An Extraordinary Event

By Alan Caruba

For two days, March 2-4 in New York, I and about five hundred other people attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, including some of the world’s leading authorities on climatology, meteorology, economics, energy, and other fields of knowledge.

It was an extraordinary event, held in New York and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that has been among those leading the effort to educate and inform the public about the mountain of lies that have led them to believe that the Earth is experiencing a huge increase in heat, a "global warming", that is allegedly the direct result of human activities, primarily from the use of energy that includes coal, natural gas, and oil.

The conference message is simplicity itself: There is no “consensus” on global warming. The science is not “settled.” Indeed, this conference marks a highpoint in the effort to rescue the planet from people who regard their fellow human beings as a cancer afflicting the Earth.

This hoax, generated out of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, actually included some IPCC members who have labored long and hard to dispute the IPCC reports on the basis of real science, not the spurious claims based largely on flawed and even deliberately false computer models.

In breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners, some of these now-famed global warming “dissenters” and “deniers” presented talks complete with power-point presentations filled with statistics and charts that disputed the alleged facts of the IPCC. These presentations were then augmented by a series of panels on paleoclimatology, climatology, the impacts of the global warming hoax, its affect on the economics of both developed and developing nations, and how it twists the politics of our nation and others.

What made this event so extraordinary was that it is, to my knowledge, the first time since the global warming hoax was perpetrated back in the 1980s (it had been preceded by a campaign in the 1970s asserting—correctly—that we are closer to the next ice age) that such a gathering has occurred. It has taken three decades to bring together these experts and the reason why is fairly simple.

The forces behind the global warming hoax, the environmental organizations, have been heavily funded by foundations and, as in the United States, by billions of government dollars directed to research on the climate. These groups have garnered more money from membership and the sales of all manner of books, publications, DVDs and other items. Still others have made their money by suing the government and having their legal fees reimbursed along with any other rewards.

The “stars” of the conference were men with impeccable credentials, but largely unknown to the general public because the media has been enthralled with the global warming hoaxers, either deliberately or by virtue of being disinterested in the actual science involved. Too many have failed their commitment to journalism’s high standards and they have failed a public that depends on them to explain these complex issues. By March 4, The Washington Post published a "hit job" on the Conference depicting its speakers and attendees as "flat Earth" loonies.

For decades, the headlines have heralded all manner of crisis to the point of absurdity whereby now blizzards are attributed to warming tends. This passed year has seen significant and unusual blizzard conditions worldwide and this too, the public has been told, results from a dramatic warming that is not occurring.

For me, there was the particular pleasure of actually meeting many of those who have been on the front lines of disputing the hoax, but our work is far from finished.

Much damage is being done to America by legislation based on the global warming lies, particularly as regards their impact on the provision of the energy this nation requires to be competitive in the global marketplace and to sustain our lifestyle. Our political candidates all subscribe to the global warming hoax. The leaders in the Senate and House all advocate it as well.

The result is legislation that forces the nation to literally burn its food crops—notably corn—in order to turn it into an efficient fuel additive, ethanol. This in turn is forcing up the cost of food. It is legislation that does not permit for the exploration and extraction of energy reserves such as oil and natural gas along 85% of our nation’s continental shelf, nor in Alaska where billions of barrels of oil remain untapped. It is legislation that grants huge subsidies—a form of hidden tax—to wind and solar energy, the two most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy. It is legislation that bans the future use of incandescent light bulbs.

In short, America is gripped by a form of life-threatening insanity perpetrated by the Greens and legislated by politicians who haven’t a clue about the ways they are wrecking our economy in the name of global warming.

So this extraordinary conference, drawing men and women from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, China, the United Kingdom and Europe, may well be the last best hope to turn away from a future that will be marked by the undermining of America’s and Europe’s economies.