Update on Climategate

Snakeoil is What Snakeoil Does

Things are getting worse for the great propaganda campaign. As we expected, the Australian Senate has killed Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The US Senate is burying Obama's ETS proposals into a deep, dark hole. Copenhagen will be pure political theatre and spin. Politicians will return home holding up pieces of paper, proclaiming "Global salvation in our time." It will mean nothing--as we will endeavour to reveal in the next few days. Copenhagen is dead: the only unknown now is the final shape and pallor of the corpse.

But New Zealand is still out there, punching above our weight, as Prime Minister, John Key would assure us. The hubris knows no bounds.

Meanwhile, here is a summary of what is reverberating around the world in the last twenty-four hours on Climategate.

1. Denmark is rife with ETS fraud! This is a bit embarrassing since the last time we checked, Copenhagen was in Denmark. The whole ETS concept is an attempt to create an artificial market by artificial non-market means (government fiat directives). If there were a genuine market for carbon emissions, the free market would have been trading them generations ago. Artificial markets are easily subject to rorts and frauds, where virtual reality is created by the stroke of a pen, or a keystroke.

A Danish newspaper reports that Denmark is the centre of a sophisticated scam involving ETS credits.

Ekstra Bladet reporters have found examples of people using false addresses and companies that are in liquidation, which haven’t been removed from the register [for carbon quotas]. One of the cases, which stems from the Danish register, involves fraud of more than 8 billion kroner. This case, in which nine people have been arrested, is being investigated in England.

This, we predict, is just the tip of the iceberg.

2. Legal actions are coming. According to James Delingpole in the Telegraph:

Viscount Monckton talked of at least two in the offing – both by scientists, one British, one Canadian, who intend to pursue the CRU for criminal fraud. Their case, quite simply, is that the scientists implicated in Climategate have gained funding and career advancement by twisting data, hiding evidence, and shutting out dissenters by corrupting the peer-review process.

3. Calls for a US Senate inquiry. Senator Inhofe, the top ranked Republican on the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is calling for a Senate inquiry into

a possible conspiracy between some of the world’s most prominent climatologists to, among other things, manipulate data on so-called global warming.
Inhofe said the recent disclosure of emails between several prominent climatologists reveal “possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research used by the US Global Change Research Program” and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

He suggested “a possible conspiracy by scientists, some of whom receive or have received US taxpayer funds, to stifle open, transparent debate on the most pressing issues of climate science.” Inhofe also noted that there appeared to be “a campaign to vilify scientists who question global warming alarmism.”

4. Professor Plimer calls a spade by its name. At a recent public meeting in the UK, Australian scientist, Ian Plimer did not mince any words:

Professor Ian Plimer condemned the climate change lobby as “climate comrades” keeping the “gravy train” going. In a controversial talk just days before the start of a climate summit attended by world leaders in Copenhagen, Prof Plimer said Governments were treating the public like “fools” and using climate change to increase taxes.