… But Not What Organizers Wanted

Mainstream media seem to have caught up with climate change denial (caught up with reality, really), just in time to humiliate the assembled “sceptics” at the Heartland Institute’s 2008 International Conference on Climate Change.

While Heartland wants to position the conference as a “smashing success,” the New York Times, CNN – even that raving left-wing apology sheet the Wall Street Journal – have all lifted their delicate hands and snickered. CNN, in a spot that left the cool dudes at Newsbusters apoplectic, went so far as to call the assembled skeptics “flat earthers.” (click on the seventh item here for Miles O’Brien’s actual video.)

It’s interesting, per Andy Revkin’s New York Times piece, that the coal industry’s pet scientist, Pat Michaels, stood up at the conference, acknowledged that humans are causing climate change and predicted a three-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase this century (a relative disaster scenario, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Then he said that was really no problem and that we shouldn’t bother taking any action to prevent this from happening.

If sowing confusion is the goal, these guys are still on their game. But if they were hoping to be taken seriously, alas, time, climate and public understanding has passed them by.