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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 |
House appropriates increased funding for climate research
Posted on Saturday, June 20, 2009
This week the US of House of Representatives took one step in the right direction by passing a fiscal year 2010 spending bill for the Department of Commerce (which includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), as well as other key science and technology agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA. The bill specifies increased funding for essential climate change research, observing systems, and assessment activities. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before Congress realizes that global climate disruption is a national security issue that calls for an even greater commitment of resources, for both research and response strategies.
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What does Rep. Broun of Georgia have against a National Climate Service?
Posted on Saturday, June 20, 2009
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is on a mission to de-fund climate change programs and defeat cap-and-trade legislation. This week he offered a House floor amendment to kill funding for a National Climate Service. Broun’s website includes this: “Broun Bashes Wacky-Marxist Cap and Tax Bill.” He’s among a small contingent in Congress who deny the science and a much larger group who act as if a sober response to global climate disruption were a partisan issue. The climate science and policy community must step up its efforts to emphasize that climate change affects everyone, has no political party affiliation, and is too urgent a matter to be used for political grandstanding.
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President Obama should lead in talking about the consequences of inaction on climate change
Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009
We talked with Grist, The Daily Climate, and KPFA-FM in Berkeley, CA about the June 16 release of Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States and the role of the White House under two administrations.
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Video link and key quotes from White House briefing on Global Climate Change Impacts report
Posted on Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Four top climate scientists and government officials—John Holdren, Jane Lubchenco, Jerry Melillo, and Tom Karl—hosted the White House press briefing yesterday to present “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” The live streaming video was unavailable for the first portion, but CSW director Rick Piltz attended in person and supplied key quotes via text messaging for our first “live blogging” session on Daily Kos. The video is now on YouTube. Here we offer some key messages and quotes, such as NOAA Adminstrator Jane Lubchenco’s: “The report is a game-changer,” and climate change adversely “affects things people care about.” And John Holdren: “It’s time to act, after years of dithering and delay.”
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Climate Science Watch joins the e-fray: we post on Daily Kos, and Tweet on Twitter… what’s next?
Posted on Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Our new “tweet” handle is ClimateSciWatch. (If you follow us, we’ll follow you.) Our posts are auto-fed to make new “tweets.” We just discovered that the US Global Change Research Program twitters about the new Impacts report: ClimateChangeUS, with the byline, “The U.S. Global Change Research Program presents a new and extensive evaluation of climate change impacts in the U.S. at the regional level.” Most of the entries are photos, or, in the vernacular, “twit pics,” of the June 16 briefing and various meetings. On Daily Kos, you can find us at climate science watch, but we post there only occasionally.
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US Climate Change Impact Report Shows Immediate Need for Action - White House must lead in preparing
Posted on Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Later today, the White House will release a major new report on the implications of global climate disruption for the United States. This is the first climate science report to come out under the Obama administration, and the most significant U.S. climate impacts assessment since the first National Assessment was issued in 2000. It’s time to start making up for eight lost years under an administration that left the federal government AWOL in dealing with this problem. Right now the United States doesn’t have the policies, institutions, and research in place to deal with the consequences of climate disruption. There is a void in the federal system that such a planning and preparedness capability must now be created to fill. The need to jump-start federal action is urgent and should not be delayed by the daunting challenge of enacting major climate legislation. See Daily Kos live blogging.
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US government to release “Global Climate Change Impacts in the US” - Today at 1:30 pm
Posted on Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Today (June 16) the Obama administration will release, at a White House news conference, a report synthesizing the state of scientific knowledge on the likely and potential consequences of global climate disruption for the United States. This is the first climate science report to come out under the Obama administration and the most significant US climate impacts assessment since the first National Assessment issued in 2000. The Bush-Cheney administration essentially suppressed the 2000 National Assessment report and abandoned support for the scientist-stakeholder interaction it had initiated. The event will be Webcast live at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live at 1:30 p.m. EDT.
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Rising sea level, rising trouble for US East Coast projected—5 state governors form pact
Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009
“Sea levels could rise faster along the U.S. East Coast than in any other densely populated part of the world,” warns an article in the June 8 Washington Post. The warning sounds silly, after all, it’s water, and water in the tub is never “uneven”—but several recent scientific findings conclude that not only will sea level rise (SLR) vary from place to place, but that the US East Coast, in comparison with all other coastlines in the world, is likely to experience the highest SLR in coming years. Of course, the Eastern seaboard faces multiple other environmental threats. Five Mid-Atlantic governors have signed an agreement to work collaboratively to “advance a regional approach” to coastal problem-solving that includes rising seas, and to hold a stakeholder summit in late 2009. And a Bush-era gag order on EPA sea level rise expert Jim Titus has apparently been lifted.
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A deadly conflict in Peru over a rush to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest: how culpable is the US?
Posted on Monday, June 08, 2009
A clash between indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest in Peru and government police has broken out in deadly violence, leaving more than 40 indigenous people and nearly two dozen police dead. At issue is whether multinational oil companies will have access to explore and drill for oil and minerals on ancestral lands under a “free trade” agreement forged between the Bush administration and Peru. Thousands of indigenous people desperate to save their ancestral lands and way of life began protesting in April. On June 5 the president of Peru ordered 650 police to use tear gas and guns on the ground and from helicopters on crowds of peaceful protesters blocking a main highway. The conflict illustrates the economics and geopolitics of oil and minerals, versus the urgent need for better stewardship over Earth’s natural systems. President Obama should reconsider this agreement in terms of the tradeoff between a short-term economic boon for some Peruvians at the expense of others and the US thirst for oil and minerals, versus the longer-term damage to the Amazon rainforest and the life it supports, its vast ability to sequester and store carbon, and Earth’s climate system.
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House Science Cmte approves National Climate Service provisions for inclusion in Waxman-Markey bill
Posted on Friday, June 05, 2009
The United States is now one step closer to creating a National Climate Service, with the mark-up approval June 3 of a bill by the House Committee on Science and Technology. The provisions are much like those approved by a subcommittee two weeks ago, with a few important changes. A potentially debilitating cap on spending for regional climate service projects known as “RISAs” was (thankfully) eliminated. In an unexpected but welcome shift, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is tasked with exploring options for an interagency climate services program, a framework much superior to an entirely NOAA-centric operation. Minority Members offered numerous amendments, some of which would have compromised the overall intent to provide climate services to stakeholders.
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How can we manage climate change risks in the private sector if companies won’t say what they are?
Posted on Thursday, June 04, 2009
Two closely related reports released this week by Ceres reveal that major corporations are largely failing to disclose to investors their risk exposure to climate change consequences and policy developments, typically sharing “minimal information” on how climate disruption is likely to impact their bottom lines. Ceres, along with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Center for Energy and Environmental Security (CEES), analyzed company filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and discovered that major oil and gas companies, coal companies, electric utilities, even insurance companies (whose bottom line is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts) scored low points in reporting their overall vulnerability to an altered environmental and economic climate. Wouldn’t it be better for businesses and investors/shareholders alike if everyone came clean and we earnestly got down to the business of reducing risk to our environment and economy, simultaneously?
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Check out “Earth 2100” tonight on ABC, a two-hour special showing us our climate future
Posted on Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Could this be the final century of our civilization? This provocative question is explored in a new TV special that takes the viewer on a journey into the future, the year 2100 to be exact, airing tonight, on ABC, from 9-11 pm EDT. “Earth 2100” centers on “Lucy,” a fictional character born on this day, June 2, 2009, looking back on the 21st century as a 91-year-old woman living in a world where humans failed to bring down CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to avoid serious consequences. This is “door number 1”—then we are offered “door number 2” —an alternative scenario, one we can look forward to only if we tackle and conquer the task of bringing down emissions to avert catastrophe and suffering. See details for previews.
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It’s now open season for hurricanes: How we can make our coasts more resilient?
Posted on Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Two organizations with exceptional talent and credentials - The Heinz Center, and Ceres— released a 9-page report last month, Resilient Coasts: A Blueprint for Action. As we are now entering hurricane season, a good question to consider is: How can we make our coastal areas more resilient to the harsh conditions that hurricanes inflict? It’s an important question, as much is at stake: More than half of the US population lives in coastal counties, and, according to the report, about a third of the nation’s gross domestic product – $4.5 trillion – is generated in those counties and in adjacent ocean waters. So what more could we be doing to protect our coastlines and the people, natural resources, wildlife, and buildings that inhabit them? Plenty! says the blueprint. See details…
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Michael MacCracken’s review of Roger Pielke, Sr.’s May 14 climate talk to the Marshall Institute
Posted on Monday, June 01, 2009
In his presentation, “Considering the Human Influence on Climate,” on May 14 at a Marshall Institute luncheon in Washington DC, Prof. Roger Pielke, Sr. argued that the climate change issue is more complicated than the seemingly almost exclusive focus in politics and the media on carbon dioxide emissions would suggest, and that failing to consider all aspects of climate change, both its natural and human-caused components, was leading to a too-narrow discussion of policy responses. On its face, this is not an unreasonable point, but in how he got there and how he drew conclusions from it Pielke ventured onto questionable ground, says Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute.
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MIT modeling study doubles earlier projected warming, poses challenge for impacts research
Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009
“The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago — and could be even worse than that,” says MIT’s statement about a new study published in the Journal of Climate. The study, funded by the U.S. Global Change Research Program through the Dept. of Energy, underscores the urgent need for policy action, and also for a major research effort on the likely impacts and consequences of this magnitude of climate change. Serious support for such research is not happening now, and poses a challenge for the science leadership of the Obama Administration in restoring the credibility of the federal climate research program.
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