"WATERMELONS" AND "RED HOT" CLIMATE LIES

Watermelons: “green” on the outside, “red” on the inside. That popular definition of environmental statists is what Czech President Vaclav Klaus had in mind when he denounced global warming zealots for promoting “a new religion” that “threatens to undermine freedom and the world’s economic and social order.”

Klaus would not have been welcome a week ago Saturday when lights were dimmed in San Diego and other local communities to celebrate “Earth Hour”—a global PR event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to tout the profound dangers of manmade climate change.

As is typically the case, our local television hairdos enthusiastically aired the proceedings without providing (as an honest “Fairness Doctrine” would require) comment from team-Klaus or team-Richard Lindzen (MIT Professor of Meteorology) or team-Freeman Dyson (Princeton physicist emeritus) or team-Bjorn Lomborg (Danish author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”).

That’s only a short list of dissenters who possess credentials at least as impressive as those held by members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Indeed, “climate criminal” Christopher Horner notes in his book, “Red Hot Lies,” that the IPCC is chock full of government-picked “scientists” with degrees in sociology, economics, and even “transport management.” That unimpressive list includes IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who as an economist and industrial engineer felt sufficiently qualified in atmospheric dynamics and psychohistory to compare critic Bjorn Lomborg with Adolf Hitler.

Horner supplements his analysis of the IPCC’s general scientific expertise with two lengthy chapters that document IPCC malfeasance—exemplified in the practice of hyping summaries for policymakers months before completion of the work purportedly being summarized. New Zealand climate scientist Dr. Vincent Gray provides his own succinct institutional summary: “The IPCC is fundamentally corrupt.”

Horner, Klaus, and others have explained why today’s global warming propagandists are knee-deep in statistical manipulation, character assassination, intimidation, and censorship.

First, financial incentives for jumping on the global warming gravy train are enormous—dwarfing the alleged “buying” of scientists by Exxon-Mobil. Billions are now headed toward alarmists like Al Gore who stand to gain billions more from their ties to favored green industries. Ironically, this idea of “monotizing” environmental groups was made famous by Enron’s Ken Lay.

Secondly, climate hysteria creates an opportunity for top-down statist policies—the preferred governmental arrangement of “Watermelons” whose political dreams revolve around the redistribution of wealth and ever-expanding social controls.

A prime example of the hugely successful indoctrination tactics employed by alarmists is the shameless targeting of intellectually defenseless children. One prominent proselytizer recently spoke at a San Marcos high school and was described in a North County Times headline as a “Nobel Prize winner” and “expert in global climate change.” Paragraph thirteen noted that the “author” (actually one of many authors) of an IPCC climate change report teaches “conservation biology.”

Nowhere was it mentioned that Antarctica’s ice-mass is actually increasing or that polar bears are flourishing. Least of all, I’d wager, did the feted butterfly specialist divulge any such inconvenient truths to her captive audience.