Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as Britain's CRU

Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn't comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long

In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).

I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.

NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately. On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.

The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.

As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity. NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective. Also, please note that these documents were responsive to a specific FOIA request from two years ago. Recent developments — combined with admissions contained in these documents — beg further requests, which have both been already filed and with more forthcoming.

Furthermore, on January 29, 2010, CEI filed our appeal of NASA continuing to improperly withhold other documents responsive to our FOIA requests. In this appeal we informed NASA that if they do not comply by the twentieth day, as required by law, we shall exercise our appellate rights in court immediately.

The documents:

Under Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA shepherds a continuing public campaign claiming clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — climate change induced by human beings. The documents released via the FOIA request, however, contain admissions of data unreliability that are staggering, particularly in light of NASA’s claims to know temperatures and anomalies within hundredths of a degree, and the alarm they helped raise over a mere one degree of claimed warming over more than an entire century.

Dr. Reto Ruedy, a Hansen colleague at GISS, complains in his August 3, 2007, email to his co-worker at GISS and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt:

[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date (at this point the (sic) seem to end in 2002).

This lapse led to wild differences in data claimed to be from the same ground stations by USHCN and the Global Climate Network (GHCN). NASA later trumpeted the “adjustments” they made to this data (upward only, of course) in extremely minor amounts — adjustments they are now seen admitting are well within any uncertainty, a fact that received significantly less emphasis in their public media campaign claiming anomalous, man-made warming.

GISS’s Ruedy then wrote:

[NASA’s] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data … may not have been correct. … Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.

Ruedy claimed this introduced an estimated warming into the record of 0.1 deg C. Ruedy then described an alternate way of manipulating the temperature data, “a more careful method” they might consider using, instead.

Another document

Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin privately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations. When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:

i never, till today, visited http://www.surfacestations.org and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?

Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.

Another document

In an August 14, 2007, email from GISS’s Makiko Sato to Hansen, Sato wrote that his analysis of a one degree warming between 1934 and 1998 might in reality be half that amount:

I am sure I had 1998 warmer than 1934 at least once because on my own temperature web page (which most people never look at), I have [image/information not visible in document]. … I didn’t keep all the data, but some of them are (some data are then listed, with 1934 0.5 deg C warmer than 1998)

As AGW proponents only claim a one degree warming over the past century, the magnitude of a .5 degree Celsius problem in their calculations is tremendous.

Sato continues:

I am sorry, I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data after 2001 paper.

Sato is referencing the paper by Hansen, et al., in which Hansen’s colleagues remind him 1934 was indeed listed as being a full half-degree warmer than 1998 — which is shown in their emails as being what the data said as of July 1999 (their paper described 1934 as only “slightly” warmer than 1998, p. 8). Still, throughout these emails Hansen later insists 1934 and 1998 are in a statistical tie with just a 0.02 Celsius difference and even that their relationship has not changed. For example, Hansen claims in an email to a journalist with Bloomberg: “As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result.” The implication is that things had not changed when in fact NASA had gone from claiming a statistically significant if politically inconvenient warmer 1934 over 1998, to a tie.

Regarding U.S. temperatures, Ruedy confessed to Hansen on August 23, 2007 to say:

I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data.

Another document

The Ruedy relationship with a Brazilian journalist raises the matter of the incestuous relationship between NASA’s GISS and like-minded environmental reporters. One can’t help but recall how, recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of glacier shrinkage in the Himalayas was discredited when found to be the work of a single speculative journalist at a popular magazine, and not strict peer-reviewed scientific data. The emails we obtained include several instances of very close ties and sympathetic relationships with journalists covering them.

The same can be said of NASA’s relationship vis-a-vis the IPCC, whose alarmism NASA enabled. One NASA email implicitly if privately admits that IPCC claims of accelerating warming — such as those by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — are specious. Yet NASA has never publicly challenged such alarmism. Instead, it sat by and benefited from it, with massive taxpayer funding of its rather odd if growing focus on “climate.”

In an August 15, 2007, email from Ruedy to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg, responding to Sorg’s request for Ruedy to say if warming is accelerating, Ruedy replied:

“To observe that the warming accelerates would take even longer observation times” than the past 25 years. In fact, it would take “another 50-100 years.”

This is a damning admission that NASA has been complicit in UN alarmism. This is not science. It is debunked advocacy. The impropriety of such policy advocacy, let alone allowing unsubstantial scientific claims to become part of a media campaign, is self-evident.

SOURCE (More to come)






Lawsuits roll in as EPA “endangerment” deadline looms

Critics of U.S. EPA's climate regulations are lining up to launch legal battles against the agency's "endangerment" finding amid a looming deadline for court challenges. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday petitioned (pdf) a federal appeals court to reconsider EPA's determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, a finding that paves the way for broad regulations of the heat-trapping emissions.

The challenge from the industry trade group is the latest of a series of legal attacks against the finding, and observers say more could appear before tomorrow's deadline for critics to file petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. "The U.S. Chamber strongly supports efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, but we believe there's a right way and a wrong way to achieve that goal," the group said in a statement.

EPA's endangerment finding is the wrong way, the chamber said. "Because of the huge potential impact on jobs and local economies, this is an issue that requires careful analysis of all available data and options. Unfortunately, the agency failed to do that and instead overreached." The chamber said its petition was based on lapses in EPA's process in making the decision to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or the finding.

Last week, Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation Inc. filed a separate petition (pdf) with the appeals court. The limited-government advocacy group, which filed the petition on behalf of 13 House Republicans and other business associations, plans to challenge the integrity of the scientific data used to underpin EPA's finding (E&E Daily, Feb. 11).

And last December, groups including the Coalition for Responsible Regulation Inc., coal and mining companies Massey Energy Co. and Alpha Natural Resources Inc., as well as the National Beef Cattlemen's Association, also petitioned (pdf) the court to review the finding. Those groups are also planning to challenge the science behind the determination. A coalition of 16 states and New York City has asked (pdf) to intervene in that case (Greenwire, Jan. 25).

Roger Martella, former EPA general counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said he expects the groups to pursue a variety of strategies to attack the finding. "Many of the petitioner groups take the position that global climate change is a serious issue that warrants action and will want to avoid turning the endangerment litigation into a debate on climate change science itself," Martella said. "Instead, these groups are more likely to focus on the legal and record basis for EPA's endangerment determination -- in other words, whether EPA is asking the right questions, looking at the right information, and meeting its burden in finding endangerment under the standards set forth in the Clean Air Act."

EPA expressed confidence today that the endangerment finding will withstand legal challenge. "The U.S. Supreme Court ordered EPA three years ago to determine whether unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to the American public," EPA said in a statement. "The Agency made an affirmative finding following an exhaustive review of the peer-reviewed science and thousands of public comments submitted in an open and transparent process."

Debate over standing

Experts say the appeals court is likely to lump the industry petitions together within the next couple of weeks. Some observers expect the court to promptly dismiss the case, while others are confident that the panel will ultimately hear oral arguments. Petitioners will likely be required to file briefs within several months, said Jeff Holmstead, an industry attorney and former EPA air chief during the George W. Bush administration. Following that, the administration normally has 60 days to respond, and challengers have another 30 days to submit reply briefs.

"We are certainly going to make every effort to put this before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals," said Shannon Goessling, executive director and chief legal counsel at the Southeastern Legal Foundation. "I think it's a very good chance" that the court will hear the case, Goessling added. "This is a precursor to an abundant amount of regulation. Between the reporting rule and the tailoring rule and the effect on stationary sources and vehicles that will be coming out in 2012, this will have broad, sweeping effects that will cost upward of a trillion dollars."

But David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel at the Sierra Club, said he expects the court to dismiss the case after the Justice Department argues that the petitioners lack standing. "DOJ will make that motion and the court will grant it," Bookbinder said. Because the endangerment finding does not impose any immediate regulations, Bookbinder said, no injury was done to the petitioners by issuing the determination. "If there's an agency action that doesn't involve actually doing anything to you, there's no standing, there's no injury," he said.

More HERE





Obama's Cap-and-Trade Policy Takes Another Hit: BP, Caterpillar and ConocoPhillips Exit Global Warming Group

President Obama's cap-and-trade policy took another hit with the announcement that oil companies BP and ConocoPhillips and heavy equipment maker Caterpillar are leaving the high-profile United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) lobbying organization. USCAP played a key role in lobbying for the Obama-supported Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill approved by the House of Representatives last year.

"The companies that bolted USCAP realized the organization was really a front group serving only the interests of GE and utility companies and their environmental allies. This became obvious when the Waxman-Markey bill gave the vast majority of free carbon allowances to the utility industry while GE reaped the reward of its lobbying muscle by securing federal mandates for electricity generation in a way that benefits GE's wind turbine business," said Tom Borelli, PhD, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project.

