Lawson, Nigel

promoted to primary on 10 yr anniv of climategate, central guy

NO MERRI

RELATED TO MONCKTON

see net zero watch

Lord Lawson of Blaby

London, England -- On July 10, E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow Chris Horner gave a talk in the UK House of Lords, hosted by Lord Lawson of Blaby and Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Attended by several members of the House and other interested parties, Horner's talk and the discussion afterward centered [...]

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/global-warming-policy-foundation-net-zero-watch-koch-brothers/

pix 

Steve Baker MP, a trustee of the lobby group, has led the opposition to the government's net-zero policies

An influential Tory-linked lobby group leading the backlash against the UK government’s net-zero policy has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an oil-rich foundation with huge investments in energy firms, openDemocracy can reveal.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which also campaigns as Net Zero Watch, has also received more than half a million dollars through a fund linked to the controversial billionaire Koch brothers.

The GWPF has long refused to disclose its donors and claims it will from anyone with an interest in an energy company.

But tax documents filed with US authorities and uncovered by this website reveal the network of dark money behind it for the first time – including the $30m shares in 22 companies working in coal, oil and gas that are held by one of its donors.

shadow climate secretary Ed Milibandsaid: “US right-wing groups with links to big oil are desperate to stop action against the climate crisis. Now they are trying to extend their reach into UK political debate."

A registered UK charity, the GWPF is one of the most vocal groups in British politics opposing the government’s ‘net zero’ plans and has been at the forefront of recent calls to restart fracking.

The Tufton Street-based group’s trustees include former chancellor Nigel Lawson and Steve Baker, who leads the ‘Net Zero Scrutiny’ group of backbench Tory MPs and was recently criticised for sharing a paper by the group that denied the climate crisis.

Over four years the GWPF’s US arm, the American Friends of the GWPF, received more than $1.3m from US donors. At least $864,884 of this has been channelled to the UK group, with some being held back for expenses.

Of the £1.45m that the GWPF has received in charitable donations since 2017, at least 45% has come from the US.

American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy

The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s US ‘friends’ group did not have to declare the sources of this so-called ‘dark money’ – but openDemocracy has discovered through the filings of other groups that:

• Between 2016 and 2020 the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust. Described as a “dark money ATM” for the US political Right, the secretive trust has given hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 100 groups working to cast doubt on the scientific consensus behind climate change.
• The Donors Trust has received millions from the Koch brothers, who inherited their father’s oil empire and spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement before David Koch’s death in 2019. More recently, it received nearly $4.8m from America First Works, a non-profit closely tied to Donald Trump that contributed millions to his failed 2020 reelection bid as well as to campaigns to restrict mail voting. The GWPF told openDemocracy that the Donors Trust was simply a “middleman, matching donors to those seeking funding” and that it was “able to vet [donors with which it was matched] in line with our funding policy”.
• TheGWPF also received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation – set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m worth of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings. It has bankrolled numerous conservative causes, including the right-wing Daily Caller news site and the Heritage Foundation think tank.

“It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Founded by Lawson and university lecturer Benny Peiser in 2009, the GWPF has long been accused of promoting climate denialism.

Last week, Peiser the unfounded claim that Putin has “colluded with the green movementin Europe and all over the world”.

The GWPF – which Greenpeace UK said has “spent the last twenty years campaigning to preserve our addiction to fossil fuels” – has become increasingly prominent in recent years.

The group was forced to set up a new non-charitable organisation for its political lobbying in 2014 after the Charity Commission found its stance on climate change breached charity rules.

Labour MP Graham Stringer sits on its board of trustees, while two of Global Warming Policy Foundation’s staff recently became advisers to Tory MP Craig Mackinlay. Another trustee, Terence Mourdant, is a long-standing Tory donor who gave £25,000 to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign.

Steve Baker, who joined the GWPF last year and has called on Boris Johnson to resign over partygate, is a long time admirer of US libertarians. He has previously received expenses-paid trips to conferences organised by US conservative groups that have been accused of opposing environmental action.

‘Net Zero Watch’

In October last year, the UK government announced its strategy for reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

The same month, the GWPF’s campaigning arm – the similarly-named Global Warming Policy Forum – rebranded itself as Net Zero Watch, a name it continues to use alongside the original moniker.

In a statement announcing the change, Peiser claimed that in a “net zero future you will be poorer and colder” and “that a political backlash is long overdue” in response to the policy.

Net Zero Watch has repeatedly claimed that the cost of living crisis is the result of net-zero policies.In a report published in March, it said that renewable energy is responsible for the crisis and called for the government to reintroduce coal power plants and restart fracking.

Climate policy researchers said that the group is spreading “misinformation and propaganda” about net zero rather than providing analysis.

Net Zero Watch has found allies in Parliament among a group of 20 Tory MPs and Peers, who formed the Net Zero Scrutiny Group,  a cadre of backbench Conservative MPs modelled on the European Research Group that has emerged as a staunch critic of Boris Johnson’s net-zero plans.

Net Zero Scrutiny Group members include former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey; Robert Halfon, a former schools minister; and Tory peer Peter Lilley, who is a former trustee of the GWPF.

Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, the MPs leading the group, are regularly quoted on press releases from Net Zero Watch and have repeated some of its lines on the economic cost of net zero word-for-word.

In February, Harry Wilkinson, currently head of policy at Net Zero Watch, and Ruth Lea, a former GWPF trustee, began working for Mackinlay as parliamentary advisers. Wilkinson has previously tweeted that “The ‘climate crisis’ is a religious belief, nothing to do with science.”

The GWPF shares its Tufton Street address with a number of anonymously funded think tanks who have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to climate change mitigation policies.

Earlier this year, Nigel Farage announced he was forming a new campaign for a referendum on net zero.

