…"perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice"

Produce the documents!

Another one,
DOE National Institute for Climatic Change Research, http://niccr.nau.edu/forms.html
“Research should:
(1) answer important questions about potential effects of climatic change on the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems within the 50 states or District of Columbia;
(2) evaluate or improve the understanding and prediction of potential effects of climatic change on the future geographic distribution of U.S. terrestrial ecosystems at the regional scale;
(3) use measurements of contemporary exchanges of mass and energy between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems to answer important questions about possible effects of an altered terrestrial carbon cycle and/or surface energy exchange on global and/or regional climate; or
(4) use synthesis of existing experimental or observational data, or modeling, to answer important questions about potential effects of
climatic change on U.S. ecological systems and/or feedbacks from U.S. terrestrial ecosystems to climate at the regional scale.”

A better analogy might be, pigs at the trough. Here’s a picture courtesy of the UK govt. http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery_images/0701/0000/0102/100_6563_mid.jpg :
Note it didn’ take a conspiracy to get these interests assembled. They got their of their own accord. And most look happy to be there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/jul/06/research.highereducation
“Researchers working on the social and economic impact of climate change will get more money “as a matter of urgency”, the council said.
More fellowships in this area will be funded to help researchers tackle the problems outlined by the inter-governmental panel on climate change and the Stern review.
The fellowships will cover the economics of climate change, securing effective international collective action, impacts of climate change on international development and poverty and how to change behaviour. A call for bids is due out shortly.”

I sympathize with Mr. Vaughan. He wanted to get his “experience out” in the public. However, in this “environment” we do need to produce “prima facia” evidence. (Such as PDF’s of grant application instructions which say something similar to the above.)
It would make Climategate^2
Please note how the ACTUAL SEGMENTS OF CODE from CRU not only betray the biases, fudge factors, manipulations to “get the result we want”..
BUT they also show how SHODDY the work is.
We can run with that and should.

Nation Science Foundation “Where discoveries begin”
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10503/nsf10503.pdf (page 5)
At the system end of the continuum, emphasis will be placed on proposals that advance our knowledge of important arctic environmental processes, the relationships among the various components of the arctic system, and the changes occurring in the cycles of water, carbon and energy in the Arctic and their connectivity to similar processes in lower latitudes with priority on subjects relating to environmental change in the Arctic.

Man Made global warming – Man made climate change – The latest urban legend.

Isn’t it odd that AFTER a conspiracy is EXPOSED, the defenders of the conspiracy say it can’t be a huge conspiracy involving thousands of people because, if it was a huge conspiracy involving thousands of people, it would be EXPOSED.
Hmmm, I think the premise just ran into itself.

Anthony,
I cam across this well-written article in the Jerusalem Post. I thinks it’s well-worth reading.
Think Again: Beware of religious fanatics
Dec. 10, 2009
Jonathan Rosenblum , THE JERUSALEM POST
Excerpt:
– “BENJAMIN FRANKLIN once said that two things should never be viewed in production – sausage and the news. We can now add to that list scientific consensus. An Internet hacker recently released thousands of e-mails to and from researchers at the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU), one of four official repositories for world temperature data.
Scientific consensus, the e-mails reveal, is a tautology: According to global warming alarmists, anyone who expresses any degree of skepticism is by definition not a serious scientist.
In one released e-mail, Phil Jones, head of the CRU, and Michael Mann, the lead author of the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), discuss ways to delegitimize Climate Journal, whose editor has published peer-reviewed articles by global warming “skeptics.” Jones assures Mann that one way or another he and a colleague will prevent two such articles from appearing in the next report of the IPCC, “even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is.”
Science depends on a willingness to continually retest hypotheses against the available data. Yet the UEA researchers did everything possible to prevent such testing, including destroying the raw data. The CRU’s temperature data is “adjusted” to account for different means of collection at various stations around the world. When researchers sought the raw data to examine those adjustments, Jones and colleagues first resisted and eventually destroyed much of the data. Other e-mails speak of deleting all correspondence related to the preparation of the fourth IPCC report.
One e-mail speaks of “trick[ing]” the data to hide the lack of global warming since 1998, despite the continual rise in carbon dioxide emissions. In an e-mail from UEA, a researcher laments, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But no such doubts about the climate models, upon which predictions of catastrophe are predicated, were ever expressed publicly. Another e-mail discusses strategies to obscure the uncomfortable fact that for long periods within the last thousand years, way before any human industrial activity, the earth was far warmer than today.
THE E-MAILS, opined The Sunday Times of London, constitute not a “smoking gun, but a mushroom cloud” in terms of the doubts cast on the so-called global warming consensus. The chicanery revealed does not disprove the theories of the global warming alarmists, but it makes a mockery of the notion that there is a scientific consensus. Yet with the exception of Fox News, the UEA e-mails went unmentioned for days by America’s mainstream media. When The New York Times was finally forced to do so, it adopted the stance of the “wizard of Oz” telling Dorothy to ignore the man behind the curtain manipulating the dials.
Such efforts to create a consensus by diktat are old hat. In 2001, when Cambridge University Press published Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, the scientific establishment went into overdrive to discredit the work. Lomborg argued that the dangers of global warming were vastly overstated, and the costs of the measures proposed to reverse it drastically out of proportion to any danger.
Nature, Science and Scientific American published scathing editorials denouncing the book. Only Nature permitted a letter to the editor (not from Lomborg himself) responding. Science and Scientific American initially refused to publish any responses, and Scientific American threatened legal action if Lomborg continued to post its review and his response on his Web site. Though Skeptical Environmentalist had been peer-reviewed by three leading earth scientists prior to publication, one leading scientist demanded the firing of the Cambridge University Press editor responsible for the book’s publication.
David Schoenbrod, a law professor and former attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, reviewing the Lomborg controversy in Commentary (September 2002), concluded that Lomborg had refuted seven out of the nine allegations of factual error made in Scientific American’s scathing review, and that the other two were trivial and had no impact on his conclusions. Indeed, the 11-page Scientific American review had more demonstrable factual errors than Lomborg’s 500 page book.” –
[url]http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447408290&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter[/url]

Has anyone thought about bombing the antarctic to break off the ice so it floats around the world cooling the planet?

John Bowman (08:49:35) :
This essay in Time Higer Education is a must read.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=409454&c=2
You’re right John. Martin Cohen an editor of the Philosopher and an environmental activist (FOF) has produced one of the clearest articles disputing the case for AGW that I’ve ever read!
This is a must read.

Shawn Sene (08:42:35) :
First of all, a conspiracy with a few thousands members is very comprehendable.
Secondly, most “climate” scientists, especially among the IPCC, are not even involved with the proving of man-made global warming (not climate change, because they weren’t trying to prove cooling) Most are invovled with the effect of a warmer world not the cause.
Lastly, we know that the data was manipulated and maintained by a rather smaller set of scientists. Methods of interpretation of data was handled by the same people. Anyone outside this group who doesn’t know the data was purposely bad, would come to the conclusion that the world was warming and man most likely was causing it.
Exactly right. Most AGW/Climate Change is not involved in the actual causes of climate change. The cause is presumed. They take the projections creating elsewhere and then make educated guesses on what the consequences will be.

Is God trying to send a message?
The forecast for Copenhagen:
http://www.worldweather.org/173/c00190.htm