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May 27, 2009Kert Davies, over at the ever-vigilant Exxon Secrets site, writes:
Finally. After years of denying its role in the campaign of climate denial, Exxon has revealed a dirty secret, that it has and likely still is DIRECTLY funding junk scientists.
Thanks to Exxon's revealing this little secret, we now have a direct link between the Exxon black bag o' cash and two scientists who have made their careers as global warming deniers.
Read all about it.
The following piece is by Satu Pitkänen, one of our press officers in Finland
I realised it's time to wake up and smell the upcoming EU election. Despite the fact that many of the decisions that affect my everyday life are done locally, inside my country, some of the most significant political processes have to be done internationally. Take climate change for example. It is nothing a single person or a single country can do much about. We need to be in on it together.
That's why I had to stop yesterday, rub my eyes and read again. "Our enlarging carbon footprint is only a sign of the welfare we have created for ourselves", said Mr Ari Vatanen, a Finnish world rally champion and now member of EU parliament (as a French resident, and part of a conservative French political party) and a candidate for the next term from Finland. He went on: "Warmth is a good thing, cold is a bad thing. When it's cold one can die of a flu. Welfare has always meant that it gets warmer." Yes, really. It does sound like an argument from kindergarten!
I'm sure most of us understand the basics of science and know it's perfectly possible to study long term temperature and climate changes. And I'm sure most of us - even the sceptics - have now accepted the fact that we are influencing the climate. But not Ari: "It's absurd that a person would know how the climate changes. Nobody knows what the weather is going to be like next Saturday. Warm periods have come and gone during history."
If the EU is to maintain its position as the climate leader of the world, we have to make sure we elect the right people to the parliament. Politicians who have earned their votes simply by driving a fast car should not to be allowed to undermine the promising path of diminishing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing down climate change. We need parliamentarians with vision, not populist ideas of bringing a sports car to everyone's garage without exhausting any natural resources.
The state of the oceans was bad enough when all we had to worry about was overfishing, pirate fishing, whaling, shark finning, dumping, mining, and oil exploration, (there are a lot of etceteras here, but you get the idea). When you add global warming to the threats, you face the prospect of acidification, of coral reefs dissolving like alka-seltzers, of messing with the chemistry of the source of half of the world's oxygen, of glacial melt altering ocean currents, and the possibility that instead of sucking down 30 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, the oceans could flip to become net carbon emitters, and you've got the kind of screaming nightmare scenario that could wake up even a politician to the need for action, not words.
All 32 activists at a palm oil diesel refinery in Porvoo, Finland have been arrested by police. 6 of the activists have already ben released and we are waiting for the release of the remaining activists.
Do your part. Join these brave activists and take action - Send a letter to Neste Oil and ask them to stop using palm oil in NExBTL diesel and to instead find a sustainable raw material before putting their planned NExBTL refineries into operation.
Before most of us even had our first cup of coffee this morning, 32 activists from Finland and Sweden were up and taking action at a palm oil diesel refinery in Porvoo, Finland. Neste Oil, an oil refining company that is largely owned by the Finnish government, has plans to rapidly expand over the next three years - to become the world's largest consumer of palm oil.
Palm oil production is the leading cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia. Rainforests and peatlands are cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxiode. This destructive practice is the leading reason why Indonesia is now the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. If that doesn’t sound bad enough we can also blame this rampant deforestation for pushing species like the orang-utan and the Sumatran tiger to the brink of extinction.
The activists will be at the plant as long as they can demanding that Neste Oil stop contributing to forest destruction that is contributing to climate change. Do your part and join them in the action. Send a letter to Neste Oil and ask them to stop using palm oil in NExBTL diesel and to instead find a sustainable raw material before putting their planned NExBTL refineries into operation.
Neste Oil uses palm oil as the main component of the NExBTL-diesel and markets it as an environmentally-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. This ‘green’ marketing contradicts the warnings that climate scientists issued last year that palm oil grown on deforested land is many times more damaging to the climate than conventional fuels.
A few weeks back, we reported that Greenpeace Australia Pacific's Origami Whales campaign was top of its category in the 2009 Webby Awards.
Well, Origami Whales won the People's Voice Award in the 'Rich Media Advertising: Non-Profit/Educational' category so thanks to everyone who voted - you've helped bring more pressure on the Japanese Prime Minister to explain why Japan is spending taxpayer's money on fake science, and a supply of what meat that no one wants .
On Tuesday May 5th The Washington Times had an editorial that was all about Greenpeace, it was included in both the print and online versions of the newspaper. The editorial mentioned arson, and 'Nazi brownshirts' in reference to Greenpeace, but also hinted that Greenpeace had used the 1985 bombing of the flagship Rainbow Warrior by agents of the French government as a means to raise funds. Understandably, people were upset.
Today the Washington Times has published an editorial by Phil Radford, the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA that tactfully 'corrects' the previous editorial (which has since been taken down). It's a good read.
Check out what the folks at Greenpeace India are up to. They've taken on one of the largest companies in the country - all to protect endangered Olive Ridley Sea Turtles.
Full story: Tata and the turtles
In these tough economic times none of us are strangers to the concept of ‘budgeting’. It makes perfect sense doesn’t it? You have a limited amount of funds to allocate so you try to live within those means. Of course you could ‘live now, pay later’ but that way disaster lies.
That concept is applied to carbon in the context of climate change in a new study published today in the science journal Nature.
There's a Q and A on the article here
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