Royal Society

led to Exxon having to dump CEI

desmog uk tag: https://www.desmog.co.uk/directory/vocabulary/765

===

API wm o'keefe tried to get ward fired?!

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/exxon-sowed-doubt-about-climate-science-for-decades-by-stressing-uncertainty/

see below

...The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science,harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]

The Society's communications manager Bob Ward reminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

The Royal Society said it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but "we do have concerns aboutExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change."

Ward said Exxon was funding at least 39 organizations "featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science on climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge."

...

---

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2006/royal-society-exxonmobil/

ref

4 September 2006

The Society welcomes open debate, underpinned by sound science, on the subject of climate change. In September 2006, the Royal Society wrote to ExxonMobil to express concern that some of its corporate publications were presenting a misleading view of the scientific evidence about climate change and were over-emphasising uncertainties about what we do and don't know. This letter followed a meeting which had taken place at the request of ExxonMobil where the Society raised concerns about Exxon's position on climate change and the company's funding of lobby groups that misrepresented the science. At the meeting ExxonMobil indicated that it intended to stop funding these organisations. The letter asked for clarification as to when the company would carry out this pledge. Although we have exchanged further letters with ExxonMobil, it has still not addressed this issue.

Downloads

Letter from the Royal Society to ExxonMobil no cut paste to nick thomas esso uk reply to BS?

In, particular I was very surprised to read the following passage...

https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2006/8257.pdf

PDF, 597.0KB

Letter from ExxonMobil to the Royal Society ken cohen to Rees no cut paste

complex and varying opinions exist...

https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2006/8257-Reply.pdf

PDF, 1.4MB

As the UK's national academy of science, the Royal Society has a responsibility to speak out when scientific evidence is misrepresented. We will continue to do this on climate change and on other issues.

It is essential that the scientific evidence on climate change is accurately represented so that policymakers, industry, the public and other stakeholders can make informed decisions about what actions to take.

In particular, it is important to note that:

The Royal Society's objective is to promote debate on climate change and to ensure that it is informed by sound science; it is not our intention to stifle debate.

The Society has never objected to the funding of scientific research by ExxonMobil. We actively promote scientific research that seeks to improve our understanding of climate change.

We do have concerns about ExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change.

1962 ALUM

The Looming Climate Crisis

By Chip Neville

https://yale1962.org/speakout/The-Looming-Climate-Crisis.html#chap-VIII

Part II. Politicians, scientists, and think tanks.

How a small group of conservative think tanks and obstructionist scientists, supported by the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, have successfully delayed action on climate change for years.

Chapter VII. The political global warming debate.

Taking action against global warming would be an open and shut case, one would think, but nothing could be farther from the truth politically. Despite the fact that SCIENTIFICALLY the case is open and shut, we are now engaged in a bitter and divisive POLITICAL debate on curtailing global warming. To see why, we must look at who has much to lose if we radically change the way we produce energy in this country and the world. (Not if we radically change our way of life -- I am certainly not advocating that -- but if we radically change the way we produce energy.) As radical changes typically involve action by the Federal Government as well as private industry, we must also look at who is ideologically opposed to government regulation and intervention in the market place.

In his Technology Review article, Bill Gates says that to raise an extra 11 billion in R&D funds for energy research, "you'd only have to tax energy 1 percent."[41] If we multiply 11 billion by 100 (because 1% is 1/100) we find that the total market for energy in the United States comes to 1.1 TRILLION dollars. That's not chump change even for multi-billion dollar corporations.[42] 80% of our energy in the U.S. comes from coal, oil, and natural gas, and while this figure represents actual energy produced rather than dollars expended, it indicates that a drastic change in the way we produce our energy stands to cost the coal, oil, and natural gas companies around 80% of that 1.1 TRILLION dollars. And that's just in the U.S. alone. No wonder the fossil fuel industry is unenthusiastic about meeting the challenge of climate change.

[SMOKING GUN]

Conservative commentators like to point to left wing paranoid conspiracy theories when people talk about concerted efforts by the fossil fuel industry to spread disinformation about the threat of climate change, but unfortunately there is DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE of just such efforts dating from the first days of the political global warming debate. In 1998, as the New York Times reported:

"Industry opponents of a treaty to fight global warming have drafted an ambitious proposal to spend millions of dollars to convince the public that the environmental accord is based on shaky science."

"Among their ideas is a campaign to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun's heat near Earth."

"An informal group of people working for big oil companies, trade associations and conservative policy research organizations that oppose the treaty have been meeting recently at the Washington office of the American Petroleum Institute to put the plan together."[43]

The Times report goes on to list Exxon (now ExxonMobil), Chevron, the Southern Company, as well as The George C. Marshall Institute and The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (now The Advancement of Sound Science Center or TASSC) as participants, in addition, of course, to the American Petroleum Institute where the participants met. The group planned to spend $5 million over two years to, in the words of the Petroleum Institute memo on which the report was based, "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences." The memo also called for $600,000 to be to be spent on 20 or so "respected climate scientists," recruited "to inject credible science and scientific accountability into the global climate debate, thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'." This campaign was to be directed at science writers, editors, columnists and television network correspondents.[44]

Public exposure of the plan seems to have caused it to be abandoned, but the strategy outlined in the Petroleum Institute memo has continued to be used by the coal and oil companies and their conservative think tank allies to great effect.

Chapter VIII. The Royal Society's "Dear Nick" letter.

The Royal Society, sometimes known as the Royal Society of London, is the oldest and most prestigious scientific body in the world. OnSeptember 4, 2006, in its famous "Dear Nick" letter, it took the unprecedented step of taking ExxonMobil to task for misrepresenting climate science, and for funding groups which mislead the public about climate science and global warming.:{[45]}: The letter was addressed to Nick Thomas, Director, Corporate Affairs, Esso UK Limited, and was signed by Bob Ward, Senior Manager, Policy Communication for the Royal Society. The letter is quite interesting for what it reveals about ExxonMobil's tactics at the time, and is worth quoting almost in full:

"Dear Nick"

"Thank-you for your recent letter and accompanying copies of the 2005 ExxonMobil 'Corporate Citizenship Report' and the 'UK and Ireland Corporate Citizenship' brochure. I have read both with interest, but I am writing to express my disappointment at the inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change that these documents present."

"In particular, I was very surprised to read the following passage from the section on Environmental performance under the sub-heading of 'Uncertainty and risk' (p.23 in the 'Corporate Citizenship Report':"

'While assessments such as those of the IPCC have expressed growing confidence that recent warming can be attributed to increases in greenhouse gases, these conclusions rely on expert judgement rather than objective, reproducible statistical methods. Taken together, gaps in the scientific basis for theoretical climate models and the interplay of significant natural variability make it very difficult to determine objectively the extent to which recent climate changes might be the result of human actions.'

"As I mentioned in July, these statements are very misleading. The 'expert judgement' of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was actually based on objective and quantitative analyses and methods, including advanced statistical appraisals, which carefully accounted for the interplay of natural variability, and which have been independently reproduced."

"Furthermore, these statements in your documents are not consistent with the scientific literature that has been published on this issue. ..."

"At our meeting in July, I also told you of my concerns about the support ExxonMobil has been giving to organizations that have been misinforming the public about the science of climate change. ..."

"I have carried out an ad hoc survey on the websites of organizations that are listed in the ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report for 'public information and policy research', which is published on your website. Of those organizations whose websites feature information about climate change, I found that 25 offered views that are consistent with the scientific literature.

However, some 39 organizations were featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science of climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge, or by conveying a misleading impression of the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change. My analysis indicates that ExxonMobil last year provided more than 2.9 million to organizations in the United States which misinformed the public about climate change through their websites. ..."

"Yours sincerely"

"Bob Ward"

"Senior Manager, Policy Communication"

This letter reveals that as late as 2006, ExxonMobil was still following the strategy laid out in the American Petroleum Institute memo of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'" in regard to global warming and climate change. It reveals that ExxonMobil was working through a variety of organizations "which misinformed the public about climate change," and it reveals that ExxonMobil was supporting these organizations by helping fund them to the tune of$2.9 million for the single year 2005.

Of course, companies have the right to get their message out, but note that ExxonMobil was playing both ends against the middle: it also featured links to the websites of 25 organizations that "offered views that are consistent with the scientific literature." In this way, ExxonMobil could give the appearance of impartiality in a scientific debate which was still undecided. Of course the debate had long been OVERWHELMINGLY DECIDED in favor of anthropogenic global warming with serious future consequences, but ExxonMobil's support strategy was cleverly designed to undermine that proposition.

ExxonMobil and other corporations fighting environmental progress have got a very good return for their dollars. ExxonMobil spent a mere $2.9 million on various organizations fighting action on climate change in 2005 according to the Royal Society, and the entire budget of the conservative Heartland Institute for 2010 was a mere $4.4 million according to a recent article in the conservative but extremely well written Weekly Standard. But this same article in The Weekly Standard points out that the Natural Resources Defense Council took in $99 million in 2010.[46] The highly successful corporate campaign to delay action to stop climate change has been one of the most successful examples of asymmetric warfare on record. Unfortunately, it may also have jeopardized the future of our Republic and our entire civilization.

2001

Conclusions[

Working Group I[

The key conclusions of Working Group I (The Scientific Basis, Summary for Policymakers, in IPCC AR3 WG1 2001) were:

An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system (The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6 °C; Temperatures have risen during the past four decades in the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere; Snow cover and ice extent have decreased)
Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate (Anthropogenic aerosols (i.e., human emitted aerosols) are short-lived and mostly produce negative radiative forcing; Natural factors have made small contributions to radiative forcing over the past century)
Confidence in the ability of models to project future climate has increased(Complex physically based climate models are required to provide detailed estimates of feedbacks and of regional features. Such models cannot yet simulate all aspects of climate (e.g., they still cannot account fully for the observed trend in the surface-troposphere temperature difference since 1979) and there are particular uncertainties associated with clouds and their interaction with radiation and aerosols. Nevertheless, confidence in the ability of these models to provide useful projections of future climate has improved due to their demonstrated performance on a range of space and time-scales [3].)
There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities
Human influences will continue to change atmospheric composition throughout the 21st century
Global average temperature and sea level are projected to rise under all IPCC SRES scenarios.

The TAR estimate for the climate sensitivity is 1.5 to 4.5 °C; and the average surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees over the period 1990 to 2100, and the sea level is projected to rise by 0.1 to 0.9 metres over the same period. The wide range in projections is based upon several different scenarios that assume different levels of future CO_2 emissions(see the section below on Projections in the TAR).

Synthesis Report[

The TAR Synthesis Report includes a summary of the TAR's main findings and uncertainties.^[2]"Robust findings" of the TAR include:^[2]

Observed warming of the Earth's surface, attribution of observed warming to human activities, projected increases in future global mean temperature, rising sea levels, and increased frequency of heat waves.
Future warming will have both beneficial and adverse effects, but for higher levels of warming, adverse effects will predominate.
Developing countries and poor persons are most vulnerable to climate change.

===

cei ebell attack sir david king major sci advisor, PO'd parliament

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/**2007/05/**skeptic200705

... nearly every week brings a new alarm about global warming, Ebell stays proudly resolute—rather like George W. Bush rationalizing each new setback in Iraq. Only, with global warming, even the Bush administration is now embracing the latest I.P.C.C. report, in principle at least, and trying to make a case that Bush is now a convert to the reality of the threat. With warming, as with Iraq, alarm is growing among U.S. lawmakers:

{. Recently, West Virginia Democratic senator John D. Rockefeller IV,who has championed the coal industry in his state for 30 years, teamed up with Maine Republican senator Olympia Snoweto write a quietly impassioned letter to ExxonMobil's new chairman and C.E.O., Rex W. Tillerson. The senators asked Tillerson to have ExxonMobil cease and desist from its global-warming-denial campaign}:. They are, they wrote, "persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally." In particular, they wrote, "We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute are true."

Myron Ebell is shocked—shocked—and, of course, delighted. To be singled out among the three dozen ExxonMobil front groups is quite an honor. "Obviously it helps us with our media and general visibility," he acknowledges. In fact, ExxonMobil stopped funding C.E.I. last year. The company has also indicated to the Royal Society, Britain's prestigious academy of science, that it is reviewing the funding of all outside groups, but insists this is an annual process.

The scope of that edict may not be clear until early 2008, when the company publishes its 2007 Worldwide Giving Report. Already, though, Ebell is portraying C.E.I. as "a little flyspeck" up against the awesome clout of the competition. "The major environmental groups in this country have budgets of collectively over $1 billion a year," he says. "Our budget is $3.7 million a year, of which only about a quarter goes to global warming. Add up the other [global-warming denier] groups and maybe you can get to $10 million."....

===

2007 bbc 4 gt GW swindle:

Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the film. In it, :{Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:

Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future.^[26]

===

p 156 mashey 2012

Z.2007.02.8 Heartland on Monckton Letter

British Lord Demands End to Climate Science Censorship

“Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley and a member of the

Upper House of the British legislature, 763 has sent a letter to Sens. Olympia

Snowe (R-ME) and John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)excoriating them for

attempting to strong-arm ExxonMobil into cutting off support for public interest

groups that question global warming alarmism. …

Monckton, a former science and technology advisor764 to British Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher, .. Monckton’s open letter, edited for length, appears below.

…”

“You commend Britain’s Royal Society [765]

, once a learned body and now a mere

Left-leaning political pressure-group, …

Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the

United Kingdom legislature,…”

Heartland edited the original [766] document, deleting the following section

quite relevant to the topics discussed in this report:

“In the circumstances, your comparison of Exxon’s funding of sceptical

scientists and groups with the former antics of the tobacco industry is

unjustifiable and unworthy of any credible elected representatives. Either

withdraw that monstrous comparison forthwith, or resign so as not to pollute the

office you hold.”

Monckton has been discredited numerous times, [p? 767] but Heartland promotes

him as a “global warming expert” to their readership.

This was apparently insufficient as seen in next article.

763 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Br

enchley Monckton has never been a member of the House of Lords.

764 There is no evidence of this claim, and much otherwise.

765 The RS is the oldest science society in the world. Monckton is a nonscientist.

766 www.ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf p.6

767 scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/monckton_debunks_monckton.php

www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-tries-to-censor-john-abraham.html

yyy.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jul/14/monckton-johnabraham

---

...

p 194

Z.2010.09-10 2 Thomas Cheplick

Royal Society Reexamines Global Warming Position.931

“The Royal Society of Great Britain, generally considered the nation’s most

prestigious scientific society, has announced it will conduct a review of a

previous public statement supporting the claims of global warming alarmists.

That statement had declared the “debate on climate change is over” and the

planet is becoming disastrously warmer due to human emissions of carbon

dioxide. The Royal Society is reexamining its position after a growing number of

member scientists expressed disagreement with the position of its leadership.

…”

932

“Professor Bob Carter of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at

James Cook University in Queensland, Australia finds the Royal Society’s

backtracking on global warming alarmism surprising, but recognizes it shouldn’t

be.”

933

931 royalsociety.org/policy/climate-change/reports-statements The PDF:

“There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century

has been caused largely by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels and

changes in land use, including agriculture and deforestation.”

Does Cheplick have the slightest relevant experience for this topic?

932 Any learned society has a small percentage who manage to let ideology

override science [MAS2009] and Z.2010.08-16 and complain. See RS section:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

In this case, it was a few RS retirees with no climate expertise (private

communication.) Most science societies are expected to have position statements

on topics within their expertise and most update them periodically. One might

think from Cheplick’s wording that the RS used “alarmists.” They did not.

933 Carter is Adjunct Professorial Research Fellow at James Cook U, Townsville:

www.jcu.edu.au/ees/staff/az/JCUDEV_014954.html

He is a marine geologist who writes widely about climate, just not credibly in

peer-reviewed science journals. He is involved in various free-market and climate

anti-science activities, including those of Heartland.

www.desmogblog.com/rm-bob-carter; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter

Lord May’s C.V. has Princeton, Imperial College, Oxford, 3 of the world’s best:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_May,_Baron_May_of_Oxford

By comparison, Carter’s academic credentials are weak, and few would have ever

heard of him except for his active campaign against mainstream science and thus

acting a reliable source of quotes. I’ve lectured for JCU Townsville, and it

seemed a decent middling school, but it is not Princeton, Imperial College or

Oxford (where I’ve lectured, as well.) For Australian university rankings, see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Australia

---

“Carter noted Lord Robert May, who was president of the society when its

statement was issued, is a vocal proponent of global warming alarmism. Now

that May is no longer president of the society, its leadership is listening more to

the member scientists, who are much more skeptical of alarmist claims than May

was.”

‘Taken over by climate zealot’ IRS-3E

Carter did not mince words in describing May’s influence on the Royal Society’s

global warming position in overcoming the differing opinion of member

scientists. “Leadership of the society was taken over by an opinionated

Australian, climate-zealot President Robert May, who believes it is the role of

scientific societies to provide political advice,” said Carter. The society’s

decision to reexamine its position “is also almost certainly[the result of] a large

majority of reputable scientists who have long since seen through the [global

warming] scam,” he added.’

‘“The Royal Society matter was only newsworthy because as a society we are so

fixated on authority figures, and the Royal Society is seen as the impeccable

authority figure. In actuality, over the last 20 years the Royal Society has

transmuted from an impartial science academy into a politically active agency, as

has the National Academy of Sciences[in the United States],” said Carter.’

934

‘Authorities Losing credibility

Professor Thomas Derr935 of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts says

the Royal Society hurt its prestigious reputation by so ardently embracing a

theory unsupported by concrete evidence. By declaring the scientifically

controversial theory as fact, the society diminished its reputation as an objective

scientific organization, Derr says. Even so, Derr suspects the Royal Society will

not fully recant its mistake.

“For some time the Royal Society, whose pride is in open inquiry and scientific

doubt, has been under fire for touting the anthropogenic global warming thesis

without any care for proper scientific method—in effect trashing its heritage,”

said Derr. “The recent hints of remorse are worth investigation, but don’t expect

anything like recantation. Human nature doesn’t allow that.”

Derr noted the desire for grant money to study climate change usually acts as a

deterrent to these “in-the-field” scientists being skeptical of the global warming

theory.

“The pursuit of grants and prestige does not favor skepticism. For a while people

noted that biologists who wanted research grants always stuck into their project

934 After getting a degree from Cambridge, Carter’s career has been spent in New

Zealand and Australia, not the UK or US, but freelance writer Cheplick relies on

him. Then he shifts to another person of dubious relevance.

935 Derr is a Professor Emeritus of Religion and Biblical Literature, which

Cheplick failed to note. Derr is included in §X.

...

proposal the hope that it might help cancer research, even if that was pretty

marginal, [but it] helped to get approval. It’s the same thing now for global

warming: It is the cause that produces the money,” Derr explained.’

“Michaels Predicts Whitewash

Patrick Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC,

says the Royal Society has too much already invested in global warming

alarmism to back down substantially from its prior statement. While finding it

necessary to reexamine its prior statement in light of a backlash from member

scientists, the organization’s leadership will inevitably affirm its prior statement

after making a few tweaks here and there, he says.

The Royal Society’s review of its public statements will likely be a whitewash,

says Michaels, just as reviews by Penn State University and the U.K.’s East

Anglia University whitewashed misconduct perpetrated by its faculty in the

Climategate scandal.”

936

Myron Ebell, CEI 06:03

So let me just say, I want to point out thatthese subpoenas issued by Attorney General Schneiderman in New York, by the Attorney General in the Virgin Islands Claude Walker and by the Attorney General of Massachusetts Maura Healey and I think by Kamala Harris in California. These are not by any means the start of the story of trying to silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism in energy integration and policies. Nor should this be taken out of the context of what the left is doing to try and silence and defund all types of groups on all sorts of issues. Let me just give you one example of the background because it involves CEI.

In 2006, ExxonMobil was first targeted. ExxonMobil posts all of their contributions to nonprofit groups on their website. So in 2006 after Lee Raymond retired and was replaced by Rex Tillerson, the environmental left pounced, first the Royal Society in London, they don’t have legal authority but they have a huge amount of intellectual authority. At first, they demanded that ExxonMobil stop funding CEI. And when ExxonMobil announced they would agree to do that, they then said, well now they have to stop funding all the other groups they fund.

The same thing happened later that year with Senators Olympia Snowe, a Republican, and a Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, said, well we’re glad you stopped funding CEI, if that is indeed true, but now you have to stop funding all the other groups. [logic just flipped?] Now, Exxon’s annual total was about 2.5 million dollars. 2.5 million dollars to 20 some groups.CEI is the leader of the opposition, it was the largest recipient but there were many smaller groups and bigger groups that got funding. 2.5 million dollars was something that the left thought was worth fighting over.

Myron Ebell, CEI 08:30

===

Which of these three …

Exxon has hit back at the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific organization. A few days ago news broke that the RS had sent Exxon a letter in September scolding it for funding organizations that mislead the public on global warming. This was a highly unusual thing for any august scientific body to do, but those familiar with the traditionally staid RS were particularly surprised.

Exxon accuses the RS of "inaccurately and unfairly" depicting it as an agent of scientific misinformation on global warming. That's horsesh*t. As anyone who's read Chris Mooney's definitive "Some Like It Hot" knows, the characterization is entirely accurate.

The more interesting question has to do with Exxon's relationship to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, source of this Spring's delightfully and unintentionally hilarious "CO2 ... we call it life" ads. Those ads kicked up a lot of dust, and since then Exxon reps have privately told a number of people -- including Bob Ward at the RS -- that it is no longer funding CEI.

David Roberts

===

ref

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/2210**2015**/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty

as he wrapped up nine years as the federal government's chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science.

His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller's legal counsel a century earlier. "What I rather imagine he would say is that you are on the wrong side of history, and you need to find a way to change your position," he wrote.

Addressed to chairman Lee Raymond on the letterhead of the United States Global Change Research Program, :{his}::{ September 2002 letter}: was not just forceful, but unusually personal.

No wonder: in the opening days of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, Exxon's chief lobbyist had written the new head of the White House environmental council demanding that MacCracken be fired for "political and scientific bias."

Exxon was also attacking other officials in the U.S. government and at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), MacCracken wrote, interfering with their work behind the scenes and distorting it in public.

Exxon wanted scientists who disputed the mainstream science on climate change to oversee Washington's work with the IPCC, the authoritative body that defines the scientific consensus on global warming, documents written by an Exxon lobbyist and one of its scientists show. The company persuaded the White House to block the reappointment of the IPCC chairman,[ROBERT ----] a World Bank scientist. Exxon's top climate researcher, Brian Flannery, was pushing the White House for a wholesale revision of federal climate science. The company wanted a new strategy to focus on the uncertainties.

MacCracken had a long history of collaboration with Exxon researchers. He knew that during the 1970s and 1980s, well before the general public understood the risks of global warming, the company's researchers had worked at the cutting edge of climate change science. He had edited and even co-authored some of their reports. So he found it galling that Exxon was now leading a concerted effort to sow confusionabout fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect."To call ExxonMobil's position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement," MacCracken wrote. "To be in opposition to the key scientific findings is rather appalling for such an established and scientific organization."

Exxon had turned a colleague into its enemy.

It was a vivid example of Exxon's undermining of mainstream science and embrace of denial and misinformation, which became most pronounced after President George W. Bush took office. The campaign climaxed when Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.Taking the U.S. out of the international climate change treaty was Exxon's key goal, and the reason for its persistent emphasis on the uncertainty of climate science.

This in-depth series by InsideClimate News has explored Exxon's early engagement with climate research more than 35 years ago – and its subsequent use of scientific uncertainty as a shield against forceful action on global warming. The series is based on Exxon documents, interviews, and other evidence from an eight-month investigation.

"What happened was an incredible disconnect in people trained in physical science and engineering," recalled Martin Hoffert, a New York University professor who collaborated with Exxon's team as its early computer modeling confirmed the emerging scientific consensus on global warming. "It's an untold story of how we got to the point where climate change has become a threat to the world."

The Uncertainty Agenda

As the Bush-Cheney administration arrived in the White House in 2001, ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) now had partners for a climate uncertainty strategy.

Just weeks after Bush was sworn in, Exxon's top lobbyist Randy Randol sent the White House a memo complaining that "Clinton/Gore carry-overs with aggressive agendas" were still playing a role at the IPCC as it prepared its next assessment of the climate science consensus.

MacCracken and three colleagues should be replaced, or at least kept out of "any decisional activities," he wrote. Meanwhile, U.S. input to the IPCC should be delayed.

Further, two scientists highly critical of the prevailing consensus should be enlisted: John Christy of the University of Alabama should take the science lead and Richard Lindzen of MIT should review U.S. submissions to the IPCC.

Exxon had been circulating a proposal to fundamentally overhaul MacCracken's global change research program, by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science.

The timing was not coincidental because the administration, as required by law, was about to lay out a new federal climate research strategy. Exxon and its allies wanted the work done during the Clinton-Gore years to be marginalized.

In March 2002, Flannery, Exxon's science strategy and programs manager, contacted John H. Marburger, the president's incoming assistant for science and technology, to pitch the company's favored approach of emphasizing the uncertainty. Earlier discussions, he asserted, "have not sought to place the uncertainty in the context of why it is important to public policy."

Exxon's position paper, attached to his letter, took a dig at the work of the IPCC.

"A major frustration to many is the all-too-apparent bias of IPCC to downplay the significance of scientific uncertainty and gaps," the memo said.

A Seat at the Table

Exxon had not always been so at odds with the prevailing science.

Since the late 1970s, Exxon scientists had been telling top executives that the most likely cause of climate change was carbon pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels, and that it was important to get a grip on the problem quickly. Exxon Research & Engineering had launched innovative ocean research from aboard the company's biggest supertanker, the Esso Atlantic.ER&E's modeling experts, by the early 1980s, had confirmed the consensus among outside scientists about the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

"The facts are that we identified the potential risks of climate change and have taken the issue very seriously," said Ken Cohen, Exxon's vice president of public and government affairs, in a press release on October 21 addressing the ICN reports. "We embarked on decades of research in collaboration with many parties."

Exxon has declined to answer specific questions from InsideClimate News.

[grfx dialogue]

A 1980 memo proposed an ambitious public-relations plan aimed at "achieving national recognition of our CO2 Greenhouse research program."

"It is significant to Exxon since future public decisions aimed at controlling the build-up of atmospheric CO2 could impose limits on fossil fuel combustion," said the memo. "It is significant to all humanity since, although the CO2 Greenhouse Effect is not today widely perceived as a threat, the popular media are giving increased attention to doom-saying theories about dramatic climate changes and melting polar icecaps."

Most of all, Exxon wanted a seat at the policy-making table, and the credibility of its research had earned that. In 1979, David Slade, manager of carbon dioxide research at the Energy Department, called it "a model for research contributions from the corporate sector."

Sen. Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, invited Henry Shaw, an early Exxon scientist, to join the policy deliberations. He was the only industry representative invited to an October 1980 conference of the National Commission on Air Quality, newly set up by Congress, to discuss "whether potential consequences of increased carbon dioxide levels warrant development of policies to mitigate adverse effects."

Shaw's bosses agreed that he should attend, "both to be informed as to what actions or proposals that result and to bring objective thinking and information to the meeting," Harold Weinberg, Shaw's boss in Exxon Research and Engineering, wrote in a memo. But first, he said, Shaw needed to be briefed by public affairs executives "on possible hidden agenda and individual biases of which we may not already be aware."

When Shaw gave feedback to the commission in December, he noted the uncertainties about carbon dioxide and climate change.At the same time, he wrote that it was "important" to place CO2 on the nation's public policy agenda,as the commission was recommending, and supported the panel's suggestion that it was "timely to consider ways of reducing CO2 emissions now."

He also backed a recommendation that the U.S. "seek to develop discussions on national and international policies."

In late spring of 1981, Flannery was one of the few industry representatives at a large gathering of accomplished scientists at Harper's Ferry, W. Va., for a Department of Energy "Workshop on First Detection of Carbon Dioxide Effects." He sat on a panel with NASA's James Hansen, who was about to publish a landmark study in Science magazine warning of significant warming even if controls were placed on carbon emissions.

The workshop's proceedings would declare that "scientists are agreed" that carbon dioxide was building up in the atmosphere, that the effects "are well known" and "will bring about an increase in the mean global temperature," and that it is "commonly accepted" that warming "will affect the biosphere through a change in climate."

Working with Hoffert, Flannery wrote a highly technical 50-page chapter to a 1985 Energy Department report. Their modeling projected up to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the 21st century unless emissions of greenhouse gases were curtailed.[grfx]

the influential government report said the models provided a "firm basis" for this kind of projection, and that "we are already committed to some of this warming as a result of emissions over the last several decades."

The Harper's Ferry conference was chaired by MacCracken; he also edited the warming report. He recalled recently that "the underlying push was for a level of understanding that was convincing enough to let policymakers become aware of what the issue was that society faced."

As Hoffert put it in a recent interview, in those days at Exxon "there were no divisions, no agendas. We were coming together as scientists to address issues of vital importance to the world."

Fork in the Road

In 1988, James Hansen told Congress that there was now enough warming to declare that the greenhouse effect had arrived. Also that year, the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It was a moment that Exxon's climate experts had been forecasting for a decade: that as warming became unmistakable, governments would move to control it.

Looking backward, one Exxon document from the early 1990s reflects a trail of research into global warming stretching back "long before the issue achieved its current prominence."

An internal compendium of the company's environmental record, on file in the official ExxonMobil historical archives at the University of Texas-Austin, acknowledged the uncertainties that have always faced climate researchers, but it didn't downplay the risks.

"Fossil fuel use dominates as the source of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide," said one section of the encyclopedic review. "Current scientific understanding demonstrates the potential for climate change to produce serious impacts."

"For Exxon and the petroleum industry, potential enhancement of the greenhouse effect and the possibility of adverse climate are of particular and fundamental concern," it said.

Drilling for Uncertainty

The IPCC published its first report in 1990. Despite the scientific gaps, the panel warned that unrestrained emissions from burning fossil fuels would surely warm the planet in the century ahead. The conclusion, the IPCC said after intense deliberations, was "certain." It prescribed deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off a crisis in the coming decades.

At this crucial juncture, Exxon pivoted toward uncertainty and away from the global scientific consensus.

At the IPCC's final session to draft its summary for policymakers, Exxon's Flannery was in the room as an observer. He took the microphone to challenge both the certainty and the remedy. None of the other scientists agreed with Flannery, and the IPCC brushed off Exxon's advice to water down the report, according to Jeremy Leggett's eyewitness account in his book, The Carbon War.

At a conference in June 1991, MacCracken joined a panel chaired by Flannery to work together on a climate change project involving geo-engineering.

The contact, according to MacCracken, led to an unexpected solicitation from the oil lobby in Washington. Will Ollison, a science adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, in a fax marked urgent, asked MacCracken, then at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to write a paper highlighting the scientific uncertainties surrounding global warming.

The API, where Exxon held enormous sway, wanted him to write up the complex nuances in plain English – with an emphasis on the unknown, not the known.

Ollison said the IPCC's 1990 report "may not have adequately addressed alternative views."

"A review of these alternative projections would be useful in illustrating the uncertainties inherent in the 'consensus' views expressed in the IPCC report," Ollison wrote.

MacCracken rejected the task as "fruitless."

"I would caution you about too readily accepting whatever the naysayers put forth as a means of achieving balance," MacCracken wrote back.

Flannery, for his part, continued to emphasize uncertainty. And so didExxon's new chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, who spoke of it repeatedly in public.

"Currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate," Raymond claimed in a speech delivered in 1996 to the Economic Club of Detroit.

"Many people, politicians and the public alike, believe that global warming is a rock-solid certainty," he said the next year in a speech in Beijing."But it's not."

Addressing the World Petroleum Congress, which was meeting just before the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, Raymond even disputed that the planet was warming at all. "The earth is cooler today than it was 20 years ago," he said.

That was false. Authoritative climate agencies declared 1997 the warmest year ever measured. Decade by decade, the warming has continued, in line with the climate models.

But Raymond, turning his back on Exxon researchers and their state-of-the-art work, mocked those climate models.

"1990's models were predicting temperature increases of two to five degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Last year's models say one to three degrees. Where to next year?"

"It is highly unlikely," he said, "that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."

The Doubt Industry

Exxon and its allies had been working hard to spread this dilatory message.

First, they set up the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a lobbying partnership of leading oil and automobile companies dedicated to defeating controls on carbon pollution.

"As major corporations with a high level of internal scientific and technical expertise, they were aware of and in a position to understand the available scientific data," recounts an essay on corporate responsibility for climate change published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.

[grfx]

"From 1989 to 2002, the GCC led an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign aimed at achieving these goals by sowing doubt about the integrity of the IPCC and the scientific evidence that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels drive global warming," says the article, by Harvard climate science historian Naomi Oreskes and two co-authors.

Then, in 1998 Exxon also helped create the Global Climate Science Team, an effort involving Randy Randol, the company's top lobbyist, and Joe Walker, a public relations representative for API.

Their memo, leaked to The New York Times, asserted that it is "not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it." Opponents of the Kyoto treaty, it complained, "have done little to build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty."

The memo declared: "Victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science," and when "recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom.'"

Exxon wholeheartedly embraced that theme. For example, an advertisement called "Unsettled Science" that ran in major papers in the spring of 2000, prompted one scientist to complain that it had distorted his work by suggesting it supported the notion that global warming was just a natural cycle. "It's a shame," Lloyd Keigwin later told the Wall Street Journal. "The implication is that these data show that we don't need to worry about global warming."

Another ad, one of a series placed in The New York Times, cast aspersions on scientists who "believe they can predict changes in climate decades from now."

Then, in the heat of the 2000 presidential race between climate champion Al Gore and erstwhile oilman George W. Bush, Exxon placed an ad in the Washington Post accusing MacCracken's office of putting the "political cart before a scientific horse."

Blowing the Whistle

The collaboration between Exxon, its surrogates, and the Bush administration to emphasize uncertainty and stave off action came to light in 2005. A whistleblower named Rick Piltz disclosed that Philip Cooney, an oil lobbyist who had become chief of staff at the White House environmental council, had been heavily editing the work of government researchers. Cooney resigned, and was hired by Exxon.

But the clashes continued between the scientific establishment and Exxon's purveyors of uncertainty.

The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science,harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]

The Society's communications manager Bob Wardreminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

appendix b]

exxon's uncertainty campaign was detailed in three exhaustive reports published in 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project.

At a Congressional hearing in 2007, Harvard scientist James McCarthy, who was a member of the UCS board and the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared: "The Bush administration and a network of Exxon-funded, ExxonMobil funded organizations have sought to distort, manipulate and suppress climate science so as to confuse the American public about the urgency of the global warming problem, and thus, forestall a strong policy response."

===

https://reason.com/2006/09/22/confessions-of-an-alleged-exxo/

no lnx quite long

Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore

Actually no one paid me to be wrong about global warming. Or anything else.

RONALD BAILEY | 9.22.2006

"Exxon Misleads on Climate Change," according to Reuters earlier this week. The story, headlined around the globe, was based on a letter sent by the British Royal Society to the oil giant ExxonMobil accusing it of funding groups that misinform the public about the reality of man-made global warming. The prestigious Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific organization. The letter is from Bob Ward, the Society's senior manager for policy communication. Apparently speaking on behalf of the Society, Ward expresses his "disappointment at the inaccurate and misleading view of climate change" conveyed by an ExxonMobil's 2005 Corporate Citizenship report. Ward also says that he did a quick analysis of public policy organizations listed in ExxonMobil's 2005 Worldwide Corporate Giving report and found that "25 offered views consistent with the scientific literature" whereas Ward says he found 39 groups featuring information that "misrepresented the science of climate change."

It's safe to say that Ward may count the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine and Reason Online as one of the 39 groups that he believes misleads the public on the issue of climate change. If that's the case, then at least some of the information that Ward says "misrepresents" climate change science may be past articles written by me. So the question is: Why did I do it? Did ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond hand me brown paper bags filled with stacks of unmarked bills in the back of taxis while whispering, "Ron, we're counting on your widely read and highly influential articles to help stave off the Green onslaught against our soaring profits"? Or was I a simple-minded dupe, passing along misinformation supplied to me during expensive lunches at the Palm by corrupt scientists who had been paid off by the oil giant? Or perhaps I am just generally skeptical of end-of-the-world scenarios and believe, as Carl Sagan famously did, that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"?

I have been Reason's science correspondent for nearly eight years now. Well before I joined the magazine, I had been reporting and opining on environmental science and policy issues for various publications and as a producer of a number of national PBS television series. As far as I can tell my first published expression of skepticism with regard to catastrophic global warming was in a review of environmentalist Bill McKibben's The End of Nature that I wrote as a staff writer for Forbes magazine in October, 1989 (unfortunately not available online). In that review, I noted that NASA climate modeler James Hansen had testified before Congress a year earlier that he had detected global warming. In my review, I noted, "Hansen is a reputable scientist, but his views are by no means universally accepted." I then quoted a number of climatologists who were skeptical of man-made global warming including MIT's Richard Lindzen and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Andrew Solow. Lindzen told me at the time, "We have no evidence whatsoever that greenhouse warming has begun." (Lindzen is still skeptical of catastrophic man-made global warming.) I would talk with them and many other climate scientists over the next decade and half as I continued to cover this issue.

My next prominent foray into the topic w...

===

icn:

Schneiderman's subpoena of Exxon last year sparked an expanding inquiry by several Democratic attorneys general. A group of them held a press conference along with Gore last week to describe their coordinated actions on climate change, including the inquiries as well as support for the Obama administration's climate agenda. The attorneys general of Massachusetts and California are also investigating Exxon or other fossil fuel interests.

The investigations began after InsideClimate News, and later the Los Angeles Times, as well as other journalists reported on the history of Exxon's emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI.

CEI's general counsel, Sam Kazman, said it was "an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time."

The inquiry's timeframe covers a crucial period beginning in 2000 and 2001, at the start of the Bush-Cheney administration, when lobbyists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies were pressing the new administration to reverse Clinton-Gore policies on global warming, reject the Kyoto Protocol and overhaul government research programs into climate change.

CEI was deeply involved in this campaign, according to multiple sources, including a detailed expose by a whistleblower named Rick Piltz.

For example, CEI filed a lawsuit against both the outgoing Clinton and the incoming Bush administrations, aimed at preventing a significant review of climate science, the 2000 National Climate Assessment, from forming the basis of federal policies and international negotiations. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the CEI had made its point with the Bush administration, which continued to resist the scientific consensus endorsed by the previous administration.

