"The apocalypse was always a decade away. ."

"In 2006, Al Gore’s 'An Inconvenient Truth' was peak climate fear-mongering.

"He showed maps of cities underwater, claiming melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica would displace hundreds of millions. He said our maps 'would have to be redrawn.'

[He brought his map porn to New Zealand in 2006,  John Key confessing afterwards "all his buttons had been pushed" having undergone a Damascene conversion at the feet of Al Gore's slides.]

"18 years later, none of it has happened. Not even close. The apocalypse was always a decade away. 

"Meanwhile, the man selling the panic got rich. Very rich. 

"While you were told to feel guilty and lower your standard of living, Al Gore built a $300+ million personal fortune from the climate industrial complex. 

"He became the first 'climate billionaire.' 

"He made his money from: 

• Green investment funds (Generation Investment Management) 
• Board seats & advisory roles 
• Massive speaking fees ($200k+ per speech) 
• Carbon credit trading 

"He didn't save the planet. He monetised your anxiety. 

"The truth is, the predictions were always more profitable than they were accurate."

~ Camus

The DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle

From the folks who brought us the Keynes v Hayek rap battle ...

Live from Davos, it’s your morning update on the future of the planet. Representing the alarm bells and carbon cuts, it’s environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore, but he’s not alone. Enter the unapologetic fossil fuel defender, Alex Epstein, armed with charts, charisma, and a whole lot of hydrocarbons. Just when things start boiling over, in steps Mr. Moderate—Bjorn Lomborg—trying to cool the room with cost-benefit calculations. Is the planet on fire? Are fossil fuels the secret to success? Or is there a third path no one wants to rap about? Tune in, turn up, and try to keep your cool—this is the DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle.

Pointing out the "97% Abusers"

"If you've ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about calls to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use to prevent a 'climate crisis,' you’ve probably heard the smug response: '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused.'
    "This response is inane....
    "The usual purpose of saying '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused' is to make you believe our climate impact is catastrophic—a 'climate crisis.'
    "But neither the statement itself nor the studies it’s based on say our impact is catastrophic....
    "The '97%'... either agree on some unspecified impact or, at most, attribute rising CO2 levels as the leading cause ... of the mild 1°C warming we have experienced to date.
    "But they are abused to claim 97% agreement on catastrophic climate impact.
    "'97% abuser' John Kerry has falsely equated:

“97% of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible.”

With:

“if we continue to go down the same path…the world as we know it will… change dramatically for the worse.”

    "'97% abuser' Barack Obama, in response to a study that said "97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming,” tweeted “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous”—just adding 'dangerous' from nowhere.
    “'97% abuser' Al Gore took a study about papers agreeing with the idea that 'Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities' and misrepresented it to mean 'we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem'—adding 'serious problem' from nowhere....
    "[L]ike many other authors of 'consensus' studies [these 97% Abusers are] clearly motivated by the desire to use insignificant consensus about some climate impact to drive their desired catastrophe narrative and anti-fossil-fuel political outcome....
    "By being coupled with the refrain 'listen to the scientists,' the '97%' claim is designed to make you only look at the climate side-effects of fossil fuels when making policy—ignoring fossil fuels’ benefits....
    "Fossil fuels actually overall make us far safer from climate by providing low-cost energy for the amazing machines that protect us against storms, protect us against extreme temperatures, and alleviate drought. Climate disaster deaths have decreased 98% over the last century... But the '97% consensus' abusers try to avoid the discussion about fossil fuel benefits....
    "Summary: Using '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused' to argue against fossil fuels is illogical and unscientific. It:

1. Falsely equates some climate impact with catastrophic climate impact
2. Ignores the huge benefits of fossil fuels

    "If someone tries to intimidate you into opposing fossil fuels by saying '97% of climate scientists agree,' trying asking them:

1. What exactly do they agree about—do they agree there’s a 'climate crisis'?
2. Do you agree we should also factor in the benefits of fossil fuels?" 

~ Alex Epstein, from his post 'The myth that "97% of scientists agree' about a climate crisis' [emphases in the original]

How many days left to save the planet? #COP26 [updated]

Glasgow's meeting of climate luminaries, aka COP26, is "the last best hope" to save the planet ... say the press secretaries and promoters of COP26.

They're in good company. They've been many "last best hopes" in recent decade. 

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change," said NASA's James Hansen. He said that in 2006.

"We have only four more years to act on climate change," he said in 2009.

Hansen was a piker. In 2008, climate change researchers Andrew Simms and Victoria Johnson revealed we only had 100 months to save the planet. Or just 96 months! (This was Prince Charles; and this was 2011.)

These can be added to a long list of apocalyptic enviro-predictions with which the planet blithely refuses to cooperate.

And yet the planet is still here, and calamity has yet to occur. And, despite falling freedom and diminishing respect for reason and science, the human environment continues to get better, not worse. Historian Scott Powell puts this down to what he calls “The Hank Rearden Effect”—the tremendous ability of entrepreneurs, industrialists and inventors to continue producing, in the face of expanding efforts to slow them down. 

The great irony is that the race to continue proving the doomsayers wrong is between producers on one side, and ranged them on the other side are the vast mass of politicians, regulators and cultural mavens who wish to shackle them.

