An official climate debate could be great

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposal to hold a TV debate on climate change science makes a lot of sense.

by David Wojick, Ph.D., July 26, 2017

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposal to hold a TV debate on climate change science makes a lot of sense.  This idea is very different from the Red Team exercise that he mentioned previously, which has seen a great deal of discussion, such as here and here. The Red Team exercise would be a highly technical scientific debate. In contrast a TV debate would be designed to, as Pruitt puts it, reach the American people. It could also be a great teaching tool.

How to design such a debate raises some challenging issues. These include how many debaters should participate and who should they be, what the format should be, and at what education level should the scientific issues be discussed?

Taking the last issue first, some detractors are likely to say that the average American cannot understand the scientific debate, because it is simply too technical. It certainly can be technical, but consider this. Many States have adopted the new, so-called Next Generation Science Standards and these have climate change science being first taught in middle school, which is defined as grades 6 through 8. So the average 12 to 14 year old is expected to understand the basics of climate change science............To Read More.....

My Take - If Pruitt is wanting to have a public debate about global warming that would be understandable to the American public - I have the answer! 

They comment: "How to design such a debate raises some challenging issues. These include how many debaters should participate and who should they be, what the format should be, and at what education level should the scientific issues be discussed?"

Here's the format!

 The below information is from Wikipedia here. 

Here to the right was a picture of the typical setting.
Below are some U-Tube presentations.
1. Here's an example.
2. Another: and
3. Another:

From 1988 and 1989 there was a ten part series of "Ethics in America" "developed and hosted by former CBS News president Fred Friendly and produced by Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society (later renamed Fred Friendly Seminars). It was funded in part by the Annenberg/CPB Project.

"The original series included ten one-hour episodes:^"

• "Anatomy of a Hostile Takeover (Ethics in Business)"
• "Do Unto Others (Personal Ethics)"
• "Does Doctor Know Best? (Ethics in Medicine)"
• "The Human Experiment (Ethics in Scientific Research)"
• "The Politics of Privacy (Ethics in Journalism)"
• "Public Trust, Private Interests (Ethics in Government)"
• "To Defend a Killer (Ethics in Criminal Law)"
• "Truth on Trial (Ethics in Civil Law)"
• "Under Orders, Under Fire (Ethics in the Military, Part I)"
• "Under Orders, Under Fire (Ethics in the Military, Part II)"

You will notice there was never one on the environment.  And the panelists who appeared on the series included: ( I think this is a short list as there was a second series and others appeared deling with ethics in the media and more here.)

• Floyd Abrams, American attorney and expert in Constitutional law
• R. W. Apple, Jr., associate editor at The New York Times
• Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
• Joseph A. Califano, Jr., former general counsel of the U.S. Army, special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, among other government posts
• Stanley M. Chesley, Ohio trial lawyer
• Vincent T. DeVita, pioneer physician in the field of oncology
• Geraldine Ferraro, member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of New York
• Barney Frank, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts
• Stephen Gillers, professor at the New York University School of Law, considered an expert in legal ethics
• Newt Gingrich, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, and Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999
• Rudy Giuliani, American lawyer, businessman and politician
• James Goldsmith, British billionaire, businessman and founder of the short-lived Referendum Party in Britain
• Ellen Goodman, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist
• Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post
• Jeff Greenfield, television journalist and author
• Peter Jennings, television news anchor
• Jeane Kirkpatrick, American ambassador and former foreign policy adviser to president Ronald Reagan
• C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General
• Arthur L. Liman, lawyer and partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
• Robert R. Merhige, Jr., federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
• Robert C. Maynard, journalist
• Marilyn Hall Patel, judge presiding in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
• T. Boone Pickens, oil businessman
• Arnold S. Relman, professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor of the New England Journal of Medicine
• Alan K. Simpson, U.S. senator from Wyoming
• Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court justice
• Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush
• Louis Stokes, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio
• Lester Thurow, dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of numerous bestsellers on economic topics
• Mike Wallace, television journalist
• Faye Wattleton, the first African-American and youngest President ever elected to Planned Parenthood
• William C. Westmoreland, commander of American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968 and U.S. Army Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972
• Tim Wirth, U.S. Senator from Colorado

The moderators were:

• Arthur R. Miller
• Charles Ogletree
• Charles Nesson
• Lewis B. Kaden

I can't imagine a better platform to expose the truth on this situation.