The Island of Doubt

If you need to kill some time while you wait for word on who Obama has chosen as running mate, check out this transcript of a radio debate on climate change. Canadian PR agent Richard Littlemore takes on British journalist Christopher Monckton on the Roy Green Show on Hamilton, Ont.'s CHML. The sad affair was presciently summed up 500 years ago by Michel de Montaigne: "No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately."

Monckton, who most recently embarrassed the American Physical Society by convincing one its online editors to post an error-ridden paper on why we shouldn't be worried about global warming, gets a fairly friendly reception from the host and the listening audience. This should come as no surprise, as talk radio is a predictably reactionary and regressive medium.

Littlemore tries his best to avoid assuming the mantle of science-explainer, given that neither he nor his opponent has any training in climatology, but ends up wading into glaciology, dendrochronology and a few of the other usual suspects. His mistakes were minor, while Monckton's were egregious to the point of absurdity. At one point, in his annotation of the debate Littlemore despairs of the constraints of polite AM radio, writing "Again and again, the phrase that danced on my tongue was 'absolute bullshit.' "

That kind of language wouldn't result in a serious fine for a Canadian radio station as it would in the U.S., but it probably would put an end to the offending speaker's chances of a repeat engagement. Which is too bad, because sometimes the most appropriate word for what the climate change pseudo-skeptics do falls clearly into the domain of profanity.

Monckton never actually quotes any scientific source, but states that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, implies that the Arctic ice cap has recently experienced less ice than today, and trots out the old canard that the "hockey stick" graph was discredited by the IPCC. For the record, no it wasn't, he can't possibly know that, and no it wasn't.

All Littlemore can do is try to use polite phrases like "flagrantly incorrect."

The problem, as Littlemore concedes, is that two non-scientists really have no business debating a scientific issue on talk radio. So who should take the purveyors of BS? There are plenty of climatologists out there who are capable of talking in language that even talk-radio listeners can understand, but few have the time or the patience to waste even half an hour giving loons like Monckton the credibility such a debate would bestow. That leaves journalists and PR agents who feel someone should agree to debate the likes of Monckton for fear of letting their lies go forth unchallenged. But they don't have the authority that comes with a degree in climatology to decisively dismiss the falsehoods in which the pseudo-skeptic trades.

So what you're left with is the false equivalency train wreck of a debate that CHML listeners heard. The real culprit in that case was Roy Green, a semi-retired radio host who should know better. He probably does. But commercial radio isn't about ethics, is it? Tune in next time when I pay homage to NPR.