Posts from — April 2008

While the “motive” behind climate skeptics questioning AGW is rather clear – they are being paid by the Oil Lobby – it is less obvious what the prophet of the Inconvenient Truth could possibly win by crushing his adversaries and imposing heavy mandatory restrictions on CO2.

Many consider him being the Good Guy. Just think about it, he donated all the proceeds of his Nobel Prize award. But here’s where it gets interesting. The money will be used not to fight climate change, or to develop new technologies, but to change public opinion, which is the main goal of the recipient - Alliance for Climate Protection. Need I mention that Al Gore chairs this foundation?

Now this politician slash environmental activist slash Nobel Prize winner is adding another title to his CV – venture capitalist. He has joined an old pal, John Doerr, as a hands-on partner in Doerr’s venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins (Read the article in Fortune). Al is planning on making big bucks by driving something “bigger than the Industrial Revolution” and he looks forward to remaking the entire global energy sector – a 6 trillion dollar business.

Gore’s salary from Kleiner Perkins will go to the same organization as before – Alliance for Climate Protection. More money to swing public opinion in favor of banning CO2. But hey, what about the Kleiner Perkins profits? Where will that money end up? Could it be in Al’s pocket?

Al Gore is also the chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). This London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are becoming environmentally friendly. Little is known about this firm’s finances, where it gets its funding and what projects it supports.

As reported in the August 2007 issue of Foundation Watch (“Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade: The Money and Connections Behind It”), Gore has created a web of organizations to promote the so-called climate crisis. His battle against CO2 emissions could make him millions of dollars. How that’s for a motive?

Update:Have you seen the anti-Gore campaign just launched by The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)? If not, see it here.

I encourage you to read this very interesting article about biofuels, published in Time Magazine.

Advocates are always careful to point out that biofuels are only part of the solution to global warming, that the world also needs more energy-efficient lightbulbs and homes and factories and lifestyles. And the world does need all those things. But the world is still going to be fighting an uphill battle until it realizes that right now, biofuels aren’t part of the solution at all. They’re part of the problem.

or “Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You”

The following excerpts come from an article called “Who gains from the green economy?” by Preeti Mangala Shekar and Tram Nguyen. It was recently published in COLORLINES - The national newsmagazine on race and politics.

The authors depict a New World, a just world of brotherhood and equal opportunities. A world that will emerge thanks to global warming.

Climate change is the 21st century’s wake-up call to not just rethink but to radically redo our economies. Ninety percent of scientists agree that we are headed toward a climate crisis, and that, indeed, it has already started. With the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the clean energy economy is poised to grow enormously.

Naturally, things will have to change.

“An authentic green economics system is one that would mark the end of capitalism,” notes B. Jess Clarke, editor of Race, Poverty and the Environment. And one that would ensure labor rights and organizing, collective ownership and equality are all at the heart of it, he adds. “The real green movement has not started yet.”

Getting scared yet? Just wait. There’s more.

We have to recognize that we are at a particular stage of history, where the choices are not capitalism versus socialism, but green/eco-capitalism versus gray/suicide capitalism. The first industrial revolution hurt both people and the planet, very badly. Today, we do have a chance to create a second ‘green’ industrial revolution, one that will produce much better ecological outcomes. Our task is to ensure that this green revolution succeeds-and to ensure that the new model also generates much better social outcomes. I don’t know what will replace eco-capitalism. But I do know that no one will be here to find out, if we don’t first replace gray capitalism.

So, in case you have wondered what all the climate fuss is about - here’s the answer. Is this the kind of world you want to live in?

Read the entire article in COLORLINES and weep.

By John Coleman

jcoleman@kusi.com

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming. It is a SCAM.

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990’s to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization-threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridiculess, manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental-conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy, with one 15 minute documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I suspect you might like to say to me, “John, the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with PhD’s in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with PhD’s. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created a strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control, global warming is underway that will skyrocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.”

Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture, and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father and my older brother were both PhD-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PhD in Meteorology and becomes a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.

And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.

So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90’s they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like-minded PhD colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.

There were a few who didn’t fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them, brushing their studies aside.

I have learned since the Ice-Age-is-coming scare in the 1970’s to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn’t accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.

I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them PhD’s, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.

I am incensed by the incredible media glamor, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming. (ED: Al Gore) In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature-rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm patterns all fail to occur as predicted, everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Published with John Coleman’s permission. John Coleman works at KUSI NEWS Weather in San Diego and is the founder of the Weather Channel.