Farage’s financial backers include the private equity billionaire Jeremy Hosking who openDemocracy recently revealed has huge financial interests in fossil fuels.

The GWPF disputed that the Sarah Scaife Foundation has an interest in oil companies, telling openDemocracy: “The wealth that ultimately created the Scaife Foundation was created at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. It would be ludicrous to suggest that three generations on, it represents an oil company interest.”

Steve Baker MP said: "I understand the GWPF has already given a response to these allegations, which appear to be ridiculous.

It is an extraordinary fact that the same newspapers and commentators who would usually be the first to protest any kind of poverty are wasting the public's time with these attempts to distract from the real issues at hand. It would be better if the political world focused their attention on how our current energy strategy has driven up energy prices and contributed to the terrible cost-of-living crisis that so many are experiencing.”

820 desmog

public figures with a history of climate science denial and opposition to environmental measures are set to become members of the House of Lords, after the latest round of peerages was announced at the end of last week.

They include a trustee of the UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), who will join fellow GWPF affiliates and supporters Nigel Lawson, Bernard Donoughue, Matt Ridley, Peter Lilley, Andrew Turnbull, Emma Nicholson, Nigel Vinson and Richard Cavendish.

READ MORE

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Myron Ebell

Myron Ebell isDirector of the Center for Energy and Environment at the fossil fuel–funded Competitive Enterprise Institute and was one of the most prominent voices in the media discussing Climategate.

In a statement on Climategate, Ebell said:

“It is clear that some of the ‘world’s leading climate scientists,’ as they are always described, are more dedicated to promoting the alarmist political agenda than in scientific research. Some of the emails that I have read are blatant displays of personal pettiness, unethical conniving, and twisting the science to support their political position.“

He later to debate climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, whose emails were among those hacked.

In the interview, Ebell claimed the scientists were “cooking the data … And cooking is a technical term which means manipulating and falsifying the data.”

“These people have already been revealed as not having any honor. Now they’re being revealed as not having a sense of shame,” he said.

In 2016, Ebell led Donald Trump’s transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency. He held a press conference in London in 2017, hosted by the **Global Warming Policy Foundation**, in which he said Brexitwas an “opportunity” to shed environmental regulations. He continues to chair the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of organisations “that question global warming alarmism and oppose energy rationing policies” and have been credited with helping to persuade Trump to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.

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ref 2 desmog

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era

lord Lawsonstepped 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 thehacking 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.

Another Lord, though of a different stripe, Lord Monckton, I have met many times. The one that comes to mind is when he was the star turn during a fringe event of climate deniers near the Vatican 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 global Communist-Fascist conspiracy.

Dr S Fred Singer I interviewed at a Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas, 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 associated with both tobacco and oil companies.

These three men were influential in turning Climategate into an international scandal 10 years ago now.

Creating a storm

The 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 Professor Michael Mann, the author of the first ‘Hockey Stick’ graphwhich showed a dramatic uptick in average global temperatures following hundreds of years of a fairly stable climate. Professor Phil Jones 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 considered suicide.

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 Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) 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 open their cheque-books 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 coverage of the hacked emails, and its reporters’ fruitless attempt to find the hacker.

Lawson was also influential in the decision of the Science and Technology Committee 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 funding his new thinktank.

Manufacturing denial

Alongside Lawson, Singer and Monckton were also there from the very beginning and had significant roles to play in the development of the GWPF.

Singer was among the first climate deniers 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.

Singer worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now Atlas Network) 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 worked with the tobacco industry deliberately creating smoke and mirrors around the increasing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. The foundation received money from the oil industry, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, and was instrumental in founding the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in the UK. It was a trustee of the IEA — David Henderson — 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 rather eccentric denials, 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 lost £1m in prize money 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 Sunday Telegraph 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 (with an historic interest in**fracking**).He was also instrumental in formulating talking points 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 — attacking science 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.

Political game

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 intimately entwined with those responsible for serious spin and corporate lobbying around Brexit.

Lawson himself was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign (before applying for residency in France). He was happy to appeal to reactionary populism to settle scores within the Tory party.

One consequence of this is that Nigel Farage 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 riddled with a Lawsonian brand of climate science denial — came close to destroying Lawson’s Tory party while continuing to push the UK towards the hardest of Brexits.

Moving on

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 hisbeautiful mansion in the south of France. The GWPF lost the argument. It is now ineffective, losing support, and should soon be defunct. Singer has long retired 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.

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overview

http://www.desmog.uk/2015/07/02/remember-when-lord-lawson-brought-climate-denial-house-lords

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see also Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),

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http://www.desmog.uk/2016/01/06/climate-denying-gwpf-academic-chairman-ross-mckitrick-resigns

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http://www.desmog.uk/2016/01/08/uk-transparency-watchdog-orders-charity-commission-reconsider-releasing-gwpf-investigation-files

Lord Lawson faces further embarrassment concerning his climate denial Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), as theUK transparency watchdog has ruled that the Charity Commission must reconsider releasing files from a 2014 investigation.

Two years ago the Charity Commission conducted an investigation into the GWPF following complaints from the public that the charity was engaging in politics - this led to Lawson setting up the sister organisation: the Global Warming Policy Forum.

DeSmog UK commissioned a freedom of information request to the Charity Commission to force the release of the investigation files, so that the public could better judge whether the former chancellor had used the GWPF for non-charitable ends.

The Charity Commission originally refused the appeal on the grounds that it, along with a series of other requests, was vexatious – intended to cause disruption or annoyance. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has now ruled against the Commission and demanded it consider releasing the documents.

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Lord Lawson has taken the extraordinary decision to stand by a “distinguished” academic advisor to his charity who has become embroiled ina new scandal about climate denier groups being secretly funded by oil companies.

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desmog

Lord Lawson’s climate denying GWPF has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ money through the inappropriate use of parliamentary questions, internal government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show. Lord Donoughue (pictured), a Labour peer and member of the GWPF board of trustees, bombarded the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) with a total of 25 questions over 15 months relating to obscure climate models.

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desmog uk

the global economy was in a death spiral and Britain was at the centre of the financial tornado. The legacy of Chancellor Nigel Lawson – reliance on the deregulated and seemingly craven denizens of the City of London – meant Britain, in particular, was in serious peril.

At the same time, environmental groups and campaigners had finally persuaded the Labour Government to address the serious risk that profit-seeking oil companies posed to the global ecology. The Climate Change Bill passing through Parliament in 2008 would introduce statutory reductions in carbon emissions.

It was at this moment that Lord Lawson, retired to a picturesque and sleepy French village, and conspicuous through his long absences from the House of Lords, decided to stage a remarkable political come back.

Lawson chose the traditional platform for his bid to return to the international political stage: a book. An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming was published by Duckworth Overlook, which had a long history of producing works by authors associated with free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Puffed-Out Pamphlet

Indeed, the Appeal was a puffed out version of a pamphlet Lawson authored for the Centre for Policy Studies. As we recounted previously on DeSmog UK, the CPS was originally a spin-off of the hardline free market IEA set up to lift Margaret Thatcher to power with the support of both tobacco and oil backers.

Lawson on completing his manuscript dedicated the work to David Henderson, the IEA fellow who first approached the one-time chancellor and persuaded him to join the curious cause of climate denial.

Julian Morris, the IEA intern turned $100,000-a-year director of the climate denying pioneers at the International Policy Network was also praised in the short acknowledgements – although his involvement seems to have caused embarrassment in some quarters.

The former chancellor complained bitterly that his small contribution had been turned down by other, more prestigious publishing houses, assuming conspiracy was afoot. This is a rather cute historical echo of Friedrich von Hayek’s publishing frustrations in the 1940s before The Road to Serfdom became an international bestseller.

Dubious Arguments

Lawson’s book itself was little more than a rehearsal of the same attacks on climate science, economics and policy: manufactured and distributed mostly by American free market think tanks funded directly or otherwise by oil-vested interests from Koch to ExxonMobil.

And, it contained at least one excruciating error. It seems Lawson was unable to translate temperatures between Celsius and Fahrenheit, leaving the book peppered with hilariously daft claims about the heat in various cities around the world.

This flaw was graciously passed over by most reviewers. But some were in any case scathing about Lawson’s efforts. “But the best that can be said about this book,” Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute wrote, “is that it is mercifully short.”

Ward adds: “But his account of the science of climate change still sucks – it is a highly idiosyncratic and partial account, seemingly driven by ideology rather than by reason… Lawson parades most of the dubious arguments constantly reversed by the free market lobby groups in the United States.”

Michael Meacher, the former Labour environment minister, was kinder. “Nigel Lawson has provided a valuable antidote to the sloppiness surrounding climate change,” he wrote. “But he wants to go further than tilting his lance at the sillier eccentricities of what he sees as the climate-change establishment.”

He told Daily Mail readers: “He wants to demolish the entire infrastructure of climate change theory. Here his arguments are badly flawed.”

Lawson would send his book to the chief scientific advisor to the Labour Government – and elicit a response. But Professor John Beddington appeared to be singularly unimpressed by his interlocutor’s contribution to knowledge.

“There are a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way,” he explained patently in private correspondence since released under the Freedom of Information Act......

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8/15

This DeSmog UK epic history post reveals the identity of the man behind Lord Monckton’s eccentric climate denial.

Lord Monckton [3] hoisted himself into centre stage of the denier circus in November 2006 with a double-page feature in the then respectable Sunday Telegraph, in which he claimed climate science was “a Sci-Fi panic”[4].

The eccentric Scottish peer would boast [5]: “In the climate change debate, one figure is real. The Sunday Telegraph’s website registered more than 127,000 hits [5] in response to last week’s article revealing that the UNhad minimised the sun’s role in changing past and present climate, persisted in proven errors and used unsound data, questionable graphs and meretricious maths to exaggerate future warming.”

The newspaper article represented a remarkable return after illness to the media spotlight for a man apparently addicted to publicity and the adoration of the crowd. As the satirical magazine Private Eye reported at the time, the article was “largely incomprehensible” [6].

Untidy Factoids

Tim Lambert, of the Deltoid science blog, was even more dismissive. “The main problem with his article is that he doesn’t know what he’s writing about it. He offers up an untidy pile of factoids [7], some of which are true but out of context, some of which are not at all true, and some of which he seems to have conjured up out of thin air.”

Prior to this news splash, the Viscount had appeared in the press in 2000 as the inventor of the Eternity puzzle [8] and the man who promised £1m to the first person to find its solution. Two Cambridge mathematicians were quick to claim the prize. Monckton at first claimed the payout forced him to sell his 67-room mansion [8] - and then later that he hadlied to get more publicity for the puzzle [9].

Many years earlier, Monckton had worked as a junior advisor in Margaret Thatcher’s highly politicised Number 10 Policy Unit, although he failed to get a mention in her autobiography years later. He claimed to have introduced the first computer to government.

And, he also claimed to have been the first to persuade the PM to take the issue of climate change seriously. It may have been this remarkable and totally unsubstantiated claim [10] that persuaded Patience Wheatcroft, the then editor of the *Sunday Telegraph* [11], to take his rambling feature seriously.

As it would happen, Monckton’s sister Rose is married to Lord Lawson’s eldest son Dominic [12]. But both men deny that it was Lawson who had persuaded his in-law to adopt the well-worn and tragic claims that scientists had conspired to construct an international conspiracy [13] in order to support the case for a Communist global government.

