Why do all opposition to the CO2 thesis fail?
David versus Goliath! Is the climate change debate a battle between Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and Skeptics? Is the skeptical side the looser? Yes! Since they emerged on the scene 30 years ago, they seem not to have made ground. They even lost the infamous case on “Climategate” November 2009 (Background INFO), which based on a variety of commentary by leading climate scientists that personally disparages high-profile climate skeptics, and includes attempts to coordinate efforts to retaliate against them in various ways. See: Wikipedia. While the 10th anniversary was in November 2019, David remained silent. The Skeptics merely continue attacking the proponents of AGW as before Climategate. Why do Skeptics fail to reach a level for a fight on an argumentative equal level?
To understand better why, let’s look at a hearing on climate science by a House of Representative committee on 29th March 2017, which Tim Ball analyzed at WUWT “We Won Climate Battles, but Are Not Winning the Climate War: Here’s Why”.
The views presented at the expert table were 1:3. On one side a AGW proponent, Michael Mann, on the opposite side J. Curry, J. Christi, and R. Pielke jr, Although Tim Ball regards Mann’s claims as scientifically incorrect and the result of false computer model simulation, he assumes that M. Mann presented his case better and “won in the eyes of uninformed observers”, due to the inability of the “deniers” to provide definitive answers, and that most skeptics would not have done any better.
But why fail skeptics so thoroughly, and the distinguished Tim Ball as well, with his 30 years’ experience?. The main reason is that they, the skeptics and ‘deniers’, handle the climate change issue as superficial as main-stream climatology does, which is still largely stuck in a narrow minded view of 20th Century meteorology, for example:
__Neither side cares about reasonable definitions, respectively what is offered as terms for weather and climate are empty phrases, useless for any scientific work. (Medium Nov.24, 2020; on: CLIMATE DEFINITION)
