Climate denying Tories Lord Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley MP have close associations with the oil industry. The grandees have 13 years of Cabinet experience.
Left Foot Forward can reveal that two Tory grandees who have consistently criticised domestic and international efforts to abate climate change – Lord Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley MP – have close associations with the oil industry. The duo, with 13 years of Cabinet experience between them under Margaret Thatcher and John Major are on the payroll of companies directly engaged in, or associated with, the lucrative oil and gas industry.
On Monday, Nigel Lawson wrote an article in the Times titled, “Copenhagen will fail and quite right too”. Lawson said:
“The greatest error in the current conventional wisdom is that, if you accept the (present) majority scientific view that most of the modest global warming in the last quarter of the last century — about half a degree centigrade — was caused by man-made carbon emissions, then you must also accept that we have to decarbonise our economies.”
This blog has shown the errors and falsehoods of that article in a point-by-point motivations but Lord Lawson’s true motivations are now becoming clear. The Register of Lords’ Interests details that Lord Lawson chairs and has “significant shareholdings” in the Central Europe Trust (CET). He is described as a “senior advisor to clients on strategy and politics“. CET boast on their website to being, according to a quote in Forbes, “the company to call when you want to do business in Eastern Europe.” Their clients include oil and gas giants Total Fina Elf, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Texaco, and BP Amaco.
Lawson is also Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group who’s “primary purpose is to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate that is frequently distorted by prejudice and exaggeration.” They are based at 1 Carlton House Terrace SW1Y 5DB and share premises with the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining who have a Petroleum and Drilling Engineering Division, which includes two employees of the BP Exploration Operating Company Ltd.
Peter Lilley is a vocal opponent of the UK Climate Change Act 2008 and was one of only five MPs to vote against it. But as the Register of Members Interests claims to show, he is also a paid non-executive director of Tethys Petroleum Limited – a giant oil and gas exploration “focused on Central Asia“. But a look at his profile on the website reveals he’s also the Vice Chairman and – according to his biography – “was a Director of Greenwell Montagu Securities (1986-87) where he headed the oil investment department and which he joined in 1972.” Mr Lilley receives £40,000 “annual retainer” (p.94) from the company.
The Tethys website also states that he was an election observer for the 2005 Kazakhstan presidential elections, which is handy given that Tethys is “proud to be the first non-Kazakh oil and gas company listed on the new RFCA exchange in Almaty”. In 2005, the Times reported that Lilley’s British team were accused of a “Kazakh poll whitewash“:
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent 460 observers, said that the election did not meet international democratic standards. Flaws included restrictions on campaigning, interference at polling stations, multiple voting, pressure on students to vote, media bias and restrictions on freedom of expression, it said.
“There was harassment, intimidation and detentions of campaign staff and supporters of opposition candidates, including cases of beatings of campaign staff,” said the OSCE mission, led by Bruce George, the British Labour MP.
But Lord Parkinson’s seven-strong team, calling itself a “British parliamentary group”, pre-empted the OSCE report with a much more positive assessment. “The presidential election of 4 December represents a very significant advance,” said the report by his team, which also included Peter Lilley, the former Tory Trade Secretary. “The election was genuinely competitive and voters were given a real choice between candidates. We found no reason to doubt the integrity of the election process.”
70 Responses to “Oil links of Tory climate denial grandees”
Mehdi Hasan
I think Rupert Read is spot on – the “nasty party” is very much alive and well in the blogosphere and, especially, on issues like climate change. I’ve yet to find credible critics of climate change who aren’t somehow linked to the fossil fuel lobby. The Lawson and Lilley revelations simply reinforce this point. Then there’s the lack of credentials. Why should I believe Lawson, a superannuated Tory politician over James Hansen, a peer-reviewed NASA climate scientist? Even those “scientists” who claim to “dissent” turn out to be out of their depth, and not qualified to comment. I’ve blogged about the list of 687 “dissenting scientists” compiled by US Senate Republicanshe vast majority of them are not climate scientists, nor have they published in fields relevant to climate science:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2009/09/climate-global-monbiot
Anon E Mouse
Dave Cole – On the climate change occurring – software models that are accurate and not deliberately fudged to show predicted higher temperatures than actually occur. That would be a start.
