Grass fed beef and biochar aren't the only subjects mired in slime bag arguments. Environmentalism in general and climate change in particular are nothing but slime bag arguments by politicans and rent seekers. It's their business - or organized crime at least. It's their careers, what they do for pay and power. That doesn't mean that there are no legitimate controversies for all of these subjects or that there aren't honest arguments about unknowns as investigation ever so slowly proceeds, it just means that they are exploited by opportunists for gain. We can now add biodiversity to the list of hot slime subjects.

The fundamental reason why e-mails were stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit was . . . because climate change had reached such a fever pitch of political heat, and if it becomes evident that conserving biodiversity means changing lifestyles, those working in the field must expect debate to reach similar temperatures.

The fundamental reason for Climategate is that climate politicans had over reached and become vulnerable. Had they been honest brokers all of the controversey in the world would not have resulted in public humiliation and a body blow to science that has reduced scientists to the low level of journalists and politicans in the mind of much of the public. They punked themselves. The only way that this sort of thing will happen with biodversity advocates is if they are shown to be dishonest too, which seems probable since many of them are also ethically challenged climate hysterics and not quite intelligent enough to thrive for long in a life of crime.

With this year being declared the International Year of Biodiversity, and with the critical session of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) coming up this October, you'd expect such heated conflict to materialise this year, if at all.

Why declared? This is clearly an empty political gesture and rent seeking ruse. But, there will only be great opposition if the criminals get too brazen. Low level crime is endured but there are limits.

After President Bill Clinton signed the convention in 1993, it went swiftly into Congress for ratification, and the first indications were that it might well pass.

But a number of interested parties began to argue against - organisations concerned with land ownership and land rights, such as the Montana Farm Bureau Federation and Grassroots for Multiple Use, allied with groups opposed in principle to extensions of government and regulation.

Concerns were expressed about possible restrictions on the unfettered access that US pharmaceutical companies had to the developing world's biological riches, and on the nascent technology of genetic engineering.

In this republic laws are made by the people's representatives in the legislature and are constrained by the written constitution. Clinton should not have signed, and would not have signed if he thought that there was any chance of ratification by congress. It's an insult, though one often made in the continuing struggle for executive power against the interests of society. The slimebag arguments against the slimebag arguments for CBD are SOP. Ho hum. That's how these sorts of stupid games are played.

Here's a hypothetical example raised at the InterAcademy panel meeting.

Let's say you want to protect the Amazon rainforest and the rich biodiversity it contains.

One way you might look to do that is by reducing deforestation; and one of the main causes of Amazonian deforestation is clearance for cattle ranches.

So you might choose to campaign among Western consumers, or to lobby Western governments, to reduce the amount of beef consumed on Western plates; less beef equals more trees.

Does the issue look uncontroversial now?

There's nothing about the issue of biodiversity in this slimebag argument. This is just the tired old agenda of miserabilist food fetishists seeking to exploit the issue. If the argument was that agriculture in S. America was expanding to serve world markets, ripping up the grasslands to grow soya and other grains, pushing ranchers into the bush and then following them to rip up that land too in order to grow even more soya, then an intelligent discussion might be possible. Are there places that have more value when not used for agriculture? Did the grasslands that were destroyed for cropping have more value as grasslands, especially since they could still be grazed without loss of value, especially biodiversity? Why so little regard for biodiversity by those who seek to exploit biodiversity? It seems that they aren't actually interested in biodiversity.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the International Year of Biodiversity was not just the same old slime attack by the same old slimebags? The lessons of Climategate (and a variety of other recent "gates") might be motivation for journalists to begin to be journalists rather than just the PR departments for various rent seekers. Wouldn't it be interesting if the sloppy arguments of all rent seekers were challenged publicly? Nah, they're journalists and don't have either the skills or the ethics to do this.