Hey Mainstream Media, before you dismiss legitimate scientists who disagree with your global warming meme as “deniers,” how about listening to an actual, open-minded scientist who agrees with you?

One of the most electrifying moments of the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Climate Change Conference was when Professor Scott Denning of Colorado State University asked to speak to the crowd during the close of the conference. Listen to what Dr. Denning, a climatologist who doesn’t agree with skeptics, who believes that AGW is a problem, has to say and listen to the reaction from crowd of about 700 “skeptics.”

Heartland invites all the leading climate scientists to its conferences. Very few believers in AGW accept that invitation. Denning deserves our respect and admiration for not only showing up, not only listening to other views, but for calling out his colleagues:

It’s really too bad that more of my colleagues from the scientific community didn’t attend this.

And for acknowledging a basic truth:

We have much more in common than our differences.

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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.

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? (more…)

If ignorance is truly bliss, then green-blogger Brendan DeMelle has got to be one the happiest people on the face of the earth. Attempting to ridicule the Heartland Institutes’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, set to kick off in Chicago this Sunday, DeMelle relied on tired arguments that might otherwise be persuasive if they were either: a) relevant, or b) accurate. The following pretty much sums up DeMelle’s take:

…this denial-a-palooza fest is dripping with oil money and represents a blatant industry effort to greenwash oil and coal while simultaneously attacking the credibility of climate scientists.

The entire conference can therefore be dismissed out of hand. Nothing to see here except a bunch of posers on the take, right? Had he been blogging during the Renaissance, no doubt DeMelle would have advanced the same kind of argument to defend the accepted version of “settled science” back then:

Pay no attention of that fraud Galileo. You know he’s part of the Accademia dei Lincei, right? And you know that group is funded by that rich aristocrat Federico Cesi, right? How can you believe a guy with those connections? How can the Pope and all those Cardinals possibly be wrong?

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