Bjorn Lomborg unmasked as cog in Climate Denial Machine financed by billionaire vulture capitalist Republican Paul Singer

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmog UK, February 9, 2015

A billionaire “vulture capitalist” and major backer of the US Republican Party is a major funder of the think tank of Danish climate science contrarian and fossil fuels advocate Bjørn Lomborg, DeSmogBlog has found.

New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singer’s charitable foundation gave $200,000 to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.

The grant to Lomborg’s think tank is revealed in the tax form of the Paul E. Singer Foundation covering that foundation’s activities between December 2012 and November 2013.

Singer, described as a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has emerged as a major force in the Republican party in recent years and was a key backer and influencer during Mitt Romney’s failed tilt at the Presidency.

The $200,000 grant represented almost one third of the $621,057 in donations declared by the Copenhagen Consensus Center in 2013.

A spokesperson for the think tank told DeSmogBlog that “not one dollar” of the Singer grant had been spent.

Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, is often cited on lists of the world’s most influential people.

He writes extensively on climate change and energy issues with his columns appearing in many of the world’s biggest news outlets.

The CCC think tank produces reports that consistently argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the roll-out of current renewable energy technologies should be low priorities for policy makers.

Most recently, Lomborg wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing climate change was not the urgent problem that many thought.

He wrote that “the narrative that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism.”

Lomborg argues the poorest countries need fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty – a position that gained support from the world’s richest man, Bill Gates.

At a G20 side event in Brisbane last year, Lomborg appeared at an event sponsored by the world’s largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, where he again argued that the world’s poor needed fossil fuels. 

The CCC’s keystone project is the Post 2015 Consensus that is trying to influence the formulation of the next set of global development goals being discussed by the United Nations. Those goals will replace the millennium development goals.

Lomborg’s CCC think tank was registered as a not-for-profit in the US in 2008 and has attracted almost $5 million in donations since then. In 2013, the CCC paid Lomborg, its founder and president, $200,484 for his work. The previous year Lomborg was paid $775,000.

The think tank has insisted that its funders, most of which are anonymous, do not influence its research.  The think tank says it does not accept funding from the fossil fuel industry.

Despite being registered in the US, Lomborg has admitted that all but one of the think tank’s seven staff are based elsewhere.  The think tank’s address is a parcel service (mail pickup store) in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The discovery of support from Paul Singer comes after a DeSmogBlog investigation last year found that CCC’s early funders included conservative think tanks with links to the network of organisations funded by the Koch brothers, who have pushed millions into organisations denying climate science and blocking action to cut fossil fuel emissions.

In the 2014 US political spending cycle, data presented by OpenSecrets shows Singer spent $9.4 million influencing Republicans – the biggest disclosed individual spender on the conservative side of US politics.

Singer, whose Elliott Management hedge fund manages about $25 billion in assets, has been branded a “vulture capitalist” enterprise due to investment strategies employed by his firm that targets foreign economies in trouble.

A 2011 summary of “vulture funds” in The Guardian said Elliott Management’s “principal investment strategy” was “buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment.”

Greg Palast, the author of Vulture’s Picnic, documented in The Guardian how Singer’s firm had managed to pocket $1.29 billion from the US Treasury after a “brilliantly complex” financial manoeuvre in 2009 that saw Singer lead a consortium to buy the parts supplier of General Motors and Chrysler before claiming cash from a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.

Singer, who according to Forbes is personally worth $1.8 billion, remains in conflict with the Argentinian government over debt bought by an Elliott affiliate and other investors.

As well as the generosity shown to Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank, Singer’s foundation gave $500,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where Singer is chairman of the board of trustees.

The Manhattan Institute is also known for downplaying the impacts of climate change while promoting fossil fuels.

In October 2014, Manhattan senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote a report "Not Beyond Coal" arguing that the future for the coal industry was bright and the fossil fuel was “essential” for addressing poverty in developing countries — a position identical to that pushed by Lomborg.

Bryce also attacks the wind industry claiming it cannot cut emissions, describing wind turbines as “climate change scarecrows.” In testimony to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February 2014, Bryce said wind turbines were “slaughtering wildlife” and killed 600,000 birds every year in the US.

A review of studies and data into US bird deaths has found about 600 million birds are killed annually in collisions with windows and buildings, but even this high number was only a quarter of the birds killed annually in the US by feral cats.

Another large donation from Singer’s foundation went to the Moving Picture Institute – an organisation that says it produces films that promote understanding of “individual rights, limited government, and free markets.”

The MPI helped fund the 2004 pro-mining documentary Mine Your Own Business by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.

The two would go on to make the 2009 climate science denial film Not Evil Just Wrong, which was partly funded through a grant from DonorsTrust – a fund which stockpiles cash from conservative philanthropists and that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial while fighting action to cut emissions.

Roland Mathiasson, Executive Vice President at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told DeSmogBlog: “Not one dollar of this grant has been spent. It's for a potential future project, pending support from a broad range of political perspectives to underline the non-political nature of the project.

“It is a project for the public conversation, so obviously there will be a lot of communication once broad support is secured, and the project is launched.”

Mathiasson declined to provide further details.

DeSmogBlog attempted to contact the Paul E Singer Foundation to ask about their donation to CCC, but email requests went unanswered.
  

http://www.desmog.uk/2015/02/09/exclusive-bjorn-lomborg-think-tank-funder-revealed-billionaire-republican-vulture-capitalist-paul-singer

DeSmogBlog: Bjorn Lomborg's supposed tax-exempt 501(c)(3) Copenhagen Consensus Center that pays him $775,000

by DeSmogBlog, July 28, 2014

The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think tank registered in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington DC. The CCC says its role is to publicize “the best ways for governments and philanthropists to spend aid and development money.”

High-profile Danish economist and author Bjørn Lomborg is the Copenhagen Consensus Center's president, founder and key spokesperson and is a popular speaker at conferences and in the media, where he regularly writes columns in mainstream newspapers.

Lomborg argues that human-caused climate change is a problem, but says the immediate economic impacts will not be great. He says carbon pricing laws are expensive, the United Nations negotiations on climate change have achieved nothing and that the “smart” way to tackle the issue is to invest massively in research and technology to make “green technologies cheaper.”

In a December 2013 op-ed in the New York Times, Lomborg said that Western nations “should not 
stand in the way of poorer nations as they turn to coal and other fossil fuels.”

Stance on Climate Change
The CCC does not challenge the scientific consensus that human emissions of greenhouse gases cause climate change. However, reports from the CCC do not advocate for sharp reductions in emissions and conclude there are many other global issues which should be tackled first.
A research report and book from the Copenhagen Consensus Center, published in 2013, concluded:

Global warming is surprising, because the impact now is positive. The increased level of CO₂ has boosted agriculture because it works as a fertilizer. At the same time, the number of people dying from heat waves are more that outweighed by fewer people dying from fewer cold waves. In all, global warming benefits have increased from 1900 to almost 1.5% of GDP by now, but by 2025, they will peak and begin a rapid decline, leading to a net negative towards the end of the century.

In a speech given to Australia's National Press Club in December 2013, CCC president Lomborg said that his center's study titled “How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?” had found that “until about 2070 global warming is a net benefit to the world.”

The CCC has hosted three conferences where “the world's leading economists” are asked to prioritise global sepnding. On each occasion measures to lower greenhouse gas emissions are ranked at the bottom, or close to the bottom, of the list.

Funding
A DeSmogBlog investigation in June 2014 of the Copenhagen Consensus Center's tax records finds a rapid rise in revenue for the center since it registered operations in the United States in 2008. 
More than $4 million in grants and donations have flooded in since 2008, three quarters of which came in 2011 and 2012. In one year alone, the Copenhagen Consensus Center paid Lomborg $775,000.

