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Compiled by Steve Jalsevac

CANCUN CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT

Global Warming Hysteria: Attempted International Power Grab
– Wesley J. Smith
Some are using climate fears as a pretext to destroy the nation state system and replace it with a radically socialist authoritarianism controlled by international bureaucrats and despots, who would use the power of bureaucracies and criminal tribunals to bring the wealthy West to heel and redistribute its wealth to the poor–after the usual take off the top for corruption.

If they got their way, we would see the creation of a massive international collective that would keep the destitute mired in self-imposed misery and destroy human freedom. Lest you think I suffer from global warming hysteria, hysteria, pay careful attention to the statement by the President of Bolivia at Cancun.

Cancun’s Climate Crock
– American Thinker
It began with a prayer to the Mayan moon goddess, and it has quickly devolved into a junk science circus. Delegates to the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico were greeted by the Convention’s Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, who prayed to the goddess Ixchel.

Calling Ixchel “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving,” Figueres prayed, “May she inspire you—because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.”

Deutsche’s climate – Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
The corporate climatechange bandwagon, an unprecedented global scramble of money-grubbing and subsidy-seeking opportunists, shows no signs of ending. Whatever the failures and limitations of last week’s United Nations’ conference in Cancun, the prospect of cashing in on the idea of carbon-free energy has galvanized corporate players all over the world, generating a momentum that seems to have left the UN effort in the dust.

The carbon targets proposed in the Kyoto Protocol may be too crazy for governments to adopt, but they’re just fine with all the banks, solar power firms, turbine makers, consultants, real estate speculators, regulatory manipulators, scammers and spinners who aim to make a killing off climate change. An example of such a pro-climate change campaign is the work of Deutsche Bank, the giant German financial institution that has imbedded itself in the renewable energy field. Deutsche Bank claims to have funded more than $5-billion in renewable projects

Caritas welcomes Cancun climate deal – Catholic Culture
Caritas Internationalis, the consortium of Catholic relief and development agencies, welcomed the results of the recent Cancun summit on climate change. Negotiators there agreed to a “Green Climate Fund” under which wealthier nations would offer $100 billion in annual aid to impoverished nations to help them deal with the effects of climate change.

Development and Peace statement on the UN Conference on Climate Change in Cancun

Climate change is an issue of justice. Because carbon emissions are produced mainly by the wealthy countries of the North, yet their effect is felt more acutely by the poor countries of the Global South, climate change is an issue of justice that concerns Development and Peace.

As a Canadian organization, Development and Peace is ashamed at our government’s dismal history on reducing carbon emissions. Development and Peace can only echo the conclusions of other Canadian civil society organizations, including our ecumenical partner organization Kairos, who are calling for a national consultation on Canada’s climate policy after a November 2010 opinion poll found that over 80 percent of the Canadian public favour a radical change in the government’s climate change policies.

Development and Peace also echoes the call of the Cochabamba World People’s Conference on Climate Change for a World Climate and Justice Tribunal to judge and penalize countries and corporations whose actions have contributed to climate change and damaged the environment.


WEATHER REALITIES

There’s a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts – Sydney Morning Herald
Meteorologist Piers Corbyn has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again. Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its “mild winter” schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people – notably in farming – are starting to invest in his forecasts. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years.

Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain

The two-week period, last week of November and first week of December is the coldest since CET records began in 1659.

GREEN IDEOLOGY

Inhofe: Playing Up China’s Green Energy Status Is ‘Pretext for Imposing That Statist Vision on the American Economy’

Vaclav Klaus: Environmentalists hold an anti-human ideology – Financial Post
If we take the reasoning of the environmentalists seriously, we find that theirs is an anti-human ideology. To reduce the interpretation of the causality of all kinds of climate changes and of global warming to one variable, CO2, or to a small proportion of one variable — human-induced CO2 — is impossible to accept.

The rise of global temperature started approximately 150 years ago, but man-made CO2 emissions did not start to grow visibly before the 1940s. Many environmentalists want to save the planet, not mankind.

