click here for story on telegraph.co.uk
Climategate exposed the greatest scandal in the history of modern science but you’re never going to hear this from any of the official investigations. Andrew Orlowski at The Register has uncovered why.
Turns out, that there’s this well-funded SPECTRE-like advocacy group called GLOBE (Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment) International which has co-opted leading parliamentarians from the main parties in both the Commons and the Lords into advancing the AGW agenda.
One of those is Lord Oxburgh, recently appointed – on the Royal Society’s recommendation – to lead one of the two official enquiries into Climategate. Mysteriously, Lord Oxburgh has failed to mention GLOBE in his register of interests.
Orlowski reports:
GLOBE may be too obscure to merit its own Wikipedia entry, but that belies its wealth and influence. It funds meetings for parliamentarians worldwide with an interest in climate change, and prior to the Copenhagen Summit GLOBE issued guidelines (pdf) for legislators. Little expense is spared: in one year alone, one peer – Lord Michael Jay of Ewelme – enjoyed seven club class flights and hotel accommodation, at GLOBE’s expense. There’s no greater love a Parliamentarian can give to the global warming cause. And in return, Globe lists Oxburgh as one of 23 key legislators.
One insider has described Oxburgh’s appointment to lead this supposedly neutral investigation into Climategate as “like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank.” Here are just a few more of this scrupulously unbiased fellow’s interests, revealed by Orlowski:
In the House of Lords Register of Lords’ Interests, Oxburghlists under remunerated directorships his chairmanship ofFalck Renewables, and chairmanship of Blue NG, a renewable power company. (Oxburgh holds no shares in Falck Renewables, and serves as a non-exec chairman.) He also declares that he is an advisor to Climate Change Capital, to the Low Carbon Initiative, Evo-Electric, Fujitsu, and an environmental advisor to Deutsche Bank. For a year he was non-exec chairman of Shell.
GLOBE seems especially drawn to the kind of MP who likes sailing close to the wind. Its president is none other than Stephen Byers, recently exposed in the “cash for influence” scandal as offering his services as a lobbyist like a “cab for hire” for a small consideration of just £5,000 a day. And its leading lights have also included Elliott Morley, one of the MPs more heavily implicated in the Telegraph’s parliamentary expenses scandal.
As Bishop Hill notes its UK parliamentary group officers also include the redoubtable and incorruptible Labour MP Eric Joyce – “the first MP to claim more than £1m in expenses and on more than one occasion the most expensive MP in the house. He once famously claimed for three oil paintings on expenses “because they looked nice”.”
But then, to judge from the research done by Cumbrian Lad at Bishop Hill, GLOBE is very much the kind of body that likes to do things on the sly. Its Memorandum of Incorporation includes this revealing snippet about its purposes:
“To provide a forum for ideas and proposals to be floated in confidence and without the attention of an international spotlight“
Bishop Hill reports:
GLOBE’s corporate structure and funding are not clear from its website, but Cumbrian Lad has discovered that it is a private limited company. Interesting that – an organisation of legislators, run as a private company. He has also obtained copies of its accounts and other information from Companies House.
GLOBE was incorporated in 2006, the founding directors all being British legislators – Malcolm Bruce MP (LibDem), Joan Ruddock MP (Lab) and Nick Hurd (Con), with the last directorship being held by Lord Hunt. Since that time, Joan Ruddock has stood down and Lord Oxburgh and Eliot Morley MP (Lab) have been appointed to the board.
The current accounts are all abbreviated, which means there is very little detail about the income and expenditure of the company, but for some reason 2007 was filed in full, revealing an income of £820k, almost double that of the previous year, and all of which was spent on administrative expenses.
And where does this money come from? Its 2008 accounts note:
The Directors acknowledge the support of International Organisations, Governments, Parliamentary Bodies and Industry, both financially and politically, with paticular acknowledgement to United Nations, The Global Environment Facility, The World Bank, European Commission, the Governments of Canada and Great Britain, the Senate of Brazil and Globe Japan.
Bishop Hill smells a rat:
My reading of all this would be that GLOBE is a vehicle to enable legislators to avoid the scrutiny of their electorates – the date of incorporation is probably instructive, coming just after the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act.
It’s no wonder Lord Oxburgh didn’t want to mention it on his CV.
Here is the link listing the names of all the MPs in its parliamentary group. The ones I find particularly interesting are the Tories on the list. They are:
Gregory Barker
Kenneth Clarke
Lord Fowler
Charles Hendry
Nick Hurd
Graham Stuart
Tim Yeo
If any of these represent your constituency, I urge you not to vote for them. A Conservative who indulges in this kind of slippery green activism is no conservative at all.
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