Myron Ebell

ClimateGate: the Official Whitewash Continues

by Myron Ebell on April 14, 2010

in Politics, Science

The University of East Anglia’s carefully selected “International Panel” released their report on the ClimateGate scientific fraud scandal today.  At eight pages, it’s not even a thorough whitewash.  They don’t even make a minimal effort to rebut the obvious appearance of widespread data manipulation, suppression of dissenting research through improper means, and intentional avoidance of complying with Freedom of Information requests.  It appears that they concluded that the only way they could produce a whitewash and protect the interests of the establishment was by making only the most superficial investigation.  Perhaps they realized that doing more than taking the representations of Phil Jones and the others on trust would involve them in the moral difficulty of having to choose between being honest and maintaining their exoneration.

The seven panel members only looked at eleven published articles from CRU selected on the advice of the Royal Society.  And all eight panel members didn’t read all eleven papers.  Instead, “Every paper was read by a minimum of three Panel members at least one of whom was familiar with the general area to which the paper related.  At least one of the other two was a generalist with no special climate science expertise but with experience of some of the general techniques and methods employed in the work.”  Perhaps the third reader was a chimpanzee.  Yes, they have done a thorough and professional whitewash.

However, the report makes one concession, which is quite damning: “We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.”  In fact, the handling of the historical temperature data and production of the Hadley/CRU temperature record by Jones et al. and the handling of the paleoclimatological data and fabrication of the hockey stick by Michael Mann et al. was only possible because they hid their data and methods from professional statisticians.  When professional statisticians were able to look at Mann’s methods and data, the result was the Wegman report, which was devastating.

The New York Times Fights Back Against Climategate

by Myron Ebell on March 5, 2010

in Blog

[This is a slightly-edited version of a blog first posted on Fox News Forum.]

The New York Times published a doozy of a front-page story by John M. Broder on Wednesday on the Climate-gate scientific fraud scandal. Those who have been lambasting our national “paper of record” for months for largely ignoring the scandal, while every London paper has run multiple big stories full of juicy new revelations, can now relax. The wise and good Grey Lady has finally taken notice.

Well, not exactly. Broder’s story, headlined “Scientists Take Steps to Defend Climate Work,” is all about how the climate science establishment have realized that they “have to fight back” against critics who have used the Climategate revelations to call into question the scientific case for global warming alarmism. Those whose only source of news for the past three months has been the Times will have a hard time figuring out exactly what they have to fight back against.
Broder’s analysis follows the party line that has been worked out among the leading alarmist climate scientists since the scandal broke on November 19, 2009. And Broder makes no effort to conceal where his sympathies lie. He writes: “But serious damage has already been done,” and then discusses polling data that shows increasing public disbelief in the global warming crisis. From my perspective, that’s serious good that has been done, not damage, but then I’m not an unbiased, fair-minded Times reporter.

Broder further opines on his own behalf: “The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.” That, of course, is not reporting, but agreeing with one of the alarmists’ talking points.

And it is untrue. Anyone who has ever seen some of the leading scientific proponents of alarmism in action knows that they are not about “careful observation and replicable analysis.” In fact, the major revelation of Climate-gate has been that top climate scientists refused to share their data and methodologies because they were concealing intentional data manipulation as well as incompetence. Which is exactly what their critics have maintained for years.

But blatant bias in news stories from the New York Times is not news. What makes Broder’s story unintentionally compelling is the cast of characters that he quotes to represent the calm, objective voice of establishment science.

First up is Dr. Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academies of Science (NAS). That is an august position, and the principal reason Cicerone occupies it is because he is a wily political operator. As President of the NAS, he has worked overtime to enforce the alarmist “consensus”.
When Professor Michael E. Mann’s hockey stick graph came under suspicion, Cicerone craftily convened a National Research Council (or NRC—a government-funded scientific consulting company closely affiliated with the NAS) panel to investigate and appointed Professor Gerald R. North of Texas A. and M. University as chairman. The deceptively affable North has proven to be a reliable water carrier for whoever is in authority.

Cicerone did not share with the panel the probing questions that had been sent to him by then-Chairman of the House Science Committee and then the House’s leading green Republican, Sherwood Boehlert. Instead, Cicerone provided his own loaded questions.

When the panel’s report was nonetheless quite critical of the hockey stick research, Cicerone arranged a press release and conference that put a deceptive spin on the panel’s conclusions. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media reported what they were told at the press conference.

Cicerone is now using the NRC to rush out a report to minimize Climate-gate and defend the alarmist establishment. A group of NAS members led by Stanford Professor Stephen H. Schneider, who has long been the alarmist scientists’ chief political organizer and strategist, asked Cicerone for the study. It is clear that it is intended to be a whitewash.

Broder’s story also quotes Dr. John P. Holdren, now the White House science adviser and a long-time collaborator with Stanford Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame. Holdren has made a career of bending science to support left-wing politics and has an unblemished forty-year record of wild doomsday predictions that have all proven wrong.

After a quick quote from Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, the Chairman of the U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who is a railway engineer by profession, Broder concludes by consulting Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City:

“Climate scientists are paid to do climate science,” said Gavin A. Schmidt…. “Their job is not persuading the public.”

If only that were so, even in the case of Dr. Schmidt. True, his salary is paid by American taxpayers, but it is almost certainly the case that over the past few years he has been spending a good part of his time during office hours and using government equipment to produce political propaganda for RealClimate.org, a web site run by Schmidt and Michael E. Mann. RealClimate.org has received help from Fenton Communications, the key P.R. firm for the Soros-funded left.
Thus Broder portrays Schmidt as just a scientist trying to be left alone to do his job, but in fact Schmidt is primarily a modestly-skilled political operative working to promote global warming alarmism. Here is Broder quoting Schmidt again:

“What is new is this paranoia combined with a spell of cold weather in the U. S. and the ‘climategate’ release. It’s a perfect storm that has allowed the nutters to control the agenda.”

“Nutters” is English (and Schmidt is English) slang equivalent to “nut” in the sense of crazy person. Well, Schmidt should know—his boss is the director of GISS, Dr. James E. Hansen. Hansen is widely considered to be the leading scientific promoter of global warming alarmism and as such is a highly political animal. He is also increasingly kooky and extreme.

Hansen claimed a few years ago that the Bush Administration was censoring him. It turned out he had given over 1,300 interviews during the Bush years! Hansen predicted over twenty years ago that much of Manhattan would be under water by now as the result of sea level rise caused by global warming.

Last year, Hansen, a federal employee, was arrested for protesting at a coal mine in West Virginia. He has endorsed industrial sabotage as justified by the climate crisis we are facing and said that oil company executives should be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”

So Schmidt has it right: the nutters are in control–of the global warming alarmist agenda. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the New York Times to publish that story.

(Myron Ebell is director of Freedom Action. Freedom Action is a Web-based grassroots activist group dedicated to putting freedom on the offensive. Mr. Ebell may be contacted at mebell@freedomaction.org.)

Climategate: Alarmist Scientists Plan a Snow Job

by Myron Ebell on March 5, 2010

in Features, Politics, Science

According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism.  Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding “Climategate” scandal.

The e-mails were first reported in a front-page story by Stephen Dinan in the Washington Times today. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has independently obtained copies of the e-mails.  A list of excerpts, with descriptive headlines written by me, can be found below.  The entire file of e-mails has been posted as a PDF and can be read here.

In my view, the response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position.  The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming.

Selected Excerpts.

Note that the descriptive headlines in italics are by me. The statements in quotation marks are excerpts from the e-mails.

Can we get corporate funding for some splashy ads in the NY Times?
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26: “I will accept corporate sponsorship at a 5 to 1 ratio….”

But our ads will be untainted by corporate influence.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Over the past 24 h I have been amazed and encouraged at the support my proposal has received from Section 63 and beyond. We have had about 15 pledges for $1000!  I want to build on that good will and make sure that the facts about the climate system are presented to a very large section of the public—unfiltered by the coal, oil and gas industries….”

What is it about the New York Times?  Aren’t Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman enough?
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”

Scientists should be effecting social and political change.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26:  “I want the NAS to be a transformational agent in America.”

Snow in Washington is anecdotal, but no snow in Vancouver is proof.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “…the coal, oil and gas industries (who, ironically, are running commercials on NBC for the winter Olympics, while the weather is so warm that snow has to be imported to some of the events.)”
Robert Paine, Feb. 27: “The beltway’s foolishness about climate change seems especially ironic given the snowless plight of the Vancouver Olympics.”
David Schindler, Feb. 27: “I’d add that Edmonton is near snowless….”

This is a political fight, and we’ve got to get dirty.
Paul R. Ehrlich, Feb. 27: “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.”

