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WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming, one day after President Barack Obama renewed his call for climate legislation.
"A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record," the annual State of the Climate report declares.
Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, the report said its analysis of 10 indicators that are "clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable."
Concern about rising temperatures has been growing in recent years as atmospheric scientists report rising temperatures associated with greenhouse gases released into the air by industrial and other human processes. At the same time, some skeptics have questioned the conclusions.
The new report, the 20th in a series, focuses only on global warming and does not specify a cause.
"The evidence in this report would say unequivocally yes, there is no doubt," that the Earth is warming, said Tom Karl, the transitional director of the planned NOAA Climate Service.
Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Climatic Data Center, noted that the 1980s was the warmest decade up to that point, but each year in the 1990s was warmer than the '80s average.
That makes the '90s the warmest decade, he said.
But each year in the 2000s has been warmer than the '90s average, so the first 10 years of the 2000s is now the warmest decade on record.
The new report noted that continuing warming will threaten coastal cities, infrastructure, water supply, health and agriculture.
"At first glance, the amount of increase each decade - about a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit - may seem small," the report said.
"But," it adds, "the temperature increase of about 1 degree Fahrenheit experienced during the past 50 years has already altered the planet. Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are becoming more common and more intense."
Last month was the warmest June on record and this year has had the warmest average temperature for January-June since record keeping began, NOAA reported last week.
And a study by Princeton University researchers released Monday suggested that continued warming could cause as many as 6.7 million more Mexicans to move to the United States because of drought affecting crops in their country.
The new climate report, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, focused on 10 indicators of a warming world, seven which are increasing and three declining.
Rising over decades are average air temperature, the ratio of water vapor to air, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature, sea level, air temperature over the ocean and air temperature over land.
Indicators that are declining are snow cover, glaciers and sea ice.
The 10 were selected "because they were the most obviously related indicators of global temperature," explained Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, who helped develop the list when at the British weather service, known as the Met Office.
"What this data is doing is, it is screaming that the world is warming," Thorne concluded.
By Peter Whoriskey/ Washington Post Wednesday, July 28, 2010; A10
The long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, General Motors' electric car, will cost $41,000, the company announced Tuesday, leaving consumers to decide whether its environmental appeal is worth a price far above that of similarly sized conventional autos.
Electric-car technology has been around for years, but the high cost to make the vehicles has prevented automakers from producing them for the mass market. The price announcements for the Volt and its electric rival, the Nissan Leaf, have been highly anticipated as a result. Nissan, the only other major manufacturer expected to bring such a vehicle to market this year, said the Leaf will cost $32,780.
GM and Nissan are relying on a $7,500 federal tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles to offset some of the added cost, and they're hoping that the allure of their novel power source will make up the rest.
"The Volt is a game-changing product," said Tony Posawatz, GM's vehicle line director for the Volt, which is expected to hit showrooms in November 2011.
Although the prices are high, enthusiasts say that electric cars can reach a large, untapped market for vehicles with little or no tailpipe emissions.
The Volt can travel 40 miles on its battery charge and an additional 340 miles on a gasoline-powered generator. The all-electric Leaf has a range of 100 miles.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to put 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015.
But some analysts said they doubt that electric cars can reach a broad audience in the near term. Hybrid cars took about eight years to reach the million-unit sales mark in the United States, according to Energy Department figures.
"I'm not sure the Volt is going to be a volume vehicle," said George Magliano, director of automotive industry forecasting for North America at IHS Global Insight. "The technology still isn't there to make them cheap. At the end of the day, the consumer pays a hefty premium to make a statement."
To move the industry along and bolster U.S. manufacturing, the Obama administration has put its weight, and billions of dollars, behind an effort to develop electric cars and batteries in the United States.
In developing the Volt, GM is seeking to fulfill its promise to Congress during the government bailout to move beyond gas-guzzlers. The company had been planning the Volt long before it neared bankruptcy last year, however, as an attempt to leapfrog Toyota in the quest for fuel-efficient vehicles.
The president has expressed optimism that automakers will be able to lower the price tag of electric-vehicle technology. Earlier this month, he suggested that major reductions in battery costs, one of the primary reasons electric cars are more expensive, are on the horizon.
"Because of advances in the manufacturing, [battery] costs are expected to come down by nearly 70 percent in the next few years," Obama said at the site of a planned battery factory in Michigan. "That's going to make electric and hybrid cars and trucks more affordable for more Americans."
Both the Volt and the Leaf will cost considerably more than rival gasoline-powered compact sedans, such as the Honda Civic or the Ford Focus, each of which costs under $20,000.
Price is only one potential barrier to mass adoption, however.
Consumers must also get accustomed to plugging the cars in at home. It takes hours to recharge the vehicles, and in the absence of a network of public recharging stations, drivers that run out of juice may need a tow truck.
Both Nissan and GM are planning relatively low production levels at first, especially compared with the more than 11 million vehicles expected to be sold nationwide next year.
GM plans to produce 10,000 Volts next year, and 30,000 in 2012, company officials have said. Nissan has indicated that it will sell about 25,000 Leafs in the United States next year.
As the only two major manufacturers preparing to mass-produce cars that can run on batteries, GM and Nissan are engaged in a debate over price and capability.
On purchase price, the Leaf is significantly less, though the leasing prices are very similar. The Volt will also be available by lease with a monthly payment of $350 for 36 months and $2,500 due at signing, the company said.
"The Chevrolet Volt will be the best vehicle in its class . . . because it's in a class by itself," said Joel Ewanick, vice president of U.S. marketing for GM. "No other automaker offers an electrically driven vehicle that can be your everyday driver, to take you wherever, whenever.
Jindal calls on Washington to end drilling ban
Ben Rooney, staff reporter, On Wednesday July 21, 2010, 3:47 pm EDT
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal railed against the federal ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at a rally on Wednesday, saying the "arbitrary moratorium" could cost the region hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Speaking at an "Economic Survival Rally" in Lafayette, Jindal called on the Obama Administration to end the ban on drilling for oil and natural gas in more than 500 feet of water, which was instituted earlier this year in response to a devastating oil spill in the Gulf.
"The folks in Washington just don't seem to understand that you can't just turn a switch on and off with these rigs," Jindal said. "When they leave our coast to produce oil in other parts of the country or the world, the jobs that support them go too."
Jindal said the freeze on deepwater activity could cost Louisiana 20,000 jobs over 12 to 18 months. Lost wages for those jobs could be as high as $5 to $10 million per month, per rig, according to the governor's office.
The comments came days after the Interior Department issued the first permit for drilling in shallow water, less than 500 feet, under a new set of safety and environmental regulations.
On Friday, oil and gas firm Apache Corp. was issued a permit to drill for natural gas off the coast of Texas in about 50 feet of water. The company said it began work on the well on Sunday.
Jindal acknowledged that there are some faint signs that drilling activity in shallow water is resuming.
"I'm very very very, I want to put as many verys as you can before that, cautiously optimistic on the shallow water situation," Jindal told reporters after the rally.
While there was never an official ban on drilling in shallow water, industry officials and politicians like Jindal have argued that shallow water activity has effectively been frozen for months.
"There's not an official moratorium, but there has been a de facto moratorium," Jindal said.
