During David Suzuki’s Q&A on Australian ABC-TV, and WUWT regular Bill Koutalianos puts the fruit fly guy on the spot. Video of the interview follows. Andrew Bolt writes:
David Suzuki proves he’s pig ignorant about global warming
The very first question put to David Suzuki on Q&A last night revealed this warming alarmist’s complete ignorance of the most basic facts of global warming.
Fancy Suzuki not even knowing what the world’s main temperature data sets say about global temperatures. Fancy him not even knowing what those data sets are, even when he is given their names.
The only rational response to Suzuki’s astonishing admission of utter ignorance would have been to say to him: “Sir, you are a phony and imposter. Get off the stage and don’t waste our time for a second longer.”
Read the exchange for yourself:
BILL KOUTALIANOS: Oh, hi. Since 1998 global temperatures have been relatively flat, yet many man-made global warming advocates refuse to acknowledge this simple fact. Has man-made global warming become a new religion in itself?
TONY JONES: David, go ahead.
DAVID SUZUKI: Yeah, well, I don’t know why you’re saying that. The ten hottest years on record, as I understand it, have been in this century. In fact, the warming continues. It may have slowed down but the warming continues and everybody is anticipating some kind of revelation in the next IPCC reports that are saying we got it wrong. As far as I understand, we haven’t. So where are you getting your information? I’m not a climatologist. I wait for the climatologists to tell us what they’re thinking.
TONY JONES: Do you want to respond to that, Bill?
BILL KOUTALIANOS: Sure, yeah. UAH, RSS, HadCRUT, GISS data shows a 17-year flat trend which suggests there may be something wrong with the Co2 warming theory?
DAVID SUZUKI: Sorry, yeah, what is the reference? I don’t…
BILL KOUTALIANOS: Well, they’re the main data sets that IPCC use: UAH, University of Alabama, Huntsville; GISS, Goddard Institute of Science; HadCRUT. I don’t know what that stands for, HadCRUT; and RSS, Remote Sensing something. So those data sets suggest a 17-year flat trend, which suggests there may be a problem with the Co2.
DAVID SUZUKI: No, well, there may be a climate sceptic down in Huntsville, Alabama, who has taken the data and come to that conclusion. I say, let’s wait for the IPCC report to come out and see what the vast bulk of scientists who have been involved in gathering this information will tell us.
See those data sets here.
Like I say, a complete know-nothing, citing false claims:
STEWART FRANKS: In an opinion piece last week you wrote that the Great Barrier Reef was threatened by the increasing frequency of cyclones. Everyone watching and listening can onto the Bureau of Meteorology’s website and see that there is no increase. In fact there has been a decline over the last 40 years and no increase in the severity. Are you not, by exaggerating…
DAVID SUZUKI: That I have to admit…
STEWART FRANKS: …or even just getting wrong, are you not actually vulnerable of actually undermining your very own aim in that, you know, the Great Barrier Reef does have environmental threat, but cyclones ain’t one of them?
DAVID SUZUKI: All right. That was one, I have to admit, that that was suggested to me by an Australian, and it is true, I mean, it may be a mistake. I don’t know.
Nor does David Suzuki know what the hell he’s on about when he’s fear-mongering about genetically modified crops:
DAVID SUZUKI: Well, I mean, that is always the argument that’s made. GMOs are very, very expensive. Now, the people that need this food are not going to be able to afford it. Are we going to just create these new crops and then give them away? I simply don’t believe that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t think it is a generosity for the rest of humanity that is driving this activity.
RICK ROUSH: Actually, we are. I mean, Bt corn technology has been given away to the Kenyan State Government research people for use for subsistence farmers. Monsanto gave away insect resistant potatoes in Mexico over 20 years ago. James is working on lots of similar cases. In cases where there is no economic return, it is, in fact, being given away and they’re not so difficult to develop. When I was at Cornell, we got a gene that was a gift from Monsanto for experimental purposes. We made broccoli plants that were resistant to attacks of Dimebag Moths. A student – one of our students made about 50 transformants in about six months. The great cost of these things are no longer the actual creation of the plant. It’s the regulatory challenges to take sure that you can take them to market, to do all that safety testing.
TONY JONES: Okay, Rick, well we’ll get a response to that and we’ll move on?
DAVID SUZUKI: Well, I don’t have any response. It sounds great. I don’t know.
How in God’s name could people take this man seriously?
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Kudos to Bill Koutalianos for asking a simple question. Simon at Australian Climate Madness has put the ABC video on YouTube:
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Does any one else find it strange that a champion of CAGW is clueless about the major temperature series compilations?
