At the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit our saviors arrive in 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets.

Can their arrogance be any more blinding?

Read in the UK Telegraph:

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Do you remember the outrage when our auto executives took a private plane to DC for their hearing?  Where is the outrage for this fiasco?

George Will writes on Climate Gate in the Washington Post; The Climate -change travesty

Excerpt:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be “goaded” into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word “deniers” to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

Cows are wicked polluters.  They emit methane through  belching and flatulence, which is by one common measurement 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide emitted by cars.

“Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat to and dairy to chicken, fish, eggs or a vegetable -based diet achieves more greenhouse -gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food.”

Or you can switch to kangaroos for your beef.    Kangaroo farts don’t contain methane.

From “Superfreakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Can you imagine the marketing campaign?

It is hard not to gloat and feel some sense of relief at the release of the climate-gate e-mails.

The most bothersome aspect of the global warming mongers was the certainty.  I have no scientific back ground, but the idea that any group of scientists can pretend to know with any degree of certainty the cause and future of global temperatures just always seemed ridiculous.

Just as Wall Street caused a financial fiasco by refusing to recognize the unknown unknowns in the global financial market, climate scientists have refused to recognize their limits and have arrogantly claimed to know the unknowable.

Yet there were many scientists out there who for years have raised questions about the claims of global warming. Their professionalism was brought into question because they were not the politically recognized source. Using the word ‘denier’ to describe the skeptics made them seem like wingnuts akin to a holocaust ‘denier’.

The use of religious language to characterize the debate diminished any scientific credibility. It became clear that the science became secondary, the promoters of the theory wanted to believe it. It gave them a sense of comfort, a way to expunge their guilt.  Even the demonization of the skeptics seemed religious.

We spoke of using this problem to unite mankind in a common goal. This is not the language of science. Like a religion belief may be very resistant to any facts. The release of these e-mails is a critical tipping point in the debate and now the believers of global warming theory will be on the defensive.

We refused to believe that scientists could be corrupted by money. When money is thrown at one side of the debate we should expect information to lean toward that side, but we should question its credibility.

And yet again we see a compliant media more willing to confirm their own beliefs than to ask intelligent questions.

It is our nature to accept lies that give us comfort and certainty.  That is why the truth is so difficult for many to accept, much less work to uncover.  We owe a debt of gratitude to those who leaked the e-mails.

I would even nominate them for a Nobel Prize.

Much has been written about the Climate-Gate, but Mark Steyn applies his clarifying wit to it in this article “Cooking the Books on Climate.” Read the whole article here.

Excerpt:

“The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.”

HKO comment- credentialism does not overcome the emotional and psychological impediments to the truth. Over dependence on professional peers is just another form of elitism.  “skepticism is the price knowledge pays for truth.” When skeptics are demonized the truth suffers. Who peer reviews the peers.

Boris Johnson, a classically educated journalist and previous mayor of London, responded to the catastrophic climate predictions of James Lovelock:

“Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self disgust, and that human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods. And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful.”

From ‘Superfreakonomics- Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance‘ by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

HKO comments - and I would add that it is like old time religion in the way that non believers are demonized.

In 1991 our company received a letter from the EPA that we were a ‘PRP’ which stands for a ‘Potentially Responsible Party’ for an environmental cleanup near Tampa, Florida. In 1980 Congress passed the act which created the Superfund, which was a pool of funds administered by a new bureaucracy.

This new bureaucracy decided that since we had sold lead batteries to a lead recycling firm that, according to the new law, we were therefore responsible for their downstream liability.  The recycler disposed of the lead acid improperly, causing water pollution in a nearby swamp.

But we sold the batteries two years before the law was enacted. Didn’t matter; we were held retroactively liable.  We could not explain our innocence to a jury because there was no jury; just a ruling from the Department of Justice.  We were directed to participate in the cleanup or face fines of $25,000 per day.  My daughter then a new born would be held liable as a descendent of a targeted business.

We were one of thousands of scrap yards that sent batteries to the site; but one of a few dozen that were actually viable enough to fund a cleanup. We were held jointly and severally liable for the cleanup, so if one of the other PRPs went bankrupt we had to cover their share.

