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Oct. 7, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
49:36
Episode 250 Scott Adams: Civil Unrest, North Korea and Rehab City
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Joanne, you are so quick with the fingers.
Always one of the first.
Sometimes the first.
Nicholas, you're pretty fast too.
Andrew, Arden, Duke, Dave, Kieran, Jimmy, come on in here.
We have reached the 1000 mark.
You know what that means.
I think you do. I think you do know what that means.
It means it's time for the simultaneous sip.
Yes it is. Grab your mug, your cup, your vessel, your chalice.
Bring it up to your lips.
I hope it has coffee in it.
But anything else is fine too.
Now it's time for the simultaneous sip.
That's a good sip.
So, thank you to those of you who are sending prayers and good wishes.
For those of you who don't know, I held a funeral.
Well, I was part of a funeral yesterday for my stepson who died from an opioid overdose.
18 years old.
And we'll talk about that in a minute.
Let's talk about that now.
So, it turns out that most fentanyl comes from China.
There are these illegal drug labs in China that are cranking out the fentanyl and sending it to the United States where I guess the local drug dealers have their own pill presses.
So they mix up the fentanyl from China and put it in pills and it kills people like my stepson.
And I saw a suggestion on Twitter That I don't know if it's a good suggestion.
It's probably not a good suggestion, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.
So this is just brainstorming.
So don't put this in the category of the things I think are good ideas.
This is just an idea.
Maybe you can tell me if it's good.
So apparently the part of the new opioid addiction fighting law That has been passed by Congress.
I believe Rand Paul was instrumental in that.
It's going to the president's desk.
I don't know the details, but I think part of it is funding for technology to sniff out this fentanyl in the postal service.
So in other words, if China is mailing stuff to the United States, fentanyl, there's some technology that would allow us to detect it.
So that part I like that part.
But somebody made the following suggestion.
I want you to tell me what's wrong with it.
And you have to understand that we're already in a trade dispute with China.
So this would be an extension of the existing trade dispute.
But somebody suggested that we jack up the postal fees for any parcels or letters coming in from China.
And I don't know how that works.
I don't know how international postal fees are set, but I assume that the receiving country gets to decide what the fee is for the sending country.
I assume that's how it works, right?
So if we could jack up our postal fees for any parcels coming in from China, we could use that money to fund the technology for checking their mail.
Now, if you're saying to yourself, well, money isn't the problem or let's not throw that into the mix or any of that, you're missing the point.
Here's the point.
I want to see at least one tariff on China that really gets a lot of attention and jacking up the postal.
The postal fees would because the public understands postal fees.
So that's a topic the public understands.
But the point would be to draw attention to China as the biggest fentanyl abuser, perhaps killing as many as 30,000 Americans per year.
30,000 people a year killed by stuff that comes in the mail from China, fentanyl in particular.
Now, if we were to say we're in this broader trade war anyway, But on top of that, or with this, we're going to jack up the postal prices from China just to deal with this one issue.
Because what that does is it focuses like a laser on the shame of China.
See, right now we're saying to China, China, your trade deals are unfair.
We'd like you to change them.
But when you say stuff like that, it sort of makes China sound kind of awesome, doesn't it?
That China has better trade deals than we do?
It doesn't make them sound like losers.
It makes them sound like winners.
Now, they'll probably lose in the long run, but at the moment, it's almost a compliment to China to say that their deals are better than our deals.
We need to change that specifically for this topic.
So let's jack up their postal rates.
And again, I don't know if this is a practical idea.
There may be other reasons that we can't do that.
But jack it up.
And then we would have a laser-like focus on the shame and the loss of face in China for allowing the situation to continue.
Because we do assume that the government in China does have more control over these illegal labs Then perhaps they're exerting.
So here's what I'd like to see.
I'd like to see us jack up our postal rates for China and make a big deal about it because it's the publicity about it that's the important part.
It's not the extra money you get.
It's not the extra fees you get by jacking up the postal rates, if that could work.
Again, this is just a, you know, I'm brainstorming here.
But it would be impossible It would be impossible to miss that connection.
It would be a huge headline, and it would focus the brand of China on the thing that actually probably is the most important thing right now, not counting maybe North Korea.
