Bob Ward: IPCC corrects Richard Tol's erroneous suggestion that climate change would be good for the economy

by Bob Ward, The Guardian, October 17, 2014

Debris of a home that washed up on to the Mantoloking Bridge, New Jersey, US, after Superstorm Sandy hit the area. The incorrect claim in the IPCC report said small amounts of global warming could have positive economic effects. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has corrected a controversial claim that small amounts of global warming could have overall positive economic impacts, after I pointed out that it was based on inaccurate information.

The final version of the IPCC’s report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was published without fanfare on the web this week, including a chapter on Key Economic Sectors and Services.

The final draft of the chapter, which was published in April, featured a section on the aggregate economic impacts of climate change, containing the statement: “Climate change may be beneficial for moderate climate change but turn negative for greater warming.”

But the version published this week omits the statement because it was based on faulty data.

The statement had been inserted into the draft report at a late stage in the preparation process, and after it had been sent to independent reviewers, including me, for comment.

It was based on a paper by Richard Tol, a professor of economics at the University of Sussex, who was also a coordinating lead author on the economics chapter of the IPCC report.

The paper was one in a series by Prof Tol which had reviewed studies by a number of researchers on the potential economic impacts of climate change.

However, the first paper in the series, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2009, had contained a number of errors, including a claim that some other studies had found net positive impacts for warming of less than 3C.

Unfortunately, Tol had not used the correct figures from these studies.

I discovered the errors after a draft of the IPCC chapter was leaked online in January, and I alerted Tol and the other authors of the report.

The IPCC acknowledged the mistakes in the draft and agreed that the final version should not include them.

In May, the Journal of Economic Perspectives published an update and correction to Tol’s paper, in which he admitted the errors.

However, Tol’s 2009 paper had already been heavily promoted by climate change sceptics.

In October 2013, The Spectator magazine published a front–page article under the headline ‘Why climate change is good for the world.’

It was written by Viscount Ridley who, likeTol, is a member of theAcademic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up by Lord Lawson to campaign against the UK Government’s climate change policies.

Viscount Ridley’s article stated: “Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper).”

Tol caused controversy in April when he announced that he had withdrawn from the team preparing a summary of the IPCC report on the grounds that he did not agree with the other authors.

The summary points out: “Economic impact estimates completed over the past 20 years vary in their coverage of subsets of economic sectors and depend on a large number of assumptions, many of which are disputable, and many estimates do not account for catastrophic changes, tipping points, and many other factors.”

It concludes: “With these recognised limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income.”

A number of economists have criticised the models used to estimate future losses due to climate change, and an official journal of the American Economic Association published a collection of papers last year which examined their usefulness.

Robert Pindyck, professor of economics and finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), declared: “These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis.”

Lord Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science and president of the British Academy, pointed out: “Scientific models, because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely, appear to substantially underestimate these risks.”

He added: “Many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modelling on growth, damages and risks, come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.”

In a new paper due to appear in the The Economic Journal, published by the Royal Economic Society, Stern and Dr Simon Dietz show that if models are amended so that climate change impacts can affect the drivers of economic growth, they find that rising global temperatures could lead to a collapse in living standards.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/17/ipcc-corrects-claim-suggesting-climate-change-would-be-good-for-the-economy

Lawson's Climate Denial Donor Boasts of Shale Gas Investment

by Brendan Montague, DeSmog UK, September 30, 2014

Lord Lawson accepted a donation for his climate denial charity from a millionaire financier who successfully invested in shale gas fracking,DeSmog UK can reveal.

Edgar Miller Jr, a Texan-born venture capitalist, has been named as an early donor, fundraiser, and founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) who claims he turned down the role of director when the charity was being established almost five years ago.

The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for Lawson. Miller intimates during an interview that his donation was dependent on the GWPF attacking climate science rather than policy, and he even suggests the former chancellor is “a little bit” scientifically illiterate.

Miller boasts of his “very successful” investment in one of the first fracking companies, and confirms that today he holds mineral rights relating to property once owned by his family that he hopes will earn him further profits from shale gas. “We’ll get some royalties out of it so we’re motivated to do it,” he said.

The investor has also paid thousands of pounds to Viscount Christopher Monckton, the eccentric aristocrat who tours Britain, Australia and the United States attacking climate science.

The cash paid for an investment report about climate science and led to Monckton publishing a lengthy attack in the Sunday Telegraph back in 2006. Monckton and Lawson, related by marriage, both became interested in climate change around the same time.

Early Frackers

Lawson has repeatedly stated that he would not accept funding from the oil industry or any individual with “a significant interest” in fossil fuel companies—a statement that is in fact true as Miller has enjoyed a “less than significant” financial benefit from energy investments.

Lawson last month launched the GWPF to apparently circumvent charity commission rules stipulating that his GWPF must remain “educational” rather than political. Dr Benny Peiser, a social scientist, is the director of the foundation.

Miller, a professor of private equity at the Cass Business School and owner of Palladian Limited, told a reporter over dinner: “I was concerned when they [the GWPF] weren’t really addressing the underlying science and they kept putting the focus on policy…

“Most people in the UK don’t understand the science. The UK is scientifically illiterate. I’m not saying that you don’t have great scientists or engineers, but the average person that you meet walking along the street knows very little about the science.”

He added: “Initially I refused to give them anything because they were resistant to debating the science. Benny just wanted to talk about policy; I said I completely disagree with that… I’ve also brought one or two other donors in, who have probably altogether given £30,000 to £40,000.”

“I think one of Benny’s problems is he doesn’t have a fundamental grounding in science [and] that he has a fear. That’s one of the general problems in this country… most people are scientifically illiterate. Nigel is a little bit that way.”

Miller also described Lawson as having “a huge ego” adding: “his only problem is his personal life is a disaster.” But he confirmed that the former chancellor had Osborne’s ear. “These guys are all talking to each other all the time, they go to the same dinner parties, they spend weekends together and [attend] house parties together.”

He said of his fracking investments: “Fracking is nothing, and, you know, you’ve got 30 years of experience in the States with basically no problems at all. In fact, I invested in one of the companies which was one of the early frackers back in the 80s.”

“There’s a guy who just died called [George P] Mitchell, who was a Texan, who developed the technology. It was a very [a] very successful [investment]. Very successful.”

Basically a Bullshitter

Miller, who has lived in the UK for more than 40 years, was a senior advisor in the Conservative party and claims he helped draft the 2005 election manifesto. But after initially supporting Cameron’s leadership, he found the Etonian to be “weak”, with “too many close friends around him” who “change his mind”.

After lunch with the Prime Minister and chancellor, Miller's views had crystallised: “I came away thinking Cameron was basically a bullshitter [who] didn’t want to listen to anybody [and who] lacked in substance.” He added: “Osborne I thought was as arrogant…but I thought had more intellectual substance.”

When contacted by DeSmog UK last night, Miller replied: “You imply I have been a donor to the GWPF.  I am proud to say this is true (albeit a small donor) and I would be pleased if you publicise this fact.  I encouraged Lord Lawson in the early days of GWPF and subsequently have encouraged others to donate.  I intend to continue to contribute.  

“I have the upmost admiration and respect for Lord Lawson for having the initiative, courage and fortitude to establish the GWPF, in spite of endless

criticism and ad-hominem attacks thrown at him.  

 

“He and Benny Peiser have established the GWPF as the only authoritative public source in the UK providing a fact-based perspective on the global warming issue.  I have subscribed to Benny Peiser's newsletter for years.  This and Benny's long experience in the field has made an immeasurable contribution to the undoubted success of the GWPF.”

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

John Mashey: Did Lennart Bengtsson Know Global Warming Policy Foundation And Heartland Institute?

by John Mashey, DeSmog Blog, May 20, 2014, and updated August 30, 2014

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has recently gotten worldwide publicity. It proudly announced that well-published climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson had joined its Academic Advisory Council (AAC), finally adding someone with scientific credibilty.  A week later, he quit, and affairs went downhill, as per The Guardian, HuffPost, DeSmogBlog and many others.  Of course, the usual denial blogs and publications proclaimed awful behavior on the part of climate scientists.

