The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a United States public policy organization which promotes climate change denial. [1]
The mission of the nonprofit advocacy group Science and Public Policy Institute is to promote "sound public policy based on sound science." [2]
With a strong emphasis on global warming skepticism, SPPI was established in the middle of 2007. It heavily references works by climate change science skeptic Christopher Monckton, who served as editor of the organization's "Monthly CO2 Report", has published many of his works with SPPI, and who is also listed as the organization's "Chief Policy Advisor." [2]
The SPPI has analyzed the states for observed climate change and the impact or expense of climate change regulations or prevention measures, in addition to releasing original articles on subjects including climate change and mercury in the environment. SPPI has been called a "front" for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC), with whom it frequently co-publishes papers. [2]
The organization's executive director is Robert Ferguson, and the chief policy adviser is Christopher Monckton. Joe D'Aleo is the institute's Meteorology Adviser. Further science advisers, as listed in 2011, include:
Willie Soon was at one time the chief science advisor.
The Science and Public Policy Institute funded a film "Apocalypse? No!" intended to show errors in the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth . It shows Monckton giving a presentation to the Cambridge University Union. [3]
The SPPI took an interest in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("Climategate"). Its position is elaborated in a 45-page paper released in December 2009, titled Climategate: Caught Green-Handed!: Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate scandal, which concluded that global warming is a myth. [4]
The Institute is operated by The Frontiers of Freedom Foundation, Inc., [5] [6] [7] a policy organization founded in 1996 by former Senator Malcolm Wallop, Republican of Wyoming. [8] On its website SPPI does not detail the sources of its funding. In 2002, Frontiers of Freedom had a budget of $700,000, with fossil-fuel company Exxon-Mobil donating $230,000 of that sum. [1]
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and engaged in climate change denial, publicly challenged the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry group active in climate policy and the most prominent industry advocate in international climate negotiations. The GCC was involved in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and played a role in blocking ratification by the United States. The coalition knew it could not deny the scientific consensus, but sought to sow doubt over the scientific consensus on climate change and create manufactured controversy.
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 very 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 tried to persuade 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.
Sir Robert Tony Watson CMG FRS is a British chemist who has worked on atmospheric science issues including ozone depletion, global warming and paleoclimatology since the 1980s. Most recently, he is lead author of the February 2021 U.N. report Making Peace with Nature.
Lee Roy Raymond is an American businessman and was the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and served as president from 1987 and a director beginning in 1984.
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 newsletter called CO2Science.
Craig D. Idso is the founder, president and current chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a group which receives funding from ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy and which promotes climate change denial. He is the brother of Keith E. Idso and son of Sherwood B. Idso.
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 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 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).
Steven J. Milloy is a lawyer, lobbyist, author and former Fox News commentator. Milloy is the founder and editor of the blog junkscience.com.
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.
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a British public speaker and hereditary peer. He is known for his work as a journalist, Conservative political advisor, UKIP political candidate, and for his invention of the mathematical puzzle Eternity.
Climate change conspiracy theories assert 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 and climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.
Climate change denial or global warming denial is dismissal or unwarranted doubt that contradicts 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.
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.
Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills was a case heard in September–October 2007 in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, concerning the permissibility of the government providing Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth to English state schools as a teaching aid.
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.
Since the 1970s, American fossil fuel and energy corporation ExxonMobil has engaged in climate research focussing on global warming. It later began lobbying, advertising, and grant making, some of which were conducted with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.
the Center for Science and Public Policy, a project of the industry-funded Frontiers of Freedom (a group that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil)