Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, I woke up to some bad news this morning. It turns out that the GAO, the US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.
They were already told not to do that by the GAO. In the 2005 GAO report with the swingeing title of “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete”, the GAO said … well, basically what the title said. But noooo, those sneaky bureaucrats didn’t do that at all.
The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.
The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.
I also found out that the IPCC got $12.1 million dollars from the US Global Change Research Program. That one really angrifies my blood. The IPCC flat out states that they do not do a single scrap of scientific research … so why is the US Global Change Research Program giving them a dime, much less twelve million, that was supposed to go for research? I could use that for my research, for example …
The 2011 GAO report had some strong advice for the climate profiteers behind this secretive funding. They said:
“Congress and the public cannot consistently track federal climate change funding or spending over time,”
Oh, no, wait, that’s what the GAO said back in 2005. Unfortunately, they have no enforcement powers. What they said this time around was that the funding information:
“… was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”
In other words … no change from 2005.
Congressfolk, you are not paying attention. These guys are taking money for research and using it to party in Durban and other nice places around the planet. And the US has been secretly funding them for a decade.
Can anyone name for me one valuable thing that the IPCC has done? Can anyone point to an accomplishment by the IPCC that justifies their existence? Because I can’t. They throw a good party, to be sure, their last global extravaganza had 10,000 guests … but as for advancing the climate discussion, they have done nothing but push it backwards.
And the next Assessment Report, AR5, will be even more meaningless than the last. This time, people are watching them refuse to require conflict-of-interest statements from the authors. This time, people are watching them appoint known serial scientific malfeasants to positions of power in the writing of the report. This time, people are keeping track of the petty machinations of the railroad engineer that’s running the show despite calls from his own supporters to step down.
As a result, the AR5 report from the IPCC has been pre-debunked. It will be published to no doubt great fanfare and sink like a stone, dragged down by the politicized, poorly summarized bad science and rewarmed NGO puff pieces that the IPCC is promoting as though they were real science.
Folks … can we call a long overdue halt to this IPCC parade of useless and even antiscientific actions? Can we stop the endless partying at taxpayer expense? Can we “trow da bums out” and get back to climate science?
Please?
I say DEFUND THE IPCC NOW!
w.
PS—The GAO report is available here. And all is not lost, at least one Congressman is working to defund the IPCC:
Wrapped into the many amendments recently passed by the House of Representatives — a total of $60 billion in spending cuts that the president called a “nonstarter” — was one by Republican Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group whose occasional missteps have been the source of countless confrontations among climate scientists over the past year.
…
A congressional aide told FoxNews.com that he plans to pursue the bill — regardless of whether it is passed in the larger Republican budget.
“The congressman plans to continue his effort to stop taxpayer support of the IPCC and remains cautiously optimistic that the Senate will take the amendment,” said Keith Beardslee, a spokesman for the congressman. “Failing that, Blaine has reintroduced separate legislation he first introduced in the 111th Congress to halt funding to the IPCC.”
GO MISSOURI! GO LUETKEMEYER!!
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Typo
“they’re” not “their” in ” … hoping their holding assets not junk.”
Also – as the science is settled and we’re all gonna burn and there is no doubt there is absolutely no need for further science
and hence no need for expensive holiday junkets
– let’s leave it to the ploiticians to deal with.
Thanks for this info Willis. I agree with you … GO LUETKEMEYER!!
The bill is H.R. 680: To prohibit United States contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … you can look it up at govtrack.us and/or PopVox.com
I just wrote to my congressman asking him to support this bill!
Willis,
I’m not up to speed on the report in question, or the story. But based on how government works, it’s possible that the IPCC received funding that wasn’t “spent” properly by a federal agency. Money get’s moved around all the time when discretionary funds are not spend on schedule. Are we certain that someone in the State Department deliberately sent funds to the IPCC, or was the decision made elsewhere because it was “extra money” that had not been spent?
Without becoming a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – I can’t help wondering what’s going on. I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. I wonder if there are layers of motive behind the governmental pushing of AGW that we haven’t thought about enough?
Thanks for the info, Karen D. Now we just need to toss out most of the Dems and quite a few Republicans in the Senate.
Willis, do you mean that the flies be shood away and the honey jar have its lid screwed on tight? But what would the flies eat then? Poor flies, they will die of hunger. Poor flies. //Sarc off.
Great post. Way to go W.
Alex
Since this has been happening for some time and over the better part of 2 different administrations one needs to wounder where to oversight committees of congress are doing. I suspect not very much. This shit is pulled mostly by senior bureaucrats and political appointees. These people the congress, administration and bureaucracy believe the tax money belongs to them not the taxpayers so they can do with it what they want. Don’t believe me just buy one a few beers and you will learn just how deeply they believe this crap. Politicians are the worst of the lot too. They believe it is their duty to bribe the voters with their own tax money.
proskeptic says:
January 5, 2012 at 2:48 pm
“Without becoming a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – I can’t help wondering what’s going on. I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. I wonder if there are layers of motive behind the governmental pushing of AGW that we haven’t thought about enough?”
The idea behind CAGW was always to use it as a tool to push energy price hikes, tax increases and development of alternative energy infrastructures in order to reduce the dependency on middle Eastern oil. Probably goes back to 1973, oil price shock, Kissinger, Nixon, Limits To Growth, Club Of Rome.
A while later, during the 1975 Endangered Atmosphere conference, some scientists, Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock came up with a believable scare story.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
From there it was fabrication from start to finish…
Maybe the State Dept should rethink how useful the entire operation really is. Looks like it got out of hand. But maybe they still want to uphold it as an argument to stop the US from exploiting its own reserves; leaving them as strategic reserves for the future.
Good old George Bush.
The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!
“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”
highflight56433 says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:03 am
Back to the basic fundamental problem we humans can’t seem to get straight. Politics and politicians, rather than ethical servant leadership.
____
If want honest public leaders in Washington you’ll need to take the money out of the equation, and to do that, you’ll need to have campaign finance reform and term limits, and to do that, you’ll need to:
1) Get both the Senate and House to approve new legislation that would essentially cut them off from their happy little gravy trains (not at all likely)
2) Have a true People’s March on Washington and throw the bums out (even less likely as the shelves at Walmart are nicely stocked, most voters are asleep or radicalized into meaningless liberal/conservative bickering, and besides, if they marched on Washington to demand campaign finance reform and term limits, they’d risk getting shot or beat, and Americans are generally adverse to getting physically injured, etc. etc. etc.)
In other words, most Americans are more than willing to accept that the rich and powerful control their lives, and so long as they can watch their favorite TV program and buy their favorite tasty TV dinner at Walmart, they’re quite content to do nothing.
So many worthless organizations receiving tax $$, so little time …
Sadly, previous efforts to defund these leeches has been uniformly ineffective. They just scurry away from the light like cockroaches and pop out somewhere else where people aren’t looking.
I will write my Congressional representatives, but I suspect it will be futile.
proskeptic says: “…I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. ”
Sorry, I disagree. Did you see Erinome post above where she quoted, apparently favorably, the “Mission Statement” [oh, god, don’t get me started on the time and money wasted on developing those vapid, meaningless, globs of words] of the State Department? Here it is, and your assignment is to name one left-wing institution that a “left philanthropic bleeding heart” WOULD fund, but that the State Department WOULD NOT fund, acting pursuant to this drivel:
“Shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”
And we like puppy dogs, and unicorns, and rainbows, and ……….
There is a huge amount spent on climate research and another huge amount spent on green projects.
If you think of it in terms of cost / benefit analysis, it is…
… a gazillion dollars (including the failed green projects) that has produced a net drag on the economy and caused untold societal problems and has not resulted in a net change in the climate (which is not warming anyway).
That sounds like a lose/lose/lose/lose scenario to me. It is not a cost/benefit equation, it is cost/cost/cost/cost equation.
The only money spent should go into collecting real data by an objective statistics agency so that we can figure out what is really happening.
People should pay their own way to climate change conferences and there should only be voluntary green taxes (until we get some actual warming).
Actually, just defund the United Nations – period.
If $19 million is half….
….what exactly was so expensive that they needed $38 million?
The bigger question is what’s in it for our government/politicians? What do these world government, world trade, etc politicians have to gain?
I propose that all of the UN organizations based in Geneva be relocated to somewhere closer to many of the problem areas that the claim to represent, research and send our tax dollars to (the small part that is not absorbed by overhead, travel, conferences, etc,). The GoogleEarth pix of Mogadishu look good.
Mike says:
January 5, 2012 at 4:01 pm
The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!
“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”
Mike
Thanks for telling us it’s WORSE than we thought, now there is even more ammunition to justify the defunding a good precautionary measure in the circumstances you describe!!
If you are a US citizen just vote for Ron Paul and all those government leeches are gone.
Alex says:
January 5, 2012 at 5:27 pm
If you are a US citizen just vote for Ron Paul and all those government leeches are gone.
—–
Ahhhhh, the eternal optimism of youth. Many people make the mistake of thinking that changing the people in power will make a difference. Just remember: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. You can’t trust *anybody* in power, even if they start out as angels.
I have never met Ron Paul and have absolutely no basis on which to judge his character, but I can pretty much guarantee based on several thousand years of history that should be be elected, all his good intentions will take a back seat to his desire to be re-elected. He will make any deals, compromise any principles he thinks he has to, to stay in power. The exceptions to this rule are so few that each has a place in the history books (check out Cincinnatus, in honor of whom the city of Cincinnati is named).
The problem is with us, the electorate, who continually empower those who promise us free largesse from the public purse. When you, and your neighbors, and everyone else you know will voluntarily refuse benefits provided at the expense of others, then we have a chance to set things right.
When will the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic get it into their stupid brains that we are being conned by the IPCC. The “science” is not science and the economies of the Western World have neither the resources, the money or the will of the people to deal with this fictitious threat, especially at this time of the threat of global recession.
What we need is sound policies to provide cheap and sustainable (nuclear) energy to allow economic growth. We also need all the money spent on windmills, solar panels and the other “green” energy sources to be spent on research into hydrogen fusion. Fusion will provide the world with almost unlimited energy, to strengthen the world economy and move the poorest countries into prosperity.
Windmills, carbon capture and carbon credits of course assuage the conscience of the political left of centre, pseudo intellectuals, but none of these things feed, water or clothe the poor.
They are as useless as the left of centre, pseudo intellectuals.
@R. Gates says:
January 5, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Good points you make, there. We are just steps away from where we’ll all be pretending to work while pretending to get paid.
Willis-
My apologies for not commenting sooner. I ready your post, and had to be immediately transported to the emergency room for a “laughectomy”.
(You see, I found your anti-government rant to be so hilarious I laughed until I hurt myself.)
To be sure, $3.1 million a year (since FY2001) is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the number the GAO gave in the link you provided, by the way.
The GAO number I find more interesting is the amount we’ve spent in/on Afghanistan, Iraq and the ‘Global War on Terror’ since 9/11/01. What does $6.7 billion a month do to your blood? Does it ‘angrify’ it as well?
You see, it has always appeared to me that your vendetta against the government and environmental science has been personal. Have I been mistaken this entire time? Is it really about the money?
Just curious.
Phil M,
In case you haven’t noticed, this article is about the IPCC, it’s not about the war in Afghanistan.
Helmut Kohl and the German parliamentary commission of inquiry (1987)
essentially penned the Kyoto treaty to disadvantage the USA’s economy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/secret-history-climate-alarmism?page=1
[The Secret History of Climate Alarmism
A very German story of power politics disguised as environmentalism]
The US didn’t go for that so the UN is trying another way to impoverish us, apparently thinking that it is only fair when everyone is poor. Many in the US government and many others have been either complacent or duped by this. Your report documents this but it also indicates that it has been noticed. Score a point for the skeptics. Thanks.