Christopher C. Horner | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Washington University School of Law |
Occupation | Attorney |
Employer | Competitive Enterprise Institute |
Notable work | The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) (2007) |
Title | Senior Fellow |
Christopher C. Horner is an attorney in Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow at the non-profit libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute. He opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. [1] He is the author of three books disputing the scientific evidence for man-made global warming. He was supported by coal companies. [2] [3] Horner has been criticized for hounding climate scientists with frivolous requests for documentation and emails. [2] [3]
Horner received his Juris Doctor from Washington University School of Law. [4] [5]
He has represented non-profit libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute as well as Members of the U.S. House and Senate on matters of environmental policy in the federal courts, including the US Supreme Court.
Horner has written on numerous topics in publications such as law reviews, legal and industrial trade journals, and opinion pages. He is the author of four books:
The Politically Incorrect Guide was on The New York Times Best Seller list (paperback nonfiction) from March to October 2007. [6] [7]
Horner has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, [8] and works on a legal and policy level with numerous think tanks and policy organizations. He has given addresses to audiences in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels, and before policymakers in European capitals including London, Rome, Prague, Copenhagen, Madrid, and Warsaw; topics range from rail deregulation and unfunded pension liability to energy and environment issues. He has provided legal, policy, and political commentary several hundred times each on both television and radio, in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia, including on the Fox News Channel, Court TV, MSNBC (with repeat visits on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer ), BBC, CNN, CNN International, ITN, CBC, Bloomberg, and Reuters Television.[ citation needed ]
Horner "has been instrumental in orchestrating the attacks on climate scientists over the past decade in the form of vexatious and frivolous FOIA demands, efforts to force scientists to turn over all of their personal email," said Michael Mann, a senior climate scientist. [9] [3]
In 2015, bankruptcy court documents for the coal company Alpha Natural Resources revealed Horner was privately funded by grants sent to his home address. [10] [2] [3] In early June 2015, the Coal & Investment Leadership Forum, a trade show, sent a message to its email list confirming coal industry support of Horner: "As the 'war on coal' continues, I trust that the commitment we have made to support Chris Horner's work will eventually create great awareness of the illegal tactics being employed to pass laws that are intended to destroy our industry." The email was signed by Alliance Resource Partners Joe Craft III, Alpha Natural Resources Kevin Crutchfield, Drummond Company's Gary Drummond, Arch Coal's John Eaves and United Coal Co.'s Jim McGlothlin. [2] [11]
Environmental skepticism is the belief that statements by environmentalists, and the environmental scientists who support them, are false or exaggerated. The term is also applied to those who are critical of environmentalism in general. It can additionally be defined as doubt about the authenticity or severity of environmental degradation. Environmental skepticism is closely linked with anti-environmentalism and climate change denial. Environmental skepticism can also be the result of cultural and lived experiences.
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.
Patrick J. Michaels was an American agricultural climatologist. Michaels was a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until 2019. Until 2007, he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980.
Willie Wei-Hock Soon is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer who was long employed as a part-time externally funded researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) was a nonprofit conservative think tank in the United States. It was established in 1984 with a focus on science and public policy issues and had an initial focus in defense policy. Starting in the late 1980s, the institute advocated for views in line with environmental skepticism, most notably climate change denial. The think tank received extensive financial support from the fossil fuel industry.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit libertarian think tank founded by the political writer Fred L. Smith Jr. on March 9, 1984, in Washington, D.C., to advance principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty. CEI focuses on a number of regulatory policy issues, including business and finance, labor, technology and telecommunications, transportation, food and drug regulation, and energy and environment in which they have promoted climate change denial. Kent Lassman is the current President and CEO.
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is a conservative non-profit free market public policy think tank, which is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It advocates free-market economic policies, such as privatisation, deregulation of state-owned enterprises, trade liberalisation, deregulation of workplaces, abolition of the minimum wage, criticism of socialism, and repeal of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It also rejects large parts of climate science.
Myron Ebell is an American climate change denier who served 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 was also chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a politically conservative group formed in 1997 focused on "dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis". In September 2016, Ebell was appointed by then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Philip A. Cooney is a former member of the administration of United States President George W. Bush. Before being appointed to chair the Council on Environmental Quality, he was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. He was accused of doctoring and changing scientific reports about global warming by other agencies. He then resigned his position and denied any wrongdoing.
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank known for denying the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
Robert Merlin Carter was an English palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist. He was professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia from 1981 to 1998, and was prominent in promoting anthropogenic climate change denial.
David Russell Legates is a former professor of geography at the University of Delaware. He is the former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the same university and a former Delaware state climatologist. In September 2020, the Trump administration appointed him as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Climate change denial is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.
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.
Indur M. Goklany is a science policy advisor in the United States Department of the Interior (DOI). Trained as an electrical engineer, he has often promoted views at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change, falsely asserting that there is a lack of agreement among scientists and arguing that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has various beneficial effects.
Rick Perry is an American politician who served as the 47th Governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015. He was a candidate for the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States in 2012 and 2016, and served as the United States Secretary of Energy until December 1, 2019.
Marc Morano is a former Republican political aide who founded and runs the website ClimateDepot.com. ClimateDepot is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US non-profit organisation that promotes climate change denial.
Alexander Joseph Epstein is an American author who advocates for the expansion of fossil fuels and is a skeptic of the scientific consensus on climate change. Epstein is the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2014) and Fossil Future (2022), in which he argues for the expanded use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.
From the 1980s to mid 2000s, ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking.
The history of climate change policy and politics refers to the continuing history of political actions, policies, trends, controversies and activist efforts as they pertain to the issue of climate change. Climate change emerged as a political issue in the 1970s, when activist and formal efforts sought to address environmental crises on a global scale. International policy regarding climate change has focused on cooperation and the establishment of international guidelines to address global warming. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a largely accepted international agreement that has continuously developed to meet new challenges. Domestic policy on climate change has focused on both establishing internal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incorporating international guidelines into domestic law.