Heartland right over the target with triumphant climate change conference

Guest essay by Tom Harris

The mainstream media’s attack on the 16th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC16) held last week in Washington, D.C. tells The Heartland Institute, the principal organizers of the event, that they are right over the target and should keep bombing away. The press doesn’t waste its time criticizing events that don’t matter. They would not be even remotely concerned were it not for the fact that the leading experts at ICCC16 so effectively dismantled the most cherished and vulnerable asset of climate activists, namely the supposedly “settled science” propping up the climate scare.

This is analogous to the experience of Air Force bomber pilots. An enemy won’t waste ammunition defending something unless they consider it both valuable and vulnerable.

In 2013, World War II Lancaster bomber pilot “Sandy” Mutch (then 93 years of age) explained to me, “On bombing raids over Europe, we could tell we were closing in on the target when we started to get the most flak.” That was because important German assets were often surrounded by anti-aircraft guns that filled the sky with AAA fire. And rather than being deterred by the resistance, it told Bomber Command exactly where the next wave of aircraft should concentrate their attack.

That is why we need to carefully examine media assaults on ICCC16 (Heartland lists many of them here), to help climate realists focus our efforts to win the war for the hearts and minds of Americans.

Arguably, the most significant of the attacks on ICCC16 appeared on April 9 in the New York Times in the article “Climate change denial sees a resurgence in Trump’s Washington” by Maxine Joselow.While the article was largely nonsensical, its repeated use of the term “denial” is instructive, nonetheless. Climate activists recognize that any point of view can be effectively discredited by making an analogy, even indirectly, with Holocaust denial. We can take advantage of this by pointing out that it is both irrational and offensive to Holocaust survivors and their families to equate the remote possibility of future climate problems with one of the most horrific events in history.

Then we should explain that the speakers at ICCC16 were the opposite of climate change deniers—they say that climate change occurs all the time and has done so since the origin of Earth’s atmosphere billions of years ago. And thank God for that. Otherwise, we would be stuck in the climate of 25,000 years ago when mile-thick glacial ice covered almost all of Canada and the northern US. As I told the audience at the start of my presentation, “I deny that I deny climate change. I am a denial denier!”

In reality, speakers at ICCC16 sensibly questioned how much the climate has changed in recent years and the degree to which it is has been caused by human activity. They showed that both are undoubtedly very small and are nothing to be concerned about.

None of this seems to have gotten through to Times writer Joselow, however, who repeatedly called conference attendees “deniers” and lamented that “The event made clear that climate change deniers are experiencing a triumphant resurgence in Trump’s Washington after years of feeling sidelined by the scientific and political establishments.”

That is partly correct—there was indeed a triumphant air to the conference as, at last, the federal government is actually basing energy and environmental policy on reliable science. However, it was left-leaning media, political establishments—especially the Democratic Party—and some research grant-seeking scientific establishments who had sidelined climate realists, not the science itself. Genuine science welcomes skepticism over compliance with politically correct narratives. When critics would call him a skeptic, historical climatologist Dr. Tim Ball, Heartland’s 2019 Winner of the Lifetime Achievement in Climate Science, would simply respond, “Thank you!”

Joselow incorrectly paraphrased Heartland president James Taylor when she wrote, “Taylor said the second Trump administration had done more for the climate change denial movement than any other administration in history.” In describing the immense boost the current Trump administration has given those of us who promote unbiased science, Taylor asserts that he never referred to us as part of “the climate change denial movement.”

The fact that Joselow was so concerned that Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin was a prominent keynote speaker at ICCC16 tells us that he was exactly the right person to lead off the conference. Unlike most government officials, even most of those on our side of the issue who make vague statements designed to offend no one, Zeldin hit the nail right on the head with a sledgehammer.

“We aren’t just following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom-and-gloom prediction of the day is,” Zeldin, never one to pull his punches, told the audience of about 220 in the main ballroom (and thousands more online). “We won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end.”

Referring to the Obama administration’s finalization of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the EPA administrator told ICCC16, “They don’t ever talk about what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet.”

Zeldin concluded by congratulating the audience, “You never accepted flawed, pessimistic assumptions. You never accepted taxpayer dollars getting lit on fire. You never accepted having agency heads getting creative with the law and saying, if the law doesn’t say we can’t, then I guess we can.”

“This morning and today, all of you gathered here in DC is a moment to celebrate. It is a day of vindication!”

No wonder Joselow was upset. As EPA Administrator, Zeldin is clearly a keeper!

Sandy Mutch, who passed away on April 15, 2018, at the age of 98,told me:

“I lost many of my best friends and colleagues in the war, but we were doing it to defend our society from deadly enemies. Canada [and indeed the world] now needs leaders with the courage to stand up to today’s deadly enemies, climate campaigners who are bent on destroying the energy sources we need to maintain a prosperous society.

“No one is asking politicians to risk their lives as many in my generation did. But they must be strong enough to take the flak that always comes when you are directly attacking your enemy’s most important asset. In this case, it is also their most vulnerable asset…”

Mutch, who held a Master of Science degree from the University of Toronto (1951) and who even prepared some of his own YouTube videos on the topic, explained:

“Anyone who wants to kill the dangerous and unfounded climate scare … should focus on exposing the shaky science behind climate alarm. That is the Achilles heel of the whole movement. Shoot it down, and you win the war!”

The Heartland Institute, and ICCC16 conference co-hosts CFACT, the CO₂ Coalition, and Watts Up With That, and their allies are today’s bomber pilots. We should give them all the support they need to finally defeat the climate change disease plaguing our society.

Originally published in America Out Loud.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.