Globalisation:Global Warming Policy Foundation: Funding and links with skeptic think tanks

The Global Warming Policy foundation empasises the following; We are funded entirely by voluntary donations from our Members and Supporters. The annual membership fee is as much as you feel you can afford, but is a minimum of £100 p.a. All donors will receive a Gift Aid Declaration. If you're a UK taxpayer, you can use Gift Aid to make your donations go further. If you do, The Global Warming Foundation will receive an additional 25p for every pound you give through tax relief and at no extra cost to you. The GWPF does not disclose the identity of their donors.In March 2010, Lord Lawson said: 'We have donations from private individuals and private charitable trusts. That is how we are financed. We have one absolutely strict rule: we will not accept any money at all from the energy industry or anyone who has any significant interest in the energy industry. We do not publish a list, because if donors wish to remain anonymous, for whatever reasons, perfectly good reasons, then it is their privilege. I am very happy for them to be published. We are absolutely clean. I would be very happy to see the names of all our donors published.

The lack of GWPF to declare the source of their funds does not gain them much trust with members of the public. It leaves people wondering what/who is behind the GWPF and what their aims are. Some of their associations make the GWPF look even more suspicious. Peiser has strong ties with institutions in the US such as the Heartland Institute which have, over the years, received significant sums of money from companies such as Exxon Mobil. . Although this is not a donation to the GWPF themselves Peiser is a representative of the GWPF. Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies. In 2008 Peiser was a speaker at The Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, a conference held at the Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel in New York between March 2-4 . The conference was organised and "sponsored" by the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tanks that in preceding years received substantial funding from Exxon for its work downplaying the significance of global warming. This clearly shows that Peiser who is the director and thus a representative of GWPF ( a person holding the interests of GWPF), and heartland Institute and ExxonMobil have ties. The following year, 2009, Peiser was also once again a speaker in the Heartland Institute/International Conference on Climate Change (2009) a further emphasis of the link between the two skeptic think tanks.

Peiser also used to be on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Scientific Alliance, that was set up to counter the environmental movement by Scottish quarryman, Robert Durward. Peiser's past employer; The scientific Alliance also has links with ExxonMobil through a joint report (funded by ExxonMobil) with the George C Marshall Institute in Washington that claimed to "undermine" climate change claims.

The Scientific Alliance offers a rational scientific approach to the environmental debate in response to pressure groups. Like the Heartland Institute and the GWPF the Scientific Alliance is a Skeptic Think Tank, offering response to Global warming pressure groups. Its aims include 1. To promote sound science in the environmental debate 2.Ensure that scientific arguments remain prominent throughout the policy making process and 3. To facilitate an informed dialogue between all stallholders involved in the environmental debate through events and publications. In 2005 While Paiser was still on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Scientific Alliance, at a seminar for climate change sceptics, said catastrophic climate change was falsely blamed for everything from the fall of the Mayan civilisation to extreme weather events such as the 2003 summer heat wave."It's important for people to know there are eminent scientists who don't share this viewpoint," he said. Famine, war and disease were bigger threats to civilisation. This is quite similar to what The GWPF states and the Global warming/climate views of the Heartland Institute.

By looking at the link between the GWPF, the Heartland Institute and the Scientific Alliance, skeptic think tanks do have links and have worked together in different arena's. In the Heartland Institute/International Conference on Climate Change (2008) we also see other speakers who are associated with other skeptic think tanks in the list of speakers. Examples include S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Willie Soon, chief science adviser at the Science and Public Policy Institute This suggest that there are other links and close associations between many Global warming skeptic groups.