David Schnare

^{_{*Profile image screenshot of David Schnare speaking at America First Energy Conference, November 9, 2017, via YouTube.}}

David W. Schnare

Credentials

J.D., George Mason University School of Law (1999).¹ ²
Ph.D., Environmental Management, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1979).³ ⁴
M.Sc., Public Health-Environmental Science, University of North Carolina School of Public Health.⁵ ⁶
Bachelor’s Degree (chemistry and math major), Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.⁷ ⁸

Background

David Schnare was formerly general counsel at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (formerly American Tradition Institute), the “Director of the Center for Environmental Stewardship” at the Thomas Jefferson Institute. Schnare is the past Director of the Occoquan Watershed Coalition, and Chairman of the Coalition’s Environment and Land Use Committee. He is CEO of Schnare and Associates, Inc.⁹

According to his profile at Torcastle law, where he is listed as an attorney, Schnare has also been an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University School of Law. His profile at his now-defunct blog The Hard Look notes Schnare was also a former director of the GMU’s Law Alumni Association Board.¹⁰ ¹¹

The Thomas Jefferson Institute describes Schnare as an attorney and scientist who “managed EPA’s Office of Ground-Water and Drinking Water Economic, Legislative and Policy Analysis Branch and has made contributions on a variety of environmental and policy issues.”¹²

The Guardian reports that Schnare was chosen to be a member of Donald Trump‘s EPA transition team, along with fellow climate change denier Myron Ebell. Schnare announced he would quit the EPA, effective March 17, 2016, E&E News reported. Schnare said that the story to his resignation was “extremely complex.” He later clarified that he had resigned in protest of what he said was Scott Pruitt’s mismanagement of the agency, The New York Times reported.¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Schare has called for “geoengineering as a means to put off the most catastrophic potential effects of global warming, at least for a few decades…”¹⁶

Schnare has described environmental activists as “very sick people” who “quietly rejoice over the potential of millions (billions?) of starving people.”¹⁷

FMELC Legal Battle

Schnare has served as a director of a group known as the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC), originally called the George Mason Environmental Law Clinic (GMELC) , which he co-founded with Chris Horner in 2011.¹⁸

In 2018, legal documents obtained by DeSmog contributor John Mashey found that Schnare was forced to give out $630,000 from FMELC in settlement as part of a heated legal dispute between Schnare and another lawyer, Matthew Hardin, over the control of FMELC and its financial assets. Schnare was accused of using FMELC as his own personal bank account. DeSmog reported the funds were released to Horner and Hardin’s new venture, Government Accountability and Oversight (GOA), a group with many of the same targets as FMELC.¹⁹ ²⁰

In an email to DeSmog, Schnare said the dispute was closed, but claimed the settlement had “memorialized” his denials, which he claimed had not been disputed. He added that the August settlement came after he threatened to challenge in court the allegations against him.²¹

“They (the allegations) were without foundation. Horner et al settled because we were about to go before a judge and document that none of them were true. Basically, we let him off the hook.”²²

“This case is an example of what happens to a law partnership when the partners end up unhappy with each other. No one at FME Law wanted to work with Horner any longer. So, we let him go and gave him some of the capital so he could start over on his own,” Schnare told DeSmog.²³

Hardin offered a different version of events. Responding to Schnare’s statement, Hardin told DeSmog in an email that the lawsuits brought by the FMELC board “accurately detail what happened.”²⁴

He wrote: “Mr. Schnare’s settlement was to get out from under those suits. His comments to you seem to bear no relation to either the suits or the settlement.”²⁵

In documents provided to DeSmog, Hardin also revealed he had requested the IRS investigate FMELC and showed copies of the IRS referral and the letter to authorities in Virginia.²⁶

The legal battle has been documented at a number of sources including Lachlan Markey at the Daily Beast (Ex-EPA Official’s Legal Advocacy Outfit Embroiled in Vicious Leadership Struggle) and by John Schwartz of the NY Times (He Sues to Discredit Climate Scientists. Now He’s Being Sued by His Allies).²⁷ ²⁸

