Joe Rogan Experience #2397 - Richard Lindzen & William Happer

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>> The Joe Rogan Experience.

>> Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by

night. All day.

>> Gentlemen, first of all, thank you very

much for being here. I really appreciate

it.

>> Our pleasure.

>> My pleasure. And if you don't mind,

would you please just tell everybody who

you are and state your your resume, like

what you do?

>> I mean, just a brief version of your

>> uh

>> credentials. I'm Dick Linden and um my

whole life has been in academia

basically. I finished my doctorate at

Harvard

and I did spend a couple of years

uh at the University of Washington and

in Norway and in Boulder, Colorado.

Then um part of that was because at

Harvard uh I was working in atmospheric

sciences but they had no one who dealt

with observations. So I went to Seattle

for someone who did

and then I got my first academic

position at Chicago

and stayed there about three four years.

moved on to Harvard, spent about 10

years there and then to MIT for about

the last 35 years until I retired in

2013.

Um,

I've always enjoyed it. I mean, uh, the

field of atmospheric sciences when I

entered it, I mean, the joy of it was a

lot of problems that were solvable.

So, you could uh look at phenomena.

One of them that I worked on was the

some so-called quai bianial cycle. Turns

out the wind above the equator about 16

kilometers 20 kilometers goes from east

to west for a year turns around goes the

other way for the next year and so on

and you know we worked out why that

happened and there were other things

like that. So it was a very enjoyable

period

uh until global warming.

>> And sir, would you uh tell everybody

what your credentials are, what you do,

where you from?

>> I'm Will Happer and I'm a retired

professor of physics at Princeton.

And uh like uh Dick, I'm a science nerd,

but I was actually born in India under

the British Raj. My father was a army

officer in the Indian army, Scottish,

and my mother was American. And uh that

was before World War II. So when I came

to America as a small child, my mother

was working in Oakidge for the Manhattan

project. So

>> wow,

>> I remember, you know, the war days at

Oakidge and uh that's probably why I

went into physics. Uh I thought this

looks like interesting way to make a

living and if I can do it, I'll do it.

and and I have and I've uh done a number

of things. I spent a lot of time at

universities at Colombia at Princeton. I

also uh served for a couple years in

Washington as director of energy

research uh under President Bush senior.

And uh I've learned a lot about climate

from Dick, my colleague here. Uh I first

became suspicious when I was director of

energy research. I would invite people

in to explain how they were spending the

taxpayers money and most people were

delighted to come to Washington and have

some bureaucrat be interested in what

they were doing. And there was one

exception that was the uh people working

on climate and they would always be very

resentful. You know, we work for Senator

Gore, we don't work for you. And so I

would tell them, well, okay, let him pay

for your next year's research. I I can

find other people who will come and talk

to me who would be glad to take my

money.

>> That's interesting. So, Senator Gore has

been involved in this whole climate

thing for quite a long time then.

>> Oh, yes. Very long time.

>> When he was a senator before he was vice

president.

>> That's right.

>> And when he made that movie, An

Inconvenient Truth, what year was that

again, Jamie? Was like

>> 98 or something. Something like 99

>> that

>> What is it?

>> Oh, really? We're that off? Wow. Okay.

So 2006. So when he made that film, uh

he he b there was always when I was a

child, I do remember Leonard Nemoy had a

television show called In Search of.

Remember that show? Sure.

>> And on that show, he warned of an

oncoming ice age,

>> right? Do you remember that? And I

remember being a kid and freaking out

like, "Oh my god, Spock is telling us

the world's going to freeze. This is

terrifying."

>> And then somewhere along the line, it

became global warming.

>> And uh initially in the 80s, it was kind

of funny. People were saying, "Well,

hairspray, if more you use it, you could

play golf deep in November."

>> That was the ozone spray.

>> That was the ozone. Yes. But it was also

a part of global warming. They were

worried about global warming, but it

they were worried about the ozone hole.

It wasn't CO2 as much back then.

>> CO2 seems to have really significantly

become a part of the zeitgeist after

this Al Gore film.

>> No,

>> no,

>> no. It was before uh no it was

>> a study in in terms of academic study

for sure but in terms of people

panicking when did CO2

>> look panicking I have no idea but

now what happened was uh there was

I would say with the first earth 1970

>> there was a real change in the

environmental movement it began to focus

is much more strongly on the energy

sector

and much less on saving the whales.

>> And there was a big difference. I mean

the energy sector involved trillions of

dollars. The whales not so much,

>> right?

And uh at that time it was cooling this

global mean temperature which doesn't

change much but you know you focus on

one degree a half degree so it looks

like something and it was cooling from

the 1930s.

1930s were very warm and it was getting

cooler until the 70s and that's why they

were saying well you know this is going

to lead to an ice age

and they focused on that for a while and

then in the 70s and at that time well

what do you say you know if you're

worried about an ice age they said well

it'll be the sulfates emitted by coal

burning because that reflects light and

the less light that we get the colder

we'll get.

But then the temperature stopped cooling

in the 70s and started warming and

that's when they said well you have to

warm now scare people with warming and

uh you can't use the sulfates anymore

but the scientist called uh Suki Manabi

showed that even though CO2 doesn't do

much in the way of warming doubling it

will only give you a half degree or so

but if you assumed med that relative

humidity stayed constant so that every

time you warmed a little you added water

vapor which is a much more important

greenhouse gas you had doubled the

impact of CO2 which now gives you a

degree which still isn't a heck of a lot

but still it was saying you could

increase it uh and that's when people

started saying well now we better find

CO2 it's increased because of

industrialization and so on that began

the demonization of CO2.

>> Do you think there's just always people

that are going to point to anything like

this that's difficult to define and use

it to their advantage?

>> Oh, yeah. And this was a particular

case. Uh you you wanted to deal, you

know, the energy sector is trillions of

dollars.

anything you can do to overturn it,

change it, replace fossil fuels, it's

big bucks,

>> right? And one of the odd things I I

think in politics, I don't see it

studied much, Congress can actually give

away trillions of dollars. If you look

at the K McKenzie report on uh, you

know, eliminating CO2, net zero,

they're saying it'll cost hundreds of

trillions of dollars.

Well, if you're giving out that much,

you don't need that much of your

politician. All you need is millions for

your campaigning.

And all you're asking are the recipients

of people who are getting the money that

you are giving them. A half percent, a

quarter percent, you're you're golden.

So that's much better than giving out a

h 100,000 and having all of it back.

Well, the key though is also making it a

subject that you cannot challenge.

There's no room for any rational debate.

And if you discuss it at all, you are

now a climate change denier.

>> Yeah.

>> Which is like being an antivaxer or, you

know, fill in the blank with whatever

other horrible thing you could be

called.

>> Now, that that's a very interesting

phenomenon. I was looking at it. On the

one hand, you're told the science is

settled.

Thousands of the world's leading climate

scientists all agree, which often makes

you wonder. I mean, you went to college,

how many climate scientists did, you

know? I mean, a thousand. But on the

other hand, if you read the IPCC

reports, they're pointing out, for

instance, that water vapor and clouds

are much bigger than CO2, and we don't

understand them at all. So, here have

the biggest phenomena we don't

understand at all, but the science has

settled. Who knows what that means?

>> Well, it's also there's this very

bizarre dynamic of the Earth's

temperature itself, which has never been

static.

>> No. How would it remain static? That

would involve a hugely reactive system.

>> Doesn't make any sense. And and but

everyone seems to be buying this

narrative that the science is settled

and the earth is warming. We have to act

now.

>> You say everyone.

>> No, I don't say everyone. A lot of

politicians. A lot of polit politicians

are very attractive to this because it

gives them power,

>> right? And it's hard to define and you

can argue and if you argue against it,

you're a bad person.

>> You you do all that, but uh you know, we

spend part of a year in France, my wife

is French. You know, ordinary people

once you get to the countryside don't

take this all that seriously,

>> right?

uh here too I suspect ordinary people

have more skepticism than many people

who are more educated.

>> Yes. But unfortunately these ordinary

people sometimes are impacted by these

politicians decisions where they have to

like in the UK they were getting rid of

cows. They were forcing people to kill

>> cows paying three times more for their

heating and their electric bills.

>> Right. Right.

>> I mean it makes people poorer.

uh it's making it almost impossible to

electrify parts of the world that need

it and that involves billions of people.

No, I mean it's doing phenomenal damage

and pain, but uh you know I think for

politicians and for many people who are

well off

they need something that gives meaning

to their life and saving the planet

seems sufficiently

>> yes

>> uh grandiose but they're

>> how would um how are these net zero

policies stopping people from getting

electricity? Okay.

Well, by making it expensive, by

eliminating fossil fuels, fossil fuels

are cheaper.

Uh, at least the experience in the UK is

when you switch to quote renewables, it

tripled the price of electricity.

>> Right? But what I'm talking about is

like third world countries, parts of the

world that are undeveloped,

>> they can't afford it.

>> And that's all it is. They can't afford

it. And but they also to if they didn't

follow these net zero policies, what

kind of plants are we talking about? Are

we talking about coal plants?

>> Coal, anything, whatever is available.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, you know,

>> so you think even though coal does

pollute the environment and it releases

particulates, right? It's that's an

issue right?

>> How shall I put it? You know, it's

always a matter of cost.

We have a plant, I think, in Alabama,

that has basically as clean as any other

plant that burns coal. You can clean it,

you can scrub it, you can get rid of

almost everything except CO2.

>> Okay. So, um, the particulates aren't as

big of an issue as they used to be in

the past. Is that what it is? They're

more efficient. Okay. Yeah.

>> So, stopping So, this net zero thing is

stopping them from installing modernized

coal plants in parts of the world that

do not have electricity. And the overall

net negative weighs much heavier in not

bringing these coal plants in and not

bringing these people into the first

world.

>> Yeah. And there are of course the

alternative natural gas and so on which

are available in places

>> uh you know there are places where you

have you're lucky like in Norway or

Canada you know Quebec where you have

hydro which is intrinsically clean but

uh there there's a problem with

politicians. I remember once being in DC

and some Republican politicians came and

said, "You know what we just did? We

banned incandescent light bulbs."

They said, "Wasn't that a great thing?"

I said, "That's the stupidest thing I've

heard today. What What's the point?"

Because at the time, what was replacing

it? Compact fluorescents, which were

awful.

all they had to do was wait and do

nothing and LEDs would come along and

people would say okay I prefer that

instead uh they feel they have to do

something

>> and they would switch the fluoresence

which turned out to be terrible for

people

>> yeah so incandescent aren't bad for you

>> they were simply less efficient

>> than the you know in terms of the number

of watts of heat they generate versus

light I mean LEDs are phenomenal that

way

>> right they're the

Yeah.

>> Well, you know, it's interesting when

they have these decisions that they make

like that that do turn out to be

negative ultimately and that yet people

still allow them to make silly decisions

that don't seem to be making sense.

>> Yeah. I think there's an old cliche,

money is the root of all evil.

>> Yeah, that's what I was going to get to.

I this is the disturbing thing that I

think a lot of people have a hard time

accepting especially a lot of very

polite educated people that have

followed the narrative that you follow

if you're a good person and if you're a

person who trusts science and that is

that like we have a serious problem we

have to address it now or there will be

no America for our grandchildren. This

is the thing that we keep

>> you mentioned a tough thing there the

business trust science.

>> Yes.

It's not a great idea because that isn't

science is not a source of authority.

It's a methodology.

Uh it's based on challenge.

>> Right?

