Is Carbon Dioxide Endangering the Planet? Craig Idso vs. Jeffrey Bennett. A Debate

There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet arguing for the affirmative Craig it so Craig please come to the stage arguing for the negative Jeffrey Bennett Jeff please come to the stage well both both debaters will be using displays and that's why we've got that up at the screen and they've all been instructed And how to use the clicker I think it'll go well I trust you'll be able to see the displays from the back of the audience and Craig

you will be speaking for the affirmative so please come to the podium okay great good evening it's a pleasure for me to be here and I would like to thank the Soho Forum for sponsoring this debate in arguing for this resolution I want to make it clear from the outset that there is no debate whatsoever as to Whether or not atmospheric co2 or carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas when present in the atmosphere this one carbon and two oxygen molecule indeed has the capacity to absorb infrared radiation and warm the planet there is also

no debate as to whether or not the concentration of atmospheric co2 is rising over the past two centuries it has increased from meager zero point zero to eight percent of the atmosphere by volume to a still meager 0.04 1% Today furthermore there is no argument that global temperatures are warmer today than they were 50 100 or even 200 years ago the top occur question which is open to discussion however and for which we are all here this evening is whether or not the modern increase in atmospheric co2 has caused or is presently causing dangerous global

warming warming so severe that it is threatening life all across the planet supporters of the dangerous co2 induce Global warming hypothesis whom I will hereafter referred to affectionately as climate alarmists because of their concern or alarm about this issue typically cite the high degree of correlation that exists between historical proxy records of temperature and atmospheric co2 as in pillar as empirical support for their thesis and to that end you have all likely seen some version of this figure which displays historic temperature and Co2 reconstructions from the Vostok ice core in Antarctica for the past 400,000

years now given the strong relationship that exists between these two variables showing that higher levels of atmospheric co2 coincide with warmer temperatures well lower levels of co2 correspond with colder ones climate alarmists make the inference that changes in atmospheric co2 caused the historic changes in temperature and because atmospheric co2 is a greenhouse Gas they thus contend that any rise in co2 beyond the upper bound of its historic concentration of the recent geologic past will unequivocally cause unprecedented global warming furthermore they opine as noted in the recent Paris climate treaty and elsewhere that such warming becomes

dangerous when planetary temperatures reach a threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial values due to a host of temperature Induced climate related catastrophes and they claim that the only hope to avoid such disaster and destruction which they say is already underway is for society to immediately reduce and scale back its co2 emissions in order to achieve a policy of Net Zero emissions by 2050 but how accurate is this narrative in answering this question let us return to our previous figure and examine the historic temperature and co2 records more critically certainly these two Variables experienced a

fairly high degree of correlation over the time period shown however it doesn't take a rocket scientist or in this case a climatologist to recognize and understand the fact that correlation among two variables does not prove causation every textbook on statistics will teach you that and they will also teach you that a hypothesis of causation among two variables can be rejected if there is no statistically significant Correlation between them or if the correlation fails to be maintained in a consistent and expected manner across time applying such principles to the case we are considering here we can

therefore confidently state that if carbon dioxide is indeed the all-important control knob of temperature that climate alarmists claimed it to be then changes in atmospheric co2 should always precede changes in temperature and because co2 Is a greenhouse gas to prove causation those changes must always be such that a rise in co2 induces a corresponding rise in temperature whereas a decline in co2 must always induce a corresponding drop in temperature current observations are consistent observations to the contrary if presence in the historic record would therefore serve to invalidate a causation claim as well as demonstrate that

atmospheric co2 is nothing more than a bit player among the Many factors that drive climate change so what do the records show many of you may be surprised to learn that the historic temperature and atmospheric co2 records do indeed violate the aforementioned principles of causation and they do so more often than they maintain them multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies for example have demonstrated that following the termination of each of the past several global ice ages air temperatures have Always risen well in advance of the increase in atmospheric co2 in fact during these glacial terminations which represent

the most dramatic warming events experienced on earth over the past million years the air co2 content does not even begin to rise until some four hundred to three thousand years after planetary warming starts now this next slide illustrates the observed temporal lag in co2 is produced by a team of researchers examining glacial Termination of three two hundred and forty five thousand years ago in particular note the temperature proxies shown in red which has been shifted by the authors to the left so as to match the rapid rise in atmospheric co2 that followed eight hundred years

later and remember this leading rise in temperature and subsequent lag in co2 increase which relationship is opposite climate alarmists expectations is a consistent and proven feature at the Termination of all ice ages in Earth's recent geologic history another violation of the principles of causation in the temple in the co2 temperature relationship is witnessed at the onset of ice ages here scientists report that temperatures always drop first at the start of the glacial periods and they do so well before the air co2 concentration begins its decline what is more similar to glacial terminations these data also

indicate that the co2 decrease is Observed at the beginning of the ice ages lag behind the temperature decrease is often by several thousand years other equal equally problematic findings in the co2 temperature relationship have been discovered by scientists examining periods other than the onset or termination of the most recent ice ages including times when co2 rises and temperatures fall times when co2 Falls and temperatures rise or times when a change in either of these two variables Or parameters evokes no change in the other and once again such changes in co2 are typically followed to or

observed to follow changes in temperature from hundreds to thousands of years a more recent example of such contrary behavior as illustrated in this graphic of atmospheric co2 and temperature during the current Holocene where it is seen that for 7,000 of the past 10,000 years atmospheric co2 concentrations rose well air temperatures declined now think About that if co2 was indeed the potent climate controlling greenhouse gas that climate alarmists claimed it to be global temperatures would not have declined 1.3 degrees Celsius in response to the concomitant 25 part per million increase in atmospheric co2 that occurred over

this period rather this rise in co2 should have warmed planetary temperatures but it didn't the harsh reality is in conjunction with all the other conflicting and contrary Observations I've already shown you regarding the historical relationship between atmospheric co2 and temperature it leaves little doubt that forces other than co2 play a much greater role in controlling and driving changes in global temperature and as one final example of this fact we will next examine the most one most recent 150 years of the instrumental temperature record over this period it is estimated that carbon dioxide concentrations Increased about

