In continuation to the previous two posts on Climategate (
CLIMATEGATE: The biggest "scientific" scandal ever,
CLIMATEGATE: The market is the best peer reviewer), here are some final thoughts and resources on the AGW issue in general, before we move on to Copenhagen and its implications for India.
After initially ignoring the climategate leakage for nearly two weeks, MSM in the developed countries finally caved in, partly because the leaks went viral and attracted massive amounts of attention. Steve McIntyre, a leading skeptic and a maverick climate scientist was even interviewed on US prime time TV. Several newspapers in the UK have already gone over to the other side or at least moved towards a more of an agnostic position. Andy Revkin, the leading climate journalist of the New York Times is reportedly leaving. George Monbiot, The Guardian's leading climate journalist, seems to have regained composure after his initial
shock and disbelief, he remains a believer.
Unfortunately, Indian media and intellectuals have given the climategate scandal a complete miss. Indian media did not cover the issue with much enthusiasm earlier, since few people really care about it one way or the other. Copenhagen was covered with much enthusiasm in articles full of baseless speculation and gross factual errors.
Links and Resources:
Another very good website is
The Science and Policy Institute with which the most vocal opponent of IPCC, Lord Christopher Monckton is associated. Lord Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, famously challenged the UK Department of Education when they made the Al Gore movie
An Inconvenient Truth compulsory viewing in UK schools. Lord Monckton won that court case after pointing out some 35 errors in the movie.
A very good and recent video of a presentation given by Lord Monckton on October 14, 2009 is available on [
YouTube]. The slides for the presentation are available here [
pdf].
Another must read is an
open letter by Lord Monckton to IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pacharuri. This letter, apart from being a scathing critique of some of the scientific and statistical techniques used by the IPCC throws light on massive conflicts of interest that helps us understand the money game behind it.
For a better understanding of the problems of the solutions being proposed, in particular the economic viability of the various "green" energy sources, US based think tanks
The Cato Institute and
The Heritage Foundation are particularly helpful. A quick
fun post by Professor Mark Perry shows how Ethanol, the 90s magic bullet of the greenies has already turned out to be a "dangerous and delusional bullshit".
We urge the readers to research the web on their own before drawing any conclusion based purely on MSM propaganda.
The status of the AGW debate post climategate:
The climategate leak was by no means the first time the whole IPCC thing was seriously challenged. However, it helped shatter the mythology to a great extent. Already public support for AGW is tottering below the 50% mark.
A common talking point of the believers is that, the whole thing could not possibly have been all a scam. It is difficult to imagine thousands of scientists, the MSM all over the world, all green and environment groups and major politicians from virtually every country working lockstep in a grand conspiracy.
Actually, this is the nature of all major socially engineered movements - they gain their own momentum. Think of socialism itself - an ideology that has miraculously survived despite its proven track record of creating misery.
For something like this to stick, it needs several conditions: First, it must be perceived to help the left-liberal political parties. This in itself will ensure that the MSM in every country will deliver the right message to the intended target. Second: it must have an underlying moral or social concern so that the feel good crowd can, well, feel good about supporting it. What can beat saving the planet? Third: it must be aligned with the money game. This essentially means big corporations must be able to make money out of it, the financial world must love the scheme and it should generate loads of jholawalla type opportunities.
The AGW concept met all these conditions and more. There is a reason it has come to be called "climate change" and not just "global warming" - a convenient ploy to get all sorts of anxiety to sharply focus at achieving a singular goal, in this case a politically binding UN led treaty for all nations to sign up for eternity.
The money trail:
Contrary to the popular belief, there is huge money to be made from a green world. The finance world loves it because the trading desks stand to gain massive amounts of commission from carbon trading. Many big corporations will make windfall profits by selling their carbon credits. As an example, Lakshmi Mittal can make up to
£1bn on profits under the European scheme. The same story holds true for the Tatas for their Corus acquisition. A WSJ article
details some of the money trail involving policy research institutes and academia. A potential conflict of interest scenario involving IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri and the Tatas can be found here
and also in the open letter by Lord Moncton linked earlier.
Green energy being heavily government subsidized, an army of NGOs around the world will make out like bandits, mostly for doing unproductive work. Of course, the companies involved in green energy production themselves stand to make Government guaranteed profits, with much of the downside protected by Government. In turn, the financial world will make commissions out the green IPOs, bonds etc.
A global energy regime will create a massive global scale bureaucracy with an estimated 700 organizations under the UN umbrella.
Many conventional energy and utility companies actually welcome "green" energy. These companies are always the primary target of socialist wrath on account of their windfall profits. Most have diversified into green energy and for a good reason - green energy earns an overall better operating margin. By contrast, coal based energy for instance, runs at very low margins.
Global Governance:
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a
speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent think tank, during his US visit. Clueless Indian media reported this as though this is some sort of official US Government body. Among others, NDTV's Prannoy Roy is on CFR's
International Advisory Board.
CFR is an example of an organization that believes in the concept of a "World Government". A full discussion of this concept is beyond the scope of this blog.
Needless to say, these things increase the chances of international wheeling-dealing. The global governance concept looks particularly attractive to the Left-Liberal parties of Western Democracies. Many of them can not get their own legislative bodies to accept the recommendations of IPCC, for instance a carbon trading scheme was rejected in the Australian Senate just a while ago.
The problem is, under the Geneva convention, an international treaty such as the one being proposed for climate change is binding on a nation and supersedes the nation's legislature.
For India, the implications are less severe since for all practical purposes we do not have a constitution. The ruling party has a blank check for a trillion dollars and they can do as they please. Unfortunately, if an arbitrary global governance regime gets accepted and signed into international law, its consequences can be very problematic. Financial and economic consequences aside, it can open up a whole new front for diplomatic assault under the pretext of saving the world.
