Professor Brian Cox clashes with Australian climate sceptic | Hacker News Reader

Professor Brian Cox clashes with Australian climate sceptic

bbc.co.uk

41 pointsasib78 comments

Video and transcript are here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm

It's rare to see such a civil debate on this issue. I was impressed with everyone except for Shadow Minister Linda Burney who went straight to personal anecdote.

Minister Greg Hunt and mathematician Lily Serna had very reasonable positions for lay people: that they accepted the advice of the experts and wanted to find solutions.

Scientist Brian Cox was his usual charismatic self but did get flustered by the end. Skeptic Malcolm Roberts was composed and polite and clearly had a considered opinion.

The meat of the debate was a bit weak. Brian Cox had a cherry-picked temperature graph (land temperature). I have no idea why he rejected vehemently the claim that CO2 rise comes after temperature rise in the long-term record -- maybe he thought the claim was about current times? He was plain wrong on this. He was right to point out the potential damage from climate change in many areas.

Malcolm Roberts was weak in cherry-picking the Central England temperature record. He lost the audience in saying "NASA" was untrustworthy, when he could probably have pointed to James Hansen's record of activism and the close network revealed in the Climategate emails.

The key scientific point was whether the climate models have been validated or refuted. No real information was presented here, just assertion on either side.

Thoroughly convincing then for a skeptical public? What do they deduce from not seeing Cox trounce Roberts?

We should find better representatives for science than Cox

You use the word 'science' like it's an ideal and not a practical set of techniques used to discover natural truths and convince each other of them.

Well, Cox is Professor for Public Engagement in Science [1] so perhaps twelvechairs feels he's not very good at his job.

[1] https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/01/professor-for-public-e...

Thanks. Yes this is my point. Im surprised its apparently not clear to some

I honestly dont know how you infer that from a single use of the word.

Hes there to represent the outcomes of the worlds climate science research and is being out argued by a loon. That gives all practitioners of science a bad name in my view

Science is a set of techniques and tools. It's not synonymous with the conclusions that come from it.

It's not 'science' that gravity exists. It's 'science' that we can prove it exists, model it, measure it, and understand its impact in various circumstances.

Likewise, AGW is not science. It's good science that proves AGW.

Conflating the two is actually harmful because it encourages untrained people (anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, etc.) to misunderstand what science is.

I agree. All im saying is that Cox is doing a bad job of representing this

oh, this makes me laugh

We need to get better people at understanding that the scientific community (the ones not paid by the big oil) say that GW is a thing and the consequences are potentially very devastating if we do nothing.

The policy makers must stop being corrupt and just taking money from Big Oil and start implementing what they need to to change this trend.

It's as simple as that

Is the public really skeptical of climate change?

I believe in it, but think that any chance to move the needle on it comes to policy makers so I end up caring very little about the issue practically either way.

> No real information was presented here, just assertion on either side.

So just a regular episode of qanda then? It's honestly one of the more frustrating shows to watch most of the time.

"This is my question to you: if you don't model it, how can you go about trying to answer the question?" (brian Cox)

Yeah, validate or refute is not a reasonable representation of the truth. The more accurate question is model or more accurate model. The spread of current models is unpredictable consequences in 20 years or in 80 years.

Sadly Brian Cox stepped into the common pitfalls (like mentioning "consensus") when arguing with climate sceptics. You can shut down any climate sceptic with two points which can be easily measured and verified in any laboratory:

* We know the absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule to be true

* We know the first law of thermodynamics to be true

Hence global warming. Finished. Arguments like the fact that some models can not accurately predict the exact amount of heat oceans can absorb or that the NASA data might be biased are suddenly irrelevant.

Not quite. There's still the matter of the Callendar effect:

CO2 increases. -> World warms a litte. -> Baseline level of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. -> water warms a little more. -> Baseline level of water level...

That's where computer modeling becomes important.

As a former more than sceptic:

The first sentence is spot on.

