Lehman Brothers Close Ties to Gore, Hansen and Carbon Trading

Al Gore’s carbon trading business GIM was banked with Lehman Bros. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the future but I suspect that this increases the risk of participating in Carbon trading. Merrill Lynch was also deeply involved in this business.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

A year ago they couldn’t predict their bankruptcy but were predicting the climate 100 years ahead.

Full report at ICECAP.

Dion: the green professor

Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, is off to a bumpy start to his campaign to become Canada's next Prime Minister. Party insiders are very concerned:

Behind the scenes, Liberals worry about a "loosey-goosey" operation that staggered out of the gate, minus an airplane, to sell a complicated Green Shift plan that bears the heavy stamp of Stéphane Dion, professor. Nobody seems to have even Googled the name to see if it was taken.

[...]

"Dion is in another friggin' world," says a Toronto Liberal MP. "I could go on ad nauseam about how he won't listen to anybody.

"He's not a political animal and he just doesn't get it."

Grumblings from Toronto, normally a bastion of Liberal support, has got to be troubling. To say that Dion is out of touch with ordinary Canadians is a gross understatement. Dion has made himself and his unpopular shifty green carbon tax a major issue in this campaign and these two things will turn out to be his biggest miscalculations.

In this time of high energy costs, Canadians are justifiably leery of any new tax that would be applied on all forms of energy because of the impact it will have on not only energy prices, but on everything that depends on energy in one form or another, i.e. the entire economy. Canadians are also justifiably skeptical of Dion's claim that his carbon tax will be revenue neutral.

Only Stephen Harper's Conservatives stand to gain from Dion's ill advised Green Shift plan.

Couple that with Dion's image as an academic elite who is out of touch and who accomplished absolutely nothing as Environment Minster in the last Liberal government and Dion is in big trouble.

Dion portrays himself as the "green" leader. Unfortunately for him, that adjective has more than one meaning. And the one that's starting to stick is not the one he intended.

Even Liberal insiders are asking themselves what the heck were they thinking when they selected the dark horse Dion as their party leader:

As the Liberal Leader begins his second full week of campaigning, one veteran MP said there is “a lot of soul-searching right now about what the Liberal Party did” in choosing Mr. Dion as leader.

The Tories already enjoys a significant lead in the polls. With a month to go, the big question is whether or not Stephen Harper can grab the big trophy and land a majority government.

After October 14th, the Liberal knives will surely come out and the green professor Stéphane Dion will become a rather insignificant footnote in Canadian political history.

Global cooling

These guys have a better track record than all those high-priced computer models:

The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming.

Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hits the newsstands on Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.

They're off and running

It is no surprise, but it's now official - Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 14th to elect a new federal government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Governor General early this morning and this Parliament has been dissolved.

"Between now and Oct. 14, Canadians will choose a government to look out for their interests at a time of global economic trouble," Harper told reporters on Sunday after he triggered the vote.

"They will choose between direction or uncertainty; between common sense or risky experiments; between steadiness or recklessness."

Harper consulted with all 3 opposition leaders over the past few weeks and determined that none of the opposition parties would continue to support his minority government. The Governor General obviously agreed.

Harper has been described as opportunistic, and criticized for violating his own law that fixed election dates. The criticism is unfounded as the law provides for just such a situation where a minority government can no longer function. The opposition put the final nail in the coffin of this Parliament by indicating their lack of confidence in the Harper government in their recent meetings with the Prime Minister.

I expect Harper to focus the debate on Stéphane (the current leader of the Liberal Party) Dion's plan to introduce a new carbon tax, under their "Green Shift" proposal, described by conservatives as the "Green Shaft".

I t is usually describe on this page as Dion's "shifty green carbon tax", designed not to benefit the environment but to shift wealth from the energy rich provinces of the west to the rest of Canada (i.e. Ontario and Quebec). One Liberal MP even described it as a Green Anti-Poverty Plan.

Whatever you call it, this proposed carbon tax represents the single largest tax grab in Canadian history. And it's popularity with voters is not what M. Dion would hope.

When Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion announced his Green Shift scheme three months ago, he assured Canadians that “every single penny” extracted from consumers by his new carbon tax would be returned in the form of income-tax cuts or subsidies for “going green” — incentives for everything from home-insulation upgrades to gas-guzzler trade-ins. Mr. Dion also insisted his plan was “revenue neutral”: It wouldn’t raise the total amount of tax money taken in by Ottawa every year, but merely would “shift” the existing burden from income to emission taxes.

This seems more than a little dubious. If the plan were so great for consumers already, why did Mr. Dion feel the need this week to add almost $1-billion in annual subsidies for farmers, truckers and fishermen to offset their anticipated losses?

Moreover, if his scheme is truly “revenue neutral,” where is this new money to come from -- except through higher income or sales taxes on Canadian families or companies, which would blow the strategy out of the realm of “shift” and into the sphere of “shaft”?

