The Spectator Debate, Royal Geographical Society, London, 29 March 2011 sponsored by:
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Spectator Debate: The Global Warming Hysteria Is Over. Time For A Return To Sanity
Tuesday, 01 March 2011 16:54 Spectator
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| The number of people in the UK who do not believe in global warming has doubled in the last two years, according to a poll from the Office for National Statistics. Does this represent an alarming success in a war against science? Or the common sense of a British public who can see the claims of the climate alarmists dissolve before their eyes?
Join the Spectator debate, chaired by Andrew Neil, on Tuesday 29 March at the Royal Geographical Society, London, SW7 between 6 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. |
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FOR the motion:
- Lord Nigel Lawson, Chairman, Global Warming Policy Foundation
- Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation
- Graham Stringer MP,, Member of House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
AGAINST the motion:
- Professor Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, Oxford University
- Simon Singh, Science Writer
- Professor Sir David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and former Government Chief Scientific Adviser
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Please quote: Debate 06
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I think there certainly is a war on science, but it’s coming from within.
Scientific inquiry has been co-opted by propagandists (and by PhDs who’ve either been bought or brainwashed by politicians and investors who had their eye on making it big in the carbon credits scheme). Science should not be a matter of “repeat after me”. It ought to be about observation and experimentation and learning new things about the world.
It’s time for scientists who genuinely believe in scientific inquiry to take back their field of study. And it’s time for regular folks (like me) to stop nodding and turning the page when we read nonsense in the paper. I’d like to think the game is up. I guess time will tell.
BargHumer says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:38 am
@Joanna
From your experience, how would you expect this debate to pan out?
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I have no idea, but as I said earlier, a lot depends on whether the skeptics allow the CAGW side to define the terms. As the topic is loaded with value judgements and false dichotomies, clarifying what the real issues for discussion are is absolutely critical.
What a shame. There is no sensible motion there to debate.
Just about everybody, whatever his or her view on climate science, will agree that hysteria is bad and sanity is good.
Lord Lawson of Blaby may actually be a very good choice! Scientific credentials: 0! However; he was a part of the government that created the Tyndall centre and the CRU!
DaveE.
I have a bad feeling about this. I couldn’t believe that this, in fact, was the motion to be debated:
\\ “The number of people in the UK who do not believe in global warming has doubled in the last two years, according to a poll from the Office for National Statistics. Does this represent an alarming success in a war against science? Or the common sense of a British public who can see the claims of the climate alarmists dissolve before their eyes?” //
Let’s take the three sentences in order:
1. \\ The number of people in the UK who do not believe in global warming has doubled in the last two years, according to a poll from the Office for National Statistics. //
Is this an undisputed fact? Seems pretty fuzzy to me. What poll? When? How was it worded?
It if is a fact, the public is stupid because global warming is a physical fact — otherwise this planet would be an ice cube. The is not “global warming”, but “Catastrophic Global Warming” that the public finding increasingly dubious.
So is it the public “do not believe in global warming” or that the public “do not believe in global warming [as an imminent threat to our lives]” As the ridiculous premise is stated it should call into question the competence (and fairness) of the organizing body.
2. \\ Does this represent an alarming success in a war against science? // Yep, sure does. Global warming is a physical fact. If the public does not believe in a physical fact, it must be because they have been fooled into a fantasy. Of course, it might be public science education is atrocious. Or it might represent incredibly bad polling questions. Or bad reporting of poll results. Thanks to a poorly formed premise, this is a mess.
Only the third sentence gives hope to a “skeptic”
\\ Or the common sense of a British public who can see the claims of the climate alarmists dissolve before their eyes? // To argue this one, you must put on display for ridicule the claims of climate alarmists [and alleged alarmists, fortunately this is inclusive]. It should be like shooting fish in a barrel. It is a target rich environment.
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/birth-of-IPCC.html
Check out my “Notes form Skull Island” (it’s partly facetiously):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/17/climate-debate-rages-in-the-australian/#comment-556455
The picture accompanying the advert is a bit worrying … bloated plutocrat using the world!
There’s no doubt about the motion. It’s as follows: “The global warming hysteria is over. Time for a return to sanity.”
As Bart has indicated, it’s poorly worded: using “hysteria” and “sanity” allows the team opposing the motion to focus simply on whether such terms are appropriate rather than on relevant issues such as the dearth of evidence. All they have to establish is (a) that “hysteria” is an absurd way to describe recent scientific findings and (b) that climate scientists have not abandoned sanity. That would put the onus on the supporting team to show that the phrasing is justified. I suppose that, given the history of this matter, they might just conceivably prevail re hysteria. But I think they’d struggle to persuade the audience that climate scientists are insane.
A debate on such lines would be a huge opportunity missed. Better surely if it were phrased so that the debate had to focus on the real issues? I hope (and expect) that the participants will ignore the motion and do just that. But it’s unfortunate that the Spectator has created this unnecessary uncertainty.
It really is sad. Here are these people at The Spectator sincerely trying to promote rational debate, and yet they completely fail to formulate a motion that would promote rational debate.
It’s still not too late. The Spectator should have another try, and if some of their advertised speakers then say they aren’t happy to debate a straightforward one-simple-sentence motion, then so be it.
Thanks, Robin. It did not occur to me that the title was the official wording of the motion. There still seems some room for doubt. A couple of others previously in this thread were confused, too.
“The global warming hysteria is over”
The assumption that man-made CO2 caused the Warming. The believers believe this assumption and the sceptics are sceptical of this assumption.
“Time for a return to sanity”
Understanding the importance of trying to prove an assumption to be right or wrong using an Atmospheric chamber (Jaworowski, 2007) or the Atmosphere of Mars (Ferenc M. Miskolczi, 2007) to prove that Man-made CO2 has produced an irrelevant 0.01 Kelvin increase in over 100 years.