Tuesday saw yet another congressional science committee hearing on the topic of climate change. At least the topic of this hearing, convened by House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas), was ostensibly focused on policy rather than arguing the science. The title was “Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America.” Of course, climate science still took some shots along the way.

Rep. Smith opened the hearing with what would be a recurring theme: the Paris agreement will damage the economy without much climate benefit. But Smith couldn’t resist bringing up his ongoing feud with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He said:

An example of how this administration promotes its suspect climate agenda can be seen at the National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration. Its employees altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the eighteen year lack of global temperature increases. NOAA conveniently issued its news release that promotes this report just as the administration announced its extensive climate change regulations. NOAA has refused to explain its findings and provide documents to this Committee and the American people. The people have a right to see the data, evaluate it, and know the motivations behind this study.

Here's a quick review: There’s no evidence that NOAA scientists did anything but their jobs, there is no eighteen-year lack of global temperature increases, the update to NOAA’s dataset had been in the works for years, NOAA provided Smith with personal explanations of how the work was done and why, all the data has been publicly available all along, and NOAA has provided him with the e-mails between staff (but not scientists) he demanded.

The list of experts invited to provide testimony again included University of Alabama-Huntsville’s John Christy, who also testified at the most recent Senate committee hearing. Christy, who works on one of the satellite atmospheric temperature datasets, was there to testify that the human role in global warming is exaggerated.

Politicians like Rep. Smith have made claims about the satellite data sets that have come under increased scrutiny by the media, but Christy contended that his satellite data is better able to assess warming than any of the surface temperature data sets. (Carl Mears, who helps run a different satellite dataset, has told Ars and others he draws the opposite conclusion.)

Rep. Smith later asked Christy what he thought of the fact that 2015 was the warmest year in NOAA’s dataset. Christy cast doubt on NOAA’s data (even though every other surface data set agreed), before emphasizing that 2015 was between second and fourth in upper air data sets. “The fact that that information is not provided to the American public by a government agency is disturbing to me,” Christy said.

However, NOAA and NASA’s press conference explicitly discussed those datasets.

Christy also neglected to mention that the warmth of El Niño years shows up several months later in the satellite data sets. The boost the current potent El Niño gave 2015’s average surface temperature will mainly be felt in 2016’s average satellite temperature.

Christy wrapped up his testimony by opining on the Obama Administration’s greenhouse gas emissions pledges. “So to me, it is not scientifically justifiable or economically rational that this nation should establish regulations whose only discernable consequence is an increase in economic pain visited most directly and harshly on the poorest among us,” Christy testified.

Others invited to testify included Stephen Eule of the US Chamber of Commerce (a lobbying group), Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank), and one person invited by Committee Democrats: Andrew Steer of the World Resources Institute (an international NGO). Eule and Groves argued that the Paris agreement should have been subject to Senate approval—the global agreement was specifically structured to avoid the US Senate—and that it would harm the US economy.

Part of their criticism was that the agreement lacked the ability to force other nations to honor their pledges. But if the details of the pledges had been legally binding, the Republican majority in the Senate would have been able to block it.

It fell to Andrew Steer of the World Resources Institute to argue that the agreement was actually beneficial, that many nations and corporations are already working seriously toward emissions reductions, and that American leadership on climate is a good thing rather than an opening for competing economies to take the US down a notch.

Similar to the arguments that prevented the US from ratifying the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, it was clear that some members of the committee still feel any action on climate change simply means letting China eat America’s lunch.