Members' Contributions

Climate Scam: A dire threat to sovereignty.

DOHA, Qatar – Ms. Christiana Figueres, chief secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, has told a press conference here that the 18th Conference of the States Parties will bring about “a complete economic transformation of the world.”

She does not have in mind a democratic, free-market transformation. The intention of these 18 successive annual vacations for the world’s pampered dictators in exotic, sun-drenched locations is what it always was: to create a treaty binding more than 190 nations to do as the Secretariat says. Democracy? What’s that?

Todd Stern, the U.S. lead negotiator, was similarly upbeat at his own press conference here. With all the fervor of an evangelical preacher in an Alabama mega-church, he predicted that the “Doha Way Forward,” following the “Bali Road-Map,” the “Durban Platform,” etc., would achieve a second Kyoto Protocol – a treaty that all the nations of the world would ratify.

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations First Avenue and East 44^th Street, New York, New York, U.S.A. November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General:

On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”

The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

15 November 2012

The “hysterical and ill-informed rants” in Parliament by Green Party MPs following the Government’s decision not to recommit to the Kyoto Protocol have been criticized by the chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, Hon Barry Brill.

“The use of emotive terms like ‘ecocide’ and scaremongering claims of detriment to our children and grandchildren is over-the-top rhetoric which has become typical of Green Party reaction to all climate-related issues. The Government’s decision to back the mainstream negotiating track has nothing whatever to do with jeopardising children or being ‘clean’ or ‘pure’. It’s simply a decision that makes practical sense, said Mr Brill.

As long expected, the Government has announced that future climate change commitments will be made through the UN’s negotiating track, rather than the alternative Kyoto track sponsored by the EU.

Seeds of Change:

Solutions sprouting from grass-roots efforts

By Tom Knudson

Sacramento Bee
(Published April 26, 2001 - 5 of 5)

Change is knocking on the door of America's environmental movement. Change is remodeling it from within.

From the outside, the pressure is coming from ranchers, corporate executives, small-town merchants, educators, schoolkids and other ordinary people embracing a home-grown style of environmentalism that is quietly saving species, restoring forests and grasslands, and preserving open space.

From the inside, it is coming from a broad spectrum of environmentalists -- chief executive officers, fund-raising specialists, state directors, program officers, lawyers and others -- struggling to bring more science, entrepreneurial skill, accountability, teamwork and results to a movement they say has grown self-righteous, inefficient, chaotic and shrill.

"Haphazard conservation is worse than haphazard development. We've had haphazard conservation for 30 years," said Patrick Noonan, chairman of The Conservation Fund, a Virginia group that provides financial and technical support to small environmental organizations.

Yet this new brand of stewardship remains more seed than storm, lacking the clamor and conflict that often accompany environmental news. Its disciples do not view the world darkly. Their habitat is one of hope, not hype.

"We've effectively sold the idea that the world is screwed up," said Dan Taylor, executive director of the National Audubon Society's California chapter. "What people are looking for now are some durable solutions on how to make it better."

Playing with fire: Spin on science

puts national treasure at risk

(Fourth of five parts)

By Tom Knudson
Bee Staff Writer
(Published April 25, 2001)

The scientific paper that landed on Tammy Randall-Parker's desk was thick with jargon and data. But to Randall-Parker, a biologist with the Coconino National Forest in Arizona, it was riveting.

Citing an enormous accumulation of vegetation and deadwood in Western forests -- the legacy of years of effective federal firefighting -- the report by a prestigious team of specialists warned that unless such stands were thinned, they were likely to erupt into flame, threatening a rare, falcon-like bird: the northern goshawk.

Randall-Parker felt compelled to act. But when she and others suggested thinning near a goshawk nest, environmentalists protested on the bird's behalf, stopping the proposal dead.

Then came the fire that Randall-Parker feared. "I watched it just explode," she said. The 1996 blaze devoured centuries-old trees as if they were kindling -- including the one that cradled the goshawk nest.

"There was not a green tree left," she said. "What the scientists said could happen -- did happen, right in front of my eyes."

Environmental advocacy has long struggled with scientific fact, despite its very basis in science. But in the battle over the majestic conifer forests that blanket much of the West, advocacy is often shoving science aside -- and forests, wildlife and human communities are suffering the consequences.

