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.

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.

A friend of mine got very upset at a recent news item in Wall Street Journal. Obviously, US bankers have just begun discussing development of lending guidelines similar to the new “carbon principles” that make it tougher to build coal-fired power plants. The carbon principles pledge the banks to investigate and analyze the risks associated with CO2 emissions and integrate that analysis into lending and underwriting decisions. The rise of global warming hysteria leads to one brainless decision after another. Perhaps all entrepreneurs will soon have to factor in climate change when seeking private funding.

Many seem to think that going back to the Stone Age is the only right resolution. In Minneapolis, for example, all lights in municipal buildings will be turned off for one hour on a Saturday evening as part of the Earth Hour, initiated by WWF. Earth Hour is an initiative “to finding solutions for climate change”. I tell you one thing - it will be damn hard to find any solution in complete darkness.

In Petaling Jaya, showing some extraordinary intelligence, the Malaysian Qualifications Agency shut down all electrical appliances in its premises for 2.5 hours as part of efforts to combat global warming. All computers, printers, scanners, lights and air-conditioners were switched off. As if prayer and contemplation rather than technology and invention would save the planet.

It is also amazing how global warming is overheating the brain. 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, terrorism and global warming. Global warming was the most popular response, receiving 31 percent of the vote, while infectious disease came in last with only 3 percent of the vote.

My mother, a very wise woman by the way, can’t understand how we can speculate over what might happen in 50 years from now while 854 million people go to bed hungry every day. While every five seconds, one child dies from hunger related causes. The world today is more prosperous than it ever has been. New technological advances create opportunities to improve economies and reduce hunger and poverty. Why, oh why do we keep insisting on financial sacrifices that are a pointless waste of money?

Climate scientist Jimbo Hansen at NASA has just drafted a fresh paper urging us to return the CO2-levels back to those of 1988 (350ppm).

Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global climate. If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive life styles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of human history. The eventual response to doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet.

The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.

Sounds to me more like sermon than science. I wonder if Hansen at all believes returning to 1988-levels of CO2 is possible with emissions pouring out of China and India. Someone should tell the guy to get a grip.

Science Daily reports today that scientists have for the first time detected regionally elevated atmospheric CO2 originating from manmade emissions. Using data from the SCIAMACHY instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat environmental satellite, they have found an extended plume over Europe’s most populated area, the region from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Frankfurt, Germany.

I can almost see the alarmists dancing with rapture. However, we should first have a closer look on the diagram.

In the picture above, we can clearly see the areas of higher CO2 concentration marked in red. But look at the scale below the diagram. The difference between high and “normal” is measly 2.5 ppm. How is that for significant contribution? Also, let’s not forget that the IPCC predicts that increasing CO2 concentrations will result in a warmer climate. I got my hand read once. None of the predictions made then came true.

Dr Michael Buchwitz from the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen in Germany says that carbon dioxide emissions occur naturally as well as being created through human activities, like the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) for power generation, industry and traffic. Dr Buchwitz doesn’t mention the CO2 we all emit in our breath. It kind of makes sense that there is more CO2 in a densely populated area, such as the Netherlands.

“The natural CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface are typically much larger then the CO2 fluxes arising from manmade CO2 emissions, making the detection of regional anthropogenic CO2 emission signals quite difficult,” Buchwitz explains. “This does not mean, however, that the anthropogenic fluxes are of minor importance. In fact, the opposite is true because the manmade fluxes are only going in one direction whereas the natural fluxes operate in both directions, taking up atmospheric CO2 when plants grow, but releasing most or all of it again when the plants decay.”

Dr Buchwitz admits though that significant gaps remain in the knowledge of CO2 sources, such as fires, volcanic activity and the respiration of living organisms, and its natural sinks, such as the land and the ocean. He also says “more studies are needed before definitive quantitative conclusions concerning CO2 emissions can be drawn”.

That leaves us with a nice little diagram that basically means zilch. Or as Shakespeare would say: “Much ado about nothing”.

Source: European Space Agency (2008, March 19). Satellite Makes First Ever Observation Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com– /releases/2008/03/080318110330.htm

In today’s Standard Freeholder, a local Canadian publication, the editor blames the Modern Man for the cataclysm of Global Warming. His rhetoric brings to mind the famous quote of Albert Einstein about only two things being endless – the universe and human stupidity.

A small excerpt:

Global warming, if explained in laymen’s terms, is not all that difficult to understand. Geologists and their kin tell us that climate change in the distant past was brought about by natural events, volcanic eruptions on an unimaginable cataclysmic scale and/or similar explosions in outer space. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Not to be outdone by nature, modern man has been busy inventing a way to produce the same results, with less drama.

He has built billions upon billions of mini volcanoes around the world in the form of smoke stacks, chimneys and various other kinds of exhaust pipes, belching out much of the same pollutants as volcanoes into the earth’s atmosphere. He has even gone one step further by adding poisons and toxins previously unknown to nature and our environment. How difficult is that to understand? Some estimates tell us we have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet in the process. That’s the legacy we are busy leaving our grandchildren.

I especially like the comparison between cars and volcanoes. Mr Editor seems to obtain his knowledge not from science, but rather science fiction. Calling carbon dioxide a pollutant does not exhibit much insight. And stating that we (the humans) have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet is simply absurd.

Belgium’s heir to the throne, prince Philippe, attended yesterday the Globe 2008 conference in Vancouver, Canada, and demonstrated his impressive scientific knowledge.

He said, among other things, that to keep the CO2-levels steady would require a 50 to 85 percent cut in the emissions.

“This basically means that we will have to live in an almost carbon-free world.”

From The Vancouver Sun, March 12