April 26, 2012
Rebecca Huntley - social researcher and writer
Nick Minchin - Former Liberal Minister
Anna Rose - founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition
Clive Palmer - mining magnate
Dr Megan Clark - Chief Executive of the CSIRO
Odd. Not one of the panel is a climate scientist. The only scientist on the panel has degrees only on economic geology, only distantly related to climate science. That one scientist represents a warmist organisation with a poor record in predictions and alarmism. Not one of the many sceptical scientists in the world has been included. Of the six people on the panel, including warmist host Tony Jones, just two are sceptics.
Does this sound rigged to you?
It’s not as if you can’t actually fill a studio with sceptical scientists in Australia, even if the result is a refusal to warmists to come debate them:
UPDATE
But sceptic Nick Minchin, writing in The Spectator (out now, buy it at the newsagent), seems to reassure us he’s not the victim of politically motivated editing in the documentary tonight that the Q&A panel will discuss:
A week of global warming activity looms, with the airing by ABC TV of the documentary I Can Change Your Mind About Climate Change, in which I am ‘the denier’ and Australian Youth Climate Coalition founder Anna Rose is the believer’, to be followed by a Q&A program with us both on the panel. On
Sunday night, I hold a private screening at home for friends to gauge reactions and find out where they think I might’ve screwed up. Perhaps they are just being polite, but they sit through it all and even profess to enjoy it.
Minchin even has praise for the ABC:
However, the ABC should be commended for agreeing to back the Smith-Nasht documentary, as should Anna Rose for participating. I know Anna came under a lot of pressure from hard line warmists not to do anything to give evil deniers like me a platform for our heretical views.
I’ve also had constant refusals from warmists - with the sole exception of Professor Will Steffen - to come on The Bolt Report. They do not want debate. So, yes, praise to Rose for fronting, but having the warmist case argued by such a young and ill-informed enthusiast, against someone like Minchin, will just allow warmists to console themselves with the fantasy that they’d have done a lot better in a fairer matchup.
In fact, Rose’s position should have been taken by Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery, who is actually paid by taxpayers to change our mind about global warming. Where is he? How is he earning his salary? Why is he dodging debates, and leaving that work to amateurs just out of university?
UPDATE
Sorry, but the Can I Change Your Mind program was not an engagement with the arguments but a series of position statements that would have done little but reinforce existing views on both sides. But I guess having the sceptical side presented as a genuine contender is itself a gain. I did think, though, that Anna Rose seem positively frightened by considering the other side, freezing up completely with Marc Morano. She seems to feel she’s engaging not with arguments but with evil.
Sigh.
As for Q&A, the audience laughed a lot at Clive Palmer, which I guess was the intention. Yet he made most sense. It’s a pity that Minchin conceded so much in the initial program to the spend-our-way-out-of-this brigade. In which case he must be for the $10 billion clean energy fund, right? Although he did back off a bit during the debate afterwards.[ed. How slick is it that the eco-fascist agenda is paid for by the taxpayer through the likes of the ABC and BBC? Sell them off, let these far-left nutjobs compete on their own dime like Air America couldn't...]
