At least for a brief time in a small place, there was an overwhelming consensus among the gathered scholars, climatologists, policymakers and elected officials about man-made climate change — that it’s a colossal fraud.
The Washington Court Hotel at the foot of Capitol Hill was the site last week for the two-day 10th International Climate Change Conference, a “safe zone” where skeptics of climate change and global warming were among friends, a like-minded and supportive community with its own rules, language and inside jokes.
Many of those in attendance knew each other, or at the very least knew of each other’s work. The conversation was a lively mix of enthusiasm for the future, excited explanations of new data and theory, and commiseration for the abuse they felt they suffered for their contrarian views.
Every attendee received a cheat sheet with carefully crafted contradictions for every “myth” from the decline of the polar bear population to the rise of extreme weather patterns.
The tone was set when former Sen. Jim DeMint, now the head of the Heritage Foundation, introduced the keynote speaker, Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the frequent target of abuse for his open skepticism of global warming claims.
“I’ve seen him insulted and treated poorly for speaking the truth,” Mr. DeMint said, adding that he has also seen the senator “stand up against really incredible intimidation.”
At the conference, however, Mr. Inhofe, the winner of the Political Leadership award, was given celebrity treatment as he took the stage, greeted with a standing ovation and bumping music.
The lawmaker at one point read aloud a list of insults and threats he had received for views. Together with the audience, he laughed off the animosity, saying the abuse and personal attacks “show we’re winning.”
Conference attendees seemed well aware of their status in the scientific community, but many said the attacks only confirmed them in the rightness of their cause.
Willie Soon, who has a Ph.D. in solar physics, argued in one panel discussions that much of the data supporting climate change can be explained by solar influences on the Earth. Following the trend set by Mr. Inhofe, he displayed on the overhead projector a quote from a fellow scientist calling his research “pointless.”
He then presented an in-depth rebuttal to mainstream climate science and the criticism of his work, and accused climate change “alarmists” of falsifying data in order to advance a political agenda.
“I have no agenda,” Mr. Soon assured the audience, earning a laugh by adding, “I only love my wife and my family. I don’t love the sun.”
David Legates, a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and a former state climatologist, has become one of the country’s best-known skeptics about the theory of man-made climate change, and told the conference he had the scars to prove it.
Mr. Legates recalled two different times when his work had been referred to as “standard skeptic crap.” He defiantly thundered into his microphone, “It didn’t stop me then and it ain’t gonna stop me now.”
The comment met with the most raucous applause of the day.
• Andrew Nachemson can be reached at anachemson@washingtontimes.com.
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