“… the outcome of doing nothing to combat climate change [is] simply horrific. That is why I find your phrase – We are winning the debate intellectual and politically for good reasons – somewhat alarming.” (- Martin Palmer, below)
All I have wanted in the climate policy arena is open debate. And on social media, LinkedIn has provided that to me. I now have nearly 13,000 followers who seem to enjoy my posts and ‘counterpunches’ against the omnipresent alarmists and apologists for wind, solar, and battery industrialization.
From time to time, I repost exchanges I have with the other side for the historical record. The future will be interested in what is to us the present. To this end, here is an exchange with an adversary, Martin Palmer, self-described as
Passionate about the Climate Threat of human extinction. Author of The Nemesis of Planet A: Is The Human Race Sleep Walking Towards Its Own Extinction? (2025)
Here is our exchange that began with a plea for climate action based on good science. I responded, after which Palmer weighted in.
Bradley: Climategate science requires a whole lot of due diligence! And most fundamentally, is CO2 a pollutant outside of (garbage in – garbage out) climate model scenarios?
Martin Palmer: I am finding difficulty with the fact that you posted this Rob. For clarification, are you actually saying that the threat to the human race is the polluting effect of CO2 and that the current levels in the atmosphere today are safe? That has never been the issue. The issue is how the industrial revolution has changed the heat reflecting characteristics the atmosphere during the Holocene epoch that created an ideal climate for life to evolve. The CO2 along with other GHGs that industrial processes and the burning of fossil fuels have emitted over the last 200 years are now trapping more of the Sun’s energy. It is this that is going to kill most of the human race, not the pollution. Watch this video.
Bradley: First, don’t bully those of us that are not climate alarmists (‘I am finding difficulty with the fact that you posted this Rob’). We are winning the debate intellectual and politically for good reasons.
Second, qualitative warming is not quantitative ‘unlivability’. Warming has distinct benefits, and modern high-energy living is the answer to, not cause of, weather/climate challenges. As Alex Epstein noted:
The popular climate discussion … looks at man as a destructive force for climate livability … because we use fossil fuels. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite; we don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe. High-energy civilization, not climate, is the driver of climate livability.
Palmer: First Rob, I apologise if you thought I was bullying you. Such behaviour is counter to good debate. My comment was not meant to seem like bullying, it was a genuine reaction of disbelief. You have made no comment at all on the video I attached. Are you saying that the graphic threat to millions as wet build temperature rise is not something to comment on?
Could you please explain to me how billions, with no access to climatically controlled living spaces, can take advantage of your distinction between what you term qualitative warming and atmospheric warming that you are referring to as quantitative warming?
I am asking these questions, because the outcome of doing nothing to combat climate change as simply horrific. That is why I find your phrase – We are winning the debate intellectual and politically for good reasons. – somewhat alarming. In writing that, I am not being alarmist I am being alarmed.
Bradley: “… a genuine reaction of disbelief….” A critic would counter: ‘Stop pretending you are right in the face of a multi-disciplinary debate over CO2 effects and the right public policy on climate change.’ You are not right. Your assertion of a “graphic threat to millions as we build temperature rise is not something to comment on” is arguably incorrect.
Climate activist policy is the enemy, not physical climate change. In a real free market, adaptation has always ‘won’ against extreme weather (from any cause) as the historical record shows.
Yes, the intellectual case for free-market adaptation over government mitigation regarding climate policy is winning. Intellectually and politically. Alex Epstein has won over the current administration (and US DOE Secretary Chris Wright) with this argument [I again quoted Epstein, above]:
Bradley: “… doing nothing to combat climate change as simply horrific” is an incorrect summary of my position.
A free-market climate policy does much. It 1) eliminates all government intervention and 2) unleashes free market wealth-is-health. It supercharges adaptation to any climate scenario. In this regard, a ‘worst’ climate in physical terms becomes a ‘better’ climate in terms of business and economics (human betterment).
Note that I am challenging the ‘Deep Ecology’ notion that Nature (no anthropogenic influences) is both optimal and fragile. In terms of human betterment, it is not! ‘Climate livability’ (an Alex Epstein concept) is the wonderful result of stock energies replacing flow energies (‘energy exceptionalism’).
Hint: the market share of renewables was 100 percent before the Industrial Revolution, the era of mass human poverty.
Palmer: It is impossible to argue you with someone like you Rob. When faced with undeniable and alarming facts like the video on heat and wet bulb temperatures, you just don’t comment. Then enter into a sort of jumbo speak. What on earth does this comment from you mean? “Stop pretending you are right in the face of a multi-disciplinary debate over CO2 effects and the right public policy on climate change.’ You are not right. Your assertion of a “graphic threat to millions as we build temperature rise is not something to comment on” is arguably incorrect.“ I am not going to continue this conversation.
Bradley: “… undeniable and alarming facts….” No, model speculations are not science, and you cannot assume what is in debate. Global warming is not the problem your video assets it to be. Take out the good warming. The benign warming. Make A/C affordable (no climate policy please!) for peak warming, which is adaptation.
You are losing the debate because decades of warming exaggeration have been repeatedly refuted by reality, and the prospect of future warming has benefits, not only costs, for most people who like their climate. Statism is the problem, not physical change.
Final Comment
What about the predictive failures of doom-and-gloom since the 1960s from the neo-Malthusians? Does Martin Palmer know about and understand the nature of the Paul Ehrlich misdirection two generations ago (the 1960s)? The case for societal optimism in liberty explained by Julian Simon?
Palmer’s second problem is the nonstarter of Doomism in today’s debate (that he so urgently wants to influence). True, Martin’s timeline is out “a few centuries.” But the urgency of now-or-never is present, which Michael Mann himself has criticized as overly pessimistic, even defeatist.
“Doomism produces viral social media content — what’s been termed ‘climate doom porn,’ marked by dramatic but unsupported claims of collapsing ice sheets, runaway warming, and imminent extinction,” Mann stated (with Peter J. Hotez). Continuing:
Doom porn sells, and it has surely borne fruit for the polluters, petrostates, and plutocrats who are fanning its flames. Consider the vitriol directed at Katharine Hayhoe and Mike [Michael Mann] by ostensible climate advocates who insist it’s too late to act and dismiss our messaging on urgency and efficacy as ‘”‘hopium,’ the implication being that we are selling ‘hope’ in the way, say, junkies on the street might sell drugs. [2]
It is hard being green.
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[1] “Without unprecedented action now, climate change will doom humanity and much of life on Earth to extinction within a few centuries,” the blurb about his book reads. But he also speaks of “one more role of the dice” as if it is now or never.
[2] Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World (2025).