Leipzig Declaration

The 1997 Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change denies that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing global climate change, asserting:

"there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever."[1]

The declaration criticized the Kyoto global warming protocol as "dangerously simplistic, quite ineffective, and economically destructive to jobs and standards-of-living."

The Leipzig Declaration was written by the S. Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project, and is meant to be based on the conclusions of the November 1995 conference in Leipzig, Germany, The Greenhouse Controversy, which SEPP cosponsored with the European Academy for Environmental Affairs.

The authenticity of the declaration

The declaration claims to be a petition from 110 "scientists concerned with atmospheric and climate problems." The majority of the signers lack credentials in the field of climate science.

David Olinger of the St. Petersburg Times investigated the Leipzig Declaration, reporting that most of its signers have not dealt with climate issues at all and asserting that none of them is an acknowledged leading expert. Twenty-five of the signers were TV weather presenters - a profession that requires no in-depth knowledge of climate research. Some did not even have a college degree, such as Dick Groeber of Dick's Weather Service in Springfield, Ohio. Did Groeber regard himself as a scientist? "I sort of consider myself so," he said when asked. "I had two or three years of college training in the scientific area, and 30 or 40 years of self-study." Other signers included a dentist, a medical laboratory researcher, a civil engineer, and an amateur meteorologist. Some were not even found to reside at the addresses they had given.

A journalist with the Danish Broadcasting Company attempted to contact the declaration's 33 European signers and found that four of them could not be located, 12 denied ever having signed, and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Those who did admit signing included a medical doctor, a nuclear scientist, and an expert on flying insects. After discounting the signers whose credentials were inflated, irrelevant, false, or unverifiable, it turned out that only 20 of the names on the list had any scientific connection with the study of climate change, and some of those names were known to have obtained grants from the oil and fuel industry, including the German coal industry and the government of Kuwait (a major oil exporter).[2]

Support for the declaration

The declaration has been widely cited by conservative voices in the "sound science" movement and is regarded in some circles as the gold standard of scientific expertise on the issue. It has been cited by Fred Singer in editorial columns appearing in hundreds of conservative websites and major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Detroit News, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Memphis Commercial-Appeal, Seattle Times, and Orange County Register. Jeff Jacoby, a columnist with the Boston Globe, describes the signers of the Leipzig Declaration as "prominent scholars." The Heritage Foundation calls them "noted scientists," as do conservative think tanks such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Heartland Institute, and Australia's Institute for Public Affairs. Both the Leipzig Declaration and Frederick Seitz's Oregon Petition have been quoted as authoritative sources during deliberations in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Support for the declaration appears to be decreasing even amongst people who were previously meant to have signed it. Of the 110 original signatures, only 77 confirmed their agreement after SEPP modified the text following the Kyoto conference in 1998. As of February 2003, it has been signed by 105 people, including 25 weather presenters.

Related resources

David Olinger, "Cool to the Warnings of Global Warming's Dangers," St. Petersburg Times, July 29, 1996.
Hans Bulow and Poul-Eric Heilburth, "The Energy Conspiracy" (video documentary), Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR1) report, cited in Christian Jensen, "Re: Fred Singer's Comment on Trenberth's Article," naturalSCIENCE, February 11, 1998.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future (New York, NY: Tarcher Putnam, 2002).