” Labor vacated the arena of argument. The sceptics and deniers have turned the 70 per cent-plus belief in climate change into a minority because no one has engaged them.“
— Graham Richardson, Friday May 22nd, 2015
No one has engaged them?
That’s right Graham, we unfunded bloggers and the few surviving skeptical scientists not evicted and blackballed from our universities (yet) have tricked 20% of the population because no one has put forward the climate change arguments except for: The Climate Commission, CSIRO, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Royal Dutch Shell, GE, Panasonic, The ABC, The BBC, The Guardian, Fairfax, The Australian government, most universities, The EU, The UN, The World Bank, and the IMF.
With a budget of nothing we’re winning. Why? We have nature on our side.* The world isn’t warming, the models can’t predict the real climate, and half the population have wised up to the propaganda. The main arguments of those who would control CO2 are not scientific, but insults and bluster, shutting up and disqualifying critics rather than answering politely, and producing the evidence. The University of Queensland offers a whole course in namecalling to train people to “engage” deniers. But the public know that the endless drought ended, the dams filled, the predictions were wrong and that “denier” is not science. Namecalling isn’t working anymore (so keep it coming Graham, it helps the skeptics 🙂 ).
No one will debate skeptics
Obviously it’s a David versus Goliath battle. If Richardson means that no one will debate the skeptical arguments, he’s right.
Dear Graham, why don’t you invite one of Prof Sherwood, Prof Pitman or Will Steffen to debate Dr David Evans on your Skyshow? That’s when you’ll find out how they run scared of real debate. You are welcome to argue your case here too.
Others have tried to arrange these debates. On behalf of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Bill Crabtree invited Prof Pitman and anyone he cared to nominate to debate David Evans and Bill Kinnimonth a couple of years ago. Pitman refused, saying he wouldn’t debate “someone who denies gravity”. David Evans: PhD, M.S. (E.E.), M.S. (Stats) [Stanford Uni], B.Eng, M.A., B.Sc., University Medal, [Syd Uni]. Bill Kininmonth: Headed the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998. Andy Pitmans: BSc (Hons) PhD (1988) Liverpool Uni. UK Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Leadership (2000) Macquarie Uni.
Andy Pitman isn’t stupid; he knows what would happen if he debated Dr David Evans. He knows that their 95% certainty rests on broken models, and iteratively homogenized, reanalyzed, and readjusted data.
Andy Pitman and I debated each other in emails back in 2008 before I even published the Skeptics Handbook. I wanted to make all those emails public. Andy Pitman refused.
I debated Prof Glikson in 2010, through five rounds of to and fro, but he clearly had no idea the models depend on assumptions about water vapor that we know are wrong. The offer remains open for him to send in his reply, which he asked to be published on my site. I welcomed it (like all the other replies), but he didn’t send anything.
Graham Richardson, The Australian “Silence of the political lambs”
Here’s the relevant paragraph in context:
It is only a few years ago that Kevin Rudd massacred Howard. Rudd was the hip new kid on the block who actually used Twitter and Facebook. What is more, he told us all that climate change was the big issue facing the world and he would do something about it. Then along came Copenhagen, and the Chinese and the Indians played him off a break. He returned chastened, with his thumb in his mouth and sulking. Since then, Penny Wong and Greg Combet as environment ministers didn’t know what to do with climate change so they avoided the issue. A ludicrously overdone carbon price meant even Peter Garrett stopped talking about it.
Labor vacated the arena of argument. The sceptics and deniers have turned the 70 per cent-plus belief in climate change into a minority because no one has engaged them.
The Greens have been too busy talking about various social issues and refugees. They spend most of their time finding newer and wackier ways to spend our money. These days they are far more red than green, sadly, and they too rarely debate the science. Just because some of the science was decidedly dodgy doesn’t make the overwhelming amount of it wrong. We have a Prime Minister who is a sceptic at best, yet now Labor has announced a renewed commitment to carbon pricing. It does not understand that you cannot sell an impost without selling the reasons for it.
You need not worry, dear readers. This fearless correspondent will continue to wage war on this issue even when all my comrades have surrendered.
Dear Graham, you will need to be fearless if you are going to get real debate on your show. We are happy to help, but the global Worriers will not be. They’ll offer lots of excuses about how this is complex, and “deniers” can seed doubts. Notice how their answers all depend on the public being too stupid to listen to both sides and make up their own minds? The public includes meteorologists, lawyers, doctors, geologists and engineers, and this well educated slab of society is increasingly unconvinced by the weak namecalling and bluster. See the qualifications of 400 skeptical readers here. The polls showing that there are more skeptics among the wealthier, better educated in the UK, than among the unskilled.
And of course, unlike your Labor Parliamentarians who “vacated” the climate debate, you no longer need our votes.
*OK, technically Nature doesn’t pick sides. But it’s no accident nature seems to support skeptics, because skeptics are following empirical observations. Whatever side nature was on, skeptics would be on that side.