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Tag: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

What has Reform UK Said About Climate Change?
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Article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice speaking at a press conference in August 2026. Credit: GB News / YouTube
“Climate change has always happened. It always will.”
That was the remark made by Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice on Monday about this summer’s record heatwaves, which have caused wildfires and droughts across the country.
The Boston and Skegness MP added: “When it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it. And if it means that English wine and sparkling wine gets better and better, fantastic. […] Let’s celebrate some of these things rather than just be sort of doom and gloom about it.”
This wasn’t the first time a Reform politician has dismissed climate change as a threat or spread false or misleading arguments about it.
DeSmog has been covering Reform’s climate denial for seven years – since its founding as the Brexit Party in 2019 – along with its opposition to net zero targets and support for fossil fuels.
The party has received £24 million from fossil fuel interests, representing two-thirds of its total income to date. Those donations, and the party’s anti-climate commitments, stand in stark contrast to the lived reality of Reform constituents, who are also among those most at risk from extreme heat and flooding.
As the truth about and consequences of climate change become increasingly clear, here are some of the wildest climate claims made by Reform and its politicians.
‘The climate has always changed’
This week was only the latest example of Tice dismissing the extent of human-caused climate change by referring to fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature over several millennia.
In an interview with Bloomberg in May, Tice said: “Look, the climate’s always changed for millions of years. And it goes through cycles.”
In a June 2024 interview on BBC 5 Live, Reform leader Nigel Farage made a similar claim. “We’ve had climate change for millions of years,” he said. When told, “Not at this rapidity”, he replied: “How do we know? Our scientific knowledge of this is very small.”
And, in February 2025, Farage told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London: “Now, there are times in our past when CO2 in the atmosphere has been much, much higher than it is today, and that’s before people drove 4×4 Chelsea tractors.”
In fact, climate scientists have concluded that global warming since the industrial revolution is “unparalleled”, and stated that the contribution of humans is “unequivocal”. Scientists at NASA found that the last 10 years have been the hottest on record.
When Bloomberg showed Tice some graphs demonstrating this, the MP threatened to walk out of the interview.
‘CO2 is plant food’ and ‘not a pollutant’
Reform figures have also dismissed the role of CO2 emissions in human-caused climate change.
In November 2023, Tice posted a video on Twitter attacking climate policy, with the caption: “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food! We need to challenge the climate change nonsense!”
While plants absorb CO2, this doesn’t alter the fact that unprecedented emissions are trapping heat in the atmosphere.
At the 2025 ARC conference, Farage said: “The one thing I hear that drives me absolutely potty is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant! That’s what they tell us! That clearly is absolutely nuts.”
As the website Skeptical Science notes, whether CO2 is a pollutant depends on the context: “Although it has some very important and beneficial effects, CO2 meets the legal and encyclopaedic definitions of a ‘pollutant’, and human CO2 emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare.”
In February 2025, in an interview on Sky News, Tice said: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change [the] climate”.
In a 2021 appearance on GB News, Farage attacked what he called “this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science”.
In fact, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.
It has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
In the Sky News interview, Tice – a property developer with no scientific background – called the IPCC’s evidence “absolute garbage”.
In response, Sky quoted Dr George Adamson from King’s College London, who said the idea that Tice had “discovered something that climate scientists don’t know about is of course preposterous”.
Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London added: “We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has, to the best of our knowledge, in the last million years”.
Sunspots and volcanoes
Senior Reform figures have also repeatedly spread the false claim that climate change is caused by natural phenomena including volcanoes.
During the 2024 general election campaign, Tice appeared on BBC Breakfast and blamed climate change on “the power of the sun or volcanoes”.
In his February 2025 Sky News interview, Tice said: “The arrogant naivete of people who think you can stop the power of the sun, stop the power of volcanoes.”
At the 2025 ARC conference, Farage said: “I’m not a scientist. I can’t tell you whether CO2 is leading to warming or not, but there are so many other massive factors.”
He went on to claim that Patrick Moore, a TV astronomer, had told him 20 years ago that “when it comes to carbon dioxide levels, and when it comes to warming and cooling, let me assure you that sunspot activity and underwater volcanic activity will always have a bigger impact on the environment than man himself ever can”. Farage added: “I’ve very much stuck to that view.”
These claims about sunspots and volcanoes have long been debunked by climate experts. For example, the sun’s energy has been decreasing while Earth’s temperature has increased. Volcanoes emit around 1 percent as much CO2 as produced by humans every year.
Farage has long opposed climate action. When he was leader of the UK Independence Party prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum, the party’s manifestos pledged to rip up green measures, repeal the UK’s Climate Change Act, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement, and support fossil fuel extraction.
‘Climate lockdowns’
Reform politicians have also spread baseless claims about climate and environmental policy being part of a plot to take away people’s rights.
For example, posting on Twitter in 2023, Farage warned that London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) would lead to “climate lockdowns”.
He said: “Mark my words this isn’t going to end with 20mph zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods. No – no. This is the beginning of climate lockdowns. We will have, in years to come, days where we’re told we can’t drive, we can’t do this, you can’t do that, while Sadiq Khan is leading the way. Remember you heard it here first. Climate lockdowns.”
This is a conspiracy theory accusing left-wing politicians of making plans to impose Covid-style restrictions under the guise of tackling climate change. It has been spread by fringe groups that see anti-pollution measures as part of a “Big Brother” dictatorship.
Meanwhile, three years after being implemented, London’s ULEZ scheme has resulted in a dramatic fall in deadly air pollution and better lung capacity among children. No climate lockdowns have come to pass.
‘Net zero will destroy the economy’
This week, Tice also repeated Reform’s position that trying to cut emissions to net zero is a terrible mistake. He said: “Of course, the climate changes, but where is the evidence that net zero is going to stop it? Where is the evidence? There is no evidence.”
In his June 2024 interview with the BBC, Farage called net zero “an act of mindless self-harm” that would cause the UK to “deindustrialise” and “put massive bills on the poor, when it doesn’t benefit global CO2 emissions at all”.
Net zero targets are based on the advice of climate scientists. The IPCC has said global emissions must be cut to net zero by 2050 to limit warming to 1.5C and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Failure to do so would have vast economic consequences.
The independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than one percent of the UK’s annual economic output. Failing to get climate change under control would cost more than net zero, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
This has been witnessed this summer, with academic estimates suggesting that the heatwaves have cost the economy £4.4 billion so far. This year’s harvest has been the worst on record, leading to consternation from British farmers – including one of Reform’s own agriculture advisors.
The CCC has also said that the entire cost of net zero would be less than a single fossil fuel price shock, such as we have seen during the Ukraine and Iran wars.
By contrast, it’s estimated that Reform’s policy of scrapping clean energy schemes and expanding fossil fuel exploration would wipe £92 billion off GDP and risk over 60,000 jobs.
Article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Nigel Farage is scathing at the £250,000 cost to the taxpayer of his unnecessary and ridiculous Clacton-on-Sea election campaign that he caused to avoid scrutiny and acccountability for the £5MILLION ‘gift’ that he didn’t declare.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
22 August 2026
Nigel Farage’s Anti-Climate Record
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Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog dated Jun 3, 2024
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage speaking at a Reform UK press conference on 3 June 2024. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
The Reform UK leader is a vocal opponent of net zero policies, and has questioned the basis of established climate science.
Pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has announced that he will be standing to be an MP at the upcoming general election and will be replacing Richard Tice as leader of the populist party Reform UK.
Farage, who says that he hopes to become “the voice of opposition” in Parliament, has long been a vocal opponent of climate action and a critic of climate science – campaigning for a referendum on the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
When he was the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the party’s 2015 and 2017 election manifestos pledged to rip up green measures, repeal the UK’s Climate Change Act, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement – the flagship deal to tackle global emissions – and support fossil fuel extraction.
These reflected Farage’s personal views on climate action. In 2015, he told the libertarian website Spiked: “I think wind energy is the biggest collective economic insanity I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything more stupid, more illogical, or more irrational.”
Farage is a presenter on GB News, the right-wing broadcaster that has regularly provided a platform to climate science denial and attacks on green reforms since it launched in June 2021.
Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”
The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, while scientists at NASA have found that the last 10 years were the hottest on record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest since records began in 1880.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Farage has been a vocal critic of net zero. He has claimed that the policy is an “act of self harm” and has called for it to be scrapped.
He has said: “It will not bring economic benefits. It will make everybody a whole lot poorer. And yet the lemmings in Parliament are taking us towards an economic cliff,” adding: “I can’t think of an issue on which the public and politicians are more divided.”
In fact, politicians are markedly less in favour of climate action than the general public. New polling by YouGov for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has shown that almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the public believe the best way to achieve energy security is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and instead expand the use of renewable energy, compared to 48 percent of MPs.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than 1 percent of UK GDP, while the government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility – has said that, “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Farage has also claimed that, “If green technology is going to work, it ought to work without ordinary folk subsidising it” – referring to the government grants and investment dedicated to developing clean energy sources. The UK government has given £20 billion more in support to fossil fuel producers than their renewable energy peers since 2015.
Farage has also spread conspiracy theories about anti-pollution measures being used to control people’s lives.
In a video posted on Twitter, he argued that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s calls to reduce air pollution by cutting car engine use would pave the way to “climate lockdowns”.
He said: “Mark my words this isn’t going to end with 20mph zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods. No no. This is the beginning of climate lockdowns. We will have, in years to come, days where we’re told we can’t drive, we can’t do this, you can’t do that while Sadiq Khan is leading the way. Remember you heard it here first. Climate lockdowns.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has highlighted how climate lockdown claims are part of “a conspiratorial narrative which claims that global elites are using climate change as a pretext to restrict individual freedoms and civil liberties.”
Farage and Reform UK
Farage used his announcement to state his belief that Labour will win the general election, which will be held on 4 July, and that the Conservative Party has “crushed itself”. With the Tories predicted to lose in a landslide, Farage appears to believe that he can lead a new right-wing movement.
The Reform leader was already a key figure in the party prior to today’s announcement, effectively owning the party as well as serving as its president. Reform operates as a private company without a democratic structure, so Farage’s majority shareholding meant that could have appointed himself as leader at any time.
Despite Farage failing to be elected as an MP when he stood in seven previous general elections, and Reform only winning two councillors in May’s local elections, polls indicate that Farage may succeed in becoming the MP for Clacton.
If this is the case, Farage will be advocating in Parliament for the anti-climate policies that have been proposed by his party.
Reform has called for the UK’s net zero emissions target to be scrapped, and has proposed holding a referendum on the policy – a campaign launched by Farage in 2022.
The party’s policy agenda states that: “Westminster’s net zero plans send our jobs and money overseas, making us net poorer and net colder”, adding that net zero policies are “net stupid”.
The party’s former leader Tice, who will now become its chairman, is a prominent climate science denier. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis”, and has also expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Of the £2.5 million that Reform UK has received in donations since the 2019 election, around 92 percent (£2.3 million) of that income has been given by fossil fuel interests, polluting industries, or climate science deniers.
Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog dated Jun 3, 2024
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
10 August 2026
Reform ‘Advisor’ Launches Climate Denial Group in Poland
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Article by Marta Kasztelan, Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Heartland UK-Europe executive director Lois Perry speaking to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on his GB News show. Credit: GB News / YouTube
Lois Perry, who helps to run Reform Friends of Israel, is one of the figures behind a new Heartland Institute branch in central Europe.
A close ally of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has helped to launch the central European offshoot of a U.S. climate denial group alongside far-right figures.
