Godfrey Bloom

It’s Chris Huhne again. Here is his message to the Offshore Wind Conference in Liverpool last week, organised by Renewable UK, p.k.a. the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).

Says Huhne, “Both the Prime Minister and I stated quite categorically that we will be the greenest government ever.”

It doesn’t matter if you voted blue, or if you voted yellow. You’re getting green. Even if you only voted blue and yellow to get rid of red, you’re getting green. It doesn’t matter what you want. It doesn’t matter what the public wants. The policies of the government that the public wanted to get rid of have been taken up by Huhne and his colleagues in the Con-Dem coalition.

The reason Huhne gives for this is that “We need a low-carbon economic recovery to tackle the challenges of climate change and energy security”.

Yet the climate change story is – at least as far as almost everyone else is concerned – disintegrating. Even those who remain attached to climate politics are acknowledging that the alarm and fear generated in the debate has been much exaggerated and poorly-founded. Yet Huhne is promising “the greenest government ever”. It is hard not to smell a rat when senior politicians present such doublethink. What is going on?

The rest of Huhne’s speech is assurance after assurance that wind energy manufacturers and producers will be able to cash in on the policies created by Cameron, Clegg and Huhne’s “greenest government ever”.

There are renewable energy targets; there are incentives, breaks, and subsidies. And there are contracts. There is £200 billion on the table.

As for “energy security”, Huhne is backing the least competitive form of electricity production with your money. He wants to be a world leader in the last technology anyone wants. Wind was technology in the dark ages. It was abandoned when we discovered how to find, extract and use coal, oil, and gas, and when we discovered how to split the atom. We might yet discover how to create fuels through biotechnology and through fusion. There are still terrific advances to be made by science, yet Huhne opts for the obsolete technology. And behind his desire for obsolete technology is his obsolete politics. It is not you or I Huhne believes he needs to win over; it is the producers of this energy themselves that need to be convinced. In order to convince them, he offers them cash incentives.

First prize goes to Siemens Windpower. Huhne has just written them a cheque for a cool £5 million in order to help them create a 6 megawatt wind turbine. In 2009, Siemens generated nearly €21 billion profit. Its energy sector created €26 billion of revenue, more than €3 billion of which was profit. Why then, would they need Huhne’s £5 million, if wind really were viable? Why aren’t they leaping at the “opportunity” and need instead to be bribed, and promised subsidies, grants, deals?

The other beneficiaries of Huhne’s generosity with your money announced this week are as follows. JDR Cable Systems Ltd from Hartlepool get a £2 million grant to develop cables to carry the ludicrously expensive electricity back to our shores. Converteam from Rugby will enjoy a £1 million grant to develop “Large scale DC conversion technology”. NGentec from Edinburgh will receive £800,000. Cooper Rolling Bearings get £256,250; South Boats Special Projects Ltd get £300,000; MTL Group £250,000; and Blade Dynamics of the Isle of Wight – the place where wind-energy firm, Vestas couldn’t sustain themselves – gets £400,000.

The £10 million is the prize awarded by the government in a competition it has set up to hasten the development of cheaper wind energy. It might be said that it is not a huge amount seen next to the millions and billions that the government wastes on all sorts of things. But this £10million is just a small part of the billions it spends and billions more that it plans to spend on wind energy – a technology that Chris Huhne has admitted can barely compete with conventional sources of energy, even during a time of historically high fuel prices - through subsidies, grants, and other giveaways.

Britain is facing an energy crisis, on top of its economic problems. Chris Huhne and his colleagues are hoping that something magical will be blown in by the wind. They are living in a fantasy world, in which ‘the greenest government ever’ simply powers homes, businesses, and the economy by tapping in to nature’s bounty. However, they were appointed to run the affairs of a country which is unfortunately subject to the laws of material reality. The government’s preoccupation with ‘renewables’ invites more problems and far more cost than is necessary. Just as with Ed Miliband before him, Huhne seems determined to make a name for himself as the man who fulfilled something impossible, making Britain green and prosperous.

Wouldn’t it be better if they just got on with the job, rather than their own daydreams?

In my previous post, I referred to a video of Chris Huhne at ‘Wind Week’, organised by the fake grass-roots campaign, Embrace, which are directed and funded by RenewableUK – the rebranded British Wind Energy Association (BWEA). The BWEA are on a PR offensive, and are recruiting ‘ordinary people’ to do their lobbying for them. Being so fat and bloated on subsidies, they have immobilised themselves, and have to get other people to do their bidding, passed off as ‘campaigning’ to ‘save the planet’.

Anyway, this is what Huhne has to say for himself.

Huhne begins...

This is a very windy country so we have a fantastic amount of resource in wind energy and we can potentially produce enough electricity to fuel 33 million homes.

This is quite a claim. According to BWEA – so take the figure with a pinch of salt – 2906 wind turbines installed in the UK was sufficient to power 2,559,247 homes. In other words, the average turbine produced sufficient energy for 880 homes. So to produce sufficient energy for 33 million homes, we’d need to build 37,500 wind turbines. This small country of ours occupies an area of just 94,060 square miles. To realise Huhne’s absurd vision would mean building a wind turbine on every single 2.5 square miles across the entire United Kingdom.

Huhne’s distance from reality increases...

Now we've only got 24 million homes, so this is a real prospect of us becoming a net energy exporter again, as we were at the peak of North Sea oil and gas.

Huhne seems to think that there is a real possibility of us exporting surplus energy from wind. All we need to do is build another 34,000 wind turbines. Simple.

Even if such a hugely expensive and pointless exercise were possible, Huhne has forgotten that those 2906 were only effectively supplying power at around 28% of the time. When the wind wasn’t blowing, energy to each of those 2,559,247 homes came from some other source, coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. So on top of paying for wind turbines, we’d still need to build conventional power stations. Any benefit that we’d realise from exporting wind energy would be swallowed up by keeping a second electricity generating network on standby, in case the wind dropped.

It's a phenomenal resource, and we need to use it. We're surrounded as an island by tides, by waves, and we have wind, and we unfortunately don't have a lot of sunshine. So solar energy is not going to be our strong point. We have to work on the other renewables.

We have to work on the other renewables? Why do we have to? The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change wants us to tell us that we have no alternative. We must do as he says. This is not a subject for debate. Once again, the undemocratic reality of the UK government’s climate policies is exposed. It is as if Huhne is in hock to the wind energy industry, and we’re to pay without ever being asked for our views. To make this outright thievery look like a popular and progressive measure, the BWEA/RenewableUK has organised its very own paramilitary wing – Embrace – to parade in the street.

More nonsense from Huhne...

We are the world leader in offshore wind. And what is particularly interesting is that the cost of wind energy is coming down and down. On shore wind is now competitive with all of the conventional energy sources. We're going to see the same thing happen over time with off-shore wind.

It is a massive disappointment to hear a senior British politician speaking with such pride about our ‘world-leadership’ in an industry which is so completely uncompetitive. It’s a bit like coming first in a hit-yourself-with-a-hammer competition. Yes, Huhne is happy because he’s winning the competition to see who can be the biggest idiot.

If it really were true that wind was competitive, then why would it need subsidies? Wind farm operators currently get around 40% of the £billion subsidies handed out by the government each year, from your bill. This money effectively guarantees profits for the people putting up wind farms in areas where they simply are not wanted.

Huhne concludes, with perhaps the limpest possible defence of his policy.