Sadly (or not, I'll come back to that) I think the rest is a misunderstanding:

These two points are easy. What you are arguing against is people like my former self who accepts measurable physics but find (found) the A of AGW thing fishy for other reasons:

* The broad push that seems to come from non-scientists.

* No mention about how much of the annual CO2 releases are anthropogenic vs coming from other sources.

* Any question, however reasonable, get shouted down with "consensus", "denialist", "troll", "shill" etc etc.

It was only when I started reading the actual report that I got a more enlightened (hopefully) look at it.

All this shouting and bullying does little good and is basically collecting sheep and preaching for the choir IMO.

Now the good part is I think a lot of us aren't evil, trollish shills paid by big oil, we just had a strong false positive on on BS detectors, asked and have been flamed ever since.

(Full disclosure: not pushing AGW hard myself but it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway. It also aligns with things I already do because I find them smart anyway like trying to conserve energy by using public transit (oil independence, economic reasons, can work on my way to work), recycle(reduce need for mining, conserve energy, pollute less) etc etc.)

This is more or less where I'm at as well, except my BS detector is still going off.

> it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway

I'm not sure there's any reason here. There's no empirical evidence that any palatable recourse will actually stop or reverse global warming. It's good science (as far as I can tell) up until we get the the "What now?" question.

Someone having good proof of a problem does not make them qualified to rearrange entire industries, slow down global growth (when we already have widespread stagnation and growing unrest in the West), and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on things that might not even help.

The inability to predict climate at a useful granularity certainly doesn't help. It means attempts to address greenhouse gas levels won't objectively succeed or fail.

The fact that AGW proponents do not acknowledge these difficulties is what sets off my BS detector.

People who argue we should do nothing though have a sticky moral quandry: if you can show evidence of something bad happening (and there's a lot, and plenty more to come) then you have to argue that these are all acceptable losses.

Which tends to open more sticky questions like refugee policy, or just how many you're willing to let die in famine from drought, and so where should the aid budget of the biggest, highest emitting countries be allocated.

EDIT: For example, what should our policy on disappearing pacific island nations be? What should our military posture be if we can expect more divergence from established geopolitical norms by extremized climate conditions? How much should be banked to deal with the increased major climate events per decade, compared to historical norms (aka how frequently is a katrina scale hurricane expected to make landfall going forward?)

Turns out, once you start adding up those costs, we don't really want to pay for any of them, but it would also just be morally repugnant to suggest that, really, abandoning the poor of coastal cities is what we want to do. Don't worry, we'll pray really hard and donate far less then <10% of our yearly incomes to help when it happens. But only while it's in the news.

Those are all interesting and terrifying scenarios, but there's no science showing cap-and-trade or particular levels of carbon taxes will produce better outcomes. If they're both dead-end approaches, we need to focus even more on less obvious solutions or building up infrastructures and organizations to deal with the consequences. Pouring more good resources after bad in those cases will only make us less likely to be able to help refugees, build better levees, etc.

Cap and trade and carbon taxes are political solutions to address the scientific problem. It's hard to make people do something, and that's what they're trying to do. Don't confuse a solution you don't like with the science showing the problem.

Likewise, we shouldn't conflate science and non-scientific solutions. We are confusing solutions we like with the science showing the problem.

Calling people irrational and unscientific for seeing that is unfair and, again, not in keeping with healthy scientific exploration.

  "Here's a problem"
  "Lies!"
  "Huh? Here's my data"
  "Lies!"

20 years later...

  "Ok, I agree there's a problem"
  "Cool, so how about we try to stop making it worse"
  "You're insane!"

Yup! In a nutshell that's exactly how this is going. I would also add this kind of thing going on:

1 - "Here's a problem"

2 - "Are you sure?"

1 - "Humm, maybe not, let me get back on that"

Some years and a push for false studies made meanwhile by 2

1 - "We're definitely sure, the thousands/millions of us experts concur"

2 - "but wait, I have experts Jay and Jane here that say otherwise"

1 - "But what if they are wrong? Won't the crisis that ensue be devastating?"

