The Global Warming Policy Foundation collection

http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/2/23/GWPF_graph_2011-12.png

{ Check out Dan Olner's improved banner at the bottom of this post. }

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Recently the grand sounding Global Warming Policy Foundation, {in actuality a tiny club of non-climatologist politicians}, has been making the news for their outrageously misleading claims regarding global warming observations and climatological understanding.

It's worth noting that the GWPF's title banner has a surface temperature graph that goes from 2001-2012, typifying the tunnel vision they are committed to.

Think about it, our man-made global warming geophysical experiment is the result of a couple centuries worth of increasing human impact on our atmosphere, and our children's decades are stretching out before us.  Pretending that global warming can be discussed by focusing exclusively on the last decade's surface temp is beyond deluded and crosses over into plain old calculated fraud.

Yet, for the Global Warming Policy Foundation's brain-trust Lord Lawson the conservative politician and journalist and his sidekick the PhD of social anthropology Benny Peiser there seems to be no past history to consider nor any future worth worrying about.  

Most frightening is that they've become such a hit in such a short time thanks to that scared faith based sector of our population that simply does not want to know, folks who are happy to be fed lies, rather than challenging themselves with learning about what we are doing to the planet we depend on.

OK, that's enough of me. 
The rest of this post is a collection of articles and information from various sources highlighting many deceptions the devious GWPF has been caught at.  But, first I'll let the GWPF introduce themselves in their own words.  Then we shall see examples of how poorly they live up to those professed standards.  

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THE GWPF: HISTORY AND MISSION

The Global Warming Policy Foundation was launched by Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser on 23 November 2009 in the House of Lords – in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. 

Introducing the new think tank, Lord Lawson explained its origin:

“Last year I brought out a book on global warming which (rather to my surprise) generated an enormous feedback, almost all of it positive. A number of those who wrote to me, who included scientists, engineers and others with an experienced background, urged me not to leave the matter there but to follow it up in some way. It was this that led me to found the think-tank we are launching today, which can achieve far more than I could on my own.”

{...} 

Our concern is solely with the possible effects of any future global warming and the policy responses that may evoke. ... 

* Our main focus is to analyse global warming policies and their economic and other implications. Our aim is to provide the most robust and reliable economic analysis and advice. 

* We regard observational evidence and understanding the present as more important and more reliable than computer modelling or predicting the distant future. ... 

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{ Link to the original and read through all of it and you'll find nothing about understanding what is happening to our physical planet and the climate system.  

The omission betrays the big lie these characters are living.
They have no conception or interest in the planet we inhabit.  
They can only think in terms of the next financial statements, business plans, while behind it all is a desperate need to increase profits.  It's all they are aware of, yet these fools are telling scientists, and experts, that they know better and a nation should be listening to their advice that we have nothing to worry about.

They believe profit motivated policy considerations are more important than realistically understanding what we are facing in the real world outside our homes.  So sad. }

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Now for some healthy skepticism and a closer look at this political advocacy group GWPF.  I'll start with a SourceWatch description:

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

"The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a United Kingdom group opposing action to mitigate climate change. Founded by Nigel Lawson,[1] it is a registered educational charity "deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated" to mitigate global warming.[2]

...
Start Up

The GWPF was founded, curiously, at the same time as the climategate emails were released on the University of Tomsk's server. At the time of its foundation the average age of its trustees was 74. Chairman Nigel Lawson stated "We will certainly be actively involved in monitoring what is being said, in correcting errors where the are errors. The only thing we will not be actively engaged in is what are the causes of the temperature changes on the planet: how much is CO₂, how much is solar radiation, how much is cosmic rays. We won't be getting into all that."[5]

Funding not transparent; just 1.6% comes from memberships

The Global Warming Policy Foundation does not reveal where its funding comes from.[6] In their first years accounts they say "the soil we till is highly controversial, and anyone who puts their head above the parapet has to be prepared to endure a degree of public vilification. For that reason we offer all our donors the protection of anonymity".[7] 

