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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez couldn’t resist another opportunity to bash capitalism — and the COP15 Copenhagen Conference on global warming gave him a perfect setup. Protesters against globalization, capitalism, energy use, and other aspects of modern life thronged in the streets, while in the conference center, leaders from rich nations that want to “level the playing field” for CO2 emissions and poor countries looking for massive handouts gave Chavez a warm response.

In his harangue posted on YouTube, Chavez hit the “group of countries who think they’re better than us” and that provide a “world imperial dictatorship.” He, of course, made reference and deference to his hero Karl Marx:

There’s a ghost lurking…and Karl Marx said…a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen.  And I think that ghost is silent, somewhere in this room…amongst us…coming thru the corridors and underneath.  And that ghost is a terrible ghost.  Nobody wants to name him or her…it’s capitalism.  Capitalism is that ghost.  (applause)

Chavez got a lot of applause here too. He tied capitalism to the degradation of the earth: “the destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life.”

President Robert Mugabe, credited with destroying the economy of his own country,  Zimbabwe, also railed against Western countries and capitalism:

“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

And this is the conference where “world leaders” are supposedly coming together to plan the world’s energy future?  It’s a scary thought.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson today writes about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s policy flip-flop on global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He notes her current recommendation — expressed in her own Post op-ed last week — that President Obama boycott Copenhagen, citing the Climategate scandal as reason enough to skip the climate conference. But while she was governor she held a slightly different view, as Robinson explained:

Back then, Palin was the governor of a state where “coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans,” as she wrote (in a 2007 administrative order creating the state’s Climate Change Sub-Cabinet). Faced with that reality, she sensibly formed the high-level working group to chart a course of action.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue,” wrote Palin. “It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans….”

In her administrative order, Palin instructed the sub-Cabinet group to develop recommendations on “the opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Alaska sources, including the expanded use of alternative fuels, energy conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, land use management, and transportation planning.” She also instructed the group to look into “carbon-trading markets.”

Robinson is right about Palin’s seeming switch, but he leaves out context and cuts no slack on how the Climategate scandal has been a game-changer. For context, the idea of setting up a blue-ribbon panel to study climate issues likely came from Tom Chapple, a greenie envirocrat in her administration who left not long after she created the Subcabinet. The responsibility for managing the project fell to his successor, Larry Hartig, who has had to juggle the interests of environmentalists and the oil industry up there.

As director of Climate Strategies Watch I studied how the Subcabinet was put together, and specifically how and why they hired the global warming alarmist Center for Climate Strategies as technical advisers and consultants to run all the Subcabinet’s activities. I had written a long narrative — linking public documents and emails — explaining the developments and the less-than-transparent process, for the CSWatch Web site last year. However, that project has been folded into the activities of the Heartland Institute — my current employer — as CSWatch (we believe the site was victimized by a hacker) was only planned to last a year (it lasted about 18 months).

For those who want to plow through the story, I am reproducing the original CSWatch narrative below with links (some of which may not work) to documents embedded. You’ll see at the end that I tend to believe that then-Gov. Palin was doing the politically correct thing at the time by signing the administrative order, but left the major decisions to Chapple, Hartig, and the Subcabinet itself. I think the views she’s expressed now only serve to confirm that theory, but I could be wrong.

The story, posted late August/early September last year:

I hate to be the Baby Ruth in the punchbowl at the celebration over John McCain’s choice for a running mate, but since it’s my job to follow these things, I’ve got to highlight one area where Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has aligned with the GOP candidate on an issue that makes many conservatives cringe: global warming.

Gov. Palin signed an administrative order last September that created the Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet. Her order is perhaps not as strident on greenhouse gas emissions as some other governors, but she still buys into the argument that GHGs must be reduced.

Unfortunately her Department of Environmental Conservation hired the Center for Climate Strategies as their climate commission management team. I requested documents pertaining to the CCS hire from DEC and was sent some records, but others were identified as “deliberative” and therefore withheld from me, which officials said was allowed under state law. I still have my doubts, because other records sent to me appeared to fall into that category but were sent anyway. Regardless, the withholding of several documents with regard to an issue that does not fall under “highly-sensitive” or “security-related” undermines the governor’s reputation for greater government transparency.

As for CCS, it all began last August when DEC’s Tom Chapple (now working in the private sector) reached out to CCS’s executive director (PDF) Tom Peterson, “to discuss the opportunities and the possibility of CCS interest in helping Alaska.” In fact, it appears that Chapple was the driving force behind the state’s hiring of the Pennsylvania-based advocacy group, to manage Alaska’s development of their greenhouse gas emissions policy.

Chapple learned some about CCS from the Washington Dept. of Ecology’s Janice Adair — as his handwritten notes show (PDF) – which include a discussion about how to work out a sole source contract for CCS, and that “some states have paid some, some have paid nothing” (Washington state paid CCS $200,000). Other notes (PDF) from a conference call, presumably that included Ken Colburn of CCS, show that the typical CCS cookie-cutter process was explained, and that as elsewhere CCS would handle everything, once hired: Meetings, scheduling, technical information, Web site, preparation of pre-meeting documents, meeting minutes, etc. Oh, and we can’t forget CCS’s own grant-funding service.

In the meantime Gov. Palin signed her administrative order on Sept. 14, 2007.

A month later negotiations between Chapple of DEC and CCS representatives intensified, as they began to discuss what the typical CCS “process memo” would contain. A draft (PDF) of the agreement said, “Although additional research may be needed to help the public and policymakers better understand Alaska’s changing climate and how to anticipate and respond to its effects, the time for climate debate is over; it is now time for climate action.” Also, the document states on page 13 clearly what is off-limits: “Participants will not debate the science of climate change….” Private funders are identified as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Marisla Foundation, the Energy Foundation, and others. The opening negotiating cost (PDF, see second page) for the process was set at $480,000.

As if total control over the process wasn’t enough for CCS either, though, there’s this: CCS recommended who would be appointed (PDF) to the climate commission. Read the list and note how strongly the representation is that they want from environmentalism and government. Meanwhile private business gets short shrift, as do climate scientists, taxpayer activists, property rights activists, and other protectors of individual rights.

On November 6, 2007 the Climate Change Sub-Cabinet held its third meeting, in which CCS was allowed to make the case (PDF) for being hired as its management consultant. Ken Colburn, in his PowerPoint presentation (PDF), promoted CCS’s nonsensical economic analysis from Arizona (285,000 new jobs and $5.5 billion in net savings to the state!) and New Mexico ($2.1 billion in savings to the state). As I’ve reported in the past, those claims by CCS have been thoroughly debunked.

But unsurprisingly the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner swallowed the Colburn claims (PDF), unchallenged. The newspaper reported that Larry Hartig, Palin’s commissioner of environmental conservation, expressed interest in CCS: “If it’s not them, we should do something similar to that.” Also, Colburn explained that CCS’s services typically cost about $500,000, “but states generally pay only about 10 percent of the cost,” the News-Miner reported. “CCS covers the rest with funding from various foundations” – that is, Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Later in November DEC’s Chapple sent out a plea (PDF) – and forwarded to Colburn — to various state departments asking for help “in shaping up the scope of work for the proposed contract with (CCS).” The message was met with enthusiasm from Colburn: “This is a remarkable email, carrying precisely the right content and precisely the right tone.” Translation: “I won’t stop kissing your rump until you hire us.” More negotiations and contract details were addressed (PDF) in a conference call Nov. 29.

In early December 2007 DEC’s Hartig, with Chapple and Colburn in the loop, considered engaging the National Commission on Energy Policy (PDF) to help on climate adaptation strategies. NCEP is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which is also paying the total cost for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s climate and energy policy advisers.

As the February meeting approached in which CCS would be formally approved as manager by the Sub-Cabinet, questions were raised (PDF) about why the cost for Alaska’s portion of CCS’s services rose from $49,000 to $180,000. No other documents were provided to me that addressed this situation and its resolution, but the final contract (PDF) shows that the state is indeed contributing the $180,000. However, the full budget (see pages 36-37 of the contract) for the process is double what any of these have cost in other states: $972,196. This could be attributed to the distance of the state from the lower 48, but it’s hard to believe that could account for that great an increase in the average CCS budget.

As for the holes in my story, Alaska DEC’s Gary Mendivil sent a letter with the documents that were provided, but also explained that some records were withheld (PDF) from me. My original request was received by DEC on Dec. 27, 2007, and according to an email from Mendivil on Feb. 1, 2008, he “was told that the stack of records that was sent to the (State of Alaska) attorney for review was four inches thick….” The CD containing records was mailed to me on Feb. 20 (according to DEC’s response letter), and the documents therein did not even measure a half-inch, much less anything close to four inches. Even with the documents they listed as withheld (PDF), it would be hard to believe they could measure four inches.

When asked why any records needed to be withheld in the first place, Mendivil provided a minimal explanation: “We’ve claimed a privilege under AS 40.25.120(a)(4) (“records required to be kept confidential by a federal law or regulation or by state law”).” Not satisfied, I asked which federal or state laws DEC was citing to justify keeping a lid on certain records. His answer:

“The Alaska Supreme Court has adopted the common law recognition of a deliberative process privilege. Because Alaska’s statutory definition of “state law” encompasses common law as well as positive law, the Alaska Supreme Court has held that the deliberative process privilege is one of the judicially recognized state law exceptions to public access under the public records act. This is the privilege that the State has claimed on certain documents identified on the privilege log that was most recently given to you. In other words, the documents withheld as “deliberative process” show the mental processes of government decision makers, and are thereby protected from disclosure.”

If you review the list of withheld records, and compare it to the documents DEC did provide, you might wonder what criteria they used to determine “deliberative” vs. non-deliberative. It seems clear that many of the records they did supply could have also fallen under “deliberative” status as well.

I would say it’s pretty odd that the State of Alaska could withhold documents from the public about a commission that will go a long way towards influencing its policies on energy, environment, property rights, taxes, the state budget, land use, education, and just about every other public policy area. The DEC has not given a clear explanation why, nor clearly cited a law that allows them to make a “deliberation” exception. And even if they could, what possible reason would they have to do so when there are no national or state security issues at stake, or any other sensitive issues?

DEC’s decision, as has been the case in other states where CCS is working, undermines the claim in their contracts and process memos that their “process is fully transparent.” There is no clear indication that Gov. Palin is behind these DEC decisions – on the face it looks like all she has done is sign the administrative order creating the Sub-Cabinet, then depended on her environmental agency leaders (Chapple and Hartig) to make the rest of the decisions. But the way this has played out sure does foul up her reputation as a reformer in pursuit of greater government transparency.

An article by environmentalist journalist Fred Pearce about the “public relations disaster” that is Climategate is getting a lot of attention for Yale Environment 360, as it should. But the Web site, a clearinghouse for eco-Left points of view, crossed into bizarro territory last week with an “analysis” piece co-written by Michael Northrup and David Sassoon that touts “ambitious actions” by U.S. states to push “toward climate goals.” And the centerpiece of their “expert” analysis about the “great” things states are doing on climate policy? The Center for Climate Strategies:

Twenty-four policies and measures account for 85 percent of the states’ emissions reduction potential, touching every sector of the economy. The majority of the policies save money or expand the economy; the remainder either cost money or require investment, but overall they create new economic opportunity.

“Every macroeconomic analysis of state climate action that we have done has shown an expansionary effect,” Tom Peterson, the CEO of the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), told us. “It should not be a big leap to figure out how to nationalize it.”

Peterson’s group has worked with governors and elected officials on both sides of the aisle in dozens of states and is completing an economic analysis of state climate action for presentation at a series of events at the Copenhagen meetings.

