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 |
Censorship of Government Scientists
The ability of our society and public officials to make good decisions about climate change depends on uncensored and unimpeded communication about the findings of scientific research and scientifically based assessments of key issues.
EPA attempt to limit free speech by agency lawyers Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel violates the law
Posted on Wednesday, November 25, 2009
EPA’s attempt to limit freedom of speech by two agency lawyers, Laurie Willaims and Allan Zabel, who have spoken out in opposition to proposed cap and trade climate legislation, violates the law, says Louis Clark, President of the Government Accountability Project. EPA must be required to abandon the legacy of Bush-era restrictions on free speech for government workers — we would say, especially those addressing climate change. By accepting government employment, federal employees are not legally required to give up their First Amendment freedoms, their safeguards under whistleblower protection laws, their freedom to communicate with Congress, or their rights under anti-gag legislation that protect them from government officials who abuse their authority.
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“The Denial Machine” – Index on Censorship reviews the Bush record on climate science
Posted on Monday, April 06, 2009
In “The Denial Machine,” Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz reviews eight years of the climate change disinformation campaign in the Bush administration for a special end-of-2008 issue of Index on Censorship devoted to examining the Bush legacy on human rights, secrecy, and censorship.
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Whistleblower TV now available online
Posted on Monday, April 06, 2009
“Whistle Where You Work,“ produced by the Government Accountability Project, is a multimedia program focusing on issues of accountability. All episodes of the 30-minute program may now be viewed online. In “The Assault on Scientific Integrity,” part of Episode #4 in the series, GAP Executive Director Mark Cohen interviewed Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Rick Piltz of Climate Science Watch during the fall 2008 election campaign.
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Progress Report lists “The 43 Who Helped Make Bush the Worst Ever”
Posted on Friday, January 16, 2009
The Progress Report heralded the conclusion of the Bush 43 presidency with their list of candidates for the top 43 worst Bush appointees. We note that the list includes a number of appointees who contributed to the Bush administration’s reputation for abuse of scientific integrity.
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Broken Government assessment of Bush administration failures includes climate change communication
Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Center for Public Integrity has identified 128 “systematic failures” across the the executive branch during the past eight years, in areas ranging from the military and veterans affairs to justice and security to finance to consumers and workers to energy and the environment. One item in the report—“Climate Change: Hide the Assessment”—concerns the broken integrity of climate change science communication and the suppression of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts.
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What will the Obama transition do about Centers for Disease Control director Julie Gerberding?
Posted on Sunday, November 30, 2008
A Washington Post report on November 27 suggested that it’s unlikely the Obama administration will keep CDC Director Julie Gerberding in place. We showed in October 2007 how her Senate testimony on climate change and public health had been censored by the White House. At that time she was a good Bush-Cheney team player in trying to sweep the problem under the rug – like too many senior officials during the past 8 years.
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New study of media policies finds some federal agencies stifle scientists’ contact with reporters
Posted on Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report on October 17 grading 15 federal agencies on their policies controlling communication between staff scientists and the news media and the public. The report concluded that one of the agencies with the worst policies is the Environmental Protection Agency. A majority of EPA survey respondents indicated that they can’t speak freely to the media, and interviews with journalists indicated that EPA is an especially restrictive agency. We have repeatedly called attention to restrictive media policies as a significant method of political interference with climate science communication.
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New GAP whistleblower series debuts on Free Speech TV with panel on scientific integrity
Posted on Sunday, October 19, 2008
“Whistle Where You Work,” a series dedicated to whistleblowers and occupational free speech, accountability and transparency issues, produced by the Government Accountability Project, has begun airing on the Free Speech TV network. We are interviewed on one of the first programs, which looks at the assault on scientific integrity by the Bush administration and asks, will the new administration advance scientific freedoms?
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Notes on Conrad Lautenbacher’s troubled legacy on science and politics at NOAA (Part 2)
Posted on Friday, September 26, 2008
Any assessment of the tenure of Conrad Lautenbacher, who has resigned as NOAA Administrator effective October 31, will have to consider the problems of political interference with climate science communication and the mismanagement of the NPOESS satellite global climate monitoring project that happened on his watch. See Details for our earlier posts on these problems.
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As Hurricane Ike careens toward Texas, we are reminded of a warning the White House silenced
Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008
On March 12, 2008 the US government quietly released a report, Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Transportation and Infrastructure—Gulf Coast Study. The study, one of 21 being produced by the US Climate Change Science Program, was silenced by the Bush admninistration’s political apparatus, another victim of systematic suppression of climate science communication presumably meant to keep the American people in the dark about the ties between our heavy reliance on fossil fuels and climatic disruption, ranging from the mild to the severe. On the day of the stealth release, reporters were kept from interviewing the lead author with the Department of Transportation, an expert on the vulnerability of transportation systems to severe weather and other risks.
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Jason Burnett confirms that Cheney’s office and CEQ censored CDC director Gerberding’s testimony
Posted on Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Associated Press reported on July 8 that former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason Burnett has confirmed something we had suggested earlier: that the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acting as an agent of Vice President Cheney, directed the censorship of the October 2007 testimony of Centers for Disease Control director Julie Gerberding linking climate change to adverse public health impacts. This was a case of the ongoing White House collusion with the global warming disinformation campaign to play down adverse impacts of climate change on public health and welfare, in order to continue to block regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Dr. James Hansen calls for fossil industry disinformants to be tried for “high crimes”
Posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Twenty years after delivering his landmark testimony to the US Senate declaring a detectable fingerprint for global warming, Dr. Hansen appeared June 23, 2008 before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by Rep. Ed Markey. In his briefing (here [PDF], and here [MS Powerpoint]), Hansen pleaded for a rapid transition away from carbon-based fuels to avoid total climate catastrophe, and harshly castigated those in the fossil fuel industries responsible for deliberately and methodically spreading untruths and purposely misleading society, thus dangerously delaying an effective response and actions to avert global climatic disruption. The CEOs behind this massive disinformation campaign of the last several decades, he claims, “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
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“A Climate Hero: An Outspoken Truth”
Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008
The Worldwatch Institute and Grist have posted a three-part series (part 3 here and here) commemorating the 20-year anniversary of NASA scientist James Hansen’s groundbreaking testimony on global climate change next week. We spoke with the reporter for part 3: “Jim did a great deal to help unmask the Bush administration’s collusion with the global warming disinformation campaign. He’s a bit like a lone wolf. Nobody can tell him what to say or what to do. They made a mistake when they tried to mess with him.”
NASA internal investigation of climate science political interference let higher-ups off the hook
Posted on Monday, June 16, 2008
An investigative report by the NASA Inspector General released June 2 validates charges that White House political appointees in the NASA Public Affairs office were engaged in censoring climate science communication, but whitewashes the complicity of higher-ups at NASA Headquarters in the attempt to censor James Hansen. We told Climate Wire the report also gave top NASA officials too much credit for their response to the censorship claims after the fact. But we give the report, which took 20 months to produce, credit for documenting and validating the conclusion “that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”
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Have things changed? What reforms are needed? Remarks at Whistleblower Week in Washington
Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008
Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz spoke at a Whistleblower Week in Washington event May 12, on a panel on “Scientific Freedom and the Public Good.” In addition to comments in response to questions about his own experience, he talked about the current situation with the Bush administration and the future direction of the federal climate research program and its relationship to society. See Details for full text.
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