Hypocrisy

You have to love hypocrisy, especially when it is exhibited by politicians. Whether it is a senator preaching family values while having a mistress and a secret family, or a House Rep preaching fiscal restraint to the nation as he floods his constituents with pork projects. The arrogance of these men and women, and their sense of entitlement, is truly staggering. The latest example is the upcoming global climate summit in Copenhagen.

We have been hounded repeatedly over the past few years about the connection between Man’s carbon emissions and global warming. We have been warned that the abuse of natural resources by western civilization is destroying our planet and setting the stage for an ecological disaster of biblical proportions. Frightening stuff, but apparently not frightening enough for the government delegates attending the Copenhagen climate summit.

According to the British daily The Telegraph, there have been over 1,200 limos and over 140 private jets reserved for those attending the “climate” summit. The newspaper predicts that the climate conference “will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.”

LOL. Even Jonathan Swift couldn’t create irony this self-incriminatory.

So while you and I will soon be encouraged to eschew home heating oil in favor of cow dung, or asked to return to the horse-drawn buggy for transportation, our moral and intellectual superiors in government will continue jet-setting around the globe on “official” business.

But wait. Let’s give a round of applause to the Copenhagen prostitutes who will perform free sex on anyone who has a “climate conference delegate's pass”. At least some people who claim to support global warming theory are willing to put their money, or in this case their bodies, where their mouths are. Are they misguided? Sure.

But at least they are not hypocrites.

Global Warming Hype

The global warming community has orchestrated the most successful marketing blitz that I have seen in years. Not since Chicken Little have so many feared that the sky is falling. But are we dangerously close to causing our own destruction or is this simply global warming hype?

I am not a climatologist, a geologist, or any other “ologist”, so my knowledge of the subject is limited. What interests me are not the scientific facts, but the scientists themselves who reject the very idea of global warming and who even go so far as to mock the concept. Some of these naysayers have been ostracized by their peers; some have even been blackballed by the scientific community. Professor Ian Pilmer of Adelaide University is among these skeptics. In fact, he has been labeled the global warming ‘denialist poster boy’. In Thursday’s edition of The Telegraph, Pilmer argues that global warming is not caused by CO2 and that the major producer of CO2 is volcanoes, not Man. He also adds that “we have had huge climate change in the past and to think the very slight variations we measure today are the result of our life - we really have to put ice blocks in our drinks.’"

So why then are so many scientists falling in step with the global warming party line? Research funding.

“’In previous times people got wonderful research grants in a war against cancer and they achieved a lot of money for that. Now we have a war on climate change and we have a huge number of people out there who have their career staked on it and are beneficiaries of this process.’"

Is Pilmer’s defiance warranted or is he willfully ignoring the scientific evidence?

Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing is certain: Pilmer deserves credit for standing firm against a tsunami-sized PR wave that would drown most skeptics into silence.