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Who We Are

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was launched by Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser on 23 November 2009 in the House of Lords – in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

Mission Statement

People are naturally concerned about the environment, and want to see policies that enhance human wellbeing and protect the environment; policies that don’t hurt, but help.

GWPF is committed to providing a platform for educational research and informed debates on these important issues.

In order to make progress and advance effective policy assessments, it is essential to cultivate a culture of open debate, tolerance and learning.

Our aim is to raise standards in learning and understanding through rigorous research and analysis, to help inform a balanced debate amongst the interested public and decision-makers.

We aim to create an educational platform on which common ground can be established, helping to overcome polarisation and partisanship. We aim to promote a culture of debate, respect, and a hunger for knowledge.

Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser launching the GWPF

Founder

Lord Lawson

Board of Trustees

Dr Jerome Booth

Chairman

Jerome Booth is an economist, was co-founder of fund manager Ashmore and serves as chairman.

The Hon Tony Abbott AC

Tony Abbott was Australian prime minister from 2013 to 2015 and served as the member of the Australian parliament from 1994 to 2019. He is a director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, serves on the council of the Australian War Memorial, and is an adviser to the UK Board of Trade.

Michael Cole

Michael Cole is a British businessman and has operated as chairman of various companies. He has a degree in chemistry.

Lord Frost

Lord Frost is a former diplomat, civil servant and politician. He served as a Minister of State at the Cabinet Office between March and December 2021 after becoming a Conservative Peer in September 2020. Previously he was Britain’s chief negotiator during the Brexit negotiations, after spending much of his professional career at the Foreign Office.

Kathy Gyngell

Kathy Gyngell is a social policy analyst, broadcaster and journalist; and editor of The Conservative Woman since 2014.

Professor Michael J Kelly FRS FREng

Michael Kelly is the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He was a Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department for Communities and Local Government.

Terence Mordaunt

Terence Mordaunt is the co-owner of Bristol Port Company.

Allison Pearson

Allison Pearson is an award-winning journalist and international bestselling author. Her books have sold four million copies and been translated into 32 languages. She is a columnist and Chief Interviewer at the Daily Telegraph.

Graham Stringer MP

Graham Stringer is a Labour MP. He was the leader of Manchester City Council and the Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office under Tony Blair.

Professor Fritz Vahrenholt

Dr Fritz Vahrenholt is one of the founders of the environmental movement in Germany. Since 1969 he has been a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and served as Deputy Environment Minister and Senator of the City of Hamburg. For many years he held top management positions in the renewable energy industry.

Staff

Dr Benny Peiser

Director

Dr Benny Peiser is the director of the GWPF. He has written extensively on domestic and international climate policy. In 1997 he founded CCNet, the world’s leading climate policy network. A 10km-wide asteroid, Minor Planet (7107) Peiser, was named in his honour by the International Astronomical Union.

Harry Wilkinson

Head of Policy

Dr David Whitehouse

Science Editor

Dr John Constable

Energy Director

Academic Advisory Council

Professor Gautam Kalghatgi

Chairman

Gautam Kalghatgi is a leading energy engineer with over 40 years’ experience in combustion, engines, fuels and energy research. He has been a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, Imperial College London, Technical University Eindhoven, KTH Stockholm and Sheffield University.

Professor Michael Alder

Michael Alder is Professor (Emeritus) in Rural Environment at the University of Essex. His research is focused on land use in the UK, agriculture, conservation and the environment. He is a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society.

Professor Anthony Barrett FRS FMedSci

Anthony Barrett is an Emeritus Professor of Synthesis at Imperial College London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences and has received numerous awards for his contributions to research from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society, among many others.

Sir Ian Byatt

Ian Byatt is a former Director General of the Office of Water Services for England and Wales, before which he was Deputy Chief Economic Adviser in HM Treasury. From 2005-2011 he was the chairman of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland.

Dr John Carr

John Carr followed an academic research career in Particle Physics and Astroparticle Particle with positions at Imperial College, Rutherford Laboratory, Lawrence Berkely Laboratory, University of Colorado and the CNRS, Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille. He was responsible for the construction of the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope which was operational at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near Toulon from 2006-2021.

Dr John Constable

John Constable is a British energy analyst and the GWPF’s energy editor. 

