Lies, damn lies and global warming

The warming tendency has worked itself into a fine fury over the last week or so, possibly adding several degrees to global temperatures in the process. The reason; some of the most senior people in the Climate Change Community (sic) have been caught out cooking the books, moving the goalposts, fielding several ringers. You choose the metaphor that suits the situation best. But, basically a hacker has published a series of e-mails in which this select band seems to conspire to, well, fiddle the evidence by:
deleting or simply ignoring data that don't fit neatly into their models for future warming
attacking any person or thing that contradicts or casts doubt on their research
attempting to blackmail respected scientific journals into refusing to publish papers submitted by the contrarians.

Now, as you can imagine, this has set the cat among the pigeons. Well, to be honest, some cats among some pigeons. For all the interest the story has aroused in the BBC news rooms, it might have happened on the planet Zog. But, the opinion pages of the Guardian and the Independent have been catching fire with all of the claims and counterclaims from the Climate Change Community and the people that they describe, in their more polite moments, as Deniers.

Actually, this whole affair has demonstrated how political virtually every aspect of modern existence is. The fact that the Climate Change Community regards and refers to itself in precisely those terms tells you a great deal about its them-and-us mentality. Just like the Gay Community; the Travelling Community and all the other Communities that beset the rest of society, they huddle together like early Christians threatened by the Roman mob. And, just like Christians, as their beliefs have become more mainstream and gained respectability, they have coalesced into a major political force with wealth, stature and power. Now, as we all know power corrupts and absolute power etc, etc. That, I believe, is what has happened in this case. Professor Jones and his colleagues and acolytes around the Globe have attracted research funds, prestige and immense influence thanks to what they call AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). Having acquired these trappings they are, in a very human and understandable way, reluctant to give them up. They are the point of reference for people like Al Gore. Their predictions ( or perhaps prophecies, given their quai-religious fervour) have convinced governments around the world to tax the rest of us to the hilt so that they can make the necessary investment in wind turbines, carbon capture and the like in an attempt to stave off the inevitable horrors that will be visted upon us all unless we comply. In short, they hold the future of the globe in their collective hands. What a burden. What a responsibility. How God-like must it all make them feel?
And then, some bloody hacker with an agenda comes along and sets a bonfire under all of their vanities.
Even the High Priest of the Warming Cult, George Monbiot of the Guardian, very briefly had to admit that things looked bleak for the Warmists. He urged Prof. Jones to resign. He hasn't, but he has withdrawn his labour, presumably on full pay, until all the fuss dies down. George, meanwhile, having rent his shirt and rubbed on a few carbon-free ashes has left the fight to his many disciples while he has flown off to Toronto the better to rail against the shale oil processing going on in Alberta - roughly 2400 miles away from where he is staying.
The disciples, showing all the zeal of the converted, have girded their loins and pitched head-first into the Deniers. According to them, a few random e-mails ( around 3000 actually) do not undermine the great body of evidence that the high priests of the Climate Change Community have accumulated over the years. Asking people to delete or ignore inconvenient data is not sinister; merely a tidying-up exercise.
So, this is what I would say to them. Let's substitute the Crown Prosecution Service or DPP for the University of East Anglia. Let's say that the DPP has a rock solid case against a suspected rapist; eye witness evidence, oodles of DNA scattered around the scene and the victim. They are about to go before the judge and jury with this evidence when a copper sends an e-mail saying that the scene of crime officer found traces of DNA from a lot of other people at the scene but it was somehow omitted from the evidence presented to the prosecutor.
All of a sudden the cast-iron case has sprung several leaks. So the prosecutor contacts the copper and explains that everone is absolutely certain that they have the right man, all the evidence points to his guilt - except for this one inconvenient bit of contradictory evidence. He asks him, nicely, to delete his e-mail and forget that he ever sent it. It would merely be a case of tidying up, ironing a few anomalies; the main body of evidence was proof enough of the man's guilt, so there would be no danger of a miscarriage of justice.
Imagine the outrage such a suggestion would cause. Yet, here we have the warmists suggesting that anyone feeling outraged by the shenanigans at UEA needs a brain transplant.
Afeel each other up, nd so, on to Copenhagen where, at your expense and mine, politicians and Green lobbyists alike will burn millions of tons of carbon fuel, nod sagely - and vote to tax modern life out of existence.