Yes­ter­day after­noon, the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign saw its first sub­stan­tive debate on ques­tions of cli­mate and ener­gy pol­i­cy. The can­di­dates them­selves were nowhere to be found, but their sur­ro­gates — ener­gy advis­ers Trevor Houser and Con­gress­man Kevin Cramer (R‑N.D.) of the Clin­ton and Trump cam­paigns, respec­tive­ly — were pit­ted head-to-head in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rich­mond law school’s Moot Court­room. In the audi­ence were con­sci­en­tious law stu­dents and (opti­misti­cal­ly) dozens of peo­ple fol­low­ing along via a sub-C-SPAN-qual­i­ty livestream. The YouTube video of the debate has few­er than 400 views as of pub­lish­ing time, includ­ing In These Times’ fact-checker.

Donald Trump probably hasn’t heard of the Dakota Access pipeline—at least according to Cramer. “I’m not sure he’s aware of it, frankly,” Cramer said when asked.

The ques­tions posed by mod­er­a­tor Noah Sachs were remark­ably detailed, com­pared with those asked of Clin­ton and Trump in each of their three tele­vised face-offs. By both Houser and Cramer’s own admis­sion, yesterday’s debate packed more pol­i­cy sub­stance into eighty min­utes than any show­down between Trump and Clin­ton, going into lev­els of detail nei­ther can­di­date could. That no one will see it is a sad sign of where main­stream media out­lets’ pri­or­i­ties lie.

Like oth­er debates, yes­ter­day afternoon’s show­down deliv­ered the Trump campaign’s trade­mark lax­i­ty toward facts. Here are some takeaways:

Don­ald Trump​’s ener­gy advis­er does not know how elec­tric­i­ty works. In response to an audi­ence inquiry about pro­mot­ing renew­able elec­tric­i­ty sources, Cramer punt­ed the first response to Houser, say­ing of the ques­tion, ​“this is a good nerdy one.” When his turn came, Cramer said, ​“Great ques­tion. … It is com­pli­cat­ed when you talk about the move­ment of elec­tric­i­ty. You know, neu­rons go where neu­rons want to go once they’re on the line, right?” Con­tra Cramer, neu­rons are nerve cells in ani­mal ner­vous sys­tems (includ­ing humans’) engaged in elec­tro­chem­i­cal process­es that allow us to think and feel and fol­low through on basic cog­ni­tive func­tions. Unlike elec­trons, they are not gen­er­al­ly found flow­ing through the elec­tric grid. Cramer serves on the House Com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Com­merce, is a for­mer mem­ber of the House Com­mit­tee on Sci­ence, Space and Tech­nol­o­gy, and was pre­vi­ous­ly North Dakota’s Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion­er, a role that involved over­see­ing the state’s elec­tric utilities.

Don­ald Trump prob­a­bly hasn​’t heard of the Dako­ta Access pipeline. At least accord­ing to Cramer, who also hap­pens to the sole House rep­re­sen­ta­tive from North Dako­ta, site of the pipeline con­tro­ver­sy. ​“I’m not sure he’s aware of it, frankly,” Cramer said when asked. ​“I haven’t talked to him about it.” Some­how, the top­ic has nev­er come up. For ref­er­ence, the Dako­ta Access pipeline is the mas­sive fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture project at the cen­ter of some of the biggest envi­ron­men­tal protests since the Key­stone XL pipeline’s defeat last year, and report­ed­ly the sin­gle largest gath­er­ing of Native Amer­i­cans in over a cen­tu­ry. News about the demon­stra­tions sur­round­ing it have been in sev­er­al major news­pa­pers, and Trump him­self has close finan­cial ties to the com­pa­nies build­ing the pipeline. (Houser also declined to com­ment, as Clin­ton her­self has not issued an offi­cial state­ment on the pipeline.)

Don­ald Trump​’s ener­gy advis­er thinks the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment is ​“anoth­er bad trade deal.” He also seemed not to under­stand that a total of 85 nations and count­ing have already rat­i­fied the Paris Agree­ment, nations that in sum account for over 60% of world­wide emis­sions. ​“If [reduc­ing emis­sions] is such a great idea,” Cramer asked, ​“why is every­one else depend­ing on us to do it?”

Don­ald Trump​’s ener­gy advis­er believes cli­mate change is an exag­ger­at­ed threat because glac­i­ers. When Sachs ref­er­enced in one ques­tion that the ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998, Cramer opined: ​“I come from North Dako­ta — Far­go, North Dako­ta — and the area I grew up in is … a glacial lake bed that was cre­at­ed mil­lions of years ago by glac­i­ers. I think we’d have to be a bit proud to think that some­how these last hot years are the fault of man, and not some larg­er, reg­u­lar cycle of climate.”

He then piv­ot­ed abrupt­ly to talk­ing about how many tax dol­lars Clinton’s cli­mate plan would cost, then loosed a dis­joint­ed cri­tique of the Paris Agree­ment that includ­ed a reminder that ​“Chi­na is a com­mu­nist coun­try.” While he didn’t echo his boss’s sug­ges­tion that cli­mate change is a hoax invent­ed by the Chi­nese, when asked again by an audi­ence mem­ber lat­er on in the dis­cus­sion if he believed in man-made cli­mate change, he said the threat was ​“gross­ly exaggerated.”

Like Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans, Cramer plucked talk­ing points straight from the fos­sil fuel industry’s lob­by­ing arm, which isn’t entire­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en that the oil and gas indus­try is his biggest donor source, fol­lowed by elec­tric util­i­ties. His asser­tion that the Oba­ma administration’s car­bon reg­u­la­tions are ​“pick­ing the win­ners and pick­ing the losers” in the ener­gy econ­o­my, for instance, could have been lift­ed almost ver­ba­tim from a sim­i­lar claim made in Jan­u­ary by Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute head Jack Ger­ard dur­ing his ​“State of Amer­i­can Ener­gy” address.

Cramer wasn’t the only imper­fect debater; like Clinton’s own cli­mate plan, Houser’s answers also left plen­ty to be desired. But — also like his boss — Houser was able to rat­tle off facts and fig­ures and plans, many of them promis­ing, while the Trump cam­paign mere­ly rambled.

The choice in Novem­ber on ener­gy and cli­mate pol­i­cy, then, mir­rors the choice on most poli­cies: Between a tech­no­crat being pushed into pro­gres­sivism, and a stream of dan­ger­ous non­sense. Debates like yesterday’s may be one of the few chances before elec­tion day to see how vast that dif­fer­ence real­ly is.