TCW Defending Freedom (formerly The Conservative Woman)

Background

The Conservative Woman (CW) is a conservative blog established in 2014 as a “counter-cultural offensive against the forces of Leftism, feminism and modernism.”¹

The CW aims to challenge what it describes as “the left-liberal cultural zeitgeist” and the “anti-family, authoritarian identity politics and ‘equality and diversity’ ideology” that its editors say have “swept through the country’s institutions.”²

The blog was co-founded by former TV features editor, Kathryn Gyngell and former barrister Laura Perrins who act as the website’s editors.³ ⁴ ⁵

The CW opposes what it calls “climate quackery,” and regularly publishes work by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial organisation.⁶ ⁷ ⁸

Gyngell is a Trustee and Director of the GWPF, and the CW publishes regular articles by GWPF figures, including Ruth Lea, Harry Wilkinson, and John Constable. Lea is a GWPF Trustee and Director while Wilkinson and Constable are the Head of Policy and Energy Editor for the Global Warming Policy Forum, the group’s campaigning arm.⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴

The CW is also closely linked to the anti-BBC and climate science denying group, News-watch, and the Westminster-based PR Firm, Media Intelligence Partners (MIP).

MIP and its chairman Nick Wood were previously listed as Directors of the CW alongside Gyngell and Perrins, and MIP lists the CW as a former client. Perrins has a page on MIP’s website, but it is not clear what role she has played at the organisation.¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷

Director of News-watch David Keighley is on the editorial board of the CW, and he and Gyngell co-founded News-watch’s predecessor organisation in 1999.¹⁸ ¹⁹

Gyngell and Perrins have accused the BBC of what they call “remainer bias and woke climate evangelism”.²⁰

The CW is firmly pro-Brexit, with its editors seeing Brexit as an opportunity for the UK to free itself from the “shackles of the anti-democratic EU.” CW commentators include the vocal Eurosceptic and Leave Means Leave co-founder, John Longworth.²¹ ²²

Longworth is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Brexit Policy and was a Brexit Party MEP from May 2019 to December 2019 before being sacked by leader Nigel Farage for “repeatedly undermining” the Party’s general election strategy.²³ ²⁴ ²⁵

Gyngell and her late husband, Bruce Gyngell, were close friends with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Since 2006, Kathy Gyngell has been a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, an influential free-market think tank that Thatcher co-founded.²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹

The CW has a monthly readership of 900,000 according to its website. Both Perrins and Gyngell have been influential voices in the UK media, writing for right-leaning outlets including the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Conservative Home.³⁰ ³¹ ³² ³³ ³⁴

In an interview with the Irish Times in 2018, Perrins said the website had found a gap for a “Marmite strand of thinking, which is to say one that is either loved or hated.”³⁵

Stance on Climate Change

March 26, 2022

In an article titled “Two years that trampled on freedoms earned over centuries”, James Rogers argued that “the concept of ‘man-made climate change’ has always been a complete falsehood” and that it “makes no rational sense” that carbon dioxide is a “problem”.³⁶

He continued: “Why are we constantly being made to feel bad about being white? […] Because governments use ‘racism’ as a method of dividing and conquering […] Similarly, all the tripe about LBGTQ”.

Rogers also wrote:

“Those who ‘went green’ are the same people who insist that Britain is a ‘racist country’, the same people who voted ‘remain’ and demanded the result of a democratic referendum be overturned, the same people who hated Trump, declared that he would bring about disaster and were happy when a senile man became leader of the free world. They are the same people who wear masks and demand that you get jabbed, the same people who demanded lockdown regulation and cheered the £400 billion spent on it all, the same people who are holding fundraisers for Ukraine. They are the same people who believe in the ‘toxic privilege of white males’ and the same people who believe that gender is not a matter determined by nature and science.”

February 11, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Charlie Spedding which criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to decarbonise the economy also disputed the causal impact of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration on climate change. It stated:³⁷

“Carbon dioxide is a trace gas with a concentration of 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. It has the ability to absorb a narrow band of energy and prevent that particular wavelength of heat from escaping to space. It can, therefore, be called a greenhouse gas. However, its effect on the climate is so small as to be insignificant when compared with water vapour and, more importantly, the sun.”

It added:

“Boris Johnson’s belief that he can turn down the thermostat of the entire planet by tweaking the level of CO2 is naïve and unproven. It ignores the recent decline in solar activity which has created a Grand Solar Minimum; an event likely to decrease global temperatures.”

The article cited a post on the website Electroverse, a climate sceptic blog which according to its Patreon “has been set up to wade against the mainstream propaganda and accurately document Earth Changes as two world-altering climatic events unfold simultaneously”. The post stated: “For the well-being of society and your children, grandchildren, etc., it falls to us to deny the fake ‘consensus’ (of CLIMATE scientists only).”³⁸ ³⁹

February 18, 2020

In a statement promoting the CW’s work to readers, Gyngell and Perrins stated:

“The ‘anti-racist’ witch-hunters are still out there: piffle about white privilege is genuflected to; the crime of so-called Islamophobia sometimes seems to be treated on a par with the crime of terrorism; climate change quackery is the order of the day. We are taught to apologise for our country’s ‘shameful’ past rather than proclaim its astonishing qualities, while any sense of national belonging or identity is pilloried as fascist.”⁴⁰

May 3, 2019

In a comment for the CW, entitled “Keep calm and carry on ignoring the climate scaremongers”, Perrins wrote:

“St Greta continues her crusade to get us all to survive on kale, which prompted Ed Miliband to make a fool out of himself on the Today programme, collapsing into finger-stabbing hysterics to tell us we should declare war on this climate emergency and not to eat as many bacon butties or fly as much as he does (19,000 air miles I do believe).

