It seems that the latest release of emails accompanied by a short note from “Mr FOIA” has got the warmists over at Climate News Network (CNN) all hot under the collar.

Personally, I found the short note from “Mr FOIA” to be very short and simple, almost anodyne. No railing against renewables, no declaration of capitalism above all else, just a quiet defense of what he did on the grounds that openness is surely justified in such a massively important arena as the debate over global warming, with all the billions of dollars it generates.

Paul Brown at CNN, though, knows differently. Mr FOIA is almost certainly not some hacker with a conscience, he informs us. No, the notes that accompanied the latest Climategate leak, Brown breathlessly intimates, shows this to be a black-ops operation.

Brown gives us the background as he sees it to the Climategate leak. It started during the Second World War, he tells us, when the art of the covert operation was first used:

LONDON, 16 March – “Black ops” is what the military call it – using false radio messages, news releases and newspapers, leaflets, and creating conspiracy theories so the enemy is confused, demoralized and loses the stomach for the fight. It worked so well in World War II that, in every conflict since, all sides have used the dark arts. Many of their methods and secrets are classified, too effective a weapon to allow to fall into the hands of the enemy. A classic example has emerged in the last few days. A new leak of hundreds of thousands of emails between climate scientists is revealed. The climate deniers are having a field day. A new Climategate looms CNN: Climategate Three.

Thrilling stuff, eh? Why write about boring things like evidence and rational argument when you can just rewatch a couple of James Bond movies and bash out a column the next day?

Brown believes he has evidence though. Firstly, he asks us to consider who might benefit from the Climategate leaks. The obvious answer – everyone who is currently being gouged to pay to defend against a non-existent threat – does not occur to him. It’s big oil, apparently. (And don’t you just love that circumlocution? “Big oil” with its connotations of secret societies and conspiracies being cooked up in smoke-filled backrooms.)

Secondly, Brown presents us with his killer argument, his smoking gun. Mr FOIA’s note claiming not to be American or English is proof that he must be American or English and not only that, but black-ops as well because, you see, that’s exactly the kind of fiendishly clever thing these special operations guys do:

Although the memo is written in perfect English, it comes with a classic black ops style disclaimer that the writer is anything to do with North America. He claims not to have English as his first language, so implying that he is neither British nor American. Later, to underline the point, he says there is “no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn’t plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.”

Do you see how that works? Mr FOIA’s denial that he is English or American means that he obviously is English or American and that he is part of a massive conspiracy as well. Phew! Heady stuff huh?

Finally, in a last flourish to seal his case, Brown notes that so perfect has Climategate been as a black-ops operation that it must surely go down in the textbooks as a prime example. Noting how the “deniers” have seized on the latest release of emails, Brown gives a rather fruity and over-excited commendation to the spooks who dreamed the whole Climategate conspiracy up:

All the climate deniers, gullible to a man and woman, have seized on it with glee. To them Mr FOIA is a selfless hero who should get a medal. It is magic stuff. It is a classic of Black Ops. It ought to be in the training manual of every secret service on the planet. – Climate News Network

And here’s me thinking that the idea of a hacker realising he had access to UAE and deciding to release the emails was the most obvious explanation. Clearly I haven’t watched the X Files as often as Mr Brown and his pals at the Climate News Network though or i would have suspected the fingerprints of the smoking man all over this one.

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Update:

Canadian Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party, Joyce Murray has also started embracing conspiracy theories it seems, calling Climategate a “black ops” campaign which throws “fresh meat to the undernourished few remaining denial dogs”. Wow. “Denial dogs” – there’s a term of disparagement worthy of the Soviet-approved terms for condemning Western “running dogs” imperialists, huh?

See her Tweet here: https://twitter.com/joycemurray/status/6380895757

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