Transcript for:
Reacting to Climate Change Skepticism

in order to stop global warming to answer Candace's question directly is there something we can do yes and in simple terms the thing we can do is what's up guys Rush here and welcome to all about climate now the person we're reacting to today is someone called Candace Owens who I'll be honest I haven't really heard of a great deal before but one of you guys actually suggested I look at her so that's what we're doing now the video in question is basically a clip from a larger interview where she's talking on The Joe Rogan podcast and of course this being a climate change channel she's talking about climate change so we're going to see what she has to say and see how it Stacks up against science let's get stuck in you don't believe in climate change well I think the climate always changes I guess as well actually do I believe that this is like you know an issue that um is being that there's global warming which they've changed conveniently they got rid of the world once scientists started disproving it now they only say client climate change um okay I'm just gonna quickly pause it there because straight off the bat we've got two commonly made claims about climate change here and the claims are the climate's always changed followed by the claim that a change the terminology from global warming to climate change now I've actually made videos on each of these separately but to very Briefly summarize the first point yes the climate's always changed yes the climate changes for natural reasons but that doesn't mean it only changes for natural reasons right forest fires happen naturally but you can also go out and literally set a forest on a fire in the case of climate it's it's a similar kind of analogy the climate always changes yes but that doesn't mean humans aren't having a role and there's a bunch of reasons a bunch of evidence in fact which demonstrates a clear man-made footprint on current warming but let's briefly address her second claim the idea that they change the terminology from global warming to climate change this is actually very easy to debunk so if you look at the scientific literature and the use of these terms through history what you'll find is they've both been used frequently and often interchangeably for decades and actually to give you a very clear-cut example there's a 1950s scientific paper called the carbon dioxide theory of climatic change so that term was used at least as early as the 50s and global warming is also very much still in use her claim that they stopped calling it global warming is demonstrably wrong anyway let's let's move on okay but this is an incredibly complicated subject right and you would have to talk to a bunch of different scientists and see how they gather data and see what they understand about CO2 levels and what's the danger of them and what can combat it what could not have you done all this or do you take this flippant opinion listen I'm not this is not this wouldn't be the hill I died on right but it's not about the part I just genuinely I've read a ton about it but I would not be able to I would not be able to come to you and say like this is my strong opinion but here's like the easiest way to say this right the fact that there is a disparity in the science Community about whether or not it's real is enough to very little yeah very little disparity the vast majority agree that human beings are negatively affecting climate change that's true but it's actually the percentage of scientists who agree increases as their expertise increases so climate scientists are far far more likely to agree that humans are causing climate change than say a scientist outside of the field of climate science I won't go too much into the detail of the consensus argument it's one which personally I don't like using so we'll move on the the real problem is with climate change is that for sure there has been ups and downs throughout the history of this planet they're observable they've they follow them in we was one of the subjects that I had earlier today with um uh Dr Robert shock in 2014 the vast majority 87 percent of scientists said that human activity is driving global warming yet only half the American public public ascribed to that view so well what website 87 okay so we're talking about the consensus again um I mentioned I didn't want to go into too much detail and that it's not an argument I particularly like using so maybe it's worth me explaining why that's the case scientific training teaches you that when trying to find out scientific reality empirically opinions don't matter it doesn't matter they don't have any real scientific value what has value is evidence data something you can observe and ideally measure so if you guys are ever in this kind of discussion that Joe is in now rather than suggesting that we should believe in climate change because there's a consensus among experts which there is but rather than saying that a much stronger argument would be to say the overwhelming body of evidence points to the conclusion that man-made climate change is happening and is dangerous it's a more scientifically robust argument forget the fact of whether you believe global warming is real let's say it's 100 right let's say we know package real is there a way well let's let's be clear yeah global warming global climate change is definitely real it's happening well the question has always happened yes it has always happened so what what are we what is the this is what is forever changing like that that's the problem is that people are making it seem like that's something weird no it's not that's not you're misrepresenting the issue the issue is people think that human beings are exacerbating climate change to the point where there's a there's a Tipping Point we cross over that Tipping Point we're going to deal with huge problems that could be corrected if we act now and put a lot of funding Into Climate Control so tipping points do exist but I think people often misconstrue that with how climate change works so a good example of a Tipping Point would be the Greenland ice sheet and we know that once you reach a certain point of warming you will set off a chain reaction that will eventually mean that's the entire ice sheet will disappear it will take thousands of years to do that but once you've crossed that threshold there's kind of no coming back so