“…If we do not do as he commands then we are all going to die, either in a massive flood not seen since the time of Noah or a fiery hell not seen since Dante.

“…I am deeply sceptical when a very firm orthodoxy takes hold in any area, and this City Journal piece explains why climate change has become the science of dogma, and that environmental correctness has got a grip.

“Judith Curry, a true climatologist, explains the basics. She headed the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology until she gave up on the academy so that she could express herself independently. ‘Independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible,’ she says. She continues: ‘There is warming, but we don’t really understand its causes. The human factor and carbon dioxide, in particular, contribute to warming, but how much is the subject of intense scientific debate.”⁴¹

Funding

The CW states that it is “run by volunteers” and encourages readers to donate through its website. In February 2020, the website appealed for funding from its readership, saying that a previous crowdfunding effort had “achieved only half of the £25,000 we aimed for, the sum we calculated we needed to put us on a firmer footing and to pay for the help we need”.⁴² ⁴³

In 2019, the CW held assets worth £20,722 and had capital reserves amounting to £23,201.⁴⁴

Key People

Kathryn Gyngell – Gyngell is editor and director of the CW. Gyngell started her career in television in the 1980s, before leaving after the birth of her second child with then TV-am chief Bruce Gyngell, a “maverick” who oversaw the growth of ITV”s first breakfast show at the channel.⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

In 1999, she co-founded the anti-BBC organisation, Minotaur Media Tracking, with now News-watch director David Keighley. In 2006, she became a research fellow at the free-market think tank, the Centre of Policy Studies, where she wrote predominantly on drugs and early-years policies.⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

She has written regularly in the British press, including for the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and Conservative Home and was close friends with former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She is a Trustee and Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and obtained a Bachelor’s in social anthropology and a Master’s in sociology.⁵⁰ ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶

Laura Perrins – Perrins is co-editor and director of the CW. Perrins is a trained barrister and political commentator, opposing what she has described as a politically correct culture, and the “destructive nonsense” of feminism.⁵⁷ ⁵⁸

She rose to prominence in 2013 after clashing with then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in a radio interview, during which she said the government was “discriminating” against single mothers. She has frequently been compared to right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins for her controversial views on issues including on feminism, race and LGBTQ rights.⁵⁹ ⁶⁰

She has written for The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, Conservative Home and the Catholic Herald as well as appearing on the BBC’s Question Time, Newsnight and the Daily Politics.⁶¹

Editorial Board

Actions

April 21, 2023

TCW writer Paul Homewood argued that the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent advisory body to the UK government, are “scaremongers” that have intentionally misrepresented climate policy.

Homewood claimed that “the CCC have deliberately underplayed the true cost of their climate agenda”.

Homewood also asserted that the CCC sought to misrepresent the costs of mitigating climate change because “in reality [the CCC] are closely linked to the climate lobby” and “consequently they have a myopically one-sided view”.

Later in the piece, Homewood accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of “lies” and “misinformation” regarding their reporting of increased heatwave-related deaths in India due to climate change. Homewood argued that “the reality is that there have always been heat-related deaths in India”, which is proof that “they are not caused by global warming”.⁶⁴

April 21, 2023

TCW writer John Ellwood argued that “the New World Order are in the ascendency” because they are “bolstered by the success of their COVID-19 Bioweapon” and “climate nonsense”.⁶⁵

February 20, 2023

In a comment piece for TCW, James Delingpole claimed that earthquakes in eastern Turkey and north Syria on February 6, 2023 could have been man-made and deployed deliberately against the then-Turkish president Erdogan because “he refused to toe the globalist line.”

He said of the earthquakes: “the Powers That Be have both the means and the motive to have caused them.”⁶⁶

November 10, 2022

In an article titled “Net Zero is a low-key way of killing us off”, Iain Hunter wrote:

“I think most readers of TCW would agree that anthropogenic climate change is a provable lie. Atmospheric carbon dioxide does not influence the planet’s climate and the renewable unreliable energy industry, decarbonisation and Net Zero policies are therefore deeply fraudulent. The adoption of them represents a political error, coup even, of gargantuan proportions”.⁶⁷

The “Great Climate Lie”, Hunter wrote, was “born at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992” and “is about wrecking Western economies”. He added:

“The Net Zero push has nothing to do with atmospheric CO2, which doesn’t affect the climate in any case. That’s just the convenient excuse. As well as being economically disastrous, Net Zero is a low-key way of helping to keep the population in some discomfort as it destroys Western economies and contributes to keeping the death rate higher than normal”.

He continued: “Each of these globalist measures will contribute in its own small, unspectacular way to the overall aim of reducing our numbers […] The minds behind this assault on us are truly evil”.

October 25, 2022

In an article titled “The global parasites who do your thinking for you”, John Ellwood criticised politicians, “privileged narcissists” and “transatlantic elite[s]” who are “only too eager to help you by taking away the trouble and inconvenience of your independence of thought”. ⁶⁸

Ellwood wrote:

“To join this bunch of parasites it is necessary to have that word ‘sustainability’ attached to your job title or recent publication. If you are a Professor of Sustainable Development or some such at an obscure university, you can book your ticket to the next meeting equipped with your best holistic solution.”

He added:

“The instruction from the megalomaniac parasite class is: don’t think about the Scamdemic; don’t think about the Climate Scam; don’t think about Central Bank Digital Currencies; and don’t think about the American proxy war in Ukraine. You concentrate on Strictly and the Premier League and we will think for you.”

In concluding, Ellwood wrote: “If you take part in the charade they will become increasingly emboldened in their agenda to manipulate and enslave us”.

