Killing The Rainforest To Fuel Green Energy Is Okay, I Guess

How freaking ridiculous is all of this "green" energy, kumbaya, Al Gore worshiping nonsense getting?

This ridiculous.

A series of biomass-fired plants are being built in the UK that will trigger a 150 per cent surge in timber imports from 20 million tonnes today to 50 million tonnes by 2015, according to the Forestry Commission.
--------------snip-----------------------------
But the plant, which is due to open in 2012, will generate only 300 megawatt hours of electricity, or about 0.4 per cent of the UK's current power-generating capacity. At least four more 300-megawatt plants are planned, including three in Yorkshire that have been proposed by Drax, operator of Britain’s largest coal-fired power station.

It all sounds so silly as to give one a good laugh at the bad joke that all of this environmental Ponzi scheme nonsense has become, except average people are the ones left to pay the price tag while those who are the biggest advocates of such things continue to reap in the profits.

Oh wait, the silliness gets worse and goes beyond simply having to import massive amounts of wood to power their little power plant, which if you were cutting down the wood to make room for say a shopping center, you would face the full wrath of the green community.

Nevertheless, environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the carbon emissions involved in shipping the wood such large distances, while to meet UK pest control laws the timber will need to be baked before it can be shipped to the UK.

Wood industry officials have warned that British families could face soaring prices for a range of wood-based products, including furniture, wood panels and even wallpaper because of its impact on low-grade timber and wood pulp prices.

“It’s going to push timber prices through the roof,” said Gavin Adkins, chairman of the Wood Panel Industry Federation. He is concerned that large parts of the £1 billion industry that rely on wood as its main raw material will be forced offshore.

It wasn't that long ago that California had put people with fireplaces firmly in the crosshairs, telling the rest of the world that those who burn wood are the equivalent of the Al Capones of environmental thieves. So I guess if it is going to be used in some sort of kumbaya "green" project well then it is okay.

The whole article delves into the carbon footprint of harvesting and shipping the wood versus the power generated, but the bottom line is the British consumers wind up paying for it, probably in increased energy bills in addition to the price of wood products.

And in Australia, where they have begun their grand "cap and trade" program, they are now getting the effects of that wonderful program along with probably lining Al Gore's pocket.

THE first bills revealing a nasty 22 per cent hike in electricity prices have sparked a surge in complaints from pensioners and struggling families.

You know, in the real world there is a thing known as best practices, which basically means figure out what it is that makes whoever is number one, number one and then copy it while jettisoning those things that are dragging you down. So far our Congress seems to be looking more at the last place team instead of the first place team.

Just A Global Warming Sunday

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What more can possibly be said?





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A Global Warming 'Denier' Sounds Off

The Global Warming Bubble
You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist in the 1990s to figure that speculative investment in dot-coms with no revenues would be disastrous. The same goes for lenders giving mortgages to borrowers with no job, no income and no assets. So after surviving the tech bubble and while trying to extricate the economy from the housing bubble, why are we bent on heading into the global warming bubble?

Just this week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill that is now being considered by the Senate. The EPA projects that, if the bill is enacted, the size of our economy as measured by its gross domestic product (GDP) would shrink by as much as $2.9 trillion by the year 2050. That’s a 6.9 percent smaller economy than we might otherwise have if no action was taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. James Inhofe (eeeeevil Republican-OK) notes that the fiscal impact to consumers will include a 44% increase in the cost of electricity.

For an idea of what that might mean, consider our current economic crisis. During the fourth quarter of 2007, GDP actually increased by 0.6 percent, yet trepidation still spread among businesses, consumers and the financial markets. Though the EPA says that Lieberman-Warner would send our economy in the opposite direction by more than a factor of 10, few in Congress seem concerned. For more perspective, consider that during 1929 and 1930, the first two years of the Great Depression, GDP declined by 8.6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

And what would we get for such a massive self-inflicted wound? It ought to be something that is climatically spectacular, right? You be the judge.

The EPA says that by the year 2095—45 years after GDP has been slashed by 6.9 percent—atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would be 25 parts per million (ppm) lower than if no greenhouse gas regulation was implemented.

Keeping in mind that the current atmospheric CO2 level is 380 ppm and the projected 2095 CO2 level is about 500 ppm, according to the EPA, what are the potential global temperature implications for such a slight change in atmospheric CO2 concentration? Not much, as average global temperature would only be reduced by a maximum of about 0.10 to 0.20 degrees Celsius, according to existing research.

Oh, c'mon! If there was a shred of truth to this, al-Gore would have told us so in his award-winning documentary propaganda film.

Sacrificing many trillions of dollars of GDP for a trivial, 45-year-delayed and merely hypothetical reduction in average global temperature must be considered as exponentially more asinine than the dot-bombs of the late-1990s and the NINJA subprime loans that we now look upon scornfully.

So who in their right mind would push for this?

I met many of them up-close-and-personal last week at a major Wall Street Journal conference at which I was an invited speaker.

My fellow speakers included many CEOs (from General Electric, Wal-Mart, Duke Energy, and Dow Chemical, to name just a few), California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the heads of several environmental activist groups.

The audience ― a sold-out crowd of hundreds who had to apply to be admitted and pay a $3,500 fee ― consisted of representatives of the myriad businesses that seek to make a financial killing from climate alarmism. There were representatives of the solar, wind, and biofuel industries that profit from taxpayer mandates and subsidies, representatives from financial services companies that want to trade permits to emit CO2, and public relations and strategic consultants to all of the above.

We libertarians would call such an event a rent-seekers ball ― the vast majority of the audience was there to plot how they could lock-in profits from government mandates on taxpayers and consumers.

It was an amazing collection of pseudo-entrepreneurs who were absolutely impervious to the scientific and economic facts that ought to deflate the global warming bubble.

In the interlude between presentations by the CEOs of Dow Chemical and Duke Energy, for example, the audience was shown a slide ― similar to this one ― of the diverging relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and average global temperature since 1998. That slide should have caused jaws to drop and audience members to ponder why anyone is considering regulating CO2 emissions in hopes of taming global climate.

