Steve Koonin participated in three recent debates of the resolution:
“Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Koonin went three for three! They were all Oxford style debates with the audience polled before and after, and in every debate, the agrees went down and the disagrees went up.
This was part of the Steamboat Institute Campus Liberty Tour and the debates were at the University of Maryland, the University of Dallas, and Oklahoma State University.
Read more about his debates here. The truth always comes out (paraphrasing Lancelot in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice) and common sense often does prevail. I find it comforting that in these debates the skeptics nearly always win.
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Interesting that the skeptics at the Oklahoma State debate outweighed the believers at the start 61% to 23%.
Regards,
Bob
PS: Thanks for doing this, Steve Koonin. Keep at ’em.
U.S. Senator James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) who retired this year, was the biggest climate change skeptic in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps that’s why there are so many skeptics in Oklahoma. Or, maybe there are just a lot of common sense folks in Oklahoma.
Or perhaps it’s the reverse– the sensible Sooners elected a man who reflected their skeptical attitude. Let’s hope the one who replaces Inhofe is equally oriented.
The person replacing Inhofe is Markwayne Mullin.
Mullin is a staunch conservative, who supports Trump.
I haven’t heard what his position on human-caused climate change is.
He is a big supporter of oil and natural gas.
Steve Koonin is very good. He did not have a dog in this hunt, so was tasked by APS to lead an inquiry into revising their climate statement (which caused Nobel physics winner Gaiever to resign from APS). The several hundred pagetranscript of his fact finding ‘hearing’ (which featured Judith Curry) is still available over at Judith’s. And when APS did nothing with his findings, he wrote his now famous book.
Despite how good Koonin is, no debate against any knowledgeable skeptic can be ‘won’ by warmunists, since their ‘case’ does not stand up to factual scrutiny.
Good list Rud.
You should add that polar bears are doing fine.
Maybe this could also be added: a Tesla motoring down a freeway hit some debris and caught fire. The fire fighters said they used 12,000 gallons trying to put the fire out, and could not stop it, and a car fire normally consumes 500 gallons to fight it. The remains of the Tesla were only identifiable as a car because the wheels didn’t melt, otherwise scraps of metal.
The water is used to cool the area. The battery fire is its own demise.
Your tale reminds me of conversation I had with a magnesium casting facility manager. I was considering adopting magnesium casting as an option into our Die Casting offering to customers.
We were stood next to a huge pile of dry sand at the end of his foundry in Denmark. Puzzled, I asked him “what the sand was doing there”? He said “we sometimes get a fire on a machine from burning magnesium. If it can not be immediately dealt with, then we simply cover the whole station in the sand and leave it for a couple of days. Then we get the front end loader to shovel the sand back into the pile”.
“Doesn’t the machine get in the way of the loader picking up the sand” I asked?
“Not at all”, said Lars, “the machine ‘is’ the sand, after the two days and is now part of the sand pile”.
His answer to my question about adopting mag casting into our business was,
“Don’t do it Rod”.
Many of the hubs on military aircraft are magnesium. Very dangerous aboard carriers. Should a brake fire occur on the flight deck the quickest safest extinguisher is the ocean so the plane is pushed over the side.
Fear of melting through the ship and sinking the it. I don’t know if that could really happen and no one wants to find out.
Along with that addition:
According to the carbon dioxide causing warming is that CO₂ warming is supposed to warm both polar regions, not just the Arctic.
It ain’t warming in Antarctica!
Rud,
6 It is obvious to any power engineer that renewables are a dead end so why do governments persist? There must surely have been input to these governments pointing out this simple fact.
The solution has been available for decades, i.e. nuclear generation if we must decarbonise as some claim, despite manageable disadvantages. It is Hobson’s choice and the only viable solution. (To a problem that most governments believe in)
7 EVs do not reduce CO2 from generation by as much as is imagined. The ususal average CO2 emitted per Megawatt generated is used to calculate ev CO2 emissions. This is wrong and far below what actually happens. Add demand to a grid, only fossil fuel generation can react
as nuclear and renewables are already at maximum available output.
