The Joe Rogan Experience - #1777 - Andrew Dessler

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Andrew Dessler is a climate scientist and professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. He served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Bill Clinton, and is a Google Science Communication Fellow. Dessler is also the author of several books, among them the award-winning "Introduction to Modern Climate Change."

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. All right, we're up. Well, thank you very much for being here, Andrew. Appreciate it. Why don't you tell everybody, if you would, what you do and what your credentials are. So I'm a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

I'm the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies. I've been studying climate and the atmosphere for about 30 years. Steve Koonin, who was my last guest, and I'm trying to do this and balance things out. He has a very different take on what the science says about climate change than you do. So let's, I guess we should start. I know you've read the book. What do you think about his book? Yeah, well, let me start with a little context. I think some historical context. So for decades, on a number of problems, there have been scientists who show up and say the consensus is all wrong. So it started in the 60s with tobacco. So, you know, the evidence was very

clear that smoking is bad for you. And then the scientists started showing up and saying, no, you know, we don't really understand. There's all these problems with the science. And what the tobacco companies figured out very early is that having a scientist advance that message was much better than having a PR person. So they would go out and hire scientists to say, hey, we need you to push this message. And they went out. It was very effective. They delayed the recognition that smoking is bad for you for decades. Have you seen the documentary Ministers of Doubt? Merchants of Doubt.

Yeah. In fact, I was going to say, you know, that's a fantastic book by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway that really goes over this all the way into climate change about how science is used to try to undermine policy action. And so then, you know, fast forward to the 80s and you have fluorocarbons and ozone depletion. And in fact, the exact same thing happens. The science was really well established, but the scientists are showing up saying the scientists have it all wrong. And in fact, the arguments they're advancing are almost exactly the same as the arguments that Dr. Kuhn is advancing. If you take a Word document, you just do a global Word replace, ozone depletion for climate change, you have exactly the same argument. In fact, I have a slide with a quote that I normally don't make people read a paragraph, but I think this is actually really useful. If you go to slide 52,

this is from 1989, and I think, is it going to show up there? Yes. So this is a quote from something that was said about fluorocarbon. This says, the current situation can be fairly summarized as following. The CFC ozone theory is quite incomplete and cannot yet be relied on to make predictions. The natural sources of stratospheric ozone layer have not yet been delineated, theoretically or experimentally. The Antarctic ozone hole is ephemeral.

It comes and goes. It seems to be controlled by climatic factors outside human control rather than CFCs. That's exactly the same argument. We don't understand it. It's natural variability. It's identical argument. And keep it back up. In the next paragraph, the New York Times reports talks about the disadvantages of CFC substitutes. They may be toxic, flammable, corrosive. They certainly won't work as well. They'll reduce the energy efficiency of appliances. They'll deteriorate. $135 billion of equipment use CFCs in the United

States alone, and much of this equipment will have to be replaced or modified to work well. Eventually, that will involve 100 million home refrigerators, air conditioners in 90 million cars, central air conditioning plants in 100,000 large buildings. Good luck. The total costs haven't even been added up yet. And again, windmills don't work. The costs are going to be extraordinary. And you were around the 90s. Do you remember the economic apocalypse that happened when we replaced CFCs? It didn't happen. The economic apocalypse didn't happen.

We replaced them and none of that happened. What did they replace them with? With other CFCs. So the original F-11, F-12 got replaced with these things we call HCFCs that are less damaging. And none of that happened. And those people are the true alarmists in the debate, the people that say we can't do it, because we can do it. And they're just trying to scare people into not taking action. So you have a question? No, I was going to say, I think Kunin's take on replacing things is essentially that there's so many people in third world countries, in impoverished areas, that rely on fossil fuels.

And that eliminating fossil fuels will be devastating to those environments because these people are going to lose out on massive amounts of income. And economically, it's going to affect them in a disastrous way. That's his take, right? I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth. Certainly he argues that it's difficult to transition. I think he said at one point during his interview with you that fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source, which is not true. In fact, let me, I have a slide on that.

If we go to slide 33, this actually shows that. So your viewers may not know this. And in fact, a few years ago, fossil fuels were the cheapest energy source, but the prices are plummeting. So this is a plot from Lazard where they call the levelized cost of energy. And you can see the left on the left side, it's the price in 2009. And you can see the top dot is solar and it was extremely expensive in 2009 and then as you go down 2019 wind and solar are now the cheapest energy sources gas is close but but windows or are they are the cheap energy sources is it possible to replace all of the fossil fuel energy that we

get with solar? Oh, wow. That's a great question. And I guess we'll just sort of let the conversation flow as it wants. So yeah, let's talk about what it takes to, what would a grid that's carbon-free look like? Okay. So everybody who's capable of tying their shoelaces knows that wind and solar are intermittent. So solar doesn't produce energy at night. Wind doesn't produce energy when the sun's not blowing. So everybody knows that. When the wind's not blowing. When the wind's not blowing, yes.

Everybody knows that. So if you want to create a reliable, carbon-free grid, you have a grid that's about, on average, produces 75% of its power from wind and solar. And then the other 25% is what we call dispatchable firm power. So it could be nuclear, could be geothermal, could be hydro. It's a power source you can turn on and off to balance the variability of wind and solar. So when the wind stops blowing, you turn up your dispatchable and when you're getting lots of wind and solar, you turn it off and you let wind and solar run. I was under the impression that wind was not very effective, that these windmills don't produce that much power.

I mean, some days in Texas, it's half our power. Half of our power comes from wind? Yeah. If it's a windy day, we get an enormous amount of power. Yeah, Texas has an enormous amount of power that we get from wind on windy days. Some days you don't get a lot of power, but you do. That's incredible. I did not know it was half of our power. So conceivably, with solar and with wind, we could power the entire state.

And you need some dispatchable power. Right. You need some nuclear. You need some geothermal. You need some dispatchable power. You need some nuclear, you need some geothermal, you need something that you can balance the renewable energy with. But much less than we're currently using. That's right. And so you might say, you might ask reasonably, why use wind and solar at all? Why didn't you just build 100% nuclear? And that would work. And I would actually support that. But that's much more expensive. And I would actually support that. But that's much more expensive.

Wind and solar are very cheap at this point. And in fact, the marginal cost of wind and solar energy is zero. They produce energy, an extra joule of energy at no cost because they don't have any fuel. So if you want to pay the least amount for energy, what you want to do is you want to have a grid that's mainly wind and solar. But then you have to have this firm power that makes up for it when wind and solar don't produce, because there are going to be times when they don't produce. We know that's going to happen. So wind and solar also rely on, there has to be some sort of battery that collects the energy, correctly? No, no. Solar does, right?

No, they really don't. So that's part of why you need to have dispatchable energy. You don't really need energy storage on a grid. Now, there are some benefits to energy storage, especially storage that lasts a few hours, because you can collect energy at noon when solar is producing lots and shift it into the evening. So you can shift the energy a few hours. So you might want to use batteries for that. But you don't really need long-term storage to run the grid.

You just need some sort of dispatchable power to balance the renewable. So when you have batteries that are attached to solar systems, is that just for individual use, like for off-the-grid homes and things of that like? No, no, it would be industrial-scale batteries. And again, the idea would be to shift power from when you're getting the most solar, which is noon, to when the demand is the highest,

which is a few hours later. Right, but what I'm saying is for individual homes, most of them have battery backup systems. They have systems that store the solar, correct? Like I used to have a system like that. Yeah, you know, I don't, I actually don't know the statistics. I think most people that have solar panels

that are housed don't have batteries. I think I don't, I actually don't know the statistics. I think most people who have solar panels in their houses don't have batteries. I think some people do, but most don't have solar. So they connect to the grid as well. Yeah, so they're using- But if the grid goes down, that means their solar power is down as well, right? That's right. So for most people who have solar panels in their house, they actually have an interlock system that when the grid goes down, their solar panels shut off.

And the reason to do that is for safety of the power line workers. They don't want, if the power line workers think there's no power on the grid, they don't want these solar panels feeding power in. They walk in, they get shocked. So that solar panels actually are designed to shut off when the power goes out. Now you can put a battery on your house. You can have it disconnect from the grid and you can basically make your house a little island. But most people don't do that. If they do do that, is it really possible to power your entire home through solar that way? You know, you can. That's a question of how much you want to invest.

If you you certainly could do that. I think if you have big enough batteries, you could you could do that. But the grid is a good, reliable backup most of the time. And so I think that's what big enough batteries you could you could do that but the grid is a good reliable backup Most of the time and so I think that's what most people rely on they just hook up to the grid and you know When that when they're not when they're not generating of power There's pulling energy off the grid and whether generate excess power. They're pushing it onto the grid, right? But I think one of the things that people like about the idea of solar power is that you're off the grid is that you? Don't have to rely on anything like if the big freeze solar power is that you're off the grid, is that you don't have to

rely on anything. Like if the big freeze happens again and everything shuts off, you'll have a refrigerator, you'll have heat. Right, right. Oh yeah, no, I think that's right. And I would love to have a house like that. But most people don't have houses that can disconnect from the grid. So most of the people that do have solar power, they have solar power and they're attached to the grid. So solar is just a way of saving money and saving energy costs and saving your energy consumption. Yeah, that's right. So it's a way to pay less money for your power because you're not buying money off the grid. And with wind, they have these massive wind farms, right, where they have these giant propellers in the air.

That's right. How much energy does one of those things generate? So order of magnitude, something like 10 megawatts is sort of a general number for it. And to give you an idea, a megawatt is sort of a diesel locomotive. So kind of 10 diesel locomotives. A big coal-fired power plant is order a gigawatt, a billion watts. So you can think of 100 windmills as about equal to a nuclear power plant. Really? Is that strong? Well, I mean, we're talking order of magnitude. Maybe it's 200. Yeah. But these big windmills,

these windmills are enormous. Have you ever seen one? Yeah, I have. They're pretty crazy. They're enormous. I mean, if you haven't seen one, you just can't imagine how big they are. Yeah, we saw one. We were taking a drive through the middle of Texas the other day, and we saw one. And it was so close to the highway, and it was facing the highway. And I had this irrational fear that the windmill was going to break off and go rolling down the road and crush us. Yeah, obviously it didn't happen. I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's how big it is.

Yeah, no, didn't happen. I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's how big it is. Yeah, no, they're enormous. But I think the important point here is wind and nuclear are not exactly substitutable powers. Again, they play different roles in the grid. And this leads, you mentioned the Texas freeze. Let's talk about the Texas freeze, because I think that was really a great example of how the grid is supposed to operate and why it didn't operate. And so, you know, Texas, we have a lot of wind and solar. We also have a lot of natural gas. So in Texas, natural gas is the power source that backs up the renewables. When the renewables are not producing, natural gas is supposed to step in and back it up. I mean, that's the way our grid actually works.

We run as much wind and solar as we can, and anything else is made up with natural gas. There's a little coal, a little nuclear. And so during the Texas freeze, the renewables went down. They were not producing very much power. And again, people play this up like this is a problem with renewables. This is not a problem with renewables. We know renewables stop producing some of the time. And when that happens, you rely on your firm dispatchable power to make it up. And that was the failure. The gas system did not back up the renewables.

And why was that? Oh, that's a really excellent question. So it didn't back up because the gas supply essentially was choked off. So especially in West Texas, a lot of the gas that comes out of the ground has a lot of condensates in it, things that condense and freeze. So heavier hydrocarbons, water. And at the very cold temperatures, it actually froze the well. So the gas couldn't get out. It plugged the wells up. And then what happened is so you get this reduction in natural gas flow.

And so then the power started to go down. And this was very sudden. This was in the middle of the night on February 15th, 2021. The power started to go down. And then what happened was a lot of the natural gas infrastructure is powered by electricity. They have these compressors, they have valves. And once the electricity started to go down, all of the rest of the natural gas infrastructure started to fail. And so you lost even more natural gas. So it was really this cascading problem with the natural gas system, the dispatchable power. And, you know, that event cost about $200 billion between how much we had to pay for gas plus all the damage, all the pipes that froze

and burst. I mean, it was an enormously expensive event, one of the most expensive events Texas has ever experienced. For that $200 billion, which is all going to repair pipes, it's going to these really rich natural gas guys, we could essentially build enough nuclear power to replace most of our gas power if we had just done that. But instead, we're spending all that money, you know, repairing houses that were destroyed because the natural gas system failed. I mean, it's crazy to me that we still rely on these systems that, you know, we can talk about fossil fuels, but, you know, fossil fuels have many huge disadvantages, not just climate change, but many others. And, you know, we could fix this if we wanted to, but we're not.

And we're just sitting here paying money year after year for these failures of fossil fuel systems. Now, people have a fear of nuclear power based on Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukushima and the like. What is the current technology? When you're looking at nuclear technology in 2022, how much safer is it? How much more effective and efficient is it? And what's the best example of a new modern nuclear power plant? Yeah. So let me just say, Rev, I'm not an expert on the details of nuclear power. Certainly, people are worried about nuclear power, meltdowns, et cetera. The way I look at it is you have to trade off

costs and benefits. And you look at climate change. I mean, we can go over the litany of terrible things about fossil fuels, and I'd be happy to do that. And if you look at all of those, and you say nuclear, my view is I'm willing to take some risk with nuclear power to avoid all these other really terrible impacts. Now, I do know that there's a lot of work being done on new technologies

for nuclear, these small modular reactors, things that hold the promise of better nuclear power. And maybe those will come out. But even with kind of existing technology, from what I understand, I'm willing to take the risk. My understanding of technology, the nuclear technology rather, is that in 2022, there's many more fail-safe measures than were when they designed, like say, the Fukushima system, for instance. Yeah. I mean, every time you have a disaster, people go into it and they say, what went wrong? And then you learn lessons and you incorporate those into the new plants. I mean, you do that with plane design. You do that with any kind of big industrial thing.

So there's no question in my mind that that's right, that they're safer today than they were in the past. And, you know, but let me say, while I support nuclear, and if Republicans came out and said, we will solve climate change by building nuclear, I'd be 100% gung-ho. You know, by no means am I one of these nuclear bros that you might see on Twitter who, you know, fusion is 10 years away. And, you know, I would also take geothermal.

What are the nuclear bros saying? Oh, you know, there are people on Twitter who will say, you know, fusion is right around the corner. You call them nuclear bros? Yeah. Why do you call them nuclear bros? They're usually sort of aggressive, youngish men. They probably watch this show. They're probably steaming angry right now.

And they're actually on Twitter right now searching for me. So there's like nuclear fans? Is that what you're saying? Oh, yeah. You should. Here's a test. Go on your Twitter feed and say something like, I hate nuclear. Just say that and tweet it out and see what the reaction is.

I don't read Twitter. All right. Well. Fortunately. Yeah, OK. But I just post and ghost. I get out of there. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. But when you're saying nuclear bros, is your impression that these are real people that are just enthusiastic about nuclear power?

Or are these trolls? Or are these people that work for some sort of a lobby and they're enthusiastic about getting nuclear pushed forward because they're a part of the industry? You know, I think they're honestly enthusiastic about nuclear power. But they're young guys who are bros. Yeah, exactly. That seems odd to me. You know, this is my experience on Twitter.

So, you know, your mileage may vary. They might be fucking with you. They might have found you to be a little sensitive. Do you know that they do that? They find a little soft spot, they start poking. That is true. But you know, I, like you, I don't respond on Twitter a lot. I view it as kind of a push medium. Good for you. So there's nuclear people that are maybe a little overly enthusiastic about nuclear. Yes. That's a good way to put it. And when you looked at Steve Koonin's assertions about the impact of fossil fuels on the environment and carbon in the environment, and what about human it is agriculture, how much of it is transportation. Do you dispute his positions on those, the amount that humans, like with fossil fuels in particular, have an

impact on the earth is smaller or at least less significant than a lot of the alarmist would say? No, I think the numbers he gave are pretty accurate. And let me just sort of preface this by saying, I think that the facts that Steve Koonin gives are largely accurate. I could dispute one or two, but the things he says are right. But you have to understand that he's really acting

like a defense attorney for carbon dioxide. And a defense attorney, they don't lie. They get disbarred if they go in front of a court and lie. But what they do is they give you this carefully curated picture of reality. Just like, you know, you sit down with a defense attorney and he explains why his client is innocent. You're going to walk away thinking, you know, that person's getting railroaded. Of course he didn't do it because you're not hearing the whole thing. And so it's not that what he said was wrong. In fact, many times he said, no one's ever been able to prove anything I say is wrong and I have

footnotes for everything. And that's correct. It's what he's not saying. It's where he emphasizes his uncertainty and lack of uncertainty. That's really what's misleading, I think, in the argument. Can you give me an example of that? Oh, sure. So he spent five minutes, well, maybe not five minutes, two minutes talking about climate models and how hard it is to do. And, you know, it's like climate models are very uncertain. And then at another point, he talks about the economic models. He says warming of, and again, I don't know the exact quote, but warming of two or three degrees, why that's 4% of GDP. That's nothing. And, you know, economic models are terrible. If you don't believe the climate models, the economic models are absolutely awful.

And I can go in, I can explain that. In fact, let me tell you a story about economic models and why you should not believe them. And we'll get back to how he doesn't talk about the uncertainty in those at all. So in the 2010s, the Obama administration put out this thing called the social cost of carbon. And that's basically the cost of the damages from one ton of carbon out of the atmosphere. So they say, if you emit one ton of carbon, we have our economic model and it's going to cost $35 of damage. And they have a way of doing it. I won't go into details. Then the Trump administration comes in and they redo the calculation and they get $3.

Now, what changed? It wasn't the science. It was the assumptions going into the economic model. The Trump administration didn't put very much value on future people and didn't put any value on people outside of the U.S. And so what that means is the difference came down to a value judgment. Do we care about damages to the rest of the U.S. And so what that means is the difference came down to a value judgment. Do we care about damages to the rest of the world? Do we care about damages to future generations? That's not a scientific question. That's a moral question. And these economic estimates are completely suffused with value judgments. And they're really, I mean, I could

go on about it. Can you just expand upon what those economic damages would be and how it would affect people? Sure. So, you know, damages of, okay, so let's talk about the impacts of climate change. Actually, let me get that in a second. Let me just wrap up what I'm saying. Sure, sure, sure. So the economic estimates are absolutely unreliable in my view. And Dr. Koonin, he didn't even mention that there was uncertainty in it.

He says it's 4% as if that's a perfect number. And that's a classic merchant of doubt strategy. This number over here, which is not good for my client, that's a terrible number. Let me tell you why. This number, this supports my client. It's perfect. And so that's a classic merchant of doubt strategy. And he does that repeatedly.

It's not wrong. I can't say what he said was wrong, but I can say there was a choice he made to bolster his client, now, which is carbon dioxide. Now, let's talk about the impacts of climate change, is what you're asking. So let's talk about the, so when you warm the climate, you do a bunch of things. Not just the impact of climate, you're saying that he is not looking at it in terms of like how it affects the world. Well, that was an example of the Trump administration, how the assumptions that go into these economic models can make a factor of 10 difference in what you estimate. And if the assumptions that an economist makes when he's, the value judgments,

the values of the economist, when they're doing a calculation can make a factor of 10 difference. You can't look at that as a reliable number. That's my, you know, that's my opinion. In fact, I have a slide that shows the damages. Let me find out where that one is. So in your opinion, he's looking at it leniently. I just Googled that. And yesterday, this is a news article from a federal court decision. It says federal judge halts Biden administration from using social cost of carbon. Can you scroll up so I can read what it says? Federal judge is barring the Biden administration from using the social cost of carbon put into place on January 20th, 2021.

On January 20th, 2021, the decision issued Friday affects the interim figure in place now, as well as an updated metric expected to be issued later this month. Huh. Right. So he says they're fifty one dollars per metric ton. So that's the value. If this were the Trump administration, they would put five dollars per metric ton on that. And again, you know, which value is right? And this shows you that there's huge uncertainty in the estimates. It says here, the case brought up by 10 states, including Louisiana and West Virginia, challenged the interim metric, arguing that it was arbitrarily set and would increase the cost of energy production and other activities. So how much of an effect does this have on what you're saying? This is noise.

I mean, this is not – I mean, my point is about the reliability of these economic estimates. And these reliabilities – we have no idea what the cost of climate change is going to be. So when he's saying – when they're ruling that you can't use that term, the cost, what exactly is he saying? Put it back up again so I can see it one more time. Yeah, I think this is actually a lot less than what you're trying to, this is probably some- Scroll back up to the top so I can read the headlines again. So it's saying the federal judge halts Biden administration from using the social cost of carbon. They're not stopping people from using that. What they're saying is the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration.

And when you do that, there are certain rules about how an administration can change an executive order from a different one. And what they're saying is they didn't quite follow the right procedures. That's my, I haven't read this, but that's my interpretation. It says here, the plaintiffs did not challenge a particular use of the Biden administration's social cost figure, but rather its potential applications. So I guess what they're saying is that they don't want the Biden administration applying this idea of social cost. Right. And if you look at it, it's Louisiana and West Virginia.

Those are fossil fuel producing states. And, you know, the social a social cost of carbon is bad for fossil fuels because it makes them pay for the impacts that there or at least it incorporates the cost of the impacts in the decisions. But this doesn't challenge sort of this doesn't have any impact on what I'm saying about these economic estimates are not reliable. And so when Dr. Kuhnen says it's only 4% of GDP, you know, maybe it's 4%, maybe it's 80%. 80%. Sure. Could you go to slide 28? So to give you an idea of how economists have no idea what the impact does, this is a plot of the damage. So it's the reduction of GDP as a function of temperature.

Now, unfortunately, this is in Celsius. To convert from Celsius change to Fahrenheit change, it's multiplied by two, about two. So five degrees Celsius is about nine degrees Fahrenheit. And you can see that these estimates don't agree at all. You know, some people say that a five degree warming Celsius, about nine degrees Fahrenheit, would only reduce GDP by, you know, 8%. But that's a giant number, isn't it? 8% is a, well, this way. buddy Forecasting that kind of a rise in temperature No, but let me so why use that well I'm just saying at the end you can look at I mean, let's go to three degrees so three degrees

But is anybody even saying three degrees? Yeah, three degrees is where we're at and three degrees centigrade six five degrees Fahrenheit That's where we're going now in how much of a time period that's 2100. So in 2100, we will be five degrees warmer. Overall? Global average, yes. Wow. So five degrees is high. That's at the very top end of the worst, worst case scenario. Three degrees Celsius, five degrees Fahrenheit.

I'd never heard it that high. I'd heard like a couple of degrees. Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff. Well, okay. So this is where being an American's a disadvantage you know we talk in Fahrenheit in Celsius it is a couple degrees it's three degrees Celsius that's a couple of degrees they tried to push that on us when I was in school I should have just accepted it we should we should have a chance soccer

they were just soccer as well remember that's that is correct yeah so so three degrees Celsius is about five degrees Fahrenheit that is what that's where we're And if you kind of look at, even look at three degrees, the estimates differ by a factor of 10. Some people are saying 20% loss of GDP. Others are saying 2% or 3% loss of GDP. I mean, and all of these are lower limits. It's going to be worse than this. And the reason they're lower limits is because the majority of them add in, they do this, we call a bottom-up approach. They say, okay, what's the effect of agriculture? And what's going to be the effect of sea level rise? And what's going to be the effect of warmer temperatures on productivity? And they kind of sum them up, but they leave out all of these things. Ocean acidification, how do you even value that? Permafrost melting, how is that valued? All of these things are left out of many of these estimates. And so, you know, the important thing again, I just can't get over is we have no idea what the cost of climate impacts are going

to be. Anybody who tells you that they know what three degrees is going to be like is either a liar or a fool. We have no idea. Now, I then cannot tell you it's going to be bad, but I think it could be bad. It could be very bad, especially when you look at the Texas freeze. I mean, that was a really bad event. That was $200 billion of damages. That's a unique event though, isn't it? Isn't it also unique in that Texas has its own grid? Sure. Every event is unique in its own way. But the point I'm trying to make here is how vulnerable we are to these climate impacts. You know, we're extremely vulnerable to these changes.

And so this idea that it's going to be nothing. It's going to, you know, instead of, you know, you won't even notice it. I mean, nobody can tell you if that's right or not. And in many ways, that's the biggest reason to act on climate change, because we don't know. This raise in temperature and the associated costs that's involved, what would that cost be because of? Would it be flooding near the coasts? Would it be drought? Like, what would be the added costs? Oh, it's everything. I mean, we live in a world that is optimized for the temperature range that we're in. So when you build a bridge, for example, the engineer says, okay, what's the temperature range that this bridge can experience? Because bridges expand and contract. And you have to make sure that it's like, okay, this is the range. And

then as you depart from that, I have some slides on that, which I will look up as I'm talking. Can you go to 46? We're just now getting to the point where we're beginning to depart from the range of infrastructure. So for example, you can see on the left, heat wave made this bridge too swole to function.

And so that's one thing. And you say, well, that, so that's one thing you say well that okay that one thing by itself not a it's probably a bridge that that opens would it oh oh right right right and then yeah it looks like it is and then the other one right look like it is well i don't know the details that bridge to be honest i'm sure i'm sure in the comments it's got the lights yeah are those lights the ones that they use when they chicago i could check real quick yeah check that because that's that seems weird but in any event i've seen this many places where bridges it gets too hot and the bridges they have to close the bridges because it's because of the asphalt and it's they expand

you know they're made of metal and and stuff that expands when it heats up. And the slide on the right, which you can't see more, shows some train tracks. And again, when you build train tracks, you assume a temperature range. So it does lift. There it is, yeah. So it got too swole from – that's wild that they lift like that. So it got too swole and then it wouldn't disconnect and separate. Yeah, exactly. And then the one on the right, that looks really old.

Like, what is that from? You know, I don't know exactly when that picture was taken. Extreme heat caused railroad tracks in New Jersey to buckle, giving them a spaghetti-like look. Because they expand too much. Or because they made it in New Jersey. Yeah, a bunch of mobsters that cut corners. What do you think, Jamie? I've never seen that before, but that is pretty wild.

It's because there's a body under there that's decomposing. So that is crazy. Like, I did not know that if it got that hot that it would turn and wiggle like that. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. They're pointed towards each other, and they expand. And if they expand into each other, they buckle. And the thing you have to understand is we have trillions of adaptations exactly like that to the climate. You know, when the Pacific Northwest heat wave occurred, pavement in Portland was buckling because it just got too hot.