>> And so

>> where did this narrative come from then?

Trust the science,

>> the success of science.

>> You know, in other words, this is a

relatively new way to approach the

world. I mean, few hundred years. Mhm.

>> And uh the notion is and I think it's

been stated many times that you test

things and if they fail to predict

correctly, they're wrong. So you find

out what's wrong with them. You don't uh

fudge them. You don't change the rules.

Um it's uh led to immense improvements

in life,

development of all sorts of things.

And so it has a good reputation.

Uh politicians have less of a

reputation. So they wish to co-opt the

reputation of science.

>> Yes, that's a very good point because

try finding a good politician that

everybody agrees is rock solid. You can

find plenty of science that everybody

thinks is amazing.

>> Yeah.

>> Cell phone technology, nuclear power, so

many things that people go, "That's

incredible that they did that." Well,

that's also confusing technology with

science,

>> the result of science, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Which is also an

issue right?

>> And when you can get politicians to

attach themselves to narratives that are

supposedly connected to science,

>> you mentioned Gore at the beginning.

>> Yes.

>> You know, with that thing, he was

showing this cycle of ice ages

>> and CO2 and temperature going together.

And uh it never bothered him that the

temperature changed first and then the

CO2.

>> Yeah. Greg Braden was on the podcast

recently. He was explaining there have

been times where the CO2 was much higher

in the atmosphere but the the

temperature was colder.

>> Oh yeah.

>> So it's not like we can point to like

look at the dinosaurs. We don't want to

live the way the dinosaurs live. Look

how much CO2 they had. Like and then the

other really inconvenient thing with CO2

is that the Earth is actually greener

than it has been in a long time. I mean,

I think we'll speak to that, but I mean,

essentially, the increased

amount of CO2 in the industrial era has

added greatly

uh to the arable land.

And in fact, there's a funny story. Do

you know the name Eio Wilson? Have you

ever heard that name?

>> I do. I have heard it, but I don't know

where

>> he is. He wrote, he was a biologist at

Harvard. He wrote about sociology. His

specialty were ants and bees and things,

social insects.

And uh he was giving a talk and um

it came up for reasons that were not

obvious to me. He was talking about the

population of humanoids

and he was mentioning that you go back

uh

you know a few hundred thousand years

and uh you began the first humanoids and

there they got to about a few million

but then during the last glacial maximum

the numbers went down to tens of

thousands. It was a complete wipeout of

humans.

So I asked him afterwards, I said, "Do

do you think this could have anything to

do with the fact that CO2 was so low

that there was no food?"

And his response was to turn around and

walk away.

>> That's an inconvenient truth, sir.

It's just to me it's very strange to see

an almost unanimous acceptance of that

we have settled this that's the science

has settled from so many people and both

the left and in academia and even on the

right there's a lot of people on the

right that believe that.

>> Yeah I know and it should be the first

thing that makes you suspicious.

>> Yeah. Right. There's a consensus.

>> Yeah. I mean this is how science is

done. and something that's never static.

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in Orange County, California. You mean

the weirdest thing is when you look at

the charts of the overall temperature of

Earth that have been, you know, from

core samples over a long period of time.

It's this crazy wave and like no one was

controlling it back then and we're

supposed to believe that we can control

it now that we can do something about

it.

>> There's something else about it which I

find funny and you might have some

insight into it.

>> People pay no attention to the actual

numbers.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, we're not talking about big

changes.

You know, in other words, uh,

you know, for the temperature of the

globe as a whole,

between now and the last glacial

maximum,

the difference was 5 degrees.

But that was because most of the earth

was not affected, much of the earth

anyway, very much. But you know,

somebody says one degree, a half degree,

what's his name? Cuchier at the UN says

the next half degree and we're done for.

>> I mean, doesn't anyone ask a half

degree? I mean, I deal with that

between, you know, 9:00 a.m. and 10:00

a.m. I mean,

>> it does seem crazy. It just that kind of

fear of minute change that they try to

put into people. And what I think people

need to understand that are casual

observers of this is what you discussed

earlier. How much money is involved in

getting people to buy into this

narrative so you can pass some bill

that's called save the world climate

some something crazy like that where

everybody goes they call it the

inflation reduction act.

>> Oh even better. Who doesn't want to

reduce inflation?

>> And then next thing you know there's

windmills killing whales and all kinds

of nonsense. But the the point being

it's it it is a fascinating science.

Like the science itself is fascinating.

>> Oh yeah. you get rid of the ideology and

you stop attaching

this thing versus, you know, you're

either pro-science or anti-cience. Just

look at the actual data of it. It's

absolutely fascinating. And these minute

changes, the fact that the procession of

the equinoxes where the world earth

wobbles like the whole thing is nuts.

Like the whole temperature and it has to

stay relatively stable in order to keep

us alive in terms of like can't go too

low, can't go too high. We're in this

goldilock zone.

>> The interesting thing is during the ice

ages,

we almost get wiped out.

>> Got really close, right?

>> And what's interesting about that is as

far as temperature goes. Okay. Yeah. The

poles have gotten much colder. You have

ice covering Illinois, 2 kilometers of

ice. That that's uninhabitable.

But you get south of 30° latitude, not

very different from today in terms of

temperature.

And so you would think you had a 100,000

years people would sort of migrate to an

area where it was now pleasant.

Trouble was without CO2 which went down

to about 180 there wasn't enough food

for the people.

>> Oh so there wasn't enough plant life.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Get down to 160 150 all life would die.

There would be not enough food for

anything.

>> What's it at now? Like 240?

>> No, we're now 400.

>> 400?

>> Yeah.

>> 400.

>> 430 maybe today. Yeah.

>> Okay. Um, when you first started

discussing this and when you first

started getting interested in this, how

much push back did you get?

Um

interesting question actually

quite a lot but I mean it took very

funny forms.

So for instance uh

in

let's see 1989

for instance

I sent a paper to science magazine

questioning whether this was something

to worry about

and they sent it back immediately saying

there was no interest.

So I sent it to the bulletin of the

American Meteorological Society and they

reviewed it and published it

and the editor was immediately fired.

>> Wow.

About 10 years later, working with some

colleagues at NASA, we found something

called the iris effect. That clouds,

which were greenhouse effect at the

upper levels,

uh contracted when it got warm, letting

more heat out, so cooling as a negative

feedback. And we got the paper, put it,

got reviewed, was published again. The

editor was fired immediately, but the

new editor came on immediately and said,

"He's inviting papers to criticize it."

And suddenly there were tons of papers

criticizing it, looking for anything

that differed from what we did,

including one that found a difference

that actually uh

made the CO2 even less important, but it

was different. So he thought he could

pass it through. No, it it's insane.

And even now there's something called

gatekeepers.

I don't know. Do are you familiar with

the uh release of emails from East

Anglia?

>> No, I'm not.

>> Okay. This is 20 years ago or something

almost. Uh, somebody anonymous

released the emails from a place in

England, the University of East Anglia,

which has a lot of people pushing

climate alarm. And they were

communicating with other people like

Michael Mann and so on. And they were

talking about blocking publication and

getting rid of editors and doing this

and doing that and so on. And that was

all public.

And it had no impact at all. How

>> that sounds like that should be illegal.

>> Yeah. Well, you know, the whole business

with,

how shall I put it? Peer review,

it is not ancient. Before World War II,

very few journals had peer review.

And in fact, when I have students look

at old journals from the 19th century,

one of the big surprises

is they are less formal than today's

papers.

They are literally discussions among

scientists

about their results, their questions,

their uncertainties and so on. There's

real communication

today. I mean, there's a much more

formality in the papers. There's also in

my field the meteorological society

actually did a poll or a study how often

are papers referred to and it turns out

the average paper is referred to once.

>> Wow. I mean so you have these things

papers are written to satisfy the

funding agency.

Nobody seems to pay attention to them.

>> How did you get involved in this?

Well, uh, I mentioned my stay at the

Department of Energy, and that's what

really sucked me into it. I had never

paid much attention to science, climate

science before, but I was spending a lot

of money, the taxpayers's money on it,

and so I thought I ought to learn a

little bit about it. And uh, I already

mentioned that most of the climate

scientists did not appreciate my

questioning. They were very strange

because almost any other science when

they got a call from Washington come in

and tell us what you're doing, they were

just delighted to come and make a case

about how important their work was. But

the climate scientists were completely

different, you know.

>> Did anybody engage with you?

>> Yeah, they had to because I threatened

to cut off their funding if they didn't

come. And so

they would come, you know, and be very

sullen and uh they wouldn't answer

questions. And you know, you can't have

a seminar without asking questions.

That's how you learn.

>> So, they would come to try to get

funding from you and they wouldn't

answer questions. That's right.

>> That sounds crazy.

>> That sounds like people that don't think

they have to convince you that what

they're doing is important, so they're

entitled to that money.

>> Well, that's right. Well, you know, I

was working for President uh Bush

Senior, and when uh Carter and Gore won

the election, you know, Gore couldn't

wait to uh fire me, you know, at the

behest of all of his protees.

>> Mean Clinton and Gore.

>> Clinton and Gore. Yeah, that's right. So

he uh you know Washington fortunately

it's very hard to make anything happen

including firing someone you want to

fire because you can't find them in the

orchard. So it took him two or three

months to find me

but they finally did fire me. I was glad

to be fired. I wanted to go back to do

research. I was tired of being a

bureaucrat. So I'm you know grateful in

some sense for that.

your colleagues that you that weren't

working with you like other scientists,

were they reluctant to discuss this kind

of information with you guys when when

you first started questioning whether or

not this narrative is correct?

>> Well, you know, my field is actually

hard physics. You know, I'm I'm a

nuclear physics trained and I've done a

lot of work with lasers and uh these are

thing you you can measure. They don't

have much political influence. A lot of

them have a military significance. And

in fact, the reason I was brought to

Washington is because I invented a an

important part of the Star Wars defense

uh uh initiative, which I can say about

later, but uh I had never really paid

any close attention to science until

then, but I I was climate science.

>> Yeah. Climate science, I should say.

Yes. So once I had this experience in

Washington, I started looking to it a

little bit. But I I didn't have time to

look a lot because my own research was

going still at Princeton and we had

discovered some things that we were able

to form a little startup company. And so

you know forming the company and getting

it going and funded used up most of my

time. I didn't have time to look at

climate

but eventually that was behind me and I

invited Dick to come give a seminar at u

the colloquium at Princeton and that's

really when I began to get very

interested in it and I realized that

it's just completely different from

normal science you know it it uh

completely politicized if you can't ask

a question you know that's a bad bad

sign

>> and um and if you have a 100% consensus

determining the truth That's an even

worse sign because you know the truth in

science is whether what you predict

agrees with observation and that wasn't

true of the science the climate science

community you know they would predict

all these things and none of them ever

happened and there was no consequence

you know one failure after another and

nothing ever happened the funding kept

pouring in. Now, is this behind the

scenes? Is this discussed amongst

physicists and other hard scientists? Do

they talk about how climate science has

been politicized and the issue that that

causes or do they just accept it?

>> Well, I think for the most part,

>> speaking as a physicist, I don't know

how it is in other fields and and from

Princeton, I think most of my colleagues

recognize that uh there's a lot of

nonsense there, but they're afraid to

speak up,

>> right?

