Political bloggers of the Guido Fawkes/Iain Dale variety have found themselves, I suspect, and as I suspect that the traffic numbers may now be proving, being ever so slightly sidelined during the last month or two. Who cares about the petty pilferings of MPs when there is a world of lies and plunderings out there, under the general rubric of “Climategate”? It’s not that the blog-as-gossip mongers been ignoring this story, more that they have faced a problem of how to respond to it. Should they hurl themselves into the science of it all? Probably better to leave that to specialists. Should they switch from contemplating the merely local government of Britain, to contemplating the government of the world, no less? Probably not.
One way for these bloggers to turn Climategate into their kind of story is to follow the money, especially if it is flowing through Westminster. Iain Dale, a political blogger very much inside the Westminster Bubble, yesterday featured an expensively produced climate change propaganda guidance leaflet entitled the rules of the game. Characteristic quote:
Those who deny climate change science are irritating but not important. The argument is not about if we should deal with climate change, but how we should deal with climate change.
Which just goes to show how much difference Climategate had made and continues to make. Without Climategate, the wider public was just left having to trust the scientists and acquiesce to this kind of stuff. Now “those who deny climate change science” are a whole lot more than irritating, important even, and the question very much is about if we should deal with climate change by any means other than simply adapting to it, as and when it really does occur.
Besides which, the second part of the quoted claim is also false. The argument being put by these climate propagandists is that we all should “deal with climate change” in the particular manner that they demand. Us saying that we have different opinions about how to adapt to climate change is also to be ignored, just as is the claim from any of us that “climate change”, i.e. climate change of the man-made and catastrophic variety, may not even be happening.
The whole thing is disgusting, of course, and kudos to Iain Dale for featuring it. But the point I want to make here and now is that this disgustingness is only now clear. For as long as “climate science” was widely trusted, or at least not widely contested, this leaflet was just a leaflet, not a story. Publishing it before Climategate would merely have resulted in counter-comments from those who agree with it to the effect that they agree with it.
I recall being told by some pessimistic commenters on this early Climategate posting of mine here (done during the time before that word had even been decided upon as the name for all this), and reading elsewhere, that this story would, contrary to what I was already then enthusiastically asserting, soon go away. It would, that is to say, be made to go away. This Iain Dale posting is just one small example of very how untrue that notion is proving to be.
Over on this side of The Pond, things are a little different, I think.
Over Here, I don’t think that too many ordinary folks bought into the climate change nonsense to the degree that people did in Europe, and the debunking of the entire tissue of lies and exaggerations has just marginalized the issue further.
Besides, we have bigger fish to fry, said fish being massive government overspending and state intrusiveness.
I’m not one for wishing my life away, but November 2010 can’t come too quickly for me, to prove how deep and substantial the resistance to Obama and his Congress has become.
The rules of the game leaflet was one of the documents in the Climategate archive. If you like, there’s another in there called communicating_cc.pdf that you could do the same way. This one wasn’t just funded by Defra, it was actually produced by them.
Did you know that Gordon’s government’s offices pump out an above average amount of CO2, but ‘get away with it’ by buying – with taxpayer’s money – £60,000,000 in carbon credits? Other government departments will be paying too out of their budgets, including the cash-strapped MOD (who apparently can’t afford to fly helicopters as it is – do you know how far a helo gets to the gallon?). It’s a trick that neatly obfuscates the true extent of public money going to the carbon scammers, because they’ll still tell you how much they’re spending “on” the NHS. Tracking down the money various government departments have been spending on global warming initiatives, who authorised them, and why would be interesting. As would a thorough fisking of the contents of the Climate Change Act, said by some to be the most expensive piece of legislation ever passed by Parliament (I don’t know about that, but it is pretty pricey), and the new taxes/regulations on businesses that come in, I think, in April, (with the bills to hit the year after). The CRC and the CCL, run by some bunch of quangocrat jokers going by the name of The Carbon Trust. (Trust them?!) What effect will those have on an already staggering economy?
The US and Oz are currently fighting theirs, but we Brits have already been thoroughly screwed over by our Parliament, who passed it with barely a whimper of opposition.
Figuring out how the IPCC is funded and directed is also a job for the politically savvy. Those scientists are not selected on scientific merit, but are appointed by their governments. Who chooses? And are their any interesting patterns in the selections? I saw a blog post the other day pointing out that virtually all the authors on one particular chapter came from either the US or UK, with token representation from a range of others. What’s that all about? And how are the buggers making money from it?
If anything, the government side of things would be even more interesting. It’s just a pity nobody has leaked all their emails yet.
As I’m sure you know PA, Richard North is the go to guy on the ‘follow the money’ beat, but the whole scam is so intricate that finding out where it all goes, let alone the path it takes to get there, is a job for a team of forensic accountants. Nevertheless, some of his work is outstanding, and if we’re not sure where it’s all going, we know where it’s all coming from. Us, as taxpayers and consumers, every penny of it is stolen from us.
(IMHO, Richard doesn’t get the credit he deserves, except for the odd cite by Booker or Delingpole.)
Keep going Brian, no wall breaks easily
I’d hope that Mr. Dale runs with it, full tilt. Every tactic in use to foist a political agenda underpinned by bogus science onto the world should be fully exposed for both ridicule and censure.
I’d disagree with Kim on his take re: the left side of the Atlantic. It isn’t so much that the American public is apathetic or pre-occupied; it’s more like they were simply stunned to near speechlessness with the speed of the multi-pronged Alinskyite assault on US institutions and infrastructure – Porkulus/Stimulus got the tendrils further into the financial sector; The auto bailout accomplished a partial de facto nationalization a significant portion of the domestic auto industry; AGW/CO2 regulation is the entre into control of the energy sector (including production, distribution – it’s a strong strategic move on their part); and finally, with most attention focused on the Stalingrad-like action on nationalizing health care eating a lot of the available oxygen.
It’s like drinking from a political fire hose for people used to sipping a bit every couple of years.
Not at all oddly, the US Media, in their comfort zone being useful idiots for useless buzz phrases such as ‘social justice’, et al, probably realizes that the entire AGW issue, and the shoddiness of the foundational justification, is the weakest horse of the bunch, so they’re hoping to whistle past that particular graveyard as long as they possibly can. Kim is correct that the US population has more immediate concerns – jobs, health care, etc, which are perceived with some justification as “right now” in your face problems – the prospect that energy may be more expensive a few years from now (later) earns it a lower ranking in the growing list of concerns and things to be outraged over. This is quite likely because people don’t understand that out of all the strategies underway, the climate issue is likely to be the one with the most intrusive and costly impact, in the long run, of the government/socialist state growth agenda.
An agenda that a large part of Traditional American journalism appears to agree with (in varying degrees). Hence, their silence.
Also – when this particular light bulb does come on over the head of John Q. American Public, that the people occupying positions of public power were basically lying to them in order to grab power and control over the most basic aspects of their lives (what is not touched/influenced by energy, its costs and availability?), the backlash will make the ‘Tea Party’ movement seem quiescent, by comparison.
There will be calls for impeachment on this topic. And not just from fringe elements.
Wrong issue for that spectacle.
Most likely issue for Skippy to face impeachment over?
Campaign finance fraud. Insofar as it’s the most blatant, identifiable, and likely provable actual criminal activity engaged in that’s known to the public thus far.
The AGW fraud is heinous, but not necessarily illegal.
Let’s keep banging away. We have to make it so that voicing support for the CO2 scam in public will be about as acceptable as speaking kindly of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
Climategate may be the loose end of the junk science sweater that starts the whole thing unraveling. There is discussion now that the whole Ozone Hole thing was as firmly founded on settled science as Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming. Yet asmatics have died due to the replacement of chlorofluorocarbons in inhalers with less effective carriers. And let’s not forget Rachael Carson and the end of DDT — which has resulted in the deaths of literally millions of children through avoidable malaria infections. (Liberals don’t care, because the dead children are mostly in Africa. Hypocritical liberals!)
Junk Science Kills! And it costs just as much as real science. Let’s keep hammering the message home, on as many fronts as possible.
Now a US Senator is calling for a “criminal investigation” in Climategate, which he calls “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation.” It’s just political theater, of course, but still good to see. Keep up the pressure!