Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the “bad timing” file, especially for the Obama Administration and the UN.

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (whose scams I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a “science czar” John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to for developing his “environmental”’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, operating domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to — user names and passwords for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA, thereby also seeking to undermine the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978.

The IPCC, you will recall, is Al Gore’s co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and the host over the years of numerous scandals involving fudged and twisted climate data, research plagiarized from student theses, popular magazine articles, and green-group press releases, and, of course, the infamous Climategate emails which showed coordinated efforts to “hide the decline” in temperature data. This is not just one more scandal, however. This is much bigger.

Until the Request is posted at CEI.org, consider the following:

* CEI’s FOIA request details how the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (“ClimateGate” key among them) and, to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws posed, the group itself.

* CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business” and “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications” in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.

* This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, appointed Holdren’s office to the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.

* This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU, and US bureaucrats and political appointees to avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.

* CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.

As talks resume next month to forge legislation to act as a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.

So this morning, we requested all relevant records under FOIA, including all records sitting on that server, as they all were provided to US government employees for official purposes. This was filed with OSTP run by controversial “science czar” and, we now know, former Mitt Romney “climate” adviser John Holdren. The taxpayer deserves to know about this coordinated effort between Holdren’s OSTP and the UN.

Possibly one Republican candidate will call in the next debate for ending US funding of the IPCC, now shown to be actively working (with the Obama White House) to subvert US law. Enough is enough is enough. Possibly Governor Romney could defend Holdren and the IPCC.

In the meantime, we look for Rep. Henry Waxman to reprise the level of outrage he displayed over Abramoff to prove it was also not political and come down hard on the practice he so aggressively condemned and pursued, demanding preservation of records, threatening subpoenas, the whole works. With our request, that’s essentially what we’ve done, and we’d appreciate the company. You too, NPR.

Of course, it may not be of interest to the media, because it only uncovers unlawful dealings to hide an effort impacting our entire economy, the premise for that “fundamental transformation” of America, with the sleazy lobbying operation being the UN. We’ll wait on OSTP’s response and hope for the best from the Hill and Republican candidates.

When that silver-haired Republican candidate weighs in on the ‘climate’ debate I want to stick around until the end of the video. I love that line, “Good heavens, Miss Nakamoto, you’re beautiful!”

Wait, that’s not Magnus Pyke?

Seriously. Mr. Huntsman, beyond the pose: what would you do? “Science!” is a talking point. More of a pose, really, of being the thoughtful man while its success depends on no more than Pavlovian nodding and clucking in response. Anything else ultimately arrives at the question Hunstman’s pose begs:

What. Would. You. Do.?

What’s your point? You’re down with the kidz on campus and your media base can rest easy because you’re not, you know, ‘crazy’ as you say? Or you’re going somewhere with this? Is it cap-and-trade? Kyoto? Kyoto II? Carbon (dioxide…meaning ‘energy’) taxes?

What? And after you answer that, well, without using the word “science(!)”, please then state why?

Here’s the problem for today’s stylish poseur: Nothing ever proposed would, according to anyone or any computer model on which the entire argument is premised, detectably impact temperature or climate.

The schemes are all pain, no gain. According to all. Is that not the kind of consensus you can get behind? There is no disagreement about this, and it is surely too-little discussed. These models also belie a fallback notion that well, every little bit helps. It’s doing ’something’. Not according to them.

I debated a UN IPCC lead author, a computer modeler,  in June and he readily admitted it — he had little choice, really, the event was being videotaped. He even volunteered that what is required is total and complete elimination of human greenhouse gas emissions.

I wonder if politicians know what that means. Anyway, I’m told by the conference organizers that he does not agree to release the video, but possibly you could look into this. It seems quite relevant.

Another idea is that you’re remaining silent as to what lies behind the sneering hauteur because you actually share Rick Perry’s policy stance, but don’t want to admit it? Could it be that you really do protest too much?

The problem with the silence is that the public deserve to hear your vision, even at risk of alienating that media base. Got your pose. Check. How about what you would do? John McCain, whose campaign manager you swooped up, was clear about his intentions, being lead co-sponsor of the cap-and-trade legislation for years. Until he backed out and got vague when he began his campaign for the White House.

