Can you investigate a blanket? Why not! Warmists have for many years now been using their version of a comment from a coal industry body to prop up their belief that opposition to their cause comes mainly from what they invariably call "well-funded" sources -- with the funding coming from "Big coal", "Big oil" and various other boogeymen. They need to believe that so that they can avoid looking at the EVIDENCE against their beliefs
Russell Cook
Has the so-called global warming crisis been propped up in the media and on the internet as the result of a single phrase?
Astute Breitbart readers will know the IPCC theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is crumbling apart at an exponential rate, as can be seen in a daily roundup of the news at web sites like ClimateDepot.com, WattsUpWithThat, SPPIblog, and PlanetGore. That’s the skeptic scientists at work, exposing the faults of the IPCC and all the people surrounding it, but has news of this been seen anywhere in the mainstream media?
No. Why not? A single phrase made famous by an enviro-advocacy group and its anti-skeptic book author “star” may have been the primary reason the MSM felt a compulsion to exclude any news of, debates of, and discussions with skeptic scientists. What was this phrase? “Reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.”
Not exactly a smooth sounding sentence. If the average disinterested citizen was presented with compelling evidence that human activity is not causing global warming, and compared it to Al Gore declaring the debate over, he or she would probably say something more like, “We should show how the global warming debate isn’t settled yet.”
Back in late 1990, that is essentially exactly what happened, except that the specific people who wanted to counter-argue Al Gore’s surging rhetoric were members of a coal producers’ association. They formed the Information Council on the Environment (ICE) sometime around January 1991, and one of the documents used by its public relations personnel did NOT contain the more mundane sentence I have above.
Instead, its #1 sentence on a strategies page was this verbatim version: “Reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” It’s #2 sentence was, “Target print and radio media for maximum effectiveness.” The #9 one was, “Use a spokesman from the scientific community.”
Most anyone would interpret this paper to be what it is, pointers for PR workers to follow. A scan of the paper can be seen when you click on the page 10 thumbnail at Greenpeace archives here.
For a phrase that is cited in those two variations in a viral manner across the internet, you’d think there would be a few dozen other places where it could be seen, but here’s a small homework assignment for anyone willing to undertake it: try finding any internet site that shows either its complete transcript or a link to that Greenpeace scan. I’ll bet you can’t, with two exceptions, the Greenpeace archive scan page itself, and my own July 6 American Thinker article, “Smearing Global Warming Skeptics,” where I went into great detail about the origins of the phrase and the enviro-advocacy group that ended up making it famous. There are so many other red flags attached to the phrase and its promoters that I ended up writing three other articles about them, along with a blog piece prior to those that basically started me on this path of investigation, “The Lack of Climate Skeptics on PBS’s ‘NewsHour.’”
The enviro-advocacy group is Ozone Action, founded in ‘92 or ‘93 (depending on which of its personnel got the date right) to fight ozone depletion. Its “star” is former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan, who repeated the “reposition” phrase in a December 1995 NPR radio interview that coincidentally is the same month that Ozone Action said it started “working on climate change” – have a look again at the “‘93″ link in my previous sentence. In April 1996, an Ozone Action report proclaimed the “reposition” phrase was in a set of memos “obtained by Ozone Action and by Ross Gelbspan.” He went on to publish two global warming themed books with noticeable anti-skeptic scientist tones, and watch Al Gore show the “reposition” phrase in An Inconvenient Truth full screen for six seconds at the 1 hour 12 minute 55 second point of the movie.
Gore hasn’t let go of that phrase, either. As recently as May 8, 2010 in The New Republic (full text here), he said, “The largest carbon polluters have, for the last 17 years, sought to manipulate public opinion with a massive and continuing propaganda campaign, using TV advertisements and all other forms of mass persuasion. It is a game plan spelled out in one of their internal documents, which was leaked to an enterprising reporter, that stated: ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’.” As I showed in my July 6 American Thinker article, the documents were not leaked to Gelbspan, and perhaps more of an inconvenient truth, Gelbspan is not actually a Pulitzer winner.
When it comes to the November mid-term elections and the near-certainty of a GOP House takeover – there is one instance where a repetition of the “reposition” phrase could prompt congressional inquiry under GOP committee leadership. On May 28, 2007, Sheldon Rampton of PRWatch said at the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight (starting around the 42:30 point of the video):
“One of the first campaigns of this type began in the early 1990s funded by groups like the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association, and it was called the Information Council for the Environment, and its goal was to, in their words, reposition global warming as a theory, not fact… And the effect is to amplify the views of a relatively small number of scientists and make it seem like that is, like there is a huge scientific debate going on when, in fact, there is not.” Where did Rampton source what sounds like Gelbspan’s talking points? In a 1998 piece about the subject, Rampton cited Gelbspan, of course, along with two others who in turn cited Gelbspan and Ozone Action.
