We're having a tough time wrapping our brain around the Heartland Institute's three-day "International Conference on Climate Change" that ended yesterday in New York City. Based on what we've read, "exasperated" might be the best word to describe our state of mind.

Actually, the fact that we are reading lots about this conference is in itself a part of the problem. But let's back up for a moment. The Heartland Institute describes itself as a public policy think tank that promotes free-market solutions to social and economic problems. If those solutions include supporting tobacco companies, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil and promoting the idea that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, then yes, mission accomplished.

The scientists at RealClimate slammed this week's event from the get-go, noting the astonishing number of ways that the meeting was unlike any other scientific conference. The list includes:

• Offering $1,000 to those willing to give a talk calling global warming into question.
• Allowing financial sponsors to select speakers, as opposed to an independent scientific committee.
• Bribing all elected officials with a free stay at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan if they attended.

But perhaps most noteworthy is how the Heartland Institute promoted this "scientific" conference:

"The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective."

The agricultural insecticide carbofuran has been linked to 558 documented bird kills – incidents where multiple birds have died in the same location - and many more undocumented ones, accounting for over a million bird fatalities. When applied improperly to an agricultural field, it can kill birds where they stand, after only a few minutes of foraging on tainted plant material. Farmers have been charged with violations of the Migratory Bird Act for kills on their land related to the chemical, heavily fined, and required to make habitat improvements.

One might think that, like DDT and other harmful chemicals, carbofuran would be banned immediately as a matter of course – and the EPA is attempting to do just that, with a proposed ban now under consideration by an independent advisory panel.

While we're skeptical of any "independent" EPA panel these days, we're also not surprised that political pressure is mounting on the EPA to withdraw the proposed ban. Agricultural lobbies, politicians with heavily agricultural constituencies, and the manufacturer of the profitable chemical, who stands to lose sales both in the US and abroad.

Al Gore still hasn't endorsed a candidate for president, most likely because he has dreams of playing broker/peacemaker at the DNC convention summer and further securing his spot as patriarch of the Democrats

But that convention scenario is looking less likely by the day -- and could be totally moot by tomorrow -- which may be why the Goracle is becoming more vocal about how the environment has been getting the short shrift among campaign issues. Over the weekend, the "remarkable people" in charge of the annual TED conference deemed the former veep and Nobel Prize winner worthy enough to speak in their midst.

In his speech, Gore criticized the minimal attention given to climate change and other environmental issues during more than 20 debates, noting as we did how several of the CNN debates were sponsored by "something with an Orwellian label" of Clean Coal.

Gore said the Alliance for Climate Protection, which he started in California, would launch a national campaign pressuring candidates to better explain their plan for addressing climate change. He gave restrained praise to current efforts by Clinton, Obama and McCain, noting that they all have shown promising "leadership" on the issue.

"We've had these brilliant presentations by physicists," Gore told the TEDsters at the end of the conference. "But in the struggle for a unified field theory, I think we have to find a unified Earth theory."

Editor's Note: EnviroWonk writer Samantha Hulkower will be blogging throughout the week from the WIREC conference in Washington, D.C.

Today kicks off the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, a Tuesday-Thursday party celebrating renewable energy, thrown by USDA and the State Department. Hmmm, would have thought the Energy Department might have a hand in something like this, but let us not nitpick.

There are three parts to WIREC: the Ministerial Conference where decision makers from around the world come to discuss things and make promises; the Trade Show, where businesses show off their latest innovations; and the Business Conference, where businesses, innovators, and others not important enough to be invited to the political shindig (EnviroWonk included) network, rub elbows, and otherwise have their second-class conference.

All of the Business Conference conferences look interesting enough, covering such power sources as solar, wind, geothermal, ocean, hydro, and TWO rooms running programs about biofuels all three days, but we are really looking forward to the "Taste of America" reception Wednesday afternoon and reporting back on what America tastes like (we think it'll be Miller High Life).

Although such international conferences have been held before in Germany in 2004 and China in 2005, there is (or at least ought to be) a sense of urgency in the discussion of renewable energy. Not only because the technologies and methods being discussed here will be used to help countries reduce their emissions under the new reduction treaty negotiated in Copenhagen next year, but oil prices reached an all time high Monday, surpassing inflation-adjusted 1970s oil crisis prices for the first time.

