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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 2008

News Release Source

• The Honorable Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, and

• Yuri Izrael, science advisor to Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation

Global warming from greenhouse gases remains one of the most controversial policy issues of the day. Although many observers support the view that climate change is a crisis, many others--including highly regarded scientists at major universities around the world--remain skeptical that this is so.

The conference, sponsored by The Heartland Institute of Chicago, has nearly 50 co-sponsoring organizations from all over the world.

The conference will feature internationally recognised speakers from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Europe. Carbon Sense has registered 10 delegates from Australia and New Zealand, and several other individual delegates and scientists from Australia and New Zealand will attend.

For more information on the conference see: http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm  

The conference will take place on March 2-4 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on Times Square in New York City. Hundreds of scientists, scholars, and policy analysts are expected to attend the event to discuss the latest scientific evidence challenging the unproven notion that human activity is the cause of global warming.

Conference organizer James M. Taylor, a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of its monthly publication, Environment & Climate News, is preparing a two-day program with five tracks of concurrent sessions covering the science, economics, and politics of climate change. The cosponsoring organizations will recruit speakers and guests and promote the event.

"The global warming debate that the public and policymakers usually see is one-sided," noted Taylor, "dominated by government scientists and government organizations agenda-driven to find data that suggest a human impact on climate and to call for immediate government action, if only to fund their own continued research, but often to achieve political agendas entirely unrelated to the science of climate change.

"There is another side," Taylor continued, "but in recent years it has been denied a platform from which to speak." The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change will provide that platform, he said.  Read rest...