Malcolm Roberts is claiming it as a win.

With a jaunty little tip of his tin foil hat, Malcolm Roberts has declared victory over “climate alarmists”, after triple j’s Dr Karl Kruszelnicki knocked back his offer to engage in a pointless public debate about the science of global warming.

The One Nation senator, who has previously claimed on national television that NASA is cooking the books on climate change, has been asking Kruszelnicki to debate him since November. The famed scientist, author and broadcaster initially agreed, but apparently thought better of it after meeting Senator Roberts in person.

“Met with Malcolm Roberts today,” Kruszelnicki wrote on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. “Unfortunately, I felt that we could not find common ground.”

He went on to say that because of this, their proposed debate would be “pointless”.

Met with Malcolm Roberts today. Unfortunately, I felt that we could not find Common Ground → our proposed Debate would be pointless. Sorry. https://t.co/Eg8cGmROG3 — Dr Karl (@DoctorKarl) March 26, 2017

As far as Roberts was concerned, this was great news. “We’ve won the debate on climate science,” he declared in a YouTube video. “Absolutely won it, because the other side has forfeited.”

“The climate entertainers, the climate alarmists, have lost the debate, since they can’t match it with me,” he continued.

According to Roberts, Kruszelnicki’s position on climate change “is based upon what the climate academics have told him.” Roberts went on to describe this as “ridiculous”, which personally I found kind of confusing.

Of course, this is presumably why Dr Karl pulled out of the debate in the first place: because you can’t actually have a rational discussion with someone who refuses to even accept a base level of scientific fact. Don’t get me wrong, it would be highly entertaining watching Kruszelnicki wipe the floor with this clown. But would it achieve anything? Sadly, the answer is probably no.

Roberts said that Dr Karl has agreed to meet with him again, privately, in late July or August, “to look at the data.” Hopefully he means the data that was provided to him by scientists at the CSIRO. You know, the data that the overwhelming majority of experts agree shows that human activity is the main factor in the catastrophic warming of the planet? That data.