No, it's more important than North Korea.
I would say if you're looking at just counting the number of dead, the fentanyl thing is probably more important than North Korea right now in terms of a risk-reward thing.
So that's just a suggestion.
Here's another suggestion I was thinking about.
You know, I've been working with Bill Pulte on the Blight Authority.
The Blight Authority is Bill's non-profit that bulldozes and removes blighted inner-city properties and takes them down to bear land.
And then I'm helping Bill try to get some attention on some New ideas, things that we could do with that bladed land that would make it productive.
And I had the following suggestion.
To build a rehab city.
So a city within a city.
So it's more than one house that's a rehab house, or more than one facility.
It's an actual, almost like Vatican City, but within a city.
Because the inner cities have enormous problems with drug issues.
And my experience with the fentanyl opioid addiction is that the best way to think of this is almost like a zombie apocalypse.
If you've ever seen anybody who's on Xanax, which is usually fake Xanax, they're essentially zombies.
And even though they're walking and talking, and even if you know them, you don't see any part of their original personality.
They become the drug.
And once you've been bitten by the virus, if you will, I'm using that in a literary way, not a literal way, Once you have the virus, in other words, once you're addicted to the opioids, it seems like the only thing that matters is whether you can keep them physically away from the supply for a long time.
And so if you had a rehab city, a high-security place that has more than just a few houses in it, it could have commerce, it could have training, it could have schools, And it just keeps this population away from opioids long enough that they have a chance of, you know, reintegrating into society.
Believe it or not, the biggest problem with doing stuff like this is...
Who said LOL, Rehab City is a bad idea, bud?
Let's... Let's block you for making comments in all caps.
So, again, these are just ideas.
And what you'll find is that there are plenty of people who have money and want to help.
In other words, there's actually an oversupply of billionaires Who would literally like to do something useful with their money.
And what they lack are serviceable, good, practical ideas.
One of the things that the Gates Foundation does so brilliantly is they solve that problem for Bill Gates and some other billionaires.
So the Gates Foundation doesn't just give billionaires money to charities.
It actually does the hard work of figuring out what's the best thing to do with your money.
So it turns out that the problem is figuring out what to do.
The problem is not money.
It's not willingness.
It's not knowing what the problems are.
And I'm talking about problems in general, at least in the inner city types.
So those are two ideas.
I'll just throw those out there. Let's talk about the unrest because of the Kavanaugh situation.
Are any of you worried that this unrest will lead to some kind of a broader meltdown in society?
My take on it is that we're not even close to anything like that.
That there's no real risk of that.
And here's my take. The protests we've seen so far Correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, you wouldn't know if I was wrong, but you can suspect I'm wrong.
Here's my take on all the protests.
I would label them as cathartic theater.
In other words, people are protesting Because it feels bad and that the protesting feels good.
In other words, the current situation is unpleasant to them and they don't have a productive way to get out the feelings.
And so the protest is allowing them to express their feelings in a theatrical way.
And I mean theatrical in not really a negative way.
Because if it helps, it helps.
And if people need to get their feelings out and this helps them do it, maybe that's good.
So to me, it looks like a safety valve.
And you've seen the people dressing up, right?
Most of the protests have some form of theater or sign or costume or something like that.
And even the people who are The protesters who are attacking people in restaurants.
When I say attack, I mean verbally attacking in restaurants.
The people who are trapping senators in elevators.
When you see the video, it feels like theater because they are acting for the camera and it comes across that way.
So I would not be too worried That what you're seeing turns into some kind of a civil war.
But I would say this.
We have a system that pretty much guarantees that everything that happens now of any major political interest will turn into this.
Let me give you a bad analogy.
The fight over Kavanaugh And really every political fight that happens these days is a little like climate change.
This would be the worst analogy you've ever heard.
And I'm not even done yet.
In the sense that the idea behind climate change, whether you believe this or not, or what degree you believe it or what parts you believe, just follow the analogy for a moment.
The idea is that...
Global warming is going to create super storms and huge droughts.
The idea behind global warming is not just that the temperature goes up, but that in major pockets it will cause disasters.
So there will be too much rain and flooding over here, too much drought over here, too many hurricanes over here, etc.
And by analogy, and again for my analogy it doesn't matter that you believe that, I'm just using that as a model to make this point.
The current form of politics is like climate warming, meaning that the current business model for the media, the news, is to get you as worked up as possible.
So it didn't used to be the case that the job of the news was to make you angry.
That was never the job of news.
The job of news was to tell you what's happening in some kind of objective way.
And even the people competing against each other, they competed to do the best job of just giving you the facts.
Now, I'm oversimplifying, but that's generally true.
Now the business model has changed because we can measure the impact of any kind of difference.
So if one network tries something and it works, they can measure it, the other networks can measure it, and suddenly they have to do that thing.
So you have the situation where the news is competing to see how much they can jack up your emotions.
So instead of trying to present you with information in the form of news, the news media model has evolved because we can measure all the impacts of our actions into something that's really just designed to get you excited.
So like global warming, everything that happens in politics from now on, or at least until that business model evolves into something else, so the current permanent situation is that whether you took out President Trump and replaced him with anybody else, a Democrat, you could replace the president with anybody, and from now on, it will always look like this.
And probably will keep increasing.
Now the good news is, I think our system can take a lot of increase.
Because it's mostly this cathartic theater increase.
You know, people are not picking up weapons.
They're not. You know, the left is not arming itself.
Or even close.
They're not talking about it.
They're not trying to. They're trying to use every legal maneuver they can.
And I have to tell you, When I see the left using every scheming legal maneuver, you have to first of all balance that against the fact that the right also uses every scheming legal maneuver they can.
Well, I'm not sure that's bad because it sort of stress tests our system.
You know, we've got this system and can you beat the crap out of the system and the system's still there?
It's kind of one of the things I like about the flag, right?
The flag of, you know, the United States, the American flag, in my opinion, One of its greatest qualities is that you can destroy it, like you can burn it, you can tarnish it, you could destroy an American flag, and when you're done, the American flag is stronger.
What else is like that?
Can you think of anything like that?
The American flag, if you destroy it in public, it gets stronger.
Because everybody who watches it says, that's our system.
Thank you. You just confirmed the power of the flag, that you can burn it right in front of the public and you don't go to jail for that.
That is the power of the flag.
Well, when I watch the protests, and it looks like cathartic theater to me, there's some stress testing of the system, but the system is really strong.
I mean, we have a really strong system, and it's partly the Constitution, and it's partly the way we've been socialized.
So I'm pretty optimistic about the system, but what you should expect forever Until the business model of the media changes, is that what you think is Trump derangement syndrome is just derangement syndrome.
Trump might make it a little bit worse, but the fact is, if you just replaced him with a Republican, you replaced him with a generic Democrat, it didn't matter.
It wouldn't matter who you replaced him with.
We're now at a point of, let's say, political warming.
Well, there we go. I turned that into something.
It's not climate warming, and whether or not that exists or is what people predicted it will do, etc., is separate from the analogy.
We have now political warming.
We are in a permanent cycle of warming in politics.
There will be bigger hurricanes and there will be bigger droughts and bigger cyclones and stuff.
But guess what?
The planet Earth When a hurricane wipes out a town, what do we do every time?
We build it back stronger and we create jobs and we stimulate the economy while we're doing it.
If you look at the tragedy in Puerto Rico, which nobody can be happy about, it's impossible to know how much better or worse that could have been done.
We don't really have anything to compare it to.
But we know that a lot of people died, and that's a tragedy.
We know that the entire infrastructure was just totally smashed.
But what's going to happen to Puerto Rico?
Well, I can guarantee you what will happen to Puerto Rico.
It is part of America.
We deal with these things the same way every time.
It's like the flag. You can flatten Puerto Rico, but we're going to build it back stronger.
So, I wouldn't worry too much about the fate of the world.
We're pretty good at this stuff.
And we can take a lot of cathartic theater.
Now, the president very cleverly tweeted this morning that the...
I'm going to have to find the exact words here, if you don't mind.
I'm going to look at the president's tweet about the left getting out of control.
I think that was this morning.
We'll see how quickly I can find it.
If I can't find it quickly, I won't make you wait.
All right. And the president says...
I tweeted too much today.
So this is the president's tweet from this morning, I guess.
Or yesterday. From yesterday.
He says, you don't hand matches to an arsonist.
And you don't give power to an angry left-wing mob.
Democrats have become too extreme and too dangerous to govern.
Republicans believe in the rule of law.
Not the rule of the mob.
Vote Republican. Now, one of my favorite techniques that you've seen the president use a number of times is that if there's some attack that the other side is using that's getting some traction, He'll often just take the gun out of their hand and turn it around.
And the traction that they were getting is calling Kavanaugh, saying that Kavanaugh had a bad temperament.
So that whole temperament thing was getting some traction.
I don't know if it ever made a difference on the right, but on the left, just to clarify, the idea of the Of the rehab city was not that it's a concentration camp.
I'm not talking about a mandatory commitment to it.
That wasn't the idea.
So that might be why some of you didn't like it before.
Completely voluntary, like any rehab.
So anyway, the president has taken the gun out of the hand of his enemies and flipped it around as he does.
Do you remember when he was accused of fake news?
And he turned fake news into his brand against the other side.
When you think of fake news now, you pretty much think of CNN automatically.
And he's doing the same thing here.
So the anti-Kavanaugh people were saying, Temperament, temperament.
He doesn't have the temperament.
Now the president, without using that word, because that would be a little too on the nose, he's saying that they're an angry mob, and they're too extreme and too dangerous, and they don't like the rule of law.
What's all that say? Well, kind of gets the temperament.
And somebody made a suggestion.
Now, I retweeted his tweet and I said, now I understand why Democrats believe they shouldn't be allowed to own guns.
You think about it?
This is Boo.
Let me show you how to hold the cat.
By the way, if you've never tried to hold a cat that doesn't like to be held, this is the way you do it.
You put your hand here, and this works with most cats.
This is very comforting.
If I were to hold her any other way, she'd be squirming.
But when I see this, I put the back hand on the butt.
Backhand on the butt. Front hand right into the chest bone.
And then this cat, which normally does not like to be held.
She doesn't like to be held any other way, but she goes completely limp like this.
It's her favorite thing in the world.
All right. She didn't see enough of me yesterday.
So as I was saying, Somebody on Twitter suggested that since the Democrats seem to have a temperament problem, and at the same time, the Democrats are anti-gun.
Alright, so put these two together.
The Democrats are anti-gun, and they also seem to have a temperament problem because they're rioting and they're doing the cathartic theater thing.
So somebody suggested that we pass a law that Democrats can't own guns.
Now, the first time you hear that idea, passing a law that says Democrats can't own guns, the first time you hear that you say to yourself, well, that's a ridiculous, just joke idea.
But here's what's so funny about it.
If you're a Democrat, don't you believe that some gun control is better than none?
Right? So if you were to say to a Democrat, let's just be completely rational here.
Republicans will never give up their guns.
But you believe, you Democrats believe, that more guns is worse and more people with guns is worse.
So why don't we start somewhere where we can all agree.
Let's just start where we all agree.
We all agree that if you're a registered Democrat, you shouldn't have a gun.
Now, would Democrats disagree with gun control for Democrats?
It's an interesting argument, isn't it?
Because on one hand, it's ridiculous on its surface because you don't make laws that only affect some people who have voluntarily signed up to be in a party.
You don't do that.
But on the other hand, it's what they want.
This is one of those rare situations where there's a group of the public who is advocating to reduce their own rights.
You don't often see that.
I'm sure there are other examples, but so the gun control people are advocating to limit their own rights, their own rights of gun ownership.
They'd like to limit everybody else's rights too.
But isn't it a step in the right direction?
Logically, I can't make an argument why that's not a good idea.
It's ridiculous and a good idea at the same time.
And I can't reconcile it, right?
You're having the same reaction, aren't you?
I can tell from the comments that some of you, you're having the same brain spin that I had, which is, that's totally ridiculous!
But why? Half of gun control is better than none.
And for most Democrats, most of them don't want a gun.