Top scientists adore Al Gore.
David Schindler, Feb. 27: “I recall an event at the Smithsonian a couple of eons ago that I thought did a great job, & got lots of media coverage. AL Gore spoke….”
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Al Gore has a very well written article in the NY Times.”

Forget the science, we want energy rationing!
William Jury, Feb. 27: “I am seeing formerly committed public sector leaders backing off from positions aimed at reducing our fossil fuel dependence.”

They’ll forget Climategate if an authoritative institution repeats the same old line.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “An NRC report would be useful.”
Steve Carpenter, Feb. 27: “We need a report with the authority of the NAS that summarizes the status and trends of the planet, and the logical consequences of plausible responses.”
David Tilman: Feb. 27: “It would seem wise to have the panel [writing the report] not include IPCC members.”
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar. 1: “National Academies need to be part of this….”
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar 1: “It is imperative that leading scientific societies coordinate a major press event….”

The last academic defense: It’s McCarthyism!
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar. 1: “…Senator Inhofe, in a very good impression of the infamous Joe McCarthy, has now named 17 leading scientists involved with the IPCC as potential climate ‘criminals’.  ….  I am hopeful that all the forces working for honest debate and quality assessments will decry this McCarthyite regression, and by name point out what this Senator is doing by a continuing smear campaign.  ….  Will the media have the fortitude to take this on–I’m betting a resounding ‘yes!'” [Note that Schneider has already sent this e-mail to the media asking for their help.]

To read all the e-mails that CEI has obtained, go to the PDF posted here.

Duke Energy lobbies for cap-and-trade while warning customers of cold weather

by Myron Ebell on March 3, 2010

in Politics

Duke Energy advises its customers to prepare for the ravages of global warming.

Duke Energy advises its customers to prepare for the ravages of global warming.

While Duke Energy’s Chairman, CEO, and President, James Rogers, spends millions of dollars of his customers’ money lobbying for cap-and-trade on Capitol Hill, the company’s web page for its South Carolina customers is passing along tips on how to handle cold weather.  Shouldn’t Duke Energy be warning its customers how much more they are going to have to pay to Duke Energy in higher electric rates if Congress passes the cap-and-trade legislation that Duke Energy supports?

Wyoming Passes Windmill Tax

by Myron Ebell on March 1, 2010

in Blog, Politics

The Wyoming House and Senate have passed the nation’s first tax on wind energy and sent the bill to Governor Dave Freudenthal.  The Democratic Governor proposed the new tax to the Republican-dominated legislature last month and so is almost certain to sign the bill into law.

The new excise tax of one dollar per megawatt hour will begin in 2012 and will apply  to windmills that have been generating electricity for three years or more.  Revenues are to be split 60-40 between counties and the State.

Amusingly, Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, complained about the proposed tax on the grounds that it would discourage wind power production:  “It is very disturbing to hear that one of the great States for resources wants to tax the industry and discourage the development of jobs in their State.”  She did not mention that Wyoming already taxes oil, natural gas, and coal production, which is why it doesn’t levy a personal income tax.  Nor did she mention that wind power receives huge subsidies from federal taxpayers.  The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency estimated in 2008 that wind receives $23.37 in federal subsidies per megawatt hour.  So Wyoming has quite a ways to go before it captures the entire federal subsidy.

It will be interesting to watch how quickly other States follow Wyoming’s example.

The Return of Al Gore

by Myron Ebell on March 1, 2010

in Blog, Politics

It’s not clear what Al Gore has been doing the past three months since the Climategate scientific fraud scandal broke–perhaps doing a bit of interplanetary travel or hanging out in a remote cave discussing how to de-industrialize America with his fellow global warming alarmist, Osama bin Laden.  No matter, Gore has returned to his global warming crusade with an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times.  And what an op-ed!   “We can’t wish away climate change” is 1896 words, or about three times the length of most op-eds.  Unfortunately, the leader of the forces of darkness hasn’t learned a thing during his mysterious sabbatical.

Gore begins by claiming that “it would be an enormous relief” if global warming turned out not to be a crisis.  This is undoubtedly true for most people, but Gore can’t resist piling on: “I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion.”  Oh, really?  Can anyone believe that the man who has remade himself from a losing presidential candidate into the savior of the planet wants it all to go away?  And who stands to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars from investments in green technology if energy-rationing policies are enacted?  Would he give back his Oscar and his Nobel Peace Prize?

Gore then summarizes Climategate as “the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”  Yes, at least two mistakes.  One that he doesn’t mention is the systematic manipulation of data in order to make the 1930s and ’40s appear cooler and the 1990s and 2000s warmer in the surface temperature record.  Another is the conspiracy to cover up the Medieval Warm Period with the infamous hockey-stick graph.  Nor does Gore mention that Professor Phil Jones, the central figure in Climategate, conceded in a recent interview that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

For Gore, the scientific case for alarmism is exactly as it was before Climategate, except that it’s “clearer and clearer” that things are actually worse than scientists thought.  This is a refrain Gore trots out every few months, and it is  the main reason he continues to lose credibility.

From misrepresenting the science Gore moves on to describe the political obstacles to global energy rationing.  He correctly summarizes the obstacles as formidable, but can’t resist telling another tall tale.  He claims that China “had privately signaled last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty” in Copenhagen.  But when the Senate failed to pass cap-and-trade, “the Chinese balked.”  This “private signal” is sheer fantasy.  The Chinese government have made it clear in the most direct, undiplomatic language at every international global warming pow-wow for years that they will not commit to mandatory emissions reductions.

Gore concludes with a long, incoherent rant about why he and his fellow doomsters have so far failed.  It all started with the fall of Communism.  This allowed “market fundamentalists” to convince ignorant voters that, “Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated.”

So what is to be done?  Here Gore becomes totally unglued.  “…[W]hat is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.”  The point about a regime of laws in particular and politics in general is that they cannot be instruments of human redemption.  Gore’s global salvationism (to use English economist David Henderson’s insightful term) is not far removed from the totalitarianism of Communism and National Socialism, as he makes clear in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance.

And where does Gore put his hopes for human redemption?  Hilariously, Gore is counting on Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), who may release a draft energy-rationing bill this week that Gore hopes “will place a true cap on carbon emissions.”

This shows that Gore can still get a laugh now and then, but he’s become another illustration of the old adage that even the best vaudeville acts eventually wear out.  It’s time for Al Gore to hang up the soft shoes and shuffle off the stage.

Cap and Trade is Dead: Let’s Hear It for BP, Conoco, and Caterpillar

by Myron Ebell on February 17, 2010

in Politics

The coalition of major corporations hoping to get rich off cap-and-trade legislation started to crack up yesterday when BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar dropped out of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership (or US CAP ).  Their defections end the exceedingly small remaining chance that cap-and-trade could be enacted this year.

BP America and Conoco Phillips did not pull out because they realized that the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has revealed that global warming alarmism is based on junk science.  Nor did they pull out because they finally recognized that energy-rationing policies will wreck the U. S. economy.   They pulled out when it became clear that they were not going to get rich off the backs of American consumers if the cap-and-trade bill enacted is anything like the specific bills being considered in Congress.

The Waxman-Markey bill that the House passed last June by a 219 to 212 vote and the Kerry-Boxer bill introduced in the Senate would, as intended by US CAP, raise energy prices for consumers through the roof.  Unfortunately for BP America and Conoco Phillips, the primary beneficiaries of this multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from consumers to big business would be electric utilities and General Electric.

In other words, the two oil companies lost the political pushing and shoving match to James Rogers of Duke Energy and Jeffrey Immelt of GE.  That’s no surprise: Immelt has been driving GE into the ground ever since he took over, but he’s a savvy political operator; and Rogers learned how to get to the government trough first from the master, Ken Lay of Enron.  It is worth recalling that Enron Corporation was the leading promoter of the Kyoto Protocol and cap-and-trade before it went spectacularly bankrupt.

Caterpillar’s case is different.  As the major manufacturer of heavy equipment used in coal mining, Caterpillar must have been asleep when they joined US CAP.  The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project has been gently shaking Caterpillar’s top executives for several years, and perhaps they finally woke up.

So cap-and-trade is dead.   But other piecemeal energy-rationing policies are still very much alive.  The Environmental Protection Agency is going ahead with regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act.  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working with Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) on a “compromise” package that can gain bi-partisan support.  Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has passed a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards out of his committee.

And big corporations are still circling the trough.   By my count, US CAP still has twenty-three corporate members plus eight environmental pressure groups that front for big business.  And of course, BP America, Conoco Phillips, Caterpillar, and many other companies that don’t belong to US CAP still hope to make money off the “right” sort of policies to raise energy prices.

