Government watchdog groups have filed complaints against the Biden administration over its use of the data set, which is often used to advance climate change policy.
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed a complaint with the Department of Commerce regarding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Billions ProjectDatasets aimed at tracking natural phenomena [and climate] Disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage dating back to 1980. Billion dollar disaster (BDD) data, often cited by the Biden administration to imply that climate change is intensifying and justify sweeping environmental policies, is based on opaque data. Based on. PPT alleges in its complaint that this is due to questionable accounting practices.
“American households and businesses continue to suffer from high inflation, which many believe is largely due to the current administration’s energy policies and government spending. These are blatant violations of scientific integrity. “The idea that this could underlie the policy rationale should be of concern to all Americans,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. The Biden administration started out promising to base its decisions on the highest quality science, but too often it has fallen short on those promises.” (Related article: The entire effort to halt new natural gas exports traces its origins to an Ivy League professor and his shaky research.)
PPT Scientific Integrity Committee by nick pope
NOAA operates under the auspices of the Department of Commerce, so the complaint was filed with the Department, Chamberlain told DCNF.
The PPT complaint alleges that NOAA does not adequately disclose the sources and methods for compiling the BDD data set, adding or removing BDD events to the data set without providing a rationale for doing so, or using more traditional accounting methods. The company claims that it has produced cost estimates that are sometimes significantly different from those produced by the company. procedure.
NOAA says it compiles BDD data from more than a dozen sources, but the agency does not disclose those sources for specific events and how it derives loss estimates from those sources. It also does not indicate whether it is calculated, PPT’s complaint alleges.
The complaint further alleges that NOAA’s accounting methods are opaque and “produce questionable results.”
For example, when Hurricane Idalia hit Florida in 2023, the PPT complaint states that NOAA initially estimated that the storm caused approximately $2.5 billion worth of damage, and that ultimately insured losses amounted to approximately $300 million. It was predicted to be $10 million. Florida Department of Insurance Regulation Because of that number. Despite this, NOAA later raised its estimate of the damage caused by the storm to $3.5 billion, a discrepancy that NOAA offered no explanation for, PPT alleges in the complaint.
NOAA researchers disclosed In the past, the agency has considered factors such as features related to livestock feed costs, in addition to more traditional damages, in its cost calculations.
The complaint also cites Roger Pilke, Jr., a former academic who believes climate change is a real threat but opposes politicized science, and says BDD events have been reported without explanation. They claim that they are being secretly added to or removed from datasets. In a forthcoming paper analyzing the benefits of BDD statistics, Pielke will compare his late 2022 dataset to his mid-2023 dataset, adding 10 new his BDD events to the list, I discovered that 3 items were deleted without any explanation.
Apart from the methodological issues that PPT asserted in its complaint, using BDD events as a proxy for the intensity of climate change is inherently misleading because economic data does not reflect changes in weather conditions. Pirque previously explained to DCNF that there is.
For example, as Steve Milloy, Senior Policy Fellow at the Energy and Environmental Law Institute, previously explained to DCNF, increasing concentrations of assets, particularly in coastal areas, will reduce the usefulness of BDD events as indicators of the intensity of climate change. may be confusing. Hypothetically, the exact same hurricane could strike the exact same location decades apart and the total damage could vary widely. This is not because storms are becoming more intense due to worsening climate change, but because there are simply more assets standing in the way of them.
NOAA acknowledged this limitation of the data set in previous communications with DCNF.
Additionally, NOAA retroactively adds disasters to the list. adjust for inflationSo, for example, a hurricane that caused $800 million in damage in 1980 would be added to the list because, adjusted for inflation, the damage would exceed $1 billion.
The Biden administration frequently cites BDD datasets to substantiate its large-scale climate change plans.
For example, Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk cited this dataset in: written testimony A document explaining the White House’s decision to suspend new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals was submitted to lawmakers in February.
The BDD statistics come from the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5 ) is also referenced.
NOAA claimed that the increased frequency of BDD events was a sign of climate change intensifying in January. press release and blog post 2023 and defended the use of the dataset in subsequent communications with the DCNF.
“Sensational climate claims made without adequate scientific basis and propagated by government officials threaten public trust in scientific authorities and undermine the government’s mission to steward the environment.”PPT the complaint states. “It also poses a risk that policymakers will base important government policy decisions on unscientific claims that are not supported by evidence.”
NOAA declined to comment, citing the aggressive nature of the scientific integrity allegations. The White House and the Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.
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