"With the Waxman bill, environmental special interest groups and GE achieved their renewable energy dreams and the utilities took the free carbon allowances, leaving their coalition partners in the oil and heavy industry companies out in the cold," added Borelli.

For years, policy experts at the National Center have been harsh critics of USCAP, saying its lobbying goals are bad for the U.S. economy, low-income Americans, employment and the stockholders of affected companies, including those of several USCAP members.

On the eve of Caterpillar's 2007 stockholder meeting, for example, The National Center organized a letter to Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens signed by 70 organizations, companies and prominent individuals, including a former U.S. Attorney General, urging Owens to immediately withdraw Caterpillar from USCAP. National Center for Public Policy Research Vice President David Ridenour noted when the letter was released that the cap for which USCAP was lobbying would "cost the poorest fifth of Americans nearly double what it would cost the wealthiest fifth of Americans, as a percentage of wages, in added energy costs."

Ridenour also noted that Caterpillar itself would have been adversely affected: "Capping U.S. emissions will accomplish little while hurting the poor and many of the industries upon which Caterpillar has depended for sales. When Caterpillar President James Owens has presided over the destruction of the oil, mining, timber and agricultural industries, what product will it have to sell then? Emissions credits?"

Borelli concurs. "When I challenged Caterpillar's participation in USCAP at the 2007 Caterpillar stockholder meeting, I was outraged to learn that CEO Jim Owens did not conduct a cost-benefit analysis to estimate the impact of cap-and-trade on his business. By adopting the progressive line of 'having a seat at the table' in shaping legislation to justify USCAP membership, Owens embodied the proverbial 'useful idiot' in supporting the left-wing's energy agenda," said Borelli.

At the 2009 Caterpillar shareholder meeting, Owens acknowledged he opposed the Waxman-Markey bill because it could harm his business. This put Owens at odds with coalition partner Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric.

GE secured hundreds of millions of dollars from President Obama's $787 billion "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" for its utility customers Duke Energy, Exleon and FPL Group - all USCAP members.

"USCAP has always been about GE, the utility industry, and environmental advocacy groups advancing their narrow cause at the cost of the other coalition 'partners' and taxpayers. It's only a matter of time until the other USCAP members, such as John Deere & Co., wake up and recognize that cap-and-trade legislation is toxic to shareholder interests," said Borelli.

SOURCE






Who Doesn't Trust Science Now?

All of you deniers and flat-earthers who are exploiting the glacial temperatures and bizarre snowfall to mock global warming fears are missing the point: Weather isn't the same as climate. Shoddy evidence, bogus fears and a lack of transparency, on the other hand, are worth talking about. Yet the lack of skepticism by those who claim a sacred deference to scientific integrity proves that flat-earthers aren't the only ones susceptible to some faith-based ideology.

Recently, Tim Wirth, who is the president of the U.N. Foundation and a former senator, said the manipulated evidence uncovered by the ClimateGate e-mail scandal was a mere "opening" to attack science that "has to be defended just like evolution has to be defended." Get it? Those unreasonable people who deny evolution -- despite the overwhelming evidence -- are the same brand of illiterate hoi polloi who won't hand over their gas-powered lawn mowers on the word of an oracle weather model and haphazardly placed weather station.

Problems keep popping up for the true believer. Phil Jones, the former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (and the only one held responsible for ClimateGate), admits that lots of his decades' worth of data were sloppy or missing, i.e., not very scientific. Jones, when recently asked whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period, admitted that it had not been proved -- and the importance of this can't be stressed enough. Is Jones just being careful now? Probably. Which is more than can be said for others.

The important Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035. Turns out this was based on the conjecture of a single researcher. The 2007 IPCC report also warned that by 2020, global warming may reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent, though there was no real science to back the claim.

We all have heard the average environmentalist get a bit hysterical with tales of impending catastrophes as a way to motivate us. But these reports were edited by scientists. Can we count on them always to be honest and apolitical? The only way to know is transparency.

So let's revisit the case of Kevin Trenberth, who is head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate Analysis Section. This week on National Public Radio, he blamed the heavy snowfall, in part, on global warming, proving that even very smart experts can use weather to further the cause. Trenberth, who has no problem taking a salary and nearly full funding from taxpayers, is not as keen on complying with Freedom of Information Act requests. He, through NCAR lawyers -- also paid for by you (and doing a wonderful job) -- claims to be immune from such intrusions.

