OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Comments (10)

1. 

   rejean

   Al Gore caught lying to Congress

   posted at 8:40 am on June 6, 2009 by Keemo

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   Al Gore’s venture capital firm has invested $6 million in a software company that stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation — further fueling controversy that Gore lied about his profiteering from cap-and-trade to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee during testimony in April.

   Hara Software sells software to help track greenhouse gas emissions. The market for such software is now about $2.5 billion dollars in size, and is expected to grow by a factor of ten to $25 billion if cap-and-trade legislation is enacted, according to Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee.

   Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm in which Al Gore is a partner, invested in Hara just last year. Chatterjee told Reuters that,

   “This company would not have existed if Al Gore had not bought off on the idea.”

   Gore is also under fire for lying to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) at the same congressional hearing about his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

   Operating as a stealth tax, cap-and-trade will make the vast majority of Americans poorer and less free — but Al Gore, Kleiner Perkins, Amit Chatterjee and Hara will be laughing all the way to the bank.

   3 years ago

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2. 

   truth_sets_you_free

   Yep, follow the money. There are a lot of elites all set up to make a killing off Cap and Trade. Dot.com, war, housing boom... there always needs to be something to be gamed so the uber rich can pad their pockets.

   But global warming sounds like such a worthy fight. How could we be against dealing with it? :-)

   3 years ago

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3. 

   rcox082239 Idea Submitter

   I thought I would get some opposing comments with data supporting Global Warming. I have received at this time only 32% down votes and no supporting comments. This surprises me because I thought all Greenies believed the lie to be true.

   RWCX

   3 years ago

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4. 

   rcox082239 Idea Submitter

   Here's mine show me yours.

   By Scott Harper

   The Virginian-Pilot

   © June 6, 2009

   WASHINGTON

   U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was in a froth, and his audience loved it.

   The California Republican was talking about global warming and could barely contain his disgust.

   "Al Gore has been wrong all along!" Rohrabacher yelled into the microphone. "This is outrageous! All of this is wrong! The people who have stifled this debate have an agenda that is just frightening!"

   Welcome to the third annual International Conference on Climate Change, a daylong session of speeches and scientific presentations that took place Tuesday just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Almost no media covered the event.

   Organized by The Heartland Institute and other conservative think tanks and groups, the conference drew about 250 guests, most of them researchers and policy analysts, some from as far away as Japan and Australia.

   There was plenty of wry laughter during the day, especially when former Vice President Gore and his award-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," were brought up, which was often.

   The conference hall also was filled with a tangible air of frustrated defeat, like the brainy kid in math class who thinks he knows all the answers, raises his hand time and again, but is never called upon.

   "We are seldom heard in the policy debate," said Joseph L. Bast, president of The Heartland Institute. "If you open your newspaper, turn on your TV set, you're likely to see global warming alarmism, and nothing else."

   Bast labeled as "popular delusion" the current conventional wisdom on the issue - that man-made emissions, notably carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels is dangerously heating up the planet, causing sea levels to rise and is increasing the ferocity of storms and drought.

   As such, the conference represents a lingering - and still powerful - sentiment that global warming is not such a big deal after all.

   Instead, attendees argued, the slow and slight increase in air, water and atmospheric temperatures during much of the 20th century is part of a natural cycle of the Earth's unpredictable, roller-coaster weather patterns.

   Carbon dioxide, they debated, is not a pollutant that should be regulated, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Supreme Court now hold; it is an attribute that helps plant and sea life.

   Bast acknowledged that the conference was hurriedly organized, and moved from New York City to Washington, to counteract proposals from President Barack Obama for a "cap-and-trade" program aimed at fighting global warming by drastically limiting carbon emissions.

   Bast and others described the proposed programs as a complete waste of money, with potentially crippling consequences for the economy, and without any attainable goals.

   "How do you control the weather?" asked Bob Carter, an Australian scholar from James Cook University. "For us to assume we can somehow control nature and regulate weather patterns, when we cannot even predict them correctly, is patently absurd."

   Others saw darker motives in the climate debate.