According to Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, the number of permits issued for drilling in shallow water in the Gulf has plunged to 1 in July from a high of 24 in March.
The government first announced a six-month ban on deepwater drilling on May 28, just weeks after the Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded and sank, giving rise to the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
But on June 22, a federal judge overturned the ban. A government attempt to overturn the ruling was denied by a U.S. court of Appeals on July 8. A few days later, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar re-worked the old moratorium, issued a new one on July 12, and changed the label to "suspension."
"On the deep water moratorium we have not seen any movement," Jindal said.
--CNN's Dugald McConnell contributed to this report.
Pensioner, 95, threatened with legal action after putting butter tub in wrong recycling bag
A 95-year-old widow has been threatened with legal action - for putting an empty butter tub in the wrong recycling bag.
The grandmother was warned she faces prosecution after putting the plastic container in a green bag instead of a black one.
Her family said they were horrified at the warning, which they say could have triggered a heart attack.
Warning: The note was left on the pensioner's recycling bin, warning her she could face prosecution
Karen Walters, 42, said her grandmother was too embarrassed to be identified after the incident.
‘It is scary and ridiculous - she is a really law-abiding citizen,’ she said.
‘If she had seen the warning, she would have had a heart attack. But luckily her son spotted it before she saw it.
‘It’s the fact that a 95-year-old was threatened with prosecution.
‘She was horrified when she was told about it.’
The official notice was stuck to the green bin bag at the pensioner's home in West Cross, Swansea.
The woman had washed 15 tins and put them out for collection – but mistakenly added the empty butter tub.
The recycling team refused to collect the green recycling bag after spotting it.
It stuck the notice advising householders why the rubbish was not collected, which includes a line saying that mixing up recycling can lead to prosecution.
A spokesman for Swansea Council said: ‘We would like to apologise to the lady and her family for any distress caused by the notice placed on her recycling bag.
‘We want to reassure the family that we had no intention of prosecuting the lady.’
He said the advice tag was only meant to give people guidance and inform them why recycling bags were not collected.
A spokesman for charity Age Cymru said: ‘We know that older people in general are excellent at recycling in many ways and it would be a shame to think that because of her mistake in sorting her waste, this lady and her family are put off from doing so in the future.’
Indian billionaire to open ’save the planet’ restaurant in UK
May 9th, 2010 - 4:23 pm ICT by ANI -
London, May 09 (ANI): Indian billionaire Radhika Oswal is set to open the world’s first restaurant that offers a menu aimed at saving the planet from climate change.
Otarian Restaurant, which will open in London next month, will have carbon footprint published, in the veg menu, alongside the price and carbon cost of the meat equivalent.
However, many feel it is a gimmick, since Oswal family’s business interests include Burrup Fertlisers, which produces liquid ammonium, a pollutant which is used as a base ingredient for the production of fertilisers and explosives.
“Highlighting the climate change impact of our unsustainable diet, especially meat eating, is laudable,” the Independent quoted Dan Welch, co-editor of Ethical Consumer magazine, as saying.
“But there’s a deep irony in the link to Burrup, one of the world’s major manufacturers of the feedstock of chemical fertilisers,” Welch added.
However, Radhika insists it is a positive effort.
She said: “It doesn’t mean that if you are doing something good that all parts of you have got to be good. I believe the world needs fertilisers to feed the population there is today.” (ANI)
More Global Warming Profiteering by Obama Energy Official
Ex-Gore associate and current Obama energy official Cathy Zoi is exploiting global warming for her own mega-gain. (And see the exclusive PJTV interview with Christopher Horner.)
Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.
Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy.
Among Zoi’s holdings are shares in Serious Materials, Inc., the previously sleepy, now bustling, friend of the Obama White House whose public policy operation is headed by her husband. Between them, Zoi and her husband hold 120,000 shares in Serious Materials, as well as stock options. Reporter John Stossel has already explored what he sees as the “crony capitalism” implied by Zoi being so able to influence the fortunes of a company to which she is so closely associated.
In addition, the disclosure forms reflect that Zoi holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in “founders shares” in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss “smart meter” firm. She also still owns between $15,000 and $50,000 in ordinary shares.
“Smart meters,” put simply, are electric meters that return information about customer power usage to the power company immediately and allow a power company to control the amount of power a customer can consume. These smart meters are a central component of the Obama administration’s plans to reduce electricity consumption as part of the “smart grid.”
In a rare moment of candor, Obama “Energy Czar” Carol Browner said to US News & World Report last year: “We need to make sure that …[e]ventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able [sic] to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won’t operate at its peak, you’ll still be able to cool your house, but that’ll be a savings to the consumer.” (emphasis added)
Clearly, DoE funding to encourage the adoption of “smart meters” would very likely lead to much increased sales by Landis+Gyr — and a potential windfall for Zoi. But surely Zoi doesn’t participate in the relevant “energy efficiency” policy?
In fact, as a condition of her employment with the Obama administration, while Ms. Zoi maintained significant security holdings in Serious Materials and Landis+Gyr, she promised to “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect on the[ir] financial interest” without obtaining a waiver first.
But then, if she doesn’t participate in decisions that could have a “direct and predictable effect” on her Landis+Gyr holdings and she doesn’t participate in decisions that could have a “direct and predictable effect” on her holdings in Serious Materials, it seems worth asking in which decisions she can participate.
Doesn’t Zoi’s involvement in these issues raise serious ethical or legal issues?
Given her position and the breadth of the decisions and duties from which she would have to recuse herself if someone with the rather glaring conflicts as Ms. Zoi has follows through on her promises to avoid participating in decisions that would impact companies in which she oddly has retained a substantial financial interest — what decisions and policies is she participating in? Has she obtained waivers? If so, on what; if not, why not? Re-read her title. Re-review her investments. What, precisely, is she doing on our dime and how come she is permitted to carry such obvious conflicts of interest that either preclude her from working on nearly any matter of substance under her purview, or trigger automatically serious ethical and other considerations? And, what happened to that whole ethical, transparency thing?
(See the exclusive PJTV interview with Christopher Horner.)
Grassroots summit calls for international climate court
Cochabamba conference
closes with call for rich countries to halve greenhouse gas emissions
and set up a court to punish climate crimes
Rich countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%
and set up a court to punish climate crimes, according to an
international conference of grassroots climate groups and social
movements in Bolivia.
President
Evo Morales, who organised the gathering, also announced plans to mount
a referendum of 2 billion people on solutions to the climate crisis
within a year.
Speaking at the close of the four-day World People's Conference on
Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Morales called on
the UN to listen to the voice of the poorest. "The UN has an obligation
to listen to its peoples and social forces. If the UN doesn't want to
lose its authority, they should apply the conclusions of this
conference. And if they don't, I am convinced that the peoples will
apply their wisdom, recommendations and documents," he said.
The
conference - which was attended by 30,000 people, according to the
organisers, including NGOs, scientists, as well as union and government
delegations - resolved to push for proposals that keep fossil fuels in
the ground, protect indigenous rights, and reject plans to pay countries
not to cut down forests through schemes
like Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd). "This
alternative has to succeed because the alternative to Cochabamba is
Copenhagen and Copenhagen came out with a so-called solution to climate change that in no way
meets the severity of the climate crisis," said Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein.
