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ON November 24 in Melbourne, Professor Ian Plimer launched his new book which aims to spread doubt and uncertainty on the science of climate change.

Targeting school children and teachers (at least superficially) with his book, Professor Plimer told the audience: “These children are being fed environmental propaganda and these children are too young to be fed ideology”

Yet the book – How to Get Expelled From School – is being supported by the Institute for Public Affairs, a think-tank that exists to do little else than spread its own free-market ideology.

Not only that, but Professor Plimer, a geologist at the University of Adelaide, was actively fundraising for the IPA just last month when the Federal Government’s carbon price legislation was passed.

The executive director of the IPA John Roskam, former corporate affairs manager for mining giant Rio Tinto, is on the editorial board of the book’s publisher, Connor Court.

During his 20-minute launch speech on YouTube, Professor Plimer criticised climate scientists for being allegedly part of a “political movement”. Yet in virtually the next breath, he told the audience “one of the aims of this book is to maintain the rage, because we have an election coming.”

So much for spreading ideology and taking the politics out of science?

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A UK-based climate change denial think-tank has been caught making serious misrepresentations on climate policy which go against the guidelines of the UK's charity regulator.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, set up as a charitable organisation by former UK Conservative finance minister Lord Nigel Lawson, has been gaining traction in some media outlets who are turning to the foundation in an apparent attempt to "balance" their stories on climate change.

But in providing balance, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, shows those media outlets are also helping to spread mistruths.

Writing in The Guardian, Ward looked back on public statements and media interviews given by Lord Lawson since his foundation was launched in November 2009 and found at least five examples where the public had been misled.

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Viewers of the Munk Debate Tuesday night among Guardian columnist George Monbiot, Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May, Thatcher-era Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and the Disingenuous Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg can only come back to a conclusion that many had reached beforehand: these occasions offer the denial industry a boost in credibility they neither earn nor deserve.

Watching the debate, it was hard not to conclude that May and Monbiot were winning in their argument in favour of the proposition: that climate change is the defining issue of our time. The assembled audience seemed to agree on one hand, ranking the debaters in descending order from Monbiot, through May, Lomborg and finally Lawson (who impressed a mere eight per cent of those assembled).

Lawson himself seemed to concede defeat in his summation, noting that “They have the best of the rhetoric.”

Yet the audience, which began the night split 61 to 39 per cent in favour of the proposition, ended it voting 56 to 44 per cent in favour - a slide of five points toward the underperforming rhetoriticians arguing on behalf of denial and delay.