CHICAGO, Dec 19, 2007 /PRNewswire-USNewswire

An open letter to the United Nations Secretary-General, issued during the recently concluded climate change conference in Bali, characterizes attempts to prevent global climate change as "futile" and "a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

Endorsed by more than 100 independent scientists, engineers, and economists who work in the field of climate change, the open letter calls on world leaders to abandon the goal of "stopping climate change" and focus instead on helping nations become resilient to natural changes by promoting environmentally responsible economic growth.

The signatories to the letter include distinguished professionals who have occupied leading positions in national and international science organizations, government organizations, and universities. Many have been elected as fellows of distinguished scientific academies or awarded prestigious science prizes.

Their letter emphasizes that the reports issued by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are an "inadequate" foundation on which to base policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. The IPCC reports do not reflect many of the most recent peer-reviewed findings in climate science, discoveries that shed serious doubt on the increasingly improbable hypothesis that human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are having a significant impact on global climate.

The writers of the open letter detail some of the serious misrepresentations of science in the IPCC summaries for policymakers; call attention to the outdated nature of some IPCC conclusions; and assert that balanced economic analyses do not support measures to restrict energy consumption for the purpose of diminishing CO2 emissions. The signatories further explain that, because attempts to drastically cut CO2 emissions will slow economic development, the current UN approach of curbing CO2 emissions is likely to increase, rather than decrease, human suffering from future climate change.

For more information or to set up interviews with any of the Open Letter endorsers, please contact:

For more information about The Heartland Institute and its efforts to combat global warming alarmism, contact Media Relations Manager Harriette Johnson at 312/377-4000, email hjohnson@heartland.org.

SOURCE The Heartland Institute

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