"Earth Day": The Joke Goes On......

"The Joke" you say?  Yes, the joke is on us, all of the people on Earth who believed and the many who continue to believe these environmental doomsday predictions.  The predictions are often initially made by self-serving academic "scientists" seeking grant money to further their careers.  These scientific "truths" are then picked up by environmental "non-profit" organizations (e.g. Sierra Club) and used to frighten and motivate the public to contribute money and join the panicked rush to "save the planet".

Once politicians smell the blood in the water of public opinion, they do what they do best.  They jump on the popular bandwagon, act is if they know what they're talking about, and with sincerity oozing from every pore they plead with the public to help them save Mother Earth, whales, polar bears and everything in between by what else, donating to their campaigns and voting for them.  (Think buffoons like John Kerry, Al Gore, and now Obama.)

Finally, the liberal mainstream media picks up on the emotional sensationalism surrounding the repeated threats of impending doom and prints claims like those made in the following article and publishes them as if they were the gospel itself.  It is a tried and true method of manipulating and fleecing the public, and unfortunately, it is unlikely to end any time soon. 

Meanwhile, we can only hope to help educate and inform those who will listen and learn, and perhaps, if people must tighten their belts enough, they will recognize this environmental fraud for what it is and vote these self-righteous, hypocritical environmental opportunists out of office.
Peter

Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970?


April 22, 2011 ·
What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.

For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.

Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director


“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.

And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.

Source: Reason.com

The Real Danger This Earth Day: ENVIRONMENTALISM

 I've been necessarily away for a while and it looks as if the myth of man-caused global warming, or call it climate change....whatever.....is dying and fading away, as we have predicted it would.  http://thefellowshipofscientifictruth.blogspot.com/  The truth always, ultimately, eventually prevails.  However, let us not forget the damage that has been done, to our economy, to the integrity, respect and credibility of our scientific institutions, and scientists themselves. 

Most of all, this "Earth Day", let us remember who is and has been behind this "environmental" "green" movement, why, and how.  The battle over global warming may be over, but the war over environmental reason and sanity versus liberal, idealistic fascism goes on.  Case in point?  Look at the current battle with the EPA trying to stop oil and gas drilling by creating the "boogie-man" of "dangerous" hyro-fracking of wells.   http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/  

The environmental extremists will not give up easily.  Their minds are set; their crusade against   capitalism, economic health, and freedom is clear.  The war is not over, not by half.  The following article says it well.
Peter


What Greens Really Believe

Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
April 20 2011





Earth Day was established in 1970 and millions of Americans and others around the world have been steadily brainwashed to embrace the impression that environmentalism is about protecting the Earth, but when Greens talk among themselves, it is a very different story and a frightening one at that.

The massive propaganda program that supports the Green agenda is impressive in its scope. Its locus is the United Nations whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was revealed in 2009 to be a complete hoax based on the manipulation of computer models to predict a warming due to excess carbon dioxide. There never was any threat from CO2. It is a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. It represents a very minor, even minuscule, part of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Nothing, however, deters the Green agenda and, since the first Earth Day, it has penetrated the nation’s schools and, of course, its politics, deliberately deterring and thwarting access to the nation’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the greatest such reserves in the world! It is a drag on business development. It is the ultimate nanny state seeking to alter people's lifestyles through coercion, legislation, and persuasion.

What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.

Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept, was quoted by William Tuck in “Progress and Privilege”, 1982, as saying “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals, but absolutely limited by the state.” Lamont Cole, an ecologist, has said, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."

Stewart Brand, writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote, “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”

I doubt most people are wishing for a disaster and, when they occur such as the earthquakes in Haiti and in Japan, the first instinct of decent people worldwide is to mobilize to help those affected. This is a very human reaction, but it is not a Green one.

Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists characterized capitalism, saying “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…Capitalism is destroying the earth.”

It is no coincidence that Earth Day is also the birthday of Vladimir Illich Lenin, the founder of the former Soviet Union and devotee of Karl Marx, the creator of Communism. The Communist revolution worldwide led to the murder of an estimated one hundred million throughout the last century.

