Rumours persist that protesters also had tent pegs, bicycles AND EVEN SILLY STRING
DOZENS of misinformed media outlets yesterday went on a hysterical rampage – going head-to-head with FACTS and SCIENCE – and causing chaos across the country as they poured an oily slick of lies across the nation’s front pages.
At the same time, hundreds of idiots wreaked havoc across the internet, using websites as diverse as Twitter and newspaper comments sections to vent their reactionary opinions and stupid world view.
The occasion was, of course, the weekend’s Climate Camp, and the hyped-up ‘day of action’ which took place on Monday. Inevitably, there wasn’t nearly enough ‘action’ to satisfy a media which had been building up this invasion of anarchists intent on violence and disruption for months, but hey, let’s not let the small matter of FACTS get in the way of some good RIOT coverage!!1!211
Faced with this lack of COP15 style scenes of thousands of riot cops and activists facing it down, they had to make do with total lies and some made-up nonsense about ‘weapons’ – all of which the police obligingly did their best to go along with.
Most of the press coverage of Monday has focused on a supposed ‘oil slick’ which was created by activists pouring ‘oil and vegetable oil’ onto two busy roads. This is a blatant lie which has been spread by Lothian and Borders Police in a bid to discredit the protests and any political points they were trying to make. Two roads were indeed shut by the police for several hours on Monday morning, but there’s no evidence to prove that protesters had poured oil anywhere, let alone over busy roads. In a couple of actions on the day, molasses was used, specifically because it has the appearance of oil, but is sticky and doesn’t present any present any great safety risk, as oil would. Somewhere, wires have obviously got crossed, and news about molasses being poured over the offices of Cairn Energy in the city centre has lead to the Climate Camp being blamed for presumably an accidental leak of oil on two Edinburgh roads – hardly a rare occurrence.
Lethal weapons recovered by the police
In another bout of sensationalism, police were able to provide the media with pictures of supposed ‘weapons’ that they’d retrieved from around the campsite. The key word here being campsite, particularly when it’s revealed that these dangerous weapons were in fact a chisel and a mallot. Leftfield can also exclusively reveal that the site had saws, spades and even pick axes. In fact, a whole marquee was dedicated to storing tools which we’d presumed were for site maintenance and construction – how terribly naive of us.
As well as the police, the media were able to rely on a bunch of populist politicians from the mainstream political parties to come out and call on the police to start beating up peaceful activists who were engaged in a “disturbing” protest according to Labour and an “absolutely unacceptable” one according to the Lib Dems, while the Tories added that “it is time that the police sort this out”. The chair of Lothian & Borders Police Board also came out yesterday and called for protesters to foot the bill for the policing of the entire camp, in a startling display of utter contempt for the democratic right to protest.
As it happens, Monday’s actions were highly successful, closing down the offices of two energy companies in the city centre, as well as various RBS buildings and branches. As we’ve already reported, the camp also managed to close down the entire RBS headquarters for the day, with staff being told to stay at home or work elsewhere. Most of the condemnation of the protests – from the media and equally misinformed idiots on the internet – is coming from people with little understanding of the camp, its aims, or what really went down on the day. From what I saw, the only lives that were endangered during the whole camp were those that risked travelling in a shaky siege tower as it took its lengthy journey down to the front lines…
Your riot cops are no match for our RHINO SIEGE ENGINE
I’ve just returned from 5 days of occupying the land of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a piece of direct action that yesterday successfully achieved its objective of shutting down RBS’ headquarters. On Monday when we looked across at the building we could see there was nobody working there apart from cops and security guards.
Context
A quick recap: for the past few days hundreds of activists affiliated with Climate Camp have targetted the Royal Bank of Scotland. Having previously taken direct action against projects like Kingsnorth coal fired power station and the (now cancelled) third runway at Heathrow, they’ve moved on to a target that’s slightly less obvious.
