Leipzig Declaration

The Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change is a statement made in 1995, seeking to refute the claim there is a scientific consensus on the global warming issue. It was issued in an updated form in 1997 and revised again in 2005, claiming to have been signed by 80 scientists and 25 television news meteorologists while the posting of 33 additional signatories was pending verification that those 33 additional scientists still agreed with the statement. All versions of the declaration, which opposes the global warming hypothesis and the , were penned by Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).

The first declaration was based on a November 9–10, 1995 conference, organized by Helmut Metzner in Leipzig, Germany. The second declaration was additionally based on a successor conference in Bonn, Germany on November 10–11, 1997. The conferences were cosponsored by SEPP and the European Academy for Environmental Affairs and titled International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy.

The 1995 declaration asserts: "There does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever." The latter statement was broadly accurate at the time, but with additional data and correction of errors, all analyses of satellite temperature measurements now show statistically significant warming.

The declaration also criticised the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, saying: "Energy is essential for all economic growth, and fossil fuels provide today's principal global energy source. In a world in which poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For this reason, we consider 'carbon taxes' and other drastic control policies ... to be ill-advised, premature, wrought with economic danger, and likely to be counterproductive."

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