'global warming' scam advances, UN advocates wealth transfer to third world hellholes

[SwordoftheVistula]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/07/international-flight-levy-un-climate-change

Britain and other rich countries will be asked to accept a compulsory levy on international flight tickets and shipping fuel to raise billions of dollars to help the world's poorest countries adapt to combat climate change.

The suggestions come at the start of the second week in the latest round of UN climate talks in Bonn, where 192 countries are starting to negotiate a global agreement to limit and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The issue of funding for adaptation is critical to success but the hardest to agree.

The aviation levy, which is expected to increase the price of long-haul fares by less than 1%, would raise $10bn (£6.25bn) a year, it is said.

It has been proposed by the world's 50 least developed countries. It could be matched by a compulsory surcharge on all international shipping fuel, said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment and energy minister who will host the final UN climate summit in December.

"People are beginning to understand that innovative ideas could generate a lot of money. The Danish shipping industry, which is one of the world's largest, has said a that truly global system would work well. Denmark would endorse it," said Hedegaard.

In Bonn last week, a separate Mexican proposal to raise billions of dollars was gaining ground. The idea, known as the "green fund" plan, would oblige all countries to pay amounts according to a formula reflecting the size of their economy, their greenhouse gas emissions and the country's population. That could ensure that rich countries, which have the longest history of using of fossil fuels, pay the most to the fund.

Recently, the proposal won praise from 17 major-economy countries meeting in Paris as a possible mechanism to help finance a UN pact. The US special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, called it "highly constructive".

The Bonn meeting is the first climate meeting at which countries are discussing texts. These cover greenhouse gas reduction and financing developing countries' efforts to combat climate change.

Analysts said last night that the talks were most likely to stall over money. Developing countries, backed by the UN, argue that they will need hundreds of billions of dollars a year to adapt themselves to climate-related disasters, loss of crops and water supplies, which they are already experiencing as temperatures around the world rise. Yet so far, as a Guardian investigation revealed back in February, rich countries have pledged only a few billion dollars and have provided only a few hundred million.

"Developing countries will no longer let themselves be sidelined. In the past, they have been brought on board [climate negotiations] by promises of financial support. But all they got was the creation of a couple of funds that stayed empty. Developing countries will not settle for more 'placebo funds'," said Benito Müller, director of Oxford University's institute for energy studies.

Saleemul Huq, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that until rich countries made serious pledges, the rest of the negotiations would suffer because it would be impossible to agree actions without knowing how they would be funded.

Last week, a US negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, said that the US had budgeted $400m to help poor countries adapt to climate change as an interim measure. But that amount was dismissed as inadequate by Bernarditas Muller of the Philippines, who is the co-ordinator of the G77 and China group of countries.

[Guapo]

People are beginning to understand that innovative ideas could generate a lot of money.

Innovative as in instilling fear such as global climate change.Everything has a price as they say.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Innovative as in instilling fear such as global climate change.Everything has a price as they say.

Maybe they aren't raking in as much money with the Starvin' Marvin ads and 'AIDS prevention' anymore

[Bloodeagle]

Well, I believe there is truth in Global Warming. But this new Global Warming bandwagon parading its way across the world is nothing more than the newest fad sham doublespeak. The war on terrorism is wearing off just as its predecessor, The War On Drugs did in the late 90's.
The new common enemy is us! What will we do? We will find new and improved ways of living and doing business. We will buy electric cars and then build more nuclear power plant. We will grow organic and increase our carbon footprint by shipping dung from Iowa to grow tomatoes in greenhouses in British Columbia and then ship this green produce around the world in electric trucks.
We will feed our carnivorous pets vegetarian diets and hold hands, blah, blah, blah.
I can hardly wait till the day that we declare a Department of Green Security in the U.S. with ummm Ralph Nader at the helm.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Naderspeak.JPG/200px-Naderspeak.JPG

[Treffie]

Britain and other rich countries will be asked to accept a compulsory levy on international flight tickets and shipping fuel to raise billions of dollars to help the world's poorest countries adapt to combat climate change.

Do we have much choice? :mad:

[Dante]

It used to be "global cooling" in the 1970s and 1980s. Pollution was supposed to black out the sun and make the ice caps grow until a new ice age was over us.

