Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Skeptics Conference

[It is now Friday 7th and, although the conference ended on Tuesday, google ads are still appearing for it, for example on this blog. As I say in this posting, they don't seem to be very well organised.]

The International (skeptics) Conference on Climate Change enters its last day today. They seem a bit disorganized, running a 7/8ths-page ad in the NYT only yesterday, the second day of the conference. Speakers include Czech President Vaclav Klaus, and ABC’s resident idiot John Stossel. Vaclav Klaus is not to be confused with his predecessor Vaclav Havel, who has written against climate change for example in a NYT Op-Ed last September (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/opinion/27havel.html). It is not clear to me why politicians have independent (i.e, not informed by expert opinion) opinions about scientific issues, and in this case I think their opinions are about as useful as Mbeki’s views on HIV.

They claim the conference is sold out, but apparently that is only 500 people. They also say that James Hansen and Al Gore were invited to attend but declined. Even the organizers don’t seem to be saying that climate change is not happening, btw, but rather that it is not a crisis.

The NYT published a story on the conference today. See http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin

For a simple reposte to skeptics on the science see my post yesterday.

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