The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) filed a data quality petition in February with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), challenging global climate change information. The CEI petition seeks withdrawal of the National Assessment on Climate Change (NACC), which is the inter-agency technical document that underlies most of the federal government's recent statements about global climate change. In the same month, CEI filed similar data quality challenges on the NACC report with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). All of the challenges use the same information and arguments. CEI filed the NOAA petition on Feb. 19 and seems to be directly derived from comments submitted to NOAA on the Department of Commerce's proposed data quality guidelines, comments on the strategic plan for the climate science program, and other correspondence with the agency prior to the challenge. The global warming petition questions the objectivity, utility and reproducibility of the NACC. CEI claims in the petition that the NACC draws on data from improperly used computer models, selecting extreme models that violate the data quality guideline of objectivity. The petition also asserts that due to political pressure, the NACC was not authentically peer reviewed and that a congressionally requested scientific review went unperformed. CEI asserts that NOAA disseminates NACC because NOAA is the host of the Committee for Environment and Natural Resources (CENR), which oversees the committee that developed NACC. Much of the evidence CEI presents in the petition seems to rest on the comments and opinions of individuals. While the comments are interesting and certainly support the CEI's position, it seems that they have not fulfilled their burden of proving the information does not meet the data quality guidelines. The fact that some peer reviewers believed that the document needed major changes, does not make their views valid. CEI neither establishes that this was a majority view of reviewers or even a significant percentage. In any peer review process there is a wide variety of feedback, often contradictory. The feedback is considered and then incorporated or addressed to the extent possible. A troubling aspect of this data quality challenge is that CEI seeks to "correct" this information by prohibiting the government from disseminating the NACC. Under NOAA's data quality guidelines, the petitioner is required to submit the corrected information. CEI is not fulfilling this burden with its claim that the information is so "fatally flawed" that it cannot be corrected. The petition represent the first of the data quality challenges that public interest groups warned would be filed. During the development of the data quality guidelines, numerous public interest groups voiced their concern that the well intentioned principles of improving data quality would be misused to de-publish information, gag agencies and prevent the free discussion of information. NOAA denied CEI's request in an April 25 letter, explaining that NOAA does not disseminate the report. The agency did provide information that was incorporated into the report, but contends that providing source information does not amount to the dissemination of NACC. Additionally, NOAA links to the NACC through website links, but the NOAA data quality guidelines do not consider supplying links as a form of dissemination. In response to the question of NOAA hosting the CENR site, the agency states that it is conducting a review of all hosting activities as part of a larger project and CENR may or may not remain on a NOAA page. CEI did not submit a request for reconsideration to NOAA within the deadline. While CEI has not pursued this matter any further with NOAA, the group has continued its efforts to de-publish the NACC. In the first lawsuit filed under the Data Quality Act, CEI challenged the dissemination of NACC by OSTP. CEI's lawsuit was settled out of court but would have been the first test of whether the guidelines are enforceable by the courts. Several agencies stress their DQA guidelines are not rules nor are they legally binding. See the OMB Watch Analysis on the lawsuit for more information.