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Jan. 16, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
54:56
Episode 376 Scott Adams: Kamala Harris, Some Fake News You Think is Real, and Climate Update
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Hey Jake, come on in here.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Guess who I am? You're right, I'm Scott Adams.
Probably didn't see that coming, but I'll bet you do have.
Your cup, your mug, your glass, your stein, your chalice.
And I'll bet you've filled it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me, please, for the simultaneous sip.
Somebody said there's an explosion in Syria.
Is that on CNN's page yet?
Oh, ISIS claims responsibility.
All right, well, that sounds like just more of Syria.
So, let's talk about Kamala Harris first.
Has everybody seen her video in which she talks about her favorite music and dances a little bit in her chair and laughs and has a good time?
I think most of you saw it.
If you're watching this Periscope, you probably watched that sort of thing.
If you haven't seen it, this won't make as much sense, but you have to know that Kamal Harris is one of the top, at least top five, I think probably top one, contender for the nomination.
And you know that recently everybody who's a Democrat is sort of accidentally or unconscious trying to compete with RPOS. So RPOS did her little video live streaming where she's in her kitchen and she did a little dancing video.
And now apparently other Democrats think that they need to get on board with the casual, fun, hey, I've got a personality, I'm young.
kind of vibe.
Elizabeth Warren was the first to fail with her beer drinking video.
Then we also saw Beto I think he did okay with his cooking video.
It was a little derivative.
It wasn't original.
And then he jumped the shark by live streaming his dental appointment.
And I'm thinking, okay, you do not get it.
If you are trying to associate your brand with dental pain, you don't understand how anything works.
So, Kamala Harris is the latest to, I'm guessing, take maybe some professional advice from people who don't give good professional advice, and it was to let her hair down and be a little less serious.
I think most of you have the same impression I did, which is when you've seen her, on TV especially, she seems a little too serious.
And so she needed to, I think, break out of that and show she had a personality and all that.
So she does a little video, I guess it was for the late show.
And here was my impression as I watched it.
So as I watched it, I cringed and I almost felt embarrassed for her.
And then I realized, it's probably perfect.
So, let me ask you.
I think most of you had the same impression, which is like...
But, do you think that her bass had the same impression?
Alright, let me tell you what I saw.
If you're a man, and some of you are, have you ever been driving a car where there are two or more women in the car?
Let's say you're the only man in the car, but there are two or more women in the car, and somebody turns on the radio.
How do all the women in the car start acting?
They start acting exactly like Kamal Harris.
In other words, women by themselves talking about music, listening to music, look kind of exactly the way she looked to me.
So if you are trying to be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party, which I think we have to admit is primarily going to be chosen by women, women are the dominant members of the Democratic Party, and they're going to decide who their candidate is.
So when you look at the Kamala Harris thing, do you say to yourself, oh, cringeworthy?
Well, you probably weren't going to vote for her anyway.
That's my guess.
But if you were a 20-something college woman and you looked at Kamala Harris, you know, laughing and having fun with that music, did you say to yourself, my God, that's cringeworthy?
Or did you say, oh yeah, that's me?
I do the same thing.
I like that music too.
Oh, yeah, she's shown some personality.
It's just exactly the way my girlfriends and I act when we're getting silly.
I think we're missing the power of that.
Remember that when President Trump was doing his President Trump or his candidate Trump stuff, what was the reaction on the other side?
The people who were never going to vote for him thought it was cringeworthy.
They're like, oh, I can't believe he's doing that.
It's like, oh, is he really saying that?
And then you have to remember that he was only talking to his base and they liked it.
And if you're looking at the primaries, you're not even talking to the whole base.
You can win the primaries by maybe getting 30% or whatever it is, but it's something less than half.
If you can control 30%, Then all the other candidates sort of disappear because they're taking up, you know, 2%, 3%, 5%.
So when she does something that so clearly appeals to the dominant force in the Democrat Party, in other words, she paces them.
She acts as silly as they may imagine that they act in their personal time.
And I'm not going to judge it.
So I'm not the one who's going to say, she shouldn't act like that or people shouldn't act like that.
It's just the way people act.
It is the normal way I observe females from probably the age of 10 to 60 who act when they're in a car and somebody turns on the radio.
They start singing along and dancing in their chairs and laughing very loud.
It's just completely normal.
So be careful about judging Kamala Harris for that.
Because she did show her personality and she did pace the dominant force that she was trying to get to.
So do not underestimate her.
Next, I want to really piss you off.
Are you ready for that?
Now, I'm going to go out on a limb today.
I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say some things that I guarantee you're not going to like.
I guarantee it.
But it's part of the reason that you watch my periscopes.
Because I think you have a little bit of trust that I'm not going to say just what you want to hear.
Alright? And here it is.
I'm going to start with a little setup.
Let's say you have a roommate, and your roommate is the only other person who has access to your home, and you're pretty sure of that.
This is a fake situation, but just imagine that you know your roommate's the only one who has access to your house besides you.
And you come home, and all your food has been eaten out of your refrigerator, the food that you're saving for yourself.
And you go to your roommate and say, why the hell did you eat all my food?
And your roommate says, I didn't eat your food.
And you say, you're the only person who has access to the house, besides me.
And your roommate says, that's what you think, but you did not account for alien technology.
Because I was here and I saw several of them beam into the kitchen, eat your food, and then beam back to their ship.
Which version of reality do you accept?
Do you accept the version of reality that's completely normal?
Your roommate ate your food and lied about it.
Completely normal. Or do you accept the version where it's hard to believe on its surface that aliens beamed into your kitchen and ate your food, right?
So generally speaking, let us agree that if there are two fully capable explanations of the same situation, one is completely normal and the other was just batshit crazy, you should go with the normal one, shouldn't you? I'm going to give you four examples that fall into this pattern.
Two of them you're going to love.
Two of them you're going to be really pissed off at me.
Are you ready? Number one.
President Trump is accused by CNN of praising white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.
There are two explanations for the story.
Explanation number one, the event in Charlottesville was about Confederate statues, which he'd talked about a number of times, and he was on the side of thinking that they were okay to leave them.
I'm not, but that's beside the point.
So when he said there were good people on both sides, one version of the story is, well, he means both sides of the statue question.
Some people like them, some people don't.
That's it. That would be the most normal He went in public and said, well, this statute question, there are good people on both sides, they just disagree on this point.
CNN turned it into this, that the President of the United States, the sitting President of the United States, went on television, this is their version, and praised neo-Nazi white nationalists who were marching and yelling and chanting anti-Semitic things.
The president's daughter is Jewish.
His son-in-law, his grandkids are Jewish.
Many of his top advisors.
Israel loves him.
He's the first person to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
Do you think that Netanyahu and Israel had not noticed anti-Semitism?
Do you think they're not good at that?
I'm pretty sure that they can pick up antisemitism when they see it.
They're really good at it.
So one version of reality, he was just talking about the statues, because that's what the event was about.
Normal. The other version, batshit crazy.
Absolutely batshit crazy, the idea that he went in public and intentionally praised the people who were carrying racist symbols, whatever they were doing, and chanting anti-Semitic stuff.
Couldn't have possibly been true.
Here's another one. And I'm going to give you the two you might like first.
One version is that Representative Steve King, 69-year-old representative from Iowa?
Iowa, I think.
So here's CNN's version of events.
Oh, well, let me give you the normal version.
The normal version of events is that he wondered aloud in a New York Times interview why the words Western Civilization had turned into a bad thing.
When he had gone to school to learn that Western Civilization had done some good stuff.
Now, does that sound extraordinary or completely normal?
It's the sort of thing he said before lots of times, right?
He likes Western Civilization, independent of race, because remember, Western Civilization includes all kinds of races.
We are the melting pot.
Western civilization is a melting pot.
That's the most normal thing you would say about it.
When he was in school, like me, he learned that we're a melting pot, but that our culture produced some good stuff.
So completely normal.
How did CNN report that?
They reported, because they conflated something he said in the beginning of a sentence with an entirely different point at the end of the sentence, they conflated two things and they decided that he went on television and praised white supremacists.
They literally reported that a sitting representative with many years of experience Went on a major New York Times interview, people he knows to be the enemy, essentially, and that he said, yeah, white supremacists love them, or some version of that.
Now that version of events is batshit crazy.
That's just batshit crazy compared to the more normal one, which by the way, Representative King presented the full context.
