Or watch it directly on YouTube.

So says an article today in USA Today. Sad…to see writers of the future serving an organization that helps to insure it will be less free, more violent, and poorer.

Here’s the intro paragraph:

Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described “deviant” thinkers: science-fiction writers.

Read the rest.

If you’ve ever debated an environmentalist, it probably didn’t take him long to dismiss your sources on the grounds (with or without actual evidence) that they are (partially or wholly) funded by the fossil fuel industry. Perhaps he even linked to ExxonSecrets, SourceWatch, or Media Mouse. Often these leftist-environmentalist sites are misleading, neglecting to offer comparisons of such funding in relation to total funding from all sources, and often failing to provide adequate evidentiary documentation for their claims. Since leftist-environmentalists are so convinced that financial gain and the source of one’s funding determine the outcomes of one’s research and the ideas one holds, it seems only fair to compare budgets, examine the sources of their funding, and question whether and to what extent they stand to benefit from the CAGW hysteria they are promoting.

Donald Miller discusses how Gore benefits financially:

A basic rule of investigative journalism and criminal investigation is “Follow the Money,” or as Cicero put it, “Cui bono?” (“To whose benefit?,” literally, “[being] good to whom?”).

Al Gore profits handsomely from his climate crisis activities. Validation of the Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory poses a major threat to this source of income. He will not disclose his speaking fees, but he reportedly received $250,000 for a speech that he gave in Saudi Arabia recently, and his average speaking fee for his global warming lectures is said to be $50,000 to $100,000. Gore is also a founding partner and Chairman of Generation Investment Management (GIM), a firm that “manage[s] the assets of institutional investors… as well as those of select high net worth individuals.” [Emphasis added.] GIM invests in companies poised to cash in on CO2-caused global warming solutions, such as government subsidized solar and wind alternative-energy ventures and projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe.

The day after he won his Academy Award The Tennessean reported that Gore’s electrical and natural gas bills for his home in Nashville in 2006 were $27,360. This amount of energy, all of it generated from fossil fuels, is more than 20 times than that consumed by the average American household. A spokesperson for Gore pointed out that he buys “carbon offsets” to pay for his large “carbon footprint.” Gore invests these offset funds in GIM, the company he chairs [Note the shell game here -G]; and his apocalyptic climate forecasts (reinforced by those currently being made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scare citizens and government leaders around the world and persuade them to invest in alternative energy programs, raising the value of GIM’s privately held shares.

Can an individual who stands to make millions from the CO2 global warming paradigm be trusted to present an unbiased review of this subject and view with an open mind alternative theories of climate change?

And how other advocates benefit financially as well:

Global warming is now a $5 billion industry, which benefits the government and its politicians and bureaucrats, environmental activists, the media, executives and shareholders of “green” industries, and climate scientists. Businesses profit by gaming the regulatory and planned “cap and trade” process rather than have to make money by producing things people want. The (“good news is no news”) media shamelessly plays along and profits by frightening people. And we see how the movement’s most prominent activist, former Vice President Al Gore benefits.

Climate scientists are awarded $1.7 billion a year in government grants to study climate change, but under the condition that these scientists continue to support the “consensus” or lose their funding. Climate scientist Richard Lindzen, in “Climate of Fear,” writes : “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”

The global warming scare enables government to intervene and extend its control over people’s lives. The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, looking for ways to keep Social Security and Medicare afloat and balance the budget, are investigating proposals for a carbon tax, under the pretext of cutting down on Greenhouse emissions.

Apparently the Green in Greenpeace stands for money and…gasp!…greed!

The “green” in Greenpeace, it turns out, stands more for money than for the environment. When its anti-biotech scaremongering drove consumers in Brazil away from genetically improved foods, Greenpeace swooped in with its own line of organic foods to fill the demand that its activists created. Greenpeace’s more recent reckless activism is a broader attempt to create the same sort of consumer shift here in the United States.

And why not? Greenpeace itself (as is the case with a variety of anti-biotech activist groups) is heavily invested in the organic foods industry. The International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources noted in a November 2001 report that Lord Peter Melchett, the former leader of Greenpeace’s UK office “is one of the largest organic farmers in Europe.” So when Greenpeace campaigners send hundreds of threatening letters and e-mails, make phone calls by the thousands, and stage intimidating live protest “actions” against their corporate targets, their own bottom line (and that of their financial supporters) stands to benefit.

Even if you discount the impact of hidden financial motives, the more obvious ones are pretty convincing. Last year, Greenpeace USA raised over $8 million in cash, and its bean-counters know very well that the group isn’t completely immune from public backlash. In February 2001, Greenpeace issued a press release blasting genetically improved “golden rice,” the enhanced crop that could save hundreds of thousands of Third World children from blindness and death. In response, the biotech rice’s inventor went public with a scathing response, exposing the activists as “political extremists.” Within 24 hours, Greenpeace had backed down amid a slew of membership cancellations.

Environmentalists still accuse the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) of being funded by Exxon even though Exxon hasn’t given the organization any money since 2005.

Environmentalists complain about how much money Exxon gives to the “climate change denialist” movement but it is interesting to see how much money they themselves spend on climate change issues. Exxon paid out “$2 million in grants to organizations that oppose global warming alarmism last year.” I don’t have figures for the total amount of grants given by the fossil fuel industry as a whole, but I’m skeptical it exceeds the $100 to $150 million (presumably per year) spent by the environmentalists on climate change issues. Consider that many of the organizations that receive grant money from the fossil fuel industry are not single-issue organizations, meaning that they deal with multiple issue areas beyond climate change (or, more broadly, environmentalism), and the money they receive often goes into their general operating budgets and is not specifically earmarked for climate change projects. Moreover, to my knowledge, grant money from the fossil fuel industry and other corporations makes up only a small fraction of the revenues of these organizations.

Finally, The National Center for Public Policy has challenged “Greenpeace and its affiliates to disclose the sources and amounts of its 2006 donations exceeding $50,000. If it does so, The National Center for Public Policy Research will do the same.” To my knowledge, this challenge has gone unanswered. I doubt it will ever be met. What do they have to hide? I wonder if any of their funding comes from the fossil fuel industry? After all, many energy companies have either bowed to political pressure recently or sold out for rent-seeking reasons.

Hat tip to Marc Vander Maas of the Acton Institute’s PowerBlog, the latest victim of the watermelon smear campaign, for many of the links.

[Update #1 (9:35pm): I moderated a very vulgar comment by an anonymous user with some very ignorant misconceptions. For those who probably won’t bother to read my other posts and other writings, I’m a libertarian, not a right-winger, and so I’m against both the social welfare state and state-corporate capitalism.] [Update #2 (6/12 8pm): See here and here for two sources of funding for many leftist-environmental organizations. While not a direct connection, the money does ultimately originate from corporations, including, in the former case, from oil.]

You may have heard that there was a debate held relatively recently (March 14, 2007) between skeptics and alarmists on whether global warming is a crisis. The audience was polled before and after the debate. The alarmists when into the debate with an almost 2 to 1 edge, more of the audience thinking global warming was a crisis, but the skeptics clearly won the debate as more of the audience left the debate thinking global warming was not a crisis.

The debate was held by Intelligence Squared U.S. and hosted by Brian Lehrer.

Speaking for the motion (not a crisis): Michael Crichton, Richard S. Lindzen and Philip Stott.

Speaking against the motion (crisis): Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt (of RealClimate, Richard C.J. Somerville.

Here are the poll results:

Before Debate
Not a Crisis: 29.88%
Crisis: 57.32%
Undecided: 12.80%

After Debate
Not a Crisis: 46.22%
Crisis: 42.22%
Undecided: 11.56%

The transcript and audio recording are now online. And here is some commentary on ClimateAudit.

Many environmental activists are no doubt trumpeting the fact that more and more energy companies are jumping on the CO2 emissions reduction bandwagon. What they don’t know or just won’t tell you is that these companies are doing it for rent-seeking, not principled, reasons.

Not all energy CEOs are selling out though. At least one, Robert Murray, chairman and CEO of Murray Energy, a coal company, is taking a stand and chastising his fellow CEOs. He generally avoids discussing the science of climate change, preferring to address the calamitous environmental policies being advocated by the largely leftist environmentalist movement. He sensibly points out the negative consequences such policies will have for the American economy and workers, even if fears about global warming are accurate.

He says: “Even if the politicians believe 100% that man is causing global warming, they still have an obligation to discuss honestly just what damage they want to inflict on American jobs and workers and people on fixed incomes, in the here and now, with their programs.”

Click here to read more.

