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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 |
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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IPCC 2007 final report on climate change impacts now available online
Posted on Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, the Working Group II contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is now available online. Chapter 14 focuses on climate change impacts on North America.
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Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN
Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007
The Bush administration’s long overdue U.S. Climate Action Report – 2006, given a stealth release on Friday afternoon July 27, lacks a forthright discussion of a range of likely adverse climate change impacts on the U.S. and fails to draw on the IPCC 2007 impacts assessment report and the substantial scientific literature on which it is based, including the assessment of North America impacts. The failure to use this material, and the overall evasiveness of the impacts and vulnerability chapter of the report, was clearly a political decision. Administration officials have once again defaulted on an opportunity to address a crucial challenge for national preparedness.
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Federal court ruling pending in lawsuit to compel new National Climate Change Assessment
Posted on Thursday, July 26, 2007
A federal court ruling is pending in the Center for Biological Diversity et al. lawsuit against the U.S. Climate Change Research Program and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to compel the preparation of a new National Assessment of Climate Change. In July the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, directed the parties to file a supplemental briefing in response to several questions about the content of the assessment required by the Global Change Research Act and its relationship to the CCSP research plan. The government defendants have an August 3 deadline for filing their briefing. A ruling in the case could come at any time after that. See Details for links to Plaintiffs documents in the case and the detailed Declaration of Climate Science Watch Director Rick Piltz.
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Union of Concerned Scientists Northeast climate change report does the government’s job
Posted on Sunday, July 15, 2007
On July 11 the Union of Concerned Scientists released a major report, Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast: Science, Impacts, and Solutions. The report identifies a wide range of signficant, harmful, likely impacts on cities and ecosystems in a nine-state region. In the absence of federal support under the current administration for national and regional-scale climate change impacts assessments like this, the Union of Concerned Scientists is filling in a gap that should not be there in the first place, doing a job the government should be doing but is currently unwilling to do.
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IPCC North America climate change impacts chapter shows evasiveness of U.S. Climate Action Report
Posted on Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The current draft of the Bush administration’s U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report (CAR) has a chapter on climate change impacts that fails to engage in an adequate substantive discussion of the current state of knowledge on that subject. As an indicator of the shortcomings of the administration’s chapter, compare it with the North America chapter of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II assessment report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. We are posting our copy of the final review draft of the IPCC North America chapter because we believe U.S. reviewers of the CAR should have it as a reference during the State Department’s too-brief public comment period. Note the climate change impacts on North America identified in the IPCC report that are omitted, or barely touched upon, in the CAR. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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“Impacts and Adaptation” chapter of U.S. Climate Action Report 2007 is an evasive failure
Posted on Monday, May 07, 2007
The U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report (CAR), issued in draft on May 4 for a 2-week public comment period, contains a chapter on “Vulnerability Assessment, Climate Change Impacts, and Adaptation Measures” that simply does not come to grips with what is expected in satisfying the U.S. “national communication” commitment under the climate treaty. This chapter is a big step backward from its predecessor, Chapter 6 in the U.S. Third Climate Action Report (2002), which drew heavily on the now-suppressed National Assessment, and signals the administration’s fundamental evasiveness about engaging in a forthright discussion of climate change impacts on the United States. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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Public review of administration’s Fourth U.S. Climate Action Report until May 18
Posted on Sunday, May 06, 2007
On May 4 the State Department issued for public review a draft of the U.S. Fourth Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, with a deadline of noon, May 18, for submitting comments. This report, which is already 16 months beyond its original deadline for fulfilling a U.S. commitment under the climate treaty, calls for critical scrutiny, especially of how the chapter on Impacts and Adaptation was handled. [Editor’s Note: See also the 30 July 2007 posting, Bush Administration submits evasive Climate Action Report to the UN.]
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UPDATE on IPCC Working Group II Climate Change Impacts Assessment Report
Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007
We note that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has temporarily removed on-line access to chapters of the Working Group II assessment report on climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. These chapters are undergoing final copyediting prior to publication. It is our understanding that the IPCC may re-post the chapters in a few weeks, and the full report will subsequently be published in book form. It was unusual for the IPCC to post pre-publication chapters. We are not privy to the internal decisionmaking that led, either to the posting of almost-final chapters, or to the decision to take them down, but we are not aware of any wrongdoing in this regard. We will post a notice as soon as we find that the full draft is available again. In the meantime, the Summary for Policymakers is still available on the Working Group II Web site.