I think Wind Week is a very good initiative because it sensitises people... lots of myths about wind turbines... When I put a wind turbine on my house in er in in in er Eastleigh, you know, the neighbours were worried, is it going to be very noisy. Well it's not noisy at all. And you know, is it going to mash up all the birds. No, it's not going to mash up all the birds. Does it actually look that bad? No it doesn't. So I think when people get more familiar with the technology and they realise how friendly it is by comparison with many of the other ways we traditionally generate electricity, I think they will warm to it, and I hope that it becomes easier to get the roll-out which can actually take advantage of this enormous resource that we've got.

Huhne seems to think that we just need to be gently persuaded into accepting windfarms. He seems to think that whatever our objections, we can be nudged and sweet-talked by pretend activists at fake grassroots organisations into thinking that they are a great new idea. He seems to think that our objections can be gently swept aside by getting pretend activists to make enthusiasm for wind the social norm. He thinks we’ll be convinced by his own wind turbine at his constituency home – in a place he can’t even remember the name of – and he thinks we’ll be convinced by what he says his neighbours say about whatever it is he has attached to his house. He is mistaken.

Huhne represents a peculiar phenomenon of our times – democratically elected (just about) politicians seem to think that the views of those who elected them don’t really count for much. Virtually nobody votes for the Green Party or green policies, and opinion polls time and time again demonstrate that the public simply aren’t interested in the climate agenda or that they don't really give a stuff about expensive, inefficient, and unreliable renewable energy. Yet once elected, Huhne and his ilk seem to take it upon themselves to set about persuading us that we must accept the green agenda – as though that was what people had voted for them to do.

A year ago, climate sceptics seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Then along came Climategate. Then COP15 failed. Then Glaciergate. The scandals emerging from climate alarmist circles are now hard to keep up with. We’re all sceptics now. Except of course, for the new UK government, who seem committed to this stupid idea of putting up wind farms where they are not wanted.

Chris Huhne of the Liberal Democrats is the Con-Dem coalition’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and replaces Ed Miliband, who was also a fan of wind. Here is Huhne, banging on about how great wind is at an event in Leicester Square.

I’ll return to Huhne’s silly little speech in the next post. What interests me now is the circumstances of that piece to camera. The event Huhne is speaking at is part of “Wind Week”, organised by “Embrace My Planet”, whose website proclaims them to be the “campaign to support renewables”. It goes on,

Embrace my planet is a movement of ordinary people who are supporting renewable energy in the UK, enabling you to make your opinions known to politicians and the media.

Now, fair’s fair, we mustn’t grumble when people – ordinary people, remember – we disagree with organise themselves to campaign for whatever it is they would like to see more of. Healthy debate is one of the few remaining British institutions that is capable of providing some resistance to climate nonsense. For instance, I was pleased when recently, my colleague Lord Monckton and Lord Lawson together won the motion This house would put economic growth before combating climate change at the Oxford Union. However, can you imagine the debating chambers of Westminster pondering such a direct and well-formulated question? The UK and EU are already committed to putting climate change before all else, including democracy.

Anyway, it turns out this “movement of ordinary people” isn’t quite so ordinary after all. A deeper search of the website reveals that,

Embrace is an arms-length campaign of RenewableUK (formerly BWEA), the trade association for renewable energy suppliers in Britain. While it is sponsored by companies, the campaign itself is activist-led - Embrace provides the facilities for renewable energy supporters to campaign directly to their elected representatives, as well as organise campaigning events for themselves.

RenewableUK, formerly the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA), seem to have been embarrassed about their association with wind, and changed it. ‘Wind’ has become such an embarrassment that now they use the much more benign-sounding ‘renewable’. But it’s still the BWEA, in fancy dress. This is a PR war.

And just as ‘renewables’ turned out to mean, in fact, ‘wind’, what was claimed as ‘a movement of ordinary people’ was in fact a lobbying organisation for wind farm companies. These companies who make fat profits from subsidies are pretending to be a grass-roots organisation. They pass themselves off as citizens to lobby for government action favourable to wind farm operators and installers. This enables them to continue to profit from subsidies. This is a scam. Of course it is.

Imagine a big oil company had set up a similar organisation. Imagine, for instance, BP were to set up some kind of organisation of ‘ordinary people’ to change the public’s perception of its image. Imagine – just for example – that It had been accused of despoiling the environment, and so in response, it set up and financed an organisation which it populated with ‘citizens’ and other ‘ordinary people’ to lobby on its behalf in the USA. There would be an outcry. The ‘activists’ that would work with this organisation would be accused of dishonesty. Nobody would take their claim to being ‘ordinary people’ seriously, and it would be all too obvious that what they were doing they were doing for extraordinary reasons.

So why is it so different when wind companies want to spoil the environment?

The winds of change have caught the pro-wind lobby grimacing. Stuck in an ugly contorted image of its own making, it realised it needed a facelift and split to become RenewablesUK and its pretend activist/PR wing, the Embrace campaign. But behind these facades is the same old monster: bloated by subsidies, yet hungry for more. More! MORE!

A few months ago, I decided to ask the EU Commission a few questions about what it was going to do, now that doubt has been cast over the work of the IPCC.

Question 1

Has the Commission made a single attempt to scrutinise the Intergbrovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports before taking the advice they contain to turn it into policies such as the Emission Trading System (ETS) that affect millions of EU citizens and their livelihoods? If not, can the Commission provide an explanation?

Question 2

In the light of:

— the leaked emails from Hadley CRU,

— the allegations of corruption surrounding Rajendra Pachauri,

— and the recent exposure of non-peer-reviewed and non-scientific research from politically motivated campaigning organisations being included in IPCC reports;

What does the Commission intend to do to investigate these affairs, and is the Commission planning to review its climate policies?

The commission has replied...

The Commission bases its climate policy on solid scientific input such as the one provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assesses all the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for understanding the risks of climate change. The assessments of the IPCC represent the consensus of thousands of scientists worldwide, based on peer-reviewed research, and approved by all governments. Objectivity is ensured by the broad and open review process and shared responsibility for the report.

The IPCC has clarified that the Climate Research Unit (CRU) analysis is substantially correct and that the illegal hacking of private communications between scientists had not impacted the validity of the key findings of the fourth Assessment report. An independent review was announced by the University of East Anglia.

The IPCC has acknowledged that one particular source, used in their analysis of the melting of Himalayan glaciers, was not in compliance with their rules of procedure and they have apologised. This is a responsible reaction. This mistake, however, does not undermine the large body of evidence gathered in the IPCC reports that show the impact of human actions on climate, including on glaciers. In addition, studies that followed the IPCC's fourth assessment report have consistently supported this evidence base or even strengthened the case for urgent action against climate change.

The Commission regrets that these incidents have provoked comments in the media supporting that climate change is a hoax.

The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has initiated in tandem with the Chair of the IPCC, a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC's procedures and processes. This review will be conducted by the Inter Academy Council (IAC), an international scientific organisation. It will be conducted completely independently of the UN.

Based on the above, the Commission currently sees no reason for changing the basis for its climate policy. It carries out detailed impact assessments which analyse the need for policy initiatives and the potential impacts they may have, and has done so, for example, for the energy and climate package and for the revision of the emission trading scheme. They are publicly available on the Commission's impact assessment website. The Commission will of course continue to pay close attention to all scientific work undertaken and stands ready to review its policies if and when necessary.

This answer falls well short of what I was expecting, even from the EU.

Notice that no answer has been given to my first question. I ask... "Has the Commission made a single attempt to scrutinise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports before taking the advice they contain...". The Commission replies, "The Commission bases its climate policy on solid scientific input such as the one provided by the [IPCC]".

I would expect any policy-making process to have in place a further process to evaluate and to scrutinise anything and everything it used to inform itself. No such process exists.

We are expected to share the Commission's trust in the IPCC.

I don't even trust the Commission.

