Yesterday the Attorney General announced that an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, in Washington, D.C. has been foiled.

The Saudi Ambassador was to be killed by a bombing of a restaurant he frequents in the capital, so many others would have been killed and wounded.

The plot also involved attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.

Barry Rubin writes at PajamasMedia:

The case is still being developed, and it isn’t clear whether the origin of this plot goes back to Tehran.

By which he means: Did the government of Iran order the attacks?

That does not need to be asked. In a despotism there are no free agents who decide for private reasons to attack another country. Although there is division among the internal powers of Iran – between the supreme “spiritual leader”, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and the president, Ahmadinejad; between either or both of them and the Revolutionary Guards; and probably between factions in every section of government and the military – it had to be one or some or most or all of them who approved such a plan as this.

According to ABC’s sources, Manssor Arbabsiar — an Iranian American living in Texas — approached an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, thinking he was speaking with a member of a Mexican drug gang for help in the proposed attacks. He said he was acting on behalf of a cousin, Gholam Shakuri, who might be a Revolutionary Guard official involved in terrorist operations.

He offered $1.5 million for the killing, with a $100,000 down payment in two installments being paid by Arbabsiar while on a visit to Iran.

These two men have been charged with conspiracy to kill, among other charges. Arbabsiar, who is now cooperating with the prosecution, also offered to provide opium in large quantities for the Mexican drug cartels. Apparently, the FBI has a lot of evidence, including recordings of meetings and telephone calls with Arbabsiar.

Reuters reports more details:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said one of two men charged in the plot, both originally from Iran, had been arrested and confessed. The other, who was still at large, was described in the criminal complaint as being a member of the elite Quds Force, which is part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. …

U.S. authorities arrested the other man, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29. …

The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help, but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The confidential source, who was not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.

Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar …

Rubin comments:

Let’s assume that this story is accurate. What’s most important here is not the innate sensationalism of this dramatic story, but its political implications. An Iranian official — perhaps two according to the indictment — is directly linked with a plan to stage terrorist attacks on American soil in which Americans would certainly have been killed or injured. This amounts to an act of war. 

Indeed, it is the first time in modern history that a foreign government has been caught planning a major terrorist attack on American soil.

President Barack Obama, Homeland Security, and other top agencies and officials have the evidence and full briefings into this matter if they choose to access them. What effect would this have on U.S. foreign policy?

What effect should it have?

Already, they have had high-quality intelligence. We know this from the congressional testimony of Defense and State Department officials:

– Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

– Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders on its soil and letting them plan attacks on America from that safe haven.

– Iran is training and supplying the Taliban with weapons and training to attack and kill Americans.

– Iran is deeply involved in attacking and killing U.S. personnel and citizens in Iraq.

And that’s not all. Is this sufficient evidence to persuade Obama that Iran regards itself as being at war with the United States? That the top priority of U.S. Middle East policy — and very possibly the number-one priority of U.S. foreign policy generally — should be to counter Iran and revolutionary Islamism? And I don’t mean by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezballah as moderates!

Yes, it should have been the top priority years ago, but Obama has continued to hold out his hand in friendship to the monstrous regime.

Will there be a change now, Rubin asks.

Is this case going to be the smoking gun — or, perhaps, the smoking bomb — that gets U.S. policy on the right course? It should be, though I suspect it isn’t. …

Does Obama even understand the significance of it?

He has known about the plot since June, so the question is, “Why break it now?”

Jihad Watch asks that question and suggests an answer with another question:

 To divert attention from his spiraling scandals and plummeting fortunes?

But there is another – or additional – possible reason for the timing.

The announcement of the plot was made by Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been issued with a subpoena to appear before the the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in connection with the  “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal. Was it timed to make him seem extremely competent at his job and even perhaps indispensable?

If so, it’s a miscalculation. To have the Attorney-General make the announcement is to indicate that the administration sees the plot as a problem for law-enforcement, when in fact it is a grave act of aggression by a foreign power against the United States, and as such should be understood as a cause of war.

It has long been apparent that Obama hates to make decisions. And he hates to attack an Islamic country unless other Islamic countries give him the nod. This time, of course, Saudi Arabia will be pleased to have Americans risk their lives in an assault on Iran to punish the regime and prevent it developing into a nuclear-armed power. Obama would rather the Israelis bombed Iranian nuclear installations (especially – we suspect – as their doing so would then allow him to condemn Israel for an act of  aggression).