But for people concerned about climate change, RBS is in fact at the heart of the problem. As a financial institution, they are the biggest UK investors in fossil fuels, styling themselves “the oil and gas bank.” In an economy that is now kept firmly in the stranglehold of financial capitalism, banks and other investors must be held responsible for their leadership role in a socio-economic system that is destroying the ecological basis for civilisation.
This system is now in the early stages of falling apart at the seams, due to the interrelated crises of the environment, the economy and social collapse. In the UK, RBS is at the heart of this process.
The current economic crisis was caused by the fact that the dominant financial institutions, like RBS, had used debt and self-delusion to try and keep the economy going. This bubble lasted for a while, until the myths that underpinned it began to unravel. The UK government then gave RBS and other massive banks huge injections of our money. RBS is now 84% owned by the British state. However, they refused to take any control over the banks in return for this money, leaving RBS under the command of its previous owners.
The people that run RBS have one priority: finding ways to invest their money (which you and I gave them) that will generate them more profits and then more money to invest. That’s what they exist to do as an institution. One of the main ways they can do that is to put our money into energy projects. As the world’s supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, the ones that remain will become more profitable to extract, at least for a while.
So RBS has poured our money into projects and companies like the Alberta Tar Sands, ConocoPhilips who are destroying the Amazon rainforest, and E.ON, the energy corporation looking to cover Europe with new coal fired power stations. They do this not because they’re evil, but because they are designed as an institution to do a specific job, and they’re doing that job.
As it is currently structured, it would be impossible to make RBS act otherwise, which is why we should demand that instead of being controlled by private capitalists the wealth of RBS is used collectively and socially to solve problems in the world, instead of being used to create huge problems that will make the world a less habitable place for humanity in the coming decades.
This is all the more appalling when you remember that the working class is about to face one of the greatest austerity blitzkriegs of all time, after the government chose to facilitate RBS and its chums taking the money that should have been spent on public services, jobs and wages for the people who actually keep our society running – public sector workers. In this context, it’s clearly time for radical action against an institution which is poisoning our society.
Some of SSY’s roving reporters are back to civilisation to give YOU all the latest news from climate camp…
After an epic amount of pushing, we stormed RBS headquarters this afternoon. Delicious molasses bombs were thrown, windows were smashed and there was a lot of scuffling with the police. Bear in mind that today was Sunday, and the bank wasn’t even open…! Who knows what’s on the agenda for the rest of the working week…
Most of the SSY delegation are still pitched up in the RBS back garden and will be until the end of the camp – stay tuned for a full climate camp analysis and review in a few days…
A few of us SSYers are about to head over to head over to Edinburgh to take part in the camp for climate action. If you’re reading this and can make it, get there! The camp took their site last night, at Gogar Station Road, right next to the Royal Bank of Scotland global headquarters!
Information for those of us outside just now is limited, but we’ll be trying to bring you updates during the day as we find out more. SSY will be part of the swoop today, from 12 a group will be heading from St Andrews square (where the bus station is) to the site. Come along and join us. If you can’t make it, just get to the site whenever you can. See the map on the climate camp site for where to go.
UPDATE: Me, Liam T and Liam M are at the camp now, and it’s fantastic! There’s a couple of hundred folk, and more arriving all the time. Tonight and tomorrow we’ll just be setting up the site, as much help as possible is needed. The grounds of the RBS complex are actually really nice, and it’s a great place to hang out.
This weekend, Climate Camp is coming to Edinburgh.
Anything up to 1000 people are expected to descend on the capital for five days of discussions, workshops, training and direct action, in the fifth camp of its kind in the UK. Following past camps which have targeted airport expansion and coal power stations, this year the main target will be the ‘oil and gas bank’, the Royal Bank of Scotland, who handily have their huge, James Bond baddie style centre of operations on a site just outside of Edinburgh. RBS have come in for a huge amount of ire recently due to their direct funding of mineral extraction projects that’re hugely damaging to the environment, like the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada. And these are, of course, being funded with our money, given that RBS is now majority owned by the taxpayer following the billions poured into the banks by the Treasury.
