Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film

[babylonsister]

Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film


Fuel and mining magnate backed UK challenge to An Inconvenient Truth

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday October 14, 2007
The Observer

The school governor who challenged the screening of Al Gore's climate change documentary in secondary schools was funded by a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists' claims about global warming.

Stewart Dimmock's high-profile fight to ban the film being shown in schools was depicted as a David and Goliath battle, with the Kent school governor taking on the state by arguing that the government was 'brainwashing' pupils.

A High Court ruling last week that the Oscar-winning documentary would have to be screened with guidance notes to balance its claims was welcomed by climate-change sceptics.

The Observer has established that Dimmock's case was supported by a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies. He was also supported by a Conservative councillor in Hampshire, Derek Tipp.

Dimmock credited the little-known New Party with supporting him in the test case but did not elaborate on its involvement. The obscure Scotland-based party calls itself 'centre right' and campaigns for lower taxes and expanding nuclear power.

Records filed at the Electoral Commission show the New Party has received nearly all of its money - almost £1m between 2004 and 2006 - from Cloburn Quarry Limited, based in Lanarkshire.

The company's owner and chairman of the New Party, Robert Durward, is a long-time critic of environmentalists. With Mark Adams, a former private secretary to Tony Blair, he set up the Scientific Alliance, a not-for-profit body comprising scientists and non-scientists, which aims to challenge many of the claims about global warming.

more...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2190770,00.html

[SergeyDovlatov]

1. the question is, though. What came first, chicken or the egg?

Meaning, this guy held this position due to his view on AGW science and was subsequently supported by oil & mining.
Or, he sold out to them and changed his view.

I think it is the former. Since it is much more lucrative to be a supporter of AGW as a scientist than to be in opposition.

[Viking12]

5. WTF?

more lucrative to be a supporter of AGW as a scientist

You obviously have proof of this conspiratorial claim, right?

[SergeyDovlatov]

6. Conspiratorial? What made you think so?

I worked as a researcher at the University and I now something about grant getting. (Though it was not about environment)
Government grants were the most lavish compared to smaller grants provided by private companies.

If there is a certain area of research that is currently hot topic and have a lot of funding, you do want to select your topics to not buckle the trend so that you can get a favorable reviews by the people who are reviewing your grant application.

Howeer, I base my opinion on a grant situation in a different discipline and it may be somewhat different for environment studies, but I doubt it.

[applegrove]

2. Not a surprise.

[sakabatou]

3. I'd love to see their "proof"

[LSK]

4. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY