Poland is a long way from New York, and the distance illustrates the vast gulf between truth and rhetoric in how many in the mainstream media continue to cover climate science.

Last year, not a single English language Canadian news reporter was sent to cover the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poznan in Poland (except Richard Littlemore of DeSmog Blog).

Yet even as they teeter of the edge of bankruptcy, the National Post felt it important to have a reporter covering the climate denier’s conference held this week at the swank Marriott Marquis in New York and sponsored by the notoriously unethical Heartland Institute.

The UN Conference featured actual scientists and had the potential to generate real news on how the world might come to grips with climate change.

The Heartland Conference is instead a retread of last year’s denialpoloza, featuring the same washed up hacks on the oil industry payroll.

While the Heartland Institute and the rest of the climate change fringe met inside the Marriot Times Square hotel we hit the streets and asked everyday Americans what they thought about global warming. We also asked them what they thought about the Heartland Institute's conference. 

Seems that the Heartland conference is more than just a little out of touch with where people are at on the issue.

Enjoy:

I'm here again at the Heartland Institute's climate change conference in New York - or as I like to call in DenialPalooza Take 2 - and what really strikes me so far is that it's the same people attending and talking about the same things they did last year.

I've been to a lot of different conferences over the years and there's always excitement in the sharing of new studies published and hearing the lastest discoveries. After all that's what conferences are about, a time to share and advance knowledge. You wouldn't go to a mainstream conference one year and then go the next just to be presented the same information by the same people you heard last year.

That is, unless there's really nothing new to share. And that appears to be the case with this year's climate chage DenialPalooza. The schedule of speakers and the panel topics are almost a carbon copy of last year.

Take a look at the 2008 schedule and compare it to the 2009 one - same people, same topics, nothing really new.

So what's this conference about?