The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change enjoyed a rousing opening night in New York City today, with a capacity crowd and multiple standing ovations for keynote speakers Vaclav Klaus and Richard Lindzen. The world’s largest-ever gathering of global warming skeptics assembles Sunday, March 8 through Tuesday, March 10 to confront the issue, “Global warming: Was it ever really a crisis?”
"What we are trying to accomplish with this conference is to present to the politicians and to the public that the debate is not over about global warming or climate change; that there is plenty of room for disagreement; and that sound science shows that the earth is not warming," said Dan Miller. Miller is director of public relations for The Heartland Institute, who is hosting the event along with about 59 co-sponsors.
Miller said: "For much of the latter part of the 20th century there's been a mild warming as we come out of an ice age -- but the planet today is much cooler than it was a thousand years ago.
"This is the second major international conference devoted to answering questions overlooked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A diverse, much larger audience of about 700 people, including scientists, economists, elected officials, public policy experts from around the world is attending this year. About 100 journalists are expected to come through over the course of the next couple of days; near real-time updates are also available on the Internet via Twitter updates (hash tag #iccc09) and blog postings.
The event demonstrates once again the breadth and high quality of support that the “skeptical” perspective on climate change enjoys. About 80 speakers representing Brazil, Canada, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, England, Sweden, Israel, the United States, and more are on the schedule, with US speaker affiliations including Wharton, MIT, George Mason, NOAA, NASA, and US Dept of Energy. The roster of speakers has hundreds of peer-reviewed papers to its credit, with listed credentials including physicist, astrophysicist, astronaut, state climatologist, meteorologist, geologist, climate modeler, carbon accountant, economist, politician, hydrologist, environmentalist, paleoclimatologist, oceanographer, insects and infectious disease expert, Nobel prize-winning IPCC member, and founder of the Weather Channel. Read more...