The accounts show the extent to which the secretive Foundation is funded by anonymous donors, compared with income from membership fees. Its total income for the period up to 31 July 2010 was £503,302, of which only £8,168 (or 1.6%) came from membership contributions. The foundation charges a minimum annual membership fee of £100.[8]

In 2012, the Guardian exposed Lawson's links to coal-fired power companies in Europe.[9]"
 (there's more)

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The Guardian  |  March 6, 2014

Lord Lawson climate sceptic thinktank's report rebuked by scientists

Global Warming Policy Foundation ignores bad news on planet's sensitivity to carbon dioxide

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/mar/06/lord-lawson-climate-sceptic-thinktank

"Climate change contrarian "think tank" the UK's Global Warming Policy Foundation has some news.

Apparently the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been hiding "good news" on climate change.

The "good news" the IPCC apparently tried to hide is that the world's climate system is less sensitive to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than some scientists think it is.

The bad news for the GWPF – a secretly funded organisation founded by UK climate science sceptic Lord Nigel Lawson - is that before the ink has even dried on their new report, the organisation has been accused of cherry-picking facts to make their argument stick.

And in more bad news, one of the researchers cited by the GWPF report has told me that even if Lawson's think tank is right, then we're heading for 3C of global warming by the end of the century (which is actually very bad news).

The new GWPF report in question is written by "independent climate scientist" Nic Lewis and "freelance science writer" Marcel Crok. …"  
{...}

I asked Professor Forster for his views on the GWPF paper. Perhaps Lewis and Crok should have done the same?  A baldly honest Professor Forster told me:

Lewis and Crok use methods developed by Jonathan Gregory and myself to infer a lower climate sensitivity than that quoted in IPCC AR5. Whilst our techniques are powerful they have uncertainties and do not necessarily produce more robust estimates of climate sensitivity than other methods, as they make crude assumptions and suffer from data quality issues. Climate sensitivity remains an uncertain quantity. Nevertheless, even employing the lowest estimates suggested by Lewis and Crok, we expect continued and significant warming out to 2100 of around 3C above preindustrial if we continue to emit CO2 at current levels.

{…}

I asked Sherwood what he thought of the GWPF report. He told me:

The report is standard cherry-picking.  It offers no new evidence not already considered by the IPCC, relying very heavily on a few strands of evidence that seem to point toward lower sensitivity while ignoring all the evidence pointing to higher sensitivity.

It relies heavily on the estimate by Forster and Gregory, which was an interesting effort but whose methodology has been shown not to work; this study did not cause the IPCC to conclude that sensitivity had to be low, even though both Forster and Gregory were IPCC lead authors and were obviously aware of their own paper.

(for the full story)

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Tamino  |  June 5, 2013

GWPF

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/gwpf/

"The “Global Warming Policy Foundation” has released a GWPF Background Paper by Benny Peiser.

It begins by stating what they claim to agree with the scientific establishment about on the subject:

A. Matters where we agree with the dominant scientific establishment and can quantify the outcome ...

{…}

I’ll agree with points 1 through 4. But what’s their explanation for point 5?

5. Since 1980 global temperatures have increased at an average rate of about 0.1C per decade. This is significantly slower than forecast by the vast majority of GCMs.

There are 5 major estimates of global average temperature, 3 for the surface, 2 for the lower troposphere (the lower layer of earth’s atmosphere). All make their data publicly available. ...

None of the data sources indicates a warming rate of 0.1 C/decade as claimed by the GWPF, they all indicate a faster rate. For the three surface-temperature data sets, the GWPF claim is just plain statistically rejected.

So what’s their basis for that claim? ...

In my opinion, their claim falls far short of an honest portrayal, very far short, and is the kind of failure to engage honestly which makes it impossible to have a rational discussion about global warming. …"
(for the full story)

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Tom Bawden   |  June 14, 2013  

Lord Lawson's climate-change think tank risks being dismantled after complaint it persistently misled public

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/lord-lawsons-climatechange-think-tank-risks-being-dismantled-after-complaint-it-persistently-misled-public-8659314.html

"Lord Lawson’s climate-change think tank faces being dismantled or even
wound down after a formal complaint that it has persistently misled the public prompted the statutory regulator to probe into the group.

