Why are the global warming folks afraid of public debate?

Question

David Suzuki, Canada's top gw alarmist regularly jumps up and runs out of interviews when someone opposes him. It's because he realizes there's no scientific basis for his false rants. No other believers are willing to publicly debates it either, even though the skeptics want to publicly discuss what's really behind agw in a scientific fashion.

Why won't any pro-agw 'scientists' publicly debate their beliefs? Put it 'on the line' as skeptics are willing to do? Only to discuss publicly the science behind their beliefs.

Answer 1

They won't debate it because they don't have a leg to stand on.  The global temperatures have been decreasing for the last ten years.

These idiots have been claiming that a "consensus" exists and now they claim that peer review and public debate is irrelevant.

I have included a link to a list of 31,000 scientists that disagree.

Answer 2

Science debates themselves. They don't need your 2 cents. If the deniers like the heartland institute can't submit their "work" through scientific channels for scrutiny, it's not worth the paper it's written on.

Answer 3

They're not all afraid of debate. There was a debate last year where Richard Somerville, Brenda Ekwurzel and Gavin Schmidt debated Michael Crichton, Richard Lindzen and Philip Stott.

So when you say they won't "put it on the line" you're wrong. I think they've also been pretty public about the science, too--they did publish a 1000 page document last year, and thousands of papers in journals.

EDIT: Let me say this again because you seem to have missed it the first time, there have been debates. You can watch the one I mentioned on YouTube.  Scientists have better things to do than debating--they do research. I can only think of a handful ot atmospheric scientists on the denier side to even debate the thousands on the side that believe in it. There have been multiple panel discussions including William Gray at various scientific meetings.  

Why don't these 32,000 "scientists" that have signed the petition write a few papers and debate that way?

Honestly, though, science doesn't proceed by debate.

Answer 4

There is no longer a debate about Global Warming , everyone with even a little bit of intelligence knows it's happening. I can't believe that in this time of enlightenment and education there could still be people so ignorant that they can't even hear the Truth.

Answer 5

Science doesn't work by public debate.  When a doctor tells you that you need open heart surgery, do you ask him to have a public debate about it too?

Here's a better question for you - why are all the global warming 'skeptics' afraid of scientific publications?

Answer 6

people with at least little intelligence believe in global warming...those who have alot of intellect and ACTUALLY TIHINK FOR THEMSELVES dont believe in global warming because they dont drink kool aid...for those planet activists who think they know it all about global warming.... heres some FACTS that you should know (1) heating causes CO2 levels to rise... not CO2 causes heating because (2) about 95% of CO2 emissions are caused from heating the planets oceans (3) ice caps of any sorts arent melting, theyre calving (moving) (4) we breathe CO2 so i guess we should stop breathing then... (5)carbon emissions have no impact at all on our temperature because (6) the sun has an impact to our temperature

Answer 7

Those who oppose anti-scientific c**p (like global warming denialism (which is not skepticism, skeptics accept that global warming is happening, that we are causing it and that it will probably have some bad effects)) often avoid debates with those who peddle anti-scientific nonsense (like creationalism, homeopathy, Planet X, global warming denialism, etc) for the following reasons:

1. It can have the effect of legitimising nonsense (even if the nonsense is completely discredited)

2. It often takes more to refute a claim that it does to make it which puts the scientist at a disadvantage against the crackpot since the scientist needs more time to debunk the crackpot while not getting more time (say it might take half an hour to explain why it's not the sun but the crackpot who thinks the sun is causing global warming will only have to spend a matter of seconds to say that).  Just look at some of the other answers here (which include a lot of claims that appear to make sense like 31,000 scientists disputing global warming) but which when examined closely turn out to be nonsense for examples as to why they wouldn't want to get dragged into such a thing.

3. Many people who peddle nonsense will try to rig the rules of the debate to make them look better.

4. Most scientists have very little experience in such settings while the crackpots often can be very experienced (when you debate a fool, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience).

5. Most climate scientists (i.e. the ones who could wipe the floor with a denialist) are too busy actually doing real science to bother with crackpots.

If you read up on why those who oppose anti-science stay away from debates you'll probably find a few points I haven't covered.

Besides, the facts behind global warming are well established enough that there's no real point to any debate as to whether it occurs (the scientific community has already settled that) so we now need to move towards the details as to what will happen as well mitigation.

willow: That's already happened, it's called the IPCC.

Answer 8

I wish the government and the media would stop filling our heads with lies about global warming. It's natural!! More and more scientists are against the fact that it is man made and what all the environmentalists have been saying is a load of rubbish, it's become like a religion I tell you. The planet heats and cools every few hundred years and we didn't cause and there's nothing we can do about it. There have been higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere before, and I'm talking many hundreds of years ago, before the industrial revolution. Raised temperature of the earth will cause raised CO2 levels, and not the other way around!

Answer 9

what needs to happen is for all the scientists in all the fields to come together with their findings, instead it's a battle of who can shout the loudest.