Non-US CTT/Front

neglected,

see CTT2 and main

NO MERRI

see UK IEA and GW-P

note growth in Commonwealth primarily, esp around gw and gmo

see pied piper:

Sir Antony Fisher (1915 - 1988) was one of the most influential background players in the global rise of libertarian think-tanks during the second half of the twentieth century, founding the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other think-tanks worldwide. The most prominent include:

• Fraser Institute
• Manhattan Institute
• Pacific Research Institute
• National Center for Policy Analysis
• Centre for Independent Studies
• Adam Smith Institute

This section is about how RWI are growing overseas,

but also about global governance is essential?

---

roberts climate obstruct

4. Networks of think tanks are spreading obstruction globally

A group of think tanks—public policy institutes that perform research and

advocacy—have promoted disinformation and misinformation about climate

science and contested climate policies via reports and presentations to leg-

islatures, news and social media, and other channels.49,50,51 They present

quasi-academic positions while shifting the framing of climate change from

a science-based issue to a matter of individual liberty and economic free-

dom (Chapter 5). They have also funded research reports and conferences to

challenge the IPCC consensus on anthropogenic climate change52 and have

networked transnationally to increase their capacity to promote or disrupt

specific political discourses on the topic.53 Their institutional structure is

shaped by the predominance of men, especially in the case of European think

tanks, illustrating a documented alignment between masculinity and climate

contrarianism.54 There is also a strong convergence between the far-right,

neoliberal thought advanced by these think tanks and resistance to climate

action (Chapter 5).55

Many of the most influential think tanks are based in the United States, but

the dominance of think tanks has spread globally, thanks in part to the Atlas

Network, a global network of such organizations that advocates free-market

(libertarian) and neoliberal policies (Chapter 5). The Heartland Institute in the

United States, the Free Market Foundation in South Africa, and the Global

Warming Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom all have worked to chal-

lenge climate policies and programs (Chapter 5). Similar ideas and practices

have also spread to think tanks in the Global South, such as Andes Libre in Peru

and the Instituto Liberdade in Brazil (Chapter 8). Funding flows around the

world to support these think tanks, which share information, tactics, events,

connections, experts, board memberships, and legal support.56...

:{---

businessman credited with helping spark the 1970s North Sea oil boom has moved into offices at 55 Tufton Street in Westminster, where the UK’s principal climate science denial organisation and many pro-Brexit campaign groups are based, DeSmog has learned.

John “Algy” Cluff, whose company Cluff Mineral Resources specialises in “support activities” for oil and gas extraction, as well as gold mining in West Africa, joins an influential hub of free market think tanks and lobby groups housed in the building.

1119

==

UCSC EMAIL 1 25

The role of the press in reproducing the climate action contrarian framings of European think tanks. Journalism

José A. Moreno

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/thinktank-climate-science-institute-economic-affairs

==

Liz Truss's think tank allies said mini-budget was 'fantastic'

https://www.opendemocracy.net › liz-truss-kwasi-kwart...

Sep 29, 2022 — Truss's think tank backers said her mini-budget would get the economy ... None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IE

when the UK’s new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a raft of tax cuts for high earners last week in his mini-budget, the response from the markets was damning. The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation, and the cost of government borrowing jumped sharply.

But the announcements were cheered on by a group of secretive think tanks closely connected to Liz Truss and her advisers. After years of lobbying, a Conservative government had finally adopted their proposals to scrap the top rate of income tax, remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shelve a planned rise in corporation tax, and pledge a fresh crackdown on unions.

The Adam Smith Institute, where Truss’s political secretary Sophie Jarvis was head of government affairs, said the plans were “a welcome first step to getting the British economy back on track”.

The mood was particularly buoyant at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose director general Mark Littlewood greeted the announcement by claiming: “This isn’t a trickle-down budget – it’s a boost-up budget."

truss and Kwarteng have faced accusations that their proposals are inspired by ‘trickle-down economics’, a term for a set of policies adopted by the former US president Ronald Reagan that cut taxes for the richest in the belief that wealth would then filter down to the poorest. The theory has been discredited by both the International Monetary Fund and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IEA has received donations from BP and ExxonMobil and, along with the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, the tobacco industry. The IEA and the Adam Smith Institute have also received millions of dollars from US funders of climate denial.

Later, speaking at a post-budget briefing, Littlewood was asked by journalists if he was anxious about his policies being put to the test.

“We don't write policy ideas just for them to sit on the shelf – we write them in the hope that one day they're enacted,” he said. But he also admitted that: “If it turns out that these don’t work, I think the IEA has got a lot of hard thinking to do.”

Tim Montgomerie, a former adviser to Boris Johnson, wrote on Twitter that the budget was a “massive moment for the IEA”. “They’ve been advocating these policies for years,” he said. “They incubated Truss and Kwarteng during their early years as MPs. Britain is now their laboratory.”

Truss is particularly close to the IEA, having founded its parliamentary wing FREER in 2011 and hired its former communications director Ruth Porter to run her campaign, later rewarding her by making her deputy chief of staff.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, which once shared a Westminster office with the IEA, predicted that the budget would boost economic output by £99bn over the next ten years and said it was the “most taxpayer-friendly budget in recent memory.”

The economic projections were produced in collaboration with another think tank, Europe Economics. Andrew Lilco, the organisation’s executive director, was later asked to respond to criticism that the budget would benefit the rich more than the poor in an interview on Sky News. 

“I have no interest in equality. I think it’s an incorrect policy objective. I don’t think it’s morally or economically sound as a policy objective,” he said.

The Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank co-founded by former Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher, also claimed credit for many of the policies announced in Kwarteng’s budget.

Tom Clougherty, its ‘head of tax’, said on the earlier this week that: “I think that frankly both the overall message and the specific announcements contained within [the mini-budget] are fantastic. Exactly what we would have hoped for and what people like us have been calling for for a long time.”

The reaction from the markets and financial institutions has been in stark contrast to the celebratory rhetoric from Truss’s allies.

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund issued a stinging rebuke of the government’s tax cuts and called on the prime minister to reconsider them to prevent increasing inequality.

The United Nations fund, which monitors the international monetary system to identify risks and recommend economic policies, said the budget could undermine efforts to tackle already rampant inflation.

With turmoil continuing since Friday, the Bank of England was forced to step in to calm the markets. The same day, the bank announced it would buy £65bn of government bonds over the next fortnight as fears grew that pension funds could be affected.

The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney later accused the government of “undercutting” financial institutions and said its tax-cutting measures were “working at some cross-purposes” with the bank.

Speculation that the central bank will now increase interest rates to nearly 6% has prompted nearly 300 mortgage deals to be pulled by lenders. Millions of existing mortgage holders could now also face huge hikes to their monthly repayments.

guk gen'l history includes US

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/vested-interests-public-against-climate-science-fossil-fuel-lobby

How vested interests tried to turn the world against climate science

For decades fossil fuel majors tried to fight the consensus – just as big tobacco once disputed that smoking kills

Revealed: top UK thinktank spent decades undermining climate science

Felicity Lawrence, David Pegg and Rob Evans

Thu 10 Oct 2019 11.00 EDT  Last modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019

Environmental activists gather outside the American Petroleum Institute headquarters in Washington during global climate action week last month. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]

In 1998 a public relations consultant called Joe Walker wrote to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association representing major fossil fuel companies, with a proposed solution to a big problem.

In December the previous year, the UN had adopted the Kyoto protocol, an international treaty that committed signatory countries to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.

Reducing emissions represented a direct threat to the profits of fossil fuel companies and the API was working on an industry response.

“As promised, attached is the Global Climate Science Communications Planthat we developed during our workshop last Friday,” Walker wrote. The workshop had involved senior executives from fossil fuel companies, including the oil multinationals Exxon – later part of ExxonMobil – and Chevron, and the gas and coal utility Southern Company, and a handful of rightwing thinktanks.

Q&A

What is the polluters project?

Walker outlined a vision of a comprehensive, international campaign to change public opinion on the climate crisis by casting doubt on the scientific research, presenting it as unreliable when the overwhelming majority of scientists had reached consensus.

The communications plan involved finding sympathetic scientists, identifying thinktanks to fund that would produce helpful reports, and working through supposed grassroots groups to hold debates questioning the consensus on global heating, along with a constant flow of media briefings manufacturing uncertainty.

The plan sounded much like a 1960s PR campaign devised by the tobacco industry to delay controls by questioning the science showing that smoking killed. Some of the people involved were in fact tobacco campaign veterans.

The fossil fuel industry had been making use of its lobbying group, the Global Climate Coalition, since 1989 to stress the uncertainties of climate science. But by the late 1990s companies such as BP and Shell were beginning to withdraw from it as public doubt about the problem became increasingly untenable in the face of the evidence.

“Project goal: a majority of the American public, including industry leadership, recognises that significant uncertainties exist in climate science,” the 1998 Walker API memo began. A series of strategic goals was elaborated. It said “victory will be achieved when … recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the conventional wisdom” and “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality”.

3:46

Why we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainer

After the memo was leaked to the New York Times, the industry said the plan was only a proposal and was never put into effect.

Climate campaigners such as Greenpeace say they believe a highly organised effort by the fossil fuel industry to question climate science, involving scientists and some thinktanks in receipt of fossil fuel industry funding, nevertheless succeeded in the following years in shifting public opinion away from urgent action.

In 2010 the American sociologists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright identified conservative thinktanks, along with US conservative politicians, media and fossil fuel corporations, as crucial components in a “denial machine” that emerged in the 1990s.

The activity of this machine would peak when the industry’s financial interests came under threat, most notably in the years after 2007 and the election of Barack Obama, who had pledged to regulate and cap emissions.

Half a century of dither and denial – a climate crisis timeline

Read more

Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, published the first peer-reviewed study in 2013 of who was funding what he called the climate change counter-movement that delayed action on the crisis. He found that between 2003 and 2010 more than $500m had been donated by private conservative philanthropic foundations to organisations whose output included material disputing the consensus.

Thinktanks, trade associations and front groups were a key part of the effort, he concluded, with their major funders including foundations affiliated to the fossil fuel magnates the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and the ultra-conservative Scaife and Bradley foundations.

Brulle also found evidence of a trend to conceal the sources of funding once campaign groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and the Climate Disinformation Database started tracking what they called dark money to climate denial from the mid-2000s.

In the second half of that decade, Koch, Scaife, Bradley and ExxonMobil foundation funding to organisations involved in propagating doubt declined while donations to the same organisations via two anonymised vehicles, the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, increased rapidly.

Among the thinktanks most identified with spreading doubt are the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Marshall Institute (which folded in 2015), the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the campaign group Americans for Prosperity.

Elsewhere the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Global Warming Policy Foundation have been prominent publishers of material questioning the consensus on climate science in the UK. These organisations fiercely dispute that any of their work constitutes organised climate change denial.

Richmond v Chevron: the California city taking on its most powerful polluter

Read more

Americans for Prosperity, which has received a very substantial part of its funding from the Kochs, helped make resistance to action on climate a feature of Tea Party rallies in the US.

