Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Over the past week we have looked at several very potent symbols that were misused by major media campaigns that pushed a political agenda to promote vigorous action to combat global warming. We saw that they had to ignore basic arithmetic to paint polar bears as threatened, hyperventilate over GRACE findings that less than 0.5% of East Antarctic ice may have disappeared, and ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
It would be very easy to write exactly the same type of story about the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and floods, the Amazon rainforest and African agriculture. In all cases, grey literature, a lack of perspective and some dubious research were packaged together to paint a widely disseminated but inaccurate portrait of danger posed by global warming.
But in this guest post I would like to talk about the media campaigns themselves. I have a bit of experience in this, as I have been advising companies on media strategies for almost 20 years now.
An organisation like Greenpeace, with a budget of $213 million for 2007, doesn’t say how much it spent on advertising, although they report spending over $3 million on media and communications. However, a source has told me that their combined media spend (and including that of their 27 country offices) comes to a bit over $50 million. The German branch of Greenpeace spent $2.5 million on advertising just by itself.
Greenpeace International spends its money on ‘campaigns’ such as Oceans, Forests and Trees. And of course, Climate and Energy, on which Greenpeace International spent $4.3 million. And much of the money spent on their campaigns is on advertising. (And of course, a lot is spent on fundraising, staff and things like maintaining the Rainbow Warrior.)
But I don’t want to pick on Greenpeace. Wikipedia has a list of about 500 environmental organisations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_organizations
So let’s talk about what I think actually happens. Let’s say that the WWF commissions a scientific research project about, for example, the Amazonian rain forest. They identify a scientist who has demonstrated his commitment to ecological principles by working to save the Amazon for over 20 years–someone like Daniel Nepstad. They structure his research in line with his previous output, guaranteeing that the results will be in line with what they already know. The report comes out saying not just that rain forests like rain, but that even a slight decrease in precipitation can have disastrous effects on the rain forest.
WWF puts out a press release and targets some advertising to show the Amazon turned into a desert, or savannah. Another organisation pipes up with their own analysis of satellite photography of the Amazon that may lend support. Other environmental organisations piggy-back on the WWF’s work with their own press releases, advertising, op-ed contributions, letters to the editor and to politicians (Greenpeace alone has 2.8 million members), and it becomes big news. The fact that it is becoming big news stimulates a second round of media targeting, going after the mainstream media, getting columnists and broadcasters to cover the story–because the story now is the media campaign, not just the Amazon (which by itself is too remote to touch the flinty hearts of editors).
It gives the appearance of a well-coordinated campaign, thought up in the boardrooms of people that readers here have already indicated they distrust, like George Soros or Maurice Strong. But the odds are very good that it is not. It is quick reaction by sympathetic organisations taking advantage of an opportunity to reinforce messages that they have supported since they came into existence.
So I’m not suggesting a plot, or a worldwide conspiracy. As these organisations have grown, they have gotten rich enough to employ savvy media professionals, who do communicate with each other and are quick to spot the main chance. (Sort of like me being willing to help Anthony with a few guest posts, no matter how much I rile up the regulars.)
These people have calenders of relevant upcoming events, from local elections to Earth Day. They have rolodexes with each others’ names as well as all the journalists and politicians they can grab–and they share. They have a forward publishing schedule, so they often know what sister organisations are going to come out with, so they can coordinate similar releases.
It’s like the blogosphere, in a way–only with money. Lots of it. They have a lot of political and economic clout and they are determined to use it. If some mistakes are made along the way, they are willing to ride it out and persevere. The skeptics have nothing like this at their disposal, despite protestations from people like Naomi Oreskes. The think tanks are mostly marginally concerned about climate change, and there is nothing like a calendar or publishing schedule. Opposition to climate activisim is completely ad hoc, which is why it is so surprising that they have had some tactical successes.
This is a really tough time for these people. They staked a lot on getting a global agreement in Copenhagen, and it’s a real blow to them (and their egos) that it didn’t happen. Losing the US cap and trade battle was equally damaging to them. But taken as a very large group, they have money, organisation and a lot of professional skill.
It will take more than Climategate or the Hockey Stick to beat them. Readers of Watt’s Up With That should be aware of that.
But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfulleThe Media Campaigns That Promote Dubious Science Thomas Fuller
Over the past week we have looked at several very potent symbols that were misused by major media campaigns that pushed a political agenda to promote vigorous action to combat global warming. We saw that they had to ignore basic arithmetic to paint polar bears as threatened, hyperventilate over GRACE findings that less than 0.5% of East Antarctic ice may have disappeared, and ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
It would be very easy to write exactly the same type of story about the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and floods, the Amazon rainforest and African agriculture. In all cases, grey literature, a lack of perspective and some dubious research were packaged together to paint a widely disseminated but inaccurate portrait of danger posed by global warming.
But in this guest post I would like to talk about the media campaigns themselves. I have a bit of experience in this, as I have been advising companies on media strategies for almost 20 years now.
An organisation like Greenpeace, with a budget of $213 million for 2007, doesn’t say how much it spent on advertising, although they report spending over $3 million on media and communications. However, a source has told me that their combined media spend (and including that of their 27 country offices) comes to a bit over $50 million. The German branch of Greenpeace spent $2.5 million on advertising just by itself.
Greenpeace International spends its money on ‘campaigns’ such as Oceans, Forests and Trees. And of course, Climate and Energy, on which Greenpeace International spent $4.3 million. And much of the money spent on their campaigns is on advertising. (And of course, a lot is spent on fundraising, staff and things like maintaining the Rainbow Warrior.)
But I don’t want to pick on Greenpeace. Wikipedia has a list of about 500 environmental organisations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_organizations
So let’s talk about what I think actually happens. Let’s say that the WWF commissions a scientific research project about, for example, the Amazonian rain forest. They identify a scientist who has demonstrated his commitment to ecological principles by working to save the Amazon for over 20 years–someone like Daniel Nepstad. They structure his research in line with his previous output, guaranteeing that the results will be in line with what they already know. The report comes out saying not just that rain forests like rain, but that even a slight decrease in precipitation can have disastrous effects on the rain forest.
WWF puts out a press release and targets some advertising to show the Amazon turned into a desert, or savannah. Another organisation pipes up with their own analysis of satellite photography of the Amazon that may lend support. Other environmental organisations piggy-back on the WWF’s work with their own press releases, advertising, op-ed contributions, letters to the editor and to politicians (Greenpeace alone has 2.8 million members), and it becomes big news. The fact that it is becoming big news stimulates a second round of media targeting, going after the mainstream media, getting columnists and broadcasters to cover the story–because the story now is the media campaign, not just the Amazon (which by itself is too remote to touch the flinty hearts of editors).
It gives the appearance of a well-coordinated campaign, thought up in the boardrooms of people that readers here have already indicated they distrust, like George Soros or Maurice Strong. But the odds are very good that it is not. It is quick reaction by sympathetic organisations taking advantage of an opportunity to reinforce messages that they have supported since they came into existence.
So I’m not suggesting a plot, or a worldwide conspiracy. As these organisations have grown, they have gotten rich enough to employ savvy media professionals, who do communicate with each other and are quick to spot the main chance. (Sort of like me being willing to help Anthony with a few guest posts, no matter how much I rile up the regulars.)
These people have calenders of relevant upcoming events, from local elections to Earth Day. They have rolodexes with each others’ names as well as all the journalists and politicians they can grab–and they share. They have a forward publishing schedule, so they often know what sister organisations are going to come out with, so they can coordinate similar releases.
It’s like the blogosphere, in a way–only with money. Lots of it. They have a lot of political and economic clout and they are determined to use it. If some mistakes are made along the way, they are willing to ride it out and persevere. The skeptics have nothing like this at their disposal, despite protestations from people like Naomi Oreskes. The think tanks are mostly marginally concerned about climate change, and there is nothing like a calendar or publishing schedule. Opposition to climate activisim is completely ad hoc, which is why it is so surprising that they have had some tactical successes.
This is a really tough time for these people. They staked a lot on getting a global agreement in Copenhagen, and it’s a real blow to them (and their egos) that it didn’t happen. Losing the US cap and trade battle was equally damaging to them. But taken as a very large group, they have money, organisation and a lot of professional skill.
It will take more than Climategate or the Hockey Stick to beat them. Readers of Watt’s Up With That should be aware of that. But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfullerr
The trouble is that if all that they predict, and therefore their credibility, doesn’t happen, and (as is likely) either nothing changes or it gets cooler, then the egg on their respective faces is going to cost an arm and a leg to remove. And that, of course, will cost them future funding…
What I feel is the worst part of it all is the companies, corporations and especially banks that help the WWF (for example..) gain money be charging just a bit extra, but from a large amount of people. This is of course good PR for the banks and WWF both and is getting harder and harder to avoid as a customer in general. Can’t continue writing because i would end up ranting and cursing on this scandalous trade and criminal business from these so called NGO:s.
The CAGW fanatics have learnt well from a master propagandist, who wrote: “A lie that is a good lie (that is, an effective one) is always a better lie if it is a whopper! The capacity of the masses for absorbing an idea is limited. So make it simple.
“And give it to them in black and white, no half-tones! For otherwise you miss the entire purpose of propaganda, which is to present a clear view of the situation on which the masses are willing to act.”
It may not be the goal of these organizations, but global government is the goal of the Maurice Strong crowd, the IPCC and a group of individuals (ManBearPig included) and banks who stand to get filthy rich off cap and trade and end up with world level powers. Global government was part of the Copenhagen agreement – no details given but the entity was included.
Conspiracy by the environmentalist organizations does not mean that others are not.
He who controls the energy flow (by pricing) controls every aspect of every economy.
“Opposition to climate activisim is completely ad hoc, which is why it is so surprising that they have had some tactical successes.”
=========================================================
I think it might have something to do with a thing we like to call TRUTH.
These organization may not have a goal of a global government, but that does not mean that others do not. Maurice Strong’s group has that goal and has stated it publicly. Strong set up the IPCC to make the case for control of emissions and part of this goal is that emissions control is meaningless unless it is enforced worldwide.
There is a group of individuals (ManBearPig included), banks, and governments who stand to make huge fortunes from cap and trade, and the people who determine the market price of carbon will control the world’s economies.
He who controls the energy controls everything.
So there are many little gangs that keep track of what’s going on and what everyone else is doing and when they all jump on the same opportunities it only looks like they have some sort of central command, there is no unifying organization. The Mafia does not exist.
Got it.
Are you one of those anti-science right wingers I have been hearing so much about?
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Is-the-Right-Wing-Anti-Science-4985
REPLY: No, we aren’t. Anthony is apparently a Democrat. I’m a libertarian, which is orthogonal to the political axis, and the others here vary widely. Calling right wingers anti-science, though, is just a slight twist on the Alinskyist rule that leftists should always call anybody who agrees with them a racist. – Mike
WWF, Greenpeace…you’ve been able to name some of the organisations who employ those “savvy media professionals”. You really were keeping us in suspense for a while, Thomas. It was as if those media types were just doing it on their own. It’s a great moment for you.
No scientists are in on the scam! Whew. That will come as a relief to Australians, who looked like having to pay huge power bills to subsidise medieval technology; who were going to be exposed to ubiquitous carbon taxes as well as the inflation caused by that wet dream of all stock-jobbers, spivs, skimmers, scammers and touts: an ETS.
Since there’s no scientists in on the deal, just media tossers, we’ll be cool now…yes?
Tom, thanks for your posts – they are thought provoking.
However what part about the coordinated actions you describe isn’t a conspiracy?
This lovely little piece that Andrew Bolt highlighted.
“In fact, it’s exactly this inner tyrant that Greenpeace has deliberately sought to tempt with its commercial featuring a hooded boy coached into believing adults are killing his world.
“By the time I grow up there won’t be any fish left in the sea,” he says with a menacing scowl.
“Clean air will be a thing of the past, polar ice caps will be gone, oceans will rise, entire countries will disappear … There could be famine, worldwide epidemics …
“We’re not just talking about the future, we’re talking about my future.”
