I’ve just received an invitation from the Brisbane Institute to participate in a debate with Ian Plimer and Lord Monckton. Having seen Plimer’s Lateline performance, I can’t imagine that this exercise will add much to the sum of human knowledge. OTOH, the event will go ahead regardless. Any thoughts?
Clarification I should say straight off that I have no intention of attempt to debate climate science. Although I’m probably better qualified to discuss the key issues (many of which involve statistics) than either Plimer or Monckton, that’ s not saying much. In any case, discussing these issues in a debate format with dishonest antagonists is pointless, as has been shown many times.
So, the only way to approach it is to address the underlying conspiracy theory directly. If Monckton and Plimer are right, all the major scientific bodies in the world are engaged in a conspiracy to introduce communist world government by (drumroll!) auctioning tradeable carbon emissions permits. The question is, can I convince an audience sympathetic to delusionism that this is a really silly thing to believe?
Update Without advising me that my invitation had been withdrawn, the Institute made another invitation, to Barry Brook, who accepted. So, the decision has been made for me. I did, however, think about the approach I might take if I accepted.
I planned to elaborate Monckton’s conspiracy theory, announce myself as part of the global conspiracy, and conclude by pointing to Margaret Thatcher (Monckton’s former employer) as the originator of the whole thing (she has a great 1990 speech putting forward the case for urgent action based on the precautionary principle). At the end I would have played it straight for a minute or so, asking the audience whether they want to believe this black helicopter nonsense or the alternative that the scientists have it right. Would this have worked? We’ll never know.
Regardless, I certainly hope that Barry Brook and Graham Readfearn (the Courier-Mail environment blogger who will also appear on the pro-science side) stick it to Monckton and Plimer for their political axe-grinding, long track record of lies, and general nuttiness, rather than giving this deplorable event any credibility.
John Quiggin 
Pilmer obviously doesn’t believe anything he says, he is just promoting his book and laughing all the way to the bank. You should call him out as such
Go. That way your ideas and rebuttal of theirs are spread a little wider, and we get to see a further explanation of your position, which we can adopt and/or adapt.
I’m doubtful that any good can come of it. Plimer will simply reiterate his talking points, ignore all substantive challenges and make detailed examination of any point at hand impossible for the audience to unpick.
He refused to debate Monbiot in London when Monbiot attemped to place constraints on Plimer’s freedom to make the topic whatever he wanted and more recently his confrontation with Monbiot on Lateline turned farcical when he proved unwilling to defend the contents of his own book — which he had in his hand as he spoke. In the end he tried winning by blithering endlessly about anything but the claims he made and asking Monbiot to be have some manners.
It would be far better if Plimer were to face the kind of examination that Lomborg did before the DCSD over The Skeptical Environmentalist and if University of Adelaide were to examine whether he met their tests for academic misconduct.
The fact remains that Plimer’s book is an academic shambles posturing as “a search for the science”. Plimer ought be heard no more until he can warrant his ostensibly scientific claims and the integrity of his work or he rescinds. Handwaving loudly ought not to secure him the recognition of respectable persons such as you.
PS — a chinwag in which only Monckton and Plimer, along with perhaps the loopier members of our local agnotologists ight actually be entertaining. Freed of all restraint, they may well attest even more generously to their complete idiocy or venality.
Who’s in the audience? Are they worth the effort? If you want to do it, do it but if you feel pressured, you have a prior engagement.
My opinion FWIW is that you are in a no win situation.
Similar to those biological scientists who try to debate creationists and its seems the
common feeling among them now is that its best to deprive them of oxygen.
Plimer and Monckton can willy nilly throw out any number of single sentence nonsense assertions that unfortunately will require either elaborate organized detailed answers which take too much time and space to develop or smart retorts of, unfortunately, little substance.
Its a shallow game.
The sound bite will appear to beat the detailed response and I presume that the audience will be stacked by denialists.
