Climategate’s 15 Year Anniversary Could Give Momentum to Team Trump

Climategate anyone?

This scandal erupted 15 years ago this month when political activists masquerading as scientists got exposed in a series of emails leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. 

The correspondence revealed researchers willing to cook the books, fabricate data, and muzzle dissenting voices when mother nature did not cooperate with theories linking human activity to dangerous levels of global warming. The email exchanges also made it clear that CRU staff engaged in a coverup. They made a concerted effort to resist open records requests from scientific skeptics who pressed for CRU records to be open and available for public scrutiny. 

Put simply, Climategate demonstrated a willingness on the part of climate activists to violate the scientific method when it did not confirm their political agenda. James Delingpole, a British author and journalist, has driven this point home many times in his extensive coverage of Climategate. By concealing their data, climate activists prevented scientists from outside of CRU from replicating their work to see if it withstood rigorous testing. As Delingpole explains, the scientific method is set in motion when someone makes a claim, and then attempts to substantiate that claim with data. The next and final step is to allow for others to replicate their work and to see if it holds up. 

(Read more: Worst Climate Stories of the Week – The Why Donald Trump Won Edition)

Who are The Real Deniers?

Dan Kish holds the position of senior fellow with the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit outfit that favors free market energy policies. Kish cites evidence indicating that alarmist positions on climate do not square with sound science. 

“Climate alarmists and their allies in the media like to apply the term ‘denier’ to anyone who does not accept their premise,” Kish said in an interview with Restoration News. “But Climategate shows they are the real deniers. Every year you see a new set of facts coming out showing that these catastrophic predictions and estimates are wrong and every year they deny the facts.”

Climategate intersected with the “15^th Session of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” or COP15, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. The scandal was likely responsible for delaying U.N. efforts to implement an international “cap and trade” agreement that would restrict fossil fuel emissions. But a few years later, with President Barack Obama in office, the U.S. and the international community succumbed to the Paris Agreement during COP21 in Paris France in December 2015. Under the U.N. agreement, participating countries must establish their own “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs to help alleviate what the U.N. views as a coming climate catastrophe. President Donald Trump took executive action to withdraw the U.S. from Paris, but President Joe Biden promptly reinserted the U.S. into the U.N. agreement. 

An Opportunity to Kill the Paris Accords for Good

Kish sees an opportunity for Trump to dismantle the “climate industrial complex” in his second term by taking steps to permanently repeal the Paris Agreement. Kish credits Paul Tice, a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics, for seizing on the right strategy in a piece for the Wall Street Journal. 

“We have the anniversary of Climategate to help give momentum to the Trump agenda,” Kish observed. “But we also have the anniversary of COP29, which tells us the U.N. is still pressing ahead with its climate agenda.” COP29 took place in Baku, Azerbaijan earlier this month, where the U.N. reiterated its commitments to NDCs. 

Tice proposes that Trump submit the Paris Agreement as a treaty to the U.S. Senate instead of falling back on another executive order. Treaties require a two-thirds majority in the Senate for approval.

“This move would effectively put an end to the Paris Agreement, which was always a treaty and should have been called one,” Kish said. “But there’s another step here involving CO2 regulations that should be tackled, and I think Trump has the courage to do this.”

Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Pollutant

Tice proposes that the incoming Trump administration revoke the 2009 Endangerment Finding that declared Co2 a pollutant on the basis of highly specious findings. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA empowered Obama’s EPA with the ability to consider whether greenhouse gas should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. 

“This decision flew in the face of everything we learned from climategate,” Kish said. “The Clean Air Act was never crafted to cover CO2 emissions. The court basically allowed the EPA to expand its power over the economy through all kinds of regulations.”

The selections Trump has made for his cabinet in areas that are relevant to energy policy give Kish hope that the new administration will seize on the lessons of climategate. Kish is particularly pleased with the selection of Chris Wright to head up the Department of Energy. 

“He preaches the gospel for affordable and reliable energy,” Kish said. “He’ll be called a denier in the press, but that’s what we should like about him. Trump and Wright know there’s nothing worse than energy poverty. Just look at Europe.”

Restoration News has shattered the myths around the climate cult and junk science in our comprehensive report: How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—And How to Stop It