Harassment of Climate Scientists

After leaving the EPA in 2011, Schnare spent years suing universities to obtain climate scientists’ emails. His efforts began with suing the University of Virginia (UVA) to obtain climate scientist Michael Mann’s emails on behalf of the American Tradition Institute. That case, which he coordinated with Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), was unsuccessful. Since then, Schnare and E&E Legal have sued universities across the U.S. including Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Texas, and Washington DC.²⁹ ³⁰

Discussing Schnare’s appointment on Donald Trump’s transition team, Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes, co-author of The Merchants of Doubt, a history of industry attacks on scientists, told BuzzFeed News:³¹

“A man who has been harassing scientists, for doing science, is now going to help shape the future of the most important federal agency that relies on scientific information to inform public policy.”³²

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which provides legal help to researchers targeted by nonprofits funded by the coal and oil industry, described Schnare’s work as “one part of a systematic campaign, funded by certain individuals and entities whose economic interests are threatened by any meaningful efforts to combat climate change, to create doubt about the reality, causes, and potential consequences of climate change where there should be none.”³³

Schnare himself has described his work as “public service.” Shnare said “For some of us, it’s in the blood. We commit ourselves to public service and we never stop.”³⁴

A former EPA official, Eric Schaeffer, told Buzzfeed News noted that Schnare’s legal pursuit of scientists was worth further discussion given his new position on Trump’s transition team:

“His agenda appears to be an effort to intimidate climate scientists, I can’t see any other reason to do this,” said Schaeffer. “Otherwise you’d have to subscribe to the notion of a global conspiracy of scientists to make up their science, which just seems loony.”³⁵

David Schnare, E&E Legal, and Coal

Arch Coal (previously one of the largest coal producers in the United States) listed the Energy & Environment Legal Institute as a creditor, Arch Coal’s 2015 bankruptcy proceedings revealed.³⁶

The Intercept reports that Alpha Natural Resources, another large coal company declaring bankruptcy, was directly funding E&E Legal’s other lawyer, Chris Horner.³⁷

Schnare & Scientology

In the early 1980s, one “D.W. Schnare” co-authored 5 papers (one per year from ’82-’86) glorifying the Church of Scientology’s “Hubbard detoxification” regimen (or “Purification Rundown”) for removing toxins from the body. A “David Schnare,” presumably the same, appears to have been listed as achieving “Clear” status in the Scientology publication Auditor magazine number 126, in August 1976, 6 years before beginning his “detoxification” publications.

Two of these papers were co-written with Hubbard’s personal physician, Gene Denk. Some sources identify Schnare as the Director of Research for the Scientology front-group Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education (FASE).³⁸

Schnare’s works are frequently cited as on pages about the Scientology-based Narconon, as well as the health benefits of saunas, sweating, and alternative therapies. His book also makes reference to the “body burden” reduction treatment. His “Pro-Narconon medical literature” includes:³⁹ ⁴⁰ ⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴³ ⁴⁴

D.W. Schnare, G. Denk, M. Shields, S. Brunton: Evaluation of a Detoxification Regimen for Fat Stored Xenobiotics, Medical Hypothesis, Vol.9, 1982.
D.W. Schnare, M. Ben, M. Shields: Body Burden Reductions of PCBs, PBBs and Chlorinated Pesticide Residues in Human Subjects, Ambio, Vol.13, No.5-6, 1984.
D.W. Schnare, P.C. Robinson: Reduction of the Human Body Burdens of Hexachlorobenzene and Polychlorinated Biphenyls, World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Scientific Publications Series, Volume 77, 1986.

Stance on Climate Change

March 2008

Schnare has said that it is too late to curb global warming because “The world has already exceeded the greenhouse gas emissions ‘tipping point’ beyond which catastrophic warming cannot be stopped.”⁴⁵

December 2007

“When it comes to global warming, I’m a skeptic because the conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models…”⁴⁶

Schnare believes that the IPCC’s science “could be wrong. But it could also be right. And, what if the IPCC predictions are true? Then, as the first truth states, it’s too late, and the climate scientific community has admitted as much.”⁴⁷

Key Quotes

2016

“For some of us, it’s in the blood. We commit ourselves to public service and we never stop.”⁴⁸

