Every once in a while I stand in awe at the ability of the greatest conspiracy theorists in the universe who are able to somehow convince millions of people that their concoction of falsehoods, misinterpretations, omissions of critical facts and outright lies are true and that there really is a massive conspiracy among thousands upon thousands of people, governments, corporations and even the military to lie to us in order to hide a terrible truth.

No, I’m not talking about the birthers, or the 9/11 Truthers, or the Free Masons/Illuminati fruitcakes. I’m talking about these guys: the ones who say Global Warming is a Hoax.

If you don’t know much about climate science, or about the details of the controversy over the “hockey stick,” then A. W. Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science might persuade you that not only the hockey stick, but all of modern climate science, is a fraud perpetrated by a massive conspiracy of climate scientists and politicians, in order to guarantee an unending supply of research funding and political power. That idea gets planted early, in the 6th paragraph of chapter 1.

That’s right I’m talking about the small group of people who have managed for decades to deny global warming and climate change, and have convinced more people around the work than any other group pushing the idea of a worldwide secret conspiracy to destroy civilization as we know it that the bull-looney they are selling is true, or at least grounds for reasonable doubt among respectable folks.

In short, Climate Change Denialists.

There aren’t many climate change “skeptics” with any real scientific credentials in the field, yet somehow they keep getting their message of a massive conspiracy led by Al Gore, the UN, communist killers and greedy radical leftists research scientists determined to destroy capitalism on the nightly cable news shows the network news programs and in the other news outlets like major newspapers.

This has occurred despite all the facts which can be arrayed to show that the earth is warming at an alarming rate, like the melting sea ice in the Arctic which will hit an all time high this Summer, and which has been declining rapidly since 1979 …

So far during this year’s melt season, the extent of sea ice has been flirting with the declines seen in 2007, which saw the smallest extend of summer ice since 1979, when satellite records began building of the ice’s status.

These days, when the melt season ends each September, the extent of summer ice is some 40 percent smaller than 30 years ago, says Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

That long-term ice loss as a clearer link to global warming than does six months of temperatures, he and others say, although even the ice loss also is affected by natural variations in wind patterns from one year to the next.

… that sea levels have been rising twice as fast as climate change models predicted …

Professor Konrad Steffen, from the University of Colorado, Dr John Church, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Tasmania, Dr Eric Rignot, of Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, and Professor Stefan Rahmsdorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, are all experts in sea-level rise. Their views represent the mainstream opinion of researchers in the field, taking account of the most recent data.

Only two years ago, the UN’s Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its Fourth Assessment Report, or AR4, that the worst-case prediction for global sea-level rise was 59cm by 2100. But the scientists in Copenhagen suggested that the 2007 report was a drastic underestimation of the problem, and that oceans were likely to rise twice as fast.

… or the rapid acidification of the world’s oceans because of all the carbon dioxide they are absorbing.

You know, people used to doubt that small invisible creatures like bacteria and viruses caused most diseases. They doubted that the earth revolved around the sun. Some even doubted that a strange twisty molecule in your cells called DNA held the blueprint for creating life. Instead people, once upon a time believed that fire breathing Dragons demanded virgin sacrifices, that immensely huge and ravenous sea monsters would destroy ships that wandered too far from shore, and that if you sailed to far your ship fall off the edge of the world.

Of course our modern day doubters don’t rely upon superstitions. They rely instead upon the ignorance of most people regarding how science works, and upon the Big Lie technique — i.e., he who tells the biggest lie, and tells it the most often, no matter how outrageous it may be, is likely to be believed, especially if the truth is something frightening that would require people to change the way they live their lives.

They are masters of the sound byte, public relation campaigns, and the ability to take what the data tells us or what a scientist says out of context. They know every logical fallacy known to man and they are willing to use them. And they don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Indeed, they cherry pick the facts and abuse them to buttress their lies while ignoring or denying any facts that don’t fit the narrative.

Montford doesn’t just criticize hockey-stick shaped proxies, he bends over backwards to level every criticism conceivable. […]

The willingness of Montford and McIntyre to level any criticism which might discredit the hockey stick just might reach is zenith in a criticism which Montford repeats, but is so nonsensical that one can hardly resist the proverbial “face-palm.” Montford more than once complains that hockey-stick shaped proxies dominate climate reconstructions — unfairly, he implies — because they correlate well to temperature.

Duh. […]

Imagine that. The data is suspect because it supports they theory of global warming. That is, global warming is fake because the all the data used shows that global warming is occurring!

