Essay by Eric Worrall
A Guardian journalist reports back from the Heartland Conference.
Inside a jubilant DC conference where ‘the climate deniers are in charge now’
Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say
Dharna Noor in Washington DCTue 14 Apr 2026 23.00 AEST
…
The clearest sign of the crowd’s rising power was the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general. “It is a day to celebrate vindication,” he said on Wednesday morning.
…
“Twenty years ago it would have been shocking … for the EPA administrator to take seriously a group of people whose positions are so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,” said Oreskes. “But essentially, climate deniers are in charge now.”
…
The youth-focused panel was disrupted by activists with Climate Defiance.
…
In an interview, an organizer of the protest who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation said the action was intended to ensure the panel was not “allowed to go undisrupted”, especially because the panel’s audience “was almost entirely geriatric white men who will not live to see the effects of climate change the way that my generation will”.
“The message that we wanted to bring was that climate change denial is not just a matter of a difference of opinions,” said the organizer, adding that they do not believe efforts to spread climate denial to youth will be effective. “These people think that they are untouchable and that they can spread this kind of misinformation entirely unchecked? No.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/14/dc-conference-climate-deniers-trump-epa-chief
…
A tweet from Climate Defiance about their disruption of Heartland, claiming to speak on behalf of young people;
“These people think they are untouchable” sounds a bit ominous. But desperation is to be expected in times like these. The collapse of the climate movement and climate funding is forcing activists to make painful decisions, like whether to apply for a job.
Classic projection
In my book, a big case of deliberate spreading of misinformation came from US climate scientist Ben Santer who interrupted the agreed IPCC science position prepared for their second assessment report, 1995, that there was inadequate science to link mankind to causes of climate change.
Santer simply stood up and said “the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate”. This immediately became accepted wisdom.
To date, this link has been accepted with little attempt to support it with data.
What a porky! Geoff S
But it’s been supported with plenty of propaganda.
Warning: AI political lawfare incoming-
Australian federal court warns lawyers over ‘unacceptable’ use of AI
“The collapse of the climate movement and climate funding is forcing activists to make painful decisions, like whether to apply for a job.”
I wonder how many will realize they’ve spent (time) exporting those possible jobs to countries without the environmental regulations they’ve been supporting.
Starbucks is fully staffed.
With all of the purple-haired, face-pierced, sex pretenders.
Just be more optimistic. As far as I’m concerned an estimated 1.6 million migrants voluntarily self-deported in 2025. They were often involved with construction, agriculture, hospitality, cleaning and delivery sectors. Some vacancies are still open and the activists do have a life chance to become useful to society.
Activists (mostly liberal white women) only want brown people to do THOSE jobs.
Oh yes, they were lame. And I loved the bleach obsession. These so-called truth tellers peddling a lie that left wing fact checkers like Politifact won’t go with. Good job, guys. What lie are you planning to use next time?
They seem suitably upset; very bad losers too.
Leftists are always bad losers. Instead of admitting the failed results of their policy, they stick with “Socialism is really gonna work this time guys, believe us!!!
Yes, like Saint Obama said: “Elections have consequences”.
While I REALLY appreciate “Watts Up with That,” it’s fair to demand editorial integrity.
This article fails at one point, when it used the phrase “Guardian journalist.”
I challenge the author to identify one actual journalist on the Guardian staff. Opinion writer or reporter, biased projectioneer, propaganda artist, etc., yes.
Journalist? No.
Churnalists.
I’m not the author but a name is linked and highlighted in red.
Following the link.
“Dharna NoorDharna Noor is a fossil fuels and climate reporter at Guardian US”
Guardian US?! It seems the cancer has metastasized.
So, not a “journalist”, just another spewer of lies. Well, to be honest, that is what “journalist” has meant for 40 odd years.
My bad 🙂
You were just too kind. [:-)
Keep up the good work…or keep fighting the good fight!!
They were indeed pathetic anti-intellectuals. It was good seeing Will Happer act as a bounce at last call to help escort the misanthrope out the door.
These are the same folks who believe boys can turn into girls and men can turn into women. Nothing about their ability to believe what they want to believe surprises me.
If they belive that, it’s no wonder they fell for the CAGW scam.
#WillHapperSecurityService!
I was actually right there in the room when the sideways hat guy started his clumsy trash, I thought for the first few seconds it was a funny skit that panelist Lucy Biggers had inserted into her presentation to ridicule the science-illiterate closed-minded youth zealots she’s now valiantly trying to enlighten. But when I saw Dr Happer among those helping to shove the idiot out – wow!