>> Because it's bringing in enormous

amounts of money. We Dick mentioned that

the love of money is the root of all

evil and in universities for example but

at Princeton we have enormous new

building program it's funded to a large

extent from overhead from climate grants

you know and you're talking about you

know not small change you know you're

talking about hundreds of millions of

dollars you know for construction

>> so it's it's like you know this famous

drama of this Norwegian playwright Enemy

of the people Ipsson And and uh the

point of the drama was there was this uh

resort town in Norway where you would

come and you would uh uh be treated at

the spa. You drink the water and and go

home healthy. Well, people would come

and drink the water and they would die

of typhoid. And

a local doctor said, "You know, we're

killing people. We're not curing them."

And he was declared an enemy of the

people because he was cutting off the

source of funding for the city. So it's

it's that syndrome. It's an ancient

human problem,

>> right?

>> So it's it's always been there and it's

there in spades with climate.

>> It's part of it. Uh

another part of it is the politicization

has made it a partisan issue.

I mean in the US and I think that's in a

way fortunate.

It's almost a right versus left issue.

>> Yeah. And as a result uh you have people

the universities are almost entirely on

the left and so it's uh something they

support.

You know the money end of it is sort of

funny. I mean, I have the feeling at MIT

that our president, uh, Sally Cornbluth,

you know, probably spends her time

worrying about, uh, how she can use

climate money to support the music

department. I don't know. I mean,

>> so when they get funding for climate,

they can allocate it as they wish. often

you know it is fungeable

>> okay

>> you get this huge overhead you know 50%

60% of your grant goes to the

administration and not to your research

>> you know they can do what they like with

the overhead

>> interesting yeah

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And if they take a a a step outside of

the narrative and say, I think we need

to reexamine what's going on with CO2 in

the atmosphere, and it seems there's a

politicalization of this subject, and

that's bad for science, that's bad for

education, it's bad for everything.

Let's take a step back. They would

immediately lose so much fun.

>> Well, the the main thing it's bad for is

for overhead income to the university.

>> Exactly. Exactly. from an administrator.

>> By the way, I mean, this is something

that the press didn't deal with very

much. Trump

was cutting the overhead.

He was uh saying that he didn't want to

have that included in grants. I don't

think the public realized how

significant that was for better or for

worse.

>> Yeah. Well, I think most people have no

idea where grants go. They they don't

even think about it.

>> No. I mean uh

>> and the amount of money that's involved.

>> Yeah. When I was active, if I got a

grant,

I'm a theoretician, so I didn't need

laboratory work. It mainly was for

support of students

and so but then 50% of it went to the

administration.

Yeah. It's like a lot of charities

almost.

>> Yeah. A lot of money goes to overhead. A

lot of money goes to executives. A lot

of money goes to the administration on

grants. It's

>> and some of it is reasonable.

>> Sure. But

>> but it's also you're kind of attached to

keeping that money flowing in. And

there's a gigantic incentive to not rock

the boat and not discuss it the same way

you would discuss nuclear science,

>> right?

>> Yeah.

>> Oh, yeah. and and the attraction I mean

if you're an administrator

if you're a president of a university

uh that often overrides everything else

you know that uh you're raising money I

remember years ago I started college at

Wensler

and I made the mistake of mentioning to

someone that I appreciated the fact they

never bothered me I transferred out

after my sophomore year so it began

bothering me and I realized the

president of Wensler was making over a

million and a half dollars. This is

years ago, probably making much more

now. And the uh fundraiser came back to

me and said, "Do you know how much money

she raises?"

And I said, "Oh, so she's on

commission."

>> Yeah,

>> right.

>> Yeah, that that is kind of what's going

on. Yeah,

>> that it gets real weird when you bring

that kind of stuff up and people get

very reluctant to have these

discussions. They don't want to rock the

boat. I've I've talked to a lot of

friends in academia and they say people

pull you aside like in quiet corners to

discuss how this is kind of [ __ ]

>> But there's also the alumni.

I find this with Harvard especially.

A lot of the people who graduate from

Harvard really love the place

for better or for worse and uh they will

do anything to protect it.

>> Mhm.

>> And does it make sense?

>> Yeah.

>> Especially since to stick your neck out

there's not a whole lot of benefit

unless you're writing a book about you

know how ridiculous current climate

change models are.

>> A lot of people did at first Enhoff. A

lot of politicians wrote books saying

this is a hoax. this and they managed to

ride that out. I mean, by just keeping

on demanding that it be accepted. It's

interesting.

>> It is interesting. It's because it's

universally accepted on the left. Any

discussion at all about I've had

conversations with people and I say,

"What do you why do you think that?"

Like, "What do you know about climate

change?" And almost none of them have

any idea what the actual predictions

are, how wrong they've been, what Al

Gore predicted in this stupid movie,

which is so far off. If you He thought

we were all going to be dead today,

>> right?

>> There's very little change between 2006

and today,

>> right?

>> I mean, as I mentioned before, I think

for some people its importance is it

gives quote meaning to their life.

>> Yes.

um it becomes a part of an ideology and

it's very cult-like ideology that

encompasses a lot of different things

unfortunately. Um what do you think are

the major factors? You talked about

water vapor, CO2, there's methane.

There's a lot of different factors that

would lead to the temperature of the

Earth moving in any direction. Correct.

>> Okay. Yeah. I let me back off that a

little because

>> one of the things that is sort of

strange is the narrative itself deals

with global temperature.

Not clear what that is. I mean uh some

average over the whole globe. How do you

take it? What do you do with it? But

more than that

uh what is climate?

And you know there is a definition it's

an arbitrary definition

and uh it's that uh it's time it's time

variation on time scales longer than 30

years.

>> It's pretty arbitrary.

>> Yeah.

>> But it distinguishes it from weather

which is changes from day to day or week

to week. It's

>> right. So if they can see a rise in

temperature over 30 years they start

getting concerned.

>> They start calling it climate.

Okay. Now, you can take data from every

station

and filter it to get rid of everything

shorter than 30 years.

That's called a lowass filter.

And you can look at that and each

station and see how does it correlate

with the globe.

And it turns out very poorly

because most climate change by that

definition is regional.

So for instance uh in this area let's

say the states like Louisiana, Alabama

Gulf states

they had a period of cooling when the

rest of the country was warming.

Nobody paid much attention to it because

that's normal. Different areas do

different things.

Um, you have reasons why it's local. I

mean, if you're near a coast, near a

body of water, the circulations in the

ocean are bringing heat to the surface

and away from the surface all the time

on time scales ranging from a few years

for El Nino and so to a thousand years.

And so this has nothing to do with the

global average.

Um the whole business that the global

average is an issue was something that

was created for people studying

different planets.

And so you'd look at the average for

each planet and that varied quite a lot.

So that was useful. But for looking at

the Earth's climate, I'm not sure a

global mean is a particularly useful

device.

>> That makes sense. How much of a factor

does the sun play? Obviously a lot. It

heats us up, but like yeah, the changing

of

>> you know that's something there's

argument about.

uh I think you know for instance uh a

man called Malankovich

in around 1940

made a convincing argument and I think

now it's correct that orbital variations

created a change in insulation incoming

sunlight in the Arctic in summer and

that controlled the ice ages

>> and the the thinking was pretty simple.

Uh he was saying that uh you know every

winter is cold, every winter has snow,

but what the temperature or the

insulation or the sunlight in the summer

is determines whether that snow melts or

not before the next cycle.

And if you're at a point where it

doesn't melt, you build a glacier. M

>> takes thousands of years but you know

eventually it's big

and uh in recent years for instance uh

there have been young people who have

shown that that works. It's interesting

there was even a national program called

climap

to study this. It's around 1990 or so

and they found something peculiar. They

found that uh there were peaks in the

solar the orbital variables

that were found in the data for ice

volume

but that the time series were not lining

up right.

The young people looking at this said

you're looking at the wrong thing.

If you're looking at the insulation,

you want to look at the time rate of

change of ice volume,

not just the ice volume.

>> And then the correlations were

excellent.

So this was a theory Malanchovich that I

think has been reasonably sustained.

Uh

but it the people doing this got no

credit, nothing cuz you know

early in my career these people would

have been rewarded.

Now it didn't contribute to global

warming. Nobody pays attention to it.

>> Joe, let let me add to what Dick has

said, which I agree with. Um, but uh you

asked about the sun and as Jake says

that uh is a controversial issue. The

establishment narrative is that the sun

has very little to do with it. It's all

CO2. CO2 is the control knob. Don't

confuse me with other possibilities.

But nobody is is quite sure about the

sun. We have not got good records of the

sun for a long time. So, we're stuck

with proxies of uh how bright was the

sun 500 years ago or 5,000 years ago.

And uh one of the proxies is uh when the

sun activity changes, it changes the

amount of radioactive isotopes that it

makes in the atmosphere. Things like

carbon 14 or burillium 10. These stick

around for long, you know, thousands of

years or longer. And you can from that

infer how many of them were made uh 500

years ago or 5,000 years ago. And they

don't give any support to the idea that

the sun has been constant.

>> It's very clear for example that the

amount of carbon 14 you know this

radioactivity

uh that's produced changes from year to

year. If you don't take that into

account you get all the dates wrong from

carbon 14 dating. you know, where you

>> take an Egyptian mummy and you burn up

the cloth and you measure the carbon 14

in it and you get the wrong answer

unless you assume that the rate of

production then was different from what

it is today because you know what the

right answer is from the Egyptian

mummies. There's a pretty good

historical record of that. So, it's

clear the sun is is always changing.

And over the last 10,000 years, since

the last glacial maximum, there have

been many warmings and coolings, very

large warmings and coolings. And that's

particularly not noticeable near the

Arctic, you know, in high latitudes in

the north. For example, my father's home

in Scotland. I was a kid. I would walk

up into the hills south of Edinburgh and

you could see these farms from the year

1000 where people were able to make a

crop at altitudes where you can't farm

today. It was it's too cold today but it

was clearly warm enough in the year 1000

>> which was the time when the Norse farmed

Greenland. So what caused those? It was

not uh people burning oil and coal you

know

>> right? And so I think the best uh guess

as to what it was is some slight

difference in the way the sun was

shining in those days because they do

correlate with the carbon 14.

>> That's absolutely fascinating. Mhm.

>> Now, when we have estimates like say of

the the Jurassic or any any dinosaur

age,

>> was there is there enough of an

understanding of the differences in

temperatures back then that we know

whether or not they ever experienced ice

ages?

>> Oh, yeah.

>> So, we can go back 65, 100 million

years.

>> You can go 500 million years.

>> 500 million years and

>> evidence of ice ages. Absolutely.

>> There always been. There's always been

an ice age and a warming

>> and they don't they don't correlate very

well with CO2. You can also estimate the

past CO2 levels and they don't correlate

with ice ages.

>> What's special about the recent ice ages

is they're pretty periodic.

So for 700,000 years, almost every

100,000 years you have a cycle.

>> Wow.

>> Uh if you go back further than that, you

begin seeing that fall apart. And for

about 3 million years, 40,000 years is

the dominant period. And then you go

back further than that and you don't

have ice ages for a long time.

>> Wow.

>> Yeah. It's very very poorly understood,

I would say.

>> And

so, and there's also no way to track it.

Like there's no way to tell what's going

to happen to the sun. They they have

some sort of an understanding there's

increased activity.

>> It's not clear that solar activity was

the issue. could have been many factors.

>> Well, you know, how shall I put it? Uh,

with the ice ages,

as I say, orbital theory was the main

thing.

