A climate change research department at one of Britain’s leading universities has defrauded taxpayers out of millions of pounds by falsely claiming credit for research done elsewhere.
According to an investigation by David Rose for the Mail on Sunday, the Centre for Climate Change Economics (CCCEP)at the London School of Economics (LSE) has snaffled £9 million in UK government grants by claiming credit for studies it had not funded and for papers published by rival academics.
One of the misrepresented authors, climate economist Richard Tol, has described it as “a clear case of fraud ‚Äì using deception for financial gain.”
Here are Rose’s key findings:
- The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which has given the CCCEP ¬£9 million from taxpayers since 2008, has never checked the organisation’s supposed publication lists, saying they were ‘taken on trust’;
- Some of the papers the CCCEP listed have nothing to do with climate change ‚Äì such as the reasons why people buy particular items in supermarkets and why middle-class people ‘respond more favourably’ to the scenery of the Peak District than their working class counterparts;
- Papers submitted in an explicit bid to secure further ESRC funding not only had nothing to do with the CCCEP, they were published before it was founded;
- The publication dates of some of these papers on the list are incorrect – giving the mistaken impression that they had been completed after the CCCEP came into existence.
So why isn’t this scandal ‚Äì involving sums which in almost any other field would result in a criminal investigation ‚Äì being given wider coverage in the media?
Probably because up until this point, very few people even knew the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy even existed.
I certainly didn’t ‚Äì and I’ve been covering this territory for over a decade.
Its goals, apparently, include:
- Undertake an ambitious, innovative and interdisciplinary programme of research, firmly grounded in theory but with practical applications, linking science and social science and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches; and
- Conduct research of the highest academic standard, subjecting it to internal and external review through seminars, briefings and publication.
In other words, it’s basically yet another make-work scheme for the various parasitical academics, researchers, propagandists and otherwise unemployable environmental studies graduates and postgraduates on the climate change gravy train.
Prominent among these is the organisation’s chairman (“chair” as he prefers to style himself) Lord Stern ‚Äì the economist ennobled by the Tony Blair government after producing the widely discredited Stern Review which argued for massively increased global spending on the climate change industry ‚Äì who now makes a very tidy living lobbying for climate action.
As Rose reports:
Lord Stern has also become personally wealthy through his climate change work. When it last filed accounts a year ago, his company, NS Economics Ltd, set up to handle his public speaking income, had a bank balance of £349,000. He is also paid as an advisory director of the giant Spanish solar energy firm Abengoa SA.
The organisation’s spokesman is another painfully familiar figure on the global warming circuit: the failed paleopiezometrist and worryingly plausible pit bull impersonator Bob Ward, one of whose handsomely paid functions is to smear and discredit climate sceptics and to wear down those few journalists brave enough to report honestly on the climate scam with vexatious and time-consuming official complaints to various regulatory authorities.
As a result of Rose’s investigations, Ward was forced to make an extremely rare, indeed possibly unprecedented apology to the world.
Last night, CCCEP spokesman Bob Ward admitted it had ‘made mistakes’, both in claiming credit for studies which it had not funded and for papers published by rival academics. ‘This is regrettable, but mistakes can happen… We will take steps over the next week to amend these mistakes,’ he said.
Both Lord Stern and Ward are in the pockets of Jeremy Grantham, a British-born, US-based hedge fund billionaire who helps bankroll the global warming industry’s propaganda machine while likely profiting from the regulatory measures that his minions’ campaigning helps to effect.
Grantham has established a number of institutions at universities to help promulgate the climate change scare story, among them the Grantham Institute ‚Äì Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London. Its chairman Professor Sir Brian Hoskins and co-director Professor Joanna Haigh earn their keep by assiduously promoting the correct climate change message, most notably as the BBC’s go-to climate experts.
This is not to be confused with the similarly named Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, which is based at the LSE with Lord Stern as its “chair” and Bob Ward as its press spokesman. In turn this organisation “oversees” the scandal-hit CCCEP.
It is a racing certainty that not one of these myriad organisations has produced research of any value to mankind whatsoever. But that was never the point: rather their purpose is to hoover up whatever government funding money is available – quite a bit, by the looks of it – while populating academe with on-message scientists who can continue to advocate for environmentalist causes in the guise of neutral science.
