Palin to Obama: 'Boycott Copenhagen' because of 'Climategate'

Never one to miss an opportunity to jump on a conservative bandwagon, Sarah Palin has called on President Barack Obama to boycott the worldwide climate conference in Copenhagen this month, citing the recent "Climategate" emails incident as proof that global warming is based on "junk science."

Palin has again taken to the social networking website Facebook to voice her opinion, this time declaring that anthropogenic climate change is an "unscientific" excuse for a "cap and tax" plan based on "snake oil" and a "scare tactic" pushed by "dogmatic environmentalists."

In the incident she refers to, hackers exposed a series of email exchanges between scientists that has further polarized the climate change debate in the United States. Various conservatives, particularly in the United States, have touted it as proof of a global conspiracy.

Palin wrote that "the leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming."

Scientists on the blog RealClimate disputed these claims, saying: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

Palin opined that "Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood... Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place."

But her doubts on evolution, a virtually undisputed concept among experts, bring into question her scientific credibility. Only six percent of modern scientists are Republicans, a Pew survey found this summer.

Palin's conclusions on climate change run contrary to the research of the world's most lauded scientists, who have discovered that since 1997, "climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then," the Associated Press reported weeks ago.

Republican Sen. James Inhofe (OK), who has long said that global warming is a "hoax," recently called for an investigation into the leaked emails. He alleged that the IPCC "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."

This week, two prominent conservative writers announced they were officially leaving the American right, disillusioned by -- among other things --  the frequent denial of climate science among leaders. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs noted "Support for anti-science bad craziness" as one of his quips, specifically naming Sarah Palin and "climate change denialism" as prime culprits. Andrew Sullivan wrote that he "cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax."