Some reading for the “anti-warmalists” and “climate-change deniers”

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Here are some more global-warming/climate-change "hoax" photographs....

[nitpicker1]

Some more reading for the “anti-warmalists” and “climate-change deniers”

http://xtranewscommunity2.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,12423.0.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

What we sow is what we reap

Letters to the Editor - The Dominion Post | Thursday, 01 November 2012



THE HORROR of the Frankenstein hurricane with the benign nickname, Sandy, which this week kicked in the United States' front door, won't be lost on its victims.

It will be lost on the deaf and blind corporate establishment, wedded only to profit, which refuses to acknowledge its major role in atmospheric change and fights regulation. This Frankenstorm is, in a sense, “going back to mother”.

In the past 30 years, damaging weather events in the US have increased five times over. What we sow is what we reap, and unless the blind greed of corporate capitalism is reined in, destructive environmental events such as Sandy will increase in frequency and severity, finally engulfing all of us in a holocaust of our own making.

ALAN RHODES
Napier

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/letters-to-the-editor/7892327/Letter-What-we-sow-is-what-we-reap

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[sickofpollies]

Back in the superstitious days every bad weather event was blamed on witches.

In the modern 21st century nothing much has changed. We still scapegoat and cannot accept bad weather as bad weather. Loonies still have to blame someone for it.

The Aztecs thought they could control the climate by physically taking people's hearts. These days our leaders believe we can control the climate by taking away people's green bits of paper.

[nitpicker1]

Greens blast Government for backing out of Kyoto deal
Jacqui Stanford, Newstalk ZB November 10, 2012, 6:41 am

...Dr Graham says it means a lot of hot air at talks, but no legally binding measures to reduce emissions. ...

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/15346599/greens-blast-government-for-backing-out-of-kyoto-deal/

o goody!

 does this mean us domestic energy users are going to get a refund of the carbon tax we have already paid on electricity and fuel? 

yeahbut

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/carbon-trading/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501831&objectid=10824448

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Despite storms and floods, humans willingly ignore global warming

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Tuesday, November 27, 2012


Humanity is oblivious to climate change warnings. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/November 27, 2012.

WHAT DO Manhattan and Miami have in common with ancient Pompeii? They are doomed places where the residents cannot imagine that the good times will ever end.

Superstorm Sandy got our attention — like Mike Tyson walking into the house and punching our dog. And the certainty that more freakish, savage storms will pay a visit has made it tough for global-warming deniers to keep denying. But denial is not as tough to reckon with as obliviousness. Being oblivious to approaching doom is a consistent human trait. We are a hopeful, gullible and greedy species. Most of us imagine we can be the last one out of the burning casino with hundred-dollar bills stuffed in every pocket.

Last week, PBS broadcast Ken Burns' new documentary, about the 1930s Dust Bowl, and provided a reminder of humanity’s unwillingness to acknowledge that what makes us rich today may kill us tomorrow. In the opening decades of the 20th century, real estate hucksters, railroad tycoons and even government agencies persuaded thousands of dirt-poor farmers to come to the dry and windy center of the Great Plains, plow up millions of acres of ancient grasslands and plant wheat.

There were several reasons this was a bad idea, but for a couple of unusually wet decades, bumper crops were the norm. Then, in the 1930s, inevitable drought returned. The land dried up and, quite literally, blew away in enormous black clouds that killed crops, livestock, children, old people and dreams. It was the worst man-made environmental disaster in American history.

Now, as we grow more aware that we face the worst man-made environmental disaster in the history of the world, we are proving to be no more wise than the imprudent farmers who tore up the buffalo grass. Rather than taking serious steps to curb the carbon emissions that are driving up temperatures everywhere, rather than being shocked by the rapid melting of the polar ice packs and mountain glaciers, rather than seeing drought-driven wildfires and monster storms as portents of things to come, we are redoubling our efforts to extract every last ounce of fuel from the dirtiest depths of the land.

The oil boom in North Dakota is turning that sparsely populated state into an American Arabia. Even bigger is the oil bonanza in western Canada. According to a Los Angeles Times report, recruiters from Alberta are scouring California and other states hoping to lure tens of thousands of workers north to the oil fields.

