Watch the Marc Morano and Bill Nye Climate Debate on FOX With Stossel. Nye Cites ‘Hockey Stick’ as Proof – Says Politicians can fix potholes and the climate – Morano denounces as ‘medieval witchcraft’.
Morano vs. Nye on CO2:
NYE: ‘Do we agree that the atmosphere used to have 250 parts per million, now it has over 400 of carbon dioxide.’
MORANO: Absolutely. We’ve had ice ages at between 2,000 and 8,000 parts per million in the geological history of the Earth. We’ve had similar temperatures with 20 times the CO2 levels…The idea that — that the U.S. or developing world should limit their energy choices based on rising CO2 fears is scientifically baseless. And the geologic record bears that out and the current weather bears it out…It comes down to hundreds of factors are influencing our climate here. CO2 is not the tail that wagged the dog…There’s no more weather extremes over the 20th century. You can go from hurricanes or — we’re at a historic low right now…We had the lowest year on record for tornadoes.’
Morano vs. Nye on Development in Poor Nations:
MORANO: ‘How is the white, wealthy Western Europe world, in Europe and the U.S., going to tell people of color, 1.3 billion in the developing world, they can’t have what we have? Who is Bill Nye to tell [the developing word] they can’t have carbon-based energy?’
NYE: ‘We don’t want to have less. We want to do more with less. And this is where the innovations come in.’
Stossel’s ‘Chill Out’ program with John Stossel on Fox Business – First Broadcast January 23, 2014: Bill Nye the Science Guy, who says he is “frantic” about climate change debates skeptic Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com.
Morano and Nye also debated on CNN in 2012. Also see Morano debating on UN TV in November and his debate on CNN in December 2013.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/9_Im9B46TAc[/youtube]
Full Transcript below:
Stossel
January 23, 2014 Thursday
SHOW: STOSSEL 9:00 PM EST
Chill Out
BYLINE: John Stossel
GUESTS: Phil Valentine, Alex Epstein, Marc Morano, Bill Nye, Robert Engelman, Bill Bissett, Mark Nelson
SECTION: NEWS; Financial
LENGTH: 7553 words
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not just cold, this is a killer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If this isn’t climate change, then what is it?
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As an American, I am here to say we need to act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(APPLAUSE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN STOSSEL, HOST (voice-over): All dramatic weather is our fault.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my god.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Terrible tornadoes in Oklahoma. Horrible.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We know that this is because of the burning of fossil fuels.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Carbon could cost us the planet.
STOSSEL: It makes me want to ask Al Gore about that, but where is he?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He’s out at one of his other houses.
STOSSEL: Whether Gore is right about global warming didn’t matter, you already pay for his remedy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they’re declaring war, truly, on jobs.
STOSSEL: Who will win this war?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: It’s a happy ending.
STOSSEL: We’ll search for that. That’s our show tonight.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
ANNOUNCER: And now, John Stossel.
STOSSEL: I titled this program, “Chill out,” because after I researched the global warming scare that was my conclusion. We ought to just chill out. But our government isn’t chilling out. You now pay billions to try to fix global warming. And this year, “The Hill,” the Washington newspaper that covers Congress, said climate will be the political battle of 2014. Big money is being spent to convince Americans to vote to spend even more to try to stop global warming. In a moment, we’ll hear from Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” who says he’s frantic about climate change. He’ll debate Marc Morano of climatedepot.com. But first, let me set the terms of debate. People say to me, Stossel, you don’t believe in global warming? But I do. I think it’s a stupid question, because what do you mean when you say global warming? To me, it’s really four questions.
One, is the globe warming? Well, yes. Global temperatures have risen, though not lately so much. Question two, is the warming manmade, is it our fault? Three, is it a crisis?
And four, if it is, can we do anything about it? Bill Nye’s answers to those questions are yes, yes, yes and yes. And for years, he’s told his viewers, beware of…
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL NYE, “THE SCIENCE GUY”: — what we call global warming. Global warming.
The globe is getting too warm. It’s something we’ve got to be careful of. Otherwise, things could get weird.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STOSSEL: Bill Nye joins us now, along with climate change skeptic, Marc Morano. Marc, you first. Why aren’t you scared? Bill and lots of people are.
MARC MORANO, FOUNDER, CLIMATE DEPOT: We’re now able to empirically look at their predictions that they made in the ’80s and start to see them fail. And out of 117 climate models, one analysis showed 114 failed. So when the predictions are failing them, uh, they still claim it’s worse than they thought. But that’s not the case here. So the bottom line is, the burden of proof is on them and they’ve failed to make the case.
STOSSEL: Bill Nye?
NYE: In the year 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven — seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many, uh, large populations of humans around the world. Now, you may have heard of the hockey stick graph. This is where, uh, we compare the temperature of the world over the last 10,000 years with the temperature now. And so we think of that, uh, as the…
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: — of a hockey stick?