2 - "But those two [that we handsomely paid] can be right!! [don't take our business away because your cities will be under water and turmoil will take over the world, how would we get our money]"

2 proceeds to pay SIGs and a major political US party that kisses the boots of the Koch brothers (which is one of the embodiments of n.2)

> We're definitely sure, the thousands/millions of us experts concur

More friendly advice: if you want do discuss with reasonable peers, don't do this.

"Millions of experts" is wild hyperbole

IIRC, even in the 2500 scientists UN report a few years ago it turned out that quite a few of them vere authors etc.

Also, from an outsider but scientific/engineering background perspective this makes it sound fishy: in other disciplines debate is encouraged, in climate science it seems to be 2500 good scientists and anyone else is a quack, a troll or a paid shill.

May I suggest a third point on your list?

* All that coal and oil wasn't going to burn itself!

Yes! Calculate 1 trillion barrels of oil divided by Earth's surface area and it's hard to say it won't change something.

(1 trillion barrels being rough consumption to date)

This is the kind of facts we need more of:

* estimates on how many kgs of oil, coal and gas have been used, by year.

* estimates on how many kgs of CO2 each one contributes with when used.

* How many kgs of CO2 are estimated to be in the atmosphere.

* etc

Sadly AGW proponents here and on Ars never seems to want to discuss these numbers rather than rather unscientific things like how many scientists signed the latest report.

Edit: and let me add before someone else does, sceptics are mostly equally bad at this.

Not really (though your desire to "shut down" dissenting views speaks of something other than science). Most skeptics accept the well-known ability of CO2 to absorb heat. What many are skeptical of is the Mann-made disaster associated with warming, the political skullduggery involved in the hockey-stick graph, the denial of the impact urban heat islands have on the surface temperature record, and the fact that the solutions called for conveniently intersect with the desires of many on the left of the political spectrum (higher taxes, co-ordinated international action etc).

These 'concerns' are all the 'skeptics' are left with after decades of outright nonsense has been overturned.

Climate science skepticism is akin to creationism at this point.

Nice hand-wave

You say you accept the science but are still skeptical due to some vague, ill defined nonsense, and you have the cheek to accuse me of handwaving?

Wow.

So pointing out

-the deceptive conduct of several prominent scientists, both around the hockey stick graph and the cover-up since it was published

-the discrepancies between temperatures recorded by satellites and surface stations

-the convenience to one side of politics of an upcoming huge cataclysmic event requiring massive government intervention

is cheek / vague, ill-defined nonsense / akin to creationism? Right. It truly is impossible to have a rational debate in public on this subject.

The first point you make there is pure diversion

The second is poorly supported rubbish

The third is mere politics and had no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of the phenomenon.

So yes, handwaving to try to support your continued position of denial, with no solid reason at all. The 'cheek' comes in that you accuse others of the same.

Rational debate is impossible with people like yourself, that cling to miniscule distractions and bring politics into science, yes.

It's like creationism in that you start with something you don't like (the politics of the 'other side' and what you think they're trying to achieve) and then go looking for justification for your foregone conclusion.

It's almost as good as the one it is replying to.

Scientists have a lot of confidence in the historical surface temperature records, because they have been calculated in several different ways, and the results generally agree with each other.

For instance, the ECMWF (the European weather prediction centre) has a very nice model that uses just barometer readings to calculate historical weather patterns, temperature and all. The results agree remarkably well with actual observed and reported weather. We have those records going back a long time, and because no thermometer readings are used, there is no potential for urban heat islands to bias the results. Because barometer readings generally are consistent over time (as in, sensor technology improvement doesn't really change the bias), there is no potential for a time-specific bias in surface temperature.

I would love to read some accessible information on this - how the models can be so trustworthy. I sort of reluctantly accept climate change, and I generally support environmentally positive politics, for a host of reasons. But when I see graphs like this[1] from the IPCC I can't help but think that predicting 100 years in the future from 100 years of data is never going to be very reliable. What kind of validation have these models had? Surely they are not just fitted to the past 100 years?

