Climate Research Center Hacked- Thousands Of Damning Docs Hit The Net: Global Warming Cancelled?

via: rightsoup.com

Wow. While we were sleeping some HUGE news hit– the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre in the UK was apparently hacked… or an insider’s conscience got the best of them. Thousands of emails and documents of various types were leaked online. (The CRU is the world’s source for global temperature records.) These files contain highly sensitive information that could prove very embarrassing to their authors. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The documents show the scientists ignoring, manipulating and outright deleting data to fit their climate-change hoaxes. Just in time for Copenhagen!!

Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous “hockey-stick” graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

There are emails discussing how to avoid Freedom Of Information Act requests for data. There are documents like one entitled “The Rules of the Game”, which looks to be a primer for propagating the global warming scam to the masses. The Hadley CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine:

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight …”It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”…

Regarding that Freedom of Information request sent to Jones, referred to above– Jones discusses in a file called “jones-foiathoughts.doc” his evident reluctance to hand over information, presumably to Climate Audit – and lists as one option sending back the information just as raw data, which would “annoy” those behind the FOI request:

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

And this gem:

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

Al Gore is rocking in the corner as we speak.

The anonymous hackers offer this brief summary of their alleged finds so far:

0926010576.txt * Mann: working towards a common goal
1189722851.txt * Jones: “try and change the Received date!”
0924532891.txt * Mann vs. CRU
0847838200.txt * Briffa & Yamal 1996: “too much growth in recent years makes it difficult to derive a valid age/growth curve”
0926026654.txt * Jones: MBH dodgy ground
1225026120.txt * CRU’s truncated temperature curve
1059664704.txt * Mann: dirty laundry
1062189235.txt * Osborn: concerns with MBH uncertainty
0926947295.txt * IPCC scenarios not supposed to be realistic
0938018124.txt * Mann: “something else” causing discrepancies
0939154709.txt * Osborn: we usually stop the series in 1960
0933255789.txt * WWF report: beef up if possible
0998926751.txt * “Carefully constructed” model scenarios to get “distinguishable results”
0968705882.txt * CLA: “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science but production of results”
1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death “cheering news”
1029966978.txt * Briffa – last decades exceptional, or not?
1092167224.txt * Mann: “not necessarily wrong, but it makes a small difference” (factor 1.29)
1188557698.txt * Wigley: “Keenan has a valid point”
1118949061.txt * we’d like to do some experiments with different proxy combinations
1120593115.txt * I am reviewing a couple of papers on extremes, so that I can refer to them in the chapter for AR4

The hacker/mole released this statement along with the files:

“We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.”

INDEED. Much more here at Watts Up With That. Here are all of the emails in chronological order.
We’re on this developing story. Happy Friday!

This content is copyrighted by Right Soup.

Bad Publicity for Cap-n-Tax

Freedom of speech is a right of all Americans — unless, it seems, you work for the Environmental Protection Agency and you’re critical of cap-and-trade. Seasoned EPA attorneys Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel were recently directed by the agency to un-post a self-made YouTube video outlining the “big lie” and the “big rip-off” of what we like to call cap-n-tax.

Echoing their Washington Post op-ed, the duo state that even as congressional advocates claim cap-n-tax will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the evidence says otherwise. “Cap-and-trade for climate change has been tried in Europe,” Williams says. “It produced harmful volatility in energy prices and few greenhouse gas reductions. It raised energy prices for consumers and made billions in windfall profits for utilities.”

Furthermore, when it comes to the promise of carbon offsets, Zabel insists they won’t work. Drawing upon his 20-plus years overseeing California’s cap-n-tax and carbon offset programs, he explains offsets will “make it look like we’re getting greenhouse gas reductions when we’re just getting business as usual.”

Unfortunately, the EPA has little interest in tolerating dissent, and, in its climate crusade, muzzling criticism has emerged as the agency’s weapon of choice.

