Shock and Awful

It appears that along with booing at funerals, criticising the recently deceased and threatening to shirtfront foreign leaders, it’s now acceptable to use sites of national significance for corporate functions. 

The Official Launch of Northrop Grumman Australia will be held at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on next month. Northrop Grumman, an American company founded in 1939, has been a supplier of military hardware to the Australian Defence Forces, and others around the world for years, and employs over 400 people in Australia. 

Their close affiliation with Australia’s defence industry might seem like a natural fit with a war memorial, making it an obvious venue for a defence-related knees-up. But the Australian War Memorial is not just any old museum. 

According to the official website, 

The Australian War Memorial combines a shrine, a world-class museum, and an extensive archive. The Memorial's purpose is to commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war. Its mission is to assist Australians to remember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society. 

I’d think that’s how most Aussies see it, and want it to remain that way. 

The Northrop Grumman function has caught the attention of social media users after Crikey published a teaser on Tuesday. The Twitterati are aghast at the thought of using our war memorial to hold a function which could just as easily be held in the ballroom of the Holiday Inn. That the War Memorial even has a function space for hire comes as a surprise to many, including some Canberra residents. 

The function venue is Anzac Hall, a large military-themed function room located within the memorial grounds, and it seems to be marketed to corporations for events like this launch. They even provide the option of guided tours and mementos as part of your special occasion. 

So is this just another example of righteous indignation from the reactionaries on social media? I asked my partner Rob, a career Army Officer with over twenty years’ experience in the ADF, for his thoughts. He was surprised, and appalled. For Rob, the War Memorial is sacred ground, a place to remember and honour those who came before him, and those yet to follow. It shouldn’t be a quirky option for trendy wedding receptions, or a commercial venue for multinational defence suppliers to celebrate their profit margins. 

And yet it is, complete with the blessing of the Australian War Memorial Council, which includes several decorated military veterans and public figures. 

So let’s put it down to shock value. We were surprised. We didn’t know. I won’t be rushing to hold my next big event in the Anzac Room, but as long as it’s okay with the majority of veterans and the families of those we lost, I’ll climb down off my high horse and continue to see the Australian War Memorial as the very special place it is.

Gee Whizz

It’s possible that Australians, and Brisvegans in particular, might be more interested in the G20 if our Prime Minister wasn’t such a total pillock.

The G20, melting

As this year’s host of the annual get-together of the world’s leaders, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is the Big Man about town. It won’t be all schmoozing and shirtfronting at Brisbane’s G20 Summit; there’s economic growthy business to be done! On the sidelines, there’s even more more to delight: sporadic attacks of light displays, really big signs, plane spotting, exclusion zones, motorcades, barricades, a massive media centre with food, random protests and secret cultural activities will fill the otherwise deserted streets of Brisbane.

And in the meeting halls of Brisbane’s Southbank, there is an infinite number of opportunities for Prime Minister Abbott to embarrass us. His warm up efforts at APEC were impressive. He has admitted – proudly? - that he told Mr Putin to stop trying to relive the glory days of Soviet supremacy.

TONY ABBOTT: "One of the points I tried to make to Putin is that Russia would be so much more attractive if it was aspiring to be a superpower for peace and freedom and prosperity, if it was trying to be a superpower for ideas and for values, instead of trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old Soviet Union."

You bet you are…you bet I am, Mr Abbott.

Cutting through the clarity of the G20 Agenda is a hazy national awareness that this was Prime Minister Abbott’s best opportunity to make good on his promise to shirtfront the Russian leader. Demonstrating his consistency to a global audience, he failed to live up to his word…as you would, with an extreme 1.5% of the Russian navy floating around off our northern coastline.

There’s also the very real probability he will shame us all without saying a word, particularly as regards his favourite topic, climate change. It will be hard to stay coherent in the midst of Brisbane’s heatwave, where temperatures on Sunday are forecast to be at least ten degrees hotter than the average for November. The biggest challenge in the history of humanity remains stubbornly off the official G20 agenda; the untimely emissions reduction agreement by China and the United States nothing more than a distraction.

Ittoqqortoormiit - pretty, isn't it?

Luckily, Australia has plenty of coal, and Tony Abbot knows that coal is good for humanity. He may just announce that Australia can save the world.

Let’s face it: most of us will have G20 experiences far away from the action. Even those of us who live just outside the Brisbane CBD and Southbank precincts will stay away and observe the goings-on from a safer distance – probably our lounge rooms. Without that subdued glow of national pride, the little fizz when we recognise a local landmark in the B-roll of the news footage, the G20 could be held in Ittoqqortoormiit. (That’s a real place in Greenland, I think).

Earlier this morning, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane Graham Quirk was on the radio, asking residents to brave the empty confusion of the G20 weekend, and come to town to see the barricades and the media, pigheadedly reporting on the effectiveness of the barricades. The fear is that the eleventy thousand visitors and media in town for the G20 will see Australia’s New World City – yes, that’s really Brisbane’s official tourism marketing slogan – entirely devoid of life.

Lord Mayor Quirk’s fears were valid. Does the G in G20 stand for Ghost-town?

Unsurprisingly, Brisbane residents have fled, and the government must take responsibility for that. They declared a public holiday in Brisbane for today, gave G20 delegates free access to public transport but graciously allowed residents to pay full fares and at the last minute, offered insufficient free parking. After saturation coverage of the massive security preparations, why would any sane person go anywhere near the city during the G20?

Brisbane, in her party frock

CBD offices are closed, although the shops and eateries are – optimistically - open. The multi-laned motorways out of town have been clogged for hours with locals pouring out of town and into the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and Hinterlands.

Those of us left behind in suburbia will absorb the greatness of the G20 through the media. Yesterday’s highlight was Clive Palmer phoning 612 ABC Brisbane to answer a quiz question. Today, Channel 7’s Bill McDonald power-sweated through near-desolate city streets, looking for someone to interview. He found a pair of kids who were most interested in seeing “anyone”, and a group of buskers who were on a break.

Regardless of how and where you choose to avoid the G20, the most important factor is to manage your expectations. Keep it real. It’s a bunch of really important blokes – plus Angela Merkel and Christine LeGarde – at a puffed up networking event being hosted by the Blunder from Down Under.

Gee Whizz.

For the best in G20-related information, refer to First Dog on the Moon's excellent explainer.

The Hunt for Red November

So, it appears that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is so affronted - or possibly amused - by Prime Minister Tony Abbott's threat to shirtfront him, that he's brought a few ships from the Russian Navy with him. 

Meanwhile, News Corp's daily press is determined to revive the Cold War - just look at the imagery on its front pages. No-one in Australia this morning, including members of the international media who are here for the G20 this weekend in Brisbane, is in any doubt about the location of a few Russian warships.

More likely, the Russians are taking this rare opportunity to flex their naval muscle in front of the world's media. Putin has a history of muscle flexing, with and without a shirt front, and the presence of Russian warships off the Queensland coast is a handy if ridiculous distraction from the unsatisfactory investigation into the MH17 disaster, and from the Russian troops which are currently pouring across the border into the Ukraine.

As much as Mr Putin might like to draw focus to his military power for all the world to see, and as much as the News Corporation editors have taken the bait, this is not about Australia. 

We are, however, in a position to take advantage of the gift. Our Prime Minister, along with Premier Campbell Newman and Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, can take control of the agenda, undermine any perceived Russian hostility, and create a new paradigm of G20 inclusiveness with a simple invitation to Mr Putin for his troops to visit Brisbane while they're in the area. Come in and enjoy all South East Queensland has to offer. Accommodation is not an issue, as the sailors would sleep on their ships, and the city is geared up as never before to host international visitors. The Gold Coast and Sunshine Coasts are less than an hour from Brisbane, and who wouldn't love an impromptu few days in subtropical Queensland?

And the message that we could send to the world? That Australia is friendly, welcoming and inclusive That Brisbane really is Australia's New World City, as the marketing people like to say...and as an added bonus, the tension between Tony Abbott and Vladimir Putin could be defused with just a few words.

Who knows? If Mr Abbott was to welcome the Russian sailors off the coast of Queensland now, he might just learn now to welcome other people who come to our shores by boat.

