The Heartland Conference: Last Cries From The Climate Denial Extremists
The Heartland Conference: Last Cries From The Climate Denial Extremists
Our guest blogger is Alexandra Kougentakis, a Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellows Assistant.
This week in New York City, the Heartland Institute is holding its “International Conference on Climate Change,” a gathering for VIPs of the climate denial movement. Despite the extremist positions taken by speakers at the conference, funding and support comes from the top echelons of the conservative movement, including the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. Unfortunately, these climate skeptics can’t even agree with each other:
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.
Most of the speakers hail from conservative think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute, repeating last year’s effort with the same long-debunked arguments. Keynote speaker Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rallied his fellow deniers by with the Tinkerbell strategy: “We will eventually win against anthropogenic global warming alarm simply because we are right and they are wrong.”
Lindzen is a particular favorite of the deniers for his academic credentials — but his ties to Big Oil and conservative ideology might have more to do with his positions on climate. Industrial polluters from OPEC to the Western Fuels Association have paid him generous consulting fees. Lindzen is on the record for describing Exxon Mobil, who has spent $16 million funding the climate denier industry, as “the only principled oil and gas company I know in the US.”
5 Responses to “The Heartland Conference: Last Cries From The Climate Denial Extremists”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
First off – you’re a political scientist – what do you know about climate change. Secondly, you’re obviously a
March 9th, 2009 at 3:26 pmdemocratic activist who supported Kerry (who got big ketchup money) and Al Gore.
Why don’t you inform readers of your lack of credentials and your bias?
“Unfortunately, these climate skeptics can’t even agree with each other”
Climate skeptics? I think they believe in climate.
But more substantially, why is it a bad thing they do not agree with each other? From the same article you linked in that line;
“But Dr. Lindzen also criticized widely publicized assertions by other skeptics that variations in the sun were driving temperature changes in recent decades. To attribute short-term variation in temperatures to a single cause, whether human-generated gases or something else, is erroneous, he said.”
It seems to me its simply intellectual honesty.
“S. Fred Singer, a physicist often referred to by critics and supporters alike as the dean of climate contrarians, said that he would be running public and private sessions on Monday aimed at focusing participants on which skeptical arguments were supported by science and which were not.”
Same article, again. So the fact these participants don’t all agree is logical. There is a wide array of scientific data available, and depending on which you read, allows for a completely different interpretation.
In fact, they are trying to weed out the skeptics that are basing their beliefs on emotion, rather than science.
Is there any similiar effort on the opposite side of the debate?
No, because 1) they refuse to accept that there is a debate, and also because 2) then it would weaken the national drive to promote a green agenda. And truly, that is the most important thing to most of these people – not the science.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:10 pmNfilheim, there is a large effort to weed out those who are basing their arguments on emotion in favor of those who are looking at the flood reinsurance rates and the energy independence of the U.S.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:32 pmI agree with Nfilheim: The idea that their failure to agree is somehow a bad thing really comes from a misunderstanding of science.
The IPCC is not a scientific conference if it’s directed towards building a consensus. Science is based on disagreement and discussion.
On top of that, it’s important to know that the inductive methodology of hypothesis-driven science is not being used by the doomsayers. I’m a pretty rabid liberal and strong supporter of Obama, but I am also a scientist. It saddens me to think that Al Gore (not a scientist by any means) has managed to steer the Democratic party towards this nonsense.
Luckily, I think it will become clear that this Global Warming movement is losing steam, and hopefully we won’t kneecap our industries too terribly badly.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:12 amNfilheim:
Hint: That’s called “cherry-picking”.
No. If there’s any “weeding out”, then why don’t I see it?
Your use of the word “agenda” is a pretty big clue that it’s you who are basing your beliefs on emotion.
– bi
April 6th, 2009 at 11:58 pm