UPDATE from Hoyt himself below…
I like Hoyt.
Two earnest young chaps drive out to meet the slimy-ogre-from-the-hobbit who posts skeptical comments all over the web, and discover, shock, Hoyt is actually a nice guy. He’s not only normal looking, he’s well spoken, and he has good manners. He’s likeable.
Watch: The secret life of internet climate trolls: part one – 5 min video
They young fans of the climate scare get excited when Hoyt admits he doesn’t believe a Democrat. (Hmm, I suspect they are thinking “ideologue”.)
They also got excited when he said he was a prostate cancer survivor, not because he survived (though I say, Thank Goodness) but because it gave them an excuse to talk about “doctors”. There’s an attempt at a James Delingpole-BBC moment coming where they play up a logical fallacy as if it tells us something about the climate. You trust medical science, but not climate science? I do hope Hoyt responded that if his medical doctors had been hiding data and losing records he would have been skeptical of them too.
Naturally, there’s no real science discussed. That apparently comes in “Part III”. Though…wait and see. They’re pairing him up against Physics Girl (who we meet in Part II) who has a PhD, works with the Hadron Collider and has a black belt in Judo.
We all know how selective editing can bias the result, but so far at least it’s been a fun thing to watch. Let’s hope they keep the good natured theme, and let both sides speak. If they do, that would make it a first.
The odds are not good (to put it mildly). This comes from Climate Desk, where they enjoy their troll battles so much they don’t allow any comments at all. (Just tweets).
But lucky for them, they have a whole planet to find a bad-weather-day somewhere for a photo-op.
Hoyt, feel free to tell us your side of the story over here.
UPDATE: Lubos points out that Part III is up in another spot. And I can say Congrats to the guys at Climate Desk, against my expectations, they did keep it good natured. They didn’t actually discuss any science at all. But they didn’t do a character assassination.
PhysicsGirl is assuming that all scientists are the same, that confirmation bias doesn’t exist, and that when someone discusses a climate model, an answer about another model entirely, has some meaning. She talks in general abstract terms so much I wonder if she’s been reading much on the climate debate. James doesn’t answer the most pointed question that survived the editing (would he keep his job?). And I’d like to see what Hoyt said that was edited out, but he comes across well in a video that goes nowhere. But if they’d caught him getting angry or making a mistake, it would have been a headline.
@hoytc55 Good on him.
h/t Willie. Ta.
UPDATE: Hoyt in comments says:
Joanne, I enjoyed reading your review of the ClimateDesk videos. Also, I have visited your superb site many times. It is very helpful pointing out various angles to the global warming alarmist propaganda effort.
Concning the video, James West and Tim ODonnell were a pleasure to work with and total professionals, as we filmed and interviewed for some three hours, and then another hour with Rosi with the show down. Yes, a lot was edited out, and it obviously had to be. Also, obviously a lot of “assumptions” have been made about who Hoyt is, how he thinks, and what actions he’s taken such as with prostate cancer and doctors.
First, I got involved in the issue when our school was showing Inconvenient Truth as a factual documentary.After a number of back and forths of easily demonstrating that Inconvenient Truth was nothing but a propaganda film, to the school system’s credit, they took a more balanced approach. Then after when I continued to see the propaganda pour out of the alarmists grant grovelling organizations, I thought I would continue to study the issue and get involved in the dialogue. Where the alarmists have gone with this is astonishing. In a nutshell, I think the global warming propaganda campaign will go down as the greatest fraud ever perpetuated in science. The only thing they haven’t blamed CO2 and global warming for is bad breath. Give them time. They will get there.
The one comparative that is completely wrong in the video is that I listened to what my doctors told me to do when we discovered I had aggressive prostate cancer. Then there is the attempt to give the alarmist climate scientists credit via a comparison.While, it could be easy to assume I relied on my doctors, nothing could be further from the truth. Do you think that a doctor is going to give you direct guidance when their world is a cacaphony of malpractice law suits? My primary sources for my decision to elect to have DaVinci Robitic surgery came from my friends who had prostate cancer and numerous research forums. My doctors, through no fault of their own were vague…such as “you need to check everything out”. Guys, if you are 50 or older, know your PSA score. There are few or no symtoms as in my case.
What is striking is how obvious it is even to a layperson on the subject such as myself that global warming has little to do with CO2. Early on I asked my son Will who is a Penn State aerospace engineer about the power generation equivalents between man’s power generation and the sun’s energy hitting the earth. It took Will little time, and he is an expert in power equivalents, to calcaulste a ratio that is so large that the only possible conclusion is that the sun and oceans in numerous ways control our climate. But facts don’t matter now. When you point out the facts, the response is to suppress it, block the publication in the various science journals, or call you names. The global warming AGW component is now a multibillion dollar effort for grants and left wing political promotion.
In summary, we have a theory, and it is only theory on its best day,called global warming which has been hijacked by a left wing and/or socialist political movement, where bending data is totally acceptable. The effort has morphed where this political group is attempting to implement policy via an “assumed close” as if this false theory has been proven.Ironically, what will ultimately return sanity and integrity to the climate science and physics world is climate itself as temperatures are leading the way with them having been flat for 16 years.