The insurance industry has been behind the global-warming-weather fraud since the 1970s.

Your home insurance premiums - and the insurance industry’s profits - depend largely on the industry’s skill in making two types of investments: in the stock market and in marketing that scares the bejesus out of its customers.

The insurance industry, like most in these turbulent times, hasn’t done well of late in picking blockbuster stocks. But it has done brilliantly in picking blockbuster scares - all related to global warming. The upshot? The insurance industry wants more money to cover its poor stock picks. And more money again to cover future global warming risks. With the government’s blessing, insurers will now jack up your home insurance premiums by 10% to 15% in the coming year.

The insurance industry earned every dollar that it makes from global warming - its sharp-eyed marketers spotted the potential before anyone else. In 1973, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest insurers, warned that rising temperatures could result in receding glaciers and polar caps, shrinking lakes, and rising ocean temperatures, with carbon dioxide as the culprit.

“We wish to enlarge on this complex of problems in greater detail, especially as - as far we know - its conceivable impact on the long-range risk trend has hardly been examined to date,” Munich Re concluded. And enlarge on the problem it did. Munich Re enlisted others in the insurance industry and then methodically and relentlessly made its case to Greenpeace, other environmentalists and other industries that stood to profit.

The result was the greatest environmental scare success in history. By 1979 large numbers of scientists were on board, the World Climate Conference expressing concern that “continued expansion of man’s activities on Earth” may lead to climate change. By 1988, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s was born. By 1992, Maurice Strong and Al Gore held the Rio Conference and by 1997, the Kyoto Treaty was a reality.

Canada’s insurance industry also led. One year after Kyoto, the industry founded and has ever since funded the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, which it installed at the University of Western Ontario. This sciencey-sounding institute, which calls itself “an independent, not-for-profit research institute,” has as its executive director Paul Kovaks, formerly of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the industry’s lobby group. The institute’s board? Its chair’s day job is president and chief executive of Co-operators Group, while other directors include top dogs at State Farm Canada, Swiss Reinsurance, Lloyd’s Canada and Allstate Canada.

The main work of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, naturally enough, involves avoiding catastrophic loss reductions on the balance sheets of Co-operators, State Farm and its other corporate members. The research from this bought-and-paid-for operation has then justified higher insurance rates on the basis “that the frequency and severity of extreme weather events is rising, contributing to an increase in claims and costs.”

Just this week, the institute’s Gordon McBean, also an author for the IPCC’s latest scary report, reiterated this view. “Where we have good data on the observations of the climate, you can show that there is an increased frequency of high-precipitation events,” McBean told CBC, adding that “analysis done by scientists shows that that change is related directly to the greenhouse gas - increasing - concentrations. In other words, it’s a part of the human-caused climate change.”

More scary stuff appears on the website of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which blames climate change for extreme weather events that in turn lead to higher industry payouts and thus higher rates. “Protect Yourself From the Effects of Climate Change” one headline states, asking: “Are you disaster ready?” Readers then have a choice of seven climate-change threats to click on - hurricanes, severe storms, winter storms, wildfire and the like. The top climate change scare that the Insurance Bureau lists, bizarrely, is “Earthquakes,” which not even the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction blames on climate change.

Canadian insurers like TD Insurance claim “it’s a proven fact” that climate change is driving rate increases. This is true, not because the science justifies rate increases but because government regulators and many in the public accept the claim as valid. The actual facts, from those not associated with the IPCC, say quite the opposite, and emphatically so.

Last year, the American Meteorological Society published a peer-reviewed study that investigated insurance claims from extreme weather events. The study’s author, Laurens M. Bouwer of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit in The Netherlands, examined 22 previous disaster loss studies involving extreme-weather-related natural hazards such as tropical cyclones, as well as small-scale weather events such as wildfires and hailstorms.

The conclusion: “The studies show no trends in losses...that could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change. Therefore it can be concluded that anthropogenic climate change so far has not had a significant impact on losses from natural disasters.”

In the face of overwhelming criticism of its climate change claims, even the IPCC has begun to backtrack. Its latest study uses a definition of climate change that concedes humans may contribute little or nothing to climate change: “Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.”

