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Newsletter (September 3, 2010)
In This Issue
Featured- Man Shot After Taking Hostages at Discovery Communications HQ
Science & Ecology- Climate Panel Faces Heat
Economics & Energy- Blown in the Wind
- Some Wind Advocates Are Now Foes
- Landrieu to White House: Lift Drilling Moratorium ASAP
Religion & Ethics- Sources of the Warmabomber's Bright Ideas
- The Clean Development Mechanism Delivers the Greatest Green Scam of All
Politics & Debate- FBI: Eco-Terrorism Remains No. 1 Domestic Terror Threat
- Monckton Refutes Abraham
- Wallis Admits to Soros Funding
Briefly Noted
Meet the Critics: Kesten C. Green
Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
Featuredby RBR/TVBR
September 1, 2010
Police shot and killed a man Wednesday afternoon nearly four hours after he took hostages on the first floor of the headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, MD, just outside Washington, DC. None of the hostages were hurt.
James Lee was no stranger to Discovery Communications. He had previously been under a court order to stay away from the company’s headquarters following his arrest at a 2008 demonstration which he organized.
WUSA-TV (CBS) Washington, DC interviewed two men who knew Lee from the homeless shelter where he once lived. They said he was a friendly guy, but passionate about animal rights and environmental causes. At some point, the formerly penniless and homeless man somehow came into money and began paying homeless people to join his protests. He was arrested at the 2008 demonstration and charged with, among other things, “littering” for throwing money on the sidewalk to attract the attention of passersby to his protest. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Science & Ecologyby Jeffrey Ball
Writer for the Wall Street Journal
August 31, 2010
An independent investigation called for "fundamental reform" at the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying the organization's 2007 report played down uncertainty about some aspects of global warming.
The probe of the IPCC, a preeminent climate-science body that won the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago, was conducted by the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies. Leaders of the IPCC asked the council to conduct the probe following the disclosure of a few errors in its 2007 climate-science report, which concluded, among other things, that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by human activity. . . .
A particular problem in the 2007 report was that it didn't consistently reflect uncertainty in some aspects of climate change, the investigation found.
Although the IPCC has guidelines in place for measuring uncertainty, those rules were "not consistently followed" in the 2007 report, "leading to unnecessary errors," the investigation said.
For instance, the investigation noted, the 2007 IPCC report said it had "high confidence" that climate change could halve the output of rain-fed agriculture in Africa by 2020.
But a fuller explanation about how the IPCC came up with that "high confidence," the investigation said, "would have made clear the weak evidentiary basis" for that statement. The InterAcademy Council panel recommended that IPCC reports assign specific probabilities to projections "only when there is sufficient evidence" to justify them.
The InterAcademy Council also faulted the IPCC for failing to stress in its 2007 report when some claims were based on literature that hadn't undergone the scientific process of peer-review. The IPCC should impose tougher guidelines to make sure non-peer-reviewed information is clearly "flagged," it said.
The investigation also said the IPCC sometimes failed to adequately reflect "properly documented" views of scientists who disagreed with the consensus conclusions.
IPCC leaders say they have already begun discussing how to better characterize uncertainty and to be more transparent about whether information has been peer-reviewed.
Read the rest.
Related Item:
InterAcademy Councel: Climate Change AssessmentsBack to top Economics & Energyby Robert Bryce
Managing Editor, Energy Tribune; Author, Gusher of Lies and Power Hungry
August 16, 2010
They like everything big in Texas, and wind energy is no exception. Texas has more wind generation capacity than any other state, about 9,700 megawatts. (That's nearly as much installed wind capacity as India.) Texas residential ratepayers are now paying about $4 more per month on their electric bills in order to fund some 2,300 miles of new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from rural areas to the state's urban centers.
It's time for those customers to ask for a refund. The reason: When it gets hot in Texas—and it's darn hot in the Lone Star State in the summer—the state's ratepayers can't count on that wind energy. On Aug. 4, at about 5 p.m., electricity demand in Texas hit a record: 63,594 megawatts. But according to the state's grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's wind turbines provided only about 500 megawatts of power when demand was peaking and the value of electricity was at its highest.
Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state's installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most. Texans may brag about the size of their wind sector, but for all of that hot air, the wind business could only provide about 0.8 percent of the state's electricity needs when demand was peaking. . . .
Read the rest.
Related Item:
Macrae: More Than Half of Britain's Wind Farms Have Been Built Where There is Not Enough WindBack to top by Associated Press
August 23, 2010
“We are not going to be changing our energy profile in New England with 1,000 wind turbines, but we are going to be destroying our environment,’’ said Eleanor Tillinghast, who used to be a fan of wind power.
“If we are talking about sacrificing all our mountaintops for 5-6 percent of our energy needs, that’s not acceptable.’’ Bob Anders used to count himself among the fans of wind power — until developers pitched the idea of a 10-turbine wind farm near his Webster home with blades reaching close to 500 feet in the air.
That’s when Anders began having second thoughts about the disruption, from the constant whooshing of the turbines to the repetitive glint of sunshine off the blades at certain times of the day, not to mention a feared drop in property values.
“I’ve dedicated the past two or three months of my life to reading about this and I haven’t found anything good,’’ Anders said. “It’s a major impact on our neighborhood.’’
While the massive 130-turbine Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound has battled lawsuits and jumped through permitting hoops for nearly a decade, the nation’s first planned offshore wind farm isn’t the only wind energy project in Massachusetts facing irked neighbors.
In the Western Massachusetts town of Monroe, foes of a proposed 20-turbine wind power project fought for six years, all the way to the state Supreme Judicial Court, to block the 30-megawatt Hoosac Wind project. The court last month allowed the project to move forward.
In Brimfield, wind developers are working to convince neighbors about a plan to install wind farm of eight to 10 turbines. And in Webster, Anders and some of the 70 or so other homeowners near the wind farm are planning to hire their own acoustic engineers. One complicating factor is that the project is just across the town line in Douglas.
The opposition of Anders and others is posing a threat to Governor Deval Patrick’s goal of generating 2,000 megawatts of wind power in Massachusetts by the year 2020 — an effort that could require the installation of up to 3,000 turbines, the bulk of them on land.
Although the installation of onshore wind turbines has picked up dramatically, that goal is still daunting. There have been just 22 turbines installed since 2001, with 140 more in the pipeline.
To help pick up the pace, Patrick pushed a bill he said would streamline the permitting process. That bill got within a final vote in the Senate before the clock ran out on the Legislature’s formal session on July 31.
“The wind siting bill is enormously important,’’ Patrick said Friday. “We have to get serious about moving to alternatives.’’
But the bill’s critics say it undermines local control and would make it easier for developers to push through unpopular projects. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Bridget Johnson
Editor at The Hill in Washington D.C.
August 29, 2010
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) implored the Obama administration Sunday to lift the offshore drilling moratorium, saying it was excessive and hurting Gulf Coast residents.
Landrieu said a pause in operations, imposed in the wake of the BP oil spill, was necessary but that the moratorium needed to be lifted.
"A six-month moratorium has put a blanket of fear and anxiety and it must be lifted as soon as possible," Landrieu said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The senator said she was not fighting for "big oil," but for small businesses affected by the ban.
"We need to get back to work to build this region, and we intend to do so," she said.Back to top Religion & Ethicsby Paul Chesser
Special Correspondent for the Heartland Institute and Director of Climate Strategies Watch
September 2, 2010
Where in the world would James Jay Lee, the Global Warmabomber, have gotten the radical idea that the number of humans must be reduced, if not eradicated, to accomplish environmental goals? Richard Morrison provides some answers at the main site today. Here are some other deep-pocketed promoters who link population control (aka abortion or "reproductive" rights) and saving the environment (aka "sustainability"): . . .
The United Nations; United Nations Foundation (population, environment); George Soros (population, environment); Center for American Progress (population, environment); Ford Foundation (population, environment); Tides Foundation (population, environment); The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (population, environment); The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (population, environment); The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (population, environment); The (Ted) Turner Foundation; The George Gund Foundation (population, environment); Compton Foundation (population, environment); WestWind Foundation (population, environment); The Overbrook Foundation (population, environment); The Summit Foundation (population, environment); The Educational Foundation of America; Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation; Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund; Weeden Foundation
That's billions of dollars to spread the humans-are-pollution message around, and only the few found with a couple of basic Google searches. Feel free to add your discoveries in the comments (I'm sure I'm missing obvious ones).
And then there are the talk radio hatemongers on the Left and the alarmists who wish harm or death on global warming realists...
by Richard Morrison
New Media Expert and Writer
September 2, 2010
News Wednesday afternoon that an armed gunman had entered the cable TV headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland and begun taking hostages alarmed people throughout the Washington, D.C. area and around the country. As law enforcement officials negotiated with the suspect, posts on social media outlets inevitably began arguing over the ideological motivations of the hostage-taker, James J. Lee. Conservatives were quick to point out the suspect's radical environmentalist manifesto, while left-leaning sources disclaimed any connection. News a few hours later that the suspect had been shot and killed by police spawned a round of smug black humor, concluding that he had been successful in accomplishing one of his chief demands, a smaller world population. . . .
No doubt environmental activist groups will deny any connection between the violent action of James J. Lee and their own work. And on the surface, that may appear to be so. But the flawed theories and anti-human prejudices of modern environmentalism's founders cast a long shadow -- and the unflinching misanthropy of the movement's modern radicals continue to attract disaffected individuals looking for something to believe in. Lee's willingness to endanger the lives of others is thankfully rare, but his conviction that "the planet does not need humans" is anything but.
Read the rest.
Related items:
Cohen: Eco-terrorism Hits Maryland: 'Inconvenient Terrorist' Latest in Long Line
Choney: Suspect had long protested Discovery programming
James Lee's WebsiteBack to top by Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph
Author, The Real Global Warming Disaster; Co-author (with Richard North), Scared to Death.
August 28, 2010
It is now six months since I reported on what even environmentalists are calling "the biggest environmental scandal in history". Indeed this is a scam so glaringly bizarre that even the UN and the EU have belatedly announced that they are thinking of taking steps to stop it. The essence of the scam is that a handful of Chinese and Indian firms are deliberately producing large quantities of an incredibly powerful "greenhouse gas" which we in the West – including UK taxpayers – then pay them billions of dollars to destroy.
The key to this scam, designed to curb global warming, is a scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), set up under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and administered by the UN. It enables firms and governments in the developed world to buy "credits" which allow them to continue emitting greenhouse gases. These are sold to them, through well-rewarded brokers, from firms in developing countries that can show they have nominally reduced their emissions.
Easily the largest and most lucrative component in the CDM market is a peculiar racket centred on the manufacture of CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, classified under Kyoto as greenhouse gases vastly more damaging than carbon dioxide. The way the racket works is that Chinese and Indian firms are permitted to carry on producing a refrigerant gas known as HCF-22 until 2030. But a by-product of this process is HCF-23, which is supposed to be 11,700 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. By destroying the HCF-23, the firms can claim Certified Emission Reduction credits worth billions of dollars when sold to the West (while much of the useful HCF-22 is sold onto the international black market).
Last year, destruction of CFCs accounted for more than half the CDM credits issued, in a market that will eventually, it is estimated, be worth $17 billion. Of the 1,390 CDM projects so far approved, less than 1 per cent accounts for 36 per cent of the total value.
Even greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the "biggest environment scandal in history".Back to top Politics & Debateby Fox News
March 31, 2008
For nearly seven years, the nation has turned its terror focus on Al Qaeda and the hunt for Usama bin Laden. But there is a domestic terror threat that federal officials still consider priority No. 1 — eco-terrorism.
The torching of luxury homes in the swank Seattle suburb of Woodinville earlier this month served as a reminder that the decades-long war with militant environmentalists on American soil has not ended.
"It remains what we would probably consider the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat, because they have successfully continued to conduct different types of attacks in and around the country," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko.
The FBI defines eco-terrorism "as the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature." . . .
The perpetrators of the March 3 fires on the Seattle Street of Dreams left their mark, investigators said, with signs that read, "ELF" and "McMansions in RCDs r not green," a reference to rural cluster developments or residential subdivisions, along with an estimated $7 million in damages. . . .
The FBI currently has 180 ongoing eco-terror investigations and over the last several years has tied them to some 1,800 criminal acts, Kolko said.
Despite the gains law enforcement has made, it just takes one person to reignite the movement, Holland said.
"There's no way to know or gauge how many people are actually sympathetic to that ideology and will continue to perpetuate it through acts of arson and other violence," he said.
Read the rest.Back to top by Christopher Monckton
Viscount of Brenchley; Chief Policy Adviser, Science & Public Policy Institute
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Sea Level Rise
Part 3: Polar Bears
Part 4: Sea Ice
Part 5: What's Killing Polar Bears?
Part 6: The Medieval Warm Period
Part 7: Climate Sensitivity
Part 8: Global Surface
Part 9: The Temperature Record
Part 10: NCDC Graphs
Part 11: The Consensus Lie
Part 12: How fast is sea level rising?
Part 13: Correlation?
Part 14: Interglacial Periods
Part 15: Global Warming's Evil Twin
Part 16: Extent of Sea Ice
Part 17: The Greenland Ice Sheet
Part 18: The Himalayan Glaciers
Part 19: CO2 is a Trace Gas
Part 20: A Few Loose Ends
Part 21: ConclusionBack to top by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Online editor for Christianity Today
August 20, 2010
Jim Wallis has admitted that Sojourners has received funding in the past from liberal billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute.
Last month, Marvin Olasky asked Wallis to admit his affiliations on the left when reported on the money from Soros in World magazine.
George Soros, one of the leading billionaire leftists—he has financed groups promoting abortion, atheism, same-sex marriage, and gargantuan government—bankrolled Sojourners with a $200,000 grant in 2004. A year later, here's how Jim rebutted a criticism of "religious progressives" for being allied with Soros and MoveOn.org: "I know of no connections to those liberal funds and groups that are as direct as the Religious Right's ties to right-wing funders."
Since then Sojourners has received at least two more grants from Soros organizations. Sojourners revenues have more than tripled—from $1,601,171 in 2001-2002 to $5,283,650 in 2008-2009—as secular leftists have learned to use the religious left to elect Obama and others. In a Patheos interview, Wallis suggested that Olasky was lying.
“It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.
“So, no, we don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners. That’s where it comes from. In fact, we’ve had funding blocked, this year and last, by liberal foundations who didn’t like our stance on abortion. Other liberal groups were happy to point out to them that our stance wasn’t kosher on abortion, so our funding was blocked.
“So tell Marvin he should check his facts, and not imitate Glenn Beck.” Jay Richards of National Review and Olasky responded to Wallis. Here's Olasky again:
Want to see for yourself what someone apparently did not want you to see? Click here to download the PDF, go to page 225, and you’ll see the grant to Sojourners.
You can also see the 2006 grant by downloading the 990-PF for that year and going to page 125. And by the way, look at page 114 of the 990-PF for 2007: another $100,000 grant to Sojourners “to support the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign.” Wallis released a statement through a spokesperson to Patheos.
I should have declined to comment until I was able to review the blog post in question and consulted with our staff on the details of our funding over the past several years. Instead, I answered in the spirit of the accusation and did not recall the details of our funding over the decade in question. The spirit of the accusation was that Sojourners is beholden to funders on the political left, which is false. The allegation concerned three grants received over 10 years from the Open Society Institute that made up the tiniest fraction of Sojourners' funding during that decade -- so small that I hadn't remembered them. CT has asked Sojourners if Wallis has any further response.Back to top Briefly NotedWashington Times: EDITORIAL: The Gulf's Bird Toll
Horgan: Nuclear Fall InBack to top Meet the CriticsMeet the Critics gives you basic information on 64 of the leading critics of dangerous manmade global warming. Today's critic:
Kesten C. Green, Ph.D
Forecasting expert Kesten Green has held teaching and researching positions at Victoria University of Wellington and Monash University and is a contributor to the NIPCC. "GCM's are not scientific forecasting methods," Kesten said (MP3). "The situation is just too complex and uncertain for the kind of complex models that they use to work. The situation could be characterized as one of ignorance. We know so little--or not sufficient anyway, about climate, to construct complex models and make predictions for the next hundred years." A few of Kesten's works that bear on the climate issue are Validity of Climate Change Forecasting for Public Policy Decision Making (PDF), Polar Bear Population Forecasts (PDF), What Is the Appropriate Public-Policy Response to Uncertainty? (PDF), and Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts (PDF).
Back to top Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Information in this newsletter is for scholarly and educational use only and may not be copied or reproduced for any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders.
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