The “I’m and idiot and I dont know what I am championing” came through loud and clear.
as I posted on Jo Nova’s site….please keep him…we don’t want him back…
We have been force-fed a diet of fruit fly here in Canuckistan for forty-plus years. His show, “The Nature of Things”, started off as an interesting look into the natural world, with Suzuki acting as affable host. The affability had cracks, through which seeped a simmering dross of nascent environmental alarmism. Uncle Dave’s misanthropy seeped through as well, diluted somewhat by his sciency facade. Years hence, his full-on hate of humanity is on display, with his public drubbing of everything. The scientific content vanished, replaced by emotional; outbursts in front of frightened school kids and cozying up to the bizarre self-designation of “Elder” bestowed upon him by his ‘charitable’ foundation, which to this day dodges the rule from the Canada Revenue Agency about remaining politically neutral. My personal experience was to be doused with a fusillade of potty mouth from Dave after I nearly ran him over while he jaywalked across 4th Ave in Vancouver. Had to tell that story. Through it all, he became lazy, and has become a legend in his own mind. He is a relative has-been in Canada now, people are sick of his foolishness. So now, riding on that lofty reputation, he runs into a brick wall of facts in an Australia newly distancing itself from the climate kooks.
Just like Tim Flannery, I might add, who is scheduled to give a lecture on green things in Calgary in a few weeks. I wish I could attend, to help strip off the flab of his free ride.
Notice that both today and yesterday we had the same argument given about the temperature. It’s the one that says that we have had the hottest ten years on record in this century. Yesterday Gore used it. Today Suzuki used it. It was provided for them by James Hansen, and it is the fallback position for every warmer that is asked about the flat spell. And they pretend that the statement proves that the temperature is still rising. But it is clearly a case of false logic. If I climb a set of stairs and reach the top floor, then every step that I take on the top floor will be higher than any step that I took coming up the stairs. But it does not mean that I am still going up.
Such an anti-scientific attitude…belief over knowledge! He used to be a decent (not great, but ok) geneticist. Then he got into the business of “shaping” the beliefs of several generations of kids through his science shows. But this interview exposes a basic lack of curiosity that should disqualify him from espousing on any topic without being fully vetted in advance.
My attitude about trying to understand the AGW arguments is nicely summed up by the following from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” section of Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love:
“What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
Obviously not always that easy to find the facts in the face of temperature smoothing and adjustments, but it’s necessary to understand the arguments from their basic underpinnings to have any hope of comprehending the topic. Dr. Suzuki apparently fails to understand the very foundational data. Amazingly, he swallows the talking points (hottest decade ever!) without question. Science=skepticism, or as Feynman famously put it, “belief in the ignorance of experts.”
“Bolt has insulted pigs everywhere! I know pigs. Pigs are really smart animals.”
Love it, Brian.
I am starting to feel sorry for the warmists. Is there no one who can speak intelligently for the group? David Suzuki just made Al Gore look smart!
(Ha, ha, ha . . . just kidding.)
Dr. Burns, I’m glad you quoted Brian, for it elicited this:
IN DEFENSE OF THE SELF-RESPECT OF PIGS EVERYWHERE:
What an embarrassment this fool is to Canada, but I too think that the Bolter has been a little hard on pigs.
But Suzuki’s mind boggling stupidity is indeed difficult to understand. His lack of interest in the data sets and lack of knowledge of them is almost beyond belief.
My friends and I have little formal education but try and keep up by reading the better blogs and regularly look at the temp records.
Reuters Point Carbon provides the news:
“Private donors relaunch Australian climate body govt had closed 24 Sep 2013 10:28 BANGKOK, Sept 24 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A climate science advisory body shut down by the Australian government last week has been relaunched, relying on private donations, former climate commissioner Tim Flannery told ABC television on Tuesday.”
Private donations… the scam cannot die and now the private interests that were conveniently hidden behind the climate bureaucracy are forced to come out of the closet… The same happened in Canada after Vivian Krause exposed the forces behind the Vancouver Mayor Greg Robertson and Suzuki…
“David Suzuki just made Al Gore look smart!” (Jim Clarke) — lol
Here they are, the Climate Buddies are on their way….
Oh man Suzuki! This is the guy that said that because there’s carbon in windshields, that’s why your car gets hot inside when the sun is out. I can’t even make that up.
Let him talk, I say. Just not where he or his handlers control the “edit button”.