May, 2015

“According to Judith Curry […] we just don’t know. […]”⁴⁹

“For the last 18 years, the global temperature has been level. Hasn’t gone up, hasn’t gone down. We don’t know what’s going to happen for the next 18 years. It could go up; it could go down. What we need to do is figure out how to plan so that whatever happens, we’re doing something sensible. The clean power plan itself is problematic in that it costs so much money, and will upset some of the work we do on our electric grid to such a degree that we need to have enormous confidence that the kind of changes the EPA currently wants make good sense. For example, if we want to get rid of carbon, one of the best solutions would be to go to nuclear energy.”⁵⁰

“The science is still out. I’m a Ph.D. scientist, and people say ‘well, you’re a skeptic’ and my answer is ‘well, all scientists are skeptics. That’s what being a scientist is.’ And, so when you hear a consensus saying ‘gee, we think this is a big problem,’ and then you actually look at the real science, and you find out, gosh, the temperature has not gone the way we predicted it would, we have to go back and ask ‘how are our assumptions doing? Are we really right?’ And when we’re talking about the size of investment we’re talking about, we need to have a great deal of confidence. What we have though are opportunities to make sensible changes. […] What we need to do in the final call is have a good public discussion about this. And, when you do, you find people are not willing to go any further than they have to because of the other expenses in life.”⁵¹

April 22, 2014

Speaking at The Heritage Foundation’s Happy Earth Day: Dispelling Environmental Myths and Celebrating Human Achievement event, Schnare, at 27:23 states:

“What we really need to do is to admit, as has been said already, is that we’ve succeeded. There is no one single good measure for water quality, but there is a sort of general measure: is the water “impaired” based on what the state said the quality of the water ought to look like. And, so, if you look at all the waters of the United States, and there’s over 300,000 of them, sorry, there’s over 300,000,000 of them—I can’t remember being a lawyer and a scientist—sometimes those numbers can collide, but the bottom line is most of them are not impaired, and those that are impaired, are impaired from natural causes… You know, the deer have to go to the bathroom somewhere.”⁵²

At 34:12 Schnare then says:

“Today, maybe I’m a scientist, but I’m also a lawyer, and when I left the [Environmental Protection] Agency someone asked me and said ‘well, what are you going to do?’ and, I said, ‘I’m going to sue the agency,’ and they went, ‘oh no.’ And so, [since then] we have [sued]…”⁵³

February 17, 2011

“The energy windmills offer is not free, not clean, not reliable and not consistent. And it doesn’t create new jobs.”⁵⁴

May 18, 2010

“Those of us familiar with the coal-fired power plant industry have long recognised that CCS may be slightly more than a pipe-dream, but will never be affordable or practicable for the vast majority of coal-fired plants. Yet no one in the bureaucracy has had the courage to stand up and refute this politically correct but scientifically bankrupt concept.”⁵⁵

May 12, 2010

“Tea Parties are scathingly and properly scathingly opposed to the climate change proposals that have emerged over the past decade. They see the economic consequences of such action, and applying the principles of ‘opportunity costs’ and the need for honest science, including full transparency in the scientific discussion.”⁵⁶

March 16, 2010

“These propagandists [Stephen Schneider and other scientists involved in ‘Climategate’] are not to be confused with the majority of scientists who have no political agenda and who simply want to be scientists. These are often the scientists who are under attack and should not be. Among them are Richard Lindzen, MIT, Roger Pielke, Sr., University of Colorado – Boulder, and John Christy, UAH. These people refuse to go beyond where observation takes them. They are under attack because they refuse to participate in the propaganda campaigns.”⁵⁷

April 16, 2008

“I note in passing, by the way, that many environmental activists quietly rejoice over the potential of millions (billions?) of starving people. They think we need population control and food riots prove their point at the same time that it reduces population. These activists are very sick people and they constitute the leadership of most of the national environmental movement. But we’ve known about that for years, so I don’t suppose any of us should be particularly surprised about that.”⁵⁸

March 16, 2008

“The Virginia plan to reduce greenhouse gases by a mere 30 percent by 2020 is too little, too late and so is the even more aggressive IPCC proposal to reduce them by 80 percent.”⁵⁹

February 2008

“So what’s the problem with CO2? Well, it is a greenhouse gas and the general consensus is that the world needs to cut back on CO2 emissions. Indeed, the nation’s foremost global warming scientist, Jim Hansen, claims we need to reduce our CO2 emissions to near zero, and within the next 12 years.

