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Tea with the Black Dragon (edition 2001)
by R. A. MacAvoy
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Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy
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No current Talk conversations about this book.
Entertaining and imaginative but superficial and direct. MacAvoy has an excellent writing style but the diminutive plot of this novel makes me wonder if this was one of her earlier novels. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed this book - it just never seemed to fulfill its potential. A beach read of the fantasy world.
very different than I anticipated.
Martha Macnamara has come to San Francisco at the request of her daughter, only to be unable to find her daughter when she arrives. What she did find was Mayland Long, an enigmatic and intriguing man who seems fascinated by Martha. He insists on helping her find her daughter, but soon finds himself working alone at double stakes when Martha goes missing.
This was a quick and fun read, I enjoyed it, although it was clearly a debut novel. The character of Mayland Long was a terrific one, and one I would like to read more about. Martha had promise, but was missing for most of the novel. The villains and daughter felt like set decorations. I would hope that the author has found a set of proof-readers for her subsequent novels, because this one was full of grammatical errors, not to mention typos. My favorite was, "It was warm in the house and as he ran his hand through his head, releasing a spatter of drops,..." The character had come in from the rain, but the zombie implications of this sentence were intriguing.
A lovely little book about a retired chinese dragon and an Irish fiddle player facing intrigue and skulduggery in San Francisco. Well crafted prose, interesting characters, and an elusive quality of comfort and strangeness mixed.
A quiet fantasy. Set in the 1980s (remember this when they start discussing computers), it's a change of pace from many fantasy novels, with middle-aged protagonists and no overt magic. (Kudos to the author for daring to have a female protagonist with "grizzled hair"!) I recognize that the book is well-written, although it failed to grab me—the wrong book at the wrong time, basically. In having almost no magic in it, it felt less like a fantasy and more like a mystery, and I just haven't been in the mood for mysteries lately.
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0553232053, Paperback).
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:22:02 -0400)
Cryptic phone calls and a mysterious disappearance draw Martha to San Francisco in search of her estranged daughter. With the help of a philosophical stranger, Martha embarks on a dangerous adventure.
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Gossip Girl: Season 5, Episode 21
Despicable B (23 Apr. 2012)
Ratings: 7.4/10 from 177 users
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Blair feels like her Upper East Side status might be slipping away and devises a plan to assure that doesn't happen. Meanwhile, Lily throws a family gathering - including William, Carol and... See full summary »
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Relax in the warmth of southern tradition in Windsor and make our home your home away from home. Nature surrounds you with fields of corn, tobacco and cotton. Magnolias and crepe myrtles bloom beautifully in their season. Sounds and scents will relax your evenings. Listen to the birds and the rustle of the leaves. The hum of the cicada merges with the creaking of the porch rocker to create a true southern experience.
Indulge yourself with a visit to this charming small town established in 1768. Our home is located only a short distance away from many regional activities.Destinations of a historical nature are abundant in Bertie and surrounding counties. Let us know your interests so we can fill your stay with interesting activities.
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Robert Henry hates war. He believes the United States is "going the wrong way" in the current Iraq War, and that religion should never be the center of a conflict.
But with two hats hanging off a coat rack, reading "Vietnam War Veteran" and "U.S. Navy,"this hatred for war may be downright puzzling to some.
Why hate war if he spent eight years in the military?
"I hate violence, I hate war," he answered simply while sitting in his Canastota apartment that looks out to a lovely view of the Erie Canal.
Trying to forget
Henry's "short stint" in Vietnam and role in the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was enough for his career in the military. Henry doesn't even like to talk much about his experiences while in the military, because of how people may judge him.
"Some younger people who believe in what they see in the movies think, 'Oh, tough guy. I'm gonna go beat him up,'" he said. "It's nothing like the movies."
He remembers being "this close" to nuclear war against Russia while waiting for attack during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. "Bay of Pigs was scary I kid you not," Henry said.
He remembers crossing the equatorial line, and going through the initiation to become a Golden Shellback. He trekked from one side of the ship to the other, all 472 ft., on his bloodied hands and knees through two weeks of garbage, and Golden Shellbacks screaming "You dirty, rotten pollywag!" with whips in their hands.
But above all, he'd probably most like to forget what he remembers seeing in Vietnam. "Some of the things I saw, a woman and her baby, dead along some path, who were just trying to live the simple life but they were dead. Terrible, terrible, terrible," shaking his head as if trying to remove the memory from his mind.
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Is Arjun Kapoor giving the nod to a movie adaptation of Chetan Bhagat's "Revolution 2020"? The young actor prefers to stay mum as long as the makers make an official announcement.
There's buzz that after delivering a hit with "2 States", an adaptation of Bhagat's bestseller "2 States: The Story Of My Marriage", Arjun has been approached for the onscreen version of "Revolution 2020", to be helmed by Rajkumar Gupta.
Asked about the prospects of signing on the dotted line for the project, Arjun told IANS: "I have to meet Rajkumar Gupta and Siddharth Roy Kapur, so I look forward to meeting them soon. When there is something official to speak about, they are the ones who should talk about it. Producers should announce it, not actors."
But are you keen?
"Again that's something individual and personal," said the tall and handsome actor, who has vowed the audience with his work in films like "Ishaqzaade", "Gunday" and "2 States".
The book "Revolution 2020" is a love triangle set against a backdrop of corruption.
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Personally, I seriously don't want him in Revolution. The character of Gopal should be given to someone more mature looking than him.
I just hope baba accepts Revolutiob 20-20. He was jst the best in 2states n i know if he does Revolution 20-20 the movie will b another hit for sure.
Actors Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer Singh as well as filmmaker Karan ...
Preity gets 'emotional' on 'Nach Baliye 7' set!


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NEWSQueen's Birthday Honours List30 June 2015
NEWSAbe Fekadu Medical Research Council Award30 June 2015
NEWSMartin Prince meets Queen Sofia at III International Symposium29 June 2015
NEWSMark Jordans Leads Nepal Earthquake Desk Review with Help of GMH Students26 June 2015
CGMH 5-year report
Click here to see what we have achieved over the last 5 years
The recording of our latest seminar, '#Poverty and #Mentalhealth - Breaking the Cycle?' is now available. http://t.co/Sdwo1ii0I71 week 14 hours ago
UPCOMING EVENT: The fourth Movement for Global #MentalHealth Summit, TISS Campus in Mumbai India, 28-29th November. http://t.co/PXXhQ6Xzk11 week 14 hours ago
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John Doeg Autograph
I recently found a box full of over a thousand autographs that was collected by my father-in-law when he was in High School and College. Most of them were boxing and baseball autographs, but there are a few tennis players also, including a nice photograph that is signed by John Doeg. I was just wondering if anyone would be interested in purchasing it.
If you are, please contact me. I will then show you the item and you can let me know how much you would be willing to pay for it.
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Everything you believe a lie
reply to post by bwinwright
Another member of the "everything is a lie" club here on ATS.
You're just choosing to believe somebody else's version of history, you know that right?
Take the GOT incident for example. Called by many a "false flag". What do you know about it? Did you know the US had boots on the ground in Indochina for years before that? Did you know that there were actual events involving North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf at that time? Or do you just toe the conspiracy line like millions of other "awake" ones who couldn't tell their arses from their elbows out there in internet land?
Is everything you believe a lie?
FDR and Hirohito secretly planned Pearl Harbor to get the U.S.A. into World War II?
The Gulf of Tonkin attack which got the U.S.A into the Viet Nam war never happened...


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- Filed Under
EDITOR: A portion of the blame for our current lack of jobs and opportunities can be laid at the feet of both political parties in Congress, but I believe the largest share can be attributed to our current president and his actions and inactions on major issues. The current tax regulations are a major incentive to outsource to plants overseas. The current and pending environmental regulations do the same.
In an effort to win votes, we've seen laws and regulations passed to favor special interests. Political ads, which are half-truths at best and are taken out of context, change the entire meaning of what was presented.
For those who want lower taxes, fewer welfare costs, fewer abortions, fewer troubled teenagers and more responsible adults, it has been proven that you should back family planning. This has resulted, where used, in fewer unwanted and uncared for children. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the far-right portion of the Republican Party is against family planning.
However, if we are going to save our country from becoming a second Greece or Spain, our best bet is to vote Republican at this crucial time. Only Mitt Romney has the experience to get this country going in the right direction.
Norman F. Deffner,
town of Maine


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What we've been up to lately
We've just rolled out the updated version of BO2 Multihack
We've launched this new awesome project. We are proud to present our Black Ops 2 Multihack Mod v1.9
So many options to play with, downloaded and installed your setup, some of the mods work flawlessly. I must try them all, thank you admin.


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- Publishers seek injunction in e-reserve case
- Quick Takes: Replies on Earmarks, $100M for Yeshiva, Universities Praise Picks for Panel, Strike Suspended at Eastern Michigan, Elite Colleges Urged to Diversify High Schools, Grants for Black Colleges, Stanford Bans Drug Company Gifts, Hack at MIT
- Court rejects many of publishers' arguments on e-reserves
- Gender Bias Alleged -- Again -- at Florida Gulf Coast
- Decision Time in Britain
Questions About BP Gift to Cambridge
The University of Cambridge could suffer "reputational damage" over its relationship with BP following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an academic has warned.
