In response, a Southland regional councillor says both the advocacy group and touring physicist are guilty of gaslighting and misinformation.
Groundswell NZ is asking supporters to help fund 86-year-old Dr William Happer’s coming New Zealand tour.
"Now is the time to bring the full scientific debate to New Zealand, where we so often just get one side," Groundswell said in a statement.
Dr Happer has long been critical of the idea climate change is caused by humans, arguing that higher carbon dioxide levels are beneficial and global warming is naturally occurring.
Environment Southland (ES) deputy chairman Phil Morrison told the Otago Daily Times there was an element of "gaslighting" in Dr Happer’s approach.
"The idea that we need not worry at all about greenhouse gases and the effect that they are ... imposing upon our climate ... I think there is risk inherent in that," he said.
Dr Happer was appointed senior director of the US National Security Council office for emerging technologies in 2018, but resigned the following year.
Mr Morrison said while it was important to consider a range of perspectives, it was also key to weigh up all evidence to find balance.
"The weight of evidence seems to indicate the opposite of what [Dr Happer is] promoting," he said.
Though quick to stress he was not a climate scientist himself, Mr Morrison formerly co-chaired the Regional Climate Change Working Group.
The ES climate action initiative was endorsed by the Invercargill City, Gore District and Southland councils and has been running for three years.
From a survey the group did in 2023, he understood 13% of Southland participants did not believe in climate change or planning action in response.
"I don't know if it's helpful to use the term deniers," he said.
With the wide breadth of information available on the subject, he said people needed to be discerning in what they accepted as fact.
"Check their credibility, check their credentials, check who's funding them, check the organisations that may be promoting it," he said.
Mr Morrison said there were different levels of "good and less good" behaviour in advocacy groups that engaged with local and central government.
From what he had seen, not everybody played a clean game in the advocacy space.
"I have a real reaction to disinformation ... and I think we need to call it disinformation and misinformation more often."
