The great global warming swindle
By Chris Clancy
web posted December 17, 2012
Recently yet another hugely expensive "climate change" conference was held in Doha, Qatar. Almost predictably, it came to an end in a manner which was both confused and inconsequential.
What exactly was achieved? Nothing!
That fact it was held in a country which earns its money by exporting fossil fuels perhaps best sums the whole thing up. What surprises me is that the nonsense is still going on.
When Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 it appeared to be lapped up by everyone. The central thrust of this film was that climate change was man-made (anthropogenic); the main culprit was rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels.
At the time when it was screened the general "consensus" was that the arguments were over. CO2 emissions were driving weather change. The whole thing was done and dusted.
The following year, in March 2007, Channel 4 broadcast a TV documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle. It was produced by Martin Durkin. The central thrust of this film was twofold.
The first was that it was sunspot activity which drove climate change not CO2 emissions. The second was that the climate change movement was, first and last, a political movement.
Oddly enough, it appears to have actually started on the Right, as Durkin lays out in his documentary. It was Margaret Thatcher, no less, who got the ball rolling back in the mid-1980s. Following her battle with the National Union of Mineworkers, she was determined the UK would never again be as dependent on coal for its energy as it had been.
She obviously had no idea what she had started.
A few years later, after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, the Left found itself in a boat without a paddle. Driven by their hatred of capitalism, left-wing activists hijacked the "green" movement. They seized upon "global warming" – this became their flagship - it must have seemed like an answer to their prayers. Very quickly, they set about using that old political trick of giving people something to worry about and then converting this fear into votes.
From about 1990 onwards these political activists, euphemistically known as "environmentalists", became incredibly well organized. All people had to do was utter the magic words "global warming" and career paths opened and research funds flowed. As time passed it started to evolve into an ideology — anyone who spoke against it was shouted down.
At some point "global warming" morphed into "Anthropogenic Global Warming" – otherwise known as AGW. Presumably the intention was to give the thing some kind of "scientific" legitimacy. Then later, in the absence of any "warming", AGW morphed into "climate change".
The pro-climate-change movement reached its zenith with Gore's film. It won two Oscars and an Emmy and earned him a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Durkin, for his efforts, was slaughtered on the internet and everywhere else.
However, in retrospect, his film proved to be a turning point for many people.
They went to the internet. They learned that there was another side to the story. They learned that there were many highly qualified people in this field who disputed cause and effect — who argued that it was changes in the weather that drove changes in CO2 — not the other way around. They claimed that the whole thing was a scam and a hoax. People like Prof. Richard Lindzen, William M. Gray and John Coleman.
For Al Gore's film, the honeymoon period came to an end when Lord Christopher Monckton - 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, no less - decided to go after him. In 2007 he ran a series of newspaper advertisements challenging Gore to an internationally televised debate on climate change.
Gore did not respond. Given Monckton's demolition of Gore's film this was a sensible decision.
Incidentally, Monckton actually turned up at Doha, and made this video with a camel called Aziz (complete with carbon capture mask). He then gatecrashed the conference posing as a delegate from Myanmar. He was immediately "de-badged", or should I say "de-bagged", by officials, and then given 24 hours to leave the country.
This was probably the only memorable part of the whole week.
But anyway … back in 2009, two years after Durkin's film … the AGW hoax was actually exposed for what it was. In April of that year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commissioned its own report by one of its own people, Alan Carlin, into the validity of the science behind AGW.
The EPA tried to suppress his findings. But the truth found its way out. His conclusion was that the science behind AGW was no longer defendable.
Then, in the run up to the Copenhagen fiasco at the end of 2009, AGW suffered a series of further direct hits:
- The leader of the Liberal Party in Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, was toppled on the issue of cap and trade and replaced by an avowed climate skeptic, Tony Abbott
- The news from New Zealand that raw data on weather had been blatantly manipulated by pro-climate change scientists
- Then the revelations about what had been going on at East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit
- And more
After nearly twenty years - AGW was finally where it belonged – at the beginning of a downslope. But it has proved to be a very long downslope.
Obama and Co.have stuck doggedly to their "green" agenda. One only has to think of things like Cash for Clunkers, Solyndra and the Keystone XL Pipeline as glaring examples of ideology trumping science fact.
AGW, or "climate change", was conveniently shelved during the November 2012 election campaign. But now, following the Dem. victory, it appears to be back in all its glory.
To get up to date on what's going on, see Alan Caruba's five most recent articles on the subject:
UN Climate Change Thieves Gather In Qatar – Nov 26 2012
The US Is Blocking Energy, Wealth and Jobs – Nov 28 2012
Legislators Must Oppose A Carbon Tax – Nov 30 2012
Connecting The Global Cooling Dots – Dec 3 2012
Climate Tyranny Avoids Scrutiny – Dec 11 2012
Given all the above, the question inevitably arises - how could any government be so irresponsible as to base their energy/environmental policies on such a monstrous lie?
Joanne Nova - writing in The Skeptic's Handbook– summed things up very well with this quote:
"[T]he only thing that matters … is whether adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will make the world much warmer … If carbon dioxide is not a significant cause, then carbon sequestration, cap-and-trade, emissions trading, and the Kyoto agreement are a waste of time and money." June 2009.
Let's finish by making one crucial point absolutely clear. The case for Anthropogenic Global Warming has never been proved.
And - in all likelihood – never will be. 
Chris Clancy lived in China for seven years. Most of this time was spent as associate professor of financial accounting at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. He now lives in Thailand where he spends his time reading, writing, lecturing and, whenever he gets the chance, doing his level best to spread Austrian economics.