Love him or hate him, the man can win a debate. Andrew Bolt shares the results of the National Press Club Debate in Australia writing:
No wonder the warmists hate debate
The National Press Club debate’s results:
Lord Monckton – 10
Former Greens adviser Richard Denniss – 1
Journalists – 0.
Watch the video of the debate in full:
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paul revere says:
July 20, 2011 at 9:46 am
The silence from SteveE is deafening.
==============================================================Give him time he has to make up, er I mean find, the evidence.
I don’t doubt the warming, I doubt CAGW.
Have many papers been written about the benefits of global warming?
SteveE says: “The reason most people refuse to debate with him is because he talks rubbish. Admittedly he’s very good at presenting, but rubbish is rubbish whichever way you look at it. Most of his arguments are deeply flawed or just plain false.”
Rather rude of you to criticise Denniss that way. At least he showed up, which is more than i can say for most Warmists.
Unfortunately, debates are settled more on the rhetorical skills and charisma of the debaters rather than facts. Good for Monckton, but giving weight to public debates seems bad for anyone who values science above showmanship.
A slight re-work of Dr Denniss’ cancer analogy.
Doctor: You have a melanoma on your arm, I need to amputate the arm.
Patient: Where is it?
Doctor: You can’t see it yet.
Patient: So how do you know I have it?
Doctor: I ran a computer model.
Patient: Has the model ever successfully identified a melanoma before?
Doctor: No, but this time we have it right. There is an overwhelming consensus that it works.
Patient: How does it work?
Doctor: There is an overwhelming consensus that it works.
Patient: But how does it work?
Doctor: There is an overwhelming consensus that it works.
Patient: I think I need a second opinion.
Doctor: There are no other opinions, there is an overwhelming consensus.
Patient: I think I’ll go and see Dr Smith.
Doctor: You can’t trust him, he’s a denier.
Patient: He published a paper on chemotherapy treatment for melanoma.
Doctor: It wasn’t peer reviewed.
Patient: It was the Medical Review.
Doctor: Yes but the reviewers were all deniers and the editor was fired.
Patient: I think I’ll go now.
Doctor: It’s much worse than we thought.
Patient: I’m going.
Doctor: First pay me 4 trillion dollars.
Patient: Bye now.
These debates have far ranging impact. This one is already all over the internet. The statistics cited by Monckton will be what is remembered. Not the nonsense about seeing a doctor when you are sick. Even those who believe in AGW but are not on the AGW gravy train will realize that the proposed cure is far worse than a 1C rise in temperature.
dz alexander says:
“Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research Society, claimed that he never lost a debate.”
It’s not up to the debate participant to decide who won. Otherwise, Tim Lambert would have won his debate against Lord Monckton as he claimed, when he clearly lost.
Sceptics will always win these debates (and always have) because sceptics have usually studied the facts surrounding the many varied issues in this debate while the pro-AGW people have to rely on appeal to authority, the precautionary principle or easily refuted myths which is just a weak debate position.
Has any pro-AGW person ever explained how they get to 3.0C per doubling? I actually think the vast, vast majority (including the vast majority of the scientists themselves) do not know how this is arrived at. But there is a scientific consensus on it.
Monckton missed a lot of opportunities to drive his points home. He talked about the misleading elements of models but never once brought the models themselves, as opposed to data, into question. And he never used the term “flawed analogies” to describe the two or three that Denniss used. There were several other places that his responses were less than direct.
Winning against such a weak opponent is not much of a victory. On the other hand, a win against Al Gore wouldn’t be difficult, either.
Hans Moleman says:
July 20, 2011 at 9:59 am
Unfortunately, debates are settled more on the rhetorical skills and charisma of the debaters rather than facts. Good for Monckton, but giving weight to public debates seems bad for anyone who values science above showmanship.
=====================================================
I rather look at it as an ability to express the thoughts in a cohesive and comprehensive manner. This reflects upon the thoughts and ideas as well has the ability of the orator.
Bill Illis –
“Has any pro-AGW person ever explained how they get to 3.0C per doubling?”
I think section 8.6 of WG1 of IPCC AR4 report is what you’re looking for.
Oh wow, I need to come back to see that in full!
I think the Denniss’ comment at the end is telling. He does not understand that Co2 is not an unintended byproduct of combustion. It is the INTENDED product. The other resultants such as soot and CO and SO2 being caused by inpurities in the process. Since he kept referring back to the economists, whom I doubt understand that fact, I can only assume was his intention. By siding with economists and not the core science he refuses to debate nor accept the alternative scientific view.
The warmists really love their ‘Doctor’ analogy don’t they.
They think it is a perfect example of how you can be sure, that when there is a general consensus amongst scientists and professionals, then you can be sure they are right and the suggested remedy and treatment will be beneficial.
