Please note, this page has been
archived since 2011 and will not be updated.
Dr Richard A E North is a blogger, political analyst and author.
He has co-authored several books with Christopher Booker of the
Daily Telegraph, including
Scared to Death, From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing
Us the Earth. Dr North is a climate sceptic commentator and
played a key part in the "Amazongate" story, as well as propagating
allegations made against Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman. Both
stories were followed by
published
apologies and retractions from the newspapers involved,
with the latter reported to have resulted in considerable legal
costs.
Dr North studied a PhD in
food hygiene at Leeds Metropolitan University and has not
studied academically in a climate-related field, or published peer
reviewed academic papers on climate change. He
appeared as a witness for the activist group London Greenpeace
(unaffiliated with Greenpeace) against McDonald's, supporting
claims that the majority of food poisoning cases were related to
eating meat. North also campaigned against government policy on
behalf of the United Kingdom Egg Producers Association during the
salmonella scare. Since then, he has collaborated with Booker on a
number of campaigns challenging scientific findings or government
policy.
Dr North runs the EU Referendum blog,
which in 2006 was described as being the
third most influential in Britain by the Financial Times. He is
about to publish with Booker a book titled
Climategate to Cancun: The Real Global Warming Disaster
Continues… In 2009 he published
Ministry of Defeat 2003 - 2009: The British in Iraq. His
previous books have been collaborations with Booker and include
The Mad Officials: How The Bureaucrats Are Strangling Britain
and
The Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must Get Out of Europe.
Between 1999 to 2003 Dr North was research director for the
political grouping containing UKIP in the European Parliament.
North said he resigned from UKIP to avoid being fired after falling
out with the party leader and MEP Nigel Farage. Following his
resignation, North
said:
I am not and was not prepared to be a
bag-carrier. Nor would I fetch and carry for Farage, or write his
letters, or be available to pour him into a taxi when he was so
blind drunk that he could no longer stand, or cover for him when he
failed to turn up for morning appointments because he had been out
on the tiles all night long. I am almost old enough to be his
father, but I am not in the business of being his nanny.
Dr North worked in partnership with Christopher Booker in an
investigation into the finances of Dr Rajendra Pachauri. The sub
heading of one article in The Sunday Telegraph claimed Pachauri was
"making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies",
resulting in what the newspaper described as a "conflict of
interest" with his IPCC role. However, an
investigation by KPMG found the allegations were untrue.
The Sunday Telegraph published an apology and retraction of the
allegation.
Dr North is also credited with creating the "Amazongate"
controversy in which he claimed that a statement made by the IPCC that 40 percent
of Amazon rainforest could be threatened by a decrease in rainfall
was bogus. The criticism
first appeared on Dr North's blog and was repeated in the
Sunday Times with the headline "
UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim" under the
byline of environment editor Jonathan Leake. The online version of
the story credited "research" from Dr North.
Scrutiny of the relevant part of the IPCC report found that while it was poorly
referenced, the science behind the claim was well established and
supported by peer-reviewed research. Following a
complaint to the Press Complaints Commission from Dr Simon Lewis, a
Royal Society research fellow and member of the Earth and Biosphere
Institute at the University of Leeds, the Sunday Times was forced
to publish
a page-two apology and retract the article acknowledging it was
inaccurate.
Dr Lewis
wrote in his complaint to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)
that
Had I known Richard North was connected
to writing the Sunday Times piece I would have refused to comment
or answer questions about the Amazon as North is in no way a
trustworthy writer when it comes to the careful assessment and
reporting of scientific knowledge.
Dr Richard North, profiled here, is distinct from right wing
commentator Richard D North, Media Fellow of the Institute of
Economic Affairs, who maintains a blog here.
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