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International Center for a Scientific Ecology

A fake environmental organisation based in Paris, which was set up initially by the asbestos and tobacco industries in Europe. Their idea was to promote the Heidelberg Appeal as if it were a genuine and substantial petition presented to the participants at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 by a large group of knowledgeable scientists who denied the realities of global warming and ozone depletion.

SUMMARY ONLY

The ICSE existed only in the minds of Michel Salomon (its director) and in the secret records of S Fred Singer's Science & Environmental Policy Project. Tobacco documents make passing references to it because Philip Morris and Johns Manville Asbestos Co.helped fund the 'junk-science' project which led to its formation.

It was established by the asbestos and tobacco industries to capitalise on the success they had had with the promotion of the Heidelberg Appeal petition (drafted by Michel Salomon, probably with Singer's help) and presented by Candace Crandall and other publicists working for the Global Climate Coalition (funded by polluting industries) in an attempt to disrupt or dilute the consensus emerging from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

The aim was to capitalise on their success at Rio in promoting the idea that the political world was now awash wih "junk-science" -- and that all forms of health and environmental activism were both anti-business and anti-social ... perhaps anarchic or communist.

After Rio, SEPP and its industry sponsors encouraged the chemical, pharmacuetical and energy industries to jointly fund the development of ICSE and made it available to them as a vehicle for scientific disinformation. The board membership began to look like a mimographed copy of a european-style Business RoundTable.

The ICSE is credited with running two follow-up conferences:

  • The first was a conference on linearity vs. thresholds in scientific research.
      The regulators were increaingly favouring the idea of linearity, which was the idea that, for some people, any measurable level of a toxin in the environment would lead to harm since some people were always more sensitive than the majority. The only safe level for the community to aim for was zero.
      The companies, however, wanted to promote the idea that there was always a threshold below which no one was ever harmed.
      This conference had speakers from a range of industries, including prominent tobacco scientists and those working for the asbestos lobby.

  • The second held in Washington DC at the George Mason University (Candace Crandall was PR for the university) was directed at passive smoking. It was funded and controlled jointly by Singer and Tom Borelli, a top-level science lobbyist for Philip Morris USA where he ran the so-called Science & Technology division (scientific lobbying).

    Salomon later shifted to the USA and joined SEPP full-time while the ICSE seems to have quietly faded into well-deserved oblivion.

    [Some of these hot-links should work}

    • Michel Salomon
    • Candace Crandall
    • S Fred Singer
    • Science and Environmental Policy Project
    • Global Climate Coalition
    • Frederick Seitz
    • Thomas Borelli
    • Heidelberg Appeal