Well, that isn’t going to happen. We don’t have the capacity to stop using existing coal-fired power plants. […]”⁶⁰

September 26, 2007

“As Ken Caldeira, a professor of climate science at Stanford University, explains, reducing greenhouse gases will cost around 2 percent of the gross domestic product while geo-engineering (by putting reflective aerosols into the upper atmosphere) will cost about one-thousandth of that.”⁶¹

Key Deeds

November 2018

As reported at DeSmog, Schnare was forced forced to give out $630,000 from the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC) in settlement as part of a legal battle in which Schnare was accused of using FMELC as his own personal bank account. The settlement agreement stated that Schnare and his co-defendant Chaim Mandelbaum, another attorney who joined FMELC, would return $630,000.⁶²

April 24, 2018

The Free Market Environmental Clinic filed a complaint against Schnare, the group’s chair, after he spent time working in a senior EPA position. FME Law contended Schnare had improperly obtained the group’s tax-exempt status by misrepresenting its structure. The Daily Beast reported the troubles began when Schnare took a leave of absence from the group in January 2017 and installed fellow attorney Chaim Mandelbaum as FME Law’s executive director.⁶³

Schnare told colleagues he expected to spend three or four years working with the EPA. He withdrew from day-to-date operations.⁶⁴

In late 2017, a new board with incoming chairman Matthew Hardin asked to review the group’s finances. Mandelbaum initially proved a bullet list of assets and liabilities, but resisted providing more information. ⁶⁵

Schnare admitted the reason for resistance in an email: “It appears I made some significant errors when preparing the by-laws and related papers for FME Law.”⁶⁶

One of those errors resulted in FME Law becoming legally paralyzed. When the outside law firm Gross & Romanick was consulted to sort out the issue, they concluded that “As currently organized, FME cannot act.”⁶⁷

“The board of directors is not properly constituted to manage a [professional limited liability corporation]” they concluded in a January 2018 memo. Schnare claimed that conclusion was based on incomplete documentation.⁶⁸

The outside law firm also concluded that Schnare had made misstatements in the group’s application for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, which would make it more difficult to resolve the issues in corporate structure. If a court-appointed receiver were brought on to address the issues, they would be legally required to report the issues to the IRS. Schnare claimed he had already informed the IRS of the underlying issues.⁶⁹

“If the IRS were to investigate and rule that tax exempt status was improperly obtained, FME would likely be forced to disgorge any monies raised and any contributors would have to amend their personal tax returns to reflect donations to a nonexempt entity,” Gross & Romanick had warned. “In such a scenario, it is likely that the members of the board would have some exposure for misrepresenting the status of the organization.”⁷⁰

A legal complaint by FME Law alleged that Schnare began requesting “a payout” in the range of $280,000 to “keep things quiet” around the legal issues created in the initial 2011 tax filing. Schnare claimed that the money was to fulfill contractual obligations, and was not hush money.⁷¹

FME Law’s complaint further alleged Schnare had threatened to go to the authorities. In a January 27 email to Chris Horner, Schnare wrote:⁷²

“Things are getting out of hand. It is in no one’s interest to end up in court, especially yours as it would be discovered that you engaged in fundraising without FME Law or yourself being registered to do so, placing you subject to criminal penalties.”

In a meeting that same day, Schnare suggested the Democratic attorney general of Virginia would be interested to investigate the group. Schnare denied his former colleagues’ allegations that his statements had been threats:⁷³

“I have no idea how thin their skin is. There were no threats, absolutely none.”

Regarding allegations, including that he had misrepresented the group’s nonprofit states, extracted funds for himself and a partner, and the threat of reporting FME Law, Schnare told The Daily Beast:⁷⁴

“The arguments aren’t grounded in facts,” Schnare told The Daily Beast in an interview. “It’s all based on incorrect data.” He described the situation as “like a bad divorce.”

November 15, 2017

In a closed-door meeting hosted by the Heartland Institute, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post, David Schnare noted that they work working to place allies in key White House positions and other areas that guide federal policy:⁷⁵

“There are ways to get names in, and we’ve used every door and window and crack in the wall we can use,” Schnare said.