Perhaps Dr. Bengtsson did not know that GWPF was the nearest UK equivalent to the Heartland Institute and the two were quite closely coupled.

FOIA Facts 5 - Finds Friends Of GWPF analyzed AAC Chairman David Henderson's email to a list that included 19 Heartland experts, speakers, employees or consultants. Then, another eight Heartland-related people were GWPF or AAC members, including Henderson himself.  The full To: list was quite instructive.

Two years after the infamous Heartland billboard and other exposures of Heartland activities, seven GWPF AAC members are still Heartland Experts:
Robert Carter, Freeman Dyson, Indur Goklany, Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Ian Plimer, Nir Shaviv. 

Both Heartland and GWPF are tax-exempt political “charities” that have little to do with science except to attack it.  Perhaps Dr. Bengtsson has now learned that one is known by the company they keep and a credible scientist had fallen into very bad company.  Hopefully he has indeed learned.

UPDATE 08/30/14: For more detail, see discussion at Ha ha: Lennart Bengtsson leaves advisory board of GWPF (Stoat), L'Affaire Bengtsson (Rabett Run), and  Wikipedia.  When a scientist starts doing silly things and lending his name to an anti-science group, calling colleagues' displeasure McCarthyism shows ignorance of the term's meaning.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/05/20/did-lennart-bengtsson-know-gwpf-and-heartland

The Guardian: Two secret funders of Nigel Lawson’s climate sceptic organisation revealed

Neil Record and Nigel Vinson confirm their donations, and are both linked to think tank IEA that took funds from oil companies

by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, September 2, 2014

Lord Lawson, former chancellor, is the chairman of Global Warming Policy Foundation.Photograph: Micha Theiner/Rex Features

Two secret funders of Nigel Lawson’s climate sceptic organisation have been revealed. This is the first time anyone financing the group has confirmed their contributions. Both are linked to a free-market thinkt ank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which has admitted taking funding from fossil fuel companies and has also argued against climate change mitigation.

Lord Lawson has steadfastly refused to name the funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation since its inception in 2009, stating only that none have significant fossil fuel interests. The GWPF has become the most prominent climate sceptic group in the UK, but critics of the GWPF argue that funders’ names should be made public in the interest of transparency.

The names were uncovered by the investigative blog Desmog UK. Neil Record, the founding chairman of a currency management company Record and an IEA trustee, confirmed he has given money to the GWPF but said the amount was a “private matter.” Record gave the IEA £36,000 to support a seminar featuring Lawson in November 2009 and on the same day Lawson launched the GWPF. Record told The Guardian: “I personally regard the continuing contribution of the GWPF to the climate change debate as very positive in assisting balance and rationality in this contentious area.”

Lord Nigel Vinson, a wealthy industrialist and life vice-president of the IEA, has given the GWPF £15,000 according to Charity Commission records. “I am very proud to fund [the GWPF],” he told The Guardian. “You have to put a question mark over climate change if over the last 14 years the world has not got any hotter.” Scientists argue this “pause” in air temperatures is an illusion, based on cherry-picked data and ignoring the fact that over 90% of trapped heat enters the oceans.

Record and Vinson are the first GWPF funders to confirm their donations. Sir Michael Hintze, a major Conservative donor and hedge fund tycoon, was named by The Guardian in 2012 as a GWPF funder but has not confirmed or denied his GWPF link. Like Record, Hintze is an IEA trustee.

“Lawson has stubbornly refused to name his donors even though such secrecy must undermine the trust the public has in his climate denial think tank,” said Brendan Montague, editor of DeSmog UK. “But now we might begin to understand why. The evidence suggests many of Lawson’s funders are associated with the radically neoliberal IEA, which has a long history of attacking climate science and regulations while accepting money from oil companies.”