Gillian Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at Cambridge, also raised concerns the energy giant could already be "engrafted into the academic fabric of the institution."
Professor Evans was responding to the announcement – made in a notice from the university's General Board – that the BP Foundation had given Cambridge a donation of more than £4 million (or nearly $6 million). The university proposes to use the gift to set up a professorship in earth sciences named after geophysicist Dan McKenzie.
Speaking during a university "discussion" which allows academics to comment on proposals from the board, Professor Evans said there was a danger of the post "blurring altogether the boundary between commerce and academe."
She referred to plans allowing BP to nominate one of the fund managers and to suggest a name for the professorship's board of electors. Professor Evans said lines may already be blurred by the existence of the BP Institute, a Cambridge research center set up in 2000 with an endowment from the oil corporation.
Pointing to the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, she said: "There may be reputational damage in store for the university. That would be bad enough in any case, even if the connection was merely financial, but it is surely much worse if BP is engrafted into the academic fabric of the institution."
She added: "This BP proposal is for a much larger part of the camel of commerce to enter the tent than I believe is safe for the protection of academic freedom, the protection of reputation and the protection of the university's charitable status."
James Jackson, head of the Cambridge earth sciences department, says in a statement that research independence for the proposed post was "guaranteed" and BP's involvement would be "wholly beneficial".
He said: "There is no desire, intention [on either side] or practical possibility that BP should control or interfere with the new professor's activities."
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The Global FlyFisher - The Largest and Best Place to go for Online Fly Fishing and Fly Tying
Book, video and gear reviews
Judith Dunham
The Art of the Trout Fly
Reviewed by Martin Joergensen
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 21:16:34 +0100 (MET)
I recently suggested that we should review books for each other. Here is my own first offer (not chosen for any particuler reason):
- Judith Dunham, The Art of the Trout Fly
- Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1988
- Price US$ 29.95 (On the cover. I paid the double in Denmark)
The flies are beautiful
The photos are beautiful
The Typography is beautiful
The print is beautiful
...even the girls are beautiful (sorry, couldn't resist it)
Seriously. This is a book that I like just to touch. The print renders the photos in an excellent quality, and leaves the reader with a feeling that the flies are as textured, translucent and subtle as they actually are. The pictures were all taken with great skill by Egmont van Dyck, and those of us who know how much care it takes to give justice to a piece of fur and feathers will know how much effort was put into pictures like these.
As seen more and more often, the flies are taken on very textured, 'natural' backgrounds and not isolated in a vice. But opposite many pictures taken in this way, these let the flies present themselves in a way that makes it possible to see a lot of details. Yet the pictures are well composed and the light setting done in a manner that doesn't blur or hide, but emphasize things.
And the flies are ofcourse the upper class flies that you expect from a book with a title like this one. Each picture shows one or several flies made by tiers that give their own text on the opposite page. The text is mostly ralated to the flies in a fairly distant manner, just explaining why these particular patterns were chosen, catching a mood, etelling an anecdote. Few of the tiers give direct tying instructions.
The patterns are described through a material list, and any fairly experienced tyer will be able to tie most of them using this list and the pictures. Only few use special techniques, that have to be seen demonstrated.
The flies come from all over the world. There are of course many flies from the US, but some Swiss, Dutch, Japanese and even Danish flies have sneaked in. They represent a broad variety of mostly traditional trout flies. There are sections with wets, dries and terrestrials, and even though only few of them are completely new -- even to me, who doesn't fish trout in streams very often -- they offer very good inspiration, and reading the comments of the tiers is very stimulating.
These aren't nescessarily the best flies tied by the best tiers, but the presentation makes it a joy to leaf thorugh the book.
Reading a book as this gives me new ideas and makes me want to go to the vice imediately. It's an art book, OK, but a very usefull one.
GFF staff commentFrom: Martin Joergensen · martin·at·globalflyfisher.com Link
Submitted October 20th 2014
From: Egmont van Dyck · TheiPhoneArts·at·Gmail.com Link
Submitted October 20th 2014
|More great articles on The Global FlyFisher
|These other stories on "Dry Flies - Flies fished in the surface" might also interest you:
More about Dry Flies
|A couple of random articles
Lake ChampMany years ago, when Colombian Carlos Heinsohn began to tie flies, he didn't have more than a few basic materials and not more than three models of hooks. He wanted a huge dragonfly nymph, so he made one almost entirely with black and brown marabou on a #6 hook with a few wraps of copper wire.
June 24th 2009


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train or car rental
My husband and I will be in Italy for a month. We want to travel to all around. What is the best way, and most cost effective way, to get from one place to another? Any tips on how to trade around? Thank you!
My husband and I will be in Italy for a month. We want to travel to all around. What is the best way, and most cost effective way, to get from one place to another? Any tips on how to trade around? Thank you!
Liz, The answer depends on WHERE you're going in Italy. If you'll mainly be in cities, trains (especially high speed) are the most efficient and make the most sense. No worries about parking, traffic or ZTL fines, high fuel costs, tolls, CDW costs, vandalism or other issues. Trains are also faster and more efficient as the fast trains run at up to 300 kmH. If you're going to be roaming around hill towns with "limited" public transport, then a rental car is usually the best method. Using a combination of both types should cover everything. Note that for driving in Italy, EACH driver must have the compulsory International Driver's Permit, which is used in conjunction with your home D.L. Failure to produce an I.D.P. if requested may result in fines on the spot! You'll also have to be VERY CAREFUL to avoid the dreaded Zona Traffico Limitato areas, or hefty fines will result. Happy travels!
Trains (or buses) as much a u can. At least for intercity travel and to bigger towns. Limit rental car to countryside and small villages (for example Tuscany's countryside). Rental cars are costly because of mandatory insurance (rental rates are about $400 to $500 per week for a small economy car), so use them judiciously.
Thank you for your replies. We plan on doing a lot of Italy. Rome, along Almalfi Coast, then north toward Tuscany, Venice, Florence areas. We will train as much as possible. Renting there, let alone driving there, worries me a bit. Thank for the info about the international drivers license too, never heard of that!
It's actually an International Drivers Permit, not a license. You get it from AAA. What it does is it translates your Washington drivers license into various languages. Although you may not get asked to produce it when you rent a car, you will be sorry to not have it if something happens. Every driver must have one. It's only $15 and you provide a passport sized photo. If you don't have a photo they will take one there for you. I think they charge $10 for that. Before driving in Italy be sure to look up the road signs to see what they mean. Particularly commit to memory what a ZTL sign looks like and avoid driving in one. You can do a search on this helpline and see what happens when you do. It's not pretty... That's why they are referred to as the Dreaded ZTL's.
I can't comment on the Amalfi coast but driving through the wine regions of Tuscany was relatively easy (be sure to have a GPS with the most current maps)and not really scary at all (just remember to pull over to allow any driver in a hurry to pass). We kept our driving to daylight hours though some say that the nighttime is easier because you can see headlights before you see the cars. Having a car allows you to see what the Italians call the panorama of the area that you won't see from a train. And its well worth seeing in my opinion. The beauty is breathtaking. And you can stop and take in a beautiful vista when you come across it (lots of pull-off areas available) though if you stop at every beautiful vista you won't get anywhere.
I think it depends on what excites you. We enjoyed touring a few of the historic Tuscan towns (Siena, Lucca, Volterra) but enjoyed as much the beauty of, for example, the Chianti Road. Driving through and stopping in the areas of the small villages where people really live and hang out was pretty great. Having a car allowed us to get away from the touristic stuff a little. Roberto, we rented a car for nine days through Auto Europe (Europcar) for $327 including all necessary insurance. Yes the gas was expensive but the Punto got great gas mileage. And for us the driving was part of the entertainment and not just a way of getting from Point A to B.
I also wanted to add that we did a fair amount of highway driving (autostrada/superstrada - never did figure out what was what) which was very easy and not at all scary. We drove from Lucca to the Cinque Terre and back and then from the outskirts of Florence to Varenna and than back to the Milan airport. It was no more nerve wracking than driving in any unfamiliar place. The scariest thing was the first time we pulled into a tollbooth because we weren't sure if we would understand what we owed etc. It was clearly marked and, as it turns out, most of them were "manned." Just be sure to have lots of coins and small banknotes.
Wow, again, all your replies are so helpful! I am loving this and I haven't even left for Italy! Okay, to add to that...any thoughts on renting vespas or the sort? :)
Choose based on your personal preference and pace. Your rental car goes when you want and will not leave without you. Sunrise or sunset on a hill top is easy with a car. Stop when you see a cool spot for photography, a walk about or for lunch. Research parking options and be prepared for tolls. Spend less on lodging for freedom to roam. Sometimes free parking is available with lodging - I was pleased and amazed to get that for our stay in Florence this summer part of a 23 day trip with a rental car for most of the time. And they are not mutually exclusive, we took the train into the city center in Milan and Amsterdam, took Eurostar from London. Enjoy the trip!
