Rupert Darwall

Credentials

Economics and History, Cambridge University. [1] , [2]

Background

Rupert Darwall is a Consulting Director with the White House Writers Group, where he specializes in the intersection of public policy and finance. [3]

Darwall has also been listed as an “Expert” at the Centre for Policy Studies, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. [1] [12]

Darwall’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Prospect, and Financial Times. [1]

Stance on Climate Change

January 28, 2013

In an article titled ”Second-Term Climate Change” in the National Review Online, Darwall wrote:

“It was characteristically bold of President Obama in his second inaugural to speak of the overwhelming judgment of science on global warming, given that we are well into the second decade of average global temperatures that indicate no statistically significant warming trend. The temperature standstill was not predicted by climate scientists, leaving them struggling to rationalize its significance […]
Even if climate science is as robust as the president asserts, in the absence of a global agreement on carbon emissions, mandates and subsidies to produce renewable energy will have negligible impact on global temperatures and on the weather. A 1998 study on the effect of the Kyoto Protocol estimated that, if fully implemented, it would delay the rise in global temperatures by four to 14 years over the course of the current century and have a minimal effect on the rise of sea levels. However, the cost of the attempt would be at the expense of the competitiveness of American business and American taxpayers and consumers.” [4]

Key Quotes

September 30, 2013

Darwall wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

“If climate scientists are really as confident in their understanding of the climate as the IPCC's 95% confidence headline figure is meant to suggest, they would put a firm date by when the pause must end and temperatures bounce back to what the IPCC claims is the long-term upward trend. All too predictably, the IPCC avoids such a hard-edged test […] The body's flagrant disregard for the InterAcademy Council's findings and its reluctance to address the 15-year warming pause are symptomatic of a failure of leadership. The conclusion is unavoidable: The IPCC is unreformable and the Fifth Assessment Report should be the IPCC's last.” [5]

September 26, 2013

In a New York Post article titled “Obama administration killing jobs pointlessly,” Darwall wrote:

“The environmental laws of the 1970s aimed to clean up America’s air and waters. They were about curbing local pollution and making the environment better for Americans. Cutting carbon-dioxide emissions is completely different. Unless the rest of the world joins in, it’s pointless for America to act by itself. Remember, we’re talking about global warming.
“Acting alone, the sacrifice of blue-collar jobs is entirely about political symbolism and appeasing wealthy green activists.” [6]

June 6, 2013

Darwall wrote a Wall Street Journal article titled “Global Warming and the Gipper,” where he declared:

“Might it be that it was Ronald Reagan and not Barack Obama who began to slow the rise of the seas? That is one conclusion that could be drawn from a new paper by Canadian physicist Qing-Bin Lu of Ontario's University of Waterloo. Instead of carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Lu argues that ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other halocarbons caused global warming. Thanks to the Reagan administration and the 1987 Montreal Protocol, CFCs have been phased out by developed countries. After a lag, Mr. Lu argues that global temperatures peaked around 2002 and predicts they are set to gradually fall over the next five to seven decades.
“Upholders of the consensus argue that increased carbon dioxide is the only way to explain rising global temperatures. Now there is a competing explanation, with a chronology that better fits the evidence.” [7]

Key Deeds

March 10, 2019

Darwall wrote an article in the Washington Post entitled “When There’s Too Much Sun and Wind,” arguing that the “biggest danger of renewable energy is oversupply.” [19]

May 9, 2018

The Washington Post reported that, in November, Darwall had forwarded Scott Pruitt an unreleased Competitive Enterprise Institute paper titled “A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm.” Darwall told EPA team aides that his paper was the “best go-to justification for Administrator Pruitt’s red/blue team appraisal.” The information came to light from newly released emails and internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency. [18]

October 3, 2017

Darwall published a book titled Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex. Darwall also published an adapted excerpt from the book at the National Review where he asserts that the statement “the science is settled. We must act” is “unscientific in its premise and authoritarian in its consequence.” [17]

-July 5, 2015

Rupert Darwall published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled, “Obama’s Renewable-Energy Fantasy.” Darwall wrote “there is no rational justification for policies favoring renewables,” and that “there is no objective cost-benefit analysis that could justify the president’s [Obama] target for renewable energy.” [16]

Citing Bill Gates’ June 25, 2015 interview with the Financial Times, Darwall claimed, “current renewables are dead-end technologies.” [15]

“They [renewables] are unreliable. Battery storage is inadequate. Wind and solar output depends on the weather. The cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical,’ Mr. Gates concluded.”[15], [16]

Darwall concluded the op-ed by stating “Mr. Obama’s renewable target is a triumph for Shumacher’s Buddhist economics—which amounts to being poor and staying poor. It does not produce jobs, growth or prosperity.” [15]

