7 ms·
Video and transcript are here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm It's rare to see such a civil de
by tominous 10y ago
Video and transcript are here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm
It's rare to see such a civil debate on this issue. I was impressed with everyone except for Shadow Minister Linda Burney who went straight to personal anecdote.
Minister Greg Hunt and mathematician Lily Serna had very reasonable positions for lay people: that they accepted the advice of the experts and wanted to find solutions.
Scientist Brian Cox was his usual charismatic self but did get flustered by the end. Skeptic Malcolm Roberts was composed and polite and clearly had a considered opinion.
The meat of the debate was a bit weak. Brian Cox had a cherry-picked temperature graph (land temperature). I have no idea why he rejected vehemently the claim that CO2 rise comes after temperature rise in the long-term record -- maybe he thought the claim was about current times? He was plain wrong on this. He was right to point out the potential damage from climate change in many areas.
Malcolm Roberts was weak in cherry-picking the Central England temperature record. He lost the audience in saying "NASA" was untrustworthy, when he could probably have pointed to James Hansen's record of activism and the close network revealed in the Climategate emails.
The key scientific point was whether the climate models have been validated or refuted. No real information was presented here, just assertion on either side.
- vixen99 10y agoThoroughly convincing then for a skeptical public? What do they deduce from not seeing Cox trounce Roberts?
- twelvechairs 10y agoWe should find better representatives for science than Cox
- humanrebar 10y agoYou use the word 'science' like it's an ideal and not a practical set of techniques used to discover natural truths and convince each other of them.
- austinjp 10y agoWell, Cox is Professor for Public Engagement in Science [1] so perhaps twelvechairs feels he's not very good at his job. [1] https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/01/professor-for-public-engagement-brian-cox/ https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/01/professor-for-public-e...
- twelvechairs 10y agoThanks. Yes this is my point. Im surprised its apparently not clear to some
- twelvechairs 10y agoI honestly dont know how you infer that from a single use of the word. Hes there to represent the outcomes of the worlds climate science research and is being out argued by a loon. That gives all practitioners of science a bad name in my view
- humanrebar 10y agoScience is a set of techniques and tools. It's not synonymous with the conclusions that come from it. It's not 'science' that gravity exists. It's 'science' that we can prove it exists, model it, measure it, and understand its impact in various circumstances. Likewise, AGW is not science. It's good science that proves AGW. Conflating the two is actually harmful because it encourages untrained people (anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, etc.) to misunderstand what science is.
- twelvechairs 10y agoI agree. All im saying is that Cox is doing a bad job of representing this
- joantune 10y agooh, this makes me laugh We need to get better people at understanding that the scientific community (the ones not paid by the big oil) say that GW is a thing and the consequences are potentially very devastating if we do nothing. The policy makers must stop being corrupt and just taking money from Big Oil and start implementing what they need to to change this trend. It's as simple as that
- madeofpalk 10y agoIs the public really skeptical of climate change? I believe in it, but think that any chance to move the needle on it comes to policy makers so I end up caring very little about the issue practically either way.
- mrmincent 10y ago> No real information was presented here, just assertion on either side. So just a regular episode of qanda then? It's honestly one of the more frustrating shows to watch most of the time.
- cam_l 10y ago"This is my question to you: if you don't model it, how can you go about trying to answer the question?" (brian Cox) Yeah, validate or refute is not a reasonable representation of the truth. The more accurate question is model or more accurate model. The spread of current models is unpredictable consequences in 20 years or in 80 years.