Foster: An Inconvenient Film

Peter Foster via the National Post:

Al Gore is about to feature in a new movie, but he’s not going to like it very much. Titled Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, the film presents a devastating account of the shaky foundations and hefty price of Mr. Gore’s brand of self-interested and hypocritical alarmism.

Created by the Irish film making duo of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney — who made another excellent documentary about the “dark side of environmentalism” called Mine Your Own Business — Not Evil provides the perfect rebuttal to Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Despite being chock-a-block with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, Mr. Gore’s movie has frightened schoolchildren all over the world, driven the public policy debate, and garnered both an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for its star.

Not Evil — which is due to be released later this year — will appear at a crucial time. The world’s crisis-beset nations are due to meet in Copenhagen in November to concoct a new policy straitjacket to succeed the meddlesome but utterly failed Kyoto Accord. If global warming's U.N.-based ringmasters have their way, this will lead to a slashing of industrial production in developed countries and to a huge extension of boondoggle redistributionist schemes to fund “green” technologies in developing countries.

Higher taxes, closed factories. Otherwise known as the "green" economy.
More about Not Evil Just Wrong here.



Update: Thanks to Magnus in the comments, here is another video with Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Inconvenient Debt

Fox News guy Glenn Beck calls it Economic Apocalypse. And he uses a presentation style reminiscent of the Goracle to present it. Hockey stick and all. I call it madness.



Bonus video: Hypocrisy with Penn Jillette.

The pot calling the kettle....

It would appear as though over a quarter of Stephane Dion’s speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2005 was plagiarized directly from a 2004 speech given to the U.S. Senate committee chaired by none other than…..John McCain.

Read all the gory details at Return of the Tory.

Update: Link fixed.

Feulner: Kyoto's pointless promises

An excerpt for Ed Feulner's opinion piece Kyoto's pointless promises from the IndyStar:

China's CO2 emissions rose 8 percent last year, after jumping more than 11 percent in each of the two previous years. According to a Dutch study, China alone accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse-gas emissions in 2007, and its current lead over the United States in such emissions is only expected to grow.

Contrast that with our environmental record.

The U.S. government estimates that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by just 1.6 percent in 2007, after dropping 1.5 percent the year before. The growth in our emissions is less than the growth of our gross domestic product, meaning we've improved the economy while reducing the growth in our emissions.

And we're doing that without being part of the Kyoto treaty.

Indeed, few people would know this fact because the US is generally portrayed by the main stream media as the guilty culprit when it comes to emissions of so-called "greenhouse gases". More on the Kyoto Accord:

That 1997 agreement requires the 37 countries that signed it to slash emissions by a combined 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But the treaty is a pipe dream. Instead of falling, the United Nations reported that such emissions are nearing "an all-time high." Greenhouse gas emissions from the Kyoto signers increased 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Yet we have seen no increase in world temperatures in the past ten years and scientists are now forcasting a period of global cooling lasting maybe one or two decades.

Signing Kyoto may allow a country to claim it's a good "global citizen," but many of those citizens aren't keeping their promises. The U.N. reports Kyoto signers Austria, New Zealand and Canada have all increased their emissions over 1990 levels -- by 14, 23 and 54 percent, respectively.

In fact, the U.N. admits that the only reason the world might meet Kyoto's goal (a 5 percent reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2012) is because the economies of so many Eastern European economies collapsed when the Iron Curtain fell. In other words, only a domestic recession will allow the planet to hit Kyoto's target.

Feulner goes on to discuss the economics of Kyoto and the failure of the US congress to pass the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill because "it would slash our national GDP by at least $1.7 trillion by the year 2030".

Yet despite the failure of the majority of Kyoto's signatories to meet their emissions reductions targets, and despite the minimal effect on world temperatures that fully implemented Kyoto CO2 reductions would bring (0.07 degrees Celsius reduction in global temperatures by 2050), the world marches on toward Kyotocide with the UN leading the charge for a new "son of Kyoto" treaty which would reduce CO2 emissions even further.

I'll close with Feulner's final comment:

The world doesn't need a new Kyoto -- the treaty that accomplished nothing but takes the gold medal for uselessness and hypocrisy.

The good the bad and the ugly of climate change legislation

Two points of interest:

1) Liberals and environmentalists in Canada have nothing but harsh criticism for Stephen Harper's Conservative government's plans to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions because they say his plan doesn't go far enough.

1) Small-l liberals (mostly Democrats) and environmentalists in the U.S. are pushing for climate change legislation, the Lieberman-Warner bill a.k.a. America's Climate Security Act which has been costed at about $6 Trillion as the solution to saving the planet.

Got that? liberal plan in the US is good, Conservative plan in Canada bad.

Now take note of this excerpt from an article today by Lorrie Goldstein called Cap and trade? The devil's in the details

In fact, the U.S. bill's goal of cutting carbon emissions by 18% below 2005 levels by 2020, mirrors that of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government to lower Canada's emissions by 20% below 2006 levels by 2020.

How can two plans that are practically identical, as far as emissions reductions targets are concerned, be viewed so differently?

Here's the ugly part: One is seen negatively because it's proposed by conservatives, the other is seen positively because it is promoted by liberals. Both will obviously lead to more government intervention in our respective economies, but the US version is also full of good old pork barrel spending.

Here's an even uglier truth: Neither one of these plans, even if completely successful in reaching their targets, will have any effect whatsoever on our climate. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Now do a cost-benefit analysis on that.

Big government and expansion of the power of the state* is what climate change legislation is all about. It has nothing to do with the climate. Nothing at all.

The hot air cult

Cal Thomas comments at the Washington Times on a theme that's been observed here in the past: that global warming alarmists are in fact followers of a pseudo-religion:

You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon-polluting ways.

One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. So it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, says The Washington Times, "are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis." In a report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, these scientists cast doubt on a "scientific consensus" that human-caused global warming endangers the planet.

Like most cultists, the true believers struck back, not by debating science, but by charging that a small number of the scientists mentioned in the report have taken money from the oil industry.

And Exxon has dismissed the claim as just so much hot air. But we should take a look at the dollars for some startling information:

The pro-global warming cultists enjoy a huge money advantage. Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, noted in an EPW report how much money has been spent researching and promoting climate fears and so-called solutions: "In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one," he wrote on June 18, 2007. The $19 million spent on research that debunks the global warming faith pales in comparison.

Mr. Thomas doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the Goracle and his followers:

Mr. Gore and his disciples will still be living in their big houses, driving gas-guzzling cars and flying in private jets that leave carbon footprints as large as Bigfoot's, while most of us will be forced to drive tiny automobiles and live in huts resembling the Third World. But hypocrisy is just one of many traits displayed by secular fundamentalists like Mr. Gore.

Before adopting any faith, the agendas of the people attempting to impose it, along with the beliefs held by them and their disciples, should be considered. Al Gore and company are big government liberals who think government is the answer to all our problems, including those they create. As Ronald Reagan often said, in too many cases government is the problem.

That last paragraph sums it up rather nicely.

h/t: the Strong Conservative

What really happened at Bali

While the liberal media are trumpeting the "deal" reached at the UN conference on climate change in Bali as a "cave in" by both the United States and Canada, the truth is not quite so simple.

Noel Sheppard writes in Manic Misinterpretations of Climate Change Capitulation by US in Bali:

Readers should understand that this was a huge victory for the U.S., and what was indeed missing from the Kyoto Protocol the Clinton administration, with support from then Vice President Al Gore and 95 senators, refused to ratify in 1997. Now, ten years later, developing nations are the ones that have capitulated and agreed to participate in emissions cuts.

Though most media will downplay this, it was indeed a win for the Bush administration and America, as it establishes that any agreement to emissions cuts in the future - assuming such occur - will include developing nations like China and India. This potentially assures that any climate change agreement the U.S. enters into in the future will not give such nations an unfair economic advantage.

Again, this was a HUGE win for the Bush administration that will likely be downplayed by the press.

Downplayed by the press is an understatement. This "deal" sets no hard emissions targets as sought by the Europeans and it effectively ends the exemption enjoyed until now by so-called "developing" nations like China and India. As Sheppard says, "the White House got exactly what it wanted from this conference, and the alarmists got virtually nothing."

The greening of Al Gore

The Goracle has received a bit of criticism in the press prior to receiving his Nobel Prize.
From the Times Online:

WHO would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business? Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures.

and from the Daily Mail:

Al Gore is criticised for lining his own pockets after £3,300-per-minute green speech

But at least he's saving the world from CO2 right?
Well, not exactly: Gore Takes Train From Oslo Airport, Luggage Takes Mercedes

Update: scientists in Australia are investigating eco-friendly flatulence.

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.

WaPo: U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming

From Investors Business Daily (with emphasis added, of course):

Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for . . . an ice age? An old Washington Post story indicates he did.

On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.

The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.

Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.

So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?

"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story, which was spotted last week by Washington resident John Lockwood, who was doing research at the Library of Congress and alerted the Washington Times to his finding.

Hansen has some explaining to do. The public deserves to know how he was converted from an apparent believer in a coming ice age who had no worries about greenhouse gas emissions to a global warming fear monger.

This is a man, as Lockwood noted in his message to the Times' John McCaslin, who has called those skeptical of his global warming theory "court jesters." We wonder: What choice words did he have for those who were skeptical of the ice age theory in 1971?

People can change their positions based on new information or by taking a closer or more open-minded look at what is already known. There's nothing wrong with a reversal or modification of views as long as it is arrived at honestly.

But what about political hypocrisy? It's clear that Hansen is as much a political animal as he is a scientist. Did he switch from one approaching cataclysm to another because he thought it would be easier to sell to the public? Was it a career advancement move or an honest change of heart on science, based on empirical evidence?

If Hansen wants to change positions again, the time is now. With NASA having recently revised historical temperature data that Hansen himself compiled, the door has been opened for him to embrace the ice age projections of the early 1970s.

Could be he's feeling a little chill in the air again.

Or then again, maybe he's feeling a litlle heat...

Macleans: Al Gore's tenuous grasp on the 'truth'

Just inside the front cover, on page 4 of the May 14, 2007 issue of Maclean's magazine appears this photo of the Goracle with an interesting caption:

GORE BLASTED the Tories' green plan, but it includes almost every remedy that he calls for

The editorial that follows is called "Al Gore's tenuous grasp on the 'truth'" (sorry, it doesn't appear to be available on-line yet, but the print version of the magazine is available now and I've copied it here):

Of all the memorable scenes in Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, it's hard to forget his forecast on rising oceans.

The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet at the hands of global warming will increase worldwide sea levels by nearly seven metres, Gore states. He sketches out the impact this will have: India and Bangladesh will be inundated. Forty million people will be displaced around Shanghai. Florida will all but disappear. Most cruel of all, however, is the effect on New York City. His graphics then show a blue tide of water slowly swallowing up city streets. "This is what would happen to Manhattan. They [scientists] can measure this precisely." In a whisper he adds: "The area where the World Trade Center Memorial is to be located would be underwater." It is perhaps the most powerful moment in the movie. Yet, like the bulk of Gore's message, it is also heavily exaggerated and of questionable practical value.

Those scientists in which Gore puts so much faith do discuss the possibility of a failure of Greenland's ice. In fact, the February 2007 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mentions the possibility of a seven-metre rise in the oceans. But that report also says global warming would have to continue "for millennia" for this to occur. Gore's Manhattan/Atlantis scenario is thus a potential risk sometime after 4007. It's not exactly a clear and present danger.

We bring this up not because global warming or environmentalism are things to be
ignored—they are important issues to be sure—but to point out Gore's frequent distance from the useful truth. His comment last week in Toronto that the Conservative government's environmental plan is a "complete and total fraud... designed to mislead the Canadian people" is as exaggerated and misplaced as his movie scaremongering. It is never a fraud to be honest. However painful it may be for single-minded idealists like Gore to admit, it is an absolute impossibility for Canada to meet its 2012 Kyoto targets without triggering economic collapse.

The plan released by Environment Minister John Baird last month includes almost all the remedies Gore himself calls for. Ottawa has already introduced tax breaks for public transit. Now we have rebates for fuel-efficient cars with new standards on the way. There will be carbon sequestering, a new technology fund and a ban on incandescent bulbs. Baird's plan is also notable for its focus on reducing air pollution, which arguably has a bigger negative impact on Canadians today than global warming ever will. Taken as a whole, the plan represents an effective compromise between economic sanity and environmental necessity.

Gore's fascinating reinvention of himself from earnest but boring politician to environmental crusader is a notable achievement. If he has made himself rich in the process, we applaud that as well. But during this transformation, Gore appears to have forgotten the art of realistic policy-making, and he has ceased to tell his audience the whole truth. M

Kudos to Macleans for making this honest and unbiased assessment of the Goracle and the deceptions that he promotes in the name of environmentalism.

There's lots more on environmentalism in this issue of Macleans, including a 5 page "Green Report" by Luiza CH. Savage and Nicholas Kohler, titled "Welcome to Planet Al" about the recent travels of the "larger-than-life-jet-setting-celebrity-magnet-environmental-rock-star" through Canada.

Suzuki: I'm over by 'hundreds of tonnes'

This "profile" of David Suzuki appeared in today's Vancouver Sun (the writer is obviously so smitten by the great environmentalist that he completely forgot to make use of a grammar or spell-checker - I've copied his words below verbatim).

Buried amongst all the gushing praise, you will see this startling admission:

Our planet canabsorb each person creating one tonne of carbon emissions from fossilfuels a year, he figures. The average Canadian now accounts for morethan 20 tonnes. Yet hes far, far beyond even that excess. Each roundtrip between Toronto and London, he estimates, creates about one tonneof greenhouse gases per passenger. So, Suzuki guesses, hes over hislimit by hundreds of tonnes.

Yes, hes being buying carbon offsets, he says. But hes now decidedthats no longer enough: Starting out his eighth decade, hes decidedhe needs to be more in sync with the planets ability to absorb all hisgreenhouse gases, so this frequent flyers long-haul flights must bedrastically cut.

If he's over his limit by "hundreds of tonnes", then his carbon footprint is about 20 to 30 times that of the average Canadian. How Al Gorish of him!

So this epiphany means that Suzuki is promising no more annual vacations to Australia, and that he will be clustering future speaking engagements in geographic areas to cut back on emissions or speaking by video conference.

Big deal. Even with these reductions, Kooky Suzuki's carbon footprint will still dwarf that of the average Canadian, who he says is 20 times higher than ideal. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Kyoto is a complete and total fraud

The Goracle blessed Toronto with an appearance yesterday - and offered some criticism of the Canadian government's policy on climate change, saying it was a...

"complete and total fraud. It is designed to mislead the Canadian people"

Environment Minister John Baird responded to that remark:

"It is difficult to accept criticism from someone who preaches about climate change, but who never submitted the Kyoto Protocol to a vote in the United States Senate, who never did as much as Canada is now doing to fight climate change during eight years in office, and who has campaigned exclusively for hundreds of Democratic candidates who have weaker plans to fight greenhouse gases than Canada's New Government."

"I wish Al Gore had asked to be briefed on the plan," Baird said in an interview that aired Sunday on CTV's Question Period.

"You know, it's easy when you've had the big job and then you're on the side lines -- it's easy to complain," Baird added. "My responsibility, our government's responsibility, is to act. If we came forward with our environmental plan in the United States, they'd call it revolutionary because it's so tough."

It is growing tiresome watching these politicians stumbling over each other to see who can out-green who, while nobody has the guts to speak the truth about Kyoto and climate change.

To paraphrase the words of the Goracle, Kyoto is a complete and total fraud. It is designed to mislead the Canadian people.

Suicide is painless

Lorrie Goldstein asks a few pointed questions of the current leader^tm of the Liberal Party:

If implementing Kyoto is painless, why didn't they [the Liberals] do it?

C'mon Mr. Dion, Your party signed Kyoto in 1998, ratified it in 2002 and promised in 1993 to cut emissions by far more than Kyoto requires. Don't tell us the Liberals never did any costing studies. Where are they?

We know the Liberals earmarked $10 billion over seven years to fight climate change in 2005, but was that the full price of implementing Kyoto, or a down payment?

Yesterday, the National Post said the Liberals had studies in 2000 estimating that complying with Kyoto would result in a loss of $4,400 of disposable income for a typical family, close to Baird's numbers. Is that true?

What about post-Kyoto, since the science Dion cites to make the case for combating global warming also tells us that to be effective, future emission cuts will need to be 12 times those called for in Kyoto?

Many politicians (and journalists) don't understand Kyoto takes effect next year, not 2012.

Kyoto requires Canada to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 6% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. We don't have until 2012, we have to hit that average starting in 2008.

Say we miraculously reduced our emissions next year to 4% below 1990 levels for 2008, 2009 and half of 2010 -- impossible without wrecking our economy because we're 35% above our Kyoto target now.

Under Kyoto, even if we achieved that target -- and we can't -- we'd still have to cut deeper -- down to 8% below 1990 levels for the last half of 2010 and all of 2011 and 2012. That's just to hit our target of an average 6% cut below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012.

If we miss -- and we will, big-time -- Kyoto requires us to make up the difference, plus a 30% penalty, while achieving deeper cuts post-2012 that have yet to be negotiated, going on for decades.

Policy makers are faced with a dilemma because Canadians are saying two contradictory things.

First, we tell pollsters, by about two-to-one, that we favour Kyoto. Then we say we're two-to-one against paying significantly more for fossil fuels (Suzuki fans notwithstanding). But you can't have the first, without the second.

Dion, and others, have been getting away with asserting Kyoto will be all but painless. Dion has claimed we'll make "megatonnes" of money by cutting "megatonnes" of emissions without being challenged.

Last week, Baird called his bluff. About time.

The Liberals didn't get it done because they knew Kyoto is suicide. And it won't be painless.

Scare tactics

There's no hypocrite like a Liberal hypocrite:

No one has been more guilty of employing scare tactics than those-- the federal Liberals chief among them-- who believe manmade carbon emissions are about to trigger a global-warming catastrophe. Floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, famine, disease, crime and widespread death have all been predicted if our Kyoto targets aren't met.

The above is from today's National Post editorial, Kyoto Hypocrisy, as is this:

There is no wonder why the Liberals themselves did absolutely nothing to reduce Canada's greenhouse emissions during the nine years they were in charge after the signing of the Kyoto treaty: They had in their hands forecasts similar to Mr. Baird's and were deathly afraid of the political fallout that would accompany that much economic pain. Now that they are out of office, though, the Liberals suddenly are all in favour of a speedy Kyoto implementation.

Previous.

Most ridiculous item of the day

Today's item comes from actor John Travolta on global warming solutions:

"I'm wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities.

Newsflash John: it's warming on Mars too!

Travolta owns not one, but five private jets and it is estimated that last year he personally accounted for a whopping 800 tonnes of carbon emissions. Despite his outspoken concern for global warming, Travolta realizes the obvious:

"I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets."

Right. And you're just another celebrity who should stick to acting.