And still, after more than three decades of doom-saying we have still to see the predicted effects of global warming. We are however feeling, and about to feel even further, the effects of regulations to (allegedly) arrest global warming.

Expect promises of many more to spew forth from COP26.

How many days left to save the planet? Apparently exactly as many as it takes to grab another headline.

UPDATE: To keep yourself updated on the latest gloomy predictions, you really can't go past The Extinction Clock. A slice...

 

Quote of the Day: On Al Gore’s predictions

“Ten years after Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and its guilt- and fear-producing predictions, examine just how ‘accurate’ his ‘junk science’ proved to be on his way to the bank:

1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Al was even discovered purchasing a beachfront mansion!
2. Increased Tornadoes – declining for decades.
3. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.
4. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.
5. Massive Flooding in China and India – didn’t happen.
6. Ice-Free Arctic – false; further, the largest refreezing in years occurred two years ago.
7. Polar Bear Extinction – numbers are actually increasing!
8. Temperature Increases Due to rapidy-increasing CO2 – no significant rising for almost 20 years.
9. Katrina, a Foreshadow of the Future – false; past 10 years, no F3 hurricanes; ‘longest [hurricane] drought ever!’
10. The Earth in a “True Planetary Emergency” Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses – never happened.”

      ~ Marc Morano, from his post ‘Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient
          Sequel’ Comes As His Dire Climate Predictions Fail
          To Materialise’

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#TopTen | No. 8: 12 celebrities who wallow in hypocrisy

 

Hypocrisy, they say, is the tribute vice pays to virtue – and there is no higher virtue to any celebrity than very public displays of altruism. Number eight in this year’s top-ten most popular posts here at NOT PC is a link to a report on celebrity hypocrisy. Turns out that nine out of ten Hollywood gasbags think that other people should sacrifice for their latest vacuous cause …

---

12 celebrities who wallow in hypocrisy

It’s no sin to live palatially, not if you’ve earned it.

It is rank hypocrisy however to maintain that others hunker down and sacrifice while you’re living high on the hog yourself.

A new report shines a bright light on the high-energy lifestyles of 12 so-called “celebrity environmentalists” who very noisily demand low-energy lifestyles for others in the name of “saving the planet.”

The 12 celebrities chosen to highlight in this report are: Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Harrelson, Julia Roberts, James Cameron, Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Ian Somerhalder, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz and John Travolta. The media have used all of these celebrities to help promote their own climate alarmist agenda, while simply ignoring or glossing over any inconsistencies or contradictions.
    This report doesn’t focus on every single celebrity hypocrite. Instead, it looks at 12 whose lifestyles contradict their activism. …
    At the top of the list we find Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron and Al Gore – all of whom boast a net worth of well over a 100 million and frequently use private jets to travel all over the world, rent mega-yachts and live in massive mansions.

And all of whom also own or frequently rent private jets, large fuel-guzzling floating palaces, and very expensive and low-lying coastal or beachfront property – giving the lie to many things including (especially with this last) their alleged fears of rapid and destructive sea-level rise.

‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron warned of a future “world that’s in shambles” because of climate change, and said he believes “in ecoterrorism” yet, he owns an impressive private collection of motorcycles, cars, dirt bikes, a yacht, a helicopter, a Humvee fire truck and a $32-million submarine. ABC and CBS even praised Cameron for his submarine purchase, with CBS’s Gayle King saying she loved his “passion and curiosity.”
    Leonardo DiCaprio ironically stood in front of the UN warning that “if we do not act together, we will surely perish” – just three months after he had flown to Brazil on a private plane to borrow an oil billionaire’s 470-foot yacht. Yet, ABC News praised him for “not just talking the talk.”

And Al Bore? Well, he’s moved on from having the largest domestic power bill in his state to now investing his new oil wealth in at least two large and very expensive dwellings several metres below the high tide he fatuously claims will inevitably engulf us al.

And it’s not just these few fuckwits who speak with a forked tongue. The short list only scratches a very large and two-faced surface.

    Hollywood has many more climate change alarmist hypocrites who weren’t included in this report. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, commuted more than 300 miles to work by jet, multiple times a week. Paul McCartney once had his Lexus hybrid car flown from Japan to the UK, which The Huffington Post admitted caused its ‘transport footprint‘ to be over 100 times greater than it should have been.“ Not only did Live Earth Concert star Madonna fly all over the world to promote her career, ‘The Daily Mail’ reported that she owned ‘'”a collection of fuel-guzzling cars, including a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, Audi A8s and a Mini Cooper S.”
    Trudie Styler, the wife of Sting, even admitted in 2008 that the couple were climate change hypocrites. According to ‘The Daily Mail ‘“[e]nvironmental experts labelled Sting’s band, The Police, the dirtiest in the world because of the amount of pollution created during last year’s reunion tour of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Germany, the UK, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan.”

So not just shitty music but shitty ethics as well.

As the late celebrity author Michael Chrichton once soberly observed,

I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes.

---

Stay tuned Monday for the seventh most popular post here at NOT PC this year, a reluctantly-written report on a local libertarian gone bad …

Tomorr.

Watch live NOW: 10th anniversary debate for Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’

 

Ten years after Al Bore’s “game changing” film An Inconvenient Truth the debate is certainly not over, not at the Heartland Institute.

To mark  the decade-anniversary of the film, the Heartland Institute is hosting a debate on the film’s predictions between Heartland Institute Science Director Jay Lehr vs. Colorado State University Professor Scott Denning.