Then it changed in the mid-1980s to "global warming", and it was the same people who had talked about "cooling" who now switched to "warming." The media, as usual, covered for them, and today noone remembers the "cooling" lies. Before that, it was supposed to be acid rain, and we were supposed to run out of metals in the 1960s. The environmentalists had a list with the exact years when we'd run out of various metals - silver, aluminum, copper, etc. (In fact, we have literally only scraped the surface of the metals in the earth.)

Then there is Al Gore's fake movie - actually it wasn't his movie, but the movie of Jewish director Davis Guggenheim, using Al Gore as the Gentile front figure, a common method. Here we learn that polar bears are drowning because of melting ice caps, which is a lie. A court in Britain asked the movie makers to provide evidence: the only thing they could find was a piece about polar bears drowning too far away from the shore, which happens once in a while. (It was in court because British schools refused to show the movie, deeming it unscientific.) In fact the number of polar bears has increased substantially in the last fifteen years.

As for the connection between carbon dioxide and rising temperatures, that is odd considering that carbon dioxide is one of the most common gases in the atmosphere. In 1991, a volcanic eruption at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than humans had done during the entire 20th century.

Have you ever heard of this eruption? Shouldn't it have been counted as an unmitigated disaster? And yet, things remain normal afterward. We don't hear of Mount Pinatubo because if we did, people would no longer listen to the talk about human-produced carbon dioxide being a disaster threatening the entire planet.

To have green forests and healthy waters is what everyone wants. But environmentalist organizations are raising hysteria over pollution because they want to label technology, the greatest of White achievements, as something evil. While those races who failed to even invent the wheel would then have done so out of goodness, a desire to spare the planet. Whites, inventors of the light bulb and the airplane and computers, are once again made to feel ashamed of themselves - and the message is that things would be better if we didn't exist, or at least if we were minorities in our own countries. Many Whites feel this shame, and nod approvingly at the thought of the Third World taking over the West. They live "in harmony with nature," you see.

[Lenny]

Have not 9 of the past 10 years been the hottest on record? Are we not putting tons of CO2 into the atmosphere constantly? Is it a coincidence? That's a mighty big coincidence. I don't see how the "It's a scam" people have a leg to stand on.



It used to be "global cooling" in the 1970s and 1980s. Pollution was supposed to black out the sun and make the ice caps grow until a new ice age was over us.

The global warming scenarios still do predict massive cooling in Europe and probably an eventual return to perma-ice in much of Europe. The only Britain for example is so temperate at such a high latitude is the North Atlantic Current constantly pushing up warm tropical waters. If that shuts down, Europe is doomed. :(

[SwordoftheVistula]

Have not 9 of the past 10 years been the hottest on record?

Apparently not, according to the experts:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".

Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?

From last year:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKPEK161570._CH_.242020080204

Millions remained stranded in China on Monday ahead of the biggest holiday of the year as parts of the country suffered their coldest winter in a century.

Freezing weather has killed scores of people and left travellers stranded before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival -- the only opportunity many people have to take a holiday all year.

[Treffie]

^ I wonder when our Govts will finally admit that the scientists have perhaps got it wrong....again?

[SwordoftheVistula]

^ I wonder when our Govts will finally admit that the scientists have perhaps got it wrong....again?

If and when they figure out a way to use it to wring taxes and impose regulations on people


New York City has coldest June since 1958, on par with 1897:

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PNS&issuedby=OKX

000
NOUS41 KOKX 012057
PNSOKX

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
455 PM EDT WED JUL 1 2009

...UNUSUALLY WET AND COOL JUNE FOR CENTRAL PARK...

FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE...HERE ARE THE TOP TEN COOLEST AND WETTEST
JUNES ON RECORD SINCE 1869 FOR CENTRAL PARK NY:

COOLEST WETTEST
AVG. TEMP. YEAR INCHES PRECIP. YEAR
64.2 1903 10.27 2003
65.2 1881 10.06 2009
65.7 1916 9.78 1903
66.8 1926/1902 9.30 1972
67.2 1958 8.79 1989
67.3 1927 8.55 2006
67.4 1928 7.76 1887
67.5 2009/1897 7.58 1975
67.7 1878 7.13 1938
67.8 1924 7.05 1871


DUE TO THE UNUSUALLY COOL AND WET CONDITIONS IN JUNE...HERE ARE SOME
INTERESTING FACTS TO NOTE:

THIS JUNE IS TIED FOR THE 8TH COOLEST ON RECORD. THE AVERAGE
TEMPERATURE WAS 67.5...3.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...WHICH ALSO
OCCURRED IN 1897.

THIS WAS THE COOLEST JUNE SINCE 1958...WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
WAS 67.2 DEGREES.

BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES OCCURRED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS
JUNE...OR 75 PERCENT OF THE MONTH.

CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 90 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR.
THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1996.

CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 85 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR.
THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1916. THIS HAS ONLY OCCURRED
2 OTHER TIMES...1903 AND 1886.

THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN
APRIL. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 IN APRIL...BUT NOT IN
JUNE WAS BACK IN 1990.

THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN
MAY. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN MAY...BUT NOT IN JUNE
WAS BACK IN 1903. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN
APRIL...BUT NOT IN JUNE WAS ALSO BACK IN 1903.

THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE REACHED IN CENTRAL PARK IN THE MONTH OF JUNE
WAS 50 DEGREES. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 2003.

THE LOW TEMPERATURE DIPPED BELOW 60 DEGREES 11 TIMES IN THE MONTH OF
JUNE. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS IN 2003 WHEN IT OCCURRED 17
TIMES.

IT WAS THE SECOND WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD WITH 10.06 INCHES OF RAIN.
THE WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD IS 2003 WITH 10.27 INCHES.

THERE WERE 19 DAYS THIS JUNE WHERE THERE WAS AT LEAST 0.01 INCHES OF
RAINFALL. THIS HAS NEVER OCCURRED IN CENTRAL PARK.

AT LEAST A TRACE OF RAINFALL WAS REPORTED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS
JUNE.

[The Lawspeaker]

Have not 9 of the past 10 years been the hottest on record? Are we not putting tons of CO2 into the atmosphere constantly? Is it a coincidence? That's a mighty big coincidence. I don't see how the "It's a scam" people have a leg to stand on.




The global warming scenarios still do predict massive cooling in Europe and probably an eventual return to perma-ice in much of Europe. The only Britain for example is so temperate at such a high latitude is the North Atlantic Current constantly pushing up warm tropical waters. If that shuts down, Europe is doomed. :(
Well.. I agree. Global warming is taking place but whether it is human-induced can be a matter of debate. What we are seeing now is merely a warmer age (like the Medieval Warm Period (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period)) as we also had a colder age (Little Ice Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age)). The climate seems to fluctuate up and down as the sun seems to have more violent period, producing more solar flares. Only 6 percent of the climate change seems to take place because of the use of greenhouse gasses. Although I do agree that we should create less (especially when it comes to using motorized vehicles) but that is only to make our own cities more livable, ween ourselves off foreign oil and make sure that our forests stop dieing. And we should also plant more trees.

But let's look at the bright side of global warming--- for us. Because there won't be a benefit for Africa but then again I couldn't care less about them. When we protect ourselves better against rivers and the see we should start seeing higher yields in agriculture and a more diverse produce. Probably grapes in Yorkshire or the Dutch province of Gelderland. Or as seems to have been the case during the Viking Age: grapes in Maine.
Southern Europe will have to take measures to prevent desertification and look at new forms of irrigation and different products to grow though.

Warm periods are usually good periods for the economy and agriculture and I am willing to embrace it with both arms. The third world (mainly Africa) will suffer though but who bothers. (at least I am not a hypocrite that says that I will shed tears for them).

[SwordoftheVistula]

Here we go, the socialist program of the 'global warming' crowd comes out in the open. Do you heat your home during winter (because you don't live in a jungle or savanna)? Drive a car to go to work (because you actually have a job)? Or far, far worse...do you own a factory which provides jobs and produces things people enjoy? You are in for a new global tax!

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06427635.htm

To fairly divide the climate change fight between rich and poor, a new study suggests basing targets for emission cuts on the number of wealthy people, who are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, in a country.

