Billion-dollar climate denial network exposed

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/21/denial

I see some truth in this.  It was written by somebody that is passionate about the environment and the article seems to end with presumption.  For instance, the author doesn't have data on 75% of the source of these moneys and concludes that the über rich are behind the money trail.  Quite possibly true, but no proof is available.

Quote :

An extensive study into the financial networks that support groups denying the science behind climate change and opposing political action has found a vast, secretive web of think tanks and industry associations, bankrolled by conservative billionaires.

"I call it the climate-change counter movement," study author Robert Brulle, who published his results in the journal Climatic Change, told the Guardian. "It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort."

His work, which is focused on the United States, shows how a network of 91 think tanks and industry groups are primarily responsible for conservative opposition to climate policy. Almost 80 percent of these groups are registered as charitable organisations for tax purposes, and collectively received more than seven billion dollars between 2003 and 2010.

Among those named as key nodes of the network were the American Enterprise Institute, which claims to have no institutional position on climate change, and the Heritage Foundation, which campaigns on a number of issues.

However, Brulle admitted that tracing the funding back to its original sources was difficult, as around three quarters of the money has been routed through trusts that assume anonymity to their donors.

While it was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said: "This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power."

He added: "They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy."

Lot's of assumptions there although it would only be logical to assume those with an interest in reducing EPA regs (in the U.S.) would be associated with like minded organizations. The opposite is also true with pro-climate change activists associating themselves with like-minded groups. Climate change? It appears to be occurring but not on an Al Gore scale. How much is natural and how much is caused by mans influence on the environment? There will never be an agreement on that. I do think much of the pollution problem in the atmosphere is caused by third world cess pools like Russia and China. In the U.S. our biggest problem is runoff into waterways like the Mississippi and Chesapeake Bay. Those nice lawns need a lot of fertilizer.....

Those nice lawns, trees, and gardens also need a lot of pesticides and other things that eventually end up in the water..

Here is a pic of our back yard at our little home in Pensacola.  I haven't fertilized it in 3-4 years, but it gets watered every other day by the sprinkler system. In some areas, the grass grows so thick, I have to slow the mower down to a crawl just to cut it.

When we lived on the water in a big house on Innerarity Island, I never fertilized within 20 feet of the water and when I fertilized the other areas, it was done so sparingly.

Looks beautiful Eric.. It's more than the lawns near the water, it's the ones in the northen parts of the county and all over the country in addition to the farms spraying lots of pesticides..

Look at a watershed map and you can see the vast areas contributing to waterways pollution. Maximizing farm output is a definite contributor, how to find a balance is elusive though.

Speaking of watersheds, I was the Perdido Watershed Ecosystem Management Coordinator when I was a manager at Florida's DEP. We had about a hundred participants from governments, education, industries, and environmental groups.

Within the Perdido Watershed, (Alabama portion as well) our mission was mainly to prevent just the stuff we're posting about... minimizing fertilizer and pesticides, water conservation, stormwater runoff, recycling, etc.

My last job at DEP was Northwest District Pollution Prevention Coordinator. THAT was a humbling experience. It was like trying to eat an elephant. You can only do it a bit at a time, y'know.

Regarding the Perdido Watershed group, guess who was the most disruptive, counterproductive particiipants?

The environmental groups. Maybe I should have said SOME of the environmental radicals.

They strutted around like our group was a sham. Since I was from DEP... an agency that they deemed not stringent enough with governments and industries... and since governments and industries participated, some of the environmental folks were openly disruptive.

Maybe they thought we were trying to steal some of their wind... doing stuff they felt was theirs to handle. I dunno.

Things like oil leaking into the oceans has been going on for thousands of years or longer.. I imagine since oil was first used as a fuel, the amount might have increased, but pesticides and fertilizers along with some other chemicals are not naturally occuring and are probably doing more harm than the things that are natural every day chemicals..

And our oceans, rivers and streams are getting bombarded by all the new compounds we have created to regulate our environment and it is gonna bite us on the arse. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, deodorants, and now we're dumping nanoparticles into our waters and into the air we breathe. Those little buggars are going into everything and, of course, they're safe... just like DDT and Agent Orange were "safe".

Our sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove these things from the waste stream, so this crap hits the rivers or wherever the plant discharges it's effluent.

And artificial sweeteners are sweetening the Great Lakes.

http://news.yahoo.com/forget-own-health-stop-drinking-diet-soda-good-191807099.html

Eric wrote:

And artificial sweeteners are sweetening the Great Lakes.

http://news.yahoo.com/forget-own-health-stop-drinking-diet-soda-good-191807099.html

I've tried for years to find a soft drink that I could stand that had an artificial sweetener and haven't been able to, so I guess I'm not poisoning myself that way. No fertilizer for my lawn- it just makes the weeds grow taller. Also no weed killers ever work, so I've given up on those too.
I have beautiful green weeds year round. Just cut my grass here in December two days after Christmas because the weeds don't care when it's winter.
Momma nature hates my yard.
Sometimes "green" isn't such a good idea. There was an article in the PNJ this morning about Brad Pitt's houses he built in the 9th ward in N.O. and how the "green product" lumber he'd used on the porches is starting to rot already. It was guaranteed for 40 years and had no arsenic in it. It lasted about 3 years before rot began. He's now replacing it all with pine lumber- I'm not sure if he's using treated decking or not, but he learned his lesson about using "new" products.

If Pitt wanted to go "green" with his decking, he could go with recycled plastic decking. It doesn't rot and it seems to hold up pretty good. Your runners that they hook to need to be closer together, as the recycled plastic "boards" tend to sag if their supports are spaced too far apart.

The paper said he used some kind of wood called Timber SIL which is lumber with glass infused into it. I've been to the Ninth Ward and seen some of the houses built by his "Make it Right" charity and they are much more attractive than a lot of the low cost housing that's been built here in Pensacola. The paper said the charity is going to replace all the wood at a cost to themselves of 150 thousand dollars. The folks in New Orleans like Pitt a lot, not so much Nicolas Cage who has bought a plot in one of their most historic cemeteries and put a pyramid on it for him to be buried in when he dies. I understand it's a real eyesore to the tourists who visit the cemetery to check out the history.