To Bob's credit he was not hostile to her. In fact he says it is obvious she believes what she is saying. But he would like to let her know that she shouldn't be worried. In fact climate scientists supposedly haven't gotten ANY of their predictions right. They have gotten ZERO correct according to Bob. Really.
These are the claims the climate scientists have gotten wrong according to Bob.
1-20 years ago they were telling us that **by this time** sea levels are going to rise so much from melting icebergs that millions will die, entire countries will be underwater, coastlines will be gone, famine will be running rampant, so many disastrous hurricanes and tornadoes will lead to calamity. We're going to be burning up and children won't know what snow is any more. The polar bears will be drowning.
2-30 years ago it was global cooling. An ice age age **by this time**. Millions of people are going to be dying from freezing to death and lack of food.
3-Also AOC says the earth will be uninhabitable 12 years from now.
Following this litany Bob made the following statement:
"How many times do these environmentalists have to make predictions and not get any of them right, zero of their predictions right, before we start realizing I'm not going to listen to them when they keep on making these kinds of predictions."
Bob said that in time Greta would see that the coastlines are still coastlines, the temperature of the earth is still the same, the ice is still there in the arctic, no coastline houses are underwater, the state of Florida isn't underwater.
Also apparently a letter was delivered to the leaders of the UN summit that was supposedly a listing of 500 scientists that completely dissent from the mainstream view and they want to have a debate about it. Why won't they engage in this debate? They'll say it's because they don't want to give the other side credibility, but if the science was clear this debate should be welcomed. But they won't because their argument is so weak. This is Bob's conclusion.
Well I thought I should give Bob a call on this. But it was tough for me to figure out what to say, and I would suggest to Bob that this is another reason why this debate is not welcomed by climate scientists (though I agree they do not want to give the denial side credibility.) What Bob engaged in with this discussion is what is sometimes called the Gish Gallop. Overwhelm your opponent with as many arguments as possible, each of which require detailed research. Hurricanes, tornadoes, polar bears, ice age, sea levels, global cooling. I don't even know where Bob is getting his specific information. How can I discuss without first getting the sources and researching them? What would a climate scientist do on the stage for 90 minutes? Would anybody expect this to resolve the question? It takes tons of time, tons of study. In reality it takes a research paper, which is what scientists have been going back and forth doing for the past 30 years. That's why the debate is over.
This is what I was thinking about in placing my call. I thought maybe I should just call in, ask for a source on one issue and tell him I'll call back next week. But I decided instead to try to talk about the ice age because he had brought that up the last time we talked and he had provided the source. At least I can speak to that intelligently. But I want to try to avoid having him jump from here to there on a different topic.
Unfortunately I was unable to do that. He seemed to view my effort to bring up his source on the ice age as me just trying to nail him to the wall for one error he made 7 years ago, like this is just me trying to get in a zinger I guess. And he was off to the races talking about polar bears, hurricanes, supposedly I need to go find a photo of a house from 50 years ago on the coast and compare it to today. We're off in 14 different directions. This is what a verbal debate would look like and I can see why no climate scientist would be interested.
Despite that I think the call was OK. I at least got some good info out there. But I was unprepared to really deal with polar bears and hypothetical coastline photos. To Bob's credit though he did let me get most of my points out.
And perhaps I will follow this with reaction to his various arguments. If I can track down his sources.
