The Bloodwood Tree

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a body made up of representatives from 166 different nations to rule out political bias. The 152 lead authors and 650 reviewers include experts with all sorts of personal opinions for and against climate change but all bound by the one rule - they can only say what the evidence tells them. And what the evidence told them in 2007 was that Global Warming was caused by people predominantly in the rich west, and the impacts were going to be devestating for the world’s poor and the environment we’ve been put on the earth to care for.

It seems that the media is full of people who know better than all of them though, and they all seem to know that these claims are nothing but “alarmism”, that the right thing to do really is to continue making money as fast as possible and assume that the science is wrong. Just recently, Alan Jones from 2GB interviewed another self-proclaimed expert on the matter (http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=4998), Lord Cristopher Monckton from the UK. Monckton - an economist who invented some jigsaw puzzles, pretends to be a member of the British Upper House of Parliament, awarded himself a fake Nobel Prize and used to be editor of a couple of British tabloids (no training in science whatsoever) knew for sure that it was all just alarmism. Dangerous alarmism too - he explained to Jones that the meeting in Copenhagen was all a secret plot to set up a one world government.

The Alan Jones interview relies on 4 points:
1) There is a secret treaty to be signed in Copenhagen; it’s been carefully kept from us
2) It will be impossible to break out of the treaty
3) The treaty will usher in a one world government
4) Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has been categorically disproven

1) I’m not sure about the secrecy claim; I seem to have heard of it often enough without trying (eg http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6905356.ece)
2) The treaty (http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf)is the same as any other treaty. Australia didn’t have a clause to break out of its treaty with Indonesia but when mass demonstrations occurred in Melbourne, John Howard broke it against his own politics to send troops to East Timor. Treaties are broken all the time; they’re only as strong as the will of other signatories to invoke trade sanctions etc as punishment. There is nothing undemocratic about a Government entering into treaties without a referendum; this is how it has always been done (http://www.dfat.gov.au/treaties/making/making2.html). Since 1990 Australia has signed 115 multilateral treaties and 458 bilateral treaties. There is nothing different about this one.
3) I searched the treaty for the word “Government”, and aside from the mention of other governments there is a mention (p18) of government outside of the individual national governments. The use of the term is in the sense used in say a university; ie “governing body” and is no more sinister than calling it a committee. The option of a governing body is one of 4 options given in the treaty, and the treaty does not ascribe any powers to the government other than organisation and monitoring of emissions.
4) The claim that AGW has been categorically disproven is based on a June paper by Lindzen and Choi “On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data” (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039628.shtml). The paper claims that satellites show too much long-wave radiation leaving the atmosphere; ie that it’s not being caught by greenhouse gases. The earth’s climate is affected by 3 things - the amount of energy reaching the atmosphere, the amount of energy reaching the earth’s surface and the amount of energy leaving the atmosphere. The amount reaching the atmosphere is quite predictable and doesn’t change on a human timescale but over many thousands of years (aside from very small changes due to sunspots). The amount coming in is affected by reflectance from clouds which possibly change with the 11-year sunspot cycle. The amount going out is affected by how much gets in and how much is caught by greenhouse gases. No one disputes any of that; what it means is that if more radiation is leaving when temperatures are higher (as the paper suggests), then more must be coming in. The fact is though, we’ve been measuring how much is coming in for longer than we’ve had satellites and it has been going down since about 1970. It is physically impossible for his findings to be right and even vocal AGW skeptics like Roy Spencer have disregarded his findings because they can only be either instrumental or mathematical error. It comes down to basic physics - energy can’t be created or destroyed.

The idea that it’s all a communist plot is not based on anything in the treaty at all. There is no communist wording or suggestion, no hints of communist policies to be implemented. The basis of his claim is on the fact that one of the aims of the treaty is a committment for rich western countries that caused the warming to give aid to the third world nations we are killing with it. Most of the Christian aid organisations are asking for the same thing - is that communism or justice?

Monckton is a rich English Lord that objects to slowing our climb into filthy richness by giving to the poor. He’s an economist that doesn’t want to come out and say that it’s just about money because that would be bad form, so he pretends to be a scientist concerned by all of the other evil scientists getting rich off their grant money (we are going to be set for lab coats for decades if we can pull this one off!). Richard Lindzen who wrote the paper is famous for being paid $2500 a day by oil companies to make a lot of his arguments. Conservative libertarians claim that a centralised government pressure on the economy such as through cap and trade is an infringement of our freedoms; just as they object to any rules being imposed on free trade agreements. Now when the US makes an agreement with a developing nation they no longer put in a clause that says the country doesn’t have to export their food to them if they are in famine. Now countries that suffer famine and stop exporting to keep their people alive will be subject to trade sanctions by the US because having a rule that protects them is an infringement of American freedom and their way of life. It’s just about money, the arguments are weak and most were shot down years ago.

There is no substance whatsoever to Monckton’s claims about one-world government. Christians often prick up their ears at this because of a warning in the book of Revelation that says some day the Antichrist or “the beast” will come.

“He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” (Revelation 13:7)

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” (Revelation 13:16-18)

Revelation was written by the Apostle John while in exile on the island of Patmos. The book was written to contemporary Christians in code; for instance it refers to the Roman Empire as “Babylon” rather than saying Rome so that the letter wouldn’t be intercepted and edited or destroyed. The number 7 stood for God’s perfection; repeating it three times means everything satisfied and made good. Man’s number is 666 - nearly 7 three times over but missing the last vital ingredient because our human nature can’t allow it. I believe that many Christians have been too preocupied looking for a Hitler or evil nation to be an antichrist that we don’t recognise that 666 is man’s number. The one-world government is here and growing. No one could buy or sell unless they have the mark of the beast - you try getting a load of groceries that doesn’t include stuff made at the expense of the poor. You want food in the west, you have to pay the Piper. For every dollar in aid given by western nations we take back $14 dollars in unfair trade. It’s globally organised - not by a formal government but by tacit agreement that putting ourselves first is more important than the things Jesus listed as the most important matters - justice, mercy and faithfulness. Because of this, even though we face overwhelming evidence that the climate is warming, that we’re doing it and that the cost to the world’s poor is already estimated by the WHO at 150,000 lives per annum as the most intense cyclones double in frequency, glaciers melt, more extreme heatwaves cause drought and fires of record intensity etc; even though it has never been effectively refuted, “man’s number” will kick in at Copenhagen and the response to AGW will look impressive but will not be enough to do the job. We will be more concerned about looking like we care while making sure our hip pockets don’t suffer. It’s what John Howard called a “practical and balanced approach”.