Notice the ironic title of the hearing, “Shaping the Message, Distorting the Science: Media Strategies to Influence Public Policy.” Republican James Sensenbrenner is currently serving on that main committee, and more important, is the ranking member on one of Nancy Pelosi’s creations, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. On Sept 28, Politico reported that Sensenbrenner “wants to keep the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming alive so it can investigate climate science and police President Barack Obama’s green policies.”
As Breitbart readers might guess, I’ve already used the contact form at the CEI & GW web page to suggest a specific investigation.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
Hollywood Leftists, Green Groups Outspend Supporters of California Proposition to Suspend Regulations
Despite being heavily outspent, the proponents of Proposition 23 in California are within range of an election victory that could help unravel energy rationing schemes that originated in their state. Outgoing Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed off the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) in September, 2006.
The law, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2012, would set emissions restrictions and renewable mandates that would raise energy prices and increase jobless rates, new studies show.
Proposition 23 calls for the law to be suspended until after unemployment drops to 5.5 percent or below for four consecutive quarters. This stipulation would effectively kill the legislation. Although media reports tend to focus on the support Proposition 23 has received from business interests, the opposing side actually has a huge financial advantage that has gone unreported.
Maplight.org, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign funding has produced some telling statistics that deserve greater publicity and attention. Liberal activist Thomas Steyer has spent $5 million to defeat Prop 23, while the National Wildlife Foundation has spent $3 million, and the Sierra Club has spent another $1.2 million. Just those three sources, have spent more money than all of the Prop 23 supporters combined.
“Green activists and allied rent seekers like to portray themselves as the underdogs against big business in their environmental causes,” Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow for environmental policy has observed. “The battle over Proposition 23 — the California ballot measure to suspend the state’s global warming law until unemployment is under control — is certainly no exception. But they have David and Goliath backwards here; those spending to defeat the measure and keep California cap and tax in place have outgunned supporters of reform by at least 3 to 1.”
Only a small percentage of the amount spent against Prop 23 comes from average in-state residents, Lieberman points out.
“In fact, most of the money has come in the form of six and seven figure contributions from big environmental groups, Hollywood bigshots, and, most disturbingly, opportunists like venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, who hope to secure a guaranteed market selling alternative energy and vehicles far too expensive to compete otherwise,” he has written.
Most recently, Gov. Schwarzenegger teamed up with his former Hollywood Director James Cameron to defeat the proposition. Cameron has pumped $1 million into the “No on 23″ efforts.
Recent polls show voter sentiments are evenly split. If the proposition does pass, it could doom “cap and trade” laws that were passed in other states in response to AB-32.
SOURCE
New climate change game reveals the misanthropy that motivates the Green/Left
An educational computer game in which users have to save the world from climate change offers an interesting solution – decide the problem is overpopulation and design a virus to kill millions.
Fate of the World goes on sale on Tuesday and has been praised by gaming experts and climate campaigners as a way of reaching new audiences in the fight against carbon emissions.
However, climate change sceptics may be surprised and angered by some of the strategies on offer in the game which is being released on PCs and Apple Macs.
As the head of a fictional international body the user must save the world from soaring temperatures, increasing floods and deadly droughts.
The game, developed by Red Redemption, an Oxford-based design company, uses real data and input from scientists and has best been described as a Football Manager for eco-enthusiasts.
Users are presented with a budget, environmental data, and a series of energy policies which range from emissions caps and investment in biofuels to continue investing in fossil fuels.
Other more extreme policies are also available such as creating a disease to reduce the world's population or geoengineering, such as cloud seeding from planes.
The game, described on its website as a "dramatic global strategy game", takes you forward 200 years to see the outcome of your decisions, including whether major species such as the polar bear have been condemned to extinction.
The blurb reads: "You must manage a balancing act of protecting the Earth. Resources and climate versus the needs of an ever-growing world population, who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space. Will you help the whole planet or will you be an agent of destruction?"
