A tall story

Melanie Phillips and Luboš Motl have both reported on a debate about Global Warming that was staged on Wednesday in New York by Intelligence Squared. The motion was Global warming is not a crisis.

Before the debate began, the audience polled 57% against (it is a crisis) and 30% for (it isn't). After the debate, the figures has changed to 42% against and 46% for. So some minds were changed. Interesting.

A transcript of the debate can be downloaded here.

One of the people arguing that climate change is a crisis was Dr Gavin Schmidt of NASA and RealClimate.org and he blogged about it later. Here's the remark that struck me (Crichton was one of his opponents):

However, this live audience were a rather select bunch, and so maybe this will go over differently on the radio. There it might not matter that Crichton is so tall...

Melanie Phillips picked up on it too. I think he meant it as a joke.

I certainly hope so. Unfortunately, the way he began his post was intended seriously:

First off, I'd like to thank the commenters for all of the suggestions and ideas to the previous post. They were certainly useful. In particularly, the connection with the difficulties faced by evolutionists in debates vs. creationists proved to be very a propos.

I don't remember any evolutionists threatening the lives of creationists, saying they should be subjected to Nuremberg-style trials or waffling about post-science science to justify their abandonment of the scientific method.

I don't remember any evolutionists trying to prevent scientific enquiry in their own field. I don't remember any evolutionists saying that their branch of science had basically come to an end and no new findings could ever be relevant.

It's perfectly clear that the climate has been warming. It's also clear that climate alarmists have completely lost the plot.