The UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine (see our posts A siren song from hell, April 1, 2011; and The danger of R2P, March 23, 2011), in the name of which Obama has taken America into a third war on a Muslim enemy while insisting it is all for the good of the Muslims populations as a whole, is an extension, a perversion, and potentially a contradiction of the real responsibility to protect, which is the most important duty of the national government of every nation-state.

The chief reason to have a national government is that it’s the only or best institution for protecting the nation from foreign enemies, and every individual from harm by others to his or her person and property. That it can effect such protection is the chief virtue of the nation-state, a reason why nation-states are necessary and – if not ruled by oppressive despots – essentially good.

To interpret R2P as a high moral pretext for allowing a bunch of communist and/or Islamic nations to manipulate America and other strongly armed Western nations into using military force against states they dislike, is to take away its purpose by depriving the nation-state of its defensive power, the very thing the “responsibility to protect” needed, and so to render every state vulnerable to conspiring enemies.

The sinister purpose behind the re-interpreting maneuver is to establish “world governance” by turning the corrupt, hypocritical, worse-than-useless United Nation Organization into an institution of world government.

To achieve this collectivist end, cabals of collectivist powers, organizations, and individuals have tried a series of ploys.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and all that followed from it, was one. They hoped that they could convince governments, through heavily propagandized public opinion, that the only way to save the earth from the catastrophic man-made global warming they invented, was to hand over power to the UN, which would set about redistributing wealth equally among the  nations, thus crippling the developed world where the liberty they loathe still prevails.

Another ploy, not as widely known or as dramatic in its immediate effects as IPCC and R2P, was the World Health Report 2000, put out by the World Health Organization (WHO).

There is an excellent article about it, by Professor Scott W. Atlas in the April 2011 issue of  Commentary magazine, on which we have drawn for the following information, analysis, and comment:

[The Report’s] most  most notorious finding – that the United States ranked a disastrous 37th out of the world’s nations in “overall performance” – provided Barack Obama’s transformative health-care legislation with a data-driven argument for swift and drastic reform, particularly in the light of the fact that the U.S. spends more on health than any other nation.

Professor Scott proceeds to demonstrate that –

In fact, World Health Report 2000 was an intellectual fraud of historic consequence – a profoundly deceptive document that is only marginally a measure of of health-care performance at all. The report’s true achievement was to rank countries according to their alignment with a specific political and economic ideal – socialized medicine – and then claim it was an objective measure of “quality”. … It sought not to measure performance but something else.

That “something else” was a figment of its compilers’ collective dream. They wrote:

“In the past decade or so there has been a gradual shift of vision towards what WHO calls the ‘new universalism’,” WHO authors write, “respecting the ethical principle that it may be necessary and efficient to ration services”.

So we’d all be subjected to the lowest common standard of health care – not for the sake of good health, but for the sake of ideological equality.

Professor Atlas substantiates his case by explaining in some detail the criteria the compilers of the report used to make its ranking assessments. The report, he says “went on to argue, even insist, that governments need to promote community rating” and “a common benefit package” .

And he comments aptly:

It is a curious version  of objective study design and data analysis  to assume the validity of a concept like “the new universalism” and then to define policies that implement it as proof  of that validity.

The report endorsed wealth-redistribution and centralized administration – ie. socialized health-care, the authors’ very definition of good quality health provision. A country’s rank depended on the extent to which its health care was government controlled.

The policy recommendation preceded the research.

Just as – we would point out – the policy recommendation of IPCC preceded the research.

Automatically, this pushed the capitalist countries … to the bottom of the list.

Professor Atlas concludes:

If World HealthRreport 2000 had  simply been issued and forgotten, it would still have been a case study in how to produce a wretched and unreliable piece of social science masquerading as legitimate research. That it served so effectively as a catalyst for unprecedented legislation is evidence of something more disturbing. The executive and legislatoive branches of the United States government used WHO’s document as an implicit Exhibit A to justify imposing radical changes to America’s health-care system, even in the face of objections from the American people. To blur the line between politics and objective analysis is to do violence to them both.

The whole of Professor Atlas’s article is well worth reading.

The production of bio-fuels promotes hunger. Ethanol is the sacrifice of food to ideology.

Driven by its obsession with “green energy”, the left – whose heart, remember, is constantly aching for the wretched of the earth – has food turned into fuel (rather than drill for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska). The result – the wretched of the earth go hungrier.

