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

Congressman Markey Queries Federal Aviation Administrator on Failure to Consider Climate Change

Posted on Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Chairman of the House Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, Rep. Ed Markey (Democrat from Massachusetts), prompted in part by a Climate Science Watch report [PDF] and Web site post, has sent a letter [PDF] to the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration expressing concern that the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transport System (NextGen) fails to include climate change considerations in planning for future air travel challenges.

House of Representatives Passes the Global Change Research and Data Management Act of 2007

Posted on Monday, August 13, 2007

A legislative proposal repealing the US Global Change Research Act of 1990 and replacing it with a set of provisions that re-establishes an interagency Global Change Research Program passed the US House of Representatives on August 4 as part of an omnibus energy bill (see related post).

Energy Bill Passed by House Has Many Provisions on Climate Change Impacts, Assessment, Adaptation

Posted on Monday, August 13, 2007

An omnibus energy bill (HR 3221) and a companion energy tax package (HR 2776) were passed by the House of Representatives in a rare Saturday session on August 4 2007. Both are voluminous and contain hundreds of provisions that, if signed into law, would reorient the United States toward cleaner and more efficient energy technologies and approaches, and take significant steps to address climate change. However, President Bush has already indicated he will veto both bills.

House Science Chairmen suggest NOAA is railroading Hurricane Center Director Bill Proenza

Posted on Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Continuing their investigation of the recent controversy at the Tropical Prediction Center / National Hurricane Center (TPC/NHC), chairmen of two House Science and Technology Subcommittees have called on NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher either to reinstate the Center’s Director William Proenza or return him to the position he held prior to running the TPC/NHC—instead of subjecting him to a “drastic demotion,” which the Administration’s political agents at NOAA are apparently intending to do. In the letter, the Science Chairmen said it appeared Proenza had been treated with “little evidence of fairness” when removed from his post in early July.

House appropriations for NASA and NOAA would begin to reverse damage to climate observing system

Posted on Saturday, July 28, 2007

On July 26 the House of Representatives approved a Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations bill with funding for NASA and NOAA. The bill, if enacted, would take a few steps toward rectifying the damage that has been done during the current administration to the future of global climate change space-based observations and to Earth science research and analysis at NASA. The Appropriations Committee report on the bill challenges administration priorities and underscores the need for a stronger national climate program.

House committee hearing July 31 on Administration politicization of Endangered Species Act science

Posted on Friday, July 27, 2007

The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on July 31 on “Crisis Of Confidence: The Political Influence of The Bush Administration on Agency Science and Decision-Making.” According to a press release from committee Chairman Joe Nick Rahall (D-WV), the hearing was organized in response to a recent report in the Washington Post that revealed how Vice President Cheney’s manipulation in 2002 of the use of science in Interior Department decisionmaking led to the die-off of more than 70,000 salmon in the Klamath River Basin, said to be the worst fish kill on record in the western United States.

Former Surgeon General says Bush political appointees censored science communication

Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Reuters reports: The first U.S. Surgeon General appointed by President Bush accused the administration on July 10 of political interference and muzzling him from discussing the scientific underpinnings of key issues like embryonic stem cell research. “Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served from 2002 until 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The New York Times reports that Carmona described attending a meeting at which top officials dismissed global warming as a liberal cause. “And I said to myself: ‘I realize why I’ve been invited. They want me to discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the science.’ I was never invited back.”

House Oversight deadline for White House to release climate change documents

Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007

In a bipartisan June 20 letter to White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman James Connaughton, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ranking Member Tom Davis (R-VA) set a firm deadline of June 27 for the White House to provide climate change documents that were requested eleven months ago. Despite numerous discussions and requests, CEQ has withheld more than 500 documents from the Committee. What do these documents contain? Who is responsible for CEQ’s stonewalling?

OSTP Director Marburger’s misleading testimony on NPOESS space-based climate observations

Posted on Saturday, July 07, 2007

In his testimony at a June 7 House Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on the development of the NPOESS satellite system, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Marburger played down the extent to which the future of essential climate change observations from space has been jeopardized by the Pentagon’s elimination or downgrading of eight climate sensors originally planned for NPOESS. In addition to an internal NOAA-NASA report to the White House released in June by Climate Science Watch, a presentation to a National Research Council panel on NPOESS by the director of the NOAA Climate Program Office is another source that paints a more truthful picture.

Letter to the House Science and Technology Committee on global change research legislation

Posted on Sunday, July 01, 2007

On June 27 the House Science and Technology Committee reported the Global Climate Change Research Data and Management Act of 2007 (H.R. 906). Climate Science Watch and the Union of Concerned Scientists have communicated to the Committee our concern that the bill remains underdeveloped in two key respects: (1) It does not address the need to protect the integrity of scientific communication from political interference; and (2) It does not adequately address the need for an explicit focus on national assessment of U.S. climate change impacts and response strategies.

Senate appropriators share our distrust of NOAA and the White House on essential climate satellites

Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007

The Senate Appropriations Committee reported a FY2008 NOAA funding bill on June 28 that provides $400 million above the President’s request. “The committee is doubtful this administration will ever show the leadership and bold thinking required to address the true needs of our planet’s oceans and atmosphere,” the committee report says. The report also expresses doubt about whether the administration will commit to timely budget increases needed to fund the sensors for measuring essential climate variables that were dropped from the NPOESS satellite system by the Pentagon and NOAA. How best to mitigate this damage presents a dilemma.

GAO report questions policies on dissemination of federal scientists’ research

Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007

On June 18 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report supporting recent criticisms that federal agency media policies hinder government scientists from publicizing their research results. Based on a large survey study, the report estimates that 102 scientists at NASA and 76 at NOAA have been denied approval to disseminate their results for reasons other than those stemming from standard technical review. The report says: “At NOAA, researchers who had requests denied represented a diverse cadre of research areas, including climate, environment, or atmosphere; oceans and coasts; and fisheries and ecosystems. Among the most common reasons that researchers reported for the denial of their requests were that the topic or results were sensitive...” We have noted many times that the gatekeepers interfere selectively, when communication of research findings and interpretations of their significance to a wider public audience might call into question current policies.

Senate committee advances whistleblower protection bill but leaves out protection for scientists

Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007

On June 13 the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced legislation that would restore the mandate of the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), which has been gutted by judicial activism since 1994. However, while the legislation would strengthen protections for federal whistleblowers who expose waste, fraud and abuse of power, it fails to address scientists who expose the manipulation, distortion, or suppression of their work.

Congressional investigation into science editing of Smithsonian Arctic climate exhibit

Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007

The chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has announced he is investigating the handling by Smithsonian Institution officials of science text for the Smithsonian’s exhibit on Arctic climate change. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) has asked the acting head of the Smithsonian Institution to turn over relevant information about just about everything except what we called for on May 22: the actual text as it was drafted by scientists, and the specific changes made by Smithsonian officials prior to the exhibit.

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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