Hopes begin to fade

It is over three weeks since the start of "Climategate" and we have another week to go before the slugfest at Copenhagen winds up. With a bit of luck, by mid-week it will be snowing in that drab little city and we can get some small entertainment out of the discomfort of the warmists.

They, of course, will tell us it's just "weather" – to which the riposte should be that, if there is a difference between "weather" and "climate", why is it that climate scientists use weather stations rather than climate stations to provide their temperature data?

It is interesting, however, to see Anthony Watts waxing indignant over the AP treatment of "Climategate". Three years ago, we were saying much the same things about that news agency, over another "gate" – that one was "Qanagate". We have been here before. The battles are the same – just the subject matter changes.

Then as now, we have the central problem of the corruption of the media. It is a pity then that more people were not prepared to enter the battle on what was a point of principle about media distortion and the fact that they were allowing themselves to be used as propaganda. We might just have less of a problem now.

That we do have a serious problem is evident in the latest report from Copenhagen by Ben Webster, Environment Editor for The Times. He tells us this:

The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN's science body.

World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.

The delay will anger developing countries who, scientists say, will face the worst effects of climate change despite having contributed relatively little of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

You could not even begin to deconstruct that to remove the value-laden terms. The warmist dictionary has acquired a whole new vocabulary, so much so that the believers are talking almost a completely different language. It isn't English – it just happens to use some of the same words.

However, if we have judged the meaning correctly, this suggests that the slugfest is in serious trouble. For all the hype, it looks as if there is going to be a glorious fudge, with nothing much resolved. And if the review is delayed six years, what appears to be a firm cooling cycle may be so well entrenched that the warmists will have no chance of pulling off a final agreement.

That said, one presumes all the Kyoto mechanisms will remain in place – and it is those which are really driving this scare. As we reported earlier, there is serious money involved and, as is beginning to become apparent, as with the science, control is vested in a very small, closed circle of people who are manipulating the system.

For their sins, however, they have had to suffer a lecture from Blair - a fate we would not wish on our worst enemy. But, reading his comment that the world must take action on climate change at Copenhagen even if the science is not correct, it would appear that he is one of them anyway. They deserve each other.

But, with even The Independent raising a lament that "Hopes of global emissions deal at Copenhagen begin to fade", we can have some small cheer that, for once, the warmists are on the back foot. We should not enjoy other peoples' misery but, in this case, I am quite prepared to make an exception.

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