WikiLeaks Cables Confirm Climate Skeptics' Fears -

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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wikileaks-cables-confirm-the-worst-fears-of-climate-skeptics/?singlepage=true

Just a year ago, the Climategate files — a collection of emails, data, and computer source code — were somehow purloined from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and made public. Pajamas Media was one of the first news organizations to cover them, with the first breaking news story out within hours of their first discovery (“Hacker Releases Data Implicating CRU in Global Warming Fraud“).

The full consequences are not yet clear, but the files’ release probably led to the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference — to which the Obama administration had committed no little amount of political capital — and certainly contributed to the public’s increasing skepticism about the supposed consensus of climate science.

In some ways, the most surprising part of the Climategate files was how well they confirmed the dark suspicions of climate skeptics: there really were problems with replicating some of the most quoted results, there really had been some questionable manipulations made so the data would present the “right” picture, and there really was a somewhat covert group, composed of scientists on the “human agency” side of the argument and certain “reliable” environmental journalists, who were working together to suppress counter-evidence and assassinate the reputations of the skeptics.

Almost exactly a year later, Julius Assange and the WikiLeaks website revealed another collection of similarly purloined data. This time, the data was a collection of diplomatic cable traffic among American diplomats all over the world, some of it considered very sensitive — classified SECRET. Again, the purloined messages proved very embarrassing to the authors, although in this case the damage wasn’t just to egos and reputations; the cables did damage to American interests, even to national security.

On December 3rd, the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom published one of a series of stories based on the cables, this one titled “WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord.” The United States really was applying considerable political and diplomatic pressure on other players; the scientific “consensus” had long since been subsumed by the pressure to score a political win. As the Guardian put it:

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The bribes — sorry, I mean promised aid — was no mean amount of money. The Guardian reports amounts in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The government of the Maldives set their price at $30 million. With a population of roughly 300,000, that is $100 per person in a country where the average household gets by on $450 a year.

This pressure, however, wasn’t limited to financial transactions: the United States was developing intelligence on the other participants in the conferences.

Seeking negotiating chips, the U.S. State Department sent a secret cable on July 31, 2009, seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.

At the same time, foreign powers — most probably at least including the People’s Republic of China — used sophisticated social engineering and cyberwar methods to get leverage in the upcoming negotiations.

On June 19, 2009, the State Department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the U.S. climate change envoy … while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing.

“Spear phishing” is an attack in which a carefully customized email message to a particular person, including personal information and promising something sure to be of interest to the recipient, is used to introduce a “Trojan horse” program, and while the cables don’t actually identify the suspects, it’s the same style of attack, and exactly the same exploit, that the Chinese used on Google.

The Guardian article is an amusing exercise in cognitive dissonance. The CIA wanted to collect intelligence on the other participants: CIA, ooh, bad! But it was to push through the global warming treaty. Wait. Global warming treaty, oooh, good! The Guardian writers clearly had some trouble deciding what they really thought.

By the time the Copenhagen conference came around, domestic political considerations inside the Obama administration had far outweighed whatever scientific basis originally drove the negotiations. On the other side of the table, pious public mouthing of global-warming dogma was replaced by straight-out monetary transactions: if you want our agreement, come up with the most cash. And China, South Africa, Brazil, and India were working the process with both politics and less savory means, to make sure they had the leverage to get what they wanted.

The lesson of the WikiLeaks climate cables turns out to be very much like the lesson of the Climategate files last year. The most surprising aspect of this story is how thoroughly the cables confirm the dark suspicions of climate skeptics.

Charlie Martin writes on science and technology for Pajamas Media.

Climate Deal unlikely this year - Skirmishes at UN climate conference

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Excerpts From Fox News - April 11, 2010

Climate talks had nearly ground to a halt in April, with delegates squabbling over how to conduct negotiations for the rest of the year on a new agreement to control global warming.

The talks about talks appeared near breakdown over minor procedures, but that was because of a deep divide over the hastily crafted political deal struck at the Copenhagen last December by President Barack Obama and a small group of other world leaders.

There you go. Our arrogant president, making things easy for everyone...yet again.

The lengthy battle was supposedly over the authorization of a committee chairwoman to prepare a draft negotiating text for the next meeting in June. But down deep, the rancor during Copenhagen had not faded and the split between industrial and developing countries continues.

The agreement they are trying to prepare for is meant to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which had provisions capping greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries. It expires in 2012. The new deal would be expanded to include emissions by swiftly developing countries like China, which has already passed the US as the world's biggest polluter.

The Copenhagen "accord," thrown together in the final 36 hours at Copenhagen, now means little or nothing to anyone. It set a goal of limiting the increase in the Earth's average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels, but did not specify how that would be done.

Of course not. That would take actual thought. Obama and the others were only there to look good for the cameras.

Many countries — even among the 120 countries that supported the Copenhagen Accord — denounced the closed-door manner in which it was done (although that was standard operating procedure for Obama) and voiced disappointment that its emissions requirements were voluntary.

Bolivian delegate Pablo Solon also protested the cutoff of funds from the U.S. Global Climate Change initiative as "a very bad practice" and an attempt to put pressure countries to support the agreement. Solon said Bolivia would not change its policies.

So...American citizens aren't the only ones feeling forced into things by Obama...

Read More http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/11/official-climate-deal-unlikely-year/

Climate Chief KNEW of False Glacier Claims Before Copenhagen

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From The Times January 30, 2010 -Ben Webster

The Times of London reports that research has shown that IPCC's assessment that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 was false, and Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of IPCC, was told this way before the Copenhagen summit.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)is the U.N.'s leading climate change watchdog. Many look to the organization to be a respectable purveyor of truth. But Pachauri waited two months, until after the Copenhagen summit, to correct the false From The Times January 30, 2010report that his organization had published. He failed to act despite knowing that their claim had been refuted by leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report that the glaciers were melting at an alarming rate was the foundation for many proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

However, most glaciologists believe the Himalayan glaciers are so thick and high altitude that at their present rate, they will take hundreds of years to melt. Some are growing and many show little sign of change.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error only after coming under media pressure following the summit. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error a few days.

When asked whether he had kept silent deliberately to avoid embarrassment at Copenhagen, he said: “That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.”

"However, Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal, said he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error in November of 2009.

Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/29/climate-chief-knew-false-glacier-claims-copenhagen/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews/scitech+(Text+-+SciTech)&test=latestnews