Former Czech President to head up climate sceptic group

by Martin Banks

Klaus, who spoke to reporters about his new role at Brussels press club, said the idea was to counter “one-sided propaganda.”

Campaigners insist that by adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, people are amplifying the natural greenhouse effect, causing global temperature to rise.

Climate scientists also says that humans are responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years.

However, Clintel, the international climate science and policy foundation which Klaus now heads, questions such beliefs, calling it “climate alarmism.”

In his address, Prof Klaus, one of Europe’s most prominent and outspoken critics against what he calls “arrogant green activists,” spoke out against the “official doctrine of men-made global warming.”

It was the “duty” of him and others, he said, to question this and present a counter argument.

He said, “We plan to expand our activities and be more active in public debates.. We plan to find new supporters.

“We should overcome the widespread feeling of loneliness that some of our friends and supporters experience.”

Prof Klaus said, "It is our duty to oppose the irrational, populist and evidently non scientific climate alarmism and the public should be informed that the hypothesis that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming has not been scientifically proven."

Clintel, an independent foundation founded and headquartered in Amsterdam, is the publisher of the World Climate Declaration, which states that “There is no climate emergency”. More than 2,000 scientists and professionals from more than 40 nations, including president Klaus, have signed the Declaration.

In 2023, Clintel published The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, a book that critically examines the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Prof Klaus is a Czech economist and politician who played a key role in the transformation of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. He was Minister of Finance of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) during which he was the main architect of the post-communist economic reforms and privatization.

He was Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (1993–1998) and President of the Czech Republic (2003–2013).