Al Jazeera English TV interviewed Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz on November 23 on what we should expect from President Obama in connection with the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference. We want him to go, we said. He should make a strong policy statement and say that he’ll fight for [...]
“Ice everywhere is talking to us,” says Henry Pollack, “in a language that we must understand and heed. Ice is a sleeping giant that has been awakened, and if we fail to recognize what has been unleashed, it will be at our peril.” The eminent climate scientist’s new book, A [...]
For those who are following the controversy being spun up over hacked e-mails and files from the Climatic Research Unit directed by climate scientist Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia, here are a few news and commentary sources we have found worth reading. Climate Science Watch earlier posted [...]
EPA’s attempt to limit freedom of speech by two agency lawyers, Laurie Willaims and Allan Zabel, who have spoken out in opposition to proposed cap and trade climate legislation, violates the law, says Louis Clark, President of the Government Accountability Project. EPA must be required to abandon the legacy of [...]
The White House announced today that President Obama will travel to Copenhagen on December 9 to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The White House press release says: “Based on the President’s work on climate change over the past 10 months—in the Major Economies Forum, the G20, bilateral [...]
Bill McKibben in the November 22 Washington Post: “Imagine an American president who would take the press corps to Glacier National Park so they could hike the dwindling ice fields, then fly them above the millions of acres of dead lodgepole pines covering much of the West, and then take [...]
Another powerful argument for a coordinated high-profile federal mission to raise preparedness for climate change impacts came last night with a federal district court decision holding the US Army Corps of Engineers liable for “monumental negligence” in its duties to maintain a key ship channel, leading to devastating flooding in [...]
Another powerful argument for a coordinated high-profile federal mission to raise preparedness for climate change impacts came last night with a federal district court decision holding the US Army Corps of Engineers liable for “monumental negligence” in its duties to maintain a key ship channel, leading to devastating flooding in [...]
A report released today by the UN Population Fund identifies gender inequities in vulnerability to global climate disruption. The report looks at the nexus of population dynamics, the welfare of women worldwide, and climate change impacts and adaptation and concludes that successful and lasting adaptation strategies must address these factors.
[...]“Pay now, or pay more later” is the increasingly substantiated wisdom of addressing—and failing to address—the threat of global climate disruption. The bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) pulled together the findings of seven climate change impacts studies conducted around the country, and recently issued what amounts to yet [...]
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 [...]
On the occasion of Lou Dobbs abruptly quitting his anchor-commentator program on CNN, we recall two occasions on which he ran a climate change story. In one, he didn’t appear able to distinguish the relative merit of the views of a distinguished climate scientist and IPCC author [...]
The US Global Change Research Program is in serious need of an overhaul if it is to meet today’s data and information needs associated with preparing for, mitigating, and building resilience to a troubling set of climate change consequences. Just under $2 billion in federal funding goes to support climate [...]
The US Environmental Protection Agency has sent its scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare to the White House for final review, the next step in moving toward regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Global warming denialist attempts to derail [...]
The US Environmental Protection Agency has ordered two of its attorneys to remove a video they posted on YouTube about problems with climate change legislation backed by the Obama administration or face “disciplinary action,” according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). “EPA is abusing ethics [...]
Climate Science Watch attended a November 4 conference on Climate Change, State Resilience and Global Security, held at the Center for Naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia. At the conference a group of distinguished national security professionals provided perspective and engaged audience members in a type of “war game” scenario that [...]
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 [...]
The US needs “a national strategic plan that will guide the nation’s efforts to adapt to a changing climate,” says the Government Accountability Office, finding “a general lack of strategic coordination across agencies” in their efforts to adapt to climate change impacts, characterized as “preliminary.” We’ve been saying this all [...]
Scientific American contrasts CEQ chair Nancy Sutley’s stated position on science and policy at the White House with what we observed, reported, and documented under her Bush-Cheney CEQ predecesors, and what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee discovered in its lengthy investigation initiated after we leveled our charge. “My [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“There are going to be those who make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks,” said President [...]
