[update. apparently the video I posted was a bootleg. I will be updating with official link when it becomes available – cr]
[Update 2 the official video has been released and we have a post with it here. It is also available on our videos page ~cr]
Monday, August 15, 2022
Resolution: Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
For the affirmative:
Andrew Dessler is a climate scientist who studies both the science and politics of climate change. He is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and holder of the Reta A. Haynes Chair in Geosciences at Texas A&M University. His scientific research revolves around climate feedbacks, in particular how water vapor and clouds act to amplify warming from the carbon dioxide that humans emit. During the last year of the Clinton Administration, he served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Based on his research and policy experience, he has authored two books about climate change and one book about stratospheric ozone. His educational background includes a B.A. in physics from Rice University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University. He also did postdoctoral work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior to graduate school, he worked in the energy group at The First Boston Corporation doing mergers and acquisitions analysis.
For the negative:
Steven Koonin is the author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (2021). He joined New York University Stern School of Business as a Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences in September 2012. He is also Director of NYU’s new Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). Professor Koonin was confirmed by the Senate in May 2009 as Undersecretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, serving in that position until November, 2011. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, he was BP’s Chief Scientist, where he was a strong advocate for research into renewable energies and alternate fuel sources. He came to BP in 2004 after almost three decades as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, serving as the Institute’s Vice President and Provost for the last nine years.
This debate may also be found on our video page.
Dressler….”Climate change is already happening”
No further viewing necessary….
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any real effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence all efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will have no effect on global climate. Mankind does not even know what the optimum global climate actually is let alone how to achieve it If adding CO2 to the atmosphere really caused surface warming then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened.
Please, could somebody summarize shortly the main points of both sides, and what was the conclusion? Many THX in advance.
Koonin simply destroys Dessler.
1) He gets Dessler to essentially triviaize SLavery and China’s Civil Rights Abuses
2) He exposes his lying to the audience about signing a letter attacking Koonin
3) Dessler is simply clueless about the economics of Green Energy and easily refuted
4) The audience was laughing and mocking Dessler during the event, even the MC got is some jabs
5) You won’t be seeing any more Climate Debates, Dessler destroyed any credibility of his cause
When Dessler told Joe Rogan he wouldn’t debate climate change. He really meant I can’t debate climate change. With a performance like that He really needs to be kicked off the AGW debate team.
I watched the first 53 minutes – the opening 17 minute statements of both speakers.
Dressler was appalling: No data. No specifics. Off the point quotations. A rambling and barely coherent presentation. Cartoon like slides with child-like logic and sweeping assertions. It was embarrassing.
Koonin’s argument was clear and concise and memorable: There is no climate crisis. Proposed solutions impact the poorest the most. The intermittency and costs of renewables cannot be sustained. His arguments addressed the palpable flaws in the proposition.
Unless Dressler pulled out a magical piece of data in the rest of the debate, Koonin wins this debate easily.
The most entertaining thing about this debate was watching Steven Koonin’s face of boredom about to fall asleep while pretending to listen to Dessler’s hysterical lies.
A Dessler-qoute: “I installed a battery to go with my solar panels”
This is one of the most inefficient and expensive way to deal with the reliability problem. And right there profes Koonin´s points!
The elites can bail out, the masses are stuck with unwise decision!
Mr. Dressler is a Michael-Mann-wannabe — with less than half the intellectual horsepower.
That’s bad because at this rate, he is really idiotic.
Koonin “won” the debate based on before & after voting. We won’t see any more debates by the alarmists for quite while.
I thought Koonin would have refuted Dessler’s repeated lies on LCOE with respect to Solar&Wind being cheaper. And Dessler’s comment about not needing to pay for backup to solar/wind until you use it was utter nonsense. Dessler’s best comment was ~”if we guess wrong on the climate [by mid-century] then we’ll be screwed”. Of course I took that to mean that if we do the proposed all-in on CLIMATE DEPENDENT renewables we will be screwed!
LOL in a sad way.
It was worth watching [Note: watch it at 1.5x speed, or 1.75x] but the slides for both sides were poorly chosen: too small, busy or wordy. [And where was Christy’s spaghetti graph of the satellite record?! It’s colorful and easy to read. By itself, it is a knock-out punch to the validity of the models]
Full disclosure: I liked Koonin’s book “Unsettled”
Dessler mentioned attribution, I was hoping he would be called out on that by Koonin.
Not only shows the difference in CO2-sensistivity between CMIP5 and CMIP6 of about 25% clearly how bad these models still are (and you really should not base any decission on them), but also R. McKitrick has published a massive critique on attribution last year, which is still standing and needs to be addressed before any climate attribution can be pulled out of the hat in such a discussion. The fact that mainstream climate scientists try to ignore that finding should not be tolerated!
Dessler is an awful presenter, skips all over the place and only offers anecdotal alarmists bs. No wonder he lost so badly. He even dresses like a slob. There must be someone better.
Koonin, on the other hand, lays out a cogent argument citing experts and data. He deserves better competition.