   These skeptics, including Rohrabacher, contended that global warming is a liberal-inspired hoax, intended to wrest control of world energy policy and wealth from Western countries so the United Nations can have its way.

   To them, liberty, capitalism and the U.S. economy are at stake.

   "I have to wonder what has happened to the sovereignty of the United States," said U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the keynote speaker at the conference and the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which debates climate policy.

   Skeptics, or "realists," as they call themselves, focus much of their scorn on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Gore in 2007.

   The IPCC consists of hundreds of scientists from across the globe who, for two decades, have tracked climate research and temperature trends, and attempted to interpret what they mean for policymakers.

   Its most famous pronouncement, in 2007, was that a marked increase in greenhouse gases from mostly man-made sources is "very likely" causing climate change.

   "Very likely," the IPCC wrote, means a 90 percent certainty that human activity, not natural variability, is the driving force.

   The IPCC also noted that many geographical areas seem especially susceptible to climate change, including low-lying coastal areas, such as southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

   But scientist after scientist at the conference pointed out flaws and shortcomings in the calculations of the IPCC, especially its reliance on computer models to make forecasts.

   One researcher, Roy Spencer, a professor at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, noted that the IPCC did not adequately calculate how clouds play a major role in ground temperatures.

   When there are few clouds in the sky, temperatures typically are warmer, Spencer said, and when it is cloudy outside, conditions typically are cooler.

   Is it possible then, Spencer asked, that decreasing clouds in recent decades caused the warmings recorded on Earth?

   Spencer said he asked the IPCC about this and was surprised to learn that the organization had not researched this point and had assumed that cloud cover does not change over time but is fairly consistent.

   The two revelations sparked more wry laughter from the audience.

   "If a 1 percent change in cloudiness could trigger global warming, or global cooling, wouldn't you think that'd be a pretty important thing to nail down?" Spencer asked. "They have never gone there."

   Skepticism over climate science is hardly new. Indeed, skepticism has always been a part of scientific discourse and has been around global warming since the 1970s, when the theory first gained credence.

   William "Skip" Stiles, a Norfolk environmentalist, was working as a congressional aide back then, and he remembers the committee hearings, the charges and countercharges of bias and flawed science.

   "I will agree that these models are only as good as the data that goes into them," Stiles said. "But when you think of all the shots these folks have had at this, and all the years of research by the IPCC - we're talking 25 years! - you have to think we've reached some fairly solid conclusions that global warming is real and we, as humans, are playing a major role in it."

   Carl Hershner, a researcher and professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who has tracked sea level rise in Virginia for years, expressed similar thoughts.

   "One thing about science is that you never get rid of all the naysayers," Hershner said. He described the IPCC as "an extremely conservative group" that "constantly looks at achieving consensus, and updates its findings regularly."

   In his keynote address Tuesday, Sen. Inhofe predicted that cap-and-trade will pass the House of Representatives - "Nancy Pelosi has the votes," he said - but will stall in the Senate, where previous climate-change programs have similarly died.

   Last year, without any action coming from Washington, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine appointed a Climate Change Commission to suggest ways Virginia can reduce carbon emissions and lessen its role in accelerating warming.

   The theory that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and not man-made, was not part of commission deliberations.

   "The fact that global climate change is happening and is largely human-caused is now widely accepted," reads the commission's final report, published in December.

   At the bottom of the page, however, is a footnote: "While we have concluded that the overwhelming evidence supports these points, we have heard testimony providing contrary information during public comment periods at our meetings."

   State Sen. Frank Wagner, a Republican from Virginia Beach, was a member of the climate commission. He also has attended one of the skeptics' conferences in New York City.

   "I've tried to keep an open mind," Wagner said. "There are so many theories out there, and so much detail, you're kind of overwhelmed.

   "I mean, even the scientists themselves are debating with each other at these meetings. You're left wondering what the truth really is."

   Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com

   3 years ago

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5. 

   amx

   I hear we really haven't had any "warming" for the past several years.

