Mike Hulme, of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, wades through the bilge that poured forth from last week’s hysteria-fest in Copenhagen. It is impossible to fail to discern a growing fear among the global-warming industry that soon this golden goose may stop cranking out so many eggs, and the related agenda is flagging.

Hulme raises most of the issues which should have been raised by this event but weren’t. He notes:

Last week’s conference has been widely reported as one at which the world’s scientists delivered a “final warning” to negotiators about the necessity for a powerful political deal on climate.Some commentators branded it “The Emergency Science Conference”.
The six key messages include statements that:
“the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised”
“there is no excuse for inaction”
“the influence of vested interests that increase emissions” must be reduced
“regardless of how dangerous climate change is defined”, rapid, sustained and effective mitigation is required to avoid reaching it

Busy trying to do a lot in the allotted space, Hulme mostly grazes these with some half-hearted blows. So, let’s delve deeper, taken in order. First, the globe is cooling, and no IPCC model projected that — any more than they allow for 15 years of no warming. The only means of validating these models is by observations, and observations have invalidated them. The first statement is a lie, as is screamed out by the childish worst case (or even worse) is coming true. Pant pant.

The second is the usual moral preening substituting for substance.

The third is the height of irony: a group of the most heavily vested interests calling for the reduction of the influence of certain other vested interests, clearly in favor of increased influence by yet a third group of vested interests, the rent-seekers.

Enjoy the torture of the fourth statement, the sort of weaselly strutting that one has come to expect from a group of people whose lead argument is “do what I want or everyone dies.” Begin with the reality that nothing ever proposed would (according to anyone) do anything, and you’ll soon find this an absurd time-waster.

Although Hulme overstates the robustness of the IPCC review process, he concludes this about the confab:

The conference was in fact convened by no established academic or professional body.Unlike the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) or the UK’s Royal Society – which also hold large conferences and from time to time issue carefully worded statements representing the views of professional bodies – this conference was organised by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU).
This little-heard-of coalition, launched in January 2006, consists of 10 of the world’s self-proclaimed elite universities, including of course the University of Copenhagen.
IARU is not accountable to anyone and has no professional membership.
The statement therefore simply carries the weight of the secretariat of this ad-hoc conference, directed and steered by 10 self-elected universities.

All of which somehow explains the media’s breathless reporting all week long of the group’s rantings as offering further “data” — from computer models about the future, mind you, so “data” isn’t exactly the appropriate phrase — that the future will be worse than anyone had thought.