that's an example of a Tipping Point which exists now this is often confused with the idea that a planet as a whole has like this runaway greenhouse effect that will warm to a certain point and once we've warmed too far it will keep warming forever now that can happen a good example of a planet that's happened to is Venus but the idea that this could happen to Earth I mean the evidence isn't there because my question is let's say that it's real okay let's just assume like if that's the best way it's 100 yeah do you feel that you have found in your research that there is something that human beings can do that would change this all around it's possible yes one of the things that that wasn't the answer she was hoping for I like the fact that she should have said that question as if it was a gotcha moment and then Joe comes back and art Says Yes actually there is something we can do let's see Joe's answer first he may give the information which I would give if I was asked this question but if he doesn't I'll add to it I had a poor carbon out of the atmosphere and even even possibly reuse it there's there's all sorts of things that people are trying to do I mean we had um what was the young man who made that uh device boy on slot he figured out a way to uh make this device that pulls plastic out of the oceans they're figuring out a way to I mean that's important so his first answer was carbon capture essentially that's something we could do and yes but the technology there is nowhere near where it needs to be in order for it to be a viable solution in order to stop global warming to answer Candace's question directly is there something we can do yes and in simple terms the thing we can do is stop pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere because that is the court since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by 50 that's going to have a big effect on the energy balance of the planet and as a result it's going to cause global warming so in terms of basic physics if we want to stop global warming and the climate change that it causes it is literally as simple as stopping putting CO2 in the atmosphere the one thing you'll always find with me is I'll never pretend to be so educated on something like I'm not going and college campus is talking about global warming I don't do that right but why are you saying that you don't I just I just I don't know maybe because it got through this mainly because it got so politicized studies into scientific agreement on human cause global warming and look at all the studies it's between a hundred percent and 91 at the lowest 91 of one of the studs it's a pretty broad consensus who are they um 306 scientists to confirm over 97 of climate scientists agree and over 97 percent of the scientific articles find that global warming is real and largely caused by humans so my question to you is if you want to step outside of the scientific consensus right which is vast and involves 10 306 scientists and just say I don't believe in it yeah even if you're right even if you're right you don't have enough information to say that so I don't I just my recall on a lot of things that I read and this was a while ago so this is what where I when I first formed in my opinion I'm not believing this I read a [ __ ] ton of Articles can't recall the data because like I said this wasn't something I was super passionate about it was like somebody posted something and then I went on like a tarot reading about it um but it was essentially just noting that in a lot of these studies like when you go and you if we had time to sit down and really pull this up their rolling you know 10 000 scientists that are within a community that is fun like these dot Works do you believe in everything that mediamatter.mediamatters.org puts out for statistics right that's a political that's a political arm of the Democrats I'm talking about a different subjects but I know but I'm just politics yeah versus science but this has been politicized okay so she said it's been politicized and I agree climate change has been politicized but I would disagree on exactly the nature of that politicizing so Candace and Joe obviously live in the American political cultural bubble and the anglosphere more broadly is entwined in that so being in the UK we're obviously affected by American politics and discourse but if you look outside that kind of social political context at other countries what do you see look at a country like Russia authoritarian nationalistic culturally politically very different from the West more broadly same with India China right these are all very different cultural social contexts and yet they're scientists say the same thing I think the significance of that is often lost on people because if it was true that climate change was a liberal left-western agenda you would expect that the countries who scientists are publishing This research would only come from countries which lean towards uh Progressive Western Democratic principles but that's not the case at all every country across the board every single scientific organization on the planet is arriving at the same conclusion regardless of their political affiliations that should tell you that this isn't a political manifestation and yes politics has got involved and the solutions are very political but the fact that climate change is happening and is man-made and is likely dangerous and is having negative consequences already measurable negative consequences on the planet all of those things are agreed upon by every scientist working on this subject in the world regardless of the country they're working in or the political affiliation of their country that should tell you that this isn't a political manifestation global warming in particular has been politicized 100 it has been politicized right that's the whole reason I I fell down this dark hole one night reading about it and I didn't I was like you know what the other day I don't really care it has been politicized but I think that's also maybe why you're saying you don't agree with it so quickly that is an excellent point I I totally agree I think that that is why because in in America in particular it's become such a divisive issue if you are a conservative sort of traditional Christian values Republican American it kind of comes with a territory now to question at the very least the science of climate change so it's almost