When we found out that an environmental remediation company had damaged the site prior to our involvement we sought to sue them for their liability only to find out that they had worked for the EPA and were indemnified for their negligence and incompetence. This meant that even if we proved their negligence in court that the cost of their action would be charged back to US as an ongoing site expense.

Over the next 15 years our ‘cleanup group’ spent more on legal bills than we spend on the cleanup. An entire industry of environmental lawyers grew to respond to the Kafkaesque world created by the EPA and Superfund.  As one of the other PRPs noted, ” Our grandparents left countries because of laws like this.”

When the Superfund bill was passed it enjoyed widespread support from both parties to address the very real concern over the funding to clean up about 1400 identified sites.  But like other such ‘comprehensive’ laws the details are rarely identified in the bill itself.  The details are written and enforced by a bureaucracy that writes rules that our elected representatives never see, that are never debated at town hall meetings, that are never joked about by John Stewart or Bill Maher, that never hear the scorn from Bill O’Reily or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, and are too complicated to be addressed by the great unwashed sending in their letter to the editors.

This is why the details and hot points about the still to be seen Health Care Bill are irrelevant and distracting.  Once the government is able to establish a bureaucracy to write the rules and govern the use of our health care system the real damage will be beyond the scope of the Tea Parties, Twitterers, and even our own legislators.  This is the real truth about how the laws work in this country, especially when we seek ‘comprehensive ‘reform.   ”Comprehensive reforms” create bureaucracies that are unaccountable and indestructible.  They relegate our basic systems of justice to the dustbins of history.

Instead of trying to recreate an entire system we should identify the broken parts and fix them, one at a time if necessary. It would be much easier to get a bipartisan agreement and actually get something passed.  We agree that there are parts of the system that need change, but in our rush to ‘do something’ we attempt to do everything and end up with nothing.

But amidst the arguments and controversies this bill will be compromised at any cost as long as the end result is the establishment of a government bureaucracy to control our health care system. That is when the real damage will be done.

The episode of Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt including the blacklisting of Hollywood writers with suspected, rarely proven (as if that should even matter), communist ties was one of our most embarrassing episodes in our recent history.

McCarthy was able to capitalize on the fears of world communist domination to scare us into trashing our most basic liberties such as free press and due process. The actual arrest of a few communist spies was just like adding gasoline to the fires of fear.

Anyone who opposed McCarthy was deemed suspect and thus was dissent squashed and reason trampled. Apparently the witch hunt started with an uneventful speech that was surprisingly given legs by unexpected press coverage. But once the story got legs McCarthy rode it for all it was worth until the fateful hearings when the Senator starting charging the Army with harboring communists; It was then that Joseph Nye, the army’s chief legal representative, startled the Senator and the Chamber with his famous smack down, “”Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

That comment was greeted with applause, and McCarthy quickly descended into shame and oblivion, and faced censure in the Senate. Edward R. Murrow also took a courageous stand on his show, “His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. [...] We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully.”

In spite of a free press and unlimited sources of information we have not escaped the dangers of a sycophantic press who fear being called ‘racist’ for challenging the reason or policy of a minority, or a ‘denier’ (i.e. as in ‘holocaust denier’ ) for challenging the claim ‘the debate is over’ (Al Gore’s response to challenges about global warming) when in fact the debate never occurred. Such accusations bring the same chill to dissent as ‘communist’ did from Joe McCarthy.

Any challenge to a political orthodoxy must come from within its own party to be effective. The opposition is never taken seriously and in this new era where most seek or filter the news to confirm their existing opinion, calls for change and contrary evidence cannot even be heard.

But we should remember Joseph Nye and Edward Murrow that it just takes one voice to expose a fraud and stop it dead in its tracks.

There is much debate about global warming. Apparently enough skepticism is emerging to change the term to “climate change”, or better yet, “man made climate change.” That way the real problem, “man” can be held accountable no matter which way the temperature goes.

To get beyond the precise scientific facts, which, let’s face it, few of us are capable of understanding; let’s just ask a few skeptical questions.