They never expected it to get to 120 degrees or however, 150, however it got that high. And so when the temperature departs the range that we're kind of in now, we're just there. It is actually had wide roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled under extreme heat. Oh, wow. Look at that. That's crazy. Yeah. Looks like a whole volcano underneath it. Yeah, that's right. And I mean, it this is going to be incredibly expensive to fix the trillions of tiny adaptations we have. And so this idea that this is not going to be expensive, nobody has any idea how expensive this is going to be, nobody. And so again, for somebody to come on here and confidently say it's going to be 4% of GDP with this much warming, that's defense lawyer. That's what defense lawyer says.

My client's a great family man, and it's going to be, you know. Here's another one. Heat so strong in rural Australia, bent a railroad track. Look at that. That one's nuts. That's even crazier than the one in New Jersey. That is insane. Is that real?

I don't know. I think they're fixing it. I don't know. I can't tell. Well, it's just even if they are fixing it, how'd the metal get bent like that? Look how the asphalt's pushed, or the rocks how the rocks and gravels pushed to the side. So what Koonin was doing, in your mind, is looking at absolute best case scenario and ignoring all the potential things that could go sideways, like these infrastructure things

you're pointing out. Yeah. I mean, what know, what does a defense lawyer do? You know, my client is an upstanding family man. You know, CO2 is plant food. My client, you know, could not have done it. It was somebody else. You know, he was talking about ocean circuit. It's ocean cycles. He mentioned that during his interview. And what he doesn't tell you is the, you know, CO2 was found with the victim's blood all over him and he was holding a knife and there's videotape of him stabbing the client. And I'd be happy to go over why we're so, I mean, twice you asked him what fraction of the warming is due to humans. And he basically blew you off several times saying, oh, we have no idea. And that is, that's one of the things that's absolutely wrong. Okay. So what fraction of the warming is due to humans?

So the best estimate is that it's a hundred percent. It's all the warming. So let me, let me explain why that's the case. So begin with, let's be clear, we're talking about the warming over the last century plus, last 150 years. So if you could go to slide 23, let me explain, and I'm going to give you kind of a cartoon version. This is actually how I teach my undergrad class at what we call detection attribution. And the first thing you have to realize is that if the climate changes, there has to be a physical reason. If a house is burglarized, somebody did it. And if the climate is changing, there has to be a reason. So we can list the suspects. So this is from the

usual suspects, of course. And we know what's changed the climate in the past. And so we can investigate this. We know that continental drift, the climate in the past. And so we can investigate this. We know that continental drift, the fact that the continents are moving, that can change the climate. We know that the sun's output, the sun is the ultimate source of energy for our climate. If the sun gets brighter, that could cause climate change. Orbital variations, that's what actually drives the ice ages. It's the fact that the earth's orbit varies over long timescales. ice ages. It's the fact that the Earth's orbit varies over long time scales. Ocean cycles, that's what he said, things like El Nino. He said, you know, we don't, that could be it.

And then finally, you have greenhouse gases. So can you go to the next slide? And so we can exclude all the suspects. We can exclude continental drift. It's too slow. The continents haven't moved in the last century. Orbital variations, also too slow. That's a hundred thousand year process. The sun, we have observations. We measure the output of the sun. It's not getting brighter, at least since we've been measuring them from the seventies. Ocean cycles, that one actually is the hardest one to exclude, but we don't have any evidence to support it. So imagine, you know, someone was on trial and the only evidence that they did it was that they didn't have an alibi. There was actually no evidence that they did it. If you were in a jury, you wouldn't convict them.

You know, they said they were home playing their Xbox, but nobody saw them. And so they're obviously they obviously murdered that person. You would not convict somebody for whom the only evidence is absence of an alibi. And that for ocean cycles, that's the only thing you can point to. We don't have, we can't rule it out, but we don't have any evidence that it did it. And then you have greenhouse gases. So I like to call greenhouse gases, the world's dumbest criminal. It dropped its wallet at the crime scene. It, you know, fingerprints, there's videotape of it committing the crime. It was bragging to his friends that it did it. You know, when they arrested him, all the stolen stuff was in the

trunk. Can you go to the next slide? So again, I don't know if you want to read this, but we have massive amounts of evidence that carbon dioxide is responsible for the warming of the last hundred years. And there's no other explanation. And you put it all together, the scientific consensus is that we're responsible for all of the warming, 100%. So there's a lot of people that are just listening to this, so we'll read this off. The different things you highlighted are theoretical reasons why adding CO2 will warm the climate, CO2 is going up, geologic record shows correspondence between CO2 and temperature. Fingerprints and climate model support CO2.

Yeah, I mean, let me, I could talk a little bit more about this. So we've known since the 1800s that if you add a gas, a greenhouse gas, those are gases that absorb infrared radiation. If you add that to the atmosphere, it's going to warm the climate. We've known that since Arrhenius in the 1890s. We also know that carbon dioxide is going up. All right. I mean, I don't think there's any dispute about that.

It's going up because humans are consuming fossil fuels. That's the main reason. And so you put those together. And in the 1890s, people were predicting that we would see global warming. I mean, that was 1890s. They said, we can't see it yet because we don't have measurements, but this is going to warm the climate. So indeed, when you see the climate going up, you think, okay, that makes sense. If you look back at the paleo record, we have reasonable estimates of what the climate was back a billion years. Not super good, and you have to

infer them. There's obviously uncertainty in that. But you can see that in periods when the carbon dioxide was low, there was a lot more ice on the planet because you can tell if there's ice covering regions of the planet. And so you can see this correspondence between low CO2 and lots of ice. That's not perfect. And if you want to, you can point out a period, well, it's high CO2 here. But it's a pretty good correspondence. You put that slide back up so I make sure I don't forget. Is there any instances of high CO2 but low temperatures? You know, I have, let me, actually, can you go to slide 26? Actually, I can show you the data.

So this plot, the bottom plot shows millions of years. And the left-hand axis, which goes with the orange line, is atmospheric CO2. You can see atmospheric CO2 varied from 2,000 parts per million, which is about five times as much as there is today, to 250 parts per million, which is about 60% of what it is today. And the blue shows how far down, that goes with the right-hand axis, that shows how far down the ice went. And you can see that in periods when the CO2 was low, there was a lot of ice. Now, you can also see there's some variability that doesn't necessarily reflect itself with ice. So if you go back 400 million years, right before the CO2 line starts. You can see a period that might have high

CO2 and ice. But, you know, there are lots of other things that could be going on. You know, a single outlier like that, you don't want to use to contradict the overarching picture of the trend. And then going and so going back to that line, next one is called fingerprint. So what a fingerprint is, is it's a way to separate various forcing agents. So for example, if the sun were causing climate change, we would expect the entire atmosphere to warm. That's a prediction that you can work that out just theoretically. If greenhouse gases are causing the warming, the lower atmosphere warms, the upper atmosphere cools. So that's a fingerprint. And indeed, that's what we see.

We see the lower atmosphere warming. We see the upper atmosphere cooling. That's a fingerprint of carbon dioxide. What would it normally be? If there wasn't the amount of greenhouse gases, how do you determine? Is there a percentage in terms of what's warm in the lower atmosphere versus cool in the higher atmosphere? Right, right. So we're just looking at trends.

So we're not looking at, we're not concerned with what's normal. We're just concerned with what's been happening over the last, you know, we've been measuring upper atmosphere maybe 50 years on balloons. And over that 50 years, you can see temperatures going down. Actually, probably not 50 years, maybe 30 years. You can see temperatures going down in agreement with what you would expect from adding carbon dioxide. There's some other things going on. There's ozone depletion, which also affects the trends in the stratosphere.

How do we know that the temperature in the upper atmosphere goes down when you add carbon dioxide? Oh, okay. That's a good – I often ask that question to graduate students. So basically, what's a good way to think about it? So when you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, I'm trying to think about a way to say you increase the emissivity of the stratosphere. So basically, probably the best way to say it is when you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, if you add it to the lower atmosphere, you're basically trapping heat. If you add it to the upper atmosphere, you actually increase the ability to radiate to space. And so by adding to the upper atmosphere, it's radiating directly to space. And so it actually can cool the atmosphere. In the lower atmosphere, it doesn't have the ability to radiate directly to space, and

it basically just traps heat. Now I'm going to get angry emails about that, because that's a great simplification of it, but that's basically the way I think of it. But the important thing is, this is really firmly established theoretically. And I doubt Dr. Kuhn would argue with that. So clearly there's an observable trend that matches the model that high CO2 is causing the warming of the lower atmosphere and the cooling of the upper atmosphere. And it's important to say this is not a model result.

This is fundamental physics. This is just a few equations. It's not a global climate model. You don't need that kind of model. This is just simple physical principles applied to the problem. Does anybody argue against this? I don't think anybody would argue with that point, that fingerprint. So that fingerprint shows that greenhouse gases are responsible for a clear and measurable warming. Yeah. I mean, here's the point. Let me just reiterate this. Dr. Kuhn and he doesn't say anything that's wrong he just doesn't talk about

it so he's never going to talk about the co2 fingerprint because that doesn't support his client do you think he's doing this because of his I mean do you have an opinion about this does he doing this because of his past working for BP working for previous administration's. He worked for the Obama administration, which was a more environmentally friendly administration than the Trump administration. But what do you think would be the reason or the motivation behind doing something like that? You know, I don't care to speculate. I actually have no idea what causes people to say these things. But as I said before, you know, he's not unique. You know,

people, he's not the first person in climate change to say this. What is kind of interesting is over time, the Kuhnen-like person has changed their views quite a bit. In the 1990s, the people like him were saying the Earth's not warming. And then they were saying it wasn't, humans aren't having an effect. And then as those arguments became increasingly ridiculous. Now, he actually has quite in many respects. I think we actually agree on a lot of things. He agrees the earth is warming. He agrees humans are having influence. He's always playing up uncertainty to get to a conclusion that his client is he's trying to create reasonable doubt. He's doing what a defense lawyer does. Reasonable doubt is his product. In fact, there's a memo from a tobacco executive which explicitly says that's our goal. We're not trying to win the debate. We're not trying to convince people that smoking is safe. We're trying to create doubt in the mind of the general public. And that's exactly the goal here. It's not to prove that, you know, because he can't prove that carbon dioxide. He's just trying to create doubt. He's trying to slow down action. That's going to be the net effect if he's successful. And again, I don't understand.

I'm not going to say why he's doing it. I don't know. Now, when he talks about it and he shows these charts of a period of many hundreds of years and the temperature of the earth over that time, it does seem to be having this fluctuating effect, which mirrors what we're seeing now. Not really. Well, it depends exactly what you're talking about. So if you look at the last thousand years, there's no period like the last hundred years. In what way? I mean, I wish I had a slide of it.

I don't. But I mean, the last thousand years, the temperature was basically pretty flat. And we've had a one degree rise in temperature in the last, you know, it does look like a hockey stick. You've probably heard of the hockey stick. It does kind of look like a hockey stick. And, you know, so the paleo record doesn't really support, the historical record doesn't show anything like last century. Now, let me be clear. The argument in favor of carbon dioxide is not that you can't go into the historical record and ever find anything like that. That's not the argument. The argument, as I laid it out, is we know carbon dioxide traps heat.

We know that. That's fundamental physics. We know we're adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That's fundamental physics. We know the Earth is warming and it's warming about as much as our theories suggest. So a lot of what this is, is it's just kind of a shiny object to distract you. Like let's talk about Greenland melting in 1930. That's a distraction. It doesn't take away from the fact that humans are warming the climate and that as the climate warms, Greenland's going to melt a lot more. So there are these aberrations, and you look at long periods of time where it does get unusually warm, it does get unusually cool, but what you're saying is, make no mistake about it, what's happening right now is unusual,

and it's caused by humans. I wouldn't say it's unusual. I mean, if you go back 60 million years, there was no ice anywhere on the planet. There were palm trees in Wyoming, there were alligators in the Arctic. It was a different world. It was also a high CO2 world, by the way, and that's not a coincidence. So I wouldn't say it's unusual. What I say is humans are driving this warming. And, you know, modern human society with millions of cities of millions of people and trillions of hours of architecture of infrastructure, that's maybe 100, 150 years old. We've never experienced the kinds of warming that's coming. And it could be a terrible, terrible ride.

Nobody really knows. And let me be clear. I'm speaking now as a parent, as a citizen, not as a scientist, because science doesn't tell you this. My opinion is someone who knows a lot about this is I don't want to run the experiment. I don't want to see if Dr. Koonin is right. And the impacts are small. I think we should take action. And the key thing is we can take action at very low cost because and we haven't talked about it.

Fossil fuels are incredibly expensive, not the price you pay at the well, but the cost to society is extremely high. So, you know, we can take action at low cost. It's a risk. We should do this. I'm speaking again. That's my personal opinion, not as a scientist, because science doesn't tell you that. That's my personal opinion as a citizen. What I'm saying about it being unusual, not that it's not unusual in terms of like historically over the time that the earth has existed. But I mean that there's this moment where it's very clear that human beings are doing it. Yeah. If you mean unusual that way.

