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Sept. 18, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
10:01
Episode 667 Scott Adams: How to Save the World. Literally. In Only Two Minutes
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Time Text
Hey everybody, come on in here.
This is going to be a very short periscope on a very important topic.
I'm going to show you how to save the planet.
Now this is a very serious topic and it will only take you a couple minutes.
So in two minutes I'm going to show you how to save the planet.
Now this might seem like a big claim.
But it's not. So here's the problem.
As you know, there are a lot of people who are worried about climate change, and it'll get too warm.
And there are some devices that have been invented that will scrub the CO2 out of the air.
I've tweeted about a number of these, and then there's a new one that's even more interesting.
And this is a device by a company called Hypergiant Industries.
It looks like it's a tabletop device.
It's filled with algae, And it sucks air into it, and the algae is really good at turning the CO2 into something else.
So the idea is that, this company's idea, is that individuals could afford to just buy one of these devices, have it at home, turn it on, then it starts sucking the CO2 out of the air, and if enough people were doing it, we could keep the CO2 at good levels.
Now, I didn't realize when I said that, people stormed into my Twitter feed and they said, Scott, you may have just destroyed the world.
And I said, what?
They said, Scott, don't you know, CO2 is not pollution.
CO2 is literally plant food.
I'm seeing it in the comments, right?
And you're right. CO2 is plant food.
Our plants need CO2. So this device could destroy the whole world.
And not just this one.
But what about all those other devices that take the CO2 out of the air?
What if we had this and other technology around the world and we start sucking the CO2 out of the air?
Pretty soon no plant food, right?
Plants die. The whole planet is dead.
And so when I saw people come in and inform me, they said, Scott, Scott, Scott, if you do this, you'll literally destroy the whole planet.
I thought, I've got to stop this.
I've got to stop this.
So I came onto Periscope.
With a solution. Are you ready for this?
So this is a little bit technical.
I think you can hang with it.
I'll try to simplify it as much as possible because I know a lot about electronics and, you know, I work with engineers.
So I'm probably operating at a higher plane of technical understanding here.
But I'll try to break it down to your level.
All of these devices, no matter which company makes it, Hypergiant or anybody else, they're going to require electricity.
So at some point, there's something like this.
Can you see this? This is called a power plug.
For those of you who are not technical, it's a three-prong power plug.
And for demonstration purposes, I'll use the other end of it as the outlet.
Now, in order for one of these CO2 devices to work, you need to do this.
Watch carefully. The plug...
There's three of these things, and they'll go right into the three on the plug-in, like this.
Then you push it, push it, and there.
And then you've done something that's called creating a circuit.
They have to be together.
Now electricity will flow through your CO2 device and destroy the world.
So this is the bad part.
So now you've got electricity, it goes to your device, takes the CO2 out of the air.
As you know, CO2 is plant food.
Plants all die, the planet is destroyed, and you're dead.
What can you do? And hundreds of people have come to my Twitter feed to say, Scott, you're dooming the planet.
If we do this, The plants will die.
And I'm thinking, what could I do?
Like, what could we do if that happened?
Like, how could you fix it?
Like, what could you possibly do before it goes too far?
And I thought, eh.
Now this is a little out of the box.
And I can tell from my Twitter feed that most of you didn't see the solution.
It's sort of, I don't know, it's in left field.
But just bear with me.
Bear with me. Watch this. You see the connection.
These two things are connected.
And when they're connected, too much CO2 is being taken out of the air.
We overshot the mark.
We got what we wanted.
You know, took the temperature down a degree.
But we kept going.
Plants are dying. Watch this.
Watch this. Now, if you're listening to this, I'll describe it.
I'm taking the plug earlier that I plugged in, and it's in the outlet, and it's powering these CO2 devices that are destroying the world.
And watch this. Pull it just gently.
You just work it out, work it out there.
For those of you who can't see this, I've actually separated now the plug from the outlet part.
Now, this air gap between does not allow the electricity to flow from the plug anymore into the holes of the outlet.
There's no connection anymore.
Now, under this condition, and again, I don't want to make this too technical, but the device that's sucking the CO2 out of the air almost always will stop running after the electricity is removed.
And that's how you save the world.
Now, some of you are worried about a thing called a slippery slope.
That if you start taking CO2 out of the air, you'll just keep taking it until it's all gone.
And for those people who are worried about taking too much CO2 out of the air until it's all gone and we all die, I wonder how you ever take a bath at home.
Do you ever take a bath?
Because I would be afraid to take a bath Because what do you do once the bathtub is full, and then it keeps going, and then your house is full of water?
How can you survive in a house that's full of water?
It's crazy. So the slippery slope would kill you if you tried to take a bath, wouldn't it?
What about when you go on a diet?
Have you ever gone on a diet?
How did you avoid dying?
I mean, if you go on a diet, you reduce the amount of food you're eating, and then you keep reducing it until you're not eating anything, and then you die.
How do you people who believe in slippery slopes go on a diet?
Are you afraid that you'll actually die?
Here's my point. The slippery slope is not a thing.
It is absolutely imaginary thinking.
Things go until they have a reason to stop.
Always. Every time.
Everything goes until it has a reason to stop.
There's no such thing as a slippery slope.
Things don't have their own free will.
It's not like events decide to slip.
Everything goes until there's something to stop it.
Do you know what would stop the devices from taking too much CO2 out of the air?
Us. The scientists would say, all right, it's pretty good.
Don't want to overshoot the mark.
We're measuring this every day.
We just hit the perfect amount.
Hey, everybody, unplug your CO2 devices.
Now, if we needed more CO2, do you think we couldn't add it to the environment pretty quickly?
How hard would it be to add CO2 if we overshot the mark?
It would take an afternoon.
That's the problem. It's too easy to put CO2 in the atmosphere.
Do not worry about slippery slopes.
They're not real.
Sometimes, all you have to do is pull the plug.
All right. I had to do this because the number of people coming to my Twitter feed with amazing levels of loserthink was a shock.
Now, loserthink, by the way, Is not calling the person who's thinking it a loser.
All right, I want to be very clear about it.
When I use the term loser think, it's the title of my new book that will be out in November.
I'm talking about a technique of thinking that's unproductive.
So it could be very smart people who are doing it.
So it has nothing to do with your native intelligence or even your...
Well, it has nothing to do with your intelligence.
It simply has to do with the fact that you have not been exposed to the fact...
And now you are, that there's no such thing as a slippery slope.
Everything changes until there's a reason not to.
And in the case of these CO2 scrubbers, it would be the most visible change in the entire planet.
Everybody would be watching, and everybody would quite easily be able to change direction.
Oh, too much CO2 taken out of the air?
Fixed. That's it.
Don't worry. It'll be fine.
All right. That's all for now.
I just wanted to keep this simple.
If you're arguing slippery slopes, don't do it in public.
It's not a good look.
It doesn't mean anything.
It's magical thinking. It's completely free from any form of rational thought.
And that's all for today.
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