The good news is that public opinion has turned decisively against global warming alarmism and energy-rationing.  People have figured out that they, not big business special interests, will end up paying the bills when energy prices, in President Obama’s elegant formulation, “necessarily skyrocket.”  In the November elections, the American people have a lot more votes than James Rogers of Duke Energy or Jim Mulva of Conoco Phillips.

BP, Conoco, and CAT Abandon Ship

by Myron Ebell on February 16, 2010

in Blog

Today, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar have dropped out of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership.  This is the first recognition by the many major corporations pushing energy-rationing legislation that cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the Congress and that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is collapsing rapidly.  We hope that other major corporations will soon see the light and drop their support for cap-and-trade and other similar policies.

While these announcements are most welcome, they do not mean that we can relax our efforts to defeat and roll back energy-rationing legislation and regulations.  Many policies and proposals that would raise energy prices through the roof for American consumers and destroy millions of jobs in energy-intensive industries still pose a huge threat.  These include:

the EPA’s decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act;
efforts by environmental pressure groups to use the Endangered Species Act to stop energy production and new power plants;

the higher fuel economy standards for new passenger vehicles enacted in 2007;
presidential executive orders;

and bills in Congress to require more renewable electricity, higher energy efficiency standards for buildings, and low carbon transportation fuel standards.

Triumph in Hopenchangen: the Future of Future Meetings Is Assured!

by Myron Ebell on December 20, 2009

in Blog

An historic agreement has apparently been reached at COP-15 in Hopenchangen.  Having read the draft text, it appears to be nearly as historic as some of the earlier historic agreements achieved after heroic efforts at the last several COPS.  It seems that President Barack Obama has made almost as much progress by attending the COP as President George W. Bush made at earlier COPs without attending.  The world will now congratulate and thank President Obama for pulling the world back from the brink just as they expressed their gratitude to President Bush.

Of course, as President Obama said at his press conference, it’s going to take a lot more work and–surprise–many more meetings.  Here’s what the President said: “We hope [these decisions] will bring about a result which, if not what we expected from this meeting, may still be a way of salvaging something and paving the way to another meeting next year.”

Hopenchangen has thus guaranteed the future of future meetings!  If the UNFCCC wants to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, I hope they will consider teleconferencing.  If they don’t, then they are soon going to run out of glamorous cities and resorts in which to meet.  They’ll have to start revisiting the locations of past COPs.

There was one little ray of hope in President Obama’s remarks at his press conference.  In thanking India for their role in the negotiations, the President observed that hundreds of millions of Indians don’t have more electricity and that he understood that they need more energy, not less, in order to reach decent standards of living.  Yes, the world is not energy rich.  It’s energy poor.  That is a much bigger challenge than global warming, and focusing on global warming obstructs progress on increasing access to energy.

The Crackup of the Global Warming Alarmist Establishment?

by Myron Ebell on December 18, 2009

in Blog, Politics, Science

The arrival of President Barack Obama and over one hundred other heads of state in Copenhagen for a photo op at the UN global warming conference has buried the really big story here.  No, it’s not the fact that no agreement will be reached on a new international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  That outcome was foreseen months ago.

The big news is that the grand alliance pushing global warming alarmism and energy-rationing policies has started to break apart here in a spectacular way.  The official United Nations global warming bureaucracy have thrown out the twenty to thirty thousand environmentalists who traveled to Copenhagen to attend the meeting as officially-accredited delegates of non-governmental organizations (or NGOs).  The environmentalists are extremely angry and have every justification for being angry.

This is potentially momentous because the two wings of alarmism are totally dependent on one another.  The UN’s Kyoto bandwagon has been pushed along by the environmental movement and no new treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol, when it expires at the end of 2012, will have a chance of being adopted without the continuing and unremitting backing of the environmentalists whom the UN has unceremoniously booted out this week.  For the environmental groups, Kyoto and its successor treaty are the only viable vehicles for achieving their goals of reducing emissions and putting the world on an energy starvation diet.

What has happened this week in Copenhagen is not based on any ideological disagreements.  It’s all the result of four things: the size of the room, the number of attendees, total incompetence, and poor manners.  The UN chose to hold what was billed as “the most important meeting in the history of the world” in a conference center that only holds fifteen thousand people.  The environmental NGOs sent lists of delegates that added up to over thirty thousand.  The UN looked at these two numbers and decided everything would work out fine.

Everything hummed along fine last week because it was the first week of the conference, which is devoted to technical meetings.  The majority always come for only the second week because that’s the glamorous part.  The second week is when the heads of delegations arrive to begin high-level negotiations and when the media arrive in huge numbers to cover them.

Over the weekend the United Nations organizers of the meeting realized they had a big problem.  They announced that each NGO was going to be limited in the number of its delegates that would be allowed into the conference center beginning Tuesday.  A total of seven thousand passes were to be handed out.  Thus for example the World Wildlife Fund sent approximately 120 delegates to Copenhagen and was going to be given 23 passes.

Then on Monday, thousands of people waited for up to nine hours outside in the cold to get into the building.  They were trying to register and get their ID badges.  In the huge crowd were the heads of a couple major environmental organizations.  At the end of the day, the UN let in a few to register and told the rest to go home.

Luckily, I didn’t arrive until Tuesday and it took only ninety minutes standing in the cold and another ninety inside to get registered.  That’s only partly because the UN started processing people much more quickly.  It’s also because a lot of people gave up–and are probably still trying to get warm.

The reason given for restricting the NGOs to seven thousand attending at any one time was that it was necessary to keep the total below the conference center’s capacity of 15,000.  It’s baffling that the UN’s global warming secretariat didn’t think of this weeks ago and send e-mails to the NGOs telling them that they couldn’t send so many people to the most important meeting in the history of the world (which it might be from the perspective of the environmental NGOs).

That was only the beginning, however.  On Tuesday, it was announced that only 1,000 NGO delegates would be allowed to attend on Thursday and Friday and that the method for choosing the lucky few would be announced later in the day.  A notice was posted that said the decision would be made by 6 PM.  At 6, another notice said come back at 7.  At 7, we were told that NGO representatives would meet with Yvo De Boer, the head of the Secretariat, at 7:30 and to watch our e-mails for an announcement of when we would meet.  At 7:45, we were told to assemble at 8 to find out which lucky thousand would be allowed to attend the last two days of the conference.  At 8, the meeting with Mr. de Boer was still going on.  So we sat and waited.  Ditto 8:30.  Ditto 9.  At 9:35, our NGO representatives appeared.

By this time, enough people had given up that I thought I had a good chance.        of getting a pass (and I should explain that CEI for whom I work is one of the few accredited NGOs not on the global warming bandwagon).  Then the NGO representative told us that UN security had advised Mr. de Boer that no NGO delegates should be allowed to attend the last two days, when over one hundred prime ministers and presidents, including President Obama, would be in the building. But de Boer had insisted on the rights of “civil society” to be represented and had secured a compromise. Instead of a thousand passes for NGOs, there would be three hundred.

Thus the approximately thirty thousand NGO delegates who traveled from around the world to Copenhagen to attend COP-15 were limited to seven thousand on Tuesday and Wednesday and to three hundred for the last two days.

The reason that UN security advised banning the NGOs altogether is that some of the environmentalists had been behaving badly. On Monday, there had been a small demonstration inside the conference center. I wasn’t there, but from television coverage it looked like the demonstrators were shouting at official government negotiators walking down the hall past them and that the demo was close to turning into a small riot.

Now, world leaders don’t like demos or riots close to them. Instead of glowing news reports all about them meeting with their fellow important world leaders, the stories from COP-15 would be about the protesters who are angry at them. One thousand NGO delegates in the building might include just enough malcontents to cause an ugly and highly televisable ruckus.

Consequently, there are many thousands of environmental activists in Copenhagen without a lot to do. Many of them are extremely angry. It snowed Wednesday night and gusting winds have made Thursday bitterly cold. The news reports say that four thousand protesters tried to push their way past police barricades and into the conference center. Two hundred sixty were arrested. I don’t know what might happen on Friday outside.

Inside everything will no doubt run smoothly where the heads of state are having their photos taken and making their speeches about how important it is to save the world from the ravages of global warming by agreeing to a new treaty. We will be expected to overlook the fact that after two years of negotiations begun at COP-13 in Bali, the major nations are further apart than they were then. The news from the conference center will be that these hundred-plus heads of state have pulled the world back from the brink of failure and a new treaty is now within sight. Sure.

The real news is that there is now a tremendous amount of animosity and distrust between the UN establishment and the environmental establishment. They know that they need each other, which is why the mainstream environmental NGOs have not made a stink and why the establishment press hasn’t made it a front-page story. But the fissure arising out of the UN’s incompetence is going to take a long time to heal and could easily grow much wider.

That is the very good news coming out of Hopenchangen.

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