Monckton’s Denial

So how exactly did it come to be that Lord Monckton should become the spokesperson for the more eclectic climate deniers – flown around the world by ExxonMobil-funded think tanks like the ominous soundingCommittee for a Constructive Tomorrow [14] (CFACT) – to attack scientists?

This is how Monckton himself takes up the story: “Well, I didn’t decide. It was all accidentally; I was rung up by the chief executive of a boutique finance house.”

According to Monckton, the mystery chief executive said: “Look, all our investors want to pile in on this green investment stuff but I want to know: is there a problem with the climate?”

Monckton replied: “Oh yes, I advised Margaret Thatcher on it 25 years ago and it was quite clear then that the scientists were worried and I recommended to find out more.”

CEO: “[We] would like you to find out more.”

Monckton “spent a month on his dime” investigating the science and sent the investor a 40-page report. It concluded that climate change did not represent a serious threat.

The man called a few days later and demanded: “Why should I pay any attention to this?”

Monckton: “Well, you asked me to do this, I gave it my best shot, you’ve got all my evidence there.”

CEO: “I’ve consulted a dozen people, all of them more eminent than you…”

Monckton:“Well, thank you very much.”

CEO: “And they all tell me that this is a real problem, this is the worst problem humanity has ever faced and we have to do everything we can to stop this and you’vesaid: ‘no problem at all’.”

Monckton: ‘WellI don’t say there is no problem at all, I say it’s not likely that there is much of a problem and even if it were it would be cheaper to let it happen.”

CEO: “Well, we are going to go with you and not theother 11.”

Monckton: “Why is that?”

CEO: “You’re the only one who provided any evidence, and you’ve provided 40 pages of it. The others all told me that I had to believe: I didn’t get where I am today by believing stuff.”

Generous Financier

Monckton has always refused to give up the name of the financier who paid him generously to investigate climate science who and set him on the path of attacking scientists in talks in the United States and Australia ever since.

However, an investigation by DeSmog UK has established that the mystery man is Edgar Miller, a right-wing American who claims to have significant influence in the Conservative Party and who boasts of having made a fortune from early investments in shale gas development [15].

Miller was born in Bailey County, Texas [16], but moved to Britain almost 40 years ago. He is a serial investor and entrepreneur, having directed companies with names like Palladian Software Limited, Maxwell Espinosa and UK Israel Business.

The climate denier is a political animal, claiming to have met Margaret Thatcher “on several occasions.” He is also close to Peter Lilley MP and Andrew Tyrie – the unsung hero of Tory climate denial.

“I used to be more connected to the Conservative Party. I used to work up in there with policy but I quickly learnt that it’s a mug’s game because most politicians are not interested in anyone’s help,” he told a female journalist over dinner.

Moderately Wealthy

“When you are talking to these people, they are either so ignorant that they didn’t understand what you were saying or they were just so ego driven, or both, that they figured they know all the answers.”

Miller is moderately wealthy, having bought a London townhouse in Notting Hill for £725,000 in 2000. He used to drive an E-Type Jag until he had an accident, apparently attempting to impress a female passenger.

Miller will become significant again in our history of climate denial – supporting Lord Lawson at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and speaking candidly about his falling out with the new Conservative leadership.

Up next in theDeSmog UKepic history series, we detail how a Channel 4 programme on climate change was edited to promote climate denial.

READ THE EXTENDED EXTRACTS FROM MONCKTON’S INTERVIEW

So, both then you wrote an article in 2006 – in November, you say? So, when did you decide to get really involved in the debate?

Well, I didn’t decide. It was all accidentally; I was rung up by the chief executive of a boutique finance house, who said: ‘Look, all our investors want to pile in on this green investment stuff, but I want to know: is there a problem with the climate?’

And I said, ‘Oh yes, I advised Margaret Thatcher on it 25 years ago and it was quite clear then that the scientists were worried, and I recommended to find out more.’ And he said, ‘I would like you to find out more.’

And I spent a month on his dime and had a look, and sent him a 40-page report, and he rang up a few days later and said, ‘Why should I pay any attention to this?’ I said, ‘Well, you asked me to do this: I gave it my best shot; you’ve got all my evidence there.’

And he said, ‘I’ve consulted a dozen people, all of them more eminent than you’ – and I said, ‘Well thank you very much.’ He said, ‘And they all tell me that this is a real problem, this is the worst problem humanity has ever faced and we have to do everything we can to stop this, and you’vesaid: “no problem at all”.’

I said, ‘Well,I don’t say there is no problem at all; I say it’s not likely that there is much of a problem and, even if it were, it would be cheaper to let it happen.’ And he said, ‘Well, we are going to go with you and not the other 11.’ I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘You’re the only one who provided any evidence, and you’ve provided 40 pages of it,’ he said, ‘the others all told me that I had to believe,’ he said, ‘I didn’t get where I am today by believing stuff.’

So, do you remember the name of this guy who contacted you?

Ah, I think I ought not tell you that because it was confidential. Although, he did at the end say, ‘Can I send this paper to the editor of theSunday Times?’ She then rang up and rather tested it and said, ‘How can I print 40 pages of equations in a paper?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think that was the idea; I think he wanted to suggest to your mind that there might be another side to this story and suggested I might write it for her (sic). I can do plain English as well; I don’t just write in equations.’ ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘Well, could yousend me over 1,000 words?’ So, I sent her a 1,000 words sample…

Tags:

lord Monckton [17]

CFACT [18]

Edgar Miller [19]

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Source URL: http://www.desmog.uk/2015/08/06/mystery-man-behind-monckton-s-conversion-climate-denial

Links:

[1] http://www.desmog.uk/2015/08/06/mystery-man-behind-monckton-s-conversion-climate-denial

[2] http://www.desmog.uk/user/25731

[3] http://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton

[4] http://www.carbonbrief.org/profiles/christopher-monckton

[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533912/Wrong-problem-wrong-solution.html

