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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Smokey, that wasn’t James’ comment. He was quoting said comment.
In the meantime:
Some pretty significant scientific finds have been brought to the world by non-scientists.
With regard to my last comment, I will make one final response to Ophie.
Now I get it! You’ve swapped time scales. The warmenistas were always about 30 years; now, if I can decode your posts, you are talking, what? 400 years, the height of the LIA.
Frankly, this is a strategy you warmenistas should always have followed, but it still doesn’t heat up the argument, as it was both a lot warmer and colder before. Are you cherry picking there, Ophie?
Ophie doesn’t realize that my mind is highly trained and paid and razor sharp.
Sorry for the crappo, but I do take insults un-lightly. Especially by thirds.
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but when I was in college scientists and engineers were encouraged to be skeptical (something that might be missed pursuing a B.A. from Yale ). Today in my daytime job I am held to this standard.
A questioning attitude is cultivated.
Individuals demonstrate a questioning attitude by challenging
assumptions, investigating anomalies, and considering potential
adverse consequences of planned actions. This attitude is shaped by an
understanding that accidents often result from a series of decisions and
actions that reflect flaws in the shared assumptions, values, and beliefs of
the organization. All employees are watchful for conditions or activities
that can have an undesirable effect on plant safety
I don’t turn off that mindset when I come home.
I’m sure someone’s said this before:
Sceptics tend to summarise the science, whereas our “smart friends” tend to “summerise” the science.
Yes Phil, Dawkins is very clear. He is willing to believe in aliens as long as they EVOLVED!!
Apparently mathematics and odds aren’t part of his logic.
James:
““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””
Would you please explain the connection between cyclical flooding in river valleys that has been occurring longer than humanities existence and the scam called AGW??
Ophiuchus (or Serpentarius or snake-handler or whatever):
“Could you cite the page in the IPCC report that makes that claim? Or any such claims in any of the NAS reports?”
Since not even the IPCC utilises the actual science and recommendations from many of the contributors, I find this statement to be just a little disingenuous. Tell me, how can the Conclusions and Recommendations be published 6 months before the science parts have been completed if the science means anything to them??
Maybe they KNOW what the results are going to be because their requirement is that the Science will support their Conclusions!!! Yes, it is even stated there. (read it again if you missed it. try and be a little discerning and not in the worship mode this time!!)
By the way, have you noticed how their certainty is very high, yet, each report brings their projections closer to us deniers?? Boy, you AGWers are sure RUBES!!!
So, how much time did Hansen give us in his last Religious fire and brimstone rant?? Think you can crash the world economy in time to save us from ourselves??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
REPLY: You mean this one?
That’s the one. What a hoot!
Not sure what your reading, but I never mentioned the IPCC or NAS reports. But for your reference:
Or you may want to check An Inconvenient Truth where 20 feet is the figure used for the high end.
I was actually referring more to reports like this:
And this from the BBC:
David
Yes, and 8,000 years ago, sea level was 120 meters (400 feet) lower than it is today. About 5,000 years ago, sea level was about 2 meters (6 feet plus) higher than today.
There really is no “correct” level. Sea level fluctuates. See my website for an animation.
I am not a scientist, merely a lawyer. With respect to AGW, I am very comfortable in saying “I don’t know.”
However, I am very worried about exposure to DHMO and I feel that it should be banned. Okay, not really. Actually, in 1996 I met the man responsible for creating the DHMO website. I thought it was a hoot.
The similarities between the DHMO joke and the AGW movement are amusing…and frightening.
Richard Dawkins is brilliant in his field of evolutionary theory. I highly recommend all his books. However, his views on political issues including AGW I find kooky to say the least.
Attributing the flooding of Tuvalua to rising sea levels is just untrue (less politely it’s a lie). The reason for the islands flooding is well understood. It’s because the undersea volcano the attol sits on is settling over time. The land underneath the attol is sinking and any contribution from rising sea levels is minor.
Unfortunately, the BBC is one of the worst offenders in publishing these untrue articles.
I too was highly disappointed when the Skeptical Inquirer published last year pro-AGW articles. For that reason, I didn’t renew my subscription, after 30 years of loyalty.
Dawkins views on climate change are easy to google, though I’m afraid they won’t me very popular around these parts:
“Is global warming a threat to the human species? ROBIN THOMPSON, Oxford
Yes. You could say that the human species is a threat to the human species. I recommend Al Gore’s film on global warming. See it and weep. Not just for the human species. Weep for what we could have had in 2000, but for the vote-rigging in Jeb Bush’s Florida.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-dawkins-you-ask-the-questions-special-427003.html
I always think it’s a joke when people talk about Midwest flooding around the Mississippi as an outcome of global warming. The first time I heard Gore do it in the 90s, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
People built around the Mississippi because it was a “highway” in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it is a river that drastically changes its course every 1000 years or so. Since the economics are so important we (the government) have done some heavy engineering to prevent the change. As New Orleans showed us, this is a battle we will eventually lose. It has nothing at all to do with global warming.
