Monday, March 09, 2015



Britain's wackiest political party

The Greens like to do things differently. One of their deputy leaders had just blown a few billion pounds more from their wish-list budget when the chairwoman – who could hardly be seen in her green jumper against the vast green background – announced an ‘attunement’.

This turned out to be a reflective – and to my mind rather long – minute’s silence. ‘It’s incredibly successful if people get stressed,’ explained our host, although several people around me merely used the pause to check social media on their smartphones.

Welcome to the world of Britain’s wackiest political party, on display this weekend at its spring conference in Liverpool.

There is something mildly amusing about a party that insists on meditative breaks, has a keynote speaker identified as ‘a non-binary person from Belarus’ and chairwomen who say things like: ‘I would like to hear from someone who does not identify as a man.’

And a party that uses such a contorted form of internal democracy it ends up with daft policies to ban most cars and seriously debates proposals to extend human rights to all animals.

Yet this is currently the country’s most successful political party, attracting 100 recruits a day from people dismayed by traditional party politics. Bizarrely, the duffest interviews given by its bumbling leader Natalie Bennett only drive up membership.

Joining the hundreds of enthusiastic delegates – a mixture of grizzly bearded hippies, elderly ideologues, earnest young recruits and well-spoken women in charity shop chic – offered fresh insight into what is now the third biggest party in England and Wales. They proclaim the politics of the future.

Yet much of the time it felt like I had stumbled into an Alan Bennett sketch filled with middle-class people munching on non-meat sandwiches as they debated how to save a world wrecked by austerity, bankers and Conservatives.

Many of these new members – half of whom voted Liberal Democrat at the last Election – are young people inspired by the idea of reshaping politics. They were given special badges declaring their status and enthusiastically snapped up green T-shirts on sale.

Presumably they were not the people targeted in a seminar explaining how to use email.

Yet for all these new recruits rushing around excitedly, there were also the same old stalls offering vegan recipes for raspberry cake, T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Still Hate Thatcher’ and angry leaflets denouncing the monarchy.

On one, I found Jon Liebling, a friendly 47-year-old dancer promoting the medicinal use of cannabis. He said he had smoked the drug for 26 years to curb anxiety attacks.

His stall proclaimed ‘United Patients Alliance with Norml Women’s Alliance’. When I asked about Norml Women, he said its founders ‘felt there was too much testosterone in the cannabis movement’ – but they had not turned up and he had forgotten the acronym’s meaning.

The Australian-born Bennett promises a new style of politics – which many people might say she exemplifies with her stumbling interviews and inability to explain key policies.

Yet after she spoke on Friday, managing to avoid ‘mind blanks’ as she promised lots of new taxes, the grey-haired woman next to me could not stop gushing: ‘I am so excited. I am overwhelmed. I feel like I belong here.’ She turned out to be a Labour deserter. And this is why the sudden Green surge is giving her previous party palpitations as it is outflanked on the left.

Indeed, electoral mathematics mean it is possible the Greens might not just impact on voting outcomes in May but even be in position to join a coalition led by Ed Miliband.

This is a party that wants to ban the monarchy, House of Lords, much of the Armed Forces, free schools, foie gras and fur – while freeing up drugs, borders, brothels and, said its leader, allowing people to join terror groups such as Islamic State.

Yesterday they chucked in free university undergraduate education, joining the Greens’ desires for free social care, free universal childcare, 500,000 extra new homes and a basic income for everyone costing almost three times the budget of the National Health Service.

Since they also want to end economic growth, I asked their press team how these policies would be paid for. ‘There’s lots of money around,’ replied one party veteran, looking at me as though I was stupid.

A younger colleague said children would not start schooling until six under a Green government – although it is hard to believe this would raise the requisite £350 billion or so needed to close the annual gap between their policies and economic reality.

The Green Party’s emphasis on ultra-democracy is admirable, giving all members a voice – but it means scores of strange ideas end up on its statute books since anything is possible with its Alice in Wonderland politics.

Among the proposals considered this weekend, for instance, is the extension of human rights to ‘all sentient life forms’ with ‘the murder, torture and kidnapping’ of dogs and dolphins carrying the same penalties as when such crimes are committed against people.

