 Our next speaker is Donald Prothrow. Donald Prothrow has written 35 books. I haven't read 35 books. Unbelievable. His talk is called The Mind of the Science Denier. Really nice. Yeah, don't forget also that in case you did not hear, closing remarks are going to be at 1.45. Unfortunately, Patricia Churchlin cannot make it this afternoon. So our closing remarks are going to be at 1.45. Spread the word, please, that our final remarks will be at 1.45. Okay, Donald Prothrow's limerick is this, for his talk, The Mind of the Science Denier. The proof was incontrovertible, but the man thought it was disputable. As he looked overhead, low bridge, the sign said, now he owns a suburban convertible. Please welcome Donald Prothrow. You hear me now? There we go. Thanks so much for sticking out of the round. I appreciate it. I know some of you are torn with the World Cup final going on right as we sit here. Just don't dance around if someone gets a goal. And I will try my best not to run into extra time and make sure that George doesn't do a PK on me. Anyway, since we were the theme of this meeting as psychology and brain science, I thought I would try to put together sort of a connection between that and the last chapter of my new book, which is called Reality Check, which is still on the sale. I'll stand out there by the skeptics booth, and that's where I'll go after today. We finish here. So if you wish to buy a copy, I'll be there. The last chapter talks about how people believe these things in my book that we talk about, such as creationism, climate science denial, anti-vax, the whole range of various types of science deniers. And so if in some ways I'm glad I'm in the last positions, this is a nice sort of capstone to everything we've heard now for two and a half days. And in many ways, there are things you've heard before, but now I'll apply it to a specific instance so you'll get a better sense of how these are put together. And of course, as we've seen throughout this meeting, lots of people don't like the world as it is. They love to repeal reality. They love to deny what's apparent to us. But let me step back in some time, about two centuries here, and remind us of a little bit of where we come from on this. Let's just step back to the Enlightenment period, the late 1700s, especially in France. The man you see on the screen is the Marquis de Condorcet. And he among many of the French Enlightenment philosophers who were also many times scientists as well, or mathematicians as Condorcet was, were also great believers in rationality. They thought they'd finally broken the shackles of the church and it's broken the shackles of royalty and they're finally getting to a world where reason would be eventually enthroned as the power behind human thought. And Condorcet was a great optimist. He thought if enough people were educated, if enough people understood science, enough people could be taught to think rationally and so on. Eventually all society would be rational. We'd never have any problems anymore with the strange things that were common in France in 1700s, or even now. And I'm sad to say, of course, Condorcet turned out to be wrong because a very irrational event named the French Revolution cut his head off. And he learned the lesson the hard way, unfortunately. So we learned that, in fact, humans are not rational. The optimism of the French in the 1700s, of course, has been shattered many times by many different things. Okay, we are belief engines, as the word Michael Sherman uses, or other kinds of things. We have a worldview or core belief system. This is what drives all humans. And we learned this over and over again during this session. We've heard lots of different people talking about this. And because this core belief system is so central to the way we operate, we're frequently in a situation where we'll do any trick or any twisting of our brain or our thought processes to justify belief and make it fit what we already decide is true and what is not true. And many people have talked about this. In Michael's last book, the believing brain was all about how we are belief engines and how we believe then we think, rather than think, then believe. And a very nice book that came out recently by a journalist, Will Stock called The Unpersuadables, Adventures of the Enemies of Science, where he embeds himself with creationists and holocaustiners and all the rest. Very interesting to watch these people basically hang themselves with their own words, which is what he does in his book. And they both point out again that it doesn't really matter who you are. We're all products of this. We all have a preferred set of beliefs. We have a core belief system. Some are more bizarre than others. Some are more easily shattered than others, but we can't escape it. That's part of being human. And so, of course, the metaphor is often used for this. Of course, take again another example from Lewis Carroll from Alice through the Looking Glass. The people who are in a belief system can see the world inside out. Right is left. Black is white. These are amazing tricks that our brain can do under the circumstances where we are forced to defend what we already believe. And of course, we all know, especially, we want beliefs that fit what we already accept as true. So, of course, an inconvenient truth, which was a true title of a real movie, is always going to get less popularity than a movie entitled A Reassuring Lie. Or here we have our college professor in philosophy, presumably, with a very nice syllogism. If P is false, I will be sad. I do not wish to be sad. Therefore, P is true. And if you can read the bottom there, it says there, now you have not skipped 95% of all philosophical debates. This very part of us is being human. We do not like to hear anything that doesn't fit our existing worldview. And psychologists, you've heard this over and over again for the last two days now, have a lot of terminology for this, but I think some of this has