Tweaking science to make a point is nothing new for environmental groups. To protect rare species, for example, some groups trot out just those studies -- or snippets of studies -- that support their view. Some will pick and choose facts that serve their interests in campaigns to create wilderness areas.

Litigation central: A flood of costly lawsuits raises questions about motive

(Third of five parts)

By Tom Knudson
Bee Staff Writer
(Published April 24, 2001)

No one knows the Sacramento splittail better than Peter Moyle.

For 20 years, Moyle, a professor of fisheries biology at the University of California, Davis, has struggled to protect the silvery fish that lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. He even helped prepare a petition requesting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service list the fish under the Endangered Species Act in 1992.

But when the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity sued the wildlife service in 1998 to force a ruling on the petition, Moyle wasn't pleased.

The reason? By then, three wet winters had touched off a splittail population explosion. What's more, a multibillion-dollar habitat restoration plan for the Delta, called Cal-Fed, was brightening the fish's future.

"I was sorry to see it," Moyle said of the suit. "Things were getting better."

When Moyle later learned that the center's law firm had been awarded $13,714 in public money for a court victory that led to the fish being listed as "threatened," he was shocked.

Suing the government has long been a favorite tactic of the environmental movement -- used to score key victories for clean air, water and endangered species. But today, many court cases are yielding an uncertain bounty for the land and sowing doubt even among the faithful.

Green machine: Mission adrift in a frenzy of fund raising

(Second of five parts)

By Tom Knudson
Bee Staff Writer
(Published April 23, 2001)

Dear Friend,
I need your help to stop an impending slaughter.
Otherwise, Yellowstone National Park -- an American wildlife treasure -- could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups!

So begins a fund-raising letter from one of America's fastest-growing environmental groups -- Defenders of Wildlife.

Using the popular North American gray wolf as the hub of an ambitious campaign, Defenders has assembled a financial track record that would impress Wall Street.

In 1999, donations jumped 28 percent to a record $17.5 million. The group's net assets, a measure of financial stability, grew to $14.5 million, another record. And according to its 1999 annual report, Defenders spent donors' money wisely, keeping fund-raising and management costs to a lean 19 percent of expenses.

But there is another side to Defenders' dramatic growth.

Special Series in the Sacramento Bee

By Pulitzer Prize Winning Writer Tom Knudson

To our readers

(Published April 22, 2001)

Today, on the 31st anniversary of Earth Day, the environmental movement is at a crossroads. No one can deny its many successes in preserving precious natural resources, but they have come with a price. In fact, some say the environmental movement is fighting for its very soul.

In this five-part series, Tom Knudson, The Bee's Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental reporter, examines the high-powered fund raising, the litigation and the public relations machine that has come to characterize much of the movement today. His stories are based on exhaustive research conducted over 16 months with travel to 12 states and northern Mexico. And what he has found is that the movement established, in part, to combat the influence of the powerful has itself become big business.

-- Rick Rodriguez
Executive Editor

The NZ Climate Science Coalition- press release- 20 September 2012

“Day 258 of 2012 is the highest for this date since satellite scanning of Antarctic ice areas commenced 33 years ago” the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition announced today. “It is also the fifth highest daily value on record.”

Coalition chairman, Hon Barry Brill, says the most remarkable aspect is the extent to which the 2012 area exceeds normal Antarctica averages. “The sea ice cover yesterday was 311,000 square kilometres above the 1979-2012 average. The surplus ice is more than twice the area of New Zealand”.

“The Antarctic dimensions come partly at the expense of Arctic sea ice” said Mr Brill. “Over the 33-year period aggregate global sea ice volumes have remained steady, but there are fluctuations between the two polar areas from year to year. The fluctuations are the result of ocean currents and wind patterns, rather than temperatures”.

“Antarctic ice is much more important than that of the Arctic. The area of its sea ice is a million square kilometres larger than the highest value ever recorded in the Arctic. Then, of course, the Antarctic is an entire continent, with more than 90% of the earth’s glacial ice” said Mr Brill.

Mr Kennedy Graham  MP, PhD

Green List MP

Parliament Buildings

Wellington

            cc        Rt. Hon  Lockwood Smith  MP, PhD

              Hon Amy Adams  MP, Minister for the Environment

              Hon Simon Bridges  MP

              Ms Jan Wright, PhD, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

              Rupert  C. E. Wyndham