Newsbusters

The UN's 62nd anniversary

Do you trust the United Nations to keep you informed about important world issues like climate change?

Dr. Tom Coburn is a ranking member of the U.S. Senate's Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, part of the Committe on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He released this today on the 62nd anniversary of the UN:

The U.N. charter declares the purpose of the U.N. is to maintain peace and security, develop friendly relations based on respect for equal rights and self-determination, and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Unfortunately, 62 years later, the United Nations is incapable of living up to its charter.

For years, there have been attempts to reform the U.N., both from the Secretariat and from the U.N.’s donors. Unfortunately, all reform efforts have failed.

Dr. Coburn said, “The best way to honor the U.N. on its birthday is to help the organization cure its cancer of corruption, fraud, secrecy and impotence that is preventing the U.N. from achieving its mission.”

To that end, Dr. Coburn has unveiled a website, the United Nations Watch, cataloguing the growing list of scandals and released the following list of examples currently plaguing the U.N.:

A stinging indictment of the UN.

Stossel on AGW: Give me a break!

Man-made global warming? John Stossel says, "give me a break!"

GORELERO

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet" and other.. uh, untruths. GORELERO by Hugh Hewitt.

Global Warming effecting education system

Who'd a thunk? Global warming is now having an adverse effect on students' ability to learn.



h/t: the Grouchy Old Cripple

Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

An update on the recent High Court ruling in Britain, via Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

Here's something American media are virtually guaranteed to not report: a British court has determined that Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods.

It seems a safe bet Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer won't be discussing this Tuesday morning, wouldn't you agree?

For those that haven't been following this case, a British truck driver filed a lawsuit [0] to prevent the airing of Gore's alarmist detritus in England's public schools.

According to [1] the website of the political party the plaintiff, Stewart Dimmock, belongs to (ecstatic emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

How marvelous. And what are those inaccuracies?

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
• The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
• The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

In the end, a climate change skeptic in the States must hope that an American truck driver files such a lawsuit here so that a U.S. judge can make similar determinations.

Of course, even if one could find such an impartial jurist, our media wouldn't find it newsworthy, would they?

Judge: Gore's film promotes "partisan political views"

From the Times Online:

A lorry driver from Kent has forced the Government to rewrite guidance for schools that want to show Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Stewart Dimmock, a father of two, brought a High Court action against the screening of the documentary in schools, claiming that it was “politically partisan” and “sentimental”.

His lawyers argued that the film contained serious scientific inaccuracies. They accused the Government of backing the film, by the former US Vice-President, as a way of “brainwashing” pupils on global warming.

Mr Dimmock, a school governor with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: “I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore’s film falls far short of the standard required.”

Yesterday the High Court judge Mr Justice Burton said that the film did promote “partisan political views”.

Global Warming is not caused by carbon dioxide

A good website to check out: The Science of Global Warming in Perspective
h/t: On Climate Tinkers:

When an ice age begins, global Warming occurs exactly as it is doing now. Heated oceans cause precipitation to increase. Eventually, increased snowfall will reflect away solar energy and trigger a cool-down.


Alarmists are not promoting science; they are promoting propaganda justified through a black-box analysis which generates contrived numbers. Science requires evidence and logic.

There is no mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming

"Greenhouse gases" absorb all radiation available to them in a few meters. More of the gas cannot absorb more radiation. A thick sheet of plastic does nothing more than a thin sheet. Doubling the CO2 would only shorten the distance for absorption of radiation from 10 meters to 5 meters, which is not an increase in temperature.

The real cause of global warming could be an increase in solar energy, as critics generally claim; but there is evidence that it is due to variations in heat from the earth's core. Ice ages are caused by oceans heating, which appears to result from increased heat from inside the earth. The primary evidence is the exact cycling of ice ages. Environmental factors would not be so precise. Also, the oceans heating more than the atmosphere points to the heat coming from inside the earth.

Atmospheric changes can result from variations in solar activity, but they are superficial compared to heat from the earth's core which drives ice age cycles.

Ice over oceans is melting much faster than expected. The reason is because the oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. Heated oceans can melt ice rapidly, while heated air cannot. Ninety percent of ice is below the surface—exposed to water, not air—and water has the heat capacity needed for melting.

The Science of Global Warming in Perspective by Gary Novak.

Dirty snow?

Are the so-called greenhouse gases taking the heat for dirty snow?

Writing about their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the researchers explained that dirty snow has had a significant impact on climate warming since the Industrial Revolution. UCI scientist Charlie Zender said that in the past 200 years, the Earth has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius and he contends that up to 20 percent of this rise could be attributed to dirty snow.

The effect is more conspicuous in Arctic areas, where Zender believes that more than 90 percent of the warming could be attributed to dirty snow. "When we inject dirty particles into the atmosphere and they fall onto snow, the net effect is we warm the polar latitudes," said Zender. "Dark soot can heat up quickly. It's like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack."

(...)

Zender explains that dirty snow is potentially much more of a threat to Arctic areas than greenhouse gases, levels of which have increased by one-third in the last two centuries. "A one-third change in concentration is huge, yet the Earth has only warmed about 0.8 degrees because the effect is distributed globally," Zender said. "A small amount of snow impurities in the Arctic have caused a significant temperature response there."

Zender believes policymakers could use these research results to develop regulations to limit industrial soot emissions and begin switching to cleaner-burning fuels that would leave snow brighter. New snow falls each year, and if it contained fewer impurities, the ground would brighten and temperatures would cool.

And it would be a lot cheaper to clean up emissions of soot than to try to reduce CO2 to Kyoto levels. A lot more effective too.

But then again, Al Gore & Co. wouldn't be able to impose regulations on industry and make billion$ from the carbon cap & trade swindle.

The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade

For Al Gore, the business of climate change is all about the money. Here's a great article by Deborah Corey Barnes at Human Events.com

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

There's nothing new about Gore's profit motives concerning carbon trading, but Barnes lays out the details very thoroughly in her article.

Gore’s Circle of Business

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”

(...)

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

(...)

Front and Center

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine.

This is only the start, you should read the rest.

There's more in my earlier post: Blood and Gore.