What is the optimum temperature for man’s well being? It would appear that warmer temperatures are better for growing food and avoiding mass starvation. Is cold weather not more threatening to human life that warm weather? Are we capable of knowing what the “right” temperature is?

How much impact do man’s activities have on our weather? Does not a single volcanic eruption create more atmospheric climate change than all of our industrial output? Does a minor change in the earth’s orbit have greater effect on whether we are in an Ice Age or an interim warming period?

Given the uncertainty of environmental trends and the impact caused by our activities, and the substantial cost required to mitigate this uncertainty, would we not help out our fellow man far more by putting this same amount of money into a cure for AIDS and other diseases, clean water, farming technology and education?

If we place a cap and trade allocation program on our carbon credits, who determines how many carbon credits are the proper amount? Can they be increased or decreased if the economic damage is too severe? How solid is the science that determines the proper amount of carbon credits? Is the science better that the common belief 30 years ago that cooling was a bigger problem?

Who will make the money trading these carbon credits? Enron which promoted the idea eight years ago is no longer around. Will other Wall Street firms trade in these credits? Who will regulate them? Will we be allowed to contract derivatives of carbon credits? Will the regulation be governed by political concerns, financial concerns or scientific concerns? Who will determine which concerns have more merit?

If the temperature becomes stable or starts to cool as some claim it already has, will the market for carbon credits be abolished?

How much impact will our carbon regulations have if most of the rest of the world does not emulate our policy?

Our environmental proposals stand to cost us a fortune. There is uncertainty that there really is global warming. There is uncertainty that it is man made. There is uncertainty that our proposals will have any impact. There is uncertainty that warming is necessarily bad and if so relative to what? There is uncertainty what the optimal temperature is. Without such an objective how do we measure the progress of our actions?

There is great uncertainty whether the cost of mitigating this uncertain problem yields a benefit that justifies the expense, especially given much greater benefits that can be had with less money and greater certainty.

If I was a man who played the odds, I would consider our “climate change” proposals a very bad bet.

In the July/ August ’09 issue of Atlantic on page 19 lies a full page ad from Shell Oil Company featuring a message from their President Marvin Odum in support of Cap and Trade.

Odum opens his letter “For Shell, the debate about whether climate change is real is over.”

It is striking that he does not address the issue as ‘global warming’ but he calls it ‘climate change’. This indicates that global warming is attracting too many legitimate skeptics, but the global harbingers of doom do not want to relinquish the political power this evil mirage has come so close to delivering.

Can anyone debate that “climate change is real”? Now that ‘warming’ is in doubt, can we be too ‘cold’? Are we to make Mother Nature so precise that we should ‘ban’ any deviation from seasonal norms, regardless of their cause? Can we possibly know the origin of climate variations or ‘change’? Is it atmospheric change, variations in our orbital pattern, or a consequence of industrial emissions? Do we actually know what the correct temperature is supposed to be? If we do, it is possible to fine tune this thermostat through some matrix of government or industrial policies? Is this starting to sound more ridiculous by the day?

We can estimate how many barrels of oil are in the ground, how many tons of copper, aluminum or iron ore is in the ground or in industrial storage, or how many bushels of wheat or corn is likely to be harvested; but who knows how many ‘units’ or ‘carbon credits’ there are to be traded. This will be a figure created by the government. Certainly there will be some delusional sham calculation made by scientists who claim to be able to read the pulse of God, but does anyone think that the number of carbon credits will not be adjusted constantly for political purposes?

But why would any oil company support such a ridiculous system? One guess is just political pressure, but I think there are other motivations. It is common for crony capitalists to use government regulation to limit competitors’ entry into their field. This cap and trade policy is perfectly suited for such an ambition; what better way to make your existing energy assets more valuable than to limit your competitors’ access to competing assets?

Perhaps the established energy companies see the political drive as being inevitable and they are just trying to have a voice at the table. But the only thing I am more skeptical of than a massive social change based on incredibly dubious information claiming that the “debate is over” are compliant industry captains cheering them on with public altruistic statements.