The Loneliness of Being A Skeptic in Copenhagen

Tom Harris, the Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition and a former PR executive with the High Park Group, was one of the organisers of the Copenhagen Climate Challenge as an alternative to COP15 conference. The conference was co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Danish group, Climate Sense. Speakers, dubbed in promotional material as "climate realists", featured high-profile skeptics including S. Fred Singer, Professor Ian Plimer and Christopher Monckton. John Vidal reports in The Guardian that the only clue he could find to the location of the conference was a sticker depicting "a happy-looking Eskimo standing on a clearly melting ice flow with a cheerful sun beaming down on him and his ice-cream under the words 'Hurra global warming'". One journalist noted that the conference was attended by only 60 people, comprising 15 journalists, 18 speakers and 27 audience members. One journalist estimated that the audience had "an average age well above 60" while another noted that attendees were "exclusively male".