I just watched Rep. Moran go head to head with extremist Republican Dana Rohrabacher on Hardball on the topic of (human influenced) Global Climate change. Frankly Moran was terrible and should stay away from debating this topic.
Rohrabacher's main points were 3 extremely easy to debunk, common, and frankly old denialist talking points.
These were:
- Greenland was warmer 1000 years ago, and that is why it is called 'Greenland'.
- Other planets like Mars are getting warmer as well.
- Many scientists are signing on against the theory
The simple refutations are short and sweet:
- Greenland was a case of 'false advertising' much like the Republican's "Healthy Skies Initiative", as Erik the Red knew people wouldn't follow him to "Glacier Town"; plus while there is something called the Medieval Warm Period (WMP), temperatures are warmer than the WMP today.
- The theory that the solar variation is heating all the planets has simply been debunked repeatedly, with the last debunking coming only a number of days ago
"The basic problem with the hypothesis is that solar variations probably change new particle formation rates by less than 30 percent in the atmosphere. Also, these particles are extremely small and need to grow before they can affect clouds. Most do not survive to do so," Adams said.
Despite remaining questions, Adams and Pierce feel confident that this hypothesis should be laid to rest. "No computer simulation of something as complex as the atmosphere will ever be perfect," Adams said. "Proponents of the cosmic ray hypothesis will probably try to question these results, but the effect is so weak in our model that it is hard for us to see this basic result changing."
- The claim that all sorts of scientists are skeptical about global warming simply falls apart if you mock wingers for thinking of the the local TV weatherguy as a scientist. Plus the ones that are on their side a people like Fred Singer, who argued in the 1980's that there was no hole in the ozone layer, and argued in the 1990's that secondhand smoking wasn't harmful.
I don't expect politicians to know all the ins and outs of a topic like this, but they should know what common debate points they are going to encounter, and easy ways to smack them down. If someone like Moran can't take 10 minutes to learn what the most common global warming lies are, he should temper his ego and pass on the TV time.
Moran obviously didn't know enough about to refute the talking points, and he exuded a lack of confidence debating the material that allowed Rohrabacher to constantly interject and talk all over him. Not only did he not get any of his own points across, he made Rohrabacher actually look legitmate and knowledgable.
Basically, Moran's only argument was he was "with the scientists" on this. Now this is not wrong, but it pisses me off that this is such an important topic and he couldn't take the time to figure out what Rohrabacher was going to argue.
[VIDEO ADDED:]
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[Okay that didn't work, the video is down in the comments!]