A debate is a structured contest relative to a specific issue and typically has a moderator, who should remain impartial, and an audience who are in essence judges. In certain debate formats, questions can be asked by the audience whether attending or through digital communication channels. The significance and importance of debates controlled in a nonpartisan manner cannot be understated. In many aspects, this is the time people can make decisions on topics of great importance to them, to future governance, or to society as a whole.
Viewing a debate live or on television is best because the audience can also judge appearance, facial expressions, mannerisms, and body language. These characteristics can at times overturn or invalidate the words that are being spoken by a participant.
Participants in debates can be declared victorious by varying methods – some, not just by spoken content or rebutted argument. It has often been said that Ronald Reagan won using humor while later in a political day Al Gore lost because of body language. The lesson to participants is that people judge on most everything – many on preconceived beliefs and doctrines irrespective of debate content.
In the early 2000s, Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish author, and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center challenged the same Al Gore multiple times to debate on anthropogenic climate change. The one time Gore agreed to the debate he did not show up at the preselected location or time.
In 2009, Lomborg caught up with Gore at one of Gore’s climate change presentations during a Wall Street Journal Economic Conference in California and once again asked him to debate. Gore replied, “The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue. It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake.”
As a result of this response, we can turn to Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright or to Malcolm X who both declared, “The chickens have come home to roost”.
As President, Donald Trump asked the communities of climate physicists, climatologists, climate scientists, and climate geologists to set up a blue and red team to debate the climate change issue and let legislation, policy, and regulations be dictated by that outcome. The blue or climate change advocacy team declined.
The climate battle rages on because one side constantly refuses to debate the other. The justification has always been that conceding to a debate gives the opposing team credibility and credence. To uncover the bona fide justification return to the sentence mentioning Jeremiah Wright.
Robert Bradley, Jr. Founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research, writes a classic case of debate refusal and rejection in “Science Is A Lot Less Than It Appears In Some Cases” and even offers money for it to happen.
The climate change proponent is Andrew Dressler, a climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University and the challenger is Steven Koonin a theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. Previously Koonin was the Federal Undersecretary of Energy for Science with the Obama Administration and is now a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering.
While continuously refusing to debate Dressler is at ease with ad hominem attacks, pointless defamation, and slandering.