We have seen here and elsewhere they are not interested in fact or logic.
Your training and ethics won’t allow you to confidently spruik nonsense or resort to debating tricks.
Your opponents, if you do participate, have shown no such scruples.
The real question is: why are the Brissy Inst pushing this pair?
A while ago I would have seen this as a bit like a challenge to evolutionary scientists to debate the creationists: no amount of scientific facts would serve to make a minority group of crackpots rethink their position. So why bother to give any legitimacy to them?
But although Plimer’s position, and that if the denialists generally, has been shown to have no scientific foundation, it is supported by a very heavily funded lobby that is eating away at the strong majority position of climate change realism and at the stomach of policy makers. Because of the resources behind them (and the importance of the issues), I don’t think they can be ignored now.
So reluctantly, and assuming that it will go ahead anyway (and won’t be loaded two against one) I say take them on.
Who will benefit? Plimer seems capable of saying the most outrageous stuff whilst keeping an air of injured civility about him. I doubt you will puncture his ‘argument’, he seems to have his responses fairly pat and will ignore any evidence or challenge of substance. You could try Monbiot’s tactic of re-asking and restating the problems with Plimer’s claims.However Plimer may have trained up after Lateline and counter with the ‘kindly old man injured by the harsh badgering assailant’.
Monckton I don’t know but I imagine he is at least as good as Plimer at manipulating audiences. In the end denialists at the level of the ‘interested public’ are swayed by stereotyped emotional triggers. Do you think reason and evidence can counter that, or will their abiities to emotionally manipulate the crowd – who themselves may be quite hostile – overwhelm reasoned debate?
I’d really want a clear idea of what winning the debate would achieve, and what winning would require strategically.
On first thought, Plimer is really too badly behaved and irrational to bother with.
Too some extent debating fools like these is to give them credibility. From what I read in Wikipedia, even his ‘debate’ with the creationist loonies didn’t reflect well on him.
From the entry on him in Wikipedia “Plimer is an outspoken critic of creationism and is famous [sic] for a 1988 debate with creationist Duane Gish in which he asked his opponent to hold live electrical cables to prove that electromagnetism was ‘only a theory’. Gish accused him of being theatrical, …”
Talk about non sequitur. Of course, creationism (‘God did it’) and intelligent design (‘Someone identically similar to God did it’) are absurd nonsense. However, many of these creationist nutters believe in things like electromagnetism and so on. And the time honoured result from holding live electrical cables neither proves nor disproves the theory of electromagnetism. Hence, one is forced to agree with the nitwit Gish. Plimer was simply being theatrical. But neither he nor at least some of the audience seem to appreciate that.
Given that Plimer doesn’t seem to know what a valid or a sound argument is, or what facts are, and too many of the typical audience don’t seem to know either, you can only expect to win these types of encounters by being quick on your feet and cleverer in finding ways to humiliate him.
A problem with people like Plimer, who have loud voices, strong opinions and are the party to many acrimonious down and dirty debates, is that, as a consequence, they have practice, and hence, through experience, combined with a low animal cunning which they often possess, may know how to appeal to the rabble with every fallacious trick available.
If you are good and experienced at this sort of sport, and think you will splatter him, then why not? Otherwise, why bother? If you can’t be bothered, you could say that having watched the Lateline debate where he was thoroughly trounced you can see no point in working over old ground.
Salient Green is correct: who’s likely to be watching? I suspect they will be people who made up their minds about AGW long ago and are only there to enjoy watching their champions make Al Gore jokes at your expense.
Sample of Monckton’s rhetoric from yesterday’s Online Opinion (which I refuse to dignify with a link):
‘So, who are the criminals against humanity? The brave and diligent scientists whose research in many different fields now amply demonstrates that the chief conclusions of the UN’s climate panel are nonsense, or the pietistic true-believers whose policies allegedly designed to address the non-problem of “global warming” are already killing millions by starvation?’
