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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 |
Global Warming Denial Machine
Setting the record straight on purported “errors” in “An Inconvenient Truth”
Posted on Wednesday, October 17, 2007
On the RealClimate web site, scientists Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann set the record straight on what a UK judge recently termed “errors” in the film “An Inconvenient Truth” (while approving its continued use in classrooms). “It is clear that the purported ‘errors’ are nothing of the sort,” Schmidt and Mann say, in a point-by-point discussion. A useful corrective, because of course global warming denial machine fossil-fool politicos and junk lawsuit filers used the UK judge’s remarks to support their usual wrong-headed hype (here and here, for example) and outright demagoguery (here, for example).
Washington Post feeds global warming disinformation campaign with Bjorn Lomborg feature
Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2007
On October 7, the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section featured a 1,900-word page one article by the notorious Danish statistician, adjunct business school professor, and “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg. The article exemplifies how the global warming disinformation campaign is shifting its focus from outright denialism to a more complex and misleading downplaying of harmful climate change impacts and positing of misleading arguments about mitigation. And its publication, with no alternative perspective from someone with scientific credentials, or at least a stronger reputation for accuracy and intellectual honesty than Lomborg has, shows a lack of good professional judgment by the Post’s Outlook editors, in their shaping of public discussion of the climate change problem.
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RealClimate scientists take on latest manifestation of global warming disinformation campaign
Posted on Wednesday, October 10, 2007
RealClimate, an indispensable web site devoted to setting the record straight on climate science issues, reported on October 10 on a new attempt to reinvigorate the notorious 1999 “Oregon Petition.” The RealClimate site has an associated Wiki that provides a wealth of information debunking what they call “climate contrarian pseudo-science.”
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Climate contrarian Pat Michaels refused to disclose funding in Vermont court case
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Patrick J. Michaels, one of the global warming skeptics most often interviewed by news media, withdrew as an expert witness in a high-profile Vermont court case rather than disclose his funding sources, court documents show. Moreover, Michaels told the court in July 2007, some funders gave him money on the condition that their identities remain secret -- and he is largely dependent for his livelihood on the money they give him.
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Newsweek cover story focuses on the global warming denial machine
Posted on Sunday, August 05, 2007
”Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine,” a 4,700-word cover story in the August 13 issue of Newsweek (now available online), explores the history and current situation with what the article terms the global warming denial machine. “Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine’s campaign,” the article says at one point. “It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. ‘If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action,’ says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995...Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, [administration] officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial -- and therefore no basis for making policy.
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Rolling Stone article on White House global warming denial links Cooney to V-P’s office and Rove
Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007
A very good article in the June 28 issue of Rolling Stone, on the Bush administration global warming disinformation campaign, shows direct connections between former White House CEQ chief of staff Phil Cooney and both Vice President Cheney’s office and Karl Rove. From Cheney’s continuing statements that deny and misrepresent the scientific intelligence on human-induced global warming, to Cooney’s manipulative policing of federal climate change science communications on topics deemed politically sensitive, a lack of integrity in dealing with climate science started at the highest level of the administration and fed down directly into the working level of the federal climate research program. Federal science program officials, in requiring clearances from Cooney to publish reports, had been drawn into Cheney’s sphere of influence. “They’ve got a political clientele that does not want to be regulated,” Rolling Stone quotes Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz as saying. “Any honest discussion of the science would stimulate public pressure for a stronger policy. They’re not stupid.” Also from our conversation with reporter Tim Dickinson: “‘They decided they didn’t need to win the debate on climate,’ says Piltz, the former official who exposed Cooney’s tactics. ‘They just had to leave an atmosphere of uncertainty about it and dissipate the will for political action.’” This article—“Six Years of Deceit: Inside the Bush Administration’s Secret Campaign to Deny Global Warming and Let Polluters Shape America’s Climate Policy”—is a must-read for anyone concerned with this problem.
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House Science investigations chairman calls on Exxon to account for global warming denial funding
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2007
On May 17 the Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology sent a letter to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson calling for a full accounting of ExxonMobil’s financial support of the global warming denial and disinformation political campaign. Denialist operatives and their allies will no doubt launch their usual bogus complaint that raising this issue this is somehow an effort to suppress honest scientific discussion and analysis. The opposite is the case, as AAAS President-elect Prof. James McCarthy’s March 28 testimony before the subcommittee clarified.
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Greenpeace report on Exxon’s continued funding of global warming denial and disinformation machine
Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007
A May 2007 report by Greenpeace USA concludes that, in 2006, Exxon spent $2.1 million on 41 groups that are part of the climate change denial and disinformation campaign. The report says Exxon has now given $22 million to these groups since 1998.
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MacCracken on Lindzen’s misleading Newsweek Op-Ed
Posted on Saturday, May 12, 2007
Michael MacCracken says Richard Lindzen’s April 16 op-ed in Newsweek, “Why So Gloomy?” contains numerous misleading statements and statements that are contrary to the international scientific consensus. MacCracken takes Lindzen’s argument apart, line by line.
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“Hot Politics”—PBS FRONTLINE program and extended interviews online
Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007
The full PBS FRONTLINE hour-long program on global warming, “Hot Politics,” which aired on April 24, can be viewed online. We are in segment #6—Censorship, discussing the Bush administration’s treatment of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts. Extended text from a number of the interviews is also posted, including interviews with Jim Hansen of NASA and CSW Director Rick Piltz.
PBS FRONTLINE “Hot Politics” of global warming on April 24
Posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007
FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) “go behind the scenes to explore how bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today.” Coming Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 9pm (check local listings to confirm time). A CIR Web video segment deals with the Bush administration’s suppression of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts. [See UPDATED post, April 28, 2008: “Hot Politics” re-aired—PBS FRONTLINE program on global warming politics and online interviews]
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“Dante’s Inferno: Green Edition”—The Eighth Circle
Posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007
It was called to our attention that, in its May 2007 Green Issue special section, Vanity Fair magazine presents a “Dante’s Inferno: Green Edition” graphic in which a number of global warming denialists are consigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. The Eighth Circle is reserved for “The Fraudulent.” There we find, among others, James Connaughton of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Phil Cooney.
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NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Phil Cooney
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007
In his column in the March 28 New York Times, Tom Friedman talks about the Bush administration and the role of its former climate change communications operative Phil Cooney, and draws a contrast with the bipartisan and science-accepting approach being taken by the governor of California.
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Vice President’s global warming views at odds with majority of climate scientists
Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007
In an exclusive February 23 interview, ABC asked Vice President Cheney about the topic of global warming, a subject Mr. Cheney has rarely addressed in the past. The Vice President agreed that the Earth is warming but, like President Bush, maintained there is debate over whether humans or natural cycles are the cause—a position that puts the administration at odds with the vast majority of climate scientists.
Exxon Mobil takes first steps to accept climate change science and cut funding of the denial machine
Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007
Exxon Mobil, beginning to reposition itself on climate change policy, acknowledged that climate science has identified risks that call for action and confirmed that it has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute and several other groups that have pushed global warming denialism.
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