For those of you who don't know of him already, Rick Piltz is one of the many science whistleblowers to run screaming from the Bush administration. I've written about him here. Formerly of the Climate Change Science Program, Piltz famously drew attention to the editing of government climate reports by White House official Philip Cooney, who subsequently resigned and, as pretty much everyone now knows, went to work for ExxonMobil. Now Piltz has launched a website, entitled "Climate Science Watch," that's full of goodies like this. For one thing, he has exposed a troubling inquiry by Senator Inhofe into the funding relationship between the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It sounds like Joe Barton, redux. Inhofe says he's "examining the roles that the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) play in researching, analyzing, and understanding the science of global climate change." He then demands:
A basic organization chart for NCAR and UCAR with names and titles of office directors, A list of all NCAR and UCAR staff, their job title, location, and a brief description of their duties and responsibilities. A list of all NCAR and UCAR employees working at, or who are under contract with, non-NSF Federal agencies and departments or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's), their job title, salary, and length of time on this assignment. Please provide this information for a period of time covering the past 3 years. Any and all rules, policies, regulations, manuals, internal memoranda, and any other documents that govern NCAR and UCAR employees working at or who are under contract with non-NSF Federal agencies and departments or NGOs. A list of research projects funded for the last 3 years broken out by institutions and amount of funding by fiscal year.
Hmm, what do you think Senator James "global warming is a hoax" Inhofe plans to do with this information? Hint: It probably doesn't have anything to do with improving government funded climate research. Moreover, as Rick Piltz points out, it's not even clear that Inhofe's Senate committee has any jurisdiction over the National Science Foundation. For exposing this Inhofe memo, and for all the other stuff on his new site, I'm welcoming Rick Piltz to the web and will be adding Climate Science Watch to my blogroll.