The News Blues

Is the news bad for you? Some experts seem to think that it is. Fair enough, too. A quick look at the headlines on any given day will feature many more bad news stories than good news stories. If you consume enough of it, and if you care about what you’re seeing, it’s bound to have an impact.

Headlines from news.com.au

Swiss author and intellectual Rolf Dobelli discusses in his 2011 book The Art of Thinking Clearly, the many many reasons why consuming news is damaging to your mind, your career, and even your health. In fact, Mr Dobelli has given up news altogether, and says he feels better for it. 

Bully for Rolf. It must be liberating to be able to live without any information about what is going on in the world. For those of who are news addicts, the concept of giving up the news is on a par with giving up coffee, chocolate, red wine…oxygen… Aside from the immediate rush of horror we might feel at the idea, there’s also the practicalities of living on the anti-news equivalent of a desert island.

The news is more than politics. Consider these scenarios: There’s a safety recall on your car. Your favourite restaurant burned down. You have to vote next week. There’s a cyclone heading your way. The stock market crashed and your life savings are worthless. We’ve been invaded by little green men from outer space.

How do you get by without that information?

The impacts of too much news – and let’s be honest, most of it is bad news - are potentially worse for people who are already suffering from depression and anxiety. Some psychologists advise their clients with depression to avoid the news, and there’s certainly a push on some internet fora that if you do suffer with depression, it’s better to avoid news reports.

Is there really link between depression and consumption of news? If there is, are we talking about news content or the way in which the news is presented? Could people who are suffering depression improve their mental health by ditching the news? 

I suspect there is a relationship between depression and anxiety disorders and engagement with the news, but not a causal link. It surprised me to learn that there is a lack of research into this touchy issue, so let’s see what we can find out!

Please complete the short (non-scientific) survey below. It’s completely anonymous, and if the results are at all indicative of a correlation, we’ll look at formalising the results with an academic study.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Thanks very much for your contribution. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post, and please forward this survey to your contacts.

Panic at 7.30

Effective immediately - or as of 7:30pm last night, to be specific - you can stop worrying about co-payments, uni fees, asylum seekers, metadata, climate change, Ebola, racehorses, budget emergencies, budgie smugglers, soldiers’ salaries, girlie-men, burqas, destroying the joint, legalising the joint, exams or what’s for dinner. Those trifles aren’t gonna matter in the face of the Next Big Threat: the Petrol Crisis.

The ABC’s nightly current affairs show 7.30, in cahoots with Senator John Madigan, has delivered to us a new reason to panic. Australia could run out of petrol. Here's what the Senator had to say:

SEN. JOHN MADIGAN, INDEPENDENT: In the event that there is a threat what do we do? At the peacetime when everything is going along nicely there isn't a threat, but in the event that something does happen what is the plan, how are we going to do it? Other countries in the world have mandated fuel stocks. We don't.

Al Qaeda, the blueprint for Islamic terrorism and forerunner to Daesh, has urged its followers to consider a disruption to the world’s SLOCs – literally, “Sea Lanes of Communication” but more commonly, the usual maritime trade and naval routes around the globe. Specifically, Al Qaeda has mentioned the Malacca Straits, a narrow passage of water between Malaysia and Indonesia, through which impressive quantities of the world’s shipping passes.

Ensuring safe passage through the Straits of Malacca is of particular importance to Australia as the majority of ocean imports from Asia and Europe will pass that way. This includes oil. Unlike the USA, Australia has no strategic oil reserves, so when we run out, that's it until more arrives. What we do have are dwindling on shore processing facilities and limited domestic oil production, so any interruption to ocean freight through the Straits of Malacca will impact our oil supply.

The 7.30 team interviewed an impressive range of subject matter experts and opinion makers from the oil industry, the military, motoring bodies and petrol retailers, yet not one of them could quantify the likelihood of an attack. 

Everyone except the oil company man (whose industry controls the amount of petrol in the market at any given time) agreed that any interruption to our ability to import oil would be bad. Very bad.

JOHN BLACKBURN, AIR VICE MARSHAL (RET.): If there's an interruption to the fuel supply chain coming in from overseas, after about a week we're going to run into serious problems. Without fuel can't go to work, can't get to school, you can't get food.

GRAHAM BLIGHT, NRMA: Imagine if everybody lost 50 per cent of their fuel, what would happen to industry? What would happen to agriculture? What would happen to Defence?

So this can mutate into a very serious issue for us.

Oh god! Now it’s mutating! Panic faster, people! Run around in tiny circles, stopping only to wring our hands until we've set aside reason, experience and evidence and replaced them with fear. Only then can we shove our thumbs in our mouths, hide under the desk and rock back and forth. We are alert, we are alarmed, and goshdarnit, we’re all doooomed!

Shipping in the Straits of Malacca

Did I mention that the threat is coming from Al Qaeda? With close to 1 in 4 Australians already admitting to negative feelings towards Muslims, let’s throw some petrol on those flames too.

Actually let’s not: let’s conserve every last drop! In fact, why aren’t we rationing petrol already? Rationing always goes well with panic and war and stuff.

But back up a moment. How, exactly, could someone disrupt the flow of vessels through the Straits? The answer would obviously be by blocking it with something substantially bigger than Lego blocks. It’s actually less than 3km wide at the choke point near Singapore, but I doubt Al Qaeda is into building bridges. That would be kind of obvious, it would take at least until Johnny Farnham’s next retirement, and wouldn’t block the strait anyway. I just like bridges.

They could block the choke point with a flotilla of hostile vessels. The problem there is that ships are expensive, and while they might be able to cobble together a flotilla from the pirate boats that already practice terrorism in the Malacca Straits, the flotilla would need to be fairly still…which makes them an easy target for the goodies (TM Tony Abbott) to destroy. Just call in an airstrike or three, and boom! No more nasties, other than the world’s largest environmental disaster, which would just coincidentally, also close the Straits of Malacca.

The aftermath of Gulf War 1: fire on water

They could try sinking ships, one by one, as they enter the Strait. In fact, sinking just one ship would prevent the rest from entering – it’s that colossal environmental disaster thing again -  so there’s the Strait, out of action. Now, every ship would have to transit via the other SLOCs nearby:  Lombok Strait, Makassar Strait, Sibutu Passage and Mindoro Strait. They’re all longer and hence more expensive, so businesses don’t use them unless they have to.

But they could. The world will not stop - it'll just take a detour.

There are others options too. We could consider trans Pacific supply from the Americas, or surface transport north to Europe, east across the top and ocean freight via the Sea of Okhotsk and Japan. Both would be hideously expensive – but so would Australia running out of petrol.

Thankfully, we've got that covered too: 

IAN MACFARLANE'S STATEMENT: At any given time Australia has crude oil and refined product on the way to Australia by diverse shipping routes... In the unlikely event that fuel supply is severely disrupted the Australian Government has powers to prioritise essential supply.

ANDREW BREWER, GM SUPPLY, CALTEX AUSTRALIA: I look at how Australia has handled fuel supply interruptions in the past. We've seen multiple events internationally; Fukushima, GFC, local events such as Queensland cyclones, and in all those cases the industry has been able to provide fuel reliably and securely for customers.

So dial back the panic just enough to consider this: we still don’t know if it’s likely to happen, and there’s nothing you or I could do about it anyway. The great news is that there's untold sh*t-tonnes of metadata doing something impressive, and that's supposed to keep us all safe.

So thanks, Senator Madigan and 7.30, for loading us up with something else to fret about. We'll take a pass this time. 

Everyone, stand down and resume your normal internet panic stations. Here are some kittens to help.

Hey Nick, I found your intolerance

When I wrote yesterday’s blog post, I wasn’t expecting much reaction, yet even this took me by surprise. Someone of twitter, someone with whom I have no connection at all, tweeted these responses:

The blog post that elicited that response on twitter is about my reasons for accepting the science of climate change. It’s not about multiculturalism or discrimination or intolerance or Islam. Regardless, this person has decided that it’s okay to challenge my writing, my point of view, my friends, and my ethnicity, and it is important to challenge the ideas, although not so much the personal. 

What’s fascinating is that the tweeter has taken a guess at my cultural origins, probably based on nothing more than my surname (although s/he could have read my previous blog posts, which spell it out), and has done so utterly out of context. S/he also accused me of not showing my face. Oh, how that accusation burns, coming from a twitter account with an egg for an avatar, and the twitter handle retarded muzi voodoo. (I tweet under my real name.)

