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Outgoing United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer sent an urgent message to wealthy industrialized nations on Tuesday reminding them about previous promises to help the world’s poorer nations to adapt to a changing world due to global warming.  Without a firm show of funds, he said the pursuit of a global climate agreement would remain a question mark for many as the December COP-16 talks in Cancun grow closer.

de Boer urged the industrialized nations to quickly present the $30 billion in aid they have pledged to deliver over the 2010-2012 period to help poor nations fight climate change impacts such as increasingly severe droughts and floods.

“Times are harsh, especially in Europe, but $10 billion a year for three years from all industrialized countries is not an impossible call,” he said.

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In the conservative world of science, conclusions are couched in caveats and statements are chosen carefully to not seem overwrought. And in the world of climate science that’s no different. For example, in their 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a series of defined levels of certainty about their conclusions that looked like this:

• “Virtually certain” (considered more than 99% likely to be correct)

• “Very likely” (more than 90%)

• “Likely” (more than 66%)

• “More likely than not” (more than 50%)

• “Unlikely” (less than 33%)

• “Very unlikely” (less than 10%)

• “Exceptionally unlikely” (less than 5%)

So in the IPCC’s final report they made statements like, “Global climate change is “very likely” to have a human cause.”

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Good News! Climate change is all a big mistake! This remarkable finding was revealed by Michael Asher in Daily Tech – a publication more focused on iPhones than atmospheric science.

Asher’s piece Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 confidently states that “Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago…”

Strange. That’s not what scientists are saying. Just last month NASA released a chilling report showing that between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003 – enough to fill Chesapeake Bay 21 times.

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Among the most galling visions, as U.S. carmakers stand cap-in-hand before the American people, is the site of a preening GM Vice President Bob Lutz pretending to be green.

Lutz is firmly on the record as someone who is too lazy, too ideologically hidebound or just too stupid to look at the latest robust and frightening science of climate change. He has dismissed global warming as “a total crock of shit,” saying that he puts his faith in the signatories of the laughable Oregon petition.

Lutz has tried to reassure us in the past by saying, “My thoughts on what has or hasn’t been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors.” Which raises an interesting question: why would Congress bet billions on a policy maker who would dismiss out of hand the biggest environmental crisis in human history, and then go on making self-destructive decisions that drive his company to the brink of bankruptcy?

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The DeSmogBlog research team has completed a full backgrounder on the Alliance for Energy and Econmic Growth that is run mainly by the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute.

The Alliance for Energy and Econimic Growth (AEEG) was founded in 2001 and has been a major attack dog on climate and renewable energy policy for the US Chamber of Commerce.

While it is unclear who the founding members of the AEEG are the website registration currently lists both the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute as contacts. The staff email address for the US Chamber of Commerce is listed as the main contact.

The current management team of the AEEG (PDF) includes many of the most influential players in the US energy and transportation lobby…