Related link at Pajamas Media: Hacker Releases Data Implicating CRU in Global Warming Fraud
The WSJ reports that the “Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain was hacked yesterday, apparently by Russian black hats, and thousands of sensitive documents, including emails from climate scientists dating back a decade, were posted online.”
Some of the old emails from scientists made public apparently make references to things like “hid[ing] the decline,” referring to global temperature series and different ways to slice and dice climate data.
In all, it seems there are more than 3,000 files in the hacked folders, which have been reposted in various places on the Internet.
The big Copenhagen summit had lost a lot of its appeal in recent days, as world leaders kept dialing down expectations for the climate talks. Maybe this will spice things up.
James Delingpole at the Telegraph thinks it may be “the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming'” but adds “there are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.” While the leaked documents and emails strongly suggest that Global Warmists have been taking the public for a ride, the news is as likely to be welcomed as a belated discovery that Karl Marx was actually a stockbroker. It is likely to be denied and the critics who use the leaked documents will be mercilessly attacked. So Delingpole is probably right in believing that there’s too much riding on Global Warming for its political support to die quickly. For example, Herman Van Rompuy, the new President of the European Union “talked of funding social welfare from new green taxes and went on to discuss ‘financing levies at European level’, which his spokesman said later was similar to Gordon Brown’s call for an international tax on financial transactions.” France plans to levy $29 on every ton of carbon dioxide emissions.
“The gravest challenge that we face is climate change… Every one of our compatriots must feel concerned,” Mr Sarkozy said in a televised speech aimed at winning over a sceptical public. …
Mr Sarkozy faces an uphill battle to convince voters to accept the plan. An opinion poll by Ifop for the magazine Paris Match, published this week, found that 65 per cent of people were hostile to the tax.
“The aim of ecological fiscal policy is not to fill state coffers but to incite French people and companies to change their behaviour,” Mr Sarkozy said, adding that households that keep energy consumption low could end up better off financially.
These multibillion dollar funding schemes are unlikely to end simply because an inconvenient truth has been discovered. The New York Times described the cast of characters waiting for endorsement at the forthcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change. Jobs, careers, fame and fortune — parties and stretch limos, private jets and yachts — are all waiting on the speaking of a few words.
There are some new industries that do stand to gain more directly from Copenhagen, however. Carbon traders will also be at the meetings, and hungry for the expansion of their business. … “If you had to pick one industry that is most ‘leveraged’ to an agreement in Copenhagen, it would be this industry that develops, finances or buys credits from greenhouse gas reduction projects internationally, outside the U.S.” … “If there is an agreement in the near term with the U.S. as a partner, domestic projects and investments to reduce emissions could well be eligible for the international carbon market,” Mr. Rau said. “That would spawn a whole industry here.”
Even if the Global Warming industry were to die today, a lot of “Green” investment is already out there and unless the band keeps playing the music will stop. For that reason the bandmaster, however weary his arms will be prodded to keep waving the baton. He must protect the investment. “After 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, Mr. Rau said, the value of the investments in developing countries will be uncertain, and if the uncertainty is prolonged, it can hurt investment.” Keep playing, bandmaster.
The BBC says the police are now busy hunting down the CRU hackers. The Center itself gravely informed the public that it could not vouch for the veracity of the leaked material posted online. “”Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine. This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.” There were tantalizing hints that the leak was inside job. “We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry.”
The Guardian quotes Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics as saying “It does look incriminating on the surface but there are lots of single sentences that, taken out of context, can appear incriminating. You can’t tell what they are talking about. Scientists say ‘trick’ not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something – a short cut can be a trick.”
A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”
Politics is in many ways the bloodless — and sometimes not so bloodless — equivalent of war. Clausewitz believed politics and war fed into each other. It was an ongoing process, not a single event. That meant that actors were free to act on the flow of conflict as it went along. The hacking incident at the CRU will not end the Global Warming War, but it was part of it. The drive to control and tax human behavior will probably continue unabated. But so will resistance to it.
James Delingpole is probably also right in asserting that however dismissive the Global Warmists may publicly be of the CRU hack, the smoke of doubt has entered the temple. Even the European public is beginning to suspect that AGW really means “All Your Gold Belong to We”. The Telegraph’s Delingpole says, “if you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.” Well maybe not now, but you might want to start thinking about diversifying your Green portfolio. Nuclear power, anybody?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member