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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

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The U.S. government dedicates millions of tax dollars every year to send its representatives to climate change conferences across the world. It makes little difference who is in power. In 1997, the Clinton administration sent 47 representatives to the two-week United Nations meeting in Japan where the Kyoto Protocol was created. Ten years later, the Bush administration sent the same number to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

President Barack Obama doubled down on this tradition, sending 124 representatives to the U.N.’s Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 and 79 reps to the 2014 conference in Peru. With basic travel and living expenses of over $10,000 per participant for the ten-day yearly event, costs easily exceeded a million dollars per meeting.

The Trump Administration’s approach to these events is nearly as ridiculous, sending 42 representatives to the Katowice (Poland) Climate Change Conference in December 2018.

In fact, there are dozens of climate change conferences that administration officials attend around the world each year. Clearly, the sky is the limit when it comes to covering costs for America’s high-flying climate bureaucrats. While we are advised to walk, bicycle, and take the bus to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, hundreds of civil servants regularly enjoy tax payer funded flights to exotic locations across the globe to take part in negotiations to save the world by eliminating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels.

To balance their knowledge of the climate change issue, how many of the current administration’s staff are scheduled to attend the most important climate change conference of the year that is being held a mere 0.8 miles from The White House?

Perhaps you have guessed; it is zero.

That’s right, no one from the Trump administration will be in attendance at the 13th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-13) being held on July 25th at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. 

That is a huge loss since ICCC-13 will reveal that neither science nor economics back up the climate scare. Speakers will explain that this is one of the greatest scandals in history.

ICCC-13 is the latest in a series of conferences held across the world by The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. The first ICCC conference (ICCC-1) was held in New York City in 2008 and resulted in the release of “The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change”, which was endorsed by 114 climate experts who were in attendance at the conference as well as 712 qualified endorsers not at the conference. ICCC-1 speakers provided compelling evidence in support of the conclusions of the Manhattan Declaration, which stated:

“That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

“That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
“That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
“That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
“That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.”

The Declaration recommended:

“That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

“That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.”

In the years that followed, many of the world’s leading experts in climate and energy science, policy, and economics spoke at ICCC events. In every case, they delivered realistic views of these disciplines, completely at odds with the alarmist stance promoted at virtually all of the other climate conferences around the world. Presenters at ICCC events hailed from major universities such as Princeton, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Alabama, and Canada’s University of Victoria. The U.S. Senate, state governments, and prominent international think tanks provided speakers, and dozens of U.S. state legislators attended as observers.

Yet federal administration after administration continued to ignore the conferences. In fact, not once in the twelve ICCC events held to date did a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator bother to attend. Even when the 2015 Tenth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-10) was held at Washington Court Hotel, 1.1 miles from EPA Headquarters, neither EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy nor any of her representatives bothered to walk down the street to hear that much of what their agency was saying about climate change is completely wrong. McCarthy would have heard William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, now President Trump’s primary advisor on climate change, tell the audience that the forecasts of models on which the climate scare is based diverge widely from real world observations. “The models don’t work at all,” said Happer at ICCC-10, “and yet we’re supposed to believe them and think that this is an existential threat to the world” (and alter our economy accordingly).

The Administrator and her staff would have learned from University of Pennsylvania forecasting expert Professor J. Scott Armstrong that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts are untrustworthy since they violate almost all relevant forecasting principals. They would have learned from the late Professor Bob Carter, former Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at Australia’s James Cook University, that the announcements of national science academies supporting climate alarm “are based, not on the views of the expert members of the societies involved, but on the views of a small cadre of politically active executives. It is a political consensus. It is not a scientific consensus.”

Similarly, if today’s EPA Administrator, Andrew Wheeler, and his staff were to attend ICCC-13 on July 25th (none are scheduled to attend) they would learn that the EPA’s recently released Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule is fundamental misguided. This is because, like the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan that it replaces, the ACE rule is based largely on the mistaken idea that CO2 emissions from industrial activities need to be controlled due to their supposed impact on the thermostat of our planet. EPA continues to consider CO2 as a pollutant, when, in fact, it is the exact opposite. Were it not for life-giving CO2, Earth would be a dead world. Its recent increase has produced a 24% increase in the green areas of Africa.

If EPA officials were to attend ICCC-13, they would hear from PhD scientists Nir Shaviv, David Legates, Roy Spencer, and others about:

  • the huge impact the Sun has on climate change, an effect too often ignored by climate activists
  • how climate model results compare with observed temperature data
  • the science presented in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the latest volume of peer-reviewed research by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
  • the real-world benefits of CO2 and a warmer climate.

They would also hear from Dr. Kevin Dayaratna, Dr. Roger Bezdek, and Dr. Benjamin Zycher, about the latest in energy and climate economics and the societal benefits of fossil fuels. They would learn from policy experts Myron Ebell, Douglas Pollock, and James Taylor about the “Political suicide of CO2 taxes, the Green New Deal, and renewable mandates.”

