While covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I took a morning away from the main venue to attend a forum of "climate skeptics".
The speakers presented political, economic, and scientific analyses to counter the series of assessments by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A few of the skeptics went so far as to suggest that the current international drive to tackle global warming would eventually lead the world into some kind of "energy tyranny". One even showed a video clip of how "energy police" would invade private homes in the American suburbs, unplugging and removing the owners' microwave ovens, television sets, and other appliances.
I left the forum before the morning session ended. I felt that most of the speakers were too emotional and politically charged to be considered objective.
But I was impressed by the presentation of Dr Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service, who challenged the IPCC findings with his research data.
In the next few days, I talked with several scientists, including Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair, and asked them about Singer's data. All of these scientists brushed aside Singer's arguments, saying that the IPCC's primary finding is indisputable: "Warming in the climate system is unequivocal".