The camp kicks off on Thursday, with a ’swoop’ on the site of the camp from four different locations in the city. The site will then be set up and made ready for the Saturday, when most climate campers are expected to arrive, and when the week’s activities properly begin. Over Saturday and Sunday, there’ll be a wide-ranging discussion on the way forward for the radical environmental movement, and how we can halt the onset of devastating climate change across the globe. Much of the debate will focus on the link between capitalism and climate change, posing such questions as whether we need destroy capitalism to destroy climate change, and whether we should ‘green the banks’ or ’smash the banks’. There’s also going to be workshops on stuff like fuel poverty, last year’s radical climate change conference in Bolivia, and the role of workers in fighting climate change. It’s not all talk though – there’s also going to be lots of legal training and direct action training in preparation for Monday’s mass day of action against the RBS HQ. With the RBS-sponsored Edinburgh Festival in full-swing at the moment too, the camp also promises a ‘greenwashing guerillas mission’, deep into the heart of the festival!
System Change not Climate Change!
The camp operates on a non-hierarchical basis of mass participation and consensus decision making. Based on geographical location, it’ll be divided into different ‘neighbourhoods’, each with its own kitchen and other facilities. The whole camp is free, but obviously does incur pretty big costs for the organisers – for young people going they’re recommending a donation of £10/15 for the camp, and a small donation for each meal you have.
SSY are planning on fully participating in the camp this weekend – and you should come too! We’ve heard a rumour that this might be the last really big, national climate camp in the UK, at least for a few years anyway, and seeing as it’s in Scotland, it’s really too good a chance to miss.
The 2010 Camp for Climate Action handbook, containing a full programme of everything that’s happening over the weekend, plus anything else you need to know, is available here.
The ConDem coalition government has shown its true shade of green with new proposals to reward households who produce more recycling waste. The plans, announced last week by Communities Secretary, Conservative Eric Pickles (whose name just seems to capture his essence), are ostensibly designed to reduce waste going into landfill sites around the country. In reality they illustrate how the government’s commitment to market idealism trumps any supposed commitments to the environment made during the election campaign or before.
Microchips are being fitted to wheelie bins and household waste measured on collection, in a pilot scheme being rolled out to 60, 000 households in the Conservative-controlled borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the southeast of England. The scheme rewards households for producing more recyclable waste, with a loyalty-card like system whereby residents collect points for their recycled rubbish, which are then exchanged for shopping and restaurant vouchers for up to the value of £130. While there are not yet plans to create a national scheme, Pickles’ endorsement could mean other English local authorities follow suit in the near future.
The previous New Labour administration had toyed with the idea of microchips in bins before, tabling both incentive schemes like this one and the contrasting approach of introducing tax-like penalties for households sending too much waste to landfill. The latter idea generated a fearful response from the tabloids, with the Daily Mail warning of “Spy chips hidden in 2.5 million dustbins” and “council snoopers [planning] pay-as-you-throw tax” in March this year.
However both the carrot of the incentive scheme and the stick of the waste tax are misplaced policies that fail to tackle the real causes of the excessive quantities of rubbish our society produces. As philosopher and environmentalist James Garvey argued in the Guardian last week, the point should be to reduce waste overall, not just change the bins people use to dispose of it. The old environmental adage, “reduce, reuse, recycle” was in that order for a good reason. Recycling of recyclable materials should be the last resort, with far greater emphasis on reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place. This is because while recycling is certainly better, and more energy efficient, than sending waste to landfill and creating new products and packaging from scratch using raw inputs (like oil for plastics, trees for paper and card or metal ores for tin cans), it is still an energy-intensive and environmentally destructive process, especially as recycling too has been left to the fate of the market.
John Vidal reported in 2004 that over one third of recycling waste collected in the UK was being sent 8,000 miles around the world for processing in China, without any consideration for the environmental and social consequences – especially as China is quickly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world, with very little in the way of legal protection for the environment or exploited workers. The Environment Agency admits that the practice of exporting recycling waste has continued to expand, suggesting on their website that, “If you work for a local authority or company that is involved in waste management, an increasing amount of the wastes you collect and process for recycling and re-use will ultimately be exported.” They report that the volume of waste exported doubled from seven million tonnes in 2002 to 14 million tonnes last year.
Sometimes SSY members try to sneak back after their 27th birthday
However even if recycling were rationally planned and performed locally to good environmental standards, it would still be far less efficient than producing less stuff in the first place. The problem with both the bin tax and the incentive scheme is they do little or nothing to reduce the amount of rubbish produced. The Tories’ incentive scheme could even potentially increase the amount of waste generated. As Garvey describes it:
“The point of recycling has to do with understanding the importance of reducing waste in a finite world. It costs energy and resources to make a plastic bottle, fill it with water, package it and ship it to your local shop. We currently get almost all of that energy by burning fossil fuels and doing damage to our climate. The resources which go into the bottle’s production, distribution and disposal might have been used in other, better ways. Once empty, the bottle might take up space in a landfill or end up in the ocean. If you understand the value of reducing waste in a finite world – if you want to avoid a hand in wasting energy, causing climate change, squandering resources, poisoning oceans – you might think twice about buying a bottle of water. If you recycle because you earn reward points for doing so, you might just buy a lot of plastic bottles.”
This also points to the second problem with market-based “solutions” to environmental problems, that of inequality. The pay-as-you-throw tax proposal would have affected all households equally, regardless of income or the availability of opportunities for avoiding excessive packaging and wasteful consumption. Only those with access to gardens or allotments, as well as spare time, are in a position to compost their food wastes, for example. Similarly the incentive scheme encourages wasteful consumerism – especially rewarding those who can afford to consume the most – while celebrating that it might persuade a few more to use the right kinds of bins for the right kind of rubbish.
A complete rethink of priorities is necessary to really challenge the way waste is produced and dealt with, rather than simply attempting to tinker with people’s behaviour to get a few more items in recycling bins and a few less in the ground or floating in the sea. Supermarkets, the food industry and other commercial interests need to be challenged and prevented from covering everything in maddeningly excessive packaging. People should be given the opportunity and be encouraged to consume less stuff and live less wastefully, not just cajoled into using recycling bins, whether by carrot or stick. The logic of free market capitalism has been the cause of excessive waste and environmental destruction. Are we really expected to believe that a market-based response can do anything to reverse that?
The attempt by Aberdeen SSP to conduct a serious interview on the issue of free public transport was left in disarray last night after a (no doubt drunken) passerby interrupted SSP candidate for Aberdeen North Ewan Robertson’s attempt to explain the policy. Rather than discuss issues of climate change, reversing rip-off privatised transport with a free, publicly owned service run for people’s needs while reducing congestion and carbon emissions, the interview was cut short as a local Aberdonian vented his anger at Donald Trump. This is probably in response to Trump’s efforts at building an elite golf course in Aberdeenshire which will destroy the beautiful and environmentally rare sand dunes, as well as threatening the local resisdent’s with compulsory purchase orders i.e. evicting them from their homes, if he can get Aberdeenshire Council on side. Then again, we’ll never know…
In response to the utter failure of the world’s governments to tackle the climate crisis in Copenhagen, the left wing government in Bolivia has organised a people’s summit.
Bolivia, Venezuela and other radical developing countries refused to sign the deal that rich countries like Britain and the US tried to force through the Copenhagen summit, exposing it as a scam that would have shifted responsibility on to poorer nations instead of those responsible for climate change. In response, the British government withdrew £2.3 million of climate aid from Bolivia.
