Lord Lawson has taken the extraordinary decision to stand by a “distinguished” academic advisor to his charity who has become embroiled in a new scandal about climate denier groups being secretly funded by oil companies.

The former chancellor and chairman-for-life of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has dug in his heels after a member of his Academic Advisory Council agreed to secretly channel oil money to another anti-science front group.

Professor William Happer, of Princeton University, was contacted by an undercover Greenpeace UK investigator posing as a representative of a fictional Middle East oil company.

He discussed writing a report extolling the benefits of carbon dioxide and passing it through the GWPF’s self-styled peer reviewed process. He asked that the faux oil company donate $8,000 to the US-based CO2 Coalition.

The Charity Commission has confirmed that it would be reviewing the evidence from the Greenpeace campaign as part of an ongoing inquiry into the GWPF’s activities. DeSmog UK broke this story on Tuesday. 

Son-of-a-Bitch

Lawson told the Independent newspaper that he stood by his advisor. “We have a large number of people on our advisory council,” he said. “They’re not part of the staff of the GWPF. They’re distinguished academics. Happer is a distinguished academic.” 

He also claimed the GWPF had a “very thorough peer review process … in many ways better than the standard peer review system in most academic magazines.”

Happer, the American academic at the centre of the scandal, called a Greenpeace researcher “a son of a bitch” when approached immediately before a Senate hearing this week. The video of the altercation has been posted to YouTube.

He confirmed he had taken “not a dime” for his carbon dioxide advocacy but appeared to confirm that the CO2 Coalition had “taken nothing directly” from coal giant Peabody Energy but they had “taken some of my fee.”

Happer did not deny sending the emails when approached by the Independent. He said: “I considered this an opportunity to try to educate more people on what I think is the truth about CO2.”

Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the GWPF, originally told DeSmog UK that “Greenpeace has got it wrong.”

However, as events developed he performed an apparent u-turn and conceded when pressed by reporters from the national press his trustees should “review” the Greenpeace evidence and “decide how to handle advisers.”

Corporate Donors

The former senior lecturer in sports science repeated the oft-stated claim that the GWPF does not accept any funding from anyone with a “significant” interest in energy. 

He told the Independent that the GWPF had “never taken a commission from outside” and had “no corporate donors or any donors to do with energy interests whatsoever”.

Moreover, he confirmed that the GWPF was “discussing with [the Charity Commission] how to handle complaints” made against the climate denying think tank.

The Charity Commission confirmed to DeSmog UK that a file had been opened into the GWPF and the Greenpeace evidence would now also be examined.

A spokesperson added in a further statement: “I should make clear that this is not a formal investigation (statutory inquiry). We are assessing potential concerns that have been identified. We have not drawn conclusions as to what, if any, regulatory role there might be for us.”

Serious Questions

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace said Lawson’s charity has “serious questions to answer”. He added: “Does it condone a member of its academic council agreeing to be secretly sponsored to write a report by a group purporting to be from a Middle Eastern oil company?”

Lawson has been mired in controversy about the funding of his climate denial think tank from the moment it was launched in November 2009 hours after the Climategate scandal broke and ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. 

The former Tory chancellor told a powerful Parliamentary committee of MPs that he would not accept donations for gifts from anyone with a “significant” interest in energy companies.

The charity has refused ever since to reveal the identity of any of its donors. However, DeSmog UK has now named several of his benefactors, at least one of whom has held shares in the oil giant BP. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

An undercover investigation by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world’s most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.

Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.

Academics affiliated with leading US academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.

According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to US congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.

Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing "peer review" services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments. 

The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday December 8 and also calls fellow "sceptics" Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF). 

On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.

The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups.  Donors Trust, together with oil giant Exxon, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate. 

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.

The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote: 

Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed”. Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.

He added: “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.”

Asked for comment by Greenpeace, the GWPF said in a statement that it rejected Greenpeace's investigation, saying any claims it had offered to put a fossil fuel commission report through its own version of peer review were a "fabrication".

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.