LSE london sch econ

<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">June 10, 2019Lomborg wrote an <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/10/theresa-may-spend-1-trillion-pointless-policy-climate-madness/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">article</a> for The Telegraph entitled “Theresa May is about to spend £1 trillion on a pointless policy. This climate madness has to end.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop" data-mfn="63" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" data-wpel-link="internal" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">63</a> Lomborg was <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/06/13/theresa-mays-net-zero-target-wrong-approach-climate-change/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">quoted</a> in a Telegraph editorial three days later which called a “net zero” target for the UK the “wrong approach to climate change.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop" data-mfn="64" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" data-wpel-link="internal" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">64</a> Lomborg’s article was <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/uk-newspaper-the-daily-telegraph-duped-by-bjorn-lomborgs-climate-propaganda/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">criticized</a> by Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute, in a blog entitled ”UK newspaper ‘The Daily Telegraph’ duped by Bjorn Lomborg’s climate propaganda.” Ward wrote that Lomborg’s article was “characteristically filled with false claims, yet was obviously not fact-checked by the newspaper.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop" data-mfn="65" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000005c314d20000000016b44709_7823" data-wpel-link="internal" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">65</a></div><div style="font-size: small;">=<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/think-tanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/think-tanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html</a>2/10<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.<div id="thirdparty01" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div id="article-im-prompt" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons – 25 per cent – now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute – a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data.<div id="thirdparty02" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="ad-perform js-ad-placeholder js-ad-placeholder--perform" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it."<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org – a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me."<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment.<p style="font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda."<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere – and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions."</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref 2 desmog</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">l<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">ord Lawson</a> stepped to the curb hailing a taxi. We had both been at an event in a swish Fleet Street hotel discussing illegal phone hacking by journalists. I had followed him out onto the pavement and asked whether the hacking of scientists' emails from the servers of the British university had been unethical — as well as criminal. “It was a whistleblower,” he scowled. The black taxi took off, leaving me in a cloud of diesel.</div>Another Lord, though of a different stripe, <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Lord Monckton</a>, I have met many times. The one that comes to mind is when he was the star turn during a fringe event of <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/04/27/pope-francis-should-answer-exxonmobil-rather-god-imply-climate-deniers" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">climate deniers near the Vatican</a> in April 2015. I began by asking whether he, as a Catholic, believed the Pope could in fact be fallible when pronouncing climate change the challenge of our age. Before I knew where we were, the faux peer was accusing Barack Obama of being the centre of a <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/11/27/madness-viscount-monckton-descends-paris-conference" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">global Communist-Fascist conspiracy</a>.Dr <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/s-fred-singer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">S Fred Singer</a> I interviewed at a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/7bap4x/las-vegas-climate-change-denial-brendan-montague-101" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas</a>, the United States, back in 2014. He spoke quietly and softly, explaining his role in recruiting Lawson, the former British chancellor, to the climate denial cause. This mattered because Singer is the grandfather of the denial of climate science, and has been <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/10/fred-singer-granddaddy-fake-science-retires-sepp-president" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">associated with both tobacco</a> and oil companies.These three men were influential in turning <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/climategate-10-years" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Climategate</a> into an international scandal 10 years ago now.Creating a stormThe illegal hacking of thousands of private emails between climate scientists, both at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere, and their publication in November 2009 was supposed to be the smoking gun which proved that hundreds of highly respected, indentured university scientists working around the world had conspired together to exaggerate the risks from climate breakdown.The target of the hack attack had been Pennsylvania State University <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/03/04/who-michael-mann-and-why-do-climate-deniers-hate-him" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Professor Michael Mann</a>, the author of the first <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/what-hockey-stick-graphs-tell-us-about-recent-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">‘Hockey Stick’ graph</a> which showed a dramatic uptick in average global temperatures following hundreds of years of a fairly stable climate. <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/09/03/integrity-science-and-politics-integrity-lawson-jones" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Professor Phil Jones</a> was collateral damage: accused of academic dishonesty, hauled in front of a powerful Parliamentary committee to answer these trumped up charges, his life’s work unfairly called into question. He <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">considered suicide</a>.Climategate should have been a storm in a teacup. The emails revealed nothing new. A few choice phrases were taken out of context, twisted, and presented as damning evidence. It was Lord Lawson who turned it into a crisis for climate science.He launched the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)</a> in Parliament just in time to make best use of the faux scandal, toured the newspaper offices using his reputation as Thatcher’s one time chancellor to persuade editors to take the event seriously, and called on his Tory friends to <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/09/29/david-go-green-cameron-s-top-donors-financing-climate-denial" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">open their cheque-books</a> to fund his opaque think tank.The GWPF scored some initial successes. Lawson is said to have persuaded his former friend, Lionel Barber, until recently the editor of the Financial Times, to take the Climategate fiasco seriously. This in turn likely influenced the Guardian in its decision to run day after day of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/hacked-climate-science-emails" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">coverage of the hacked emails</a>, and its reporters’ fruitless attempt to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/jul/20/climategate-detective-disappointed-catch-hacker" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">find the hacker</a>.Lawson was also influential in the decision of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12269493" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Science and Technology Committee</a> of the House of Commons to launch its investigation — trapping Professor Jones under the cameras and the hot lights to answer evidently preposterous allegations. Lawson, even during a hearing which he had been influential in being opened, refused to say who was <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254763/Lord-Lawson-labelled-climate-alarmists.