warming. in 2007 al gore and the bbc both shared this prediction -- the arctic would be ice-free by 2013. last year ice in the arctic grew by 60%. as for the alarmist claim that global temperatures would rise for the foreseeable future, temperatures have flat lined for the past 16 years. the facts are challenging politically correct theories. there's enough evidence to at least have a serious debate about carbon taxes, destructive regulations and job-killing high cost energy proposals. is it cold enough for you? >> it's about to get hot in here. i'll tell you that. look, i agree with you that we should have a debate, but we should not be debating whether or not global warming is real, whether it's caused by humans. 97% of all the peer review literature says it is. that's the same level of agreement that you got that hiv causes aids. we should be debating what to do about it, not debating whether it's happening.

tonight in the crossfire we've got folks that can help us. levine nyack and david criteser who studied climate change for the heritage foundation, one of my favorite. >> we'll send you a pledge card. >> that's good. it's up where we got to get you over there. you and i have been talking about this issue for many years. i don't understand how you can have a position that you've got right now. a lot of people are saying that -- 97% of the peer-review literature in this field says that humans are causing climate change. let me show you who does not agree with that. donald trump, professor donald trump is on your side. it's very expensive global warming bs, that's a scientific term, it's got to stop. professor erick erickson says the difference between the people who believe in the second coming of jesus and those who believe in global warming is that jesus in fact will return. can you explain to me why you're

on the side of professor donald trump? >> absolutely. happy to do it. 97%, by the way, is a bogus term. they threw out about 97% of the literature they're looking at because it didn't say anything. >> because it wasn't peer reviewed. >> but it doesn't matter because what they agree on is so innocuous that all of what you call deniers agree with it as well. na the world is getting warmer, all right? and that some of that warming is due to man, maybe a significant amount. the debate should be over how much warming are we going to have? and even more importantly than that, what is your legislation going to do to combat it? that's the one you can't beat. >> first of all, the legislation that we'd like to put forward to do something about it came from your wonderful heritage foundation. >> i'll be happy to do that. >> but honestly, i think that we are in a very serious problem in the united states. you have wacky weather not just here. you have one cold snap. you've got wacky weather all around the world. >> this is science?

wacky is a science? >> i'm trying to many ko up to your donald trump level. >> this is professor jones. >> haven't gotten there yet. but listen, we have very severe extreme weather events that are happening even here in the united states. california right now, you've got the ice caps melting on the mountains there. you've got a big heat wave in australia, argentina. wacky weather, dangerous weather all around the world. by the united states not moving aggressively being held up by folks like you, we're missing a chance to do something about it. >> let me guide you, not hold you. when you look at the science, on both sides they understand that the trend in hurricanes is flat. we're not having more hurricanes. it has gotten warmer. we're not having more hurricanes. we're not having more tornadoes. scientists agree there's not an increase in drought and floods. what we have is climate ambulance chasers. they go after every time there's an adverse event, every time

there's an adverse event you run over and say, see, this is just what we expect with global warming. global warming said this is consistent with their models, they have a zillion models that can explain everything except the lack of warming in the past 15 years. >> so suddenly you'd like to pick the 15-year period suddenly even though there's been a trend that compares the last 15 years shows a huge increase in heat -- the last eight of the nine hottest years have been in the last eight years. >> according to some people. that's debatable. >> at some point this is the problem. this isn't science any more. this is politics. right? when the national academy of science, the ipcc, when 11 countries national academy of sciences all say it will result in more tornadoes, more droughts, more wildfires, you're not bringing back science. >> the science we need is just numbers, all right? we've had the warming that you all say is not only man-made but it's significant and you point

to all these things that its' causing, but if you look at the numbers, it's not causing more tornadoes, it's not causing more hurricanes. we've always had floods and hurricanes. >> think of the weather channel. >> that's not science. we have numbers. that's what science is. >> let me ask you a question, though, because that does strike me -- and i know this doesn't fit in the politically correct mantra. when you look at the patterns, the fact is that, for example, on the arctic ice, it's come back in a very big way. in antarctica you have this fiasco of the people that went down there to prove the ocean was open -- and by the way, carbon footprint even though they were in a diesel boat -- who are now trapped in the ice who had two different icebreakers come in to try to help them. they're now talking about o doing extraordinary things to offset the carbon footprint of all three of these, isn't there a point where we should have some discussion about the degree

to which it may not be as predictable as some of the computer models suggest? >> absolutely. every scientific report gives you a range. they won't tell you exactly how much it will warm. they won't say a hundred more droughts or wildfires. these people aren't seeing into the future. what they're telling you is based on scientific expertise, which i don't believe you have either, is a trend. we might be the last four people that are having this debate. i can tell you other countries are moving forward actually trying to take action. >> wait one second. the head of the german climatologist is going to the meeting this week because he believes they've been totally misrepresented. and he believes in fact they're not accurate. you find a number of places around the world now where they're pretty sophisticated people who are saying we've gone way overboard on these computer models. >> part of the thing is even if you take the number that you the just threw out there about a 60%, that's a rebound in one year from one of the worst numbers that we've had.

