‘Cap and Trade’ Meets Skeptics in Chicago

CHICAGO – As the U.S. Senate prepares to take up a bill to counter the effects of global warming, more than 70 of the world’s leading climate scientists, economists, and policymakers will convene in Chicago May 16-18 at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change.
 
“A minority of Americans today believe that human activity is the primary cause of global warming, and that number is dropping rapidly,” said Joseph Bast, president of the sponsoring Heartland Institute. “Even fewer people support complicated cap-and-trade schemes like that being pushed by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) that would sacrifice our liberties and prosperity in seemingly pointless efforts to reduce human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
 
Presenters from 23 nations will address more than 600 attendees at the international conference, and ask tough but necessary questions about what some are calling the Great Global Warming Delusion: Was there ever really a “scientific consensus”? Also, did the release in mid-November of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University reveal a pattern of fraud and suppression of academic debate?
 
Among the featured presenters:
 
* Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose work on the role clouds play in climate sensitivity and global temperatures has put him in the vanguard of global warming skeptics.
 
* Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University will present new data rebutting global warming alarmists who claim to find a dangerous rise in sea levels.
 
* Dr. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute will release new information that should compel the Environmental Protection Agency to re-open its finding that carbon dioxide endangers human welfare.
 
* Dr. Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where he directs a variety of climate research projects, and author of the upcoming “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists.”
 
* Dr. William Gray of Colorado State will present a new paper, “The overwhelming dominance of natural climate change over anything carbon dioxide increases can accomplish.”
 
The conference is open to the public, but admission will be charged. More than 600 scientists, economists, businesspeople, state and federal legislators and regulators, thought leaders, and media representatives already have registered to attend at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, 540 North Michigan Avenue.
 
Complimentary registration is available to qualified print, broadcast, and online journalists. For more information, contact Dan Miller or Tammy Nash at The Heartland Institute, [email protected] or [email protected].
 
The Chicago-based Heartland Institute is a 26-year-old national nonprofit organization funded by 1,800 donors. No corporate donor provides more than 5 percent of Heartland’s $7 million annual budget.