Aaron Mair versus Senator Cruz

How to win a debate when you don’t know what you are talking about

>>> Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV >>>

First watch this exchange between Sen. Ted Cruz and Aaron Mair on climate change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=84&v=Sl9-tY1oZNw

Now, here are two guys who wouldn’t know the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current from the Circumpolar Current or a Hadley Cell from a Polar Vortex. Neither has the background to understand, let alone to contribute to research. You’d just as well have two 5th graders arguing.

Then, Cruz is a lawyer. I learned long ago that law is a sort of fundamentalism which argues to text and precedent. When you are unfortunate enough to go to court, you hope the verbal map of legal “reality” matches the physical world reality in which your incident happened. Often it doesn’t. We hear about people being absolved of crimes years after being convicted. Doubtless there are many innocent that are never absolved. Of course we never hear about them!

A lawyer is trained to serve the best he can the person who pays him, defense or prosecution. Justice is what we hope for, but not what the lawyer argues for. He argues to win. How it comes out depends on the judge, who tries to fit the lawyer’s work to the legal map of “reality.”

Let’s not talk about who pays Senator Cruz and how – you know anyway, since he wants to be President. Real high stakes!

Mr. Mair is obviously used to gentleman debate of academics, where you are supposed to use experts for things you don’t research yourself and specify where your claims come from. Go for the jugular is not his thing. Being right is more important than wining on points.

The video is not even a classy debate. Sen. Cruz may not be aware how much he looks like a bully. But some love that, just like they love to see a hero beat up the bad guy. This video went wild in Right-leaning circles.

The following is this author’s comment on the transcript from here:

Sen. Cruz:. “. . is this a frequent practice of the Sierra Club to declare areas of science not up for debate, not up for consideration of what the evidence and data show?”

Comment: Strong frontal attack, the appropriate answer: “NO! But we depend on expert opinion.”

Mair: “If you are relying on the evidence and data, the science, the preponderance of the evidence, are there.”

Comment: Correct, but not assertive.

Cruz: “But that’s a different thing than saying we should not debate a question, that the Sierra Club has declared this scientific issue resolved, and there should be no debate.”

Comment: Better answer: “Not so fast, Senator. What we say is that the experts have decided. And it is not appropriate for those of us who are not familiar with all the evidence, terms and all the data to cherry pick the little we have heard.”

Mair: “Based upon the preponderance of the evidence the science is settled. But the thing is that anything is up for debate, Senator. We can debate anything.”

Comment: Gentlemanly, but not long on points.

Cruz: “Well, I would note that even the phrase “preponderance of the evidence,” having been a practicing lawyer for many years, means 51%, that means 49 . . . at least 51% is what the preponderance means. You know, I would ask, for example, if you want to end debate, if you don’t want to address the facts, how do you address the fact that the last 18 years the satellite data show no demonstrable warming whatsoever?”

Comment: Better answer: “The fact is 97% of the people with the education, access to the tools and a lifetime invested have that view, That is a preponderance of evidence.”

Mair: “Sir, I would rely upon the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I would rely on the evidence, again, of our own NOAA officials, the data are there.”

Comment: Cruz ignores this key statement and instead goes on the attack with another assertion.

Cruz: Is it correct that the satellite data over the last 18 years demonstrate no significant warming?

Mair answered: “No.”

Comment: Here Mair made a big mistake. No such data exist, it is a very serious mistake for Mair not to have called him on it. His experts behind him, who he whispered to, apparently did not know, either.

Cruz: “How is it incorrect?’

Mair: [Confers with staff.] Based upon our experts, it’s been refuted long ago, and there is no longer, it’s not up for scientific debate.

Comment: A firm assertion “that data doesn’t exist” would have set Cruiz back on his heals. Mair’s experts should have known this, even if he didn’t. They improvised and the rout began. If Cruz denied their assertion that it didn’t exist, all they would have had to do is ask him for the name of the study or the scientists. In fact, even if the study had existed, subsequent studies disproving it could have been cited.

Further down Mair: “But Senator, 97% of the scientists concur and agree that there is global warming, and anthropogenic impact with regards to global warming.”

Cruz: “The problem with that statistic that gets cited a lot is that it’s based on one bogus study. And indeed your response . . . I asked about the science and the evidence, the actual data, we have satellites, they’re measuring temperature . . .

Comment: This was not a “bogus” study. Cruz claim must have been taken from the right-wing myth makers. The research on acceptance of climate scientists is here. It was published by NASA. It involves 18 American scientific societies and over 200 worldwide! It shows the “Temperature Anomaly” graph with figures from four of the most prestigious scientific bodies on earth in climate studies. There simply is no anomaly!

So, the only “science” Cruz brings up is one claim he got out of climate change denier literature. That seems to be his source and his limit.

As for the right wing sounding board, I used to go into a store which had a cartoon on the wall. It said “Never argue with a fool, bystanders don’t know the difference.”

P.S. Don’t miss all the good stuff at the bottom of the last reference!

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NOTE: GOP Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) of South Carolina on Climate Change

Documentary Fracking Films

‘Dear Governor Hickenlooper’ Film Exposes Detriments of Fracking and Promise of Renewable Energy

From Frack Free Colorado & Protect Our Colorado, EcoWatch.com, May 21, 2014

Dear Governor Hickenlooper, a collection of documentary films directed by a variety of Colorado filmmakers provides a new perspectives on fracking and clean energy through the eyes of scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and families. The film, addressed to Colorado’s governor, premiers at Mountainfilm in Telluride on Memorial Day weekend.

Mountainfilm in Telluride, has screened a number of important and memorable environmental documentaries such as Gasland I and Gasland Part II, Bag It, The Cove and Who Killed The Electric Car. Dear Governor Hickenlooper introduces audiences to an ex-gas worker turned whistle blower, Aaron Milton; Cornell’s Professor of Engineering, Anthony Ingraffea, who sheds new light on gas well failures; Dr. Theo Colburn on how fracking affects our children’s health; a family whose dreams are broken when the gas company moves in next door. Shane Davis, AKA “The Fractivist,” is Dear Governor Hickenlooper’s protagonist, taking the audience from one story to the next while elucidating well site visits and statistics from the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission’s own accident data.

“With 52,000 active wells in Colorado and 3,000-4,000 more coming on line every year, the stories of how fracking is impacting real people’s lives across the state are unfolding daily,” Stash Wislocki, the director of Dear Governor Hickenlooper. “We wanted to unleash the creativity of citizens and filmmakers from Denver to Durango and beyond to bring these stories and new science to light.”

Dear Governor Hickenlooper was inspired by Jon Bowermaster’s film, Dear Governor Cuomo, a film about a concert event staged at the New York capital by dozens of celebrities and musicians to keep New York’s moratorium on fracking in place. So far, their efforts have been successful.

Dear Governor Cuomo was screened at Mountainfilm and festival director David Holbrooke was inspired to jumpstart a film in Colorado. “I believe in the power of film and strong storytelling to create change and hope this documentary will have that effect here in Colorado as well as other states,” said Holbrooke.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, uses 1 to 8 million gallons of water and up to 40,000 gallons of toxic chemicals per well. Each well can be fracked up to 16 times. There are 52,000 active wells in Colorado with 3,000-4,000 additional wells permitted each year. The huge volume of water being used and permanently removed from the ecosystem due to chemical and radioactive contamination is pitting the oil and gas industry against farmers and concerned citizens. In addition, fracking is affecting air quality. Recent studies have shown that in rural areas across Colorado and Wyoming, ground level ozone near fracking sites is higher than ozone levels in downtown Los Angeles.

Another study by the Colorado School of Public Health shows that people living within a half mile of a fracking site have an elevated risk of cancer. Further, Cornell’s Dr. Anthony Ingraffea co-authored a study showing how the high methane leakage rates from fracking operations contribute more to global warming than the carbon equivalent emissions from burning coal. The science is out: fracking is detrimental to our health and environment and it needs to stop.

The film also emphasizes on Colorado’s renewable energy potential, and examines the reasons renewable energy development in the state and country isn’t on-par with many countries in Europe that get 50 to 80 percent of their power from renewable sources today.

Dear Governor Hickenlooper, a collection of documentary films directed by a variety of Colorado filmmakers provides a new perspectives on fracking and clean energy through the eyes of scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and families.

“When I talk to experts like Stanford’s Dr. Mark Jacobson, who is featured in Dear Governor Hickenlooper, about the fact that it is possible, today, to be powered 100 percent by renewable energy, but we simply lack the political will to do so, I can’t help but ask this question,” said Allison Wolff, producer of Dear Governor Hickenlooper. “Why would we permanently poison our water, our air and our communities for the short-term gain of a handful of oil companies and politicians when it is possible to have clean energy right now?”

The makers of Dear Governor Hickenlooper are closely aligned with grassroots organizations across the state that successfully put initiatives on the ballot in 2012 and 2013 to ban or put moratoria on fracking. These groups will be organizing screenings of Dear Governor Hickenlooper throughout the summer and fall in cities and towns throughout Colorado, leading up to 2014 elections when there are likely to be new fracking- and renewable energy-related state-wide initiatives on the ballot.