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 |
Assessments of Climate Impacts and Adaptation
The U.S. "National Assessment"; the impacts and adaptation chapter of the U.S. National Communication required by Article 12 of the U.N. Climate Convention; and other major assessments.
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.
See Details
American Public Health Association and World Health Organization: Climate change threatens health
Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008
Serious public health threats associated with global climatic disruption have been the focus of the World Health Organization April 7 “World Health Day”, the American Public Health Association April 7-13 National Public Health Week, and an April 9 Congressional hearing. This is what the White House didn’t want Centers for Disease Control director Gerberding to include in her Senate testimony last October.
See Details
GAP press release on stealth release of climate change transportation impacts report
Posted on Friday, March 14, 2008
A March 14 news release by the Government Accountability Project leads with: “This past Wednesday, March 12, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program quietly released a major assessment report on the likely impacts of global climate disruption on a wide range of transportation infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region. This report release was buried by the DOT, and officials have been blocking journalists from speaking with the report’s lead author.”
See Details
Stealth release of major federal study of Gulf Coast climate change transportation impacts
Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008
On March 12 the U.S. government released a major assessment report on the likely impacts of global climate disruption on a wide range of transportation systems and infrastructure in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. The report was released in a way that was clearly intended to minimize public attention to it, and our media sources say the Department of Transportation is blocking journalists from talking with the lead author at the agency about the findings in the report. Why? Read on....
See Details
US State Dept. request for comments on the future of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Posted on Saturday, February 09, 2008
“The U.S. State Department, in its role as coordinator for the U.S. Government’s role in the IPCC, requests public comment on the activities and process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to facilitate the U.S. Government’s effort to assess and enhance the IPCC’s high-level of scientific credibility and relevance for the evolving needs of decisionmakers.” We have some questions for consideration.
See Details
R.I.P Bert Bolin
Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Bert Bolin, Swedish climate scientist and co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has died at age 82. Dr. Bolin played a key role in communicating the dangers of climate change and served as the first chairman of the IPCC from 1988 to 1998. We deeply appreciated his leadership in making the IPCC into the indispensable organization that it has become. See AP article here.
Non-native jellyfish wipe out salmon fishery in Northern Ireland – another warning sign?
Posted on Sunday, December 02, 2007
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, a massive bloom of “mauve stinger” jellyfish, in a dense pack covering 10 square miles 35 feet deep, thousands of miles north of their preferred ocean habitat, feasted on about a half a million pounds of gourmet, organic salmon being raised in pens off the coast of northern Ireland and slated for market during the upcoming holiday season. All indications are that climate change played a key role in the fatal intrusion. The incident raises important questions for the US climate science programs and our overall level of climate change preparedness.
See Details
Webcast and Written Testimony from Senate Hearing on U.S. Global Change Research Program
Posted on Thursday, November 15, 2007
On November 14, 2007, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on “A Time for Change: Improving the Federal Climate Change Research and Information Program.” We provide links to an archived Webcast and to the written statements of the witnesses; soon we’ll have more to say about this interesting hearing. Stay tuned.
See Details
IPCC meets on 2007 Synthesis Report amidst concerns about climate change and political pressure
Posted on Monday, November 12, 2007
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, is meeting in Valencia, Spain, this week to complete action on the IPCC Synthesis Report, the fourth and final volume of the comprehensive IPCC 2007 scientific assessment of climate change. We expect government representatives will engage once again in the kind of politically motivated interventions that have appeared to characterize negotiations on previous IPCC policymaker summaries this year—as we documented with the scientists’ “Final Draft” Summary for Policymakers on the climate change impacts assessment report before it was altered during editing negotiations with government representatives.
See Details
Chris Mooney on the National Assessment scandal in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2007
The November-December issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists features an excellent article by journalist Chris Mooney—“An Inconvenient Assessment”—on the scandalous treatment of the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts by the Bush administration, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, and the global warming denial machine. ("Seven years ago, scientists published a pioneering study to help Americans understand the implications of climate change. Here’s why you’ve never heard of it.") Highly recommended, and not just because we are quoted and cited in it.
Former Director of Climate Program Office: “Administration should be held to a higher standard”
Posted on Sunday, September 02, 2007
The director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Office until March 2006 calls for a “full soup-to-nuts national assessment” of climate change impacts.
See Details
Bush-Cheney Administration spins a sound legal defeat into an affirmation of their illegal actions
Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007
On August 22, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Kristin Scuderi, released an official statement of reaction to the court case, Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. Dr. William Brennan et al (see related post). The ruling by Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong was clear: by failing to meet deadlines to produce a research plan and climate change impacts assessments, the Administration is in violation of the law, and now is under an enforceable court order to comply. However, the inaccurate and grossly misleading OSTP statement "attempts to spin a complete legal defeat into an affirmation of their illegal actions” says the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Brendan Cummings with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). We list OSTP's claims and Cummings' point-by-point rebuttals.
See Details
Inslee, Kerry Applaud Decision Forcing Administration to Comply with Climate Change Law
Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2007
The office of Repesentative Jay Inslee (Democrat, Washington) released a press release on 22 August 2007 in response to the court order issued on 21 August 2007 regarding Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. Dr. William Brennan et al. Senator Kerry and Congressman Jay Inslee had filed a memorandum of Amici Curiae to the court on 17 April 2007. According to Rep. Inslee, the decision “makes clear that the Bush Administration has been illegally suppressing the scientific facts that link global warming to the very real impacts on our daily lives.” We provide the full press release.
See Details
Court Rules that Bush Admin. Unlawfully failed to produce Scientific Assessment of Global Change
Posted on Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A Federal judge says the Bush Administration has violated the Global Change Research Act by failing to produce a national global change research plan that was due by July 2006; and a scientific assessment of global change that was due in November 2004. The last scientific assessement, the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, was submitted to Congress in November 2000. Climate Science Watch has long maintained that the Bush administration’s suppression of official use of the first National Assessment report and its termination of the national climate change assessment process for connecting scientists to policymakers and society is the central climate science scandal of the administration. Ruling on the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity et al, U.S. District Judge Sandra Brown Armstrong has ordered the Administration to produce both the plan and the assessment no later than the end of May 2008.
See Details
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).
See Details