This is a far cry from the more common scary definition that blames humans for “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

The difference between the two definitions is not academic. If the insurance industry admitted that it has no reason to believe that anthropogenic climate change will drive future extreme events, we would all have extra money in our pockets.  POST.

By Russell Cook, American Thinker

Remember when Governor Rick Perry burst into the presidential race?  Arguably one of the things that made him quickly rise to the top was the answer he gave to a question about global warming at an August 17th event: “I think we’re seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

Just a day later, the Washington Post described what Perry’s campaign sent them as proof to back his statement:

... a link to something called the [Oregon] Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 “American scientists” on a petition that says there is “no convincing scientific evidence” that human release of greenhouse gasses will “cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate”.

Now imagine, for a moment, news of such a petition being so inconvenient to the Obama administration in light of the upcoming U.N. climate conference in Durban, South Africa that they made efforts to marginalize it via a prominently placed op-ed saying that the petition had fake names in it.

Imagine that these efforts involved a relatively unknown scientist who coordinated his efforts to write the anti-skeptic op-ed with the White House Office of Science and Technology (headed by Obama Science Czar John Holdren), and with an enviro-activist group famous for slamming skeptic scientists—like Greenpeace, for example.

Then again, there’s no need to imagine—all this apparently did happen, and John Holdren was involved, but it didn’t take place just recently.  It was aimed at the U.N. climate conference in Buenos Aires in 1998 during the Clinton/Gore administration, and was in response to a favorable article written by the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby about the then-17,000 signers of the petition and how the news of so many skeptics might derail the conference’s efforts to “to put teeth into the treaty that came out of Kyoto” just a year earlier.  And the enviro-activist group was Ozone Action, which was later merged into Greenpeace USA in 2000.

Back on August 26, 2010, I wrote a piece about the unhelpful appearance of Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, current head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), being tied to Ozone Action’s initial 1998 efforts to marginalize the petition.  On October 4, 2010, I wrote another article which went into much greater detail about the highly questionable efforts of Ozone Action to portray the petition as tainted by “fake” names.

I was unaware of the direct White House involvement until I ran across page 2 of this scan.  Scientist George Woodwell is appealing for help from John Holdren, who was on Clinton’s President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST):

The Globe does not wish to publish it, at least over my name alone. (Who is he?) The thought is that you would lend legitimacy and tip the scales in favor of publishing, especially if you cite (or allow others to cite) your PSAC connection. I would, of course, be delighted to have you as an author, even the author, if you are willing. ...

The issue has become urgent in that the Jacoby distortion is being circulated in Buenos Aires to stop any action at all. I am dealing with John Passaccantando of Ozone Action and Ann Kenzig, now in the White House on this project.

Woodwell misspells Ann Kinzig’s last name.  Kinzig was “an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in the Office of Science and Technology Policy” (OSTP), coincidentally at the same time when Jane Lubchenco was the chair of AAAS.

Additional evidence of Ozone Action’s ties to the White House comes in the form of a March 1998 e-mail alert to them from the OSTP’s Rosina Bierbaum regarding a Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) press release describing faults in the IPCC:

Despite White House claims that the debate over global warming is in fact over, an examination of their substantiation of ‘2,000 scientists’ reveals experts in Chinese medicines as well as ‘urban studies’, hotel administrators, ‘masters of arts’ psychiatrists…

In case anybody has missed the news of it, these sorts of crippling problems in the IPCC are substantiated in intricate detail within Donna Laframboise’s brand-new book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

One more reason Ms. Bierbaum specifically alerts Ozone Action: the SBSC press release also notes climate scientist skeptics who signed the Leipzig Declaration, an effort put together by atmospheric scientist (and AT contributor) Dr. S. Fred Singer.  Dr Singer was a harsh critic of Ozone Action back when that group focused purely on how chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) supposedly were a driver of ozone depletion, and he became one of the primary targets of that group and anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan.  Those are the same enviro-activists I cover in my writings about how the fossil-fuel-industry-funding-corruption accusation against skeptics appears to be completely unsupportable.