I feel no need to justify my blog post or my existence to this git. This post is primarily to highlight that regardless of how happy and contented Australians are, there is an aggressive element of intolerance against Muslims that runs deep and profoundly stupid within our society. Followers of the Intolerance Cult – to paraphrase Tony Abbott and his ‘death cult’ - takes clumsy shots at anything that sounds even vaguely Middle Eastern or Muslim.

In today’s Australian, columnist Nick Cater’s opinion piece “Search for the missing intolerance” cites a new survey from the Scanlon Foundation, suggesting that perhaps we’re mostly happy little Aussie Vegemites living in one of the happiest places on the planet. 

Welcome to Disneyland. 

The overwhelming majority of Australians — 92 per cent — feel a sense of belonging. Nine out of 10 express pride in the Australian way of life. Eight out of 10 think this is a land of opportunity. Eight in 10 think ethnic diversity has been good for Australia. Six in 10 think the immigration level is about right or could be higher. “This is possibly the highest level of positive sentiment towards immigration in the Western world,” says Andrew Markus, the author.

Nick Cater goes on to suggest that as “racism” seems almost inconsequential in our happy-go-lucky utopia, we should be looking at casual racism, which he proposes is a less serious, almost trivial and usually accidental form of ethnic slight.

Since there is no evidence of institutional racism, we are told to be wary of “casual racism”, petty linguistic crimes that few of us are clever enough to be aware we are committing.

Mr Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre which, as the name suggests, is politically aligned with the Liberal Party. I imagine Mr Cater would be quite accepting of Attorney General George Brandis’s casually divisive language on QandA last night, when he continually referred to Muslim audience members as ‘leaders of their community’ – as opposed ‘leaders of our community’, which if Australia is as socially cohesive as the Scanlon study indicates, would be the same community. 

But that’s just “petty” and unimportant, right?

Actually, it’s an essential element of intolerance in Australia, particularly if you read the research presented by Scanlon Foundation’s 2014 Survey, and not just Mr Cater's summary. Intolerance comes in many forms and has many targets: race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physicality, political leaning, social strata and more. While racial intolerance seems fairly low, religious intolerance towards Muslims is not, with 1 in 4 Aussies feeling negative towards Muslims. 

From the Summary, we see this:

Questions on attitude to Christian, Buddhist and Muslim faith groups find that, as in past surveys, a very small proportion are negative towards Christian and Buddhist faiths (close to 5%), but a proportion almost five times higher (close to 25%) towards Muslims.

Furthermore, on reading p50 of the study, 

First, when questions were asked in specific terms with regard to immigrants who have settled in Australia, there was a very low level of negative sentiment (at or below 11%), with one significant exception, the attitude to Muslims (44% negative).

Nick Cater should’ve looked just that little bit harder. The evidence of intolerance he is seeking is right there, in the key document of his own op-ed.

We may not be racist – although some Australians undoubtedly are – but we are a society divided.

I encourage you all to browse through the Scanlon Foundation 2014 Survey – there are some terrific insights lurking within.

Climate Change: Why I Believe

Last night, I involved myself in a Facebook conversation about climate change with an old friend, someone I haven’t seen in over 20 years. Neither one of us is a scientist, but he is a climate change denier and I am not. Let’s call him Don. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by Don’s opinion, yet it reminded me of all the reasons that I believe climate change is real and is a threat to our world.

As a non-scientist, I have to believe that most scientists know what they’re doing, and that the results of their research is credible. I don’t have the scientific knowhow or wherewithal to challenge them. Most people don’t. We need to rely on the work of experts and trust that their findings are correct.

The most extensive investigation so far was conducted in 2013,  and concluded that 97% of published climate science papers believe that man-made climate change, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), is real.

Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

 - 2013 Report

Prior to this, the most often quoted study of the science of climate change was a 2010 analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The result was the same. Both of these analyses were themselves conducted using scientific methodology.

Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. - PNAS Report

A key argument from climate change deniers is that science is fact, not consensus, and therefore, the 97% consensus is meaningless. This argument makes me dizzy. The 97% consensus is a consensus of fact. Take any one of the 4000-odd papers reviewed in the 2013 study and they will give you basically the same set of facts - scientific findings - about the existence of climate change: that AGW is real, caused by human action on the environment, and that it is a continuing threat. These are the facts derived from science.