When you look at the full context, it's pretty obvious that he was talking about Western civilization being something that went from good to bad and that he was not talking about white supremacists.
It's obvious when you look at the full context.
Remember, one story is completely normal.
He said the same thing he's always said.
Western civilization is pretty good.
Our melting pot worked out pretty well.
Bash you crazy? He went on to a New York Times interview, this highly experienced guy, and said, yeah, white supremacy.
That's good. That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
All right? Those are the two you agree with, probably, because I know my audience here.
You're more likely to agree with those two.
All right, here's two. You're gonna frickin' hate me now.
Remember how I always say that a third of the world has no sense of humor?
And then when I first started saying that, I think most of you said, well, that's not true.
I would have noticed if a third of the world didn't have a sense of humor.
And then you started noticing and you see it all the time now, right?
Until I said it, you probably didn't even think that was a thing.
You probably thought, well, everybody has a sense of humor.
We like different stuff, but everybody has a sense of humor.
Not true. About a third of the public Literally doesn't have a sense of humor and literally can't identify a joke.
You saw that with President Trump saying, hey, Russia, if you've got those Hillary emails, I'd like to see them.
Those of us with a sense of humor said, oh, obviously that's a joke.
And those without a sense of humor said, no, that's obviously true.
That's exactly what he's asking to do.
He's colluding right there.
But likewise, similar to my point that people don't have a sense of humor, there are a great deal of people in this country, and maybe a third, I don't really know the percentage in this case, but something like a third of the public can't understand figurative speech.
They look at the words, they look at the definition in the dictionary, and they say, no, these words tell me exactly what you're thinking, because it's these exact words.
A third of the public can't understand how words work.
In other words, they don't understand that sometimes they're literal and intended to be that way, and sometimes people are talking in a colorful way, a casual way.
Let me give you two examples.
Number one, Peter Strach in his famous Discover text said that they needed an insurance policy.
Possibility number one, For explaining what he meant by the insurance policy.
He was talking about the Russian collusion investigation.
Number one, totally normal explanation.
They thought there was a genuine risk that the president was involved in something with Russia, because that's in evidence, right?
We do know that people were legitimately concerned that maybe there was something there.
Now, I think they're wrong, but they had enough sort of hints to say, well, we should look into it.
Strzok assumed that the president couldn't get elected like everybody else assumed, like most people assumed, not me, but most people.
And so, if President Trump didn't get elected, then looking into his connection with Russia, not all that important, right?
They might still want to know, but it's not going to affect the country much.
But if he did get elected, they would need an insurance policy.
Meaning, just in case he got elected, and just in case there was some meat on this collusion thing, which he didn't even think was necessarily much meat, they better have an investigation.
Just in case. An insurance policy.
Now what I described is a completely normal explanation of events.
They didn't think he'd get elected.
There's some suggestion that he colluded with Russia.
Well, we might need an insurance policy just in case it gets elected, and just in case there's something to that.
So we better look into it. Perfectly normal.
Acceptable. No problem.
That's one. Here's the other version that most of you have accepted, which is just batshit crazy.
This is batshit crazy, and most of you believe it.
You believe that a sitting FBI agent, someone who understands the vulnerability of all of your messages, wrote in a text message that could easily be discovered and was, that he was part of a plot to take down the President of the United States.
That's batshit crazy.
Even if you think he believed it, that he was trying to take down the president and that it was just a political plot because he didn't like the political leanings of this president, he's not going to write that in a text message to his lover.
No frickin' way.
It's not believable, even a little bit.
It was just a use of words, completely normal.
I'm sorry. If you're believing the batshit crazy version, you bought into the whole deep state collusion, and you have to just own the fact that you took the batshit crazy version.
Now, if you say to yourself, but wait a minute, I'm not relying on that one word.
Look at all the stuff.
Look at all the reasons that I know it's a deep state.
Do you know that Max Boot just produced an article with 18 pieces of evidence that the President of the United States was definitely a puppet of Putin?
18! Of course, if you look at all 18, they're all ridiculous.
But there are a lot of them.
Same with the Deep State.
The Deep State is almost certainly A conspiracy, well, what would you call it?
Almost certainly not true, but there's plenty of evidence, right?
Well, there's a thing somebody said, the way somebody acted on TV, somebody's got some money, somebody's connected to Hillary.
There's lots of it.
It just isn't convincing.
Here's the next one. You think you hated that last one?
When do you see this one?
Here's one you're really going to hate.
I know because I've been doing this all morning on Twitter.
So many of you who are climate deniers buy into, essentially, most of the skeptical arguments.
Okay, that's crazy because I've been digging into the skeptical arguments now for a few months and most of them are ridiculous.
So if you said to yourself, I think climate science is not true because of here are all these 10 good reasons, you're not really on strong ground there because there are not 10 good reasons.
There might be a few. In fact, I haven't gotten to the bottom of my research, but I would say there are a few claims that work against the climate science claim that haven't been debunked as far as I can tell, but that's only a question about how deeply I've gone.
So here's what many of you believe.
You believe that Climategate proved there was a conspiracy to be fraudulent.
You believe, many of you do, not all of you, that in an email to Michael Mann that another scientist who was working with him said that he was going to use nature's trick, you know, a trick, To hide the decline.
In other words, hide a part of the climate record that didn't work with the current theory that things were getting warm.
So they were going to use a quote trick to quote, hide the decline.
Now people said, my God, it's a smoking gun.
It's a smoking gun.
It's right there. The scientists who are closest to this say they're using a trick and they say they're hiding something.
That's not science.
Science is not about using tricks.
Science is not about hiding things.
Smoking gun. Smoking gun.
You've got it. Somebody's saying that I'm blackmailed because I'm saying this.
If you think that what I'm going to say next about this climate gate is because somebody got to me or because I'm blackmailed, You're sort of in a bad shit crazy area.
I'm whatever is the opposite of working for somebody.
I'm just losing money on what I'm doing.
So I'm doing everything wrong if I'm trying to make money.
Everything I've done on the topic of politics and the periscopes has done nothing but cost me money.
My income has suffered greatly and there's no other source.
Nobody's paying me for this opinion.
Nothing like that.
I promise you that. Here's the ordinary explanation and the bad shit crazy one.
The ordinary explanation for the words trick and hide the decline are that these are scientists who are working in this field and they personally have seen all kinds of studies that confirm in their opinion.
Now here's the important part.
Their opinion, right?
So what I'm going to say next is their opinion, not mine.
So they've worked in the field and they have convinced themselves from all they've seen that climate change is real and it's going to be a gigantic problem for the world.
And because they're the ones who know it and they need to communicate it to the rest of the world, there's sort of a marketing element to things, right?
It's not enough that they do the science.
They've also got to market it.
So when somebody is talking to somebody they know and they're using a technique in science, would it be normal for somebody to say, Hey, Bob, I used your trick.
I used your trick on the numbers and it got me the result that's now consistent with the theory.
The most normal explanation is that it's just casual language and that they're not speaking literally.
It's not a trick like a magic trick.
There's no hat. There's no rabbit.
They're talking about a technique which is published.
A published method.
It's just common language to say, oh yeah, I used your trick and it worked.
It got us the numbers we expected and not the numbers that don't fit the theory.
Now when he used the method, which is published, which is widely viewed and people have looked at it, everybody's looked at it, and the people who looked at the trick, which is really just a method, the other scientists looked at it and they said, oh, that's okay. That looks entirely appropriate even if it's wrong.
You showed your work. You showed how it fit the theory.
Whatever it is, it's definitely not fraudulent because you showed your work.
All right. Now, when they said they're going to hide the decline, remember the context.
The context is scientists who legitimately believe that the Earth is warming and if they don't explain it to people in a convincing way, We're all dead.
I'm exaggerating, we're not all dead, but there'll be dire, dire impact if they don't convince the world.
If you're trying to convince the world and there's one inconvenient part of the data that you believe, here's the key part, that you the scientists believe is not accurate, what would you say you might do with it?
Well, you might say you would adjust it.
But that's not the point of it.
The point of it is to have a package you can show the public.
In that case, you kinda wanna hide it.
So if I say to you, my friend that I'm working with who knows the entire context, hey, Bob, so I used your trick, meaning your method, to adjust the data, meaning I hid that part that didn't make sense, and now we can show it to the public because the part that they would have questioned, we've used a method to figure out why that didn't make sense, and now it all makes sense.
