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 |
“The US Global Change Research Program – What do we want from the next administration?”
Posted on Monday, January 14, 2008
Dr. Robert Corell, Director of the Global Change Program at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, invites comments on “The US Global Change Research Program – What do we want from the next administration?” a scoping paper drafted for discussion on January 17 at a national conference on Climate Change: Science and Solutions, being held in Washington, DC. CSW Director Rick Piltz will participate on a panel that will lead a discussion of topics covered in the paper, and will call for changes in the federal climate and global change research program.
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New research finds escalating melt of Antarctic ice sheet
Posted on Monday, January 14, 2008
NASA scientist Eric Rignot, lead author of the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience: “Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it’s losing more....We believe it is related to global climate forcing.” “The new findings come as the Arctic is losing ice at a dramatic rate and glaciers are in retreat across the planet,” the Washington Post reported on January 14.
Climate Change Science Program acting director William Brennan to face Senate confirmation hearing
Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008
On January 10 the President announced his intention to nominate Bill Brennan, current acting director of the Climate Change Science Program, to fill the position previously held by James Mahoney as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. This is a Senate-confirmed political appointment and offers the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation an opportunity to get his answers to questions about the problems and direction of the program before voting on confirmation.
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Fish and Wildlife Service suspicious delay of decision on polar bear threatened status
Posted on Tuesday, January 08, 2008
On January 7 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a politically suspicious delay in making a court-ordered ruling on “threatened” status protection for the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. The administration could refuse to give the polar bear threatened status only by denying the science of global warming. Are administration officials politicizing the agency’s decision and its timing? One year ago, on January 8, 2007, we explained how Interior Secretary Kempthorne was misrepresenting the analysis of his own agency’s scientists of the threat to the polar bear from projected disappearance of sea ice habitat due to global warming.
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Call for public comments on revised U.S. climate science research plan
Posted on Sunday, January 06, 2008
A summary of a revised research plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program has been posted for public review and comment during January and February. Following our August 2007 victory in federal court in the Center for Biological Diversity et al. lawsuit against the Bush administration, the administration is scrambling to meet a court ordered deadline to produce by May 2008 a new federal research plan and a scientific assessment focusing on global change impacts—two documents that they previously had no intention of producing during this year.
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“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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