A thinktank linked to Japanese technology giant Canon is coming under pressure to remove multiple articles from a research director who describes the climate crisis as “fake news” and compares campaigner Greta Thunberg to a communist.
One Australia-based international fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS), Prof Jeffrey Braithwaite, told the Guardian the claims about climate science from research director Dr Taishi Sugiyama were “not defensible”.
Campaign group Action Speaks Louder, which has produced a report documenting Sugiyama’s claims, says the institute is “promoting dangerous climate delay and denial” and is demanding Canon withdraws support until the articles, which include a book aimed at school-age children, are removed.
In articles on the institute’s website and in other outlets, Sugiyama, using his CIGS affiliation, says there is no climate crisis, and rejects evidence of increasing heat extremes and more intense rainfall.
During November’s Glasgow climate talks, Sugiyama, who has helped write several major UN climate reports, said a speech from the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg showed she had “turned from an environmentalist to a communist”.
Sugiyama also authored a book, published this year, encouraging Japanese school children to question the science of climate change. His work is often published on conservative outlet Daily Will, and then republished on the CIGS website.
Braithwaite, an internationally respected healthcare expert who is a CIGS fellow, told the Guardian he found the content from Sugiyama on the CIGS website “deeply disconcerting”.
Braithwaite said he raised concerns with the institute last week. The institute viewed its role, he said, as “trying to improve the world” and, like at a university, allowed its researchers a level of freedom.
“But this is so far outside the norm and is not evidence based,” he said. “It is clearly against the assembled evidence on global warming and the changing climate and its effects. It is not defensible.”
Braithwaite is a leading international expert on healthcare. He said: “This does not sit comfortably with someone like me who has been actively trying to recognise and promote the science on global warming and to consider its effects on human health. We need to follow the science.”
Braithwaite said he would discuss his connections with the institute at a board meeting of the International Society For Quality In Health Care, of which he is president.
Critical of IPCC report
Dr Seita Emori, a climate scientist at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies, questioned Sugiyama’s reliability as a source on climate change, saying his interpretations of data contradicted the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“I found his arguments use typical strategies of climate sceptics – if not contrarians – all over the world,” he said.
On the site of another thinktank, Sugiyama has recommended several reports translated into Japanese from the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – a group founded by the former UK chancellor of the exchequer Lord Nigel Lawson and known for its antagonism towards climate science, the IPCC, renewable energy and policies for governments to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions
Sugiyama was a lead author on a chapter of that report examining the global response to cutting emissions. He is currently a lead author of a chapter of a major IPCC report, due next month, on ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions around the world.
You must be logged in to post a comment.