Take one irreverant comedian. Add an open bar, a hybrid sedan, and one of the most serious problems facing life on Earth. Mix it all up with a live DJ and plunk it down in a sleek, enormous open space on New York City's west side on a dark and stormy night.

What you get is "The Darker Side of Green," last night's climate change debate between two media-savvy environmental journalists Amanda Little and Phelim McAleer, emcee'd by comedian Sarah Silverman, and sponsored by luxury car maker Lexus.

Coming just a few days ahead of the New York Auto Show, the event was a little bit clubland and a little bit auto expo. A pristine white Lexus CT200h sedan ("a nimble sportback hybrid that delivers an exhilarating ride and extraordinary fuel efficiency," according to the company) occupied pride of place in the center of the loft-like venue, bracketed by faux forest topiary and animations of stylized tree boughs.

Hundreds of stylish, black-clad young adults (many from media professions such as advertising or graphic design, from what I could tell), lined up in the rain along 10th Avenue to get into this event. It seems safe to assume the draw was as least as much the free wine and organic spirits, as well as a chance to see star comedian Sarah Silverman, as it was the debate about the truth of climate change.

It was about what you'd expect from a face-off between a well-published, articulate enviro-reporter and a self-promoting, equally articulate climate skeptic, with questions provided by a young, smart, attractive and foul-mouthed comedian, before a slightly inebriated audience: pretty darn entertaining.

"Alright, let's start this mother-f*#ker," cried Silverman to kick off the debate. (She went on to curse out the crowd several times for talking too loud and not paying attention: "I really hate all you people right now.") The sort of question she asked of Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells -- Our Ride to the Renewable Future: "Why should we stop climate change, when it's going to make everyplace nice and warm and comfortable like California? Won't it melt all the guns?"

And to McAleer (introduced to scattered boos and hisses from the crowd), director and producer of a film called Not Evil, Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria: "Why do you hate polar bears? And what is your level of disdain for puppies and kittens?"

The evening's most surprising find was that Silverman knew her stuff. At one point she asked McAleer about his skepticism toward the famous "hockey stick" graph that shows temperature rise due to human-propelled carbon emisssions. "Is this because you hate science," she said, "or because you don't have hockey in Ireland?"

McAleer's response was to point out a cooling trend in the past several years, saying that it that invalidated the graph. Silverman rebutted that however much cooler the past decade or so may or may not have been, those lower temperatures are a blip in the record when set against the overall sharp increase in global temperature over several decades.

This may sound basic to the average climate scientist or environmental advocate. But it's a relatively subtle point that many people can't manage to articulate when challenged. Silverman carried off this and other rebuttals with aplomb.

Between McAleer's grandstanding denunciations of radical, freedom-hating environmentalists determined to keep the developing world in non-industrialized, malaria-ridden poverty, and Little's determination to respond with facts about heat-trapping gases and green job creation, it wasn't always clear that the two were at the same event.

"Industry to me means prosperity," said McAleer during one exchange. With a nod to event sponsor Lexus, he challenged anyone to separate American culture from the fossil-fuel burning automobile. Gesturing toward the the sedan on display across the room -- and by implication its capacious back seat -- he added, "It means giving people a chance to boff with their girlfriends." A straw man argument to be sure, but c'mon: he said "boff"! McAleer knows how to entertain the crowd.

Little ultimately gave as good as she got. She earned cheers from the tipsy audience for extolling the rise of clean-energy manufacturing and jobs as the evolution of industry, not the end of the material life.

Little got particularly fired up answering McAleer's charges that UK climate researchers had manipulated data and thrown the whole of climate science into doubt (aka "Climategate"): "That's kind of like saying Phelim is a putz who is misrepresenting the truth, so everyone in this room is a putz who is misrepresenting the truth."

(Irishman McAleer: "What's a putz?" Silverman: "It's like a chubby sod.")

At this point you may legitimately wonder if I have a bias against McAleer. Setting aside his bad reporting of science, which is particularly bad coming from a guy who calls himself an environmental journalist, my first-hand knowledge of McAleer is that he's made a lot of viral video hay out of an incident last October, when he confronted former Vice President Al Gore during a question-and-answer session at an annual meeting of enviro journalists.

He has claimed since -- bringing it up unbidden at "The Darker Side of Green" -- that he was censored by timid fellow journalists for daring to ask Saint Gore hard questions about climate change.

I was in the room during this incident. Here's what I and hundreds of others witnessed:

Gore spoke. Journalists lined up behind two microphones to ask him questions. After exchanging two or three rapid question-and-answers with Gore (which was one or two more than anyone afterwards got), McAleer refused to relinquish the microphone to the people waiting behind him. At which point the mic was cut; he was escorted off the line; and with his camera crew in tow, he made a point of storming dramatically out of the room. His heavily edited video clip hit YouTube within a day or so.

(Here's the account by journalist Tim Wheeler -- the "bouncer" at the event.)

So what's the point of setting up a debate about the facts climate change, when one party bends the truth? I asked Amanda Little why she participated in the event. "You have to have fun and laughter as part of the debate and the solution," she said. "Glamour, sarcasm, product placement, music, even the unruly crowd" are all part of lightening up and mainstreaming a heavy topic.

"To me," said Little, McAleer "is a provocateur, a prankster, a showboat. This is a performance."

I wanted to ask McAleer the same thing. But I couldn't find him after the debate. Rather than answer questions afterward, it seemed he'd made a fairly quick exit from the room.