Yeah. And that this is very measurable. Absolutely. There's no debate in the scientific community about this. So what can be done in terms of having an impact on the fossil fuel consumption? And what would that do to this overall model of global warming or climate change, I should say? Yeah, well, okay. So we know basically how to decarbonize our economy. I mean, we can do it. And in fact, if I have a good slide, which I think really, probably up front, which really shows this. I will keep talking while I look for this. So, yeah, we know how to decarbonize.

Oh, can you go to slide 37? So, you know, fossil fuels have already lost. So they're already on their way out. This plot is the ERCOT. So ERCOT is the Texas grid. And this shows the power that's getting connected to the Texas grid by source. And the horizontal line shows the different sources and the bars are different years. Don't worry about the different years.

You can see nobody's hooking fossil fuels up to the Texas grid. There's a little bit of gas, but it's mainly wind and solar. And there's actually a little bit of battery. You know, it used to be, if you looked at older years, they had coal as a separate category. But nobody's hooked coal up to the grid in so long that they just lumped it in with other, which is zero. I can't believe how big solar's impact is. Yeah, no, I mean, this- I would have never guessed that.

Yeah, no, so fossil fuels have already lost. And the reason they've already lost is they're expensive. You know, people don't want, you know, if you're building energy, if you're an energy producer, you're going to build the cheapest energy source, right? So it's wind and solar. And they're winning in the marketplace. And if you go to the previous slide. place. And if you go to the previous slide, so at this point, it says renewables will account for 95% of the growth in global power generation capacity. It says renewable energy has another record year of growth, says IEA, and another record year for renewable energy despite COVID-19,

blah, blah, blah. 290 gigawatts of new renewable energy generation capacity, mostly in the form of wind turbines and solar panels, has been installed around the world this year, beating the previous record last year. On current trends, renewable energy generating capacity will exceed that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026. I would have never guessed that. Yeah, I mean, this is new. So I'm not, I mean, this is- Where are these solar panels located that are gathering up this much power? 2026. I would have never guessed that. Yeah, I mean, this is new. So I'm not, I mean, this is- Where are these solar panels located that are gathering up this much power?

I mean, they're everywhere. It's rooftops, it's large solar plants. Are you talking about in Texas or in the world? Yeah, I mean, anywhere. Let's just say Texas. It's everywhere. In California, they're about to put solar panels over a canal. There's lots of space to put solar panels. So for example, I would love it if they put solar panels over a canal. There's lots of space to put solar panels. So for example, I would love it if they put solar panels on the parking lot outside my building. Because when I, you know, you walk out in July and get in your car and it's, you know, 300 degrees in there, not literally, but it feels that way. And so I would love to have, you know, there are lots of places to put solar panels that don't affect use at all, rooftops, parking lots, canals.

that don't affect use at all, rooftops, parking lots, canals. And so there's lots of space to put this. And, you know, it's already as cheap. I mean, you can make an argument that maybe it's not cheaper than the cheapest fossil fuel, but it's very close. And if you look at the trend, the trend is so steeply down, you know that in a few years renewables are going to wipe out fossil fuels. Now, what about when it comes to automobiles? Well, I mean, electric cars are much better than internal combustion cars, if you've ever driven one.

Yeah, I have one. I have a Tesla. Yeah, so I mean, it's much better than an internal combustion. The way it's been explained to me is that there's not enough minerals to support the production of enough vehicles that are made simply with electricity. Yeah, you know, the people make, I'm always, I always find it ironic that the people who make those arguments are often people who will then tell you, you know, the free market works, and we should let them get the government out, let the market. So what does the free market do if cobalt becomes rare? So people are smart, and the free market will innovate. They'll figure out ways to substitute other minerals for that. They'll figure out, I mean, the market will innovate its way out of this. If you believe in the free market, you believe the market will find

some solution. So I don't know the exact- I think they've scaled it though. This is what's confusing because I think I've read something that said that there are not enough rare earth minerals to power electric cars for every person on earth. It's physically impossible. That they don't exist in terms of like the ore, whatever the mines that we currently have that are pulling these things out of the ground. Right.

I mean look, I would be very skeptical of that. Remember when they said we were running out of oil? Yeah this is like- That's a different thing, isn't it? I mean, we've been extracting oil for a long time. We've only been making electric cars for a couple decades. Right, but my point's about innovation. So innovation, so if it turns out there's some mineral, you know, some element, cobalt or something like that,

the engineers are smart. They'll figure out a way around that. I mean, I can't, let me just mean, I can't really speak authoritatively. This is not my area, so I can't give you an authoritative answer. But I generally believe in the free market. And in this case, I think the free market will work to solve that problem. But, I mean, you know, I'm not an expert in that. So let me just say that.

Right. But that's a key problem here, right? Well, certainly, if you want to build, if you want to scale up all of these Right. But that's a key problem here, right? and how they're mined. So a lot of them are in Africa. And I do think you don't want to create problems where the mining is. Right. And so I do think that's an issue. Rare earth magnets mostly made of, say that word, neodymium? Yeah, neodymium. Neodymium are widely seen as the most efficient way to power electric vehicles.

China controls 90% of their supply. Oh, great. Prices of neodymium oxide more than doubled during a nine-month rally last year, and are still up 90%. The U.S. Department of Commerce said in June it's considering an investigation into the national security impacts of neodymium magnet imports. Yeah, I mean, let's think about, let's say you're a battery manufacturer in the U.S. You realize that if you can figure out

how to make a battery without that compound, you're going to be rich. And so this is going to, so once electric cars pick up, the innovation is going to be extremely impressive. And the reason I say that is not because, you know, pie in the sky, because that's our history.

The history of environmental regulations causing advances in technology. You see that all the time, you know, just that plot of the price of solar and wind that's driven by concern for climate change. Yeah, it wasn't just like it happened to happen then happened because people see renewable energy as a future. And so there is there was a lot of work done to produce that energy more cheaply. And I think that's what's going to happen with electric cars. I know that there are some theories and there's some concepts that they're working on in terms of making these batteries more efficient and making these batteries quicker to charge and last longer. to charge and last longer but I didn't know that there's new technology in terms of like different minerals that are more common that could be used as batteries or in batteries yeah I mean there's a huge amount of research I'm

not a battery person so I really can't speak on what the cutting edge of batteries is something if it was innovative would change everything right and I mean the thing I realize is that's extremely valuable if you're a company that makes batteries and you can come up with a different compound, something like that, that's gold. And so they're going to do that. And that's the way innovation right? Like if we are going to use electric automobiles for every person on the planet, this is a necessity. And right now there's just a hope that the free market steps in and find some sort of a viable solution. Well, as of right now, there's enough of these minerals. I mean, you can go- There is? Sure. Well, as of right now, you can go buy a Tesla. I mean, the question is, can we-

Yeah, but they're very expensive. Like if somebody wanted to go and buy an electric car and they were on a very tight budget, there's a lot more financially viable options for internal combustion vehicles. Yeah, no, that's right. And I do think that you'll see the price of those come down because that's the way the market works. Well, actually, what is a Model 3? A Tesla Model 3 is like, it's not too bad. I think they start somewhere around then. And that's an amazing car for that amount of money. 40? 45. So a little bit more. So it's not the

cheapest car. No, but you're right. Most of the electric cars are, they're aimed at a market for people who are concerned about climate change, climate change, people who would otherwise be buying a BMW. So I don't think there's been sort of the effort by the manufacturers to make a middle, sort of a lower price point car. But I will say, the most exciting things for me is Ford and their F-150 truck. I mean, yeah, you live in Texas. You know that you pull up the light, every other car is a F-150 truck. Yes. I mean, yeah, you live in Texas. You know that you pull up to the light, every other car is a F-150, it seems.

And did you see the new commercial they had during the Super Bowl of the Chevy Silverado that's electric? I did not see that, but I heard about all the electric car commercials. They pissed a lot of people off because they used the Sopranos theme song, and then the kids from the Sopranos were in the ad. But the car, the new Chevy Silverado electric,

looks amazing. It looks cool. It looks cool. It looks like, see if we can find like a photo of it. It looks like a Silverado, but it looks like futuristic. There it is. Like, look at that thing. That's electric. And that thing's sick. It looks like a Silverado, but just a little bit more streamlined, a little bit more futuristic. Oh yeah. And if you get in and drive one, it's like get rid of my internal combustion engine car. I mean, they drive better. They're cheaper to operate.

You have lower maintenance issues. Like I said, I have a Tesla, and I have the stupid one. I have the plaid. It's ridiculous. It's the most ridiculous car I've ever driven. That's the one car I would never get rid of. So have you ever actually gone somewhere and accelerated, done the quarter mile as fast as it can? Of course I have. How dare you ask me that question? Yeah, it's preposterous. It's zero to

60 in 1.9 seconds. I had my kids in it the other day. I'm like, are you ready? I'm like, let's go. And it's like, when you accelerate on the highway, it's literally like you're on a roller coaster. You can't believe it's that fast. And it's silent. So when you the highway, it's literally like you're on a roller coaster. You can't believe it's that fast. And it's silent. Yeah, yeah. So when you pass people, you don't even feel like a douchebag. If you need to merge in traffic, it's not making a loud noise. You're just going.

Whee! Right, right. It's a much less aggressive way of merging with traffic. So do you drive with full self-drive on? No. I don't trust that. Yeah. That seems a little sketch.

I mean, I'm sure it's great, but I've done it a couple times just to show people like, watch this, and then like, look, it's driving. But no, I keep my fucking hands on the wheel. Yeah, that's smart. It just doesn't, I mean, I get it. I get it works, but it's like, you don't want to be a statistic. Right, right. And it works 99.9% of the time.

Not enough. But it's that 0.1. Yeah, it's also, it's like, I want to, if I see someone acting weird up there, I want to slow down. You know, if I see some guy who looks like he's drunk, I want to move over. You know, I want to be, I don't want to just zone out. Right. But I used to use it when I'd come home from the comedy store when I lived in L.A.

And I used to use it for that reason because I was tired. Because, you know, I'd come home, it's like 12, 30 at night. I'd just get on the highway, go doop, doop. And just for 10 minutes, just relax. You know, put my hand on the wheel. But I'm just driving straight and there's not that many people on the road. It's a little bit more relaxing. Yeah, I think on the highway is where I would probably trust it the most.

But even then, when you see someone acting weird. Yeah. Like you want to, you know, sometimes you want to drive defensively. You want to make maneuvers. Yeah, the human brain is really amazing at its ability to assess situations. You just wonder, you know, the AI is not there yet. Maybe it will get there at some point. Yeah, I don't think the AI is going to spot drunks that good. Because, you know, like I'm good at spotting a guy who's either on a phone or drunk. Or then, you know, they're kind of, like,

drifting a little bit. I'm like, this fucking guy. And I'll either slow down or I'll get ahead of them. I generally like to slow down. I like to keep my eye on those fucks. So, yeah, electric cars are awesome. I'm a big fan. And if they do innovate and figure out some sort of a way to... I ask Elon about that, actually, like what they're going to do, what the plan is in terms of like mass distribution.

Yeah, I know. I think, you know, I'm sure he's thinking about it. He has to be. He has to be. He's probably got an idea. The person who cracks it will be rich. Well, one of the possibilities, and it sounds really ridiculous, but one of the possibilities is asteroid mining, right? I mean, because they've found these asteroids. Possibility. I mean, I think that a lot of the stuff that people talk about doing in space is going to turn out to be a lot more, that may turn out to not be economically viable. Too difficult. Yeah,

just too, I mean, you have to go somewhere, get the asteroid, bring it back, mine it. It's a hard problem. Yeah. Okay. So that's automobiles. The elimination of coal-powered plants and these other things that are putting CO2 and particulates into the environment, what can be done about those things, and how long do you think it would take to implement them and what kind of an impact would that have on the overall effect that human beings are having on the climate? Right. So let me begin by saying nobody talks about shutting all this stuff off tomorrow. It's like, you know, we're going to shut this off tomorrow. There's debates about how fast to decarbonize.

decarbonize. My personal view is that this is sort of a multi-decadal problem that you probably just, you know, I think it's not unreasonable to shut down all the coal now, but the other stuff you probably want to let run out until it wears out. And then you just don't replace it with fossil fuel infrastructure. And, you know, that's certainly achievable. What are the offenders in order? So coal is the worst greenhouse, the worst fossil fuel. You know, someone I know calls coal the enemy of the human race. Do you remember when Trump called it clean coal? Yeah. So they, you know, there's some people on Madison Avenue that's like, how do we rebrand this?

You know, clean coal. It's alliterative. But it's like the least clean thing you think of. You think of like grabbing coal, you get it everywhere. Right. You think of it being like the least clean thing you think of. You think of like grabbing coal, you get it everywhere. Right. You think of it being in the air. Yeah. So coal actually kills millions of people from air pollution around the world every year. Tens of thousands of Americans.

In addition, it releases the most amount of greenhouse gases per unit of energy you generate. So it's really, so that's the worst, that's the worst fossil fuel. And we want to get rid of that as soon as we possibly can. And the Americans that are dying from it, they're dying from actual coal from poisoning in the air? No, it's, so coal puts out these chemicals, these small particulates. They often are referred to as PM 2.5, it's a particulate matter with a size less than 2.5 microns. And if you breathe those in, those actually go deep into your lungs and get in your bloodstream. And there's lots of studies which show that coal, that if you live in very polluted air and you're breathing it in,

you'll have heart attacks more frequently, you know, strokes, all these health impacts associated with that. And, you know, it's tens of thousands of Americans every year from coal. And, you know, this is something, again, the anti-climate people, they don't talk about it. It's just, it's not something that supports their case. So they just leave that out. Where is this happening the most in this country? Like, what's the most polluted by coal? You know, that's a good question. I don't know exactly where it is, but it's anywhere that's downwind of a coal-fired power plant. Let's find that out. Like, places in America most polluted by coal.

