You would think that a conference that features some of the world’s leading scientists talking about a hot-button issue like global warming would attract a bit of old media attention. The Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, currently being held in Chicago, features distinguished scientists like the University of Colorado’s Dr. William Gray, Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon, MIT atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen, former astronaut and United States Senator Dr. Harrison Schmitt and the guy who broke the hockey stick, Steve McIntyre. But, while there are a number of bloggers here, while Pajamas Media is here, while the European press is here – including the BBC – and while I’m here, the MSM is nowhere to be found.

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What are they so afraid of – that they might learn something? It’s not like everyone is singing in chorus. For example, on Sunday night Steve McIntyre told the fascinating story of how and why Michael Mann and his cohorts “hid the decline,” complete with the relevant e-mails and published charts that irrefutably show how Mann, Jones and the rest of the climategate gang consciously discarded relevant data and then tried to cover their actions up.

The mainstream media meme, with regards to hiding the decline, is that while that this revelation was regrettable, it does nothing to disprove the theory that mankind is responsible for global warming. Guess what? McIntyre agrees. In fact, he went out of his way to say that he’s not your “go to” guy with respect to carbon dioxide’s effect on the climate. There are others who have that particular expertise. But, anyone who listens to McIntyre recount this story of scientific malpractice could not help but be deeply troubled and wonder: what else have they been hiding?

Michael Jungbauer, a state senator from Minnesota, recounted his state’s short, but already painful experience with “green power.” In 2007, Minnesota instituted a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which is a government mandate that requires the state to ratchet up the amount of power it uses emanating from renewable sources each year. (About half of the states in the union currently have such standards and more are coming). In Minnesota’s case, the standard says that eighty per cent of the state’s power is supposed to come from renewable sources by 2050, which Jungbauer noted rather wryly, will effectively set the state back to 1905 in terms of fossil fuel use.

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After almost three years of dealing with its Renewable Portfolio Standards, the price of electricity in Minnesota has risen by nearly ten per cent, the state is bleeding jobs and the poor are being hurt most of all. “This is the most regressive type of tax ever proposed,” Jungbauer said. Contrast that with Utah’s experience. Utah state representative Mike Noel happily noted that his state has among the lowest electricity rates in the nation and, not coincidentally, is also near the bottom in renewable energy production.

Many scientists at the conference have attempted to quantify how much mankind influences planetary temperatures. While no one agrees with the doomsday predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, no one is willing to say that the net effect is zero either. But there’s no consensus about exactly how much mankind can affect the climate, except for the general view among these distinguished academics that it’s not enough to lose any sleep over.

It’s refreshing to write about climate change and note a lack of consensus. That’s science the way it’s supposed to be: researchers attacking a problem from different angles, finding different answers and learning from each other’s work. It’s one-hundred eighty degrees the opposite of the cheerleading competitions that the IPCC conferences, like the most recent one in Copenhagen, have become.

So why does the old media ignore the rich, diverse opinions and research that this conference offers? Not only is there no one here from the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN, the Chicago Tribune didn’t even send a reporter (one of their columnists did show up however), even though the venue is within walking distance of Tribune Tower. Remarkable. Is the MSM drinking its own stale Kool-Aid, convinced that the science really is “settled” and that oil money just has to be behind any contrarian opinion? Or are they just so embarrassed now that the wheels are coming off of the global warming bus that they just can’t face the public? Probably a little of both.

No matter though; the new media is here in droves, along with an amazing number of ordinary folks who are sick of being bullied by alarmist science and want to be a little better intellectually armed. I’ve had a chance to talk to many of the professionals and business people who came to the conference on their own dime, people like the owner of limo company in New York who wants to help spread the word, a free-lance Dutch writer who foresees the demise of global-warming programs in Europe and a orthodontist from Florida who paid for his own film crew, just so he could do his part to educate the public. A pity that the MSM couldn’t be bothered to notice what’s happening in Chicago this week, but then that’s exactly why fewer and fewer of us take notice of the MSM any longer.