Solar panels taking a fall in UK, were sold like a financial instrument, guys holding the bag should not be at all surprised, see Spain

Poor towns will go on being poor towns, because make believe industries always go away and leave the people as they were.

2/28/11, "Solar `Gold Rush' in U.K. May Die With Fastest Price Roll-Back," Bloomberg, Morales, Roca

"Cornwall, the poorest county in England, said five months ago it expected a “gold rush” of $1.6 billion in solar energy investments. Now, the U.K. government may get in the way."...

• (The government "may get in the way?" It was the government who set up a make believe job market to begin with. The pressure of the climate "community" and proximity to the monarchy may have been too much to resist. ed.)

(continuing): "The central government said this month

• it’s considering cutting incentives and reducing the size of projects,
  

concerned that the above-market rates it promised through April 2012 may lead to too many solar farms.

Britain is moving faster than any other European country

• to contain a surge in solar power and prevent the boom-and-bust
  

seen in Spain and predicted for the Czech Republic. The risk is scaring off the investors who would create the “green jobs” Prime Minister David Cameron is seeking to revive the economy.

“It’s going to completely kill the market,” said Tim German, renewable energy manager for the local government in Cornwall at the U.K.’s southwest tip.

• “Investors are starting to get cold feet.”

Sharp Corp., the Osaka-based electronics maker which employs 1,100 U.K. workers after doubling the size of its panel factory in Wales, says the government may cripple the industry. Already, companies are scaling back. Matrix Group Ltd. and Ingenious Media Holdings Plc

• suspended solar funds seeking 55 million pounds ($89 million).
  

Low Carbon Solar Ltd. says it can’t spend the 70 million pounds it secured from pension funds.

At Good Energy Group Plc, a clean electricity retailer based in Chippenham, England, Chief Executive Officer Juliet Davenport says she may only get 4 percent of the 100 megawatts of solar power-purchase agreements she wanted. It was an industry that for the first time was moving fast and attracting investment,” Davenport said. “Suddenly, the rug has been pulled and everybody’s saying ‘What’s the future? Should we go off to North Africa and develop there and forget about the U.K.?’”

The solar surge began April 1, when the government brought in so-called feed-in tariffs guaranteeing prices as much as 12 times the market rate for electricity generated from the sun. Last year, developers doubled the capacity of solar power generation in the U.K. to 66 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes.

That’s a fraction of the 16,800 megawatts installed in Germany, 3,700 megawatts in Spain and 2,500 megawatts in the U.S. Only one of last year’s 26,000 U.K. projects had a capacity greater than 50 kilowatts."...

• (Comparing megawatts installed from one country to the next is not helpful. It is a make believe industry, at least on a large scale. ed.)
  

(continuing): "It was the bigger ground-mounted projects in the works that triggered alarm bells in London,

• not families tacking solar panels on their roofs.

The council in Cornwall, where per-capital economic output is a third below the national average, in September predicted a solar “gold rush” worth up to 1 billion pounds. By February, local officials were scoping 150 sites for about 50 companies planning solar farms. Nineteen had applied for planning permission, and seven had been granted it.

“What has spooked people is the 150 planning applications in Cornwall,” Daniel Guttmann, director of renewable energy at global accountancy firm PwC in London. “If you multiply that up, it’s a reasonably large number.” The renewable-energy subsidies, paid by utilities,

• [translation: ratepayers]

were designed to spur not only roof-mounted panels. Wind turbines, small hydroelectric plants and biomass projects were also covered -- all intended to generate jobs. The Renewable Energy Association said the solar industry would employ 17,000 people by the end of this year, up from 10,000 in 2010.

Projects as large as 5 megawatts were eligible for the incentives. That left room for solar farms on open land.

On Feb. 7, the Department of Energy and Climate Change said it’s reviewing tariffs. The surprise was the speed and scale of the probe: By July authorities plan to decide on new rates for solar plants bigger than 50 kilowatts, or just 1 percent of the 5-megawatt eligibility maximum.

• Projects for wind, hydropower and the smallest solar plans will be reviewed by year-end, with new rates coming in April 2012.

“I don’t want large-scale solar installations to be claiming money meant for householders, small businesses and communities,” U.K. Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said in an e-mailed response to questions.

• Barker later today is due to speak with representatives of the industry at a reception in London with two trade groups, the Micropower Council and the British Photovoltaic Association.

It’s the earliest formal review of feed-in tariffs by any European nation, said Martin Simonek, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In Slovakia, authorities stopped issuing licenses after six months, though prices weren’t reviewed until 15 months after the program began.

• The Spanish system lasted a year before being scaled back.

In the Czech Republic, about 1.7 gigawatts of panels were installed last year. After tariffs were cut, New Energy Finance [Bloomberg's carbon trading company] forecast about 400 megawatts this year. In Spain, installations fell to 69 megawatts in 2009 from 2.8 gigawatts in 2008 after incentives were changed.