40% and global temperatures rose between 0.8 and 1 degrees C 1 degrees Celsius according to many climate alarmists some 3/4 to 100% of this observed temperature rise was of anthropogenic origin most all of which warming they ascribed to the concomitant increase in atmospheric co2 this is because notwithstanding the plethora of observational data that demonstrates otherwise the only Narrative climate alarmists are willing to embrace regarding the co2 temperature relationship is one in which atmospheric co2 is a powerful greenhouse gas whose increase will always result in climate warming and based upon that narrative they have constructed multiple

highly sophisticated though imperfect computer climate models which do not surprisingly project dangerous global warming is underway in response to the modern and still ongoing rise near co2 content well The historic record of co2 and temperature relationship over the past half million years certainly proves problematic to these to this thesis and actuality one really need only examined the most recent 150 years to recognize there is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of co2 are causing dangerous global warming one red flag that immediately pops up when focusing on this time period is the observation that

despite a consistent And near exponential rise in atmospheric co2 over the past 150 years temperatures fluctuated between periods of both global warming and global cooling in addition it is difficult if not impossible for climate alarmists to adequately reconcile the fact that the two largest warming events that occurred in this record the first between 1910 and 1945 and the second between 1975 and 2005 experienced nearly identical rates and magnitudes of warming despite an Atmospheric co2 increase in the latter event that was 5 times that which occurred during the former event nor is it easy for climate

alarmists to adequately explain without abandoning their co2 induced global warming thesis how a three decade long cooling event can follow a three and a half decade long warming event when the co2 increased during the cooling event was twice that which occurred during the preceding warming event the only way to Properly reconcile each of these contrary observations is for climate alarmists to admit they have overestimated the warming power of atmospheric co2 and if you haven't yet been convinced of this fact I offer the following additional evidence in this slide the record of the historic temperatures of

the pass for ice age cycles is presented notice that the peak warmth of the preceding four interglacial periods was between One and two degrees Celsius higher than the then that observed during the current interglacial in which we now live despite there being 45% more co2 in the present atmosphere thus even if temperatures were too warm another one or two degrees C above their current values in the near future there is no way such warming can definitively be attributed to the additional co2 humans have added to the atmosphere in the modern era because the higher Temperatures

in each of the past four interglacials occurred under co2 concentrations that were about half the value as they are today another problematic issue for climate alarmists is the recent global warming pause or temperature hiatus despite an 11% increase in atmospheric co2 over the past two decades which increased represents one-fourth of the total increase in co2 during the modern era global temperatures have shown little if Any warming not surprisingly not one of their climate models predicted this temperature plateau expecting warming they all failed to see it coming and speaking of the models according to theory inherent

in all climate models co2 induce global warming over the past 40 years should show a unique fingerprint in the form of a warming trend that increases with altitude in the tropical troposphere as indicated by the red and orange colors presented in The center of this figure and outlined in blue changes due to solar variability and other known natural factors do not yield this pattern however as shown in the next slide real observations do not match this model expected Theory each of the red bars and this graphic shows warming that should have occurred in the tropical

upper tropospheric period 1979 to 2017 as predicted by simulations from 102 different climate models the average predicted warming rate over this nearly Four decades long period as shown by the black horizontal dashed line is 0.44 degrees celsius per decade in contrast radiosonde measurements obtained in this portion of the atmosphere as shown in blue reveal that the actual warming rate is three times smaller than that predicted by the models this divergence between model projections and observational data is even more evident in this next figure which plots both predicted and observed Temperature anomalies of the upper tropical

troposphere once again observational data reveal that the model derived projections of co2 induce global warming are running far too hot so much so in fact that mathematical analyses confirm a statistically significant difference between the two temperature series now that key fact alone is sufficient to provide more than enough of a credible scientific basis for invalidating all of the climate models And their associated predictions in closing considering such as each of these several evidences I presented to you it is truly disingenuous for climate alarmists to claim with any degree of certitude that the modern temperature increased

bears an anthropogenic fingerprint or that rising atmospheric co2 is causing dangerous global warming there exists far too much data to the contrary and because the models all fail in this regard the global warming debate Should really end here for pretty much all of the additional ancillary climate related predictions made by climate alarmists rely upon the unrealistic temperature rise predicted by their invalidated climate models and thus we have no alternative but to conclude that indeed there is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of co2 are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the

planet [Applause] Jeff Jeffrey Bennett for the negative thank you very much for coming out tonight I really appreciate us seeing such a big crowd and I thank you too Jean and the soho form and Reason magazine for sponsoring this debate this is the first time I've ever done a formal debate I know it's also Craig's the first time so we appreciate your being kind to us here Thanks So I take issue with most of maybe all of what Craig said there but there'll be time for my rebuttal later and there will be time for the

audience to ask questions later so I want to just focus on that resolution which says there is quote little or no evidence of any danger from global warming now I'm gonna start with a caveat I'm an astronomer not a climate scientist so there's plenty of intricacies of climate science that I can't speak to with authority However it turns out that astronomy offers a really good way to approach this topic in terms of understanding what the actual evidence is so I'm gonna start with what I like to call a tale of two planets here so what

you see on the screen is Earth and Venus and they are shown to scale and you can see that they're both basically the same size in addition to both being the same size we know from other data that they are in most respects almost identical planets Except for one you can see that the surface temperatures are enormous ly different Earth has a pleasant temperature Venus is hot enough to melt lead and what I'd like to get you to do is think the way scientists think when they start to see something like this which is the

first ask why would two planets that are otherwise so similar differ in this one particular way now most people first guess that the answer is distance From the Sun because Venus is closer to the earth but you can see here this is our scale model of the solar system in Washington DC outside the Air and Space Museum if you look here at the Sun right there and then you see where Venus and Earth are if you imagine a giant bonfire at the Sun well sure Venus is gonna be a little bit closer to it but

not enough to account for that enormous temperature difference so if it's not the distance from the Sun that explains the Difference in these planets temperatures what is and the answer is the greenhouse effect which Craig mentioned this is well understood science we get energy from the Sun in the terms of visible light the surface of a planet returns it in the form of infrared light represented by those red arrows and greenhouse gases the blue dots in this picture like water vapour carbon dioxide and methane absorb and re-emit the remit the infrared light And thereby adding

energy to the heat and surface and lower atmosphere of a planet and this works actually just like a blanket does if you put on a blanket on a cold night the blanket itself doesn't give off any heat the reason it warms you up is because it slows the escape of your own body heat and the greenhouse effect works like a blanket for planets and the more greenhouse gas blue dots in this picture the more that your planet is going to warm up now if You've never heard of this before and you're thinking like a scientist

the way I asked you to you might say well Jeff that's a very nice story but why should I believe you and the reason you should believe me is because of the evidence so first off we can actually measure the greenhouse effect in the laboratory you basically put gases in a tube rezar how they interact with different wavelengths of light and this is not new science it's Been done since 1856 then once you have all those measurements you can use them to calculate the expected temperature of a planet and what you find is that when

you look at the predicted temperature with the greenhouse effect you get correct answers when you look without it you don't in fact for the earth is the little equation there shows without the greenhouse effect this planet would be completely frozen over the only recent life exists on this planet is because we Have a naturally occurring greenhouse effect and so that brings us back to wrapping up our tale of two planets on earth we have enough greenhouse gas existing in our atmosphere naturally to make our planet livable venus has so much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere

that it creates an extreme greenhouse effect that explains that very very high temperature and so I like to put it this way if the greenhouse effect is of good thing for life on Earth venus is Absolute proof that it is possible to have too much of a good thing and that is where scientific concern about global warming begins because we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and we know that it's concentration is indeed rising primarily through the burning of fossil fuels and as you can see in this slide since the measurements began in the