Schnare also criticized Pruitt and the White House for not attempting to revoke the EPA’s endangerment finding:⁷⁶

“So the question then becomes, what pressure can you put on Mr. Pruitt to make him do it?” Schnare told the group, before mimicking Pruitt’s voice. “The answer he gave me was, ‘Dave, if the president tells me to do it, I’ll do it. Otherwise, I’ll decide what I’m going to do.’ Well, okay, and then I resigned.”⁷⁷

Schanre also brought up the idea of using litigation to force the EPA to act on the endangerment finding:⁷⁸

“If we come up with this case and say, well, this is what we want to do, and then we send a little note off to Scott Pruitt and say, ‘We are going to sue you, would you like to sit down and talk.’ It’s not exactly sue and settle, it’s just, ‘We are going to sue your a–, and you ought to settle,’ ” Schnare said on the recording.⁷⁹

November 9, 2017

Schnare spoke on a panel moderated by Steve Milloy discussing the endangerment finding at the Heartland Institute’s “America First Energy Conference” at the Marriott Hotel in Houston, Texas. His presentation was titled “The Endangerment Findings: What They Are, How They Are Done, and Who Does Them”:⁸⁰

The event description read as follows:⁸¹

“At the America First Energy Conference, we plan to examine—one year and one day after Trump’s shocking Election Day victory—the following:

“Where does Trump’s America First Energy Plan stand?

“How much progress has been made in implementing it, and what remains to be done?

“What scientific and economic evidence is there that the plan is putting the nation on the right path for economic growth, environmental protection, or both?”⁸²

In a fundraising letter obtained by DeSmog, Fred Palmer had promoted the event as having the goal to “review the scientific and economic evidence that exposes the fraud inherent in the Obama-era regulation regime” while discussing “the overwhelming benefits of fossil fuels to us all.”⁸³

As reported at the Houston Chronicle, speakers notably included two Trump Administration officials: Richard W. Westerdale II of the State Department and Vincent DeVito of the Department of Interior. David Bernhardt, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, was also formerly listed as a Heartland conference speaker, but apparently withdrew.⁸⁴

Scott Pruitt also addressed the conference in a recorded video, personally thanking Heartland for “what you’re doing to advance energy” and “for what you’re doing to advance natural resources.⁸⁵

The Climate Investigations Center put up a parody of the America First Energy conference website, complete with profiles on the individual speakers and highlighting their corporate funding and ties to groups such as the Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC).⁸⁶

Many of the other speakers have regularly spoken at the Heartland Institute’s past ICCCs. Notable speakers listed so far include Joe Bast, Fred Palmer, Roger Bezdek, H. Sterling Burnett, Hal Doiron, Paul Driessen, John Dale Dunn, Myron Ebell, Heartland’s new President Tim Huelskamp, Craig Idso, David Legates, Jay Lehr, Anthony Lupo, Ross McKitrick, Steve Milloy, Todd Myers, John Nothdurt, David Schnare, and numerous others.⁸⁷

August 2017

According to an August 2017 article at The New York Times, Schnare clarified that his reason for resigning was Scott Pruitt’s mismanagement of the agency.⁸⁸

“He’s got a serious problem because of his emails down in Oklahoma — he’s burned himself,” said Schnare, referring to the thousands of emails released as part of a request by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). (Pruitt had previously asserted the emails did not exist).⁸⁹

Schare cited Pruitt’s lack of transparency as one of the reasons for his resignation:⁹⁰

“My view was that under this administration we would be good at transparency, particularly in the regulatory area,” he said. “But these guys aren’t doing that.”⁹¹

March 16, 2017

Schnare announced he would resign from the EPA, effective March 17, 2016, E&E News reported.⁹²

“The backstory to my resignation is extremely complex,” Schnare said. “I will be writing about it myself. It is a story not about me, but about a much more interesting set of events involving misuse of federal funds, failure to honor oaths of office, and a lack of loyalty to the President.”⁹³

According to an internal email E&E News obtained that had been addressed to agency and transition team officials , Schnare had made the following statement:⁹⁴

“Transitions begin and they end. I have been honored to have had the opportunity to serve the Trump Administration, but I have completed as much as I am able. Thus it is time for me to move on […] I wish each of you the best.”⁹⁵