Next time someone uses it just ask about the practice of phlebotomy (bloodletting). For millennia this was the prescribed treatment for a huge range of ailments. ……
“Bloodletting was used to treat almost every disease. One British medical text recommended bloodletting for acne, asthma, cancer, cholera, coma, convulsions, diabetes, epilepsy, gangrene, gout, herpes, indigestion, insanity, jaundice, leprosy, ophthalmia, plague, pneumonia, scurvy, smallpox, stroke, tetanus, tuberculosis, and for some one hundred other diseases. Bloodletting was even used to treat most forms of hemorrhaging such as nosebleed, excessive menstruation, or hemorrhoidal bleeding. Before surgery or at the onset of childbirth, blood was removed to prevent inflammation. Before amputation, it was customary to remove a quantity of blood equal to the amount believed to circulate in the limb that was to be removed”
This practise was common until well into the nineteenth century.
Of course if you had questioned the treatment being offered to you at the time the response would have been similar to the warmists position now. …..’Of course we are right nearly all professionals agree and look at this list of patients treated who survived and recovered’. You however might point to a long list of patients who subsequently died.
The response would be of course……..’Ahh that is because we didn’t bleed them enough!’
Alan
Re: Charles Johnson of the Intl Flat Earth Research Society.
I remember a newspaper interview of him from the early 80’s. He looked like Moses in a suit, posing with his wife for a photo in front of their house surrounded by Joshua trees in California’s high desert.
He said the first time he saw a globe it “just didn’t make any sense.”
But the most memorable quote went something like, “If the earth were round, Australians would be hanging by their feet. My wife is from Australia, and my wife has never hung by her feet.”
Tough to beat that in a debate!
Ah, if only scientific truth were determined by who could win a debate.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Lord Monckton kick a little butt but the did anyone else enjoy it as much as I did that the angry, green feminist from Campus reporting was straight out of Central Casting?
Emmenjay – Brilliant!
Alan, just think of the consensus about the “ether” in space that allowed light to travel through space, or the cause of cholera in London.
The consensus just sucks and this one over CO2 is just the worst.
R. Gates says:
“Ah, if only scientific truth were determined by
who could win a debateconsensus and computer climate models.”There, fixed it for you.
Re the Steve E comments – and I’m not him:
Monckton does have a bit of a rep for over-egging the pudding – he’s obviously a politician trying to put a view across, rather than an unbiased reporter. It doesn’t make everything he says rubbish, but from time to time he gets things wrong because he’s a bit over-eager. You can see why he’s found himself a niche, but ideally he’d go along with the propagandists on the other side of the fence.
Don’t ask me for specific examples, because I don’t remember what the specifics were, so I’ll just have to google them up, and you lot can do that just as well as I can.
Looks like Hans is afraid of the public learning of these debates, tuning in, and all becoming climate realists, (otherwise known as sceptics in proggy circles).
actually the scientific method is merely a stylized form of debate … sometime you “debate” with yourself, sometimes with other scientists but in the end your evidence either wins or loses the debate against the real world … peer review is yet another form of debate when properly done …
the way Mann et al do it, not so much …
Dr. Dennis did a credible job demonstrating how the “consensus” works and enables its own propagation. Short on factual information and long on hand-waving analogies and appeals to authority. Whenever real science or the consensus dependence on models and [CO2] sensitivity exaggeration was brought up, those topics were swiftly avoided if not deftly deflected. Nonetheless, Dr. Dennis did not stoop to any ungainly nor reprehensible behavior so despite being thrashed, debate-wise, he is to be commended.
Viscount Monckton OTOH, was rapier-sharp but perhaps a bit too chiding for the scribes in attendance. He took them to task, rightfully, on numerous occasions but he could have shown some leniency and incited them more often to “show both sides of the story in a fair manner”. He did so on one occasion but the tenor and nature of the subsequent questions left him non-plussed and therefore in a position to up the ante of his rhetoric. All in all, a clear win for the side of reason and science. Catastrophism, not so much.
The AGW fanatics and their carbon tax strategy – meaning their entire argument rests on CO2. Then considering 96% of the CO2 output is from natural sources perhaps Australians needs to ask themselves if they pay their carbon taxes will nature cooperate and stop producing CO2?
@Alan Millar
I wish that Monckton had replied to the medical analogy with a counter-analogy involving stomach ulcers and H. Pyroli infections. The concensus believed that most, if not all, ulcers were caused by stress and diet. Four out of five doctors would have required the patient to reduce stress and change diet. That one non-concensus doctor would have prescribed antibiotic to cure the patient.
In fact, wasn’t it a pair of Australian (or New Zealand?) doctors who fought the concensus and proved that at least some ulcers were caused by H. Pyroli infections?