Andrew Montford(Bishop Hill) and Andrew Orlowski of the Register quickly pointed out that Oxburgh failed to disclose that he was UK Vice Chair of Globe International. Bishop Hill reports that Oxburgh is one of four directors of the company.
Globe International is an off-balance sheet “private company” funded predominantly by governments and NGOs. As a private company, I guess that it is unaccountable. It brings legislators together – with a particular concern to the advancement of climate change legislation. Its webpage contains glowing testimonials from leading politicians.
In late October, it sponsored an ambitious lead-in meeting of legislators in Copenhagen, hosted by the Prime Minister of Denmark. Oxburgh is listed one of the participating legislators – together with Ed Miliband of the UK, Sam Fankhauser, Chief Economist, GLOBE International and Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Yvo de Boer, of IPCC and the UN Framework, Ed Markey (video), Nancy Pelosi by video and others. A list of speakers is here. Oxburgh’s profile says that he is UK Vice Chair.
On March 30, 2009, Globe International launched a major iniative in Washington DC, an initiative attended by Ed Markey who warmly thanked then Globe International President Elliott Morley of the UK (speech here). Morley is one of four MPs recently charged with criminal offences arising from the UK MP expenses scandal.
The participants to the Globe International meeting in Copenhagen were given a warm welcome by the current president of Globe International, Stephen Byers, another UK, MP.
Byers also features prominently in recent UK news. A few days ago, the Times broke a story in which Byers described himself as “sort of cab for hire”:
Stephen Byers, former trade and transport secretary, was secretly recorded offering himself “like a sort of cab for hire” for up £5,000 a day. He also suggested bringing Tony Blair to meet clients.
Byers’ charges were for consultancy per diems. The Times secretly recorded the conversation – see here. Make sure that you listen.
Labour defenders argue that Byers’ influence peddling didn’t “matter’, because he didn’t have much influence – see New Statesman here for example. It’s funny how arguments in those sorts of situations tend to follow the same pattern.
I hadn’t heard of Globe International prior to this incident. Naming an officer and director of Globe International as chair of the CRU inquiry seems pretty insouciant. But Oxburgh’s UK associates at Globe International – Elliott Morley and Stephen Byers – don’t seem to feel that rules that apply to others should apply to them. Perhaps Oxburgh feels the same way about impartiality obligations.
Climate Audit 
31 Comments
Well, Well! Nice whitewash ingredients.
In the Byers clip from “The Times”, most prominent is Bluebottle, as formerly played by Peter Sellers in the Goon Show. One part script of Bluebottle’s was “Enter Bluebottle wearing string and cardboard pyjamas. Waits for audience applause. Not a sausage.”
Have these people no shame?
What a classy duo: Morley and Byers. Kerry Emanuel must be truly desperate to prop up the AGW cause.
Incidentally, Tony Blair had a gig teaching at Yale, just like Randy the Love Guru.
Earlier tonight I read Lindzen’s paper:
Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions? — available at:
Click to access 0809.3762.pdf
Then I read Steve’s latest posts and become depressed. As the pit grows deeper, the more disillusioned I am becoming.
So I pondered for awhile; it all fits together, just as Lindzen describes. These inquiries aren’t about science at all — it’s politics! I’ve concluded that Climatology is not a science; rather it is nothing but models and simulations, the results of which are modified according to the dictates of the political movements and governments that control all of the funding sources; i.e., play ball with the politicians and the movers-shakers or have your funds cut off. Do you honestly think these inquiries have the interests of science at heart? It is all about political power and money, including some permutations on the latter.
Read Lindzen.
To better understand the game should be uplifting to the spirit.
One great thing about this tawdry story is how simple it all is:
Bad science + eco-politics = ego, power, money, and goodtimes for the love guru.
It is interesting how the Team and their tag-alongs have no problem debunking skeptics for real and imagined relations with the oil or coal industry, but invariably fail to apply the same value neutral sociology of knowledge and its methodological relativism to themselves. It must be nice when only their material interests and motives are saintly, altruistic, and beyond reproach. Doubtless this comes from thinking of themselves as transnational citizens of the world, above the petty money grubbing of the rest of us.
It is becoming clear that the Team and their friends in ecopolitics enjoy far more financial support from the energy industry than their opponents, which makes sense from a business point of view, as increased levels of fear translate directly into taxpayer support for R & D into “sustainable” energy, enabling the energy companies to build businesses at our expense to replace oil when it runs out.
“GLOBE’s objective is to support ambitious political leadership on issues of climate and energy security, land-use change and ecosystems and economic and population growth. ”
An organization funded by governments in order to influence those same governments to enact climate change and other policies. Go to the website and look at the organization’s structure – it’s a bureaucrat’s heaven on earth.
But a sensible person may ask, Why are taxpayers spending untold millions so politicians can travel about on junkets to discuss issues on which they already all agree in order to submit proposals essentially to themselves?
