Optimists Bite Back (finally)


Today is the last day of the biggest optimist event to date.
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, N.Y. (2-4 March).
The Heartland Institute.
"Plans for the conference include five keynote presentations and 25 panels of scientists discussing a wide variety of global warming-related issues. Approximately 100 experts will give formal presentations at the conference, with several hundred others expected to attend and share information in a more informal manner.
Five tracks of panels will address paleoclimatology, climatology, global warming impacts, the economics of global warming, and political factors. Each track will consist of four or five panels composed of experts on some aspect of the general topic. Many of the presenters will provide written papers to supplement their presentations, which will be collected and edited for publication following the event. Other follow-up activities include planning for a follow-up conference in London in 2009, the launch of a scholarly journal, and publication of a rebuttal to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recently released Fourth Assessment Report."
Sunday:
“It’s a genuine turning point in the global warming debate,” Bast said. “The world can hear us now. The global warming swindle is finally coming to a much-deserved end.”
(Full report)
Monday:
"The first full day of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, hosted by The Heartland Institute and more than 50 cosponsors, was by all accounts an extraordinary success, from the packed breakfast and lunch plenary sessions to the rapt attention given to panelists during the 20 concurrent sessions addressing nearly every aspect of paleoclimatology, climatology, and the economics and politics of climate change."
(Full report)
Tuesday:
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change was a success by every measure: attendance, quality of presentations, media coverage, and as a catalyst for future programs. History may well note that the long and largely unimpeded march of error, exaggeration, and even lies in the campaign to turn climate change into a global "crisis" hit a bump in March 2008, when the advocates of sound science and common sense finally came together to expose and confront it.
It was the conference heard around the world. And its message was deceptively simple: Global warming is not a crisis.
(Full report)

John Tierney's (New York Times) take on the N.Y. conference:
Global-Warming Skeptics Convene in N.Y.
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/global-warming-skeptics-convene-in-ny/
And:
Lessons from the Skeptics’ Conference
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/lessons-from-the-skeptics-conference/
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Monckton's counter to the Gore AIT, "Apocalypse? No! The Scientific Reasons Why 'Global Warming' is NOT a Global Crisis." is available. The DVD is on sale here and a decent review can be found here.
"The IPCC is a ‘corporation’ that puts itself first. It therefore has an interest in maintaining its existence and status.
In order to demonstrate IPCC political bias, Monckton shows 3 statements that were in the 1995 IPCC draft report:
1. None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gasses.
2. No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of observed of observed climate change] to anthropogenic causes.
3. Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.
Politicians 'got at it' and took out the above from the final report which stated:
“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” !"
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On Newsbusters' site, Noel Had this to say about the recent swing in temperature;
Is Winter 2008 Making Climate Alarmists Question Global Warming?
With the winter of 2008 ushering in record-cold temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere -- following similar, albeit mostly unreported, weather in the Southern Hemisphere's 2007 winter -- it seems the resolve of the believers has been a bit weakened, to say the least.
More.
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Steve Mc (Climate Audit) reports on his recent visit to Georgia Tech:
On Thursday, I spent most of the day seeing interesting and substantive work in areas unrelated to anything that I’d written about - things like establishing metrics for aerosols using Köhler Theory or laboratory procedures for speleothems. And whatever other criticisms people may have of me, I don’t think anyone has ever criticized me for not finding interest in details and methods. On Friday, I heard an extremely interesting exposition on the physical basis of hurricanes and their role in the overall balance of nature. An interesting context here (and one that I was previously unaware of) is Peter Webster’s interest in monsoons and Bangladesh.
On Thursday, I was also guest at a seminar on climate and the media (including blogs); on Friday early afternoon prior to my EAS seminar, there was a short Q and A session with the Hockey Stick class. At 3.30 Friday afternoon, I presented to the EAS seminar. I didn’t count the crowd, but it looked like there were about 100 people there, including a couple of (non-GA Tech) CA readers from Atlanta. There was a short question period after the presentation and then a beer-and-wine reception.
More.
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Finally a link to the optimists' answer to IPCC assessment reports'
propaganda, the NIPCC report. (pdf)
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate.
Contributors
Warren Anderson United States, Dennis Avery United States, Franco Battaglia Italy, Robert Carter Australia, Richard Courtney United Kingdom, Joseph d’Aleo United States, Fred Goldberg Sweden, Vincent Gray New Zealand, Kenneth Haapala United States, Klaus Heiss Austria, Craig Idso United States, Zbigniew Jaworowski Poland, Olavi Karner Estonia, Madhav Khandekar Canada, William Kininmonth Australia, Hans Labohm Netherlands, Christopher Monckton United Kingdom, Lubos Motl Czech Republic, Tom Segalstad Norway, S. Fred Singer United States, Dick Thoenes Netherlands, Anton Uriarte Spain, Gerd Weber Germany.