probably already been absorbed by you, but I'll just quickly go through it again. We put this all under the broader category of motivated reasoning. We're using reason, basically, to do what we want it to do, not what it's supposed to be telling us. And there are lots of subcategories of that. We've already heard about cognitive dissonance a bunch, but I'll say a bit more about it. Certainly, we are learning our behaviors from whoever we are raised by, whatever part of the world we are. That's tribalism. We have other types that innate psychological tendencies that don't come from our environment that are genetic, and then things like confirmation bias. We've heard many of these, but let me say a few things about them in this specific context. So, for cognitive dissonance, for example, we heard a bunch of different speakers mention this, and this is a very nice definition of it. We hold a core belief that's very strong. We're presented with evidence that works against this belief that that new evidence cannot be accepted as easily as it should be. It might have created a feeling that's extremely uncomfortable, and that's what we call a cognitive disease, that feeling of uncomfort when these two beliefs clash. And because it's so important to protect this core belief, people will rationalize, ignore, or even deny anything that doesn't fit with this core belief. This is where denial of science created a cognitive dissonance. Some really juicy quotes here that say this very nicely. The legendary one from F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I've seen many plays. The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald eventually stopped holding that ability to function and died of tragic causes. And then a very interesting quote from John Maddox, a reporter looking at the people over in Ken Ham's organization. Watching creationist Jason Lyle trying to reconcile the cutting edge of modern planetary physics with the offhand assertions of a religious tract written thousands of years ago by an unknown assortment of bearded semi-cave dwellers. I found myself wondering how long this poor chap has. Not to overdo the Fitzgerald, but I shall think of the creationist often as day after day they beat on boats against the current of truth born back ceaselessly into being just completely, utterly wrong. So cognitive dissonance. Here's a nice little flow chart that sort of says how it works in a very nice little nutshell. For example, let's say a piece of information that is shown in the yellow splash. You learn that excuse me, in the top one where smoking causes diseases and it's your smoker. So the conflict then shown by the yellow splash is you have this unhealthy tension state. This dissonance ringing in your head. There are two resolutions. In the upper boxes you'll see the resolution smoking is dangerous therefore I stop something along those lines but more often the resolution is in the bottom green boxes. Research must be wrong. I can keep smoking. Or in the context of what I'll be talking about today two classic examples of cognitive dissonance in two kinds of science deniers. A creationist, for example, finds a sign to affect the context of the Bible. The core belief system says the Bible is literally true. We just heard a bunch of this when we heard Bill Nye talking last night. Therefore, their conclusion science must be wrong or it can be reinterpreted or it can be denied whatever they have to do. Of course, lots of people are uncomfortable with this and it's sort of interesting as we mirror the apes I just wonder what they think about being related to us too. Or as a creationist do it denial is usually very helpful that it blindfolds and earplugs and as you see down there in the bottom protect your gracious police in style with these God-approved eye and earguards blocks out 90% of all known science. I've seen people who have those on even though you can't see them. Some of you who watch YouTube a lot a very famous sequence where Richard Dawkins interviews this woman Wendy Williams, another one of Ken Ham's people and talks to her about transitional fossils my particular area of interest and he points out transitional fossil transitional fossil and she just says there are no transitional fossils it puts one in front of her there are no transitional fossils literally that blinders and those earplugs are sitting in there even if you can't see them or take it over to another instance the climate denier global warming constrains business it makes us regulate, it makes us do things like cap and trade or whatever global warming deniers underlining motivation is hardcore capitalism environmentalists must not be allowed to interfere with business especially when the hardcore libertarians get into this so therefore I believe and understand capitalism therefore the science of global climate change must be wrong that's what motivates it it's a cognitive dissonance that builds that whole thing and so if you once again they find their own way to not look at the world as it is all right so that's one thing let's not about it let's look at another influence we are all tribal beings you may come from a small town where you were raised in a particular church and you're part of that tribe your family, your immediate friends all your associates were part of that tribe they influence your world as you grow up now here you are in a different tribe being influenced by the people you're around right now we learn our world view and our values from whatever our tribe is our family, our community and as most of you know in this room it's very hard to be the black sheep in your family the one person like I am in my family is not religious it's a very tough way to be living works against everything most people are built to do and especially in the case of being the black sheep in a religious family your choices are following what you think to be right versus hell and damnation which your family still thinks you're due for to follow what they think is right that's a very powerful and disincentive to wander away from your tribe's faith most of you have probably seen this done before Richard Dawkins has said it a bunch of times you can predict what tribe you belong to in terms of religion just by where you live and where you were raised the true religion is the religion of what you happen to be what kind of community you have to grow into so if you're from the Middle East Islam is the religion of truth but if you're other parts of the world Buddhist, Hindu, and so on and I love that little quote down there at the bottom from Mark Twain who always said it beautifully man is a religious animal is the only religious animal is the only animal that has a true religion several of them is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat through his theology isn't straight Twain can say it that way and there are other kinds of tribalism too here we have the big book of Republican science the GOP tribe with the universe of 6,000 years old dinosaurs and noses are global cooling and women who shut down their own pregnancies all sorts of bizarre, non-scientific ideas that were probably prominent in the last two elections in 2008 and 2012 and there are people who have said and written oh well the two parties are the same there's the Wu on the left there's the Wu on the right I say bullshit the only case where you see that the GOP has adopted these Wu policies these anti-science policies as part of their policy there are planks in the Republican platform in many states and on the national level and their leadership all co-that line especially climate denial and many in the creation of the well only Republicans push creations in public school not Democrats and ironically although I say oh well anti-vax is a left-wing Wu no actually the polls show it's more common than it is among liberals whereas contrast I note said the Democrats are perfect but there are no major leaders of the Democratic Party that are pushing Wu as part of policy that is an asymmetry and that is why they're not equivalent if you doubt me on that just look at the panel of presidential candidates they gave us in 2008 and then again in 2012 the five in 2008 all of them were climate deniers and mostly creation except for John Huntsman and nearly all creationists except for John Huntsman that's their leadership those are the people they wanted to make the most powerful human in the planet or look at the House Science Committee which is all run by Republicans 100% climate deniers almost all creationists these are the people dictating science policy from the House at least and they're all anti-scientists now this comes from our not only just from our environment also we have deeply ingrained things that are part of our growing up and part of our deep psyche these have been studied by many people these automatic emotional visceral parts of our brain that are not easily controlled in most cases we have limited control over what we do with these things they're mostly subconscious so we're like the little stick man there trying to control an elephant if you've ever heard research of Daniel K.N. for example he breaks it down in a series of polls communitarian there on the right versus individualistic on the left and often from the top from hierarchy and strict rigid ranking of people to egalitarianism equal equal opportunity and the people who tend to be conservative not just the way they're raised but also they often have deeper unconscious or subconscious characteristics that make them treasure things like stability and hierarchy and religion all these things come with that type of thing and so that often predicts a lot of their political affiliation this has been by a number of political scientists as well as psychologists or Jonathan Haight has done something similar here next slide where the things that make the conservative community link together loyalty to your community versus betrayal the sanctity of religion versus degradation those are very strong things in their community along with authority of the people above you versus subverting them and those are not so powerful in the liberal community where other things are more valuable like care people versus their harm liberty versus oppression and fairness versus cheating so there's a very different way that our brains are wired even if we raise a certain way sometimes we don't stay that way but nevertheless we talk about tribalism you're talking about again this deep-seated thing that's built into us and then we are raised with as well it's very hard to undo any of that with actual evidence with actual argument persuasion you all know this when I debated Dwayne Gish in 1983 he brought in a giant church loads of people to fill the audience and I had five kids from my school in Illinois on my side at Purdue and the whole audience was cheering for Gish I was just the one person there who wasn't and it was a real challenge because you have the whole room stacked against you no matter what I said no matter how quickly I shot down his arguments didn't matter they didn't get it they didn't care okay evidence doesn't matter to these people right and I found this out during the question and answer session when they handed up cards from the audience for me to answer they're all about my sex life my personal beliefs my salvation there wasn't any science questions in the whole stack it never was about science to begin with it was clearly a religious issue alright and think about what these people are thinking and some of you may have been in this boat thinking one time what are a few inconvenient facts if you're damned to hell if you doubt the Bible right that's a very powerful disincentive to accept anything that doesn't fit and as we heard several people already say often arguing with them doesn't do the good it often does bad things it causes a backfire effect where they entrench themselves further in their beliefs and you've done just the opposite of what