a tribal thing like if you're part of that group it then becomes very hard to question that because everyone who agrees with you on other political issues also believes this one thing but that as I mentioned before isn't the case in other countries I understand what you're saying but what I'm saying is that you're a very smart person and people listen to you and they're going to listen to you for a long time but this is what I hate this is an opinion on everything you don't have have a foreign opinion on everything what you do have to have is the ability to know when you don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about I just said that I said that you the entire time yeah I don't believe that you asked me and I said this wouldn't be the hill I chose to die on because I don't I don't why even say you don't believe in it because I I just personally if you how about not have a belief until you say really okay so you would prefer if my language as opposed to admitting that I do not know this I Wouldn't Die myself I've never made a video I've never made a public statement you would have preferred if I had just started by saying I I have no I have no opinion no I don't know okay that's what I'm saying you you say I said I didn't know you say I don't believe in it yeah I don't believe it you're saying really clearly that you don't think it's real yeah so I mean I think it would be the same if I said to you like you know uh do you believe in God right no I would say I don't know you would say so if that's this I think it's really interesting that she brought up a direct religious analogy here I'm God because to me it shows that in her mind these things are equivalent she's seeing climate change and belief in it as a fundamentally religious thing rather than an evidence-based science thing you would say so if that's this that I feel like this is sort of like Linguistics though no I would say I don't know I always say I don't I don't know I'm not most people say like I believe I believe it or I don't right so it's like if you say a lot of people say they don't know okay I think believe is definitely a word that's associated with God right Believers associated with God and religion it's not associated with science and we're talking about a scientific topic here so again the fact that she's brought that up is is quite interesting they don't believe in God and then somebody starts saying oh you need to form is it it's like do they just I just don't believe it no no you don't because God is Not scientific data right there's a big difference between measuring the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and right deciding whether or not there's an afterlife right exactly I just I I personally think that some scientists started talking about global warming and it got politicized they figured it was another way to extract human beings money because of fear that's my opinion I think there's probably some truth to that there's basically we're going to find our core scientists that agree with everything we say this is proven that Harvard Studies have been incorrect because they were being funded by um certain you know political interest groups corporate funding of studies that basically try and arrive at a conclusion which benefits them that absolutely happens but again I'll just point you to the fact that every scientific organization on the planet with all their various different government systems that they work in and the political context in which they work all arrives at the same conclusion that's a pretty clear indicator that politics isn't the driving Factor here so I'm not inclined when someone pulls up an article and says look a 10 000 scientists I air on the side of okay I don't know the scientists are I don't know what this organization is funded by so I'm going to stick by my God and say I don't really believe it that's fair enough but if that's going to be your position you need to apply that as well to the studies that she was referring to earlier which she was suggesting uh supported the idea of scam you can't have it both ways you can't say if you show me evidence of climate change in scientific papers well I don't believe it because people might be you know screwing around with the data they might have an agenda but then read a bunch of Articles saying there is an agenda and say yeah sure that makes sense like either you're skeptical of everything or you're skeptical of nothing you can't be selectively skeptical because to be selectively skeptical is inherently unscientific and see I don't really believe in it yet now if I decide that I'm going to run for office and I've got to make a decision on on the atmosphere and what we're going to do about global warming and CO2 missions you better believe I will be fully ready to discuss it I'm not going to make a YouTube video and just know the outskirts of it I don't do that right but if you and I have a discussion sorry I don't believe it like I don't know what to say always open to learning I've I've been wrong before I was a liberal two years ago you know I don't know if she is open to learning maybe I'm being unfair but I mean she's been presented with evidence twice by Joe it's not the best evidence admittedly but it is evidence nonetheless and her reaction to it wasn't that's interesting I need to check that out it was I don't believe it she just dismissed it out of hand and as we've seen it feels like she's immune to changing her mind any evidence which Joe brings up she will say oh I think it's I don't believe it I mean she's literally said I don't believe it several times and so I'm not sure how open to learning she actually is I'm open to learning but I'm not gonna like protect like say something that feels inauthentic and what I wanted to say there was I don't believe in it oh okay so that's the end of the video yeah that was very interesting I think it was particularly interesting because neither of the people talking were actually climate experts she seemed like a nice person uh I I actually quite like to have a chat with her myself uh I'm sure we could have an interesting discussion I don't think I could change her mind but I could probably do a better job than Joe at showing her actual evidence though I suspect the response would be sorry I don't believe it but anyway thanks for watching make sure to like comment subscribe All That Jazz and until next time goodbye