CATHY LEWIS: How do you answer skeptics?
Because I'm sure that they still come to you
and say "I'm sorry, I [inaudible] it."
How do you answer that?
ADM. DAVID TITLEY: I mean, what I do is
I kind of go through in a, thank God, more abbreviated version
than what I did this evening,
but basically just try to walk through the physics
because-- at a very basic, conceptual level,
no equations, no nothing like that.
Because we know the climate's changing.
I mean, there's just too much data for us.
And again, I kind of go back to my time on that ship that I showed you,
USS Farragut.
I was privileged to be the navigator,
which is a really, really cool job,
because you're the only junior officer that can
tell the captain where to go.
So that's actually kind of fun.
But one of the things you learn as a navigator--
if you don't learn it,
you're probably not going to be one very long--
is you never trust any one individual data point.
So, you know, I kind of look at climate change like that.
If it was just the Arctic,
but all the glaciers were like, you know, being the same
or coming down, and there were no temperature changes,
there was no acidification change in the ocean, well, OK,
we've probably got to look at something else.
But when you look at all the data,
it all lines up with a consistent picture.
You can actually model it,
you take out the carbon dioxide, you don't get the right answer;
you put in the CO2, you get the right answer.
So you can kind of go through that
and I just gave one example of,
you know, when skeptics have a question about,
what's a trace gas.
And I hear that all the time.
Well, hey, alcohol's a trace,
but we sure hear about that.
So just because it's a trace,
it's interesting,
but it doesn't mean that it cannot be effective.
So what I've found is
that people who really, really, really believe it's all a vast conspiracy theory,
there's not much you can say.
But I would say--
and again, could I just get a show of hands of whose been in the military?
OK, so a bunch.
So you guys and gals will probably sort of understand this.
You know in the military we have some
very, very, very sensitive programs
and you read people in,
make them take polygraphs half the time,
you are told to never, ever, ever talk about them.
If you do, we will humiliate you,
we will take you to jail,
we will take away your job.
Even then, it's pretty hard to keep a secret. Right?
It's pretty hard to keep a secret.
So what I sometimes want to know,
when I hear these conspiracy theories
is how do you get about 3,000 academics across the world
who like to talk,
who (oh, by the way) if they could really disprove this,
there's probably a Nobel Prize in it for somebody.
You know, how--how--
do they all like sign an oath or something
that they were all going to say this?
I mean, we've got a hard time in the Navy
to try and keep some.
It's a challenge.
So are you telling me a bunch of academics
who like to talk are going to...you know...
it just doesn't pass the sense.
You know, there are some people you just aren't going to convince.
But then, you know, that's OK.
LEWIS: So I guess the issue would be then,
and I think you were talking about this a little earlier,
there will be a percentage of people who will believe you no matter what,
a percentage of people who will disbelieve you no matter what,
so the battle is for what's in the middle.
ADM. TITLEY: [inaudible] of the New York Times
really writes about this, the so-called six people.
And yeah, people on either end are there,
and the people in the middle slosh around,
and they'll, you know, I really think,
I'm pretty optimistic, people listen to reason.
If you can make a well-reasoned case,
you know, giving somebody just a spreadsheet or whatever
or one picture of a [inaudible]
probably doesn't do much, but
you know, it's sort of building the first principles.
I think, you look at all the data.
As I said, I didn't start off really believing much of this.
but as you look at it,
I mean, you've got to kind of come to a conclusion.
So it's what Churchill said,
can you, when you see the truth,
can you, can you kind of change your own--