Liz, Regarding rental of Vespas or Motorinos, you may find it helpful to read the following comments from the excellent www.roninrome.com website: http://www.roninrome.com/%20transportation/riding-a-scooter-in-rome While the article covers Rome for the most part, many of the points would apply to other areas also. I can't remember what type of license is required to rent Motorinos in Italy but if it's like this area, you can rent vehicles up to 50 cc with a regular driver's license but above that you'd need a motorcycle license. Using the 50 cc machines at higher speed highway conditions is NOT going to happen, so you'd be limited to using them only with cities at low speed. My suggestion would be to forget the Motorinos. A combination of walking and public transit is usually the best method. Cheers!


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Activist to speak about fair-pay issues
Fair-pay activist Lilly Ledbetter, whose name is attached to federal gender equity legislation, will speak at a free, public event Jan. 25 at the University of Louisville.
"A Conversation with Lilly Ledbetter" will run from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Ekstrom Library's Chao Auditorium. UofL's College of Arts and Sciences is sponsoring the event.
Ledbetter is expected to talk about her experiences championing gender pay equity. The Alabama woman was the plaintiff in an employment discrimination case against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. that went before the U.S. Supreme Court. She spoke during the 2008 Democratic National Convention on Women's Equality Day. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 into law not long after his inauguration.
Ledbetter is speaking at UofL in conjunction with her keynote talk at the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission's 15th annual Race and Relations Conference.


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Press release from Marketwire
Tree Island Announces Third Quarter 2012 Results
Thursday, November 08, 2012
Tree Island Announces Third Quarter 2012 Results16:45 EST Thursday, November 08, 2012VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Nov. 8, 2012) - Tree Island Steel Ltd. (TSX:TSL)(TSX:TSL.DB) - Q3 2012 Financial Highlights:Sales amount to $34.0 millionGross Profit of $3.5 million or 10% of revenuesEBITDA(3) (before foreign exchange) at $1.0 millionTree Island Steel Ltd. (formerly Tree Island Wire Income Fund or the "Fund") ("Tree Island"(1) or the "Company")) (TSX:TSL)(TSX:TSL.DB) announced today its financial results for the three and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2012.For the three-month period ended September 30, 2012(2), sales totaled $34.0 million versus $38.0 million during the corresponding period in 2011, while gross profit increased to $3.5 million from $1.4 million mainly due to Tree Island's ongoing focus on profitable growth. Gross profit per ton also improved to $144 per ton, compared to $51 per ton in the same period in 2011. Gross profit and gross profit per ton continued to demonstrate improvement on a consecutive quarter basis as the Company maintained price discipline and further improved operational efficiencies. As a result of Tree Island's ongoing focus on pricing and cost management, EBITDA increased to $1.0 million during the third quarter of 2012, which compares to an EBITDA loss of $1.3 million during the corresponding period in 2011.For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2012(2), despite a 5% decrease in sales volume, Tree Island's revenues increased by 2% to $117.6 million from $114.9 million during the same period in 2011. Gross profit and EBITDA also increased to $11.7 million and $4.7 million, respectively. The year-over-year improvement in financial results is largely the result of focused management initiatives.During the nine-month period ended September 30, 2012, Tree Island purchased 1,018,500 units at an average price of $0.30 per unit, under its previously announced normal course issuer bid. These units were cancelled by the Company at the end of the month of purchase. On September 6, 2012, the normal course issuer bid was extended to September 6, 2013. Under the renewed normal course issuer bid the Company may purchase up to 1,700,000 units."I am encouraged with our overall business strategy demonstrating strength and resilience in a business environment where price volatility and overall visibility continue to be a challenge," said Dale R. MacLean, President and CEO of Tree Island Steel Ltd. "Our financial performance during the third quarter is a clear testament to our focus on profitable growth, and the strength of our underlying business fundamentals evidenced by the meaningful improvement to profit margins on a year-over-year basis despite lower sales volumes."Amar S. Doman, Chairman of Tree Island Steel Ltd. noted, "The Company continues to demonstrate financial and operational progress with a solid commitment to providing best-in-class product quality and service to customers and partners. The sustained improvement in financial results reflects the hard work and dedication of the Tree Island team during some challenging times, which have led to a stronger Tree Island today."Three Months Ended September 30Nine Months Ended September 30Summary of Results ($000's except for tonnage and per unit amounts)2012201120122011Sales Volumes - Tons(a)24,24227,40880,82585,032Sales$33,962$38,005$117,581$114,949Cost of sales(29,697)(35,774)(103,564)(103,135)Depreciation(778)(820)(2,299)(2,459)Gross profit3,4871,41111,7189,355Selling, general and administrative expenses(3,267)(3,507)(9,306)(9,393)Operating income (loss)220(2,096)2,412(38)Foreign exchange gain (loss)163(1,817)75(1,239)Gain on sale of property, plant and equipment31143011Changes in financial liabilities recognized at fair value(727)1,414(727)2,301Gain (loss) on renegotiated debt--17,805(3,234)Financing Expenses(1,422)(2,153)(5,975)(6,259)(Loss) income before income taxes(1,763)(4,641)14,020(8,458)Income tax (expense) recovery(228)47(1,304)(146)Net (loss) income$(1,991)$(4,594)$12,716$(8,604)Operating income (loss)$220$(2,096)$2,412$(38)Add back depreciation7788202,2992,459EBITDA(b)$998$(1,276)$4,711$2,421Foreign exchange gain (loss)163(1,817)75(1,239)EBITDA including foreign exchange$1,161$(3,093)$4,786$1,182Net (loss) income$(1,991)$(4,594)$12,716$(8,604)Add back significant non-cash itemsNon-cash financing expenses6341,3393,3133,962Non-cash (gain) loss on renegotiated debt--(17,805)3,234Changes in financial liabilities recognized at fair value727(1,414)727(2,301)Adjusted net loss(b)$(630)$(4,669)$(1,049)$(3,709)Per unitNet (loss) income per unit - basic(0.09)(0.20)0.57(0.38)Net (loss) income per unit - diluted(0.09)(0.20)0.27(0.38)Per tonGross profit per ton14451145110EBITDA per ton41(47)5828 As at September 30, As at December 31,Financial position20122011Total assets$94,036$91,005Total non-current financial liabilities$29,629$42,789Sales volumes exclude tons which were processed as part of tolling arrangements See definition of EBITDA and Adjusted Net Loss in footnote 3 to the press release About Tree Island Steel Ltd.Tree Island Steel Ltd. has a 100% ownership interest in Tree Island Industries Ltd. and its performance depends on the performance of Tree Island Industries Ltd. Headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, since 1964, Tree Island Industries Ltd., through its four operating facilities in Canada and the United States, produces wire products for a diverse range of industrial, residential construction, commercial construction, agricultural, and specialty applications. Its products include bright wire; a broad array of fasteners, including packaged, collated and bulk nails; stucco reinforcing products; concrete reinforcing mesh; fencing and other fabricated wire products. The Company markets these products under the Tree Island, Halsteel, K-Lath, Industrial Alloys, TI Wire, and Tough Strand and Select Brand names. Tree Island also owns and operates a Hong Kong-based company that assists the international sourcing of products to Tree Island Industries Ltd. and its customers.Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release includes forward-looking information with respect to the Tree Island and the Company, including their business, operations and strategies, as well as financial performance and conditions. The use of forward-looking words such as, "may," "will," "expect" or similar variations generally identify such statements. Any statements that are contained herein that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Although management believes that expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties including risks and uncertainties discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Fund's most recent annual information form and management discussion and analysis.The forward looking statements contained herein reflect management's current beliefs and are based upon certain assumptions that management believes to be reasonable based on the information currently available to management. By their very nature, forward looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and a number of factors could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward looking statements. In evaluating these statements, prospective investors should specifically consider various factors including the risks outlined in the Fund's most recent annual information form and management discussion and analysis which may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward looking statement. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: general economic, market and business conditions, the cyclical nature of our business and demand for our products, financial condition of our customers, competition, volume and price pressure from import competition, deterioration in the Company's liquidity, disruption in the supply of raw materials, volatility in the costs of raw materials, significant exposure to the Western United States due to lack of geographic diversity, dependence on the construction industry, transportation costs, foreign exchange fluctuations, leverage and restrictive covenants, labour relations, trade actions, dependence on key personnel and skilled workers, reliance on key customers, intellectual property risks, energy costs, un-insured loss, credit risk, operating risk, management of growth, changes in tax, environmental and other legislation, and other risks and uncertainties set forth in our publicly filed materials.This press release has been reviewed by the Company's Board of Directors and its Audit Committee, and contains information that is current as of the date of this press release, unless otherwise noted. Events occurring after that date could render the information contained herein inaccurate or misleading in a material respect. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information and management of the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by applicable securities laws.References to Tree Island include references to Tree Island Industries Ltd. as the context may require. Please refer to our Q3 2012 MD&A for further information. References made above to "EBITDA" are to operating profit plus depreciation and references to "Adjusted Net Income (Loss)" are to net income (loss) per IFRS adjusted for certain non-cash items including non-cash financing expenses, changes in fair value of convertible instruments and gain (loss) on renegotiated debt. EBITDA is a measure used by many investors to compare issuers on the basis of ability to generate cash flows from operations. Adjusted Net Income (Loss) is a measure for investors to understand the impact of significant non-cash items that affect our results from operations. Neither EBITDA nor Adjusted Net Income (Loss) are earnings measures recognized by IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. We believe that EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income (Loss) are important supplemental measure in evaluating the Fund's performance. You are cautioned that EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income (Loss) should not be construed as alternatives to net income or loss, determined in accordance with IFRS, or as indicators of performance. Our method of calculating EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income (Loss) may differ from methods used by other issuers and, accordingly, our EBITDA or Adjusted Net Income (Loss) may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Tree Island Wire Income FundINTERIM CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION(In thousands of Canadian dollars - unaudited)September 30December 3120122011AssetsCurrentCash2,8503,852Accounts receivable14,41013,835Inventories43,02136,123Prepaid expenses1,4352,53361,71656,343Property, plant and equipment32,19534,303Other non-current assets12535994,03691,005LiabilitiesCurrentSenior Credit Facility16,63111,247Accounts payable and accrued liabilities13,90913,745Income taxes payable1,9912,093Other current liabilities129158Fair value of convertible instruments1,049322Current portion of long-term debt1,7344,88235,44332,447Convertible Debentures15,39114,298Term Loan4,417-Long-term debt9,58228,491Finance Lease101-Other non-current liabilities457364Deferred income taxes2,17276667,56376,366Unitholders' Equity26,47314,63994,03691,005Tree Island Wire Income FundINTERIM CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF OPERATIONS(In thousands of Canadian dollars, except units and per-unit amounts - unaudited)Three Months Ended September 30Nine Months Ended September 302012201120122011Sales$33,962$38,005$117,581$114,949Cost of goods sold29,69735,774103,564103,135Depreciation7788202,2992,459Gross profit3,4871,41111,7189,355Selling, general and administrative expenses3,2673,5079,3069,393Operating income (loss)220(2,096)2,412(38)Foreign exchange (loss) gain163(1,817)75(1,239)Gain on sale of property, plant and equipment31143011Changes in financial liabilities recognized at fair value(727)1,414(727)2,301Gain (loss) on renegotiated debt--17,805(3,234)Financing expenses(1,422)(2,153)(5,975)(6,259)(Loss) income before income taxes(1,763)(4,641)14,020(8,458)Income tax (expense) recovery(228)47(1,304)(146)Net (loss) income for the period$(1,991)$(4,594)$12,716$(8,604)Net (loss) income per unitBasic$(0.09)$(0.20)$0.57$(0.38)Diluted$(0.09)$(0.20)$0.27$(0.38)Weighted-average number of unitsBasic21,846,71422,900,70322,293,59822,867,849Diluted21,846,71422,900,70361,365,07222,867,849Tree Island Wire Income FundINTERIM CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS(In thousands of Canadian dollars - unaudited)Three Months Ended September 30Nine Months Ended September 302012201120122011Cash flows from operating activitiesNet (loss) income for the period$(1,991)$(4,594)$12,716$(8,604)Adjustments forDepreciation7788202,2992,459Changes in financial liabilities recognized at fair value727(1,414)727(2,301)Gain on sale of property, plant and equipment(3)(11)(430)(11)(Gain) loss on renegotiated debt--(17,805)3,234Net finance costs1,4222,1535,9756,259Deferred income tax recovery224411,40786Fair value change on Phantom Units47536449Exchange revaluation on foreign denominated debt(388)3,152(512)1,958Working capital(810)(2,031)(6,795)(11,995)Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities6(1,831)(2,354)(8,866)Cash flows from investing activitiesProceeds on disposal of property, plant and equipment154948749Purchase of property, plant and equipment(23)(161)(232)(319)Net cash (used in) provided by investing activities(8)(112)255(270)Cash flows from financing activitiesTerm Loan(125)-4,875-Repayment of long-term debt(297)(1,200)(6,514)(2,598)Interest paid(813)(728)(2,321)(2,088)Normal course issuer bid(39)(5)(301)(5)(Repayment of) advance on Senior Credit Facility(47)3,8905,38411,341Net cash (used in) provided by financing activities(1,321)1,9571,1236,650Effect of exchange rate changes on cash(28)53(26)(8)(Decrease) increase in cash(1,350)67(1,001)(2,494)Cash, beginning of period4,2013,0733,8525,634Cash, end of period$2,851$3,140$2,851$3,140FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Contact Information: Tree Island Steel Ltd.Nancy DaviesChief Financial Officer(604) firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Keith Couragewrote a question about Salsa Mukluk 3 Fatbike on October 1, 2012
I've read that there were some chain rub...
I've read that there were some chain rub issues with the Mukluk. I noticed that a number of other 2011 Mukluks I've found online used a triple up front, while this one uses a double w/bash.
Can any owners or, perhaps, Hucknroll employees shine some light on this for me?
Fact or fiction?


text:
climate change
Senator Inhofe gloats over Google funding, raises money off protests
James Inhofe, the Senator from Oklahoma, is one of the most outspoken and bombastic deniers of climate change and attackers of science, bar none. He tried to criminally investigate 17 climate scientists whose emails were hacked and leaked. He "wrote" a "book" called The Greatest Hoax, about climate change. He compares the EPA to the Gestapo. He also receives a huge percentage of his campaign money from the fossil fuel sector. Most of the rest comes from arms manufacturers. James Inhofe is exactly the kind of politician that has stopped any meaningful action of climate change in the United States.
And Google just threw him a fundraiser at their Washington DC Lobbying Headquarters.
Google has made lots of promises along their rise to global dominance of the internet. One of them is their motto "don't be evil." Another is to do their part to head off climate change. To that end, Google has invested in data centers powered by renewable energy and publicly promoted solutions to global warming. Google's Executive Chairman has made strong statements against climate change science deniers, saying "You can hold back knowledge. You cannot prevent it from spreading. You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you'll be seen as a liar."
That's why more than 12,000 people signed a petition asking Google not to fund Senator Inhofe. And when Google decided to hold the fundraiser anyway, people gathered outside of Google's DC office. Activists even made it in to Google's office, to ask Google employees their thoughts on funding such an outspoken enemy of the environment.
Inhofe's response?
To fund raise off "upsetting the environmentalists" and Google's support. See Senator Inhofe's gloating email:
This is why we can't let corporations like Google and the enormous wealth that they bring with them to continue to support politicians like Inhofe. Sign this petition and help stop Inhofe's climate change lies.
The Keystone XL Coverup: The State Department's Attempt to Hide Oil Industry Connections
Mother Jones Magazine has uncovered a new twist in the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline. As it turns out the authors who drafted the environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline worked for TransCanada, Koch Industries, Shell Oil, and other oil corporations that stand to benefit from building the Keystone XL. Not only did the State Department know about these conflicts of interest, they redacted this information from public filings in attempt to conceal the truth.
For background, the Keystone XL is a proposed oil pipeline that would ship sour crude oil from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf coast of Texas. The oil would then be refined and shipped abroad.
In order to build the pipeline, Transcanada, the company who proposed Keystone XL, must get the OK from the State Department. The State Department bases its decision on whether or not to approve the pipeline on an environmental review, conducted by a third party group overseen by the State Department and paid for by Transcanada.
This review, called the "draft supplemental environmental impact statement" was released earlier this month. It has been widely criticized as downplaying the impact that building Keystone XL will have on the climate, and all but paving the way for approval for the project.
The review was conducted by a company called Environmental Resources Management (ERM). When ERM released its review of Keystone, it also released a 55 page filing claiming that there was no conflicts of interest in writing the report. However, the State Department redacted information from this filing, including the biographies of key experts involved in writing the report.
According to Mother Jones, those redactions were meant to keep ties between the report authors and Transanada a secret from the public. Here is what the State Department was covering up:
- ERM's second-in-command on the Keystone report, Andrew Bielakowski, had worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada over seven years as an outside consultant. He also consulted on projects for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, three of the Big Five oil companies that could benefit from the Keystone XL project and increased extraction of heavy crude oil taken from the Canadian tar sands.
- Another ERM employee who contributed to State's Keystone report—and whose prior work history was also redacted—previously worked for Shell Oil;
- A third worked as a consultant for Koch Gateway Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Shell and Koch* have a significant financial interest in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. ERM itself has worked for Chevron, which has invested in Canadian tar sands extraction, according to its website.
However, this is not the first time that the State Department has been criticized for conflicts of interests involving TransCanada and Keystone XL.
From Mother Jones:
In October 2011, Obama's reelection campaign hired Broderick Johnson, who had previously lobbied in favor of Keystone, as a senior adviser. Emails obtained by Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that opposes the Keystone pipeline, revealed a cozy relationship between TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott and Marja Verloop, an official at the US Embassy in Canada whose portfolio covers the Keystone project. Before he lobbied for TransCanada, Elliott worked as deputy campaign manager on Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid. Clinton served as secretary of state until recently.