"Here in
Cochabamba you have one of the governments that is really negotiating
for its own survival saying we can't afford to lose and you have all of
civil society lining up behind that government and saying we don't want
to negotiate away any country's survival, we refuse to be part of any
negotiation like that," she said.
The united opposition to the forest conservation scheme Redd - under which countries
earn carbon credits for keeping forests intact - will concern many rich
countries who are depending on it to provide billions of dollars but
must convince indigenous peoples of its value. "Redd is branded as a
friendly forest conservation programme, yet it is backed by big
polluters and climate profiteers. We cannot solve this crisis with out
addressing the root cause: a fossil fuel economy that disregards the
rights of Mother Earth," said Alberto Saldamando, legal counsel for the
International Indian Treaty Council.
Many delegates doubted if
world leaders would pay much attention to the talks. "They may wish to
deny that the peoples of the world have gathered in Cochabamba and
brought forward real solutions to the problems of the world. But the
reality is that the proposals coming out from here won't be ignored by
anyone, they cannot wish it away," said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends
of the Earth International.
The meeting has no direct bearing on
the UN climate talks, but it has been set up as a venue for grassroots
movements to put pressure on governments to act on climate change. "They
cannot simply ignore that something happened here. This is better and
more real than the Copenhagen accord that did not take off, this is the
real forum for tackling the climate problems," Bassey said.
Jim
Shultz, Harvard-educated and Cochabamba-based head of the Democracy
Centre, cautioned that indigenous peoples would have to learn how to
achieve change in rich countries. "Change is not going to happen by
convincing people to unscrew one kind of lightbulb and put in another.
It's not going to happen by getting people to just pick up their litter.
It's going to happen because we as a planet relate in fundamentally
different ways to the way we use energy... If people in the global south
are serious about demanding political change from the global north then
they need to get a lot more astute very quickly, about how political
change in the north actually happens."
"Developed countries
should take very seriously what happened here," said Angelica Navarro,
Bolivian ambassador to the UN in Geneva. "This is real democracy. We are
trying to bring a solution onto the negotiations table, coming from the
people. If they don't listen I think it will be one of the biggest
mistakes. Because this is coming from the grassroots, from people that
are really suffering, that are at the forefront of the battle, it will
be a mistake not to hear to their own people."
Senator Kerry hints at changes in U.S. climate bill
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John
Kerry, leading the drive for compromise climate change legislation, on
Tuesday said his proposal will not contain any sort of motor fuels tax
and could scrap an oil sector "fee" that has been discussed.
In recent weeks, government and industry
sources have said the bill that Kerry and Senators Joseph Lieberman and
Lindsey Graham plan to unveil on Monday would contain a "linked fee" in
the transportation sector.
Such a
fee, they said, would be linked to a mechanism for pricing carbon
dioxide pollution permits in the electric power sector as part of a
global warming bill.
Any new tax or
fee could be a lightning rod for opposition from Republican and
Democratic senators, especially those running for reelection this year
and at a time when domestic gasoline prices already are rising in a
difficult economy.
But speaking to
reporters, Kerry said: "There is not even a linked fee. There's not a
tax, there's nothing similar."
Pressed
for clarification about the fee, Kerry then said, "certainly not the
way it was described previously, nothing like that." The Massachusetts
Democrat refused to elaborate.
On
Friday, a spokesman for Graham, a South Carolina Republican, issued a
statement saying that the senator "does not support a gas tax and the
bill he is working on does not include gas tax." But the aide did not
address whether a fee would be in the bill.
The
bill authored by Kerry, Graham and Lieberman aims to reduce U.S.
smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that
scientists blame for global warming.
Expressing
frustration with political opponents to such an effort, Kerry said,
"They'll say anything, they'll lie and they'll distort."
The question of a new tax or fee being
included in a climate bill has been a controversial issue because many
Republicans have long dismissed climate control legislation as nothing
more than a new tax on consumers, who would face higher energy prices
when more expensive alternative energy like wind and solar power replace
dirty-burning coal and oil.
Don
Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, when
asked about Kerry's upcoming bill, told Reuters, "There could be pieces
in the bill we like, pieces we don't like. We don't like a national
energy tax."
In an attempt to lure
some additional Republican support for a climate bill, Kerry, Graham
and Lieberman have been talking about expanding the nuclear power
industry and offering new incentives for oil drilling off some U.S.
coasts.
(Reporting by Richard
Cowan, editing by Anthony Boadl
US climate report publicized in runup to Senate bill
20 Apr 2010 00:35:50 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - An environmental coalition publicized a new U.S. draft report on climate change on Monday, one week before the expected unveiling of a compromise U.S. Senate bill that aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The Project on Climate Science, a coalition of environmental groups, publicized the report in advance of Earth Day on April 22, a spokeswoman said. The report was released with little fanfare on April 7 and posted on the Federal Register on April 8.
The report, a draft of the Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report that will be sent to the United Nations, says bluntly: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced ... Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases."
Without action to stop them, climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions will rise over 8,000 megatonnes by mid-century, the draft said. By adopting measures detailed in a bill passed last year by the U.S. House of Representatives, these emissions will drop beneath 2,000 megatonnes. They're now about 6,500 megatonnes. The United Nations measures greenhouse gas emissions in megatonnes, or million metric tons.
The effects of climate change are already evident, the draft said: warming air and oceans, vanishing mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost, signs of instability in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and rising sea levels.
The State Department draft, now open for public comment, precedes the expected April 26 unveiling of Senate legislation by Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and Independent Joe Lieberman.
Supporters of the bill hope this will pave the way for the full Senate to debate and pass a measure in June or July.
The State Department report will ultimately go to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; previous U.S. reports to this body were in 1994, 1997, 2002 and 2007.
The draft report is available online at http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/rpts/car5/index.htm.
(Editing by Jackie Frank)
The video vault has now provided us another glimpse into the fever swamp occupied by President Obama’s moonbat science czar John Holdren. Holdren of course is the man brought in to put a scientific imprimatur on the Left’s latest excuse for much of its economic agenda, wrapped as it is in the cloak of averting environmental crisis.
First, the merely good news arising from Holdren’s odious openness: it floated to the surface just in time for my new book coming out Monday (but available for pre-order now, before today’s ’s Ways and Means Committee “green jobs” hearing causes a run on them! Really.). In these pages Holdren, Carol Browner and a few others receive close inspection, particularly in Chapter 3 “Van Jones Was No Accident: Obama’s Radicals” (also relevant to this discussion is Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’”).
More on all of that, including some pretty startling internal documents, in a few days.
Now for the even better news. As detailed in “Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America“, Holdren is a longtime global-cooling-then-warming alarmist who’s also on record advocating the constitutionality of sterilizing the public through the drinking water supply to address the “population crisis” when it reaches the point that his kind believe is just too much to bear.
As is also detailed, he and his ilk like to see (and shriek) crisis pretty much everywhere they look, and transparently as an excuse for their real obsession with massive government usurpations of individual liberties — or, ahem, Power Grabs. So to them that point where statist seizures are urgently required is always right…about…nnnow.