NYE: — shaft of a hockey stick…
STOSSEL: — it’s going to shoot up.
NYE: Well, it is shooting up. It’s not going to, it is shooting up. And so it’s the speed that we’re going to have difficulty dealing with. But economically…
STOSSEL: But the temperature hasn’t increased in the past 15 years. It isn’t shooting up.
NYE: When you cherry-pick the data for certain surface temperatures, you end up with a — a very small change. It’s hardly noticeable. These people try to introduce the idea that scientific uncertainty, plus or minus a few percent, is equivalent to doubt about the whole thing. This is perfectly analogous to the cigarette industry and cancer, trying to introduce the idea that since you can’t…
(CROSSTALK)
NYE: — prove any one thing, the whole thing is in — is in doubt.
(CROSSTALK)
STOSSEL: As a consumer reporter. Just hang on one second, Marc. I’ll give you a shot. As a consumer reporter, I’ve covered 1,000 scares. Lawn chemicals, cell phone radiation…
MORANO: Sure.
STOSSEL: Pesticide residues, plastic bottles killing people, power lines, Mad Cow Disease was going to kill everybody. And always the example is, yes, there were doubters about cigarettes. I mean that one example doesn’t mean that the global warming scare is correct.
But, Marc, I — I should let you speak.
MORANO: Yes. For him to bring up cigarettes — the global warming scientists are the ones fulfilling a narrative. I mean we have Michael Oppenheimer, one of the lead U.N. scientists, took an endowment from Barbra Streisand. These Hollywood — the climatologists to the stars.
STOSSEL: Well, they’ve got to…
MORANO: He’s also…
STOSSEL: — get money from…
(CROSSTALK)
STOSSEL: — Barbra Streisand wants to give me money, I’ll take it.
MORANO: Right. But it’s so insulting to imply that somehow skeptical scientists are on the pay like tobacco companies. It’s the height of arrogance when you look at the actual data, the global warming scientists, through government grants, foundations, through media empowerment, have the full advantages of government money, foundation money, university money. There’s not even any comparison. And yet, these skeptical scientists, as their numbers have grown, we’ve had scientists like James Lovelock, who — the inventor of the Gaia Earth Theory, who has reversed himself.
STOSSEL: But a lot of climate scientists, serious ones, are genuinely worried.
MORANO: The ones you’ll always point to these ‘genuine’ climate scientists are from the United Nations. And the United Nations, the head of it, Rajendra Pachauri, came out last year or the year before and said their mission is to make the case that CO2 is driving global warming. They put the cart before the horse. And what happened was many U.N. scientists have now turned on it. Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish scientist, has just come out and said we wouldn’t even have noticed the warming of the 20th century if it weren’t for modern instrumentation. And the idea of the hockey stick that Bill Nye mentioned is absurd. That has been, you know, called, quote, “statistical rubbish,” unquote. And hundreds of scientists in dozens and dozens of studies have shown both the Medieval and the Roman warming period. And these appeared in peer-reviewed journals, were as warm or warmer than current temperatures.
STOSSEL: Bill?
NYE: See if we can agree about this. There used to be a billion people a couple of centuries ago. Now there are seven billion.
STOSSEL: We agree on that.
NYE: There used to be…
STOSSEL: And the air is cleaner and people are living better.
MORANO: Yes.
STOSSEL: And fewer people are starving because of capitalism and industrialization.
NYE: Do we agree that the atmosphere used to have 250 parts per million, now it has over 400 of carbon dioxide.
STOSSEL: Yes. There’s more greenhouse gas out there.
MORANO: Absolutely. We’ve had ice ages at between 2,000 and 8,000 parts per million in the geological history of the Earth. We’ve had similar temperatures with 20 times the CO2 levels.
STOSSEL: Climate does change.
MORANO: Sure.
STOSSEL: And if you look, over time, we have a graph here from just the year 1000 to today, we had the Medieval warm period, we had the Little Ice Age, big changes.
NYE: You’ve really, uh, you’ve really messed with the far right hand side of the graph.
MORANO: That’s the United Nations graph from 1990, pre-hockey stick…
NYE: Yes.
MORANO: — before they reinvented past temperatures.
NYE: Do you agree that it’s never happened this fast?
MORANO: Actually, we’ve had, without benefit of mankind, similar CO2 levels in the recent (geologic) past without mankind’s influence. And I think…
(CROSSTALK)
MORANO: — the speed had nothing to do with it.
NYE: What about the weight?
