Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

I've been trying to write about the Copenhagen Climate Conference since before it began, but something always seems to get in the way before I get through the first sentence. The latest was ten minutes ago when a neglected frying pan was left on a hot burner. This resulted in smoke, which in turn set off the smoke alarm, which sent Little Ann the Australian Shepherd heading out the doggie door while Carl the Cattle Dog tried to climb into my lap. Since he's now hysterical, weighs three stone eight pounds and has unclipped claws, this is not as pleasant as it sounds.

Excuse me.

That's better.

Part of the problem with trying to write about Copenhagen is that just about everyone on the planet down to the prostitutes handing out free sex to attendees has posted an article about the conference. The other problem is that it is so filled with targets that if they were ships they'd make a German U-boat captain burst into tears because he ran out of torpedoes in the first five minutes. Trying to write about this Holy See of Blessed Gaia is an exercise in pure frustration that I haven't felt since I walked into a free house in Wolverton that had 27 brands of real ale hand pumped off the wood.

Take the conference itself. Over one hundred nations have sent delegates on a mission to Save the Planet^TM by reducing "carbon" emissions despite the fact that it was openly acknowledged that the conference was doomed to failure before Ban Ki Moon threw out the first Canape. Instead, the goal of the conference (aside from washing down the caviar with a couple of buckets of Dom Perignon 1990 in between bouts of free nookie) is to draught a statement of intent to discuss the rescheduling or an interim debate to determine the feasibility of reconvening the focus group to revise the invitations to Copenhagen II: Revenge of the Taxpayers. That's if the civilised countries can stop yelling at the backward ones for trying to stop being backwards while the kelptocrats scream back that they need the aid cheque now because the next payment on the Mercedes is due. It makes me almost feel sorry for the Prime Minister of Australia who kept changing his plane tickets so he could meet Barack Hussein Obama and has to go back to Canberra with an "I went to Copenhagen to Save the Planet^TM and all I got was this lousy tee shirt".

At least the delegates are doing their bit to lower CO2 emissions by hiring every limo and private jet in the northern hemisphere so only the deserving disciples of Lord Summerisle will be doing the emitting in a good cause–like seeing what's shakin' down in Christianshaven. It isn't that I'm surprised at the Political Class acting like 18th century French aristocrats teleported into Weimar Germany with a sack of cocaine. The idea that they can live the chock full o' carbon high life while telling the peasants to use Google Street View to take their next holiday is to be expected. What I find suspicious is how their poker-faced prophecies of doom aren't matched by their proposals, which seem to boil down to making the free world less free and prosperous while enriching a load of dictators, bureaucrats, and social engineers who regard Brave New World and 1984 as instruction manuals. Look, if the world really was facing a global catastrophe, don't you think the Elite would take it a bit more seriously a do something more than trying to save the polar bears from drowning?

It seems to me that if things were really that bad and we only had 30, 20, 10, one year (or is it a week and a half now? I forget) to save the world, there'd be some major reprioritising. Instead, cap and trade, travel rationing et al are tacked on to every other bit of green nonsense we've had to endure for the past forty years. I'll believe that the warming alarmists are sincere when Obama, Brown, and the rest make a joint statement declaring that the nations of the world are instituting a crash programme of nuclear power construction across the globe that includes everything from nuclear batteries to fast breeders to thorium pebble reactors for dodgy nations with proliferation issues, that welfare benefits would be slashed and the money given to fusion research, that China stops building coal plants or face an all-out attack by the other nuclear powers, that all fossil fuel reserves be thrown wide open to provide the energy needed to power the transfer to a non-fossil fuel economy, that all other environmental protections become subservient to these goals, and that this will be funded by opening fast food franchises serving Kentucky Fried Polar Bear cooked in Atlantic right whale oil. First one hundred customers get a free giant panda fur coat with buttons carved out of genuine elephant ivory.

Of course, the real elephant here goes by the name of Climategate. You can tell when anyone brings up the subject in Copenhagen because you're immediately treated to the spectacle of 1500 guys in black tie stuffing their fingers in their ears and going "La la la la la! I can't hear you!" Small wonder when the settled science of global warming that two months ago was as impervious as Newton's Laws suddenly looks more and more like Piltdown Man. It also doesn't help when the investigators come off less like Einstein and more like Bernie Madoff as they shove another box full of primary data into the paper shredder. Not only does the scandal refuse to die as "hide the decline" enters into everyday usage, but warmists are discovering the yelling "shut up!" isn't that great a defence.

All this would be funny as hell if it weren't for the fact that what's at stake is more than the reputation of a few scientists and freeloading politicians. It's trillions of dollars and the freedom of a human being to literally fart without a bureaucrat's permission. Is global warming a hoax or is the warmpocalypse truly in our future? There are arguments for both sides and everything in between, but I think that between something rotten going on in the state of Denmark and something in the peer-reviewed climate science journals that smells equally of week-old fish, I think the one thing that is certain is that the "We only have (insert number here) years to Save the Planet^TM, so we have to act NOW!" is the real hoax and a dead one. We have the time. Let's get someone honest to do some real research under full public scrutiny to find out what's really going on with Earth's climate. Then the free, democratic, civilised people of the world will decide what to do. Not the UN. Not Al Gore. Not Gordon Brown, Not Barack Hussein Obama. Not the tyrants or the Third World kleptrocrats. But free men who choose for themselves after due deliberation, argument, and persuasion.

It's too important to have it otherwise.