Believe all that and you’re excused the threat this boy makes next: “Starting today, the lines are drawn. You have to choose sides. You can be for my future or you’re against it. You’re a friend, or you’re an enemy.
“I may be just a kid a today, but tomorrow will be different …
“You’ve had your chance to fix this problem. Now we have ours. We won’t be cute. We won’t be patronised. We won’t be denied our future.”
I’m reminded irresistibly not just of James J. Lee but of the scene in Cabaret, in which a beautiful boy, eyes brightly steeled with moral fervour, starts sweetly to sing Tomorrow Belongs To Me.
And only as the camera pans out do you see him in his Hitler Youth uniform, with shirt of forest brown.”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_the_freen_totalitarian_itch/
That kid should get out more and play footy and it might teach him to look at the world around him more. I know my 11 yo lad has got particularly muddy this year after our 14 year drought has ended so spectacularly here in SE Aus.
Cheers Jack
As cheap money runs out….small pockets of common sense start to prevail.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7997668/Climate-change-is-inevitable-says-Caroline-Spelman.html
Tom, good explanation. The psychology of it is not new tho. It’s been the same for eons. It’s always some individual or organization who declares themselves the “Savior of Mankind ( or a subset thereof )” from some looming disaster or another, if only we (the Unenlightened ) would put them in charge. What has changed is their reach via modern tech.
That having been said is all true and accurate. There is probably no concerted desire by the AGW advocates to rule the world but it does play the role of “useful idiots” to the gang who do want to rule the world. Politicians.
The ongoing and unrelenting pro AGW propaganda that pours out of the MSM is quite astonishing, only slightly more astonishing than the paucity of “skeptical” material in that same media. Obviously money plays it’s part but I think much more is to be laid at the feet of classical and liberal arts education which seems to send a good portion of it’s human output into the “meedja”. These are generally people who have stuck religiously to their student socialist leanings and now see themselves as being part of the team that will save the world from the nasty humans.
What is very encouraging though, is the number of sensible , ordinary, people who don’t know much about AGW other than it smells funny. They apply the sniff test and so remain hugely unconvinced and are joined by more and more who decide to step into the light. Perhaps it’s the increasing energy bills, the behavior of the chattering busybodies or those hideous and irritating wind generators.
Propaganda only works for so long before people start to see the lies for what they are. Thirty years into this global catastrophe and none of the predictions are true. The man on the Clapham omnibus isn’t an idiot no matter what the smart arses tell him to the contrary.
Thomas Fuller: It will take more than Climategate or the Hockey Stick to beat them. Readers of Watt’s Up With That should be aware of that.
Yet there is erosion, Thomas. Dripping water (yes, it does still rain) will wear away a rock. Boredom is a great crowd thinner (and there is a lot of boredom abroad). Cold is a puzzlement when one should be roasting… but my money is mainly on boredom. AGW is losing its novelty.
“Conspiracy” does not require one central figure or entity giving everyone else marching orders. The existence of a conspiracy is established merely be demonstrating what you have written here. There are indeed a whole lot of people and organizations working together behind the scenes to present a narrative that is not true. Some of those working together are true believers. Some are charlatans working for a buck. Others have purely political motives. Some are various combinations.
But all that need be shown is that they coordinate their efforts with others behind the scenes to present a false narrative. Alarmist scientists coordinate the release of exaggerated findings with a media campaign joined by sympathetic journalists and editors. Politicians and investors coordinate to trumpet the “science” in an effort to pry cash from taxpayers to create profits for investors some of which become campaign contributions. NGOs and charities join in the hype to solicit contributions. Others use the hype to argue for more and more govt to “control” the problem identified in the exaggerated science.
The AGW lobby like to ridicule sceptics by scoffing about how ridiculous it is to think that a conspiracy could be cooked up between so many different players.
Well I think most sceptics, like myself, never believed that there ever was such a conspiracy.
It is more a band wagon.
Once a few prime movers got it rolling it turned out that there were enough unscrupulous, dishonest, gullible, easily led or sincere but impressionable people out there to ensure that the band wagon always grew.
Everyone one of them can see something in the narrative for themselves.
A research grant opportunity, a chance to sell some bit of technology, a way of gathering votes, a way of enforcing a few new laws or raising a bit of tax, a way of displaying environmental concern, a nice little business opportunity etc.
The only one who misses out every time is the tax payer who is expected to quietly stump up for research grants, wind power subsidies etc…
I am hoping that the long suffering tax payer one day gets the ability to bring the bandwagon to a sudden and unceremonious halt.
While there doesn’t need to be a conspiracy to explain what has been going on with the weather/enviromentalists (since weather=climate when it’s hot, weather when it’s not), there are people in all of those groups who have had training in radicalism. I suppose it could be a coincidence that these groups just happen to generally oppose free markets, and minimal state, but I doubt it. What I think is happening is that a rather small group of “radicals” have aimed at eliminating economic liberty, and per force, individual liberty. They don’t have to have meetings, the general idea is known, and by attacking separate pieces the effect is of disparate organizations.
The key is centrism, and opposition to anything which allows individuals to live their lives independently. More isn’t needed, other than a controlling mechanism, and CAGW is a perfect tool.
By embracing generally supported ideas, like we shouldn’t pollute our world, we shouldn’t turn the world into a garbage dump, they wander into other areas, not as readily accepted, were they first proposed, but when they follow just a little farther out, a sufficient number of followers will follow. Pretty soon you get PETA, Greenpeace, and his Goreness.
[Note to all – the word ‘conspiracy’ triggers the spam filter and it may take some time for such comments to be liberated. Promotion of conspiracy theories is generally not condoned on this blog ~jove, mod (not meaning to pick on this comment at all – you make some excellent points)]
But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government.
===========================================
Let’s see
You must have a different UN than the rest of us…………
Tom, These organizations know the “chain of command” in the media, just like you do. They know how to work it, just like you described. Knowing what the media wants to report and feeding it to them that way, is still a “well-coordinated campaign”.
Of course the UN wants global government, and the UN wants to run it.
If not, there is no reason to even have the UN.
I think the fundamental problem here is that we as a species are wholly unprepared for the challenges of living in a surplus society, where there are few – if any – real threats to ourselves. We respond much stronger to alarm than to good news, which makes perfect sense as a survival mechanism, and we distrust the status quo, which perhaps deceptively urges us to sit back and enjoy, while unknown perils may be lurking around the corner.
Seen in this light, Climate Change is a perfect cause to rally our instinct to fight for survival. The enemy is the surplus society itself, a complex enough enemy that it can be trusted to lunge back at us, no matter how many heads we cut off.
Who am I to say that they’re wrong. The “beauty” of it, though, is that they can afford to be wrong a countless number of times, yet still be right. It is a fundamental belief, backed up by historical precedence. End of Days has always attracted followers, and even the staunchest skeptics must concede that, eventually, some turn of events will prove them right, an Earth as we know it will be no more.
Which also sheds light on Nissan’s polar bear ad:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/10/unbearably-stupid-polar-bear-advertising/
Given enough people in all the right places who happen to believe in “The Cause”, such as ad agencies, they start to believe that there’s a powerful movement that they latch onto which they believe will further their own objectives. In this case, selling a low carbon emission car. They’re so into this belief system that they can’t see the tackiness of it.
Keith Battye says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:33 am
The ongoing and unrelenting pro AGW propaganda that pours out of the MSM is quite astonishing, only slightly more astonishing than the paucity of “skeptical” material in that same media. Obviously money plays it’s part but I think much more is to be laid at the feet of classical and liberal arts education which seems to send a good portion of it’s human output into the “meedja”. These are generally people who have stuck religiously to their student socialist leanings and now see themselves as being part of the team that will save the world from the nasty humans.
I think your last bit (“nasty humans”) captures at least part of it. There is a tendency among the press to follow the old saw “If it bleeds, it leads”. Thus, a heading of “we’re all gonna die!” will always win out over “Everything A-OK!” This, in turn, is fed by (and feeds into) an apparent guilt manifestation among some people whereby, since life is pretty good for most people (relatively speaking), we must be setting ourselves up for a fall of biblical proportions. Combine this with the money that is made available to researchers to study this threat, whereby the researchers may be subconsciously pressured to keep finding out “It’s worse than we thought!” to keep the grants flowing. Before you know it, you have a nice little feedback loop reinforcing the “Armageddon Now” theme. Of course, the lack of any actual catastrophes to date doesn’t stop them – they just blame natural phenomena on CAGW and a scientifically-illiterate mainstream press gobbles it up.
Exactly. It doesn’t take an X-Files style conspiracy to stampede a herd ready to run somewhere and just needing a nudge in the right direction.
“This is a really tough time for these people. They staked a lot on getting a global agreement in Copenhagen, and it’s a real blow to them (and their egos) that it didn’t happen. Losing the US cap and trade battle was equally damaging to them. But taken as a very large group, they have money, organisation and a lot of professional skill.
It will take more than Climategate or the Hockey Stick to beat them. Readers of Watt’s Up With That should be aware of that.”
Thomas it matters not one iota what resources this “very large group” has. Nor does it matter that the good work of Anthony, Steve McIntyre, and the other sceptical and luke warmer bloggers will continue to show this “very large groups” propaganda for what it is, propaganda. At the end of the day the final arbiter will be mother nature herself.
Mr Fuller,
As someone who has many years of experience in investigating and tracking groups, their operations and sources of support, I can say that there are, in fact, global governance conspiracies.
The central network for dissemination of this is the World Federalist Society, a group backed by the UN to promote World Government to the masses, especially in the US and Europe. I’ve attended a number of their meetings to learn what they are about (there is a chapter near me in Hanover, NH that is led by various Dartmouth alumni and retired UN and US officials).
As an example, the World Biosphere Preserve program, which is publicly touted as a program to recognise and protect the worlds “special places” and ecosystems is part of a program here in the US by various green NGO’s to engineer the “donation” of vast tracts of private wilderness (usually owned by paper/logging companies, mining concerns, etc) to the US government or to the groups own tax-free charitable corporations (which removes the land from local and state tax rolls, costing many rural communities large amounts of needed property tax revenue). If donated to the US government, it is usually done with a deal that the NGO (usually groups like the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, etc) has a 999 year contract to “manage” the land for the government.
Any locally owned hunting cabins with leases on the land are summarily nixed by the groups. The groups are then able to seize the private cabins and then start renting them out to well heeled members for thousands of dollars a night in “donations”.
The land is then declared a UN World Biosphere Preserve. This gives the UN, under treaty, shared allodial title to the land so the UN can count the Preserve lands as UN assets, much as the US government counts Federal wilderness, forests, and National Park lands as assets of the US government that it uses to collateralize money it borrows to cover its huge budget deficits and its vast welfare and war machine. This is also the reason the UN is slowly building up its assets in the Biosphere Preserve program, for the same reason they sought, several years ago, to do a deal with the World Wildlife Federation to declare all seamounts in international waters to be World Biosphere Preserves under the sovereign control of the WWF, and giving the WWF authority to tax fishing operations in those areas, to share those tax revenues with the UN. Having declarable assets and tax revenues independent of the donations of member nations (donations which historically have been paid for mostly by the US and allow the US to keep the UN on something of a short leash), gives the UN the ability to operate independently of the will of its donor states and to borrow large amounts of capital with which to finance things like, say, large military forces under UN control, independent of the military commands of UN member states.
Should the UN also be able to tax things like carbon emissions and currency trading, as they have recently proposed, this would give the UN additional tax revenue with which to pay interest on debt accrued in pursuit of building its own military forces.
“[Major media campaigns] ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.”
I was under the impression that this claim was made by the scientists in the IPCC report. These facts were reiterated on numerous occasions by Rajendra Pauchari.
Here is the IPCC’s statement on the matter.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf
Unless I have greatly misunderstood what you have said, it seems completely incorrect to say that the media pushed these errors in the face of IPCC protest.
It seems. Tom, that everyone, pro or con to the issue, hates your opinion. I think you may be on the right track!
