Sparks: When climate mitigation becomes 'political': The Guardian uncovers IPCC links to Saudi oil industry

Capitalism is a beast that never sleeps, and here it simply hires the men who measure the rising tide to ensure they describe the drowning as a necessary form of thirst.

Men fear the changing sky because they do not see the atoms of carbon moving through the furnace, yet they trust the very architects of the flame to explain the cooling of the air.

Consilience is impossible when the induction is steered by the hand of the merchant, for a theory of mitigation cannot be verified by the very industry that necessitates the remedy.

Things that are truly distasteful: a scholar who accepts ink from the man who poisons the well, and a scroll of warnings written with a pen dipped in oil.

Efficiency is sacrificed to keep the old machinery running, as these guardians of the circuit intentionally introduce resistance into the wire to prevent the inevitable surge of a cleaner current.

Objectivity is the mask worn by the producer to preserve his power, a clever physiological trick where the predator drafts the laws of the sanctuary to ensure his prey remains plentiful.

We wager our entire existence on the word of men who are paid to tell us the void is not approaching, forgetting that even the most brilliant mind is a reed easily bent by gold.

The international committee invited the wolf to chair the subcommittee on sheep-fold security, and expressed the most delightful surprise when the resulting report suggested that fences were entirely unfashionable.

He who occupies the high ground of information without firing a shot has already won the battle for the future, for he directs his enemy's retreat into a terrain of his own choosing.

How long will these merchants of the earth abuse our trust, turning the very halls of reason into a marketplace where the survival of the Republic is bartered for a few more years of profit?

Democratic citizens surrender their judgment to experts, failing to notice when those experts have quietly become the administrative agents of a new industrial aristocracy that directs the public will through the soft pressure of science.

The connection between the extraction of the ancient sun from beneath the desert and the melting of the distant mountain ice is obscured only by those who profit from severing the web of nature.

When the stewards of the greening power take silver from those who scorch the earth, the very breath of the firmament is choked by a fever that no corrupted physician can heal.

Scientific consensus is a healthy tonic, but when the apothecary is owned by the man who manufactures the contagion, I find it prudent to examine the prescription with a very sharp eye.

Travelling through these corridors of power, I observe that the men who speak most loudly of the horizon are often the ones being paid to ensure we never actually reach it.

It is a most reasonable arrangement that the producers of smoke should dictate the limits of breathing, as it ensures the air remains exactly as thick as their ledgers require.

Note the phrase 'mitigation strategies': a linguistic landfill where the responsibility for the fire is buried under a layer of technical jargon provided by the arsonist himself.

Evidence belongs to the domain of demonstration, yet when the premises are dictated by the merchant’s interest rather than the philosopher’s reason, the resulting conclusion is merely a sophism dressed in the robes of truth.

Power concedes nothing without a demand, and it is the height of folly to expect the master of the oil fields to write the proclamation of our ecological emancipation.