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.

UN Climate Chief used Bogus Data to get Grants

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Quotes from The Sunday Times, January 24, 2010

According to reports, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Meaning - EU taxpayers have been funding research into a bogus scientific claim about melting glaciers.

The Sunday Times had one week earlier highlighted flaws in the IPCC's 2007 report on impacts of global warming. The IPCC had said climate change would melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. Most glaciologists considered that ludicrous. After being confronted, the IPCC retracted the claim and corrected its report.

However, The Sunday Times then discovered the same bogus claim had been cited in grant applications for TERI. One of the grants, announced earlier just before the Glacier scandal broke, resulted in a £310,000 grant from Carnegie.

"Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers."

The grant application states: "The Himalaya glaciers, vital to more than a dozen major rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, are melting and receding at a dangerous rate. One authoritative study reported that most of the glaciers in the region "will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming, resulting in widespread water shortages,..."

Oh my gosh, most of us lowly people have no idea how these people in power around the world are scamming us. Just keep on working, lowly peons. Our masters need more bling.

And yet, so many point the finger at the US as the cause of all that ails. Never mind what tyrants, dictators, and Somalian gang leaders are doing. The US and Britain, the ones that try to run to help everyone, are blamed. And never mind that the UN isn't run by Americans, but by many of the said dictators and various ranking swindlers. Take - oh, Pachauri for example.

In India questions are also being asked about Pachauri's links with GloriOil, a Houston, Texas-based oil technology company that specialises in recovering extra oil from declining oil fields . Pachauri is listed as a founder and scientific advisor.

Critics say it is odd for a man committed to decarbonising energy supplies to be linked to an oil company. I think it's odd, too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece

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