A press release issued this week falsely describes economist Woodrow Clark as a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Six weeks from now, the All-Energy 2014 trade show will be held here in Canada. Organizers have issued a press release titled Nobel Peace Prize winner is Keynote speaker for…Conference in Toronto.

Yesterday, that press release was distributed via the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) e-mail list. It is also reproduced and/or mentioned

on the OSEA website

at ClimateWire.ca

on the EcoStrategy Twitter feed

on the Alternative Energy Magazine website

on the Canadian Corporate Responsibility website

on the Green Building Advisor website

and on the Sector Publishing Intelligence website

The keynote speaker in question is Dr. Woodrow (Woody) W. Clark II. Since he is not a Nobel Peace Prize winner, large numbers of people have been profoundly misled by the above press release.

Clark is an economist and founder of the consulting firm Clark Strategic Partners. Its website describes him both as a “scientist” and as a “long-time advocate for the environment and renewable energy.” It prominently displays a certificate manufactured by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Signed by two IPCC officials, that certificate merely says Clark contributed to the IPCC’s activities. It was not issued by the Nobel committee. It does not say he won a Peace Prize.

The IPCC itself has issued a formal statement declaring that it is “incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner.”

Yet over at LinkedIn, under the Honors and Awards heading, Clark’s profile continues to list “Nobel Peace Prize (shared with other members of the UN IPCC).”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A 2009 interview, published simultaneously at SustainaBlog.org and Inside Climate News, thrice describes Clark as a Nobel Prize winner – without mentioning the fact that a Peace Prize is being discussed rather than a prestigious science Nobel.

The Silicon Valley Business Journal sponsored a 2009 power breakfast in which “Nobel Peace Prize recipient” Clark was the main attraction.

In 2011, a Beverley Hills online news service ran the headline: Nobel Laureate to Talk Sustainable Communities on Monday Night. Here’s how that item began:

It’s not often that a Nobel Prize winner lives in your community, but we have one here in Beverly Hills: Resident and qualitative economist Woodrow “Woody” Clark II, MA3, Ph.D., was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with colleagues from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The following month, when Clark addressed executive MBA students at the IESE Business School in Madrid, students were similarly told he was a “Nobel laureate.”

An (undated) press release – issued jointly by Clark’s consulting firm and Eco Pond Rescue – calls him a “Nobel Prize Winner” in its headline and a “Nobel Prize laureate” in its first sentence.

Then there are the two media releases published on a US State Department website: Nobel Laureate Dr. Woodrow Clark II in Mauritius and Nobel Laureate Dr. Woodrow Clark II in Seychelles. Clark’s profile over at KeynoteSpeakers.com sheds light on the above by explaining that he

is representing the USA State Department by going to different countries to talk about “climate change” and “what to do about it.” In August 2010, he was in Africa and in October 2010 in the People’s Republic of China.

According to Amazon.com, the back cover of Clark’s 2009 book, Sustainable Communities, describes him as a “co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.” Fake Nobel glory was also used to market the 2011 book, Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead – that Clark co-wrote with Grant Cooke (see here, here, and here).

For good measure, in Chapter 1 of a 2010 volume, the Sustainable Communities Design Handbook, Clark claims once again that he’s a co-recipient of the 2007 Peace Prize.

The better part of 24 hours has elapsed since I first e-mailed Michael Zupanic, the media contact person indicated on the press release discussed at the top of this post. Five hours have elapsed since I sent a second e-mail, addressed to Zupanic and several other (mostly UK-based) personnel associated with the All-Energy 2014 trade show scheduled for Toronto in April.

The only acknowledgement I’ve received so far is an auto-response from someone who’s currently out-of-the-office. Stay tuned.

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