Nigel Lawson and climate sceptics
There are a wide range of “sceptics” ranging from people who don’t believe that the world has a problem with rising temperatures, plastic pollution, food, water, energy shortages and others who accept there is a problem but money would still be better targeted on other areas.
from wikipedia
On 23 November 2009, Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),[12][65] a registered education charity,[66] involved in promoting climate change denial.[57]
In 2011, Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute said that the GWPF was "spreading errors" and "the 'facts'" Lawson "repeats are demonstrably inaccurate".[67] Ward also criticised Lawson for repeating in a 2010 BBC radio debate that Antarctic ice volumes were unchanged even after his error was highlighted by his opponent, Professor Kevin Anderson.[67] Ward said that Lawson provided no evidence to back his claim which is contrary to satellite measurements, and Lawson similarly incorrectly implied that the correlation between CO2 and sea levels was uncertain as well as that sea levels were rising more slowly since 1950 than before it.[67]
The Charity Commission requires that statements by campaigning charities "must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base". They reviewed the GWPF, which was subsequently split with its campaigning arm and renamed the Global Warming Policy Forum without charitable status, while the charitable section retained the original title.[67] Lawson's son, Dominic Lawson, is also a climate change denier, taking a similar viewpoint as his father in his columns in the Independent on Sunday.[68][69]
In a BBC Radio interview in August 2017, Lawson claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events. In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.[70]