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Jan. 5, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
45:54
Episode 362 Scott Adams: AOC Derangement Syndrome, Shutdown Persuasion, Wall Funding, and Karate
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Hey, it's the weekend, and it's always time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
That's me. And if you're here early, it means that you will be in time for the simultaneous sip.
Yes, it's your lucky day.
I guess all the planets lined up this time.
And so... If you're here and you're ready and you're prepared, please raise your mug, your cup, your glass, your container, your tankard, your stein, your chalice, if you will.
Fill it with your favorite liquids.
I like coffee. And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, yeah.
So, it looks like I'm dressed up, but I literally just put on a soft, warm shirt because it was cold.
That's it. This is like a really soft shirt.
All shirts should be made out of whatever the hell this is made out of.
You should throw away all your shirts, except whatever this is made of, and I don't even know what it is.
So, the most amusing story in the news, if you saw it on CNN's website, I'm not sure where it was, but somewhere in the United States, there was a woman who was accosted and almost kidnapped by a man in a parking lot.
The woman broke away from the would-be kidnapper and ran into the closest local store that was open, which happened to be a karate training center.
The perpetrator Chased her into the karate training center.
Now, the best part of this story is you don't have to wonder how it ended.
It's a story where you hear the setup and you already know how the story went, right?
So she chases this guy into a karate training center where, as you might imagine, the students...
Or maybe not that capable yet.
But they did have an instructor.
And apparently the instructor confronted the perpetrator.
And the only pictures we have of it are the perpetrator being taken out on a gurney.
Best advertisement for a karate center ever.
In fact, When this karate instructor redoes his marketing, he should just take the one clip from the news of the perpetrator's feet.
All you can see is his feet sticking out under the gurney as the ambulance is taking him away.
Now, apparently the police got into it too, so we don't know exactly if the real damage to this guy was done by the karate instructor or the police.
I assume that he couldn't have fought with the police unless he was still on his feet enough to fight with them after the karate instructor was done with him.
But it doesn't make it any less funny because this was a guy who did not know how to pick a fight.
He lost a fight with a woman, a karate instructor, and the police in one day.
All right. The funniest thing that's happening on social media and in the news is an astonishing lack of awareness.
The kind that just makes your head go...
Sorry, I'm laughing too hard here.
And it goes like this.
In 2015, Do you remember people like me and Mike Cernovich, notably, were saying things like, this Trump candidate guy is a lot more powerful than you think.
And when he's making claims such as he's gonna deport 14 million people or he's gonna cut taxes and we'll make it up with our greater income collection from greater profits, people like me were saying, Well, none of that's real, but could get him elected.
You just have to not take the extreme stuff too seriously, because that's the stuff that gets moderated after you get elected.
And of course, everybody told me I was crazy and told Mike Cernovich he was crazy, I'm sure.
And then we got ourselves President Trump, because it turns out that we had correctly identified his persuasion skills and that they are as powerful as you think.
Fast forward to 2019.
AOC is doing exactly the Trump playbook.
She goes on 60 Minutes, I think, and says, hey, maybe we should have a 70% tax rate on the super rich.
Heads explode, hair on fire.
My God, she must be stopped.
It's the craziest thing.
How impractical is that?
Doesn't she know she can't do math?
It is exactly Trump 2015.
It's his play. It worked in 2015.
It's working now.
If you go on social media and you say to me, Scott, how blind can you be?
You idiot. Her plans are bad.
She's just a young person who has no understanding of the world.
She doesn't know policies.
You are agreeing with me.
You think you're disagreeing.
But the more you argue with me, the more you're agreeing.
My point is that she's making you do that.
If she makes you do that, that's my point.
The more you come after me to tell me I'm wrong, the more I'm right.
That's how it works.
The more energy she creates in you, the more I'm right.
If you come and yell at me five times and tell me that, no, she's not the real thing, that proves I'm right.
If you come back to me and yell at me 10 times that I'm wrong, that means I'm twice as right.
