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Contact for Interviews:    

Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273

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Washington, D.C., November 6, 2003—The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has publicly acknowledged that the National Assessment on Climate Change was not “subjected to OSTP’s Information Quality Act guidelines.”  This acknowledgement now appears prominently on the document posted on the U. S. Global Change Research Program’s web site (http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/).  With this admission, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has withdrawn its complaint in federal court that the National Assessment did not meet the minimal scientific standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act.

A subsequent product disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Action Report 2002, repeats many of the scientifically unsupportable assertions contained in the National Assessment and should now be subjected to FDQA guidelines, as should the next National Assessment due in October 2004.

“The record shows that the Clinton White House pressured bureaucrats to rush out an incomplete and inaccurate report despite protests from government scientists,” said Christopher C. Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI.  “The government also subsequently confirmed that the two climate models selected for the National Assessment are ‘outliers’ chosen to guarantee extreme results and are incapable of replicating even past climate trends.”

CEI argued in its complaint that the National Assessment violates legal requirements of objectivity and utility by employing computer models proven unreliable and by incorrectly revising climate history to portray the climate of the 20th century as unusual. 

“We are pleased to see that the federal government has now put the public on notice that the National Assessment is propaganda, not science,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at CEI.  “The next report must meet the minimal scientific standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act.”