So will he or won’t he strike back at Iran? Our guess is that he won’t. He’ll go to the UN and ask “the international community” – a wraith lodged permanently in the mind of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – to consider setting a date for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what warnings of what actions might be sent to the Iranian government without provoking it too severely.

From PowerLine

Down with evil corporations

(Hat tip Andrew M)

We know not to expect a confessed atheist to stand as a conservative candidate for the presidency. We simply omit the religious beliefs of candidates from the factors we consider in our assessment of them, unless they themselves make religion an important part of their policies.

In the present line-up there are a pair each of Catholics, Santorum and Gingrich;  Baptists, Cain and Paul; Evangelical Christians, Bachmann and Perry;  and Mormons, Romney and Huntsman. And Gary Johnson is a Lutheran.

To us it makes no difference what name their brand of superstition bears. We politely overlook the lot. If they’re not embarrassed to display a belief in the supernatural, we’ll treat it as we would a disfigurement it would be rude to stare at.

But when believers themselves make a big point of trumpeting their own nonsense and denigrating everyone else’s – that’s entertainment.

Send in the clown. His name is Dr Robert Jeffress, and here first, at his webesite, is what he has to say about … Dr Robert Jeffress:

Dr. Robert Jeffress is the senior pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Dr. Robert Jeffress’ bold, biblical, and practical approach to ministry …

as opposed to other pastors’ timid, anti-biblical, and impractical approach to theirs? …

has made him one of the country’s most respected evangelical leaders.

Respected, that is, by the 10,000 members of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

He goes on to inform us that –

Vision America [an organization that works to get the religious into active politics] honored Dr. Jeffress in 2006 with the Daniel Award for his steadfast commitment and boldness in proclaiming the uncompromising Word of God.

Uncompromising? The Word of God is “uncompromising”? With what? “Uncompromising” suggests firm consistency, so by “the Word of God” he  cannot mean the Christian bible. Great anthology of fiction though it is, it’s a thicket of contradictions.

So what can he mean?

We suspect he means he is uncompromising in his scorn for all religious beliefs except his own particular set, on the certainty of which he will not be swayed a fraction of an inch.

And – yes!  We find next, reported here, that –

 On his show Pathway To Victory, Jeffress said that Satan is behind the Roman Catholic Church. …

Jeffress calls the Catholic church a result of “the Babylonian mystery religion” found in the Book of Revelation, and says the Catholic Church represents “the genius of Satan.” …

This is the Babylonian mystery religion that spread like a cult throughout the entire world. The high priests of that fake religion, that false religion, the high priests of that religion would wear crowns that resemble the heads of fish, that was in order to worship the fish god Dagon, and on those crowns were written the words, ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the bridge between Satan and man. That phrase ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the Roman equivalent of it is Pontifex Maximus. It was a title that was first carried by the Caesars and then the Emperors and finally by the Bishop of the Rome, Pontifex Maximus, the Keeper of the Bridge.

You can see where we’re going with this. It is that Babylonian mystery religion that infected the early church, one of the churches it infected was the church of Pergamos, which is one of the recipients of the Book of Revelation. And the early church was corrupted by this Babylonian mystery religion, and today the Roman Catholic Church is the result of that corruption.

Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, ‘pastor how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation.’

Isn’t that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don’t do it with purple paper and red ink, you’re not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.

And that’s what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.

So he won’t be voting for Santorum or Gingrich.

Next, on Mormonism:

“It is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity,” Jeffress said, “It is a cult.”

So he will not be voting for Romney or Huntsman? Right:

Jeffress went on to explain that many evangelical Christians will not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and therefore not “indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God.” He even claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith “speaks to the integrity issue” as it explains why he has reversed his position on abortion rights, among other issues. … “He is not a “true, born again follower of Christ.”

Jeffress does, however, enthusiastically support Perry:

Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit with a fiery endorsement.  

Chris Moody, writing at Yahoo! News, comments:

Labeling Mormonism as a cult does not put Jeffress outside of the Southern Baptist mainstream. The denomination officially recognizes Romney’s church as a cult, and has done so for years. …

“The Southern Baptist Convention has officially labeled Mormonism as a cult, so this is not some right-wing extremist view. It’s a view of the largest Protestant denomination in the world,” [Jeffress] said. “I think there are a lot of people who will not publicly say that’s an issue because they don’t want to appear to be bigoted, but for a lot of evangelical Christians, that is a huge issue, even if it’s unspoken.”

