The Crime of the Century

Doc Zero on the global warming scam and the latest revelations from the CRUgate emails:

Few recent events have illustrated the ineptitude, and political agenda, of the mainstream media more dramatically than “Climagate.” The revelation of email correspondence from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, documenting various attempts to suppress data and manipulate scientific “consensus” with thuggish tactics, confirms what critics of the global-warming movement have always maintained: it has a lot more to do with money and politics than science. In fact, the global-warming movement is essentially the opposite of science – the manipulation and destruction of empirical data to support a theory whose accuracy was decided in advance.

Those tempted to compare global warming to a religion should consider that religious faith does not require the willful suppression of knowledge. Calling the belief in global warming a “religion” is an insult to religion. It’s a mistake I have made in the past, and I owe the faithful of all religions an apology for doing so.

Global warming is a scam, pure and simple. By any objective measure, it’s the crime of the century, with a dollar value that dwarfs the sins of Bernie Madoff or Enron. People like Al Gore have become millionaires by selling books and “carbon credits” to their marks… many of whom knew perfectly well they were being taken for a ride, but felt political pressure to play along, or saw opportunities created by the exercise of raw government power. The economic damage from legislation passed in response to this hoax will run into trillions of dollars, if Barack Obama’s disastrous cap-and-trade legislation passes the Senate.

An objective media would respond to this blockbuster news story with front-page headlines and “special report” television treatment. By now, the authors of the incriminating Climate Research Unit emails would be infamous around the world. Top operators of the global warming racket, such as Al Gore, would be hiding in their mansions, afraid to face the mob of angry reporters gathered outside. Liberals love to accuse big corporations of manufacturing crises and taking advantage of consumers with false product information and deceptive advertising. Here is the paramount example of those offenses, on a scale that would widen the eyes of the greatest titans of industry. If a private corporation had conducted a scam as vast, and as destructive to the prosperity of nations – and the aspirations of the working poor…

… but no private corporation could do anything like this, could they? The global warming scam is the kind of crime that only Big Government can mastermind.

Private industry makes plenty of mistakes, but the global warming scam is defined by its utter contempt for costs and benefits - the laws of gravity that hold businesses in orbit around the free market. The global warming cult maintains that no chances can be taken – we must ignore all reservations and contrary evidence, and proceed as if the worst possible outcomes are inevitable, unless we take drastic action. We have to take this action immediately – not even the slightest delay is acceptable. Members of the global warming cult provide constantly shifting dates for environmental doomsday, painting dire pictures of coastal cities becoming aquariums after the polar ice caps melt. With the eager assistance of media allies, the cult produces ridiculous propaganda, like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or the movie The Day After Tomorrow, embraced warmly for their “good intentions” despite being filled with exaggerations and outright lies.

Business leaders confronted with this kind of hard sell, blown in their faces with frantic enthusiasm, generally respond with suspicion, because they know a con when they see one. When you tell a businessman he is morally obligated to accept a deal that imposes monstrous costs, without visible benefits, and he must agree immediately without asking any further questions, he will get up and leave the table… unless you point a gun at him, and force him to sit back down. That’s where government comes in.

It’s easiest to con someone when they want to be fooled. Global warming is like pornography for Big Government addicts. It provides the rationale for sweeping new powers. It can be used as a moral club to beat class enemies. It creates a climate of perpetual emergency that allows endless taxation and erosion of liberty. There is great power to be gained by those who act as the harbingers of a disaster that is always too far away for hard-nosed analysis, but too close for careful deliberation.

Like most of the biggest government crimes, this one will never be prosecuted. No one will go to jail for the bogus “hockey stick” climate graph, or compensate victims for economic damages. The suckers who bought carbon credits will never be made whole. When corporate miscreants like Enron are brought to justice, there is much talk about setting precedents, and sending warnings to other would-be lawbreakers. Such warnings are never sent to government crooks, and no one talks about the need to set precedents. Indeed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was still parroting the “science is settled” line today… days after anyone capable of rational thought could possibly agree. No one milking political power from the global warming scam will feel any need to back down or start making sense, until they start paying a significant political price.

If describing the acolytes and hucksters of global warming as “criminals” seems harsh, ask yourself how this situation would be treated if the miscreants had been operating within the private sector. Imagine a group of corporations conspiring to create an imaginary crisis, using junk science and false advertising, with their original raw data safely shredded. Imagine these greedy capitalists selling fantastically expensive “solutions” to the problem they manufactured, and demanding control over scores of other industries in the bargain. Picture an advertising campaign reaching into movies, books, music, and “news” programs. Imagine corporate representatives invading schools to indoctrinate children from an early age, and absolutely saturating children’s literature and television with slogans and carefully constructed horror stories about how the world will suffer, if their parents don’t play ball and start forking over money and liberties to the conglomerate.

Now imagine a hacked server disgorging emails between officers and technicians of these corporations, worded exactly the same as the East Anglia Climate Research Unit messages, and ask yourself how long it would take for the first Senate subcommittees to issue subpoenas, the first crisis news specials to pre-empt prime-time programming, or the first grand juries to convene.