By Mr. Curmudgeon

Demonstrators estimated to number around 100,000 marched from Copenhagen’s Chistiansborg Slotsplads to the Bella Center where delegates representing 200 nations are gathered to find an expensive and freedom-killing solution to a nonexistent problem – global warming. The demonstrators expressed frustration with all the talk at the climate conference and want action. The protestors, however, were less united by their wants than they were in their clamor.

A lone voice in the crowd, barley heard over the loud swish of police helicopters, was David Pontoppidan, a sociology student from the University of Copenhagen. “We want free debate,” the New York Times reported, “We want to be able to be taken seriously even though we don’t agree with the U.N.” Welcome to the club, David.

Al Gore’s sci-fi classic, “An Inconvenient Truth,” may have been short on truth, but its real purpose was to inconvenience those wishing to engage in honest debate regarding the preposterous apocalyptic claims made by the tax-supported high priests of climate science. A central tenant of Gore’s fable is that the overwhelming consensus among climatologists confirms that global warming is real and that we are its cause.

As the e-mails from “climategate” show, that consensus is the product of a massive scientific fraud. In defense of the Climate Research Unit – the central perpetrator of the scam – the mass media argues that we Americans are too stupid to truly evaluate whether years of gathered climate data is real or manufactured. We are to shut up and let our betters in white coats and at the U.N. design sadistic carbon-cutting policies that require us to march back in time to live like pathetic urchins in a Dickens novel. To contradict this dogma is sacrilege. And that is the real point.

Climate change has evolved into the central dogma of the eco-religion. Unlike religions stemming from the Judeo/Christian tradition – that are scrupulously removed from the public square by our political and legal institutions –the opposite holds true for the eco-religion. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, is a hateful impediment to the new religion and it won’t be tolerated.

President Obama’s presence in Copenhagen signals his distrust of our political traditions, built on the consent of the governed, in favor of Gore and his high priests – who wish to subject every man, woman and child on Earth to the dictates of a new religion built on a foundation of fraud.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Many of the delegates currently attending the Copenhagen climate summit know who the real enemy is. It’s not global warming or big oil. For advocates of the “climate justice movement,” the enemy is us – every citizen of the United State of America. In an editorial appearing in 56 newspapers around the world, its authors say, “Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty…even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president [Obama] cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.”

The editorial conductor motions to the string section of the global warming orchestra and the violins begin their sorrowful moan:

“…The rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions…”

Then the editorial gets to the heart of what the Copenhagen summit is really all about – what to Americans will seem an ear-splitting gong:

“Social justice demands that the industrialized world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries…

“Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.”

In other words, we Americans will have to pay for our high standard of living by living like hunter-gatherer equatorial pygmies. Climate change, after all, has little to do with weather and everything to do with economics. It’s the kind of “change” that is eerily similar to the one President Obama campaigned on. When Ohio’s Joe the Plumber encountered candidate Obama loitering on his front lawn, old Joe could hardly have imagined that Obama’s promise to “spread the wealth around” was a threat that had global implications.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

As the delegates to Copenhagen’s climate summit debate the nuanced wording of a draconian measure to place billions of us carbon emitters under the thumb of U.N. climateers, a question comes to mind: what action will the U.N. take to enforce a global climate treaty once the measure is agreed upon? You can catch a revealing glimpse of the U.N.’s organizational skills as played out in the African Congo.

Several months ago, the United Nations agreed to allow the Congolese army to join the copious ranks of its 19,000-man Central African peacekeeping force. The world body went so far as to provide food and ammunition to the eager new recruits. A document from the United Nations peacekeeping force (know as MONUC) states that its mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is “…the maintenance of the cessation of hostilities and the disengagement and redeployment of the parties’ forces, the comprehensive disarmament, demobilization, resettlement and reintegration of all members of all armed groups…and the orderly withdrawal of all foreign forces…”

During the past three months, U.N. peacekeepers conducted Operation Kimia II, which was originally designed to disarm and repatriate Rwandan rebels. Instead, U.N. peacekeepers knowingly supported abusive “military operations,” says Human Rights Watch.

The New York Times reports that the U.N.’s Congolese contingent failed to read the fine print of their peacekeeping mandate. Instead, they “killed hundreds of civilians, gang-raped girls and even cut the heads off some young men.”