I had never heard that. I didn't know that that many people were dying from coal poisoning every year. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't call it coal poisoning. I would call it air pollution because it's really— But it's directly a result of coal. Exactly, yes. So it's coal poisoning. Yeah. Coal poisoning sounds better. Yeah, I mean, it's really- But it's directly a result of coal. Exactly, yes. So it's coal poisoning.

Yeah. Coal poisoning sounds better. Yeah. Air pollution sounds like it's inevitable. I'll tell you, that's a good branding, coal poisoning. Yeah, it is. Coal poisoning. It is.

That's exactly right. How about make t-shirts that say fuck coal and just put like an asterisk over the U? I would wear that. What do we got, Jamie? Anything? I don't think that list is super prevalent, so I'm trying to find it. Because it's just bringing up a lot of like, these coal plants are contaminators. Right.

Is there an area in North America most polluted by coal? I was also going to say, the way I Googled it, it's probably going to give me a small city. I Googled U.S. city most coal pollution but like that's not you know they're not right but giant cities but even that small cities it might be enough to you know kill thousands of people what do we have for is it giving you a list a place in indiana what's that called i mean this story was written in evansville but i think it's just outside of that. Evansville. I know somebody from Evansville.

Can you go to slide 50? This will blow your mind. It says there's seven coal plants within 30 miles of this spot. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, you do not want to live there. Holy shit. See what that sky looks like. Google Evansville. Who the fuck do I know?

I know someone from Evansville. I don't know what part of the story that's going to be. Whoa! That is nasty. Go back to that again? Go back to the beginning again? Give me some volume on this. Let me hear what they're saying. Southwest Indiana has some of the worst air in the country. People are suffering there. I think the air quality stinks. You can feel your chest on a daily basis, how difficult it is to breathe. There was a fine dusting of ash.

It was all over the kids' playset. These streets would be just black with coal. All the way up through the courthouse square would be covered with coal dust. It's the sacrifice zone. Those folks have been enlisted with particulate matter, NOx and SOx and acid rain for decades. There's an inherent conflict between fossil fuel industries and public health and the environment. Our future generations rely on our protests here today. I'll be darned if we're going to let anybody turn down our lives in eastern Kentucky.

I think these conflicts aren't going away anytime soon. What is this documentary? It's called, is it called America's Super Polluters? That's horrible. When you just look at the sky from there. So these poor people that live in this area, it's a scroll up so I could read that please. No, no. I'm sorry.

Down. Evansville, Indiana. See to see one of the country's largest coal-fired power plants head northwest from this Ohio River City on east because there's another in the region. In fact, nearly every direction you go will take you to a coal plant, seven within 30 miles. Collectively, they pump out millions of pounds of toxic air pollution. They throw off greenhouse gases on par with Hong Kong or Sweden. Industrial air pollution, bad for people's health, bad for the planet, is strikingly concentrated in America among a small number of facilities like those in southwest Indiana,

according to a nine-month Center for Public Integrity Investigation. Wow. This is horrible. Look at what this says here. It merged two federal data sets to create an unprecedented picture of air emissions. They found that a third of the toxic air releases in 2014 from power plants, factories, and other facilities came from just 100 complexes out of more than 20,000 reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. So how does the EPA allow those plants to stay open?

I mean, if you're looking at what these people are saying, where they've got a fine dust of mist over their child's play sets and the streets would be black with coal, how is that possible? How are they allowing that? I mean, have you seen our political system? I have. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of our politicians are essentially wholly owned subsidiaries of ExxonMobil. And, you know, they do what's in the best interest of fossil

fuel. Let me show you a I have a good slide that shows that you go to 48. And just I mean, just in Texas, there are two bills. One bill, you know, this is the state of freedom where people should be allowed to do what they want to do. Well, some communities had the audacity to say, we don't want any drilling in our city limits. And, of course, the Texas state government stepped in and said, oh, no, you cannot rule your own life. We rule your life for you. And this is a fracking bill. That's right. But I mean, it's really a drilling bill.

So they said you cannot drill in the city limits. They passed a law and they said you can't drill in the city limits. And the Texas legislature came in and said, no, you have to have drilling. If people, you know, we're not going to let you ban drilling. OK, so it says saying that Texas needs to avoid a patchwork of local regulations that threaten oil and gas production. Governor Greg Abbott on Monday signed legislation that would preempt local efforts to regulate a wide variety of drilling-related activities. So this is different, though, than the coal-powered plant. Drilling is fracking and for oil, and also natural gas, right? It is different from coal. But the idea of what's happened is these fossil fuel producers, as they become unpopular and uneconomic, they're looking to legislatures to rescue them. So the same people who, and these are often Republican legislatures who talk about freedom, they're happy to take away consumers' freedom if it supports the people who give them a lot of money.

And effectively, that's what happens. These fossil fuel companies are so powerful now politically that they can get legislatures to pass laws to force consumers to use them, or at least to force them to continue to allow them to be extracted. consumers to use them, or at least to force them to continue to allow them to be extracted. And if you go to the other side, there's another Texas law where they said Texas passes law banning investments with fossil divesting businesses. So the state of Texas won't work with you if you divest from fossil fuels. And again- What? So they passed a law banning investments with fossil divesting businesses. So does that mean- The state won't work with a company.

So the state won't work with a nuclear company, a company that's making solar? No. Imagine you have a bank and the bank says, we're going to divest all of our investments from fossil fuels. And they make a statement that, then they would not, state of Texas would not work with them in some capacity. Oh, I see. It's not like you have to use fossil fuels, but if you make a statement that you're divesting from fossil fuels, you're off the list from Texas. And again, in a state that is based on freedom and companies making decisions for their shareholders. These companies

that divest, they're making business decisions. They're saying- Right. So Texas won't invest in these companies that divest. Right. Won't work with them. Won't work with them. Yeah. And so- And the idea is that this is probably good for the economy. That's how they're looking at it in some way? Or is it just that they've been manipulated by special interest groups? Well, I have my theory about that. I'd love to hear your theory.

Yeah. My theory is that these people care about getting reelected. And I think that one of the things that helps them get reelected is getting a lot of money from fossil fuel companies. So I do think that drives it. I also do think that being pro fossil fuel in a primary in Texas is probably an advantage. But that doesn't take away the fact that, you know, people's you know, the state is moving to curtail freedoms to enforce fossil fuel use, basically. And this is a state where, you know, we believe in freedom. Right. This is not Indiana. right? Evansville, Indiana, the place that's the worst with the seven power plants in a 30-mile range. How does that happen? How does anybody allow that to take place? And is there any effort to try to stop that from

taking place? Yeah. I mean, certainly people are... You saw that march. I mean, people are mad about it. There are lots of people who... So Obama, he had something called the Clean Power Plan. And the Clean Power Plan would have essentially eliminated coal-fired power if it was written in such a way to explicitly cause coal-fired power to basically not... There would be no more building of coal-fired power plants. And it would really have caused them to be phased out pretty rapidly. plants and it would really have caused them to be phased out pretty rapidly. And, you know, that got hammered in Congress. It didn't, you know, actually, it wasn't a bill. It got hammered in the court system. You know, it got sued. All of these states sued. It went through the court system and it got overturned. And, you know, it essentially got abandoned. And the states are presumably suing because there's some sort of a financial interest by the people that are putting these politicians in place. Yeah, that's basically right. I mean, there's a – I don't know.

I don't have a slide of it. You might be able to find it by Googling. There was an article. I think it was North Dakota was canceling a lot of wind leases in order to prop up their coal. So people who had leased space to build windmills, wind turbines, I don't like the word windmills, you know, they were going through and they were canceling these leases in order to save the coal industry. Is there any sort of technology that can extract the particulate matter that these coal plants eject into the atmosphere? You know, that's a good question. I don't know. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's the article.

Very good. How coal holds on in America. In North Dakota coal country, officials rally to save a coal-fired power plant at renewable energy's expense. Look at that. Is that real? Like, look at the disgusting smoke that's pumping.

Imagine living there and seeing that pumping into the air where you're raising your children yeah i know i would not want to live downwind of that thing i would say though most of the smoke is probably water vapor so but there is but there's there's particular yeah there's definitely putting a lot of crap into the atmosphere and a lot of carbon dioxide it's just stunning that knowing what they know about Evansville, that they haven't put the kibosh on that. Well, you know, it goes to show you, I think in our current political system, a lot of people don't have a lot of power. You know, districts are gerrymandered. There's no limits on give it campaign giving. And essentially what it's done is it's taken away power, especially from, you know, a lot of these coal plants are polluting the poorest neighborhoods.

You know, if you go to Houston, you look around like the Ship Channel, the most polluted places are the poorest places. Those people have no political power at all. And, you know, they could go talk to their representative and he doesn't give a crap. Sort of like the water in Flint, Michigan. Yeah, it's exactly the same. Those people have no power and they just can't lobby. They can't – and maybe their representative is pushing it. But there's not this groundswell of support in the rest of the legislature do something about it. So when we're thinking about fossil fuel, we can't just think about the effect that CO2 has in the environment in terms of warming. We have to think about the effect of the particulate matter

and the pollution and what it's doing to people's health. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. So go to slide 50. This is, I mean, this is actually, I think this will blow your mind. So this is a study that came out that in 2018, fossil fuel air pollution was responsible for one in five deaths. Worldwide. Worldwide.

Not in the U.S. That's crazy. And a lot of those were in places like India that have really, really terrible air. Is that the place that has the worst? Probably at this point, I would say it probably is. Delhi. They have a lot of two-stroke motors and things like that that really put out a lot of crap.

Can you scroll down, Jamie, so we can see what this says? No, that's it. That's the screenshot. You can Google that, but go to the next slide. This is the other point. So in addition to pollution deaths, let's go through the litany of terrible things about fossil fuels. So there's climate change. There's pollution. It's killing

millions of people. It also is bad for the economy because of the price swings. Now, we have electric cars, so we don't really care. But if you own a gas car, the price is going up to $4, goes down to $2. That's economically destabilizing. And in fact, we know that a lot of recessions have been caused or they've been started by price swings from fossil fuels. So it's really this, if you have no idea what you're going to be paying, it's hard if you're a business owner or a citizen to make a decision. It's like gas is $2 a gallon, should I spend money on tuition or do I have to put money in the bank because I know gas is going to go up?

I mean, you don't know what the price is, so it's hard to do it. Can you go to the next slide? Oh no, don't go to the next slide. So in addition, fossil fuels are a national security issue. So, you know, we invaded Iraq. You know, why did we do that? We did it twice. So we did it because of the need to maintain stability in the oil markets, especially the 1993, no, 91 invasion of Kuwait and Iraq. And the thing I realized is even though we don't import a lot of oil from those places, the price of oil is set by the international market. So if you buy a barrel of oil from West Texas, the price of that is set by the entire world. And so that gives people like Vladimir Putin, gives people like Saudi Arabia, the ability to manipulate the price of oil and hammer our economy. So for example, two years ago in 2020, Saudi Arabia and Russia got into a price war,

drove down the price of oil. The price of oil, the oil futures actually went negative here for a few days. And that actually demolished, obliterated the Texas oil industry. I mean, there were layoffs, there were bankruptcies. It was really hard economically. And so from a national security standpoint, we don't want those countries to be able to hammer our economy by manipulating the price of oil, which they can do. And if you look right now, you know, Putin sitting on this big gas supply that goes to Europe. And, you know, there are all these implied threats about a gas supply being sent to Europe. And Europe is, you know, they need the gas. And so he's got his, you know, he's got his hand around their necks. And, you know, that's not a good situation to be in. So this is not a thing that we can look at in terms of a compartmentalized problem.

Absolutely not. There's just one problem. All of these things chain together and they cause a cascade of issues. That's right. And you combine that with the fact that we can switch. It's not like this is terrible and we don't have any alternative. I mean, if we did have any alternative, I would fully support fossil fuels because we need power. But we have an alternative that's not that expensive.

You know, people have done the studies. We know solar and wind are reasonably cheap. You build some dispatchable power, build some, even though they may be expensive, build some nuclear plants. We could get off, largely get off fossil fuels. There are some edge cases that it's hard, trucks, international airline flights. You know, we don't know exactly how we'll decarbonize those, but, you know, there's a lot, we could decarbonize the electric grid. You know, we know how to do that. Well, just that Indiana area alone with the seven power plants within a 30 mile range,

I mean, that seems insane. It seems like there should have been a solution offered up decades ago for that. Yeah, there should have been. But, you know, there's a lot of, you know, look, look at, you know, it goes back to like our government, look at the Senate. So in order to get anything passed to the Senate, you've got to get all the senators voting, you know, forget even 60 votes for the filibuster. For reconciliation, they're trying to get the Build Back Better plan, which would have had a lot of climate stuff in. They couldn't get Manchin, Joe Manchin, senator from West Virginia.