So why don't they first ban gun ownership of other Democrats?
Because you know who could vote for that?
Republicans. Republicans might actually vote for that and just say, you're allowed to own a gun unless you've registered Democrat.
Now keep in mind that that law could never pass, I don't think, unless the Democrats were actually in favor of it.
But why wouldn't they be?
Why wouldn't they be?
I don't know. Alright, let's talk about the North Korea summit.
Lost in the headlines, the Kavanaugh stuff sort of wiped everything else off the headlines.
But lost in all that is that Pompeo apparently had a very productive trip to North Korea.
And they're talking about having another summit, meaning the president would meet with Kim again, maybe in this country.
I think the next one would be here.
But they're talking about as soon as possible.
Listen to that term.
They want to have a summit, and both sides have agreed that they want it as soon as possible.
Now, maybe you always want them as soon as possible.
It could be nothing. But I'll tell you what it feels like, given the other reporting about this.
It feels like North Korea is just racing against their own bad economy.
In other words, it seems to me this is what I feel, you know, I don't have all the details, but this is what it feels like, just reading the tea leaves.
It feels like they're so close to the real deal, the real thing, that at least mentally Kim is on board with denuclearizing.
He just needs the right mechanism, work out the details, do the little political dance, do the PR dance, figure out how to manage it with his people and all that.
But it seems to me that he's mentally committed to this, which is...
All we ultimately need to make it happen.
And that they'd like to get it going as quickly as possible, because the sooner they get something concrete going for inspections and denuclearization, the sooner we can start flooding money into the country in investment, the sooner they can eat.
So it's feeling to me Like something really good's happening there.
And when you look at the week the president's having with unemployment at 3.7, which is crazy, and you're looking at the judges that he's putting on the courts, and you look at ISIS is completely obliterated, as far as I can tell, at least as a territorial power.
We haven't had a major We've had a terrorist attack lately.
It's been a while. You know, and even my biggest issue, the opioid crisis, the government is producing, and I believe the president will sign it.
Now, that one's not a Republican-only deal.
That's a nonpartisan deal, so if Congress gets that right, that credit goes to both sides.
It's starting to feel like President Trump in two years might be the most consequential, maybe the most successful president in a hundred years.
In his first two years.
I don't think that's an exaggeration, is it?
I'm always on guard for when my bias kicks in and I'm blind to it.
But I think...
On objective things which you could measure, you know, ISIS economy, terrorism, and North Korea, and maybe even the trade deals.
The trade deals are starting to come online now.
These are pretty measurable things.
These are sort of yes-no binary things plus measurable things.
It's going to be hard to make an argument that he's not the most successful president in a hundred years.
And you could come really close to the argument that he is the best president ever.
Again, I'm trying to watch my bias, but I'm thinking, what are the things you measure?
You would measure social justice, right?
So social justice would be a big thing.
And even before President Trump, we had pretty much a lot of, at least in terms of the law, we had social justice.
You know, gays can marry, blah, blah, blah.
Things are looking good on social justice.
But, you know, the economy, ISIS, North Korea, denuclearization, trade deals, cutting regulations, these are pretty big things.
Oh, I forgot the debt increased.
Yeah, the debt's a tricky one.
So let's talk about the things which his critics could criticize him of.
The debt. Climate change, for those who think there's a different way to handle it.
And race relations, I would argue that race relations are a problem of political warming.
You know, what I was talking about before, the business model of the media requires them to amp up anything that looks like a problem.
So I would say the race relations stuff is at least 80% a product of the media.
Because if they simply reported the news objectively...
There wouldn't be much of a race problem.
It's the way it's reported that turns the president's politically incorrect statements into something horrible.
Well, healthcare is a good example too.
But here's the thing you have to consider.
No president before has ever solved health care.
So it's not like you can look at President Trump and say, well, those other presidents did great with health care.
He messed up on this.
I would say he's not successful on health care.
Not successful. So I would agree with his critics there.
But nobody else was either.
So if you're trying to compare who's the greatest president Healthcare is kind of a push, right?
Healthcare is the thing that no president got right.
So that's sort of a tie.
Then you have to go down and look at the other stuff to see if you can break the tie.
Climate change. What president has gotten climate change right?
None. Right?
None. No president has ever gotten climate change right.
So again, on that level, How do you grade this president?
You'd say just as bad as every other president, or if you're in the other camp, you'd say just as good as any other president.
But similar. Nothing happened.
However, President Trump has done a good job of goosing the economy.
And a strong economy does put you in a much better position for dealing with either the remediating climate change or solving it more aggressively with better technology later.
You need a strong economy to do any of that stuff.
So you could argue that he's done more for climate change to remediate it than any other president only because he ignored it and worked on the economy.
Because you need all that money and that economic wherewithal to make any difference if you're going to act.
But on the things that all presidents have been dealing with, or other presidents have been dealing with, so other presidents have had economies, other presidents have had North Korea problems, other presidents have had terrorism problems, ISIS problems, Middle East problems, etc. So on the things that other presidents have dealt with, Trade deals.
Other presidents have had trade deals.
So on all the things that other presidents have also dealt with in their own ways, it feels like he's the most successful.
And I'm completely understanding that the other side does not agree with that.
Contemporary presidents, though. - Humans don't control climate.
You know, I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
If your argument about climate change is on the science, you're not really on a strong position.
The science part of climate change Even Republicans who have studied it agree that all other things being equal, if you add CO2, and humans do, there should be some warming, if all else being equal.
That part seems real.
The part that is not science, but gets confused with science, is the models.
The what happens.
You know, the prediction.
The prediction stuff is bordering on astrology.
But the basic science of whether you added CO2 to a system, it would warm.
Now, I know what you're saying.
You're saying plants need CO2. That is...
I don't know how to say this.
I don't want to insult you because a lot of people have this view.
The people who talk about climate change and say plants need CO2 are not in the conversation in any serious way.
Here's why. Plants do need CO2. The risk is that there would be too much of it and it would cause warming that would be worse than the greening.
So CO2 does cause greening.
But it also causes warming.
And the issue is, there's some amount of warming, some amount of warming, theoretically, that would make the greening not enough of a benefit to pay for it.
So, if you want to have a good argument The CO2 is good for the plants is true, but it's not a good argument.
Because the question is whether there's some amount of warming that will destroy the planet, even though CO2 is good for plants.
So don't use that argument if you're trying to be serious in this conversation.
Likewise, those of you who say CO2 doesn't cause warming, You're not really the good arguers.
And believe me, I have empathy toward the argument that the climate warming is oversold and overblown.
So I'm sort of leaning in your direction.
But don't say stuff like CO2 doesn't cause warming.
You could say there are other things also that cause warming, perhaps.
There are other factors.
But don't say CO2 doesn't cause warming.
And don't say that humans don't cause it.
Because those are the things that even Republicans who don't believe there's a big problem, even they believe that.
On the science part, that is pretty settled.
The part that's not settled is if there are other variables that we haven't taken into account.
that part it's hard to know yeah I mean so here's the other thing For those of you who think the sun and the sunspots are the better explanation of climate change, that's a terrible argument.
Again, I'm not on the other side of you.
I'm not on the other side.
I'm just saying that your own argument that the sun is the cause of the global warming with the sunspots and whatever is a terrible argument.
It's a terrible argument, because science has largely discounted that.
And even Republicans who study it would agree with that statement.
Those of you who have seen something on the internet from somebody who showed you a graph that showed it tracks well with the sunspots, just understand that there are all kinds of graphs They seem to show all kinds of things and it doesn't mean anything.
The matching a graph to some other thing is something you could do with a lot of random coincidences.
So for example, you've probably seen that there's a website, I forget what it is, but they do this humorous thing where they track The number of bathtubs produced with the number of murders.
They find all these correlations where the lines are almost perfectly matched, but it's just a coincidence.
So the solar flare stuff falls into that category.
You can find somebody will give you a graph that matches up, but the people who work in this field have largely entirely debunked solar flares.
So when the left calls the right anti-science, these are the things they're talking about.
I would say it's a mistake to say that CO2 doesn't cause warming.
It would be accurate to say it's hard to predict how much of a problem that is, if any.
