Bill Kininmonth on TV

Comments

1. John Trigge says

   August 1, 2011 at 1:23 pm

   Whilst watching KAK’s attempt to add to the debate, I was struck by the disparity of Bill Kininmonth, a ‘climatologist’ and John Hepburn, a mechanical engineer.

   Mr Kininmonth spoke about ice ages, the LIA, the world warming over thousands of years – the scientific stuff – whilst Mr Hepburn started out his ‘rebuttal’ by stating “I approach this issue first and foremost as a parent of 2 young children and I think, like a lot of people, you look at the coal that is being burnt, the millions of tons of coal and oil that is being burnt around the world and just intuitively you have to think that it has to go somewhere and it has to do something and there has to be some negative impact” then claims that this is a ‘common sense view’ that is backed by many scientific organisations.

   So, one the one hand we have a scientist who states fact, who is hesitant (or appears so) to offer yes and no answers to a complex issue and on the other hand we have a non-scientist using emotional images of his children, who knows intuitively that the burning of fossil fuels has to have a negative impact and that this is ‘common sense’.

   KAK was rather naive to expect to progress the discussion of this issue with a short session on her programme with guests with such varying backgrounds. One looks at and is attempting to understand the science, the other with little or no scientific background justifies his position with ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense’ (which is all too often not so common).

   I’m surprised that Mr Kininmonth agreed to ‘debate’ such an unworthy opponent in a setting that could not give time to explore the nuances of the subject.

2. Steve Schapel says

   January 17, 2012 at 7:26 pm

   I know I’m a little late to this party!! Nevertheless, an interesting interview, in many ways.

   Hilarious, I thought, where John Hepburn mentioned about the solar power stations that are working 24 hours per day. 🙂