[Vision2020] The Myth of the Copenhagen Conspiracy

[Paul Rumelhart]

Nick,

I'd like to make some comments on your column; they are interspersed 
with the relevant text below.

nickgier at roadrunner.com wrote:
> Greetings:
>
> This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  I want to thank Ted Moffett for his help on this one.
>
> Nick Gier
>
> THE MYTH OF THE COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CONSPIRACY
>
> By Nick Gier
>
> Climate skeptics are praising Lord Christopher Monckton's October 14 address to the Minnesota Free Market Institute in which he declared that man-made global warming is a hoax. In his speech Monckton, former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, revealed the Copenhagen Conspiracy, which predicts that in Copenhagen Obama and other world leaders will set up a Communist world government under the guise of flawed climate studies.
>   

I would like to point out that not all climate skeptics are of the 
opinion that man-made global warming is a hoax.  Sure, there are some 
who feel that way.  There are also many that are simply not (yet?) 
convinced that the matter is completely settled.  Of course, it's the 
frothing-at-the-mouth types that get interviewed.

> Earlier in the year scientists from realclimate.org studied some of Monckton's graphs, and they decided that the Viscount of Brenchley misrepresented data from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and manipulated other evidence to conclude that there has been substantial cooling since 2002.
>
> The World Meteorological Institute, that left-wing organization that feeds lies to your weather reporter every evening, just released a report indicating that the first years of the 21st Century (except for 1998) were the warmest on record. The world’s oceans are warming at even a greater rate.
>   

Another common myth, since we're on that topic, is the myth that every 
single climate skeptic is absolutely sure that the world is not 
warming.  From what I've seen, and I've been following this topic fairly 
closely, the majority of skeptics are of the opinion that the earth is, 
in fact, warming.  They just don't ascribe the majority of it to CO2 
increases.  I've heard lots of other reasons, such as a "correction" to 
the little ice age, a natural warming from being between ice ages, 
warming due to Milankovich cycles, or other reasons or combinations of 
reasons.

> After pointing all of the errors and deceptions in one of Monckton's graphs on CO2 emissions, NASA's Gavin Schmidt asks "How can this be described except as fake?" 
>
> Climate skeptics are capitalizing on illegally obtained e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.  The claim that these messages are the "smoking gun" that anthropogenic climate change is a fraud is of course absurd. 
>   

I have read extensively of these emails.  What I see is not a group of 
people intent on defrauding the public, but rather  I see a group that 
has bet everything on anthropogenic global warming and has gained 
considerable influence on world affairs because of it.  They wish to 
show the world that their theory is correct and that there is no 
significant opposition to it and they have worked to maintain that 
fiction through political means because they sincerely believe that they 
are completely correct and that the world will suffer for it if they 
allow dissenting opinions to be showcased.  The problem is that science 
is not intended to work this way, and becomes in fact broken when this 
attitude prevails.

> At least eight experts in science ethics have read the e-mails and they have concluded that, while there was intemperate language about climate skeptics, there was neither fabrication nor manipulation of data.
>
> Much hay has been made of East Anglia researcher Phil Jones’ use of a "trick" in one of his papers, but in this context it simply means an ingenious way of presenting data. 
>
> One e-mail indicated that two papers by climate skeptics might be withheld from the 2007 IPCC report, but in the end both papers were included and discussed. 
>   

Does their not following through make the suggested action any less 
manipulative?

> Another e-mail by Phil Jones instructed his colleagues to delete e-mails that were requested by skeptics, but his colleagues say that they did not comply.  The Climate Research Unit issued the following statement: "No record has been deleted, altered, or otherwise dealt with in any fashion." 
>   

Similarly, does the refusal of his colleagues to perform that action 
make it any less damning?

> Let’s look at the credentials of three other climate skeptics.  The first one is Tim Ball, who lied that he was the first Ph.D. in climatology in Canada and that he was a professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg.  Ball has had no peer-reviewed papers in the field for 13 years, and that he is a "paid promoter of the oil and gas industry rather than a practicing scientist."  
>
> There is also Patrick Michaels, a fellow at the CATO Institute, which insists on free market solutions for everything.  Climate scientist Tom Wigley states that Michaels' "statements on the subject of computer models are a catalogue of misrepresentations and misinterpretation.  Many of the supposedly factual statements made in his testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading."
>
> Finally, I offer John Theon, who has not done any science for thirty years and therefore has no expertise to comment on sophisticated computer climate modeling.  As a former NASA official, Theon falsely claims to have been James Hansen’s boss, and he is also the source of the libelous claim that Hansen, one of the nation’s top climate scientist, manipulated data. 
>   

I know nothing of these skeptics.  Yes, there are people at all points 
of the spectrum.  This includes the entire spectrum, not just the 
"skeptical" side of it.

> Climate skeptics claim that investing in the green economy that will control greenhouse gas emissions will force us back into the Stone Age. In my column last week I demonstrated that Denmark is on track to meet its Kyoto obligations, and that there is nothing Paleolithic about its low unemployment, highly competitive economy, and aggressively green economy.
>   

There are many different interests involved in this debate.  Some of 
them believe that putting controls upon our emissions would be foolhardy 
and even economically dangerous if it turns out that CO2 is not the 
threat it's been made out to be.  I can't really say I disagree with 
them.  Also, there is no contradiction between being a skeptic of this 
one theory and being "green".  Many skeptics, such as myself, think we 
should get off of oil and coal for environmental, political, and health 
reasons and that we should be investing in alternative energy solutions 
in order to diversify our energy portfolio.

> With regard to Lord Monckton's visions of Communist world government and the erasure of national sovereignty, legal experts say that this is completely unfounded and paranoid. On this issue the fact-checking Politifact.com has decided to give Monckton a special award.  On their Truth-O-Meter the Viscount of Brenchley received the rating "Britches on Fire."
>
> In Copenhagen Lord Monckton confronted young protesters and called them Hitler Youth.  Even when one of the students identified himself as Jewish and said that his grandparents died in the Holocaust, Monckton continued to insult the protesters. This certainly not a proper way for a British peer to conduct himself.  His lordship behaves far worse in public than the East Anglia researchers did in private e-mails. 
>   

I haven't read about this before, but it would appear that Lord Monckton 
has proven himself to be a grade-A asshat. 

When you're in the skeptical camp, the world starts to look different to 
you.  You notice how the media generally frames their articles about 
global warming, and you start to see this desire to show a united front 
and how it affects our country's news and it's policy.  You see asshats 
like this showcased and summarily refuted.  You start to take note of 
the computer animations of polar bears on small slabs of ice in the open 
water, and you hear little children tell you how you are murdering the 
earth.  You hear stories about how being too skeptical can shorten your 
scientific career, and you see how questions critical of the theory get 
sidestepped, as happened here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI

Yet, you look at the graphs of ocean sediment temperature proxies and 
you look at the NOAA's NCDC data adjustment graphs, and you wonder: 
"what if the science is not settled?"  How big of a disservice are we 
doing humanity by jumping the gun on this?

Paul