The question is, how can the State Department get away with routinely ignoring or burying connections between the oil industry and regulators responsible for Keystone XL?
Climate Science Denier Chris Stewart now Head of Congressional Committee on Climate Science
Chris Stewart, a republican from Utah, was recently appointed Chair of the House subcommittee on Environment.
This means that Congressman Stewart now has dominion over the EPA, climate change research, and "all activities related to climate." According to the House Science Committees website (of which Stewart's subcommitee is a part), the chair of the Environment subcommittee oversees:
"all matters relating to environmental research; Environmental Protection Agency research and development; environmental standards; climate change research and development; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including all activities related to weather, weather services, climate, the atmosphere, marine fisheries, and oceanic research;…"
Unfortunately for the EPA, NOAA, and anyone worried about climate change, Chris Stewart is a climate science denier. Mr. Stewart believes there is "insufficient science" to determine if climate change is caused by humans. He believes this in spite of the fact that the EPA, NOAA, and all experts in the field (which he now oversees), disagrees with him.
For the record, Chris Stewart has no advanced degrees in science. However, before running for congress he was owner and CEO of Shipley Group, a company that trains government workers on environmental issues. Shipley Group actually runs a training on climate change science, and according to the Shipley Group website "Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to understand basic climate change science." Clearly Mr. Stewart has never taken his company's training.
Ties to Fossil Fuels
Though Stewart seems to ignore climate change science (while his company profits by teaching it), he does not ignore the fossil fuel industry. In fact he is quite sympathetic to the plight of oil and gas companies. His campaign website claims:
"I am the CEO of a company that works extensively with independent energy producers. I understand how difficult it is to get a drilling permit on federal lands. It is painfully slow, incoherently arbitrary, and always expensive."
Stewart's "extensive" knowledge of the fossil fuel industry is not a surprise. His brother, Tim Stewart is a lobbyist for American Capitol Group, a washington DC lobbying firm. American capitol Group lobbies for fossil Fuel interests, like the Western Energy Alliance, a group mainly comprised of fracking and oil companies. Tim Stewart also lobbied for EnergyNorthAmerica, a company he cofounded to lobby for the Fossil Fuel Industry. One EnergyNorthAmerica slide presentation reads:
"The fact that fossil energy and mining are viewed by political "elites" with disfavor, a view driven by acolytes of radical environmentalism, has resulted in damaging laws and regulation and general neglect"
Unsurprisingly, the fossil fuel industry does not ignore Chris Stewart either. One of Stewart's books (which were published and praised by Glenn Beck), is recommended reading at Koch Industries. Stewart received the maximum possible campaign contribution from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries during his last campaign. He also received considerable support from several Koch and Exxon funded SuperPACs. All told, he received more funding from dirty energy companies and their superPACs than any other single source.
See Chris Stewart's PolluterWatch profile for more information.
Charles Koch: CO2 Causes Climate Change...and I Don't Care
As the nation warily watches every Republican presidential candidate kiss the ring of billionaire donor Charles Koch for a shot at his network's $300,000,000 pool of presidential cash, Charles Koch did something unusual. Last week's USA Today interview with Charles Koch noted his shifting opinion on what he calls climate change "hysteria:"
For the record, Koch says this of climate change: "You can plausibly say that CO2 has contributed" to the planet's warming, but he sees "no evidence" to support "this theory that it's going to be catastrophic."
Wait...Charles Koch just accepted that the planet is warming? Hold your applause. Clearly, Mr. Koch still denies that there's a problem - which means he's missing the entire point of discussing climate change. But any movement from Charles on the 5 Stages of Climate Denial--from #1 down to #3--is a big deal. This is the same guy who has poured $80 million into organizations that have misrepresented climate change science to the public and advocated against any viable solutions to the problem.
Koch's Right-Hand-Man: "Charles is ahead of me on this."
Last June, leaked recordings surfaced from Koch's regular meeting of millionaires and billionaires who are coordinating $889 million in spending around the 2016 election. Charles's Koch top strategist Richard Fink indicated that we may see a shift in Koch's rhetoric on climate change. Fink, aka "Charles Koch's Brain," told attending prospective donors what they wanted to hear: donate to us, and we'll fight the crazy commie hippies and their pesky science. From the Undercurrent:
"The environmental movement. Occupy Wall Street. These kids are searching for meaning. They're protesting the 1 percent. They are the 1 percent, but they're protesting the 1 percent. The environmental movement and climate change. It's not about climate change. I studied climate change for six years. I can't figure it out, quite frankly. Charles is ahead of me on this. I'm not a climatologist, but I'm not completely stupid. I can tell you I meet with people, particularly in California, that are convinced the world is going to burn up in you know, a year or two. They don't know the answer -- they don't even know the question, because it's not about climate change. It's about a cause. It gives their life meaning."
For context, you should probably know that Fink told the room's billionaires that the minimum wage would lead to fascism, comparing today's low-income Americans to pre-Nazi Germany citizenry. Not exactly a room full of academics. And since one of the people that Mr. Fink 'meets with' was a scientist that he funded to study global temperature data, you have to wonder how much experience Rich Fink has with willful ignorance.
When Charles Koch Accidentally Proved Global Warming
Charles Koch cannot deny is that he's seen the global temperature record data. In 2011, through the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF), CKF president Richard Fink funded a high-profile study on global surface temperature data. This dataset, which was an unnecessarily redundant reproduction of several other similar studies, was constructed by a scientist who at the time was a climate change denier.
BEST data compared with previous reconstructions of global surface temperature data.
Dr. Richard Muller's Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) made headlines when he announced his acceptance of what climate scientists had already been saying for over 15 years--yes, people are responsible for unnatural climate variability that scientists have documented--and surprised the country by becoming an advocate for solutions to global warming.
This put Mr. Koch in an awkward spot. Koch's $150,000 grant to Dr. Muller made him the project's top single donor, and Muller was a celebrated skeptic before his dramatic change-of-heart.
Add to that Mr. Koch's background in science--a chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For such an educated, celebrated albeit controversial high-society businessman, the refusal to acknowledge science that is understood by middle schoolers guaranteed to undermine the sensible reputation that Koch Industries has spent a lot of money to put out there.
But Charles gets no credit here. Dumping almost $80 million into organizations that have attacked the scientists who study climate change and interfered with virtually every proposed policy and regulation to solve global warming isn't being a science-savy CEO. It's being a denier, and especially in the context of a self-serving petrochemical billionaire, that's pretty offensive to the rest of us.
We define climate change denial as "anyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy." Mr. Koch remains a staunch denier in that regard.
The Koch brothers continue to finance campaigns to make Americans doubt the seriousness of global warming, increasingly hiding money through nonprofits like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.
Why focus on Charles Koch and David Koch? Many large foundations associated with corporate fortunes are active in financing climate denial groups - Anschutz, Bradley, Coors, DeVos, Dunn, Howard, Pope, Scaife, Searle, and Seid, to name a few. Unlike Koch, most of those fortunes did not come from owning a corporation like Koch Industries, historically rooted in fossil fuel operations. And none come as close as the Kochs in terms of decades-long focus on actively building a political influence network and coordinating other wealthy executives, corporations and families to dump amounts money into politics that not even the Koch brothers could afford.
Check out Greenpeace.org for more research on the Koch brothers crusade against climate science.
ALEC Climate Change Denial: A Touchy Subject
Here's a headline you might expect to see on Reddit's "Not The Onion" page:
Washington Post: This conservative group is tired of being accused of climate denial — and is fighting back
The "conservative group" is ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a lobbyists' policy factory, where corporations vote as equals on "model bills" with state legislators.
The Post notes that ALEC takes issue with the label "climate change denier," after the group's work doing just that led to the departures of major corporate supporters. Two organizations got letters from ALEC's lawyers, insinuating there would be legal action taken for accurately describing ALEC's legacy of denying climate change.
If you want to see how ALEC's own member politicians, lobbyists, and materials deny the science of climate change, check out ALECClimateChangeDenial.org. It's in their own words, so they may have to send a Cease and Desist letter to themselves.
For the record, Greenpeace's feelings are a bit hurt we too didn't get a warning. Did you not see our years of work to expose ALEC's climate change denial?
ALEC may have ignored us, but ALEC's member corporations haven't. Companies ranging from Google to BP to eBay to Northrop Grumman have recently dumped ALEC. Google's chairman said ALEC is "literally lying" about climate change in a surprise announcement to abandon the lobbying group on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.
This isn't the first time ALEC got turned away at the dance. In the past, ALEC has faced mass corporate defections for its role in spreading lethal Stand Your Ground gun laws across the country and for disenfranchising legitimate voters with "Voter ID" legislation. Over 100 companies have ditched ALEC.
Together, lobbyists and lawmakers create fill-in-the-blank laws to hide chemicals used in fracking (for ExxonMobil), attack renewable energy incentives in the name of "Electricity Freedom" (for The Heartland Institute's corporate clients), and create red tape around the President's plan to reduce carbon pollution from coal plants (for polluters represented by the Edison Electric Institute), and many many more examples of promoting fossil fuels, attacking clean energy competition and denying the science of climate change.
ALEC may be nervous with the attention its operations are getting. ALEC's own lawyers have written about their precarious relationship with IRS tax law, acknowledging they would need to spin off a sister organization and register some staff as lobbyists in order to avoid potential action from the IRS that could affect ALEC's tax-exempt status. For ALEC's member corporations, that's a big deal - it's unclear what liabilities they would face if ALEC's nonprofit status was revoked.
Common Cause - one of the organizations to get these legal threats from ALEC over the "climate denial" exposure - has submitted detailed complaints to the IRS documenting how ALEC operations likely violate their nonprofit status. So far, the IRS has failed to do its job and walk into the shadows of ALEC's operations, where there is every indication that ALEC has crossed the line.
So no hard feelings, Common Cause. You're probably getting the legal letters because ALEC would rather have you arguing about climate science that their questionable relationship with the IRS.
Willie Soon's Climate Denial: Southern Company Caught Polluting Science
Written by Sue Sturgis. Crossposted with permission from Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies.
Last week Fortune magazine named the Southern Company a top utility for the sixth year in a row, citing its "wise use of corporate assets" and "social responsibility." The nation's fourth-largest electric utility is headquartered in Atlanta and serves more than 4.4 million customers in the South through its subsidiaries Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power and Mississippi Power.
But the good press was soon followed by bad: Two days after Southern received Fortune's honor, the news broke that Greenpeace and the Virginia-based Climate Investigations Center obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request revealing that the company was the leading funder of a controversial scientist whose work has been used to raise doubts about the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change in order to stall regulatory action. The Southern Company is the top carbon polluter among U.S. utilities and the eighth-biggest in the world, according to Carbon Monitoring for Action.
The documents show Southern provided more than $400,000 between 2006 and 2015 to fund research by and part of the salary of Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics -- more than a third of Soon's total funding. In return, Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian gave the utility the right to review his scientific papers before publication while promising not to disclose the company's funding without its permission. Other contributors to Soon's work revealed in the documents include oil and gas giant ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute -- corporate funding sources that in some cases Soon failed to disclose in violation of journal policy.
The Smithsonian has asked its inspector general to review Soon's ethical conduct. In addition, three U.S. senators -- Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) -- sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies including Southern, trade groups and other industry organizations seeking to unearth the extent of what they call "climate denial-for-hire programs."
"We've known for many years that the tobacco industry supported phony science claiming that smoking does not cause cancer," said Boxer, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "Now it's time for the fossil fuel industry to come clean about funding climate change deniers."
Soon, an aerospace engineer whose work has depended heavily on funding from fossil-fuel interests, has promoted the hypothesis that the sun causes climate change, making him a favorite of the climate change denial crowd. He has served as an adviser to various denialist think tanks and has spoken at denialist conferences.
Soon's scientific work has long been controversial, with a widely criticized 2003 study he co-authored with astronomer and fellow climate change denier Sallie Baliunas leading to theresignations of several editors who were involved in the journal's peer-review process. The publisher eventually admitted that the flawed study should not have been published.
Scientists have pointed out various weaknesses in Soon's work, such as misinterpreting other scientists' data and relying on obsolete information for analyses. Some have noted an even more fundamental problem: Soon's claim that any evidence of a sun effect means carbon dioxide is not driving climate change. For example, in a 2009 article titled "It's the Sun, Stupid!," Soon wrote that because he has assembled evidence supporting the hypothesis that the sun causes climatic change in the Arctic it "invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change."
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Earth Institute at Columbia University, critiqued Soon's claim at Real Climate:
But this is a fallacy. It is equivalent to arguing that if total caloric intake correlates to weight, that exercise can have no effect, or that if cloudiness correlates to incident solar radiation at the ground, then seasonal variations in sunshine are zero. The existence of one physical factor affecting a variable in a complex system says nothing whatsoever about the potential for another physical factor to affect that same variable.
Paying to turn doubt into 'conventional wisdom'
The Southern Company has long been involved in efforts to mislead the public about climate change and to block regulatory action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
In 1998, as the United States was considering signing the international Kyoto Protocol treaty to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, Southern was part of an initiative called the Global Science Communications Team that brought together industry, public relations and think tank leaders to devise a plan to confuse the public about the state of climate science.
The company's representative on the team was research specialist Robert Gehri, who was also Soon's contact at the utility.
Though the Kyoto-era communications effort was supposed to be secret, a memo from the group written by an American Petroleum Institute representative became public. It said "victory" would be "achieved" when industry leaders, the media and average citizens "understand" uncertainties in climate science, and when recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the "conventional wisdom."
The draft plan called for spending $5 million over two years to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences," the New York Times reported:
It would measure progress by counting, among other things, the percentage of news articles that raise questions about climate science and the number of radio talk show appearances by scientists questioning the prevailing views.
While the United States signed the treaty that November, the Clinton administration did not submit it to the Senate for ratification. The Bush administration rejected it altogether three years later.
A decade after its efforts to block U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, the Southern Company had become the nation's top lobbyist on federal legislation to address climate change by creating an emissions trading plan, which it opposed. A 2009 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found the utility had nearly twice as many climate lobbyists as any other company or organization. While the House of Representatives approved the bill, it was defeated in the Senate.
More recently, Southern deployed its lobbying power to block carbon emission limits for power plants proposed by the Obama administration. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize the carbon regulations this summer, but they're now being challenged in court by 12 states and a coal mining company.
In 2013, as the administration was preparing to roll out the rules, a lobbyist with a utility consortium told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Southern Company devotes more resources to lobbying than most utility companies and is "very active in pushing its point of view." Indeed, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics classifies the company as a "heavy hitter" for its generous spending on lobbying (over $12 million in the 2014 cycle alone) and campaign contributions (over $1.4 million in 2014, with most of that benefiting Republicans).
Southern's campaign contributions have helped promote climate science denial in Congress. The top recipient of contributions from the company's PAC and employees in the 2014 campaign cycle was Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who is part of what Climate Progress has dubbed the "Climate Denier Caucus." Perdue has accused the EPA of "overreaching" in its efforts to address climate change and has echoed the line Southern has pushed, saying that "in science, there's an active debate going on."
And Perdue's not the only leading recipient of Southern's political support to help spread the questionable scientific talking points the utility has paid for: Rep. Gary Palmer, an Alabama Republican who received $18,000 from the company's PAC and employees in the 2014 cycle, last year told WATE that science "says global climate change is more a function of nature and solar activity than it is anything man does."
Chalk it up as yet another "victory" for a company that last year raked in $2 billion in profits.
Climate Scientists: Coal-funded #Fakexpert Willie Soon was Never Credible.
"The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless."
Recent revelations regarding Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon's financing and coordination with fossil fuel companies for studies undermining the science of climate change has received quite a bit of attention. Our friends at the Climate Investigations Center have links to source documents, letters to the IRS and Congress, letters to journals that Soon appears to have mislead, and some of the press covering all of this.
The drama has largely outshone the main point among most scientists: Willie Soon's work is vastly discredited. For those who aren't familiar with Willie Soon's fossil fuel company contracting over the last fifteen years, there is probably a legitimate question of whether or not this guy deserves to be in his current pinch.
Frankly, he had it coming.
Scientists and science reporters have often had to waste their time addressing the interference of Soon and his cohorts, who take advantage of the public's general unfamiliarity with scientific nuance.
But scientists too are talking about Dr. Soon's work and what it means for the troubled peer-review process that the most stringent journals usually adhere to. Here is a summary of some of the most interesting conversations in science publications about Willie Soon's #Fakexpert scandal.
First, Soon's manager at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Charles Alcock, has time and time again said that neither he nor Smithsonian support Soon's fossil-funded conclusions. From E&E Publishing's ClimateWire:
"I'd have to say that I've reached my conclusions independent of Dr. Soon's work," Alcock said. "Dr. Soon is not actively engaged in actually gathering new data. He's principally disputing the interpretation of data gathered by other people. And I think this is an area where most of the progress will be made by people who collect new [climate] data or who build new models."
Soon's industry-financed papers have been debunked by climate scientists over and over. Just last month, Soon co-authored a paper claiming to debunk decades of science using a "simple" model of long term temperature projections. Scientists worldwide noted that Soon's methodology was grossly oversimplified, ignoring key factors that scientists have warned will lead to unprecedented temperature increases in the coming decades.
The Heartland Institute, a think tank with ties to the fossil fuel industry, paid to promote this paper in Science Bulletin, a journal published by the Chinese National Academy of Sciences. Heartland has misrepresented the Chinese NAS for political purposes before, and Science Bulletin was the latest victim of Dr. Soon's serial lack of disclosure of fossil fuel funding to science journals. Science Insider - published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - interviewed editors at science journals who appear to have been fooled by Dr. Soon's non-disclosure of his industry payments.
