Professor Tim Flannery, who achieved notoriety for his apocalyptic, spectacularly wrong global warming predictions, boasts of bailing up former News Corp director James Murdoch and accusing him of destroying ‘people’s faith in science’. Clearly, Professor Flannery flunked irony at university.

In his recent book, The New Climate Wars, ‘hockey stick’ inventor Michael Mann wrote that News Corp’s amplification of a false conspiracy, known as ‘climategate’, helped derail the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, setting back global efforts to rein in warming by crucial years. Yet ‘climategate’ never was a false conspiracy. It was a collection of damning emails desperately trying to defend a hypothesis that was being torpedoed by observations. Indeed, it was Mann who rewrote the climate record to give the appearance of a rapid rise in post-industrial temperatures.

Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ featured in The Science of Climate Change 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which was lauded at the time as the most authoritative statement on global warming. Legendary scientist Dr Frederick Seitz was so outraged, that he wrote, ‘This report is not what it appears to be – it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the NAS and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report’.

Dr Seitz would no doubt despair of the latest IPCC consensus report. Compiled by more than 200 scientists over the course of several years and approved during a recent virtual meeting by 193 governments, some working papers have not been released.

If the IPCC had a reputation for integrity, perhaps this scientific consensus would deserve some respect. But the culture encouraged by its chairman for 13 years, Rajendra Pachauri, lives on. Investigative journalist Donna Laframboise, in her book, Into the Dustbin: Rajendra Pachauri, the Climate Report and the Nobel Peace Prize, describes him as an ‘environmental activist’ and an ‘habitual liar on climate matters’. Under the auspices of the IPCC, Pachauri knowingly allowed the falsehood that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 to stand. Even then he insisted all IPCC conclusions were backed by peer-reviewed science. However, an independent audit confirmed less than two-thirds came from the scientific literature.

Yet, while the IPCC may remain the global warming establishment’s ‘gold standard’ on climate-related issues, without drastic reform, its credibility and that of science and scientists more generally will continue to fade in the public’s eyes.

Indeed, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Dr Ottmar Edenhofer, is more in tune with the direction of public thinking. ‘One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy’, he says. ‘Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth’.

UN climate supremo, Christiana Figueres, agrees, saying, ‘Probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves… is to intentionally transform the economic development model’. She argues  democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. She believes the dictatorial ‘Communist China model’ is the best way to achieve her ambitions. That’s not conspiracy theory; it’s fact.

No wonder science attracts young political ideologues, more driven by a quest for power and influence than scientific integrity.

Come November, the UN’s COP 26 will be held in Glasgow. In the lead-up to, and throughout the conference, we will face a barrage of unrelenting climate hysteria, intended to deceive policy makers and the public into believing that we have only twelve years left to save the planet. Strangely, at COP 24 in Katowice three years ago, world governments were given a similar 12-years deadline.

And, only four years ago in Paris, 190 countries pledged to control ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions to keep global temperatures ‘well below” 2.0 degrees Celsius (preferably by 1.5 degrees Celsius), by 2100. Deliberations were influenced by a key National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publication which whistleblowers later revealed contained critical unresolved data issues.

Suddenly, without debate, 1.5 degrees has become the new standard. We’re told, ‘Even half a degree, will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people’. It means global carbon dioxide must be cut by 45 per cent by 2030, which requires ‘economic and social transformation based on the best available science’. For that to be achieved means ‘developed’ nations will basically carry the burden.

China, the world’s largest emitter by far, ignores the IPCC. It self-defines as a ‘developing’ country, despite failing to comply with the five criteria. It is building 43 new coal-fired power stations and 18 blast furnaces and has ended subsidies for renewables. Better to watch what Beijing does, than listen to what it says. But, who cares? Certainly not the United Nations. The recent, corrupt behaviour of its World Health Organisation and World Bank agencies confirm a strong, pro-Beijing bias.

For all the debate, one thing remains certain. The ‘best available science’ does not reside within the IPCC. It’s why scientists like Flannery and Mann are paranoid about contrary views and why honest scientists like Peter Ridd are sacked for daring to demonstrate global warming is not killing the Great Barrier Reef.

It’s also why up to 25,000 government officials, media representatives and other zealots from around the world are expected to jam the Glasgow echo-chamber. Covid rules for thousands of foreign delegates will be relaxed, while about 10,000 police from around the UK will create a ‘welcoming’ atmosphere for protesters. Covid-19 is so yesterday.

A Guardian article headed, ‘Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Have we got the stomach for it?’, says it all.

It’s not News Corp’s editorial policy or changes in the climate which threaten our civilisation, but Chinese politics dressed up as science.