That’s the level of scholarship you can expect. Constantly rebutting the same old tired fraudulent crap from the likes of Plimer and Monckton simply gives it more credibility than it deserves, IMHO. Better to leave them alone in the echo chamber looking like the sad losers they are.
@Ken Lovell
And one can expect the local LaRouchites will be out in force asking why you want to engineer a final solution for most of the planet.
Monckton is a bit of a lunatic but his remarks about Copenhagen being a communist conspiracy to overthrow capitalism were widely reported. He will presumably use standard exaggerated lines of argument. He doesn’t have much of a sense of shame.
It’s better to focus on a few of these – warming stopped in 1998, water vapour is more important than CO2 etc – and politely annihilate his arguments.
you have to go, you have no choice
and I guess another issue is – What has happened to the Brisbane Institute that they would give these two a forum?
Tough one, I reckon. My initial reaction was that you should do it and show them up for the ill-informed people they are. But on 2nd thoughts, I don’t think it is worth it. Clearly neither person has any credibility and will not be swayed by any argument or evidence. Neither deserve a public forum, as Plimer’s last LL performance proved and really, it is a shame the Brisbane Institute is giving them one: it counts against their own credibility. Perhaps your best move would be to issue a statement turning down the invitation on the grounds that, given their track record and lack of credibility you will not do anything to suggest they should be taken seriously? “Mere participation would accord their position more respect than it deserves” or words to that effect.
I’m really coming to the view that the sooner credible organisations (inc the MSM) stop bowing to the likes of these two in the name of some phoney idea of “balance” the better off we will all be. I’m all for open debate, but that isn’t what these two are engaged in. How many more times will they be given a forum to repeat their usual, well-refuted rubbish, before someone says enough?
My thoughts are JQ that I wouldnt debase myself by debating anything with a couple of paid for delusionists.
Sorry but you can mix in better circles than debating a couple of charlatans. I would decline on that basis and make it clear why.
Some things are beneath one’s dignity as an economist. You are a good one…as for these two – they arent even economists, let alone intelligent or worth debating. They really are sell outs – both of them.
@nanks
Brisbane institute has now proved itself an irreputable group nanks. This is the second time…so which new ratbag denialist manager has turned coated the Brisbane institute.
He should be fired immediately for being a biased jerk that he would evenconsider house charlatans like Plimer and Monkton. Are they that desperate to sell seats?
Looks like the general consensus here JQ is to tell them to get st****d.
Good luck John, it will be a tough debate to win.
IMHO you should go John.
I recently attended a “presentation” by David Archibald, another geologist and denier/delusionist. Of course, there is no convincing people like him (his slides were riddled with inconsistencies, errors and, well, lies) but some of the audiences in such meetings may be genuine seekers of the truth. I’d suggest you stick to facts (I made the mistake of calling Lomborg and Plimer charlatons so I got into an unwanted discussion on tactics rather than facts), and take two or three key points that you want to get across (the sea levels are rising, C14 shows where it is coming from, etc) and not get distracted. Basic debating points maybe, but it might work.
Complete waste of time, at best.
With all due respect, JQ, you are not a skilled polemicist, and what is required is someone who can get down and dirty and dish it out mercilessly, like Paul Keating did to his enemies (in and out of the Labor Party) in the 1980s.
Tough gig.
Why give them any oxygen, why lend them your credibility?
Really, will any open, inquiring minds be there?
I’m sure any unbiased observer would recognise that the’re a pair of wittering old fools (I loved Clive Hamilton’s ad hominem attack in crikey today!), but how many unbiased people will be there?
Nthing all the other commenters saying: don’t give them the oxygen. And you are unlikely to win over anyone in that audience.
What is the topic of the debate?
