De Groene Rekenkamer - oude wijn in nieuwe zakken

De Groene Rekenkamer is een organisatie die zichzelf onterecht een onafhankelijke kritische auditor van ecologisch getinte onderwerpen noemt, maar in realiteit een organisatie is die vooral overal tegen is, omdat het niet past binnen een politieke ideologie. De organisatie heeft een lange geschiedenis van het publiceren van ronduit belabberde wetenschappelijke onzin (één voorbeeld uit een lange reeks),

De Groene Rekenkamer lanceerde recent een nieuwe website. Tijd om eens te kijken of dit betekent of de organisatie ondertussen al wat meer kaas heeft gegeten van wetenschap.

De nieuwe website oogt visueel beter. Maar daar houdt het goede nieuws helaas meteen op.
De sectie over klimaat toont vooral nog steeds aan dat De Groene Rekenkamer nog steeds geen ernstig
verhaal weet te brengen. Laten we eens een snelle blik werpen op de klimaatpagina's:

Invloed van de zon
Op talloze pseudoskeptische websites tracht men de invloed van de zon op het klimaat te overroepen. Dat er een invloed is, is nogal evident (duh), maar de meetgegevens tonen aan dat de zon de afgelopen 50 jaar vooral redelijk stabiel is geweest, terwijl de temperatuur op aarde in dezelfde periode toenam
eerst toont De Groene Rekenkamer een grafiek die het aantal zonnevlekken toont. Er is echter iets merkwaardigs aan de hand.

Hieronder presenteer ik eerst de grafiek met het aantal sunspots tot 2010, en erna de grafiek op de site van De Groene Rekenkamer.


En de grafiek van De Groene Rekenkamer:


Merk op hoe de gafiek op De Groene Rekenkamer stopt omstreeks 1950, zodat de indruk gewekt wordt dat de zonne-activiteit de afgelopen tijden enkel maar toenam. De daling van na 1950 wordt "verzwegen". Dit is een schoolvoorbeeld van een cherrypick : een deel van de data wordt bewust achtergehouden  om een misleidend beeld op te wekken. Dat is niet erg netjes.

Vervolgens post de Groene Rekenkamer een grafiek die een verder rechtstreeks sterk verband moet suggereren tussen de zonne-activiteit en de temperatuur.

De juiste vergelijking tussen beiden wordt weergegeven in de eerste onderstaande figuur  (bron: skeptical science):


In plaats van dit globaal beeld te presenteren, tracht De Groene Rekenkamer een andere indruk te wekken door middel van een grafiek afkomstig van Willie Soon, een man met een bedenkelijke reputatie op het creëren van misleidende wetenschappelijke nonsens.

Dit is het beeld dat ze presenteren:


Het verschil met de grafiek die ik hierboven heb gepost ?
De eerste grafiek hierboven vergelijkt de invloed van de zon en de temperatuur op aarde.
De grafiek van Soon vergelijk de invloed van de zon op het temperatuursgradiënt tussen noordpool en evenaar. En zegt niets over de relatie tussen de gemiddelde temperatuur en aarde en de zon.
Weerom wordt getracht een misleidend beeld op te roepen.

Klimaatgevoeligheid
De Groene Rekenkamer betwist dat de klimaatgevoeligheid en verwerpt de gevestigde orde door het citeren van één paper, zonder aan te halen waar de andere studies foutief zouden zijn.

De paper (On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance) van Spencer en Braswell was zo ondermaats dat dat hij nooit gepubliceerd had mogen worden. Wat editor-in-chief Wolfgang Wagner ook erkende, waarop hij prompt zijn ontslag indiende. Wagner schreef:

Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science. Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.
After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.

Hij vervolgt:

With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of The University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011, the main author's personal homepage, the story "New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism" published by Forbes, and the story "Does NASA data show global warming lost in space?" published by Fox News, to name just a few.

Uiteraard vertelt De Groene Rekenkamer de kritiek op de paper er niet bij.