Since Lord Lawson launched the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in November 2009 it has “persistently disseminated inaccurate and misleading information about climate change as part of its campaign against climate policies in the UK and overseas,” the complaint alleges.

The use of factually inaccurate material without a legitimate basis in science is an abuse of the foundation’s charitable status, which is all the more reprehensible because the public is more trusting of pronouncements made by charities, according to the complaint, filed by Bob Ward, head of policy at the Lord Stern’s Grantham Institute and a former communications director at the Royal Society.

“The foundation arrogantly ignores any challenges to the accuracy of the information it spreads, and has not been held to account for misleading the public. As I have discovered on numerous occasions, when the foundation is notified of inaccuracies, it simply refuses to admit it is wrong or to apologise,” said Mr Ward, who is a reviewer for the forthcoming International Governmental Panel on Climate Change report that will shape the action the world agrees to combat global warming. … "  (for the full story)

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also see: 

Is the Global Warming Policy Foundation complying with Charity Commission rules?

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/34578 

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Secret funding of climate sceptics is not restricted to the US

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/15/secret-funding-climate-sceptics-not-restricted-us

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Graham Readfearn, Leo Hickman and Rupert Neate  |  March 3, 2012

The Guardian Reveals Key Funder of Global Warming Policy Foundation Is Michael Hintze 

http://www.desmogblog.com/guardian-reveals-key-funder-global-warming-policy-foundation-michael-hintze

Cross-posted with permission from The Guardian
by Graham Readfearn, Leo Hickman and Rupert Neate

"Michael Hintze, a leading Conservative party donor who runs the £5bn hedge fund CQS, has emerged as a financial backer of the climate sceptic thinktank founded by former chancellor, Lord Nigel Lawson.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, launched by Lawson in 2009, regularly casts doubt on the science and cost of tackling climate change in the media and has called on climate scientists to show greater transparency, but has refused to reveal details of its donors. Leading Nasa climate scientist James Hansen calls it "one link in a devious manipulation of public opinion [regarding climate change]."

On Monday, Downing Street was forced to reveal that Hintze was among the leading Tory donors who were invited to privately dine with David Cameron at a "thank you" dinner following the general election in 2010. The revelation that Hintze, who has also donated £1.5m to the Tory party, is connected with climate change scepticism will be an embarassment for David Cameron, who has pledged to lead the "greenest government ever".

The Guardian has seen correspondence sent by Hintze in which he appears to indicate he is financially supporting the educational charity. Last October, Hintze emerged as a key figure in the lobbying scandal which forced the resignation of the then defence secretary Liam Fox after it was revealed by the Guardian that Hintze had given free office space to Fox's controversial associate Adam Werrity and flown both Fox and Werrity on his private jet. Hintze's former charity adviser, Oliver Hylton, later lost his job at CQS after it was revealed that he was the sole director of Pargav Ltd, a company which paid for Werrity's global travel and derived its income from Conservative party donors. …" (link)

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   Leo Hickman  |  20 January 2011  

Global Warming Policy Foundation donor funding levels revealed

Accounts show extent to which secretive thinktank is funded by anonymous donors rather than income from membership fees

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/20/global-warming-policy-foundation-donors

"Accounts filed with the Charities Commission and Companies House in the last week show for the first time the extent to which the secretive Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded in November 2009, is funded by anonymous donors, compared with income from membership fees. Its total income for the period up to 31 July 2010 was £503,302, of which only £8,168 came from membership contributions. The foundation charges a minimum annual membership fee of £100 .

The accounts include a statement from Lawson in which he justifies why the foundation, which has called for increased transparency and scrutiny of climate scientists, refuses to reveal the identity of its donors: "The soil we till is highly controversial, and anyone who puts their head above the parapet has to be prepared to endure a degree of public vilification. For that reason we offer all our donors the protection of anonymity." …"

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DeSmogBlog.com has done quite a few articles and reviews of GWPF below I share quotes from a five part series by Ma Rodger - I encourage you to link to the full length originals and while you're there check out search results for GWPF

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MA Rodger  |  January 27, 2012

What Does GWPF Really Stand For?

http://www.desmogblog.com/what-does-gwpf-really-stand

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a UK-based climate-sceptic think-tank founded in November 2009 by Lord Lawson. Within two years of its launch, a survey of scepticism in the global media by Oxford University's RISJ had added a final chapter showing the GWPF had gained success in 'inserting itself into the (UK) national discourse' and that its founder and its director had become 'the two most quoted sceptics by far' within the UK national press.

The GWPF believes it has made a difference, saying of itself 'The key to the success of the GWPF is the trust and credibility that we have earned in the eyes of a growing number of policy makers, journalists and the interested public.' Yet the GWPF has also been criticised for being secretive, misinformed, wrong and perverse.

Here a series of posts will examine the GWPF and some of its publications to discover what GWPF really stands for. Are they a company of virtuous paragons? Are they a pack of unprincipled scoundrels? In this first post, we’ll explore the background of this climate denial “think” tank. ...  (read on)

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MA Rodger  |  2012-03-09

Debunking the GWPF Briefing Paper No2 - The Sahel Is Greening

http://www.desmogblog.com/debunking-gwpf-briefing-paper-no2-sahel-greening

Here we examine GWPF's Briefing Paper No2 - The Sahel Is Greening by Philipp Mueller who is the Assistant Director of the GWPF. Coverage of the greening Sahel has been in the media for a decade now, so this cannot be too controversial a subject, can it?

GWPF BRIEFING PAPER No2 - SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUBJECT


Mueller explains what this Briefing Paper No2 is about in the first three sentences.

'Global warming has both positive and negative impacts. However, very often only the negative consequences are reported and the positive ones omitted. This article will show an example of a positive effect of warming.' 

Mueller then sets out to show how the Sahel is enjoying a 'positive impact' of global warming.

Yet already here is a glaring omission. Despite this being an ideal opportunity to list out all the other 'positive impacts', Mueller fails even to hint at what any of the others might be. Never mind. We still have the Sahel. Or do we? ...

Mueller's account contains many omissions and misrepresentations. The list is so long that the full account of Mueller's errors are appended to the bottom of this post and just a summary is presented here. ...

APPENDIX - Details of Omissions & Misrepresentations within Mueller's paper. ...  (read on)

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MA Rodger  |  2012-03-15
Debunking GWPF Briefing Paper No3 - The Truth About Greenhouse Gases

http://www.desmogblog.com/debunking-gwpf-briefing-paper-no3-truth-about-greenhouse-gases

The GWPF Briefing Paper No3 The Truth About Greenhouse Gases examined here is a longer document (all 5,500 words of it) written by "a working scientist" (a physicist to be exact) who tells us he has "a better background than most in the physics of climate." This sounds good as there is much physics involved in the subject of greenhouse gases, things like the EM spectrum and climate forcings. So on face value, this GWPF Briefing Paper No3 should be a worthwhile read. …

WHAT IT'S REALLY ABOUT


Sadly, the paper actually has very little to say about greenhouse gases. A mere 5% is devoted to CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Other than brief comments about water vapour, the report fails even to mention any of the other greenhouse gases.

Instead the paper devotes 13% of its length to defining safe limits of CO2 for breathing, a further 13% to all that horrid science being done by climatologists, 15% to the oh-so-hard time skeptics have trying to confront this horrid science and 54% explaining how science has been corrupted and truthfulness lost.
So it is ironic that “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases” will not be found in this GWPF Briefing Paper No3. ... (read on)

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MA Rodger  |  2012-03-20
GWPF & The Hockey Stick Curve

http://www.desmogblog.com/gwpf-hockey-stick-curve

Despite its title, Briefing Paper No3 said very little about such gases. Yet one subject (not directly to do with greenhouse gases) was discussed at some length within the paper. As it is also discussed in other GWPF papers, the subject will be examined in this fourth post of the series.

AN IMPOSSIBLE HOCKEY STICK AVERSION

In Briefing Paper No3, perhaps the strongest accusation made by the author Professor William Happer concerns the IPCC who allegedly “rewrote the climate history” by deleting the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age (MWP & LIA) from the climate record.

