We promise this will be the last post devoted to this week's sham of a climate change conference -- brought to you by the friends of big oil and big tobacco -- but we just couldn't let this item pass without comment: The founder of the Weather Channel thinks it would be a good idea to sue Al Gore and others involved in the sale and marketing of carbon credits, in order to "finally put some light on the fraud of global warming."

Speaking Monday at the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, John Coleman -- who founded the Weather Channel in 1982 but is no longer affiliated with the station -- told the audience that suing Gore and others would force "global warming alarmists" to give a more honest account of their policies.

"I have a feeling this is the opening," he said. "If lawyers will take the case -- sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. The lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention."

Coleman is a strange character who has essentially disassociated himself with TWC because a station of full of meteorologists and climate experts has the audacity to believe that global warming is indeed real. "The Weather Channel had great promise, and that's all gone now because they've made every mistake in the book on what they've done and how they've done it and it's very sad."

Yes, and that's exactly why your channel is about to be sold for $5 billion.

EnviroWonk writer Samantha Hulkower is blogging from the WIREC conference this week. We're glad she's there instead of here.

Tuesday was the first day of the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, held in our nation's capital at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, which according to conference materials is the "most energy efficient building of its size on the east coast." So we were off to a promising start.

WIREC seems to take sustainability seriously: Composting food scraps, donating leftover food to the DC Foodbank, purchasing supplies locally when possible, utilizing recycled, organic, or postindustrial materials to make badges, handouts, cups, etc., and most impressively, forgoing plastic water bottles for water coolers and fountains. It's nice to see consistency.

Upon registration we were loaded with swag. Don't be too envious -- it's not exactly like the Oscars. We got a surprisingly useful canvas messenger bag, chocked full of tons of brochures, pamphlets, and other paper products of companies exhibiting. In following the conference's sustainability theme, they will be perfect for lining our bird's cage or recycling.

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 ]