How the Trump Administration and Congress Should Use Science to Govern
The election of Donald Trump raises many questions about the future role of science and evidence in policy making. Many of us are deeply troubled that some transition team members, senior...
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Standing Up to Pernicious New Attacks on Federal Climate Scientists
UPDATE (February 10, 2017): A draft version of a manuscript on NOAA’s ERSSTv5 climate dataset has been leaked while it is undergoing peer-review. As submitted, the paper’s findings are consistent with...
View ArticleThe House Science Committee’s Shameful Climate Sideshow
There are a lot of ways one can imagine, in principle, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology holding a constructive, timely hearing on the state of climate science and its implications...
View ArticleOn Bioenergy, Budgets, and Why Legislating Scientific Facts Is Never a Good Idea
We need members of Congress to resist the Trump administration’s call for deep cuts to federal science and science-based environmental and public health protections in its proposed FY18 budget. We also...
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President Trump, Paris, and ExxonMobil
It is remarkable what you can achieve when you set the bar really low. By announcing his plan to withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord, shamefully reneging on our...
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Got Climate Science Questions, Administrator Pruitt? Ask the US National...
Scott Pruitt, the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, appears to need some help in understanding the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. Back in March, for example,...
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The IPCC Gets Real about the 1.5°C Target
The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C released today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), provides a stark profile of the disruptive climate futures we face with rising...
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Yale Poll Finds Majority of Americans Think ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Other...
Communities face growing costs from climate change-fueled extreme weather and rising seas, and they need to prepare for further, now unavoidable, impacts. Who is going to pay these costs? A striking...
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Is BP Finally Committing to Ambitious Climate Action–or About to Fool Us...
BP plans to unveil further details of the company’s climate strategy at a virtual investor meeting next Monday September 14th. Steven Pisano/WikimediaUpdated Sept. 18 My colleague Nicole Pinko sat...
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BP and Shell Must Leave the American Petroleum Institute: Here’s Why
wisepig/flickrFor decades, the American Petroleum Institute (API) has been a powerful force against US action on climate change. Representing the interests of its oil and gas company members, API has...
View Article2° C or Not 2° C: Insights from the Latest IPCC Climate Report
In his “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet eloquently presents each of us with an opportunity to wrestle with the timeless question of how to respond to the slings and arrows of life’s...
View ArticleWho Is Responsible for Climate Change? New Study Identifies the Top 90...
Today’s publication in the journal Climatic Change by Richard Heede on Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010 provides a robust...
View ArticleReconciling the Local Wildlife Risks of Wind Energy with its Global Climate...
If you care deeply about the natural world, how should you view the growing number of wind turbines across the American landscape? Two colleagues and I have published a new paper in the journal...
View ArticleThe IPCC’s New Climate Science Guide for the Perplexed Policymaker
It is remarkable how many U.S. elected officials appear to be baffled about climate change these days. Despite the long scientific consensus that emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil...
View ArticleGlobal Warming Fact: More than Half of All Industrial CO2 Pollution Has Been...
By the end of this year, more than half of all industrial emissions of carbon dioxide since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution will have been released since 1988 — the year it became widely known...
View ArticleReflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth: The NAS Weighs Controversial Measures in...
The president’s science advisor John P. Holdren has often observed that humanity has three basic options for dealing with climate change: Mitigation (reducing heat-trapping emissions), adaptation...
View ArticleFossil Fuel Firms Are Still Bankrolling Climate Denial Lobby Groups
BP has withdrawn support to ALEC, a group known for misrepresenting climate science, but appearances can be deceptive. Oil, gas and coal companies remain firmly behind climate disinformation campaigns....
View ArticleExxon’s Early Knowledge of Climate Risks, Their Long Campaign of Climate...
Internal Exxon memos recently brought to light through meticulous investigative reporting by Inside Climate News (ICN) show that senior company executives knew by 1978 that emissions of carbon dioxide...
View ArticleEnergy, Climate Experts Call on Presidential Candidates to Lay Out Their...
I’m writing from the Paris climate negotiations to share with you some exciting news: Today, 74 of our nation’s leading clean energy and climate experts have released a letter urging U.S. presidential...
View ArticleHolding the Fossil Fuel Industry Accountable: What We’ve Done and Must Do in...
As we celebrate the landmark Paris Agreement and the momentum it creates for accelerating the pace of clean energy adoption and climate preparedness in the U.S. and internationally, the Union of...
View ArticleScientists, Legal Scholars Brief State Prosecutors on Fossil Fuel Companies’...
The meeting provided senior staff from state attorneys general offices in nearly a dozen states with an opportunity to hear from leading climate scientists, legal scholars, historians, and other...
View ArticleFarewell to Edward L. Miles (1939-2016): Friend, Colleague, Force for...
I was saddened this week to learn of the passing of the remarkable Ed Miles, who died on May 7 at his home in Seattle, Washington. I first came to know Ed in the late 1990s, when we were both...
View ArticleThe Heat is on Fossil Fuel Companies for Decades of Climate Deception
As I pointed out in a recent blog, my colleagues and I at the Union of Concerned Scientists have been researching and calling attention to climate disinformation by leading fossil fuel companies for...
View ArticleWhy the American Geophysical Union Should Reject Corporate Sponsorship from...
The continued acceptance of corporate sponsorship from ExxonMobil, a company with a long and well-documented track record of climate science misinformation, appears deeply inconsistent with AGU's own...
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