You have to do it. I really believe the commenters saying no good will come of it are wrong. Very silly things are entirely believable when unchallenged. I recently had a debate with some climate change skeptics. As a scientist (not a climate scientist), it made me incredibly upset, but the end result was that (i) I was able to quote from the very sources they used to rebut them and (ii) they looked very silly for claiming as their own someone else’s words. Now, this isn’t to say I convinced the skeptics, but other friends of mine were involved and they were convinced. Refusal to engage with AIDS denialism seems sensible, because they are so isolated and such fringe players in western society. (Rebutting them in African nations where they have policy influence might be worthwhile). However, climate denialism isn’t fringe anymore – it’s a contrarian reflex that I have no seen, somewhat bizarrely, adopted on the left, the right and even by so called environmentalists. There is too much danger that ‘innocent bystanders’ will be sucked in. Address the absurdity of the conspiracy. Address the dishonesty of the skeptics, their funding sources. At the end of the day, reason doesn’t always win, but a refusal to speak sense means that only nonsense gets spoken.
@Rationalist
hmm.
it seems to be one of those situations where winning is sorta either/or.
debate with an eye to
Not Lose.
Looks like a set-up. Don’t go. Cogently argued points will be unlikely to change that audience’s views.
It really is a no win situation. If you agree, there won’t be much in the way of actual rational debate on their behalf. If you don’t agree, they’ll gloat about you refusing to debate them on the issue. With that said, I still think the best option is to turn down the offer. There is little doubt that it would be a waste of time.
Plimer and Monckton will not debate in good faith and the audience is a waste of time. If they are not convinced already it is because they have committed to a firm self-serving position and no amount of facts, evidence or logic will change it. By sharing a stage with them you will be conferring on them a legitimicy they don’t deserve. Check the debate at the Sydney institute between Ray Evans and Ian Dunlop. Evans made a complete fool of himself but they audience lapped it up because this is the nonsense they want to hear.
Send someone with qualifications in rhetoric/pr/media or a humorous item to substitute for yourself. Don’t go.
Monckton is an articulate, unflappable, show pony for the denial show.
@CM
Well done you but really I don’t agree that AIDS and this issue are comparable. Sure there are people with cultural reasons for taking nonsense positions on AIDS but they are nothing like the numbers of people who feel that mitigation is an existential question.
If you’re pitching at the mass of the populace the message is simple — can you do what you propose without causing me to be seriously worse off? If the answer is yes, you win. If the answer is “I don’t know” the other side wins. The science doesn’t get a guernsey.
That’s why the delusionals aim for maximum FUD. They appeal to people’s fears of being ripped off, suspicion of remote elites, especially government and especially foreign government since foreigners are always suspicious and in a majority. These days scientists get called ivory tower boffins, and Dunning-Kruger gets tested three times a week as every nong who thinks he can read a graph and look out of the window can tell what the climate is.
You can’t beat that. You just can’t.
I teach at high school 205 days per year. During that time you learn and relearn what the window of significance is. For children it is quite short. The lower the educational stream, the shorter it is. Tell them something good will happen (or something bad) and you get their attention, until you tell them it’s the other side of the weekend and then it becomes irrelevant. Behavioural economists sometimes call this “the discount rate”.
This is true of adults too. If you are modestly well educated you wil,probably spend most of your time in the company of people with similar education and accomplishment. The idea of planning for the future and of connectedness with things that are geographically and temporally remote seems unremarkable. The better educated your milieu the more remote it can be and still be significant.
The reverse is also true though, sadly. Trying to talk about 30-year climate trends and problems in 2050 seems to vast numbers of people — even those who accept it in principle — hard to buy into and so the incentive to believe any old tosh that allows you to keep doing now what feels good is damned near irrestistable. Cognitive dissonance is hard to beat when it comes with incentives. Throw in three-year election cycles and where does policy wind up? Nowhere good.
PrQ is a great guy but he can’t win the politics at Brisbane Institute. The “balanced” media who report will bend over backwards to be “fair to both sides” and treat the nonsense of Monckton and Plimer with equal reverence to the half quotes they get from PrQ.
