Before the debate in the New York City on Wednesday night, the alarmists enjoyed a 57 percent support while the global-warming-is-not-a-crisis team received 30 percent of votes.
Special welcome for Tim Blair's readers... If you want to see an Australian view on the debate, see Herald Sun. Melanie Phillips reports from Great Britain.
After the debate, however, the skeptics' team climbed to 46 percent while the alarmists dropped to 42 percent. The difference changed from +27 (serious warming) before the debate to -4 (no serious warming) after the debate. Skeptics have also won the online vote, 55 percent vs 42 percent with 3 percent undecided.
Well, the debate is over. And the outcome of the debate? Global warming is not a crisis. See
- Audio - MP3 from NPR
- Full audio - search for unedited on this NPR page
- IQ2 U.S. - event web page
- Transcript - 79-page PDF file
- Newsday - report
Democracy doesn't belong to science but you can see that if you do it right, as Rosenkranz Intelligence Squared did, the reasonable people (skeptics) defeat the alarmists according to democratic rules, too.
Congratulations to "passionate" Dr Philip Stott, "soft-spoken" Dr Richard Lindzen, and "folksy and tall" Michael Crichton MD.
"Skeptical" Dr Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate.ORG, "moderate" concerned scientist Dr Brenda Ekwurzel, and "perplexed" Dr Richard Somerville have a lot of things to learn - not only about debates, I think. The adjectives are not mine: they come from the editors of Scientific American.
An entertaining observation: Alexander Ač, a self-described green idealist, was promoting the debate in the fast comments before it started. He probably believed that the alarmists would win. ;-) My condolences - but the only disciplines in which the alarmists could win are groupthink, intimidation, and irrational hysteria. The result of the debate also shows how clever Al Gore is to avoid any hypothetical debate and to rely on the dirty work of his devoted believers instead.
And that's the memo.
P.S.: Gavin Schmidt has already determined why they lost. The main reason is that Michael Crichton is tall. There seems to be a scientific consensus among the RealClimate.ORG fans that this is the right explanation. Next time, they will try to debate on the radio because Michael Crichton is not tall on the radio. Good luck, green brains!
Additional well-known climate articles on The Reference Frame
- Viscount Christopher Monckton & climate alarmism
- Temp decided CO-2 and CH-4 concentrations, not the opposite way around
- IQ2 US duel: sceptics defeated alarmists
- Massachusetts v. EPA
- Correlations of the cosmic rays and warming
- 2006: a not really great year for panic makers
- 2006: coolest average temperature since 2001
