Climate Deniers Gather In Times Square

This week, more than 600 people have gathered in New York for the International Conference on Climate Change. But it may not be what you think -- it's a conference organized by the conservative Heartland Institute, which doesn't believe in climate change.

It comes on the heels of a gathering of some 12,000 young climate activists -- who favor action to stop climate change -- in Washington, DC.

This year's conference has its high points and its low points for organizers. Among the high points is one of its special guests -- the president of the Czech Republic.

Conference organisers were celebrating something of a coup in securing as a keynote speaker the Czech president, Václav Klaus, at a time when his country holds the rotating presidency of the EU. Klaus, a Eurosceptic, believes that efforts to protect the world from the impact of climate change are an assault on freedom.

In his remarks last night, Klaus accused European governments of being "alarmist" on the subject of climate change and in thrall to radical environmentalists.

"They probably do not want to reveal their true plans and ambitions to stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back," he said.

But Klaus and the others at the conference are being abandoned and questioned by others who only last year would have stood beside them. The New York Times' Andrew Revkin points out a wide variety of reasons that the conference is a bit weaker than usual, including the fact that not even Exxon wants to sponsor it now:

But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming's skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

The meeting participants hold a wide range of views of climate science. Some concede that humans probably contribute to global warming but they argue that the shift in temperatures poses no urgent risk. Others attribute the warming, along with cooler temperatures in recent years, to solar changes or ocean cycles.

But large corporations like Exxon Mobil, which in the past financed the Heartland Institute and other groups that challenged the climate consensus, have reduced support. Many such companies no longer dispute that the greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels pose risks.

Comments

[tapeatsbill]

Exxon and their ilk WILL fall off the end of the flat earth one day. It is inevitable that we WILL decarbonize with wind, solar and 100 mpg cars.

The only question is how long will this take and how many of us humans will be still be around.

Western Union used to be the biggest communications company in the 1870's. They could have purchased Alexander Graham Bell's patent on his telephone for $100,000. They didn't and they were replaced by Bell Telephone as the #1 communications company.

Same will happen to Exxon and their tribe. They are hanging on to old dying technology, they just don't know it yet.

Hey its hard to change.

Same is happening with banks. People now can pay far less interest and be free & clear of all debt in a fraction of the time without really drastically changing their lifestyle. The banks got their's now it the people's turn. TheGreenFinanceProject.org

P.S. Love my velvet painting of Adam & Eve riding a dinosaur.

[JNagarya]

I DEMAND that they bring back the Flat Earth! This round planet is a hazard which results in massive unnecessary death when people fall off the sides of it into deep space!

And what we need more of is velvet paintings of Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs!

[SFTor]

No, JNagarya,

what we need is to grab this chance as Democrats to become much more hard-nosed about facts, and about science, and much less tolerant to vested interests wherever we may find them.

The Republicans have run this country into the ground through bad government and disregard for reality. If we can take a hard look at ourselves and the unsavory alliances that Dem leaders still have with industry and moneyed powers, we actually have a chance to win back government for the benefit of ordinary people. But that will mean that we slaughter our holy cows and stare down every convenient belief, and pull them all into the harsh noonday sun for a closer look.

AGW is a monumental issue. It is a critical issue. It would be disastrous to get this one wrong either way. It is a potential poison pill for the environmental movement, should the current thinking be faulty. Stop ridiculing people who disagree, open your mind, and talk about it.

[deathofcommonsense]

Agreed. There is no place for politics in science (or is it vice versa?).

[ssfahrer]

Jesus said not to worry about this, for if He continues to feed the sparrows, surely He will feed His people (and if He stops doing so, it is His Will, which we have no control over). Eventually, there WILL be an Apocalypse (as in the Book of Revelation); at least Christians know the ending....

[JNagarya]

Paranoid nonseense as substitute for THINKING.

[SFTor]

Please ssfahrer,

could we try to keep the baby Jesus out of this? We are also all very happy that the sparrows are fine.

The priest: "It is a lovely field you and God have created here, my dear farmer."
Farmer: "You should have seen what it looked like when He ran the place by himself."

[OkieMon]

the national academy of sciences says to a 95% certainty level than human activity is the major cause of the rapid rise in world temperature (1 degree over the last century). Left unchecked this rise will increase to 6 degrees by the end of this century, a temperature which will among other things increase drastically the water vapor content in the atmosphere leading to a myriad of catastrophic consequences.....

[CelticMajic]

On page 17 of that report it says: "Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one because the model simulations could be deficient in natural variability on the decadal to century time scale."

Doesn't sound so much of a sure thing to me....

[tjfdownsouth]

Quit bring those facts in here. This thread is about hysteria and we want to keep it that way.