Not a good risk trade IMO
Ample support above I think for your own good instincts on a no-win proposal, John. You don’t take a knife to a gunfight; you don’t take a respected economist to try to talk sense at a delusionals’ cabaret. I’m pretty sure you know how much hope there’d be of your winning any points with an audience that will have turned up to be inflamed by these two charlatans. It’ll be an ugly crowd in a mood only for the murder of science and government. I think though that you might put frankly in writing to the Brisbane Institute a few references to the proven fraudulence of Plimer and at best delusionism of Monckton – is the Institute unaware of this evidence, or does it not care?
PrQ asks:
Not a chance. To reason with people who believe stuff because they like how it sounds to them is an impossible paradox. They didn’t come to their ideas through reason but through sentiment. They think people they are remote from are highly likely to be spivs or worse. If you defend them, you too are a spiv or worse. “Climategate” is alll they will hear.
You have to give them a more impressive sentiment to attach themselves to. Except you can’t because most will be 45+ and so they will already have made up their minds that they know all they need to know about everything. They aren’t in thje market for new ideas or new places to belong. They will be there to defend their way of life from socialists and carbon traders and people who can’t see how fat Al Gore is.
I agree that you should not do this. It seems pretty clear that climate change delusionism is motivated by anti intellectual hostility rather than a rational disagreement of how to interpret scientific data. The audience will make themselves immune to your rigorous, well researched scientific arguments and crow that you failed to convince them.
The only approach that I have found to have any effect on these people is to abandon the science and talk about economics. Point out that the costs of aggressive climate action are almost unnoticeably small and that it is wise to take action (even if you are a skeptic) as a form of insurance against disaster.
I think that the best tactic would be to stick to the global commie conspiracy theory and encourage both of them to provide substantive evidence, as much as is required of the AGW camp.
As climategate will be a weapon a good understanding of qty and quality of emails might be handy.
The Brisbane Insititute is sponsored by UQ, the City of Brisbane and the Queensland government. I’d be surprised if those bodies had an interest in pushing denialism (except maybe the Qld govt because of the Coal Industry).
I’m not invited so it is easy for me to say – I’d go. I’d be interested in general terms to see Monckton and Plimer in the flesh so to speak. Emphasising the ludicrous level of conspiracy that would have to be true if Monckton and Plimer are correct is also an essential point to make in the ‘debate’.
I suppose asking them to elaborate on the details of the conspiracy and their evidence for it would be one strategy….
Unless your qualifications are in climatology or statistics, you should avoid such exercises.
The Plimer line is overexposed.
What’s the saying? “Never debate a fool, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”.
@Tim Dymond
Tim – I can understand the QLD government polaying host to this pair of delusional dysfunctional self seeking charlatans. After all, its the same government who flogged off $15 billion worth of state assets on sham excuses communicated to the electorate as if addressing 6 year olds with no real accounatbility anywhere.
Would we expect any less of Bligh and Fraser?
(the labor government who has turned insanely right wing plus plus ie laissez faire neoliberal market ideologues? Its only natural the Bligh Government woiuld host these loony right charlatans)
But UQ?? I have a problem with that. A big problem. What is going on there? You dont fund an institute that gives ar time to quacks and media conjurers. Or do you in the modern profit seeking university?
Let the event go on an usual OTOH without you….you could of course send a letter of apology saying you dont think these people are worth debating the matter as there is no real debate.
I would approach this idea with great caution. Plimer uses very cynical tactics in a “debate”. assuming ther eis no moderator to make people answer questions or judge a winner, he will simply poster to try to convince the confused. He will use his usual weapons – repeat past lies, resorting to reputation, bombast and arrogance when he is caught out. Yet no matter what you or he says, he will NEVER admit he is wrong, even when it is plainly proven. All of the substantial points in the Lateline interview had been pointed out to Plimer publically before. Yet he proceeded to repeat the same “points”, already knowing they were false, and still refused to admit he was wrong, or that he had lied. So you will find it a very dissatisfying experience.
