Bell, Larry

<h3>Larry Bell</h3>

=pushed ati schnare holocaust BS ~ lisa jackson EPA  =BS forbes attack?<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/">https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/</a> =<div>=</div><div>
</div><div><div>Opinion</div><div>
</div><div>JUL 10, 2012 @ 12:45 PM 156,094 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets</div><div>
</div><div>The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty: Are Our 2nd Amendment Rights Part Of The Deal?</div><div>    </div><div>
</div><div>Larry Bell , CONTRIBUTOR</div><div>I write about aerospace, environment, energy, Second Amendment policy  </div><div>Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.</div><div>
</div><div>US President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly. "As a former lecturer in constitutional law, wouldn’t President Obama realize that the U.N.’s gun- grab agenda violates our sovereign rights? Perhaps the answer to that question warrants some serious reflection. " (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)</div><div>
</div><div>One year ago I wrote an article titled “U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms” which has recently gained a great deal of renewed public interest. This update reviews some more recent developments, offering additional perspective about an immediate matter which should be of great concern to all who value rights guaranteed by our Second Amendment.</div><div>
</div><div>The Obama administration is actively engaged in negotiations to finalize details for a new global agreement premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates”. As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon describes its purpose, “Our goal is clear: a robust and legally binding Arms Trade Treaty that will have a real impact on the lives of those millions of people suffering from consequences of armed conflict, repression and armed violence…It is ambitious, but it is achievable.”</div><div>
</div><div>Under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. originally voted against a resolution that began the process in 2006. However, the current administration reversed that policy, and strongly supports its enactment. In January 2010, U.S. representatives joined with those of 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution to draft a blueprint for enactment in 2012. This activity is planned to be completed by July 27, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push hard for Senate ratification. Previously led by the United Kingdom, there can be no doubt that the U.N.’s 193-member General Assembly will approve it.</div><div>
</div><div>Foreign ministers of the U.K., France, Germany and Sweden want the treaty to cover all types of conventional weapons, notably including small arms and light weapons, all types of munitions, and related technologies. They also advocate that it include strong provisions governing human rights, international humanitarian law and sustainable development. (More about sustainable development later.)</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Internal Security and Nonproliferation, Thomas Countryman, has stated that the Obama administration does not support regulation of ammunition, but only wants to make it more difficult to “conduct illicit, illegal and destabilizing transfers of arms”. In addition, a press release issued by the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs says that “The outcome will not seek to prohibit citizens of any country from possessing firearms or to interfere with the legal trade in small arms and light weapons.”</div><div>
</div><div>Such statements have many very strong skeptics, both inside and outside Congress. One reason, among many, is that Iran, a country that is one of the world’s worst human rights violators, yet often chaired the U.N. Human Rights Council…yes Iran, arms supplier to many of America’s most determined adversaries… was selected for a top Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) planning conference position. The members, apparently including U.S. representatives, authorized this selection shortly after the same U.N. found the very same Iran guilty of transferring guns and bombs to the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad who is presently slaughtering thousands of its own citizens.Meanwhile, the U.N., America included, purporting to be distraught about illicit, illegal and destabilizing transfers of arms, watches in the wings as these tragedies unfold. Of course, they’re very busy. Those arms control planning conferences require a lot of attention.</div><div>
</div><div>On June 29, 130 Republican House members sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary Clinton arguing that the proposed treaty infringes on the “fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms”. The letter charges that “…the U.N.’s actions to date indicate that the ATT is likely to pose significant threats to our national security, foreign policy, and economic interests as well as our constitutional rights.” The lawmakers adamantly insist that the U.S. Government has no right to support a treaty that violates the Constitution and Bill of Rights.</div><div>
</div><div>Democrats have accused Republicans of making this a political issue, maintaining that the treaty poses no Second Amendment threat. Others, such as former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, caution gun owners to take this initiative seriously. He believes that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”</div><div>,...</div></div>listed as contributor, does that mean paid?  they also have legal disclaimer of his opinions--<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/01/22/the-u-n-s-global-warming-war-on-capitalism-an-important-history-lesson-2/#18fdc08215fc">http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/01/22/the-u-n-s-global-warming-war-on-capitalism-an-important-history-lesson-2/#18fdc08215fc</a><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/17/epas-secret-and-costly-sue-and-settle-collusion-with-environmental-organizations/#430d45ad3a4b">http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/17/epas-secret-and-costly-sue-and-settle-collusion-with-environmental-organizations/#430d45ad3a4b</a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sue and Settle “ practices, sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits”, are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein  court-ordered “consent decrees” are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft together in advance behind closed doors. Then, rather than allowing the entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by agreeing to move forward with the requested action they and the litigants both want.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In other words, the agency throws the case, somewhat like Bre’r Rabbit agreeing to be thrown into a favorite brier-patch. A big difference however, is that in this case, Farmer McGregor andMr. Rabbit were partners in the scam from the beginning. It’s the unwary American public that actually does get caught in the thorns.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the environmental group is given a seat at the table, outsiders who are most impacted are excluded, with no opportunity to object to the settlements. Accordingly, both the litigants and the defendant agency, operating in coffee bars and friendly courtroom shadows, avoid the harsh outside glare of oversight. No public notice about the settlement is released until the agreement is filed in court…after the damage has been done.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<div id="article-0-inread" article-ad-inbody="inread" class="inread ng-isolate-scope inread-active" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both;"><p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On top of all that, we taxpayers, including those impacted regulatory victims, are put on the hook for legal fees of both colluding parties.<a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=20ba71b7-802a-23ad-4ca7-a06341934622" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> </a><a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=20ba71b7-802a-23ad-4ca7-a06341934622" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">According to a 2011 GAO report</a>, this amounted to millions of dollars awarded to environmental organizations for EPA litigations between 1995 and 2010. Three “Big Green” groups received 41% of this payback: Earthjustice, $4,655,425 (30%); the Sierra Club, $966,687; and the Natural Resources Defense Council, $252,004. Most of this was paid to environmental attorneys in connection to lawsuits filed under the Clean Air Act, followed next by the Clean Water Act.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition, the Department of Justice forked over at least $43 million of our money defending EPA in court between 1998 and 2010. This didn’t include money spent by EPA for their legal costs in connection with those rip-offs, since EPA doesn’t keep track of their attorney’s time on a case-by-case basis.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">W<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-style="font-style" inherit="inherit" font-variant="font-variant" font-weight="font-weight" text-align="text-align" center="center">hile researching various broken government regulatory processes, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce discovered many new rulemakings and unreasonable permitting delays which appeared to have resulted from such consent decrees  in which the EPA agreed to bind itself to issue new regulations on a specific timetable; i.e., “We can tell Congress the court made us do it.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-style="font-style" inherit="inherit" font-variant="font-variant" font-weight="font-weight" text-align="text-align" center="center">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Chamber concluded that such Sue and Settle rulemaking is responsible for many of EPA’s “most controversial, economically significant regulations that have plagued the business community for the past few years”. Included are regulations on power plants, refineries, mining operations, cement plants, chemical manufacturers, and a host of other industries. One of the most successful Sue and Settle strategies <a href="http://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/reports/1207_ETRA_HazeReport_lr.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">they cited</a> “… has been on an issue few in<a href="http://www.forbes.com/places/dc/washington/" target="self" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Washington</a> or around the nation are paying attention to: regional haze requirements under the Clean Air Act.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Chamber’s study author, William Yeatman, Assistant Director for <a href="http://www.forbes.com/energy/" target="self" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Energy</a> and Environment at the Competitive <a href="http://www.forbes.com/enterprise/" target="self" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Enterprise</a> Institute (CEI), emphasizes that EPA’s abuse of its Regional Haze authority forces states to relinquish their authority and accept EPA’s far more expensive plans, thereby increasing consumer utility charges. He concluded that: “… no state is immune from having its rightful Regional Haze authority trampled by EPA at profound costs for virtually nonexistent benefits.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Having conducted eight state case studies, Yeatman <a href="http://www.uschamber.com/press/releases/2012/july/us-chamber-report-reveals-epa%E2%80%99s-takeover-states%E2%80%99-regional-haze-programs-all" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">found that</a>:<ul style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">In <a href="http://www.forbes.com/places/az/" target="self" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Arizona</a>, EPA’s Regional Haze regulation threatens to increase the cost of water, forcing the state to spend an additional $90.2 million per year to implement the federal regulation.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">In <a href="http://www.forbes.com/places/mt/" target="self" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Montana</a>, EPA’s proposed Regional Haze controls are nearly 250% more expensive than what that agency’s standing rules presume to be “cost-effective” for compliance,</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">In 2011, the EPA disregarded New Mexico’s Regional Haze plan, instead imposing a federal plan that requires nearly $840 million more in capital costs…potentially raising average annual household utility bills by $120.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">Although North Dakota is one of only 12 states that achieves all of EPA’s air quality standards for public health, it would not be able to achieve EPA’s Regional Haze goals for visibility even by shutting down all industry. The EPA plan would also cost the state an additional $13 million per year,</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">Refusing to approve Oklahoma’s Regional Haze plan, the EPA’s plan would cost the state $282 million annually.