Apparently, with White House assistance and Holdren’s co-authorship, Woodwell got an op-ed in at the NY Times/International Herald Tribune, which, as I reported in my October 4, 2010 article, mimicked prior recent pieces by Ozone Action personnel about fake names being seen in the Oregon Petition Project.  Not helping this narrative are confessions from SourceWatch (” ... environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list ... “, and DesmogBlog ("According to the May 1998 Associated Press article, the Oregon petition included names that were intentionally placed to prove the invalid methodology ... “.  Problem is, I noted in another of my articles how SourceWatch’s Sheldon Rampton had close ties to Ross Gelbspan, and the narrative in the short version of the AP article DeSmog links to is different from the long version, switching from “[s]everal environmental groups” questioning the names in the petition to simply Ozone Action questioning them.

Compare this to other like-minded tactics: the credibility of assertions about Tea Party people hurling Nazi epithets apparently had to be “helped along” at one rally via a planted sign orchestrated to be seen by a photographer associated with a “progressive” website, as Michelle Malkin summarized in her April 12, 2010 blog post.  CBS news anchorman Dan Rather and whatever dislike he had for George W. Bush apparently had to be “helped along” with the use of forged National Guard documents.  Then there were the efforts to portray Rush Limbaugh as a racist, which seemed to require the use of planted quotes Limbaugh never said.

Same tactic in the petition smear.  Don’t meet your critics in a head-to-head debate; instead, marginalize what they say, ridicule their efforts, and plant evidence if their efforts don’t look ridiculous enough to tilt public opinion in your favor.

If there is one example of how far-left ideology can’t defend itself, it is the entire idea of man-caused global warming.  Just look at what its promoters must do to keep it alive in the face of withering criticism.  The disturbing thing about it is how long they’ve kept up this juvenile tactic, thanks to a complicit mainstream media.

Russell Cook’s collection of writings on this issue can be seen at “The ‘96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists,” and you can follow him on Twitter at QuestionAGW.

By Michael Barone, Source:  Rasmussen Reports on SPPI

Religious faith is a source of strength in many people’s lives. But religious faith when taken too far can prove ludicrous - or disastrous.

On Oct. 22, 1844, thousands of Millerites, having sold all their possessions, climbed to the top of hills in Upstate New York to await the return of Jesus and the end of the world. They suffered “the great disappointment” when it didn’t happen.

In 1212, or so the legends go, thousands of Children’s Crusaders set off from France and Germany expecting the sea to part so they could march peaceably and convert Muslims in the Holy Land. It didn’t, and many were shipwrecked or sold into slavery.

In 1898, the cavalrymen of the Madhi, ruler of Sudan for 13 years, went into the Battle of Omdurman armed with swords, believing that they were impervious to bullets. They weren’t, and they were mowed down by British Maxim guns.

A similar but more peaceable fate is befalling believers in what I think can be called the religion of the global warming alarmists.

They have an unshakeable faith that manmade carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science - which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity - but on something very much like religious faith.

All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.

The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.

Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

Corporate elitists, like General Electric’s Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you’re clever, you can figure out how to make money off it.

Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen, just as Catholic bishops flocked to councils in Constance, Ferrara and Trent, to codify dogma and set new rules.

But like the Millerites, the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom - and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.

If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it’s obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.

Skepticism has been increased by the actions of believers. Passage of the House cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 focused politicians and voters on the costs of global-warming religion. And disclosure of the Climategate emails in November 2009 showed how the clerisy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of propagation of the faith.

We have seen how the United Nations agency whose authority we are supposed to respect took an item from an environmental activist group predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 2350 and predicted that the melting would take place in 2035. No sensible society would stake its economic future on the word of folks capable of such an error.

In recent years, we have seen how negative to 2 percent growth hurts many, many people, as compared to what happens with 3 to 7 percent growth. So we’re much less willing to adopt policies that will slow down growth not just for a few years but for the indefinite future.

Media, university and corporate elites still profess belief in global warming alarmism, but moves toward policies limiting carbon emissions have fizzled out, here and abroad. It looks like we’ll dodge the fate of the Millerites, the children’s crusaders and the Mahdi’s cavalrymen.