Politics / Propaganda Warming to the climate con job
| 22 November 2009
DISPLAYING his usual keen grasp of science, and not in any way seeking a distraction from events involving certain Sri Lankan boating enthusiasts, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last week addressed the Parliament.
There had been, Rudd revealed, a crucial incident in Melbourne.
It was an incident that would shape our national future and determine core government policy. An incident pivotal in Australia's history. An incident that, were it not for Rudd's insight, may have passed with little notice.
Melbourne, he told Parliament, had experienced a hot November evening.
This is apparently all the evidence Rudd needs to be convinced anew of global warming, which previously was understood to be global. Now that it's fully contained within a city on Victoria's southern coast, I suppose we can ignore weather events from anywhere else.
For example, Delhi recently enjoyed its coldest November day in five years.
Perth's previous November was its coldest since 1971. November 18 in Hong Kong was the coldest such date since records began in 1883. New York's October? The coldest in 23 years. Canberra itself hasn't exactly been a cauldron lately, recording its coldest day in 43 years this past June.
Even your hardcore warmies tend not to blame solitary toasty nights on climate change, but our PM, armed with his ANU arts degree, isn't bound by logic or convention. You'd expect the scientific community to have taken Rudd to task over his Melbournal warming thesis, but as the week went on they faced more pressing concerns of their own.
Unless you're the PM, we ordinary folk lack any empirical means by which to determine whether or not global warming is happening. We can't see global warming, hear it, or touch it. As far as we can tell, a hot night in Melbourne is just like any previous hot night in Melbourne. They tend to happen every year or so.
Thus, we rely on experts to inform us about, as Leigh Sales referred to it on Friday night's Lateline, "the majority scientific opinion on global warming". Problem is, even as Leigh delivered her line (a single keystroke probably calls it up on ABC teleprompters) the majority scientific opinion on global warming was taking one of its biggest hammerings yet.
It seems that either hackers or some disgruntled insider busted into the email records at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), then exposed to the world hundreds of messages to and from the likes of climate scientists Phil Jones, Benjamin Santer, Michael Mann, Ken Briffa, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth and Jonathan Overpeck, who are among the most senior formulators of that majority scientific opinion.
An anonymous statement attached to the emails announced: "We feel that climate science is too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."
It sure does. Few outside of climate nerd circles have ever heard of Jones, Mann, Briffa etc, but these blokes (why are climate alarmists usually rich white men, by the way?) are largely the reason we're all talking about destroying our economy in order to save some forest sweepings for our cave-dwelling grandchildren to eat.
Should they be proved genuine, which is looking likely at this point, in the absence of any denials, these emails are absolute dynamite. In one, CRU director Jones mentions using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in certain temperatures. (Hilariously, one of his online defenders subsequently claimed: "Scientists often use the term trick to refer to a good way to deal with a problem, rather than something that is secret, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all." Could've tricked me. As for hiding a decline, the same defender meekly admits to "a poor choice of words".)
Other words also seem poorly chosen, such as these, also allegedly from Jones: "If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences." Considering that we're told by these gumbies that the consequences of global warming would be untold death and destruction, Jones is clearly quite committed to his cause. Most normal people would cop the odd error here or there if it saved a single life; Jones would apparently rather people die than be shown up as wrong.
Just in case you still think Jones is just some no-name boffin toiling pitifully in academia's climate change coal mines, one file in the exposed CRU records reveals that he has collected 13.7 million in grants since 1990. Remember this the next time you hear anyone talking about all the oil company money being funneled to we evil denialists. As one commenter wrote on America's National Public Radio website: "I've been working around scientists milking this scam for a decade for grant money. Most will admit it's BS when you pour enough beers into them, but hey, the money's good." Jones's fellow warmer Overpeck allegedly writes in another email: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." A lack of warming? Haven't heard much about that from the majority scientific opinion. Nor have we previously heard of much else covered in the exposed emails, from dodging FOI requests to tax avoidance and shafting non-compliant journalists.
Here's more bad news for the warmenists. There is great public hunger for this story.
In May, the UK Daily Telegraph stacked on 600,000 in sales through its coverage of the expenses scandal involving British MPs. Well, they've got another hit on their hands. On Saturday, the most-read single item on the Telegraph's website covered what has become known as Climategate.
Given that Australia, the US, and every developed nation on Earth is threatened by the same economically-ruinous eco-alarmism, you'd expect other newspapers to also be jumping all over this yarn. They could, after all, do with the circulation.
Perhaps they're taking their lead from Kevin Rudd. More important matters need attending to. It was hot in Melbourne the other night.
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Bobby V. Kennewick Wa
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