The counter-movement against action wound up to fever pitch in 2009 when it looked as though Obama and the US would sign up to UN climate protocols after the Copenhagen summit due at the end of that year.

Before the summit, individual independent climate experts found themselves subject to devastating attacks. Scientists at the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit had their emails hacked. The contents of the emails were circulated, with the information they contained having been extracted in a way that suggested the scientists had manipulated their data. A police investigation failed to establish who the hackers were.

The rightwing media labelled it “climategate” and several thinktanks promoted the story enthusiastically. Multiple inquiries would later exonerate the scientists but by then the damage was done; the public’s faith in climate science had been measurably dented.

Half a decade later some fossil fuel industry funding of climate contrarian science was exposed, when Greenpeace found out via freedom of information requests that a prominent academic at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Willie Soon, had attracted more than $1.2m in payments over 14 years from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the API and a Koch foundation, to the centre for his work. Soon doubted the scientific consensus that emissions were the principal cause of global heating.

He is now an affiliate of the Heartland Institute. Soon strenuously denied that his industry funders had any influence over his conclusions and the Heartland Institute said he was not even aware of who some of the donors to the centre were, making a conflict of interest impossible.

[pix  US college students protest against the Kyoto treaty in support of George W Bush at a climate summit in Bonn in 2001. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP

There has been a noticeable moderation of views from those previously involved in questioning the science of climate change. Several now acknowledge global heating is caused by human activity but have shifted focus to arguing that the market and technological innovation rather than government action or international treaties curbing emissions are the best ways to tackle it.

The director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Center for Energy and Environment, Myron Ebell, for example, told the Guardian: “CEI believes strongly that the policies being proposed by climate alarmists to deal with global warming pose much greater threats to human flourishing than do the effects of global warming. Abundant, affordable energy is a necessary condition of human wellbeing but the global energy-rationing policies being pursued, like those in the Paris climate treaty, threaten to consign billions of people around the world to energy poverty and perpetual economic stagnation.”

ExxonMobil, Chevron, Southern Company and the API all said they recognised the seriousness of the climate crisis and the need for business, governments and consumers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The API said the industry as a whole had invested billions of dollars in zero- and low-carbon technologies. Chevron and Southern Company said they had ambitious targets to reduce their carbon footprints. ExxonMobil said its position on climate science in the past had been misrepresented, and that claims regarding what it knew and when had been debunked. None of the companies responded to questions on the communications plan and funding of organisations whose output included doubting the science.

The Koch, Scaife and Bradley Foundations Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund and Americans for Prosperity did not respond to requests for comment.

The thinktanks said the criticisms levelled at them by climate activists and critics seriously mischaracterised their positions. They said the views they published were those of individual affiliates rather than institutional ones. They added that they respected their donors’ privacy but the source of their money did not influence their research or output, which was completely independent. The Heritage Foundation said allegations it had denied climate science were “seriously inaccurate”. It accepted “the climate is changing, the planet is warming and that humans are playing a role”. Instead it described itself as “sceptics of climate catastrophism and costly policies that will drive energy prices higher”.

The Cato Institute said it had never been in the business of “promoting climate science denial”; it did not dispute human activity’s impact on the climate, but believed it was minimal.

As the crisis escalates…

bit lost see clintel

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/06/climate-science-deniers-planning-coordinated-european-misinformation-campaign-leaked-documents-reveal

A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.

Plans for a self-styled “European Declaration” include press conferences in Brussels, Rome and Oslo and a letter to be sent to leaders of EU and UN institutions, scheduled for mid-September.

The letter claims to have “400 independent Climate Scientists and Professionals” signed up so far.

Some notable signatories are part of a trans-Atlantic network of thinktanks pushing for environmental deregulation post-Brexit, and have a history of climate science denial. A number of former employees of the network’s member organisations are now staffers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet  Brulle, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and an expert on climate science denial, told DeSmog the campaign looked like a panicked response to recent high-profile efforts to highlight the climate crisis:

“The rise of the Extinction Rebellion movement, and the immense popularity and influence of Greta Thunberg, are having a significant impact on media coverage of climate change and concern about this issue. I would suspect that the aim of the campaign is to blunt the impact of these climate advocacy efforts.”

“The talking points are stale and patently scientific nonsense. That isn't critical. The point would be to keep the ‘contested’ nature of climate change alive.”

Geoffrey Supran, a Research Associate at Harvard University who gave evidence to the European Parliament in March on oil giant ExxonMobil’s historic promotion of climate science denial, said he thought the move was an attempt to distract from the various upcoming efforts to increase action on climate change globally, such as the UN Climate Action Summit at the end of the month:

“These people are the rhetorical equivalent to the kid in the classroom screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ They're desperate for attention.”

“As always, they presumably hope to muddy the waters of public and political discourse on the climate crisis. To feed the echo chamber of sympathetic right-wing media and blogs, and to prey on naive and unsuspecting journalists who may be tempted to exercise false balance in their climate coverage.”

Coordinated effort

The campaign is being spearheaded by a new Netherlands-based climate science denial group called the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL), launched in April with funding from Niek Sandmann, a multimillionaire real estate developer.

The group’s co-founder Guus Berkhout, an engineering professor who began his career at Shell and set up the Delphi Consortium in the 1980s to develop new exploration methods for the oil and gas industry, told DeSmog that interest in the campaign had been “overwhelming”.

Berkhout said there were plans to hold press conferences in European capitals and that the effort was being “expanded to a World Climate Declaration”. He declined to offer further details or comment.

In addition to CLINTEL, the international organising group includes some well-known figures from the climate misinformation world, including:

• Professor Richard Lindzen, former Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (USA)
• Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition (Australia)
• Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, Speaker at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (Germany)
• Professor Jeffrey Foss, Contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada)
• Jim O’Brien, Chair and Co-founder of the Irish Climate Science Forum (Ireland)
• Terence Dunleavy, Founding Chairman of the International Climate Science Coalition (New Zealand)

In an email seen by DeSmog, Berkhout explains that “signatures are being collected from persons who give a valuable contribution to the climate debate and are recognised as such”. He goes on to boast that there are “already a lot of great names on the list”.

Of the 400 signatories, only a handful have a background in climate science, with the majority being writers, engineers and geologists with no direct expertise in the field.

In addition to the Cato Institute's Richard Lindzen,the list features numerous figures from US-based libertarian groups, including Patrick Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Charles Battig and Willie Soon from the Heartland Institute, which provides a total of 12 signatures alone. All three organisations are members of the Atlas Network, a Koch-funded international umbrella body of free-market groups.

UK affiliates of the network include the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance. A number of former employees of these groups are now working in Boris Johnson’s government.

Taxpayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott is reportedly advising new Chancellor Sajid Javid, whose Conservative leadership campaign he ran, while former employee Chloe Westley has joined Boris Johnson’s Number 10 team. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has appointed two special advisors from the IEA and ASI.

UK support

The UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation(GWPF), founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson in the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, is also well-represented in the campaign.

At least four members of its Academic Advisory Council feature in the letter’s signatories, and other contributors to the GWPF have also backed the “declaration”.

One is Northumbria University Professor Valentina Zharkova, who gave a lecture to the group last year claiming that climate change is caused by natural solar cycles. A paper Zharkova co-authored in June on the same subject was criticised for containing “basic errors” and an investigation into how it came to be published was launched by the scientific journal that printed it.

CLINTEL also has close ties to the GWPF. Berkhout wrote an essay for the UK group last year insisting that climate change was purely a natural phenomenon. And in February, the GWPF published an article by its Dutch counterpart that said: “Yes, the Earth is warming up. But that is business as usual. Earth’s history tells us that climate change has always happened.”

The following month GWPF director Benny Peiser spoke at a gathering in Amsterdam where CLINTEL announced its upcoming launch.

At that event, Berkhout: “in this whole audience, apart from the organisation and a few brave ones, I don't see young people. So the first thing we are going to do is talk with the young people.” CLINTEL currently has a youth wing called “Young Clintel”.

The GWPF did not respond to a request for comment.

Other UK signatories include directors and former directors of lesser-known oil and gas companies, as well as five Fellows of the Geological Society, a professional body representing Earth scientists.

In addition to the EU “net zero” emissions target under consideration, planned “climate strike” protests and the upcoming UN Climate Action Summit, the media offensive may also, given its European focus, be timed to coincide with a crunch government meeting in Germany on how the country will meet its 2030 emissions target, set to take place on 20 September.

German signatories to the letter include a spokesperson for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), which a Der Spiegel investigation earlier this year found had been working closely with the insurgent, far-right Alternative for Germany party to campaign against action on climate change.

==

914

• Right-wing outlets like The Wall Street Journal editorial page are touting a deeply flawed new study attacking electric vehicles.
• Trump Fed pick Stephen Moore repeatedly said that he liked working at Fox News because he met "a lot of beautiful women" there. Moore has also praised slave-owning Confederate general Robert E. Lee and hates climate science so much that he even attacked Ivanka Trump.
• Tucker Carlson's wild new talking point is that abortion is somehow a tool of "corporate" oppression.
• A Fox host blamed bank regulation for high tuition and the student loan crisis.

ref

Wall Street Journal published an editorial on April 23 that derided electric vehicles in Germany as "dirty," based on a recent study that has been called into question by a number of experts and mainstream German news outlets. The Journal's editorial board, which has a history of climate denial, has attacked both German energy policy and electric vehicles (EVs) before.

The dubious study has also been hyped by climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S., including Infowars and The Daily Caller.

Experts point out major flaws in German study on electric vs. diesel cars

The study was conducted by the Ifo Institute, a Munich-based think tank, and argued that a Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle driven in Germany is responsible for more carbon dioxide pollution than a Mercedes C220d diesel vehicle. The study, which was released in German on April 17 and has not yet been translated into English, finds that the Tesla emits between 156 and 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, compared to 141 grams of CO2 from the diesel Mercedes. The study attributes roughly half of the Tesla's emissions to the vehicle’s production process, including its battery, which the authors assume will only last 10 years or 150,000 kilometers. The other half of the Tesla’s estimated emissions in Germany come from electricity used to charge the car, some of which is generated by burning coal.

English-language summaries of the study include a press release from the Ifo Institute and a Brussels Timeswrite-up.

Soon after the study's release, German-language outlets started pushing back on its findings and methodology, including Der Spiegel, the highest-circulation news magazine in Europe, and WirtschaftsWoche, a weekly business news magazine. Articles in both publications highlighted miscalculations and faulty assumptions, and pointed to a number of other studies on EVs that had come to opposite conclusions.

One English-language debunk of the study came in a Twitter thread from Netherlands-based energy researcher Auke Hoekstra. Hoekstra noted that the study's claims about the diesel Mercedes' emissions are wrong -- the Mercedes emits closer to 220 grams of CO2 per kilometer, rather than 141, he argued. He also highlighted how the authors used an extremely low number for how long an electric vehicle battery lasts. He stated, “even Tesla's from the olden days can drive 600 000 km before the battery reaches 80% capacity.” He summed up his criticisms:

To summarize: EVs only emit more CO2 if you make unrealistically negative assumptions for battery production, battery life and electricity mix while making unrealistically positive assumption about diesel consumption.

