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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 |
Capitol Hill briefing draws needed attention to challenges of climate change impacts and adaptation
Posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A January 8 Capitol Hill briefing by four leading analysts on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation reflected a growing awareness that scientific research and assessment per se don’t necessarily lead to effective action to enhance resilience to the impacts of global climatic disruption. The briefing began with the scientific foundation for understanding climate change impacts and moved to an insightful discussion of the challenges of putting adaptive preparedness into practice.
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White House Science Office reactivating U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010
Katharine Jacobs, who chairs the forthcoming National Academy of Sciences report on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, is moving to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to play a lead role on climate change assessment and adaptation. OSTP is taking the first steps to reactivate the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts, nine years after the first National Assessment was issued, then later essentially suppressed by the Bush Administration.
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Copenhagen post-mortem: Interview on Al Jazeera
Posted on Saturday, January 09, 2010
Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz talked with Al Jazeera English TV about the conclusion of the Copenhagen climate conference and where it leaves us.
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After Copenhagen, questions about U.S. commitment to climate change aid to developing countries
Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010
After building up expectations with the Copenhagen Accord of substantial new aid to developing countries, is the Obama administration already lowering them now that the action has shifted to the U.S. domestic scene? Under the Copenhagen Accord, “developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly” $100 billion a year by 2020 in “new and additional, predictable and adequate funding” to aid developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change. But on January 7, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “sidestepped the commitment when asked directly if the US portion would be additional,” ClimateWire reported.
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Ross Gelbspan: “In Conclusion…”
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010
“The truth is that, even assuming the wildest possible success of these initiatives—that humanity decided tomorrow to replace its coal and oil burning energy sources with non-carbon sources—it would still be too late to avert major climate disruptions,” says journalist-author Ross Gelbspan. “Despite this reality, the activists are still focusing on the causes—and not on the consequences—of the crisis. All these initiatives address only one part of the coming reality.” We share Gelbspan’s view, outlined in a recently posted video, that an essential part of the solution is “a coordinated global public-works program to rewire the world with clean energy.” We would add—in light of the potential future Gelbspan describes and scientific assessments project—that a coordinated strategy of adaptive preparedness that seeks to limit, if possible, the damage from global climatic disruption must be a major component of a comprehensive climate policy. See Details for the video and links to sources.
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New Years Eve
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009
Climate Science Watch wishes our tens of thousands of “unique visitors” from all over the world a Happy New Year and best wishes for a better 2010.
A New Year’s resolution for Obama: Figure out how to talk to the public about climate change
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009
In the U.S., public understanding of and support for climate science and its findings about the likely consequences of global climatic disruption is seriously underdeveloped, and even appears to have slipped during 2009. This may be due in part to the decision by President Obama and some of his strongest supporters to focus their message narrowly on the mantras of clean energy and green jobs, and their tactics narrowly on cap and trade legislation….
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Stephen Schneider: Climate Denier Gate a case of Science as a Contact Sport
Posted on Wednesday, December 30, 2009
In Climate Denier Gate (Stephen Schneider’s term for what the deniers call “Climategate”), “the private frustrations of a few climate scientists was turned into an ostensible plot by the entire climate science community in dozens of countries, hundreds of institutions, and hammered out over 40 years of peer reviewed assessment studies—as some kind of fraud.” Schneider says, “The big untold story here is how broken the 2009 media is for investigating the wrong folks and giving credibility to a non-event that changes nothing in climate science.” One more episode in the decades-long tension between climate science and public debate, the subject of Schneider’s memoir, Science as a Contact Sport.
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Shameful treatment of whistleblower who exposed Pentagon failure to protect troops in Iraq
Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009
Marine Corps whistleblower Franz Gayl says military officials are trying to force him from his job for exposing the Pentagon’s unconscionable delays in delivering lifesaving equipment to troops in Iraq. This shameful treatment suggests that the White House has yet to fulfill Obama’s campaign pledge to see to it that whistleblowers are treated as patriots instead of pariahs.
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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.
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Text of the Copenhagen Accord
Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009
The United Nations climate conference of 193 nations in Copenhagen ended early this morning with particpants agreeing to “take note” of the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement brokered by the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. With the Copenhagen Accord, an initial group of more than 25 nations has agreed to adopt and report on national mitigation actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Developed nations have agreed to mobilize resources to support mitigation, adaptation, technology development and transfer, and capacity-building in developing countries. The document is a 3-page, 12-paragraph political statement and conceptual framework, with Appendices to include listings of mitigation targets and actions of Annex I and Non-Annex I parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. All national actions under the agreement are voluntary. No date is specified for when, or whether, a more detailed and binding protocol will be negotiated. See Details for full text.
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Two whistleblowers who exposed misconduct further endangering Katrina victims are honored today
Posted on Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Two courageous individuals will each receive meritorious awards today for blowing the whistle on two separate instances of misconduct that put Hurricane Katrina victims in unnecessary jeopardy, reports Government Accountability Project colleague Jess Radack on the Daily Kos today. Maria Garzino, a mechanical/civil engineer and team leader with the US Army Corps of Engineers, will receive the Public Servant of the Year award from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for exposing the intentional installation of faulty pumps in flood-prone areas of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Ivor van Heerden will receive an award for civic courage for speaking out against systematic incompetence and negligence in planning and preparing for Gulf coast hurricanes, despite resistance from his former employer, Louisiana State University. Click on details for the crosspost.
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Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail: Associated Press, FactCheck.org, and other sources
Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A team of reporters at the Associated Press did an “exhaustive review” of the climate scientists’ e-mail stolen from the University of East Anglia in the UK and concluded that “the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked.” FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center said: “Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded….E-mails being cited as ‘smoking guns’ have been misrepresented.” Two videos by Climate Crock examine e-mails and take down some denier propaganda.
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Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail: Nature, AAAS, AMS, Union of Concerned Scientists
Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A strong editorial in the journal Nature, statements from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society, and an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists set the record straight in countering the effort by the global warming denial machine to spin up a scandal over the climate scientists’ e-mail stolen from the University of East Anglia.
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Andy Revkin’s Last Day at The New York Times: December 21
Posted on Monday, December 14, 2009
“Science writer Andrew C. Revkin, the individual journalist most identified with reporting on climate change, is leaving The New York Times,” the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media reports. “His last day will be December 21.”
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