A Conservative peer has been appointed as the director of the UK’s leading climate science denial think tank, with the group pledging to spread its ideas in Parliament.

Lord Craig Mackinlay announced in The Telegraph today that he is now in charge of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), an “educational charity” set up in 2009 by former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson to challenge established climate science.

In a report published last March, the GWPF claimed it was “naive and entirely unrealistic” to believe that CO2 is causing climate change, that record global temperatures are “normal”, and that “there is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis”.

The group has previously expressed the view 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 its current levels.

Mackinlay’s appointment comes as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch aligns the party with a global populist backlash to climate policies. She has described herself as a “net zero sceptic” – despite her past support for the UK’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Mackinlay is also the founder and chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), a caucus of Tory parliamentarians which claims to accept the “fundamental facts” of climate change and is merely critical of net zero policies.

Despite two thirds (24 out of 37) of the NZSG’s supporters in the House of Commons losing their seats in the 2024 general election, Mackinlay has vowed to continue the group’s work. 

However, there has been little evidence since the election that other MPs or peers are part of the group. DeSmog asked Mackinlay if the NZSG was still operating, but didn’t receive a response. 

Today’s appointment also entrenches the long-standing relationships between senior figures GWPF and Conservative Party figures. 

DeSmog revealed in September that GWPF funders and directors had donated more than £7 million to the Conservatives over the past two decades, including during last year’s leadership contest.

Badenoch herself received £15,000 during the contest from Neil Record, chair of the GWPF’s campaign arm Net Zero Watch (NZW), who also provided her with a campaign office.

In January, Tory shadow net zero secretary Claire Coutinho called for NZW director Andrew Montford to be invited by the government to review its climate and energy policies. 

NZW was spun off as an independent body last year after a Charity Commission probe into the GWPF’s structure, funding, and alleged political activities. 

While the Charity Commission failed to uphold the view of campaigners that the GWPF was engaged in political activity potentially in breach of its charitable status, it seems the group appears to want to use Mackinlay’s new role to influence public policy.

In a GWPF press release today, Jerome Booth, chairman of the group’s board of trustees, said it was “delighted” to welcome Mackinlay, and that the group “stands ready to assist policy makers across the political divide and help educate decision-makers and the public”.

Mackinlay previously employed the GWPF’s head of policy Harry Wilkinson as his parliamentary aide. 

Booth added: “We are here to help in an emotive area of policy, one where moral reasoning has dominated and debate has been stifled in the mainstream media.”

“The GWPF might have a new director, but there’s no doubt it will keep churning out the same old and tired climate science denial,” said Agustina Oliveri from the Good Law Project.

“The return of Trump might have emboldened attacks on net zero policies in this country, but the majority of the British public will continue to see through these fringe views”.

Science Defiance

Mackinlay was appointed to the House of Lords in July after stepping down as the Conservative MP for South Thanet, having contracted sepsis in September 2023, which required the amputation of his arms and legs. 

In an article for The Telegraph today, Mackinlay compared the UK’s net zero policies to sepsis, writing: “I will not sit back and allow this dangerous, ideologically driven agenda to take hold. My experience with sepsis taught me that you simply can’t give a dangerous disease a second too long to spread.”

While Mackinlay and the GWPF claim net zero will be ruinously expensive, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s advisory body on net zero, stated last week: “we estimate that the net costs of net zero will be around 0.2 percent of UK GDP per year on average in our pathway,” with most of the investment expected to come from the private sector. 

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s independent spending watchdog, has said “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.

Mackinlay also paid tribute to GWPF founder Lord Lawson’s “bold rejection of climate alarmism”. Lawson, who died in 2023, declared during the COP26 climate summit in 2021 that “global warming is not a problem” and the “principal effect” of CO2 is plant growth. 

Mackinlay replaces GWPF founding director Benny Peiser, who in 2022 said it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis”. 

Scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, have 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”. 

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”. 

Party Politics

Mackinlay follows a long line of political figures who have been appointed to senior positions at the GWPF. 

Tory and Reform UK donor Terence Mordaunt, editor of The Conservative Woman Kathy Gyngell, and influential Tory peer Lord Frost were all members of the GWPF board, stepping down in August, September, and December respectively. 

Mordaunt, who served as the GWPF’s chair from 2019 to 2021, has donated around £412,000 to the Conservatives since January 2023. Frost was appointed in January to the NZW board. 

Fellow NZW board member Andrea Jenkyns, a former Tory minister, has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and is standing for mayor of Lincolnshire in May’s local elections. 

Other GWPF board directors include Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia, who last year said man-made global warming was “ahistorical and utterly implausible”. 

In October, Abbott was dropped by the new Labour government as trade advisor, a role he was given by the previous Conservative administration.

In January, the GWPF reported its lowest annual income since 2016, with income for the period to September 2023 of £280,000, down £100,000 on the previous year. 

Mackinlay was approached for comment.