Lois Perry – executive director of Heartland UK-Europe – claimed on social media last week that she was “In Poland to launch [the] Heartland Institute Central Europe”.
The U.S.-based Heartland Institute has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”, and has strong ties to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
At the launch of the new branch in Warsaw on 13 May, Perry appeared alongside Mariusz Zagórski, a speechwriter for Poland’s former president Andrzej Duda of the national conservative Law and Justice Party. Zagórski, who will be the branch’s official representative, told DeSmog it would “propose solutions” on energy costs and “evaluate climate policy”.
The Heartland Institute’s U.S. president James Taylor was also in attendance. Taylor is a Trump ally who has dismissed what he calls the “mythical global warming crisis”.
They were joined by representatives from Law and Justice, the far-right Confederation Party, and unnamed “guests from the U.S., Great Britain, and Austria”. The event was hosted by the Stanczyk Club, a space co-owned by the influential conservative legal advocacy group Ordo Iuris, which campaigns to restrict LGBT and abortion rights, and has co-authored a plan to dismantle the EU.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Heartland Institute has been working with far-right parties in recent years to oppose EU climate legislation, while Farage helped to launch Heartland UK-Europe in December 2024. The group didn’t respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment but previously said that it “stands resolute in its mission to advance sound science, economic prosperity, and individual liberty”.
Perry – a former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader who ran the anti-net zero lobby group CAR26 – is the strategy director of Reform Friends of Israel, a group affiliated with the party that officially launched in February.
Perry has repeatedly claimed to be advising Reform on its climate and energy policy, and told a conservative Polish TV channel this week that she has an “unofficial but very close role” in the party. Perry has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”. In reality, the world’s foremost climate science body, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
https://www.desmog.com/map/364
Raphaël Kergueno of Transparency International EU told DeSmog that the Heartland Institute’s growing presence in Europe was “emblematic” of “lobbying efforts in Brussels” from pro-Trump groups.
“This European Parliament mandate has seen a notable uptick in lobbying by MAGA-affiliated organisations, including by the Heartland Institute,” he said.
Kenneth Haar, a researcher and campaigner at the transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, added: “All over Europe we see climate policies under pressure from corporate interests, and from the political right. Views that were regarded as absurd and fringe only a few years ago are now part of the debate.”
Poland Plans
According to Zagórski, the keynote address at the Warsaw event was delivered by Szymon Sikorski of Kraków Agricultural University, who said that climate change is “not necessarily caused by humans”, but is the result of “more complex and long-term effects.”
Zagórski told DeSmog after the event that Heartland wants to do for Poland and central Europe what it does in the U.S. — draft energy policy for politicians.
“The Heartland Institute has been evaluating the availability of various energy sources in different U.S. states,” he said, pointing to a report adopted by lawmakers in Louisiana. Zagórski added: “We want to prepare similar reports for countries in our region, to propose such solutions to our decision-makers.”
Zagórski, who sits on the advisory board of Poland’s farmers’ union Solidarity, told DeSmog he would work closely with Perry in London and Heartland’s base in Chicago to create a political nucleus in Poland.
“Warsaw is a hub for many strong conservative groups, farmers’ unions, and organisations that criticise or perhaps evaluate climate policy,” he said – adding that the launch event proved that “Warsaw can be a hub from which these activities can be organised.”
Speaking at the launch, Tomasz Sakiewicz, the head of right-wing Polish broadcaster TV Republika said: “For years, I’ve been advocating for the creation of think tanks, as they have them in the U.S.” – adding that the Heartland Institute could “inspire” Poland with “certain blueprints” modelled on America.
Farage, Perry, and Heartland
In September 2024, Farage spoke at a fundraiser for the Heartland Institute in Chicago, where he called for the group to set up a branch “across the Pond”.
Three months later, the Reform leader was the star speaker at the launch of Heartland UK-Europe in London. Perry, who reportedly first met Farage on his GB News show, was appointed its executive director.