SOURCE
Global warming as the latest version of the Devil's work
Some history from Sallie L. Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
This is a brief lesson in history about fear and ignorance of extreme weather 500 years ago. Now, as impossible as it is to comprehend events in the 20th century without understanding totalitarianism, it is likewise impossible to understand Europe’s 16th century without recognizing the role of superstition. Magic, witchcraft, sorcery and superstition pervaded every scale of culture from the smallest corner to the cosmic.
Now, an equable climate had pertained in Europe about a thousand years ago, and by the 14th century, that had deteriorated into a long period called the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age saw harsh winters, severe storms, and also extreme variability. That means you could see mild winters and then very severe winters, summer heat waves, droughts, sea storms and floods. The Little Ice Age persisted about 500 years, abating only in the 19th century in some places.
Now the most severe period of that 500-year period of the Little Ice Age occurred in Europe between 1550 and 1700. That was also probably the harshest period of weather in the last thousand years, if not longer. Now the severe conditions and climate brought about crop failure, starvation, disease, death and social unrest. But it was already occurring in a period of great upheaval, as the Reformation, the counter-Reformation and warfare battered Europe.
Now how unusual was this very intense period of the Little Ice Age? On the afternoon of August 3, 1562, a thunderstorm struck central Europe across a front several hundred kilometers long. After raging for several hours, the storm unleashed a terrific hail that continued until midnight. It destroyed crops. It destroyed vineyards, birds and unprotected horses and cows.
Diarists then noted something that we hear today. They said for a hundred years, such a storm had not been seen. The storm was deemed so unusual in this period of superstition that it had to be unnatural. It had to be supernatural. Thus, superstition and witchcraft bred a precautionary response. Eradicate those responsible for the storm and this period of new storminess.
Now, it was well known that people could cook weather with the help of Satan, so thus did extreme conditions of the severest part of the Little Ice Age contribute to Europe’s most horrific period of mass executions and witch trials. This was completely legal, and it was undertaken, administered, by highly educated upper social strata. These were institutionally legalized executions for sorcery. There are many reasons for these trials, but some of them are related to weather cooking, that is, working with Satan to produce these severe storms. The estimates now are about 50,000 executions across Europe, and no country was spared of this.
There were skeptics who stood up, but they were often accused of or threatened to be accused of sorcery to squash any debate. So legal philosopher Jean Bodin in 1580 noted that witchcraft was the most terrible problem facing humankind. Again, a very modern note.
Bodin championed the international attack against skeptics like Johann Beyer. Now, Johann Beyer was a physician, and Beyer argued that the accused sorcerers seemed to be suffering from what he thought were medical conditions we would modernly term mood disorders. He also thought it was theologically impossible for Satan to work through such people to do his work. Beyer then declared that confessions that had to be extracted by torture because there was very little direct proof of witchcraft—well, these confessions were extracted by torture, and he found this torture immoral.
So the response? Jean Bodin decided to accuse him of witchcraft, so any feeble notes of humane skepticism had to be wrenched out of society. Jean Bodin wrote in response to Beyer’s humane skepticism, “Any country which tolerates these skeptics will be struck by plagues, famines and wars.” Now since it was known that witches caused weather and this unusual weather raged, so did the tortures and executions.
How severe did it get? Well, on May 24, 1626, a hailstorm struck central Germany and dropped one meter of hail. Two days later, an arctic front descended onto central Europe and bit hard. Rivers froze, grape vines exploded, the rye and barley crops were destroyed. Tree leaves were blackened and fell to the ground and denuded the trees, and people thought it was Y2K.
Now, the lord mayor of Zeil in Franconia, Johann Langens wrote, “Everything was destroyed by the frost, which had never happened in people’s memory.” Which was true. Probably a frost that severe hadn’t occurred in 500 years, but since it was so unusual, it had to be unnatural, given that century’s reigning paradigms. “Whereupon,” continues Johann Langens, “whereupon an intensive pleading and begging started among the rabble. Why did the authorities tolerate these sorcerers and witches? The sorcerers and witches must be punished.”
So punish them, the authorities did. In this area of central Germany in 1626 alone, Bamberg executed 600, Wurtzburg 900, in electorate Mantz, 900 more were executed, and Westphalia, 2,000. That’s just the result of the 1626 frost, and those are directly related to weather cooking.
Science is the only successful means we know of to explain nature, and growth of wealth is the only successful means we have to afford prediction, preparation for and survival—in order to survive extreme weather, which has always happened and always will. But science needs special societal protection, and without that protection, science will just be dialed out and in its place will be substituted the myths that humans love to create, myths like weather cooking.