As with any all-gain, no-pain promise from a politician, this one is too good to be true. Among Canadians, that was Green Shift’s problem from the start: Few could be convinced that Mr. Dion’s eco-friendly dream could be achieved at zero cost.

The campaigns have already begun and M. Dion is going to find his shifty green carbon tax a tough sell to voters. Expect him to be very critical of Stephen Harper to throw attention away from his big tax grab. Plus Dion is not widely popular in his home province of Quebec and raising taxes on energy will not help him improve there.

The Conservatives will surely focus on Dion's weak leadership and his deadly carbon tax. Couple that with Stephen Harper's consistently strong ratings on leadership and the economy and that should bring the Tories back into power after October 14th.

It's going to be interesting.

McCain to make Palin energy czar

The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that John McCain wants to put Sarah Palin in charge of US oil and energy policy if he becomes president:

The Republican presidential candidate will make his running mate the public face of the country's drive for energy independence, according to a McCain campaign official.

The campaign official said: "The Democrats say that Governor Palin is inexperienced, but she has vast experience in the energy sector. She will be at the forefront of the push for energy independence. She's popular and she's very persuasive." A Republican Party official, who has discussed Mrs Palin's role with members of Mr McCain's team, added: "She can say: 'I'm from Alaska. I know all about this and I support drilling, even in ANWR."

"No one has more experience of getting oil out of the ground and to the market than Sarah Palin," he said. "It is the issue that most distinctively divides the two parties and it is one that has proved popular for Senator McCain.

"No political figure in the US has more experience of taking on privilege and vested interests than Sarah Palin."

On another note, Governor Palin opposed the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species and recently went so far as to sue the Department of the Interior over the issue.

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.

“We believe that the Service’s decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available,” Governor Palin said.

The Service’s analysis failed to adequately consider the polar bears’ survival through prior warming periods, and its findings that the polar bear is threatened by sea-ice habitat loss and inadequate regulatory mechanisms to address sea-ice recession are not warranted. The Service also failed to adequately consider the existing regulatory mechanisms, including conservation measures within Alaska and the international community, which have resulted in a sustainable worldwide polar bear population that has more than doubled in number over the last 40 years to 20,000-25,000 bears.

Bravo for Governor Palin. Who better than Alaskans to know the real story of the polar bear? Polar bears are not threatened and the greens managed to browbeat Kempthorne into listing them as such when it was completely unwarranted.

It was just another move by the greens to make it more difficult to drill for oil in the Arctic. Let's hope Governor Palin's suit is successful and this obstacle to energy independence can be removed.

Related.

Update & Note: the term "Czar" or "Tsar" does not appear in the above article from the Sunday Telegraph. It was a term I used in the title of this post. Actually, the more appropriate use of the word in this case would be the feminine "Czaritsa" or "Tsaritsa".

At any rate, in the strictest sense it refers to a ruler or monarch, which is not a position you will find in the government of the USA. Its use here is in the more informal meaning of an:

...official having special powers to regulate or supervise an activity: a racetrack czar; an energy czar.

NI Enviro minister calls alarmist views "hysterical psuedo-religion"

When was the last time you heard an elected Minister say anything like this?

"Reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists."

Those words were said by Northern Ireland's Environment Minister Sammy Wilson.

The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has angered green campaigners by describing their view on climate change as a "hysterical psuedo-religion".

(...)

Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change.

"The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact," he said.

Right on cue, the greens said Wilson was "like a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer". I like how the lefties always stoop to character assassination when they encounter a skeptic, but never, ever ever offer to debate the science.

Poll: Tories 35%, Bloc 34%, Libs 20% in Quebec

This might help us understand a little better why Prime Minister Harper wants to have an October election.

"Without money, organization and imposing candidates, Stéphane Dion's Liberal Party is headed straight for the slaughterhouse, according to several influential members," the paper reported.

Massive gain in Arctic Sea Ice

via DailyTech:

Increase twice the size of Germany: "colder weather" to blame.

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany.

With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring.

The data is for August 2008 and indicates a total sea ice area of six million square kilometers. Ice extent for the same month in 2007 covered 5.3 million square kilometers, a historic low. Earlier this year, media accounts were rife with predictions that this year would again see a new record. Instead, the Arctic has seen a gain of about thirteen percent.

William Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois, tells DailyTech that this year the Arctic was "definitely colder" than 2007. Chapman also says part of the reason for the large ice loss in 2007 was strong winds from Siberia, which affect both ice formation and drift, forcing ice into warmer waters where it melts.

Earlier predictions were also wrong because researchers thought thinner ice would melt faster in subsequent years. Instead, according to the NSIDC, the new ice had less snow coverage to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, resulting in a faster rate of ice growth.

Most concern has focused on the Arctic regions, rather than Antarctica. Recent research has indicated Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend, for reasons which remain unclear.

