The cuddly polar bear has become global warming's favorite mascot. It's also become a political flash point: on one side, conservation groups say global warming threatens the bear by permanently damaging its Arctic habitat. On the other, conservative groups say the so-called plight of the polar bear is a gambit to intensify climate change hysteria. The battle flared up again last Monday, when a California federal district court judge ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the Interior Department agency that evaluates endangered species, to decide on the polar bear by May 15 (a four-month extension of the original due date of Jan. 9). If FWS lists the bear as endangered, it would be the first mammal to face extinction due to global warming.
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Washington — After years of debate over global warming, a measure to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the United States is set to come to the U.S. Senate floor in June.
Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday the federal government might need to rethink its support for corn ethanol because of rising food prices, a stance similar to Republican John McCain's but at odds with farm states considered important to the November election. "What I've said is my top priority is making sure people are able to get enough to eat. If it turns out we need to make changes in our ethanol policy to help people get something to eat, that has got to be the step we take," said Obama, D-Ill., on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"When you look at the globe, California is a little spot on that globe," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently at Yale University's Climate Change Conference. "But when it comes to our power of influence, it is the equivalent of a whole continent."
Perhaps. As an exercise of this influence, Mr. Schwarzenegger has attempted to push climate-change policy forward, signing the Global Warming Solutions Act. It commits the state to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels – roughly 25% below today's – and all but eliminating them by 2050.
Then, the grand ethanol experiment blew up: It's seen as one of the primary causes for escalating worldwide food prices that, as scholars at the Competitive Enterprise Institute characterize it, pushed "millions of people in the developing world to the brink of starvation and causing riots across the globe."
"Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously." Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in The Australian on April 23. "All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead."
Chapman neither can be caricatured as a greedy oil-company lobbyist nor dismissed as a flat-Earther. He was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology staff physicist, NASA's first Australian-born astronaut, and Apollo 14's Mission Scientist.
Some more pieces of the "How Al Gore is Going to Become Amazingly Wealthy by Selling Climate Hysteria" puzzle came together Friday when the Silicon Valley venture capital firm he's now a part of announced a $500 million investment in green technologies.
Making matters more delicious, the firm already has investments in many of the same companies Gore admitted in March he has a stake in.
To begin untangling this web, let's first take a gander at what was reported Friday by the San Francisco Chronicle (emphasis added):
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said Thursday it will invest $500 million in green technology companies that have passed their earliest stages of growth and are maturing.
The venture capital firm also will invest in green-tech startup companies as part of another investment fund it introduced Thursday, which will invest $700 million over the next three years in startups.
For those that have forgotten, this is the same VC group Gore joined last November as reported by NewsBusters.
Here's where the plot thickens. The KPCB website identified the following companies this group has already invested in: Altarock Energy Inc, Altra Biofuels, Amyris Biotechnologies, Ausra, Bloom Energy, GreatPoint Energy, Mascoma Corporation, and Miasole.
Sound familiar? Well, they should, as these are some of the same companies Gore highlighted in his speech to the TED conference in Monterey, California, which NewsBusters reported on April 11:
There are a lot of great investments you can make. If you are investing in tar sands, or shale oil, then you have a portfolio that is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets. And it is based on an old model. Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sands and coal shale is the equivalent. Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense. I have a stake in these so I’ll have a disclaimer there. But geo-thermal concentrating solar, advanced photovoltaics, efficiency, and conservation.
As Gore spoke these words, pictures of electric cars, windmills and solar panels appeared in multiple slides on the screen with company names at the bottom such as Amyris (biofuels), Altra (biofuels), Bloom Energy (solid oxide fuel cells), Mascoma (cellulosic biofuels), GreatPoint Energy (catalytic gasification), Miasole (solar cells), Ausra (utility scale solar panels), GEM (battery operated cars), Smart (electric cars), and AltaRock Energy (geothermal power).
Starting to make some sense? Gore and this VC firm invest in the same companies, all which will benefit from the enactment of legislation requiring industry to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and then they travel the world lobbying governments to do exactly that.
Untangling the web further, one of the key partners at KPCB, legendary moneyman John Doerr, also spoke at the TED conference in March, and as can be seen in this video, bragged about how he and seven of his colleagues lobbied legislators in California for the passage of AB 32, The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
As Doerr proudly exclaimed, this made California "the first state in this country to mandate 25 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020."
Later, Doerr told the audience something that should answer everybody's questions concerning what all this climate hysteria is about:
We've got to make this economic so that all people and all nations make the right outcome, the right profitable outcome, and, therefore, the likely outcome. Energy's a $6 trillion business worldwide. It is the mother of all markets. You remember that Internet? Well, I'll tell you what: green technologies, going green is bigger than the Internet. It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.
Things becoming clearer?
Let's understand something, folks: this man and this VC firm made billions off of the dot-com boom of the '90s. Now, they're all over this green technology investment scheme.
However, unlike the Internet, their success lies first in scaring the heck of people, and then getting governments — like mine here in California — to buy into this nonsense, and enact legislation which will require businesses to purchase products from companies they already own.
Without such legislation, this entire investment scheme collapses just as dot-com stocks did from March 2000 through March 2003.
This raises some interesting questions. After all, in the past couple of weeks, NewsBusters has reported many media outlets beginning to recognize the folly of biofuels, and how they are adding to the international food crisis.
As Gore and KPCB have invested large amounts of money in biofuel companies, when will press members make this connection, and start informing the public of this really inconvenient truth?
—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A new clearing house Web site on global warming skepticism is up, called The Chilling Effect, and along with its sister site Gored Earth, says it will produce a new political cartoon that addresses the issue every week. The first two look very promising.
More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
I just spent two days in Detroit and Lansing talking about the fairly new Michigan Climate Action Council, where I was hosted by the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy. As usual the local mainstream media showed little interest, but I did get some coverage by the state's (subscription only) political news service, Gongwer ("Group Charges Climate Panel Rigged"):
Michigan, and other states, have hired the Center for Climate Strategies to assist state climate councils in determining how best the state can respond to global warming issues. But what they are getting is a pre-packaged set of recommendations that have no proof of effectiveness, Paul Chesser of Climate Strategies Watch told those gathered Tuesday for a luncheon hosted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
State officials said the Michigan council is developing its own plan based on Michigan findings and needs, not being served a pre-determined set of recommendations.
Compare that to what the MCAC process memo — basically the ground rules — say about the commission's procedures and sources of recommendations:
The MCAC process will follow the format of CCS policy development processes used successfully in a number current and completed state-level climate action planning initiatives. To facilitate learning, collaboration, and task completion by the MCAC members, CCS will provide a series of decision templates for each step in the process, including: a catalog of state actions with ranking criteria, a balloting form for identification of initial priorities for analysis, a draft policy option template for the drafting and analysis of individual recommendations, a quantification principles and guidelines document for each TWG, and a final report format. CCS will also provide meeting materials for each MCAC meeting and TWG teleconference call, including: a PowerPoint presentation of the discussion items, an agenda and notice of the meeting, a draft summary of the previous meeting for review and approval, and additional handouts as needed. Materials will be provided by CCS in advance through website posting and email notice with a goal of seven-days advance notice. CCS will provide and manage a project website (www.miclimatechange.us) in close coordination with the DEQ. All website materials are reviewed by the DEQ prior to posting. Examples of CCS project websites can be found at www.climatestrategies.us.
But other than that, Michigan is unique! More from the Gongwer report:
Mr. Chesser argued the state climate councils, such as the Michigan Climate Action Council, should be open to discussions of the science supporting global warming findings as well as policies to address it. But he said CCS-run councils do not allow such discussions.
DEQ spokesperson Robert McCann admitted the Climate Action Council was not discussing the reality or causes of global warming. "They're starting point is what science is telling us," he said. "There's really is no scientific debate at this point."
That's because the alarmists are afraid to debate!
But Mr. McCann said the council is not being led to pre-determined recommendations that CCS may have offered in other states. "That's certainly not how it's working here," he said. "They are really taking an open book look at what's happening here."
And CCS is the author.
Mr. McCann argued the recommendations expected from the Climate Action Council will not only help to improve the state's environment, but will also help to improve its economy by creating incentives for alternative energy and energy efficiency. "They'll help us protect the environment and carve a path to those next alternative energy jobs," he said.
Some locals are not thrilled.
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