Whales and calves in the Las Perlas while Big Oil funds climatechange skeptics

A personal point of view

Whales and their calves have been photographed around the Las Perlas archipelago in early March.

They normally pass through in June or July. An isolated incident or part of a larger trend as wild life reacts to changing climatic conditions with breeding pattern changes, animals moving to new

habitats?

 In Australia people with homes along large stretches of coastline are seeing them disappear as rising tides take over. Low level Pacific islands are threatened with extinction and islanders look at plans to move to the mainland. In San Blas  some islands could soon disappear.

The Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate faster than predicted and Northwest and Northeast passages may soon be a reality. Not good news for the Panama Canal, as the shipping distance from Europe to Asia would be dramatically reduced, and no canal fees dor Maersk et al.
Climate change skeptics, and Panama has its share of those, point instead to an Al Gore plot to make a fortune through his green business investments. Wouldn’t you invest in green technology if that was the way to make the world a cleaner and safer place to live?
The deniers have had a great time demonizing the now-exonerated scientist at the centre of ‘Climategate’. but a report published this week shows that Koch Industries gave $48.5m to organizations dedicated to producing research and campaigns that cast doubt on climate change. Oil giant ExxonMobil spent $24m in the same period on its own climate change skeptic activities.
First Post reports that Koch is a Kansas-based conglomerate dealing in petroleum, minerals, chemicals and finance among other industries. It’s annual revenue is $98bn .
Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute have received respectively $5m, $1.6m and $1m from Koch since 2005, all conservative think tanks which contributed to Climategate .
Climategate blew up in November following the hacking and dissemination of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Climate change skeptics alleged the emails showed that CRU scientists misled the world by claiming climate change was happening despite the data proving otherwise. British MPs this week cleared the CRU head, Dr Phil Jones, of distorting his data.
But climate skeptics continue  making hay with the e-mails. Steve Lonegan, a director of Americans for Prosperity, said Climategate could be the "biggest hoax our world has ever seen". The Heritage Foundation called Climategate a conspiracy attempting to "freeze out dissenting scientists from publishing their work” Patrick J Michaels of the Cato Institute, a vocal climate skeptic says the CRU scientists perpetrated a "capital crime".
A recently published list of “scientist” skeptics included scores of physicians, pharmacists, people with humanities degrees and no related experience, or background in climatology.
Much of the Koch money has gone to fund scientific studies aimed at giving a veneer of respectability to climate change skepticism, which is against mainstream scientific opinion.
A 2007 study funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and ExxonMobil concluded that polar bears were not declining because of global warming. "Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming spring air temperatures the ‘ultimate’ survival control factor?" was published in Ecological Complexity as a ‘Viewpoint’ piece and not subjected to peer review.
But the paper was cited by then-Alaskan governor Sarah Palin to support her case against government action to protect the polar bear.
Two polar bear experts, Dr Ian Stirling and Dr Andrew Derocher, responded to the paper, saying: "[The article’s authors]… suggest that factors other than climate warming are responsible for a decline in the polar bear population of Western Hudson Bay… In our examination of their alternative explanations, and the data available to evaluate each, we found little support for any."
Koch has defended its environmental record. "We believe the political response to climate issues should be based on sound science. Both a free society and the scientific method require an open and honest airing of all sides, not demonizing and silencing those with whom you disagree."
Now isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? {jathumbnail off}

This week president Obama lifted the ban on oil exploration in formerly protected areas of the US coastline. The oil lobbyists are smiling all the way to the banks, who did a great job in dragging the world economy to the brink while handing out multi million dollar bonuses to failed executives.