How is it possible that so many politicians, their huge bureaucracies, important groups in the scientific establishment, an important segment of business people and almost all journalists see it differently? The only reasonable explanation is that — without having paid sufficient attention to the arguments — they have already invested too much into global warming alarmism. Some of them are afraid that by losing this doctrine their political and professional pride would suffer. Others are earning a lot of money on it and are afraid of losing that source of income.

Venezuela’s Chavez blames capitalism for deluges rains that have brought chaos to Venezuela
“The environmental imbalance capitalism has caused is without doubt the fundamental cause of the alarming atmospheric phenomena,” he wrote in his weekly opinion column. Though such talk has won praise from some campaigners, Venezuela is an unlikely climate champion given it is a major global oil exporter and also a famously consumerist society.

A charity with plenty of very long tentacles
– Kevin Libin, National Post
In late October, a group of environmental and social justice activists met at a remote lodge on Cortes Island, 150 kilometres north of Vancouver, up the Georgia Strait. The four-day gathering was billed as the Social Change Institute—an event that says it “gathers seasoned and emerging leaders with thinkers and trainers from the change-making world”—and it’s been happening for years. The lodge is called the Hollyhock Centre, a New Age retreat known for its holistic healing circles, Shaman drum making workshops and Tantric “sacred sexuality” seminars.

Under the direction of the American Tides Center, the organizing branch of Tides, those recipients eventually included, besides hospitals, schools, religious groups and museums, a catalogue of left-wing causes, everything from anti-war groups and anti-gun groups to pro-choice efforts, gay-marriage advocates and numerous environmental causes, ranging from the mainstream, such as Ducks Unlimited, to more hard-core anti-industry groups like Corporate Ethics International.

In an interview this spring with the liberal U.S. website, Huffington Post, Mr. Solomon went further, explaining that he and Ms. Newell had concocted a 500-year vision for the planet, incremented into sequential 50-year strategies.

ECONOMIC REALITIES

The growing fallout of the shale revolution – Financial Post
A sign that shale gas has great potential is that greens are trying to shut it down. The Marcellus shale field alone, in New York and Pennsylvania, has been estimated to be worth as much as US$2-trillion. The American Petroleum Institute has calculated that it could support 280,000 jobs. In Quebec, a report this week suggested that the industry could create almost 5,000 jobs a year for the next 10 years.

So much for running out of hydrocarbons. As for the geopolitical implications, shale gas, which is also present in large volumes in Europe, promises to reduce the significance of both Russian and Iranian gas, along with those suppliers’ potential for causing trouble.

The Energy Equation: Practical Fact vs. Political Fiction
In terms of generating electricity, both wind and solar power systems are in the early phases, and it remains to be seen how much they can contribute to solving our energy problems.  Wind farms require huge amounts of real estate; they are expensive to construct; maintenance is expensive and downtime common; and they pose a danger to birds, especially migratory waterfowl.  They are also are extremely difficult and costly to maintain. 

Solar power has improved, but like with wind power, it has not reached the point where it can be embraced as the key to self-sufficiency. Despite this, the Obama administration has poured billions of dollars into the coffers of preferred companies such as General Electric and foreign manufacturers in establishing installations that will shortly become obsolete—if they aren’t already.

‘Coal war’ with Beijing next hit on U.S. economy
– WorldNetDaily
Obama said, “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

The next serious crisis for Americans could be a lack of coal to run the power plants that light up computer screens, heat microwave dinners and turn on the big-screen televisions, according to experts on the issue.

Coal-fired plants produce 80 percent of the electricity in China and demand for electricity is growing roughly 99 percent a year. It’s hard to comprehend how fast demand for coal is growing in China…” The report noted China today consumes three times the coal of the U.S., but has only half of the U.S. coal reserves.


DEMOCRATS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

U.S. Attorney General: Martin Luther King Father Of Environmental Justice Movement – CNS
Holder also said he is calling on all U.S. Attorney’s offices to start examining environmental requirements in conjunction with civil rights laws.

Napolitano Says DHS to Begin Battling Climate Change as Homeland Security Issue
– CNS
At an all-day White House conference on “environmental justice,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.