Climate change – follow the money

Isn’t it funny how skeptics are called ‘conspiracy theorists’ yet the alarmist nutters are claiming a conspiracy of fossil fuel companies intent on secretly undermining efforts to address climate change with tiny donations.
Conspiracy theory: a theory that explains an event or situation as the result of a secret plan by usually powerful people or groups
Fossil fuel companies are very powerful groups.

I am always fascinated by the officious sounding and ominous warnings that come out multiple times a day from various sources about the dire consequences of their projections and little evidence contained in DATA.
We will have no food. Entire land masses will become deserts and uninhabitable. At the same time, rising sea levels will drown us all.
I have NEVER been able to have any of these people explain to me: 1) What IS the perfect temperature? 2 degrees from now? 3 degrees ago? 2) What is the sea level “supposed” to be? There are coral reefs in deep water now, meaning that they were in shallow water at some time in the past. Yet, there are coral quarries in Florida and limestone deposits in Indiana.
Earthquakes and volcanoes cause far more IMMEDIATE damage than climate. Let’s do something about them.

They spam for money and events, too. I don’t recall ever signing up for emails from the edf, or “joining” the edf, but I recently found myself on their regular list. They mail me several times a week urging me to sign petitions, participate in walks for climate justice, and of course, send them money.
I suspect that this is a case of nonprofit abuse — at the very least they engage in questionable practices when they add people to a mailing list without permission. I’ve remained on it because I’m curious as to what their propaganda machine kicks out.
The problem with NGO and nonprofits is that anybody can found one (the rules are quite liberal) and make themselves an officer. There are then effectively no limits on what you can pay yourself as a salary or bonus in the nonprofit (at least none that I’ve ever seen). The “not for profit” practice management group that took over my wife’s practice, for example, pays its top officers multimillion dollar salaries and multimillion dollar bonuses. Instead of distributing double taxed income (C corp) or tightly held singly taxed income/increased value (S corp), by distributing NOTHING and “paying a salary and bonus as large as our income will stand” they get to make out like single-taxed bandits and at the same time pretend that they are doing good, after all, they are running a non-profit NGO.
One day, with luck, congress will cap this and decapitate the tax avoidance scam they created by not capping it in the first place. Top executive salaries of (say) a few hundred thousand, no bonus, or else you lose your tax-exempt non-profit status would do it nicely. In the meantime, it would be very interesting to see just what the EDF pays its top officers. Are they selfless volunteers? Or are they making (say) $5 million a year and another $5 million in bonuses? How much money actually is spent “fighting climate change” and just how is it spent?
The other money you should follow is the vast amount that goes from e.g. the DOE to energy companies for research into green energy, alternative energy and so on, as well as the subsidies for the implementation of same. Personally, I think that the single group that makes the most money from the supposed threat of AGW is “Energy Companies” of all sorts, including the very oil, coal and gas companies that are supposed to be the bad guys. They make a pile from the artificially inflated prices in an inelastic market, and they turn around and make more still by effectively backcharging the taxpayer for half the cost of implementing energy resources that are not optimally cost effective but “required” by increasing list of laws or public relations demands or are simply attractive with the subsidy even if they aren’t required at all.
Don’t throw me into ‘dat briar patch, Br’er Fox… oh no, please don’t.
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Électricité de France (EFF) gets its main revenue from nuclear power. Thanks to EDF the Germans are building less brown coal plants. Not that I’d be against those either.
Thanks to EDF tens of millions of people have access to reliable and affordable electricity. Albeit based on my knowledge of French, perhaps not so in Germany. But even that’s far better than the chronically deficit-churning public subsidy-depending energy companies.
As far as I’m concerned EDF can go and milk all the willing donkeys on the way. Same applies to Alvar Gullichsen who turned it into an art http://www.bonkcentre.fi/p2_eng.htm

Now that the GOP controls the House and Senate I would guess that the funding for climate related stuff will not go up. 😉

A few months ago, I wasted an hour or so reviewing EDF’s expert climate panel–there was ONE scientist out of over 50 listed experts. The scientist was a biologist, if I remember correctly, the rest of the expert team was composed of lawyers, economists, accountants, and numerous individuals that were experts at dealing with the “government.” Unfortunately, this is the state of affairs in our culture. The money this organization churns through, as well as other similar organizations, is mostly directed towards the “progressive” view of existence. In my neck of the woods, we call them “charlatans”….

It will no doubt astound many readers to learn that there are more than 26,500 American environmental groups. They collected total revenues of more than $81 billion from 2000 to 2012, according to Giving USA Institute, with only a small part of that coming from membership dues and individual contributions.
“Cracking Big Green” examined the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reports of non-profit organizations. Driessen and Arnold discovered that, among the 2012 incomes of better-known environmental groups, the Sierra Club took in $97,757,678 and its Foundation took in $47,163,599. The Environmental Defense Fund listed $111,915,138 in earnings, the Natural Resources Defense Council took in $98,701,707 and the National Audubon Society took in $96,206,883. These four groups accounted for more than $353 million in one year.
That pays for a lot of lobbying at the state and federal level. It pays for a lot of propaganda that the Earth needs saving because of global warming or climate change. Now add in Greenpeace USA at $32,791,149, the Greenpeace Fund at $12,878,777; the National Wildlife Federation at $84,725,518; the National Parks Conservation Association at $25,782,975; and The Wilderness Society at $24,862,909. Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection took in $19,150,215. That’s a lot of money to protect something that cannot be “protected”, but small in comparison to other Green organizations.
If you wonder why you have been hearing and reading endless doomsday scenarios about the warming of the Earth, the rise of the seas, and the disappearance of species and forests, for decades, the reason is that a huge propaganda machine is financed at levels that are mind boggling.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/

It is all the fault of President Eisenhower — while he warned us about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex — he failed to warn us about the far more insidious and far more devious and far more dangerous — Government – Academia – Media Complex
we just had in another domain a bit of light cast upon this — MIT Prof of Economics Dr. Jonathan Gruber [popularly considered as the ‘architect of ObamaCare’] — spilled the beans at a panel discussion about the Affordable Care Act — his words have recently gone viral [not ebola though]
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. It’s a second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
As Homes [Sherlock] says — follow the academic and his paws on our money