Richard Tice, deputy leader and energy spokesperson for Reform is a climate change denier.
Almost every expert scientist agrees that human activities on this planet are causing or accelerating climate change.
Tice’s take? That idea is "absolute garbage".
He told a reporter from Sky that
There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change.
And more recently he told the Guardian that:
Do I think that [the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere] will definitely change the climate? No. There is no evidence that it is.”
No evidence! Institutions of science and beyond, of course, virulently disagree.
Bob Ward, policy director at LSE University’s Grantham Research Institute and Geological Society fellow, called the comments "pure misinformation".
"There is not a single credible scientific organisation in the UK or the world that agrees with him about the causes or consequences of climate change," said Mr Ward.
Dr Andrew Jarvis from Lancaster University called the comments "categorically wrong", while Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London said Mr Tice was "missing the point".
Dr George Adamson from King’s College London said the idea that Richard Tice had "discovered something that climate scientists don’t know about is of course preposterous".
In fact a 2021 scientific review found an astounding amount of consensus amongst scientists:
We conclude with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change—expressed as a proportion of the total publications—exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
How does Tice explain this "feedback"? Well, by seeking recourse once again in the usual wild conspiracy theories.
The Reform UK deputy leader suggested Nasa and the UN were wrong to report that the leading cause of climate change is human activities, arguing he could name thousands of scientists who agree with him but won’t come forward because they are “terrified to speak because they won’t get any research funding if they tell it how it is.
But there’s more:
There is so much money and vested interests who are trying to push this agenda on us. It has to stop and only Reform UK is going to stop it
says a party that had 92% of its funding come from "oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers" in the years leading up to 2024.