Happer tells us that both MWP & LIA were “clearly shown in the 1990” first IPCC report. Then eleven years later, according to Happer, they were both simply expunged from the climate record for no valid reason.

Indeed, within the 2001 third IPCC report the MWP & LIA are entirely absent from the graph that according to Happer is “not supported by observational data.” This is the dreaded “Hockey Stick” curve.

Can the IPCC really be responsible for such skulduggery?

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Happer11.jpg

“CLIMATE HISTORY” OR A STAB IN THE DARK?

The version of “climate history” preferred by Happer was actually rather ill-defined. This “climate history” that Happer is so wedded to appears in the First IPCC Assessment Report in 1990. It is a “schematic diagram of global temperature variations” covering the last 1,000 years (Figure 7.1c, reproduced above). Being “schematic” it has an un-numbered vertical scale and the “dotted line nominally represents conditions near the beginning of the twentieth century.” ...  (read on)

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MA Rodger  |  2012-03-31
What The IPCC Ignores, According To The GWPF

http://www.desmogblog.com/what-ipcc-ignores-according-gwpf

... This fifth post examines one of the assertions made within GWPF Briefing Paper No1. The paper boldly claims that the findings of the UN IPCC are too narrow and that the work of “many scientists” is being ignored.

Can it be true? Is there “an alternative (scientific) view“ being overlooked by the IPCC? This would be a monumental discovery! Forget Briefing Paper No1. Let's examine those overlooked scientists.

Yet despite the importance of this assertion, Briefing Paper No1 only manages to name one of these “many scientists.” He is Syun-Ichi Akasofu whose cited paper will now be examined. ...

THE THEORY AS STATED

Dr Akasofu is an octogenarian geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His 2010 paper "On Recovery From The Little Ice Age” cited by Briefing Paper No1 was published in Natural Science (Vol 2.11) whose publishers raise some achademic eyebrows. The 2010 paper is a much shortened version of an unpublished 2009 paper (50Mb pdf).

In these papers Akasofu presents the following thesis: . . .

BEST WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER

Akasofu would have been much helped in his thesis had the recent BEST land temperature analysis been available to him (as graphed below). He would then have been better able to concentrate on his linearity theory rather than concentrating as he did on establishing a general rise in recent temperatures stretching back to 1800-50 and to the end of the Little Ice Age. Indeed, his linear theory is sometimes conflated within this Little Ice Age linkage.

Even so, the total of evidence he presents for linearity is particularly sparse and also flawed. ...

A LINE WITH LITTLE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

Beyond the temperature record itself, the sole evidence Akasofu advances directly to support the linearity theory is but one single sea level rise study, Holgate 2007. The linear findings of this small study (it uses just 9 tidal gauges although all with nearly continuous records) are not reproduced in other studies. ...

A SHAKY WOBBLY THEORY

More damning however is the quality of the evidence provided to support his wobble that he says overlays his linear trend. According to Akasofu's wobble theory, global temperatures should now be in decline.

Akasofu states this decline is evident yet none of his evidence shows such a decline. …  (read on)

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Further reading:

SOU  |  September 29, 2013

Nigel Lawson and the GWPF is "confused and meaningless"

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/09/nigel-lawson-and-gwpf-is-confused-and.html

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WILL STRAW |  March 1, 2010

Five questions for Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/03/five-questions-for-lord-lawson-and-benny-peiser/

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CampaignCC.org  |  'Sceptics' Hall of Shame

http://www.campaigncc.org/climate_change/sceptics/hall_of_shame

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Fiona Harvey  |  TheGuardian.com, Friday 7 March 2014 

Global warming is a misleading term because it actually sounds quite nice

There has been a big failure in communicating climate change to the public, but we have to deal with it – before it deals with us

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/07/global-warming-misleading-term-climate-change

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SkepticalScience.com's search results for "GWPF" brings up another collection of examples.  
Check it out, click here

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I was checking out HotWhopper's new search engine this morning, when it linked me to an interesting discovery over at AndThenTheresPhysics.  It appears Dan Olner has improved on the GWPF webpage banner.

Dan Olner (@DanOlner)