At the time the Bush administration was rewriting federal climate studies, a task carried out by a former oil company lobbyist who moved into the Council on Environmental Quality under Bush, and then went to work for Exxon when his role was publicly disclosed.

Much of the White House's engagement with the energy lobby during the early Bush-Cheney years still remains undisclosed. The administration refused to publish all its communications with the industry during its first year in office, when Vice President Dick Cheney ran an energy policy task force that consulted heavily with the industry behind closed doors.

The Virgin Islands subpoena suggests one way that some new details might be brought to light.

CEI is one of several organizations that have been repeatedly named over the years by those who have criticized Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for financing the climate denial work of third parties. After the Royal Society of the United Kingdom castigated Exxon in 2006 for giving money to groups misrepresenting climate science, Exxon said it had stopped financing the CEI.

===

C.E.I. has become the best known of these global-warming skeptics not just because Ebell is as quotable as he is. Like the hero of Thank You for Smoking, he courts notoriety. He first made the news a few years ago when a Bush White House senior official named Phil Cooney was caught watering down language on global warming in a U.S. government report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell, as an e-mail later showed, advised the once and future oil-industry flack on how to spin the embarrassment.

Not long after, Ebell stirred the wrath of the British Parliament by declaring in a BBC radio interview that the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, had made a "ridiculous claim" on global warming despite knowing "nothing about climate science." The House of Commons proposed a motion to censure Ebell. (The motion never passed, Ebell says wistfully.) Last year, C.E.I. ran a public-service commercial on television about carbon dioxide so cheeky it verged on parody. "They call it pollution," ran the tagline about CO2. "We call it life." Ebell was delighted at the howls it provoked.

According to the government's chief scientist, Sir David King, while the evidence continues to grow, what we really need to see is action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

"Action is affordable, inaction is certainly not," said Sir David at the Greenpeace Business lecture on global warming in London.

As scientists around the world study the changes in our climate going back almost a million years, they confirm what many of us know, climate change is already here.

===

The Foreign Secretary appointed Sir David King as his new permanent Special Representative for Climate Change in September 2013. Sir David was previously the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 – 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute. He also served as the Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford; was Head of the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University 1993-2000 and Master of Downing College at Cambridge 1995 -2000.

Sir David has published over 500 papers on science and policy, for which he has received numerous awards, and holds 22 Honorary Degrees from universities around the world. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991, a Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002 and knighted in 2003, Sir David was also made an Officier of the French Legion d’Honneur’ in 2009, for work which has contributed to responding to the climate and energy challenge.

Special Representative for Climate Change

Special representatives use their expertise to develop a greater coherent effort in making sure that the FCO works closely and effectively with foreign powers.

Professor Sir David King was appointed as the UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change (full-time) in September 2013. Sir David was previously the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 – 2007, working with Prime Ministers Blair and Brown, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute. He also served as the Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford, 2008 – 2012. Some of his other appointments include the Chair of Future Cities Catapult, Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, Senior Scientific Advisor to UBS, and Adviser to President Kagame of Rwanda.

He was born in Durban, South Africa, educated at St John’s College Johannesburg and at Witwatersrand University, and graduated with an Honours degree in Chemistry, 1960, and a PhD, 1963.

He is a physical chemist working in surface science and catalysis. He was the Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of Liverpool, 1974 – 1987, and subsequently the 1920 Professor of Physical Chemistry at Cambridge University, 1987 – 2000, Head of the Department of Chemistry, 1993-2000, and Master of Downing College at Cambridge, 1995 -2000. He has published over 500 papers on surface science and heterogeneous catalysis, and on science and policy, for which he has received many awards, medals etc. including: the Rumford Medal of The Royal Society, 2002; the Linnaeus Medal, Sweden, 2007; the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal, Indian National Science Academy, 2007; the Arthur W. Adamson Award, the ACS, 2009; and the Symons Medal, Association of Commonwealth Universities, 2013. He has received 23 Honorary Degrees from universities around the world.

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991; Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002; knighted in 2003; and made “Officier dans l’ordre national de la Légion d’Honeur” in 2009.

icn road not taken:

Then, in the heat of the 2000 presidential race between climate champion Al Gore and erstwhile oilman George W. Bush, Exxon placed an ad in the Washington Post accusing MacCracken's office of putting the "political cart before a scientific horse."

Blowing the Whistle

But the clashes continued between the scientific establishment and Exxon's purveyors of uncertainty.

The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science, harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20^th century was probably caused by humans.

The Society's communications manager Bob Ward reminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

The Royal Society said it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but "we do have concerns about ExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change."

gwpf attacked attack roy soc: http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/montford-royal_society.pdf

===

yet

http://www.desmog.uk/2016/10/12/world-s-oldest-scientific-academy-royal-society-allow-climate-denying-gwpf-lecture-go-ahead-despite-internal

Royal Society will be going ahead with the controversial Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) annual lecture next week despite internal pressure to cancel the event, DeSmog UK has learned.

The decision to allow the lecture to go forward was made during the Royal Society’s governing council meeting last week where several fellows and associates of the society raised concern over the climate science denying GWPF’s 17 October event.

As DeSmog UK understands, there was a strong sense among many at the meeting that the Royal Society – the world’s oldest scientific academy, founded in 1660 – had made a mistake in accepting the booking for the GWPF’s ‘by invitation only’ lecture to be delivered by Matt Ridley.

However, there was a divergence in opinion on what should be done in response – for example, cancel it or allow it to continue.

Joanna Haigh, Royal Society fellow and council member who attended the meeting, told DeSmog UK: “The Royal Society has decided that cancelling the booking would give the event an unwarranted higher profile.”

She added that “some scientist experts will attend the meeting and keep check on the accuracy of the statements.”

According to a spokesperson for the Royal Society, a range of views were expressed during the meeting, but their position remains unchanged: “The GWPF is one of many organisations who hire space to hold its own events at the Royal Society. There is no suggestion of endorsement by the Royal Society for the views expressed at these events.”

They continued: “The evidence shows us that the earth is warming and that recent warming is largely caused by human activities. Once that is accepted, there is scope for debate on the policy responses and that is the area that the GWPF claims to be interested in.

“If the GWPF uses this opportunity to misrepresent the scientific evidence it would undermine the legitimacy of its views on policy responses to climate change.”

The GWPF, founded by former chancellor and Conservative peer Lord Nigel Lawson, was forced to split its operations in 2014 after a Charity Commission report found its materials lacked balance and “promoted a particular position on global warming.”

And as DeSmog UK understands, it was a commonly held view by everyone who spoke up during last week’s meeting – which was the majority of those who attended – that the GWPF’s activities are reprehensible.

The fact that the climate denial think tank has a few Royal Society fellows in its ranks was also noted.

As Professor Andrew Watson, a Royal Society Fellow and Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Exeter, who is not on the council, previously told DeSmogUK: “I expect the RS agreed to this [booking] because they didn't want to be accused of censorship, but the GWPF is not just interested in hiring a lecture theatre — they are also hiring the brand.”

This isn’t the first time either that a GWPF event has been held at the Royal Society. In 2012, the group’s annual lecture was delivered at the venue by the climate science denying German electric utility executive Fritz Vahrenholt, where he dismissed the role of CO2 in climate change.

But as the Royal Society’s spokesperson said: “The Society has a strong track record of opposing those who cherry-pick or misrepresent evidence when it comes to the science of climate change and indeed we have had robust disagreements with the GWPF in the past.”

In 2013, Royal Society president, professor Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel prize-winning biologist, accused GWPF founder Lord Lawson of cherry-picking global temperature data to argue there had been a global warming “pause”. This misleading claim was then debunked by a fellow of the Royal Society, Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London.

A private briefing was then held between Royal Society scientists, Lawson and other members of the GWPF to discuss the science. However, this quickly erupted into a public row over whether the GWPF had spun the meeting as a publicity coup.

===

psi wacko

31 March 2013

Sir Paul Nurse, President, The Royal Society

6-9 Carlton House Terrace

London SW1Y 5AG

Dear Sir Paul Nurse,

Your reply to Lord Lawson dated 8 March has come to hand. It goes without saying that I make no claim to be responding on his behalf; he is more than capable of doing that for himself. Your letter, however, is such a singular juxtaposition of barely suppressed personal antipathy (malice even), blatant mendacity and shameless evasion, especially coming from a person in your position, that comment seems warranted.

Nigel Lawson’s letter never “implied that you should not be commenting on climate science” sic. Only a wilfully distorted reading of the words written could possibly have placed such a construction on them. The point of emphasis very plainly was and is that there is no excuse for wanton misrepresentation, either generally or personally. You are then provided with a specific example, which the writer unequivocally and in terms describes as “a lie”. He is, of course, quite right, is he not? And, if he is, what then are you?

You write that you ‘understand very well the importance of reliable observation, experiment and consistent rational argument’ sic. Good, and so you should! After all, to borrow Prof. Lindzen’s elegant and succinct definition, “Science is the continuing and opposing dialectic between theory and observation”. In principle, nothing in science is ever “settled”, so long the contra-scientific contention of anthropogenic global warming consensus proselytisers, conspicuously amongst them The Royal Society. Against this backdrop and of your assurance in particular, perhaps you would care then to explain why such propagandists:

decline to publish empirical evidence;

usually with insolence, refuse to offer their raw data, their algorithms and their methodology to the scrutiny of the scientific community at large;

manipulate and misrepresent the data they claim to possess;

refuse to validate or have validated their general circulation models, even though these are known to be flawed;

decline to engage in any form of debate which might expose them even to questioning, let alone to constructive criticism;

who, in substitution thereof, prefer instead to smear and defame any who challenge their dogmatic orthodoxy, with many amongst the dissenters being scientists of immense distinction, equal at least to your own, and often experts in disciplines far more directly relevant than yours to matters in hand.

With respect to the fifth of these bullet points (and there could have been many more), let me add that I speak from experience. Prior to 1 August 2007, the RS, on its website, carried a section headed “Share Your Views”. It comprised about six topics, one of which was putative climate change. On 1 August, the entire section was pulled……………. I have reason to believe because of awkward questions being posed in a number of contributions posted by myself. Now, though I say it myself, this was pretty impressive for, to be sure, here was an admittedly interested but, still, an untrained layman occasioning the demise of an entire section hitherto sanctioned and encouraged by the mighty RS! A hard copy of the complete exchanges can be supplied; would you like one?

In passing, from the RS, I personally was the recipient of this rather heart rending little bleat:

“Yes, WE have caused global warming”. And yes, in scarlet!

—–

And you claim to respect the importance of rational debate. Well, well!

Furthermore, contrary to your baseless suggestion, at least to my knowledge, there have never been any GWPF ad hominem attacks on persons who disagree with it/them. Such, on the other hand, constitute the default tactic of, as far as can be detected, all those of your claimed persuasion. Indeed, an increasing public perception of pointless impoverishment wrought by fraudulent science has concomitantly increased the shrill desperation of its proponents, to the extent that dishonourable epithets such as ‘denier’, ‘contrarian’, ‘nay-sayer’ now stand as amongst the more moderate “personal attacks” favoured by AGW cult fundamentalists.

The impertinence implicit in your suggestion that the GWPF may not have access to climate science advice of the highest calibre is in keeping with the thrust of your letter as a whole. It is also equally wide of the mark. The distinction between their climate specialists and those favoured by the RS, however, lies in the objectivity which the former bring to the task of assessing possibly dangerous climate change in contrast, that is, to the edifying displays of integrity in, say, the climategate emails and pronouncements of the IPCC – and let’s not overlook, within only the last few days, the work of such paladins of scientific rectitude as Messrs. Marcot et al 2013 with yet another dodgy hockey stick. The allusion, I’m sure, is familiar to you.

And finally, of course, we must not neglect a (perhaps the) key suggestion in your letter, namely that relating to the issue of GWPF funding. This is now, and has ever been, the one routine constant running through all warmist rants and diatribes. That it should be repeated by the President of The Royal Society demonstrates more clearly than anything else the loss of dignity it has endured and depths of corruption to which it has been reduced under your stewardship and those of your two predecessors. At this point, be it noted also that what is sauce for the goose is likewise sauce for the gander. No? But then, in your book, hypocrisy, no doubt, is the tribute that vice must reluctantly but unavoidably render to virtue.

Well, anyway, I can provide you with at least a partial answer. In small measure some of their funding has come from me and, dare I suggest, many like me. And no, I have no connections with ‘big oil’, ‘big gas’ or the Koch brothers! I do, however, have a deep seated prejudice against bogus science, scientific charlatans, self-serving and dishonest politicians and brazen chicanery.

Yours sincerely,

R.C.E. Wyndham

Cc: Prime Minister Mr. E. Miliband MP Mr. N. Clegg MP Mr. E. Davey MP Lord Lawson As the spirit moves

PS For illumination as well as entertainment: Address of the President of the Royal Society to their Lordships of the Admiralty, 20 November 1817:

“It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordships’ knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the circumpolar regions, by which the severity of the cold……………….in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has during the last two years greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened………………………………

and

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far North as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to 3,100 metres show the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have completely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the Eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have so far never ventured so far North, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that, due to the ice melt, the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.”