[6] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/611859-monckton-peye.html

[7] http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/05/chinese-navy-disproves-global/

[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/953316.stm

[9] http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/aristocrat-admits-tale-of-lost-home-was-stunt-to-boost-puzzle-sales-1-679237

[10] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/835827/monckton-foia-release.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI5WMXH27O6KH3ALA&Expires=1436881118&Signature=vyllUu%2FfzjEpCrCZmoPyLwLNv34%3D

[11] http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/nov/16/patience-wheatcroft-interview

[12] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/07/rosa-monckton-unlikely-disability-activist

[13] http://adju.st/2006/11/christopher_monckton_in_the_te.html

[14] http://www.cfact.org

[15] http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/30/lawson-climate-denial-backer-boasts-shale-gas-investment

[16] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/759755-texas-record-edgar-miller-birth.html

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new series desmog uk 1/15

http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/17/our-inaugural-series-honourable-man

lord Lawson has become the most influential and respected climate denier in the world with the launch of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Our inaugural seriescharts his remarkable return to the political stage. 

Lawson was chancellor to Margaret Thatcher during the neoliberal free market revolution of the 1980s and personally orchestrated the creation of Britain's privatised coal, oil and gas industries.

The Tory grandee is well known for being shrewd, secretive and willing to inspire unpopularity. His resignation as chancellor began the collapse of Thatcher's power and led to the Lawson Boom with runaway inflation, soaring house prices and increasingly chaotic financial markets.

Now in his 80s, Lawson has returned from an idyllic retirement in the south of France, where his fame had been eclipsed by his celebrity chef daughter Nigella, to become the de facto leader of Britain's climate deniers.

His message then was that we cannot buck the market. His message now is that we cannot hope to stop climate change. Those who benefitted from financial deregulation believe he still serves their interests.

Those millions who suffered from the mass unemployment that followed his chancellorship, those trapped by the ever-expanding housing bubble, and those concerned about the impact on the environment both nationally and internationally are much more wary.

In our “long read” inaugural series, DeSmog UK tells the unauthorised inside story of Lawson's remarkable return to the political stage, and asks what motivated this grandfather to sacrifice his golden sunset years to become embroiled in the climate wars. Catch up now.

==

http://desmogblog.cmail2.com/t/t-l-jddyltk-jdldtjdit-g/

http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/07/25-years-thatcher-s-death-spiral-lawson-would-undermine-legacy

25 years ago today Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her premiership when she took to the podium at the UN general assembly on the global environment held on 8 November 1989.

However, her continued fall from grace would undermine what could have been one of her greatest contributions as a world leader, but instead exposed a government broken after the resignation of her chancellor Nigel Lawson.

...

http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/05/lawson-s-break-thatcher

Lawson is almost always introduced as Thatcher's chancellor — but he was instrumental in her downfall. And once again, the tobacco- and oil-funded Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and its radical free market ideology was at the heart of the debacle. 

Margaret Thatcher's chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson's last public engagement as chancellor was at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), where he was joined by Sir Geoffrey Howe: “It was a happy if piquant occasion,” Lawson would remember.

“Here were the two ministers who, of all Margaret's cabinet colleagues, had probably done most over the previous ten years to roll back the frontiers of socialism.”

Secretly, however, both Lawson and Geoffrey Howe were on the verge of breaking with Thatcher.

Howe confirms: “What Nigel and I knew — but our friends and the IEA did not — was just how badly frayed now were the bonds that had once bound the three of us together.”

“The situation, Nigel told me that day, was becoming 'preposterous' and he was 'close to the end of his tether'.”

Lawson had that year delivered the annual keynote speech for the now-called Hayek Lecture.

He used the opportunity to defend his record of deregulation in the financial markets: “The abolition of the corset and other controls on the behaviour of the banks and building societies has greatly increased the flexibility of the financial markets and widened the choices available to consumers.”

“And coupled with that, the changes associated with the Big Bang have given the London markets the freedom they need to maintain and enhance London's role as the financial centre certainly of Europe, and possibly the world.”

The IEA lecture was sponsored by the newly privatised British Airways.

Market Absolutism

Ironically, it was the free market absolutism of the IEA that was the root cause of Lawson's dramatic and tempestuous falling out with the prime minister.

Thatcher, following the advice of Sir Alan Walters of the IEA, wanted to leave the value of the pound entirely at the whim of the markets.

Lawson, perhaps influenced by his civil servants at the treasury, believed this ideological orthodoxy would be ruinous for the country and was then spending millions of taxpayers' money buying up the pound to ensure it kept its value.

Lawson wanted Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) which would involve its governments collectively protecting their currencies against speculators and the markets.

The prime minister simply refused. Back in November 1985, Lawson persuaded everyone in the cabinet that Britain must join — everyone except Thatcher.

“If you join,” Thatcher hit out, “you will have to do so without me.”

According to Lawson: “There was an awkward silence, and the meeting broke up.”

The row had a profound effect on the chancellor: “I was extremely depressed.” Lawson had a choice. He could give up on his ERM ambitions or defy his prime minister.

“I gave the green light to a secret mission I had planned in advance in the hope of a favourable outcome of the meeting. Accordingly, on 7 December, Peter Middleton, Geoff Littler and (from the Bank) Anthony Loehnis went on a highly confidential visit to Bonn to discuss contingency planning in the event of Britain deciding to join the ERM.”

Lawson would recall a further major row with Thatcher: “Joining the ERM, as she saw it, had become a battle of wills between her and me. But it was the ominous 'I must prevail' that was still ringing in my ears as I left the room.”

The split between the two most powerful ministers of state was beginning to leak. More seriously, the boom initiated by Lawson's deregulation and sell offs was starting to dangerously overheat.