Which brings us to what is most important about this week’s news, Holdren’s implicit yet inescapable admission of the Big Lie: his thesis captured on tape is that energy use here in the good ol’ been-top-dog-too-long USA must be dramatically curbed, because “renewable” energy will not (gasp!) replace those conventional energy sources, and some serious sacrifice is therefore in order:
“I think ultimately that the rate of growth of material consumption is going to have to come down, and there’s going to have to be a degree of redistribution of how much we consume, in terms of energy and material resources, in order to leave room for people who are poor to become more prosperous.”
Got it. Spread the energy around. Even though they push an agenda on the promise that windmills, solar panels and as yet undiscovered but breakthrough pixie dust will carry the day, they know full well that there is not and will not be enough energy in the hydrocarbon-constrained world they are designing.
Now, energy poverty is a terrible, dirty, anti-environmental thing. But imposing it is a long-held fantasy of the Left. When you control power, you control an awful lot. So, as a fella Holdren knows is fond of saying, let me be perfectly clear: The “green energy” agenda, the latest label slapped on the global warming agenda, is precisely what we have long argued it is. It is energy rationing.
This means artificial, state-created energy scarcity. And Holdren’s comments admit it.
He acknowledges one nasty little side effect of his control freak, redistributionist philosophy when put into practice, which is that the old-fashioned energy sources onto which they seek to force you cannot and will not allow us to maintain our prosperity.
So much for that business about us all becoming millionaires from selling windmills to each other. Not so surprised are those among you who recall how the utopians’ little experiment in the last century showed that state control of resources produces so much prosperity you need to build a wall to contain it.
What Holdren admits is possibly a major reason that people have for a century and a half abandoned what Obama rather cluelessly calls the “new technology” — wind and solar energy — in favor of hydrocarbons or “fossil fuels” as soon as they can. Which ability, as my new book makes clear, Team Obama is working to ensure quickly comes to an end.
But at least we now agree on this. And since no free society would do to itself what the Holdrens (and Obamas) of the world demand, their agenda does indeed require the Power Grab — in the name of staving off “crisis!” — because the sort of steely eyed discipline required to impose the rationing, or re-introduction of poverty to the masses in the name of progress, can only come from the state.
Sort of all makes sense now, in a twisted way. So let us praise this candor for also coming just in time for the Senate’s stab at re-branding cap-and-trade legislation, expected to be unveiled next week if, fortunately, led by the Dream Team of John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. I never thought I would say this, but thank you, John Holdren.
Climate bill making its way
through Senate as Universal Voter Registration kept hidden
Barely coming up for a breath from the healthcare bill battle, some in
Senate have shifted their focus to cap and trade. Senators irresponsibly
moving the bill from the back burner in order to sponsor it, in spite
of global warming cooked books, include Massachusetts Democrat John
Kerry, Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and
Republican-in-name-only Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. According to http://www.ft.com, senior
fellow Daniel J Weiss of the liberal think-tank Center for American
Progress Action Fund said, “They know that to pass a comprehensive bill
they will need to ease concerns of some special interests and
mid-western senators whose states have manufacturing-oriented
economies.” Translation: we will need to come up with some attractive
backroom deals to get this one passed, too.
The article also states that Utilities and manufacturing groups will be
faced with “caps,” and “The federal government would sell separate
pollution permits to each sector, using a ‘hard price collar,’ to limit
greenhouse gas allowances between $10 and $30 per ton, and committing to
flood the market with credits if the price ceiling is exceeded.” If the
bill passes, its massive tax would begin in 2012 for utilities and 2016
for manufacturers.
Even if this particular mandate isn’t directly applied to individuals,
it will be passed on indirectly, because utilities and manufacturers
will pass on that extra cost to customers. So individuals, businesses
and even places of worship will be hit with the increased costs of
manufactured items, electricity usage and heating and cooling.
One way in which consumers
will be directly affected in the
near future is that if the bill should pass, there will be a “petrol
tax” which will be forced on to consumers. Whether that will be an
obnoxiously higher gas tax with a new name or just a blatant tax
increase under the old worn out name was unclear. Of course, there’s
always the option of a new tax and an old tax.
Democrats are pushing for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions by 2020. However, In March of 2009,
http://www.wsj.com
reported that the congressional budget office, “estimates that the price
hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in
the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every
year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment
and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut
between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income.
The rich would pay 1.7.”
With national unemployment being about 10 percent (as of this writing),
Republicans have expressed a deep concern over the impact of a bill like
this on the present economy if it were to pass. Interestingly, a Fox
News poll reported on Tuesday that “79 percent of voters think it’s
possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of
Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80
percent).” The article also stated that 62 percent of voters don’t
believe that the White House has a plan for fixing the economy.
One Senator who has been very outspoken about cap and trade is Senator
James Inhofe --
Especially once fraudulent reports about global warming were made public
(back in November) by a blogger in Britain who apparently hacked into
some official government records about climate change. The information
revealed that reports on global warming had been falsified to make it
appear as though the Earth was warming, when in fact, it has been
cooling. Senator James Inhofe has challenged Senator Barbara Boxer to
hold hearings concerning the climategate conspiracy and its cooked
books.
Inhofe was interviewed by WND Radio America about cap and trade, and he
mentioned that, “Lindsey Graham and John Kerry are trying to make this
like it’s some kind of energy bill, but it’s not.” He reminded listeners
that the whole thing really started back in 1988, with the United
Nations. Inhofe also stated that Graham and Kerry, “think if they can
just take the same cap and trade and call it something else, that
they’ll fool people…if you go back to 2003, there was the
McCain-Lieberman bill. In 2008, they did the same.” More recently, there
was Boxer-Kerry.
Inhofe also pointed out that the cap and trade bill will, “cost
somewhere between 300 and 400 billion dollars per year…Even Lisa
Jackson, the Obama director of the EPA, said that if we are to pass
these bills here that it wouldn’t reduce green house gases because it
would only be in the United States.” But that was the point of the
Copenhagen agreement. To try to have an “international” cap and trade
program -- even if it would have only applied to “rich” countries such
as the US and the UK. No doubt that it will return at some later date.
WND Radio America Interviewer Greg Crumbus asked Senator Inhofe, “It’s
been said that despite the CBO projections on healthcare, that cap and
trade is really the means by which this administration plans to pay for
the expanded government role in healthcare. Do you see it that way, and
how much more fierce will this fight get as a result of that?
Inhofe pointed out that one of the reasons why Obama wants cap and trade
to be law is because “that’s a huge, huge source of money that they can
say is going to the environment, but it’s going to his social
reengineering programs. I don’t think they’ll get by with it.”
Inhofe has given speeches about global warming for the last 10 years,
and his speeches can be read at his website:
www.Inhofe.senate.gov
“Over population” has been blamed for climate change, and this was
brought up by communist China’s vice minister of National Population and
Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC), Zhao Baige in Copenhagen
meeting last year. China – same place where they have that one child per
family mandate and forced abortions if anyone dares to have more.
Another bad piece of proposed legislation that the liberals in Congress
would like to force through is Universal Voter Registration.