In their excellent new book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore take on the deceptive public relations tactics behind the global warming denial machine. Featuring an oily cast of characters that may be familiar to our regular readers, their work reveals the techniques [...]
Likening “environmental wackos” to jihadi terrorists, Rush Limbaugh bent some recent comments on population and climate change by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin out of shape and threw down this challenge: “This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet…Mr Revkin, [...]
Acid Test is an excellent film about the global threat of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to marine life and the health of the entire planet. The 21-minute film, produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council and narrated by Sigourney Weaver, with some beautiful cinematography, is now [...]
The New York Times and Greenwire reported on October 14 that climate scientists refuted claims, made in a petition to EPA by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that essential data on the global warming temperature record had been destroyed, thus undermining the legitimacy of EPA’s prospective “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. [...]
“Pat Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute continue to obfuscate well-established scientific conclusions by counting on most non-specialists to be unaware of the vast preponderance of multiple lines of evidence for anthropogenic climate warming,” Stanford University Prof. Stephen Schneider says, commenting on CEI’s petition to EPA that seeks to delegitimize [...]
Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK and Ben Santer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory comment in response to a petition to EPA by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pat Michaels, which misleadingly seeks to obstruct EPA’s process in [...]
California, the quintessential trailblazer and laboratory for national environmental policy, was the first state to enact a comprehensive climate change bill. California’s grand emissions reduction agenda, however, will require funding, and right now California faces billions of dollars in budget shortfall in a crunch that’s not expected to turn around [...]
“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, [...]
With a challenge to the IPCC global temperature data record, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is on a political mission to head off EPA’s decision on an “endangerment” finding that could lead to regulation of greenhouse gases. “Their bottom line is an antiregulatory ideology,” we said to Environment & Energy Daily [...]
If President Obama is looking for ways to formulate a national climate change strategy that extends beyond cap-and-trade, he has no further to look than his home town of Chicago, Illinois. Under the leadership of Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Chicago Climate Task Force created in 2006 produced an ambitious [...]
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 [...]
A total of 1000 US mayors have now signed their names to the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, a milestone being celebrated in Seattle this weekend, where 60 mayors are attending the group’s Leadership Meeting. The three-pronged Agreement centers on cutting heat-trapping pollution emissions in their own cities [...]
Climate Security Index, a new report by the American Security Project, links global climate change impacts and energy insecurity to US national security, concluding that these interrelated problems constitute a “clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” The report says global climate change is projected [...]
The Christian Science Monitor reported last week: “Atlanta flood: After drought, residents caught by surprise.” This is precisely the sort of headline that climate scientists have been warning us about when they talk about altered precipitation patterns as a result of global climate disruption. The 20 inches of rain that [...]
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 [...]
“The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax,” writes Nobel Economics Laureate Paul Krugman in his September 25 New York Times column. “Even corporations are losing patience with the [...]
CO2 is Green, a coal-money-funded global warming denialist media propaganda campaign with a message that almost might make you think you were reading a satire on denialism in The Onion, says that “plant and animal kingdoms, including humanity, [will be] harmed if atmospheric CO2 is reduced.” [...]
The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), says the UN Environment Programme, announcing the publication of the report, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009. The Washington Post, covering the report, [...]
In his September 22 speech at the UN Climate Summit in New York, President Obama said more than we’re used to hearing him say about the threat posed by global climate disruption. How much of this aspect of the speech, the President’s clearest statement on the urgency of the problem, [...]
“I do think it’s important to have these heads of government address the world and acknowledge the seriousness of the climate change problem,” Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz told Al Jazeera English TV in a September 22 interview. President Obama hasn’t really spoken too much about climate change impacts, [...]
President Obama hit some right notes this morning at the UN Climate Summit in New York, conveying a sense of urgency and national responsibility for reducing US carbon emissions. He said the impacts of global climate disruption can threaten human security, safety, health, and prosperity, and acknowledged a responsibility to [...]
