The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has subpoenaed the emails of several federal scientists suggesting that they manipulated data on global warming in order to promote the Obama administration's policies on climate change.
Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is investigating the global warming study that scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration authored refuting claims that there had been a "pause" in global warming during the past decade, The Washington Post reported.
Smith, who is skeptical of climate change science, has threatened to subpoena Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in the on-going dispute over the study's methods. NOAA falls under the umbrella of the Commerce Department.
The study's results were submitted in December 2014 and published in June.
NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan sent a letter to Smith on Friday chiding him for trying to "coerce the scientists who work for me."
“If the committee doubts the integrity of the study,” Sullivan wrote in the letter, “it has the tools it needs to commission a competing scientific assessment.”
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