The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund has described Universal Voter
Registration as follows: “It means all of the state laws on elections
will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states:
‘take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on
every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of
property owners, take everyone on every list of drivers license holders
and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be…’”
A
www.wnd.com article from March 1st,
2010 which is entitled “Stealing the next election: from amnesty to
universal registration, Obama’s strategy for maintaining power, “says
Universal Voter Registration is, “being secretly prepared by at least
two prominent members of Congress. This is essentially a scheme to
legalize voter fraud by shifting responsibility for registering to vote
from the citizen to the government, meaning people are automatically
registered to vote, based on DMV records, income-tax returns, welfare
rolls, unemployment lists and other government databases.”
The article also states that, “Since government databases contain names
of non-citizens, not to mention mentally incompetent individuals and
felons – factors that would ordinarily disqualify a person from voting
in most states – universal registration would open the floodgates to
fraud. And since many people own property in more than one location and
pay taxes to numerous government entities, they would be afforded the
opportunity to vote in multiple locations.”
The topic of Universal Voter Registration has also been addressed in the
March issue of Whistleblower magazine
But getting back to cap and trade, Besides the increased financial
strain that a cap and trade legislation would put on families, churches,
ministries, businesses, and the overall economy, another concern and
argument against it that has come up among various ones in Congress is
the potential for emissions credit program fraud and abuse. In
fact, there has already been a court case involving that kind of fraud
and abuse. Anne Masters Sholtz, a former California Institute of
Technology economist, helped create a small cap and trade program in
California and apparently used fraudulent means to gain more than $12
million from a New York Investment firm by “selling fake emission
credits.” So Sholtz’s case lends some credibility to fraud and
abuse concerns. And the fact that there are global warming documents
that have been found to be fraudulent is not helping the liberals who
want the cap and tax bill to pass – especially when there is scientific
evidence that is actually showing that the earth is cooling and not
warming.
The Los Angeles Times
DWP rates may rise between 8% and 28% to pay for mayor's green initiatives
The hike would pay for more aggressive conservation programs and a solar plan designed to create 16,000 jobs as well as cover the fluctuating price of coal and natural gas.
By David Zahniser and Phil Willon
March 15, 2010 | 11:21 p.m.
Households that get their power from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power could see their electric bills go up between 8.8% and 28.4%, depending on where they live and how much energy they use, under a plan unveiled Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Appearing with labor and environmental leaders, Villaraigosa said the proposed increases would ensure that the DWP meets his goal of securing 20% of its energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by Dec. 31.
The increased revenue would help pay for new environmental initiatives, including more aggressive conservation programs and a solar initiative designed to create 16,000 jobs.
But it also would address the DWP's failure to collect enough money to cover the cost of existing renewable energy initiatives and the fluctuating price of coal and natural gas, utility officials said.
"Nobody's denying that this is a big increase -- at least I'm not," said DWP Acting General Manager S. David Freeman. "Because we've put it off so . . . long, [ratepayers] have saved money in the last three years."
The mayor has been talking for weeks about the need for the DWP to charge more. Monday was the first day his team showed its estimate of the effects on consumers of the increase, which is scheduled to be phased in over a full year starting next month.
Under the plan, households that use the smallest amount of electricity -- technically known as Tier 1 customers -- would see an average increase of 8.8%. Those customers make up 58% of the DWP's residential ratepayers.
Tier 2 customers, who use more power and make up 36% of the utility's residential customers, would see an average increase of 16.8% to 18.9%. Tier 3 customers, who use the most power and make up the remaining 6%, would face hikes in their electric bills of 24.4% to 28.4%, according to documents provided by the mayor's office.
In the hotter San Fernando Valley, where ratepayers receive a slight break on their bills, the average Tier 1 customer would see monthly electric bills jump from $38.76 to $42.17 by April 2011. A Tier 2 customer in the Valley would see the monthly bill increase from $92.19 to $107.60, according to the proposal.
Businesses would see increases in the average bill ranging from 20% to 26%. Any increase would become less steep, however, once ratepayers adopt conservation measures or find ways to install solar panels and sell the excess power to the DWP, mayoral aides said.
The DWP board, whose members are appointed by the mayor, must approve the plan for the increases to go into effect; the proposal goes before the board Thursday. The City Council will review the plan in upcoming weeks and can affirm it or send it back for more work.
The mayor also warned that more increases would be needed to reach his next goal: securing 40% of the DWP's power from renewable sources by 2020.
"We could have raised our fees even more to address the long-term goal of taking us to 40% renewables by 2020 and coal-free," he said. "We knew we had to do this incrementally."
Either way, the proposal drew complaints from a Westside neighborhood activist, who described the increase as a hidden tax.
Mike Eveloff, president of the Tract 7260 Homeowners Assn., criticized the mayor for seeking more money at the same time the DWP is providing at least $220 million annually to balance the city's budget. "As long as the DWP is showing a surplus, then they have no rational reason for seeking a rate increase," he said.
Once all the increases are in place, the DWP will receive an additional $648 million per year.
Villaraigosa said the money would help pay for the hiring of "green doctors" to evaluate the energy efficiency of homes and stepped-up efforts to help residents obtain energy-efficient lightbulbs and refrigerators.
One union leader said residents would support the increases once they knew how the money would be spent.
"When they see that there is a clear-cut plan to do what we need to do in this city -- which is to be more green, to create jobs -- then I think that most people . . . are willing to go along with that," said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor.
Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper's estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.
Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion.
"Retraction is a regular part of the publication process," he said. "Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances."
Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007.
In a statement the authors of the paper said: "Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.
"One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes."
In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for "bringing these issues to our attention".
About New York
Bloomberg the Bigfoot (in Carbon)
Published: December 12, 2009
The average New Yorker uses one-half to one-third the electricity of other Americans. Our carbon footprints are just 29 percent of people who live outside the five boroughs, and City Hall has practical plans to reduce even that amount by nearly a third over the next two decades. No wonder that this month, in a talk at the New York Academy of Science, Rohit Aggarwalat, the mayor’s chief adviser on sustainability, said the city was “the most environmentally efficient society in the United States.”
So it makes perfect sense that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is going to Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday to address the international conference on climate change: his administration is working to head off problems that will not emerge until long after he is gone.
A strong case can be made that when it comes to energy and climate issues, Mr. Bloomberg is the most visionary public official in the country.
And a strong argument can also be made that on a personal level, he ranks among the worst individual polluters ever to hold public office.
Mr. Bloomberg owns a helicopter and two jets, both Falcon 900s. He flies everywhere on private jets, by far the least efficient form of transportation on or above the earth. He takes his jet to Bermuda many weekends. He has flown around the globe on it. He uses it to go to Washington. He is planning to get to Copenhagen for the climate conference by private jet, too.
The carbon math works out like this: by taking his Falcon 900 to Denmark, Mr. Bloomberg will be responsible for the release of 37 times the carbon dioxide than if he and his entourage flew on a scheduled commercial flight. The calculations were done at my request by Dimitri Simos, the developer of software used by the airline industry to assess aircraft emission and performance. Mr. Simos said that a Falcon 900 carrying eight people from Newark to Copenhagen would produce 21.6 tons of carbon dioxide. By adding eight people to the scheduled Scandinavian Airlines flight, the aircraft, usually an Airbus A330-300, would produce an additional 0.58 tons of carbon dioxide.
Mr. Bloomberg’s routine trips to Bermuda are even more carbon costly: the private jet produces 130 times more emissions than going commercial. On those jaunts, Mr. Simos said, the Falcon produces 4.3 tons of carbon dioxide; putting another two people on an American Airlines Boeing 757-200 that flies to Bermuda would produce only 66 more pounds.
This is not Bloombergian hypocrisy; it is a paradox, shared by most of humankind. I’ve lived within a block or two of a subway station since birth, yet owned a car since I got a driver’s license. There is a long list of public figures — from movie stars to politicians to journalists — who preach conservation for everyone else, while living in mega-homes and flying in Gulfstreams. It is probably not a good idea for the rest of us to look down our noses at people who cannot resist such temptations until we can afford them ourselves.
In the case of Mr. Bloomberg, his addiction to private jets is striking because in so many other parts of his life, he appears fastidious about shared resources. The lighting and electronic gear in his family foundation building use 20 percent less energy than typical offices; the foundation recycles rainwater to irrigate a green roof; even most of the construction and demolition debris were recycled.
Moreover, you can watch generations of elected officials — at all levels — come and go without having the nerve, wisdom or generosity to grapple with tomorrow’s tough problems. You see just the opposite with Mr. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, a set of strategies to make the city habitable and more efficient in 2030, complete with goals that must be met each year.
Those who have flown in private jets say they have much to recommend them — none of this arriving at the airport two hours ahead of time and taking off your shoes to get to the boarding gate. You drive up to the hangar, get on, and the flight attendant brings a glass of wine and a plate of sushi. The business aviation industry says that its jets are getting more efficient and that they account for a tiny fraction of human-made carbon emissions. They are very expensive to operate, but even when Mr. Bloomberg travels on official business, he always picks up expenses for himself, his staff and the police security detail.
As it happens, Mr. Bloomberg is also a great public evangelist for high nutritional standards, but shakes salt on his pizza and loves a Big Mac.
There is a lesson here for everyone, whether they are in Copenhagen or New York or elsewhere. Human beings will produce as many tons of carbon emissions as they can afford. And we’ll have the fries with that.
Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That's why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science
Research and rationalism: ice core drilling on the summit of Quelccaya ice cap, Peru. Photograph: Peter Essick/Getty
I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can't possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.
The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people's denial. Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.
It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.
Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren't going to follow or understand them. Jones's statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.
In this case you could argue that technically he has done nothing wrong. But a fat lot of good that will do. Think of the MPs' expenses scandal: complaints about stolen data, denials and huffy responses achieved nothing at all. Most of the MPs could demonstrate that technically they were innocent: their expenses had been approved by the Commons office. It didn't change public perceptions one jot. The only responses that have helped to restore public trust in Parliament are humility, openness and promises of reform.
When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.
I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit. Otherwise, like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, he will linger on until his remaining credibility vanishes, inflicting continuing damage to climate science.
Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.
The crisis has been exacerbated by the university's handling of it, which has been a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond. RealClimate reports that "We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day." In other words, the university knew what was coming three days before the story broke. As far as I can tell, it sat like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting for disaster to strike.
When the emails hit the news on Friday morning, the university appeared completely unprepared. There was no statement, no position, no one to interview. Reporters kept being fobbed off while CRU's opponents landed blow upon blow on it. When a journalist I know finally managed to track down Phil Jones, he snapped "no comment" and put down the phone. This response is generally taken by the media to mean "guilty as charged". When I got hold of him on Saturday, his answer was to send me a pdf called "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999". Had I a couple of hours to spare I might have been able to work out what the heck this had to do with the current crisis, but he offered no explanation.
By then he should have been touring the TV studios for the past 36 hours, confronting his critics, making his case and apologising for his mistakes. Instead, he had disappeared off the face of the Earth. Now, far too late, he has given an interview to the Press Association, which has done nothing to change the story.
The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline. They appear to have no idea what they're up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be scumbags, but their media strategy is exemplary.
The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore's brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow. Hoggan and Littlemore have shown how fossil fuel industries have employed "experts" to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Heat and in Ross Gelbspan's book The Heat Is On) are 100 times graver than anything contained in these emails.
But the deniers' campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.
James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books including Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His website is www.jamesdelingpole.com
Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax
Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.
The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.
Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.
Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.
Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.
For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.
Where they lead, the rest of the world’s politicians will eventually be forced to follow.
November 3, 2009
Gore’s Dual Role in Spotlight: Advocate and Investor
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.
Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.
Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.
“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”
In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades.
“I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all of the time I was in public service,” Mr. Gore wrote. “As a private citizen, I have continued to advocate the same policies. Even though the vast majority of my business career has been in areas that do not involve renewable energy or global warming pollution reductions, I absolutely believe in investing in ways that are consistent with my values and beliefs. I encourage others to invest in the same way.”
Mr. Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of dollars he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures, like carbon trading markets, solar cells and waterless urinals.
He has also given away millions more to finance the nonprofit he founded, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and to another group, the Climate Project, which trains people to present the slide show that was the basis of his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Royalties from his new book on climate change, “Our Choice,” printed on 100 percent recycled paper, will go to the alliance, an aide said.
Other public figures, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have vocally supported government financing of energy-saving technologies, have investments in alternative energy ventures. Some scientists and policy advocates also promote energy policies that personally enrich them.
As a private citizen, Mr. Gore does not have to disclose his income or assets, as he did in his years in Congress and the White House. When he left government in early 2001, he listed assets of less than $2 million, including homes in suburban Washington and in Tennessee.
Since then, his net worth has skyrocketed, helped by timely investments in Apple and Google, profits from books and his movie, and scores of speeches for which he can be paid more than $100,000, although he often speaks at no charge.
He is a founder of Generation Investment Management, based in London and run by David Blood, a former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (the firm was quickly dubbed Blood and Gore). Mr. Gore earns a partner’s salary at Kleiner Perkins. He has substantial personal finances invested at both firms, officials of the companies said.
He also serves as an adviser to high-profile technology companies including Apple and Google, relationships that have paid him handsome dividends over the last eight years.
Mr. Gore’s spokeswoman would not give a figure for his current net worth, but the scale of his wealth is evident in a single investment of $35 million in Capricorn Investment Group, a private equity fund started by his friend Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay.
Ion Yadigaroglu, a co-founder of Capricorn, said that Mr. Gore does not sit on the fund’s investment committee, but obviously agrees with the partners’ strategy of putting long-term money into promising ventures in energy, technology and health care around the globe.
“Aspirationally,” said Mr. Yadigaroglu, who holds a doctorate from Stanford in astrophysics, “we’re trying to make more money than others doing the same thing and do it in a way that is superior in ethics and impacts.”
Mr. Gore has said he invested in partnerships and funds that try to identify and support companies that are advancing cutting-edge green technologies and are paving the way toward a low-carbon economy.
He has a stake in the world’s pre-eminent carbon credit trading market and in an array of companies in bio-fuels, sustainable fish farming, electric vehicles and solar power.