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">funding his new thinktank</a>.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Manufacturing denial</h3>Alongside Lawson, <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/09/08/who-was-actually-behind-lord-lawson-s-idea-create-global-warming-policy-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Singer</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/09/08/lawson-and-monckton-row-over-climate-science-campainging" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Monckton were also there</a> from the very beginning and had significant roles to play in the development of the GWPF.Singer was among <a href="https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/s-fred-singer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">the first climate deniers</a> in the world, indeed when he entered the fray most climate scientists were aware of the complexity and contingency in the research. It was firmly established that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused heating, and that the amount pumped out through the use of fossil fuels was inextricably rising. But issues like the sensitivity of the atmosphere to change and how quickly this would change was still hotly debated.<a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/02/04/how-tobacco-shills-inspired-climate-denial" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Singer worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation</a> (now <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/atlas-economic-research-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Atlas Network</a>) in the United States. The foundation was primarily concerned with promoting free market, neoliberal economics. Friedrich von Hayek was the intellectual inspiration. He argued that any regulation would distort the market, leading to hardship.This ideology was very much in the ascendancy around the world: Lord Lawson has been its “chief architect” in the UK and as chancellor had torn apart the regime of financial regulations. But as well as causing economic collapse in many of the economies where it was tested, neoliberalism now faced the challenge posed by climate science — which would inevitably lead to calls to stop (or regulate, or tax) fossil fuel use.[pix clatham hse]The Atlas Foundation turned to Singer for help. The physicist had previously <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/no-apology-is-owed-dr-s-fred-singer-and-none-will-be-forthcoming" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">worked with the tobacco industry</a> deliberately creating smoke and mirrors around the increasing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. The foundation received money from the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/atlas-economic-research-foundation" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">oil industry</a>, including <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Koch Industries</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">ExxonMobil</a>, and was instrumental in <a href="https://tobaccotactics.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Network" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">founding the Institute of Economic Affairs</a> (IEA) in the UK. It was a trustee of the <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/06/11/do-you-know-when-lord-lawson-first-began-talking-about-climate-change" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">IEA — David Henderson</a> — who first approached Lord Lawson at an event hosted by the London School of Economics and persuaded him to take up the cause of climate denial.Lord Monckton also had a part to play. A viscount, Monckton was born into money, but despite his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/11/lords-climate-christopher-monckton" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">rather eccentric denials</a>, actually missed out on becoming a member of the House of Lords when hereditary peers were abolished. The viscount worked for a very short period for Thatcher’s policy unit. He later <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1370668/Inventor-to-sell-home-after-1m-puzzle-is-solved.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">lost £1m in prize money</a> when he launched a puzzle betting no-one could crack it. They could.Monckton became something of a hero to the climate denier community when he published a two-page rant in the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Sunday Telegraph</a> claiming that he alone had exposed the fatal flaw of the science of climate change. The rather eccentric ramblings had originally been drafted as a report for a private investor (<a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/08/06/mystery-man-behind-monckton-s-conversion-climate-denial" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">with an historic interest infracking</a>). He was also instrumental in <a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">formulating talking points</a> from the Climategate scandal for climate science deniers across the world.[pix congress?!]Monckton — if you believe his side of the story — advised Lawson to establish the GWPF and take up his new climate denier cause — <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/09/08/lawson-and-monckton-row-over-climate-science-campainging" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">attacking science</a> rather than policy. He also claimed to have recommended Dr Benny Peiser — who wrote his dissertation on whether people are more athletically active in the summer — as the head of the charity. Peiser denied this version of events, desperate to distance Lawson and the think tank from the discredited and conspiracy-prone Monckton.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Political game</h3>Lawson once boasted that he was responsible for what he (modestly) called Lawson’s Law: he advised the Tory party not to fight elections based on what the electorate actually cared about, but instead to persuade the electorate to care about what the Tory party could win an election on.Lawson did not advise fake news, but it encouraged a distortion of reality that has seriously undermined our politics. It opened the floodgates.Along the way, the GWPF has gotten into bed with the wildest of right-wing neoliberal think tanks, becoming <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">intimately entwined</a> with those responsible for serious spin and corporate lobbying around Brexit.Lawson himself was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign (before applying for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/31/brexiter-nigel-lawson-applies-french-residency-vote-leave" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">residency in France</a>). He was happy to appeal to reactionary populism to settle scores within the Tory party.One consequence of this is that <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-farage" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Nigel Farage</a> long ago adopted the tactics of his namesake. Farage has dabbled in climate denial. He has gone further in stirring up populism. He is the master of scapegoating. And he is forever throwing “dead cats” into the political arena, keeping us constantly focused on our relationship with the EU. And in doing so, his Brexit Party — a party <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/11/election-2019-here-are-all-brexit-party-s-climate-science-deniers" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">riddled with a Lawsonian brand of climate science denial</a> — came close to destroying Lawson’s Tory party while continuing to push the UK towards the hardest of Brexits.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Moving on</h3>Lawson, Monckton, and Singer have all quietly fallen off the radar. But their legacy, honed through the manufactured scandal of Climategate, lives on.Lawson made himself chairman of the GWPF for life, but age has — with the same inevitability as climate breakdown — taken its toll and he has retired from climate politics to his beautiful mansion in the south of France. The GWPF lost the argument. It is now ineffective, losing support, and should soon be defunct. <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/10/fred-singer-granddaddy-fake-science-retires-sepp-president" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Singer has long retired</a> from his think tank. Monckton is still attacking the Pope, but to no effect.From climate denial and the fakest of fake news, to corporate lobbying and media spin — you reap what you sow.<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div></div></div></div></div>