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Skeptic wins rare climate debate in New York City: It’s Official: Warmist Andrew Dessler lost to Physicist Steve Koonin – Audience voted Koonin the winner

 

https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2022/08/15/the-koonin-dessler-debate/

The Koonin-Dessler Debate

By Andy May

The debate I announced here between Steve Koonin and Andy Dessler took place Monday August 15th, it was very educational and illuminating. I will try and write more about it in a few days.

In short Andy Dessler said that economic models suggest that climate change is a negative for human civilization and not positive at all. But he avoided putting any numbers to this assertion.

Dessler believes that wind and solar produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels, and that they can provide most of our power. Koonin counters that the only reason wind and solar are cheaper is that the cost of fossil fuel backup and the required changes to the U.S. grid are not included in the solar and wind costs. Koonin shows an estimate of $2.4 trillion to upgrade our electric grid to work with mostly wind and solar.

Koonin stated that the costs of climate change are minimal, and in 100 years will not be noticeable because the world economy will grow so much in that time. Climate change, even in the worse scenarios, only reduces growth very slightly, by 4% or less, and everyone will still be better off. He notes that in the past global warming and climate change have benefited mankind since people are much better off today and much more resilient to climate change than 100 years ago. He also points out that the poor of today should not be made to suffer because the elites (that is the U.S. and the western world) believe, without evidence and only based on models, that fossil fuels are polluting. He adds that solar and wind are not pollution free.

Koonin quotes U.S. economist Anthony Downes, who once said:

“The elite’s environmental deterioration is often the common man’s improved standard of living.”

From “Up and down with ecology- the ‘issue attention cycle,’” by Anthony Downs (link)

At the end of this very interesting Oxford-style debate in the New York Sheen Center, these were the results:

 

The Koonin-Dessler Debate Results

Obviously, Koonin won, the swing was 25% in his favor. Let us hope that these results are not changed online like they were in the last big climate change debate.

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Author Jerome Corsi attended the NYC climate debate and filed this report: (Author of the New Book: ‘The Truth about Energy, Global Warming, & Climate Change: Exposing Climate Lies in an Age of Disinformation’ – By Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D. – Foreword By Marc Morano)

Jerome Corsi: 

The debate last night at the Soho Forum in the Sheen Center was a fairly dismal affair. Dr. Dessler persisted in requesting slides (identified by number, “Can we see slide #27,” for instance). But when displayed on a big screen at the front of the auditorium, the slides (when eventually found) contained print too small to be read.

Perhaps that was to Dr. Dessler’s benefit. The inherently questionable arguments the requested slides were supposed to “prove” truthfully made going to “evidence” premature. Yet, perhaps Dr. Dessler’s rhetorical strategy was more subtle than was initially apparent. An audience in the auditorium not able to read the evidence adduced on the slides might be convinced Dr. Dessler had made his point.

Perhaps the only memorable slide Dr. Dessler displayed was a Michael Mann “hockey stick” redo.  That slide needed minimal words to again erase rather typically climatic events (like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age) that “warmologists” like Dr. Dessler find inconvenient to acknowledge.

Dr. Koonin won the debate, more or less. Dr. Koonin began by conceding that anthropogenic warming was obviously true.  But, Koonin suggested, the consequences of anthropogenic global warming (and the subsequent climate change weather catastrophes) were livable. This argument apparently appealled to a NYC audience that preferred to live burning those noxious hydrocarbon fuels rather than risk a repeat of the July 13, 2019 blackout.

Regrettably, Dr. Dessler might have won that argument.  All Dr. Desser had to do was explain he he saw in the near future the reality of creating a pocket-sized wind- or solar-powered backup generator the size of a flashlight that might be installed to power a skyscraper in the event of an energy-grid blackout.

When leaving the auditorium after the debate, the night in NYC was pleasantly cool.   This was surprising for a mid-August summer night in New York City amidst a global warming climate catastrophe caused by our wanton use of “fossil fuels.”

If only humans would finally realize we ourselves exhale this noxious killer, carbon-dioxide, we might solve the global warming/climate change problem. We human beings might finally be intelligent enough to satisfy the IPCC.  We could continue giving China a pass for failing to adhere to its NZE (“Net Zero Emission”) goals, but if we bite the bullet and adopt a drastic alternative.  To true globalists seeking to exploit the global warming/climate change hoax for therir purposes a swift but effective solution is possible.  The globalist solution would only demand that we accpet the necessary “wormologist” solution of a worldwide ritual festival of hari-kari combined with a mercifully short interval of global genocide targeted first (but by no means last) on those filthy Oil Barrons and their criminal Capitalist friends.

Jerome Corsi
Reflections …
August 16, 2022

 

https://twitter.com/H_Ols/status/1559532269894881282

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