2008 deprived the public of a debate. And this led to the ugly House cram-down of cap-n-trade, abandoned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

So, now, you tweet and reply in debate against “comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said”. Yes. That’s the response the self-selecting universe who says such things were hoping for.

For what it’s worth, I’m partial to this post-ClimateGate ‘open letter’ from a former luminary in the climate movement now exiled as a ‘heretic’ for putting the agenda and gravy train at risk:

No one really believes that the “science is settled” or that “the debate is over.”  Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda.  There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.

Ouch. Ah, but who is the head of Georgia Tech’s School of Atmospheric Sciences compared to the IPCC’s “chief climate scientist”, who turns out to be a railway engineer? I bet she doesn’t even read the New York Times.

Because you see, these scientists who never tire of saying no one ought dare opine about their field who is not a ‘climate scientist’ (broadly defined, on a case-by-case basis ultimately determined by whether you give the desired answer), they have no problem spending most of their time playing policy expert, demanding laws. Climactically meaningless ones (begging another question — whether this can really be about the climate). And as Dr. Curry notes these demanders of policies are activists with science degrees.

Adopting any of these futile, all-pain no gain schemes claiming to be ‘responsible’ by ‘doing something’, despite that the basis for your action, climate models, all claim otherwise would not only be reckless. It would be, well, anti-scientific. Again, ouch.

Finally, if that whole climatically meaningless thing doesn’t bother you, can you then tell us who is your model for policies to follow? As candidate, Obama had the courtesy to acknowledge he wanted to impose an EU-style cap-and-trade scheme that would cause “electricity rates [to] necessarily skyrocket”, “bankrupt[ing]” anyone who tried to build a coal-fired power plant, and that “this would also raise billions of dollars.” To no climatic effect, recall.

And he told us eight times to look at his model, Spain. He no longer gives those speeches. Politics abhors a vacuum. Would you please step up? What policies do you seek?

Running for the presidency is not a Thomas Dolby video, let alone governing. We’re now bearing the costs of buying empty phrases, leaving more than a few unpleasant details to be revealed too late. Mr. Huntsman, please move beyond the “Science!” pose and tell us: On ‘climate’, what would you do?

“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

Not much to quibble with Texas Governor Rick Perry about there. Except if you’re the Washington Post which, like Politico, cannot countenance Perry’s refusal to bow at the altar of what has been decided. So for his apostasy WaPo gives Perry a whopping “four Pinocchios” in a sneering, nasty and intellectually dishonest piece, “Rick Perry’s made-up ‘facts’ about climate change”, rife with straw men, heavy on double standards, and otherwise mixing and matching errors of omission and commission.”

First, an editorial note. WaPo reveals its delirium on the issue by citing polls as its apparent evidence for man-made climate change, concluding with “After all, it was first established in 1896 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could help create a ‘greenhouse effect.’” Apple, meet orange.

This non-sequitor misreads WaPo’s own cited source and is more confused than the ritual confusion of climate change with man-made climate change, then conflated with the alleged catastrophic climate change (which WaPo also then offers). So, Mr. Kessler, the greenhouse effect, in existence somewhat longer than man, enables life on earth. Man does not help create it. It’s here with us, or without us. On WaPo’s relative scale, this scolding of another for supposed ignorance, clueless about that of which it scolds, merits at least five Pinocchios.

Perry’s camp referred ’something called’ the Washington Post to “something called the Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 ‘American scientists’ on a petition that says there is ‘no convincing scientific evidence’ that human release of greenhouse gasses will ’cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.’ The petition is a bit old, having been started in opposition to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming.”

WaPo, using a week’s worth of sneer quotes if still citing ‘no convincing evidence’ of catastrophic heating, just polls of other people not addressing ‘catastrophic climate change’, didn’t like that.

“Only 9,000 of the signers actually have PhDs, and the list of signers’ qualifications shows only a relatively small percentage with expertise on climate research.”

Remember, WaPo cites no evidence at all or even the ritual appeal to authority for man-made climate change (catastrophic or otherwise), but just assumes it without even the courtesy of an ‘arguendo’.

So let’s turn to the evidence WaPo generally cites, in its coverage, as supporting its faith, ’something called’ the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now, the IPCC ‘is a bit old’, having been started expressly to ’support a possible future climate treaty’ in 1988. And seek to support such a thing, it does. If with increasing hilarity.