In a time of high unemployment and high gas prices, this seems like happy, hopeful news. But it is hope built on sand — the vast deposits of oil sands that give up their black gold only through a process that requires a bottomless supply of water and poses huge environmental risks. The worst comes after the oil is extracted. That is when we burn it all up in our cars and factories and send the resulting emissions into the atmosphere.

On Sunday, the New York Times published a set of dramatic graphics showing how several coastal cities will be affected by rising sea levels that will be one result of global warming. Scientists say if immediate, dramatic measures are taken to reduce emissions, the seas may rise just five feet. New York City might be able to cope by erecting barriers, but Miami Beach would disappear. If the world hits just the modest emissions targets that have already been set, but largely ignored, sea level will go up twelve feet. That means all that will be left of Miami is a scattering of islands, while nearly a quarter of New York goes underwater.

But if we continue full speed ahead, drilling, fracking and burning it all up, then the coasts will see a 25-foot rise that swamps all of south Florida; all of Norfolk, Virginia; big swaths of New York and Boston; every beach in California and, strangely enough, more than 60% of Sacramento.

Of course, this is all many decades in the future, our legacy to future generations. For now, in between the storms and wildfires, we will remain oblivious. After all, until the end actually came, Pompeii was a pleasant town with a fine mountain view.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-global-warming-20121126,0,3924115.story

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Ocean acidification is killing sea life, and we are the culprits

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:05AM - Wednesday, November 28, 2012


Ocean acidification threatens sea life and the global food chain. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/November 28, 2012.

IF THE prospect of coastal cities sinking into the sea 100 years from now does not motivate Americans to do something dramatic to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there is something happening at this very moment that should be setting off sirens. Rising CO2 levels are making the oceans more acidic and that change in the chemistry of the seas is disrupting the food chain that ends with you and me.

For years, as scientists watched the carbon emissions from our tailpipes and smokestacks spew into the sky and goose temperatures higher, there was one mitigating factor that was keeping a brake on global warming: The oceans were absorbing a whole lot of that CO2.

Now, though, it turns out that is not such a blessing. Carbon dioxide welling up from the cold, deep ocean is shifting the pH balance in shallower coastal waters. That rise in acidity is affecting organisms that depend on calcium carbonate to form protective shells and exoskeletons — creatures such as crabs and oysters and clams, as well as coral reefs that provide crucial habitat for many kinds of sea life.

Acidification dissolves shells and coral. There is evidence it also screws up the instinctual guidance systems of at least some types of fish, making them unable to discern the difference between predators and prey. Scientists suspected something bad like this might happen as the oceans grew more sour, but they did not expect it to be happening already.

Researchers are finding that, in several locales, the shells of tiny creatures called pteropods are being thinned and broken down by acidity. People do not eat pteropods, but plenty of fish do. They supply 50% of the diet of pink salmon, and people do eat salmon. It is not hard to understand the biology: If pteropods disappear, salmon and other fish get scarce.

In an interview with the Seattle Times, Gretchen Hofmann, a biologist at UC Santa Barbara stressed how crucial little creatures like pteropods are in maintaining the food chain. “They’re small but carry an enormous amount of nutrition and are eaten even by very big fish. If you’re in the Antarctic and see a beautiful emperor penguin, it exists by eating fish under the sea ice. And those fish eat pteropods.”

Moved to action by a massive die-off of oyster larvae that was traced to acidification, Washington became the first state to establish a blue-ribbon panel to come up with a plan to cope with ocean acidification. The panel released its findings on Tuesday and recommended 42 steps toward adaptation, remediation, monitoring and education.

For now, such efforts may help protect the seafood industry that brings $1.7 billion annually to Washington, but one state cannot fix this problem permanently.

The threat is global. A report by the United Nations Environment Program said, “Fish, including shellfish, contribute 15% of animal protein for three billion people worldwide. A further one billion people rely on fisheries for their primary source of protein.... Fish stocks, already declining in many areas due to over-fishing and habitat destruction now face the new threats posed by ocean acidification.”

Each and every day, humans loft 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and the seas absorb a fourth of that. Unless we are feeling suicidal, it is time to change our way of doing business. This is not a matter of finding empathy for our grandchildren who will be stuck living on a simmering, stormy planet because we refuse to end our carbon-burning ways, this is a matter of killing off species that feed us today.