I went to one meeting where 19 people were determining a ban on foie gras due to the force-feeding of geese. One young man dissented on the grounds this was discriminatory to dairy cows that were being ‘raped’ and their calves ‘murdered’.

‘To have a ban on the dairy industry would not be popular with the public. It would be a vote loser,’ responded session leader Ronnie Lee – although hastily adding he had been a vegan for 44 years in case anyone might think him unsympathetic to animals.

Then there was the well-attended gender group, which agreed people should be allowed ‘a third option of X gender’ on passports – although the discussion leader then confessed this might create risks for people publicly identified as transgender in many countries.

The meeting also agreed parents should be allowed to avoid putting children down as either male or female on birth certificates.

One elderly Green from Tyneside, doing his best to keep up, admitted he was confused by the latest terms for transgender people.  He was not the only one, with talk about LGBITQ people – the ‘I’ turned out to be for Intersex and the ‘Q’ for Questioning.

At the peace and defence group, software engineer Chris Burdess said they needed to review policies that were ‘unnecessarily inflammatory and aggressive’ towards diplomats and members of the armed forces. ‘We don’t want to single them out as evil,’ he said.

But their policy-making process is so ponderous, Burdess admitted this could not be achieved before the Election. Mind you, they have pledges to pass measures that were actually passed nearly two decades ago.

Such eccentricities might be endearing if the Greens had not suddenly emerged as a semi-serious force in British politics.

Yet its leaders brush aside criticism of policy absurdities by saying they are merely promoting new ideas and looking long-term.

Downstairs in the Liverpool convention centre was a gathering for fans of fantasy games. Upstairs, they seemed to be playing fantasy politics. But if this shambolic bunch ever got a sniff of power, the entire country would be losers.

SOURCE





‘Protect the Land Owner': Virginia Farmer Continues Fight Against Environmental Group

Instead of filing the same version of the conservation easement that was signed by its president and a Virginia farmer, the Piedmont Environmental Council pulled a “bait and switch” that dramatically altered the document’s terms and conditions.

That’s one of several revelations that have come to light in the past few days as Martha Boneta, the owner of Liberty Farm in Fauquier County, Va., prepares to initiate a new round of litigation against Piedmont Environmental Council, a non-profit land trust.

Boneta refiled a lawsuit Wednesday in Fauquier County Circuit Court that says the environmental group colluded with realtors and government officials to issue zoning citations against her property. This was done to force Boneta into selling her farm, she alleges in the suit.

Boneta also is considering filing a second lawsuit at the federal level against Piedmont Environmental Council.

That suit would be based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, commonly known as RICO.

The environmental group’s inspectors and officers have overstepped their authority under the easement to the point where they have trespassed across Liberty Farm and interfered with her farming activities, Boneta alleges.

Moreover, an analysis of the discrepancies that exist between the documents underpinning the easements shows that it may be “invalid,” and “unenforceable,” she says.

Boneta bought the farm from the Piedmont Environmental Council in July 2006 with the easement already attached. On June 29, 2006, Boneta and Chris Miller, the Piedmont group’s president, signed each page of the purchase contract with the easement.

But on July 26, 2006, the Piedmont Environmental Council filed the alternative easement with Fauquier County officials, without Boneta’s consent, just prior to transferring the title of the property over to her. The new agreement provides the green group with rights and privileges not in the version Boneta agreed to when she purchased the farm.

There’s more.

New evidence has emerged that appears to debunk a historical designation the Piedmont Environmental Council makes in both the signed and filed versions of the easement that says Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the confederate Civil War general, encamped on Boneta’s property on the evening of July 18, 1861.

Historical accounts of Jackson’s movements in and around the Paris, Va. section of Fauquier County at that time place the encampment at another location.

Oddly enough, the Piedmont Environmental Council makes a similar historical claim about Jackson’s whereabouts in the easement documents it has associated with Ovoka Farm, also located in Paris, but on a separate parcel of land from Liberty Farm.

The general couldn’t have been in both places at the same time.

Boneta has provided The Daily Signal with an “Analysis and Assessment of Damages” — prepared by an economist she hired — that details the losses she incurred as a result of the altercations and discrepancies in the easement documents.

The analysis shows that the historical claim made about the Jackson encampment inflated the real estate price of Liberty Farm well beyond its actual value.

Boneta paid $425,000 for the property in 2006. Over a two-year period, she was forced to fence off about 18 acres of the Oak Grove section of the farm — where the Piedmont Environmental Council located the Jackson encampment — which meant she could not farm in this area.

“What the PEC has done is unethical and a breach of contract,” Boneta told The Daily Signal in an interview. “If they can do this to me and my family, what else have they done? We are shocked to learn that a non-profit 501(c )(3) that is supposed to operate in the public interest would commit this kind of an act.”

The idea behind conservation easements is for property owners to receive tax breaks in exchange for agreeing to restrict future development on a portion of their property. The Boneta easement lists the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation as co-holders.

The environmental council has not responded to recent inquiries from The Daily Signal seeking comment, but it has presented the public with an online post that provides details of its history with the property and the differences it has with Boneta.

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation passed a resolution last November that said it would be willing to assume full control of the easement if the opposing sides could come to terms. That has turned out to be a big “if.” The Virginia Outdoors Foundation has uncovered “a number of serious flaws” in the easement it says must be addressed through “a corrective amendment.”

What Boneta describes as a “bait and switch” between the signed easement and the easement filed with the county government further complicates the ongoing legal standoff as there are substantial differences between the two documents. In fact, entire sections were added to the filed version of the easement without Boneta’s consent, according to the “Analysis and Assessment” paper.

These new revelations could serve as the basis for the federal lawsuit Boneta expects to file on top of the suit that has been reactivated at the state circuit court level.

“The only reason why the lawsuit was withdrawn at all was to give an opportunity for mediation,” Boneta explained.

“The PEC has not taken responsibility for the horrendous bad acts and damage they have done. We have no choice than to re-file the existing lawsuit as well as additional lawsuits and claims.”

SOURCE





“A Critical Assessment of ‘Air concentrations of volatile compounds near oil and gas production: A community-based exploratory study’

In October 2014, Environmental Health published a study purporting to show fracking operations for oil and gas production cause dangerous air quality issues. The study has been cited by environmental groups, the media, and some policymakers as “proof” of the dangers associated with fracking.

In this Policy Brief for The Heartland Institute, chemist and environmental consultant Rich Trzupek identifies significant flaws in the study. For example,

* the study’s authors did not conduct upwind and downwind sampling, but rather assumed background concentrations based on national averages;

* the risk levels used are based on a lifetime of exposure to the target pollutant at the measured concentration. In the majority of cases this comparison is not scientifically defensible;

* and the study is not an examination of air quality during fracking, but rather an examination of air quality near operations and equipment common to oil and natural gas production and transportation regardless of whether the well was fracked.

Trzupek also notes, “In 60 percent of the sampling events, ... concentrations of target pollutants did not exceed the alarm levels set by the authors. To their credit, the authors did not attempt to hide this fact. Nevertheless, this fact has been routinely ignored by media and policymakers ...”

SOURCE





Critiquing ‘Phantom’ Global Warming Risks to Defense Readiness

In May 2014, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report titled Climate Change Adaptation: DOD Can Improve Infrastructure Planning and Processes to Better Account for Potential Impacts.[1] The authors write, “We were asked to assess [the Department of Defense’s] progress in taking action to adapt its U.S. infrastructure to the challenges of climate change.” The request came from five Democratic members of the U.S. Senate: Barbara Boxer (CA), Mark Begich (AK), Al Franken (MN), Jeff Merkley (OR), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).

The phrasing of the request suggests there is no doubt climate change poses a “challenge” the Department of Defense (DOD) should be addressing. This bias is not surprising since each of the elected officials who asked for the report has in the past made alarmist claims about the causes and consequences of climate change and called for policies to increase the cost of fossil fuels and subsidize the development and use of alternative fuels such as biofuels, solar, and wind.