But Soon's work was widely disregarded before his controversial 2015 paper in Science Bulletin. The prestigious science journal Nature notes that Dr. Soon's haggard relationship with science isn't new:
The scientist has published numerous papers that go against mainstream climate science. Most famously, in 2003, Soon co-authored a paper in the journal Climate Research that questioned the standard interpretation of climate change over the past millennium and argued that recent warming is not unusual by historical standards. Subsequent controversy led to the resignation of several of the journal's editors. In that case, the controversy revolved around scientific issues, not disclosure of funding sources. [More on this scandal in our profile of Willie Soon]
NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt for RealClimate re-starts, giving Soon the benefit of the doubt (select clips):
However, a valid question is whether the science that arose from these funds is any good? It's certainly conceivable that Soon's work was too radical for standard federal research programs and that these energy companies were really taking a chance on blue-sky high risk research that might have the potential to shake things up. [...]
It is most succinctly highlighted in an article Soon wrote 'It's the Sun, stupid' (not sure if it was ever really published anywhere, but he did send it to his contacts at Koch Industries). Towards the end he states:
The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.
It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of "preventing catastrophic climate change."
It is the leap from the first to second sentence that drives Soon's research – the notion that if you can find enough correlations to solar forcing, the impact of CO2 must be diminished, if not obliterated altogether. But this is a fallacy. It is equivalent to arguing that if total caloric intake correlates to weight, that exercise can have no effect, or that if cloudiness correlates to incident solar radiation at the ground, then seasonal variations in sunshine are zero.
If you're feeling masochistic enough to read more from scientists into the documented gap between reality and Willie Soon's research, check older RealClimate posts on Dr. Soon here, here, and here, and this generously-detailed debunk of Soon's presentation at the latest Heartland Institute climate denial conference by ecologist Richard Telford.
Telford isn't the only scientist baffled by Soon's awkward presentations. University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank details his "depressing" encounter with Willie Soon, at an event and a personal encounter, from NPR:
When it was announced that Soon was giving a talk at the University of Rochester, I knew it would be interesting. I was more than willing to hear what the man had to say. The whole point of being a scientist is, after all, to try to leave your preconceptions at the door and let the work speak for itself. I also wanted to understand Soon's own thinking about the role he was playing as a public skeptic.
On all counts I was disappointed.
Taken as nothing more than a scientific talk, Dr. Soon's presentation was, in my opinion, pretty bad. I watch a lot of these things. It's part of my job. If Soon had been giving a Ph.D defense, he would have been skewered. I was left without a clear line of argument or clear justifications for his claims. More importantly, for a topic this contentious there was insufficient discussion of the voluminous and highly detailed response critics have offered to his claims that solar activity accounts for most observed climate variability. Many of my colleagues listening to the talk said they felt the same way. I came away thinking, "Is that the best they have?"
The presentation that Prof. Adam Frank found depressing was focused on Soon's long-since-discredited thesis that the Sun, not industrial pollution, is responsible for climate change. Citing peer-reviewed material on Skeptical Science, science reporter Chris Mooney re-examines how Soon's primary argument is debunked, for the Washington Post:
[T]he idea that the sun is currently driving climate change is strongly rejected by the world's leading authority on climate science, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found in its latest (2013) report that "There is high confidence that changes in total solar irradiance have not contributed to the increase in global mean surface temperature over the period 1986 to 2008, based on direct satellite measurements of total solar irradiance."
The IPCC "basically says that global warming is not caused by the sun," says Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "The strongest evidence for this is the record of satellite measurements of solar output since the late 1970s that show no increasing trend in solar output during a period of rapid global warming." [...]
A recent scientific review article on climate and the sun similarly notes "the lack of detection of an underlying irradiance trend in the past three decades," and concludes, in rather strong terms, that:
Claims that the Sun has caused as much as 70% of the recent global warming … presents fundamental puzzles. It requires that the Sun's brightness increased more in the past century than at any time in the past millennium, including over the past 30 years, contrary to the direct space-based observations. And it requires, as well, that Earth's climate be insensitive to well-measured increases in greenhouse gases at the same time that it is excessively sensitive to poorly known solar brightness changes. Both scenarios are far less plausible than the simple attribution of most (90%) industrial global warming to anthropogenic effects, rather than to the Sun.
So in sum: It's not that the sun can't influence climate. It can, and it does. And climate scientists have accordingly been studying the influence of the sun for many years.
Discover Magazine has a similar rundown of Soon's debunked "it's the sun" thesis, based on a video of a presentation Soon gave to a Koch-funded student group.
Even Koch-funded scientist Richard Muller has abandoned Soon's solar theories in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, as Brad Friedman reminds us, in a study that Charles Koch Foundation itself helped finance (oops).
While most scientists may agree that Soon's work is nothing to bat an eyelash at, Soon's corporate funders aren't trying to influence scientists - they're trying to influence policymakers, and the people who vote for them. The Scientist quotes Harvard's Naomi Oreskes, author of Merchants of Doubt, a book documenting corporate manipulation of science that is now being released as a critically-acclaimed movie (trailer here):
Though the vast majority of climate scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing as a result of human activities that increase the amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, researchers like Soon foment debate by publishing alternate hypotheses or denials. "The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate," Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard, told the Times. "Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater."
And the implications for this? Jay Michaelson at the Daily Beast has a brilliant summary of why these climate deniers matter, when their work is so discredited and marginalized in the scientific community:
Yet unlike 9/11 trutherism, and Obama-is-a-Muslim trutherism, the Climate Truther campaign has an air of respectability, a unanimous adherence among Republican presidential candidates. How is that possible?The answer is money. Lots of money. Billions of dollars, in fact, spent to create an entire industry of scientists, publicists, think tanks, and legislative organizations.Willie Soon, for example, should never have been given much credence in the first place. Like nearly all of the Climate Truthers' scientists, he is not a climate expert. He's not even an astrophysicist, as he is often presented. As the New York Times revealed, "He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering."
"Willie Soon (as amply documented in my book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars") was instrumental in the early attacks on the Hockey Stick by James Inhofe and other fossil fuel industry-funded politicians. Now we know for certain that his efforts were a quid pro quo with special interests looking to discredit my work as a means of calling into question the reality and threat of climate change."
Wille Soon's Fall from Grace: Climate Denier #Fakexpert Has Extreme Conflicts of Interest
Extra Extra! Read all about climate denial scientist Willie Soon's dirty money from petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch, coal utility Southern Company, oil giant ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies to deny the science of climate change!
The last time I bumped into Willie Soon, I asked him if there was any explanation for some of the information in our latest round of documents indicating that his employer was eager to take money from ExxonMobil:
The questions I tried asking Dr. Soon (who won't talk to me, after a few of these encounters went bad for him) are based on seemed to show that despite all the embarrassment Soon has caused his employer, the Smithsonian Institution, private communications with ExxonMobil indicate that Smithsonian was all too happy to take Exxon's money for their general operating budget.
Is that why the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics allowed Dr. Soon to conduct what essentially is a lobbying and public relations campaign for fossil fuel companies, all in their name? From the documents Greenpeace obtained, here's the Harvard-Smithsonian Center thanking Exxon:
To their credit, Smithsonian officials say they are doing an internal review of Dr. Soon. We'll see how that goes, but it's not encouraging to see that Soon's coworkers may have been complicit in peddling influence for ExxonMobil and the other polluters financing Dr. Soon.
For years, we at Greenpeace have been working to make public the secret paper trails that show what everyone already knows: climate science deniers - #Fakexperts - are few and far between, and most of them are paid by companies most responsible for global warming to downplay the problem.
Willie Soon's payments from Koch, Exxon, Southern Company and the American Petroleum Institute aren't news - we've known he took over $1 million from these interests since 2011. But the level of detail and the implications from this latest round of research is shocking. From the New York Times:
He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work. The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as "deliverables" that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.
For Greenpeace, this raises both legal and ethical questions. From The Guardian:
In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.
Our executive director Annie Leonard just sent a letter to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and two letters to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology (here and here) in pursuit of answers.
Is the IRS okay with Charles Koch's nonprofit foundation funding research that appears to have directly influenced state and national politicians? Did ExxonMobil violate any Congressional rules by giving Soon a grant just two months after Soon told Congress he had no financial conflicts of interest, after telling them that climate change isn't a crisis? And Southern Company?
We will keep you posted as things unfold - keep track yourself on the Climate Investigations Center, where our former colleague Kert Davies is busy trying to answer the same questions. For disclosure - know that Kert helped start this work when he still was Greenpeace's Research Director. We have continued to partner with him on this since his amicable split from our team.
After you read the Times, check out more on the story...just about everywhere. The Boston Globe writes that Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) plans on opening an investigation on climate science deniers. InsideClimate News notes how Soon has been part of a game plan detailed by the American Petroleum Institute in a leaked memo from 1998. Gawker, Discover Magazine, and STGIST have more. Gizmodo wins for the most brazen headline.
