Union of Concerned Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit advocacy group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Kurt Gottfried, a former senior staffer at CERN, currently chairs the UCS Board of Directors. The Union of Concerned Scientists is member of the Sustainable Energy Coalition.

Issue stances
The group supports an increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, as well as a reduction in smog pollution from construction equipment and diesel trucks. The UCS also supports the enactment of state laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, based on California's regulations. The UCS supports deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, as well as national and international action to combat climate change. The organization has also produced several reports on regional effects of climate change in the United States.

The UCS supports a national renewable electricity standard which would require utilities to produce a certain percentage of their energy from sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. The UCS also acknowledges that nuclear power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but maintains that nuclear power must become much safer and cheaper before it can be considered a workable solution to global warming. They support increased safety enforcement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission among other steps to improve nuclear power.

The Union of Concerned Scientists tracks instances of political interference in science and supports whistleblower protection and free speech rights for federal scientists. Its scientific integrity program has produced surveys of federal scientists at multiple agencies and a statement signed by more than 11,000 scientists condemning political interference in science.

The UCS supports the reduction of antibiotic use on livestock to prevent medical antibiotic resistance in humans who consume treated animals. It also opposes cloning animals for food, as well as forms of genetic engineering.

The group opposes the use of space weapons and supports the idea of an international treaty to regulate military uses of space. The group also works on reducing the number of nuclear weapons around the world and opposes the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The group criticizes the technical feasibility of building a missile defense shield.

History
The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by faculty and students. One of the co-founders was physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. Henry Kendall, who served for many years as chairman of the board of UCS. In 1977, the UCS sponsored a "Scientists' Declaration on the Nuclear Arms Race" calling for an end to nuclear weapons tests and deployments in the United States and Soviet Union. In response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the UCS sponsored a petition entitled "An Appeal to Ban Space Weapons".

In 1992, Kendall presided over the UCS' Warning to Humanity, which called for "fundamental change" to address a range of security and environmental issues. The document was signed by 1700 scientists, including a majority of the Nobel prize winners in the sciences.

According to the George C. Marshall Institute, the UCS was the fourth-largest recipient of foundation grants for climate studies in the period 2000-2002, a fourth of its $24M grant income being for that purpose.

Press
In 1997, the UCS circulated a petition entitled "A Call to Action". The petition called for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and was signed by 110 Nobel Prize laureates, including 104 Nobel Prize-winning scientists.

In February 2004, the Union received press attention for its publication "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking". The report criticized the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for "politicizing" science. Some of the allegations include altering information in global warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency, and choosing members of scientific advisory panels based on their business interests rather than scientific experience. In July 2004, the Union released an addendum to the report in which they criticize the Bush administration and allege that reports on West Virginia strip mining had been improperly altered, and that "well-qualified" nominees for government posts, such as Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel were rejected because of political differences. On April 2, 2004, Dr. John Marburger, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement claiming that incident descriptions in the UCS report are "false," "wrong," or "a distortion." Marburger expressed disappointment and dismissed the report as "biased." . UCS rebutted the White House document by saying that Marburger's claims were unjustified. UCS later wrote that since that time, the Bush administration has been virtually silent on the issue.

On October 15, 2005, in response to what it termed a "changing political climate," the UCS announced the creation of a new "Scientific Integrity Program" to analyze and advocate scientific integrity and against politically-motivated interference.

On October 30, 2006, the Union issued a press release claiming that high-ranking members of the U.S. Department of the Interior, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald, systematically tampered with scientific data in an effort to undermine the protection of endangered species and the Endangered Species Act.

On December 11, 2006, the UCS issued a statement signed by 10,600 leading scientists including Nobel laureates. The statement calls for the restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy-making. The announcement came as the group that documents suspected censorship and political interference in federal science.

On May 23, 2007, the UCS cited a joint-study with MIT and issued a press release claiming that "any test of the U.S. missile defense system that does not show whether an interceptor missile can distinguish between real warheads and decoys is irrelevant" and "contrived," and called for an end to the taxpayer-funded program until the system can show an ability to actually address "real world threats."

On June 21, 2007, the UCS released a report documenting the political manipulation of scientific data to influence updated US ozone regulations: "The law says use the science, the science says lower the standard to safe levels," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program. "In disregarding its own scientists' analysis, the EPA is risking the health of millions of Americans."

Criticism
Capitalism and free market-advocacy groups have criticized the UCS for its stance on environmental and other regulatory issues. The UCS has been called an "unlabeled left-wing activist group", and of having "policy positions that are predictably those of a far-left pressure group". .

Fred Singer, a University of Virginia professor, founder of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, has said that the group has "zero credibility as a scientific organization." Singer has been labeled a "climate contrarian" by the UCS.

The head of the Media Research Center Brent Bozell claimed that the UCS is "a left-wing activist organization with a left-wing activist political agenda...trying to position itself as being some kind of objective, centrist, moderate, apolitical entity when it is nothing of the sort."

Publications

 * The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists
 * Scientific Integrity in Policymaking
 * Atmosphere of Pressure: Political Interference in Federal Climate Science