Dozens of international companies such as the oil company Shell and the Dutch airline KLM have provided financial support to the prominent Dutch climate change skeptic Frits Böttcher for years. The now published “Shell Papers” state that Böttcher received hundreds of thousands of euros between 1989 and 1998 to sow doubts about man-made climate change.
According to the journalists, Böttcher’s most well-known supporters included the German industrial group ThyssenKrupp and the Dutch banking group ING in addition to Shell and KLM. The “Shell Papers” of the Platform for Authentic Journalism (PAJ) were published in the newspaper “De Volkskrant” and on the Dutch investigative portal “Follow the Money”. Accordingly, the chemistry professor Böttcher, who has since died, received a total of around 450,000 euros from the companies that he used to publish articles and opinions that were skeptical about climate change.
Böttcher was one of the founding members of the influential Club of Rome expert group in 1968. The chemistry professor at the University of Leiden was known to regard the greenhouse gas effect that leads to global warming as a “myth”. In his opinion, CO2 was even “good for the planet”.
Several of the companies named in the research stated that they could not verify the allegations. The alleged financial aid for Böttcher was too long ago. “That was 25, 30 years ago. We cannot speculate on what exactly happened and in what context, ”Shell said. KLM said there was “no evidence” that the company supported Böttcher 30 years ago. ThyssenKrupp also said it could not confirm the allegations, but assured the company did not support “climate change skeptics”.
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