Journalist and filmmaker Phelim McAleer (Mine Your Own Business, Not Evil Just Wrong) attempts to ask Al Gore a question about ‘Climategate’ emails at the UN Climate Change Conference. Al Gore’s Press Secretary grabs his McAleer’s microphone and UN security guard pulls the cable from the microphone. For more Inconvenient Questions and answers about The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria visit www.noteviljustwrong.com
A Stanford professor with ties to Nobel Laureate Al Gore and the growing ClimateGate scandal used United Nations security officials at the climate conference in Copenhagen to halt questions about e-mail messages obtained from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit.
Dr. Stephen Schneider was speaking at the Bella Centre Thursday when Irish journalist Phelim McAleer began asking about ClimateGate.
McAleer is known for his documentary “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” which challenged the content of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” as well as for confronting the former Vice President during a lecture in October only to have his microphone turned off.
According to a video just posted at Big Government, UN security officials stepped in when McAleer tried to ask the Professor inconvenient questions.
Professor Stephen Schneider’s assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book. […]
He asked Professor Schneider about his opinions on Climategate – where leaked emails have revealed that a senior British professor deleted data and encouraged colleagues to do likewise if it contradicted their belief in Global Warming. […]
During some testy exchanges with McAleer, UN officials and Professor Schneider’s assistants twice tried to cut short McAleer’s question.
However as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider’s assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider. […]
Two officers corralled the film crew and one officer can be seen on tape threatening the cameraman. The Guard can also be heard warning that if the crew did not stop filming their would seize the equipment and the journalists expelled from the conference.
McAleer apparently has lodged an official complaint about his treatment:
“I have met Mr Christopher Ankerson the UN’s head of security for the conference and he has confirmed it was Professor Schneider’s staff who asked the security guards to come corral us at the press conference. Mr Ankerson could not say what grounds the security guard had for ordering us to stop filming.”
“This is a blatant attempt to stop journalists doing journalism and asking hard questions. It is not the job of armed UN security officers to stop legitimate journalists asking legitimate questions of senior members of the UN’s IPCC.”
Professor Schneider was interviewed for McAleer’s “Not Evil Just Wrong” documentary but lawyers later wrote to McAleer saying he was withdrawing permission for the interview to be used.
Schneider has been a controversial global warming alarmist for quite some time. As NewsBusters reported in October, he appeared in a 1978 television program warning Americans of a coming Ice Age (relevant section at 6:04):
Since then, Schneider has been a close confidant to Gore. In fact, as McAleer demonstrated in the following video, Schneider was with the Global Warmingist-in-Chief when he acknowledged winning the Nobel Peace Prize:
According to a Google News search, only Edie.net and a blog at the Stanford Review have reported this incident.
Color me extremely unsurprised.
—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.
Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking. Except we’re the ones they want to enslave. If they get their way, they’ll crush us with taxes, make our energy bills skyrocket, and otherwise cut our standard of living back to 19th-century levels. “Okay, you guys sit there shivering in the dark while we whoop it up with some Copenhagen hookers!” All because “the science is settled,” when anybody with an Internet connection can find out for themselves just how unsettled the science really is. And, of course, because it’s just not fair that we live better than any other human beings in the history of the world. Why don’t you feel more guilty?
If the only way to save the planet is to help destroy the planet, then… maybe we’re not really destroying the planet? These guys don’t really believe what they’re saying — that we’re on the verge of a global apocalypse because of anthropogenic global warming, or man-made climate change, or whatever they’re calling it this week — or else they’d never burn another ounce of fuel in their lives. They’d never go anywhere that can’t be reached on foot, and even then, they’d try to find a way to lower their CO2 emissions. Hey, how about putting a dry-cleaning bag over your head and securing it with duct tape? I’ll help!