SOURCE
Some excited geologists
There's rarely anything too exciting in geology so perhaps a wish for drama can be understood. A conference of geologists has just declared that the earth will take 100,000 years to recover from global warming. That the recovery actually took place about 10 years ago seems to be overlooked. And it took place while CO2 levels continued to rise! Pesky! But when you've got a model, who needs facts?
A conference organised by the Geological Society in London this week will bring together scientists from around the world to look at how the world coped with climate change in the past.
By studying rock sediments from millions of years ago geologists have been able to model how increases in greenhouse gases led to temperature change and extinction of species.
Professor Jim Zachos, of the University of California, said that 55 million years ago volcanic activity caused around 4,500 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere over thousands of years. This caused the planet to warm by 6C (10.8F), forcing whole ecosystems, including early mammals, to adapt, migrate or die out in certain areas.
Prof Zachos said that if the world continues to pump out greenhouse gases at the current rate, around 5,000 gigatons of greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere over a few hundred years. He said this will cause a more rapid temperature rise that at any other time in history and could cause “mass extinction of species”.
“The impacts will be pretty severe compared to 55 million years ago in terms of evolution of this planet,” he said.
The Geological Society warned that it could take the Earth 100,000 years to recover. A statement read: “The geological evidence from the 55 million year event and from earlier warming episodes suggests that such an addition [a massive increase in greenhouse gases caused by the activities of mankind] is likely to raise average global temperatures by at least 5 to 6C, and possibly more, and that recovery of the Earth’s climate in the absence of mitigation measures could take 100,000 years or more.
Numerical models of the climate system support such an interpretation. In the light of the evidence presented here it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise, uncomfortable though that fact may be.”
SOURCE
Jewellers won't touch Alaskan gold
This is empty tokenism. Asians are huge buyers of gold and they won't bother where it came from
FIFTY of the world's leading jewellers have pledged to blackball gold mined by Anglo American in Alaska. The jewellers fear that they could be tarnished by any future environmental disaster.
Tiffany, Zale, Mappin & Webb, Watches of Switzerland and Fraser Hart are among those that have said they will not sell gold from the proposed Pebble Mine in western Alaska.
The gold and copper mine is on the shores of Bristol Bay, home to the world's largest wild salmon fishery. Opencast goldmines are notorious for the ecological damage they can cause as a result of leaks and spills and the local community is concerned that the salmon industry, worth $US400 million a year, could be harmed.
It is not unusual for North American communities to try to block construction of a mine, but the Bristol Bay campaigners are unique in having gathered so much support from big retailers.
The jewellers, which had sales of more than $US1.6 billion last year, are understood to be concerned that any future environmental disaster at the mine could tarnish gold's reputation for purity.
Consumers are said to be increasingly interested in the provenance of the jewellery they buy in the wake of publicity during the past decade about blood diamonds - precious stones sold by warlords to further conflicts in countries such as Sierra Leone. Moreover, interest in "ethical" gold will probably increase next year when the Fairtrade kitemark is applied to the metal.
Noel Coyle, chief executive of Fraser Hart, a British jeweller, said: "In some areas, mining of precious metals presents too great a risk to communities and the environment. Bristol Bay is such an area."
At Pebble Mine, the concern is that leaks or spills could dump toxic heavy metals and cyanide into Bristol Bay. Modern goldmining uses vast quantities of cyanide to leach gold out of the ore, which is an efficient and cost-effective process but one that is also susceptible to accidents.
Everett Thompson, a commercial fisherman from Bristol Bay, told The Times: "The salmon have provided for us for 9000 years and they are the economic engine of our region. "We are trying to keep our waters pristine so our salmon will support us for generations to come."
More than 5000 people are employed in the Bristol Bay fishing industry and about 40 per cent of the world's supply of sockeye salmon comes from the region. Every year about 170,000,000lb of salmon is caught and a large portion of it is canned for Britain, which is the world's largest consumer.
Anglo American is exploring the proposed site for Pebble Mine and has yet to submit an application for a mining permit. Its primary interest in the site, which is owned by the state of Alaska, is for copper production. Gold would be a potentially lucrative byproduct.
A spokesman for Anglo American said: "Pebble is still an exploration project and, as such, there is not yet a mine plan on which all interested parties could make an informed judgment of what may be proposed."
A group of four Bristol Bay residents are in London this week to talk about the project with jewellers and to meet Anglo American executives. Mr Thompson said: "We are not against mining or miners and we don't want to go fist-to-fist with them. "But they are coming into our backyard and we will protect our jobs."
SOURCE
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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