At Reform’s annual conference in September 2025, at which Heartland hosted an event on energy policy, Perry told Politico that she had “held conversations with policymakers within Reform” and was advising the party.
Farage also joined Heartland at a gathering in January this year at a Mayfair club, with attendees including former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Reform, which is leading UK-wide polls and won 14 councils in this month’s local elections, campaigns to scrap climate policies and dramatically increase the UK’s fossil fuel production.
The Heartland Institute, which was founded in 1984 and originally worked with tobacco giant Philip Morris to deny the harms caused by smoking, received at least $676,000 (around £500,800) between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil.
Heartland previously told DeSmog that its “support comes from a diverse array of individuals and organisations who share our vision for a freer, more prosperous world.”
Heartland UK-Europe executive director Lois Perry speaking on Polish podcast 13 Piętro in May 2026.

Credit: 13 Piętro / YouTube
As DeSmog revealed, Reform has received £24 million from donors with fossil fuel interests – more than two thirds of its total income since being founded in 2019.
A number of senior Reform figures deny the scientifically established contribution of carbon dioxide to climate change. Farage himself has claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.
On her recent trip to Poland, Perry promoted Reform’s political agenda. In an interview with 13 Piętro, a podcast on TV Republika – an outlet close to the Law and Justice Party – Perry described net zero as “the deliberate de-industrialisation of the United Kingdom”, adding: “We’re going to abolish it on day one. No more subsidies, no more net zero.”
Perry added: “I did a conference recently with a bunch of woke net zero fanatics. And I stood up and said, ‘I advise Nigel Farage on all net zero policy, and I advise all of you guys to go think about getting another job, because the money is being switched off.’”
Reform was contacted for comment.
MAGA World
Perry has also claimed that the Heartland Institute “has been extremely influential in helping to shape policy at the highest level” in the Trump administration.
In May, she and Taylor attended CPAC events in Hungary and Poland alongside key Trump supporters – including Kristi Noem, the U.S. government’s then head of Homeland Security.
Taylor claimed that he “met with some very influential people at the top of the Law and Justice party” during CPAC Poland, while Perry said they “made some extraordinary progress in Poland and Hungary and some massive connections”.
Poland’s current President Karol Nawrocki, a Law and Justice Party ally who was elected last May, is a Trump supporter and earlier this month floated the idea of a national referendum on the EU’s climate policies.
In May 2025, days before Poland’s presidential election, Trump’s allies gathered at CPAC Poland to rally support for Nawrocki. Noem used the event to promise U.S. military assistance if Nawrocki won the vote.
However, last week, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unexpectedly cancelled a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to the country.
The U.S. State Department is reportedly seeking to fund ideological allies in Europe, while Trump acolytes have campaigned across the continent in support of far-right parties.
However, they lost an ally with the defeat of Viktor Orbán in last month’s Hungarian elections, despite U.S. Vice President JD Vance campaigning for the now former Hungarian prime minister ahead of the vote.
Orbán’s government had significant ties to Reform, with senior figure Matthew Goodwin receiving direct funds from the Hungarian state, and Reform politicians including Farage publicly praising Orbán’s regime as a model for the UK.
“The recent change in government in Hungary has made it much more difficult to launch alt-right initiatives in that country today,” said political and disinformation analyst Anna Mierzynska. “That is why they are trying in Poland.”
Article by Marta Kasztelan, Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
29 May 2026
Nigel Farage Accepted £10,000 Gifts from Petrostate
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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi, December 2025. Credit: Nigel Farage / X
The leader of Reform, a pro-oil party, received lavish hospitality from Abu Dhabi.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage received freebies worth £10,000 from the Abu Dhabi government, new records show.
Farage’s latest register of interests shows that he accepted flights and accommodation to attend the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 Grand Prix in December, paid for by the regime that runs the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This included a front-row “paddock” pass to the event worth £4,500.
The records show that Farage also attended “meetings” during his visit.