The GAO staff members who led the study are listed as Director of Defense Capabilities and Management Brian J. Lepore, the primary contact, and Assistant Director Laura Durland. GAO “key contributors” are listed as Frederick K. Childers, Roshni Dave, Michele Fejfar, Michael Hix, Sarah Kaczmarek, Mary Koenen, Brandon Kruse, Amie Lesser, Amanda Manning, Celia Rosario Mendive, Anne Stevens, Chris Stone, Joseph Thompson, Christopher Turner, Erik Wilkins-McKee, and Michael Willems.

The following critique of GAO’s study reveals GAO has overlooked convincing evidence that what is called “climate change” is unlikely to have a greater effect on DOD’s infrastructure or America’s military preparedness in general than past changes in climate. GAO also overlooked evidence that shows requiring DOD to invest in mitigation or adaptation to address phantom risks could divert resources from other more urgent needs, reducing military preparedness.

Much more HERE






Facing extinction... to make 'green' fuel

Deep in the Sumatran jungle, a British zoologist forms a magical bond with a young orang-utan. His mission? To help stop their habitat being ravaged

It is an utterly heart-melting image. A young Sumatran orang-utan swings down from his tree to nuzzle and play with a British zoologist who is here to save his life.

Dr Ian Singleton gets a privileged close-up view of how these highly intelligent animals are possessed of such an extraordinarily wide range of emotions, and why they form such close and touching bonds with human beings. As well they might: sharing 97 per cent of humans’ DNA, they are one of our nearest living relatives.

Tragically, though, these bewitching pictures, captured by environmental photographer David Higgs, betray a story that shows humanity at its most rapacious.

Orang-utans like these face becoming the first species of great ape to become officially extinct. There are just 6,000 still wild in Sumatra’s swamps and rainforests. Their numbers are reducing rapidly because their habitat is being ravaged, largely to make way for the mass plantation of palms.

The plants produce palm oil, which is used increasingly in an ever-growing variety of western consumer products from chocolate bars and biscuits, to soaps and cooking oil.

It is also used to give diesel cars a ‘green’ bio-diesel mix – the EU has committed to eco-targets that say ten per cent of transport energy must come from renewable sources including bio-fuels by 2020. Indonesia produces 31 million tonnes of palm oil every year, and uses about 3.4 million tonnes for its own bio-diesel consumption.

Dr Singleton, who cut his teeth at Gerald Durrell’s zoo in Jersey, is director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), a charity based in Medan, north-west Sumatra. Here he runs a health and quarantine centre, where sick and injured orang-utans are nursed back to health; arranges the rescue of orang-utan orphans and those kidnapped for pets; and campaigns to keep what is left of their habitats.

Orang-utans can be subjected to horrifying violence – often inflicted by loggers, miners and oil-palm planters. One of the orang-utans getting urgent care at the centre is blind. He was rescued as a ‘teenager’, after being shot 62 times. Three of those gun shots hit him in the eyes. Having lost his sight, he will never be able to return to the wild.

He came from the Leuser Ecosystem, an area where most Sumatran orang-utans live. It is supposed to be protected. Another orang-utan at the SOCP centre is known as ‘No Nose’, because most of it was sliced off by a machete.

Dr Singleton told The Mail on Sunday that the threat to the apes’ habitat didn’t come from local people, but from large, multinational companies that ‘make all the profit from cutting down the forests but bear none of the huge costs’. Indeed, most of SOCP’s staff are Indonesian, including a cadre of dedicated vets, scientists and conservationists.

The threat is very real. One area which had, until recently, one of the largest and densest orang-utan populations was the Tripa peat swamp forest near Medan. ‘Since the mid-1990s, it’s shrunk from 60,000 hectares (232 square miles) to just 9,000 (34),’ Dr Singleton said.

The wider Leuser Ecosystem – which once covered more than 7,700 square miles – is disappearing just as rapidly. The problem, Dr Singleton added, had been exacerbated because Indonesia’s Aceh province, where SOCP mostly works, was granted regional autonomy.

Legally, its forests and swamps were supposed to be protected, ‘but the Aceh government’s land use plan doesn’t even mention this’. Recently, SOCP successfully took a firm that had carved out illegal concessions in the swamp lands to court, resulting in a £20 million fine.