Instead, it was as if the audience did a collective blink and missed the slide entirely. When I tried to draw attention to the slide during my presentation, it was as if I was speaking in a foreign dialect.

The only conclusion I could come to was that the audience is so steeped in anticipation of climate profiteering that there is no fact that will cause them to reconsider whether or not manmade global warming is a reality.

The callousness of their blind greed was also on display at the conference.

Heh. They were just demonstrating what's been learned from the high priest of the Religion of Environmentalism.

In an instantaneous poll, the Wall Street Journal asked the audience to select the most pressing societal problem from a list of five that included infectious disease (malaria, AIDs, etc.), terrorism, and global warming.

Global warming was the most popular response, receiving 31 percent of the vote, while infectious disease was far behind in last place with only 3 percent of the vote. It’s an amazing result given that billions are sickened, and millions die every year from infectious disease. The consequences of future global warming, on the other hand, are entirely speculative.

Finally, I was astounded by the double-speak practiced by the global warmers.

Nothing to be astounded about. Fluency in double-speak is the cult hallmark.

Virtually every speaker at the conference professed that they were either in favor of free markets or that they supported a free-market solution to global warming. But invariably in their next breath, they would plead for government regulation of greenhouse gases and government subsidies for alternative energy.

And the next POTUS will gladly sign whatever obscenely generous give-away legislation lands on his/her desk.

It’s hard to conceive of any good coming from a public policy in which facts play no substantial role in its development and words have no meaning in its public debate.

Steve Milloy

Via Canada Free Press

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. ― Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

At Play In The Fields Of al-Gore

New green taxes for 'gas-guzzling' cars
Motorists face having to pay new green taxes as ministers step up their war on "gas-guzzling" cars.

The Government wants to get people out of high-emissions vehicles by making them more expensive, while also cutting the cost of driving for more environmentally-friendly options.

Two recently published reports commissioned by the Department for Transport examine the impact of raising the cost of buying the most polluting cars, and of increasing running costs by raising road tax or fuel prices.

Let's be honest. The increase in running costs will come about by raising the road tax and fuel prices.

Labour's plans, although not as advanced, echo those announced by the Tories last year. David Cameron's advisors drafted a series of "green supertaxes" which would add as much as £3,000 (US$5,940.89) in tax to the showroom price of bigger cars.

The first detailed report, by Cambridge Econometrics, sought to identify policies that "might be used to reduce CO2 emissions from road transport."

It said its findings confirmed "the prior beliefs of the DfT", that people buying cars in the middle tax bands were most likely to be affected by small changes in both purchase price and running costs.

A £3,000 'green supertax' would be a small change in the purchase price. rofl

According to the report, these drivers are most likely to choose more environmentally friendly cars next time they go into the showroom.

This was reinforced by a second study, by the Economics for the Environment Consultancy, which examined what would happen if only 1 per cent was added to the showroom price of new cars.

The economists found the biggest impact on carbon dioxide emissions came when prices were hiked up for cars in the middle of the market, between 141 grams CO2 per kilometre and 225.

In this range - encompassing a Ford Fiesta 1.4 to a Ford Focus 2.5 - the change in price would see large numbers of motorists buying greener cars.

The DfT said the studies were "routine research" without any policy recommendations.

But the willingness of the DfT to commission them is significant, given that Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, has ordered his own report on how motorists can be encouraged to chose greener cars.

That study, from Professor Julia King, vice-chancellor of Aston University, is due to be presented before the next budget.

Last night the Tories welcomed the Government's readiness to adopt green motoring taxes.

[...]

But the AA voiced alarm at the prospect of yet more motoring taxes.

"National and local government are coming up with yet more schemes which are financially punitive for car owners and their families," said a spokesman.

[...]

Read it all at The Telegraph

The American Left salivates.

EU Set To Take 'Moral High Ground'

Instead of capitulating to the EUSSR, maybe Gordon Brown should rethink his grand plan of denying the Brits his previously promised referendum on the new EU Constitution Treaty of Lisbon.

EU aims for moral high ground with swingeing climate change package

A blueprint for tackling global warming was put on the table yesterday by the EU, which challenged the US and other big polluters worldwide to join the battle against climate change. Setting out plans for the world's first significant low-carbon economy, the EU ordered swingeing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions which included challenging targets for Britain.

Under draft legislation unveiled by the European commission, 20% of Europe's energy mix is to come from renewable sources by 2020, while Europe's biggest polluting industries must slash their emissions by 21% against 2005 levels by the same deadline.

The climate change package, senior officials in Brussels said, would give the EU the moral high ground, letting it lead the drive for a new, post-Kyoto international bargain on global warming with the US, China and India.

Moral high ground taken by a bunch of amoral hacks. rofl

While the overall aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 363m tonnes, or 20%, by 2020, Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, said the scheme included "automatic triggers" to take the cuts to the level of 30% if the remainder of the world signed up for similar action.

"Climate change is the great project of our generation," said José Manuel Barroso, the commission president. "Europe can be the first economy for the low-carbon age ... The package is the most far-reaching legislative proposals made by the European commission for many years."

Other than seizing the national sovreignty of member states, what other 'far-reaching legislative proposals' have been made?

The EU executive laid out binding targets for each of the 27 member countries on emissions reductions and on renewable energy in order to reach the goal of the 20% cut in greenhouse gases, as well as the 20% target for Europe's energy mix being provided by renewables, and 10% of all road fuel deriving from biofuels.

Barroso put the cost of the package at about €3 a week for every European - the price of three tanks of petrol a year.

Cool. Let the EU pay for it out of its budget - without increasing member 'fees'.

The bulk of the reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is to be obtained through a carbon trading scheme in which the union's biggest industrial polluters, such as power generators and oil refineries, buy and sell emission permits. The "price of carbon" is expected to rise and the hope is that the market will deliver the compulsory cuts.

In the sectors not involved in the carbon trading scheme, such as transport, farming, and construction, national caps are being imposed.

The British government welcomed the commission's draft, which orders a 16% cut in emissions by Britain by 2020. The UK is also obliged to increase its reliance on renewable energy, from less than 2% now to 15% of the country's total energy needs by the same date.