And it’s live now! Head over to Heartland’s YouTube live-stream page, where you can ask questions in the chat room, or watch it here:

 

.

Sea level hazards: You can’t repeal risk, but you can repeal section 71

Ask Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright why, with the money made by peddling his warmist mantra, Al Gore purchases and enjoys sea-level property--despite his own claims that the apartments thereon will be rapidly underwater--and I’ll wager she’ll have no idea.

Nonetheless, this from last Friday’s news:

NZ urged to act on rising sea levels – RADIO NZ
Entire communities may need to be uprooted due to rising sea levels and the Minister of Finance should start preparing for the financial impact now, says the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright.
    The commissioner's latest report 'Preparing New Zealand for rising seas: Certainty and Uncertainty' identified at least 9000 New Zealand homes that lie less than 50cm above spring high tides.
    There was no doubt sea levels were rising and it was certain the frequency of coastal flooding would increase as the sea level rises, Dr Wright said. …
    A standard process for council engagement with coastal communities should be included in central government direction and guidance on sea level rise, Dr Wright said. …
    Councils' planning for sea level rise was problematic … [so] the government was recommended to put direction on planning for sea level rise into a National Policy Statement, such as one envisaged for dealing with natural hazards.
    Officials were urged to address the issues the report raised in the upcoming revision of the 2008 MfE Guidance Manual - which provided direction and guidance to councils on how they should deal with sea level rise.

Here’s my own recommendation for “officials” providing “direction and guidance to councils on how they should deal with sea level rise”:

Direct them to keep the hell out of the way.

You may think that’s a frankly frivolous thing to say, but hear me out.

Let’s grant her claim that sea levels are rising and coastal flooding will increase. Let’s assume that she’s not just another one not letting a good climate crisis go to waste. Let’s agree with her that at least 9000 New Zealand homes are “at risk” when that happens. But let’s recognise that it’s about this point that Ms Wright begins wringing her hands and talking about “sending people letters” and uprooting entire communities –and that people are taking that prescription seriously.

But me ask you this: is this massively increased coastal flooding going to happen this week? Next month? Next year?

Let me answer it for you. No, it’s not. The “best estimates” on which she relies (and for the sake of argument let’s agree with them) are talking about these things happening over the course of a century, or even more. Yet the speed of this century-long accretion is allegedly urgent enough that “officials” must begin planning today to expel people from their homes some time tomorrow.

No other possibilities appear to be contemplated other than snail-paced action from officials to tell property-owners what action they must take.

But, well, let me just ask you: Do you know of any means whereby folk could sort out for themselves the risks associated with sea-levels threatening their property, and deal with it as expeditiously as they think necessary?

Think you there might be some process for engagement that didn’t require either central government “direction and guidance” or the bullying and bureaucracy that comes with it?

Any idea of some solution that might spontaneously emerge when folk go about their daily risk-taking business?

Yes, I know, it wholly eludes Ms Wright, council officials and all, none of whom appear to have heard of the phenomena for which Nobel Prizes are awarded, but the process by which supposedly marginal homes can so peacefully and undramatically end up in the hands of those who are satisfied the risk of ownership is worth it—and out of those whose hands are wringing wet with worry mark—is precisely the market process that deals with risks like this every day.  A process whereby those who discount risks in favour of perceived value can outbid and help compensate those who truly fear the worst.

Another way to say this is that the former pick up a bargain from the latter. But if we’re speaking freely, and by this stage of the game we surely are, then how many existing property-owners would really and truly take Ms Wright’s views that seriously they would want to leave their paradise at a knock-down rate. (And putting it the other way, wouldn’t those who are convinced she is right, as well as Wright, be thinking they were the ones stealing from their buyers, since in their minds it is the buyers who are going to miss out—and soon!)

So. Simple.

Problem is that there are only two ways whereby this simple, free and peaceful process could be made to not work, and both are either contemplated or already exist today:

• either public action to ban private action; or
• laws to ensure that councils rather than land-owners assume the risk for any alleged natural hazards, and may bully land-owners into compliance with whatever “plans” for their property council sees fit, up to and including the effective nationalisation of their land for beachfront reserve.

Ms Wright proposes the former. The Building Act and Resource Management Act already enforce the latter.

I therefore suggest that the only public action necessary in the face of this alleged threat is to remove the sections of these two acts imposing the resulting risk on ratepayers.

LET’S RULE OUT ONE THING right from the bat. Landowners neither deserve nor should be paid compensation from any public trough. The only compensation these willing sellers need is that provided by a willing buyer. And have no fear they will exist.

But all that’s really necessary is the repeal of one simple section of the Building Act, section 71.

I can guarantee you’ve heard of this section before, or at least its results.

You heard about it a lot after the Christchurch earthquakes, often associated with red-zoned land.

You surely heard of its results when council goons trued to evict stroppy old Joe Bennett from his Lyttleton home because they were “concerned for his safety” after the Christchurch earthquakes because of two risky rocks they thought were threatening his home (the risk being entirely in the eyes of the councils'’ beholders):

Last August two goons marched up the drive and slapped a sticker on my house. The sticker threatened me with enormous fines if I didn't leave. I didn't leave. …
    In August, Mr Democracy Services issued a press release saying that the council was concerned for the safety of people in red-stickered houses. Nice of him, but irrelevant. My safety is not the council's concern, just as theirs isn't mine.
    As I said on radio at the time, I don't need another mother. The decision to live in my house was mine to make, and mine alone. And the consequences were for me to accept, and me alone.
    If the council considered my place to be dangerous, they could put a sign outside saying so. Duty done. The truth is that the council never cared about my safety. It cared only about its own legal liability.

Remove Section 71 and the council will have no legal liability, and then between ourselves and our insurance companies we can all safely (or at least peacefully) plan our own futures and look after our own risk. Even if it does mean a sign outside your house—or a tag on your certificate of title—saying that in council’s opinion, which we should all be free to express, the sky is about to fall on us.

That way, the council nannies don’t need to cover their arses.

You see, in the face of risks or alleged risks, Section 71 and its related sections do essentially make council wholly responsible for damage to your property, mandating a policy of “managed retreat” should “natural processes” impinge or appear to infringe upon some unlucky person’s land.

What that retreat means might be summed up in that sticker slapped on Joe’s house by the goons: Enormous fines if you don't leave. Except that in some places now the goons just refuse you your right to build on your own land because, they say, of the risk.

This means that in some parts of the country where the tides, sea levels sand dunes are alleged to be moving in such a risky fashion that almost the entire coastline is said to contain “natural hazards” (bucolic old Tauranga being one such place) you may not build at all in those parts of your land so designated by mother; you may build on other parts differently designated only if you have another site on which to move your house; and  if a sand dune is blown within a certain specified distance of your house, then mother says you may not even take out a shovel to move it – instead, you must move your house to that other site you’ve been keeping for that very purpose all these years.

New Zealand, this is your future under Jan Wright and her recommendations – and, while largely being unspoken about, it has been our present for at least the last twenty years. As I wrote way back in 2002, under the District Plans written in conformity with this policy, beachfront properties are essentially already being nationalised in order to create unpaid-for beachfront reserves.

You see -- trees, rocks, sand dunes and “natural processes” all have rights under the Building and Resource Management Acts. Human beings do not.

Repeal the section that makes it so, however, and you too can live like Al Gore.

Although maybe without the huge nest egg that allows him to purchase sea-level San Fran condos.

When Al Gore falls, does Nick Smith make a sound? [updated]

Global warming cap-and-trade is this National Government’s big idea (they have damn few, so anything at all is enough to constitute a big one).  Nick Smith’s Emissions Trading Scam is a flagship world-leading policy—leading the world in plundering consumers and shackling producers, in the hope the world will catch on and emulate us.

They’re not.

So here’s a tale for someone to read to Nick Smith.  A story about a man named Al Gore, who several years ago, in the midst of the hype over global warming generated by loud activism, scary science and fraudulent films like his own, got involved in setting up the Chicago Climate Exchange. It really was leading the world. Explains Steve Milloy,

Although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law, like the Waxman-Markey scheme passed by the House in June 2009.
At its founding in November 2000, it was estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion. That estimate ballooned over the years to $10 trillion.

Al and his friends were looking at billions of dollars of profit if they could scam the politicians to pass the bill, or something like it. Never happened. Never will. And so here’s what some recent trading on Al’s exchange looks like:

 

Impressive, huh?

Al Gore’s exchange is dead, dead, dead.  And it serves the old fraud right.

Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all the action in Chicago. The CCX’s backers wanted to use a new prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite literally, all the action in the world.

And now the CCX, launched to the sound of unrelenting media hype,  is quietly being taken out and shot.

In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading — the only purpose for which it was founded — this year.

Which leaves just two relevant questions:

• Will Thick Smith take the relevant decision himself—or be forced to?
• If Al Gore’s Chicago Climate Exchange Suffers Total Failure, Does the MSM Make a Sound?

UPDATE: The graph of carbon price per metric ton over the life of the exchange is fascinating. Thanks for the link to reader Julian P. who, like me, “finds it really difficult to feel sorry for the people who bought in at 750 cents.”

Notice too who else bought into the scam when it was spiking?  Yep, mid-2008 was about when Thick Smith started to go hard on his Emissions Trading Scam.

And a year later, once he’d begun its introduction, the Wall Street Journal had this to say:

To the annals of global warming lunacy, add this gem from New Zealand: According to [the Key Government, Nick Smith and] a parliamentary committee, Kiwis should accept lower standards of living to protect the national image abroad.”
            - ‘Kiwi Carbon Haze,’ Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2009

The image to be created presumably being that of a pack of idiots.

PUBLIC NOTICE

A few readers have been sending me the story about Al Gore. Please don’t. We don’t run that sort of rubbish here.

Socialist Studies at Avondale College

Guest post by Paul Van Dinther

If you thought that socialist brainwashing only happens in American schools, think again. It happens right here today under our very noses.  Avondale College, for example, where my 14-year-old son attends and is subjected to "Social Science" class—more accurately called "Socialist Studies." If you want single-sided socialist  indoctrination, this appears to be the place to come.

My son has grown up in a family with a healthy level of scepticism towards whatever the media dishes up, and my own critical views towards global warming feature regularly at the dining table. A few weeks ago, however, he messaged me that the class was being required to watch Al Gore’s thoroughly discredited film Inconvenient Truth as a lead-up to an assignment on the Kyoto Protocol. (And by “thoroughly discredited,” I mean to a High Court standard.)

My son's critical mind kicked in immediately, and he asked if they would also show The Great Global Warming Swindle as a counterbalance to Gore’s propaganda, but his request was dismissed, except to say it might, may, could, perhaps be shown after the assignment was handed in. Maybe. Several other students voiced equally critical comments about the single-sided view on global warming being presented, which was promptly silenced by a 3 page handout full of highly technical counter-arguments against global warming scepticism. These pages were handed out without either comment or discussion. We now wait with bated breath to see how his assignment will be marked.

But they are not done yet. Today again, another message. This time the class is being shown the controversial and equally one-sided The Story of Stuff—a twenty-minute polemic against capitalism of which Michael Moore would be embarrassed. Already thoroughly exposed, and even banned in at least one State of the US, it is still still apparently suitable to be shown in New Zealand’s compulsory Socialist Studies classrooms, without any opposing views being allowed. Once again a single-sided view is presented.

I don't mind having long-established views challenged, as it only serves to test our own, but this is not a fair fight. This is not learning or education, it is indoctrination pure and simple. Kids in schools are highly impressionable, and this uncritical barrage of indoctrination from those whose wisdom our children are supposed to respect is so overwhelming, and so slanted, that it looks like nothing so much as taking advantage of those that teachers have within their control. One from which only impressionable young kids with careful parent guidance will be able (we hope) to emerge with their thinking matter intact.

It is a type of child abuse of the mind. And the worst of it is, I actually am forced to pay for the brain damage being inflicted.

Environmentalists: Follow the money [updated]

What does it mean when governments pay lobbyists to lobby for policies that the government itself wants to implement?  What does it mean when they call those lobbyists “independent.”

While you’re thinking about that, consider this report, from Europe:

Green pressure groups get €66 million from the EU       
    “Have you ever wondered why the eco-lobby is so pro-EU? Now you have your answer. Green pressure groups are becoming financially dependent on Brussels. Ten years ago, they received €2,337,924 from the European Commission; last year, it was €8,749,940.
    “A study by the International Policy Network reveals the extent to which Green lobbyists look to the EU for their income: Climate Action Network, Friends of the Earth, WWF, they’re all at it. Much of this money, the paper shows, is then recycled into lobbying the EU.
    “You see how the system works? The EU pays eco-lobbyists to tell it what it wants to hear. Its clients, naturally enough, tell it that the EU ought to increase its powers. A similar racket goes on between Brussels and the mega-charities (see here).”

Just to clarify, the top ten recipients of European taxpayers’ money for telling European governments what they want to hear are:

Green 10 Members
Birdlife International
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Bankwatch Network
Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-E)
European Environment Bureau (EEB)
Transport and Environment (T&E)
Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)
Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE)
Greenpeace
International Friends of Nature (IFN)
WWF European Policy Office (WWF-EPO)

And that’s just in Europe. (Think about that the next time some charming young thing on a street-corner rattles a Greenpeace collection can under your nose.  Or they complain about how much Exxon supposedly is paying all us global warming skeptics.)

And while you’re thinking about that, just consider that the same things happens all round the world (here, as just a few examples, think Association of Smoking Hysterics (ASH), the wowsers of ALAC, the Fight the Obesity Epidemic anorexics, Gary Taylor’s anti-development Environmental Defence Society, Guy Salmon’s pro-government Ecologic, and—once again--Greenpeace). 

And in the States, as just one example,

    “The Competitive Enterprise Institute has uncovered, via a Freedom of Information Act request, a fascinating instance of the symbiotic relationship among 1) left-wing advocacy groups, 2) left-wing Obama administration officials, and 3) lobbyists for moneyed interests who benefit from left-wing policies. It has to do with wind energy…
    “Emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Obama Department of Energy is using the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) -- the lobbying arm of "Big Wind" in the U.S. -- to coordinate political responses with two strongly ideological activist groups: the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and the George Soros funded Center for American Progress (CAP).”

As the Powerline blog asks: Where do the lobbyists end and the government begin?

The same could be asked in every country, of nearly every environmental lobbyist.

And if the word “corruption” occurred to you while you were thinking about all this, then I think your answer to my first question is going to be in the right ballpark.

UPDATE: More American lobbyists and rent-seekers along these lines include:

• Al Bore’s Generation Investment Management (GIM)

• Goldman Sachs

• World Resources Institute

• Morgan Stanley

• Bank of America

• World Rainforest Movement

• Winrock International

• Nature Conservancy

• Resources for the Future

• Woods Hole Research Center

Story here. As Deborah Corey Barnes is quoted as saying therein: “

“When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.”

Why is that, do you think?

“Life Imitating Rand: Al Gore, Doctor of Ecology & Enemy of Freedom” [update 2]

“Life Imitating Rand,” says PJTV:

    “In a move seemingly ripped from the pages of an Ayn Rand novel, the University of Tennessee flatters Gore and itself with an honorary doctorate in ecology – and evolutionary biology too.”

Click the pic to head to the PJTV discussion.

UPDATE 1:  Blunt sent me a relevant cartoon, which I think we have to file under “wishful thinking”:

 

UPDATE 2:  The University of Tennessee may not be able to see through Gore’s chicanery—or maybe they’re just eager to grab a slice of his ill-gotten gains—but Edward Cline can see him for what he is: a "huckster” who is “determined to revive his Climategate-damaged credibility and salvage all the money he has invested in alternative energy companies -- whose “alternatives” are lower standards of living at higher costs, alternative energy sources dependent on the vagaries of nature (i.e., natural climate change) and the whims of bureaucrats…”

“Gore’s New York Times byline claims he is a “businessman.” That would be correct if businessmen by definition were scam artists and hucksters. But such a definition would comport with the character of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the CRU -- which have been exposed as dens of thieves and con-artists. Gore is in the right company.”

Read ‘Gore’s Wishes are Your Commands’.

Gore speaks! [updated]

Since the release of the ClimateGate emails, and the steady flow of revelations since about the dishonesty and frank incompetence of the IPCC Team, sightings of Al Gore have been as rare as confirmed appearances by the Yeti – only more venal, and much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more embarrassing, and mostly from the back as enablers so frequently allow him to avoid inconvenient questioning.

So having disappeared for several months, and become a figure of fun even to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show audience, the Senior Denier-In-Chief is back – back denying that anything has changed since he put his head below the parapet as the ClimateGate bullets started flying.

The New York Times is his latest enabler, publishing one-thousand words in which he talks up his stock portfolio, and denies anything just happened over the last few months to expose the incompetence and shoddy science of the IPCC and its fellow travellers upon whose wave of warmism he has ridden to become the world’s first carbon billionaire.

It’s a beautifully crafted piece of denialism.  The fraud of “consensus” has been exposed to daylight, but Al Gore would like you to carry on looking the other way.  Like he does.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, said on February 27 that “this apparent (global warming) consensus misled not only the media and the public, but also the wider scientific community, which had remained largely unaware of the ongoing debate and of the work of many reputable climate experts who disagreed with the IPCC.”  Dr. Singer summed up the entire global warming hoax as based on “temperature data (that) had been manipulated.”

Gore wants to continue the hoax.

Christopher Booker reckons, “'A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC: The emerging errors of 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental.”

Gore denies there are significant errors.

Bret Stephens says in the Wall Street Journal that the sound of ClimateGate “is not the sound of settled science, but of a cracking empirical foundation. And however many billion-dollar edifices may be built on it, sooner or later it is bound to crumble.”

Gore denies there are any cracks in the manufactured “consensus,” and no slowdown in the creation of billion-dollar edifices based on this climate fraud.

It’s his own edifice Gore’s Times piece is designed to protect –and that’s all you can really say about it. He doesn’t believe any of it any more than you do. As physicist Lubos Motl says, it’s “an op-ed that is bound to become a subject of jokes.”

He argues, in essence, that the World is about to end, and it’s Fox News that’s to blame.

And he concedes that the IPCC has made “at least two mistakes,” mentioning specifically “a flawed” overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, which we now know was based on little more than gossip; its unjustified hype about non-existent flooding in the Netherlands; and the law-breaking refusal of Phil Jones and his East Anglian colleagues to supply their scientific evidence when requested under the UK’s Official Information Act, which he downplays as “hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics.”

But he appears blithely unaware (or at least hopes that you are) of other revelations of IPCC lies errors that have appeared since he last stalked the world stage, including:

• the extent of sea ice around Antarctica, which has been increasing, not decreasing,
• Amazon rainforests,
• African agriculture,
• attribution of extreme weather damages,
• the corruption of the IPCC’s chief “scientist” (who is not a scientist but a railway engineer),
• revelations of manipulations of the modern surface temperature record in China, in Alaska, in Australia, in Antarctica, in Orlando, in Sweden, in New Zealand, in South Africa . . .
• revelations of manipulations of the historic temperature record,
• revelations of lost data,
• IPCC’s scientists were forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

And that’s not all he ignores. The IPCC’s beleaguered “keeper of the records,” Phil Jones admitted to the BBC’s environmental reporter, Roger Harrabin that “from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming” – something Al Gore is still at pains to deny – and that talk of science being settled is nonsense. [Asked by Harrabin to comment on the claim that ‘the debate over climate change is over.’ Jones responded: “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the paleoclimatic) past as well.”]

There is no way that The Goracle could not know any of this, since the fallout from all of it overshadowed and  all but blew apart the Copenhagen climate conclave.  He just hopes that you don’t.

He hopes that the bandwagon can keep right on rollin’.

Too late, Al.

Al would like to think that the worst scientific scandal of our generation can be swept under the carpet so he can continue to pontificate all the way to the bank.

It can’t. It’s too late.  All that’s left, or should be, is to mop up the damage that’s been done scientifically, politically, and philosophically.

As philosopher Stephen Hicks says, “A sad thing about the ’Climategate’ or ‘Warmergate’ scandal is that we will now have to revise the textbooks and add our own politicized scientific culture to that sorry list [of scientific fraud],” including examples of the destructive effects of the politicization of science from Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

    “We learned successfully why and how to separate politics and religion.
    “Will we be able to learn the exact same lesson about politics and science?
    “The lesson is not only about politics. The core lesson [that anyone with a brain and an honest use of it should be able to draw] is about the corruption of philosophy (especially epistemology), which has enabled an entire generation of journalists, activists, and politicians to be intellectually disarmed by a group of frauds — or to become enablers in disarming those who would challenge the frauds. A postmodern philosophical culture indeed. . .
    “Lysenkoism was ‘science’ in the service of an established political regime, while the Climategate people are ‘scientists’ in the service of establishing a new political regime. . .
     “I’m hoping Climategate will be a cautionary tale about politicized science rather than the end of science.”