If you yell at me 20 times that I'm wrong about this, I'm now four times as right as I was in the beginning.
Every time you tell me I'm wrong, you're proving me right, because you can't stop talking about her, and that's the point.
She's all about the energy.
She's about the attention.
And if you're talking about her lack of understanding of how socialism works, you are missing the show.
Just like the other side missed it in 2015.
So it is hilarious to watch the low level of awareness about exactly what she's doing and how it's affecting people.
And I don't exactly know how to react to it.
Because I've never seen a case so clear where every time the critics complain, they're just proving my case.
Alright, that's enough about that.
So, let's talk about negotiations for the wall.
So do you remember that it wasn't long ago, the news was reporting that Pence had maybe offered that somewhere like $2.5 billion might be good enough if they could reach an agreement.
And then Nancy Pelosi was saying something like, zero money, zero money for the wall.
And the high number that we'd heard recently, the recent high, had been $5 billion.
What did President Trump, the master persuader, do In a situation in which the anchors had been co-opted.
The anchors, in this case, are the mental number that people have in their head.
The mental number had started at around five billion, but because other people were getting more attention, Pence was getting attention at two-five, Pelosi was getting attention at zero.
And even the news was saying, well, maybe it could be 1.5, maybe it could be 1.8.
What about 3 billion?
These are all bad anchors from the president's point of view.
Because if people are thinking the smaller number, then they're already thinking past the 5 billion, and they're thinking toward the low end.
So suddenly, the president says, the number is 5.6 billion.
Instead of negotiating toward the middle, he raised his first offer.
In the past two days, what number have you heard the most?
5.6.
He took their small numbers and wiped them off of your brain.
He reformatted the hard disk in your head and said, no, no, no, he got the wrong anchor in there.
We're going to put even a bigger number.
Do you know why 5.6 is brilliant?
Because there's something wrong with it.
That's what makes you remember it.
You know what's wrong with 5.6?
Why is it higher than 5?
Where in the world did.6 come from?
Do you think there was somebody who did an analysis and came up with, ah, it's really 5.6?
These numbers are completely arbitrary.
The fact that he made it 5.6 instead of, let's say, an even 6 or an even 7...
It's also part of the persuasion.
You've seen this a million times, right?
In your normal life.
If somebody comes to you and says, I think it'll cost $10 million.
Do you think they've really done the numbers?
Because 10 million is like a suspiciously round number.
But if somebody comes to you and says, I think this is going to cost $9,753,000.
Immediately, you say to yourself, oh, well, at least somebody has a spreadsheet.
You know, they've worked the numbers.
It doesn't mean it's accurate, but it means they've really worked on the numbers because they came down to this pretty specific number.
The president's counter with an higher number that happens to be, you know, a weird number.
It's not a round number. You know, it's an even number, but not a round number.
5.6 is wrong.
It's wrong in your head.
You immediately recognize it as moving in the wrong direction.
Wait a minute. Wasn't that five billion supposed to get negotiated lower?
Why is it bigger?
So it's wrong that it sticks in your head.
It sticks in your head because it's a little bit wrong.
It strikes you as something out of place.
So the president has cleverly regained the anchor.
So he's re-anchored it at 5.6, which gives the other side room to negotiate down to 5, which is hilarious.
Now, you might say to yourself, wait a minute, Scott, the fact that all of this is so obvious to everybody, isn't it obvious what he's doing?
Yeah, it is. It's also obvious what Pelosi is doing.
It's obvious what everybody's doing.
It still works.
That's sort of the magic of persuasion.
It doesn't matter that you know the technique and you recognize it being used against you.
It still works, because persuasion is operating on a non-rational level, and that's great.
Now, the president also has people Debating the nature of the barrier.
Will it be steel slats?
Will it be concrete?
If they're talking about that, they're already thinking past the sale of some kind of a physical border.
So he's got that working for him.
So he's got two little persuasion advantages going so far.
Now we've also got the who wins when the government is closed.
I've heard some people say that most of the government employees are Democrats.
I don't know if that's important because they're humans, right?
The more important factor here is that they're human beings and they're Americans.
So I don't think it's terribly important that maybe more of the employees are Democrat than Republican because clearly there'll be enough Republicans in the mix that that's not the biggest factor.
But take a look at their brands.
The Republican brand is let's have less government.
Now this close down doesn't really get you less government because whenever it starts back up you'll be right back where you were and they'll be paid back back wages etc.
So in any real sense there's nothing happening that would make the government smaller.
But when you close the government and nobody notices I haven't noticed.
Most of you haven't noticed.
Doesn't that play into the Republican brand a little bit better?
It's like, we could just close this thing for a year if we want.
So the other thing that President Trump has said is that he's put the anchor at a year.
Because when you were thinking about this close down of the government, weren't you thinking in terms of a day or two, maybe a week, could be two weeks, That's probably what you were thinking about, right?
Because everybody's brain was sort of in that period.
The president just said, how about a year?
I could take it for a year.
Now, I don't know if he can, but I love the fact that from a negotiating perspective, he said, I could wait a year.
Months? Year?
Absolutely. We could definitely do that.
That definitely puts the Democrats at a slight disadvantage because their brand is being nice to people.
Their brand is more government.
So the longer the shutdown goes, the more it works against their brand of kindness and getting the government working, and the more it works in favor of the Republicans who are more tough love and do we really need this much government anyway.
So that's good. Now the other important factor here is that Nancy Pelosi has, I wasn't sure she was gonna double down on this, but she has made one of the worst persuasion mistakes I've ever seen.
Now I could be wrong about this, so maybe this will play out differently than I expect, but I'd be surprised.
So Nancy Pelosi has talked herself into an irrational corner.
She said that walls are immoral.
Now, the first time she said it, I thought to myself, ah, she's just testing that out.
And when it falls flat, which I thought it did, she's going to back off of that, or she'll, you know, clarify it to mean something else.
But it turns out she doubled down and tripled down.
She's saying it clearly and publicly.
Walls are immoral.
Now, what happens when somebody asks her, and it might take a while because the mainstream media is more on her side than not, but what happens when somebody asks her in an interview, can you clarify this opinion that walls on the border are immoral?
Because we have lots of fence on the border, Do you suggest that we take down the borders that we have?
Because it wouldn't be expensive.
You wouldn't even have to take down the whole fence, right?
You just walk to the border and, you know, snip a hole in it, and you move this fence, which by Nancy Pelosi's view would be immoral, so that whatever border construction we already have should be immoral, according to this theory.
So, why isn't somebody asking her if we should get rid of the barriers we have?
Because you can't answer the question.
If somebody asks her that question, it will reveal her primary rejection of the barrier as being purely political.
Now, I think people get that it's purely political, but it still matters if you can embarrass people in public.
So I think she's talked herself into a corner and I don't exactly know how she gets out.
And the way to a solution is that she's going to have something that looks like a win at the same time that the president gets something that looks like a win.
So how can she win if she's taken an absolute stand against barriers?
You almost have to embarrass her off the stage.
In other words, you can't treat it seriously and still find a solution.
Because if you treat it seriously that barriers on the border are immoral, you kind of have to get rid of the ones you have.
You kind of have to stop even asking questions at border crossings, don't you?
So I think the path forward is that she has to be Humiliated and embarrassed off of that position, which is completely unsupportable.
And I don't know how long it will take the mainstream media to realize that they have to ask that question.
If Fox News is the only one asking it, she can just ignore it.
But you kind of have to get CNN and MSNBC to ask the question, what exactly do you mean by it's immoral?
Which isn't really good enough, because if you ask the question, In the abstract, can you explain why walls are immoral?
She'll say something like, well, we're a country built on immigration.
That's not really the answer, is it?
So you can't ask the general question because that will allow her a general weasel answer.
You have to ask a specific question.
Nancy? Do you think our existing fences and barriers on the border, of which there are many, there are many miles of existing fences and borders, do you think we should put a gate in them and open them up?