Iain, governments ( and the MSM ) persist because they think that if they are seen to change their mind they will look stupid, and politicians ( and MSM moguls ) do not want people to think of them as stupid.
I guess most of us here would think of them as sensible, and even honest, ( what a thought, honest politicians ) if they publicly changed their minds.
Politicians are not the real problem re climate, it’s their scientific advisors who are feeding them all this AGW and catastrophic tipping point crap who are really to blame for this mess, as well as the garrulous self-serving media.
Scientists are supposed to be morally bound by their methodology and seeking the real truth, most still are. But their managers, and political activists especially at the IPCC are driving ideology and have twisted the science to suit themselves and their agendas.
Look at all the climate data manipulation, especially in global and regional temperatures in order to emphasize the AGW storyline, all the ecological bullshit about polar bears, penguins etc, all designed to scare the public witless. When the planet is just fine, and it is doing its own thing oblivious of us humans.
We can do a lot better than this exhibition of moral weakness and gross anti-scientific stupidity we are now practicing and break down this AGW cabal before they break us. Science and modern observations have shown us AGW is a false mirage, with CO2 having little effect on climate over the past 500 million years, the sun, Earth’s orbit and the hydrological cycle being the main factors changing climate. We should all just admit our mistakes and move on.
Nuclear power was thrown out of the game by Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) begore the IPCC was launched
“The China Syndrome” was released two weeks before TMI and it probably over stimulated the fear of what TMI represented. That fear has hung on.
If you change the words “was thrown out” to be “became politically difficult”, I could agree with the comment. The facts are that the Three Mile Island incident resulted in no human injuries, and the Chernobyl power plants were of an obsolete design that is not in use today. The biggest problem with both of these was the media hysteria, not the facts. As some pundits have said, “More US citizens have died from riding in the front seat of Senator Ted Kennedy’s car than have died from nuclear electricity generation in the US.”
The fact remains that nuclear power is the only short-term solution to reducing CO2 emissions that doesn’t require invention and discovery of technology that is presently non-existent.
Then there is the fact that CO2 is not harmful to the planet. It is beneficial to both plants and life. The climate crisis freaks have not been able to prove, factually, otherwise. The whole climate crisis is a sham to separate the rubes from their money. Just like a carnival game, only a little more serious. Treat the proponents for what they are, crooks. Every. Damn. One. Of. Them.
Just sayin’.
To separate the rubes from their freedom
I agree completely. The problem is that the Warmist true believers don’t face reality.
If you debate the 1005 wrong predictions of CAGW and win the debate, you automatically win the debate on Nut Zero without even mentioning Nut Zero. Without the CAGW belief, Nut Zero would be moot point.
A debate could concentrate on climate science, or energy issues, or wild guess climate predictions of doom. A focus on one subject is the best strategy for a debate, not all three subjects. I believe the 100% wrong wild guess climate predictions of doom are the best choice for the subject if you want to win a debate with the Climate Howlers. Otherwise, it becomes a debate of “My science is better than IPCC science”, which is a losing strategy (even if true) due to the strong IPCC appeal to authority.
Debating Nut Zero is even more complex than climate science because there is no detailed plan to debate — just a vision statement with an arbitrary completion year, and no successful pilot projects. Nut Zero is an unaffordable, not feasible fantasy project. It would be impossible to guess the total global cost of Nut Zero to the nearest $100 trillion dollars!
You can avoid reality for a while, but ultimately it will catch-up.
That’s why it’s called reality.
With all the current turmoil in the financial markets and the world in general, the smoke and mirror approach is crumbling, along with the woke ideologies that may sound nice in principle to some, but have no real foundation in reality.
Once the bottom two foundational aspects of maslow’s hierarchy of needs are under threat, as they now are for many people, only what actually works becomes important.
Reality can be a hard task master
“… in these debates the skeptics nearly always win.“
___________________________________________
Nearly always and those that skeptics don’t win need
to be examined as to why.