But the Commission seems to think that the IPCC is sufficiently robust a review of the science to be the basis of policies that affect each of our lives and livelihoods.

As we have seen, however, the IPCC are not so adept at checking their own facts. I will discuss the IPCC's recent mistakes shortly. For now, what is interesting is that the Commission seem to beleive that the IPCC cannot make mistakes...

The assessments of the IPCC represent the consensus of thousands of scientists worldwide, based on peer-reviewed research, and approved by all governments. Objectivity is ensured by the broad and open review process and shared responsibility for the report.

It is simply and totally not true -- not even a little bit true -- that "the IPCC represent the consensus of thousands of scientists. Only ONE of the three working groups (WGs) that produce reports under the IPCC process is made up of a majority of scientists. The other two panels (WGII and WGII) contain a hotchpotch of economists, sociologists, doctors, lawyers - a range of disciplines - and the occasional climat scientist. Of working Group I -- where the scientists live -- there are not thousands of them, but in fact just a hundred or so. And there is no consensus between them. They work in groups of about a dozen or two at a time to work on chapters within their report. The Commission's answer misrepresents the work of the IPCC in the same way that John Prescott did last year.

Furthermore, it is not true that the review process is "broad and open". You could not, until recently get access to the comments from reviewers. And even now that you can, what opportunity do you, I, or even an expert have to challenge the IPCC report? None. Once the IPCC's report has been written, there is not further checking allowed. The EU won't check it. And the UK government won't check it. And to try to do so is to be shouted down as a "denier". yet its errors are allowed to cascade through political institution after political institution, whereupon they land on your head.

It's all okay, though, says the Commission. The IPCC have checked its own work, and it's still all in order. And the work of the Hadley Centre -- the group of scientists caught out evading Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and making up data to "hide the decline" -- is okay, because there has been an "independent inquiry".

I've had a really good idea, based on these answers. Let's get rid of the courts - judges, juries, lawyers, magistrates... the lot... Instead, when someone is suspected of having committed a criminal offence -- murder, rape, arson, theft, fraud -- let's get the suspect's mummy to decide whether or not they are guilty, and what should happen to them.

Because that is as rigorous a process as the IPCC and Hadley Centre have been through. The Parliamentary inquiry was hurried, so that it could happen in good time before the election. The independent inquiry headed by Lord Oxbrough is highly questionable, given the fact of his business activities - he advises an investment firm with a climate fund of more than £1.5 billion. And As Christopher Booker points out, he is also director of "Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment", which is a "worldwide network to lobby governments to take more drastic action on climate change".

The Commission concedes that the IPCC has made just one mistake, now known as "Glaciergate". But it happened to be a pretty big one. If you're not familiar with the story, this is what happened. Over a decade ago, an article in the New Scientist by Fred Pearce claimed that new research suggested that Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035, leaving the billion or so people living beneath the mountains without their water supply. Years later, the WWF picked up the story, and used it in one of their reports. The WWF report was then picked up during the writing of the IPCC's latest report (AR4), and was included. But it turned out to have been a completely groundless. Pearce was an avid environmental alarmist, and had written books on global water shortages. He had rushed the story through without checking any facts. The WWF, who are junkies for a disaster story - it's how they get their cash from governments - similarly took the story at face value. And whoever it was at the IPCC who included it didn't do their job properly.

Was this just one mistake, as the Commission have claimed? No. There is also the case of "Africagate". As Richard North explains, the IPCC reported that parts of Africa would suffer from a 50% reduction in crop yields by 2020. This turned out to be based on flimsy and barely credible report by an unknown academic, and not published in any peer-reviewed journal. North concludes...

Even the mildest critics of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri might now be moved to observe that they have eschewed uncertainty, to project the most pessimistic scenario imaginable – with no scientific support and a great deal of embellishment.