So what is the difference between a cult and a religion? We googled that question and found no direct answer but this description of a cult:

1. Thinking in terms of us versus them with total alienation from “them.”

2. The intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members.

3. The charismatic cult leader. Cultism usually involves some sort of belief that outside the cult all is evil and threatening; inside the cult is the special path to salvation through the cult leader and his teachings.

Which seems to fit Dr Robert Jeffress’s views, technique, boastfulness, and doctrine.

Here is the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of a cult: 

1. formal religious veneration: worship

2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also: its body of adherents.

And what is a religion?

1. the service or worship of God or [sic] the supernatural

2. commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

And “cult” is given as a synonym of “religion”.

So the answer is: no difference. Mormonism is a cult, Christianity is a cult, Judaism is a cult, Islam is a cult, Hinduism is a cult, Buddhism is a cult …

But please don’t let that stop Dr Robert Jeffress. His fresh-faced vanity, his belief in Satan and eternal life, his chat about the Blood of Christ and Salvation, his contempt for the fish god Dagon …

All divinely ludicrous.

It is not only the probability if a nuclear bomb that is to be feared from Iran’s persistent development of nuclear power.

According to this article, Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor is likely to repeat the disaster of Chernobyl:

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a “tragic disaster for humankind,” according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a “great likelihood” that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document …

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by “second-class engineers” who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world’s most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has “no serious training program” for staff or a contingency plan for accidents. …

Bushehr was started in 1975 when the Shah of Iran awarded the contract to Kraftwerk Union of Germany. When the Germans pulled out after the 1979 Islamic revolution the reactors were far from finished. They sustained serious damage in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The document claims airstrikes left the steel containment vessel with 1,700 holes, letting in hundreds of tons of rainwater.

The regime revived the project in the 1990s, but with one reactor only. It wanted a prestige project to show the Islamic Republic could match the scientific achievements of the West.

It may also have wanted a cover for developing its nuclear weapons program — and the opportunities for personal enrichment that the project gave Iran’s elite. This time Iran employed Russian engineers, who had not built a foreign nuclear reactor since the Soviet Union started to collapse in 1989.

Russia’s experts wanted to start from scratch. The Iranians, having already spent more than $1 billion, insisted they built on the German foundations.

This involved adapting a structure built for a vertical German reactor to take a horizontal Russian reactor — an unprecedented operation. Of the 80,000 pieces of German equipment, many had become corroded, obsolete or lacked manuals and paperwork.

“The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans’ and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses,” the document says. It goes on to claim that “much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers,” who consider the project a “holiday.”

The first victims of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Iran would be the Iranian people. We wonder how many of them are aware of the danger. Even if many of them are, there is nothing effective they can do about it.

It would be a boon for them and the rest of the world if Bushehr were bombed.

The Environmental Protection Agency is a curse on the American nation, and must be abolished.

Its innumerable regulations “to protect the environment”  make energy more expensive, and consumers poorer.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

Those [in the US] who fancy themselves to be green progressives are about to get some unwelcome “progress.” Thanks in part to environmental rules, electricity bills are headed for double-digit increases. …

A review of regulatory filings by the news source found that “utilities are seeking permission to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars in new charges to customers to help upgrade aging infrastructure and build new or retrofitted power plants that comply with tougher environmental regulations.” …

Yes, the environmentalists’ bill is now coming due. Some cost hikes are unavoidable. The electrical grid, like other infrastructure, needs to be updated and improved. But the costs due to “tougher environmental regulations” are avoidable. …

Trying to scrub and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, for instance, is counterproductive. CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s a naturally occurring gas necessary for life on Earth.

But the environmentalists are extreme in their loathing of man-made carbon emissions, and their agenda is supported by many policymakers.

Remember when a 2008 presidential candidate said if he’s elected his cap-and-trade policy would bankrupt anyone who tried to build a coal-fired power plant on his watch?

Well, President Obama has yet to get a cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, yet he is seeing a version of the future he wanted unfold. American Electric Power, which provides electricity to customers in 11 states, plans to retire five of those hated-by-the-left coal plants, which generate enough power to light 3 million homes; retrofit a number of other coal plants at a cost of $8 billion; and add at least two natural gas plants by the end of this decade. …

AEP is not the only power company that is having to pass on the costs of decarbonization and other environmental regulations to its rate payers. The entire industry has to play the game whose rules are fixed in Washington and state capitals. 

Because of this game, “consumers,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40% to 60% in the next few years” due to “pending environmental regulations” that will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation’s electricity, more expensive to operate. “Many,” continued the Tribune, “are expected to be shuttered.”

This is only the beginning of higher prices.

National Economic Research Associates estimates that the cross-state air pollution and proposed maximum achievable control technology rules could cost the electric power industry $21 billion annually (which will be paid by customers), kill an average of 183,000 jobs a year, and reduce the typical family’s disposable income by $270 a year.

The people behind the policies that drive power bills higher will argue that their motives are pure. They’d say they’re simply trying to make the planet a healthier place.

They’re unlikely to say that their real motive is to gain ever more political power, but gain it they do – and bear the burden with beatific equanimity.

More expensive energy cannot make people healthier, only poorer and colder.

As the  IBD editorial rightly concludes:

They  ignore how much cheap energy has promoted health and accelerated the prosperity that has contributed to our wellness. As such, there’s nothing progressive about the environmentalists’ agenda.

Dousing the fire on a human body

The picture is from the Religion of Peace, showing a woman trying to put out the fire on the burning body of a bomb victim with water from a plastic bucket.

This happened on October 4, 2011, in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, when over one-hundred people were killed in a powerful truck bomb by al-Shabab terrorists.

They carry out their mass murders, abductions, and tortures, in the name of Islam.

Islam orders Muslims to kill non-Muslims, but forbids them to kill other Muslims. The victims of this bombing were almost certainly all Muslims. Many of them were students. The lone perpetrator believed the students were not doing their Islamic duty, according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Somali suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people, including students seeking scholarships, in an attack near the education ministry was a school dropout who had declared that young people should forget about secular education and instead wage jihad.

Bashar Abdullahi Nur, who detonated a massive blast Tuesday that covered the capital in dust more than a half-mile away, had given an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio station.

“Now those who live abroad are taken to a college and never think about the hereafter. They never think about the harassed Muslims,” he said. …

Dozens were wounded, including Somalia’s deputy health minister. …

The attack took place near a building housing several government ministries, and it was not immediately clear what was the precise target. However, it is not the first time the al Qaeda-linked militants have targeted students. In 2009, the al-Shabab group attacked a graduation ceremony, killing medical students and doctors. …

The group considers the secular education as a form of Western invasion into the minds of the Muslims.

Obviously nowhere near invasive enough.

Pat Condell tells the truth about the Palestinians.

Although some of their leaders imported the idea of nationalism from Europe in the 20th century, it is not a motivating cause among Arabs. Tribe and religion are what matter to them. They regard the existence of Israel as an offense against Islam, and their hatred of it has nothing to do with territory, boundaries, settlements, states, no matter that their spokesmen pretend otherwise when they address the Western media or the United Nations. Islam teaches that all non-Muslims are worthy only of hatred, subjugation, and ignominious death.

This article is by Giulio Meotti from Front Page:

What can motivate the current Palestinian society to … the most horrible form of childhood molestation and child sacrifice? The way in which the Palestinian Authority educates children and society is a key indicator of its true intentions.

Convincing ordinary individuals to sacrifice themselves to kill the Jews is not easy, it requires subhuman ideas and institutions. The logo of the “Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations” – on their website and on top of their official statements at the U.N. – shows the Palestinian Authority’s claim to a Palestine that stretches throughout the entire historical entity of the former Palestine mandate, which had nothing to do with those who call themselves Palestinians today and everything to do with a national homeland for the Jewish people..

Palestinian Media Watch also revealed that Mahmoud Abbas chose an icon of genocidal anti-Semitism, the mother of four terrorists, one of whom killed seven Israeli civilians and attempted to killed twelve others, as the person to launch the statehood campaign with the United Nations.

In a widely publicized event, Abbas had Latifa Abu Hmeid lead the procession to the UN offices in Ramallah and hand over a letter for the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. It is a measure of how deeply the ethos of martyrdom has penetrated Abbas’ policy, hailed for its “moderation”.

For as long as the PA continues to foment violence and promote hatred, the number of youngsters willing to blow themselves up or to slit Israeli throats will unfortunately continue to mount. The Palestinian Authority is still a font of incitement …

Palestinian leadership now seeks self-determination at the United Nations, but its daily policy shouts to the world that even after statehood, the fight must continue against the Jews. …

There is no precedent in the history of humanity for this god of martyrdom.

Well, perhaps there is. There were long dark ages when untold numbers of Christians sought martyrdom as a qualification to enter their heaven, often through murderous encounters with other Christians over differences of doctrine. And the lust for martyrdom must have been the motive of at least some of the Christian warriors of the Crusades. That sort of thing is not done so much now by Christians. But many Christians, notably on the political left, condone and even actively encourage Palestinian terrorism.

