Global Warming Science: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

 

The Climate Industrial Complex

 

[last update: 2011/05/19]

 

 

The Climate Industrial Complex

 

In his 1961 farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower stated [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm]:

there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties

and:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

 

We now face the Climate Industrial Complex, where all powers involved want to impose their own version of a costly action as a solution to the misrepresentation of global warming.

 

 

This document contains the following sections:

 

 

See also: Carbon Monetization – The Traders

 

 

See also:

 

         Climate Money Paper

 

 

 

[2011/05/19] Update – Siemens uses “climate change” to try to get government subsidies -- added to Rent Seekers section

 

 

[2010/01/15] Update – Exelon (with connections to Obama – Forbes refers to Exelon as “the President’s Utility”) added to Rent Seekers section (See also: Double Standard: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/DoubleStandard.htm)

 

[2010/04/29]: A study of why corporations give to environmental groups (in an apparent conflict):

http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1185995021.pdf

 

 

[2009/12/20] Update – IPCC Chairman Pachauri (climate complex scam artist extraordinaire) added to Rent Seekers section

[2010/01/17] – See also: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7007891/The-curious-case-of-the-expanding-environmental-group-with-falling-income.html

And: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/pachauri-theres-money-in-them-glaciers.html

 

 

[2009/12/03] Update

 

Climate Alarmists Lie About the Funding

 

A climate alarmist’s typical whine: “global warming deniers are funded by oil companies”. Reality is sparse for the alarmists – see: “Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics” [http://www.prisonplanet.com/oil-companies-support-global-warming-alarmists-not-skeptics.html] This is why you find the major oil companies supporting global warming legislation – they know how to profit from it. The United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP’s) members include oil companies Shell and BP (as well as major energy providers – Exelon, Duke, etc.; major chemical companies – DuPont, Dow, etc.; and environmental groups – Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, etc.) [http://www.us-cap.org/about/members/index.asp] These disparate groups – oil companies and environmental organizations – have found a common way to scam money.

 

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) “is dedicated to the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” and “the development of an active, global greenhouse gas market” [http://www.ieta.org/ieta/www/pages/index.php]. “Our 170 member companies include some of the world's largest industrial

and financial corporations, including global leaders in oil” - including Shell, BP, Chevron, Hess, ConocoPhillips, etc.

 

See “Climategate: Follow the Money [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html] for a discussion of the warmist funding juggernaut: “Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s. Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. … Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. … Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own. They include not just old standbys like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but also Ozone Action, Clean Air Cool Planet, Americans for Equitable Climate Change Solutions, the Alternative Energy Resources Association, the California Climate Action Registry and so on and on. All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God. None of these outfits is per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

 

[2010/01/18] Update

“TAXPAYERS FOOT BILL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE CAMPAIGNERS” – “Brussels bureaucrats gave climate change groups more than £1.5million of taxpayers’ money last year to promote the theory that human activity is causing global warming … The European Commission handed out huge cash sums to Climate Action Network, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund. In one case, British and other European taxpayers paid out more than £700,000 to Friends of the Earth Europe – more than half the pressure group’s 2009 budget. The payouts came to light after questions by UKIP Euro MP Godfrey Bloom. He said the cash was perpetuating unfounded claims about global warming. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas insisted that the groups’ aims and objectives were in tune with EU policy.[http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/152595/Taxpayers-foot-bill-for-climate-change-campaigners]

 

 

 

 

The Complex

 

The global warming scare was initiated by the United Nations who formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to promote the scare. Their goal: achieve a global tax (in this case based on CO2) in order to grow the U.N. into a world government. Some in the UN viewed it simply as a means of transferring funds from the US to African countries. (See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_History.htm for a detailed account of the UN’s involvement, as well as http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GlobalGovernance.htm for an account of the groups using global warming to promote global governance.)

 

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) started to see the easy lucre that the global warming scare provided. The United Nations encouraged government funding of NGOs and their participation in UN meetings (including the UNFCCC meetings such as in Poznan, 2008) in order to achieve more influence over sovereign governments that were not cooperating with the UN’s goals. (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm#forum and http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Oxfam.htm for examples of major NGOs who are benefiting from the scare.) Other NGOs saw it as a way to expand their business of selling fear.

 

Corporations also started to see the monetary benefit of global warming – not as a tax, but as a cap-and-trade scheme providing money-making transactions. This view uses the same basic global warming scare scenario, but cap-and-trade competes with the U.N. for the money involved. Enron was one of the early companies hoping to capitalize on this; later, other credit trading companies became involved. (See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/CarbonMonetization.htm for details on these companies.) Certain industries also greatly benefit from the creation of new government regulations, while those whose costs will increase simply pass along the costs to consumers. Many corporations also view it as a way to gain market share via government-imposed regulations that will benefit their products in otherwise non-profitable businesses.

 

The U.S. Congress started to realize there was a large source of government funding available in the initial sale of CO2 credits for a cap-and-trade scheme (not to mention trading loopholes for election funding).

 

These are the competing and/or cooperating interests who all stand to lose if the actual science - showing that CO2’s influence on climate is negligible - is accepted before their money-grubbing schemes get implemented.

 

 

 

 

The United Nations

 

The U.N. originated the global warming scare with the purpose of instituting a global tax (“Support for such a "carbon tax" has been growing since the 1992 UN Earth Summit focused international attention on the damage to the environment caused by excessive use of fossil fuels worldwide.” [http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no4/154finan.htm]) (See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_History.htm for a detailed account of the UN’s history in developing the scare.)

 

The main goal of the UN in all of this is to expand their role as a global government. In 1991, Maurice Strong claimed that the Earth Summit, of which he was Secretary General, would play an important role in "reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance." and in 1995, in “Our Global Neighborhood”, the Council on Global Governance agreed: "It is our firm conclusion that the United Nations must continue to play a central role in global governance … "user fees" might be imposed on companies operating in the "global commons." including carbon taxes, which would be levied on all fuels made from coal, oil, and natural gas." http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html

 

As countries develop carbon credit trading programs, the UN loses its opportunity to develop a global tax. The UN’s focus is now more on brokering international agreements that include transfer of funds from “developed” to “developing” countries under the guise of climate change mitigation.

 

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the organization that is trying to broker an international deal (they hope to do this by the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009). The head of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer (appointed by Kofi Annan in 2006), is mainly focused on transferring money for development in third world countries: “"Yvo often defends developing countries, sometimes with strong statements insisting that the northern hemisphere has to pay up," [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Developmental-Issues/Yvo-de-Boer-global-climate-butler/articleshow/4628270.cms

 

The 2008 UNFCCC meeting was in Poznan, Poland December 2008. BBC environment correspondent Richard Black was unable to make it back to Poznan on Dec. 8 as a result of CO2 protesters disrupting London’s Stansted Airport [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/]. He talked about how a long-running dispute between developed and developing countries over how to manage the UN Adaptation Fund which channels money from the international carbon market into climate protection, appears still to be a live issue. The developed countries paying the money regard it as theirs; but so do the developing nations, who argue that it is merely what the west owes them for having created the problem of man-made climate change.

 

African Union leaders met recently (Aug. 2009) and now want $67 billion per year to “cushion the impact of global warming”. "This is the time for Africa to aggressively engage to ensure that climate change is effectively addressed," Jean Ping, chairman of the AU Commission, told delegates. The draft resolution, which must still be approved by the ministers, called for rich countries to pay at least $67 billion annually to counter the impact of global warming in Africa.” [http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO569667] The AU said “A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum [GHF] that was released in May said poor nations bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change.” The GFH report is full of lies as documented at: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm.

 

The UN FCCC meeting in December will try to get an international agreement. See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/UNCopenhagenPrep.htm

 

See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_History.htm for a detailed account of the UN’s involvement.

See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GlobalGovernance.htm describing how global warming is used to promote global governance.

 

 

 

The NGOs

 

The NGOs were encouraged to expand their role by the United Nations, so that the UN could gain further influence over sovereign member countries. The role of NGOs was greatly expanded by Maurice Strong, who headed the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (“The Earth Summit”) – the UN lists “2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs); 17,000 people attended the parallel NGO Forum” [http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html]. The NGOs have also greatly benefited monetarily from promotion of the global warming scare. Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc. all use the global warming scare stories to increase their funding.

