If there is one thing that has stood out regarding this year’s Republican presidential debates, it’s the inability of media analysts to agree on winners and losers in each debate’s immediate aftermath. Flipping from Fox News to CNN to MSNBC, a candidate who is declared a winner by one network analyst is often deemed a loser by another. Even when analysts talked about Herman Cain’s strong performance in last week’s Orlando debate, nobody predicted it would vault Cain to the top of the Florida straw poll heap.
Here’s a take-it-to-the-bank prediction for each of the upcoming debates: staffers for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and each of the other candidates will claim victory immediately after the debate. Obviously, however, there will be losers as well as winners. Without an objective audience vote on winners and losers, our best way of determining who won and who lost will be determined by post-debate polls, who is able to continue raising money and compete in the months ahead, and who drops out of the race.
This somewhat muddled way of determining winners and losers stands in direct contrast to an unprecedented and superbly organized global warming debate hosted by the prestigious Intelligence Squared debating society in New York City. Intelligence Squared has presented 50 debates on a wide range of public interest topics. Before each debate, audience members are presented with an assertion and are asked to vote on whether or not they agree with the assertion. After the audience votes, a panel of proponents and a panel of opponents square off on the topic. Each debater is allowed to give a prepared presentation. After the presentations, the moderator invites audience members to question the debaters and the debaters are encouraged to challenge each other. After this give and take, each debater is allowed to give a closing statement. Finally, the audience votes again on whether or not they agree with the debated assertion.
If there is one thing that has stood out regarding this year’s Republican presidential debates, it’s the inability of media analysts to agree on winners and losers in each debate’s immediate aftermath. Flipping from Fox News to CNN to MSNBC, a candidate who is declared a winner by one network analyst is often deemed a loser by another. Even when analysts talked about Herman Cain’s strong performance in last week’s Orlando debate, nobody predicted it would vault Cain to the top of the Florida straw poll heap.
Here’s a take-it-to-the-bank prediction for each of the upcoming debates: staffers for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and each of the other candidates will claim victory immediately after the debate. Obviously, however, there will be losers as well as winners. Without an objective audience vote on winners and losers, our best way of determining who won and who lost will be determined by post-debate polls, who is able to continue raising money and compete in the months ahead, and who drops out of the race.
This somewhat muddled way of determining winners and losers stands in direct contrast to an unprecedented and superbly organized global warming debate hosted by the prestigious Intelligence Squared debating society in New York City. Intelligence Squared has presented 50 debates on a wide range of public interest topics. Before each debate, audience members are presented with an assertion and are asked to vote on whether or not they agree with the assertion. After the audience votes, a panel of proponents and a panel of opponents square off on the topic. Each debater is allowed to give a prepared presentation. After the presentations, the moderator invites audience members to question the debaters and the debaters are encouraged to challenge each other. After this give and take, each debater is allowed to give a closing statement. Finally, the audience votes again on whether or not they agree with the debated assertion.
On March 14, 2007, Intelligence Squared presented the assertion, “Global Warming Is Not a Crisis.” Supporting the assertion that global warming is not a crisis were Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Philip Stott, emeritus professor of bio-geography at the University of London; and the late author Michael Crichton, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who had been a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and an instructor at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Opposing the assertion were Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists; Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and Richard C. J. Somerville, professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.
The pre-debate poll of audience members indicated Lindzen, Stott and Crichton were facing an uphill fight. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin (57% to 30%, with 13% undecided) the audience disagreed with global warming “skeptics” and voted that global warming was indeed a crisis.
For the next two hours the experts sparred on the science. When the debate ended, the audience rendered its verdict. Now, having had a chance to hear the scientists themselves present their arguments, the audience switched sides and sided with the global warming “skeptics.” By a vote of 46% to 42% (with 12% undecided), the audience voted that global warming was not a crisis.
Proponents of a global warming crisis often use the phrase “the debate is over.” They are right in more ways than they realize.
Not only did the scientists who are skeptical of an alleged global warming crisis decisively win the refereed debate with an objective means of determining winners and losers, but they won so convincingly that few “warmist” scientists will publicly debate the issue anymore. In a very real sense, “the debate is over.”
Ask Al Gore to participate in a global warming debate, or even field a few challenging questions, and watch him launch into a profanity-filled tirade. Ask Gavin Schmidt if he would like another chance to win over an audience at a conference in which “skeptics” will also be invited and get the silent treatment for an answer. Indeed, the majority of “warmists” who are so eager to attain media attention when they are sure nobody will challenge them will quickly look for the nearest chair to hide under when offered a chance to participate in any kind of fair and open debate.
In the wake of future Republican presidential debates, the staff for each candidate will claim victory and most will return for future debates. Regarding global warming, however, the debate truly is over and the victor is indisputable.