EPA Chief Zeldin & CFACT headline the sixteenth Worldwide Convention on Local weather Change in DC

EPA Chief Zeldin & CFACT headline the 16th International Conference on Climate Change in DC

By CFACT Ed

The 16th International Conference on Climate Change — co-hosted by CFACT, Heartland Institute, CO2 Coalition, and Watts Up With That — made a huge splash in our nation’s capital last week. CFACT staff were featured prominently as panelists and keynote speakers at the two-day conference, which brought together a host of scientists, policymakers, and media influencers.

The conference opened with a powerful keynote by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who called on climate skeptics to celebrate. CFACT co-founder and executive director Craig Rucker, who was featured on several panels and delivered a keynote speech, had the honor of introducing Zeldin.

Zeldin bluntly declared to the gathering of several hundred: “Today is a moment to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication.” He also noted the hard work of all those attending the summit.

“You were right there on the front lines against there being an endangerment finding in 2009,” Zeldin said just steps away from the White House at the historic Hotel Washington.

POLITICO reported that the climate skeptics gathered did not want to see Zeldin leave EPA as rumors swirled that Zeldin could be a leading contender to be promoted to U.S. Attorney General.

“We don’t want to lose him at EPA,” said Marc Morano, of the conservative think tank the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. “I think he’s been the most consequential EPA chief in the agency’s history.”

Prominent scientists were featured during the summit, including Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. John Clauser, who received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work on quantum entanglement. Other marquee scientists who spoke included Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry, and Harvard Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon.

Australian physicist Dr. Peter Ridd, a former professor at James Cook University, received the prestigious Frederick Seitz Memorial Award for his work debunking false claims of the Great Barrier Reef’s decline.

Governor Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia also delivered a keynote speech challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions based on his involvement as the state AG when the Supreme Court in 2022 ruled in his favor in West Virginia v. EPA.

CFACT Meteorologist Chris Martz appeared on the younger-generation climate panel, which also included Linnea Lueken, Lucy Biggers, Emma Arns, and Anika Sweetland.

The panel, titled “Bringing Youth into the Climate Realist Fold,’ featured a new generation of climate skeptics in their 20s and 30s, mesmerizing the crowd with their personal stories of converting to climate skepticism and how social media is a force for educating kids who have previously only been exposed to climate indoctrination.

Martz also delivered a powerful scientific keynote speech with the latest on extreme weather attribution and debunked many common climate myths.

CFACT’s Marc Morano delivered the conference’s closing keynote how climate skeptics are currently winning. The title of his talk was “The Great Reject: Triumphant Trump Dismantles the Climate Agenda with Nary a Pushback.” Morano appeared on a panel about failed climate tipping points, and he traced back the first known climate tipping point to an academic during President Lincoln’s era in 1864, warning of “climatic excess” unless mankind changed its ways.

The Washington Times reported on Morano’s analysis. “I have been on the climate beat for over 25 years, and I have never seen anything like this,” Morano said he told The Times. “Trump is gutting everything the climate movement has ever stood for. Billionaires are silent or reversing themselves on climate, and even Democrats in Congress have been mostly silent as Trump crushes the climate movement. There has been no pushback!”

Rucker presented the ‘Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth’ award to Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com. Rucker noted that Milloy has relentlessly pursued the truth for decades, exposing hypocrisy, lies, and misinformation from the Green Left.

National and international media covered the climate summit, including France’s Le Monde, which reported, “For the first time in the history of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, its administrator delivered a speech at a conference organized by the Heartland Institute, one of the most influential bastions of climate skepticism in the country.”

The New York Times reported that, “Climate Change Denial Sees a Resurgence in Trump’s Washington,” adding, “A conference near the White House drew hundreds of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change. The mood was triumphant.”