Al Gore challenged to international debate on global warming

[Rogue 9]

Link.

Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming

Mon Mar 19, 9:30 AM ET

To: ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS

Contact: Audrey Mullen, +1-703-548-1160, for Center for Science and Public Policy

PERTH, Scotland, March 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/docs/20070316_monckton.html)

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide."

Monckton and Gore have once before clashed head to head on the science, politics, and religion of global warming in the usually-decorous pages of the London Sunday Telegraph last November.

Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge."

The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism."

Lord Monckton's resounding challenge to Al Gore reads as follows --

"The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice- President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, 'That our effect on climate is not dangerous,' to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President's choosing.

"Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President's prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!"

Well. If nothing else, this should be entertaining.

[frigidmagi]

I hope this is televised.

[SirNitram]

I'm sorry... These things just piss me off.

They boil down into soundbites and catchphrases and other stupidity. That's not fucking science.

[Lord Iames Osari]

not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate...

Is anyone else amused by this?

[Comrade Tortoise]

I'm sorry... These things just piss me off.

They boil down into soundbites and catchphrases and other stupidity. That's not fucking science.

Agreed. The question of our contribution to global climate change should be answered in the laboratory and by the computer models, not by press conferences and soundbites.

Public debates are a fun diversion, but at the end of the day, they dont solve a damn thing. Both sides think their guy won, and use the debate to score political points.