Professor Vincent Courtillot

Vincent Courtillot is professor of geophysics at the University of Paris Diderot and Director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris. He is past president of the European Union of Geosciences and currently chairs the scientific council of the City of Paris.

Professor John Dewey FRS

John Dewey (Oxford University) is an eminent geologist who has made outstanding contributions to plate tectonics and the understanding of the process of mountain building. 

Professor Peter Dobson OBE

Peter Dobson is the former Director of Oxford University’s Begbroke Business and Science Park. He was one of the founders of a Master’s course on Environmental Technology at Imperial College (in the early 80s) and one of the founders of the Energy Society at Oxford University.

Professor Christopher Essex

Christopher Essex is Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at The University of Western Ontario. He co-discovered the entropy production paradox, computed the first accurate entropy production rate for the Earth, the first accurate temperature for laser radiation, and pioneered the concept of computational over-stabilization, which has implications for climate models.

Dr Samuel Furfari

Dr Samuel Furfari is professor of energy geopolitics and energy politics since 2003 (Brussels and London). Between 1982 and 2018, he was a senior official at the Energy Directorate-General of the European Commission where he devoted an entire career to energy technology and energy policy. He is the author of 15 books on energy and sustainable development and numerous articles. Since 2019 he has been the President of the European Society of Engineers and Industrialists.

Christian Gerondeau

Christian Gerondeau is an expert in transport and energy policy and was in charge of national road safety policy for France and the European Union. He is the chairman of the “Association Francophone des Climato-Optimistes” (AFCO).

Professor Laurence Gould

Laurence (“Larry”) Gould is Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford. He is Past Chair of the New England Section of the American Physical Society and is Chairman of the Executive Board of the International Symmetry Association.

Professor William Happer

William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. From 1991 to 1993, he served as director of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. 

Professor Ole Humlum

Dr Humlum is a former Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and Emeritus Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo. He is a member of the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research.

Professor Terence Kealey

Terence Kealey, a medical biochemist, was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham (2001-2014). His latest book is entitled Sex, Science and Profits.

William Kininmonth

William Kininmonth is a former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Climate Division.

Bryan Leyland

Bryan Leyland DistFEngNZ is a power systems engineer with more than 60 years worldwide experience. He has been heavily involved in hydropower and most new renewable energy technologies.

Professor Richard Lindzen

Richard Lindzen is Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his work on the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry, and has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.

Professor Ross McKitrick

Ross McKitrick is a Canadian economist specialising in environmental economics and policy analysis. He is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario. With Stephen McIntyre, he was instrumental in exposing the fatal flaws of the so-called Hockey Stick.

Professor Robert Mendelsohn

Robert Mendelsohn is Professor of Economics at Yale University and one of the world’s leading environmental economists. He has written extensively on the economics of climate change.

Professor Garth Paltridge

Dr Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and was a Chief Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). 

Professor Ian Plimer

Ian Plimer is Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide. He has published 60 academic papers and six books. His latest book, recently published, is entitled Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science.

Professor Gwythian Prins

Dr Gwythian Prins is Emeritus Research Professor at the London School of Economics, where he founded and directed the Mackinder Centre for modern geo-politics. He has researched, published and advised governments on the politics of global warming since the 1980s.

Professor Paul Reiter 

Paul Reiter is Emeritus Professor of Medical Entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, and widely respected specialist in the epidemiology and control of mosquito-borne diseases.

Professor Peter Ridd

Peter Ridd was Professor of Physics at James Cook University specialising in geophysics. He published over 100 articles in international journals, many relating to the Great Barrier Reef upon which he worked for over 35 years. 

Dr Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley is one of the world’s foremost science writers. His books have sold over 800,000 copies and been translated into 27 languages. His new book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 was published in November 2021.

Sir Alan Rudge

Sir Alan Rudge FRS, an electrical engineer, is Chairman of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Chairman of the ERA Foundation, former Chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council,and a former member of the government Scientific Advisory Committee.

Professor Nir Shaviv

Nir Shaviv is an astrophysicist carrying out research in the fields of astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Henrik Svensmark

Henrik Svensmark is an astrophysicist and head of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute, DTU.

Dr David Whitehouse

David Whitehouse, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, was successively BBC Science Correspondent and Science Editor BBC News Online.  He is the author of a number of books on solar system astronomy and the history of astronomy.