Already, U.K. investors are retreating. At NextEnergy Capital Ltd. in London, Chief Executive Officer Michael Bonte- Friedheim scaled back plans to develop solar farms, saying three are in the works, down from as many as eight.

Low Carbon Solar CEO Mark Shorrock said that of a planned pipeline of 80 megawatts, the Cirencester-based company can now only develop 3 megawatts.

• Two funds worth up to 30 million pounds that his company was working on with asset manager Ingenious
  

• are suspended.
  

Six solar farms planned for Cornwall can’t be built, and there’s nowhere to invest the funds he has from pension plans, he said.

“It’s absolute sabotage,” Shorrock said.

The 50-kilowatt threshold would cause “huge shrinkage” in the market, Ian Lucas, the lawmaker who speaks on business for the opposition Labour Party, said in an interview. A limit that low would “cripple” the industry, said Andrew Lee, the

• head of European sales for Sharp solar.

“This puts a hole in school installations, small community installations, social housing installations -- all of which the feed-in tariff was originally intended for,” Lee said in an interview in Wrexham, where Sharp in the past year boosted capacity to 500 megawatts of panels, adding 300 jobs and

• a training academy for installers.

Some companies are less concerned about the review. Robert Goss, solar panel maker Conergy AG’s head of U.K. sales, said the Hamburg-based company hasn’t downgraded its forecast. Jamie Richards, a partner at Foresight Solar, said the company will spend all 20 million pounds it’s raised on rooftop projects.

In Cornwall, German is less sanguine, saying

• “the so- called solar gold-rush will not happen.”

The danger for the government is investors won’t have confidence in other incentive programs, said Good Energy’s Davenport and Shorrock at Low Carbon Solar.

“You won’t get offshore wind money, you won’t get tidal energy money, you won’t get carbon capture and storage money because

• it’s all got to come from these same pension funds
  

and they won’t trust the government,” Shorrock said."...

• (The government doesn't create anything, it just moves around what others create. ed.)
  

(continuing): "“That’s the kind of seed of doubt the government has now sown, and it’s very, very damaging.”"

---------------------------------------

(It was smoke and mirrors on the backs of the people from the beginning. Someone said energy policy should never be combined with job/economic policy). ed.)

via Tom Nelson

Brazil judge blocks Amazon Belo Monte dam--Rainforest saved from profiteers. UPDATE: Brazil Belo Monte Dam approved--of course

3/3/11, "Brazil court reverses Amazon Monte Belo dam suspension," BBC

"Brazil court reverses Amazon Monte Belo dam suspension"

• "A court in Brazil has approved a controversial hydro-electric project in the Amazon rainforest, overturning an earlier ruling.

Last week a judge blocked construction of the Belo Monte dam, saying it did not meet environmental standards.

But a higher court on Thursday said there was no need for all conditions to be met in order for work to begin.

Critics say the project threatens wildlife and will make thousands of people homeless."...

---------------------------------------------------

2/25/11, "Brazil judge blocks Amazon Belo Monte dam," BBC

"A Brazilian judge has blocked plans to build a huge hydro-electric dam in the Amazon rainforest because of environmental concerns.

• Federal judge Ronaldo Desterro said environmental requirements to build the Belo Monte dam had not been met.

He also barred the national development bank, BNDES, from funding the project.

• The dam is a cornerstone of President Dilma Rousseff's plans to upgrade Brazil's energy infrastructure.

But it has faced protests and challenges from environmentalists and local indigenous groups who say it will harm the world's largest

• tropical rainforest and displace tens of thousands of people.

Judge Desterro said the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama, had approved the project

• without ensuring that 29 environmental conditions had been met.

In particular, he said concerns that the dam would disrupt the flow of the Xingu river - one of the Amazon's main tributaries - had not been met.

His ruling is the latest stage in a long legal battle over Belo Monte.

• Previous injunctions blocking construction have been overturned.

The government says the Belo Monte dam is crucial for development and will create jobs, as well as provide electricity to 23 million homes.

The 11,000-megawatt dam would be the biggest in the world after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu,

• which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.
  

It has long been a source of controversy, with bidding halted three times before the state-owned

• Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco was awarded the contract last year.

Celebrities such as the singer Sting and film director James Cameron have joined environmentalists in their campaign against the project.

They say the 6km (3.7 miles) dam will threaten the survival of a number of indigenous groups and could make some 50,000 people homeless, as 500 sq km (190 sq miles) of

• land would be flooded."

.

