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

Senate testimony on climate change and national security raises questions: Whose security?

Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009

Global climatic disruption will pose a national security problem and will require a response from the US national security apparatus, a panel of experts told an October 28 Senate Environment Committee hearing on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. But climate change doesn’t have a national security solution. This calls for careful framing for US policymaking of the issue of whose security, and insecurity, is at stake.

Federal climate change adaptation strategy needed, say Rep. Markey, hearing witnesses, GAO report

Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009

Climate Science Watch’s call for a national adaptation strategy in climate legislation was buttressed by the recommendations in a new congressional Government Accountability Office report released at an October 22 hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Expert witnesses told Committee Chairman Ed Markey and other members that, while climate change adaptation cannot effectively substitute for emissions reduction efforts, federal guidance and investment in adaptation efforts nationwide are essential to protecting against unavoidable disruptive impacts.

President Obama at MIT calls down those who make cynical claims about climate change

Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009

“There are going to be those who make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks,” said President Obama today in a clean energy speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, Bonner and Associates, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, and others are all culpable. What can and should President Obama do in the face of growing climate change risks, risks that might be more swiftly ameliorated through public policy if it were not for these dishonest tactics?

Climate Cover-Up: New book by the DeSmogBlog team is a take-down of the denial machine

Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009

In their excellent new book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore take on the deceptive public relations tactics behind the global warming denial machine. Featuring an oily cast of characters that may be familiar to our regular readers, their work reveals the techniques of mass confusion employed by major players in the energy industry to stall action on climate change.

Limbaugh to Revkin: Die

Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Likening “environmental wackos” to jihadi terrorists, Rush Limbaugh bent some recent comments on population and climate change by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin out of shape and threw down this challenge: “This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet…Mr Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?” Revkin has a good reply, which includes this: “This might be funny, in a sad way, if it weren’t for the fact that my mailbox is already heaped with hate mail.”

Recommended: Acid Test, a film about the threat of ocean acidification, available online

Posted on Sunday, October 18, 2009

Acid Test is an excellent film about the global threat of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to marine life and the health of the entire planet. The 21-minute film, produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council and narrated by Sigourney Weaver, with some beautiful cinematography, is now available online in its entirety (also here). Dr. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, one of several scientists in the film, says, “We’re moving from a world of rich biological diversity into essentially one of weeds…If we destroy these ecosystems it will take millions of years for them to recover.” Another scientist says, “Changes that haven’t happened for millions of years are starting to happen right before our eyes.” The only way to stop acidification is to reduce carbon emissions.

Scientists return fire at CEI and Pat Michaels for bogus charges on global temperature data record

Posted on Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The New York Times and Greenwire reported on October 14 that climate scientists refuted claims, made in a petition to EPA by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that essential data on the global warming temperature record had been destroyed, thus undermining the legitimacy of EPA’s prospective “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. The reporting picked up on statements made by Phil Jones of the UK Climatic Research Unit and Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on this Website.

Stephen Schneider comments on the CEI and Pat Michaels petition on the global warming data record

Posted on Wednesday, October 14, 2009

“Pat Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute continue to obfuscate well-established scientific conclusions by counting on most non-specialists to be unaware of the vast preponderance of multiple lines of evidence for anthropogenic climate warming,” Stanford University Prof. Stephen Schneider says, commenting on CEI’s petition to EPA that seeks to delegitimize the global warming data record. As Schneider says in his soon-to-be-released book, Science as a Contact Sport, “The tactic of persistent distortion is nothing new in the battle arena of climate change.”

Phil Jones and Ben Santer respond to CEI and Pat Michaels attack on temperature data record

Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK and Ben Santer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory comment in response to a petition to EPA by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pat Michaels, which misleadingly seeks to obstruct EPA’s process in making an “endangerment” finding on greenhouse gases. This new CEI tactic is to call into question the integrity of the global temperature data record and, by implication, the integrity of leading climate scientists.

California: “Going for broke” on climate policies? Or too broke to take them on?

Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009

California, the quintessential trailblazer and laboratory for national environmental policy, was the first state to enact a comprehensive climate change bill. California’s grand emissions reduction agenda, however, will require funding, and right now California faces billions of dollars in budget shortfall in a crunch that’s not expected to turn around anytime soon. Political pressure to delay the ambitious measures called for in “AB 32” is mounting, but, California can’t afford to put off at least one major component of its climate plan: weaning itself from fossil fuels, says a new report. Doing so will cost money, as will dealing with severe water shortages and other climate impacts going forward. We wonder, what will be the federal role, if any, in helping California (and other states in a similar boat) get over this hump?

In “Day Six” campaign, people of faith advocate stepped up adaptation assistance

Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009

“Dear Senator, We urge you to support a climate bill that addresses the root causes of climate change and makes needed investments in vulnerable communities already experiencing its devastating effects.” The plea is not from another environmental group—rather, it’s the core message of the DaySix.org campaign sponsored by an interdenominational, online community called Faithful America that has more than 100,000 members. “Those who are hurt most and worst should not be helped the least and last.”

CEI global warming denialists try another gambit seeking to derail EPA “endangerment” finding

Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009

With a challenge to the IPCC global temperature data record, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is on a political mission to head off EPA’s decision on an “endangerment” finding that could lead to regulation of greenhouse gases. “Their bottom line is an antiregulatory ideology,” we said to Environment & Energy Daily on October 7. “When they use science, they use it tactically, and they will go to war with the mainstream science community.” This latest flap appears to be a grasping at straws. Is it a sign of desperation in the denialist camp?

“Lessons learned” while building climate preparedness—notes from Chicago, Pres. Obama’s home town

Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2009

If President Obama is looking for ways to formulate a national climate change strategy that extends beyond cap-and-trade, he has no further to look than his home town of Chicago, Illinois. Under the leadership of Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Chicago Climate Task Force created in 2006 produced an ambitious climate action plan that “is grounded in the science” and simultaneously deals with “mitigation” (avoiding unmanageable impacts by reducing heat-trapping pollution) and “adaptation” (managing unavoidable consequences of climate destabilization). Chicago now wishes to share its experiences with others, starting with the recent release of a “lessons learned” chronicle that mayors and governors, in fact all policymakers at all levels of government, can benefit from.

Adaptation provisions in the Kerry-Boxer Senate climate and clean energy legislation

Posted on Tuesday, October 06, 2009

In its sections on adaptation and preparedness for global climate disruption, the bill introduced by Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer on September 30 parallels in some respects and differs in others from the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill as passed by the House in June. In this aspect of climate policy, as with its Pollution Reduction and Investment mitigation provisions, the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act as introduced is a work in progress, a first step toward what must become a fully-developed climate change preparedness strategy.

1000th US mayor signs climate agreement—but most still aren’t prepared for climate impacts

Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009

A total of 1000 US mayors have now signed their names to the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, a milestone being celebrated in Seattle this weekend, where 60 mayors are attending the group’s Leadership Meeting. The three-pronged Agreement centers on cutting heat-trapping pollution emissions in their own cities and towns, while urging their governors and the federal government to adopt CO2 reduction targets. But it doesn’t call for planning or preparedness for climate change impacts. On the agenda is the economic recession and “green” economic recovery; this would also be a good opportunity for the mayors to talk about climate change impacts, and to learn from one another how they can best prepare and adapt.

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