Because they're immoral.
Is that your position?
So you've got to get her down to that level of specificity to embarrass her off the point, because that's the only way you're going to be able to negotiate something.
And then secondly, Somebody sooner or later is going to suggest, as I've been telling you now for a month or so, sooner or later, somebody on one of the teams, it'll either be Trump or his team or it will be Pelosi and Schumer or their team,
somebody's gonna say, at least whenever they're ready to negotiate, somebody's gonna say, let's turn it over to the engineers and let them decide what borders make sense.
Because politicians should not be engineering.
As soon as they do that, as long as you get rid of this immoral thing.
So you have to embarrass that off the stage, which is easy, if you ask the right questions.
And then you've got a chance.
So, could take a while.
Could be fast. We don't know.
All right. The president's also said, That he believes he has the authority to declare a national emergency and instead of getting funding through the normal way, he could divert funding from other national security buckets and just build that border because the crime coming through the border and the risk of terrorists coming through,
etc., even though we haven't seen terrorists come through, at least successful ones, the argument still stands that they could come through and therefore it's a national emergency.
He obviously doesn't want to do that.
That's going to be the last chance, the last choice, but he does have the option.
The problem with that option is that the public doesn't see it as an emergency.
And when I say the public, I mean the side who doesn't want a wall in the first place.
Half of the public does see it, and they would agree, but they also agree with them on most stuff.
I don't think that's the best plan because it's gonna play into the dictator.
It would play into the whole dictator thing.
It's like, ah, he's ignoring the laws and declaring an emergency.
That's just what dictators do.
So he's wise to put that out there as a possibility, but without pushing that button too hard.
I think he is wise to say, you don't want me to do that.
That's a good play. All right.
So that's the most fun that's going on.
I want to mention again that when Trump was asked about freshman congressperson, what's her last name?
Tlaib? I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
But the one who called him a MF. And the president's response was, That she embarrassed herself and disgraced the country, and he basically took the position that's opposite of what he normally takes, because he's usually on the other end of this conversation.
But I thought it was transparently political, and it was obviously persuasion, and yet, still works.
Because the President is trying, it looks like he's trying to craft a reputation for being reasonable.
Notice that he's gone from concrete wall to, well, American steel is even better.
I'm not backing down from a concrete wall.
I have upgraded the plan from concrete, which isn't that good, to steel, which is even better.
So I think that's a good play, too.
But he's acting flexible in what he wants to call this border.
He was acting flexible in talking to people, and he's sort of taken this whole I would say his vibe from a DEFCON 10, where he's the dangerous crazy guy insulting people, down to more like a 6.
It might take a while for the rest of the world to notice.
Because he's going to have to stay on this lane for probably a month or two before it's going to look like a real change.
And if he does, and he keeps getting good material from the other side, if the other side keeps going, talking about impeachment and calling him an MF, and these things, they're going to look like the crazy ones in the conversation.
If he tunes down his crazy persuasion, it looks like he has.
Alright, so I think that's fun to watch.
Now, at the end of my periscopes, I like to do Small digestible bits of climate change discussion because the topic is so big that if you try to talk about it at all, all you get is whack-a-mole.
Like both sides have infinite whack-a-mole things.
So if you say, well, let me debunk this point, they'll just say, well, what about my other point?
So nobody can ever get anywhere because it's too big a topic.
But I want to see if I could boil this down to just a few things That are actually objective and can be checked.
Just the strongest points.
And I've got some candidates here for the strongest points.
And there are two things that the strongest points need to have.
They need to be solid points, but also something that the other side could check, whichever the other side is, depending on the point.
So it has to be checkable and a strong point.
And let me give you a few examples.
So the strongest argument on the climate alarm side, I wish there were another name for it, but let's call it that, because that's a biased name.
If you call them climate alarmists, you've already biased the label.
It would be better to say that they're, I don't want to call them, let's just call them the consensus.
Let's say the climate consensus because it takes the bias out of it.
Alarmist gives too much opinion.
So the climate consensus people say that the Michael Mann hockey stick graph where the warming goes like this and then suddenly it turns up is their strongest evidence because it's based on actual data.
Now, here's the argument.
The argument is some people say, well, but the temperature measurements were We're manipulated.
But the people who counter the skeptics say the following things.
There were adjustments, but the adjustments actually make it look like it's less warming, not more.
So the first thing you can check Is these two starkly opposite statements about objective facts.
These are all facts which apparently are public.
So there are public facts that the Tony Heller side says, look at these facts, they are public.
You can see that every time an adjustment was made, it made the warming look like it was greater in the current period.
What are the odds that every adjustment Would be in the direction that would make it look warmer.
The climate consensus people say that Tony Heller is just wrong and that you can look at exactly the same information and you can see very clearly that it's the opposite of what he says.
That those adjustments make it look less warm than it would have been if they had not adjusted it.
Now those two things are looking at the same data and they're saying up And one is saying down.
How in the world can we not settle that?
They're looking at the same data.
One says it's going up in terms of how it would change the graph.
One says it's going down.
That's got to be checkable.
Now, I can't check it because I don't have the skill, I don't have the depth, wouldn't have the context, but surely that could be checked.
So let's put that on the list of things that there's stark disagreement with, and I think it can be checked.
And this is different than, say, the climate models, because the climate models are complicated and there are a lot of judgment in there.
It's a little harder to check.
Now the other thing that the climate consensus says is that the adjusted temperatures in the past, the ones that are taken from thermometers and temperature gauges that are spread out around the world, they say that those are confirmed By other types of measurements.
So ice cores confirm it and tree rings confirm it, etc.
So they're saying we're not just looking at this.
Every way that we can measure temperature, and there might be five different ways I think, satellites included, every way that we do it gives us the same answer.
We still get the same graph.
I'm getting to the fun part, all right?
So the climate consensus says, no matter how you measure it, you get the same answer.
Hockey stick. Things of warming at a higher rate.
Here's the fun part.
I just saw a skeptic who said, and they looked like they were smart people who dug in pretty far.
So it wasn't just crazy people.
It was, you know, academics and scientists.
Academics, at least. They looked at Michael Mann's method.
They sort of dug into his method.
And here's what their claim is.
Are you ready for this?
This is the most fun thing you've ever heard.
Their claim is that the methodology he used to construct his hockey stick graph, you get the same graph with random data.
You heard that right.
You can take any data, just random data, and put it into his methodology, and then draw a graph, and it looks like this.
And they proved it by putting random data into his methodology and publishing the graphs, and they look just like his.
Now, I'm not going to say who's right.
All right? So I'm already getting a lot of pushback on social media for they think I'm taking a side.
So they think I'm a denier, which is not at all what I am.
I'm a citizen who is not a scientist.
Who can't tell the difference?
I can't look at climate science and decide what's true and what isn't.
I can look at the models that are projecting 80 years out, and I do have the background and the knowledge to know that those are not reliable.
But they're also mostly in the service of persuasion.
So the models are used for persuasion, and for that they work.
But when you're looking at the more basic science of have you measured this correctly, And now that you've measured it, have you put it on a graph and does it tell you, you know, does it at least explain the past and the recently observed present?
So that part, I have no visibility on.
I have no expertise.
I don't know if I'll ever know what's true in that domain.
So I'm coming at it as a true, let's say skeptic, because skeptical equals scientific.
In the way I use it, skeptical and scientific are really the same thing.
So I'm right in the middle.
I can be convinced either direction.
I could easily be convinced that the scientists are right about all of it, except for the models, which are ridiculous.
But I could be convinced it's a huge problem we have to deal with.
I could be convinced that it's not.
I don't even feel like I'm leaning in one direction at the moment.
But here's where I'm going.
There are some few things that we can just check and find out who's right.
The critics or the consensus of scientists.
And here's one that can be checked.
Can you put random data into Michael Mann's methodology and would it always give you the hockey stick?
That's a very specific claim.
