To: Brumar89 who wrote (5707 ) 12/9/2011 2:07:56 PM From: Brumar89 Respond to ... UK Charity, Oxfam has emerged a key play maker at Durban Climate Summit. Oxfam reportedly has nine people in various official government delegations. This includes the Bolivian country delegation containing an Oxfam member, the Bangladeshi delegation having three Oxfam members and Belgium two! But their nine infiltrations still come a poor second to top carbon profiteer, WWF with their 14 delegates. We can understand Belgium, but why should taxpayers of poor countries like Bolivia and Bangladesh pay Oxfam staff's first class airfares, five star hotel and other perquisites? The major beneficiaries of the proposed Climate Green Fund are the NGOs themselves with WWF and Oxfam positioning themselves to grab a huge chunk of the fund's resources. We can expect NGO staff and consultants with strong links with WWF and Oxfam to grab all the top positions at the Fund - positions that comes with hefty tax free salaries comparable to multi-lateral agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations . While taxation of the aviation sector will make it difficult for ordinary global citizens to fly, such a fund will ensure that WWF's and Oxfam's top executives and board members continue to fly business class unfetered. The taxation of of the shipping sector will give a fillip to inflationary pressures of food commodities which should be bad news for global poverty and hunger. Credibility lies at the heart of any successful advocacy research. However, NGOs in their zest for results often forget this golden rule of the need to pursue truth. We need to start with a question, rely on intellectually sound techniques and methods to answer it, and report the answer, whatever it may be, as uncomfortable as it maybe. The question and even the kinds of evidence brought to bear may be shaped by values. After all, there is no such thing as value-free social science. But in “truthful” research, the answers are what they are, regardless of the researcher's personal point of view. By contrast, “propaganda” starts with an answer and research is geared to not find out how things work but to prove a predetermined conclusion . For example, Oxfam makes the remarkable case "Climate change poses a grave threat to food production. First, it will apply a further brake on yield growth. Estimates suggest that rice yields may decline by 10 percent for each 1°C (1.8 °F) rise in dry-growing-season minimum temperatures " Remarkable as the study is based on a measly 100 sq metres experimental plot maintained by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. If Tmin reduces yields, how does Oxfam all time record rice harvest in India, two years in a row? Last year, Andhra farmers dumped their rice into the Krishna River to protest low prices due to the rice glut in India and they are expected to do so again this year. NASA warns that sunspots could completely disappear by 2015 and if solar activity does not pick up, we are poised to a return to the “Little Ice Age”. The UK Met Office in a published paper in popular scientific journal, Nature to this effect admitted. What could be much worse, if the Katla volcano in Iceland erupts which the BBC say is imminent, we may even face the prospect of nuclear winter. in the near term. Katla could spew an ash cloud dwarfing the 2010 eruption that cost airlines two billion dollars (£1.27 billion) as it is a much bigger beast than the nearby Eyjafjallajokul volcano, which blasted ash all over Europe for several weeks. Its last major eruption in 1918 continued more than a month, turning day into night, starving crops of sunlight and killing off some livestock. .... devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com
