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

It’s Hurricane Preparedness Week…Are we prepared?

Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009

Hurricane season officially starts on June 1 and this week (May 24-30) is Hurricane Preparedness Week. Warmer ocean temperatures and other climate change-related factors give hurricanes potentially deadlier energy and force. While elected officials and local papers are now urging people in hurricane-vulnerable areas to prepare emergency kits with flashlights, batteries, canned food, and bottled water, what about the larger challenges we continue to grapple with? What about the capacity of the built environment to withstand high winds and driving rain? The availability and safety of temporary housing (recalling the FEMA scandal of formaldehyde-soaked trailers post Katrina)? The effectiveness of evacuation plans and adequacy of escape routes? What is the condition of critical infrastructure, such as dams, dikes, drainage systems and water pumps? Are we truly prepared for hurricane season? We doubt it.

“Confidential” GOP memo on blocking cap-and-trade bill assumes lack of focus on cost of inaction

Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009

A leaked “confidential” strategy memo by Senate Environment Committee Republican staff has been derided by Democrats for its obvious flaws, but it does suggest how climate legislation is vulnerable to an attack message if its supporters fail to make clear the likely consequences of inaction on climate change. A pseudo-populist attack, attempting to paint the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security cap-and-trade emissions-reduction bill as an anti-consumer “energy tax,” could succeed politically if leading supporters of the bill focus too narrowly on a “green jobs” and “clean energy” message, while neglecting to speak in terms of WHY a transformation of the energy system is essential: that is, to avoid devastating likely impacts of unchecked global climate disruption.

Update on defense strategy in the Tim DeChristopher monkey-wrench BLM oil lease case

Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2009

You be the judge. The University of Utah student who threw a monkey wrench into a controversial oil and gas land lease auction administered by the Bureau of Land Management by buying up parcels he couldn’t afford and now faces severe jail time and fines is working up his legal defense for a July trial that is referred to in legal circles as “necessity” or “choice of evils.” His lawyers are betting that DeChristopher will be able to satisfy four legal requirements in mounting a successful defense.

Climate adaptation policy remains underdeveloped as cap-and-trade dominates the legislative debate

Posted on Wednesday, May 20, 2009

This week, the House Energy & Commerce Committee has been considering and marking up (amending) a thousand-page bill formally introduced last week by Reps. Waxman and Markey (H.R. 2454). While the complex details of an elaborate CO2 cap-and-trade scheme remain hotly debated and the central focus of attention, other crucial public policy matters, such as how the federal government will assist communities in anticipating, preparing for, and adapting to the impacts of global climate disruption, are less far along in development. While the “Adapting to Climate Change” subtitle in the Waxman-Markey bill contains some good provisions and some improvements on an earlier discussion draft, we still have a ways to go before we have adequately addressed the federal role in “managing the unavoidable” consequences of climate change, even as we seek to “avoid the unmanageable” impacts by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Some reassurance on White House regulatory czar-nominee Cass Sunstein

Posted on Monday, May 18, 2009

At his Senate confirmation hearing May 12, Office of Management and Budget regulatory affairs administrator-designee Cass Sunstein vowed to respect the rulemaking authority of EPA and other agencies, and to limit and “humanize” the use of cost-benefit analysis in reviewing proposed agency rulemakings so as not to allow “maximizing money” to undermine the values of environmental and health protection and the integrity of scientific assessment in decisionmaking. If he makes good on these promises, he will begin to undo the damage done by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under his predecessor.

A wittle wiki—wif weawy wundaful wideos wegawding whistleblowah Wick (ah, Rick Piltz, that is)

Posted on Sunday, May 17, 2009

In the category of “how quickly things change,” haven’t we all wondered what we would do without cell phones, texting, IM’ing, Google, Wikipedia, Ebay, and Craigslist? How did we ever manage to function without these, such a short time ago? Aside from Google (which is second only to oxygen in my view), Wikis are my favorite electronic vice. The woyld of wikis is just awwiving. One ~~wittle~~ little wiki caught our attention, since it’s about Wick…I mean, er, Rick, as in Piltz, the Director and Founder of CSW and this blog. This wiki is called “viswiki” implying visuals (and some audio too, if we’re weawy wucky) ... oops…. and has some ~~weawy~~ really interesting ~~cwips~~ clips from Piltz’s ~~awway~~ array of footage, including an insightful interview with the Senator-in-Permanant-Waiting and comedian-turned-news-commentator-turned-politician, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).
** PWEEZE, CWIK on dis WINK **

GAP testifies at House hearing for government whistleblowers

Posted on Friday, May 15, 2009

At a May 14 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on whistleblower protection, Government Accountability Project legal director Tom Devine called for quick action on the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, HR 1507, a bill that would give federal workers the right to jury trials when they are harassed for blowing the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse.

Congress takes step to create a National Climate Service - but beware of shackles and poison pills

Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2009

On May 12 a House subcommittee approved a bill (H.R. 2407) that would create a National Climate Service (NCS) in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with a mandate to provide usable information to decisionmakers and the public about the climate conditions we can expect to see and will need to plan and prepare for in a climate-disrupted world. The bill is an improvement over, and is likely to be offered as a replacement for, similar provisions in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s cap-and-trade bill that is now the subject of heated debate. But two amendments adopted in the mark-up by the House Science and Technology Committee’s Energy and Environment Subcommittee weaken it and could undermine the NCS going forward. These provisions should be dealt with when the bill is considered by the full Science Committee next week.

Reporters’ misuse of memo on EPA endangerment finding aided global warming disinformation campaign

Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009

On May 12 several major media sources, including the Associated Press, ABC News, and the New York Times, propagated a misleading story about an internal interagency review memo on EPA’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. Their misleading headlines and leads, insufficient fact-checking, seeming lack of understanding of bureaucratic process, and seeming credulity in the face of global warming disinformation tactics, gave added fodder to those who are pleased to use any opportunity to demagogue against climate change mitigation.

Like a bridge under troubled waters…DOT Sec. LaHood, will you ease our minds? An open letter

Posted on Friday, May 08, 2009

An open letter to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who has a golden opportunity to leave a remarkable legacy as a cabinet member by tackling two top national priorities - reigniting our economy, and reorienting the transportation sector to reduce its carbon footprint and become more resilient in the face of global climatic disruption. Our letter asks Sec. LaHood to take bold, swift measures to harmonize the economic and environmental imperatives facing us today by managing the virtual flood of funding now flowing through the Transportation Department to cities and states as part of the “economic stimulus” package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and tackling twin climate change challenges: 1) reducing greenhouse gas emissions to help avoid unmanageable climate change impacts, and 2) preparing for inevitable impacts by building projects designed to withstand a climate future that bears little resemblance to that of the past. The thousands of “shovel-ready” transportation-related projects in the pipeline must be undertaken with climate disruption in mind, else we risk building and repairing roads, bridges, and rail lines that may be under water or compromised in other disruptive and costly ways within several decades, if not sooner.

When will Pres. Obama choose a new head for NASA, and will they make Earth Science a priority?

Posted on Monday, May 04, 2009

NASA is a space ship without a captain, on this 104th day of the Obama administration. The temporary stand-in, long-time civil servant Christopher Scolese, has plenty of experience and is highly regarded but is having to make long-term strategic planning decisions absent a confirmed Administrator since January 20 when Michael Griffin was relieved of his post. Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren recently expressed his hope that the President will name someone soon, and said we need to restore rightful attention and funding to Earth Sciences and climate change research—programs he says were “decimated” under the Bush administration. We agree with Holdren.

Jim Hansen rallies for monkey-wrench activist Tim DeChristopher at his arraignment today in Utah

Posted on Tuesday, April 28, 2009

NASA climate scientist James Hansen is in Utah today to speak at a rally in support of University of Utah economics student Tim DeChristopher as he faces arraignment at 11:45 am MDT (1:45 pm EDT) in Salt Lake City. DeChristopher was charged with two felony counts, each carrying up to five years in prison and a possible $750,000 fine, after he intervened in an oil lease auction held by the Bureau of Land Management in December 2008 by bidding on parcels he knew he could not afford (see our April 15 post). The sales were later canceled by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who questioned BLM’s handling of the sale in the last days of the Bush administration. Hansen will argue that this creative act of nonviolent civil disobedience was a legitimate act of moral protest, justified by the urgent need to rapidly curtail CO2 emissions primarily from coal and oil combustion. The outcome of the arraignment will be posted later today on DeChristopher’s website.

Update: DeChristopher plead “not guilty” to two felonies at his April 28 arraignment; the trial date is set for July 6, 2009.

White House science & budget offices must lead in revitalizing federal climate research

Posted on Monday, April 27, 2009

Stronger leadership from the White House and Congress is urgently needed to revitalize and reform the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), to ensure that we have the scientific underpinnings for dealing effectively with the growing climate change threat. This 20-year-old, $1.8 billion program is now suffering from leadership neglect, parochialism within the participating agencies, and a slow recovery from the insults and injuries of a two-term, Bush-Cheney administration that talked up the need for science but then walked all over the people who were making honorable contributions to our understanding of Earth’s highly complex climate system and how human activity is interfering with natural processes. (For example, by censoring communications and cutting budgets at a time they needed to be growing.) We’re now left with a dysfunctional family of research programs and initiatives, all competing with one another for funding and recognition. While the White House is necessarily focused on cap-and-trade, green jobs, and renewable energy, we wonder, who is steering the multiagency climate science ship? It obviously needs a rudder, sails, and a crew and captain; it should not be left to drift. Part of the formula that worked in the past was an alliance between OSTP and OMB, and a 1990 law specifying product and process. Is this the right formula to get us back on course? We argue, cautiously, that it is—with some adjustments.

New climate working groups in Senate Environment Committee must address preparedness, adaptation

Posted on Thursday, April 23, 2009

Yesterday Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), announced that she has established five committee working groups to tackle various aspects of a new and improved version of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill considered last year. We offer some early input on the topics they will cover and approaches we would like to see them take, and encourage this Committee to reach out to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to coordinate and cooperate on overlapping areas of jurisdiction, especially as regards climate change impacts and adaptation and overall preparedness for climate disruption.

“The concept is so broad that it may not make sense to place a climate service inside NOAA.”

Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009

“You need a program that is broader than just expanding the NOAA National Weather Service to do climate forecasts,” we told Congressional Quarterly. “You need to be looking at agriculture, food security, forests, water resources, transportation infrastructure, coastal infrastructure, wetlands.” The periodic national climate change vulnerability assessment that would be required by the Waxman-Markey climate bill is a great idea, we said, but assigning the project to NOAA would circumvent the existing federal Climate Change Science Program, which sponsored the first National Assessment and brings together a wider array of resources.

Page 3 of 40 pages < 1 2 3 4 5 > Last »