Among the many conservative think tanks faithfully pushing the skeptic message in Washington, D.C., few are as prominent—or, should I say, infamous—as the Heartland Institute. The “independent” research and non-profit group has the dubious distinction of having organized the first major denier-palooza, the “International Conference on Climate Change,” last year. Despite a less than stellar showing, and an even more lukewarm follow-up in March, it’s hoping that the third time will be the charm.

The likes of Senator James Inhofe, Lord Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts will be descending on the Washington Court Hotel this week to discuss the “widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on the causes, consequences, and proper responses to climate change.” Its ostensible purpose will be to “expose Congressional staff and journalists to leading scientists and economists in the nation’s capital” and demonstrate that “global warming is not a crisis and that immediate action to reduce emissions is not necessary”—which it calls the emerging consensus view of (the handful of) scientists outside the IPCC.

At some level, it’s hard not to feel an ounce of sympathy for global warming skeptics. Surely it must take a lot of resolve and perseverance to keep pushing an idea that everyone else (presumably, they, too) knows is blatantly false. That is, until you actually start reading some of the material they try to pass off as sober-minded research.

What I find pathetic is not so much the content, which, as we all know, is easily disprovable, but the fact that their views have barely evolved over the years – even as the science has progressed and become less vague. A perfect example of this regressive mentality is a speech that was recently given by Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

We'll never know whether the great empiricist John Locke would have been part of the global warming denial industry, but we can be pretty darn sure that the self-proclaimed "John Locke Foundation" (JLF) is.

The JLF is a well-heeled political organization based in North Carolina that has recently published a "North Carolina's citizen's guide to global warming" (pdf). The guide contains the usual global warming myths perpetuated ad naseum by the global warming denial echo machine; water vapor, medieval warming period etc.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI ) is once again offering $10,000 payments to scientists who will comment on climate change - this time in the search for policy options that will open up a "middle ground" in the debate over climate change policy.

This fascinating-if-true development is reported here on the Science and Politics of Global Climate Change Blog.

Kenneth Green, the "visiting scholar" who last year offered $10,000 payments to any scientist who was willing to provide an "independent" analysis of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was the former Director of the Centre for Studies in Risk and Regulation at The Fraser Institute - which is set to release such an "independent analysis" on Monday.

For those who are attending the London press conference, it might be reasonable to ask if any of the contributors to this report actually received the $10,000 payment.