late 1950s it's gone from about 315 parts per million up to over 410 parts per million Today in fact as Craig mentioned before we can look at the historic geological record from ice cores from Antarctica and we actually have an 800,000 year record of the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere right now and what you can see is that were actually about 45% higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years and if you extrapolate that curve there upward and say if we keep burning fossil fuels as we're doing today what will Happen you

find that will be a double the pre-industrial value 560 parts per million by the time today's school kids are my age and at triple that value approaching a thousand parts per million by the middle of the next century and that brings me to the summary that I like to call global warming one two three one we know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that makes a planet like Earth warmer than it would be otherwise - we know that the use of Fossil fuels is adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and when you put

those two facts together they're very obvious conclusion 3 is that global warming will happen and in fact this basic physics is well-established we know it through our studies of the greenhouse effect we know it through Venus there's really no doubt about it and even tonight's resolution doesn't dispute this it's just arguing about whether or not it's dangerous for us and So to show you why I think it is dangerous for us and I should just quickly caveat it is not gonna kill off life on Earth it's not even gonna drive us to extinction it is

dangerous for our civilization and there our survival with the current prosperity that we enjoy here's a graph that shows you the global average temperatures going back to 1880 and you can see quite clearly that it is warming it's warmed about a degree Celsius almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit Since 1880 overall it is not a smooth curve because climate climate is complex also some places will warm more or less than others which is why some scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming I usually use global warming but either one is fine so I'm going to

show you a little video here is a video created by NASA you can see the years going by at the bottom and it's showing you regional temperatures blue is cooler than the 20th century average red is Warmer and even as you get into the mid century you can see things fluctuating back and forth well you don't see any clear correlation as Craig already explained to us but keep watching they're into the 90s to thousands to tens I think you're starting to see the pattern quite clearly and you'll notice that the world is warming all around

but in particular in the Arctic regions now what effects does all this have why are these effects dangerous for us well There's lots of different consequences that scientists have investigated but I like to divide them into a five main categories that I'll go through for you now the first are the effects of this regional climate change and here I've picked the pictures in sign from Colorado I live in Boulder Colorado a picture of wildfires that are clearly increasing in magnitude around the world but there's many other effects of there's more hotter days than there used

To be the data show that clearly nights are warmer than they used to be data show that clearly the range of weeds and pests is increasing data show that clearly there are more droughts more floods data show all those things clearly secondly the second major consequence is the increase in storms and extreme weather that you've probably noticed and as you watch the writer reports or experience the weather for yourself and I want to point out this is Not mysterious remember what global warming is doing it's adding more heat and energy to the atmosphere in oceans

and heat and energy are the drivers of weather and in fact for those of you who like numbers the numbers are quite astonishing the greenhouse gases we're releasing have created a global energy imbalance in which Earth's atmosphere and oceans are gaining approximately 250 trillion joules of energy per second Which is the equivalent energy that will be added by detonating for her ocean of a size atomic bombs every second that's measured in a couple of independent ways and when you think about that much energy for her Oshima bombs per second added to the climate system and

you know energy drives heat and weather it's not a surprise that we're seeing more extreme weather events a trend that will only worsen in the future the third major consequence is the melting of sea Ice because the Arctic is warming so much more and that has many other detrimental effects for example because ice reflects a lot of sunlight and water absorbs it the decline in ice coverage actually amplifies other effects of global warming the melting of sea ice also changes the salinity of ocean water and some studies have even tied the reduced ice to changes

in what's been called the polar vortex which may be the cause of some of the extreme winter Events that we've experienced here in the US in recent years the fourth major consequence consequences rising sea level as sea water expands through heating and landlocked ice melts into the oceans scientists still have a lot to learn about how rapidly ice will melt but it's a near certainty just from thermal expansion of the sea water alone that sea level will rise by at least another 1 to 3 feet before the end of this century and possibly much more

Which will not only flood many coastal regions but as New Yorkers will remember with hurricane sandy a storm surge can greatly magnify even a relatively small sea-level rise the fifth major consequence is ocean acidification and that occurs because only about half the carbon dioxide we emit are emitting into the atmosphere staying there the rest is being absorbed some by plants some by the soil and the oceans and in the oceans the carbon dioxide dissolves and Makes the ocean water more acidic the combination of this acidification and the warming ocean temperatures has been linked to coral

reef bleaching declines in ocean fish stocks and many other effects which harm our ability to harvest food from the oceans there's one more general science point I'd like to address and that's the put changes in geological context this is the same 800,000 year ice core record that I showed you before but now showing Global average temperatures on the top as well and we can talk during the audience Q&A about the correlation that's there that Craig disputes but it's real as you can see Earth's climate changes naturally and substantially the bottoms represent ice ages and the

peaks represent the warmer into glacial periods so one of the common questions is if the climate change is naturally like that why should we worry now and The reason is because today's carbon dioxide concentration is rising far beyond what it is done naturally in the past 800,000 years and we actually expect there to be a lag time of a few decades between when the carbon dioxide rises and when the temperature rises and that is why most scientists are very concerned that we will soon see that temperature curve rising similar to the way we see that

carbon dioxide curve rising in fact the only way you would Not be worried about that would be if you thought there might be some reason that the temperature won't respond to this carbon dioxide change which is essentially what Craig was arguing and that gets to an issue called the climate sensitivity this is what Craig and many of the other so-called skeptics often argue in essence they're claiming that there's some mitigating feedback that will limit the temperature changes but no such feedback is known and there's Every reason to believe that the climate really is that sensitive

and not only from the models because as Craig and other skeptics often point out if you look back millions of years there were times when life on Earth thrived when the carbon dioxide concentration was much higher than it is today a thousand parts per million or more but earth was also so warm at that tough those times that there were no ice caps at all and that means that this fact Actually supports the conclusion that temperatures couldn't principle go much higher than they are today and from our understanding of Earth and Venus where you can

be very concerned that they are so I want to summarize I've shown you the overwhelming evidence that makes the one two three case established by a hundred and sixty years of physics that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide really do make planets I've shown you why we expect five major Categories of consequence I've talked a little bit about the fact that this is all supported by evidence well what evidence more than fifty thousand peer-reviewed papers published on original climate research in the past two decades alone and more than 99.9% of those consistent with the consensus view

that global warming poses a threat to civilization the only way you could possibly agree with tonight's resolution that there is Quote little or no evidence is if you believe all this evidence is somehow been faked that somehow the many thousands of scientists who study this the people and organizations and students who support their work are all part of a great conspiracy to deceive you unless you believe that this resolution is not a matter of opinion there is strong and abundant evidence of danger whether you agree that it is really dangerous That's opinion but the act

the fact that there is evidence is undeniable and just in case you think maybe it is all a conspiracy and that there is little or no evidence I'm gonna close with the words of a noted chemist who also happened to be the first major global leader to speak out on this topic before the United Nations this is what she said in 1989 what we are now doing to the world by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate is new in The experience of Earth it is mankind and his activities which are changing

the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways that was Margaret Thatcher and you'll notice that she understood both the science and the threat so unless you think she was part of some vast conspiracy - then it should be clear that tonight's resolution demands a resounding no Roboto from Craig all right you hear me so nothing in dr. Bennett's presentation is sufficient to negate or overturn the facts I presented to you previously although atmospheric co2 is a greenhouse gas it is not the control knob that drives global temperature and it is sure certainly not

causing global warming the historic record is clear a control knob does not consistently lag several hundred to thousands of years behind changes in the parameter it is supposedly governing and a control knob most certainly does not Proceed and produce multiple occurrences of a response that is opposite its expectation climate alarmists want you to ignore such contrary empirical behaviors even though they are far more characteristic of the historic relationship observed between atmospheric co2 and temperature than they are not I would also remind you that the fingerprint of co2 induce global warming the predicted temperature rise in

the upper tropical troposphere Which is supposed to provide the definitive proof validating the climate model projections has failed to show itself in the observational data this fact alone if you accept the scientific method should be more than sufficient to convince you that dangerous global warming is not occurring or that it ever will consequently all the ancillary climate related catastrophes that require a dangerous temperature rise to ensue are also likely unlikely to occur And if we had enough time in this presentation period I would present you with a full data-driven rebuttal showing a lack of confidence

in the claims that dr. Bennett brought up but alas we don't have that time so I'll leave it up to you to bring and ask me those questions that concern you the most during the Q&A period and I will share with you some equally damning data and then that firmer demonstrate a further demonstrate that the planet is not in danger of Imminent peril and because of an increasing co2 and in fact the reality is pretty much the opposite rising concentrate of atmospheric co2 are actually benefiting humanity and the biosphere in a great number of ways

now to give you just a taste of such benefits I'm going to end by sharing with you the results of a recent scientific study examining the health and vitality of the terrestrial biosphere over the past 34 Years now employing a series of globally distributed datasets the authors of the study examined changes in planetary gross primary productivity over the period 1982 to 2015 but before I advance to the next frame however I want you to consider that since 1980 the earth has weathered three of the warmest decades of the modern instrumental temperature record as well as

a handful of intense and persistent El Nino events large-scale deforestation as well as a Supposedly unprecedented forest fires and episodes of persistent and widespread severe weather events including droughts hurricanes and floods at the same time the Earth's co2 concentration has increased by more than 16 percent and the human population has grown by over 55% so global warming alarmists the earth has been in the throes of a veritable climate Armageddon so just how bad has the planet suffered in response to these supposedly Much-feared events well the answer frankly hardly at all despite the many real and

imagined assaults on vegetation and humanity and nature alike including the perceived dangerous co2 induced global warming the terrestrial biosphere has met and overcome these challenges if they even were challenges as indicated in this graphic the spatial distribution of the linear trends in gross primary productivity over the past 34 years are overwhelmingly positive revealing a Persistent and widespread vegetative enhancement which occurred on over 75% of the planets land area and as I see on this cake of good findings the researchers who in conducted this analysis determined that the principal factor responsible for inducing these positive trends

just so happens to be the same factor climb alarmist claim should be obliterating them yep you guessed it rising concentrations of farik co2 just like you learned in fifth Grade science class co2 is plant food and the more co2 we put in the air the better plants grow how ironic how ironic this is even more so when one learns that the next most significant factor contributing to this planetary wide growth stimulation was rising temperatures I'll be at its influence was more than five times less than the positive influence exerted by co2 they would thus seem

that climate alarmists have missed nature's memo recent warming Has not been dangerous and rising atmospheric co2 is benefiting the biosphere thank you very much so I'm actually I'm gonna start with that last point it is true that the earth has been greening as Craig just showed us but you might be wondering how do we know that it's caused by carbon dioxide rather than changing in agricultural processes and so on where Craig didn't tell you was that the way we know it's caused by carbon dioxide and it is is through Models but remember earlier he told

you he doesn't trust models so which is it in this case he's correct and the models are correct more important he claims that this greening is obviously beneficial but that doesn't make any sense if I told you that you've been gaining a lot more cells in your brain it might mean that you're learning a lot more but it could also mean you've got brain cancer and in fact it doesn't take much digging into the research to learn That the research that Craig claims is supporting benefits actually is more in line with cancer for example Craig's

the lead author of this thing called the nipcc the basically non-governmental IPCC that claims to refute the IPCC report sends out hundreds of thousands of copies to teachers around the world trying to confuse them and here's their summary for policymakers check one if it comes up that's don't count my time on this That's not what those are not my sides okay there we go so this is from the summer here's summary of the from their report and it says the result what he was Thomas and beneficial greening of the earth and he psyched three references

but I went and looked up those references the first one actually came with a press release saying that the limited benefits do not outweigh great dangers the second one they were so upset at being cited here that they Wrote a rebuttal in which they said they referenced our scientific study but distorted the facts and the third study he cites in the abstract which is the summary that the authors put at the beginning of the paper they actually said some vegetation would benefit however most would suffer an experienced irreversible change this is not an isolated example

the research that he claims as saying one thing is saying the other and you could check for yourself Easily I looked at his website and looked up the various things he talks about his home page has two videos up at the top the first video talks about all the great things that are gonna happen with carbon dioxide in the green of the earth it cites two studies one is again just like the others examples I showed you clearly taken out of the context the second study it cites is his own paper on economic benefits but

nowhere in the video does he tell you that it's his own Self citation which scientifically is not really considered a legitimate practice the second video shows two plants growing under different carbon dioxide concentrations with the one with the higher concentration growing faster well that's not a surprise of course if you give two organisms the same living conditions but one of them you give more nutrients that's gonna grow better but in the real world we have to ask questions like how will our crops do When they are battered by more extreme weather and drought what about

the fact that the weeds are also going to grow faster and that pests will move into new territories as the climate changes the fact that he even posts a video like that suggests he thinks you're pretty easy to fool his website also lists numerous other studies that supposedly support his claims as well as a list of scientists whose research they cite supposedly in support of his claims I went and read a set of those studies and I emailed a sample of those scientists and guess what none of the studies I read actually said what he

says they claimed and every single scientist who responded to my email said they were being taken out of context sample quotes included this is madness what a travesty and where did these weasels come from and the IPCC represents just a body that synthesizes the work of thousands of other Scientists around the world everything they do is transparent explained on their website these are thousands of researchers devoting their lives to real science working very very hard Craig thinks they're all too stupid to understand simple little things like correlation and causation of course they understand these things

and they investigate them and they spend years doing it who does the work that Craig's citing this nipcc he represents well it Has a list of contributors so I looked them up it turned out out of the about a hundred or so people contributing to it only fifteen of them did I find who've ever engaged in anything that might conceivably could be considered original research and climate and none of them are still active researchers today I don't do original climate research either so in that sense I'm kind of like you are you're hearing one thing

