U.N. climate chief resigns amid Climategate scandal

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the U.N.'s climate chief, Yvo de Boer, has resigned:

The announcement was unexpected and comes ahead of the scheduled end of his post this fall. It also comes ahead of talks towards a binding global deal on emissions reductions at the end of the year in Cancun, Mexico.

(AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

According to the report, de Boer is resigning in order to 'work on climate and sustainability in the private sector and academia.'

However, the unexpected announcement comes as the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are still reeling from a global scandal that has shaken public confidence in the organization's scientists who are working on climate change.

This week the climate scientist who was at the forefront of the scandal involving erroneous data, the withholding of evidence that did not fit the IPCC's accepted theory on man-made global warming, and the manipulation of information, admitted that his data was wrong and that the earth may not be warming at all.

In addition, critics of the manner in which the U.N. handled various aspects of the climate debacle hold de Boer responsible for the failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change to produce a binding agreement among participating nations:

Although Mr. de Boer has been credited with raising the profile of climate change negotiations and helped broker agreement on the roadmap towards a new treaty at the 2007 summit in Bali, he was also criticized for the lack of organization at the Copenhagen talks last December, when negotiators got bogged down in procedural issues and failed to reach a binding agreement.

However, in spite of the attempt of global warming advocates to make de Boer the 'fall guy' for some of the failures surrounding the U.N.'s handling of the climate issue, the main players in the Climategate scandal have made no move toward stepping down, and the U.N. apparently has made no move to force the issue.

For example, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has steadfastly refused to resign despite numerous demands from critics that he step down.

Not only did Pachauri engage in withholding evidence from the public, but he waited nearly 3 months before admitting that even prior to the Copenhagen conference he knew that the Committee's official report contained glaring errors about the Himalayan glaciers and other data that cast a long shadow of doubt over commonly-accepted conclusions concerning 'man-made global warming.'

As the Climategate scandal continues to broaden and as more information is disclosed pointing to a stunning consortium of fraud, false information, and shoddy science, it is becoming clear that laws have been broken and that many nations around the world have lost billions of dollars as a result.

This fact has some critics calling for the criminal and civil prosecution of all of those involved in climate fraud and its cover-up.

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