Today at UCLA, a group of high profile climate change deniers are featured at a conference titled: “Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny?”

By itself this is nothing special; climate “skeptics” are always having these echo chamber conferences, to keep the deluded masses fully stocked up with hooey. But this time, the conference is sponsored by a far right front group called the “American Freedom Alliance” — an organization that also vigorously promotes creationism and anti-Muslim bigotry: Climate sceptics flirt with intelligent design and Islamophobic group.

I’ve said for years that climate change deniers have a lot in common with creationists; now the connections are becoming explicit.

The American Freedom Alliance is, perhaps, best known for its on-going legal action with the California Science Center over the cancellation of an AFA event to be held at the centre in 2009 at which it intended to screen a “teach the controversy” film called Darwin’s Dilemma, which explores the “Mystery of the Cambrian Explosion in Fossil Records”. At the time, Avi Davis, executive director and senior fellow of the American Freedom Alliance, said: “New scientific evidence makes it vital that we take a close look at the numerous inherent scientific problems of the Darwinian theory of evolution.” The AFA has subsequently fought the case on the grounds of freedom of expression.

But far more controversial than its dabbling in the “evolution v intelligent design” debate is the AFA’s stance on Islam. One of the AFA’s three fellows is a highly provocative figure called Robert Spencer who has willingly stoked the “Barack Obama is a Muslim” meme, challenged the building of the “Ground Zero mosque”, and runs a controversial blog called Jihad Watch.

For example, in 2010, he used his blog to offer his support to the far-right English Defence League: “The EDL is standing up to violent thugs from both the Left and the increasingly assertive Islamic communities in Britain, and they deserve the support of all free people.”

The AFA’s funding is unclear, but tax returns (pdf) for the Fairbrook Foundation - a charitable foundation set up by computing multi-millionaires Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, which supports a wide range of Jewish and pro-Israeli groups - show that the foundation has donated more than $100,000 to the AFA since it was founded in 2007. It has also directly funded Spencer’s Jihad Watch, too. (A Politico investigation last year showed how the Fairbrook Foundation has funded the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which itself has funnelled nearly $1m to Jihad Watch in recent years. Tax returns (pdf) for the David Horowitz Freedom Center also show that it paid Spencer a salary of $131,981 in 2009.)