And it seems to me that objective people could dig into this and confirm whether the critics who make this claim are right or whether that's complete BS. Wouldn't you like to know?
And again, if you told me to bet my life on who was right, Michael Mann, that he used reasonable temperature data that has multiple backups, meaning there are five ways to measure the temperatures and it all says the same thing.
Is that the case?
Is he right?
Or are the critics that they put random information into his methodology and got the same curve?
Let's check it out.
Let's find out. I'd love to know that.
The other things that are interesting are when you talk about the amount of ice on the world, you can find two opinions.
One, mostly coming from NASA and the IPCC. Basically, the scientific consensus is that the ice in the poles Is reducing.
And reducing at a fast rate, faster than could be explained by historically normal processes in which temperatures go up and down.
Isn't that something we can...
I'm sorry, I wanted to swear again.
But it's frustrating that that's even in dispute.
Because when I look at the skeptics, they tend to be pointing to articles that seem to be scholarly, or that, you know, it seems to be credible.
But, you know, I can't tell.
And when I look at the NASA stuff, it looks credible to me.
But so do the skeptics.
So it seems to me the question of, do we have more or less ice recently?
Are you telling me we can't even figure that out in a way that the public can decide what's the true story?
You know, you're always going to have disagreements, but it seems like that would be a kind of objective.
I feel like we should be able to figure that out, but maybe not.
And then there's the C-level.
Can't we just say, and I've said this before, Can't the climate consensus say, look, here's the deal.
We're going to make 10...
I would consider this fair.
We're going to make 10 sea level predictions, meaning for 10 locations on the planet.
Now, if you don't know this, sea level does not go up at the same amount everywhere on the planet.
If the ocean is warmer in one place, it expands so it would go up there.
So you don't get even, you know, even...
Sea level rises.
So let's say that the climate people say, okay, we're gonna pick ten places and tell you our best guess that these will have higher rises than other places and that it'll be a fast rise compared to what we know historically.
And then we wait five years.
And if they get, let's say they get seven out of ten right, Would you consider that persuasive?
Because I would. If the climate consensus made 10 predictions about sea level five years out, and they got 7 out of 10 right, I'd kind of agree with them at that point.
If they get 5 out of 10, I don't know, maybe that's a little sketchier.
Yeah, and so let's...
I tend to ignore the anecdotal stuff.
Somebody said the Maldives are rising, not lowering.
Anything about one coastline, one island, one hurricane, one storm, one year that was high or low, anything that has one in it, I'm not interested.
If you're telling me about one of something that happened, not interested.
Somebody is questioning my wife five years.
Why not five years?
We could certainly measure it in five years.
If it's real, we're going to see it in five years.
And if it's not real, I think we'd know in five years.
Predict air temperature, which changes faster.
Yeah, maybe. The trouble with the air temperature stuff is that then you would have to get back to, are our measuring devices accurate and, you know, have they changed over the next five years, that sort of thing.
All right, here are the...
I'm going to add to my list of bad arguments, one I just saw by...
water.
So one of the worst, let's not say worst, One of the weaker skeptical arguments is that water vapor is the strongest component of warming.
I would consider that one of the weaker arguments.
It's one of the most popular ones too, because it seems to me the climate consensus would have figured that out.
So here's a weak argument.
Let's say, I'm trying to think of, well, an analogy is just going to make things worse.
It's a weak argument because it's the most obvious thing that the climate consensus would look at.
The skeptics act as if they're the ones who discovered that water affects temperature.
I'm pretty sure that the entire scientific community has figured out that water vapor is a factor.
So those of you saying, nope, they hadn't figured out about water, that is so not credible as a complaint.
Well, let me put it this way.
The complaint that they're not considering water vapor would be a complaint like saying that they're not even scientists.
Like they're not even trying.
Now, again, I want to be very careful here.
It could turn out that the inability to calculate the water vapor is true and the point is valid.
But it is not true that the few skeptics who say, hey, it's water vapor, are smarter than the majority of scientists who say we've got control of that variable.
