Obama Administration

After a 19-Month Vacancy, White House Taps an Academic Meteorologist to Head the OSTP

Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, vice president of research and professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. This week the White House formally announced the appointment of Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, PhD, a meteorologist and atmospheric research scientist at the University of Oklahoma, to direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). [...]

U.S. Fails to Submit Reports on 1 January as Required Under U.N. Climate Treaty

The U.S. has failed to submit by 1 January a major report required under U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Most countries have submitted their reports, while there is no publicly available information on the status of the 7th U.S. Climate Action Report and 3rd Biennial Report. Under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, drafts were made available for public review and comment. And the last reports were submitted under President Obama before the January 1, 2014 deadline.

Charter Set to Expire for Interagency Subcommittee Overseeing Federal Climate Research

By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow The charter of the subcommittee that oversees the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is set to expire tomorrow, October 21, 2017. This speaks volumes about the Trump Administration’s attitudes toward science generally – and toward climate change science specifically. More ominously, it raises very serious questions about the [...]

EPA Administrator Misleadingly Criticized Draft Climate Science Special Report; EPA then Cleared Report for Final Release

Scott Pruitt, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Source: EPA By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow “Frankly this report ought to be subjected to peer-reviewed, objective-reviewed methodology and evaluation,” said Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, when asked about the leaked draft of a Federal Climate Science Special Report (CSSR). [...]

ExxonMobil and Climate Change: A Story of Denial, Delay, and Delusion, Told in Forms 10-K — Part Three (E): 2013

By Anne Polansky Source: https://go.nasa.gov/2vXO0Vm Covering the year 2013, this is our latest installment in a timeline series addressing how the Exxon Mobil Corporation has characterized risks to its business operations associated with climate change (in its annual 10-K reports to shareholders), in light of what corporate leadership knew, or reasonably could have [...]

Federal Climate Science Special Report Leaked: Clearance Process Raises Concerns Over Upcoming Climate Assessment Report

Troubled and opaque Administration review process is a harbinger of problems for the Fourth National Climate Assessment By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow A final draft of a key federal report on the science behind climate change has been leaked to the New York Times and made public. The “Climate Science Special Report” (CSSR), produced [...]

Syria, Nicaragua, and now the United States of America:  Official Members of the Climate Change Ostrich Club

“Hello Mr. President, I hope you will take action on climate change,” CSPW founder and George W. Bush White House climate change whistleblower Rick Piltz said politely but firmly to President Bush in the White House Rose Garden on a sunny morning in June 2001. The President was just about to make a much-anticipated statement [...]

ExxonMobil and Climate Change: A Story of Denial, Delay, and Delusion, Told in Forms 10-K (2009-2016) – Part Three (C): 2011

Maura Healey & Eric Schneiderman SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2ouw2Ja This is the fifth installment of our series analyzing how Exxon Mobil Corporation has communicated to its shareholders the risks associated with climate change over the last two and a half decades, using the company’s annual 10-K reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The [...]

Why Are 21 Kids Suing the Federal Government, and Why Does It Matter?

Source: Our Children’s Trust Last year, on August 12, 2015, a group of courageous millennials filed suit against President Barack Obama and members of his cabinet for failing to adequately address the climate change problem commensurate with the threat, despite the fact that we have known for decades that human-caused global warming has [...]

ExxonMobil and Climate Change: A Story of Denial, Delay, and Delusion, Told in Forms 10-K (2009-2016) – Part Three (B): 2010

From left, ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron Chairman and CEO John Watson and ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva are sworn in before a June 15, 2010 Congressional hearing on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. SOURCE: Associated Press This latest installment of our series addressing how the ExxonMobil Corporation has been engaged in [...]