I have begun to think that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis might be a conspiracy after all, since it seems to be driven by a relatively small group of people. It seems to go back to Al Gore's tenure as Vice-President when he provided funding to Hansen at NASA/GISS to start climate modeling. A lot of the scientists involved came from "green" organizations. Others have noiced the same thing:

Not a conspiracy but ....

An email from Prof. Lindzen [rlindzen@MIT.EDU]

I would suppose that you are sometimes accused of thinking that the global warming issue is a conspiracy. Whenever such an accusation is made to me, I respond that no conspiracy is needed. However, increasingly it is evident that conspiracy has played a role.

For example, Tony Socci, who played a significant role in the Singer affair, is now the spokesman of the American Meteorological Society in Washington. John Firor, who was for many years the administrative director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was also the chairman of the board of the Environmental Defense Fund. R. Napier, president of the World Wildlife Federation - UK, is also chairman of the board of the UK Meteorological Office (which includes the Hadley Center).

Jim Hansen is closely associated with Michael Oppenheimer who was long the Barbara Streisand Scientist at Environmental Defense, and, apparently Michael was on the EPA review panel that recommended the funding of Hansen to get into climate modeling (after NASA had cut funds for the New York lab). Oppenheimer, despite only being a minor author of 3-4 peer reviewed scientific papers on climate, is now a professor at Princeton University. It would be interesting to know who endowed his professorship.

There are many other examples of such interlocking relations between environmental activism (in political or organizational form) and seemingly authoritative academic bodies. I doubt that these relations are accidental.

Moreover, intentional slander seems to be a standard tactic. One matter which involved me was the accusation by Gelbspan that I had lied about a debate in the UK with Bert Bolin. I informed Gelbspan that I had a tape of the debate. Gelbspan said that he wasn't interested. Much of this happened quite long ago, but the situation only seems to be getting worse. My hope is that this is simply a fever before the disease breaks.

Here is a reference to a DVD that descibes science not being considered by the catastrophic AGW advocates:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/video/ClimateCrisis.jsp

Here is a discussion of why some corporations are onboard with the CO2 is destroying the world groupthink. Hint: The reason is to write regulations that will harm their competitors and increase their profit.

http://tomdeweese.blogspot.com/2008/02/reward-hero-buy-gm.html