 

The NGOs have been getting more open about the real point of the global warming scare: After the 2007 Bali meeting, the Climate Action Network web site provides the following discussion: "A common theme was that the “solutions” to climate change that are being posed by many governments, such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and biofuels are false and are not rooted in justice. ... a climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources" [www.climatenetwork.org/bali-blog/ngo-bustle-in-bali]

 

The NGO climate network prepared a newsletter after the 2008 Poznan meeting [http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/poznan-ecos/Eco6can-talk.pdf] reporting: “Developing countries are approaching the climate problem constructively, advancing serious, ambitious and realistic proposals and ideas. It is now time for an equally serious response from developed countries. Finance ministers should not shirk their duty to ensure that resources are made available, adequate to addressing the adaptation and mitigation needs of developing countries. This requires the willingness to commit to generating hundreds of billions of dollars annually

 

The Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) is staffed mainly by ex-UN people who want to ride the global warming money wave further. See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm#forum for more details on this group.

 

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has greatly increased its revenues since global warming became its main focus (“The common denominator in everything we do is climate change. This Annual Report features a special section on climate change and our approaches to taming what has become the greatest environmental crisis ever faced. The effects of this global threat are now undeniable and are seen in every area WWF works” – from the WWF 2008 Annual Report [www.worldwildlife.org/who/financialinfo/2008AR/index.html])

 

Left: WWF in 2008 had operating revenue of $196.5 million – a 30% increase over 2006. Their bogus science involves promoting positive-feedback “tipping point” theories.

 

WWF was started in 1961 as the funding arm for the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature – “the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network”). The IUCN/WWF under the auspices of Maurice Strong organized the Rio “Earth Summit” NGO Forum.

 

 

 

Maurice Strong made the following statement: “…partnership between IUCN and WWF. This, together with your new partnerships with organizations like the Earth Council and University for Peace, and links with the World Economic Forum and World Business Council for Sustainable Development provide IUCN with an unprecedented opportunity for leadership in developing the new mechanisms of global governance.” [http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/resources/files/strong_jordan.htm]

 

The World Resources Institute (WRI) is an environmental think tank started in 1982 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and has many corporate partners (including BP, Shell, Wal-Mart). The number one goal listed in their 2008 annual report [http://pdf.wri.org/wri_annualreport_2008.pdf] is: “Protect the global climate system from further harm due to emissions of greenhouse gases”. The annual report shows a picture of their labyrinth: “The rooftop of WRI’s headquarters in Washington, DC is now green, and houses a labyrinth. WRI collaborated on the project with the American Psychological Association (APA), the building owner.” The APA is trying to brainwash people and plans "to launch a national initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint ... stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet", as well as developing an “international agenda for psychology and climate change“ (See: [http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AGW_Psychology.htm#us_apa]) Al Gore is on the WRI board of directors; the board chairman – James Harmon is a Senior Advisor to the Rothschild Group and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Another board member, James Speth, (former president of WRI) was an administrator at UNEP and chair of the UN Development Group and is also on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. WRI Board member Frances Beineke is also the president of NRDC. Both Speth and another former WRI chairman, Jonathan Lash, were also formerly involved with the US government. Speth was head of the Carter Administration's Council on Environmental Quality and member of the Clinton - Gore transition team; Lash was Co-Chairman of the President's Council on Sustainable Development [http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html]

 

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change (whose slogan is “Working Together…Because Climate Change is Serious Business”) is tax-exempt organization created in 1998 to promote “innovative solutions” to global warming. (As mentioned previously, Enron was a founding member.) The president of the Pew CGCC is Eileen Claussen –“a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Singapore Energy Advisory Committee, the [GE] Ecomagination Advisory Board, the Natural Gas Council, the Harvard Environmental Economics Program Advisory Panel, and the U.S. Commodity Future Trading Commission’s Advisory Committee.” [http://www.pewclimate.org/about/staff/exec.cfm] The Pew Center started the Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC), which states: “The United States should significantly reduce its GHG emissions through economy-wide, mandatory approaches, which may vary by economic sector and include a flexible, market-based cap-and-trade program. Complementary policies may also be necessary for sectors” – i.e. legislation favoring the member corporations. The BELC member companies include many of the same corporations as in the US Climate Action Partnership, discussed below in the “Corporations” section – basically oil, mining, energy production, and related companies.

 

 

 

 

Corporations

 

The two main areas where corporations will benefit are trading the carbon credits and having “green” products subsidized by taxpayers and required by government regulations.

 

The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on fossil-fuel plant NOx and SOx emissions. In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulfur-dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. Enron became one of the biggest corporate boosters of the Kyoto global warming treaty, which would require huge reductions in energy use by consumers and industry. According to an internal Enron memo, quoted by The Washington Post, the Kyoto treaty would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. Enron became a founding member of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s Business Environmental Leadership Council, a leading industry front group pushing the Kyoto agenda. Enron chairman Ken Lay also served on the board of the Heinz Center for Science” [http://cei.org/gencon/019,02898.cfm] (The Heinz Center for Science gave NASA’s James Hansen $250,000 since he was manipulating the temperature station data via adjustments in order to promote global warming [http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3671])

 

Lawrence Solomon states it as: “The potential losses of an Exxon or a Shell are chump change, however, compared to the fortunes to be made from those very same regulations. …The climate-change industry — the scientists, lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and, most importantly, the multinationals that work behind the scenes to cash in on the riches at stake — has emerged as the world’s largest industry.

[http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/30/lawrence-solomon-enron-s-other-secret.aspx]

 

General Electric (one of the world’s leading wind turbine suppliers) stands to make huge sums of money from government imposed regulations. "The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever," General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues. "On climate change," Rice wrote, "we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses." Most of all, Waxman-Markey would profit a GE joint venture called Greenhouse Gas Services, which deals in greenhouse gas credits, products that have value only if a cap-and-trade bill like Waxman-Markey passes.[http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-GE-puts-the-government-to-work-for-GE-8154266-54820577.html]

 

Many corporations view the new “green” trend as a way to increase market share via government-imposed regulations. The United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) is “an expanding alliance of major businesses and leading climate and environmental groups that have come together to call on the federal government to enact legislation requiring significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.” [http://www.us-cap.org/about/index.asp] The USACP members include oil companies (Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips), car companies (Ford, Chrysler), energy companies (NRG Energy, Exelon), mineral extraction (Alcoa, Rio Tinto) and of course General Electric, among others. The environmental groups in this “alliance” include the World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and NRDC. “We believe the strongest way to achieve our emission reduction goals is a federal cap-and-trade program” See http://www.sightline.org/research/energy/res_pubs/windfalls/windfalls for an examination of the effects of what these companies are promoting: “windfall profits at the expense of consumers.

 

One member of the USCAP – DuPont – has decided that the “sustainable development” movement is where the money is. In 1986 DuPont patented alternatives to CFCs and battled against the ozone depleting chemicals it produced once it held the greatest advantage in regulation. Now since the passage of the House cap-n-trade bill, “DuPont will not only receive subsidies for upgrades and other investments it would have made regardless, it could even receive subsidies for such investments made before the bill was passed. … DuPont predicted that by 2015 it would be able to grow its annual greenhouse-gas related revenues by at least $2-billion a year, and that its sales of renewable materials that displace fossil fuels would double to $8-billion.” [http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/06/27/lawrence-solomon-dupont-s-new-game.aspx]

 

The US Chamber of Commerce opposed Obama’s plan to have the EPA regulate CO2 emissions. This has lead to several companies resigning from membership in the Chamber of Commerce. Exelon resigned of course – they are part of USCAP. On October 5 Apple resigned from the Chamber (Al Gore is on the board of directors of Apple).  [http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/10/05/exodus-apple-leaves-chamber-of-commerce-over-climate-spat/]

 

