European Science and Environment Forum

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European Science and Environment Forum logo circa 1997
ESEF claim to take no corporate funding, circa 1997. Retrieved from the Internet archive of 24 December 1997: Mission

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).

Like other "sound science" front groups, its real mission is to disparage the science upon which environmental safety regulations are based, and it was initially a creation of the tobacco industry, which promoted the idea of "junk science" and overregulation.

The ESEF was linked, via shared staff (Julian Morris and Roger Bate), to the Institute of Economic Affairs and later the International Policy Network and the Sustainable Development Network. The IEA itself has links to the Adam Smith Institute and FOREST, the UK smoker's rights organisation, and Roger Bate continued to work for the IEA in London, while officially being the Director of the ESEF in Cambridge.

In 1996, Roger Bate approached R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for a grant of £50,000 to fund a book on risk, containing a chapter on passive smoking.[1] However, the request was denied and the money was never received. In 1997, the ESEF published What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health, edited by Roger Bate which included a chapter on passive smoking; the book's publication was carefully supervised by Philip Morris.

History

The 'European Science and Environment Forum' is defunct. It was formed in 1994 by Roger Bate, Dr John Emsley and Professor Frits Böttcher. Later it was run by Bate with Julian Morris and Lorraine Mooney, and linked to the International Policy Network and the Sustainable Development Network.

Some have called it a European version of Steve Milloy's The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), a front group created to assist the tobacco industry in its fight against regulation of secondhand cigarette smoke.

As with TASSC, it argued that government and safety regulations were not based on "sound science." The idea was to broaden the attack-front against the regulators by placing tobacco regulation into a larger bundle of corporate "sound science" issues. These included the "ban on growth hormone for livestock; ban on [genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone] to improve milk production; pesticide restrictions; ban on indoor smoking; restrictions on use of chlorine; ban on certain pharmaceutical products; restrictions on the use of biotechnology." 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,[2] 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[3] 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. The site was relaunched with a different domain name (www.scienceforum.net, now defunct) and stated' To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF accepts funding from a wide variety of sources, except government donations.'[4] The 'wide variety of sources' are not disclosed. The last archived version of the website is dated 3 November 2005.

Bill Durodie of the Living Marxism network is among the authors most published by ESEF (Poisonous Dummies, 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.[5]

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[6] 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.'

Turf war

APCO Worldwide, the same PR firm that created TASSC, participated in the planning and development of ESEF. Burson-Marsteller, another long-time PR firm for Philip Morris, tried to take control. Their main advice to Philip Morris was that companies outside the tobacco industry should be recruited to support Euro-TASSC (as a way to hide the tobacco lobbying), including makers of "consumer products (food, beverages, tobacco), packaging industry, agrichemical industry, chemical industry, pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry, electric power industry, telecommunications."

A full-scale turf war broke out between Burson-Marsteller and APCO over the question of which PR firm should handle the European campaign. Jim Lindheim of Burson-Marsteller laid claim to the account by stressing his firm's already-proven expertise at defending tobacco science in Europe. "We have the network, much of which is already sensitized to PM's special needs," he stated. "We have a lot of experience in every country working with scientists. . . . We've got a large client base with 'scientific problems' whom we can tap for sponsorship." [7]

APCO's Margery Kraus responded by reminding Philip Morris regulatory affairs director Matthew Winokur that Burson-Marsteller's long history of tobacco industry work was public knowledge and therefore might taint the endeavor.

"Given the sensitivities of other TASSC activities and a previous decision not to have TASSC work directly with Burson, due to these sensitivities in other TASSC work, I did not feel comfortable having Stig (Carlson) or anyone else from Burson assume primary responsibility for working with TASSC scientists," Kraus stated.

As for experience in handling scientific problems, she pointed to APCO's work for "the following industries impacted by science and environmental policy decisions: chemical, pharmaceutical, nuclear, waste management and motor industries, power generation, biotech products, packaging and detergents, and paint. They have advised clients on a number of issues, including: agricultural manufacturing, animal testing, chlorine, dioxins, toxic waste, ozone/CFCs, power generation, coastal pollution, lead in gasoline, polyurethanes, lubricants."