you're hearing another thing who do you trust Well you could do what I did look up some of these things for yourself and you'll find that he is presenting a distorted picture of what the scientific community is actually doing and you can walk over to any University your research center walk in talk to the scientists about how they do their work and what they're doing and you'll learn that they're working hard diligently and to the best of their ability to understand this topic clearly Thank you for your spirited debate we get to the Q&A portion

of the evening I'm going to begin by exercising debaters up moderators rather prerogative to ask more questions but you may want to line up but first I want to ask either of you I would at this moment you'll have options to do this throughout the next period of Q&A do either if you want to ask the other question at this moment no do do you want to ask you I do Oh Jeff go ahead Yeah so Craig suppose that someone were to invent a technology that we could attach to our cars and our power plants

that would capture all the carbon dioxide emissions before they get into the air and it could be installed with essentially no cost so we could just keep living exactly as we are but no more greenhouse gas going into the air are you for or against this find alright slide to show you to share why let's go to slide number Let's go to a slide actually sorry let's go to slides 84 please you know there are consequences actually for stopping all co2 emissions a lot of times they think that this is an insurance policy that we

don't we can that there's no reason not to emit co2 but in fact there are consequences if we stop the co2 from rising and part of that is explained here in this graphic which shows you an amalgamation of several studies this is back in 1992 now there's actually Literally been thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies that examine the effects of co2 on plants ok and so there's not just two or three on my website if you can go there and you'll find more than 5,000 experimental results and what these studies all show is that as you

see if you increase the co2 concentration of the atmosphere plants experience an enhanced growth mint enhance growth and that'll translate into many benefits including Agriculture alright so as the population the planet continues to grow how are we going to feed the planet well this is one way that we can do that co2 helps provide this benefit of increasing our agricultural output so there you have a negative thing if we took away the co2 we would not be allowing ourselves to have this benefit and there's a number of researchers that say that by 2050 the earth

could be food insecure because of the rising population of the planet and So that's one what's one negative absolutely that would come is the reduction in agricultural output so so you would be against using this technology that would with no cost stop our co2 emissions and let us keep living otherwise as we are so just to make sure I'm clear on that I've seen your quote saying that no one knows the optimal co2 level for earth but you're willing to run the experiment even though Got tens of thousands of scientists who say this is dangerous

even if we could do it for free and stop it you would just keep running the experiment to see what happens to it look at this graphic here you can see the benefits of co2 go out beyond up to 2,000 parts for me so again you got tens of thousands of we're never gonna get to 2,000 parts per million what are these benefits because the most of the estimates today suggest that We'll never get there even if we burned all the fossil fuel reserves that are available going higher at all so you just think we

should keep going higher even if we could stop it for three there's absolutely positive benefits that are gonna they're gonna come from it it's not a danger to do you have a question you have a question for Jessica preface that question I would like to show a figure so let's go to figure number 60 number 60 please so this this Is a graphic here you know you mentioned you brought up yeah for that extreme weather events are increasing well how come we see data like this where tropical cyclone frequency this is global hurricane data from

1971 to 2018 and it's looking at the frequency of hurricanes in tropical storms and we look at this graphic and we don't see an increase okay so they're not increasing we could go to the next slide as well intensity this measure is a measure of Intensity hurt global hurricane energy accumulated energy we see again no trend upward again if co2 was the controlling factor of these extreme weather events why do we not see that occurring here it's always possible to cherry-pick the data this isn't cherry-picking what you have this is this is global data so

again we've got thousands of scientists who've looked at all kinds of data come to the conclusion that extreme weather events Are increase you're just reviewing with us data here this participants overall it's like picking one you're picking one particular topic extreme events overall insurance companies are noticing this in fact they actually keep some of the best data on in my global warming primer which you can read for free online because I have the whole thing posted there you can see the data collected by me gari which which which shows the Increasing number of extreme weather

events so but even if we weren't seeing the signal yet and we are we know from the basic physics of global warming that as we keep doing this it's gonna keep it's going to happen the idea that more greenhouse gas will make a planet get warmer is as clear as the idea that dropping a ball off a building it's gonna fall down so if I showed you data from additional studies that showed different extreme weather events did not Occur would you like to see those data or would you not want to see them you can

show me anything you want I'm not a climate scientist I'm an astronomer who's looking at what the experts are saying and again so do you want me to show you the data or not okay okay let's go to the next slide then please show forsen well make it just one please make up let's go to 70 then this is one that you brought up you number 70 this is a study that came out in 2014 Okay and it's looking at dakedo variation of global burned area this is this this is the best science that's been

done to some global data now my colleague here can pull out and cherry-pick the data and show you a particular study where the fire had increased but this is an amalgamation of all of those data over the globe and what you see here is what a downward trend in the globally burned area all right so that that refutes this how do You explain that that this is the data you're gonna refute the data so there this particular graph I haven't seen but there was a similar thing you haven't seen too I'd be happy to show

you some of you may have heard of wrote a similar op eds in a Wall Street Journal a few years ago and he cited a study from penis and just like I did with your papers I actually contacted the authors of that study because I was confused I said it looks like the wildfires are Going down and they said you need to read our paper more carefully it's being completely missing misinterpreted in that Wall Street Journal I can't tell you exactly what you're misinterpreting here all I can tell you is again allisyn's and that's being

misinterpreted isn't it yeah word friend you picked really going up you said I can't pick one slide but you did pick one slide thousands of scientists are telling me that the wildfires are indeed Increased I have a quick question to put to each of you moderators prerogative and then we'll leave it to questions for the audience first question to you - Craig what you you keep saying that carbon dioxide doesn't seem to be causally related it you don't get the correlation and causal terms what else could be affecting the temperature change what else could it

be absolutely natural let's go to slide 64 This isn't a temperature but it'll help explain that so what you see here this is this is natural variation in sea ice cover okay over the last 10,000 years I showed you the slide of temperature over the last 10,000 years this is sea ice at variation as you can see natural variability is huge over these longer timescales and even on some shorter time scales as well now we are presently in the far left portion of this graphic okay and you can see that the variations That we see

right now over art the time period of our lives is minuscule in comparison to what can occur over much longer time scales so Nature has a way on its own via natural factors that drive most of this now what is it probably it's probably solar related changes with the Sun it could be it could be the ocean internal oscillations and so forth the fact is we just don't know and I'm willing to admit that it's clear co2 is not the draw the Control knob of climate you know coming Jeff before I get to yes sir

co2 is the control knob of time and that's well established by the greenhouse effect and I do want to point out again you know I haven't seen this particular graph either what I do know is every study I read that Craig claimed was supporting his point of view when I asked read the study it wasn't you could check that for yourself - you can pick slides Out of context any way you want it doesn't change the reality of more than 50,000 peer-reviewed papers 99.9% of them supporting the dangers of global warming just a comment on

that actually that is that is false there's a number of studies that don't show this to be problematic and I and I also invite you to look at the data for yourselves it's not hard to understand that those who receive billions of dollars in funding for this issue are gonna circle the Wagons and say yes it's a problem and we need to keep studying - you Jeff the problem that some of us have who read the New York Times for example is that I came across in 1989 I read a prediction that Manhattan would be

under water by the year 2000 I saw Inconvenient Truth and it was about two years ago that Manhattan would have been underwater we're now in the basement we're still not underwater and so and so all of these all of these thousands of Peer-reviewed scientists keep telling us things that never come true so we it e 'it's a beginning to get skeptical of what all those peer-reviewed people are doing with themselves so could you address that so you probably also remember that in the 1970s they claimed that the globe was gonna cool and so on exactly

yeah it's not true if you actually look at the studies back then I was in college studying this that studying some Of this at the time the papers that were being published were saying warming will be coming Time magazine ran a story about cooling now think magazine is not a scientist Al Gore is not a scientist the New York Times writers are not scientists what the scientists are saying and if you look back at what James Hanson predicted about the temperature in 1980 the actual warming that's occurred since then is right in the middle of

the range That he predicted the if you look at the actual scientific papers that were coming out at that time everything that we are seeing today is actually quite well in line with that in fact the famous Swedish chemist Iranian back in 1900 did a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the physics of the greenhouse effect of what would happen with a certain rise in co2 and his back of the envelope to calculation turns out to be quite close to what the most Complex computer models are showing today that I can't help the media over blowing things

sometimes but that doesn't change the fact that the clear scientific case and evidence has been building for a hundred and sixty years and you want you are saying contrary I read something that was a quote from a press release 1989 in the year 2000 Manhattan would be under water from a climate scientist from the UN and you're saying James Hansen all the rest of Their forecasts have actually been on the money is that right they have been there's always predicted uncertainty ranges and they have been right pretty close to the center of their uncertainty records

please slide 73 yeah okay let's see how well those predictions are going okay this is a recent study that came out last year in the Journal of marine science and engineering there's the reference please go look it up you'll see I'm not distorting the truth what You look at here is these are model projections of sea level rise from the period not from the period 2007 to 2016 compared against observations and it has error bars here as well the dark lines the dark horizontal lines are the tides trends and what's actually occurring in the data

the light blue line is the projections made under three different scenarios of the climate models and what you find as I have highlighted here at yellow over the past Decade the in Samba model mean projections of future sea level rise are approximately twice the magnitude of that which is observed in the tide gauges the models are failing and as I told you during my presentation sea-level rise ice melting is the thing that we have the DIF most difficult time understanding right now we know there's a problem with the models for sea level rise that's right

the overestimate at all okay thank you and QA please state Your question as a question and you know I have to go up to the mic for a question sir sorry question please go ahead yes my question is for Jeff so I assume that you're in favor of banning fossil fuels at some point I'm in favor of replacing our current energy sources with ones that don't release co2 into the atmosphere but right so I I'm not in favor of us just getting rid of something without having something are you in favor of nuclear power I

am oh I Should just well on that topic I'll point out people won't worry about the dangers of nuclear waste and nuclear waste is a real problem in an hour a coal plant produces more toxic waste than a nuclear plant plant produces in a year and the nuclear power plants waste will be in principle dangerous for thousands of years the coal plants waste is dangerous permanently it doesn't even have a half-life it's dangerous for ever so yes I'm in favor of nuclear power Comment I'm in favor of whatever energy is the cheapest that we can

get to help raise humanity out of energy poverty next questions is fairly cleanly why is it that for certain graphs you've included error bars but certain graphs you have not specifically the time lag graphs for the ice cores right how precise are the time measurements for for it for the temperature the corresponding co2 measurements there now you'd have to go back and look at the Individual papers those graphics come to be larger than 800 or 400 years no I don't believe so based on what what the authors published that they all came out and say

I gave you those several they'll come out and they show you Kim the back Factory in the life back prison yeah okay yeah yeah but that could show a trend even over over a long period of time even though the specific 400 800 year intervals may not have that level Of precision that you account for in the lag and that's a possibility but again when you see this over and over and over again those error bars be known right so again you know the idea that the temperature leads the co2 in some of these cases

is well known it's not a surprise we understand perfectly why that occurs that something to do called the Milankovitch cycles you can read about it on my online global warming primer Craig's making the assumption That when the scientists see this they don't understand correlation versus cause a lot of thousands of scientists who spent their year their lives devoted to study of this who've gotten PhDs don't understand a simple idea of Statistics of course they understand us and they've studied it in depth they go around the world to Antarctica to Greenland to isolated Islands they risk

their lives oftentimes collecting the data that it takes to try to understand What's going on here and we do understand it today and yet you know I don't have time to get into it because I want to have other questions but again you go to my global warming primer and see how what the explanation for that fact is and it's not that the scientists are too stupid to understand correlation and causation and of course I don't claim that obviously scientists are very smart it's but they're overestimating the Influence of co2 on climate and that is

a very debatable point yeah next question yeah one of the major scandals was that years ago the scientist who believed in global warming rejected papers they didn't agree with and we're all heavily invested in the companies in science I'm a retired physician anything you publish in medicine you have to reveal every stock you own and all the relationships you have and If you read the papers several very fine people how to leave Memorial sloan-kettering because they've gotten shares from the companies that we're doing research on please comment on that and the fact that in science

you say it's a closed issue you never say it's a closed issue thirty-five years ago people were doing radical mastectomies on breast cancer the data showed that a lumpectomy was just as good people were doing major surgery on peptic ulcers Today you take antibiotics a few days so the first point I'd like you to address is the question of investments and not revealing what you have and rejections of papers that disagree with you and the second is how can you say anyone who knows anything about signs like John Kerry that it's a closed issue the

question is dress to you Jeff okay so I'll start with your second part I don't know any scientists who say it's a closed issue if it was we wouldn't still Be doing research on it we have enough understanding to know that we face a substantial and real risk that there are dangers being posed we can't say exactly what's going to happen that's why it requires continued study up to your first point I don't know what companies people for the past hundred and 60 years have been investing in that's a bias them in this way I

doubt if that was the case certainly for even if you're talking about government funding until The 1980s scientists were doing work on this topic and they weren't getting government funding because the government funding wasn't there as the government responds in terms of where the research dollars go to where the research needs are and as people saw that there was a need for more research in these areas the government provided more money for that I can guarantee you none of these scientists who were tens of thousands of scientists are getting Rich they are living on academic

research salaries they're not anything like the salaries that most of people here in New York are seen they're not getting rich off this they do not have these conflicts of interest as far as peer review peer review sometimes makes mistakes no doubt about that but you have to have some system for evaluating your papers and moving forward if you are working on a home remodel project you got to get a Certain number of bids and you're gonna get those bids from remodel contractors not from random people you've got again tens of thousands of scientists who've

been studying this and coming to the same conclusion you got Craig and a few other people at the nipcc none of them active in research who are saying something different so in actuality there's a lot more scientists that are against this issue that would support the the action Deferment be affirmative on a resolution tonight and unfortunately a lot of them just don't speak out or they wait till they're retired before they can speak out because they feel threatened but that being a side you know science progresses on the scientific method right it doesn't progress on

how many people agree with you or how many people you think agree with you it progresses on empirical analysis of a hypothesis that's what the scientific method is That's what we've gotten away from in today's postmodern society it's all about you know so many people agree and so forth but it's not how science works you know Albert Einstein said you know it's only takes one scientist to prove them wrong it doesn't take a hundred or a thousand it just takes one that can prove them wrong that's nice too please okay thank you both for coming

tonight seeing how scientists can predict co2 levels in the future our scientists able To see what rather predict post dict what the co2 levels would have been if there was no Industrial Revolution and if we as humans never started burning coal what you check the first question is like why don't you go first sure okay so if if we had not started the Industrial Revolution for all practical purposes the co2 concentration would likely have remained around 270 to 280 parts per million and I say that because that's the concentration that it Reached during all those

previous interglacial sheíll periods that we shall be both show graphs of so that's about where it would have stayed it would have ocellated between anywhere from a hundred and eighty parts per million it at the depths of the lily of the ice ages to about 270 280 parts per million during the interglacial so it's about a hundred part per million oscillation that we see i we agree I see ya next question please yes thank you Venus when I first saw references to Venus and how Venus proves the greenhouse theory because its atmosphere is mostly carbon

dioxide I thought well that's it seems like a good point I'd better go look into that and I've looked into it and the counterpoint is oh the the atmosphere of Venus is like a hundred times more dense than the atmosphere of the earth and that density 100% explains The higher temperature without even getting to the greenhouse theory and I either of the two of you have comments on that sure density alone doesn't do it Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen and they have no effect on our planets temperature at all because they're not greenhouse

gases they don't absorb infrared radiation carbon dioxide when it's dense does have the effect because it's a greenhouse gas that absorbs the infrared question yeah just Make you know it and that's that's a nice parallel or you said he's using there but one thing you have to consider too is is there is a difference between us beyond that and that is earth is it is a living planet right there's other forces that act here that don't act there for example you can have here's a feedback that'll happen with with extra co2 by itself it didn't

it increases the photosynthesis of phytoplankton in the ocean as you raise the co2 concentration Those phytoplankton a substance called DMS which is a precursor to act as cloud condensation nuclei and as so as a co2 concentration goes up more DMS gets produced that can then act as a negative feedback to incoming solar radiation so it's there's other factors that don't make that at one-to-one correlation our next question this questions for both of you I've noticed that you have modestly different measurements for parts per million of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but you do have extremely

different scaling and I've noticed that does change how we're able to perceive those differences and your timelines are extremely different I was wondering if you could speak to the methodologies behind getting those measurements and your sources for those measurements I'm not quite sure what your further I thought our units and our timelines are basically in agreement yeah they basically are from from the Slides we had seen we noticed that you one of you had 280 parts per million for the modern era and one of you had about 480 was the concentration in the year 1750

batana the Industrial Revolution 315 is where it was in the late 50s when the measurement started at LAN Aloha and 410 is where it is today can I jump in estimation moderators probably I'm curious about one point you made Jeff when you talk about correlation and timing I mean I'm I'm in economics and I I do think that if something is happening and then the thing is supposed to be causing happier before it does then that's simply so because the scientists work that one out so according give you the brief explanation according to our basic

understanding of the AI cycles of ice ages that the earth goes through the triggering mechanism is small changes in Earth's axis tilt and the ov acuity the ellipticity of Earth's orbit and those Changes there's three major cycles and when you put them all together they're called the Milankovitch cycles and they actually reproduce the pattern of ice ages quite well so the idea is that when for example when an ice age begins these natural changes in orbit and and rotation axis are causing a little less sunlight to fall on the earth which cools the earth now

that cooling the amount of cooling by itself is not enough to explain this huge Drop into the ice ages what it does is it initiates a feedback process so the earth cools a little bit due to less sunlight coming in that slightly cooler temperature means the oceans can absorb more carbon dioxide and a little bit more ice freezes the freezing ice reflects more sunlight by absorbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that reduces the greenhouse effect and that further drives us to colder temperatures which brings even more Carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as even

more ice which keeps driving the temperature down and to where plummeted in that ice age and then on the return it's the same thing so we actually expect that the temperature should be leading because it's being caused at the trigger is that change in the amount of sunlight that that doesn't imply that there are lots of other factors that affect temperature other than carbon dioxide no Doesn't there are lots of other factors but that is the driver because that is the one the greenhouse effect so another common question is the greenhouse effect on earth there's

actually more greenhouse effect due to water vapor than due to carbon dioxide by several times however water vapor when the temperature around changes it increases or condenses or evaporates very rapidly in a response to what's going on with the temperature around it Carbon dioxide doesn't respond quickly and therefore it's the driver of what happens the water vapor just responds and amplifies once the carbon dioxide is coming and I'm comet coming I think that kind of what you said is really kind of just just proves which what you're saying carbon if that's the case if if

the Menk of it recycles and then if the water vapor are driving this then co2 certainly is not no co2 is the driver that temped the Milankovitch cycles Trigger and it's the changes in co2 due to those temperature changes that then have an amplifying process with the water vapor if that was the case the sensitivity the change in co2 that hundred parts per million that we saw we would we would expect to see a lot greater change or even less of a change now with the change in co2 I think we expect to see exactly

what we're seeing it's not coverage still alive No he's 18 okay we unfortunately don't have any time for more questions and but but one more question I heard I took a break and I just have to fly home I took too much moderators prerogative go ahead guess what one big concern about carbon dioxide is that as you get more acidifies the ocean and retards carbonation or carbonyl fication kills sea life but as you pointed out over most of the last 550 million years Carbon dioxide has been over a hundred over a thousand ppm is as

much as 3,000 ppm for an adenine Royer and so if so it's only in the last 10 million years or so that we've had these very low co2 eras during the ice ages and Permian if so where does all the limestone come from if limestone can't form at these high levels of co2 if it's dangerous why do we have limestone all over the place the answer is because Earth actually has remember I showed you that slide that Shows Venus has 200,000 times as much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere as Earth does that's earth actually has

that same 200,000 times as much carbon dioxide but it is all in limestone because it dissolved in the oceans billions of years ago so the limestone comes from all that carbon dioxide dissolved over billions of years changes by a few thousand parts per million are small in comparison I'm afraid that will have to wrap it up at That thank you for your question I will go to the summations Craig please so in closing I would like to thank the so home forum for sponsoring this event dr. Bennett for being a cordial debate adversary and for

