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Linkage Policy
This policy governs the establishment of external links on the City of Beverly Hills' official website. For purposes of this policy, an external link is a hyperlink from the City's website to a website maintained by another party. Neither the City's website nor the external links on such website constitute a forum for expressive activity by members of the public. Rather, the purpose of the City's website and external links is to provide information about officials, services and attractions related to Beverly Hills. Providing external links is in no way an endorsement or recommendation by the City of Beverly Hills of any website maintained by another party or the information therein; these sites are not part of the City's official website. The City reserves the right to deny requests for external links or delete existing external links.
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Sunday, May 23, 2010
It's Bagel Time!
Bagels are really fun to make! I quite enjoyed myself in the kitchen toasting the seeds, rolling the dough, boiling the bagels, sprinkling the seeds, and watching them carefully in the oven so they didn't burn.
The process was easy...there was no back breaking kneading involved (maybe a couple minutes). My bloggie friend Vegan Thyme makes bread all the time, she inspired me.
This is my first attempt at a basic bagel. I will defiantly be making these again. I got the recipe of of vegweb.com. I made a dill tofu spread to go on top piled with sprouts and cucumber and you got major yum factor.
Tofu spread
1 block tofu
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp dried dill
1 dill pickle- minced
1 clove garlic-minced
1/2 shallot-minced
1 lemon- juiced
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
9 comments:
This looks fantastic!! Yum!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMay 23, 2010 at 8:25 PM
You are a brave woman to make your own bagels.ReplyDelete
" Hut ab", that's what we would say in German.
those are incredible looking bagels!! congrats on your sucess!ReplyDelete
Holy Cow! These look sooo good!!ReplyDelete
- Big DinnerMay 23, 2010 at 11:35 PM
Those are some good looking bagels for your first attemptReplyDelete
All you need is a great cup of coffee and your all set
Those are beautiful! They look so much better than the storebought everything bagels I eat for breakfast all the time. :)ReplyDelete
That spread sounds fantastic! Going to try today:)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMay 25, 2010 at 12:01 AM
You totally nailed it! Look amazing and fluffy!ReplyDelete
Bluehost is ultimately one of the best web-hosting company for any hosting plans you need.ReplyDelete
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subset: commoncrawl


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In the continuing expansion of the utility construction segment of its diverse market interests, MDU Resources Group Inc., a North Dakota-based electric utility, has purchased two more electrical contractors.
With the purchases of Bell Electrical Contractors Inc., St. Louis, and Oregon Electric Construction, Portland, Ore., the Bismark, N.D.-based company will add $140 million in sales and increase its coverage of the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest.
Bell Electrical Contractors Inc., a 27-year-old electrical contracting firm with 50 nonbargaining employees, 200 union employees and annual revenues of approximately $40 million, focuses on commercial, industrial and institutional electrical work, as well as well as communications engineering, design and construction.
Bell Electrical will become part of MDU Resources' Utility Services Inc. subsidiary. Utility Services Inc. (USI), also based in North Dakota, is an infrastructure construction company specializing in electric, natural gas and telecommunications utility construction as well as interior industrial electrical, exterior lighting and traffic signalization. USI operates throughout most of the United States.
Ron Tipton, USI's president and chief executive officer, said the acquisition complements the company's existing operations in Missouri and the central U.S., where it also owns Capital Electric Construction Co. Inc., Kansas City, and Capital Electric Line Builder Inc., Leavenworth, Kan. It acquired these companies earlier this year. "Bell Electrical is a leading contractor in its market," said Tipton. "Through its diverse capabilities, the company has become a single-source provider for its electrical contracting services."
The acquisition of Oregon Electric Construction gives USI/MDU Resources another electrical contracting firm with expertise in power-line construction. The 50-year-old contractor specializes in new construction, repair, maintenance and service work for high-tech, industrial, health care, commercial, institutional and power generation customers. The company also provides preconstruction, design-build, design-assist and turnkey services for both electrical and integrated systems work. The company has 100 nonbargaining employees on staff and up to 600 union employees. USI's Tipton says the acquisition will help the company expand in the Northwest.
"Our expanded services will include inside electrical construction, specialized, low-voltage systems, electrical service and maintenance along with power plant controls and installation," he said. The management teams of Oregon Electric and Bell Electrical will continue to manage the operations.
Since its start-up in 1997, USI increased its revenues to $169 million in 2000. The company has grown primarily through acquisition, and through its acquisitions this year expects 2001 revenues to top $400 million. Along with this year's purchases of Oregon Electric, Bell Electrical, the Capital Electric companies, the electrical contractors that the company owns include Wagner and Smith, Dayton, Ohio; International Line Builders, Portland, Ore.; Harp Line Construction Co., Kalispell, Mont.; and Pouke and Steinle Inc., Riverside, Calif.
Its parent company, MDU Resources, is a natural resource company with $1.87 billion in 2000 annual sales that focuses on construction materials and mining operations, oil and natural gas production, sales and transportation of electricity, natural gas, and natural gas transmission and storage.


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Majority of Americans Still 'Believe' in Global Warming
Posted 04 July 2010 - 12:56 PM
I didn't lose my mind - I have it backed up on a disk ... somewhere
Posted 04 July 2010 - 08:35 PM
And that would best be done by taking action now. Not against corporations or wrecking our economy doing rediculous things to fight nature. Rather live with nature.
For instance, it is claimed sea levels may rise 20 feet in the next 100 years. So why do we continue to build cities below sea level or right on the coast? Why not require all new construction be at least 30 feet above sea level? Those buildings would be safe if levels came up 20 feet. As for the exisyting cities, let them live their useful lives. By then most will be due for replacement anyway, so then demolish them.
Levees? For now support them. But gradually relocate the areas behind them so that when the inevitable floods come damage will be minimized. Then as above, relocate the areas to higher ground.
Even farm lands. People worry about our agricultural areas becoming deserts. Maybe so, but consider other areas too cold now may at that time be prime farm land. Again we adapt.
Taking this type of approach will minimize the effects of warming and allow us to live with global warming and nature.
Visit my website, "The Paranormal DESTINATION"
Posted 06 July 2010 - 01:12 AM
I didn't lose my mind - I have it backed up on a disk ... somewhere
Posted 06 July 2010 - 11:17 AM
Dinosaurs come to mind. Then over-population. Depletion of natural (once thought of as renewable) resources. Feeding this over-populated plantetary speck. Bees dying. Bats dying. Crops failing. Children raising children, killing children, killing their parents.
Again we adapt.
Cynicism comes easily to me.
The good news is the ozone hole is healing. The bad news is that it ain't all good news:
Posted 06 July 2010 - 11:27 AM
The scientific community is split over the issue of global warming. On the side that agrees global warming is reality, they still disagree over the cause. Volcanism is one (IMO - very real) source.Dinosaurs come to mind. Then over-population. Depletion of natural (once thought of as renewable) resources. Feeding this over-populated plantetary speck. Bees dying. Bats dying. Crops failing. Children raising children, killing children, killing their parents.
Again we adapt.
Cynicism comes easily to me.
The good news is the ozone hole is healing. The bad news is that it ain't all good news:
Yep, it aint all good news, but I look at it this way........................
Mankind has suffered terribly over the millenia, ice age, black plague, etc, etc, etc. Maybe what we need is a wakeup call to get us off our overweight, out of shape, behinds.
During the depression my parents made do, today many would kill their neighbor for a loaf of bread. Yep, I'm a bit cynical too, maybe a good wakeup call is something that will be good in the long run.
Perhaps we have all put too much distance between Us and God/Nature.
Ok, Ill get off my soapbox now and go back to my air conditioned, direct TV supplied, mancave
Edited by Robot, 06 July 2010 - 11:29 AM.
Posted 06 July 2010 - 11:46 AM
"I know that an active volcano emits more greenhouse gas in a single day than an SUV does in a year".
The "Volcano Chlorofluorocarbon's are "natural" and decompose much more quickly than the "artificially stabilized" manmade Chlorofluorocarbon's.
Posted 06 July 2010 - 01:46 PM
I suppose I can agree with that. Except to say we've only been here a millisecond when compared to dinosaurs.
Mankind has suffered terribly over the millenia, ice age, black plague, etc, etc, etc.
Posted 07 July 2010 - 09:52 AM
Unfortunately, it's also evidence that scientists suck at communication.
But I already knew that. :-P
Posted 08 July 2010 - 07:54 PM
If only your optimistic view were true.
Supporting "evidence" that the scientific process works:
Unfortunately, it's also evidence that scientists suck at communication.
But I already knew that. :-P
In fact, the outcomes of the various investigations into Climate Gate have produced the expected, and widely predicted, results: whitewash.
What we have seen in these investigations is the vested interests in science and politics joining together in an effort to protect each other, and their lucrative sources of income.
Take into account that the fraud perpetrated by Jones, Mann and Hansen resulted in millions of dollars in research grants being awarded to their respective institutions. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the investigations by those same institutions come up with little more than a token slap on the wrist for the offenders. You dont bite the hand that feeds you.
However, within the world of real science, real scientists continue to work and are slowly but surely chipping away at this fraud.
One would hope that they will soon be able to get back to addressing the real issues that confront our planetary environment, and which are currently being sidelined by the great gold rush of The Great Global Warming Scam.
Posted 10 July 2010 - 07:52 AM
It's true for me. I'm still hoping you'll go back a few posts to answer a couple of challenges so we'll have a better understand of your truths.
If only your optimistic view were true.
Be confident that in the ensuing storm, it will be washed away leaving only the incontrovertible, repeatable proof of the real truth.
In fact, the outcomes of the various investigations into Climate Gate have produced the expected, and widely predicted, results: whitewash.
That's exactly how it works. Unless you've personally got very deep pockets for funding, you have to put on your sales hat and go beat the bushes for contributors. Who is most likely to contribute to my endeavor? OH, YEAH! Like-minded investors.
What we have seen in these investigations is the vested interests in science and politics joining together in an effort to protect each other, and their lucrative sources of income.
Are you neglecting Mr. Gore? You do understand what a grant is, don't you?
Take into account that the fraud perpetrated by Jones, Mann and Hansen resulted in millions of dollars in research grants being awarded to their respective institutions. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the investigations by those same institutions come up with little more than a token slap on the wrist for the offenders. You dont bite the hand that feeds you.
And yet, within the world of real science, real scientists continue to work and are slowly but surely chipping away at the truth.
However, within the world of real science, real scientists continue to work and are slowly but surely chipping away at this fraud.
Are you so uniquely qualified to help us identify the real issues with such accuracy, that we can rest assured we won't get blind-sided?
One would hope that they will soon be able to get back to addressing the real issues that confront our planetary environment, and which are currently being sidelined by the great gold rush of The Great Global Warming Scam.
My money stays on the scientific process.
Posted 18 July 2010 - 06:54 PM
The American government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglias climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last Novembers leak of hundreds of stolen emails.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the units main sources of funding for its work assembling a database of global temperatures.
It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.
This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the units work.
The leaked emails caused a global furore. They appeared to suggest that CRU scientists were using tricks to strengthen the case for man-made climate change and suppressing dissent.
A spokesman for the DoE said: The renewal application was placed on hold pending the conclusion of the inquiry into scientific misconduct by Sir Alastair Muir Russell.
Muir Russell published his report earlier this month. It said that the rigour and honesty of the CRU scientists were not in doubt but criticised them for a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness.
The DoE peer review panel will now sift through the report and decide if American taxpayers should continue to fund the unit.
A spokesman for the university said: We are still waiting to hear if the latest bid for funding to the US Department of Energy has been successful and would not comment or speculate in the meantime.
The Sunday Times, 18 July 2010
Posted 21 July 2010 - 02:38 PM
Posted 05 August 2010 - 06:40 PM
The EU Connection in Climate Research
by John Rosenthal
Millions of euros come with an agenda
The leaking of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails and data last November shattered the appearance of a scientific consensus on supposed man-made global warming and provided a disturbing insight into the corruption of the scientific process as it relates to the man-made global warming hypothesis. The spectacle of scientists stonewalling freedom of information requests, destroying records, hiding unwelcome results, colluding to keep dissenting viewpoints out of scholarly journals, and even suppressing their own acknowledged doubts all of this made it perfectly clear that other interests were at stake than the pure pursuit of knowledge. The centrality of the quest for funding in the e-mail exchanges made it equally clear that for the scientists in question, money, unsurprisingly, was first and foremost among those interests.
But just who or what had corrupted the science in order to produce the phantom consensus? Commentators in U.S. online discussion forums and blogs wasted no time in identifying two prime suspects: the reputed prophet of green energy, Al Gore, and the rights least favorite leftist billionaire, George Soros. Such speculation said a lot about the top bogeymen in the conservative blogosphere, but it was prima facie implausible or even indeed absurd. After all, no single individual, no matter how wealthy, has the resources that it takes to politicize weather and corrupt the entire global scientific enterprise. Indeed, in the grand scheme of things, one of the named suspects is not even particularly wealthy. Despite the prominent role he has played as a spokesperson for climate alarmism, it is far more likely that the former vice president is a passenger on the global warming bandwagon, not a driver.
If no individual has the money it takes, states especially if they pool their resources most certainly do. The real culprit in the corruption of the scientific process and the promotion of climate alarmism is named again and again in the East Anglia e-mails and documents. But the culprit is named with many different names, mysterious combinations of letters and numbers and lyrical code words, names like dgxii, dgxi fp5 fp6 fp7 life enrich. What do they mean? In the final analysis, it is but one and the same multinational organization that lurks behind all these designations: the European Union.
The eu funding stream
All the designations refer either to departments of the European Commission or eu funding schemes. dgxii is the acronym by which the Commissions Directorate General for Research was formerly designated, and dgxi was the acronym for the Directorate General for the Environment.
The Research dg is essentially a funding organization. It controls a massive multi-year budget for research support known as the Framework Programme or fp, for short. The European Network for Research into Global Change or enrich was an early climate change research initiative that was launched already under the fourth Framework Programme (199496). The Environment dglikewise has at its disposal a financing instrument (albeit a more modest one). The financing program of the Environment dg is called life. The Research Directorates Framework Programme 6 or fp6 ran from 2002 through 2006 and comprised a budget of some 17.5 billion. The current Framework Programme 7 began in 2007 and will run through 2013 It comprises a research support budget of some 50.5 billion.
fp6 funded 26 projects on climate change. The total eu contribution to these projects was a whopping 165,580,451. The University of East Anglia was a partner institution in no less than eight of these projects and it was the coordinating institution for one. Under fp7, the climate research manna has flowed even more freely. In just the first three years (200709) of the current Framework Programme, the European Commission has already funded 28 projects on climate change for a total eu contribution, according to provisional data, of some 116,271,772. The University of East Anglia is a partner institution in four of these projects.
Several of the fp7 projects bear suitably alarmist abbreviated titles like climsave, redd-alert, and even HighNoon. As the example of HighNoon illustrates, not all the beneficiaries of the European financing are European research institutions. HighNoon is funded under an fp7 funding scheme known as cp-sica (Collaborative Project-Specific International Cooperation Action) that is specifically dedicated to funding research with international, i.e. non-eu, partner institutions. As it so happens, the lead international partner in the HighNoon project is none other than The Energy and Resources Institute (teri) in New Delhi. teri is the research center of Rajendra Pachauri, the embattled chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc).
No single individual, no matter how wealthy, has the resources that it takes to politicize weather.
In as much as the principal aim of HighNoon is to assess the impact of Himalayan glaciers retreat (as well as possible changes of the Indian summer monsoon), the short-form title can be presumed to be an allusion to what is now perhaps the most infamously alarmist claim associated with Pachauri and the ipcc: namely, the prediction that at the present rate of warming the Himalayan glaciers can be expected entirely to disappear by 2035.
