“With the climate activists out of political power, they must regroup and turn to open debate and persuasion. Alex Epstein is ready when you are, Misters Brune, Gore, Hansen, Holdren, Musk, Nye, and Romm.”
John Holdren, James Hansen, Joe Romm: Since you are sure that planetary warming necessitates government rationing of fossil fuels, why not debate and expose the fallacies of the climate optimists, or the ‘deniers’ as you like to call them?
Alex Epstein stands ready (and he tried with Holdren, who surely has more time now as a private citizen.)
I was reminded of this when Alex sent out this email last week about a twitter challenge to Bill ‘The Science Guy” Nye:
Why Bill Nye “The Science Guy”?
Because he is the most prominent opponent of fossil fuels that has shown any inclination to debate.
My top 2 dream debates are Al Gore (whom I have offered $100,000) and Elon Musk (who blocked me from Twitter for asking a few tough questions).
Bill Nye, on the other hand, is occasionally willing to debate opponents on TV, at least for a few minutes. And I believe I could do a lot of good by making an example out of him.
For the last several years, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” has been one of the top 10 public attackers of fossil fuels. Next month on Netflix he will release a show “Bill Nye Saves the World”…and you can guess he will be “saving” it from fossil fuels. He has millions of social media followers, many of whom have associated him with scientific thinking since they were in grade school. And I get lots of social media requests to address the things he says.
If Nye’s followers and their networks are made aware of a live event or recording in which Nye’s position is shown to be unscientific (and immoral) and are exposed to a pro-human, big picture way of thinking about fossil fuels, it could create a measurable shift in how the youth view fossil fuels.
That’s the plan. Let’s see if we can get him to accept. If you want to help out, message him on Twitter or Facebook or through his website, challenging him to debate me.
Colleges are Debating Climate Policy
The costs and benefits of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the costs and benefits of government policies to restrict fossil fuel usage, not only should be but is the subject of vigorous debate.
The 2016 – 2017 Resolution of the college Cross Examination Debate Association (membership below) is:
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should establish a domestic climate policy, including at least substantially increasing restrictions on private sector emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States.
The debate is unavoidable and on!
Conclusion
Add another name to the list of prominent fossil fuel foes who should be willing to take on Alex Epstein: Michael Brune. The head of the Sierra Club stated last November: “We’re waiting for action, and Trump is kidding nobody on climate as he simultaneously stacks his transition team and cabinet with climate science deniers and the dirtiest hacks the fossil fuel industry can offer.”
With the climate activists out of political power, they must regroup and turn to open debate and persuasion. Alex Epstein is ready when you are, Misters Brune, Gore, Hansen, Holdren, Musk, Nye, and Romm.
———-
The following institutions are members of the Cross Examination Debate Association:
Arizona State Augsburg College Baylor University Binghamton Blue Ridge Community College Boston College Butler University California, Berekely City College of SF Clarion Concordia College Cornell University CSU Fullerton CSU Northridge Dartmouth Emory University Emporia State Fresno State Georgetown George Mason University Georgia State University Gonzaga Harvard Idaho State University Illinois College Indiana James Madison Johnson County Community College Johnson County Community College Kansas City KS Community College Kansas State Lakeland College Liberty University Lindenwood Long Beach City College Miami (FL) Michigan State University Missouri State University New School New York Northwestern State University Northwestern University Oklahoma Pepperdine University Pittsburgh Rochester Rutgers Samford University San Francisco State University Southwestern Stanford University Towson Trinity University UMKC University of Arizona University of Central Oklahoma University of Florida University of Georgia University of Houston University of Iowa University of Kansas University of Kentucky University of Louisville University of Mary Washington University of Miami (FL) University of Michigan University of Minnesota University of North Texas University of Northern Iowa University of Puget Sound University of Southern California University of Texas University of Texas, Dallas University of Texas – San Antonio University of Tulsa University of Washington University of Wisconsin University of West Georgia University of Wyoming University of Notre Dame UNLV US Military Academy Vanderbilt Vermont Wake Forest Wake Forest Wayne State University Weber State University West Virginia Wichita State University William and Mary
I would like to debate as well
I would also like to tell you of my latest book, “Human Caused Global Warming”.
