ClimateScienceWatch |
Promoting integrity in the use of climate science in government |
Climate Science Watch is a nonprofit public interest education and advocacy project dedicated to holding public officials accountable for the integrity and effectiveness with which they use climate science and related research in government policymaking, toward the goal of enabling society to respond effectively to the challenges posed by global warming and climate change. See Details |
John Holdren: US public opinion is near a tipping point on climate change despite deniers’ strategy
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008
In a February 18 interview at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harvard Prof. John Holdren, outgoing AAAS board chairman, said “I really think we’re close to a political tipping point in the United States on the climate change issue....I think the deniers are finally losing the battle and the discussion is now moving to solutions.”
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Harvard Prof. John Holdren on “Global Climate Disruption: What do we know, what should we do?"”
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008
"Global warming is a misnomer. It implies something gradual, uniform, and benign. What we’re experiencing is none of these,” says Prof. John Holdren, recently president and board chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “We are already experiencing ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference’ with the climate system,” Holdren said. “The question we have now is whether we can avoid catastrophic interference.”
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Major corporations seek green image on climate policy but fund coal lobby front group
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008
Major U.S. corporations that are part of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which has called for strong legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, also have funded a coal-industry front organization that is waging a $35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to undermine support for such legislation. The front group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, has sponsored CNN presidential candidate debates at which no questions were asked about global warming. Corporate greenwashing? Media sellout?
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House Science Committee chairman questions White House delay on federal science integrity principles
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008
In the more than six months since the enactment of a law requiring the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop principles of science communication integrity for the federal agencies to implement, and more than three months after the statutory deadline for issuing the principles, the White House continues to be tangled up in its own internal political processes rather than being in compliance with a straightforward statutory requirement.
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AAAS honors climate scientists James Hansen and Robert Watson
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008
On February 16, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its annual meeting in Boston, honored Jim Hansen of NASA with the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, and former IPCC chairman Bob Watson with the AAAS International Scientific Cooperation Award. Both have been targets of the Bush administration’s politicization of climate science.
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“Scientific Freedom and the Public Good” – Statement to the next president
Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008
On February 14 a group of prominent scientists, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, released a statement – “Scientific Freedom and the Public Good”—calling for the next president to put an end to political interference in science and create changes that would allow federal science to flourish. We support the UCS Restoring Scientific Integrity Network.
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Why hasn’t White House science director issued required science communication integrity principles?
Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2008
When White House science Director John Marburger testifies before the House Science and Technology Committee on February 14 at a hearing on funding for the America COMPETES Act, the Committee should ask him why he has not issued the federal science communication integrity principles required by the Act.
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New Harper government policy muzzles communication by Environment Canada government scientists
Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"The concept of free speech is non-existent at Environment Canada,” says Canadian university climate scientist Andrew Weaver. The National Post (Canada) reported that Environment Canada recently instituted media message control rules for government scientists in an action that appears worthy of some of what was documented earlier under the Bush-Cheney administration. The Post reports that the policy of requiring that the content of all responses to media inquiries be controlled through public relations officials in Ottawa is infuriating scientists, who had long been encouraged to discuss their work with the media and the public.
An eminent climate scientist working to hold government officials accountable
Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008
"Time is running out. If an agreement isn’t possible in the next 2, 3, or 4 years, it may be too late to prevent serious climatic consequences....Unless the negotiations can find the political will to agree on enforceable and meaningful (= large) cuts in emissions, the climate is going to degrade. That’s just a fact,” says Dr. Richard Somerville, distinguished atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, coordinating lead author of the IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, and signer of the 2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists.
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US State Dept. request for comments on the future of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Posted on Saturday, February 09, 2008
“The U.S. State Department, in its role as coordinator for the U.S. Government’s role in the IPCC, requests public comment on the activities and process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to facilitate the U.S. Government’s effort to assess and enhance the IPCC’s high-level of scientific credibility and relevance for the evolving needs of decisionmakers.” We have some questions for consideration.
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President’s FY 2009 climate science budget proposal remains below the 2001 level
Posted on Friday, February 08, 2008
While President Bush has requested an increase in funding for the Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Year 2009, the inflation-adjusted program budget still remains below what it was in 2001, and significantly below the mid-1990s level. This despite growing observed signs of global climatic disruption, and the President’s recurrent insistence that scientific uncertainties needed to be resolved as a precondition to backing a requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Presidential Climate Action Project “State of the Climate” statement calls for federal action
Posted on Thursday, February 07, 2008
In signing the Presidential Climate Action Project “State of the Climate” statement, Climate Science Watch joins Nobel Prize winners, leading scientists, elected leaders, heads of major environmental organizations, and others in urging the federal government to invest more in climate science, to seize the opportunity of an emerging global market for clean energy technologies, and to recognize that global warming is an economic, public health and national security issue. The statement was delivered to the White House, Congressional leaders, and presidential candidates.
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For a National Climate Change Preparedness Initiative
Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz put forward our proposal that the next administration undertake a National Climate Change Preparedness Initiative, at a national conference on “Climate Change: Science and Solutions,” in Washington, DC. He spoke on January 17 as part of a panel on the future of the the federal global change research program.
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“The American Denial of Global Warming”
Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Prof. Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California-San Diego Science Studies Program, lectures on the history of the global warming disinformation campaign, led by corporate-funded policy operatives and ideologically-driven scientists, who employed the “tobacco strategy” to manipulate public opinion to create an exaggerated sense of uncertainty about scientific evidence on global warming and climatic disruption. (See especially from 26:00 forward in this 58-minute video.)
A strategy session on the future of the US Global Change Research Program
Posted on Tuesday, February 05, 2008
A process for developing a set of recommendations to the next administration and Congress in January 2009 was kicked off on January 17 at a national conference on Climate Change: Science and Solutions, in Washington, DC. Climate Science Watch participated in and reports on the session, chaired by Dr. Robert Corell: “The US Global Change Research Program: What do we want from the next Administration?”
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