Let’s hope so.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt reckons The Goracle’s op-ed “reveals just how religious is his mission, and just how theocratic would be any government he and his global warming followers controlled:

    ‘From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.’

“He will use the law to redeem your soul. To which the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witchhunters would have said: ‘Amen.’ ”

Quote of the day: Abe Lincoln on facts

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
…………………………………………………………. – Abraham Lincoln

Not sure luminaries like James Hansen or Stephen Schneider or Jim Salinger or The ‘I-won’t-debate-with-you’ Goracle agree with old Abe.  Must be a generational thing. (Gore still won’t debate by the way, but he will sometimes answer questions – but only if the audience is tame.  Or tamed.)

Hey, what’s a little “emphasis on extreme scenarios” between friends, eh?  It’s all necessary to push that old carbon taxing barrow, right.

Al Gore: ‘Not Evil Just Wrong’ [update 2]

New film out soon.  Here’s the trailer [hat tip I Love CO2):

Here’s the site for the film:
And here’s its blog.

Which has the news that he’s trying to rewrite history.

And here’s the news that The Goracle was greeted by protesters in Melbourne.  (And he bringeth rain.)

UPDATE 1: Meanwhile, on Planet Prince Charles, “we only have 96 months left to save the planet.”  Perhaps Big Ears heard it from one of his plants.  Mark Steyn explains why the Prince and the Gore-mongers prefer you in poverty, while we should let them eat cake.

UPDATE 2: Retiring BBC luminary Peter Sissons concedes the BBC is officially warmist, come what may -- just as they report that “experts blame climate change” for “Almost 250 children under the age of five [having'] died in a wave of intensely cold weather in Peru …” 

“This year freezing temperatures arrived almost three months earlier than usual,” says the BBC report. Damn that global warming, eh!

Which makes a chap wonder just who exactly are the “denialists” here?

Soapbox Salinger sacked [updated]

NIWA has sacked Jim Salinger. Described by some as “New Zealand's most prominent climate scientist,” by others as "New Zealand's most prominent climate alarmist," and still more as “the voice of global warming in New Zealand,” his sacking does not unfortunately presage any sort of change of direction for New Zealand’s most prominent global warming promoters. NIWA is still wall-to-wall warmist – but when both Greenpeace and Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons are upset at his sacking, it’s reason enough to celebrate.

As Anthony Watts does:

Now if NASA could just get the stones to do this for Jim Hansen . . .

Said Salinger himself in response to the sacking: “As scientists we’re all a bit eccentric and we all might slightly break protocol, but it’s not going to destroy NIWA.” For “break protocol,” read “use his job as a political soapbox.”

For your interest, here is some of the “wisdom” Salinger has dispensed on behalf of his former employer:

• At a convention of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in New Zealand, Jim Salinger told the crowd that climate change will likely cause a decline in the production of malting barley in New Zealand and particularly Australia, and that, "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up."
• "Regional warming" is killing NZ’s glaciers, said Salinger in November 2007. Yet according to Salinger's own organisation, New Zealand's average temperate the previous month was 0.5 degrees Celsius below average, New Zealand experienced no warming over the last century, and the “regional” warming over the Southern Hemisphere for the last 30 years showed "a warming trend" of around 0.00 °C per decade.
• In April 2007, comments from Salinger over over Northland's flooding showed that the Government's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) should be shut down, said Augie Auer. "So simplistic, it's silly" was how Dr Auer described the statement.
  "As an explanation of the cause and consequences of last week's Northland rains," said Dr Auer, "Dr Salinger's statement ... is as unscientific as it is incorrect. "
• In February this year, Salinger was quoted in the Herald on Auckland’s so called “hottest day ever” -- “the highest since official NIWA records began in September 1868” said the Herald – a remarkable judgement based on one outlying reading in Whenuapai, a station which only existed from 1945 to 1993 and from 2005 to now. (See discussion here at NZ’S Weather Forum.) This interview was among those cited as a reason for Salinger’s sacking.

UPDATE: Commenter Falufulu Fisi suggests a related link:

Anyway, here is a YouTube grilling of warmist messiah Al Gore by a Republican Congresswoman on cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gases during a congressional hearing recently which just been posted at TechCrunch. Watch Al Gore being frustrated by the questions put forward to him the the Congresswoman.

This was yet another occasion when the Goracle -- who has a policy of never debate, only obfuscate --  managed to once again sidestep the challenge of former Thatcher Science Advisor and Free Radical contributor Christopher Monckton, Gore’s Democrats refusing to allow  Monckton to testify alongside Gore. [Michael Savage interviews Monckton here.]

