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Watch: Warmist Andrew Dessler declares ‘I won’t debate the science, the science is set’ – Joe Rogan is not impressed

 

 

With just a few questions, Joe Rogan gets climate scientist to admit that he’s too scared to debate the science on climate change

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/17/dessler-on-the-joe-rogan-experience-oy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dessler-on-the-joe-rogan-experience-oy

One of our favorite Climate ScientistsTM, Andrew Dessler recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience. I believe it was the Katastraphic Klimate Konsensus’s response to the transgression of previously allowing Dr. Steve Koonin to appear.

 

MasterResource has another excellent article on Dessler’s behavior

By Robert Bradley Jr. — February 17, 2022

[Andrew] Dessler said anyone arguing that the science is too uncertain isn’t arguing from a legitimate position…. “[Koonin]’s a climate flat earther.” (Quoted in Benjamin Thorp, October 18, 2021).

“Dumb arguments” is too harsh? He’s just a old white dude whose vast experience in the halls of power gives him a unique ability to point out the errors that other people make? Nope. (Andrew Dessler, October 14, 2021)

Andrew Dessler, a climatologist at Texas A&M University, will have nothing to do with any critics of climate alarm. This activist has pure scorn toward his intellectual and scientific doubters. “Angry Andy” is certain that climate science is settled and drop-everything alarming.

deep ecologist (nature is optimal and fragile; human interference cannot be good), Dessler has long concluded that we are headed for (or already in) a climate dystopia. Any fair hearing of the less extreme view of global lukewarming/CO2 benefits would be a leak in the dike, one that could expand and take down the Wall of Climate Gloom.

But for now, the cancel culture is at work with climate science in particular. Michael Mann (Dessler’s colleague in arms) put it this way:

All of the noise right now from the climate change denial machine, the bots & trolls, the calls for fake ‘debates’, etc. Ignore it all. Deniers are desperate for oxygen in a mainstream media environment that thankfully is no longer giving it to them.

Report, block. Don’t engage.

Imagine an open-minded young person considering a career in climatology. He or she wants to really wants to probe the look-the-other-way areas of uncertainty with climate-feedback physics and with climate models. Seek and expand the frontiers of knowledge under the highest standards of the scientific method. Show professionalism and respect for the views of colleagues and others. Experience politeness and social skills, given and received.

That person best not enter into a profession where an Andrew Dessler or a Michael Mann or a John Holdren would sneer and blackball. Remember what Mann said about Judith Curry in Climategate: “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” Cancel Culture 101.

Steven Koonin

Enter Steven E. Koonin, University Professor at New York University. This noted theoretical physicist is author of the best-seller: Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (2021). Having taught theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology for most of his career, Koonin went on to work for BP (new technologies) and then as Obama’s Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. In this position, Koonin oversaw climate research and energy technology work.

Koonin has a BS in Physics from Caltech and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from MIT. A specialist in modelling complexity, Koonin wrote the classic 1985 textbook Computational Physics.

Koonin is author of 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of physics and astrophysics, scientific computation, energy technology and policy, and climate science, as well as having been lead author on multiple book-length reports, including two National Academies studies.

In short, Steve Koonin is a leader in his field and well respected. And, it turns out, he is honest and of an age and tenure where he can speak truth to power.

Dessler’s Smears

Here is Dessler on Koonin:

I actually hate to weigh in on Koonin’s book …. Here are a few thoughts. First, Koonin has a track record of making dumb, over the top, exaggerated arguments.

Second, his facts are carefully cherry picked to present a specific narrative. For example, he says heat waves in the U.S. were more severe in the 1930s than today. OK, but the U.S. covers 2% of the planet. Globally, heat waves are more severe today.

Also, his belief in models is quite selective. We can’t trust climate models at all — the climate is too complicated!! — but we can have 100% confidence in absurd economic models of GDP growth.

And:

It is important to realize that virtually all experts in the area ARE convinced by the data that humans are ~100% responsible for modern warming. So you can believe Koonin or you can believe the 99.9% of scientists.

And:

Koonin’s arguments are 1) cherry picking of factoids and 2) value judgements about his interpretation of the data and his interpretation of risk. His judgements of the data disagree with virtually all expert scientific opinion. His risk assessment is based on his values.

And:

I typically don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but the fact that Steve Koonin continues to get high-profiles endorsements of his dumb arguments suggests that some powerful media agents have decided that he’s their best bet for trying to cast doubt on climate science. Thoughts?

Dessler likes to use other words against Koonin’s views such as “idiotic complaint” and “denier shuffle.”

Andrew Dessler pretty much embarrasses himself, his department, and his university with such vitriol. Why?

Part of it is Dessler’s certainty that the science has reached certainty on what is known and not known. No shades of grey on the very pessimistic, alarmist black-and-white conclusion: humankind is on the road to doom.

So hyper-emotionally invested. Anything less than alarm–even by a scientist every bit as credentialed as himself–and Dessler must turn emotional and angry.

Second is old-fashioned envy. Koonin’s Unsettled — with sales exceeding 100,000–has outsold all of Dessler’s books put together. Koonin, moreover, has a reputation that Dessler does not. And Koonin is a go-to for a lot of organizations that are trying to cut through a lot of politicized science.

Little wonder that Andrew Dessler will not dare debate Koonin at Texas A&M. (I have offered to underwrite such a campus-wide event to no avail.) The climate alarmist, arguing a speculative position, cannot get away with a lot with the bright lights on. [1]

Appendix: Wrong Again?

Regarding Koonin’s major points against settled, alarmist climate science, Dessler states:

I don’t see that these are the kinds of arguments that get traction with the broad public anymore…. Most people, they look out their window and they can see climate change is real. Given the fact that what’s happening is exactly what was predicted by scientists decades ago. I think that people understand that climate science is real, as described by the scientific community.