[bolding by Jo -- She wonders is this the earliest form of scientific global warming alarmism?]

————————————–

November 2, 1922 – as reported by AP and published in The Washington Post.

h/t Paul, Keith, Neville… with thanks to Rupert

How Intense did the Battle Between Bob Ward and ExxonMobil's Army of Climate Deniers Get?That time when Bob Ward – working at the Royal Society at the time – went head to head with ExxonMobil’s army of climate deniers.

In thisDeSmog UKepic history post, the battle continues between Bob Ward – working at the Royal Society at the time – and ExxonMobil’s army of climate deniers.

Bob Ward, the then head of media at the Royal Society, was shocked when members of Koch-funded public policy organisation the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) heckled professor David King, the government’s chief scientific, during a visit to the United States in 2006.

Ward began to wonder if there had been an upsurge in attacks by deniers on science during the previous months, and soon found himself going head-to-head with the world’s most powerful company on the issue of climate change.

“I was trying to evaluate to what extent ExxonMobil might be controlling that activity,” he told me. “I prepared an internal memo about ExxonMobil and what they were publishing in the UK.”

ExxonMobil Calling

This communique was leaked to the Guardian, which published the story. “I got a phone call from ExxonMobil, from their PRteam in the UK, and they wanted to come and see me… during the course of the conversation he ventured the fact that they were planning to stop funding a number of these sorts of think tank campaign groups.”

Ward was delighted with the meeting and believed that Exxon was about to take steps to end its funding of climate sceptic think tanks.

But, in August 2005, the oil company sent him its 2005 Corporate Citizenship Report which “had almost verbatim exactly the same uncertainty statements about climate change.”

Ward wrote immediately to Nick Thomas, ExxonMobil’s UK corporate affairs director, and said it was “very disappointing” that the report “leaves readers with such an inaccurate and misleading impression of the evidence on the causes of climate change.”

This time, Ward gave the letter directly to the Guardian, which duly followed up its earlier story on 20 September 2006. ExxonMobil’s response was surprising.

Concerted Campaign

There followed a concerted and multi-pronged campaign to effectively bully the Royal Society out of entering the debate over the truth of climate science.

The oil company issued a press release which stated: “ExxonMobil gives financial support to organizations which research significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company.

“These organizations do not speak on our behalf, nor do we control their views and messages. Our financial support for such organizations is publicly posted on our website. We review funding of these organizations on an annual basis. As we are currently in that review process, it would be premature for us to discuss funding decisions for any particular organization.”

William O’Keefe, the American Petroleum Institute (API) lobbyist, dashed out a letter the day after the Guardianstory appeared and signed off as CEO of the climate sceptic Marshall Institute.

Groupthink

The missive to the Royal Society accused Ward of “advocating censorship” and referring to George Orwell’s phrase ‘groupthink’ to suggest that the Royal Society was engaged in a Stalinist suppression of honest debate.

“The censorship of voices that challenge and provoke is antithetical to liberty and contrary to the traditions and values of free societies,” O’Keefe wrote without irony. “That such a call comes from such a venerable scientific society is disturbing and should raise concerns worldwide about the intentions of those seeking to silence honest debate and discussion of our most challenging environmental issue – climate change… You are attempting to stifle that debate and that is dangerous.”

This line of attack was spontaneously adopted by Dominic Lawson, Nigel Lawson’s son and heir, in the lefty Independent, where he asserted that “the debate on climate change is far too important to be shut down by scientists.”

One Step Further

The oil giant appears to have then gone a significant step further to protect its reputation from attack.

“I then went on holiday to the US for a couple of weeks to see my parents, so I was away in Oregon,” Ward recalls.

“I got a phone call from Chris Huhne, who was at that time the Lib Dem environment spokesman, and he said, ‘I’ve been phoned by ExxonMobil who implied that you’ve been sacked by the Royal Society because of the letter’. I was kind of shocked that they’d try and resort to such a clumsy tactic.”

In response, Ward wrote to Ken Cohen, the vice president for public affairs at ExxonMobil in Texas, demanding an explanation and “to seek your assurance that your organisation will not attempt to propagate damaging rumours about me”.

And, in Britain, Huhne raised his concerns in the House of Commons and asked the MPs: “Should we be buying fuel from people such as ExxonMobil? I do not want even indirectly to be helping to fund bodies such as the International Policy Network and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I don’t think the government should either.”

Up next on the DeSmog UK epic history, we follow calls made by the original American oil barons – the Rockefellers – for ExxonMobil to stop funding climate denial.

That Time When the Rockefellers Called on ExxonMobil to Stop Funding Climate Denial. Here, we recall how the Rockefellers echoed Bob Ward's concern about ExxonMobil.

===

resigned when busted for trying to fix wife speeding tkt?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne

===

Sir Peter Lachmann is professor of immunology at the University of Cambridge, and a former vice president and biological secretary of the Royal Society, as well as a former president of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences.

Lachmann chaired the Royal Society expert group which produced the Society's first report on GM crops in 1998. Entitled 'Genetically Modified Plants for Food Use', it broadly concluded that the use of GM plants had the potential to offer benefits in agricultural practice, food quality, nutrition and health.

Peter Lachmann is a member of the Sense About Science working party on peer review, and is also on the Advisory Council of Sense About Science. He is also an advisor to the Genetic Interest Group, to which SmithKline Beecham have also been controversially linked.

Lachmann has also been

a scientific advisor to SmithKline Beecham;a former non-executive director and current chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Adprotech plc, a biotech company which Lachmann helped spin out from SmithKline Beecham;a consultant to Geron Biomed, which markets the cloning technology behind Dolly the sheep.

Lachmann was one of the Fellows of the Royal Society who were key players in the attacks on Dr Arpad Pusztai from the time he went public with doubts about the safety of GM foods. In February 1999, for instance, Lachmann was among the nineteen Fellows of the Royal Society who condemned Pusztai, in all but name, in a letter published in the national press.^[1]

Lachmann's most notorious intervention in the GM debate occurred in 1999 in the run up to the Lancet's publication of Dr Arpad Pusztai's paper showing adverse effects on rats fed on GM potatoes. The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, received a phone call from someone The Guardian newspaper identified as Lachmann. Lachmann was said to have been highly aggressive. He is said to have called Horton 'immoral' for publishing something that he knew to be 'untrue'. Towards the end of the conversation Horton says his caller told him that if he published Pusztai's paper, this would 'have implications for his personal position' as editor. News of the threat against Horton, which Lachmann denied, made the front-page of The Guardian in November 1999.

A few months earlier Lachmann had responded in print to Horton's criticism of the Royal Society's review of Pusztai's then unpublished research. Horton had declared it 'a gesture of breathtaking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists who should be judged only on the full and final publication of their work.' In a letter to The Lancet, Lachmann attacked both The Lancet and the British Medical Association (BMA) for 'aligning' themselves over GM crops 'with the tabloid press in opposition to the Royal Society and Nuffield Council on BioEthics'. His letter concluded with an expression of concern about the potentially serious damage that 'this campaign of vilification does to the science base and the prosperity of the UK'.

Following publication of Arpad Pusztai and his co-researcher Stanley Ewen's paper in the Lancet, Lachmann wrote another letter to the journal. He called the paper 'unacceptable'. Pusztai and Ewen responded that if the research needed to be repeated, as Lachmann had said, then why hadn't that happened? 'If Lachmann represents the view of the Academy of Medical Sciences on GM-food safety, he should use his influence to make funds available foir the continuation of this work in the UK.' Prof Ewen, who was based at the University of Aberdeen, says he received a warning after the letter was published. 'Because we attacked him, it was bad for any university. I was told not to be so provocative.' Eventually, Prof Ewen felt he had no option but to retire from his academic post.

Lachmann had been among the founding Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences as well as the Academy's inaugural president - a post which he took up immediately on completing his term as biological secretary at the Royal Society.

The Academy was established in 1998 to have the 'authority to speak out on the multitude of public policy issues that involve the biomedical disciplines', as well as to provide 'expert advice to Government and policy makers'. 'Regulation of Biotechnology' is one of the key areas in which it has provided advice.

Lachmann was also able to use his presidency of the Academy as another platform for attacks on The Lancet. In an article in the Academy's first Fellowship Newsletter, Lachmann wrote that the medical sciences were beset by 'controversial issues - including also the problems of genetically modified food discussed at our Edinburgh regional meeting.' The Academy, Lachmann said, needed to defend 'rational science in the face of wild scare stories. The Academy has found itself much embroiled in this now first year and there's no sign that our involvement is likely to diminish.' The Academy had also set up a working group on how to deal with the media. 'This is a matter of major importance for a new, and as yet little known body, and the experiences that both our sister academy, the Royal Society and we have had in the last year, not least with The Lancet, highlight the difficulties to be overcome.'

Lachmann also used the Academy as a platform for attacks on the British Medical Association over their cautious stance on GM. In December 2002, for instance, in a letter to The Times he and three co-signatories expressed concern 'that the recent call from the British Medical Association for the Scottish Executive to halt GM field trials should not be taken to reflect wider medical opinion.'

One of the letter's co-signatories was Bridget Ogilvie, who is the Vice Chair of Sense About Science. The letter concluded, 'Scientific and medical developments in areas from gene therapy to immunology will not be possible if trials and applications can be curtailed on the basis of concerns without scientific foundation.'

The letter also criticised the BMA for giving its opinion despite 'no expertise in plant science'. Although Lachman has repeatedly made this criticism, he has failed to explain how on that basis a professor of immunology like himself has given his opinion so freely and so authoritatively on this issue. In an item broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in January 2003, for instance, Lachmann stated, 'Food is food and medicines are medicines and I think that food, whether it's brought about by conventional plant breeding or by the insertion of genes, is really much the same.' From a scientific point of view, it is impossible to make such a generalised statement - differences may arise both intentionaly and unintentionally.

Lachmann's comments were included in reports, run by the BBC's science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, which claimed that at the urging of Sense about Science, the British Medical Association had decided to review its cautious policy on GM in its 1999 report on the subject and issue a new report. Lachmann told Ghosh that the BMA's original 1999 report had been based on research which was now 'discredited' - presumably, a reference to Pusztai.

Lachmann was presented as if he were a spokesperson for the BMA rather than a critic. In fact, the biotechnology company Bayer subsequently quoted Lachmann's comments in an official submission to the government's economic review in which they referred to Lachmann as 'the new Director of Science at the BMA'.

The BMA responded on the day of the broadcast with a press release in which Dr Vivienne Nathanson, Head of BMA Science and Ethics, stated that, 'Today's BBC reports stating why the BMA would be undertaking a future report of GM crops and food is wrong.'The BMA press release also stated, 'The claim that we have been persuaded by the organisation Sense about Science to review our policy is simply wrong.' The BMA said that it's review was, in fact, routine as the original report had been of an interim nature. The BBC subsequently amended its online report in the light of the BMA statement. The amended report clarified who Lachmann was, describing him as a 'vocal proponent' of GM crops.

Lachmann has also been a vocal proponent of human embryo cloning for the purpose of harvesting embryonic stem cells. Ernst Helmreich of the University of Warzburg, responding to a Lachmann piece in the journal Nature, made a point that many would regard as applicable to Lachmann's cavalier attitude to genetically engineered crops, 'What I missed in Professor Lachmann's article... is the acknowledgement that stem cell therapy is fundamentally different from other treatments... Implantation of stem cells will profoundly interfere with the regulatory circuitry of our cells and tissues. It is, therefore, not surprising to someone familiar with cellular regulation, that implantation of stem cells into the brain of Parkinson patients caused side effects that were worse than the disease itself.'Geron Biomed, for whom Lachmann has been a consultant, has long been a keen supporter of embryo cloning - unsurprisingly, given its involvement in cloning technology, and has made the transition from animal cloning to human embryo stem cell research.

It is interesting to note, given the extremity of Lachmann's concern over the quality of Pusztai's research and Lachmann's aggressive complaints about the Lancet's publication of Pusztai's paper, that the Academy of Medical Sciences drew strong criticism during Lachmann's presidency over the feebleness of its response to the problem of research fraud. The Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope), a body formed by journal editors, described the Academy's plan to leave the problem to employers, as 'toothless' and lacking 'sufficient clout' to make any real difference. The British Medical Journal's editor, Richard Smith, warned further research misconduct was inevitable in such circumstances. 'Questions will then be asked about what the scientific establishment has done to respond to a problem identified more than 20 years ago. The answers, unfortunately, will embarrass us all.'

Notes

↑ Laurie Flynn and Michael Sean Gillard, Pro-GM food scientist 'threatened editor', The Guardian, 1 November 1999, accessed 17 Dec 2009

Categories:

The history of events and the quotes below are adapted from Andy Rowell's book, Don't Worry, It's Safe to Eat, Earthscan, 2003, ISBN 1853839329.