Uh, the fact that you have, you know,

various factors determining the orbit of

the earth versus the sun and so on uh

give you periodic changes in the

incoming radiation as a function of

geography in the earth. Joe, let me add

again to what Dick has said that uh he

correctly said that the current ice ages

which are queer periodic really only

began 3 million years or so ago and at

first they were oscillating a lot faster

than today

and that was approximately the time that

the ismas of Panama closed. So one of

the suspicions is that when the Panama

Ismas closed and stopped the circulation

of water from the Atlantic to the

Pacific, that made a huge difference in

the transport of heat and things like

the Gulf Stream. For example, the Gulf

Stream would have been completely

different if water could have flown into

the Pacific instead of to North Europe.

And that was about the time that the

these fluctuating ice ages began.

>> Wow. But, you know, we've set back the

the serious study of climate, I think,

by 50 years by this manic focus on CO2.

If your theory doesn't have CO2 in it,

forget it. You know, you won't get

funding. And so, the the the true

answer, I mean, to me, you know, there

was a period uh 200 years ago when

everyone thought that heat was

flegiston. There was this magic subject

uh you know, non-existent. But everyone

had to believe in plagistine and it

turned out it was nonsense. It wasn't

there at all. But but you couldn't get

anyone to support you unless you

believed in pluggistan. So I call this

the plagistan era of climate science

where plagistan is CO2.

You know

>> well this is what confused me. You

gentlemen are academics. You're

obviously very intelligent people.

There's other very intelligent people

that are involved in academia. How does

this problem get solved? like how do

they start treating this as what it is

instead of attaching it to a political

stance?

>> Well, I think stopping the funding for

uh this massive funding for climate

would help because it's certainly been

driven within academia by the

availability of funds. If you're willing

to support the narrative, you will be

handsomely rewarded and you'll be

elected to societies, you'll win prizes

>> and you'll be shunned again if you

don't.

>> That That's right. So I think for

example if some administration in

Washington wants to slow this down and

get some sanity they should cut the

funding or or they should at least open

up the funding to alternate uh theories

of what is controlling climate because

the the theory that the control knob is

CO2 doesn't work. It's completely clear

it doesn't work

>> and it just seems so insane that if we

move in the same direction and we as you

say if it does if it really is holding

back climate science by 50 years like

that that's a travesty.

>> Well, you know, Dick would have made a

lot more progress and his colleagues

would have made a lot more progress if

they hadn't been forced to deal with

this CO2 cult and we might understand

climate today without that. There there

are a lot of things that are peculiar

about science in general.

Uh you know,

one of them is numbers.

I mean, uh

it isn't having more people work on

something. Uh you want to have an

environment where

there's freedom.

um often think I mean Will is familiar

with this. There's a photograph from

1929

of all the world's physicists

at a Salv conference. This is a golden

age of physics.

Um

if you quintupled the number of people

working on physics, would you have

improved the situation? I doubt it.

And so, you know, I think freedom is

much more important than just piling on.

>> There's the photo things. Yeah,

>> you have that. Great.

>> There they are.

>> Not quite. It's not the same.

>> Mhm. But that's a Saltway Conference.

Absolutely.

>> Now, the 1929 had the Curies.

>> Well, Pierre might be there.

Sorry,

>> it's okay.

>> Yeah.

>> Either way, we I guess we

>> Yeah, but I mean I wondered at times,

you know, when you had uh

the

Soviet competition with the US and uh

they were the first ones into space and

we suddenly began a program to get more

and more kids to get into STEM.

>> Mhm.

um that has its downside.

First of all, uh you're going to dilute

the field if you increase it too much.

And the second thing is with peer

review. I mean, peer review is new. I

mean it wasn't that common before World

War II

but people have pointed out uh it has

its virtues

but uh you know you can see the the

Royal Medological Society for instance

used to give you instructions and the

instructions were you can only reject a

paper if there is a mathematical error

that you can identify. I or if it's

plagiarized, it's repeating something

that already exists.

And that was pretty fair

because how is a reviewer supposed to

decide if a new theory is right or not

or so on? That that's asking too much of

that. But today, peerreview is almost a

process to enforce conformity.

uh if you're not going with the flow,

you can get rejected.

And that's

a lot of things structurally need to be

I think rethought a little bit. The

physicists have done pretty well with

archive

where they have a publication vehicle

using the internet

that bypasses reviews and lets people

read it and see what's up on it. But all

sorts of things like that need to

happen. I mean, what will is saying is

true. I'm sure I science of climate has

been set back at least two generations

by this.

Well, it just seems like it's bad for

any kind of science and that open free

discussion and debating ideas based on

their merit and what data you have.

That's what it's supposed to be about.

It's not supposed to be attached to an

ideology and I just don't understand how

it got this far

>> and how it can be separated. So when

when did it really become a problem

where ideology started invading into

certain segments of science?

>> Well, it's happened many times in the

past, Joe. Climate is only the most

recent. Uh

>> so it's just a natural thing that

happens. Well, for example, there was

the eugenics movement in America and

Britain and Western Europe where the

claim was that uh the great gene pool,

you know, of the Anglo-Saxon race was

being diluted by all these low Italians

and Eastern European Jews and China. It

was all completely nonsense. But they

had learned journals where you could

publish an article that proved that. And

you had the presidents of Harvard and

Stanford and Princeton, Alexander Graham

Bea Bell being great eugenicist, you

know, protecting the American genome and

it was all nonsense. It just complete

[ __ ] And yet uh and the only thing

that stopped it really was uh was the

Nazis because they took it over with a

vengeance. You know, they were big fans

of the eugenics movement in America and

and Britain and they took it to its, you

know, absurd extreme extreme.

>> They also gave an honorary degree to the

leading eugenicist in America, a man

called Laughlin.

But

>> oh my goodness.

>> No, I mean uh

what Will is saying, I mean, it had a

practical consequence by the way. It

actually led to the immigration

restriction act of 1924

which held that America was going to

restrict

immigrants

to percentages based on the population

in the 19th century. So there would be a

quotota for England and Scotland which

was fine, a little bit less for Germany,

almost nothing for Eastern Europe,

almost nothing for Italy and so on. And

and that was used in the runup to World

War II

to allow Roosevelt to prevent Jews from

escaping Europe.

>> Wow. Um,

and it was only changed in 1960.

So essentially you were keeping out

Jews, Eastern Europeans, Chinese until

then because of eugenics in 1924.

We, you know, the average person that's

not involved in science always wants to

think of science as being this

incredibly pure thing amongst

intellectuals or they're trying to

figure out how the world works. When you

hear stories like that, you hear that

kind of stuff and you're just like, "Oh,

this has always been a problem.

>> You're dealing with people,

>> human beings. That's the problem, right?

That that's that's getting to the heart

problem.

>> Yeah. Joe Joe says this this famous

quote by Emmanuel Kant, you know, from

the crooked timber of mankind,

no straight thing was ever made.

>> Oo,

>> that goes for science as well as every

other aspect of human society. What

could have been done to protect the

scientific process from this sort of an

ideological invasion or at least shelter

it somewhat to to make sure that

something like eugenics doesn't ever get

pushed or climates or any anything

that's just not logical and doesn't fit

with the data? Well, the trouble is,

you know, when something like eugenics

comes around,

uh the population is told that this is

science,

>> right?

>> And uh how are they going to say no? I

mean, you had uh bar various uh famous

laboratories

devoted to this. And it it wasn't a

fringe thing,

>> right?

>> And so I don't know how you would

distinguish it at that time from

science. Today there are books on it and

you know you have the correspondence of

biologists who are saying well it's a

little bit dicey but they're saying it's

it's bringing it to the four of public

attention. So maybe that's a good thing.

M well it just makes you shudder to

think like what happens if the Nazis

didn't take over Germany and eugenics

continued to progress in America. That's

terrifying

>> to think where we would be today.

>> Right. Right. We' have been a much

poorer country because so many leading

Americans, you know, creative,

productive people have immigrated, you

know, fairly recently. also probably

would have led to some horrific actions

in order to enact this.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. I mean when you put things in the

hands of politicians,

>> um there is a disconnect.

I mean the business with the light bulbs

I mentioned, right?

>> It wasn't malice,

>> it was ignorance.

And you combine ignorance with power and

you often get nonsense. and the

narrative that you're doing something

good for everybody.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Dick has often made the point

which I agree with that politicians and

and sort of society leaders are the

worst in situations like this. The

ordinary person is often a little bit

more skeptical and more reasonable.

>> Yeah. So, for example, I like to tease

Dick because he's a Harvard grad about

the Salem witch trials, but they were

orchestrated by people from Harvard. You

know, it was not the common people.

>> Have you ever read into that at all?

>> Yeah, I've looked into it carefully.

>> What do you think about the Urgot

poisoning theory?

>> Well, um,

>> does it make sense?

>> I I don't know. Uh, most of the

testimony was from young women about the

same age as Greta Tunberg, by the way.

And uh you know they had these visions

uh of uh the person they were accused u

consorting with the devil and doing all

sorts of seeing things and uh that was

accepted as testimony. It was called

spectral evidence.

>> And so when

>> wow

>> when finally the trials were stopped it

wasn't for the right reason which is

that there's no such thing as witches.

You know they were stopped because

spectral evidence you know was uh shaky.

It was being used against the Harvard

judges themselves at that point. So it

was getting very dangerous,

>> you know, but one of them was selling a

book on how to how to detect witches,

cotton matter, you know.

>> Well, I've read that as well about the

printing press. When the printing press

was first devised, a lot of people like,

oh, we're going to get so much

knowledge. No, a lot of the early books

were like how to detect witches,

>> right? That's right. Malus Maliporum,

you know, the hammer of the evildoers.

That was the first book on witches. What

I'd read about Salem though was that

they had core samples that detected a

late frost and that they believe this

late frost might have contributed to uh

urgot growth cuz apparently that's that

does happen a lot when the plants grow

and then they freeze and then

>> they get mold on them and that mold

could contain urgot and that has LSD-

like properties which totally makes

sense if they're eating LSD laced bread

and they thought everybody was a witch

but either way.

>> Yeah. Yeah, it took I I think that's a

kinder explanation of what happened. I'm

less generous.

>> Well, you know more about the behind the

scenes. Yeah.

>> No, but I mean people I think what Will

is saying is there are people who always

want to have a chance to do in their

neighbor.

>> Yes. Sure. And if you could say your

neighbor's a witch, what better way? We

can't have witches in our neighborhood.

Let's burn them or drown them at the

time, right? That's what they did to

people.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Well, that that's one of the parts

of Orbal's 1984 that many people forget,

but a big part of that was every day

there was two minutes of hate. And so

people seem to have this need for

hatred. You know, you have to have a

part of the day where you can hate

something or somebody. And so if you're

hating CO2, at least that's better than

hating your neighbor.

>> Well, if you're on Twitter, you're

you're using up a lot more than two

minutes of hate. Uh-huh.

>> Well, you know, but even with political

figures,

>> I'm always surprised. I mean, seems

obvious that any political figure who is

exploiting hate and fear probably does

not mean well.

>> Yeah.

>> And yet we continually fall

>> over and over again. Yeah. All of them.

>> And you know, other countries do the

same pattern.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> That's what's dark. It just seems like

we're terrified of being terrified

>> and we want safety and we want someone

comes along and scares the [ __ ] out of

us and vows to protect us.

>> Yep.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, children do this all the time. Go

into a dark closet and frighten

yourself.

