By Noel Sheppard

Global warming skeptic and founder of the website Climate Depot Marc Morano debated climate change with Bill Nye the Science Guy on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight Tuesday.

PIERS MORGAN, HOST: Our big story tonight, you are so hot, America. I mean that literally. The temperature was a balmy 60 degrees this afternoon in New York just outside CNN’s studios. (Yes but November was 3.8F below normal with record snow for NYC - that’s called weather Piers) The average high temperature in December is normally 43. A warm front has flooded the lower 48 states. Quite extraordinary but is it evidence of man-made global warming? That’s tonight’s battleground America. Joining me now are Bill Nye the Science Guy and Marc Morano, the publisher of ClimateDepot.com. Welcome to you both. Let me start with you, Marc Morano, if I may. You are implacably opposed to the concept of man-made climate change. Why?

MARC MORANO, CLIMATE DEPOT: We followed the evidence. There are quite literally hundreds of factors that influence global temperature, everything from tilt of the Earth’s axis to ocean cycles to water vapor, methane, solar system. If you go down, look at the scientific literature, we are finding reams of data and new studies showing the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods are as warm or warmer today without our CO2 emissions. We have gone 16 years without global warming according to U.N. data, and we have the absurd spectacle of people claiming acts of Congress can control the weather and make hurricanes less nasty and tornadoes less frequent which by the way none of them are showing any trends at all that are unusual.

MORGAN: Okay. Bill Nye, your response?

BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY: Well, we start talking about the facts.

MORANO: Those are facts.

NYE: The Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warming Period, those are just in Europe.(WRONG-There was a Medieval Warm Period and it was global? According to data published by 1118 individual scientists from 641 research institutions in 46 different countries...and counting!) Let’s see if we can agree on a couple things. Do you agree that when I was a kid or when you were a kid, there was 340 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

MORANO: Sure. Carbon dioxide is rising. What’s your point?

NYE: So here’s the point, is it’s rising extraordinarily fast. That’s the difference between the bad old days and now.

MORANO: Carbon dioxide.

NYE: ...much faster than ever in history.

MORANO: Let him finish, Marc. Let him finish.

NYE: It’s the rate that’s of great concern more than the actual number itself.

MORGAN: And what do you put that rate down to, Bill?

NYE: It’s human activity. You go back, this is what I say all the time. You look at the ice and you find bubbles of trapped gas from 200 years ago, let alone 1,000 years ago. There’s nobody running around with a hypodermic needle injecting bubbles of gas in ancient ice cores. That’s the ancient atmosphere in there so you can determine the composition exactly. This Medieval Warm Period is brought up quite often, but it was really a European phenomenon. It wasn’t global.

MORGAN: What are the biggest factors, the man-made factors creating the acceleration of CO2 in the atmosphere?

NYE: The biggest thing is when I was 9 years old, the Earth’s population changed from 2.999 billion to 3 billion. Now it’s in my lifetime, it’s now 7 billion people trying to live the way we lived in the developed world and we’re just burning carbon and spewing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at an extraordinary rate.

MORGAN: Right, so Marc Morano, if there is a massively increased acceleration in CO2 in the atmosphere at the same time that there’s been a bigger than double the sizing of the population of the planet, why would that not be inextricably linked? Explain to me.

MORANO: CO2 is rising. No one is disputing that. What Bill Nye just did was waste everyone’s time explaining that CO2 is rising. The question is what impact does it have on the weather, on climate change. That is where you look at the geologic records. We’ve had warmer periods with lower CO2 and colder periods with higher CO2. You have to go way back for some of that but the bottom line is hundreds of factors are dictating our climate. The Medieval Warm Period was both Southern and Northern hemispheres. On my website there’s literally, it demolishes the idea of a hockey stick, new peer reviewed study. So the idea that Bill Nye is going around saying CO2 is up, therefore global warming is dangerous, we should be concerned, it’s not. It’s not dangerous. The bottom line is all these factors dwarf the effect of CO2.

MORGAN: Let me jump in. How do you explain the Eastern seaboard, for example, is getting some of the warmest weather it’s ever had at the same time that California has been plunged into storm after storm in the last week and you see New York last month had the worst hurricane it’s ever endured and so on and so on? How do you explain that we’re getting so many of these freakish weather patterns if at the same time you’ve got all this extra CO2 in the atmosphere and all those people now guzzling up power and energy and emitting gases that weren’t there before. Surely that is evidence, isn’t it? Wow what a crock

MORANO: No. You go to the peer reviewed literature. You are you looking at anecdotal evidence. Basically global warmists like Bill Nye say global warming will cause many bad weather events. And guess what? Bad weather events happen all the time so people look and say look, there’s more proof, there’s a bad weather event. Bottom line, big tornadoes, F3 and larger since the 1950s have dropped dramatically. Bottom line, we’ve gone the longest period without a major U.S. Category 3 or larger hurricane hitting the U.S. since 1900, maybe the Civil War. Bottom line, new study in the journal Nature, peer reviewed, no change in U.S. drought in the last 60 years. Bottom line, a new study out shows that drought has not changed in 85 to 126 years.