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">In Wyoming, the EPA proposed a federal implementation plan that would cost almost $96 million per year more than the state’s plan.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">Minnesota is subject to back-to-back Regional Haze regulations, whereby EPA is claiming authority to regulate regional haze twice in succession at its Sherburne County generating plant.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: disc;">EPA’s proposed plan would cost Nebraska nearly $24 million per year to achieve invisible “benefits”.</li></ul><p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px;">Louisiana Senator David Vitter (R-LA), the new ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, <a href="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=644862c0-f95a-e23f-b506-828fbd0cab86" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">plans to investigate this Sue and Settle practice</a>, “using all available tools to bring to light this often abused path to regulatory influence”. For starters, he asked his Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to join with AGs of 13 other states who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with EPA on August 10, 2012, asking for any and all correspondence between EPA and a list of 80 environmental, labor union and public interest organizations that have been party to litigation since the start of the Obama administration.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Unfortunately, getting federal agencies to comply with formal FOIA requests isn’t proving to be easy. And to make matters worse, there is evidence that top bureaucrats have even used private e-mail accounts and aliases to cover culpability tracks.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px;">For example, Senator Vitter, along with Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, recently sent a letter to James Martin, EPA’s Region 8 administrator, <a href="http://www.globalwarming.org/2013/02/05/sen-vitter-hits-the-ground-running/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">warning him</a>: “The use of personal, non-official e-mail accounts raises concerns that you could be attempting to insulate this and other e-mail correspondence from a Freedom of Information Act request. Moreover, your actions may also constitute violation of the Federal Records Act”…evading congressional oversight of federal agencies.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of those private e-mails at issue involved an exchange between Martin and Vickie Patton, the General Counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, regarding an arranged meeting with him. Patton wrote: “Hi Jim, Next Monday or Tuesday December 12/13 at 9am depending on which is best for you.” Responding, Martin replied: “January 13 at 9:00 am works for me if it works for you. (Lost your original note-is that the date and time you proposed?” Vitter and Issa have confirmed that the meeting did, in fact, take place at the EPA regional office.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Several Martin e-mails were released by EPA as the result of a FOIA lawsuit lodged by Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Horner’s efforts also revealed evidence that former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was conducting official agency business under cover of the alias name “Richard Windsor”, and CEI also sued EPA seeking   e-mails concerning the EPA’s behind-the-scenes regulatory war on coal plants. Horner’s new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451694881/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1451694881&linkCode=as2&tag=chrishorneron-20" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">The Liberal War on Transparency</a>, discusses this and other tricks.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Suspicions abound that the exposure of Jackson’s undercover communications had much to do with her departure decision shortly afterwards. Senator Vitter commented: “I think this e-mail issue clearly spurred Lisa Jackson’s resignation. But it’s much broader than her. It’s about a culture of hiding an extreme agenda from Americans because it can’t be sustained in public debate.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CEI issued a statement that agreed with Vitter’s perspective,<a href="http://blog.nola.com/politics/print.html?entry=/2012/12/sen_vitter_thinks_lisa_jackson.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">commenting</a>: “We also believe the timing was no accident. She claims to have told President Obama shortly after his re-election she planned to leave in early 2013, but her announcement went public just days after the Justice Department agreed- as a result of a lawsuit filed by CEI- to begin producing 12,000 e-mails from her ‘Richard Windsor’ account.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On January 28, 2013, on behalf of the American Tradition institute (ATI) Horner also sued in the Federal District Court of Washington, D.C. to compel EPA to end its eight-month stonewall of two FOIA requests regarding its “uncomfortably close ties at great taxpayer expense” with the American Lung Association (ALA), and the Sierra Club. Both of these organizations lobby for stringent regulatory legislation the EPA wants, while at the same time, receiving agency funding. ALA has received $20,405,655 from EPA over the past 10 years, and has run campaigns against politicians who challenge its policies. An ALA billboard ad in Michigan targeted House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, featuring a child with an oxygen mask over her face. The text read: “Rep. Fred Upton, protect our kids’ health. Don’t weaken the Clean Air Act.”<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px;">According to the ATI complaint, “The Sierra Club employs a similar model and has close working relationships with Agency officials.” This charge refers most particularly to a recent incidence where Sierra hired disgraced EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz. He left EPA shortly after a videotape revealed him acknowledging his “philosophy of enforcement” as being akin to random crucifixions used to keep subjects suitably respectful and “really easy to manage for the next few years.” Armendariz has pledged to continue to help Sierra (and, presumably, EPA) fight the coal industry.<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senator Vitter’s office has informed me that there are ongoing investigations regarding a known revolving door of environmentalists and agencies, as well as Equal Action to Justice Act recovery money flowing to these groups post-settlement. In other words, the litigating groups are getting paid to sue both at the front end and tail end as well...<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bit of plagiarim?<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.vitter.senate.gov/newsroom/press/vitter-warns-louisiana-of-epas-secret-sue-and-settle-deals-could-impact-state<header style="line-height: 20px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 55px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; padding: 4px 0px;">Vitter Warns Louisiana of EPA’s Secret “Sue and Settle” Deals, Could Impact State</h1><h2 class="lead" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; font-weight: lighter; line-height: 34px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; letter-spacing: -1px; opacity: 0.9;">Says EPA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are colluding with environmental groups</h2></header><p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><time class="dateline" datetime="2013-01-22" style="line-height: 1.35; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; display: block;">Tuesday, January 22, 2013</time>WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) is warning of more secret “sue and settle” deals with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups. In a letter today, Vitter encourages Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to join the 13 states’ AGs who recently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with EPA asking for any and all correspondence between EPA and a list of 80 environmental, labor union and public interest organizations that had been party to litigation since the start of the Obama Administration. “The collusion between federal bureaucrats and far-left environmental organizations entering legal agreements under a shroud of secrecy is the opposite of a transparent government,” Vitter said. “This is a problem across the country, but could quickly become a threat to Louisianans if we see the full weight of the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service come crashing down on private landowners.”Vitter is encouraging Caldwell to join the other states’ AGs, and is also encouraging the inclusion of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their investigation. The Fish and Wildlife Service was not included in the original FOIA request. In his letter, Vitter also highlights a specific recent example where the Fish and Wildlife Service entered an agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity that could impact private property owners across the South and in Louisiana with new rules on habitat for endangered species on private property because private property owners will have few resources to fight any legal challenge of a massive federal agency.A copy of Vitter’s letter is below.January 22, 2013James D. “Buddy” Caldwell
Attorney General
State of Louisiana
1885 N. Third Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802Dear A.G. Buddy Caldwell:            I write asking your personal assistance regarding a matter imperative to Louisiana’s economy and private property owners across our great state.   My concern stems from the non-transparent nature of litigation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and specifically the entering of consent decrees through a practice referred to as “sue and settle,” and sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits.”  Under this practice, radical environmental groups file lawsuits against a federal agency in a friendly court demanding the agency take action.  Rather than allowing the entire process to play out, the Department of Justice and the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by agreeing to move forward with the requested action.  While the environmental group is given a seat at the negotiating table, private property owners and other affected residents are not given the opportunity to object to these settlements. On August 10, 2012 thirteen state Attorney Generals filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with EPA asking for any and all correspondence between EPA and a list of 80 environmental, labor union and public interest organizations that had been party to litigation since the start of the Obama administration.  My specific request is that you intervene in these efforts and expand the investigation beyond the EPA to include the USFWS.  The collusion between federal bureaucrats and the organizations entering consent agreements under a shroud of secrecy represents the antithesis of a transparent government, and your participation in the FOIA request will help Louisianans understand the process by which these settlements were reached.  Using these “sue and settle” agreements, a significant portion of regulatory policy is being fashioned behind closed doors with groups that are clearly antagonistic to the economic health of the United States and Louisiana.  This regulatory policy is having a significant, negative impact on states and private property owners.  A specific recent example involves the settlement agreement between the USFWS and the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group who has made clear its goal is to use the litigation process to force species listings.  The agreement to make listing determinations on hundreds of species will adversely impact private property owners across the South and the state of Louisiana with new rules on habitat for endangered species on private property.  Unfortunately, most private property owners will not have the resources to fight the legal and regulatory onslaught of a massive federal agency.            As the new ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I plan to investigate  this “sue and settle” practice using all available tools to bring to light this often abused path to regulatory influence.  Private interest groups using lawsuits that are settled in secret, with minimal to no input from the regulated community, small businesses and private property owners should no longer go on without oversight.            As the AG, your intervention and requested expansion of the FOIA request can help to investigate and shed light on what our federal agencies are doing to undermine Louisiana and the people of our great state.  I am warily confident that both EPA and USFWS will shun all efforts to open the doors on these practices, the negotiations, and the communications between agency staff and outside groups regarding “sue and settle” agreements.  However, I request that you stay vigilant and join the consorted effort of the 13 other state AGs working to make public the collusion between our federal government and certain interest groups.            If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
                                                Sincerely,
                                               
