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The mega-fraud was the assertion that the science was settled, which the IPCC trumpeted with claims that 2,500 scientists from around the world endorsed its findings. Except those 2,500 — a number that was soon inflated to 3,000 and then 4,000 — didn’t endorse anything. They merely reviewed some of the studies heaved into the IPCC’s maw, many of them giving the research the thumbs down.

Likewise, a much heralded claim that 97 per cent of scientists believed the planet was overheating came from a 2008 master’s thesis by a student at the University of Illinois who obtained her results by conducting a survey of 10,257 earth scientists, then discarding the views of all but 77 of them. Of those 77 scientists, 75 thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produced the 97-per-cent figure that global warming activists then touted.

In fact, major surveys show that scientists in the tens of thousands do not believe that global warming represents a threat. With the departure of president Obama and his administration, which had blocked independent investigations from being pursued, whistleblowers in greater numbers will now dare to come forward, knowing they will no longer be silenced.

One of them is Dr. John Bates, a recently retired principal scientist at NOAA, who described how his agency manipulated data to manufacture a non-existent increase in global temperatures. In a press release last week, U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith thanked “Dr. John Bates for courageously stepping forward to tell the truth about NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion.” This week a second press release from the same committee indicated that NOAA will be brought to account.

The blizzard of lies from NOAA and other corrupted agencies will soon be outed in excruciating detail. The greatest scientific fraud of the century will thus be laid bare, along with its craven and corrupt enablers in government, academia, industry and the media.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com