Serious threat to humanity – isn’t that for you to prove Dave since you increase our taxes to to to – what happens to those taxes?
Climate change is occurring, has occurred and will occur constantly. You take a leap of faith (since you do not have a single item of proof) to believe we affect it. Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t.
No one knows but when Moonbot at the Guardian expresses concerns I wonder why you don’t question the whole thing yourself.
Why don’t you Cooling Earth Deniers have a thirst for the truth?
Dave Cole
Anon E Mouse,
Here’s the software model: http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
Serious threat to humanity: one example would be that a 1m rise in sea levels would displace around half the population of Bangladesh (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2FBF00175563) (something on the order of eighty millions) causing major population shifts in a volatile region. Rinse and repeat for other parts of the world.
I agree with you that climate change occurs naturally; the evidence is that human actions, particularly but not exclusively the emission of carbon dioxide, is increasing the rate of that change in a particular direction that will severely affect us. There is good evidence to show that humans have affected the climate in the past – this use to be a wooded island, after all – and that this incarnation is particularly dangerous.
Do you think there is some sort of global conspiracy here to use climate change to raise taxes?
Dave Cole
The vast bulk of scientific opinion is that anthropogenic climate change is a reality and a threat.
We could look at the 2009 report done by Doran & Zimmerman at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which received response from 3,146 earth scientists. It found that 76 out of 79 climatologists who “listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change” believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. (from Wikipedia; original at http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf).
Or we could look at the 2007 Harris Interactive report, which surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger. (Again, from Wikipedia; original at http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html)
It is possible that a series of mistakes has been made, and that actually climate change is not happening, or humans aren’t responsible for it. (The latter point is somewhat irrelevant so long as we are able to affect it.) I concede the possibility, but I think it highly unlikely. However, given the possibility and the disastrous consequences it could have, it would seem prudent to take remedial action.
It is also possible that climate change is a giant con. If climate change is a con, a lot of people have either been taking in by it or are involved in promoting it. There’s a list of some organisations that have said that humans are having a deleterious effect on the climate, or words to that effect, and it’s quite long:
The national science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Ghana, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, India, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia & Zimbabwe, The US Global Change Research Program, the International Arctic Science Committee, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the InterAcademy Council, the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, the Network of African Science Academies, the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the US National Research Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the European Science Foundation, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, the American Geophysical Union, the European Federation of Geologists, the European Geosciences Union, the Geological Society of America, the Geological Society of Australia, the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the American Meteorological Society, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the UK Royal Meteorological Society, the World Meteorological Organisation, the American Quaternary Association, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians, the American Society for Microbiology, the Australian Coral Reef Society, the UK Institute of Biology, the Society of American Foresters, the Wildlife Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Australian Medical Association, the World Federation of Public Health Associations, the World Health Organisation, the American Astronomical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Institution of Engineers Australia and the International Association for Great Lakes Research.
Anon E Mouse
Dave Cole – Wow someone on LFF has actually answered me without smearing anyone – the normal policy of one of the moderators is to call me a “denier and extremist” even though I do not deny the climate change and since my view is shared by the majority of people in this country I can not be an extremist. Actually someone called Claire was very polite. Misguided but polite.
I need to check the software you link to but if it doesn’t include the effects of solar radiation from the Sun, the only heat source that directly affects this planet and particularly cloud formations, it cannot be accurate.
Also since the effects on the climate are of (allegedly) an increase in CO2 it will also need to include simulations of CO2 absorption by the planet. If it does that and does it accurately, unlike the software used by the CRU then I will change my opinion of the man made CO2 contribution to global warming.
Finally I do not believe there is a global conspiracy to raise taxes. Governments are fully capable of doing that without any excuses.
I am still awaiting an answer though regarding the fact Gordon Brown said the floods in 2007 were directly linked to climate change yet he didn’t stop either new coal fired power stations or Runway 3 at Heathrow.
The question is whether he is mad or bad.