Climategate: peak oil, the CRU and the Oman connection

By James Delingpole

This is a guest post by contributor Andrew30 (whose full name I’ll give you when he reminds me via email). He put it up in comments but it’s so interesting it really deserves a blog all to itself).

Why would a Middle Eastern kingdom be funding a British Climate research business?

Oman has just completed a massive investment in LNG, and developed and installed new CO2 removal technology in their process; this lowers the carbon footprint of their gas. So using their gas to drive electricity generation will be less costly once CO2 is taxed.

They have no problem with this whole thing.

Saudi Arabia, who have oil and not so much gas, are in a different position, they have a problem with this whole thing.

Just an observation; a 4 degree rise in temperature in the Sultanate of Oman or Saudi
Arabia would change it from really hot to really hot.

Maybe it is just good business.

http://www.omanlng.com/

Oman LNG L.L.C
Formed: Set up by Royal Decree in February 1994.
Location: Head office: Muscat; Plant: Qalhat near Sur (approx 340 km from Muscat)
Products: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
Shareholders: Government of Oman 51 %, Royal Dutch/Shell Group 30%, Total Elf Fina 5.54%, KOLNG 5%, Partex 2% Mitsubishi 2.77%, Mitsui 2.77%, ltochu 0.92%.

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK was set up in 1971 with funding from Shell and BP as is described in the book: “The history of the University of East Anglia, Norwich; Page 285)” By Michael Sanderson. The CRU was still being funded in 2008 by Shell, BP, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex LTD (the nuclear waste people in the UK)

This is important to know, for two reasons.

Firstly, the key institution providing support for Global Warming theories and the basis for the IPCC findings receives funding from “Big Oil” and the nuclear power industry.

Secondly, the research from the institution which is perceived to be independent publicly funded research, is actually beholden to soft money, CRU is in fact a business.

The funders of the CRU are on the bottom of this page from their website:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080627194858/http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

So, there a business set up in the early 1970’s, so what?

I thought that this might explain a bit about how we got to where we are. I am not a conspiracy theorist but to me it looks like this may have been a very, very long term plan. Of course it could all just be coincidental, but it does seem to fit the observable information.

A few weeks ago I explained the apparent CRU fraud to a friend of mine, a believer in AGW; he said ‘Why would they do it?’ I indicated the Jones had received 22 million, etc, but he countered, ‘For a fraud this large, going on for this long, there would have to be billions of dollars to be made, not millions’. That made sense.

So I looked into it a bit. First this is no short term thing, it covers two or three decades, involves many countries and government on both sides of the isle, the US alone has had 4 different presidents and the UK a similar number of prime ministers, Canada the same. So is it not political in the partisan sense of the word.

If, and this is a big if, you make the assumption that the objectives were:

1. Provide a smooth replacement of the use of oil in power generation and transportation, so as to avoid a panic over Peak Oil.
2. Get people to buy into Nuclear Power so that base load electrical power generation would not consume the available fossil fuel supply.
3. Get the people to really want to pay for it all.

Note: The IEA put a date on peak oil production THIS WEEK, so if the CO2 scare does not pan out they are already starting to put the ‘Peak Oil’ story into play. It is also the 2020 date, why am I not surprised.

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15065719

Then the following is not unbelievable.

The newer scrubber technology for coal fired plants was moving along well back then, and in fact today their scrubbers can remove pretty much everything except CO2. However there is really not much money in coal, it is abundant, easy to handle, local in most instance to the base load demand for electricity, and a coal fired power plant is not much more complicated, or expensive, then a good steam engine.

Since there was not enough money in coal it would not be financially rewarding to simply try to promote coal as a replacement for oil.

So they looked at the situation and realized that the difference between the different technologies to replace base load power generation was the amount of CO2 per kilowatt/hour.

At that point CO2 became the target. That happened sometime between 1985 and 1988.

Now, the environmental movement is comprised mostly of followers, you can look up ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ (water), on many occasions at environmental conferences comedians and light news organizations have managed to get lots of environmentalists to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. So apparently they do not do a lot of independent analysis before making a conclusion, they are mostly followers.

So if you need a large number of followers, there is a ready supply, but you need people, a few leaders, to tell the followers what to think. The followers do not need to, or perhaps even want to, know the reason or the facts; they just need something or someone to follow.

Now you gain control of a climate research business, and begin the task of demonizing CO2, you realize that it will take years but that is OK, there are billions of dollars waiting at the end. Slowly over time you manage to get control of the worlds climate data and begin adjusting it, you use what you have been told by the marketing people to present the information needed in as clear and scary manager as is possible. Remember the two biggest motivators are fear and greed, and in this case, because of the number of followers greed will not work. There are simply too many followers to pay them all off.

More at the Telegraph

Saudis rain on summit's parade

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent

SAUDI Arabia has seized on a series of stolen British university emails to become the first country to cast doubt on the consensus about man-made climate change ahead of next week's Copenhagen summit.

The world's largest oil exporter claims the emails stolen from researchers at the University of East Anglia undermine the scientific case that human activity is overheating the planet.

Britain's Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change, Ed Miliband, yesterday said it was "absolute and utter nonsense" to suggest the controversial emails weakened the evidence about climate change.

The emails were illegally hacked from a computer system at the University of East Anglia and then stored on a Russian web server. On November 19, a computer in Saudi Arabia was used to post a link to the stolen emails on a website popular with climate change sceptics and deniers.

The emails, private exchanges of messages and data from climate researchers at the university, were pounced on by sceptics who said they revealed an unprofessional and combative approach towards critics of the mainstream view of climate change.

