From half of the same team that brought you this classic video of di-hydrogen monoxide:
Climate change? Once more, ‘I don’t know’
By Penn Jillette
July 3, 2008
From: The Los Angeles Times
My partner, Teller, and I are professional skeptics. We do magic tricks in our live show in Las Vegas, and we have a passion for trying to use what we’ve learned about fooling people to possibly get a little closer to the truth. Our series on Showtime tries to question everything — even things we hold dear.
James Randi is our inspiration, our hero, our mentor and our friend. Randi taught us to use our fake magic powers for good. Psychics use tricks to lie to people; Randi uses tricks to tell the truth.
Every year, in Vegas, the James Randi Educational Foundation gathers together for a conference as many like-thinking participants as you can get from people who question whenever people think alike. There are smart, famous and groovy speakers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. There’s lots of real science stuff with real scientists questioning things that a lot of people take for granted, like ESP, UFOs, faith healing and creationism. It’s a party.
Teller and I are always honored to be invited. We don’t wear our usual matching gray suits, and Teller doesn’t stay in his silent character. Teller chats up a storm. It’s not a gig; it’s hanging out with friends. During our loose Q&A period this year, someone asked us about global warming, or climate change, or however they’re branding it now. Teller and I were both silent on stage for a bit too long, and then I said I didn’t know.
I elaborated on “I don’t know” quite a bit. I said that Al Gore was so annoying (that’s scientifically provable, right?) that I really wanted to doubt anything he was hyping, but I just didn’t know. I also emphasized that really smart friends, who knew a lot more than me, were convinced of global warming. I ended my long-winded rambling (I most often have a silent partner) very clearly with “I don’t know.” I did that because … I don’t know. Teller chimed in with something about Gore’s selling of “indulgences” being BS, and then said he didn’t know either. Penn & Teller don’t know jack about global warming … next question.
The next day, I heard that one of the non-famous, non-groovy, non-scientist speakers had used me as an example of someone who let his emotions make him believe things that are wrong. OK. People who aren’t used to public speaking get excited and go off half-cocked. I’m used to public speaking and I go off half-cocked. I live half-cocked. Cut her some slack.
Later, I was asked about a Newsweek blog she wrote. Reading it bugged me more than hearing about it. She ends with: “But here was Penn, a great friend to the skeptic community, basically saying, ‘Don’t bother me with scientific evidence, I’m going to make up my mind about global warming based on my disdain for Al Gore.’ … Which just goes to show, not even the most hard-nosed empiricists and skeptics are immune from the power of emotion to make us believe stupid things.”
Is there no ignorance allowed on this one subject? I took my children to see the film “Wall-E.” This wonderful family entertainment opens with the given that mankind destroyed Earth. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing someone hating ourselves for what we’ve done to the planet and preaching the end of the world. Maybe they’re right, but is there no room for “maybe”? There’s a lot of evidence, but global warming encompasses a lot of complicated points: Is it happening? Did we cause it? Is it bad? Can we fix it? Is government-forced conservation the only way to fix it?
To be fair (and it’s always important to be fair when one is being mean-spirited, sanctimonious and self-righteous), “I don’t know” can be a very bad answer when it is disingenuous. You can’t answer “I don’t know if that happened” about the Holocaust.
But the climate of the whole world is more complicated. I’m not a scientist, and I haven’t spent my life studying weather. I’m trying to learn what I can, and while I’m working on it, isn’t it OK to say “I don’t know”?
I mean, at least in front of a bunch of friendly skeptics?
Penn Jillette is the louder, bigger half of the magic/comedy team of Penn & Teller.
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Sounds like typical bullying of anyone who says ” It isnt happening or I’m not sure”
Wrong Wrong answer. The answer should be ” I beleive in AGW, it must be happening , [snip].
I’m not a mathemetician, but did do maths and physics to a high standard at college. It seems to me if you take out the 1998 blip you are left with very little warming at all. Also Hansen’s range of temps for 2008 which he forecast in 1998 is out, he didnt hit the target. How can we beleive he can then hit the target for 2050? or 2100?
Lets have a bit more real time analysis and less hype before we commit eco harikari.
Great site Anthony, really sorry I cant understand all of it. I rely on people like you to tell the truth. Cheers Adrian
Further demonstration that the cult of AGW is religious in aspects. No heresey allowed. “I don’t know” is the only correct answer based on the noisey data, incomplete climate models and troublesome agendas prevalent in climate research today.
AGW-belief is more of a religion than a science
– you have to ‘believe’ in it
– you have to accept the doctrine handed-down from on-high, without question….
– or thou shalt be cast out!
