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 |
Al Gore New York Times op-ed a lesson for Obama in how to talk about climate change with candor
Posted on Saturday, February 27, 2010
In the Sunday February 28 New York Times former Vice-President Al Gore weighs in with a strong, 1,900-word op-ed column that includes a spirited defense of climate science and the besieged climate science community (something it would be nice to see Obama start doing). Gore also takes aim at the political paralysis that has been allowed to develop in Washington, notwithstanding the large Democratic majority. He argues for not abandoning cap-and-trade legislation—even as it now appears that it may be on the verge of being jettisoned by Senate climate bill negotiators. Will Senate leaders try to sell us a watered-down compromise that is inadequate to the problem supposedly being addressed? And he delivers a richly-deserved thrashing of the hubristic triumphalism of free-market fundamentalists, who have served the interests of corporate power and wealth, promoted fake-populist demagogues, and undermined the country’s ability to govern itself intelligently. “From the standpoint of governance,” Gore says, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis — inconvenient as ever — must still be faced.”
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Sen. Inhofe inquisition seeking ways to criminalize and prosecute 17 leading climate scientists
Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Senator James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has gone a step beyond promoting his long-notorious global warming denialist propaganda. He is now using the resources of the Senate committee to seek opportunities to criminalize the actions of 17 leading scientists who have been associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports. A report released by Inhofe’s staff on February 23 outlines this classic Joe McCarthyite witch-hunt: page after page of incorrect and misleading statements, a list of federal laws that allegedly may make scientists subject to prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department, and a list of names and affiliations of 17 “key players” in the “CRU Controversy” over stolen e-mails and their connections with IPCC reports.
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Scientists ill-equipped to deal with all-out war on climate science community
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2010
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel of eminent scientists agreed they and their colleagues should have responded more quickly and effectively to news about a few errors in the 2007 IPCC climate change assessment report and to allegations about hacked researcher e-mails—but they characterized the public impact of these controversies as far out of proportion to the overwhelming evidence that human activity is changing the Earth’s climate, with profound implications.
“The situation is completely out of hand,” ScienceNOW reported Texas A&M climate scientist Gerald North saying at the event. “One guy e-mailed me to say I’m a ‘whore for the global warming crowd.’ Scientists cannot use the same tone and rhetorical style as commentators and bloggers,” he said. For example, how can scientists be expected to respond to this kind of incitement from the bizarre extremist talk show host Glenn Beck on Fox News: “If the IPCC had been done by Japanese scientists, there’s not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occurred.” This is not a science education problem—it’s much worse than that.
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Anyone Can Whistle: The Essential Role of the Whistleblower in American Society
Posted on Saturday, February 20, 2010
On February 17 the Government Accountability Project teamed up with Participant Media and the Paley Center for Media in New York City for a televised, long-format special featuring legendary whistleblowers. The program detailed and analyzed what whistleblowers are, the six stages of whistleblowing they typically experience, and their lack of legal protections. Noted guests for the event included Daniel Ellsberg, former FDA commissioner David Kessler, former NYPD whistleblower Frank Serpico, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, and others. See Details for more information and link to video of the event.
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Deep Climate investigation of denialist and “skeptic” attack on Hockey Stick temperature record
Posted on Friday, February 12, 2010
The investigative blogger Deep Climate has been working to set the record straight on how an orchestrated campaign by members of Congress, industry-funded global warming denialist groups and PR operatives, and professional “skeptics” has spread misleading information about the paleoclimate temperature record while launching attacks on the integrity of leading members of the science community. Two recent posts at Deep Climate – “Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, part 1: In the beginning,” and “Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, part 2: The story behind the Barton-Whitfield investigation and the Wegman Panel,” should be read in their entirety, along with Richard Littlemore’s post at DeSmogBlog – “Wegman’s Report Highly Politicized – and Fatally Flawed: ‘Independent’ Hockey Stick analysis revealed as Republican set-up,” and Joe Romm’s post of additional supporting material, links, and references at Climate Progress.
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World Wildlife Fund statement on the IPCC and WWF’s scientific work
Posted on Friday, February 12, 2010
The World Wildlife Fund has issued a statement on the results of the organization’s inquiry into statements about Himalayan glaciers and the climate change threat in the Amazon attributed to WWF in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change impacts assessment report. The statement indicates steps WWF will take to ensure that the scientific community and the public can more easily distinguish between WWF’s voluminous peer-reviewed scientific reports and their general communications products, and to ensure their scientific publications continue to meet the highest standards for accuracy, and notes the broader context of the strong scientific basis for understanding climate change.