Source.

The path from global consensus to snake oil

Roger Pielke, Jr. writes:

At least one IPCC lead author appears to be trying to cash in on concern over climate change. With the help of several University of Arizona faculty members, including one prominent IPCC contributor, a company called Climate Appraisal, LLC is selling address specific climate predictions looking out as far as the next 100 years. Call me a skeptic or a cynic but I'm pretty sure that the science of climate change hasn't advanced to the point of providing such place-specific information. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that if such information were credible and available, it'd already be in the IPCC. The path from global consensus to snake oil seems pretty short.

Source: Prometheus

Dion's credibility gap

From today's Globe and Mail:

OTTAWA — Christine Stewart, who was the Liberal environment minister when Canada signed the Kyoto agreement in 1997, said none of her cabinet colleagues -- including current party leader Stéphane Dion -- supported her efforts to put a real plan in place to meet its ambitious targets.

Our current Environment Minister adds this:

Environment Minister John Baird said there is a pattern of key Liberals saying there was a lack of commitment when the Liberals signed Kyoto. "Dion has a huge credibility gap and he has created it himself," Mr. Baird said in a telephone interview.

Baird might be referring to this.

Al Gore's Carbon Footprint

h/t

Carbon Indulgences

The new pseudo-religion of Global Warming has discovered the value of a tried and trusted practice from the Middle Ages, that of selling indulgences to its believers to help relieve them of their guilt caused by their own carbon emitting "sins". These new modern day indulgences come in the form of "carbon offsets" and they were all the rage at the recent Academy Awards:

HOLLYWOOD'S wealthy liberals can now avoid any guilt they might feel for consuming so much non-renewable fossil fuel in their private jets, their SUVs, and their multiple air-conditioned mansions. This year's Oscar goodie bag contained gift certificates representing 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas reductions from TerraPass, which describes itself as a "carbon offset retailer." The 100,000 pounds "are enough to balance out an average year in the life of an Academy Award presenter," a press release from TerraPass asserts.

Not to be left out, the Goracle has jumped onto this bandwagon too and claims to purchase enough indulgences and green power to offset the incredible energy consumption of his Tennessee mansion which came under criticism earlier this week. Bill Hobbs takes a closer look:

So, where does Gore buy his ‘carbon offsets’? According to The Tennessean newspaper’s report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management. a company he co-founded and serves as chairman:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe…

As co-founder and chairman of the firm Gore presumably draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.

Al Gore profiting from his climate change activisim? Say it isn't so!

But like the Indulgences of the Middle Ages, these modern "carbon offsets" are unlikely to be of any real value, at least not in the way in which they are being promoted - environmentally. From Economist.com:

The carbon offsets, on the other hand, sound like a very reasonable plan. That is, they did until I began thinking about them.

Most carbon offsets seem to work on one of a few principles: they plant trees, invest in renewable energy sources, or pay someone in a developing country to use some less-polluting technology, like a CFL.

It turns out that a lot of websites have already devoted quite a lot of space to discussing why these plans don't work particularly well.

A lot of websites like here, here, here, here and here to name a few.

So if Al Gore and the Hollywood-ites start whipping out these coupons and claiming to be green, be very, very skeptical. My guess is that TerraPass is less like a real carbon offset and more like, say, the International Star Registry, where you get a nice certificate for the wall and the internal glow of having a star named after you (which, officially, it really is not). Both the star registry and TerraPass are selling the exact same thing -- fluff. (...)

This type of thing is incredibly amenable to fraud. If you sell more than 100% of an investment, eventually the day of reckoning will come when you can't pay everyone their shares (a la the Producers). But if people are investing in CO2 abatement -- you can sell the same ton over and over and no one will ever know.

The fact that Carbon offsets are just another unregulated scam was the topic on the Rush Limbaugh show today. Transcript. Rush even came up with a pretty funny parody commercial.

Update: Mark Steyn weighs in.