Debate: denied!

Climate skeptic plays hookey

Posted by Andrew Dessler (Guest Contributor) at 2:59 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Read more about: climate | climate science | climate change skepticism

The great climate debate was supposed to be yesterday, but it was not to be. My opponent, Dr. Tim Ball, was a no-show. He knew the debate started at 2:00 p.m., but got the time zone wrong. After he figured that out, his phone stopped working. Go figure.

So it was just me, and I spent about 75 minutes answering questions that readers had left on Eric Berger's Sciguy site, as well as taking questions from the phone lines. Many of the questions were interesting and reasonable, and I very much appreciate the people that posed them.

However, what would a climate change debate be without a few wackos?

One caller asked (and later emailed me the same question):

I would like to know if you really believe you and others like you can manage the climate of this planet? As the Wizard of Oz found out, there are unforeseen consequences to your actions.

That's right, if the Wizard can't make good policy concerning flying monkeys, witches, and Judy Garland, what chance do we have of handling climate change? This caller will most definitely not like my suggestion that we geoengineer a cooler climate by sending up flying monkeys carrying mirrors to reflect sunlight back to space.

The last caller was also a doozy. I'm still not 100 percent sure what he was asking, but my response, describing how most scientists agree that climate change is real, triggered Godwin's law and brought the ubiquitous comparison between the IPCC and Nazis. Steve Hayword of AEI fame emailed me to say that he caught this exchange and described it as "a train wreck." It's definitely worth listening to.

I was also surprised at the venom some skeptics have reserved for the "scientific consensus." It almost seems as if the existence of a consensus among scientists is evidence that a scientific consensus doesn't exist. That doesn't make sense to me, but it must to them.

And as I was answering some of the more hostile questions, I started wondering how you convince someone of the reality of climate change who thinks everything you say is a lie. I don't think there's any way to have a meaningful and civil conversation in that context. Thus, there are some people that you simply can never convince.

It also drove home just how useless these kinds of "debates" really are. At this point, the public policy debate has really shifted to what we need to be doing rather than the reality of climate change. Trying to convince the remaining die-hard skeptics is a waste of time and effort. (I know that many Grist readers have been saying this for a while, and I guess I'm now on board.)

You can download a mp3 of the debate from the blogtalkradio site. Enjoy!

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On concerns about the rampant expansion...........

............of economic globalization activities that are now overspreading the surface of Earth.

From my humble point of view, the "powers that be" who are managing the growth of big-business activities worldwide could be in denial of the practical reality of the finite world we inhabit and also unwilling to openly and honorably acknowledge the validity of research from no less than 2000 IPCC Nobel Laureate scientists that is being reported with regard to the ominous, distinctly human-induced predicament which is looming before the human community, a predicament that is already visible on the far horizon to many in the human community, but not yet openly and adequately discussed. That many too many politicians and economic powerbrokers adamantly support the continuous, unrestrained growth of the global economy, which could soon become an unsustainable human enterprise, does not favor our children's well-being or safety, I believe.

Too many of our current leaders appear to have religiously pledged their primary allegiance to the short-term `successes' of unbridled economic globalization, whatever they may be, regardless of the long-term potential for catastrophe that such a recklessly unchecked and unrealistic pursuit portends. For leaders of the political economy to conspicuously ignore the carefully and skillfully obtained scientific evidence on climate change, and global warming in particular, is an incomprehensible failure of human thinking, judging and willing, with potentially profound implications for the future of our children.

Plainly, what is necessary now is intellectual honesty, clarity of vision and courage as well as a willingness among leaders of economic globalization to begin "centering" their attention on the probability of converging threats to humanity that could soon be posed by the gigantic scale and patently unsustainable growth rate of the over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species in our time.

Always, with thanks,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

by stevenearlsalmony at 3:30 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Excellent job

I listened to the program and thought you did an excellent job. Two minor criticisms, at the beginning when you were talking about paleoclimate you buried your lede, taking a long time to build up to the conclusion about how greenhouse gases affect climate. Second, when you hit the nutter at the end you might have said something about your opinion being based on physics. On the whole excellent, but I fear you will now have the problem of champion fighters, with every drunk in the bar thinking that he can take you.

by EliRabett at 6:07 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Excellent debate

Hi Andrew: I listened to your debate (or lack of) and thought you came across very well. However I am not sure I agree with your point "It also drove home just how useless these kinds of "debates" really are."

A couple of years ago I would have agreed with this, but I have seen too much in the way of politics happening in both the US and Canada. I think that the majority of the people don't consider the science behind climate change. They feel that there is a debate and that each side has points - albeit the side supporting probably AGW has more.

Debates like this show that how strong the science is. True you will never convince all the people, but you don't need to. Your target is the large group who will quietly watch. They are the ones who will influence policy in the future.

Regards,
John

by John Cross at 11:27 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Agreeing with John

Andrew, it is never useless!! The lurkers and listeners outnumber the skeptics, and they are your true audience.

It was only when people who believe in science and rational thought gave up the debates that the creationists and anti-science folks began to make real headway.

There is probably nothing more crucial you could be doing!! Thanks from all of us for carrying the ball!

patrick in Beijing

by bookerly at 1:04 AM on 19 Dec 2007

Yeah

I have pointed uncounted people to your posts on the Gristmill. Nobody will change their mind when someone is looking. It has to happen when no one is watching. I was skeptical when the subject of global warming first appeared, which is an appropriate first response. I moved toward agnosticism and on to acceptance years ago. This is how it should proceed.

