Dispatches from a Flat Earth

I really haven't found any better example of the flawed approach to the climate change issue by denialists than the following little gem from the Heartland Institute website:

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC DebateWritten

Abstract: MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London emeritus professor Philip Stott and physician turned novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton trounced three prominent opponents in a March 14 public global warming debate sponsored by the Intelligence Squared debating society and distributed for broadcast by National Public Radio. A poll of hundreds of audience members in attendance showed an overwhelming majority believed in alarmist global warming theory before the debate, but by debate's end skeptics outnumbered alarmists.

I have not yet listened to the debate, but I invite you to consider for a moment a group of people who, on the one hand, claim that uninformed, pro-global climate change hysteria has hijacked the debate, while on the other, claim it as a victory for denialism when an audience full of non-scientists is swayed by a single debate (the pre-debate poll put at 57% to 30% the proportion of audience members believing that "global warming is a crisis," while a post-debate poll put the numbers at 46% to 42% believing it is not a crisis). Inasmuch as there is still a "debate" on ACC, this is how far outside of the realm of actual scientific inquiry it has moved.