September 30, 2022

In an article titled “The climate scaremongers: Fact Checking Ed Miliband’s Fracking Claims”, Paul Homewood criticised Ed Miliband for speaking out against the government’s plan to lift the moratorium on fracking, saying “it is highly irresponsible of Miliband to try to alarm the public in this way” and that “Miliband’s obsession with wind and solar power is a dangerous illusion, a naive fantasy” that “will put our energy security at risk, cost jobs and cripple the UK economy”.⁶⁹

Homewood also quoted GMB Union’s Gary Smith, who “told the New Statesman that Labour must back fracking, hydrogen and new nuclear power plants to solve the energy crisis rather than bowing to the ‘bourgeois environmental lobby’, declaring that a ‘sprint for renewables just doesn’t cut it”.

September 12, 2022

In an article titled “Exposed: the ‘97% of scientists agree with manmade global warming’ lie”, David Craig wrote: “Our government is imposing draconian limitations on our lifestyles, our economy and our finances to save the planet from supposed catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), now renamed ‘climate change’”.⁷⁰

He criticised the 97 percent figure, saying: “To call the ‘97 per cent of scientists endorse AGW result ‘garbage’ could be seen as insulting to garbage”.

September 10, 2022

In an article titled “We’re heading for Net Zero ruin because our politicians are science dunces”, Ivor Williams wrote:

“UK efforts to reduce our one per cent contribution to emissions are not only crippling our economy and increasing our reliance on imported energy, but are utterly meaningless when set against the ever-rising emissions from countries desperately needing cheap power”.⁷¹

In addition to his claim that “there is an almost complete absence of scientific understanding in both Houses of Parliament”, Williams called for politicians to heed what he described as the “sound and well-argued advice” from Net Zero Watch, saying “its reports and papers […] are much more tied in to the real-world situation than the blinkered output from the Climate Change Committee”.

Williams also suggested that the websites of both Anthony Watts and Paul Homewood, two TCW contributors and climate deniers, “provide two more welcome doses of reality, each trying to calm the growing media hysteria over what is being headlined as ‘catastrophic climate change’”.

“All our worries about energy costs go back to the lack of scientific knowledge in our government and in its advisory committees. No one thought to ask the right questions because they didn’t know what the right questions were”.

August 9, 2022

In an article titled “One-sided teaching that gives students eco-nightmares”, Dr Deborah Ancell wrote:

“If educators continue teaching unchallenged and biased climate knowledge, they do a disservice to students, humanity, civilisation and ultimately truth. Current teaching fails students and explains their eco-anxiety. Educators have a duty to end their suffering.”⁷²

Referring to the UK curriculum, Ancell said: “Humans are responsible for 3 per cent of CO2 emissions. There is no mention of Mother Nature’s remaining 97 per cent”.

She added: “Fear is also spread by academic journals which publish only one side of the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] hypothesis […] The peer-reviewed process builds on journal core knowledge – a process which prevents challenges to the AGW core. This perpetuates groupthink and confirmation bias”.

Ancell continued:

“With the European Union’s reclassification of nuclear and natural gas as ‘green’, and the UK likely to follow, the Government’s policies are outpacing and undermining their educational texts. Is this a tacit admission that ploughing resources into AGW is wrong? Or is it a pragmatic policy change overriding a confected crisis in which Government’s never really believed? (A re-run of Covid and Partygate perhaps?)”

August 1, 2022

During the Conservative leadership election, TCW published an article by Andrew Montford titled, “Energy: Is reality starting to dawn?” in which he wrote: “one can’t help but wonder if members of the Green Blob have belatedly started to come to terms with the scale of the disaster they have unleashed upon the country.”⁷³

He continued:

“The web of green measures that are quickly strangling the economy and driving households into penury were put in place in response to the Climate Change Act […] Repealing the Act may therefore be the single most important step for the new administration”.

Otherwise, Montford wrote, “the Climate Change Act will continue to grind British families into the dust”.

July 30, 2022

In an article titled “Mass hypnosis and the gateway to tyranny”, John Roberts criticised “the idea that a small increase in the atmosphere of a trace gas which is essential to life is responsible for rising global temperatures, storms, mass extinctions, diseases, and I could go on but you’ve heard it all before”.⁷⁴

July 29, 2022

In his article titled “The climate scaremongers: Was it really an unprecedented heatwave?”, Paul Homewood labelled reporting about the UK’s heatwave “idiotic” and “over-the-top”.⁷⁵

He added: “The BBC and the MSM [mainstream media] have been blaming [the heat wave] on climate change, with suitably scary colours to ram the message home”, claiming that “nowadays we are told to panic over a couple of days of hot weather!”

Homewood cited a “recent study” which “found that global temperatures even now would be 0.5C to 1.1C higher if pollution were to suddenly disappear”, and said “it is cold that kills, not heat”.

Taking aim at the BBC, Homewood wrote “the BBC are afraid to tell its readers the truth” and that “the BBC have shown their contempt for ordinary people who dare to question the climate dogma”. He added:

“To the climate extremists at the BBC, it is heresy to claim that weather was worse in the past! […] They dismiss anybody who disagrees as ignorant ‘deniers’”.

July 20, 2022

In an article titled “As XR idiots run riot, Europe faces ruin from its climate insanity”, Kathy Gyngell wrote: “It is not climate change that is pushing us to mass extinction, but the policies that this type of aggressive and alarmist eco-fundamentalism has pushed”.⁷⁶

She also criticised what she called “naive climate warriors” and the “BBC’s heatwave climate fearmongering”, and included a link to a report written by the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s John Constable.

