Nature om Heartland-konferensen

Den naturvetenskapliga tidskriften Nature skriver om Heartland-institutets årliga klimatförvillarkonferens:

Scientists can only carry on with their work, addressing legitimate questions as they arise and challenging misinformation. Many climate scientists have already tried to engage with their critics, as they did at the Heartland event. The difference, of course, is motive. Scientists work to fill the gaps in human knowledge and to build a theory that can explain observations of the world. Climate sceptics revel in such gaps, sometimes long after they have been filled.
It is scientists, not sceptics, who are most willing to consider explanations that conflict with their own. And far from quashing dissent, it is the scientists, not the sceptics, who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data — which is where sceptics get much of the mud they fling at the scientists. By contrast, the Heartland Institute and its ilk are not trying to build a theory of anything. They have set the bar much lower, and are happy muddying the waters.

Heartland-institutet är en konservativ/libertariansk tankesmedja som uppger sig ha målet att "upptäcka, utveckla och främja fri-marknads-lösningar på sociala och ekonomiska problem." När det gäller miljöproblem så tycks det innebära att förringa eller rent av förneka problemen. Vid årets konferens i Washington DC deltog bl a veteranen S Fred Singer, republikanske senatorn James Inhofe, dennes förre assistent Marc Morano som nu driver förvillarsajten ClimateDepot, Roy Spencer från University of Alabama in Huntsville, Willie Soon från Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics och tankesmedjan George C. Marshall Institute, Christopher Horner från tankesmedjan the Competitive Enterprise Institute, och bloggaren Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That).