DeSmog

Mat Hope

About

Mat was DeSmog’s Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director for DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UK’s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021. He began working with DeSmog as the UK’s Deputy Editor in October 2016, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief. He completed his PhD on political communication strategies in US Congressional climate change debates at the University of Bristol in 2012, which won the Hilary Hartley prize as the best thesis in his department’s graduating class. Mat is a member of the National Union of Journalists.

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Oil giants Shell, Statoil and BP have been awarded exploration licenses for new areas of the North Sea, just weeks after declaring their commitment to tackling climate change. The UK Oil and Gas A...
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It’s not always easy to own up to mistakes. So the Mail on Sunday deserves some credit for correcting an error it made reporting average global surface temperatures. But it’s still unclear how the...
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For the North Sea oil and gas industry, it must seem like Christmas comes in March. The chancellor’s budget announcements for the past five years have given increasingly generous financial incentiv...
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He’s only been in his post for nine months, but you’ve got to wonder if climate minister Nick Hurd is already bored of answering questions from climate science denier MPs. Yesterday, Hurd had to p...
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Oil giant BP is promoting its brand to thousands of schoolchildren in almost 100 schools in Aberdeenshire, an area in which it recently slashed a fifth of its workforce. Documents obtained by DeSm...
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Big oil company Statoil yesterday released its ‘climate roadmap’. It said the plan “will further strengthen Statoil’s industry leadership in climate performance”. A closer look shows that Statoil ...
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The government has announced more financial help for the North Sea oil and gas industry. Chancellor Philip Hammond today announced plans to establish a panel of experts to decide on the best way t...
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Big Oil companies have made billions from exploiting the North Sea’s oil and gas resources. But as it gets harder to squeeze a profit out of the drying fields, they are increasingly asking the taxp...
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Two fringe British climate science deniers are heading to Maryland to see Donald Trump and his tea party pals this week, taking their Brexit-inflected anti-science agenda with them. Trump’s golden...
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The world’s cleanest energy companies took a hit when Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November. But their market value seems to have bounced back within a month of the famously fos...