From a New York Times editorial, September 6, 2011:

 

Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, . . . insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” . . . Ron Paul of Texas calls global warming “the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years.” Michele Bachmann of Minnesota once said that carbon dioxide was nothing to fear because it is a “natural byproduct of nature” and has complained of “manufactured science.” Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has called climate change “a beautifully concocted scheme” that is “just an excuse for more government control of your life.”

 

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And now, an MNN exclusive!

 

The MNN Investigative Reporting Department has been working for many months with former WikiLeaks operatives and Interpol officials to uncover the unvarnished truth behind the Climategate Hoax. The investigative team recently uncovered a “smoking gun” – an extraordinary cache of documents stored on a USB stick, providing unequivocal evidence that climate scientists around the world have been meeting in secret to plan and execute the most nefarious and successful hoax in generations.

 

The most damning evidence is a transcript of an audio recording of a secret meeting of the climate change cabal at a phony research “lab” in “Geneva.” In the recording, several top climate scientists, working under the guise of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), discuss their plans to expand the scope of their lucrative scheme.

 

(In light of the pending criminal investigation, names have been changed at the request of our lawyers: “Dr. Nick Machiavelli” is a senior climate scientist at a top Ivy League university and believed to be the cabal’s ringleader and a personal friend of "Al Gore"; “Dr. Vyacheslav Molotov” is a British climate scientist holding research positions at several top government institutions, responsible for spreading the hoax to the senior ranks of numerous European governments; and “Dr. Patsy Pawn” is a recent graduate of a climate science program at a university in the U.S. South and a new recruit to the cabal.)

 

Dr. Nick Machiavelli: So what we’re hoping, Dr. Pawn, is that you’ll be willing to infiltrate some of the State Houses and Senate offices in the American “heartland,” what we call the “Red States” – they’ve proven very resistent to our scheme.

 

Dr. Patsy Pawn: Right. Right. Shouldn’t be a problem – I was a cheerleader at Texas A&M. But could you explain to me again how the scheme works, exactly?

 

Machiavelli: Of course. It’s pretty simple, really. We take data on historic weather patterns and climatic conditions, most of which is gathered under the authority of various democratic governments and widely available to elected officials of any stripe, other scientists, and the general public, and then we change that data all around to suggest that these [snickers] greenhouse gases are warming the earth’s atmosphere and hurtling civilization toward catastrophe.

 

Dr. Vyacheslav Molotov: When really – I mean, people will believe anything a climate scientist says – when really it’s all just part of the usual cycle of warming and cooling that’s governed the earth’s climate for millenia! It’s total bunk!

 

Dr. Pawn: Right. See, that’s what’s confusing me. Why would you – I mean, why even hatch this scheme in the first place?

 

Dr. Machiavelli: Oh, Dr. Pawn, you dear child. Don’t you see? We’re titans! Kings! Climate science will soon command the sorts of budgets and carry the sort of power formerly reserved for advanced weaponry production and oil drilling. We’re on the cusp of global domination! [cackles]

 

Dr. Pawn: But aren’t you – I mean, don’t we all just live on pretty modest academic salaries? I mean, compared to what a senior analyst at like Goldman Sachs pulls in. And aren’t your research budgets some miniscule fraction of what you’d get if you were studying “clean coal”? Not to mention what you could make as, you know, a geologist at a major oil company or something?

 

Dr. Machiavelli: Don’t be ridiculous. We are titans. Moguls. The governments of Europe bend effortlessly under our iron will!

 

Dr. Pawn: Well and that was another question I had. If this is all just a hoax, how did you actually manage to sell pretty much every political party of every stripe in Europe on it? I mean, the leading government actors on renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction are Germany’s Conservatives. How’d you manage that when you can’t seem to sway a single two-term Congresswoman from Minnesota?

 

Dr. Molotov: I’ll handle this one. It’s elementary, my dear Pawn: they’re in on it! They’re all socialists at heart, you see, even the so-called conservatives, and this is such a soothing balm to their old communistic wounds they can’t get enough of it. They’re worried that the free market would take away their power to tax carbon and centrally control the energy business. They need us as surely as the Manhattan Project needed Heisenberg.

 

Dr. Pawn: But there’s honestly not a single government official in all of Germany or Spain or Denmark or Britain willing to break ranks?

 

Dr. Molotov: In on it.

 

Dr. Pawn: Not a single research scientist or energy bureaucrat has spilled the beans?

 

Dr. Molotov: In on it.

 

Dr. Pawn: The CEOs of BMW and General Motors and Ford?

 

Dr. Molotov: In on it.

 

Dr. Pawn: What about Areva, the French nuclear giant now building wind turbines in the North Sea? What about the heads of BP and Shell and Statoil? What about T. Boone Pickens?

 

Dr. Machiavelli: Enough, Dr. Pawn, you’re wasting valuable scheming time. They’re all in on it! It’s the greatest conspiracy of all time! It’s got a former vice-president and failed presidential candidate at its head, and he has aligned himself with nonprofit environmental groups and several prominent actors – do you think there is a captain of industry capable of holding out against such formidable opposition? [cackles again]

 

Dr. Pawn: So let me get this straight. You and literally tens of thousands of scientists working independently in numerous disciplines from marine biology to paleogeology at universities and government labs around the world have all decided to agree to lie in exactly the same manner about the same topic, for years on end, in official statements and casual conversation alike. You’ve convinced heads of state, energy bureaucrats, science-beat journalists, industrial moguls and even the chief executives of oil and gas and nuclear conglomerates to agree to endorse your version of events. And there’s enough money and power in climate science research grants to buy all this silence? Everyone’s in on it just to get some tiny sliver of the research money that in many cases they themselves earmark and authorize? And which is such a small sliver compared to what they hand to defense contractors that I can’t believe we’re even having this deranged conversation in the first place?

 

Dr. Molotov: In on it.

 

Dr. Machiavelli: Don’t you see, Dr. Pawn. It’s the ultimate so-crazy-it-just-might-work scheme. You’ll see. One day my name will be synonymous with scheming.

 

Dr. Molotov: In on it.

 

* * *

 

The recording continues in this vein for some time. MNN will publish a full transcript as soon as all the co-conspirators – including, as noted, the heads of state of every country in Europe, including Russia – have been brought to trial.

 

Special thanks to Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement for providing a model for this piece.

 

To scheme with me 140 characters at a time, follow me on Twitter: @theturner.