Email chain: Happer, O’Keefe and Donors Trust From: Jonathan Ellis [mailto:jonathanellis@hamiltonellis.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2015 11:45 AM To: William Happer Dear Professor Happer, I am a partner in a business advisory firm based in Beirut, working across sectors but primarily focusing on energy and defence. One of our clients is an E&P company that is concerned about the impacts of the UN climate talks later this month. I am writing to you now because we are looking to commission a briefing to be released early next year, following the talks, which highlights the crucial role that oil and gas have to play in developing economies, such as our client’s MENA region. Given your influential work in this area and your position at Princeton we believe a very short paper authored or endorsed by yourself could work strongly in our client’s favour. Does this sound like a project you would be interested in discussing further? Kind regards, Jonathan Dat 03/11/15 (17:27:00 UTC) e Fro William Happer XXXXXXXXX m To Jonathan Ellis Dear Jonathan, I am attaching a white paper that was written (with major input from me) by new group, the CO2 Coalition, that I helped to organize this past year. Also attached is some testimony I gave a few months ago at a regulatory hearing in St. Paul, MN, on the social cost of carbon. I would be glad to try to help if my views, outlined in the attachments, are in line with those of your client. Best wishes, Will Happer From: Jonathan Ellis [jonathanellis@hamiltonellis.com] Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 10:54 AM To: William Happer Subject: Re: Proposal: briefing paper Dear Will, Many thanks for getting back to me and for the attached reports. It certainly sounds like you and our client are on the same page. Out of interest, were these papers part of the same initiative on CO2 reported on in the London Times recently? The focus we envisage for this project comes from a slightly different angle. Our client wants to commission a short briefing paper that examines the benefits of fossil fuels to developing economies, as opposed to a switch to so-called clean energy. We are looking for this to be published early next year, in the wake of decisions made in Paris. We can get more details of the briefing to you shortly, but in the meantime it would be useful to clarify whether we would be able to reference you as Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University if this project were to go ahead? Also, we are keen to get this research out far and wide and have ideas of media outlets that would be open to this in Europe, but would welcome any ideas of US outlets or contacts you may have. And on that, it would be useful to know, in your experience, whether you would need to declare the source funding when publishing research of this kind? Best wishes, Jonathan Dat 05/11/15 (19:26:50 UTC) e Fro William Happer XXXXXXXXX m To Jonathan Ellis Dear Jonathan, The London Times paper you mention is by Matt Ridley, someone the CO2 Coalition is in close touch with. The article also mentions Patrick Moore, like me a member of the CO2 Coalition, and my friend from Princeton, Freeman Dyson, who shares our views. My official title as an emeritus faculty member at Princeton University is Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus. To be sure your client is not misled on my views, it is clear there are real pollutants associated with the combustion of fossil fuels, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen for most of them, fly ash and heavy metals for coal, volatile organics for gasoline, etc. I fully support regulations for cost-effective control of these real pollutants. But the Paris climate talks are based on the premise that CO2 itself is a pollutant. This is completely false. More CO2 will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy. I have closed down my research laboratory after retirement last year, so I no longer have any external funding, most of which used to come from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research for studies of the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter. My activities to push back against climate extremism are a labor of love, to defend the cherished ideals of science that have been so corrupted by the climate-change cult. If your client was considering reimbursing me for writing something, I would ask that whatever fee would have come to me would go directly to the CO2 Coalition. This was the arrangement I had with the attorneys representing the Peabody Coal Company in the regulatory hearings in Minnesota. The fee I would have received was sent instead to the CO2 Coalition, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt educational organization. The CO2 Coalition covers occasional travel expenses for me, but pays me no other fees or salary. Best wishes, Will From: Jonathan Ellis [jonathanellis@hamiltonellis.com] Sent: Friday, November 06, 2015 8:36 AM To: William Happer Subject: Re: Proposal: briefing paper Dear Will, Thanks for your reply and apologies for incorrectly quoting your official title, I’ll make sure that is corrected for the future. If we were to go ahead with a