Al Gore went from a $2 million net worth when leaving office as vice-President to a more recent $100 million net worth. “He wants to make fossil fuels uncompetitive and renewable energy competitive by convincing governments to punishingly tax fossil-fuel technologies through mechanisms such as cap and trade. In the process, Gore intends to make money at every stage of this transformation — through his stake in the carbon trading markets being created, through his portfolio of renewable energy and other so-called clean-tech investments and by acting as a broker.[http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/08/26/lawrence-solomon-carbon-baron-gore.aspx]

 

Many powerful people at the corporations have a desire for global government. Carbon trading must be globally regulated: Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading. Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and regulated. … A key implication of creating a legal yet global system of trading is the loss of sovereignty it implies. … The European nations already do this, on certain issues, yielding sovereignty to the EU. And in time, the EU itself will eventually have to yield to a larger body … So emissions trading could establish a new world order[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3323732/Carbon-trading-must-be-globally-regulated.html]

 

See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/CarbonMonetization.htm for information on the companies planning to scam the carbon credit trading, as well as their connections to the UN etc.

 

 

 

U.S. Congress

 

In 1990, the United States Congress enacted the Global Change Research Act, which required the administration to report annually on funding for climate change science. According to a 2005 General Accounting Office report, Federal climate change funding, as reported by OMB, increased from $2.35 billion in 1993 to $5.09 billion in 2004“. The following table is from that report (NOAA is within the Dept. of Commerce). This provides an increasing amount of taxpayer dollars to researchers, who thus do not want global warming to be shown to be a scam. This also influences who speaks out – only retired professors or those with very secure jobs will speak out against the scam (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/TheExperts.htm)

 

 

 

The US Congress started viewing carbon cap-and-trade as a source of government income. In 2008 Senator Dianne Feinstein of Califor­nia introduced a measure for government oversight as part of the CO2 trading. She said: “This landmark legislation will not only signifi­cantly reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, it will also generate tremendous economic potential. In fact, new carbon markets – with annual values of approximately $300 billion – are expected to emerge once Congress establishes a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions.” [http://www.apx.com/documents/APX-on-Market-Oversight.pdf]

 

House speaker Pelosi (Jan. 2009): “She said she hopes to hold a vote before December, when climate negotiators gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to work on a successor to the treaty many countries adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. "I believe we have to because we see that as a source of revenue," she said, noting that proposed cap-and-trade bills would raise billions of dollars by forcing major emitters to buy credits to release greenhouse gases.

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/22/MN5Q15EJQ2.DTL]

 

President Obama wants Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authority under the Clean Air Act if legislators don't move fast enough or create strong enough provisions. Obama wants a CO2 cap-and-trade system put in place with “an economy-wide law - instead of just some major emitting sectors - and to auction off 100% of the emission credits, which analysts say could exponentially increase the cost of emitting, as well as the pay-off for low-carbon projects” [http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200902221138DOWJONESDJONLINE000312_FORTUNE5.htm] Industry fears it could shut down the economy, not only preventing plants from operating and spurring a dramatic retooling of the energy sector but also pushing up costs and hurting the international competitiveness for a raft of sectors”.

 

The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill has been passed by the House, but they had to make many concessions to groups to get it passed – so it won’t bring the expected income to the government. Many Senators say the bill would hurt the economy. But the lobby dollars flow: “Senate progress towards climate change legislation is already irretrievably mired in parochial conflicts” [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ah3CTKEw4HQc]

 

And now the Senate is working on the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill, which will not only punish American companies, but also fund deficit reduction as well as fund developing countries. See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/KerryBoxerAct.htm

 

Obama and the Democrats say this “non-tax” will create millions of green jobs. Without these government regulations in place to pass the costs on to consumers, the reality is that green technologies in the US cannot compete. Even though “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the stimulus package, created a $2.3 billion program that gives manufacturers of renewable-energy components tax breaks”, companies are closing US manufacturing. “General Electric Co. (GE) plans to shut down its only solar-panel manufacturing facility [in Delaware], as it found that prices for panels fell below production costs … The decision to shut down production was "mainly due to the challenges in the solar industry, including overcapacity levels that are twice demand and industry pricing that's below the cost of producing the panels," … GE's production facility is a victim of a rapidly evolving solar market, where older U.S. plants are shutting down, reducing production, or outsourcing abroad, even as some foreign manufacturers, like those from China, plan to open new manufacturing in the U.S. … BP Solar International Inc., part of BP PLC (BP), announced in April that it would close panel production in Frederick, Md., and in Madrid, eliminating 620 positions. It also is drawing more on outsourced manufacturing through Chinese suppliers.” [http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200911060915DOWJONESDJONLINE000459_FORTUNE5.htm]

 

 

 

Rent Seekers

 

[last update: 2011/05/19]

 

Global warming is a great excuse for various rent-seeking groups to demand money from “rich” countries.