And now we can explain it to the public that we believe we're convinced by all of the science, not just the stuff we're doing, but all of the science has convinced us that this is real and we need to package it better.
So, you know, the way to understand the climate models, I think, is the marketing of the science.
The models aren't really the science.
The models are the marketing.
It's the part they hope the public looks at and goes, oh, my God, we've got to do something now, which is the point of it.
So here's the point. If you assumed that the scientists were bad, then those words would confirm it.
But you have to start with the assumption that they're bad for those words to be bad.
If you start with the assumption that they believe the science, because most climate scientists are on the same side, so if you believe that they believe what the other scientists believe, that's the most normal explanation.
Do you think it is normal to say that there are some climate scientists who totally don't believe in climate science?
Do you think that's a normal, like, routine thing?
It's not. But it's normal and routine to call a method a trick, and it's normal and routine to say if you've got something that doesn't make sense, you'd like it to go away.
You'd like to hide it. So those are four cases where you can easily compare the normal explanation To the batshit crazy one.
In this case, there's a secret cabal of scientists who are working to hide the truth for reasons we don't know.
They're trying to...
Oh, and then the reasons given for why the scientists would try to hide the truth intentionally, right?
Because remember, the climate gate is the assumption that they're doing it intentionally.
There's a whole other argument that says maybe they haven't done the work right.
That's a different level of skepticism.
But the people who say, no, it's intentional and we found it.
Do you think that all of these scientists working on climate science, that their secret reason for doing it is that they want to move resources around in the world and that it's something about socialism?
Because that's just batshit crazy.
It's batshit crazy to think that thousands of climate scientists are all in on a secret plot.
There isn't the slightest chance that's true.
Not the slightest chance that's true.
Now, people are saying grants, you know, the grant money, follow the money.
That part I'm not disputing.
Be very clear about what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that the money has no influence on decisions, but there's no evidence that they're taking money and just lying.
That's not an evidence, right?
Now, if it becomes an evidence, I'll change my mind.
Let me give you some examples of questions that I, as a...
I'll say a climate idiot.
So the best way to describe myself in the climate science topic would be idiot, right?
So here are the questions that I don't know how...
Oh, here. I'm going to start with two bad skeptical points.
Here's a bad one. Somebody on Twitter today said, well, Scott, can you tell me what level of CO2 is optimum for humans to survive?
Because if you don't know what is the right amount of CO2, how can you say we're not at the right amount?
How can you say that, Scott?
Okay, that's the worst opinion.
Nobody is arguing, at least I've never heard it, nobody's arguing about the level of CO2 being the problem.
The problem is that CO2 is alleged to cause clouds to do what they do, which is alleged to cause warming, and it's the warming.
Stop asking me what's the right amount of CO2. If the problem is heat, you could at least ask, well, what is the right level of temperature?
That would be a fair question, but it wouldn't be on the point because the point is that it's going up and we don't know how to stop it.
So it doesn't matter if we are below the level we'd like to be.
It doesn't matter that the better temperature is the one above us.
That's not a point because the point is we're going to go right past that.
So stop saying we don't know how much CO2 is the right amount.
It's a stupid freaking thing to say because if the point is that it's changing and we don't know how to change it, it wouldn't matter if we knew it was the perfect amount because we're not going to stay there for more than a day.
Here's another argument that's terrible.
Somebody says, I'll believe in climate science when the scientists themselves start being more energy conscious.
Humans are humans.
People are going to use their cars and they're going to make up reasons why it's okay for them and how their car use isn't going to change the world.
And, you know, whether I drive a Prius or a SUV, you know, my personal decisions as a climate science are just not going to change the world.
And nobody's going to copy them just because the scientist is driving a Prius.
So stop arguing about what the scientists are doing in their real life.
Stop talking about Al Gore.
Stop talking about rich people buying homes on the coast.
Do you know where else rich people buy homes?
In hurricane places, in flood places, in wildfire places, and in earthquake places.
I'm a rich guy and I built my house in California.
Biggest earthquake risk around, right?
I mean, I'm not on the fault line, but rich people We'll build their house anywhere they want, and if they lose their house, they will build another one.
It completely is no point that rich people are building in nice places because they might lose their house.