At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.

David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land.”

Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil.

Major environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to name just two, oppose the use of coal, oil, and natural gas to provide energy.

So much of what environmentalism preaches and claims in its propaganda is utterly false, but telling lies is part and parcel of the Green message.

Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator (D-CO) said, “What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Virtually everything being advocated by the Obama administration represents this willingness to take action and tell lies about the nation’s need for energy, with the exception of the worst ways of producing it, wind, solar, and biofuels. Even before gasoline prices climbed to new highs, negatively affecting all aspects of life in America, Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, was advocating higher prices.

The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.

A deluge of environmental propaganda will precede Earth Day, April 22, 2011. It should be seen as a warning to all who believe in the Creator and all who wish to advance a world at peace, one in which humanity benefits from trade, prosperity, and modern technology worldwide.

It seems reality is finally forcing the abandonment of the folly of the current crop of "alternative" sources of energy.  As I've said here many times, it is a good idea to try and find clean sources of energy to replace oil, gas, and coal.  However, the use of lies about the burning of fossil fuels as the cause of global warming and climate change has been stupid from the beginning, because the truth will eventually prevail.  The lies have only served to discredit some scientists, science itself and harm what are basically legitimate areas of research.  Lies will always come back to bite you. 

Of course lies make fools of people like Al Gore, and this should give the millions who supported him at least a little pause for thought.  Al Gore doesn't care because he has taken the money and run long ago in a classic scam.  Far worse are the billions of dollars of taxpayers money spent to promote the hoax and finance "alternative" sources of energy that are doomed to be economic failures and disaster.  The most notable of these failures are solar, wind, ethanol and to a lesser degree, geothermal energy. 

Now the people are paying for this huge hoax with lost jobs, increased taxes, a more unstable world, governments hopelessly in debt and an increasingly restive population, as we've just seen in Egypt.  Hang on to your hats, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Peter

Is This The End Of The Man-Caused Global Warming Myth?

If the resignation of Carol Browner as described in the following article signals the end of the great hoax that has been the myth of man-caused global warming, it couldn't happen soon enough. The next step is to terminate the ridiculous and reckless spending on "alternative" sources of energy such as ethanol, wind power, and solar energy. There is nothing wrong with seeking alternatives to oil, gas, and coal, it is wasted and fraudulent spending of taxpayers dollars as funding and subsidies that is the problem. Let's get all of this out in the open and be honest about what the real alternatives and options are.

We've been lied to by people like Al Gore (and Carol Browner) long enough. Read on, and for some background on these issues, search the archives of this blog and others. Books will be written on this whole issue for decades to come and Al Gore will go down in history as thoroughly discredited as the namesake of the "Ponzi Scheme" or all others who defraud the public on a massive scale. The truth will prevail.

Peter

Home » News

Browner Resignation, Obama Omission Could Spell the End of Global Warming Policy, Say Climate Change Analysts

Friday, January 28, 2011
By Matt Cover

Carol Browner speaking at a press conference with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, on Dec. 15, 2008. (Wikipedia Commons)

(CNSNews.com) – The abrupt resignation of Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s global warming czar, and the omission by Obama of global warming from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday could mean that the White House has given up on global warming, according to climate change analysts.

Browner, who announced her resignation Tuesday, led the White House effort to enact global warming legislation and policy. A former director of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, Browner was well regarded in the environmentalist community and served officially as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama left out any reference to global warming or the more ambiguously named climate change, seemingly abandoning what had been one of the most prominent policy areas of the past two years.

Browner’s signature legislative goal – cap and trade legislation – failed in Congress last year when it was not brought up for a vote in the Senate after narrowly passing in the House.

Most recently, Browner was rumored to be in the running to replace Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. Instead of Browner, Obama chose former J.P Morgan Chase executive William Daley.

ClimateDepot.com proprietor Marc Morano told CNSNews.com that Browner’s departure was likely a sign of frustration with Obama and the president’s lack of attention to her signature issues.

“She’s probably frustrated with Obama’s lack of commitment on this issue,” Morano said. “I think Carol Browner is frustrated because she realizes Obama is not the man she thought he was when it comes to global warming.”

President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“Obama is terrified of the issue – it’s never been more than a check-box issue for him – so she was basically reduced to not doing that much of anything and she realized that nothing was going to happen,” he said.

Morano also said that Browner probably read the writing on the wall following the November election that swept a wave of conservative Republicans into Congress, effectively making any new environmental legislation all but impossible.

“I think she realizes that her hands may be tied,” Morano said. “She [probably] doesn’t feel like she can be as effective as she wants to. She is a hardcore, committed greenie [environmentalist].”

Morano said that Obama’s omission of global warming from his State of the Union indicated that he would be “running” away from the issue in 2012 because it has become politically unpopular.

“Browner doesn’t want to be in a position where she’s going to be open to a lot of shots especially with the new Republican House and not be able to do what she wants to do because Obama’s going to be focused on reelection and running terrified of the man-made global warming issue,” said Morano.

“The new political expediency is skepticism,” he said. “Man-made global warming is the new butt of jokes in Washington.”

Myron Ebell, director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, said it was “hard to say” why Browner left, citing her rumored loss of the chief of staff position.

Ebell said that her departure and Obama’s omitting global warming from his speech may indicate that the administration was merely putting global warming policy on the back burner, preferring a stealthier approach.

“It may be that the White House decided, well, we’re off global warming and she’s the point person on global warming so she no longer has a role here,” he said.

“Remember that when Obama acknowledged this fall that cap and trade was not going to be enacted he said that – and this is pretty close to an exact quote – that there’s more than one way to skin that cat,” said Ebell. “And I think what they’re doing is they are adopting a lower-profile policy, a set of policies, to achieve the same goals without ever mentioning global warming or cap and trade or anything that will allow us to refer back to candidate Obama’s comment when he was senator [to the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle] that ‘under my cap and trade plan electric rates will necessarily skyrocket.’”

“They still want that, they just want to achieve it in a way that the public will have a much harder time seeing and therefore opposing,” said Ebell.

The Predictable Failure Of "Alternative Energy"

As has been described and predicted on this blog and many other places on the internet, and notably NOT in the "mainstream media", the so-called alternative or "green" sources of energy are proving to be just a lot of hot air, a waste of time and mainly tax-payer money. I'm referring primarily to large-scale wind and solar energy electrical projects. They are simply not economically viable without government subsidies. With government hand-outs drying up, so are these "alternative energy" plans. The same holds true for ethanol production and geothermal energy.

The real tragedy here, beyond the waste of huge amounts of taxpayer money to the detriment of all, is the fact that that the entire motivation to develop these alternative sources of energy has been based on the enormous hoax that is the concept of man-caused global warming. It is all blamed on the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of "fossil fuels" like oil, gas, and coal. What an utterably idiotic and scientifically untenable theory! Yet so successful has the environmental industry or lobby been over the past several decades, led by shysters and hucksters like James Hanson and Al Gore, that many people have bought into the myth. Indeed an entire industrial and academic cult has grown around this huge hoax.

Fortunately for all of us the man-caused global warming hoax has been exposed and all things relating to it are predictably coming to an end. As far as I am concerned it can not come any time too soon. Read on and search this blog for articles and information supporting and outlining the demise of the myth of man-caused global warming, or what is now popularly and ridiculously called "climate change".
Peter

Investors Abandon Green Energy in Wake of Huge New Gas and Oil Find

Written by John O'Sullivan, Suite 101 20 January 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Huge new recent discoveries in gas, oil and rare mineral deposits see major investors and governments bail out of a collapsing green energy market.

Environmental investments look to be going up in smoke according to Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (January 20, 2011). Peiser presents a swath of news reports making distinctly unpleasant reading both for environmentalists and green investors.

European Governments Signal End to Renewable Energy ‘Bubble’

Peiser shows the rush away from green energy began in earnest in December 2010 when first a pro-green Spain slashed funding for wind projects by 35% and declared photovoltaic plants would be cut by 45%.

Read rest…

Blowin' In The Wind.......The Slow Death Of Wind Energy

There is an old saying, "Money talks and bullshit walks". Few ideas deserve this criticism more than the concept that wind power or wind turbines can generate electricity as an economic alternative to oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy. About the only thing more stupid is the whole idea that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming, or should I say "climate change". This grand hoax is coming to a pitiful end, investors are taking their money elsewhere, as documented in the following article. The "smart money" is fed up with the ridiculous alarmist lies of the environmentalists promoting wind energy as a solution to the world's energy needs. Al Gore ought to be hung in effigy from every windmill in the world by the millions of people who lost money and jobs because of his lies and deception. An inconveniet truth indeed!

Peter

Climate-change funds shift focus from wind, solar

12:01 am ET 12/10/2010- MarketWatch Databased News

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The poor performance of some sectors aiming to slow climate change is pushing money managers to cast further afield for investments that both carry green credentials and are likely to post better returns.

Some renewable-energy stocks, such as those in solar and wind industries, have fallen spectacularly in recent years, belying hopes that they were poised to break out.

Money managers say this poor performance is in part due to a lack of hoped-for policies to help these industries grow. As a result, say the managers, they are looking at other areas of the market that are part of the climate-change story, such as recycling and energy efficiency. Even eBay Inc , as a promoter of reusing goods, fits the bill.

"Nobody's questioning the long-term prospects, market share or gains of [renewable energy] sectors, but over the medium it's not been that good," said Vipin Ahuja, manager of Allianz RCM EcoTrends Fund . "So people are looking elsewhere for sustainable stories for the next couple of years."

Ahuja's fund, which he joined about one year ago, is down 19% a year in the past three years, according to data from Morningstar Inc.

The deteriorating prospect for new policies to combat climate change has been palpable at the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancun, where delegates from nearly 200 countries met to hash out a possible extension of the Kyoto Protocol and other policies.

The more sober atmosphere this year, particularly compared to the gathering's predecessor in Copenhagen, reflected toned- down hopes the world's largest polluters would reach agreement on policies to combat global warming and promote renewable energy. Read MarketWatch's coverage of the Cancun climate talks.

Those downgraded expectations have left their mark on solar-panel stocks, once Wall Street darlings.

In mid-2008 First Solar Inc.'s stock trading at close to $300. Today, it's at about $132.

It's a similar story with many of First Solar's peers, including SunPower Corp. , whose stock has fallen from close to $100 to about $12 in the past 30 months. The MAC Solar Energy Index is down an annualized 27% in the past three years.

Others in the renewable energy space have also suffered, such as wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems , which has seen its stock price fall from more than $140 in 2008 to less than $30 a share this week.

One example of how politics has hurt the renewable sector is the failure to pass a federal renewable portfolio standards policy. The rule would have forced utility companies across the U.S. to supply a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources.

"That discouraged many utilities from signing, for example, agreements for wind [farm] installations," said Colm O'Connor, a portfolio manager at Kleinwort Benson Investors who is part of the management team on Calvert Global Alternative Energy Fund, which is down an annualized 26% over the past three years, according to Morningstar.

Looking elsewhere

"In the past year we've avoided wind and solar investments," said Richard Mercado, manager of London-based F&C Global Climate Opportunities Fund.

Merchado said the fund has been looking more at the natural gas sector, and -- in a theme several money managers repeated -- also at so-called mainstream companies with a climate-change slant. For example, eBay is one of the fund's investments as it "promotes re-using products and not throwing them out," said Merchado.

Merchado said the most represented sector in the fund is energy efficiency. This focus chimed with that of other managers, several of whom pointed to developments in LED technology as an example of the trend. As the costs come down, use of LEDs in anything from televisions to traffic lights increases, and lighting for commercial spaces becomes possible.

Another example of looking at efficient, rather than renewable, energy is demand-response technology. These services let utilities manage consumer demand more efficiently by relaying energy usage data back to providers.

O'Connor said he plays demand response by investing in meter makers such as EnerNOC Inc. and Comverge Inc. .

Ben Allen, director of research at Parnassus Investments, said that since 2007 his firm has invested in Waste Management Inc. , which he said has been focusing on energy efficiency by turning waste into electricity. Another company Parnassus likes is Cooper Industries PLC, in part because of the company's growing LED business.

Allianz RCM's Ahuja said his fund's holdings in LED-related companies went from zero to about 15% in the past year.

Sticking with it

But though solar and wind have suffered recently, that's not the whole tale. For example, while there's no federal renewable portfolio standard, O'Connor said that 29 states have their own standards. And the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus bill -- created two programs of credits to promote renewable power projects.

What's more, Ahuja noted that global demand for solar energy grew 100% in 2009. And, he said, some solar companies have seen their share prices grow, or at least hold up better than others, in recent years, such as China's Trina Solar Ltd. and Yingli Green Energy Holdings .

Some sectors in the climate change theme, such as renewables, are subject to policy volatility, said Bruce Kahn, senior investment analyst at DB Climate Change Advisors, a unit of Deutsche Bank .

"I agree that the area is struggling in the short term, but we're investing in the long-term trend and trading around the volatility," he said. "It tells me that you can't pick sectors when dealing with this kind of volatility -- it's a stock-pickers universe."

General Electric (GE) Waking Up To Fact That GreenEnergy (and global warming) Is A BUST

Destroying and disproving the myth of man-caused global warming has had a significant effect on General Electric, one of the myth's primary supporters. Apparently GE has seen the light, come to their senses and finally realizes that the entire premise of man-caused global warming has been one gigantic hoax. Search this blog for articles on GE to follow the history of these schemes, scandals, lies, and deceptions. Look for similar changes in focus and attitude toward global warming, climate change and all it entails.
Peter

The browning of GE

3:36 pm ET 12/13/2010 - MarketWatch Databased News

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- General Electric's decision to buy Britain's Wellstream Holdings PLC is clearly about securing a spot for itself in Brazil's booming deepwater oil industry.

But it also offers an interesting counterpoint to GE's own carefully groomed public energy persona.

For the past few years, GE has been busy prying open business opportunities in green energy. As part of the push, it created a separate R&D clean-tech unit called Ecomagination, slapping a bright green GE logo on the enterprise to visually drive home the point.

The company is now deep into wind power (turbines), it's a huge proponent of electric vehicles (recharging stations), and a major player in the developing a "smart" energy grid (smart meters) -- programs that also happen to be backed by billions of dollars in government stimulus funding.

So why is GE plunking down $1.3 billion to buy Wellstream Holdngs , a company that makes pipeline and other equipment for the offshore oil industry? Read about the GE-Wellstream deal.

Wellstream is an interesting choice because much of its operations and revenue are in Brazil, a country that's emerging as a global energy powerhouse because of its rich offshore oil fields, surplus of sugar-based ethanol fuels and extensive hydropower. GE simply wants to be in the mix.

The oil component of that mix is certainly looking more attractive than it did when GE launched Ecomagination a couple of years ago, before the Great Recession.

GE couldn't at the time have seen just how deep the recession would be, or what impact it would have on budgets aimed at "going green." They also couldn't have foreseen how the Cancun Climate Change Summit, which wrapped up this weekend, would end up being about as toothless as COP15, the Copenhagen climate change summit a year ago.

A major recession and an international stalemate over imposing stricter carbon controls are not helping GE's green technology sales. And who knows how long government stimuli are going to last, especially given the results of the mid-term elections here at home.

By buying Wellstream, GE is doing what all conglomerates do. It's diversifying. It's also plunking down a big chunk of cash to make sure it's got a piece of the action in the overseas offshore oil industry. That might not sound very green to an environmentalist, but given the current economic climate, it simply sounds like GE hedging its bet.

-- Jim Jelter