in other words, you can have a ball bouncing down a hill and when you see the bounce up, you go, a-ha, the ball is not going down the hill. this is the kind of stuff that makes the conversation very difficult. >> yeah, right. you're looking at one spot, the arctic. we're talking about global warming. if you look at global sea ice, it is at a record because of the huge increase in the antarctic. there's a decrease in the arctic and a huge increase in the antarctic. of course i say we have models that explain that but -- >> what scientific body you quote. this issue has been studied by the largest number of scientists in the world. no issue. here's what you guys are doing, let me give you a analogy. >> somebody smoked cigarettes all their lives lives to 80 or 90. that one example, hey, cigarettes moocigarette s must be fine for you. this guy lived. just cherry picking an anecdotal

fact. >> i want you to respond because that's exactly what happened with the science on tobacco. my father died of lung cancer. and for about 40 years they were handpicking science, tobacco industry, saying look at this, it's safe. turned out it wasn't safe. i'll never get my dad back. i don't want to lose the planet from the same reasoning. >> this is exactly the sort of fraud we're talking about. this is agreement that there's warming, there's agreement that co-2 is a global warming gas. there's agreement that human activity is increasing that. there's not agreement that we're heading to a catastrophe. that's the thought. we don't have to have denier science or denier math or denier websites, you can go to noaa and look for coverage for sea ice. you can go to noah's website and look at the trend for hurricanes. it's flat. that's not mine. >> i'm very happy to debate science. >> yes, yes. >> okay? and i'll give you an example of a large anomaly. mine would be compared to the sun and compared to various

patterns of earth behavior, if you look out over time, it's very unlikely that carbon load in the atmosphere is nearly as powerful. one specific, 11,000 years ago, for reasons we have no understanding of, the gulf stream quit. you have 600 years of little ice age in europe with glaze yurs coming down across northern europe, after six years the gulf stream started. i don't know that there's a single climatologist on the planet today who can explain either why it stopped or why it started. if you have things on this scale -- and by the way you're seeing this start up right now on what explaining the last 16 years, oh, yeah, remember there's this thing happening in the pacific and the ocean and the atlantic ocean -- >> but there are other factors. >> no, i'm just saying some of which we didn't know existed ten years ago are suddenly major factors that have nothing to do with carbon. isn't it fair to say that carbon may be a factor and so may solar energy, so may the earth's magnetic field and the tilting

of the earth? there are a lot of factors here. >> i am a biologist, by the way, by training. i don't know how many -- we're doing this through politics. if nine out of ten doctors came to you and said your kid is sick, there's something you should do about it. will you say, no, i'll trust the one doctor that thinks he's okay and think z there's some factor you don't control? no, we're talking about the future of our planet. a moral obligation to start acting. >> i agree. and talking about today's climate just here in the northern united states. when we come back, we'll talk about the climate news you haven't heard about. how are things with the new guy? all we do is go out to dinner. that's it? i mean, he picks up the tab every time, which is great...what? he's using you. he probably has a citi thankyou card and gets 2x the points at restaurants. so he's just racking up points with me. some people...

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and one freakish cold snap does not overturn the basic loss of science. here's what every seventh grader knows. if you add more greenhouse gases to a system, you will have a hotter system. this increasingly wacky weather is actually a man-made problem, and we need a man-made solution. it's not just about today's extreme cold, it's about extreme weather all around the world. parts of australia right now are hot enough to melt candles. in california, the ice packs are melting while we've got snow like we've never seen in georgia. the fire season out west is now practically 12 months long. something is happening, it's serious, and it is fine for people to pick their senators using politics. they should not pick their science using politics. that's much too dangerous. so to you, sir. >> yes. >> you say that there's agreement that you are not denying the basic science, if you take a beaker and you add greenhouse gases to it, it will

get hotter. y you're not denying that. >> right. >> but you're trying to make the case for some reason -- i don't know why -- that we can take a billion years of carbon stored underground suck it out into our atmosphere over a hundred years and not have catastrophic outcomes? >> can we do science? here's the science, if you take the co-2 alone and you double it which is where we're headed for by tend of this century. you double the amount of co-2 in the air. if that's all you do, you get between 1 and 1 1/2 degrees centigrade increase in temperature which is not catastrophe. all the models to get these horror stories have to have feedback loops. >> like methane leak. >> like methane, all these sorts of things. that's not seventh grade science and that's not working. the models are all off. >> methane is ten times more powerful a greenhouse gas than

carbon, that's science. so is it your argument that science works for carbon but not for methane? >> no, it works for methane. but when it gets warmer there might be more carbon fixing in the bogs than release of carbon. soes that's science. we don't know that. they need a whole chain of low probability events in order to get the catastrophic warming. >> you're just playing roulette, right? again, if you're doing it with your own life, that's your choice at some level. this is a planetary decision we're making. we're talking about the future of our children and grandchildren. just like our parents and grandparents left us a better planet. we have a moral obligation to do something better here. the fact of the matter is that there are solutions that we should be debating. >> i'm happy to do that. >> one quick thing. the only thing that's changed in the last ten years is the politics. the science has stayed -- has gotten more convincing if anything. the fact that you can sit on a couch eight years ago and talk about, yes, this is real, now we need to do something, along with many other republican governors around the country who are