So which ones were those, and who screwed up?
The climate is what it is and no amount of modelling or wishful thinking will change that.
If China and India burns enough coal without gas scrubbing to reduce atmospheric particulates, humanity may avoid the current glaciation that I figure began in 1400 when evaporation from the extensive temperate region of the North Atlantic reached its minimum in the current precession cycle. It will increase over the next 9000 years drawing ever increasing moisture into the atmosphere over the North Atlantic ahead of winter. Snowfall must increase. Melt rate in summer will also increase but will not outpace the rate of accumulation on the peaks in ever lower latitudes. Once accumulation begins, more peaks rise above the snowline.
The rapidly increasing minimum temperature on the Greenland plateau should be ringing alarm bells for glaciation – per attached. The only way winter temperature can increase over Greenland is due to increasing snowfall.
Snow is not easy to melt because it usually has high reflectivity – currently 52% on the Greenland plateau in June. Black particulates falling with the snow increase the amount of snow that can melt in any summer but Greenland is already accumulating ice on the plateau so is pristine enough to avoid net summer melt.
So what does CO2 do?
Improves conditions for plant life to flourish.
As long as there are ice free oceans and land free from structures, the rate of biomass accumulation will continue to increase. Biomass on land moderates temperature range because it retains moisture.
The excess optical depth from increased CO2 condenses into water droplets and rains out from the atmosphere. This causes about a 1% decrease of relative humidity in the atmosphere.
The Manabe assumption of fixed relative humidity under thermodynamic equilibrium for doubling CO2 has not held. it’s really that simple. https://climate-dynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/manabe67.pdf
Absolut humidity (water vapos) is a climate variable, not relative humidity. Absolute humidity changes as a result of changes of the troposphere temperature, so absolute humidity it is a RESULT of climate change, not a CAUSE of climate change,
Climate science calls it the humidity paradox. but it’s not a paradox at all. It is perfectly physical, as observed in reality. CMIP models cannot reproduce the humidity field.
Dr. William Gray discussed this long ago. With enhanced CO2 driven evaporation you also get an enhanced convective flow. This drives water vapor higher into the atmosphere where it is colder which leads to increased condensation.
The obvious benefit of increased water as CO2 increases is to enhanced plant growth. Actually looks like it was engineered.
It causes true believers to sit on asphalt and to glue themselves to artwork of antiquity. It also seems to upset autistic children.
If they were serious, they would use homemade glue from natural sources instead of glue made from hydrocarbons.
Liars, not CO2, causes all that.
Who is “us” and who is doing the compelling? Certainly not China and India.
sounds like they deified “climate science” so that it can compel us- no doubt we’ll see a “10 commandments” from this deity, which was probably handed down to one of the COP27 worshipers on nearby Mt. Sinai
Should read: “Hypothetical bullshit compels us to do nothing – it’s just hypothetical bullshit.”
Honest question. Have the skeptics ever lost an Oxford style debate? There are a couple famous ones we won.
The skeptics lose every debate because the CAGW belief and predictions of climate doom fantasy lives on.
Yes, but the majority of people are not buying the CO2 crisis.
Look at how much effort, and how much money the Alarmists have put into convincing people that CO2 is dangerous, and it’s still not enough, even according to the Alarmists. They are still trying to figure out the best way to fool the public about CO2.
The only people convinced by the Human-caused Climate Change hoax are the politicians. Unfortunately, that’s the only people that need convincing and then our economies go into a tailspin when these politicians declare wars on oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear.
Unfortunately, the average person is going to have to suffer because of the climate change hoax. How long this will continue is the question. It will continue as long as our politicians believe CO2 is a harmful gas, even though there is no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
CO2 is beneficial, not harmful. The world has been turned upside down by the lies about CO2.
There is no evidence substantiating the Alarmist claim that CO2 is harmful. None.
