The World of Sam Reynolds

Christmas came early for me this year. While most Man-Children my age were hoping for a present like new video games, clothing, or a credit card bailout package from their parents, I got something unexpected: a 61mb zip file containing discourse from scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom; discourse in the form of emails in which these scientists express their difficulty in gathering data to prove the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Way back in the spring of 2009, when I was a community college student at Okanagan College (BC’s worst college three years standing) I penned a paper for an Environmental Policy class, arguing that Anthropogenic Climate Change was, in short, a great lie. The Earth is warming because of cyclical change, and not due to the release of carbon gasses into the atmosphere I passionately argued. Unfortunately the professor shot my thesis down with great haste.

When the paper was returned I found scribbled in red pen:  “THERE IS CLOSE TO 100% CONSENSUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS ANTHROPOGENIC”. This was followed with a big red  “C –“

On November 21, the information clearing house Wikileaks obtained and published a series of emails sent between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. The emails show that CRU head Phil Jones and scientists under his direction were conspiring to manipulate data when results of climate observations did not match the projections in their models. As Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said to his colleagues in the UK in an email from October “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.

Ouch.

Now there are a variety of other quotes from these emails that further my doubt of the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Climate Change. Once the cabal of Scientists realize that the numbers simply don’t add up they begin to massage the data, making it fit the mould of AGW that demagogues such as the Goreacle have prophesised about. Jones does this through, in his own words, a “trick”, to “hide the decline” of climate temperatures.

It should be noted that all this has occurred weeks before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately, the revelation that Anthropogenic Climate Change is possibly a great lie didn’t cause much of strife in conference delegates. There wasn’t any kind of mass dues ex machina, end to the conference; Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice summarized the attitude of delegates toward the emails by stating “It does not change the position of Canada … The science overall is relatively clear”. During the coverage of the Copenhagen conference, Climategate was ignored by much of the media as well. Most of the press was focused on the treatment of protestors, or Canada’s dubious distinction as one of the world’s largest carbon emitters because of our oil-sands.

Let us step back and analyze the situation here. Only weeks before the Copenhagen conference, AGW is determined to be possibly a great lie, a product of conspiracy, and the hottest topic at this conference is Canada’s oil production? The world’s uproar isn’t focused on the shattering of the climate change myth, but how countries should buy terrorist oil as opposed to “dirty” Canadian oil.

Shocking.

The Green movement is fuelled more by socio-economic policy then actual science. 1997’s Kyoto protocol was the product of socio-economic factors and international politics as opposed to bona-fide environmental protection. Kyoto, like most of the Green movement, discounts the Milankovitch cycle as a forcing mechanism of Climate Change.  As a result there are wide scale variations in climate observations and subsequent predictions, enough to cause strife within the scientific community.

What Climategate has revealed to us is the lack of understanding of climate models within the scientific community. Normally this isn’t a problem, peer review and questioning is part of the scientific process. Unfortunately, the powers that be would like to have us understand that the climate change question has been resolved beyond dispute. Copenhagen proves this: discourse was centered on how wealth should be transferred from the Global North to remunerate countries affected by climate change. Absent were strategies on how to get the world’s biggest polluters to cease and desist.

As the conference drew to a close, it was clear that China was demonstrating her superpower prowess in negotiations. As her industrial growth is fuelled by cheap coal, China had no interest in ratifying any agreement which would curb pollution emissions. Backed by fellow Global South superpower, India, China proceeded to shoot down any attempts to reach a binding accord under the auspice of “protecting developing nations”.

The final product of Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Accord, is not legally binding nor does it set any detailed targets for the reduction of carbon emissions. Instead it transfers wealth from the Global North to the Global South, because of our “culpability” in climate change. The new geopolitical powers in the world have managed to scribble a symbolic “C-“ over any progressive shift in the green movement. Instead the world’s biggest polluters will be allowed to remain polluting, the Global North will suffer financially, and the possibility that climate change may just be hyperbole will all but be ignored.