Yet the destruction continues. Typically, Dr Singleton said, the oil-palm planters were ‘first on the scene’ when a forest area was first opened up. In their wake came roads, another deadly threat.

‘Once you break up orang-utan populations by fragmenting their habitats with roads, they swiftly die out.’ There is no doubting the size and profits of the palm oil industry. In 2013, Indonesia exported 21 million metric tonnes of the oil, worth more than £15 billion.

But Dr Singleton said: ‘Using palm oil for biofuel actually doesn’t cut but drastically increases emissions, because it means cutting down forests. It isn’t a green option.

‘The best thing would be an immediate moratorium on the use of biofuel from this source… I would like to see the EU investigate the consequences of its decisions.’

Senior Greenpeace campaign official Patrick Venditti agrees. ‘Fuelling Europe’s vehicles in this manner may well drive orang-utans, as well as tigers and other endangerd species in Sumatra, to extinction.’

SOCP now wants to establish an ‘orang-utan haven’ near Medan, as a centre for conservation, education and research that will also give local people a chance to experience the apes close-up, as many Sumatrans have never seen an orang-utan. ‘This is a critically endangered species,’ Dr Singleton said. ‘To save them, we need all the help we can get.’

SOURCE





Climate Scientists to Bullies in Congress: Buzz Off

Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona and ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, sent a letter to seven university presidents demanding information on funding sources, financial disclosure guidelines, and all draft testimony or exchanges relating to the testimony of certain researchers who have testified before Congress on climate change issues.

Grijalva’s letter asked about the climate research and funding for seven scholars: geographer Robert C. Balling, Jr., Arizona State University; atmospheric scientist John Christy, University of Alabama; climatologist Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology; historian Steven Hayward, Pepperdine University; climatologist David Legates, University of Delaware; atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado.

The letter, plainly intended to intimidate climate scientists who dare to question the Obama administration’s often-stated view that climate change is man-made and dangerous, generated heated responses from science organizations, individual scientists, and other members of Congress.

“Sends a Chilling Message”

The American Meteorological Society, the national scientific society for the development and dissemination of atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences, responded to a letter from U.S. Grijalva with a letter of its own. The letter, signed by Dr. Keith L. Seitter, AMS Executive Director, and dated February 27, is a stinging rebuke of Grijalva’s demands.

“Publicly singling out specific researchers based on perspectives they have expressed and implying a failure to appropriately disclose funding sources — and thereby questioning their scientific integrity — sends a chilling message to all academic researchers,” Seitter wrote. “Further, requesting copies of the researcher’s communications related to external funding opportunities or the preparation of testimony impinges on the free pursuit of ideas that is central to the concept of academic freedom.”

Seitter goes on to say peer-review, not political inquiries into funding sources, “is the appropriate mechanism to assess the validity and quality of scientific research, regardless of the funding sources supporting that research as long as those funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest are fully disclosed. The scientific process that includes testing and validation of concepts and ideas — discarding those that cannot successfully withstand such testing — is chronicled in the peer reviewed scientific literature. We encourage the Committee to rely on the full corpus of peer-reviewed literature on climate science as the most reliable source for knowledge and understanding that can be applied to the policy options before you.”

Attacking Skeptics’ Funding

Grijalva justified his query by citing recent media attacks on researchers skeptical of the theory greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for energy are causing catastrophic global warming.

The latest media assault began in late February with an article in The New York Times repeating claims made by a long-time Greenpeace staffer, Kert Davies, that Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist concealed financial support received by the Smithsonian Institution to support his work. The Times article noted Soon’s work was supported by more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel companies over 11 years.

The information was not new, as Davies had been pushing similar stories as early as 1997. The Times reporter failed to mention the funds went to the Smithsonian and not directly to Dr. Soon, and the Smithsonian kept approximately half the money it raised specifically to ensure that Dr. Soon’s research was appropriate and conducted without undue influence by donors.

The Smithsonian has said it is investigating the matter. Since its staff negotiated and signed every contract for all of the money raised for Dr. Soon’s work, it presumably already has found there is no conflict of interest on Dr. Soon’s part.