Bob Ward, policy director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said: “It is not surprising to find such strong links with a right-wing lobby group, the IEA, which also promotes climate change denial. It is now crystal clear that the campaign by the GWPF against the UK government’s climate change policies is driven by right-wing ideological zeal rather than evidence-based reason.”

Lawson did not respond to a request for comment. In October 2012, he said his fundraising for the GWPF had started with his friends: “They tend to be richer than the average person and much more intelligent than the average person; that’s why they can see the flaws in the conventional wisdom.”

The GWPF, which is registered as an educational charity, launched a new campaigning arm on Monday which will not be restricted by Charity Commission rules on political campaigning. The Global Warming Policy Forum will, like the GWPF, be chaired by Lawson, and Record is one of three board members.

“The new organisation will be able to conduct campaigns and activities which do not fall squarely within the foundation’s remit as an educational charity,” said a GWPF statement. In the statement, Lawson said: “This reorganisation will enable us to build on the progress of the past five years and make substantial further progress over the next five years which may well be decisive in the evolution of climate change policy.” The world’s nations have set a deadline of December 2015 for a global UN deal to tackle climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/02/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-organisation-funders

DeSmog UK: Exposed: Lawson’s Climate Denial Donors’ Links to Tobacco and Oil Backed Think Tank

by Brendan Montague, DeSmog UK, September 2, 2014

Launch of new Global Warming Policy Forum mired by new revelations linking former chancellor to oil and tobacco-funded climate denial think tank

Lord Lawson faces increasing scepticism about the independence of his climate denial charity as the names of two of his anonymous donors with links to the tobacco- and oil-funded Institute of Economic Affairs are disclosed for the first time.

The Tory grandee launched the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPForum)* yesterday. There had been complaints from the public to the Charity Commission alleging his Global Warming Policy Foundation was acting politically.

The former chancellor, who retains considerable influence over his successor George Osborne, has successfully kept the identities of almost all his financial backers a closely guarded secret five years after the foundation was first launched, despite the consternation of MPs and climate campaigners alike.

On the Record

But now Neil Record, the founding chairman of his own specialist currency management company, and trustee of the free market Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, has been named for the first time as a financial backer. 

Asked how much he gave to Lawson’s charity, he replied this was “a private matter on which I am not prepared to comment further.” DeSmog UK estimates the donations to be higher than £100,000. 

Lord Vinson, who was instrumental in the rise to power of the late Margaret Thatcher, has also been named as a GWPF funder for the first time. The industrialist and peer was made “Life Vice-President” of the IEA, having worked closely with its first director general, Sir Ralph Harris.

ALSO SEE: LAWSON'S HOT AND COLD AFFAIR WITH THE IEA

Vinson also set up the Centre for Policy Studies with fellow free market zealots Keith Joseph and Thatcher in 1974 supported by the IEA. The CPS, funded by both the tobacco and oil industries, secured Thatcher's rise to power. 

Vinson has donated £15,000 to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the first five years through his own charity, according to documents submitted to the Charity Commission. “I think they are a very admirable institution,” he told me. 

A third GWPF funder, Michael Hintze, has previously been named by The Guardian, although the city investor has refused to confirm the report and disclose the true extent of his largess. Hintze runs the £5 billion hedge fund CQS and is a generous donor to the Conservative party. 

All three men named have worked closely with the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Westminster-based think tank which has for decades accepted funding from cigarette and petrol multinationals while attacking both the science of tobacco cancer and climate change.

Speaking Fees

An investigation by the newly launched climate website DeSmog UK has established that Record privately donated £36,000 to the IEA to fund a seminar starring Lawson on the same day in November 2009 that the one-time chancellor launched the GWPF in the House of Commons. Lawson’s speaking fees are up to £12,000 per engagement.

Record has told how his confidence in climate science was first called into question when he attended an earlier talk by the American scientist Dr S. Fred Singer also attended by Lawson. Singer has a long history of promoting climate denial and has been accused of misleading the public about his own financial support from major oil companies, including ExxonMobil. 

Record is also named as a board member of the new Global Warming Policy Forum. When asked about his donation to the foundation, Record said he has “never had any involvement with the energy sector in any capacity” adding his donation was “paid for with my personal money, not with corporate funds.” 

Record said in a letter: “The organisers (i.e., the IEA) invited both Lord Lawson and myself to a dinner after the debate…and there I learned about the Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which I had not heard before. 

“[Lawson] invited me to meet his staff, and as a result of that, I decided the best way in which I could be of some use in furthering sensible debate in the whole climate change arena was to become a supporter (i.e., donor) to the GWPF.”

Undermining Science

The IEA established its industry-funded Environment Unit in the early 1990s and published the first reports in the UK aimed at undermining the then burgeoning science of climate change. 

The institute was also instrumental in establishing the Covent Garden-based International Policy Network, which during its lifetime accepted funding from ExxonMobil while attending major conferences around the world to raise fears about the policy implications of climate change.

Mark Littlewood, the current director general of the IEA, personally introduced Record to Lawson after the climate event in November 2009. He said he only “vaguely” knew Lawson but that he was not active in the climate debate because the GWPF took this role. 

He also confirmed last year that the IEA continues to receive funding from the oil company BP. He added: “…we jealously guard our editorial independence and no industry group can commission research from us - but if that's understood I'll bank a cheque from the tobacco industry without a single problem.”

Lord Vinson donated £5,000 to the GWPF in 2011 and then doubled his grant to £10,000 last year. This second grant was recorded alongside a donation to the Prince’s Countryside Fund under the category, “For the advancement of environmental protection or improvement”. Vinson has been a long time funder of the IEA, as well as its once-influential climate denying offshoot the IPN. 

The author of this article has been quoted in The Guardian this morning saying: “Lawson has stubbornly refused to name his donors even though such secrecy must undermine the trust the public has in his climate denial think tank,” said Brendan Montague, editor of DeSmog UK. “But now we might begin to understand why.

“The evidence suggests many of Lawson’s funders are associated with the radically neoliberal IEA, which has a long history of attacking climate science and regulations while accepting money from oil companies.” 

Bob Ward, policy director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, told the newspaper: “It is not surprising to find such strong links with a right-wing lobby group, the IEA, which also promotes climate change denial. It is now crystal clear that the campaign by the GWPF against the UK government’s climate change policies is driven by right-wing ideological zeal rather than evidence-based reason.”

DeSmog UK intends to publish the names of further Global Warming Policy Foundation funders ahead of the Conservative Party conference held in Birmingham from Sunday, September 28. The investigations website has invited Lawson to publish the full list in order to regain control of the agenda, without success.

*PLEASE NOTE: All references to the Global Warming Policy Forum on DeSmog UK and DeSmogBlog will have the abbreviation GWPForum. GWPF will only refer to the charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

http://desmog.uk/2014/09/02/exposed-lawson-s-climate-denial-donors-links-tobacco-and-oil-backed-think-tank

MUST READ: Nigel Lawson: An Honourable Man [yeah, right] (1st installment in a series on the Climate Denial Machine in the UK)

by Brendan Montague, DeSmog UK, September 1, 2014

The once chancellor to Thatcher and father of Nigella Lawson stages a remarkable political resurrection by making climate denial his personal crusade. The first of three parts in our inaugural series, "An Honourable Man." 

Nigel Lawson is an honourable man. The one-time British chancellor interrupted his idyllic retirement in the South of France to take part in what he described as a “distinctly surreal” debate on global warming held by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London on the evening of Monday, November 23, 2009. It would turn out to be portentous day in the history of British and American climate denial.

The 82-year-old was sporting dyed-black hair and a crooked salmon-pink tie. He spoke off-the-cuff. “There are huge benefits from a warming planet,” he assured his audience. “What is important is that you will be able to pocket all the benefits.”  

The shrewd rhetorician admitted that he was “not competent to pronounce on the science” and that he simply did not know whether climate change was taking place: “Within these four walls,” he said, “I have to confess to this ignorance.”

