Only a couple weeks ago I published a commentary explaining why it came as no surprise that last month’s summit of Asia-Pacific leaders – that was intended to produce a consensus on legally binding climate change commitments – produced nothing but hot air.
I noted that my cynicism about this Chicken-Little nature of the efforts to combat climate change was based, in part, on the fact that:
Virtually none of the countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol (adopted in 1997) – with its legally binding emissions targets – is honoring promises made in this agreement. In many cases their emissions have actually risen….
I won’t even comment on the “emissions trading” scheme, which allows rich countries to pollute all they want provided they pay poor countries (that typically pollute far less) for the privilege: a scheme eerily reminiscent of papal indulgences….
[Critical climate change treaty goes up in smoke, TIJ, November 19, 2009]
Little did I know, however, that my intellectual cynicism was no match for the scientific machinations of those whose research forms the basis for much of today’s global warming orthodoxy.
This, alas, is the only conclusion one can draw from the revelations in thousands of emails (some dating back 13 years) that were hacked from the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit (CRU) and published on the Internet last week.
In fact the smoking gun is one email in which Professor Phil Jones, the director of CRU, suggests “using a trick to massage years of temperature data to hide the decline.” This also happens to support the contention I made in a commentary last year that natural climate variations (i.e., cyclical phenomena) have us now entering a period of “global cooling.”
I can confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU files… The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.
Meanwhile, this is the extraordinary take of Eduardo Zorita, an expert in European climate trends, on this unfolding climate email scandal. Even worse, he claims that he and other scientists were “bullied and subtly blackmailed” by more powerful colleagues to fit in the scientific mainstream.
Yet I doubt there’s a single world leader who is genuinely shocked by this revelation that the global warming debate has been more about crass politics than hard science. The only issue now is whether any leader can maintain a straight face when merely blowing hot air about “legally binding emissions cuts” at the UN’s climate summit in Copenhagen next week.
In any event, the political firestorm these emails have caused has finally extinguished all hope of getting any of the major emitters of greenhouse gases (like India and China) to sign on to the highly touted Copenhagen Climate Treaty. After all, these gases are fueling their unparalleled economic growth.
Then of course there’s the cynicism being expressed by leaders of developing countries, most notably in my region of origin – the Caribbean. For they clearly see this whole debate as little more than leaders of developed countries saying ‘do as we say, not as we do.’ Not to mention their indignation at the open conspiracy to get Third-World economies to pay for the environmental crimes that were blithely perpetrated throughout the 20th century to develop First-World economies.
Here, for example, is how Joseph Ross, Trinidad and Tobago’s Tourism Minister, rejected UK calls for a climate tax on air passengers:
We recognize the importance of protecting the environment and so on, but we are also saying that in the Caribbean, we are not in fact the ones responsible for the disaster.
Naturally, all of this makes one wonder why any world leader would even bother to attend this summit….
Especially since nothing indicates what a waste of time attendance would be quite like the fact that the prophet of climate-change doom himself, Al Gore, abruptly canceled his appearance today, citing, in patently disingenuous fashion, “unforeseen changes in his schedule”. For his cancelation is as unforeseen as a fat rat jumping a sinking ship!
Related commentaries:
Critical climate change treaty goes up in smoke
Global cooling? Yes
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