Owen Paterson to give lecture to Nigel Lawson's climate-sceptic thinktank

Former environment secretary Owen Paterson is to give the annual lecture for the UK’s most prominent climate sceptic group, the Global Policy Warming Foundation.

Paterson, who slashed funding for adapting to climate change impacts in the UK, agreed to give the lecture just days after leaving office.

The GWPF is led by Lord Nigel Lawson and the annual lecture has been given by high-profile climate sceptics, including in 2013 former Australian prime minister John Howard, who described those urging action on climate change as “alarmists” and “zealots” for whom “the cause has become a substitute religion”.

Paterson’s repeated failure to endorse the conclusions of the world’s scientists and governments that climate change is dangerous and caused by fossil fuel burning had led to the assumption that he was a climate change sceptic, but the announcement of his support for the GWPF confirms it.

Lord Lawson, chairman of the GWPF, told the Guardian he had wanted a British lecturer after a series of speakers from overseas. "I felt Owen Paterson would give an excellent and thoughtful lecture. At the time I invited him he was still in post as environment secretary, a job of considerable relevance to the successful development of UK shale gas, which the GWPF strongly supports."

But the confirmation of Paterson's views has prompted campaigners to question the UK government's commitment to tackling climate change. "Paterson held an office to do things that help protect the UK public from the impacts of climate change and it is extremely good that he has gone,” said Andrew Pendleton, at Friends of the Earth. “But there are still questions to answer about how this government is dealing with climate change: how seriously do they take it? This is not about an internecine fight within the Tory party, it is about the future of humanity.”

Ben Stewart at Greenpeace UK said: “Some people would say that for the last two years Paterson has been delivering a rolling 24/7 lecture for the GWPF. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s come out of the closet and formalised the relationship.”

Bob Ward, policy director at the LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: “This provides a glimpse of how far the tentacles of Lord Lawson’s lobby group have extended into government departments. Let us sincerely hope that the new environment secretary, Elizabeth Truss, is better informed about climate change than her sacked predecessor.”

Paterson, who was also responsible for defences against rising flood risk - the greatest consequence of climate change in the UK - made a series of sceptical comments during his time as environment secretary.

In September 2013, he said: “People get very emotional about [climate change] and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries.” In June 2013, he said: “The climate has not changed. The temperature hasn’t changed in 17 years.” On the same occasion, the BBC’s Any Questions show, he said: “The measures that we take to counter climate change may cause more damage than they gain.”

A Conservative Party spokesman declined to say whether it had been a mistake to appoint a climate sceptic as environment secretary. He said the words in the letter sent by prime minister David Cameron's to Paterson after the latter's sacking spoke for themselves: "I would like you to know how much I have personally appreciated your friendship, loyalty and support over the years, and your commitment to the government’s priorities."

The GWPF is the UK’s most high-profile climate sceptic group and it is a charitable foundation. But it recently announced it would be setting up a separate lobbying arm, the Global Policy Warming Forum, after advice from the Charity Commission on the conflict between charitable status and political campaigning.

Other sceptics who have given the GWPF annual lecture include former Czech president, Václav Klaus, who said: “The widespread acceptance of the global warming dogma has become one of the main, most costly and most undemocratic public policy mistakes in generations. The previous one was communism.”

Another lecturer was Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, who said global warming has “stopped”, that carbon dioxide is “not a pollutant, but part of the stuff of life” and that if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was doubled, then “plants would love it”.

The GWPF does not reveal the source of its funding. “The GWPF relentlessly promotes the use of fossil fuels – so who are the funders behind that lobbying?” said the Green party’s James Abbott.

Ben Stafford, head of public affairs at WWF-UK, said: “As environment secretary, Owen Paterson has seen at first hand the impacts of a changing climate. This year’s severe floods in England were a stark reminder about the risks we face in the years and decades ahead. We hope he’ll use his GWPF lecture to make the case for ongoing UK leadership, both at home and abroad, to secure a strong international deal to limit emissions, and to invest in measures to mitigate the impacts we are already seeing.”