The Heartland Institute’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-7) took place in Chicago, Illinois from Monday, May 21 to Wednesday, May 23, 2012. It was an unqualified success.
Videos of the presentations are available at Heartland's Climate Conference Archive Site.
Approximately fifty speakers addressed nearly 300 audience members eager to learn the truth about the causes and consequences of climate change. Especially noteworthy speakers included Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, Congressman James Sensenbrenner, European Parliament member Roger Helmer, and former astronauts Harrison “Jack” Schmitt and Walter Cunningham.
The conference was cohosted by a record 60 think tanks and other civic and business groups, including organizations in Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Germany, India, New Zealand, and Nigeria. Well-known cosponsors based in the U.S. include the Acton Institute, American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Reason Foundation.
Invitations were extended to more than 50 scientists who support the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s perspective, but none agreed to attend. It was a stunning admission that the scientific debate has turned decisively away from the IPCC’s alarmism and toward a more realistic perspective.
Left-wing groups including "Forecast the Facts" and Occupy Wall Street promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly -- fewer than 50 people showed up for their rallies, and those who did put on a pathetic display of ignorance. Some even wore boots on their heads, and all but one refused a cordial invitation to debate.
Sun News, a television network in Canada, conducted interviews with many of the speakers and hosts of the conference and produced an hour-long special report on the conference. Ezra Levant's introduction to that report can be viewed here.
This year’s theme was “Real Science, Real Choices.” Scientists, doctors, and economists from Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Norway, and the U.S. addressed everything from the latest research on solar cycles and cosmic rays to paleoclimatology, extreme weather events, renewable fuels, and contemporary temperature records. A panel composed of former NASA astronauts, scientists and administrators described how NASA is damaging its reputation for sound science by issuing false and exaggerated predictions of future climate change.
The conference ended on a high note, with speakers and attendees agreeing that realists have taken the lead in the ongoing scientific debate, that the public is now strongly on their side, and that the coming elections are likely to cause the reversal of the anti-energy and anti-science policies of the recent past.
If you weren’t able to attend this exciting event, please view the videos of the presentations at the ICCC-7 page in our conference archive site. Watch, listen, and learn for yourself what the real science of climate is revealing, and what choices we all must make as citizens and consumers.