Hide your wallets, folks.

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said: "This plan shows exactly what we are aiming for globally - a comprehensive and effective agreement to tackle climate change, with the carbon market at its heart."

John Hutton, the business secretary, said the government would review its strategy to meet the UK share of the EU renewables target. "This package will show the EU's continuing global leadership on climate change. I want to see it agreed as soon as possible to give business the certainty it needs to plan low-carbon investments with confidence."

Better results if market forces were allowed to work free of government interference, but try explaining that to a socialist.

Environmental pressure groups sounded broadly satisfied with the package, which has to go through the European parliament and be endorsed by national governments before becoming law, perhaps in a year's time.

"A work in progress", was the verdict of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. "I see no reason why some of these targets may not become stronger, may not become more stringent."

Barroso said the package would unleash a money-spinning bonanza in Europe and urged EU firms to seize the opportunity to become global leaders in innovative green technologies. He predicted hundreds of thousands of new jobs, insisting that the overall €60bn cost would be less than 0.5% of Europe's economic output.

For some reason, I'm quite confident that comrade Barroso will not do the honorable thing should the cost be more.

The scheme would save €50bn a year in reduced oil and gas imports, he said. Bowing to pressure from energy-intensive industries such as the steel and cement sectors, which have threatened to pull out of Europe if the measures cripple their competitiveness, the commission held out the prospect of free pollution permits under the carbon trading scheme.

This came amid warnings that it would be "economic suicide" to penalise the sectors too heavily. But big energy groups, which amassed huge profits in the early stages of the trading scheme, will have to bid at auction for all their permits from 2013.

The commission says that by 2020, this will be adding 5%, or about €150, a year to household bills, though its own officials say that the rise could be 15%.

In other words, they haven't a clue.

A decision on free permits for sectors hit by competition from low-cost countries is to be taken from 2010 onwards.

Via The Guardian

al-Gore was too busy doing paperwork to comment.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. --- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Memo to Barroso

Previously: Global Warming Scam to Cost EU $100 Billion

See also Reality Confronts European Union.

Got 'Global Warming'?

No small wonder that Gordon Brown is adamant about denying the Brits his previously promised referendum on the new EU Constitution Treaty of Lisbon.

Brussels demands thousands more wind turbines across the UK

Britain will be forced to build thousands more wind turbines in the countryside under a Brussels edict to be announced tomorrow.

Energy experts say new EU climate change targets mean the UK will have to generate 40 per cent of its electricity from green sources within 12 years.

In order to meet that target, the number of wind turbines on the land would have to rise fourfold. Thousands more would be needed at sea.

The move would be one of the greatest engineering projects in years - and dramatically change the skyline of Britain and its coastal waters.

But critics say onshore turbines are an expensive blot on the landscape that often fail to generate enough power to justify their existence.

The Government concedes that the shift away from coal and gas will cost up to £6billion [US$23.23 billion] a year. Most of that burden will be passed to consumers.

As the costs of most government mandates are.

The move is part of the EU's commitment to generating 20 per cent of Europe's energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Under the plans - approved by Tony Blair - every member state will be told its contribution to the "green energy revolution" tomorrow. Britain currently has one of the worst records for renewable energy in Europe.

Years of cheap gas mean that nine out of ten homes use gas central heating, while hydroelectric and wind power produces just 2 per cent of electricity.

Tomorrow, the petulant bitch known as the European Union Brussels is expected to demand that 15 per cent of Britain's energy, including heating, transport fuel and electricity, comes from renewable sources by 2020. Because it would cost too much to convert homes and vehicles to green energy, the bulk of the target will have to be met by electricity companies.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 40 per cent of electricity will have to be renewable within 12 years.

If it fails to meet the targets - described by civil servants as "difficult" - Europe will impose daily fines on the UK.

[...]

Read it all at The Daily Mail

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. --- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

Previously: Global Warming Scam to Cost EU $100 Billion

Also at A Tangled Web

Reality Confronts European Union

The al-Goracle cult, otherwise known as the Religion of Environmentalism, has many devotees within the corridors of the European Commission and European Parliament.

That is, until a known eeeeevil – reality – jumped up and bit 'em on the ass.

EU Members Lobby against 'Harmful' Climate Plan
European countries and businesses have criticized a climate change action plan that COMINTERN the European Commission is scheduled to unveil next week. Their concerns about competition and carbon trading could undermine the EU's commitment to confront climate change.

As the European Commission puts the finishing touches on a sweeping climate change policy package to be unveiled on Jan. 23, politicians and business leaders from the EU's richest member states are lobbying to revamp draft policies that they believe could harm them in Europe and abroad.

Among the critics of the bill are France, which wants to protect its nuclear investments, Germany, which is worried about its renewable energy sector, and major European auto and steelmakers, who are concerned that Europe could lose its competitive edge.

But the Commission says it will not be bullied into diluting the climate change package. To back down, Commission President José Manuel Barroso told Reuters, would be an international embarrassment after the EU worked to promote itself as the international leader in addressing climate change. "We knew from the very beginning that transforming Europe into a low-carbon economy is not an easy task," said Barroso. "But this is the moment to be serious, responsible and coherent with our commitment."

In other words, Barroso believes that saving face is more important than the economic health and well-being of European Union member states. Nice to see that the consummate tax tick has his priorities straight.

Barroso was responding to complaints that include a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy objected to a policy that would raise the share of energy that Europe derives from renewable sources from 8.5 percent currently to 20 percent by 2020. He said the policy "unnecessarily penalizes the prospects of growth." France wants to have its huge nuclear energy program counted in the mandatory contribution it will be asked to make toward the EU goal, but atomic power, which produces toxic waste, is not considered a form of renewable energy.

Germany and Spain are protesting another proposed policy. Ministers in Berlin and Madrid sent a letter this week to the Commission criticizing a system [that] would encourage companies in Europe to trade renewable energy across borders. They are worried that an EU-wide system would undermine their existing national systems. "This will put a very successful development of renewables at risk, which is not acceptable to our governments," read the letter in part. It was the second time this week that German officials criticized the forthcoming policies, after Bavarian politicians condemned (more...) a proposal to cap the amount of carbon dioxide that new automobiles produce per kilometer they are driven.

In an interview with the German magazine Capital published Tuesday, the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, denied that a new renewable energy trading system would infringe upon existing "feed-in" systems in Germany and Spain. "Don't worry," said Dimas. "We will ensure that Germany can keep its system without restrictions in (the) future and ... we will construct it in such a way that it doesn't hinder national promotion systems in Germany and other countries -- that's a promise."

A politician making a promise. ROTFLMAO .

Private sector leaders also criticized the forthcoming policy package, saying strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions will hit major industrial polluters unfairly and encourage them to relocate outside of Europe. BusinessEurope, a lobby group that represents most of the Continent's largest companies, said it had learned that the Commission will require industrial polluters to cut emissions to 21 percent below 2005 carbon emission levels by 2020.

EU officials explained that 2005 was chosen because it is the first year in which data includes the impact of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme; BusinessEurope says it is unfair because it does not take into account efforts to reduce emissions that companies made between 1990 and 2005. In a letter to Commission President Barroso, the group also objected to broader plans to strengthen the continent's carbon trading scheme.

Many of the permits that a company must hold to emit carbon are currently distributed for free, but the Commission is proposing to auction those permits to the highest bidder by 2020. To offset the impact that might have on the competitiveness of a European business, the Commission is considering a carbon tariff (more...) on imports from outside the EU that were not produced within a carbon trading market. Still, BusinessEurope calls the prospect of an auction-based trading scheme "extremely worrying."

The lobbying in Brussels this week is in sharp contrast to the proud tones in which European leaders announced last March their joint agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and make major investments in renewable energy and biofuels. As the Commission drafts policies that will make those goals a reality, Europe's richer countries are frustrated that they will be asked to bear the brunt of the collective goal.

EU officials told Reuters this week that the Commission wants to allow the EU's poorest member states to actually increase their emissions, by up to 20 percent above 2005 levels. That would help poor states like Romania and Bulgaria grow their economies -- but could spell trouble for the strong European countries charged with making up the difference.

Via der Spiegel Online

See also Moonbats and Economics.

Also at A Tangled Web.

"Most of the models couldn't predict the past"

al-Goracle, line one, please.

Global Con-sensus
December 21, 2007: 08:05 PM EST

Dec. 24, 2007 (Investor's Business Daily delivered by Newstex) --

Climate Change: A Senate minority report lists 400 reputable scientists who think the only melting ice we should really fear was in the cocktail glasses of attendees at the recent global warming conference in Bali.

In the wake of the Dec. 3-14 conference, where delegates worked to draft a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol on global warming, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has released a report that lists scientists who challenge both Al Gore's assertion that the debate is over and the Bali conclusion that the planet is in imminent danger.

Many of the 400 scientists have taken part in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose climate change reports tout consensus but which critics charge are heavily edited to support pre-defined conclusions.

Among the IPCC's warming "deniers" is atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute.

"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting -- a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number -- entirely without merit," he said. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: Just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."

Physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing tools for clients like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says: "Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling -- all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by cyclical variations in solar output."

Brosnahan says he has "not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case." Those models, he says, leave out too many variables.

Indeed, a study in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology looked at 22 computer models used by the IPCC. Most of the models couldn't even predict the past.

Predictably, after a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 to 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), though she didn't name which scientists she thinks were bribed to distort the truth. Wise move.

This is not like Al Gore getting 75 hours of free airtime on NBC, a unit of General Electric (NYSE:GE) , which stands to make wads of cash on things like solar panels and wind turbines. Or Gore being involved with a company that sells carbon offsets.

Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor has noted that more than 600 scientists at the Bali gathering could have debunked Gore's warming theories, but the U.N. "censored" them.

By the way, Gore and his statist friends in Europe repeatedly have criticized the U.S. for its "failure to act" on warming. But new data show the U.S. in 2006 slashed output of greenhouse gases by 1.3%, while Europe's output continued to grow. So who's failing to act?

Here an idea: How about NBC hosting 75 hours of debate between some of Inhofe's 400 scientists and any one of Gore's choosing, including himself? Afraid of some inconvenient truths, Al?

Via CNN

Also at Also at A Tangled Web

"We are creating a new currency."

There will be dancing in the streets of the parallel universe for sure.

Ministers ordered to assess climate cost of all decisions
Coal-fired power stations, airport expansions and new road schemes could all be put on hold following a decision by (British Prime Minister ed.) Gordon Brown that ministers must in future take account of the true economic cost of climate change damage.

Ministers have been instructed to factor into their calculations a notional "carbon price" when making all policy and investment decisions covering transport, construction, housing, planning and energy.

That price - which will increase annually - is intended to frame all day-to-day policy and investment decisions for the next 30 years.

As a result carbon-free or clean technologies, including nuclear power, have been given a significant boost as they will now become relatively less expensive than polluting technologies.

The "shadow price for carbon", representing the cost to society of the environmental damage, has already been agreed for every year up to 2050 by government economists. It will be set at £25.50 (£1=US$0.50 ed.) a carbon tonne for 2007, rising annually to £59.60 a tonne by 2050.

The climate change minister, Phil Woolas, said: "This will have huge implications for [the] government. If for instance a new power station is due to cost £1bn, but it will add £200m worth of carbon emissions, we will decide that the cost of the power station is £1.2bn, even though its cash price is £1bn. We are creating a new currency."

In theory the carbon price will create a bias against roads and carbon-emitting coal stations and make new "zero carbon" building regulations appear more economic.

In other words, they won't.

Decisions about investments in new nuclear power stations will be made exclusively by the private sector, but the social carbon price is likely to affect the role of regulators and make them more willing to back nuclear as opposed to other more carbon emitting energy technologies.

It has also been agreed that every major Whitehall policy and investment decision will be monitored over the next year to check that policymakers are actually incorporating the shadow price of carbon.

