On November 4, the Indian government cancelled Greenpeace India Society’s registration. According to the notice issued by the Tamil Nadu Registrar of Societies, Greenpeace India society’s registration was cancelled for “fraudulently” conducting their business by falsifying balance sheets, and other violations of the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act of 1975. --Shreya Dasgupta, Mongabay, 6 November 2015
India’s domestic spy service has accused Greenpeace and other lobby groups of hurting economic progress by campaigning against power projects, mining and genetically modified food, the most serious charge yet against foreign-funded organisations. “A significant number of Indian NGOs funded by donors based in US, UK, Germany and Netherlands have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment, which lends itself to stalling development projects,” the Intelligence Bureau said. These included coal-fired power projects, genetically modified organisms, mega industrial projects including South Korean firm POSCO’s steel plant and Vedanta’s bauxite project both in Odisha, hyro-power projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the strategic state on the border with China. --Reuters, 12 June 2014
A top Republican is threatening the head of the government’s climate research arm with criminal prosecution if the agency does not hand over materials related to a climate change study that shows there has been no “pause” in global warming. Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, sent a letter to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Wednesday asking for all correspondence between the agency and outside sources about the study’s release. “Your failure to comply with the committee’s subpoena has delayed the committee’s investigation and thwarted the committee’s constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Smith said in the Wednesday letter to NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan. “Furthermore, your failure to comply with a duly issued subpoena may expose you to civil and/or criminal enforcement mechanisms.” --John Siciliano, The Washington Examiner, 4 November 2015
Last month, the House Science Committee, chaired by Lamar Smith (R-Texas), subpoenaed NOAA for data and communications relating to Karl’s article. NOAA is refusing to give up the documents, citing confidentiality concerns and the integrity of the scientific process. Is the subpoena harassment or appropriate constitutional oversight? There are two legitimate concerns here. The first is data quality, an issue that needs to be resolved owing to the central role that this data set is playing in U.S. climate policy. The second issue is arguably more worrisome and difficult to uncover: a potential alliance between NOAA scientists and Obama administration officials that might be biasing and spinning climate science to support a political agenda. --Judith Curry, Fox News, 5 November 2015
When it comes to climate change, many Chinese just aren’t as fussed as they used to be. That is among the key findings of global polling by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center, which found less than one-fifth of Chinese surveyed viewed climate change as a very serious problem, down 23 percentage points from polling five years ago. At the same time, a growing segment in China also said climate change was not much of a problem at all. 19% of Chinese said global climate change was “not too serious” of a problem this year, versus just 6% in 2010 results. --The Wall Street Journal, 6 November 2015
The opening of an investigation of Exxon Mobil by the New York attorney general’s office into the company’s record on climate change may well spur legal inquiries into other oil companies, according to legal and climate experts, although successful prosecutions are far from assured. Many oil companies have funded lobbying efforts and research on climate change, so prosecutors would most likely be able to search through vast amounts of material. Energy experts said prosecutors may decide to investigate companies that chose to fund or join organizations that questioned climate science or policies designed to address the problem, such as the Global Climate Coalition and the American Legislative Exchange Council, to see if discrepancies exist between the companies’ public and private statements. --Clifford Krauss, The New York Times, 6 November 2015