Something I haven’t understood about science–perhaps someone could explain?–is the difference between “the evidence so far supports…” and “we actually know”. I keep wondering about the analogy with having a search party out looking for someone lost in a forest: if you know the size of the forest, then you wouldn’t give up searching until you’d covered every foot… and once you had, you could say with certainty, either that they are not here, or, we found them. But if you are dealing with unknown unknowns… how do scientists decide at what point they know enough to be reasonably sure that “they know” ?
You got Penn Jillette to write a blog post? I feel even more blog envy.
Oh well. Maybe if you have a get together of everyone who has guest posted, I could persuade Penn to dance the Rhumba with me. 🙂
I sympathize somewhat with Penn. Here he is a professional skeptic so to speak, consorting with the likes of James Randi (an alleged paranormal skeptic) and a big algore supporter as well as an AGW acolyte.
I imagine he got beat on by Randi & Co. to drink the Kool Aid.
Penn, of course it’s OK to say “I don’t know”. And you’re working on it, which is great. But, don’t be fooled by your “really smart friends” who know “a lot more than me”, and are convinced of global warming. The very fact that they’ve been hornswaggled by AGW shows that they may in fact not be as smart as you think. Furthermore, you do not have to be a scientist to do your own research. You will find that the more you look into it, the more skeptical you will be of AGW. Many of us, myself included, started off believing AGW was true. At this point, I do not consider myself a skeptic on AGW, but rather a “climate realist”, having advanced beyond mere skepticism.
good article….but richard dawkins is a hack and anyone that considers him worthy of respect (philosophically) shoud be embarrassed. he truly is a logical heretic (meaning he has no apparent skills of logic…..
For believers there are no skeptics, only believers and deniers.
For many years I subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP now CSI). Back then they professed to believe that “Extraordiany Claims Require Extraordiany Proof.” In those days Randi was a CSICOP Fellow (I met Randi and Jillete at a CSICOP conference in Washington DC in 1990). Randi split with CSICOP some time back over a libel suit and Randi started his own magazine SKEPTIC. Recently, I was horribly dissappointed when the Skeptical Inquirer bought into the AGW theory hook line and sinker. SKEPTIC has published articles favorable to AGW, but at least it also published a well researched article skeptical of AGW. <a href=”http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html” title=”A Climate of Belief”
Back in the late ’70s, early ’80s, I was skeptical about global cooling and then global warming, but I was concerned about the increasing CO2. I knew much less than the little I know today and was then “skeptical” as I didn’t know.
We now have 20 years of non-rising temperatures with rising CO2; I have moved from “skeptical” to heretic as the AGW religious movement has developed and prognostications haven’t.
I saw a P&T thing on recycling. It was so funny I literally fell out of my chair laughing.
REPLY: You mean this one?
Mark:
Dawkins logic is pretty good
– he has an amazing clarity of thought.
– he does a scientic should do – let himself be led by logic & reason, not emotion & prejudice.
– I don’t know where he sits on the AGW vs non-AGW debate, but it would be interesting to find out.
Why can’t more people be that honest! I have constantly repeated that we don’t know enough to go about messing with ‘solutions’ that could prove worse then the problem!
Case in point:
Seventeen year study shows Greenland Ice Cap melting much slower then previously though! It would take thousands of years, at the current rate, for the melt to affect sea levels.
We were told in the next decade those islanders would be swamped and every major coastal city was shortly to follow.
Yet with the limited knowledge we have we are expected to make changes that could lead to current dangers like expanding world hunger and unknown long term consequences.
David
“You can’t answer “I don’t know if that happened” about the Holocaust.”
Actually, you can, and you should. NO aspect of history should magically be exempt from rational consideration and re-evaluation in the light of new evidence. For example, the BBC documentary “The Nazis, A Warning From History” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207907/) gives quite a new slant on the widespread killing of civilians under the Nazi regime, and asserts that quite a few ‘traditional’ views of the Holocaust are wrong. Is this documentary correct? I don’t know, but I suspect that it might be….
When it comes to AGW, it should be a lot simpler, because the maths IS available to everyone. Honestly! And when you delve into it you can make up your own mind fairly easily……
I’d like to point out what I think to be the real message of Mr. Penn’s piece. It’s not just OK to say you don’t know, it’s prudent. He’s saying that he’s not a scientist and he doesn’t know. I would advise some of the commentators on this blog to adapt the same point of view. If you are not familiar with the science, then you don’t know, and it’s best to admit that to yourself. Of course, if you want to learn about the science, then by all means use this blog to ask questions and educate yourself. But if your purpose truly is educational rather than political, then you really should be reading all sides of the issue, not just one side.
And the people who suggested that this was just one more example of the “Global Communist Conspiracy to Take Over the World Through AGW” criticizing somebody for not hewing to the party line, may I remind you that the person in question was apparently a reporter for Newsweek — not a member of the scientific community.
Robert Wood writes:
We now have 20 years of non-rising temperatures with rising CO2
Why don’t the responsible anti-AGW people jump all over people who make blunders like this? Mr. Wood discredits your cause.
LifeTrek writes:
We were told in the next decade those islanders would be swamped and every major coastal city was shortly to follow
Could you cite the page in the IPCC report that makes that claim? Or any such claims in any of the NAS reports?
Well, Penn, you should listen to your really smart friends. Maybe this one. At the 58th Nobel Laureate Meetings at Lindau, July 1, 2008, from a panel discussion, Douglas Osheroff said the following:
”
Admin note…the above was not censored. “James” appears to have made an error in posting. Try again.~jeez
Well, Penn, you should listen to your really smart friends. Maybe this one. At the 58th Nobel Laureate Meetings at Lindau, July 1, 2008, from a panel discussion, Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Prize in physics, 1996, said the following:
“As you look at the CO2 level going up, temperatures rising, ice melting all over the world, you can say is this just an aberration of our climate and the answer is no”.
or
“If you look at the huge floods in the United States Midwest that is an example of what we can expect to happen over and over again”
Amazing how people bought into the dihydrogen-monoxide story so easily. The lady circulating the petition, didn’t even have to mention that it kills several thousand people a year (through drowning). All she had to do was give it a chemical sounding name and say that it was in lakes and streams and food. And everyone thought it must be evil stuff and should be banned.
I was born in the USA and I love this country so it hurts me to say this, but boy we’ve got some real dopes here.
Now that I think of it, the hysteria over carbon-dioxide isn’t that much different. Some folks are even going so far as to call it a pollutant, when in fact it is a natural component of our atmosphere and is necessary for plants to survive.
OPIE (Ophiuchus):
Please detail the error in Robert Wood’s statement (oh, and I wouldn’t recommend using GISS as your reference on this blog, the regular readers know too much).
It still amazes me that the brain-washed eco-terrorists of the world have such distain for people who are honest enough to say “I just don’t know”
I’m proud to say that I’m just not a believer in these theories. There is still far to many holes in the science to be able to say outright that climate change is down to man. 7 of those wholes are orbiting the same star that we are.
I have faith in the truth and, faith in people like Anthony to bring the facts to the people. Many thanks for your hard work and dedication, Anthony.
To use the appropriate terminology that fits the concept, it would appear that Mr. Penn is an agnostic. That would make me an atheist as far as man overwhelming natural variability and causing massive warming. The most that mankind might achieve is localized land-use effects.
And, as for dihydrogen monoxide, if the precautionary “principle” were to be consistently applied to all substances and not just those that activists have targeted, the use of the substance would have to be banned, though such logical consistency conflicts with the human drive for political power.
James (14:41:21) :
“As you look at the CO2 level going up, temperatures rising, ice melting all over the world…”
Both of those statements are wrong.
Care to try for a hat trick?
Regarding AGW, most people have it backwards. It is not up to Skeptics ( aka “Deniers” ) the to prove their points. It is up to AGW supporters to prove that their theory is correct. The skeptics raised some very good points that AGW supporters have so far failed to explain. They are – in no particular order -:
1., There is no historical, or paleo-climatical evidence that CO2 concentration controls the climate. Evidence of past climatic changes like Medieval Optimum, or LIA were not correlated to CO2 concentration and the largest of recent ( geologically speaking ) climate changes, the ice ages- through the ice core samples – show that that the CO2 concentration changes were the consequence rather than the cause of temperature changes.
2., In absence of a clear understanding of all the non CO2 caused temperature changes – which is clearly the case – assuming that all temperature changes are caused by CO2 is wrong. The evidence is both empirical -temperature changes both in the 1940 to 1975 period and in recent years failed to correlate with CO2 concentration increases. The second reason is purely logical. In absence of knowing what other factors influence climate, it is impossible to determine CO2’s contribution. Rather like in algebra. You need two equations to find two unknowns. One is not enough.
3., There is an undisputed observation that CO2 concentration is increasing and there is some modest warming taking place. Computer models, however predict a catastrophic runaway warming. The reason why computer model predict a catastrophic warming, because they were programmed to do so. Our understanding of our climate, both recent and historical, show that this is an incorrect characterization of our climate. Our climate is remarkably stable and small temperature increases do not lead to runaway temperature increases – as current climate models predict. If the computer models are screwed up -as they clearly are –
junk them and do not try to change the world to fit the computer models.
Why don’t the responsible anti-AGW people jump all over people who make blunders like this? Mr. Wood discredits your cause.
Because, Ophie baby, it’s true.
I will not respond any more to Ophie. He is just a * stirrer