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HALL
OF SHAME
Keeping track of the journalists and
academics who promote their careers by denying climate change.
One would think that no one could continue
to seriously deny our addiction to fossil fuels is damaging
the world's climate systems. Who could be arrogant enough
to ignore the consensus of 2,000 climate scientists and all
the world's scientific institutions; blind enough to miss
the melting permafrost, the shrinking glaciers, the regular
freak weather?
Yet, as always, there is a small group of people
happy to distort the truth to promote themselves and build
their careers. Some are directly funded by the fossil fuel
industries. Some are self promoting egotists seeking attention.
Some just want to be controversial and fill a newspaper column.
Their arguments also differ. A declining number
claim that there is no climate change at all. Some accept
climate change but say that it will be beneficial. Most say
that there may be some small change, but that it has been
exagerated for political reasons. The claim that the causes
are still unknown and that it is probably a natural cycle.
All of the deniers- we refuse to grace them
with their chosen name, "skeptics"- are dangerous
for they create a false debate around the existence of climate
change and divert attention from the real debate: "What
are we going to do about climate change?".
On this page Rising Tide keeps a regularly undated
record of these deniers. We believe they must be made accountable
for the damage they cause.
This page is work in progress. We welcome more
information or clarifications. More information on the international
climate deniers can be found on the site www.heatisonline.org
UK CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS
ACADEMICS
PHILIP STOTT.
Stott, a gifted self-publicist, is grooming himself to be
Britains leading climate change denier. Trading on his academic
credentials as a professor of geography at the University
of London, Stott appears regularly on radio and television
programmes citing carefully selected contradictory data and
studies to undermine the IPCC consensus.
DAVID UNWIN.
Unwin is a Professor of Environmental Science at Birbeck College.
He has been quoted in the media claiming that the uncertainties
are too huge to draw firm conclusions and that the IPCC is
obsessed with reducing CO2. He regards adaptation as a better
strategy.
FRED HOYLE
Despite his credentials as past president of the Royal Astronomical
Society, Sir Fred Hoyle is not above promoting himself with
some pure conjecture. In April 2001 he co-authored a report
in Astrophysics and Space Science Journal that claimed that
human induced global warming is vital to counter another ice
age. His co-author, Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the
University of Cardiff, was quoted as saying: "Perhaps
we should be stepping up rather than decreasing our greenhouse
gas emissions".
PIERS CORBYN.
Corbyn is director of Weather Action, which claims to provide
long term weather forecasts to British industry. He also claims
to lectures at the South Bank University in London. Corbyn
has been actively promoting himself and his organisation with
claims that global warming is largely a product of "natural"
changes in solar radiation and magnetic fields. Like many
deniers, he claims that there is a vested interest by the
IPCC scientists to play up the problem to obtain research
grants.
JOURNALISTS
MELANIE PHILLIPS
A right wing controversialist, Phillips titled her 15th April
2001 "Comment" column in the Sunday Times "the
myth of global warming endangers the planet". She claimed
that "there is no conclusive evidence to support the
global warming theory". Apparently "thousands of
scientists are dismayed by the falsehoods of Kyoto",
though she only names arch denier Richard Lindzen (see below).
The report of the IPCC she says is "more akin to a religious
icon than a piece of scientific reasoning". The "myth"
of climate change has been created by "those who wanted
a stick to beat western capitalism, America and globalisation".
The article was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.
PETER HITCHENS
Peter Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips a provocative right
wing journalist, is keen to promote denial arguments. In his
column in the Mail on Sunday he clained that there is still
"no evidence" to support global warming. In a reply
to a complaint about this article he reiterated that all the
existing scientific data are "suppositions, allegations,
predictions. Numbers prove nothing"
JULIAN CHAMPKIN
Champkin wrote an article of December 6th 2000, in the Daily
Mail titled "Whatever Happened to Global Warming".
The double page article showed photos of floods claiming them
as proof that the scientists who, it said, had predicted hot
dry weather, had been wrong all along. No scientific opinion
was sought in the article.
THINK TANKS
MARK ADAMS-SCIENTIFIC ALLIANCE
Mark Adams is a former Private Secretary to John Major and
Tony Blair who left to set up a career as a lobbyist, public
relations consultant and denier of climate change. In 2000
Adams set up a web site (http://www,scientific-alliance.com)
to "use scientific fact to counter scare-mongering by
the so-called green lobby". The site quotes the usual
tiny handful of deniers and links to the US right-wing anti-environmental
think tanks (Cato Institute, George C Marshall Institute described
as having a "rigorous unbiased analysis"). The organisation
purporting to be behind the website, the SCIENTIFIC ALLIANCE,
does not involve any scientists or indeed exist in any formal
sense. It is a public relations vehicle modeled on the US
think tanks based out of Adam's Westminster office and created
by Robert Durward, the director of the anti-environmentalist
lobby group, the British Aggregates Association.
EUROPEAN DENIERS
BJORN LOMBERG
Lomberg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
has received endless coverage in the right-wing media, and
Lomberg has built a lucrative career as a public speaker.
