“ClimateGate”: Behind the Screen
This is the second of a series of comments about “ClimateGate”, an important and emerging topic that we have decided to use as an observational laboratory.
Our previous comment focussed on the role of public relations in the climate change debate. This comment looks at the public relations structure.
Public Relations is the “free market” cousin of propaganda. Both wage a war of words. The spoils of war are the beliefs, and subsequent behaviors, of large groups of people and ultimately whole populations.
To identify the mechanisms and motivations behind the public relations message, we work backwards from one or more points of delivery.
The RealClimate.org website was announced to the team of scientists working on global warming by Gavin Schmidt, on October 12, 2004. An extract of the announcement says:
“… In order to be a little bit more pro-active, a group of us (see below) have recently got together to build a new ‘climate blog’ website … [that provides] … a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly ‘bombshell’ papers that are doing the rounds and give more context to climate related stories or events.”
The announcement lists the group of contributers to this site as: Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies), Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University), Eric Steig (University of Washington), William Connolley (British Antarctic Survey), Stefan Rahmstorf (Potsdam University), Ray Bradley (University of Massachusetts), Amy Clement (University of Miami), Rasmus Benestad (Norwegian Meteorological Institute), and Caspar Ammann (National Centre for Atmospheric Research).[1]
The RealClimate.org website is registered to “Environmental Media Services” (EMS). EMS was established as a joint not-for-profit “project” (i.e. joint venture) between the Tides Center and Fenton Communications.
Fenton Communications is a high profile Public Relations company that specializes in supporting people and projects “that they can believe in”. Their client list includes Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, and SeaWeb, among others.
The Tides Center partners with groups and organizations to promote, “economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected”.
The Tides Center gets the majority of its funding from the Tides Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that accepts donations from philanthropists and charitable foundations, and allows the donors to nominate which causes they wish to support. This permits resources to be consolidated to increase their effectiveness, it provides anonymity for the donor and allows various tax incentives under US law.
The primary function of the EMS “Project” was to coordinate public relations resources for the various research institutions, to enable the scientists to present a united front in the face of professional argument and skeptical criticism, and latterly, to support RealClimate.org. EMS also provided the primary interface to the media, particularly in the US and the UK, through the production of Press Releases and Media Briefings.
The original founder and first President of the EMS project was Arlie Schardt. Mr Schardt is reported to have been Al Gore’s Press Secretary during his 1988 Presidential Campaign and Al Gore’s Communications Director during the 2000 campaign.
Since the beginning of 2006, the work undertaken by EMS was transferred to a new entity, “Science Communication Network” (SCN).
A side-bar on the SCN website reads:
“Environmental Media Services (EMS) founder and president, Arlie Schardt, has retired effective 12/31/05, and as a result EMS has ended its accomplished 13 year run. EMS operated successfully as a nonprofit communications clearinghouse dedicated to expanding media coverage of critical environmental and public health issues. The spirit of EMS will live on through Science Communication Network, however SCN will focus largely on environmental public health and science integrity, rather than the wide range of issues addressed previously by EMS.”
Presumably they will continue to support the RealClimate.org blog.
The above relationships between for-profit, and not-for-profit, organizations has provided significant financial leverage to conservation groups concerned about climate change.
Our hypothesis regarding the relationships is as follows:
Fenton Communications creates public awareness of conservation issues; especially anthropogenic climate change, on behalf of one or more of its environmental clients. This publicity influences the size and number of contributions made to the Tide Foundation in support of environmental issues.
The funding is channeled from the Tide Foundation through the Tide Corporation to fund the EMS (and now possibly SCN) projects.
It is a commonly assumed that research institutions, such as universities, are fully publicly funded. This is often not the case, and most researchers are reliant, at least partially, on grants from industry sponsors or philanthropic organizations.
On instructions from The Tide Foundation, The Tide Corporation funds climate research, either directly, or through its joint project with EMS or (SCN).
The EMS/SCN projects promote the research findings through the media, conferences, and other outlets, thus completing the circle.
Each time the money goes around, public awareness is increased, and with it the amount of contributions to the Tide Foundation for environmental research.
For a small down payment you get high-level activism, and tax breaks besides.
Footnotes:
[1] Names of institutions appended from various sources. Information may no longer be current.
