Sea level rise 'overblown,' solar energy 'dumb,' climate change deniers tell forum

Pumping carbon dioxide intothe air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts outfake science about climate change to control the global energymarket; and wind and solar energy are simply "dumb."

These are among the messages that flowed from the AmericaFirst Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by someof the country's most vocal climate change doubtersandattended by a handful of Trump administration officials.

The second annual conference, organized by the conservativethink tank the Heartland Institute, pulled together speakers fromJunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and theCenter For Industrial Progress, along with officials from theU.S. Department of Interior and the White House.

Panels at the eventincluded: Carbon Taxes, Cap & Tradeand Other Bad Ideas; Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement;and Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.

Ex-EPA chief Scott Pruitt attended 2017 event

The day-long conference reflected the political rise ofglobal warming skeptics in Donald Trump's America that isoccurring despite mounting scientific evidence,including fromU.S. government agencies, that burning oil, coal, and naturalgas is heating the planet and leading to drought, floods,wildfiresand more frequent powerful storms.

A similar conference blasting the link between fossil fuelsand climate change last year drew then-Environmental ProtectionAgency chief Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to reverseObama-era climate initiatives and roll back regulation hinderingdrillers and miners but who has since resigned in a flurry ofethical controversies.

The U.S. officials who joined this year included White House special assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department AssistantSecretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes, an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. They praised theadministration's moves to clear the way for oil industryactivity and steered clear of commenting on climate change.

But their presence gave climate change doubters at theconference a boost.

"It'sa step in the right direction," saidself-described climate change doubter Roy Spencer, a principalresearch scientist at the University of Alabama, referring tothe U.S. officials in attendance.

Sea level rise claims 'overblown': Heartland Institute

In an email, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swiftsaid department officials "speak at thousands of conferencesevery year and share ideas with a diverse group of individuals." A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment.

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute,said the views presented at the conference "once on the fringesof U.S. politics" would be proven right.

"The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown,overstated or frankly just wrong,"he said in an interview.

Huelskamp dismissedUnited Nations findings on climate change as "fake science" motivated by a desire for "power andcontrol."

Evidence of sea level rise, however, exists across thestate that hosted the conference.

New Orleans has been ravaged repeatedly by hurricanes thatscientists say will become stronger and more frequent because ofclimate change. And the rest of Louisiana is losing coastline atone of the fastest rates on the planet because of sea level rise andencroaching industry, according to the National Oceanographicand Atmospheric Administration.

"It's a nice world they live in," said Steve Cochran,campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restorationprograms, referring to the attendees of the America First EnergyConference.

"It's not the world we live in."

Evidence of climate change visible across Louisiana

The governor's office of Louisiana, a state that hasearmarked tens of billions of dollars to fend off coastalerosion and relocate a Native American tribe from a sinkingoffshore island, did not respond to requests for comment aboutthe conference.

The deep state is real ... They're certainly anti-fossil fuel.-LouisianaCongressman Clay Higgins

In the conference exhibit hall, the words "Coming Soon!"inbig orange letters framed a Heartland Institute advertisementfor the fifth volume in its "Climate Change Reconsidered" series. Attendees also passed around a book titled Dumb Energy:A Rant Against Wind and Solar Energy.

The more than 40 speakers praised Trump for withdrawing fromthe Paris climate accords, a global agreement to fight climatechange mainly by cutting carbon emissions; and for rolling backregulations to allow oil companies to lead the biggest energysurge in the nation's history.

But they warned that proponents of the U.S. oil and gas boomare still locked in an epic struggle with climate activists in academia and within federal agencies.

"The deep state is real,"said Congressman Clay Higgins, aLouisiana Republican, addressing the conference. "They're certainly anti-fossil fuel."

Funes of the Interior Department spoke on a panel called The Future of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas,alongside Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling at LLOG Exploration Co.and Fred Palmer, who joined Heartland in 2016 after retiringfrom coal company Peabody Energy.

"Oil production under President Trump has increased two million barrels per day since the beginning of hisadministration," Funes said. "The U.S. is exporting four timesas much oil as it exported a decade ago."

On the sidelines of the conference, Funes said he onlyattended the conference to speak about the nation's surging oil production, and he refused to comment about the views of otherspeakers.

Efforts to reach Balash and Rollins were unsuccessful.

But on the dinner keynote address, Balash embraced the mostobvious mutual terrain between the conference organizers and theTrump administration:the U.S. deregulation push.

"Last year, this administration rolled back 22 regulationsfor every one that it proposed," Balash said. "Unfortunately, I think we need about a decade of that to get back to a reasonableplace."