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Why snowstorms freak out Washington, D.C.: How snow-plowing policy is made in the nation’s capital
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010
“Obama announces that he wants to get the snow plowed, but that he wants bipartisan consensus and compromise instead of unilateral action, and that instead of him pushing a particular snow-plowing policy, he wants Congress to work out the details. The Republicans, seeing that Obama is for cleaning up the snow, decide that they must be against it. They negotiate the plan down to clearing half the snow and doing it very slowly. Then they still refuse to support it. Joe Lieberman expresses his intention to join Republicans in filibustering the plan if it comes to that. Eventually, the Republicans and Senate Democrats have whittled it down to a non-binding resolution expressing support for the idea of ‘somebody’ plowing the snow at some point in the future, and the Democrats have thrown in some tax cuts to get 60 votes. It finally passes, still getting zero Republican votes (other than Olympia Snowe, since it reminds her of her name). Republicans attribute this to Democrats’ hyper-partisanship and unwillingness to negotiate. At this point, it is July.” (h/t to Layne Longfellow and a poster on a social networking site)
Commerce Department proposes NOAA Climate Service
Posted on Tuesday, February 09, 2010
On February 8, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled a major new proposal for the establishment of a NOAA Climate Service, a new office tasked with serving the nation’s increasing climate information needs. We support this initiative as a significant step in the right direction, while noting that it appears to leave aside, for now, the question of how the Climate Service office will ultimately coordinate with the full suite of federal activities relevant to climate change adaptation and preparedness planning.
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A new low: 44% approve Obama’s job performance, 47% disapprove; 29% approval among independents
Posted on Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The Marist Poll of U.S. public opinion conducted February 1-3 finds fewer registered voters nationwide—44%—currently approve of President Obama’s perfromance as president than disapprove—47%. For the first time since he took office, a majority of Independents—57%—disapproves of how he is doing in the role. 54% of Americans nationwide say, in general, the country is headed in the wrong direction. Unless Obama and his Congressional majority begin soon to demonstrate some urgency in hammering out a coherent agenda with a coherent narrative, and show the public they can rise above endless processing and political impasse to execute effective policymaking, we can kiss the prospect of meaningful climate legislation (and much else) goodbye.
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How does the politicization of climate change affect public opinion?
Posted on Monday, February 08, 2010
Recent polling that suggests a decline in U.S. public concern about global warming has raised fears about the viability of building and maintaining support for climate legislation and policy unless there is more widespread understanding of the threat. Climate science has also taken a hit in the news recently with the “Climategate” controversy and questions about the efficacy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) review process. Yet the fierce politicization of the climate change problem raises questions as to whether public opinion has been shaped more by partisan conflict than by an understanding, or a lack thereof, of the scientific findings per se.
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Climate Progress interviews Christopher Field and Michael MacCracken on climate change reality
Posted on Monday, February 08, 2010
Chris Field, co-chair of the next IPCC assessment of climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, and Mike MacCracken of the Climate Institute were interviewed February 3 on human-driven climate change and its potential impacts and responded to global warming “skeptics”. In talking about how we know humans are changing the climate and why climate change is a clear and present danger, Field and MacCracken bring sanity and clarity to a discussion that has been confused by denialist attacks on the IPCC and the climate science community. See Details for links to videos.
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Questions to an IPCC co-chair on ensuring the credibility of IPCC leadership and communications
Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010
We asked Christopher Field, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: To counter the effort by the global warming disinformation campaign to discredit and delegitimize the IPCC, how will the IPCC ensure that the public and policymakers see it as being impeccable, not in an advocacy mode, without conflicts of interest, and highly credible going forward? In his reply, Dr. Field said the IPCC “has been slow – is in the middle of being slow – to come up with a comprehensive strategy for the challenges that are being raised,” and stated his personal commitment to making needed changes.
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President Obama’s FY2011 Budget has 21% funding increase for USGCRP climate science research
Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Alongside major new investments in clean energy development, President Obama’s FY2011 Budget proposes $2.56 billion in funding for climate and global change research conducted under the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) umbrella. This $439 increase over the FY2010 level brings climate research funding to a level higher than under any previous administration dating back to 1989.
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