This is from Breitbart:

World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency [Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO] said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.

Some of them already have – Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria …

And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January — the highest level since records began in 1990. …

The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December — with big increases in particular for dairy [cattle feed becomes more expensive because of the ethanol program], cereal and oil prices. …

The data from the Rome-based FAO showed that prices for dairy products rose by 6.2 percent from December, oils and fats gained 5.6 percent, while cereals went up by 3.0 percent because of lower global supply of wheat and maize. …

The Food Price Index hit 200 points over the whole of 2008 at the height of the 2007/2008 food crisis. It breached that level for the first time in October 2010 with 205 points. …

And this is from FrontPage Magazine:

One of the most common causes of societal discontent, the very factor that led to the ongoing Egyptian protests, is hunger. Unfortunately, worldwide global warming fanaticism has only contributed to this plight. By consuming ever-expansive portions of the world food supply for the production of green bio-fuels, the left has increased the cost of food for those who can least afford it. This has caused much undue suffering for the world’s poor and significantly exacerbated Third World instability — and Egypt is no exception. …

Today, we’re seeing that effect in Egypt and we’re going to see more of it throughout the world unless we can fix the growing worldwide food crisis. We’ve been skating on thin ice, in terms of food supply, for more than a decade now. Between 2000 and 2010, the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. By 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That’s a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade. …

Between 1999 and 2009, the amount of cropland used to grow wheat in America dropped by over 3 million acres, or almost 5 per cent. … The amount of land used to grow rice dropped over 15 per cent; for oats, over 30 per cent; for rye, over 20 per cent; for peanuts and edible beets, over 25 per cent; and for sugarbeets, a shade under 25 per cent. These are some of the commodities that are used, directly and indirectly, to produce the food that once fed the world. And, those statistics are just a few highlights, or lowlights if you will, of the overall trend.

In the US, farmers use ever more land to grow “energy-crops” – chiefly corn and soybeans – because they are subsidized by the government, and ever less for crops that can only be eaten.

Overall, the amount of United States cropland used to grow basic food commodities — crops other than corn and soybeans — has decreased by over 22 million acres since 1999. …

The American taxpayer … ultimately pays the bill for the bio-fuel incentive programs that make growing energy crops more profitable than providing nutrition to the globe.

It’s ironic that the United Nations should be warning about the disastrous results of the food-into-fuel policy, since it is the central church, the Vatican one might say, of the “green” religion.

But don’t take my word for it, consider instead the viewpoint of the organization that has been pushing global warming hysteria harder than anyone this side of Al Gore: the United Nations. According to the UN, almost 10 per cent of world grain production – that’s about 100 million metric tons per year – goes for bi-fuel production. They expect that number to double by 2018. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that “competition between the three Fs (food, feed and fuel) is expected to intensify,” which is probably about as close in tone to criticism that one branch of the UN is going to use about another branch: the International Panel on Climate Change.

So it seems that the left has now become more sentimental about the planet than about the poor.

Michelle Obama and her fans might try fussing less about Americans being too fat and think more (if think they can) about why other nations are too thin.

The immense and imminent threat of “global warming”, supposedly caused by humanity’s feckless ways, has been exposed as a fantasy.

So now the alarmists, who cannot admit defeat because they profit so hugely from their warmed-up panic, cry “climate change” instead.

Sure, the earth’s climate is changing. It’s forever changing. Who’s surprised? And who on earth wants to pay to know more about it?

Pay we do, however, and lavishly, whether we want to or not.

According to Art Horn, meteorologist, about $4 billion of tax-payers’ money will be spent this year – “wasted” as he bluntly and fairly puts it – on climate change research.

Here’s his account of where the money goes:

What can we cut out of the federal budget to make any kind of dent in this enormous pile of borrowed money? We could start with the vast sums of cash being wasted on climate change research.

This year, your government will spend in the neighborhood of $4 billion on global warming research, despite the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998, and despite all of the billions that have been spent so far yielding no conclusive evidence that using fossil fuels to make energy has any significant effect on Earth’s temperature.

The human component of carbon dioxide that is injected into the air each year is very small, on the order of 3%. Half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by human activity each year is immediately absorbed into nature. Carbon dioxide is 8% of the greenhouse effect; water in the air is 90% of the greenhouse effect. By volume, carbon dioxide is currently at about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere, increasing at about 2 parts per million annually. In other words, carbon dioxide is increasing at a rate of .5% per year. Since human activity adds 3% of the carbon dioxide that gets into the air each year, the human component of the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year is 3 % of .5%, or just .015%. …

Check the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2011 budget request, and go to chapter 15: Climate Change in the FY 2011 Budget. The numbers are staggering. In 2011, your government will spend $10.6 million a day to study, combat, and educate about climate change.

