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 an undergraduate degree in Geology . [2] [3] He once worked at HECSU.
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]
The global warming controversy concerns the public debate over whether global warming is occurring, how much has occurred in modern times, what has caused it, what its effects will be, whether any action can or should be taken to curb it, and if so what that action should be. In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view, though a few organizations with members in extractive industries hold non-committal positions, and some have attempted to convince the public that climate change is not happening, or if the climate is changing it is not because of human influence, attempting to sow doubt in the scientific consensus.
The Stop Esso campaign was a campaign by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People and Planet aimed at boycotting the oil company Esso, known as ExxonMobil in the United States, on the grounds that it is damaging the environment.
The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Tempe, Arizona. It is seen as a front group for the fossil fuel industry, and as promoting climate change denial. The Center produces a weekly online science newsletter called CO2Science.
The Scientific Alliance is a UK-based organization that claims to promote open-minded debate on scientific matters and science policy, including biotechnology, genetically modified food, energy and climate change. Its stated aim is to "bring together both scientists and non-scientists committed to rational discussion and debate on the challenges facing the environment today." In the scientific literature it is regarded as "a UK-based lobby group which challenges the scientific consensus on climate change".
Myron Ebell is an American climate change denier who serves as the Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an American libertarian advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose coalition formed in 1997 which presents itself as "focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis". In September 2016, he was appointed by then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the petroleum industry. Much of its work has been dedicated to the advancement of climate change denial and blocking of climate legislation to defend the interests of its constituent organizations.
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
Business action on climate change includes a range of activities relating to climate change, and to influencing political decisions on climate change-related regulation, such as the Kyoto Protocol. Major multinationals have played and to some extent continue to play a significant role in the politics of climate change, especially in the United States, through lobbying of government and funding of climate change deniers. Business also plays a key role in the mitigation of climate change, through decisions to invest in researching and implementing new energy technologies and energy efficiency measures.
Rex Wayne Tillerson is an American engineer and energy executive who served as the 69th U.S. secretary of state from February 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, under President Donald Trump. Prior to joining the Trump administration, Tillerson was chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil, holding that position from 2006 until 2017.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a 2007 British polemical documentary film directed by Martin Durkin. The film denies the scientific consensus about the reality and causes of climate change, justifying this by suggesting that climatology is influenced by funding and political factors. The program was formally criticised by Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulatory agency, which ruled the film failed to uphold due impartiality and upheld complaints of misrepresentation made by David King, who appeared in the film.
A global warming conspiracy theory invokes claims that the scientific consensus on global warming is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. Conspiracy theorists typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind global warming has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.
Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. Many who deny, dismiss, or hold unwarranted doubt about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming self-label as "climate change skeptics", which several scientists have noted is an inaccurate description. Climate change denial can also be implicit when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denial or denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.
ExxonMobil Corporation is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Both of its predecessors are used as brands for fueling stations and downstream products today, alongside Esso. The vertically-integrated company also has a chemical division, ExxonMobil Chemical, which produces plastic, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products. ExxonMobil is incorporated in New Jersey.
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a lobby group in the United Kingdom whose stated aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. The GWPF, and some of its prominent members individually, have been characterized as practising and promoting climate change denial.
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is a research institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science founded in May 2008. The centre is a partner of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College and acts as an umbrella body for LSE's overall research contributions to the field of climate change and its impact on the environment. Furthermore, the institute oversees the activities of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP), a partnership between LSE and the University of Leeds.
Brian P. Flannery is a physicist who variously worked as an astrophysicist and as a climate modeller for ExxonMobil. He is known for being a co-author of Numerical Recipes, a widely used series of textbooks describing useful algorithms.
Since the 1970s, ExxonMobil engaged in climate research, and later began lobbying, advertising, and grant making, some of which were conducted with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.
Darren W. Woods is an American businessman, and the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil since January 1, 2017.
The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer. Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.