If I had to debate Plimer, I would use two methods:
1. Question his motives. Despite attacking others and conspiracies, Plimer himself has a vested interest in carbon fuels as director of several mining companies, and as a former petroleum geologist. He knows he is lying so ask him why does he lie? Is it for the money? Is it arrogance? Ask him when was the last time in his career he ever admitted being wrong about anything?
2. Ridicule. Perhaps the best weapon against these charlatan experts is to parody them. Don’t take them seriously. Don’t give him undeserved credibility. Joke about his own claims. Ask Plimer if recent hot spells are just “lucky”. Invite him to buy Murray River farms without water allocations. Ask him when was the last time he had an article on climate change published in any peer revewed journal?
I suppose the point is that Plimer has no intention of giving you an honest debate. He will just repeat his nonsense talking points. He will be confident in his ability to bluster and bully you. So have counter tactics prepared in advance.
Alice
Living here in Adelaide I would have assumed the same about University of Adelaide (not allowing Plimer to speak like this). Yet they still do, to our collective shame.
@wilful
There’s also “Never debate a fool – from a distance people can’t tell the difference.”
Go – but go with a strategy to ensure you get your message across rather than trying to engage in rational debate which I doubt that you will get.
Let someone else more on their level have a silly high school debate with them. What’s the point of lowering yourself to that level and having Plimer attempt to patronise you with “have some manners young man” if you try to get him to answer a question. They have no credibility and no shame. There are people worth debating on climate change and there is a large sector of the public who might be one over by good arguments but not at that event.
Just think how The Australian/Courier Mail would report it!
@Rationalist
It will be the easiest debate in the world to win, since Pilmer is, objectively speaking, an established liar, a shameless fraud and a clown who can’t even defend the contents of his own book, and has precisely zero facts on his side.
On the other hand, by being given a forum for “debate” with somebody serious, Pilmer already has won in a sense, because he’s bringing other people down to his level. That’s the dilemma. These people are not interested in “winning” a debate; facts, logic and reason exist outside their universe. Their objective is simply to waste other people’s time by having a debate, to create the illusion of doubt where none in fact exists. You should have some familiarity with this, because it is much like the objectives of a typical message-board troll.
If you did go, I suggest the standard debate tactic in an impossible-to-take-seriously debate of being more extremist than your opponents. Proudly proclaim your adherence to Marxist-Leninist-Goreism. Explain how Greenies are going to take over the world using specially trained polar bear shock troops ridden by cute little child soldiers who advocate atheism. Ridicule carbon trading permits as a capitalist plot to financially speculate upon the misery of peasants and workers caused by temperature increase, and suggest that an all powerful secret carbon police would be much more cost effective. Support all your statements with quotes from Plimer, Monckton and their mates (Spiked Online, Lubos Motl, Sen Inhofe, etc).
Conspiracy theory lies gain strength from being denied, which (to them) constitutes suppression. If they are openly embraced their true ridiculousness often comes to the surface.
Analogous case: A successful US propaganda campaign during WWII in the pacific was to rebroadcast Japanese propaganda, but inflate all the numbers by 50%. Japanese radio would proclaim “we have sunk 100 US ships!” and the US would rebroadcast (in the same language etc, so it sounded like it came from Japan) “we have sunk 150 US ships!”. Cumulative effect was to make the Japanese broadcasts sound unbelievable and untenable.
Monbiot was successful when debating Plimer on Lateline because he turned the tables and pointed out that it was Plimer and others who were the ones actively deceiving the public.
It might be worth making the risk management argument – i.e. even if you are skeptical of the science, the consequences of you being wrong are far worse than the consequences of being right.
Might also be worth pointing out that there are no climate scientists on the panel (assuming they don’t invite any). Note that Plimer does not count as a climate scientist.