GWPF North American Speaking Tour

We don’t know – they have declined to say. There were some reports they had grants about ten years back from a US organization which was in some way linked to or funded by the Koch brothers. That was quite a while ago, haven’t come on anything specific since then.

Does it matter? I would rather they say. But in the end, what matters is the quality of their publications – and the quality of the arguments on climate and energy issues.

We can look at the funding of the activist climate organizations too. We should not think that just because it comes from a progressive foundation or donor that its any less funding from interested parties, or that this is compatible with and no threat to independence. In fact I would argue that the unaccountable foundations are far more of a threat to rational climate and energy policy than the fossil fuel interests.

In the end, if you are an advocacy group you are going to be offered, and probably have to accept, funding from people who are drawn to support you by the fact that they find your views convenient.

But in the end, for people like the readers of Watts, the issue is the quality of the arguments. GWPF and the related organization the Global Warming Policy Foundation are producing valuable and accessible material which is critical of and exposes the current scientific and policy hysteria about climate and energy.

When the history of this great popular delusion is written, years from now, they will be mentioned in the same way Roger Babson is by writers on the 1929 crash. In the meantime, they are contributing to the process of democracy. We are in the end going to get out of the current mess of counter productive energy policies driven by hysterical alarmism. What will get us out, in the Western democracies, is rising skepticism about the mania, and this will emerge from a debate to which the GWPF and Watts and similar bodies will have contributed to.

We need these voices for democracy to work. It will. Its the only way we will get through it, and we will, though it will probably be very painful on the way. And cold, and dark!

Or it may perhaps be that I am wrong, and its not a delusion at all. In that case that too will emerge from the debate which the GWPF and the like are contributing to. The need for open debate including by all interests is 150 year old political science, going back to J S Mill.

You should be particularly glad that GWPF exists and publishes. Its only by letting light into their false and erroneous views that they can be publicly refuted, after all….