What a grubby spectacle of self-interest at the expense of taxpayers already on the hook for deficits as far as the eye can see.
For the moment it all looks very depressing in the UK, the ‘Independent’ Climategate inquiries are anything independent but and look to end up as whitewashed as the 3 Iraq inquiries. The establishment and all 3 main political parties are all sold on AGW and look to use it as a means to their own ends. The only 2 political parties with a view against AGW are a single issue party UKIP and [snip] BNP. This leaves you with no realistic way of using a General election vote to express any displeasure with Govt policy on AGW.
snip
Don’t forget something in this debate. Even though the inquiry is no doubt rigged, even though the main stream media by and large don’t want to know, there is one trump card in the pack: the economy. The legislation brought about by those who believe in man-made global warming will be harming the economy. I left the UK to live in France. Here, they tried to bring in a ‘carbon tax’ but failed. It is widely viewed as something that would hurt the economy and would increase unemployment, which it probably would have done. From my analysis of the situation, those countries which ignore the pleas of the man-made global warming camp, those countries that only pass token legislation, all things being equal, will prosper over those of countries who drink their own poison.
Why not play on that? It will help bring home the message to people: scientific corruption can cost *you* your job.
Indeed, if they are going to hold a rigged inquiry, then why don’t the sceptics sponsor their own inquiry? Make it an independent inquiry. Get other bodies to certify that independence. Certainly, it won’t be able to compel anyone to give evidence, but it will be able to make something of the fact that people won’t. Use the Internet as a venue. Set up a special forum, perhaps. I would be willing to contribute money and time to help such a thing become a reality. Then, when their ‘inquiry’ presents its rigged results, the sceptics can then present the findings of their *certified independent* body. Emphasise, when they try to ignore the results, that they are being *unfair*. Fight fire with fire.
OK, I see. It’s OK johnh to call the BNP [snip] but it isn’t OK for me to say that that is going too far. Fine. I see where such censorship is heading now. Very even-handed of you. You can hardly say that you aren’t playing politics here or were just snipping political statements. What do you think johnh’s statement is?
If that is the way you are going to be, then so be it. But it cheapens this blog in in my eyes. It turns it into another piece of political correctness. The thing is about political correctness is that it is so *petty*. One statement of mine pointing out that the BNP is a nationalist party and boom. It shows a definite lack of imagination. What are you afraid of? This is just like the way that the man-made global warming camp treat you. Very sad but a sign of the times.
I expect that this statement will be snipped soon, but at least some will see what has happened here.
[RomanM: You don’t seem to understand that snips of the comments with political and religious implications have ZERO to do with political correctness, but are necessary to prevent the threads from sinking into the kind of food fight that you are trying to continue now. Steve did the original snipping and accidently (I can assure you) neglected to remove the offending content. It is impossible to be on top of everything instantly when the comments come quickly.
I have now removed the initial reference.If you see something offensive of this type in the future, bring attention to it and it will be removed as soon as possible.]
Hmmm. Yet more revolutionary thoughts fill my head. Maybe in the UK we need to vote for the local Independant or BNP just to send a shockwave into Whitehall.
Though saying that remember its the Civil Service (Sir Humphrey) that runs the country – the grey suits never change even though the politicans do! How much sea level rise would it take to “lose” Whitehall? Anyone fancy coming on an ice melting project this summer….
At least three things have happened here in Britain recently that should make any decent person, of whatever political leaning, apalled. The MP’s expenses, ex-ministers peddling influence for profit, and the CRU leak – all drawn together in this post to give the strong impression of the country being run by a contemptible gang of self-serving, immoral mediocrities ripe for being booted out of office. And yet, with an election imminent, the polls give the present government hope that they mey yet pull off another win. I just wonder what they would have to do to lose. Of course as far as climate is concerned, they cannot lose since they are effectively all the same. Apologies for the above rant, it brings nothing to the scientific climate debate – I just needed the therapy.
I am getting happier about this new scandal by the minute. Its wonderful farce!
Kerry Emanuel wants to save the Global Warming crusade. He lends his support to the East Anglia whitewash. Then, in a nice touch of justice, finds himself on the same team with Byers and Morley, sticky-fingered cabbies recently in the public spot-light. Wonderful!
Some day we are going to look back on this hilarious nonsense and be sad when it is no longer around to amuse. It will be a sadder world indeed when reporters cease covering the latest views of Al Gore, Captain Jimmy and first seaman Gavin, Randy the Love Guru, Byers, Morley, Michael Mann, John Holdren, Kerry Emanuel, and all the rest of the gang. I am going to miss these guys!
How can we keep them around, to continue to entertain? For an encore, they could join ex-Governor Blagovich on a TV show hosted by Donald Trump.
This isn’t just a minor conflict of interest. Wow.
