Conservative Legal Group Sues NOAA Over Climate Change Documents

House Science panel Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is getting some legal backup to his campaign to pry loose internal climate-change documents from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Judicial Watch, the conservative legal advocacy group, announced on Tuesday that on Dec. 2 it filed a suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking the NOAA communications records related to a scientific study released last June. Smith believes the report was altered to lend political weight to President Obama’s clean power agenda.

Smith, who chairs the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, in October subpoenaed NOAA’s internal email exchanges between scientists making final adjustments to temperature readings in the study. The agency has so far declined to hand over the scientists’ messages while defending the scientific process, but it has recently given the lawmaker memos from the agency’s public affairs staff planning release of the study.

Judicial Watch suggested its suit and earlier Freedom of Information Act request to the Commerce Department—NOAA’s parent—influenced the situation in that NOAA released the batch less than a week after Judicial Watch served its lawsuit.

“We have little doubt that our lawsuit helped to pry these scandalous climate change report documents from the Obama administration,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, whose group received a call from NOAA responding to its research into the agency’s handling of climate data. “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism.”

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