Yesterday the Heartland Institute announced that its 14th annual climate conference is scheduled for May 7th and 8th, at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
While they’ve yet to actually fill out the schedule with any details, it promises to be “THE EVENT” for “those who want to meet the best scientists and experts… brave enough to publicly tell the truth about the CLIMATE DELUSION.”
Now, if that makes you think they’ll be saying extremely denial-y things, it’s worth mentioning that the event will feature “expert discussions about the benefits of a gently warming and slightly wetter world.” Although it’s not exactly groundbreaking, and it’s all but certain that the event itself will feature those who deny that it’s warming all together, this gentle admission that it’s getting hotter and wetter is progress of a sort.
Another point of progress: so far, of the nine program speakers, three are women and two are men of color. Granted, they’re basically all Koch-denial-network-employees, but it’s still somewhat shocking to see anyone outside the “Grandfather who spends too much time yelling at Fox News” demographic on the lineup.
Not that the old man demo isn’t well-represented: (not) “Lord” Christopher “I’ve discovered a cure for AIDS and the common cold” Monckton is giving the keynote, with Anthony “Finally formally on the Heartland payroll” Watts and Niel “I’ve been retired for over a decade but I guess you’re struggling for speakers” Frank presenting as well.
And, of course, James “my brother Jerry has outed us all as liars for hire” Taylor will also be presenting. For a sneak preview, we can look at a Powerpoint presentation he recently delivered to an Idaho House of Representatives committee. In it, Taylor hammers home the idea there’s a benefit to warming seen in a longer growing season, warmer winters and more rainfall.
Instead of sitting through the presentation, though, we recommend reading some of the reporting on it, which was highly critical and extremely entertaining. Taylor made an attempt to push back on the criticisms, some of which were pretty scathing. One editorial began by describing his talk as “an embarrassment to every lawmaker who takes his organization seriously” in the very first sentence, and later pointed out that Taylor’s presentation was “lies from the start.”
It seems Taylor (like Monckton) was stymied by how time and calendars work, as the policy brief his presentation was based on claimed that Idaho Governor Brad Little said climate change was real after a March event, despite the fact that the comments were made in January. The editorial snarked that “to our knowledge, [Gov. Little] has not yet mastered time travel or altered the calendar to put March before January.” (To be fair, Taylor added a correction note at the top of the report.)
The mistakes didn’t stop at the brief, though. During his presentation, Taylor repeatedly confused Idaho for Iowa, though the PostRegister editorial gave him a pass for that one, as “when grifting keeps you on the road all the time, it’s easy to forget where you are.”
The Idaho Statesman editorial was less forgiving, pointing out that Taylor “kept calling us Iowa” but also “acknowledged that he had not talked to any Idaho scientists, industry officials or others on the ground when compiling his 16-page policy brief.”
Taylor, of course, blamed the “liberal Idaho media” for the criticisms, because as we all know, Idaho is the epicenter of die-hard progressive politics and liberal media.
Given that the stakes of climate change are so very low (it’s not like the atmosphere is what allows Earth to sustain life or anything) and the science, politics and policy around it are so very complex, it makes total sense to take to heart the pronouncements of a grifter who got confused about what order the months are in over the overwhelming scientific consensus.
So if those odds seem good to you, and you’d bet the well-being of the planet on someone who would need to study up to pass an elementary school geography test, consider paying $200 for a ticket to Heartland’s conference.
Because nothing says “this is a smart choice I definitely won’t lose money on or come to regret in any way” like a trip to a Las Vegas casino!
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