All the best…. Jeff
I saw a report today that stated fake antivirus a little over 1 billion new malware variants were discovered in the first half of this year. The main motivation for malware today is money, such as by fake antivirus scams, to send out spam, to steal your identity or personal information, or to hold a person or company hostage. Indeed, malware and virus creators are known to pay a bounty for every computer infected. The point of this is simple: When quick easy money is to be had, there are many who want that money and they will not give it up without a difficult fight.
Environmental groups have quick easy money. All they have to do is peddle some scare story and they will get donations from suckers and government handouts. How hard is it to scare people? Indeed, Wikpedia lists around 500 of such organizations according to this article. Do you really think so many environmental groups would have started if it wasn’t profitable? Where do such groups get their money? Do they sell something? They might sell T-shirts or the like, but they certainly don’t sell lots of goods or services. There is money to be had. And how do you loosen a person’s wallet? If you preach sunshine and lollipops, people will think everything is fine and therefore we will hold on to our money. If you preach doom and gloom, people will open up their wallets because something has to be done. That is all it takes. Anybody can do it. You just have to follow the model of those who are already successful and you’ll quickly have enough money to live on easy street for a long time.
Now I’m sure several of these environmental groups started off with the best of intentions, especially the earlier ones. But money corrupts as much as power. And the result is what you see by the modern day Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club, and others. I would love to see how much money is spent saving the earth versus how much money is spent getting more money, advertising, and salaries. The Sierra Club and 3 other environmental groups ran a commercial in my state against the incumbent Republican senator who is not in their pocket. How much money did that cost? Why wasn’t that money put to better use, such as buying some land and preventing development on it?
(Footnote: I’m not comparing environmental groups with virus writers. Virus writers are much worse. What I am saying is that when easy money is to be had, there are many people who will exploit it even if it is not moral or ethical. These are just two examples of easy money and there are many others.)
Hmm, so if the environmental extremists think they are lacking money to save the climate, the obvious thing to do would be to slash the amount of organizations in half to free up an unseemly amount of cash.
Andreas says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:47 am
… this scandalous trade and criminal business from these so called NGO:s.
Please don’t let these shysters off the hook… let it go… keep on ranting… keep in cursing!
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:08 am
The Mafia does not exist.
Just like the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t exist… and black ops don’t exist… and spooks don’t exist… and money doesn’t talk…. So lets all keep happy and sing along: High Hopes – Whoops there goes another accidented rubber tree plant…
Keith Battye says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:33 am
Thirty years into this global catastrophe and none of the predictions are true.
Not that the Main Stream Media has a memory… or the electorate… or the politicians…
Roger Carr says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:34 am
but my money is mainly on boredom.
My money is mainly on MONEY… it is the economy that counts… and at the moment it is counting backwards…
the governments are funding the NGO’s in Aus..
and Agenda 21 or whatever pseudoname that various councils etc label it, millenium 21 is another..are sure ALL tied into the UN IMF and WHO agendas to gain an awful lot of control over people and resources.
Gates and a lot of other big money sources are on the bandwagon and it is NOT Philanthropy, its self interest and greed, all good PR and makes the gullible buy their items, cos theyre sooo nice. his 800k? shares in BP make him a thorough charlatan, his support of vaccination and now GM foods for the poor. disgust me!
scuse me while I Puke!
Maybe Greenpeace could actually USE the money to do something? rather than keep hitting the public for more? seeing as so many are volunteers, they sure are ripping the world off..slave labour by any other name?
Adam Smith developed “economics” based on the hypothesis that individuals and nations are motivated by “enlighted” self interest. In the last half-century that motivator has evolved into “what’s in it for me now?”. In the process, truths that enlighten appear to have little or even negative value. Watch closely who is sponsoring political issue ads regarding energy and environmental legislation (supporting incumbants that voted for “cap-and-trade”). How will you vote?
While I agree that there is a media machine behind numerous environmental groups, many of which share similar goals (Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club, etc.), there is another aspect as to why these organizations are now gaining so much traction, when a mere 25 years ago they were far fewer and more ‘fringe’. I am speaking of the amount of money these groups spend on education.
It’s no real surprise that we’re seeing a surge in environmental activism. We’re now seeing the product of 25 years of educational spending, from elementary school through high school, that is producing people who have an indoctrinated belief in how mankind is affecting the world. We now have teachers in schools who have been raised in this particular indoctrination, and they pass these misguided beliefs onto the children because they don’t know any better (and their education has been less about critical thinking and more about group thinking).
I’m a college professor (I teach chemistry), and I see this particular kind of “conclusion without evidence” or “incorrect conclusion from data presented”. The clear problem shows up in laboratories, where students cannot make any reasoned conclusions because they have been ill-equipped for critical thinking. However, these students are the same ones who have numerous activism buttons on their bags, eat “organic”, and are convinced mankind is destroying the planet.
It’s not the 10 letter c-word that ends with -icy (don’t want the spam filter picking it up), but it’s more of a reflection of the shifting goals in higher/secondary/elementary education, and a lack of counter-argument. As Thomas states, the opposition is more “ad hoc”, which stems from proper scientific argument when some people have disagreements about the conclusions of another. Unfortunately, the reasoned responses are attributed to “Right-Wing Anti-Science” types or “Deniers”, a meme that is taking over the reason-based discussions that permeated the literature 30 years ago.
If there’s one thing Climategate has taught us, it’s that critical thinking isn’t necessary for scientific analysis any more.
So are you saying that the Website RealClimate is part of a media campaign promoting dubious science? Do you have any proof of this? I mean, *any*?
And how about your wild conjecture “They structure his research in line with his previous output, guaranteeing that the results will be in line with what they already know.” Can you provide any examples where this is the case? If the conspiracy is as widespread as you say there should be dozens of examples you can come up with.
It seems to me this is a great cross between a wild-eyed conspiracy piece and a smear article. You offer no proof that any nefarious activities are going on, in fact you even say outright that you don’t, it’s ‘here’s what I think happens’. As someone who considers himself a reporter this is an example of terrible, horrible reporting. No facts, all conjecture, all opinion.
Thomas, you may be right in that a sort of ‘old boys network’ actually co-ordinates the scare stories in a sort of Madison Avenue fashion. Maybe there is no mafia-like over-arching organisation behind the AGW network of advocacy groups, their publicists and their scientists, but I am convinced that most of the world’s universities and state school systems are staffed and run by people who are unaware of how deeply they and the education infrastructure has been contaminated by Marxism, which provides an endless supply of ‘willing idiots’ who perpetuate the scare story du jour, including the sillier aspects of CAGW. There are enough examples of unacceptable, or, at best, inappropriate, teaching materials being fed into schools at all levels and not just in the various national science curricula, for any parent to at least be aware of what is being taught in his or her children’s classroom. While the Marxist thrust may not be centrally organised, it has gathered enough momentum to be defining what is taught in the supposedly ‘free world’.
mikelorrey says:
September 13, 2010 at 6:06 am
“…gives the UN the ability to operate independently of the will of its donor states and to borrow large amounts of capital with which to finance things like, say, large military forces under UN control…”
Fortunately, the UN et al seem incapable of budgeting in a fiscally prudent manner. Note the world financial crisis. That is why Copenhagen failed. They ran out of other peoples money before they could finish the deal. They wont mess up the next time though.
“Promotion of con****acy theories are generally not condoned on this blog”
Then an article like this really shouldn’t be either. If you want to declare con****acy off limits to discussion, then you don’t discuss it yourself. Allowing the author of a post to take one side of an issue and rejecting any contrary opinions is what the Warmists do.
I’ll agree with the author that there is no single Grand Con****acy to which every Warmist is a party. Instead there are a few smaller con***acies (such as the CRU scandal has revealed) in collusion with one another. That latter word is sufficiently broad as to include a situation where the colluding parties have no shared secret plans to coordinate their activities, but do have interests that would be furthered by certain events taking place. The various parties, knowing these others share some tactical goals, will cooperate without overt coordination, almost as if an “invisible hand” had guided them.
*bangs head on desk*
Conspiracy theorizing is good clean fun, but let’s be realistic.
There’s no way a conspiracy lasts very long if it consists of more than a few people. The media campaigns Tom describes aren’t the product of conspiracies – they are the product of a social movement. That’s why so many of the people involved in promoting it seem to have similar worldviews and interlacing solutions.
One could think of AGW alarmism like the civil rights movement, but deriving authority from climate scientists instead of baptist ministers. Or one could think of it as a movement like the Vietnam War protests, or prohibition, or women’s suffrage.
Except that it’s broader than the examples I’m coming up with; AGW alarmism is a pan-European movement, even more than a North American movement.
By the way, my “Is the right wing anti science” link above, from The Atlantic quotes Anthony:
Good luck with that Anthony.
#
#
The Monster says:
September 13, 2010 at 7:01 am (Edit)
It’s not the discussion of a plot, scheme, plan, intrigue, connivance, machination, ploy, subterfuge etc. etc. that is the issue in this case . . . it just appears that the spam filter traps responses with the c word so they get slowed down a bit.
That’s my take on this anyway.
Philip Thomas says:
September 13, 2010 at 6:09 am
“[Major media campaigns] ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.”
I was under the impression that this claim was made by the scientists in the IPCC report
======================================================
Philip, it’s obvious, after reading “Tom” for a while, that Tom is also very selective with what he reads, and also selective of what “truths” he writes about.
Either that, or he is well read on the subject, and he’s twisting it too.
docattheautopsy:
Was that a scientific observation, doc? 😉
I think people will wake up one day to realise that the UN is not really their friend. That it’s only ever been interested in identifying problems that it is the solution for. ‘Climate Change’ will eventually be seen for what it really is – a means to that end. There is a bigger picture though and it’s not particularily difficult to comprehend – rich and powerful people will always seek ways to be richer and more powerful. There, no “c’ word required and more importantly no “t” word either !
(UN) papers for the meeting obtained by Fox News indicate that the topics included:
“– how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda”
“novel ways to bypass its member nation states and deal directly with constituencies that support U.N. agendas.”
“Is the global governance structure, still dominated by national sovereignty, capable of responding with the coherence and speed needed?” it asks. “Or do we need to push the ‘reset’ button and rethink global governance to meet the 50-50-50 Challenge?”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/08/years-setbacks-looks-world-leader/
Tom Fuller,
Thank you for posting this topic and creating the opportunity to philosophize, again.
Before I begin on this rather controversial topic, I must stress that I do not see any doomsday/apocalytic collusion situation. I only see need for continued vigilance. No alarmism here, yawn, if you want that then move along.
Prima Fascia, your logic looks sound about environmental groups and news media not fermenting konspiracies (purposely misspelled to dupe the spam filter, I hope).
However, even if I were to accept your post entirely, to me clearly it is quite reasonable to conclude the probable existence of other groups (non-media and non-environmental groups) of people who see an opportunity in the idea of AGW for manipulation of some environmental groups, some news media and some educational institutions for ulterior purposes.
Why do I consider it quite reasonable to conclude the probable existence of other groups (non-media and non-environmental) who have the goals of manipulating some media, some environmental groups and some educational institutions? It is because I know that most of the very large number people are still around who supported intellectually, politically and morally all that 20th century stuff involving socialism’s/communism’s global dominance plan and triumphant calls to eliminate what America stood for (private freedom & capitalism). The widespread failure of socialism/communism in the late 20th century does not mean that those people abandoned their philosophies/ideals. Au contraire, mon ami . . . . they are angry the capitalists prevailed so far. So far. Do those people individually see an opportunity for their goals in the AGW theory? Of course. Duh. Do those people know each other’s cellphone numbers, website and email addresses? Betcha.
Does the above scenario painted by me make a konspiracy probable? No, not if those people have become virtually all dog-eat-dog (an old term of theirs) capitalists. Do any of the commenters here think most of them became devoted capitalists?
Finally, ahhh, remind me again what that UN thing is all about. Is it private freedom & capitalism?
Again, no alarmism/doomsday/apocalyptic stuff . . . yawn . . . just constant vigilance.
John
it’s just a small incestuous ‘climate change’ world…
watch the connections, Anybody remember my link to Futerra..
Rules of The Game – a Climategate doc, released with all the emails.
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/RulesOfTheGame.pdf
“Futerra and The UK Department for Environment published the Rules of the Game on 7 March 2005. The game is communicating climate change; the Rules will help us win it. The document was created as part of the UK Climate Change Communications Strategy.”
also other docs:
http://www.futerra.co.uk/revolution/leading_thinking
New Rules;New Game
Sell The Sizzle, etc…
Ever wondered where ‘Carbon Footprint’ came from (Futerra focus grouped it…)
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Words-That-Sell.pdf
They also advice the UN Environment Program:
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/WebEN21.pdf
Futerra, in partnership with the UN Environment Programme, published Communicating Sustainability: How to produce effective public campaigns in September 2005.
Well the co founder Ed Gillspie, also writes for…
wait for it….
The Guardian…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ed-gillespie
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/17/climate-change-advertising-standards-authority
Also, ED Gillspie is part of a group ( a director) called Sandbag, promoting Carbon Offsets (and selling tonnes of CO2) They are campaigning for carbon emmisions trading, and the set up of EU emmisions trading
http://www.sandbag.org.uk/whoweare
A co director – of Sand Bag. is Mike Mason – co founder of Climate Care. (and still MD).
This is where Prince Charles and Al Gore can by their carbon offsets, for all their airmiles, and cars, and expensive homes.
http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/about/our-organisation/
Climate Care being bought by JP MORGAN CHASE Bank in 2008 (no doubt as a nice earner, post causing a financial crash)
Also Ed Gillspie
Mike Mason, on the losing side of that Oxford Climate debate, where all he could do was abuse Lord Monckton…
Ed Gillspie, is also a commissionar for the London Sustainability Commision.
What a small incestuous world, ‘the climate change’ industry is
Haven’t started on the other directors of Futerra yet……
The skeptics have nothing like this at their disposal
Hey! We get our round and shining pal up there in the sky. That skeptic it’s a WUWT regular!
I rather agree with the author, there isn’t a central conspiracy, but science is asked to decide about issues too quickly.
It is also asked to answer impossible questions – I mean, given a quantity like average global temperature, that is subject to a range of cyclical variations, plus some noise, it is obviously not possible to determine if CO2 is making a difference until data has been recorded over a much longer time period. Politicians want an answer to a simplistic question, and use our money to get an answer – be it right or wrong.
I also suspect a lot of science has evolved in unfortunate ways. Computer models are easy to construct, tweakable to get the expected answers, and basically function to hide the assumptions that were used to create them, and create output that looks misleadingly like real data. The peer review system was always imperfect, and it is hardly surprising that some scientists have learned to subvert it. Research of this sort provides a good living for scientists who don’t really care if their answers are right, so long as they are politically right.
I actually feel very sorry for organisations like Green Peace and WWF, because I feel they used to campaign about real issues. Who, for example, can argue with their campaigns against the transport of plutonium nuclear fuel by sea, or those opposing the destruction of the rain forests. Somewhere they got mislead, perhaps deliberately, into concentrating on a worthless issue that is certainly less significant than a host of other concerns.
Some more media/pr ‘climate change’ people.
Fiona Fox / Bob Ward are extremly pro CAGW…
Bob Ward – on the board – Science and Media Centre
Fiona Fox – Director of the Science and Media Centre.
Fiona, who infamously on BBC Newswatch (23/04/2010) said:
“it is unnecessary….misleading…inaccurate… to always have a sceptic to balance the views of the climate scientist” Fiona Fox – Director, Science Media Centre
“Fight the good fight for accuracy, in fact. On Climate change there has been a real change.. People like Richard Black and Roger Harrabin BBC Environment, journalist/analysts) , fighting internally to say we DON’T have to have a sceptic every time we have a climate story.”
Bob Ward attacks ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion ‘ in the Guardain.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/19/me-and-bob.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/25/message-from-the-guardian.html
After the Guardain were forced to make a number of changes to the original article.
Bishop Hill, Andrew Montford got to write a response in The Guardain.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/9/10/my-response-to-bob-ward.html
(Bob Ward is also comms director – Grantham Institue for Climate Change)
Yet EXXONMobil help fund the salaries of the Science and Media Centre…
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/about/funding.htm
Yes Bob and Fiona, get funded by EXXONmobil!!!!!!!!!
Wonder if they tell their ‘climate change’ activist chums…
Fiona Fox – Director – Science and Media Centre
Bob Ward on the board.
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/about/smc_board.htm
YEP, the big oil denial machine supposed leader, climate change activists (and Sir John houghton.s) favourite love to hate, fossil fuel climate change denying, oil company…
EXXON Mobil
Have to laugh really..
Shell
BP
as are:
Met Office
Department of Energy and Climate Change
and many more…(News International, Times, etc)
All contributing to Fiona’s salary….Bob’s as well (renumeration for board members or just expenses?)
No need for conspiracy, just to fuel a few self bragging nuts about their self importance and superior intelligence…they will set on fire a whole prairy of their ilk
Thanks, Thomas for bringing a timely marketing perspective to the scientific community. Pure facts and truths are unfortunately not enough in a marketplace that AGW – promoting NGO’s and their PR/advertising companies understand and manipulate so well – with the advantage of huge budgets. I’ve been in the industry myself and know that emotion sells products and ideas: (“Oh, what a feeling” wins over “Oh, what a power to weight ratio” every time.) Science and logical argument have been proven less important than well-researched emotional spin when it comes to the average consumer. Serious comparison gives way to simplistic sound-bytes and quick-grab headlines. Some serious money needs to be allocated to counteract this appalling imbalance.
As for the conspiracy ‘theory’, you would need to examine just who has the most to gain from the ultimate benefits. I think you should do some serious research on that.
Right, but you will find bandwagons in parades, and parades always have organizers and leaders. Those who cheerfully follow along, ‘camp followers’ perhaps, may have only a dim glimmer of the purpose of the parade. But the organizers know what they are doing. They have goals, and while those goals may be venal and self-serving, they may also be ideological and antithetical to the life of a free society. If objective scientific inquiry is destroyed in the process, chalk it up to ‘collateral damage’.
The difference between a parade—a movement of true believers—and a conspiracy is that the latter is secret. The paraders all don the same color shirts and loudly proclaim their allegiance to the cause. Then watch out.
/Mr Lynn
Here’s a form of collusion, where everybody is on the same page because they share common and explicit values and particular goals that may properly be called a con-spiracy:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/08/18/the-tribal-outcast/#comment-14980
from there and the next half dozen posts before and after show the dainty schemers counting the fish in Watts’ pond.
They imagine themselves, in the favorite phraseology, shapers of opinion and movers of men (that’s what they imagine a gossip is) and they count themselves equal, those who think up politically correct terms such as ‘androgynous docking mechanism’, with the real engineers who do the nuts and bolts.
There’s obviously a lot of easy money (as is noted by the author, for his own good reasons) in providing talking points. No real scholarship is required, just skill at identifying hot buttons and yankable chains.
What is content, value, purpose of this article? To whom and for what?
The author wants to ingratiate, engage and add to his ‘fan base’. Hit count goes on the old resume as advertisers and the other ‘shapers and movers’ agree it’s got the smell of money.
The internet is anarchy in the fast lane. Ad hoc principia sapientiae.
Mr. Fuller,
Having read your article I have three points for your consideration.
Being certifiied as paranoid does not preclude a plot against oneself.
More people on the bandwagon increases the volume but adds nothing to the tune.
‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’ has no precedent.
Thomas: Thanks for another very interesting article. I have a question about the idea that media campaigns “ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035”. Although I’m sure you’re right that the media campaigns often ignore or misrepresent the scientists, I do think that some of the dodgy claims you mention are also in AR4. Perhaps you are making a distinction between what “IPCC scientists” say, and what “AR4” says? If so, what does this say about the IPCC?
Tom,
You forgot one key point in your excellent post: most reporters are just plain lazy. The days of the hard digging investigative reporter are long gone. If in the field, they would rather sit in the bar and drink than actually go out and dig up a story. If in the news room, they would rather just get it from the internet.
I can’t find the reference now, but someone on another discussion board pointed out a pro-AGW web site (sort of an ICECAP for true believers) that provided almost daily canned news stories on climate change that wound up being re-printed in hundreds of newspapers around the country. I doubt if any of the reporters that used them even thought twice about verifying them. Besides, they were just reporting the consensus. (Hopefully ClimateGate showed some the ring in their noses)
It may not be a cons…acy, but the people running that site have a major influence on what ‘global warming’ information gets into the main stream media.
But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.
No conspiracy required, just the politics of opportunity. “climate change” has become all things to all men. Extending the role of the UN, Grabbing your share of a trillion dollar carbon market, a better deal for Africa or simply wanting to save a Marmoset or two. Without straying beyond the peer reviewed literature “climate change” has something for everybody. It would be easy to see it as an organised conspiracy but like the Baptist and the Bootlegger they all have very different goals.
if you dig deeper, there WERE IPCC scientits, saying about glacier numbers pre 1997…
The lead authors, etc, decided to leave it in for effect..
post climategate, there the indian glaciologist, saying it was rubbish, this is when Pachauri. called them/it voodoo science..
It turned out that Pachauri had been informed by IPCC scientists, that it was a mistake, when he said this..
Tom Fuller is correct on this.
It’s the head of the hydra, lead authors, etc, that are the biggest part of the IPCC problem. Even Steve Mcintyre, is an ‘acredited’ IPCC scientists – he was involved you know. bring him in, to ignore him, stratgey.
A long time ago I recognzied what I dubbed “mutally beneficial acts” or “convergent interests”. The concept is that an action by one is recognized as being in the financial, political or personal interests of another, and so is copied or promoted. Where there is a loose community of like-interested people or groups, the idea can be broadcast and supported before it even comes out, and so appears to be coordinated, though it is not. It explains the appears of conspiracies where there are none, of collusion where there is none. Even gas prices jumping up “simultaneously” for different providers across the city or country are explainable by the concept. We do not need the far-left or far-right to propose Fifth Columnists in our midst. Just observant and self-aware individuals trying to maximize their own ideas.
Mark S says:
September 13, 2010 at 6:48 am (Edit)
So are you saying that the Website RealClimate is part of a media campaign promoting dubious science? Do you have any proof of this? I mean, *any*?
And how about your wild conjecture “They structure his research in line with his previous output, guaranteeing that the results will be in line with what they already know.” Can you provide any examples where this is the case? If the conspiracy is as widespread as you say there should be dozens of examples you can come up with.”
#######
Mark, we cover this aspect of the corruption of science in our book, although we both would have loved to give it more space. let me first give an example, and then quote what we wrote. There is more, maybe a post.. Anyway, one example of how research is twisted, is the area of tree rings. In particular the FAILURE to follow up 20 years later and “update the proxies” many key proxies, like bristlecones and yamal” have not been updated in over 20 years. That data, if it showed a divergence, could upset a huge applecart. In fact one reasearcher did do some updates and her research is ignored. she was told not to answer questions about it from steve mcintyre. but we have her data and it does throw doubt on bristlecones. The point is, nobody wants to look at data that may cause problems for the theory. money does not change the answers of a given science, money changes the QUESTIONS ASKED. And now a long excerpt from the book. I need new shoes:
In order to understand the subtle ways in which funding, policy interests, and personal interest twist the publication process, we need only turn to David Michaels, author of “Doubt is their product.” In a Washington Post editorial he describes the corrosive effect of funding. Ulterior motives don’t usually result in fraudulent studies, ulterior motives change the questions that you ask.