North lists these four substantial controversies surrounding the IPCC's claims about climate change and its effects: "Climategate", "Glaciergate", "Amazongate" and "Africagate" Add to this the questions surrounding the "Hockey Stick" graph affair, and the questions about Rajendra Pachauri's credibility as chair of this organisation - "Pachygate". The claim here is that Pachauri knew about the false claims in the report, but allowed them to be reproduced ahead of the COP15 climate negotiations in Denmark last December. And there are further claims that Pachauri and organisations he is associated with have materially benefitted from this. My colleague, Paul Nuttall asks the following,

The real gain to Corus from stopping production on Teeside is the saving it will make on its carbon allowances, allocated by the EU under its Emissions Trading Scheme which will be worth up to £600 million over the next three years. As the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is the head of the Tata Foundation, one must ask "qui bono?" Needless to say, Tata of India owns Corus.

"Qui bono" (who benefits) indeed. Thanks to EU carbon legislation, on the basis of the IPCC, which is headed by Pachauri, thousands of jobs in Britain have been lost as the operations at Teeside are moved to Asia - landing Corus (owned by Tata) a massive windfall of many £millions. Yes, Tata is being paid to export British jobs.

So, you see, I think we really ought to be able to ask the EU on what basis is makes laws which allow this sort of thing to happen. It replies, it seems, by understating the extent of the controversy surrounding the IPCC, and over-stating the robustness and certainty of the IPCC's output. It is "based on peer-reviewed research, and approved by all governments", says the Commission. Rubbish.

A recent audit by Citizens -- stuff governments and their self-interested agendas -- discovered that in some chapters of the IPCC's report, as many as 85% of the sources used as "evidence" were not peer reviewed at all.

The Commission's reply is as dodgy as the IPCC itself. In spite of this wealth of evidence, they maintain that there is "no reason for changing the basis for its climate policy".

I beg to differ. There are many, many reasons to examine the basis of the EU's climate policy. I can think of more than 60 million of then off the top of my head. Every single person in the UK stands to lose out from EU climate legislation. It will cost every UK family thousands of pounds. It will cost you your futures, your pensions, and possibly your jobs. It will cost your children the bright, positive, rewarding future they deserve.

Over at Wattsupwithtthat, the unstoppable Anthony Watts posts a link to an ‘interesting’ Greenpeace blog today.Watt's picks up on what appears to be a threat issued from Greenpeace activist, Gene Hashmi. Hasmi complains that in the wake of Climategate and other scandals,

Climate skeptics are suddenly enjoying street cred. Not surprisingly, public belief in the climate science has been shaken. How did this happen? Or, as a fellow traveler tweeted the other day... "How do you explain the weight of climate skeptic voices in social media if expertise is more valued than ever?"

Hashmi is not at all ashamed of his conspiracy theorising.

Across the pond in the US, the "biggest company you've never heard of" has been hard at work to achieve similar results. Their name is Koch. You can pronounce that name any way you want. David and Charles are two brothers heading Koch Industries. And they are to US climate policy what Halliburton was to US foreign policy. With $100 billion in annual sales and operations in nearly 60 countries, they have enormous financial interest in keeping us addicted to fossil fuels. Matter of fact, they've actually surpassed Exxon’s funding of climate denial think-tanks and astroturf front groups.

For years, Greenpeace have been trying to finger Exxon Mobil as the organisation at the centre of a climate denial conspiracy. But the smear campaign has worn ever thinner. Not only does the idea that all climate scepticism emerges from one company’s propaganda effort insult the intelligence of everyone, believer or not, it is all too obvious to anyone who follows the debate at all closely that big energy companies have been cashing in on the Green bandwagon. There are huge subsidies available to green tech companies. There are vast fortunes to be made in carbon trading – a scam that the totally corrupted firm, Enron got itself involved in, way back in the 1990s.

In 1997, Enron’s Senior Director for Environmental Policy and Compliance, John Palmisano wrote in a company memo that “This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”, and that

If implemented, this agreement {Kyoto} will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous.

Greenpeace pretend that the climate debate is an issue of big business versus the rest of us. But the reality is that Greenpeace is merely changing the ground such that the big businesses it favours (and that pay it dues) get to benefit.

For Exxon’s refusal to do as Greenpeace had told it, Greenpeace launched a propaganda war against Exxon. Through its anti-Exxon campaign, Greenpeace created a highly biased picture of Exxon Mobil’s relationship with various politicians and think tanks and non-profit organisations. By revealing only the picture that suited their campaign, Greenpeace demonstrated the flow of just less than $45 million over the course of a decade, between Exxon and various think-tanks and organisations that, to greater or lesser extents, had been critical of the climate agenda. That may sound like a great deal of money, but it forgets two important things.

First. Over the course of more than a decade, $50million becomes just $5 million a year. This needs to be seen it the context of vastly greater funds made available to green organisations by business and by government. Enron gave $millions to green NGOs to lobby for environmental legislation, for instance. Some even allege that Greenpeace were beneficiaries of Enron’s lobbying fund. We know, also – because I asked – that the EU gave in 2009 1.7 million Euros to Friends of the Earth Europe, the WWF European Policy Office, and Climate Action Network Europe. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Second, by failing to take into account Exxon’s broader program of donating, Greenpeace’s anti Exxon propaganda project lost perspective and any sense of scale. As the company points out, in 2008 it donated $225.3 million to a variety of beneficiaries throughout the world, including environmental organisations.

2008 marked the 13th anniversary of ExxonMobil Foundation’s establishment of the Save The Tiger Fund (STF) with non-profit partner National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Over the last 13 years, ExxonMobil has contributed more than $16 million to tiger conservation efforts, making ours the largest corporate commitment ever to save a species. With facilitating partners like World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, WildAid, and Fauna and Flora International as well as local, grassroots NGOS, our investments reach well beyond tigers. Conserving wild tiger populations means fostering cooperation among government agencies, businesses and civil society and building the capacity for local solutions management. Through activities that support tiger habitat, we have also invested in major Asian river systems that provide transportion and drinking water to millions, and protected millions of acres of carbon-storing vegetated and forested land.

Maybe Greenpeace were simply upset that they didn’t get any of that money for themselves?

Now, of course, Greenpeace are switching their focus to a new company, Koch. Back to Hashmi’s blog, which complains...

David and Charles are two brothers heading Koch Industries. And they are to US climate policy what Halliburton was to US foreign policy. With $100 billion in annual sales and operations in nearly 60 countries, they have enormous financial interest in keeping us addicted to fossil fuels. Matter of fact, they've actually surpassed Exxon’s funding of climate denial think-tanks and astroturf front groups. Through millions in lobbying and political contributions to politicians, Charles and David Koch are polluting not only our environment, but also the US political process, where efforts to get climate legislation passed is being hampered by massive corporate lobbying and denial campaigns -- including those that now claim that polar bears are not threatened by global warming.

Greenpeace have now chosen Koch as their climate enemy, claiming that,

From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.

In the four years, Exxon is alleged to have spent $2.2 million a year on donations, Koch spent $6.35 million. Seems like a lot to you or I, again. But, again, it’s nothing compared to corporate and governmental gifts to environmental organisations in return for favours. A recent study by the International Policy Network (IPN) discovered that nine of the ten biggest green charities in the EU had been funded to the tune of 66millon Euros since 1998. In 2009, groups such as Friends of the Earth were funded – by the EU from your taxes – to the tune of 8.8 million Euros, just so that it could lobby the EU for more environmental legislation. Did you catch that, the entire point of the EU paying green NGOs all this money is so that these green NGOs can tell the EU what to do.

Hashmi’s first blog ends with this silly video that obviously cost a substantial amount to produce. Greenpeace seem to have bought themselves, not just one, but three vehicles for the purposes of their public stunts.

