The first day of the Heartland Institute’s 10th International Climate Change Conference has come and gone, and, though as a member of The Heartland Institute I may be a bit biased, it was amazing.
The day opened with a rousing breakfast keynote address by the inspirational leader of the climate realists on Capitol Hill, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe was awarded Heartland’s 2015 Political Leadership on Climate Change Award, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and in exchange treated the assembled attendees a rousing discussion of the highs and lows of his experience fighting for a rational assessment of climate science and climate policy in his tenure as a Senator.
With that as a warm up, the true meat of the conference began with morning breakout sessions on topics including, Climate Science, Climate Science and Accurate Data (at which I was honored to serve as a moderator), Energy Realities and Energy Policy.
The panel on Climate Science and Accurate Data was my favorite, not because I moderated it, just to be clear, but because it was so timely. As anyone stays up to date on climate shenanigans is probably aware, just last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tweaked its data again to find — contrary to every other international data set, the IPCC’s own findings and the world’s weather balloon and satellite data sets, that there has been no pause in the earths warming, rather, contrary to it own previous records, and the records from every other source — the ongoing 18 year hiatus in global warming is to be written out of the temperature records and history books. That’s right NOAA now denies what is obvious to every other scientific body on earth, that despite an ongoing rise in carbon dioxide emissions, the earth has not warmed for nearly two decades. At the same, time, as has been uncovered country after country, has been adjusting or fiddling with their temperature data. Consistently, homogenizing (that’s the word they use) past data to make it appear cooler than was actually recorded, and adjusting more recent data to make it appear warmer than has actually been recorded, with the result that the warming trend appears steeper and the amount of warming experience greater than actual measured temperature show.
Anthony Watts northern California’s KPAY’s resident meteorologist originator of SurfaceStations.org, a Web site devoted to photographing and documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S. led off the panel with a presentation is entitled, Government Gate keepers and the true temperature record. Watt’s explained much of temperature data that we collect, even before the government tampers with the raw data, is simply biased because it is recorded and gathered from inherently unreliable (because of where they are located) surface thermometers.
Then, Dr. Roy Spencer, a giant among climate realists, explained improvements to the weather satellite monitoring network he and colleague, Dr. John Christy, working at the University of Alabama ‚Äì Huntsville, in conjunction with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, created and run.
J. Scott Armstrong, Ph.D. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, closed the panel. He discussed his work with his colleague Kesten Green, the two of whom founded the Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, and International Symposium on Forecasting. Armstrong, Green and others have determined what principles are necessary provide the most accurate forecasts possible, and it will surprise almost no one to know that climate alarmists violate almost every one of them. Armstrong’s presentation was entitled, Global Warming? It’s a forecasting problem.
At lunch, the assembled were treated to another powerful keynote address by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, where he discussed his efforts to ensure that the science used by executive agencies (primarily the EPA) to make regulatory policy is the best science possible, by requiring it be publicly available for testing, replication and, if it happens to be the case, falsification. He detailed promises made by the Obama administration to be transparent and forthcoming with scientific data and how it violated every one of those promises, hiding, attempting to destroy, and avoiding the release of the science used to make clean air and clean water rules.
Closing out lunch, University of Delaware Climatologist, David Legates discussed the trial and travails he has been through in defending sound climate science. For his efforts, Legates was awarded Heartland’s 2015 Courage in Defense of Science Award, sponsored by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The afternoon had panels on the international experience with climate policies, economic analyses of proposed climate policies, and the national security and human health implications of climate change and policies proposed to prevent or slow it.
The first day closed on an uplifting note with the awarding of the Fredrick Seitz Memorial Award, sponsored by the Science and Environmental Policy Project, to prominent physicist William Happer. Happer’s remarks chronicled the Alice in Wonderland fantasy-like ravings climate alarmists.
The conference has international representation, including speakers and attendees from Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Switzerland, Malaysia, the Navajo Nation, New Zealand and the UK. And among the dozens of representatives of the media attending were members of the press in Sweden and Germany.
Also attending were numerous state legislators from across the country including representatives and senators from Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Interviewed by a television crew, one of the questions I was asked was why I I thought the conference was a success. Part of my response was that it would be a success if just one person in the group learned one new thing to help them battle climate alarmists in their attempts transform the economic system of the world and extend government control over peoples lives. However, I pointed out, at ICCC-10, everyone, even veterans of the climate wars such as myself, learned dozens of things they did not know before attending, leaving us all better armed for the ongoing conflict to uphold sound science and economics in the discussion of climate policies.
