statism watch

Flashback: Green energy bubbles threaten to pop at both Federal and Municipal levels | Terence Corcoran: Ontario puts $10B in the wind | Ontario Premiere McGuinty heralds Samsung ‘green energy’ deal | ‘Green jobs’ are key to U.S., Canadian recovery: US Ambassador | Jim Prentice: Implement A ‘North American Climate Change Regime’ | Ont. gives green energy price guarantee | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | US Congress passes mandatory national service bill | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | Terence Corcoran: Ontario’s green energy plan sneaks in feed-in taxes | New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty” | US Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills | Justin Trudeau introduces National Voluntary Service motion | Ontario joins continental WCI cap-and-trade scheme | B.C. carbon tax kicks in on Canada Day | They call it cap and trade, but it’s just another fuel tax | Quebec, Ontario sign historic climate pact | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

CBC News
March 13, 2010

Alternative energy advocates are applauding a recent decision by the Ontario Power Authority to approve hundreds of new green energy projects.

The OPA said Wednesday that 510 projects have been approved in 120 communities across the province. Most of the new projects will be solar installations.

Peter Glover, director of marketing for Ottawa Solar Power, said the news is a “huge bonus” to the solar industry.

“It’s opening up the renewable energy technology industry dramatically in Ontario,” Glover said. “What’s been a very slow progression of interests and installations is suddenly ballooning.”

The power produced by the new projects will be sold into the grid under the province’s feed-in-tariff program, which pays green energy producers a premium rate for the power they produce.

The program is part of the province’s Green Energy Act, which gained royal assent in May 2009. The province announced the program’s regulations in September, and started accepting applications from aspiring power producers in October.

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Yes, everyone get ready for the big ‘green jobs’ boom propaganda. Problem with that idea is, money isn’t a zero-sum game. You print it and give it to Samsung, or sink it in a public rail line, you may employ some people short-term but this will be at the expense of the people standing on the taxation rug you just pulled out from under them. For more, see the broken window fallacy. Now, combine this with the fact of US states and regional initiatives signing these independent contracts with Canadian provinces on any number of things – environmental projects, carbon taxes, continental IDs, running massive highways through, etc. – and you’re looking at a situation where Canadian sovereignty is being leached away with zero input from you.

Related: West coast regionalization rears its head in ‘Cascadia’ | B.C., 3 US states sign accord for ‘Pacific North America’ hours before Olympic kickoff | Jim Prentice: Implement A ‘North American Climate Change Regime’ | Passing on the Mantle of Deep North American Integration | Think-tank calls for United States of Great Lakes | Toronto part of ‘transnational mega-region’

Dana Gabriel, BeYourOwnLeader.com
March 12, 2010

U.S.-Canadian state and provincial integration is being achieved in areas of transportation, the economy, energy and the environment. With some national, trilateral and global initiatives being discredited, stalled or ineffective, it appears as if the strategy has further shifted to a regional and local level in an effort to lay the groundwork for new agreements.

In 2008, the Pacific Coast Collaborative was established between Alaska, British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington as, “a formal basis for cooperative action, a forum for leadership and information sharing, and a common voice on issues facing Pacific North America.” Some of its key priorities include action on clean energy, regional transportation, emergency management, sustainable regional economy, ocean conservation and climate change, as well as other issues. The inaugural Leaders’ Forum of the Pacific Coast Collaborative was held in Vancouver, British Colombia on February 12, 2010. It was hosted by Premier Gordon Campbell and chaired by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The meeting was also attended by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire and Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown. Although Alaska is also a member of the group, they were not able to send a representative to the meeting. It was announced that Oregon will be hosting the next forum to be held later this year.

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Flashback: Fury as EU approves antibiotic resistant GM potato | Canada’s flax crop mysteriously contaminated by GM seeds | Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seed | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis

Ian MacDougall, Associated Press
March 10, 2010

Arctic vault now contains the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, operators say

Two years after receiving its first deposits, a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault’s operators announced Thursday.