Hugely impolite as his intrusion was, rather than bodily throwing him out which is probably what the dolt expected so that he could provide fodder for his pals and the propagandists at the Grauniad, what I would’ve recommended is hauling him instead up onto the stage and giving him a microphone and telling him “explain now to this audience all how our science assessments are wrong.” The pathetic guy would run out of the talking points he’s been fed in two minutes or less, and if we hit with a non-stop barrage of science-based questions, he’d realize how acutely embarrassing this is for him, and he’d then hurriedly leave the room while we say “no, wait, stay and see if you really can defend your opinion!“
He wouldn’t have complied by answering any questions. He would have just shouted and made noise. That’s all they know how to do.
“the misanthrope”
You don’t often see people with a negative IQ !!
“so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,” IS Oreskes. -fixed.
Yeah, Oreskes is propagandizing again. Her side is the one without the facts.
The Grauniad just had to have a quote from her for this article. Don’t get me started on all her fatal faults ….
“Summary for Policymakers: Naomi Oreskes“
There are some basic facts no one should deny.
For example the latest high-sensitivity models used in the IPCC6 report produced unrealistic results.
Older models lack their improved resolution and physics.
As climate alarmism is model based, it is therefore currently in a unscientific position.
If you have to run a model thousands of times, and average all those runs together to get something that sort of resembles reality, then the models are utterly useless.
The models are utterly useless because the underlying assumptions they are built on are not true.
“‘the climate deniers are in charge now’”
I just stepped outside and checked.
The temperature on my front porch is 83.1*F and it’s breezy.
I don’t deny that.
(I suspect the Sun has something to do with it but, try as I might, I can’t control it.)
Did you exhale?
Did the 20K to 40K ppm you exhaled create a tipping point or raise the temperature?
No? Hmmm….. /s
And where I am it’s 39F and mostly cloudy.
WAIT! I know! We can average those together and and it will be totally useful!
And you will be totally safe! /s
I notice oracle Oreskes is still around. Wow, after all those years.
She is the go-to propagandist.
They are no longer ignoring skeptics like they used to. Means we are beyond Gandhi’s stage 1:
”First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
Don’t count your chickens . . . . . . . . .
Yes. When Trump is out of office, this will all come back with a vengeance. We’re really screwed.
Reversals (of policy and reality) are already in progress: Since Virginia’s Youngkin left office, Abigail Spanberger has rejoined the “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” (Cap and trade mandates for power companies); expanded solar and wind initiatives (525 megawatt expansion of solar this year)… and revived a gaggle of fawning journalists proclaiming her “landmark clean energy initiatives”, which will “bring back affordability” for ratepayers. Average residential electricity continues its upward grind, up again this year to nearly 16 cents / kWh and no reprieve in the foreseeable future.
She has also signed a law that automatically gives VA’s 13 electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote. Several states have done so already, only a few more and the electoral college is no more.
No to charter shools; expanded teacher salaries, and the beat goes on…
Classic low level thinking presentation.
Smears, Insults, Projection, irrelevance.
I just watched the video.
They reminded me of the other idiots that block traffic at intersections thinking they’ve accomplished something.
They have accomplished something….. making themselves look ridiculously stupid and ignorant.
The “climate” protesters are really, really good at that. !
…the panel’s audience “was almost entirely geriatric white men who will not live to see the effects of climate change the way that my generation will”.
Really? Your generation is complaining that it isn’t getting a shot at the affluence that my generation supposedly got as a matter of birthright. The globalist climate agenda virtually guarantees that you will not.
As an 84 y o scientist with marbles intact, I can state from experienced observation that there is a big difference between the workforce of the 1970s and the workforce of today in western countries.
In the 1970s, a larger % of paid jobs produced gains to the national income through productivity. That is, more jobs created products that could be sold for dollars.
Today, too big a % of the workforce is producing products that cannot be sold for $$$. They might be paid to think, but if nobody wants to buy their thoughts then national income levels fall.
This effect is supported by figures showing job increases in the bureaucracies outstripping increases in (say) manufacture of goods or primary production.
Sure, there is a place for sport and entertainment, but there is a net loss to a society when in modern fashion 80,000 people sit watching a few athletes kick pigskin around an arena when they might be picking fruit around an orchard, saving the need to pay for imported farm labour. Geoff S
That’s a good point. We were so successful that we could afford to do that without thinking about it. Will we continue to be able to do so?
