Amazongate: why it matters

James Delingpole, The Telegraph
Jul. 11, 2010

In the war for the truth about “Man-Made Global Warming”, the Amazongate batttle won by Christopher Booker and Dr Richard North represents the most significant victory since Climategate.

It has been a long time coming. These last three or four months have been a pretty desperate time for us climate realists. Time and again we’ve shown the IPCC process – supposed “gold standard” of the scientific “consensus” on AGW – to be riddled with flaws; we’ve revealed how the scientists at the heart of the IPCC have broken FOI laws, conspired to shut out dissenting voices, and tried to distort and manipulate and even hide evidence that doesn’t suit their nakedly political purpose. Yet on the word of these charlatans we are being expected to commit an estimated $45 trillion, an annual Ł50 billion in Britain alone, doing the thing they call “Combatting Climate Change.”

And what has been our reward? A string of official inquiries, including three into Climategate, a Penn State one into Michael Mann, a Dutch one into the IPCC, plus the Press Complaints Commission one which led to climbdown by the Sunday Times over its reporting of Amazongate – and every one a white wash. (For the clearest summation of the key point these whitewashes overlooked, read the excellent Andrew Orlowski here.)

It’s no wonder that the promoters of climate change alarmism have been crowing that they have right and truth on their side, and that their enemies are just vexatious kooks with no evidence to support their outrageous claims against decent, hardworking honest scientists like Michael Mann and Phil Jones.

Big mistake.

When it comes to money, power and influence, the pushers of AGW alarmism definitely have the advantage. They control most of the MSM, the major scientific research establishments, institutions like the Royal Society and the National Academy for Sciences, the government, the well-funded propagandists like the WWF and Greenpeace, the big carbon traders like Al Gore and George Soros, the EU, the UN, the schools, the universities.

When it comes to a straightforward battle between truth and lies, though, the alarmists are always going to lose because they don’t have the facts on their side. And this is what is so important about the Amazongate saga. It may look complex, involved and slightly dull. It IS complex, involved and slightly dull, which is why I’m not going rehearse it here. Read Booker for the overview. Read Richard North for the full, definitive account. Then read Anthony Watts, who is on fire and righteously angry about a story he recognises as perhaps the greatest IPCC scandal since Climategate.

All you really need to know, though, is this:

The IPCC made a false claim in its most recent assessment report, passing off the propaganda of environmental activists as peer-reviewed science. Instead of admitting the truth and retracting its false claim, the IPCC and its sympathisers went into entirely characteristic cover-up mode. Activist scientists like Daniel Nepstad obfuscated; other activist scientists like Dr Simon Lewis of Leeds University exploited the ignorance and pro-Warmist bias of the Press Complaints Commission to bully an entirely unnecessary retraction of a true story on the subject by the Sunday Times; activist journalists like George Monbiot then boasted that they had been vindicated – a claim that was excitedly repeated throughout the ecotard blogosphere and among ecotard cheerleaders like the BBC. All of this energy in defence of a great, stinking lie.

Now the magnificent indefatigable Dr North and the mighty Booker have exposed that great, stinking lie. When the definitive history of the climate wars is eventually written, they will emerge as figures as towering in their greatness as Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.