And what, you might ask, was the response from the U.N. under secretary general for peacekeeping operations? “We knew this was a risky operation,” Alain Le Roy told the New York Times, “We have no other option.”

Alain Le Roy may feel he has no choice but to feed and arm marauding killers, but the United States should know better than to make binding agreements with a nihilistic organization that refuses to distinguish between peacekeepers and predators.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

With the Republican Party bereft of testosterone, it has fallen to Gov. Sarah Palin to say what Republican geldings won’t. In a column published in Tuesday’s Washington Post, Gov. Palin commented on the manipulation of climate data by the malevolent Climate Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia:

“The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

“Climate-gate,” as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit…have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle — the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nations organization overseeing events in Copenhagen, defended the CRU’s data hoax, which is not surprising. The CRU provided much of the data the IPCC uses to pressure weak-minded world leaders:

“Comments on blogs and in the media about the contents of a large number of private emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, have questioned both the validity of the key findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and the integrity of its authors. IPCC WGI condemns the illegal act which led to private emails being posted on the Internet and firmly stands by the findings of the AR4 and by the community of researchers worldwide whose professional standards and careful scientific work over many years have provided the basis for these conclusions.”

The AR4 report is a crucial document contending, “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” and that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th Century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [We The People] greenhouse gas concentrations.” So, it’s understandable that the IPCC is concerned climate-gate e-mails threaten the legitimacy of the U.N. and Al Gore’s so-called scientific censuses. As Palin states:

“The e-mails reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.”

Horrified that a leading organ of the mainstream media would give space to a rare Republican critic of global warming, Tim Lambert of ScienceBlogs.com wrote a response to Palin’s Op-Ed entitled “The Washington Post can’t go out of business fast enough.” Lambert lamented, “…Now they have a piece by climate expert Sarah Palin. The Washington Post simply does not care about the accuracy of the columns it publishes.”

Though unintentional, Lambert raises a profoundly important point. Why would any alert being trust the purveyors’ of incomplete and manipulated data with deciding the fate of billions of human beings simply on the basis of their so-called “expertise?” Would you roll over if handed a computerized bank statement shorting your saving account by several thousand dollars? After all, the bank’s data-entry specialist can certainly claim the title “expert.” Lambert is angry because by publishing Palin’s Op-Ed, the Post opened the door – if only briefly – to the fallibility of the self-professed infallible experts.

Copenhagen’s 11-day summit, therefore, is the byproduct of climate science fiction. Like the humorless intergalactic scold Klaatu in the 1951 sci-fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” climatologists assure us that the U.N.’s dictatorial mandates won’t require “giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle.”

Earthling Sarah Palin isn’t so sure:

“Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference.”

It’s not the bad science that bothers me. It’s that the Copenhagen conference seeks to achieve agreement to erase national sovereignties, giving the U.N. unprecedented power over all human activity on Earth. Like the enforcing robot Gort, the U.N.’s iron bureaucrats believe they are programmed to save us from ourselves, thus saving the planet. This would be laughable if the reality of it weren’t so sci-fi scary.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Popular radio and Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck is upsetting his critics again. His association with advertiser Goldline has media lefties crying “conflict of interest!” According to the leftist MediaMatters.org, “On the November 23 edition of his Fox News show, Beck told his audience that in the event of a possible U.S. economic ‘collapse,’ they should practice ‘the 3 G system’ of ‘God, Gold, and Guns.’” That doesn’t strike me as all that unreasonable in light of Obama’s agenda to hobble the U.S. economy while destroying the value of the dollar. If more of us had listened to Beck, we’d be sitting pretty right about now.

Just six days after congress passed Obama’s so-called stimulus package, gold closed above $1,000 an ounce. Though it has retraced from its recent high, gold stands at around $1,130 an ounce.

MediaMatters further states, “…Beck essentially scares his audience into believing that hyperinflation and economic collapse is a near sure thing and then advises them to buy gold to protect themselves. All along Beck never mentions that a gold-buying company happens to be one of his few remaining sponsors.” Regardless of who is sponsoring Beck, can any reasonable individual conscious of his surrounding fail to see the financial ruin in our future do to government excess? The Reserve Bank of India recently purchased 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund. According to the Reuters News Service, “Some economists say the move could be aimed at diversifying its reserves holdings which focuses on the U.S. dollar.” Duh. Obama’s policy to destroy the U.S. Greenback is why nations searching for a brighter future are increasing their gold holdings while planning how to decouple their economies from the world’s dying reserve currency – the dollar.

