House Republicans are pressing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) for answers about a signature dataset frequently cited as evidence that climate change is intensifying.
Members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Committee wrote to NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad on Wednesday demanding information about several aspects of the agency’s “billion dollar disasters” (BDD) dataset, which the Biden administration has cited to justify its pause on natural gas export terminal approvals, among other things. The lawmakers allege that the BDD data may be violating NOAA’s scientific integrity rules, and they also requested clarification on NOAA’s methodology and an explanation as to why the agency does not adjust for variables like GDP.
The metric’s critics have pointed out that economic statistics are an inappropriate proxy for climate change’s intensity or changing meteorological conditions. For example, identical storms in identical locations at two different times would render different damage totals because of increases in the amount of property in harm’s way and not necessarily because climate change has gotten any worse.
“Since the 1990s, NOAA has published annual reports showing the number of disasters that have cost more than a billion dollars in damages,” the letter states. “Debate around the validity of the reports’ methodologies has resulted in NOAA making incremental but important changes. Since 2011, the reports’ cost estimates of all past disasters in the dataset have been updated annually to account for inflation in today’s dollars.”
“However, despite adjustments for inflation, the reports have not been adjusted for increases in population or wealth in the same capacity,” the letter continues. Due to these increases in population and wealth, even mild storms can sometimes appear to cause greater damage today. The lack of updated, comprehensive data in these models raises considerable concern given that these reports have been cited by both Congress and the President as the justification for different federal government actions concerning climate change.”
BDD data was used in a flagship climate report released by the Biden administration in 2023, and it was also cited as evidence to justify the administration’s pause on approvals for new liquefied natural gas export terminals by Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk in testimony provided to Congress in February.
The letter alleges that NOAA’s adjustments for inflation appear to be inconsistent in some cases. Additionally, the lawmakers wrote that the opaque methodology for deriving BDD data makes the data nearly impossible to independently replicate and verify.
The letter’s authors — Republican Reps. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, Max Miller of Ohio and Jay Obernolte of California — called on Spinrad to disclose why NOAA connects BDD data and climate change and the scientific basis it has for doing so, as well as for an explanation as to why the agency does not adjust its data for increases in population or wealth.
Roger Pielke Jr., a BDD critic and former environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, raised several of these issues in his own correction request submitted to NOAA in January. In response to his request, NOAA said that it would be taking some steps to improve the BDD data’s transparency.
NOAA referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the statement it issued upon releasing their response to Pielke’s correction request when contacted for comment for this story. An agency spokesperson added that the agency will respond to the lawmakers’ letter via official channels.
“NOAA notes that the [request for correction (RFC)] did not identify specific data points that need correcting. In conducting its review of the RFC, NOAA has not identified any data inaccuracies in the Billion Dollar Disaster data set,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement shared with the DCNF regarding Pielke’s correction request. “NOAA has determined the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters data set meets the threshold for influential scientific information (ISI) under NOAA’s Information Quality Guidelines. As a result, NOAA will review and update its management practices for the data set.”
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