Then there is NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Chris Horner at the free market-advocating Competitive Enterprise Institute has been trying for years to have NASA release information about the inner workings of Goddard. As a government agency without any national security issues to worry about, it has an obligation to comply. Shouldn't NASA want to comply? After all, the science of climate tragedy is irrefutable -- so obvious, in fact, that those who resist can be compared to Holocaust deniers.

It is true that most reasonable people concede there has been warming on the planet and that most concede they can't possibly fully understand the underlying science. I certainly can't, despite my best efforts. The problem is that reasonable people also understand economic trade-offs. Many don't like intrusive legislation. Others can sniff out fear-mongering for what it is. Some even trust in humanity's ability to adapt to any changes in climate trends.

In the end, though, the burden of proof is on the believers. And if they're going to ask a nation -- a world -- to fundamentally alter its economy and ask citizens to alter their lifestyles, the believers' credibility and evidence had better be unassailable.

SOURCE






C. of E. now stand for "Church of the Environment

Saving souls is no longer what the Church of England is about

Today's bishops are always encouraging us to ask "Why?" So let's oblige them. Part of the answer, when it comes to this annual fast-fest, seems to be that the climate-change lobby has hi-jacked Lent and that the Church has wholeheartedly gone along for the ride. It turns out that that the iPod ban is only a one-day contribution – Day 20 – to the Christian relief agency Tearfund's annual Carbon Fast. This also enjoins us to "choose an energy supplier that sources all its energy from renewable sources" (Day 3), ask "what your MP is doing to tackle climate change" (Day 17) and to refrain from flushing the loo (Day 43), which might fill the house with the air of the medieval mystic, but is actually aimed at saving water.

Tearfund describes itself as a bunch of "Christians passionate about the local church bringing justice and transforming lives – overcoming global poverty." Which is fair enough, but tellingly it offers its Carbon Fast as "daily actions that will help people reduce their carbon emissions, become 'greener' and have fun at the same time." There are some Bible passages and prayers thrown in, but the whole thing does appear to be an environmental and quasi-political agenda imposed on the holiest season in the Christian calendar.

Traditionally, the self-denial of Lent, even the foreswearing of life's little pleasures, is meant to remove self-indulgences so that we can concentrate on spiritual preparation for Good Friday and Easter. Spend less time carousing and you might actually read a book, or listen to music that transports the soul. It has to be said that you might even have more "fun at the same time" than you'll get from "sustainable furnishings" (Day 11) or from not flushing the lavatory.

The Rev Joanna Jepson, chaplain to the London School of Fashion, an institution that might be expected to be rooted in some worldly idolatries, encourages her students to give up something "really important to them" for Lent, such as "trash TV and shopping." She goes on the wagon too, but describes that as "dull and boring" compared with removing the real barriers to spiritual reflection.

"Consumerism is meant to fill us today. It's our modern-day daily bread," she says, albeit sipping a fashionista's pink "rhubarb gin and tonic" as it was Shrove Tuesday yesterday. "Consuming is our distraction." She goes on to describe shopping as "the modern stone that we turn into our daily bread" as a hat-tip to Jesus's 40 days of temptation in the desert, which provides the Christian model for Lent.

This rather more scriptural view of Lent and Tearfund's Carbon Fast aren't mutually exclusive. Apostles of the Carbon Fast will argue that turning off the iPod or "blocking unused fireplaces" (Day 23) turn its disciples from selfish and sinful people, who concentrate on themselves and their own needs, into communal creatures who consider the welfare of the planet and the less fortunate who live on it.

Similarly, Rev Jepson's no-retail therapy may have the added benefit of questioning the rampant consumption that allegedly threatens the planet (though if everyone did it, it would also threaten our fragile retail economy).

All that pre-supposes, as the Carbon Fast unquestionably does, that the Lenten priority is to save the planet. That itself may be a distraction from the idea that Lent, or rather the climax at its end which changes human history forever, is about saving people. That's a prospect worth preparing for, which means getting some of the stuff which obscures that vision out of the way.

Again, the Carbon Fast has more to offer in that regard than taking the iPod's soundtrack to your life out of your ear. It suggests (Day 8) eating by candlelight. That suggestion, rather boringly, will have energy-saving at its root. But someone who shares food (and even wine, since you're giving up so much else) by the ethereal light of a candle may find that it illuminates simple human pleasures that go missing in the gluttony of the rest of the year.