The big winner in the climate change money train is the National Science Foundation — they are requesting $1.616 billion. They want $766 million for the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program, a 15.9% increase from their last budget. They also need another $370 million for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), an increase of 16%. They say they also need another $480 million for Atmospheric Sciences, an increase of 8.1%, and Earth Sciences, up 8.7%.

Oh, and $955 million for the Geosciences Directorate, an increase of 7.4%.

The second largest request for money in 2011 comes from the Department of Energy. They say they need $627 million for things like funding for renewable energy. The request represents a whopping 37% increase from last year! …

Let’s get NASA in on the parade! For 2011, NASA wants $438 million to study climate change, an increase of 14%. NASA’s total Earth Sciences budget request is actually $1.8 billion. …

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for $437 million for climate research. This is an increase of 21.4% from the previous budget. This includes funds for regional and national assessments of climate change, including ocean acidification. Once again, another meaty bag of money to tap into for researchers, who have nice cars and big houses and need to keep up the payments.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is also interested in robbing the climate change vault — they say they need $244 million in 2011. Of this total, $171 million is for the Climate Change Adaptation initiative. …  Another $73 million is needed for the New Energy Frontier initiative. The goal of this program is to increase solar, wind, and geothermal energy capacity. …

Of course, there’s more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants $169 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions …

Is there any government agency that does not get some climate change funding? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants $338 million for climate change programs. They want $159 million for climate change research, up a whopping 42%. They also want another $179 million for renewable energy, an increase of 41%! The USDA’s climate change efforts are supposed to help farm and land owners adapt to the impacts of climate change. Yes, really.

Redundancy on top of redundancy, piles of money on top of piles of money. All to study climate change, which, according to the theory, should be warming us rapidly, but, according to the data, has stopped.

Ours is a highly adaptable species. Human beings have survived climate changes for hundreds of thousands of years. Guess we could struggle on as usual without financing exorbitantly expensive investigations into a phenomenon we know perfectly well we cannot control.

An article by geologist Jonathan DuHamel at Townhall contradicts the emotive propaganda put out by the sly IPCC on “global warming” and species extinction:

In their quest to control carbon dioxide emissions, together with the economic power that entails, climate alarmists are claiming that global warming will cause massive species extinctions. The geologic record, however, shows the opposite. Major extinctions are associated with ice ages and other cooling events. The current wildlife extinction rate is the lowest in 500 years according to the UN’s own World Atlas of Biodiversity. …

Warmists are shedding seas of crocodile tears over the polar bear species, which they claim may soon be extinct as its arctic habitat is becoming too warm to sustain it (because wicked mankind is making it so). But –

People who live in the Arctic know that polar bear populations have been increasing, mainly due to changes in hunting regulations. Native Inuit hunters say that “The growing population has become a real problem, especially over the last 10 years.”

The polar bear has been around for a very long time and somehow survived conditions that were warmer than now and even warmer than computer projections. …

Abundant research shows that warming increases the range for most terrestrial plants and animals, as well as for most marine creatures. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes plants more water efficient and more robust.

Looking at the greater geologic record, we see that in the warming period subsequent to each ice age, life rebounded with more speciation and greater biodiversity. We have ample reason to believe this pattern will continue.

There you have it: everyone who cares about the planet and its teeming life has a duty to enlarge his carbon footprint.

“This is an administration that could just as well have been put in place by America’s most relentless enemies,” David Solway writes at FrontPageMag. “It is headed by a president with deep roots in a neo-Marxist social movement and associational ties with a host of disreputable characters.”

Yes.

Solway sums up the Obama Devastation of America thus far:

There can be little doubt any longer that the United States is now governed by a rogue administration … We are observing an establishment that is unwilling to defend the nation’s borders from drug cartel violence and illegal immigration, forcing unread bills through Congress in the dark of night, embarking on a socialized medicine program it cannot afford and which has not worked wherever else it has been tried, plunging the nation into bankruptcy with misnamed “stimulus spending,” unsustainable entitlements and exponential debt, refusing to drill safely on land to reduce its dependence on foreign oil supplies, utterly incapable of dealing with cataclysms like the Gulf oil spill, touting an impractical, premature and ruinously exorbitant Green Energy policy, considering cap-and-trade legislation when it has become undeniably clear that Global Warming research is a profoundly unsettled and perhaps even a false science, scrubbing all reference to Islamic terror from its official documents and pursuing a foreign policy that might accurately be described as geopolitically suicidal. Quite a list, but unfortunately an accurate one.

