Maybe this is why the US bailed out of the UNFCCC “Green Climate Fund” this week.The science has been “McKibbenized” for quite some time.
Email 340.txt
date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:13:20 -0500
from: “Tom Jacob” <Tom.Jacob@USA.dupont.com>
subject: REFLECTIONS ON THE HAGUE…
to: … schellnhuber@pik-potsdam.de… jonathan.pershing@iea.org, RKinley@unfccc.int, …m.hulme@uea.ac.uk…pachuri@teri.res.in…
munasinghe@worldbank.org…
In The Hague, we saw for the first time organized disruption of the conduct of negotiation and publicly staged confrontations. While organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process through major groups suchas NRDC, EDF/ED, WWF and Greenpeace, they have operated within the structure as constructive participants in the policy-setting process, along with industry.
It gets worse:
At The Hague, this “inside” role was supplemented by hundreds of young, relatively naïve demonstrators brought in specifically to energize the environmental presence and confront the process. Even some within the ranks of the more established participants — while disavowing the takeover of the negotiating room — saw fit to publicly offer Minister Pronk and the UNFCCC Secretariate a veiled threat of “Seattle” if the process failed to deliver.
In the context of this resurgence of “environmental fundamentalism” it is also interesting to contrast the dynamics of the final give-and-take between the US and the EU in The Hague.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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More on David Viner and the British Council
–
Generations with the most at stake
16 December 2009
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=13326
Dr David Viner, head of the British Council’s climate change programme, tells Alison Thomas why young people have such a vital role to play in negotiations designed to save the world.
…some of the brightest and beadiest eyes scrutinising the politicians belong to a global network of concerned young people, galvanised into action by the work of the British Council in some 60 countries.
…More than 100,000 young people are signed up to the council’s international climate champions network, choosing climate change champions in each nation and working to develop grassroots solutions and share them with others.
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British Council gets in on the climate act
Why is the British Council spending taxpayers’ money on the recruiting of 100,000 “international climate champions”, asks Christopher Booker
13 Feb 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7231466/British-Council-gets-in-on-the-climate-act.html
1.8 Gigadollars! That would pay for one entire power station every two years somewhere in the world. Instead, it is wasted on a bunch of useless people!
Intro to weather derivatives…
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/05/052505.asp#axzz1evxU44ce
It’s not a surprise to see a big business acting in this manner. I am not against big business, but I always remember that the only reason for any business to exist is to make money. They don’t exist to give people jobs, or produce food or fuel, or make cool computers. These are just side benefits of trying to make money. They also don’t exist to follow societal ethics or morality, or even act legally, but the latter might land you in prison which doesn’t help a business make money. The former two are only considerations if they hurt the bottom line. There are plenty of illegal and unethical businesses that make big money.
Small business has no power to manipulate government into passing laws favorable to them, but big business does, so it should be no surprise that they lobby Congress to change the laws to favor them since our elected representatives have put themselves in a position to do so. Business will do whatever is necessary to make money no matter if it is rational or not. If carbon trading will make a business lots of money, then carbon trading it is. Whether it hurts the overall economy is no matter.
With this in mind, and borrowing from Jefferson’s “a wall between church and state,” I say we need a wall between business and state, at least in the sense that business cannot buy the favor of lawmakers. And after all these Climategate revelations, I think we need to consider a wall between public science and state too. It seems that some publicly funded scientists have become government lobbyists promoting both their personal beliefs and their own financial gain.
Gail.
I actually worked for a national Patent Office. You have to have a very, very good reason to extend past the 17 years. (Usually it is only awarded to drugs, which take so long to get to market that the patents are worthless otherwise.)
The patent you cite (#3258500) is not a patent for Freon. It is a process patent. Anyone could make Freon at the time, provided they used another method. A catalyst patent might be worth something, but process patents rarely.
Companies like DuPont own loads and loads of patents worth effectively nothing. I know, I used to see dozens of theirs (surfactants mostly). It’s small beer for them, and it might slow their competitors down a little.
There is no way that patent was keeping anyone else from making Freon. And that still leaves the problem: why did DuPont’s competitors agree to the CFC ban if it was only helping DuPont?
We need a Chemical Rehab Society. For Freon, DDT, Alar, aspartame, and many more.
This looks like a “Pay for play”, i.e., WWF is paying scientists to write press releases:
#3107
http://dump.kurthbemis.com/climategate2/FOIA/mail/3107.txt
date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 07:13:31 -0400
from: “markham/dompka”
subject: Climate scenarios
to: “mike hulme”
“* Please refer to WWF just as WWF, since we have two different names. ”
“* In the first paragraph in the second column (the section on the last century), is it confusing to talk about the two periods of maximum warming? Critics often talk about the lack of explanation for no warming between 1940 and 1970 as a reason to disregard the warming trend. Maybe you can clarify, explain or leave out?”
“* Is there any space for a couple of blown-up quotes in the margin or somewehere? If so, I nominate these two – possibly paraphrased to be shortened in the second case:
1. From 3rd para. The year 1998 was probably the warmest…
2. From 5th para. Recent climate model experiments show that…”
“* Somewhere I’d like a stronger sentence/reference to possibly biodiversity, wildlife or species loss. As far as I can see, it only gets a very vague mention “”
“On contracts. I’m really sorry about the mess and will try to start sorting this out this morning when I get into work (you can call or e-mail me there). Just remind me though, this contract did not account for the publication, printing and distribution did it? WWF-UK seems to be confused about this and now I am too. Apologies again – maybe next time, I’ll pay the university overheads. Adam”
Gail Combs— in the dead of night the treasonous US Senate unanomously ( 97-3 ) abolished the BILL OF RIGHTS!