I’m sure watermelon environmentalists will be rapier-quick to dismiss the man as being self-interested and deceitful about his true motives, but I think such an ad hominem attack, in addition to being a logical fallacy, would just be a plain wrong interpretation of him. If environmentalists are concerned about human life and not just about nature and other animals, then they have a responsibility to seriously examine the economic ramifications of their proposed policies. Simply dismissing this man’s concerns because of his job is the height of irresponsibility. As it stands, there is a dearth of understanding of economic theory and history and the policies currently being proposed will have certain and severe negative consequences now and long into the future, consequences that will likely be worse than the negative effects of global warming, and will be ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. On top of that, some of the policies (as the article points out) will serve to enrich the very energy industry that the environmentalists hate, at the expense not only of everyone else but also of the environment.

Perhaps not all environmentalists put nature and other animals ahead of human life in importance, but far too many do. I’ve even encountered one on myspace who thought bacteria are more important than humans. And now apparently some of the watermelons want to tear down some dams, that produce electricity without producing methane or CO2, just to save the fishes. Nevermind the economic consequences for the human beings who depend on this energy. No, the watermelons insist we should focus on alternative fuels instead. Nevermind that none of these fuels are economically viable yet. Nevermind that ethanol will not be able to displace gasoline in the foreseeable future, if ever. Nevermind that destroying the dams will probably necessitate adopting sources of energy that are far more polluting, at least for the near future, at great expense no less.

Check out this WSJ.com article: “Dam the Salmon: In the Northwest, environmentalists want to have it both ways” by Shikha Dalmia (May 30, 2007).

And it’s not just dams environmentalists are against:

Indeed, environmental groups have a history of opposing just about every energy source.

Their opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two years ago the Center for Biological Diversity sued California’s Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating birds. (“Cuisinarts of the sky” is what many greens call wind farms.) Solar? Worldwatch Institute’s Christopher Flavin has been decidedly lukewarm about solar farms because they involve placing acres of mirrors in pristine desert habitat. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society once testified before Congress to keep California’s Mojave Desert–one of the prime solar sites in the country–off limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are unlikely to get enviro blessings, because some of the best sites are located on protected federal lands.

Greens, it seems, always manage to find a problem for every environmental solution–and there is deep reason for this.

I wonder when they’ll turn against CFLs because they contain dangerous mercury, or against ethanol because it requires too much environmentally harmful farmland for growing corn? Oh, wait, isn’t over half of the corn acreage planted in the US genetically modified?

[Update #1 (2pm): The anti-corn-based ethanol rumblings have apparently already begun. See the fourth and second-to-last paragraph of this article.] [Update #2 (6/04 12:45pm): Add fireplaces to the list of things environmentalists are against.]

Dalmia’s subsequent discussion on the difference between conservationists and preservationists is enlightening. The former seek to preserve the environment, or at least parts of it, to serve human needs and wants. This is compatible with individualism and the protection of individual rights. The latter view nature as having intrinsic value to which human needs and wants must be subordinated. Preservationism, of which Deep Ecology is an example, is fundamentally anti-human life. Dalmia also discusses how such radical environmentalism is harmful to developing countries and then elaborates on its obstructionist nature.

Besides hurting the Third World, such radicalism had made the environmental movement incapable of responding to its own self-proclaimed challenges. Since nature can’t speak for itself, the admonition to protect nature for nature’s sake offers not a guide to action, but an invitation to inaction. That’s because a non-anthropocentric view that treats nature as non-hierarchical collapses into incoherence when it becomes necessary to calculate trade-offs or set priorities between competing environmental goals.

Thus, even in the face of a supposedly calamitous threat like global warming, environmentalists can’t bring themselves to embrace any sacrifice–of salmons or birds or desert or protected wilderness. Its strategy comes down to pure obstructionism–on full display in the Klamath dam controversy.

Yet, if environmentalists themselves are unwilling to give up anything for global warming, how can they expect sacrifices from others? If Al Gore wants to do something, he should first move out of his 6,000 square-foot Nashville mansion and then make a movie titled: “Damn the salmon.”

On the salmon issue and more, see also this Cafe Hayek blogpost: “Fishy Reasons; Or Dam Collective Action” by Don Boudreaux.

Meanwhile, environmentally conscious politicians decry high gas prices as “gouging” and “unfair profits” while simultaneously imploring us to curb our fossil fuel use. (See this Washington Post op-ed by Robert Samuelson, “A Full Tank of Hypocrisy.”) Nevermind that these two positions are contradictory. If they want us to curb our fossil fuel use, they should be praising high gas prices and encouraging the fossil fuel industry to raise those prices. Not that I think politicians should use statist means to force such higher prices, but the hypocrisy is amusing.

Click here. Absolute must-see for both sci-fi and gun buffs.