NOAA’s “no evidence” that wind kills whales violates the Information Quality Act

From CFACT

By David Wojick

NOAA persists in claiming there is no evidence that offshore wind development is causing whale deaths. This is a false claim that is repeated endlessly in the press. There is lots of evidence some of which I have documented over the last two years.

It is actually illegal for Federal agencies to make false claims like this. There is a 25 year old law called the Information Quality Act (IQA) enforced by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. IQA mandates that agencies provide accurate unbiased information.

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

1. “Quality is an encompassing term comprising utility, objectivity, and integrity.”

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

Unfortunately NOAA’s repeated claim that there is no evidence of wind development causing whale deaths is neither accurate no unbiased. It is false and typical of NOAA’s actions biased in favor of development.

Moreover this wind-whale information falls under the special IQA category of influential scientific information which NOAA defines as “Influential scientific information (ISI) means scientific information the agency reasonably can determine will have or does have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or private sector decisions.”

In fact it qualifies as highly influential scientific assessment: “The term Highly Influential Scientific Assessment (HISA) refers to a subset of Influential Scientific Information and means an influential scientific assessment that: …. (i) could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any year, or (ii) is novel, controversial, or precedent setting or has significant interagency interest.”

The viability of the multi-billion dollar a year offshore wind program crucially depends in part on this wind-whale information. This evidence assessment is a HISA and IQA guidance rightfully calls for extra care and caution in making such assessments.

This HISA care is clearly not being given. NOAA has conducted no systematic studies on the issue of evidence. They have simply shrugged off the issue in favor of wind development. This is a glaring violation of the Information Quality Act.

Of particular interest is the adverse impact of sonar site surveys as until recently that has been the primary activity. NOAA’s website says the following:

“At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths.”

In reality there is lots of evidence. Bear in mind that evidence comes in pieces. NOAA may be confusing evidence with certainty, that is thinking that because the specific impact on whales is uncertain that constitutes no evidence. Such reasoning is completely wrong.

Here are three simple examples of existing evidence that wind development is causing whale deaths.

First, the year site development got fully underway the Atlantic coast humpback whale death rate roughly tripled and it has remained high. This is strong evidence of a development induced tipping point. Wind defenders talk about the impact of increasing ship traffic and climate change but neither jumped at this specific time.

Second, NOAA itself has predicted and authorized thousands of noise “harassments” of whales where so-called harassment includes causing temporary deafness (which us actually an injury). That deafening a whale could lead to its death is obvious and NOAA even discusses this possibility. Thus these authorizations count as evidence supporting the hypothesis of development caused death.

Third, last year Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis found a high statistical correlation between the specific local activity of sonar survey boats and clusters of whale deaths. This is very strong, some would say compelling, evidence that wind development is causing whale deaths. 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 preposterous. They consider it in an obscure single paragraph in a 160 page defense of their harassment authorization for the Vineyard Wind project. Here they say: “Overall, while NMFS considered this information, it did not provide new information that links whale strandings to offshore wind vessel movement or surveys.”

NOAA falsely claims this groundbreaking study provides no new information linking wind development and whale deaths! That is precisely what it does. This ridiculous claim is clearly biased and far from objective. It is typical of NOAA’s handling of the wind-whale evidence issue.

NOAA’s blatant violation of the Information Quality Act by ignoring the evidence that wind development is killing whales needs to be investigated and corrected.