Skeptics routinely get smeared by Al Gore, Michael Mann, and others of being like and/or in the employ of “Big Oil’, ‘Big Coal’, or “Big Tobacco’. Yet many of the same people who hurl such accusations seem blind to their own ‘big’ predicament. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. had this to say about that in a series of tweets today.
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/428925455916232705
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/428925878194544640
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/428926733736103936
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/428927023361171456
STRIKE 2
One of the founders of the wildlife and climate campaigning WWF is Dr. Anton Rupert. The now deceased Dr. Rupert made his fortune from the cigarette manufacturing company called Voorbrand, re-named Rembrandt, now consolidated into Rothmans.
Ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1508360/Anton-Rupert.html
STRIKE 3
STRIKE 4 and you’re out!
BBC Pension – Top equity Investments at 31 March 2013
Altria Group [Tobacco]
Drax Group [Electricity generation]
BHP Billiton [Oil & mining]
British American Tobacco
BG Group [Oil & natural gas]
BP [Oil & natural gas]
Royal Dutch Shell [Oil & natural gas]
Imperial Tobacco
Centrica [Natural gas & electricity]
Reynolds American [Tobacco]
Petrofac [Oilfield services]
Occidental Petroleum [Oil & natural gas]
The above list “Does not include any assets held in pooled funds.”
Richard D says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Get rid of the pads, helmets and the huddle thing, where they stand around holding hands waiting for someone to tell them what to do next like a bunch of big, stupid, babies.
Well said. If anyone want to see the original game consisting of just a field, men and balls, tune into the six nations over the next few weeks and see how it should be played. By the way, as a health professional I can confirm that frequent blows to the head are strongly correlated with cerebral damage, in the same ways as boxers suffer as Muhammed Ali can demonstrate, It a much less complex correlation than the complexities of climate science and rather more obvious. As a result I’d be happy for my sons to play rugby, ( at a pinch) but advise them to avoid American football like the plague, not that it is played overly in Wales!
It’s all huff and puff and there’s no smoke without fire.
Gareth Phillips says:
January 30, 2014 at 4:20 pm
“…I can confirm that frequent blows to the head are strongly correlated with cerebral damage…”
As I said, who knew? But for most of their prime years and significantly beyond, they live like royalty. Fame, money, adoring women, children worshiping them as heroes… They get a lot more out of life than most people who maintain their faculties into late years. I know a lot of people who’d take that option in a heartbeat.
“big tobacco” gets a mention here, so not really O/T.
30 Jan: Reuters: US consultancy ICF wins bid to help plan China carbon market
U.S. consultancy ICF International has won a 5-million euro ($6.8 mln) contract to help the European Union advise China, the world’s biggest carbon-emitting nation, on designing a national emissions trading scheme (ETS).
ICF fought off competition from other carbon advisory firms eager to get involved in designing what is likely to be the world’s biggest emissions market, worth billions of dollars, when it launches before the end of the decade…
…and has sought expertise from Europe, which has operated its own market since 2005…
The EU project is one of several offering assistance to China in designing a nationwide carbon market. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are funding other initiatives. (Reporting by Stian Reklev; Editing by Joseph Radford)
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/30/china-carbon-idINL3N0L412J20140130
Wikipedia: ICF International
ICF International, formerly known as ICF Consulting, is a management, technology, and policy consulting firm based in Fairfax, Virginia…
ICF employs more than 4,500 employees in more than 60 offices worldwide. Washington Technology ranked ICF No. 64 in its “2011 Top 100” list of the largest government contractors based on prime contracting revenue…
ICF was founded in 1969 as the Inner City Fund, a venture capital firm established to finance inner-city businesses. Its first president was C. D. Lester, a former Tuskegee Airmen, who was joined by three U.S. Department of Defense analysts…
ICF’s Integrated Planning Model (IPM®), a detailed model of the electric power sector, has been used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in support of its air regulatory analysis for more than 15 years. ICF provides support to EPA in applying the model…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICF_International
LOL:
2013: Desmogblog: Ties That Bind: Ernest Moniz, Keystone XL Contractor, American Petroleum Institute and Fracked Gas Exports
Congress will review the Obama Administration’s nomination of Ernest Moniz for Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) in hearings that start today, April 9.
Moniz has come under fire for his outspoken support of nuclear power, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for shale gas and the overarching “all-of-the-above” energy policy advocated by both President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent in the last election, Mitt Romney…
As first revealed on DeSmogBlog, Moniz is also on the Board of Directors of ICF International, one of the three corporate consulting firms tasked to perform the Supplemental Environmental Impact Study (SEIS) for TransCanada’s Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline…
Moniz earned over $300,000 in financial compensation in his two years sitting on the Board at ICF, plus whatever money his 10,000+ shares of ICF stock have earned him…
Moniz’s American Petroleum Institute Ties to Shale Gas Export Advocacy
In this arena, the DOE – via the consulting firm National Economic Research Associates (NERA), a firm with historical ties to Big Tobacco – said exports of the U.S. shale gas bounty (LNG exports) were in the best economic interests of the U.S. in its long-awaited Dec. 2012 report…
If he receives congressional confirmation, this means Moniz will jump ship from his ICF Board of Directors position and have the final say over DOE LNG export decisions.
