NASA GISS Gavin Schmidt vs UAH’s John Christy debate on CNN’s Situation Room an hour ago:
h/t to WUWT reader Chris
Gavin Schmidt -vs- John Christy on CNN
- Monday, February 9, 2026
NASA GISS Gavin Schmidt vs UAH’s John Christy debate on CNN’s Situation Room an hour ago:
h/t to WUWT reader Chris
I note that ‘climategate’ has today exceeded ‘climate change’ on Bing.
I thought Christy came across as credible, respectful, respectable, and restrained.
However, I truly was dismayed at “the free pass” Christy gave to the “smoothing datasets” comment by Gavin.
IT IS NOT “SMOOTHING” OF DATA! IT IS SPLICING TOGETHER DIFFERENT PORTIONS OF DIFFERENT CURVES AT CONVENIENT PORTIONS TO ARRIVE AT THE CONCLUSION YOU ARE MAKING. MOREOVER, IT IS USING DIFFERENT CURVES GENERATED BY DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES (tree rings vs instrumental records).
As a physician and scientist who has studied a variety of fields including geology and ecology, I have never seen this done (at least to the end that it was not challenged). Perhaps I have not seen this technique before because I have reached graduate level studies in only one field, but it is shocking to me.
I think Christy missed a golden opportunity to generate even more discussion on mass media about this and hopefully incrementally bring the lay public up to speed on what is going on. However, I give him credit for his many years of hard work, most before this was a big issue to the rest of us.
I think skeptics have had less practice in front of the camera, but I’m sure we will come on strong!
As an aside, both Pielke and Christy appeared to be looking at the cameras at an uncomfortable angle, whereas the guy from Princeton and Gavin Shmidt both appeared comfortable, were leaning in to the camera, and knew how to give the appearance of looking the viewer “in the eye”.
Our side needs media consultants!!!!!!!!!! 🙂
I think John Christy did extremely well here.
If anyone of these two came across as being an honest scientist, it’s John and not Gavin.
The most important message from this “debate” is that John was allowed to end it all by saying:
“…noone can prove that the extra greenhouse gasses we are adding are causing all of it or part of it.”
…and Gavin didn’t flinch. If he indeed did believe otherwise he would have interrupted exactly there.
I guess he doesn’t believe in it either.
Joe Bastardi says it best:
http://www.accuweather.com/world-bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
“THESE PEOPLE ARE DUMB!”
That’s who we need to get on CNN.
The focus of the email leaks should be the CRU surface temp data. Even before the Mann’s Nature Trick email became the talk of the town, the Hockey Stick paleo-reconstruction was on the wane. The Team just shifted the HS from paleo data to other reconstructions -namely surface temps.
I hope we don’t blow a good oppurtunity to bring not only CRU but NASA’s GISS and NOAA’s temperature analysis to light. I don’t think many people realize how crucial these distorted temperature analysis are to not only the Team but to almost all of the Alarmists.
Sorry – correction:
Joe said that these peope AREN’T dumb.
At least now he Tem are being forced to face public criticism. The skeptics at last are getting some air-time. This is good.
Totally agree. More media training is needed.
Climate models are not tools for understanding past climate shifts. They’re hand-tuned by men…you can’t use a climate model to demonstrate the role of CO2.
Not really … Computer models can be useful, just reset the start point to something like 1AD and predict the temperature for the next 2000 years. If your model can do that, then it has value. If it can’t it has political value, nothing more.
Real science and engineering uses computer models just this way. Verified.
I have been watching the Skeptics verses the Alarmist go back an forth on TV in these “Interviews” and the Skeptics are not properly prepared.
The audience is not the idiot moderator and the Skeptic’s job is not to convince the Alarmist of anything.
The audience is the stupid, “I can’t focus”, casual viewer and these Skeptics need to use truthful phrases and statements that the casual viewer can immediately relate too.