Cary Fowler, who heads the trust that oversees the seed collection, which is 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the North Pole, said the facility now houses at least one-third of the world’s crop seeds.

“In my lifetime, I don’t think we’ll go over 1.5 million. I’d be rather surprised if we go over a million,” Fowler told The Associated Press. “At that point, we’d have all the diversity in the world … and the most secure samples.”

Located in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe. It was opened in 2008 as a master backup to the world’s other 1,400 seed banks, in case their deposits are lost.

War wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another bank in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006. The Svalbard bank is designed to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes.

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Flashback: Terence Corcoran: Ontario puts $10B in the wind | Ontario Premiere McGuinty heralds Samsung ‘green energy’ deal | ‘Green jobs’ are key to U.S., Canadian recovery: US Ambassador | Jim Prentice: Implement A ‘North American Climate Change Regime’ | Ont. gives green energy price guarantee | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | US Congress passes mandatory national service bill | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | Terence Corcoran: Ontario’s green energy plan sneaks in feed-in taxes | New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty” | US Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills | Justin Trudeau introduces National Voluntary Service motion | Ontario joins continental WCI cap-and-trade scheme | B.C. carbon tax kicks in on Canada Day | They call it cap and trade, but it’s just another fuel tax | Quebec, Ontario sign historic climate pact | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
March 10, 2010

Despite bubbles, governments keep pumping air into alternative energy

That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot.com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown. If you can’t hear it, you are not alone.

While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars at the green energy monster. The politicians don’t seem to be keeping up with the trends. “Don’t try to catch a falling knife,” warned J.P. Morgan this week in a report that told investors the market continues to fall out of the solar panel module market.

It downgraded a bunch of solar companies that have already been in a tailspin since the fist signs of a solar crash back in 2008.

Other alternative energy sectors are hitting walls. Jurisdictions with wind power regimes face continuing issues related to the fact that the wind often doesn’t blow much, turning investments in wind farms into cash-draining albatrosses. In Ontario, the 1,100 megawatts of built wind turbine capacity are often running a few megawatts at a time, and even on the best of days have trouble producing 150 megawatts.

Despite the fundamental lack of economic justification for alternative energy, governments keep pumping air into the bubbles. They blew a small fortune on ethanol programs that didn’t quite work out, so now they’re betting vast sums on aggressive campaigns to create green industries using some of the most regressive interventionist methods known to economics.

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This is the Soros plan. And of course, the IMF will happily operate this immense capital pool. Really nothing to do with global warming, of course, that’s just the pretext. It’s unlikely the money will even ever go towards ‘fixing’ the environment, as though a tax could ever accomplish this in the first place. Remember how the American banks simply appropriated the bailout funds and put them towards buying up and merging with their smaller competitors? It’s outright theft. And the end that these globalizing institutions have in sight is the creation of a new layer of global governance, with centralized taxation and currency control headed up by the IMF and the World Bank. It doesn’t seem as though they particularly care how they get the funding for this – recent months have seen separate proposals for a ‘Tobin tax’ on all financial transactions at Copenhagen and elsewhere, a global bank insurance levy, and now this idea of a direct ‘IMF tax’ on the GDP of nations. Ever since Copenhagen fell through (in large part because African states could see the proposed economic colonization a mile away, and they didn’t want to go that route), the globalist clique has backed off for a while, but now the renewed push is on to get the international community to capitulate, and there is an implicit threat involved now. Hand over power, or more countries fall. (Economist Max Keiser has exposed how Iceland was taken down by derivatives (skip to the second video), and it’s all over the news how Goldman Sachs wrecked Greece.)

