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Russia 'Secretly Working With Green NGOs To Oppose Fracking In Europe'

Nato Claims Moscow Funding Anti-Fracking Groups



Russian intelligence agencies are covertly funding and working with European environmental groups to campaign against fracking and maintain EU dependence on Russian gas, the head of Nato has claimed. “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” Mr Rasmussen, former Danish prime minister, told an audience at Chatham House, the international affairs think-tank. -- Sam Jones, Guy Chazan and Christian Oliver, Financial Times, 19 June 2014
A Nato official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Financial Times that the alliance believed Russia was engaged in “a campaign of disinformation on many issues, including energy”. “The potential for Russia using energy supplies as a means of putting pressure on European nations is a matter of concern. No country should use supply and pricing terms as tools of coercion,” they said. “We share a concern by some allies that Russia could try to obstruct possible projects on shale gas exploration in Europe in order to maintain Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.” -- Sam Jones, Guy Chazan and Christian Oliver, Financial Times, 19 June 2014 The European Union’s attempt to cap greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 16 years is threatened again as rising pollution from the bloc’s biggest economies show even developed nations want to burn cheap coal. While Germany pledged to cut heat-trapping gases 55 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels, it’s managed 25 percent so far and is moving in the wrong direction, according to the European Environment Agency. --Mathew Carr, Bloomberg, 20 June 2014

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The climate-change debate is a game that is being played for the highest of stakes. So it’s terribly important that we find the right answers to the scientific questions. Toward that end, it is all the more essential to ensure that scientists have free rein for legitimate research, with an absolute minimum of political interference. Nearly 500 years ago, powerful prelates leapt prematurely into another scientific debate, denouncing the work of Galileo, with consequences that burden the Catholic Church to this day. The problem at the time was not with Galileo’s scientific research, which the Church had sponsored, but with the determination to make scientific conclusions fit into a preconceived ideological framework. Let’s not repeat that mistake. --Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, 19 June 2014 The absence of warming over the past 15 to 20 years amidst rapidly rising greenhouse gas levels poses a fundamental challenge to mainstream climate modeling. We will reach the 20 year mark with no trend in the satellite data at the end of 2015, and in the surface data at the end of 2017. With CO2 levels continuing to rise, it will at that point be impossible to reconcile climate models with reality and the mainstream consensus on how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases will begin breaking apart. –Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, 16 June 2014 The IPCC produced two reports last year. One said that the cost of climate change is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world economy with renewable energy is likely to be 4% of GDP. Why do something that you know will do more harm than good? –Matt Ridley, Financial Post, 19 June 2014


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