Capricorn holds a major stake in Falcon Waterfree Technologies, the world’s leading maker of waterless urinals. Generation has holdings in Ausra, a solar energy company based in California, and Camco, a British firm that develops carbon dioxide emissions reduction projects. Kleiner Perkins has a green ventures fund with nearly $1 billion invested in renewable energy and efficiency concerns.
Mr. Gore also has substantial interests in technology, media and biotechnology ventures that have no direct tie to his environmental advocacy, an aide said.
Mr. Gore is not a lobbyist, and he has never asked Congress or the administration for an earmark or policy decision that would directly benefit one of his investments. But he has been a tireless advocate for policies that would move the country away from the use of coal and oil, and he has begun a $300 million campaign to end the use of fossil fuels in electricity production in 10 years.
But Marc Morano, a climate change skeptic who until recently was a top aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that what he saw as Mr. Gore’s alarmism and occasional exaggerations distorted the debate and also served his personal financial interests.
Mr. Gore has testified numerous times in support of legislation to address climate change and to revamp the nation’s energy policies.
He appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April to support an energy and climate change bill that was intended to reduce global warming emissions through a cap-and-trade program for major polluting industries.
Mr. Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate advocacy, is generally received on Capitol Hill as something of an oracle, at least by Democrats.
But at the hearing in April, he was challenged by Ms. Blackburn, who echoed some of the criticism of Mr. Gore that has swirled in conservative blogs and radio talk shows. She noted that Mr. Gore is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in firms that could benefit from any legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions.
“I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it,” Mr. Gore said, adding that he had put “every penny” he has made from his investments into the Alliance for Climate Protection.
“And, Congresswoman,” he added, “if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”
Americans No Longer Swallowing Global Warming Dogma
Friday , October 23, 2009
By Bret Baier
Not Buying It?
Global warming is becoming a much tougher sell. A new Pew Research poll says the percentage of people surveyed, who believe climate change is a very serious problem, has dropped from 44 percent last year to 35 percent.
Only 57 percent believe there is solid evidence of rising temperatures. That's down 14 percent. There is a similar drop in those who say global warming is man-made. Just 36 percent believe it, down from 47 percent.
One expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Daniel Weiss, tells the Wall Street Journal the findings were caused by: "Right-wing media personalities... distorting science while the mainstream media remains trapped in its he-said, she-said narrative."
Oklahoma Republican Senator and global warming skeptic James Inhofe says the poll reflects concerns over proposed climate change legislation: "The more Americans learn about cap-and-trade — the more they oppose cap-and-trade."
Save the Planet
A new book states that if you want to save the planet, it's time to swap that pet cat or dog for a rabbit or a chicken.
New Zealand professors Robert and Brenda Vale write in their new book, "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," that keeping a medium-sized dog has the same ecological impact as driving a Toyota Land Cruiser more than 6,000 miles/year. They say a cat causes the same environmental impact as driving a Volkswagen.
The couple assessed the carbon footprint created by popular pets, taking into account pet food ingredients and living space.
The pair does not actually advocate eating domestic animals but Brenda Vale says: "If we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things in our environment."
Crunching the Numbers
For those of you keeping track at home, President Obama's sit-down with NBC Wednesday night means he has now given 12 interviews to that network since taking office.
The president has been on CBS News 11 times over the same period and nine times on ABC. He has also given seven interviews to CNN. But despite multiple requests, President Obama has been on Fox News just twice since January. "Special Report" has resubmitted its standing request and we have yet to hear back.
The president has given a total of 41 interviews to major networks over the first nine months of his presidency. Fox News research estimates his predecessor, George W. Bush, gave six television interviews over the same period.
—Fox News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.
Berlin Brothel Offers Discounts to Bike-Riding Customers
Friday , October 16, 2009
BERLIN —
Part of Berlin's red-light scene is going green.
One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.
"It's very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment," said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d'Envie, or House of Desire.
Local residents in Prenzlauer Berg — a part of former East Berlin now home to scores of trendy boutiques, restaurants and clubs — had staunchly supported the Green party in recent elections and have welcomed the bordello's offer to emphasize the environment.
The bordellos in the capital of Germany, where prostitution is legal, have seen business suffer with the global financial crisis. Patrons have become more frugal, and there are fewer potential customers coming to the city for business trips and conferences.
But Maison d'Envie has seen its business begin to return since it began offering the $7.50 discount in July, Goetz said.
To qualify, customers must show the receptionist either a bicycle padlock key or proof they used public transit to get to the neighborhood.
Those who arrive on foot, however, are out of luck.
"We haven't found a way for people to prove they have walked here," Goetz explained.
Other brothels have tried different incentives to cope with the economic downturn. One Berlin bordello offered a flat-rate for an unlimited time before officials' concerns over prostitutes' rights and cleanliness in the club forced them to rescind the offer.
The 450,000 prostitutes working in Germany, some 10,000 of whom are in Berlin, have the same legal rights and social benefits as people in other professions.
Texas Man in Custody on Federal Arson Charges With Possible Eco-Terrorism Link
Friday, October 02, 2009 A Texas man was arrested this week on federal charges stemming from an arson at a construction site that may have ties to eco-terrorism, according to a criminal complaint.
Former California resident Stephen James Murphy was taken into custody at his home in Arlington, Texas, Wednesday, said FBI Los Angeles director Keith Bolcar in a release about the arrest.
Murphy was named in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles charging him with the 2006 attempted arson of unfinished townhouses in Pasadena, Calif., according to Bolcar.
On Sept. 19, 2006, the Pasadena Fire Department was called to the townhouse construction site after a "crude incendiary device" made out of cigarettes was discovered there, according to the complaint. The device failed to go off.
Construction workers couldn't start one of the tractors and noticed a message written in marker on the side that read, "ANOTHER TRACTOR DECOMMISSIONED BY THE E.L.F." — a reference to the Earth Liberation Front, an environmental extremist group.
The investigation later revealed that the ignition system of the tractor had been tampered with, according to the complaint.
Murphy was recently linked to DNA evidence collected at the scene from the cigarettes, the FBI said
Council hires hoodie spies to rummage through bins and see what is being thrown away
Worried residents thought their rubbish was being stolen when council 'spies' dressed in hoodies started rifling through their bins.
Concerned neighbours saw mysterious men emptying their bins into black sacks and loading them into an unmarked white van.
When homeowners questioned the official binmen an hour later they learned their council was conducting a survey of what was being thrown away.
Sneaky: A council snooper takes rubbish from a wheelie bin in this photograph taken by a resident. Homeowners thought their rubbish was being stolen
The 'spies' were part of a week-long waste analysis study by the Northamptonshire Waste Partnership, a collaboration of eight local authorities working to reduce rubbish going to landfill. An external contractor was told to go through the bins of residents.
One thousand houses were targeted as part of the survey, including 780 in Northamptonshire.
But none of the inhabitants of Cedar Close, Irchester, near Wellingborough, Northants, had received any notice from their council about what was going on.
Resident Gillian Barnett, 61, said the snoopers made her feel 'very uncomfortable'.
She said: 'Three young men parked outside my house and just started going through my bins - I thought they were pinching my rubbish. It was very suspicious.
'We haven't had a leaftlet or a letter, all my neighbours were going round asking each other what was happening.
'If they'd had "County Council" marked on their van it would have been less concerning but as it was nobody knew what was going on.
