Climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has apparently been left with a hole in its finances after a major donor did not renew itsย funding.
The Atkin Charitable Foundation had given the GWPF ยฃ20,000 each year between 2012 and 2016. But the foundation pulled its funding in 2017, its latest accounts filed with the Charity Commissionย show.
The GWPF was founded by climate science denier Nigel Lawson in 2009 with the purpose of combating what the foundation describes as โextremely damaging and harmful policiesโ designed to mitigate climateย change.
The Atkin Charitable Foundation was set up in February 2006 to fund efforts towards the โrelief of poverty, distress and sickness, the advancement of education, the protection of health and for any other charitable purposeโ, according to its annual trusteesโย report.
Edward Atkin sits on both the Atkin Charitable Foundation and GWPFโs board of trustees. He made his money through selling his baby-feeding business Aventa for ยฃ300 million in 2005.
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Atkin is a major Conservative Party donor, having donated almost ยฃ230,000 to the party since 2002, according to Electoral Commission data.
Atkin also donated ยฃ2,000 to Boris Johnsonโs London mayoral campaign in 2008. Johnson is a significant part of a network of politicians and lobbyists pushing disinformation on climate change and for Brexit, which DeSmog UK previously mapped.
Johnson has flirted with climate science denial over the years. In a Telegraph column in 2013,he said a cold snap in weather casts doubt on the science. Then, writing in the Telegraph in December 2015, he argued recent warm winter weather had nothing to do with climateย change.
In both columns he referred to the โgreat physicist and meteorologist Piers Corbynโ โ brother of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and a well-known climate scienceย denier.
The Atkin Charitable Foundation and GWPF have been contacted forย comment.
Image: Chatham House/Wikimedia Commons CC BYย 2.0
