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Letting off steam in NYC
What do the president of the Czech Republic and the last living man to walk on the moon have in common?
Answer: they both have a thing about climate change “alarmists”
Both angry men are giving speeches at what’s being billed as the world’s largest ever meeting of climate change sceptics, in New York City.
Organised by the Heartland Institute – a US public policy think tank dedicated to free market solutions – the conference will centre around the question: “Global Warming: Was it Ever Really a Crisis?”
One of the pre-event adverts led with the statement:
Tens of thousands of scientists now say the media and environmental advocacy groups have it all wrong, that global warming is not a crisis. They point to a cooling trend in global temperatures since 2000, past warming and cooling cycles that were not man-made, and new evidence that carbon dioxide is not a very powerful greenhouse gas.
You can also watch a couple of the Institute’s short promos here.
Amongst the keynote speakers is Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.
Klaus, who has an academic background in economics, is giving a talk this morning (Tuesday) entitled “We Should Not Make Big Changes over Climate Change”.
Other notable presenters include: Jack Schmitt, the last living astronaut to walk on the moon; Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist on NASA’s Aqua satellite; and Richard Lindzen of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s leading experts in dynamic meteorology.
Meanwhile, over in Copenhagen this week more than 2000 climate scientists will be discussing their latest research ahead of the UN Conference on Climate Change that will take place in the city in December.
I’m guessing the outlook at that event will be rather different.
It so strange that this debate goes on. Everyone agrees with the fundamentals, that the planet naturally heats and cools in cycles, and that the current rate of global warming is greater than the natural cycle, yet big business prevents any preventative action from moving forward. It’s so depressing.
California Home Loans
Better hurry….the citizens are getting wise to the Gore scare
There have been arguments about the cycles (eg was there a mediaeval warming period?) and there is argument about how good the evidence is for the current rate being more than natural. Both sides claim the other is driven by funding (big business or IPCC), not that it is relevant to the science. For a good look at problems with the science see http://www.climateaudit.org
Joel says “everyone agrees … that the current rate of global warming is greater than the natural cycle” … umm, apparently everyone does NOT agree, Joel.
But … “california home loans” is your shameless URL link spam advertisement ? Now THAT is depressing ! You are part of a much bigger problem than global warming, I am sorry to say.
With “sour grapes” and “angry” speakers, I wondered what this blog was about. Visiting the conference web site is well worth the effort, with access to many presentations and other resources. The conference is worth plugging positively: we need to be encouraging a debate that is more critical of the so-called consensus. I would like to see Physics World exploring some of the arguments in more depth. The angriest presentation I could find was by Joanne Nova – The Great Global Fawning: How Science Journalists Pay Homage to Non-Science and Un-Reason. This suggests, with some justification, that the popularisers of science have lost their ability to critically appraise the climate science issue.
What the skeptics say has the simple implication that the problems this unique planet is facing has nothing to do with the activities of the human race. That is even if the human race were not there, things would have been more or less what they are there today: the forest cover would have been dissapearing in the same way, living species would have been facing extinction as ever, under-ground water level would have been going down as usual, the ozone cover would have continued dissapear and so on. They mean to say that human presence has no effect on this planet. That is indeed heartening!