Climate Debate Nuttiness

The debate over climate change has reached a new low with media - at least in the UK and in the climate change blogosphere- covering a recent debate between the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (left) and John Abraham (right).

Seriously?

Let's review their qualifications. Lord Monckton has been a journalist, a deputy leader of the UK Independence Party, and the creator of the Eternity Puzzle. Professor Abraham teaches mechanical engineering at the University of St. Thomas, a third-tier university in St. Paul, Minnesota.

To my mind, this epitomizes the problems with the "climate change debate". It's full of people with strong opinions, but virtually no training in climatology.

I took a grand sum total of one meteorology class my freshman year of college, and while a remember little of what I learned about adiabatic lapse rates and occluded fronts, the one thing that my B in that class taught me is that meteorology is hard. I have no trust in the ability of amateurs to dip themselves into the complexities of climate science and get it right. As Pope put it:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

But then again, I think we need to be skeptical of the abilities even of experts to get it right on something as complex as the climate, which does, after all, involve an interconnected system covering the entire planet.