Since about half the planet's climate-warming emissions come from less than a billion of its people, it makes sense to follow these rich folks when setting national targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the authors wrote on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As it stands now, under the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, rich countries shoulder most of the burden for cutting the emissions that spur global warming, while developing countries -- including fast-growing economies China and India -- are not required to curb greenhouse pollution.

Rich countries, notably the United States, have said this gives developing countries an unfair economic advantage; China, India and other developing countries argue that developed countries have historically spewed more climate-warming gases, and developing countries need time to catch up.

The study suggests setting a uniform international cap on how much carbon dioxide each person could emit in order to limit global emissions; since rich people emit more, they are the ones likely to reach or exceed this cap, whether they live in a rich country or a poor one.

For example, if world leaders agree to keep carbon emissions in 2030 at the same level they are now, no one person's emissions could exceed 11 tons of carbon each year. That means there would be about a billion "high emitters" in 2030 out of a projected world population of 8.1 billion.

EACH PERSON'S EMISSIONS

By counting the emissions of all the individuals likely to exceed this level, world leaders could provide target emissions cuts for each country. Currently, the world average for individual annual carbon emissions is about 5 tons; each European produces 10 tons and each American produces 20 tons.

With international climate talks set to start this week in Italy among the countries that pollute the most, the authors hope policymakers will look at the strong link between how rich people are and how much carbon dioxide they emit.

"You're distributing the task of doing something about emissions reduction based on the proportion of the population in the country that's actually doing the most damage," said Shoibal Chakravarty of the Princeton Environment Institute, one of the study's authors.

Rich people's lives tend to give off more greenhouse gases because they drive more fossil-fueled vehicles, travel frequently by air and live in big houses that take more fuel to heat and cool.

By focusing on rich people everywhere, rather than rich countries and poor ones, the system of setting carbon-cutting targets based on the number of wealthy individuals in various countries would ease developing countries into any new climate change framework, Chakravarty said by telephone.

"As countries develop -- India, China, Brazil and others -- over time, they'll have more and more of these (wealthy) individuals and they'll have a higher share of carbon reductions to do in the future," he said.

These obligations, based on the increasing number of rich people in various countries, would kick in as each developing country hit a certain overall level of carbon emissions. This level would be set fairly high, so that economic development would not be hampered in the poorest countries, no matter how many rich people live there.

Is this a limousine-and-yacht tax on the rich? Not necessarily, Chakravarty said, but he did not rule it out: "We are not by any means proposing that. If some country finds a way of doing that, it's great."

This week's climate talks in Italy are a prelude to an international forum in December in Copenhagen aimed at crafting an agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. At the same time, the U.S. Congress is working on legislation to curb U.S. carbon emissions.

[Freomæg]

Look, whether global warming is a reality or not (I believe it is, but that it's largely not man-made), it should not be used for any kind of transfer of wealth. Where do our 'carbon taxes' go? Do they gut spent entirely (no profit for contracted companies) on bettering the global environment? I don't think so.

Global warming is being used as a device by corporate government to transfer wealth from the public to the elite. Furthermore it is being used as a device to transfer wealth from the first world to the third, thus de-industrialising the west (which is one of their stated goals and aids their strife for a new world order, with 'level playing field' - ie global impoverishment).

[SwordoftheVistula]

Goldman Sachs seems to be in on it:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=325899798635675&secure=1&show=1&rss=1

When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million. A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. It seems it's easy being green, at least for some.

Gore has his lectures and speeches, his books, a hit movie and Oscar, and a Nobel Prize. But Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., was curious about how a man dedicated to saving the planet could get so wealthy so quickly. She sought out investment advice we all could use in a shaky economy.

Last May, we noted that Big Al had joined the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers the previous September. On May 1, 2008, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.

Last Friday, Gore was the star witness at the hearings on cap-and- trade legislation before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Blackburn asked Gore about Kleiner-Perkins, noting that at last count they "have invested about a billion dollars invested in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that we are discussing here today."

Blackburn then asked the $100 million question: "Is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?" Gore gave the stock answer that "the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it but every penny that I have made I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge."

Last May, we also noted that on March 1, Gore, while speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green investments that he recommended attendees put money in rather than "subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil.

He also is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue with a clear conscience. It's a scheme that will make traders of this new commodity rich and Bernie Madoff look like a pickpocket. The other founder is former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood.