paper, would you be happy to be quoted with this title on the research? Things are progressing well here and it is great to get your insights into how we could proceed. Just to reiterate, our client is completely comfortable with your views on fossil fuel pollution, their focus is on CO2 and the threat posed by decisions made at the upcoming climate negotiations- I think these areas complement each other well. It’s very helpful to know that you are in touch with a journalist like Matt Ridley with such a big reach. Do you think there’s any possibility that he would help to disseminate our research when it is ready? I also noticed that Mr Ridley referred to a peer review process in his article – which would certainly be of interest to our client. Would you have any thoughts on how that could that work if we wanted to do something similar with this project? On the matter of reimbursement, we would of course remunerate you for your work and would be more than happy to pay the fee to the CO2 Coalition. Do you work on a flat-project fee or an hourly rate? If you have suggested figures we can run them by our team here. Just to double check though, as I haven’t worked with the CO2 coalition before, our client does not want their name associated with the research as they believe it will give the work more credibility. What provisions for anonymity does the CO2 coalition provide? Would this be an issue? Once we have this info I can run everything by our client again and hopefully get clarity on how to proceed. Many thanks, Jonathan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Date 06/11/15 (21:54:55 UTC) From William Happer XXXXXXXXX To Jonathan Ellis Attachm CO2 report FINALhires.pdf ents CO2.pdf 3.2 MB 1.0 MB Dear Jonathan, The title I sent you, William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University, would be fine. I am sure Matt Ridley will be interested in whatever you produce. The Breitbart news organization would also likely help, as would various blogs, syndicated columnists, etc. As for peer review, this normally refers to original work submitted to a scientific journal for publication, and not to the sort of articles that Ridley writes for the media, or what I think you are seeking to have written. If you like, I could submit the article to a peer-reviewed journal, but that might greatly delay publication and might require such major changes in response to referees and o the journal editor that the article would no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly your client would also like. I hope I understand what you mean by "project." What I thought you meant was writing something like the white paper or the regulatory testimony, copies of which I attach again for clarity. My fee for this kind of work is $250 per hour The testimony required four 8-hour days of work, so the total cost was $8,000. Depending on how extensive a document you have in mind, the time required or cost could be more of less, but I hope this gives you some idea of what I would expect if we were to proceed on some mutually agreeable course. If I write the paper alone, I don't think there would be any problem stating that "The author received no financial compensation for this essay." I am pretty sure that your client's donation to the CO2 Coalition on my behalf would not need to be public according to US regulations of 503(c)(3) educational organizations, but I can get some legal advice to confirm this if you would like. Best wishes, Will Happer ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------From: Jonathan Ellis [mailto:jonathanellis@hamiltonellis.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:19 PM To: William Happer Subject: Re: Proposal: briefing paper Dear Will, Sorry for confusing matters, you are totally correct in your understanding of the project - we are looking for a short paper that makes the case for the benefits of CO2 from fossil fuels in my client’s region. With regards to peer review, I raised this issue because Matt Ridley’s article on Dr Indur Goklany’s recent CO2 report said that it had been thoroughly peer reviewed. Would it be possible to ask the same journal to peer review our paper given that it has a similar thrust to Goklany’s? It’s not a deal-breaker, but I felt that it helped strengthen that piece of work. The hourly rate works for us and, as previously discussed, we are happy to make a direct donation to the CO2 Coalition, providing it is anonymous. We can look into the official disclosure regulations, but it would be useful to know whether the CO2 Coalition voluntarily discloses its funders? Presumably there are other donors in a similar position to us? We are currently putting the finishing touches to the project brief and terms of reference, but would welcome your input once we have done so later this week. Best wishes, Jonathan Dat 10/11/15 (20:50:18 UTC) e Fro William Happer < XXXXXXXXX m To Jonathan Ellis Dear Jonathan, What I think Matt Ridley meant by peer review was that early drafts of Goklany’s paper were reviewed by many other scientists. I was one of the reviewers and I made suggested changes that Goklany responded to. I think Matt was also a reviewer and I know that the entire