The UN Summit on Climate Change on September 22 confronts President Obama with the challenge and the great opportunity to give his first substantive speech on climate change, before both a domestic and an international audience. President Obama should speak not only of the urgent need for greenhouse gas mitigation, [...]
Not only that, but doing nothing, thus further incurring myriad risks associated with climate change, could cost nations up to one-fifth (19%) of their GDP by 2030, with developing countries most vulnerable, according to a new report from the Economics of Climate Adaptation Working Group, created by the World Bank’s [...]
A group of 181 prominent insurers and investors who control $13 trillion in assets—more than four times what the US government spent last year—has called on governments to make drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions: 25-40 percent by 2020, from 1990 levels. A statement released at this week’s International Investor [...]
A newly created Climate Change Response Council at the Interior Department is a good reminder that the Executive Branch has much power to effect positive change under existing statutory authorities, even without a major climate bill or other new climate legislation. The Council, announced by Interior Secretary Salazar, will attempt [...]
A new hotline that citizens can use to blow the whistle on deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal tactics being used by corporations and lobbyists to oppose climate and clean energy legislation has been set up by groups including the AAUW, National Wildlife Federation, NAACP, Center for American Progress Action Fund, and [...]
If it is true that US distributors are wary of the new British film “Creation,” about Charles Darwin, due to controversy and pressure generated by the anti-science irrationality of religious ideologues, what might it suggest about the prospects for the US being able to deal with climate change on the [...]
More than 2,000 climate experts and decisionmakers from 155 countries have established a Global Framework for Climate Services—“to strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services.” The Declaration creating the Framework adopted at last week’s World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3) in Geneva calls on the Secretary General [...]
Peter Gleick, long an internationally recognized expert in water policy and climate change and one of many accomplished PhD graduates under Dr. John Holdren at UC-Berkeley, warns of a “New McCarthyism” in the United States that is poisoning the well of intelligent discourse so critical to a functioning democratic society. [...]
“Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age, Study Suggests,” an article in the September 4 New York Times by Andrew Revkin, talks about a new study that concludes that human-driven global warming could reverse a slow, long-term Arctic cooling trend and potentially prevent the reappearance of a new ice age over [...]
“Himalayans needs climate change science to get its fingers dirty,” says a former student of John Holdren and research director of a prominent water conservation center in Nepal. In an interview with the UK Guardian Environment Network as part of an ongoing series of dialogues, Dipak Gyawali says the ecologic, [...]
President Obama should communicate the scientific conclusions that show why it is necessary to undertake the massive task of decarbonizing the energy system, and the potential consequences of inaction, says the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang blog today. Failure to do so would be “a mistake that may cost the [...]
The financial costs of supporting the global population in a climate-disrupted world were significantly underestimated in a series of 2007 background papers for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other key reports, according to an independent critique headed by Martin Parry, the eminent scientist who headed [...]
“On this anniversary, we are focused on the threat from hurricanes. But we must also be prepared for a broad range of dangers,” President Obama said in his August 29 weekly address, on Lessons and Renewal Out of the Gulf Coast. Amen to that, and while he is using the [...]
Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn in a new report that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts. The real costs of adaptation are likely to [...]
Yields of three of the most important crops produced in the United States – corn, soybeans, and cotton – are predicted to “fall off a cliff” if temperatures rise due to climate change, according to a paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Global [...]
The mainstream media, including the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, have not covered an independent evaluation recently released by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that there are serious safety and reliability issues with hydraulic pumps that were installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The [...]
The Nature Conservancy has announced a new interactive program, ClimateWizard, that allows anyone to click on any state in the US or any region of the world to see how temperature and precipitation have changed in 50 years and how they are likely to change by the end of this [...]
Senators Baucus (D-MT) and Whitehouse (D-RI) submitted proposed climate legislation earlier this month that mirrors the Natural Resources Adaptation section in the House-passed Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill (H.R. 2454). The broad coalition of environmental NGOs behind these provisions is well-organized, politically effective, and has put forth a solid [...]
Earth’s average ocean surface temperature in July was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880, breaking the previous high mark established in 1998, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. An El Niño natural climate variability pattern is currently superimposed on the human-driven global warming trend. The [...]