Palin speech tonight

Sarah Palin gets her chance at the RNC tonight to strike back at the vicious attacks she and her family have endured since being named by John McCain as his VP pick. But she will do it with class:

"Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of the country."


"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."

Update: Sarah Palin delivered big time at the RNC tonight. A home run. There were so many highlights, but I especially liked when she ad-libbed after seeing a sign that read "Hockey moms 4 Palin". She brought the house down with this,

"What's the difference between a pit-bull and a hockey mom?
Lipstick."

Sarah Palin is more than ready to take on "Papa Joe" Biden. The full text of her speech is here.

And just for good measure, Rudy Giulianni's speech is here. He was on fire tonight too.

Update2: the video... h/t: The Other Club

Rodney Hide is right

Rodney Hide is an MP in the New Zealand Parliament. The following are his comments regarding NZ's proposed Climate Change (Emissions Trading & Renewable Preference) Bill published by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition:

I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science.

It is not that that should count, but I think that it is significant for what I am about to say—that is, that the entire climate change - global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle.

Enacting this legislation will cost New Zealanders dear—that is the point of it - and it will drive up the costs of basic goods and services for New Zealanders probably by at least $500 or $600 a year.

It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business. It will put farmers off their farms. And it will do all this for no impact on world weather, for no environmental gain, and for no conceivable advantage to New Zealand or to the world.

Facing an impending election call here in Canada this week Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the opposition Liberal Party, made some hasty changes to his own unpopular shifty green carbon tax proposal. But the problem, Stéphane is that Rodney Hide is right.

The problem for the first two Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change reports was what was called the medieval warming period, where a thousand years ago the Earth was warmer than it is now.

Then, magically, an obscure physicist in the US came up with a new bit of analysis - the hockey stick - that showed world temperature to be flat and then rising dramatically as the world became industrialised. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change grabbed this, put it on the front of its document, and repeated it five times.

(...)

The science was rubbish, because a computer model is not science. Science is about theories, hypothesis, and the testing of these against the facts. That is not what has happened in the basic science here.

The IPCC models were wrong. The data in the IPCC reports was skewed and biased. The conclusions of the IPCC were wrong. Carbon emissions do not cause "global warming" or "climate change". Neither a "cap and trade" system or a shifty green carbon tax will do anything to protect the earth's climate.

Dion's Liberals want a shifty green carbon tax because it is just that. A new tax. Global warming is an irresistible excuse for "tax and spend" liberals to bring in new taxes.

Speaking to his caucus on Wednesday, Mr. Dion said a Liberal government would set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to help groups likely to be hard hit by his proposed new fossil fuel taxes.

If his new carbon tax was truly "revenue neutral" as Dion claims, then why would he need hundreds of millions of dollars to help Canadians who are "hard hit" by his new shifty green carbon tax?

As Rodney Hide says, it's a "worldwide scam and swindle".

h/t: Newsbeat1

RNC: Thompson and Lieberman

I can't help but think that if this Fred Thompson had been on the campaign trail during the primaries, he might have faired much, much better. Fred spoke about nominee John McCain tonight at the Republican National Convention:

John McCain's bones may have been broken but his spirit never was.

Now, being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be President.

But it does reveal character.

This is the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of history have sought in their leaders.

Strength.

Courage.

Humility.

Wisdom.

Duty.

Honor.

Fred also had a few words about and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin:

Speaking of the vice presidential nominee, what a breath of fresh air Governor Sarah Palin is.

She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family.

Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union -- and won -- over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.

Let's be clear ... the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment.

Sound like anyone else we know?

Of special interest, former Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman also spoke in favour of John McCain:

My Democratic friends know all about John’s record of independence and accomplishment.

Maybe that’s why some of them are spending so much time and so much money trying to convince voters that John McCain is someone else.

I’m here, as a Democrat myself, to tell you: Don’t be fooled.

God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man.

The full text of both speeches are available at the links above.

Gov. Palin on Polar Bears, etc.

John McCain's VP nominee discusses energy independence, drilling in ANWR and polar bears with CNN's Glenn Beck during this interview originally aired in June of this year.



via Newsbusters

Update: I just watched a fascinating interview with Gov. Palin by Maria Bartiromo on CNBC. Partial video here.

One thing for sure, Sarah Palin is going to shake up this election campaign. She has real answers for America's energy questions. And she has a track record of dealing with the oil industry in a practical, ethical and environmentally conscious manner - all the while protecting the interests of her shareholders, the people of Alaska.

She's not solely focused on developing non-renewables like oil and natural gas. As Governor she has recognized the need for, and funded other sources of energy, particularly renewables like wind and tide.

The more I see of Gov. Palin, the more I am convinced that John McCain made the right choice for his VP running mate. She makes a lot of sense and could really shake up Washington. If her ideas and principles can applied on a national scale she could actually get the US moving towards energy independence.

Perhaps the ticket should be Palin-McCain.