Profiling the Global Warming Skeptics

Submitted by Bob Burton on

The core of the small global network of global warming skeptics are once more gathering at a conference organized by the Heartland Institute, a corporate and foundation funded think tank based in Chicago. In their ad (pdf) promoting the conference, Heartland claims that those attending will be "calling attention to new research that contradicts claims that Earth’s moderate warming during the twentieth century primarily was man-made and has reached crisis proportions."

The list of speakers and free-market think tanks co-sponsoring the conference provides a reasonably comprehensive guide to the most active of the remaining global warming skeptics. We are aiming to ensure that there are reasonably detailed profiles on the most prominent of the speakers at the conference and at least a 'stub' page in SourceWatch on each of the speakers and sponsoring think tanks. (A stub page need only comprise a sentence or two and some basic formatting, but the more comprehensive it is the better.) Once created, the new page will be indexed by Google and other search engines and quickly rise to near the top of search results. Once it's high up in the search results, the article will serve as a quick reference resource for interested citizens and journalists. You don't need to be an expert on climate change policy -- we have created a guide to the sorts of information that will be useful.

If you would like to help, go to the project page and follow the steps set out in the notes. Have fun, and thanks for your help!

Main Source: 
Project on the Heartland Institute's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change
Topics: 
Climate Change
Science
Think Tanks

Comments

Anonymous replied on

Friends,

Your attempt to convince people that humans are causing a global warming crisis would be more credible if you were more honest in your depictions.

You claim, "The list of speakers and the free-market think tanks co-sponsorsing the conference provides a reasonably comprehensive guide to the most active of the remaining global warming skeptics." This attempt to mislead your readers about the large number of scientists who are skeptical of a human-induced global warming crisis makes one wonder about your commitment to truth and honesty.

As an organizer of the conference, I have had so many impeccably credentialed scientists ask to speak that I have had to beat them off with a stick. Of the more than 100 speakers at last year's conference, we have been able to invite less than half of them back because we have had so many inquiries from scientists who we could not fit on last year's agenda. Sitll other highly credentialed scientists are waiting in the wings for 2010 because we haven't been able to fit them into the 2009 or 2009 program. And even then, we will only be able to invite a minority of them because there are way too many scientists to fit on the agenda.

Moreover, these are some of the most brilliant minds in science speaking out against the so-called global warming crisis. Among the speakers at next week's conference are scientists from Harvard, MIT, NASA, NOAA, etc. etc.

If the science is on your side, then you shouldn't feel the need to deliberately misrepresent the nature of your opposition and their scientific arguments. If you encourage a fair, open, and respectful discussion, the truth will eventually prevail.

James M. Taylor
Senior Fellow, Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute

Mutternich replied on

you wouldn't mind accepting CMD's general invitation to create stub articles in SourceWatch for some of these people. Couldn't hurt you, right? :-)