As I noted in my last post on Occupy Wall Street and the religious left, there are some folks who seem to have a serious problem coming to grips with reality. Two article today on a different subject continue that theme.  One is from the World Council of Churches, and is entitled, “Religious voices advocate for climate justice at Durban.” The other is from Jim Lacey, writing at National Review Online, and is entitled, “Scientists Behaving Badly.”

The latter is a scathing summary of the latest release of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. In what has already been dubbed “Climategate 2,” the emails paint a devastating picture of venality, duplicity, and political calculation on the part of the most prominent international advocates of the theory of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). A few highlights:

Anyone still desiring to contest the assertion that only a few persons controlled the entire warmist agenda will be brought up short by this note from one warmist protesting that his opinions were not getting the hearing they deserved: “It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.” Over the years this core group, led by Phil Jones at East Anglia and Michael Mann at Penn State, became so close that even those inclined toward more honest appraisals of the state of climate science were hesitant to rock the boat. As one warm-monger states: “I am not convinced that the ‘truth’ is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships.”…

Unfortunately, from the very beginning, the core group at the heart of Climategate had no interest in “scientific truth.” As one states: “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.” In other words, let’s decide on a conclusion and then use only evidence that proves that point, discarding everything else. One scientist who seems to have been slightly troubled by these methods wrote: “I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”…

At one point, Jones admits that the “basic problem is that all of the models are wrong.” Of course, there is a simple reason for this. When the models do not show what the warmists want them to show, they simply apply “some tuning.” One scientist was worried enough about this “tuning” to write that he “doubt[ed] the modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer.” In this case, “tuning” means changing the model until it tells you what you want it to.

Lacey goes on to show that both the global press and governments were also in on the act, neither of which is a surprise. The London Daily Mail had a shocking article yesterday, for instance, that shows how completely in bed with the climate change hysterics the BBC has been. And American politicians, from President Obama to Al Gore to various members of Congress, have been pushing climate change for almost two decades as an excuse to get the government’s hands on ever more of the private economy, despite the increasing evidence that 1) warming has stopped over the last fifteen years, and 2) that much if not all of the increase in global temperature prior to that was a natural phenomenon.

Over at the WCC, on the other hand, climate change has been used as the bogus basis for a nonsensical campaign for “climate justice,” a faith-based movement that sounds an awful like like pretty much every other WCC political campaign of the last half century:

“This is the only home we have,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu referring to the crucial significance of our planet and its survival. He was speaking in an inter-faith rally in Durban, urging the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP17) to deliver a Fair, Ambitious and Binding (FAB) treaty to address climate change effectively.

The COP17 stars today, 28 November, in Durban, South Africa.

The inter-faith rally, held at the Kings Park Stadium on 27 November was the first event for faith communities in Durban, who have been preparing for COP17 since one year ago.

“We have faith!” proclaimed bishop Geoff Davies, director of the Southern Africa Faith Communities Environmental Institute, one of the key organizers of the rally. “Africa is a continent of faith, and we have come here together from different faith traditions to voice our moral and spiritual call for a paradigm shift. We call for climate justice now,” said Davies.

Among other faith leaders, the WCC general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, conveyed greetings on behalf of the churches, and sent a strong message to Durban, saying, “It is time for climate justice”.

And what is “climate justice”? I went to the web site of a WCC-connected “movement” called “Time for Climate Justice,” and was unable to find a definition of the term. There was this sweeping statement on the home page for which I was unable to find any connecting evidence anywhere else on the site:

Poor people in developing countries are suffering first and worst from the consequences of climate change, yet they have done least to cause the problem. This is an injustice.

The only real hint I was able to find regarding what would constitute “climate justice” was a short paper on “The Political Economy of Climate Finance,” written for something called Christian Aid, which essentially advocated massive financial transfers from developed to developing nations, financed by punishing taxes on corporations–the same thing that the WCC has advocated in response to virtually any economic, social, or political problem of the last fifty years.

So there you have it: an essentially socialist financial program justified by empty-headed but fervent faith in a scientific fraud. Yep, that sure sounds like the World Council of Churches to me.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Van is a cartoonist with a wicked wit. He drew this back in 2009 for COP-15, but it is just as relevant here: