Doug Ross @ Journal

The UN's IPCC Global-Warming Bunko Scam

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on global warming with a massive publicity blitz. The New York Times breathlessly announced an impending disaster due to man's catastrophic treatment of the environment:

...[a temperature rise] of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century could lead to the inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people... ...While the report said that assessing the causes of regional climate and biological changes was particularly difficult, the authors concluded with “high confidence” — about an 8 in 10 chance — that human-caused warming “over the last three decades has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems...”

The Times waits until paragraph 28 to announce that the 21-page report summary was the subject of much debate. There was no unanimity and the summary itself represented the product of serious negotiation:

The meeting dragged on in a marathon session through the night before Dr. Pachaui emerged this morning to stand on a blue armchair and announce to reporters that an agreement had been reached between scientists and government officials over the final details... Officials from [several] countries argued that data in the report did not support the level of certainty expressed in the final draft...

Skeptical scientists

Indeed: government officials play a central role in the IPCC, refining and interpreting the science... for the scientists. And when respected scientists do decry the hysterical posturing of the IPCC, the media does its best to shield it from criticism. Powerline highlights one of many scientists critical of the fear-mongering who spoke with the AP:

Yesterday, ...one of the world's leading weather experts, Dr. William Gray, blasted Al Gore for perpetrating global warming hysteria. Since Dr. Gray is generally recognized as the world's leading expert in the science of forecasting hurricanes, this is news. But let's examine how the AP handled it in the article that resulted from their interview... As we have noted elsewhere, the U.N.'s IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one, and its findings have been subject to withering criticism. But the AP implies that the U.N's report represents a scientific consensus: Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years. [The AP positions Gray as an] elderly crank who "rails" and disagrees with the U.N. is not part of "mainstream thinking," notwithstanding the fact that, as the AP acknowledges, he is the world's foremost authority on hurricanes...

This would be entirely typical for scientists who dare to defy the UN and IPCC bureaucracies. MIT's Richard S. Lindzen, one of the world's foremost experts on climatology, pilloried Al Gore last year:

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse... ...given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade. [And] there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition...

Dr. Claude Allegre is another example. Twenty years ago, Allegre raised the possibility that burning fossil fuels could result in an increase in mean global temperature. However:

Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations [IPCC] have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank...

In fact, many scientists have pinned "global warming" on solar activity.

"It's the sun, stupid!"

After all, Earth lies within the scope of the Sun's 'atmosphere':

...The observed global warming may be explained by increased solar activity, the present level of solar activity is historically high as determined by sunspot activity and other factors. Solar activity could affect climate either by variation in the sun's output or by an indirect effect on the amount of cloud formation. Solanki et al. (2004 - Max Planck Institute, Germany) suggest that solar activity for the last 60 to 70 years may be at its highest level in 8,000 years...

In fact, Mars is suffering from its own fever:

[Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory] -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839... Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming. "Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance." The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions...

Given this wide range of respected scientists -- climatologists, astronomers, and environmentalists -- who question "human causality" of global warming, why would the IPCC be so anxious to promote its agenda of fear-mongering? The answer is simple: money. Recall that the IPCC is "a political body and not a scientific panel." It has commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. In fact, a great many scientific livelihoods rest upon the promotion of the IPCC's curriculum. But that's only the beginning of the story.

The Carbon-Offset Market: "Fraudulent" and "Fictitious"

A set of meetings in March ("The Vienna Energy Efficiency and Climate Meetings" - March 19-22, 2007) offers another clue. Much of the discussion related to the growth of the carbon offset market. Panelists represented a variety of companies set to profit from "carbon offseting," including the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), Point Carbon, EDF Trading, Capital Carbon Markets, and Natsource. Carbon offsets are a currency that supposedly allow organizations and individuals to "make up" (offset) their carbon-dioxide emissions. What Al Gore and the rest of the IPCC bureaucrats won't tell you is that wanton profiteering appears to be at the very heart of "carbon offsets." Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. In a 2001 report, a UK-based environmentalist group called The Corner House labeled the carbon-offseting scheme a "fantasy." And even earlier, in May of 2000, a presentation at the Agrarian Studies 2000 Conference at Yale University denounced the carbon offset market in extremely stark terms:

...This [carbon-offset] market is being put together not so much by states as by a burgeoning international web of technocrats, multilateral agencies, corporate alliances, brokers, lobbyists, consultants, financiers, think tanks, lawyers, forestry companies and non-government organizations... ...the [biological climate-change equivalents, or carbon sequestration credits] commodity to be traded in this new market is fictitious...

The IPCC's Conflict of Interest

In fact, what did IPCC officials do around the time they were finalizing their reports? They formed businesses to take financial advantage of their 'findings'. Among the IPCC panel members set to benefit from earlier IPCC reports on warming were Richard Tipper, Mark Trexler, Pedro Moura-Costa, Careth Phips, Sandra Brown, and Peter Hill. Tipper, for example, formed a consulting company just months after being appointed to one of the UN's climate panels. The World Rainforest Movement investigated these bizarre financial ties and concluded that the IPCC report "must now be shelved due to their clear conflict of interest and a new report instigated which will be free of the taint of intellectual corruption." And solar energy portal Ecotopia reports that members of the IPCC "...had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees... [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such... projects." In other words, IPCC members were poised to profit from carbon-profiteering from the very outset of their reporting.

The UN's Circle of Crime

Remember, the IPCC is an arm of the United Nations. That's the same organization that has brought us the multi-billion dollar Oil-for-Food scandal; the slaughter in Darfur; a plethora of anti-Israeli screeds; the Rwandan genocide; accusations of rape and child pornography in the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, and Sudan; and, most recently, ties to a North Korean counterfeiting operation. Let's ignore for the moment the fact that the IPCC has, as its core membership, businessmen and scientists poised to profit from global warming alarmism. Consider, instead, that the mainstream media ceaselessly flogs the idea that we can trust the same organization that's brought us an unprecedented series of frauds, scandals, scams, and sex schemes. Our media wants the public to believe that this same corrupt organization can be trusted on its dire predictions of calamity due to man-made global warming? The media has harped for years on the failure of inadequate intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. But on the issue of global warming, the media tells us there's no need for evidence -- especially from scientists who have no conflict-of-interest with the IPCC and its carbon-offset trading schemes. You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical. But based upon what I've read about the IPCC, what I know about its parent organization, and the many critical scientists who are routinely muffled by the mainstream media, I'm wagering that global warming is just another UN-sponsored bunko scam, from the same folks who brought you a world-class set of criminal operations. Book 'em, Danno. Oven-baked good readin', just like Mama used to make: Bill Hobbs (note the title caption), Dan Riehl, Deroy Murdock - Leftist Hate: Gore Fans Threaten Gore Foes Ace of Spades, Anchoress, Astute Bloggers, Blame Bush, Blue Crab Boulevard, Dinocrat, Don Surber, Dr. Sanity, Ecotality, Fausta's Blog, Flopping Aces, Gateway Pundit, Hedgehog Blog, Life ain't Brain Surgery, Mass Backwards, Outside the Beltway, Right Wing News, STACLU, Texas Rainmaker