I am indebted to Mike at the Greenfyre blog for clarifying a major point in the Climate Change debate for me. He points out that there’s the science, and there’s the debate, and the science is not subject to the debate. Rather the debate must involve the science.
The determination of whether climate change is real or not is not something that can be settled by debate: it’s not a matter of reason, it’s a matter of fact. Greenfyre deconstructs a Wall Street Journal article by John Fund that seeks to paint Al Gore as being wrong simply because he declined to debate with Bjorn Lomborg. Greenfyre comments:
Can there be a more telling confession that you have nothing of substance to offer than challenging a public figure to debate matters of fact and science?
This post by Greenfyre cleared up a lot of cloudiness for me. There is a massive amount of uncertainty around the issue of climate change, largely because of the weight of denial that arises with every published pronouncement about it. But practically all the refutation I see is couched in terms of debate rather than hard fact. Now I get it.