>> Well, there is also terrible things in

the world and terrible people in the

world. Um, but when you have a just

everything scares the [ __ ] out of

everybody. everything is the end of the

world and climate being one of the key

ones that I hear all the time with young

people. In fact, there were some recent

surveys that were done if you know about

these like the things that give young

people the most anxiety and climate is

at the very top of that list.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's really strange to

think that this is causing young people

not to want to have children, not to

want to continue, to have no hope for

the future. This is bizarre. and just

live in constant fear. Yeah.

>> Of one day. But meanwhile, is anybody

paying attention to all these rich

people buying shoreline property? Yeah.

Like, do you think they're stupid?

>> Do you think Jeff Bezos is a dumbass cuz

he's buying these giant mansions like

right on the ocean? Like, do you really

think the water's going to raise that

much?

>> That's how I put it. I mean, you know,

even the people who are pushing it at

MIT, I mean, buy houses on the shore.

>> Obama did. They got that beautiful house

and Martha's Vineyard. It's like if

you've looked at the timelines, I'm sure

you have like time-lapse video of the

shoreline from like 1980 all the way up

to 2025. It doesn't move.

>> I mean, it goes a little bit in Malibu

and there's a lot of

>> they go back much further than that.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. I think Joe, it's true. Sea level

is rising. It's different at different

shores because the land is also rising.

You're sinking,

>> but it's not very much. And it hasn't

accelerated the it there's no evidence

that CO2 has made any difference. It

started rising roughly 1,800 at the end

of the little ice age and it's not not

changing very much.

>> And wasn't there like an unprecedented

amount of Arctic ice that's increased

recently.

>> That's right. Well,

>> yeah.

>> I mean that that's always variable,

>> right? But when that happens, how come

that doesn't hit the news? If if the ice

goes away, then it's going to hit the

news. Oh my god, look at this. We lost a

chunk the size of Manhattan and

everybody freaks out.

>> Well, we were supposed to be ice free 20

years ago.

>> Yes. Yeah.

>> Uh no, you know,

>> our girl was just off by a little bit.

He's just give him some decades to be

vindicated.

>> That is the point that I think uh people

have made. A test usually means if you

fail it, you've done something wrong.

>> Yes.

uh only in theology does it mean that

you change the goals.

>> Right. Right. Especially when you

invented the theology because climate is

very much like a religion or at least

the adherence to it is very religious

like or I should say cultlike.

>> Right.

>> Because it's not like there's a higher

power. It's it's everyone's just

terrified and you have to change

everything you do now

>> cuz you're guilty. And it used to be

that like the sign of virtue would have

was to have an electric car and then

every my favorite thing is going up

behind Teslas now and they have bumper

stickers that say I bought this before

Elon went crazy.

>> So now they don't I mean it's just

everyone is trying to figure out what

they're supposed to do in order to still

be accepted by their group.

>> And the climate one is one that if you

bring it up with people, it's almost

like you're talking about witches. Like

they want to get out of there. Like if

you actually looked at

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> It's a religious thing or a cultlike

thing.

>> Absolutely. Yeah.

>> And they don't really It's not like

they've studied it a lot and like Yeah.

It's really interesting. And this is why

I think that we've got to reduce CO2 and

you have like this informed discussion

with someone. You go, "Oh, okay. So,

when did you start reading about this?

What book was that? Where, you know, did

you see this and did you see that?" And

okay. And you now you're having an

informed discussion. But that's not what

it's like. It's like you bring it up and

they're like, "Oh god, climate change is

settled. Climate change is settled."

Okay, you don't believe in Even Bernie

when I had him on when he was talking

about climate change is a real a giant

problem and we started showing the

Washington Post thing that says that

we're in a global cooling period and

it's raised up sometime over the last

but if you look at like the peaks and

valleys, the main thing is like this has

never been static. And I said to Bernie,

I'm like there's a lot of money in this

Bernie. Like you've got to admit this

like this isn't something that we have

to act on now to save each other. It

might be something that we're being

[ __ ] with. And that's what it seems

like to me.

>> It's like

>> well the question is why does he find it

so enthus why is he so enthusiast

>> wonderful for funding?

>> Yeah.

>> I think he's overall a very good person.

I really do. And I think he he would

have been a fascinating president. But

uh I think there are too many things to

concentrate on in the world. And if you

really want to do a deep dive into the

actual science of climate and CO2's

impact on climate and what actually

causes us to get warmer or colder,

that's a lot of work. It's a lot of

work. And I don't know if the senator of

Vermont has enough time to do that work

and to really do it objectively or to

talk to someone like you

>> to have an informed conversation with

someone who studied it for decades and

go, "Okay, there's a lot more to this

than I thought and why does it fit in

the same damn pattern where people get

attached to an idea?" because that idea

is attached to their ideology.

>> But you're hitting on a problem and I

think Will knows this as well. A lot of

this stuff is actually tough material.

>> Yes.

>> I mean, for instance, uh you know, the

question of what determines the

temperature difference between the

tropics and the pole,

that's actually handled in a third-year

graduate course.

uh you know it deals with hydrodnamic

instability which is a complicated

subject and it it's a real problem in a

field. It's true throughout science

where you're trusting people

to behave I think decently

uh but the m material itself

is not going to be entirely accessible

to everyone

and how you deal with it how you

approximate I mean the same is true with

uh nuclear power with other things

these are technical ical issues. They're

not trivial

and you're asking in a democratic

society for people to make decisions.

That's a tough issue.

Um it involves a certain amount of trust

and what we're describing is a situation

where the trust is being uh violated.

>> Yeah. There's this nice Russian proverb

that Ronald Reagan loves so much. Trust

but verify.

>> Yes.

>> And um it's hard to verify, you know, if

you're an average citizen. Yeah.

>> Something about climate.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

>> That's what's so frustrating about this

conversation when you have it with

people that are indoctrinated

>> when they're like climate change is a

giant issue. Like there's so many times

I've seen they're very fun YouTube speak

um videos where they catch people at

these protests and some joker just

starts interviewing them and they

clearly don't know what the hell they're

protesting for.

>> It's fascinating that you left the house

like you you had nothing better to do.

You don't know why you're protesting but

you're there and you got a sign and you

still don't even understand it. That's

how powerful this thing has become in

our society. And the fact that they've

been so that the powers that be or

whoever is involved has been so

successful at pushing this narrative

that it's number one of the number one

anxieties that young people have about

the future

>> in a place where we may very well be

involved in wars like but the war

doesn't freak them out as much as being

involved in a climate emergency.

>> How dare you?

>> Right there you go lady.

>> But you notice how quickly she changed.

>> She flipped up. Now it's Palestine. You

got to mix it up. People get bored with

the climate. You got to you listen, you

want to be someone that's in the news,

you got to keep moving. You got to keep

it moving. You know, you stop doing rap

music, start acting. You got to keep it

moving. And that's, you know, she's an

entertainer. Well, she had a very

unfortunate experience um with that

blockade in uh Israel. So maybe she's

out of the business now, but I doubt it.

But when you're taking a 16-year-old kid

and having her as a face of climate

change like and as you said this is

something insanely difficult to digest

for the average person and you know she

doesn't have this data at her

fingertips.

>> It's not just digest. I mean it's how

many people can solve partial

differential equations.

I mean this is one of the complaints I

have which is sort of odd. People blame

this on models.

And what the models are doing is they're

taking the equations of fluid mechanics,

something called the Navier Stokes

equation,

and they're doing it by dividing it into

discrete intervals and seeing how things

change with distance and time and so on.

And one of the things that uh

we know is no one has ever proven that

this actually leads to the solution.

>> Uh but but it's used for weather

forecasting and all sorts of things and

so on. At any rate, so they do this and

they do I think many of the people doing

it are doing it carefully or as

carefully as they can

and um

they get answers that will often be

wrong.

But as best I can tell, none of these

models predict catastrophe.

uh [ __ ] made the point I think correctly

that even with the UN's models

you're talking about uh a 3%

reduction in uh national product or

gross domestic product by 2100.

That's not a great deal. It's not the

end of the earth. You're already much

richer than you are today. So what

what's the panic?

And uh

it's true the models don't give you

anything to be that panicked over. So

the politicians and the

environmentalists invent extreme

descriptions that actually don't have

much to do with the models but they

blame the models.

>> So you know it's it's a confusing

situation.

I mean the models have a use.

They just shouldn't be used to predict

exactly what the future is. You can use

them to see what interacts with what and

then study it further.

Let let Joe let me uh just uh say a

little more about what Dick commented on

the Navier Stokes equation which

describes fluid motion, the atmosphere,

the oceans and uh it really is a very

hard uh mathematical problem to solve

because they're not only partial

differential equations, they're what are

called nonlinear partial differential

equations.

And so there's a joke about uh Veriner

Heisenberg who was uh the inventor of uh

quantum mechanics uh a very bright guy

and he was the head of the Nazi atomic

bomb program during World War II and so

he was captured by the Americans and the

British and uh because of this activity

was forbidden to work on nuclear physics

uh later you know after the victory

and So he decided to work on fluid

mechanics on solving the Navier Stokes

equation

and uh he was a as I said a tremendously

uh talented physicist and but he found

it very hard he didn't make very much

progress because it's much harder than

quantum mechanics or much harder than

relativity to solve those equations.

And so one one of his students

supposedly said to him, "Well, you know,

Professor Heisenberg, um they say that

if you've been a good uh physicist when

you die and you go to heaven that um

the Almighty allows you to ask two

questions and uh he will answer any

question you ask." And uh what will you

ask him? And Eisenberg supposedly said,

well, I will ask him why general

relativity

and uh why turbulence? Turbulence is the

Navier Stokes equation. He says, and I

think he will be able to answer the

first one.

>> That's funny. That's funny. And

>> this is what's you know the the best

assumption or the best measurements of

what's controlling the temperature on

Earth.

>> Well, you know, they're they're asking

you to have great confidence in a

calculation involving this miserable

equation that is so hard to solve uh at

least very far into the future. You can

solve it for a short time, but it's very

hard to go much further. one of Dick's

colleagues at MIT, a man named Lorent.

Uh why don't you tell him about Lorent?

>> Well, no, Lorent is credited with chaos

theory, but basically it's a statement

that these are not predictable.

Um

whether that's true or not is still an

open question, but it has a lot of those

characteristics and detail. I mean, you

know, for instance, it wouldn't be a

surprise if you're looking at a bubbling

brook and you have all those little

eddies and so on. You know, are you

actually able to track the whole thing

accurately? Probably not.

How accurately would you have to do it

if you scaled it up to climate?

Who knows?

>> Yeah. The the typical

description of this theory was that it's

as though a butterfly flapping its wings

in the Gulf of Alaska causes hurricanes

two years later in

Florida.

>> Yeah, that one's funny.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> People repeat that and you're like, "No,

that's not how it works at all."

>> I don't think it works.

>> I know. Of course not. But it's funny

when people like to bring that

what it I think he meant was rather

simpler than that. You know, the

hurricane is likely to occur. The

flipping of a butterflyy's wings might

have actually changed it from one day to

another.

It wouldn't it would have an influence

downstream.

Everything has an influence. Everything

is tied in together. Now, when we make

models based on incorrect data about

like CO2 levels and what the temperature

in the future is going to look like, at

what point in time do you think another

country needs to screw up the same way

Nazi Germany ran with eugenics and it

ruined eugenics in the United States

where they're like, "Oh my god, this is

a horrific idea." Do you think something

like that has to happen in another

country where they have to take this

climate change green energy thing to its

full end? You think so?

>> I think that's how it will end. Yes. I

think Britain or Germany may be the

sacrificial country

>> because Germany has shut off a couple of

their nuclear power plants. Correct.

