The conference has a moral duty to seek and follow the truth, wherever it may lead, even through the thorniest of dilemmas. If crop-based biofuels reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, is it moral for the United States — the world’s largest producer — to burn up half of its corn crop every year? If these fuels indeed result in more carbon dioxide emissions than simply powering automobiles with gasoline would, is it moral to put thousands and thousands of people out of work — and gravely harm the state of Iowa — by shutting down the massive infrastructure that now serves the corn-ethanol industry?

The conference also has a moral duty to examine the corruption of science that can be caused by massive amounts of money. The United States has disbursed tens of billions of dollars to climate scientists who would not have received those funds had their research shown climate change to be beneficial or even modest in its effects. Are these scientists being tempted by money? And are the very, very few climate scientists whose research is supported by industry somehow less virtuous?

Then there is the all-important question of what our authority should be. Should it be the constructs of the human mind as expressed by interacting differential equations in a computerized simulation of climate change? Or should it be how God and nature express that climate, having placed us in what is now the 21st consecutive year without a statistically significant lower-atmospheric warming trend?