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A campaign is underway to have Patrick Moore adopted as an Ambassador for EXPO 2015 in Milan, where the theme will be “Feeding the planet, energy for life”.

Among the GMO supporters leading the Moore campaign are Marc Van Montagu, the president of the European Federation of Biotechnology, and Ingo Potrykus, the “inventor” of Golden Rice.

In their petition, addressed to the President of the Council of the European Union among others, they describe Moore as an environmentalist who’s always had “a crystal clear reputation”. Some might think this meant he had an unblemished reputation but Moore is, in fact, a hugely controversial figure.

This is because after leaving Greenpeace back in the mid-1980s Moore earned his living defending almost everything Greenpeace was concerned about – from mining to clearcut logging, nuclear power to fish farms, PVC to GMOs. Paul Watson, another early member of Greenpeace, has branded Moore “a hired gun for industry” who defends his clients “with lies, character attacks, and pseudo scientific justifications.”

Van Montagu and Potrykus are equally misleading about Moore’s campaigning on climate change. Here’s what they say in the petition:

“Over the past 15 years, Mr. Moore has been involved in activities related to climate change and food shortage in general adopting an original, but not isolated, approach in the environmental movement: the systematic control of the scientifically proved data.”

It almost beggars belief that these GM scientists would place Moore’s climate campaigning in the context of championing the systematic use of “scientifically proved data”, given that Moore is a leading denialist with zero scientific credibility on the issue – see the article below. In fact, Moore is currently touring Australia for a climate science denial organization that sought to fund raise for his tour by selling t-shirts comparing climate change to make-believe stuff like the tooth fairy!