Willem van der Velden

I mentioned in my previous post about the silly overlap between the Dutch Climate Foundation and the Pro Automobiles Foundation. In 1997, a new political party emerged from this Pro Auto Foundation, called Nederland Mobiel (The Netherlands Mobile). Locally, this new party even managed to get some people elected, yet it would be wrong to call the party a big succes.
Nevertheless, it might be worthwhile to pay some attention at Nederland Mobiel’s former president, Willem van der Velden. A man whom’s political career was/is rather unusual.

So far, Willem van der Velden was :

-Member of the central left-liberal party D'66 : 1966 - 1970

-Member of the central right-liberal party VVD : 1970 - 2000

-in 2000, he became involved with a party for senior citizens which was called JOOP, a party of which no one really remembers it ever existed. The party leader, astrologist Ed Noordman, claims he predicted the 09/11 events.

-in 2001, van der Velden was the president of Nederland Mobiel

-van der Velden would keep working on his career and joined LPF (Pim Fortuyn List) until august 2006. This would become a success and in 2002 for six months he even became a member of the Dutch parliament. He also entered the local council in the city of The Hague.
There was some scandal because the political advisor for Willem van der Velden was Jurrien Boiten, a man he met in Nederland Mobiel. Boiten is a controversial figure who had an active role in the Centrumpartij, a party which was abrogated in 1998 by a Dutch court, because of their racist and xenophobic statements.
-After LPF became defunct, van der Velden continued with “Group van der Velden ”

-From august 2006 onwards he’d become Secretary of the Partij voor Nederland (“party for the Netherlands”) of Hilbrand Nawijn, an ex-minister of LPF who left the party after losing his prominent role in the party.
After the 2006 elections which were not very succesful for the PvN with only 0,05% of the votes, Nawijn stepped out of national politics. Nawijns last ‘important’ deed entering the show So you wanna be a popstar. Even though his singing became joke of the day, he recorded a single which you can see beneath the widget, music starts at 0:30. Listening at own risk.

-in 2008, van der Velden became president of the local party ONS Den Haag (‘our new Society The Hague’) which is trying to participate in the 2010 elections.

Van der Velden & climate change

In 2006, his LPF period when the party entered the local council in The Hague with one single representative. In a response to the question what one man can do, Willem Vander Velden wrote a statement about the support he was receiving from different corners :

above that, we can rely on the support of the scientific bureau of LPF, of the Foundation Pro Auto for subjects on mobility (…) and from the Climate Foundation (for realistic and pragmatic views on environmental issues.

Earlier this year, as an answer to the financial crisis, on march 29 Van der Velden filed a motion to the local council of The Hague to reduce the city spending with 50 million euro. This could be reached by :

stopping to fund ‘non-essential’ expenses like subsiding groups working on the right of immigrants, subsidising arts & culture & to stop subsidising actions on climate change

Willem van der Velden still is part of the board of the Pro Auto Foundation.

Seeing the political career of this man, i get depressed.

Hilbrand Nawijn – He Jumpen

The Climate Foundation

Roots of the Dutch Climate Scepticism series, part 7

Before looking at the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland, i want to have a look at another organisation that ultimately would join the DGR-coalition : the Climate Foundation (in Dutch : Stichting Klimaat).

J.T. ‘Hans’ Grashoff

The climate foundation was an organisation with a clear vision : the only reliable sources of energy are oil and nuclear power. Any other alternative (wind, hydrogen) is dismissed.
The President of the Climate Foundation was J.T. Grashoff. This very same man also is president of the Foundation Pro Automobiles. Seriously.
The environmental views of Pro Auto are exactly the ones you would imagine. An example is their comment on a news article on new techniques to reduce CO2, on which they add themselves :

Comment of Pro Auto : the environmental mafia still did not proof that CO2 is the cause of climate change.
Globally, only 1 to 4% of CO2 is anthropogenic, therefore it’s terribly arrogant to claim this limited percentage is responsible for such a big phenomena.
[they fail to notice we ADD this percentage annualy, resulting in a rise from 280 ppm (1850) to 385 nowadays]

Former Dutch State Secretary Van Geel, while looking how the The Netherlands could reach their Kyoto-targets and reducing CO2-emissions, launched ideas like limiting the maximum speed for cars and by building more windmills. In a response, Pro Auto & Stichting Klimaat in 1993 organised a seminar with he aim of presenting the “real” facts about climate change.

Adriaan Broere

The Climate Foundation was found in 2001, and besides Grashoff one of the more vocal founding members was Adriaan Broere, a man who often described as a geophysic even though actually he only has the bachelor degree. He spent most of his professional career in the US, and returned to Holland after his retirement and started calling himself a climate researcher. Which he is not, nor has he ever been one.
The level of his criticism isn’t very impressive. An article on his visions (and the ones of Arthur Rörsch) starts as follows :

They can’t even predict the weather of tomorrow, and yet they say in a hundred years we all permanently will have to walk around in our swimming pants !

More interesting is a text Broere wrote himself. He drops a lot of red herrings and makes plenty of errors like stating “most of the 120.000 glaciers are actually growing”. The only thing to remember from his entire text is the name of a person Broere explicitly calls his mentor : S. Fred Singer. Once again there’s a clear connection between Dutch climate sceptics and Singer
Since the Climate Foundation joined the DGR-coalition, their website is no longer online, which is a pity. It used to contain prominent links to websites like Pro Auto and Libertarian.nl …

Dutch climate skeptical organisations pt 2 : De Groene Rekenkamer (intro)

The next organisation which deserves some more attention is The Green Court of Audit or in Dutch : De Groene Rekenkamer (DGR).

As we will see, this is the organisation where different kinds of environmental skeptics (not just in the field of climate change) come together. Clearly, as will be explained later on, DGR is an organisation with a clear political focus.

De Algemene Rekenkamer is the Dutch court of auditors which on its website summarizes its task as follows : The Court of Audit checks that the government spends public funds and conducts policy as intended.

Of course it's this Auditing institute which inspired the name Groene Rekenkamer. Clearly, just from the name itself, one can already see what kind of organisation DGR will be. The organisation was found in 2008 by scientists and journalists and in the statutes DGR describes the aim they were formed as follows (§2) :

The aim of DGR is to critically look at the governmental policy on environment, health, technology & related areas and to encourage scientific analysis of risks, cost-effectiveness of the policy and to spread knowledge to a broader audience.

As a little sidenote i can't resist mentioning that, regarding what's to follow, i was surprised to see that under revenues the very first source the organisation sees is "subsidy". I was amused :-)

Before the official start of DGR in 2008, there already was a coöporation between the different groups which ultimately would join DGR, something MeerVrijheid's Theo Richel (as far as i understand, he became an employee of DGR) was already asking for in 2005 on the website libertarian.nl (sic). The groups which ultimately would form De Groene Rekenkamer are :

• Stichting Kernvisie, ("Foundation Nuclear Energy") which still exists independently.
• Stichting Heidelberg Appeal Nederland ("Foundation Heidelberg Appeal Holland") which indeed found inspiration for its name in the international Heidelberg Appeal
• Stichting klimaat ("climate foundation")
• vzw de Chlorofielen which, as far as i know, was the one-man personal toy of Ferdinand Engelbeen

For a better understanding of what DGR is about, it is useful to have a closer look at the organisations behind DGR. Which will be the topic of the next couple of blogposts.