I built right here in California, and I might lose my house to an earthquake.
I might. But it didn't stop me from building.
It doesn't mean I don't believe in earthquakes.
I know personally somebody who lost a mansion in the Malibu fire.
Now, if somebody builds a house in an area where people buy fire insurance, they know they're in a fire zone and they know that their house could burn up.
But they do it anyway because they like living on the beach.
What did this rich person say when he lost his mansion in the Malibu fire?
Well, build another one.
That's it. Just build another one.
Because he's rich.
Right? So stop asking why rich people are acting like rich people.
They're not like other people.
Rich people can afford to lose their mansion.
They could lose a couple of mansions.
It's fine. And if you're not going to lose your mansion for 30 years, you're going to enjoy the beach for 30 years.
All right. Here are the questions that I have not heard the answers to, but only because of my ignorance, not because the answers do not exist about climate change.
Number one, is it true that our current rate of temperature increase is precedented?
In other words, has happened in the last hundred years.
So is it true that our current increase is very similar to one that we measured within this century?
True or not? And if it is true, why are we talking about the rate of increase being the thing?
I can't get a confirmation of that.
Now it could be that it's not the rate of increase alone, but it's how long that rate of increase has run.
So it could be that earlier in the century we had the same rate of rise, but it didn't last long.
Versus the same rate, but it lasted longer.
So is that the argument?
I don't know. But I can't make a decision until I know.
Here's another one. Can you really measure the temperature of the ocean in an average way?
Obviously you can measure it in one place.
But do you think that science can really get some kind of an accurate reading of the average temperature of an ocean?
Now, I'd love to think that they can.
To me, that would be a technological marvel and quite an accomplishment of science.
I mean, that would be way up there on things that would impress me.
But I haven't heard anybody who really is close to how it's done that can make a case that I, a non-scientist, would find even slightly persuasive.
The whole idea that we can measure the average temperature of the ocean and going back for years doesn't even sound slightly persuasive.
But I would like to be talked into it.
I've never heard the argument for it.
Here's my other question.
How do you measure the temperature millions of years ago?
to the level of precision that would be useful.
Now, I understand you can do the ice cores and you can look at tree rings and stuff like that, but are those things precise?
And if they're not precise, I think there are about 10 different ways to measure temperature historically, you know, different proxies, which one of them is the best?
And if there is one that we know to be the best, How do we know that?
How would we know what was the best one?
Because in order to know it's the best, wouldn't you have to compare it to something?
So are you comparing it to the second best one?
Or is it true that when we measure these proxies, let's say in the last hundred years, they hold up pretty well, so therefore we figure, well, it's probably good for a million years?
That doesn't sound persuasive.
I can't believe this, you know, looking at your ice core samples, I'm just making this part up, but if you looked at your ice core samples or your tree rings a hundred years ago, and maybe that was someplace you had a good temperature measurement to, so you say, oh yeah, look, Ice core, physical measurement, very similar, so we got it.
But that doesn't really mean that that holds up for a million years, does it?
I mean, I have trouble believing that there's any way we can measure temperatures within the small range of, you know, several degrees up or down a million years ago.
But maybe. I'd love to know that we could do that.
I'm not saying we can't do it.
I just can't imagine it.
And so I'm having trouble believing the historical numbers.
Then there's a question of were all the temperature adjustments to the land measuring devices, were they all in one direction?
I've heard the following argument, that most of the land ones were in the same direction, I don't know how to explain that, but that most of the ocean ones were in the other direction when those measurements were adjusted.
I don't know what's behind that.
I don't know why they would be measured in the same direction, why one would be more in one direction and one would be the other.
If the ocean is 90% of the temperature problem, because that's where 90% of the temperature impact is, doesn't it only matter what the ocean was doing?
Shouldn't we just throw away all the land-based measurements?
Because it's only 10% of the planet and almost all of our measuring devices are in the United States, and apparently the United States hasn't had a temperature increase like the rest of the world.
So, shouldn't we just throw away all the land-based measurements?
Because if we can measure the ocean, that's the better one, right?
Let's see. Here's a question I'd love to know.
So the belief is that there are many thousands of climate scientists who are on the same page.
That they're all largely say CO2 is driving temperature, it's going up too fast.
We're in trouble. Thousands and thousands of scientists.