                                                David Vitter
                                                Ranking Member
                                                U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works<p style="line-height: 1.4em; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/#2735270c76fb">http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/#2735270c76fb</a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">page 2 2013 <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their 'Science'<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2/13 [climategate bs?]<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Larry Bell<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CONTRIBUTOR<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I write about aerospace, environment, energy, Second Amendment policy  <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Continued from page 1<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">First, taken from a 1996 IPCC report summary written by B.D. Santer, T.M.L Wigley, T.P. Barnett, and E. Anyamba: “…there is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcings by greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols…from geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change…These results point towards human influence on climate.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Then, a 1996 publication “The Holocene”, by T.P. Barnett, B.D. Santer, P.D. Jones, R.S. Bradley and K.R. Briffa, says this: “Estimates of…natural variability are critical to the problem of detecting an anthropogenic [human] signal…We have estimated the spectrum…from paleo-temperature proxies and compared it with…general [climate] circulation models…none of the three estimates of the natural variability spectrum agree with each other…Until…resolved, it will be hard to say, with confidence, that an anthropogenic climate signal has or has not been detected.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In other words, these guys, several of whom you will hear from later, can’t say with confidence whether or not humans have had any influence at all…or even  if so, whether it has caused warming or cooling!<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer, speaking in November 2010, advised that: “…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The late Stephen Schneider, who authored The Genesis Strategy, a 1976 book warning that global cooling risks posed a threat to humanity, later changed that view 180 degrees, serving as a lead author for important parts of three sequential IPCC reports. In a quotation published in Discover, he said: “On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, on the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of the doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of 2001 and 2007 IPCC report chapters, writing in a 2007 “Predictions of Climate” blog appearing in the science journal Nature.com, admitted: “None of the models used by the IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed state”.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Recommended by Forbes<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.N.'s Global Warming War On Capitalism: An Important History Lesson<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Promised Land's Fracking Fictions: OPEC Goes Hollywood With Crocudrama<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CargillVoice: How Rising Global Temperatures And Extreme Weather Will Change Farming]<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Al Gore's Oil-Fueled Al-Jazeera Deal Follows A String Of Green Energy Fias...<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Even With Bipartisan Push, Is Keystone XL Still A Pipe Dream?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">]<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Christopher Landsea, a top expert on the subject of cyclones, became astounded and perplexed when he was informed that Trenberth had participated in a 2004 press conference following a deadly 2004 Florida storm season which had announced “Experts warn that global warming [is] likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity.” Since IPCC studies released in 1995 and 2001 had found no evidence of a global warming-hurricane link, and there was no new analysis to suggest otherwise, he wrote to leading IPCC officials imploring: “What scientific, refereed publications substantiate these pronouncements? What studies alluded to have shown a connection between observed warming trends on Earth and long-term trends of cyclone activity?”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Receiving no replies, he then requested assurance that the 2007 report would present true science, saying: “[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have come to a conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity, and has already stated so. This does not reflect consensus within the hurricane research community.” After that assurance didn’t come, Landsea, an invited author, resigned from the 2007 report activity and issued an open letter presenting his reasons.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Some Interesting ClimateGate E-Mail Comments:<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A note from Jones to Trenberth: “Kevin, Seems that this potential Nature [journal] paper may be worth citing, if it does say that GW [global warming] is having an effect on TC [tropical cyclone] activity.” <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jones wanted to make sure that people who supported this connection be represented in IPCC reviews: “Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Raymond Bradley, co-author of Michael Mann’s infamously flawed hockey stick paper which was featured in influential IPCC reports, took issue with another article jointly published by Mann and Phil Jones, stating: “I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL [Geophysical Research Letters] paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year reconstruction.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trenberth associate Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research wrote: “Mike, the Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC …”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wigley and Trenberth suggested in another e-mail to Mann: “If you think that [Yale professor James] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official [American Geophysical Union] channels to get him ousted [as editor-in-chief of the Geophysical Research Letters journal].”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A July 2004 communication from Phil Jones to Michael Mann referred to two papers recently published in Climate Research with a “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL” subject line observed: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is.” <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A June 4, 2003 e-mail from Keith Briffa to fellow tree ring researcher Edward Cook at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York stated: “I got a paper to review (submitted to the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Sciences), written by a Korean guy and someone from Berkeley, that claims that the method of reconstruction that we use in dendroclimatology (reverse regression) is wrong, biased, lousy, horrible, etc…If published as is, this paper could really do some damage…It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically… I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review—Confidentially, I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom Crowley, a key member of Michael Mann’s global warming hockey team, wrote: “I am not convinced that the ‘truth’ is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Several e-mail exchanges reveal that certain researchers believed well-intentioned ideology trumped objective science. Jonathan Overpeck, a coordinating lead IPCC report author, suggested: “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Phil Jones wrote: “Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds. …what he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene! I reckon this can be saved by careful wording.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; -webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Writing to Jones, Peter Thorne of the U.K. Met Office advised caution, saying:  “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necess...=iccc<h2 style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; clear: both; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 255); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Larry Bell</h2>Day Job: Professor of Architecture at the University of Houston, blogger at Forbes.comIndustry Ties: Heartland Institute.  Climate Expertise: None, despite writing <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545#bell" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">Climate of Corruption</a>.He said it: "<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/larry-bell-global-warming/2011/01/22/id/383607#ixzz34S3dtb1f" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">Pointing the finger</a> at carbon dioxide as the culprit is a convenient way, of course, of vilifying carbon based fuels."seems like mirroring; massive use of rnc emails in 43 admin? plame: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy</a> also:  When two state attorneys general obtained this email they wrote to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft" title="John Ashcroft" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">John Ashcroft</a>, the US attorney general: cooney/ebell<table class="cquote" role="presentation" style="line-height: 22.4px; margin: auto; border-collapse: collapse; border: none; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><tbody><tr><td style="width: 20px; vertical-align: top; border: none; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.6em; padding: 10px;">“</td><td style="vertical-align: top; border: none; padding: 4px 10px;">It appears that certain White House officials conspired with an anti-environmental special interest group to cause the lawsuit to be filed against the federal government.The idea that the Bush Administration may have invited a lawsuit from a special interest group in order to undermine the federal government's own work under an international treaty is very troubling.</td></tr></tbody></table>--newsmax tv <a class="yt-uix-sessionlink yt-uix-tile-link spf-link yt-ui-ellipsis yt-ui-ellipsis-2" dir="ltr" title="Global Warming Skeptic Bell: CO2 Hoax Biggest Climate Change Lie" data-sessionlink="feature=c4-feed-a&ei=LbwUVPH6IMGmqwXPq4HgBg&ved=CBAQvxs" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buAiehw0Q1c&list=FLyIv75EzJfHakdqwhaNG1Sg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; line-height: 1.3em; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-overflow: ellipsis; word-wrap: break-word; max-height: 2.6em; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-line-clamp: 2; display: inline !important; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Global Warming Skeptic Bell: CO2 Hoax Biggest Climate Change Lie</a><div class="yt-lockup-meta" style="line-height: 12px; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><ul class="yt-lockup-meta-info" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background: transparent;"><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline-block; background: transparent;">by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6h-dWzJ5NpAlja1YsApdg" class="g-hovercard yt-uix-sessionlink yt-user-name spf-link " data-sessionlink="feature=c4-feed-a&ei=LbwUVPH6IMGmqwXPq4HgBg&ved=CA8QwRs" dir="ltr" data-ytid="UCx6h-dWzJ5NpAlja1YsApdg" data-name="c4-feed-a" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; background: transparent;">NewsmaxTV</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline-block; background: transparent;">3 years ago</li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline-block; background: transparent;">16,497 views</li></ul></div>Larry Bell, author of the new book 'Climate of Corruption,' contends that the deliberate distortion of climate data perpetuates inaccurate information about perfectly natural climate changes. He al... <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/climateofcorruption">http://www.youtube.com/user/climateofcorruption</a>=-press agent for horner cei?
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/17/epas-secret-and-costly-sue-and-settle-collusion-with-environmental-organizations/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/17/epas-secret-and-costly-sue-and-settle-collusion-with-environmental-organizations/</a>=larry bellhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/11/13/epa-charged-with-lethal-experiments-on-hundreds-of-unsuspecting-subjects/<p style="line-height: 27px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">A suit filed in federal court charges the Environmental Protection Agency with conducting illegal and potentially lethal experiments on hundreds of financially needy people who were paid $12/hour without even informing them of risks. Based upon thousands of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, procedures undertaken since 2004 and continuing through the Obama administration exposed subjects at the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine to very high levels of toxic air pollutants. Many of these subjects were already health-impaired, suffering from asthma, metabolic syndrome, and aging (up to 75 years old).<p style="line-height: 27px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">One of the pollutants was a fine particulate substance known as PM2.5, a major component of diesel exhaust which EPA had determined to be unsafe for inhalation at any level, particularly for health-impaired and elderly populations. The administration’s own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council chairman, Jon Samet, stated that in a 2011 commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine. House <a href="http://www.forbes.com/energy/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Energy</a> and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) reiterated EPA’s position on this in a February 2012 letter to EPA air chief, Gina McCarthy.<p style="line-height: 27px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">EPA has strictly regulated PM2.5 under its Clean Air Act since 1997.  Those air quality standards costing multi-billions of dollars are being dramatically tightened. Two of the biggest new ones under its recently D.C. District Circuit Appeals Court-rejected Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard, are heavily premised upon condemnation of PM2.5 as a killer. As EPA Administrator <a href="http://www.forbes.com/places/ms/jackson/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Jackson</a> testified in Congress in September 2011, “…particulate [PM2.5] matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.” She added, “If we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy we would have an identical impact to finding a cure for cancer.”<p style="line-height: 27px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">So if this is the case, why did EPA fail to warn their test subjects that the substances they would be exposed to in high doses were so dangerous? While the administration has repeatedly told Congress and the public that PM2.5 can kill within hours of exposure, they only told them, for example, that “You may experience some minor degree of airway irritation, cough or shortness of breath or wheezing. These symptoms typically disappear two to four hours after exposure, but may last longer for particularly sensitive people.”<div id="article_container_0_loge" class="loge_ad ad_initialized article_body_ad" style="line-height: 20px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 0px 30px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; float: right; clear: right; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/7175/fdc.forbes/article-new_3container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">One such “sensitive person” is an obese woman with a history of heart disease. She had to be rushed to a hospital for an overnight stay after suffering a cardiac arrhythmia during an experiment. And although EPA attributed her heart problem to PM2.5 in a published report, no one ever bothered to warn subsequent subjects of cardiac arrhythmia risk.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The American Tradition Institute (ATI) which filed the law suit against EPA and its administrator asserts that such practices are not only illegal, but run afoul of virtually every rule of ethical standard established since World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments to protect human study subjects from rogue scientific research. The egregious Tuskegee experiments were influential in prompting Congress to pass the National Research Act of 1974 creating a commission to develop principles for protection of human subjects in scientific experimentation.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ATI believes that EPA has both civil and criminal liability. The litigation was filed on behalf of lead plaintiff Landon Huffman, an ATI member who participated in the EPA’s human experimentation after receiving a consent form that did not explain that he would be exposed to something that the agency claims to be lethal. He was also never informed that such human experimentation was only supposed to be conducted in a manner that would potentially and directly benefit the study subjects.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">To the contrary,  Mr. Landon maintains that he was led to believe the experiment would help people with asthma, a condition he suffers…not told that the pollution that was forced into his lungs could actually cause an asthma attack. Nor was he ever given anything by EPA that would possibly relieve his asthma.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Since learning that EPA considers that the gases he was exposed to are lethal, Landon reports being distraught and consumed with emotional distress. This includes a fear of dying and future inability to support his wife and family. He is also distressed that other participants may suffer in the same way.[plag?]<div id="article_container_0_recx_0" class="recx_ad ad_initialized article_body_ad" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 0px 30px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; float: right; clear: right; line-height: 20px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/7175/fdc.forbes/article-new_4container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ATI member and plaintiff Steven Milloy recalls horrific family memories of his uncle, a prisoner  at the WWII German Mauthausen concentration camp where grisly pseudoscientific medical experiments were conducted. There, upon threat of death, he was forced to identify fellow prisoners who were too ill to work, knowing they would subsequently be executed.  Milloy is a well-known author and publisher of <a href="http://junkscience.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">JunkScience.com</a>.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Another ATI plaintiff, David Schnare, formerly served for 33 years as an EPA scientist, policy analyst and enforcement lawyer. He left the agency after realizing that it had abandoned even-handed science-based approaches of earlier times. David is named in honor of family member David Steiner, a prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp who died on May 3, 1945, just 21 days after liberation. Some 729 inmates were subjects of barbaric medical experiments. Of those victims, 154 died.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Guided by painful lessons of such tragedies, it is difficult to imagine any possible justification for the EPA’s experiment program on plausible ethical or legal grounds. Section  42 of U.S. Code 3515b addressing prohibition on funding certain experiments involving human participants states that: “…[no]funds appropriated by this Act ….shall be used to pay for any research program, project, or course which is of an experimental nature, or any other activity involving human participants, which is determined by the Secretary or a court of competent jurisdiction to present a danger to the physical, mental, or emotional well-being of a participant or subject of such program, project, or course, without the written, informed consent of each participant or subject.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Since three of the EPA researchers connected with its human experiments are North Carolina-licensed physicians, that state’s medical board is now investigating their participation. The University of North Carolina which provided the EPA with a required institutional review board (IRB) for approving the experiments is also conducting an inquiry. And while the Obama-appointed Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has refused multiple requests to get involved in the issue, Senator Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is now calling for investigatory hearings on the matter.<div id="article_container_0_recx_1" class="recx_ad ad_initialized article_body_ad" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 0px 30px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; float: right; clear: right; line-height: 20px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/7175/fdc.forbes/article-new_5container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: transparent; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">In a letter to committee chair Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Inhofe wrote: “It is extremely disturbing that EPA may have conducted illegal human experiments, exposing people with conditions such as asthma and metabolic syndrome to concentrated high levels of substances like fine particulate matter and diesel exhaust.” He then charged that: “EPA has repeatedly said that these substances can cause cancer and lead to death, so if these allegations of human experiments are true, it just validates the problem that the Obama-EPA’s mission is not about public health.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 161.656px 21px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 27px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">So there it is. Either such devastating charges are warranted, or the agency’s assessments of toxic dangers presented by diesel PM2.5 emissions are greatly exaggerated and unsupportable. In the second event, EPA is at least guilty of gross scientific incompetence, public misrepresentation of facts, and costly abuse of regulatory authority. Either way, they must be required to clear the air and clean up their act.