Two More Inconvenient Voices at the EPA

via: Heritage

In the alleged new era of transparency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making quite a name for itself as being the agency of opacity. The latest is the EPA’s suppression of a video entitled, “The Huge Mistake” by Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, two lawyers currently working at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a video that says cap and trade will not work. From the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER):

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered two of its attorneys to remove a video they posted on YouTube about problems with climate change legislation backed by the Obama administration or face “disciplinary action”, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The couple had received clearance for posting the video but EPA took issue with its content following publication of an op-ed piece by the two in The Washington Post on October 31.”

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch remarked, “EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees who have every right to speak out as citizens. EPA reversed itself because someone in headquarters had a tantrum about their Washington Post essay.”

In their Washington Post column, Williams and Zabel rightly criticize the carbon offset measure in cap and trade, arguing that past experiments with offsets have led to nothing but fraud with no reduction in carbon dioxide. They also stress that likening the carbon cap and trade program to the acid rain cap and trade program is comparing apples and oranges because minor modifications and low-cost alternatives aren’t available for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels – as they were to address sulfur dioxide emissions linked to acid rain.

This comes after the EPA suppressed an internal report from one of the agency’s own, 35-year analyst Alan Carlin – a scientist who specializes in climate change. His report warned that the science of climate change was dubious and that we shouldn’t pass laws that will raise energy prices, hurt American families and hobble the nation’s economy without a full understanding of climate change.

We spoke to Dr. Carlin when the story first broke in June and he said, “I’ve been involved in public policy since 1966 or 1967. There’s never been anything exactly like this. I am now under a gag order.”

Once the Competitive Enterprise Institute released some of the EPA’s back-and-forth emails with Dr. Carlin, it became blatant that report had been smothered for political reasons: “One of the e-mails is from Dr. Al McGartland, director of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics reads, “The administrator and administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

This also comes after Senators Boxer and Kerry produced a ‘semi-final draft’ version of their cap and trade bill, which included the billions of dollars worth of emission allowance permits to different industries and released it only to the EPA to model the economic impacts. The draft was unavailable to the public until after the Environment and Public Works committee voted on it. The Heritage Foundation is one of few organizations to have modeled the economic effects of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. Bill Beach, the director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, wrote a letter to Senator Boxer (CCing Senator Kerry, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Senator Inhofe) asking for a copy of the semi-draft legislation to model the economic effects of the bill but did not receive a copy of the bill.

Zabel has first hand experience with cap and trade, overseeing California’s cap and trade and offsets programs. Apparently, this was the problem according to the Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson. He writes, “One EPA official said that the agency’s response wasn’t due to the content of the attorneys’ writings, but to the way they highlighted their EPA experience in making their arguments.”

But isn’t Zabel exactly the type of person who should be warning us about the inefficiencies of a cap and trade system. Wouldn’t you want to utilize his highly specialized knowledge and experience?

President Obama, in his memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, wrote that “Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.”

Given Obama’s propensity for hiring czars, maybe the solution to the EPA’s cover ups is a transparency czar.

Our Choice or Al Gore’s Choice?

Al Gore has had a busy week. First, the former vice president’s renewable energy investments received some serious backing from the taxpayer as $3.4 billion stimulus package would be allocated for smart grid investment. $560 million went to Silver Spring Networks, a company Gore’s venture capitalist firm invested in, that makes hardware and software to improve efficiency in the nation’s electricity grid. That’s not the only way Gore is profiting from the global warming debate. On November 3rd he published his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, which details the need for more wind, solar and biofuels, improved energy efficiency and the use of offsets and trees to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere – among other things.

Gore stresses that the cost of doing nothing is much higher than any dire economic projections that would result from capping greenhouse gas emissions, or as Gore likes to call it, “global warming pollution.” To gain support, Gore paints pictures of rising sea levels that will swallow up islands and devastate the global economy. But this “opportunity cost” of doing nothing must be discounted by the actual effect the “doing something” will have. Doing something like cap-and-trade, does not mitigate climate change entirely, if at all, and therefore the (negative) opportunity foregone (i.e., the expected climate change) is not the full benefit.

We have to look at how much climate change Waxman-Markey is expected to mitigate. As Heritage analyst David Kreutzer says, “We need to look at the cost of these proposals in light of what difference these proposals make. None of the proposals will entirely eliminate predicted climate change regardless of the assumptions, models, computers or theories used.”

He has conducted interviews with Katie Couric, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, which features a sketch of Colbert debating himself on the issue of global warming. (The skeptic Colbert cites The Heritage Foundation’s numbers on the costs of cap and trade. You can check it out here beginning at the 9:00 mark.)

Al Gore writes in his new book that “that we have at our fingertips all of the tools that we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient would be collective will.”

One of the problems is that we do not have the technology at our fingertips for a green revolution – at least not a cost acceptable to most energy consumers in the United States. Laurie Williams and Allen Zabel, two EPA lawyers opposed to cap and trade, write: “The biggest obstacle to this revolution is that uncontrolled fossil fuel energy remains much cheaper than clean energy. Cap-and-trade alone will not create confidence that clean energy will become profitable within a known time frame and so will not ignite the huge shift in investment needed to begin the clean-energy revolution. In recent interviews, even the economists who thought up cap-and-trade have said they don’t believe it’s an appropriate tool for climate change.”

Furthermore, collective will is an ingredient that should be left out of the recipe for a healthy economy. It’s not collective will that the right amount of food from all over the world is stocked in your local grocery store. It’s spontaneous order. It’s not controlled by any one person or collective will; it’s a great number of people who have never met but their interests coincide.

Even so, what the government purports to do isn’t collective will; it’s the decision of few that affective the lives of many and the decisions are being made with taxpayer money. While Gore does not officially wear a political hat anymore, he is still very much involved: Despite suffering one of history’s worst political fates, Gore has by no means given up on politicians. Behind the scenes, he takes calls from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and strategizes with Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, sponsors of the Senate climate bill.”

The “collective will” of our government promises nothing for our children but an economy with less opportunity.

Capping Carbon Will Threaten National Security More Than Bolster It

via: Heritage

Proponents of global warming legislation or an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions argue that climate change could affect the safety, not only in the United States, but in other countries as more natural disasters will lead to increased global conflict. But the claim that warming causes increased tension and causes wars is misleading according to recent testimony from Heritage analyst James Carafano:

The global climate has always been changing. Adapting to these changes and human efforts to manage their surrounding environment is a permanent feature of human competition. The environment does not cause wars–it is how humans respond to their environment that causes conflicts.

Climate change does not necessarily ensure that there will be more or less conflict. For example, as the Arctic ice melts and the environment becomes more benign, Arctic waters will become more available for fishing, mineral and energy exploitation, and maritime transport. Nations will compete over these resources, but it is how they choose to compete–not the change in the weather–that will determine whether war breaks out.

Furthermore, any changes in the climate, for better or for worse, will occur gradually over decades. Thus, there will be ample time to adjust national security and humanitarian assistance instruments to accommodate future demands. Those adjustments can and should be made with the most appropriate instruments, which might comprise any or all of the elements of national power including diplomatic, economic, political, and informational tools as well as the armed forces.”

Cap and trade bills and climate treaties will do much more economic harm than environmental good and would limit the resources available to effectively prepare and respond to natural disasters or national security threats. The truth is the climate has been changing on its own for centuries and more scientific dissent exists disputing how much warming is human-induced or even caused by carbon dioxide. The Heritage Foundation estimates that between 2012 and 2035, $9.4 trillion in gross domestic product would be lost because of cap and trade. It would reduce our resources not only to cope with natural disasters but also our military preparedness and overall economic well-being. As energy prices soar, production will decrease, resources will become scarcer and innovation and entrepreneurial activity will fall, and innovation and entrepreneurial activity are the two things that will help to effectively adapt to climate change, if necessary.

Carafano’s full testimony is available here.

Lord Christopher Monckton not allowed by Democrats to debate Al Gore on Global Warming!

UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009

Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday.

Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don’t want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday.

But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance.

Gore was scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment’s fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed ‘celebrity’ as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill.

The “celebrity” witness turned out to be Gore.

Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats’ “celebrity” with an unnamed “celebrity” of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

[Update: A GOP House source told Climate Depot that the Democrats on the Committee said “absolutely not” to allowing Monckton to appear during today's Gore hearing.

The GOP committee “pushed at multiple levels” to bring Monckton in to testify but the Democrats “refused,” according to the GOP source.

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was called in to testify after Monckton was rejected by the committee Democrats, according to the Congressional source.]

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution.”

“Congress Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore’s sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,”

Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening. “Waxman knows there has been no ‘global warming’ for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years’ of global cooling.

Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore’s mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, ‘the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,’” Monckton explained.

Monckton has previously testified before the House Committee in March.

Climate Change This Week: China, India, Cats and Dogs

Lashing out at the growing skepticism that global warming is real, Barack Obama last week blasted as agenda-driven “[t]he naysayers” who “pretend that this is not an issue.” According to Obama, “From China to India, from Japan to Germany, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to produce and use energy.” But the issue may not be important enough, even to the president. It seems he will skip the much-touted Copenhagen climate conference and instead drop by Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

Could this be because “racing” China and India came to a screeching halt last Thursday when they nixed mandatory carbon emissions constraints, effectively pulling out of any Copenhagen treaty? These two nations recognize what Obama denies and what Wang Jin wrote in China’s Science Times journal: “The real intention is not for the global temperature increase, but for the restriction of the economic development of the developing countries.”

Meanwhile, two professors from New Zealand have actually suggested ditching cats and dogs in favor of edible pets — and, no, we’re not talking animal crackers. In their book, “Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living,” Brenda and Robert Vale contend that when you account for food production and carbon emissions, a cat is about as a bad for the environment as a Volkswagen Golf, a medium-size dog is twice as destructive as a Toyota Land Cruiser, and two hamsters are equivalent to a plasma TV. The authors write, “There is certainly some truth in the fact that if we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat, and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things on our environment.”

What to do with the surplus of Rovers and Fluffies? Perhaps they should be served à la carte at Copenhagen. Given such consistently outlandish arguments from the global warming crowd, we don’t expect any waiting lines at Copenhagen diners.

The Verdict’s In: Cap and Trade Will Not Work

Over the summer The Washington Post called Europe’s experience with cap and trade as “Exhibit A” of what not to do on climate. Yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Iain Murray brought evidence to the jury – that jury being Senate Environment & Public Works Committee. Murray detailed the failures of the EU cap and trade scheme. Despite the European Union establishing an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in the year 2000, the United States has had similar or better emissions reductions than most countries:

“According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, the United States has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions 2 by 3 percent. By comparison, the only major economy to reduce its emissions more was France, at 6 percent. The United Kingdom managed a similar performance to the US at -2.9 percent. Most other economies performed much worse.”

Murray then refers to a study by the Taxpayers’ Alliance in London to weigh in the costs side of ETS and discusses what it would take to achieve a 20 percent reduction by 2020 – same as the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill in the United States:

 

EU emissions did drop a negligible 1.5 percent in 2008. Being charitable, let’s assume that all of that emissions drop can be ascribed to the ETS. If so, then to achieve the 20 percent reduction target the EU has for 2020, simple extrapolation suggests that will cost the EU a staggering $2.28 trillion that year (and the accumulated costs would be even more massive). In fact, the cost could be way higher than that, because we tend to make the more affordable cuts first; deeper cuts will naturally cost more per unit.”

In testimony in July, Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman brought his own evidence to the table for why Europe’s model is not the one to follow:

We have also seen examples of fraud and unfairness in the process. Given the similar politics here, where big businesses have lobbied for free allocations much more effectively than the little guys–consumers, homeowners, small business owners, farmers–it is quite likely that the inequities would appear here as well.

The reason for the failure of carbon cap and trade is simple — reducing carbon dioxide from the existing installed base of energy-producing and -using equipment and vehicles is prohibitively expensive, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. Many nations committed to emissions reductions under the Kyoto Protocol are going to miss the targets (unless the recession lingers) and any talk of tougher targets is empty rhetoric.”