Eventually RJ Reynolds Tobacco was brought in to help with the funding and APCO and Burson-Marsteller joined forces. British-American Tobacco (BAT) also came on board, and effective control gradually passed over to European tobacco and food interests.[8][9] The question then became whether to create a new organisation or submerge the new 'sound-science/junk-science' propaganda program in an existing organisation like that created to run the Heidelberg Appeal (ICEF) or whether to found a completely new organisation like TASSC. A conference was held in Brussels in mid 1994 to settle all of these questions.[10]

Roger Bate, a long-time employee of the the IEA (Director of the Environmental Unit), headed the group[11] and through all of these individual and institutional channels, ESEF was effectively linked into the growing international science-denial network which railed against claims of climate-warming, ozone-depletion, passive-smoking, and other environmental and health activism.

Dr John Emsley, Science Writer in Residence at Imperial College (London Uni) and Professor Fritz Bottcher, director of Global Institute for the Study of Natural Resources (in The Hague) also lent their names to the organisation, as did lobbyists like Australian Peter Toynbee, the Director of Coal Research Association, and Robert Nillson, a tobacco industry 'consultant' from Stockholm University.[12]

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.[13][14][15] Bate wrote many of these also, especially for the European Wall Street Journal.[16]

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).[17]

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”.[18]

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.[19]

Personnel

A delegation of representatives from ESEF attended the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties in Milan in December 2003.[20]

Academic Members - 1998

Prof. Tom Addiscott UK | Prof. Bruce Ames USA | Dr Sallie Baliunas USA | Dr Alan Bailey UK | Dr Robert C. Balling USA | Prof. A. G. M. Barrett UK | Dr Jack Barrett UK | Mr Roger Bate UK | Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen UK | Prof. Dr Frits Böttcher The Netherlands | Prof. Norman D. Brown UK | Prof. Dr K. H. Büchel Germany | Dr John Butler UK | Mr Piers Corbyn UK | Prof. Dr. A. Cornelissen The Netherlands | Dr Barrie Craven UK | Mr Peter Dietze Germany | Dr A. J. Dobbs UK | Dr John Dowding UK | Dr John Emsley UK | Dr Patricia Fara UK | Dr Oeystein Faestoe UK | Dr Frank Fitzgerald UK | Prof Dr Hartmut Frank Germany | Dr James Franklin Belgium | Dr Alastair Gebbie UK | Dr T. R. Gerholm Sweden | Prof. Dr Gerhard Gerlich Germany | Prof. D. T. Gjessing Norway | Dr Manoucher Golipour UK | Dr Adrian Gordon Australia | Dr Vincent R. Gray New Zealand | Dr Gordon Gribble USA | Prof Dr Hans-Eberhard Heyke Germany | Dr Vidar Hisdal Norway | Dr Jean-Louis L’hirondel France | Dr Sherwood Idso USA | Dr Antoaneta Iotova Bulgaria | Prof. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski Poland | Dr Tim Jones UK | Prof. Dr Wibjörn Karlén Sweden | Dr Terrence Kealey UK | Prof. Dr Kirill Ya.Kondratyev Russia | Prof. Dr F. Korte Germany | Mr Johan Kuylenstierna Sweden | Dr Theodor Landscheidt Germany | Dr Alan Mann UK | Dr John McMullan UK | Prof. Dr Helmut Metzner Germany | Dr Patrick Michaels USA | Sir William Mitchell UK | Dr Paolo Mocarelli Italy | Dr Asmunn Moene Norway | Dr Brooke T. Mossman USA | Prof Dr Hans-Emil Müller Germany | Prof Dr [[Dr Paul Müller Germany | Dr Joan Munby UK | Mr Liam Nagle UK | Dr Genrik A. Nikolsky Russia | Dr Robert Nilsson Sweden | Prof. Dr Harry Priem The Netherlands | Dr Christoffer Rappe Sweden | Dr Ray Richards UK | Dr Michel Salomon France | Dr Tom V. Segalstad Norway | Dr S. Fred Singer USA | Dr Willie Soon USA | Dr G. N. Stewart UK | Dr Gordon Stewart UK | Dr Maria Tasheva Bulgaria | Dr Wolfgang Thüne Germany | Dr Alan Tillotson UK | Dr Brian Tucker Australia | Prof. Dr med. Karl Überla Germany | Prof. Dr H. P. van Heel The Netherlands | Dr Robin Vaughan UK | Prof. Nico Vlaar The Netherlands | Dr Horst Wachsmuth Switzerland | Dr [[Michael P. R. Waligórski Poland | Dr Gunnar Walinder Sweden | Dr Gerd-Rainer Weber Germany | Prof Donald Weetman UK | Dr Charlotte Wiin-Christensen Denmark | Dr Aksel Wiin-Nielsen Denmark | Dr James Wilson USA[22] The list immediately identifies this group as affiliated with Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Heidelberg Appeal group, ICSE (run by SEPP and Michel Salomon).