On 10 August 1998 the GM debate changed forever with the broadcast of a programme on British TV about GM food safety featuring a brief but revealing interview with Dr Arpad Pusztai about his research into GM food safety. Dr Pusztai told of his findings on the ill effects of GM potatoes on laboratory rats. He was subsequently gagged and suspended by his institute, the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland, his research team was disbanded, and his research data was confiscated. He was subjected to a campaign of vilification and misrepresentation by several pro-GM scientific bodies and pro-GM lobbyists, in an attempt to discredit him and his research.

The story began three years earlier. That's when the UK government's Scottish Office commissioned a three-year multi-centre research programme into the safety of GM food under the coordination of Dr Arpad Pusztai. At that time there was not a single publication in a peer-reviewed journal on the safety of GM food.

Dr Pusztai, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, was an eminent scientist. He was the world's leading expert on the plant proteins known as lectins. He had published three books and over 270 scientific studies.

He and his team fought off competition from 28 other research organisations from across Europe to be awarded the GBP1.6 million contract by the Scottish Office. The project methodology was also reviewed and passed by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) - the UK government's main funding body for the biological sciences.

The research involved feeding GM potatoes to rats and monitoring physiological changes. By late 1997 preliminary results from the rat-feeding experiments were showing totally unexpected and worrying changes in the size and weight of the rat's body organs. Liver and heart sizes were getting smaller, and so was the brain. There were also indications that the rats' immune systems were weakening.

Dr Pusztai was interviewed for a programme about GM food being made by Granada TV's World in Action. The filming took place in late June 1998 with the agreement of the director of the Rowett Institute, Professor Philip James, and in the presence of the Rowett Institute's press officer. The World in Action interview was broadcast on the evening of Monday 10 August 1998.

Later that evening Professor James congratulated Dr Pusztai on his TV appearance, commenting on "how well Arpad had handled the questions". The next day a further press release from the Rowett noted that 'a range of carefully controlled studies underlie the basis of Dr Pusztai's concerns'. However, reportedly following two calls to the Rowett from the Prime Minister's Office, the Government, the Royal Society and the Rowett launched a vitriolic campaign to sack, silence and ridicule Dr Pusztai.

He was accused of unprofessional conduct because his work had not been peer-reviewed. However, his research subsequently passed peer-review after being reviewed by a larger than usual panel of scientists and was published (see below). Many people also take the view that in circumstances where research is giving rise to serious concerns that may need to be addressed sooner rather than later, it is acceptable for scientists to act as whistle blowers and draw attention to the problems their research is uncovering even prior to peer-reviewed publication.

The Government criticised the methodology of Pusztai's research despite the fact that this had been approved in advance by its own Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Neither the Government nor any other official body has ever repeated or refined Dr Pusztai's experiments to test the validity of his results.

The Royal Society and its leading Fellows were key players in the attacks on Dr Pusztai from the time he went public with doubts about the safety of GM foods. In February 1999, for instance, nineteen Fellows of the Royal Society condemned Pusztai, in all but name, in a letter published in the national press. Among the signatories was Peter Lachmann, who played a key role in the attacks on Pusztai.

Three months later in May 1999 the Royal Society published a partial 'peer review' of Pusztai's then unpublished research. This review was based not on a properly prepared paper, like that Pusztai and his collaborator Ewen submitted to The Lancet for peer-review, but on a far-from-complete internal report intended for use by Pusztai's research team at the Rowett Institute.

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the Royal Society review as 'a gesture of breathtaking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists who should be judged only on the full and final publication of their work.'

The Royal Society's review was organised by members of a working group appointed by the Society in coordination with the Society's officers. The Royal Society claimed that anyone who had already commented on the Pusztai affair had been excluded from this decision making process in order to avoid bias. However, William Hill, Patrick Bateson, Brian Heap and Eric Ash, who were all involved, were all among the co-signatories of the letter condemning Pusztai that had been published in The Daily Telegraph back in February.

In addition, four key people involved, including the Chair of the working group, Noreen Murray, as well as Brian Heap, Rebecca Bowden and Sir Aaron Klug, were all part of the earlier working group that had issued the Royal Society's 1998 report supporting GM foods.

There were other issues of bias. For instance, William Hill, the chair of the Pusztai working group, was also the deputy chair of the Roslin Institute, famous for genetically modifying animals and for cloning Dolly the sheep. Roslin in turn had links to Geron Biomed for whom Lachmann consulted. Similarly, Noreen Murray was the wife of theco-founder of Europe's first biotechnology company, Biogen.

Undaunted by the Royal Society's attack on their unpublished work, Pusztai and his co-researcher, Prof Stanley Ewen, submitted their final paper on their experiments to The Lancet. It was sent to six reviewers, double the normal number, and a clear majority were in favour of its publication.

However, prior to publication the Lancet's editor Richard Horton received a phone call from Peter Lachmann, the former Vice-President of the Royal Society. According to Horton, Lachmann called him "immoral" for publishing something he knew to be 'untrue'. Towards the end of the conversation Horton says Lachmann also told him that if he published Pusztai's paper, this would "have implications for his personal position" as editor.

The Guardian broke the news of Horton being threatened in November 1999 in a front-page story. It quoted Horton saying that the Royal Society had acted like a Star Chamber over the Pusztai affair: "The Royal Society has absolutely no remit to conduct that sort of inquiry." Lachmann denied threatening Horton although he admitted making the phone call in order to discuss the pending publication.

The Guardian also talked of a GM 'rebuttal unit' operating from within the Royal Society. According to the journalist Andy Rowell, who helped research The Guardian article, Rebecca Bowden, who had coordinated the Pusztai peer-review and who had worked for the Government's Biotechnology Unit before joining The Royal Society in 1998, admitted to the paper, 'We have an organization that filters the news out there. It's really an information exchange to keep an eye on what's happening and to know what the government is having problems about … its just so that I know who to put up.'

The attacks on The Lancet editor and his decision to publish Pusztai's paper continued. Sir Aaron Klug, vigorously opposed the publication of Pusztai's research, saying it was fatally flawed in design because the protein content of the diets which control groups of rats were fed on was not the same as that of the other diets. Pusztai commented: 'In fact, the paper clearly states that ALL diets had the same protein content and were iso-energetic. I cannot assume that Sir Aaron is not sufficiently intelligent to read a simple statement as that, so the only conclusion I can come to is that he deliberately briefed the reporters with something that was untrue.'

Richard Horton remained unbowed. 'Stanley Ewen and Arpad Pusztai's research letter,' he wrote, 'was published on grounds of scientific merit, as well as public interest'. What Sir Aaron Klug from the Royal Society cannot 'defend is the reckless decision of the Royal Society to abandon the principles of due process in passing judgement on their work. To review and then publish criticism of these researchers' findings without publishing either their original data or their response was, at best, unfair and ill-judged'.

The attacks continue unabated. Peter Lachmann's successor as Biological Secretary of the Royal Society, Patrick Bateson, told readers of the British Association's journal Science and Public Affairs that The Lancet had only published Pusztai's research 'in the face of objections by its statistically-competent referees' (June 2002, Mavericks are not always right). Bateson, presumably deliberately, inverts the fact that Pusztai's Lancet paper successfully came through a peer review process that was far more stringent than that applying to most published papers.

In an article in The Independent, giving the Royal Society's views on why the public no longer trusts experts like themselves - 'Scientists blame media and fraud for fall in public trust' - Pusztai's work is categorised as 'fraud'. Pusztai's peer reviewers, we are told in the article, 'refused it for publication, citing numerous flaws in its methods - notably that the rats in the experiment had not been fed GM potatoes, but normal ones spiked with a toxin that GM potatoes might have made.' Almost every word of this is straight fabrication. There was no fraud. Rats were fed GM potatoes. The publication of Pusztai's Lancet paper was supported by a clear majority of its peer reviewers, etc. etc. It is particularly ironic that such a travesty should have been published in an article reporting the Royal Society's concerns about the reporting of science in the media.

In February 2002 a new Royal Society report on GM crops was published as an update to the Society's September 1998 report on GM. The expert group which produced it was much more broadly based than in '98 and the report took a noticeably more cautious line. 'British Scientists Turn on GM Foods', ran The Guardian's headline on a report which included an admission 'that GM technology could lead to... unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional status of foods'.

The expert group was chaired by Jim Smith, who had sat on the Society's Pusztai working group, and tucked away inside the report was a paragraph on Pusztai. Once again, it was designed to mislead.

The first part of the paragraph read: 'In June 1999, the Royal Society published a report, review of data on possible toxicity of GM potatoes, in response to claims made by Dr Pusztai (Ewen and Pusztai, 1999). The report found that Dr Pusztai had produced no convincing evidence of adverse effects from GM potatoes on the growth of rats or their immune function.’

The Royal Society report references the phrase 'claims made by Dr Pusztai' - claims it said it had reviewed - to the article published by Pusztai and Ewen in The Lancet in 1999. In fact, however, the Royal Society’s partial review of Pusztai's research was published months before The Lancet article appeared. The Royal Society thus conceals the fact that it had only ever reviewed part of Pusztai's data, condemning him ahead of publication of his actual paper.

The 2002 report continued: 'It concluded that the only way to clarify Dr Pusztai's claims would be to refine his experimental design and carry out further studies to test clearly defined hypotheses focused on the specific effects reported by him. Such studies, on the results of feeding GM sweet peppers and GM tomatoes to rats, and GM soya to mice and rats, have now been completed and no adverse effects have been found (Gasson and Burke, 2001).'

But the Gasson and Burke paper, to which these further feeding studies are referenced by the Society, was not a piece of primary research but an 'opinion' piece written by two pro-GM scientists, Mike Gasson and Derek Burke. Worse, one of t he two further studies mentioned had not even been published, except by way of summary, ie it had never been fully peer-reviewed. In other words, the Royal Society uses an unpublished and non-peer-reviewed study to attack Pusztai, two years after it had condemned him for speaking to the media prior to publishing his work in a peer-reviewed journal.

In response to criticism, the Royal Society admitted that the work in question remained unpublished but said this was not a problem because 'it had been discussed at international scientific conferences'. By this definition, however, Pusztai's research would have been equally validated before the Society ever launched its partial review as it had been presented at an international conference prior to the Society's review.

Andy Rowell, author of a book that deals extensively with the Royal Society's role in the Pusztai affair, writes, 'the fundamental flaw in the scientific establishment's response is not that they try and damn Pusztai with unpublished data, nor is it that they have overlooked published studies [supporting Pusztai's concerns], but that in 1999, everyone agreed that more work was needed. Three years later, that work remains to be undertaken... [A] scientific body, like The Royal Society, that allocates millions in research funds every year, could have funded a repeat of Pusztai's experiments.'

Nobody ever has.^[1]

Contents [hide]

Dr Pusztai on the 10th anniversary of GM safety scandal

The following is an email of 10 August 2008 from Dr Pusztai to Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch, in which Dr Pusztai comments on the 10th anniversary of the television interview.

Dear Claire and Jonathan,I thought that I should write to you on the 10th anniversary of my 150 seconds of TV "fame" and tell you what I think now. It is very appropriate to write to you because you have provided the most comprehensive service to inform people about the shenanigans of the GM biotechnology industry and its advocates.On this anniversary I have to admit that, unfortunately, not much has changed since 1998. In one of the few sentences I said in my broadcast ten years ago, I asked for a credible GM testing protocol to be established that would be acceptable to the majority of scientists and to people in general. 10 years on we still haven't got one. Instead, in Europe we have an unelected EFSA GMO Panel with no clear responsibility to European consumers, which invariably underwrites the safety of whatever product the GM biotech industry is pushing onto us.All of us asked for independent, transparent and inclusive research into the safety of GM plants, and particularly those used in foods. There is not much sign of this either. There are still "many opinions but very few data"; less than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published describing the results of work relating to GM safety that could actually be regarded as being of an academic standard; and the majority of even these is from industry-supported labs. Instead we have the likes of Tony Trewavas and others writing unsupported claims for the safety of GM food and defaming people like Rachel Carson who can no longer defend herself; not that she needs to be defended from such nonentities.In normal times one would not pay much attention to such people desperately trying to be seen as the advocates of true science, but these are not normal times. The mostly engineered (GM engineered) food crisis gives the GM biotech industry and its warriors an opportunity to come to the fore with claims that GM is the only way to save a hungry world; a claim not much supported by responsible bodies, such as the IAASTD. The advocates of GM also now think that they have found a chink in the armory of people's resolve that they can exploit by telling us that we would not be able to feed our animals without GM feedstuffs. In this way, they hope to bring in GM by the backdoor. Please remember that whatever our animals eat, we shall also get back indirectly. Rather ominously, there has been no work whatever to show the safety of the meat of GM-fed animals.We must not underestimate the financial and political clout of the GM biotechnology industry. Most of our politicians are committed to the successful introduction of GM foods. We must therefore use all means at our disposal to show people the shallowness of these claims by the industry and the lack of credible science behind them, and then trust to people's good sense, just as in 1998, to see through the falseness of the claims for the safety of untested GM foods.Let's hope that on the 20th anniversary I shall not have to write another warning letter about the dangers of untested GM foods!Best wishes to allArpad Pusztai

Biography

Dr Pusztai has a PhD from the University of London in biochemistry and physiology, and is former senior scientist at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland. Dr Pusztai was dismissed from the Rowett Research Institute after he went public with his research on GM potatoes in 1998. The research was finally published in The Lancet in 1999.