Lost jobs. Lost income. Lost economic activity. Nothing to show for it. The evidence is incontrovertible. Let’s hope the jury listens.

Copenhagen Conference

An Inconvenient Rebuttal

via: Patriot Post

Ann McElhinney’s low-budget documentary refuting the global warming hype and hysteria arrives in Washington just in time to break Al Gore’s crystal ball. “Not Evil Just Wrong,” the feature-length film she made with her husband Phelim McAleer, coolly reveals how Al’s disguise of hot fanaticism as cold fact arrives as the Senate begins to gear up for debate on “climate change” legislation.

“We know you can’t teach religion in school,” McElhinney says. “But there is a religion being enforced, a green religion.”

Her film illustrates just how schoolchildren have been indoctrinated with fear, loathing and foreboding, as Al’s film attempts to recruit them as tiny prophets of doom. Her camera shows children in Northern Ireland describing how the sea level rises when the ice caps melt and polar bears drown. “It may (happen) here, and we will all die,” says a little girl on the verge of tears, trying hard to look as though she understands what she has been taught. Pipes up an earnest little boy: “And most of us can’t even swim.”

The emotional abuse of the children in the film, first shown to an audience the other night at the Heritage Foundation, illustrates the frightening tactics employed by certain environmental groups.

President Obama joins the hysteria from time to time, as in his doomsday remarks in September at the economic summit in Pittsburgh: “Rising sea levels threaten every coastline. More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent droughts and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive. On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees … the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”

But lately even some environmentalists think the facts, like the children, have been abused by the politics of what now must be called “climate change,” since the globe is inconveniently cooling, not warming. Gerd Leipold, a leader of Greenpeace, defends the tactic of “emotionalizing issues” to get public attention, but concedes that mistakes were made, as in the claim that Arctic ice will disappear by 2030.

Al and his like-minded cohorts insist that the argument is over, but it isn’t. The mistreated facts have been resisting Al’s disguise and occasionally get a little relief. In 2006, a British court characterized Al’s Oscar-winning documentary as riddled with exaggeration and error, and said the film could not be shown to schoolchildren without counter arguments and balancing evidence. The judge cited nine significant errors and misleading statements. Polar bears, for example, hardly face extinction, as Al suggested, and their numbers have actually increased five-fold over the last half-century.

“Not Evil Just Wrong” demonstrates how the politics of environmentalism directly affects the lives and livelihood of men and women who live less stylishly than the sophisticated bicoastal greens who have made Al Gore their icon.

McElhinney’s film focuses on people (not polar bears) whose paychecks and families are dependent on coal-generated energy, and whose interests are usually ignored in abstract statistics.

One mother proudly shows off her new house at the edge of a small town in Indiana, and worries that her good fortune is threatened by environmental activism that will destroy jobs and raise prices for gasoline and electricity. “I’m not the one traveling in a private jet,” she says. “When I have to go somewhere, I get in a car.” The camera follows her when she drives to Al Gore’s mansion outside Nashville to deliver a letter to tell him her side of the story.

Elitism is the target this film hits with savage insight. It’s about who makes what sacrifices. Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an outspoken critic of what he calls the sloppy scientific evidence of global warming, observes wryly that environmental “experts” collect lots of frequent flyer miles delivering lectures telling others that they shouldn’t fly.

The makers of “Not Evil Just Wrong” have bypassed the Hollywood distribution system by organizing grassroots private showings in homes, churches, schools and think tanks. On opening night, they screened their documentary 6,000 times in 27 countries.

McElhinney tells me how she was transformed from “really liberal” to environmental conservative when she saw mindless policies destroying lives in the developing world. The film describes the tragedy of DDT, the miracle insecticide that almost eradicated the mosquito that carries the malaria virus. But DDT was banned after publication of Rachel Carson’s 1962 best seller, “Silent Spring.”

Millions in Africa have died of malaria since, and after the World Health Organization lifted the ban, concluding that it had acted on unscientific science, the incidence of malaria plummeted. Hysteria has wounded the facts, but the wound may not be mortal.

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