Norway, a rich country in Scandinavia (in northern Europe) with a population of almost five million people enjoy the second highest GDP per-capita (after Luxembourg) and third highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world, and has maintained first place in the world in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) for six consecutive years (2001-2006).

Most of the wealth comes from large fields of natural resources such as oil and gas. Norway is the third largest exporter of oil and gas worldwide. Only Russia and Saudi Arabia export more oil than Norway. In 2006, oil and gas accounted for 58% of all the services and products exported.

Ah yes, Norway is one of the few countries that are generating huge amounts of money on the continuation of global warming. While it’s probably true that most people in Norway feel a bit ashamed about this fact the second largest political party (as of the 2005 parliamentary elections) in Norway, the Fremskrittspartiet (shortly translated to the “progress party”), wants to gain more members (read votes) by downplaying the severity of climate change.

All the other major political parties in Norway acknowledge the severity of man-made climate change and have unanimously decided on tougher actions against climate change.

So why would a sane political party go against all trustworthy scientific reports you might ask? Well. The easy answer is “what would you expect?”

What would you expect from a far-right (sorry, I mean conservative) political partly like Fremskrittspartiet who advocates free market economics and deregulation of the economy, stricter limits on immigration, closer cooperation with NATO, United States and Israel in foreign policy and less state aid to developing countries.

One of Fremskrittspartiet’s goals is to limit immigration to 100 people per year (Source: Dagens Nyheter 11/4/2008). They especially want to stop Muslims, illiterate and poor people from coming to Norway.

The party leader Siv Jensen believes that by denying global warming the Fremskrittspartiet will attract more voters from the other political parties in Norway and might have a chance to win the coming election from the current red-green government.

By educating 1000 party members to confront the “exaggerated” public and scientific opinion about climate change and to use chosen “scientists” in the election campaign Siv Jensen hopes to profile Fremskrittspartiet as the “deviant and sane voice” in Norwegian politics.