Another "Gee, who knew?" article on the environment

This from the Daily Mail online from the UK.

Environmentalists 'exaggerated' threat to tropical rainforests from global warming
By David Derbyshire
The threat to tropical rainforests from climate change may have been exaggerated by environmentalists, according to a new study.

Researchers have shown that the world's tropical forests thrived in the far distant past when temperatures were 3 to 5C warmer than today.
They believe that a wetter, warmer future may actually boost plants and animals living the tropics.
The findings, published in the respected journal Science, come from a study of pollen trapped in rocks during a natural period of global warming 56.3million years ago.

Science may be getting around to the truth instead of politics.

Expensive green jobs, news from Spain

Spanish paper: Obama driving off ‘green energy’ cliff
By: David Freddoso
Chris Horner has been all over the story of Spain’s unimpressive experience with green energy. Spanish newspapers have finally called out the U.S. President for choosing a failed model for a “Green Economy.” From the other day:
On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America.
Later came the revelation that Obama administration senior Energy Department official Cathy Zoi — someone with serious publicized conflict of interest issues — demanded an urgent U.S. response to the damaging report from the non-governmental Spanish experts so as to protect the Obama administration’s plans…But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.

Now the Spanish press is on to the story. Buried on page 34 of today’s Gaceta is this headline:

Spain admits that the “green economy” it sold to Obama is a bust
Spanish government leaks a report acknowledging the grave economic consequences of betting on renewable energy

The first few lines:

The president of the United States, Barack Obama, does not appear to have chosen well in basing his “green economy” on Spain’s. After the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero demonized a study by various experts on the economic downsides of renewable energies, it just leaked an internal document from the Spanish cabinet which is even more negative.

Among the findings, paraphrased from the right sidebar:

* Green energy is 120 percent more expensive, simply due to the extra costs of solar and wind, and the evolution of the market is not going to bring down those costs any time soon.
* The clean energy sector is slated to receive 126 billion euros in the next 25 years, but no one knows where the money is going to come from . In 2009, the subsidies were worth 5 billion euros.
* Photovoltaic solar power accounts for 53 percent of the extra cost of renewables, whereas it produces only 11 percent of Spain’s renewable energy.
* Each “green job” comes at the expense of 2.2 traditional jobs.

Pot meets Kettle, but at least he dropped out of the mix

From the Washington Post

Graham withdraws support for climate legislation

By Juliet Eilperin

The effort to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year suffered a critical blow Saturday when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), the key Republican proponent of the bill, withdrew his support because of what he said was a "cynical political" decision by Democrats to advance immigration legislation first.

The move forced the other two authors of the climate and energy bill, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), to cancel a much-anticipated news conference planned for Monday at which they were to unveil the plan they negotiated with Graham.

Graham, who spent weeks working with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on an immigration measure that will appeal to both parties, wrote in an open letter Saturday to leaders of the climate effort, "Moving forward on immigration -- in this hurried, panicked manner -- is nothing more than a cynical political ploy."

I wish he had dropped out because he suddenly became wise to the climategate scandals, but apparently it was only a political ploy. 

Cow Gate??? Is there no end to the Crazy that is Global Warming?

We all knew it was silly. Cows, according to the environmental powers that be, and  humans, are the cause for global warming. Well, not exactly.

Now it's CowGate: expert report says claims of livestock causing global warming are false

It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unravelling. The latest reversal of scientific “consensus” is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming – one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks. Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense. The Washington Times has called it “Cowgate”.

The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” claimed: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.” This led to demands in America for a “cow tax” and a campaign in Europe at the time of the Copenhagen car crash last December called Less Meat=Less Heat.

Now a report to the American Chemical Society by Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California at Davis, has denounced such scare-mongering as “scientifically inaccurate”.

Read the rest here at the Telegraph UK blogs.

And the UK is Waking up to the Climate Facts

From the Times Online:
Public scepticism prompts Science Museum to rename climate exhibition

The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months.

The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.

The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.

How long will it be until the powers that be here in the US realize the fraud involved in this?  Have we indoctinated our children for so many years that they are now the teachers of a flawed sicence?
Read the rest here.

AGW, Enviromentalism, it's all about the money

From Watts Up With that:
North and Booker on Amazongate: A billion dollar cash cow

Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum sends word of this new revelation. North and Christopher Booker were the first to point out the money trail with Pachauri. Now the have followed the money on IPCC’s “Amazongate” all the way to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Here’s an excerpt from both.

Appearing in the Booker column is an account of how the “conservation” group WWF hopes to turn Amazonian trees into billions of dollars, all in the name of saving the planet. The background briefing on which Booker relied is posted below, detailing how the rainforests are to become a monstrous cash-making machine.

The Amazon – a “green gold-rush”

The WWF and other green campaign groups talking up the destruction of the Amazon rainforests are among those who stand to make billions of dollars from the scare. This “green gold-rush” involves taking control of huge tracts of rainforest supposedly to stop them being chopped down, and selling carbon credits gained from carbon dioxide emissions they claim will be “saved”.

Backed by a $30 million grant from the World Bank, the WWF has already partnered in a pilot scheme to manage 20 million acres in Brazil. If their plans get the go-ahead in Mexico at the end of the year, the forests will be worth over $60 billion in “carbon credits”, paid for by consumers in “rich” countries through their electricity bills and in increased prices for goods and services.

The prospect of a billion-dollar windfall explains the sharp reaction to the “Amazongate” scandal, in which the IPCC falsely claimed that up to 40 percent of the rainforest could be at risk from even a slight drop in rainfall.

Here, the IPCC was caught out again making unsubstantiated claims based on a WWF report. But unlike the “Glaciergate” affair where its claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was conceded to be an “error”, the IPCC stood firm on its Amazon claim, stating that the assertion was “correct”. What makes the difference is that there is no serious money locked into melting glaciers. Amazonian trees, however, are potentially worth billions.

In standing its ground, the IPCC was strongly supported by the WWF, and by Daniel Nepstad, a senior scientist from the US Woods Hole Research Centre. Relying on an assiduously fostered reputation as a leading expert on the effects of climate change in the Amazon rainforests, Nepstad – who works closely with the WWF – posted on the Centre’s website a personal statement endorsing “the correctness of the IPCC’s statement”. Bizarrely, his own research failed in any way to substantiate the claim.

Read the rest of this entry at the EU Referendum here

Also see the Booker column in the Telegraph

The UN and Climategate

From Fox News
After Climate-Gate, U.N. Submits to Independent Review
By Ed Barnes
In an apparent slap at the embattled chief of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has ordered a newly formed outside scientific panel to review its "procedures and practices" -- and more significantly, its management.
The hastily assembled panel will be headed by Prof. Robbert H. Dijkgraaf, head of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-chairman of the InterAcademy Council. The investigation will be carried out by the Council and will be composed of unpaid volunteer scientists. The panel's formation, it was acknowledged at a press conference Wednesday, was a direct reaction to criticism of the way the IPCC put together its last report on climate change.
The Council is composed of the heads of national science academies in 15 countries, according to Dijkgraaf, a theoretical physicist.

Read the rest.

Good Ole Al Gore, "He can't help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth"

See update below after  you read this.
Plus he doesn't know any better because apparently he really doesn't know exactly what the attacks show. In today's New York Times (online) he has an editorial essay, much of which can be disputed.

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

We cannot wish it to happen, either. As for the attacks on the science, well, if the science were valid it would be able to withstand those attacks. The recent email and document releases and revelations, however, show us the science is corrupted.
He goes on to say:

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

In the Washington Post, Sunil Sharan writes of the Green Jobs Myth, he undoubtedly knows what he is talking about as this is how he is described, "The writer, a director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE from 2008 to 2009, has worked in the clean-energy industry for a decade." He knows whereof he speaks. He ends his essay with this:

For the purpose of creating jobs, then, a "clean-energy economy" will not offer a panacea. This does not necessarily mean that America should not become green to alleviate climate change, to kick its addiction to foreign oil or to use energy sources more efficiently. But those who take great pains to tout the "job-creation potential" of the green space might just end up inducing labor pains all around.

Read Al Gore's editorial, then read Sunil Sharan's.  They both say much more than I have copied here.  I think I know which one will gain your respect.

Update   I found this link at Ann Althouse:
Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor  it is from Nov 2009.   Read it to see what a hypocrite he is; nowhere in his editorial does he say how much money he has already made or what he expects to make on "green jobs."

UN Climate Change Head Honcho Resigning

This is an AP story, guess it was getting a little warmer in his office.
Top UN climate official resigning
By ARTHUR MAX

AMSTERDAM — Top U.N. climate change official Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press Thursday that he was resigning after nearly four years, a period when governments struggled without success to agree on a new global warming deal.

His departure takes effect July 1, five months before 193 nations are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt to reach a binding worldwide accord on controlling greenhouse gases.

De Boer is known to be deeply disappointed with outcome of the last summit in Copenhagen, which drew 120 world leaders but failed to reach more than a vague promise by several countries to limit carbon emissions — and even that deal fell short of consensus.

But he denied to the AP that his decision to quit was a result of frustration with Copenhagen.

And - he didn't say he needed more time to spend with his family, or if he did it wasn't reported here.  Nothing was mentioned in the article about the scandals reported associated with the most recent report. It goes on to say:

De Boer said he will be a consultant on climate and sustainability issues for KPMG, a global accounting firm, and will be associated with several universities.

For a little more go here.

The AP has a long article on the Climategate exposure

And the Washington Post has an article, that if not damning is at least telling the liberal world that something is afoot and it isn't going to be good for those whose religion is climate change. The AP article is not as critical as any of the British papers but it is a start for the American MSM.
First the Associated Press:
Scientists seek better way to do climate report
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON – A steady drip of unsettling errors is exposing what scientists are calling "the weaker link" in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning series of international reports on global warming.

The flaws — and the erosion they've caused in public confidence — have some scientists calling for drastic changes in how future United Nations climate reports are done. A push for reform being published in Thursday's issue of a prestigious scientific journal comes on top of a growing clamor for the resignation of the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Now for the Washington Post:

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda  
By Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold

With its 2007 report declaring that the "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Prize -- and a new degree of public trust in the controversial science of global warming.

But recent revelations about flaws in that seminal report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel's work but also in projections about climate change. Scientists who have pointed out problems in the report say the panel's methods and mistakes -- including admitting Saturday that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands was below sea level -- give doubters an opening.

This still doesn't give us details, but it is shining some light on the idea there may be a problem at the IPCC.

Another in the Washington Post with a lighter side:
Global warming's snowball fight
by Dana Milbank

The back-to-back snowstorms in the capital were an inconvenient meteorological phenomenon for Al Gore. ....

....Al Gore, for one, seems to realize it's time for a new tactic. New TV ads released during last week's blizzards by Gore's climate advocacy group say nothing about climate science. They show workers asking their senators for more jobs from clean energy.

That's a good sign. If the Washington snows persuade the greens to put away the slides of polar bears and pine beetles and to keep the focus on national security and jobs, it will have been worth the shoveling.

Climategate affects are questioned in the Netherlands

Found on Lucianne.com
Error in Dutch polder data undermines trust in IPCC 

A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.

In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.

Climate-sceptic MPs were quick to react. Conservative MP Helma Neppérus and Richard de Mos from the right-wing Freedom Party want the minister to explain to parliament how these figures were used to decide on national climate policy. "This may invalidate all claims that the last decades were the hottest ever," Mr De Mos said.

The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Living Environment Planning Agency told reporters that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

The discovery comes just a week after a prediction about glaciers in the Himalayas proved wrong. Rather than disappearing by 2035, as IPCC reports claim, the mountain ice would last until 2350, according to the original research underlying the report.

Every nation relies on the United Nations IPCC report to plan policy.  The IPCC has been shown to be flawed in so many ways.  How long will this continue?

 

Climategate News from Canada

Climate agency going up in flames
Exit of Canada's expert a sure sign IPCC in trouble
by Terence Corcoran

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they've been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada's leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it's a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, mastermind of one of the most sophisticated climate modelling systems on the planet, and lead author on two recent landmark IPCC reports.

For him to say, as he told Canwest News yesterday, that there has been some "dangerous crossing" of the line between climate advocacy and science at the IPCC is stunning in itself.

Lots more at this site.

Climategate,Glaciergate, now Amazongate

Read all the spectacular gates at Climate Depot.  They have all the links.
I8 links and stories to all the scandals.  Why this is not getting more big story play in the networks, cable and print media, I don't know. Wait, maybe I do, it doesn't fit their agenda.
Update: Thanks to  http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ for the link. Now how about you folks reading the whole blog.  http://rockportconservatives.blogspot.com/

Climate Gate Becomes Pressgate

An article in Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism asks that question along with questions for the media and a discussion of the biased, liberal coverage of Climategate.
As Climategate Becomes Pressgate, Questions for the Media

Trillions of dollars are at stake in the man-made global warming debate. The Climategate scandal – where leaked emails and computer programs involve dozens of prominent scientists worldwide – has almost everything one would want in a good scandal: conspiracies, fraud, possible destruction of documents, and lots of heated exchanges. But the media has been reluctant to look into the problems and even when the controversy has been acknowledged it has been quickly dismissed as unimportant.

It is a long article that covers a lot, go read it here.
I post these many links to articles on climate because they are as important as the healthcare bill when it comes to changing our lifestyles and how much the will cost us in national and personal wealth. Pay attention, they want your country.

Update: This from the Small Dead Animals Blog, posted by Kate
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
December, 2009...

January, 2010...
Climate science faces a new controversy after the Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100..

So I, Rockport Conservative, went to the Times Online site to read the whole thing.
I suggest you read it, too. It is a very good elaboration of the pressgate question, or should I say, an answer.
You can make the sea level rise insert large enough to read easily if you hold down the control key while scrolling the mouse wheel up.

You Lie! (Just like everybody else...)

From the telegraph UK:

Climate change: the true price of the warmists' folly is becoming clear

From the Met Office's mistakes to Gordon Brown's wind farms, the cost of 'green' policies is growing, warns Christopher Booker

Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.

For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.

Then, as councils across Britain ran out of salt for frozen roads, we had the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, admitting that we entered this cold spell with only six days’ supply of grit. No mention of the fact that the Highways Agency and councils had been advised that there was no need for them to stockpile any more – let alone that many councils now have more “climate change officials” than gritters. Read it all.

From PowerLine:

Why is Umar being Treated as a Criminal Rather than an enemy Combatant?

The Obama administration's decision to treat Umar Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant rather than an enemy combatant is indefensible on the merits. It is also incredibly costly in terms of foregone intelligence. The administration's combined arrogance and stupidity would be laughable if their consequences weren't so serious.

Today's Telegraph carries Philip Sherwell's article quoting former Senator and 9/11 Commission member Slade Gorton on the issue. Speaking of Abdulmutallab, Gorton says:

"He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal."

Why is the Obama administration treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant? It is an unbelievable fact that we have as yet no straightforward answer to this question. There is, in any event, no good answer to it. If we are at war with al Qaeda, as Obama himself asserted last week in the statement to which Gorton alludes, why are we treating Umar Abdulmutallab (not to mention Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) like John Gotti?

JOHN adds: Check out, too, Marc Thiessen's excellent piece which explains the unique value of intelligence gained from captured al Qaeda terrorists.

From NeoNeocon:
Are Obama’s lies politics as usual?

Most people now recognize that Obama has been lying about a lot of things. But it’s often said that’s just business as usual for politicians, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is being naive.