I have to suppress the nausea of having this man and his foundation do all they can to marginalize my father for all these years. No wonder they fear my dad. As suspected, Suzuki is absolutely clueless, and not just in one field.
On top of that, my parents are the most eco-friendly people of anyone I know. Take that, Suzuki you carbon Sasquatch!!
@ur momisugly David Ball — sounds like you have a hero for a dad. Tell him, thank you, please.
Have fun snowboarding with your kids (don’t tell me you guys ski?!). “At least my kids will know what snow looks like,” (you the other day) — lol.
DAVID SUZUKI: Well, I don’t have any response. It sounds great. I don’t know.
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actually, this response seems quite reasonable.
I’m tempted to comment… in fact, hey, I am commenting…
But Suzuki, one of the dimmest bulbs in Canada, is just too easy. So I don’t even need to.
Like Suzuki, Patchauri also just claimed that because “x of the warmest years were since 2000,” warming must be continuing apace. Idiots don’t know the difference between level and trend.
And Suzuki finished talking about traditional cultures and how a river has rights and that is the reason the company is fixing it. The river does not need rights to sue or charge a company with environmental vandalism. Traditional societies are the most unscientific of all – they are at the opposite end of the spectrum of science through to complete bullshit. Suzuki did not put up a good show on QandA, and he was shown up to be an ignorant idealistic bullshitter himself. It is a pity, because he does know stuff, but clearly not climate stuff (or GM stuff for which he should know given he did genetics). He is now old, idealistic and out of touch with science, having been sucked into the idealistic hype of how traditional societies had it right. Sorry, we cannot go back there ever again and we never will. Or let’s go back there and rape and steal women from neighboring tribes; leave one of twins to die, kill of babies born to young Mother’s; suffer from malnutrition when drought etc affects their ability to gather and hunt.
I avoid watching Q&A on communist ABC – it is bad for my mental well-being. Instead, I follow CatallaxyFiles blog (administered by Sinclair Davidson) which has a thread devoted to each show. Far more entertaining. For the Suzuki episode: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/09/23/qa-tonight/
Please note: thread usually contains foul language.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
Doesn’t the IPCC say basically the same thing as Suzuki said in his initial reply in the draft SPM you posted yesterday?
Yes. Same dishonest “talking point” response to the inconvenience of the truth. Recently repeated by the IPCC’s romance novelist in chief, in direct contradiction of his earlier admission that reaility isn’t complying with the party line.
I think Koutalianos did a good jub, but I have one niggle: he said “So those data sets suggest a 17-year flat trend,…” Why not use the verb “demonstrate” or “show”.
The weasel word “suggest” is used more and more to avoid refutation of the warmists’ predictions.
Newton did not “suggest” that F=ma; he made an outright claim. If wrong, F=ma would have been demolished binned and disposed of as all bad science must be.
What an astonishing piece of television. Has to go down as one of the strangest things I have seen. I watched it live and nearly fell off my chair at Suzuki’s response to the first question. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who knew less about the subject.
The future’s looking brighter–science advances one funeral at a time.
Some just take waaaay too long.
Do you think Suzuki will give it some thought now? Do you think he might go home and… oh, I don’t know, maybe look some stuff up? Do you think he might begin to wonder if he has gone down the right road on all this…?
I know. Not likely. But if he’s worth his salt, he’ll do exactly that and then he’ll have the other side of the coin to be really passionate about. He might even think it A Good Thing to jail the con-artists.
His $30,000 fees are going to dry up fast unless he gets his act together. This is out of the bag now.
The ten hottest years on record, as I understand it, have been in this century.
I just a bit agocommented on this warmest decade meme, in that instance courtesy of Mr. Pachauri. Rather than go through the whole exercise again, here’s the climax. Token alarmist, circa 1950:
Each of the last three decades has been warmer than all preceding decades since 1850 and the decade of 1940 to 1950 has been the warmest on record.
As long as they keep regurgitating the warmist “warmest decade” talking point, I shall counter it, so long as I am allowed of course. The simple fact though is they just can’t let it go. As Mr. Koutalianos noted skillfully under the guise of a question, it is a new religion. That’s no revelation to those throughout these threads but this sad exchange could certainly open the eyes of many a fence-sitter. Then again, Mr. Suzuki tried to deflect the blow with an epic hand wave as he retreated to his ivory tower of cards:
So where are you getting your information? I’m not a climatologist. I wait for the climatologists to tell us what they’re thinking.
He cedes his own authority on the matter, but chastises the blasphemer with an appeal to authority that does prove utterly, religiously dogmatic. Pathetic.