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The organization's Executive Director is Robert "Bob" Ferguson, who was listed as executive director of the Center for Science and Public Policy in the Frontiers of Freedom Foundation 2006 form 990[2]. He is also a former Chief of Staff to Republican Congressmen Jack Fields (1981-1997), John E. Peterson (1997-2002), and Rick Renzi (2002). The chief science adviser to the institute is Willie Soon, PhD an astrophysicist and geoscientist, a skeptic of man made global warming and proponent of the theory that climate change is caused by solar variation. The chief policy adviser is Christopher Monckton, a former special adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Further science advisers include William Kininmonth, Robert M. Carter, David Legates, Craig D. Idso, and James J. O'Brien. Joe D'Aleo is the institute's Meteorology Adviser.

Speaking of which, this is a fascinating analysis of the 'climategate' emails:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf

Jon


-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers on behalf of Chiara Certomà
Sent: Sat 1/23/2010 11:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: RGS-IBG second CFP:   Science, politics and the nature of environmental debates


Second Call for Papers: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference,
London, 1-3 September 2010.
  Science, politics and the nature of environmental debates

The recent attention given to scientific discourses and practices in
providing effective guidance to global environmental policies has
shown that expert knowledge is not exempt of politics. On the
contrary, scientific knowledge is the resulting product of continuous
epistemological negotiations occurring amongst scientists as well as
between scientists and non-scientists on what scientific data mean.

The very recent controversy generated by the possible manipulation of
climate data by several climate scientists a week before the
Copenhagen summit can be seen as an explicit demonstration of how
politics and science are intertwined and cannot be thought
independently. Although this event raised the awareness of non-
scientists about the uncertainties of climate sciences, how the
interplay between politics and science occurs is still largely
unquestioned and misunderstood. This miscomprehension has significant
impacts on the formulation and application of environmental policies
but also on how the non human world is imagined. For example, the
epistemic realm through which scientific discourses and practices are
produced and articulated makes it possible for scientists 'to provide
a voice' (as a material semiotic approach suggests) to the biophysical
environment that is generally considered as external to human
societies and apolitical. In turn, the predominance of scientific
discourses and practices in environmental NGOs and policy makers'
circles when engaging with the non-human world makes it rather
difficult to reorganise and challenge the power relationships
constituting environmental sciences and politics.

By not engaging with the politics at the centre of the production of
knowledge as well as acknowledging its impact on the comprehension of
the non-human world, environmental politics are building on shaky
foundations that can result in important local and international
policy failures, widely addressed by the post-environmentalist
critiques.

Thus, this session aims at bringing together contributions that are
seeking to interrogate and re-conceptualise the relationships between
politics, 'the political' and science in environmental governance.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:

·      How non-scientific epistemologies can give voice to nonhumans
and thus being part of a renewal of environmental politics, as a non-
foundationalist and non-normative political view?

·      What are the different relationships occurring in the process
of making scientific subjects political?

·      How scientific practices and discourses could inform us about
the essence of the political?

·      How knowing about the politics of science would improve policy
making and application?


Abstracts (250 words max) should be submitted, by email, to session
organisers Sébastien Nobert, King's College, London ([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
) and Chiara Certomà; Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa ([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
) by 1st of February at the latest.