People who are still skeptical at this point out of ignorance will probably come around once they are aware of more facts but there will always be those who will never give it up. Think back to the intelligent design debates.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 8:39 AM on 19 Dec 2007

Waste of time?

I hope there were people listening that took something away from it. Personally I admire you for the civility and patience. I do feel for Eric though. He's got a real bunch on his blog... Talk about paranoid cranks...

by MarkUK at 9:50 AM on 19 Dec 2007

thanks

I'd like to echo the thanks to Andrew for attempting this debate. I do find it useful, for me at least, to gage how the public perceives this issue. I really believe that the caller who graciously volunteered to be the counterpoint after Ball went MIA is like a lot of people in this country. They don't claim to be scientists but they truly believe, based on what they see in the media, that there is a lot of disagreement in the scientific community over climate change. As we've heard many times before...this stems from the idea that the media is is selling a product. And a debate is much more of a hot seller than a non-debate. Thus, there is this huge disconnection between what the scientific community actually knows about the issue and what the greater public believes the scientific community knows about the issue. In the media, the skeptic arguments exist in an echo chamber and a few loud-mouth skeptic scientists can seem like a whole army to the unsuspecting citizen.

The last caller was also frustrating to listen to. I really didn't understand his point about creating a null hypothesis of "There is a global climate". How do you put numbers to that and test it in a statistically meaningful way? He mentioned correlating nearby climate data to create test the idea of a regional climate but not finding significant correlation between all of the global weather stations wouldn't mean that a global climate doesn't exist. Surely, if you had a large spatial collection of paleoclimate data, you could correlate measurements over geological time during glacials and interglacials. But I still wouldn't know how to phrase that null hypothesis.

I really started to get annoyed when he started with the whole semantic issue of "What is truth" and the argument that nobody should ever utter the word scientific consensus. Andrew, your cancer example was excellent but we never got to hear the caller respond to it. Bottom line: scientific consensus is absolutely essential in a rational society where scientific knowledge influences policy-makers who are not scientists themselves. This scientific knowledge is not the same as absolute truth as the caller wishes it could be but it is (like Andrew said) the best we have to work with.

by egbooth at 11:50 AM on 19 Dec 2007

Dr Dave

I have to assume that early caller's the proprieter of Dr Dave's TruthBlog, Dr. Dave's RadioBlog, Dr. Dave's Techblog, Soldiercentric, i.e. Dave Mason - he never says what he's a doctor of, just calls himself dr dave.

I would say if that's him, then assuming he's a phd in something besides business or economics or what have you, then there was a debate. it's just that dr dave's side sucks eggs, and he's too ignorant even to make their strongest case. both his truth blog and his tech blog are foam-at-the-mouth right-wing screed-blogs, and he gives no evidence of understanding a science of any kind, let alone climate science. recommended (esp. the truth blog, which obsesses on global warming) because it'd be great for the next show to have him call in and be called to account for his pseudoscience.

by Marion Delgado at 8:11 AM on 20 Dec 2007

MWP and things

Andrew,

During the press conference that accompanied the NRC report on proxies, they were asked to clarify their position on now vs the medieval warm period. They gave the same conclusion as the IPCC, that is 2:1 or 66% or "likely" (or whatever you want to call it) warmer today than then. You said on the show that it was basically a coin flip, but it was stronger than that, and consistent with the TAR's conclusion (although they objected to the specificity of singling out a specific year or decade).

The first skeptic caller mentioned "Dr. Gray of New Zealand" being censored. He was talking about Vincent Gray. Gray's exploits are documented here:
http://nouseforadave.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/blatant-hyp ...

Long story short, this one guy accounted for half of the reviewer comments to chapter 9, and 90% of all the comments rejected. A third of them were rejected because they were nonsensical gibberish. It is a total laugh riot that was given as an example of "crushing dissent."

Deltoid and Desmogblog have more:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/12/john_mclean_and_t ...
http://www.desmogblog.com/nrsp-peddling-deceptive-statist ...

Also, a good response to those who argue that consensus requires unanimity, and we can't act until every skeptic is convinced, is to ask them whether the existence of doctors who question the link between HIV and AIDS means that there is no consensus among doctors that HIV causes AIDS, or that policymakers shouldn't act because the "jury is still out."

by cce at 11:53 PM on 20 Dec 2007

Debate Debased

Glad you have finally come around to the fact that these debates are a waste of time, my thoughts exactly. The AGW advocates and activists will never move and the skeptics are the same, with the same old, tired talking points on both sides unaccepted by the other. Since it is really politics that's no surprise, except that you thought it otherwise. However, as with the NPR debate, which the skeptics won easily, the public still knows there is controversy over the cause of climate change. And thus the "what do we do about it" remains mired in the uncertainty of the cause and thus the probability the "solutions" will work.

I am fine with moving the discussion and debate to what we do about "it". In that one political realities and economic sanity will succeed where these debates with believers vs. skeptics may fail. That is a good thing, and as the cooling and natural forces emerge once again to show themselves more powerful than AGW believers, things will again become more rational and less religious/political on the science of climate change.

by SammyOwl at 1:16 PM on 24 Dec 2007

Denialists have nothing but spin

SammyOwl portrays himself as being in the middle, he complains about "skeptics" spewing "the same old, tired talking points"... and then he goes on to spew some of the same old denialist talking points himself? Oops.

egbooth:

"What is truth?" Shucks, and I thought that was a parody:

http://www.thepoorman.net/tcs_parody/TCS_TheDayAfterTomor ...

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

by frankbi at 3:46 AM on 14 Jan 2008

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