How to Win a Climate Debate
H/T: This meandering thread at Lucia’s, where the faucet scene in My Cousin Vinny was fondly recalled.
Vinny Gambini: [Vinny hears a drip in the motel bathroom] Weren’t you the last one to use the bathroom?
Lisa: So?
Vinny Gambini: Well, did you use the faucet?
Lisa: Yeah.
Vinny Gambini: Then why didn’tcha turn it off?
Lisa: I DID turn it off!
Vinny Gambini: Well, if you turned it off, why am I listening to it?
Lisa: Did it ever occur to you it could be turned off AND drip at the same time?
Vinny Gambini: No. Because if you’d turned it off, it wouldn’t drip!
Lisa: Maybe it’s broken.
Vinny Gambini: Is that what you’re saying? It’s broken?
Lisa: Yeah. That’s it, it’s broken.
Vinny Gambini: You sure?
Lisa: I’m positive.
Vinny Gambini: Maybe you didn’t twist it hard enough.
Lisa: I twisted it just right.
Vinny Gambini: How could you be so sure?
Lisa: [sighs] If you will look in the manual, you will see that this particular model faucet requires a range of 10 to 16 foot-pounds of torque. I routinely twist the maximum allowable torquage.
Vinny Gambini: Well, how could you be sure you used 16 foot-pounds of torque?
Lisa: Because I used a Craftsman model 1019 Laboratory Edition Signature Series torque wrench. The kind used by Caltech high energy physicists. And NASA engineers.
Vinny Gambini: Well, in that case, how can you be sure THAT’s accurate?
Lisa: Because a split second before the torque wrench was applied to the faucet handle, it had been calibrated by top members of the state AND federal Department of Weights and Measures… to be dead on balls accurate!
[She rips a page out of a magazine and hands it to him]
Lisa: Here’s the certificate of validation.
Vinny Gambini: Dead on balls accurate?
Lisa: It’s an industry term.
Vinny Gambini: [tosses paper away] I guess the fucking thing is broken.
Another way is to pretend he was talking about the toilet rather than the faucet, say “the toilet isn’t dripping,” and accuse him of bad faith and playing semantic games before stalking off.
That works too.
Sounds like a great scene. Will have to hunt for the movie now. 🙂
@ Stu
This is a very funny film. You’ll like it. And Marisa Tomei is just lovely as Lisa.
PDA:
You asked this loaded question
do you think it’s appropriate to assert as fact the content between what Anna wrote and a conversation you were not privy to?
The loaded question contains these elemients:
1) the premise that Keith was not privy to the conversation on the back-channel
2) that keith stated a fact something he did not state as a fact– though he intimated it.
One of these premises contained in your loaded question is dubious; the other is wrong.
Given the topic Keith’s posts, readers could hardly forget the existence of “back channels”. For all you, I or any reader of Keith’s post Keith was privy to the contents of the conversation on Tobis’s undisclosed “back channel” and became aware of the content of the discussion through a “back channel”. So your assumption that he was not privy to the contents of the conversation is dubious. But your question assumes it true.
The premise that Keith stated what was said on the back channel as a fact is simply false. Saying “I didn’t expect x” is not the same as saying “X is a fact”. The most that can be said is that saying “I didn’t expect x” brings up the subject that x is something that might or might not have occurred. In that sense, it intimates it as otherwise, the notion might not rise in the readers mind. But no reader should jump to the conclusion that “I didn’t expect x” implies the writer is saying ” x is a fact”.
For what it’s worth, I still don’t know what was said on the Tobis’s back channel. Tobis didn’t provide quote– he was vague. Conversation at my blog suggests that Tobis was not referring to discussion on Planet 3.0, but rather some other back channel. Unless Tobis tells us which backchannel to access or posts the full discussion– or someone else with access to the back channel posts the content we can’t know what was said on that back channel. For all we know people did discuss “what to do” about Keith and for all we know Keith knows this too.
Regardless of what was discussed, you asked a doubly loaded question and are now irked that it was perceived as a semantic game. The double loading may have been an accident, but you ought to be able to see the double loading and understand how that question would be perceived when asked. It at least looked like a semantic game.
Lucia,
to quote Michael Tobis.
There are about a half dozen active climate communicator email lists I’m aware of, one which I run and one of which I am a member. […] Sort of remarkably, I invited Keith to my list in the first place. Who knows where it would have gone had he accepted.
It is my understanding, that the discussion took place on the above mailing list.
bluegrue–I don’t read that comment as interpreting the discussion took place on that specific list (planet 3.0). I’d initially thought Tobis that list might be the “back channel” because I knew it existed. I’m pretty sure people have reported the discussion did not take place on planet 3.0.
You did link to the comment where Tobis suggests the existence of skeptic lists with rather nefarious goals:
It’s pretty much inevitable that the Heartland gang has their own list or lists wherein they collate their nonsense and try to hush up its bizarre contradictions. I suspect they also have some political list which dreams up and coordinates their random ambushes on innocents and serious researchers.
Really? A list that “dreams up and coordinates … random ambushes on innocents and serious researchers”?
While I would never be surprised at the existence of lists about many things, I continue to doubt a skeptic list with the goals Tobis suggests. Tobis does seem to see those with whom he disagrees as resembling devil like phantasms.
Am I the only one who reads Tobis’s use of the words “Back Channel” in this light?
[…] I think Keith Kloor is “dead on balls accurate” when he describes introduction of the amendment as “a clever chess […]