Climate:CLIMATE: NYC conference focuses on 'global warming swindle' (03/03/2008)
Nathanial Gronewold, E&ENews PM reporter
NEW YORK -- More than 500 people have gathered in a Times Square hotel for two days of seminars, panel discussions and movies devoted to the distinctly minority notion that human activity is not a major driver in global warming.
"Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" provides a platform for academics, politicians and others who maintain that there's no scientific consensus on global warming's causes or consequences. In their sights are reports by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
For example, Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told a breakfast session today that the IPCC has ignored data showing the correlation of temperature increases with the rise of urbanization. This is critical, he said, because most land temperatures are taken in cities.
"The problem remains one of determining what part of a given temperature trend is climatically real and what part is the result of observational difficulties and of artificial modifications of the local environment," McKitrick said. "You've got temperature data but a lot of it is coming from the wrong places, from cities and airports and places you don't really want to be measuring it."
And David Douglas, a University of Rochester physics professor, presented research that he said shows IPCC models used to predict future warming failed to accurately track the historical data.
"Can you trust these models to predict the future," Douglas asked, "if they cannot predict the past?"
Douglas and McKitrick were among several speakers who focused on inaccuracies and discrepancies in an effort to show that authors of climate reports had exaggerated findings in a politically motivated effort to spur government action.
But Lisa Moore, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said conference speakers were largely rehashing concerns that the IPCC had addressed long ago. "The science is exceedingly clear," she said. "Now is the time to have the more useful discussion of how to solve the problem."
The Chicago-based Heartland Institute and 50 other organizations are sponsoring the conference. The institute has been tied to the oil, gas and coal industries, but the group no longer discloses its funding sources.
Not everyone at the conference is a climate contrarian. Among the scheduled speakers is Yuri Israel, a vice chairman of the IPCC and science adviser to outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Beyond the speeches and panel discussions are scheduled viewings of documentaries such as "Apocalypse No!" and "The Great Global Warming Swindle."