Climate activists and scientists supporting the alleged “consensus” on man-made global warming have a long history of suppressing debate and intimidation scientists into silence. As a new round of calls go out to shut down scientific debate,
See: Global Warming Alarmists — Media Pressure to end Debate – & SILENCE DISSENT: 60 climate ‘campaigners’ sign letter demanding media keep skeptics out of the news – Say they will not appear in media with skeptics
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from author Marc Morano’s new 2018 best-selling book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.
(Move over Rachel Carson! – Morano’s Politically Incorrect Climate Book outselling ‘Silent Spring’ at Earth Day – Order Your Book Copy Now! ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ By Marc Morano)
Book Excerpt
Losing and Ducking Debates
In 2007, a high-profile climate debate between prominent scientists ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner by a tough New York City audience. The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured a three-on-three debating format. Before the start of the nearly two-hour
debate, the audience polled 57.3% to 29.9% in favor of the proposition that global warming was a “crisis.”
But following the debate, the numbers had completely flipped to 46.2% to 42.2% in favor of the skeptical point of view, argued by MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott, and the physician-turned novelist-and-filmmaker Michael Crichton. After the stunning victory, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, one of the scientists on the losing side promoting belief in a climate “crisis,” excused the defeat by noting that his debate team was “pretty dull” and at “a sharp disadvantage” against the skeptical scientists. Scientific American agreed, saying the warmists “seemed
underarmed for the debate and, not surprising, it swung against them.” NASA’s Schmidt appeared so demoralized that he realized that debating skeptical scientists was not something he would ever want to do again. “So are such debates worthwhile? On balance, I’d probably answer no (regardless of the outcome),” Schmidt wrote.
In 2013, Schmidt was true to his word, refusing to even appear alongside skeptical climatologist Roy Spencer on John Stossel’s Fox TV program. Schmidt literally walked off the set when Spencer came on to talk.
…
Hollywood producer James Cameron, responsible for such mega hits as Titanic and Avatar, has also been a huge climate activist. Cameron once challenged skeptics to a public debate using the rhetoric of an Old West gunslinger: “I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads.”
In 2010, Cameron’s representatives reached out to me to assemble a skeptical debate team to face off against the producer at a public event. We agreed to the terms; Ann McElhinney and the late Andrew Breitbart were going to be joining me on the skeptical side of the debate.
I was flying to Aspen, Colorado, for the great global warming Wild West showdown when Cameron got cold feet and canceled the debate. At the very last moment, Cameron pulled the plug on a debate he himself had initiated and organized. When my connecting flight landed in Denver, I was informed that the debate was off. The official reason given by Cameron’s spokesman was that “Morano is not at Cameron’s level to debate, and that’s why it didn’t happen.
Cameron should be debating someone who is similar to his stature in our society.” But the real reason had nothing to with “stature in society” and more to do with fear of losing a climate debate. Cameron backed out of the debate at the last minute after environmentalists “came out of the woodwork” to warn him not to engage in a debate with skeptics because it was not in his best interest.
I responded to Cameron’s last-minute debate ducking with this statement: “Cameron let his friends in the environmental community spook him out of this debate. When he was warned that he was probably going to lose and lose badly, he ran like a scared mouse.” Cameron had gone from Wild West gunslinger to chicken of the sea. But Cameron’s real failing is not his debate cowardice; it is his indifference to the needs of the developing world.
No Wonder Cameron Ducked Debates
In 2010, Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver flew to Brazil to protest a dam that would be one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects. Even then Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the leftist Workers’ party, objected to Cameron’s attempts to keep energy out of the developing world and “argued that the dam will provide clean energy and is needed to meet current and future energy needs.”47 Cameron opposed a dam—now under construction—that will bring vital electricity to Brazilians. Cameron flew to the developing world to campaign against improving the lifestyles
of its poor citizens.
But Cameron seems to be guided by his own form of utopian philosophy. “We are going to have to live with less,” the fabulously wealthy producer told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. Cameron, whose net worth was estimated
at around $900 million in 2014,49 warned that we face “a dying world if we don’t make some fundamental changes about how we view ourselves and how we view wealth.” He warned against the “consumer society where you buy something and then throw it away when you get the next new thing, filling up huge landfills with plastic and electronics.”
Cameron also wants Americans to change their ways. “Honestly, the truth is, we have to revisit almost every part of our lives and our existence over the next few years. Energy consumption, I think, being the biggest one.
Energy and global warming are interlinked issues obviously,” the producer explained.
But revisiting “almost every part of our lives” did not seem to impact Cameron’s personal life. He owned not one but two adjacent eight-thousand square-foot mansions in Malibu—and a submarine.
#
Wash. Post’s Andrew Freedman Ducks TV Debate with Climate Depot’s Morano – Demands Separate Taping – ‘WaPo’s Freedman appears to be afraid of defending his global warming assertions’
Debate Ducker Dan Weiss
Daily Caller article by Michael Bastasch: ‘Dan Weiss, the director of climate strategy at the liberal Center for American Progress, refused to appear on Fox Business to debate climate skeptic Marc Morano last week. Morano runs the blog Climate Depot, where he reports on environment and climate news. Weiss was set to debate Morano on the show “The Independents” but “refused to debate directly with Morano, and chided [the show] for airing his views,” according to the Fox Business show.
‘In what is part of a growing trend, yet another global warming activist ducked a TV debate,’ Morano told the Daily Caller News Foundation. ‘Weiss and other activists claim the debate is so settled that granting a skeptic ‘equal time’ does some type of disservice to ‘science.’ Climate activists want to impose everything from carbon taxes, UN treaties, cap-and-trade, EPA regulations, light bulb restrictions, automobile regulations, even our bedtimes — yet they will not debate the basis for these actions.’
‘I have had many debate cancellations previously,’ Morano added. ‘In 2010, I was set to debate Hollywood producer James Cameron after weeks of negotiations, only to have the debate cancelled at the last moment when my plane landed in Colorado for the debate.’
Weiss isn’t the only proponent of man-made global warming that has refused to debate a climate skeptic. Last year, Fox Business host John Stossel asked about a dozen climate scientists to debate skeptic Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist who now teaches at the University of Alabama.
Hide the Debate: Cameron ducks Climate Debate with Breitbart, Morano, & McElhinney
Great Non-Debate: Wash Post’s Freedman claims paper is not ‘politically motivated’ – Morano in hostile climate debate with TV reporter – WaPo’s Freedman gives more than half a dozen excuses on why he could not debate Morano
World-Wide Reaction to Climate Depot’s Public Climate Clash with the Washington Post – Climate Depot ‘point by point minced Wash. Post’s empty claims’