Telegraph Columnist Allison Pearson Becomes Director of Climate Science Denial Group

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https://www.desmog.com/2023/05/02/telegraph-columnist-allison-pearson-becomes-director-of-climate-science-denial-group/

The newspaper’s chief interviewer and columnist joins an increasingly influential body of trustees at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The Daily Telegraph’s chief interviewer and columnist Allison Pearson has joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), one of the UK’s principal climate science denial groups. 

This appointment adds to the influence of the GWPF in the press and potentially the amount of sway that it holds over the Conservative Party. 

Pearson, who has written a number of articles criticising climate action, will be assuming a role on the board of trustees alongside former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who joined the GWPF in February and also serves as a trade adviser to the UK government.

Lord David Frost – a Conservative peer and former Cabinet Office minister who was appointed in November – is also a GWPF director, along with Terence Mordaunt, who has donated £342,500 to the Conservative Party and its MPs since 2008 via First Corporate Consultants and First Corporate Shipping. This includes £10,000 donated in March this year to Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt. 

The GWPF is a member of the Tufton Street network – an interconnected hub of think tanks and pressure groups that lobby against state action, including in the realm of climate change. The GWPF has criticised both the policies adopted by governments to address climate change, and the science underpinning these policies.

The group said in 2015 that “policies to ‘stop climate change’ are based on climate models that completely failed to predict the lack of warming for the past two decades”. It has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.

In September 2022 Net Zero Watch – the GWPF’s campaigning arm – published two reports rejecting climate science on the greenhouse effect. 

https://www.desmog.com/2023/05/02/telegraph-columnist-allison-pearson-becomes-director-of-climate-science-denial-group/

Continue ReadingTelegraph Columnist Allison Pearson Becomes Director of Climate Science Denial Group

Memo to the UK Conservative Party

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SUBJECT: Your new leader

HTF did she do PPE? HTF did she present a budget without consulting her cabinet over it?

She’s in the grip of the IEA and other insane Tufton Street think-tanks.

You’re on course for a serious clash. We need climate action immediately, we need no new oil and gas now. We don’t have time to feck about, the World is burning.

We can’t tolerate you having a bonkers, insane totally divorced from reality leader who has the infantile approach that things will happen simply by wishing them to be true. Put reins on her.

Continue ReadingMemo to the UK Conservative Party

COP26 New summary day 3

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I’m reaching a few conclusions about COP26. It isn’t serious about addressing climate change because governments are sucking up to the filthy rich and powerful. That’s what refusing to address aviation is about, all the private jets and Bezos and actors appearing. Aviation appears to be a good target for climate activism, it’s hugely damaging and far more likely to get public support. I’ll be going to my local airport on Saturday.

In UK and worldwide we need to elect some Greens or e.g. nationalist parties, with strong green policies. It’s happening anyway, Bristol is likely to elect some Green MPs at the next election. The Greens are taking votes from Labour and hopefully people will realise that the current Labour party is undeclared Tory and anti-democratic in party actions, Stalinist really. [ed: Stalinist as an insult: authoritarian dictatorship with a total disregard of others’ perpectives, crushing and destroying people.] It’s a shame that the elections are so far away in 2024.

The Brexit dark money lobby has a new target – climate change action

Officially the UK government has committed to Net Zero by 2050, but behind the scenes an organised, well-funded opposition to climate change action is growing on the Conservative Right. And many of those at the vanguard – and their tactics – come straight from the veterans of Brexit.

A classic example of this appeared in The Telegraph this week: the day before the Budget, it reported a YouGov survey that found a majority of the British public “want a referendum on Boris Johnson’s net zero plans” by the next general election – a majority of those who expressed a preference, that is.

Perhaps it’s because I spent so long looking at the dark money behind Brexit, but the first thing I thought while reading The Telegraph’s story was: “Who has paid a professional pollster to carry out a survey on a question nobody is asking?”

The answer is something called Car26.org. This, The Telegraph informed its readers, is a “new campaign group calling for a referendum on net zero proposals and a pause in eco regulations until such a ballot is held”.

Yep, you read that right. No climate change mitigation policies until a referendum on Net Zero. Sound familiar?

The taxpayer-funded European Research Group of Conservative MPs – which played a starring role in the UK’s exit from the EU – has largely morphed into the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. The Global Warming Policy Foundation — which long promoted climate change denialism — has been relaunched as Net Zero Watch. Wycombe MP Steve Baker, the “Brexit hardman”, is a leading light in both.

Boris Johnson races back from COP 26 on private jet to meet climate change sceptic pal

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Hours after telling world leaders in Glasgow to stop “quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2”, Mr Johnson controversially hopped on board a chartered private plane.

His spokesman defended the decision saying: “It is important that the prime minister is able to move around the country and we have obviously faced significant time restraints.”

A No 10 spokesperson said: “All travel decisions are made with consideration for security and time restraints.

Boris Johnson’s luxury private plane habit laid bare as he spends £216k on flights

‘I was jailed for protesting against climate change but Johnson refuses responsibility’

As world leaders come together this week at COP26, I write this from a cell in Wandsworth Prison where I am serving a 12-month sentence for a peaceful climate protest, after climbing on an aeroplane during Extinction Rebellion’s October Rebellion in 2019.

‘Reality check’: Global CO2 emissions shooting back to record levels

The world’s “carbon budget” is the total emissions allowed to retain a 50% chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C, but analysis shows this will be blown in 11 years if the current rate of emissions continues.

COP26 protests in Glasgow see five people arrested by police

Police have made five arrests as hundreds of climate activists marched through Glasgow as part of demonstrations around the Cop26 summit.

The protest was one of several in Glasgow on Wednesday, as the Cop26 summit discussed the financial system.

Police Scotland said on Wednesday evening that five arrests had been made.

Two of the arrests took place after a number of officers were sprayed with paint. Cans of spray paint were also seized.

COP26 Glasgow: Greta Thunberg and 58,000 activists expected

More than 58,000 activists including Greta Thunberg are set to protest in two COP26 rallies in Glasgow this weekend. 

It wasn’t just fancy world leaders and smug glossy fossil fuel parasites attending Cop26

First Dog on the Moon

Continue ReadingCOP26 New summary day 3