WASHINGTON, DC (March 23, 2017) — Three hundred very happy scientists, economists, elected officials, and medical doctors – and one astronaut – gathered in Washington, DC on Thursday for the first of two days of presentations on the science, economics, and politics of climate change.
Spirits were high as speaker after speaker congratulated one another for persuading the new Trump administration to “end the Obama administration’s war on fossil fuels waged under the false flag of ‘global warming.'”
The conference, the Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change organized by The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization, featured such topics as the impact of climate change on human health, “fossil fuels and world peace,” and the “social cost of carbon.”
In opening remarks, the president of The Heartland Institute, Joseph Bast, said, “Most scientists don’t believe climate change is mostly man-made and dangerous. Most of the public don’t believe it, either. Now, we have a president who doesn’t believe it.”
Myron Ebell, who chaired the Trump transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, was on hand to address the audience and receive an award for “speaking truth to power.” He said the conference was “the most important event to educate Washington, DC on climate science since President Trump took office.”
Steven Milloy, another member of Trump’s EPA transition team, said the event was “a great opportunity for climate realists to strategize for the Trump administration on what to do about climate change.”
Willie Soon, a prominent climate scientist whose research shows the human influence on climate is smaller and less predictable than claimed by government scientists working for the Obama administration, was also on the program. He said, “no one should be surprised when history records that this conference and the eleven that preceded it played a major role in protecting open and objective science at a time when politics and the tactics of intimidation threatened to extinguish it.”
On the schedule for Friday are Christopher Monckton, a science advisor to Margaret Thatcher; Dr. William Happer, a distinguished professor of physics at Princeton University; and scientists and economists affiliated with several think tanks. The conference is being live-streamed at Heartland.org.
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