Flashback: EU considers general carbon tax | Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012 | Davos: Global climate fund threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns | Davos 2010: George Soros warns gold is now the ‘ultimate bubble’, calls for IMF to handle climate fund | Copenhagen Accord Establishes Global Government Framework | Canada part of Copenhagen climate deal | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | World leaders push for climate deal | UN Chief: We Will Impose Global Governance | Copenhagen climate summit releases draft final text | IMF could fund climate adaptation: Soros | Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Canada agrees to contribute to $10-billion climate change fund | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Leaked G20 Documents Shed Light on Global Carbon Tax | Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’ | Czech President: Copenhagen to be ‘Largest tax increase in world history’ | Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading as banker scam | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate, downgrades CO2 threat | EU agrees to pay developing countries ‘climate aid’ to pass Copenhagen | Copenhagen’s Plans for a New ‘Government’ are Scary | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Lord Nicholas Stern: The world’s future is being decided this weekend | Thatcher science adviser: Copenhagen goal is world government | German Scientists Call for ‘World Climate Bank’ | G8 Summit: Rich nations to pay green tab | US Congress Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that it was not allowed to read | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment? | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Economic stabilization may rely on carbon economy, economist says | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Obama, Gore, tied to Chicago carbon exchange | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | EU calls for global carbon trading system to fight climate change

The Associated Press
March 8, 2010

Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, left, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, right, take part in a panel discussion at the University of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, March 8, 2010.(AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday proposed a plan for the world’s governments to pool together to raise money needed to adapt to climate change, a rare step for an organization that normally does not develop environmental policies.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the Fund is concerned about the huge amount of funding needed and the effect that will have on the global economy. He added that the proposal may help efforts to reach a binding agreement on climate change later this year.

Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the Fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the organization will release a paper within 10 days with full details. It is unclear how the proposal will be received.

The IMF raises funds from its 185 members mainly through a quota system that is based broadly on each country’s economic size. The United States is currently the largest shareholder.

“We all know that (carbon taxes and other fundraising methods) will take time and we don’t have this time. So we need something which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough to solve the problem,” Strauss-Kahn said. “And that is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with.”

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Bank tax, carbon tax – the globalists don’t care, as long as they can bring some kind of fraudulent global tax in – piecemeal and region by region if need be.

Flashback: Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012 | French Carbon Tax Law Struck Down | Copenhagen climate summit: plan for EU to police countries’ emissions | Copenhagen Accord Establishes Global Government Framework | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | IMF could fund climate adaptation: Soros | UK energy smart meter roll-out is outlined | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Leaked G20 Documents Shed Light on Global Carbon Tax | Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’ | Czech President: Copenhagen to be ‘Largest tax increase in world history’ | Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading as banker scam | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Sarkozy launches carbon tax to help ’save the human race’ | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Google PowerMeter to track home energy usage in Toronto test drive | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Ontario joins continental WCI cap-and-trade scheme | B.C. carbon tax kicks in on Canada Day | They call it cap and trade, but it’s just another fuel tax | Quebec, Ontario sign historic climate pact | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

BBC News
March 5, 2010

The European Commission is planning an EU-wide minimum tax on carbon as part of the EU’s green energy agenda – but the UK opposes such a move.

The minimum tax would apply to fuel, natural gas and coal.

The EU’s new Taxation Commissioner, Algirdas Semeta, is working to revise the EU’s existing Energy Taxation Directive, his spokeswoman said.

Carbon taxes already exist in EU members Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In France the idea is being hotly debated.

Responding to the EU plan on Thursday a UK government spokeswoman said: “We do not support the idea of a mandatory pan-European carbon tax.

“The existing Energy Taxation Directive gives member states the flexibility to introduce a carbon tax if they wish.

“We believe that member states are best placed to choose the policy tools for achieving their climate change objectives.”

In Brussels earlier this week, Commissioner Semeta said the adoption of carbon taxes “on a larger, European scale seems desirable, as they would undoubtedly encourage innovation to strengthen energy efficiency and environmental protection“.

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It appears the truth in this, as in many matters environmental, is no longer politically correct.

Flashback: Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates

CBC News
March 5, 2010

The Nunavut government is reducing the number of polar bears that hunters can kill in the Baffin Bay region, where polar bear numbers have been disputed by scientists and Inuit.

Environment Minister Daniel Shewchuk announced Friday that starting this year, the hunting quota, also known as the total allowable harvest, for polar bears in Baffin Bay will be cut by 10 bears annually for four years.

