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 |
Climate Security Index: Global climate disruption seen as a US national security problem
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Climate Security Index, a new report by the American Security Project, links global climate change impacts and energy insecurity to US national security, concluding that these interrelated problems constitute a “clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” The report says global climate change is projected to produce “insufficient water supplies, shifting rainfall patterns, disruptions to agriculture, human migrations, more failing states, increased extremism, and even resource wars,” all of which pose an urgent threat that must be addressed in national security policy. And, we would ask, what are the human security issues that must be addressed in the larger international policy context?
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“The lesson from the Atlanta flood is that many Americans are unprepared”
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor reported last week: “Atlanta flood: After drought, residents caught by surprise.” This is precisely the sort of headline that climate scientists have been warning us about when they talk about altered precipitation patterns as a result of global climate disruption. The 20 inches of rain that fell in a day and a half and deluged a wide swathe of the greater Atlanta area has, so far, taken 10 lives and inflicted an estimated $250 million in damages. It followed a two-year drought that severely threatened local water supplies. Citing “great hydrologic and climate uncertainty,” one expert quoted by CSM puts forth a new climate wisdom that has as yet to catch on widely: “We can’t necessarily count on what we saw in the past as the judgment of where storms are going to be in the future.”
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CSW recommendations for Senate climate bill on preparedness, research, & climate services
Posted on Monday, September 28, 2009
Calling for “a comprehensive, proactive national planning and preparedness strategy for limiting and adapting to the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of climate change,” Climate Science Watch transmitted on September 4 a set of detailed recommendations to three Senate committee chairmen who have been developing climate and clean energy legislation. The recommendations focus on the components of legislation that should address climate change preparedness and adaptation, a prospective National Climate Service, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. We call for the establishment of a National Center for Climate Change Preparedness, which would serve as a coordinating entity and point of entry to the federal government for states and local communities facing a set of wide-ranging impacts, to allow full and equitable access to federal expertise and resources across multiple agencies and departments. See Details for a summary of our recommendations, our letter to Senators, and a discussion of the recommendations.
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Krugman in NYTimes: The campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies.
Posted on Saturday, September 26, 2009
“The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax,” writes Nobel Economics Laureate Paul Krugman in his September 25 New York Times column. “Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers….So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy….It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial….”
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Wash Post credits new denialist propaganda with “reviving the debate” on climate change cause
Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009
CO2 is Green, a coal-money-funded global warming denialist media propaganda campaign with a message that almost might make you think you were reading a satire on denialism in The Onion, says that “plant and animal kingdoms, including humanity, [will be] harmed if atmospheric CO2 is reduced.” This operation is running media ads in the states of certain key Senators, something perhaps worthy of noting. But how strange that the Washington Post’s 900-word article on this today is titled “New Groups Revive the Debate Over Causes of Climate Change.” The Post thinks this has the status of a debate? Steven Mufson, your article is OK, but who wrote this dopey, misleading, and really irresponsible title? Shame on the Post for this. (By the way, we also cross-posted on the Daily Kos today.)
UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009: Impacts of Climate Change Coming Faster and Sooner
Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009
The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), says the UN Environment Programme, announcing the publication of the report, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009. The Washington Post, covering the report, says: “Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world’s leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago.”
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Most US media coverage of UN Climate Summit underplayed message of why the need for action is urgent
Posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009
In his September 22 speech at the UN Climate Summit in New York, President Obama said more than we’re used to hearing him say about the threat posed by global climate disruption. How much of this aspect of the speech, the President’s clearest statement on the urgency of the problem, was covered in the US news media? Not much. His speech at the UN Climate Summit should be just a first step in beginning to develop that discourse.
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CSW director Rick Piltz interview on UN Climate Summit: “We’re very far from where we need to be”
Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009
“I do think it’s important to have these heads of government address the world and acknowledge the seriousness of the climate change problem,” Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz told Al Jazeera English TV in a September 22 interview. President Obama hasn’t really spoken too much about climate change impacts, potentially disastrous impacts, and he did that today…[But] if you pay close attention to what the leading climate scientists are saying about the implications of the trajectory that we’re on right now, and the great distance between that and what the political world is translating into policy, we’re very far from where we need to be.” See Details for full text.
