by Chris Barnyard

Recently the Next Left blog surveyed and showed that all the top ten Tory blogs in the UK denied the existence of global warming.

Now Martin from the Lay Scientist blog has done a similar survey of UK MEPs.

By my count, 23% of Britain’s 72 MEPs are either explicit climate ‘skeptics’, or are members of ‘skeptic’ parties who remain silent on the subject (I use the term in quotes since climate ‘skeptics’ are generally about as ‘skeptical’ as 9/11 ‘truthers’ are truth-oriented – googling for things that support your case and credulously accepting them as ‘fact’ isn’t skepticism).

Of those, eight belonged to UKIP, two were Conservative and two BNP.

Views of several other MEPs were not know.

Martin adds:

The 26 Conservatives did better than I expected, perhaps through Cameron’s attempt to rebrand the party as Green Conservatives. Indeed, Tories like Vicky Ford are openly attacking bad science, with quotes like: “To be honest, I get fed up with climate-change-deniers.” Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan from the Tory fringe pose the last challenge to a European party consensus on the issue, while the views of four remain unknown. The fringes of the right, who now comprise around 20% of our elected representatives in Europe, are a car crash. The BNP aren’t exactly the most rational of parties, and their views were not unexpected; but UKIP are a much more serious proposition and take a fiercely anti-science line, as you can see from a quick search of their website. UKIP are a climate denialist party.

Read the full article here.