By the time of the Conservative party conference in October 1989, interest rates had hit 15 per cent.

“A financially deregulated economy, while more efficient and dynamic, is also probably less stable,” Lawson later admitted.

But this was not going to wash with the voters, or the MPs, at the conference, fearing the loss of their seats.

In the same month Lawson shocked his colleagues by announcing his resignation, seriously undermining his government and unleashing a series of events that would lead to Thatcher's downfall.

Thatcher wrote to Howe who had been in the Commons: “I am the bearer of bad news. Nigel has decided to resign as Chancellor and I have not been able to dissuade him in spite of intensive efforts. It is a great shock — he has been such a good Chancellor.”

Unassailable

During a television interview she kept saying: “Nigel was Chancellor, Nigel's position was unassailable, unassailable.”

Lawson observed that she used the word “unassailable” so many times that “it acquired a new and ironic meaning in Westminster parliamentary discourse”.

The reaction to Lawson's betrayal was robust. The Sunran the headline “Good Riddance”. The Daily Mail screamed “This bankrupt Chancellor”.

Lawson, the first chancellor to resign in three decades, was accused of betraying his prime minister, betraying his party and betraying the British people.

Lawson over the next few months was able to reflect on his decade as chancellor. He had transformed Britain into a veritable tax haven, with lower corporation tax than any developed country in the world: “Companies would on the balance enjoy substantial reductions in their tax bills,” he would boast.

He halved and then halved again the tax on shares, feeding a frenzy of speculation in the City of London.

In 1988 he had slashed income tax from 60 to 40 per cent for Britain's highest earners. He removed all taxation on home sales for the first £30,000 and fuelled the housing boom. He unleashed “a credit revolution” and subsequent heated economy.

Value Added Tax, a regressive tax hitting the poorest hardest, was increased. “Nigel the Tax Terminator” would be his favourite headline in any newspaper during his time at Number 11.

House prices, as all newspapers love to report, went through the roof with increases reaching 22 per cent above inflation.

He then cut taxes on corporate donations to charities, such as those by :{BP:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: and British American Tobacco to the IEA.

Lawson can also claim credit for ending Britain's nuclear programme.

He prevented the sale of nuclear plants to the private sector when he realised the cost of clean-up was astronomical.

Thanks to his intervention, the taxpayer would pay the multi-billion pound bill for the legacy of the nuclear experiment.

Led Astray

“The moral of the whole episode is twofold,” according to Lawson. “First, that Ministers can always be led astray by scientific experts. Second, that the dangers of state ownership are greater than even the Thatcher Government had realised.”

Lawson's greatest mistake, he would accept, was failure to control the boom.

As chancellor, he turned his back on “the discredited neo-Keynesian idea of cutting the Budget deficit by raising tax rates to curb a boom” claiming that it would have “merely destabilised tax rates”.

He also failed to use interest rates to control the market: “My central mistake was undoubtedly to underestimate the strength and duration of the boom of the late 1980s, and thus of the inflationary forces it unleashed,” he wrote in his memoirs four years after his resignation.

“At the start of that resurgence I described it on one occasion as a 'blip', an unfortunate expression in the circumstances and one which I was not allowed to forget.” He added: “Looking back, it may be argued that I should have deliberately gone in for shock treatment, and raised interest rates much more sharply in the early stages… Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

Lawson's resignation had come at considerable personal cost. The former chancellor would have to move out of Dorneywood where he had spent “eighteen happy months” funded by the taxpayer enjoying the house, its extensive grounds, swimming pool and dedicated staff.

There would be no more nights out with finance ministers watching “highly trained and unfailingly solicitous geisha girls”.

Nor would he be able to raid the Government Hospitality Service wine cellars and enjoy claret “of such splendour that [the French finance minister] Balladur talked longingly about it whenever he saw me for months afterwards.”

From now on, Lawson would concentrate on making money for his own personal treasury. And he would turn to the mass privatisation of Eastern Europe to make his fortunes.

At the end of his political career, what was it all about? “There was one basic principle which guided my own efforts,” Lawson tells us. “The Tory belief should be the opposite one: that income or property belongs to the people who earn it or who have legitimately acquired it, and that a case has to be made for taxing it away.”

“When the trumpets and drums are silent, and the last revisionist tract is off the Press, this is the abiding rift which remains between Left and Right.”

==

==

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Nigel_Lawson

Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby, an AGW denier with ties to coal burning power stations,^[1] was Secretary of State for Energy 1981-83, and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1983-89 and a founder and Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ^[2][3]. He is the author of 'Appeal to Reason : A cool look at global warming' He earned raised eyebrows during the expenses row for claiming more than £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his 18th century farmhouse in Gascony as his main residence.^[4]

Family

He is the father of Dominic Lawson, and Nigella Lawson. Dominic is married to Rosa Monckton the sister of Lord Christopher Monckton^[5]

Views on Climate Change

Nigel Lawson is a prominent climate change skeptic. He has written a book called 'An Appeal to Reason’ which apparently argues that saving the planet will be the real disaster. ^[6]

...update

Key Actions

December 6, 2020

An article in The Daily Mail quoted an interview featuring Lawson, which appeared on YouTube channel Triggernometry, marketed as “the free speech YouTube show and podcast.” Lawson criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to decarbonise the economy through a “Green Industrial Revolution,” stating: “I have never been more depressed about the future of this country. I hope the Government might come to its sense and abandon this plan, but it’s absolutely a commitment they’ve made so far, but it’s a suicidal commitment.” [46]

Lawson also disputed the efficiency of wind energy, a key element of the “Green Industrial Revolution,” stating: “The cost of moving from cheap and reliable energy to very expensive and unreliable energy is massive, and it’s crazy. The biggest thing Johnson wants to move to is wind, which is hugely expensive and very unreliable,” adding: “I think that climate change is not a threat, it is happening very gently at a fraction of a degree per decade which is something we can perfectly well live with.”