This page provides links to documents on rent seekers scamming for global warming money.

 

See also: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/UNCopenhagenPrep.htm for a large gathering of rent-seekers.

 

The Group

The Rent Seeking

 

 

Siemens

May 2011

> Siemens sees “billions” from government legislation

“The head of Munich-based Siemens AG (SI)’s U.S. unit said he is unhappy that federal energy policymakers in Washington are no longer focusing on climate change. … “I’m pretty concerned about where we are on climate change,” he said. There were “billions and billions and billions of dollars” in projects waiting to go forward had Congress passed climate legislation, Spiegel said. …

 

See: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-16/siemens-u-s-chief-concerned-by-inattention-to-climate-change.html for details.

 

 

 

Exelon

January 2010

> Members of USCAP see fortunes to be made from government legislated cap and trade

Exelon - the country's most valuable utility by market value. Soon after Rowe created Exelon in 2000 with the merger of the Chicago utility Unicom and the Philadelphia utility Peco, he sold off most of the company's coal plants and focused the company on nuclear. He created a generation subsidiary that sells the power produced by 17 reactors, by far the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third biggest in the world. Exelon's nukes turn out 130 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year and not a single metric ton of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas. That's a nice place to be now that it appears that Washington--helped along by Rowe's lobbying--is going to impose a price on carbon. Exelon needs that legislation to happen sooner rather than later. Without a carbon price of some sort, Exelon's fortunes aren't so bright … Exelon has very deep ties to the Obama Administration.

The President's Utility
Ties are tight between Exelon and the Obama Administration:

President Obama. Frank Clark, chief executive of Exelon's ComEd, is a big Obama fundraiser, helping him launch his run for President.

Rahm Emanuel. John Rowe hired Emanuel (Obama's chief of staff, then at an investment bank) for advice on the 2000 merger that created Exelon.

David Axelrod. His consulting firm helped concoct a public ComEd campaign for rate increases (before he became Obama's chief political strategist).

 

See: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/americas-best-company-10-exelon-utility-tax-carbon-windfall.html for details.

 

 

 

IPCC’s Pachauri

December 2009

> The head of the IPCC makes a fortune

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all. What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations. … raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations. … In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion. … The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company.

 

See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html for details.

 

 

 

African Union

August 2009

> The African Union wants the US to pay

African leaders will ask rich nations for $67 billion per year to cushion the impact of global warming… Environment and agriculture ministers from several nations are meeting at African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian captical of Addis Ababa to try to agree a common stance before a UN summit… Earlier this year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called on rich countries to compensate Africa for warming, arguing that pollution in the northern hemisphere may have caused his country's ruinous famines in the 1980s”.

 

See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GWForAfrica.htm for details.

 

 

 

Oxfam 

July 2009

> Oxfam doesn’t understand science

Climate change is damaging people’s lives today. … Some of the most worrying new science focuses on the likelihood of more extreme droughts as a result of global warming, and of large-scale and possible abrupt changes in arctic, mountain, and tropical forest ecosystems. … Oxfam’s experience in nearly 100 countries is definitive: hundreds of millions of people are already suffering damage from a rapidly changing climate, which is frustrating their efforts to escape poverty” They conflate individual cyclones / hurricane events as being caused by global warming. They use anecdotal stories of individual farmers instead of science. That’s because: “This paper is about the impact of climate change on humans. It does not seek to debate the science behind this or objectively review it. Much of the existing science is complex and by its nature speculative”. In other words the paper does not purport to be objective, but to tug at the money strings.

 

See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Oxfam.htm for details.