Leading experts lend support to Freedom of Information request concerning climate sceptic foundation chaired by Lord Lawson
Leading climate scientists have given their support to a Freedom of Information request seeking to disclose who is funding the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based climate sceptic thinktank chaired by the former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson.
James Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies who first warned the world about the dangers of climate change in the 1980s, has joined other scientists in submitting statements to be considered by a judge at the Information Rights Tribunal on Friday. They will argue that Lawson's foundation routinely misrepresents and casts doubt on the work of climate scientists. Their statements will form part of the supporting evidence being presented by an investigative journalist who is appealing against an earlier rejection of his FOI request to the Charity Commission for it to make public a bank statement it holds revealing the name of the educational charity's seed donor, who gave £50,000 when it launched in 2009.
Brendan Montague, the director of an organisation called the Request Initiative, a "community interest company that makes Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of charities, NGOs and non-profits", is seeking to argue that, by authorising his request, the public interest will be served by ending the secrecy around the financing of Lawson's charity.
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