Topic: NewsBusters
We've noted how NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard (among others) touted a British court ruling that there were nine (or is it 11?) errors in Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" without noting that the court also ruled that the movie's "four main scientific hypotheses" are "very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC." Turns out there's something else that Sheppard and Co. aren't telling their readers.
In an Oct. 9 NewsBusters post, Sheppard decribed the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Stewart Dimmock, only as "a British truck driver." From the UK Observer:
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.[...]
In 2004 the alliance co-authored a report with the George C Marshall Institute, a US body funded by Exxon Mobil, that attacked climate change claims. 'Climate change science has fallen victim to heated political and media rhetoric ... the result is extensive misunderstanding,' the report's authors said.
Any chance Sheppard will tell his readers the full story behind the "truck driver" and his well-funded, politically motivated lawsuit? Don't count on it.