As recently as early January, Pachauri rudely dismissed an Indian government report that found the sensational prediction to be unsupported by the evidence. Pachauri called the government report voodoo science. Barely two weeks later, the ipcc was forced officially to retract the claim, after the supposed expert on whose authority it had been based refused to stand behind it. The expert in question, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, is a teri distinguished fellow and, per a recent teri press release, the head of teris glaciology team. He is also the coauthor of a presentation on the Status of Indian Glaciers under Climatechange Scenarios available on the HighNoon website.1 It now appears that the 2035 date was the product of a misreading of the findings of the geologist V.M. Kotlyakov, who in a 1996 paper estimated that at then-present rates of warming the worlds extra-polar glacier cover would diminish by 80 percent by . . . 2350.
The projected eu contribution to HighNoon is 3,311,756. It is telling that a recent and related Carnegie Corporation grant to teri and an Icelandic partner institution is worth barely one-tenth of this total. This is to say that for scare-mongering climate researchers like Pachauri and Hasnain, private American foundation money is just, so to speak, icing on the cake. eu money is the cake. Pachauris teri is a partner institution in no less than six research projects that have thus far been funded under the eus Seventh Framework Programme. Three of the six are on climate change. Numerous U.S. institutions, both public institutions and private educational institutions, are likewise participants in eu-funded climate research projects.
Among the files to be found in last Novembers online document dump is a spreadsheet of grant monies received by Professor Phil Jones, the former director of the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit (cru). Jones stood aside from his post shortly after the compromising documents were made public. Above all on account of its imposing £13,718,547 total or over $21 million at current exchange rates the spreadsheet attracted attention in both new and even some old media. The data in it clearly reflect the importance of eu funding for the climate research agenda of Jones and the cru. But they also in fact underestimate the importance of eu funding. By far the largest grants included in the spreadsheet are operating grants to two research centers: the Institute for Connective Environmental Research and the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research. As a British public educational institution, the University of East Anglia naturally relies on British public sources to cover the operating costs of its research centers.
But they underestimate the importance of EU funding. By far the largest grants in the spreadsheet are operating grants to two centers.
If one removes these two operating grants and considers only the project-related funding, Joness total haul falls to £4,379,264 for the roughly decade-and-a-half (19902006) covered by the spreadsheet. Of this amount, some £1,882,706 or 43 percent came from the European Union. Moreover, the importance of the European funding clearly increases with time, representing some 48percent of the project-related grant monies after 2000< and fully 52 percent after 2002. The latter date is of particular significance for European climate activism, since it was in 2002 that the European Union and all its then-member states simultaneously submitted their ratifications of the Kyoto Protocol, the eus showcase international initiative for combating climate change. The year 2002 also marked the start of the sixth Framework Programme.
It should be noted that some of Joness domestic British sources of research funding are themselves in turn beneficiaries of eu money. This is the case for both the uk Met Office which is a partner in several eu-funded climate research projects and the Natural Environment Research Council (nerc). The nerc, moreover, makes no bones about its avid interest in helping uk scientists to leverage eu money.2 As it happens, such a leverage effect i.e., the stimulation of additional public and private investment as a consequence of eu funding is one of the express aims of the eu legislation adopting the current Framework Programme.3
That eu money would come to swamp domestic British sources of funding even in the work of Professor Phil Jones is particularly impressive given just how relatively limited the horizons of the professor appear to have been. The real internationalist in the East Anglia group was clearly Mike Hulme, the director of the Tyndall Center. Thus, on June 18, 2004 Hulme and two of his associates sent an e-mail to Jones and several other recipients announcing:
The Tyndall Centre is intending to lead a bid for a large eu research project (ca. 12-15 million Euros in the initial bid) on climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in Europe. The call was announced this week with outline bids (ca. 20 pages) due by October (3rd call of the sixth framework programme, fp6).
The Tyndall trio went on to invite the recipients to participate in the bid. Jones then proceeded to forward the e-mail to two of his Climate Research Unit colleagues along with the following note:
Dave and Clare,
I am presuming we (cru) dont want to get involved with this.
Err! yes i think this would be good to get involved, Dave Viner replied. The successful bid would become adam Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy a project funded by the European Union to the tune of nearly 13 million. According to an indicative budget included in the East Anglia document file, as the lead participating institution the University of East Anglia alone was slated to receive a cool 1.84 million.4 Another document contained in the file indicates that Jones was part of a group applying for fp7 funding at the very time that the Climategate scandal broke. The document is dated November 9, 2009. The abbreviated title of the proposed project offers some curious insight into just how Jones and his colleagues viewed the eu. The full title is European Reanalysis and Observations for Monitoring, out of which the authors managed creatively to extract the abbreviation euro4m. But the short-form title would seem more obviously to refer to something else: namely, the 4 million in support that the researchers were requesting!
EU funding and the politicization
of science
It is no accident that eu funding leads to politicized science. Promoting research that supports eu policies is, after all, one of the stated main strategic objectives of the Research dgs framework programmes.5 Indeed, the joint European Council/European Parliament decision adopting Framework Programme 7 promises a new approach . . . which should allow the political objectives of Community research policy to be reached more easily.6
The decision identifies ten thematic areas for research support and community action. For each of them, a rationale is provided and key activities are identified. The rationale for including energy among the ten areas is explained by, among other things, the need to curb dramatically emissions of greenhouse gases in order to mitigate the devastating consequences of climate change. In keeping with this rationale, co2 capture and storage technologies for zero emission power generation is identified as a key activity. Not surprisingly, Environment (including climate change) is another of the ten thematic areas. The rationale provided for its inclusion notes that earths natural resources and the man-made environment are under intense pressure from . . . climate variability and warming at local, regional and global scales.
In other words, the eus funding for climate research is based on the proverbial assumption that the science is settled, the debate over. Skeptics, so to say, need not apply. That the earth is warming, that the causes are anthropogenic, and that the consequences will be devastating all these propositions, despite their largely empirical character, are treated as axiomatic by the eus program and hence placed outside the realm of legitimate inquiry. The program is thus at variance with the very nature of the normal scientific process. When Barack Obama went to Copenhagen in December and declared that the reality of climate change is not in doubt and that all that remained was to agree on actions to meet the challenge, he was merely repeating European dogma. The eu decision adopting the seventh framework programme serves, in effect, to promulgate this dogma: to establish it by law for the entire European research area, i.e. for all the eu member states and their some 500 million inhabitants. While decreeing empirical truths may have been a matter of course for Church authorities in the Middle Ages, it is surely extraordinary to find the political authorities of supposedly democratic nations doing the same in the 21st century.
If we consider, moreover, the concrete policy objectives that eu-funded climate research is designed to support, it is hardly surprising that eu funding would favor dogma over science. The centerpiece of euclimate change mitigation efforts is, after all, the Kyoto protocol. Indeed, the Kyoto protocol has arguably been the single most high-profile eu policy initiative bar none. With the protocol set to expire at the end of 2012, the focus of current eu efforts is to have a new Kyoto-like international agreement in place by that date and to succeed in involving the United States this time as party to it. But unless all three of the highly contestable propositions enumerated above are true, the emissions-trading scheme at the heart of the Kyoto arrangements amounts to nothing more than an enormous and wasteful boondoggle. All the various and sundry mitigation strategies such as the development of carbon capture technologies, for instance would be boondoggles as well.
But just why would the eu want to promote such a system of boondoggles? In order to answer that question, one needs to go back in time: to 1990.
1990: Kyotos secret history
According to abelief that is widespread among climate skeptics, the global warming scare and Kyotos ostensible solution are just means to an end, and the end in question is in fact entirely unrelated to climate or the environment. They are, in effect, just a backdoor route to global socialism. Now, it is certainly true that Kyoto hands over enormous power to international bureaucracies and subordinates markets to their whims. Indeed, the emissions trading scheme does more than just subject markets to political control. By dictating companies and countries need for carbon credits, it actually conjures a market into existence purely by government fiat. But the socialist Trojan horse explanation for Kyoto requires that we attribute an implausibly large degree of foresight and premeditation to European actors and/or their un co-conspirators.
eu bureaucrats and the national political elites in the two major continental European powers, Germany and France, are undoubtedly overwhelmingly inclined to favor a directive role for state institutions. But they did not need to have any grand design for global government in order to find Kyoto attractive. Simple opportunism and the aggressive pursuit of national interest were sufficient. For the terms of the Kyoto accord are in fact enormously advantageous for the eu. Most fundamentally, they are advantageous for the country representing the eus largest economy: Germany. They are more or less neutral for most other eu member states. And they are enormously disadvantageous for the United States.
Kyoto was essentially conceived as a deal between the eu and the U.S., the worlds two largest economic areas in terms of gdp. Other parties to the agreement are largely window dressing. Under the banner of common but differentiated responsibilities, the treaty implicitly recognizes this fact. Common but differentiated responsibilities is a bizarre sort of newspeak for a novel type of international agreement under which many of the parties, in effect, only agree to other parties doing things. The Kyoto accord creates no concrete obligations whatsoever for some 150 of the 189 countries that are presently party to it. It is hardly surprising, then, that it was possible to get them to sign on.
Many of the Annex I countries, however, benefit from targets that are so lenient that they too incur no real obligations.
Indeed, by allowing developing countries to sell carbon credits to industrialized countries as part of the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (cdm), Kyoto creates a positive financial incentive for the developing countries to join. Only countries that have ratified Kyoto may participate in the cdm. In light of its existence, it would have been astonishing for poorer countries to refuse to join the Kyoto system. They had literally nothing to lose and cold hard cash to gain. Indias National cdmAuthority estimates that the country will be able to earn nearly $6 billion on the carbon credit market by the year 2012.7 China and Brazil are likewise major beneficiaries of the cdm.
So-called Annex I countries are a different matter. Annex I refers to Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Kyoto accord is a protocol to the convention. Unlike the developing countries, the Annex I countries do incur practical obligations under Kyoto in the form of emissions reduction or limitation targets at least, in theory. The targets concern a bundle of greenhouse gases of which co2is the key component. Many of the Annex I countries, however, benefit from targets that are so lenient that they too incur no real obligations. Russia, for instance, is only required to hold its emissions at or below 1990nbsp;levels. Given the collapse of Soviet-era industries, this meant that Russia would be sure to have plenty of hot air to spare and could only be a financial beneficiary of the Kyoto arrangements.
Australia is one of three Annex I countries assigned a positive emissions target under the treaty, thus being officially allowed to increase its emissions in relation to the 1990 base year. But Australia was not only given the benefit of a positive target. By virtue of what is commonly referred to in the literature as the Australia clause, it was also allowed to include emissions from land clearing in the calculation of its emissions total for the base year. The effect of this was massively to inflate the base year emissions total, thus rendering the real allowance even greater than the official 8 percent.
On the other hand, all but two of the present day eu member states are officially required to reduce their emissions under the treaty. Twenty-three of them incur the maximum requirement of an 8 percent emissions reduction. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that for the most part this apparently stringent requirement translates in practice into minimal requirements or indeed none at all.
In 1990, of course, something rather epoch-making occurred in Europe: German reunification.
The fundamental source of the legerdemain is the selection of the year 1990 as the reference date for measuring emissions reductions. In 1990, of course, something rather epoch-making occurred in Europe: German reunification. As a result of reunification, East Germanys highly inefficient, highly carbon-intensive industries were quickly wound down. This would be reflected in a sudden and substantial drop in the reunified countrys overall co2 emissions figures. Now, it might be thought that only Germany itself could benefit from this fact under Kyoto. Why should the other eu countries have gone along with the trick?
But under Kyoto other countries are in fact also able to benefit from Germanys statistical good fortune. The protocol permits groups of countries to share their emissions reduction burden. Among Kyoto cognoscenti, this arrangement is colloquially known as a bubble. Nominally, each of the fifteen states that comprised the eu at the time of Kyotos adoption is supposed to reduce its emissions by 8 percent in relation to 1990 levels. But thanks to their formation of a bubble, in reality they are only committed to collectively reducing their emissions by this amount. The actual individual commitments are laid out in Annex 2 of the April 2002 European Council decision approving the ratification of Kyoto.
Germany graciously agreed to take on the seemingly disproportionate burden of a 21 percent reduction in emissions. As the top line in Figure I below illustrates, the country has already achieved such a 21 percent reduction in co2 emissions. The graph is adapted from the textbook Renewable Energy and Climate Change (Wiley & Sons, 2010) by Professor Volker Quaschning of Berlins Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft. As the other two curves in the graph make clear, however, Germanys prima facie impressive achievement is largely just a statistical by-product of the precipitous fall in eastern German emissions in the early 1990<. The evolution of co2 emissions in eastern Germany is represented by the bottom curve. The middle curve represents the evolution of co2 emissions in western Germany. As can be seen, on Professor Quaschnings calculations, from 1990 until today, they have remained almost unchanged.
And what of Germanys principal partner in European integration? Under the eu bubble arrangement, France has no obligation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It is only supposed to hold them steady at 1990 levels. All told, seven of the fifteen eu member states forming part of the eu bubble have no emissions reduction requirement. Five members of this group are indeed permitted to increase their emissions, some of them by vast amounts.
The 1990 Kyoto base year was also, of course, beneficial for the ten post-Communist Eastern European countries that were candidates for eu-membership at the time of Kyotos adoption in 1997 and that would subsequently join the eu. In case it was not beneficial enough, however, the ten countries were permitted to opt for a year other than 1990 as their base year or even to use the average over a period of years. Unsurprisingly, several of them opted to employ a base year or period upstream of 1990 when their still communist-era industries were pumping out the maximum amount of co2. Equally unsurprisingly, almost all of these countries will be able to meet their Kyoto targets without any difficulty and without having to have taken any special measures to do so.
And what of the United States? Under the terms of the Kyoto protocol, the U.S. is supposed to reduce its emissions by 7 percent. On the face of it, this is a slightly less stringent target than that accepted by the eu15. But what does this 7 percent mean in practice? Well, it means 7 percent. The U.S. was granted none of the hidden indulgences that have allowed other industrialized nations to continue emitting greenhouse gases at unchanged levels or even to increase their emissions.
It is hardly surprising, then, that according to calculations undertaken by Yale economist William Nordhaus, the United States alone was slated to bear some two-thirds of the total costs of the protocol as originally conceived and four times the costs borne by the eu15.8 From both Nordhauss analysis and the details of the treaty itself, it would appear that the other major loser under the terms of the Kyoto accord is Japan, which is saddled with a hard and fast 6 percent emissions reduction target.
The march of the pgos
Here is an update on the Inter-reg proposal, Tyndall Center associate Iain Brown writes to Mike Hulme and two other colleagues in an e-mail dated January 29, 2004, . . . Aiming for a 3 year project of 34 million Euros. interreg is yet another eu funding scheme, this one attached to the Directorate General for Regional Policy. The proposal in question would become the interreg-funded project branch: Biodiversity Requires Adaptation in Northwest Europe under a Changing Climate. But in case the interreg application failed, Brown suggested some possible backups: Other alternatives are life and Framework VI.
As mentioned above, lifeis the financing instrument of the Directorate General for the Environment. The current life + program, covering the period from 2007 through 2013, makes available 2.143 billion in funding.9 Contrary to Iain Browns apparent expectation, ordinarily life would not in fact fund scientific research. But what it does fund is highly relevant to the story of climate alarmism. If the eus Research dg and its Framework Programmes have corrupted the scientific process as it pertains to climate, the Environment dg and its life program have distorted public debate and thereby undermined the very democratic process. They have done so, notably, by financing ngos.
The leaking of the East Anglia e-mails and documents sparked a remarkable and, in many ways, unprecedented process of public scrutiny of the supposed climate science consensus via blogs and online discussion forums. One of the most troubling discoveries made by the scrutinizers was the vast number of allegedly scientific claims in the ipccs 2007 Fourth Assessment Report that were referenced not to peer-reviewed scientific journals, but rather to advocacy groups or ngos. As judged by the number of citations, perhaps the most authoritative of the nonscientific authorities cited in the ipcc report is the self-styled conservation organization that goes by the initials wwf. The acronym originally stood for World Wildlife Fund, and the American branch of the organization still uses this name. The organization as such, however, is now officially known as wwfWorld Wide Fund for Nature.