   3 years ago

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6. 

   rejean

   Dr. Craig Idso, is the founder and chairman of the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He addresses concerns about global warming and marine life, including the death of the coral reefs and other underwater ecosystems. Neither increases in temperature nor increases in carbon or both of them together, have had any lasting ill effects on the calcifications and growth in marine organisms. The Center’s work on ocean acidification can be found here. His general advice for politicians: pay attention more to real world observations than theoretical hypotheses.

   Cato scholar Pat Michaels gives the audience a great preview of his relatively new book, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know. Michaels refutes the misstatements of Al Gore, the IPCC scientists, and other global warming alarmism through simple fact-checking. The book, a bit technical at times (as it should be) is one of the best pieces of literature out there refuting climate change extremism. You can get it here.

   Bob Carter is next. Professor Carter is a geologist at James Cook University and is widely known for his global warming skepticism. In his 2006 article, “There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998,” He goes on to say,

   The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.”

   An Australian professor, Carter discusses the wildfires that took place in his homeland which resulted in over 200 deaths, displaced 10,000 people and devastated a great deal of land and wildlife in Australia. He then points to massive floods, hurricanes, tornadoes that have done the same around the world. Needless to say, the alleged culprit of these events is often global warming. Any plan stemming from natural disasters should be a plan not to change temperature but to accommodate those affected and adapt when and where we can. Countries have spent trillions of dollars on Kyoto Protocol treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1997. Notice any change in the temperature?

   Dr. John S. Theon follows Carter. Theon, a retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist was once James Hansen’s supervisor. Hansen, remember, is the climate scientists known for global warming fear mongering and is probably the most prominent name in the global warming movement other than Al Gore. Hansen believes CEOs of oil companies should be put on trial for committing high crimes on humanity and nature.

   Theon is one of the 650 dissenting scientists named in a U.S. Senate Minority Report released in December 2008. He tells the story of Hansen’s close relationship with Gore and how Gore and Hansen worked together to politicize what should have been a scientific debate. Accused of muzzling Hansen, Dr. Theon confidently says he did so for a good reason. The climate change models used by NASA simply did not know enough to forecast credible predictions of climate change and anthropogenic effects on it.

   At the time in 1988 to the early 1990s, the variation in modeling results, from a few degrees of warming to a few degrees of cooling, indicated to Dr. Theon that these models could not be trusted. Though the models have improved, the climate remains extremely complex, and that has led Dr. Theon to the same conclusion that many other climatologists and scientists have arrived at over the past few days: there is no scientific consensus on climate change and implementing an extremely costly policy that may have little or no effect on temperature would be ill-advised and dangerous.

   As expected, the mainstream media is careful to avoid reporting about this conference and what the scientists at this meeting have to say.

   General Electric has bombarded us with daily propaganda — through its NBC networks, that includes MSNBC and CNBC — to make us swallow the global warming/cap and trade scam. Why? Because they stand to make BILLIONS from the scam at our expense. Not only is GE the largest wind turbine generator maker, but it may benefit as the sole “secondary market” trader of the cap and trade credits.

   We need to help others know about the truth behind the scam.

   Cap and trade represents huge taxes and cost increases, which will hurt mostly the poor and the middle class. Cap and trade will give dictatorial powers to Obama and will further enrich his billionaire friends (Gore, Soros, Goldman Sachs, Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange friends, GE, etc.) — all at our expense and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.

   Cap and Trade “would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb directed at the U.S. economy—all without any scientific justification,” said famed climatologist Dr. S. Fred Singer. It would significantly increase taxes and the cost of energy, forcing many companies to close, thus increasing unemployment, poverty and dependence.

   Those brainwashed to the point of wanting to destroy the economy to “prevent global warming” are behaving like the most primitive human beings who were duped into believing that human sacrifices would ensure them good weather. Human beings don’t have the power to control climate! And killing the economy will not help the environment. Poor countries can’t protect the environment. Just look at Haiti!

   More and more scientists and thinking people all over the world are realizing that man-made global warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. More than 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims. They are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3562/218/

   Additionally, more than 30,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” http://www.petitionproject.org

   We pray that honest leaders – both Democrat and Republican - are able to save us from Obama’s criminal global warming/cap-and-trade scam.

   3 years ago

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7. 

   rcox082239 Idea Submitter

   Well said and thank you.

