Disenlightenment 69
Roger Simon looked in on the Copenhagen Mysteries. These apt observations of his are quoted by Power Line:
On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then, before the Caudillo had concluded his tedious remarks and long before the “meaningful deal” between the world leaders was announced, I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.
A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming [AGW] as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340.
What puzzles us a little is that Roger Simon is a self-confessed believer in ‘God’. In a recent Pajamas TV video he advised atheists to pray to ‘God’ every day for 30 days to cure them of their atheism. But surely ‘God’ is no less of a superstition than ‘AGW’ or a ‘Madonna’ manifestation?
Who’s in the pay of Big Oil? 9
Global warmists accuse scientists who disagree with them of being in the pay of ‘Big Oil’. The implication is that those who say climate change is not caused by carbon emissions resulting chiefly from human activity are untrustworthy because they are bought.
In fact the warmists themselves have been funded by oil companies.
Here is a list of the funders of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), whose scientists’ emails, exposing the deceptions they have been practicing, were recently made public by a hacker or whistle-blower (most probably the latter):
British Council, British Petroleum, Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities [the EU], Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
The list is worth examining. Much could be said about the donors. But for the present we only want to point out that British Petroleum and Shell contributed to the millions that have financed dishonest research.
The one thing that was great about the 20th century was Science (and its daughter technology). The human race could be justifiably proud of it. It was the highest triumph of reason. Everything else that the age produced might arguably be decadent and worthless – its art, music, literature, architecture, morality – but real Science (not the ‘social sciences’) was indisputably the genius of the age, and scientists were authentic heroes. Thanks to them, men walked on the moon, countless diseases became curable, the cosmos was explored, nuclear energy helped to sustain our civilization … and more, much more. (If the gifts of Science were put to bad uses, that was the fault of the users not the scientists.)
The CRU fraudsters and their co-conspirators have brought Science itself into disrepute, and that is what they should be most ashamed of. But they are fanatics. To judge by their reactions thus far to the ‘Climategate’ scandal, they will probably maintain that they have been misunderstood rather than that they have disgraced themselves and their discipline.
Trusted voices for a better world 44
How can we bear to miss it?
From Politico:
Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe plan to address negotiators at international climate talks in Copenhagen next week. …
The assistant president of Sudan [ you know, where Dafur is], Nafie Ali Nafie kicks off the speeches at noon on Wednesday. Nafie chairs the G-77 group, a block of developing nations pushing hard for more money and stricter emissions cuts from rich countries.
Mostapha Zaher, director-general of Afghanistan’s Environmental Protection Agency [who knew there was such a splendid thing?], is listed as the final speaker. …
The new religion and carbon-neutral sex 79
All religions have a foundation myth.
The foundation myth of the religion of Environmentalism is man-made global warming.
Its Old Testament consists of the books of Karl Marx and the lesser prophets who came after him: eg Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao, Marcuse … Its New Testament consists of the Gospel according to Michael Mann and Al Gore, and the E-pistles of the Climatic Research Unit Apostles.
This is part of an article on the (priestly and inquisitorial) powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, by Jonah Goldberg:
Tim Wirth, a former Senator and now chairman of the United Nations Foundation, once said: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” New York Times columnist and prominent warm-monger Thomas Friedman has repeatedly said (most recently this week) that he doesn’t care if global warming is a “hoax” because even if it is, the fear of it will force us to do what we need to do.
And it just so happens that … global warming fuels nearly every progressive ambition. Wealth transfers from rich to poor nations: Check. The rise of “global governance” and the decline of American sovereignty: Check. A secular fatwa not only to erode capitalism but to intrude on every aspect of our lives (Greenpeace offers a guide to carbon-neutral sex): Check. Weaning us off of oil (which, don’t let the Goregonauts fool you, was a priority back when we were still worried about global cooling): Check. The checks go on for as far as the eye can see, and we will be writing them for years to come.
The Copenhagen rave 17
To the older attendees it must feel like a ’68ers reunion, the UN’s change-the-climate conference. The failed Reds changed into victorious Greens, still wanting central control of the whole world. ‘They don’t think much’ could sum them all up.