That means the current quota of 105 Baffin Bay polar bears will be reduced to 65 by 2013.

“This population has been considered a conservation concern for some time now,” Shewchuk told reporters Friday in Iqaluit.

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Flashback: Monsanto’s GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals | Canada’s flax crop mysteriously contaminated by GM seeds | Britain will starve without GM crops, says major report | It is too late to shut the door on GM foods | Organic food no more nutritious, study finds | Researchers working on swine flu ‘vaccine corn’ | High-fructose sweeteners linked to obesity, diabetes | Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | UK Environment minister calls for international food treaty, GM foods at Fabian Society address | GM Crops Climb to Nearly One-Tenth of Global Crop Production | Genetically engineered meal close to your table | The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops | Europe’s secret plan to boost GM crop production | Hunger in Africa blamed on western rejection of GM food | GM crops could lead to ‘disaster’: Prince Charles | Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seed | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis | Agribusiness positions GM crops as panacea to predicted global food shortage | Monsanto Plans to Save World with its Biotech Crops | High-level UN task force to tackle global food crisis | Scientist who claimed GM crops could solve Third World hunger admits he got it wrong | Codex Alimentarius — An Emerging Threat | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

Joan Delany, The Epoch Times
March 2, 2010

Genetically modified pork a step closer to Canadians’ dinner tables

Genetically engineered pigs developed at the University of Guelph have passed the first of several regulatory hurdles on the way to being approved for human consumption.

Environment Canada has determined that the university’s transgenic Yorkshire pigs—so-called Enviropigs—are in compliance with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and can be produced outside of the research context in controlled facilities where they are segregated from other animals.

Developed in 1999, the Enviropig is the first transgenic animal created to solve an environmental problem—phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater in areas of intensive pig production.

Depending on its age and diet, manure from the Enviropig contains 30 to 70 percent less phosphorus than that of regular pigs. Enviropigs are able to digest a form of phosphorus in feed grains that regular pigs cannot, producing manure that is less environmentally damaging.

Steven Liss, associate vice-president of research services at the University of Guelph, says researchers have been working to develop an animal that has “less of an impact environmentally and can be produced in a more sustainable fashion.”

“I think there’s a great deal among our community and population that would applaud efforts to reduce the environmental impact of animal production, and I think this would go a long way to increase the sustainability and lessen the footprint that pig production sometimes yields.”

Submissions have been made to Health Canada and other federal agencies including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have the pigs approved for human consumption and commercialization. Liss declined to speculate how long it could take the various agencies to reach a decision.

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It’s time for a summation of the global warming fraud so far, and Christopher Booker delivers.

Flashback: UK: University at center of Climategate accused of misleading MPs, deleting information | Global warming panel to get independent review | Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Christopher Booker, The Telegraph
February 27, 2010

The emerging errors of the IPCC’s 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC’s last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other “extreme weather events” were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The “science is settled”, the “consensus” is intact.

But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.

All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC’s 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.

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Flashback: Global warming panel to get independent review | Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Ben Webster, The Times
February 27, 2010

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has been accused of making a misleading statement to Parliament.

The University of East Anglia wrote this week to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee giving the impression that it had been exonerated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). However, the university failed to disclose that the ICO had expressed serious concerns that one of its professors had proposed deleting information to avoid complying with the Freedom of Information Act.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit, has stepped down while an inquiry takes place into allegations that he manipulated data to avoid scrutiny of his claims that manmade emissions were causing global warming. Professor Edward Acton, the university’s vice-chancellor, published a statement he sent to the committee before giving evidence to MPs at a public hearing on Monday. He said a letter from the ICO “indicated that no breach of the law has been established [and] that the evidence the ICO had in mind about whether there was a breach was no more than prima facie”.

But the ICO’s letter said: “The prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence.”

The letter also confirmed the ICO’s previous statement that the university had failed in its duties under the Freedom of Information Act by rejecting requests for data. The university had demanded that the ICO withdraw this statement.

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