Ken Haapala

Credentials

MS (Economics), Economic Modeling, Energy Economics.¹

Background

Ken Haapala is the President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and an expert at The Heartland Institute. He has also been a regular contributor to the Heartland Institute’s Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) reports.² ³

Haapala is the compiler of SEPP’s ”The Week That Was,” a weekly newsletter on climate news, with a “News You Can Use” section that highlights articles and papers primarily written by climate change deniers. Haapala’s background is in energy and economics modeling.⁴

In January, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Kenneth Haapala to serve on the administration’s team handling appointments for the U.S. Department of Commerce, the federal agency overseeing the NOAA.⁵

Stance on Climate Change

July 2015

In a Heartland Institute statement, Haapala declared:

”The EPA stated that it based its finding on three lines of evidence. These lines of evidence do not exist, or no longer exist. They are: (1) a distinct human fingerprint in the atmosphere over the tropics; (2) late 20th century warming was unusual; and (3) climate models predict that human-caused warming would become dangerous to humans in the 21st century. No one, including the National Academy of Sciences, has been able to find the distinct human fingerprint except those who falsely claim such a warming is uniquely human-caused.”⁶

March 2008

Happala is an endorser of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change which declares, among other points, that:⁷

“there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.”

Key Quotes

January 31, 2018

Following President Donald Trump‘s State of the Union Address, Haapala said in a statement:⁸

“Perhaps the most remarkable item in President Trump’s first State of the Union Address and its official rebuttal by Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) was the failure to mention dire global warming/climate change, drastic sea level rise, and the many ills that have been prophesized if we continue to burn hydrocarbons and emit carbon dioxide. Is a new realization occurring that we will not overheat or drown in acidic waters? Probably not. The alarmists will continue to attack President Trump for his climate policies and gently criticize Kennedy for his oversight. After all, decades of propaganda cannot be overcome with a single speech.”⁹

January 24, 2017

In a Heartland Insitute Press Release, Haapala commented on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline executive orders: ¹⁰

“Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil over land. When the Keystone XL pipeline was proposed, it made economic sense to build it. Not only was it to be built with private money, it made far more economic sense than many of the so-called ‘shovel ready’ jobs in the ‘stimulus bill’ funded by taxpayers. Whether it still makes economic sense is now up to the developers, not the arbitrary political whims of Washington.

“Stopping the Dakota Access pipeline after 98% of the pipeline was laid down was an example of how the greens infected political decisions in Washington. The pipeline was to be drilled almost 100 feet below the riverbed of the Missouri, not placed on it. But, that made little difference to those stopped it.

“Let’s hope that President Trump’s decisions are a sign of better times to come.”

July 2015

“[It’s] past time [to end the scare and] stop the madness of wasting great sums of money on EPA’s imaginary threat.”¹¹

“The EPA claimed that carbon dioxide emissions are pollutants that endangers human health, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on this planet,” Haapala reports. “Green plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis to create the food plants and animals need to survive.”¹²

November 2009

The following is from Haapala’s testimony on the EPA, published at the Northern Virginia Chapter of SEEE (Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment):

“Carbon dioxide is a necessary food for green plants, thus necessary for life on this planet as we generally recognize it. As discussed in the second report, thousands of experiments and observations show that virtually all food crops and green plants thrive better in an atmosphere enriched in carbon dioxide and better resist stress such as draught, or insect attacks. Contrary to EPA claims, Carbon dioxide enrichment, condemned by these regulations, is a benefit to agriculture, humanity, and the planet.”¹³

He added that “The EPA has failed to present any compelling physical evidence that man’s emissions of Greenhouse Gases caused the 20th Century warming. Instead, it has relied on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its faulty computer models that are biased, obsolete, and wrong.”¹⁴

Key Deeds

August 7, 2018

Haapala was a registered as a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s “America First Energy Conference” (AFEC 2018) in New Orleans, Louisiana.¹⁵

“The purpose of this event is to promote and expand energy freedom in the United States, as outlined in President Donald Trump’s bold America First Energy Plan, a proposal first released during the 2016 presidential campaign. The president’s plan marks a decisive change in direction from the Obama administration’s ‘war on fossil fuels’ and focus on the theory of catastrophic man-caused climate change,” the conference description reads.¹⁶

