Desmog Video

Peter Dietze

Climate change research

Deitze is an electrical engineer. According to a search of 22,000 academic journals, Dietze has not published any research in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject of climate change. There is a "P. Dietze" listed in three research papers from the 1970s on electrical engineering.

Dietze, TASSC, big tobacco and the "European Science and Environment Forum"

Dietze was listed as an "Academic Member" of the European Science and Environment Forum, an organization that was formed in 1994 by Roger Bate, Dr. John Emsley and Professor Frits Böttcher, with an aim to be the European version of the tobacco industry funded front group TASSC. The European Forum touted itself as "an independent, non-profit-making alliance of scientists whose aim is to ensure that scientific debates are properly aired, and that decisions which are taken, and action that is proposed, are founded on sound scientific principles."

Like TASSC, the European Forum issued reports questioning the scientific evidence linking second-hand tobacco smoke and the risk of lung cancer.

The European Forum has also been known in the past to work closely with the George C. Marshall Institute, an Exxon-funded US think tank that has been at the forefront of the industry-funded attack on climate change science.

Dietze and the "NRSP"

Dietze is listed as an “Allied Expert” for the Natural Resource Stewardship Project (NRSP), a lobby organization that refuses to disclose its funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Chair of Scientific Advisory Committee, Dr. Tim Ball. In an October 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article about who funds the NRSP, Tom Harris, stated that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him to say whether energy companies are funding his group." Although Harris has since denied that such an agreement exists, he has failed to respond to follow-up questions about the source of NRSP funding.

Dietze and the "Leipzig Petition"

Deitze was a signatory to the 1995 "Leipzig Declaration," which was a project of Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project and a group called the European Academy of Environmental Affairs. The declaration stated that "there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide."

According to Sourcewatch, when a Danish journalist attempted to contact the 33 European scientists listed on the petition, 12 denied signing the petition and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Of those that did admit to signing the letter, one was a doctor and another was an expert on flying insects. The declaration was then revised and Dietze's name, among others, was removed.

It is interesting to note that a similar tactic was used in the Oregon Institute's petition that DeSmog reported on earlier in our research of the letter of 60 scientists to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Fred Singer and his organization and the George C. Marshall Institute were also deeply involved in the Oregon Petition.