Chemist William Moomaw has never won a Nobel Prize. But advertisements for his speaking engagements say otherwise.

William Moomaw, photo source here

Late last week, a press release announced that five bone fide Nobel Laureates (2 physicists, 2 economists, and an obscure Peace Prize winner), along with “more than 3,000 scientists from over 100 countries” have endorsed a document called the Groningen Science Declaration.

This declaration calls on world leaders to “change the way we understand, plan and invest for a changing climate.” It is a supporting piece of theater for the Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 currently underway in the Netherlands (although most events appear to be taking place virtually).

If you click the Groningen Science Declaration link embedded in that press release you’re taken to a web page that fails to list the names of 3,000 scientists. Instead, you’re invited to download a 3-page pdf. The label along its left margin reads: “GCA Science Statement.” Presumably, this and the Groningen Science Declaration are one and the same, even if the word Groningen is nowhere to be found.

On the final page of that PDF, a grand total of six scientists endorse the statement. The first one – William R. Moomaw – is a real chemist. But he’s a fake Nobel laureate.

It takes five seconds to enter a name into the search box over at NobelPrize.org. Moomaw produces zero results. Between 1901 and 2020, eight individuals named William have been awarded a Nobel in chemistry. Moomaw is not amongst them.

But last February, when he delivered a talk to the Brussels Press Club, the entire European press corps was apparently clueless. The event was advertised as a “conversation with Nobel Laureate & Professor Emeritus William Moomaw.”

Also last year, a Harvard Medical School continuing education course was described this way:

our keynotes will be delivered by 2 Nobel laureates, Dr. William Moomaw (defined climate change and global warming) and Dr. William Kaelin (defined how cancer cells adjust to hypoxia). [bold added]

Kaelin is a bona fide Nobel laureate. In 2019, he and two others shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But the people who paid hundreds of dollars to take the Harvard course were profoundly misled. Moomaw has never won a Nobel Prize.

The audience at a Massachusetts youth center in early 2019 was similarly told that Moomaw is a “Nobel Peace Prize-winning” retired professor (my italics). Which brings us only slightly closer to the truth.

top half of the poster; click image to see full version

This is a sordid tale, about which I’ve written extensively (see here, here, here, here, and here). The short version is that, in 2007, a UN body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was awarded half of the Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore was awarded the other half. This was emphatically not a science award.

Rajendra Pachauri, who was then chairman of the IPCC, wrote to IPCC-affiliated academics en masse, including Moomaw. “This makes each of you Nobel Laureates,” Pachauri proclaimed. (In 2013, I estimated that 9,000 people had helped the IPCC write its reports during its then 25-year history).

Pachauri was mistaken. When the Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union in 2012, individuals associated with the EU did not become Nobel laureates. When the Peace Prize was awarded to the UN’s World Food Program a few months ago, no one there was instantly transformed into a Nobel laureate. In each case, the organization was being honoured.

In 2012, the IPCC issued a formal statement making this crystal clear. It reads, in part:

The prize was awarded to the IPCC as an organization, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC. Thus it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner. [bold added]

Nearly a decade later, William R. Moomaw still hasn’t received the memo. Audiences to whom he has spoken during the past two years were falsely advised that he is a Nobel laureate.

This, ladies and gentleman, is the person whose name appears first on the Science Statement issued by the Climate Adaptation Summit.

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Continued here.  More about the Climate Adaptation Summit 2021:  [Part 1]  [Part 2]

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ADDITIONAL INFO:

• The press release is backed up here
• The Brussels Press Club event notice can be seen here, and is backed up here.
• The Harvard Medical School event was held in October 2020 (listed second). The description appears here, with a backup link here. In 2021, people taking this continuing ed course are being charged between $325 and $650.
• The poster for the youth center event is here, with a backup link here.

• Moomaw is chair of a science committee at the activist organization, Earthwatch. On its website, that entity’s communications director describes him as “the Most Humble Nobel Laureate I Know” (backup link here).
• The website of a student climate action group at MIT currently incoherently describes Moomaw as “Nobel Laureate-winning lead author of the IPCC report” (backup link here).

• Earlier this month, a Tibetan news portal described Moomaw as a “scientist and Nobel laureate,” (backup link here).
• In February 2020, a newspaper in Granby, Connecticut announced in a headline: “Nobel Peace Prize-winning author to speak at Holcomb Farm on climate change” (backup link here).
• In August 2019, a Massachusetts magazine described Moomaw as a “Nobel Prize-winning scientist” (backup link here).
• In November 2015, a newspaper in Framingham, Massachusetts announced that an activist group would be showing “a video of Dr. Bill Moomaw, 2007 Nobel Laureate, for his work as lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” at a local church (backup link here).
• Another newspaper promoting the same event described Moomaw as “the 2007 Nobel Laureate for his work as lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (my italics, backup link here).
• In April 2010, the OregonMetro.gov website reported that William Moomaw, described in the headline as a “Nobel peace prize winner,” spoke to “200 elected elected officials and local leaders” (backup link here).
• The Summer 2009 edition of a magazine published by the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts declares, on page 4, that Moomaw is a “Nobel Prize-winner” (entire magazine here).

The new distortion

• A December 2020 article in an MIT publication tells us Moomaw coauthored “five major reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (including the 2007 report that won the Nobel Peace Prize).” My italics, backup link here.
• That statement is wrong. An organization won the Peace Prize, not a report. Moomaw was one of 600 authors who worked on the 2007 IPCC report.
• Moomaw is similarly described as “co-author of the Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report” (my italics) in a May 2020 article that appears to have been originally published here, but has since been re-published here, here, and here. That’s how fake news spreads like a cancer.
• In February 2020, the Brussels Press Club event was discussed on the website of the Brussels Diplomatic Academy. The headline reads: “BDA Conference hears from a lead author of the IPCC Nobel Peace Prize winning report” (my italics, backup link here).
• In December 2019, a Brussels English-language newspaper similarly described Moomaw as “a leading author of a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. report on climate change” (my italics, backup link here).
• A March 2019 news story funded by the Pulitzer Center also describes Moomaw as “a co-author of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Climate report“ (my italics, backup link here)