COPENHAGEN — Taking their cue from radical environmentalist political stunts, global warming “skeptics” in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference served up their own attempts at headline-grabbing actions to protest the agenda.
Film maker Phelim McAleer, responsible for the Not Evil, Just Wrong documentary on global warming, entered the conference building wearing a polar bear suit with a sign around his neck reading: “Where is Phil Jones.” Megaphone in hand, the polar bear demanded to see disgraced climate scientist Phil Jones, the head of University of East Anglia’s notorious Climate Research Unit which was exposed in the leaked e-mail and data scandal now known around the world as “Climategate.”
"I wasn’t getting anywhere with conventional attempts for an interview so I decided to use the environmentalist trick of dressing up as a polar bear to catch attention," McAleer said. "Professor Jones has produced a lot of the IPCC’s science and now he and the science is in question and he needs to answer some serious questions. They are suggesting massive changes to our way of life, therefore Professor Jones and his dubious methods should face hard questions."
Of course, McAleer never found Jones — the scientist temporarily stepped down from his position while the university conducts an investigation — so he was certainly not welcome at the conference. But McAleer made his point.
Another daring stunt in Copenhagen was pulled off by the U.S.-based Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Activists from the organization sailed up alongside the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior and unfurled a giant banner reading “Propaganda Warrior.” Earlier in the day, the group boarded a separate Greenpeace ship called Arctic Sunrise and hung a banner that read “Ship of Lies.” The efforts were part of a campaign to bring sense and balance back into the environmental debate, according to the group.
“Greenpeace has done this many times to companies around the world,” noted CFACT executive director Craig Rucker, who planned the operation. “We believe this is an opportunity to express our message that Greenpeace has done many things on the environment that are just simply lies — lies on DDT, lies on global warming, lies on a whole host of policies that hurt people and impoverish nations.” He said their disregard for the truth and people’s well-being had become intolerable, “so we decided to take action.” Rucker also noted that the supposed environmental organization uses similar tactics to oppose nuclear, hydroelectric and hydrocarbon energy — despite the fact that 1.5 billion people still do not even have electricity, which is essential to running hospitals and schools, lighting homes, and even purifying water.
“Greenpeace ships, like the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, have become global symbols for radical environmentalism, and we wanted to call attention to the harm these groups are causing,” said CFACT president David Rothbard. “It seemed appropriate to use one of Greenpeace’s favorite tactics to make this point.”
And it was not just Americans. “There were a lot of Danes that helped out with the effort too,” said CFACT’s Lene Johansen, who was also in Copenhagen for the action. And in addition to the Danish “skeptics” who participated in the Greenpeace ship operation, the Denmark-based group Climate Sense partnered with the organization to put on the “Copenhagen Climate Challenge Conference,” bringing together prominent scientists from around the globe to debunk the “science” behind anthropogenic global warming theories.
Among the speakers who received the most attention at the skeptics’ conference was Professor Niklas Nils-Axel Mörner, a prominent scientist and oceanographer at Stockholm University who studies sea levels. He chastised the president of the Maldives for claiming that the island nation would soon disappear. According to Mörner, who has studied the Maldives extensively, “we must rely on the facts, and the facts don’t support the president.”
But the President of the Maldives was not swayed by Professor Mörner’s findings. He told The New American that Mörner was doing shoddy work and that he had not properly measured the sea levels around the island nation. “There are still people who don‘t believe we landed on the moon,” he said, later changing his tune to, “You know, that isn’t even worthy of comment.”
But despite the efforts that were made by global-warming skeptics to garner some media exposure at Copenhagen, the media igorned (or dismissed) the skeptics — including not just the activists but the scientists — and pretended instead that the alarmist position is the only show in town.
