… more concerned with spending money than in monitoring its effectiveness.”
From Fox News, which has the exclusive story:
Inadequate oversight, lax bookkeeping, sloppy paperwork, haphazard performance agreements and missing financial documentation have plagued U.S. State Department spending of tens of millions of dollars to combat climate change, according to a report by State’s internal financial watchdog — and the problem could be much, much bigger than that.
The audit report, issued last month by the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), casts an unflattering spotlight on a relatively obscure branch of the State Department that supervises climate change spending, and depicts it as over-extended in its responsibilities, unstaffed in critical monitoring posts, and more concerned with spending money than in monitoring its effectiveness.
…
According to a State Department website, the U.S. has contributed some $5.1 billion in climate change funding to developing countries in 2010 and 2011 alone, with additional money still pouring forth in 2012.
- OIG looked at seven of 19 program grants totaling $34 million, and discovered they contained no specific plans for monitoring the results. As the report demurely noted, “Without comprehensive monitoring of grants, the department may not always have reasonable assurance that federal funds were spent in accordance with the grant award; that the grant recipient performed program activities as dictated in the grant award; and that the program’s indicators, goals and objectives were achieved.”
- So-called grant oversight officers whose responsibilities included developing the monitoring plans, also failed to provide written reviews of compliance with State Department reporting standards, along with a variety of other financial procedures. In some cases, there apparently weren’t enough oversight officers to go around; when three left their jobs, OIG found evidence that only one was replaced.
- Oversight officers apparently didn’t do a lot of overseeing. The OIG discovered that actual visits to climate change sites were rare, and when they occurred, not much effort went into examining the actual paperwork involved. In one series of Indian cases examined by OIG, the officers’ reports “typically summarized meetings held with grantee officials where only the statuses of the programs were discussed.”
- Requirements that grant recipients submit quarterly financial statements were apparently ignored, even though procedures called for cutoffs if the statements were not provided. The report cites an unnamed recipient in Hyderabad, India, who got two separate grants totaling $1.1 million: funding continued to be doled out throughout the project, even though the reporting requirements were completely ignored. And in other cases, even when quarterly reports were received, they were often flawed.
- The same cavalier attitude toward reporting apparently applied even when projects ended. As the report discreetly puts it, overseers “did not always obtain the final reports needed to ensure that final deliverables were achieved, funds were reconciled, and proper closeout of the project was completed.”
- One reason for this, apparently, is that reporting requirements for detailed results toward specific indicators — along with general goals and objectives — were not included in any of the seven grants examined by OIG. One of the missing indicators in a number of cases was the actual amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere by the project.
Here’s the complete de-classified report
http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/195671.pdf
It’s all about the money. These fools aren’t solving anything related to climate with this spending.
h/t to WUWT reader Robbin Harrell
More of your hard earned tax dollars being pissed against a wall. (As we say in Scotland.)
Having spent nearly four years managing a large grant from USG, I am really quite appalled at this. We had very strict accounting and reporting requirements which we had to impose on sub-contractors as well, such that I spent more time on these activities than on the scientific work I was supposed to be supervising. I fully accepted this as the price of working with government money and so did all of our sub-contractors.
I still shudder at the outcome and impact reporting (two very different things according the State Department) where we had to not only detail what was done (including the gender of the people supported/trained), but also progress towards the ultimate project goals. That the climate change projects have no such oversight is a scandal, regardless of your opinion on the importance of this issue. Why is this left to Fox to report? It should be on every network.
RE: “any pejorative adjective you wish: ‘crash’, ‘bankruptcy’, ‘collapse’…”
Make that: “any pejorative noun you wish: ‘crash’, ‘bankruptcy’, ‘collapse’…”
” One of the missing indicators in a number of cases was the actual amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere by the project.”
That’s the money quote.
Don’t know how much ‘carbon’ you’ve removed ? Then you don’t know how much you’ve lowered the temperature by (although, whatever the true amount is, skeptics will be more than happy to explain to you why the temp reduction will be vanishingly small)
Taphonomic says:
August 15, 2012 at 9:04 am
“Since Copenhagen, the United States has substantially increased its investments in international climate finance.
That is not funding for [the study of] climate change, but perhaps it was presumptuous to believe that that was what was meant.
Speaking of the government and carbon dioxide emissions (often within hot air):
What is the carbon footprint of the military, and if sequestration goes in, will it cause a great drop in the output from all those carriers, supersonic war planes, and vehicles measured in gallons per mile without catalytic converters that move and have to be moved over a ten-thousand mile area?
If they were serious about reducing greenhouse gases, we would cease being the policeman of the world.
Also on the “feed the poor”, how is requiring that a large portion of this year’s already very reduced corn crop will go into our gas tanks compatible with anything charitable? Especially since it does NOT oxygenate fuel, at least according to physical and chemical laws, even if Congress says otherwise?
When I graduated from high school my father spent a lot of money to send me abroad. She wasn’t my type so I sent her back. (well, somebody had to say it)
“Russia wants global warming.”
But I do believe they are actually planning on a colder climate. Investing in new ice breakers for an ice-free arctic? Don’t think so:
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/11/26/61067849.html
Hence the get to the oil so it can be sold to their freezing comrades and others standing in the “soup line.”
http://vmdaily.ru/news/novii-lednikovii-period-ne-za-gorami1329540932.html
Rob asks “Why is this left to Fox to report? It should be on every network.” Because Fox is the only network not in the DemoncRats pockets.
5.1 Billion? Isn’t that a lot less then what has been spent just in the CONUS??? But not to worry.The eco-cultists here in Canuckistan are trying hard to catch up.After all,why should just the USofA fall,when they can bring down all of NA?
I’d like to know what measurable good all this spending on climate change has accomplished. It seems that the real reason for it is to redistribute money from the middle class of one country to the wealthy class of other countries. It certainly isn’t ending up in the hands of the poor and disadvantaged.
Wouldn’t it be better to save the money and use it later to help people adapt to climate change when (and if) it ever becomes necessary? Adapting to it will be far, far cheaper than trying to prevent it.
I wonder how much of that “easy money” went to IPCC’s Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri’s personal “think tank” in New Deli? “The Energy and Resources Institute” (TERI) is reputedly one lavish facility complete with golf facilities, artificial waterfalls, etc. Lots of relatives and pals in THAT payroll. Ordinary Indians can only press their noses to the fence and drool.
Fact: The US GOV is the largest launderer of money on the planet. Climate change is merely how this administration covers the things they want to spend $ on, but which the general public would never accept.
We’re borrowing money from China to give it to India? WTF?
Malicious benevolent spending (skullduggery made to look good) certainly makes the world go hrrruuumphph and cheer when the culprits are put to irons. What is far worse is when the givers, spenders, and takers of our money believe that what they are doing is the right thing, and manage to convince a whole’lotta other people that what they are doing is the right thing. And that is what I think we are up against. The world isn’t cheering that we are putting the culprits to iron, the world is cheering FOR the culprits.
Just another thing that makes you go,,,,,Hummm?
No surprise. “Going Green” means our “Green is Going”.
Well, now we know why DHS purchased 450 million rounds of .40 S&W ammo! They’re probably expecting the good citizens to be armed with pitchforks, etc. My fellow “clinging” Texans and I may not be so gullible!
If you want to know about government spending you want to listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igpk2ePGhnU particularly at 2min 50sec and at 3min 20 sec it sums up how bureaucrats think and how throwing money at any problem/non problem will solve it.
James Bull
The comment above re: money laundering. Is that what the liberal dominant Senate and the liberal dominant Executive Branch, and the liberal dominant Judicial Branch have been doing? Laundering our money under the feel-good title of Green Jobs, and then funnelling cash to best friends around the world? I’ll say it again, we’ve all been snookered by governmental benevolence.
No wonder it takes a grandmother’s persistent steel arm and lye soap to scrub this stuff off. I think it is time to bring back that image of the women who went to work in the factories while the men were at war. We need to role up our sleeves, get our hair out of our face, raise a strong-armed fist, and scrub these liberals out of office.
Berényi Péter says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:41 am
Is there a standard (and safe) procedure in place for these government employees to divert a fraction of that money to their personal bank accounts? If so, the whole mess starts to make sense.
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Of course. All you have to do is make sure your wife’s cousin gets a nice big “Grant” to study wether Unicorn belches effect the environment and then not audit. Just split the take. It happens all the time.
To Leif Svalgaard,
Leif, please remember that the funding the U.S. government is pushing out for “climate change” is not exclusively for research into causes. For example, the previous Presidential administration, in 2004, earmarked over $5 billion for climate change. Of that, $1.9 billion was for research. $3.1 billion was for “mitigation”. Money for mitigation projects long ago surpassed money for basic research.
The above numbers were from a White House budget document, I do not at the moment have the link. I am quite certain that if the current U.S. Senate had bothered to pass a budget, the numbers in that budget would be substantially larger.
“Follow the Money” is sound advice, but it is difficult to follow the money into a black hole.
I hesitate to classify all monies flowing into black holes as “fraudulent”. Highly suspect, yes! But let’s be scientifically objective. We should only label “fraud” where there is at least a preponderance of the evidence. In the vast majority of these cases, there IS NO evidence though there should be.
So there should be three categories of audit of funding: valid (forms in place), fraudulent (evidence of malfeasance) and Missing In Action. Statistics on “Missing in Action” ought to raise appropriate political heat.
Typical.
An auditor for the British Columbia government just ripped the BC Legislature for not keeping track of its own finances (admistration and perhaps MLA expenses, not government operations).
No indication of mis-use of funds, at least so far.
A somewhat humourous note mong the botches was records showing their bank account was badly overdrawn, proper accounting showed what it actually was – approximately even.
Of course legislators aren’t chosen for their ability and competence anymore, but as so many are lawyers you’d think they’d pay more attention. (I know, but I’m not going to waste ink on lawyer jokes today. 😉
Pamela Gray says:
August 16, 2012 at 7:40 am
“We need to role up our sleeves, get our hair out of our face, raise a strong-armed fist, and scrub these liberals out of office.”
I think I’m in love.
Tom in Texas says:
August 15, 2012 at 7:58 pm
We’re borrowing money from China to give it to India? WTF?
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Is borrowing money,when you are already in debt and having nothing to show for it SUSTAINABLE.
I thought the current green/liberal/labour/democrat/socialist/progressive theme was sustainability??
Sorry about the labour spelling but I’m just a Brit in France.
Steve T.