No BBC/UK Government employee including Richard Black can be taken seriously while advocating global warming

BBC employee Richard Black's recent article advances catastrophic man caused global warming (for which kleptocrats demand broke Americans pay billions now and in perpetuity to 'renewable' slush funds of the World Bank, UN grifters, hedge fund thugs, organized crime, and parasitic monarchs). We aren't subservient to monarchs or EU's and have no desire to be.

2/24/11, "US climate cuts threaten isolation," BBC News, Earth Watch blog by Richard Black

Mr. Black, nothing you say on the topic of climate can be taken seriously as you are an employee of the UK government, which has millions if not billions at stake in the global warming industry. For example:

In 2007 UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the carbon market was key

• "to the economic fortunes of the City of London.""...

The financial survival of the UK monarchy is dependent on the success of the global warming industry. The monarchy as reported has a new income arrangement which relies in part on wind turbine income. Prince Charles isn't technically with the government but he acts in a governmental role in pushing the global warming agenda part of which reportedly includes starving children. You may have noticed:

10/24/10, "'It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles's obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to whether he is seeking to increase his own

• investment portfolio
  

each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.'"

----------------------------------------------------

Reference: 10/25/10, "Queen set to earn millions from windfarm expansion," UK Independent, Andy McSmith

Reference: 12/31/10, "One's in the money! Why Prince Charles's secret 20-year campaign could make him the richest king in history," UK Daily Mail, G. Levy

Reference: 2/9/11, "UK's Prince Charles blasts climate-change skeptics," AP

-----------------------------------------------------
If you cared about the environment, you wouldn't say another word about it until you tracked down and jailed those involved in wasting or stealing billions of taxpayer dollars in climate schemes via the UN to carbon trading schemes making great profits for organized crime.
--------------------------------------------------

Finally, as to your warning the US of 'isolation' from the global community. Surely you are aware the community you reference is a sewer of bankers, thugs, and ever-needy monarchs of European and other countries whose idea of 'community' is that we work all day, then give them our money. We are happy to stay as 'isolated' from you as possible as your people starve to death via the global warming fraud.
----------------------------------------------

Reference: 10/24/10, "Queen's £38m a year windfarm windfall," This is money, by Martin Delgado and Christopher Leake

"How much the European Monarchies cost:

• - Great Britain £68m
  
• -Holland £33.8m
• - Norway £23.9m
• - Belgium £11.7m
• - Denmark £10.5m
• - Sweden £10.2m
• - Spain £7.4m
• - Luxembourg £7.2m"

===========================
2/21/11, "Green economies for growth, urges UN," BBC

Reference: 1/29/11, "In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale," UK Daily Mail. photo Red Door News
------------------------------------------------------
2/21/11, "Green economy needs 2% of every nation's income, says UN," UK Guardian, Fiona Harvey
-------------------------------------------------------
12/8/10, "March to keep World Bank out of climate finance," Climate Justice Now
---------------------------------------

Prince Charles says you might harm your grandchildren when his pet project is already doing so.Toxic lake in Baotou, Communist China poisons Chinese farmers, children and land. It remains from making magnets for the UK's wind turbines.


---------------------------------------

11/5/10, "Bank Tax, CO2 Auctions Recommended by Soros Panel to Help Climate Efforts," Bloomberg
-------------------------------------------

Reference: 1/15/11, "What was the role of warmists in the Queensland flood disaster?" UK Telegraph, C. Booker

----------------------------------------------

10/24/10, "Queen's £38m a year windfarm windfall," This is money, by Martin Delgado and Christopher Leake

"The EU has told Britain it must generate more of its energy needs from renewable sources. But critics say the plan to increase Britain's dependence on green energy is flawed and could leave homes and business suffering routine power cuts within five years.

Sir Martin Holdgate, former chief scientist at the Department for the Environment, said: 'There is pressure to act on climate change. But when you look at the cost per unit, it is a rather expensive way of providing electricity.'

In its latest accounts, the Crown Estate says that its offshore windfarm business is 'experiencing exponential growth and we expect it to provide a significant source of total income in the next ten years'.

Revenue to the Estate from the windfarms rose by 44% last year to a 'low base' of £2.6m.

But with the third round of contracts handed out in January, companies bidding for the work say a bonanza is on the horizon....

Eon, Centrica, EDF, Scottish Power and npower are among the suppliers that have been awarded contracts to develop windfarms.

The firms pay the Crown Estate a rental fee to run their cables along the seabed from the turbines to the shore.

The companies also have to pay a percentage of the money they make from generating electricity....

A spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for a more accountable Royal Family, said: 'It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles's obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to whether he is seeking to increase his own

• investment portfolio
  

each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.'"

------------------------------------------------

2/11/08, "Bloomberg slams U.S. energy law over corn ethanol" Reuters by Louis Charbonneau and Timothy Gardner

via Tom Nelson

Soros not quite done robbing the poor, seeing global warming is a failed hoax, he proceeds to taxpayer funded 'sustainables,' and 'equity' funds

2/24/11, "New Soros investment fund, profiting off Obama's 'green energy' push, hires top Obama energy aide," Washington Examiner, T. Carney

"George Soros -- whom we're always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies -- is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the "green energy" boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies

• supported by the groups Soros funds.

As the press release puts it, this fund will "leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications." As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC's NetNet flagged this.

So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds -- like Center for American Progress --

• will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.

But this story gets better.

The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC's NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it,

Zoi was Barack Obama's "Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy." An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama's point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she's going to work for George Soros

• to profit off of subsidized green tech.

If you remember Zoi's name, it's because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi's husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a "poster child of green industry."

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota put it this way:

"Ms. Zoi is married to Robin Roy, a top executive at Serious Materials, a privately held manufacturer of 'sustainable green building materials' located in California. On the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure submitted by Ms. Zoi to the White House Ethics office as part of her confirmation, Ms. Zoi disclosed ownership with her spouse of 120,000 vested and unvested stock options in Serious Materials, a company her office regulates and that she may profit from."

Oh yeah, Serious Materials pocketed federal stimulus money, too.

But as NetNet's Thompson puts it:

But we can put all that behind us, because now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms. Thata girl Zoi!"

-------------------------------------------

2/24/11, "Soros and Obama’s Clean-Energy Czar Join New Private Equity Fund," Forbes, Pentland

"Private equity firm Silver Lake is launching a new fund, Silver Lake Kraftwerk, with billionaire financier George Soros to invest in clean energy businesses.

Silver Lake manages $14 billion and has offices in both Silicon Valley and China. The new fund will focus on providing growth capital to companies that “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications,” according to Reuters.

In addition to Soros, the new fund also secured a commitment from Cathy Zoi, who recently resigned as the Obama administration’s acting under secretary for energy and assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, to join the fund in April. Zoi earned her spurs working for Al Gore as a climate-change crusader and has since ascended the ranks to become a star in her own right at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Silver Lake Kraftwerk will be led by Adam Grosser, who spent 10 years as a general partner at venture capital firm Foundation Capital."

via Tom Nelson

--------------------------------------------

2/23/11, "Susan Rice skips UN meeting on Libya violence," Huffington Post (via GWP)

Obama's pick for UN ambassador, Susan Rice, was not at the UN for a recent meeting about the Libya crisis. She chose to fly to a UN 'sustainability' conference. Soros' interests come first. Life and death matters come last.

via Weasel Zippers

The UN is either pleased about Libya or they are inept. In any case, it proves there is no point to the UN--Arabian Business

2/24/11, "Libya prompts a key question: what is the point of the United Nations?" ArabianBusiness.com, A. Bhoyrul

"Did you see the speech? Rather silly wasn’t it. A bit of a ramble, often incoherent, and at the end of it I was asking myself several questions. Why did I waste my time listening to this man again? What exactly is the point of him? How did he ever become leader in the first place? What will it really take to get rid of him?

I am talking about Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General. As the Middle East and North Africa faces seismic changes - not to mention, as I write this, unbelievable violence and carnage in Libya - the man we should be looking to for leadership and solutions has again proved to be an irrelevance. If you think that’s harsh, you should read a report from the UN’s own internal audit office which recently warned that his leadership was “drifting into irrelevance.”

Let’s take a quick look at Ban Ki-moon’s recent work. As Tunisia fell, he had absolutely nothing to say. When Egypt fell, he had absolutely nothing to say. When Muammar Gaddafi sent fighter jets to bomb his own people, and fly in death squads from North Africa to continue his murderous reign, what did Ban Ki-moon (and by definition the UN) do? Erm, nothing.

Well, actually, to be fair to him, on Monday he did at least call Gaddafi, the guy he had been cozying up to at the G8 leaders’ summit last March.

Hours later, Gaddafi appeared live on television vowing to do a Tiananmen Square on his own people.

Good work, fella.

While Libyans have been begging the outside world to come and rescue them – or at least put in a no-fly zone to stop them being bombed – Ban Ki-moon has talked about holding a security council meeting. No such meeting has happened. It took him four days to even string together a vaguely worded statement condemning Gaddafi’s actions.

On Thursday 24 February, as massive global effort was underway to evacuate foreign citizens from Libya, the

• UN boss vowed “to monitor the situation closely.”

Let’s stop being nice about this. Ban Ki-moon is the eighth UN Secretary General, and surely the very worst of the lot.

Though ironically, he may turn out to be the most significant. Thanks to his failure to resolve or influence any recent world crisis (especially in the Arab world), many nations are rightly now wondering what exactly is the point of the United Nations. Does anyone take any notice what it says anymore?

Having been founded in 1945 as a replacement to the League of Nations, the UN’s official mandate is “facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and

• achievement of world peace.”

It all sounds very fancy, but does it actually mean anything? Israel, as an example, has ignored 47 – yes 47 – of the resolutions the UN has passed against it, yet is still one of the 192 member states. The most recent of these was Resolution 1860 on January 9 2009, calling for “a full cessation of war between Israel and Hamas.”

Like Ban Ki-moon’s call to Gaddafi on Monday, nobody’s listening anymore.

Former US president George Bush completely ignored the UN’s wishes when he stormed into Iraq in 2003. The UN’s only notable contribution to the conflict in Iraq was its oil-for-food programe, which was exposed in 2005 as being

• riddled with corruption.

So where does all this leave Ban Ki-moon? There are two issues here, the UN and him. Little has changed at the UN since 1945. Now would be a good time for member states to look at the set up, structure and authority of the UN – and what can be done to rescue it from its current status. Yes, I know the UN does some great work on the humanitarian front,

• but maybe that is all it should be employed to do.

As for Ban Ki-moon, he will be up for re-election next year. During his last campaign, his official bio claimed he was fluent in both English and French. When he completely failed to answer questions in French during a Paris press conference, he rather embarrassingly told reporters: “My French perhaps could be improved, and I am continuing to work. I have taken French lessons over the last few months. I think that, even if my French isn't perfect, I will continue to study it.”

I suspect he will soon have plenty of time to perfect his French."

via Lucianne.com

Nick Griffin, MEP, 'No one talks about global warming anymore'

2/15/11, "Nick Griffin MEP: Man-made climate change is the deadliest scam in history" Remarks before European Parliament," You Tube video

Griffin: ""Whenever I hear MEPs discussing ways to extract more money out of the little people in the name of 'climate change', I am struck by two things.

The first is how no-one talks about 'global warming' any more. Clearly even the most out-of-touch MEPs have realised that exposes of fraudulent pseudo science, and record cold winters across the globe, have made the public rightly very skeptical about all the

• deceitful propaganda about drowning polar bears.

The second is the car park beneath us. Porsches, Mercs, BMWs, SUVs - a show-room of gas-guzzling luxury for the people who tut-tut in disapproval at men in white vans and plot to make their working lives even harder with speed limiters

• and financial penalties....

While I appreciate the efforts of some MEPs to blunt the worst excesses of this C02 hysteria, the plain truth is that anyone who even gives credence to the threadbare hoax of man-made global warming is a collaborator

• with the deadliest scam in history.

Yes, deadly, because it isn't only robbing ordinary people and de-industrialising the West. It is also, right now, starving to death hundreds of thousands of the world's poorest children as food crops are replaced by

• taxpayer-subsidised bio-fuels.""...

Nick Griffin, MEP, speech to European Parliament on You tube, transcribed by Tom Nelson
--------------------------------------

Reference: 2/11/08, NY Mayor Bloomberg said US ethanol rules will cause people to starve to death, 2/11/2008,

• "Bloomberg slams U.S. energy law over corn ethanol" Reuters by Louis Charbonneau and Timothy Gardner

========================

Nick Griffin speaks about global warming fraud to EU Parliament, 11/24/09 leading up to Copenhagen:

----------------------

You Tube must not have liked the video below containing the copy at top. ed.

.

UN urgently meets with Hollywood, seeks global warming storylines in movies, Ki-Moon cites Lake Chad as Al Gore did and British Court ruled against

UN Ban Ki-Moon cites Lake Chad for global warming (as Al Gore did), but British High Court ruled in 2007 Lake Chad case could not be attributed to global warming:

10/11/2007, UK Times: "The drying of Lake Chad, the judge said, was “far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and overgrazing, and regional climate variability”."

• 
  

2/21/11, "Global warming: the United Nations courts Tinseltown," LA Times blogs, Greenspace

"The United Nations has long courted celebrities for its peace-keeping and anti-poverty efforts, from Mia Farrow and Ricky Martin to George Clooney and Angelina Jolie.

• It is a mutually beneficial arrangement.
  

Hollywood stars grasp at gravitas; the U.N. pushes for publicity.

Now the beleaguered multi-national agency, fresh from a disappointing round of climate negotiations in Cancun, wants something more concrete:

• actual story lines in movies,
  

• television and social media drawing attention

to the dangers of global warming.

The push comes at a time when public concern over climate change has plummeted in the polls and Congress has rejected federal legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“Usually I speak to prime ministers and presidents, but that has its limits” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in Los Angeles on Monday for a high-profile outreach effort.

• “Movie producers, directors, actors — they have global reach.”

Ban will sit down for a conversation with actor Don Cheadle before several hundred entertainment industry invitees at a

• “Global Creative Forum” Tuesday at the Hammer Museum.

The day-long gathering will feature panels titled “The United Nations and Hollywood for a Greener and Better Planet,” “Making Global Warming a HOT Issue” and "Empowering Women and Protecting Children for a Safer World.”

Panelists include such top U.N. brass as the Indian economist Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;

• a Nobel-prize winning group of scientists; and
  

Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who heads the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and chaired the Cancun talks.

The secretary-general will host a lunch and dinner for several hundred writers, directors and producers

• and meet with a handful in private.
  

And he will participate in a "Facebook town hall" with several members of the band Linkin Park, which has used U.N. videos to raise money for Haiti relief efforts.

Ban has made global warming a major priority of the international agency. “The science is clear,” he said in an interview. “Climate change will continue unless drastic measures are taken to stop it.

“I have traveled around the world and seen it for myself from Antarctica to the Brazilian rain forest

• to Lake Chad,
  

once a huge sea that has now dried up and become a small pond.”

Does Ban have in mind something like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth"? Or the Armageddon-style “The Day After Tomorrow"? He is making no specific recommendations. “I am sure Hollywood can make good stories from this,” he said, adding that the outreach effort “may be a small start.

• We have to educate people
  

who may not have the expertise and the information.”"

-------------------------------

10/11/2007, "British judge finds nine errors in Al Gore's "alarmist and exaggerated" Inconvenient Truth movie," BritainAndAmerica.com

-------------------------------------------

10/11/2007, "Al Gore's Inconvenient Judgment," UK TimesOnline, Lewis Smith

------------------------------------------------

10/11/2007, "Gore climate film's 9 'errors'," BBC (mentions 3 of 9 judged errors)

"The nine errors alleged by the judge included:

Mr Gore's assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge said this was "distinctly alarmist" and it was common ground that if Greenland's ice melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia".

Mr Gore's assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming - the court heard the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established the snow recession is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Mr Gore's reference to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned "swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.""

---------------------------------------------------
10/11/2007, "Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film," UK Daily Mail. Chart below from Daily Mail

-----------------------------------------------

10/19/07, "35 inconvenient truths: The errors in Al Gore's movie," SPPI blog

"Lake Chad has been dry before: "Over-extraction of water and changing agricultural patterns dried the lake, which was also dry in 8500BC, 5500BC, 1000BC and 100BC. "...
-------------------------------------------------

9/5/2007, "BBC drops climate change special," UK Guardian, John Plunkett

---------------------------------------------------
Reference: 2/21/11, "Green economies for growth, urges UN," BBC

--------------------------------

Many Americans are on food stamps and are starving, the UN says it must have even more of our money. Obama apparently agrees.

via Climate Depot

Obama gave $535 million in taxpayer stimulus money to a billionaire for green jobs scheme that created no jobs

• "Solyndra’s majority owner, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, was a major fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign."...

2/22/11, "Panel: Green jobs company endorsed by Obama and Biden squandered $535 million in stimulus money," Daily Caller

"Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s stimulus and green jobs initiatives, but instead it has become the center of congressional attention for

• waste, fraud and abuse of such programs.

According to a Feb. 17 letter signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, Florida Republican, to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturer should never have received a $535 million loan guarantee from the stimulus.*

The company became the first recipient of an Energy Department loan guarantee under the stimulus in March 2009, which was intended to “finance construction of the first phase of the company’s new manufacturing facility” for photovoltaic solar panels.

The Energy Department estimated in a March 20, 2009 press release that

• the loan guarantee would create 3,000 construction jobs and a further 1,000 jobs after the plant opened.

And President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden each personally showcased Solyndra as an example of how stimulus dollars were at work creating jobs, during appearances at the company over the course of the following year.

Biden personally announced the closure of Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee in a Sept. 9, 2009 speech, delivered via closed-circuit television, on the occasion of the

• groundbreaking of the plant.

The vice president justified the federal government’s investment in Solyndra in front of employees and other dignitaries, including Secretary Chu and former Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, saying the jobs the company intended to create would “serve as a foundation for a stronger American economy.”

“These jobs are the jobs that are going to define the 21^st century that will allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20^th century,” Biden said.

According to Biden’s speech, the $535 million loan guarantee was a smaller part of the $30 billion of stimulus money the administration planned to spend as part

• of its Green Jobs Initiative.

Obama made similar claims in a May 26, 2010 speech at the plant, but the 1,000 jobs he and Biden touted in their respective speeches

• failed to materialize.

Instead, Solyndra announced on Nov. 3 it planned to postpone expanding the plant, which put the taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $390.5 million taxpayers**, or 73 percent of the total loan guarantee, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It also announced that it no longer planned to hire the 1,000 workers that Obama and Biden had touted in their speeches and that it planned to close one of its older factories and planned to lay-off 135 temporary or contract workers and 40 full-time employees.

A closer look at the company shows it has never turned a profit since it was founded in 2005,

• according to its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.

And Solyndra’s auditor declared that “the company has suffered recurring losses, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, [that] raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a growing concern” in a March

• 2010 amendment to its SEC registration statement.

“While we understand the purpose of the Loan Guarantee Program is to help private companies engaging in clean energy products to obtain financing by providing loan guarantees, subsequent events raise questions about Solyndra was the right candidate to receive a loan guarantee in excess of half a billion dollars,” Upton and Stearns wrote.

A June 2010 Wall Street Journal report indicating that Solyndra’s majority owner, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, was a major fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign has stimulus opponents such as

• Citizens Against Government Waste crying foul.

“We have said this is pork-barrel spending since the beginning,” Leslie Page, spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, told The Daily Caller. “And the one thing about pork is

• its corruptive influences.”

Kaiser flatly denied he had anything to do with the loan guarantee when he was asked by the Journal, but Page nonetheless sees cronyism in the loan guarantee because

• personal involvement of the president and vice president in the project.

“This seems like a quid pro quo, and it raises a lot of questions,” Page said.

Other stimulus critics say Solyndra shows just how flawed the program has been from the beginning and how

• it has failed to create jobs and needs further oversight.

“It would have been a lot more effective to put money into the hands of the private sector,” said Alex Cortes, chairman of the Restore the Dream Foundation and DefundIt.org. “This is just another example of the failure of the stimulus.”

Solyndra is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Cortes, who plans to raise awareness of other stimulus pork projects such as an approximately $800,000 television ad campaign in New York aimed at promoting healthy eating habits....

“[The administration] is trying to pretend we’re creating jobs and hoping the taxpayers are

• dumb enough and blind enough to believe the lie,”
  

Corrao said. “But after two years of unemployment about 9 percent, people aren’t going to believe it anymore.”

Solyndra did not respond to a request for comments."

via Hot Air

American Bar Assn. takes the side of sharia law across the US while it still has free speech with which to do so-Updates: ABA email, & Pamela Geller

Updated 2/24/11, "The ABA does damage control," American Thinker, Pamela Geller

"Above all, the ABA claims that this taskforce has nothing to do with the organization itself: "The actions of a few interested members within one section are not and cannot be interpreted to be those of the entire American Bar Association. Claims to the contrary are erroneous."

This is spin and damage control. In my Tuesday article I quoted the Section on International Law stating that the ABA's Executive Counsel "has organized a Task Force to review the legislation of 14 states -- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming -- in which anti-Sharia legislation has been introduced."

There was no way this Task Force could be understood as neutral. Clearly it was dedicated to working against anti-Sharia legal initiatives. The Section on International Law document said: "The Section's Executive Counsel [sic] has organized a Task Force to review the legislation of 14 states -- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming - in which anti-Sharia legislation has been introduced. The goal of the Task Force is to have a Report and Recommendation against such legislation as well as an informal set of ‘talking points' that local opponents of these initiatives could use to make their case in each of these states."

This should incite justifiable public outrage, and actually increase support for and awareness of the legislation among the grassroots electorate.

A source knowledgeable about the ABA has also informed me that the organization's Middle East law committee recently began a lobbying campaign, which the ABA's international law chair endorsed. It was a political act, not a neutral study. This source sent me ABA policy guidelines that make it clear that policies that are formulated by small committees or "entities" can and do become official ABA policy under certain circumstances, and those circumstances are present in the case of this

• pro-Sharia Task Force.

This puts the ABA on the spot: either its policy mechanism on Middle East law has been taken over by Middle East-based lawyer(s) with Islamic supremacist sympathies, or the Middle East law committee does represent the ABA's actual positions.

Further, is there any ABA group or task force assigned to helping those who oppose Sharia to craft legislation to ban it? No.

• There is only an initiative to oppose those fighting the Sharia.

Particularly troubling is the non-democratic way in which the ABA made the decision to oppose the anti-Sharia initiatives of various states. A tiny minority of the ABA's total membership steers its policies, which almost always are developed from the top down. The pro-Sharia initiative seems to have been pushed forward through what the ABA calls a "blanket approval" or even more rapid "technical comment" procedure, and seems to go beyond issuing mere statements to actively organizing lobbying to influence state legislation -

• a practice that is generally forbidden for tax-exempt organizations.

All this makes it obvious that the ABA's statement disclaiming any support for Sharia was completely false and dishonest.

• If the ABA continues to forward this deceitful rhetoric, I will expose even more information about its support for Sharia.

There is one way the ABA could make at least partial amends now: it's time the ABA created a task force to help those of us who are fighting the introduction of Islamic law in America.