The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is bringing together 15, 000 people from environmental groups, organisations for indigenous people, writers, scientists and activists. It’s taking place in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, where 10 years ago the people won a historic victory against water privatisation that helped pave the way for a left wing government taking power and the moves towards socialism that grassroots organisations in Bolivia are trying to carry out now.
The summit is expected to take proposals to the next UN meeting on climate change in Mexico later this year. These are expected to include a global referendum asking people to vote on solutions to climate change, as well as in an international climate justice court in which major polluters could be prosecuted for their harm to the planet. The conference will demand that rich countries open their borders to allow in the millions of climate refugees created by their own pollution. They also want the UN to draw up an international charter of rights relating to climate change and the environment, such as the right to clean, unpolluted fresh water.
Bolivian President Evo Morales
Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the summit with a chant of “For the planet or for death!”, and went on to say:
“Capitalism is the major element responsible for the destruction of the Earth. Capitalism depends on the greatest profit possible. Yet globalization is manifestly creating poverty. For capitalism, we’re only consumers or workers. There is no other aspect to our identities. Capitalism commodifies everything. We must choose either corporations and death or life. We cannot live in harmony with Earth when a few people are controlling the vast majority of the planet. Our new system of collectivist socialism will solve these problems. We are against unlimited development.
We are united here to celebrate the role of indigenous peoples as stewards of the Earth and as an alternative to unsustainable development. Mother Earth belongs to all of us and cannot be sold. Capitalism is synonomous with the destruction of the planet.”
He went on to criticise dependence on plastic materials, which pollute the environment for thousands of years. He contrasted ponchos made of plastic to traditional indigenous ones made of wool, pouring water over the wool poncho to demonstrate how it was more waterproof. This was evidence, he said, of how we needed to return to indigenous ways in order to save the planet.
Political Prisoner of the US, Leonard Peltier
Some of the most inspiring messages to the conference came from people who couldn’t attend it physically. Leonard Peltier is a Native American political prisoner in the US. He has been imprisoned since 1977 for a murder he did not commit. Peltier was one of a group of civil rights activists who were attacked by the FBI on a reservation in 1975, and in the resulting shootout an activist and two FBI agents were killed. It should be remembered that at this time the FBI was effectively at war with the people of the Pine Ridge reservation, which had a higher murder rate than the city of Detroit, as many activist were killed or disappeared with no investigation. At Peltier’s trial witnesses were coerced and false evidence introduced, leading to his sentence of life imprisonment.
In his message to the conference in Cochabamba conference, Peltier said:
“My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most.
The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction.
In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage.
To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.
It is time for all our voices to be heard.”
You can read the full text of what he had to say here.
Another person who couldn’t be there was the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. Galeano is a left wing journalist, historian and novelist, who has had to flee Latin America several times for fear of being killed by right wing dictatorships supported by the US. Perhaps his most well known work is ‘The Open Veins of Latin America,’ which tells the story of how Europeans and the US have plundered Latin America and destroyed its environments and peoples since their first arrival over 500 years ago. The book has been hugely influential, being translated into 20 languages. It was banned by the right wing dictatorships that once held power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Last year, Venezuelan President Huge Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy at a summit to try and help him understand the revolutionary processes underway in Latin America.
Galeano’s message to the summit said:
Eduardo Galeano
“Bolivia is one of the American nations where indigenous cultures have managed to survive, and their voices are now ringing with more force than ever before, despite the scorn and persecution they suffered for a long time.
The entire world, stunned as it is, is wandering about like a blind man in the middle of a crossfire, having to listen to those voices. They teach us that we, tiny beings called humans, are part of nature, relatives to all those who have legs, paws, wings, or roots. The European conquest condemned the indigenous, who lived in that communion with nature, for idolatry, and for believing in that communion they were flogged, their throats were slit, or they were burned alive.
From the times of the European Renaissance, nature has been turned into a commodity or an obstacle to human progress. And, to this day, this divorce between us and her has persisted, so much so that there still are people of good will who are moved by poor nature, so abused, so wounded, but are seeing her only from outside.
