By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

Julia Gillard claims global warming is already killing the Great Barrier Reef:

Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged, and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century.

Warmist alarmist Sir Nicholas Stern made the same claim:

The snows on Kilimanjaro are virtually gone, the Barrier Reef is probably going...

The ABC was already hypeing up the destruction of the reef by global warming in 2002:

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says up to 10 per cent of the reef has been lost to bleaching since 1998.

ABC host Kerry O’Brien back then treated the death of the reef as imminent:

It’s not just Australia’s farmlands which are threatened by global warming, the greenhouse effect could also spell disaster for coral reefs around the world, including our own natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef.

As Australia prepares for another hot summer, one man is on a mission to capture as many corals as possible on high-definition camera before even more stretches of once-spectacular reef are bleached bone-white.

And remember the alarmism of prominent warmist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg?

In 1998, he warned that the reef was under pressure from global warming, and much had turned white. He later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery.

In 1999 he claimed global warming would cause mass bleaching of the reef every two years from 2010.

He yesterday admitted it hadn’t.

In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

He later admitted this bleaching had a “minimal impact”.

All that alarmism, relentlessly pushed by this desperately dishonest government, is now blown out of the water by the latest research by Townsville’s Australian Institute of Marine Science:

Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009....

While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980’s suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery.

You have been deceived again and again and again. 

By Alan Caruba

In the words of Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Thursday, June 30, will mark the beginning of the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a free market policy center headquartered in Chicago. The conference will be held in Washington, D.C., an appropriate location considering how much hot air emanates from Congress and the White House.

I attended the first conferences that took place in New York City, just across the river from where I live, so I was “there at the beginning” for conferences that were, in the words of Gandhi, largely ignored by the mainstream media and subsequently mentioned but only as the object of mockery.

When, in 2009, emails exchanged between a handful of scientists who provided the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the most specious, deliberately duplicitous “data” to prop up the “global warming” hoax were revealed, the whole house of cards began to collapse.

It has since been propped up by a bunch of media, political, and science dead-enders who had stacked their reputations on pulling off the great hoax of the modern era; that an infinitesimal amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - 0.038 percent - was causing the Earth to heat up, the seas to rise, and Minnie Mouse to announce she was pregnant.

The success of the forthcoming conference, however, has been blessed by the modern form of respect, a preemptory news release attacking it. The Center for American Progress issued a ”press call advisory” titled “Climate Deniers Congregate in the Nation’s Capital.”

It began, ‘The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch...” Whoa! Mr. Chairman, we rise to question why the Center for American Progress (FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS - DESTROYER OF NATIONS) would engage in an outright lie? Answer: That’s what progressives do because they are immune to the truth.

For the record, neither Exxon Mobil, nor Mr. Koch, has contributed to the cost of the conference. The former has not contributed to the Institute since 2006 and the Kochs have not sent any money in more than a decade.

But let’s finish the Center’s opening sentence that characterized the conference as “boasting a full agenda of notable climate deniers.” The term climate deniers has long been attached to any scientist, academic, politician, or commentator such as myself who had the temerity to point out that every single claim made on behalf of “global warming” was pure horse-hockey.

Since 1998 we have been discussing the new climate cycle, a COOLING one!

The Center for American Progress sought to make light of the conferences’ theme, “Restoring the Scientific Method.” And a damn fine theme it is considering the damage to the entire scientific community that, prior to the global warming hoax, was not famous for deciding what the truth was by “consensus.”

Real science still depends on peer review and the thorough testing of a hypothesis until it can no longer be disputed because it is reproducible. You can say the Earth is flat until you are blue in the face, but it is still round. The “warmists”, however, did everything they could to short-circuit this rigorous process.

The Center for American Progress is concerned that the forthcoming conference asserts that “global warming is not a crisis” and it will be devoted to “ending global warming alarmism” and “disputing that global warming is man-made.”

Would someone please tell the Center that the Earth is now more than a decade into a perfectly natural cooling cycle and that mankind does not control the sun, the oceans, the clouds, the volcanoes, or any climate event? Whenever a tsunami, blizzard, or tornado occurs, Mother Nature’s advice to mankind is “Get out of the way!”

