NOAA has 'no evidence' that wind killing whales violates Information Quality Act – is it worth it?

from CFACT

David Wojik

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration insists there is no evidence offshore wind development causes whale deaths. This is a false claim that the media keeps repeating. There is a lot of evidence, some of which I have documented over the past two years.

It is actually illegal for a federal agency to make such false claims. There is a 25-year-old law called the Information Quality Act (IQA), enforced by OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. IQA requires agencies to provide accurate and unbiased information.

Here are two key definitions from NOAA’s IQA guidance:

1. “Quality is a catch-all term that includes usefulness, objectivity, and completeness.”

2. “Objectivity consists of two distinct elements: presentation and substance. The presentation element involves whether the information disseminated is presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and fair manner and in an appropriate context. The substance element involves a focus on ensuring accuracy , reliable and unbiased information.

Unfortunately, NOAA's repeated claims that there is no evidence that wind development caused whale deaths are neither accurate nor fair. This is wrong and typical of NOAA's development bias.

In addition, this kind of wind whale information falls under the special IQA category of influential scientific information, which NOAA defines as “Influential scientific information (ISI) is information that the agency can reasonably determine will have an important impact on public policy or policy.” or scientific information that does have a clear and substantial impact.

In fact, it qualifies as Highly Impactful Scientific Assessment: “The term Highly Impactful Scientific Assessment (HISA) refers to a subset of influential scientific information, meaning that… ….. (i) may have a potential impact in excess of $500 million in any one year, or (ii) be novel, controversial, or precedent-setting, or of significant cross-agency interest.

The viability of offshore wind power schemes worth billions of dollars a year depends heavily on wind whale information. This evidence assessment is HISA and IQA guidance and rightly requires that extreme care and caution be exercised when undertaking such assessments.

This HISA care was clearly not provided. NOAA has not conducted a systematic study of the evidence issue. They simply shrugged off the issue in favor of wind energy development. This is a clear violation of the Information Quality Act.

Of particular interest are the adverse effects of sonar field surveys, as this has been the main activity until recently. NOAA’s website is as follows:

“Currently, there is no scientific evidence that noise from offshore wind characterization surveys may cause whale deaths.”

In fact, there is a lot of evidence. Remember, evidence is fragmentary. NOAA may be confusing evidence with certainty, arguing that because a specific impact on whales is uncertain, it does not constitute any evidence. Such reasoning is completely wrong.

Here are three simple examples of existing evidence showing that wind development is killing whales.

First, mortality rates for Atlantic Coast humpback whales roughly tripled in the year site development was in full swing and have remained at elevated levels. This is strong evidence of development-induced tipping points. Wind energy defenders talk about increased ship traffic and the impact of climate change, but at this particular time neither one jumps on the bandwagon.

Second, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) itself has predicted and authorized thousands of whale noise “harassments,” where alleged harassment includes causing temporary deafness (which is actually an injury). It's clear that deafening whales could kill them, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has even discussed the possibility. Therefore, these authorizations are seen as evidence supporting the development-induced death hypothesis.

Third, last year, Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis found a high statistical correlation between specific localized activities of sonar survey vessels and clusters of whale deaths. This is very strong, some would say convincing evidence that wind developments are killing whales. Correlation is not causation, but correlation in the context of a causal hypothesis is strong evidence. (This is the basis for clinical trials.)

NOAA's response to this compelling study is simply ridiculous. They consider this in a nondescript paragraph in their 160-page defense of the Vineyard Wind special harassment authorization. “Overall, while NMFS considered this information, it provided no new information linking the whale strandings to offshore sailboat movements or surveys,” they said here.

NOAA falsely claims that this groundbreaking study provides no new information linking wind development to whale deaths! That's exactly what it does. This ridiculous statement is obviously biased and far from objective. This is typical of NOAA's approach to wind whale evidence.

NOAA is flagrantly violating the Information Quality Act by ignoring evidence that wind development is killing whales and needs to be investigated and corrected.

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