According to publicly available European Commission data, WWF was awarded nearly 9 million euros in EU support in 2008 alone.
The infamous Himalayan glacier retreat prediction in Chapter 10 of the ipcc report, for instance, is supported by nothing more than a citation of a 2005 wwf paper (which cites in turn Syed Iqbal Hasnain). As Donna Laframboise of the No Frakking Scientific Consensus blog has pointed out, a search of the ipccs Fourth assessment report turns up dozens of citations of no less than sixteen wwf-sponsored papers or pamphlets.10
Now, it is commonly assumed, even by many ipcc critics, that wwf is a private advocacy organization funded by donations from the public. This is hardly surprising given that wwf does, of course, engage in high-profile fundraising efforts. wwf commercials have indeed helped to popularize what is undoubtedly the most iconic image of the supposedly nefarious effects of a warming climate: the stranded polar bear floating aimlessly on what we are led to believe are ever diminishing chunks of ice.
But wwf also receives substantial funding from the European Union. Indeed, the financial ties between the eu and wwf are so regular and systematic that it would be more accurate to describe the organization as a pgo or para-governmental organization rather than an ngo.
According to publicly available European Commission data, wwf was awarded nearly 9 million in eu support in 2008 alone. In 2007, the figure was over 7.5 million. The money came from several different eu budget lines, including development aid, communication, and the environment dgs life+ program. Most of the support took the form of ostensibly project-linked grants to wwf-International or its national affiliates. The largest single grant for 3,499,999 went to wwf-International in 2007. wwf is so intimately familiar with eu money that it has even edited a handbook on eu environmental funding on behalf of the European Commission. In February of this year, the organization advertised a job opening with the title European Funding Coordinator. The European Funding Coordinator will promote funding interactions between the eu as a donor and the wwf Global programme, the job description explains.
Not all of the eus funding of wwf, moreover, is project-linked. Most significantly for present purposes, wwfs European Policy Office in Brussels receives an annual operating grant from the Environment dg. According to publicly available European Commission data, in 2009 this contribution amounted to 661,878, representing 15.46 percent of the offices total budget. wwfs European Policy Office has been awarded an annual operating grant from the eu every year since 1997. In earlier years, the subsidy represented as much as 28 percent of the offices budget. In addition, since 2002 the organizations Danube-Carpathian Programme Office in Vienna has likewise received regular operating grants from the eu.11
The period of the eus financing of the wwf policy office happens largely to coincide with the period covered by the East Anglia e-mails. wwf and wwf officials make several appearances in the e-mails. The general tenor of the organizations interaction with the scientists is unmistakable.
In October 1997, for instance, just two months before the Kyoto climate conference, Andrew Kerr of the wwf Climate Change Campaign can be found berating the Japanese government for proposing scandalous emissions reduction targets for industrialized nations: i.e., more realistic, less misleading, and more equitable targets than those that would ultimately be adopted. It is vital that European governments reject the proposal in no uncertain terms and urge Japan to at least support the eu standpoint, Kerr writes. In July 1999, Dr. A. Barrie Pittock of Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (csiro) can be found well-nigh pleading with Mike Hulme to alter climate change scenarios being prepared by Hulme on a wwf grant. Our main concern . . . is your use of the 95% confidence limits of natural climatic variability as some sort of threshold for change, Dr. Pittock writes.
This is a reasonable thing to do if you are addressing the question of whether climatic change will be detectable at a scientific level of confidence, but that is certainly not the question I would expect wwf to want answered . . . I would be very concerned if the material comes out under wwf auspices in a way that can be interpreted as saying that even a greenie group like wwf thinks large areas of the world will have negligible climate change.
After receiving assurances from Hulme about changes in the latters presentation, a relieved Pittock (I am now much happier) sheepishly explains the background to his intercession:
I should perhaps explain my delicate position in all this . . . I have a son who is now a leading staff member of wwf in Australia and who is naturally well informed on climate change issues. Moreover, Michael Rae, who is their local climate change staffer, is a member of the csiro sector advisory committee.
One day after receiving Pittocks plea, Hulme received still more indirect input from wwf, this time via Adam Markham. Markham tells him that in particular, they [wwf] would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible. In an e-mail sent August 6, 2003, Stephan Singer of wwfs European Policy Office can be found flogging that summers European heat wave as proof of truly global warming and offering money for a study on the economic costs of these weather extremes.
How could allegedly man-made global warming come to eclipse unquestionably man-made terrorism?
Several other so-called ngos that have played important roles in the promotion of the Kyoto protocol and the supposed fight against global warming are likewise beneficiaries of eu operating subsidies. During the Copenhagen conference in December, the youthful militants of the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth earned a particular reputation for rowdiness, leading to the groups highly publicized banning from the Bella conference center. Friends of the Earth is commonly described as a grassroots organization. Magda Stoczkiewicz, the director of Friends of the Earth Europe, complained bitterly about the ban: If Friends of the Earth is not allowed inside the un negotiations we cannot play our crucial role in bringing the voices of citizens to the talks, especially the voices of those who are disadvantaged and already suffering most because of climate change.
But consultation of eu funding data reveals Stoczkiewiczs pretence to representing civil society and the climate-disadvantaged global masses to be a sham. In every year from 2003 through 2009, Friends of the Earth Europe was awarded operating grants from the eus Environment dg representing anywhere from 40 percent to 53 percent of its annual budget. Friends of the Earth Europe has been receiving eu subsidies since 1997. The Climate Action Network Europe, an umbrella group of European ngos, has received operating grants from the eus Environment dg representing anywhere from 34 percent to 64 percent of its budget in every year from 2003 through 2009. In all but one year, the grant was over 50 percent.
One of the great political puzzles of the last decade is how allegedly manmade global warming a purely hypothetical threat, of which no one has to date suffered any known consequences could come to eclipse unquestionably manmade terrorism as the greatest global challenge of our times. That this development could occur during a decade in which by all accounts global temperatures have on the average declined renders the mystery all the greater. During this same decade, at least tens of thousands, and more likely hundreds of thousands, have fallen victim to Islamist-inspired terror attacks in the United States, India, Iraq, Great Britain, Tunisia, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Israel, Somalia, Spain, and numerous other countries around the world.
The eclipsing of the real and immediate threat of Islamist terror by the hypothetical long-term threat of global warming represents an obvious aberration. It simply cannot be the result of the spontaneous uprising of the global masses, as Friends of the Earth and other eu-funded pressure groups would like to make us believe. Instead, it would appear that the very practice of eu-funding of ngos has helped to create a sort of pseudo civil society, amidst the din of whose protests and press releases and media campaigns the interests of actual civil society have become all but inaudible.
John Rosenthal writes regularly on European politics for publications such as the Weekly Standard and the Daily Caller. More of his work can be found at www.trans-int.com.
1 Accessed January 22, 2010.
2 See Natural Environment Research Council, An International Plan for nerc. According to nercs 200809 annual report, nerc itself received £4.3 million in support from the eu in the 200809 fiscal year.
3 See Decision No. 1982/2006/ec of the European Parliament and of the Council.
4 The universitys final take was presumably even higher, since the proposed budget assumes an eu grant of only 12 million.
5 European Commission, FP7 in Brief (2007), 7.
6 See Decision No. 1982/2006/ec of the European Parliament and of the Council.
7 See http://www.cdmindia.nic.in/, (accessed February 26, 2010). For a revealing example of how the cdm works, see Christopher Booker, £60m bill for the co2 of our political class, Telegraph (February 20, 2010).
8 See William D. Nordhaus, Global Warming Economics, Science, 294 (November 9, 2001), Figure 3. By total costs here I mean just the sum of the costs of all the countries or regions bearing costs. Nordhauss chart includes a bar representing world costs, which is something different.
9 See Regulation No. 614/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council.
10 Richard Norths EUReferendum blog should be mentioned as another blog that played a major role in drawing attention to the ipccs dependence upon wwf.
11 Data on eu operating subsidies to environmental ngos is available at http://ec.europa.eu/...t_ngos97_07.htm, (accessed June 30, 2010).
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Posted 12 October 2010 - 01:03 AM
Brave scientist calls out the global warming fraudsters
Thomas Lifson
Big money and big politics have corrupted Big Science, and global warming is the proof.
The American Physical Society is the pre-eminent academic organization of American physicists, and supportive of the global warming fraud, which has generated billions of dollars in research funding for Big Science. In an extraordinary act, a prominent scientist has resigned from the APS, in protest of its forsaking of genuine science. Generally, scientists do not voluntarily separate themselves from such honors as membership in the APS.
Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sent the following letter to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society, an act Anthony Watts likens to Martin Luther nailing his theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. The letter speaks for itself, laying out the problem of corruption of big science:
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence-it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind-simply to bring the subject into the open.<
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
Posted 02 November 2010 - 07:48 PM
Wednesday, November 03, 2010 at 06:37am
SO you think I exaggerate when I say global warming is just the latest cause of the closet totalitarian?
Then pay close attention to an experiment the warmists are about to inflict on the people of Norfolk Island.
Be warned. Whats being trialled there with $390,000 of Gillard Government money may, if it works, be spread to the mainland, say the researchers.
Which means its coming for you.
The plan - and, no, Im not joking - is to put Norfolk Islanders on rations to fight both global warming and obesity.
Funded by the Australian Research Council, and approved by the Socialist Left Science Minister Kim Carr, researchers from the Southern Cross University will give each volunteer on the island a carbon card.
Every time they buy petrol, electricity or an air flight, they will have carbon units deducted from the fixed allowance on their card.
More units will be lost each time they buy fatty foods, or produce flown in from a long way away.
If, at the end of each year or so, they have carbon units left over, they can sell them. If theyve blown their allocation, they must buy more.
But each year, the number of carbon units in this market will be cut, causing their price to soar - and thus the price of extra food, power and petrol to rise - because the idea is to cut greenhouse gases and make Norfolk Islanders trim, taut and terrifically moral.
Conservatives well aware of human fallibility will immediately spot the obvious flaw in this latest scheme of the Left to remake humanity.
Its this: what happens when people run out of their carbon rations, and cant afford the extra units they need to buy more fuel, power or even food?
This is precisely what I put this week to Garry Egger, head of this experiment and professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at SCU.
His response was astonishing and revealing, because this basic question - which so exposes the teeth of the totalitarian - would have been one youd think hed long wrestled with.
After all, his personal carbon trading idea is not new, so much does it appeal to the fingerwaggers and bullies infesting the global warming faith.
As far back as 2006, Britains then environmental minister, David Miliband, proposed a similar scheme, since endorsed by the Environment Agency and House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, which even insisted the Government defy howls of protest from mere voters.
Widespread public acceptance, while desirable, should not be a pre-condition for a personal carbon trading scheme; the need to reduce emissions is simply too urgent, the MPs said, before being driven off to dinner.
(Or as our own Professor Clive Hamilton, author and former Greens candidate, puts it, global warming is so horrible that leaders must look to canvassing of emergency responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.)
Nor is Eggers idea new in Australia, The farcical ideas summit of prime minister Kevin Rudds 1000 best and brightest Australians also recommended it - which is a very good reason to be alert and alarmed.
We have the technology now to create a carbon account for individuals, says the summits report, in between appeals for chairbound workers to be given 30 minutes a day of exercise and stairs to climb at work.
Yet although carbon rationing plans have been kicked around for years by the Left, that key question of the conservative has still not been answered. As in: what if people dont want to live your dream? What if they rebel, or merely fail you?
Lets go to the transcript of my interview with Egger on MTR 1377 this week, to see how he answered.
Me: What happens to those people who overdraw their carbon emissions ...
Egger: In the first year you are just warned ... (Later) if you overspend, youve got to buy the units that are cashed in ...
Me: If you put this in on the mainland and you were really strict about it - you really thought the world was warming very, very dangerously and someone exceeded their rations of these carbon units - one would presume that you would make food, for example, too expensive for them to buy.
Egger: Thats right ... so if youve got, for example, a very fatty unhealthy food that is imported from overseas which takes a lot of carbon to develop it, then the price would go up ...
Me: What happens to a very fat family, a very irresponsibly fat family, and theyve blown their carbon budget to the scheissenhausen and youve made their food terribly expensive? What about the kids? They go to breakfast and theyve got one baked bean?
Egger: In general youll find that in a very fat family they are low-income earners ... so those people would actually benefit from a scheme like this because the food that they buy, the energy that they use, they dont use as much energy as the rich anyway ...
Me: But what happens? Their ration of carbon credits runs out and youve made food too expensive for them to buy. What happens to them?
Egger: Again, they get money back from doing the right thing.
Me: No, but theyve done the wrong thing. Thats why they are fat and poor. Theyve done the wrong thing, theyve run out of their carbon credits. What are you going to do to them then, when the foods too expensive to buy?
Egger: There are going to be personal cases like this that need to be worked out and they need to be worked out in the tax system as well as in the carbon credits system.
Egger, founder of GutBusters, undoubtedly means to do good. He has no wish to see children starve.
YET I think we have here an insight into a key failing of so many grand schemes of the Left to improve resistant humans or build for them someone elses idea of the perfect society.
These schemes so often are too perfect for the flawed humans they supposedly serve. But its the humans who must then adapt to the system, and not the other way around. Which is where some force is required; some democracy sacrificed.
What a buzz for the closet totalitarian then, to bully other people for their
own good - in this case, to save the planet.
When the cause is so just, which planet-saver could let some contemptible fatty stand in their way, begging for the carbon credits to feed their chubby children?
On the other hand, which planet-saver would deny themselves any aid or comfort in this great struggle?
Need an illustration of what Im talking about? Egger himself plans to jet off to Mexico next month to boast to a United Nations global warming conference how he persuaded Norfolk Islanders to ration just such joy flights for themselves.
This is your future coming right at you, folks. Best you realise its no longer a joke.
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You buy things from Amazon by using the account and payment information you provide when you create an Amazon account. You probably have an account if you ever bought anything on Amazon (or opened an account when you bought your Kindle Fire HD).
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After you associate your device with an Amazon account, you can manage account settings by following these steps:
Navigate to the Amazon website by using the browser on either your Kindle Fire HD or computer.
Tap (if you're using a touchscreen device) or click the Your Account option in the top-right corner of the Amazon screen.
Tap or click the Manage Payment Options or Add a Credit or Debit Card option from the Payment section of your account.
Change or enter a new method of payment and billing address.


text: I am not sure if I am in the correct forum. My DH and I have been trying to conceive for the past 1 1/2 years. I was pregnant at 17, but terminated the pregnancy. I am now 36 and DH is 42. I have been tested and found to be quite healty and capable of getting pregnant. DH's sperm count is exceptionally low, however. Roughly, what are our chances of having a successful IVF, both with and without ICSI, the first time around?


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At Work: Thinkers have value in today's job market
Of all the non-useful things people believe, have no proof of but perpetuate, I'd like to put one to rest:
"You can't do anything with" (fill in the blank) an English degree, a degree in philosophy or anything in the general vicinity of the humanities or social sciences.
STORY:What's a B.A. in English worth anymore?
COLUMN:Learn to think if you want to get hired
But that belief is just false, false, false — especially today.
How can that be? With the cry for skilled workers in science, technology, engineering and math, you would think that people only with those degrees can find jobs.
Like most things in this world, the job market is not that simple.
First, let me point out that a lot of successful people with degrees in English and philosophy have had or are having terrific careers:
Carol Browner, former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and astronaut Sally Ride are three examples of people with degrees in English. And there are plenty more.
Chris Hayes, the youngest prime-time anchor of any major cable news channel, recently premiered his new show on MSNBC. He got a bachelor's degree in philosophy.
When he was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, host Terry Gross intimated how odd it was to study such an abstract area because his work — in which he talks about politics — is "about the real world and real policies."