>> Right. All of their nuclear power

plants.

>> Oh god.

>> Mhm.

>> And they did it all for green energy.

>> That makes no sense. Well, I think they

did it because of the Fukushima thing

and because the Green Party is so

powerful in Germany and they not only

>> turned off their plants and not nuclear

and coal as well, but they blew a lot of

them up, you know, you see these

pictures of the plants, you know, being

blown up by dynamite just to make sure

that nobody restarts them. So, they're

fanatics.

>> Oh my god.

>> The real fanatics. Yeah.

>> That's so crazy.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> And so, at some point, some country like

Germany, they'll lose all their jobs.

all the industry will move. There will

be no jobs. People will all be on

welfare. There's no money to pay them.

And at that point, sudden someone will

realize, you know, we've taken a wrong

turn here.

>> I can't believe they blew their plants

up. That is nuts.

>> And what are they replacing with right

now? You have Russian gas,

>> windmills,

>> windmills.

>> Yeah. And imported.

>> But you're right. They're importing

fossil fuels

>> and importing electricity from France,

which still has a large nuclear power

base.

>> How? But how is Germany so smart and so

dumb at the same time? Because they have

tremendous engineers. They make some of

the best automobiles ever.

>> They're making them in Hungary.

>> Oh,

>> but that but that's an a profound

question is how is it that this country

of poets and philosophers

>> Yeah. had the Nazis.

>> had the Nazis. Exactly. And

>> Dietrich Bonhaofer was one of the few

German theologians who had the courage

to remain in Nazi Germany. He was

invited to come to the US. But he he

said, "I'm going to stay with my

people." And he was eventually hung by

the German by the Nazis. He didn't

survive.

But he had this theory that it was um

stupidity. And it's a very interesting

theory. If you look on the internet, you

can read about Bonhaofer's theory of

stupidity.

But he um his view was that all of these

Nazi supporters, they didn't really

believe in it all. They were just dumb.

You know, it's hard for me. When I first

read about this, I couldn't believe it.

But the more I look at it, I I think

that every nation has the problem that

most of us are pretty stupid.

There's a large percentage of us that

will believe almost anything. And we

could point to a lot of

>> things that are subjects in the

zeitgeist right now that people

wholeheartedly believe in that makes

zero sense.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> That could go with that. And you would

go, okay, there's there's some part of

this has to be attributed to low

intelligence. So like what percentage of

of people in this country are incapable

of thinking for themselves? And it's not

a small number. Maybe it's 10, maybe

it's 20, whatever percentage. It's it's

enough where it's a giant problem.

>> That's one thing. But also intelligence

itself is a complex issue.

There are people who like us may be

idiots of

there are things that we can do very

well and other things we don't.

>> Yeah. Absolutely.

>> I mean, you know, math departments are

famous that way.

>> Well, I think it's a sign of almost any

great person at anything. Yeah. There's

usually areas in their life where

they're just completely lacking whether

it's hygiene or relationships or what

they're obsessed by what they do and

that's why they're great at what they

do.

>> You know, look, there are great writers

who can't do arithmetic,

>> right?

Uh I don't know, you know, where you put

them in that category,

>> right? Well, and there's great physical

athletes that they have an intelligence

of moving their body in a way that they

understand things at a much higher level

than anybody else that does whatever

their athletic pursuit is. They probably

don't wouldn't do that well on an ACT

test. Doesn't mean that they're not

intelligent. It's just it's a different

kind of intelligence.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And that makes the world a

more interesting place by and large.

>> It really does. But what's scary is when

you count on the people that are

supposed to be the people that are

obsessed and studying this one thing

like this climate change emergency that

we're supposed to be under and then you

find out, oh wait a minute, this is not

this isn't like an exact science.

>> Oh, we started with Gore,

>> right?

>> And Gore, you know, flunked out of

Harvard,

>> did he?

>> Yeah. And his father, who was a senator,

got him back in.

Uh I was teaching there at the time.

>> Oh really interesting.

>> And the person he attributes his

awareness of CO2 to Roger Rall was

teaching a sort of science for poets

course and he got a D minus in it.

>> Is he made the most money off of this?

Because he's made a lot of money off of

>> you know he's made a few hundred million

I don't know these days. small change,

>> right?

>> Still there, there's a a very clear

motivation to keep that graph going. You

know, it's um especially now with social

media.

There's so many people that can like we

were talking about Greta Thurberg. I

mean, I don't know what her motivations

are, but I do know that there's a lot of

people out there that have large social

media platforms that all they want to do

is connect themselves to something that

people are talking about all the time.

And there's a lot of money in that and

there's a lot of, you know, a lot of

power in wielding that influence. And to

to do so then just hop on any bandwagon

that comes along and not really know

what you're talking about is it's it's a

real problem that we have in society

today.

>> And

>> and it's a in a way a new problem given

social media.

>> Yeah. Yeah. The social media aspect of

it is a new problem. Another new problem

is AI and fakes like that you you see

fake videos and fake news stories and

fake articles and it's just like you

it's very it takes time to pay attention

to what's real and what's not real

today. And so if somebody wanted to push

any kind of a narrative about anything

uh especially climate change or you you

could scare the [ __ ] out of somebody

very quickly with a nice video and it

doesn't even have to be real.

>> Well, that was the reason for extreme

weather being chosen. I mean, it's

interesting. For quite a few years, the

climate issue was temperature.

And you'll have noticed the last 15, 20

years, it's extreme weather,

>> right?

>> And that shows that, you know, it was

fake because um it's trivial. I mean, we

looked it up. uh the average uh month

there are four or five

extreme events someplace in that month

that are once in a hundred year events.

So each of them makes for a good video

and you have four or five a month and

they're each only on one that's in a

hundred years and people aren't putting

it together that you know once in

aundred year events occurring four or

five times a month

but you know you always have a picture

of a flood someplace or a rise or this

or that and those are used to scare

people. It's got harder and harder to

scare people with numbers,

>> right? It's extreme weather events. I

keep that's what I keep hearing. The

hurricanes are getting stronger.

>> They're getting more frequent. And they

repeat that. And I don't think that's

necessarily true.

>> No. No. Uh for years, the IPCC, the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change of the UN,

was honestly saying they could find no

evidence that these were related.

The last one they had to say something

because the politicians control what's

in the IPCC

but even with that they were saying no

and uh that had nothing to do with the

public relations

said to hell with it even if there's no

relation we'll say there is because that

gives us visuals. M

god. Now when people like Bill Gates

start talking about putting reflective

particles in the atmosphere to cool off

the earth and protect us from the sun's

rays like where is all that coming from?

Especially if like you would imagine

even

>> even Wills said it comes from dumbness.

>> Well, I'm sure. But even proposing

something like that should have the

whole world up in arms. Like, hey, a few

people can't make a decision that will

literally impact the entire world and

possibly trigger a catastrophic drop in

temperature that kills us all.

>> Yeah.

>> Why? Because you made Microsoft. Like,

why do you get to do this? That seems

like something you would have to have

the whole world vote on and they would

have to be like really well informed

about what the consequences of this

going wrong could be. Mhm.

>> Well, I'd have I have to hope that most

of the world agrees with you and me and

and that Bill Gates will never be

permitted to do something like that.

>> The fear is that someone would let him

though. The fear is that a country would

let them. you get the right politicians

in place and the right fear-mongering in

place and you let them try or what you

let somebody try and these people that

do try get large grants and they're

making a lot of money to do this and

that's what scares the [ __ ] out of me

that this could be a a way that people

could try something out on the whole

world that could be catastrophic.

Well, just technically um it would be

extremely difficult because the amount

of material you have to get up to the

stratosphere to mimic a large strata

volcano.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, I even Bill Gates probably

can't afford that and I'm not sure the

US treasurer could either. So is it just

theoretical at this point? Like the

>> I think you know

it's an interesting thing you're

pointing that someone like Gates has

delusions of grandeur based on the fact

that he's fabulously wealthy.

>> Yeah.

>> Um but as a practical matter

that particular approach probably

is not going to be as dangerous as you

think. It won't work.

>> It won't work.

>> Yeah. Well, it's just the idea that

someone would even propose something

like that based on what you gentlemen

have discussed so far today.

>> No, your point is right. I mean, you

have people who have the means to try

things

and uh they're getting a free ride on

this.

>> Yes, that's the thing. They're getting a

lot of money to implement these changes.

That's why these green new deals and

these green energy initiatives and all

these green things like people have to

understand why are you hearing about

this all the time because it's it's a PR

campaign. It's a PR campaign for a a

group of people that are trying to make

a lot of money. That's what this is all

about. And the more you get on board,

the more money they can get politicians

to spend on this stuff and the more

money these companies make. And the

whole thing is about money.

>> Much of it is money.

>> They're not really worried about you.

That's what you have to understand. If

they ever say that they're worried about

your future for the the betterment of

our people, we have to make sure that

everybody's okay. We got to protect the

climate. They don't care. That's not

real. What they really want to do is

make sure a lot of money comes in. And

if a lot of money coming in is dependent

upon them scaring the [ __ ] out of you,

that's what they lean towards.

>> And you know, money and its

transferability and fungeability, its

influence, its feedbacks, it's this

Yeah, but that's always been true.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. Joel, let me bring up another

targeted group and that is uh farmers

and ranchers, you know, because of uh

their supposed contribution to

greenhouse warming. Uh

>> just a couple years ago, I was invited

to come down to Paraguay by uh uh some

farmers there who were worried about the

uh upcoming climate talks in the Persian

Gulf. And the European bankers were

demanding that uh Paraguay uh turn most

of its ranch land back into forest, you

know, to save the planet and otherwise

they wouldn't give loans to Paraguay.

And so the the ranchers were worried

that they're going to be put out of

business and their families put out of

business. And uh so I was there for a

week and I talked to the president and

luckily it turned out they had a very

sensible president and he didn't need me

uh to recognize it was nonsense and uh

but he was I think grateful to have

someone with a science background

confirm his suspicion that it was all

nonsense. So he went to the conference

and basically told the bankers, you

know, to go to hell and they didn't pull

the funding out of Paraguay. So there

were no consequences and the the

ranchers did not suffer. But you know,

everybody's under the gun and

>> Well, there were consequences in

Ireland.

>> Yeah.

>> Yes.

>> They had to kill half their cattle.

>> Yeah. Which is

>> nonsense.

>> Total nonsense and insane. And if you

pay attention to what regenerative

farmers will tell you is that like if

you do it correctly there's the it's

actually carbon neutral

>> at least carbon neutral

>> at least carbon neutral and and possibly

contri

manure. Manure f fertilizes the plants.

It's all real simple. It's been around

forever. And this idea that all of a

sudden cow farts and burps are a giant

issue and they're going to kill us all

and we need to kill all the cows. Like,

who are you? Like, who's saying this?

And how'd you get to talk? Like, this is

how'd you get to kill half their cows?

Like, you should go to jail.

>> They should go to jail.

>> You're so stupid. You're criminally

stupid. You killed their cows.

>> But when it comes to attractive drugs,

power is one of the worst.

>> Oh, it it might be the worst.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, it might be the worst. And it's if

people can get people to do their

bidding, they often love to do it. Even

if it's preposterous, like getting you

to kill half your cows so that you have

a less high methane count you're

releasing from your organization.

>> I mean, you know, Will has worked on

this and others, but you know, the

methane thing is an example of uh

innumeracy.

In other words, what they argue is that

a molecule of methane

has more greenhouse potential than a

molecule of CO2.