January 23, 2017

David Schnare is listed on President Donald Trump‘s “beachhead team” that will oversee the transition of the EPA. In addition to Schnare, E&E News reports that those on the list include David Kreutzer of the Heartland Institute and Charles Munoz, a former Americans for Prosperity operative who will serve as White House liason.⁹⁶

May 14, 2015

David Schnare was featured in the first session of a televised policy debate series sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy on on Richmond’s “Community Idea Station”, WCVE-TV “Living with Climate Change.”⁹⁷

Schnares opponent in the debate was Glen Besa, director of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra club and the debate was moderated by political analyst Dr. Bob Holsworth. Video below, followed with some excerps from Schnare’s portion of the debate.⁹⁸

“According to Judith Curry […] we just don’t know. […]”

“For the last 18 years, the global temperature has been level. Hasn’t gone up, hasn’t gone down. We don’t know what’s going to happen for the next 18 years. It could go up; it could go down. What we need to do is figure out how to plan so that whatever happens, we’re doing something sensible. The clean power plan itself is problematic in that it costs so much money, and will upset some of the work we do on our electric grid to such a degree that we need to have enormous confidence that the kind of changes the EPA currently wants make good sense. For example, if we want to get rid of carbon, one of the best solutions would be to go to nuclear energy.”

“The science is still out. I’m a Ph.D. scientist, and people say ‘well, you’re a skeptic’ and my answer is ‘well, all scientists are skeptics. That’s what being a scientist is.’ And, so when you hear a consensus saying ‘gee, we think this is a big problem,’ and then you actually look at the real science, and you find out, gosh, the temperature has not gone the way we predicted it would, we have to go back and ask ‘how are our assumptions doing? Are we really right?’ And when we’re talking about the size of investment we’re talking about, we need to have a great deal of confidence. What we have though are opportunities to make sensible changes. […] What we need to do in the final call is have a good public discussion about this. And, when you do, you find people are not willing to go any further than they have to because of the other expenses in life.”

April 22, 2014

David Schnare was a speaker at The Heritage Foundation’s “Happy Earth Day: Dispelling Environmental Myths and Celebrating Human Achievement” event.⁹⁹

See the video footage here:

September 2012

The University of Virginia (UVA) criticized David Schnare, claiming that he had misrepresented himself by requesting emails from climate scientist Michael Mann while still working for the EPA, even though Schnare claimed he had already left his EPA position at the time of the request.¹⁰⁰

The University argued for denying the release of Mann’s emails, as it appeared Snare had pursued their release from the UVA “during regular weekday business hours” while working for the EPA. The UVA also argued that the letter Schnare produced that claimed he had alerted EPA to his request for approval of the outside activity actually “may have been prepared after the fact” by Schnare.¹⁰¹

As Mother Jones reported at the time, “neither his Deputy Ethics Official nor his Assistant Deputy Ethics Official has any record of receiving it or approving this request to engage in outside activity” at the time Schnare claimed it was provided.¹⁰²

October 17, 2011

University of Virginia attorney Richard Kast submitted an affidavit that complained Shnare had misled the university into thinking he no longer worked at the environmental agency. According to Kast, Schnare had worked on the case while at the government job, and that the outisde-employment.¹⁰³

“The fact that Dr. Schnare has, for whatever reason, felt compelled to make misleading statements to me about his employment status with the EPA, and demonstrably false statements about his having obtained the requisite approvals to represent ATI in this lawsuit while still being employed by the EPA, is extremely troubling and has destroyed Dr. Schnare’s credibility in my mind,” Kast wrote int he affidavit.¹⁰⁴

Kast noted that Schare’s outside employment waiver, which the EPA had no record of receiving, had a provision that “All services will be performed entirely outside normal duty hours.” According to Kast, “I have received 58 emails from Dr. Schanre from February 17 to September 29, 2011. […] Most of these e-mails were sent between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. and all were sent on week days and on days that were not federal holidays.”¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶

In Schnare’s affidavit, he argued that he had sought prior approval for his work outside of the EPA and that the agency had lost his waiver. He also said that even though his name was on the group’s court filings, and he represented it in court, that he was not actually representing the group but rather himself alone. This was something Kast called “preposterous” in court.¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁸

“I took the case pro bono, so funding of the case was never a question as to where the money came from because there wasn’t any money in the first place. Any effort to suggest I was in the pay of coal or oil interests is without foundation,” Schnare said.¹⁰⁹

June 30–July 1, 2011

Schnare was a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC6.)¹¹⁰ His speech, titled “The Current Policy Front of the Climate Change Agenda” can be viewed below.

