Thread by @risingwthetide

Recently, an oil-funded, climate-denial group (@ClintelOrg) published a paper saying "there is no climate emergency", signed by "1100 scientists & professionals".

Our deep dive reveals the 26 Belgian signatories have little to no background in climate science.

A🧵from a 🇧🇪

This declaration is pure & peak climate denialism. Calling for the "depoliticisation" of climate (as if that's even possible) & refuses to admit the IPCC's reports as proof or evidence. What irks me is that this will be a source of "authority" for climate deniers in the future 1/

Desmog has a great page on the org and their links to oil/gas/millionaires. They routinely post some of the dumbest takes on climate. desmog.com/climate-intell…
Now onto my fellow Belgians
2/

After looking into all 26 of these people I can say with some confidence that these men (no woman) share similarities. They are all white, somewhat older (a lot retired), and almost all of them transfer their expertise from one area to climate science, despite differences 3/

Many of them are/were engineers, chemists, industrialists, managerial types, or just normal people with an interest in climate. So who are they exactly to speak on climate? Let's see. 4/

#1 is Henri A. Masson, VP of CLINTEL. He's a chemical engineer by training, but sold out early & has been teaching/working in management & corporate for decades. So while he may have done a PhD and PostDoc (on big boi boilers) in the 80s, he certainly can't speak on climate.

#2 Ferdinand Meeus, a retired chemist who's done a bit of research but mostly product dev, sales & business for DOW/BASF. Calling himself an IPCC Expert Reviewer (a role where expertise is self-declared) Meeus seems to want to be known as an expert in CC, he's clearly not.

#3 Eric Blondeel, a retired civil engineer, harder to find info about him except that he writes for the same terrible websites as the others on climate-science denial. Again though, engineering isn't climate science. Sorry Eric.

#4 Emiel Van Broekhoven, he passed away last year, and taught economics as a prof. He hasn't published anything on CC, but he was director of BNP Paribas during their years of proven laundering, falsification of records & colluding to charge unjustified fees.

#5 Christophe de Brouwer, a doctor and prof in public health @ULBruxelles, he sometimes writes angry articles about Greta and masks. But medicine isn't climate science.

#6 Alexandre G Clauwaerts, currently an olive oil producer, Alex used to work in corporate for none other than Suez, Engie & Electrabel. Studied civil engineering, then became a managerial type. A rather common story, apparently. But his marketing & sales exp is not CC science

#7 Benjamin Damien, a "biotech entrepreneur", he studied biology, did a PhD related to vaccines, but then also left academia (cant blame him tbh) and jumped from biotech startup to startup as a managerial type. No CC science experience then.

#8 Ferdinand Engelbeen, a retired chemist who worked most of his life for Akzo Nobel, a paint manufacturer(!). He then moved on to make chlorine, PVC raw materials & chlorinated herbicides. He managed to publish 2 articles on CC in "Energy & Environment" journal –

Which sounds very professional, but is in fact a disgraced journal that lacks academic integrity whose editor in chief openly admitted launders climate denialism as scientific literature. Many have called them out, it even once published a paper saying the Sun is made of Iron!

#9 Samuel Furfari, Prof. at @ULBruxelles, known to students for his blatant climate denialism, teaches energy geopol. He's the Pres of the ESEI a small lobby org that brands itself as an expert group on engineering & also said ✝️ is under attack by ecologists!

#10 Georges Geuskens, chemist by training, retired in 1999 after working mostly on polymer degradation. Georges hasn't done research since the 20th Century and denies the existence of the greenhouse effect. Thanks George.

#11 Drieu Godefridi, a Trump supporter and founder of the Hayek Institute in BXL, he has a PhD in Philosophy & wrote "The Green Reich" (yikes). His book websites have been turned into advertisements about wine?? Philosophy isn't climate science expertise

#12 Jan Goffa, a retired computer scientist with an MBA and experience in civil engineering. Jan worked for decades in hydraulics and soil capacity probing, to check how strong the ground is for buildings, mostly. This ain't CC science either.

#13 Volkmar Hierner, a management consultant and company coach, calls himself Dr. but couldn't find what in, probably politics or literature tbh, he worked in the EU & seems to be a massive fan of Austria. Cool, but still not climate science expertise.

#14 Jan Jacobs, a start-up coach, consultant, and freelance journalist. He seems to have little/no formal journalism training, which hey, isn't a problem, but it shows. Jan writes for Doorbraak, an opinion tabloid which defends VBlok, our old neo-nazi party banned for racism.

(Little plug, we did/are doing a 4 part narrative show on the History of the Flemish Far Right and Vlaams Blok is obviously a huge part of that. Listen to the first 2 eps (in bio) to hear how actual 40s nazis created a party that rose to the top in modern Belgium!)

#15 Raymond Koch, a retired vice-director of the plasma physics lab at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels & part-time lecturer in plasma at @umons. That's cool and all, but again, transfer of expertise.

#16 Rob Lemeire, another writer, who also writes on Doorbraak about political correctness, ecology and criticises the identity of trans folks. What he did before 2018 isn't sure but a writer isn't a CC scientist. Or a scientist actually. Like, at all.

#17 Jean Meeus, a retired mathematician who worked on astronomy. He also worked at Zaventem airport as a meteorologist a long time ago, checking the weather for planes. A retired weather/astronomy man is the closest thing we got so far!

#18 – Ernest Mund, a nuclear physics researcher who taught part-time at @ULbruxelles. He trained as a civil engineer and has likely been retired for 2 decades. His research on nuclear energy isn’t exactly climate science

#19 – Baart Ooghe, apparently a geologist and geophysicist, but after looking very deep I could not find a single published paper from this “independent scientist”. It is highly unlikely this person is a peer-reviewed researcher.

#20 – Jaak Peters, A Flemish nationalist writer and psychologist. He was national secretary of the racist party Vlaams Blok. He is also completely untrained and unqualified to speak on the subject.

#21 – Eric Perpete, a chemist by training, he went on to work on microcomputed tomography, which has nothing to do with Climate science in any way.

#22 – Hugo Poppe, Prof of meteorology who retired in 2002 and hasn’t practiced in his field for 2 decades. However, he is so far the only one with relevant qualifications to evaluate CC science

#23 – Phil Salmon, studied radiation physics & x-rays, works on medical tech, has been a software developer at Bruker for 20 years. Programming machines to take pics of bio samples isn’t climate science expertise.

#24 – Jozef Verhulst, chemist and author, couldn’t find any information whatsoever regarding his books or job. He is potentially the owner of a patent for looming machine parts.

#25 – Jean van Vliet, retired, has a master in engineering and potentially worked at Belgonucleaire, co-writing 1 published paper on nuclear energy. Jean does not have any CC science papers or experience.

#26 – Appo van der Wiel, Sr. developer engineer, studied (micro)electronics, and has published work on silicon and other materials. He has worked for 20 years in a semiconductor firm. Appo (also) has no CC science expertise.

In conclusion, the 26 men mentioned above have together very little or even no relevant climate science experience. So why are they being called scientists with an implied authority on climate science?

1 possibility is that most of them seem to engage in transfer of expertise, believing that being an expert in one field makes them an expert in all fields Sometimes this can be defended (physics & maths) but other times, it’s a bit more far-fetched (psychology & climate science)

I personally think there is a sense of entitlement among them, believing that they should be listened to despite their lack of qualification. Would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve made it this far & in the future, don’t let anyone use this letter as an appeal to authority!

@ClintelOrg #belgium climate people, learn to recognise these men as agents of disruption!

#belgique #belgie #ulb #umons @theburningcase #climatbelgique #ecologie #environnement

@ClintelOrg @JPvanYpersele @Comac_Belgium @DaubeOctave @LBQfr @safitna @SanderClaess @europeangreens @ecologroenevere @KhattabiZakia @pdsutter @groen @ecolo @Jordy_Sabels @JongGroen @_nadianaji @BartDhondt @JeremieVaneeckh