Bishop Hill The perils of over-promotion
Mar 31, 2015 Energy: gas Greens Prominent anti-fracking campaigner and prospective parliamentary candidate Mike Hill has been very good at promoting himself in recent years. But media attention can be a double-edged sword, as Mr Hill has found to his cost in recent days. Last week he was the subject of a two stories at Guido Fawkes blog, when it emerged that he had once applied for a job at Cuadrilla, that he had pretended spun things so as to present himself as an adviser to the European Union, the Royal Society and DECC, when his role had been little more than to be involved in discussions with them.
Today he is in the Times, which reveals that Mr Hill helped produce a report on fracking that persuaded a doctors' organisation to take a stand against fracking. However, Mr Hill's anti-fracking background was not revealed and with his colourful background now revealed to all it could be argued that the doctors' statement is now a dead letter.
But Mr Hill's story seems even stranger than we first thought. A 2012 post on the Counting Cats blog suggests that he is not only an engineer and campaigner but is also a citizen of extraordinary public spirit, having spent £17000 of his own money on his shale-related activity. This seemed just a bit too good to be true, as Counting Cats explained:
Most people who have money to burn and want to push for regulation tend to lobby the government directly. Or, if they are in a hurry, bung enormous bribes at corrupt politicians. I’m cynical enough to wonder if Mr. Hill has an angle so I went trawling but where to start? At the foot of each page of the report is © Michael Hill – GCAL. GCAL could refer to Glasgow Caledonian University. It also refers to this.
Gemini Control and Automation Ltd (GCAL) make bespoke filters for industrial centrifuges – Heinkel centrifuges in particular. This company is based in Lytham, not a million miles from Preece Hall. One of the uses for Heinkel centrifuges is in the fracking industry, specifically servicing flow-back. By amazing coincidence a bloke called Mike Hill is associated with Gemini Control and Automation Ltd.
Well knock me down with a filleted kipper!
It’s possible that Michael Hill B.Sc. C.Eng. MIET has no connection with Gemini. If he is not associated with this GCAL then I apologise in advance for thinking him less of a philanthropist and more of a mercenary. I also apologise to Gemini in advance if this is nothing more than a very weird coincidence.
However, the GCAL website apparently no longer mentions the connection to the fracking industry, so I think many people will conclude that Counting Cats was barking up precisely the right tree.
[Updated slightly after an email from Mike Hill's wife. See here]
Reader Comments (23)
For some reason, "Be sure your sins will find you out" came to mind.
I don't think Mike Hill will be the last to find himself in this sort of situation as the in-built mendacity of the environmental movement becomes too much even for the MSM to put up with.
The GCAL website now says it is being redeveloped.
Perhaps somebody should report him to the relevant authority for fraud.
Another fantasist who wants to be an MP.......
It seems he has at the very least been taking the Mikehill......:o)
I am more concerned that presumably intelligent members of the BMA were taken in by this. I presume that letting of blood and leeches will be the order f the day from now on.
trefjon:
There is no shortage of blood-sucking leeches in AGW.
Ask Yeo? Deben? And others for confirmation.
Commenter microdave found & posted the link below, of Hill's attempt to interest Trougher Yeo:
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/252485/shale-letters3.txt
Wow - he's even objecting to the smoke-detector-type radiation sources used in the onsite instrumentation! He's just casting around for absolutely anything vaguely technical to scaremonger about. Total time-waster. If idiots like this get into powerful regulatory positions then UK industry is finished. Not just the shale gas industry. Any industry.
He is positioning himself nicely, so that in years to come, he can write a book and do lucrative lectures, headed
"The Green Blob, my part in its downfall"
There will be a quasi statistical follow up...
"How to create false balance, with homogenised double standards"
@Morph, the GCAL site has been under redvelopment for over a year now.
If people are wondering how Mike Hill can afford to pay for all this fancy stuff like being an PPC for parliament when his company doesn't seem to be doing much and he seems to be cutting himself off from his industry be denigrating it so much that no one wants to work with him, then the answer is that he is being supported by someone else. That person is Mark Mills, his brother in law. Look up Cardpoint to see Mark's history.
This Hill guy is some piece of work.
@trefjon
I am more concerned that presumably intelligent members of the BMA were taken in by this. I presume that letting of blood and leeches will be the order f the day from now on...
Er... no. Individual people work by thinking. People en mass work by following the one in front. The thinking processes of the BMA staff who signed up to this will have been:
1 - is this a currently popular assertion?
2 - will agreeing with it help the BMA, or conversely, disagreeing hurt the BMA?
3 - does it require us to spend any money or do anything arduous?
If the answers to all these things are acceptable, a signature will be produced.
Sceptics make the capital mistake of assuming that a technical proof that AGW is a scam will derail the bandwagon. It won't, because the bandwagon does not consider technical issues. Technical issues convince people, NOT committees. The good news is that the Times has published a warning about activist propaganda. Which means that the Times has considered item 2) above and come to the conclusion that it is safe to say something against AGW. As we get more and more of this, groups like the BMA will revise their understanding, the answer to item 1) will change, and AGW will sink.
To be replaced by the next fashionable idiocy...
Mike Hill has other form in Formby:
Pointed out by Nick Grealy (of NoHotAir) in the comments at the New Statesman in March 2013. After the Gold Rush for Hill, rather than Neil Young?
Of course, the BBC had already swallowed his claims to be an advisor to the Council in this piece for Newsnight.
According to his election website "He is presently writing a joint paper with Professor David Smythe on fracking and is a co-author on the Medact position paper being published in March." That would be this Prof Smythe:
The Medact paper is here. I suspect Dr. James Verdon will dissect it with his usual forensic skill.
Mike Hill is singlehandedly destroying the anti-fracking movement in the Fylde. So many people have based their understanding of fracking on his information and now we find he has zero credibility. Thanks Mike. U have ruined the movement.
Mike Hill has other form in Formby:
Pointed out by Nick Grealy (of NoHotAir) in the comments at the New Statesman in March 2013. After the Gold Rush for Hill, rather than Neil Young?
Of course, the BBC had already swallowed his claims to be an advisor to the Council in this piece for Newsnight.
According to his election website "He is presently writing a joint paper with Professor David Smythe on fracking and is a co-author on the Medact position paper being published in March." That would be this Prof Smythe:
The Medact paper is here. I suspect Dr. James Verdon will dissect it with his usual forensic skill.
TR 12:23 so did Mike Hill actually end up on the payroll of the fracking industry after all?
Conspiracy theorists could have a field day. Or does he just follow the most lucrative cause.
Both Lewandowsky and Cook could write a top scientific opinion paper, based on a sample size of 1.
Mike should be in
Prison
Together with the rest of
Westminster
I have tweeted him to invite him to respond. I am blocked.
Judging by the criticisms set out here, I suspect his Institution doesn't have a tight enough set of Rules of Conduct, as lying shouldn't be tolerated, even distorting the truth is a no no for my Institution!
@TR.
Maybe Hill was a Trojan Horse on the anti-fracking movement?
Now that's an interesting thought.
Dr Verdon is being highly restrained:
http://frackland.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/medact-vs-british-columbia.html
Dr Verdon has an Update noting UKOOG have issued a detailed rebuttal, showing how the Medact report has failed to understand how the UK regulatory system works.
http://www.ukoog.org.uk/about-ukoog/press-releases/146-shale-gas-industry-says-medact-report-fails-to-understand-uk-regulatory-system-and-lacks-credibility