Only subjective evidence that can't be proven or disproven please.

[deathofcommonsense]

Please, get the facts straight; your beloved IPCC quote a 0.6 degree C increase over the last century, not 1.0 degrees. That is almost a half of degree difference, and if one degree is rapid and catastrophic, then every tenth of a degree is important right?

[Richard Lawson]

In the end, this is not an academic debate, because we and our children are part of the experiment. The consensus among scientists (yes, with a few exceptions, as is always the case in science) that we should decarbonise our economy as a matter of urgency.

Say we decarbonise our economy, and it turns out that AGW theory is wrong? Well, we will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation and manufacturing and taken thousands out of fuel poverty. Not bad, but that's not all. We will also have reduced the shock of Peak Oil and Peak Gas. And addressed our energy security problems. Also not bad.

Say we go the way of the denialists/sceptics? Problems with energy security, Peak Oil, Peak Gas, fuel poverty, unemployment, and finally, massive, catastrophic climate disruption from droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, and war. Not good.

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on decarbonising. I'm sure Pascal would agree.

[doublehelix68]

Yes,

Err on the side of caution in regard to a new direction for energy consumption. In the end, even if global change proves to be wrong (which I seriously doubt) we will have still made out lives more energy independent, reduce costs and created jobs.

So what is wrong with that?

[CelticMajic]

Whats wrong is in our headlong quest to obtain the "perfect climate" we will impoverish millions as they are unable to afford the energy--in effect energy destitute.

Clean energy is not cheap, it it were we would not still be fossil fuel based as the market would go their.

The argument that we do not pay the total cost of our fossible fuel is lost on those who are bearly able to pay for their needs now....

[Exusian]

Fact: Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic and speaker at Heartland's global warming/climate change denial conference, has degrees in economics but no training in physical science.

Fact: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has degrees in both physics and chemistry.

Question: Which one are you going to believe on global warming/climate change?

[jsgaetano]

Your facts have no place in a discussion of Global Warming Denial.

[deathofcommonsense]

You have to be kidding me right? You guys are going to question one mans creedentials and belittle his background yet, give creedence and put belief into somebody like Gore and his little PPT presentaion? He 'earned' a D in natural sciences in college!

You can't have it both ways.

[Dick214]

Goody, a convention of Elvis spotters!

[oregonideas]

OK, guys, great gathering...let's all meet here again next week when we'll support the "flat earth" position......

[jkminwa]

But, but, Tommygun, the Vikings grew grapes in Iceland in 1100 (or 1300, or whatever).

Tommygun, its the same ol' BS...have an opinion, scour up a fact or two to try to support it, and then attack some lightning rod political figure rather than the science (look! over here! he said he invented the internets!)

[SFTor]

(I just posted this waaaaay down the page. I am making an exception for myself and am posting it here.)

I'm afraid it goes a little deeper with Al Gore. I am a hardcore liberal Democrat. I must admit that Al Gore's act is wearing a little thin.

Several aspects of what Al Gore has been saying have been disproven.

Mann's hockey stick? Disproven. Almost any data set you put into Mr. Mann's calculation creates one.

The plight of the polar bears? Not so, there are five times more polar bears today than there was in 1960.

The melt of the snow cap on Kilimanjaro? An artifact of local land use changing rain patterns, not global warming. One more thing: it appears the snow cap is back, and growing.

The drying out of Lake Chad? The lake also dried out around 8500 BC, 5500 BC, 2000 BC, and 100 BC.

These were examples Al Gore used to support his argument that the Earth is in the throes of AGW, and they have been shown to be spurious.

I would be happier if Al Gore worried less about carbon offsets, and more about the truth, inconvenient or not.

[Exusian]

And I replied way down page:

Nothing like cherry-picking references in time and ignoring subsequent data and research.

Mann's hockey stick?
Subsequently substantiated by at least three independent replications using different data sets.

The plight of the polar bears?
It varies, some populations are stable or even growing, some are in decline.

The melt of the snow cap on Kilimanjaro?
Newsflash: land use changes are anthrogogenic, and therefore part of anthropogenic climate change.

The drying out of Lake Chad?
8500bce and 5500bce were well-documented warming periods of high temperatures during the Holocene Climate Optimum, a fact that in no way means that the current drying is not due to anthropogenic climate change.

The only outright assertion Gore made that could be in any way be considered 'spurious' was that citizens of some Pacific nations have already had to evacuate to New Zealand.

You might want to read the actual legal decision on Gore's so-called 'errors' (the scare quotes were actually used by the judge):
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html

or a synopsis of the decision:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/10/an_error_is_not_the_same_thing.php

But hey, never let the facts, or the actual legal decision get in the way of propagating a deliberately constructed myth.

