It was a 5 on 1 smackdown in the Utah House lounge and Rep. Mike Noel (Kanab) came away the victor.  Kudos to Fox13 for not only catching this on camera but for filming the entire 8 minute long exchange. (HT Paul Chesser at American Spectator)

To set the stage - Rep. Noel greets former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson in the House Lounge.  Former Mayor Anderson is accompanied by at least 4 Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) supporters.  Mayor Anderson apparently starts the conversation with an accusation that Rep. Noel does not support "renewable" energy...

There were a number of brilliant exchanges during the debate.  The first comes about 50 seconds in.  Former Mayor Anderson starts into the "scientific consensus" meme stating that "top climatologists" are all in agreement.  Rep. Noel asks if (noted AGW Skeptic) Professor (Richard) Lindzen from MIT was considered a "top climatologist".   Mayor Anderson replied that professor Lindzen was "making money off of this" to which Rp. Noel replied "Oh and Al Gore HASN'T...?" Rep. Noel then goes on to rebut the consensus claim by pointing out the number of scientists that disagree with the AGW premis and often refers back to the IPCC report and the multiple errors in the report.

However, my favorite part of the exchange comes at about the four minute mark.  Rep. Noel starts hitting former Mayor Anderson with FACTS about the subject of what is needed to maintain "renewable energy".  Former Mayor Anderson starts the exchange talking about how people can be put to work with "good clean renewable energy" - Rep. Noel asks for a definition of "renewable".  Former Mayor Anderson mentions the expected "wind, solar and geo-thermal".  Rep. Noel (who happens to be an energy policy guru like another Rep. Mike I know back in MN) asks the question that none of the renewal energy folks ever ask or seem to be prepared to answer - "what is the base load supply of wind and solar?"  Well the answer to that question (today) is a coal or nuclear based electrical grid, but former Mayor Anderson can not bring himself to answer that common sense question completely...first he just says "well you need a grid."  Rep. Noel follows up with "what KIND of grid?" and all former Mayor Anderson can do is sputter "let's talk about solutions".

The thing is the only kind of solutions that former Mayor Anderson wants to talk about are incomplete solutions because the natural fact is there has to be a back up for those days that the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.  THOSE are facts.  We can not (at this juncture) get rid of coal powered plants completely.  It is simply not possible.  Rep. Noel was ready to talk workable solutions and was trying to do that but obviously Mayor Anderson was not ready to "talk about solutions".  Apparently the only thing that Mayor Anderson was there to do was to try to play gotcha and instead of being the "getter" he was the "gettee"!

So even though former Mayor Anderson came with numbers, he (and his merry band of spinmeisters) were all defenseless in face of facts and real working solutions for America's energy needs.