And a damning one, though not even comprehensive.

The rogue president still has two more years to go.

Only by an unforeseeable stroke of luck could it be less.

Only by an unpreventable fit of national lunacy could it be more.

We have written quite often about the myth of man-made global warming. Now we can confidently declare that the myth is fading.

The collectivists who tried to frighten us into accepting poorer lives and “world governance” in order to “save the planet”, are disappointed. They’ll have to search for some other excuse to control us, and they’ll find one of course.

To the general public, the most persuasive argument against believing the myth is probably the economic crisis, the scientific arguments on both sides being hard for the non-scientist to follow.

Whatever the reason, the folks are no longer buying the scare.

Summing up the change in the climate of opinion on climate change, Cal Thomas writes at Townhall:

The myth of “global warming,” or climate change … is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs, if they were melting, which many believe they are not.

After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution [The Royal Society] is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.” …

In Canada, the polar bear — which has been used by global warming promoters to put a cuddly face on the issue — is in danger of not being endangered any longer. CBC News reported that the polar bear’s designation as a “species of special concern” has been suspended …

The New York Times recently lamented “global warmism’s loss of credibility” in a story about hundreds of “environmental activists who met to ponder this question: “if the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?” The “consensus” never was a consensus. Most of us may not have gotten an “A” in science, but we can sense when we are being bamboozled. …

Meteorologists, like Joe D’Aleo of The Weather Channel, are publicly distancing themselves from the false doctrine of global warming. D’Aleo says, “We’ll have La Nina conditions before the summer is over, and it will intensify further through the fall and winter. Thus we’ll have cooler temperatures for the next couple of years.”

Remember the scare ignited in 2007 by supposed melting Arctic ice caps? The Star Canada says a new analysis shows that the apparent change was the result of “shifting winds,” while an expedition last year to the North Pole discovered the ice “100 percent thicker than expected.” …

Watch for the hardcore “global warming” cultists to continue clinging to their beliefs; but also watch increasing numbers of scientists and eventually politicians to abandon this once “certain” faith and to look for other ways to control our lives. In that pursuit, the left never quits. Rather than acknowledge their error, they will go on to make new mistakes, knowing they will never be held accountable.

Obama delivered a commencement speech at the US Military Academy at West Point which was studded with ironies.

From the Washington Post:

Obama pledged to shape a new “international order” based on diplomacy and engagement.

His presidency has been notable for diplomatic failures and not a single success. As for “engagement”, his obstinate persistence in trying to “engage” Iran has given it all the time it needed to develop nuclear bombs and build the ballistic missiles to deliver them. But a record of failure does not prompt Obama to reconsider his policy.

“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation,” he said. “We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice — so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”

Just where has he “steered currents in the direction of liberty and justice”? Where has he got nations that do not “meet their responsibilities” to “face consequences”? Russia invaded Georgia, took and occupied two of its provinces, and Obama has not done a thing about it. What international cooperation has there been to make Russia withdraw?

“The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times,” he said in prepared remarks. “Countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing its wounds.”

He may be seeking such an international order, but he’s done nothing to bring it about. Far from “countering violent extremism and insurgency” he refuses even to name the perpetrators of it (Muslims) and the cause they serve (Islam). If he hoped his audience would assume he meant Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be remembered that he was always against the war in Iraq, has shown reluctance to win decisive victory in Afghanistan, and has told the enemy the dates when he’ll withdraw American troops from both battlefields regardless of whether anything that could be called victory has by then been achieved.

On “securing nuclear materials” he held a useless international conference, when Canada and one or two other non-belligerent states promised not to give fissile material to terrorists, but no real danger was eliminated.

And then he comes on to the tired and stupid mantra “combating climate change”. Combating climate? It’s a primitive and ignorant notion. Call in the rainmakers, or cool makers, or warm makers, and let them start their chants!

