Accredited journalists were kicked out of a sparsely attended climate denial conference hosted by the US oil-and tobacco-funded Heartland Institute today in Paris.
Heartland’s ‘Day of Examining the Data’ event was repeatedly advertised as open to the public and media. However the freedom-of-speech espousing think tank had French security guards from the Hotel California outside the COP21 official venue remove DeSmog UK journalists.
Why? Because the 9 am press conference was now apparently a private event.
An archived copy of the Heartland Isntitute Website shows the conference advertised as “open to the public”
With the two DeSmog journalists gone, this left the likes of Marc Morano from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Christopher Monckton preaching to a small choir of under 30 people, the majority of which were elderly men. Ironically, tomorrow is gender day at the official Paris COP21 climate conference.
The formerly open to the public Heartland climate denial conference just cut number of women present by a third pic.twitter.com/8uUZzRDcyu
— Kyla Mandel (@kylamandel) December 7, 2015
This isn’t the first time such a climate denial conference has been underwhelming.
Last April, Heartland and CFACT travelled to Rome to try and pursuade the Pope not to speak on climate change. Aside from a very minimal media presence at the first day of their press stunt, there was no one except the climate denial faithful on day 2.
It also isn’t the first time for this group to refuse journalists entry to their events. In June, accredited journalists were barred from attending Heartland’s annual climate conference — and the media that did get in was cordoned off in a separate room unable to actually stand in the conference hall.
This comes after The Australian published a story earlier today headlined “Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers’”.
Source: Desmosblog. Reproduced with permission.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they throw you out of an open/invitation-only meeting of the ‘facts’.
Oh, the Pathos … the poor, poor delusional bastards …
… needless to say you could never get me to feel even the very tiniest bit sorry for them …
I liked Chris Monkton’s conspiratorial assertion that ‘the UN wanted Tony Abbott removed from power to keep him away from Paris, and Turnbull wouldn’t have deposed him without their help.’ As to the overwhelming rejection by the majority of Australian voters? What would the world’s greatest defender of democracy against the evil United Nations know or care about voters? Apparently the demise of Stephen Harper in Canada was similarly engineered by the subversive forces of the UN, not the voters of Canada.
The Heartland Institute gets less and less connected with reality all the time. They are in danger of ending up in some other kind of institution.
Heartland institute and all the other deniers are clearly going to be present simply to promote to its blinkered clique that they had an impact at the climate event. How that plays out in the months to come is up to all of us to rubbish their science (lack of) and its proponents.
As climatic conditions deteriorate the only consolation for me would be hearing that a lynch mob had rounded up these sick sycophants.