1: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-...

A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming is a history of climate models and data, published by MIT Press. https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics-Infras...

This is a great site that has links to outside resources. https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

There is no point in making any 'case' about climate, because it is not a matter which can be resolved by argument. Some people believe in global warming, others don't. That's all there is to it.

It is not a matter of science. Why not? Because it is not accepted as a matter of science, by those who don't think it is a matter of science. It is not a matter of evidence. Why not? Because there is no universally accepted evidence. Attitudes to global warming are irreducible essential beliefs, and therefore not amenable to any form of argument.

This is nonsense, years of scientific evidence and argument have overturned a lot of 'denialist' canards and made acceptance of the science much more widespread, including getting most western governments on board with it to various extents.

Those with a religious zeal (in either direction) are a minority.

Climate change is an ideology. Terms like 'denialist' and 'warmist' indicate the ideological nature of the climate change issue. When people say: "global temperatures are rising" they usually mean they advocate certain state intervention, such as higher taxes on fuels. On the other side, most denialists advocate a free-market economy, less immigration, and a strong traditional national identity. None of these issues are related to the temperature of sea water, or the extent of ice-caps, or any other natural phenomena.

If you look at what is in fact done with the climate change issue, you see it primarily used to promote 'green' products. So it is not a 'left-wing' or 'progressive' factor, except in the eyes of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Its most specific use is to promote the nuclear power industry, which is hardly a leftist plot. It is not used to reduce carbon emissions, because no government has a policy to do that. They say they do, at the Copenhagen conference for instance - but then western leaders also regularly say that they will give hundreds of billions to the poor in Africa. Easy, if you never have to pay.

Absolute cynicism is the only way to treat the whole climate circus - the scientists, the politicians, the so-called environmental groups who seek nothing but finance for their own existence, the denialists. The right thing to do is to turn your back on all of them.

Climate change is science. What we do about it is a scientific, engineering and political problem.

Turning your back on multiple groups who are in no way equal - denialists and those with a wider environmental agenda are not the same as those giving us good science - is woeful and willful ignorance.

There is no such thing as "universally accepted evidence" on anything, and it's more about people than the evidence. There are still folks challenging relativist physics, theory of evolution or basic geography facts.

That doesn't work. You haven't mentioned anything about how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere and how it got there, and when.

Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it doesn't mean it is _the_ greenhouse gas, or even the main climate change culprit.

Some climate change deniers are specifically anthropogenic climate change deniers. They don't argue against climate change happening, just against the idea that it has anything to do with human activity.

Given that CO2 is soluble, the Ocean absorption question remains. One could still also claim that data on the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been fabricated to fit the temperature data (or the other way around).

Historic values can't be independently measured and verified. The closest you can get to that is looking at a variety of independent sources, and checking whether they correspond. That won't convince someone who believes that the so-called independent sources are in cahoots, or innocently republishing one another's results.

That easy explanation put you clearly in the skeptic/denialist field :).

The problem is that the real increase of the temperature is different because the changes in the CO2 level produce changes in other things (like the water vapor concentration, the size of the polar ice shields, ...) So you have to multiply it by a coefficient that is very difficult to calculate analytically and it's only possible to make models and estimate it using simulations.

Something like 3 times the easy model.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity

>* As estimated by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) "there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C."

Debates like this make me realize we as a species have little hope.
Brexit, Trump, Climate Change just shows he who shouts loudest and repeats the most lies gets attention and support.

But on the panel, it was the skeptic that was made out to be the crazy person. The audience (which admittedly skews towards more educated, political-left) was clearly behind the majority of the panel.

The guy's also a sovereign citizen nutter. Here's a letter he wrote to the prime minister at the time, Julia Gillard. Or rather, The Woman Julia Eileen: Gillard., acting as The Honourable JULIA EILEEN GILLARD.
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-05/one-nation-senator-den...
He's a Queensland Senator now. Awesome.