The CCC's public tax records show contributions recieved by the think tank but account for only about $500,000 of the center's total $4.3 million income between 2008 and 2012.
In 2008, the think tank's first year of operation, it received $120,000. Tax records of the New York-based conservative Randolph Foundation [pdf] show it gave $120,000 to Lomborg's project that year. The Randolph Foundation gave CCC a further $50,000 grant in 2012.
In 2009, the CCC received $300,000. The tax records of the Sevenbar Foundation shows it gave CCC a $50,000 grant in 2009. The foundation has a focus on raising funds from lingerie shows which it then passes on to women entrepreneurs in developing countries through micro-financing.
In 2010 CCC accepted $750,000.
In 2011, the CCC received $1,064,685 in contributions and donations. The tax records of the Kansas-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which holds about $2 billion in assets, indicate it gave CCC a $150,000 grant in 2011 and another in 2012. The foundation is the legacy of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Ewing Kauffman.
In 2012, the tax records show that CCC paid Bjorn Lomborg $775,000 that year for a declared 40-hour week. In previous years of its US operation, the CCC declared Lomborg was working only one hour per week for the center. 
The CCC's Vice President Roland Mathiasson told DeSmogBlog:

Some donors stipulate that we are not allowed to advertise the name of the foundation or donor. Donors routinely decide to be anonymous, for a variety of reasons. Given how some parts of the blogosphere vilify Dr. Lomborg and certain research from the Center, it is something donors can understandably live without.

 

We work with more than a hundred of the world's top economists and 7 Nobel Laureates. It is the work of these people that assure the public of the quality of the output of the Copenhagen Consensus. 

 

We do not take funding from fossil fuel industry and we are explicit that no funding will have any influence on our research. This statement should be on our website – we'll add this to the new website. 

Key People

• Bjørn Lomborg - President
• Roland Mathiasson - Executive Vice President
• Scott Calahan - Independent Board Member
• Loretta Michaels - Independent Board Member
• James Harff - Treasurer/secretary
• David Lessmann - communications manager

 Actions

October 2013
The CCC published a book “How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?” with a chapter edited by economist Professor Richard Tol. The chapter concluded:

After year 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world, justifying cost-effective climate action.

May 2012
The CCC published an assessment of of global challenges with a list prioritizing action. The “Copenhagen Consensus 2012” findings suggested funding on climate chnage should be restricted to improving yields from crops and, down the list, investing in projects to artificially engineer the world's climate.

February 2012
In an interview with Ecologist, CCC president Bjorn Lomborg discussed how his organisation's annual funding from the Danish Government had been withdrawn. This had resulted in the CCC losing 90 per cent of its £1.5 million (about $2.4 million) annual budget.

February 5, 2008
The Fraser Institute hosted Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, on a cross-country speaking tour.

May 2004
The first Copenhagen Consensus project generates a list of priorities for world spending. In a list of 17 proposed “projects” the three related to climate change are placed 15th, 16th and 17th. The Kyoto Protocoal and two types of carbon tax were all categorised as “bad projects.”  At the time the project's founder Bjorn Lomborg was director of of the Environmental Assessment Institute established as an independent authority by the Danish government. 

September 2003
The Institute of Public Affairs, an Australian free market think-tank, hosted Bjorn Lomborg for the HV McKay Lecture on how the world should prioritise funds in tackling major issues. During Lomborg's visit, he also lectured at the National Press Club. The IPA produced an edited transcript of Lomborg's speech.

http://www.desmogblog.com/copenhagen-consensus-center

Searching for climate-do-nothinger Bjorn Lomborg's millions

by Graham Readfearn, storify, June 26, 2014

1. There are many puzzling things about Danish climate change contrarian Bjorn Lomborg - a guy often cited on lists of the world's leading influencers. 
   

   
   

   He admits burning fossil fuels causes global warming but says it's no big deal. 
   

   
   

   In fact, he claims that the economic costs of climate change will not turn negative for another 50 years. 

   
   

   He says the world should not waste billions on tackling rising greenhouse gas emissions, but should instead prioritise funding to beating poverty - like we can't do both? Energy poverty is a killer, he says, so the developing world should burn as much coal as they need.
   

   
   

   His critics - of which there are a great many - say Lomborg tends to cherry-pick certain chunks of data, ignore others and dismiss risk in order to make his arguments stick.  I took a look at some of his arguments on my Guardian blog Planet Oz back in December 2013.
2. Is Bjorn Lomborg right to say fossil fuels are what poor countries need?
   

   What do the poorest people on the planet - those likely to be the hardest hit by human-caused climate change - need right now? According to Bjørn Lomborg, the economist and self-titled skeptical environmentalist, what they need are cheap fossil fuels.

