Monday, December 10, 2007

Not Even Pretending Anymore

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA -- After banishing environmentalists and opposition MPs from Canada's delegation to the Bali climate conference, Ottawa has decided to allow an oil company and several business executives to join the official delegation.

[...]

A major oil and gas producer, EnCana Corp. of Calgary, was also permitted to join the delegation.

Encana is the real gagger here. One of their former directors*, Michael Chernoff, is best known for offering free copies of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (denialist propaganda) to schools around the nation. Furthermore, Encana itself has been ranked as one of the dirtiest operators in the tar sands by a European research firm.

Swell company these Tories want to keep at a conference devoted to climate change.

* He is still listed as being on several committees at the company website.

21 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

They really just hope everyone will give up.

What else is there left but character assassination?

Anonymous said...

here ya go,a littlered meat for all of The Believer Cult,The Goreacle admiration Society andHocket Team Members.

Climate warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (`fingerprints') over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is `unstoppable' and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

The fundamental question is whether the observed warming is natural or anthropogenic (human-caused). Lead author David Douglass said: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."

Co-author John Christy said: "Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide."

Ti-Guy said...

"A littlered meat?"

I just had to stop there, which is just too bad, because I'm sure Biff's un-sourced cut 'n paste was riveting.

bigcitylib said...

Where'd the cut and paste come from, Biff?

Anonymous said...

So, backed by so much "littered" meat (or whatever it is), when exactly at the conference is Harper and his stooge Baird going to announce he doesn't believe in limiting carbon dioxide emissions since he doesn't believe it contributes to climate change?

Oh wait, he has instead insisted he takes this threat seriously as a critical priority of his government?

Now that's a quandary, ponzi scheme, isn't it? Is Harper just lying through his teeth by pretending to care? Or is he just incompetent at doing something about an issue he proclaims to be so important?

Which is it?

Greg said...

Harper is using the reasoning behind flat tax schemes to promote an "everyone pays the same" carbon reduction plan. The idea that rich nations can afford to pay more than poor nations is as unthinkable to him as rich people being able to pay more tax than the poor.

Anonymous said...

since the UN lied about The Oil for Food & Palaces scam and then the UN recently was outted fabricating increased AIDS numbers in Africa to keep the funding happening, can anyone be surprised the UN is running a ponzi scheme about global warming ??


"Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming

- December 05, 2007

Christopher Monckton, Denpasar, Bali

As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.

Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.

My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. The report's first table of figures - inserted by the IPCC's bureaucrats after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent - listed four contributions to sea-level rise. The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10.

The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than twice the IPCC's published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the internet and earning me my Nobel prize.

The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold. "

Anonymous said...

It is not devoted to climate change.

It is devoted to a money-sucking socialist scheme.

Gayle said...

I see Biff is back to his usual tactic of trying to derail the discussion rather than address the point.

Good title for the post BCL - I think that is the crux of the matter (and the reason why the Biffs of the world were given their orders to go out and derail any discussion of this).

TG is right - they really do hope we will give up. Baird is puffing up Canada's donation to the Global Environment Fund in an attempt to conceal the fact he has been obstructing any progress in Bali.

I wonder how his children are going to feel about paying for his feet dragging in the years to come.

wilson said...

The world is interested in Canadian technology.

Is clean air tech not the key to limiting ghg's, green jobs and all the other optomistic talking points Libs use?

Why bash the Cons for bringing a solution to the table?

If Dion really wants to be a 'ero, he should consult Encana reps and sell our tech to all those 'connections',
rather than spend his time protesting Canada's position.

Ti-Guy said...

TG is right - they really do hope we will give up.

It's win-win for Harper. Even though Canada has a moral obligation not to aggravate Global Warming, he can always be comforted by the fact that acting alone, Canada can do little one way or the other, since our emissions represent a small fraction of the total. At the same time, he can play both ends of the corporate game...keeping Big Oil happy ensuring ongoing TAR sands development and by throwing money into "alternative" fuels, which is really the "ponzi" dimension to Harper's scheme.

Canadian Conservatives sense that this, on the whole, will benefit Canada financially in the short term to mid-term, and that's all they care about. If that's all I cared about as well, I'd be on their side.

But I never take the side of stupid/mean/greedy people out of principle, so there we are.

Ti-Guy said...

If somebody accused you of the most ridiculous, baseless, unfounded and patently absurd actions, would you hesitate to defend yourself?

I didn't know "Big Oil" commented here, and under the handle "anonymous" no less.

I swear, all Conservatives have just become one big corporate mind. If that isn't the worst of socialism, I don't know what is.

Unknown said...

"And yet you expect the oil industry to just sit there..."

Don't be silly, anony. Nobody is any more surprised by the oil industry waging a campaign of misinformation against climate science, than they were by tobacco disputing the health affects of smoking.

Ti-Guy said...

And yet you expect the oil industry to just sit there and accept these moronic attacks.

What were Big Oil's profits last year?

They lost any consideration when they started doling out the wingnut welfare (which I pay by with my addiction to oil and shopping).

Anonymous said...

BCL - for your reading pleasure - the report from the US government House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (from their website):

"For the past 16 months, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. During the course of this investigation, the Committee obtained over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department, held two investigative hearings, and deposed or interviewed key officials. Much of the information made available to the Committee has never been publicly disclosed.

This report presents the findings of the Committee’s investigation. The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.

In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute developed an internal “Communications Action Plan” that stated: “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ uncertainties in climate science … [and] recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’” The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry’s communications plan were its mission statement. White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy"....and it goes on...

And, then we seen who Baird takes to Bali - so, who's calling the shots Messrs. Harper and Baird? Well, now we know don't we.

Anonymous said...

Whoops BCL - I meant to give the address of the US government report I referred to above:

http--oversight.house.gov.documents/20071210101633


So, you deniers have "been duped" by the White House, Harper and big oil.

Anonymous said...

Biff's cut-and-paste was from Fred Singer's blog.

It's interesting that with this one Christy seems to ne underlining the fact that he's left the reservation. OTOH, that he was recently been singled out for slam-dunking on the front page of Eos due to a completely bone-headed error may be an indication that he now has nothing left to lose professionally.

Raging Ranter said...

Any chance that the Kyoto kultists are going to demand an end to the Indonesian and Malaysian practice of destroying rainforests for the sake of feeding the European appetite for palm oil? Or at least demand that Europe stop subsidizing this industry as a means of meeting their phoney Kyoto targets?

Yes, that's right. Europeans, Holland in particular, are funding oil-palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia because oil palm plantations are considered great "carbon sinks", and palm oil is considered a low-emissions bio-fuel. Palm oil is also present in almost half of all grocery products on European shelves. They refuse to import Canadian canola oil because it is GMO. (Canadians have been eating transgenic canola products for years, and it hasn't hurt us at all - I guess Europeans are just more delicate or something.)

Apparently destroying rainforests is OK as long as you are doing so in order to avoid harmless GMOs and meet your Kyoto targets.

Maybe when environmentalists show some real concern for the environment, and not just the optics of Kyoto and other useless UN-sponsored circle-jerks, conservatives will take them more seriously. Until then, the best thing Harper can do for the environment is to make sure this Bali gabfest fails completely. I dread some of the destructive policies that will come out of a "successful" Bali round.

Not to say that Harper's slate is clean. He is in bed with the Canadian "bio-fuels" industry and is creating Canada's very own version of subsidized habitat destruction. However, most of this habitat destruction will occur only insofar as marginally productive agricultural lands, which were allowed to grow wild due to poor yields, are once again put back into production. This will be very limited in scope, and pales in comparison to the rainforest destruction going on in Southeast Asia right now.

Unknown said...

Try to keep up, ranting fatty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7140894

"Maybe when environmentalists show some real concern for the environment, and not just the optics of Kyoto..."

What a pathetic liar you are, fatty.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/footer/search?q=palm+oil
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/agriculture_environment/commodities/palm_oil/index.cfm

Raging Ranter said...

Fatty? Are you another Ti-Guy who enjoys fantasizing about plump men, and projecting those fantasies onto me? Christ, what a couple of fucking weirdos. It's your business how you choose to think of me, but I'll admit that kind of incessant sexual fantasizing really creeps me out.

However, you do bring up a point I should address. I didn't mean ALL environmentalists. I just mean the ones who are participating in the wank-fest in Bali right now. I should have been more clear on that.

As for me "lying", your fucking pathetic. The enviro-whackos who oppose GMO crops lobbied heavily to keep the EU from importing Canadian canola and US soybeans, which means palm oil is used instead. And Holland most certainly DOES subsidize oil palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia as part of its carbon reduction scheme. And those plantations most certainly ARE responsible for rainforest destruction.

Braindead twits like yourself just can't see that very often environmental goals conflict with each other, and that the commonly accepted "wisdom" on how to deal with environmental problems is very often wrong. Therefore, policies need to be chosen carefully. (Like wind power for example. Wind power is seen as universally good, but it's really another clusterfuck, but I don't have time to get into that.)

The problem of so many environistas is that they think that as long as they're doing something good for the environment, it's good all 'round. Well, it isn't. Unintended consequences abound, and they need to be considered before rushing headlong to embrace alleged "solutions."

Of course, I'm paid by the Conservative Party to say these things, and to disrupt the conversations on liberal blogs (because you, Lenny, are so fucking important) so I would say those things wouldn't I.

Unknown said...

You're sucking wind, fatty. I don't know any "environmentalists" who are in favour cutting down rainforest to fuel vehicles nor converting our cropland into fuel production. Those efforts are being driven by big agricorps and the same old pigs at the trough. And the issues surrounding palm oil aren't news to anyone, it'senvironmentalists that have brought the issue to the public's attention, not you with your "big scoop" post.
So if you weren't talking about the largest environmental organizations in the world when you said "environmentalists" who specifically were you talking about? Be specific, fatty.