   We still need to see the evidence from the ones that have voted no to this idea.

   3 years ago

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8. 

   rcox082239 Idea Submitter

   Here is something you won't see in the main stream media.

   Still waiting for the evedince that man is causing Global Warming from the no voters.

   By Bob Unruh

   © 2009 WorldNetDaily

   U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas

   In an attempt to inject some balance into the current push for "cap-and-trade" plans that would hit anyone who uses energy with massive new taxes and limits, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has asked Congress to consider the opinion of 31,478 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, who agree humans have nothing to do with any "global warming."

   In a statement to the U.S. House just days ago, Paul said, "before voting on the 'cap-and-trade' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists."

   He was referring to the Petition Project, which actually was launched nearly 10 years ago when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then, between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign.

   But in the last few years, and especially because of the release of the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, the campaign has been reinvigorated.

   "Mr. Gore's movie, asserting a 'consensus' and 'settled science' in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse," project spokesman and founder Art Robinson has told WND.

   Robinson, a research professor of chemistry, co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling in 1973, and later co-founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

   Paul cited the petition results in his statement to Congress.

   "Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth – not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas," Paul said. "They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters."

   The petition states:

   "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

   (Story continues below)

   Robinson has warned that there are some very serious ramifications to assuming "global warming" results from mankind's actions and therefore those behaviors all need to be halted.

   "The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded," he said. "In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries," he told WND.

   Said Paul, "Above all, we must never forget our contract with the American people – the Constitution that provides the sole source of legitimacy of our government. That Constitution requires that we preserve the basic human rights of our people – including the right to freely manufacture, use, and sell energy produced by any means they devise – including nuclear, hydrocarbon, solar, wind, or even bicycle generators.

   "While it is evident that the human right to produce and use energy does not extend to activities that actually endanger the climate of the Earth upon which we all depend, bogus claims about climate dangers should not be used as a justification to further limit the American people's freedom," Paul said.

   One of the previous efforts the petition signers opposed was the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 global plan to clamp down on energy use.

   The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science, specifically had worried about that.

   "This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful," he wrote.

   Robinson has told WND, "It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice."

   "At a time when our nation is faced with a severe shortage of domestically produced energy and a serious economic contraction; we should be reducing the taxation and regulation that plagues our energy-producing industries," Paul said. "Yet, we will soon be considering so-called 'cap and trade' legislation that would increase the taxation and regulation of our energy industries.

   WND also reported recently when Steven Chu, who was appointed by President Obama to be the U.S. Energy Secretary, said white paint is what's needed to fix global warming.

   Chu told the London Times that by making paved surfaces and roofs lighter in color, the world would reduce carbon emissions by as much as parking all the cars in the world for 11 years.

   He was speaking at the St. James' Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, in which the Times partners for media events, when he described his simple and "completely benign" … "geo-engineering" plan.

   He said building codes should require that flat roofed-buildings have their tops painted white. Visible sloped roofs could be painted "cool" colors. And roads could be made a lighter color.

   "I think with flat-type roofs you can't even see, yes, I think you should regulate quite frankly," Chu said in the Times report.

   And asked if governments should promote white paint as the global warming "solution," he said, "Yes, absolutely … White roofs everywhere, yes."

   3 years ago

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9. 

   rcox082239 Idea Submitter

   Still looking for a rebuttal of this idea. It seams ingenuous to vote no without stating why.

   Taken from:

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5525933/Crops-under-stress-as-temperatures-fall.html

   Crops under stress as temperatures fall

   Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.

   By Christopher Booker

   Published: 6:04PM BST 13 Jun 2009

   For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

   There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

   None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.

   In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."

   In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.

   There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.

   Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.

   It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.

   It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.

   RWCX

   3 years ago

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10. 

    gypsy_sage

    Or the activity to experiments put out there fromall around the world...like Nuclear bombs exploding....I have always thought the pics of the ice caps breaking off are doing just that....Breaking, not melting....Something is changing under ground...Movement with great force is what makes things like that happen....not the emissions they say Americans are responsible for....

    3 years ago

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