Thursday 25 August 2011

Seif el-Gaddafi - once lauded by the NYT for his views on global warming

Saif al-Islam, who received his PhD from  the London School of Economics, also gave the LSE  a grant of £1.5 million

It is worth remembering that Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, 38, son of Muammar el-Gaddafi was until recently the darling of the liberal establishment in Europe and the U.S. In 2007 for example, the New York Times, an ardent promoter of the human induced global warming myth, run this adulatory portrait of of Seif:

A Son Radiates His Own Light in His Father’s Libya


The thin man with a shaved head smiled slightly as he made his way to a podium erected amid Greek ruins, a serious presence in a boisterous crowd that gathered last week to celebrate plans for an eco-development region near this town in the deserts of eastern Libya.
In a skullcap and white tunic with a gold-trimmed vest, the man talked slowly, deliberately, even a bit nervously, presenting data in English about desertification, oil and carbon emissions. He corrected even the smallest grammatical errors in the printed speech he was reading.
Climate change is a global problem, but global solutions start with local solutions,” he said in faintly accented English.
Societies, he said, should be built in a way that allowed them to reduce greenhouse gases. “The day will come when oil will run out, and if we wait for that it will be too late,” he said.
The man — part scholar, part monk, part model, part policy wonk — was Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the powerful 33-year-old son of Libya’s extroverted and impulsive president, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. He is, in short, the un-Qaddafi.

Read the entire article here

Of course, the reporting has lately changed:

When the Libyan uprisings began in February 2011, the younger Mr. Qaddafi backed his father's violent crackdown from the start, promising "rivers of blood.''
In June 2011, the International Criminal Court in The Hague called him Libya's "de facto prime minister'' as it issued arrest warrants for him, his father and the country's chief of intelligence

PS

Seif is still on the run, but if he is captured alive, he will not become the "green" leader of Libya that New York Times expected him to become. He will have to address some more serious questions than dubious climate change when facing the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Al Gore and the IPCC warmists have lost a leading supporter in Africa.

No comments: