Google’s philanthropic arm on Thursday said it is taking aim at global warming, poverty, and pandemics with millions in cash and the Internet giant’s global resources. Google.org Executive Director Larry Brilliant said the group had a ‘brutal’ job selecting priorities from the world’s ills and crafting five core initiatives it feels best match Google’s strengths. Google.org announced more than $25 million in grant money being invested in groups combating environmental, energy, poverty, or health woes. [Agence France Presse/Factiva]
The Washington Post reports that “…The initial grants begin to fulfill a pledge made four years ago by Google’s founders to devote about 1 percent of the company’s equity and annual profit to humanitarian causes. Google.org, the philanthropic arm formed in 2006, expects to give away as much as $175 million over the next few years.” [The Washington Post/Factiva]
Read more here.
By Jennifer Marohasy in the Politics and Environment Blog
Five more scientists have been added to the over 400 scientists in the Minority Senate Report who dispute man-made global warming claims. See who they are on the blog here.
In recent weeks, 18 new scientists have come forth. See the new listed scientists here and here. See full Minority report here.
Icecap Note: Alarmists and some in the media have made inept efforts to discredit the report and claim that unlike the IPCC 2500 scientists, that the Senate scientists are not all qualified climatologists. Climate Resistance has documented that the cross section of specialites across the three IPCC report working groups is not unlike that of the Senate 420+. See the reports here, here and here. They have also taken on the all too familiar alarmist knee jerk reaction to dissent that it is a well funded campaign that puts them at a disadvantage in this analysis.
Translated from Perfil Magazine
A group of prominent Argentine scientists disputes the theory that human activity is the cause of global warming and demand a “more serious debate”. Eduardo Tonni, head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata, notes that, while it’s not politically correct to dispute this theory, the evidence for global warming being a “natural” occurrence is far more compelling. He warns that scientists that oppose man-made global warming are lacking funding. As reported by Perfil magazine, scientist Rosa Compagnucci, a researcher with the National Science and Technology Commission (Conicet), and former member of the IPCC stated at a recent conference at the Military Geography Institute that global warming is actually a phenomenon that has occurred quite frequently over the past 2,000 years. And, she noted, rather than being caused by carbon dioxide emissions produced by human activity, which many scientists accept as “irrefutable truth,” it is much more likely related to “capricious” solar activity which, over a period of decades and centuries, has not been at all homogenous.
An author of two of the IPCC’s 2001 reports, and an expert on the El Nino phenomenon, Campagnucci points to the period of global warming that occurred during the medieval period, between 800 and 1300. With all the emphasis today on preparing for global warming, she warns, this could leave man unprepared to deal with the possibility of a new ice age. She notes that South America’s Southern Cone just went through a brutal, record-breaking winter, which could be repeated in North America. As for natural disasters such as tsunamis or hurricane Katrina, Eduardo Tonni warns that there is little evidence that they are more frequent today than in the past. “The alarmism we see today,” he argues, “is justified by the fact that it generates funds . . . Unfortunately, this is just another product of the market.” See story in pdf format here.