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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If we put the issue of man made environmental pollution aside for a moment and consider the issues raised by Hockensmith's article, there are a lot of things to think about. Scientific research, and the information that comes from it, is so important to the many things that we do over time.

As a Southern California native with an interest in our weather, it is clear to me that we are totally out of line population-wise to readily deal with potential water extremes. Water is a critical element that has had huge impacts to the environment and civilization over time. Really, it's not about controlling environmental climate and weather, but how we live in harmony with it. If you're doing something wrong, it's best to recognize it.

When you think about it, taking on a denial role with respect to the knowledge that we've learned about our planet is a dangerous path. Ignorance is so easy to peddle today. The Koch brothers have done every well getting folks to look the other way.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What is the political purpose behind global warming?
I thought it was all economic, with folks who make money putting CO2 in the air wanting to continue and a bunch of do gooders wanting to save us?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Who the hell are the Koch's? Start here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Koch_Industries

Then there is this:



Quote:
Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network



It is impossible to track all of the funds going into denial propaganda; one of the sources I've come across said that they spent a billion in 2013. The Supreme Court opened the door to secret donations, so if you think you are getting reputable journalism if you don't watch Fox, you are wrong.

A study was published in late 2013 tracking what can be tracked about the funding. Here, from the author:

Quote:
By Robert J. Bruelle, PhD

A new study conducted by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.

Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding countermovement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to countermovement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.

Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The study was published Friday in Climatic Change, one of the top 10 climate science journals in the world.

The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.

“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming,” said Brulle. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight—often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians—but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what’s driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes.”

To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service.

The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010. The data shows that these 91 organizations have an annual income of just more than $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities, Brulle notes.

Key findings include:

Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as: the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.
Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.
Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25 percent of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.
Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75 percent of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.
“The real issue here is one of democracy. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible,” said Brulle. “Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square. Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts.”

This study is part one of a three-part project by Brulle to examine the climate movement in the U.S. at the national level. The next step in the project is to examine the environmental movement or the climate change movement. Brulle will then compare the whole funding flow to the entire range of organizations on both sides of the debate.

Brulle has authored numerous articles and book chapters on environmental science, and is a frequent media commentator on climate change. He co-edited Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (2005) with David Pellow, and is the author of Agency, Democracy, and Nature: U.S. Environmental Movements from a Critical Theory Perspective (2000).

Brulle previously served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Coast Guard for two decades. He received a doctorate in sociology from George Washington University, a master of science degree in natural resources from the University of Michigan, a master of arts degree in sociology from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor of science degree in marine engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you're short of water SWC, bring your buckets over here. Half our country is beneath it! ('Well Watered Lands' as my first childhood atlas called us.)

It has nothing to do with climate change, despite the attempts of some stupid politicians to pass the buck for their mismanagement of things. It is a longish term problem of very heavy rainfall during some winters, which has been known about, and successfully coped with for centuries past, by DREDGING all the flood plain rivers and waterways, to prevent them backing up and fllooding the lands.

The Environmental Agency, whose job it is to manage things STOPPED dredging operations over 20 years ago to pursue more fashionable 'green' agendas of saving the habitats of birds, beetles, and whatever else they thought took precedence over people.

They were warned of the consequences of not dredging, but they knew best (still building new houses on the flood plains) and chickens have now come home to roost. Thousands are now virtually homeless, and livelihoods have been ruined.

Millions are now going to have to be spent just to catch back up with the past. Why has common sense deserted so many supposedly sophisticated people nowadays? (Roll on the next mini-ice age!)
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

G.T., we have to remember that there is a delicate balance between maintaining natural ecosystems and expanding development. Often, it's too easy to develop in areas where we shouldn't. I've seen a lot of that in the past, and it can come back and haunt us in unexpected ways. Frankly, here in California, I'm glad that the California Coastal Commission gets to play a powerful role in monitoring and approving any coastal development schemes. In my view, when you think about the issues of public access, their work has been invaluable.

Can't use the beach if you can't get to it.
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windoggi



Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.surfrider.org/
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

swchandler wrote:

Can't use the beach if you can't get to it.

Can't use the beach if it's gone.
.
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, SWC, but what is simply brushed aside and disregarded by environmentalists, and their incessant preaching and pontification is that we, in the UK, are tightly packed into our small island, with now over 60,000,000 people, and an out of control immigration problem from poorer countries. We are now one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Perhaps if others of you, living in 'The Big Country' faced our critical shortage of space , and problems, you would take a more pragmatic view of what really matters!

Idealism is great, for those who have the living room, resources, and wealth in plentiful supply.
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And incidentally, our country only contributes just 2% of the yearly atmospheric CO2 supplies!

What percentage does the United States produce?
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windoggi



Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743

PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 5:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GURGLETROUSERS wrote:


Idealism is great, for those who have the living room, resources, and wealth in plentiful supply.
My definition of affluence is "having a choice"
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