He countered her what-does-a-philosophy-education-have-to-do-with-the-real-world perception by describing his incredible intellectual training.
His education was about clear reasoning and learning to be "critical of one's own arguments and of others' arguments and whether they follow logically," he said.
"I evaluate every argument (of guests on the show) through the framework of philosophy and of logic and whether things do follow from the premises," Hayes said.
No matter what your politics, watch him and you'll see that the guy does a phenomenal job of applying this education.
Many people who study language or philosophy learn practical skills that can be used in the real world. They learn to analyze and understand complex information, how to write persuasive, comprehensive arguments and how to think.
In my new book about what employers are looking for today, every employer I talked to said the same thing.
Yes, some are seeking particular technical skills. But what they want most are people who can think critically, know how to listen, and be open to other points of view.
This is how innovative ideas and products get hatched.
If you look at people with degrees in social sciences, which typically focus on society and human nature, you'll see that their education, too, can be quite useful in the job market.
Take anthropology, an area that got attention in recent years when Florida's governor, Rick Scott, said colleges should drive students toward science, technology, engineering and math programs and away from becoming anthropologists "where we don't need them."
His over-simplistic classification misses out on anthropologists' relevance to companies today.
You have to get beyond your limited perception, which likely entails people digging for fossils in Siberia. Think of anthropologists as having skills in observing and analyzing people in their natural environment.
That makes them very useful in places like General Mills, where an anthropologist's work observing people's habits in real-life breakfast settings led to the development of Yoplait's portable Go-Gurt.
Anthropologists, who also are skilled in critical thinking, work for places like Intel, IBM, Microsoft and research firms, and according to the Bureau of Occupational Outlook, have a rosy 21% growth rate through 2020.
If you're getting ready to look for a job or considering what to study, don't be deterred by simplistic or outdated perceptions about what's practical in today's marketplace.
When someone asks, "What will you do with a degree in English, philosophy or anthropology?" brag about the great training you got that can apply to the real world.
What employers want above all are people who can think critically.
And from what they tell me, those people are not so easy to find.
Career consultant Andrea Kay is the author of This Is How To Get Your Next Job: An Inside Look at What Employers Really Want. Reach her at email@example.com. Twitter: @AndreaKayCareer.


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08 Jan, 2015
2016 Camaro previewed in black. Surprise unveiling from Chevy coming at Detroit?
Posted by: admin In: Main
Will we see the 6th gen Camaro revealed at the Detroit auto show next week? GM has been mum on the topic, but Automotive News did recently reference a rumor regarding a possible surprise unveiling from Chevrolet at the show. In any event, we will know soon enough as the Detroit auto show officially kicks [...]


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Game Notes - pdf
(PITTSBURGH, Pa.) - The Carnegie Mellon University football team will host DePauw University on Saturday, September 22 at Gesling Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pa. The game is set to start at 1:00 p.m.
Carnegie Mellon will enter the contest with a 3-0 mark and will look to start 4-0 for the seventh time under head coach Rich Lackner and first time since 2006. DePauw comes to Pittsburgh seeking its first victory of 2012, as the Tigers dropped their first two contests.
Last week the Tartans defeated Catholic University 35-17 thanks to the play of junior quarterback Rob Kalkstein (Monroeville, Pa./Gateway). Kalkstein posted career-highs with 290 passing yards and three touchdowns on 10-of-12 passing, raising the Tartans' team pass efficiency rating to tops in Division III at 261.94. DePauw travels to Gesling Stadium after dropping a 52-14 contest at Wittenberg University last Saturday.


text: I just baught a dexter 3500# torsion axle from a friend. I want to use it for a smoker trailer, but the axle is too long. Can i cut and shorten the axle? I did read a few articles saying the rubber does not run the whole length of the axle, just from each end in a few feet. This axle is made for a 80" frame. The smoker tank is 30" wide and I want to keep the tank close as possible to center. So at 60" I would have 15" on each side from smoker tank to side of trailer. This way I can reach the doors. I dont even know is I can take 20" out of the axle.? any help is appreciated. Thanks, Joe


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Barcode Discount › Handheld Computer › Windows Mobile Handheld Computer › Motorola MC9500-K › Motorola MC9598-KDBEAC00100
Capable of handling any environment
The Motorola MC9500-K is purpose-built for the most demanding field applications. The superior rugged specifications dramatically reduce repair and downtime, delivering an exceptional return on investment and total cost of ownership. Designed to easily handle the inevitable drops and bumps out on the road, the MC9500-K passes Motorola's stringent mechanical design tests for both stress and endurance. The MC9500-K is the first mobile computer to provide true WAN technology independence. In addition to the ability to select either of the 3.5G wireless broadband networks. The MC9500-K offers a portfolio of keypads designed to meet the needs of virtually any type of application - from heavy text entry to calculator-style numeric data. Keypads can be swapped in your backroom in minutes, eliminating the need to return the device to a service center. The MC9500-K also offers a new housing, IP67 sealing, the industry's highest drop and tumble rating and more.
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Nursing Opportunities In The Northern Cape
Find the best nursing opportunities in the country when you sign-up to Ambition 24Hours today. We supply medical staff with the best nursing job opportunities, and it only takes a few steps. Register with the link below, wait for our friendly team consultants to contact you and follow the easy steps from there. As a leading medical recruitment agency for over 20 years, you can be rest assured that you put you first.
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Flexible Working Hours | Top Rates Of Pay | The Best Nursing Jobs In the Northern Cape
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Please email or call us anytime - 24-7, weekends and holidays – and we are ready to take your call on 0860 204 204 to register. Contact us for registration information.
(Our office is open in Cape Town for registrations 8:00am - 5:00pm, Monday – Friday.)


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Dan Walters
Dan Walters: California budget is balanced? Not by a long shot
One of the conceits of Capitol politicians – much on display during this election year – is that they finally balanced the state budget after years of deficits.
Gov. Jerry Brown is especially prone to making the claim, particularly when he grants audiences, as he often does, to out-of-state journalists who don't know better.
It simply isn't true, or at least isn't when one looks at the state's finances holistically, rather than piecemeal.
To Brown, et al, the budget is balanced because it provides enough money to pay the obligations that he and the Legislature choose to pay. But when what they choose not to pay is included, the budget is billions, even tens of billions, of dollars out of balance.
They choose, for instance, not to include a $70-plus billion shortfall in the trust fund that pays teachers' pensions. The California State Teachers' Retirement System says it needs another $4.5 billion a year to cover the unfunded liability that's growing by $20 million a day.
No one questions that number, and the money must come from the state, from school districts that get most of their money from the state, or from teachers themselves.
They also choose not to include a $60-plus billion unfunded liability for the health care of retired state employees and there's really no way for that debt to be shared. It will be paid, sooner or later, from the state budget – and it, too, is growing by the day.
There's also an unfunded liability of some dimensions for state workers' pensions.
The state Department of Transportation has revealed another mounting debt that's being ignored – deferred maintenance of the 50,000 lane-miles of state highways. California has some of the nation's worst pavement conditions as 35 million vehicles run up 300 billion miles of pavement-beating travel each year.
Over the last four years, $3.9 billion has been spent on long-neglected highway maintenance and reconstruction projects, mostly from bonds and federal "stimulus" grants. However, the state's own plan says $2.8 billion is needed each year, only a quarter of which is being budgeted.
Add it all up, and California is ignoring at least $10 billion a year in debt payments that current politicians are avoiding but that their successors and taxpayers will have to shoulder at some point.
That doesn't count, by the way, the billions of extra dollars in constitutionally protected spending for school aid and payments to counties for realignment of criminal justice and other programs that are being financed through temporary increases in sales and income taxes.
What happens when those taxes expire in a few years, but the spending obligations lodged in the state constitution continue?
A balanced budget? California is like a family that makes minimum credit card bill payments and ignores its mortgage.


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Following the success of the Kellogg's post-Olympic tour, three of the members of the U.S. women's gold-medal squad from London will back out on the road in 2013.
