CFACT arrived in Europe last week for the prelude to COP15 starting with a press conference at the European Parliament on Wednesday and an all day climate conference in Berlin, Friday.

In the wake of the Climategate email scandal and Australia's rejection of its emissions trading scheme we've found politicians, media and real people more open to questioning man-made global warming.  There's been a shift and free people's are no longer marching in lockstep.  

Attendance has overflowed at all three of our events.  The debate is on.  

Here are my remarks from Copenhagen Tuesday.

Introductory Remarks by Craig Rucker of CFACT, Climate Sense Conference, Copenhagen
December 8, 2009

Ladies & Gentleman, mankind is in danger.  The threat is real.  Unless we, gathered here together resolve to take action there will be real and dire consequences.  Never before in my lifetime has the danger been so real, so close, so palpable.  The threat, however, is not from man-made global warming, but from man-made hysteria.  Yesterday, some 10,000 delegates representing over 180 nations flew into this lovely city for the start of the United Nations conference on Climate Change.  They represent the greatest threat to the health, safety, standard of living and hope for progress of all mankind since the fall of twentienth century totalitarianism.  

My name is Craig Rucker.  I am the executive director and co-founder of CFACT, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a registered U.N. NGO.  We've been focusing on issues of environment, development, energy and freedom for twenty-four years.  I have now attended around a dozen U.N. Conferences in such places as Cairo, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Bali, Cancun, and Kyoto.  In light of recent events, I have never seen the stakes raised so high or the need for action so great.  We are honored to co-sponsor this event.

Today we gather to discuss climate change.  We will be privileged to hear from venerable leading scientists and experts.  I am confident that anyone listening to these experts with an open mind, anyone exmaning the mountains of scientific data and evidence surrounding this issue will conclude that no climate treaty should be signed in Copenhagen this December!  

I cannot remember any issue where one side has so insistently and effectively monopolized a discussion while stifling and excluding diverse viewpoints.  This is not how science is designed to operate.  For the scientist, questions, examination, indeed skepticism are the building blocks of the quest for truth.  

For the layman, who relies on their common sense and experience of the world to sort it all out, here is a handy guide.  When someone avoids debate, refuses to share data, resorts to name calling and character assasination, when they insist on rigging the game, they are not confident in their facts, nor their conclusions.  Public opinion polls show that the global warming crowd has lost the support of the people.  They know that the player who refuses to show their cards is bluffing.  Its time the bluff was called.

In America, we treasure our sense of fair play.  When a group refuses to play by the rules, Americans get upset, we get a bit as we say ...... ornery.   I've grown up with the notion of the ornery American.  Now I know that we are not alone.  I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to the ornery Dane and the ornery Brit.  I'd like to call your attention to regular people who take their obligations of citizenship so seriously that when confronted with the global warming mountain of propaganda, they didn't just ignore, complain and be complacent, they took action.  I speak of course of Jens Jorgen of Denmark and Graham Capper of the United Kingdom who along with David Rolla Rouse and the Reverend Philip Foster are the founders of Climate Sense and of our gathering today.   Thank you gentlemen for your hard work and dedication, you created something fresh and new that could not be more timely.  
CFACT is proud to call you our friends and allies and we are honored to co-sponsor this event.

Recently we have all learned of the emails that emerged from the University of East Anglia, a scandal that has come to be known as Climategate.  To me, it seems abundantly clear that the proponents of global warming have been cooking the science to produce the results they wanted. They've supressed data, colluded, stifled debate, threatened scientific journals that published opposing viewpoints and placed climate propaganda ahead of climate science.  We're talking about such names as James Hansen, Kevin Trenbirth, Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Tom Karl, Gavin Schmidt, Keith Briffa among others.    These are not a small, isolated band of insignificant scientists, as our friends at the BBC, Washington Post, Guardian and other media sources would like to assert.  These are literally the founding fathers of global warming.

The IPCC process has been neither fair, nor accurate in assessing climate trends, causes and impacts.  Its time to return to sober, patient, thought and debate.  I am convinced that any treaty signed this month would hurt our economies and our people while not altering the climate at all.  As we like to say at CFACT, it would be all pain, no gain.  We have in fact crafted an all pain no gain petition and invite you to learn more and sign it at AllPainNoGain.org.