[Wombaticus]

Just to pick a small issue with these flat worlders...

Why on earth would anyone want to "stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back"???

These conservatives come up with the most outrageously stupid motives for their adversaries, ironically the above quote seems to match the conservative results rather closely.

[ibsteve2u]

I don't know how the kind of people that tend to be righties do it, but their personalities fairly jump out at you even in pictures.

Take the Czech Prez in the picture: Roll the clock back four hundred years, and I have absolutely no trouble picturing him standing over me just cranking on the wheel of the rack as my joints popped - just because I dared to say the earth wasn't flat...

[bmauers]

Where are the ocean acidification deniers meeting?

[tjfdownsouth]

You mean the water has gone bad too? Next thing you know the ground will be dirty.

[SworldPeas]

You want proof that man's activities are effecting the planet??? Take a look at the moon on the horizon, it's dirty brown. When I was a kid it was gleaming white at the horizon. PROOF the atmosphere is getting more and more dirty. Harvest moons happen in Fall time and are glowing orange not brown. I don't need to be a scientist to be aware of my surroundings all I have to do is be very observant... anybody else notice the browning of the moon???

[PC Contrarian]

No one disputes that man's activities adversely affect the planet. Everyone agrees that it's in our interest to clean up the environment. That doesn't mean we are affecting the climate, which is very complex.
Alarmists are trying to end the debate which in itself is unscientific. Let's hear what the skeptics have to say.

[SworldPeas]

"Everyone agrees that it's in our interest to clean up the environment. That doesn't mean we are affecting the climate,"

So our pollution is not effecting the atmosphere? Burning fossil fuels is not having an impact? is that what your saying? because thats what I'm hearing...

[sarasotajeff]

The debate is certainly scientific, and still going on mainly due to the bushcoevangelical war on science. And those on the opposite side of the debate from yours are not "alarmist", they simply do not agree with you. They, like the vast majority of actual scientists, are actually correct, as well. It has been determined that man HAS damaged the planet and HAS contributed to global climate change. Deniers will come around now that the big oil companies are no longer so active in the fight and will likely stop paying the fake/lying "scientists" they've pushed out there before...

[jkminwa]

Scientific debate continues, and will continue, even after we adopt carbon caps and act on the science. Two different realms, politics and science.

As you acknowledge, the climate is complex. And unlike the skeptics who pull out a "fact" or two and think the whole concept fails, scientists have developed complex dynamical models that study the interaction of thousands of phenomena, and those models suggest that AGW is real and accelerating. When the skeptics stop trotting out dogma, and make serious scientific arguments, rather than characterize AGW as "Algore's theory," I'll listen.

[Exusian]

Every one of us here have already heard everything the 'skeptics' have to say--many times over.
They bring nothing new to the discussion, just the same half-truths, misunderstood and misrepresented truths, and deliberately constructed and disseminated untruths.

Compare the program from last year's Heartland conference to the one for this year. There is no significant difference.

[realpolitic]

Exusian, they repeat the same mistruths time and time again. They wear ignorance like a badge of honor. Well, obviously, the science deniers will not have a place at the table when it comes to policies to respond to climate change. They will still be talking to themselves and denying the science.

[FrTown]

To all the deniers out there,
How do you explain the fact that Great Britain now produces wine and wheat and soon will be exporting olive oil?

[PC Contrarian]

They also produced wine 1,500 years ago. Maybe we're just getting back to normal after the mini ice age of the mid-1800's.
Care to define what is a "normal" climate?

[FrTown]

Read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/britains-first-olive-grove-is-a-sign-of-our-hotter-times-405557.html

[SFTor]

The Little Ice Age shortened the English growing season by two months. Wine was also produced in England during the Medieval Warm Period, about 1000 years ago.

[OkieMon]

stopping all the dumping of mercury and carcinogens in the environment from burning coal and oil should be reason enough to drastically reduce their use as soon as possible....

[PC Contrarian]

I absolutely agree. Let's make policy on what we know; not on faulty computer models.
As soon as possible for me means taking the economic impact into account.

[OkieMon]

actually using coal and oil is much more expensive than alternative energies when you take in the fact of the cost of their pollution....coal and oil companies now just past that cost (in dollars and human lives) onto the unsuspecting....

[jkminwa]

So you are familiar with the models, are you? Please explain specifically how the models are faulty. Until then, I will assume you have merely latched on to a talking point to justify your primary concern about economic impact. For what its worth, the coal companies and the Bush Administration claimed that we don't "know" that mercury emissions from coal constitute a threat to human health. Of course, by their definition of "knowing," I wonder if we "know" anything.