European Science and Environment Forum

Roger Bate co-founded the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) with Dr John Emsley and Professor Frits Böttcher. A year earlier Bate had founded the Environment Unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Amongst the ESEF's publications is Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment, co-edited by Bate and Julian Morris. The IEA website comments: 'In the latest ESEF book, Fearing Food, new agricultural and food technologies, including genetic engineering, are shown to be generally beneficial both to health and to the environment.' Contributors to the book included Michael Wilson, John Hillman and Dennis Avery.

Bate also directed and presented the BBC2 Counterblast programme 'Organic Food: The Modern Myth' (BBC2, 31 Jan 2000) in his role as Director of the European Science and Environment Forum.

In its mission statement on its original website^[6], the ESEF described itself as 'a non-partisan group of scientists' and claimed, 'To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF does not accept outside funding from whatever source, the only income it receives is from the sale of its publications'. (emphasis added)

However, documents released by tobacco giant Philip Morris show that ESEF was established with money from the tobacco industry - solicited by Bate. As Big Tobacco's European front organization, their task^[7] was to smuggle tobacco advocacy into a larger bundle of 'sound science' issues, including 'restrictions on the use of biotechnology.'

Shortly after the Philip Morris revelations the original ESEF website was taken down. It has subsequently been relaunched with a different domain name^[8] and now says^[9], 'To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF accepts funding from a wide variety of sources, except government donations.' The 'wide variety of sources' are not disclosed.

Bill Durodie of the Living Marxism network is among the authors most published by ESEF (Poisonous Dummies, Poisonous Propaganda, The Demoralisation of Science).

Bate's IEA Environment Unit co-director, Julian Morris, ostensibly had no direct connection with ESEF, but an ESEF domain inquiry prior to the disappearance of the original website revealed he was the website registrant.

Given the Big Tobacco connection, it is perhaps no surprise to find the Director of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health complaining that, 'Roger Bate of the Institute of Economic Affairs produces new variants of the familiar argument of the tobacco industry'. In pursuing the question of 'who is funding this work at the IEA' ASH noted ESEF's role:

'The organiser of the seminar at the IEA, Roger Bate is also a key member of something called the "European Science and Environment Forum". This body has recently published analysis that amounts to an attack on... findings on passive smoking.'

ASH also noted that tobacco research was not the only area where these players had been involved in jointly promoting dubious science for corporate purposes:

'Both Bate, the ESEF and the IEA have had a dry run for their work on tobacco. Roger Bate came to fame as the author of an IEA book dismissing the widespread scientific consensus on global warming "Global warming or hot air?". The ESEF also published a book of so-called sceptical science - this was the work of a small group of scientists. The word 'sceptical' dignifies something that was much more cynical. The aim was to create controversy and deflect public policy measures to combat climate change - something very similar appears to be happening with tobacco.'

Activities

In its mission statement published in 1994 on its original website , the ESEF described itself as a non-partisan group of scientists and claimed, To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF does not accept outside funding from whatever source, the only income it receives is from the sale of its publications.

Almost immediately, it took on a crusade to fight UK and European regulations against passive smoke and workplace smoking, along with global warming and restricted use of pesticides and herbicides. It fought mainly to discredit the World Health Organisation, while attempting to rebuff the science used by the USA's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Lorraine Mooney was brought onto the ESEF staff from the IEA to write editorials, letters to the editor and op-ed pieces. Bate wrote many of these also, especially for the European Wall Street Journal.

The organisation also worked with the Weinberg Group (another contractor/science-lobbyist organisation which ran special conferences for the tobacco industry) in promoting Risk Management ideas (essentially the preeminent role of economic factors, to counter the application of the precautionary principle). [10]

In February 2002, the President of the George C. Marshall Institute, William O'Keefe, and Philip Stott jointly released a European Science and Environment Forum study, "Climate Change and Policy: Making the Connection". The press release issued listed Stott as the lead contact, stated that the report was “based on the work of a group of science and policy experts convened by the American George C. Marshall Institute” and thanked the “International Policy Network for supporting the publication of this report”. (Frederick Seitz was at the Marshall Institute at this time)

ESEF, Stott’s release stated, was “ a Cambridge-based science and policy think-tank, focuses on clearly communicating scientific facts on major public policy matters while challenging the misuse of science in the policy debate”. In the release Stott stated that “in the UK, it is a media myth that there are only a few scientists who disagree with the view of 'global warming' on which the Kyoto Protocol is predicated”.[11]

In the preface to the report – which was a repackaging of a report released the previous year by the George C. Marshall Institute - Stott argued that more effort was needed gathering data before climate science uncertainties would be resolved. “It is clear that the mandatory, command-and control, economics and politics of the Kyoto Protocol are not justified. Indeed, as the authors rightly conclude, ‘…actions must not be predicated on speculative images of an apocalyptic vision of life by 2100’”, Stott wrote.[12]

Bate also directed and presented the BBC2 Counterblast programme 'Organic Food: The Modern Myth' (BBC2, 31 Jan 2000) in his role as Director of the European Science and Environment Forum.

Personnel

A delegation of representatives from ESEF attended the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties in Milan in December 2003.

• Lorraine Mooney, Director | Paolo Ghislandi, ESEF Associate | Fabio Leoncini, ESEF Associate | Mario Daviddi, ESEF Associate | Luciano Grugni, ESEF Associate | Bill Durodie, 'Research Fellow', circa 1999 |

In 1998 the Academic Members of ESEF included: Bruce N. Ames, Sallie L. Baliunas, Robert C. Balling, Jack Barrett, C.J.F. Böttcher, Peter Dietze , Tor Ragnar Gerholm, Gerhard Gerlich, Sherwood Idso, Helmut Metzner, Patrick J. Michaels, William Mitchell, Harry N.A. Priem, Michel Salomon, S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon, Wolfgang Thüne, and Gerd-Rainer Weber, while Richard S. Courtney and Michael Gough were Business Members. The list immediately identifies this group as affilliated with Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Heidelberg Appeal group, ICSE (run by SEPP and Michel Salomon).

Affiliations, Publications, Resources, Notes

Affiliations

International Policy Network funded an ESEF report on the precautionary principle in 2002

Publications

• Roger Bate, Indur M. Goklany and Robert Nilsson Perilous precaution: the folly of disregarding science First published in June 2002 by The European Science and Environment Forum 4 Church Lane, Barton, Cambridge, CB3 7BE, England. ESEF thanks the International Policy Network for providing sponsorship of this project.
• Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection The European Science and Environment Forum, 2002 - Originally published in 2001 by © George C. Marshall Institute Washington DC. Introduction by Philip Stott
• Bill Durodie Poisonous Dummies: European Risk Regulation after BSE, The European Science and Environment Forum, 1999.
• Robert Matthews. Facts versus Factions: the use and abuse of subjectivity in scientific research ESEF Working Paper 2/98 The European Science and Environment Forum

Contact

The European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) is an educational charity.

Company number: 3275771;

Charity number: 1060751

Limited by guarantee.

4 Church Lane, Barton, Cambridge, CB3 7BE

Web http://www.scienceforum.net

Internet Archive holdings for the website: http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://www.scienceforum.net

Internet Archive holdings for the previous website: http://waybackmachine.org/19991201000000*/http://www.esef.org

Phone: (44)(0)1223 264643 Fax: (44)(0)1223 264645

References

1. ^http://web.archive.org/web/19971224164327/esef.org/mission.htm
2. ^http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=European_Science_and_Environment_Forum
3. ^http://www.scienceforum.net/
4. ^http://www.scienceforum.net/esef.htm