Back in June, Frank Swain and I argued for evidence-based policy ahead of the European Elections, and called for greater scrutiny of the various parties' policies on science. Inevitably for a pair of science bloggers pretending to be Guardian journalists, we were ignored. The election came and went, people elected a parade of fringe characters, and the result for science policy can be seen in the following statistic, researched and calculated over several very tedious evenings.

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).

You can see further data, graphs and commentary below. The raw table of all MEPs is linked at the end of this post.

Lets start with the overall numbers. The table below shows the sum of MEPs holding each view, and was constructed based on an exhaustive search for published quotes in the media. I've included two figures: the first column shows explicit views, while the second column shows how the data changes if we assume that those MEPs who don't express views are likely to follow the party line (which gets us the 23% figure - I'll discuss the problems with this assumption below).

So 12 MEPs (16.7%) are actually on record taking an stance on climate opposed to science. They are Stuart Agnew [UKIP], Marta Andreasan [UKIP], Gerrard Batten [UKIP], Godfrey Bloom [UKIP], David Bannerman [UKIP], Derek Clark [UKIP], Nick Griffin [BNP], Daniel Hannan [Con] and Roger Helmer [Con] who deny that any warming is occuring; and Andrew Brons [BNP], Nigel Farage [UKIP] and Paul Nuttal [UKIP] who deny that any warming is man-made.

Let's just take a minute or two away from the data to enjoy Godfrey Bloom giving probably the most epicly stupid 90-second speech you'll see in the European Parliament large month.

Erm, right. Anyway, we can break these down by party as follows.

The problem here are the 10 unknowns (14%), hence my weasel-worded use of "up to" in the title of this article. They are Derek Vaughn [Lab], Kay Swinburne [Con], John Bufton [UKIP], Phililp Bradbourn [Con], Trevor Colman [UKIP], William, Earl of Dartmouth [UKIP], Jacqueline Foster [Con], Emma McClarkin [Con], Mike Nattrass [UKIP] (whose views are somewhat ambiguous), and Nikki Sinclaire [UKIP].

It seems reasonable to assume that these MEPs are likely to follow the party line, which I'll look at further below. If any readers can help track down the views of these ten, I'll be happy to update the article (with credit given).

Let's gratuitously show off my blog's graphing capabilities for a third time, and make another bar chart (the graphing capabilities are so advanced, I haven't figure out how to do pie charts yet. Sorry.)

Note the almost complete absence of the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the SNP from this analysis so far. 100% of Lib Dem and SNP MEPs have publicly called for action on climate change. Indeed, the same is true for all of Scotland's MEPs, and our Northern neighbours lead the British Isles on climate. Only one Labour MEP has apparently failed to speak on the issue.

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.

UKIP have 13 MEPs, of whom 8 are definitely in opposition to the science, while the views of 5 are undeclared. Looking at the stream of anti-science output coming from their party, and taking into account the anecdotal evidence from MEPs like Richard Corbett (who refers to "the entirety of UKIP" being in the denialist camp, though admittedly before the 2009 elections), it seems reasonable to assume that most of those unknowns are not far off the views of their colleagues.

Given that I've generously assumed all four Tory unknowns follow their party line, the speculative figure of 23% I mentioned at the top of the article seems reasonable to me. I appreciate, however, that this is a very unscientific approach, and I'm looking forward to being ruthlessly attacked in the comments for it!

Over the last several years, overt climate denialism has been pushed to the fringe of politics, with the debate among mainstream parties pretty much won by the science. Indeed, around 70% of our MEPs accept (publicly at least) that climate change is a man-made problem and that we need to act.

The problem for the European Union is that the same fringe has reemerged as a major force since the June elections, particularly with the growth of UKIP. This sudden increase in anti-science views among our European representatives threatens, if it continues, to undermine progress tackling the scientific challenges we face, and tarnish our reputation as a leading nation in the fight against climate change.

And it begs the question, what range of views will the 2010 General Election (or elections) bring into our domestic Parliament?

Raw Data

Download Data as Text File

• Key to Data File:
• 0 = Unknown view
• 1 = No warming at all
• 2 = GW not anthropogenic, do nothing
• 3 = AGW Happening, do nothing
• 4 = AGW happening, action needed