Contamination by mercury, a neurotoxin, was detected in EVERY FISH sampled in 291 streams across the country in a study released today by the U.S. Geological Survey. A quarter of the fish were found to contain mercury above EPA’s safe level for human consumption. The main source to watersheds is [...]
The American Petroleum Institute, with an “eyes only” tactical memo, urged member companies to recruit their employees, retirees, vendors, and contractors to attend ‘Energy Citizen’ events across the country during the August congressional recess to show opposition to climate legislation. Other corporate and anti-tax interest groups joined in. Greenpeace released [...]
In his June 13, 2005, column (“Blair vs. Bush”) on the battle over climate and energy policy, columnist Robert Novak, who died this morning, wove a tale of how UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, 11 national academies of science, bipartisan cooperation in Congress, and whistleblower Rick Piltz were all, in [...]
An August 10 editorial in the New York Times (“A Real Bill for the Climate”) calls on President Obama, as we have done, to start communicating the urgency of the climate change problem and its threat to the planet, and get beyond the easy “green jobs” message that his administration [...]
In July 30 Senate testimony, President Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren addressed the need for new directions for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, national climate change assessment, and the development of a National Climate Service—all along lines we have been advocating.
[...]In July 30 Senate testimony on the relationship between climate research, assessment, and policymaking, President Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren presented the kind of articulate, rational, mainstream perspective that we have been accustumed to hearing from him for many years. The reality of his views and actions gives [...]
The Associated Press reported on August 7 that Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), who supports an overhaul of the health care system, apparently had his life threatened by a caller who is associated with the right-wing thugs who have been suppressing discussion of health [...]
California state agencies have developed and issued for public review a draft 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy. This is the first example of a strategic, operational plan for collaborative action by state agencies to adapt to impacts of global climate disruption and sea-level rise. The congressional climate and energy bill [...]
Kathryn (Kate) Moran, Professor of Oceanography and Associate Dean, Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, is joining the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as a Senior Policy Analyst with expertise in oceans, the Arctic and global warming. She testified in [...]
New Mexico is under such severe drought this July that state politicians are appealing to the federal government for drought relief for seven counties. Meanwhile, the rain that does fall occurs in strenuous downpours that damage agricultural crops. Record-breaking drought has hit southern Texas. And California is in such dire [...]
Some items gleaned from recent news accounts suggest the question: are ocean warming and rising sea level acting as a threat multiplier for common beach hazards?
[...]Some items gleaned from recent news accounts suggest the question: are ocean warming and rising sea level acting as a threat multiplier for common beach hazards?
[...]The global warming disinformation campaign – politicians, media, ideologue politicos - has falsely and disingenuously accused EPA of suppressing climate science and censoring a climate science whistleblower. Part 3: Statement by Government Accountability Project Legal Director on the Carlin incident.
[...]The global warming disinformation campaign – politicians, media, ideologue politicos—has falsely and disingenuously accused EPA of suppressing climate science and censoring a climate science whistleblower. Part 2 in a series: What to make of the leaked McGartland-Carlin e-mails?
[...]The global warming disinformation campaign – politicians, media, ideologue politicos - has falsely and disingenuously accused the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of suppressing climate science and censoring a climate science whistleblower. Part 1 in a series: What to make of the Carlin document?
[...]Chris Mooney, journalist and author of the classic book The Republican War on Science, and co-author Sheril Kirshenbaum have a new book out on the steadily widening disconnect between the science community and mainstream American society. Mooney and Kirshenbaum ”explain how religious ideologues, a weak educational system, science-phobic politicians, and [...]
In his remarks on climate change and clean energy at the G8 summit on July 9, President Obama said, right up front: “The science is clear and conclusive, and the impacts can no longer be ignored. Ice sheets are melting. Sea levels are rising. Our oceans are becoming more acidic, [...]
How great will the Great Plains still be in the face of global climate disruption? What can we expect to see in the this vast swath of land, bordered on the west by the Rocky Mountains and on the east by Mississippi River, ranging from Wyoming and North Dakota abutting [...]
