‘Until last week, Bernard Madoff was considered biggest fraud in world history’ — now it’s ClimateGate
By Piers Akerman
UNTIL last Friday, Wall Street’s scammer Bernard Madoff was considered the biggest fraud in world history, having taken his greedy clients for an estimated $US64.8 billion. Madoff’s fraud has been put in the shade however by the extraordinary web of scandal which has been revealed by leaked emails from the Hadley Centre (University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit) over the last few days, which certainly appear to demonstrate that a group of the most prominent scientists advising the United Nations on global warming have systematically manipulated data to support their argument that global warming is both genuine and caused by humans. Apart from a weak claim the leaked material was “out of context”, there was no denial of the authenticity of the 3000-plus documents and 61 megabites of hacked data and emails put on the net on the weekend. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has called climate change the greatest moral issue facing the world, would be wise to withdraw the ETS Bill before the Senate or risk looking an even greater idiot if the emails can’t be refuted. He will be shown to have recklessly endangered the national economy by relying on falsified data to run his fear and smear campaign against credible critics and make his extravagant claims of global disaster. Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull also should draw breath and consider the basis of his support for the ETS as the rest of the world looks into Climategate and considers how the UN was able to bankroll what appears a rogue group of climate scientists hell-bent on justifying their claims with dodgy data. Recently, Britain’s new high commissioner to Australia, the politico Baroness Valerie Amos, introduced herself to Canberra with an address at the National Press Club at which she lectured Australians over their growing reluctance to embrace the accepted wisdom on global warming. “I have been surprised that the science itself is being questioned,” she said. “These are things where there have been debates over a long period of time in other countries and where we have reached conclusions and moved on. “In the UK, there is a degree of political consensus about what in broad terms needs to be done. There is a lot of debate about how we do it. You would certainly not see on a daily basis . . . the kind of negative reporting that you have here,” she thundered. As the baroness now wipes egg from her face, she might think it is a pity there was not more negative reporting earlier in the UK, and she and her Labor government would not look as stupid as they do now. Baroness Amos might tell Australia what her prime minister, Gordon Brown, plans to do about this scandal. A full investigation is clearly needed, but after that what? As those involved have not denied the evidence presented in the leaked emails, and presuming they would have, if they could have, shown they did not falsify and manipulate data to satisfy what is now a political agenda, their scientific reputations must remain under a cloud. Rudd Labor’s propaganda machine is in overdrive presenting doomsday scenarios which now appear to be totally baseless. It would be an absolute folly for the Copenhagen meeting to continue before there are answers to all the questions raised by Climategate, and an even greater foolishness for the Opposition to back the Government’s ETS, based as it is on manipulated data. Rudd recently claimed that those who don’t agree with the global warming theory were “deniers”, but it now seems they were just people who weren’t ready to be easily fooled.
Source ht: Climate Depot