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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 |
C-Span webcast of Whistleblower Week panel on “Scientific Integrity and Individual Conscience”
Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007
C-Span has an archived webcast of the May 14 Washington Whistleblower Week panel on “Scientific Integrity and Individual Conscience.”
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MacCracken on Lindzen’s misleading Newsweek Op-Ed
Posted on Saturday, May 12, 2007
Michael MacCracken says Richard Lindzen’s April 16 op-ed in Newsweek, “Why So Gloomy?” contains numerous misleading statements and statements that are contrary to the international scientific consensus. MacCracken takes Lindzen’s argument apart, line by line.
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Whistleblower Week in Washington: Panel on “Scientific Integrity & Individual Conscience”
Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007
CSW Director Rick Piltz will participate on a panel on “Scientific Integrity & Individual Conscience” to help kick off “Whistleblower Week in Washington,” May 14-18, a week of activities designed to promote protections for government and corporate whistleblowers. This is billed as the largest gathering of whistleblowers and related public interest groups in U.S. history. We invite you to attend the events.
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Environmental Science & Technology: Top 10 environmental policies of the Bush administration
Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, published an online editorial May 9 “dedicated exclusively to looking back on the Bush Administration’s environmental record.” Note #1 and #2.
IPCC North America climate change impacts chapter shows evasiveness of U.S. Climate Action Report
Posted on Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The current draft of the Bush administration’s U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report (CAR) has a chapter on climate change impacts that fails to engage in an adequate substantive discussion of the current state of knowledge on that subject. As an indicator of the shortcomings of the administration’s chapter, compare it with the North America chapter of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II assessment report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. We are posting our copy of the final review draft of the IPCC North America chapter because we believe U.S. reviewers of the CAR should have it as a reference during the State Department’s too-brief public comment period. Note the climate change impacts on North America identified in the IPCC report that are omitted, or barely touched upon, in the CAR. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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“Impacts and Adaptation” chapter of U.S. Climate Action Report 2007 is an evasive failure
Posted on Monday, May 07, 2007
The U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report (CAR), issued in draft on May 4 for a 2-week public comment period, contains a chapter on “Vulnerability Assessment, Climate Change Impacts, and Adaptation Measures” that simply does not come to grips with what is expected in satisfying the U.S. “national communication” commitment under the climate treaty. This chapter is a big step backward from its predecessor, Chapter 6 in the U.S. Third Climate Action Report (2002), which drew heavily on the now-suppressed National Assessment, and signals the administration’s fundamental evasiveness about engaging in a forthright discussion of climate change impacts on the United States. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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Public review of administration’s Fourth U.S. Climate Action Report until May 18
Posted on Sunday, May 06, 2007
On May 4 the State Department issued for public review a draft of the U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, with a deadline of noon, May 18, for submitting comments. This report, which is already 16 months beyond its original deadline for fulfilling a U.S. commitment under the climate treaty, calls for critical scrutiny, especially of how the chapter on Impacts and Adaptation was handled. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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Wolfowitz deputy’s efforts to undercut climate change text in World Bank strategy paper
Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007
One of Paul Wolfowitz’s two handpicked deputies, Juan José Daboub, tried to water down references to climate change in one of the World Bank’s main environmental strategy papers, the bank’s chief scientist Robert Watson told the Financial Times. In Dr. Watson, Daboub picked the wrong person to try to get around in Cooney-izing climate change text in an official report.
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“Hot Politics”—PBS FRONTLINE program and extended interviews online
Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007
The full PBS FRONTLINE hour-long program on global warming, “Hot Politics,” which aired on April 24, can be viewed online. We are in segment #6—Censorship, discussing the Bush administration’s treatment of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts. Extended text from a number of the interviews is also posted, including interviews with Jim Hansen of NASA and CSW Director Rick Piltz.
GAP and UCS call on Commerce Dept. to suspend new restrictive media policy
Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007
April 23—In a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today attacked a new media policy affecting all departmental employees, including climate change scientists and meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The policy was presented last month and was described as institutionalizing recent advances in scientific freedom at the Department of Commerce (DOC), including NOAA.
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PBS FRONTLINE “Hot Politics” of global warming on April 24
Posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007
FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) “go behind the scenes to explore how bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today.” Coming Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 9pm (check local listings to confirm time). A CIR Web video segment deals with the Bush administration’s suppression of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts. [See UPDATED post, April 28, 2008: “Hot Politics” re-aired—PBS FRONTLINE program on global warming politics and online interviews]
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“Dante’s Inferno: Green Edition”—The Eighth Circle
Posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007
It was called to our attention that, in its May 2007 Green Issue special section, Vanity Fair magazine presents a “Dante’s Inferno: Green Edition” graphic in which a number of global warming denialists are consigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. The Eighth Circle is reserved for “The Fraudulent.” There we find, among others, James Connaughton of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Phil Cooney.
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Bush administration is #1 on 2007 annual list of Jefferson Muzzle “winners”
Posted on Saturday, April 21, 2007
The “unprecedented degree of political interference in communicating government-funded scientific research to the public” has earned the Bush Administration a 2007 Jefferson Muzzle from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
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UPDATE on IPCC Working Group II Climate Change Impacts Assessment Report
Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007
We note that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has temporarily removed on-line access to chapters of the Working Group II assessment report on climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. These chapters are undergoing final copyediting prior to publication. It is our understanding that the IPCC may re-post the chapters in a few weeks, and the full report will subsequently be published in book form. It was unusual for the IPCC to post pre-publication chapters. We are not privy to the internal decisionmaking that led, either to the posting of almost-final chapters, or to the decision to take them down, but we are not aware of any wrongdoing in this regard. We will post a notice as soon as we find that the full draft is available again. In the meantime, the Summary for Policymakers is still available on the Working Group II Web site.
Upcoming screenings of global warming documentary “Everything’s Cool”
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2007
“Everything’s Cool,,” a new documentary film that is billed on its Web site as “A Real Life Disaster Movie…about the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action,” is scheduled to be screened during the next month in Santa Cruz CA, Durham NC, Ashland OR, Jackson WY, Toronto, and San Francisco. CSW Director Rick Piltz will appear in connection with screenings at the Ashland Independent Film Festival April 13-15 and the annual ECO-fair in Jackson April 27-28.
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