The Heartland Institute organized a gathering of the clans this week in New York City. Skeptics of various shades and stripes sat in on panel discussions and heard speakers make pronouncements along a spectrum of opinion. "Registration for the event exceeded 550" according to one of several press releases I received. I had hoped to go for a few hours, but other priorities won out , plus I'm under the weather, as it were, with a cold. Andrew Revkin, the "NY Times" climate change beat reporter (and the author of Dot Earth, the popular blog), wrote this article today: Cool View of Science at Meeting on Warming. (I've written about the skeptics before here. I reference a terrific article there by Sharon Begley at "Newsweek" – The Truth About Denial.)
Revkin writes that "The main targets at the meeting were former Vice President Al Gore, who has portrayed global warming as a "planetary emergency,' and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four sets of reports assessing the human impact on climate over 20 years." You know how those uppity Nobel Peace Prize winners are. Al Gore truly is one of the most popular "targets" of modern times. I've also written that, at least as far as climate change goes, there are any number of prominent folks in the world, who will tell you what Gore tells you, and sometimes more. See If You Don't Like Al Gore, Then
Revkin's story on the conference was preceded on Sunday by Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell. The "hook" here is a blog post from one Marc Morano, communications director for the Republican minority on the US Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, in which he claims that Earth's ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way. Michael Schlesinger, a scientist quoted in the "NY Times" piece, is skeptical about the skeptics: "any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction."
"Nuff said.