Gabrielle Douglas, Alexandra Raisman and Jordyn Wieber headline the Teen Choice Live! Tour which pairs gymnastics and pop duo Megan and Liz.
"I'm so excited to go on a tour with Aly, Jordyn, Megan and Liz and bring our fans so many of our favorite things in one glam-filled event. I love the TEEN CHOICE awards and always get excited to see who gets the surfboard!" Olympic all-around champion Gabrielle Douglas said.
The 45-city tour kicks off Jan. 13 in Richmond, the first of four tour stops in Virginia, Douglas' home state.
"This tour will be a fun 'thank you' to everyone that has shown support and helped us accomplish our goals," Raisman said.
Wieber added, "We know it's going to be an amazing show and hope the fans leave inspired to follow their dream, just like we followed ours."
Tickets go on sale Saturday.
Teen Choice Live! Tour
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ChargePoint and DBT USA announced plans to significantly expand the networked EV charging station landscape in North America.
Through a partnership, DBT USA's new North American portfolio of Level II EV charging stations now have the option to connect to ChargePoint's charging network.
DBT USA says it can provide, through ChargePoint, station owners and EV drivers advanced features including the ability to help with trip planning, manage the cost of charging, and find and operate public stations.
In a recent study by Pike Research, ChargePoint and DBT are rated as the number one and two EV charging station equipment manufacturers, respectively, in the world.
The companies are currently showcasing their combined solution at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"With 20 years of experience and more than 10,000 units installed worldwide, DBT is synonymous with innovative and comprehensive charging hardware," said Hervé Borgoltz, DBT's CEO. "By partnering with ChargePoint we now offer an intelligent solution for the North American market with advanced EV charging services the marketplace demands. ChargePoint is an ideal platform to bridge the connection between grid, vehicle, and drivers through our new charging infrastructure portfolio. By using DBT's unique scalable hardware, this collaboration with ChargePoint will also allow electric charging operators to tailor their charging solutions to get the best return on investment possible, especially in the fleet and public charging areas."
Through this agreement, DBT USA's GNS product portfolio, including the GNS Premium and the GNS Bundle now provide network services, via ChargePoint, for both charging station owners and EV drivers.
DBT's GNS Premium gives station owners the opportunity to manage payment as well as monitor station operating status via ChargePoint cloud services.
DBT's GNS Bundle combines a GNS management unit with one or several GNS "satellite" stations allowing parking operators and fleet managers to progressively build their network of stations. DBT says GNS Bundle is ideal in helping them grow their charging infrastructure as new electric and plug-in hybrid models become available in North America.
Both GNS Premium and Bundle models can be purchased with ChargePoint Network compatibility for EV charging station management.
For station owners, ChargePoint features include patent-pending ChargePoint Connections, support for multi-site deployments, and additional pricing models for charging services.
ChargePoint says it optimizes management workflows, allowing station owners to operate more efficiently and with less effort while maintaining tight control over access and management rights.
For EV drivers, ChargePoint-enabled locations are included on all ChargePoint mobile phone applications for iPhone and Android. These free ChargePoint mobile apps provide an easy way to locate stations near any specified address, get turn-by-turn directions, start and stop a charging session directly from a smart phone.
Additionally, these apps allow drivers to utilize ChargePoint's station reservation feature. Drivers can locate reservable stations, and then make, view and cancel a reservation directly from a smart phone.
"We are pleased to partner with DBT USA as they enter the North American marketplace," said Pat Romano, president and CEO of ChargePoint. "ChargePoint's open platform integrates seamlessly with DBT's station hardware, enabling their customers to be part of the ChargePoint network."


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The Everyday Backpack, Tote, and Sling
Introducing the Everyday Bags
Like all Peak Design products, our new bags are packed full of features and meticulously engineered. They are designed from the ground up to be both the best camera bags and the best everyday carry on the planet.
Skip ahead to: Backpack | Backpack Size | Tote | Sling | Range Pouch | Specs | FAQs
How to get them
Become a backer of this project and pick a reward. You will essentially be pre-ordering one of our new bags. You'll get a special backer discount, and you'll receive your stuff before it is available in stores. Want to buy more than one? Check out All Rewards & Add-ons. Still confused? Check out How to Back this Project.
Are these camera bags?
Let's make one thing abundantly clear: these ain't just camera bags. They're Everyday bags—crafted by a team of designers, engineers, and photographers to meet the needs of everyone in the modern world.
We may have cut our teeth in the camera accessories world, but these bags are for everyone, just like our (award-winning*) Everyday Messenger that we designed and launched a year ago with the help of renowned adventure photographer Trey Ratcliff. Peak Design Everyday Bags are unrivaled as camera bags and uncompromising as everyday companions.
Everyday Backpack
Simply put, a backpack without compromises. Available in Charcoal and Ash, and in 20L and 30L sizes. Unless otherwise specified, all pictures are of the 20L Everyday Backpack.
What makes the Everyday Backpack so stacked?
Find your size
Everyday Tote
The classic tote bag, completely reimagined to protect, organize, and provide lightning-fast access to your camera gear and everyday carry (think beach, gym, traveling, diapers, etc). Available in Charcoal and Ash.
What makes the Everyday Tote so dope?
Everyday Sling
The ultimate low-profile, quick-access day bag for light carry and daily excursions. Makes a great bag for beginning photographers or pros who just want to carry essentials. Also a fantastic option for the non-photographer who just wants a sleek everyday bag. Available in Charcoal and Ash.
What makes the Everyday Sling so bling?
Range Pouch
The Range Pouch is specifically designed to protect and carry lenses on belts, straps, or in bags, available in three sizes. Like our Everyday Bags, the Range Pouch is intelligently designed, expandable, versatile, and feature-packed.
Why do we vouch for the Range Pouch?
Comparison and Specs
How to Back
1. Choose a reward level.
Everybody can choose one (and only one) reward level to back this project. You cannot choose 2 reward levels. Just one. You will get all items in that reward—you cannot swap things that you don't want for things that you do want. See the FAQ for why we can't do this.
2. If you want to add something, check out the Add-On Menu.
If (and only if) you want to add something additional to your reward, check out the Add-On Menu below. If it's in the Add-On Menu you can add it to your reward by increasing your pledge by the amount specified in the menu. You can only add things to your reward that are in the Add-On Menu.
If you want to add on a Peak Design product that you don't see in the Add-On Menu, don't worry. We'll give you a chance to do that after our campaign ends. See the FAQ for further explanation.
3. Relax, you're done for now.
All details like shipping information, color preference, and add-on specifics will be collected via survey after this campaign has ended.
Rewards and Add-Ons
1% For The Planet
This year we have the privilege of joining 1% For The Planet. In doing so, we pledge to donate 1% of our revenue (gross revenue, not just profit) to a group of certified environmental nonprofits.
Thank you for your support!
We can't say it enough. Thank you for believing in us. We can't wait to get these new products in your hands.
Risks and challenges
This is Peak Design's 6th Kickstarter project. We don't want to toot our own horn too vigorously (nobody likes an overly vigorous tooter) but we've got some great experience under our belts on how to manufacture high-quality goods and fulfill lots of orders for them. We've also been blindsided more than once by completely unexpected issues and always dealt with them in a way that leaves every last customer happy with their purchase and proud to support our company.
In short, we know what we're doing, and you should be very confident that we will deliver what we say we will, when we say we will. And we solemnly swear that should unforeseen issues come up, we will handle them with the utmost transparency and care for you, our backers.
Supply Chain Risk: We're incredibly proud of our supply chain, and have a lot of confidence that we can make what we say we'll make, when we say we'll make it. But know what? Sometimes 10 shipping containers of product get stuck outside a shipyard for 3 weeks. We pad our schedule for these kind of things, but sometimes not enough.
Acts of God: We're based in San Francisco. That means we could have an earthquake. Or we could have a massive spur-of-the-moment parade involving wacky costumes and public nudity. Or, god forbid, the Dodgers could come to town. Whatever happens, we'll get through it together. We promise.Learn about accountability on Kickstarter
Funding period
- (59 days)