At least this year they didn’t bring hockey sticks! In late June I attended the Heartland Institute’s 6th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in Washington DC. This was the second time the organizers invited me to the conference. Every attendee at last year’s conference was handed a two-foot-long hockey stick to reinforce Heartland’s complaints about what they see as an incorrect interpretation of published 1000-year temperature proxy reconstructions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly every speaker at the meeting denounced the climate change science consensus, lambasted mitigation policy, or delved into details about solar cycles and natural climate variability.  

This year Heartland senior fellow James Taylor invited me to present at ICCC, even though he knew I would deliver a very strong and persuasive case for the physical basis of anthropogenic climate change and the dire need for an aggressive policy response. At the meeting, I was treated with respect and even warmth despite my vehement disagreement with most of the other presenters. Heartland gave me a very prominent platform: both an hour-long keynote debate over lunch with Prof. Roy Spencer and a 15-minute plenary presentation in the final panel of the meeting. (more…)