On Wanting to Debate
This has to be one of the lamest things I have seen in a while.
Fred Singer offered to debate Richard Somerville and Naomi Oreskes in January in San Diego. Both declined. Oreskes said she didn't want to debate someone "with a known record of promoting public misrepresentation of science."
This is used as an excuse to avoid debate by climate alarmists all the time. But it makes no sense. If someone is either a) using really bad arguments or b) spreading misrepresentations, I would definitely want to debate them.
Last week my speech at Arizona State on privatizing the operation of state parks was turned into a debate between myself and the most vocal opposition to the approach, the head of the Arizona Sierra Club. When asked if I would be willing to debate rather than speak, my answer was "hell yes."
You see, I am actually confident in my arguments. I was longing to have a face to face debate on this topic. In fact, I was incredibly frustrated that opponents of using private companies to help manage public recreation were constantly arguing against a straw man that doesn't actually exist in reality. You can see that in spades in the debate below (I am the second speaker, the Sierra Club person is the third). Note how, despite nearly a year in Arizona of public discourse on this topic (pushed mainly by yours truly), opponents are still criticising the model based on hypothesized implementations, rather than observation of actual examples within an hour's drive of where we were speaking.
I start at 19:45, which I am sure everyone wants to watch ;=) And yes I talk too fast, to make it a debate they cut my 45 minutes down to 10.