Business Members - 1998

Dr Alfred Bader UK Mr John Boler UK Mr Charles Bottoms UK Dr Francisco Capella Gómez-Acebo Spain Mr Richard Courtney UK Mr Michael Gough USA Dr Claes Hall UK Mr Richard Hallett UK Mr Peter Henry UK Mr Holger Heuseler Germany Mr Graham Horne Dr Warwick Hughes Australia Dr Kelvin Kemm South Africa Mr Peter Plumley Dr John Rae UK Dr Michael Rogers UK Mr Peter Toynbee Australia Dr Wynne Davies UK[22]

Affiliations, Publications, Resources, Notes

Affiliations

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

Publications

Books

  • Roger Bate, Life's Adventure: Virtual Risk in a Real World, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000.
  • Richard North, Risk: The Human Choice, European Science and Environment Forum, 2000.
  • John Brignell, Sorry, Wrong Number! The Abuse of Measurement, Brignell Associates, 2000.
  • Lorraine Mooney & Roger Bate (eds), Environmental Health: Third World Problems - First World Preoccupations, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
  • Julian Morris & Roger Bate (eds), Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
  • Roger Bate (ed), What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health, Butterwoth-Heinemann, 1999.
  • Roger Bate (ed), Global Warming: The Continuing Debate, European Science and Environment Forum, 1997.
  • John Emsley (ed), The Global Warming Debate, European Science and Environment Forum, 1996.

Working Papers, Pamphlets and Articles

Resources

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


Notes

  1. ↑ Roger Bate, Environmental Risk - Book Proposal, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California. Original proposal dated 8 August 1996.
  2. ↑ ESEF Mission Statement, retrieved from the Internet Archive of 24 December 1997 on 29 January 2015.
  3. ↑ European Science and Environment Forum, SourceWatch, last accessed 29 January 2015.
  4. ↑ Mission Statement, ESEF, retrieved from the Internet Archive of 3 November 2005 on 29 January 2015.
  5. ↑ [whois.networksolutions.com:43] Registrant: European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF-DOM) UK Domain Name: ESEF.ORG Administrative Contact: Morris, Julian (JM4309) 101603.3004@COMPUSERVE.COM European Science and Environment Forum, Kersfield Road, London, SW15 3HE
  6. ↑ http://www.ash.org.uk/html/press/980420b.html
  7. ↑ [1]
  8. ↑ [2]
  9. ↑ [3]
  10. ↑ [4]
  11. ↑ [5]
  12. ↑ [6]
  13. ↑ [7]
  14. ↑ [8]
  15. ↑ [9]
  16. ↑ [10]
  17. ↑ [11]
  18. ↑ [12]
  19. ↑ [13]
  20. ↑ "Conference of the Parties: Ninth session, Milan, 1–12 December 2003", UNFCCC, page 67.
  21. ↑ W. J. Durodie Scientific 'truth' The Times (London) November 16, 1999, Tuesday, SECTION: Features
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 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
  23. ↑ ESEF Publications, retrieved from the Internet Archive of 3 November 2005 on 28 January 2015.
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