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 |
“Everything’s Cool” global warming documentary on DVD
Posted on Sunday, January 06, 2008
"Everything’s Cool”—a film about the efforts of global warming citizen activists and educators, and about America finally “getting” global warming in the face of the right-wing disinformation campaign and the dangerous chasm between scientific understanding and political action—is now available on DVD for home and community screenings.
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House-Senate conferees should report strong Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act bill
Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008
A January 3 editorial in the St. Petersburg (FL) Times, “Protect the Whistleblowers,” calling on Congress to strengthen the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and override a presidential veto if necessary, leads with: “Were it not for the disclosures of Rick Piltz of the White House Climate Change Science Program, the public might never have known that Bush administration appointees, including an oil industry lobbyist, altered the conclusions of the country’s top scientists in order to subvert concern over global warming. Piltz is one of thousands of whistleblowers who help make our government more accountable.” But: “The Whistleblower Protection Act is no longer serving its initial purpose....According to the Government Accountability Project, a nonpartisan organization devoted to protecting whistleblowers, in the last 13 years whistleblowers have suffered a 2-to-183 losing streak before the one federal appellate court to which they may appeal.” See Details for full text and Piltz note.
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R.I.P Bert Bolin
Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Bert Bolin, Swedish climate scientist and co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has died at age 82. Dr. Bolin played a key role in communicating the dangers of climate change and served as the first chairman of the IPCC from 1988 to 1998. We deeply appreciated his leadership in making the IPCC into the indispensable organization that it has become. See AP article here.
As California sues EPA on CO2 regulation, inside sources could help set the record straight
Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008
California and 15 other states sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on January 2 for denying them a waiver needed under the Clean Air Act to put in place first-in-the-nation regulation of carbon emissions from new cars and trucks. A Congressional investigation has been initiated into EPA’s documents on its decision on the waiver. Climate Science Watch calls on inside sources to help set the record straight by providing information that may not be evident in formal documents, including information about White House political interference in agency decisionmaking under the statute.
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Coming Dec. 27: “Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen”
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2007
Here’s something we’ve pre-ordered for New Year’s reading: Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming, by climate science author Mark Bowen, “tells a chilling story of deliberate efforts by senior NASA managers, acting in concert with the Bush White House, to play up uncertainties and minimize dangers regarding global warming....A must-read not just for environmentalists but for all politically conscientious readers.” (Kirkus Reviews) The book, published by Dutton, is scheduled for release on December 27.
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EPA decision controlled by White House CEQ in denial of California CO2 rules?
Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007
In denying California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, we believe the Environmental Protection Agency was suborned by White House politics to make a decision that appears to be without either good legal or scientific justification. Ask Marty Hall, Phil Cooney’s successor as chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and former top staffer for global warming denialist Sen. James Inhofe, what role CEQ and the Vice-President’s office played in manipulating what should have been an independent professional decision by EPA.
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James Hansen letter to UK Prime Minister Brown: “We must solve the coal problem now.”
Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
NASA climate scientist James Hansen sent a letter on December 19 to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling on him to lead a moratorium in the West on new coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2. A phase-out of coal use that does not capture CO2 is “80% of the solution” to the global warming problem, Hansen says. “We must solve the coal problem now.”
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House Oversight approves report on political interference with climate science communication
Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007
On December 12 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a majority report that concludes that the Bush Administration politically interfered with climate change science communication and misled policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming. The Committee was divided. The Republican minority put forward a “Preliminary Minority Views” report that draws conclusions based on unquestioningly accepting at face value misleading statements by Phil Cooney and other current and former administration officials.
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A climate scientist in the “reality-based community” finds science advisor Marburger talk “scary”
Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007
In his critical review on the RealClimate site of a December 11 talk by White House science advisor John Marburger, Prof. Ray Pierrehumbert sees political slant continuing to trump climate science.
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House Oversight Committee report contradicts NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher’s testimony
Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007
On 16 February 2006, the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., was asked in a Senate Hearing whether there was White House censorship of communication by NOAA scientists. Lautenbacher responded that he was "not aware that there is any truth to that at all," that he had "never seen anybody to be able to muzzle a scientist," that scientists say "whatever they want to say," and that "we don’t interfere with the ability of our scientists to discuss their peer reviewed science." His statement is contradicted by a report issued on Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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CSW director: White House under Clinton-Gore “was not at war with the mainstream science community”
Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2007
In an article on the House Oversight Committee majority report on White House political interference with climate change science, released December 10, the Christian Science Monitor reports: “Rick Piltz, director of the climate science watch program at the Government Accountability Project...[says] the White House’s efforts this time were about more than organizing a coherent policy message.” No administration is above criticism, but under the previous administration the White House “was not at war with the mainstream science community.”
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House Oversight report on administration political interference with climate change science
Posted on Monday, December 10, 2007
On December 10 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), released a proposed report on the results of a 16-month investigation of allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. The report draws on more than 27,000 pages of documents obtained by the Committee from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department. The report draws on and validates information we and others brought forward, and includes material that has not previously been published. On the corrupting influence of CEQ, we told Greenwire: “Everybody was complicit. Everybody knew what was going on, although nobody had the full story, because the tentacles of CEQ were out in so many different directions.”
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IPCC Chairman Pachauri and Al Gore Nobel lectures: Climate change and government accountability
Posted on Monday, December 10, 2007
R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10. Pachauri: “Will those responsible for decisions in the field of climate change at the global level listen to the voice of science and knowledge, which is now loud and clear?” Gore: “We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.” Their Nobel Lectures, and the Presentation Speech by the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, deserve to be read in full….
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2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists
Posted on Thursday, December 06, 2007
A consensus Bali Climate Declaration, signed by more than 200 members of the international climate science community, says that the goal of a new climate treaty regime “must be to limit global warming to no more than 2º C above the pre-industrial temperature,” and lays out targets for achieving this goal. The signers of the Declaration include about 75 U.S. scientists, in both universities and government labs.
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States and enviro groups petition EPA to regulate aviation greenhouse emissions
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2007
A coalition of California and other states, along with Earthjustice and other environmental groups, is filing formal petitions calling on the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to exercise its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from domestic and foreign aircraft departing or landing at American airports. On July 18 Climate Science Watch published a report critical of the administration’s failure to address aviation’s contribution to global warming in the federal aviation planning and development program. We called for aviation emissions to be addressed in U.S. climate change policy and regulation. The action to petition EPA is a significant step forward in advancing the issue of aviation and climate change, which has been neglected for too long in the debate on climate policy.
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