July 15, 2022

In an article titled “The climate scaremongers: A manifesto for a new Prime Minister”, written during the Conservative leadership election, Paul Homewood suggested that: “Boris Johnson made the huge error of enthusiastically embracing the Net Zero strategy from the start of his premiership”.⁷⁷

Homewood proposed that the next Prime Minister use this “ideal opportunity to reverse course, away from […] a hard left eco-agenda” by adopting a manifesto with a preamble that calls net zero “ruinously expensive” and “suicidal”.

Homewood’s draft manifesto sets out additional policy recommendations which argue that the UK’s “decarbonisation should not be at a faster rate than the rest of the world”, that “all Carbon Budget targets should be suspended”, and that “the proposed ban on petrol/diesel cars should also be postponed”.

Homewood added that the government should “put a stop to all new subsidies for renewable energy”, “fully commit to a long-term future for North Sea oil and gas”, “end the ban on fracking, and lift all unnecessary restrictions which were previously in place”, “immediately approve the proposed Cumbria coal mine”, and “put an immediate stop on plans to force landlords to meet higher energy efficiency and low-carbon standards”.

Citing a speech made by Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaksa in November 2021 at COP26 – months before Sri Lanka’s economic collapse – Homewood wrote: “Politicians like Rajapaksa love to grandstand on the world stage. But it is always their people who pay the price”.

June 21, 2022

In an article titled “Put the Climate Change Act on ice, Mr Johnson”, Dr Deborah Ancell – a lecturer in applied management at the University of Westminster – addressed a letter to the Prime Minister which argued that the Climate Change Act 2008 was based on “exaggerated claims” that “global warming can be cured by reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide”.⁷⁸ ⁷⁹

She added that “there is no evidence” that carbon dioxide drives global warming, writing:

“How could it? CO2 is plant food. It commits no harm. It’s not a pollutant. Increased CO2 is beneficial, so why chase ‘net zero’?”

June 17, 2022

Paul Homewood began an article titled “The climate scaremongers: The real cause of the energy crisis”, by citing a Forbes article which claimed that the “oil and gas sector in the West has been starved of investment as a result of Government climate policies, pressure on banks from governments […] the activities of eco-activist investors, woke hedge funds, judicial decisions, environmental roadblocks and a lot more”.⁸⁰ ⁸¹

Elsewhere in the article, Homewood said that net zero policies were “all in the name of a baseless fear”, he labelled net zero a “suicidal path” and spoke of “The Climate Alarmist Cult”.

May 27, 2022

In an article titled “The climate scaremongers: It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum!”, Paul Homewood labelled the Met Office’s claim that “the 2010 heatwave in Northern India was made 100 times more likely by climate change” as “nonsense”.⁸²

Under a subheading titled “Who funds the Green Blob”, Homewood argued that “money from billionaires in the US is funding a massive propaganda effort in Europe, designed radically to restructure our society regardless of the wishes of the public”, adding that “left-wing organisations are happy to collaborate with billionaires who act against the wishes of the working classes the left are supposed to represent”.

He also criticised The New Scientist publication, for seeming “to be under the impression that the rest of the world gives a damn about climate change”.

May 11, 2022

In an article titled “Will new GCSE just be climate propaganda? Tell the truth, Mr Zahawi”, Paul Buckingham argued that the new natural history GCSE was an “intended ‘climate cult’ indoctrination of children”.⁸³

Quoting from a letter he wrote to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, Buckingham wrote: “I am sure you would not wish to see schoolchildren being taught pseudoscience”.

Asking for “the scientific evidence that any such teaching must be based on”, Buckingham said that the UK’s Committee on Climate Change and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “will not suffice, as both have already failed to provide the evidence required”.

April 20, 2022

In an article titled “America’s climate hypocrisy”, Thomas Lane called people concerned about climate change “weather worrywarts” and criticised politicians like John Kerry for “preaching that we must lower greenhouse gas emissions” while flying via private jets.⁸⁴

He wrote: “If one tells me that he believes in climate change, then proceeds to drive off in an SUV or purchase a home on the ocean or fly in a private plane, then I don’t believe that he believes in climate change” [emphasis original].

April 19, 2022

In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister titled “Net zero – a grim fairy tale”, Dr Deborah Ancell wrote:

“There is no known harm from CO2. Consequently, there is no enemy to fight to attain ‘net zero’ […] no need to cover the land in environmentally damaging and unsightly solar farms or wind turbines (your ‘white Satanic mills’)”.⁸⁵

She criticised the IPCC for “‘polishing’ the UN’s climate reports to ensure they continue the drama of ‘climate emergency’ (or some such doomsday title)” and suggested that there is “no evidential basis” for restricting carbon emissions “to pursue <2C temperature rise by 2050”.

Ancell also wrote that “CO2 is not our enemy. With no enemy, we have no need to fight. The pursuit of distant ‘net zero’ resembles fraud on a massive, taxpayer subsidised scale”. Instead, she claimed that “a slight warming accompanying increased CO2 should deliver a positive impact improving agricultural output” and that “increased warming should reduce winter heating costs (something you favour).”

March 20, 2022

In an article titled “How we defied death threats to speak out against Net Zero insanity”, TCW writer “Bridget Jones” chronicled the cancellation of a Reform Party rally “to drum up support for a referendum” on the UK Government’s “disastrous Net Zero strategy”.⁸⁶

Jones also repeated comments made by Richard Tice at the rescheduled event that “we are only at ‘base camp’ on the climb to decarbonisation lunacy” and that Britain has a “national treasure” in the form of shale gas.

She also mentioned arguments made by Net Zero Watch authors Andrew Montford and John Constable, and suggested that “pain and poverty” would be the result of net zero.

