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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
25:06
Why I Changed My Mind on Climate Change
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So a question from a listener, Free Atheist, writes in and says, I know this has nothing to do with the video, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on climate change.
I heard in one of your videos you said that not all scientists agree.
I would suspect that not all scientists would agree when some of them are being bribed hundreds of thousands of dollars to say it's not real or that humans aren't causing it.
Do you think the reason you're against it doesn't have to do with evidence, but the fact that the left supports it and you're against the left?
So I understand the question.
I would respond first and foremost by saying that there's lots that the left advocate that I also support.
The left generally is skeptical to empire building and aggressive foreign policies and invasions and interventions and so on, which the right generally is a little bit more supportive of.
and I'm with the left on that.
The left is strong criticisms of corporate bailouts and banker bailouts and so on which I also agree with.
The left is very skeptical and critical of the unholy relationship between corporations and the state which I fully agree on.
And the left is pretty secular and I am an atheist so The fact that the left supports something does not make me innately hostile to it.
That would be kind of pinball reactionary time, rather than clear thinking time.
I'll tell you the thoughts that I have, or one particular analogy that I find very helpful with regards to climate change, and hopefully this will help make sense of my position, which obviously I think is a reasonable position, otherwise I'd change it.
For those who don't know, I graduated with a graduate degree in history.
I was really focused on the history of philosophy.
And I then got a job, naturally, as a programmer at a stockbroking trading company.
And it was quite eye-opening to sort of live the Kooball-based Wall Street experience every day.
And, you know, it taught me a lot about hard work.
It taught me a lot about accountability.
It taught me a lot about how you have to replace phones when traders break them in anger.
And it taught me a little bit about corruption and greed.
It's not the whole reason behind that field, but it's obviously a part, as it is a part of most of the human experience.
So when it comes to climate change, The important thing, as I've said in many videos, is not to create arbitrary categories.
I do not view any group of human beings as above corruption.
And this doesn't mean that climate scientists are corrupt.
Please understand, I'm not sort of jumping to that conclusion.
Let me just sort of give you an analogy that tells you at least where I'm coming from and the reasons why.
Priests can be corrupted.
Politicians can be corrupted.
CEOs can be corrupted.
The ring will corrupt just about everyone.
And power corrupts.
I am with Lord Acton on that, where he said power tends to corrupt.
Absolute power tends to corrupt.
Absolutely.
Because we have a kind of pyramid-structured society, we've got a hierarchy, we've got people at the top who have lots of power, who order around hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, who have massive amounts of weaponry and guns and a prison-industrial complex, we're kind of in this taser-based, pseudo-social contract, cattle-prodding, herding society where lots of force is used to order people around all the time.
Everybody who has a good idea thinks that good idea Or to become a law and be used to attack people who disagree with them and send them to prison or threaten them with fines With the result being they go to prison if they don't pay the fines should they decide to act on their conscience against the busybody do-gooding impulses and control freakism of the self-appointed moralizers of the species so
Because we live in this pyramidic structure where we put a small number of people in charge of a huge number of lives and massive amounts of resources, we can only justify that or really survive it psychologically if we believe that there's a group of people who are uncorrupted by power.
Now the voluntarist, or I would say the philosophical, approach to society is to recognize that nobody is immune to power.
Therefore, you cannot have a centralized agency of near-universal force at the center of society because it will corrupt and destroy just about everybody who comes in contact with it.
And those who it doesn't corrupt and destroy, it keeps around as pets of supposed honesty in order to present a more moral veneer to the general population.
So once you recognize and accept the basic truth that power corrupts, then you give up the fantasy that you can create An exclusionary group of magical human elves who are uncorrupted by power.
Now once you accept that, well, that opens you up to some really clear thinking about how society should be organized, which is it should spontaneously self-organize in the absence of coercive force and a centralized violent power known as the state or a centralized indoctrinating power known as religiosity or whatever.
That's the reality.
And we do have this fantasy that scientists are somehow, you know, white-coated other beings from other dimensions, incorruptible by power, solely dedicated to the unself-interested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, for the beneficiary of mankind, and so on.
They are the new priests.
This is the way the priests used to be viewed, and then that sort of fell by the wayside for a lot of people.
And now we have scientism as sort of like the new And it has a pretty similar relationship to priests with the government in that the priests justified the government by saying the king was appointed by God and to disobey the king was to disobey God and you couldn't really break that.
And now we have scientists who support the power of the state.
It's very, very similar in terms of its relationship to power.
This doesn't mean that I'm anti-science.
I'm incredibly pro-science.
