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Carbon fiber composite is absolutely lousy at conducting heat perpendicular to the fiber. Which is why they seem to be cool, that's because it's an insulator around the (rapidly heating) steel barrel. Hence the accuracy problems.
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No idea what cause the accuracy problems; but when I tested the ABS barrels, we measured at three points, including the exposed steel gas block. One reason we did this is exactly because I was concerned that the carbon fiber was acting as an insulator and hiding the heat.
However, the ABS barrel stayed cooler than the M4 barrel at all three points and it cooled back down to ambient temperature faster as well. Had the carbon fiber been acting as an insulator, I would have expected the gas block temperature to be higher than the M4, and overall it should have taken longer for the ABS barrel to cool down. Neither of those happened.
Accuracy, however, was unacceptable even by military standards.