While heading the MIT Energy Initiative, Moniz also worked alongside John Deutch.
Deutch headed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under President Bill Clinton and now serves as head of the Board of Directors of Cheniere Energy, a corporation that owns many proposed LNG export terminals along the Gulf coast…
If he receives congressional confirmation, this means Moniz will jump ship from his ICF Board of Directors position and have the final say over DOE LNG export decisions.
Further, the Vice President of ICF International is Karl Hausker, the husband of Kathleen “Katie” McGinty, one of the members of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel and also a member of the DOE fracking subcommittee. She recently threw her name into the ring as a Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate for the 2014 election in Pennsylvania…
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/09/ernest-moniz-keystone-xl-contractor-american-petroleum-institute-fracked-gas-exports
Follow the money, follow the race to the money.
But only rich, greedy, capitalistic republics are eviiiiiiiiil when they attempt to make money … in the private sector. Now, making money off of company-to-politician connections? THAT’s cool and groovy. But only if the politician is democratic: So a CA democrat senator’s husband gets the single contract to build the billions+ California high speed railroad, ICF’s leaders get to flip between ICF and goverment agencies regulating oil, rails, pipelines, and energy, government laboratory heads become government energy department heads, …. democrat donors get ambassador appointments to Norway, China, the EU …
“As a result I’d be happy for my sons to play rugby, ( at a pinch) but advise them to avoid American football like the plague, not that it is played overly in Wales!”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A gentleman’s sport for sure. Notice the white collars on their jerseys!
u.k.(us) says: “I guess I’m Twittercapped“. Did you mean Twitterpated? Actually, if the IPCC gets its way, we’re all Twitterpated – as in Bambi in which a pair of animals were “twitterpating” and ended up with babies”.
Here’s a google page I got that provides links to rugby vs. US football comparisons:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=youtube+football+vs.+rugby&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Here’s one of them, Compare the violence of the hits. (skip the first minute of each segment):
@RogerKnights
I played for years and yes rugby can be a little rough 🙂 …..Too often head injuries in football are the result of the false security of helmets and using a helmeted head as a weapon/spear. American Football needs to protect its players better from brain injuries.
With this link between concussions and brain damage and football, we must remember that correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
For instance in the matter of brain damage, Hillary Clinton had a concussion and had to wear funny glasses for a while to straighten out her vision, but I’m sure she never played football. At least she hasn’t joined the NFL players concussion suit yet.
Actually the comment about the IPCC is possibly noting the fact that the IPCC views now actually reflect the sceptics better than the catastrophists – IE IPCC Extreme weather NOT related to CO2 etc. From what I can see there are only really two points of difference. The IPCC still declares positive feedback when the feedback is negative, and the IPCC underestimates the level of natural variation (Ie their statement that more than 50% of warming is CO2 related is wrong). With a change in just these two positions the IPCC would be on message for the sceptics – strange as it may seem. If fact many of the mainstream news items refuting catastrophist claims use the IPCC to cite from.
“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”
Translated, this means that the IPCC declares that only 50% can be relied upon as the likely increase in temperature due to CO2 (1951 to 2010). Warming 1850 to 1950 is presumably natural cyclic phenomenon- this implies that the net warming since the little ice age cannot be accepted to be more than 50% of total warming and manmade component less than about 30% (though the IPCC unwisely just declares a minimum rather than a range).
Using temperature rise VS CO2 rise since the LIA as a baseline , this in itself implies the climate has a sensitivity to CO2 of less than 0.8 degrees per doubling, and a sensitivity to the manmade, non- cyclic component of only 0.6 per doubling – Case closed.
Strangely, the IPCC does seem to be on trajectory to intersect mainstream sceptic views that sensitivity is between say 0.2 and 1 degree per doubling, even though the models still have gains that are too high, higher in fact than the IPCC concedes. Unfortunately, since this doesn’t feed into the UN’s world government agenda very well, I’m not overly confident that the trajectory will be maintained.
Soccer and Hockey both make the team lose a player on the field for violent or dangerous play. Penalties have to be more serious for violent play.
Could it be that the IPCC report is getting better while the summary for policy makers is still questionable?
The IPCC still declares positive feedback when the feedback is negative
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Intuitively this is what makes little sense to me. How can there be positive feedback when historically temperature has been so consistent – varying by just a few degrees plus or minus. I’m more familiar with human biology where negative feedback is the norm and positive feedback is usually operating in an overall negative feedback, or else its usually bad BAD….