Like most deniers, Lomberg plays on his academic credentials,
as an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University
of Aarhus in Denmark, and makes constant reference to his
former membership of Greenpeace. Lomberg's usual strategy
is to claim that he takes a reasonable middle ground- yes,
there is a problem but it is nothing like as bad as is claimed.
So he accepts that there is climate change, but claims, with
no evidence, that it "will not decrease food production;
nor is it likely to increase storminess, the frequency of
hurricanes, the impact of malaria, or cause more deaths".
He says that we should do nothing directly about CO2 emissions-
that it will cost $1 trillion (a figure with no justification)
to implement the Kyoto protocol and that it is cheaper to
maintain business as usual and invest in renewable energy.
There is a web site dedicated to dismantling Lomberg's arguments
at www.anti-lomborg.com
EUROPEAN SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT FORUM.
The Forum is a talkshop for climate deniers created by the
George C Marshall Institute to undermine the IPCC in Europe.
The Forum consists of the usual small band of deniers and
right wing zealots among them JOHN SCHLESINGER, former
head of the CIA, RICHARD LINDZEN, RICHARD COURTNEY
and PHILIP STOTT. A report published February 2002,
"Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection"
contains many of the Institute's main arguments- that the
science is too uncertain, that the IPCC findings "have
become politicized" and do "not demonstrate any
genuine human influence on global climate."
AUSTRALIAN DENIERS
LAVOISIER GROUP. The group was created
by Hugh Morgan, managing director of a mining company WMC.
Morgan believes that environmentalists "threaten our
survival" and has supported several other influential
Australian right-wing groups. The group argues that there
is no evidence of global warming, and that the Kyoto protocol
will undermine Australian sovereignty which it compares to
the planned invasion of Australia by Japan. It uses similar
language to oppose even carbon trading, calling federal government
discussion papers proposing carbon trading Nazi propaganda,
"Mein Kampf Declarations".
LARRY MOUNSER, lecturer in Mass Media
at the University of New South Wales, wrote a typical denial
article for the Canberra Times in December 2000, claiming
that global warming was a "creed" not science, that
extreme weather events are natural, but manipulated to look
like climate change by the media in search of a scare story.
AMERICAN DENIERS
US ACADEMICS
RICHARD LINDZEN. As a Professor of Meteorology
at the credible Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lindzen
is the most reputable academic among the US climate deniers.
Lindzen trades on his qualifications constantly to gain access
to top level discussion in the US government or scientific
institutions. His arguments, though, are identical to the
other deniers. In an article in the Wall Street Journal (June
11 2001) he claims that "there is no consensus, unanimous
or otherwise, about long-term climate trends or what casues
them" and "we are not in a position to confidently
attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast
what the climate will be in the future". Lindzen works
closely with other deniers, such as Fred Singer and the George
C Marshall Institute.
FRED SINGER. Like Richard Lindzen, Singer
is a leading denier who trades on his academic credentials
as a Professor in the University of Virginia and a former
director of the US Weather Satellite Service. Despite this
he has not had a single article accepted for any peer-reviewed
scientific journal for 15 years. Singer's main line of argument
is that satellite temperature measurements show no increase
in global temperatures. He shows no interest in accepting
recent explanations for this discrepancy. He admits to having
received direct funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and ARCO.
Exxon is also among the funders ($10,000 in 1998 alone) of
his academic sounding front organisation the "The Science
and Environment Policy Project". Singer also has close
links with the Rev Moon (leader of the Moonie cult) and his
rabid right wing newspaper the Washington Times in which his
articles regularly appear. He also writes for the far-right
climate denying Hoover Institute, and the New American, journal
for the extremist John Birch Society.
PATRICK MICHAELS
Dr. Michaels is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute's Environment
and Natural Resources Program. His research has received direct
funding from, among others, Western Fuels ($63,000) German
Coal Mining Association ($49,000), Edison Electric Institute
($15,000), and Cyprus Minerals (440,000), a major funder of
anti-environmental campaigns. Tom Wigley, one of the leading
IPCC scientists, describes Michaels work as "a catalog
of misrepresentation and misinterpretation". Michaels
produces a newsletter "World Climate Report" sent
free to every member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
ROBERT BALLING. Dr. Balling published an influential
denial book "The Heated Debate" in 1992 which was
translated into Arabic and distributed to the heads of OPEC.
Between 1991 and 1995 he (and his accomplice Dr Sherwood Idso,
see below) received $300,000 in funding from coal and oil
organisations, amongst them the British Coal Corporation ($75,000),
the German Coal Mining Association ($80,000) and the Kuwaiti
Foundation for the Advancement of Science ($48,000)
ROBERT MENDELSOHN. Dr Mendelsohn is an
economist at Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies who has built a public profile from arguing that in
the US and globally the costs of climate change will be outweighed
by the benefits. In his book "Global Warming and the
American Economy" he argues that global warming will
be good thing for the US economy. Agricultural yields will
increase from longer growing seasons and increased CO2. He
admits there will be costs, especially for poor people in
the tropics, but, like Bjorn Lomberg, he argues that the best
strategy is business as usual and using economic growth to
pay for any costs.