An excellent book on this subject is “The Control of Nature” by John McPhee.
On another note, didn’t Osheroff win the prize for low temperature physics? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard AGW people say non-climate scientists are not supposed to comment on AGW. I don’t believe that should be the case but if the AGW people think the restriction should be lifted, I think we’re making real progress.
Penn & Teller have done a show on global warming and actually interviewed Lomborg, who took a stick to the concept; the show featured, from memory, some entertaining exchanges with feral greens. I can’t remember the date, but it was some years ago.
James quotes Dr Osheroff at the recent Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau as saying:
“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”.
and
“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”
You can watch the actual 90 minute discussion here:
http://nobellaureate.feedroom.com/index.jsp?auto_band=x&rf=sv&fr_story=60d8eeecb63502e7f7b041331a3c1a6f30c9766f&skin=showcase
Interestingly, at 8 mins 36 secs into this discussion Dr Osherwood starts his brief talk thus:
“Please let me just state that is actually, I mean, I’ve already given a talk on Global Warming at a Lindau meeting which showed that I do not shrink from talking about things I know absolutely nothing about. So I will continue therefore”
I meant Dr Osheroff, dammit, not Dr Osherwood!
My two cents:
I’ve been watching for years, waiting for the global warming episode 🙂
But here is the bottom line: even if Penn knew–with total certainty–that AGW was bogus, he still shouldn’t preach that fact. Penn and Teller do too much good work. If they came out against Gore et al, they would lose too many connections, and too much influence. The best strategy is to continue doing what they do: teach skepticism. Teach people to question what they are told. The rest will work itself out it time.
PS. James Randi is a helluva guy–I’ve met him, and own all of his books. But he’s a lot less qualified than I am to judge the merits of the IPCC reports. I’d be silly to take his opinion over my own judgment. It’s a bit ironic, but Randi made some of his best contributions by showing how easily scientists could be fooled by magicians. (Geller, etc) It may be that his biography will one day includes a chapter on how he was fooled by scientists.
not at all surprised that Dawkins believes in AGW. seriously, i don’t know who told you (phil) that Dawkins is logical and reasonable. he is anything but. his emotions and lack of reason are evident in his very poor and pitiful arguments. while he is clearly a brilliant SCIENTIST….he is a tragic excuse for a philosopher. the leaps he makes to come to the conclusion that God does not exist are beyond sad. the only reason he is famous is because 1. he is saying what people so badly want to believe…..2. most people are not adequately trained to spot his very poor rhetorical skills logically speaking.
Interestingly, Dawkins “Prisoners’ Dilemma” works have some features in common with climate models.
Postulate a formula or model with parameters that cause it to converge, then woe and behold, claim the convergence is some sort of significant result.
When people used to profess disbelief when I said “I just don’t know” I used to ask them, “Well then, what piece of evidence convinced you?” I don’t bother anymore. It is drifting towards the time when saying “I don’t know” is like answering the question “Is Christ risen?” with “I don’t know” in 15th Century Spain.
Mark:
My opinion about Dawkins was formed from reading ‘The God Delusion’ and also listening to what he had to say (about evolution), and watching a few of his videos on the web
http://www.richarddawkins.net is a good place to start
– I’m generally pretty impressed with his reasoning
But here is the bottom line: even if Penn knew–with total certainty–that AGW was bogus, he still shouldn’t preach that fact. Penn and Teller do too much good work.
I don’t see Penn as being a preachy type of guy no matter what he believes, but I’ll bet he could find clever (read evil) ways of needling AGWers mercilessly, and still be funny about it. More importantly, though, I think he really just wants to know, so that in the future if someone asks him “what about global warming?”, he’ll have an answer besides “I don’t know”.
I see Penn was responding to a Sharon Begley blog posting. Ms. Begley uses a rather sophomoric tactic in responding to those who do not hold her opinions on global warming. Like Penn, she tried using this same tactic on me when I wrote her to criticize her article last August in Newsweek titled “Global Warming is a Hoax”. Ms Begley responded quite quickly and said she was thinking of writing an article for a future issue of Newsweek on how smart people can be fooled into believing dumb things, and asked if I would I be willing to be interviewed for such an article. I imagine that when she pressed the ‘send’ button she stuck out her tongue for good measure.
Always time for as second post…
Dawkins is not logical and not particularly intellectually rigorous either. Now, Carl Sagan, I can respect. Carl Sagan was logical, sensible and could probably convince me he was right (me being a christian, since you’re asking) if we spent long enough arguing about it. Sagan respected his opponents and consequently they respected him. He didn’t resort to arguments from authority, or strawmen or anything like that. He simply persisted with the logical, rational argument until his opponents saw his point of view for themselves. Dawkins just browbeats people until they surrender.