   

   GRAHAM READFEARN
3. Bjorn is also a bit of a charmer and his love of the plain black t-shirt gives him an aura of practical pragmatist - the realist out there batting for the world's poor. 
   

   
   

   He is wildly popular and appears on major media outlets across the world, writes opinion columns in the most widely read newspapers on the planet and speaks with utter conviction. 

   
   

   But a question few people ever ask is - where does all the money come from for his Copenhagen Consensus Center think tank - and what even is that?  What are their offices in Copenhagen like?  Are they as plain and understated as Lomborg's t-shirts?

   
   

   I decided to take a look for DeSmogBlog.
4. The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank
   

   In early 2012, it seemed like the future of Bjørn Lomborg's influential think tank was in serious doubt. The Danish Government had changed its political stripes and the millions in public funds that had poured into his Copenhagen Consensus Center had come to an abrupt halt.

   

   DESMOGBLOG
5. The think tank is actually based in the US where it registered in 2008.  My story for DeSmogBlog found his think tank has pulled in $4.3 million in funding since 2008, most of it in the last two years. Lomborg himself was paid $775,000 through the think tank for his work in 2012, which is the latest year where public records are available.  
   

   
   

   The majority of the income is not disclosed.
   

   
   

   The think tank's VP told me one reason for this was that "Donors routinely decide to be anonymous" and that one reason was that "given how some parts of the blogosphere vilify Dr. Lomborg and certain research from the Center" this kind of heat was "something donors can understandably live without". He said they most certainly don't take cash from "the fossil fuel industry" and donors have no influence on their research.

   
   

   But where is all that money coming from?  

   
   

   I discovered grants from three foundations - one in particular is strongly linked both ideologically and financially to the network of organisations controlled by the right-wing Koch brothers. Another also has ties. Following up my story, Joe Romm at Climate Progress put some flesh on those Koch links.
6. Bjorn Lomborg Is Part Of The Koch Network - And Cashing In
   

   DeSmogBlog has done the first comprehensive analysis of where Bjorn Lomborg's money comes from. You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that a guy who argues for inaction on climate change and pens pieces like "The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels" is connected to the Kochtopus empire.

   

   THINKPROGRESS
7. DeSmogBlog also created a meme.
9. New York Times Dot Earth blogger Andy Revkin showed particular interest in Lomborg's hefty salary.
11. 
    

    Others wondered how many t-shirts Lomborg could buy with that kind of income.
12. 
    
13. Some saw the irony of climate science denialists who love touting the conspiracy that climate scientists are only warning the world about global warming because there's a government grant cheque in it.
14. 
    
    
15. For me, the whole story highlights two realities.  
16. 
    

    A think tank that publicly lobbies for policy positions that would hugely benefit the fossil fuel industry does not have to say where its money comes from. This applies in the US as it does in the UK and Australia and probably lots of other places too.

    
    

    When media outlets across the globe publish Lomborg's views as the "founder and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center," readers are always left wondering.  What is that?  
17. https://storify.com/readfearn/searching-for-climate-contrarian-bjorn-lomborg-s-m

Shoot and a miss: Wall Street Journal op-ed attacks 97% climate consensus

by Climate Science Watch, May 27, 2014

A new opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal attacks the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming while completely missing the point on what scientists are actually saying about climate change. Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute and Roy Spencer can try to obscure the consensus by nitpicking over details, but it won’t change the facts: climate change is real, human-caused and dangerous.

The following is a guest post by Climate Nexus:

Shoot and a Miss: WSJ Op-Ed Attacks 97% Climate Consensus

The Heartland Institute’s Joseph Bast and serially corrected Dr. Roy Spencer have a new opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal attacking the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming. The bulk of their argument amounts to nitpicking over the meaning of words like “dangerous” and “catastrophic,” completely missing the point on what scientists are actually saying about climate change.

The evidence is solid: 97% of climate scientists agree that warming is real and human-caused. The scientists’ assessment of whether warming is dangerous or urgent is not covered in the 97% surveys, but the dangerous nature of warming is well-documented in other comprehensive sources.

97% of climate scientists agree that warming is real and human-caused. Multiple studies with differing methodologies have reached this conclusion, a few of which are named in the WSJ piece. The surveys do not attempt the task of gauging exactly how dangerous scientists believe warming to be. This would be difficult as it is a much more complicated question and not typically discussed in the abstract section of peer-reviewed papers.

While complaining about the omission of questions about the harmfulness of warming, Bast and Spencer prove just how universal the consensus is. They say that even scientists who are skeptical of “catastrophic” global warming would agree with the surveys’ statements. Scientists who actually dispute the human contribution to climate change are apparently a smaller group of outliers every day.

Bast and Spencer even reference the IPCC, implying that a “key question” remains: humans might have caused some warming, but just how much? Bast and Spencer may have missed it, but the IPCC actually answers that question. The scientists’ best estimate is that humans have caused ALL of the observed warming since 1951. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Attempts to refute the consensus have been widely discredited. Bast and Spencer reference one thoroughly debunked “Petition Project” with 31,000 supposed signatures. The project contains numerous false signatories and its organizers have admitted “there’s no way of filtering out a fake.” The project is run by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which in the past has argued that nuclear weapon dangers have been exaggerated and that the Y2K bug would end the world. Its leader Art Robinson is skeptical of evolution and HIV-AIDS and believes that nuclear waste should be used to “enhance” Oregon’s drinking water.

Widespread consensus also exists that warming is harmful. The 97% surveys do not reference the harmfulness of warming, but plenty of other authoritative and comprehensive sources do. Bast and Spencer directly quote the IPCC as saying climate change “poses risks for human and natural systems.” Risks to human systems are not a good thing. Elsewhere the IPCC details impacts of human-caused climate change that are happening right now, including increased heat waves and extreme precipitation, which are not particularly positive developments either.

The National Climate Assessment further confirmed that climate change is here and now, and that its impacts “are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond.” In their climate overview “What We Know,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science stated that climate change impacts will be “highly damaging.”

Bast and Spencer’s tactic of conceding the basic science but disputing its implications is increasingly popular, as evidenced by the rise of the “delayers.” But this just shows that climate contrarians are grasping at straws. They can try to obscure the consensus by nitpicking over details, but it won’t change the facts: climate change is real, human-caused and dangerous.

Earlier CSW posts:

Quantifying, once again, the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming (May 22, 2013)

New study finds striking level of agreement among climate experts on anthropogenic climate change (June 21, 2010)

Interview with Stephen Schneider on climate science expert credibility study (July 2010). Expert credibility matters.

Recent Climate Nexus guest posts:

Lomborg hypes already-debunked Bengtsson story in new Forbes column (May 22, 2014)

Wall Street Journal’s attempts to politicize National Climate Assessment fall flat (May 9, 2014)

Wall Street Journal misquotes IPCC to advocate inaction on climate change (April 7, 2014)

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2014/05/27/shoot-and-a-miss-wall-street-journal-op-ed-attacks-97-climate-consensus/

Climate denier rebuttal roundup

James Taylor of the infamous Heartland Institute has doubled down on his distortion of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) survey.  "Climate Science Watch" has the original rebuttal from the AMS authors, The Guardian has more info and "Scholars and Rogues" (S&R) also has a piece with plenty of great detail. In addition, the AMS itself has a polite but stern rebuttal to Heartland's deceptive email blast, which is also covered by S&R, NCSE, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Mother Jones.

Scientists responded to Richard Muller's NY Times op-ed about tornadoes in "LiveScience," clarifying what is and isn't known. Mike Mann has his own personal take, which is particularly relevant because Muller 'quoted' Mann in his op-ed.

And in response to Bjorn Lomborg's op-ed blitz, Graham Readfearn has a wonderful column in The Guardian, while Joe Romm has a column showing how the NY Times, despite running a rehashed Bjorn Lomborg op-ed, had previously rebutted Lomborg's claims.

Finally, "Climate Science Watch" has a rebuttal to a Boston Globe piece, and "Media Matters" perfectly contextualizes the author of a NY Post column by revealing he wrote a book called "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS" and was once fired for taking money to write pro-tobacco and pro-Monsanto articles.