And that whether you say that, you know, whether you say 60% of them agree or 97%, most of you would agree it's the majority are on the same page.
So here's my question. How many of those thousands of scientists were personally part of the measurement gathering?
How many of them were actually there measuring things?
How many of them actually know how the data for the temperature I gotta think it's only a handful, right?
Wouldn't you imagine that in the entire world there might be, I'm just guessing, five people who are close enough to all of the different measuring methods, especially the good ones, that they have a real good idea of what's happening there?
I can't believe it's more than five people.
So when you're talking about thousands of people agree, are you really saying thousands of people trust five people?
Now that's a question, not a statement.
I'm not saying that's the situation, but aren't there maybe only five people who really are close enough to the measurements to really know what's going on?
Maybe five? Worldwide?
I'm guessing. Maybe one?
Which is possible? Maybe one?
Maybe no one?
Let's take it from a legal perspective, chain of custody.
If you're in a legal trial and somebody's got some evidence, the defense will make you prove that you know exactly who had the evidence and where was it checked in, how was it gathered, and that you can describe with great credibility the entire chain of custody of the evidence.
Does science have something like that?
And again, I'm not stating that they don't.
It's an ignorant question from a citizen who would like to know, am I going to be on a planet that's self-destructing?
And without that knowledge, I don't know what to think of the fact that thousands of scientists are on the same side.
Because it sounds like they may have gotten all of their most important information From the five people?
Again, just guessing.
Maybe it's 20, maybe it's 100, I don't know.
People who actually are close to the data.
Alright, then there's a question of whether Michael Mann has released his temperature data.
And this is that two movies on one screen situation.
So there are two versions of reality.
And they both look equally credible to me.
So one version is that Michael Mann has data about temperature that he's not showing anybody.
Which would be amazing, right?
Like, if that were true, that the author of the hockey stick graph showing temperatures going up, that his data he wouldn't show to other scientists, well that would sort of sound fraudulent to you, right?
Most of you believe that's true, don't you?
Do you believe that's true?
Most of the skeptics believe that's true.
That he has secret data and he hasn't shown it to anybody.
The other movie is, He has shown it to everybody.
It's public. He made it available, and the public record clearly shows that he made his data available.
The part he did not make available is apparently some of the way his model works, some of the algorithm and the model or something like that.
But one of the most basic core beliefs in the skeptical world For climate change, is that Michael Mann did not release his temperature data.
But you can also look at the letter in which he said, here's my data, and you can talk to the scientists and they'll say, yeah, we all have access to it, it's public.
So, both of those things can't be true.
But if you had to ask me what's reasonable, Alright, which of those two stories sounds normal, and which one of those sounds just batshit crazy?
Alright? Normal would be people wanted his data, he's a scientist, everything in his credibility depends on making that data available to other people, and so he did.
That's the most normal thing in the world, right?
The data was made public and people looked at it and they ran their own models against it and they got similar conclusions.
But he didn't want to release some proprietary things about his model, but that's not important because people use the same data, use their own model, got kind of the same shape of a hockey stick roughly.
That sounds completely normal.
Here's what's batshit crazy.
That the most important name, let's say famous, famous name in climate science, the creator of the hockey stick is hiding his data.
Does that sound...
Do you think that the other scientists would let him get away with that?
Do you think that the other thousands of scientists would look at the sort of the, let's say, the brand image bearer of their cause and say, and therefore say, no, it's fine that he keeps it secret.
We don't care what his data says.
It's not really believable, is it?
No peer review.
Well, if it's been released publicly, I'd say that's really peer reviewed.
Now, I suppose if we dug down, we'd find issues with what was the raw data and which was the adjusted data, etc.
So here's another question I've asked.
So there's an allegation that, I think this is the Tony Heller point, that many of the land-based measurement devices have been adjusted.
And they were adjusted for good reasons, meaning that sometimes they moved them from, you know, they were originally in the light and they got moved to the shade or vice versa.
So they have to adjust for shade versus light.
And there's heat islands and then there's, at some point they started taking temperatures at different times of day, so they have to adjust for that.
So there are good reasons for adjustments.
And the scientists presumably have showed their work.
Here's why we adjusted it.
Here's how much we adjusted it.
But I have to ask, what did they calibrate their adjustments to?