And so cutting back methane will have a

big effect.

But there's so little methane in the

atmosphere that he got rid of all of it.

It would have almost no effect compared

to CO2.

And you know somehow that step in the

arithmetic gets lost.

>> Yeah. Simple arithmetic. They just can't

do simple arithmetic. Yeah.

>> It's just weird how these narratives

become so prominent in in social media.

It's it's really weird how things like

CO2 become this mantra that everybody

chants. It's it seems very coordinated

and actually kind of impressive that

they've managed to silence questioning

scientists and really put the fear of

God into people that read things and

don't agree with it.

>> It began right at the beginning of the

issue as I was mentioning. I mean

already by 1989

Science magazine was

let me in fact one of the ironies with

Science magazine which is you know

important magazine. It had an editor who

was Marsha McNut who actually had an

op-ed appear in Science magazine saying

she would not accept any article that

questioned this.

>> Wow. And you know what her reward was?

She became president of the National

Academy of Science.

>> She was a good girl.

>> Yeah.

>> Follow the rules.

>> Yeah. But you know, Dick's point about

forbidding questioning. It's just

unbelievable. I When I was a young man,

my first job was at Colombia and the

grand old man there was uh

>> Robbie.

>> Robbie. I I Robbie. And uh Robbie uh

came from a Eastern European Jewish

family and his mother had a very poor

education, but she was determined that

he would get a good education. And so he

would always tell me, you know, when I

would go home from school every day, my

mother wouldn't ask me, "What did you

learn today in school, Izzy?" She called

him Izzy is.

and he would uh tell her and then she

would say and did you ask a good

question today.

>> So he said she was really more

interested in whether he had asked a

good question which would meant that the

wheels were turning in his head than

whether he had memorized something and I

always took that to heart. I think that

was a very wise uh mother

>> and it's it he turned out very well as a

result. Do you think there's more

uniformity in thinking in academia now

with the pressure of social media and

the pressure of these echo chambers that

people find themselves? So there's

>> of course yeah

>> that's that's terrible because you you

know you'd have thought with the

internet one of the things the internet

is going to be a balanced resource or

resource of information. You're going to

have the answers to any questions you

want and we'll be able to sort out

what's true and what's not true. Nobody

took into account echo chambers and then

ideology being attached to science.

>> That's right.

>> No, I mean the internet

not surprisingly was an unpredictable

phenomenon.

>> Yes.

>> I mean

>> completely.

>> Yeah. I mean you know you saw it but uh

well you're seeing it yourself. I mean,

you have media that they were looking

for a 100,000 subscribers.

With the internet, you're dealing with

millions. And that's considered small in

some cases.

>> Yeah. There's people like Mr. Beast,

some fun guy on YouTube that I think he

has, what does he have? And how many

million subscribers does he have?

>> Something insane. Way bigger than any

television show that's ever existed

before.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. Nobody saw it coming. did it on

his own.

>> Yeah, it's it's a weird time. And then

there's a lack of trust in mainstream

media which is also disturbing.

>> Which is uh also deserved,

>> right? Also deserved. That's a problem

as well. And when you see mainstream

media uh also going along with all these

climate change ideologies and these the

all these different things that are

attached to the narrative that you're

not allowed to deviate from.

>> It's just like it gets very frustrating.

>> Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about this,

but my recollection was as a kid in New

York

that you had newspapers like the New

York Times that were always sort of

center right left, but you had others,

the Journal American and so on,

and they differed in their coverage, but

on the whole, they covered the same

news.

uh if something happened it would appear

in both.

I realize in retrospect that wasn't

always true. But today I have the

feeling that if I look at uh the Post in

New York or the New York Times, I'm

looking at two different worlds.

>> Right. Right.

>> And there's something wrong with that.

>> Very Yeah. Something very wrong with it.

And I don't I don't know what the answer

is to how to solve it or if those things

need to just go away and independent

media needs to replace them. But you're

you're seeing a massive dissolving of

trust in these main like when I was a

kid I used to deliver the New York Times

and I delivered the Boston Globe but I

delivered the New York Times as well

because it was prestigious. I thought it

was cool to deliver the New York Times

and it was a long route. I had it was a

lot longer than my Boston on Sunday as

well.

>> Yes, I did. Yes, I did. But fortunately,

the ads didn't work. So, I didn't get a

big thick ad chunk like you do with the

Boston Globe because it's like local

ads.

>> But the point being is that like it was

a it was the paper of record and now

today it's just another blog. It's just

like it's an ideologically captured

online blog that's very left-leaning.

>> I think people have pointed out the

correct reason for that. the end of the

classified ads.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh they used to have to satisfy the

people paying for ads,

>> right?

>> Now they have to satisfy their readers

and so the readers only want to hear one

thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. It's a real problem. It's a real

problem. But I guess just like all

things that happen, there'll be some

sort of a course correction or some new

players will enter in. And

>> it was, you know, it would be fine if

the newspapers took different positions

but covered the same items.

>> Right. Right. Right.

>> And here

I will say and maybe there's a bias in

this. If I listen to MSNBC,

there are whole areas of what's going on

that I will hear nothing about.

Fox may cover things differently, but

they're less guilty of leaving stuff

out. They may take a different view of

it, but you'll hear about it. that

certain media now are not even

mentioning things that they don't want

you to know about is a little bit

disturbing.

>> It is. It is. But again, it gives rise

to independent media. Gives rise to the

very good independent journalists that

exist today. But the thing is like the

average person is not going to find

them. They don't know where to look.

>> Well, this is an opportunity to put in a

good word for Al Gore since uh he was an

inventor of the internet.

Yeah, he did kind of take credit for

part of that. Right.

>> Right. Yeah.

>> What did he say exactly?

>> I think he said I had a hand in that or

something like that. So I

>> I did too. I bought a computer once. I

had a hand in that.

>> I played a part of the economy of the

internet.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Well, it's um

uh I think it's these kind of

conversations with uh people like

yourself that uh will help

>> because the more people listen to this

and the more people start reading other

articles written by different people

that also question it and to where you

get a kind of understanding of this

pattern that does go back to like what

you were talking about before with

eugenics and with many other things in

history.

>> Yeah.

>> You go there's there's times where

you're on the wrong side of things. you

don't realize it because you've been

lied to and you've been, you know, these

politicians,

>> but it's also the abuse of science

uh is too much of a temptation for

politicians.

I mean, uh science, it's hard to say,

but uh you know, if there are way of

making people understand that science

really is not a source of authority,

it's a methodology.

And that if you are

using it as a source of authority and

destroying it as a methodology,

uh you're anti-science.

>> Whether that helps or not, maybe people

don't care,

>> but I think people do, but they're

scared to deviate again from the

narrative. Like how do you think do you

think it's possible to get in people's

heads, hey, we have to at the academic

level especially separate ideology from

truth? And you can't attach believing in

something that is like so firmly a part

of being a progressive person or being a

conservative person that you're

unwilling to look at the data and look

at facts. That has to be shunned, right?

So how does that go about? I think

you're hitting on something important.

You can't do it every place. Can't but

with the funding agencies.

Uh the government is in a position to

say funding agencies

must take an open view of certain

subjects or all subjects for that matter

and uh not lay down rules that you

cannot question.

Yeah, let let me add to that. I think

one of the great strengths of American

uh science and technology over the last

50 years was that there was not a single

funding agency in Washington, but you

know, you could get funding from the

National Science Foundation or you could

get funding from the Office of Naval

Research or from some other or

organization and they all competed with

each other and they didn't like each

other very much. And so if you couldn't

get a grant from NSF, someone would help

you from the army or some other place.

So I think multiple sources of funding

has an enormously positive effect on the

vitality of science and technology in a

country and people used to talk we we

need an office of science. So I thought

that was a terrible idea you know to

that means onepoint failure. You know

there was someone in a position to

throttle

>> you know some important thing.

Department of Energy tried to do both

sides for a long time

>> and they held out longer than other

departments.

>> Mhm.

>> But eventually, for some reason, they

were all forced into the same box.

>> Money starts talking, baby.

>> Yeah. Money.

>> There's a lot of money. Department of

Energy. Wasn't that the department where

uh from the time Trump won the election

to Biden leading office, they gave out

something like $93 billion in loans.

>> I think it was EPA or maybe it was No,

loans could have must have been energy.

Must have been energy. Yeah.

>> Like it more than had been given out in

the last 15 years.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure all was smart, well spent money

that we definitely couldn't get by

without spending.

>> Um, it's kind of funny like

>> that's pathetic. Yeah,

>> it is kind of pathetic, but it's also

kind of funny like how

>> in this day of transparency, you know,

there's so much information that's

available today, so easy to find things

out that they would try to pull

something like that off and then do it

successfully right in front of

everybody's face.

Well, having spent time in, you know,

Department of Energy headquarters, um,

it doesn't surprise me.

>> I I believe you.

>> Um, how difficult has this been for you

gentlemen to like debate this stuff and

to bring it up with people and have

conversations? Have you experienced a

lot of resistance?

>> Yeah, I mean, it it's interesting how it

evolved. I think in the '9s

there was still a certain openness about

it and uh you know if there were a

conference people on both sides would be

invited and so on. Somehow by the 21st

century

uh it came down hard. Uh there was

absolutely nothing open anymore.

But I have to say when I invited uh Dick

to give his colloquium on climate in

Princeton, it's a good university and he

gave a good colloquium. The next day a

Nobel Prize winner from my department

walked in and said, "What son of a [ __ ]

invited Linden to give this talk."

I said, "Well, I'm the son of a [ __ ]

Get out of my office."

>> Oh, wow. Yeah.

>> And what did you have to did you try to

engage with him at all about why you

were upset? Why he was upset rather?

>> No.

>> Just wasn't even worth it.

>> It wasn't worth it. Yeah.

>> Wow. It's just hard to believe as

someone who's outside of academia. It's

hard to believe there's close-minded

people at universities.

>> The point was he he didn't know the

first thing about that issue. Not not a

thing. Yeah.

>> But he was very leftwing and

>> Yeah, that's the point. That's why

>> No, this was the political polarization.

Yeah. Yeah.

But it's it's also there's no deviation.

There's no people like, you know,

everybody's either one side or the

other, allin or not.

>> And if you're not, you get cast out of

the kingdom. It's very weird.

>> Mhm.

>> They just it's just just disturbing to

someone like me that it goes on like

that in universities. If someone come up

to you and say,

>> I think it's worse in universities.

>> Wow. How did that get started? Like when

did So was it the same thing as like the

climate? was it with everything like

somewhere around the 21st century like

when

>> Yeah. I you know I'll take something

that was much less publicized

uh

the

what was the program uh

with your

device uh

>> oh the uh the uh star the stars

>> the sodium guide star.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean, universities

treated that as something you could not

discuss

the notion that you wanted to have a

defense against nuclear.

>> Really?

>> Yeah. What what Dick is talking about is

that I got called to Washington because

early uh in the um Star Wars era,

we were asked to look at every possible

way to defend against incoming Russian

missiles. And so that meant trying to

shoot them down with rockets and also

trying to shoot them down with high

power lasers.

And so during a classified summer study

in 1982,

uh there were some people from the air

force, some generals and uh technical

people and talked about the problem is

if you even have a beautiful blue clear

sky and you try to shoot a Russian

missile that's coming toward Austin, by

the time the laser reaches the incoming

warhead, it breaks up into hundreds of

little speckles, not one of which has

enough power to cause any damage to the

target. And so that was a problem that

was well known to astronomers. But the

inverse problem of star does the same

thing. When you focus it on a

photographic plate, you don't get a

point. You get lots of speckles. And so

astronomers knew how to solve that. You

know, the the problem is the incoming

wave gets wrinkled by the atmosphere.

