"What are you lookin'at?" --- The Arctic habitat of polar bears is under threat as climate change - [thank GOD this caption did not go with the less provable phrase, Global Warming, which has a politically monied connotation and edge to it]- causes ice to melt. Image Credit: Joseph Napaaqtuq Sage/APEquality Shows Itself In Many Forms
Here is an item that might warm your heart and cause the brain cells to spin.
The following story goes into detail as to how some scientists are offered "cash" to dispute the United Nations supported climate study.
At MAXINE, the first thing that leaps to mind is an educational system infrastructure where scientists and educators are awarded grants to "study" the cause and effect of climate and change by bureaucracies and politicians who are able to use government monies to influence and sustain the power they naturally have. Government money is collected, lobbied for by interested parties, assigned to niche programs, and fed to educational research and study programs.
So what is wrong with a little "equal" time and influence in the development of a study or message ... after all, who pays the scientists at the capitalist system-hating United Nations and what is in "IT" for them? The ego, prestige, and political control exerted through international agreements like --- Kyoto, do ya' think?
Fair & Balanced is what we like to see at MAXINE!
Excerpts from The Guardian (UK) –
Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
Ian Sample, science correspondent - The Guardian - Friday February 2, 2007
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.
The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".
Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.
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"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."
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Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."
On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.
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So there you have it, the authoritative and balanced voice of Greenpeace states "The AEI ... functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."
At this moment, the UN has lost on the debate as to who isn't on the take!
Have we (the world) already forgotten the unimaginable torts and betrayal found in the "Oil-For-Food" program negotiated and managed by the United Nations over this last decade?
Isn't the funding by the UN of a scientific report, that promotes an international agreement, that the United Nations would be tasked in managing, just a little suspect?
At MAXINE, we are just askin' questions.
Additional background information about Kyoto and a reaction from China about the report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