Woolas said: "This is far bigger than people realise. It is intellectually thought-through and very tough. Gordon Brown may not ride a bike, but by god he is showing a lead."

My ass. Comrade Brown and his commissars have done nothing but create a cash cow for the government.

Tony Juniper, the head of Friends of the Earth, said the "carbon price" could change economic calculations around issues such as a third runway at Heathrow. He added: "At the moment there are gaping holes in government policy with them professing concern for climate change on one hand, and rushing to expand airports and widen roads on the other. If this helps to fill in that gap then it has to be a step in the right direction. Whether it works or not will depend on whether they have set the carbon price high enough."

The price has been set at a level calculated to ensure the government can meet its major policy target of stabilising carbon emissions at between 450 and 550 parts per million carbon, the figure recommended by the review conducted for the Treasury by Sir Nicholas Stern.

The review found that the costs of addressing climate change now will be cheaper than the costs of doing so later.

The shadow price is partly drawn from new modelling on the scale of the threat posed by climate change and partly by economic work undertaken by McKinseys and the Stern review on behalf of the Treasury on the economic costs of failing to address climate change.

The price is intended to take into account the full global costs of the damage carbon causes over the whole of its time in the atmosphere.

Equivalent values will be used for other greenhouse gases.

A note setting out the government's thinking prepared in part by the chief economist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Richard Price, says ministers must refer to the shadow price. It states: "It is important that the shadow price for carbon is applied consistently and universally across decisions in government with significant implications for emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases."

Via the The Guardian

Also at A Tangled Web

From Across Ye Olde Pond

Britain's 'new' Labour party: Hoist by their own petard.

UK's official CO2 figures an illusion
Report reveals Britain's hidden CO2 emissions
Britain is responsible for hundreds of millions more tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions than official figures admit, according to a new report that undermines UK claims to lead the world on action against global warming.

The analysis says pollution from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism, which are not measured in the official figures, means that UK carbon consumption has risen significantly over the past decade, and that the government's claims to have tackled global warming are an "illusion".

The report, from a team of economists led by Dieter Helm at Oxford University, could prove embarrassing for British negotiators at the UN climate summit in Bali, where they are trying to persuade countries including the US and China to agree a new worldwide treaty to limit the effects of global warming.

Britain is seen as a main player as the talks enter their second week, partly because it is one of few countries on track to reduce its emissions as required under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global plan to curb carbon emissions.

Ministers are due to arrive for the high-level segment of the talks on Wednesday. By Friday, they aim to agree a road map and timetable for a treaty to succeed Kyoto in 2012.

Under Kyoto, Britain must reduce its greenhouse gas output to 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2012. According to official figures filed with the UN, Britain's emissions are currently down 15% compared with 1990.

But the new report says UK carbon output has actually risen by 19% over that period, once the missing emissions are included in the figures.

The report says: "This is a dramatic reversal of fortune. It merits an immediate, more detailed and more robust assessment. It suggests that the decline in greenhouse gas emissions from the UK economy may have been to a considerable degree an illusion."

[....]

Oops.

There'a much more at The Guardian Unlimited

Here's a curious thing.

Around 750 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC) is stored in the atmosphere. The annual interchange of carbon between oceans and atmosphere is estimated at 90 GtC while the annual interchange between the atmosphere and plant life is about 60 gigatonnes. Annual anthropogenic emissions are about 5.5 gigatonnes.

When I do the maths, that makes human emissions contributing just over 7% towards the carbon in the atmosphere. I wonder why then global alarmists choose to more than double this figure? Could it be that the mania that drives so much of global warming alarmisn is in itself immune to science?

The more I think about [it] the more I conclude that this entire climate change fanaticism is just a crock.

That's from David Vance, blogging from Northern Ireland over at A Tangled Web, who also wonders about eco-fraud at the 'climate change' conference in Bali and offers up some interesting info.

"While global warming alarmists revel in self-importance at their 11-day forum in Bali, dissenting scientists are being shut out and credible charges are leveled that the U.N. has doctored sea-level data."

A very interesting quote he cites from Investor's Business Daily. Read it all, you won't be disappointed.

Previously Polar Bears On The Brink?

Global Baloney

'Polars bears on the brink?
Don't you believe it'
[...]

... wealthy tourists discovered the thrill of nature-watching breaks and Churchill, home to the most easily accessible polar bear population, became a fashionable - and newly prosperous - adventure holiday destination.

Although the town is still accessible only by train or light aircraft, its guesthouses are packed during late summer and autumn, when the vast ice-sheet over the bay melts, forcing around 1,000 bears to lollop around for months on the shore.

Lately, however, it is not only polar bear watchers who come flocking.

With the clamour over global warming, it has become a magnet for an army of environmentalists and climatologists who have given Churchill an air of impending doom.

The Arctic ice-cap is shrinking fast, is their message, and as it disappears, so too will the polar bears.

Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).

Yet, we are repeatedly warned, if the planet continues to overheat at the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.

"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.

To some Churchill residents, who base their opinions on personal experience rather than fancy charts and computer models, this is so much nonsense put about by scaremongers for their own dubious ends.

When outsiders question whether anyone would be so cynical, they are reminded of that now-famous photograph of a polar bear which appears to be teetering precariously on an Arctic ice-floe, melting faster than ice-cream, in the depths of winter.

For a while, it became a powerful symbol of the perils of global warming - until it was revealed to have been taken three years ago and during the height of summer.

Oops.

Representatives from the 'global warming' conference in Bali were unavailable for comment.

Read it all at The Daily Mail

The Sky Is Falling!

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. --- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

'We Have Very Little Time to Act'
A world with 30 percent fewer species. Huge water shortages caused by disappearing glaciers affecting hundreds of millions of people. Tropical rain forests dying out as ground water disappears. An accelerating overall rise in world temperatures. All this and more could be the world's fate in just a few short decades.

That, at least, is the ominous tale told by the report released this spring by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This month, though, the IPCC said it had made a mistake. Our future is actually much bleaker. The original predictions had been based on current emissions of greenhouse gases. As it happens, such emissions are still climbing by 3 percent each year.