==

larry bell forbes 2014

Remember the big “acid rain” scare during the 1970s and 1980s attributing damage to lakes and forests to emissions from Midwestern utilities? If so, did you ever hear the results of a more than half-billion-dollar, 10-year-long national Acid Precipitation Assessment Program study that was initiated in 1980 to research the matter?[cf 60 min?]

Probably not.

As it turned out, those widespread fears proved to be largely unfounded, since only one species of tree at a high elevation suffered any notable effect, and acidity in lakes was traced to natural causes. The investigating scientists reported that they had “turned up no smoking gun; that the problem is far more complicated than it been thought; that other factors combine to harm trees; and that sorting out the cause-and-effect was difficult and in some cases impossible.”

Robert Bruck, a North Carolina State University plant pathologist who worked on the project, <a href="http://www.apple.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">observed</a>: “if you’re environmentally oriented, you going to find things to be concerned about; if you’re one who finds no reason to get excited, you’ll find much to support that too.”

Although the Reagan-Bush administration refused to sponsor any acid rain legislation before the results were in, the regulatory groundwork had already been established through the EPA to avoid letting a perfectly good crisis go to waste.

Senator John Heinz (R–PA) and Timothy Wirth (D-CO) had previously cosponsored a “Project 88” to provide a pathway for converting environmental issues into business opportunities. That media-fueled alarm about acid rain provided a great basis for new “allowance trading” legislation to create markets for buying and selling excess sulfur dioxide (SO2) credits. Project 88 became the Clean Air Act of 1990.

Carbon-Capping Cronies: Enron, Al Gore and Friends

One of the<a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;"> big traders in the SO2 allowance market was Enron</a>. Back at that time in the 1990s the company was diversifying its energy business, and already owned the largest natural gas pipeline that existed outside of Russia, a colossal interstate network. However natural was having difficulties competing with coal.

The hype about global warming which had been ginned up by then-Senator Al Gore’s famous 1988 congressional hearings on the matter provided what Enron recognized as a dream opportunity. [!]  After all, since a cap-and-trade market had been established for SO2, why not do the same for CO2 which was already being blamed for a climate crisis? Natural gas was a lower CO2-emitter than coal. Besides, they knew exactly where to go in Washington to get some help.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Air-Con-Seriously-Inconvenient-Warming/dp/0958240140" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Enron’s CEO Ken Lay had met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in the White House on August 4, 1997</a> to prepare a strategy for the upcoming Kyoto conference in December. Kyoto was the first step toward creating a carbon market that Enron desperately wanted Congress to support.

But there was one very pesky problem. Unlike SO2 which really does produce unhealthy smog, CO2 wasn’t a pollutant…at least not yet…and therefore EPA had no authority to regulate it. So after Al Gore’s Senate pal Timothy Wirth was appointed to become undersecretary of state for global affairs in the Clinton-Gore administration, Enron’s boss Lay began working closely with him to lobby Congress to grant EPA necessary CO2regulatory authority plus also gain public support for the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol initiative.

And lobby they did. Between 1994 and 1996 the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, and together with the Pew Center and the Heinz Foundation they engaged in an energetic and successful global warming fear campaign which included attacks on scientific dissenters. Incidentally, the Heinz Foundation, headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry, generously provided a $250,000 award to Al Gore’s star congressional hearing witness, NASA’s James Hansen, who subsequently went on public record  supporting  her new husband John Kerry’s failed presidential bid.

An <a href="http://cei.org/op-eds-and-articles/enron-sought-global-warming-regulation-not-free-markets" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">internal Enron memorandum stated</a> that Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside the restructuring [of] the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Al Gore and his partner David Blood, the former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) took big stakes in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) which was poised to make windfall profits selling CO2 offsets if and when cap-and-trade was passed in Congress.  Speaking before a 2007 Joint House Hearing of the Energy Science Committee, Gore told members: “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it…There will be unchained investment.”

Thanks to a 2010 Republican mid-term House cleaning that didn’t occur.

Windy Hurricane Sensationalism Poses Extreme Science Threat

There’s nothing like terrible and destructive weather events to stir up climate scaremongering. A notable example occurred just prior to the release of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Summary for Policymaker’s Report following the devastating 2004 summer storm season which witnessed five landfall hurricanes in Florida which captured media attention throughout the world.

Opportunities to link this unusual pattern to man-made global warming were not lost on some IPCC officials, particularly Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. In October of that year he participated in a press conference <a href="http://www.apple.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">that announced</a>: “Experts found global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity.”

But there was a serious challenge. The IPCC studies released in 1995 and 2001 had found no evidence of a global warming–hurricane link, and there was no new analysis to suggest otherwise. Dr. Christopher Landsea, an expert on the subject at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, was astounded and perplexed when he was informed that the press conference was to take place.

As a contributing author on both of the IPCC’s previous reports and an invited author for the upcoming 2007 report, Landsea believed there must be some huge mistake. He had not done any work to substantiate the claim. Nobody had. There were no studies that revealed an upward trend of hurricane frequency or intensity…not in the Atlantic basin or in any other basin.

Landsea wrote to top IPCC officials imploring, “What scientific, refereed publications substantiate these pronouncements? What studies being alluded to have shown a connection between observed warming trends on Earth and long–term trends of tropical cyclone activity?”

Having received no replies, he then requested IPCC leadership assurance that the 2007 report would present true science, saying: “[ Dr. Trenberth] seems to have come to a conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity, and has already stated so. This does not reflect consensus within the hurricane research community… Thus, I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information consensus within the scientific community most expert on this specific topic.”

After the assurance didn’t come, Landsea resigned from the 2007 IPCC report activities  and issued an open letter presenting his  reasons.

And while the IPCC press conference proclaiming that global warming causes hurricanes received tumultuous responses in the international press, Mother Nature hasn’t paid much attention. In reality, there has been no increase in the strength or frequency of landfall hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; there has been no increase in the strength or frequency in tropical Atlantic hurricane development during the past 370 years; and the U.S. is currently enjoying the longest period ever recorded without intense Category 3-5 hurricane landfall.

