A senior Reform UK councillor has been criticised after claiming man-made global warming is a “hoax”.
Bert Bingham, cabinet member for transport and environment at Nottinghamshire County Council, made the comments during a public meeting on Thursday.
He claimed data is “manipulated” and people have been “brainwashed over time through the media”.
Bingham declined the BBC’s request for an interview.
Bingham was speaking during a debate on a motion tabled by Labour councillors which called for the Reform-run authority to recommit to becoming carbon neutral by 2030.
“I’ve been involved in award-winning sustainability projects for 25 years, and I’ve never seen such nonsense as the anthropogenic global warming hoax,” he said.
“The statistics are manipulated. I’ve followed it over decades, there’s lots of science out there, but at the moment it seems to be as in a lot of matters with Covid, if you follow the money, you find the science or the pseudoscience.”
Scientists around the world agree human activities are causing temperatures to rise, and the year 2024 was the world’s hottest on record.
It was also the first calendar year to surpass 1.5C (34.7F) of warming, according to the Copernicus climate service.
The UN’s climate body – the IPCC – concluded in 2023 that “human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming”.
Bingham said Reform UK is opposed to net zero targets “but that does not mean we don’t support environmental protection, sustainability, resource efficiency, industrial symbiosis – many areas I’ve worked in.”
He added that declaring a climate emergency was “absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical”.
“They’ll have us back living in mud huts – if even living at all – by the time they’re done,” he said.
He said he was “happy to debate people at any time on the price of energy and how it’s manipulated”.
He declined to be interviewed by the BBC at the end of the meeting, saying he had a prior engagement.
Labour county councillor Helen Faccio, who tabled the motion, said she was “stunned” by the comments.
She added: “I don’t think it’s really appropriate that you think you know better than a whole body of evidence and scientists who present all this information all the time and have told us this is happening – we can see it is happening.”
Other Reform UK councillors applauded at the end of Bingham’s speech.
Council leader Mick Barton told the BBC he does not agree with Bingham that man-made global warming is a hoax, but is “more than happy” for him to continue in his cabinet role.
“I’m the leader but I don’t tell Bert what to say and I don’t tell Bert what not to say, that’s up to councillor Bingham.”
“Bert Bingham is one of the best cabinet members I’ve got and if he’s got his own opinions on climate change, I ain’t got a problem with that.”