Humor and sarcasm goes a long way in making the zombie viewer understand the proper perspective.
For example, “The polar ice cap is not disappearing! Just talk to that idiot AGW Alarmist who tried to sail around the North Pole or those grant begging imbeciles who tried to walk to the home of Santa Claus only to freeeeeeeze their bottoms off and had to be rescued.”
Serenity now……….
MikeE (03:05:04)
Outright censorship and political control here in the UK. From the Environment secretary, to TV adverts on co2 – its nothing but propaganda and brain damage. Richard Lindzen occasionally writes articles for the Dail Mail, otherwise, I don’t think its a lack of expertise – just that its not allowed a voice. However, people don’t trust authority, or being browbeaten in the UK, so I doubt many people are that fooled by government scientists on the climate.
*hurt and disillusioned* – and I thought you guys liked our accent… 🙂
No, seriously, he’s just irritating. He did say one thing I agreed with though:
Scientists have to be professional sceptics
@Bruce: Thanks for the Stott clip. Somehow not come across him before; he’s very good.
both Schmidt and Mann are not scientists. They are mathemeticians. They Mannipulate data. Assembling data creats a graph. Doing correlation analysis could tell us if a green hoax gas has a causal relationship with warming. If it goes up in concentration and temps go down, a rational math conclusion is that the causal relationship is not found. If math is their contribution, it will also judge their work.
Schmidt has a flock fleecing attitude. His arguments are emotional. so much for math being in between data and conclusions.
Pamela wrote:
Pamela Gray (22:57:15) :
“I am a fan of debate technique and John won this hands down with a knockout hit outa the park!!!! Debate isn’t about beating your opponent over the head with ferocious attack. It is more like a delicate surgery on your opponent. Gavin doesn’t even know what hit him.”
A fan of debate techniques should understand that an acedemic debate is not a political war. Academic debating uses different rules for different results.
The art of political war requires debating techniques that get the biggest bang for the buck; sometimes, acedemic debating rules must be violated to get the desired effect in a political war. Political Marketing Campaigns require different techniques.
Voters don’t have the time to analalyze debate points like academics do.
Politics is war conducted by other means. War is politics taken to the highest degree. The very same issues that are decided in a war are decided in political war.
Please don’t confuse a “Hawvaard” debate and political war.
“Americans love a winner!” GSP
“Just Win Baby!” Allen Davis
markm
There is quite a difference of opinion here, showing I suppose that two people watching the same thing can always describe it differently, which is why no one wins these “debates”. It would be great to have a real debate–hours and hours until one side was reduced to a bunch of tired whiners repeating the same tired points…., but the modern attention span is zip.
People like the two Ms, Christy, perhaps Pielke and may even Spencer, who has a bit more experience testifying in public, are thoughtful, deliberate, and reasoned, which puts them at a disadvantage before the TV camera. I’m not sure what sort of forum would provide an advantage for these sorts of individuals, but even the great goracle doesn’t debate live skeptics. We could try to shape ourselves in the image of folks like Gore, Hansen, and Schmidt, but would we feel good about it?
I gave a brief presentation to one of my introductory courses on the surfacestations.org project, and I was surprised what an effect it had upon them. Even the most mathematically challenged, hard-science illiterate member of our faculty could follow the Darwin temperature record machinations, and was appalled. Some earlier post on this thread mentioned saying nothing more than “you do realize the pole melts and refreezes each season, don’t you?” Pound on the simple stuff, let the hard science take care of itself.
I haven’t read through all the comments, but I just watched the ‘debate’, and—
What the hell is wrong with John Christy?
He let Gavin Schmidt run all over him, and never even attempted to make the case for rational science.
Is the Arctic ice-cap melting? Yes, he said, meekly. (Well it has melted some, and refrozen some, and it goes in cycles.)
Is man causing global warming? Yes, he said, meekly. (No, man isn’t, dammit!)
