Look Out, All You Smarty-Pants Scientists! Heartland Institute Is Holding A Deniers' Conference!

[hatrack]

And Obama made him do it - Thanks, Obama!!

EDIT

Bast, who studied economics at the University of Chicago, was the first person hired by Heartland's founder David Padden to help launch the think tank in 1984. Bast was also instrumental in the creation of the State Policy Network, a network of right-leaning state-based think tanks that came on the scene in the early 1990s. In addition to his work as an administrator, Bast has written or co-authored a number of books, including several that challenge mainstream health claims about cigarette smoking. According to the non-profit's latest 990, for 2012, Bast was paid an annual salary of $157,000.

Bast said he would just as well have not hosted a conference this year, but the other side has simply forced his hand. At the start of the year, liberal financier Tom Steyer announced he would be putting $100 million into a Super PAC to make climate change a wedge issue leading up to 2016. And recently, President Obama has shown a renewed interest in doing the same.

At a speech last week before the League of Conservation Voters, Obama spiritedly mocked climate skeptics, especially those who serve as elected officials. (A Gallup poll from April found 39 percent of Americans were "concerned believers" about global warming, while 25 percent fell into the camp of "cool skeptics.&quot

"President Obama has decided to make this a big issue," Bast said. "We really were hoping we wouldn't have to keep pushing this issue, but I think Obama told us that we had to."

EDIT

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101807383#.

[groundloop]

1. I'm sure an economist knows more about climate change than 1000's of climate scientists !!!!

[OnlinePoker]

2. Well, I guess you could say the same about the head of the IPCC

He's a mechanical engineer, not a climatologist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri

[caraher]

4. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Economics

with a dissertation on forecasting electricity demand. Per the same Wikipedia article. Still not a climatologist, of course, though that's also no surprise since climatology is just one facet of IPCC's climate change studies.

[caraher]

3. Interestingly enough...

Bast admits climate change is real! Yet he insists the existence of "deniers" is a fiction:

Perhaps to the surprise of many, Bast readily concedes that man-made climate change is real—"You cannot put billions of tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and not expect there to be an impact," he says—and argues that the climate change denialism is merely a straw man put forth by the left. (That may come as a surprise to a number of conservative politicians who continue to dispute made-made climate change or, as is more recently the case, play the "I'm-not-a-scientist card.&quot