She concluded: “Even more sinister than the catastrophic effects […] of the Government’s disastrous climate agenda is the censorship effected by a group of bullies to shut down a public conversation around Net Zero”.

March 10, 2022

In an article titled “Forget the global warming hype – the world’s getting colder”, Neil Bryce criticised the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its “stubborn, outdated stance that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change”, arguing instead that “the sun is the major controlling influence on our climate”.⁸⁷

Bryce also argued that belief in climate change is due to “a domino effect known as an Amplifying Cascade of Systemic Bias”, which, he claimed, is reinforced by a “tendency not to report negative results, to manipulate data, refuse to share it with known critics and failure to accede to the full peer review process”.

Bryce concluded by claiming that “we are crossing the threshold into a period known as a Grand Solar Minimum, ushering in a prolonged cooling period”. Consequently, he argued, “the net zero obsession will gradually fade” along with “pursuit of a pointless net zero pipedream”.

March 8, 2022

In an article titled “Go for fracking or the lights will go out”, Julian Flood argued that the downside of net zero and renewable energy is that “you’re going to be cold, you’re going to get poor and your granny is going to die of hypothermia if we get a hard winter”.⁸⁸

Flood wrote that in contrast, “fracked gas will power everything you need”.

Concerning what he describes as “the vandalism of the solar developers”, Flood suggested that “at least 10,000 people will have their lives changed for the worse” by a new solar farm on the border of West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire, adding “the true figure will be thousands more than they are admitting”.

Flood concluded: “There is one major problem in not going for fracked gas, one that trumps all others. If we keep on the path we’ve chosen it won’t be long before the lights go out”.

March 4, 2022

In an article titled “The climate scaremongers: BBC’s campaign against fossil fuels”, Paul Homewood claimed that “the BBC is doubling down in its campaign to fight fossil fuels”, writing “now they don’t even attempt to disguise it, so convinced are they of their moral superiority in the matter”.⁸⁹

Accusing the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme of “selling the UK steel industry down the river”, Homewood concluded: “The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. It is just another senseless sacrifice to the Great Green God”.

February 26, 2022

In an article titled “Carry on driving, and eating beef”, Ivor Williams responded to advice that people limit their meat and dairy intake to “reduce [their] environmental impact on the planet” with the rebuttal that “making cows illegal would have no effect on the climate but would upset a lot of farmers”.⁹⁰

In support of fracking and new North Sea oil drilling, Williams wrote: “we have all we need under our feet or at the bottom of the North Sea”.

May 14, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Julian Flood criticised Bill Gates’ plan to mitigate climate change by spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere to deflect the sun’s energy and cool the earth.⁹¹

Disputing the veracity of models showing increased incidents of climate-induced extreme weather, Flood wrote: “The computer models which frighten us all with the prospect of disrupted monsoon and hydrological cycles, with increased rain and mega-droughts, are merely sophisticated guesses,” adding: “The data – the rate of warming as measured by balloon thermometers and satellites – does not match the models. The modelling guesses are wrong.”

Elsewhere in the article, he wrote: “Isn’t it odd how the green movement keeps telling us that we are threatened with the ultimate disaster but simultaneously opposes any realistic attempt, such as fracking or nuclear power, to reduce humanity’s carbon dioxide footprint?”

May 4, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Charlie Spedding criticised Secretary of State for business, energy and industrial strategy Kwasi Kwarteng, who had suggested that the adoption of vegan diets could contribute to combating climate change.⁹² ⁹³

Spedding disputed that cattle farming had deleterious effects on the environment, writing: “Universities and farmers around the world have proved that regular movement of herds of livestock to fresh grass, in a way which mimics nature, increases carbon storage in the ground and simultaneously improves soil fertility.” He added: “Wild herds of ruminants have been doing this for 50million years, a timescale which suggests to me that it is ‘sustainable.’”

Elsewhere in the article, Spedding downplayed the severity of climate change, arguing that media coverage had fuelled an overestimation of its impacts. He wrote: “Daily fearmongering across mainstream media has shown that people can be persuaded to believe implausible ideas if they have already been made to feel sufficiently scared.”

April 23, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman written by clergyman and columnist Peter Mullen characterised climate change as part of a broad ideological conspiracy to undermine ‘traditional’ Western values and Christian morality. Mullen wrote: “Every ideology invents its own slogans in which to enshrine its prevailing mythology. The iconoclasts’ signature slogan is ‘Saving The Planet’ and their overarching myth is climate change.”⁹⁴

March 9, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by retired chartered accountant and columnist Clark Cross criticised the government’s decision to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, stating: “This virtue-signalling and the horrendous cost of climate change expenditure is meaningless whilst other countries are doing very little.”⁹⁵

Cross also wrote: “The whole global warming threat has been grossly exaggerated and the UK’s decarbonisation policies are not only futile but also expensive,” adding: “There have been hundreds of failed climate predictions over the last 30 years.”

March 3, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Ian Wilson criticised insurance companies such as Aviva and Legal & General, who had pledged to sell stock in companies which were insufficiently committed to counteracting climate change. Wilson stated: “What right have they to bully companies who may hold totally different views on climate? Indeed would such enterprises dare to express views contrary to the behemoths?”⁹⁶

Wilson also cited a letter written by Dutch climate science denial group the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) which contended that “There is no climate emergency.” The letter stated that “The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing.”⁹⁷

Wilson also disputed that CO2 was a primary driver of climate change, writing: “Managements of enterprises under threat might even have considered the implausibility of CO2 being a major driver of climate when the dinosaurs thrived for untold millions of years and saw ice ages come and go at levels of the gas ten or 15 times those of today.”