In 2005, Dr Pusztai was honoured with a whistleblower award from the Federation of German Scientists. Since his research was made public he has given close to 200 lectures across the world.

Resources

Interview with Dr Arpad Pusztai about his experimental findings on GM potatoes and the subsequent political fallout.

Arpad Pusztai and the Risks of Genetic Engineering, interview with Arpad Pusztai by Ken Roseboro, The Organic and Non-GMO Report, June 2009

Notes

↑ Andy Rowell, Don't Worry: Its Safe To Eat, Earthscan, 2003, ISBN 1853839329. See also: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=113

Categories:

zeitgeist blogger bs

===

https://atlasmonitor.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/charlie-hebdo-climate-scepticism-free-speech/

Charlie Hebdo, Climate Scepticism & Free Speech

jbuc912 / January 12, 2015

GWPF| 12 Jan 2015

Climate Extremism & The Chilling Effect On Free Speech

At the end of that process, some Global Warming denierswould never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives. — Professor Richard Parncutt, University of Graz, Austria, :{25 October 2012}:

As I read the grim headlines from Paris, I was reminded of another encounter in another European city, Berlin, specifically at the Opernplatz where the Nazis staged one of their most infamous book burnings in 1933. One of the authors whose works they incinerated was the great German poet, Heinrich Heine, whose epigraph now lines a memorial marking this historically ominous event: “That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.” And where they drive out and kill Jews, they will ultimately drive out and kill you, too. –James Kirchick, The Daily Beast, 10 January 2015

The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around. Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is atidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. —Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, 6 October 2006

1) Charlie Hebdo, Climate Scepticism & Free Speech –Climate Etc, 11 January 2015

2) Crackdown Ordered On Climate-Change Sceptics –The Times, 2 April 2014

3) Climate Scientist Forced Out From New Job In ‘McCarthy’-Style Witch Hunt – :{Daily Mail}:, 15 May 2014

4) Raymond Snoddy: BBC In Deep Water Over Climate Change Censorship Row –MediaTel, 9 July 2014

5) The BBC Is Scared Of Nigel Lawson – And It’s Right To Be –The Spectator, 12 July 2014

6) Climate Extremism & The Chilling Effect On Free Speech – :{Spiked,}: 6 October 2006

I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put [their climate change denial] in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial – except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes. –Mark Lynas, 19 May 2006

In the climate wars, those that use pejorative names for people that they disagree with are the equivalents of racists and anti-semites, and deserve opprobrium and disrespect. It is very sad, not to mention bad for science, to see scientists engaging in this behavior. We need to open up the public debate about climate change, and get rid of the tyranny of political ‘correctness’ in the climate debate that is being enforced by a handful of self-appointed and readily-offended fools. –Judith Curry, Climate Etc, 11 January 2015

As George Bernard Shaw said, “All great truths begin as blasphemies”. In the West in the past, it was the Christian God that was protected by a censorious forcefield. Now it’s climate-change orthodoxy, the ideology of multiculturalism, Islamo-sensitivities, gay marriage… These days, speaking ill of any of those new gods could earn you a metaphorical lashing from the mob, or expulsion from polite society, or possibly a prison sentence. –Brendan O’Neill, The Australian, 10 January 2014

A globally-renowned climate scientist has been forced to step down from a think-tank after he was subjected to ‘Mc-Carthy’-style pressure from scientists around the world. Professor Lennart Bengtsson, 79, a leading academic from the University of Reading, left the high-profile Global Warming Policy Foundation as a result of the threats, which he described as ‘virtually unbearable’. In his resignation letter, published on the think-tank’s website, he wrote: ‘If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy.” –Willis Robinson,Daily Mail, 15 May 2014

[img gagged]

Science regresses if it becomes intolerant of criticism. At the beginning of her reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England spoke words of tolerance in an age of religious strife, declaring that she had no intention of making windows into men’s souls. Unlike religion, science is not a matter of the heart or of belief. It exists only in what can be demonstrated. In their persecution of an aged colleague who stepped out of line and their call for scientists to be subject to a faith test, 21st-century climate scientists have shown less tolerance than a 16th-century monarch. There is something rotten in the state of climate science. –Rupert Darwall, National Review, 15 May 2014

Ministers who question the majority view among scientists about climate change should “shut up” and instead repeat the Government line on the issue, according to MPs. The BBC should also give less airtime to climate sceptics and its editors should seek special clearance to interview them, according to the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said that appearances on radio and television by climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be accompanied by “health warnings”. –Ben Webster, The Times, 2 April 2014

The danger comes instead from self-censorship. Which BBC editor now is going to invite Lord Lawson or even Prof Bob Carter on to their programmes in the certain knowledge that they are likely to be criticised and perhaps have time-consuming complaints upheld against them? As Lord Lawson argues, surely correctly, he has, in effect, been banned by the BBC. It is an easy thing to judge. Let’s see when he next appears in the climate change context. There will, of course, be no edict. He will just never ever be invited to take part in any BBC programme on the issue. –Raymond Snoddy, MediaTel, 9 July 2014

The BBC has effectively banned Lord Lawson, the former chancellor (and former editor of this magazine) from appearing on its programmes to debate climate change, unless he is introduced with a statement discrediting his views. When people try to close down debate rather than engage with it, there is a pretty clear conclusion to be drawn: they lack confidence in their own case. —The Spectator, 12 July 2014

1) Charlie Hebdo, Climate Scepticism & Free Speech

Climate Etc, 11 January 2015

Judith Curry

In response to the tragic shootings at the headquarters of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, there have been a number of provocative essays on freedom of speech.

I have discussed the issue in a previous post In defense of free speech, but the recent events have compelled me to write a post on the broader issues raised by Charlie. Below are excerpts from articles on the topic that have resonated with me or that I otherwise found provocative. […]

Climate wars

Anyone defending the satirists at Charlie should have a tough time defending Michael Mann in his legal war against the satirical writings of Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg. It will be interesting to see if Charlie and the defense of satirists changes the dynamics of the Mann vs NRO/CEI/Steyn lawsuits.

David Brooks says it best:

Most of us move toward more complicated views of reality and more forgiving views of others. We do try to open conversations with listening rather than insult.

Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semi-respect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

We need to open up the public debate about climate change, and get rid of the tyranny of political ‘correctness’in the climate debate that is being enforced by a handful of self-appointed and readily-offended fools.

Full post

2) Crackdown Ordered On Climate-Change Sceptics

:{The Times, 2 April 2014

Ben Webster, Environment Editor}:

Ministers who question the majority view among scientists about climate change should “shut up” and instead repeat the Government line on the issue, according to MPs.

The BBC should also give less airtime to climate sceptics and its editors should seek special clearance to interview them, according to the Commons:{ Science:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: and Technology Committee. Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said that appearances on radio and television by climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be accompanied by “health warnings”.

Mr Miller likened climate sceptics to the Monster Raving Loony Party and said that the BBC should limit interviews with them just as it restricted the coverage it gave to fringe political parties.

In a report published today, the committee criticises the BBC’s coverage of climate change, saying that its news programmes “continue to make mistakes in their coverage of climate science by giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight”.

The MPs say that the BBC should apply the same “stringent requirements” to interviewing climate sceptics as it applies to interviewing politicians. “For example, any proposal to invite politicians to contribute to non-political output must be referred to the Chief Adviser Politics. The BBC could benefit from applying a similarly stringent approach when interviewing non- experts on controversial scientific topics such as climate change,” the committee says.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Miller added that when Lord Lawson appeared, the BBC should make clear that his think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, questioned the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “At the very least, put a caption at the bottom of the screen: ‘the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s views are not accepted by 97 per cent of scientists’,” he said.

The committee’s report says that the Government is “failing to clearly and effectively communicate climate science to the public”. It concludes: “All Ministers should acquaint themselves with the science of climate change and then they, and their Departments, should reflect the Government approach in person, in media interviews and online by a presenting a clear and consistent message.”

Mr Miller named Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, as one of the ministers he believed had deviated from the Government line on climate change.

Full story

[img green kkk]

3) Climate Scientist Forced Out From New Job In ‘McCarthy’-Style Witch Hunt

:{Daily Mail, :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:15 May 2014

Willis Robinson

A globally-renowned climate scientist has been forced to step down from a think-tank after he was subjected to ‘Mc-Carthy’-style pressure from scientists around the world.

Professor Lennart Bengtsson, 79, a leading academic from the University of Reading, left the high-profile Global Warming Policy Foundation as a result of the threats, which he described as ‘virtually unbearable’.

The Swedish climatologist, who has published more than 200 papers, said he received hundreds of emails from colleagues criticising his decision to switch to the organisation.

His ‘defection’ was described as the biggest switch from the pro-climate change lobby to the sceptic camp to date.

In his resignation letter, published on the think-tank’s website, he wrote: ‘If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety.

‘I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life.

‘Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

‘I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy.

Full story

4) Raymond Snoddy: BBC In Deep Water Over Climate Change Censorship Row

MediaTel, 9 July 2014

As Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor, accuses the BBC of banning him from debating climate change at the Corporation, Raymond Snoddy warns that the reputation of BBC News would be seriously compromised if journalists were found to be censoring.

[img cartoon]

The BBC is getting itself in a huge hole over its coverage of climate change – and it does not seem to see the need to stop digging.

The controversy is best highlighted by the BBC’s decision to uphold a complaint against the Today programme for the appearance of climate change sceptic Lord Lawson to discuss the impact of climate on the recent floods.

A complaint against the World at One has also been partially upheld after an interview with a sceptical scientist Professor Bob Carter, head of the department of earth science at James Cook University.

Even though the former Chancellor was more than balanced by his co-guest the scientist Sir Brian Hoskins, chairman of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, the BBC apologised to complainant Chit Chung, a Green Party activist who has a draught proofing and insulation business in Dorset. […]

The danger comes instead from self-censorship. Which editor now is going to invite Lord Lawson or even Prof Bob Carter from New Zealand on to their programmes in the certain knowledge that they are likely to be criticised and perhaps have time-consuming complaints upheld against them?

As Lord Lawson argues, surely correctly, he has, in effect, been banned by the BBC. It is an easy thing to judge. Let’s see when he next appears in the climate change context.

There will, of course, be no edict. He will just never ever be invited to take part in any BBC programme on an issue that he has put considerable effort into learning about, and one where he has published a best-selling book.

On the BBC internal contacts list producers add advisory notes against names and you can be sure the former Chancellor will get one.

One of the key components of the case for a new licence fee is the integrity of BBC News. The case for man-made global warming may indeed be the right one, but the reputation of BBC News would be seriously compromised if journalists were found to be censoring, if not inconvenient truths then troubling anomalies.

**Full story**

5) The BBC Is Scared Of Nigel Lawson – And It’s Right To Be

The Spectator, 12 July 2014

It is only a matter of time before Nigel Lawson — if he is allowed on the BBC at all — has to have his words spoken by an actor in the manner of Gerry Adams at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign during the 1980s. In the case of Mr Adams, whose voice was banned from the airwaves by the government, the BBC stood up for free speech. But it is quite a different story with Lord Lawson.

The BBC has effectively banned the former chancellor (and former editor of this magazine) from appearing on its programmes to debate climate change, unless he is introduced with a statement discrediting his views.

The BBC’s Editorial Complaints Department this week ruled that the Todayprogramme broke BBC guidelines in February by inviting Lord Lawson to a debate with Sir Brian Hoskins, chairman of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change. It bizarrely claimed that his views are ‘not supported by the evidence’ — though he had pointed out, correctly, that the planet has not been warming for the past 17 years. Nevertheless, the BBC politburo warned, listeners should have been warned that Lord Lawson is in a minority and, therefore, his words ‘should not be regarded as carrying equal weight to those of experts such as Sir Brian Hoskins’.

Lord Lawson is, of course, not a scientist. But a great many people speak on the BBC on subjects in which they do not have any formal qualifications: Al Gore, for example. Or Rajendra Pachauri, a railway engineer by training, who now runs the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). Neither does the BBC seem to be worried about non-scientists addressing scientific issues when it comes to such things as fracking or GM crops, on which any green activists are welcome to speak, however bizarre their scaremongering theories.

What Lord Lawson is, however, is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think-tank that has no quarrel with the idea of global warming. Its aim is to appeal to reason, and to engage in mature argument rather than hysteria. Lord Lawson is advised by scientists who until recently included Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading. Professor Bengtsson was hounded off the GWPF board by his fellow scientists.

When people try to close down debate rather than engage with it, there is a pretty clear conclusion to be drawn: they lack confidence in their own case. The suppression of debate was shown again this week when Vladimir Semonov, a climate scientist at the Geomar Institute in Kiel, Germany, revealed that a paper he wrote in 2009 questioning the accuracy of climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was effectively censored by the scientist to whom it was sent for review. Their reasons for demanding passages be removed seems rather less than scientifically rigorous: one wrote that the offending material would ‘lead to unnecessary confusion in the climate science community’ and another said that ‘this entire discussion has to disappear’.