By Jennifer Rubin at Commentary-contentions:
It’s quite apparent that many of the true believers don’t think much — or care much — about science or facts. (”A group called GenderCC (Women for Climate Justice) rejects using distractions like ‘numbers’ and ‘target dates’ to track and fight climate change, and doesn’t appear very interested in the environment itself. Instead, it hopes to implement ‘gender-mainstreaming’ and ensure that the U.N. guarantees the fullest participation of ‘feminist scientists’ at every level.”) There is a group pushing contraception and population “control” and one that wants to ”explore how thoughts affect matter and how a shift in consciousness can transform current deteriorating conditions.”
The religious-like fervor is hard to miss here. Facts and science don’t really figure when you’re shifting consciousness. What is interesting is the vicious antagonism displayed by the mainstream media when conservative gatherings like the Tea Parties are covered. They ignore those groups’ serious bent (posters displaying James Madison quotes never seem to make it into CNN coverage) and focus instead on the inevitable loony element that turns out for any mass movement. But when the confab is filled with, indeed dominated by, those indifferent to reason and obviously peddling a hippy-dippy agenda, the MSM is mute, playing along with the game that the confab is a serious exercise in science-based policymaking.
Amending scientific laws 91
From PowerLine:
In 2007, the Supreme Court decided that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It therefore held that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had not only the power but the duty to regulate this gas. Thus, nine unelected individuals issued, in effect, a directive to the executive branch.
Yesterday, the bureaucrats at the EPA announced that carbon dioxide and several other gases pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and that, accordingly, EPA would begin writing regulations to reduce emissions. EPA’s administrator added, however, that she would prefer that Congress pass legislation to accomplish the same task.
Thus, the executive branch, in response to a directive from judges, is now attempting to pressure Congress into taking action that, from all appearances, Congress does not want to take.
If this is democracy, it seems like a new kind of democracy.
Not only that, but what makes the Supreme Court an arbiter of scientific proof? It should have refused to hear the 2007 case on the grounds that it is incompetent to judge it.
Now the EPA has been granted dictatorial powers to meddle in every American’s private life. A government that does that is asking for mutiny.
Are we saved? 109
At last we atheists believe in the existence of a Savior of Mankind. We don’t know his name. We only know he’s a simple hacker.
He’s saved us from incalculable harm.
Or at least we hope he has.
When short-sighted capitalists and blind communist ideologues meet next week in Copenhagen, will they yet succeed in impoverishing and enslaving us in the name of saving the planet from global warming? Even though the hacker has revealed that the ‘science’ is fraudulent?
From Canada Free Press:
The upcoming Copenhagen meeting sponsored by the United Nations had hoped for a global redistribution of wealth over the next 20 years of between $6 trillion and $10.5 trillion, according to the draft treaty, to “Compensate for damage to the less developed countries’ economy and also compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity, as many will become environmental refugees.” Third world governments see dollar signs.
In the U.S., the Treasury Department estimates that the president’s cap-and-trade approach would “generate federal receipts on the order of $100- to $200 billion annually.” The Congressional Budget Office reports that a 15 percent CO2 reduction would cost an average household $1,600 a year.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a bureaucrat’s paradise that exists solely to perpetrate the myth, while enjoying frequent meetings at exotic venues throughout the world.
Many governments maintain bureaucracies just to “study” the myth. In the U.S., it’s the Global Change Research Program. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association], the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center of the USGS [US Geological Survey], and the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] are just a few other federal agencies feeding at the trough.
Over the last 20 years, the US government spent $32 billion on climate research, yet has failed to find any evidence that carbon dioxide emissions significantly affect temperature or represent a danger. Government agencies, the private sector, and universities were the recipients of this money. These organizations have a vested interest in maintaining the myth.
The feds also spent another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. Solar and wind-power generation of electricity can be a supplemental supply, but these methods could not compete with fossil fuels without a subsidy. These industries have a vested interest in maintaining the myth.
The ethanol industry is founded solely on the myth that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels, even though the U.S. has abundant supplies.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Bailout bill) contained $3.4 billion for research and experimentation in the area of carbon sequestration – burying carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuel plants. There are also, really wild schemes for geoengineering, schemes to block the sun with mirrors, or seed the atmosphere with sulfur to produce more clouds.
