During Tuesday night's vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Vance dismissed climate change as "weird science," skeptically characterizing the scientific consensus about burning fossil fuels as "this idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change." Top climate scientists were unimpressed with Vance's posturing.
These included University of Pennsylvania climatologist Dr. Michael E. Mann, who wrote to Salon that he could not "stomach Vance's constant lies and the lack of fact-checking," from CBS debate hosts, adding that "the reality is that the world's scientists say that carbon emissions cause climate change. Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax. Denial of the threat to our civilization posed by climate change, alone, is disqualifying for the Trump-Vance ticket."
"What he said was just completely wrong, but not a surprise," Glenn "The Hurricane" Schwartz, said. He has 50 years of experience as a meteorologist, becoming one of The Weather Channel's first "hurricane specialists" in the 1980s. Analogous to the fictional tornado chasers in "Twisters," Schwartz chased hurricanes and other extreme storms in real life.
Schwartz added that there are three facts about climate change which cannot be denied: "Number one, carbon dioxide is increasing, which increases the temperatures of the earth. Number two, it's us doing the increase. Number three, things will keep getting worse unless we start producing those alternative energies. That determines whether you're a denier or not. If you can't agree with that, which the science has been there for 150 years and even Exxon knew about it 40 years ago, and when their scientists predicted it practically perfectly and then hid it for 40 years, then you're a denier."
An expert from a federal science agency, who spoke to Salon on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisals, particularly objected to the implications in Vance's description of climate science as "weird."
"Climate science is not at all 'weird,'" the expert said. "It's fascinating and interesting and salient. We have tons of data coming in from satellites. We have improvements and understanding from the models. We have tests and evaluations and calibrations and all the things that you want in a science. We have predictions that have come true. We have hypotheses that have been tested and conclusions that have stood the test of time. It's not at all weird!"
Indeed, the consensus among experts seems to be that Vance's intention behind the "weird" diatribe was to casually disregard the legitimacy of climate science altogether. According to Dr. Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), this is a glib approach that humanity can not afford at this juncture in its history.
"Climate change is very real and we are the cause of it," Serreze said. "How many more wake-up calls do we need? How many more Hurricane Helenes? The longer we ignore climate change, the worse it will be."
One of the debate moderators, Norah O'Donnell, fact-checked Vance in real time, pointing out that "the overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the Earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate.” She then asked Vance if he agreed with Trump's mischaracterization of climate change as a "hoax," which he avoided answering.
"JD Vance, while a smooth talker, stayed true to his pattern of lies and obfuscation," Serreze said. "He's more dangerous than Trump, another climate change denier."
Dr. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who emphasized his opinions are his own, likewise criticized Vance by saying he "clearly doesn't understand science and he's being willfully ignorant. Idiots like Vance and Trump, thinking they know more than an entire scientific community, dangerously contribute to the tragedy of irreversible global heating. Carbon dioxide and methane are driving global overheating, this is basic physics." At the same time, Kalmus also felt Walz put in a weak showing.
"Walz did a terrible job talking about climate in this debate," Kalmus said. "Fossil fuels are the cause, period. The fossil fuel industry has been lying and blocking action for decades, period. All the storms and floods and fires and heat waves and crop failures will become more frequent and intense until we phase out fossil fuels, period. That's the physics. It's irrefutable and pointless to argue with it. And we have a viable solution: solar and wind and batteries. Let's create millions of great jobs and do this."
