Monckton and Lambert Debate; who won?

In terms of substance, Lambert kicked his butt. Though Monckton is a more eloquent speaker - I'll give him that.

Monckton's first argument about Haiti cropland being used to grow biofuels - first off I really doubt any significant percentage was converted, but secondly it's entirely irrelevant to the science of AGW. He starts out saying AGW is 'imaginary', then starts babbling about biofuels. WTF?

It reminds me of the debate involving Schmidt, Lindzen, and Crichton a couple years ago. Crichton spent the whole debate babbling about how we should address poverty instead of AGW, as though we can only choose one or the other, completely ignoring the science.

I skipped forward a bit. At the 8 minute mark Monckton made the false claim that adaption is cheaper than mitigation - absolutely absurd. I didn't hear any support of this argument, though granted I'm skipping around. Then he finally gets to the science. Over 8 minutes after saying AGW is 'imaginary'.

He then babbles for a while, finally getting to the point, that there was a glacier at the equator at sea level when atmospheric CO2 was 300,000 ppm. WTF?! I'm sorry, but that's total bullshit. This is his foray into the science, 10 minutes after calling AGW 'imaginary', he claims atmospheric CO2 was 300,000 ppm 750 million years ago? I'm sorry, no. 10,000 ppm I could buy, but he's gone more than an order of magnitude higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carb...

Right there to me he loses the debate. I don't care if he's debating against a monkey. When you claim the science is 'imaginary', spend 10 minutes babbling about anything but the science, then when you finally get to the science not only do you babble about the climate 750 million years ago as though it's directly comparable to today's, but make a statement that's wrong by more than an order of magnitude, that's just inexcusable. But then his argument arguably gets worse.

Monckton's entire scientific argument then essentially rests on this Pinker et al. study, and Lambert crushed him on it.

First off Lambert did a great job pointing out that if you cut through all of Monckton's babble and unsubstantiated claims that AGW is 'imaginary', what the debate really boils down to is climate sensitivity. Monckton thinks it's low based on (a misinterpretation of) Pinker et al. So Lambert not only pointed out the error, but contacted Pinker, who said that Monckton was misinterpreting her study, which did not contradict the findings of the IPCC. Lambert also played a nice audio clip of Monckton basically calling all climate scientists frauds. Pinker's full response is linked below.

But in the end Monckton's entire argument rested on this one paper, and Lambert destroyed him by contacting the author and proving that Monckton's argument was based on a misunderstanding of the study.

I don't have time to listen to the last 45 minutes, but unless Monckton pulled Lambert's pants down during the part I didn't watch, I don't see how you can conclude anything other than Lambert whooped Monckton in this debate. Because metaphorically speaking, Lambert pulled his pants down by actually talking to the author whose study (or more accurately, a misinterpretation of her study) Monckton based his entire argument on.

*edit* reading Ottawa's linked blogs, apparently Monckton's response was to re-do the calculation treating the Earth as a blackbody without an atmosphere, concluding that climate sensitivity is zero. So his response to Pinker's correction is to conclude that feedbacks don't exist. Now that's convincing! Makes me wonder how the planet transitions between glacials and interglacials though. That orbital forcing must be pretty damn strong if it can cause 10°C warming shifts without the aid of any feedbacks!

I love the denier argument that if you ignore the fact that Monckton misrepresented Pinker et al. and ignore Pinker's correction, then Monckton won the debate. Just ignore that Monckton got his butt kicked, and he clearly won! Brilliant!

The Pinker tape presented by Lambert was a solid punch. But reading Ottawa Mike's links, the review shows it was on illegal low blow. Take that out of the debate and Monkton scored a clear decision.

Edit: Dana. Lambert clearly edited his conversation with Pinkers to omit damaging evidence.

“People tend to use the concept of “Forcing” kind of “freely”. There are many

concepts of forcing in use, such as aerosol forcing, cloud forcing, which can be related to shortwave or long wave or both (as defined above). Since the energy from the sun is the major driver of the climate system, and since clouds are the major modulators of how much of this energy reaches the surface, people tend to label this effect as “cloud forcing” (which is not the same as the formal definition). I believe that one of the issues pointed out in your communication is related to the use of the “cloud forcing” concept. Indeed, this is not the official definition of “cloud forcing”; however, if we give Christopher Monckton the benefit of doubt and assume that he meant “the impact of clouds on the surface shortwave radiation” than it can pass.”

Pinker's paper shows that more sunlight reached the earth due to less clouds. This additional sunlight would cause warming that is not associated with the buildup of greenhouse gases. But the IPCC is saying most of the warming is due to greenhouse gases. By not taking into account the Pinkton paper the IPCC are overestimating the greenhouse gas forcing. That was the point Monkton was making, and Pinker concurred that the her results could be interpreted that way. Lambert was dishonest by not mentioning that.

I'm not qualified to declare a winner although the tactics of Lambert are questionable:

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/lamberts-pinker-t...

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/lambert-victim-of...

Those eyes are just creepy, the guy without the bug eyes won