By the way, while there also hasn’t been any increase in mean global temperatures during lifetimes of most of today’s high school students, Kevin Trenberth’s theories still get lots of attention. Searching for answers as to where the “missing heat” that greenhouse gas emissions should have trapped in the Earth’s climate system went, he speculates that the  oceans ate them.   Unfortunately, the science to support this most recent assertion is once again missing as well.

The Big Himalayan Melting Glacier Snow Job

Although the IPCC is broadly represented to the public as the top authority on climate matters, the organization doesn’t actually carry out any original climate research at all. Instead, it simply issues assessments based upon supposedly independent surveys of published peer-reviewed research. However, some of the most influential conclusions summarized in its reports have neither been based upon truly independent research, nor properly vetted through accepted peer- review processes.

IPCC’s representation  in its 2007 report that global warming would likely melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 prompted great alarm across southern and eastern Asia where glaciers feed major rivers. As it turned out, that prediction was traced to a speculative magazine article authored by an Indian glaciologist, Syed Hasnain, which had absolutely no supporting science behind it. Hasnain worked for a research company headed by the IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. IPCC’s report author, Marari Lai, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">later admitted to London’s Daily Mail</a>, “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take action.”

Well, they were successful and did get some action. This dire prediction prompted concern that rivers fed by the melting Himalayan glaciers would flood, then dry up once the glaciers retreated, endangering tens of millions of people in lowland Bangladesh.

Retired Air Marshal A.K. Singh, a former commander in India’s air force, then foresaw resulting mass migrations across national borders, with militaries (including ours) becoming involved. Purportedly influenced by this, Senate Armed Services Committee members <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/hillary-clinton" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Hillary Clinton</a> (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) snuck some language into the National Defense Authorization Act which required the Department of Defense to consider the threat of climate change effects in its long-range strategic plans. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/05/31/the-new-military-war-against-climate-change/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">One of those national security threats that DOD planners mentioned in 2009 was that global warming would melt the massive Himalayan ice mass</a>.

Political Science: The Winners and Losers

So just how well did this sort of this political science pay off in supporting the various agendas? Well, in the case of Enron…obviously not so great. As for Al Gore, even though his carbon cash-in plans got capped he still harvested lots of the green he was peddling. His pals did okay too. Timothy Worth landed a position as Vice Chair of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund. James Hansen who Al’s congressional hearings catapulted to fame is thankfully no longer at NASA, but is still scoring lucrative talking gigs in between routine arrests at Keystone XL Pipeline protest rallies.

EPA’s employment growth and regulatory ambitions have obviously benefited from IPCC’s alarmist agendas. Its 2009 “endangerment finding” decreeing that atmospheric concentrations of six greenhouse gases (including CO2) “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” was based entirely upon IPCC claims which were refuted at the time even by its in-house “Internal Study on Climate” report conclusions. That report, authored by my friend Alan Carlin who was then a senior research analyst at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics stated:  “…given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based upon a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”

Yet as IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/11/19/climate-talks-or-wealth-redistribution-talks/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">admitted in November 2010</a>, “…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”

And who are the real losers of such agenda-driven science? One of the biggest is climate science-related credibility. Fellow Forbes contributor Patrick Michaels recently posted an article quoting Dr. Garth Paltridge, a former chief research scientist with Australia’s prestigious Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. Referring to a dilemma in the overselling of global warming, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2014/02/03/will-the-overselling-of-global-warming-lead-to-a-new-scientific-dark-age/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: underline; background: transparent;">Partridge observes</a>: “The trap was fully sprung when many of the world’s major national academies of science (such as the Royal Society in the U.K., the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S.A and the Australian Academy of Science) persuaded themselves to issue reports giving support to the conclusions of the IPCC. The reports were touted as national assessments that were supposedly independent of the IPCC and of each other, but of necessity were compiled with the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest of, many of the scientists involved in the IPCC international machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the mast of the politically correct.”Partridge then predicts some potentially horrific consequences when the day of reckoning finally arrives. Noting that this day is approaching, he states: “…the average man in the street, a sensible chap who by now can smell the signs of an oversold environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to suspect that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.” This, he concludes:“is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavour.”

When this occurs, we all lose.

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bell cites:

<h1><a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/blog/" accesskey="1">The Briefing Room</a></h1>

<h2>The Briefing Room -- Investigate Magazine's Group Blog</h2>

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<a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_4.html">« Investigate Oct 05, A left-wing conservative</a> | <a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/blog/">Main</a> | <a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_6.html">Investigate Oct 05, The Accident Waiting To Happen »</a>

<h2>March 16, 2006</h2>

<h3>Investigate Oct 05, The Kyoto Conspiracy</h3>

How Enron hyped global warming for profit

Not one single day goes by in New Zealand now without a reference somewhere to global warming, and New Zealand’s requirement to comply with the Kyoto protocol. But few people realise that Kyoto was the brainchild of a corrupt multinational energy company, looking to make a buck out of the green movement. KEN RING explains

Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is sup-posed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten especially amongst the greenies how Kyoto was born in the corridors of very big business. The name Enron has all but faded from our news pages since the company went down in flames in 2001 amidst charges of fraud, bribery, price fixing and graft. But without Enron there would have been no Kyoto Protocol.

About 20 years ago Enron was owner and operator of an interstate network of natural gas pipelines, and had transformed itself into a billion-dollar-a-day commodity trader, buying and selling contracts and their derivatives to deliver natural gas, electricity, internet bandwidth, whatever. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on how much pollutant the operator of a fossil-fueled plant was allowed to emit. In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise.

Then came the inevitable question, what next? How about a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program? The problem was that CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission. Al Gore took office in 1993 and almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime. He led a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue ‘credits’ of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Under law a tradeable system was required, which was exactly what Enron also wanted because they were already trading pollutant credits. Thence Enron vigorously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories. Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to “reduce” global warming. Executives at Enron worked closely with the Clinton administration to help create a scaremongering climate science environment because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a monstrous financial windfall. The plan was that once the problem was in place the solution would be trotted out.

A lawyer named Christopher Horner was hired who had worked in Senator Liebermann’s Environment Committee. Horner, employed by Enron, became director of relations with the Federal Government. That was in 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was drafted. According to Homer, on the second day at the job he was told that the Number One Objective was to obtain an international treaty that would impose cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time allowed trade with emission rights. Enron had the biggest natural gas production behind Russia’s Gazprom. Enron was making a lot of money trading with coal, but they had already calculated that the profits they would lose with coal would be more than compensated by the profits derived from its privileged position in other areas. With clever positioning and anticipation Enron had bought the world’s biggest wind power company, GE Wind, from General Electric. They now also owned the biggest solar power company in the world, in society with Amoco (now belonging to British Petroleum – BP). Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists – but asking for results favorable to their interest – “proof” that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. The fire of malaise, now lit and kindled, only required feeding.

The expressive term ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who trans-ported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. The bootleggers had allies in the Baptists and other teetotalists, who believed that alcohol was a deadly threat to the social order, and had worked for decades to get prohibition onto the statute books. The Baptists provided the political cover and the bootleggers pocketed the proceeds. In public the two groups maintained a great social distance from each other. Now Enron had positioned itself at the centre of an awesome Baptist-bootlegger coalition. The gargantuan rents which Enron energetically sought could be realized only if the Kyoto Protocol became established as part of US and international law. Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO saw Enron as not only making billions from sales of the natural gas which was to displace coal as the preferred fuel under the Kyoto commitments, but he realised that as the main if not the only international and domestic trader in the new barter world of carbon credits, Enron could realise hitherto unimagined wealth. Such credits, of course, would only become bankable pieces of paper if governments, particularly the US Government, established and policed a global policy of decarbonisation under which a global tax on carbon was to be enforced.

As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this was simple; just look at the recent issue of Scientific American where four attack dogs were called out to chew up Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish The Skeptic Environmentalist demonstrating that global warming is overblown. David Bellamy, the world’s foremost environmentalist also stepped out of line with his widely printed article “Global Warming? What a load of old Poppycock.” In the same way Galileo was forced to publicly utter that the moon had no effect on tides, so Bellamy under pressure backtracked on some of his claims.

Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.” One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA. True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today – the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion. Some greenie campaigning in America is still directed from this source. On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the scandal.

Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference.

”Enron stood to profit millions from global warming energy-trading schemes,” said Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association and American Coal Coalition. The investigation into the collapse of Enron will reveal much more about the intricacies of the Baptist-bootlegger coalition which was promoting the Kyoto cause within the Republican Party and within US business circles. Coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going – from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices. If the Kyoto Protocol were ratified and in full force, experts estimated that Americans would lose between $100 billion and $400 billion each year. Additionally, between 1 and 3.5 million jobs could be lost. That means that each household could lose an average of up to $6,000 each year. That is a lot to ask of Americans just so large energy companies can pocket millions from a regulatory scheme. Moreover, a cost of $400 billion annually makes Enron’s current one-time loss of $6 billion look like pocket change. Little wonder Americans and the incoming Bush administration did not want a bar of it.

In NZ the Labour government was forced to agree to the Kyoto Protocol because the Alliance Party self destructed and Labour needed the Greens for support in Confidence and Supply. The cost of that support was agreement to GE legislation and the Kyoto Protocol. Labour could see that the GE debate had no financial return, but the carbon credit trading game looked much more promising. Positive credit-trading with all our trees acting as CO2 sinks made politicians see dollar signs. But just as Enron came unstuck mired in financial ruin and scandal, so too is the Kyoto Protocol set to ruin economies and bring down governments and any players foolish enough to be taken in. Enron collapsed in a quagmire of bribery, misinformation, energy price manipulation and the use of political connections to exert pressure on energy boards. Anything connected to the Kyoto Protocol will turn out to be good money after bad, because a scheme instigated by half-truths and hype must eventually collapse under the weight of the spin of its own cover-up. The half-billion dollar debt NZ now owes could be just the beginning. In 2002 Helen Clark said “Climate change is a global problem ..the Kyoto Protocol is the international community’s response to climate change and New Zealand is playing its part”. This contrasted strongly with Enron’s own internal report expressing doubt that global warming was real. It is hard to accept that Clark does not know that the Protocol only became real through Enron. Real problems are the gullibility of satellite western economies, the dangers of being the tail of giant corporate dogs and the perceived need to appease the EU for trade deals. Global warming itself does not even get a look in. In NZ the only funding for environmental research comes to the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment and is funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The particular institute concerned has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time proclaiming to be spokespeople for government policies re the environment. In this way debate is suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternative viewpoints, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and no voice of balance in government-funded public media.

I suggest you look out the window to see if there is any catastrophe happening. While looking, check to see if any ocean is yet rising. Also look up – exactly where is this methane cloud? Please, someone,

explain how heavier-than-air car emissions can get 6-8 miles up where weather is generated? We are not all that taken in. Despite all the handwringing and increasingly desperate hysteria, where global warming is concerned there has been a failure to force this paranoid religion onto the world. Since the Rio Conference in 1992, the greens have tried using the threat of global warming to induce Protestant guilt in us all, to cap growth, to change lifestyles, to attack the car, industry and the Great Satan of America. They have lost. Only schoolchildren remain rich fodder willing to believe it is up to them now to Save The World, which hasn’t needed saving one iota during the last 4,000,000,000 years or it wouldn’t still be here. Now it is surely time to face the facts: there isn’t a snowflake-in-hell’s chance of global warming altering real life. But the failure of the greens is not just with the public. While playing the climate-change card at the G8 Summit, the final Gleneagles’ declaration shows that the leaders of the developed world have no intention of sacrificing growth and economic success for an ascetic global warming religion. To quote Michael McCarthy, the environment editor of the Independent: ‘The failed agenda that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund for Nature and others were complaining of – that the US has still not agreed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions – was the green groups’ own agenda, not the British government’s. At G8 the idea of capping greenhouse gas emissions was cleverly replaced by an emphasis on technological innovation and imaginative development. The Kyoto Protocol is effectively dead.

SIDEBAR

In NZ almost the only funding for environmental research is invested in NIWA and comes via the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment, but mostly funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The institute has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time acting in the appointed role of spokespeople for government policies on the environment. NIWA is a fine organisation when it comes to marine biological research, but when it comes to climate projection theirs must still be only an opinion. Sadly, though, other opinions that might make for lively debate are somewhat suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternatives, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and subsequently no voice of balance across most government-funded public media. Consequently the work of NIWA is perceived in some quarters as having become politicised which is sad for an otherwise valuable and necessary national research resource.

REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2002/Feb/20020226Comm007.asp

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26124

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/EvansEnron.html

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=204

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/opeds/80320040418_landrith.html

http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CAC72.htm

http://www.niwa.co.nz/pubs/ar/2004/14ncc.pdf

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Posted by Ian Wishart at March 16, 2006 10:30 PM

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<h6 class="postMeta" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; background: transparent;">Post 6 months ago | 8,820 views</h6>

<h2 style="margin: 0px 20px 5px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; text-decoration: none; background: transparent;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/11/remember-the-acid-rain-scare-global-warming-hysteria-is-pouring-down/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; background: transparent;">Remember The Acid Rain 'Scare'? Global Warming Hysteria Is Pouring Down</a></h2>

<p style="margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(60, 60, 60); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">As it turned out, those widespread fears proved to be largely unfounded, since only one species of tree at a high elevation suffered any notable effect, and acidity in lakes was traced to natural causes.<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/11/remember-the-acid-rain-scare-global-warming-hysteria-is-pouring-down/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(15, 45, 95); text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">read »</a>

</div></article>

</div>

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<h6 class="postMeta" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; background: transparent;">Post 6 months ago | 7,487 views</h6>

<h2 style="margin: 0px 20px 5px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; text-decoration: none; background: transparent;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/09/loss-of-production-tax-credits-brings-big-wind-chill-to-cooling-subsidy-dependent-market/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; background: transparent;">Loss Of Production Tax Credits Brings Big Wind Chill To Cooling Subsidy-Dependent Market</a></h2>

<p style="margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(60, 60, 60); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">We can be very certain that Big Wind will be back with gale force attempts to persuade Congress to restore the longstanding PTC which was allowed to expire at the end of 2013. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/09/loss-of-production-tax-credits-brings-big-wind-chill-to-cooling-subsidy-dependent-market/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(15, 45, 95); text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">read »</a>

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<h6 class="postMeta" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; background: transparent;">Post 6 months ago | 9,299 views</h6>

<h2 style="margin: 0px 20px 5px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; text-decoration: none; background: transparent;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/04/global-warmings-tree-ring-circus/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; background: transparent;">Global Warming's Tree Ring Circus Brings Us The Costliest Show On Earth</a></h2>

<p style="margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(60, 60, 60); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">If global warming isn’t the Greatest Show on Earth, it’s certainly the costliest and most bizarre. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/04/global-warmings-tree-ring-circus/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(15, 45, 95); text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">read »</a>

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<h6 class="postMeta" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; background: transparent;">Post 6 months ago | 30,854 views</h6>

<h2 style="margin: 0px 20px 5px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; text-decoration: none; background: transparent;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/02/the-polar-vortex-climate-alarmism-blows-hot-and-cold/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 30px; background: transparent;">The Polar Vortex: Climate Alarmism Blows Hot And Cold</a></h2>

<p style="margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(60, 60, 60); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">Giving it a special, exotic-sounding name is a great way to distinguish this from a common old run-of-the-mill weather phenomenon. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/02/the-polar-vortex-climate-alarmism-blows-hot-and-cold/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(15, 45, 95); text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 20px; background: transparent;">read »</a>

</article>

</div>

</li>

</ul>

===

<ul>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/191545"> Meet The Climate Denial Machine</a></h1>

November 28, 2012 3:16 PM EST

blog ››› Jill Fitzsimmons </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/184850"> Fact: Bill Clinton And Larry Summers Agree With Obama On Bush Tax Cuts</a></h1>

June 7, 2012 2:17 AM EDT

research ››› Emily Arrowood & Kevin Zieber </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/183968"> Myths & Facts About Wind Power</a></h1>

May 25, 2012 9:22 AM EDT

research ››› Jill Fitzsimmons </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/185266"> Callous Climate: Conservative Media Deride Adaptation Aid For World's Poor</a></h1>

December 13, 2011 5:08 PM EST

research ››› Shauna Theel </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/182576"> Right Wing Makes Use Of NY Times' Shoddy Report On Green Jobs</a></h1>

September 8, 2011 11:36 AM EDT

research ››› Shauna Theel </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/182929"> Forbes Runs False Quote In Attack On Climate Data</a></h1>

July 21, 2011 4:54 PM EDT

research ››› Jocelyn Fong </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/182324"> Conservative Media Misled Light Bulb Consumers At Least 40 Times In 7 Months</a></h1>

July 18, 2011 10:32 AM EDT

research ››› Jocelyn Fong & Shauna Theel </li>

<li>

<h1><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/185131"> Heartland Institute's Climate Contrarians Enjoy Media Platform</a></h1>

July 7, 2011 12:41 PM EDT

blog ››› Jocelyn Fong </li>

</ul>

<a href="http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=larry+bell&x=0&y=0">http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=larry+bell&x=0&y=0</a>

---

<a href="http://mediamatters.org/tags/larry-bell">Larry Bell</a>, an <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/larry-bell">architecture professor</a> who has not published any peer-reviewed climate research, <a href="http://www.climateofcorruption.com/">wrote</a> Climate of Corruption, in which he <a href="http://www.aim.org/podcast/take-aim-larry-bell/">argues</a> that "politics is responsible for the global warming hoax." Forbes provides Bell a weekly column where he <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/">often</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/24/carbon-taxomania-bipartisan-stupidity-on-steroids/">casts</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/08/21/gullible-warming-a-contrived-crisis-that-is-too-good-to-waste/">doubt</a> on manmade climate change, which he <a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/">incorrectly</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/29/global-warming-alarmism-when-science-is-fiction/">says</a> is "based upon speculative theories, contrived data and totally unproven modeling predictions" when in fact there are several <a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/">observed lines of evidence</a> of rapid climate change.

===

sw;

Larry Bell is a weekly columnist for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Forbes_Magazine" title="Forbes Magazine">Forbes Magazine</a> with no evident climate expertise who writes columns dismissing climate science<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_note-0">[1]</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_note-1">[2]</a>. He is listed as author of a Jan. 2011 book titled Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind The Global Warming Hoax, published through the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Greenleaf_Book_Group&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Greenleaf Book Group (page does not exist)">Greenleaf Book Group</a>, a vanity press.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>] </div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#Background">1 Background</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#Articles_and_resources">2 Articles and resources</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#References">2.1 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#Related_SourceWatch_articles">2.2 Related SourceWatch articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#External_resources">2.3 External resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#External_articles">2.4 External articles</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>Background</h2>

Bell appears to have no background in climate science. His Forbes blurb states that "Weekly columnist Larry Bell is a professor at the University of Houston and author of Climate of Corruption"; his University of Houston professorship is in "Space Architecture", where he is director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) - an institution funded by the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sasakawa_Foundation&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Sasakawa Foundation (page does not exist)">Sasakawa Foundation</a>, which was founded by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ryoichi_Sasakawa" title="Ryoichi Sasakawa">Ryoichi Sasakawa</a>, "rightist and gambling figure" who was "the last living member of a group accused after World War II of the most serious war crimes" (and "gave millions of dollars to charity").<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_note-2">[3]</a>; the foundation is chaired by Sasakawa's son.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_note-3">[4]</a>

<h2>Articles and resources</h2>

<h3>References</h3>

<li id="cite_note-0"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_ref-0">↑</a> Larry Bell (2011-01-05). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/climate-change-hoax-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html">The Climate Crisis Hoax</a>. Forbes.com. Retrieved on 2011-01-31.</li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_ref-1">↑</a> Larry Bell (2010-12-27). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_print.html">Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts</a>. Forbes.com. Retrieved on 2011-01-31.</li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_ref-2">↑</a> ? (?). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/20/obituaries/ryoichi-sasakawa-96-rightist-and-gambling-figure-in-japan.html">Ryoichi Sasakawa, 96, Rightist And Gambling Figure in Japan - New York Times</a>. ?. Retrieved on 2011-01-31. “a Japanese rightist who built a gambling empire and gave millions of dollars to charity, died on Tuesday at a Tokyo hospital. ...Mr. Sasakawa...was the last living member of a group accused after World War II of the most serious war crimes.”</li>

<li id="cite_note-3"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_ref-3">↑</a> Jade Lindgaard (2010-11-11). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/111110/when-past-came-back-haunt-sasakawa-foundation">When the past came back to haunt the Sasakawa Foundation</a>. Mediapart. Retrieved on 2011-01-31. “Sasakawa Foundation in Japan... [has been] rebranded the Nippon Foundation... [A] note by US General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Japan at the end of the war, states that Sasakawa "is clearly one of the worst offenders, outside the military, in developing in Japan a policy of totalitarianism and aggression." The note recommends that he be retained in custody as a Class A war criminal suspect and tried before an International Military Tribunal in Tokyo. ... Ryoichi's son... is the current chair of the Nippon Foundation.”</li>

</ol>

</div>

<h3>Related SourceWatch articles</h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Belden_H._Bell" title="Belden H. Bell">Belden H. Bell</a>, a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heritage_Foundation" title="Heritage Foundation">Heritage Foundation</a> trustee (as is <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Steve_Forbes" title="Steve Forbes">Steve Forbes</a>), may be a relative. (Larry Bell, who is in a position to know, disagrees, saying in email "I am not familiar with Belden Bell and seriously doubt that we share a family tree. Bell seems like a relatively common name. Also doubt that he knows of me"; but multiple attempts to confirm this with Belden Bell have been unsuccessful.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Bell#cite_note-4">[1]</a>)</li>

</ul>

<h3>External resources</h3>

<h3>External articles</h3>

<ul>

<li>Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia (with input from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Kevin Trenberth) (2011-01-06). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/forbes-rich-list-of-nonsense/">Forbes’ rich list of nonsense</a>. RealClimate. Retrieved on 2011-01-31. “"...the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources. A recent piece by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled “Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts”, is a classic example. Bell uses the key technique that denialists use in debates, dubbed by Eugenie Scott the “<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gish_gallop" title="Gish gallop">Gish gallop</a>”, named after a master of the style, anti-evolutionist Duane Gish. The Gish gallop raises a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire edifice under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. [In this column] he casts his attack not as an attack on science (his usual method) but on the media:..."”</li>

</ul>

This article is a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch:Find_or_fix_a_stub" title="SourceWatch:Find or fix a stub">stub</a>. You can <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch:Find_or_fix_a_stub" title="SourceWatch:Find or fix a stub">help</a> by <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Larry_Bell&action=edit">expanding it</a>.

===

<h3 class="storytitle" id="post-5984">Forbes’ rich list of nonsense</h3>

<div class="meta">Filed under:

<li><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/" title="View all posts in Climate Science" rel="category tag">Climate Science</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/reporting-on-climate/" title="View all posts in Reporting on climate" rel="category tag">Reporting on climate</a></li>

</ul>

— group @ 6 January 2011</div>

Guest commentary from Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia with input from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Kevin Trenberth

While it is no longer surprising, it remains disheartening to see a blistering attack on climate science in the business press where thoughtful reviews of climate policy ought to be appearing. Of course, the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources.

A recent piece by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_print.html'); return false;" href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_print.html" rel="nofollow">“Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts”</a>, is a classic example.

Bell uses the key technique that denialists use in debates, dubbed by Eugenie Scott the “Gish gallop”, named after a master of the style, anti-evolutionist Duane Gish. The <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/plimer_does_the_gish_gallop.php'); return false;" href="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/plimer_does_the_gish_gallop.php">Gish gallop</a> raises a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire edifice under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. In real-time debates the number of particularities raised is sure to catch the opponent off guard; this is why challenges to such debates are often raised by enemies of science. Little or no knowledge of a holistic view of any given science is needed to construct such scattershot attacks.

The approach also works somewhat in print, if the references are sufficiently obscure and numerous. Ideally, someone will take the time to answer such an attack, but there is a fundamental asymmetry of forces at work. It is, in fact, easier to form an allegation than to track down a reasonable explanation of what it means and how it really fits in to the balance of evidence. Also, the skills required to reflect the science are deeper than the ones required to attack it; hence the defenders are outnumbered and outgunned. Still, sometimes an article is prominent enough that it merits a detailed response.

The slightly out of the ordinary thing about Bell’s piece is that he casts his attack not as an attack on science (<a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/climate-change-hoax-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html'); return false;" href="http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/climate-change-hoax-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html">his usual method</a>) but on the media:

<blockquote>As 2010 draws to a close, do you remember hearing any good news from the mainstream media about climate? Like maybe a headline proclaiming ‘Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported: Global Warming Theorists Perplexed’? Or ‘NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase: Alarmists Fear Climate Science Budgets in Peril’?” he begins.</blockquote>

But the remainder of the article is true to the form. Bell gallops through all the purported “good news” that the media ignored. The implication is that the media is complicit in overstating the climate change story.

But these aren’t the sorts of observations that most people generally receive from the media. Instead, they present sensational statements and dramatic images that leave lasting impressions of calving glaciers, drowning polar bears and all manner of other man-caused climate calamities.

Many intentionally target impressionable young minds and sensitive big hearts with messages of fear and guilt. Take, for example, a children’s book called The North Pole Was Here, authored by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin. It warns kids that some day it may be “easier to sail than stand on the North Pole in summer.” Imagine such images through their visualization: How warm it must be to melt that pole way up north. Poor Santa! And Rudolph! Of course it’s mostly their parents’ fault because of the nasty CO2 they produce driving them to school in SUVs.

Lots of grown-ups are sensitive people with big hearts too. Don’t we all deserve more from the seemingly infinite media echo chamber of alarmism than those windy speculations, snow jobs and projections established on theoretical thin ice?

</blockquote>

Whether the enemy is the “mercenary” scientific community, the “power hungry” liberal politicians or the “sensationalist” press matters little. What matters is to suggest the public has been manipulated, before starting the manipulation in earnest. The strategic point is to divert attention from what most scientifically informed people consider the key facts: the climate is changing as a result of human intervention. The longer we delay taking policy action, the more damage we will take and the more an effective policy will cost. It is conceivable and increasingly foreseeable that we will delay long enough that useful policy becomes infeasible and both human civilization and the biosphere will be permanently damaged.

The near-silence of the media on these matters is considered by many to be a key part of the problem. Yet, in this context, Bell suggests we are ignoring “the good news”.

Does he have a point? Is there really much of substance that qualifies as good news justifying his conclusion? The value of his piece depends crucially on how newsworthy his good news was, and how these items fit into the big picture.

We counted eleven assertions of fact in his gallop. Let’s look at each of them and place them in context. Bell especially emphasizes his first two points, so we examine them in detail (quotes from the article are bolded).

Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported

Bell’s first claim is not a confidence builder.

It’s possible that Bell is referencing a specific metric of hurricane activity (<a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy'); return false;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy">Accumulated Cyclone Energy</a>), but that does not give a full story, nor does it show ‘record lows’. According to NOAA the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which ended Dec 31, was one of the busiest on record. In the Atlantic Basin a total of 19 named storms formed – tied with 1887 and 1995 for third highest on record. Of those, 12 became hurricanes – tied with 1969 for second highest on record. Five of those reached major hurricane status of Category 3 or higher. 2010 was just behind 2004 and 2005 for earliest occurrence of a third category 4 hurricane.

It is true that none of the 12 hurricanes made landfall in the US (though tropical storm Hermine made landfall in US and hurricane Karl made land fall in Mexico but caused major flooding in Texas. But the climate system cares nothing for national borders. This may be just a lucky break . Looking in detail <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/2010-hurricane-season-tropical-storms-0671/'); return false;" href="http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/2010-hurricane-season-tropical-storms-0671/">it is attributable to some other features</a> of the prevailing winds last year.

What is certainly untrue is that there was “record low” cyclonic activity in the Atlantic!

What about elsewhere? A tie for the <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://climatesignals.org/2010/06/hurricane-celia-ties-a-record-for-strongest-hurricane/'); return false;" href="http://climatesignals.org/2010/06/hurricane-celia-ties-a-record-for-strongest-hurricane/">strongest eastern Pacific hurricane</a> on record (Celia). A category 5 hurricane hitting the Philippines (<a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Megi(2010)'); return false;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Megi%282010%29">Megi</a>).

Did the press ignore this story? Even on this Bell’s leading point is <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2010-11-29-hurricanes29_ST_N.htm'); return false;" href="http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2010-11-29-hurricanes29_ST_N.htm">dubious</a>. But in the context of climate change, sea surface temperatures continue to increase and strong tropical cyclones continue their upward trend. So Bell leads off with a real clunker.

NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase

Bell’s second point, also from the lead paragraph:

<blockquote>According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern.</blockquote>

We traced this claim to an internet <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-baltimore/oceans-are-cooling-according-to-nasa'); return false;" href="http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-baltimore/oceans-are-cooling-according-to-nasa">article by Justin Berk</a> that says:

Two separate studies through NASA confirm that since 2003, the world’s oceans have been losing heat. …

Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, published his first report about the warming oceans. The article Correcting Ocean Cooling published on NASA’s Earth Observatory page this week discussed his and other results. Willis used data from 1993-2003 that showed the warm-up and followed the Global Warming Theory. In 2006, he co-piloted a follow-up study led by John Lyman at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle that updated the time series for 2003-2005. Surprisingly, the ocean seemed to have cooled. He was surprised, and called it a ‘speed bump’ on the way to global warming.

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But the excellent article “<a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/'); return false;" href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/">Correcting Ocean Cooling</a>” which Berk references (and to which Bell is implicitly referring) for this actually explains how Willis went back and found that his earlier report of cooling was erroneous!

<blockquote>So the new Argo data were too cold, and the older XBT data were too warm, and together, they made it seem like the ocean had cooled,” says Willis. The February evening he discovered the mistake, he says, is “burned into my memory.” He was supposed to fly to Colorado that weekend to give a talk on “ocean cooling” to prominent climate researchers. Instead, he’d be talking about how it was all a mistake.”</blockquote>

Berk is so happy to find the word “cooling” in an article that despite the title “Correcting Ocean Cooling” he doesn’t bother to read or understand the whole point of the article. It’s really a very compelling example of how superficial this kind of journalism is; Berk gets something backwards, Bell picks it up, and Forbes, no less, uses it to lead off an article (albeit an op-ed column).

What’s more, the NASA article itself is from 2008, so even if the press had reported it as news as Larry Bell suggests, it would not have been in 2010. But in fact, the news was that the previous evidence of cooling was erroneous. Bell’s second point is simply wrong as well.

Now that we have some sense of the quality of Bell’s research, we’ll go a little more quickly through most of the other points, saving for last a case where he might have a stronger point.

A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced “Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity.” Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim–not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin.

This famous controversy occurred in 2004 and is not 2010 news. Nor <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29397-2005Jan22.html'); return false;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29397-2005Jan22.html"> was it ignored by the press</a>. We doubt that Landsea went so far as to claim that “no research had been conducted to support that claim” but if he did he is certainly incorrect. This topic goes back at least to 1987 with a paper in Nature by Kerry Emanuel. Kevin Trenberth offers some salient points about the controversy from his point of view:

<ol>

<li>I was not an IPCC spokesperson and I was not advertised as such. Landsea claimed otherwise.</li>

<li>I did not call the press conference, it was called by Harvard university (Paul Epstein and Jim McCarthy), I participated.</li>

<li>There was a ton of research including my own on changes in the hydrological cycle that were pertinent but not specifically Tropical Storm based, as well as Kerry’s work.</li>

<li>Landsea did not notify IPCC once, let alone repeatedly. He called a press conference and resigned from IPCC but he was not even part of IPCC. He had been asked by me to write something as a contributing author. It was a horrible distortion of many facts.</li>

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A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water “racing to the sea.” … Only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed.

This again is not 2010 news since it happened in 2007. It is a fact that after a massive retreat from 1991 to 2005 Kangderlugssuaq regained a tiny fraction, less than a tenth, of that retreat by 2007. This may be of interest to glacier dynamicists, but its climatological importance is nil. Glaciers worldwide are in massive retreat. Indeed, <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/?p=61'); return false;" href="http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/?p=61">Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier lost another 5.2 square km in 2009</a>.

[The] ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year

The top of the ice caps are growing slightly as expected, since warmer air contains more moisture which will fall in those places as snow. The issue that the public ought to pay attention to is the much larger and accelerating melt at the edge of the ice sheet. This is not especially 2010 news, but in any case it is sleight of hand. The real action is the instability at the edges, which already dominates the accumulation in the interior and looks likely to overwhelm it.

The new sea level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years.

Just wrong:

Figure showing the last 18 years of sea level rise derived from satellites and validated against tide gauges. (Update: longer records available <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#seaLevel'); return false;" href="http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#seaLevel">here</a>).

Next:

… if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there ‘must’ be a focus on global warming.

There are many grants supported by the grant agencies. Some are very broad and some very narrow. While it is possible that some grants specify “global warming”, it is relatively unusual. Currently open climate calls in the US through NSF can be seen at <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_list.jsp?org=GEO&ord=rcnt'); return false;" href="http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_list.jsp?org=GEO&ord=rcnt"> here</a>. The claim simply isn’t true.

The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.

This is at least a current topic. It probably is based in <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n8/full/ngeo901.html'); return false;" href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n8/full/ngeo901.html">Patterns of Indian Ocean sea-level change in a warming climate</a>, Han et al. Nature Geoscience 2010. They conclude that “sea level has decreased substantially in the south tropical Indian Ocean whereas it has increased elsewhere. This pattern is driven by changing surface winds associated with a combined invigoration of the Indian Ocean Hadley and Walker cells, patterns of atmospheric overturning circulation in the north–south and east–west direction, respectively, which is partly attributable to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases.”

So yes, there are apparently parts of the Indian Ocean where sea level has declined. This just leaves <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib.jpg'); return false;" href="http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib.jpg">more water to pile up elsewhere</a>. In fact, it shows how powerful the forces of climate change already are, in order to be able to outweigh the generally rising ocean volume in a limited area. It is hard to see how this rises to a general interest topic or how it qualifies as “good news” though.

The Northwest Passage has certainly opened up before.

This is untrue in recorded history. The <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage#Later_expeditions'); return false;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage#Later_expeditions">traversals prior to 2007</a> were in very specialized boats and often took years. In 2007 and 2010, genuine shipping lanes opened up for the first time. It was possibly open in the mid-Holocene about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago and was certainly open millions of years ago. But since the opening of the passage itself received far too little attention (in our opinion), it is hard to see what Bell is complaining about.

in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand)

“Previously” is grossly misleading. This was <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/021809.html'); return false;" href="http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/021809.html">an instrumental glitch that lasted a few weeks</a>. And February 2009 was not in 2010 either.

… previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double.

We’ve saved this for last because here Bell has a fraction of a point; as far as we can tell the only thing he raises that is 1) current and 2) arguably of general interest and 3) arguably good news. The use of the word “exaggerated” however is malicious and unjustified.

There are a number of ways of estimating the large scale mass balance of the ice sheets. Prominent among them uses information from the GRACE satellite, which measures the gravitational field of the earth. By its nature, the resulting measures are very large scale. They are complemented by precise local measures of ice altitude, for example, which are precise but cannot give broad coverage. To estimate ice cap melting the GRACE results also have to be combined with an estimate of the post-glacial rebound from the last ice age (which is still affecting the mass distribution of the Earth’s crust). Observing a planet is tricky business.

A <a onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100906085152.htm'); return false;" href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100906085152.htm"> recent publication by Wu et al</a> makes the claim that:

“these [previous] results were not properly corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment, the phenomenon that the Earth’s crust rebounds as a result of the melting of the massive ice caps from the last major Ice Age around 20,000 years ago. These movements of the Earth’s crust have to be incorporated in the calculations, since these vertical movements change the Earth’s mass distribution and therefore also have an influence on the gravitational field.”

There is some contention here. If it proves true, it is an example of science at its best; a sequence of corrections converging on objective truth. The original estimates would have been corrected, pretty much by a factor of two as Bell says.

So this is current, substantially good news, and possibly salient for a general audience. On the other hand it is only good news about bad news; the ice retreat may have been overestimated, but we are still talking about hundreds of billions of tons more ice melting than accumulating every year, and this rate still shows signs of accelerating.

In this case, it is worth noting that all the evidence is that the ice sheets are losing mass and that the loss is accelerating. The Wu et al paper would be simply a recalibration of the net loss. This is good news, but not great news, and is certainly no evidence at all that climate change is negligible.

Please notice how we are trapped in a polemical double bind here.

What the naysayers will do is celebrate every correction that makes matters look less dangerous and criticize every correction that makes matters look more dangerous. In the former case, the older measure will have been “exaggerated”, and “corrected” by some noble and courageous hero. In the latter case, the newer measure is treated as the “exaggeration”. Thus, every single change in the estimate of any quantity is treated as evidence of the grand conspiracy.

What should be celebrated as advances of truth are instead recast either as the bad scary science defeated by the good non-scary science or the other way around. This is especially evident in the clumsy way the Willis tale is told, wherein the casting is confused because one person takes both roles.

So what remains of the criticism Bell raises? Very little indeed! The only unreported good news is that ice cap melting might have been overestimated, though it is still large and probably accelerating. The other ten of his eleven points are essentially nonsensical. I am not being partisan or oppositional here. I examined every point with an open mind and came up with ten points that boil down to complete nonsense and the last one a bit heavy on the spin.

Ultimately, though, the criticism of the press is ludicrous. The naysayers ought to be thrilled at the lack of interest in climate change shown in the press, at least in North America. The longer we delay, the bigger the topic gets, and the more ridiculous the refusal of the press and policy sector to grapple with it becomes.

Yet widely respected publications like Forbes seem eager to promulgate great clouds of rhetorical ink to make the problem seem ever more trivial and distant. If there is good news of general interest, of course it should be reported. But Bell seems to want, instead, to invent it.

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Bell, Larry

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