each of you for attending here this evening the underlying question in the climate change debate is whether or not atmospheric co2 is a powerful greenhouse gas capable of causing dangerous global warming that will threaten our planet in Testing this hypothesis I have provided you with multiple evidences based on real-world observations that it is not more often than climate alarmists are willing to omit the historical record defines co2 as the dependent variable following changes in temperature with a lag time that varies from hundreds to thousands of years how can a cause perceived to be so powerful

often so often trail it's supposed effect and how can a cause Elicit responses that are directly opposite its hypothesized effect the answer is quite simple and it doesn't take a climatologist to figure it out it is because atmospheric co2 is not the all-important greenhouse gas that climate alarmists claimed it to be sufficient proof is documented in historic records sufficient proof is also found in the missing fingerprint of co2 induced global warming of the tropical upper troposphere that Observations fail to capture and sufficient proof is noted in a vast array of real-world data that failed to

match model projections for a host of these subordinate temperature related climate catastrophes consequently there is little to no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming now using another common-sense approach to recognize this fact let us return to this figure which if you recall shows That all four of the preceding interglacial periods in earth's temperature history reached values which were one to two degrees Celsius warmer than the present and they did so naturally despite 45% less co2 in the air than there is now I doubt you would find anyone on

the planet except maybe your local New York representative Alexandria Accio portes who would take the extreme position that temperatures during those Interglacials were dangerous yet recall from the comments I made at the beginning of this debate that the Paris climate treaty actually defines dangerous warming as temperatures that that cross a threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial values well as you all know global temperatures have already warmed between 0.8 and 1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times therefore using the Paris climate treaty standard which is echoed by climate Alarmists elsewhere the planet cannot warm another half

to three-quarters of a degree Celsius or climate Armageddon will ensue seriously come on give us a break such warming if it occurs with still place planetary temperatures some point three to one point three degrees Celsius below the warmth of the temperatures experienced during most of the previous four interglacial periods which by no means were periods of planetary disaster clearly the model Based projections of the consequences of rising atmospheric co2 are way off the mark dangerous co2 induce global warming is not presently occurring nor will it likely ever occur in the future likewise pessimistic forecasts of

ecosystem degradation and collapse failed to match observed trends showing widespread enhancement of planetary vegetation these and other phantom pillars that form the foundation of all Climate alarmists claims are merely the conceptual constructs of woefully inadequate computer climate models real-world observational data in contrast do not support a catastrophic or even problematic view of global warming consequently I implore each of you to honor science and the scientific method by voting in affirmative for our resolution tonight thank you [Applause] thank you so um let's get back to the Resolution the resolution claims there is little or no evidence

that global warming poses any dangers to us now Craig's given you a lot of claims of things that would show that but he hasn't shown that there's little or no evidence I've shown you that there is a tremendous amount of evidence in fact what I've shown you is that we have more than 160 years of scientific study of the greenhouse effect and planetary warming establishing that basic physics Of the problem and showing that it is quite real and that carbon dioxide is the driver we've got more than 50,000 peer-reviewed publications just the last two decades

alone this represents the work of thousands of PhD scientists supported by many more students it's this research has been conducted under the auspices of every major University NASA NOAA the Department of Defense Department of Energy and equivalents and virtually every other nation just this Year in January the Department of Defense and the national intelligence agencies released their national threat assessment and in which they said global warming poses significant danger for our society the national climate ascent assessment put out in 2017 under the trump administration said the same thing hundreds of pages of research backing the

fact that we have a real problem Craig wants you to believe that all this vast amount of evidence doesn't count That's the only way he can say little or no evidence but as I've noted the only way it could not count would be if all these scientists don't know what they're talking about or there's some sort of mind-boggling conspiracy of all these scientists universities government agencies and as I showed you including Margaret Thatcher me the resolution is factually false because the evidence is real and it overwhelmingly shows that human caused Global warming poses a danger

to the future of our civilization but I want you to do more than just vote no I want you to leave here ready to look up for yourself and understand that Craig he seems like a nice person but he is running a misinformation campaign deliberately with the attempt to try and fool you and the rest of the public into believing that all these scientists are out somehow to get you and to destroy your lifestyle they're not and in fact We didn't get a chance I was hoping it would come up during the Q&A but I'll

tell you what I'm a free market evangelist and I believe if we charge the true cost of our fossil fuels including what they do to our health our with their pollution the costs of national security of protecting the oil supply of all the money we've given terrorists by buying fossil fuels for them over the years if we included all those costs we would find that switching To any other source whether it's renewables nuclear anything else or even sequestering the carbon from the fossil fuels would be far cheaper we'd be getting energy far cheaper than we're

paying today we're actually overpaying for our energy right now because we let the fossil fuel companies just dump their stuff in and make all the rest of us pay for it by the way there's a word for that where somebody does stuff and makes everybody else pay socialism we Have a socialist energy economy today and if we recognize the reality this problem we can solve it in a way that promotes the free market stops the socialist spread of the energy market has more personal freedom for all of us and at the same time benefits us

with more cleaner and cheaper energy leading us all to a brighter future now we live in a time when we often hear about how polarized we all are but I want to tell you what we all agree on from the most Extreme left for the most extreme right we all want a better world for our children and grandchildren so I'm gonna close with an exercise designed to personalise this issue I want you to imagine that you have to write a letter and a time capsule for 50 years for your grandchildren to open at which point

they will be on average about the same age you are today and here's what I want you to write dear grandchildren as I Write this in 2019 people are arguing about whether global warming is a real problem and if so how serious it will be for you when you were my age I have examined the evidence and I have decided to fill in your decision hope your world is a good one love you what are they going to think about the actions that you took today when they read your letter in fifty years we know

Craig is gonna say he wants to keep the experiment going of dumping more carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere because he thinks it's gonna be good for us I don't think that's the case and I hope you will imagine writing a letter your grandchildren that will make them proud of how you helped us all work together to solve the problem of global warming and build a better future for all of us [Applause] well we want to open the voting the final vote so please vote on the resolution yes/no or undecided there is Little or no rigorous

evidence that that the the carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet meanwhile you why considering the vote go on our website at Sol formed org and you'll find monthly debates scheduled through December next month we're going to have a debate about food and the resolution is going to read something similar to what this resolution this evening read it will be there is little or no Rigorous evidence that vegetarian vegan diets are healthier than diets that include meat eggs and dairy that will be Nina Tai shells defending that resolution against

nutrition expert David Katz and well we've got quite a lively audience the sea and oh okay well I'm going to chain you it looks like we have the final vote thank you Jane the the resolution the yes vote on the resolution that there is no evidence that's causing dangerous global warming It began at 24% that was the Prevot the resolution yes at 24% and it went up to 46% so it gained 22 percentage points that's the number to beat the no resolution started at 29% it went up to 41% went up 11 points and so

the Tootsie Roll goes to Gregg it so congratulations to you both [Applause]