Jun. 6--WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was in a froth, and his audience loved it.

The California Republican was talking about global warming and could barely contain his disgust.

"Al Gore has been wrong all along!" Rohrabacher yelled into the microphone. "This is outrageous! All of this is wrong! The people who have stifled this debate have an agenda that is just frightening!"

Welcome to the third annual International Conference on Climate Change, a daylong session of speeches and scientific presentations that took place Tuesday just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Almost no media covered the event.

Organized by The Heartland Institute and other conservative think tanks and groups, the conference drew about 250 guests, most of them researchers and policy analysts, some from as far away as Japan and Australia.

There was plenty of wry laughter during the day, especially when former Vice President Gore and his award-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," were brought up, which was often.

The conference hall also was filled with a tangible air of frustrated defeat, like the brainy kid in math class who thinks he knows all the answers, raises his hand time and again, but is never called upon.

"We are seldom heard in the policy debate," said Joseph L. Bast, president of The Heartland Institute. "If you open your newspaper, turn on your TV set, you're likely to see global warming alarmism, and nothing else."

Bast labeled as "popular delusion" the current conventional wisdom on the issue -- that man-made emissions, notably carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels is dangerously heating up the planet, causing sea levels to rise and is increasing the ferocity of storms and drought.

As such, the conference represents a lingering -- and still powerful -- sentiment that global warming is not such a big deal after all.

Instead, attendees argued, the slow and slight increase in air, water and atmospheric temperatures during much of the 20th century is part of a natural cycle of the Earth's unpredictable, roller-coaster weather patterns.

Carbon dioxide, they debated, is not a pollutant that should be regulated, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Supreme Court now hold; it is an attribute that helps plant and sea life.

Bast acknowledged that the conference was hurriedly organized, and moved from New York City to Washington, to counteract proposals from President Barack Obama for a "cap-and-trade" program aimed at fighting global warming by drastically limiting carbon emissions.