Who are these people, regularly cited either as “2,500″ or “2,000″ of the “world’s leading climate scientists” (later downgraded to 400 after a little scrutiny)? Are they that? Do The Four Hundred hold up against thirty-plus thousand including 9,000 PhDs? (and why does WaPo need to distinguish PhDs from the rest, as more credible? The man running the federal government’s climate effort has long claimed a PhD, even in a CV submitted to get a federal grant many years ago, but it turns out he only possesses an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from a different university than the one he used to claim an academic PhD from? Is he unqualified? Sort of like, well, WaPo’s writer. President Obama. Al Gore. And the rest? Again with the flexible standards).

No. The IPCC’s ‘chief climate expert’ is a railroad engineer. The 2,000 are anthropology teaching assistants, transport policy instructors, socialist economists and other climate luminaries.

And the IPCC’s Dr. William Schlesinger admitted that only 20% of UN IPCC scientists deal with climate: “Something on the order of 20 percent [of UN scientists] have had some dealing with climate.” Meaning by his own admission, 80% of the UN IPCC membership has no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.

Then there was this odd example of diligence. “Judging from news reports, the number of signers has barely budged from 2008, further undercutting Perry’s claim of a groundswell of opposition.”

Sure, on a relative scale the pace slowed from the original 19,000. And, well, a few other things have emerged since 2008 (if not evidence to support WaPo’s assumed theory). Speaking of ClimateGate, WaPo then goes on to dismiss the affirmations from that leak by an apparent internal whistleblower with “five investigations have since been conducted into the allegations — and each one exonerated the half-dozen or so scientists involved.” (I say affirmations as they weren’t revelations to some of us; I wrote a book detailing what was affirmed in those emails, naming names and explaining what was known about, e.g., their ‘trick to hide the decline’, a year prior).

This merits a handful of Pinocchios, principally because these panels did not actually inquire in any sense into wrongdoing, and when they edged near the subject they largely limited their pursuit to asking the accused and people who know them, who (surprise!) concluded there was none. As Steve McIntyre, Bishop Hill and others — including one non-cheerleader who was interviewed, and ignored in strange fashion —  have separately noted.

WaPo has sniveled about me, personally, for daring to look a little deeper than these supposed investigations did. Apparently anxious, transparency for thee, not for me is the order of the day at this FOIA-using enterprise outraged that others would use FOIA.

Political candidates choose the path of least resistance, seeking to avoid the noise machine dedicated to intimidating debate on an issue they then disingenuously waive as away with ‘the debate is over’. When did we have it? What won it? I don’t know. And you won’t know from reading WaPo.

But this has gotten us where we are. WaPo knows this, and is trying to make an object lesson out of Rick Perry, after Iowa voters and nationwide poll-respondents made one of former climate activist Tim Pawlenty. Someone needs to have Perry’s back on this or the alarmists who seek to cow the brave into submission will win.

The Washington Post has a predictable, propagandistic lead Monday editorial — “Climate change underscored: A new report leaves little room for doubt” — that merits a fisking for the prominence given such admittedly non-newsy, if wildly spun and internally inconsistent, repetitiveness (emphases added throughout):

“CLIMATE CHANGE is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

So says — in response to a request from Congress — the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.

Ah, so — the implication is clear — it is a panel of scientists; wait, not just scientists, but climate scientists, and worthy of description as ‘preeminent’. But, then, the piece continues oddly without elaboration on this hint:

In a report titled “America’s Climate Choices,” a panel of scientific and policy experts also concludes that the risks of inaction far outweigh the risks or disadvantages of action.

Well, as Hoover fellow Paul Gregory notes, prompted by similar slop from the New York Times, “Of the first eight names, only one appears to be a climate scientist. The others are engineers, lawyers, and public policy types”.

But of course, we’re used to these gents being railroad engineers (the IPCC’s chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri) and anthropology teaching assistants (see the IPCC ‘world’s leading climate scientists’). By the next paragraph, however, surely the reader would begin wondering what is such a panel of scientists doing making these recommendations, which are in fact policy calls?

And the most sensible and urgently needed action, the panel says, is to put a rising price on carbon emissions, by means of a tax or cap-and-trade system. That would encourage innovation, research and a gradual shift away from the use of energy sources (oil, gas and coal) that are endangering the world.

Slippery, slippery. We need not belabor the ‘what if a skeptic trotted out such an ‘expert climate panel’ argument here. It’s just too obvious.

None of this should come as a surprise. None of this is news. But it is newsworthy, sadly, because the Republican Party, and therefore the U.S. government, have moved so far from reality and responsibility in their approach to climate change.

Oh. So it was the Republican-controlled Senate, with 60 and then 59 Democrat Senators, which refused to take up the issue last Congress? No. Just like the opposition in the House, then and now, Senate opposition is bipartisan, and strongly so. Though you’d never know that from reading the hyper-political WaPo:

Seizing on inevitable points of uncertainty in something as complex as climate science, and on misreported pseudo-scandals among a few scientists, Republican members of Congress, presidential candidates and other leaders pretend that the dangers of climate change are hypothetical and unproven and the causes uncertain.

Not so, says the National Research Council. “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.”

Climate-change deniers, in other words, are willfully ignorant, lost in wishful thinking, cynical or some combination of the three.

Ah, yes, ‘certainty’, and name-calling to prove the point. But then, as Jacobs, seizing on uncertainty also pointed out:

“The report tells us… the science is far from certain. I quote: ‘How will the climate system respond to increased greenhouse gases? The exact value of “climate sensitivity” – that is, how much temperature rise will occur for a given increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration – is uncertain due to incomplete understanding of some elements of the earth’s climate system.’ Note the wobbly use of language, such as “exact” or “some elements,” to signal that the science is “almost certain.” I can imagine the illustrious committee members searching for appropriate qualifiers that would not let the cat out of the bag.

In fact, climate sensitivity to doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is fairly summarized as the whole shootin’ match of the climate issue. Computer models on which policy types base their demands (and alarmists their prophesying) assume a climate sensitivity that is vastly greater than the les policy-relevant observations. You might know the latter as ‘reality’.

This group-grope “is not a study of climate science but of risk management”, per Jacobs, although I must add it is one accepting fairly well disproved assumptions (key among them: the climate’s sensitivity), which in itself is highly problematic.

I could go on. Because the Post surely did. But the point is that all of the tired name-calling and hyperventilation gets no more compelling the fifth or fiftieth time it is trotted out. These people demand a terrible imposition on society for no detectable climate impact. Let alone the subjective idea of ‘gain’ (as warming has historically been beneficial, indeed called a ‘climate optimum’.

But outlets like the Washington Post and its editorial board have always had a difficult time with good news. It’s just not news at all. Sort of like the NRC ‘report’ WaPo flogs, as it does each and every such one. Meanwhile, the sky remains just where we left it.

This latest entry is an embarrassment, if a rather typical one as I detail on Chapter 1 of Red Hot Lies, “Media on a Mission.” Here are some problems with the article:

“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” [Dem. Congressman and pro-cap-and-trade voter Baron] Hill said, echoing most climate scientists.

The author does not point to any survey of “most climate scientists,” challenge or even inquire about the source for or other evidence to support that claim. That is because there is no such survey or collective assertion by the critical masses of “climate scientists.” Period. It’s a talking point. But he’s a reporter. If he wanted to be straight about the issue he would at the very least turn to the very inconvenient statement by the Association of State Climatologists. But, again, it’s inconvenient.

When pressed, those who scribble or utter this shibboleth generally expand the universe of “climate scientist” to include anyone who is willing to go on record agreeing in return for being called one of the world’s leading climate scientists. Even if they are anthropology teaching assistants. Read on.

That is, they revert to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of (as its name indicates) representatives appointed by governments, which itself appoints anthropology TAs, instructors in “the human dimension of environmental change” (bring own incense, please) and transport policy instructors, for example, to achieve great if still exaggerated (why is that necessary?) numbers of supporters who supposedly (but didn’t) write its proclamations? The IPCC’s “chief climate scientist” and chief “climatologist,” according to outlets like the New York Times and USA Today is, just for the record, actually a… railway engineer.

The piece continued quoting the Member of Congress it sought to defend:

“That is indisputable. And we have to do something about it.”

Except that it is highly disputed, so it must be disputable. Stop and ask: have I not heard great vitriol tossed at scientists who dispute, sign petitions arguing against — and even resign their lifelong membership in professional societies over — this indisputable truth? Have you heard about the Wikipedia gatekeeper now topic-banned from the site for his years of work altering the truth and smearing the many scientists and papers disputing its supposedly indisputable opposite (WSJ notes it nicely, here, subscription required)?

Why would these things be if the argument about man-made global warming isn’t disputable? Or, possibly, is that just a talking point to avoid dispute which, as the years have shown, the alarmists cannot make the case serially stated as fact throughout articles such as this one?

Also unremarked was the salient point that nothing this congressman has ever voted for or voiced support for — meaning, not Kyoto, not cap-and-trade, not ‘green jobs’…nothing — would according to anyone ‘do something’, meaning, detectably impact the climate. So, frankly, it is rather unreasonable to conclude that the prescribed ‘do something’ remedies are in fact about the climate. See “ideological groups,” below.

The piece then adopted a different sort of advocacy, biased and selective characterization:

Groups that help support Tea Party candidates include climate change skepticism in their core message. Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and largely financed by oil industry interests,…

Of course, solar, wind and related industries underwrote the public affairs, lobbying and smear campaigns. In fact, they even teamed up with left-wing ideological groups who love the prescription (Team Soros over at Center for American Progress, plus the Rockefeller and other foundations). Oh, and oil and utility interests, who lead author Ed Markey (D-MA) even publicly thanked for dragging his bill over the finish line in the House. The article continued:

The oil, coal and utility industries have collectively spent $500 million just since the beginning of 2009 to lobby against legislation to address climate change and to defeat candidates, like Mr. Hill, who support it, according to a new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington.

That’s as far as the reporter got into raising Team Soros, oddly. As a source for its information. But in fact, most of the money spent by such groups appears to have been spent writing and lobbying to pass their favored bill — quick, name an oil company which fought the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill? You’d be wrong, and the utilities’ trade association Edison Electric Institute claimed to have helped craft the bill, which they helped pass the House. But that doesn’t fit the template of activist-journalists who channel “most climate scientists.”

Just as some do not understand that it’s the spending, stupid, largely driving public disgust with the political class, our media friends’ decline is largely attributable to such knee-jerk, unthoughtful bias, preening advocacy shrouded in the aura of objectivity.

Washington appears — appears — to be on its way to reform. Possibly the media can be fixed, too. Most Tea Partiers agree. Of course, I didn’t talk to most Tea Partiers, but I read a lot of my peers saying that. So it must be an indisputable truth.

In 1972, Maurice Strong, a patriarch of the global environmental movement who now sits on the board of directors for the Chicago Climate Exchange, led the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which met in Stockholm and released a declaration linking the human exerience to nature. It acknowledged that “man is both creature and moulder of his environment” and has advanced to the point where he has the power to significantly affect nature and, by extension, his own intellectual, moral, social and spiritual growth. The global social ramifications of man’s environmental stewardship are thus clearly stated in the Stockholm declaration:

The protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the wellbeing of peoples and economic development throughout the world; it is the urgent desire of the peoples of the whole world and the duty of all Governments.

The UN felt the environment and social well being were so linked that the declaration’s first Principle focused on it:

Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations. In this respect, policies promoting or perpetuating apartheid, racial segregation, discrimination, colonial and other forms of oppression and foreign domination stand condemned and must be eliminated.

Without question, the UN has made a particular commitment to social and environmental ideology since the very beginning of the green movement, and in the Stockholm declaration we can see much of the framework for global socio-environmental ideology already in place.

In 1987, the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (aka the “Brundtland Commission”), of which Maurice Strong was a member, first defined the now ubiquitous term “sustainability,” which in its essence was the integration of the three pillars of 3BL. Moving forward, Strong became Secretary General of the next major UN environmental summit, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (i.e., the “Earth Summit”), held in Rio de Janeiro, and created the Earth Council as a means of facilitating sustainable strategies worldwide.

The Rio summit was pivotal in the integration of 3BL ideals into what we now call “sustainable development.” The summit spawned Agenda 21, a comprehensive action plan with 27 guiding principles commonly known as the “Rio Declaration.” In response to these recommendations, President Bill Clinton, via executive order, created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), which was essentially a restatement of the principles of the Rio Declaration. Not surprisingly, the three pillars of 3BL (i.e., “People, Planet, Profit” — again, the fundamentals of “sustainability”) were integral in both of these initiatives. For instance, note Principle 25 of the Rio Declaration:

Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.

