It is amazing to see how people circle the wagon even after discovering that the Climate Change emperor has no clothes after emails from the University of East Anglia surfaced. It really deflates the push for the climate change treaty in Copenhagen that was supposed to be historic (some would argue disastrous in terms of U.S. sovereignty). It should also diminish the argument for a harmful cap and tax bill that will fleece American taxpayers when they see their energy costs go up.
Megan McArdle points out even if the data wasnāt faked, it certainly still could be biased, but even so the data is bad. And yet people circle the wagons, call those who question the content of the emails deniers and want to continue on with this farce.
President Barack Obama still plans to go to Copenhagen, and Sarah Palin in an Washington Post op/ed urges the President to boycott:
This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I’ve always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska’s economy and the nation’s, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.
Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits — not pursuing a political agenda. That’s not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate — far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska’s communities and infrastructure.
But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen — which actually allow them to increase their emissions — President Obama’s proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That’s not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress’s cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.
The Leftist media wishes that Climategate and Palin would just go away, but wishing wonāt make it so. Palin is so āirrelevantā that the Climate Change King, Al Gore, tried to provide a rebuttal to Governor Palinās op/ed in an interview with Andrea Mitchell:
In response, Gore said that "the deniers are persisting in an era of unreality. The entire North Polar icecap is disappearing before our eyes… What do they think is happening?"
He said we’ve seen record storms, droughts, fires — and the effects taking place are exactly as predicted by these scientists for years.
Asked about Palin’s charge on Facebook that these are "doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood," Gore replied that the scientific community has worked on this issue for 20 years. "It’s a principle in physics. It’s like gravity. It exists."
In that same interview Vice President Gore also said that the earthās core is several million degrees, which by the way, would make it hotter than the surface of the sun. Interesting, but I digress. Governor Palin responded to Goreās rebuttal:
Perhaps heās right. Climate change is like gravity ā a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect itā¦.
ā¦I have never denied the existence of climate change. I just donāt think we can primarily blame manās activities for the earthās cyclical weather changes.
Former Vice President Gore also claimed today that the scientific community has worked on this issue for 20 years, and therefore it is settled science. Well, the Climategate scandal involves the leading experts in this field, and if Climategate is proof of the larger method used over the past 20 years, then Vice President Gore seriously needs to consider that their findings are flawed, falsified, or inconclusive.
Vice President Gore, the Climategate scandal exists. You might even say that itās sort of like gravity: you simply canāt deny it.
Vice President Gore if following a similar pattern of the rest of Climategate deniers when cornered, make up things about your opposition or get cranky about it. Is it too late to see Goreās Nobel Peace Prize taken away? Probably not since they still seem to listen to wrong information about the nature of the Climate Change debate.