February 28, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by Methodist pastor and columnist Peter Simpson characterised environmentalism as a pseudo-religious fad and a consequence of the decline of religious faith in Britain.⁹⁸

He stated: “This is why there is so much anxiety about alleged climate change in our society, and it is why governments are vigorously embracing the green agenda to ‘save the planet,’” adding: “Such actions are a form of religious virtue signalling, akin to the way in which the Pharisees in the New Testament made their piety known by making it obvious to all around them that they were engaged in acts of fasting.”

February 27, 2021

A satirical article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Weaver Sheridan narrated a fictional episode of BBC children’s TV programme Blue Peter starring climate activist Greta Thunberg, implying that Thunberg’s proposed solutions to climate change were analogous to a Blue Peter project.⁹⁹

The article included instructions for building a “DIY” solution to climate change, including: “Glue together five million ice lolly sticks in a lattice pattern to make your turbine blades. If you can get sticks from Magnums, so much the better. But make sure there is no chocolate residue on them, which could affect the aerodynamics.” The article also stated: “Because concrete is environmentally unfriendly, make the foundations with papier mache pulped from unsold copies of The Guardian. These are plentifully available.”

February 22, 2021

An article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Michael St George argued that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to decarbonise the economy through a ‘Green Industrial Revolution,’ represented a technocratic “Great Reset,” placing political power in the hands of unaccountable elites. It referred to environmentalism as a “Woke Shibboleth,” intended to “bring about the comprehensive revamping of all aspects of our societies and economies under a globalist, supranationalist, technocratic totalitarianism.”¹⁰⁰

St George also criticised US President Joe Biden’s green policies, including his decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, which he described as “costly but ineffective,” and Biden’s commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which he described as “impractical and ruinously expensive.”

The article cited a press release by climate “lukewarmer” Bjorn Lomborg, which claimed that “the climate impact of all Paris INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) promises is minimal,” and an article written for ConservativeHome by Global Warming Policy Foundation Deputy Director Andrew Montford, which claimed that: “Johnson might protest that the tab for the pandemic was simply unavoidable, but when it comes to assigning the blame for runaway net-zero spending and the economic ruin and loss of liberty that his environmental policies will bring about, there will be nobody else to blame.”¹⁰¹ ¹⁰²

February 17, 2021

In an article for The Conservative Woman, columnist David Langland argued that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had attempted to subvert Western institutions of government, and that the “extremely influential climate change lobby,” was an example of this collusion.¹⁰³

He wrote: “In the 1970s, the Canadian businessman and UN wheeler-dealer Maurice Strong became a friend of the CCP, later living in Beijing. He was at the forefront of the founding of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the political adoption of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis,” adding: “Now we in the West are having forced upon us the consequences of the hypothesised need to cut carbon emissions, in ways which will make energy very expensive and thereby lead to increasing levels of poverty.”

February 13, 2021

A satirical article in The Conservative Woman by columnist Tony Brown lampooned the alleged futility and hypocrisy of attempts to counteract climate change, encouraging the reader to commit to a hyperbolic ‘Climate Pledge.’ The article stated: “I pledge to assist my government in achieving ‘net zero carbon emissions’ by 2050, but due to the seriousness of the climate crisis I will try to achieve this by 2030 through changing my personal lifestyle to the frugal one existing before the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago.”¹⁰⁴

The article also disputed the cost implications and effectiveness of renewable energy, stating: “I accept that by relying on weather-dependent renewables for power in my own country that the provision of energy will be intermittent and more expensive and will need to be rationed.”

Brown concluded by disputing the severity of recent episodes of climate change, stating: “However, I remain willing to reduce my standard of living and that of my children and grandchildren to save the planet from one of the variations in climate which have happened regularly over the estimated 4.5billion years of its existence.”

January 27, 2021

In an article for The Conservative Woman, columnist Ariane Leoning disputed that atmospheric CO2 concentration was causing climate change, stating that only a “miniscule amount” had entered the atmosphere, which she claimed “cannot have the slightest effect on global atmospheric temperatures or the planet’s climate”.¹⁰⁵

Loening then asserted that “there has been no atmospheric global warming for about 20 years,” citing an article in Electroverse, a climate science denial-promoting news and opinion website. According to its Patreon, the site was set up “to wade against the mainstream propaganda and accurately document Earth Changes as two world-altering climatic events unfold simultaneously”.¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷

Elsewhere in the article, Loening claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been “established by globalist and fanatical ideologues in order to ‘prove’ that man-made carbon dioxide emissions cause global atmospheric warming”.

January 5, 2021

In an article for The Conservative Woman, the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Energy Editor John Constable criticised the costs of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, writing: “Mr Johnson’s administration, in common with every UK government from Mr Blair to Mrs May, is failing to sanity-check the emissions reduction policies and is, indeed, quite deliberately avoiding the subject. This is all the more reprehensible because the sanity check isn’t that difficult.”¹⁰⁸

Constable cited a December paper he wrote for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which stated: “Even assuming, as the government wrongly does, that offshore wind is already inexpensive and will become still cheaper in coming decades, the abatement costs per tonne of carbon dioxide are many times higher than mainstream estimates of the harms of climate change.” Constable also stated that the government’s policies would cause “terrible socio-economic harm”.¹⁰⁹

December 14, 2020

An article in The Conservative Woman praised DUP MP Sammy Wilson for his appearance on an episode of BBC Radio 4 panel show “Any Questions?” in which Wilson had criticised the government’s proposal to ban the sale of new diesel and petrol cars from 2030, comparing it to “a Stalinist Five-Year Plan.” The article stated that “not only will Johnson’s posturing plan make private transport unaffordable for poorer people, but banning vehicles which run on petrol and diesel vehicles will halt further development of fuel-efficient engines.”¹¹⁰

December 12, 2020

In an article for The Conservative Woman, climate science sceptic Paul Homewood criticised the Committee on Climate Change (CCC)’s advice to the government on achieving decarbonisation by 2050. He disputed the efficacy of renewable technologies, asking: “And when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine? We will have to fall back on gas power stations, with the proviso that they can capture and store the carbon dioxide produced, even though nowhere in the world has managed to do this at scale.”¹¹¹

Homewood also asserted that: “Eating less meat and dairy will of course cause great damage to British farming, as well as pushing up food bills for poorer families.”

