The climate change debate is being dominated not by scientists, but by pseudo-scientist ideology-driven zealots. They approach it backward, with a conclusion firmly in mind. Whatever they can contort into supporting the hypothesis, they keep. All else they often reject or downplay. The facts are made submissive to the conclusion.

Jeremiah Jacques, 2015

Here is a dramatic display of the intellectual poverty of climate alarm campaigners: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/07/ted-cruz-destroys-sierra-club-presidents-global-warming-claims-senate-hearing/ . The video embedded at the link deserves to be watched to the end. The leader of one of the major climate alarmers, and climate alarm troughers, in the USA - the Sierra Club - displays all the lack of depth you might expect from a random selection of kids on a climate demo. No grasp of the subject. No ability to respond sensibly to reasonable questions. Block-headed resort to citing 'authority' when cornered. In this case the claimed authority is the notional '97% of climate scientists' - a statistic notorious for the awful stink emanating from it.

The article linked to is also well worth reading. It begins as follows:

Presidential candidate Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is showing Sierra Club President Aaron Mair to be an ideological hack and global warming alarmist.

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Cruz subjected him to a withering cross examination. Mair was reduced to stammering and frequent awkward pauses which he used to receive whispered advice from staff. He repeatedly referred to the discredited “97 percent of scientists concur” claim, and was unwilling to acknowledge valid scientific data that disproves the claim.

Mark Steyn, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, called Cruz’s relentless questioning of Mair “a thing of beauty.”

Ten different times in his testimony, Mair claimed that “97 percent of the scientists concur and agree that there is global warming.”

“The problem with that particular statistic, which gets cited a lot,” Cruz rebutted, “is it’s based on one bogus study.”

The day began contentiously and Mair proved completely unprepared for the piercing questions posed by Cruz.

This apercu is apt for the President of the Sierra Club (see Oct 8 comment), and I fear there is little doubt that it applies very widely to a great many organisations with leaderships fixated on the opportunities that the climate scaremongering presents for them. They may be wily, they may be politically smart, but they are in the intellectual basement and the moral gutter:

A vociferous belief in the danger of climate change may be a marker for a shallow thinker. It doesn't take a lot of research to realize that the "we are doomed by climate change" story is full of holes.

Norman Rogers

The main blog post today (http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/11/3/whos-behind-the-rico-push.html is about a very revealing investigation by Shub Niggurath into blatant conspiratorial schemings by CO2 Scaremongers of huge ambition in the 'Climate Accountability Institute' (CAI):

The workshop ended and there was ‘agreement’. ‘Documents’ needed to be obtained. Legal action was needed both for ‘wresting potentially useful internal documents’ and ‘maintaining pressure on the industry’.

A consensus had emerged

… an emerging consensus on a strategy that incorporates legal action with a narrative that creates public outrage.
The participants, we learn

…made commitments to try to coordinate future efforts, continue discussing strategies for gaining access to internal documents from the fossil fuel industry and its affiliated climate denial network…

Essentially, they had fantasised about incriminating documents existing in some companies, and talked themselves into this fantasy being a hard reality that they needed to exploit. First the wish, then the data. This is fantasy-based evidence-making. Even more shoddy and disturbing than policy-based evidence-making.

As Niggurath notes in a postscript: 'The CAI are free to plot the downfall of their opponents. But it is somewhat of a surprise to see the entirety of their ideas to be picked up and translated into action by the intellectually bankrupt climate activist movement.'
Read his report here: https://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/rico-teering/

Ben Pile pulls no punches in a piece triggered by this:

Earlier this month, a report from the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health announced that ‘fecal sludge’ might be one answer to several of the world’s problems.

He notes:

The message from global institutions to the world’s poor is: ‘you may have your own shit, but you may not have coal’. In 2013, the World Bank, despite acknowledging many people’s lack of access to electricity, said that, because of climate change, it would no longer be supporting the development of coal-fired power stations.

After exploring this a bit further, he concludes:

But there is plenty to be cheerful about. Within the past 20 years, extreme poverty has halved, and almost every indicator of human welfare shows unprecedented progress. Perhaps that is what most terrifies an engorged, top-heavy class of environmental and ‘development’ technocrats: the possibility that the World’s problems are being solved not just without them, but in spite of them. It is worth considering the possibility that their plans may soon make ‘development agencies’ the main obstacle to development.

Hat-tip: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/no-more-fish-dinners-for-you-this-is.html#links

Pointman goes to town on the likes of COP21:

It seems to me it’s degenerated down to nothing more than a work’s outing, a jolly, an annual occasion to meet like-minded people and feel good at doing something noble, and best of all, someone else is picking up the tab for your trips to exotic places like Cancun, Durban, Doha, Warsaw, New York and now Paris.
I can’t help but think that if you added up all the money it takes to assemble forty thousand people from all around the world in one city for two weeks, house them, feed them and entertain them, never mind provide conference facilities, how much real poverty relief that money could do.
The thing I’ve found about all those beautiful people primping and preening their egos because they’re saving the Earth, is that they simply won’t see what’s under their nose, or maybe they don’t want to deal with it. It’s dirty, unkempt, ugly and definitely in your world right here and now, not safely tucked away a hundred years hence.
It’s invisible to them.