MORGAN: Let me, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let me add one more bottom line before I defer to Bill Nye. He knows more about this than I do. Another bottom line, the world is indisputably getting warmer. The U.N. Weather agency said last week 2012 is on track to become one of the top ten hottest years on record. Add all the weird climactic changes we’re seeing. Bill, over to you. Piers is clueless as usual)

NYE: This will be the hottest two decades in history, in recorded history. So when you throw around a statement like the U.N. says it’s not the hottest 20 years, I got to disagree with you. There may be some surface data shows that in certain cities.

MORGAN: Here’s my point to you, Marc. It’s a straightforward one, really. If you are wrong, then the implications for the planet are utterly catastrophic.

MORANO: Not at all.

MORGAN: In other words, if you and the climate change, well, let me finish. If the anti-climate change brigade win the argument and nothing is done because you convince people nothing needs to be done and you’re wrong, then in 100, 200 years, we’ll have caused devastation for the planet that will then be irretrievable. If however you are right in what you say and this is unnecessary and overreaction and so on, what you’re seeing is a bit of economic hardship in the short term to deal with what may not be as big a problem as you think it is.

MORANO: Why is it the wrong argument? Because every proposal ever done including the United Nations Kyoto protocol would not impact the temperatures assuming you buy into their science.

NYE: We’re not talking about the temperature.

MORANO: We’re talking about a climate bill in the United States. President Obama was telling people it will keep the planet four or five degrees cooler for our grandchildren. His own EPA said it wouldn’t affect global CO2 levels let alone temperature. If you actually do, the developing world is getting 1,000-plus coal plants. There are 1.3 billion people who don’t have running water and electricity. If we actually go the route of trying to stop carbon-based energy - which has been their lifeline, which would lower infant mortality and longer life expectancy - it would be the most immoral position you can take. Bottom line is even if skeptics are wrong the solutions that the global warming alarmists have proposed would have no detectible impact on climate change.

MORGAN: Let me let Bill Nye respond to that.

NYE: If we were to begin to reduce carbon emissions, have the United States for example lead the way in this new technology, especially energy transmission, energy storage, electricity, we could change the world. We could get everybody a much higher quality of life than they would otherwise have. The problem is so many people live near the coasts and they are very old economic reasons. People lived on rivers since the beginning of human history. So as sea levels, as the world gets warmer - and I take it he doesn’t disagree the world’s getting warmer, the sea actually gets bigger. So ice is also falling off the ice sheets so that ice is up on land. This is also going to cause the sea level to rise. So for example, in the case of Sandy, which was not an especially big hurricane, the economic impact was $30 billion, and that’s in the developed world where we have the resources to deal with it. When you have people displaced on a continental scale, we’re not talking about a few people trying to get through a fence at a border between countries. We’re talking about tens of millions of people trying to move north, trying to move out of Southeast Asia. You’re going to have trouble. So the sooner we get on that problem, the better.

MORANO: These are all predictions are based on climate models that violate 81 of the 87 principles of forecasting.

NYE: I appreciate your yelling. That’s good.

MORGAN: Marc Morano, do you accept that the ocean levels are rising, that the planet is getting hotter, that CO2 emissions have dramatically increased in the last 50 years, and ice sheets are shrinking, and the planet population is doubling and accelerating at a terrifying rate, and that the combination of all these things is likely to be a major problem for the next two or three generations, and therefore, doing nothing shouldn’t really be a sensible responsible option.

MORANO: Doing nothing? First of all the United States did nothing, our CO2 emissions are dropping as we move to fracking away from coal through technology. So the idea of doing nothing, there’s nothing to do. There’s no way you can solve a non-problem. Sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age. There’s no acceleration. Dutch Meteorological Institute said there’s no acceleration. You can look at the data, the land-based data. There’s no acceleration in sea level.

NYE: We just don’t agree on the facts. We aren’t going to get anywhere.

MORANO: Where it goes is scary, and where the horror story is in all these predictions. They come out and say it’s worse than we thought. Why? Because the predictions get scarier and scarier.

MORGAN: Okay, I respect that you have views. I don’t think they’re facts, and there are many scientists who would take issue with you about the use of the word facts. I’m going to have to wrap it up, I’m afraid. Been a spirited debate. I appreciate you both coming on. Thank you.

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Weatherbell was originally asked to do the Marc Morano part, but we had conflicts. Marc did well in this two against one battle. Both Piers and Bill Nye proved how ignorant they are about the science, using tired old debunked alarmists talking points and using anecdotes about a warm day in NYC to prove the theory. When we tried to present a snowy winter or decade of cooling (now 16 years) as evidence of falsification (Karl Popper and Richard Feynman), we were told we were cherry-picking and that we did not understand the difference between weather and climate. Sorry boys and girls, I taught weather and climate for 10 years at the college level. I grew up with Mr. Wizard, a real scientist. Not a political phoney actor - a Soupy Sales clown but without the personality.  And somehow in CNN’s mind, an English accent portrays intelligence. Sorry Piers did a good job promoting Susan Boyle and in evaluating talent but he is no talk show hope and not a fair interviewer like Larry King.

BTW, I was busy yesterday and today doing cable access shows on weather and climate promoting the truth about climate change and also the efforts, Joe Bastardi, Ryan Maue, I and our team at Weatherbell.com are doing to provide accurate forecasts of storms like Sandy. JB was on cable over a week in advance warning of a hit on NYC and NJ.  Please remember to join us as subscribers, a great Christmas gift to a weather enthusiast. Also please help Icecap pay for our expenses. We get no grants unlike Mann at Real Climate who gets a blank check from Fenton Communications to peddle Bad Science and has NASA look the other way as Gavin Schmidt spends his working hours at NASA posting in Real Climate. We get no money for doing interviews on cable large and small. Art Horn is driving 6 hours to join me tonight at HIS expense.  Even small amounts are appreciated. BTW, your cable access channels are looking for programming. Put together a powerpoint and got down and present it. I once did one in Bloomfield Michigan several years ago to a club that was shown over 5 dozen times and had the blood boiling at the University and Wunderground.  I have worked 7 days a week since early 20111 and the inception of Weatherbell. When I do these other things or post on Icecap, it is during breakfast or in place of dinner. That is how strongly I feel about the truth and getting the message out. It is a battle we can’t afford to lose, quite literally.

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Marc Morano Exposes Bill Nye’s Astonishing Ignorance Of Climate Science In Debate On CNN
NOTRICKSZONE

I thought Bill Nye was supposed to be well-informed about science. Boy, was I wrong. Marc Morano Exposes Bill Nye’s astonishing ignorance of climate science. It started as soon as Nye opened his mouth at the 1:39 mark, he claimed the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Period were isolated incidents occurring only in Europe. He repeated it again 1t 2:55.

That claim was already refuted 10 years ago. Since then there are dozens of studies from every corner of the globe where proxy data clearly show that the aforementioned optimums occurred in cycles WORLDWIDE. Incredibly, Bill Nye thinks that the global temperature was more or less constant before human CO2 emissions. Even Michael Mann no longer believes that.

At the 2:20 mark, Nye then says that the rate of CO2 rise is of great concern. False. What is of concern is CO2’s impact on global warming. All scientists agree that a doubling of CO2 will lead only to about 1 to 1.5C of warming by itself. CO2’s impact is turning out to be far less than originally feared. In fact “the rapidly rising CO2” has resulted in no global warming in over 15 years!

Then at about the 3:35 Morgan and Nye seem to claim that the climate is directly related to the human population, i.e. when population rises, then temperature rises. Now we are getting a good idea of just how bad Nye and Morgan’s science truly is.

Throughout the debate, Nye and Morgan’s arguments are carried by fear and horror visions. You can’t help but to think they are a bit on the hysterical side.

At the 4:30 mark, Morgan then totally confuses weather with climate. “How do you explain the warm weather today? Why is it we have all this freakish weather just when we have so many people? That’s evidence isn’t it?” The CNN host has now ventured into comedy science. It’s again that psychological affliction of insisting that the world is coming to an end, and not being able to live without that.

At the 6:30 mark it’s the old “precautionary principle” line. It’s a wonder these people ever hop onto a plane or drive a car.

The rest of the debate is pretty much Bill Nye and Piers Morgan neurotically worrying about the phony computer-generated horror scenarios 100 years down the road, and confirm they believe that global temperatures are rising (they aren’t, they’re flat) and that sea level rise is accelerating (it isn’t, in fact it is decelerating).

Finally, I couldn’t help noticing that their primary worry is population growth for them there are just too many people on the planet. They need more “Lebensraum”.

Not the first time Nye made a complete fool of himself and exposed his leanings on CNN. See this .