Global warming is the foreboding thunder in the distance. Ocean acidification is the lightning strike in our frontyard, right here, right now.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-ocean-acidification-20121127,0,3773335.story

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

• Climate change conforming to UN predictions: scientists

     ABC News - 12:55pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time, Monday, December 10, 2012

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

Global Warming

But its been getting colder for the last 16 years 


global warming is over long live global cooling

If you pay me money I will save the world from cooling

Lets call it an ice tax

Get your self some ice credits from me today 

There's good money to be made from fear mongering lol 

Al's Carbon Footprint

PHOTOS: Al Gore's New $8.875 Million Montecito Villa

Real Estate , Al Gore , Los Angeles Real Estate , Celebrity Homes , Al Gore Global Warming , Al Gore Montecito , Al Gore's New Home , Gore Montecito , Montecito , Oprah-Montecito , Real Estalker , Slidepollajax , Los Angeles News
Via Real Estalker, Al and Tipper Gore have picked up a $8.875M luxury getaway in Montecito, CA; a swanky zip code that has attracted big name residents like Oprah Winfrey, Steve Martin, and Kirk Douglas. Records show that the approximately 6,500 sq. foot home boasts 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a large pool house, 6 fireplaces, wood framed french doors, and carved stone detailing throughout. Check out the slideshow and see what you think: tacky or tasteful.

















Al Gore's house

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/al-gores-house-2/

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Blind faith of climate change deniers endangers us all

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, December 13, 2012


Climate change deniers refuse to accept scientific warnings. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/December 13, 2012.

THIS WEEK's Newsweek magazine features a couple of essays — one about Jesus and one about climate change — that demonstrate the difference between simple faith in the unknowable and blind faith that denies scientific fact.

An article by Bart D. Ehrman, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discusses things that people believe about the birth of Christ that are actually not in the Bible.

For instance, despite what the Christmas carols say, nowhere in the holy book does it mention an ox and ass beside the manger or the exact number of wise men following the star (a star that seems to be operating contrary to the laws of physics, by the way).

More unsettling for those who want to take the Gospel accounts literally, the genealogies of Joseph cited in Matthew and Luke that link him to King David are at odds with each other. And the census of "the whole world" declared by Caesar Augustus that allegedly sent Mary and Joseph on a journey to Bethlehem is not mentioned anywhere in the very comprehensive bureaucratic records of the Roman Empire.

Doubters have concluded that the nativity stories are obvious myths meant primarily to connect Jesus to the Jewish messianic prophecies. Plenty of others feel no need to take every element of the Christmas story as fact. For them, the spirit of the tale is what matters most. Literalists insist anything is possible with God (including a virgin giving birth), and they have formulated ingenious ways to reconcile the discrepancies in the Gospel accounts.

Two millenniums away from the actual event, there is no way to determine perfect truth and no great harm done if folks choose to believe every aspect of the lovely story of that silent night.

Great harm is what comes from denying scientific facts about 21st century issues. That is the concern of the second Newsweek article. Written by Mark Hertsgaard, author of "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth", it documents a stark threat to mankind's food supply:

"By 2050, scientists project, the world's leading wheat belts — the U.S. and Canadian Midwest, northern China, India, Russia, and Australia — on average will experience, every other year, a hotter summer than the hottest summer now on record. Wheat production in that period could decline between 23 and 27 percent, reports the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), unless swift action is taken to limit temperature rise and develop crop varieties that can tolerate a hotter world."

Hertsgaard takes the reader to North Dakota, where climate change has forced production of durum wheat from the east into the west of the state. Ironically, farmers are now bumping up against the oil boom in western North Dakota that is gobbling up farmland, sucking up vast quantities of water and flaring huge amounts of natural gas into the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating the ongoing rise in global temperatures that are threatening not only wheat crops, but rice and corn as well.

Yet, even though the consequences of climate change are becoming frighteningly obvious and, as Hertsgaard writes, "scientists at both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency linked the record heat and drought of summer of 2012 with man-made climate change,” far too many conservatives cling to a blind faith that climate science is a hoax. Doug Goehring, North Dakota’s Republican agriculture commissioner, is typical of them all. Rather than believe the science, he says, "I believe an agenda is being pushed."

