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**NZCLIMATE & ENVIRO TRUTH NO 167
5 MARCH 2008
THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION
I have just returned from the first international conference of climate sceptics which took place in the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, New York on Sunday to Tuesday this week. It was sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a United States non-profit, cultural and educational organisation, with co-sponsors from 52 international bodies which included the New Zealand Business Roundtable and organisations from Pakistan, Costa Rica, Turkey, Australia, China, Venezuela. Uruguay, Argentina, United Kingdom, South Africa, Austria, Germany, Peru, Brazil, Italy, India, Hong Kong, and Phillippines. 29 of the co-sponsors were from the United States. Included was also the recently formed International Climate Science Coalition which was initiated by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, and is currently an organisation consisting mainly of members from New Zealand, Australia, UK and Canada. There was no corporate or political sponsorship of any kind for the Conference.
There were 101 lecturers whose lectures were divided into plenary lectures at lunch and dinner functions, and five separate series classified under Paleoclimatology, Climatology, Climate Change Impcts, Climate Change Economics, and Climate Change Politics, plus a final series showing movies.
There were 500 delegates, mostly sympathisers, as I was unaware of anybody present who was willing to argue that we were wrong.
It was like a family reunion with people who have become intimate friends over the Email, but this was the first time you could meet them as real people. There were so many that I even missed some.
The New Zealand people there besides myself were Owen McShane, Terry Dunleavy and Muriel Newman and her husband. Owen is chairman of the policy panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, and Terry is the secretary. Many of you may know that Muriel, who is a former ACT MP, runs an excellent weekly political email newsletter which I can unreservedly recommend.
The highlight of the entire conference was a speech by Vaclav Klaus. recently re-elected President of the Czech Republic. He said that he was re-elected despite his well-known opposition to the global warming theory. He aroused personal memories when he said that in his country they recently celebrated their freedom from Communist rule by commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Communist takeover in 1958. It so happens that I was present in the then Czechoslovakia with my fiancee when this happened. We were participating in a youth railway construction project. Klaus is an economist. He speaks good English and he made his sympathies clear.
The 101 lecturers included people from Australia, Canada, Britain, Sweden, New Zealand, Russia, Poland, South Africa, India, France, Italy, Germany, Norway, and Hungary. They included Yuri Izrael, a Vice Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and "the most influential advisor" to President Putin. Many were from the United States and they included African Americans and Asian Americans. There were only 3 women.
Fred Singer was able to announce the publication of an important response to the latest Report of the Intergovernmenmtal panel on Climate Change entitled "Nature, Not Human Activity Rules the Climate" It can be obtained from the Heartland Institute at their website.
http://www.heartland.org
He pointed out that his panel of 23 scientists (which included myself) had reached the opposite conclusion from the IPCC; that there was no evidence that the climate was influenced to a measurable degree by changes in greenhouse gases. He showed that the climate models can be proved to be wrong.
There was also the announcement of the formation of the International Climate Science Coalition with Executive Director Tom Harris from Canada, Their Publi Relations Advisor, Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley presented the Manhattan Declaration from the Conference which has already been signed by many persons present. It expresses the wishes of the conference, and is copied below, Any of the readers of this Newsletter who would like to support it, or join the International Climate Coalition, are invited to do so. I attach the appropriate form and the contact is Tom Harris at
My own lecture was in the "Politics" section, and for some reason, my title "The Global Warming Scam" got translated into "The International Agenda on Climate Change", I was immediately faced with the fact that the PowerPoint projection system had broken down, so I had to lecture without it. In some ways it turned out better, because we were asked to submit PowerPoint presentations and most people sent material for a two-hour lecture. The week beforehand we were told we had only 20 minutes and many had trouble condensing their talk. My PowerPoint had been printed out for each member of the audience, so I was able to cover my main points without the bother of dealing with all those pictures. Incidentally, if any of you would like to hear my lecture, I am available after I return from our Pacific cruise on April 19th.
This was truly an historic occasion. I hope to live long enough to see the day when the group photograph that was made at the end will be scrutinised to identify the pioneers who eventually succeeded in bringing down this evil anti-human, economically disastrous, religious doctrine of human-induced climate change and we can go back to normal life.
(Note: Dr Gray’s conference PowerPoint. “The Global Warming Scam” can be viewed at www.climatescience.org.nz)
. International Conference on Climate Change
New York City, 2008
Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change
“Global warming” is not a global crisis
We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,
Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Recognising that the causes and extent of recently-observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;
Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:
Hereby declare:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.
Now, therefore, we recommend –
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
Agreed at New York, 4 March 200