US MEDIA
WASHINGTON TIMES- although happy to be
confused with the venerable Washington Post newspaper, the
Washington Times is an aggressively right wing tabloid and
soap box for the most rabid anti-environmentalists. The editorial
line of the Times is that climate change does not exist and
is the invention of people who want to subvert capitalism
and the American way of life. The Times is funded by "Reverend
Moon" founder of the Moonie cult.
US INDUSTRY GROUPS
GLOBAL CLIMATE COALITION
The GCC was founded by fossil fuel producers and car manufacturers
to lobby against any international initiatives that would
impact its members profits. By March 2000, though, its refusal
to recognise the legitimacy of the scientific consensus (and
a feisty campaign in the US) forced the resignation of British
Petroleum, Shell, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, and General
Motors. In February 2002 the GCC was formally disbanded having
achieved its primary goal of pulling the US out off the Kyoto
Protocol. http://www.globalclimate.org
WESTERN FUELS ASSOCIATION
The WFA is an association of $400 million of US coal producing
interests. The WFA is one of the most powerful forces in the
US actively denying the basic science of climate change. One
of its greenwash offshoots is the Greening Earth Society-
on the board of which is Dr Patrick Michaels.
AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE
The API, whose members include all the major oil companies
(including BP), has consistently tried to prevent the US ratifying
the Kyoto Protoocol. The API works closely with Fred Singer
and Frederick Seitz, both of whom worked with the API 1998
for a $5 million advertising campaign denying the climate
science.
EXXON MOBIL
In addition to its involvement in many of the lobby groups
and think tanks mentioned above, Exxon Mobil has frequently
gone it alone in its crusade to deny climate change. In 2000
it funded an ad undermining the IPCC's consensus titled "Unsettled
Science" which appeared in the New York Times and Wall
Street Journal. The ad's key evidence was taken, without permission,
from the work into ocean currents by Lloyd Keigwin, a legitimate
scientist. Keigwin publicly said he was annoyed with the advert,
and distanced himself from its findings.
US THINK TANKS AND CONSULTANTS
GEORGE C MARSHALL INSTITUTE
The Institute, led by Frederick Seitz, is a very well funded
far right think tank which maintains that climate change is
a liberal plot to undermine the US economy. The Institute
specialises in creating a veneer of scientific credibility
for its views, constantly pointing out that Seitz was once
president of the US National Academy of Sciences. In March
1998 the Institute went one step further with a typical report
attacking the international climate negotiations as intellectually
and scientifically flawed. The format of the report was nearly
identical to that used for Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences. The Academy issued a statement discrediting the
report and distancing itself from its conclusions.
CATO INSTITUTE- another far right think
tank- similar in its views to the George C Marshall Insititute.
FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM INSTITUTE
Another far right think tank, funded, by Exxon Mobil amonst
others. Fred Singer is on the staff.
TECHCENTRALSTATION.COM
This website is an offshoot of American Enterprise Institute,
It is hosted by JAMES GLASSMAN, a professional climate
denier who is frequently published in the US, and KEN HOLME.
Holme was Director of Arms Control in the Reagan administration
In an article in May 2001, Holme claims that unnamed "top
scientists" believe that the evidence of climate change
is insufficient to take any action. He compares the "liberal"
Kyoto Protocol with the lack of science in the "liberal"
campaign for breast feeding- which he voted against whilst
in the UN. See http://www.techcentralstation.com
CHRISTOPHER C HORNER attorney for the
COOLER HEADS COALITION- yet another right wing think
tank. A regular contributor to the Washington Times. In an
aggressive and facile article in April 2001 he debunks the
science, demanding to know "did my Land Rover chase the
dinosaurs to oblivion?"
SHERWOOD, CRAIG AND KEITH IDSO
The Idsos all work through their front organisation, the academic
sounding Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
Change. In their publications, such as "Carbon Dioxide:
Friend or Foe" they argue that increased atmospheric
CO2 will produce net benefits and improve agricultural output.
Their video, "the Greening of Planet Earth", which
claims that global warming is a net benefit for the world,
received $250,000 in funds from the Western Fuels Association
and was used intensively to lobby congress.
HENRY LAMB Lamb edits World Concerns,
a magazine for SOVEREIGNTY INTERNATIONAL, an anti-United
Nations think tank. He claims that freedom is a "gift
from the Creator". Cheap and plentiful energy is a "friend
of freedom" which is threatened by the Kyoto Protocol.
The answer, he says, is to remove all legally binding requirements
from the protocol. www.freedom21.org.
BILL HAMMOND is President of the Texas
Association of Business and Chambers of Commerce. Hammond
has been mobilising Texan businesses to lobby the government,
claiming that implementation of Kyoto would shutdown 25% of
US power plants leading to "a crisis of energy shortages
and skyrocketing prices".
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