Turns out that Thom Yorke, the lead singer of the mega-alternative band Radiohead, is a bit of an envirowonk himself. Last week, Yorke took the stage with European Union environmental commissioner Starvos Dimas of Greece to kick off Friends of the Earth’s European Big Ask Campaign, an effort to curb emissions across the EU.

The campaign seeks to mimic the United Kingdom’s climate change bill, the first such national legislation to set binding cuts of greenhouse gases. Goals for the Big Ask are 30 percent reductions in emissions in 17 European countries—each has it own page on which users can take action—by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050.

Beyond the Big Ask Campaign, Yorke is putting his money where is guitar is. He also promised last week that Radiohead would forego tour dates in Glastonbury because the city lacks a public transportation system. Yorke also says he’s installing a geothermal system to generate clean power at his house.

If all Yorke’s efforts are successful, maybe he can avoid having to plant any fake plastic trees.

You see, the thing about climate change is that the climate is changing from what has previously been considered normal. Although climate change is now used interchangeably with "global warming", climate change doesn't only imply warming temperatures. It has also been attributed to increased droughts, floods, stronger hurricanes, just to pick a few changes in weather as a result of global climate change. Quick science lesson (for here at EnviroWonk, we aren't just politics nerds, we are science nerds too):

• Weather is atmospheric conditions in a specific area over a short period of time.
• Climate is the long-term average of weather patterns.

So we talk about what the weather is like today, or even the past week. But, we talk about climate when we say that spring has been coming earlier, or winters are not as cold as they used to be. A single day of weather, or even a single season, does not a change in climate make.

It's simple enough to understand, which is why we are not surprised that climate skeptics have started to jump all over this cold winter as evidence that Al Gore is the biggest con man since Frank Abagnale.

In what has to be the best disclaimer in history, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Republican minority blog, whose Ranking member we can never forget is Senator Inhofe, felt the need to explain their clever, snarky headline, and thereby drain all humor from the situation:

Earth's 'Fever' Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way

[Disclaimer: Since there is no "normal" temperature of the Earth, there is no way the Earth can have a "fever." The headline's reference to "fever" is for amusement purposes only. See also the U.S. Senate Minority Report:"Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007" - LINK ]

We don't usually single out individual columns like this, but when Ferris Bueller's economics teacher has something to say, we are usually entertained, if not informed. That's not to say we always agree with the former Nixon speechwriter, because we rarely do. He's kind of like George Will in that while everything is always well-written, a lot of it just happens to be kind of nutty.

Anyway, Stein had a column in yesterday's New York Times business section titled "Exxon Mobil Needs A Hug". He writes how the company and its staggering profits have become an easy and often-used target for candidates -- especially Obama and Clinton -- to play up their populist image with blue-collar America.

Stein thinks the candidates should reconsider the attacks on Big Oil and aim elsewhere, arguing that "envy is simply not good economics" and that those huge profits are benefiting more than just a few Texas billionaires.

"Exxon Mobil, in fact, is owned mostly by ordinary Americans. Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil’s shares ... When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives ... It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans."

Interesting points, though Stein conveniently neglects to mention anything about our long-term energy future or the environmental consequences of continuing to follow the XOM doctrine. Big oil may be, as Stein says, "Big us" in 2008, but that sounds like a bad philosophy to pursue in the long haul.

In what was probably the Danish equivalent of Nixon going to China, the Prime Minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, paid a visit to President Bush at his ranch in Texas this past weekend. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and the UN will be holding negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 to finalize post-Kyoto emissions regulations.

The Prime Minister's visit is considered to be a "diplomatic coup". We don't want to diminish the importance of a European President, but think coup might be a slight hyperbole. Denmark might be holding the next high-profile climate negotiations, and claim the currently-thawing Greenland, but it's still, well, Denmark. We dare you to name a more famous export than Hans Christian Andersen.

That said, being the Prime Minister of the country hosting the next big round of negotiations is nothing to dismiss, and Rasmussen could be a potentially influential figure in the international talks. Considering his buddy-buddy relationship with Bush, not to mention their joint affinity for mountain biking, Rasmussen probably has a better chance of influencing Bush than a Nobel Prize-winning climate expert.

We can't understand why Bush was his usual vague, technology-panacea self to the reporters, while secretly telling Rasmussen his willingness to be part of binding agreements, according to the Washington Post. With his approval ratings lower than the water level in Lake Mead, you would think Bush would be playing up anything that would make him more appealing/less despicable to the public.