"Scientists are telling us we have a very small window of time in which to act," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We have 10 or 15 years to turn global emissions from their current upward trend to an extreme downward trend."


There's much, much more from the Bali Climate Change Conference

Hang on to your wallets, folks.

Calling On All Good Danes (And Other Folks, Too)

Denmark to Hold New Referendum on Euro

Denmark will hold a referendum on whether to adopt the euro and drop exemptions to closer cooperation with the EU on defense and law enforcement, the prime minister said Thursday.

Danish voters rejected the European common currency in a 2000 referendum. The Scandinavian country has also opted out of other key areas of EU cooperation.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a news conference it was time to reassess those exemptions, which Denmark was granted in the early 1990s.

"A lot has changed since," he said. "It is the right time to take a decision."

No date was set for a vote but it would be held during the next four years, said the prime minister, whose center-right government was re-elected last week.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be a separate vote for each of the exemptions.

Danes stunned fellow EU nations in 1992 by rejecting the Maastricht treaty on closer European cooperation.

A year later, Danish voters approved a revised treaty with clauses letting the Scandinavian country stay outside a single currency and banking system and refrain from joining a European defense structure or conform to EU citizenship laws and common law enforcement.

"We have always said that the Danish exemptions are a hindrance for Denmark," said Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark's prime minister since 2001.

He said the referendum would be held after Denmark had ratified the new EU reform treaty, which includes changes in decision-making rules designed to make the union function more effectively. The treaty replaces the failed EU constitution, which was rejected two years ago.

Fogh Rasmussen's Liberal-Conservative coalition won the Nov. 13 snap election with support from its nationalist ally, the Danish People's Party, and a smaller centrist group.

Denmark, a country of 5.4 million people, has held five referendums on EU-related issues since it joined the bloc in 1973.

In the latest one, on Sept. 28, 2000, Danes voted 53.1 percent to 46.9 percent against replacing the Danish krone with the euro. Recent opinion polls have shown a narrow majority of Danes now favor switching to the euro.

Via the AP

It appears that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is afflicted with a serious case of -isms. To better understand that from which Rasmussen and many Old Europe politicians suffer, clarity is found in New Europe, as demonstrated by President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic.

[...]
Ten-fifteen years ago I spoke many times in this country about this process of transition, about its non-zero costs, about its benefits, tenets and pitfalls. Now, when it’s over, we face a different problem.

As I said, we already succeeded in getting rid of communism. But – along with the predominant view at home and elsewhere – we erroneously hoped that the attempts to suppress freedom and to centrally organize, mastermind, regulate, control the whole society (and economy) were already matters of the past, an almost forgotten historic relic. They are, to our great disappointment, still there. I see more examples of them in Europe and in most of international organizations than in America itself, but they can be found here as well.

The reason is that there are new, very popular and fashionable “isms” which again put various issues, visions, plans and projects ahead of individual freedom and liberty. It is social-democratism (which is nothing else than a milder and softer version of communism), it is human-rightism (based on the idea of mostly positive rights applicable all over the world), it is internationalism, multiculturalism, europeism, feminism, environmentalism and other similar ideologies.

Communism is over, but attempts to rule from above, are still, or perhaps again, here.

The second main challenge I see is connected with our experience with the EU, but goes beyond it because it is part of a broader tendency towards denationalization of countries and towards world-wide supranationalism and global governance.

The special sensitivity, that I (and many of my countrymen) have, makes me view many current trends in Europe rather critically. My opponents do not seem to hear my arguments and a priori keep rejecting the views they don’t like. To understand my criticism requires familiar knowledge of the developments in the EU, its gradual metamorphosis from a community of cooperating nations to the union of non-sovereign nations and prevailing supranationalistic tendencies. This is not the standard knowledge in America.

I have always been in favor of friendly, peaceful, and for all of us enriching cooperation and collaboration of European countries. However, I have many times pointed out that the move towards an ever-closer Europe, the so-called deepening of EU, the rapid political integration, and the supranational tendencies without an authentic European identity and an European demos are not only necessary for the freedom and democracy in Europe, but damaging.

Freedom and democracy, these two, for us so precious values, cannot be secured without the parliamentary democracy within a clearly defined state territory. This is exactly what the current European political elites and their fellow-travelers are attempting to eliminate. And it bothers me.

This is from a speech Klaus delivered before the CATO Institute earlier this year and his ranking of the Religion of Environmentalism™ as the third main threat to individual freedom is a great read.

Or, kick back and see for yourself.



Writing in the Financial Times June 13th, Klaus stated that,

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:

• Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
  
• Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
  
• Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
  
• Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
  
• Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
  
• Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
  
• Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Amen, brother!


Also at A Tangled Web

'Global warming' and you

Price hikes for German beer as costs rise
Nuremberg - A worldwide scarcity of malt and hops means price rises are on the way for German beer, both in Germany and in its principal export market, Italy, a national breweries leader warned Tuesday.

In all, about 15 per cent of German-brewed beer is drunk abroad, with export growth partly making up for declining sales in Germany.

Gerhard Ilgenfritz, president of the private brewer's federation, said the brewery-gate price of a 24-bottle crate was likely to rise 1.00 to 1.10 euros (1.46 to 1.60 dollars) at the start of 2008.

Speaking in the southern city of Nuremberg just before the November 14-16 beer trade fair Beviale, he said the world price of aromatic hops had doubled in the past two years and the price of brewers' barley had tripled.

World barley reserves had been run right down as world demand for grain soared, harvests contracted and pressure grew on farmers to grow for energy sales rather than food.

But the Religion of Environmentalism demands that we go green, starting with increased ethanol production.

Energy was also costing more.

China has become the world's biggest brewer, making 35.1 billion litres annually, followed by the United States (23.2 billion) and Germany (10.7 billion).

First-nine-month domestic sales of 8 billion litres were down 2.3 per cent, whereas exports of German beer gained by 5.2 per cent.

Via Expatica

'Global warming'.

Get it?

UPDATE: Also at Protein Wisdom and Ft. Hard Knox

He's Played On Their Fears!

