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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 |
Science-Policy Interaction
Successfully confronting the challenge of climate change will require a more functional relationship between scientists and policymakers, with greater accountability and integrity in the translation of research into effective response strategies.
In V-P debate, ask Biden and Palin for science and policy views on human-driven global warming
Posted on Thursday, October 02, 2008
The vice-presidential candidates debate tonight should include questions that enable viewers to compare and contrast the candidates’ positions on the fundamental challenge of human-driven global climate disruption. While Obama and McCain differ less radically in their stated positions on climate change than on many other issues, McCain’s running mate has given interview responses ranging from denialist to incoherent on the subject.
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Alaska Gov. Palin appears to deny global warming is due to human activity
Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008
In response to an interview question about global warming, Sen. McCain’s running mate Gov. Sarah Palin replied: “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.” This denialist formulation is at odds with what her state’s own Alaska Climate Change Strategy web site says about attribution.
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Did Gov. Palin misrepresent views of Alaska scientists on threat to polar bear?
Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008
“Alaska’s marine mammal scientists agreed last year with federal researchers who concluded polar bears are threatened with extinction because of a shrinking ice cap,” the Anchorage Daily News reported on May 25. “The state’s in-house dispute seems to refute later statements by Gov. Sarah Palin that a ‘comprehensive review’ of the federal science by state wildlife officials found no reason to support an endangered-species listing for the northern bears.”
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Gov. Sarah Palin on polar bears, climate change, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008
In September 2007 Governor Palin formed the Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet and charged it with preparing and implementing an Alaska Climate Change Strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and responding to the effects of climate change. But Palin opposed listing the polar bear as threatened by global warming and loss of sea ice habitat, in spite of the findings of a scientifically based status assessment put together by the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Marine Mammals Management Office in Alaska and the clear requirements of the Endangered Species Act.
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EPA union officials: Stephen Johnson subverted staff on global warming sound science and policy
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008
McClatchy Washington Bureau reported: “Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson stunned his staff last month when he publicly opposed their proposals for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, four union officials representing EPA staff working on global warming policies said in a letter [to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson].” The letter, released on August 5 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), alleges that Johnson subverted the work of EPA staff and damaged the agency’s reputation for “sound science and policy.” A news release by PEER says: “The professional staff charged with developing greenhouse gas regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency want Administrator Stephen Johnson to come clean on how decisions were reached on key climate change issues.
Canadian government mimics US “quiet release” method for major climate and health report
Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Globe and Mail (Canada) reported on July 23: “The Conservative government is planning a quiet release for a major Health Canada report that warns of the harmful impact of climate change on the health of Canadians, particularly the young, elderly and aboriginals.” Only days after the “quiet release” of a major US climate science program report on the same topic, Canada appears to be following the Bush administration’s bad example: Instead of highlighting these reports and using them to advance broader public awareness of the consequences of unchecked global warming, current US and Canadian government “leaders” leave them to be released by middle management and discussed by a relatively few experts.
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EPA report on climate change health & welfare impacts: Interview comments on Free Speech Radio News
Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008
In a July 18 interview on Free Speech Radio News, CSW director Rick Piltz commented on the release by EPA of a new federal scientific assessment of climate change impacts on human health and welfare, and how the administration is determined to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions in spite of the research findings. See Details for comments.
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Media coverage of EPA release of climate change health effects assessment
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Reuters covered EPA’s release on July 17 of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program synthesis report, Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems. USA Today (archived) cited our statement questioning why the report released today was held up until after EPA had issued its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on greenhouse gas regulation. As the federal government’s most comprehensive assessment of the harmful impacts of climate change on human health and public welfare in the United States, this report, years in the making, should have been used in developing EPA’s required “endangerment” finding as a step toward regulating greenhouse gases, instead of keeping the work of the Climate Change Science Program disconnected from this decision support role.
EPA releases report identifying harmful effects of climate change on human health
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
On July 17 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a major study by the US Climate Change Science Program synthesizing current scientific knowledge of climate change-induced threats to human health. The evidence synthesized in this report should be critical to an EPA “endangerment finding” for regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. However, EPA evidently did not rely on and did not cite the CCSP report in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on CO2 issued last week. The administration held up today’s health effects report for 3 months, waited until after EPA’s ANPR was issued, then posted the report at about the same time that Vice President Gore was attracting media attention with a major speech on climate change policy.
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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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“Rejuvenating Public Sector Science” – CSPI’s Fourth National Integrity in Science Conference
Posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s daylong Integrity in Science Conference in Washington, DC, July 11, will forge an agenda for independent regulatory science and protecting public sector scientists from political meddling and corporate influence. Jim Hansen of NASA will speak on the “Threat to the Planet: The Dark and Bright Sides of Global Warming.” CSW Director Rick Piltz will participate in a panel on Government Science and the Climate Crisis.
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Richard Somerville: Include climate change ethics and equity issues in science research agenda
Posted on Sunday, June 08, 2008
“I am convinced that a scientific community that aspires to be helpful to society must include ethics and equity as an integral part of its research agenda,” writes Richard Somerville, a coordinating lead author of the IPCC 2007 climate change scientific assesment. “We should place greater emphasis on providing quantitative information relevant to the ethical consequences of different policy options.”
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Bush administration has run out the clock on climate change assessment and action
Posted on Friday, May 30, 2008
ABC World News reported on May 29: Today, the White House finally released an overdue report on the comprehensive impact of global warming on the United States. It is the first such report from the Bush administration since it took office more than seven years ago. Rick Piltz...and other administration critics charge the White House delayed this report for years and is taking credit for it now while passing any decisions about action to the next president. “Here we have an administration that has one foot out the door. They have run out the clock on taking any really meaningful action on climate change.” Piltz said....Piltz points out that the scientific community has been articulating these findings for years and says that the subsequent action on the report is what will count. “This is something that has been well understood in the scientific community and the government for some time now,” Piltz said. “Even after we lift the hand of censorship off this climate science communication, we still need the political leaders to embrace it and learn from it and act on it.”
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Government report provides strong evidence U.S. endangered by climate change impacts
Posted on Thursday, May 29, 2008
On May 27 the U.S. Government released a report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in The United States, with strong conclusions that ought to suffice to establish an “endangerment” finding under which EPA would regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
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