PINDER: Global warming feeds the lust for more power at the UN

Part Three in a series about the United Nations Organization. Read Part One here, and Part Two here.In early June, Secretary-General Guterres described fossil fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos.” His increasingly shrill language reflects the failure thus far to advance the United Nations' objective to establish a global governance structure through the manipulation of a “climate crisis”.It must be very disappointing for him and his colleagues to see the “crisis” narrative unwinding. Emissions continue to increase despite trillions of dollars of spending to create energy alternatives that cannot compete with fossil fuels be it cost, reliability, availability, or efficiency. (A subject for another day, the narrative was always headed to economic purgatory, political unpopularity, and the increasingly discredited fantasy of net zero.)The truth, then — the godfather of climate chaos is the United Nations.The first two climate conferences in Rio in 1988 and 1992, then titled Earth Summits, established the UN framework for what has come later. At the second summit, an international environmental treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — was negotiated and ratified in March 1994.The contribution of reviled or renowned (depending on your beliefs) Canadian Maurice Strong, another leading socialist, was pivotal in establishing this initiative. According to Wikipedia, its mandate is in part, “to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. This highlights a pertinent fact disregarded by advocates of climate change action and supportive media.The assumption from the beginning was that carbon dioxide is “dangerous,” and it is human “interference” that is causing what is now referred to as a “crisis”. These assumptions have never been proven and strong scientific evidence repudiates that narrative.To manufacture scientific support for this assumption and recommend action, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established. It features periodic “Assessments,” now totalling six, to 'review and report' the science. From all indications, including a reviewer of the Third Assessment (who edited my earlier Commentaries), the work of the IPCC is credible.The folks at the UN are intelligent but also disingenuous. Just to help us lesser mortals including the media and politicians, before the release of the IPCC Assessment reports, it publishes a Summary for Policy Makers. The 30-page document “interprets” the science. This clever communication rightly assumes that very few, especially media and decision-makers, will ever read the Assessments that are often deep scientific reports of hundreds and sometimes thousands of pages. What is disturbing is how the Summary documents are written. All countries which signed the protocol gather and negotiate every word, sentence and paragraph of the Summary. It is a blatantly political document, not a scientific one.The Economist supports the global warming narrative and advocates policy-driven C02 reductions. Despite this position, the May 10th 2014, edition featured a column titled “Inside the Sausage Factory.” “The authors write a draft summary of which each sentence of the draft is projected onto a big screen in a giant hall. Officials then propose changes to the text; authors decide whether the changes are justified according to the full 1,000-page report. Eventually, consensus is supposed to be reached, the sentences approved or rejected, and the Chairman bangs the gavel and moves on to the next sentence.” These Summaries are the foundation of the shrill warnings, the attacks on fossil fuels, and the demands for more control by the UN. The media reports and political responses are based on the Summary, not the full report — just as the UN intends.We are all familiar with the annual COP meetings (Conference of the Parties) of which the Paris gathering in 2015 was the most consequential. The purpose of these UN-sponsored and organized conflabs is to beat the drum, create fear and attack fossil fuels.One wonders what contributions to CO2 levels result from the aggregation of private jets and conventional airlines. These hypocrites exceed even those attendees of the World Economic Forum, a Strategic Partner to “jointly accelerate” (from Wikipedia) the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development. Why don't we plebs understand that the elites, who need to direct our lives, can do what they implore the rest of us to avoid? Isn’t it a “crisis” for them too?The Illusory Truth Effect is defined as the tendency of people to believe information after repeated exposure. The UN well understands this, thereby relentlessly propagagandizing a global warming crisis (later evolving into climate change.)Consider the revealing words of Tim Wirth, the President of the UN Foundation, “We have got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Classic elitist rationalization! And as if to drive home the point about truth, Paul Watson of Greenpeace declared, “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” Both comments are quotations from Forbes Magazine repeated in Steve Koonin’s must read “Unsettled”.The UN brass is deliberately misleading us, because of course their beliefs are superior to ours, ergo a responsibility to guide our thinking. This is the scary aspect about climate change that is real.At his June press conference, the Secretary-General further exclaimed “we need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell…we are the danger.” It gets worse. At the same press conference Guterres also said, ”I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies and urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”What happened to the mandate of human rights, free speech, and support for democracies? How is it that the UN merits funding from the pockets of Canadians? The Fourth and final part in this series appears tomorrow, Monday September 2nd. It reviews other UN actions that have on balance, made things worse in the world, not better.

PINDER: Global warming feeds the lust for more power at the UN

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