Climate Asylum

I’ve made a few videos, and had a few of my climate change talks recorded, so I decided to collect them here on this page.

1. “How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change,” B.R. Bickmore, talk given at Utah Valley University.

2. “Climate Change:  What Do We Know, and How Do We Know It?”  B. R. Bickmore, talk given to the LDS Earth Stewardship group.

3. “Climate Consensus:  A Cautionary Tale.”  This is just a video I made when my wife got Final Cut Express for Christmas.  All about whether there is a scientific consensus about climate change, and why it is important.

4. “Joe Barton and Monckton Worship.”  Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) was instrumental in bringing Lord Christopher Monckton to testify before a congressional committee as a climate change expert.  Monckton is not a scientist of any kind, and although he is a real British lord, he goes about falsely claiming to be a member of the British Parliament (i.e., a member of the House of Lords).  For people like Rep. Barton, all that matters is that Monckton is a real British lord who tells them what they want to hear in a high-class British accent and with a few Latin phrases sprinkled in.  Old Joe doesn’t have the lingo down, however, so instead of calling Monckton “Lord Monckton,” he repeatedly just calls him “Lord,” just like you might hear a Southern Evangelical Christian address Deity in prayer.  (At the end of the video Barton even says, “Thank you, Lord.”)  I post this here simply because it cracks me up.

5. “Climate Change and the Open Mind“.  In April 2013 I gave an invited talk entitled “Climate Change and the Open Mind” at DePauw University.  This was part of a workshop called “Cool Talk about a Hot Topic: The Ethics of Communicating about Climate Change,” put on by the Prindle Institute for Ethics.  Click here to see the video of the talk.  There are also links there to the other talks given at the symposium.  The question I asked was why things like political ideology are much better predictors of a person’s views about climate change than things like education.  I think some of the answer has to do with flaws in how we educate people about 1) what it means to be a critical thinker, and 2) what it means to do science.  My primary example to illustrate my points was Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and of course I had to bring in Christopher Monckton.  That’s just a given.