Correct ANY of these and the tables are turned. Bigly.

— AukeHoekstra (@AukeHoekstra) April 22, 2019

Hoekstra also argued that the analysis should not be presented as an academic study. Instead, he characterized it as “the opinion of three people, … none of whom have any background” in EVs or batteries. One of the authors, Hans-Werner Sinn, has been criticized for using dubious assumptions in energy studies before: Sinn received strong pushback on a 2018 paper he wrote claiming that energy storage requirements ultimately limit the expansion of renewable energy. Sinn has also argued that criticism of Volkswagen over its role in the Dieselgate scandal has been exaggerated, and placed much of the blame for the scandal on U.S. efforts to regulate diesel engines.

Another debunk of the Ifo study came from Fred Lambert, chief editor of the electric transportation news site Electrek. He noted:

One of the biggest mistakes they are making is that they are comparing the full production and lifecycle of an electric vehicle, including the emission from the electricity uses, against the production and lifecycle of a diesel car without accounting for all the energy used to produce the diesel and supply it to the cars.

Lambert also called out the study’s authors for falsely assuming a battery life of 150,000 kilometers and for failing to note that Germany is planning to rapidly decarbonize its electricity system, which would greatly improve the carbon footprint of EVs in the near future.

Another criticism of the study has been its focus solely on Germany's energy grid and the authors' failure to take into account the overall mix of the larger European energy market that Germany is a part of. German carmaker Volkswagen, which manufactures both EVs and diesel vehicles, responded to the study by defending EVs. In an English-language article by Deutsche Welle, a German international broadcaster, Volkswagen noted that with Germany's current electricity mix, its Golf EV would have a similar CO2 output as a diesel car of the same type -- 142 grams per kilogram compared to 140. However, “using the European energy mix for calculations, which includes large amounts of nuclear energy from France and water power from Norway, the e-Golf's carbon footprint would be down to 119 g/km” -- far below the CO2 output of a diesel car.

Other analyses have disproved the claim that EVs are not environmentally friendly. In 2018, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that a U.S.-based EV is equivalent to a conventional gasoline car that gets 80 miles per gallon. Unlike the German study, it looked at all of the emissions from fueling and driving both vehicles. It also found that EVs will get cleaner over time as electric grids get cleaner, noting that its 2018 estimate was an improvement of 7 mpg from 2017. And a 2017 report from the Transport & Environment group, a Brussels-based transportation policy group, found that EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than diesel cars even when EVs are powered by the most carbon-intensive electricity.

Right-wing outlets in the U.S. promote Ifo’s study to disparage EVs

Although the Ifo study is specific to Germany’s electric grid and has been widely criticized, climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S. have picked up on it and are using it to disparage EVs generally. Steve Milloy, a notorious denier and frequent Wall Street Journalcontributor, tweeted about the study on April 19. On April 22, extreme right-wing outlet Infowars wrote about the study, and far-right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson tweeted about the Infowars piece. The right-wing website Zero Hedge wrote about the study too, and a tweet pointing to that post was retweeted by Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official and current Fox News contributor.

After The Wall Street Journal wrote about the study, still more right-wing outlets covered it, including The Daily Caller, which has a long record of inaccurate reporting on climate and energy issues, and The Western Journal, a conservative news outlet with a history of deceptive climate claims.

The Wall Street Journalhas a long track record of misleading on climate and energy issues

The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages have spread misinformation about climate change for decades. A Media Mattersstudy found that from January 2015 to August 2016, one-third of the paper’s climate-related opinion pieces contained climate denial or other inaccurate statements about climate change. We’ve also found that the paper's opinion section is ExxonMobil’s chief apologist for its climate change lies, and it has defended the fracking industry against accusations that it contaminates drinking water. According to a recent article in Current Affairs,the Journalhas shifted in recent years from denying climate change to downplaying it, but still remains an impediment to clean energy and climate action. The Wall Street Journal has always been a pro-polluter, pro-industry paper, so it’s no surprise that it would overlook flaws and publicize questionable research that disparages a direct threat to the fossil-fuel industry.

Posted InEnvironment & Science, Climate Change, Energy

Network/OutletWall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, Infowars, Western Journal

PersonSteve Milloy, Paul Joseph Watson

Stories/InterestsClimate Change, Electric Vehicles

==

==

http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/wiki_ttni_en/index.php/Category:Think_Tank_Network

http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/wiki_ttni_en/index.php/Category:Think_Tank

==

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Think_tanks_disputing_global_warming

==

extensive list/ info

(previous 200) (next 200)

http://powerbase.info/index.php/Category:Think_Tanks

--

Case Study 3: The “Spanish Study” on Green Jobs

Since the creation of new clean energy jobs is a critical

benefit of climate and energy policy, opponents have

focused on discrediting ‘green’ jobs. A report appeared on

this subject in spring of 2009 called the “Study of the effects

on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources”54

by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, an economics professor at King

Juan Carlos University in Madrid. According to Dr. Alvarez’s

study, Spain’s policy commitments to renewable energy

development had actually cost Spain jobs—2.2 jobs lost for

each clean energy job created.

The study became a favorite talking point for opponents of

clean energy, who seized on the study when it was released

in March—coinciding with the House Energy and Commerce

Committee discussions on the American Clean Energy

and Security Act. The study was trumpeted by opposition

groups, covered by reporters, and repeated in congressional

testimony by US Representatives opposed to clean energy

policy and climate mitigation measures.

Despite the fact that the conclusions and methodology

of the study by Alvarez have been repeatedly proven

unsupportable55 (most recently by the US’s own National

Renewable Energy Laboratory56, in addition to ministers with

the Spanish government57 and independent experts58 ), the

‘study’ continues to be trumpeted. The study recently made

its way into fact sheets circulated by clean energy opposition

group Americans for Prosperity,59 which is founded and

chaired by David Koch.

Where did the “Spanish study” come from, and who

promoted it? Several organizations and individuals—each

supported through the Koch web—have played key roles in

supporting, disseminating and promoting the research.

• March 2009: The Institute for Energy Research (IER)

supported60 and disseminated61 the “Spanish study,” released

in March of 2009.

• April 2009: Patrick Michaels was an early commenter on

the study62, saying in April 2009 that he wasn’t surprised by

the findings and that the U.S. should expect similar results

from stimulus funding on renewable energy.

• May 2009: The Heritage Foundation promoted the report

in a variety of ways63, including a May 2009 Washington, DC

briefing.

• July 2009: Americans for Prosperity’s Colorado64 chapter

promoted the study through its blog.

• July 2009: Americans for Prosperity’s policy director Phil

Kerpen repeated the study’s findings in July 2009 testimony65

to the Western Caucuses Bicameral Hearing on Cap & Trade.

• August 2009: American Energy Alliance (AEA), IER’s

advocacy arm, incorporated the report’s findings into fact

sheets that it disseminated66 during its “American Energy

Express” bus tour in August 2009.

• September 2009: Americans for Prosperity’s Texas67 chapter

posted comments repeating the study’s faulty conclusions.

• September 2009: Americans for Prosperity’s policy director

Phil Kerpen repeated the study’s findings in online68 comments.

Case Study 4: The “Danish Study” on Wind Power

A similar play was conducted a few months later with another

study linked to the Koch web. The “Danish study,”69 prepared

by Danish think-tank CEPOS, provides clean energy opponents

a means of raising questions about the viability

of renewable energy and a means of directly criticizing

President Obama for his statement that Denmark produces

almost 20% of its electricity through wind power.

However, the study contains factual errors,71 its conclusions

have been misrepresented72 and to boot, its findings are

not particularly relevant to the US.73 The study includes

errors such as a miscalculation of the electricity production

from wind in Denmark (they claim 5% of total production in

Denmark though the real percentage is 20%). In addition, the

study does not take into account the differences between

the European and North American electric grids.

Nevertheless, like the study from Spain, the CEPOS study is

being promoted and disseminated through many of the same

organizations in Koch’s web. The “Danish Study” appears to

follow a similar pattern.

• CEPOS was recently awarded74 a $100,000 grant from

the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which has given

CEPOS “several awards.”75 The Charles G. Koch Foundation

and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation both support the Atlas

Economic Research Foundation.

• The Institute for Energy Research is promoting the study

among its members and Hill staff, as well as online.76 IER

organized a three-day tour in September 2009 to bring the

report’s co-author Hugh Sharman and CEPOS chief executive

Martin Agerup to Washington D.C. to explain the study to

a “wider American audience.” The organization also created

fact sheets77 that promote the study’s findings and claim

President Obama is misusing the Danish example.

• Heritage Foundation promoted the study78 on their website.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf

w/o borders

http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/climate-deniers-atlas-foundation

Climate Change Deniers Without Borders

How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad—and how they could derail any progress made in Copenhagen.

—By Josh Harkinson

| Tue Dec. 22, 2009 

Writing two weeks ago in Poland's most popular tabloid, the Super Express, an economic analyst named Tomasz Teluk claimed that a potential climate agreement in Copenhagen might double Poles' electricity bills, hobble his coal-dependent country, and even lead to one-world government. Fortunately, he wrote, the "'global warming' scare" has been hugely overblown: "As each of us learned in elementary school, carbon dioxide is a gas essential to the development of life, not a poison, so you do not have to eliminate it at any price."

Teluk, the founder of the Globalization Institute, a libertarian think tank, is Poland's most prominent climate change skeptic. He has become a hero to Polish conservatives, who have convinced their government to resist strong emissions cuts and block the European Union from giving climate change assistance to developing nations. A leading Polish financial newspaper recently named his institute the country's best think tank. But Teluk is hardly a homegrown climate skeptic. Much of his rhetoric, such as his claim that CO2 is good for you, echoes the well-worn claims of American skeptics. And much of Teluk's newfound visibility can be traced back to his long-standing ties with conservative patrons and energy interests in the United States.

Americans have provided Teluk with jobs, fellowships, professional contacts, and money. This year, the Globalization Institute won a $10,000 grant from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think-tank incubator that's funded by ExxonMobil. Teluk isn't alone. The Globalization Institute is part of a loose network of some 500 similar organizations in dozens of countries that are often bankrolled by American foundations that are, in turn, backed by carbon-spewing American industries. The foreign groups' finances are opaque, yet an Atlas Foundation spokesman acknowledges that some of them wouldn't exist without dollars being pumped in. In the coming months, these groups will lead the fight in their own countries to derail the shaky deal made in Copenhagen—which will likely prompt American skeptics to cite widespread international opposition to taking action on climate change.

With US-backed overseas think tanks parroting denier talking points in dozens of languages, the echo chamber is already up and running. "The correct policy approach to [the] non-problem [of climate change] is to have the courage to do nothing," writes British skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton in an article summarized in Chinese on the website of the Beijing-based Cathay Institute for Public Affairs. As the United States stonewalled sub-Saharan African countries' demands for more climate-related foreign aid in Copenhagen, the IMANI Center for Policy and Education in Ghana and three other African think tanks backed by American interests signed on to a letter blaming poor nations for invoking "the climate change scapegoat to explain hunger, sickness, and climate vulnerability."

This September, after President Obama repeatedly cited Spain's success creating green jobs, congressional Republicans flew in Gabriel Calzada, president of Spain's Instituto Juan de Mariana, to present a study claiming that each green job created in his country destroyed another 2.2 jobs. "Europe's experience actually suggests that this is precisely the wrong approach," he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. (The study was debunked by the Spanish government.)

At the center of this feedback loop is the Atlas Economic Research Foundation,which has supported more than 30 other foreign think tanks that espouse climate change skepticism. Atlas has given the Instituto de Juan Mariana more than $100,000. In 2008, it gave the IMANI Center for Policy & Education a $100,000 grant. It has also funded skeptic groups in the four nations whose governments just inked a controversial, last-minute climate deal with the United States in Copenhagen: the Cathay Institute in China, the Liberty Institute in India, the Free Market Foundation in South Africa, and the Instituto Liberdade in Brazil.

Founded in 1981 and named after Ayn Rand's free-market amorality tale, Atlas Shrugged, the Atlas Foundation has spent more than $20 million seeding some 200 libertarian think tanks across the globe as part of its Atlas Network. Much of its money has come from Phillip Morris; foundations tied to the Koch family, oil magnates who are leading funders of denier groups; and the Earhart Foundation, which was created from the profits of the now-defunct White Star Oil Company. Since 1998, ExxonMobil and its foundations have given Atlas nearly $1 million. Between 2002 and 2008, the last year for which tax records are available, Atlas' budget more than tripled, nearly hitting $7 million, with the largest single portion going to grants for "think tanks in different regions of the world."

The Atlas Network overlaps with other international networks that share its climate change skepticism and fossil fuel funders. Foundations linked to ExxonMobil, the Koch family, and other conservative interests have donated more than $1 million to Canada's Fraser Institute, which in turn supports a network of think tanks in 71 countries that promote "economic freedom." Exxon, the Kochs, and other foundations tied to American oil money have also helped bankroll the British-based International Policy Network. In 2007, IPN created the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a group of 59 "independent civil society organizations" from 40 countries, "as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change."

Some US companies and climate denial groups have taken a more targeted approach to funding their foreign allies. In 2004, ExxonMobil gave $80,000 to the Centre for the New Europe-USA for its "global climate change education efforts." In 2007, the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which has received money from Exxon, granted $135,000 to four skeptic think tanks in Canada and New Zealand, followed by $182,000 to foreign groups in 2008, according to tax filings (it didn't say which groups received the money). The Washington, DC-based Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow supports a German affiliate, CFACT-Europe, which put on a conference for climate change skeptics in Berlin earlier this year and protested the climate talks last week. "We want to get rid of this whole climate topic to focus on environmental problems again," CFACT-Europe director Holger Thuss said before marching with about 30 other demonstrators through downtown Copenhagen.

Thuss is reluctant to admit his ties to American donors. "We are not funded by the same people [as CFACT-US]," he said, though CFACT's president told Mother Jones that he gives the European group "a little bit of support when we can." Other leaders of foreign think tanks are similarly dodgy. Emmanuel Martin, who edits the French-language website Un Monde Libre and frequently disputes climate science on his blog for the newspaper Le Monde, at first told me that "Atlas has not given me any orders or any financing on anything to do with the subject" of climate change. When told that an Atlas employee in Washington had described him to me as "our editor" and said that "he gets a lot of support from Atlas," Martin clarified that "Atlas effectively finances a good part of our events" but maintained that his writings are entirely his own.

Yet Martin's Un Monde Libre website is part of the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity, a program that operates websites in 14 languages. (Atlas inherited the program from the libertarian Cato Institute in January.) Martin and other local "intellectual entrepreneurs," as Atlas calls them, translate and syndicate Atlas-generated content, such as a recent interview about Climategate with Cato's resident global warming skeptic. "We provide the literature and ideas," says Global Initiative general director Tom Palmer in a recent video promoting the program. "We go and find the entrepreneurs, and then we can slot them right into all of the flagship programs that have made Atlas so successful."

"There are some [think tanks] that wouldn't be able to survive without us," says Austin Petersen, Atlas' new media program manager. "But they get grants from all kinds of different places, not just from Atlas. There is no way we'd be able to support the whole network by ourselves."

In an email, Teluk of Poland's Globalization Institute writes that direct financial support from American funders "was not crucial" to launching his group. Yet he's clearly benefitted from their support in other ways. Teluk says he was first exposed to free-market think tanks at a conference in Rome hosted by the International Society for Individual Liberty, a libertarian group based in Arizona. He later won a scholarship at George Mason University's Institute for Humane Studies, a haven for climate change deniers that receives funding from the Koch family foundations. In 2003, while working toward his doctorate in philosophy in Krakow, Teluk got a job with TCS Daily, an online opinion journal published by the DCI Group, a PR firm known for its corporate Astroturf campaigns. TCS received $95,000 for "climate change support" from ExxonMobil that year. "Quite frankly, someone that doesn't have their PhD, they aren't a noted academic yet," says Todd Kruse, who hired Teluk while serving as a vice president at DCI, "and getting published on a journal like that gets them noticed and helps them branch out."