What a strange video. Greenpeace seem to be protesting about Koch alleged funding of “scientific distortion”, yet right behind them is an exhibit which is much more interesting to this case. The venue for this silly protest is a museum, whose newest exhibition has been funded – at what appears to be very considerable cost – by one of the individuals accused by Greenpeace of standing in the way of science. As the Museum’s website explains, [http://humanorigins.si.edu/exhibit]

On March 17, 2010, the Museum marked its 100th anniversary on the National Mall with the public opening of our newest exhibition hall – the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. This exhibition is based on decades of cutting-edge research by Smithsonian scientists, and is the result of an international collaboration with over 60 research and educational organizations and over 100 researchers from around the world. The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of scientific evidence for human origins and the stories of survival and extinction in our family tree during times of dramatic climate instability.

“The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins uses Smithsonian science as a foundation to help appreciate our own unique development as human beings,” said Cristián Samper, director of the Museum. “The opening of this hall represents one of the most significant public and scientific achievements in the 100-year history of the museum. Our goal is to provide visitors and online guests with an exciting educational experience that will encourage them to explore for themselves the scientific discoveries about what it means to be human.”

Greenpeace’s stunt now looks ridiculous, and only draws attention to the very thing that undermines their own campaign of distortion. The donation to the museum and its product are remarkable demonstrations of a commitment to public education and engagement with science.

Having found a new villain, Greenpeace now need a new Victim – a Damsel in Distress that Greenpeace, in its shining armour, could pretend to protect. Hashmi’s second post does just that.

Three months ago, in an unprecedented move that could have far-reaching effects, the small Pacific island nation of Micronesia wrote to the Czech Environment Ministry challenging the expansion of Prunerov 2, the Czech Republic's most polluting coal power plant. Their case? The effect of CO2 emissions from Prunerov and plants like it would eventually see low-lying Pacific islands -- even those that didn't share a border with the polluting country -- submerged due to rising sea levels.

How are Koch and the 110,000 inhabitants of the Federated States of Micronesia connected? Well, barely at all. The Czech government continued with its plans to build a power station for its 10.5 million population. This, says Hashmi, means that the government of the Czech Republic are “doing the bidding” of “fossil fuel corporations’’. “This has revealed that a watertight legal case, a high moral ground and a credible support base are no match for infinitely-resourced and well-muscled think-tanks”, he says, forgetting that it is the Czechs themselves who actually want electricity.

Hashmi is now frustrated. He recognises now that public opinion is against him and his comrades. The “deniers” are winning the PR war. They are losing the democratic war. The gloves are off. Hashmi declares war against:

The oil and gas mafia running loose in New Delhi. The coal magnates that have Canberra by the short and curlies. The petrochemical giants that have placed a firm jackboot on the EU's throat. The fossil fools and nuclear lobbyists that have Washington DC on speed-dial.

It is news to me that “petrochemical giants” control the EU. Really. The EU is terribly keen on environmental legislation, bankrolling environmental organisations, and creating yet more undemocratic institutions to control and regulate businesses and private individuals. Hashmi simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But ignorance never stopped the self-important. Hashmi, has the zeal of a religious warrior. It is worth quoting what he has said in full.

Emerging battle-bruised from the disaster zone of Copenhagen, but ever-hopeful, a rider on horseback brought news of darkness and light: "The politicians have failed. Now it's up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It's not working. We need an army of climate outlaws."

The proper channels have failed. It's time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.

If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.

If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.

So there you have it. Greenpeace pretends to be defending “democracy” and society” but this claim is paper thin. Nobody ever voted for them. They serve only their own interests.

As I pointed out previously, Greenpeace have themselves declared war on the legal, democratic, and positive activity of individuals and businesses. It has such little respect for democracy, for law, and for human lives that when its propaganda, lies and doom-saying fail to change laws, politics and minds, it turns to force instead.

Stop green violence. Stop green terrorism.