“By David Michaels
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Wal-Mart and Toys R Us announced this spring that they will stop selling plastic baby bottles, food containers and other products that contain a chemical {BPA} that can leach into foods and beverages. … Congress is considering measures to ban the chemical. But is there enough evidence of harmful health effects on humans? One of the eyebrow-raising statistics about the BPA studies is the stark divergence in results, depending on who funded them. More than 90 percent of the 100-plus government-funded studies performed by independent scientists found health effects from low doses of BPA, while none of the fewer than two dozen chemical-industry-funded studies did. This striking difference in studies isn’t unique to BPA. When a scientist is hired by a firm with a financial interest in the outcome, the likelihood that the result of that study will be favorable to that firm is dramatically increased. This close correlation between the results desired by a study’s funders and those reported by the researchers is known in the scientific literature as the “funding effect.”Having a financial stake in the outcome changes the way even the most respected scientists approach their research. ”
As Michael notes, if a scientist is hired by a firm with a financial interest, it changes the results and the structure of the science. If this holds true for companies that have a profit motive then it would seem to extend to research centers, universities, and labs who survive on the funding they get. For example the Tyndall center, discussed below, is dedicated to finding ways to adapt and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Such a mission presupposes that the climate will change in ways that are harmful. Michaels continues:.
“Within the scientific community, there is little debate about the existence of the funding effect, but the mechanism through which it plays out has been a surprise.At first, it was widely assumed that the misleading results in manufacturer-sponsored studies of the efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical products came from shoddy studies done by researchers who manipulated methods and data. Such scientific malpractice does happen,but close examination of the manufacturers’ studies showed that their quality was usually at least as good as, and often better than, studies that were not funded by drug companies. This discovery puzzled the editors of the medical journals, who generally have strong scientific backgrounds.
Richard Smith.. has written that he required “almost a quarter of a century editing . . . to wake up to what was happening.” Noting that it would be far too crude, and possibly detectable, for companies to fiddle directly with results, he suggested that it was far more important to ask the “right” question. ..Smith, Bero and others have catalogued these “tricks of the trade,” which include …. publishing the results of a single trial many times in different forms to make it appear that multiple studies reached the same conclusions; and publishing only those studies, or even parts of studies, that are favorable to your drug, and burying the rest.”
Here we see all the tricks employed by Mann and the rest of the Team. In drugs test as Michael notes, companies publish the results of a single test many times to make it look like multiple studies say the same thing. In climate reconstructions McIntyre has catalogued the same trick with multiple authors using the same climate proxies and then claiming independent verification. They also, as we have seen engage in publishing studies or data that are favorable, while burying the rest. Hiding the decline. Michael continues and discusses how “meta analysis” is created, analysis that describes the AR4 chapter 6 process:
“The problem is equally apparent in review articles and meta-analyses, in which an author selects a group of papers and synthesizes an overall message or pattern. Decisions about which articles to include in a meta-analysis and how heavily to weight them have an enormous impact on the conclusions. …….It has become clear to medical editors that the problem is in the funding itself. As long as sponsors of a study have a stake in the conclusions, these conclusions are inevitably suspect, no matter how distinguished the scientist.”
What Michael argues for tobacco companies and other funded science seems to clearly hold for climate science, especially in light of what the Climategate mails reveal. Michaels answer is to de link sponsorship and research and establishing research groups with an independent governing structure. For example the Health Effects Institute was established by the EPA and manufacturers. Noteably the HEI
has an independent governing structure; its first director was Archibald Cox, who famously refused to participate in President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” meant to help cover up the Watergate scandal. HEI conducts studies paid for by corporations, but its researchers are sufficiently insulated from the sponsors that their results are credible.
Climate science . In particular the compilation of a global temperature index, needs an Archibald Cox.
What I am missing in all this political speculation about who benefits and how from the climate alarmism is any mention of an industry that directly benefits from it. And I don’t mean carbon traders and renewable energy companies.
What I am talking about is the insurance industry. Especially those companies that back-insure many of those insurance companies that you and I deal directly with.
For them an increase of perceived risk when in fact there is none is an easy justification to increase rates, aqcuire more clients and make much more money. The more people get (and pay) for insurance that is not needed the more money they make.
Things like creating a public perception of an increase of extrem weather events, sea level rise and so on is a clever business strategy to increase profits for those insurance companies that insure against natural disasters.
No wonder quite a few large insurance companies are funding groups and institutes that promote climate alarmism.
To follow up on my previous comments. It is still all about the money, because with money comes power, and we all know what comes with power.
Environmental issues are there – dioxin is a problem, heavy metals are a problem, local pollution is a problem. The sad thing is Government, in all its forms, exacerbates the problem – local governments are the largest polluters in the world – they pour gigatons of waste into our waters every day.
A real environmentalist would be hard at work to stop Governmental pollution. Stopping that fixes 85% of the world’s pollution problems.
Someone tell EXXON, they are paying for Bob Ward, over at the Sceince and media centre….
Why ExxonMobil must be taken to task over climate funding
ExxonMobil should keep its promise by ending its financial support for lobby groups that mislead the public about climate change, writes Bob Ward
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/jul/01/bob-ward-exxon-mobil-climate
EXXONMobil help pay the salaries of the Science and Media Centre…
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/about/funding.htm
Fiona Fox – Director – Science and Media Centre
Bob Ward on the board.
Steven Mosher says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:03 am
I like your writing when you’re in top form like that, Mr. Mosher.
This may sound very simple-minded, but would you mind explaining why it’s wrong to falsely represent reality? My reason leads me to believe that being able to define right and wrong would be an end run around the complexity of the infinite permutations of falsehood. It would be very useful to have a ‘bumper sticker’ statement of what is the objective standard of values – so anybody could use that to make instant sense of whether something is right or wrong without having to become mired in false statistics.
In other words, can you express, explicitly, the Principle at root?
Stephen Mosher at 9:03
“she was told not to answer questions about it from steve mcintyre”
perhaps should read;
she was told not to answer questions from Steve Mcintyre about it
Well, I would like to say that I disagree with Thomas Fuller in this case.
Very much so.
What do you call it when a very big, a VERY BIG organisation tries to take the freedom away from all citizens on this planet? By just signing a few sentences in Copenhagen?
What do you call it when the Obamas, the Rudds, the Browns, the Merkels, etc etc gang up and goes to Copenhage to sign up on the end of freedom?
When all the dust is settled, and the historians look back, it will NOT be forgotten what they tried to lure them into signing.
So if we dont call it a conspiracy, its just a matter of word-play. We can choose what to call it. I call it a conspiracy.
And what was it that stopped them? one person stopped them.
The person that leaked some emails from CRU. No doubt about that.
That person deserves the Nobel Peace prize. He/she saved millions of lives.
So if they had signed the original petition, the question would be; Would the constitution in each country have protected us against these elected official’s follies?
I’m not sure whether the Norwegian constitution would have saved us.
One can only hope.
TJA says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:13 am
Are you one of those anti-science right wingers I have been hearing so much about?
Are you one of those anti-science left wingers I have been hearing so much about, since the French Revolution was funded by the same who fund the Global Warming Scam and whose purpose was and it is a rosy world of no ethics, abortions, gay marriage, stem cells from chopped aborted babies, etc,etc.?
I hope you write a bigger post about the funding effect.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tightened+muzzle+scientists+Orwellian/3515345/story.html
Dubious politicians and their dubious mandarins
also promote dubious science and warp science
to their own ends–
regardless of what any constitution or
law might say —
and then it will take ten years in court to
maybe rectify the situation.
e.g. Canada
I actually think the Mosh man could do a great post about that. Hope he does.
kwik says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:37 am
So if we dont call it a conspiracy, its just a matter of word-play. We can choose what to call it. I call it a conspiracy.
And what was it that stopped them? one person stopped them.
The person that leaked some emails from CRU. No doubt about that.
That person deserves the Nobel Peace prize. He/she saved millions of lives.
—————————————————
An absolute prince of pirates if there ever was.
We never have too many heroes to admire and inspire.
May he remain anonymous, too, for as myth he is ideal.
Nobody has an infinite war-treasure chest, and neither do these piggy-backers have infinite money supply.
That goes double with political support.
They have erred with some very bad journalism, and have a lot of egg on thier faces.
They have a lump to swallow, and it comes in the form of opportunistic politicians who are feeling the squeeze of anti-incumbentism.
So, they are fighting off the label of “Loser” by backpeddaling, and the politicians not easily swept away by thier dog-piling press releases are harder to connect with.
It’s a squeeze-play they find themselves in.
Money, power and utopian dreams explain it.
Money = advocacy & climate funding, government taxes, carbon credits market
Power = Advocay influence, government control, enforced utopian dreams
Utopian dreams = wattle and daub, reduced populations, retarded industry
Nothing like this happens on the other side of the coin either…sheesh, get real. Most the junk we are subjected to on a daily basis is BS. Folks just need to have an ability to see through BS, and life is good.
“There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.”
Oh come on, there emphatically is a conspiracy, a massive conspiracy. Greenpeace and the WWF wouldn’t have made any progress at all if it hadn’t been for the, so called, ‘scientific’ basis of AGW theory.
Obviously they have been caught red handed in their outrageous Himalaya glacier scam and desertification of the rainforest scam. But their malign influence is all over the science.
Key elements of the IPCC for example have clearly conspired to bury the enormous amount of peer reviewed literature that refutes everything from the very existence of a ‘greenhouse effect’, to the recent observed precipitous fall in global average temperatures, to the clear negative feedbacks of atmospheric water vapour, to the burgeoning polar bear population, to the dramatic growth of arctic sea ice.
On the back of this conspiracy, every major national science body in the world has conspired to agree with the IPCC’s findings. How thankful we’ll all be for the tireless work of the 3% of maverick climate scientists and blogs like this that have done their part in exposing the conspiracy for no reward whatsoever, other than the thanks and recognition of future generations from saving us all from our collective folly.
I’m willing to believe that there is no conspiracy on the lower levels, but have you ever read en masse what the Green planners really are aiming for? These are actual quotations from the original leaders and philosophers behind the main drive. It sounds pretty scary, if you ask me.
rbateman says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:32 am
Nobody has an infinite war-treasure chest, and neither do these piggy-backers have infinite money supply
While you pay your taxes they will. No doubt.
The only difference between consensus and conspiracy is ensus and piracy.
The rest is con.
What you have just described is a bunch of like minded organisations diliberately cooperating and planning support for each others policies and campaigns with their diaries and informal get togethers.
So there is planning, cooperation and presumably a lot of contact and meetings between these organisations to present a number of united policies and actions, sort of a conspiracy then, just not for central government but rather for policies and actions that often need central control..
Thomas Fuller,
You write a very persuasive article, but, to be blunt, you are absolutely WRONG.
All I have to do is point you to the issues that the alledgedly pure environmental organisations are espousing and it is obvious. Here in California, just a couple of years ago, there was a battle over the direction of the Sierra Club and what faction would run it. Some of the old line environmentalists were trying to take back control of the organization to refocus it back on …… ENVIRONMENTALISM!!! They lost. Those who wanted to back leftist issues, such as illegal immigration which is diametrically opposed to careful use of our resources, won.
What you describe DOES happen and I do not disagree with it. The fact that many of the environmental organisations, if not all of them, have been captured by hard left ideology types is also not in question. All you have to do is LOOK AT THE POLICIES THEY PUSH!!! They promote centralised control and in many cases, like the so-called renewable energy push, cause more damage than they prevent.
Men and organizations should be known for their actions, not their propaganda.
Keith Battye says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:33 am
That having been said is all true and accurate. There is probably no concerted desire by the AGW advocates to rule the world but it does play the role of “useful idiots” to the gang who do want to rule the world. Politicians.
———————————————————
Keith, with respect, there are layers above the politicians.
And, having said that, does that make me a conspiracy theorist? Are we simply to believe that our democratic institutions guarantee us ‘conspiracy-free’ development of world affairs?
I use the words ‘world affairs’, rather than ‘government’ because I don’t believe the government is a conspiracy: of course I don’t. But when it comes to world affairs, well that’s a different matter.
The struggle continues.
Keith Battye says: September 13, 2010 at 5:33 am
They do more. Those who reply to articles these days understand the science to a remarkable degree, usually a lot more than the writer of the article.