Why does this consensus convince me that the science is real? Applying the theory of Occam’s Razor to climate science suggests that the worldwide hoax/conspiracy theorists are wrong. The number of assumptions, leaps of faith and the masses of people who’d need to participate in such a hoax make it all but impossible.

Ever tried to keep a secret?

The 2013 study started with approximately 12,000 papers spanning 20 years of research, and using the criteria of eliminating those which did not take a position for or against climate change, there were around 4,000 papers analysed, with well in excess of 1,000 authors.

Ever tried to get a thousand people to keep a secret? Ever tried to get a thousand people, from diverse backgrounds, languages and agendas to agree on something contentious, and then keep it secret?

Why would they? What’s in it for them? What would be their motivation?

Motivation, according to author Daniel Pink, is governed not be the old ‘carrot and stick’ aphorism, but by three intrinsic human factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the ability to make rational, informed decisions without compulsion or coercion. Mastery is skill, the ability to carry out tasks competently and with confidence. Purpose is the reason, understanding and accepting why you are doing what you’re doing.

Even if the carrot and stick approach was accepted as the only driver, what carrot could be accepted by this particular group of scientists? It’s not financial reward, as the majority of climate scientists publishing in scientific journals work in government or academic research rather than for big business. Research scientists and academics are not well paid in comparison to their corporate counterparts. The downside is that in return for the big salaries. corporate scientists are often expected to produce results which support the business that pays them. So money is not a motivator, and may in some cases be a demotivator.

Therefore, it’s probably fair to say that research and academic scientists have chosen autonomy. Their science is for its own sake – to learn, to discover, to contribute. Mastery is also a given, as these scientists who are having their work assessed and accepted for publication in scientific journals are not mugs. They are highly qualified experts in their fields.

That leaves us with purpose as the pivot point for the consensus versus conspiracy debate. For what reason would a thousand or so learned scientists, their peers and publishers claim that the planet is in danger from climate change if, in fact, it isn’t?

Hoax Time

This is where the theme music from The Twilight Zone cuts in, and we stray from reality.

Climate change deniers often believe that the massive global warming “conspiracy” is tied to Agenda 21, a United Nations initiative from 1992 which promotes sustainable development on a global scale. They believe Agenda 21 is tied to the drive for a New World Order, where a single fascist-socialist government rules the world for the good of all creatures great and small, but to the terminal detriment of capitalism and free will. 

The structure of Agenda 21 is such that initiatives are developed at local government level, rather than being a federal government mandate. In fact, Agenda 21 is non-binding. There has even been some pushback against against Agenda 21, particularly in the US, where Republicans and Tea Partiers actively campaign against it.

Agenda 21 was adopted by the United Nations in 1992, when 178 governments voted in favour of the programme. It has been amended and sanctioned twice since then. So now, instead of having a thousand or so scientists and their communities in on the story, we have most of the governments of world signing on too…and when we say ‘governments’, we should include the leaders, plus the individuals from each of 180 or so nations who would understand the "real" purpose of Agenda 21 and be tasked with implementing it. In the 22 years since Agenda 21 became a reality, most countries have changed governments multiple times. Conservatively speaking – and this is just a guess - we now have 200,000+ people in on the conspiracy.

Every tried to get 200,000+ people to keep a secret?

What possibly benefit would there be for hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, male and female, Christian, Muslim, Hindi, Jewish, atheist and others, and from everywhere along the political spectrum, to engage with the whole Climate Change/Agenda 21/New World Order palaver, and agree to promote a scientific untruth to support a socialist one world government?

I can’t wrap my mind around a conspiracy of that scale. Even if it’s only the scientific community involved in the Big Lie, and those scientists have convinced the leaders of impending global catastrophe, I find it virtually impossible to believe. If it's the other way around, I can't accept that the Agenda 21 signatories have convinced the majority of climate scientists to fall into line and lie. 

There is simply no credible motivation for the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists to undermine their life’s work by manipulating data, falsifying results and fabricating conclusions, and lying about it.

People aren’t that gullible…are they?