They're little warm patches and cool

patches. And so, uh, what you can do is

you reflect the incoming star light from

a anti-rinkled mirror. So, it comes in

wrinkled, it bounces, it is nice and

flat, then it focuses, and you get a

point. And you you could do the same

thing when you're trying to shoot a

incoming missile. You pre-rinkle the

beam so that when it reaches the

missile, it actually focuses all the

power onto the missile. So, it's called

adaptive optics. And the the mirror is

called a rubber mirror. It's a mirror

that you can adjust

and but to to do that you know you need

to know how to adjust the mirror. So you

have to have some information to how do

I wrinkle it push here pull there etc.

And the way the astronomers did it was

they used a very bright star in the sky

and then for nearby stars you could use

the bright star to correct your mirror

for all the neighboring stars. But it

only worked for a degree or two off the

direction of the correcting stars. And

so unless the Russians attacked us from

the during the night from the direction

of the brightest stars in the skies, we

couldn't do anything with our lasers.

>> Oh wow. So I I said, "Well, I know how

to fix this. All you need to do is make

an artificial star wherever you like

because there's a layer of sodium at 100

kilometers, and we now have lasers that

will excite that." And so you can make a

yellow star that's plenty bright enough

to use that light to adjust the mirror

wherever you like. And nobody had ever

heard of the sodium layer during the

This was top secret meeting.

>> When you say make a star, do you mean

like a satellite star, like a small a

bright a bright source of light shining

down through the atmosphere. Most of the

problem is fairly close to the ground.

The first kilometer or two up.

>> And what would this be made out of?

>> Sodium. So the if you go to 100

kilometers, the earth is plowing through

the dust of the solar system. And so

we're constantly burning up little

micrometeorites.

And they're all loaded with sodium

atoms. And so they get released into the

upper atmosphere and they stay there and

make a layer that's about 10 km thick.

And not many people know about that. I

happen to know about it and I knew you

could use it, you know, for this method.

That's why I got called to Washington

was making this. It was a highly secret

invention for 10 years. Wow. Yeah.

That's fascinating.

>> When the Soviet Union collapsed, then uh

this was declassified thanks to the

effort of a Livermore friend and

colleague Clare Max, a a woman physicist

astronomer, but they she finally

persuaded the Department of Defense to

declassify it. So if you go to any big

telescope now around the world, it has

one of these sodium lasers pointing up

at the sky at night. You'll see this

bright yellow beam going up. Oh wow,

look at that right there.

>> Oh, there it is. Yeah.

>> Wow.

>> Yeah. That's And so the point where

they're coming, this is actually green

light. And so for the sodium, most of

them are yellow for sodium, but that's

the basic idea.

>> And so this was a difficult thing to

discuss in academia.

>> Well, I couldn't discuss. It was highly

classified. So I couldn't even mention

it until about 1995, I think. 40 94 95

when it was declassified but I'd

invented it you know 12 years earlier

you know

>> but you know the point was

in academia you could not discuss

>> uh you couldn't you couldn't discuss

working for defense of the country that

was uh

>> you know somehow immoral you know

defending the country I wasn't trying to

attack Russia I was trying to defend

ourselves

>> right

>> you know

>> yeah that's a ridiculous position to

think we don't need defense against

missiles.

>> Well, you know,

>> they're they're hard to defend against,

but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try,

>> right? Yeah.

>> Exactly. I mean, at MIT, you had all

sorts of people saying, you know, you

shouldn't try. It's silly. It's

impossible. And so on. What was the

point of that?

I mean, you have a problem, you try and

solve it.

>> Yeah. It seems like that's what science

is supposed to be for.

Now it it's you know if you probe

I think into these issues you realize

that climate is an extreme case

but politics interfacing science is not

new.

>> Well it just seems like human behavior

human behavior and anything else. It's

like the the same patterns you you'll

find them in big businesses. You find

them in a lot of different you find them

in almost all communities and groups of

human beings. There's people that get

into control and they force certain

narratives. And the fact that that

happens with the highest levels of

academia and with science though is con

is really confusing to people like

myself that are counting on everybody

like you to get it right.

>> We're as much we're as much part of the

crooked timber of mankind as anyone

else. I mean, such a great quote.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean, you know, I've often

mentioned I mean, my family, you know,

immigrated here from Germany 38,

but uh when Hitler came to power in 33,

every university in Germany got rid of

everyone who had Jewish blood

before Hitler even asked. Mhm.

>> So, universities are not uh

bastions of independent thinking.

>> What could be done to make them more?

So,

>> you know, the Canadians did something

that I thought had potential.

every faculty member,

especially junior faculty,

immediately got grants that they didn't

have to apply for.

And so

in that system,

every one of their faculty could

function as a research scientist. You

know, students were paid for otherwise.

And there at least one link in the chain

of influence was broken. You had an open

system there.

Even there though

uh other pressures came to bear. But it,

you know, it seemed like a good idea

>> or at least a better idea.

>> Yeah.

But it again, unfortunately, it just

seems like that just pattern of human

behavior just pops its ugly head up over

and over and over again.

>> Yep.

>> Well, you know, Joe, Dick just gave up.

You know, it's worth going back to the

founding of this country because if you

read the things like the federalist

papers, which was uh the theory of our

government, what comes through loud and

clear was that uh our founders believe

that humans were extremely corrupt and

uh you know not very reliable and given

that

how do you make a system that will

function even with that

>> and that's what they tried to do. you

know, that was the whole reason for the

balance of power and and all the things

that are in there. And so I, you know,

it was partially successful. It

certainly worked better than other

systems for a long time.

>> Better than all the other ones. Yeah.

But it amazingly astute.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Better than papers. I mean,

they've held up well.

>> Yeah. Um, anything else to add before we

wrap this up, gentlemen? Is there

anything else you think people should

know?

>> Well, trust but verify.

Yeah. I mean, how shall I put it?

Destroying the world is not an easy

thing to do. It shouldn't be the top of

your list of worries.

>> Yeah. Um, you mean destroying the world

with climate change? Yeah. It's not

really what it is, and it's very

overmagnified.

>> Absolutely. I mean, how shall I put it?

Its origins were almost entirely

political.

I often find it strange that one talks

about the science at all.

I you know uh we're discussing you know

can it happen? Is this is it warming? Is

it cooling? Is extreme weather

increasing?

It's amazing to me that politicians can

put forward

a concept that is purely imaginary

and have the science community discuss

it seriously.

I wonder what it how it would have

worked if it wasn't for an inconvenient

truth. If that movie hadn't been made, I

wonder because sometimes people need

something like that in that sort of a

form for it to really take hold as an

idea.

>> You may be right. I mean, uh, something

was needed to make it catch on.

Uh, it had been around for

quite a few years

without catching on quite that way.

>> Yeah.

>> But it was also the confluence, you

know, the UN really got interested in

it. Uh, you had the World Meteorological

Organization, all of them saw something

they could gain in it. And so it began

to seem almost overwhelming,

but it did, you know, it reached the

right people. I mean, the funding

agencies, the NSF got taken over almost

immediately. NASA took about 10 years,

Department of Energy took 10 years, but

they worked on it.

It's kind of stunning. At least from the

outside, you know, from my perspective,

it's kind of stunning. It's it's

stunning how successful it is. And

again, like I said, if you're in polite

company and you have a conversation and

someone brings up, well, we've got to do

something about climate change, you just

go like the record skips, like

>> how much do you know,

>> right?

>> It turns out very little, most people.

And then it turns out according to you,

it's almost impossible to figure out

anyway the actual

>> I know. I mean, the notion that there's

a crisis has taken hold,

>> right? even though nobody sees evidence

of a crisis.

>> And the main movie that started off that

crisis from 2006 is entirely wrong. All

of its predictions

>> and what's supporting it now is the

extreme weather, which is a fake,

>> but it provides visual visuals.

>> Yeah. Um it's very hard for people to

swallow, but uh I encourage them to look

at the data of hurricanes historically

and you realize like, oh, pretty stable.

It's pretty It's up and down and

>> all over the place, but it's not any

worse now than it has been before.

>> Oh, I mean, growing up in the Bronx

in the 40s,

every autumn there were hunger

hurricanes.

>> Mhm.

>> You could wake up in the morning, the

streets were lined with the trees that

had been blown down.

Interestingly enough, that has not

recurred in New York for about 30 years,

40, 50 years.

>> I think the last one I remember when I

lived in Boston was Gloria.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. They don't get hit by hurricanes

anymore. If they did, they'd freak out.

Climate change.

>> But then 38 was a gigantic hurricane.

And uh I was born in a town on a lake in

New Massachusetts called uh Lake

Chagmanag

Shabun.

>> That's a real name.

>> Yes, that's a real name.

>> Wow.

>> But at any rate, in that lake were a

couple of islands that were created by

the hurricane of 1938. Just local stuff

around.

>> Really?

>> Yeah.

>> Wow.

But that also killed a lot of people

because we didn't have the information

of it coming,

>> right?

And I'm sure buildings weren't really

designed to withstand those either.

>> No, I mean

if how shall I put it? I'm glad it came

then, not now. I suppose if it came now,

it would be proof,

>> right? Actually, the worst hurricane on

record on the east coast was the last

year of the American Revolution, and it

had a big impact on winning the war.

What happened was this enormous

hurricane mostly in the Caribbean, but

it wiped out the British fleet. It wiped

out the French fleet. There was nothing

left, you know, really. It was just

tremendous hurricane. And so

the uh the reason it affected the war

was um the British just assumed that the

French were incapable of restoring their

fleet. So that when Cornwallis decided

to try and escape from the Carolas up

into Virginia to the British fleet to be

uh rescued uh you know with all of the

partisans coming after him.

he um didn't worry about the French and

so

but the French had managed to rebuild

their fleet after the hurricane. They

had had 12 months and they had enough

ships that they were able to barricade

the mouth of the Chesapeake and when

Cornwallis got there he was trapped

because he could the British couldn't

come in to rescue him, you know, from

Rhode Island or wherever they were.

>> And so he had no choice. He had to

surrender.

>> Wow.

>> That was the end of the war. And we can

thank the hurricane for making that

happen so neatly.

>> As well as the French.

>> The French. And the French. God bless.

God bless the French. Yeah.

>> What are the warmest years on historical

record in terms of like recent years?

>> 34 35

>> 1930. What was it like then?

>> It was in the peak of the Dust Bowl and

it was uh I don't know several degrees

warmer than I don't know the exact

figure, but you can look at the records.

They're pretty clear.

>> Yeah.

It's, you know, you're not going to see

gigantic numbers, but

again, that global metric is a little

bit confusing. Locally, it was a huge

effect,

but it globally, yeah, that what you're

what you're saying completely makes

sense. It doesn't make sense to try to

have a global temperature unless you're

studying other planets.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. What matters is where people live.

What's the temperature there?

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Right.

>> Well, um, listen, gentlemen, I really

appreciate your bravery and talking

about this stuff and and sharing all

this information. It's

>> hope for the best.

>> Very enlightening. Yeah, it really it

helps. These kind of conversations, they

move the needle. They really do. So, I

really appreciate you guys.

>> Thanks.

>> Thanks for being here. I really enjoyed

it. Thank you. Bye, everybody.