[Jack Jennings (5:16 am) quotes Andrew Bolt on Greenpeace’s video using an angry child.] This is the foullest video I’ve ever seen. Behind this child are his parents, Greenpeace, and Al Gore with his wretched film that I once believed. It’s like we have neo-Nazi indoctrinators running free, acting like child molesters. I think of Jesus’ words, heavily condemning those who lead children astray. Yet Greenpeace started with good intentions, and Al Gore too AFAICT.
James Sexton says: September 13, 2010 at 5:05 am
Yes.
Tom
Richard Courtney saw, before it even happened, the “vicious circle” of media, funding and politics causing Climate Science’s integrity to be thrown overboard. He predicted right, and was ignored.
I would add, the integrity and character of Climate Scientists has changed as a result of pressure from this infernal media-funding-politics triangle. I think Phil Jones fell prey to temptations that have only arisen in the last few decades. It’s sad that his predecessor Hubert Lamb wrote a really good book before the corruption started. But Mike Mann is surely the product of the infernal triangle, the character they wanted.
Tom, the science is suspect; it’s now overseen by weak characters and opportunists who play to the infernal triangle. What can we do. Raising the science awareness is crucial, you might say such self-education is an act of patriotism. Read the primer under my name. Or encourage others to do so. Only then can we grow the political willpower to amend legislation so as to break the power of the infernal triangle.
‘But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.’
Well, I suggest that you look at the development of the EC and for that matter the UN – then think again.
Doug
This propoganda has crucial impacts. The current Britsh government is continuing the agenda of the previous bunch of incompetents in carbon reduction policies. It is planning to spend over 20 billion dollars a year over the next 20 years to save the planet and at the same time cutting the Trident defence upgrade ( cost $2obillion one off), its defence upgrade programme ($10billion one off) and a host of social, transport, energy investments etc. It’s a politian’s dream to save the planet and, perhaps rightly, believe that’s what their voter’s want. They won’t be around to ask the voters in 20 years time – mind you maybe the voters won’t be either.
About 2 or 3 weeks ago I wrote an article for another site where I argued that what we see is a conspiracy theory is really just human nature. When you look at the climategate scandal it certainly has all the smackings of a genuine conspiracy and in the case of the “Hockey Team” this may even be the case. The other side then rightly counters that it is ludicrous to think that literally thousands of “climate scientists” from all over the world are engaging in collusion or conspiracy. They are probably right. You don’t need a conspiracy to explain some things when a simple understanding of human nature will suffice.
Climate scientists are paid to study the “problem of global warming”. If there’s no “problem” there will be no funds to study it. Most climate scientists from all over the world are essentially paid to believe in the problem they’re studying. Enlightened self-interest kicks in. The pro-AGW path is the path of least resistance. It assures you receive grant funding, eases publication, provides a better avenue for academic advancement, etc. Going against the AGW activist meme is likely to result in less recognition, loss of funding, scorn from one’s peers and reduced standing in one’s field. A conspiracy isn’t necessary…human nature is all you need.
Nearly 100% of climate research is funded by governments. I can’t think of any government (except perhaps the Czech Republic) that wants AGW to go away as a political issue. It’s the ultimate scam and a perfect avenue for greater centralized authority and tax revenue. It’s not in any government’s best interest to fund research that may reveal that AGW is a fraud. Governments fund climate research to there is a human nature symbiotic relationship for researchers and governments to pursue what is in their own best interests…human nature.
You can extend this logic all across the food chain for those who stand to gain by promoting the AGW polemic – NGOs, banks, businesses, commodity traders, politicians, etc. They don’t have to “conspire”. Given the right set of circumstances, human nature will do it for you.
If you remove fame and fortune from the equation, interest in AGW would nearly evaporate overnight. In the US entitlement programs like Social Security are almost certainly going to implode into insolvency within a decade or so. Yet our politicians pretend this is a non-issue and feign concern for planetary temperatures after their own grandchildren of died of old age. In truth all this nonsense is about money, power and control in the here and now and damn little to do “saving the planet” 90 years from now.
Dr.Dave:
You don’t need a conspiracy to explain some things when a simple understanding of human nature will suffice.
Human nature, or the nature of those who do not have neither values nor principles?
There are a lot of people who actually can not go against their principles, you know them: they are the poor professionals, the jobless, those who do not get even the look behind the shoulder of their “peers”. As the old adage reads: “God rears them but the devil unites them”. It is not “human nature” but the “nature of evil”.
James Atwell says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Think somebody wrongly understood things: The purpose was to reduce carbon, not to elect reduced brains.
“Doug says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:29 pm
‘But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.’
Well, I suggest that you look at the development of the EC and for that matter the UN – then think again.
Doug”
Don’t say that. Thomas Fuller, ex Green Technology consultant to the UK government has business interests with the EC!
I googled him and this testimonial came up.
‘Bill understands how business happens in the governmental sector, especially the European Commission. He’s a hard worker and next time I need a big proposal for an E.C. tender, there’s no doubt that he’s the guy to go to.
Tom Fuller, Managing Director, nQuire Services Ltd’
http://www.pep-partnership.co.uk/testimonials.asp
Not making an ad-hominem, just putting the cards on the table.
Mark S (6:48 am): “…are you saying that the Website RealClimate is part of a media campaign…?”
Environmental Media Services (EMS) provide web hosting and support for RealClimate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Media_Services
Since the world is completely upside-down at the moment it makes sense to wonder why.
There are a lot of good points made in this thread, let me summarize the one that matters most (IMO): some say there is no “conspiracy” simply because the whole entire thing is not under central control, while others say it IS a “conspiracy” because there is a central guiding control. Both are correct. Of course not every individual involved in “climate science” is on board with whatever endgame is being pushed, but enough are in the most critical positions to guide things. All of human endeavor has been this way throughout history.
In fact, we can name names (soros, manbearpig, etc) but they are mostly just opportunists enriching themselves on the currently fashionable meme. What I see as the opponent is 60s radicalism, anti-Vietnam protestors, an entire generation that wanted to change the world at any cost. I also believe that almost every one of these people have the best intentions, but are completely wrong in almost every thought process.
They constantly run into the LAW of unintended consequences. Thanks to these people we’re removing BPA from plastic and replacing it with… what? We removed R-12 from A/C units and replaced it with… what? I can no longer eat at KFC because the fat they deep-fry with is nauseatingly putrid, same with fries from McDonalds and Wendys. Yuck. It seems the gullible are always going to believe junk science.
And it is an unfortunate fact that the majority of “science” I hear people spouting is of the “junk” variety. I know one teen girl whose teacher told the class that the majority of points of light we see in the night sky aren’t even stars, but satellites. Majority! Almost everyone I know “knows” something that is just plain wrong.
If you were unscrupulous and wealthy, and had an idealistic goal, wouldn’t you exploit the ignorance of the masses too? The biggest problem is that the people doing this REALLY BELIEVE that they are doing the Right Thing. That is downright frightening.
In Australia the level of noise has increased since Copenhagen. During our recent federal elections the CC brigade were putting out articles every second day and the pathetic bunch of us non believers are totally overwhelmed with it.
Australia has reinstalled a Labour (socialist) govt and they will put in an ETS (cap and trade) with the help of the Greens Party. There seems to be little that we can do to slow this down.
So goodbye America we are going down the toilet of taxes.
Still on the bright side Australia is going to single handedly save the planet from global warming.
Comforting isn’t it?
CodeTech says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
“If you were unscrupulous and wealthy, and had an idealistic goal, wouldn’t you exploit the ignorance of the masses too? The biggest problem is that the people doing this REALLY BELIEVE that they are doing the Right Thing. That is downright frightening.”
I think you may have a point here but I think it may be unique to climate science. About 15-20 years ago medical (or more specifically pharmaceutical) science became pretty polluted. Unlike climate science, drug research is generally funded by pharmaceutical concerns. The little trick they pulled was to provide grant funding for research and then back away…except for one little hitch. They reserved the right to determine if the study they funded would be published. So results that didn’t turn out in favor of their commercial interests were never published. Well…as you might expect, the ship hit the sand. This little proviso quickly vanished from grants. Now medical researchers proudly publish negative results (e.g. drug A is no better than drug B).
This is not the case with climate research which is almost 100% funded by government. If you dare to present negative results you’re SOL for funding. This situation if rife for plunder and exploitation by a wealthy, ideologically driven few. They can almost bank on getting the results they desire and then market it to a largely ill-informed public. Pharmaceutical companies had to market their propaganda to a much better informed group of physicians (not impossible, just a much harder sell).
If you have a chorus of voices screaming that we’re heating up the planet and destroying our ecosystem the public takes notice. The promoters of drugs are not innocent of using hyperbole, they’re just slightly more cunning. One of my favorite examples is the much touted study that showed daily use of clopidogrel (at $3/day) reduced the risk of subsequent stroke by 50% compared to aspirin. Factually this correct. It doesn’t mean much when you look at the numbers (risk reduced from 1.3% to 0.6%). You would have to treat literally hundreds of patients with the expensive drug rather than dirt cheap aspirin for a number of years to MAYBE prevent a single instance of fatal outcome. But they still continue to dazzle a number of physicians. The same company has consumer ads on TV for this drug but I’m sure the eyes of most consumers glaze over when they see it. There is never any mention of the cost relative to the marginal benefit. There are strict limitations by the FDA concerning any claims that a drug manufacturer can make.
Not so with climate science. AGW proponents can make any outlandish claims they want. The only similarity is that they, too, avoid any mention of cost for the plans they propose nor do they offer up realistic scenarios of expected, statistically proven outcomes. Climatology is the wild west of science.
All these eco-scares provide fertile ground for exploitation by the ideologically driven. Facts and proof don’t matter. Worse still, our tax dollars are funding it.
Media campaigns are wars of rhetoric. As such, all presentations of evidence are done to support the argument. I don’t have any problem with this activity as long as it is understood that scientific evidence is being used to support a rhetorical position. However, I have a big problem when any campaign appeals to the authority of their scientific evidence and leaps to the conclusion that their rhetorical position is therefore the truth. It’s a rather unpersuasive way to sell an argument to me because they are corrupting the value of the scientific evidence and to a lesser extent the scientific method.
Bottom line for me: If the scientific evidence is not strong enough to confirm a predicted causal relationship then I’m not persuaded. And the trouble with climatology is that none of the scientific evidence is strong enough. So let’s get back to applying scientific method to environmental problems with well known and predictable causal mechanisms.
BobT,
You may have already see this, but it’s too funny not to share:
Holy smoke sanity at last!!!!
————-
But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed conspiracy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a conspiracy theory to explain events of the past two decades.
————
but it won’t do the slightest bit of good.
Egos (left and right) get too attached too the idea that they have special insight into things they can’t possibly know and so reality is denied.
“But you should also put away the idea that this is some centrally directed consp!racy with an aim of global government. There is no need of a consp!racy theory to explain events of the past two decades.”
Tom, I’d by lying if I said your stance doesn’t confuse me, though I may be misinterpreting what you say. I agree wholeheartedly that there is no need of a consp!racy theory (so I don’t trip the filter) for as I’ve said countless times most of this agenda is transparent and readily available for all to see, and not consp!ratorial interpretations of the agenda but the agenda material itself from the parties involved. So with that, I can’t see how you could possibly propose that the aim here is not global government.
Adding to my confusion of your statements is the memory of what you said just a few weeks ago in comment #5 in the article Jeff Id created about global governance spawned by my initial comment. You can find your response here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/uns-ideal-global-government/#comment-35261
“Broadly speaking” you agreed with the article and ended with, “It’s the poor that have to be kept down for their shabby little plans to work.”
So what “shabby little plans” do you mean and would said plans be “centrally directed”? In that article I spoke at length about some of the details of the agenda from the UN-sponsored Commission on Global Governance, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, and in comment #24, the Club of Rome (they are not from a Dan Brown novel and count Gore, Gates, and Strong among their powerful ranks). All of these sources are out there for you to research the topic, so how exactly is it that you draw your conclusions about global government and your contention that the idea be “put away”?