And Wheeler and his staff would be present when awards are given to some of the most courageous scientists on the planet, people who have risked their career, and even their lives, to stand up for good science and honest debate on one of the most important policy issues of our age.

Although administration officials are apparently too concerned with political correctness to dare attend ICCC-13, let’s hope they are at least watching on line, which anyone can do at www.heartland.org starting at 8:00 am ET on July 25.

Future generations will not look kindly on today’s leaders for paying attention to only one side of the climate debate. By then, trillions of dollars will have been wasted trying to accomplish the impossible – controlling the climate of our planet – while numerous critical real-world issues remain improperly funded. With over $1 billion U.S. dollars now spent every day across the world on climate finance, it is a disgrace that this administration, like all those before it, will not be in attendance at the most important climate change conference of the year.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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Rich Kozlovich
4 years ago

Heartland hasn’t been shy of its agenda since its inception which is now, and always has been, follow the facts wherever they may lead. Not the clabber that’s been used to promote the junk science and corruption surrounding Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Of course, now that the world is in a “pause” on warming, and it now looks as if we may be facing another minimum, which if it occurs will bring a lot of cold, which is notoriously deadly, Warmists have changed it to Anthropogenic Climate Change. That way if it get’s colder, warmer, wetter, drier, or my dog gets fleas, CO2 is the cause.
As for Second Hand Smoke, that’s nothing more than junk science that everyone should be aware of. According to the “Congressional Research Service and the extensive documentation by a federal judge that exposed the dubious way in which EPA cooked the data to come up with its claim of 3000 cancer deaths from SHS.” Researchers got grant money for turning pimples into piles.

Dave James
Dave James
Reply to  Rich Kozlovich
4 years ago

Mr. Tom Harris & Dr. Jay Lehr deserve credit for disclosing their direct connection to the Heartland Institute. Like Heartland itself, neither Dr. Lehr nor Mr. Harris tries to hide their agenda.
1)”Time to End the War on Coal” by Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris, May 3, 2019, The Post & Email
2)”Clean coal for the future” Tom Harris, Feb 9, 2018, Idaho Press
3)”Coal key to national security strategy” Tom Harris, Jan 13, 2018, The Spectrum
4)”Climate scare must be debunked for coal to recover” Tom Harris, Jan 2, 2018, Superior Telegram
5)”Harris: Coal has many uses” Tom Harris, Sep 3, 2018, Casper Star Tribune.

Dave James
Dave James
4 years ago

There is a reason no administration from either party attended Heartland Institute conference. The Heartland Institute is not shy about their agenda. The Heartland Institute’s history of promoting pseudo-science pre-dates their false and misleading claims about climate change. During the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with tobacco company Philip Morris to question the links between smoking, secondhand smoke and health risks.
In the “President’s Letter” in the July 1998 issue of The Heartlander, the Institute’s magazine, Bast wrote an essay “Five Lies about Tobacco”, which said “smoking in moderation has few, if any, adverse health effects.” (Source “Five Lies about Tobacco; The Tobacco Bill Wasn’t about Kids”Heartland Institute, July 1, 1998)
Both Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris are associates of the Heartland Institute (Source Heartland Bios for Lehr & Harris) This op-ed reads like a sour grapes, press release by the Heartland Institute.

Russell Cook
Russell Cook
Reply to  Dave James
4 years ago

@”Dave ‘I-refuse-to-divulge-if-this-is-my-full-name’ James”: Fun how you feel compelled to omit the sentence in that really old ’98 newsletter following what you quoted — “Virtually any product (water, salt, and vitamins come to mind), if used in excess, is a health hazard.” If that old thing is literally the best “evidence” you can come up with to show the world Heartland questioned “the links between smoking, secondhand smoke and health risks,” and thus are outright smoking/cancer deniers, you have an uphill struggle with a vertical slope ahead of you. We can debate what constitutes “excess,” of course. Virulent anti-smoker I am, I’d say it is what the average smoker takes in every day. But to Heartland’s point, I have one relative who lived to 99 with apparently no ill effects from her half-pack a day or less, and I have another living relative doing the same thing with no readily apparent harm. But I lecture him to stop altogether because it still ain’t good for him.
If you’d only read my own material in depth, you’d know how I covered the folly of relying on that old Heartland newsletter in my May 11, 2017 blog post, “2nd Hand Smoke kills (or so we’re told) pt. 2” ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=5198 ). The fun thing about you, friend, is how you are consistently unable to dispute the global warming science claims cited by Tom Harris or more recently by Jay Lehr. The best you can do is cite IPCC material which contradicts the material that Harris and Lehr cite. Therefore, to gain traction for your viewpoints, you’re committed to persuading readers to dismiss them because of any associations they may have. Using your own line of faulty reasoning, you’d dismiss the ornithology work done decades ago by Bob Stroud simply because of his association with people at the Alcatraz prison.
What I enjoy the most about you, besides your never-ending sidestepping of challenges to back up what you say throughout your online commenting career, is that you never actually dispute the specific political-side details I write about at my GelbspanFiles blog, or in my other online writings, such as never explaining what you meant by that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” comment ( https://disqus.com/home/discussion/harlandaily/climate_change_assessing_the_risks_harlan_daily_enterprise_harlandailycom/oldest/#comment-2599527347 ). You just bend into pretzel shapes trying to imply I’m some kind of close associate with the Heartland Institute, as do the other comment stalkers of mine who tag along with you (my top post today at my Twitter feed features your hapless commenter pal “9.8m/ss” and his hilarious attempt to compare me to Rush Limbaugh. I’m surprised he didn’t accuse ME of working at AEI). I’m no more then tenuously associated with them, and you probably know that.
Keep doing what you do, I guess, but don’t be overly surprised if what you claim is total free speech gets viewed increasingly by astute comment section moderators as baseless guilt-by-association personal attacks with no redeeming value as actual free speech.

