Post by marchesarosa on Jun 30, 2011 9:44:08 GMT 1
The Log in the Eye of Greenpeace
Posted on June 29, 2011 by Anthony Watts
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, (~$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: www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=8943
“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.
more here with all the links
wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/the-log-in-the-eye-of-greenpeace/#more-42427
Posted on June 29, 2011 by Anthony Watts
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, (~$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: www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=8943
“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.
more here with all the links
wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/the-log-in-the-eye-of-greenpeace/#more-42427