'It made me worry about what I had put in the bin - I didn't know I was going to be fined or what.
'I heard this was happening in nearby streets like Pine Close too.'
Another resident, who asked to remain anonymous, slammed the council for using 'Big Brother' tactics.
Worried: Residents of this street in Irchester, Northamptonshire, had received no notice about the council's plans to sift through their rubbish
She said: 'I'm cross they're doing this without our knowledge or permission and I'm concerned about their motives.
'The people doing this didn't even look official, they were just teenage-looking lads in hoodies.
'It's such an underhand "Big Brother" thing to do, spying on local people like this. It's alarming.
'It puts your back up and makes you feel vulnerable; we didn't know if we'd get a fine or if they were just looking at what was being thrown away.'
Another resident who asked to be anonymous said she was 'furious' about the council rifling through her rubbish.
'This sneaky behaviour on the part of the council is underhand and alarming.
'Taxpayers are sick and tired of being spied on by their councils, it is an infringement of both their dignity and personal space'
She said: 'How is this information going to be used? You just don't know. We weren't told anything.
'I'm still annoyed. It feels like an invasion of our privacy.'
Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough Borough Councils have authorised waste experts Resource Futures to go through the bins of people living in their boroughs as part of this survey.
This was to provide Project Reduce - a £138million government-funded enterprise headed by Northamptonshire County Council and Milton Keynes Council - with information about what was being sent to landfills.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive at the TaxPayers' Alliance, condemned Northampton County Council for what he described as an 'aggressive' campaign.
He said: 'This sneaky behaviour on the part of the council is underhand and alarming.
'Taxpayers are sick and tired of being spied on by their councils, it is an infringement of both their dignity and personal space.
'People are doing all they can to recycle, if they are throwing something away it's because they have to.
'This approach is unnecessarily aggressive and a waste of taxpayers' money and precious resources.'
But a Northampton County Council spokeswoman insisted the survey was purely for informative purposes.
She said: 'This is not a punitive measure and all data gathered will be kept strictly confidential.
'We just want to gather more information about what people are throwing away so we can target our resources to better meet their needs.'
A Wellingborough Borough Council spokesman added that the study was to help improve waste disposal efficiency.
He said: 'The council has been assisting with a study to provide information about the composition of waste we currently send to landfill.
'The information will be used to help find a more efficient way of disposing of household waste that cannot be recycled.'
Corby Council lead member for the environment Cllr Peter McEwan said: 'Landfill charges are currently in excess of £60 per tonne and rising.
'It is vital that we continue to search for cleaner, greener ways to treat and dispose of our rubbish.'
A Kettering Council spokesman said the work was completed in their borough last week, adding that the study was being carried out alongside household recycling and composting initiatives.
Bob Neill, Shadow Local Government Minister, said: 'There is growing public concern about town halls' powers to snoop on people's homes.
'Laws passed by Labour Ministers have created powers of entry for bin inspectors to enter homes and gardens. These must be scrapped.'
Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper Soft Toilet Paper's Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?
By David A. Fahrenthold Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 24, 2009
ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. -- There is a battle for America's behinds.
It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).
It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess.
The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.
It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it.
This summer, two of the best-known combatants in this fight signed a surprising truce, with a big tissue maker promising to do better. But the larger battle goes on -- the ultimate test of how green Americans will be when nobody's watching.
"At what price softness?" said Tim Spring, chief executive of Marcal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper. "Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big [marketing] machine has told me that softness is important?"
He added: "You're not giving up the world here."
Toilet paper is far from being the biggest threat to the world's forests: together with facial tissue, it accounts for 5 percent of the U.S. forest-products industry, according to industry figures. Paper and cardboard packaging makes up 26 percent of the industry, although more than half is made from recycled products. Newspapers account for 3 percent.
But environmentalists say 5 percent is still too much.
Felling these trees removes a valuable scrubber of carbon dioxide, they say. If the trees come from "farms" in places such as Brazil, Indonesia or the southeastern United States, natural forests are being displaced. If they come from Canada's forested north -- a major source of imported wood pulp -- ecosystems valuable to bears, caribou and migratory birds are being damaged.
And, activists say, there's just the foolish idea of the thing: old trees cut down for the briefest and most undignified of ends.
"It's like the Hummer product for the paper industry," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We don't need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds."
The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper -- in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts -- are shorter. The web often is rougher.
So, when toilet paper is made for the "away from home" market, the no-choice bathrooms in restaurants, offices and schools, manufacturers use recycled fiber about 75 percent of the time.
But for the "at home" market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally "virgin" fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc.
Big tissue makers say they've tried to make their products as green as possible, including by buying more wood pulp from forest operations certified as sustainable.
But despite environmentalists' concerns, they say customers are unwavering in their desire for the softest paper possible.
"That's a segment [of consumers] that is quite demanding of products that are soft," said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia-Pacific. Sales figures seem to make that clear: Quilted Northern Ultra Plush, the three-ply stuff, sold 24 million packages in the past year, bringing in more than $144 million, according to the market research firm Information Resources Inc.
Last month, Greenpeace announced an agreement that it said would change this industry from the inside.
The environmental group had spent 4 1/2 years attacking Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle toilet paper, for getting wood from old-growth forests in Canada. But the group said it is calling off the "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.
By 2011, the company said, 40 percent of the fiber in all its tissue products will come from recycled paper or sustainable forests.
"We could have campaigned forever," said Lindsey Allen, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace. But this was enough, she said, because Kimberly-Clark's changes could alter the entire wood-pulp supply chain: "They have a policy that . . . will shift the entire way that tissue companies work."
Still, some environmental activists said that Greenpeace should have pushed for more.
"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests. He said real change will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how that would be okay."
That part could be difficult, because -- in the U.S. market, at least -- soft is to toilet paper what fat is to bacon, the essence of the appeal.
Earlier this year, Consumer Reports tested toilet paper brands and found that recycled-tissue brands such as Seventh Generation and Marcal's Small Steps weren't unpleasant. But they gave their highest rating to the three-ply Quilted Northern.
"We do believe that you're going to feel a difference," said Bob Markovich, an editor at Consumer Reports.
Marcal, the maker of recycled toilet paper here in New Jersey, is trying to change that with a two-pronged sales pitch. The first is that soft is overrated.
"Strength of toilet paper is more important, for obvious reasons," said Spring, the chief executive, guiding a golf cart among the machinery that whizzes up vast stacks of old paper, whips it into a slurry, and dries it into rolls of toilet paper big enough for King Kong. He said his final product is as strong as any of the big-name brands. "If the paper breaks during your use of toilet paper, obviously, that's very, very important."
The second half of the pitch is that Marcal's toilet paper is almost as soft as the other guy's anyway.
"Handle it like you're going to take care of business," company manager Michael Bonin said, putting this reporter through a blind test of virgin vs. recycled toilet paper. Two rolls were hidden in a cardboard box: the test was to reach in without looking and wad them up, considering the "three aspects of softness," which are surface smoothness, bulky feel and "drapability," or lack of rigidity.
The reporter wadded. The officials waited. The one on the right felt slightly softer.
That was not the answer they wanted: The recycled paper was on the left.
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