Oh god, a proper nutter then.

Oh yes here we go:
https://theconversation.com/one-nation-climate-denial-and-th...

What.
"I, Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul has not seen or been presented with any material facts or evidence that I, Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul am not living in a free and equal society or should pay for it in some further spurious tax levied supposedly on carbon dioxide, and believe that none exist."

Would it be hard for a climate scientist to present the numerical evidence in something akin to a Jupyter notebook?
So, something that says
"Here's how we collected the data, and here it is"
"Here's some transformations on it"
"If we're right about xyz, this bunch of statistical tests will turn out like so..."
I tend to give the experts the benefit of the doubt, also on this issue. But everything I hear in the media is simply "consensus" vs "conspiracy".
I actually would like to understand how the data works, and how the models work.

It doesn't work that way. Climate change is so politicised that pretty much every source of information is biased. It is impossible to get a clear picture. Politics is absolutely toxic to science. Many people would like to establish something like a world government by leveraging issues like climate change. Even though we really have no idea about the severity and magnitude of the problems ahead of us. I personally think scientists are exaggerating massively; here we have climatologists who cannot even predict correctly whether it rains next week, yet they make predictions about how in 20 years the climate is such and such.

Climate is not weather.
"World Government" is an utterly crazy conspiracy theory.

Climate is not weather.
Clearly you have no idea how modeling works and how similar such computer models for weather and climate are (usually splitting up the area in smaller parcels or a volumetric approach and running equations on them in parallel). Unless the scientist is really dumb and just extrapolates arbitrary temperature data points with a polynomial of degree 1 (aka a line) to predict the climate.
"World Government" is an utterly crazy conspiracy theory.
Look at governmental bodies like the EU that spread and grow like cancer. It is obvious that in today's world, more than ever, there are strong forces in play that want to centralize power. It is a fact that climate change is already used to push regulations onto people by unelected governmental bodies.

> here we have climatologists who cannot even predict correctly whether it rains next week, yet they make predictions about how in 20 years the climate is such and such.
Consider observing a forest road in an area with lots of rabbits. You can't accurately predict how many rabbits will dart across the road in the next hour, but you can — based on long-term observations — predict roughly how many rabbits will cross that road in a year, and based on the empirical evidence of bunnies counted conclude that the number furry creatures moving from one side to another is increasing or decreasing.
Symptoms versus trends. The latter can be predicted with some degree of accuracy.

You raised a good example with rabbit population. Consider this:
http://fractalfoundation.org/OFCA/predatorprey.jpg
Nobody would ever dare to fit any of the two populations with a straight line, yet they do that with temperature data with barely any explanation for the choice of a linear function.

Read and understand the IPCC reports, and then we'll talk.

Thank you, I will.
For those who are interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report
http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/

Averages (climate) can be much easier to predict than particular values (weather). As a mathematical analogy, we cannot predict accurately whether flipping a fair coin is going to come up head or tails, but we can predict that if you flip it 1000 times it's going to be between 450 and 550 heads with 99.8% probability.

The problem with presenting data is that you have to be an expert (e.g. a climate scientist in this case) to thoroughly understand the techniques and assumptions used in the models. The average citizen, who is no doubt quite intelligent, isn't going to understand that stuff and certainly isn't going to put their life on hold to learn it. We need to look at the big picture here: society needs to trust science to get this stuff right. Or at the very least, we should all be asking ourselves "who benefits from the policy that this person is advocating?". The answer that we should accept for that question is "everyone", not "energy company shareholders".

> We need to look at the big picture here: society needs to trust science to get this stuff right.
Why do we trust in mathematical proofs? Answer: because one (theoretically) doesn't have to trust authorities, but can check the proof oneself. The same holds for results from empirical sciences: They can be falsified and lots of experiments have been done with the intention to falsify the theories and failed.
By the way: This is also a strong argument for open access (because parking scientific results behind paywalls makes this really hard).
Thus science is not about trusting authorities, but about being to verify yourself (structural sciences) and all. In other words: Science is about distrusting authorities and verifying/falsifying yourself.