November 18, 2020

Lawson was quoted in The Telegraph referring to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 as “economically illiterate.” Lawson also reportedly stated that: “If the Government were trying to damage the economy they couldn’t be doing it better”, and “a programme to erect statues of Boris in every town and village in the land would also ‘create jobs’ but that doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.” [45]

June 24, 2019

Lawson wrote a letter to MPs and Lords expressing his opposition to the “net zero” emissions target being discussed in Parliament that week and urging them to delay the change until an impact assessment had been conducted. Lawson claimed that the government’s climate advisers at the Committee on Climate Change had presented “wholly improbable forecasts of sharply falling global CO2 emissions” and that the new target would lead to “astonomical costs”. The letter was published online by the Global Warming Policy Forum. [43]

January 16, 2019

Nigel Lawson stepped down as GWPF chairman, maintaining a position in the organisation as Honorary President. Lawson was replaced by Labour Lord Bernard Donoughue. It is unclear what Lawson’s involvement in the GWPF‘s campaigning wing, the Global Warming Policy Forum, will be in future. [41]

April 09, 2018...

Quotations

• "To take the extreme case, while it may at first blush seem heartless to say that the welfare of those living in the next millennium is of no consequence, to take decisions on the basis that it is every bit as important as the welfare of the population of the world today would be palpably absurd." ^[7]

SourceWatch resources

Climate change sceptics

Global Warming Policy Foundation

climate change skeptics

External resources

• Carbon Brief Profile [7]
• House of Lords Profile and Register of Interests [8]

External articles

• Lord Lawson's 'misleading' climate claims challenged by scientific adviser[9]
• Lord Lawson's appeal to unreason http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2011/April/Lord-Lawson-appeal-unreason.aspx
• Bob Ward, Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation is spreading errors, The Guardian, 21 October 2011.

References

1. ↑ "Lord Lawson's links to Europe's colossal coal polluter | Damian Carrington | Environment | guardian.co.uk", The Guardian, London: GMG. Retrieved on March 8, 2012.
2. ↑ "[1]"
3. ↑ "[2]"
4. ↑ "[3]"
5. ↑ "[4]"
6. ↑ "[5]"
7. ↑ "[6]"

Categories:

• Stubs
• Articles needing additional references
• Climate change

carbon brief

CC

"To take the extreme case, while it may at first blush seem heartless to say that the welfare of those living in the next millennium is of no consequence, to take decisions on the basis that it is every bit as important as the welfare of the population of the world today would be palpably absurd." 

Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason, A Cool Look at Global Warming.

Lord Nigel Lawson is the founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a life peer in the House of Lords, the author of An Appeal to Reason, A Cool Look at Global Warming and a former chancellor and secretary of state for energy. In 2005 he was a member of the House of Commons Economic Affairs Select Committee when it produced an inquiry into the economics of climate change.

Although he has no scientific background, Lawson has considerable political gravitas. He opens An Appeal to Reason by saying: "By way of preamble, I readily admit that I am not a scientist." In his book, Lawson states that the "largely man-made" increase in CO2 emissions have contributed to the "modest" Twentieth Century warming of the planet. However, he believes that "climate alarmists" have exaggerated the negative impact of this warming. Lawson writes: "Warmer but richer is in fact healthier than colder but poorer". He asks: "Is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature?", adding "average world temperature is simply a statistical artifact." In his book, Lawson picks seven years of data from this century to question the scientific consensus that global warming will continue. This line of argument has been widely criticized by scientists.

Dr Robert Watson, a former chair of the IPCC and chief scientist to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has said: "Lord Lawson's perspective that the UK and Europe are over-reacting to the threat of human-induced climate change is substantially wrong and ignores a significant body of scientific, technological and economic evidence."

Sir John Houghton, in a review of An Appeal to Reason for the science journal Nature, argues that Lawson uses  "sleight of hand with gross numbers" to suggest future generations will not be significantly adversely affected by climate change while ignoring evidence that "global warming will lead to tens or hundreds of millions of people suffering loss of resources, livelihoods and land." Sir John concludes that Lawson presents "misleading messages" that his conclusion on temperature rise show a "surprising ignorance of elementary statistical analysis" and recommends the peer "begin with a course of reading of the IPCC reports."

Lawson is on the record stating: "I think that the ordinary bloke has an instinctive sense that it wouldn't be too bad if the weather warmed up." He stated the summer heatwave in France of 2003, which was responsible for the deaths of 15,000 people, was in his own experience "perfectly tolerable". . In the discussion: "The sea ice has been increasing considerably for the last six months." Rapley replied: "If you're saying the sea ice is freezing - it's winter."

Lawson has links to the oil industry via his chairmanship of the company Central Europe Trust, which he declares on the Register of Lords' Interests. CET states on its website that it co-manages private equity funds and consults on mergers and acquisitions for companies including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Texaco. Lawson has also been president of the British Institute of Energy Economics, sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell, the BG Group and BP.

Lawson attended Christ Church College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. In 1961 he was appointed city editor of the Sunday Telegraph and from 1966 was editor of the Spectator. Lawson was elected as a Conservative MP in 1974 and appointed to the position of Secretary of State for Energy in 1981. He was made chancellor under Margaret Thatcher two years later, in 1983. He resigned as Chancellor in 1989, which made him the longest serving chancellor at that time, after Thatcher ignored his advice to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Lawson retains political and media influence - his son Dominic has edited the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph - and he is a prominent advocate for the climate sceptic cause.

How the 'Kochtopus' stifled green debate

Behind the climate 'countermovement' are two billionaire brothers

Steve Connor

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Even by the standards of the super-rich, Charles and David Koch are extraordinarily wealthy. Together they own most of Koch Industries, one of the largest private conglomerates in America with annual revenues of around $100bn (£62.5bn), and interests as diverse as energy, petrochemicals, pulp and paper.

