With all the… fun here at home, it’s been a while since we dropped in on our British friends. No surprise, they’ve been busy!
Lord Lawson, conservative MP and founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), was on the BBC’s morning radio program this week to discuss Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel. Though it was only a five minute interview, Lawson is so skilled at denial there were enough mistakes to warrant a fact check response from Carbon Brief.
From UK energy costs (actually below the EU average), to hundreds of billions in fossil fuel subsidies, to the climate change component at play in extreme weather patterns, to the bizarre and indefensible claim that the world has cooled since Gore’s first movie came out, Lawson did a great job in the interview showing why GWPF had to spin off a fact-free political campaigning arm.
Speaking of GWPF, DeSmogUK recently reported on the group’s new-ish director, Terence Mordaunt. Mordaunt, according to DeSmog, is “a well-connected, pro-Brexit, millionaire Tory funder with a vested interest in slowing the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.”
Mordaunt’s position as director adds an even more direct fossil fuel interest to GWPF’s leadership, who includes coal mine owner Matt Ridley as an advisor. Ridley is a perfect compliment to GWPF as he too struggles with the truth when it comes to climate change.
But Ridley has a secret weapon that allows him to mislead without running afoul of the UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) rules against inaccurate or misleading reporting. IPSO recently ruled in Ridley’s favor after a complaint over his column on the Rose/Bates/NOAA non-scandal from earlier this year. But that doesn’t mean they found he was truthful. Rather, because his column is considered “wholly opinion,” he gets a free pass to flaunt the rules that IPSO applies to reported news.
In so much as opinion is defined as an alternative to fact and not required to be based on it, this unfortunate ruling does fit the UK’s deniers to a tea.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: