IPCC - More Gates Than Wickes

Dr North takes the lead again in the fight back against the IPCC, with another revelation about the 2007 IPCC report which bogusly claimed that the Himalayan Glaciers would have melted in the next 25 years. That revelation showed that this was an entirely false claim and has rippled around the world and is what we know as Glaciergate.

Dr North now says that the very same report was again wrong with claims that food yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020. The 2020 projection is in fact now exposed as based on nothing more than speculation that is sourced back to a Canadian advocacy group, and written by an obscure academic who specialises in Carbon Trading and citing references that do not support his claims.

Time and again, we must examine why such claims are plucked out of the air and then offered with a thin veneer of polish dressed up as scientific fact that we must all be afraid of. There have been moves to introduce global trading and taxing of a Carbon economy. Such an economy already exists, it is founded almost exclusively by people who believe wholeheartedly in the notion that the world is dying because of humans and our CO2 productions. Such CO2 levels they say are unsustainable and they are putting their money where their mouths are. Fair enough, up to the point that the science backs the arguments. This is the problem, time and time again, it is being revealed that the scientific facts do not back up their claims, and time and time again evidence is being shown to have been filtered and moulded to fit a certain line of thinking; then a small questionable fact is then presented to the World as evidence of an impending doom.

The Carbon Economy and its readiness to become the largest economic and political movement across the globe means that the Climate Change argument is no longer about asking people to be well intentioned and play it safe just in case. It is now linked to billions of dollars and has the political backing of some of the world’s most powerful people. It is absolutely right that assertions be questioned. This Carbon Economy cannot succeed if the people of the world are not motivated scared into making changes that mean we become consumers to their new markets, and that existing corporations through the necessity of following their consumers move too. Many in fact are financially invested in the inevitability of this future.

So, when we are being scared into thinking in a new way, we must ask two questions. Is this true and why is this claim made. Many of the claims are now being disproven or shown to be based upon unreliable and questionable data. Some, like Africagate, are rooted in the claims of those who stand to profit from Carbon Trading. The ‘why’ keeps leading back in the same direction each time these claims are exposed. They all tie back through scientific bodies to the architects of a global economy. We absolutely must question whether altruism or profit is the true motive here.

The Climategate emails showed that those few individuals who are centre to the research are routinely avoiding Scientific Method, they are refusing to share raw data, and present only adjusted data that they have manipulated. There is, in fact a conspiracy, real and documented to do all that they can to refute the approaches of those who wish to question and review their data. After hundreds of years of human scientific advancement, an approach as such is entirely suspicious. Validation of scientific claims is completely incestuous, and the must vaunted “peer-review” is all about growing climate science by sharing only within the family of believers. Anyone who showed dissent was shunned from this family, grants pulled and smear began. This has never been an open and pure journey towards true scientific discovery; it is about certain scientist purporting a type of science that fits with their political and often financial motivations.

Until we can all reproduce the claims, until it can be shown in everyday labs and tested by multitude of models. Until we can show completely how and why such things are happening, or even prove conclusively that they are indeed happening there is not a Scientific Consensus. So, I would question the motives of those who claim there is one, despite their obviously not being one.

Why then are the media so quick to take the Climate Camp side all of the time? Well again, let’s follow the money. The BBC is the biggest and most influential media source in the UK thanks to their unique tax funding though the Licence fee. Their eco-bias is today subject to a piece in the Sunday Express where they draw parallels between the BBC’s pension pot and their coverage of Climate Change. The article starts by stating that the Beeb is under investigation and is inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon. At present for every £142.50 licence fee that is collected in the UK each year, about £8 (and rising) goes to the Corporations Pension Pot which has 58,744 members and it is valued at about £8billion. The BBC’s Pension Fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. So, 58,744 current and former employees of the BBC have their personal financial security linked to the emergence of a Carbon Economy… That places the Corporation very squarely in the camp that wants to see a global Carbon Market, it has linked itself to that market in a very hefty financial way. Why has the BBC placed all its eggs in such a precarious basket? Well, for that you should ask Peter Dunscombe who is the BBC Head of Pension Investment… oh, and Chairman of the very same Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

An editorial line thus follows that the Scientific Consensus is that the Science of Climate change is settled. But repeatedly we find out, not through disclosure but through investigation and leaks that the Science is really anything but settled. Peter Dunscombes Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change campaigned vigorously for a strong and binding global agreement on Climate Change at Copenhagen, which was the very same editorial line carried out by the BBC. The BBC despite its copy and paste responses to public letters of concern cannot be believed when so incredibly beholden to the need for Climate Change Governance. They can reply all they like, they aren’t impartial or balanced. They have one hand in your pocket, and the other in Al Gores.

A very quick check of their current members is revealing, and not entirely secular.  I would argue, nobody listed could hold an impartial position in a Climate Change debate.

Flip back to the Express story, and it is clear that not everyone at the BBC is happy about this situation. They quote veteran newsreader Peter Sissons as being unhappy with the Corporations coverage:

“The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.

“I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

So, will the BBC now change its editorial line? No, it will not. Why, because even if it was conclusively proven that CO2 was not linked to man-made climate change their pensions and financial security is on the line. The Climate Change argument allowed them to push their viewers towards a lifestyle they largely believe is better, but it is rooted in a fictional belief. Contrast the money invested globally in efforts to prove the CO2 link to Climate Change and that invested to disprove it, and the BBC has years worth of stories to follow Scientist’s efforts to look in a single direction, and to push for a change in lifestyle that they approve of.

The Public however are not being taken in any longer, and despite the BBC’s blackout towards the sceptics, these arguments are making their way into the public debate. The man in the pub HAS taken note of it, those of us who visit our rapidly disappearing Public Houses know this, we are hearing it more and more. This is almost entirely thanks to the Internet and bloggers which were the only outlets who dared voice their opinion openly and as there were very few in the MSM who were brave enough to give such an opinion, but this has then led to a wider audience and has attracted the Express group and some of the Blogs of MSM press, if not the paper copies. Nonetheless, the arguments are there and more and more people are questioning this false and manufactured scientific consensus. There is a reluctance to allow sceptical argument to seep into the mainstream; but it is getting there. At the end of the day, why make such an effort to suppress people’s opinions? It can only be that the modern media is now more geared to shaping opinions than it is to reflecting them.

Public perception must be turning because even a poll commissioned by the BBC confirms this.

The Populus poll of 1,001 people mirrors a Populus poll commissioned by The Times in November and has turned up some interesting results, and an interesting shift in perceptions in just two months. Most notably the number of people who would sit in the sceptic camp now outweighs those who sit in the believer’s camp with only 26% of people now believing that Climate Change is happening and that it is manmade, down from 41% in November 2009.

It would be as ridiculous of me to claim that this will now lead to a complete reversal in public opinion, as comparatively ridiculous are the claims that the Science of Climate Change is settled. But there is another point I want to Labour (excuse the pun).

When the IPCC Scientist said that the Himalayan Glaciers would melt, that Polar Bears are drowning and that Africa is going to starve the answers they presented to these supposed issues are and were always that same. More Government, more taxes, more regulation. Not just more regional, National and supra-national government and regulation; but global regulation, and a global tax. These people always insist the cure to all our ailments is more socialism, more interference and they get it by ramping out more and more guilt to keep us in our place. It has worked time and time again, not just with Climate Change, but with a number of arguments.

If I was in a car show room and the salesman pitched a new car as the answer to all my woes, or if a double glazing salesman pitched new windows as the elixir to all my pains, you would like me suspect that I was being sold what was in stock to be sold by the person doing the selling, undoubtedly with commission to themselves. Those in government wanting more government are doing just the same, and because they succeed so often at it, a number of Global Companies are setting themselves up to operate in such an environment. Let’s just keep everybody’s motives in mind when discussing such matters, because like always this is what paints a truer picture. With Africagate, why were the very nations that were said to be in such danger by the IPCC being cajoled at Copenhagen into an expensive global regulating treaty, when the chief problem in building their agriculture is in fact another form of regulation; that of the criminally illiberal EU Common Agricultural Policy?

The answer is to keep all of the arguments going and keep all sides of the argument in the public domain so that people can make their own minds up, rather than being prescribed their opinion... Then, through true democratic discourse, allow those fairly accrued opinions influence their ballot decisions. If the debate cannot be impartial, and clearly it cannot be then it needs to be balanced with all sides and views heard. The Science, if there is any, needs to be tested by sceptics for that is how true scientific progress and consequently humanitarian progress can be achieved.

Climategate, Glaciergate, Africagate... hardly proving to be a balanced debate so far, is it.


Cross-posted.

IPCC - More Gates Than Wickes