Once again, al-Gore is cashing in on the fears of the Leftisphere; fears that he has carefully crafted over the years.

Gore Joins Major Venture Capital Firm
Al Gore announced Monday he's joining Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firm to guide investments that help combat global warming.

Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for his work on climate change, joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as it and dozens of other venture firms expand into so-called "clean-tech" investments worldwide.

The former vice president, who starred in the Academy Award-winning global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is expected to be a high-profile, active partner at Kleiner Perkins. He's already a senior adviser to Google Inc. (GOOG) and a member of the board at Apple Inc. (AAPL) Alliance for Climate Protection, the advocacy group he co-founded, is based in Palo Alto.

Gore said he'll donate 100 percent of his salary as a Kleiner Perkins partner to the advocacy group, which focuses on accelerating policy solutions to the climate crisis. He would not disclose the amount. "It's one of the benefits of not being in the public sector anymore," he said in an interview.

Accelerating policy solutions is also known as propaganda. And what about his profits from carbon credits?

Also Monday, Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr announced he's joining the advisory board of Generation Investment Management, the $1 billion investment firm that Gore founded with David Blood, who previously managed $325 billion in assets out of Goldman Sachs' London office. Doerr is one of Silicon Valley's most outspoken clean-tech advocates.

Clean technology encompasses alternative fuels, water purification, renewable energy and recycling programs and other eco-friendly initiatives, as well as products ranging from electric cars to microbes that search for oil in seemingly tapped-out wells.

North American and European venture capitalists invested $1.9 billion in clean-tech companies in the first half of 2007, a 10 percent increase from the first half 2006, according to Ann Arbor, Mich.-based trade group Cleantech Network.

Last year, Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins earmarked $100 million of its $600 million investment fund to startups that work on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The firm expects to dedicate one-third of new funding to clean tech by 2009.

In 2005, Kleiner Perkins named former Secretary of State Colin Powell a "strategic limited partner," but the moderate Republican hasn't played a prominent role in the firm's affairs.

For years, Gore, 59, has been good friends with Doerr, a former Intel Corp. (INTC) salesman who became a billionaire thanks to early investments in startups such as Netscape Communications, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Google.

They palled around together so much in the 1990s that fellow venture capitalist and former InfoWorld editor Stewart Alsop II created spoof political buttons that said "Gore and Doerr in 2004."

Via The AP

Interesting timing. Very interesting.

Spokesthingys from the Propaganda Ministry of the People's Revolutionary Republic of Koslamistan were unavailable for comment. Perhaps it's the new reality - al-Gore the eeeevil capitalist - that's caused their tofu to spoil.

And Not A Word About 'Global Warming'

Tidal surge puts east coast in 'extreme danger'
Thousands of people have been told to be ready to leave their homes as a tidal surge threatens to batter the east coast, bringing "extreme danger to life and property".

The freak, 10ft rise in sea level is expected to breach coastal defences and could bring the worst flooding in 50 years.

Gordon Brown has chaired a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency response committee as the Environment Agency warned that more than 10,000 homes could be hit.

Conditions have been likened to those preceding the floods of 1953, which surged two miles inland between the Tees and the Thames and claimed the lives of 300 people.

The entire east coast stretching from Humberside to Kent has been put on alert.

Police and local authorities are preparing to evacuate low-lying coastal areas of East Anglia and nine severe weather warnings have been issued.

The Environment Agency announced: "Severe flooding is expected. There is extreme danger to life and property."

Residents have been issued with sandbags and advised to fasten doors, and prepare to move upstairs with food, clothes, blankets and torches.

They were also told to fill baths and buckets with water for washing, and store drinking water in clean bottles.

In London, the Thames Barrier and Dartford Creek have been closed and householders along the Kent coast were also told to expect flooding.

Barbara Young, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said in most areas the biggest waves would come at high tide.

She added: "We are better prepared than 1953 and have better served by early warning system. But saying that Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft are not well served by good flood defence systems. We are asking people to act now."

The agency issued six severe flood warnings, five flood warnings and 22 flood watches nationally, covering North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and the north Kent coast.

The severe warnings are in place from Great Yarmouth, where 8,000 homes are at threat, down to the village of Shingle Street, and on parts of the River Bure and River Yare.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, told MPs: "A tidal surge of up to three metres is making its way down the North Sea which could coincide with peak high tides.

"There is a risk of flood defences being overtopped on the coast and in tidal rivers, especially in East Anglia, particularly the Norfolk Broads and the south coast of Great Yarmouth including Lowestoft, and areas south of this as far as the Coast of Kent."

The high seas and flooding are caused by a combination of a "storm surge" and a spring, or naturally high, tide.

In this case 100mph north westerly winds at the tale end of a huge low pressure near Iceland are blowing down the relatively narrow channel of the North Sea between Norway and Scotland.

These have a funnelling effect, pushing water down the North Sea into the bottleneck that is the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English channel.

The water in the southern part of the North Sea has not got enough space to move and so the sea level rises substantially.

John Hammond, spokesman for the Met Office, said: "An event like this probably doesn't happen even once in twenty years."

Norfolk police say they have contingency plans in place to deal with a potential breach of sea defences in Great Yarmouth.

Local authorities are on standby to provide rest centres for residents who are unable to return home because of flood damage.

In Suffolk tides are expected to reach their peak at approximately 7.30am tomorrow.

The local authority advised residents in areas most likely to be vulnerable to flooding to leave their properties and seek shelter outside the affected area.

A number of schools are also expected to be closed tomorrow.

Across Europe, forecasters warned of high winds, extreme snowfall and avalanches.

Dutch port authorities are preparing to close Europe's largest harbour in Rotterdam to defend against predicted storm surges as high as 13ft (4m) and winds of up to 60mph (100 kph).

Gusts of up to 125 kph (78 mph) are expected in Germany and Denmark.

Meanwhile, the first storm of winter has caused major problems in northern parts of Britain as schools were closed and ferry crossings cancelled.

Hundreds of people suffered power cuts and fallen trees blocked roads as gusts up to 90mph battered the far north.

All schools on Orkney were closed, along with 13 in Caithness and Sutherland and a smaller number in Aberdeenshire.

