**NEW POLL: Who presented the best argument? Bill Nye or Joe Bastardi? Vote in the poll after watching the video!**
Global warming debates have always been fascinating to me, especially those that are intelligent, level-headed and full of statistics. I’m not a fan of name-calling. Luckily, I found this very interesting debate on man made global warming vs natural Earth cycles on YouTube from “The O’Reilly Factor”. It’s worth a look as both sides are evenly represented:
Right on Matt! An O’Reilly Factor link on the Kitsap Sun. I thought I would never see the day.
Bill Nye?
Who are they gonna trot out next? Professor Frink?
First, it should be noted that Bill O’Reilly flubbed his opening when referring to a paper that was recently retracted from Nature Geoscience. The impact is exactly the opposite of what Bill thinks they are.
As to the debate, Bill Nye was far more accurate in his presentation. Mr. Bastardi whole argument seems to rest on his belief that the mean global temperature is cooling. He then uses solar and volcanic activity to confirm this. The problem is, he uses a single year (1998) as his baseline. This makes his argument statistically invalid and also ignores the fact that 2005, not 1998, is the warmest year on record. 2009 tied 1998 as the second year on record (and the warmest year in the southern hemisphere). The 2000’s were the warmest decade in the instrumental record. CO2 concentrations are the highest at any point in the last 800,000 years, possibly as far back as 15 million.
As Bill Nye rightly points out, the evidence is overwhelming at this point, which makes me wonder about Mr. Bastardi’s motivation since he is clearly an intelligent man.
If One’s liveleyhood depends on NOT recognizing Global Warming, recognizing Global Warming IS a challenge for the ethically-challenged.