This is the dumb non-scientist question.
If you had a measuring device And you had to adjust it because you thought it was wrong because of whatever reason.
What would you use to adjust it?
Because if you have something that's a better measurement, shouldn't you just be using that thing?
Shouldn't you just use the thing that you used to adjust the other thing?
If there's something that's so good you can use it as your standard for adjusting, Maybe just use the other thing.
And if they just adjusted it by math or something, I'd want to know that.
So here's the question I asked.
What would the trend look like for just the measurement devices that have been in place for a long time, the ones that didn't need any adjustment?
Because I believe there are hundreds of them.
451, somebody says.
So what would happen if I looked at just the ones that never had a reason to be adjusted?
What kind of trend would they have?
Now apparently, say the skeptics, it would show that we've been getting cooler instead of warmer.
But, say the scientists, that doesn't matter because most of these measurements are in the United States, like 90-95% of them, and the United States could be getting cooler while someplace else in the world is getting warmer, and that wouldn't mean anything because you expect some give and take in individual regions and even over long periods of time.
You know, it might be 30 years that one continent is a little extra cool, but it wouldn't tell you what the average is, and the average is the important thing.
So I would love to see, just for my own education, the measurements that are the most dependable and have never been adjusted for as far back as we can get them.
Because if it turns out that the United States is not getting warmer, And all that's happening is we're having fewer hurricanes.
Because I think that's what happened this year.
I don't know. That might adjust my thinking.
That might adjust my thinking on what is real.
Alright. That's my current thinking on climate.
I see people signing off, which means that this topic has less interest.
Keep in mind that when I'm talking about climate change, First of all, I'm a genuine...
I don't want to say skeptic because that makes you look like you're in one camp.
I'm undecided. Skeptics have sort of decided, you know, at least the way we use that word in political context.
So I'm not one of them.
I'm more undecided because the further I dig into this, the more confusing it is.
But I will tell you that the majority of what the skeptics say is ridiculous.
It's just ridiculous. But there's a lot of what the climate scientists say that doesn't pass the sniff test.
Not even close.
Like the tree ring stuff doesn't pass the sniff test.
The ability to measure temperatures accurately and to even know what the history is.
Honestly, it might be true, but it doesn't pass the sniff test.
The idea that the models using all these many variables are accurate enough even to be directionally useful is ridiculous.
I think the best way to look at the models are as the marketing part of the science.
So they've got the science.
They need to convince the world there's a problem.
How do you do that?
The public won't understand the science, but they might understand this cool graph.
So, the Michael Mann breakthrough wasn't scientific only.
Let's assume that he got everything right for this conversation.
It wasn't a scientific breakthrough as much as a marketing breakthrough because he found a way to put it into a visual form that was compelling and would cause people to do what he assumed are the right things.
Alright? Predictions of the future.
Are they right or not?
Well, my understanding, and again, You know, I'm the climate idiot, so everything I say has to be taken with a grain of salt and a lot of fact checking.
But my understanding is that, you know, back in the 80s, there was a climate scientist, Hansen, who made some predictions that didn't come even close to being true.
But science has progressed a great deal since the 80s, and scientists, I believe, I believe, not sure about this, but I believe they would say, yes, that's true.
In the 80s, we made some predictions, and they did not come true.
But we have refined all our methods.
We've done, you know, countless number of studies and tests and measurements since then.
And now we took what was kind of a bad preliminary process that did not predict well and we fixed all those things.
So we've gone just like everything else does.
I mean, your first iPhone was terrible, right?
If I judge the future of smartphones by the first iPhone, I would say it's a complete step backwards.
I can't even make a phone call on this thing.
It keeps dropping calls. But if I just say, well, what happens if you wait 10 years and then the iPhone's pretty awesome?
So what happens if you wait 10 years in creating climate models?
Couldn't it be perfectly true that they used to be terrible and that they figured out how to make them pretty good?
I doubt it, but none of that is eliminated by the fact that we used to have bad models.
The fact that they used to be bad and they did not predict in the past doesn't tell you anything about the new stuff.
Because the new stuff, presumably, is better.
Yes, some people are saying not likely.
I think it's not likely in the sense that nobody can make predictions with that many variables.
Alright, that's all for now.
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