Really? Is this a ‘settled’ fact, Professor Dessler?

Actually, it is panic time for climate alarmism among the political and intellectual elite. Citizens are protesting, and voters are voting against the forced energy transformation, itself the flip side of climate exaggeration.

Better yet, with the problems of wind/solar out in the open (and at an early stage of the transition!), the open-minded are looking anew at the science and false climate prognostications of years and decades past. They are not very impressed. Expect sales of Koonin’s Unsettled to grow and another edition to appear in the next years.

——————-

[1] My email exchange with Professor Dessler (11/09/2021) follows. I stated:

Let’s have a debate between you and Steven Koonin or even David Friedman with a full house at Texas A&M to put you on record–will you consider that?  I’ll make a $5,000 contribution to the university to help make it happen. Put the bright lights on where the statements will be on the record. Televise it. But it has to have a fair moderator and set-up.

He answered that day:

Add a zero ($50,000, donated to the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M) and you have a deal.  You can even moderate the event and handle all of the logistics. I’ll find a room on campus.

I answered (11/14/2021):

No thanks for the invitation to increase my contribution from $5,000 to $50,000. And for me to moderate, etc. I want a real debate with me in the audience or watching it on TV. It deserves prime time with physical climate science on trial.

No reason to relegate a climate discussion/debate to the ‘back of the bus,’ right? That is an insult to you, your opponent, and science itself.

So work on a serious budget, and let’s give it the attention it deserves. I will increase my donation appropriately….

A fair debate between the alarmists and the optimists is prime-time important. Why have it in some basement? Let’s put the lights on and have a marque event….

Professor Dessler did not respond….

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Flashback 2010: Andrew Dessler debates Richard Lindzen  on Climate Change Science, Policy

University of Virginia School of Law
Professors Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M and Richard Lindzen from MIT debate the scientific evidence of anthropogenic global warming, while University of Virginia Law School professors Jonathan Cannon and Jason Johnston discuss the policy implications.

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2010: Professors Debate Climate Change Science, Policy

Excerpt:

Climate scientists Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M and Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology debated the scientific evidence, and Law School professors Jonathan Cannon and Jason Johnston discussed public policy implications.

Dessler began the debate by showing a line graph documenting rising global surface temperatures over the past 150 years. He said other independent evidence corroborates that data.

“Why are scientists so confident that the earth is warming?” Dessler asked. “It’s because we have lots of data.” He cited findings from surface thermometers, satellites, glacier and ice melt, ocean temperatures and rising sea levels.

He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls that evidence unequivocal, and that there is irrefutable evidence that carbon dioxide warms the earth. “It’s a question of magnitude,” he said.

The combination of CO2 with other warming factors such as humidity and the resulting cloud formation provide a recipe for global warming, according to Dessler. He also dismissed the idea that evidence for anthropogenic climate change is based on hypothetical models rather than existing data.

Finally, Dessler criticized the “doubt agenda,” likening efforts to discredit global warming to those employed by groups that denied the correlation between smoking and cancer. Climate change deniers, like defense attorneys, need only create doubt, he said.

Lindzen began by claiming that scientists and policymakers misrepresent the debate.

“The debate is not about whether it is warming or not, or even about whether man is contributing some portion of whatever is happening,” Lindzen said. “Here we agree. The issue is how much. Is it a matter, or should it be a matter, of concern?”

The problem among scientists, Lindzen said, is one of amplification of the findings. He characterized the findings of global warming advocates as “alarming.”

“One has to distinguish between small and large changes … that it’s settled science should be offensive to any sentient individual,” he said. The models used by scientists are “exaggerating [global] warming,” according to Lindzen.

“The claim of incontrovertibility is far more suspicious than the claim of doubt,” he said. “Arguing from authority is commonplace in this field, and obviously you should look at the scientific data and reasoning and even elementary logic.”

He criticized the use of phenomena such as ice depletion and melting glaciers as proof of climate change. “[They] are complex phenomena having many causes. The conflation of the existence of climate change—which after all is unquestionable, it’s always occurred—with anthropogenic climate change is, of course, misleading,” he said.

Finally, Lindzen condemned the scientific culture that has sprung up around the arguments for anthropogenic climate change. “By definition, nothing in science is incontrovertible and especially in a primitive and complex field like climate. Incontrovertibility belongs in religion where it is referred to as dogma,” he said.

Cannon said that from a public policy perspective, it’s prudent to begin measures to combat man-made climate change, such as a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax, with the idea that they can be altered as the science dictates. “We do our best to assess the risks, taking into account the uncertainties as we are able to understand them. We make a judgment about what risks we are willing to accept, and we work within that judgment to try to establish a policy that will limit risks to that level,” Cannon said.

Johnston took an economist’s view, and said there are too many unknowns to justify potentially harmful policy changes.

“By determining that potential harm we can strategize to reduce or eliminate that harm. Economists have come to think that with climate change we can’t really do that,” he said. “We don’t know the probabilities that different things might happen and we really don’t know the magnitudes.” The state of the art for predicting the economic effects of catastrophic climate change is very bad, Johnston said.

The event was sponsored by the Virginia Environmental Law Journal and the Virginia Environmental Law Forum.

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Read: Bonus chapter: Intimidating the ‘Deniers’ to Enforce the ‘Consensus’ – Climate ‘deniers’ threatened with being ‘thrown in jail’ – ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’

 Flashback 2007: Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate – RealClimate.org’s Gavin Schmidt appeared so demoralized that he mused that debates equally split between believers of a climate ‘crisis’ and scientific skeptics are probably not “worthwhile” to ever agree to again.

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