SIO422: Tucker Carlson, Space Genius

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 422. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and oh gosh, got a fun one for you today. I just, all right, I saw a, you know, kind of a retweet of a Tucker Carlson program from earlier this month, and it was one of those things, this happens often, it was one of the things where I was like, well, surely this is a parody, this is someone exaggerating, dunking, as it were, there's no way he really said this.

And then I noticed, oh, wait, no, that actually the description in Tucker Carlson's own tweet about the video was already ridiculous. Then I had to watch it and I'm not, uh, I get into it with my guests. So, you know, I'm, I've not even gonna, no need to get into it here. We're going to get into it pretty much right away, but oh my God. This video is so nuts. It's so nuts and can't wait to break it down with an expert.

It's going to be a ton of fun. Going to find out if there are dinosaurs on one of Saturn's moons, essentially. Before we get to that couple of things, for one, we have now recorded the bonus for January for SIO. And so I can at least preview it. It's in the edit bay. It'S a nice, long, juicy one. So it's going to take a bit of a time to edit, but I can't wait to get it to you because it is An expert, Dr. Rick, going through the, I if you could call it that, that happened between Bill Maher and Seth MacFarlane about COVID and COVID bullshit, just fucking COVID nonsense. Sense. Like, and it was a clip I saw. It made me so frustrated and just, but also I couldn't believe how good of a job Seth MacFarlane did at refuting this COVID nonsense kind of anti -vax bullshit from Bill Maher. And it's not even that long of a video, but it packed so much of a punch.

We talked about it for honestly hours. We'll see what it adds down to, but that was so much fun. Again, I got to say, it is just such a pleasure to do this show and to get to talk to actual experts about things that very unqualified people on the Internet or on TV like Bill Maher and Tucker Carlson feel feel like it's their place to just Spout nonsense on. And so it's so fun to bring you actual experts and expert knowledge.

That's going to be the bonus. It'll be out pretty soon. If you don't want to miss it, go to patreon.com/seriouspod to hear us take down the idiot Bill Maher and his anti -vax nonsense. Also you can skip the auto ads, one of which you're probably going to hear very soon. Only that, the monthly hangout happened a few days ago. Gosh, that was fun. It's getting bigger every month and more fun every month.

Thank you truly from the bottom of our hearts, mine and Lydia's, for coming and hanging out. We get an absolute kick out of it. A joy to see your faces and speak to you. So one more great reason to be a patron and patreon.com/seriouspod or patreon.com/wherethereswoke either of them. And with that said enough on that, let's get to, I don't know, man, fucking dinosaurs on Saturn or whatever. It's just, you'll see. Let's get get to it I'm joined by JD. JD, how are you doing?

0:03:21 JD: Doing good. How are you?

0:03:22 Thomas: Well, I just had to watch this video for the second or third time, so not great, but you know.

0:03:29 JD: It's pretty rough.

0:03:30 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, this was fun. Nice happenstance. I'd seen this video and I was like, oh man, I got to talk about this. And then Lydia was like like, Ooh, there was a proposal in the, you know, in the inbox that would be perfect for someone to talk about this with. The listeners a two, three sentence introduction of yourself so they know who you are.

0:03:32 JD: Yeah, is J.D. Menges. I'm currently a PhD student out in Colorado in field of space resources, which I will get into a little bit later. Have a master's in geological engineering and a further background in mathematics. So

0:04:03 Thomas: Love it. All those degrees and Tucker Carlson walk into a bar and what I'm just imagining if people don't know this video yet, like what they must be like, what is happening? Like what, What could he have talked about that would make it such that a space resources, mathematics, engineering person, whatever, would have a lot to say? And I just want to play. I'm just going to, there's no need for further comment. Let's just play the first minute or two or whatever it is.

0:04:29 Clip: In the United States, we often refer to our main sources of energy as fossil fuels, oil, natural gas, coal, they're fossil

0:04:36 Thomas: Okay. So Far, so good. I'll just say he's, he's right so far. We do often refer to certain fuels as fossil fuels. Okay, so, so far, I think he's mostly accurate. You want to endorse that? That yeah,

0:04:51 JD: That's one of his two broken clock moments there.