Indigenous cultures see her from inside. Seeing her, I see myself. What is done against her is done against me. In her I find myself, my legs are also the road on which they walk.
Let us celebrate, then, this Summit of the Mother Earth. And may the deaf listen: the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity.”
You can read the full text of what Galeano had to say here.
Scary volcano face isn't happy about climate change. I wouldn't fuck with him, even if I was Willie Walsh
Now that the flight ban is over, it’s estimated that the grounding of planes over the past few days has prevented around 2.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions by the aviation industry.
To put this in perspective, this is more than the annual emissions of around 50 different developing countries like Rwanda, Malawi or Sierra Leone.
It’s far from enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, but it’s a dent in the continuing self-inflicted poisoning of our home that capitalism is causing for humanity. It also serves to highlight the ridiculous dependence of the UK and other rich countries on planes.
The UK government likes to trumpet its record on the environment, claiming that UK carbon emissions are falling enough for us to more than meet our commitments under the Kyoto protocol.
Unfortunately, the government’s figures are about as fiddled as the ones on unemployment. They don’t take into account the cost of importing all the food we rely on Africa to grow for us, or the goods China manufactures for us. When you take into account the cost of shipping and aviation, UK carbon emissions are still rising, i.e. making the crisis worse. The governments figures also allow them to deduct carbon credits by paying for forests abroad etc., which is in fact a bit of a scam.
So taking this all into account, it’s pretty clear that the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has done more to tackle climate change than the UK government, or the US government, where carbon emissions also continue to rise. Not only are these governments not doing something about the problem, they’re making it worse.
The UK government has fought tooth and nail against local residents in Hillingdon, who are sick of noise and pollution, for a third runway at Heathrow airport. This is despite the fact that in independent report found that the third runway would actually COST the UK economy £5 billion, far from making money. But government policy is absolutely committed to the expansion of the aviation industry, no matter the long term cost.
How most of the stuff we buy gets here
As George Monbiot writes in a great piece for the Guardian, our society is now way over specialised and complex, which leaves it vulnerable to collapse. We depend so much on the developing world meeting our needs for us with cheap (virtually slave) labour, that the smallest disruption can have a ripple effect. Even in the few days flights were banned the UK was facing running out of certain food commodities.
Capitalism takes its decisions purely on what makes money, and doesn’t factor in the long term possibility of problems. Supermarkets rely on “just-in-time” deliveries, and any disruption pulls the whole thing down. What we should take away as a lesson from the volcanic disruption is that we urgently need to start meeting more of our needs closer to home. That means that cities need to start growing their own food, and regions must as much as possible be self sustaining. Of course there’ll always be a need to get some from outside, but right now we couldn’t sustain ourselves without the planes and ships bringing in our food.
Transforming our cities and regions into self sustaining, healthier places to live would be a lot of work. But its exactly the sort of work that would solve so many of our social problems, and give meaning to the lives of people who are unable to find a decent, meaningful job, and are left alienated by an economy that currently considers them useless because they aren’t rich.
Growing food in the heart of the city in socialist Cuba
The other thing we should learn from this crisis is that capitalism has weak links. Some workers have a lot of power that right now they aren’t using. The whole complex system in the developed world relies on the aviation, shipping, and transport industries, and if workers in these areas were organised and prepared to disrupt things, we could put a lot more pressure on capitalist governments than they’ve felt in a while. It’s no accident that British Airways management are so determined to smash the workers in one of the few airlines that has decent union organisation. Something for socialists to think about.
News came today that an independent inquiry into the so-called ‘Climategate’ hacked email scandal has cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.
Last year an as yet unidentified hacker managed to steal thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. These were then sent to climate change deniers, who picked through them with a fine tooth comb, trying to prove that climate change is in fact a giant lie made up by a global conspiracy.
