What is with the media? - by Richard... Tuesday, December 22, 2009

What is with the media? - by Richard... Tuesday, December 22, 2009

We noted earlier that the New York Inner City Press had quizzed UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon on Dr Pachauri's financial affairs. This was at a packed press conference on the Copenhagen Accord in the UN building, where hundreds of reporters were present. And at least one other picked up the Pachauri story, writing this:

The lack of transparency has been an on-going critique throughout the climate negotiations. On Sunday, the Telegraph reported that the head of the UN's climate change panel, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, has made a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies.

His worldwide portfolio, which includes banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in "carbon trading" and "sustainable technologies," is estimated soon to be worth trillions of U.S. dollars a year, according to the British newspaper. 

As chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Pachauri could find himself in a conflict of interest as many of the companies he advises is dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations. 

When asked about the allegations, Ban replied in general terms, saying that businesses are bound to profit from a world-wide agreement on climate matters. "Businesses psychology will shift with this political accord," he said. 

"As soon as this climate Copenhagen accord is translated into a legally binding treaty, I'm sure that the business community will shift their business operations towards a green growth economy."

And the source of this report? Ah! The state-owned China Daily press agency, Xinhuanet. No British media organisation covered the story. If you want information, go to Communist China.

PACHAURI THREAD

Print ready

Wheels coming off? - by Richard...

Via the Examiner we see a report in the Christian Science Monitor. It tells us that a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50 percent of likely (US) voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.

One slightly false note - the Examiner says: "... the climate alarmists now have a long way to go to re-establish their credibility with the public at large." Nah! They've blown it. If after 20 years of propaganda, this is the best they can achieve, then they are going nowhere.

Interesting though how many of the media stories on the current vile weather fail to mention global warming (lack of) in their copy. You can bet that if there was anything that could be remotely attributed to their religion, it would be right up-front.

(Pic: outside the back door 18:00 hrs GMT - global warming very much in evidence.)

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

Print ready

Welt online - by Richard...

The Germans are getting very interested in the affairs of Dr Pachauri. They have even translatedThe Sunday Telegraph article into German (in full). That has to be a first for us.

Interestingly, no other British newspaper has carried the story - much less the BBC of course - and the main British political blogs also haven't touched it. 

PACHAURI THREAD

Print ready

Global corruption - by Richard...

In the wake of my piece yesterday on the power of the internet, we see a laborious op-ed in The Daily Telegraph on precisely that theme. 

This one is from Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, who argues that: " ... the internet allows the rebirth of communities and the strengthening of society in a way that its founders never envisaged. Understanding that simple fact has the power to transform the relationship between politicians and the people who give them their jobs.

This is the sort of lame waffle that you expect of politicians, who vaguely realise that there is a thing out there called the internet, but don't really understand it or begin to appreciate its power.

He does not, for instance, mention the storm of activity over the recent Climategate episode, the most recent and effective demonstration of internet power, which forced the issue onto the MSM agenda when most journalists were keen to bury it.

But what particularly Hunt fails to understand is that two things have happened to transform society, of which the internet is but one. The other is that corruption has gone global. Local politicians who take positions of power in their own countries can – as has Tony Blair – tap into an international network of influence and corruption, with vastly more opportunities for self-enrichment, freed from the restraints of local supervision and bodies like parliaments which were set up in another age to perform this function.

This is also where the MSM is trailing. Even our big national newspapers are basically local rags, more interested in the affairs of the local Westminster village. And many of the political blogs have fallen into the same trap. Parochial to a fault, they still regard the European Union as "foreign affairs" and the workings of the raft of international bodies such as the UN are foreign territory to them.

For political leaders in any one country, however – including our own – these bodies form a support group. They provide a network, an opportunity for grandstanding and the portal to untold riches and influence, all completely divorced from democratic controls and the legal restraints – which are also, essentially, parochial. 

If you want to be a thief on a grand scale, become a politician in an international institution. You will be showered with honours and given a police escort to the airport and a taxpayer-funded first-calls ride to a destination of your choice, where you can spend your ill-gotten gains free from scrutiny. While the "locals" rip-off thousands and the occasional million, these crooks are into billions, sharing the spoils between them.

If you want global government, which as EURSOC points out has moved from the realms of the crank to a serious subject, it is already there in the form of that informal nexus of corruption which binds the "world leaders" and their fellow travellers, the international corporations and the raft of tranzie organisations, NGOs, faux charities and foundations.

And that is where the internet comes in. Like corruption, it too is global. It has become the global gamekeeper to catch the global poacher. The thieves can run but they cannot hide, for the internet represents the eyes and ears of a global community which, increasingly, is becoming tired of being ripped-off, tired of the impotence of their local politicians – whose only real interest is to get on board the international gravy train – and tired of being taken for fools.

Global corruption, therefore, looks to be the theme of the forthcoming year. It looks as if we are going to be busy.

GLOBAL CORRUPTION THREAD

Print ready

Finger on the pulse - by Richard...

WUWT has his finger on the pulse reporting that the blogs are making the running on global warming, leaving the MSM trailing. From here, with an interesting picture from February, to here, a blog from a science writer in Germany, this is building a momentum that is becoming unstoppable.

We are on the edge of something here which is so big it staggers the imagination – a vast, global nexus of corruption that pervades virtually every single government in the world with its taint. Pachauri is the tiny tip of a huge iceberg. And it is people-power that is going to bring them down.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

Print ready

False signals? - by Richard...

How much of this lack of preparedness, one wonders, is due to the false signals given by the Met Office to the airport authorities about global warming – thus lulling them into a false sense of security about the need to equip properly and develop appropriate systems? With the Met Officeonly recently forecasting a mild winter, is it surprising that the airlines and airports have been caught out?

If you look at the picture, the plant you see is a standard bucket loader - the sort of kit you will see on many construction sites. It is not dedicated snow clearance equipment. The bucket loader is slow, inefficient and can cause considerable damage to runway and taxi-way fittings. Pressing this sort of kit into service shrieks that the snow-clearance operation is being run on a shoe-string - as you would if you were only expecting mild weather.

And the Met Office is not getting any better at it. Forecasters, we are told, fear that their original prediction of one or two inches of snow on Monday may have been an underestimate, and gave warning that much of the South East may see more than four inches. Temperatures were expected to drop to as low as 21F (-6C) in some parts of the country overnight, the Met Office said.

And they want us to believe they can forecast ahead to 2020 and beyond?

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD