Did you see Al Gore’s histrionic ‘boiling seas … a billion climate refugees’ performance at Davos, effectively out-fire-and-brim-stoning our own evangelical Energy Minister, Chris Bowen?

Gore’s performance plays to the cohort who truly believe the global warming scenario is about climate. But they have been hoodwinked. It was always about money and power. Gore is said to have become a billionaire along with many others in the green business world, while politicians that lean on end-of-the-world rhetoric have been made ministers.

Tell a lie often enough and people will come to believe it. The scary climate alarmist scenario was so cleverly executed that it fooled the world. Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science and past UN IPCC contributor, gives voice to this when he says:

‘In punching away at the clear shortcomings of the narrative of climate alarm, we have, perhaps, missed the most serious shortcoming: namely, that the whole narrative is pretty absurd. Of course, many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance.’

It all began with the construction of the anthropogenic global warming scenario, launched on June 23, 1988, in the US Senate committee which included the testimony of James Hansen of NASA. That’s right, global warming began in the US Senate, not a scientific research institute, university, or geological society, but a house of politics.

It is worth recalling how the scenario was born in dishonesty and has been characterised by it ever since. To emphasise the ‘warming’ at the congressional session, Hansen’s Democrat ally, Senator Tim Wirth, scheduled the hearing on a day forecast to be the hottest in Washington that summer. In addition, Wirth sabotaged the air-conditioning the previous night, hoping to ensure the TV cameras could show everyone sweating in the heat.

Wirth later told Deborah Amos (NPR News) how he did it:

‘What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot … The wonderful Jim Hansen was wiping his brow at the table at the hearing, at the witness table, and giving this remarkable testimony.’

Remarkable indeed, a political agenda dressed in the lab coat of science.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given scientific cover for the political activism ever since, and even admits its political agenda. On November 14, 2010, Ottmar Edenhofer, then co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, was quoted by the Zuricher Zeitung:

‘Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.’

A Marxist bid for control of economies. That was 13 years ago.

An example of the IPCC’s methods was given by Lindzen. He revealed that only a few scientists were involved in writing the IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report. Although purported to speak for thousands of scientists, it was not thousands offering their consensus. Dr. Lindzen was a participant himself and said, ‘Each person who was an author wrote one or two pages in conjunction with someone else. They travelled around the world several times a year for several years to write it, and the summary for policymakers had the input of about 13 of the scientists. Ultimately, it was written by representatives of governments, of environmental organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, and industrial organizations, each seeking their own benefit.’

The unreliability of global warming enthusiasts was demonstrated when Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was criticised in October 2007 by a High Court judge in Britain who (inconveniently for Gore) highlighted what he said were ‘nine scientific errors’ in the film.

The judge made his remarks when assessing a case brought by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of a political group, the New Party, who is opposed to a government plan to show the film in secondary schools.

The judge ruled that the film can still be shown in schools as part of a climate change resources pack, but only if it is accompanied by fresh guidance notes to balance Gore’s ‘one-sided’ views. The ‘apocalyptic vision’ presented in the film was not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change, the judge said. That was 2007, 16 years ago! This revelation has not slowed down sucker governments that are ripe for subsidies in renewables, really big batteries, and wind farms.

The mistakes identified in the film mainly deal with the predicted impacts of climate change, and include Gore’s claims that a sea-level rise of up to 6 metres would be caused by melting in either west Antarctica or Greenland ‘in the near future’. The judge said: ‘This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”.’ He accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water – ‘but only after, and over, millennia.’ A wake-up call … 1,000 years in advance.

Over the past 20 years or so, vast amounts of information based on the scientific method have become available, which debunk the alarming global warming scenario in which carbon dioxide is a dangerous warming gas. It has never been proven to be so, despite the claims trumpeted by alarmists.

This brings us to the political leadership around the western world, where climate tsars and energy ministers support their misguided leaders with climate hysteria, designed to excuse their staggeringly expensive emission reduction policies, undermining their own economies. Davos is the funnel through which participants clip the funds on the way through.

It has been quite a charade; those at the political pinnacle have self-abused themselves to appear gullible, flogging the climate warming horse in Al Gore’s evangelical wake, enriching the investors in the climate lobby under cover of saving the planet. And we poor suckers have bought it. I include myself, having been unable to resist arguing the misuse of falsehoods masquerading as science, instead of exposing the swelling bank accounts of the proponents and addressing the political agendas. One of those is the well-worn practice of hyping some threat and then offering safety ‘if you vote for me’.

In early July 2022, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was commenting on the floods which had yet again devastated large regions north of Sydney. He told the media how climate change was causing ever increasing extreme weather events. This is well documented to be incorrect. Neither the media nor any of his advisers corrected him.

Is the entire political class so inept that it is unaware of the tsunami of credible information debunking the alarmist orthodoxy? Is the mainstream media so corroded by political bias it has allowed its professional scepticism take long service leave?

Writes Lindzen: ‘Since 2009, the US and other governments have undertaken actions with respect to global climate that are not scientifically justified and that already have, and will continue to cause, serious social and economic harm – with no environmental benefits.’

Andrew L. Urban is the author of Climate Alarm Reality Check – what you haven’t been told (Wilkinson Publishing).