It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
This article raises some good points, most of which we have all heard before. Please read the entire article!
I find it interesting that the writer of the article is Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and a known environmentalist with legitimate credentials.
originally posted by: here4this
a reply to: Grimpachi
First , I like to include a little humor in my post designed to get someone to smile. To make light . Second , no as someone that "was around" then , those revelations were earth ending scenarios and very much the topic of the world at the time. Of course , back then I was a member of the tree-hugging hippie style in a major way . I had a tendency to hate everything that could possibly hurt the world. The endgame for those scenarios :
Pollution and the coming Ice Age : companies were fined heavily before the regulations were in place , and then fined heavily if they did not comply - The cost of manufacturing went up so high , we basically caused most of these companies to relocate to other countries (hey , you deal with the pollution , we continue to live the good life).
Propellants and the hole in the Ozone layer: Once the propellant and freon manufacturers were fined heavily , then told they had to change their formula (once this was done , the government put a much higher tax on those products leading to skyrocketing costs for consumers) the danger faded into oblivion. Gee , money to the government can cure world problems in nature ? Is the hole still there -yep. Is it the same as it has ever been -yep
After living through those periods in time , I am concerned (rightfully so , that all this is not to cure the issue , merely for the government to rake in more money) And as most people absolutely jumped in to these head first just because someone said so I would like for them to think first and foremost. Do not just look at a chart and say , wow this is real. Think for yourself. This world is a huge , and I do mean huge ball of rock and water .
Is the hole still there -yep. Is it the same as it has ever been -yep
originally posted by: Grimpachi
I wonder did you find any scandals such as Heartlands with tobacco?
If you did I would be inclined to think they are just would be dirty lying filth that can't be trusted to be truthful on any level just like Heartland. So that is where I set the bar at can it be met?
But the stolen Heartland documents exonerated, rather than embarrassed, the skeptic movement. They demonstrate only an interest at Heartland in getting the truth out on the actual objective science. They revealed little funding from oil companies and other self interested commercial enterprises, who actually contribute heavily to global warming alarmists as protection money instead. The documents also show how poorly funded the global warming skeptics at Heartland are, managing on a shoestring to raise a shockingly successful global challenge to the heavily overfunded UN and politicized government science.
Maybe that is why Gleick or one of his coconspirators felt compelled to go farther and composed a fake memo titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.” Whoever did it understood that a document composed on his computer and distributed online would contain markings demonstrating its source and confirming the forgery, so they printed it out and scanned it to hide its digital trail. The scanned document itself, however, contained evidence that allowed even amateur sleuths to trace it back to the Pacific Institute’s offices, as explained in an article by Megan McCardle, a senior editor for The Atlantic. (McCardle, incidentally, is highly sympathetic to global warming alarmism.)
The forged cover memo, not the actual stolen document, contains language mirroring Climategate. It discussed fabricated projects that are not activities of Heartland, and references a $200,000 Koch Foundation contribution for climate change activities that doesn’t exist. The Koch Foundation confirms that it gave Heartland only $25,000 in 2011, earmarked for health care policy projects and not climate change, an amount equal to only 0.5% of Heartland’s 2011 budget. By contrast, as the Journal also observed, the budget last year for the Natural Resources Defense Council was $95.4 million, and for the World Wildlife Fund $238.5 million.
What I found was that Phillip Morris had contracted Heartland to investigate the link on second hand smoke and cancer... and paid them somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000 over the years to do so.
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on incriminating facts? If they need to be manufactured or forged, are they still incriminating?
So we've followed the money and now we've followed the scandals... whose side are you on, Grimpachi? I'm excited to follow your next suggestion because, so far, you're 2 for 2 with providing trails by which to make the Heartland Institute look golden and smell like roses compared to their detractors!
I wonder did you find any scandals such as Heartlands with tobacco?
I'm finding myself seeing Heartland as being a relatively benign group going up against massive money movers
Dear Roy:
Thank you for inviting me to request renewed general operating support for The Heartland Institute for 1999.1 note that Philip Morris contributed $5,000 last August (for a Gold Table at our annual benefit) and $25,000 in October (general
operating support). It also has allowed you to serve on our Board of Directors, which has produced many positive results for the entire organization.
Because Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris' bottom line, things that no other organization does, I hope you will consider boosting your general operating support this year to $30,000 and once again reserve a Gold
Table for an additional $5,000.
We genuinely need your financial support. Maybe by the end of this letter you'll agree that we merit even greater support; I certainly hope so!
Working with State Elected Officials
Unlike any other free-market think tank. Heartland's primary audience is the nation's 7,500 state elected officials. We reach them more often, and generate from them more requests for research, than any other think tank in the country
originally posted by: Grimpachi
Maybe you can enlighten me on the other suggestion you say I made?
Oh I see. You forgot who has said what in the thread. That must be embarrassing.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.
Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
It’s an important question, considering the U.S. government spends $22 billion a year to fight the global warming crisis (twice as much as it spends protecting our border).
To put that in perspective, that is $41,856 every minute going to global warming initiatives.
According to the GAO, annual federal climate spending has increased from $4.6 billion in 2003 to $8.8 billion in 2010, amounting to $106.7 billion over that period. The money was spent in four general categories: technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, science to understand climate changes, international assistance for developing countries, and wildlife adaptation to respond to actual or expected changes. Technology spending, the largest category, grew from $2.56 billion to $5.5 billion over this period, increasingly advancing over others in total share. Data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Policy Institute indicates that the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn’t count about $79 billion more spent for climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for “green energy.”
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
So we've followed the money and now we've followed the scandals... whose side are you on, Grimpachi? I'm excited to follow your next suggestion because, so far, you're 2 for 2 with providing trails by which to make the Heartland Institute look golden and smell like roses compared to their detractors!
Peter Joseph Ferrara (born 1955) is an American lawyer, policy analyst, and columnist who is the current general counsel for the American Civil Rights Union and analyst for The Heartland Institute.
Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, says he, too, took money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients. "I do that all the time," Ferrara says. "I've done that in the past, and I'll do it in the future."
Maybe that is why Gleick or one of his coconspirators felt compelled to go farther and composed a fake memo titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.”
It discussed fabricated projects that are not activities of Heartland
originally posted by: mc_squared
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
You're sitting there discussing numbers that are utterly dwarfed by the amount the groups pushing green energy in the name of ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE are shuffling around their players. Revenues of $5.3 million, you say? Let's examine the other side here...