They couldn't get him to vote on it, to vote for it. So, I mean, you know, that's the problem. The problem is dysfunction in our government. It is not a science problem. It's not a technology problem. It's not a technology problem. It's a governmental problem. And I think the U.S. over time is just, you know, our political system is not responding to the needs of the people. It's responding to the needs of people who are very rich. So this Build Back Better plan would have had something in there about eliminating

these kind of power plants? Yeah. So the Build Back Better plan had a lot of climate policy. And I don't think it had anything that specifically said, these must be eliminated. But there was a lot of spending in there that would have led to a lot of good climate policy. Isn't the problem with these bills though that they slip in a bunch of other stuff that people don't want to have attached to something that may be good? Like if you looked at the Build Back Better, there was a politician, I forget who it was, that held up the bill and it was like thousands of pages and he's like, do you think any of these people that are trying to pass this have read through this?

And they probably haven't. The problem is the shenanigans that go along with politics, right? Yeah. I mean, that's a political problem. And people vote... I'm sure that guy, whoever it was, voted for bills exactly like that, but ones he thought would help his career and help his constituents. That's an excuse of the day. Perhaps. Yeah. We're guessing. Yeah. He might be very principled. He very well could be. That's right. You laugh when you say that, though. You're laughing too.

I know. I'm with you. Because that's how goofy the world we're living in when it comes to politics. It's really hard when you see how these people behave to think that they actually have our best interests in mind. And to think that this is all we have. Yeah. All we're offered is like crap and crap and crap. Yeah. It's like the idea of the free market in terms of politics

has never really manifested. There's never been some better solution to the way we handle things now. It's still large corporations that are influencing politicians to do things that aren't in the best interest of their constituents, and that's how they get elected.

And when they get elected, they bullshit us, and they get into office, they still do the same thing over and over and over again. It's like a magic trick that we keep falling for. It's like Lucy pulling that ball away from Charlie Brown every time he goes to kick it. I mean, every time it's the same thing. Yeah. But I wouldn't blame us as much. I mean, there's a lot of things that the politicians do to sort of entrench their power. You know,

gerrymandering is a classic thing. You know, if they gerrymander correctly, your vote doesn't count. I mean, they've literally taken your vote away from you. And, you know, you wonder once you get into a situation like that, how do you get out of it? Because you can't vote the people out because, you know, they've literally said it. So you can't do that. And the complex system that they put in place with, I mean, it's so entrenched and these people are so, their roots go so deep. It's so hard. You see like these Nancy Pelosi characters, these career politicians, it's like, how would you ever get rid of these people? They're so embedded into the system. And then you find out how much money they've made while being a politician and making a fraction of that a year.

You're like, how are you so rich? Yeah. Like, what are you doing? Yeah. And over time, it just gets worse. I mean, my 93-year-old father lives in College Station. And, you know, he was denied a mail-in ballot. I mean, he's 93.

And it turns out he made a slight. They denied him a mail-in ballot? They denied him because he didn't quite fill out the paperwork exactly right. And, I mean, my wife had to finally call and fix it. But, I mean, you know, they're making democracy harder. And this is all to entrench their power. So what can be done right now that we're not doing? Well, I mean, we just need to make a decision that we're going to phase out fossil

fuels. I mean, this is, as I said before, this is a political problem. It's not a technical problem. It's not a scientific problem. It's, we need to make a decision. We need a policy. And, you know, if you talk to economists, they will tell you, we need to price, you need to put a price on emissions. So right now it's free to dump pollution into the atmosphere. You don't pay for it, even though you're causing harms to all these people, you don't pay for it. And you need to put a price on emissions. So right now it's free to dump pollution into the atmosphere. You don't pay for it. Even though you're causing harms to all these people, you don't pay for it. And you need to price that. If you do that and you make people pay the full cost of their actions, that would go a long way towards fixing the problem.

Well, I would imagine like in Evansville it would be non-profitable. I mean it seems like the amount of money that those – I mean there should be some sort of a crazy class action lawsuit. Yeah, no, I learned about it today watching it the same as you did. Yeah, that does seem like a terrible injustice. So when you read a book like this, that is essentially a non-alarmist perspective, you think that what this does is not just delays the inevitable, which is we do need to take a chance, but also puts us in a worse position because people are looking at it like it's not that big a deal. And by the time they wake up to it, the amount of issues that we have will have multiplied. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of things are going on. So let me

give you an example. So if you look at where, for example, solar panels, China dominates the market in solar panels. And in 2007, I testified before the Texas House of Representatives. I said, you know, Texas has an opportunity. We could dominate solar panels. We could start moving now. And if we don't, we're in construction. Yeah, manufacturing. We could become the Saudi Arabia of solar energy by building uh wind uh these solar panels and i said if we don't we're

going to be buying from china or france now we're not buying from france but we are buying them from china and so say france because people hated france back then remember the freedom fries i thought france is that's a good thing that's what i thought you were going with yeah no it was just it was i was purely pandering. I was pandering to the people on the committee to get them to agree with me. And so and so, you know, by delaying, there's an economic cost that because when we do switch, which we are going to do it because, again, solar and wind are the cheapest energy. We're going to be buying it from, you know, wind turbine manufacturers in Europe and from China, solar panels from China. So we're giving away the economics. It's kind of like, what if we had not let Silicon Valley grow up in the

U.S.? It's sort of that level of economic activity that we're giving away by not acting. In addition, you're right. Emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is effectively irreversible on any time scale that we care about. What that means is once the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere right now, it's at about 415 parts per million, which means out of every million molecules of air, 415 are carbon dioxide. Once it goes up to some level 420 it takes a very long time for that to come down hundreds of thousands of years before it gets back down to pre-industrial and so we're going to be warming the climate for thousands of years so people in the year 3000 year 4000 their climate will be determined by the decisions we make decisions we make will determine the climate for a very long time. And so we really don't have time to wait 40 or 50 years. And, you know, it sounds like, you know, if I remember your

previous guest, he basically said something like, you know, eventually we'll take care of this, but it's not a priority. I think future generations beg to differ on that. You know, they're going to be affected by this for a very long time. And to me, that's one of the most challenging parts of this is the very long time scale of our impact. Is there any potential for a technology that extracts carbon from the atmosphere? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. People are working on that. So that's a big, they call it direct air capture.

That's a big deal. It's expensive. It takes a lot of energy to do that. So in order to do that, you really have to think about the energy system and where that energy is going to come from. You don't want to burn coal to generate energy to pull. That would just be this closed loop money losing system. So you need to think carefully about what you're doing. People talk about other things, fertilizing the ocean. Some people talk about trees. Trees, it turns out, I'm pro-tree. Excuse me, one step at a time. Fertilizing the ocean. Some people talk about trees. Trees, it turns out, I'm pro-tree.

Excuse me, one step at a time. Fertilizing the ocean? Sure. So, yeah, yes. So sometimes I get so excited about talking about this, I go 100 miles an hour. I love it. Right. So in a lot of places in the ocean, it's nutrient limited.

So, in other words, the amount of algae that grow is limited by one certain nutrient. And in a lot of places, it's nutrient limited. So in other words, the amount of algae that grow is limited by one certain nutrient. And in a lot of places, it's iron. So if you drive a cargo ship full of iron and you just dump it out the back, you could grow a lot of plankton. The plankton would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and then they would die and they would sink. So we could take potentially our iron waste and dump it into the ocean and that would make all this plankton grow and that would suck carbon dioxide? Yeah, that's the theory. I don't think anybody seriously talks about that just for a number of reasons. Mainly, we really don't know if it would work.

And how much iron would we need and where would we get it? Yeah, you know, I'd be honest. I can't. This is, I probably shouldn't have used that as an example because that's not something people seriously talk about. Okay. But that was just an example of other ideas that people have come up with in the past. What are other ones? Well, there was an article a couple of years ago about trees, planting a trillion trees. It turns out that that's not a particularly good idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, and let me say, I'm pro tree. I'm not anti tree. That's a risky stance. I know. You're going out there. You're pro tree.

I am pro tree. Are you a tree hugger? Yes, I would hug a tree as long as it's, you know. And so the problem with planting a lot of trees to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is that you need a lot of land. It's not clear where that land would come from. And then the biggest problem is a tree is not a good long-term storage for carbon because you have a forest, it grows up, and then the forest burns down. All that carbon's back in the atmosphere. And so you need to be able to store carbon for a very long time. So trees, even though I think we should be planting trees, I love trees, they're not a way to solve this problem. One of the things that Stephen said when he was on the podcast was that the Earth is far greener now because of the fact that there's excess CO2 in the atmosphere.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, so we know that of the carbon that we've added to the atmosphere, a quarter of it has gone into the biosphere. So a quarter of the carbon we add goes into the biosphere. So a quarter of the carbon we add goes into the biosphere, a quarter goes into the ocean. So the stuff that goes in the ocean is acidifying the ocean. So that's ocean acidification. The quarter that goes into the land does green it. So there's a corresponding negative effect to all the greening. There's also, you have to think about acidifying the ocean at the same time. So with all the green, if you're saying a quarter and a quarter, so that's literally half, right?

Yeah, so half the carbon we add doesn't stay in the atmosphere. Gets absorbed by the ocean or by plants. Exactly, yes. And so if they did plant a massive amount of plants everywhere, it still wouldn't be enough. Yeah, there's no, if there were an easy way to pull large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere that way, we would be doing it. Now, I don't remember where I saw this. I'm sure I saw it on the podcast. Jamie probably pulled it up, but it was, I think it was in China. I forget

where it was, where they had essentially a skyscraper sized air filter that they were going to center in a city. This is different, but this is similar. World's biggest machine capturing carbon from the air turned on in Iceland. Operators say the Orca plant can suck 4,000 tons of CO2 out of the air every

year and inject it deep into the ground to be mineralized. Is that a lot? 4,000 tons? So last year human emissions were probably 40 billion tons. So this is not meant to be a major... No, it's not. This is not meant to be a major... This is sort of a proof of concept is how I would look at it. So people are working on this, but you have to realize that to pull 10 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere in a year, which is probably kind of around the magnitude we'd have to do, that would be just a titanic industrial process. It would be equivalent to about all of the infrastructure we have to produce that much.

So think about all of the wells, all of the power plants, exactly. So it's certainly theoretically possible. It may be that we end up doing it, but I don't think we can rely on that. You do not want to bet the farm or your kids' futures on that. Jamie, there's an image right there. Click on that article. It says sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought. So this is from Nature. It says, estimated cost of geoengineering technology to fight climate change has plunged since a 2011 analysis. Now, is it possible that like all these other things,

like you were talking about solar, how solar was far more expensive and the yield was far lower 20 years ago, that as time and technology increases, they could get to a point where they could siphon this carbon dioxide from the atmosphere much more efficiently. Yeah. Just like when I was talking about batteries, there is so much money in this. If you could come up with a cheap way, if you could do this for $50 a ton, you would be richer than Croesus. I mean, you'd be the richest person in the world if you come up with a way to do that. And carbon is valuable, too, right?

They could use it for things. Well, you've got to pump it underground. Oh, really? As long as you use it for some way, it's never going to escape. What if you fuck up underground? What if you pump it in there and fuck that up, too? You know, we know that these natural gas reservoirs, where you'd put it, it stays there for a long time. Because natural gas has been there for millions of years.

So I think we can— and we know how to drill. We know how to do that. That's pretty well understood. Talk to me about fracking. Now, I saw that documentary, the Josh Fox documentary. I don't remember what it's called. Is that one of the water on fire? Yes.

Yes. What, is that valid? Like, what do you think is about fracking and what are the issues that it causes? You know, I don't have a specific view of fracking compared to regular natural gas production, non-fracking natural gas. We've got to stop doing it. I mean, all of it. Just all natural gas production? Yeah. I mean, over the next few decades, not tomorrow, but, you know, natural gas, it failed during the Texas cold spell.

And, you know, in Europe right now, natural gas is extremely expensive. And so remember how I talked about a grid has to have has intermittence and it has to have dispatchable firm power. So if you go to the UK, their dispatchable firm power is natural gas. And when the wind goes down, which, you know, it's going to do, you know, there can be periods where the wind's not generating. They have to turn natural gas. Natural gas is incredibly expensive right now. They are paying out the wazoo for it. We need to stop with commodity fuels. We should be going to nuclear geothermal. I think geothermal is a dark horse. I actually think very highly of geothermal. Geothermal, if you go back 10 years, the issue was always in the drilling. But our drilling

has gotten so good because of fracking actually the advances in the ability to how ironic yeah that explain geothermal to me so geothermal is you you extract heat from the ground then you use that in heating from lava like from just yeah i mean certainly in certain places like iceland for example or california there are places that's geothermal they're actually pretty good at getting it not just from, or they're getting better at getting it not just from these really high temperature places. But that's the traditional geothermal. You inject some water down. It gets really hot because of lava and just really hot rocks.

How deep do you have to go to do that? I think thousands of feet. So miles? Yeah, a thousand feet's a mile. 5,000 feet's a mile, right? Isn't that what it is? So miles? Yeah, 1,000 feet's a mile.