If you say CO2 is good for plants, therefore everybody is stupid, That's not smart, and that's being anti-science.
Because CO2 is good for plants, but unlimited warming will kill us all.
So if unlimited warming is happening, it doesn't matter that your point is true that CO2 is good for plants if you're still dead.
So don't use bad arguments.
The good argument If you want one, is to go after the projections, the models, because the models are not science.
They're something scientists do, and they may have some value in understanding how variables work together, you know, internal to the science, but I don't think they have predictive ability.
There is no unlimited warming.
Well, we don't know, do we?
If whoever said Unlimited, I was hoping that you would understand when I said unlimited that that did not literally mean unlimited.
So if you're arguing about my choice of words that unlimited actually means it will go up forever and will turn into the sun, that wasn't the point.
The point was that the temperature can go up a lot and it can go up In theory, enough to have grievous risk to the world.
That part, you know, show me the data.
Showing you the data wouldn't help you at all.
And that argument is very weak.
You and I cannot look at climate science data and make anything out of it.
We can't. Because we don't know if the data is real, we don't know how it was collected, we don't know if it's biased.
So the other worst argument about data, climate science, and this is the worst, weakest argument.
I have personally looked into all the science, and even though I'm not a science, I'm pretty smart.
I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty smart.
I did my own research, looked deeply into this whole climate science thing, and I've made a decision.
I've taken a side. That is the weakest argument you'll ever hear.
It's also the most popular one.
Why? Because there is no way that a citizen who is not a climate scientist who is up to their neck in the current climate science knowledge could have any hope of understanding the field.
The only thing you could see is the graphs that are probably coincidences, the liars, the fakes, the phonies, the people who got papers published but they shouldn't have.
The whole climate science field is mostly false information, I think.
And if it's not mostly false information, I can say for sure that you can't tell the difference.
You and I can't tell the difference.
So just give up on that.
You have to make your decision based on things that are a little more solid than a citizen's ability to understand climate science by reading about it on the internet.
That's just not a thing.
Not all 33,000 scientists were climate specialists.
It is fair to say, for those of you who say that there's not as much agreement on climate, I think that's a good argument.
So it's a good argument to say That we don't know exactly how much agreement there is.
Because the biggest problem with that whole 98% of scientists agree thing or whatever the number is, the big problem with that is that the thing they're agreeing on is the thing that even the critics agree on.
Let me say that again because it's so important.
The thing that 97% of climate scientists or even just scientists in general agree about It's the same thing that the skeptics agree on.
That if you were to add CO2 to the system, all other things being equal, it could warm up.
That's it. So everybody agrees on that.
So when you say 97% of scientists agree on climate scientists, it is also true that the vast majority of skeptics agree with that.
That's the one thing both sides agree with.
What they don't agree with is the non-science spark where you're looking at models and the models are not science.
Alright, enough on that.
You could teach people how to be boring, somebody said.
It's funny, I was feeling the same thing as I was talking.
The longer I talked, the more I was thinking to myself, is this boring?
It feels like it's boring.
The Earth's temperature has always fluctuated.
That's a good argument. No, it's not.
No, it's not. So somebody said the argument is that the Earth is always getting warmer or always getting cooler.
And therefore, you know, that's the whole story.
You know, it's always going one way or the other.
That's not the answer to climate science.
Because if the world is already getting warmer, in other words, if we're in an extended warming spell...
It's going to make it worse if we add stuff that'll make it warmer.
In theory. So, in theory, the fact that it's warming for a long period will make it even more dangerous that we're adding warming to it.
So, my wife is listening, so finish strong.
Andrew? And Andrew's wife?
It's a challenge. The challenge is to finish strong.
I'm going to finish this periscope with the strongest possible statement.
Are you ready for it?
Here it is. It's time for the simultaneous sip.
And that's it. That is the most important thing I'm going to say today.
So Andrew and Andrew's wife, join me, will you?
Grab your mugs, your cups, your chalices for the second simultaneous sip.
And then we're going to say, have a good Sunday.
Mmm, I hope your coffee is warmer than mine is.
I guess I talked for a long time there.
Alright, that's all for now.
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