Shoppers in Cheltenham were sent flying as a mini-tornado hit the High Street.

A sudden gale force wind hit the Spa town at around 3pm, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.

Via The Telegraph

al-Goracle was unavailable for comment.

al-Goracle: An Inconvenient Truth

A truth conveniently overlooked by the Nobel committee?

Creators of carbon credit scheme cashing in on it
Judi McLeod -- There's an elephant in global warming's living room that few in the mainstream media want to talk about: the creators of the carbon credit scheme are the ones cashing in on it.

The two cherub like choirboys singing loudest in the Holier Than Thou Global Warming Cathedral are Maurice Strong and Al Gore.

This duo has done more than anyone else to advance the alarmism of man-made global warming.

With little media monitoring, both Strong and Gore are cashing in on the lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.

Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as "the world's first and North America's only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil."

Gore buys his carbon off-sets from himself--the Generation Investment Management LLP, "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C." of which he is both chairman and founding partner.

To hear the saving-the-earth singsong of this dynamic duo, even the feather light petals of cherry blossoms in Washington leave a bigger carbon footprint.

It's a strange global warming partnership that Strong and Gore have, but it's one that's working.

Strong is the silent partner, a man whose name often draws a blank in the Washington cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of a beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the Unites States. That's because he spends most of his time in China where he works to make the communist country the world's next superpower. The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is big cheese in the world of climate change, and is one of the main architects of the coming-your-way-soon Kyoto Protocol.

Gore is the glitzy, media approved front man in the partnership, the flashing neon lights on the global stage warning the masses of the end of Earth, as we know it, and Hollywood's poster boy for greening the silver screen.

The skeptics of man-made global warming believe that Gore and Strong have made climate change "the new religion". Climate change is not the first religion both parties have tried to make stick. Along with former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Strong, currently president of the Earth Council, has been boasting of replacing the Ten Commandments with the Earth Charter, a golden rule guide for how the masses should treat the environment.

Gore, who has given sermons at the United Nations sponsored Cathedral of St. John the Divine Church in New York City, is a promoter of the religion known as Gaia.

The two environmental gurus also share a belief in radical Malthusian population reduction. According to them, too many people, particularly in the U.S. are polluting the planet, emitting excessive Freon through their refrigerators and jacking up the air conditioning.

But the conduct of Al Gore and Maurice Strong in the capitalist world is one for the books. It's a side of them that may have remained unknown had it not been for the investigative talent of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of An Inconvenient Truth traveled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste.Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.

"Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day. First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm's registered lobbyist, and Gore's former top Senate aide," wrote EIR.

"Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers' cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.

"With Al Gore's Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal's stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When, in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers--including Maurice Strong--sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996--a Sunday--the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.

"On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share.By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice Strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong's role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.

In 1997, Strong went on to accept from Tongsun Park, the Korean man found guilty of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, $1 million from Saddam Hussein, which was invested in Cordex Petroleum Inc., a company he owned with his son, Fred.

In that year, Gore, still U.S. vice president, was making news for "taking the initiative in creating the Internet."

The leaders of the man-made global warming movement, you might say, get around.

Meanwhile Jumbo's still in global warming's living room, but the duo with the tiniest carbon footprints on earth continue to just tiptoe past him.

And that's the way it is.

Via Canada Free Press

Previously Irena Sendler & Nicholas Winton

On Energy Independence

Then there's the Pelosi Plan

Calling al-Goracle

'
Czech president new face of US media campaign

[13-09-2007] By Ruth Frankova, Radio Praha

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has become the face of a media campaign questioning the impact of global warming. The campaign is run by the free-market think-tank Heartland Institute. It features pictures of Vaclav Klaus and former US vice-president Al Gore under the headline "Global Warming Is No Crisis". It also draws attention to Mr Klaus' speech that is to take place in two week's time at the UN conference on global warming. I spoke to Tom Swiss of the Heartland Institute and started by asking about the campaign's aim.

"The ad campaign is focused around the central idea that global warming is not a crisis. We acknowledge that global warming exists and it exists at about one degree per century. Al Gores movie An Inconvenient Truth created a lot of fear and hysteria and we are challenging Al Gore to a debate on a science because his science is very weak."

Why did you choose the Czech president to feature in your campaign?

"President Klaus has been a big defender of freedom. He understands the idea that the big government oppression destroys communities. When government gets in to control something, the entrepreneurial spirit is just killed. President Klaus has understood for a long time that this debate on global warming is bringing the big government back in. We feel that he is a great spokesperson and a real hero. I think the Czech Republic should be really proud to have him as a president."

How many Americans do you think know who Vaclav Klaus is?

"Well the newspaper campaign runs in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Times and they are all for the business leaders of America. So these are the people that are the most highly educated; the upper level executives. I think a significant percentage of them know who Vaclav Klaus is."

Do you think the campaign can affect Americans' view of the Czech Republic?

I hope so. President Klaus is demonstrating some significant leadership on this issue. And in politics, when someone does that, they open themselves up to an amazing amount criticism. I think the American spirit is entrepreneurial and I think they respect a leader that actually stands up for a position and speaks clearly on it. So I think the United States will see that president Klaus is a leader in the position and have a lot of respect for the Czech Republic because of that."

The Czech environmental group Hnuti Duha said earlier this week that the Heartland Institute is sponsored by Exxon Mobile. Is that right?

"No, I don't know where they got that. The ad campaign is supported by business leaders. We have 1,500 individuals that support us. There is no energy producer money spent. In fact all of our donations that come from energy producers are less than a four percent. I would like to challenge them and ask them where they came up with that information because that's not accurate."

We're wondering if Heartland received the same discount from the NY Times that was provided to the Stalinistas?

Pinch? Cat got your tongue?

It's Dubya's Fault

Taking the hints screeched by the Kommandante's Kooky Kult and fat, wacky al-Gore

Religious leaders pray for planet at Greenland glacier
Yesterday Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Jean-Pierre Keri was busy applying spar varnish to Tuhhh-ray-zuh's yacht and was unavailable to mindlessly pontificate.