The climate change carnival in Copenhagen

Perhaps Andrew Bolt of the Australian summed up the recent UN global warming conference best when he said, “Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the “solution”. Indeed, something was rotten in the state of Denmark, for the conference had nothing to do with climate change but was rather a shakedown of the West by the third world countries using the ideology of global warming as the vehicle to accomplish a massive transfer of wealth, all done of course under the sham pretense of saving mankind.

Though all participants were dedicated to the proposition that mankind is doomed unless all economic activity is regulated by a world government, given the diverse cast of characters, and the incommensurable role each played on the Copenhagen stage, it was inevitable that the proceedings would degenerate from the sublime to the ridiculous. The sanctimonious posturing by the participants in Copenhagen, like the “science” behind the whole global warming hoax itself, was not only fraudulent, but also positively surreal.

Consider the Oscar winning performance by one of the stars of the proceedings, Ian Fry, the lead negotiator for the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu. On Saturday a teary-eyed Fry pleaded with the delegates to take tough action: “I woke up this morning crying,” and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,”  ”The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause. A moving and heart-rending plea no doubt on the part of Fry on behalf of his beleaguered island nation. The problem is Fry has been a resident of Australia for the past ten years and when a reporter asked his wife if Fry had ever lived in Tuvalu, she replied, “I’d rather not comment.” As Mark Steyn notes, “Like his fellow Copenhagen delegate Brad Pitt, Ian Fry is an actor: He’s not a Tuvaluan, but he plays one on the world stage.”

Yet the farce continued unabated. Delegates were later treated to another fact-free exhortation, this time, from serial exaggerator and inventor of the Internet, eco-Messiah Al Gore. Gore told the assembled multitude of believers that the latest research showed the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. To buttress his contention, Gore cited the work of prominent climate scientist Dr. Wieslav Maslowski: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

So patently false was Gore’s statement, that Maslowski felt compelled to supply him a corrective. His rebuke was swift and stinging: “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this…it’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.” Is it any wonder that the most prominent spokesman of the coming apocalypse has steadfastly refused to debate the “science” with global warming skeptics?

Not to be outdone by Gore’s hyperbole, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as early as October proclaimed that, “we have 50 days to save the world.” Exactly what catastrophe would befall mankind at the expiration of the 50-day period he would not say. In a keynote address, Prince Charles lectured the delegates that, “the world has only seven years before we lose the levers of control”. Not eleven or fourteen years, but seven. Yet a question arises: if the situation is as dire as global warming proponents assert, couldn’t they lead by example and make a modest sacrifice in their commodious lifestyles to help lessen their carbon footprints?

Then there was the “let them eat cake” syndrome exhibited by the world ‘s rich and famous who flocked to Copenhagen in regal splendor. Prince Charles, like so many other global warming scolds, arrived in Copenhagen by private jet which spewed 6.4tons of carbon dioxide, 5.2tons more than if he had used a commercial flight.  So much for leading by example. As Stephen Glover of the Daily Mail wrote, “Show me a climate control zealot and I can often show you a hypocrite…” According to experts, the Copenhagen conference generated the same carbon footprint as a medium size African nation the size of Malawi.

No UN conference would be complete without the obligatory appearance by assorted third world thugs, dictators and kleptocrats. Copenhagen in this regard did not disappoint the one-world crowd. When Hugo Chavez proclaimed that capitalism is the “road to hell”, and beseeched the delegates to, “fight against capitalism and make it obey us”, he received a standing ovation from the enraptured crowd. And this was a conference convened to deal with the imminent peril posed by global warming? And what again is Venezuela’s chief export? But of course, crude oil.