MORANO: It comes down to hundreds of factors are influencing our climate here. CO2 is not the tail that wagged the dog. Another scientist who has essentially reversed herself is Judith Curry from Georgia Institute of Technology. She now says openly that you cannot control climate by reducing emissions. And that seems to be the entire premise of the United Nations, that somehow, if we tweak emissions through carbon taxes, cap and trade, we can alter weather patterns. You opened up with tornadoes and Barbara Boxer. She actually went down to the Senate floor the day of tornadoes and implied a carbon tax would help prevent future tornado outbreaks. This is Medieval witchcraft.
STOSSEL: It seems like every time there’s a new weather extreme, some people say the cause was manmade global warming.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tomorrow morning, 90 percent of the country will face below normal temperatures. If this isn’t climate change, then what is it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We know that this is because of the burning of fossil fuels.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In one year, we have had the largest tornado ever recorded on Earth. And we have had the fastest hurricane ever recorded on Earth. And they’ve hit within six months of each other.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Terrible tornadoes in Oklahoma, horrible. Carbon could cost us the planet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STOSSEL: That was Senator Barbara Boxer the day of — the very day of the Oklahoma tornado. So, Bill, global warming is going to cost us the planet, causing these tornadoes?
NYE: Well, you see, the planet will be here — well, the planet will be here, but if we have to…
STOSSEL: We won’t?
NYE: — continually rebuild and displace people.
MORANO: The idea that the United States or developing world should limit their energy choices based on rising CO2 fears is scientifically baseless, as I just mentioned. And the geologic record bears that out and the current weather bears it out. There’s no more weather extremes over the 20th century. You can go from hurricanes or — we’re at a historic low right now…
STOSSEL: The Oklahoma tor — tornado was the biggest ever.
MORANO: And they have better monitoring. We had the lowest year on record for tornadoes. And since the 1950s…
STOSSEL: There were fewer tornadoes.
STOSSEL: I’m struck, researching this, how — how there’s constant media hysteria. And it changes. In 1941, it was reported…
MORANO: Yes.
STOSSEL: — that World War II caused weather extremes. In 1961, “The New York Times” said scientists agree the world’s becoming colder. Scientists worried about a new ice age. Now we worry about warming.
Shouldn’t we be skeptical?
MORANO: Yes, and I’m sure people would say, well — science has advanced so much more. Well, science is always going to advance. The point is, this is the narrative of our day. And Bill keeps going on about overpopulation. The problem is, is that people now recognize one of the biggest problems is under population. As the developing world gets more and more carbon-based energy, India and Africa, and starts developing, the population is going to level off. So the hysteria has been there. You can go back…
NYE: So we disagree about the facts, Mr. Morano.
MORANO: You can’t disagree about facts. You’re…
NYE: The problem…
(LAUGHTER)
NYE: — and the problem is not just that there are more people in India and China, it’s they are using more energy than they ever used to use.
MORANO: And God bless them. They need that.
NYE: They want to live the way we live in the de…
STOSSEL: Why is that a problem?
NYE: They want to live the way we…
STOSSEL: That’s a good thing…
NYE: — live in the developed world.
MORANO: Would you deny them that?
NYE: So…
MORANO: I interviewed Jerry Brown, who said that they couldn’t emulate American lifestyle. Well, who is he — how is the white, wealthy Western Europe world, in Europe and the United States, going to tell people of color, 1.3 billion in the developing world, they can’t have what we have? Who is Bill Nye to tell them they can’t have carbon-based energy, which we…
STOSSEL: Well, let Bill Nye…
MORANO: — took full advantage of.
STOSSEL: — answer that.
NYE: We don’t want to have less. We want to do more with less. And this is where the innovations come in.
MORANO: Sure.
NYE: This is where the emerging technologies come in.
But embracing, uh, technologies that produce extra carbon dioxide, extra greenhouse gases, at this point in human history, is not in our best interests.
STOSSEL: I just want to play one more…
NYE: So…
STOSSEL: — video example to end. This idea that politicians can fix the climate strikes me as arrogance. And I think we heard arrogance six years ago from our president after he defeated Hillary Clinton.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STOSSEL: Bill, isn’t this the conceit of the self-anointed, politicians are going to fix the climate?
NYE: By way of example, is it conceit when politicians claim they’re going to fix potholes in the street?
STOSSEL: No, they can do that.
NYE: It is conceit when politicians say they’re going to time the traffic lights?
STOSSEL: No, they can do that.
MORANO: No, they can do that.
NYE: Is it conceit when politicians — is it conceit when politicians say they’re going to clean up the water in Chesapeake Bay?
STOSSEL: Nope.
NYE: Is that inappropriate?
Those — those things have been done.
STOSSEL: Right.
MORANO: Those are doable.
NYE: This is the same thing on a much, much larger scale.
STOSSEL: Thank you, Bill Nye and Marc Morano.
NYE: Thank you.
STOSSEL: To keep this conversation going on Facebook or Twitter, if you use that hash tag chillout, you can let me and others know what you think.