The media coverage that ensued has made a big dent in the public’s acceptance for what it is, a scientifically proven fact that is taking place. The emails went back years, and the most notorious one was from 1999, in which Professor Phil Jones said he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline in tempratures.” Climate change deniers seized on this as proof that climate scientists were fiddling data and lying.
There’s a detailed explanation here of why this particular phrase was used. Basically, the truth of the matter is that climate scientists trying to study global temperatures over hundreds of years have a problem: accurate regular readings with thermometers were only possible from the 1850’s. Before that we have to rely on evidence gathered in the natural world, like ice cores or tree rings. However, scientists have noted that there is a statistical blip where the evidence of the temperature that comes from tree rings isn’t borne out by the real temperature as measured using thermometers. The “trick” Professor Jones used was to add in the ACTUAL REAL temperatures over recent decades to a graph, so that it would be MORE scientifically accurate than just relying on tree rings.
The media seized on the word “trick”, but in fact it’s nothing more than a poorly worded email written in a hurry. Evidence of a conspiracy it was not.
The independent inquiry into the “scandal” was led by Lord Oxburgh, and gave the unit “a clean bill of health.” Their report says there was “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever.” This comes after another enquiry, by a House of Commons committee, also cleared the scientists.You can read the full text of the Oxburgh report here.
The worst the report could find to say about Professor Jones and his colleagues is that, over decades, there were some problems keeping paper records. A problem completely unknown in any other workplace in the world, where everyone has copies of everything going back to the 70’s in triplicate.
You have to feel for Professor Jones and his colleagues. When the CRU was set up, they were doing what most people would regard as boring and unsexy science. But their and others’ discoveries turned out to have huge political and social implications, as society slowly began to realise that the global capitalist economy is destroying the conditions which allowed human civilisation to develop on Earth. This is the biggest scientific issue in human history, and suddenly the CRU were put at the forefront of the most important political question of our time.
Professor Jones has said publicly that he is “a very apolitical person, I don’t want to get involved in the politics, I’m much happier doing the science and producing the papers. I’m a scientist, I let my science do the talking, along with all my scientific climate colleagues. It’s up to governments to decide and climate science is just one thing they have to take into account with the decisions they have to make.”
He's hiding from scary freaks in bear costumes!
In other words, a guy who just wanted a nice quiet life compiling graphs of tree rings and the like has been thrust into the spotlight, as allegations that could have ruined his career were repeated again and again in the mass media. He’s never been telling what anyone what we should do or set himself up as a political guru, he’s just tried to tell us all how it is, scientifically. Despite huge pressure in the media, he refused to resign, as he’d done nothing wrong. The uni themselves said they’d refuse to accept his resignation even if he did submit it.
After three inquiries into their actions, there has yet to be any serious investigation for the people responsible for harassing them, making their work more difficult, and ultimately stealing private emails. Before the leak, the scientists had faced barrages of demands from climate denier Steve McIntyre. His constant pestering hampered their ability to do their jobs.
The emails were stolen in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen summit. There is still no sign of the person responsible coming forward or being found out, but it’s clear their intention was to do maximum damage to attempts to do anything about the climate crisis.
As the contents of private emails, going back years, by people who were being regularly harassed at work by climate change deniers, were repeated again and again, the public took in the idea that the people involved were liars. Some scientists even received death threats.
The tabloids that tried to tell us again and again this was evidence of a conspiracy have of course moved on before the publication of today’s report. But the bigger question remains-who stole the emails and started this whole farce off? They are part of the REAL climate conspiracy. The gigantic lie that is being propagated by the fossil fuel industry that climate change isn’t taking place is one of the greatest crimes of all time, because the people responsible are endangering the long term survival of human civilisation in order to maximise short term profits. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious reason why capitalism is a totally bankrupt system that needs to be replaced before it takes us to the brink of catastrophic climate change.
This weekend, Climate Camp is coming to Edinburgh.
Entries (RSS)
