It seems climate change deniers may be looking to that far-right lobby group the Insitute of Public Affairs (IPA) to organise defence fund appeals in the future

Independent Australia, 1 April 2018:

For more than a decade, Ridd [Peter Vincent Ridd] has been happily criticising the science linking dangerous climate change to greenhouse gas emissions and the science showing the impacts of humans on corals.

Ridd has also repeatedly, over many years, said that the impact of agricultural runoff and water quality on the health and growth rate of corals is overstated.

But his employer, James Cook University, initiated its own action against Ridd after he had criticised specific organisations at his own university in media interviews, saying they could not be trusted. This, the university alleged, went against the university’s code of conduct.

So this is not about Ridd’s “freedom” to say what he wants but is about an alleged breach of the university’s code of conduct — whether you agree with that code or not.

When the university censured Ridd in 2016, he ignored them. He gave an interview in August 2017 to another climate science denier, Alan Jones, on Sky News. Ridd was there to talk about his chapter in a climate science denial book produced by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).

Ridd said 'we can no longer trust' the Government-backed Australian Institute of Marine Scienceand the Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University…..

The university alleged this constituted further “serious misconduct”, so Ridd took the issue to his lawyers and a case is proceeding.

To help fund his legal bills, Ridd got some help from the IPA (a key organisation pushing climate science denial in Australia for two decades) to set up a crowdfunding campaign that raised the necessary $95,000 in just 49 hours.

The IPA’s executive director John Roskam was the first donor with $500. Other notable givers included climate science denier and blogger Anthony Watts, U.S. Interior Department employee and climate science denier Indur Goklany, Perth philanthropist and IPA funder Bryant Macfie and author and political scientist Don Aitken. The Washington Post and others have also reported how Goklany has had a key role in re-writing Department of Interior climate documents.

Many of Ridd’s cheerleaders have taken his scientific claims without scepticism and have not entertained the idea that he might be wrong.

Ridd’s marine pollution?

But Ridd repeated in detail several of his criticisms in a November 2017 "viewpoint" article in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin — opening up his arguments for scrutiny.

Now, as reported in The Guardian Australia, a team of nine scientists, many based at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the James Cook University centre Ridd has attacked, have issued a response through the same journal. Their assessment of Ridd’s claims is sharp.

They say Ridd’s criticisms are based on 'misinterpretation, selective use of data and over-simplification' and that they ignore 'formal responses to previously published critiques'.