“Sustaining global growth”? How he feeds the buzz-words (such as “sustaining”) to his far left constituency and at the same time tries to give the impression that he is on the side of prosperity (“global growth”). But his flowery phrasing cannot conceal his lack of understanding.

In Iraq, he said, the United States is “poised” to end its combat operations this summer, leaving behind “an Iraq that provides no safe haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable and self-reliant.”

Since Obama came to office, there has been far less reporting of terrorist activity in Iraq by the anti-Bush and pro-Obama media. But in fact terrorism in that arrondissement of hell has not stopped. Lately it has intensified. The chances of Iraq becoming stable, “giving no haven to terrorists”, and evolving in this century into a truly democratic state are not worth betting on.

To address the military at all must, he knew, offend the far left constituency to which he long ago sold his soul. Much of his message was aimed at propitiating that radical left rather than reinforcing the morale of American soldiers.

Civilians, he added, must answer the call of service as well, by securing America’s economic future, educating its children and confronting the challenges of poverty and climate change.

His far left critics would understand that when he spoke of “securing America’s economic future” and “confronting the challenges of poverty and climate change” he meant with “green jobs” and redistribution. As for the education of children, they will take it to mean indoctrinating hapless kids with leftist ideology – a cause Obama served actively years ago in Chicago.

Here’s a dry summary of the speech by Arthur Herman in the National Review Online:

On Saturday, Pres. Barack Obama gave a commencement speech … which in effect told the thousand or so soon-to-be second lieutenants that, if he has his way, they’ll soon be out of a job.

Obama outlined for the cadets his vision of a new international order organized around bodies such as the United Nations. In Obama’s future, American military force will give way to American diplomacy joined together with new multilateral partnerships, while “stronger international standards and institutions” will replace unilateral assertion of national interests — including our own. Obama told West Point’s Class of 2010 that he sees them not battling our enemies but “combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth, [and] helping countries feed themselves” even as their citizens achieve their “universal rights.”

He’s still dreaming the dreams of his father.

Michael Mann’s “hockey stick graph” was constructed with computers (“garbage in, garbage out”) to “prove” that a wonderfully steady climate prevailed over the world for nearly a thousand years and then suddenly, in the twentieth century, Modern Industrial Man with his disgraceful appetite for material things that make his life longer, pleasanter and easier, started polluting the air and water and  earth with disgusting “emissions” that heated the planet, which is now set to become so hot that … Oh, all sorts of dire consequences will follow. And drastic, impoverishing remedies must be hastily applied world-wide by diktat. The population of the world must shrink, so have no children and die early. If you insist on surviving, go back to living hand to mouth like your primitive ancestors.

We may be exaggerating a little, but not diverging from the broad  truth.

A report by The Science and Environmental Policy Project points out:

The first two assessment reports of the UN IPCC included charts showing temperature change for the last 1000 years that included the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The Summary for Policymakers of the 2001 Third Assessment Report eliminated these temperature changes and substituted Mann’s now infamous “hockey stick” graph produced by statistical techniques that purport to show that temperatures were relatively stable for about 900 years then shot up in the 20th Century. The results of a computer model trumps physical evidence. The research was “peer reviewed” but not available for independent review. …

If Mr. Mann had been open with his research data and methods, and permitted their review by independent scientists, his errors may have been appropriately corrected in a scientific setting rather than in a political one. Instead, he chose to withhold the information. It is imperative to understand the full extent to which Mann’s now discredited study distorted the climate and energy policies of the US government – at great cost to the taxpayer and energy consumer.

Commenting on this, John Hinderaker writes at PowerLine:

It is a remarkable fact that warmists claim the right to keep their data secret and avoid any critical assessment of their work, while at the same time demanding that every country in the world fashion its energy policies on the basis of their alleged findings. No doubt there is a precedent, somewhere, for such arrogance. But I am not sure there is any precedent, anywhere, for governments being stupid enough to accede to such unreasonable demands.

Yes, it would be a far better, though probably harder, aim for the citizens of democracies to lower the level of stupidity in their governments, rather than the temperature of the earth.

Great news!

Traders in air are being arrested on the charge of fraud. Not (yet?) for their big hoax about man-made global warming, but for dishonesty anyway.

The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

All across Europe authorities have been conducting raids, rounding up individuals involved in a new version of Climate-gate. This time the data aren’t corrupted. Europe’s Emissions Trading System is. The system is so sick, it’s turned out to be a scam built upon a scam.

Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids by British and German authorities as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT [value added tax] tax fraud.