De conclusie is duidelijk: de vernieuwde website van de Groene Rekenkamer bestaat uit oude wijn in nieuwe zakken. Voor accurate informatie over klimaatwetenschap moet je echter nog steeds niet bij deze lobbygroep zijn.

Niet verwonderlijk, omdat De Groene Rekenkamer nog steeds een organisatie is die vooral tracht wetenschap te politiseren. De oude website bevatte niet toevallig volgende passage:

The inconsistency in the response of the Klimatosoof’s Theo Richel to the Open Letter of 55 Dutch Scientists

Theo Richel and Christopher Monckton

On the Klimatosoof-website DGR’s Theo Richel complains that the “55 Dutch scientists open letter” published on SENSE contains a lot of “non-climate scientists” like biologists. He writes a whole paragraph to say he thinks biologists aren’t able to understand the complex physical processes of climate science. He also wonders about the fact there are economists, politicologists, mathematicians on the list. He concludes :

On the grounds of their education only a minority of all signers is able to judge whether IPCC’s claims on anthropogenic climate change are true.

According to a comment of Bart Verheggen (link in Dutch) most of the names he recognizes actually do work in a domain related with climate research
But given Richel’s argumentation it might be fun to have a little closer look at the people who wrote (or were interviewed) on the Klimatosoof website the past half a year or so :

• Bas Van Geel is a biologist
• Theo Richel himself is a man who apparently has no education after high school
• Hans Labohm is an economist
• Benny Peiser is an anthropologist
• Lord Monckton is a man with no scientific training whatsoever
• Arthur Rörsch was a professor teaching genetics

And of course in the entire advisory board of the Klimatosoof there’s no-one who ever worked in a field even remotely close to climate science.
I think Theo Richel just disqualified his entire website :)

dr Tom van der Hoeven needs to do his homework first, then talk

Under the title ‘there’s no climate crisis’, an op-ed of dr Tom van de Hoeven (in Dutch) appeared in a local newspaper last week.
Dr Van der Hoeven, who promoted on the subject Math in Gas and the art of linearization (PhD thesis here) works for GasTerra and his article presents exactly what you’d expect from someone working in the Gas-industry.
From the very first sentence the man writes, you know you’re not reading a highlight in climate-literature. His text is so silly i will stick to presenting a quick overview of the most blatant errors / confused parts :

1) Instead of warmer, global temperatures have decreased for the past decade
Wrong.
Van der Hoeven copies the “earth’s temperatures haven’t been rising for a decade” meme, whereas this is nothing but a cherry-pick on the 1998 El-Nino. Earth did not become colder.

2) The most important cause for the climate discussion is the hockey-stick
Wrong.
The hockey-stick represents a reconstruction of past temperatures, but predictions do not depend in any way on the hockey stick.

3) Wegman has ‘broken’ the hockey stick, thereby destroying the main argument around climate change
wrong and wrong
The political Wegman report did not ‘break’ the hockey-stick. The Hockey-stick controversy has shown that indeed there were some minor statistical issues around the original work of Mann et al, but the hockey stick is not broken, but bended. It still looks like a hockey stick though.
Above that, the proxy-reconstruction of Mann is not the main cause for climate concerns.

4) Scott Armstrong thinks climate models aren’t any good
Meaningless
Van der Hoeven calls Armstrong an expert in model-predictions, but doesn’t not mention Armstrong is a professor in Marketing. Hardly a specialist in exact sciences I’d say. Nor does Van der Hoeven present any facts why Armstrong should be right.
Anyway, Real Climate & James Annan already had a look at the claims of Armstrong.

The rest of Van der Hoeven's opinion piece is meaningless sloganesque-language and naturally there’s also some wining about Al Gore. Dr Van der Hoeven managed to write one of the most embarrassing pieces on climate change i ever read from someone with a degree. Tom van der Hoeven needs to do his homework first, then talk.
The only good thing from his text is the fact that you know that people who refer to it don’t have a clue what climate science is about, or don’t care. Van der Hoeven so far was cited by Hans Labohm and Theo ‘klimatosoof’ Richel.

The Heidelberg Appeal Nederland

Roots of the Dutch climate skepticism series, part 8

The beginning of HAN

Karel Beckamn - Het broeikaseffect bestaat niet

When HAN (Heidelberg Appeal Nederland) Foundation was founded in 1993, one of the founding fathers was prof Rob Meloen (bio). In a 1997 article in hypothese (pdf) Meloen states he got interested in the subject after reading a book of former journalist Karel Beckman, a man who writes for the Free-market group i started my series on Dutch climate sceptics with, being the More Freedom Foundation. Currently, Karel Beckman is editor-in-chief for a magazine called European Energy Review.
in Hypothese, Meloen is quoted saying :

I was unhappy already with the way science is communicated towards the public. Then i read the book ‘the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist’ by Karel Beckman [and according to Beckman, nor does the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, etc –J] and i thought by myself : if a PhD-student in English literature can unmask pseudo-science, than us beta’s certainly should be able to do so too.

Soon afterwards, and with aid of a donation by the Dutch Rabobank, the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland was formed, with Karel Beckman as a coordinator. Besides Meloen, the first board was formed by Aalt Bast, professor pharmacology and toxicology and professor Albert Cornelissen, a man who would become one of the Academic members of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), a tool for the tobacco lobby which was involved with the original international Heidelberg Appeal.

First Newsletters

In their first newsletter (pdf), HAN announces they want to set up “fast alert” groups able to respond to different subjects. The first one is the one around Agriculture and environment. It’s something you don’t meet often when looking at international climate scepticism, but HAN from the beginning had very close ties with the agricultural sector.
I’m not really sure how the situation is in other countries, but in Belgium and Holland, historically the agricultural world always has been hating everything involved with environmentalism.
HAN does launch a call to its audience to help them setting up more fast response groups, and they suggest some subjects :

Biotechnology, Soil remediation, Environmental toxicology, Climatology, Acidification, subjects involving raw materials & energy and Environmental philosophy.

It is clear : Even though in the beginning HAN locally in Holland was known as an organisation working mainly on agricultural subjects, from the beginning HAN was set up with the aim to launch a broad attack on science & environmentalism. The second part of the first newsletter is a text on SEPP, the tool of S. Fred Singer which as we have seen had close ties with the international Heidelberg Appeal too.

In the second newsletter (pdf), HAN proudly announce they will start cooperating with Frits Böttcher’s global institute. This is no surprise, as the international Heidelberg Appeal was a result of tobacco lobbyism around S. Fred Singer’s SEPP and the infamous TASSC which has a European branch called ESEF with Böttcher being one of the founding fathers of ESEF…
Also in this newsletter, they announce the start of two more ad-hoc groups : one around toxicology, with (contact person Aalt Bast) and one around biotechnology (contact : Albert Cornelissen). Also in this 2nd newsletter is an interview with a man maybe known in the blog world : Ferdinand Engelbeen. Yet at the time he was just the founding father of AKZO Nobel’s Chlorophyles, it’s only later in time he’d be joining DGR.
In 1999, journalist Martijn van Calmthout wrote a very critical article on HAN : doubt for sale , criticising the foundation and the fact their reports seem to unscientific.
In this article, word is given to environmental historian Wybren Verstegen, a former secretary of HAN who left the organisation after a fight. Before becoming on speaking terms with Cornelissen again, he is quoted stating HAN is incredibly biased and always looking at things one sided, having no criticism at all towards organisations criticising environmental problems. And this will always remain HAN’s weak spot.
Around the change of the millennium Cornelissen would stop leading HAN to become dean of the faculty of veterinaries.
While HAN started as an organisation in the agricultural sector, with the Dutch Union of Pork Keepers NVV as an important source of income, the focus did shift a little, and HAN would be offering “independent research”

Jaap Hanekamp

From the beginning of HAN, the person offering research was dr Jaap Hanekamp, a man who quickly took over coordinating HAN from Beckman and who's name in the next decade keeps returning in corporate funded studies.
At present, Jaap Hanekamp is a lector for the Roosevelt College, which on it’s website presents this CV. As you can see, Hanekamp did not have a real academic career. His CV mentions he runs a “(small) company in which he conducts scientific research for third-party contractors.” That company is HAN-research, which indeed has been associated with the HAN-foundation.
Many people have wondered about the reliability of HAN and their links with he industry. An example is this 2005 article by Jeroen Trommelen which appeared in the newspaper Volkskrant :

But the Dutch antigreen movement has a weak spot. According to HAN, environmental groups and research institutes form a conglomerate of ‘heavily subsidized organisations which ‘strong independent scientists’ should avoid. But it’s just this independent & scientific character of the foundation which is questioned.