It's just not believable.
Even if it's right.
And again, I always like to remind you, I'm different from everybody else you're listening to who tells you what is right or wrong.
I don't know what's right or wrong.
I'm telling you what's credible based on the way it's presented.
So if you present to me That the main scientists who are the biggest experts in the world, thousands and thousands of them, have all neglected the biggest variable in the calculation, which is obvious to everybody, including me?
That's not credible.
Even if you're right.
Again, you could be right, but it's not believable.
There it is again.
Water vapor is a more important greenhouse gas than CO2, period.
Period.
Guess what makes your argument look stupid?
If you want to look stupid with your argument, and again, I'm not talking about the truth of your argument.
Here, I'll just talk about the way an argument is presented, your persuasiveness.
If you want me to think you're stupid, put period in words like P-E-R-I-O-D. At the end of your unsupported statement, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, period.
Or, I'd like to say it this way, because there's a dale on every side of the political spectrum.
It's water vapor, period.
Period. Water vapor.
Okay? And again, if a year from now, The climate scientists all say, oh my God, we didn't realize it's all water vapor.
I'm going to say you're right, that when you said water vapor is the big thing and they haven't gotten right, I'm going to say, my God, I was wrong about that.
You're right, but you're still stupid because of the way you're presenting it.
If you want to present a link to something scientific, et cetera, then okay.
But if you say, it's just water vapor, period, I don't want to hear it because you're just acting stupid and you don't belong in the conversation.
Here's another one. Would you like to see another one just like it?
It's the sun, Scott.
Do you see how big the sun is?
Here's a picture. The sun is this big.
The planet is this big.
The sun is a big flaming ball of heat.
That's where all of our energy comes from.
It's the sun. It's the sun, Scott.
Do you not understand? It's the sun.
Period. Stupid opinion.
So I would say the people saying it's the water vapor, period, and the people who are saying it's the sun, period, have the worst opinions, at least the way they're being presented.
Do you think the scientists had not taken a look at the sun?
So, do you think that the best scientists in the world have not considered that water and sun have something to do with the temperature?
Please, please stop saying that.
I'm gonna beg you to stop saying it's the sun and the water vapor, even if you're right, because You don't know.
But I'm pretty sure the scientists have looked into this.
Let me tell you something else that makes me crazy.
Why do we need climate models that go out 80 years?
Why do we need any complexity in climate science?
Here's what would completely convince me.
What would completely convince me is showing me the temperature for the last hundred years and to show me that the Michael Mann curve really happened.
Because if the Michael Mann hockey step curve is real, you don't have to show me your complete BS model of the future.
I'm gonna be looking to change something right away.
You do not have to convince me about the future if the Michael Mann hockey stick is real.
That's all I need.
Just make that real and stop talking, stop degrading your argument with these models.
So I would say, if I could make this recommendation to the world on both sides, If both sides stop leading with their dumbest arguments, we might get to something.
The dumbest argument on the climate consensus is that we've run a model for 80 years and we have a result.
That's just dumb. That's not real.
The dumbest argument on the skeptic side is that it's the sun, as if the scientists hadn't thought of that, Or it's water vapor.
I haven't thought of that.
Because here's the thing. If it's water vapor, the temperature's still rising and there's still something that's causing it.
And I don't think we have that much water vapor that we didn't have before.
Are we getting more water vapor than we used to have?
So I'll agree with the argument that says the models are useless because you can't model water vapor.
So I think that's true.
So I think if what you're saying is, I don't believe the future models because you can't model water vapor, I would say I agree with that.
But if you're saying that the water vapor explains Michael Mann's hockey stick graph of the things we can already see, then I say to you, why did water vapor become a problem suddenly?
Didn't we always have water vapor?
Pretty sure we had water vapor in the 20s.
Alright, so stop those bad arguments.
Alright, that is all I have to say.
And I would love to know if you can get the same hockey stick curve with random numbers as one skeptic claims or some skeptics claim.
And that's all I have for now.
And I'll talk to you.
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