you intended and so this little church billboard here says it very nicely down there in the bottom line with this strange spelling if your faith is big enough facts don't count you can't ask for a more obvious statement of what a lot of people think especially in the religious community or here we have in denial ham can ham of course with his impossible arc alright this is exactly how it works we saw him after the debate with Bill Nye was in his last minutes and the questions come in there he made a whole bunch of statements number one no evidence would ever change his mind which to me was the final blow as far as anyone who wasn't on his camp and number two that when they caught him on this he said well I don't believe that type of passage is literal it's metaphorical whereas this is the guy who makes his living saying we have to take every verse literally so this is something scholars have known for a long time to Tullian in the Roman period I believe because it's absurd because it goes against the reason and the same happens in the climate science community right you have the climate science community pretty much in its own world and then a fringe of deniers out there who chip away at it none of whom are members of the climate science community and don't know anything about the data so what you're looking at is a metaphor of testing the scales of these two contrasting viewpoints so here we have one editorial cartoon that says it nicely with evolution overlaying the scales right there on one side and nothing on the other side but faith and then the man in the slide says there see they have equal value for all schools or yet another example of our tilted scales one has virtually every scientist in the world on one side versus one climate denier in the caption there says either use that dense or he doesn't believe in gravity either but that's exactly what we're talking about the evidence is not even close to that unbalanced so we are very much like in this cartoon here unfortunately this is how the brain works sir we're seeing information it clicks our belief system but now another common trick that we've heard talked about before and it very much applies to this type of set of arguments is confirmation bias cherry picking quote mining they're all part of this thing we all know what it is confirmation bias remembering the hits forgetting the misses right good examples going on right downstairs right now those poor guys pulling away on the machines and playing poker and so on they remember the good hands they remember the jackpots they forget how much money they've already poured into that machine and that's why this scene was here okay or the psychic we all know the psychic's cold reading strategy right it's just enough tries eventually get hits and your victim will sucker whatever will not remember that they were mostly misses okay denialists have always do this they find articles and quote out of context or cherry pick a fact and that's their strategy to try to undermine you and try to get away from you they basically give you something opposite what's intended or nitpick on tiny details really don't matter very much and it's they're going to affect you in some way and then they pick at it so creation is a legendary virtually all creations literature is cherry picking little tiny things they're small anomalies to most scientists that's no big deal right we find a way to explain it sooner or later the creationist with their mana key in black and white no shades of grey view if one little fact goes against evolution the whole thing tumbles because that's the way they think right so they'll pick to a small nominally radiometric dating and therefore all radiometric dating must be false just because one thing we haven't quite figured out yet well they extrapolate the magnetic field the past not realizing course of changes and fluency and changes in direction and say oh well it can only be 6000 years old because that's how far back it goes and climate scientists the same way here you see the overall trend in increasing temperature through time over about last 50 years or so and you'll see there's the real data there which are very noisy as any real data are and there's one point particular which I put the pointer on that was 1998 it was a very very big El Nino year I remember vividly all my field trips are washed out that year and it brought a lot of heat in the system it's an anomaly it's a blip and then you'll hear the climate so from George Will all the way down saying well it hasn't been warming since 1998 and that's about as dishonest a strategy you can ask for and we blow up that section now the last part of that plot and there's 98 right there yes you can see what an anomaly it was if you average it it would be lost the background noise in fact every year after 98 for a couple years was a slower year just because it's unusual high value then every year after that's been the same warmth or higher with a couple of La Nina exceptions right and that's the way they get away with this they take an anomaly and plot it like it's a major value of something in court so here we have for example the other strategy nitpicking a board full of evidence for global warming and down there in the corner of the global warming deniers I know people are going to call them skeptics look right here ends the sense of the preposition and here you forgot to dot nye what a fraud okay and of course again creationists are famous for quote mining you see this all the time virtually everything you read in a creationist book is a quote out of context that means the exact opposite if you read it in context that's partially I think that because of their confirmation bias partially I think dishonesty the climate Gaker Fuffle a few years ago a couple of quotes out of context out of thousands of pages of emails that were stolen illegally from the computer at East Hadley and they made a big fuss out of two or three quotes out of context and eventually of course it was all shown not to be the case six into six commissions three in the United States, three in Britain showed there was nothing wrong there but the truth is that the scientific community keeps this mean going as our good friend Neil says science is not there for you to cherry pick so here we are in this bind scientific truth is moving forward we have lots and lots of people who simply don't want it to happen okay it's a very saddening thing but very much a true thing and we're just asking ourselves before we go too much further here why are we different why are we to in the scientific community as rational as these other people are laughing at right now now I would argue no because science and skepticism together are the reason we are confident this is not the case science is always about testing hypothesis of proving them wrong this is a way it gets away against confirmation bias okay always science if they're trying to talk to other scientists they're tentative they don't claim to have final truth we don't believe in science we test it and then especially something that most people in the public don't understand peer review you have hundreds of scientists out there brutally scrutinize work with the war publication and afterwards and if it doesn't survive the junk heap of many many thousands of rejected scientific ideas there's no other filter on it like that nothing in the internet gets that kind of scrutiny and even news media now no longer have quality control but science has quality control and finally we know science is not something that the deconstruction to say is just a fantasy in our mind because it works we've got rockets we've got cell phones these are things science has brought us again our friend Neil here says it very nicely when different experiments give you the same result it's no longer subject to your opinion it's a good thing about science it's true whether or not you believe in it that's why it works so here we have this barrage between fact and opinion and of course people with their minds shut it down and belief systems can't accept a lot of facts and again Carl Sagan says it very nicely the heart of science is the essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes and openness to new ideas no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive they may be and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas old and new that's how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense ok so how do we get people to change their mind we have some misteller examples one I love to point out about when now five years ago for a physicist Richard Muller famous Berkeley physicist he was a climate denier he was paid by ExxonMobil paid by the Koch brothers to tear apart the climate curves generated by NOAA and NASA and all the rest and the GOP thought they had him in their pocket he was a gun for hire so a year later after the research is starting he had a lot of data on a committee meeting on March 29th in front of the house science committee the scientists they thought they would hear him declare that global climate change was false instead he showed his data which you can't even pick out there because the black is his data and the other three colors, the other three labs they're all identical and he's told his handlers climate science is real, get over it ok so why do people do this other than the obvious things we've talked about a motivated reason we have this strange need in our country we love science and technology when it makes our lives better it gives us cell phones and the rest but we reject science if it tells us an inconvenient truth something we don't like to hear about like evolution or climate change of course our motivations are obvious creationists for their religious reasons climate deniers for libertarian conservative ideologies I would submit to you when science is telling you bad news it's probably true scientists aren't sports, kill joys making you feel miserable we have no vested interests and no incentives and nothing to gain telling you something you don't want to hear ok so if we're telling you something we have to tell you because that's what it is and it's not something pleasant it's probably true this little cartoon said it very nicely it shows up in the upper left there Archimedes being attacked by the Roman soldier and Bruno being burned at the stake and Darwin and Einstein and then science if you ain't pissing people off you ain't doing it right so yes we have been running everything since 1543 and we have this pill this pill of truth that everybody wants but nobody can seem to swallow or from a familiar movie you can't handle the truth so from the final moments here I just want to say what do we do about this how do we as members of the everyday community deal with this in the real world because everyone around us has some of these weird ideas and we already said wasting your time debating a creationist or debating a climate denier is deeply entrenched is just a waste of time unless you're doing it for entertainment which some people do I've stopped doing it I don't find it fun anymore the best bet is the vast majority of people in this country who are not actually hardcore they're on the fence they may have been raised in a religious church but they're not sure what they believe they heard a little bit of evolution but they don't know for sure I found this out when my book came out in an evolution in 2007 I got a huge number of emails saying I wasn't sure what to think but you helped me clarify this and if you look at the reviews for it on Amazon.com I got a bunch of comments like that as well it helps not to make yourself a partisan up front but to talk about it as an economic or health or human survival issue and as Phil Plates said in his podium two years ago it's a historic okay, tone is everything you don't want to belittle them you want to get them to think as Carl Sagan said people are not stupid they believe things for reasons the last way