Since it’s formation, HAN is leaning on gifts and orders from the agricultural world. The first big donation came from Rabobank and one of the first studies was sponsored by a regional federation of farmers (Fries-Flevolandse Land –en Tuinbouworganisatie). The problems with livestock manure were researched for the Dutch Union of Pork Keepers. (..) The study showing hunting could have a possible positive effect on biodiversity was paid by a lobbygroup of hunters.

The research company of HAN, paying the salary, office-room and telephone of Dr Jaap Hanekamp in the last years was thriving on money coming from the Dutch Potato Processors' Association and a Dutch union for Industries working with Building Materials, as the financial books of HAN are demonstrating.

For the upcoming years, they count on a long-term project of the European Building Materials suppliers, worth 500.000 €. The building lobby at the moment is fighting against the new regulations for the Building Materials Law, costing the sector many handfuls of money.
It was the Pharma-industry (Pfizer) which ordered the study in which Hanekamp explains that relics of antibiotics in meat aren’t harmful. And it were the farmers of LTO who paid for the study on the use of pesticides. Summary : “are those pesticides harmful for people’s health ? The answer to this questions is a firm no”

According to sourcewatch, Jaap Hanekamp was part of the board of the lobby group the Committee for a constructive tommorow (CFACT) which recently was behind the fake grassroots organisation EIKE which ran the fake 60 scientists open letter Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The end of an era
in 2004, in the newsletter celebrating the 10th anniversary, HAN launched the idea of starting a Green Court of Audit. Even though by this time well known sceptics as Dick Thoenes, Hans Labohm & Arthur Rörsch had already joined the circles around HAN, the foundation seem to have been loosing it’s vitality.

In an attempt to revive it, HAN would start contact to other organisations to form this Green Court of Audit. They did find some partners like Ferdinand Engelbeen & his Chlorophyles, The Climate Foundation with it’s close connections to the pro-automobiles foundation. Another associate was the Foundation Nuclear Energy, the lobby group of professor Rob Kouffeld

HAN also did manage to publish a GreenBook (pdf) in which they summarized all the subjects they believed to be hoaxes. The publication of this book lead to a one time cooperation with the Edmund Burke Foundation and the pro-aviation lobby group the Platform Dutch Aviation

De Groene Rekenkamer

Yet it seems that only when libertarian Theo Richel, also part of the More Freedom Foundation, that HAN found a new spirit and would be transformed in the Green Court of Audit, or as it’s called in Dutch : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR). Their double website Klimatosoof / Groene Rekenkamer is maintained by Theo Richel, who apparently currently is an employee for DGR, despites the fact he seems to have no formal education after high school, and certainly no scientific one.

The Advisory Board of DGR

At current, the advisory board of DGR still consists of HAN-foundation’s founding fathers Rob Meloen, Karel Beckman, Aalt Bast & Jaap Hanekamp. Furthermore there’s Rob Kouffeld of the Foundation Nuclear Energy.
Another person who heavily is pro Nuclear Energy is :

Prof.Dr.Ir. Frans Sluijter

as i wrote before, hidden somewhere in the comments section of a previous post :
Frans Sluijter did publish an article in a Dutch magazine SPIL which is the place where Dutch sceptics publish the things they consider to be their more "serious" works. Then I'm talking about people like Hans Labohm or Arthur 'earth hasn't warmed for 4 years now' Rörsch, and some others belonging to DGR.
Sluijter is an emeritus since 2001. He's HEAVILY pro-nuclear energy, which will come as no surprise given his academic background. He's a very vocal opponent of wind-power and building wind-mills.
In his article (in Dutch) in SPIL he writes an article against the use of windmills on land. Despite the subject, it's titled : "the position of the State : for or against it's civilians?'

i'm translating (very summarizing) some key sentences of his SPIL-article :

"the position of the State : for or against it's civilians?'
[after making plans to put them in the north sea], political pressure grows to start building windmills on land also (...) Minister Cramer apparently is horrified by the thought of building new nuclear plants and at the same time can't prevent new coal-power plants from being built. That's why he's so interested in CCS.

(...) then, after some complaining about government propaganda (…) :

everybody [government like] will come to explain, not only how you can save the world by building windmills on land, but mainly how to make civilians accept your saviour, either "friendly or the hard way"

[they'll even explain] how a local community, with one or two windmills, can stabilise the climate. The fact you can get the same amount of electricity, but then in a reliable way and on command, can be established by one nuclear plant is probably something none of them ill mention.

And that, if you're worried about CO2, you could think about a nuclear plant then will probably be considered 'swearing in church' by the target group of the study-day

He also wrote a comment on the news Toyota starts building a car powered by hydrogen. Sluijter writes :

What they don't mention is that the Hydrogen is made from ethane and this produces CO2. The only efficient way to produce Hydrogen is thermolysis, with the heath coming from a nuclear reactor.

I think it's pretty clear what drives Frans Sluijter in the climate change debate.

Ferdinand Engelbeen

Ferdinand Engelbeen was the chairman of the organisation Chlorophyles, a lobby group of employees of the Chlorine & PVC-industry. The group was founded some 15 years ago as a response to the Greenpeace campaigns against PVC, which was a lot in the news those days.
Engelbeen worked for the chemical company AKZO-Nobel, and it seems that in the circles around DGR, this industrial company is heavily overrepresented : Jaap Hanekamp worked for AKZO. Emeritus Dick Thoenes was research director for AKZO, as were Ernest ‘Noor’ van Andel and Jan Mulderink. It’s strange, because for the rest (with the exception of Huib Van Heel) there seem to be little direct connections between the Dutch climate sceptics and the industry.
It is very tempting to think Greenpeace’s campaigns around chlorines & ftalates against AKZO Nobel created an atmosphere of anti-environmentalism in the company. Of course, this is just speculation.
A person for whom it is pretty clear that a process like above happened is :

Huib van Heel

In the 70’s and 80’s Huib Van Heel was director of the chemical company Hoechst Holland in Vlissingen (which now has been split in smaller units). The company makes Phosphates from the raw Phosphor-ore minerals. Lots of it went to the washing-powder industries of p.ex. Proctor & Gamble.
In the beginning of the 80’ies, in Europe lots of attention went to water pollution and the role of phosphates and the relation in the exponential growth of algae. Finally, it was the Dutch minister for the social-democrat party Irene Vorrink who launched several rules to regulate the emissions of phosphates, which directly affected Van Heel’s factory.
Martijn van Calmthout in the newspaper Volkskrant writes a round-up what Van heel thought about Vorrink’s decision :

they had to go, not –according to Van Heel in his book “Nader Bezien” because Vorrink knows a lot of the effects of Freon's and Phosphates. It’s all about socialist politics. Aerosol sprays & soap were frequently used articles in household, and therefore a good starting point to learn the public the left-wing anti-consumerism.

One thing Van Heel’s book clearly shows is that ever since he’s on a personal vendetta against environmentalism. The thing that keeps him going seems to be rancour.
Huib van Heel would also be one of the Dutch skeptics to end up in the board of ESEF

Hans Labohm

As Hans Labohm already received way too much attention on this blog, so I'll keep it a short as possible. Labohm seems to one of the key-players in the Dutch organised scepticism network.
Libertarian Labohm, just like Richel & Beckman associated with the More Freedom Foundation. He seems to be associated with a lot of well known international organisations of climate sceptics. He appears on the website of the free-market organisation The Heartland Institute, published on the astroturf organisation Science and Public Policy group SPPI, is an allied expert for the Natural Resource Stewardship Project NRSP, etc
Like Hanekamp, Labohm is associated with the lobby group CFACT and Labohm was writing (and being paid for it) for Exxon funded Tech Central Station.
Labohm seems to appear at many places where S. Fred Singer passed by, a man about who's funding Hans Labohm has lied. Currently, Labohm publishes like crazy on DDS, a website of Joshua Livestro, one of the founding fathers of the Edmund Burke Foundation, and the man who brought in corporate funding into that foundation. Livestro also is the man who on his blog censors anyone placing a link to my blog.
Labohm, an economist, in his articles does nothing more than translating what the international lobby groups send around in their mailing lists. When commenter's question the things he writes, his most common tactic is to disappear and repeat his refuted claim elsewhere, even when it’s clear even he himself knows what he writes is incorrect. There are several examples how he does so, I’ve given one here (he’s still repeating his claim btw, i stopped updating my post as i got bored).
When Labohm does address rebuttals, the commenter's receive answers like ‘that’s what you say’ or “there are people who disagree” or “but the point is there’s no consensus” or something alike.
The blatant ignorance of Labohm is so frustrating for another Dutch climate sceptic, Geophysic Hans Erren, that on his own blog Erren sometimes writes blog posts with the sole purpose of teaching Labohm some absolute basics of climate science (example).

Politics and DGR

in the FAQ’s on the website, DGR addresses the question “is DGR a right-wing organisation” ?

of course we are generalising, but we assume that people supporting DGR are both pro a maximal personal as a maximal economical freedom, making them left nor right, but rather belonging to a philosophy called libertarism, which means they want to diminish the role of the government on every domain.

DGR consist of people who all have their own personal reasons to be attacking environmental science. Politics does seem to play a role for most of them, especially for the libertarians. Others are coming from fields of debate where environmentalism never has been popular, like agriculture, nuclear sector or the chemical industry.
Above that, there seems to be professional lobbyism involved in DGR. It seems the personal bias is troubling the scientific objectivity, and corporate funding helps closing the eyes some more.

Dutch climate skeptical organisations pt 2 : De Groene Rekenkamer (intro)

The next organisation which deserves some more attention is The Green Court of Audit or in Dutch : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR).

As we will see, this is the organisation where different kinds of environmental skeptics (not just in the field of climate change) come together. Clearly, as will be explained later on, DGR is an organisation with a clear political focus.

De Algemene Rekenkamer is the Dutch court of auditors which on its website summarizes its task as follows : The Court of Audit checks that the government spends public funds and conducts policy as intended.

Of course it's this Auditing institute which inspired the name Groene Rekenkamer. Clearly, just from the name itself, one can already see what kind of organisation DGR will be. The organisation was found in 2008 by scientists and journalists and in the statutes DGR describes the aim they were formed as follows (§2) :

The aim of DGR is to critically look at the governmental policy on environment, health, technology & related areas and to encourage scientific analysis of risks, cost-effectiveness of the policy and to spread knowledge to a broader audience.

As a little sidenote i can't resist mentioning that, regarding what's to follow, i was surprised to see that under revenues the very first source the organisation sees is "subsidy". I was amused :-)

Before the official start of DGR in 2008, there already was a coöporation between the different groups which ultimately would join DGR, something MeerVrijheid's Theo Richel (as far as i understand, he became an employee of DGR) was already asking for in 2005 on the website libertarian.nl (sic). The groups which ultimately would form De Groene Rekenkamer are :

• Stichting Kernvisie, ("Foundation Nuclear Energy") which still exists independently.
• Stichting Heidelberg Appeal Nederland ("Foundation Heidelberg Appeal Holland") which indeed found inspiration for its name in the international Heidelberg Appeal
• Stichting klimaat ("climate foundation")
• vzw de Chlorofielen which, as far as i know, was the one-man personal toy of Ferdinand Engelbeen

For a better understanding of what DGR is about, it is useful to have a closer look at the organisations behind DGR. Which will be the topic of the next couple of blogposts.

