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 White House is stonewalling the House Government Reform Committee on climate documents
Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006
The White House Council on Environmental Quality has been stonewalling a July 20 request from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Committee for documents relating to interactions between CEQ and other government agencies and outside parties about the Administration’s communications on climate science and related matters. What is CEQ concealing? From our experience we were able to supply a piece of the answer. The Government Reform Committee wants to know more about the activities of CEQ Chairman James Connaughton, former Chief of Staff Phil Cooney, and other key CEQ personnel.
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Why the administration buried a NOAA scientists’ statement on hurricanes and climate
Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Officials at the Department of Commerce have been blocking the release of a new statement by federal climate scientists at NOAA on Atlantic hurricanes and climate. On September 27 a leaked copy of the statement was posted on the web (see “Details” for the text). We believe they decided to bury the statement because, albeit in a low-profile way, it acknowledges that global warming can increase hurricane intensity, and also the possibility that, because of global warming, the current active hurricane period could persist. That is a linkage the administration has taken pains to keep the public from making, for reasons having to do with the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and the administration’s desire to fend off public pressure for a stronger global warming mitigation policy.
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Questions about White House nominee to replace Jim Mahoney at NOAA
Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The White House announced September 26 that the President intends to nominate corporate lawyer Jane Luxton to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and deputy administrator of NOAA. If confirmed, Luxton would replace Jim Mahoney, who retired last spring, leaving this position vacant for 6 months so far. Mahoney was also the director of the interagency U.S. Climate Change Science Program from 2002 until his retirement. This announcement raises questions about both the nominee and the leadership of federal climate science research.
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New Hansen et al. study: Earth’s temperature within 1 degree C of highest in past million years
Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006
A new study, led by James Hansen of NASA and published on-line today (September 25) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that, because of a rapid global warming trend over the past 30 years, Earth is now reaching and passing through its warmest level in nearly 12,000 years—since the end of the last ice age. The most important result found by the study is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8 F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years. According to Hansen, “That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level.”
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Royal Society letter to ExxonMobil: Exemplary citizen-science for public accountability
Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006
U.S. climate scientists, the National Academy of Sciences, and other science institutions should think about the remarkable recent letter from the British Royal Society to ExxonMobil in terms of their own role as guardians of public accountability. Shouldn’t ExxonMobil and other participants in the U.S. global warming misinformation machine also be hearing from U.S.-based scientists and their organizations?
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UK science academy letter tells ExxonMobil to stop funding global warming denial machine
Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006
The UK Guardian reported on September 20 that a letter from the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, has called on ExxonMobil Corp. to stop funding dozens of organizations that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”. Exxon has been distributing millions of dollars to what Climate Science Watch terms the global warming denial machine. See “details” for the full text of the Royal Society’s no-nonsense letter, which exemplifies the role we have called on the science community to play in promoting accountability for how climate change research is used in the public arena.
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Where is the U.S. Climate Action Report required under the climate treaty?
Posted on Monday, September 18, 2006
The fourth U.S. Climate Action Report, required to fulfill a climate treaty commitment, was due no later than January 1, 2006. A public review draft of the report announced by the State Department as upcoming in the summer of 2005 is now more than a year overdue. What has happened to this missing-in-action report? Has it been held up at the political level of the Administration? Climate Science Watch calls for the fourth Climate Action Report to be submitted expeditiously for public review. We call on the Administration and the leadership of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program to ensure that the report contains an honest discussion of U.S. vulnerability to climate change impacts. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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“Stealth repeal” of Clean Water Act whistleblower protections could affect science reporting
Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Citing legal documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) showing how “the Bush administration has reversed two decades of precedent and declared that important whistleblower protections in the Clean Water Act do not apply to federal workers,” the science journal Nature called the administration’s action “pernicious.” Nature says scientists could feel the chilling effect particularly strongly, and calls government whistleblowers “a key defence against further erosion of environmental standards.”
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Jim Hansen on “The Threat to the Planet”
Posted on Monday, September 11, 2006
Jim Hansen’s presentation (6.6 MB) this summer at the SOLAR 2006 Conference on Renewable Energy in Denver, which he has made available on his Columbia University Web site, integrates a wide range of scientific findings on global climate change with forthright and striking statements about their implications. Government officials should pay attention to this assessment.
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“Ignoring whistleblowers is risky”
Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006
"There has never been a time in recent years when the federal government has so blatantly tried to stop crucial information from reaching citizens,” writes Louis Clark, President of the Government Accountability Project. It takes whistleblowers and a small army of supporters to demand government and corporate accountability—public interest organizations, independent and opinionated legislators, enterprising reporters, and most importantly, an aroused citizenry that does more than just vote.
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