By Chuck Norris

Halloween just got scarier — much scarier.

Flying deep under Washington’s radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

It all sounds pretty politically benign, doesn’t it? Not according to Christopher Monckton, who was a science policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Monckton spoke to the Minnesota Free Market Institute.

“I have read that treaty,” Monckton said, “and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word ‘government’ actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, ‘climate debt’ — because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. And we’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. … And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement. How many of you think that the word ‘election’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘vote’ or ‘ballot’ occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once.”

Monckton then warned that if Obama were to sign the treaty, he would be flushing U.S. sovereignty down the global toilet. He further pointed out that even though ratification of our president’s signature on that treaty would need 67 votes in the Senate, it could pass via a simple majority as an amendment to the cap-and-trade bill.

PolitiFact (as well as many left-leaning blogs) quickly criticized Monckton’s conclusions as conspiratorial and climate-skepticism rhetoric, based upon the notion that the treaty is a draft and not a finalized document. The apologetic of PolitiFact leaves the impression that the current draft is the roughest of cuts, but in reality, it is the result of seven sessions of deliberations and revisions from several subgroups, including representatives from developed and developing countries “with a view to modifying it in the direction of consolidation and convergence.”

As I myself read through the latest draft of the 181-page treaty, I noticed many lines that could warrant Monckton’s and others’ concerns. Phrases such as “creation of new levels of cooperation,” “a shift in global investment patterns,” “adjust global economic growth patterns,” “integrated system of financial and technology transfer mechanisms,” “new agreed post-2012 institutional arrangement and legal framework,” “new institutional arrangement will provide technical and financial support for developing countries,” “global fund,” etc., are messages that make one wonder how far this political body’s arm would reach into our country and force our hands into others.

Then there are red-flag statements such as these:

–”Ensuring that global crises, such as the financial crisis, should not constitute an obstacle to the provision of financial and technical assistance to developing countries in accordance with the Convention.” (Page 11)

–”The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following: …” (Page 18)

–”Particular effort should be taken to enhance cooperation amongst intergovernmental organizations.” (Page 47)

–”A special fund shall be established: (a) For the economic and social consequences of response measures. … (b) To assist countries whose economies are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing and export, and/or on consumption of fossil fuels.” (Page 138)

Now, if that isn’t one powerful intergovernmental or global-governmental group overseeing and manipulating America’s and others’ economic and political conditions, I don’t know what is.

Read the rest of this column at Townhall.

Interview with Lord Monckton by Minnesota Majority: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

By Robert Ferguson

The Senate testimony of Sec. Chu is predicated upon false assumptions, points out Christopher Monckton in a succinct letter to Senators posted by the Science and Public Policy Institute [SPPI], a Washington DC –based NGO.
 
The letter points out that Chu’s testimony cites the now-outdated 2007 Climate Assessment Report of the IPCC and a subsequent but also now-outdated MIT study, saying global warming by 2100 would be 7-11 Fº. “These excessive estimates are founded solely on computerized guesswork,” says Christopher Monckton, former adviser to UK Prime Minister Thatcher and current SPPI policy adviser.
 
Monckton reviews a number of recent papers having appeared in the peer-reviewed literature that put the man-made warming scare to rest, and render regulation of CO2 emissions needless and blindingly fatuous.
 
Particular attention is given to the recent paper of Lindzen and Choi (2009).  Using direct measurements of outgoing radiation, the two researchers found that the IPCC models get both the science and their “predictions” wrong.  Monckton presents a series of IPPC model graphs and compares them to the one produced from real measurements.  “The IPPC model predictions,” reports Monckton, “actually trend in a direction opposite to that of the graph from observed reality.”
 
Concludes Monckton, “By patient, painstaking measurement, the two researchers have trumped the computer models’ unanimously erroneous guesswork, and have definitively ended the debate over the question how much warming CO2 causes.  Therefore, Secretary Chu’s declaration that the ‘threat’ from ‘climate change’ is ‘grave’ and that current levels of CO2 emission are ‘unsustainable’ has no scientific justification.”

Read the rest of this article at Wooeb News.

Read Lord Monckton’s letter here.

U.N. plans for a new ‘government’ are scary

By Janet Albrechtsen

We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven’t heard about it, that’s because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.

So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.

The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

Read the rest at Wall Street Journal.

By Marita Noon

This year, amidst reports of cooling temperature, the climate change debate had apparently cooled as well. Then the Waxman/Markey Bill, pushing cap and trade as the solution for global warming, was introduced. Now, with President Obama addressing the UN and calling for extreme measures to prevent catastrophic consequences, suddenly it’s front page news again.

On the same day that Obama was presenting his dramatic message to the UN, the New York Times published an article acknowledging “global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may drop in the next few years.” Clearly the debate is not as one-sided as our leadership wants us to believe.

While Obama and his “alarmist” science czar, John Holdren, are moving forward, the polls repeatedly show lack of public and scientific support. Aggressive climate change measures rank last on almost any list of current crises; people do not think the issue is one on which our government should be focused.

I predict climate change will be Obama’s Iraq.

Bush, it is widely accepted, went into Iraq based on his advisors’ belief that weapons of mass destruction awaited them. There seemed to be consensus. Even Democrats voted in favor of war. Once there, no WMDs were found. But Bush did not pull out. Instead we spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives with minimal results-—all based on bad advice. The public did not like the war. They did not want it. He had great plans for overthrowing Saddam, but the Iraqi military was no where near ready to take over—-leaving us foundering between being occupiers and advisors. The failure in Iraq defined the Bush presidency, turning even his own party against him.

Obama’s advisors are telling him that climate change legislation is imperative. They believe there is consensus. But the temperatures have stabilized and dropped-—despite increased CO2 emissions. Even the NYT admits that the declining temperatures will make legislation a hard sell to the public. But Obama is not backing down. He is willing to kill off the American economy based on bad advice. The people do not want it now and they will hate it later. We’ll spend billions of borrowed dollars for minimal results. He is focused on overthrowing hydrocarbons, but renewable energy is many years away from being ready to take over—-leaving us floundering between the light and freezing in the dark. The folly of climate change legislation will define his presidency and turn citizens against him.

Read the rest of this piece at Citizen’s Alliance for Responsible Energy.

It’s not the growing number of people in poverty who are causing climate change, it’s the rich

By Alex Renton

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government’s target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately.

And if that makes sense, why not start cutting population everywhere? Are condoms not the greenest technology of all?

World population is forecast to peak at 9.2bn by 2050. According to a report by the LSE for the Optimum Population Trust, the lobbying body currently asking parents to “Stop at Two”, it would cost $220m to provide the family planning that would reduce the 2050 population by half a billion, preventing the emission of 34 gigatonnes of carbon. Introducing low-carbon technology for the same result would cost more than $1 trillion.

So why does population control hardly feature on the agendas of the UN bodies or of the governments now committed to tackling climate change? And why do the development and environmental groups shy away from it? The Guardian’s George Monbiot dismisses the topic as a distraction, the obsession largely of “post-reproductive, middle-class white men… a group more responsible for environmental destruction than any other class in history”. David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, argues: “The only way to tackle climate change is to change the way energy is used by those of us that have already been born.”

It is certainly true that “fewer people equals a greener planet” is simplistic. In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today’s standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis.

As a result, NGOs such as Oxfam, for whom I’ve just written a report on climate change’s impact on humans, insist that dealing with consumption in the rich world is much more important than tackling population growth. According to the International Energy Agency, if the whole world moved over to clean electricity, the CO² savings would offset the emissions of up to 2.8bn poor people, easily accounting for the entire extra population forecast for 2050.

But what if we can’t reform the way we produce and use energy? The most worrying of climate change’s impacts – food and water shortages, forced migration, health epidemics – are exacerbated by population growth. According to two recent polls, nine out of 10 scientists working in climate change don’t believe we will achieve the changes in energy use committed to by the G8 and the EU. If they are right, population is going to start to matter a lot. Don’t we need a fallback plan?

Read the rest of this piece at The Guardian.

At a press conference this morning, a number of business and interest groups announced the formation of a new coalition to oppose cap-and-trade public policy. The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition says it will kick-off its campaign with a new advertisement and website (NoCapAndTrade.com).

The website includes a petition that visitors can sign to express their opposition to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and the United Nation’s proposed climate treaty expected to be debated in Copenhagen this December. The group is also bringing a localized educational program to areas of the state, featuring the new global warming documentary film, “Not Evil, Just Wrong.”

The coalition’s website also includes a campaign to boycott 20 organizations that are supporting cap-and-trade. Companies that are part of the boycott include Starbucks, The Gap, ebay, Levi’s and Nike amongst others.

The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition consists of several non-partisan, non-profit organizations who are concerned about the devastating impact a cap-and-trade scheme could have on American families and the faltering US economy. “We need energy to turn things around,” explained Linda Runbeck of the Minnesota Free Market Institute, “a massive new tax on energy is the last thing we need right now. Cap-and-trade would be destructive to our economy.”

At the onset, cap-and-trade is projected to cost the average family over $1,700 per year in new energy costs, growing to over $6,000 per year by 2035. Independent analyses of cap-and-trade proposals project the loss of millions of additional jobs and trillions of dollars out of the nation’s GDP. “Cap-and-trade is a huge tax on everything,” said Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis.