Recounting his professional history on the Atlas website this summer, Teluk thanked Kruse for helping to launch his career. He also mentioned current DCI vice president Henrik Rasmussen and TCS founder James K. Glassman, a former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy in the previous administration who now leads the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University. (Neither responded to requests for comment.) Teluk wrote that "it would have been impossible to create" his own organization without them.

In 2005, Teluk founded the Globalization Institute in Gliwice, a small city near the Czech border. Shortly before international climate negotiators gathered in Poland for a final round of pre-Copenhagen negotiations in late 2008, the Globalization Institute published a book in Polish titled The Mythology of the Greenhouse Effect. The book spawned more than a dozen articles in leading Polish media outlets; several were op-eds penned by Teluk under headlines such as "Environmentalists Cause the Greenhouse Effect." More recently, the Globalization Institute and its allies circulated an open letter to the Copenhagen negotiators demanding "Free trade, no climate taxes!" and calling climate change "nothing more than a scientific hypothesis." The institute's science advisory board includes Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation staffers.

Teluk is confident that he's helping keep Poland out of a global suicide pact. "We are one of the most recognized groups opposing 'global warming' hysteria," he writes in an email. "We are present in all mainstream media, dailies, TV, radio and Internet. Decision-makers read our reports, books and comments." He adds: "There is no scientific evidence that current global warming is caused by humans. CO2 is a gas of life, not a poison. We believe that a movement that calls a gas of life 'a poison' is a movement against human life."

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation has supported more than 30 foreign think tanks that espouse skepticism about the science of climate change. Groups in this list promote climate change skepticism or are members of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, which was organized "as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change."

Argentina: La Fundación Atlas 1853

Australia: Institute of Public Affairs; Centre for Independent Studies

Brazil: Instituto Liberdade

Bulgaria: Institute for Market Economics

Burkina Faso: Le Centre des Affaires Humaines

Canada: Frontier Centre for Public Policy

China: Cathay Institute for Public Affairs

Chile: Libertad y Desarrollo

Costa Rica: Asociación de Consumidores Libres

Czech Republic: Liberální Institut

Denmark: Center for Political Studies

Ecuador: Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Política

Georgia: New Economic School

Ghana: IMANI Center for Policy and Education

Honduras: Instituto Veritas

Hong Kong: Lion Rock Institute

India: Liberty Institute

Israel: Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies

Italy: Instituto Bruno Leoni

Lithuania: Lithuanian Free Market Institute

Nigeria: Initiative for Public Policy Analysis

Pakistan: Alternate Solutions Institute

Paraguay: Centro Paraguayo Para la Promoción de la Libertad Económica y la Justicia Social

Peru: Instituto de Libre Empresa

Poland: Globalization Institute

Slovakia: Institute of Economic and Social Studies

South Africa: Free Market Foundation

Switzerland: Liberales Institut

Turkey: Association for Liberal Thinking

Venezuela: Centro de Divulgación de Conocimiento Económico Para la Libertad

Mother Jones reporter Kate Sheppard contributed reporting to this story.

iccc 2010

 2010 cosponsors:

African Centre for Advocacy and

Human Development - Nigeria

Alternate Solutions Institute -

Pakistan

American Conservative Union

American Policy Center

Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Tax Reform

Atlas Economic Research

Foundation

Australian Libertarian Society -

Australia

Austrian Economics Center -

Austria

Ayn Rand Center

for Individual Rights

Carbon Sense Coalition - Australia

Cascade Policy Institute

Cathay Institute

for Public Affairs - China

Center for the Defense

of Free Enterprise

Center for the Study of Carbon

Dioxide and Global Change

Centro de Investigaciones

de Instituciones y Mercados

de Argentina - Argentina

Citizens Alliance

for Responsible Energy

Climate Sceptics Party - Australia

Climate Science

Coalition of America

Committee For

a Constructive Tomorrow

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Cornwall Alliance for the

Stewardship of Creation

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness

European Coalition for Economic

Growth - Austria

Europäisches Institut für Klima und

Energie - Germany

Foundation for Economic Thinking

Free To Choose Network

Freedom Foundation of Minnesota

FreedomWorks

Frontier Centre for Public Policy -

Canada

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Hayek Institut - Austria

Hispanic Leadership Fund

Iceagenow.com

ICECAP

Illinois Policy Institute

The Independent Institute

Initiative for

Public Policy Analysis - Nigeria

Institute for Free Enterprise -

Germany

Institute of Public Affairs - Australia

Instituto Juan de Mariana - Spain

Instituto Liberdade - Brazil

Instituto De Libre Empresa - Peru

International Climate Science

Coalition - Australia

Istituto Bruno Leoni - Italy

Junkscience.com

The Lavoisier Group - Australia

The Leadership Institute

Liberales Institut - Switzerland

Liberty Institute - India

Lincoln Legal Foundation

John Locke Foundation

Mannkal Economic Education

Foundation - Australia

George C. Marshall Institute

Media Research Center

Minimal Government Thinkers, Inc.

• Philippines

National Center for

Public Policy Research

New Zealand Climate Science

Coalition - New Zealand

Oregon Institute of Science

and Medicine

Science & Environmental

Policy Project

Science and Public Policy Institute

Sovereignty International

Tennessee Center for Policy

Research

TS August

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=38&ved=0CGQQFjAHOB4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuhaweb.hartford.edu%2Flgould%2FHeartland%2520Fourth%2520International%2520Conf_FullConferenceProgram.pdf&ei=jOoFUOeCBKu62gX0_oTPBQ&usg=AFQjCNFbk6NvMYX3dlO_kLjKucIbDbKNPg