Similarly, note item 10 of the PCSD’s We Believe Statement (see page vi of this link):

Economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity are linked. We need to develop integrated policies to achieve these national goals.

With the three pillars of sustainability (i.e., “People, Planet, Profit”) firmly established as a global objective, the UN has continued to move forward in its efforts to implement them across the globe. In September of 2000, the UN issued its Millenium Declaration which reaffirmed its commitment to Agenda 21. Two years later, the Johannesburg Summit, one of the most recent major environmental conferences, met to identify targets and adopt concrete steps for implementing Agenda 21.

(As a sidenote, for those wondering where today’s environmental activities fit into the picture, the Rio Summit produced another document in addtion to Agenda 21, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC). This was a non-binding greenhouse gas reduction treaty but it provided for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which does mandate emissions limits for the nations that adopt it. The parties of the UNFCCC have met annually since 1995 to progress their goal of mandating that developed nations reduce emissions to meet the Kyoto protocol. The 2009 Copenhagen conference was the most recent such meeting.  Also of interest, in pursuing its agenda, the UNFCCC relied upon the publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which were at the heart of the Climategate scandal.)

Returning to the question of why traditional businesses have adopted the inexact science of 3BL, we must realize that the Triple Bottom Line philosophy provides the foundation for the modern definition of sustainability, a paradigm which has been embraced and nurtured for nearly 40 years, and the foundation for today’s global policy and international relationships. For better or worse, the concept of sustainability has become woven into the very fabric of our society on a global — as well as local — level. Because ShoreBank was specifically founded on a commitment to environmental and social values, it comes as no surprise that it embraced the 3BL philosophy. However, it now also becomes more understandable why other, more traditional businesses are now professing a commitment to 3BL as well. Businesses which seek to be successful often cater to the current values of the culture and adopt the evolving mindset of the customer base.

We are now witnessing a shift in cultural values and priorities as the work of 40 years of cultivating 3BL philosophy begins to bear fruit. We are in a transitional phase. However, what are we transitioning into? What is our destiny? Our third and final article will seek to answer that.

Take some of the false claims in the 2007 IPCC report.

– The IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. The forecast was based on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, and the Indian glaciologist who was interviewed, Syed Hasnain, says that he was misquoted, indeed he had provide no date. Professor Hasnain discovered the mistake in 2008 when he read the IPCC’s published report, but he said: “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report. . . . My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?”

Even more disturbingly, Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, first denied that he knew about the error before the Copenhagen global warming conference. He only admitted that he knew about it before the conference when a writer for the journal Science, Pallava Bagla, pointed to email correspondence that he had with Pachauri last fall.

– The IPCC warned that because of global warming the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.” They cited one study to support their claim, but when the research was published in 2008, after the IPCC report was released, the study noted: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”

– The IPCC warned that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming, but the sole source for that claim was a non-refereed report authored by two people who the Sunday Times of London referred to as “two green activists,” one of them with the World Wildlife Fund.

– The IPCC even got wrong the percentage of the Netherlands that is below sea level. The report claims that the percent is 55 percent, when the right number is 26 percent.

On February 3rd, Mr. Pachauri however defended the UN’s IPCC report by saying that the critics “are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. I hope that they apply [asbestos] to their faces every day.” While Pachauri admits that the IPCC was inaccurate about the Himalayan glaciers melting, he claimed that the attacks were motivated by “business interests” who “spread a lot of disinformation.”

Finally, it should be noted that Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces that country’s freedom of information act regulations, has come to some conclusions regarding Climategate. The ICO found that the University of East Anglia breached violated British law by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming. The UK Daily Mail reports that “the scientists will escape prosecution because the offences took place more than six months ago.” Out of 105 freedom of information requests, Professor Phil Jones, who headed the university’s Climate Research Unit, only complied with 10 requests.

For too long global warming proponents have claimed that their claims can’t be questioned. Science should be more transparent than this. But relying on misreported news stories and white papers put out by non-scientists from advocacy cases isn’t science.  Why these climate temperature data has been hidden and why researchers won’t answer questions on adjustments that they have made has become quite troubling. In this age of computers and website, there is no excuse for hiding data.