The laughable, undisclosed thing about this article is that Northrup, one of the co-authors and program director for sustainable development at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, probably has a conversation with Peterson every day. Why? Because RBF funds a substantial majority of their work, as I explained earlier this year:

While (CCS’s) Peterson and (Ken) Colburn have been far from transparent about their origins (they also hide how much they get paid), the work CCS does has also been thoroughly discredited. They forbade any debate or discussion about global warming science. As they wooed states out of as much money as they could (not much, it turns out) to reduce the burden on their subsidizers — mainly the Rockefeller Brothers Fund — they peddled incompetent economics (Green jobs! Cost savings!) in every state where they worked. They could not produce analysis in any state that showed the effect their policy recommendations would have upon climate — ostensibly the purpose for their state commissions. And besides their disregard for recent observed climatological trends, they continue to promote obsolete technologies like biofuels, which recent studies show have increased greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduced them.

So when I asked in the comments section (scroll, baby, scroll) of the Yale 360 article why the authors didn’t disclose the RBF-CCS funding relationship, the answer from co-author Sassoon was that they were disclosed — in RBF’s annual reports! That Leftist version of “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” transparency was then followed by, “So what!” In other words, “you idiot readers ought to be well-acquainted with funding specifics of our multi-million-dollar foundation.”

Then, in keeping with the global warming alarmist playbook, they suggested I disclose who my funders are. So in response I asked if they could share some of that Standard Oil/Exxon slathered Rockefeller dough they enjoy with little ‘ol me. That comment hasn’t been posted at Yale 360 as of this writing.

Update 4:45 p.m.: I forgot to mention that CCS is over in Copenhagen delivering advice about how to further wreck state economies by raising energy costs. Surprise, surprise — RBF’s Michael Northrup is on their honored guest list. Payback is not a bitch at all!

Update 5:24 p.m.: Just noticed that the Yale Environment 360 editors posted the following at the end of the article sometime today:

The original posting of this article should have noted that the Center for Climate Strategies — whose CEO, Tom Peterson, is quoted in the story — has received funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. One of the article’s co-authors, Michael Northrop, is program director for sustainable development at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Likely a result of an email I sent them last night. I would have put it at the beginning of the article, but at least it’s there.

Or somewhere new, anyway. By necessity. So says Al Gore.

In a speech at the Copenhagen climate summit he declared: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

We’re talking a massive relocation of elves, folks.

In a curious twist, Dr. Maslowski thereupon claimed that Gore had distorted his views. ““It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” he told the Times of London. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Another Gore fibbery! But apparently not.

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano obtained a Danish government handout citing the Monterey, California professor’s modeling and reaching the same conclusion as Gore. “Projecting the trend into the future indicates that autumn could become near ice free between 2011 and 2016 (Maslowski, 2009).”

Which simply means Gore didn’t intentionally misrepresent Maslowski, not that either the professor or the former veep is right. Still, you can’t blame Santa for being just a bit nervous.

The hypocritical, inefficient anti-Greens at the United Nations, who will be responsible for the deaths of millions if they don’t change their behavior, have now far surpassed the simple wastefulness of selling out Copenhagen’s fuel-slurping limos instead of riding mass transit. As the National Center for Public Policy Research reported today, the U.N. has denied entrance to two-thirds of the NGO representatives they credentialed for the climate summit:

The restriction was announced today outside the Copenhagen conference center after several thousand accredited NGO conference delegates, including three from the National Center for Public Policy Research, waited outside for eight hours or longer in 32-degree F temperatures for admission.

NGOs apparently are being banned because the United Nations accredited 45,000 people for a building with a capacity of 15,000, although the stated reason was “security concerns.” The “security concerns” may be related to the fact that, after waiting several hours in the cold, delegations began to chant, “Let us in! Let us in!”

“To be an “accredited” or “admitted” NGO to a COP conference, NGOs must apply months in advance, and typically only make travel plans to attend after receiving complete credentials from the United Nations,” said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an accredited COP-15 NGO organization that is as of now banned from the conference. “To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 people is insane, though the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence.”

