“You’re Deifying Scientists”: Climate-Change Debate ‘Heats Up’ With Collum, Keen, Fleckenstein

While most climate scientists like Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M think debate is a bad idea…

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We disagree. And thankfully so do our guests.

Steve Keen, while primarily an economist, is well-versed in the research and a firm believer in the danger climate change poses. Dave Collum, chemistry professor at Cornell, believes much of the science to be bogus. Legendary short-seller Bill Fleckenstein was kind enough to shepard them along.

We hope you enjoy and that you give both Keen and Collum a fair shake:

For those short on time, here were the highlights:

Poking holes in the ‘narrative’

Things heated up when Collum unleashed a flurry of charts documenting trends that run counter to what we hear from most climate alarmists: Today, we actually see fewer hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and forest fires than decades past.

Collum: “There’s no obvious change in the frequency of global hurricanes back to 1980… Back to 1990, it actually has a distinct downward trend… Here’s one that goes back to 1960. These are violent tornadoes. Again, downward trend.”

“Climate change could be roaring but the naked eye can’t see it.”

“They say ‘look it’s hot outside’, and I say just because your ass is sweaty doesn’t mean there’s climate change.”

Cornell Chemistry Professor @DavidBCollum with 10 Charts that will make you rethink the Climate Change Narrative: pic.twitter.com/BrA4zKRs3o

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) November 16, 2024

“Potentially Suicidal”

Natural disasters aside, Keen brought his own charts showing the recent and rapid ascent of global temperature. If accurate, the rise in temperature in the last 150 years when viewed on an axis of millions of years is staggering.

Keen: “That’s the real danger of climate change. We’ve built [civilization] in a stable period of the climate. We’re destroying that stability and thinking we can still have the social system we’ve designed… I just don’t think that’s true.”

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— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) November 15, 2024

Keen’s sources provided below:

Judd, E. J., J. E. Tierney, D. J. Lunt, I. P. Montañez, B. T. Huber, S. L. Wing and P. J. Valdes (2024). “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature.” Science 385(6715): eadk3705. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adk3705

Scotese, C. R., H. Song, B. J. W. Mills and D. G. Van Der Meer (2021). “Phanerozoic paleotemperatures: The earth’s changing climate during the last 540 million years.” Earth-Science Reviews 215: 103503. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103503

Green New Deal?

Assuming humanity put all its resources and minds together to avert the Earth’s heating… can it be done? Fleckenstein asked our distinguished guests whether they would support a “Green New Deal” (massive public spending effort to combat climate change): 

Collum: “My dad taught me this: Never ask the government to spend your money. They’ll do a terrible job.”

“If we were serious about climate change…  They should never put guys like John Kerry in charge as Climate Czar.”

“Steve’s enthusiastic about intervening as scientists. But here’s the question I have is who is going to make these tough calls? Who has the right to sign off the informed consent to say we are going to cover the world with a blanket of particles to block the sun?”

Keen argued that — while governments are inefficient — we do not have a choice.

Keen: “I’ll go on record on saying that if we continue down the trends we’re doing right now… we’re going to destroy civilization before 2050.”

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— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) November 15, 2024