U.K. officials announced raids on 81 offices and homes, nabbing 13 people in England and eight in Scotland. The operation involved 450 investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs office.

German authorities raided 230 locations, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe. The German operation involved 1,000 investigators targeting 50 companies and 150 suspects.

The amount of money involved in carbon trading is huge and the temptations vast. While our Congress demagogues about banks and their “complex financial instruments,” they are simple compared to cap-and-trade, which as we have noted involves essentially the buying and selling of air. Throw in an oppressive value-added tax and you have a recipe for corruption and fraud.

Last December, Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.

“Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it’s not always clear what is being traded,” says Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.

Climate change has been found to be a fraud. Now the system to fight it has been. Yet it’s that system the administration and others want to establish here through cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer.

As we also have noted, the mechanism for such phantom carbon trading here has already been established in the form of the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start CCX when Barack Obama sat on its board.

CCX founder Richard Sandor estimates the climate trading market could be “a $10 trillion dollar market.” It is an invitation to fraud that would make Europe’s ETS scandal seem like petty theft.

In 2000, according to Joyce Foundation records, $347,600 was allocated to Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where Sandor was a research professor, “to design a Midwestern pilot program for the voluntary trading of carbon dioxide and other emissions that cause climate change.”

Now President Obama would make such carbon trading mandatory, limit total emissions and make carbon as valuable a commodity as booze during Prohibition.

The Joyce Foundation’s two grants totaled just over $1 million. CCX has proved very lucrative for Sandor, whose 8 million shares in the exchange has grown to more than $260 million even before a national cap-and-trade system like Europe’s is established.

Al Gore … is co-founder of Generation Investment Management LLP, the fifth largest shareholder in CCX.

The largest shareholder is, uh, Goldman Sachs. …

What has happened in Europe is going to happen here and may already have begun. We, too, can save the earth for fun and profit.

In the dark ages, when Papacy held control of men’s consciences and few dared to think, one method which she practiced to supply herself with money was the sale of indulgences. The indulgence was a permission to sin and yet be free from its consequences. … Succeeding Popes and councils … argued that if they had a right to remit sins for service to the church, they had also the right to remit them for money for the church … and concluded that if they had a right to remit past sins for money, they had the same right to remit, or excuse, or grant indulgence for sins of the future. … It was the sale of these future indulgences for money which … gave rise to the Reformation movement, called Protestant, because of their protests and objections to this and other evils recognized in Papacy.

*

We do not believe that CO2 is a pollutant; that the earth is warming to any degree that should trouble us; that the planet is warmed by human activity; that a despotic world authority is needed to regulate human activity on the pretext of saving the planet from warming; that the wealth of the First World should be redistributed to the Third World; or that anybody’s wealth should be redistributed to Al Gore.

In the name of Climate Change, the new mysticism, Al Gore and his conspirators are selling indulgences. You pay them so you can carry on with living, manufacturing, traveling and so on, all the normal activities which they say is threatening Planet Earth. Ostensibly you are buying a certain amount of some Third Worlder’s CO2 ration, as determined by Al Gore and his conspirators, because you are exceeding your own ration, as determined by them. Some of what you pay will go to a Third Worlder, they say. Most of what you pay will go to Al Gore and his conspirators.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.

Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore‘s appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation’s philanthropic leaders.

“Time’s running out (on climate change),” Gore told them. “We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together.”

Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn’t that special? …

The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration’s cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate.

Thanks to Fox News’ Glenn Beck, we have learned a lot about CCX, not the least of which is that its founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama well back in the day when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where Sandor was a research professor.

Sandor estimates that climate trading could be “a $10 trillion dollar market.” It could very well be, if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law, making energy prices skyrocket, and as companies buy and sell permits to emit those six “greenhouse” gases.

So lucrative does this market appear, it attracted the attention of London-based Generation Investment Management, which purchased a stake in CCX and is now the fifth-largest shareholder.

As we noted last year, Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of dubious value that let rich polluters continue to pollute with a clear conscience.

Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of making a great deal of money for itself. That investor was Goldman Sachs, now under the gun for selling financial instruments it knew were doomed to fail.

The actual mechanism for trading on the exchange was purchased and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.

Raines profited handsomely to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the collapse of the American economy. …

The climate trading scheme being stitched together here will do more damage than Goldman Sachs, AIG and Fannie Mae combined. But it will bring power and money to its architects.