The only way I can make sense of your stance is to say that the word “consp!racy” is unnecessary because that implies this is being done in secret when most of it is not. They seem rather proud in fact about precisely how they plan to save us from ourselves. I’ll leave you with that Club of Rome quote I highlighted in my comment:
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
Some of those open sources for you to scrutinize, hopefully more closely than you apparently already have:
http://www.sovereignty.net/p/gov/gganalysis.htm
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/index.php?idp=94#1
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/0/17394484.pdf
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
I have been breezing over these Thomas Fuller essays over the last several weeks.
I guess is what bothers me most is that Thomas Fuller seems late to the game with his profundatries.
For those of us following the bouncing ball of the globalony hoax, Thomas Fuller’s essays are pedantic.
If I may cut to the chase and ask that thinkers like Thomas Fuller cut to the chase.
Globalony is a hoax. It is a massive propaganda campaign. Everything proposed by Algore, his ensconsed scientists at GISS, NOAA, and the EPA are liars.
There, Thomas… that was not so hard to do….
To beat around the bush is Stockholme Syndrome. The libs lie. Sustainabiltiy is a cult. Globalony is a hoax.
There….don’t we all feel better?
Man up Thomas & quit dancing around the obvious.
Thomas, I beg to disagree with you on the conspiracy issue. If you study history on the right and ancient sources, you will notice that “conspiracy” was the way the world was ruled almost from the beginning. In more recent times, starting with the Venetians merchants, you’ll see that when they were defeated by Florence and Romans, they moved to Germany and later to England. In England the Venetians became powerful and had the most strong influence on Her Majesty Queen Victoria –Disraeli was one of them. They built the British Empire.
The ones who went to Germany soon were in 1776 convinced by Adam Weishaupt to form the sect known as the “Illuminati”. They were persecuted and Weishaput was sentenced to death in Bavaria but managed to escape and sought refuge with Duke Edward of Saxe-Gotha. Finally, they were financed by the Rothschild house in Frankfurt, and sent to France, where the Illuminati had a fundamental role in the French Revolution.
Today the Illuminati are still in good health, with several organizations working for them: the Bilderberg group, the New York Council for Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and many, many others, as the IMF, World Bank, the U.N., etc.
If you don’t like the word “conspiracy”, just replace it with “a gentlemen agreement”.
LuXs : September 13, 2010 at 10:43 am
It is interesting how often this Club of Rome MISquote is made:
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
—————————
The real quote:
http://www.archive.org/download/TheFirstGlobalRevolution/TheFirstGlobalRevolution.pdf
The common enemy of humanity is Man
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.
In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes.
All these dangers are caused by human intervention In natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
—————————–
somewhat different!
thefordprefect says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:28 pm
“somewhat different!”
Yeah, good luck with that.
Philip Thomas says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:38 pm
…. Thomas Fuller, ex Green Technology consultant to the UK government has business interests with the EC!…
_______________________________________________–
Thank you for that tidbit. It looks to me that Mr Fuller is busy doing a bit of damage control and misdirection for his masters.
Here is the very obvious connection which I gave him a couple of days ago but he ignored:
Stan Greenberg “…specializes in research on globalization…” http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg
Stan Greenberg provides strategic advice and research for leaders, companies, campaigns, and NGOs trying to advance their issues in tumultuous times…
“…He is also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming….” http://tpm.apperceptive.com/profile/Stan%20Greenberg
SGreenberg Carville Shrum directed Campaigns in 60 countries including Tony Blair’s in the UK.
ANd look what the UK’s Tony Blair is doing now. He is a paid adviser to JP Morgan, receives fees through Tony Blair Associates for private consultancy work and speech-making, as well as office costs and expenses in his work as Middle East envoy.
SO on to CAGW. Remember the leaked Danish text at Copenhagen that turned control of the carbon credit scheme over to the World Bank?
Well here is the banking connection again:
Not only does Strong have ties to the Rockefellers and the World Bank, Maurice Strong introduced Edmund de Rothschild on the Fourth World Wilderness Conference in September 1987, held in Denver and southern Colorado: “One of the most important initiatives that is open here for your consideration is that of the Conservation Banking Program. As mentioned this morning, we have [inaudible] here the person who really is the source of this very significant concept. He was/is one of the trustees of the International Wilderness Foundation which sponsored this meeting. He was at the first of these conferences. His conversion to the relationship between conservation and economic development has been a pioneering one… Many of the energy developments that we have seen have come from his early anticipation of our energy needs… And I’m just delighted to have this opportunity of introducing to you, Edmund de Rothschild.” http://isgp.eu/organisations/introduction/PEHI_Maurice_F_Strong_bio.htm
1972- UN’s First Earth Summit:
As Elaine Dewar wrote in Toronto’s Saturday Night magazine:
“It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.”
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg106963.html
“..Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.” http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html
Mr Fuller You forgot to mention these organizations are UN NGOs
“..As Elaine Dewar wrote in Toronto’s Saturday Night magazine: as an adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. Above all, he served on the Commission on Global Governance — which, as we shall see, plays a crucial part in the international power grab. The Commission on Global Governance (CGG), was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and head of the Socialist International. In 1991, the Club of Rome (of which Strong is, of course, a member) issued a report called The First Global Revolution, which asserted that current problems “are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives.
Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues,” notes Peter Spiro. “Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots.” The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations.” http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
Then there is the Climategate e-mail on Global Governance & Sustainable Development (B1)
Here is who theGed Davisin the e-mail is (Shell Oil executive with IPCC connection)
Senerio B1 is Agenda 21.UN Division for Sustainable Development – full text of Agenda 21
UN REFORM – Restructuring for Global Governance
Our Global Neighborhood – Report of the Commission on Global Governance: a summary analysis
We have had Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and more recently Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin so why the heck whenever anyone brings up the subject of a totalitarian world government is it considered a deranged fantasy?
Perhaps this is the reason. As one history professor noted Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country’s evolution… Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion
For a very well documented study on the recent history of a group of elites controlling the USA look at this article.
One additional point.
In the last decades we have seen business become concentrated into a few powerful multinational banks and corporations. National borders, tarriffs, quarrantine, local laws and governments are seen as an impediment to business by these multinationals. That is why we ended up with the World Trade Organization and the WTO agreement on Agriculture which gave the USA open borders tainted food and medicine and tuberculosis infected cattle showing up in US states that have been TB free for years.
Why on earth would anyone think these business people, who have met on a yearly basis since 1954 in a closed conference, would NOT be working towards a one world government. Preferably one they control???
Back in 2007 or 2008, the UN commissioned a study that supported the idea of moving the people to the food, rather than moving the food to the people. What this report recommended was moving the world’s poor onto the most productive farmland. I can’t see anything that happening now that is not moving in that direction. Open borders, the payment from government to farmers to allow their fields to revert to original “habitat”, and finally regulation to the point of strangulation. These policies are ending the days of lucrative private farming and the value of private property.
I spent several hours today trying to find the report. Alas, no luck. At the time when I first read it, it was a featured report on the UN’s website. Perhaps another reader can find it? The idea was so preposterous to me at the time that I scoffed at it. Now, it seems possible within the crazy, radical, agenda driven world that we live in.
I completely agree. I used to call this phenomenon “Class Action Conspiracy”. No actual conspiring going on. Just a sort of dumbed-down likemindedness and the usual bandwagon effect.
The media campaigns and coordination described above are by no means limited to environmental issues. The identical tactics are used to promote progressive economics and politics in general. Can you say Journolist? How about Center for American Progress? MoveOn.org?
Ian Wishart (from New Zealand) wrote an excellent book on AGW called AIR CON. In chapter 16 he dealt with the motivations of those in the alarmist movement. This entire chapter is available in PDF format at SPPI. It is truly worth a perusal.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/seriously_inconvenient_truth.pdf
GaryM says:
September 13, 2010 at 8:59 pm
The media campaigns and coordination described above are by no means limited to environmental issues….
_________________________________________
I became a believer in the big C when I saw it in action from the inside.
Sweetheart plastics, McDonald’s (hamburgers) and Polysar had a very nice joint venture planned for recycling McDonald’s polystyrene waste. The plant was to be built in Leominster MA and was designed to employ handicaped workers. It was a really nice pro-community project that we were all proud of. Unfortunately it did not project the correct “corporations are evil” image. Les than one month before the TV commercials advertizing the joint venture were to air. The anti-polystyrene campaign blew up out of nowhere, supposedly started by a New Hampshire school teacher and went nationwide in a week. The information was lies but it effectively killed the project and shut down five manufacturing plants in Massachusetts alone.
There is no way in Hades some teenager got nationwide coverage on that issue at the critical time without a lot of power and money backing her.
I related this story to John Munsell and he told me he could not get any coverage about the e-coli contamination by Con Agri and the political cover up. According to what John told me, he was interviewed by a big New York magazine, the story written, approved by the editor and then killed by the magazine’s owner. John’s story
So much for “free speech”
Semantic Analysis, a general procedure:
1. of all possible things in the world a person could choose to spend time doing, why does the person choose to make a topic of this? why does this person want you to think about this?
2. of all possible angles a person could choose to take on a topic of conversation, why does the person choose this one from all the others? what does this person want you to think about it?
3. of all possible words in the dictionary, why would a person choose to use these particular ones? how does this person want you to think?
this very often reveals much more than the promoter of the topic intended.
The inclusion of RealClimate in the icons heading this article set an immediate red flag for me. Its banner even looks like one. It is a science blog and to the best of my knowledge does not solicit or receive public funding of any description. “Which of these things is not like the other…” Ok. I suspended judgment and read on, but there was not even one mention of RealClimate anywhere in the text!
Mark S later questioned the inclusion of RealClimate and Steven Mosher replied with an explicit mention of David Michaels, author of “Doubt is their product.” Extraordinarily, this was exactly the text I had in mind the instant I saw the opening banner of the article. If WWF, GreenPeace etc are to be damned, RealClimate is left to be damned by the mere association of its icon in the image at top, without any appraisal of its similarity or otherwise with respect to the other organisations, the content of its blog or the qualifications of its authors.
I recommend “Doubt is their product” and applying its insights to RealClimate, WUWT and environmental reporting in equal measure.
Gail Coombs,
I was really suprised to find that Skeptical Inquirer magazine was run by CSI who have contractual obligations to the UN. The UN gives out ECOSOC status, only granted if the NGO has “.. provided that they can demonstrate that their programme of work is of direct relevance to the aims and purposes of the United Nations
To hold this status, ECOSOC’s terms state that they must “..support the work of the United Nations and to promote knowledge of its principles and activities..”.
http://www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/res/1996/eres1996-31.htm
This means Skeptical Inquirer cannot publish articles that do not support the UN and its interests, they have to be UN mouthpieces which expains why their supposedly balanced articles are never critical of the IPCC or Global Warming. In fact they are constantly pushing CAGW down our throats.
Here is a list of over 3000 ECOSOC NGOs, some of which purport to be involved scientific research, but all of which are tied to being UN zombies. They do the UN’s dirty propaganda and viral marketing while UN remains saintly.
http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/pdf/INF_List.pdf
Some one says:
“Thank you for that tidbit. It looks to me that Mr Fuller is busy doing a bit of damage control and misdirection for his masters. ”
You can be green, concerned for the environment, as is Athony Watts, and NOT have ‘political masters’ !!!!!!!!!
For Goodness sake….. Are all the commentors here comletely ignorant of the work Tom Fuller has done to shone a light into the corruption of science that is CAGW
I suggest you all buy, the book that Anthony Watts ADVERTISES onthe front page of this website.. Written by Thomas Fuller. (and S Mosher 😉 )
Criticise him if you will AFTER, you have read the book…
Tom Fuller is very sceptical of CAGW…
His politics are very different than my own, but he thinks science is more important than politics.
He wrote the BOOK: Climategate – The Crutape letter..