5,000 feet's a mile, right? Isn't that what it is? So they have to go deep, deep into the ground where it's far hotter, and they take that and they use it sort of in a similar vein as nuclear power? Yeah, or like any kind of conventional power. It goes down there, gets hot, it boils, and you get this really hot steam coming out and use that to turn a turbine. That's kind of the traditional way. And people are working on all sorts of different things, using it in places where it doesn't get that hot, sort of lower temperature geothermal.

And there's a lot of innovation going on in that space. So I think that that's sort of the dark horse candidate. Instead of nuclear, maybe we go with geothermal as dispatchable. And then you don't have to worry about the fallout. Yeah, you don't have to worry about all the known disadvantages of nuclear. Now, fracking is used for not just natural gas, but also oil, correct? Yeah, so they get both out of these fracked wells. And in a lot of cases, they really care about the oil, and they just vent the natural gas to the atmosphere.

Or they don't vent it. Sometimes they do, but they should flare it. Light it on fire? Yeah, light it on fire. So if you look at a satellite image of North Dakota from night, you can probably find one. You can actually see the fires, all these natural gas, all these wells flaring natural gas, they just keep the oil. But while they're doing that, they have to be doing some sort of damage to the atmosphere, right?

Oh yeah, they're releasing a lot of carbon dioxide and fugitive methane so not all the methane may burn and it's interesting you call it fugitive methane yeah and and you know the other thing about it is it produces air pollution you're burning methane you're getting you're getting crap blowing downwind it's very noisy yeah yeah I mean it's really it really it's not it's not good. I mean, wind and solar by far are socially better sources of energy. So wind, solar, geothermal and then potentially nuclear. Yeah. I mean, I would in my mind, I kind of think about three different categories. You have wind and solar. Those are your intermittents. You have some batteries that help you that are very short term, you know,

a couple hours, and that helps you shift solar energy from when you get it at noon to the evening. And then you have your firm dispatchable power. And that's, you know, it could be natural gas with carbon capture, although I think that is probably not where they capture the carbon dioxide before they vent at the atmosphere. That has not been demonstrated to be something that we can do at scale yet. Then there's nuclear, there's geothermal, and then there's hydro. And if you live in a place where that's yeah, that's available, the geology is available. Now, the use of petrochemicals and fossil fuel products has a bunch of different problems. And one of them is just the waste that's caused by the plastic and how plastic is essentially most of it is put into landfills.

One of the things we found out doing this podcast is that most of the plastic that you think you're recycling doesn't really get recycled. Yeah, that's very sad. And let me just say, when I say we should get off fossil fuels, I'm not talking about non-emissive, non-emitting processes like plastic. I think plastic plays a key role in our society. We do create too much. That's a whole different problem that needs to be solved. Plastic plays a key role in our society.

We do create too much. That's a whole different problem that needs to be solved. But I think it's perfectly consistent that we continue producing oil to produce plastics until we can find a way to solve that. I'm just really talking about generating energy with fossil fuels. Isn't there potentially different kinds of plastics that can be created from alternative sources? Yeah, you're way outside of what I know about, what I know scientifically. I think there's biodegradable plastics that are made from plant matter.

Yeah, I know. I wouldn't be surprised at all. See, if you, like, Google, I think it's one of the problems with hemp being not illegal anymore, but it was for the longest time. Google plastic from hemp and whether or not it's scalable. Because, you know, obviously there's, you know who Boyan Slat is?

I don't. He's a brilliant young man who devised a method to extract plastic from the ocean with these, like, giant machines that of uh scoop plastic together out of the ocean they use it to create products but um you know that pacific garbage patch oh yeah which is insane yeah it's as big as the state of texas if not bigger right it's depressing it's it's enormous it's so crazy when you see how big it is like on a map and that it's all waste and it's all within the last 70 80 years yeah from the advent of petrochemical products yeah I mean one day I worry that we're gonna find out we've done something really terrible to sort of the ocean ecosystem and that it's effect is

beginning to affect humans oh here it goes despite claims about hemp plastics ability to clean oceans and limit landfill growth, the truth is less universally positive. If current plastic consumption patterns persist, by 2050 the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. Holy shit. According to the World Economic Forum report, in the meantime, plastics will continue to leach into the human body. And while scientists debate the certainty of toxicity studies determining that

bisphenol, bifenol rather, bifenol A, BPA plastics are carcinogenic, the FDA will continue to review BPA safety and, of course, plastic consumption will increase petroleum consumption, wreaking havoc on the environment and geopolitical stability. What about other things that affect our environment? One of the things that people always like to point to— Crypto. Is that bad?

Well, I mean, they're using a lot of power for— To generate crypto? To generate crypto to generate crypto and I think decentralized currency would probably Prevent a lot of the issues that we're dealing with with monopolies and politicians and you know The kind of fiat currency problems that we have don't you think? you know the one thing I've noticed about Bitcoin is it seems to mainly be used by Bitcoin bros and Don't point to me man. No not you i mean i did though i did point to you

sorry i meant i mean easy yeah no i mean he's a bitcoin i meant i mean bitcoin bros are on the same family tree as nuclear bros yeah i mentioned bitcoin on twitter and uh you will be inundated yes and let me just be clear to anyone listening i'm not mentioning bitcoin so you don't have to go to my twitter feed um uh and it's also used by criminals. And so while I understand the allure of Bitcoin. They also use all sorts of money. Criminals don't just use Bitcoin. Criminals also use houses and they drink water. Yeah, but 99% of the houses are used by honest people, whereas with crypto, we probably don't want to talk about crypto.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realize now that was a strategic mistake. No worries. No worries. I know where we're going with this. So what I was getting to is there's a lot of other things that people point to as having a negative effect on the environment. And one of them is a big one that gets into the weeds ideologically is veganism. vegan diets versus animal-based diets and whether or not you can truly have a renewable,

like a farm that's a carbon-neutral farm that grows plants and animals and does so in this sort of symbiotic matter where you could feed large-scale populations, but it's a carbon-neutral environment. Yeah. So you've opened a whole can of worms there. So what we've been talking about so far is just emissions from energy. Yes. And that is a pretty, in my view, and I think in the view of the people that work on this, is a solvable problem over the next few decades. We can solve that problem. When you get into agriculture, agriculture is actually a huge source of emissions for climate. Yeah. And that is a much more difficult problem to solve. I'm not

saying it's not solvable, but with energy, with power, there's a real clear path. We know the solutions. We know the technologies. It's really just a political problem. It's not as clear that with agriculture that we're going to be able to do that as easily. And I think that a lot of it, it will end up being a political problem. But the agriculture sector exerts enormous power in our society. You know, why do you think we have ethanol blended into our gas? You know, it's not because that's actually a good way to use corn. You know, it comes from corn. They make ethanol and they blend in the gas. It's because in this really weird quirk, Iowa is the first state that nominates president.

So everybody who wants to be elected president has to go to Iowa and say, I'm in favor of blending ethanol into gas. I mean, that's why we have it. You know, and Rick Perry, he would lambast that all the time when he was governor of Texas. And then he ran for president. All of a sudden he supported it. You know, so you have these really weird political things going on in agriculture. It's very powerful politically. And so, but I, I do think that, you know, that's something that we have to work on, you know, getting our emissions down from, from agriculture.

Is there, I mean, have you ever studied this? Is there like a long-term solution to a viable carbon neutral farming system? You know, I, I'm not an expert in this, but I do think that there are methods of not just stopping emissions, but actually sequestering carbon in soils through various farming techniques and things like that. You just have to really convince farmers that it's in their interest to do it. And so you talk about, well, maybe we could pay farmers to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and things like that. Well, the people that have talked to me about this that seem to think that there is a way to do this, they're doing on a very small scale relatively to like one of the problems morally and environmentally that we have with farming in this country is factory farming

of animals because it's horrific. I mean, everybody's seen the videos, and it's like you know about the amount of waste that it causes and what it does to the environment, and also monocrop agriculture because it's not normal to grow, you know, thousands of acres of one particular kind of plant, and in order to do so, you have to kill everything else, including all the animals,

all the different things that could possibly consume your crops, all the different bugs. You have to kill a lot of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think that you got to realize that our agricultural system is optimized for profit. It's not optimized for anything else. And so factory farming is a way to produce the most pounds of hogs per dollar you're spending. And if you want to do something different, people have to recognize that they're going to pay more at the grocery store, but you'll get these other benefits. You'll have less climate impacts. You'll have these moral benefits. And so I think as a general rule,

we haven't done probably as good a job. And that's because there are people out there that are sort of combating us with misinformation at really explaining all of the costs of our present economic system. You know, as we talked about with fossil fuels, you know, you're killing millions of people around the world every year from air pollution. And, you know, that's a huge cost and all of the cost of climate change and things like that. And, you know, you just have to realize that people have to realize they might see higher prices for meat in the store, but there are benefits from that. You mean we could make the argument that you're killing millions of people with poor diets as well, and that the main contributors to this poor diet economy are probably fast food.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And I do think that there's a lot of – certainly that is a tremendous cost. But the problem with that is kind of the same problem that we have with fossil fuels is that people want to do what they want to do. They want to be able to go to Whataburger like, sir, look at you there, you guilty bastard. I love Whataburger. See, that's the problem. That is the problem. For the record, I was driving in. Hey, for the record, that's what everybody says. That's what fast food's all about. You don't have time to pull over and bust out a hibachi

and cook a steak. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and even if you did, who's growing that cow? And how's it being grown? Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, you've got to go to some sort of a sustainable ranch and get some grass-fed, grass-finished beef on a free-range cattle where the manure is being recycled and they're using it and they're composting it and then they're having pigs roam and chickens roam

and everything is sort of like feeding into the soil. Farmers, agricultural systems are one of the most tightly managed by humans. Of all the systems we have, that's the one that humans manage. And so there's a lot of capacity for adaptation, for people to adjust things. But nobody does anything if there's not a positive return on investment, if they're not going to make money from it. So really the challenge here is to convince people to do things that are good for the environment that make them money. You know, a lot of farmers put wind turbines on their farms, not because they give a crap about renewable energy. They probably all hate, you know, hate Al Gore. They do it because they get paid. You know, they get a monthly check for doing that. And so you can convince people to do the

right thing if you financially incentivize them to do it. And that's the key. That is really the key. That's always the key. Money always talks. I mean, if there's one absolute truth in everything having to do with this problem, it's money talks. But isn't that part of what the problem that got us to this position in the first place, potentially with like when you're talking about growing corn, for instance, for ethanol, like one of the things that we do is we subsidize farmers to grow corn. Oh, yeah. I mean, money talks got us into this. You know of the things that we do is we subsidize farmers to grow corn. Oh, yeah. I mean, money talks got us into this. You know, the fossil fuel companies want to make money and, you know, they do whatever they can to make money. If that means

giving lots of money to politicians and supporting, you know, dark money groups who run ads against their opponents, you know, this is all stuff that, you know, they're looking at their bottom line. They look at their job as to make the most money possible. And if you believe that's your job, and most corporations I think do, then you're willing to do anything to do that. You'll buy politicians because it's legal. It's completely legal to buy a politician in this country. Now, when you look at the future, when you take into account all these issues, whether it's coal-fired power plants or fracking or agriculture. If you're being realistic, do you think we can turn this around?

Yeah. So keep it up, slide 11. So let me sort of lay out sort of our choices here. No, that's not it. 11, yeah, that's it. So this is a bar chart that kind of shows sort of our possible climate future. So the one on the left that goes to about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, that's the temperature change from an ice age. So I think we can all agree, if the Earth went into an ice age, that would be very bad. Can we agree on that?

I agree. All right. And that's surprisingly, most people don't know that, that's only 10 degrees away. If we cool the planet by 10 degrees, we would have an ice age. And it would be an economic catastrophe. I mean, I can't- Not just economic, right? Yeah, absolutely. It'd be a catastrophe in every way, shape, or form. We wouldn't be able to grow food. Right. So we've already warmed about two degrees Fahrenheit. That's the green bar. So we're already 20% of the way to an ice age,

ice age amount of warming. We're going in the opposite direction, obviously. Ice age is down, but we're going up 20% of an ice age amount of warming. Business as usual, that's BAU. That's about five degrees Fahrenheit. That's half of an ice age. Okay. So that should scare the crap out of half of an ice age. Half of an ice age in terms of temperature change, an ice age of warming.

That I look at that and I look at my kids and I think, holy crap, this is we can't we you know, if this happens, I don't know how bad it's going to be. But half of an ice age of warming could be awful. I mean, really. I mean, you know, Mad Max. Now, whether you whether you want to take action on that, that actually is is not a scientific question. Some people might look and go, Mad Max is cool. I would love to live in Mad Max. And so they might not be worried about it. You know, some people might say humans will adapt. I have this infinite wisdom, infinite, you know.

Confidence. Confidence, thank you. Infinite confidence in humanity that we'll figure out some way to do it. And I don't, I hate government regulation. So bring on the heat. You know, I look at this, and again, I'm speaking as a citizen now, not as a scientist, but as a citizen, I don't have infinite confidence in humanity. I look at, I look at COVID, I look at the Texas blackout, and I think we're going to F this up.

When Kuhnen was talking about global warming and climate change, one of the things that he said was that what it will do is open up new areas for agriculture and that agriculture will move steadily north and that we'll adapt to that. Yeah. So that's actually happening. So agriculture is moving. You can actually look at the average acre of corn that was grown, and it's actually moved about 150 kilometers north and to the west. So north and west is higher altitude, so to cooler regions. And that's actually right.

