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April Fool's Award
Established in 2012.

Many nations have an informal holiday falling on, or about, April 1, which in some nations is called April Fools' Day. The holiday is marked by pranks and tricks played upon others. Some of these tricks may be in merriment, others may be quite serious.

In recognizing that day, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) plans to give an Annual April Fools' Award to the government official or political leader, who, in the determination of a special SEPP panel is the most deserving.
The criteria are as follows:

  • The official has advanced, or proposes to advance, significant expansion of governmental power, regulation, or control over the public or significant sections of the general economy.
  • The official does so by declaring such measures are necessary to protect public health, welfare, or the environment.
  • The official declared that physical science supports such measures.
  • The physical science supporting the measures is flimsy at best, and possibly non-existent.
All readers of TWTW are invited to nominate a government official in their country as possible recipients of the award, provided that country is generally recognized as having a democratic system of government with protection of individual freedom of speech. Please send the nomination to Ken with a one to two sentence explanation why that official is most deserving. The winning nominee will be announced in TWTW at the end of the summer.


April Fool's Awardees
2022 Senators Schumer and Manchin
At the 40th annual DDP meeting it was announced that the winner was Senators Schumer and Manchin for stagflation preservation. The vote may have been influenced by last minute ballot stuffing in West Texas. (announced in TWTW: Aug 20, 2022)

2021 The entire Biden Administration
At the 39th Conference of the Doctors for Defensive Preparedness, SEPP announced that the winner of the 2021 April Fools Award was the entire Biden Administration for its declaration of a climate emergency in complete disregard for the scientific method and the fact that this is the most prosperous time in the history of humanity [prior to COVID]. (announced in TWTW: Aug 8, 2021)

2020 Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London
He demonstrated to political leaders who care to learn that mathematical models might produce interesting and alarming results but should be used as the basis of government policy very carefully and as the data changes the policies must change. Otherwise the results can be disastrous. (announced in TWTW: Aug 22, 2020)

2019 AOC -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Although it is difficult to locate any legislative accomplishments by AOC, one could say she has accomplished a great deal towards earning this prestigious award of a lump of coal. AOC, and her press, has helped galvanize candidates for the nomination for President by the Democratic Party into an absurd race to spend the most money to destroy a reliable, functional system of energy, particularly electricity, with expensive, unreliable electricity.

The race to destruction is based on fears generated by models that have not been validated, and when tested against physical evidence, fail. Since normal science depends on rigorous application of the scientific method, one can term this fear as paranormal science, supernatural. AOC’s former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, has been reported to say it’s not about the environment, it’s about control. (announced in TWTW: Sep 14, 2019)

2018 Jerry Brown
Who better captures the spirit of the Lisa Jackson Trophy than Governor Jerry Brown, who is leading California to breathless heights of renewable energy and electricity prices? When announcing the winner, a slide of an interpretation of Jerry Brown’s Bullet Train was displayed – a junked subway car with jet engines attached on the roof at the front. [from Power Line] (announced in TWTW: Sep 1, 2018)

2017 Christiana Figueres -- former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Christiana Figueres who stated: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” (from Investors Business Daily, Feb 10, 2015) (announced in TWTW: Aug 19, 2017)

2016 Michael Mann
Michael Mann for his demonstration of non-science by cherry picking Siberian tree data as surrogates to support his pre-drawn conclusion on the occurrence of dangerous human-caused global warming. Also, he now claims we do not need data to assess climate change because we can see climate change on TV. He is now the go-to guy on integrity in science for Senator Whitehouse. (announced in TWTW: Jul 16, 2016)

2015 Ernest Moniz
In brief, when the Secretary of Energy is more interested in developing energy policy that supports CO2 emission targets than producing reliable energy, we have a problem. “Yet in spite of his obvious intelligence and education, he believes that despite the fact that computer simulations cannot predict the drag on a golf ball based on first principles, they can solve the vastly more complex problem of the earth's climate, which includes inter-related thermodynamic, heat transfer and chemistry in a multi-phase domain set in a non-inertial reference frame, which is over 10^5 times the size of the golf ball. (announced in TWTW: Aug 8, 2015)

2014 John Kerry
On February 16, Mr. Kerry gave a speech to students and government officials in Jakarta, Indonesia. He called global warming/climate change perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. In the 1960s and 70s the term Ugly American was used to describe arrogant behavior by Americans and American officials abroad. Mr Kerry is very wealthy, with several luxury homes, luxury yacht, and private jet. Yet, in that speech, he urged developing nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, namely carbon dioxide. For Indonesia, and many other developing countries, coal-fired power plants are critical for generating the electricity necessary to help bring these countries out of dire poverty. Coal-fired power plants emit carbon dioxide, which Mr. Kerry is demanding developing countries stop. Does the term Ugly American fit? (announced in TWTW: Aug 2, 2014)

2013 Barack Obama
SEPP received 13 nominees representing 4 different nations plus the States of California and Vermont. There was no need for a meeting of the special SEPP panel because the Public Choice was overwhelming.

The distinguished recipient of the Second Annual SEPP April Fools Award is none other the America’s own Barrack Obama.

The nominations closed prior to Mr. Obama’s climate speech stressing the term climate pollution more than twenty times. Apparently, Mr. Obama and his speech writers are blissfully unaware that all life on this planet is carbon based. Otherwise they would be declaring all life a pollutant. This event confirms that the voters were right in selecting Mr. Obama for The Jackson. (announced in TWTW: Jul 13, 2013)

2012 Lisa Jackson
The distinguished recipient of the First Annual SEPP April Fools Award is none other the America’s own EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson. In her honor SEPP had this special trophy prepared. (a lump of coal). Henceforth, this distinguished lump of coal will be known as the Lisa Jackson Trophy, or, simply, THE JACKSON. (announced in TWTW: Jul 28, 2012)

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