A tale of two secret meetings

In the spirit of letting things speak for themselves, I just wanted to juxtapose two recent stories I came across, each about conspiratorial meetings you are supposed to find significant.

Story number one involves billionaires from finance, oil and coal and health care industries:

Koch Brothers Convened Right-Wing Meeting in June

New details have emerged on the right-wing groups spending tens of millions of dollars to influence the upcoming midterm elections. The website ThinkProgress reports the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch held a secretive meeting with influential right-wing figures in June to plot their election strategy and lobbying activities for this year. The 210 attendees included executives from the oil industry, coal companies, health insurers, banks, right-wing pundits including Glenn Beck, and officials from the US Chamber of Commerce. The gathering was the latest in a series of bi-annual gatherings organized by the Koch brothers, who have quietly helped bankroll the Tea Party movement and dozens of other right-wing causes.

The implementation of this strategy can be seen in California.

Story number two involves the "who's who" of paleoclimatology:

Mike Mann's "secret" meeting on the Medieval Warm Period

Between 22 and 24 of September, a symposium entitled "The Medieval Warm Period Redux: Where and When was it warm?" was organized in Lisbon, Portugal. The Climategate mob was here, including Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradley. I bet the main point on the agenda was how "to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period".

All the information I've got till now makes me believe that this was an almost secret meeting. No news transpired, not even here in Portugal. Given the abstracts, and the one seen above, their intentions are clear! If Ricardo Trigo kept his mouth shut, nobody would probably hear about it. So I wish to thank my loyal reader for bringing this to our attention.

I give you one guess which story is more significant in Anthony Watts mind!

It must be wonderfully liberating to be a hard-core conspiracy theorist, casting off the limiting constraints of reality - common sense and facts be damned! Mike Mann is plotting the socialist takeover of the globe using tree-rings and obscure statistical techniques to control the UN while naive, mind-their-own-business, successful capitalists are in danger of being tossed out of their hard-earned mansions just because they want all of us to be as wealthy as they are. Or something.