The Smithsonian Institution’s charter says all such grant results “must be unclassified, in order not to abridge the institution’s right to publish, without restriction, findings that result from this research project.” The funders neither directed nor had control over the research or the dissemination of its results.

Grijalva’s ‘Lysenkoism, Witch Hunt’

Responding to Grijalva’s letter, climatologist David Legates said, “Grijalva was asked why he targeted the seven of us. His response was that we were the most well-published, most often-cited, and had the most impact on public policy in the United States. Not that our research was likely fraudulent, not that we had taken big sums of money from foreign governments, or that we simply had been publishing bad research. None of these were the reason. It was simply that we are too effective with our research and too persuasive with our arguments. Pure and simple. And since we disagree with him and his views, we must be harassed. Maybe that will stop us.

“Unfortunately, we have entered into a new age of Lysenkoism,” Legates said. “Lysenkoism” refers to an episode in science history where the scientific process was heavily influenced by the Soviet government in order to reach politically acceptable conclusions.

Roger Pielke, Jr., another of the researchers whose funding sources and e-mails Grijalva requested, wrote on his blog that Grijalva should already know he has never received any funding from fossil fuel companies and has no conflict of interest, since he has testified to this before Congress on several occasions. “I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name,” Pielke wrote.

Pielke goes on, “The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt. I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject. I can’t imagine the message being sent to younger scientists.”

John Nothdurft, director of government relations for The Heartland Institute, said the probe into Soon and other climate researchers is part of a campaign to divert attention away from the facts about climate change. “Instead of having a real conversation with the American public about the science and economics of climate change, well-financed advocacy groups and politicians with many ‘conflicts of interest’ of their own would rather direct the public’s focus on who funds nonprofit organizations, independent research institutions, scientists, economists, and other experts,” Nothdurft said.

“Apparently it is now a national offense to raise any concerns over certain aspects of the science or economics of policies that purport to deal with human-caused climate change,” Nothdurft said. “This witch hunt has nothing to do with ensuring that science is accurate or reliable. These attacks are leveled by people who refuse to engage in civil debate over important matters of science, economics, and public policy. They should not be allowed to win the day.”

Even alarmists in the global warming debate say Grijalva has gone too far with his demands. Bob Ward, policy and communications director with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in the U.K., a frequent critic of climate skeptics, tweeted, “Politicians should not persecute academics with whom they disagree. No ifs or buts.”

Controversial climate researcher Michael Mann, recently sued by the attorney general of Virginia requesting e-mails concerning Mann’s climate research during his time at the state-supported University of Virginia, called the letters from Grijalva and other Democrats “heavy handed and overly aggressive.”

Activists’ Funding Goes Unquestioned

On her blog, Climate etc., climatologist Judith Curry responded to Grijalva’s letter, arguing if Congress and the press are truly concerned whether funding taints climate research, they should also be asking about funding from large environmental foundations and lobbying groups pushing for government action. Curry asked, “Are we not to be concerned by funding from green advocacy groups and scientists serving on the Boards of green advocacy groups?”

Among the potential conflicts of interest not under scrutiny by the media or congressional Democrats are those of Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, who has written a number of peer-reviewed papers and testified before Congress on multiple occasions. He previously served as chief scientist for, and is still a science advisor to, the multimillion-dollar lobbying group Environmental Defense.

Joe Romm, author of several books on climate change, has also testified on several occasions before Congress concerning global warming. Romm is a senior fellow and chief science advisor at the Center for American Progress, which argues for greater government control over the economy. Neither Romm nor his coauthors filed conflict-of-interest disclosures for their article in Environmental Research Letters, although the journal explicitly requires it, stating, “All authors and co-authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest when submitting their article (e.g. employment, consulting fees, research contracts, stock ownership, patent licenses, honoraria, advisory affiliations, etc.). This information should be included in an acknowledgments section at the end of the manuscript (before the references section). All sources of financial support for the project must also be disclosed in the acknowledgments section.”

Grijalva himself has taken $78,854 from environmental lobbying groups, according to the imablawg website.

Pielke tweeted, “Once you tug on the thread of undisclosed financial interests in climate science, you’ll find it more a norm than exception.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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