The website is edited by Denis Dutton, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and editor of the popular website Arts & Letters Daily, and Douglas Campbell, who is currently completing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Arizona while teaching philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The two are likely to keep each other in check, for Dutton is skeptical about the human contribution to current global warming, while Campbell believes current global warming is largely manmade and requires immediate action. Both agree, however, that "The best way for science and public policy to proceed is to keep assessing evidence pro and con for anthropogenic global warming."

          What kinds of articles are being highlighted at Climate Debate Daily? In the "Calls to action" column, I found a long New Yorker article by Michael Specter who, while clearly believing in the need to address global warming, nonetheless poked holes in the fashionable notion of so-called "food miles," pointing out that items grown halfway around the world can sometimes have less of a carbon footprint than products grown fifty miles away. In the "Dissenting voices" column, I found a Daily Express article discussing how this winter is the coldest the northern hemisphere has seen in decades – to which my latest heating bill, 33% higher than last year, will attest – with Arctic sea ice coverage also making a dramatic comeback. I also found there a Cato Institute article by Patrick J. Michaels asking why his and Ross McKitrick's recently published scientific paper, demonstrating that the planet may only have warmed by half as much as is commonly thought, has been virtually ignored by mainstream media.

          Over the years, I have been steered to many a thought-provoking and edifying article by the Arts & Letters Daily webpage. The fact that the editor of that fine site has, with some help, decided to turn his attention to the climate debate is good news for those of us who believe that the competitive confrontation of opposing ideas is the best way to separate fact from fiction.
 

The Essence and Spirit of Science Itself

          Although I was pleased that Rex Murphy took it upon himself to point out that aspiring emperor Suzuki was wearing no clothes, I still think he let him off a little too easily. Murphy ended his piece by writing, "Dr. Suzuki will surely agree that truth, like science, is not under the ownership of either any one group or any one man. To argue that those who question a prevailing orthodoxy should, even metaphorically, be tossed in jail is radically inconsistent with the essence and spirit of science itself, the essence and spirit that Dr. Suzuki in his better moments so clearly reveres." But is this really so clear?

          In that same speech at McGill University, Suzuki went on to bash DDT, the infamous but very useful pesticide about which the WHO has recently changed its tune. He also trashed GMOs, which are created using techniques that are more accurate than hybridization techniques that have been in use for centuries. On both of these issues, by my count, it is Suzuki who is, at the very least, out of step with the current scientific consensus.

          What is to be done about these clear instances of Suzuki "ignoring the science?" As I am a firm supporter of freedom of speech, I do not think Suzuki should be thrown in jail for his blusterous nonsense, dangerous though it may be. He should be allowed to say what he pleases. But given his clear lack of reverence for the essence and spirit of science, I think the least we could all do is agree to stop calling the man a scientist.

          I was at a friend's birthday party a few weeks ago when, invoking birthday privileges, my friend asked the dozen or so of us gathered in his living room each to answer the question, "What is the most important thing, period?" As we were taking too long to respond, my friend offered up an answer of his own: Truth, he said, is the most important thing. Although his answer appealed to me, I posited that freedom is even more important, because without freedom, we can be forbidden from pursuing the truth – like Galileo, forced by the Catholic Church to recant his heliocentric theory and spend the final years of his life under house arrest.

          But it is not only that we must be free to pursue truth. If we wish to have any real confidence in the truths we think we have identified, others must also be free to challenge what we think is true. It is precisely in resisting and surviving such challenges in a free marketplace of ideas that purported truths prove their mettle. Only the best ideas endure, and no one person gets to declare that the debate is over. This is what the editors of Climate Debate Daily clearly appreciate, and what David Suzuki just as clearly does not.