So eventually, agriculture will move into Canada. At some point, it's going to move as far north as it can move. And this is over what period of time that it's moved to 150 kilometers? Probably a couple decades. That's not a lot of time. That's not. A couple decades is pretty recent. And we haven't seen that much warming. We've seen about a third of the business as usual warming. So agriculture, as I said before, agriculture is one of the most intensively managed and adaptable systems we have. So saying agriculture will be

fine, that should not give you any reassurance. Let's talk about some other things. Would it be easier if we just invaded Canada and took over? And then grow our stuff up there if it gets too warm? Because I think we probably should invade anyway at this point. They seem like they need our help. You know, they put like gravy on fries. I'm not sure.

You've never had gravy on fries? I have not had gravy on fries. You've never had poutine? I have not had poutine. I'm not sure. Oh, my God. You should shut your mouth until you have it because it's amazing. Fair enough. How dare you? Fair enough. All right. So let's talk a little bit about some other impacts because, again,

agriculture is the one I think is probably the most likely we'll be able to adapt as well as possible. Let's talk about something that's unadaptable. For example, permafrost melting. So, you know, we're melting all this permafrost at the top of the world. You know, how do you adapt to that? You know, all of the stuff that was built in the north, they essentially build it on permafrost with the assumption the permafrost will never melt. So you build a house on permafrost. You say, OK, that's my foundation. And then the permafrost melts and the house splits.

When you say the north, what are you talking about? Where? Oh, like anything, you know, Alaska, Siberia. They're building houses on permafrost melts and the house splits in two. When you say the north, what are you talking about? Where? Oh, like anything, you know, Alaska, Siberia. They're building houses on permafrost up there? Yeah. They build, they put the foundation on the permafrost with the assumption the permafrost is never going to melt. And it melts, then it'll soften, and then the houses will sink.

Exactly. The house just splits. It doesn't sink. It becomes structurally uninhabitable. And that happens with roads. That happens with all this infrastructure. In addition, as you heat up the permafrost, it starts emitting greenhouse gases, things like methane, carbon dioxide. I read that one of the big issues, they were talking about Siberia, and that as Siberia slowly melts, that it's going to emit an incredible amount of greenhouse gases.

Right. So that's certainly a possibility that scientists worry a lot about. And that's one of the worst case scenarios, because if that happens, then we lose the ability to stop climate change. Because even if we stop our emissions, it's still what we call a feedback system. And so permafrost is one really hard to adapt to impact. And there's ocean acidification. How do you adapt to that? The oceans are more acidic. You know, what are you going to do? And then there are the things that are extremely expensive. So imagine sea level rises. You've got to build these seawalls. You know, you have to do it around Houston. You do it around New York. These are tens of billions

of dollars. I mean, we're going to get to our, you know, my worry is we're going to get to a situation where we're spending all of our money just trying to stay alive, building stormwater infrastructure to handle more severe rainfall, building seawalls, building, you know, things to keep people alive when the temperature gets really hot, building new infrastructure for agriculture. Because remember, as the agriculture moves, the infrastructure has to move. All of your grain processing plants that were down here, you got to rebuild them up here. And so we're going to be spending all of our time and all of our money just trying to stay alive. You're not going to have money to buy a new iPhone or to go to college. Because that money's all going to be tax money. I mean, that's where it's going to come from. And let me just add one thing, which I think is really important here.

You know, a lot of people are concerned about the freedom aspect of this, as I am. You know, we saw with COVID that disasters often come with more government intervention in our lives. You know, when COVID hits, you've got to wear a mask. And, you know, in certain situations, you've got to get vaccinated. And people don't like that. And I understand that. What do you think is going to happen if there's a food shortage? What do you think is going to happen if we have to relocate Miami? It's going to be massive government intervention. If you want to have a world where the government doesn't tell you what to do, we need to solve climate change now, because it's going to be a much larger infringement on our rights if society starts to fall apart. Have you debated anyone about this?

So I have, so, okay, so I have not debated anybody about this. Actually, I take it back. I debated this person, Richard Lindzen, in 2010. My feeling is that I won't debate the science. So the science is set, you know, earth, you know, we're temperatures warming, humors are caused. I'm happy to debate policy because I think policy needs to be debated. So if someone wants to debate energy policy with me, why wouldn't you debate the science? Because the science has already been debated in the scientific system. I understand that. But to the average person that gets confused and doesn't know whether or not you're correct or Steve Koonin is correct. Yeah. So I think the debate would be very beneficial. You know, I disagree with that entirely because, because in a, in a one-on-one debate

without the ability to fact check people. So, so let's say, why couldn't you fact check them in real life? In real time, real time. Because I mean, how do I do that? He says, this paper says this. And I'm saying, do you want me to read the paper? Well, I mean, it would be a debate that would take a week. So we do a week. I mean, I don't even think it would take a week. But there's certain points that you could get where you would go over them and we could kind of establish those points in advance. Like,, what, where's the contention? Like, where's the disagreement and why does he feel this way? And why do you feel this way? And I feel like if we established like a set of parameters or a set of areas of contention. Well, we can certainly talk about that. I think we'd need to work that out, but let me just sort

of finish what I was saying that, you know, the, you know, the scientific system of peer-reviewed papers followed by replication, you know, important results are always replicated by other people. That's how science determines what is right. And I feel strongly that in the one debate I did do, I thought it was terrible and was a waste of my time. And I said, I would never do that again. But policy is different. You know, policies are value judgments. I think you do have to have public debates about that. So I'm so, you know, I think we do need to get out there and advocate for what we think we should do. What he said is that he got into this because he brought a bunch of people together to discuss

what the science is. And he said the science is not nearly as settled as he thought it was when he first started examining it. And that's why he wrote this book. And that's why he took a deep dive into the data. You know, that may well be true. I can't comment on why he did what he did. Well, that is why he did what he did. That's what he said. But the point is, like, when someone hears him or when someone hears you, there's people that would hear you and go, well, this guy's not right because Steve Koonin's right.

And I heard Steve Koonin say this. And then there's people that hear you and go, well, he's right and Steve Koonin is wrong because Steve Koonin left out all these different things and he was incorrect about that and he was way too lenient on the government when it comes to like these kind of this could be settled. At least it can be explained in a way that a rational person could have a more more informed opinion of what's going on. Yeah. You know, I think you overestimate the, uh, the ability to settle these issues in a debate. And I will say you're, you're absolutely right. You know, this is why tobacco companies hired scientists to go out and push them because they

understand the power of a scientist saying, you know, X is true. Y is, Y is not true. And so, yeah, you're absolutely right. And, uh, you know, it's, it's going to be. And, you know, it's going to be, you know, it's very frustrating to me to hear someone like Dr. Kuhn. And what's particularly irritating is, you know, there's always this little bit of conspiracy in there about like, you know, these people, they know the truth. They're afraid to say it. I mean, let me ask you, why would I be afraid? What bad would happen to me if I came out? Well, I don't think you're afraid at all. Right. But I do think that there are some people that agree with him that do not want to talk about it publicly. I'm not saying what are they afraid of? What are they afraid? They're

afraid. Well, there's I think being called a climate science denier, being called a conspiracy theorist, being maligned for your opinions. I think that's a real thing in this day and age, don't you? You know, I think that certainly everybody gets pushback. I mean, I get a lot of pushback. You know, I get hate emails. Yeah, but you're on the right side of it. But the point is, I'm still getting a lot of pushback. So the pushback doesn't change. Yeah, you certainly know that. But, you know, Dr. Kuhn is an example that you can have a great career taking his position. You know, he's on the Joe Rogan show.

I mean, how great is that? Yeah, but I mean, the point is, it's not like... But you're here too. That's a bad argument. No, no. What I'm saying is he still has a good career. And in fact, the only reason I'm on is because he was on. You would not have had me on. Of course I would have.

Well, all right. That's not true. course I would have. Well, all right. That's not true. I definitely would have. All right. Well, listen, I don't know anything about client science. So I would be more than, I did not have you on just because of that. I had you on certainly as a result of him being on. Right.

But I most certainly would have had you on anyway. Right, right. Well, again, so we can talk about, we can talk about how to do it. I'd be open to discussions about sort of parameters. You know, I think the thing you don't want to do, in fact, he even made this point, which I thought was actually an excellent point, which is he's as worried about it as I was. He said, make people write down their views. I mean, that's what we do in the peer-reviewed literature. He said, I don't want to just have a debate.

Make them write down their things and give citations and stuff. And, you know, that's why you look in the peer reviewed literature where people write stuff. It goes through peer review, then it gets published and it's all written down. It's much harder to get crackpot ideas out. I mean, I could say anything to you about anything and, you know, you know, I could just say it. But if I have to write it down and give you references, it's much harder. Right. Right. But I do think public debates about policy are really good. We need to have people talk about what's the pros and cons of this or this. My take on what you're saying is there's certain things that you're saying that are irrefutable.

First of all, the particulate matter in the air that's caused by power plants that are fueled by coal, and we look at that video from Evansville, that's horrific to me. All that stuff's horrific. The idea that the only way we can move forward is by continuing to do what we're doing already and fossil fuels and all that jazz, that doesn't make any sense to me. And I do hope that there is some innovation when it comes to battery construction methods and efficiency and all that jazz and that we do move away from a lot of the stuff that we're doing right now. I just – I wish it was – I wish there was no gray area. I wish there was no – I wish there was no legitimate intelligent people that thought differently.

That's where it gets confusing because I feel like I read his book and it was pretty fascinating. I've read several things where you rebutted him and I've read several things where you stated your position. So I was very excited to talk to you about this. And, you know, like I said, there's many things that you're saying that I don't think anybody can refute, particularly the effect of using these things that's happening, not just in terms of warming, but in terms of pollution. Yeah, you have to look at the whole menu of disadvantages. And if you do that, you realize we really should be phasing out fossil fuels as fast as possible. And we really should be taking into account what's happening with these increased levels of pollutants in our atmosphere. Yeah.

This is not very simple. You know, I get very upset when we were talking about that. What is that Josh Fox movie called? What the hell is it called? The fracking movie. Fracknation or some shit. hell is it called? The fracking movie. Fracknation or some shit. What is it called? Remember?

But I've heard people dismiss it. Gasland. I've heard people dismiss that and dismiss the impact that it has. But how can you dismiss the fact that some people have water that you can't drink anymore? How is that a dismissible thing? that you can't drink anymore. How is that a dismissible thing? If they're doing something that produces a significant amount of energy but also pollutes water to the point where it can't be digested anymore,

you can't just only look at one aspect of that. You can't only look at, but look at the market. Oh, so these people have to move out of their farm. But they paid them off. But where's that water going? Where's that polluted water going? What kind of an effect does it have on the animals? What kind of effect does it have on the plant life?

Is it leaking into the atmosphere? What's happening? And how long does it take before we know what's happening? Is this something that's real simple that you can cut it off right there and then there's no more damage done? Or is this something that leaches out into our environment for decades or hundreds of years to come? Yeah, and I mean, you make a lot of good points. There's the impacts, especially on people of modest means who are significantly impacted. You know, corporations just don't have to worry about that.

And, you know, so if you live next to it, there are lots of stories about people who live near these big industrial plants and suffer really horrific, you know, cancers and other problems. And it's, you know, as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder for people like that to get some sort of compensation or to get the harms addressed. I mean, I do firmly believe, and I think this is a key thing about climate and everything else, that polluters should be accountable for the damage they pay. And so the people who are spewing fossil fuel effluents,

you know, carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, they should be held accountable for that. And right now they're not. And that actually is the core of the problem. If they were actually being held accountable, fossil fuels would be gone very quickly. Because it wouldn't be profitable. Exactly. It'd be non-economic. And so the really, what you're talking about is, you know, what economists call externalities, which are costs imposed on people who are outside of your transaction. And that's really the problem,

that there are these free, you can throw, you know, it's like you walk over your fence, you throw your trash in your neighbor's yard. you can do that for free why wouldn't you right you know but you can't do it because your neighbor get mad and you know but but but that's essentially what a lot of corporations are doing right now and we let them get away with it because they are so politically powerful they've gotten to the point where they're more powerful than any any non-corporate entity they're more powerful than any non-corporate entity. They're more powerful than the people. I think that's a great point, and I think that's a good way to end this.

Is there anywhere online? Could you direct people online to, like, what's the best place to see your work? My SoundCloud? I don't know. I do not have a SoundCloud. Is that one of the dad jokes your kids warn you about? Yes, that is one of my dad jokes. You should be rapping about climate change. Maybe you could be on TikTok.

There is a climate change rapper who's actually quite good. Yeah, I would say if people want to see me, they should follow me on Twitter, Andrew Dessler. I'm always tweeting about climate. Spell that, please. A-N-D-R-E-W-D-E-S-S-L-E-R, one word. Okay, on Twitter. And do you have an Instagram as well? I do not have an Instagram.

No, okay. Good for you. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming here. I really appreciate it. Oh, it's been great. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too.

It was very enlightening. And I think it helped a lot. It helped to balance things out. All right, good. Good. Thank you. And hopefully I'll talk to you again someday. Yes.

Well, hopefully he'll respond and maybe we can get something together. Okay, good. I think it would be very enlightening for people. I really do. I think it would help a lot. Okay, good. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. Bye, everybody.