Research done by DeSmog found that 17 of the 43 sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, including the Heartland Institute itself, have collectively received over $46 million from either Scaife Foundations, Koch Foundations, or ExxonMobil and its foundation.

November 2008

David Schnare was a featured speaker (PDF) at the fall Climate Change Conference sponsored by the National Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Chamber.¹¹¹

This conference “brought scores of business leaders together to discuss the climate change/environmental issues facing our nation and our state.”

Schnare advocated geo-engineering in his presentation where he explained that through “artificially seeding the atmosphere with non-polluting reflective particles (that slowly descend to the surface of the earth) we can keep the earth’s atmosphere cool as we work to find economically feasible alternatives to carbon-based fuels.” He concludes that “this is a more acceptable concept than severely restricting our economic growth through drastic government regulation.”¹¹²

April 2008

David Schnare spoke at the Heartland Institute‘s First International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC1) where he introduced his paper (.pdf), titled “Climate Change and the Uncomfortable Middle Ground: The Geoengineering and ‘No Regrets’ Policy Alternative,” which was published by the Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.¹¹³

Although the paper does imply that global warming may be due in part to increases in Greenhouse Gases caused by humans, he believes that it is too late to try to reduce our emissions.

The abstract states that our situation

“calls for geoengineering as a means to put off the most catastrophic potential effects, at least for a few decades; an immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) where those reductions actually save money (the “no regrets” alternatives); significantly expanded use of and research on low-cost carbon sequestration that removes GHGs from the atmosphere or reduces carbon emissions; and some breathing space within which to further assess some of the global warming theories that, if disproven, would point humanity toward lesser or greater reliance on alternative climate change responses.”

Schnare continues, stating that “A perusal of [the Geophysical Research Letters journal], however, finds well documented, peer- reviewed papers indicating there appears to be some merit to arguments that warming over the past 40 years reflects a normal, if chaotic cycle that may overlay anthropogenic (human caused) warming, but alone explains the majority of observed warming.”

For support, Schanre quotes skeptical scientists such as Petr Chylek, Dennis Avery, Fred Singer and Alan Carlin. The suggested geo-engineering projects are reminiscent of those recommended by Bjorn Lomborg including ocean-based cloud creation, ocean fertilization, and ocean carbon sequesterization.¹¹⁴ Schnare’s speech, titled “Global Warming and Geo-Engineering” can be viewed below.

September 26, 2007

David Schnare testified before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, referencing his report titled “Responses to Climate Change and their Implications on Preservation and Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay” where he argues that we need to apply geo-engineering to prevent global warming, and that “any investments in reducing greenhouse gases…would be the greatest threat to the [Chesapeake] Bay.”¹¹⁵

Schnare details his testimony on his now-defunct blog Hard Look:¹¹⁶

“I testified that the oceans will not rise and flood the bay because before that can happen, before the Greenland Ice Sheet can melt, someone is going to employ ‘geo-engineering’ to turn down the global temperature. They will do that by replicating what volcanos do,” Schnare wrote. “ also testified that the current legislative proposals, and worse, those offered by mainline environmental groups who raise the alarm about potential catastrophies [sic], will not prevent global warming.”¹¹⁷

View his complete testimony, “Responses to Climate Change and their Implications on Preservation and Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay” (PDF), here.

Affiliations

The Hard Look

David Schnare used to operate a blog titled The Hard Look (closed as of December, 2006). The site claimed to take a look “ behind the smoke and mirrors of public policy pronouncements.”¹²⁴ ¹²⁵

The website maintained regular posts on “Global climate change” as well as “Sound Science” and numerous other categories presenting positions contrary to mainstream climate change science.

Publications

A Google Scholar search returns one article written by David Schnare on the subject of climate, titled “Climate Change and the Uncomfortable Middle Ground,” published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute. He has not published any articles on climate in peer-reviewed journals.