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Pres. Obama at UN Climate Summit talks the right talk… but will the US walk the right walk?
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009
President Obama hit some right notes this morning at the UN Climate Summit in New York, conveying a sense of urgency and national responsibility for reducing US carbon emissions. He said the impacts of global climate disruption can threaten human security, safety, health, and prosperity, and acknowledged a responsibility to aid poor, vulnerable nations in adapting to the impacts and getting on a path to sustainable development. He said there have been “too many years of inaction and denial.” But he was silent on any specific target and timetable for US emissions reductions, a key ingredient for a meaningful climate treaty in Copenhagen. See details for additional CSW takes on today’s Climate Summit.
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Obama in UN Climate Summit speech should talk about climate change impacts and the risks of inaction
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009
The UN Summit on Climate Change on September 22 confronts President Obama with the challenge and the great opportunity to give his first substantive speech on climate change, before both a domestic and an international audience. President Obama should speak not only of the urgent need for greenhouse gas mitigation, but also of the measures that must be taken domestically and internationally to prepare for the impacts of climate disruption—including how the US intends to aid the most vulnerable nations in adaptation.
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New report says many adaptation measures can be half as expensive as doing nothing
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009
Not only that, but doing nothing, thus further incurring myriad risks associated with climate change, could cost nations up to one-fifth (19%) of their GDP by 2030, with developing countries most vulnerable, according to a new report from the Economics of Climate Adaptation Working Group, created by the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility and the UN Environment Programme. The report says that some cost-effective adaptation measures already exist—some that are half as expensive as the eventual cost of inaction on climate change—and can prevent between 40 and 68 percent of the expected economic loss. Even higher levels of prevention are possible in certain areas, according to the report. As we debate climate legislation and head for international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, this report is a must-read for US policymakers—including President Obama, who so far has not warned US residents of the hazards and costs associated with unchecked climate disruption.
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API, CEI, Heartland, listen up: Big money calls for big cuts in global carbon emissions
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009
A group of 181 prominent insurers and investors who control $13 trillion in assets—more than four times what the US government spent last year—has called on governments to make drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions: 25-40 percent by 2020, from 1990 levels. A statement released at this week’s International Investor Forum on Climate Change in New York City calls for a “strong and binding international treaty that will reduce pollution and catalyze massive global investments in low-carbon technologies.” Swiss Re, HSBC, Allianz Global and the ING group are among the financial giants calling for aggressive action on climate change. The American Petroleum Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, and other deny-and-obstruct opponents of climate legislation and a climate treaty should take heed.
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Interior Secretary Salazar on right track with new climate initiative but faces tough road ahead
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009
A newly created Climate Change Response Council at the Interior Department is a good reminder that the Executive Branch has much power to effect positive change under existing statutory authorities, even without a major climate bill or other new climate legislation. The Council, announced by Interior Secretary Salazar, will attempt to bring about a “coordinated Department-wide strategy to increase scientific understanding of and development of effective adaptive management tools to address the impacts of climate change on our natural and cultural resources.” Shouldn’t all federal agencies and departments be dealing with the climate change problem head on, regardless of what Congress does, and shouldn’t leadership articulating the need to do so be coming straight from President Obama?
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Citizen hotline for reporting fraudulent tactics by opponents of climate and clean energy bill
Posted on Sunday, September 13, 2009
A new hotline that citizens can use to blow the whistle on deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal tactics being used by corporations and lobbyists to oppose climate and clean energy legislation has been set up by groups including the AAUW, National Wildlife Federation, NAACP, Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the Sierra Club.
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Darwin film controversy: What is the evolutionary value of irrational anti-science ideology?
Posted on Sunday, September 13, 2009
If it is true that US distributors are wary of the new British film “Creation,” about Charles Darwin, due to controversy and pressure generated by the anti-science irrationality of religious ideologues, what might it suggest about the prospects for the US being able to deal with climate change on the basis of scientific, evidence-based thought?
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