The emails do not prove that any evidence on climate change was falsified, but they show at least a reluctance to share information with climate sceptics and have led to an independent inquiry during which the head of the university's Climate Research Centre, Phil Jones, has stood aside.

Professor Jones says the emails were "taken completely out of context" and that the university's findings on global warming are backed by at least two research centres in the US.

"One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks," he said.

Saudi Arabia has long been reluctant to agree to any action to reduce carbon emissions and has only recently gone along with the 192 other governments attending the Copenhagen talks in accepting scientific evidence of man-made climate change.

But its chief Copenhagen negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, suggested in an interview with the BBC yesterday that there was now no longer any point in seeking an agreement to reduce emissions.

"It appears from the details . . . that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he said.

"Climate is changing . . . but for natural and not human-induced reasons. So whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on the climate's natural variability."

His government might be prepared to take "no cost" measures to control emissions but more drastic and painful action would be out of the question until there was "new evidence" about what was causing climate change, he said.

Mr Miliband poured scorn on such doubts when he spoke to a press briefing attended by The Weekend Australian in London shortly before the broadcast of Mr al-Sabban's comments.

"There will be people who want to jump on these emails and somehow say these disprove climate change is happening," Mr Miliband said.

"That is absolute and utter nonsense, frankly. I think it is very easy to take emails out of context.

"There is an inquiry going on in East Anglia into the precise nature of these emails and what they said but I think it is really important that we are responsible in this."

The Australian

Climategate - Saudis says Copenhagen deal now threatened

Climategate, a non-story to ABC warmists, could now derail the Copenhagen summit, claims one of the negotiators:

Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator… Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC News that the issue will have a “huge impact” on next week’s UN climate summit, with countries unwilling to cut emissions…

Mr Al-Sabban made clear that he expects it to derail the single biggest objective of the summit - to agree limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.

”It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” he told BBC News.

“Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not human-induced reasons. So, whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on the climate’s natural variability.”

Some other countries shared this view, he said; and as a result, governments would not be prepared to countenance agreeing anything that would affect economic growth for many years, until “new evidence” settled the scientific picture…

Mr Al-Sabban said the UN summit should encourage a “full investigation” of the CRU e-mails affair.

Andrew Bolt

Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban dismissed the IEA figures as “biased” and said OPEC's own calculations showed that Saudi Arabia would lose $19 billion a year starting in 2012 under a new climate pact. The region would lose much more, he said.

“We are among the economically vulnerable countries,” Al Sabban told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks ahead of negotiations in Copenhagen in December for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“This is very serious for us,” he continued. “We are in the process of diversifying our economy but this will take a long time. We don't have too many resources.”

Saudi Arabia, which sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, is seeing economic growth slide because of fallout from the global meltdown, but experts still expect the country, flush with cash from oil's earlier price spike last year, to be better able than other nations to cope with the current crisis.

Al Sabban accused Western nations of pursuing an agenda against oil producers, under the guise of protecting the planet.

“Many politicians in the Western world think these climate change negotiations and the new agreement will provide them with a golden opportunity to reduce their dependence on imported oil,” Al Sabban said. “That means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially to those highly dependent on the exploitation of oil.”

Al Sabban said his country wanted a new deal and was not impeding progress in talks as some activists have claimed.

An Arab environmental group IndyACT and the environmental group Germanwatch released a report today accusing Saudi Arabia of blocking key elements of the negotiations. Among their tactics, the groups said, was slowing negotiations by insisting that the economic woes of oil producers be included in the text.

“Despite the variability in the region, the current Arab position is mainly focused around protecting the oil trade rather than saving the planet form the adverse impacts of climate change,” said Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyACT.

Most countries have agreed that any new pact should include provisions to avoid temperature increases of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels — the threshold at which most scientists say serious climate change will ensue.

That would require emissions cuts from industrial countries of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, far above the 15 to 23 percent cuts rich countries have offered so far. It would also require developing countries to scale back their emissions.

Both rich and poor countries are counting on a transition to a low carbon economy as a key component of meeting their reductions, a move that would require them to away from fossil fuels and toward renewables like solar, wind and hydro power.

Source: Houston Chronicle

Action on Climate to Harm Gulf Economies: Saudi Official

March 20

VIENNA (Reuters) - Strict measures across the world to act against climate change could seriously affect the economies of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, a Saudi official said on Thursday.

"Countries talking about reducing dependence on oil could impact our economy," Mohammad al-Sabban of the Saudi ministry of petroleum told an OPEC energy conference.

OPEC has committed to reducing harmful emissions and Saudi Arabia has invested in carbon capture and storage technology which is designed to do so.

But the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries stresses that others should also take their share in managing the use of fossil fuels.

"We are ready to bear our fair share of cost of addressing climate change but no more," said Sabban, head of the Saudi Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and also a senior economic adviser at the Saudi oil ministry.

He cited an independent study by consultants Charles Rivers, which stated that policies to mitigate climate change could remove 5-20 percent of Saudi and other Gulf countries' GDP.

He also referred to International Energy Agency Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka who spoke at the same conference.

"If you take the IEA scenario presented by Tanaka yesterday that is a stringent policy scenario that will definitely head us toward 20 percent of economic welfare loss and this is very serious for oil producing countries and in particular Gulf producing countries," he said.

"Efforts to cut CO2 and at the same time reduce energy dependency on imported oil "is a very serious behavior that could impact our economy," he said.

"We stand to lose out to such policies that are biased against oil producers."

Sabban reiterated comments made by Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in Geneva on Monday that the kingdom was also investing in solar power and aimed to become a leading supplier in addition to its role as the world's biggest oil exporter.

Source: Asharq Alawsat