Dave James
Dave James
Reply to  Russell Cook
4 years ago

Quoting Joseph Bast and providing the source so his words can be read in context is not misleading but reasoned discourse.
Dr. Lehr and Mr. Harris endorse the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-13) and complain that the Trump administration will not attending Heartland Institute’s conference. They complain that “federal administration after administration” have not attended past Heartland Institute conferences. Harris & Lehr endorse the Heartland Institute’s “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels” report. At the same time Dr. Lehr & Mr. Harris disclose their direct relationships with the Heartland Institute. Mr. Harris writes, “He is currently a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute.” Dr. Lehr writes is the “former Science Director of The Heartland Institute.”
Referring to Mr. Harris and Dr. Lehr’s connection to the Heartland Institute is not “baseless guilt-by-association personal attacks with no redeeming value” but factual statements which are clearly part of rational debate.

Russell Cook
Russell Cook
Reply to  Dave James
4 years ago

Question remains: why did you leave out the sentence from Joe Bast which undermined your own quote? Sidestep, sidestep, sidestep, it’s what you do.
Meanwhile, silly me in referencing your online commenting career in my prior comment, I thought the system here would default into the standard system seen in comment sections across the internet, where your history ( https://disqus.com/by/disqus_JzQ88MTX2I/ ) would fan out for all to read at their leisure if they clicked on your name. Nope. I didn’t know you had a twitter account. Cool! Ya ought to make more use of it, though. Still, despite at least two of your six followers being spam accounts, you are ahead of my 279 by having one as a former US Senator and the other as an AP reporter. Haven’t rummaged through mine lately, I don’t think I have ANY reporter followers. Since I tightly restrict who I follow, I’ll do you the favor of following you with my other blog-specific account, so as to move your tally up a notch.
Meanwhile, back to your one-trick pony position: On that other commenting system, you go on and on against Tom Harris about “association,” and/or “connection,” and you’ve been relentless about hammering me with it recently in your lame efforts to imply I’m more connected than I actually am. What does that all actually mean, anyway? If we use your line of reasoning, are we, for example, supposed to view the opinion of a Honda dealer mechanic’s praise of the Toyota FJ’s off-road handling as something to be leery of, simply because he works for a Japanese car company??
Forgive me for sticking to my guns on this, but what you do is absolutely nothing more than baseless guilt-by-association personal attacks because you have never once provided any evidence that this association is for any kind of personal gain where they know full well that that they do is false. As for me, your attempt to connect me directly to Heartland is worthless because I’ve already demonstrated how what I do — in defense of skeptic climate scientists — began way before I had even any kind of remotely tenuous connection with them. Like Dr Willie Soon once said (which is always left out of attacks against him), I’d keep on doing exactly what I’m doing if Greenpeace gave me the donations instead ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Soon-Reuters-Greenpeace.jpg ).

Dave James
Dave James
Reply to  Russell Cook
4 years ago

Stating source of Mr. Bast’s is not a side-step. It means his words can be read in context. My quote of Mr. Bast is not undermined by the rest of his article. In fact, reading the entire article illustrates the Heartland Institute’s attempts to question the links between smoking, secondhand smoke and health risks.
Dr. Jay Lehr’s and Mr. Tom Harris’ op-ed reads like a press release from the Heartland Institute. Mr. Harris & Dr. Lehr disclose their direct connection to the Heartland Institute in their by-lines. They endorse Heartland conferences and reports. They complain that no Trump administration officials will attend Heartland’s current conference. They complain that past government officials have not attended past Heartland conferences.
Mr. Russell Cook’s assertion the Dr. Lehr and Mr. Harris relationship with the Heartland Institute is a “baseless guilt-by-association personal attacks” is not rational.

Dave James
Dave James
Reply to  Dave James
4 years ago

Stating the source of my quote for Mr. Bast is not a side-step but rational debate. It means his words can be read in context.

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