‘The Biggest Deception in History’.
Available on ‘Amazon.ca’.
http://www.drtimball.com
Good luck with bringing the cartoonish Bill Nye (his apparel is intentionally clownish) into a forum that would interrogate his belief system. Few represent the lack of critical thinking skills now so rampant across the land better than Nye does. And no incident better represents Nye’s buffoonish approach to science than his public take on perhaps the silliest episode ever to dominate the airways of popular culture–the one known as Deflategate, although the evidence strongly suggests a better term would be Framegate.
Recall the basic issue. In a January NFL playoff game in Indianapolis several years ago, where the indoor temperature was ~ 72 degrees F and the temperature on the field was ~40 degree F (while the rain was pouring down), NFL officials seemed shocked when they measured the air pressure of the footballs at halftime and discovered that, on average, the psi was ~1.5 psi less than it was as measured just before kickoff. ESPN asked Bill Nye for his “expert” opinion how this change could have happened.
Nye’s conclusion, broadcast widely–that “to really change the pressure in the ball, you need one of these, the inflation needle,” that is, someone illegally must have tampered with the footballs by releasing air pressure with the needle–is quintessential intellectualism. He utterly ignored, as did the NFL, one of the foundational principles of physics, the Ideal Gas Law–PV=nRT, which governs the thermodynamics of air pressure over time. Physicists have shown repeatedly that, under the game conditions, the footballs would have naturally lost psi precisely in accord with the psi loss as measured at half time. Indeed, all one has to do at home is to inflate a football to, say, 12.5 psi in a 70F room, stick the ball after wetting it thoroughly in a 40F refrigerator for an hour and a half, then remeasure the psi. At which time the ball’s psi will register ~1.8 psi less. See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas&feature=youtu.be
As in much of its coverage of–uh–Climate Change, our gullible media used Nye’s profound unscience to support a witch hunt that dominated the cultural scene for years and, with the help of a legal system itself crippled with an anti-intellectualism that stunts critical thinking, penalized the League’s star player with a prolonged suspension and loss of ~two million dollar in lost income.
To date, Nye has yet to apologize or even recant his stupidity. He’s a ridiculous figure who can only be a straw man in any debate about something as complex as climate, producing little but non sequiturs and argumentative sloganeering bromides that his supporters would cheer but otherwise would have nothing to do with responding to the points under discussion. He understands that debates are basically Showtime. Send in the clowns….
Before he lost weight he used to dress in a red suit and wear a long white beard, but the kiddies lost faith in him and he needed a new act.
The cycle is about to repeat.
We need this debate ASAP
Global Warming hysteria always reminds me of the Piltdown Man.
Game on! Alex is a great spokesman. Nye is a joke. On his recent appearance on Tucker Carlson, he just kept repeating “science is settled, 97 % concensus.”
I would travel down to the Bay Area to hear Alex debate:
1) Dr. Peter Gleick at U. C. Berkeley
2) Dr. Jacobson at Stanford.
3) Dr. Fine (EDF) at either university
There seems to be some concern that our universities are becoming a bit closed minded- hence I think it would be worthwhile for Alex to have a couple debates with
Jonathan Haidt– say to explore a recent post over at http://crookedtimber.org/2017/02/19/durkheimian-utilitarianism/ @ 76: ‘Science deniers? Actually, the correctly worded report was as follows: “Republicans with higher levels of education are more likely than those in their parties with less education to say that the seriousness of global warming is “generally exaggerated.”
[…] Will Michael Mann further self-destruct? Will he become a liability to The Cause like Al Gore? Might Mann’s ego be big enough to step on the stage against Alex Epstein? […]
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