Four Years After Greenpeace Sting: PR Firm Dumps Oil Lobbyists
Perhaps you heard the good news - the world's largest public relations firm, Edelman, just spun off an advertising subsidiary so that it could show a commitment to not aiding the denial of climate change science. The Guardian explains how API's contracts with Edelman were so massive--tens of millions of dollars--that it was up to 10% of the PR giant's income.
For years, Edelman has managed multi-million dollar contracts with the American Petroleum Institute (API), using its Blue Advertising subsidiary to help API run commercials selling fantasies to people: that oil and gas are our only viable, plentiful, "AMERICAN" sources of energy.
In the saga that led Edelman to dump the lobbyists at API, Greenpeace had a small role to play: we infiltrated a commercial shoot, run by Edelman's Blue advertising arm for API. The commercials were to be called "Vote 4 Energy," casting the illusion of mass popular demand for more oil and gas drilling (and more pollution, more climate change, and more government giveaways to prop it all up).
After being dressed up in a button-down, plaid orange shirt--I'm not sure what look they had in mind for me--I was put in front of the camera and told to repeat lines back. This despite the casting call for "REAL PEOPLE not Actors!" Huh.
Instead of telling them "I Vote" for oil and gas, I ran off script and demanded a prioritization of clean energy, not continued pandering to oil lobbyists at API. As I was ushered off set, the person I appealed to for a clean energy future was Robert McKernan, president of Blue Advertising, the company that Edelman is ditching. He was the last person I saw before being booted out of the studio rooms, and as we locked eyes, I appealed directly to him: "we need clean sources of energy, like wind and solar." Here's a transcribed recording of that on-set disruption:
Shockingly, API and Edelman didn't stop the commercial shoot there and reinvent it into an appeal for clean energy (yes, that's sarcasm). And as Edelman and API moved forward with the commercial, Greenpeace got another idea.
On the day that API's commercials debuted, Greenpeace created and released a fake Vote4Energy commercial, mocking their bizarre message with parody oil executives dismissing clean energy and using empty patriotic jargon: "I vote for prosperous American liberty jobs for Freedom."
We crashed API's launch event for Vote4Energy, rolling out an astroturf mat for politicians and lobbyists to make their entrance, framed by oil company logos. Online, we buried their actual website with our spoof material and drove more traffic to our fake commercial. Some journalists actually linked to our silly video in their stories about API's Vote4Energy campaign.
This was in January, 2012. Since then, big things have happened at Edelman.
Edelman's Make-Or-Break Moment
Fast forward to last fall, 2014: Edelman suffered a months-long PR crisis--the last thing a PR firm wants--over its representation of API and other climate science denial organizations. Edelman's chairman, Richard Edelman, hastily put out a statement affirming his company's commitment to climate change.
Mr. Edelman was personally urging the press that he cared about the issue, and fired a top executive who was uncooperative with the Climate Investigations Center, which was surveying PR firms on their climate change policies. It was awkward.
The mess was intensified by another round of documents showing Edelman was helping TransCanada--the operator of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline--with campaign planning to subvert local activism in Canada against TransCanada's Energy East pipeline. After the plan was leaked, TransCanada dumped Edelman.
It seems that Big Oil is starting to be a Big Headache for Big PR. Of course, there are still plenty of public relations firms with little to no moral standard out there, unrecognized by the public, for Big Oil to pay for dirty PR.
But for the world's largest firm to take some meaningful steps to throw in the towel on climate denial - that indicates a precedent for an industry that most activists wouldn't have bothered to spend time trying to change.
And it's a good thing, because climate scientists aren't getting any less distressed about our changed climate. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences is getting desperate enough to officially call for "unproven technology" in attempts to mitigate the crisis. Despite the weight of the crisis, which is just getting started, coal companies, oil companies, the Koch brothers and their legion of front groups are creating layers of red tape to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, the first regulation of carbon emissions from existing power plants.
Perhaps there's a slick PR firm out there willing to make right of its past and do something productive for the climate, and all of us who rely upon it.
Edelman: you're up. Show us you mean it this time.
Bjorn Lomborg Think Tank Funder Revealed As Billionaire Republican 'Vulture Capitalist' Paul Singer
By Graham Readfern, crossposted from DeSmogBlog.
A billionaire "vulture capitalist" and major backer of the US Republican Party is a major funder of the think tank of Danish climate science contrarian and fossil fuels advocate Bjørn Lomborg, DeSmogBlog has found.
New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singer's charitable foundation gave $200,000 to Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.
The grant to Lomborg's think tank is revealed in the tax form of the Paul E. Singer Foundation covering that foundation's activities between December 2012 and November 2013.
Singer, described as a "passionate defender of the 1%", has emerged as a major force in the Republican party in recent years and was a key backer and influencer during Mitt Romney's failed tilt at the Presidency.
The $200,000 grant represented almost one third of the $621,057 in donations declared by the Copenhagen Consensus Center in 2013.
A spokesperson for the think tank told DeSmogBlog that "not one dollar" of the Singer grant had been spent.
Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, is often cited on lists of the world's most influential people. He writes extensively on climate change and energy issues with his columns appearing in many of the world's biggest news outlets.
The CCC think tank produces reports that consistently argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the roll-out of current renewable energy technologies should be low priorities for policy makers.
Most recently, Lomborg wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing climate change was not the urgent problem that many thought.
He wrote that "the narrative that the world's climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism".
Lomborg argues the poorest countries need fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty – a position that gained support from the world's richest man, Bill Gates.
At a G20 side event in Brisbane last year, Lomborg appeared at an event sponsored by the world's largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, where he again argued that the world's poor needed fossil fuels.
The CCC's keystone project is the Post 2015 Consensus that is trying to influence the formulation of the next set of global development goals being discussed by the United Nations. Those goals will replace the millennium development goals.
Lomborg's CCC think tank was registered as a not-for-profit in the US in 2008 and has attracted almost $5 million in donations since then. In 2013, the CCC paid Lomborg, its founder and president, $200,484 for his work. The previous year Lomborg was paid $775,000.
The think tank has insisted that its funders, most of which are anonymous, do not influence its research. The think tank says it does not accept funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Despite being registered in the US, Lomborg has admitted that all but one of the think tank's seven staff are based elsewhere. The think tank's address is aparcel service in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The discovery of support from Paul Singer comes after a DeSmogBlog investigation last year found that CCC's early funders included conservative think tanks with links to the network of organisations funded by the Koch brothers, who have pushed millions into organisations denying climate science and blocking action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the 2014 US political spending cycle, data presented by OpenSecrets shows Singer spent $9.4 million influencing Republicans – the biggest disclosed individual spender on the conservative side of US politics.
Singer, whose Elliott Management hedge fund manages about $25 billion in assets, has been branded a "vulture capitalist" enterprise due to investment strategies employed by his firm that targets foreign economies in trouble.
A 2011 summary of "vulture funds" in The Guardian said Elliott Management's "principal investment strategy" was "buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment".
Greg Palast, the author of Vulture's Picnic, documented in The Guardian how Singer's firm had managed to pocket $1.29 billion from the US Treasury after a "brilliantly complex" financial manoeuvre in 2009 that saw Singer lead a consortium to buy the parts supplier of General Motors and Chrysler before claiming cash from a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.
Singer, who according to Forbes is personally worth $1.8 billion, remains in conflict with the Argentinian government over debt bought by an Elliott affiliate and other investors.
As well as the generosity shown to Bjorn Lomborg's think tank, Singer's foundation gave $500,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where Singer is chairman of the board of trustees.
The Manhattan Institute is also known for downplaying the impacts of climate change while promoting fossil fuels.
In October 2014, Manhattan senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote a report Not Beyond Coal arguing that the future for the coal industry was bright and the fossil fuel was "essential" for addressing poverty in developing countries — a position identical to that pushed by Lomborg.
Bryce also attacks the wind industry claiming it cannot cut emissions, describing wind turbines as "climate change scarecrows". In testimony to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February 2014, Bryce said wind turbines were "slaughtering wildlife" and killed 600,000 birds every year in the US.
A review of studies and data into US bird deaths has found about 600 million birds are killed annually in collisions with windows and buildings, but even this high number was only a quarter of the birds killed annually in the US by feral cats.
Another large donation from Singer's foundation went to the Moving Picture Institute – an organisation that says it produces films that promote understanding of "individual rights, limited government, and free markets".
The MPI helped fund the 2004 pro-mining documentary Mine Your Own Business by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.
The two would go on to make the 2009 climate science denial film Not Evil Just Wrong, which was partly funded through a grant from DonorsTrust – a fund which stockpiles cash from conservative philanthropists and that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial while fighting action to cut emissions.
Roland Mathiasson, Executive Vice President at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told DeSmogBlog: "Not one dollar of this grant has been spent. It's for a potential future project, pending support from a broad range of political perspectives to underline the non-political nature of the project.
"It is a project for the public conversation, so obviously there will be a lot of communication once broad support is secured, and the project is launched."
Mathiasson declined to provide further details. DeSmogBlog attempted to contact the Paul E Singer Foundation to ask about their donation to CCC, but email requests went unanswered.