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June 08, 2009

Heartland Conference has Aussie Senator Questioning Climate Hype

Marc Sheppard
An Australian Senator, whose vote will be crucial to passing his country’s proposed emissions trading legislation, has expressed serious doubts concerning manmade global warming after attending last week’s Heartland climate conference.  And he’s alarming climate alarmists with talk that such legislation, “which would cost thousands of Australians their jobs,” may be totally unnecessary.

Family First Senator Stephen Fielding was one of over 250 attendees to the Third International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, DC last Tuesday.  The Heartland Institute’s gathering was a means to expose policymakers “to leading scientists and economists” and convince them that the “scientific debate is not over and that economic analysis is more important than ever, now that legislation is being seriously considered.”

And it appears that what the Senator heard was quite convincing, as he now questions the "popular opinion" that global warming is a direct result of carbon emissions. 

Said Fielding:
"What I heard at the conference is that solar activity seems to be more closely aligned to global temperature changes over a long period of time."

Fielding has announced that he wants the science "cleared up" before he votes on the pending legislation, and backs a move to delay any such vote until after December’s international climate summit in Copenhagen:
"I now need the science to be resolved. I would be derelict in my duties and I think I'd be letting down the Australian people if I didn't properly research the issues and relied on one side of the debate."

Of course, Australian alarmists are outraged at the thought of further research.

Among them is David Karoly, a professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne, who has taken the classic alarmist tact of shooting the messenger by attacking the source of Fielding’s climate education:
"It is very surprising that he doesn't accept the best information from scientific assessments... but seeks to get his information from a group of climate change deniers, an organization [Heartland] that's receiving sufficient funding from the fossil fuel industry.”

Such name calling and unwarranted payoff allegations have become the alarmists’ knee-jerk and sole response to scientific challenge.  And the latter is particularly lame in this case, given that the total amount of funding Heartland receives from all energy companies combined is no more than 5% of their budget.

Detractors aside, Fielding will be presenting the charts and graphs he received at ICCC to Australian Climate Change Minister Penny Wong this week and ask her “to explain why what they've put forward isn't credible.” As he told ABC news:

"These scientists are pretty reputable ... and to discount them out of hand is just foolish."  

Incidentally, Senator Fielding emailed those same charts, graphs and challenges to President Obama’s special assistant on energy and the environment, Joseph Aldy, after meeting with him on Thursday to discuss the pending US climate legislation.  Fielding was reportedly distressed that Dr. Aldy and other Obama Administration officials “were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.”

Which all but echoes his chief complaint about his own country’s leaders:
"The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something which is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the Rudd government."

The Heartland Conference’s mission statement was to call “attention to widespread dissent to the asserted ‘consensus’ on the causes, consequences, and proper responses to climate change.”  Based on Senator Fielding’s subsequent words and actions, I’d say they’ve unquestionably succeeded.

Perhaps some new voices of reason from within our own Senate will now muster the courage to follow Fielding’s alarm-averse lead.

AT’s full coverage of ICCC Three is available here. 

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