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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.
“Bush doubts he’ll see Al Gore’s movie”
Posted on Monday, May 22, 2006
Reuters reported on May 22 (copyright 2006 Reuters) (archived):
Former oilman President George W. Bush sounds like a changed man when it comes to urging Americans to end their addiction to oil. But will he see Al Gore’s new movie about global warming?
“Doubt it,” Bush said on Monday when asked by a member of the audience during remarks in Chicago. “An Inconvenient Truth,” the movie by Gore, who lost to Bush in the 2000 presidential election, opens in U.S. theaters this week.
No comment.
Leading climate scientists’ U.S. Supreme Court brief in states’ greenhouse gas lawsuit
Posted on Monday, May 22, 2006
A group of 14 leading climate scientists filed an amici curiae brief on May 15 with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a petition by Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia contending that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. The brief criticizes the Court of Appeals for misrepresenting a key report issued in 2001 by the National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council by selectively citing material in the report “in ways that emphasize uncertainties in the details while neglecting fundamental areas of certainty or consensus, giving the impression that climate science is more uncertain than it actually is.”
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Open U.S. Review of IPCC draft report is a good thing—Part 2: Press coverage
Posted on Monday, May 15, 2006
Critics suggested that the federal Climate Change Science Program had posted the government review draft of the IPCC assessment report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, because the Bush administration was seeking to diminish its news value later when the final report is published. While understandable in light of the distrust the administration has engendered in its treatment of climate science, this interpretation—published in the journal Nature and subsequently picked up in other media outlets—is based on a misunderstanding of the open review procedure and its positive value. In addition, Nature and other publications violated the review protocol for the draft report by publishing specific references to the report’s findings.
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Open U.S. review of IPCC draft report is a good thing, despite criticism—Part 1
Posted on Tuesday, May 09, 2006
After the federal Climate Change Science Program posted on its Web site the government review draft of the IPCC assessment report, “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,” critics suggested variously that the Bush administration is making it possible for the review process to be hijacked by special interest groups, and that the administration is posting the report in draft form to defuse its news value when the final report is published. Such concerns are off the mark and are based on a misunderstanding of the review procedure and its value. We should be on the side of an open process with broad-based input to the U.S. Government’s review of this extraordinarily important report. The Climate Change Science Program Office should be commended, not criticized, for making the report readily available for review.
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IPCC Draft Climate Change Assessment Report Posted for Government and Expert Review
Posted on Thursday, April 13, 2006
The government review of the second-order draft of “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”—the Working Group I contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report—has been initiated. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office is coordinating the solicitation of comments by U.S. experts and stakeholders to inform development of an integrated set of U.S. Government comments on the report. The question remains: How will the U.S. Government address the mainstream climate science synthesized in the report?
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House Science Committee Chair Calls for Reform of NOAA Public Affairs Policy
Posted on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
House Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) sent a letter on April 7 to Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in response to an April 6 story in The Washington Post on concerns expressed by NOAA scientists. In the letter Mr. Boehlert says: “The issue of climate change is too important to countenance any scientists feeling intimidated or constrained about discussing the matter...” and calls on Lautenbacher to “swiftly” take five specific steps to remedy the problem.
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Thomas Jefferson Center gives 2006 “Muzzle” award to Rep. Joe Barton
Posted on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
On April 11, the 2006 Annual Jefferson Muzzle Awards were announced by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Virginia. For 15 years, the Jefferson Muzzle Awards have “honored” those individuals and institutions that committed the more egregious or ridiculous acts of censorship in the past year. Among the “winners” of the 2006 Jefferson Muzzles is U.S. Representative Joe Barton—“For taking action that appears to blur the line between scientific research and politics.”
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President claims human influence on global warming is fundamentally in question
Posted on Sunday, April 02, 2006
At a March 29 press briefing, in response to a question about global warming, the President said, “Well, first of all, the globe is warming—the fundamental debate, is it manmade or natural?” In a March 31 interview on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, Climate Science Watch Director Rick Piltz said, “For the President to say there is a “fundamental debate” about that—that’s misrepresenting the intelligence on an issue of tremendous importance to the future of this society, in order to conform the intelligence to a predetermined political position.”
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ABC News: Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?
Posted on Sunday, April 02, 2006
On March 26 ABC News aired two back-to-back segments on global warming. One addressed the question: “The vast majority of scientists have determined global warming to be a real threat. So why has it taken so long to convince Americans?” The story included interviews with Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels, journalist Ross Gelbspan, and Rick Piltz of Climate Science Watch. The text of the story, “Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job? Some Claim Disinformation Campaign Attempted to Create the Impression Scientists Were Broadly Divided,” was posted on the ABC World News Tonight Web site.
Senators call for National Academy auditing of government reports on climate change
Posted on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
An announcement posted March 29 on Senator Frank Lautenberg’s Web site begins: “In an effort to prevent future government reports dealing with the issue of climate change from being altered by White House political aides, several members of the United States Senate called for all future reports to be audited by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).” Senators Lautenberg, Inouye, and Kerry in a letter sent March 29, urged Dr. James Mahoney, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, to put in place procedures that would give the NAS oversight for future government climate science reports, including the annual Our Changing Planet report.
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CBS News “60 Minutes” airs global warming story on “Re-Writing the Science”
Posted on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
On March 19 CBS “60 Minutes” aired the second part of a two-part global warming story. The segment, entitled “Re-Writing the Science,” focused on political impediments to public communication of climate science findings, drawing on interviews with Jim Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences; and Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch.
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Former NOAA Lab Director: U.S. in “state of deep denial” on global warming
Posted on Sunday, March 05, 2006
In Warm, Warmer, Warmest, a column on global warming by Nicholas Kristof published in the New York Times on 5 March 2006, Kristof concludes that “our political system is paralyzed in the face of what may be the single biggest challenge to our planet.”
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Jim Hansen: NOAA “by fiat” put out “biased information” on hurricanes
Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Jim Hansen of NASA made a presentation (5.1 MB download) on February 10 at a conference on Politics and Science in New York City. In the talk he said: “NOAA took an official position that global warming was not the cause of hurricane intensification, and as the public was glued to their television listening to reports from the Hurricane Center, that is the main message the public received. The topic is a complex one that the scientific community is working on, but it seems that the public, by fiat, received biased information. NOAA scientists were told not to dispute the Hurricane Center conclusion in public.”
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Censorship of Federal Climate Scientists: The Critical Case of Jim Hansen
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006
Jim Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, has challenged the Bush administrations effort to prevent him from speaking freely about his analysis of the dangers of global warming and the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate disruption. What Hansen is saying and doing is especially significant at this juncture, as an example of the vital public role of citizen-scientists—those who speak from a position of scientific expertise to play a role in the broader public discourse. Scientists, including federal scientists, should be supported in playing such a role, not threatened with “dire consequences.” If we can establish the principle of freedom of public communication by federal climate scientists, unimpeded by political and ideological pressure, then others may be emboldened to also come forward into a more open public discourse.
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Toward a Second U.S. National Climate Change Assessment
Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Article by Rick Piltz of Climate Science Watch. “A second U.S. National Climate Change Assessment should be undertaken, based on advances since the 1990s in understanding the climate system and potential ecological and societal impacts of climate change in the United States. The new National Assessment should be developed as part of a process that institutionalizes a national climate change impacts assessment capability, i.e., an ongoing dialogue between scientists, policy-makers, and other stakeholders, with periodically updated, scientifically-based assessments.”
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