Czech leader rouses climate skeptics

The United States, however, pulled out of Kyoto shortly after U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2000. He objected that high-polluting countries such as China and India were not included, and said that meeting emissions-cutting commitments under the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.

Another naysayer at the Heartland conference was Bill Gray, a hurricane expert from Colorado State University who gave a talk titled: “We are not in a climate crisis!”

“It’s sort of like the field of meteorology and climatology’s been hijacked by these modelers that have come along and said these things,” said Gray, who said recent warming was a blip in “a recent spate of Ice Ages coming and going.”

Scientists generally agree that — due to changes in volcanic and solar activity — there have been periods of cooling alternating with warmer eras between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Bast conceded he believes some warming is occurring, some of it by humans, but said the conference showed that credible scientists were questioning global warming.

“The computer models are laughably bad,” Bast said.

But environmentalists criticized Bast’s organization as pro-industry.

“This is a disorganized band of deniers and contrarians who don’t agree with each other, let alone the reputable scientific consensus,” said David Doniger, policy director for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center. “It’s somewhere between a group of ideologues and a front group for some of the companies that fund them.”

Bast said Heartland — which proposes “free-market” solutions to economic and social problems — receives only 5 percent of its US$6 million (euro4 million) yearly budget from energy companies. In all, 25 percent comes from corporations, and the rest from private donations and foundations, according to the group’s Web site.

Bast praised Klaus as a speaker who had “the courage to stand up and say, ‘This is not sound science, this is terrible economics, you cannot cut emissions without losing jobs.”’

Klaus became the prime minister in 1993, when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He made his name as a conservative opposed to gay marriage and legalizing drugs, and took over the presidency in February 2003 from Havel, the dissident playwright who led the 1989 Velvet Revolution that toppled communism.

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