George Foreman vs Pee Wee Herman.
Ps. I listened to both separately on Joe Rogan Experience. I had the same opinion. Total mismatch.
I loved how Koonin used the IPCC quotes to show there is no crisis to avoid.
Dessler flailed badly but wasn’t as obnoxious as his many idiotic public statements caused me to expect.
I loved how Koonin used the IPCC quotes to show there is no crisis to avoid.
Dessler flailed badly but wasn’t as obnoxious as his many idiotic public statements caused me to expect.
Thanks for posting the video!!
That statement along with his ‘only science slide’ a ridiculous supposedly paleo-climate history of the past 30,000 years was enough to get his drift.
Steven Koonin’s presentation was to the point and convincing.
Having watched the performance end to end, I was left asking a basic question.
If Dessler, sorry, I mean Prof Dessler, represents the pinnacle of Climate Alarmism, why does anybody listen to the scare mongers?
It did answer one long standing question I have had though,
That question being how did Greta reach such prominence in the Climate Alarm movement.?
The answer, as shown by this performance by Dessler is, she is brighter than the other senior alarmist performers….
NB My question to the alarmists.
“Is that the best you got?”
Where did Dessler get that graph which showed that today’s temperatures exceed those of the entire earlier Holocene? What happened to the Holocene optimum, the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warms periods which were warmer warmer than today according to a myriad of geological evidence? Why didn’t Koonin make a comment about the graph?
Quote:”Resolution: Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Translation:”Climate science compels us to completely lose our heads, indulge in vast mendacity/hypocrisy & junk science, wallow in troughs of virtue (and other people’s money) and not least as here, engage in Bear-Baiting and Cock-Fighting as we enter a new Dark Age as Magical Thinkers look on, stroking their beards/willies and nodding approvingly”
I can’t believe the garbage Andrew Dessler is talking. The woman with $49 left on her card can’t afford much more electricity because climate change POLICY has made it much more expensive by using very expensive (and unreliable) renewables. His whole CO2 drives climate conjecture is bunk. If the USA had spent the billions of $ on reliable nuclear rather than useless renewables, it would already be ‘carbon free’ for baseload. Also, that Biden went to the ME to beg for oil was entirely on HIS head, as HE curtailed domestic production. And no Andrew, you cannot electrify everything, and no, wind and solar are NOT the cheapest. You forgot the subsidies, huge storage costs, huge distribution & switching costs, and the cost of fossil fuel backup. Why do you think the grid is built on a JIT basis, i.e. baseload + dispatchable? Dessler really doesn’t know or understand anything!
Thank you for the link.
I enjoyed the parts I watched. I was not a big fan of Koonin, but his professionalism and eloquence impressed me. So I congratulate him on his performance.
As for Dessler, I think he is a climate alarmism hustler. I’ll leave it at that.
Where was Dessler’s killer cognitive research?
Call me the tumbling dice!
Has anyone yet seen a response by Dr. Koonin to the critique by Roger Pielke, Jr.? I know he intended to write one, but I haven’t seen it yet.
That question is off topic, I know, but it came to mind when I was thinking about why Dr. Dressler seems to be the best they could scare up as an opponent. As Andy May observed, most alarmists seem, like Gavin Schmidt, to be once burnt, twice shy–at least when it comes to in-person debates. Only Dr. Dessler seems to have a high enough threshold of embarrassment.
This is not to say that Dr. Pielke’s piece was at all compelling. To me it was basically mush; it seemed as though he wanted to be critical without making any testable assertions in support. But I’m still interested in seeing Dr. Koonin’s take.
Dessler’s history of China and energy.
Dessler 1:29:15 – ” So China has been reliant on coal for decades and ,you know, because they don’t have oil, they don’t have natural gas…”
China is the world’s 6th biggest oil producer and 8th largest natural gas producer. China’s natural gas production has increased fivefold since 2000. China fracks. And yes, China’s annual coal production hit a record last year, surpassing 4 billion tonnes for the first time.
From the article: “Andrew Dessler is a climate scientist who studies both the science and politics of climate change.
Political science. Yes, that’s what climate change alarmism amounts to.
” He is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and holder of the Reta A. Haynes Chair in Geosciences at Texas A&M University. His scientific research revolves around climate feedbacks, in particular how water vapor and clouds act to amplify warming from the carbon dioxide that humans emit.”
How? Global temperatures are cooling at the present time. Where’s the amplification? Where’s the hotspot?
Idiots like this are going to determine our fate? It’s a possibility.
Dressler did say at the beginning that he only had one “science based” slide, which was his first one. After that he jumps right into some anecdotal evidence of catastrophic climate change. I guess he only had one “science based” slide because there isn’t much science to support his catastrophism arguments. I wish that Koonin had presented more data to show that the incidence of severe weather events is not increasing. That said, you really cannot debate someone who is completely immune to science and logic.
Dessler thinks there’s free money. “The govt moves in to help people pay for things” Who does he thinks pays for that? Pure fantasist.