Climate money: Bigger money moves in

Climate Money is poised to rocket—creating even larger pools of vested interests. Once it starts, how could we unwind trillions of trading rights?

Say hello to the real new force in climate science—banks.

The Shadow of Stratospheric Climate Money. Far north South Australia, Aug 2009.

First Up. Governments Up the Ante.

In the 2008-2009 financial year, Bush threw billions on the table with financial rescues and tax credits, only to be wildly outdone by Obama.

The new funding provisions made since the financial emergency of Sept 2008 are not included in the previous table of climate funds that amounted to $79 billion (so far). It’s difficult to assign the rescue package figures into strict financial years—yet the new numbers are titanic, and step right out of the scales drawn on the past funding graphs.

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Cluster’s last stand

One of the signs of a change in the slope of temperatures is the change in the slope of PR descriptions.

After chanting “The hottest year ever recorded” the message became the “second hottest year on record”, and after that, four of the five hottest years ever; and now, eight of the ten hottest years.

Look out for “12 of the hottest 15 years ever”… it’s coming.

It’s time to knock this on the head. It’s true, but meaningless. It appeals to that prehistoric part of our brains and “gets” to people in the same way that rising stock markets do. For example back in October 2007 we could have said that the top 8 of 10 record Dow Jones results were set that month (and look what that did for the Dow?)

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Climate money: Big government outspends big oil

The Exxon “Blame-Game” is a Distracting Side Show

Much media attention has relentlessly focused on the influence of “Big Oil”—but the numbers don’t add up. Exxon Mobil is still vilified1 for giving around 23 million dollars, spread over roughly ten years, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.

Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.)

As an example for comparison, nearly three times the amount Exxon has put in was awarded to the Big Sky sequestration project2 to store just 0.1% of the annual carbon-dioxide output3 of the United States of America in a hole in the ground. The Australian government matched five years of Exxon funding with just one feel-good advertising campaign4 , “Think Climate. Think Change.” (but […]

Ilmastoskeptikon käsikirja -Hello Finland

The Skeptics Handbook continues to storm the world. (If I do say so myself). 🙂

Once again, there is no shortage of people who are willing to work pro bono to help fight the scam.

I’m told Finland has a very active community of climate realists. (And as it happens, over 1000 people from Finland have visited this distant site so far this calendar year without even a reference to Finland, or Finnish text before now).

There are plenty of Scandinavian skeptics all round and this translation adds to the already competed versions in Norwegian and Swedish. (Where are the Danes?)

So send this version to all your Finnish friends and enemies! (Click on the image to download the booklet).

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