The Heartland Institute along with 20 other supporting organizations sponsored the First International Conference on Climate Change in New York City on March 2-4. Over 500 people attended, with a cross section of specialties – climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astrophysicists, biologists, economists, engineers, government officials, policy makers, and the media – from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and of course, the U.S. Many were current and former members of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who had participated in the reports but did not support the conclusions. Some have quit the I.P.C.C. in disgust.

In his opening remarks, Joe Bast, the Heartland’s president, called the event historic and addressed the questions that the I.P.C.C. had ignored, such as how reliable are the data used to document the recent warming trend? How much of the modern warming is natural, and how much is likely the result of human activities? How reliable are the computer models used to forecast future climate conditions? Is reducing emissions the best or only response to possible climate change?

He noted the attendees have stood up to political correctness and defended the scientific method at a time when doing so threatened their research grants, tenure, and publishing ability. And the attendees should be heard, because the stakes are enormous. Last October, in a column published in Newsweek, George Will wrote that if nations impose the energy use reductions that Al Gore and the folks at RealClimate call for, they will cause “more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot combined.” With regard to the scientific debate, Will wrote “People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.”

Bast noted that Heartland and the attendees had been attacked as shills for Big Oil in the alarmist media and blogs. He said Heartland gets less than 5 percent of its income from all energy-producing companies combined: “We are 95 percent carbon free.” Heartland invited Al Gore to speak, and even agreed to pay his $200,000 honorarium. He refused. We invited some of the well-known scientists associated with the alarmist camp. They also refused.

Bast ended his remarks with this message: “It is my hope, and the reason Heartland Institute organized this conference, that public policies that impose enormous costs on millions of people, in the U.S. and also around the world, will not be passed into law before the fake ‘consensus’ on global warming collapses. Once passed, taxes and regulations are often hard to repeal. Once lost, freedoms are often very difficult to retrieve.”

Over 100 scientists and other attendees spoke in the two sessions (I’ll discuss mine in a story to come). Keynote addresses by Pat Michaels, Bob Balling, Ross McKitrick, Bill Gray, Tim Ball, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer, and John Stossel were all excellent. The most inspirational moments came in an address, “From Climate Alarmism to Climate Realism,” given by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the only head of a major nation who “gets it.” Klaus, with a Ph.D. in economics, was elected president in 2003.

“I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own), and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science, and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries. This ambition goes very much against the past human experience, which has always been connected with a strong motivation to go ahead and to better human conditions. There is no reason to make the from-above-orchestrated change just now – especially with arguments based on such an incomplete and faulty science as is demonstrated by the I.P.C.C.

“I am also afraid that the same people, imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniac ambitions, want to regulate and constrain the demographic development, which is something only the totalitarian regimes have until now dared to think about or experiment with. Without resisting it we would find ourselves on the slippery ‘road to serfdom.’”

In other keynote talks, Ross McKitrick and Bob Balling addressed the contamination issues of global data bases. These include station drop-out, urbanization, and land use changes, which have been improperly adjusted for, resulting in a warming overestimation of up to 50 percent. Similar results have been found in numerous peer reviewed papers in recent years but have been ignored by the I.P.C.C. and the global data centers.

Tim Ball showed how, over time, temperatures have led, NOT followed, rises in carbon dioxide levels. He showed that the sun was more likely to blame for the changes over the millennia, and suggested a cooling on our doorstep. Fred Singer introduced “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate,” a report by 24 scientists (including myself). Based on meetings held last year in Vienna and Rome, it found that the major greenhouse signature is supposedly warming in high atmospheric levels in the low to mid-latitudes. But in actual fact, observations from weather balloons show no warming or even a slight cooling there, invalidating these models as forecast tools.

Bill Gray’s address, “We Are Not in a Climate Crisis,” discussed the importance of the multi-decadal ocean cycles in climate cycles and hurricane frequency, which he explained are the result of regular thermohaline circulation changes. He also explained how water vapor is an issue the climate models get wrong, making them unreliable for climate forecasting. Roy Spencer’s presentation supported this view. Using the new satellite results from National Aeronautics and Space Administration data, he showed how current assumptions about water vapor are wrong. From satellite measurement of water vapor and the resulting cloudiness, it appears that vapor serves as a negative feedback, reducing any greenhouse warming from increasing carbon dioxide.

The results from all these studies show that the evidence is tainted for carbon dioxide’s supposed role in global warming. There is no “DNA match” between the models and observations. In a court of law, carbon dioxide would be acquitted.

The final output from the meeting was a document called “The Manhattan Declaration” (available at http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22866), which summarizes the meeting’s findings.

The attendees left the conference with renewed enthusiasm and new ideas. Many told of others who had wanted to attend but could not get time off from their jobs or afford the trip, or feared their attendance might affect their employment. The 500 attendees are likely just the tip of the iceberg of a silent majority of scientists in climatology, meteorology, and allied sciences who do not endorse what is claimed to be the consensus position.

Major media coverage was limited. The Washington Post brushed over the conference details but went on to call it a sort of global warming doppelganger (the I.P.C.C.’s evil twin), a conference where everything was reversed. It published critical quotes from environmentalists who poked fun at the conference, calling it “Custer’s Last Stand” and referring to attendees as “flat-earthers.” John Tierney of the New York Times provided the only positive coverage from the mainstream media. He published a blog item about the first day of the meeting, and told his readers, “I welcome substantive comments – by which I don’t mean denunciations of ‘deniers’ or ‘eco-Nazis,’ or lazy ad hominem attacks and conspiracy theories about who’s being paid off by whom. Let’s stick to the science, or lack thereof, in this particular critique.” When readers did not listen, he re-blogged in an angry piece called “Global Warming Payola.” “I still find it baffling. Do the critics really think there’s more money and glory to be won by doubting global warming than by going along with the majority?”

The answer is no. The attendees were there because they care what will happen to science and the people and economies of the world if the alarmism is not checked.

Joseph D’Aleo is executive director of Icecap (http://icecap.us) a site publishes climate-related news and information.