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 |
Letter to the House Science and Technology Committee on global change research legislation
Posted on Sunday, July 01, 2007
On June 27 the House Science and Technology Committee reported the Global Climate Change Research Data and Management Act of 2007 (H.R. 906). Climate Science Watch and the Union of Concerned Scientists have communicated to the Committee our concern that the bill remains underdeveloped in two key respects: (1) It does not address the need to protect the integrity of scientific communication from political interference; and (2) It does not adequately address the need for an explicit focus on national assessment of U.S. climate change impacts and response strategies.
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Rolling Stone article on White House global warming denial links Cooney to V-P’s office and Rove
Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007
A very good article in the June 28 issue of Rolling Stone, on the Bush administration global warming disinformation campaign, shows direct connections between former White House CEQ chief of staff Phil Cooney and both Vice President Cheney’s office and Karl Rove. From Cheney’s continuing statements that deny and misrepresent the scientific intelligence on human-induced global warming, to Cooney’s manipulative policing of federal climate change science communications on topics deemed politically sensitive, a lack of integrity in dealing with climate science started at the highest level of the administration and fed down directly into the working level of the federal climate research program. Federal science program officials, in requiring clearances from Cooney to publish reports, had been drawn into Cheney’s sphere of influence. “They’ve got a political clientele that does not want to be regulated,” Rolling Stone quotes Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz as saying. “Any honest discussion of the science would stimulate public pressure for a stronger policy. They’re not stupid.” Also from our conversation with reporter Tim Dickinson: “‘They decided they didn’t need to win the debate on climate,’ says Piltz, the former official who exposed Cooney’s tactics. ‘They just had to leave an atmosphere of uncertainty about it and dissipate the will for political action.’” This article—“Six Years of Deceit: Inside the Bush Administration’s Secret Campaign to Deny Global Warming and Let Polluters Shape America’s Climate Policy”—is a must-read for anyone concerned with this problem.
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Senate appropriators share our distrust of NOAA and the White House on essential climate satellites
Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported a FY2008 NOAA funding bill on June 28 that provides $400 million above the President’s request. “The committee is doubtful this administration will ever show the leadership and bold thinking required to address the true needs of our planet’s oceans and atmosphere,” the committee report says. The report also expresses doubt about whether the administration will commit to timely budget increases needed to fund the sensors for measuring essential climate variables that were dropped from the NPOESS satellite system by the Pentagon and NOAA. How best to mitigate this damage presents a dilemma.
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NOAA bureaucrats attempt to muzzle National Hurricane Center director
Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2007
Back in the office after some time on the road and with a lot of posting to do, starting here:
High-level officials in the NOAA/National Weather Service reprimanded the new director of the National Hurricane Center for his comments about how the failure of NOAA to plan expeditiously for replacing the QuikScat satellite could diminish the accuracy of hurricane forecasts. “There is no question they are trying to muzzle me,” said NHC director Bill Proenza.
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Exxon disavows global warming denial, endorses emissions cap and trade
Posted on Tuesday, June 19, 2007
“Exxon says it never doubted climate change threat,” Reuters reported. “Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. never in the past decade doubted the risk from climate change, its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen said on Thursday, in a latest attempt to improve its green credentials. Exxon had simply firmed up, or ‘evolved,’ its understanding of the threat, said Cohen…The world’s most profitable company now accepted that a U.S. climate policy was inevitable….‘We’re very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up,’ Cohen told reporters…,‘We lean more towards an upstream cap and trade with a price protector, or a carbon tax.’” Thus, Exxon spins its way to a seat at the table.
GAO report questions policies on dissemination of federal scientists’ research
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007
On June 18 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report supporting recent criticisms that federal agency media policies hinder government scientists from publicizing their research results. Based on a large survey study, the report estimates that 102 scientists at NASA and 76 at NOAA have been denied approval to disseminate their results for reasons other than those stemming from standard technical review. The report says: “At NOAA, researchers who had requests denied represented a diverse cadre of research areas, including climate, environment, or atmosphere; oceans and coasts; and fisheries and ecosystems. Among the most common reasons that researchers reported for the denial of their requests were that the topic or results were sensitive…” We have noted many times that the gatekeepers interfere selectively, when communication of research findings and interpretations of their significance to a wider public audience might call into question current policies.
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Senate committee advances whistleblower protection bill but leaves out protection for scientists
Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007
On June 13 the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced legislation that would restore the mandate of the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), which has been gutted by judicial activism since 1994. However, while the legislation would strengthen protections for federal whistleblowers who expose waste, fraud and abuse of power, it fails to address scientists who expose the manipulation, distortion, or suppression of their work.
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Upcoming screenings of “Everything’s Cool” global warming film in New York City and elsewhere
Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007
“Everything’s Cool,”, a new documentary billed as “The story of a handful of global warming messengers speaking out in a time of disinformation,“ is scheduled to be screened during the next week at the Provincetown Film Festival (June 15), the Maui Film Festival (June 16), the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York City (June 17), and at Harvard University (June 20).
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Griffin’s NASA vision: Colonize outer space with American cultural values
Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007
On May 30 we noted NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s dubious comments on global warming, which were aptly characterized by Jim Hansen as “incredibly ignorant and arrogant,” and by Jerry Mahlman at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as showing that Griffin is either “totally clueless” or “a deep antiglobal warming ideologue.” We were a bit surprised that, at the time, none of the media coverage recollected Griffin’s far stranger statements about the purpose of human space flight, in an interview with the Washington Post a few months after he assumed his position as the head of the space agency.
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Climate Science Watch interview on Los Angeles radio
Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007
On June 10 Climate Science Watch Director Rick Piltz was interviewed on the “Background Briefing” program on radio station KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.
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Key points in NASA-NOAA report to White House science office on NPOESS de-scoping
Posted on Monday, June 04, 2007
The Associated Press reported on June 4: “A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago….‘We’re going to start being blinded in our ability to observe the planet,’ said [Rick] Piltz, whose group provided the AP with the previously undisclosed report.” We have prepared a 7-page briefing paper NPOESS-Summary.pdf that summarizes key points that lead to this conclusion, drawn from the text of the 76-page internal report NPOESS-OSTPdec-06.pdf to the White House Office of Science Technology Policy by a team of senior science managers at NASA and NOAA.
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Internal report to White House on implications of NPOESS climate observations crisis
Posted on Monday, June 04, 2007
On June 4 the Associated Press reported on the looming crisis in the U.S. satellite-based global climate observing system. An internal “pre-decisional” report to the White House by NASA and NOAA, which Climate Science Watch provided to AP, explains how the decision by the Pentagon and NOAA to drop key climate-monitoring sensors from the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)—the core of the next generation of Earth-orbiting climate-monitoring instruments—places in grave jeopardy scientists’ future ability to monitor key variables necessary for understanding climate change and its consequences. We are making the report available here NPOESS-OSTPdec-06.pdf, to encourage wider attention to this problem and to increase pressure on the President and Congress to deal with it.
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Hansen shoots back on NASA head Griffin’s “incredibly ignorant and arrogant statement”
Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007
In response to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s incredible statement on NPR’s Morning Edition today questioning whether global warming is a problem or long-term concern needing to be dealt with, NASA’s James Hansen fired back with a straightforward and welcome example of speaking truth to power. “It’s an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement,” Hansen told ABC News. “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change.” Now it would be good to hear from other NASA scientists, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program leadership, and the scientific research community. Jim Hansen should not be alone in calling Griffin down for misrepresenting the intelligence on climate science.
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NASA Administrator Griffin “not sure” global warming is a problem or long-term concern
Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007
In an interview to be aired tomorrow morning, May 31, on NPR Morning Edition, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says: “I’m aware that global warming exists….Whether that is a long term concern or not, I can’t say….To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had….I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.” Now there’s a framing that’s worthy of Phil Cooney.
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Congressional investigation into science editing of Smithsonian Arctic climate exhibit
Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007
The chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has announced he is investigating the handling by Smithsonian Institution officials of science text for the Smithsonian’s exhibit on Arctic climate change. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) has asked the acting head of the Smithsonian Institution to turn over relevant information about just about everything except what we called for on May 22: the actual text as it was drafted by scientists, and the specific changes made by Smithsonian officials prior to the exhibit.
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