In one of several recent speaking engagements at Stanford University on “Essential Voices for Accountability”, as part of the Government Accountability Projects American Whistleblower Tour, I talked about political interference with climate change communication during the Bush administration, the global warming denial machine, whistleblowing, and other matters. On April 24 I spoke with a group [...]
The IPCC climate change assessment report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, to be released in Japan on March 31, highlights the grave risks we face as the climate changes. But some news coverage previewing the release has focused on the views of Richard Tol, an IPCC author who opted to withdraw from the author team drafting the [...]
In a replay of the argument he’s made for years, political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. attempts to dismiss the wide array of evidence linking climate change to extreme weather. Pielke’s selective use of data, an approach that has brought him repeated criticism from respected scientists, is featured on the new FiveThirtyEight website, which claims to [...]
A new opinion piece in the New York Times downplays the many lines of scientific evidence connecting climate change to the ongoing drought in California. The op-ed by NOAA’s Dr. Martin Hoerling addresses only the question of direct causation, and fails to address the fact that climate change is already making droughts worse, including the California [...]
Obama science adviser John Holdren would not normally draft a 6-page rebuttal to statements about climate change impacts by a non-climate-scientist academic and blogger. But in this case Holdren was challenged in prosecutorial tones at a recent Senate Environment Committee hearing by Sen. Pete Sessions (D-Alabama). Sessions, a right-wing denialist, used fodder provided by Roger [...]
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Richard McNider and John Christy push thinly sourced, out-of-context claims about the success of climate models to argue that we really don’t know whether human-caused warming is a problem. They fancy themselves modern-day Galileos, when actually their argument reflects the vestiges of a half-century-old view that is falling to [...]
A misleading coal industry-funded study that claimed the iPhone uses as much electricity as two refrigerators leads Jon Koomey to ask: why do the media keep falling into the trap of lending credence to people who continue to put out incorrect statements, even after their claims have been debunked in the technical literature? There are multiple reasons, [...]
Is a recently posted video on the polar vortex by Obama science adviser John Holdren a sign that the White House is finally ready to unleash this powerfully articulate climate science and policy communicator, after clearly holding him back during most of the past four years? “Holdren has not been allowed to do what Holdren [...]
Canadian scientists say the closure of some of the world’s finest environmental libraries by the Harper government is destroying irreplaceable collections of intellectual capital, The Tyee reports. This action by the Harper government fits a larger pattern we have been calling attention to for several years. “Many scientists … compared the government’s concerted attacks on environmental science [...]
The Canadian House of Commons is imposing a new “loyalty agreement” that essentially bans employees working under Members of Parliament from ever revealing information they discover at work to the public. Would this gag order stop them from revealing evidence of wrongdoing by government officials? David Hutton, the executive director for the Canadian Federal Accountability Initiative for [...]