Proponents say that cap-and-trade will prevent 1/10th of a degree of warming in 100 years. “That doesn’t seem like a very worthwhile investment,” said Phil Krinkie, president of the Taxpayer’s League of Minnesota. “We’d be making extraordinary sacrifices over unproven, contested theories and even if you buy into carbon-driven global warming, the pay off is insignificant. It’s not worth the cost.”

Visit www.NoCapAndTrade.com to sign the petition, participate in the boycott and find more information.

Not Evil, Just Wrong Creates Stir in UK

A Political row has broken out over a Derby Conservative councillor’s decision to show a climate change-sceptic film in the city’s council chamber.

The new film, Not Evil Just Wrong, is a documentary which suggests evidence of global warming is inconclusive and that the impact climate change laws will have on industry is much more harmful to humans than beneficial. It is a direct challenge to Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, with was shown to councillors in Derby during Labour’s control of the authority in 2007.

Tory councillor Frank Leeming put forward the idea to show the new film today, sparking criticism from Labour councillors.

Labour group leader Chris Williamson said: “I am totally appalled. The council is committed to reducing carbon emissions, yet the Conservatives are pushing a film which threatens all of that.

“It reaffirms our belief that the Conservatives have merely been paying lip service to environmental issues in pushing their new branding as a caring party.”

 
And Labour councillor Ranjit Banwait, who is vice-chairman of the council’s climate change commission, called for the resignation of its Conservative chairman.

He said: “If the Conservatives don’t believe in climate change, then perhaps the chairman of the commission, Tory councillor Phil Ingall, should step down.

“They’re setting an incredibly dangerous precedent. They’re peddling a viewpoint which disputes what scientists have already proved about the state of the planet. Why would they do that?”

But Harvey Jennings, leader of the Conservative group, said Mr Leeming’s view was not shared by the group as a whole, adding that the Tories were “committed to tackling climate change” and believed it was a reality.

He said: “This is about facilitating freedom of speech.”

He added that Mr Leeming’s actions were not an embarrassment to his party.

Mr Leeming confirmed he was a climate change sceptic.

He said: “Al Gore’s film contained nine ‘facts’ which were wrong – and this film shows scientists answering those points.”

Read the rest of this story at Derbyshire Telegraph.

For more about Not Evil, Just Wrong, or to attend a free screening of the film in Minnesota, visit NoCapAndTrade.com.

From the Hearthland Institute

A large coalition of agricultural groups has come forward to oppose the Waxman-Markey bill restricting carbon dioxide emissions.

In a July 14 opening statement at Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) noted he had received “letters sent by 120 agricultural groups opposing the Waxman-Markey bill.”

Among the groups are the American Farm Bureau, Pork Producers Council, USA Rice Federation, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, Council of Farmer Cooperatives, American Meat Institute, National Association of Wheat Growers, and North American Millers Association.

Long-Term Costs Much Higher

Tracy Taylor Grondine, director of media relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, strongly disagrees with Waxman-Markey supporters who cite a Congressional Budget Office report asserting the bill would cost the average U.S. household merely $175 per year in the year 2020.

“Most media outlets are only focused on the front-end effects of the climate bill,” Grondine explained. “In 2020, carbon reductions will only be starting and the industry will be receiving significant carbon credit giveaways. But by 2050, the 17 percent cut in agriculture emissions from 2005 levels is estimated to rise to 82 percent, and there will be no more credit giveaways. So, by 2050 that 5 percent hit will grow to something more like a 15 percent reduction in farm income.”

Adam Basford, national affairs coordinator for the Florida Farm Bureau Federation, agrees the costs down the road will be much higher. “According to the EPA, the legislation would cost farmers $5 billion [initially] and by 2050 the cost would rise to $13 billion,” he said.

Using the initial numbers conceals the bill’s real impact, Grondine says.

“We can’t just highlight costs in the first 10 years. We must look further down the road to how this legislation will impact American households, farms, and ranches and the overall U.S. economy,” Grondine said.

Farmers Paying the Price

Raising consumer prices is actually the point of the bill, says Basford.

“The very essence of cap-and-trade is to increase prices so much that consumption, and therefore emissions, are reduced,” Basford explained. “Farm Bureau has continually said that any cap-and-trade legislation must make economic sense for agriculture. It must be structured in a way that the costs do not outweigh the benefits for family farms, rural communities, and the overall economy.

“The Florida Farm Bureau opposes this bill because it forces Florida’s farmers, consumers, and families to lose,” Basford explained. “They lose through increased electricity, fuel, and fertilizer costs—and eventually higher food prices.”

Grondine said, “Farmers want to be a part of the climate change solution, but such a solution should not jeopardize their economic sustainability in the process, nor should it pave the way for additional economic burdens on American families.”

From the Wall Street Journal

A new poll out today on Americans’ attitudes about climate change presents sobering findings for those that favor aggressive action to curb U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who see solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. According to the survey, conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, fewer respondents also see global warming as a very serious problem; 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.  The survey also points to a decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

Check-out this FACTS SHEET on public opinion from Climate Depot

Read the rest of the column

Yesterday British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issue dire warnings about global catastrophes that are to come if world leaders fail to come to an agreement and sign the Climate Treaty in Copenhagen this December.  His hyperbole sounds a lot like that of Al Gore in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”  It is interesting to note that a British judge ruled that Gore’s movie contained 9 significant errors that had to be corrected before it could be shown in British schools.  We are wondering if the judge might not want to issue a ruling on Gordon Brown’s speech as well.

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change skeptic, gave a presentation in St. Paul, MN. In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to all Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty, scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Lord Monckton served as a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to a debate to which Gore has refused. Monckton sued to stop Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” from being shown in British schools due to its inaccuracies. The judge found in-favor of Monckton, ordering 9 serious errors in the film to be corrected. Lord Monckton travels internationally in an attempt to educating the public about the myth of global warming.

There has been considerable debate raised about Monckton’s conclusion that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty. His comments appear to be based upon his interpretation of the The Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 2). This clause establishes the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. TREATIES as the supreme law of the land. Concerns have been raised in the past that a particularly ambitious treaty may supersede the US Constitution. In the 1950s, a constitutional amendment, known as the Bricker Amendment, was proposed in response to such fears, but it failed to pass. You can read more about the Bricker Amendment in a 1953 Time Magazine article.

Click here to watch Lord Monckton’s entire 95-minute speech in which he utterly destroys the so-called ‘science’ behind global warming. 

Click here to read a draft copy of the treaty.

Click here to see Obama’s speech to the UN on Climate Change.

Click here to learn what you can do to stop this from happening.

More video: Minnesota Majority’s interview with Lord Monckton [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

Members of the Maldives’ Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals Saturday at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth.

By Associated Press

President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 other government officials submerged and took their seats at a table on the sea floor — 20 feet below the surface of a lagoon off Girifushi, an island usually used for military training.

With a backdrop of coral, the meeting was a bid to draw attention to fears that rising sea levels caused by the melting of polar ice caps could swamp this Indian Ocean archipelago within a century. Its islands average 7 feet above sea level.

“What we are trying to make people realize is that the Maldives is a frontline state. This is not merely an issue for the Maldives but for the world,” Nasheed said.

As bubbles floated up from their face masks, the president, vice president, Cabinet secretary and 11 ministers signed a document calling on all countries to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

The issue has taken on urgency ahead of a major U.N. climate change conference scheduled for December in Copenhagen. At that meeting countries will negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol with aims to cut the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists blame for causing global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Wealthy nations want broad emissions cuts from all countries, while poorer ones say industrialized countries should carry most of the burden.

Read the rest of this story at Fox News.

A newly released scientific study published by MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen has the potential of destroying one of the fundamental underpinnings of global warming theorists.  The study collected 15-years of long wave radiation measurements from a satellite orbiting the earth.  The study correlates the change in the earth’s surface temperature with the change in outgoing long wave radiation.  Lindzen’s study shows that as the earth warms, the amount of radiation being bounced-back into outer space actually increases.  This is exactly the opposite result that is assumed to occur in the UN climate models.  The UN models predict that more radiation is trapped in the earth’s atmosphere as the temperature rises.  Lindzen’s findings blow a hole a mile-wide in the arguments used by global warming evangelists.

Read more about Lindzen’s study here.

From the Washington Examiner

Something important is happening when even the BBC is compelled to ask, as it did this week, “What happened on global warming?” The British news organization has heretofore insisted that the scientific consensus was cemented long ago that global warming is real and is mainly caused by human use of carbon-based fossil fuels. Put simply, what has happened is global temperatures have dropped every year since 1998, recent peer-reviewed research has uncovered the decisive influence of hot and cold cycles in the oceans on land temperatures, and growing numbers of scientists with unquestioned credentials are stepping forward to question the conventional wisdom.

But reaching a new consensus will be exceedingly difficult because the raw data on which the landmark 1996 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based its conclusion has been destroyed. The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit acknowledged in August that it discarded data that, in addition to the IPCC report, has been cited by other international studies as the main justification for severe restrictions on carbon emissions worldwide. This development raises more troubling doubts about global warming just as scientists and policymakers are expected to call for harsh new limits on energy use in its name when they meet in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Read the rest of the story.

Don’t worry if you were unable to attend last night’s conference on global climate change held at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota.  You can watch the newly released 22-minute documentary entitled “Climate Chains” as well as the 95 minute speech given by Lord Christopher Monckton after the movie.

You can follow Lord Monckton’s Power Point with this pdf document.