Benny Peiser

In May 2013 Benny Peiser spoke to a group of 200 at the 10th annual Calgary, Alberta Friends of Science, a Canadian non-profit advocacy organisation who dispute the value of the Kyoto Protocol and believe "the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change", rather than human activity. Peiser compared the apocalyptic statements surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline and oil sands climate change debate, to centuries of catastrophic, apocalyptic cult thinking in the Bronze Age for example. Peiser argued that the European Union's climate policies have failed. Licia Corbella, columnist and editorial page editor, with the Calgary Herald and a (former) longtime editor/columnist with the Sun Media organisation, described him as a social anthropologist, a visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham, and a "British climate policy expert" director of the non-partisan, not for profit Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Fred Pearce wrote in The Guardian (2010) that the three inquiries Global Warming Policy Foundation looked into were all badly flawed, and that The Climategate Inquiries report ably dissects their failures. He writes that the report, "for all its sharp—and in many cases justified—rejoinders to the official inquiries ... is likely to be ignored in some quarters for its brazen hypocrisy." Pearce argued that one of the criticisms of the three inquiries was that no climate sceptics were on the inquiry teams, and now the critics themselves have produced a review of the reviews that included no one not already supportive of the sceptical position. But, Pearce wrote, Montford "has landed some good blows here."

As an outspoken climate change sceptic, Peiser became director of the newly established UK lobbying group Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009. He serves as co-editor of the journal, Energy & Environment and is a regular contributor to Canada's National Post.

In 2009, in response to a prediction by James E. Hansen from NASA that sea levels could rise by 60 cm, he said, "The predictions come in thick and fast, but we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it's very cold, it doesn't seem to be warming."

Bob Ward who has served as policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics argued that some of the names of members of the Global Warming Policy Foundation are "straight from the Who's Who of current climate change skeptics." Ward was concerned that the GWPF would pump material that was not scrutinised through peer-reviewed into the climate change debate. The Global Warming Policy Foundation's board of trustees includes Lord Barnett, who voted against the Climate Change Bill, and the Bishop of Chester, "who has argued there was no consensus among climate change scientists that carbon dioxide levels are the key determinant". Professor Ian Plimer, a member of the GWPF's academic advisory council, "argues volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans." At its launch in 2009 it was described as a "new high-powered all-party think-tank" by global warming critic, Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Conservative Chancellor, in an interview with The Timess journalist David Aaronovitch.

Peiser argued that he is against alarmist, hysterical doomsday scenarios and catastrophic apocalyptic cult thinking but is not "a climate-change sceptic (2008)." "Most scientists do seem to accept that there is an effect of CO2 on climate; the big question is how large and dangerous it will be in future. Personally, I'm also sceptical about the doomsday scenarios."

American astrophysicist and science communicator, Neil deGrasse Tyson described (2008) the Cambridge Conference Network (CCNet) as a "widely read, UK-based Internet chat group" "moderated" by Benny Peiser with a primary interest in "open discussion of asteroids, comets, and their risk to life on Earth" but open to many other news subjects. In 2001 Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the New York's museum's Hayden Planetarium, displayed only eight (not nine) planets with Pluto reclassified as a dwarf planet. Tyson recounted the heated on-line debate on CCNet chat group following Peiser's renewed call for reclassification of Pluto's status. Peiser's entry, in which he posted articles from the AP and Boston Globe spawned from an article in The New York Times entitled "Pluto's Not a Planet? Only in New York". Tyson's decision resulted in large amounts of hate mail, much of it from children.

Physicist Laurence I. Gould from the University of Hartford, in his editorial entitled 'Global Warming from a Critical Perspective' (2007) included Benny Peiser's argument in favour of the Oxford Union debate proposition entitled "This House believes that alarmism has replaced science in the global warming debate."

In an interview in Local Transport Today in 2006, Peiser argued that environmental concerns in general and concern about global warming in particular had reached a level of "near hysteria" and was "poisonous for rational policy making".

In a 2006, letter to Australia's Media Watch, Peiser explained that he had retracted 97% of his original critique and elaborated on some of his comments: "I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact. However, this majority consensus is far from unanimous."

During a debate at the Oxford Union in 2005, Peiser stated, "The lack of a balanced approach to the issue of global warming has led to an extremely one-sided and alarmist perception of risk.... Climate alarmists habitually ignore the potential economic and health benefits of warming temperatures. While magnifying the probable risks to health and mortality as a result of warmer temperatures, many underrate or simply discount the possible health benefits of moderate warming."

In 2004, a paper was published in the journal Science by Naomi Oreskes titled Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. It researched the hypothesis that legitimate dissenting opinions on anthropogenic climate change might be downplayed in scientific papers and concluded that 75% of the examined abstracts either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, none directly dissenting from it. The essay received a great deal of media attention from around the world and has been cited by many prominent people including as Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth, the Royal Society and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, Prof Sir David King.

Media Watch wrote "And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one.(Ad Hoc Committee on Global Climate Issues: Annual report, by Gerhard LC and Hanson BM, AAPG Bulletin 84 (4): 466-471 Apr 2000) Peiser says he withdrew his criticism in March this year." AAPG is American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Peiser established the Cambridge Conference Network in 1997. Peiser acknowledges that he is "not a climate scientist" and has "never claimed to be one." His interest as a social anthropologist, is in "how climate change is portrayed as a potential disaster and how we respond to that."

In 1997 Peiser established the Cambridge Conference Network, an email-based discussion group for a conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies about Bronze Age catastrophes. Over time the network began to focus on discussion on climate change and was renamed CCNet (active from 1997 to 2006), to provide a platform for "the minority of people who are climate (change) sceptics or have doubts about the prevailing views."

In 11–13 July 1997, Benny Peiser and co-editors introduced the Second Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Cambridge Conference held at Fitzwilliam College, by outlining the background of neo-catastrophism by examining the astronomical and meteoritic background for catastrophic thinking, for example near-earth objects, cometary catastrophes and ecological disasters. The presentations by historians, classicists -researchers in areas such as Chinese studies, mythology, art, religion, literature and ancient civilisations – met with geologists, astrophysics, and a science correspondent for London's Sunday Telegraph, were later compiled in a publication entitled Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations.

Peiser studied political science, English, and sports science at Frankfurt University, receiving a doctorate in cultural studies (Kulturwissenschaften) from that institution in 1993, for an examination of the history, archaeology and natural history of Greek problems at the time of the ancient Olympic Games.

Benny Josef Peiser (born 1957) is a social anthropologist specialising in the environmental and socio-economic impact of physical activity on health. He was a senior lecturer in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and is a visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham.

Born of German parents in Haifa, Israel, in 1957, Peiser's family soon returned to Germany. He grew up in Frankfurt and "spent the first 35 years of his life" in Germany.