Aren’t most of the deniers just arguing over the effects of the human factor in climate change such as pollution, destruction of rain forests etc.?
I came in to say this. Having an equal number of representation on both sides gives the deniers way more power and legitimacy than they deserve. In any case, a debate is a terrible idea for so many reasons already covered.
Agreed. I’m sure plenty of people would claim that the sinking was due to the added weight from a million Syrian refugees that were granted asylum by Obama.
Alas, there are a good many (no idea of relative proportions) who are denying that warming is happening at all. One blizzard in New York, and “Haw, haw, where’s all this ‘Global Warming’ you claim is happening?”
That’s the political punditry sort of thing. I had thought the so called ‘scientific deniers’ had given up that kind of thing in the face of overwhelming evidence and were now claiming that we are seeing natural cycles of climate change unaffected by human behavior. I do recall some do say there’s no global climate change and just point at the melting poles as local events or some such nonsense though. Not that it matters, any such debate would break down into a lot hand waving and distraction. I’d rather see the serious scientists discuss as opposed to debate the predictions and how well established the timelines and varying possible eventualities are.
It’s not uncommon for the same denier to say both (“It’s not happening, and it’s part of a natural cycle.”). It’s classic Kettle Logic.
Cutting off the microphone seems to be key to your idea — if the warmist can’t answer a question in 90 seconds cut him off, making sure to give exactly 90 seconds in rebuttal as well.
It’s too bad that real information is so hard to come by, that we needed a President Trump to organize this debate. With the liberal technocrats running the Universities and Silicon Valley for the past several decades you’d think they’d have found a way to make information easily available by now. Perhaps something like out of the Jetson cartoons — computers in homes calling up scientific papers when asked!
Perhaps this debate can be a model for other needed debates. I’m not at all sure about quantum physics and think it would be fair for the anti-physics side to have a fair chance to argue against the cacophony of pro-quantum liberals. And now Hillaryism has been repudiated, but we still aren’t sure whether she’s a murderer or just a criminal influence peddler. Both sides of that debate should have a chance to duke it out on TV, equal time each.
I’m sure many would claim it was just God’s will.
Maybe because people don’t see its effects in their daily lives.
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By all objective measures, severe weather hasn’t gotten worse.
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Warming has been occurring at only half the rate that climate models and the IPCC say it should be.
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CO2 is necessary for life on Earth. It has taken humanity 100 years of fossil fuel use to increase the atmospheric CO2 content from 3 parts to 4 parts per 10,000. (Please don’t compare our CO2 problem to Venus, which has 230,000 times as much CO2 as our atmosphere).
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The extra CO2 is now being credited with causing global greening.
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Despite handwringing over the agricultural impacts of climate change, current yields of corn, soybeans, and wheat are at record highs.
I am not an expert, by any means, but my recollection is that was not a lot of doom-and-gloom regarding a ton of negative agricultural impacts due to global warming- if anything, the idea was that there may actually be surplus, due to some areas now having longer growing seasons, especially in the temperate latitudes. Long-term effects of changing weather patterns might disrupt agriculture in a lot of areas, but due to the unpredictable nature of weather, it is not clear what those effects will be.
I also don’t think there is much call for Roland Emmerich-style sudden weather catastrophes, except in the lurid descriptions that are haughtily presented as a way to dismiss the concerns of climate scientists- “See, this crazy thing hasn’t happened, and until it does, global warming is a myth… perpetuated by the Chinese… to usurp America’s power… thanks Obama…”
We really do need a political debate on climate change, not just in a moderated hall, but in every walk of life across the country. And we’ve never had one.
I don’t mean a debate about the scientific facts. That’s silly; facts aren’t up for debate. We’ve already established that the Earth is warming overall. We’ve established that that overall warming is causing a wide variety of other climactic effects in various parts of the Earth. We’ve established that the vast majority of the warming is due to increased carbon dioxide levels. We’ve established that the increased carbon dioxide levels are due to human activity, especially burning fossil fuels. We’ve established that the climate change has already caused a large amount of damage, in terms of money and lives. We’ve established that it’ll cause even more damage in the future, if we let it.
All of that is already established, and it does no good to revisit any of those points. None of that is political, no matter how much one side wants it to be. What isn’t established, and what it would do good to address, is the political question of what we should do about it. And that very important question is getting very nearly ignored.
Well, yes, it has. Drought, hurricanes, even blizzards. Especially droughts.
0% is worried about the mega-volcano lurking under Yellowstone, that is predicted to largely annihilate the nation, any year now.
Given that the downside of Climate Change is that prime farm land migrates into Canada, you could argue that CC is doing pretty well on the fear front.
There should be a debate and the topic and responses should be limited to two questions.
What will happen when the pole ice melts?
What can we do about it?
When 66% of the population (by your figure) is horribly misinformed, what is needed is not a debate between the people who have the facts on their side and the people who are intentionally* obfuscating the facts, for all the reasons previously mentioned. What is needed is education. What is needed is for a platform where the people who know what they’re talking about can stand up and explain the concepts to an audience, and an audience which is actually interested in learning. A debate doesn’t do that. You have one side offering facts and good information, and one side offering obfuscation and lies. That doesn’t help anyone. You might as well give Ken Ham a national platform.
*At this point, if you’d like to argue that people like Christopher Monckton, Anthony Watts, or James Inhofe are arguing in good faith, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.