The punch-ups over climate change continue to bubble along, and it seems each new week brings further damning indictments of the gloom and doom crowd. In the meantime climate change sceptics seem to be going from strength to strength. Here then is a smattering of the latest on this controversial topic.
The London Times has just come out with yet another expose of scientific fraud and corruption. It begins: “The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.
“Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists. The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions. Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure.”
As is so often the case here, simply follow the money trail. Pachauri had just recently been found to have received major grant money for his false claims. He “used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion’s share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers. It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus.”
While many tend to think scientists can do no wrong, in reality, they can be driven by lust for money and power, fame and fortune, just like anyone else. As another example of this, consider a report in today’s press which reveals a major power struggle in a leading Australian green group. Today’s Sunday Age begins their story this way:
“One of Australia’s richest and most powerful environment groups is in crisis following a toxic power struggle that has split the organisation amid claims of bullying, financial mismanagement and secret board meetings. The Wilderness Society, which has grown rapidly in recent years and now has 45,000 members, is in disarray after 144 staff members signed a petition on Christmas Eve to dump executive director Alec Marr, one of the most influential figures in the environment movement.”
Lord Monckton, who is currently on a speaking tour in Australia, said this of such vested interests, money trails, and power grabs: “So when the IPCC came along and said, right, we need a world government, we need to deal with this major issue, a lot of politicians who were in search of an issue said, oh, now we can stand up and make speeches about saving the planet, no less, that makes us really sound important. So a number of interests came together. Bankers in particular wanted to make a fortune out of carbon trading. All the boys with red braces in the city of London who call it ‘trading hot air’, they were all there. The schoolteachers wanted to motivate their kids to save the planet from the sins of their parents. What can be more appealing for kids than a story like that? The media for whom it would always sell more newspapers of advertising space if you say ‘World to End: Shock’ than if you tell the truth which is ‘Climate Continuing Changeable: Yawn’.
“And so you put all these interests together and therefore it’s not so much a conspiracy as a coalition of interests, all of whom wanted this to be true while at one part of them there was still a kind of corner of sanity somewhere saying, well, actually we don’t want this to be true. The fact is it isn’t true, and what has happened is the ordinary people have begun to smell…I can’t use the word on the air, but it doesn’t smell very nice. They’ve smelled the propaganda, the sheer hysteria of those who have been trying to promote this scare, and their unwillingness to debate. So what we’re seeing now is a collapse in this belief system, as it was, it had become a kind of religion.”
Finally, Carey Roberts recently penned an article on the “Climate Greenshirts: The Rise of Eco-Fascism”. Says Roberts, “I’m not bothered by the progressives’ sky-is-falling predictions or the off-key Mother Earth dirges. But when the environmentalists begin to call for disinformation campaigns, criminal prosecutions, and cold-blooded executions, I say, ‘Hold on a green minute, fella!’”
He offers a number of quotes from these green extremists: “James Hansen of the National Air and Space Administration has called for trials of the skeptics for alleged ‘high crimes against humanity.’ Grist Magazine’s David Roberts has demanded Nuremberg-style inquisitions for the ‘bastards’ who populate the global warming ‘denial industry.’
“During a 2007 Live Earth concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former senator, railed against the ‘corporate toadies’ who question global warming and demanded their head on a platter. ‘We need to start treating them as traitors,’ he shouted to the frenzied crowd. Two years later Kennedy declared coal company execs ‘should be in jail…for all of eternity’. Gee, what’s Mr. Kennedy planning to do for an encore?
“Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki has called for pre-emptive action against foot-dragging politicians: ‘What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act.’ Ironically, Dr. Suzuki is a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
And then there’s the Ultimate Solution, the answer to all the laggards who stubbornly refuse to jump on the global warming bandwagon. The Talking Points Memo website is a hot-bed of environmental activism. A June 2 posting asked pointedly, ‘At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers’?”
Roberts concludes, “Czech president Vaclav Klaus recently made these chilling remarks about the current state of global climate-change activism: ‘Communism and environmentalism – we are talking about two ideologies that are structurally very similar. They are against individual freedom. They are in favor of centralist master-minding of our fates. They are both very similar in telling us what to do, how to live, how to behave, what to eat, how to travel, what we can do and what we cannot do. There is a huge similarity in this respect.’ Maybe it’s time to denounce the excesses of the modern-day Green movement for what it really is: eco-fascism.”
Perhaps there is hope yet. As more and more reports of fraud, scandal, bogus science and false predictions come to the surface, and as more and more men and women of backbone and conviction stand up and speak out against the green hysteria, we may be able to turn things around. I certainly hope so. Because the extremist reactions of the greens may well be far more damaging to us than any supposed environmental threats.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece
http://www.theage.com.au/national/power-struggle-hits-wilderness-society-20100130-n5jj.html
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/2800684.htm
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/01/27/climate-greenshirts-the-rise-of-eco-fascism/
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