40 some odd years ago when I was a young economics student, I recall a discussion with a friend who was concerned that computers would be eliminating all the jobs. His parents were both academics employed in academia and he was on track to be the same. My argument was that this was only a viable path because of the vast productivity of our economy that allowed surplus to be diverted exclusively from wealth producers to be directed to purely academic activity, whether it ultimately added to the economy or not.
This paradigm only gets to continue to exist as long as the producers and the state allow it to. Now that the size of academia has exploded and has been exposed for as much fraud as it has, will this continue to be the case?
Climate Denier is a misleading expression. We do not deny climate or climate change we just say that is mostly NOT caused by man nor the burning of fossil fuels. Most reputable scientists have this position. The lefty woke mainstram and authoritarian power elites are at last being shown up because they cannot and do not explain their position.
“All the scientific evidence?!
😄😅😆🤣😂
THERE IS NONE.
The only people spreading “misinformation”ate idiots like Orestes who have been spewing it for close to FOUR DECADES.
A warmer climate IS BETTER.
These idiots are telling people to panic when they should be celebrating. WARM climate periods ARE THE BEST. The Little Ice Age climate, aka “pre-industrial” climate, WOULD BE a “climate catastrophe” with 8 Billion to feed.
“a group of people whose positions are so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,”
Show me the evidence. Not models. Not conjectures. Not redefined science and engineering terminology. Evidence.
Yes, what evidence?
They don’t have any evidence. They are blowing smoke.
Exactly. Put that clown up on the stage, aim the spotlight straight at him and dim all the rest of the lights, and ask him to stand and deliver. We’d have to handcuff him to the podium because he’d run in terror away from that challenge. But it’s not just him who fears that challenge, it’s the whole top end spectrum of the CAGW pushers who flee from debate.
They flee because they don’t have any answers.
They don’t really flee, they just shout you down and make noise.
You’d do better to handcuff him to the lectern.
Losing is an ugly thing one piece of advice, try not to look stupid while you are being ugly.
Two favorite related sayings, both attributed to Winston Churchill.
The ‘Madame’ of the first quote was Lady Nancy Astor. She and Winston loathed each other. Aside from her strong support for women’ voting rights, she was a strident antiSemite and antiCatholic. She made a number of statements in the 1930s in support of Hitler’s policies to suppress the Jews.
A canny guy, that Churchill. He also described one of his political opponents as having “…risen without trace”.
The second has been attributed to Mark Twain
2 is a Bible verse ….
Proverbs 23?
Perhaps you are thinking of this?
Proverbs 17:28 Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. ( KJV)
Story Tip:
I followed the author to the Guardian site to this:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
This is a 2021 publication.
The claim is, based on a random sample of 3000 peer reviewed paper TITLES and ABSTRACTS.
They could not identify very many skeptic papers as the “predictive keywords” were not in those abstracts.
What is fascinating is they included 1869 papers that were categorized as “No Position” in the total of the consensus. They did, however, discard 282 papers that were “not climate-related,” but included 4 papers that were “opinions.”
I did not dive into which journals, which authors, or other demographics were applicable to those 3000 papers.
Perhaps this has bee previously addressed by WUWT? I searched but came up empty..
Not the “climate deniers” but the “climate realists” as greater numbers of general populations worldwide have realized that the “climate crisis’, if not an outright scam, has been grossly exaggerated. There has been nothing in the climate that has been beyond the usual historical fluctuations and certainly not anything that can’t be handled beyond the usual adjustments and precautions. So there’s no need for carbon pricing by governments just looking for for ways to generate tax revenue, nor is there any need for new laws, restrictions or overpriced green product mandates that are already receiving too much in subsidies.
LOL.. What a bunch of WHINGING LOSERS. !
As a retired geologist, my personal opinion is that Naomi Oreskes PhD, is a disgrace to the profession. Much like Michael E Mann is to the general field climate science.
I agree.
She completely misstates the whole climate change situation.
If you are looking for the truth, believe just the opposite of what she says.
“Twenty years ago it would have been shocking … for the EPA administrator to take seriously a group of people whose positions are so patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence,” said Oreskes. “But essentially, climate deniers are in charge now.”
And here is why.
GHE’s imaginary 396 BB/333 “back”/63 duplicate loop is an extraneous figment of instrumental self-deception.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/water vapor/30% albedo not warmer. Near Earth outer space is 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. 288 K w – 255 K w/o = 33 C cooler -18 C Earth is just flat wrong. Dividing 1,368 by 4 to average 342 over Spherical ToA is wrong.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics don’t balance and violate LoT. Refer to TFK_bams09.
Solar balance 1: 160 in = 17 + 80 + 63 out. Balance complete.
Calculated balance 2: 396 S-B BB at 16 C / 333 “back” radiation cold to warm w/o work violates Lot 2. 63 LWIR net duplicates balance 1 violating GAAP.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation. Entering: 30% albedo = not BB. OLR: 17sensible & 80 latent = not BB. TFK_bams09: 97 out of 160 leave by kinetic processes, 63 by LWIR = not BB. As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
RGHE theory is as much a failure as caloric, phlogiston, luminiferous ether, spontaneous generation and several others.
When GHE fails the entire CAGW house of cards implodes like the Titan submersible.
There is no “extra” GHE back radiation because there is no upwelling BB. So called measurements are figments of precisely calibrated imagination.
By definition a BB must emit all it absorbs.
Absorbed = 160
Emitted = 17 + 80 + 63 (not BB)
Physical emissivity 1 = 63/160 = 0.39 (for heat balances)
Theoretical emissivity 2 at 16 C = 63/396 = 0.16 (For correcting IR instruments)
Because of the significant (60% per TFK_bams09) non-radiative, i.e. kinetic, heat transfer processes of the contiguous participating atmospheric molecules the surface cannot upwell “extra” energy as a near Black Body.
As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
or search: “Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder”
Oreskes is the one who is patently at odds with all of the scientific evidence.
Oreskes says there is evidence of human-caused climate change. She is wrong. She could not provide this evidence if her life depended on doing so.
Want to shut a Climate Alarmist up? Ask them for the evidence for their claim. Alarmists have no answer. Try it.
Many skeptics have asked alarmists for evidence for all the years this meme has been in existence and to date, alarmist have never given an adequate answer. That would be because they don’t have any evidence.
Correct, Climate Alarmists? You could prove me wrong by providing a little evidence to shut me up, but you won’t because you don’t have any.
Climate Alarmists won’t even acknowledge a challenge like this. All we will get is silence. Wait and see.
It’s so easy to refute Climate Alarmists. You just have to ask for their evidence.
I usually get some variation on either models are proof, or they can’t think of anything else, so it must be CO2.
Or they throw out the bogus Hockey Stick chart’s distorted temperature profile.
Some little birdie told me the following equation describes the “net” or “back” radiation between two systems, one warm at T1 and a second at T2. How do we know? Well, the subscript says so.
Qnet/t = σ ϵ A (T1^4 – T2^4)
Two systems require two of each of these.
Qnet/t is Btu/Eng h or kJ/SI h or Watts.
σ is the S-B BB hocus pocus factor, 0.0000000567 W/(m^2 K)
ϵ is emissivity, ratio between radiation leaving a system and 1) total energy or 2) BB surface at system temperature.
A is surface m^2
T Celsius units on the Kelvin scale.
Well, no explanation of how full S-B equation terms were assumed/combined &/or omitted to end up with just 1 system not 2.
There is only 1A in the equation not 2 and 1A system cannot have two temperatures simultaneously.
This equation quantifies the work required of a refrigeration loop to cool A1 from T1 to T2.
No “net” or “back” involved.
Not that it matters: 396 BB/333 “back”/63 duplicate GHE “extra” energy loop is 100% imaginary.
So incorrect…it’s just a nonsense graphic Nicholas….characterizing a refrigeration cycle using radiative heat transfer equations must be a “Schroeder physics” concept.
Calling σ, 0.0000000567 W/(m^2 K), the S-B BB “hocus pocus” factor, is well into flat-earther stuff.
It was interesting to me that the organiser of the protest used the term ‘geriatric white men’ in a derogatody way. This is clearly a racist term. It conveys the idea that white people are bad or stupid just because they are white. It is a racist slur because there are plenty of global warming skeptics of different skin tones and skin colours. The ‘organiser’ should apologose, and apologise, for it.
C’mon, you gotta get with the intersectionality. It wasn’t just racist. It was racist, ageist and sexist. It was derogatory against white people, but also old people and males in general. It was a trifecta.
Yet all of the people out protesting whatever Trump has done lately are all geriatric white people.
Not all, but most of the politicians with TDS are.
Pretty much 90% of the people I see protesting lately are at least as old as I am (64)
Damn . Can’t post 3 LoL emojis