Yes, it is — but it is the agenda of oil companies and other extracting industries that will not let a looming peril to humanity get in the way of their profits. And it is the climate change deniers in Congress and in state governments who faithfully push that agenda and will not be dissuaded, even by a host of angels.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-blind-faith-20121213,0,4041383.story

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

New Western governor sets his sights on climate change solutions

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Friday, January 18, 2013



WHEN WE were classmates at Ingraham High School in Seattle, Jay Inslee was quarterback of the football team and a key player on the state champion basketball squad. I was a fledgling cartoonist and editorial writer on the student newspaper. On Wednesday afternoon, as I watched Inslee shoot hoops with his buddies under the new backboard he had just put up on his garage, it struck me that some things have not changed. It was still basketballs for him, cartoons for me.

But, in truth, the change is rather dramatic. My bio now starts with the phrase “two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.” Inslee, as a congressman, threw elbows and blocked shots on the White House basketball court with President Obama. And now, that hoop and net he just installed is attached to the garage outside the governor's mansion in Olympia, Washington. As of Wednesday, his bio has a new top line: 23rd governor of the state of Washington.

I traveled to Olympia to see Inslee sworn in. After all, how often does a friend become a governor? And what other governor at his swearing-in would have chosen to be introduced by Dennis Hayes, the founder of Earth Day?

Inslee and I were only acquaintances in our teenage years. Our friendship really started at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. I was in Washington, D.C., covering the event; Jay was a freshman member of Congress. As we walked along a marble hallway in one of the House office buildings, he expressed amazement at where he was and what he was doing. "Our dads are supposed to be doing this, not us!" he laughed.

In 1996, I spent several days tracking him during his first run for governor. He had lost his congressional seat in the watershed election of 1994 when Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 50 years and now he was engaged in a quixotic primary campaign against Democratic heavyweights. His life consisted of nonstop fundraising calls and dispiriting candidates’ events where he made his pitch to nearly-empty rooms.

On the night of his primary defeat, standing with just a few friends and teary-eyed staffers at his quiet campaign headquarters, Inslee quoted from memory Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech about the man in the arena “who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Two years later, the indefatigable Inslee was returned to Congress from a different district and easily held that seat until he left to campaign for governor again last year. In Congress, he became a leader on new energy technology and climate change. I once asked him how anything would ever get done to forestall the looming climate calamity, given the pitiful lack of political will on the issue. As always, he was upbeat, certain that smart leaders would find a solution, certain this was not another quixotic fight.

So, it was no surprise that, in his inaugural speech as governor, Inslee told the assembled legislators he believes the state can lead the world in providing a technological response to the climate challenge. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated in California that states can take effective action to reduce carbon emissions even while the federal government dawdles. Inslee wants his state to follow a similar path and, in the process, create new jobs in the clean energy industry

Republican legislators, many of whom cling to the idea that climate change is as mythical as unicorns, sat glumly as he directed a message to them: “We don’t deny science in Washington; we embrace it. We do not follow technological innovation; we lead it. And we will not pass up a golden opportunity to create jobs.”

At the governor’s mansion, two hours after his inaugural address and a few minutes before the basketball game, I reminded Inslee of that feeling he had when he first went to Congress, that sense that an older generation should still be in charge. I asked him how he felt on his first day as governor. His answer was firm: “I am ready now.”

So much of the time, politics is dismal and disheartening, but, on Wednesday, I was reminded that elections matter. That is how we raise up good men and women like Jay Inslee who consider “daring greatly” to be their life’s mission.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-western-governor-20130117,0,1055506.story

[sickofpollies]

The claim that the first IPCC report's "projection" of future climate was correct has been debunked by the leaked AR5 draft...by their own graphs.

The comical entry above that it was correct can only be attributed by rounding up, and even then it only fits the very bottom of the range.

The leaked draft is quite illuminating. The IPCC is even prepared to say the sun has been a major influence on climate. The IPCC continues to draw upon activists (Greenpeace, WWF for example) for its references rather than less partisan sources.

The UK Metservice has been forced to admit no warming in 16 years. Their own models project no more warming for another five years.

James Hansen has had to concede natural variability in climate change (though he is adamant that it will return to his abymsally performing record.)

The debacle is slowly being unravelled. It will be interesting to see how long this modern myth can keep running until it is completely debunked except to the extreme fringe groups.

[nitpicker1]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network

[nitpicker1]

re http://xtranewscommunity2.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,600.0/msg,144523.html

I haven't read this either. Should I ?

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/16/1334921/leaked-ipcc-draft-report-recent-warming-is-manmade-cloud-feedback-is-positive-inaction-is-suicidal/?mobile=nc

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Guardian....