The process of peer review used in the scientific press is often held up as a mark of quality, which enables poorly conducted scientific research to be weeded out before it reaches the eyes of readers less qualified to judge the rigour of the work. This may to some extent be true, even if peer review failed to spot weaknesses in the now discredited Fleischmann-Pons cold fusion experiments of 1989 or stop the MMR scare.

But the peer review process is also open to abuse. Just as the social sciences became infected by political correctness 20 years ago, climate science has become governed by climatic correctness. To question the consensus that the world is facing fire and tempest as a result of anthropogenic global warming is, in the eyes of some working in the field, simply not allowable. That is something which was revealed in the Climategate scandal of 2009 when leaked emails from the University of East Anglia caught out scientists who had been withholding data, trying to keep rivals’ papers out of journals and in one case threatening violence against a sceptical scientist.

The BBC at first declined to go into the content of the emails, preferring to treat the story as a case of data theft. The fact that the emails contained material of extreme public interest seemed to count for nothing. The unknown individuals who leaked the emails can only dream of the hero worship afforded to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange; attitudes on the left towards release of information seem to swing dramatically depending on what information is being released.

The same is true of the BBC’s attitude towards balanced debate — something which is supposed to be guaranteed by its charter. The BBC has decided that it is allowable to debate such issues as whether benefit cuts are causing distress or whether sports-women are being discriminated against by male-dominated bastions — something the Todayprogramme does virtually every morning. But dare to question whether it is wise for the country to embark on the economic experiment of abandoning fossil fuel on the back of some far-from-robust scientific models, and you will have to find another media outlet.

6) Climate Extremism & The Chilling Effect On Free Speech

Spiked, 6 October 2006

Brendan O’Neill

Whoever thought that serious commentators would want it made illegal to have a row about the weather? One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing ‘climate change denial’. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’ (1) Others have suggested that climate change deniers should be put on trial in the future, Nuremberg-style, and made to account for their attempts to cover up the ‘global warming…Holocaust’ (2).

Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalise it, as the Australian columnist suggests. Because in recent months it has been turned into a taboo, chased out of polite society by a wink and a nod, letters of complaint, newspaper articles continually comparing climate change denial to Holocaust denial.

An attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ now surrounds debates about climate change, which in many ways is more powerful and pernicious than an outright ban. I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change, but I know what I don’t like – and this demonisation of certain words and ideas is an affront to freedom of speech and open, rational debate.

The loaded term itself – ‘climate change denier’ – is used to mark out certain people as immoral, untrustworthy. According to Richard D North, author most recently of Rich is Beautiful: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence: ‘It is deeply pejorative to call someone a “climate change denier”…it is a phrase designedly reminiscent of the idea of Holocaust denial – the label applied to those misguided or wicked people who believe, or claim to believe, the Nazis did not annihilate the Jews, and others, in very great numbers.’ (3)

People of various views and hues tend to get lumped together under the umbrella put-down ‘climate change denier’ – from those who argue the planet is getting hotter but we will be able to deal with it, to those who claim the planet is unlikely to get much hotter at all (4). On Google there are now over 80,000 search returns, and counting, for the phrase climate change denial.

Others take the tactic of openly labelling climate change deniers as cranks, possibly even people who might need their heads checked. In a speech last month, in which he said people ‘should be scared’ about global warming,UK environment secretary David Miliband said ‘those who deny [climate change] are the flat-earthers of the twenty-first century’ (5). Taking a similar tack, former US vice president-turned-green-warrior Al Gore recently declared: ‘Fifteen per cent of the population believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona and somewhat fewer still believe the Earth is flat. I think they all get together with the global warming deniers on a Saturday night and party.’ (6)

It is not only environmentalist activists and green-leaning writers who are seeking to silence climate change deniers/sceptics/critics/whatever you prefer. Last month the Royal Society – Britain’s premier scientific academy founded in 1660, whose members have included some of the greatest scientists – wrote a letter to ExxonMobil demanding that the oil giant cut off its funding to groups that have ‘misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence’.

It was the first time the Royal Society had ever written to a company complaining about its activities. The letter had something of a hectoring, intolerant tone: ‘At our meeting in July…you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge.’ (7)

One could be forgiven for asking what business it is of the Royal Society to tell ExxonMobil whom it can and cannot support – just as we might balk if ExxonMobil tried to tell the Royal Society what to do. The Society claims it is merely defending a ‘scientific consensus…the evidence’ against ExxonMobil’s duplicitous attempts to play down global warming for its own oily self-interest. Yet some scientists have attacked the idea that there can ever be untouchable cast-iron scientific facts, which should be immune from debate or protected from oil-moneyed think-tanks.

An open letter to the Society – signed by Tim Ball, a professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg, and others – argues that ‘scientific inquiry is unique because it requires falsifiability’: ‘The beauty of science is that no issue is ever “settled”, that no question is beyond being more fully understood, that no conclusion is immune to further experimentation. And yet for the first time in history, the Royal Society is shamelessly using the media to say emphatically: “case closed” on all issues related to climate change.’

Or as Charles Jones, an emeritus English professor at the University of Edinburgh, put it in a letter to a publication that recently lambasted climate change deniers, ‘[W]e are left with the feeling that [climate change] is a scientific model which is unfalsifiable and which has not been – and indeed cannot be – the subject of any theoretical counter-proposals whatsoever. As such, it must surely be unique in the history of science. Even a powerful model such as Relativity Theory has been the object of scientific debate and emendation.’ (8)

For all the talk of simply preserving the facts against climate change deniers, there is increasingly a pernicious moralism and authoritarianism in the attempts to silence certain individuals and groups. This is clear from the use of the term ‘climate change denier’, which, as Charles Jones argued, is an attempt to assign any ‘doubters’ with ‘the same moral repugnance one associates with Holocaust denial’ (9).

The Guardian columnist George Monbiot recently celebrated the ‘recanting’ of both the tabloid Sun and the business bible The Economist on the issue of global warming. (‘Recant’ – an interesting choice of word. According to my OED it means ‘To withdraw, retract or renounce a statement, opinion or belief as erroneous, andesp. with formal or public confession of error in matters of religion.’ Recanting is often what those accused before the Spanish Inquisition did to save their hides.) Pleased by the Sun and The Economist’s turnaround, Monbiot wrote: ‘Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.’ (10)

Earlier this year, when a correspondent for the American current affairs show 60 Minutes was asked why his various feature programmes on global warming did not include the views of global warming sceptics, he replied: ‘If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?’ Here, climate change deniers are explicitly painted as the bad guys. He also argued that, ‘This isn’t about politics…this is about sound science’, and went so far as to claim that it would be problematic even to air the views of climate change sceptics: ‘There comes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible.’

Some take the moral equivalence between climate change denial and Holocaust denial to its logical conclusion. They argue that climate change deniers are actually complicit in a future Holocaust – the global warming Holocaust – and thus will have to be brought to trial in the future. Green author and columnist Mark Lynas writes: ‘I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put [their climate change denial] in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial – except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes.’ (11)

Full essay

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ward_(communications_director)

Bob Ward has served as policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics since 2008.^[1]

He worked at the Royal Society, where he headed the media team, for eight years until 2006. He has a first degree in geology and an unfinished PhD thesis on palaeopiezometry.^[2][3] He once worked at HECSU.

Views on climate change[

Ward's first significant involvement with climate change issues was in August 2005 when, as Royal Society communications director,he called on ExxonMobil to stop misrepresenting the state of the science.^[4] Ward's communications with the company included the statement he found it "very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science ... with ExxonMobil's claims to be an industry leader". Ward learned from the company's charitable giving statements that it had continued to provide significant funds to 39 organizations involved in "... denial ... overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty ... or by conveying a misleading impression of the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change."^[4]

In 2009 he commented on the Climatic Research Unit email controversy, saying that "The politicians won't be swayed by this. It's basic physics that the world is being warmed by greenhouse gases, and politicians can see through the sceptics' arguments."^[5] He supported calls for an independent investigation into the controversy but believed the emails did not reveal evidence of wrongdoing.^[5] He also commented on how climate change denial had, in his opinion, been adopted as a political cause by the far right. ^[6]

In 2010 he expressed concern over reports that some Fellows of the Royal Society disagreed with the Society's official policy on "Preventing dangerous climate change" as stated in December 2009. In a letter to The Times and in an Op-Ed in The Guardian he urged the Royal Society to clarify its stance on global warming.^[7][8]

In 2019, on the occasion of US President Trump's visit to the UK, Ward coordinated a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May. The letter, which was signed by 250 scientists, urged her to challenge President Trump on his "refusal to accept and address global climate change". Signatories included Chris Rapley, Hugh Montgomery and Joanna Haigh.^[9]

References[

^ "Bob Ward - Institute Staff - Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment". Retrieved 2010-08-20.
^ Ball, Philip (6 Oct 2006). "When it's time to speak out". Nature News.
^ "Bob Ward". Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. p. 1. Archived from the original on 5 June 2010. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ward_%28communications_director%29#cite_ref-inquisition_4-1) Powell, James Lawrence (2011). *The Inquisition of Climate Science*. Columbia University Press. pp. 114–116. ISBN 978-0-231-15718-6.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ward_%28communications_director%29#cite_ref-Gordon_Rayner_5-1) Rayner, Gordon (27 November 2009). "Who's to blame for Climategate?". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. p. 1. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
^ Ward, Bob (2 December 2009), Climate change denial is the new article of faith for the far right, The Guardian
^ Ward, Bob (June 1, 2010). "Royal Society and climate change". The Times. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
^ Ward, Bob (28 May 2010). "UK Royal Society revives confusion as US concludes climate change certainty". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. p. 1. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
^ Bawden, Tom (3 June 2019). "Experts urge May to confront Trump on climate change failings". i.

Categories:

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https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bob_Ward_(communi...

Ward's first significant involvement with climate change issues was in August 2005 when, as Royal Society communications director, he called on ExxonMobil to ...

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Which of these three ... - Grist

https://grist.org › exxon-the-royal-society-and-cei

Exxon has hit back at the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific organization. ... By David Roberts on Sep 23, 2006 ... Exxon reps have privately told a number of people — including Bob Ward at the RS — that it is no longer funding CEI.

How Intense did the Battle Between Bob Ward and ...

https://www.desmog.co.uk › 2015/07/28 › how-intense...

Jul 28, 2015 — Bob Ward, the then head of media at the Royal Society, was shocked when ... Institute (CEI) heckled professor David King, the government's chief. ... Bob Ward – working at the Royal Society at the time – and ExxonMobil's ...

Missing: robert ‎| Must include: robert

What is it Bob Ward (communications director). Encyclopedia

https://amp.en.google-info.in › bob-ward-communicati...

Bob ward has served as policy and communications Director Grantham research ... distortion of climate change science. with ExxonMobils says the leader of the industry". ... he urged the Royal society to clarify its position on the issue of global warming. ... ExThera Medical CEO, Robert Ward, Presents Keynote Address on.

Esso Archives - Climate Files

http://www.climatefiles.com › category › exxonmobil

Letter from the Bob Ward at the Royal Society to Nick Thomas, Director of ... of Exxon, is an article in the “Imperial Oil Review” written by Robert Peterson, who ... is a letter from Robert Peterson, Imperial's Chairman and CEO, to then-Prime ...

Bob Ward - Independent Board Member, Audit Committee ...

https://www.linkedin.com › biopharmbw

Greater New York City Area · ‎Independent Board Member, Audit Committee Chair · ‎OncoSec Medical Inc (ONCS)

See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover Bob's connections and jobs at similar companies. ... Bob Ward. Experienced Startup CEO | Entrepreneur Innovator | Board Member | Board Chair | Audit ... New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Missing: royal ‎exxon

Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore – Reason.com

https://reason.com › 2006/09/22 › confessions-of-an-all...

Sep 22, 2006 — The prestigious Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific organization. The letter is from Bob Ward, the Society's senior manager for policy ... Did ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond hand me brown paper bags ... The global warming chapter was written by University of Arizona climatologist Robert Balling.

Greed to Green: Solving Climate Change and Remaking the Economy

https://books.google.com › books

Charles Derber · 2015 · ‎Social Science

Cited in Greg Wynn, ®Exxon Says It Never Doubted Climate Change, ̄ Reuters, ... Both quotes from Bob Ward of the Royal Society, ®Letter to Nick Thomas, ̄ Corporate ... Cited at some length in Martin Lamonica, ®Duke Energy CEO: Coal Not Going ... Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes (New York: Penguin, 1969).

Spinning the World: Making Visible the Genealogies ... - JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org › stable

by M Banning · 2007 · Cited by 3 — Change, Robert Watson, replaced at its request because he ... 9 Luntz is president and CEO of a political ... 22 Bob Ward, Royal Society Exxon. Letter Copy.pdf ...