That tears strips out of the ‘hockey stick team’
To quote the back cover:
“The Team, led by Phil Jones and Michael Mann, in attempts to shape the debate and influence public policy:
Actively worked to evade Mcintyre’s Freedom of Information requests, deleting emails, documents and EVEN CLIMATE DATA
Tried to corrupt the peer reviewed principles that are the mainstay of modern sceince, reviewing each others work, SABOTAGING eforts of opponents trying to publish their own work, and threatening editors of journals who didn’t bow to their demands.
Changed the shape of their own data in materials shown to politicians charged with changing the shape of our world, ‘hiding the decline ‘ that showed their data COULD NOT BE TRUSTED.
READ the book, do anyone really think, he is doing damage control for his masters…
Thomas and his co-author have arguably done as much, or MOREthan Athony Watts tpo highlight this issue…
While you are about it, read ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ – A W Montford (why no link Anthony?)
As this tells Steve Mcintyres (Climate Audit) story with respect to dismantylying the hockey stick and the teeam, up to Copenhage last year. Andrew Montford was able to squeeze in a final chapther, on the climategate emails, which verified the history he had allready written, of Steve Mcintyres quest, with Michael Mann, the ‘team’ (CRU, Jones, etc) and RealClimate…
Some of the commentors here are beyond parody, it is NOT a political issue. You can be sceptical of CAGW, and be on the LEFT, RIGHT, Centre ground of politics…
Take a look at Futerra – A media PR company, specialising in all things ‘Climate Change since 2001..
Are they:
1) All part of a conspiracy, designed to bombard the media, and the elite with a world wide agenda of climate change propaganda, working to create a globalised worldorder ran by the UN
OR
2)Are they a group of media professionals that started a business, and have done very well, marketing, communicating the ‘IPCC’ climate change message to the media, public, UK governments, Greenpeace, etc.
They started the busines because they are caring creative people that felt they should do something. They BELIEVE the fact that CAGW is real and dangerous….
1) is a conspircay – too be laughed at,
as the simple explanation 2) that produced the exact same result, just shows human nature..
This is the point Tom is trying to get across.
Yes, of course, there are now huge vested interest. but the majority of those you may find is actually big business, politicians jumping on the CAGW delusion bandwagon, to make money, or raise taxes..
Futerra – The Rules of the Game,
“Futerra and The UK Department for Environment published the Rules of the Game on 7 March 2005. The game is communicating climate change; the Rules will help us win it. The document was created as part of the UK Climate Change Communications Strategy.”
was one of the documents leaked in the Climategate hack
“Our audiences are
emotional rather
than rational.”
A gem of a quote.. from Futera.
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Branding_Biodiversity.pdf (latests buzz word)
Now we have:
” Sell the Sizzle” – Futerra.
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Sellthesizzle.pdf
and to complement Rules of the Game,
to change peoples behaviour.
New Rules;New Game
http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/NewRules_NewGame.pdf
(Rules of the Game, was one of the leaked documents in the Climategare/CRU hack/leak/whistleblowing)
Not forgeting – Words that Sell –
Where did ‘Carbon Footprint’ come from, these guys focus grouped it.
http://www.futerra.co.uk/revolution/leading_thinking
Nice business to be in…
Client list, includes BBC, UK Gov, UN Environment Program, etc
http://www.futerra.co.uk/clients/
The CAGW delusion, is NOT a hoax, scam, con, conspiracy….
It is MARKETING ! 😉 😉
I think Tom’s right. There’s no need for a con*****cy, although there’s no doubt that many proponents of the AGW story do collude. Those who suggest a “bandwagon effect” are closer to the mark.
My six decades involvement in the affairs of man have left me with a guiding principle for understanding the underlying realities of any situation – it’s called “Follow the money”.
That is perhaps overly cynical in a situation where mankind’s emotions are involved as well as their wallets, so a kinder way of describing the group-think collective behind AGW is a “community of interest”. There’s something in it for all of them, which makes it easy for them to subscribe to each new twisted morsel of supposed “evidence” that we’re doomed unless we act NOW.
Consider the actors in this drama, and what each has to gain from “belief”:
1) Presidents, Prime Ministers, Dictators, Despots et al – the opportunity to elevate themselves from flawed mortals into statesmen, the saviours of all people, true leaders whose vision transcends mere national boundaries and encompasses the world. The Nobel Prize beckons, at least for those who haven’t prematurely received one.
2) The U.N. – At last, the opportunity to be relevant and make its mark, with the possibility of garnering funds of its own, rather than having to beg for them from reluctant, corrupt, or bankrupt nations.
3) Wealthy first-world nations – These people realise that there’s only so much of everything to go round, and it’s their leaders’ duty to make sure that they get the lion’s share of whatever’s going, to maintain the standard of living that their citizens perceive as a permanent right, not a privilege. In condemning increasing emissions of CO2, what they really mean is that poor nations should not get ideas above their station and aspire to catch up. They would like the residents of those benighted nations to be taught to appreciate their stone-age conditions and be ready to serve as a repository of carbon credits that richer folks can buy to avoid compromising their own standards.
3) Poor and developing nations – Backward nations produce and consume bugger-all, so they feel entitled to be smug and righteous about their own minuscule carbon footprints. The leaders of these nations, and their friends and families, are acutely aware of the guilt of the west and waste no opportunity to exploit that shame. Riches beyond imagination could become available to the small cabal of corrupt a**holes who benefit. The people remain, fortunately, blissfully unaware of the existence of Al Gore and the IPCC, but they’d kill for a small gas stove.
4) China and India – These upcoming economies, with hundreds of millions of middle-class citizens and a couple of billion more who want to be, will play games for as long as it suits them. If there are any green jobs to be had, they will get most of them, and in the long run they will end up owning everything of value on earth. That process has already begun in earnest.
5) Low-lying nations – These places, which have been low-lying nations in all recorded human history and will continue to be so, feel supremely qualified to attach themselves to the golden teat. What’s more, they can get millions of strangers to sympathise with their imaginary plight and pay through the nose to assuage their guilt .
6) Politicians – Average politicians are fragile creature, elected by people who don’t know them, and slaves to the orthodoxy of the party that makes their elevation possible. Despite their personal beliefs, they vote as directed by the party’s vote-catching issue du jour. After all, who can be criticised for supporting a motion to save the world? Only ex-politicians tell the truth about what they really think.
7) The Financial community – These parasites are the ultimate example of “Follow the Money”, because that’s all they do. We should not be surprised that they enthusiastically support the creation of a new method of creating personal riches without actually doing anything useful. If carbon = cash, that’s all they need to know.
8) Big Oil – These guys are smart enough to know that they are in the energy business, not the oil business, and they don’t give a toss where the energy comes from as long as they can make a buck out of it. They need new sources to keep them in business when the oil runs out, and they know exactly how to procure subsidies to keep the dough rolling in. The beaut thing about green energy is that it’s prodigiously expensive and potentially much more profitable.
9) Academics – These are the supposed subject-matter experts, and across the world they have seized the opportunity to secure handsome and continuous funding so long as they keep supplying speculative papers that fuel the hysteria. Like politicians, they risk career suicide if they dare to depart from the party line
10) The media/journalists – It’s their business to report on the issues that count, and going with the flow, or actually even creating what appears to be a flow, is their job. Only the brave divert from the orthodox path.
11) Greenies – The guilt trip lies heavily on these folks, and AGW absolutely fits their narrative about how mankind is ruining everything Many of them have pure and honest motives, but the organisations that have sprung up around them – not so much. The apparatchiks who have hijacked the original movements (with which many of us here undoubtedly sympathise to some extent) are very focussed on the money trail that funds their grandiloquent activities.
12) Ordinary folk who take an interest in the welfare of their world – When subjected to a barrage of apparently uncontested agreement about our impending doom, it is the assumed duty of any civic-minded citizen to play their own small part in rectifying the situation for the good of all. Non-scientists in the main, they are blameless if they accept the apparent verdict of those who are paid to consider such matters. Belief, and being supportive of action, is conscience-easing – as long as it doesn’t cost too much.
Taken as a whole, that’s an awful lot of people who have a vested interest in the AGW scam.
Meanwhile, over at WUWT we have no barrow to push, absolutely nothing to gain, except perhaps the satisfaction of averting an unnecessary and destructive panic in the search for long-term energy solutions.
Philip Thomas says:
September 14, 2010 at 2:22 am
…I was really surprised to find that Skeptical Inquirer magazine was run by CSI who have contractual obligations to the UN…
__________________________________________-
WOW We have subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer for years. Hubby is going to be very interested in that.
Thanks for the additional info. Once you accept there are people greedy for power and wealth who have migrated to the UN it is real easy to see what is going on. One only has to look at the European Union and The World Trade Organization to see which way the wind is blowing and it is NOT towards democracy but towards a Dictatorship. Unfortunately it is a lot closer than many realize.
As the FDA of the USA stated in their internet article:
International Harmonization
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/int-laws.html
“The harmonization of laws, regulations and standards between and among trading partners requires intense, complex, time-consuming negotiations by CFSAN officials. Harmonization must simultaneously facilitate international trade and promote mutual understanding, while protecting national interests and establish a basis to resolve food issues on sound scientific evidence in an objective atmosphere. Failure to reach a consistent, harmonized set of laws, regulations and standards within the freetrade agreements and the World Trade Organization Agreements can result in considerable economic repercussions.”
Those who want power have studied real history in their private schools even though we do not.
“The kings and princes of Europe had learned from hard experience that they could raise the taxes of their subjects only so high and then they had a revolt on their hands and they tended to lose their jobs (and heads). It appears that that natural level was about 40-43%; people will tolerate taxes up to about 40-43% and then they start digging in their heels and they just won’t allow it to go any further. But with the central bank mechanism in place the lid was off. Now these governments could tax their people 50%, 60%, 70% and in some cases 80% of everything they produced and they did not have a revolt on their hands….” Source
The Real Power Brokers learned another thing. It is a lot safer if the people have no idea of who you actually are and safer yet if they think they live in a “democracy” when they actually live in a dictatorship. The EU model of allowing the “unwashed” to elect a local government while the real power resides in a body that hands down the decisions is what is envisioned for the world’s future.
Even control of the “local government” is an illusion. In the USA, state government is being bypassed by a parallel government called “Regional Commissions.” These unelected bodies are run by UN sanctioned NGOs implementing “sustainability” the code word for the UN’s Agenda 21.
“There are currently six Regional Commissions in place, or pending final approval, which impact states from New York to California; from Florida to Washington. Few people realize that these regional commissions even exist, or the growing influence they have over the lives of ordinary people, by providing the mechanism through which appointed individuals, rather than elected officials, develop public policy….
The regional governance concept began in earnest with the Clinton-Gore administration. On the heels of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, came the President’s Community Empowerment Board, chaired by Vice President Al Gore…” http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/feb2004/regional.htm
If you bother to look it is all out in the open staring us in the face but Mr. Fuller has the gall to try and tell us ” Nothing to see here, move along”
I guess the power brokers are starting to notice WUWT. Unfortunately they have a tendency to silence those who are too loud. For example Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, who “brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, The Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, UNLAWFUL CONVERSION, AND TREASON.” http://hiwaay.net/~becraft/mcfadden.html
McFadden not only lost his Congressional seat but was shot at twice and finally died of poison.
Barry Woods said on The Media Campaigns That Promote Dubious Science
September 14, 2010 at 3:06 am
Buyer beware! What CAGW is marketing has an extremely high probability of being a myth, hoax, scam, con, or some combination of some or all. Having done environemtal research at EPA for over 20 years, I’m not buying.
Fred..
I just said, it was NOT, a scam, hoax, conspiracy…..
marketing! was a little tongue in cheek(warmists seem to have no sense of humour)
shall I change this to ‘human nature’
I guess anybody reading this thread, can just follow the links I put in, have a read,think about what I have said. AND draw their own conclusions..
Some people just don’t seem to like that happening………..
You’re right it’s not a conspiracy. It’s groupthink. That, plus some pretty rabid self-interested people and organizations like CRU, Gore and GE, who catalyze the process.