The Influence of Politics and Tribalism on Climate Science

The Michael Shermer Show # 451

Shermer and Lipsky discuss: the scientists who first sounded the alarm about climate change • science consensus that global warming is real and human caused • the politicization of climate change • George H.W. Bush and Obama • a collective action problem • climate skeptics • Climategate • strategies of global warming skeptics • connection between cigarette smoking/tobacco industry and climate change • what is to be done now.

David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, and many others. His new book is The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

#michaelshermer
#skeptic

Listen to The Michael Shermer Show or subscribe directly on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

[homewall]

A "real" conservative would want to reduce pollution and emissions.

[stevenmyers]

Excellent episode! This is what skepticism is all about. The parallels with the tobacco industry are perfect!

[lestermarshall]

Merchants of Doubt is a good book to read about how companies hire people to cast doubt on real science. Everyone should read it.

[sulljoh]

This has nothing to do with trusting the establishment. It's just about following the data.

I have to use a calibrated CO2 sensor for work and occasionally stick it outside. I haven't seen a number below 400 ppm. It was 275 for most of human history.

[kevinfluth]

I enjoyed learning the reason for switching to the term “climate change”. A year ago, after watching Sagan’s testimony to Congress from 1985, have reverted to calling it Global Warming every chance I get. For some reason, it just feels like a better fit. Great conversation!

[jholt]

I used to be very concerned about climate change. So I decided I needed to really understand the actual science behind it. The more I learned the less it made any sense to me that a CO2 level of 430 PPM could possibly pose a problem.

First I looked at the climate variations during the Holocene and was surprised to discover that the most reliable proxies indicate the planet was warmer than it is today for most of the last 10, 000 years, and since the beginning of recorded history humanity has always thrived in the warmer times and suffered with the cold. The Minoan warm period, the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period were all at least as warm as today if not warmer, and those are the times when the climate was most stable, crops yields were the highest and the human population grew. During the cold times in between people starved, diseases were rampant and populations fell.

Then I looked into the physics and learned that extreme weather such as hurricanes, tornados, droughts and extreme hot and cold periods are all driven by cold polar air interacting with the warmer water and air from the equatorial areas. The more extreme the difference in temperature between these air masses, the more extreme weather events will occur. As the Earth warms the poles warm more than the equatorial areas, so that gradient between warm and cold is diminished and the climate becomes more mild. This is exactly what the historical weather records show, but the climate crisis crowd claims the exact opposite to be true.

I also learned the greenhouse effect of CO2 diminishes logarithmically, and at the current level of 430 PPM it's already approaching the flat part of the curve. I knew that plants use CO2 for photosynthesis but I was surprised to learn that the optimal CO2 level for most plant life is 1000 to 1500 PPM, and that plants require less water as the CO2 level increases. If you look at the earliest images in Google Earth and compare them to today it's apparent that the Earth has actually become more green in recent years.

I learned much more than this. These are just a few points that really stand out. The more I learned the more convinced I became that the so called "climate crisis" is a completely fabricated scam, relentlessly perpetrated by special interests with ulterior motives, Intergovernmental agencies seeking ever greater political influence, billionaire investors eager to develop new profit centers, and governments all around the world leveraging the issue to gain greater power to control the masses and forever driven to capitalize on a new potential source of taxation.

Scientists are forced to toe the line by the social and political climate that's become so entrenched. This is the only kind of climate we should really be concerned about changing.

[randallbessinger]

Visited RJ Reynolds headquaters as part of my job about 15 years ago. Interesting in that smoking in the office was obnoxious. That said the Director that I met with was a very good runner and marathoner but he was a libertarian. He thought smoking should just be up to the individual without govt. intervention. Kind of made me think he didn’t think that much of the workers working under him.

[sulljoh]

I wish people listened to the podcast before spouting their home brew theories in these comments

[rudycandu]

When I saw the title, and then the channel name, I thought the video was going to be a climate change denial. But I clicked on it anyway. I'm so glad that my initial impression was wrong. I ended up listening to the whole program. And about to see what else is on the channel.

[climatebell]

Until people focus on the physics of the greenhouse gas effect, the effect won't be nailed down computationally from a temperature rise point of view.

[mdombroski]

Naomi Oreskes? She wrote a book with a pontifical title -- Merchants of Doubt. It's about four dead guys at an obscure think tank who almost nobody has ever heard of. From this she smears anyone questioning lunacy with being like the tobacco industry. She called nuclear power supporters like James Hansen a new type of denialist. She's now participating in loony lawsuits.

[rogerdittus]

In the video Lipsky breifly mentioned "the historian of the insitute of physics" in discussing how the science came about. This probably would be Spencer Weart, who was the historian of the American Institute of Physics, and his book "The Discovery of Global Warming". The book is a fascinating read and covers how the branches of chemistry, physics, meteorology/ atmospheric sciences and others came together to make the sausage of the current dominant paradigm that really crystallied during the 70's and then refined to today, although the story goes back to scientists of various disciplines dating back to the 1700's. It is a story of correction, but one that follows along a path zeroing-in on reality that makes the psuedo-skeptic's story look quite lame in comparison. This is obvious if you think about the psuedo-skeptic claims from, say, 20 years ago and realize how they would generally not be claimed any longer. As just one example the claim that the CO2 rise may be natural was common two decades ago but has been replaced by other claims. But the psuedo-skeptics and the people that are taken in by them just keep on truckin' without ever self-critiquing. The followers of psuedo-skepticsm never review their epistimological algorithm (OMG, I can't look at whether or not this NASA, etc study is being characterized faithfully or not, or whether some factoid from a historical geology textbook is taken out of context and being stripped of important context. They never see if they can figure out if they're being lied to: this is the real problem laziness motivated by wanting to believe. The problem of global warming and what actions are possible and should be taken are complex, and humanity is not well suited to best address this category of threat. Psuedo-skeptics use this complexity to there advantage.

[sbspock]

"Climate Crisis" is a far more accurate term.

[SteveParsons-nsqn]

Incidentally, the renewed belief in nuclear power (fission) as a solution to the ´climate problem` is delusional - a technocratic fixation with the possibility of permanent motion machines - although once functioning the CO2 footprint of nuclear power stations is not high the construction (a process that takes 10+ years) the enormous use of concrete leaves a formidable CO2 footprint. Where does the uranium come from and what are the CO2 costs of its extraction and ´enrichment`? How is the radioactive waste dealt with and how much CO2 footprint does it entail? How about the problem of cooling and the enormous use of water (which last year already resulted in the temporary closure of French nuclear power stations situated by rivers as they dried out out). I recommend the recent book by the highly qualified scientist M. V. Ramana: “Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change” (Verso books, 2024)

[-LightningRod-]

i am ever so grateful for your efforts to expose these CRIMINALS, ..
I can only hope to live long enough to see them held accountable for the damage they are responsible for.
#paulbeckwith #environmentalcoffeehouse #climatechat #petercarter
i am surprised that you did not mention or reference the API meeting of 1958-9

[DJD]

Not sure staying in print is something to brag about, but all my love to Shermer, what a guy! I listen to every show and always worth it.

[AegonCallery-tyvy]

It is still important to point out that there is zero evidence that Co2 has a ( significant) influence on atmospheric temperature. This from a physics as well as a historical one.
Zero as in nil as in 0. It is all based on a construct w questionable assumptions. The assumptions are stated as fact. THAT cannot be. It is a lie pointed out by many in the field.
So, measure away..Co2 levels mostly do not corrolate w temperature fluctuations historically and when they do it's temperature first followed by rising Co2. The current narrative has it the other way around..

[jasonraider]

It is inaccurate to present the client question and skeptics as unitary, it would be helpful to divide it into several distinct questions: 1) Are temperature rising? Yes, skeptics are ignoring the data. 2) To what degree is this driven by human activity / carbon emissions? Skeptics are ignoring evidence. 3) Are catastrophic models of future increases accurate? Based on inherent problems in modeling, it is not unreasonable to be skeptical. 4) Is there any indication that policies that impose heavy economic costs in the west likely to have a significant impact on climate change? Here is where it is unreasonable to not be skeptical of official claims.

[michaelo.]

These climate people always have the same affect, it's weird.

[paulsnow]

99.9% of the energy budget of the earth resides in the oceans. We have not explored the oceans. We don't know the average temperature of the oceans at all depths.

The atmosphere holds only 0.1% of the Earth's energy budget with the sun. And that energy is transitioning to space; it is far more transitory than the energy held by the oceans. The diurnal temperature range (the delta between low and high temps, or DTR) is generally 5° C for the atmosphere, but less than 1° C for the ocean surface, and negligible a meter or two deeper.

If the atmosphere warmed by 5° C, but the oceans at all depths cooled by .005° C, the earth's energy budget would not change.

Measuring the earth's global temperature by surface temperatures is like measuring an elephant's temperature by measuring the temperature of a cat sitting on the elephant's head.

This channel should be more skeptical.