The Reform leader has previously mocked Prime Minister Keir Starmer for receiving gifts from donors.
Reform campaigns for the UK to dramatically expand its fossil fuel production, scrap its clean energy policies, and dismantle its climate targets.
The UAE is an autocratic monarchy and petrostate. Roughly 30 percent of the country’s GDP is directly based on its oil and gas output.
Reform received 92 percent of its donations between the 2019 and 2024 UK elections from polluting sources and climate science deniers, while its treasurer Nick Candy has claimed the party is actively raising money from oil executives.
Senior party figures have also praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” agenda, which has seen his administration recently capture Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and pledge that the U.S. oil industry will “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country”.
Farage denies basic climate science, claiming it’s “absolutely nuts” for carbon dioxide to be considered a pollutant. The party is being advised by the Heartland Institute, a U.S.-based pro-Trump climate denial group. Farage helped to launch Heartland’s UK-EU branch in December last year.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.”
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
Key individuals in Reform have also heaped praise on the UAE in recent months.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice has said he travels to the UAE “every six to eight weeks” to visit his partner, Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakeshott, who moved to Dubai in January 2025.
Tice has praised the UAE for its sense of national pride, work ethic, law and order, integration of migrants, and energy sector, while stating that the UK is “decadent” and “going bust”.
In an article last January for the website Arabian Gulf Business Insight, Candy praised the UAE’s crime prevention and “robust law enforcement”, adding: “Coupled with a high standard of living, excellent healthcare and top-tier schools, the UAE offers a lifestyle that few other locations can match.”
Candy also lauded “the wisdom and visionary nature of the UAE’s leadership”, writing that “the quality of government officials is mind-blowing”. By contrast, he said that Western countries are ruled by “second-tier individuals” who “allow political agendas to get in the way of what is best for the country”.
The UAE does not hold popular elections, and there are no political parties. Critics of the government are often jailed, while migrant workers face “widespread abuses” according to Human Rights Watch, including wage theft and passport confiscation.
The country also discriminates against women and its penal code allows the authorities to arrest people for campaigns promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
Reform was approached for comment.
Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.
2 February 2026
The Telegraph’s Record of Climate Falsehoods
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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
The Daily Telegraph front page. Credit: Steven May / Alamy
The newspaper has been scolding the BBC for its editorial failings, while issuing a string of climate corrections.
The Telegraph, which has accused the BBC of bias and a lack of editorial rigour, has been forced to amend a swathe of climate inaccuracies.
The BBC’s director-general and CEO resigned this weekend after a critical review of the broadcaster’s coverage was leaked to The Telegraph.
The Telegraph has used this opportunity to slam the BBC – saying that the “BBC has just signed its own death warrant” and that its future is “now in doubt”. The paper is also reporting that the BBC is now reviewing its climate and energy coverage over accusations of bias.
However, The Telegraph has repeatedly made basic errors in relation to its climate coverage in recent times.
According to its corrections and clarifications page, The Telegraph published four articles in December and January that included the false claim that Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband plans to build 1 billion solar panels to meet his net zero emissions targets.
In reality, reaching net zero by 2050 will require a tenth of that figure – 100 million solar panels.
The Telegraph has repeatedly castigated the BBC in recent days for its apparent lack of fairness, yet the newspaper frequently attacks its opponents using hyperbolic, incendiary language – even when its facts are wrong.
One of the reports that used the false solar panels statistic was entitled, “Miliband’s eco lunacy will wreck Britain and enrich the Chinese dictatorship”.
In an article from Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice entitled, “Ed Miliband’s solar farm building spree will ruin our countryside for ever”, the newspaper also claimed that the solar panels set to be installed over the next decade will cover an area of farmland the size of Greater London – a falsehood that had to be corrected.
Tice is a notorious climate science denier who has suggested that CO2 is “plant food”.
