other day of a climate debate. It was a debate between Michael Mann, who's author of the famous hockey stick graph that shows temperatures going up steeply with CO2, and Judith Curry was there on the other side. And there were two other people, one on each side. And because I had said that I've never seen a debate with the skeptics and the climate alarmists in the same place, somebody pointed me to that fairly recent video. I think it was in the last few months.

And I thought to myself, oh, this would be good. This is the first time I will see the skeptics and the climate scientists on the same stage, and they'll talk about what they disagree with each other. And man, I'm gonna really move ahead. And then I saw the format. So the format was they each get a few minutes to talk and that's that. And then there are a few questions that were sort of off point.

But here's the big takeaway. The primary claim of Michael Mann is that the temperature is not just going up but going up at a super fast rate that coincides exactly, he would say, with CO2 created by humans. So the central claim is not that it's getting warmer. That's not the claim. The claim is that the rate of warming has increased.

So Michael Mann gets up there. He has his five minutes. He shows his graphs and he says, there, the world is getting warmer and it matches CO2. And then he says the odds of this graph, the actual heat matching the CO2 rise, the odds of that being a coincidence are astronomically small. Therefore it must be meaningful.

And then the skeptics get up and they don't talk about the central claim of climate science. The skeptics don't even mention the central claim. And I thought to myself, what the hell? How could they completely ignore the central claim that the rate is going up fast and there's no other explanation?

Now I'm not going to say I'm siding with the climate alarmists because, you know, I'm not a scientist. How would I know? But I'm a little bit worried when the skeptics ignore the central claim. You know, they talked about, you know, it doesn't look like it's getting so warm and some other stuff. There were actually really good points.

Now there's sort of a related point here, which is, yeah, the related point is that both sides were persuasive. So when you listen to Michael Mann before any of the skeptics have talked, you look at that and you say, man, that looks totally persuasive. Totally. And then the skeptics talk. Judith Curry talks and you listen to that and you think that is completely persuasive. And it really was.

So both the pro and the anti sides are completely persuasive. But the way that they stay that way is they don't talk about the arguments of the other. The only way that those two sides can remain persuasive is by ignoring the argument on the other side. And until I saw it myself, I didn't think that was true.

I assumed that somebody would say A is true and then the skeptics would say, no, let's talk about A. A is not true and here are my reasons. And then the scientist would say, well, your reasons are outdated or we have a reason, you know, we don't think your reasons are true. That would look like a debate.

What I saw was definitely not a debate. It was two people talking about whatever they wanted to talk about, sort of never really connecting.

Now the best argument that I've heard for why the skeptics do not address the rate of change, Michael Mann's central claim not addressed, is that when you look at the historical record we don't have the fine detail to know if it ever did that before. So I'm kind of open to that argument but it wasn't made by any of the skeptics on the stage.

Instead one of the most persuasive skeptics was the guy who had been a founder of Greenpeace who's turned into a climate skeptic. And he points out through the historical record that CO2 and temperature have been moving in a non-aligned way for eons and therefore it's not the lever that's moving the world. You know, it's a very persuasive argument except that it doesn't address the primary claim of climate science that the rate is...

So that's all I'm going to say about that. I will say again that what is needed is an actual debate about climate science. If it's the biggest problem in the world, talk me into it. Please, please convince me it's really the biggest problem in the world by being on the same stage and interacting with somebody who will disagree with you, because those people exist.

And people saying it's not the biggest thing in the world, well let me suggest, if you think you have a settled opinion on climate change, what would that be based on, given that nobody has ever debated it as far as I can tell, at least in public? So from the perspective of the public, you and I, you and I have never seen this debated. You have never seen this debated. You've only seen people talking completely different.

So until it's debated I'm going to say I don't think you should have a firm opinion on any of this.

Now yeah, so there's the separate question of whether the worst case scenario is a big deal. And the evidence we have suggests it's not even the worst case scenario. But that's, and that has been debated by the way. So I would say that's the case where Bjorn Lomborg did directly address something specific coming out of the climate science world, specifically the economic part of it. So he said you're saying this about the economics. I'm talking about exactly your point and I'm showing you how you've exaggerated its importance. That is what a debate looks like.

But what's missing is where do the climate people get to address what Bjorn Lomborg said? It's not quite a debate until you get a little counterpoint going on, right? Saying something and then hearing somebody's projection gets you halfway there. Then you have to hear the original person's objection to the objection like a court.

Separately, it seems that there's a project that Bill Gates is funding through Harvard, I guess, in which they're going to put some kind of particles in the air with a big blimp. They're gonna launch a blimp and seed the atmosphere with some particles that are similar to what volcanoes spew to see if it will cool the world.

Now as you might imagine there are people saying, my God, my God, don't do that, because if you do that you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You might overcool the world, etc. Well, maybe. Maybe. But here's what seems far more likely. What seems far more likely is that since Bill Gates and Harvard are behind it, there are smart people doing this and there's probably little to no risk of putting some of that stuff into the air to just see if it works.

So I would not object to a test if it's possible to test it where they could do a little bit of a test. And let's say one county, and then maybe it only lasts for a month because, you know, they're not going to put that many particles in the air. Eventually they'll dissolve. So you do one little area and you do it for about a month. You see if it makes any difference. Just in case.

Because what happens if, let's say, twenty years from now, well it's a super critical problem. It's worse than we thought, etc.

I keep seeing people talk about chemtrails in the comments. Chemtrails are not real. That's tinfoil hat time. There'