My moment of rock-star glory at a climate change sceptics’ conference in America

Wow! Finally in my life I get to experience what it’s like to be a rock star and I’m loving every moment. OK, so the drugs are in pretty short supply. As too is the meaningless sex with nubile groupies. But what do I care, the crowd love me and I love them. God bless America! God bless the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change!

You’d think it would be quite dull, a conference of 700 climate sceptics (or ‘realists’, as we prefer to call ourselves) cooped up for two and half days of intense panel sessions (‘Quantifying the Effects of Ocean Acidification on Marine Organisms’; ‘Green Eggs and Scam: the Myth of Green Jobs’; ‘Analysis of the Russian Segment of the HADCRUT3 Database’) and lectures (beginning at 7.30 a.m). But I haven’t had so much fun in years.

First, the hospitality. They know how to look after you, these right-leaning US think tanks — even modest-sized ones like the free-market Heartland Institute, which suffers the misfortune of being largely funded by private donors rather than — contrary to what you’re told by many greens — Big Oil, Big Carbon or Big Totally Evil.