Generations of PA Arabs are taught to see … terrorist operations as a way to “open the door to Paradise” …  It’s the highest level of paradise, the one reserved for prophets and saints.

Signs on the walls of Palestinian kindergartens currently proclaim their students as “the shaheeds (martyrs) of tomorrow”. Elementary school principals commend their students for wanting to “tear [Zionists’] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know”.

Terrorism is sanctified throughout all the PA areas. The streets are plastered with posters glorifying the suicide bombers. Children trade “martyr cards” instead of Pokemon cards. Necklaces with pictures of terrorists are very popular.

But are there not some Muslims who dislike the teaching of hatred?

This comes from AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA),  an English-language Shia television channel headquartered in London:

Saudis export anti-Christian and anti-Jewish textbooks across the world.

Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia’s schools contain virulent forms of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry that continue to fuel intolerance and violence around the globe, says a new report.

The problem is far greater than the five million students in Saudi Arabia who use these texts every day, said Nina Shea, director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“Because of the Saudis’ great oil wealth, it is able to disseminate its textbooks far and wide,” she wrote in the report, Ten Years On.

“[These textbooks] are posted on the Saudi Education Ministry’s website and are shipped and distributed free by a vast Saudi-sponsored Sunni infrastructure to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world.

“This is not just hate mongering, it’s promoting violence,” she said in an interview. It is exporting terrorism through textbooks.

Christians are referred to as “swine” and Jews as “apes,” while being blamed for much of the world’s ills.

She notes in the report that since the Saudis control Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, they can “disseminate its religious materials among the millions of Muslims making the Hajj each year. Hence, these teachings can have a wide and deep influence.”

ABNA is apparently quoting Nina Shea with approval. But are these Shias exposing these facts about the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia out of genuine disgust or only because they are their doctrinal enemies?

The greatest real threat at present to the non-Muslim world is the aggressive Shia regime of Iran with its active pursuit of nuclear arms.

Although this article from PowerLine by Steven Hayward, referring to another in Nature, doesn’t deal specifically with retractions of scientific papers on climate change, it provides a needed lesson to those warmists who argue that consensus is in itself a scientific proof.

[B]ehind at least half of [the retractions] lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or faked data — and the other half are admissions of embarrassing mistakes. But retraction notices are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the Web of Science is on track to index more than 400 — even though the total number of papers published has risen by only 44% over the past decade.

There’s a lot more here to ponder, such as the essentially hollow and meaningless nature of modern peer review, and the increasingly tribal and ideological drift of much of the academic scientific establishment. …

Elsewhere in this week’s issue of Nature, Dan Sarewitz of Arizona State University, one of the truly honest brokers in the academic science and policy world, offers a terrific essay on what’s wrong with so-called “consensus” science reports. …

When scientists wish to speak with one voice, they typically do so in a most unscientific way: the consensus report. The idea is to condense the knowledge of many experts into a single point of view that can settle disputes and aid policy-making. But the process of achieving such a consensus often acts against these goals, and can undermine the very authority it seeks to project. . .

The very idea that science best expresses its authority through consensus statements is at odds with a vibrant scientific enterprise. Consensus is for textbooks; real science depends for its progress on continual challenges to the current state of always-imperfect knowledge.

Yet it was probably peer review criticism that revealed the errors in at least some of the retracted papers. The fact that so many more papers are being retracted is a healthy sign. To what extent, one may wonder, is the international row over climate-change claims and counter-claims responsible for the rise.

What seems to have happened with the papers on man-made global warming (AGW) is that a politicized posse of immoral scientists did everything they could to silence criticism.

They wanted AGW to be believed like a religion, with faith rather than reason. That made them betrayers of science itself, its enemies: anti-scientists.

If their thesis was true, why did they need to fake data (the “hockey-stick” graph), suppress facts (the Climategate emails), and conspire to block criticism?

Because – one must conclude – they wanted “scientific fact” to support policies that mattered more to them than truth. See here and here and here.

Change happens. Warming happens. It’s the causes of change that are in dispute – and whether it is a threat, so serious that impoverishing redistribute policies must be enacted by governments to save the earth from doom. In regard to which, there is this statement (from this source):

In the room where you are sitting right now, the temperature difference between the floor and the ceiling is about one degree. That’s the kind of imperceptible change we’re talking about — over the next century!

Arguments supporting and disputing that are invited.