The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is under attack by some of its members for its opposition to the Cap and Trade bill. The Natural Resources Defense Council, through its blogs and through the website whodoesthechamberrepresent.org maintains a running watch on those altruistic companies who have either quit the Chamber or publicly disputed its Climate Change position.

To the NRDC, companies that stick with the Chamber’s anti-Cap and Trade position are motivated strictly by greed, whereas the companies listed above are driven by the purest of altruism.

U.S. CHAMBER CLIMATE CREDIBILITY CRISIS COUNTER:

Quit the U.S. Chamber over climate: Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG, Levi Strauss & Co, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Mohawk Paper.

Quit the U.S. Chamber Board over climate: Nike.

Refused to join the U.S. Chamber over climate: NRG Energy.

Companies that say the U.S. Chamber doesn’t represent their views on climate: Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Alcoa, Duke, Entergy, Microsoft, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, Seventh Generation, Dow, PEPCO, Cisco Systems …

Altruistic? Ehhhhh. Let’s follow the money.

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The world of Defense procurement is tough, if you’ve ever served as a program officer inside the Pentagon you know that funding projects is a bloodsport. Services and program officers compete relentlessly for resources and contractors, usually with a wink and a nod from inside the Pentagon, carry on the fight with the various appropriators when battles are lost in the Pentagon. Bismarck’s aphorism about laws and sausages can be just as aptly applied to the purchase of weapons systems.

Sometimes, however, things give the appearance of having gone just too far.

Such is the case with the tussling on Capitol Hill over whether or not the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) should be fielded with the engine manufactured only by one company or whether there should be an alternative engine available for the JSF. This is the type of struggle that goes on everyday on Capitol Hill and naturally the single producer, in this case the estimable firm of Pratt & Whitney, would prefer a monopoly while the competing team of G-E/Rolls Royce, also great engine manufacturers in their own right, would prefer that they had a piece of the pie. Both motivations are perfectly understandable.

What follows is a cautionary tale which illustrates the damage that can be done the reputation of a group which either actually sells its brand or casually dismisses the dangers of perceptions of conflicts of interest. This story is about a high stakes Defense procurement, the engine maker Pratt & Whitney and the watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste.

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A soon-to-be released study of the health effects of living near wind turbines challenges the popular image of the graceful, benign windmill gently coaxing free megawatts from the passing zephyrs.

Dr. Nina Pierpont, a New York pediatrician, has studied subjects who live near windmills in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Ireland and Canada for the last five years. She concludes that some, but not all, of the near-windmill dwellers show signs of a newly-identified health risk which she calls Wind Turbine Syndrome, or WTS.

Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies ‘wind turbine syndrome’

[WTS] is the disruption or abnormal stimulation of the inner ear’s vestibular system by turbine infrasound and low-frequency noise, the most distinctive feature of which is a group of symptoms which she calls visceral vibratory vestibular disturbance, or VVVD*. They cause problems ranging from internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and tachycardia – increased heart rate.** Turbine noise can also trigger nightmares and other disorders in children as well as harm cognitive development in the young, she claims.

*[A girl I dated once told me she had VVVD. She stuttered, too.]

**[I experienced symptoms of WTS during Obama's last televised press conference. Memo to self: Search for nearby wind turbine.]

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Promoted from the diaries by Skanderbeg.  Do be sure to read down to the tabulation of the incipient green oligopoly that’s trying to coalesce around all this “AGW” nonsense….

After the “global warming” terminology morphed into “climate change”, the EPA dedicated a large section of their website to the issue. With EPA now able to provide the comprehensive information, the challenge to curtail “climate change” is now up to the Obama Administration.

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Stockholder meetings are rarely dramatic events, but things got heated at Wednesday’s GE meeting of shareholders. GE CEO Jeffery Immelt and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker had to field about ten questions from from shareholders unhappy with the leftward bias of the company’s cable outlet MSNBC and a charge that it’s business channel CNBC is being pushed in the same direction:

First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which Immelt and.. Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.

Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.

During the woman’s follow-up question, her microphone was apparently cut off. A short time later, Waters asked a question and his mic was cut, too.

“The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt,” one attendee said. “Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it.”

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