The two brothers share a similar political outlook. They are right-wing libertarians who believe in minimal regulation of industry, smaller government, lower corporate taxes and less generous social services. They are also closet "sceptics" when it comes to climate science.

Charles, 77 and the elder of the two, has effectively run the family business since the death of their father, Fred, in 1967. He is described as a hands-on executive, whereas David has played a more junior role. Nevertheless, the spectacular growth of the family firm has put them both among the richest men in America – and the world.

Each of the Koch brothers has his own charitable foundation and they have given generously to organisations that share their free-market outlook. They have both funded opposition campaigns to many of the policies of the Obama administration – so many, in fact, that their opponents have dubbed their ideological network "The Kochtopus".

Together, the two brothers have given millions of dollars to non-profit organisations that criticise environmental legislation and support lower taxes for industry.

The Kochs have also contributed vast sums to promote scepticism towards climate change, more even than the oil industry according to some estimates. Greenpeace, for instance, has calculated that ExxonMobil spent $8.9m on climate-sceptic groups between 2005 and 2008; over the same period the Koch brothers backed such groups to the tune of nearly $25m.

Americans for Prosperity, a group established by David Koch, did much to foment public outrage over the "climategate" emails stolen from the computers of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2009. The organisation claimed the emails proved that global warming was the "biggest hoax the world has ever seen".

Meanwhile, Charles and his wife Liz have established a little-known organisation called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which appears to have been set up to channel Koch money into a third-party organisation called the Donors Trust.

The Donors Trust is a "donor advised" fund, which means it has special status under the US tax system. One of the benefits of donor-advised funds for billionaires such as Charles is that their names are not linked to funds given out by the Donors Trust to other organisations.

Among the beneficiaries of Donor Trust money is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is being sued for defamation by Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University, an eminent climatologist, whose affidavit claims that he was accused of scientific fraud and compared to a convicted child molester.

Professor Mann was one of the scientists named in the stolen emails from the UEA and has been a target of climate sceptics keen to rubbish his work on temperature records, which produced the now famous "hockey stick" graph showing a rapid temperature rise in the 20th century.

According to Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Donors Trust and its sister organisation Donors Capital Fund have become key players in the climate "countermovement", which he says is dedicated to maintaining the status quo on energy policy.

For instance, in 2003 Donors received just 3 per cent of the funding that eventually went to climate sceptic groups such as the ultra-conservative Heartland Foundation, which has led the attack on climate scientists. Professor Brulle said this had risen by 2009 to about a quarter of the total funding of the climate countermovement dedicated to denying the link between greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and global warming.

The link between the Koch family and Donors was discovered by Professor Brulle and John Mashey, a retired software engineer living in California, who has trawled through hundreds of official tax records, including the US Inland Revenue Service's "990" forms of the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which mention that it had given Donors millions of dollars for "general support".

"The Kochs decided it was better to go underground and foster all these think-tanks. Charles Koch has often said publicly that anyone should be able to give money to anyone without having to make it public," Dr Mashey said. "The point of all this is that Koch wants to anonymise his giving as much as possible."

Whitney Ball, the chief executive of Donors Trust, said the fund has given more than $400m to about 1,600 beneficiaries since it began in 1999 but that only a few of them are involved in promoting climate scepticism.

"We don't disclose our list of donors, any more than other donor-advised funds… We are not legally required to do so. We have been referred to as a black box but this is a misleading and unfair characterisation. We are no different from any other donor-advised fund," she said.

"There are all kinds of reasons why people want to be anonymous. Imagine you lived a fairly modest lifestyle and you wanted to give charitably. You could do it through a donors-advised fund and no one would treat you differently," she said.

Asked whether the Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund have any connection with the Koch family, Ms Ball said: "I wouldn't say we have a relationship. We are knowledgeable about some of the groups that they fund and we are ideologically sympathetic."

Asked if she could explain how the money from the Knowledge and Progress Fund was spent, she said: "There's been a lot of hyperventilating about this… Like other donor-advised funds, we don't disclose that information."

The Charles Koch Foundation and Koch Industries declined to comment.

Lawson's sceptics double secret donations in a year

Anonymous donations to Britain's leading climate-change sceptic organisation have more than doubled over the past year – but the registered charity has consistently refused to comment on the identity of its backers.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up in 2009 by Lord Lawson, pictured, the former Conservative Chancellor, received £408,641 from anonymous donations in 2012, compared with £158,008 in 2011.

The foundation has repeatedly refused to name its financial supporters, although a leaked email last year suggested that Michael Hintze, a wealthy Tory donor and philanthropist, was one of its main backers.

Benny Peiser, a founder member of the foundation, said the charity does not receive any corporate money from the fossil-fuel industry, but denied it is being secretive about its backers.

"Our concern is about transparency of the science, not the funding. We don't take funding from vested interests and we make sure there is no conflict of interest before accepting donations," Dr Peiser said. "The main reason why they want to remain anonymous is so that people like you [the media] don't harass them," Dr Peiser explained.

From freeze to flood weekend forecast

One last blast of snow is expected over much of Britain today before the present week-long freeze gives way to a thaw and wet weather, which may combine to produce flooding.

Up to a foot of snow may fall over the Scottish Highlands, with up to six inches possible in northern England, four inches in the Midlands and up to two inches in the South.

"A combination of rain and snowmelt over the weekend will increase the risk of flooding, especially in South West England, Wales, the West Midlands and northern England," said the Environment Agency's Phil Rothwell. "We are closely monitoring the situation and have teams ready to respond to any potential flooding."

The recent severe weather has been blamed for at least nine deaths and has caused widespread disruption to travel and schooling.

Michael McCarthy