We're waiting."
-------------------------------------------------

Updated 2/23/11 with email from ABA posted below this article.

2/22/11, "The ABA's Jihad," American Thinker, Pamela Geller

"The American Bar Association (ABA) has decided to undertake the fight for Sharia law. The ABA's Executive Counsel "has organized a Task Force to review the legislation of 14 states -- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming -- in which anti-Sharia legislation has been introduced."

The goal of the ABA's Task Force is to fight against these legislative initiatives by free people, and to develop "an informal set of ‘talking points' that local opponents of these initiatives could use to make their case in each of these states."

Here's the relevant extract from the ABA's International Policies 2010:

• Oklahoma referendum related Rule of Law initiatives.

The Section's Executive Counsel has organized a Task Force to review the legislation of 14 states -- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming - in which anti-Sharia legislation has been introduced. The goal of the Task Force is to have a Report and Recommendation against such legislation as well as an informal set of "talking points" that local opponents of these initiatives could use to make their case in each of these states. We received a lot of interest from members and have forwarded your interest. At this point, the task force is in the planning and organizing stage. We will keep you updated as to the progress and we may call upon some of you who expressed their interest in this matter to volunteer.

In reality, Islamic law is the most radical and intolerant system of governance on the face of the earth. It denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and legal equality for women and non-Muslims. That's why so many states are trying to ban it. The ABA should be on the forefront of this battle. The Oklahoma ban was brilliant but poorly worded (which is why a liberal judge found it so easy to overrule the will of the people) and had

• 70% of voters approving of it --

it is clear that American people understand the Islamic threat to our constitutional republic.

Instead, our cultural warlords in the mainstream media, academia and entertainment strictly enforce the blasphemy laws of Islam, which command that one must not insult or slander Islam. In Muslim countries, blasphemy is punishable by death; in the West, it is

• your character that is assassinated if you dare to speak out against the Islamic supremacist agenda.

Our last line of defense was always the rule of law. So it is particularly jarring and deeply disturbing to come upon this latest initiative from the ABA, the last line of defense against sharia creep.

Furthermore, the ABA's "Middle East Law committee" has promoted Sharia finance for some time, with the same warmly positive slant.

Unfortunately, the ABA is not alone in this. In late January, New York State Senator Kevin Parker introduced a bill to set up an alternative bond market that would comply with Islamic law regarding financial transactions.

Has Kevin Parker ever heard of the separation of church and state, or in this case, mosque and state? I'll be damned before my hard-earned taxpayer dollars go to zakat (jihad), or to the prohibition of pork, alcohol, and some forms of adult entertainment.

• This is the financial jihad.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution recently that decried "Islamophobia."

The term """" Islamophobia" itself is an enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws. Islamic law commands that there be no candor about Islam or criticism of Islam. Any truthful statements about Islamic supremacism and violence are considered blasphemy. That's why it is shocking that Los Angeles, which is just this side of Sodom and Gomorrah, is passing resolutions that accord with Islamic law. No one in America cares what and who you worship; just don't force it upon us. I don't care if you worship a stone, just don't stone me with it. And stop telling us how many Muslims don't commit jihadi acts. Of course they don't. So what?

• I don't believe in rewarding people for doing the right thing. I don't believe in congratulating people
  
• for not committing acts of violence against people outside their religion.

Thus the Los Angeles City Council's passage of this resolution opposing "Islamophobia" and repudiating violence against Muslims is a step back centuries into the dark ages. According to the FBI, "hate crime" against Muslims is at its lowest in a decade, but acts of jihad are accelerating at warp speed. Yet the Los Angeles City Council passes no resolutions against jihad, honor killings, misogyny, gender apartheid, Islamic antisemitism, kuffarophobia, etc.

Sharia is being imposed across state lines, across the country, by way of these varying initiatives. We must push back.

And the ABA has nothing to say about any of this; it is too busy fighting against anti-Sharia, pro-freedom laws. It is yet another terrible sign

• of a morally inverted world."

----------------------------------------

• I received the following email regarding this article:

"The American Bar Association has taken no action in support of, or in opposition to, judges considering Islamic law or Sharia.

The American Bar Association has nearly 400,000 members, many of whom volunteer with any of the ABA’s 2,200 entities. One of those 2,200 entities is the Section on International Law, which has elected to assemble a taskforce of several individuals to examine this issue.

These individuals are examining whether the proposed changes to the law impact important constitutional questions. They are also considering implications for international commerce.

The actions of a few interested members within one section are not and cannot be interpreted to be those of the entire American Bar Association. Claims to the contrary are erroneous.

Martha J. Heil

News Director

American Bar Association

740 15th St. NW

Washington, DC 20005

202-662-1096 (office)

626-354-5613 (cell)

martha.heil@americanbar.org"

.