Back when I was a 12 year old, I was taught that global warming is a crisis. Being very young I was scared and was willing to do anything to stop this “global warming.” I saw the Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and I believed it.
Our teacher, Mr. Schimenz, took several of us from Queens Vocational & Technical High School on a trip to the second annual International Conference on Climate Change. What really caught my attention was that there were many scientists from all over the world at this conference.

At the beginning of the conference we quickly learned that over 32,000 scientists, including over 10,000 with PhDs, signed a petition stating that they do not believe global warming is caused by humans and that it is not a crisis. There were numerous speakers at the conference, many who presented scientific data about the earth’s temperatures, ocean currents, solar activity, carbon dioxide levels, and more.
One presentation that I found interesting was about weather stations throughout the United States. Many of these stations are compromised because of their placement. As we saw at the conference, many of these stations are located near air conditioners or in parking lots, and are influenced by exhaust from the air conditioners and cars, and from heat that reflects off the blacktop pavement.
My classmate, Esteban Soler, was very excited about meeting top-world scientists. “This conference was a good experience because I gained so much knowledge and met famous scientists who believe that global warming isn’t a crisis,” he said. Some of the people we got to meet were Willie Soon, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Dr. Harrison Schmitt, an American astronaut on the Apollo 17 mission and one of the last two Americans to walk on the moon; and Vaclav Klaus, the president of Czech Republic. “Knowing that those people were there made me realize that there are two sides to the global warming story, and there are people who try to scare us into doing what they want us to do. This conference was important because these people are doing their best to stop this false information,” Esteban said.

Daniel Corona, another student from Queens Voc, said he found Dr. Art Robinson’s talk, “Nobel Prize for Death,” to be a rude awakening. “Al Gore claims that global warming has caused an increase in malaria, even though it was the banning of DDT that has led to a resurgence of malaria and to the deaths of tens of millions of children,” Daniel said.

The global warming movement includes many celebrities, politicians, and media, all of whom have a big influence on us. Average people have been listening to these people about global warming and we have rarely heard that there is another side. Taxis going green in New York City, movies on global warming, and global warming events such as the Live Earth concerts, are just some examples of the events that make headlines.

The Heartland Institute’s climate change conference has helped make it a bit more acceptable for scientists to refute the people who hype global warming. Yet critics of the global warming movement are often attacked. Many of these scientists stand up for their views, even though they face hostile, ad hominem attacks. So do those few in the media who challenge the people who try to scare us about global warming, such as ABC’s John Stossel, who was called a traitor by Robert Kennedy, Jr. At the conference, President Vaclav Klaus said that arguing against global warming reminded him of the frustration he felt arguing against communism.

My classmate, Erick Cabello, said that the most interesting thing he learned at the conference was how science and politics tie together. “Politics has an influence on scientists nowadays, and some scientists support the global warming argument because they get research funds from the government.”

Young people like us should learn as much as we can about climate change, and speak out on this topic to our friends and in our classrooms because this has a lot of young adults needlessly afraid. As fast as these global warming beliefs were spread, we can stop these beliefs with real facts just as fast.

Armando Avila (15 years old)
Honor Society Member
Captain, Varsity Baseball Team

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