Hard to imagine a bigger conflict of interest. I guess they could have chosen Phil Jones.
Why is the Canadian government supporting this group and how much taxpayer funded money has it doled out? It’s remarkable to see all these shadowy get exposed but it is frightening to see just how political climate science is. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but…
This is a very odd structure for this kind of a group. I know nothing of UK corporate law, but in the US the idea of setting up a private company whose purpose in to allow politicians to lobby for legislation that would benefit the private financial holding of those same politicians while shielding them from public disclosure of their activities would be considered highly ‘irregular’.
The term you may be looking for is GONGO – a government-organized non-governmental organization.
Globe participating legislators URL should have an x on the end:
http://copenhagen.globeinternational.org/globe_legislators_forum/participants.aspx
UK small businesses often find business marketing hard, particularly to government departments and agencies, having to jump through numerous hoops. Not surprising that they are becoming ever more cynical about abuses of power, as well as the burden of buraucracy which business owners have to shoulder.
Byers sets a new low standard by which most bent politicians would seem like Saints.
He headed the department which on hearing of the 9/11 massacre issued an e-mail saying “that now was a good time to bury bad news” that is if the department had to publish something that would put it in a bad light, issue it now and nobody will notice, because of the worlds preoccupation with the tragic events.
He is known in the UK as a serial liar but unfortunately for him he is not very clever and most times gets caught.
Trillion-dollar green troughs
Peter Foster, Financial Post
Published: Friday, March 26, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/yl4zwey
Well it seems somethings transcend the Atlantic, re: “It’s funny how arguments in those sorts of situations tend to follow the same pattern. ”
In America it is the same way. The only time these things actually get a good hearing is when the Blogosphere latches on to them and will not let them go. Then and only then, after the embarrassment has grown, is something substantial done. But if there is no out cry, it is quietly swept under the carpet as another case of “Nothing to see here people, move along.”
Did you know that Al Gore was President of Globe International from 1990-1993?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=GLOBE_International
Now that I know about Globe…
International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems
Recommended Text for REDD+ at UNFCCC COP15
Subgroup on paragraph 1(b) (iii) of the Bali Action Plan
The following recommendations have been taken from the Forest Policy Proposals of the GLOBE
International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems. These proposals were endorsed by 100
legislators from 16 countries at the GLOBE Copenhagen Legislators Forum on 24th-25th October 2009.
Fascinating…I forget where I was recently reading about REDD and NE Brazil land grabs…WUWT, probably.
Globe Intl is an amr of The Club of Rome, which is connected directly to WWF, and IIASA which is a major contributor to the IPCC.
http://casualdoubter.blogspot.com/
Another announcement that is just as bad. Pachauri claims he hired and audit firm to audit him and work for him to tell us if he had a conflict of interest between TERI and the IPCC. First of all, they did not do an audit. Secondly, this has ethical conflict of interest written all over it. It is a big problem if you are engaged by a client and smear them. Joe Romm is pumping it up and it is no more than the foxx (guarding the henhouse) beating his chest and claiming the hen house security has not been violated.
It smells even more in that De Boer who is superior to Pachauri left the IPCC in order to work for KPMG who purportedly gave their own client Pachauri the green light. I note Mr McIntyre uses the word “audit” on this site. I am sure he knows what data audits and other forms of audits are and are not. I have no problem with that. I was taught to audit thru and around the computor and my first programing language was ironically Fortran. Pachauri is bluffing as is the Principle of Globe if they think they can hide conflict of interest and ethics compromises in their internal examinations. I will go a step farther and claim that Pachauri didn’t read the articles or test the data on some of the reports from WWF among others they printed in Ar4. In audits we tick and trace and mark the un interepted continuity of every single number to its source.
Even farther, we do internal questionaires that ask questions and tell us among many other things, whether people that gather numbers also have key stroke authority to access any single number and change it. Mann in all his business had access to any changes he wanted to make even as far as to delete “inconvenient” data.
I do not trust Pachuri, I don’t trust this sham investigation of the CRU and Jones. It is wild from the beginning in that Stephen Byers should recuse himself for conflict of interest.
As you state …private (limited ) companies … not accountable… certainly they are/were not subject to FOIA.
However yesterday if the newspapers are correct an Organisation in England called ACPO( Association of Chief Police Officers ) a private limited company HAS been declared subject to FOIA by Jack Straw The uk Minister of Justice … a totally unexpected development from an ex-student communist !
It would seem possible that now Globe International may also be subject to FOIA.
Bandits 10 o’clock high… tally ho ! good hunting !
Riddi:
Ahhh, but there’s a huge difference between those horrible law-enforcement types and those trying to bring about the great Revolution. Best we can hope for is the Law of Unintended Consequences being applied to Straw’s work…
GLOBE UK Parliamentary membership
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/register/memi328.htm
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