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

Congress: Legislation and Oversight

UK Guardian: “US Senate’s top climate sceptic accused of waging ‘McCarthyite witch-hunt’”

Posted on Monday, March 01, 2010

The Guardian covered the story of Senator Inhofe’s new prosecutorial approach to climate science. “A spokesman for Inhofe rejected the charges of a witch-hunt,” the British national daily newspaper reported. “But he said a criminal investigation was warranted and that it should not necessarily be limited to the 17 ‘key players’.”

Sen. Inhofe inquisition seeking ways to criminalize and prosecute 17 leading climate scientists

Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Senator James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has gone a step beyond promoting his long-notorious global warming denialist propaganda. He is now using the resources of the Senate committee to seek opportunities to criminalize the actions of 17 leading scientists who have been associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports. A report released by Inhofe’s staff on February 23 outlines this classic Joe McCarthyite witch-hunt: page after page of incorrect and misleading statements, a list of federal laws that allegedly may make scientists subject to prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department, and a list of names and affiliations of 17 “key players” in the “CRU Controversy” over stolen e-mails and their connections with IPCC reports.

Reps. Joe Barton and James Sensenbrenner carried global warming denier message to Copenhagen

Posted on Wednesday, December 23, 2009

“We don’t have an icecap in Texas,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said at a December 18 press briefing in Copenhagen. The “theory [of anthropogenic climate change] has never been independently analyzed by any scientific group.” Mr. Barton and some of his colleagues, including Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), showed the media in Copenhagen that the Congressional global warming denial machine may be scientifically clueless, but is still capable of waging a nasty political battle.

California’s Adaptation Strategy shows leadership that Senate climate bill should follow

Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009

The final version of the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy released last week puts forth a set of wide-ranging recommendations for managing and adapting to a set of difficult climate change impacts throughout the state. Meanwhile, a recent framework for climate legislation put forth by Sens. John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman does not address dealing with impacts at all. The US will put itself in a perilous position if California’s advice is not heeded: “To effectively address the challenges that a changing climate will bring, climate adaptation and mitigation…policies must complement each other, and efforts within and across sectors must be coordinated.”

Sensenbrenner IPCC witch-hunt: Attempt to blacklist climate scientists must be rejected

Posted on Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), ranking Republican on the House global warming committee, has sent a letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for scientists whose names appear in the e-mails stolen from the U.K. Climatic Research Unit to be blacklisted from participating as contributors or reviewers of the forthcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Sensenbrenner is engaged in an outrageous McCarthyist jihad against the climate science community, making it abundantly clear that this controversy is not really about stolen e-mails, which have been misused and misinterpreted. Rather it is part of an aggressive campaign by the global warming denial machine to bully and intimidate the science community. Sensenbrenner shows no real interest in meaningful dialogue, nor in an honest examination of climate science findings. Denialists are throwing up a smokescreen of propaganda in an attempt to legitimize their refusal to come to grips with scientific evidence on global climatic disruption and its implications. This is a power play. Climate Science Watch calls on the IPCC to rebuff this attack. We call on the Obama Administration and in particular the President’s science adviser John Holdren to fully support the U.S. climate science community in this matter. We call on Sensenbrenner’s colleagues in Congress to chastise him for this censorious anti-scientist behavior. And we call on members of the science community to understand what the denial machine is up to and not allow themselves to be divided by innuendo about and attacks on scientists who have been singled out as immediate targets of a larger predatory attack on the community as a whole. Seeking an IPCC purge is just the next step. This attack, using guilt-by-association and demagogy, will go as far as it can to delegitimize the entire climate science and assessment enterprise if it is not exposed and thwarted. (See Details for the Sensenbrenner letter and press release.)

Rep. Sensenbrenner projects “fascism” and “fraud” onto scientists, is rebutted at hearing

Posted on Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) channeled the reckless spirit of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy in an effort to lead a December 3 House global warming committee hearing toward a witchhunt based on e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit in the U.K. Sensenbrenner essentially accused the climate scientists of “fascism” and suggested that a scientific assessment that included the CRU global temperature record among its many sources is part of “a massive international scientific fraud.” Witnesses John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, leading Administration science representatives, countered with cool reason. Committee chairman Ed Markey and Rep. Jay Inslee hit back harder.

On Obama, Copenhagen, and 9 Senate Democrats’ conditions for supporting a climate treaty and bill

Posted on Monday, December 07, 2009

Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz talked with KPFK-FM in Los Angeles about a letter to President Obama from nine Senate Democrats setting out conditions for supporting a US climate policy, and with Al Jazeera English TV in Washington, DC, about Obama’s participation in the Copenhagen climate conference.

Climate change: Kids get it, Rush Limbaugh and other denialists don’t

Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009

In a new video from the World Wildlife Fund, the children of WWF staff talk about the consequences of climate change, the importance of taking action and the need for U.S. leadership in reaching an international agreement at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. Rush Limbaugh responded to the video with predictable denialist vitriol.

“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?”

Bingaman natural resources planning bill underscores need to move on climate change adaptation

Posted on Sunday, November 01, 2009

The Natural Resources Climate Adaptation Act of 2009, introduced by Senator Bingaman on October 27, would require federal agencies to prepare a national strategy and agency plans to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change on natural resources and maximize resilience. We support moving on adaptation, CSW director Rick Piltz told the Law360 newswire, though neither this new bill nor the parallel language in the Kerry-Boxer Senate climate and clean energy bill gives enough weight yet to adaptive preparedness for climate change impacts on society and infrastructure, in addition to natural resources.

Senate testimony on climate change and national security raises questions: Whose security?

Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009

Global climatic disruption will pose a national security problem and will require a response from the US national security apparatus, a panel of experts told an October 28 Senate Environment Committee hearing on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. But climate change doesn’t have a national security solution. This calls for careful framing for US policymaking of the issue of whose security, and insecurity, is at stake.

Federal climate change adaptation strategy needed, say Rep. Markey, hearing witnesses, GAO report

Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009

Climate Science Watch’s call for a national adaptation strategy in climate legislation was buttressed by the recommendations in a new congressional Government Accountability Office report released at an October 22 hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Expert witnesses told Committee Chairman Ed Markey and other members that, while climate change adaptation cannot effectively substitute for emissions reduction efforts, federal guidance and investment in adaptation efforts nationwide are essential to protecting against unavoidable disruptive impacts.

In “Day Six” campaign, people of faith advocate stepped up adaptation assistance

Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009

“Dear Senator, We urge you to support a climate bill that addresses the root causes of climate change and makes needed investments in vulnerable communities already experiencing its devastating effects.” The plea is not from another environmental group—rather, it’s the core message of the DaySix.org campaign sponsored by an interdenominational, online community called Faithful America that has more than 100,000 members. “Those who are hurt most and worst should not be helped the least and last.”

Adaptation provisions in the Kerry-Boxer Senate climate and clean energy legislation

Posted on Tuesday, October 06, 2009

In its sections on adaptation and preparedness for global climate disruption, the bill introduced by Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer on September 30 parallels in some respects and differs in others from the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill as passed by the House in June. In this aspect of climate policy, as with its Pollution Reduction and Investment mitigation provisions, the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act as introduced is a work in progress, a first step toward what must become a fully-developed climate change preparedness strategy.

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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