December 4, 2020

In an article for The Conservative Woman, freelance writer and Royal Meteorological Society Fellow Ivor Williams criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. Williams suggested that following the implementation of renewable energy, “Your phone will last a day or two. Wood-burning stoves and open fires have been banned years ago, and without electricity to power your heat pump, no coal, gas or oil, your house will be an igloo in 48 hours. Batteries and carefully hoarded old camping gas cartridges and heaters will be fetching silly money by the end of the week. The only thing that will work is a wind-up clock.”¹¹²

Williams also unfavourably compared renewable energy sources to nuclear power, writing: “But surely, you say, the government is promising to advance nuclear as a clean energy source, and by then we will have all those modular power stations as back-up? If so, I reply, why are we bothering with the ‘offshore wind which will power every home’? You can’t turn nuclear off and on if the wind blows too hard or the sun doesn’t shine. Welcome to our zero-emission future.”

November 24, 2020

An article in The Conservative Woman argued that China’s continued use of fossil fuels rendered any attempts by Britain to counteract climate change obsolete, stating: “So as global cooling occurs the Chinese will stay toasty warm while we will sit and shiver waiting for our expensive green power to be turned back on.”¹¹³

November 24, 2020

In an article for The Conservative Woman, journalist Roger Underwood disputed that a series of bushfires in California had been caused by climate change, writing that the idea had been “comprehensively demolished.”¹¹⁴

The article also criticised a report by a Royal commission that looked into the cause of the fires, stating: “The commissioners appeared completely blind to the fact that the ‘climate-change-causes-bushfires’ position is not just flawed in terms of logic, science and history, it offers no solution to the current bushfire threat. What is blatantly obvious is that the climate alarmist lobby is using the bushfires to promote a political agenda. And the commission fell for it.”

November 23, 2020

In an article for The Conservative Woman entitled, “Lockdown is part of the grand, green, global design,” journalist John Mortimer criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 10 point plan for a “Green Industrial Revolution,” characterising it as a central part of the “Great Reset.” Mortimer stated that: “Johnson’s new Red and Green manifesto is not only totally unrecognisable from the one he was elected on last year; it goes vastly beyond anything that Corbyn ever put to the electorate.”¹¹⁵

November 18, 2020

Writing for The Conservative Woman, GWPF deputy director Andrew Montford criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans for the expansion of wind energy, stating: “With wind speeds very low, the much-vaunted fleet of offshore wind turbines was dismally failing to pull the skin off the proverbial rice pudding, generating only a tiny fraction of its theoretical capacity.” Montford also stated that: “It seems clear that we will soon have no way to fill the void when the wind doesn’t blow. At that point, widespread power cuts will become the norm and Mr Johnson will have played his part in creating a second national disaster.”¹¹⁶

November 1, 2020

The Conservative Woman published a satirical article parodying content warnings about BBC programmes. For David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet” series, the article stated: “Blue Planet. ‘Warning: This programme portrays Man-made climate change as being settled science when it is nothing of the kind and thousands of scientists worldwide have rejected the notion’”.¹¹⁷

October 30, 2020

Writing for The Conservative Woman, climate science denier Philip Foster referred to climate change as a “hobgoblin”. Foster characterised the environmentalist movement as a religious cult, stating: “it is no coincidence that ‘global warming’ became the new crisis in 1989, just as the Berlin Wall fell and the ‘Red Menace’ virtually disappeared overnight. We exchanged one hobgoblin for another. The result was a new religion, or a tweak of an older religion stemming from the so-called Enlightenment and the Romantics – a bunch of mostly drug-soaked poets and artists who in effect worshipped ‘Nature.’”¹¹⁸

Foster also claimed Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring caused “more death and misery than Mein Kampf and Das Kapital put together”.

October 10, 2020

An article in The Conservative Woman claimed that the expansion of wind farms would have potentially fatal consequences for birds, stating: “no one knows how many birds are killed, and I would guess that any estimate which comes from the wind lobby can be multiplied by ten and still be way short.”¹¹⁹

The article also alleged that wind turbines had a fatal impact on other forms of wildlife, stating: “this is not to mention the number of bats and insects killed by turbines, or the potential impact on marine animals such as whales and dolphins from the noise and vibration, or the fact that on days when there is little or no wind back-up generation will still be needed. A better source of power would be the limitless hot air coming out of Downing Street.”

October 5, 2020

In an article for The Conservative Woman entitled, “The market leaders in climate mythology”, Paul Homewood criticised a report from climate risk data firm, ‘Four Twenty Seven’, which warned about the link between climate change and more extreme weather. Homewood stated that, “it is, of course, a widely perpetuated myth that climate change is leading to more extreme weather. It is a pity that those behind Four Twenty Seven have chosen to base their work on this myth, instead of researching the facts for themselves.”¹²⁰

September 19, 2020

Writing in The Conservative Woman, Paul Homewood argued that climate change was not to blame for California’s wildfires, suggesting that “Governor Newsom may blame climate change, but it has actually not been an unusually hot summer or dry summer in California this year, nor was last month’s heatwave out of the ordinary”. Homewood concluded that, “whether climate change is exacerbating wildfires is, in any event, irrelevant. There is nothing realistically that can be done to alter the climate in the short or medium term. There is, however, an awful lot which can and should be done now to manage the risk. Put simply, arm-waving and blaming climate change is a disgraceful dereliction of responsibility.”¹²¹

August 25, 2020

An article in The Conservative Woman criticised the government’s decision to reject a planning application from Banks Mining to mine coal at a temporary surface site in Highthorn, Northumberland. It stated:¹²²

“Opposition to the scheme has been fierce and continuing, with Extinction Rebellion rattling sabres along with the Green Party. But coal is needed and the Conservatives should not be timid about granting permission to proceed because of vociferous green campaigns. Highthorn is about the greenest option that can be chosen since coal brought from far away massively increases the carbon footprint, and jobs for local people will come as a bonus.”

August 10, 2020

The CW published an article by Dr Rosemary Falcon, a South African scientist and contributor to a Global Warming Policy Foundation report, which argued that the continued use of coal in Africa was necessary to address energy poverty on the continent.

In her article Falconer argued that claims about stopping the burning of the fuel were “naive” and renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar were “not there yet.” The report was criticised by numerous regional climate and energy experts, with one stating the claims made in the GWPF report were “misleading and untrue.”¹²³ ¹²⁴ ¹²⁵

August 4, 2020

The CW published an article by Global Warming Policy Forum Deputy Director, Andrew Montford which disputed scientific claims about the negative health effects of nuclear radiation.

Montford presented the arguments of a recent GWPF paper which argued that science claiming to show the health impacts of nuclear radiation had “serious flaws” and had been “exaggerated”. Montford argued that the linear-no-threshold model which posits that there is no safe limit of nuclear radiation was “plain wrong and even fraudulent” and called on the government to “commission a complete review of the question of radiation safety.”¹²⁶ ¹²⁷

July 15, 2020

The Conservative Woman reported that Africans are “tired of being lectured by people in rich countries who have never lived a day without electricity, arguing that the imposition of World Bank rules preventing the burning of fossil fuels constituted an obstacle to Africa’s economic development. Geoff Hill stated that modern technology has made ‘clean coal’ one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity, and that Western enthusiasm for renewable energy is not shared in countries such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Geoff Hill cites a report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial campaign group. The report was widely discredited by African energy experts for being “misleading”. ¹²⁸

April 14, 2020

The Conservative Woman reported that Public Health England had adopted as its official policy a 242- page report from its predecessor, the Health Protection Agency, based on a “nonsensical 5C warming by 2080”. TCW stated that, “more people die from cold, and in a warmer climate, more lives would be saved than lost.”

Characterising Public Health England as an inefficient State bureaucracy, TCW also attempted to portray the NHS’ targets net-zero carbon emissions as incompatible with medical proficiency, stating that, “we must also not forget that higher energy prices imposed by the Climate Change Act cost the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds every year, money which could be used for medical purposes” and that, “perhaps instead of wasting money fighting imaginary bogeymen, the medical establishment might have concentrated on today’s very real enemies.”¹²⁹

Paul Homewood, the author of the article, has written reports for the UK’s principal climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and researched many of former Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker’s anti-environmental articles.

April 6, 2020

Writing in the Conservative Woman, Andrew Montford disputed the IPCC’s contention that increasing climate temperatures intensify the hydrological cycle, arguing that, “ the small changes that are exciting climate scientists today would not even have been discussed by ancient engineers, who would have seen them as just noise in the ever-changing patterns of hydrological cycles.” He concluded that, “it isn’t time that hydrologists shifted their attention away from prophecies of doom, and back on to making a real contribution to people’s lives?”¹³⁰

April 4, 2020

Writing in The Conservative Woman, Rhys Jaggar gave an anecdotal account of the improvement of his vegetable plots, stating that, “Yes, we must adapt our growing to our local climate but no, the sensitivity of food crops to climate is not so extreme that minor changes to climate will affect our growing patterns unduly.” Jagger proceeded to cite climate science denier Piers Corbyn, saying that, “he is not infallible, but is a worthwhile go-to source”.¹³¹

August 27, 2019

In August 2019, Gyngell accused the “mass media” of “stoking the flames of panic” and spreading misinformation about the burning of the Amazon rainforest.

She disputed claims that the Amazon was being burnt for use by illegal loggers, and wrote that “few appear to have stopped to question the accuracy of the initial reporting or the meaning of the original Nasa pictures”. She linked readers to a number of articles promoted by the GWPF claiming that the nature of the fires had been misrepresented by the media.¹³²

August 6, 2019

In a blog post, Kathryn Gyngell referred to claims that climate change could affect the production of coffee as “alarmist claptrap”. She said that the research released by experts at Australian non-profit the Climate Institute, and funded by the Fairtrade Foundation, amounted to “climate hysteria” and referred readers to a GWPF briefing on the issue.¹³³ ¹³⁴

May 3, 2019

In a post for the CW entitled “Keep calm and carry on ignoring the climate scaremongers,” Perrins said she was “deeply sceptical” of what she referred to as a “deep orthodoxy” surrounding climate science and saying that “environmental correctness” had a “grip”.

Perrins referred readers to a Twitter thread by Climate Resistance and Spiked commentator, Ben Pile, which accused the government’s independent monitoring body, the Climate Change Committee, of “cronyism,” and of being a “tool for a narrow group of interests to enrich themselves.” Perrins also linked to research by Judith Curry, a climatologist who rejects mainstream climate science.¹³⁵ ¹³⁶ ¹³⁷