That's beside the point --- the argument above is that most people do not have time to obtain the expertise and check it yourself. So the next best thing is to trust someone who has done that, where you can't do much better than to trust consensus.

If you don't have the time to obtain the expertise one can still do good checks (only not in the details). For example if we are willing to accept the correctness (in some formalized sense) of a statistical test, we can still check whether it was applied correctly (or alternatively you can accept that it was applied correctly and try to understand the proof details behind the statistical methods). This way you will surely not get a complete understanding, but neverthess can check parts of the chain of conclusions and falsification attempts.

I agree for the most part. The problem is that the science that needs to be done to verify/falsify results requires a lot of knowledge. We cannot reasonably expect every citizen to have that knowledge. If they did, we wouldn't have this problem. (We'd have other problems, like who's doing all the other jobs now that everyone is a climate scientist?)
Your point about open access is very much on the mark, though. The society I want to live in is one that trusts science, and making all research freely available would, I think, greatly improve the general public's attitude even if they themselves cannot understand that research.

This needs more upvotes. Like creationism, global warming denial is one of the myths that has strong support on the 'developed' USA yet no basis in actual proof.
The thing is: this issue is vital to our survival (while creationism isn't)

Where do I fall in? I believe in climate change. I don't believe climate change is the result of only humans. And if climate change turns out to be bullshit, I'm glad it's being a driver for alternative energy sources, better production of goods, more environmentally friendly packaging, etc. I just believe the cause being humans is over hyped and the fact that we renamed it from global warming to climate change because the models didn't support global warming....

What caused it then? Volcanoes? please, farming, livestock and fossil fuels produce much more quantity of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide than anything else? whose fault is that? fertilized plants and Cows? but who mass produces those? Humans.
And can we really take the risk of betting that it's not us?
Yet, you are fundamentally right, there are also other punctual events that contribute to it, but decisively that the major factor is us.
This is like the leaded gasoline incident in the 60s or 70s, now everyone sees how obvious it is but all of the white noise built by special interest groups that control one major party in the US makes it look like it's feasible for it not to be a thing.
It isn't
When Brian Cox talks about consensus, he is not talking about consensus among the average Joe or Jane, he is talking about the scientific community, the ones that are experts in the matter.

This is counterproductive. All he's doing is legitimising the shill's position by debating him on TV.

I'm surprised we don't have flat Earth debates on TV yet.

"I brought the graph, right." is the new tableflip. I also have no tolerance for science skeptics. Enough.

It's "NASA", BBC. Not "Nasa".

Lowercasing of acronyms is a common stylistic choice made by UK media to aid readability.
"Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."

I see. Fair enough, I thought it was odd that it was repeated more than once. Thanks.

Interesting how your comment exemplifies perfectly a valid and common style that refutes your point: Abbreviations that are pronounced as words are written in title/inline case (e.g., Nasa, radar, etc.), whereas those that are read letter-by-letter are written in capitals.

"It's BBC, not "bebeca"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art201307021...
> Use the abbreviated form of a title without explanation only if there is no chance of any misunderstanding (eg UN, Nato, IRA, BBC). Otherwise, spell it out in full at first reference, or introduce a label (eg the public sector union Unite).
> Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

"By who? NASA? The people the… Hang on a minute. No, no, see this is quite serious. But can I just – just one thing. NASA, NASA… The people that landed men on the moon?"
Can anyone explain to me what is happening in this bit?
It's either:
a) Brain Cox doesn't know that NASA is responsible for GISTEMP and is completely incredulous at the mention of NASA (The people that landed men on the moon?), as if they aren't relevant to the discussion.
or
b) Brian Cox is aware that NASA maintains one of the major surface temperature datasets, but thinks that it is completely beyond the pale to question any of the decisions (adjustments, station selection) that go into the construction of GISTEMP, because they are NASA (The people that landed men on the moon!!!).
So which is it? Is he clueless, or just a dick?

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