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”…
Click for Nader’s letter to Inhofe.
Markey responded:
Congressman Markey would gladly discuss with Sen. Inhofe the over 100 years of science that proves carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants are raising the temperature of the Earth and changing the chemistry of the oceans,” said Markey spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder.
Sen. Inhofe told Politico:
I’d be glad to do it. We’d sure have to do some scheduling on this. I don’t know what we’d talk about for 90 minutes. We probably should have the opportunity for other people to be there.
Articulate and well thought out post, JP. Climate science was highjacked years ago by a handful of well-placed people who could see the potential monetary windfall in this manufactured crisis we now call climate change. There are many who seem to be so consumed by the rhetoric coming from the “warmies” that they go into a panic whenever the subject is broached. Thankfully cooler heads have begun to prevail as none of the Armageddon-like consequences of ‘our total neglect of the environment’ have come to fruition. Unfortunately crazy theory’s such as this one are never in short supply. People have been predicting these kinds of doom and gloom scenarios for centuries ad nauseam. Lord only knows what the next crisis will be!
How can we get any value from a debate when the standard of scientific validity is how many “scientists” are on one side or the other rather than how closely the evidence adheres to reality? How can we judge the evidence when some of it is doctored to support a belief about the conclusion? How can we acquire evidence when many scientists are excluded from research and publication? How can we reach meaningful conclusions when the debaters’ validation is political pull rather than physical fact? How can individuals rationally act on facts when the “facts” are shoved at us at the point of a government gun?
Thank you for the compliment. I wish I had the time and space to outline more of what I’ve found, but it is a tangled web that twists through every element of civilization. I’d like to add one point, in response to your insightful comment.
Central to socialist pseudo-science is the materialist assumption. Prior to that philosophers went to great lengths to try to explain a dual or “pantheistic” nature to existence, one which accounts for both the material experience and what we often call super-natural experience. The “great” breakthrough of the Euro-socialists was the development of theories in which it was possible to simply disregard this potential other facet to existence. It is commonly expressed in Compte’s formula – Only that which is apparent to the senses can be considered knowable. Or Mill’s update – Only that which can be independently reproduced can be considered knowable. There is an addendum by which these formulae work, the one employed by latterday thinkers like Einstien, who dedicated an essay to explaining why he believed in God. It employs thinking of science as a limited tool only applicable to material conditions. But that is a contradiction of the materialist thinkers who sought to rule-out non-materialism entirely. The first flaw in this materialist foundation for pseudo-science is that it originates in a circular-logic. It requires material processing to determine if a phenomena is worthy of inclusion in our thinking. Therefore only that which can be measured and later reproduced materially can be considered. That which cannot be materially measured or reproduced cannot be materially proven and so must be discarded. this evades the whole issue of whether an ‘other than wholely material existence is possible and uses the inability to measure and reproduce its phenomena materially as the proof. This is no more than a decision to ignore an aspect of existence that has been part of human experience in every culture going back as far as we can trace. No true science would try to simply disqualify such truly wide-spread and not uncommon experiences, but that is exactly what pseudo-science is founded on. This becomes even more dubious at the turn of the 19th Century when mathematics was adopted as an avenue for pure research in the formulation of the foundations of Quantum Physics. All mathematics is based on the principals; 1 + 1 = 2 and 1 – 1 = 0. But in reality so far as we can determine, this is never true. An apple plus an apple cannot equal 2 apples because no 2 apples are ever equal, therefore no combination of 2 apples can have more than an approximate meaning, a meaning that lacks correspondence to the measurable and independently reproduceable world and that which cannot be measured and independently reproduced cannot be considered. I would be the last person to assert that a mathematical model based on measurable foundations cannot be a valuable tool in exploring the nature of existence, but when we come to atheistic theories and a Carl Sagan asserts that the big bang theory is logical while a creation theory is not we have reached the height of hubris. In that assertion he claimed to dismiss God with “What came before God?” without subjecting the big bang to the same test, “What came before the pointelism that the big bang sprang from?” I could go on, but alas, life calls. The summary point is, that in the creation of pseudo-science (which today passes for science) it was not logical necessity, but political necessity that led the way. The inventors had a motive of eliminating the factor of religious traditions that focused value on the individual’s destiny and replacing it with a view that focused on the preeminence of the social destiny. This was in turn a carry-over of the divine right of kings in which kings were annointed by God to be stewards of the land and its occupants. In the French Revolution, unlike the American, the role of government did not change. All that changed (though it took the next 70 years to work it out) was that an elected body held power instead of an inherited one. Socialism is an effort to purge the land of individualism and re-impose the system existent before the Revolution or other transitions in other nations, but in a democratic form. It is in turn modeled on the family during the minority of the children in the family, but ignoring the familial stage at which the children go out into the world to establish their own destinies. Socialism is like a family where the children never grow up and remain forever the charges of the parents (or in socialism, the state). In eliminating God, the Left not only eliminates the individuals role in transcending dependence on the state, they eliminate the existence of a power greater than the secular authority. In this they hope to remedy a failing in the monarchical system. Monarchs were but stewards of God and subject to His laws. The state is subject to the people, while the people are the subjects of the state. In this formula they have eliminated consideration of an authority greater than the state, leaving the state, and those that run it, superior to the people.
Sorry that went on so long, but imagine if I’d tried to provide historical examples and references. the point is, you are spot on in identifying the role of theism vs. atheism as the root of pseudo-science and therfore the root of AGW theory being accepted as science.
Markey will back out in the end … he has to or risk being revealed the fool he is. One has to be immensely uneducated to believe the clap-trap of the human-produced-CO2-produces-catastrophic-global-warming warmist clique. While the fool, Markey is shrewd enough to know he’d be skewered and would not be able to get by with his snarky motor-mouthing (as his comment on the debate clearly revealed).
Bring it on!
Excellent post Edwin. I agree with you, and sadly so! I’m a conservative. In the present world reality I am a bad person because I’m told that as a conservative I must believe in polluting the Earth and heavens with all manor of toxic garbage, the killing and maiming of all kind of humanity through war and military occupation, a fundamental disbelief in the worth of science, and the inability to understand much of anything anyway! Though in fact none of this is true, the majority of liberal nuts in this world strongly believe in stereotyping everyone (though they will always deny such a claim), labeling them and then insisting that their right to speak freely and openly is somehow not worth as much as their need to be listened to. This is the ignorance of the elite, the arrogance of certain people who live their lives with a general mistrust of anyone who isn’t the same kind of “caring” individual they are. Sounds like a king size helping of guilt to me! Secularism, which is freely promoted in our system of public education should bear much of the fault if not only because it’s used primarily as a tool to methodically break down the traditional values that once made our family ethos so strong. Belief in a Creator, in God, is not tolerated either. For well over a hundred years now teaching colleges have been “preparing” their graduates to instill a sense of mistrust for these traditional values and have replaced them with, to quote you, the “Materialism, Euro-Socialism and “soft”-science” that has aided in a systematic breakdown of the traditional family. Our Founders must be rolling over in their graves right about now!
Markey is a mindless Luddite and professional sensationalist, as shown in his 1990s-era TV ads against those “eeeeevil assault rifles.” I’d pay to see Inhofe hand Markey his own ignorant backside.
My particular interest in this is in explaining the claim that 97% of climate scientists support AGW. The theory I’m exploring is that the post-French Revolution anti-theist movement sought means of establishing their materialist theory as superior to the theistic assumptions of the time. They were fueled by the growing development and awareness of scienific methodology, by the influence of post-Reformation Religion, by the rise of Naturalism derived from Rousseau. This combined with; the development of pulp paper, the Encyclopedia movement, the first mass-produced textbooks, the Common Schools Movement to standardize education and the appearance of a number of materialist philosophies like Impericism. This came together with August Compte’s expansion of scientific methods into the area of human behavior with his early Sociology and Logical Positivism. These trends (among others) created a generalized change in education with a system based on Materialism, Euro-Socialism and “soft”-science (the use of scientific methods where control and testing are not really feasible). There is much more to the story, but what has happened is a take-over of education in general by a philosophy based on the same foundations as social-corporativism. The teaching of science has lost its philosophical foundations and in its place has risen a philosophy in which the meaning of all things is in their effects. In this context, science has become a tool for the achievement of progress, the only materialist standard by which value can be recognized.
