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Stohrer, Gerhard
A key behind-the-scenes figure in the climate-denial business, as an associate of S Fred Singer in the Washington Institute, and the Science & Environmental Policy Project. He also worked for the tobacco and asbestos industries through his association with the International Center for a Scientific Ecology. SUMMARY ONLY
Gerhard Stohrer was a biomedical researcher with a chemical background. He ran the Chemical's Risk division of the Sloane-Kettering Cancer Institute before joining S Fred Singer and Candace Crandall at the Washington Institutute for Values in Public Policy (controlled by the Moonies Unification Church). They then jointly established the Science and Environmental Policy Project which was funded by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (still with help from the Moonie's Unification Church ) Philip Morris also lent a hand through its private PR company, APCO & Associates, and the group was joined by Fred Seitz (ex President of Rockefeller University, and a consultant to R Reynolds Tobacco) shortly after.
SEPP specialised in attacking the Environmental Protection Agency initially; especially the application of the Delaney Amendment which required zero tolerance of carcinogenic substances in food. The food industry demanded that the level of allowed toxins should be set at some arbitary 'threshold' level which would be sestablished on the basis of proven harm -- while the EPA operated on the 'precautionary principle'.
SEPP was contracted by the asbestos industry (later joined by Philip Morris) to run a conference at the Heidelberg Cancer Research Center, from which the Heidelberg Appeal document emerged. This was then promoted by SEPP and the Global Climate Coalition (a National Manufacturers Association front) as if it were an attack on the science behind global warming claims at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. This won world-wide media attention for the climate-deniers, and created the impression that the scientific word was split on the fundamental issues of carbon emissions and ozone depletion. In fact, there was a high degree of consensus at Rio, and there were scientific arguments only over some of the secondary issues.
Singer, Stohrer, seitz and Michel Salomon attempted to build on the success of the Heidelberg Appeal through the International Center for Scientific Ecology (ICSE) which was created in Paris (run by Salomon) with additional funding from the pharmacuetical, chemical, energy and mining interests to attack the idea of 'linear relationships' (the basis of the Delaney Amendment) in regulations, with particular empahsis on promoting the idea of 'thresholds' for such things as allowable levels of asbestos dust and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the general and workplace atmosphere.
He later appears to have associated himself with Frederick Seitz with an informal committee which uses the name "Risk Policy Center".