December, 2014

Rupert Darwall was a contributor to the book Climate Change: The Facts published by the Institute of Public Affairs and featuring “22 essays on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate.” The Institute of Public Affairs, while not revealing most of its funders, is known to have received funding from mining magnate Gina Rinehart and at least one major tobacco company. [13]

The book includes essays and articles from a range of climate change skeptics, with contributors including the following:

According to Editor Alan Moran in a post at Catallaxy Files blog on Climate Change: the facts 2014, Rupert Darwall “reviews the farce of the 2009 Copenhagen conference and the subsequent mini-conferences. He notes the veto imposed on costly actions by the increasingly important third world nations, contrasting this with the revolutionary outcome that the IPCC operatives are planning to emerge from Paris in 2015.” [14]

September 25, 2014

Rupert Darwall attends the “At the Crossroads; Energy & Climate Policy Summit” in Houston, Texas, hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and The Heritage Foundation. Darwall presents in “Panel III: History, Politics, and Economics,” with Marc Morano and Stephen Moore. [10]

September 24, 2014

Rupert Darwall presents a lecture on his book, The Age of Global Warming: A History, at The Heritage Foundation's event:

2014

Rupert Darwall published a report titled, “An Unsettling Climate: Global-warming proponents betray science by shutting down debate,” published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which DeSmogBlog reports as having received $33.1 million in funding from 2003 to 2010, or 6% of the United States' total income distribution of Climate Change Countermovement Organizations. [11]

September 26, 2013

Rupert Darwall attended the Heartland Institute’s “Heartland Author Series,” and presented his new book The Age of Global Warming: A History.

The event page of Heartland’s Author Series described Darwall’s book as the first “to tell the full story of the concerns over global warming and put the movement into its historical context,” including, “how science became the spear carrier of the environmental movement and global warming its most powerful argument […] how politics ‘settled the science’ of global warming in 1992 when the governments of the world agreed to the UN climate change convention at the Rio Earth Summit,” and “why 19th century predictions of eco-doom turned out to be wrong—but are still believed.” [8]

Affiliations

White House Writers Group — Consulting Director.[3]
Heartland Institute — Presented book. [8]
Centre for Policy Studies — Formerly listed as an“Expert.” [1]

Publications

According to a search of Google Scholar, Rupert Darwall has not published any climate science research in peer-reviewed journals. [9]

Resources

“Experts; Rupert Darwall,” Centre for Policy Studies. Archived April 13, 2013. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/HxOkO
“Rupert Darwall,” Zoom Information. Archived September 11, 2014.
“Rupert Darwall; Consulting Director,” White House Writers Group. Archived December 12, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/geBiX
Rupert Darwall. ”Second-Term Climate Change,” National Review Online, January 28, 2013. Archived September 11, 2014.
Rupert Darwall. “The Political Science of Global Warming,” Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2013. Archived December 11, 2017.
Rupert Darwall. “Obama administration killing jobs pointlessly,” New York Post, September 26, 2013. Archived September 11, 2014.
Rupert Darwall. “Global Warming and the Gipper,” Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2013.
“Heartland Author Series: The Age of Global Warming - Rupert Darwall,” Heartland Institute, September 26, 2013. Archived September 11, 2014.
“Rupert Darwall,” Google Scholar.
Rupert Darwall. “Speakers,” At the Crossroads; Energy & Climate Policy Summit, Texas Public Policy Foundation, The Heritage Foundation, September 25/26, 2014.
Rupert Darwall. “An Unsettling Climate: Global-warming proponents betray science by shutting down debate,” Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Summer, 2014. Archived August 24, 2014.
“Experts; Rupert Darwall,” Texas Public Policy Foundation. Archived October 15, 2014.
“Institute of Public Affairs,” SourceWatch. Accessed May 27, 2015.
Alan Moran. “Climate Change: the facts 2014,” Catallaxy Files, December 16, 2014.
Rupert Darwall. “Obama’s Renewable-Energy Fantasy,” The Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2015. Archived August 12, 2015.
“Gates to double investment in renewable energy projects,” Financial Times, June 26, 2015.
Rupert Darwall. “How media bias aids the Left’s totalitarian climate-change crusade,” National Review, November 1, 2017. Archived December 11, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/L58jn
“Emails show EPA turned to climate skeptics to craft ‘red team-blue team’ exercise,” The Washington Post, May 9, 2018. Archived May 15, 2018. Archive.is URL: https://archive.li/N702L
Rupert Darwall. “When There’s Too Much Sun and Wind,” Washington Post, March 10, 2019. Archived March 2019. Archive.fo URL: http://archive.fo/Fa9IE