We have had a long, hard journey trying to avoid CO2 production, based on nothing substantial. Alarmists can’t even tell you how much warmth a certain amount of CO2 will add to the atmosphere after decades of trying. They certainly cannot show that CO2 is the control knob of the Earth’s atmosphere. The evidence so far says that CO2 is a minor player in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Yet our politicians are destroying our economies and societies in an effort to reduce CO2 production. It’s pure madness. And many people are suffering the consequences now, and this will continue into the future as long as the goal is to reduce CO2.
There is no need to reduce CO2. The world won’t get better until politicians figure this out.
Skeptics shouldn’t be losing any climate change debates. All they have to do is request that the Alarmist produce proof of his CO2 claims. Since the Alarmist has no proof of anything he claims, he loses the debate.
Prove it! That’s the most intimidating thing you can say to an Alarmist. On the internet, they go silent at the request. In person, they sputter “97 percent”.
What seems very strange is that nowhere can I find a graph of temperature increase of a City, State, Country, Island, Lake, Sea, the Mediterranean Ocean, any Ocean that follows the same curve as the Mauna Loa CO2 graph from inception of that graph to today.
Koonin is not capable of winning a debate with Climate Howlers.
He does not understand the key problem that need to be solved.
That problem is the Appeal to Authority logfical fallacy
The blind trust in government funded scientists.
The science has general agreement: That CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas is also believed by the Climate Howlers That’s no problem. Not worth debating. The problem is the leftist fantasy of a HUGE water vapor positive feedback — an unproven theory that magically triples the effect of CO2 alone, allegedly over a 400 year period. A fantasy prediction with no observations is not science. So it should not be debated directly. What should be debated is the 100% wrong climate predictions that are based on CAGW / water vapor feedback.
The only science that could be debated must use IPCC numbers and models because they have such a strong appeal to authority effect. This could confuse listeners … but … the IPCC models used for TCS with RCP 4.5 result in average temperature predictions (70 years in the future) similar to the global warming from 1975 to 2022. But the IPCC publicizes ECS with RCP 8.5 — the worst case scary predictions. I suspect ECS, TCS and RCPs would confuse an audience, but that science could be used in a debate.
The core problem is 50+ years of scary climate predictions that are NOT BASED ON ANY SCIENCE. Always wrong predictions of doom are not science. And the climate computer games (aka models) are programmed to make the same scary, always wrong predictions.
To win a debate against Climate Howlers, one must attack the people in authority who made the wrong predictions. Use their names. State their positions when the predictions were made. State their wrong predictions. ridicule them.
The attack on their wrong predictions must be 95% of the debate — that’s the only way to defeat the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy — you destroy the credibility of those scientists and professors in authority. Leave the politicians like Al Gore out of the debate — they are just trained parrots of climate alarmism.
The remaining 5% of the debate should be explaining that wrong predictions are not science, so a consensus of wrong predictions has no value.
Why not debate “climate science”, as a scientist like Koonin will do?
Because CAGW is not based on science. And CAGW has no observations
CAGW is a leftist fantasy prediction of doom used to scare people into submission to new government energy mandates.
Climate politics is also a side issue. But the question of why there has been 50+ years of wrong predictions could come up in a debate. So the political strategy of scaremongering the public may have to be discussed: Creating fear to expand government power. It worked for climate change scaremongering for decades before it worked even better for Covid scaremongering. people in fear demand that their governments “Do Something” and that is exactly what leftists love to hear.
Which is precisely what I do when I demonstrate their AGW theory will take 25,000 years to reach 2ºC, but you wade in with your hobnailed boots to demonstrate your scientific superiority and criticise it.
My calculation isn’t right, we can see that, it’s obviously ridiculous, but it uses THEIR numbers, not mine!
To refute it they must admit THEIR calculations are wrong and, more pertinently, ordinary people without grand scientific qualifications can understand it and at the very least it gets them thinking instead of blindly accepting the ridiculous concept of NetZero.
You can persuade 100% of scientists in the civilised western world that AGW is a hoax with sound science, and you have only persuaded 10% of the western world to vote against it.
The greens don’t use science, they don’t understand it, so they use ludicrous POLITICAL propaganda simple enough for the man in the street to understand which is 90% of voters.
You have wasted 50 years claiming your science is right (and it is) but look where we are now. NetZero is not a scientific proposition, it’s a POLITICAL imperative.
You have failed, so flip the script and start COMMUNICATING with the 90% who don’t know one end of a test tube from another.
AGW theory only tells us humans have some effect on the climate, and one variable is manmade greenhouse gases. AGW theory doesn’t tell us when we will reach +2 degrees, or if we will reach +2 degree C. versus 1850. That’s just a guess.
As a worst case estimate, we can assume the +1.1 degree C, warming since 1850 is right, and 280ppm CO2 is right for 1850, even though both are wild guesses.
Then we can assume +0.4 degrees C. warming (og the +1.1 degrees C.) before 1975 was from natural causes and +0.7 degree C. warming after 1975 was from manmade causes.
That’s a worst case estimate, since we don’t know exactly what caused the warming after 1975, there’s no logical reason to assume 100% manmade EXCEPT for a worst case estimate.
Here’s the bottom line”
WORST CASE ESTIMATE
+0.7 degree C. warming from a manmade CO2 increase of almost +50%
The next +50% increase of manmade CO2 will cause less than +0.7 degrees C. warming.
So the worst case, based on observations since 1850, is less than +1.4 degrees C. warming for a 100% CO2 increase, but let’s assume some water vapor positive feedback, so +1.4 degrees C, is okay.
How long will it take for CO2 to increase another +50%, from 415ppm currently, to 830ppm, at +2,5ppm per year = 166 years
Expect a +1.4 degree C. warming in over the next 166 years, if CO2 is the only cause of global warming, and CO2 continues to increase +2.5ppm per year.
That’s better than your +2 degrees, in 25,000 years.
If you want to make a SWAG prediction, at least add some decimal points: +2.14 degrees C. in 23,983 years, +/- 46.7 years
For what little we know about the future climate, it’s possible the interglacial we live in, and should be celebrating, could end before we ever reach +2 degrees C . (and that +2 is just a meaningless number pulled out of a hat)
You just did it again. You went off on an overcomplicated rant that can never be explained to the 90% before they fall asleep.
A headline in the NYT claims “world will end in 30 days”.
90% of the worlds population don’t read past the headline.
No one reads your boring sh*t Richard, that’s why you have spent 50 years losing a ‘debate’!
Listen to other people instead of being wrapped up in your narcissistic desire to impress people with your scientific grandeur. No one is interested.
Anonymous HotScot claimed no one reads my comments … and then contradicted himself by proving that he reads my comments and replies to them.
This time the reply is a mean-spirited generic character attack, rather than debating science.
What I do not do with my comments, and will never do, is to make anti-science statements like you do.
i will never claim manmade CO2 only accounts for 3% of the CO2 growth since 1850, because the correct answer is 32.5%
I will never claim +2 degrees C. will take 25,000 years because +2 degrees C. is likely to happen in the next 75 to 150 years.
You prefer fantasy land science, which may be exciting to some people. Climate Howlers prefer fantasy land science too. Their predictions of doom are exciting too.
But I prefer honest science, which may be boring to some people, because adding CO2 to the atmosphere has been much ado about nothing.
The difficult effort to refute CAGW is not helped by your fantasyland science beliefs.
You list reasons why Koonin can’t win an debate. Given his past post I would think he saw or was involved with appeals to authority or grant seeking scientists.
] From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration. From his bio on a wiki.
I think he does understand just chooses a different path than you espouse.
Koonin actually “wins” the debates because his opponents are awful debaters … but the belief in CAGW never stops.
The debate covers two subjects, with an ill-defined title:
“Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”
Large and rapid are not defined — the words are too subjective.
Most people believe in large and rapid CO2 reductions even though there is no science to support them — the precautionary principle
A better debate would be on actual climate observations versus climate predictions: Climate Reality versus Climate Fantasies.
Or debate over what will happen if CO keeps increasing.
(Climate Howlers will go berserk while the world gets slightly warmer).
.
Yawn…….
Could it be possible (at least in principle) to create engineering models for a, shall we say, “disproof of concept”? Given the astronomical amounts of capital that get directed in useless ways, it’s not clear to me that it would be more expensive to carry out expensive experiments to falsify some of the specific claims than is currently being eaten by opportunity costs of bad decisions and policies.
How do you disprove a prediction of climate change that takes 400 years? ECS takes 400 years. The best way to attack a prediction is to demonstrate that all prior predictions were wrong.
We can’t afford to wait perhaps 200 years to claim we have proof the 400 year prediction was wrong. The first 70 years of the 400 year ECS prediction is called TCS, and it’s within reason when calculated with the RCP 4.5 CO2 growth rate scenario.
“How do you disprove a prediction of climate change that takes 400 years? ECS takes 400 years. The best way to attack a prediction is to demonstrate that all prior predictions were wrong.”
I agree.
Colder global temperatures while CO2 continues to rise as is happening today, also helps with the argument. It’s another Alarmist CO2 prediction that appears to be going wrong.
I entirely agree that we should point out that the verifiable predictions have all failed. However, I wonder if we could also construct a situation in which nature executes a reductio ad absurdum for us.
Suppose, for instance, that we could build a cylinder in space holding a column of water with a 3:2 mixture of CO2 and NH3 above. Since we don’t centuries to carry out observations, let’s make it easier for the water to evaporate by lowering the gas pressure.
Then observe how quickly this reaches an equilibrium temperature: there is no way it will take centuries.
Show that temperature is the wrong metric! It is not a unit of energy. Quote a high-school textbook.
I could debate it on premise they are measuring the wrong thing therefore all that follows is invalid. Temperature is not a unit of energy. Nor, does it always correlate. 1st define warming, is it temperature increase or energy increase. If energy it can’t be deduced by temperatures alone and other parameters were not measured in 1850 or today. If temperature, then we know which way the wind blows(El nino/El nina) can vary it by huge amounts relative to CAGW. So, therefore how do we know that smaller wind changes in wind directions over decades have not caused slight rise average global temps instead of CO2? Even a layman cab follow that.
And while Koonin did not change the overall Agree to Disagree count, he showed that many people can change their position on Climate Change and ‘societal change because CO2’ if given the facts.
Wow, that Wagner guy is as annoying as Dessler.. kudos to Koonin to debate those people.
He has pattern to reiterate in full length things which everybody already knows and repeating himself with frequent personal attacks against Koonin.There is a scene where the moderator literally scratches his head while Wagner is talking some senator with machine guns.
I am most annoyed (beside his unbearable way of “arguing” trivial things at length), when they contradict themself! Dessler and Wagener both mention “solar and wind being the cheapest” in the same debates when they later make a point that individuals spend extra money to increase their personal energy reliability by extra cost. They both seem to forget that the storage cost is not about overnight, but over winter.
I think the facts are exceedingly clear that an energy mix is a good idea/compromise, there is in fact very little to argument about.. but they do it at length.
In contrast Schrag is so much better to listen to!
He still makes very basic mistakes “the unkowns in climate models likely means it´s worse”. No! It just means they are wrong! For a visual evolution of climate models look at Scafetta´s climate sensitivity image.. easy google
And I was surprised that he did not get challenged about his statement that half of the CO2 surplus will stay in the atmosphere for 1000+ years!
This seems to contradict everything about the cabon cycle we know.. we also know that the Bern model is wrong.. (there are many posts this is the first I found http://euanmearns.com/whats-up-with-the-bern-model/ explaining the Bern mistake in an easy way)
At least Koonin kills any attempt of attribution. I still would like to see McKitrick mentioned falsifying the method, but disqualifying it as unverifiable is probably good enough.
So with the models being too alarming and the CO2 being no problem, his position falls apart! But at least he is nice in the discussion! 🙂
Oh .. forgot the Arctic water temperature change for his doomsday argument is not related to anthropogenic CO2, but natural ocean cycles.