Links tagged “kerry”

President Biden’s decision to order the intelligence community to report on the origins of the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic means that the lab-escape scenario can no longer be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. The longer that investigations failed to find evidence of the politically favored zoonotic-transmission route, the stronger became the lab-escape scenario as the more plausible explanation. For it is reasonable to assume that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done everything in its power to help World Health Organization (WHO) investigators uncover evidence to support zoonotic origins of the virus and to have suppressed all available evidence pointing to the possibility of lab escape. ...

In this regard, Beijing has been assisted by spinners of a spurious green narrative that blames modern society’s encroachment on the natural world for the pandemic. First and foremost, there is the WHO and its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in what increasingly looks like an attempt at a false-flag operation on behalf of the CCP. “The pandemic is a reminder of the intimate and delicate relationship between people and planet,” Tedros declared a year ago. “Any efforts to make our world safer are doomed to fail unless they address the critical interface between people and pathogens.”

Marc Morano, the publisher of the climate change and eco-news center Climate Depot, said Mr. Biden was acting as the chief lobbyist for the electric car industry. 

“Biden visiting in a gas-guzzling limo is par for the course for climate activists,” Mr. Morano said. “Did the president have to wait in long gas lines to fill up his limo? Did the president have to drive from gas station to gas station to find gas for his ride? Biden is doing his best John Kerry imitation.” Mr. Kerry, the White House climate change envoy, was criticized early this year for flying in private jets to events where he admonished that “too many airplanes” were adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Bloomberg News: China now accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s developed nations combined, according to new research from Rhodium Group. China’s emissions of six heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose to 14.09 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2019, edging out the total of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members by about 30 million tons, according to the New York-based climate research group. The massive scale of China’s emissions highlights the importance of President Xi Jinping’s drive to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach net-zero by 2060. China accounted for 27 per cent of global emissions. The U.S., the second biggest emitter, contributed 11 per cent while India for the first time surpassed the European Union with about 6.6 per cent of the global total.

Round-up of recent news in the wacky world of climate change activism

John Kerry: "We have to establish a baseline of truth or we can’t build consensus in a democracy." ... "Paid-for denial" are "costing us enormously", he added.

Kerry said achieving climate goals fast enough amounted to "a moonshot on steroids" - and called on scientists to help communicate to the public the urgent need for swift action. "Scientists want to avoid the fray - but we are in a war against denial," he said. "I think we have to fight back, and I think scientists have to be at the front of that fight."

He believes the world is "right now crossing the long-awaiting tipping point" toward greater action on climate change, as social movements, innovation and falling costs help drive more net-zero emissions promises and accelerate green measures. "We have the solutions we need, and we are gaining the political will to implement them," he said.

Pielke Jr.: "There is an interesting investigative journalism project to be done on the revolving door between climate science & policy and private sector climate services. Just as one example, John Kerry's predecessor as 'climate envoy' co-founded a consulting firm that feeds off of RCP8.5. Absolutely fascinating how climate scenarios (RCPs, SSPs & their derivatives) are enabling entirely new markets for consulting based on financial risk assessments of fictional futures. 

It is also amazing how much money is being paid to explore these outdated, fictional futures...

Here is a cozy eco-system: 

Former gov't officials
Scientists w/ specialized knowledge
Venture capital
Energy companies
Current federal policymaking

Has always been so. But it is interesting how these dynamics promote implausible scenarios & keep bad science going."

Axios: Kerry was the advisory board chairman for Climate Finance Partners, which "creates innovative and globally needed finance solutions that address climate change."

He was also the president of the Vietnam Sustainable Energy Corporation.

He drew a $5 million salary from Bank of America. He was tapped as chairman of the bank's global advisory council months after his tenure as Barack Obama's second secretary of State

He landed $382,400 in speaking fees from entities including Deutsche Bank, Waste Management and Cornell University.

Kerry also reported compensation "in excess of $5,000" for more than a dozen other speeches in 2019, including ones to Barclays, Zurich Insurance and the foundation run by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.