And even CNN has taken to mocking Gore these days, pointing out the irony in Gore trying to draw parallels with global warming activism now and civil righs activism in the 60s – there was some irony in that remark, being that Gore's father was a longtime senator from Tennessee that voted against civil rights legislation, said Dobbs – who “also noted during the segment prior Earth Day prognostications, all of which didn't quite come true.” Newsbusters reports:

    "Well, Earth Day, this week, and here are some words of doom and gloom from leading scientists, academics and authors on our climate and environment associated with Earth Day," Dobbs said. "Journalists Peter Collier wrote, ‘One to two million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.' Biologist Paul Ehrlich claimed that most people are going to die in ‘the greatest cataclysm of mankind.' Harvard biologist George Wall said, ‘If we don't take act now, civilization will end between 15 or 30 years.' And ecologist Kenneth Watt claiming that in 15 years, ‘Air pollution will reduce the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one- half.' I want to point out if I may that each and every one of those quotes were from the first Earth Day in 1970, nearly 40 years ago."
    The CNN segment highlighted a ClimateDepot.com report that global warming skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton was denied the opportunity to testify before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.
    "The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face," Monckton told the online magazine Climate Depot," CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester said.
    And as Climate Depot's Marc Morano explained - most Gore's doom-and-gloom forecasts are to occur in the distant future.
    "If you look at Gore's testimony today, he was talking about what could, might and may happen 50 to 100 years from now," Morano said to CNN. "He was not talking about reality."

The Earth Hour scam [update 3]

Since the most popular post over the weekend (by the power of Google) was a 2007 post on Sydney’s first Earth Hour, I’ve reposted it here for regular readers:

The Earth Hour scam
Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Earth Hour! The Shut-Your-City-Down-Hour. What a lot of self-aggrandising, warmist blather. Mark Steyn gets it right:

    Being on Eastern Time (US) rather than Eastern Time (Oz), I’m afraid I slept through the excitement of Sydney’s “Earth Hour” when, from the Lord Mayor to the lowliest rummy lying in the gutter belching incandescent meth fumes, the entire city turned out its lights for one whole hour in order to stop global warming. You can see a satellite picture of it here. No, wait, that’s North Korea by night. Now there’s a guy who’s really doing his bit to save the planet. . .

Shut down Sydney for an hour, and supposedly make a point about global warming? Yeah, they made a point all right: the point that gesture politics sucks arse. Bruce at Salmon Sheets looks at the "before and after" photo scams published in The Age (see pictures above) which purported to show the huge effect of the shut down -- presumably if the effect was so great, they wouldn't need to tart up their photos to fit the news? And in a second scam, as Andrew Yanderlou notes [hat tip Tim Blair],

    The chart [pictured right] demonstrates that during the "Earth Hour" itself, Sydney used around the same amount of electricity as it had the two nights of similar levels of electricity use at the same time.
    However, "Earth Hour" spectacularly caused a massive spike in electricity use in the two hours preceding the "Earth Hour" revealing the whole concept to be little more than a public relations scam and a contributor to global warming.
     Presumably this occurred as people brought forward the electricity using activities they had wanted to avoid during "Earth Hour."

So neither real, nor effective then. But on top of these two scams, there's an even bigger one that an uncharacteristically pointed Ed Hudgins highlights in his piece The New Cult of Darkness, which begins this way, a much deeper and more philosophical scam that is rapidly becoming all-pervasive: the idea that human life and human flourishing is un-natural, and something for which we must seek expiation from today's prevailing nature gods.

    Since early men ignited the first fires in caves, the unleashing of energy for light, heat, cooking and every human need has been the essence and symbol of what it is to be human. The Greeks saw Prometheus vanquishing the darkness with the gift of fire to men. The Romans kept an eternal flame burning in the Temple of Vesta. Our deepest thoughts and insights are described as sparks of fire in our minds. A symbol of death is a fading flame; Poet Dylan Thomas urged us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light."
    Thus a symbol of the deepest social darkness is seen in the recent extinguishing of the lights of cities across Australia and in other industrialized countries, not as a result of power failures or natural disasters, not as a conscious act of homage for the passing of some worthy soul, but to urge us all to limit energy consumption for fear of global warming.
    This is not the symbol of the death but, rather, of the suicide of a civilization. . .

It was only a symbolic shutting down of a city, but what it symbolises is much darker than those photo-shopped pictures of a great city with its lights out. Unlike other animals who adapt themselves to their environment, human survival demands that we adapt the earth to ourselves; brightly lit cities are the greatest and most exciting symbol of our civilising success, of the life-affirming success at the production of our habitat. Hanging our head in shame at that success, however symbolically, is not heroic. It's not life-affirming. It's not something to celebrate. As Hudgins concludes:

    The spectacle of a city skyline shining at night is the beauty of millions of individuals at their most human. Energy is not for conserving; it is for unleashing to serve us, to make our lives better, to allow us to realize our dreams and to reach for the stars, those bright lights that pierce the darkness of the night.

Too right.

UPDATE 1:  By the way, Al Gore didn’t join in the general “Earth Hour” hysteria at his house, reports Drew Johnson, president of Tennessee Center for Policy Research, who drove past at the appointed time to see what the Goracle was up to [hat tip Anthony Watts, who has more on the Bore’s snub].

UPDATE 2: Tim Blair makes fun of an Earth Hour noob, and another one, and adds a few links – including one of Sydney 2009 during and after Earth Hour.

UPDATE 3: Belated congratulations, by the way, to Dave Mann and Mr Dennis, who managed to slip photos of their well-illuminated residences into the Herald’s wretched gallery of Saturday night ludditery.

And congratulations too to the Flannagans, who lit up their own place, and promise to upload links to everyone else who did.