Greens want to control you, Czech president tells global-warming skeptics

Czech President Vaclav Klaus (AP photo)

Environmentalists are pursuing a latent agenda "to stop economic development and return mankind centuries back," said Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, at a conference of climate-change skeptics that began Sunday in New York.

"It is evident that the environmentalists don't want to change the climate. They want to change our behavior ... to control and manipulate us," Klaus said Sunday night  at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, held and sponsored by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute. The Institute's mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."

Joseph Romm, a former Energy Department official who edits the blog Climate Progress, called Klaus's statements "sad."

"The quote from Klaus  shows he has no understanding of the science whatsoever," Romm said. "Our understanding of climate science has gotten much stronger in the last decade. Our understanding of the catastrophe that awaits us if we don't reverse emissions trends soon has gotten crystal clear."

The conference also featured Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said his colleagues endorse climate change to win acclaim.

"Most of the atmospheric scientists who I respect do endorse global warming," Lindzen said. "The important point, however, is that the science that they do, that I respect, is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier."

Lindzen called out colleagues such as Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, whose work, Lindzen said, "clearly shows that sudden climate change occurs without anthropogenic influence, and is a property of cold rather than warm climates. However, he staunchly beats the drums for alarm and is richly rewarded for doing so."

Broecker is traveling and could not be reached immediately for comment. Broecker is considered a pioneering scientist of climate change because in a 1957 article in Yale Scientific he pondered the effects of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Last year, Broecker wrote a book, "Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat — and How to Counter It" suggesting humans will be unable to change activities that contribute to climate change in time to forestall a climate catastrophe.

Romm charged that Lindzen's quotes, too, show an ignorance of science. "How pathetic to not merely turn your back on science and the scientific method — but to actually attack the entire community of climate scientists who are working tirelessly to learn the truth and inform the public," Romm said. "That is beyond the pale."

Earlier this year Lindzen's colleagues at MIT revised prior estimates to conclude that human activity is on a path to instigate climate catastrophe within this century.

UPDATED with responses from Joseph Romm of Climate Progress 10:35 a.m., Monday, March 9,2009.