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate
groups working to discredit climate change science

By SUZANNE GOLDENBERT - US Environment Correspondent | 1:39PM GMT - Thursday, 14 February 2013


Climate sceptic groups are mobilising against Obama’s efforts to act on
climate change in his second term. — Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

CONSERVATIVE BILLIONAIRES used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.


The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents
of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire
Koch brothers. — Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.


Graphic: climate denial funding.

Those same groups are now mobilising against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president's state of the union address.

And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.

"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.

The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.

Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.

That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.

In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.

"This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an organised effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States " Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effort."

In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg."

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate sceptic groups that year.

By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channelling just under $30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favourite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.

But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause — an impression Ball wishes to stick.

She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy organisation," Ball said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network


from The Guardian....

How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups

The secretive funding network distributed $118m to 102 groups
including some of the best-known thinktanks on the right

By SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - US Environment Correspondent | 1.46PM GMT - Thursday, 14 February 2013


Dozens of exhibitors promote their oil and gas related businesses. By 2010,
Donors Trust had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups.
 — Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA.

THE SECRETIVE funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronised a host of conservative causes.

But climate was at the top of the list. By 2010, Donors Trust had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

Recipients included some of the best-known thinktanks on the right. The American Enterprise Institute, which is closely connected to the Republican party establishment and has a large staff of scholars, received more than $17m in untraceable donations over the years, the record show.

But relatively obscure organisations did not go overlooked. The Heartland Institute, virtually unknown outside the small world of climate politics, received $13.5m from the Donors Trust.

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.

Levi Russell, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, declined to comment on the importance of that support to the organisation. "We're very grateful for each of the millions of activists and donors that make what we do possible," he said in an email.

The secretive funding network also funded individuals, such as Jo Kwong, an official at the Philanthropy Roundtable who was awarded $200,000 in 2010. And there was strong interest in funding media projects.

Some of the groups on the Donors Trust list would have struggled to exist without being bankrolled by anonymous donors.

The support helped the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact), expand from $600,000 to $3m annual operation. In 2010, Cfact received nearly half of its budget from those anonymous donors, the records show.

The group's most visible product is the website, Climate Depot, a contrarian news source run by Marc Morano. Climate Depot sees itself as the rapid reaction force of the anti-climate cause. On the morning after Obama's state of the union address, Morano put out a point by point rebuttal to the section on climate change.

The gregarious Morano is a former aide to the Republican senator Jim Inhofe notorious for declaring climate change the greatest hoax on mankind.

According to Cfact's tax filings, Morano, listed as communications director, was the most highly paid member of the organisation.

However, Craig Rucker, the group's executive director, insisted the funding was not critical to their work. "It is not crucial in the least. Climate Depot's continued operation is not linked to funding from any particular source," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks

[ssweetpea]

Sounds a bit like when Galileo locked horns with the Catholic Church over heliocentrism.

The Catholic won intially but Galieo was the one who was proven to be correct.

[sickofpollies]

You're assuming of course Suzanne Goldenberg is being completely honest. I don't know all the organisations she mentioned, but I have passing familiarity with the Heartland Institute. It is true the Koch brothers donated money to the Heartland Institute. There is one problem with Goldenberg's argument though: none of it was earmarked for climate scepticism. It was all earmarked for health. IOW the Koch brothers gave zero dollars for the cause Goldenberg wants us to believe her on.

How much of the rest is true is brought into disrepute. Americans for Prosperity probably have lots of things they devote money to and I'd really be interested in the amount Exxon Mobil gave away since I've found Greenpeace et al on this to be totally fraudalent. Exxon Mobil on the other hand has given money away to Green projects in the past...

Even if Goldenberg were true, it is still small change compared to the billions climate activists get. It is somewhat out of date, but the US government has given $79billion away to them. In the last year the Australian Gilliard government has given $1.6billion to the cause.

Dr Michael Mann has recently been exposed to getting $10,000 a pop for one or two hour seminars. Dr James Hansen as reluctantly released by NASA has earned over $1million from his activism. How much he has really earned from such activity is anybody's guess.

When you present these types of charges, you should try and achieve some sort of balance.

[sickofpollies]

When it comes to funding climate activisim pays extremely well

Climate money. This was written in 2009 and so the amount of money given to these activists will be even more.