COPENHAGEN — For some in the great debate over climate change, sci ence is for sale and any evidence that does not support their prejudices is irrelevant.
Leading that charge yesterday against rational and open discussion was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who told reporters that the recently leaked e-mails from a British university’s Climate Research Unit do nothing to undermine his belief that the planet is doomed and humans are to blame.
These e-mails were private missives between the most highly regarded scientists, researchers and scholars studying global warming.
It is largely their work that is the foundation on which the UN has built its belief that global warming is real, it is undoubtedly caused by man, and the temperatures are rising at an even more alarming rate than previously understood.
And, of course, it is the basis for the two-week summit here where organizers hope to set international law that will drastically hamper US industry and severely limit personal freedoms, such as flying home for Christmas.
Oh, also, it would result in the United States writing yet another massive check in foreign aid.
So it is nothing short of astonishing to hear Ban and other climate-change faithful summarily dismiss a massive trove of alarming new evidence suggesting flawed science and foul play are baked into their vaunted global warming theories.
One e-mail refers to using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures.
Another has a scientist deep in the throes of frustration that all the exhaustive data collected doesn’t produce the expected temperature increases.
“We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!” he determines.
“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,” bemoans another scholar in one of the most startling e-mails.
He goes on to say vastly complicated computer models show that temperatures should be hotter now than they are.
“[T]he data are surely wrong,” the deluded scientist concludes. “Our observing system is inadequate.”
Or, perhaps your conclusion is wrong there, doc.
This would be just a bunch of silly scientists with a dim grasp of the scientific method, except it is so much more sinister.
One of the exposed e-mails instructs fellow scientists to destroy a chain of damaging messages.
Another goes even further in a fatwa to silence independent scientists challenging their dubious findings.
We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” the scientist raves.
In any court of law, such evidence would be grounds for mistrial.
Not here. Not at the UN.
Ban and all of his advocate-scientists will not be deterred by facts.
The UN’s top climate scientist said yesterday the only question raised by the e-mails is who revealed them and how that person should be punished.
It is a slight misnomer that people call this a religion.
There are certainly those who blindly believe, but it is driven by something much more basic.
This is all about money.
Just yesterday, Bangladesh sent word that the storm-ravaged country expects a massive payout from the UN fund that will be filled by taxpayers in countries like the United States — punishment for our advancement and industry that has fed so many hungry and cured so many sick.
Finally, Bangladesh has found the ticket into modern civilization.