Over at the Manchester Guardian, the hysterical Graciela Chichilnisky is frightened by, what to her, is a more palpable danger – global warming and the disaster-movie effects sure to follow in its wake. “The stakes are high because we procrastinated too long. Hundreds of millions of people in the Small Island States – 43 of them – could drown or be displaced – at enormous cost to the political stability of the planet. President Naheen of the Maldives is already purchasing land in India. 50 million climate refugees are expected in 2010, and 200 million by 2012…”

Given a choice, which disaster scenario do you think is more likely: that millions will fall victim to rising sea levels due to Al Gore’s invisible friend global warming, or that Obama’s ravaging of the U.S. economy will sink the dollar, lifting the tide for higher gold prices? The government of India buys gold to prepare for the latter while selling useless land to gullible Maldives islanders who fear the former. Someone in India is obviously listening to Glenn Beck.

A truth not often stated in polite company is that a telltale sign of all living organisms is that they produce waste. Two hundred nations now convened in Copenhagen are debating the best means for punishing the dynamic living organism known as the “developed world” to benefit the stagnant and undeveloped “developing world.”

The New York Times reports that one sticking point at the U.N. climate summit is “securing commitments from wealthy nations to deliver what could ultimately be hundreds of billions of dollars in financing to poor countries, which argue that they are ill equipped to deal with a problem they did little to create.” If the ultimate point of eco-religionists is to lower the industrialized West to the level of primitive, isolated island societies, why encourage the same wasteful habits by throwing our dirty money their way? Some of these dollars might lead to the creation of businesses that raise living standards – leading to the byproduct of all living organisms…waste.

And who will administer the billions of dollars in welfare payments to the societies progress left behind? Why, the very delegates now convened in Copenhagen – the ones transported by 140 private jets and 1,200 limousines. In their quest to reduce our carbon footprint, the eco-aristocracy isn’t required to abide by the same rules they wish to impose on us. According to the Washington Examiner, Al Gore’s “Green Mansion,” uses as much energy in a month as 20 average American households…” But Al Gore and Copenhagen’s ruling class are anything but average. In fact, the London Daily Telegraph reports that the eleven-day climate summit “will create a total of 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide…” That’s a lot of waste for less than productive living organisms.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

The summit on so-called “climate change” kicked-off in Copenhagen despite damning evidence of fraud uncovered by computer hackers a short two weeks ago. The controversy involves 13-years worth of e-mail exchanges between members of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which has compiled climate data for use in computer models predicting Nostradamus-like end-of-the-world catastrophes, and like-minded climatologists around the world. Not to worry, the U.N. Environment Program director Achim Steiner tells us to pay no attention to the climate data manipulators behind the curtain:

“It doesn’t change anything in the…conclusions — it’s only one line of evidence out of dozens of lines of evidence. This is not ‘climategate’, it’s ‘hackergate.’ Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.”

According to the Times of London, Britain’s Met Office (the National Weather Service of the United Kingdom), “will release temperature data from 1,000 weather stations around the world in an attempt to shore up public confidence in its statements about the dangers of climate change. The raw data will be impossible for any non-expert to interpret.” Gee, now we can play along by manipulating the data as well.

The New York Times assures us that evidence of scientific fraud shouldn’t stand in the way of equally fraudulent solutions to climate change:

“It is important that scientists behave professionally and openly. It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.”

An editorial in the journal Nature attempted to explain away an especially incriminating e-mail detailing one climatetologist’s “trick” to push data into conforming with his predetermined outcome:

“One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.”

Or, to paraphrase that nihilistic wordsmith Bill Clinton, “it depends what your definition of the word ‘trick’ is.”

Deconstructing words and their definitions has been a trusted tool of social revolutionaries. Abortion was twisted into a woman’s “right to privacy,” tax hikes are re-defined as “investments,” and unsustainable entitlement programs are “cost-cutting reforms.” If words and their meanings are as transitory as, say, the weather, the public shouldn’t be blamed for its plummeting confidence in the ravings of global warming advocates. If nothing is true, how can we be certain of anything, including climate data?

– Mr. Curmudgeon