- Inhofe
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By Steve Milloy JunkScience.com
So the debate’s not over after all. We’d pay for ringside seats.
From Politico:
Ralph Nader put on his Don King hat Monday with the hope of inspiring a made-for-TV showdown between two Capitol Hill stalwarts on global warming.
The consumer activist and former presidential candidate pitched the idea of Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe meeting Democratic Rep. Ed Markey in a 90-minute televised debate on the ins and outs of climate change science and policy.
“Clearly you are a man of your convictions on this subject,” Nader wrote in a letter to Inhofe, of Oklahoma, who is the most outspoken climate skeptic on Capitol Hill. “Just as clearly, Rep. Ed Markey is a man of his convictions on this topic.”
“People I know in Oklahoma say that you do not run away from challenges and challengers to your beliefs,” Nader added. “But the Senate floor is not exactly the place for an extended debate; it is more a place for parallel soliloquies.”
Nader suggested a debate “with [a] mutually agreed upon moderator and rules at a mutually convenient time and place, preferably on Capitol Hill.” The debate should appear on cable television, “certainly over C-SPAN”…
Tucci78 says:
December 13, 2011 at 12:51 pm
At 5:47 AM on 13 December, David recounts how one day he’d set out to walk his dog and wound up pooper-scooper-ing “a PHD scientist in the field of climate,” finishing up:
Finally he told me that his family depended on grants and people like me were a threat to his funding (really)
One does not need to be a scientist to debate CAGW with a scientist.
Er, David, just what gives you to think that you were debating a scientist and not simply an academically credentialed rent-seeking professional parasite battening on the public dole? e
Tucci, I am fairly straightforward, but that trait “with out civility is like a surgeons knife, effective, but unpleasent.” When the young man made this statement I informed him that this was in no way cogent to our debate and I wished him and his family well.
Richard, thank you for your comments and I always appreciate your comments in general. My daughter in law is graduating from Oxford and thinks my CAGW views are right wing fox news propaganda, so if you ever get that way I would love to have you talk to her. (-; By the way I am fairly conservative, in a classic liberal sense, yet I bet we could rationally discuss politics and social theory. A common quote is “East is East, and West is West, and never shall the twain meet”, but the second 1/2 is seldom quoted, “when a wise man of the east meets a wise man of the west, then the twain can meet” I am perhaps persumptous to place myself in that category.
I have to agree with several of the posters here… almost all, if not all, of the republicans are simply god awful, and I truly mean that. However, the worst part is that every single democrat out there is at least an order of magnitude WORSE then the very worst republican!!! In every single election in my adult life it has been get drunk and go vote the the lesser of two evils time. I’m not kidding! The dems are a bunch of pathological crooks that couldn’t resist stealing and lying if their lives depended on it. Democrats gave us Barney Frank, (on the way out, thank you lord!) Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer, Barrack Obama, the list goes on and on… What I can’t figure out is why do supposedly reasonably informed intelligent people keep voting for those folks… Ok, Ok, I have been to California and it is fairly obvious that being a “healthy” crunchy granola type rots your brain, but please!!!
I propose that we dispense with this debate silliness and go straight to a duel.
At 4:47 PM on 13 December, Steve in SC writes:
Of what sort? Put pistols in the hands of these Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight clowns, and we’re guaranteed to see magazines emptied in every direction but at each other.
I propose nuclear hand grenades at ten paces on the Mall.
I call “dibs!” on the bunker in Bladensburg.
Perhaps a couple of big red buttons would do the trick.
Good idea. I’ll bet the straight-shooter from Oklahoma will take out the weasel from Massachusetts with no trouble.
/Mr Lynn
That’s my concern too, and one of the reasons I favor a long-format debate: so the debate can’t be won with false claims or lost with a flub or two. It’s also the reason a favor a debate between scientists or between well-prepared amateurs like Monckton and Morano–not between politicians like Inhofe, who can’t be aware of all the ins-and-outs of the issue, and who might get blindsided. I worry too that Markey might come prepped with impressive looking graphics, and win points for flashiness. We’ve seen how John Abraham swept believers off their feet with his one-shot presentation:
@R.S. Courtney: I shouldn’t have restricted my debate-recommendation only to scientists in a private venue, in my first post. I immediately followed it with a second-thought recommendation for an ongoing series of televised debates among parties expert in the issue. I wrote, in part:
Incidentally, I’ve made about 2000 posts here over the past 3.5 years. I was the first commenter out of the gate here on Climategate.
Roger Knights:
At December 13, 2011 at 10:53 pm you say to me:
“I shouldn’t have restricted my debate-recommendation only to scientists in a private venue, in my first post. I immediately followed it with a second-thought recommendation for an ongoing series of televised debates among parties expert in the issue.”
Your suggested alternatives to the proposed Markey vs. Inhofe debate are a variant of the warmist ploy of claiming only ‘climate scientists’ should be heard. The assertion that only certain people have views that should be heard is pure fascism, and I oppose it whenever it appears whatever its source.
Having said that, I ask you to please clarify two points pertaining to your suggested alternatives to the Markey vs. Inhofe debate.
Firstly, what possible purpose would be served by a series of televised debates between ‘experts’?
Only people with an existing interest in AGW would tune-in to watch it and not get bored. And ‘experts’ (i.e. us) already have such debates on the web. But millions of others would tune-in and be interested to watch the proposed Markey vs. Inhofe debate.
Secondly, please explain why you want to deprive people of an opportunity to assess their elected legislators?
As I said to Neapolitan in my above post at December 13, 2011 at 6:30 am;
“The two politicians are involved in deciding whether or not to take actions which would harm economies across the entire world, damage energy security in their own country, and kill billions of people in the poorest parts of the world. But you say it is a “pointless exercise” for them to debate before their electorate their knowledge and understanding of the reasons for taking those actions.
There is this thing called ‘democracy’. You need to find out about it.”
Richard
That depends on the meaning of “heard.” The warmists are suggesting that skeptics shouldn’t be quoted in media reporting on climate-related matters, and similarly that they shouldn’t be invited to speak on campus or be interviewed on radio or TV, or be given space for opinion-eds, because they aren’t climatologists—or if they are, because they are in a distinct minority, plus they have dodgy “links.” That’s authoritarian—at a minimum.
(Warmists also have been following a strategy of avoiding debate with skeptics, as recommended by Fenton (iirc), in order to avoid giving credibility to the skeptical side.)
I’m not saying anything authoritarian. I favor lots of viewpoints being exchanged in the media, and lots of debates being held, as a general rule. I’ve relished the debates that have been held so far in the UK, where mostly non-scientist experts-in-the-topic like Monckton and Lawson have performed impressively.
My objection in this case is different from the warmists’ rationale. I didn’t imply that Inhofe or (Murkey) shouldn’t be heard in this debate because he’s wrong and will mislead the innocent, which is the “principled” position of some warmists. My objection is prudential rather than principled. I worry that the waters might be muddied, and our side might be made to look bad, in a nationwide short-form debate viewed by novices where our side’s champion doesn’t know all the ins and outs of the issue and therefore doesn’t have a ready reply to every trick up his opponent’s sleeve. Inhofe must have a half-dozen topics that occupy as much of his time as CAWG. He’s stretched too thin.
The way to “turn the herd” is to turn the opinion leaders. The opinion leaders on this topic are scientists and scientific journalists. The opinion leaders don’t follow the debates on the Internet—it’s a firehose. Or if they do, they assume that RC and SkS have all the answers. The average opinion leader is actually usually a timid fellow on inflammable issues like CAWG—he’ll look for cover before breaking ranks with conventional wisdom and the dicta of dozens of scientific associations.
A long-form scientific debate before panels of retired scientists (from outside climatology) would provide this cover if, after it concluded, the judging panels issued either a skeptical evaluation of CAWGism, or if their individual opinions significantly shifted toward skepticism from their initial presumptions. (When I posted fuller presentations of my ideal-debate-format, years ago here, I went into more detail about the advantages of this format.) The opinion leaders wouldn’t need to watch these debates themselves. Such panels would have the ability to see through smoke-and-mirrors warmist tactics, and the objective mindset that would be unmoved by attempts to pluck at their heartstrings with polar bears and so forth.
I worry that it’s a lose/lose poposition. If a massive shift toward skepticism occurred, the warmists would claim it was all due to trickery by our side, and anyway that the manipulable, short-sighted, selfish opinions of Joe Sixpack shouldn’t be given weight in a debate about science, any more than his opinions about the age of the earth, etc. OTOH, if a big swing toward warmism occurred, the warmists would say, “For goodness sake, won’t you accept that NOW the debate is over?”
But the populace can’t reliably “assess their elected legislators” in a short-form (90-minute, one-shot) debate on a topic with so many facets and so much ingrained misinformation. (And it’s only two legislators who’d be involved, representing less than 1% of the population.) The two sides can lob sound-bites and graphics at each other, probably satisfyling the partisans in their respective corners, but likely leaving most of the audience more confused or than ever. To really unmask the other side’s false claims is a long job—especially since most such claims can’t yet be authoritatively judged as being false, but rather only as more or less probable or improbable.
I favor the democratization of science and scientific discourse. I’d like to see journals move online, with a great diminution in the blocking and “puffing” abilities of gatekeepers and peer reviewers. And I’d like to see the government subsidize the online posting of the contents of all scientific journals, to eliminate paywalls—something I repeatedly posted about a few days ago, in a thread started by Robert Brown.
In line with that democratic attitude, I think there should be nationwide televised debates on the matter. I think the public deserves to be involved. It’s scandalous that even PBS and other non-commercial broadcasters haven’t been scheduling such debates regularly over the past 20 years. It’s even more scandalous that this omission hasn’t been due to foolishness, but to knavery: It was a conscious decision, meant to marginalize skepticism.
But the debaters or presenters in such a series should not be politicians, but persons with a really in-depth knowledge of the subject. That doesn’t exclude any viewpoint, because there are lots of skeptical scientists (mostly outside climatology) and lots of competent skeptical amateurs.
If such a nationwide forum already existed, then I wouldn’t object to giving politicians one ring of the circus, in addition.