scientific advisory board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was asked to submit comments on the first draft. I am also sure that most were too busy to respond. The review of Golkany’s paper was even more rigorous than the peer review for most journals, but since the paper was published by GWPF and not a regular journal, purists might object that the process did not qualify as a peer review. For example, Golkany knew the names of the reviews he received, but for a journal, the peer reviewers would normally be anonymous. I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review. I will double check on the regulations, but I don’t think the CO2 Coalition, a 501(3)c tax-exempt educational organization, is required to make public any donors, although it is required to disclose them to the Internal Revenue Service. Best wishes, Will From Will Happer to Bill O’Keefe- C02 Coalition On Nov 10, 2015, at 3:53 PM, William Happer XXXXXXXXX Dear Bill, I am trying get another mysterious client to donate funds to the CO2 Coalition instead of compensating me for my writing something for them. How should I answer the question below? “The hourly rate works for us and, as previously discussed, we are happy to make a direct donation to the CO2 Coalition, providing it is anonymous. We can look into the official disclosure regulations, but it would be useful to know whether the CO2 Coalition voluntarily discloses its funders? Presumably there are other donors in a similar position to us?” Best wishes, Will From: william o'keefe [XXXXXXXXX ] Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:17 AM To: William Happer Subject: Re: anonymous donors Will We are under no obligation to identify donors, except to the IRS but I think that is just organizations. When people ask the IRS or a firms 990, the donor list is redacted. If the person participates in the Donors Trust, he/she can make the donation through that and have complete confidentiality. Bill Dat 11/11/15 (20:09:31 UTC) e Fro William Happer < XXXXXXXXX > m To william o'keefe < XXXXXXXXX Cc Jonathan Ellis Dear Bill, Thanks for checking this out for me. Best wishes, Will Us to Bill O’Keefe On Nov 12, 2015, at 10:35 AM, Jonathan Ellis wrote: Dear Mr O’Keefe, Thank you for your help with this – the Donors Trust sounds like an attractive option, can you advise on the process for participating – it would be great to know how this would work? For context, we’re a business advisory firm based in Beirut and our client is an E&P company from the region. We’re looking to anonymously channel upwards of $15,000 to the CO2 Coalition for a report we are commissioning Professor Happer to write for us. Best wishes, Jonathan Ellis Dat 12/11/15 (17:38:55 UTC) e Fro william o'keefe XXXXXXXXX m To Jonathan Ellis Cc William Happer XXXXXXXXX Jonathan The website is donors trust.org. It contains information for setting up a fund from which you can make donations. I believe that $10,000 is the minimum amount. Please let me know if you have any other questions. If you decide not to set up an account with the Trust, any contribution to the Coalition would not be made public. Bill On Nov 12, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Jonathan Ellis wrote: Dear Bill, Thank you for getting back to me – the website doesn’t appear to be working though. The main question I have is whether my client, who is based abroad, will be able to make a donation directly to the Trust? Or will they have to use a US account? Best Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------------------Dat 12/11/15 (20:07:39 UTC) e Fro william o'keefe < XXXXXXXXX m To Jonathan Ellis Cc William Happer < XXXXXXXXX > Jonathan There may have been a temporary problem. I just went to the website and was able to get on. If you continue to have a problem, the telephone number is 703535-3563. Bill Us to Donors Trust From: Jonathan Ellis [mailto:jonathanellis@hamiltonellis.com] Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 9:17 AM To: Tell Me More < XXXXXXXXX > Subject: Donation enquiry Dear Sir / Madam, Bill O’Keefe from the CO2 Coalition recommended I get in touch with you regarding a donation we plan to make to his organisation. Before proceeding the main question I have is whether my client, who is based abroad, will be able to make a donation directly to the Trust? Or will they have to use a US account? For context, we’re a business advisory firm based in Beirut and our client is an E&P energy company from the region. Best Jonathan Ellis Peter Lipsett (Donors Trust) to us Date 24/11/15 (14:40:27 UTC) From Peter Lipsett < XXXXXXXXX To Jonathan Ellis Attachm DonorsTrust Application Form & Transfer Instructions.pdf 142 KB ents DT Guidebook.pdf 1.0 MB Jonathan, Nice to speak to you today. I hope DonorsTrust can be helpful to your client’s charitable needs. I’ve attached our short application as well as the Donor’s Guide to DonorsTrust, our client handbook. In terms of the contribution, I confirmed with our CFO that we require funds coming in to be denominated in U.S. dollars and drawn from a U.S. bank. Please let me know what questions you have. Thank you again for reaching out and look forward to talking further. Peter