Haapala was scheduled to give a lunch keynote presentation on August 7.¹⁷

May 8, 2017

Haapala, representing SEPP, is a signatory to an open letter to President Donald J. Trump urging him “to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.”¹⁸

DeSmog reported that the 40 groups represented in the letter, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), The Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, have received a combined total of millions of dollars from the Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil, and other industry groups.¹⁹

Analysis also showed that the groups accepted about $80 million through Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, two groups that have been confirmed is a key financial source for key U.S-based cliamate change denial groups.²⁰

January 2017

Kenneth Haapala was appointed by President Donald Trump to serve on the administration’s team handling appointments for the U.S. Department of Commerce, the federal agency overseeing the NOAA.²¹

An NOAA employee told McClatchy DC that he and a number of his colleagues were alarmed by Trump’s selection of Haapala:

“NOAA doesn’t get as much attention as EPA, but it is a pretty big target for people that want to shut down climate change science and findings they find objectionable,” The employee siad.

December 12, 2016

Ken Haapala was an attendee at a private meeting also attended by Trump’s EPA Transition team lead Myron Ebell on Capitol Hill. E&E News reported that the event was not open to the public or to the press and Ebell refused to give any details. The event was hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and held in the hearing room of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. The EPW committee is chaired by Senator James Inhofe who, like Trump, has described human-caused climate change as a hoax.²²

DeSmog reported that the event featured the “Who’s Who of Climate Science Deniers.” Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts, who spoke at the event, also wrote that the meeting was a gathering of the Cooler Heads Coalition and then listed some of the participants on Facebook:²³ ²⁴

Names mentioned above included:

DeSmog also noted that three of the attendees—Myron Ebell, Randy Randol, and Steve Milloy—had all been part of the Global Climate Science Communications Team in the late 1990s, a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute. According to an early memo, the group said “victory will be achieved when […] Average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’.”²⁵

July 8–10, 2016

Ken Haapala was a speaker at 34th Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, co-sponsored by Access to Energy, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and Physicians for Civil Defense.²⁶

Haapala spoke alongside S. Fred Singer, both representing the Science and Environmental Policy Project. Singer’s portion of the presentation focused on “Paris COP-21,” while Haapala spoke on “Legal Actions of EPA, CPP, and SCOTUS.”²⁷

DDP listed the following speakers at their event:²⁸

Jane Orient
Willie Soon
David Legates
Mohan Doss
Arthur Levy
Geoffrey L. Shapiro
Steven Hatfill
S. Fred Singer
Ken Haapala
Tony Heller (AKA Steven Goddard)
Patrick Frank
Joe Leimkuhler
Donald W. Miller
Howard Hayden
Yuri Maltsev
Stephen Jones
Matthew Robinson
Arthur Robinson

May 18, 2016

Kenneth Haapala was a signatory to a full page color advertisement in The New York Times titled “Abuse of Power” (PDF) sponsored by The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The ad serves as an open letter from 43 signatories including organizations and individuals in response to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and the coalition of Attorneys General investigating groups denying man-made climate change.²⁹ ³⁰

“Attempts to intimidate CEI and our allies and silence our policy research are unconstitutional,” said CEI president Kent Lassman. “The First Amendment protects us and everyone has a duty to respect it – even state attorneys general. CEI will continue to fight for all Americans to support the causes in which they believe.”³¹

The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a subpoena from AG Walker on April 7, 2016. On April 20, CEI filed an objection to the subpoena calling it “offensive,” “un-American,” and “unlawful,” and are contending that AG Walker is “violating CEI’s First Amendment rights.”³²

The “freedom of speech” argument was echoed by ExxonMobil’s legal team, as well as numerous other conservative groups including the Pacific Legal Foundation, and Heritage Foundation and the recently-formed Free Speech in Science Project, a group created by the same lawyers who defended the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the past.³³

The CEI letter lists the following signatories:

Kent Lassman — President & CEO, Competitive Enterprise Institute
C. Boyden Gray — Former White House Counsel
Andrew C. McCarthy — Former Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York
Michael B. Mukasey — U.S. Attorney General, 2007-2009; U.S. District Judge, 1988-2006
Ross McKitrick — Professor of Economics, University of Guelph
Ronald D. Rotunda — Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University
Richard S. Lindzen — Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT
William Happer — Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University
Jim DeMint — President, The Heritage Foundation
James H. Amos, Jr. — President & CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis
John A. Baden — Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment
Lisa B. Nelson — CEO, American Legislative Exchange Council
Paul Driessen — Author & Energy Policy Analyst
Thomas J. Pyle — President, Institute for Energy Research
Steven J. Allen — Vice President & Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center
David Ridenour — President, National Center for Public Policy Research
Steven J. Milloy — Publisher, JunkScience.com
Brooke Rollins — President & CEO, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Paul Gessing — President, Rio Grande Foundation
Ron Arnold — Researcher & Author
William Perry Pendley — President, Mountain States Legal Foundation
Adam Brandon — President & CEO, FreedomWorks
Hank Campbell — President, American Council on Science and Health
Craig Rucker — Executive Director, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
Tom McCabe — CEO, Freedom Foundation
Richard B. Belzer — Economist
Heather R. Higgins — President & CEO, Independent Women’s Voice
Joseph G. Lehman — President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Sabrina Schaeffer — Executive Director, Independent Women’s Forum
Joseph Bast — President, The Heartland Institute
John C. Eastman — Founding Director, The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Robert Alt — President & CEO, The Buckeye Institute
Michael Pack — President & CEO, The Claremont Institute
Josh Blackman — Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law
Lynn Taylor — President, Tertium Quids
David Rothbard — President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
Tracie Sharp — President & CEO, State Policy Network
Kenneth Haapala — President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Tim Phillips — President, Americans for Prosperity
Myron Ebell — Director of the Center for Energy & Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute
George Landrith — President, Frontiers of Freedom
John Tillman — CEO, Illinois Policy Institute
Craig D. Idso — Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

October 9, 2014

Ken Haapala is quoted in the Heartland Institute‘s press release, “Heartland Institute Climate Experts Comment on 18 Straight Years of No Global Warming,” which states “the global mean surface temperature has not risen for 18 consecutive years. This extends the so-called ‘pause’ in global warming to a new record, one not predicted by the climate models of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Haapala writes:³⁴

“The EPA claimed that carbon dioxide emissions are pollutants that endangers human health, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on this planet. Green plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis to create the food plants and animals need to survive.

“The EPA stated that it based its finding on three lines of evidence. These lines of evidence do not exist, or no longer exist. They are: (1) a distinct human fingerprint in the atmosphere over the tropics; (2) late 20th century warming was unusual; and (3) climate models predict that human-caused warming would become dangerous to humans in the 21st century. No one, including the National Academy of Sciences, has been able to find the distinct human fingerprint except those who falsely claim such a warming is uniquely human-caused.

“Late 20th century warming stopped about 18 years ago. Climate models cannot explain why, even though, according to the White House, federal expenditures on climate science and programs to fight global warming/climate change amount to about $22.5 billion a year. There is no scientific reason to assume significant warming will occur in the future from human carbon dioxide emission.

“The EPA and the Obama administration have embarked on a program of eliminating electricity generation from even the most efficient and cleanest modern coal-fired power plants, without carbon capture and storage – a technology untested for general application. All this is based on a perceived threat to human health that cannot be shown to exist. It is past time to stop the madness of wasting great sums of money on EPA’s imaginary threat to human health.”³⁵

July 7–9, 2014

Ken Haapala was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC9) in Las Vegas, Nevada.³⁶ His speech, titled “Funding a Failing Paradigm” can be viewed below.

DeSmog has done in-depth research on the other speakers and sponsors from Heartland’s ICCC9, which can be found here.

May 21–23, 2012

Haapala was a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). His speech, titled “Wind and Solar: The Past or the Future”:³⁷

DeSmog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland’s ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations.³⁸

June 30, 2011

Haapala was a moderator at the Heartland Institute‘s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC6). ³⁹He moderated Session 1: Assessing the scientific data. Other participants in the panel included Anthony Watts, Timothy F. Ball, and Patrick J. Michaels.

February 12, 2010

Haapala contributed to the “Petition For Reconsideration of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change” (PDF) in February, 2010. The collective reports are the result of a cooperation between the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.⁴⁰

Filers included S. Fred Singer, Co-founder of SEPP, and Sam Kazman, General Counsel of CEI. The report opposed the EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. According to the summary, “in our view, this Endangerment Finding was unjustifiably based on unscientific reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scientifically indefensible global temperature datasets.”⁴¹

March 2008

Ken Haapala attended at the Heartland Institute’s 2008 International Conference on Climate Change and subsequently signed the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change.⁴²