Blogger Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club, a writer with a keen mind and a graceful style, as well as more than his share of that rare commodity known as wisdom, has this to say on the subject:

An Election Promise is now almost synonymous with a Lie. Few voters believe that an election promise will actually be kept, but many vote according to what they are promised anyway…

From Just One Minute:
What Columbia And Harvard Man Could?
From a Mark Steyn headline:

Obama can't say who we're at war with

Posted by Tom Maguire

Well of course he can't - having elected a properly educated Columbia and Harvard man, we look to Obama for leadership on critical issues such as the proper distinction between "who" and "whom", not to mention the vital national security matter of ending sentences with prepositions. C'mon - this is the President who returned the Churchill bust, so we can hardly look to him for Churchillian leadership.

Now, if Obama could tell us with whom we are at war, that might be helpful. But can we handle the truth? Eric Holder seems to think we are at war with the Evil BushCo legacy.

Something we have been thinking here at our house now posted in an article from Bookworm:

Obama’s emotional affiliations are not American

Bookworm on Jan 10 2010

I’ve been harping for years now about the fact that Obama’s emotional connection isn’t to America, but to something else. I’ve thought it was to Leftism. Rabbi Spero makes the very good argument that Barack Hussein Obama’s emotional affiliation is to Islam. He doesn’t say that Obama is a religious Muslim. He just notes that Obama’s emotions, when not tied to Leftist causes, resonate with a desire to admire and, to America’s cost, protect Islam.

Great. Just what we need in our White House: a Lefty Islamophile.

Important News from Today

I am busy packing for a Christmas trip so do not have much time to spend posting on the blog. This is going to be a fairly long post with many links I think are very important.  I know I will be leaving out some but please read these and any links that come up with them.

From American Thinker:Merry Christmas, from Harry

     

 According to the latest news, Harry Reid has the 60 votes needed to pass Obamacare. While the legislation itself is not available for reading, to my knowledge, the Congressional Budget Office did report on it December 19. I parse that CBO report here so we know what is about to happen to us.

     The CBO does not make the accounting all that easy, despite its many tables of numbers. The number Democrats like to cite is that this plan will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the 10 years from 2010 to 019.

     Imagine that, more people insured and the deficit reduced. How do they do that? The short answer is: over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases. For the longer story, read on.

From Investors Business Daily:
Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy
This is Part 3, read Part 1 and Part2

   

  The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level

Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

     An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.     As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia." (Be sure to read all three parts of this.)

 
Read and support Michael Yon reporting from Afghanistan.
As Christmas Approaches
            As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home. Cards and letters are tacked up on many walls. The favorites are from the little kids, with questions like, "How do you go to the bathroom?" "Can you eat dinner?" "Does it hurt to get shooted?" It goes on.
               I emailed to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, asking if he had any words for the troops this Christmas. Jeff came right back with this awesome letter: Read the letter here.  
 
From the Telegraph UK more on the ongoing scandal and fraud of Climategate.
Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri        

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

       No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

        Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.  (my emphasis)

     What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

     These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year. Read the whole thing.

Michael Goodwin in the NY Post writes about the Baby Boomers shame
Dreading our future                 

      I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

     Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

     I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

     Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

     Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.

     Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.

     President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

Read more, but remember he is one of those who voted for him and we ALL suffer for it.

 
Take a look at these important blogs:
Power Line  (poll data; Lockerbie bomber)
 
Gateway Pundit  Watch a video of John McCain stand up for Sarah Palin, I saw it live this morning and it was a treat.
 
Trying to Grok has three good links. CBO assesment from the Corner;  and why the insistence for healthcare.
 
Leon Hale, if you've read his columns through the years you will enjoy reading his blog posts. He is still great.

Today's Climategate Links

American Thinker - The wages of climategate - be sure to read the comments.
The Strata Sphere - Climategate Ripping Through The “Settled Science” - read this one for sure.
From Jerry Pournelle - Data and Climate Science - explains the problems very well.
VIDEO: Lord Monckton addresses a Greenpeace-campaigner on global warming.
via Instapundit. I enjoyed watching this one. The lady is a "true believer."
Hiding The Decline At Google? - If you think some search engines are not politically driven, you must read this. another via Instapundit.
Cartoons of the Week by Tom Lewis - not all on Climategate but you will enjoy anyway.