Other Telegraph falsehoods have included the amount of undersea cables and overland power lines needed to reach net zero, the amount that would be saved by manufacturers if “net zero costs” were scrapped from bills, and that Britain has been “paying the highest electricity prices in the world for second year running”.
The BBC has made 33 corrections to its coverage overall this year, compared with 114 corrections from The Telegraph.
“Looking to The Daily Telegraph as an arbiter of journalistic accuracy and ethics is like calling on the fox to give you advice on securing the hen house,” said Mic Wright, author of Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn’t and Why it Matters.
“The paper’s attacks on the BBC are not remotely done in good faith and are the result of the publisher’s ideological and commercial interests. There is no world in which The Telegraph’s output would survive the level of scrutiny applied to the BBC’s journalism.”
The leaked review of BBC editorial decisions was produced by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee. He claimed that a speech by Donald Trump during the 6 January 2021 riots on Capitol Hill in Washington DC had been selectively edited by Panorama to suggest that Trump was encouraging the riot.
Trump is now threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion (£760,000).
While Trump’s speech was edited to distort his words, he did tell his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol”, after which rioters smashed through barricades, ransacked the U.S. Capitol, and injured 174 police officers. When he re-entered office in January 2025, Trump retrospectively pardoned all 1,600 individuals who were charged or convicted in relation to the attempted coup.
“It’s easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world’s number one news source,” said Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. “We can’t let him.
“The BBC belongs to all of us here in the UK. The prime minister and leaders from across the political spectrum should be united in telling Trump to keep his hands off it.”
The Telegraph was approached for comment.
The Telegraph’s Climate Deniers
As DeSmog has shown, The Telegraph has ramped up its aggressive, inaccurate, anti-climate attacks over recent years.
DeSmog’s analysis of opinion and editorial articles about the environment published on The Telegraph’s website in the first 100 days of the current Labour government found that 94 percent were anti-green – attacking or undermining climate science, policy and technological solutions, or environmental activists.
The Telegraph focused on Ed Miliband, with its columnists regularly deploying ad hominem attacks, labelling him “red Ed” and “mad Ed”. In one article, columnist Allison Pearson called Miliband “thoroughly mental Mili”.
In an article last week about the BBC, Pearson said: “We have become accustomed to BBC journalists lying by omission and the prioritisation of pet subjects – I swear there isn’t a spark caused by two sticks rubbed together in southern Europe that hasn’t been seized on by climate editor Justin Rowlatt as evidence of man-made global warming.”
Pearson has formal ties to climate science denial groups – a common feature of The Telegraph’s climate commentators.
She is a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.
Telegraph journalist and GWPF director Allison Pearson. Credit: Keith Morris / Hay Ffotos / Alamy
Fellow Telegraph columnist Lord David Frost is a director of Net Zero Watch, the GWPF’s campaign arm. Frost – who has no scientific training – has claimed that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” to Britain. He was recently appointed director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, an anti-climate lobby group that received funding from oil major BP for decades.
Individuals associated with the GWPF wrote at least 48 articles in The Telegraph during Labour’s first 100 days, yet their ties to the climate denial group were not mentioned once by the newspaper.
“When disinformation is allowed to run rampant, this can have devastating consequences for democracy – as is already being seen in the United States,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat. “Clearly we all therefore have an interest in ensuring that every UK media outlet – including the BBC – maintains the highest possible standards of accuracy.
“Equally, anyone familiar with The Telegraph’s long track record of misleading climate coverage may have questions about their new-found enthusiasm for rigorous and accurate reporting.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.”
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
A previous DeSmog analysis found that, during the six-month period to 16 October 2023, 85 percent of The Telegraph’s editorials and opinion pieces on environmental issues were anti-green.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, previously said the editors of The Telegraph had “lost their minds when it comes to climate change”.
“Both newspapers [The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph] are campaigning against climate policies,” Ward told DeSmog. “They are bombarding their poor readers with laughable propaganda, particularly in their comment columns.”
Additional research by Joey Grostern
Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
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Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
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11 November 2025