On the other hand, if the data didn’t support the theory of global warming, they would claim it would be valid! That they can get respectable news organizations to broadcast such stunning revelations as proof of a “controversy” is really quite the achievement. Especially when these are people who, if they were arguing that 9/11 was an inside job, or that there was a second gunman when JFK was shot, would be summarily dismissed as frauds and obsessive cranks.

Yet, in effect, that is precisely what they are claiming: that thousands of climate scientists, many of whom don’t know each other except by reputation, the Pentagon, Insurance companies, the United Nations, the “leftards” of the liberal blogosphere and, of course, Al Gore (who is really, really fat by the way) are all out to get them for trying to save the world:

Montford also goes to great lengths to accuse a host of researchers, bloggers, and others of attempting to suppress the truth and issue personal attacks on McIntyre. The “enemies list” includes RealClimate itself, claimed to be a politically motivated mouthpiece for “Environmental Media Services,” described as a “pivotal organization in the green movement” run by David Fenton, called “one of the most influential PR people of the 20th century.” Also implicated are William Connelly for criticizing McIntyre on sci.environment and James Annan for criticizing McIntyre and McKitrick. In a telling episode of conspiracy theorizing, we are told that their “ideas had been picked up and propagated across the left-wing blogosphere.” Further conspirators, we are informed, include Brad DeLong and Tim Lambert. And of course one mustn’t omit the principal voice of RealClimate, Gavin Schmidt. […]

The book concludes with speculation about the underhanded meaning of the emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the U.K. It’s really just the same quote-mining and misinterpretation we’ve heard from many quarters of the so-called “skeptics.” Although the book came out very shortly after the CRU hack, with hardly sufficient time to investigate the truth, the temptation to use the emails for propaganda purposes was irresistible. Montford indulges in every damning speculation he can get his hands on.

Since that time, investigation has been conducted, both into the conduct of the researchers at CRU (especially Phil Jones) and Mike Mann (the leader of the “hockey team”). Certainly some unkind words were said in private emails, but the result of both investigations is clear: climate researchers have been cleared of any wrongdoing in their research and scientific conduct. Thank goodness some of those who bought in to the false accusations, like Andy Revkin and George Monbiot, have seen fit actually to apologize for doing so. Perhaps they realize that one can’t get at the truth simply by reading people’s private emails.

Montford certainly spins a tale of suspense, conflict, and lively action, intertwining conspiracy and covert skullduggery, politics and big money, into a narrative worthy of the best spy thrillers. I’m not qualified to compare Montford’s writing skill to that of such a widely-read author as, say, Michael Crichton, but I do know they share this in common: they’re both skilled fiction writers.

The only corruption of science in the “hockey stick” in the minds of McIntyre and Montford. They were looking for corruption, and they found it. Someone looking for actual science would have found it as well.

Yet, you have to hand it to them and their financial backers, what they have done has worked spectacularly well. There will be no major climate bill passed this year by the US Congress and perhaps there never will be, and that fact is due in large part to these conspiracy theorists:

The effort to advance a major climate change bill through the Senate this summer collapsed Thursday …

Bowing to political reality, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said the Senate would not take up legislation intended to reduce carbon emissions blamed as a cause of climate change, but would instead pursue a more limited measure focused on responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and tightening energy efficiency standards.

“We know where we are,” Mr. Reid told reporters after reviewing the state of energy legislation with Senate Democrats and administration officials. “We know that we don’t have the votes.”

In the future people will look back and call this era in our history the “Great Bamboozlement” and we have our elite media organizations primarily to blame for giving these con artists a platform to spout their nonsense:

Is Prominent Media Coverage of the Climate Deniers Conference Warranted?

. . . Read [the NY Times and Guardian] stories about the three-day International Conference on Climate Change, organized by the Heartland Institute, and you are left with a big so-what.

The stories serve primarily to legitimize the attempts of climate change deniers to undermine the integrity of science through political means, with prominent media coverage being their most potent weapon. […]

At the very end of the New York Times story, Andy Revkin quotes Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University and an author of many reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. After reviewing the text of presentations of the meeting, Schneider said that they were efforts to “bamboozle the innocent.”

That’s a scientific assessment that shouldn’t have been buried at the bottom of the story. Imagine if the New York Times headline read:

Climate Skeptics Meet in NY to Bamboozle the Public about Peer-Reviewed Science

That might have been a story worthy of printing. Instead, we’ve been served up yet another he-said-she-said story. Sigh.

Rarely in the history of the world have so few ignorant or malicious or ill-informed or simply bought and paid for shills for an industry determined to do anything, literally anything to profit off the burning of fossil fuels, been able to obscure the truth about the greatest long term threat to human civilization. By achieving that goal they (along with lazy journalists and greedy politicians) helped create create a “political reality” that made taking action to lessen that threat “impossible.”