Mike Haseler has highlighted 15 scandals (and counting) which I think illustrate moral and/or intellectual poverty on the part of those wish to alarm us about CO2. Here are his first five:

1. RICOgate – attempts to silence sceptics using “lawfair” and smear tactics – now linked to Sen. Whitehouse
2. NOAAgate (aka Pausebuster study) – the refusal to comply with congressional subpoena from – ongoing and likely to hit the news WUWT
3. NASAgate – the warming adjustments to their temps now showing to be “massively altered” by German professor
4. Yeo’s apparent perjury in his libel case where the judge described his evidence as “implausible”, “unreliable”, “not honest”,”dishonest”, “untruthful”, “untrue” and “unworthy of belief”. Bishop Hill
5. Stern’s “Economy with the truth” whereby he was shown to have lied in a letter to the FT

See his post for the rest, and for supporting links: http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2015/11/25/current-climate-scandals/

This report recalls the leading climate change expert in the US Environmental Protection Agency being sent to prison in 2013 for 32 months for being a fantasist and conniing the US Government out of nearly 1 million dollars: http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/01/climate-change-expert-jailed-for-conning-epa-out-of-900k/.

Prepare the floodgates for opening! If only they had. One day soon perhaps ...

Hattip http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/223042/

More on the top EPA expert here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/19/republicans-seek-review-of-john-beales-work-while-/?page=all

A former high-ranking EPA staffer convicted of stealing nearly $900,000 by pretending to be a CIA spy had virtually no experience, got his job with help from a college buddy, and went on to play a key role in sweeping environmental regulations, according to a report Senate Republicans released Wednesday.

Those regulations remain in place despite John C. Beale’s lack of environmental expertise, Republican investigators said, adding that they want the Environmental Protection Agency to review the work in which Beale was involved during his 24-year tenure.

The report said Beale led an “itinerant life” as a police officer and a physical therapist in California before heading to Princeton University in the 1970s. It was at Princeton, the report said, where Beale befriended Robert Brenner, who later would become the EPA’s deputy assistant administrator.

“Rather than recruit someone with the requisite experience, Brenner sought out Beale in what appears to be a decision based solely on their personal friendship rather than any experience or credentials,” said conclusions of the report by Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

These remarks by James Delingpole may seem outrageous at first, but click on the link to see some justification for them:

‘What I really should have said is that these [alarmist climate scientists] are a bunch of lying, cheating, scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, third-rate tosspots who don’t even deserve the name “scientists” because what they practise isn’t really science but data-fiddling, cherry-picking, grant-troughing, activism-driven propaganda.’

http://cliscep.com/2016/02/17/the-delingpole-conjectures-are-they-plausible-do-they-matter

More insights into modern morals and philosophy by a distinguished commentator on such matters, James Delingpole:

Some cynics are saying that this is precisely the sort of low-down behaviour we have come to expect from the climate scamster fraternity. They point, for example, to identity thieving fraudster Peter Gleick; Rajendra “Dr Octopus” Pachauri (the former IPCC chief recently charged with sexual harrassment); Al Gore (who continues to deny having acted like a “crazed sex poodle” towards some hapless masseuse who’d come to manipulate his whale-like physique); former UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne (jailed for perjury); former MP and assiduous green trougher Tim Yeo who lost his libel case against a newspaper after the judge found that his evidence was “implausible”, “unreliable”, “not honest”,”dishonest”, “untruthful”, “untrue” and “unworthy of belief”; and, of course, “disgraced, FOI-breaching, email-deleting, scientific-method abusing” Phil “Climategate” Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of Easy Access.

Those cynics are, of course, entirely right. The problem with the $1.5 trillion climate change industry is a very simple one: because it is propped up by lies, depends on government regulation and involves eye-watering sums of money “free” to those with no morals, it inevitably attracts the very worst kind of people.

This certainly must account for some of the astonishing success of CO2 Alarmism, and for the decidedly unimpressive people who make so much of it, and from it.

Another one biting the dust:

Climate scientist Daniel Alongi has been indicted by the Australian government on charges of defrauding taxpayers out of $556,000 in false expenses since 2008.

Alongi has already admitted to creating false invoices, credit card statements, and e-mails to cover his misappropriation of funds.

Alongi’s indictment raises serious questions concerning the credibility of his research. During the period of Alongi’s alleged fraud, his research focusing on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef, coastal mangroves, and coastal ecosystems was published in numerous national and international journals.

Source: http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2016/03/14/climate-scientist-arrested-fraud