I would hope that it would be broadcast live since if it is taped the media can portray comments out of context to suit their agenda. Exposing this hoax to the general public on a prime time broadcast is what many of us have been waiting for. The energy policies currently fostered in DC (or lack thereof as may be more appropriate) are a disaster in the making. A return to the temps of the 1970’s which analogs suggest could occur in another 20 years would casue hardship for many. Ice is much more to fear then fire, a message the media is determined to keep under a blanket.
Good point, but it would still be fun to watch. Markey is no match for Inhofe, no matter what the topic. I’m still betting that Markey turns tail and runs.
I would prefer that Senator Inhofe, regardless of how he comes across currently, be Very well coached in all aspects, scientific, political and historical. These jokes (I meant to write ‘jokers’ but it still works) will do anything they can to trip him up, and mis-representing historical climate is one thing they can do at the drop of a hockey stick.
I guarantee that Markey will establish that he is not a climate scientist so that he can sidestep the lack of empirical support for AGW. Guaranteed.
Unfortunately, with all due respect to these gentlemen, they are politicians after all. Both sides will declare victory.
I say Dr. Lindzen against Dr. Hansen. My father is otherwise engaged. He and Lindzen were the only skeptics I was aware of for almost a decade before more people started speaking up.
Keep up the good work Mr. Milloy .
+ Palin & Pelosi?
>:)
Hey, we print the stupid comments too, no problem. BTW, had you read the item you might have noticed Inhofe wonders how they’ll fill 90 minutes talking about a non-extant problem and thinks it’d be nice to have a few more people to chat to to fill in the time 😉
Why would Inhofe need “other people” there? Isn’t he confident enough in his own understanding of the science? Or is he afraid to get into the ring by himself? I dare you to print this.
I would much more enjoy Christopher Monckton grind Al Gore into dust but hey as far a a debate has any validity at all Inhofe vs Markey would be fun to watch.
“The debate is over.”
This was first uttered by……………..That’s right, St. Augustine in the fourth century. He felt that we knew all that was needed to be known about religion and that all that was needed was to get/force people to go along. He did feel that hot irons were a bit much and that beating with sticks should suffice. Now it is the AGWists with the same apporach to converting the rest of us. There is no changing the mind of a believer, intellectual dissonance and all. What we need to do is mobilize the apathetic by letting them know how all of the AGW costs negatively impact them and only shackle the anlkles of our economy..
time to put these marxist liar libs in their place. send them packing….
I have no doubt it will play while I am at work. Someone record it for me, please…
Isn’t Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com a former aide to Sen. Inhofe? The Senator should be well prepared to wipe the floor with Markey. Bring it on!
It would be fun though to see Ed Markey get his -ss handed to him! He’d certainly run out of talking points within the first 4 or 5 minutes of the “debate”.
A theory becomes law in science when there is replication and a correlation between cause and effect. The SUN has heated and cooled the earth for at least 6.5 billion years. No one has as of yet proven any cause and effect with trace organic elements and temperature rise or decrease. Until that theory is proven and replication from independent studies/sources proves cause and effect, greenhouse will remain a theory and not a law of science, PERIOD!
A debate will not solve or sway anyones thinking either way. It is a waste of time, Too many words have been spoken about the issue. It’s time to agree that Mother Nature will have her way, as she has for centuries. The climate will always change just as all things do. We need to adjust to accept to what we can change and what we cannot . . . and climate is something we cannot change,
I will donate $1000 to provide funds to have the debate on Fox news, or ABC, NBC, during prime time for an uninterrupted 90 minutes. It would be easy to get $1 million in donations. I left off CBS because I don’t think anybody with sense watches that network.
Whaddayawannabet that Markey chickens out? There IS no science behind his position!
Put the debate on prime time by one of the networks. Have a bell ring whenever someone tells a lie. Markey has nothing going for him. Inhofe will make a fool out of him. Maybe this could stop all the useless waste of money trying to stop something that is not happening by means that will never work.
I’ll bring the popcorn!