Big Surprise!!!
- Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial think tanks
- Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science
- Donors distributed millions to anti-climate groups
by Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
Thursday 14 February 2013
The Guardian UK
Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.
Read the article
'Exceptional'... 'Timely'... 'Valuable'... 'Alarming'
New Film Triple Divide - Review by Robert Donnan
A clarion's call...
It's my sincere hope this film will receive widespread support and distribution. Of the 5 films I have seen on fracking (Split Estate, Gasland, Promised Land, Fracknation) this one is the best at showing a slice of the all-too-real and desperate situation as it relates to water and fracking, using exceptional documentation and analysis backed by extensive file reviews at the Pa. DEP. It will give you a fresh look at onsite burials of what I call 'toxic teabags' at drill sites, even when it isn't supposed to happen.
With much of the focus on Potter County, Pa. you come away with an in-depth sense of the inner workings of the industry and the DEP. (Violations have been recorded at 85% of the drill sites in Potter). Without its superb visual artistic elements, this documentary would remind you of an episode of '60 Minutes' which is just what you would expect from two sharp investigative reporters who have been producing this film for 2 years. Another huge plus: Industry bulldogs from EID and their ilk will find it impossible to tear down this film due to its fact-based core and ultimate thoroughness. Bravo!
RDA will be bringing this film and its makers, Joshua Pribanic and Melissa Troutman, to the the Williamsport area this spring. For more information on the film click:
For more info and screenings of Triple Divide
"
Top economists agree a tax on fuels and the carbon they spew into the atmosphere would be the cheapest way to combat climate change."
From: In Energy Taxes, Tools to Help Tackle Climate Change
NY Times Article by Eduardo Porter
(Don't forget to include methane emissions from Natural Gas production and distribution in the greenhouse gas tax fight, fellows)
EPA: NG and Oil: Second Largest Source of U.S. GG Emissions in 2011.
(And the shale gas "revolution" has hardly begun)
The U.S. EPA says natural gas and oil production are the second-biggest sources of U.S. greenhouse gases. Emissions from drilling, fracking, pipelines, compression, processing and leaky totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011.
According to Bloomberg New reporter Mark Draiem in a Feb 6th article:
Environmental groups have asked the agency to establish standards to prevent methane leakages from the drilling, fracking and transport of oil and gas...
Methane's lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide, but it's more efficient at trapping radiation, making its short-term impact 20-times greater than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.
"Reducing fugitive methane emissions is a top priority because they are so powerful" a force for global warming, said Mark Brownstein, managing director of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York.