Since I am loath to travel further these days than the Bagel Chateau one town over from where I reside, I shall be watching the conference on streaming video, June 30 to July 1. It should be noted that, in addition to a roster of some of the world’s most respected climate scientists who will make presentations, the Institute has routinely invited some of the most prominent alarmists - warmists - to participate.

A recent Forbes article noted that “a virtual Who’s Who of global warming media hounds” had been invited to participate in the conferences over the years. Conference coordinator, James Taylor, the Institute’s senior fellow for environment policy, said that Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann and others “all seem to have some sort of scheduling conflict whenever they have to share the stage with a scientist who will be challenging their evidence.”

Meanwhile, the egregiously misnamed Center for American Progress will hold a conference call on Wednesday to launch an attack on the conference. No longer ignored or mocked, the Heartland Institute and its conference are clearly on the winning side.

Funeral ceremonies for “global warming” will follow with the mourners all wearing green.

Source: SPPI

by Dennis Ambler

Matthew 7:5 - Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

As Greenpeace publishes yet another attack on a reputable scientist, (Dr Willie Soon), who happens to disagree with the IPCC, they again ignore the massive funding going into the “green” movement, from corporations including “big oil”, foundations and governments.

Their constant attacks on the integrity of genuine scientists are classic diversionary tactics to avoid close examination of the millions of dollars going into the Global Warming project. A commentary by David and Amy Ridenour in the Washington Times of June 14th last year, showed the major extent of funding to environmental groups by BP, who were being attacked by those same groups over the oil spill in the Gulf.

BP was also a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, (not the same as the Climate Action Network) contributing substantial funding to the climate-change-related lobbying efforts of the environmental groups within it, which include the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute.

The new “climate friendly” BP was first promoted by BP CEO, Lord John Browne in 1997, (then Sir John Browne), now on the Climate Change Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank along with Dr Pachauri of the IPCC and Professor John Schellnhuber of the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

A report in the Washington Examiner, entitled “Working for Big Green can be a very enriching experience” by Mark Tapscott, showed that the leaders of 15 top Big Green environmental groups are paid more than $300,000 in annual compensation, with a half million dollar plus figure for the top “earner”.

He mentions that Environmental Defense Fund President Frederic Krupp, receives total compensation of $496,174, including $446,072 in salary and $50,102 in other compensation.

Close behind Krupp among Big Green environmental movement executives is World Wildlife Fund- US President Carter Roberts, who was paid $486,394, including a salary of $439,327 and other compensation of $47,067.

Krupp and Roberts are particularly interesting because EDF and WWF-US both receive funding from the Grantham Foundation and both are on the joint management board of Jeremy Grantham’s climate institutes at the London School of Economics, (LSE), and Imperial College, London.

Jeremy Grantham is the chairman and co-founder of GMO, a $140 billion global investment management company based in Boston with offices in London, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney and Zurich.

His first excursion into climate funding in the UK was “The Grantham Institute for Climate Change” set up with 12 million pounds, (~$19million) at Imperial College, London in 2007. The chairman of the LSE Grantham Institute, Lord Stern of the infamous Stern Review, is heavily involved in carbon trading via carbon ratings agency, Idea Carbon. He joined IdeaGlobal, the parent company in 2007, as Vice Chairman. He also advises HSBC on carbon trading.

Environmental Defense boast on their website of their influence on policy in Washington and how they get around the law on lobbying caps:

“EDF has long been a powerful voice in Washington, and when the need began to exceed the $1 million annual cap on our lobbying established by tax law, we created a sister group, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, which is free of spending limits. This has enabled us to ratchet up our legislative efforts, particularly on climate, and to advocate strong environmental laws even as the stakes increase.”

A BBC investigation in 2007 by reporter Simon Cox found that the European Commission is giving millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to environmental campaigners to run lobbying operations in Brussels. Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE), received almost half of its funding from the EU in 2007.

Greenpeace also don’t mention the money that the EPA gives to NGO’s, for example National Resources Defense Council are currently in receipt of a grant of $1,150,123, (XA - 83379901-2) for promoting carbon trading.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has received $3,879,014 from the EPA in the last nine years for propaganda projects and promotion of emissions trading schemes, $715,000 in the current period 2011/12. If the EPA really were interested in science, they would be funding the genuine research undertaken by people like Dr Soon, rather than policy promotion for their own agenda.