I’ve seen videos of Dr. Christy in more spirited and eloquent form, but boy he sure lay down and let the Warmist steamroller flatten him.
The average viewer would have come away with the impression that the skeptics have no argument whatsoever, other than “Well, it’s really complicated.”
Anthony, can you get on these shows and tell them Watts what?
/Mr Lynn
Poptech (04:39:58)
Thats a very important point. Science can only be explained calmly and rationally.
I haven’t read all the comments so I may duplicate what others have said. I doubt either person will change any minds. Christy did OK but we wanted better. He needed to reconfirm that overall the ice is constant when both poles are considered and variations at either end are completely natural.
Gavin used the “but” word quite a bit. An intelligent viewer could see he was spinning for all he was worth. Unfortunately, most viewers wouldn’t catch that.
It would have been nice if Christy would have explained right away that Gavin works on climate models and without MMCC he very likely wouldn’t have a job. I think that would have put Gavin into a different light and people would have been more likely to notice his spinning.
“Patrik (04:52:03) :
Are we sure that Schmidt and Mann aren’t twins? :)”
They must be, originally from Germany (as the names indicate), created then separated by Erich Kästner (“Das doppelte Lottchen”).
“”” savethesharks (19:31:59) :
GAVIN SCHMIDT: “We do know that greenhouse gasses are increasing because of human activity….we do know that the climate is warming…we do know that its warming for the reasons basic physics tells us that it’s warming.”
Circular reasoning at its best! “””
Well maybe not circular reasoning, Sharkey, but definitely a blunderous statement for anyone claiming scientific credentials to proclaim.
I got my degree in “Basic Physics”; and Mathematics too in 1957; and for the last 52 years, I have been able to convince a relatively short list of six; plus two involuntary spinoff employers, that I am reasonably proficient at those skills, to the point where they haven’t stopped paying me yet.
I know of absolutely NO principle of BASIC PHYSICS that says that the earth is or must be warming.
In fact that is counterintuitive since we generally expect things to run downhill; with maybe something in the range of about 3Kelvins as a likely near term end point.
Of course there is a natural variablity, which will let things heat up and cool down in the short term; and we are likely in one of those warming trends coming out of a recent ice age. But the historical record; to the extent that we can believe various temperature proxies; such as the ice cores that Willis so recently laid out for us, says that rapid warming incidents, followed by much slower cooling interval, seems the general order of things.
So what is it about the laws of Physics that says, we should be warming, when in fact, for most of its entire existence, the earth has spent more time cooling than warming.
As for future predictability; a chaotic system does not have to be very complex before its future state becomes entirely unpredictable according to the “basic Physics” principles.
I have seen simple machines of about three coupled compound pendula, which can be set into oscillation in a totally unpredictable chaotic manner.
Is it not a fact; a consequence of the “basic principles of physics”, that there is no closed solution to the general three body problem; even in a strictly Newtonian fashion; let alone an Einsteinian environment ?
If Gavin Schmidt’s statement is true; why do his Playstation models of the planet earth, not even replicate the known past history of the planet; let alone predict its future state or trajectory.
YES!!!!
Those two together is a winning situation for the sceptics.
John Christy is definately one of my heros on this planet.
Calm, arguing only with scientific facts, and straight at the point.
Thank you John, for standing up for us all like that!
Well I see it was J. Storrs Hall, and not Willis, whom I should have credited with that ice core revelation below.
Sorry JSH.
Did you notice how Wolf says, in effect: “We know that all the skeptics are paid by big oil, and have their opinions because they’re paid to have those opinions. I just want to make sure you are not. Are you?”
Gavin Schmidt, an unsympathic guy, speaking to much, ithout real arguments.
He talks the others dead,
Look at the basic imagery of the two men. Christy – sporty, Southern, a good old American guy, anti existential. Schmidt – bohemian, very very NYC, a wannabe Euro, tres existentiel! Magnifique! Just saying …