we're skeptical to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or show arrogance toward their beliefs it's hard to do sometimes I know but we've got to do it now, if you're thoroughly depressed at this point I've been depressed about this for a while because I had battle creations for almost 40 years of my life I didn't seem to make any dent in this stuff but it turns out there is change going on okay, religious fundamentalism is disappearing in this country believe it or not, it's actually shrinking as the polls show particularly because they got what they wanted power over certain state legislatures and started putting in their anti-woman, anti-gay anti-minority, anti-science and now they're scared away a generation of younger voters okay, and it turns out if you look at the countries in northern Europe, especially Scandinavia like Phil Zuckerman has done what does reduce fundamentalism is a strong social safety net health care, unemployment benefits, retirement disability, childcare, vacations all those countries are virtually non-religious thanks to that system okay, they don't worry about daily survival so much they don't need God so much now, part of the problem of course is the misleading polls for example, as a very loaded question gives you only three fairly false choices and yet they use it over and over because they've used it historically so it's very misleading, get the impression that 40% of the country is fundamentalist no, you actually break it down into individual parts like how many people in the country actually believe the earth is only 6,000 years old like Ken Ham says, 14% right, nowhere near the numbers you thought, okay 30 to 40% of Americans agrees evolution takes place but just not with humans right, they're willing to go you that far okay, 80% agree with plate tectonic, something that the fundamentalists won't adapt at all as this room shows the seculars are growing, we're the fastest growing segment among religious beliefs no religious beliefs especially with you millennials in the room you're the future and there's 45 to 50% of you now who are non-religious, it's amazing or look at the other side of this, that poll there shows how much fundamentalism shrunk 9% in just a 10-year window and the green dot at the bottom the same 9% in growth and secularists okay and you can point this out by using economic arguments for example, here's our scientist saying, the creation has found unlikely support among students in China, India yes, America, we very much like it if you teach your children religious dogmas in science we'd like your jobs and you say oh, the climate deniers are such a pain in the ass they're just impossible to get around actually the polls show Americans are about 60 to 80% depending on which poll in favor of the idea of climate change is real and we're the cause and we should do something about it you never hear that very often, but that's what the most the polls show the hardcore climate deniers that are over there at Freedom Fest best 10 or 20% of the population but the GOP leadership is among that population and it's ironic we as scientists say, climate's not weather a snowstorm doesn't end climate change okay, but it's ironic that right before the 2012 election Hurricane Sandy jumped the number of people who actually accepted climate change so even though they don't get that climate's not weather weather does help convince people okay and the basic thing to remember is that we are the only ways of western industrialized country we're the major problem with climate deniers and our politics temporarily Australia has a little bit of a problem and so is Canada but that will change faster than we will climate deniers are has been they're goners, two or three more election cycles there'll be nobody left to them in Congress and the irony is that everybody who isn't in ideolog is already acting all over the world insurance companies, they don't have the option of being ideological, they have to keep their losses covered, they're all planning for climate change US military, you know not exactly a left-wing organization they're planning for climate change emergency manager people, my brother-in-law is one of these they're planning for climate change most of the non-energy related companies GE and so on, Starbucks even is trying to figure out where it's going against next coffee beans when climate change occurs okay and the European Asian countries especially are going ahead with lots of green technologies leaving us behind and eating our lunches but the economic argument is powerful you see on the left here our scientist says climate change threatens our existence it changes it to climate change threatens our economy and boom they're awake and again the ray of hope is you younger folks in your 20s and 30s in this room you guys are the future you're the ones who are going to vote these clowns out someday okay and they will no longer have power especially after the 2020 reapportionment of districts ends the gerrymandering they did in 2010 and that top three bar graph shows the youngest whole cohort, the millennials they're 80 to 90 percent accepting climate change that we need to do something about they're the ones who are going to have to make it happen and the generation screwed up so we're in this ironic position here we all agree that we need to have a better world energy independence preserve the rainforest, sustainability green jobs, renewable cities renewables, clean water and these are almost everybody's goals except for a few libertarians and here you see the skeptic in the audience the climate denier in the audience what if it's a big hoax we created a better world or nothing what Paul Sagan says at the very best of all it is far far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in the delusion however satisfying and reassuring Donald Prothrow Thank you Donald excellent hang on to those positive parts one of the sponsors before we go to our next speaker one of our sponsors