As Stephen Milloy, author of "Green Hell," points out, Goldman Sachs is lobbying for climate change legislation and is part owner of the Chicago Climate Exchange, where carbon credits from cap and trade would be traded.

Others hope to cash in along with Gore. On Earth Day 2007, the various NBC networks gave 75 hours of free air time to Gore to hype climate change. NBC is owned by General Electric, perhaps the largest maker of wind turbines and other green technology in the world. It, too, stands to benefit financially from cap and trade, as Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has noted, connecting dots others won't.

Gore's altruism is phony. According to a March 6 Bloomberg report, Gore invested $35 million of his own money not in green nonprofits, but with the very profitable Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that directs clients to green investments and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products.

As reported on Green Hell Blog, Capricorn was founded by the billionaire former president of eBay Inc., Jeffrey Skoll, who also happens to be an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore has not taken a vow of poverty even as he advocates legislation that will push millions into it. He has said greed and corporate profits are behind the studies disproving his alarmism. Maybe it's his desire for profits that's behind his manipulation of the truth.

[Revenant]

THEY are the new generation of climate warriors. They are smart, politically savvy, idealistic, apparently indefatigable and very young. They have more technology in their mobiles and laptops than NASA had when it sent men to the moon, and they are "beginning to use them for tools, not toys", as one campaigner said.

For the next three days they will be at Power Shift, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition's first major summit.

About 1500 Australians aged 16 to 26 are descending on the University of Western Sydney to learn about organising and to hear speeches from Tim Flannery, senators Nick Xenophon and Christine Milne, the NSW Premier, Nathan Rees, and via video link from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations panel on climate change, and the former US vice-president Al Gore, who is training an older generation of climate change campaigners in Melbourne this weekend.

Over three days Power Shift attendees will learn "Camp Obama" style strategies from a manifesto called The Little Green Book, such as recruiting first-time voters and targeting awareness campaigns at marginal seats in the federal election next year.

"They've got the enthusiasm and the passion," said a Power Shift organiser, Amanda McKenzie. "Now it's about giving them the tools to put that into action to create social change."

McKenzie and Anna Rose, both 26, co-founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in November 2006. The two law graduates brought together school and student groups, and young professional and interfaith groups concerned about global warming. They liken the youth climate movement to the anti-Vietnam movement, another issue where, they say, the younger generation had the most at stake.

Ms Rose, while finishing her law degree on exchange in the US in 2007, volunteered for Barack Obama during the presidential primary in New Hampshire. There she got a first-hand taste of the campaign's grass roots organising techniques. Apart from the social networking technology, a key lesson from "Camp Obama" is the power of the personal story.

On Wednesday night, in the coalition's six-star green-rated city offices, provided rent-free by the Climate Institute, 20 young people analysed a YouTube video of Mr Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech, looking at how he used his life story to build an emotional connection.

"For me it's 'My grandparents had to sell their farm because of the drought,' " Ms Rose said.

The coalition has sent delegations to global climate negotiations in Bali and Poland; they have addressed the Senate Committee on climate policy and mobilised a corps of volunteers that grows daily as talks in Copenhagen approach. Three hundred and fifty volunteers helped organise Power Shift, and they say 100,000 young people are on their databases.

Ms Rose and Ms McKenzie worked for the coalition as volunteers until this year. They are now paid a part-time salary.

They believe that the financial and climate crises can be solved if people put enough political pressure on their leaders to invest in green jobs and cut emissions drastically - an aim they acknowledge is "ridiculously ambitious". They argue that those under 30 hold the moral authority in this argument. "There's no ombudsman for future generations. We're it," Ms McKenzie said.

But they remain optimistic.

"Looking at history, huge changes have happened in short periods of time," Ms Rose said.

"Things that people said were impossible - ending slavery, giving women the right to vote, ending apartheid - have changed, almost overnight, if the conditions are right. We're trying to build those conditions."

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/climate-warriors-march-behind-little-green-book-20090710-dg2t.html

Al Gore's down here adressing some young climate warriors.:rolleyes:

By the looks of what's in this article it's pretty clear what the politics of the movement are.


"There's no ombudsman for future generations. We're it"

They haven't got even the slightest clue.