March 10, 2008

The 2008 International Conference
on Climate Change Took Place in
New York City -
CFACT One of the Co-Sponsors

"This is a truly historic event, the first international conference devoted to answering questions overlooked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." said Joseph Bast, President of the Heartland, a Chicago-based think tank, at the opening of the event.

And he continued: "We're asking questions such as:

• how reliable are the data used to document the recent warming trend?
• how much of the modern warming is natural, and how much is likely the result of human activities?
• how reliable are the computer models used to forecast future climate conditions? and
• is reducing emissions the best or only response to possible climate change?

Obviously, these are important questions. Yet the IPCC pays little attention to them or hides the large amount of doubt and uncertainty surrounding them. Are the scientists and economists who ask these questions just a fringe group, outside the scientific mainstream? Not at all."

Panelists and speakers included such scientific authorities as atmospheric physicist Ferenc M. Miskolczi, meteorologist Prof. S. Fred Singer, climatologist professor Robert Balling, Arizona State University, paleoclimatologist Prof. Fred Goldberg from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, or physics professor David Douglass, University of Rochester, New York, USA, to name but a few. An address by the Hon. Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic received thundering standing ovations from a the audience.

CFACT itself was one of the 52 co-sponsors of the conference. Various of the organization's fellows and advisors such as Paul Driessen, Bonner Cohen and Gerd-Rainer Weber were among the panelists. The student outreach of CFACT had an opportunity to present its activities on campuses in the exhibition area. Various other CFACT-board members, advisors and fellows from various European countries and the US attended the event as guests.

Areas discussed covered all dimensions of the current climate debate such as paleoclimatology, climatology, economics, politics and media. Topics discussed ranged from land use to tropical storms, from biofuels to polar bear forecasting. During his concluding remarks at the end of the event, which was attended by more than 500 scholars from a dozen or so countries, Prof. S. Fred Singer emphasized "nature, not human activity, rules the climate".

Singer also presented the NIPCC-report, the report of the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change. Another outcome of the conference was the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, Link:http://www.climatescienceinternational.org, an urgent call for more climate realism.