Three recipients of Boris Johnson’s honours are high-level backers of a climate sceptic group that claims global warming is “welcome”.

Between his political honours list published last year and his recent resignation honours list, the disgraced former PM has rewarded three allies who are closely connected to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which campaigns under the name Net Zero Watch.

The group, which campaigns for increasing the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels, has been accused of spreading disinformation about climate science.

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who was made a dame in Johnson’s 9 June resignation honours list, joined the board of Net Zero Watch in May.

“Westminster has been gripped by groupthink on climate and energy policy for far too long,” she said at the time. 

On Thursday, the group published a report claiming there was “little to be alarmed about” in last year’s extreme weather, which led to an estimated 3,200 excess deaths and saw dozens of homes destroyed by fire.

“The UK climate remains absolutely benign,” said Paul Homewood, the accountant who wrote the report. “The changes we have seen have been small, and mostly thoroughly welcome. Who would complain that we are seeing fewer bitterly cold winters?”

A climate scientist told openDemocracy the report was so full of falsehoods that its pages were better off being used “to cover your windows and help keep your house cooler during the next blistering heatwave”.

“As you would expect of something written by an accountant on behalf of a climate denial organisation with a history of spouting nonsense, this putatively scientific review of UK weather in 2022 is drivel and its conclusions risible,” said Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL.

“Packed with cherry-picked data, puerile and simplistic interpretations, weasel words and obfuscation, it trails the now familiar denier message: ‘Everything’s fine – nothing to see here, folks.’”

He added: “All we need to do is look around us to see that everything is not fine – far from it.”

McGuire, who contributed to a past report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pointed out the Met Office painted a very different picture of last year’s weather in its own annual report.

The national weather service said that 2022 – the first year an extreme heatwave in excess of 40°C was recorded in the UK – was the country’s warmest year on record since 1884.

Mark McCarthy, the head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, explained at the time that Met Office research had “shown that the temperatures witnessed in mid-July would have been extremely unlikely in the pre-industrial period – the era before humanity started emitting lots of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels”.

The impact on the environment was also devastating, with England suffering four times as many wildfires over summer than in the same period in 2021.

Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, told openDemocracy that it was “ridiculous” to describe heatwaves that cause devastating fires as “thoroughly welcome”. 

“Firefighters battling unprecedented wildfires across the UK right now understand this all too well,” he added.

Jenkyns’ damehood is not the first time Johnson, who has been criticised by Labour for giving “gongs to cronies”, has honoured those linked to the GWFP. 

In his 2022 political honours list, released in October, the former prime minister made businessman Michael Hintze and civil servant Ruth Lea life peers.

Hintze is one of the only known donors to the climate sceptic group, while Lea was a trustee and director of the GWPF between 2019 to 2021.

openDemocracy revealed last year that GWPF, which does not disclose its donors publicly, had received funding from groups with oil and gas interests.

Jenkyns, who recently said it was “time to ditch” the UK’s net zero targets, did not respond to questions from openDemocracy asking if she agreed with the report.

Benny Peiser, the director of GWPF, said: “The GWPF welcomes and encourages critical comments and discussions that are based on empirical data. Critics are invited to comment and engage with our authors. If they disagree with any of the facts presented, or believe important facts have been omitted, we will be happy to publish their criticism.”

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, said: “It is disappointing and dangerous that any politician with strong connections to the government sits on the board of the group that produced this nonsense, particularly an individual ennobled by Boris Johnson days ago. 

“While the ‘findings’ of this report are not worth the paper they are written on, it should concern voters that senior politicians continue to deny the science of climate change, the most serious threat to social wellbeing the world faces this century.”