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The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, issued a press release this morning about The Heartland Institute titled “Climate Deniers Congregate in the Nation’s Capital.”
On Wednesday, a day before Heartland’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (which you can watch live starting a little after 8 a.m. June 30), CAP will host a conference call to offer what amounts to a “prebuttal” to our event.
This is progress, all right — for us. Let me explain.
For years, the press and the global-warming-alarmist crowd thought the best counter-strategy to The Heartland Institute’s climate conferences — the first, second, third, fourth and fifth events we put on — was to either ignore them, or engage in quick mockery and move on. No matter how many scientists we brought in to talk about what the real data shows about the climate — as opposed to flawed, and always-wrong computer models — the enviro-left’s strategy never wavered. Until now. Something has changed.
As Al Gore laments in a temper tantrum of an essay in Rolling Stone, the public is wising up. Despite decades of media- and Hollywood-fueled cries that the man is destroying the planet, fewer and fewer Americans believe the hype. Slowly but surely, the real scientific evidence — which Heartand has helped bring forth — is eclipsing the alarmist message. And the enviro-left is panicking. That’s why CAP is hosting its Tuesday conference call.
As Gandhi is said to have said:
First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.
We’re well into Stage 3 at this point.
I want to take this opportunity to invite staffers from the Center for American Progress to ICCC-6, as well as the folks who will be countering Heartland’s conference on their press call — The Honorable Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Dr. Heidi Cullen, and Dr. Joseph Romm. There’s time allotted for Q&A after every presentation, and our scientists will gladly field their challenging questions. Any and all can register here.
That reminds me … It’s a myth that only “deniers” are invited to Heartland climate conferences. We always invite the “other side,” but few take the challenge. One who did, atmospheric scientist Scott Denning of Colorado State University, gushed about how well he and his views were received at ICCC-4 in Chicago last year and urged his colleagues to join him:
I learned a lot here. … I actually feel that it’s really too bad that more of my colleagues from the scientific community didn’t attend this, and haven’t in the past. And I hope we can remedy that in the future. … We can learn quite a bit from each other. … I think the most important thing that we have in common is the following: that we we think we need public policy that is based on facts, rather than facts that are based on a policy agenda.
You can watch the 4-minute video of him saying so here. Denning is funny, and sincere. It’s worth your time.
But I can’t let the press release by CAP pass without a necessary correction. The organization’s Christina DiPasquale writes:
The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch …
This is a common and inaccurate trope of the left when mentioning The Heartland Institute — and if I corrected every one I see on the Web, I’d do nothing else with my days. For the record: ExxonMobil has not contributed to Heartland since 2006 — and even then, the company’s gifts were quite modest, though appreciated. And the Kochs have not sent money Heartland’s way for more than a decade. At what point does the statute of limitations run out on such things? (More info on Heartland’s funding can be found here.)
And neither “bogeyman” of the left is funding this conference, nor has funded any of our past conferences. (An aside: Whenever I see all this Koch obsession on the left, I always think that the folks at Halliburton must be feeling lonely and neglected these days. They used to be superstars! They were the Evil Empire with Darth Cheney directing everything. Their Jedi powers were unrivaled. But now, they are relegated to the dustbin of leftist obsession history — or Tatooine, which ever is worse. )
Anyway, here’s the info on CAP’s prebuttal. Please call in if you want to hear their take. And if you’re game to challenge their view, that’s an even better reason to call in.
When:
Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 2:00 p.m. EST
Call info: 877-210-8943
Conference ID: 78485484
RSVP:
Please contact Christina DiPasquale at cdipasquale@americanprogress.org or 202.481.8181
**Please note that this call will be recorded. By participating in the call, you consent to be recorded.**
So I hope we see Cullen and Romm and Rep. Boehlert at ICCC-6. It would be a better conference with them in attendance, adding to the conversation.
UPDATE, JUNE 28: A website called Climate Progress, edited by Joe Romm, will be covering Heartland’s conference. They have already reached out to request interviews with some of our speakers. We’ll see what kind of coverage they provide.