Climate change skeptical organisations in the low countries. Part 1 : Stichting Meer Vrijheid

As mentioned many times on this blog, climate skepticism often is associated with libertarian thinkthanks and organisations.

As we will see, this is not only true in the English speaking part of the world, but also in the Low Countries.

There are several organisations denying man-made climate change, but the first one i want to mention is the More Freedom Foundation (in Dutch : Stichting Meer Vrijheid) : The discours used towards environmental issues is just what one would expect to hear from a libertarian movement.

Think of any cliché and it can be found in their environmental statement :

We think the existance of large environmental risks like the greenhouse effect, acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer are exaggerrated.
(...)

We think some environmental regulations are unnecessary and are nothing but a result of a hatred against economical growth & technology.
(...)

MoreFreedom thinks environmental taxes aren't helping the environment, nor are they meant to do so. They are meant to finance the State Treasury; or to manipulate our behavior. (...) MoreFreedom therefore pleads to abandon all environmental taxes.

As seen very often in climate skeptical environments, MeerVrijheid's climate skepticism fits into a broader picture where other environmental issues also are dismissed, and where regulations are seen as an attempt of the state to gain more power or control over citizens. The skepticism isn't scientific, but originates from a paranoid vision twoards anything governmentlike.

Marcel Roele - The secretary
The secretary of MeerVrijheid is Marcel Roele. Roele is a politicologist who is working as a freelance science-journalist.

Roele is a rather controversial figure. To quote the Dutch wikipedia :

In his article "Our own people first"* Roele argues Hitler got his race-theory from the Jewish people. Meaning the Jewish people fell in the hole they dug themselves. Furthermore he claims it has been scientifically proven black people and women are less intelligent; and that handicapped people make mankind ill.

* in dutch it's titled "eigen volk eerst" and is controversial as this very same slogan was used for a long time by the Flemish ultra right-wing party Vlaams Blok (which nowadays is called Vlaams Belang, as the party was forced to change its name after three organisations associated with the party were convicted for violating Belgian law on racism & xenophobia).

Roele claims Africa is such a poor continent because the inhabitants simply have a low iq and that :

the national iq in african countries is 20 iq-points too low to make it possible to create a western style society.

Marcel Roele copies some of the usual arguments about climate change in this article which repeats the "it's the sun" story.

Us knows us
Other people associated with MeerVrijheid are omnipresent Hans Labohm who is part of the foundation's advisory board and who on a regular basis publishes his climate change nonsense on MeerVrijheid's website.

Other articles on environental issues that are published on the website are from the hand of some other people i mentioned before like Vincent De Roeck. The website was one of the four places where his climate change is a religion, not science got published simultaneously.

On the list of authors, we also find the name of climate change skeptics Theo Richel and the names of some people i didn't blog about yet, like Elsevier-journalist Simon Rozendaal who is well known in the low countries also for his skeptical articles and for this book he co-authors with Hans Labohm and Dick Thoenes.

Another new name is Karel Beckman who in 1992 wrote the book "the greenhouse effect doesn't exist"

And then there's Peter van Maanen, who besides MeerVrijheid is associated with the the Belgian libertarian Murray Rothbard Instituut where he's one of the 7 people of the scientific advisory board. Also on this advisory board are two climate change skeptics i adressed before : Jos Verhulst & Frank Van Dun. (to be fair : as far as i know both gentlemen have completely stopped commenting on climate change ever since i mentioned them on my blog.)

The important thing is that we start to see a pattern of, as we say in Dutch : "us knows us". From now on, the same names will keep returning over and over again.

In my opinion, with the MeerVrijheid foundation we are looking at one of the most important branches of Dutch climate change tree, because in almost every other skeptical group we there will appear one of the people mentioned above as we will see in the next parts of this post.

Yet even now my conclusion already is, as you will have already guessed, that in the low countries the same thing is valid as in other parts of the world : climate change skepticism is seldomly scientific, but is usually originating in libertarism. Science gets attacked because it falsifies a polical worldview.