As Ridenour noted, about 30,000 humans-worth of greenhouse gases were blasted into the atmosphere for no good reason. Remember, these are the people who want you to trust them with tracking carbon emissions and carbon offset coupons, not to mention enforcement of such.

One of history’s great debates is whether we will die in fire or ice. The proportion of the populace crying each variety of wolf varies according to the fashion of the time.

Vikings newly introduced to Christianity, taking note of their surroundings, sided with ice. They conceived of hell as a cold place, filled with blue devils.

A few centuries later, Dante wrote his Divine Comedy. Its famous first canticle, “Inferno,” had a very different, much hotter picture of hell.

Fast forward to our time. In the 1970s, ice was the fashion once again. Grant-seeking scientists and credulous journalists warned of imminently fatal global cooling. A new ice age was dawning.

In this decade, fire is all the rage again. Many of those same grant-seeking scientists and credulous journalists have changed their minds. Now global warming will cause catastrophe. And these 690 other things (!).

The particular charges change from generation to generation. But the verdict is always the same: apocalypse. A common thread runs from the Book of Revelations to Nostradamus to Rachel Carson to James Hansen. That threat is imminent doom. As one doomsayer after another is proven wrong, the litany gets quite tiresome.

The Earth has cooled over the last decade; will we die in ice?

But it’s gotten warmer over the last century. Fire, then.

But it’s cooler than it was in the High Medieval period. Ice.

But warmer than during the Dark Ages. Fire.

And so on.

Global temperatures will continue to change, ebb, and flow, whether or not we emit large amounts of CO2, and whether or not we care. Yet many people view climate change as a horror. It must be stopped at any cost.

There is a reason why global warming alarmists don’t like to use the phrase “global warming.” They prefer “climate change.” The prospect of a world two degrees warmer than the one we live in now isn’t very scary. But the notion of climate change does scare people. Framing it that way has been devastatingly effective in getting publicity and funding. It’s good for business.

Today’s dominant mindset that any climate change at all is bad is puzzling. It implicitly assumes that today’s climate is the best of all possible climates. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it isn’t. The trouble is that few climate activists seem to have had that thought. The idea of change is so scary that nobody has the presence of mind to ask if that’s a problem or not.

I give them the counsel of Marcus Aurelius, who lived during the (rather warm) second century AD: “To be in the process of change is not an evil, any more than to be the product of change is a good.”*

No, change simply is. It is a part of life. Let us observe, adapt, and live in peace with each other and the world that we all call home. I’m not scared. You shouldn’t be, either.

*Meditations, IV.42; trans. Maxwell Staniforth.

“The decade of 2000 to 2009 appears to be the warmest one in the modern record, the World Meteorological Organization reported in a new analysis on Tuesday,” according to the New York Times. “The announcement is likely to be viewed as a rejoinder to a renewed challenge from skeptics to the scientific evidence for global warming, as international negotiators here [in Copenhagen] seek to devise a global response to climate change.”

Yes, and a false and misleading rejoinder at that. The statement appears here in what’s obviously a propaganda sheet. At a glance it would seem to refute my recent assertion in Forbes that there’s been no warming over the past decade.

But it’s a matter of which interpretation do you think counts. Yes, the last decade was warmer than the previous decade. But there has been no warming within that decade. My point remains intact: During the last decade GHG emissions and ambient levels have gone up every year whereas warming has not as this chart shows. That’s the only point I was trying to make, that even as every year the world poured more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the ambient concentrations of those gases rose, there was no rise in warming. The formula of “more GHGs = more warming” is overly simplistic; something is going on in nature that’s seriously impacting temperatures.

Oh, and as far as that “modern record” stuff goes, that’s sneaky stuff too. As I pointed out, and as this graph shows, it was much warmer in the medieval warming period – you know, back when those Viking ships were pumping CO2 in the atmosphere and when the Carolingian empire got most of its power from coal-fired power plants.

So, yeah, the WMO is kinda basically lying.