We talked with Climate Wire about how the “Adapting to Climate Change” subtitle of the House-passed Waxman-Markey climate change cap and trade bill is an improvement over how the bill started out in its earlier discussion draft form—in putting the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, headed by [...]
Al Franken, who has been declared the winner in the Minnesota U.S. Senate election, interviewed Rick Piltz on Air America Radio and the Sundance Channel on July 7, 2005. Piltz, now director of Climate Science Watch, talks about Bush White House political interference with federal climate science communication. [...]
Most of the 212 representatives who voted no on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that passed with a 7-vote margin in the House “rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases,” says Paul Krugman in his New York Times column on June 29. “And as [...]
This fourth post in our series delving into Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, a landmark report issued June 16, highlights the climate change consequences we can expect to see in the Midwest. While this region will likely escape the prolonged droughts that are projected to plague the [...]
John A. Eddy, a solar astronomer famed for his studies of irregular variations in solar activity and their connections with Earth’s climate, died on June 10, 2009. What was not captured in the obituaries we have seen was Dr. Eddy’s significance as one of the early leading lights in developing [...]
In addition to creating a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and setting in motion a sustainable energy transformation, the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” which the U.S. House of Representatives approved today by a vote of 219-212, would earmark funding mechanisms for a wide [...]
“We must have a moratorium on new coal plants and phase out existing ones within the next 20 years.” said NASA climate scientist James Hansen at a June 23 rally in West Virginia protesting mountaintop removal for coal mining. “Coal from mountaintop removal provides only 7% of United States coal, [...]
This third post in our series delving into Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, a landmark report issued June 16, highlights the climate consequences we can expect to see in the southeastern region of the US. This region is rich with culture, biodiversity, coastal and mountainous habitats, and [...]
Climate change impacts are already discernible in the US Northeast region, and are expected to worsen over time. The Northeast is projected to face continued warming and more extensive climate-related changes, some of which could dramatically alter the region’s economy, landscape, character, and quality of life. “Climate change is happening [...]
Climate change impacts are already discernible in the US Northeast region, and are expected to worsen over time. The Northeast is projected to face continued warming and more extensive climate-related changes, some of which could dramatically alter the region’s economy, landscape, character, and quality of life. “Climate change is happening [...]
Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, a scientifically based assessment report issued on June 16 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with its focus on the likely impacts of climate change across [...]
Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, a scientifically based assessment report issued on June 16 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with its focus on the likely impacts of climate change across [...]
Breaking news…. Along with actress Daryl Hannah, 94-year old former US Congressman Ken Hechler, coal mining activist Judy Bonds, and dozens of others protesting mountaintop removal for coal mining, Dr. James Hansen was arrested this afternoon for trespassing onto the private property of Massey Energy Company in Coal River Valley, [...]
22 national environmental organizations, representing millions of members, sent a letter June 22 to members of the House of Representatives urging a vote in support of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the Waxman-Markey greenhouse gas emissions cap and trade bill currently set for House floor debate [...]
In an open letter to President Obama and Congress, 20 leading U.S. scientists and scholars “call attention to the large difference between what U.S. politics now seems capable of enacting and what scientists understand is necessary to prevent climatic disruption and protect the human future. We urge President Obama to [...]
Last week the President and CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, when he learned Dr. James Hansen would be joining protesters tomorrow in a demonstration against mountaintop removal for coal mining, publicly challenged Hansen to a debate on coal burning and climate change. Along with hundreds of others, Hansen is [...]
This week the US of House of Representatives took one step in the right direction by passing a fiscal year 2010 spending bill for the Department of Commerce (which includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), as well as other key science and technology agencies such as the National Science [...]
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is on a mission to de-fund climate change programs and defeat cap-and-trade legislation. This week he offered a House floor amendment to kill funding for a National Climate Service. Broun’s website includes this: “Broun Bashes Wacky-Marxist Cap and Tax Bill.” He’s among a small contingent in [...]
