IT IS billed as the largest ever gathering of climate change deniers, a convention that kicked off last night with a title suggesting global warming is a thing of the past, and a guest list that includes a hurricane forecaster, a retired astronaut and a sitting European president.
Entitled Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis? and featuring some of the most prominent naysayers in the climate change debate, this week’s conference in New York sets out to escalate its confrontation with the scientific establishment, the vast majority of whose members subscribe to the view that humans are the principal cause of climate change.
Conference organisers were celebrating something of a coup in securing as a keynote speaker the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, at a time when his country holds the rotating presidency of the EU. Mr Klaus, a Eurosceptic, believes that efforts to protect the world from the impact of climate change are an assault on freedom.
“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity, at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, is no longer socialism.
“It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism,” Mr Klaus will say, according to prepared remarks provided by the organisers of the conference, the Heartland Institute, a Chicago think tank that shares the Czech president’s free-market views.
He adds: “Environmentalism and the global alarmism are challenging our freedom.”
This week’s gathering brings together some of the more vocal critics of the scientific consensus, which maintains that climate change has been caused by human activity and that rising temperatures are now so dangerous to people’s existence as to warrant urgent action.
Among more than 70 participants listed by the Heartland Institute is Jack Schmitt, a former astronaut, who now teaches engineering physics.
William Gray, who is regarded as the world’s leading hurricane forecaster, is also listed, along with Fred Singer, the atmospheric physicist who argues that a melting Arctic would have some positive effects, including the formation of the long-sought northwest passage.
There is also a strong contingent of free marketeers and conservative commentators, including Christopher Booker and Christopher Monckton, both British.
Environmentalists argue that climate change denial, although the view of a minority, has damaged efforts to introduce policies to address the changes.
Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace, says the climate change deniers and sceptics have been adept at adapting their views as the public grows more conscious of the dangers of global warming.
The deniers also have resources.
The Centre for Public Integrity said in a report last month that the lobby opposing climate change action gave work to 2,430 Washington lobbyists in 2008, a 300 per cent increase over the past five years.
The report estimated that about 15 per cent of Washington’s lobbyists were now working to try to stop Congress from passing a law putting a cap on carbon.
“They are on the fringes – when you look at where the public is on this issue, where governments are on this issue, and where scientific organisations are on this issue,” said Kevin Grandia, the manager of DeSmogBlog, which seeks to counter misinformation on global warming.
“The problem is when you take that fringe and add in the public relations ability to amplify that message. They have ingrained their message so well . . . it can easily be used as a tool to oppose legislation.”
Opinion polls show that about 58 per cent of Americans now believe human activity is causing climate change.
However, many do not see a need for urgent action.
The Heartland Institute was funded by Exxon Mobil until 2006; it disavows such links for this conference but lists 55 sponsors, who include right-wing think tanks. – ( Guardianservice)