Members of the board of WRI, are Al Gore and Theodore Roosevelt IV. Mr Roosevelt is the chairman of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. and is the former chairman of the ill-fated Lehman Brothers’ Global Council on Climate Change and a board member of the Alliance for Climate Protection, whose chairman is Al Gore. The 2008 income for Gore’s “Alliance” was over $88 million.

Greenpeace really should be very careful when they seek to muddy the waters on climate science by discrediting opposing scientists, they may well find that the water is full of dirty green linen.

See also SPPI paper by Joanne Nova: Climate Money

and Donna LaFramboise, BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot , the text of which follows here:

*****************

BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot

In what passes for debate about climate change one of the most tiresome allegations is that skeptics are lavishly funded by big oil. As a result of this funding, so the argument goes, the public has been confused by those who’ll say anything in exchange for a paycheck.

“Follow the money” we’re told and you’ll discover that climate skeptics are irredeemably tainted. Ergo nothing they say can be trusted. Ergo their concerns, questions, and objections should be dismissed out of hand.

It’s therefore amusing that the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now drawing attention to the close relationship between climate change activists and BP - aka British Petroleum, an entity for which the descriptor “big oil” was surely invented.

According to the Washington Post the green group Nature Conservancy - which encourages ordinary citizens to personally pledge to fight climate change - “has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.”

Gee, didn’t Greenpeace build an entire ExxonSecrets website to expose the allegedly diabolical fact that, over a 9-year-period (1998-2006) ExxonMobil donated a grand total of $2.2 million to a conservative think tank?

$10 million versus $2 million. Who do we suppose has the cozier relationship with big oil?

But that’s just the beginning. The Washington Post also points out that Conservation International, another green group which insists climate change represents a “profound threat,” has “accepted $2 million in donations from BP over the years and partnered with the company on a number of projects.”

Funny, Greenpeace doesn’t talk about that. Nor does it mention:

that BP is funding research into “ways of tackling the world’s climate problem” at Princeton University to the tune of $2 million per year for 15 years

that BP is funding an energy research institute involving two other US universities to the tune of $500 million - the aim of which is “to develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment”

that ExxonMobil itself has donated $100 million to Stanford university so that researchers there can find “ways to meet growing energy needs without worsening global warming”

The only dollar amounts Greenpeace cites in its explanation of why it decided to launch ExxonSecrets is that measly $2.2 million. Versus 10 + 2 + 30 + 500 + 100. Let’s see, which all adds up to...wait for it...$642 million.

If the world is divided into two factions - one that believes climate change is a serious problem and another that thinks human influence on the climate is so minimal it’s indistinguishable from background noise - one group has pulled off a bank heist while the other has been panhandling in front of the liquor store.

In the same document in which Greenpeace talks about the ExxonMobil money it chillingly asserts that climate “deniers” aren’t entitled to free speech. Why? Because “Freedom of speech does not apply to misinformation and propaganda.”

Actually, the big thinkers on the subject have consistently taken the opposite view. John Stuart Mill was adamant that no one has the right to decide what is or is not propaganda on everyone else’s behalf. He would have looked Greenpeace in the eye and told it to stop imagining that its own judgment is infallible.

More than a hundred years later Noam Chomsky famously declared that if you don’t believe in freedom of expression for opinions you despise you don’t believe in it at all.

If Greenpeace would like to have a serious conversation about who, exactly, is spreading misinformation I’m up for that - since it’s overwhelming obvious that the big oil jackpot was awarded to those on the Greenpeace side of the debate.

The fact that climate change activists have enjoyed such a powerful funding advantage and yet insisted all the while that the exact opposite was the case is troubling. It tells us a good deal about their intellectual rigour. About their character. And about their ability to distinguish fact from fiction.

If there really is a climate crisis, if our grandchildren’s future really is imperiled, these aren’t the people to lead us out of the wilderness.

UPDATE (June 6): Reader Terry Kesteloot alerted me to the fact that the Greenpeace.org website is apparently infected with a “very low\” risk computer virus. The links in this post to Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets FAQ have therefore been replaced with links to a copy of the document that resides at Archive.org (scroll down once the page loads).

If your machine has virus protection, the document may be viewed directly on the Greenpeace website HERE.