Science and Environmental Policy Project

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The Science and Environmental Policy Project ( SEPP ) is an organization founded by Fred Singer in 1990 , which is known for denying various scientific findings . SEPP is described as both a think tank and an astroturfing organization.

According to scientists like Michael E. Mann , the Science and Environmental Policy Project aims to discredit scientific knowledge about ozone depletion , global warming , the health hazards of tobacco consumption and other environmental and health problems. While SEPP initially dealt with the defense of tobacco consumption and belittling the associated health risks, it later specializes primarily in the denial of man-made global warming . SEPP is based in Arlington County near Washington, DC

In 2016, SEPP had an annual budget of more than $ 2 million. SEPP u. a. by industrial organizations, private individuals and foundations that predominantly pursue a deregulation agenda. In addition, SEPP received funds from industrial companies, including ExxonMobil , Royal Dutch Shell , Unocal , ARCO , as well as the founder and head of the so-called Unification Church , Sun Myung Moon .

staff

SEPP was founded in 1990 by Fred Singer, a physicist and rocket scientist. a. worked in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and left the academic world for SEPP. Over the years, Singer has received substantial funds from companies in various branches of industry, including Philip Morris , Monsanto and Texaco , and is, according to Michael E. Mann, the most productive of the "universally applicable commercial deniers" of scientific knowledge. Fred Seitz acted as chairman of the board of directors, in which, among other things, William Stuhlrenberg sat ; a physicist and former President of the National Academy of Sciences , who after his career also moved on to tackle various environmental and health problems.

Positions and Actions

Sepp is seen in the scientific literature as an important propagator of environmental skepticism, which is mainly due to the denial of the existence of environmental problems such. B. the loss of biodiversity and global warming is defined.

With the help of SEPP, Singer also began to create various petitions from supposed experts; a tactic that has been used regularly by climate deniers ever since. In early 1992, SEPP distributed a statement written by Fred Singer entitled "Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming", which was planned as a pre-emptive strike against possible results of the Rio 1992 environmental conference . The declaration, which was also signed by other scientific climate change deniers such as Richard Lindzen and Patrick J. Michaels , opposed a "system of global environmental regulations including the introduction of energy taxes" derived from "highly uncertain scientific theories" would. Such policy instruments were based on the "unsubstantiated assumption that catastrophic global warming would result from burning fossil fuels" and that "immediate action" was needed. The authors would not agree with these statements.

In 1995, SEPP sponsored a conference held in Leipzig entitled "The Greenhouse Controversy," which resulted in the Leipzig Declaration , a European manifesto denying the seriousness of climate change. The signatories of this declaration include prominent climate deniers Robert Balling , Hugh Ellsaesser, David Legates, Richard Lindzen , Patrick Michaels and Frederick Seitz . The petition, allegedly signed by 80 scientists and 25 TV meteorologists, was redistributed in 1997 and 2005 after it was first published in 1995. In 1997 a Danish journalist tried to verify the signatures of the 82 signatures given at the time. He came to the following conclusion: He could not find four signatories, twelve people denied having signed the petition, some of them even stated that they had never heard of the petition, many had no specialist expertise in the relevant subject area, and two - Balling and Michaels - had financial connections to the German coal industry and the government of Kuwait .

In 1996, SEPP published a list of the 5 biggest environmental myths of the year that they had perceived in a PR campaign: These are:

  • the global warming and the climate treaty
  • Stratospheric ozone and skin cancer
  • the secondhand smoke scare tactics
  • the lazy radon scare tactics
  • and the pursuit of a zero-risk policy that aims to ban all food additives "which are found to be carcinogenic if given to rats in huge doses"

In the 2000s, SEPP played a key role in the founding of the NIPCC , an association that climate change deniers present as a counter-body to the so-called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ). In 2003, Fred Singer hosted a conference in Italy through SEPP with the aim of evaluating the IPCC's fourth assessment report. As a result, Singer, SEPP and the Heartland Institute joined forces in 2008 to write their own report entitled Nature, not Human Activity Rules the Climate , which was designed as a counterpart to the IPCC. The NIPCC later published another report. This was written by 3 main authors, 12 chapter authors and 38 other participants from various disciplines, but hardly any of them had a real academic background in meteorology or other climate-relevant fields. Instead, many authors worked for relevant think tanks such as the US Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change or the Australian Institute of Public Affairs .

In 2018, SEPP joined CFACT , the CO 2 Coalition , the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute as one of the sponsors of the Heartland Institute's annual conference at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC.

links

The International Center for a Scientific Ecology , based in Paris, emerged from SEPP . The PR agency APCO, which designed the astroturfing organization TASSC for the tobacco company Philip Morris , recommended that TASSC set up a "public information office" that would coordinate with other organizations such as SEPP that had "tangential targets".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming . Greystone Books 2009, p. 39 and 80.
  2. ↑ a b Michael E. Mann , Tom Toles: The madhouse effect. How climate change denial threatens our planet, destroys our politics and drives us insane . Erlangen 2018, p. 85.
  3. ↑ Susanne Götze , Annika Joeres : The climate pollution lobby . How politicians and business leaders sell the future of our planet . Munich 2020, p. 71.
  4. ↑ Susanne Götze , Annika Joeres : The climate pollution lobby . How politicians and business leaders sell the future of our planet . Munich 2020, p. 106.
  5. ↑ a b MyAnna Lahsen: Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural analysis of a physicist '' trio '' supporting the backlash against global warming . In: Global Environmental Change . tape 18 , 2008, p. 204–219, here: p. 215 , doi : 10.1016 / j.gloenvcha.2007.10.001 .
  6. ↑ a b c d James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science. New York 2012, pp. 55-57.
  7. ↑ See Michael E. Mann , Tom Toles: Der Tollhausffekt. How climate change denial threatens our planet, destroys our politics and drives us insane . Erlangen 2018, pp. 83–85.
  8. ↑ a b Peter J. Jacques et al .: The organization of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental skepticism . In: Environmental Politics . tape 17 , no. 3 , 2008, p. 349-385 , doi : 10.1080 / 09644010802055576 .
  9. ↑ See James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming . Greystone Books 2009, p. 92.
  10. ↑ Dieter Plehwe: Think tank networks and the knowledge interest nexus: The case of climate change . In: Critical Policy Studies . tape 8 , no. 1 , 2014, p. 101–115, especially 108 , doi : 10.1080 / 19460171.2014.883859 .
  11. ↑ Susanne Götze , Annika Joeres : The climate pollution lobby . How politicians and business leaders sell the future of our planet . Munich 2020, p. 100.
  12. ↑ James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming . Greystone Books 2009, p. 39