actually acting on this, now that's what's changed. we're actually backwards having a debate, because of the tea party, the fossil fuel industry, the money the coke brothers have put in. >> and because there hasn't been any warming. >> let me ask you a question for a sec, assume that we have the capacity to affect the planet's temperature, that we could do any policies, what's the right temperature? >> for the planet itself? >> for the planet. it's always amazed me because i'm an amateur paleontologist. i've been to the field museum in chicago looking at dinosaurs from the antarctic and been in wisconsin looking at the ice sheets what's left over from the glacial marine when you had literally a mile-thick ice coming all the way down. what kind of hubris does it take to say, i know exactly what this planet's temperature ought to be and i'm going to manage it to that effect.

>> i'll give you the hubris. this is my hubris, the perfect temperature for the last ten years where we had human civilization would be nice to say there. there's no reason to think that we can't. the problem is if we put the foot on the accelerator with the experiment that we're doing with the only planet that we know and we're wrong and we wind up cooking the planet, that's a bad outcome, you can't recover from. we should be moving in that direction. >> friend -- >> never senator. >> the age of the dinosaurs was dramatically warmer than this is right now and it didn't cook the planet. in fact, life was fine. >> life was fine, but not for people -- >> not for people leaving minnesota this evening to get to the caribbean versus the people leaving the caribbean to get to minnesota would argue that slightly warmer wouldn't be a crisis. >> hold on a second.

>> i am. what's the right temperature? >> first of all, you are somebody who cares an awful lot about animals, about the species. >> yes. >> you've been a huge champion. almost all of the major climate scientists say that . but for all you can -- you can barely wait to get in here. let me finish. >> he did that to me on purpose. >> that's correct. >> no, listen. sure. will human beings be able to figure out to survive on many circumstances, yes. but the kind of agricultural systems are in grave danger. and other species might do better under the changed scenario. >> it's a bait and switch. 97% of some subset of scientists agree that we are manmade global warming is what we have seen.

the bait and switch is you say we are heading to catastrophic warming. there are some scientists say it is coming. but there is no consensus on major dieoff of species. >> listen, i will get to this later. i used to work in the white house and i know for sure when you do scenario planning you have to be responsible for outcomes like the ones we are talking about. in the white house and in the pentagon there are no scenarios that don't include significant global warming. they are dire from a geo political point of view and for us to say maybe, maybe not is horribly irresponsible. >> we know that there are a lot of bad things that can happen. some of them very bad with low probability and so on to. pick out one of them, global warming, that's the challenge of the 21st century.

>> it's like man picked that out. it's not like i just stood up one morning and said this is the issue that has been studied by the largest body of scientists. how do you turn around and reject tens of thousands -- if you look at the iapcc report there are catastrophic -- there are serious survival concerns around what the planet would be like. >> and they pulled back on the expected temperature increase from the previous study even though they are more convinced now but at lower levels. and they will squeeze it down farther. >> stay here. next, the final question for both of our guests. you know, the cold may be on many people's minds. but who will win the bcs championship game tonight between auburn and florida state. i asked for this question. it matters to me.

reply now using #crossfire. we'll have the results after the break.

we're back. now it's time for the final question. and i want to ask you for a second, i always thought we had an inadequate debate between adaptation and stopping it. and the example that hit me as a historian was if gore had come around at 1400 he outfield would

have said why don't we lower the seat but it's because it was impractice couple to lower the seat, the dutch rolled the dice. they are much more cost efficient response to the oceans. aren't there a lot of adaptations for the given century that would be less expensive than controlling the carbon economy? >> i have the faith in the american people particularly that we can reduce the impacts of climate change. there is so much warming that is already going to happen we have to deal with mitigation but it's we are saying oh, the problem is not real and you can do something to mitigate a problem that we said doesn't exist. >> well said, sir. >> each decade has been hotter than the one before for the last three decades. we're in a situation now where it looks like good scenario

planning would include serious concerns about climate change and in fact the pentagon almost all of its scenarios, bake in serious climate change. would you advise the pentagon not to prepare america for a world of serious climate change? >> probably not but it's what i would advise not doing is staring at the ceiling and say what can we do by cutting our energy use. we know cutting the energy use in the u.s. by 80% or 100% will have negligible impact on global warming. >> thanks, go to facebook or twitter to weigh in on our fire back question, who will win the bcs championship game tonight because auburn and florida state. 49% say auburn and 51% say florida state.

it will be a close game. >> the debate continues online and on facebook and twitter. i'm dan jones. >> and i'm newt gingrich. join us tomorrow for another edition of "crossfire." erin burnett "outfront" starts erin burnett "outfront" starts right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com next, bitter cold. the frigid air forcing schools to close, cancelling flights and postponing a major vote in washington. plus the family of the 13-year-old girl declared brain dead looking for a miracle tonight. >> she has been taken from children's hospital and brought to a place where they will use her name instead of calling her a body. and a major shake up at "saturday night live." let's go "outfront