And where could that glimpse lead? One destination could be a church like mine, where this evening the choir will sing Allegri's Miserere, its repeated soprano refrain like an angel's wail from heaven and the transcendental beauty and spiritual re-assurance of which moves the undistracted listener to tears. It's certainly worth turning your iPod off for.

SOURCE





A Psychological Profiling of Global Warming

Laying aside for a moment the current discussions over the science of climate change, I have long been interested in what we may term the psychological profiling of ‘global warming’*, that is the differences in personalities that make some people fanatical believers and others bitter sceptics. No one can doubt the violent passions involved. I have personally encountered visceral anger from both camps, and the language employed can be extreme. The whole issue clearly touches raw nerves, and I suspect that ‘global warming’ has become a public metonym for much more deeply-seated differences in personality....

First, it is undoubtedly true that there are more passionate believers in ‘global warming’ on the Left politically than on the Right, but I do not think that this bears a straightforward explanation. After all, policies associated with ‘global warming’ threaten to impose huge additional costs on the poor. I suspect that the reasons lie far more in certain personality traits than in anything else, traits that are expressed in people who naturally associate themselves, if only loosely, with the ‘Left.’

The tropes involved generally focus on a sense of guilt about being relatively pampered and rich; a largely dystopian view of society, thinking that everything must collapse into disorder and chaos - hence the inherent appeal of ‘global warming’ to ‘luvvie’ film makers, poets, and novelists [such as the highly-influential Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood]; a love-hate relationship with the dominant capitalist economy of the moment - in our age the USA; and, a residual sense of religion, mainly, and often sub-consciously, derived from Protestantism, which causes people to feel that they are - indeed that we all are - sinners who have fallen short, and that we must perform sacrifices to make amends, in this instance to Gaia.

The people involved are also folk who wear publicly a ‘religious’, or humanitarian, sympathy for the distant poor in other lands, and who can be persuaded that ‘global warming’ will harm countries like Bangladesh and Kenya the most.

They are also primarily an urban grouping with an often romantic view of both ‘Nature’ and of the agrarian life. For example, they don’t just regard allotments as practical, or a personal hobby, but as a morally-purifying life-style choice.

Lastly, they have a built-in tendency for protest which needs to be fulfilled, and they appear to move from protest to protest, often conflating confusingly the issues involved.

Roots

The roots of these complex tropes lie buried in European culture, stretching from the Eclogues (or Bucolics) and the Georgics of Virgil through concepts of ‘Utopia’ to Protestantism and the Arts and Crafts Movement. More radical origins may also be traced to the French Revolution, the ‘Green’ movement having more than its fair share of the Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Justs of this world. There are also faint echos of many, and I might add highly-varied, non-conformist groupings, such as the Diggers and the Levellers (who wore sea-green favours and ribbons).

This is thus a highly-complex grouping of tropes and of people, who often exhibit ill-defined and over-lapping concerns for which ‘global warming’ has become the over-arching metonym.

This frequently leads to significant incoherence and discontinuity in debate, in which ‘global warming’ is employed to cover and to embrace every form of ill, from the ozone layer to recycling to capitalist exploitation, as well as a wide range of personal commitments, from a Christian sense of stewardship about both the Earth and the poor to a superficially Atheistic Humanitarianism that blames religion both for many of the problems and for preventing corrective action.

‘Global Warming’: The Ultimate Metonym

‘Global warming’ has thus morphed into the ultimate metonym for those members of society who combine a sense of guilt with an internal anger and a dystopian view of the world, and who wish “to do something about it”. Such a grouping represents a far more disparate body of people than more simplistic explanations allow, and ‘belief’ - or indeed ‘non-belief’ - in ‘global warming’ reflects a given set of personality traits, not a naively-constructed, and forced, political dichotomy.

Post-Copenhagen, however, the waters have been considerably muddied. The ‘global warming’ grouping found it relatively easy to accommodate itself internally when it could make out that the USA was the prime villain. Now, it is much more complicated, as China and India, Brazil and South Africa, along with other members of the developing world, become the dominant players, and the whole world economy turns to the East, to the Pacific, and away from ‘Old Europe’. The psychological profiles in these countries possess markedly different origins, and are thus differently constructed. There is, accordingly, a growing challenge to the complex psychology that has so far informed the debate in Europe and around the periphery of the USA.

Indeed, it will no longer be possible for European psychological profiles to hold, internationally, a neo-colonial sway over ‘global warming’. We are about to witness an historic cultural clash.

SOURCE

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