The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remains in the crosshairs of Congressman Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The issue is that Rep. Smith did not like the most recent update to NOAA’s global surface temperature dataset, because it resulted in a larger warming trend since 1998—a time period that those who reject the conclusions of climate science are fond of claiming has seen no warming.

When last we checked in, the American Meteorological Society was weighing in with concern about Rep. Smith’s subpoena seeking internal communications of NOAA scientists about this update. And Smith was asserting that it was done for political, rather than scientific reasons.

Updates like this one, which add in data or revise corrections for non-climatic factors like differences between measurement techniques, are common. And, after the changes, NOAA’s dataset looks about the same as all the others. Although the data and methods he requested are publicly available, and NOAA scientists have provided explanations regarding the latest update, Rep. Smith wants to comb through their e-mails in order to uncover the political influence he assumes must exist.

NOAA has taken the position, as other scientific organizations have in the past, that deliberative communications between scientists should be protected from fishing expeditions, and has so far refused to comply.

After NOAA refused, Rep. Smith sent a letter reiterating the demand and making a few additional requests, including that four individuals from NOAA—two scientists, NOAA Chief of Staff Renee Stone, and Communications Director Ciaran Clayton—appear for closed-door interviews before the full House Committee. An aide for the committee told Ars that the transcripts of such interviews are generally not released and would not be released in this case. The rules also dictate that the committee members of one party cannot release transcripts without the permission of the other party. Whatever questions Rep. Smith wants to ask about the transparency of NOAA science will remain confidential.

But the public battle is continuing. On Friday, Rep. Smith sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker asking her to direct NOAA to comply with his subpoena for internal communications. The letter states that “Congressional oversight need not, indeed should not, begin only when evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, or other wrongdoing is unveiled.”

The letter also complains that NOAA has apparently not yet scheduled the interviews with the two non-scientists and emphasizes that “the Committee’s request for information and communications includes not just NOAA scientists but also NOAA policy and political staff.” It adds that “NOAA’s response appears to be targeted at manipulating the Committee’s requests to lend support to the false narrative being promoted by outside organizations that the Committee is attempting to target and intimidate scientists.”

As an example, Rep. Smith seems peeved that NOAA put out a press release about the study published in Science describing the update (which we covered). The letter continues, “NOAA also used Twitter to spread the news about the Karl study, tweeting ‘NOAA study refutes notion of ‘hiatus’ in rate of #globalwarming in recent yrs.’ This type of public relations effort seems better suited to an advertising campaign than a federal agency’s sober report on the findings of a publicly-funded study.”

NOAA routinely produces press releases for reports or newly published studies, and its Twitter account exists primarily to share links to those releases.