I think the scientific revolution and the scientific methodology is one of the greatest gifts The science, reason, science, philosophy, and the free market are the great gifts that intellectuals have given to the world, but we would not want to mistake government science for voluntary science.
So, I'm going to give you an analogy.
It's going to be an extended analogy, and the reason for this analogy is to break you of the illusion that scientists are above corruption.
So I want you to picture, if you will, it's very kind, I want you to picture a group of stockbrokers.
You can make them bankers, like whoever, whichever one of the financial elite 1% gets your goat the most, it's fine with me.
I'll just call them stockbrokers.
And stockbrokers create something called the economy rate.
I mean, it's just a made-up measure, right?
It's an economy rate.
And They make the case that if the economy rate goes up one or two percent, they should be paid massive amounts of money from the public purse, right?
So that's their goal.
And we'll just say ER for the economy rate.
So if the economy rate goes up maybe one or two percent, then they can make literally hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses and profits.
Now, the stockbrokers are the ones who calculate this economy rate, this ER.
Now, they can also adjust the ER as they want.
So, if the ER doesn't match the numbers that they want, then they can apply a bunch of variables to it and, again, massage it and get it to go the direction that they want.
So, first of all, the stockbrokers make predictions.
And first they say, well, the ER is going to go down.
And it's going to be really bad.
But if you give us money, we'll find a way to make the ER go back up.
And everyone freaks out and panics.
And then the ER doesn't go down.
And then they say, oh, wait.
Actually, we've adjusted our variables.
The ER is, in fact, going to go up and keep going up.
But if you give us lots of government money, then we will stop this disaster from happening.
And then the ER doesn't go up, and then they say, well, you know what?
The ER is going to go either up or down, or both.
And that way we should have a huge So they convince everyone of all of this, and the taxpayers through the government start pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of these stockbrokers because they're frightened of this number that is recorded and adjusted by the stockbrokers, which they first predicted would go down, then predicted would go up, and then just and the taxpayers through the government start pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets
So they start making their billions of dollars, and they produce a graph which says, okay, here's what we think is going to happen.
It's going to go kind of up a little bit, up a little bit, and then like a hockey stick, it goes right up very, very quickly, and everybody freaks out and gives them more, billions and billions of dollars.
And then what happens is somebody gets the source code for the hockey stick graph and finds out that because of a programming design or programming error or whatever you call it, It turns out that no matter what numbers you put in, you can put in random numbers, you're still going to get the same kind of hockey stick graph.
But this kind of just falls by the wayside and people don't question the basic thing.
So these stockbrokers then say, okay, well we think that the economic rate, the economy rate, the ER is going to go up.
Yeah, we're down on the upside, so to speak.
We really believe it's going to go up.
And they say it's going to go up hugely over the next 20 years.
And then what happens is it kind of doesn't go up.
And so what happens is they start adjusting the numbers.
And they say, well, you know, if we take the earlier numbers for the year R and we push them down, Like we used to report them as high.
If we push them down, then it makes this side of the ER numbers, like over the last 20 or 30 or 40 years, it makes them look like they're going up if we push the earlier ones down.
And they just started applying a bunch of adjustments.
And a lot of times they don't release the source data.
And a lot of times they don't even tell people what the adjustments that are being made are.
And the stockbrokers continue to make billions of dollars from the public purse.
And they're in control of the numbers and their models don't match the results and nothing comes true.
But they keep saying it's about to come true and they keep putting out numbers and then they create outlandish things that then end up being completely discredited relatively quickly.
Now let's say that these stockbrokers Who are making hundreds of billions of dollars as a whole off of this manipulation of these ER numbers from the public purse.
Let's say that, because you know, if you jiggle with the numbers and you defraud people in the stockbroking profession, you are liable for criminal penalties, right?
You can go to jail.
In Iceland you probably will.
And let's say that this wasn't the case for these stockbrokers, though.
Let's say that the stockbrokers were praised by the government, and the president himself opined that the stockbrokers were entirely correct, and anybody who questioned the stockbrokers, their self-registered, self-manipulated numbers, or their intentions, or their goals, or their honesty, or their incorruptibility, anybody who questioned this was a very, very bad guy.
And in fact a couple of stockbrokers even said, well those who question our data should be sent to prison.
And let's say all of this was going on, that the mainstream media praised all the stockbrokers, that the president and the government praised all the stockbrokers, that Oscar-winning documentaries were made about how right all these stockbrokers were, and let's say that anyone who refused to change the numbers or said, I don't really think that we
You have the right to consume hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money by adjusting these numbers when there's such a clear amount of financial incentive to do so.
expressed skepticism about the motives and the methodologies of the stockbrokers who have yet to make a solid consistent prediction, but always push the horizon of their predictions a little further down the road and adjust the numbers to match them, and are at some point very open about adjusting these numbers.
Let's say that the stockbrokers' emails back and forth openly talked about adjusting the numbers to fit the models.
Let's say anyone who questioned, like any one of these stockbrokers who said, whoa, whoa, hang on a sec, I'm not sure this is exactly science, wait, I'm not sure this is exactly great for the Economy as a whole, I don't know that it's fair.
There's significant problems with the methodology.
Let's say any stockbroker who dared to say that would be attacked and receive vicious attacks in the media.
Their reputations would be attacked.
They would lose funding for their projects.
Their careers might be ended and they would be castigated as medieval anti-scientists and so on, anti-stockbrokers or something like that.
And so the upside is, if you kind of go with the flow, there's hundreds of billions of dollars in the kitty for you and the praise of everyone and the respect of everyone and you'll get your grants approved, you'll get your projects funded and your career will go tickety-boo.
But if you question, as a stockbroker, any of the methodologies that are going on in this area, You are attacked, you might get fired, your career will be, you might even be investigated and you might have to deal with that and all that sort of mess.
So if we think about this in terms of stockbrokers who are claiming that the numbers are going to go in some particular direction, this ER number, that they themselves calculate and they themselves adjust and if they adjust it the right way, They gain the praise of everyone, their reputation is wonderful, their careers are doing great, they're invited to all the right parties, they get to go on wonderful junkets overseas, and if they question it, well, they're attacked and denigrated and could be fired and lose their careers and so on.
So if this was the case with stockbrokers, would you conceivably think that there might be some potential?
For corruption?
Would you think that maybe, just maybe, paying stockbrokers hundreds of billions of dollars for numbers that they generate and that they can manipulate at will, which have proven to be false relative to their estimates for decades, would you think that this maybe would be a situation where the stockbrokers might not act with the sterling top drawer, top shelf level of perfect integrity?
Would you be suspicious at all?
Would you be skeptical at all of everything that these stockbrokers said, or at least some of the things?
And if everyone said, oh, you see, 97% of these stockbrokers agree that the stockbrokers are correct, and it turns out that that number was completely fabricated, but it keeps getting repeated.
And if the stockbrokers, when talking about what they're doing, never pointed out the basic conflict of interest, that their careers were dependent upon them agreeing with this hypothesis in general, And their funding was dependent upon them agreeing with this hypothesis in general.
This would be a conflict of interest that you would pretty much be required to do in the private sector.
Like if you're a business writer and you're writing about a company, you have to say, well, I own five shares in this company or whatever.
And that, of course, that failure to disclose conflict of interest is sort of at the roots of Gamergate, but that's probably a topic for another time.
Not a short topic either, but So, if you understand that there would be some reason to at least be skeptical about these stockbrokers, given that hundreds of billions of dollars and careers and everything were on the line and so on, it would be reasonable to be skeptical about these stockbrokers or these bankers if this was the situation.
So in the same way, it is reasonable to be skeptical of the scientists.
And scientists, shockingly or not, they are not pure of heart robots sent from the future.
They are human beings.
And what do human beings do?
Human beings respond to incentives.
If you pay people to do something, they will generally do more of it.
If you attack or denigrate or cost people money for doing something, they will generally do less of it, right?
What is it that people say?
Well, if you want to cut down smoking, just put massive taxes on cigarettes and that will drive down the smoking rate.
And if you want more green energy, then you subsidize it, and what will happen is more people will start to research and produce green energy.
So taxes, i.e.
negative consequences, and subsidies, i.e.
positive consequences, are regularly trotted out as wonderful ways to adjust human behavior.
And they are.
It works.
It doesn't work for everyone all the time, but it works very well in general.
I mean, that's taxes, right?
Feel like paying your taxes?
Okay, you don't go to jail!
So, that's the entire basis of the system, is threats and rewards.
And think of heaven and hell and the theological sphere, it's kind of the same approach.
So, given that we know that threats and rewards fundamentally adjust and are largely responsible for a significant majority of human decisions, the fact that
the stockbrokers aka climate scientists and the media and the politicians and so on the fact that these people massively benefit from the thesis and are radically punished for departing from the thesis tells you everything that you need to know about motivation because scientists are people they respond
Of course, governments love climate change because it distracts people from things like fiat currency, national debt, internal dislocations, widening gaps between rich and poor, crumbling public schools, half-destroyed infrastructure, you name it.
You can distract people from it by keeping them in a state of constant fear and agitation.
When the amygdala is activated and they're in a state of constant fight or flight, they gravitate towards a hierarchical society.
People who are relaxed and happy want egalitarianism.
