Founded | 2002 |
---|---|
Founder | Douglas Leahey |
Type | Climate change skepticism |
Focus | Canadian public policy |
Location | |
Key people
|
Madhav Khandekar, Chris de Freitas, Tim Patterson, Sallie Baliunas |
Slogan | Providing insight into Climate Change |
Website | www |
Friends of Science (FoS) is a Canadian non-profit advocacy organization based in Calgary, Alberta. The organization takes a position that humans are largely not responsible for the currently observed global warming, contrary to the established scientific position on the subject. Rather, they propose that "the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change," not human activity. They argued against the . The society was founded in 2002 and launched its website in October of that year. They are considered by many to promote climate change denial. They are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Madhav Khandekar, Chris de Freitas, Tim Patterson and Sallie Baliunas act as advisers to the Friends of Science with their work cited in Friends' publications. Douglas Leahey has been president since December, 2009.
In the late 1990s the Calgary-based Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, a group modeled on the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, invited Chris de Freitas, from The University of Auckland, a critic of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as guest speaker. Following these talks in which de Frietas was "very critical of what was being said about the role of carbon dioxide in global warming, ...[w]e all left the luncheon speeches all shaking our heads that this silliness was going on." After the Canadian government signed the , Eric Loughead, former editor of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin and his fellow members of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists responded by creating the Friends of Science Society, who held its first meeting in the curling lounge of the Glencoe Club in Calgary in 2002.
The first board of directors in 2002 included oil industry geologist and member of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, Arthur M. Patterson, B.A.Sc., P.Geol. as President; Gordon C. Wells, B.Sc., P.Geol. as Vice-President; Charles Simpson as Secretary and H. Graham Donoghue, B.A.Sc., P.Eng. as Treasurer. Founding members of the Friends of Science, Arthur M. Patterson, B.A.Sc. (Eng. Geol.), Albert Jacobs, M.Sc. and David Barss B.Sc. (Hons. Geol. published the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (CSPG) position on global climate change science in January 2003 in which they cite an article by Chris de Freitas entitled "Are Observed Changes in the Concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Really Dangerous?”