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 Science Watch

Talks and reports by Climate Science Watch, and news about us

Climate Science Watch Weekly Update, August 2

Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Notes on climate and energy legislation, climate science, media, and a briefing on NOAA’s 2009 State of the Climate report. A brief update on what we’re keeping track of and writing about this week.

Environmental Conflict and Climate Change: The Grassroots vs ‘Big Green’

Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2010

As the news hit that we won’t be seeing a climate bill in this Congress, a group of panelists at the Netroots Nation annual conference looked at the relationship between grassroots action and the national environmental groups.

Video update: Netroots Nation panelists Jamie Henn of 350.org and Brad Johnson of hillheat.com talk about grassroots vs ‘Big Green’:

Netroots Nation: On holding the Obama Administration accountable on climate and energy

Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

How can the netroots and progressives most effectively hold the Obama Administration accountable for delivering on climate and energy policy? While at Netroots Nation 2010, Climate Science Watch put the question to Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace USA; Jason Miner, managing director of Glover Park Group; and Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International.

Climate Science Watch Weekly Update – July 28, 2010

Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

State of the Climate 2009 report; Netroots Nation 2010; ‘Mainstreaming’ federal climate change adaptation

White House Ends Climate Change Gag Order: EPA Whistleblowers Now Free to Speak Out

Posted on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Government Accountability Project (GAP), counsel for EPA and climate change whistleblowers Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, sent a letter to President Obama yesterday thanking the White House for causing the EPA to withdraw its censorship orders that effectively gagged the two enforcement attorneys. CSW director Rick Piltz said: “The culture in federal agencies of inappropriately restricting communication is dug in. It won’t be changed overnight and it won’t change all by itself. It’s going to take sustained, hands-on White House leadership and oversight.”

Climate Science Watch Weekly Update, June 29

Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A brief update on events, hearings, and legislative developments that we’ll be tracking and writing about this week.

Climate Science Watch Weekly Update, June 22

Posted on Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A brief summary of some of the things we are tracking and writing about this week—UPDATED 6/23

Climate Science Watch Weekly Update, 6/14

Posted on Monday, June 14, 2010

A brief summary of events we are attending, keeping track of, and writing about this week.

The Denial Machine: Interview on KPFK-FM Los Angeles

Posted on Sunday, May 09, 2010

CSW director Rick Piltz and Climate Cover-Up co-author Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog were interviewed on KPFK’s “Insighters” program aired April 22. See Details for transcript and webcast.

2010 recipients of the Ridenhour Prizes

Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2010

Matthew Hoh, the State Department official who resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan, was awarded The Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling on April 14 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Historian and activist Howard Zinn was posthumously awarded the Ridenhour Courage Prize. The Ridenhour Book Prize honored Joe Sacco for his illustrated book Footnotes in Gaza. Climate Science Watch attended the awards program and, as with each year’s event, found renewed inspiration.

Debunking ‘Climategate’

Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2010

“The idea that there is a massive lack of integrity in the science community, coming from the sources that are accusing them of that, politicians and right-wing blogs, is just ludicrous. They are projecting their own conspiratorial behavior and their own lack of scientific integrity onto the science community,” CSW director Rick Piltz said in an interview on the whistleblower TV program Whistle Where You Work. But the denial machine has been aggressively pushing its war on climate science and weakening public support for action, and the Obama administration and environmental groups “took their eye off the ball and have fallen down on the job in terms of really working public opinion on this.” (See Details for video and tanscript)

Worldwide glacier melt a real concern; Himalaya controversy leaves questions about IPCC leadership

Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010

The IPCC on January 20 officially acknowledged “poorly substantiated rates of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.” The controversy over the erroneous paragraph in the IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report should not overshadow the large body of evidence about anthropogenic climate change and its likely disruptive consequences, nor the overall IPCC synthesis conclusion that “Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability … in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.” But, as we said to ClimateWire, the IPCC should re-examine how it vets information when compiling future assessment reports. And, while the official IPCC mea culpa statement on January 20 is a necessary step in the right direction, it is not dispositive of questions this incident raises about the IPCC leadership and the organization’s public communications capabilities.

Revisiting Presidential Transition recommendations on climate change assessment and preparedness

Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010

As the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy brings Katharine Jacobs on board as assistant director for climate adaptation and assessment, we revisit recommendations we submitted in November 2008 to the Presidential Transition Team for OSTP, calling for the reactivation of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts and the establishment of a National Center for Climate Change Preparedness. It looks like some of what we recommended may now be on a path to being implemented.

“Why Is There No US Climate Policy?”

Posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009

The US does not have a climate change policy—none that can be articulated specifically and that represents the agreed position of the governing institutions. President Obama’s internationalist statements to the UN and the G8 about the potentially devastating impacts of global climatic disruption notwithstanding, US politics for the most part treats climate change as a domestic energy policy issue. In the effort to cobble together a working congressional majority on climate policy, the effects of climate science denialism combine with a complex set of trade-offs among parochial political concerns and economic special interests to delay the necessary decision-making. The US will go to the climate summit in Copenhagen with little in the way of real commitments to put on the table, because the US political process and US public opinion have been too self-absorbed to focus on multilateral action. The world must understand that, behind Obama’s speeches, there is a political struggle and a complex institutional terrain, which constrain him even as he seeks to lead it. Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz discusses these and other issues in an article for the online journal Eurozine, “Why Is There No US Climate Policy?”

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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