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

Congressional Oversight

Questions for Climate Change Science Program Director William J. Brennan nomination hearing

Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008

Here are some questions that members of the Senate Commerce Committee should have asked of William J. Brennan, acting director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, at his May 1 nomination hearing to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.

CDC House hearing witness Frumkin submits CDC Director Gerberding’s previously censored testimony

Posted on Saturday, April 12, 2008

At an April 9 House committee hearing, witness Howard Frumkin of the federal Centers for Disease Control submitted the testimony on health effects of climate change that the White House had redacted from CDC Director Julie Gerberding’s Senate testimony in October 2007. What led the censors at the White House Office of Management and Budget and Council on Environmental Quality to let the testimony go forward this time? See Details for the Frumkin testimony and our analysis.

House Select Committee to examine aviation’s impact on global warming

Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2008

On April 2 the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing on the potential to curb aviation’s emissions of greenhouse gases and contribution to global warming. Climate Science Watch, following a CSW report issued in 2007, has criticized the administration’s failure to acknowledge aviation’s contribution to global warming in federal planning documents and has called for aviation emissions to be included in U.S. climate change policy and regulation.

House subcommittee hearing April 1 on FEMA toxic trailers and mistreatment of CDC whistleblower

Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008

Tomorrow (April 1) the House Science Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee will hold a hearing (“Toxic Trailers: Have the Centers for Disease Control Failed to Protect Public Health?”) to further investigate the belated discovery of high levels of formaldehyde in trailers that FEMA provided to displaced Katrina victims. The hearing (also webcast) will feature testimony by Dr. Christopher De Rosa, former toxicology director at the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, testifying after being unfairly demoted and placed on a termination track for fighting to tell the truth about formaldehyde’s toxicity. We applaud DeRosa’s public service, including his decision to be a whistleblower.

House Science Committee chairman questions White House delay on federal science integrity principles

Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008

In the more than six months since the enactment of a law requiring the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop principles of science communication integrity for the federal agencies to implement, and more than three months after the statutory deadline for issuing the principles, the White House continues to be tangled up in its own internal political processes rather than being in compliance with a straightforward statutory requirement.

Why hasn’t White House science director issued required science communication integrity principles?

Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2008

When White House science Director John Marburger testifies before the House Science and Technology Committee on February 14 at a hearing on funding for the America COMPETES Act, the Committee should ask him why he has not issued the federal science communication integrity principles required by the Act.

House global warming committee hearing on administration’s delayed decision on polar bear protection

Posted on Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming announced that it will hold a hearing on January 17 on the future of the polar bear. On January 8 we noted that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had announced a politically suspicious delay in missing a statutory deadline for a ruling on threatened status protection for the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Committee Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) will question members of the Bush Administration regarding the delay of a decision until after a controversial lease sale for oil drilling off of Alaska.

Climate Change Science Program acting director William Brennan to face Senate confirmation hearing

Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008

On January 10 the President announced his intention to nominate Bill Brennan, current acting director of the Climate Change Science Program, to fill the position previously held by James Mahoney as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. This is a Senate-confirmed political appointment and offers the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation an opportunity to get his answers to questions about the problems and direction of the program before voting on confirmation.

House-Senate conferees should report strong Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act bill

Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008

A January 3 editorial in the St. Petersburg (FL) Times, “Protect the Whistleblowers,” calling on Congress to strengthen the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and override a presidential veto if necessary, leads with: “Were it not for the disclosures of Rick Piltz of the White House Climate Change Science Program, the public might never have known that Bush administration appointees, including an oil industry lobbyist, altered the conclusions of the country’s top scientists in order to subvert concern over global warming. Piltz is one of thousands of whistleblowers who help make our government more accountable.” But: “The Whistleblower Protection Act is no longer serving its initial purpose....According to the Government Accountability Project, a nonpartisan organization devoted to protecting whistleblowers, in the last 13 years whistleblowers have suffered a 2-to-183 losing streak before the one federal appellate court to which they may appeal.” See Details for full text and Piltz note.

As California sues EPA on CO2 regulation, inside sources could help set the record straight

Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008

California and 15 other states sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on January 2 for denying them a waiver needed under the Clean Air Act to put in place first-in-the-nation regulation of carbon emissions from new cars and trucks. A Congressional investigation has been initiated into EPA’s documents on its decision on the waiver. Climate Science Watch calls on inside sources to help set the record straight by providing information that may not be evident in formal documents, including information about White House political interference in agency decisionmaking under the statute.

EPA decision controlled by White House CEQ in denial of California CO2 rules?

Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007

In denying California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, we believe the Environmental Protection Agency was suborned by White House politics to make a decision that appears to be without either good legal or scientific justification. Ask Marty Hall, Phil Cooney’s successor as chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and former top staffer for global warming denialist Sen. James Inhofe, what role CEQ and the Vice-President’s office played in manipulating what should have been an independent professional decision by EPA.

House Oversight approves report on political interference with climate science communication

Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007

On December 12 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a majority report that concludes that the Bush Administration politically interfered with climate change science communication and misled policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming. The Committee was divided. The Republican minority put forward a “Preliminary Minority Views” report that draws conclusions based on unquestioningly accepting at face value misleading statements by Phil Cooney and other current and former administration officials.

House Oversight Committee report contradicts NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher’s testimony

Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007

On 16 February 2006, the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., was asked in a Senate Hearing whether there was White House censorship of communication by NOAA scientists. Lautenbacher responded that he was "not aware that there is any truth to that at all," that he had "never seen anybody to be able to muzzle a scientist," that scientists say "whatever they want to say," and that "we don’t interfere with the ability of our scientists to discuss their peer reviewed science." His statement is contradicted by a report issued on Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

CSW director: White House under Clinton-Gore “was not at war with the mainstream science community”

Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2007

In an article on the House Oversight Committee majority report on White House political interference with climate change science, released December 10, the Christian Science Monitor reports: “Rick Piltz, director of the climate science watch program at the Government Accountability Project...[says] the White House’s efforts this time were about more than organizing a coherent policy message.” No administration is above criticism, but under the previous administration the White House “was not at war with the mainstream science community.”

House Oversight report on administration political interference with climate change science

Posted on Monday, December 10, 2007

On December 10 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), released a proposed report on the results of a 16-month investigation of allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. The report draws on more than 27,000 pages of documents obtained by the Committee from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department. The report draws on and validates information we and others brought forward, and includes material that has not previously been published. On the corrupting influence of CEQ, we told Greenwire: “Everybody was complicit. Everybody knew what was going on, although nobody had the full story, because the tentacles of CEQ were out in so many different directions.”

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