[StBernard] Shakedown in Copenhagen

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - December 25, 2009

Shakedown in Copenhagen
by Pat Buchanan

If you would know what Copenhagen is all about, hearken 
to this nugget in The Washington Post's report from the 
Danish capital. 

"Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenari -- who is represent-
ing all of Africa here -- unveiled his proposal Wednesday 
for a system in which rich countries would provide money 
to poor ones to help deal with the effects of climate 
change....

"Zenawi said he would accept $30 billion in the short term, 
rising to $100 billion by 2020. ... This was seen as a key 
concession by developing countries, which had previously 
spurned that figure... as too low."

There was a time when a U.S. diplomat would have burst out 
laughing after listening to a Third World con artist like 
this. 

But not the Obamaites. They are already ponying up.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack just pledged 
$1 billion at Copenhagen to developing countries who 
preserve their forests. Thus, America, $12 trillion in 
debt and facing a second straight $1.4 trillion deficit, 
will borrow another $1 billion from China to send to 
Brazil to bribe them to stop cutting down their trees. 

When you slice through the blather about marooned bears and 
melting ice caps, oceans rising and cities sinking, global 
warming is a racket and a crock. It is all about money and 
power. 

Copenhagen has always been about an endless transfer of 
wealth from America, Europe and Japan and creation of a 
global bureaucracy to control the pace of world economic 
and industrial development. 

End game: enrichment and empowerment of global elites at 
the expense of Western peoples whose leaders have been 
bamboozled by con artists. 

When Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and Rita 
came ashore in Texas in 2005, we were told this was due 
to global warming, and hurricane seasons would now get 
worse and worse until the world radically reduced the 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

President Bush ignored the hysteria. What happened? 

As Michael Fumento reports, the 2009 hurricane season ended 
quietly, with the fewest hurricanes since 1997, and not one 
hurricane made landfall in the United States. 

When the feds sought to list the polar bear as an endanger-
ed species, Gov. Sarah Palin protested this "politicized 
science" and sued, claiming the polar bear was a healthy 
species whose numbers had doubled in recent years. 

Was she wrong?

Is the Arctic ice cap melting? So we are told. But what 
harm has befallen mankind other than to have a Northwest 
Passage opened up to maritime traffic in the summer? 

The Antarctic ice sheet is nine times as large as the 
Arctic, and here is what the British Antarctic Survey 
wrote last April: 

"(D)uring the winter freeze in Antarctica this ice cover 
expands to an area roughly twice the size of Europe. 
Ranging in thickness from less than a metre to several 
metres, the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid 
atmosphere above. Satellite images show that since the 
1970s the extent of Antarctic sea ice has increased at a 
rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade." 

One hundred thousand square kilometers a decade?

This would mean Antarctic sea ice expanded by 300,000 
square kilometers since the 1970s, or 116,000 square 
miles, which is an area larger than all of New England. 

How can the Antarctic ice cap grow for three decades as 
the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has steadily 
increased, unless carbon dioxide has little or nothing to 
do with global warming? 

Unlike the Arctic, Antarctica is a continent, and while 
chunks of ice are cracking off in Western Antarctica, in 
Eastern Antarctica, four times larger, the ice sheet is 
thickening and expanding. The Scientific Committee on 
Antarctic Research reported last April that the South Pole 
had shown "significant cooling in recent decades." 

In April 1992, as the alarm over the Earth's end times 
began, scientists worldwide issued what was called the 
Heidelberg Appeal, aimed at just the kind of hysteria we 
are witnessing now in Copenhagen. 

"We are... worried... at the emergence of an irrational 
ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial 
progress and impedes economic and social development," 
said the scientists. 

"We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by 
movements with a tendency to look towards the past, does 
not exist and has probably never existed since man's first 
appearance in the biosphere. ...(H)umanity has always 
progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs 
and not the reverse. 

"We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our 
planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by 
pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant 
data." 

Since then, 4,000 scientists and 72 Nobel Prize winners 
have signed on. Again, it needs be said: Global warming 
is cyclical, and has been stagnant for a decade. There 
is no conclusive proof it is manmade, no conclusive proof 
it is harmful to the planet.