Alex Kirby, the BBC News Online environment correspondent, published this story on Monday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1833000/1833902.stm In it he cites a report by a group of US scientists, convened by the American George C. Marshall Institute, who first published their report in the US. He then adds that "It has been republished in the UK by the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF)". What Mr. Kirby fails to report is just who the George C. Marshall Institute and ESEF are. Here is the Marshall Institute's web site: http://www.marshall.org/ And here is their "About Us" page: http://www.marshall.org/aboutpg.html It reads like a Who's Who of the respectable face of the US far right, including the author Tom Clancy and Washington Post journo Charles Krauthammer. According to the Media Transparency group, this "institute" is partly supported by Exxon and American Standard, those doughty champions of free enquiry on environmental matters. And here's a list of where the rest of their funding comes from: http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.asp?137 Again, a textbook list of right-wing corporate media fronts in the US. The ESEF sounds like a very respectable UK science forum. It's not. It is a British version of those US corporate media funnel "charities", and exists solely to attack any science that discredits corporate interests. http://www.scienceforum.net/ http://www.scienceforum.net/esef.htm From their "About" page: "To maintain its independence and impartiality, ESEF accepts funding only from charities, and the income it receives is from the sale of its publications. Such publications will automatically be sent to members. Copies will be sent to selected opinion formers within the media and within government." So which "charities" does the ESEF accept funding from? Take a wild guess. They are quite vague about the subject when asked. It seems to be linked rather closely with the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA). The Environment Unit at the IEA was founded by Roger Bate, who then went on to found the ESEF a year later. Mr. Bate had a fine time at the Seattle WTO meeting a few years back, where he got teargassed on his way to defending globalisation on behalf of another corporate lobby group masqerading as a non-corporate forum: http://www.consumeralert.org/press/120199gas.html I owe somebody in Seattle a pint it seems. Documents released by tobacco giant Philip Morris show that ESEF was established with money from Big Tobacco as part of a world-wide campaign to undermine industry-critical research. As Big Tobacco's European front organization -- its US equivalent was TASSC: The Association for Sound Science, which gave birth to Steven Milloy's infamous 'Junkscience' internet mission -- ESEF's task was to smuggle tobacco advocacy into a larger bundle of "sound science" issues, including attacking such problematic areas for US corporate interests as 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." [quoted in 'How Big Tobacco Helped Create "the Junkman"' in PR Watch, Volume 7, No. 3: http://www.prwatch.org] Now that public opinion has been proven impervious to Big Tobacco's laughable attempts at winning them over with cheap propaganda, the ESEF now seems to be focussing its energies on battles not yet lost, such as trashing neutral scientific findings from the IPCC on climate change as "junk science", and, without a trace of irony in their voices, "politicised"! The BBC likes to quote both the IEA and ESEF, though it doesn't seem to have ever mentioned any connection between them. Alex Kirby also quotes liberally from Prof. Phillip Stott, formerly of the SOAS at the Univ. of London. Since retiring, Dr. Stott has busied himself running what can best be described as an anti-green website: http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/ Note the helpful inclusion of crossword and cartoon. I'll quote here from the Norfolk Genetic Information Network site: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/090102a.htm

Back in early 2000, Kirby did a decidedly suspect Radio 4 "Costing the Earth" programme trashing organic farming via the likes of Philip Stott's close friend and collaborator, Julian Morris of the Institute of Economic Affairs. NGIN commented at the time, "It is obviously no surprise that the likes of (Richard D) North or Matt Ridley (a Research Fellow at the IEA with 2 volumes of his anti-environmentalist pieces amongst the Institute's publications) should be pleased to publicise the IEA's disinformation campaign. What is more revealing is the way in which the BBC's science and technology unit and senior 
academics like Prof Hillman or Prof Anthony Trewavas... have apparently been happy to promote such views without serious critical scrutiny of the evidence on which they are 
based." [http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/rightwing.htm] 

If this suggests that Alex Kirby might have been getting his info in all the wrong places, then it could explain the fulsome cascade of congratulations to be found directed towards Kirby in Stotty's news section. [http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/press.html] 

Many quotes then follow, with Dr. Stott heaping praise on Alex Kirby's fine work. Dr. Stott now seems to have pulled the "press" page from his site, perhaps since people seem to have started noticing the connection: it now redirects you back to the main index page. Still plenty of praise for Kirby on the archive page though: http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/archive.html Again, the BBC never mentions the close connection between Dr. Stott and the IEA and ESEF, presumably since he's not a formal member of either group. Handy, that. For the sake of "balance", there is a somewhat rambling quote at the end of the piece from Eileen Clausen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The Pew Center takes the position of the more "progressive" wing of the business community in the policy debate on climate change. Corporate members include American Electric Power, Boeing, BP, DuPont, Enron, Intel, Shell International, Sunoco, Toyota, and others. By quoting this group of high-minded environmental activists, the BBC has therefore "balanced" this piece of corporate propaganda with the mildest criticism available, from a slightly less right-wing corporate media group. But note how the headline and main thrust of the BBC Online piece are quite sympathetic to the ESEF and Dr. Stott. Whenever you read some "science" contributed from the ESEF or the IEA, you can be sure that a link with academics Philip Stott, Roger Bate, and Julian Morris, or journalists Richard D. North and Matt Ridley is not far off. Search for any two of the above on a search engine, and be amazed at what you find: defending Shell in Ogoniland, defending Big Tobacco, defending Big Agrichem on GM food, defending Big Oil on climate change, planting dubious scare stories about organic food, etc. John Vidal, Environment Editor of the Guardian seems to have noticed the Beeb's fondness for publishing right-wing propaganda uncritically back in Feb. 2000: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3960511,00.html So a few questions arise from all this: is the BBC's Science Dept run by sympathisers with right-wing corporate media fronts like the ESEF? Can Alex Kirby actually not be aware of their origins and backing? Or is he just yet another lazy journalist, willing to publish PR practically verbatim from groups like this, and head off home early? You decide. Remember, you've paid for this with your BBC license fee.