People who are frightened and defensive need a strong leader, or at least that's their belief.
That's what they need, kind of the way the brain works.
So if you can keep people in a state of constant fear and agitation, they will tend to gravitate towards a hierarchical structure which very much benefits those at the top of that hierarchy.
And climate change is one of these things that has the effect of heavily and significantly expanding political power.
And there are significant ways, even if the thesis turns out to be true, and again please understand, I'm not a scientist.
I cannot judge all of the...
All of the theses and all of the data and all of the manipulations of the data.
In the same way I can't figure out exactly what goes on with the LIBOR rate scandal and I can't figure out exactly what goes on in the Fed because it's not audited and so on.
But there are principles still which we can bring to bear on complex technical subjects where we don't have to go and get a PhD in climate science in order to figure out what's going on.
I don't need to have an MBA in finance in order to understand That something pretty hinky and suspicious is going on in the banking community as a whole.
I don't need a PhD in political science to know that there's something decidedly distasteful morally going on with modern governments.
So yeah, scientists are people that respond to incentives.
And anybody who thinks otherwise is creating an artificial category of heart-shiny warriors of perfect integrity who can never be corrupted by any influence.
And that is a dangerous fantasy.
I mean, it's very beneficial for those who are corrupt and wish not to be judged.
But it is very dangerous for you and for the future.
So political power benefits in the same way the kings benefited from the priests saying that the kings were necessary and virtuous and to obey the king was to obey God.
Politicians very much benefit from the scientists saying there's a giant insolvable problem or a giant problem that only massive expansions of government power can solve.
And of course the The green energy companies benefit hugely, the media benefits hugely by playing on the mother Gaia fetish of the people as a whole.
So it is an unholy blend, all driven by the initiation of force, an unholy whirlpool of negative incentives and positive incentives for doing negative things.
There's significant evidence that you could spend a hundred billion dollars putting out a bunch of sea-spraying ocean ships that would spray salt up into the atmosphere, which would put salt in the clouds and reflect back a whole bunch of light, and thus would negate the effects of global warming.
And now the global warming complex, the scientific-slash-political global warming industrial complex, is funded to the tune of a little over $350 billion as of a couple of years ago.
So less than a third of that in one year would solve the whole problem.
But of course the whole point is not to solve the problem of global warming.
Another way to solve global warming, of course, is simply for governments to stop borrowing money.
But if governments stop borrowing money, that diminishes their power, and what governments like to do is expand their power and influence.
That's what they do.
They are the cancer of society.
They expand until they kill the host, and then you have to start again from the rubble.
And so, if governments weren't able to borrow money, if governments simply went back on a gold standard or some basket of commodity standard and limited the amount of currency that they were able to grow, well, immediately There would be a huge drop in consumption because all debt is an increase in present consumption at the expense of future consumption and the US is currently in debt to the tune of a little over 19 trillion dollars and that is
What a year and three months or a year and four months worth of the U.S.
economy as a whole.
So the entire industrialized United States has borrowed as much as over a year of its entire output, which means that it has basically consumed an extra year and a quarter, year and a third of output in the world by deferring.
It's debt until later.
And so if you simply were to cut government spending and if you were simply to only spend, if the government would only spend throughout the world the money that it took in, global warming and a wide variety of other environmental issues would be immediately solved.
But of course that's not what governments want.
They want the ability to bribe frightened people with their own money or in fact the money of their children.
And so you don't hear these solutions like, oh, you know, let's put around the kitty, raise a hundred billion dollars, and we can solve the problem with sea salting.
Or the solution is to limit government power, stop its ability to borrow and print money, and therefore reduce the consumption of people in the here and now, which means less environmental predation and so on.
The degree to which fiat currency drives environmental predation is very obvious, but of course people on the left don't like to talk about limiting government spending because they kind of like government spending, which tells you that they really don't give a shit at all about the environment at all.
They're just using the environment as a big giant green club to make people bleed the red of socialism and communism in the long run.
So those are my thoughts about it.
Again, it could turn out to be entirely true.
It could turn out to be entirely false.
Most likely it's going to be somewhere in between.
But I have every reason to be skeptical knowing what I do about economics and incentives.
And if the category called stockbrokers...
And this scenario that I laid out before you of them creating and controlling a number which netted them hundreds of billions of dollars a year in bonuses, if you don't think that would corrupt people then you are deluded and you are dangerously deluded because you're going to hand power to people on the illusion, on the delusion that they are somehow incorruptible.
And of course the only people who would demand that you never think of them As incorruptible are the woefully, shamefully, and soul-destroyingly corrupt.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you enjoy these conversations, please, please go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
All the very best.
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