On the world commodities market, trading carbon credits generated $126 billion in 2008, and big banks are collecting fees, and some project a market worth $2 trillion. Al Gore’s venture capital firm, Hara Software which makes software to track greenhouse gas emissions, stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation. If the myth is destroyed, this market will evaporate.
Back in 2007, a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) to lobby for cap & trade. The companies planned to profit (at least in the short term) from either the cap-and-trade provisions or from selling high-priced, politically-favored (if not mandated) so-called “green” technology to the rest of us — whether we need it or not, and regardless of whether it produces any environmental or societal benefits.
Corporate USCAP members include: Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar Inc., Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, Exelon, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, John Deer & Co, PG&E Corporation, and PNM Resources. …
The vested interests are strong and many. Is the global warming industry “too big to fail?” It remains to be seen whether those interests, and [collectivist] political ideology will triumph over truth and common sense.
The greatest fraud in world history 118
… is Mann-made global warming. (We pinched the pun from Mark Steyn.)
This is by John Hinderaker at Power Line:
Michael Ramirez comments on the global warming scandal:
There’s no question that it’s a fraud, but whether the “scientists” who have been promoting the global warming hoax have committed felonies is not yet clear. They have taken countless hundreds of millions of dollars in government money and used it to produce fraudulent results, which may very well violate criminal statutes both here and in the U.K. And the “scientists'” destruction of data that was subject to valid Freedom of Information Act requests may have been criminal under British law …
I’d love to see the hoaxers behind bars, but it isn’t likely to happen, if only because the government officials who would have to bring charges are their allies. Criminal liability aside, the fact is that these “scientists” nearly pulled off the greatest fraud in world history. Compared to them, hoaxers like Enron and Bernie Madoff were pikers. The global warming alarmists sought to impose trillions of dollars in losses on the world economy, while living high off the hog on taxpayer money. If Bernie Madoff gets life, what would be the appropriate sentence for Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and the others?
IPCC report belongs with Piltdown Man 76
On December 7 the United Nations Conference on Climate Change is due to open in Copenhagen, although it is already rendered nugatory by the refusal of China and India, and the inability of the United States, to take those measures which would allow it to achieve its goal: world-wide redistribution of wealth by a global authority, an incipient world government.
Now that the United Nations IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report which launched the campaign towards this end has been exposed as a deliberate fraud, the conference can be nothing but a farce. It should be abandoned.
(Our posts on the fraud are Global warming scientists disgrace their profession and Making up science for political ends.)
A useful summary of the ‘smoking-gun’ emails is provided here. (This is a religious site that we don’t habitually visit, but in regard to this subject we are grateful for their useful work.)
Alan Caruba writes at Canada Free Press:
Now that CRU [Climatic Research Unit] and its conspirators have been exposed, there truly is no need to hold a December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen; one in which nations would be required to put limits on “greenhouse gas emissions” even though such gases, primarily carbon dioxide, have nothing to do with altering the Earth’s climate.
And that is why you are going to hear more about “climate change” and far less about “global warming.” Hidden in such discussions, intended to justify legislation and regulation, is that the Earth’s climate has always and will always change.
It is, for example, shameful and deceitful for the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to claim carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that should be regulated. The same applies to “cap-and-trade” legislation with the same purpose.
Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on studies of global warming and poured into agencies such as NASA that have lent credence to the global warming hoax.
“The U.S. taxpayer has much exposure here in the joint projects and collaborations which operated in reliance upon what the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit was doing,” says Christopher C. Horner, a longtime global warming skeptic. “There are U.S. taxpayer-funded offices and individuals involved in the machinations addressed in the emails, and in the emails themselves.”
Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, said that the initial revelations “give the appearance of a conspiracy to defraud, by parties working in taxpayer funded agencies collaborating on ways to misrepresent material on which an awful lot of taxpayer money rides.”
The climate, defined as long term trends, and the weather has nothing whatever to do with human activity and suggesting it does reveals the depth of contempt that people like Al Gore and his ilk have for humanity and those fleeced by purchasing “carbon credits” or paying more for electricity when their utility does.
The East Anglia CRU charlatans have been exposed. Most certainly, the United Nations IPCC should be disbanded in disgrace. It belongs in a museum of hoaxes right beside the Piltdown Man and the Loch Ness Monster.