But he was certain climate science “lacked integrity” and thought that even if climate change was indeed happening, the assumption that we should try to prevent it was a “great delusion.”

He accused the government of producing “mendacious” propaganda to “frighten the public,” before presenting a harrowing picture of how any limits to economic growth from reducing our dependence on fossil fuels would impact the world's poor.  

Possibly Immoral 

“If you slow down the rate at which these countries can develop, what you are doing is condemning tens of millions of people in the developing world to unnecessary poverty, unnecessary malnutrition, unnecessary premature death and unnecessary diseases,” he concluded. “I think that's possibly immoral.” 

Dr. S. Fred Singer spoke alongside the seasoned politician that night. The silver-haired US-based scientist was among the first to question the emerging science of global warming. Singer sang from the same hymn-sheet. “I'm not worried about climate change. Not at all. We know how to adapt to climate change better than our ancestors: we don't have to live in caves any more,” he smiled.

“What worries me -- the only thing I'm scared of -- are politicians: when the zeal to control the climate, to save the climate, will introduce policies that will ruin the economy.” 

The politician and the scientist were warmly applauded by the assembly of blazer-wearing pensioners that filled the small room.

This presentation took place at the Institute of Directors' imposing classical building on London's prestigious Pall Mall during a perfect storm that would severely damage the public's trust in climate science. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, Barack Obama, the American President, Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, and the rest of the world's most powerful leaders were preparing for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15), taking place that December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The gathering was being hyped by environmentalists as the last real chance to prevent runaway catastrophic global warming and therefore save humanity from itself. 

The climate deniers in Britain and America, on the other hand, were at this time marginalised from the debate after their leading proponents had become tainted with the lingering, acrid smell of oil and tobacco money. 

A Miracle Just Happened

But shortly before Lawson’s talk a comment was posted on a popular sceptic blog: “A miracle just happened,” it said.

The cryptic message linked to a file on a Russian server which contained hundreds of thousands of private emails between professors Michael Mann, Phil Jones and dozens of the world's leading climate scientists which had been hacked and stolen from the servers of a British university. 

The hack was quickly dubbed “Climategate” by James Delingpole, an eccentric denier then blogging for The Telegraph, and newspapers and broadcasters from London to New York published the sensational claim that these emails contained “smoking gun” proof that global warming was in fact an elaborate hoax. 

The farce threatened to undermine the public's trust in climate science just when the world's governments were about to introduce legally binding restrictions on carbon emissions. Lawson appeared in The Times demanding a “high-level, independent inquiry” into Jones and his work.

“The integrity of the scientific evidence” on which “far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions” are based “has been called into question,” he wrote, “and the reputation of British science seriously tarnished.” The article hit the streets as he travelled to Committee Room G of the House of Commons to launch his charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), before an invited audience of Conservative MPs, lobbyists and well-wishers.

Currency Speculation

Lawson's remarkable luck would continue late into the evening. After the formal proceedings at Pall Mall drew to a close, Mark Littlewood, the chain-smoking director general of the IEA, invited the speakers to dinner. They were joined by a third man, who had made millions in currency speculation, and had given the IEA a generous £36,000 to host the discussion -- Lawson commands a speaking fee of up to £12,000. 

During the meal, the third man discussed Lawson’s recent book An Appeal to Reason, A Cool Look at Global Warming with the author himself and accepted an invitation to pay a visit to his small charity. Some time after, he turned up at the GWPF offices just off Trafalgar Square where he met Dr Benny Peiser, the social anthropologist who somehow has become Lawson's indispensable side-kick. The multi-millionaire was seemingly impressed and agreed to donate a large sum to Lawson's foundation.

This was the beginning of a new offensive against climate science, and the end of a political consensus in Britain supporting policies to reduce emissions to prevent the worst horrors of runaway global warming.

Tomorrow: part two of our three-part prologue and introduction to the first definitive, unauthorised history of climate denial in Britain and the United States. Share on Twitter and Facebook so your friends are not forced to play catch-up!

http://desmog.uk/2014/09/01/nigel-lawson-honourable-man