0:04:55 Clip: Fuels because they come from fossils, ancient organic material, forests, jungles, plankton, dinosaurs, held under the ground for millennia, they transform into oil, gas, and coal. Everybody thinks that's true. On the other hand, there's evidence that maybe it's not the whole story. If that's where fossil fuels come from, if that's how hydrocarbons

0:05:13 Thomas: I think we gotta just keep let it go, it's so good. Holy

0:05:21 Clip: Are made, then how come they're found so deep under the oceans and at the top of the Earth? How come one of Saturn's moons, according to scientists, has more oil and natural gas than Earth? There

0:05:28 JD: Okay.

0:05:32 Thomas: Shit, there's dinosaurs on Saturn's moons, my god, do

0:05:38 JD: Is funny you say that, there's dinosaurs on Saturn, because, you know, my favorite book is Sirens of Titan and by Kurt Vonnegut and kind of works. No, but It is About weird living creatures on Titan, so so maybe there's something there. Um, so here's, here's, in Tucker's world, the thing is that, like, fossil fuels, everybody likes to say the whole thing about dinosaurs when, like, it's common knowledge at this point that probably none of our current fossil fuels came from actual dinosaurs. Oh,

0:05:45 Thomas: Is that dinosaurs on uh, on Saturday's moon thing? Oh, nice. Oh, man,

0:06:16 JD: Yeah,

0:06:16 Thomas: I was hoping and some of them did. No, I've heard that, I've had people, I've made jokes where it's like, it's, I just say, like, dinosaur juice for stuff for fun, for not, and and I have people correct me, and I'm like, okay, yeah, no, I I, and I will, I'll come by it honestly, I thought some of the people who said that would have been from dinosaurs, like, just probability wise, I thought it was just like a bunch of, you know, everything down there, whatever, whatever, old shit, but, but, burst my bubble, tell me, tell me why that's wrong. Yeah,

0:06:23 JD: And that's fine, you know, well, know, we're talking plankton, plant life, other, uh, um, know, organic matter, but, the, here is that he, quote, was, "how come they're found so deep under the ocean, at the top of the Earth," which is weirdest, dumbest thing he's, I've heard him say. Well,

0:06:55 Thomas: First he said, why they found so deep in the ocean, I was like, well, that isn't that where they would be? I don't understand. Yeah, what, keep in mind this is a scripted intro too, it's not like, if it was like, oh, okay, he's just talking off the cuff, maybe, it's like, no, this, he's reading into the screen very earnestly, a scripting intro, and he's like, why they found so far under the ocean, like, that's where they could be, and then he's like, and at the top of the Earth, whatever, he said, on the surface of the, I did

0:07:00 JD: In his world fish and marine life don't exist, die, or decompose, so I just like is know what he meant by top of the Earth, because, like, if he's talking about top, does top of the Earth mean the crust, which, Which, yeah, like, obviously, but if he's like a complete idiot and probably meant the top of mountains, then he's not just a climate change denier. He's also a plate tectonics denier, like let's use Appalachian the Mountains as an example. Right. So about 300 to 360 million years ago, the Appalaachian mountains were basically a swamp. And a bunch of it was underwater and tons There's tons of vegetation. And when it died,

0:07:27 Thomas: The North Pole, yeah, yeah, well, and also,

0:07:59 JD: It accumulated on the swamp floor. And then like some of it, a lot of it was underwater, was it subsequently buried under sediments. And then

0:08:07 Thomas: A dinosaur fell in there, ha, got, gotcha there.

0:08:10 JD: Got me possibly.

0:08:11 Thomas: It might, one might have tripped and just fell in with the plants, and then the little bit of oil is dinosaurs, there we go.

0:08:17 JD: You go. You figured it out. That was around, you know, between 300 and 360 60 million years ago, right? And then around 325 million years ago, we have what's called the Orogeny, which is when now Africa collided with North America and created the Appalachian Mountain Ranges, and it moved all that sweet, sweet coal up into the mountain, so now there's coal in the mountains, which ist why the Appalaachian region region is such a coal heavy industry, I mean, it's the coal belt, it's, the, it's Exactly, you know, I'm from around that region, uh, Pennsylvania, and it's all coal and oil, so it's, it's all Appalachian coal and oil, which was formed that way. Uh, I still don't know what he means by top of the Earth, so I

0:08:39 Thomas: Wow, That's so fascinating. Now Pangea in the mix there, all still... Oh, okay. I'm just curious, I was realizing I have two points of reference, now and whatever Pangea was. I'm like, crap, was that... When was that? Is there, like, a pre -Pangea orientation of everything? Or is Pangeo, like, a starting point of some kind?

0:09:07 JD: Pangea was, was basically just prior to that, um, it is interesting that, just, it learned about that, you know, in my current studies, that Pangeo wasn't, like, the first time, that, at least theoretically, wasn't the first time that all the continents were together, like, it happened. Yeah, so

0:09:38 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't think. I mean it's been... You said 300 million, I mean, the Earth is... pretty old, there, we go.

0:09:41 JD: Uh, it's about 4.5 billion, um, know pangea existed around 335 you million years ago so breakup really wasn't until around 175 million years before so

0:09:46 Thomas: Yeah, oh, their solo albums were not as good, those continents, you know. What, imagine was okay, I don't know, it was pretty good, but

0:09:59 JD: It Yeah. Oh, don't know. He's playing to his audience. Thought Maybe, it was really cute that he said that the fossils were held underground for millennia. Since his core audience doesn't believe that the Earth was around for a couple more than that.

0:10:19 Thomas: Yeah, well, plus, millennia, is that just a thousand years, because that's like in geology, you're, that you're the geology expert, but that's enough, that's like pocket change for geology time, right? Millennia, come on, get out of here with your millennia, we gotta stop using the millennia, they just roll around your pocket, you don't, you ever, you throw them away, they're worthless. Oh,

0:10:21 JD: Like, yes, that's thousands of years. Like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we use things like mega years or giga years, which is why you'll see things like MYR or GYR to be things like a million or a billion. Yeah, So, it's because that is orders of magnitude. Yes.

0:10:45 Thomas: Wow, huh, well, let's, let's play him a little more to get to his central thesis, but, okay, so, so far we've got some key corrections, not fuels, just to drill down, not that it matters that much in reality, but because it's, um, shockingly central to his thesis here. They're, what do we consider fossil fuels and is that a label that makes sense or are there, you know exceptions to that kind of thing?

0:11:06 JD: I accepted definition is basically any type of energy source that was formed from the remains of ancient, you, undergone complex chemical physical changes over millions and millions of years, years, uh, primarily composed of, and he'll talk about it, hydrocarbons, um, you, on which fossil fuel we're talking about, underwent different processes, you know, coal, oil, uh, gas, they went under different processes for each one, but consider fossil fuels, and that's the big part of, uh, and Dr. Soon's argument is that, you, there's, know, biogenic and there's a biogenic, what we know is fossil fuels is, is biogenic, what hydrocarbons that are formed through organic origins, uh, a biogenic is formed through inorganic, uh,

0:11:21 Thomas: Hmm.

0:11:57 Thomas: Let's pause on that, because I think that'll be key to the, I think it's worth going on maybe another minute here, let's see.

0:12:03 Clip: Are dinosaurs and planktons in forests at one point on one of Satan's moons? Probably not. So if all hydrocarbons aren't from fossils, where are they from? And why isn't this commonly known? And what are the implications of it? And what does it tell us about our modern climate change policy? These are not just esoteric questions, they're central questions, actually, as we chart the future of energy usage in the world. Willie Soon has been thinking about this for a long time. He's in astrophysics, the

0:12:07 Thomas: Planktons holy shit, all right, we'll Pause there, yeah. So what I love about this, and virtually every single time some religious nut job uses a scientific argument, is that I'm always like, well, who do you think discovered that there was this stuff on Saturn's moon, you know, it's always like, do they think that, like, the pope did it or something. It's like, the scientists also did that. So, do you think that, so what I would think, as not an asshole, like, just as somewhat modest in my own, you know, idea of my genius, is I'd be like, holy shit, fossil fuel, because methane, technically a fossil fuel on Earth, right? I Sure.

0:13:17 Thomas: So I would say, fuck, that's a fossil field. They just discovered that on a place where there's no fossils, checkmate, call Einstein, I'm now president of science, you idiots, no, I would think, like, well, if the scientists are the ones who obviously built everything that could possibly have led to the fucking discovery of methane on a moon of Saturn, and they seem to be fine, like, they didn't, you know, a bunch of them didn't jump, jump off a cliff once they've discovered that and be like, our entire, our entire science is wrong, you know, like, they,

0:13:15 JD: Contributes to it, yes, yes, yeah,

0:13:51 Thomas: I would assume that I'm missing something. I'd be like okay, well maybe, maybe methane isn't always a fossil fuel or maybe there's some, you know what I mean? So

0:13:59 JD: It's a, I said, it is a master masterclass in, in logical fallacies, and this is, is how right-wing news outlets work, this is how anything on, you know, works like that, it, I have just notes, just red inked all over the place with logical fallancies, but like, yeah, like, he, he starts with, what you're saying, false analogy, assuming that the exact same processes that produce hydrocarbons on Earth happen the exact same way on Titan, it's it's absolutely, and, and if if, if they don't happen with fossils on Titan, then obviously they can't be happening here on Earth, at least not in the quantities that, seeing, you, or that abiogenic ones, like, happens on Titan, would happen in the same quantities here, to the point where we would expect to be large reserves of that type of oil hydrocarbon underneath the surface here.

0:14:12 Thomas: Ooh, bring us in.

0:14:23 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Mm

0:14:44 JD: And, we can get into the science later about how, you, the, and its moons formed in a different way than Earth, figure, but, you, logical fallacy right here, appeal to ignorance, it's like, oh, we don't know every last aspect of how fossil fuels or hydrocarbons were formed, or, you know, climate history, so everything that we do know about it needs to be thrown out, because it's dubious, and

0:14:45 Thomas: -huh. Yeah. Yeah. Or you and I are like Tucker didn't know a thing or relied on a definition of a word like fossil fuels, a definition OFA term that maybe might be slightly misleading if you're you not an expert or something. Relying on that is like ipso facto. Therefore, if I found a slight possible exception to that, then I've disproven all of science. And there's a grand conspiracy trying to convince, you know, it's like he literally says everyone thought this.

No one didn't think that, this is what Trump used to do, he probably still does, where he'd mention something, be like, yeah, are you aware of this, you know, this, uh, whatever, it'd just be a thing that he just heard of and he'd be like, ya, nobody knew this before today, cause, I he's like solipsistically, like, anything that is out of Trump's vision, it doesn't exist, and then once he sees it, it's like, holy shit, there's this new thing. And logically speaking, yeah, I don't know the name of any fallacy cause I forget them all, but it's just like, yeah, if A A led to B on Earth, and you discover B not on Earth, it doesn't mean that, like, therefore A is also there. It's like, no, it could be a different cause. Maybe A leads to B, but maybe also C leads to D. And so, therefore, if you discover D somewhere else, you don't know what the cause is, but you can guess it's probably not A if A involves dinosaurs. That's all I'm saying.

0:15:52 JD: And And as we'll see, Dr. Soon, who is an astrophysicist, should know better, because as an astphysicists he should understand that you planets, have the the terrestrial planets, Mars and inward, that are all formed in a different way than the outer planets are, because of where they're located. So should know better, like, it's basic planetary geology, which, if you know, he has a PhD in astrophysics, he should know this. And so he's being willfully ignorant.

0:16:46 Thomas: Should we introduce him in some way? Do you want, is there a clip to introduce some or do Okay, let's do it, and

0:16:50 JD: On. It The Just Tucker's introduction of him.

0:16:54 Clip: Soon has been thinking about this for a long time. He's an astrophysicist, a geoscientist. He spent 31 years at Harvard. He recently left, and he joins us here. Dr. Soon, thank you so much. Thank you, doctor, I appreciate it, to be able to come on your show. Well, it's a blessing to have you, and this is such an interesting question with so many implications, and I want to spend most of our time talking about the implications, but

0:17:16 JD: So one of the links I'll send you is a article from the Smithsonian Magazine, which highly references, I believe, a New York Times investigation. Investigation. And let's talk about Dr. Soon here, um, going to quote from this. So, you quote, "Working from documents obtained by Greenpeace and Climate Investigation Center under the Freedom of Information acts Act, New York Times reported that Dr. Willie Soon, a researcher working with the harvard smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has scientific papers over the past decade claiming that recent climate variation is primarily due to fluctuation in the sun's energy, not human activity, without revealing that at the same time he had received $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry to fund this research," and at least 11 papers he has published since 2008 have omitted such a disclosure. Closure. At least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work." There's, that end quote on that one.

0:17:59 Thomas: Way, which Like, this guy, there, you watch a lot of this kind of stuff, or it comes up with religious debates, it comes upp with you any anti -science cause, you're ultimately, or pseudoscience, whatever, there, there's a mix of people that are put up as experts. There's people who, um, different creative ways to have like the letters "Dr." next to their name, they're like, aren't really a doctorate in the thing that they, you know, are supposed to be specializing, or they just lie, or they make, it they have some fake credentials, or what it sounds like this guy is, Dr. Willie Soon, it sounds like he has real credentials, it sounds like he's a real scientist, at some point, right. And but it's just, you know, accepting a bunch of money to make claims to help bolster you companies or whatever, is that what we have here, more? Yeah.

0:18:35 JD: Kind of, yeah, absolutely. And later on in the interview, he does make, don't I want to say good points, but he brings up issues with, with funding and And how certain, can influence the direction of a research by withholding or funding in certain ways. But he frames that as though he's above that fray, when that's absolutely not the case. And there are structures, institutions in effect, like the entire concept of peer review, or the entire concept of disclosures, where when you write papers, you disclose any potential conflicts of interest or any potential funding that research. He didn't do that. And now is going on Tucker saying that he's above that, and that all the other scientists who formed the climate change consensus are all taking money from Bill Gates or whoever, uh,

0:19:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:54 Thomas: From big actual science in order to do science.

0:19:58 JD: It, we want to go forward on, on a Doctor Soon here, like, so, I I dove deep starting with his Wikipedia page, but I was just, I'm like, none of this can't be as ridiculous as it reads, but he was a senior scientist at, now it's defunct, it was a conservative think tank called the George C. Marshall Institute, which was a conservative think-tank that was focused on climate change denial, and wait for it, funded by fossil fuel companies, including Exxon Mobil, and More. He, Soon, was also the chief science advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which on the face of it Oh, that sounds great.

0:20:05 Thomas: -hmm. No.

0:20:26 Thomas: Way. Well that sounds great Yeah, great name. Must be nice.

0:20:35 JD: Yeah, right. An organization whose mission is to promote, quote, sound public policy based on sound science. It's great.

0:20:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

0:20:43 JD: And that, they mean, yep.

0:20:43 Thomas: I'm going to donate right now. I'll click it. I've got a thousand dollar donation. Should I'm I hit submit?

0:20:45 JD: Yep. Yeah. No, no. That sound is a change denial. And they've also received funding from ExxonMobil.

0:20:52 Thomas: You know what? I've had enough. This happens on Where There's Books so often in this show. The fucking, you names of like these things. It's like the foundation for amazing science and butterflies and great everything and their their their specialty is killing children or something. You're just like, what, how, why are you allowed to do that? We need, there needs to be some independent council of namers that's like, you don't actually get to pick your name. I'm sorry, you don't get to PICK YOUR NAME. If you're one of the the fucking whatever lobbying effort or whatever it is, you get assigned a name. And the the name has to be, it'll be a panel of independent scientists who are not funded by anybody. And there's just government job, you know, just like unbribable government job. They name you based on what you're really actually doing. That's how it should work. My new policy, vote for me for president.

0:21:16 JD: Yep, I

0:21:41 Thomas: Anyways,

0:21:41 JD: Agree 100%. And yeah, and it's funny that you say that because I'm about to tell you two more.

0:21:46 Thomas: Fantastic.

0:21:48 JD: So 2004, he received the longest award name I've ever seen in my life, which is the Peter Beckman Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Defense of Scientific Truth. And that is from an organization called the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

So from what I can find, Peter Beckman was actually a pretty intelligent engineer whose escaped family the Nazis when he was 14 and has a PhD in electrical engineering, wrote several textbooks on the topic and was actually a big advocate for nuclear power back in the 70s when there was a lot of major pushback to that idea. He was also a huge libertarian and editor of like a pretty big publication that essentially parroted and published a bunch of Ayn Rand ideas and articles.

Ironically to what Dr. Soon says at one point in this interview, he claimed to have debunked Einstein's theory of special relativity. So the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness actually started during the Cold War, which was like to promote civil defense, fence, which sounds great, but has since started to just promote all of these fringe conspiracy topics, including and most prominently climate change denial. And it also has close ties and associations with the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, which is a non -profit.

0:22:40 Thomas: Oh yeah. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:06 Thomas: Physicians and surgeons, huh?

0:23:08 JD: Yeah, another great name, right? But that's a nonproduct that promotes AIDS denialism and and autism vaccine connections. So.

0:23:09 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, god yeah, yeah, but but that's so telling, because another I've come across in doing a lot of this is when you have, it like, we've got 500 doctors telling you that vaccines cause autism, and then you look at the details and it's like, well, they're dentists or something. You know, it'll be like some slightly off thing where you're like, well, that, yeah, I mean, this doesn't exactly, it just like looks better to the masses to say doctors.

0:23:18 JD: Yeah. Yeah. I yeah.

0:23:41 Thomas: Or be, and that, that strikes me as surgeons and physicists. Don't I really, you know, like, is that who, yeah.

0:23:41 JD: I there was a big one I, I don't remember his name. There was big one ages ago that he was like, he was interviewed in all of these climate denial documentaries, and you looked him up and he was a mechanical engineer who helped invent the MRI machine. And like, like well, that's that's not your expertise, man, like, yeah.

0:23:58 Thomas: You're like okay, cool, but I don t, yeah eh, yeah yeah. What is this guy's alleged ex, what should his expertise be? If he's an astrophysicist,

0:24:08 JD: Unfortunate, because some of the research he's done, which is how does solar variation affect climate. That's actually, a solar variation does affect climate. Like it's just

0:24:21 Thomas: Well, we should step back. We haven't told people. I mean, makes a howler of a claim that I almost couldn't, I've watched this three times, I was like, there's no way he actually said that, right? But let me hit play here, uh,

0:24:22 JD: Yeah. So

0:24:31 Clip: Are certainly right, but most important to clarify is that the information that is found on the largest moon on on Saturn, which called Titan, yes, it's actually results from NASA, European Space Agency, and then the Italian Space Agency, who built this spacecraft called Cassini and Hoyden, actually one of my thesis advisor committee is actually built the UV spectrometer, but the one that they used to discover this, basically the ocean, liquid, liquid form of methane, which is in ethan form, which is much more complicated than hydrocarbon, is whole ocean of it, because Titan is in such a way that it's very cold, by the way, so it's minus 290 degree Fahrenheit, yes, hint hint hint, where's the global warming there, right? If it's full of methane there, right, that's

0:24:46 Thomas: -huh, it's

0:25:21 Clip: Enough uranium.

0:25:21 Thomas: For real, like, come on, man, where's the global warming? It, you're, you're not talking about two of the same, it's so far out, okay, yeah.

0:25:31 JD: Tell you exactly where the global warming is, it's on Venus, because if he knew anything, which he does because he's an astrophysicist, he would know that the reason Venus is hotter than Mercury is because of runaway greenhouse effect, yeah.

0:25:35 Thomas: Exactly, dude.

0:25:47 Thomas: I knew that in second grade. I don't know a lot of things, but I remember learning, in no, or third grade, we had like a song about all the planets, and we learned all the plants, and that's one of those counterintuitive facts that you love to learn as a kid. I've already told Phoebe that a hundred times, she probably doesn't remember, but yeah, anyone knows that, like, yeah, Venus has this really, you know, thick ass S-S-T-H-I-C-C atmosphere over there in Venus. You know, it's just, it is thick.

0:26:11 Thomas: And so it's hotter than the planet that is closer to the sun. But like, we're missing so many, and maybe this is something that you could tell us a little bit about. I don't know if you specifically know much about Titan or whatever, but like, okay, I'm missing a lot of information there. We've, they found, they seem to have found based on this video. I haven't looked it up. I'm just going based on what this fucking guy's telling me. Like, is it an ocean of methane? Is the whole planet like covered in it? Or have they found just a small pond of it? Like what, what, what have theyfound here?

0:26:11 JD: Oh,

0:26:39 Thomas: Rain's methane.

0:26:38 JD: Rains methane, there, like, it, oh, absolutely, um, it has a, it thick methane, methane atmosphere, yeah. Basically, oceans, yeah, absolutely,

0:26:40 Thomas: Okay. Okay. So it has a methane, like a whole atmosphere of methane. So here's the information I'm missing. A, I don't remember, fucking Saturn's way far out there. So I know it's, it's way further away from the sun. And it's not as though people who believe in climate change think that the sun and proximity to the sun has no effect on how warm you would be. Like, obviously, that's also an effect, like that's going to make, make a big difference.

And two, I have no fucking idea how warm this place would be if it was just like a rock floating out there. I have no idea. For all I know, it would be much, much colder if it were just like, atmosphere less, dry as a bone slab of granite out there orbiting Saturn versus what it is now. Maybe it is retaining a whole bunch more heat than it would otherwise do.

I don't, or there's some scientific reason why that's all nonsense, I don't fucking know, I have no idea. But for this guy to come out here and say, where's the global warming there? Hint, hint. It's just like instantly, okay, he's incredibly full of shit. There's

0:27:42 JD: Uh, and, you, he know, was honest, or kept up with his, you, reading anything about how, how was formed or, you know, there's... there's a lot of theories about how certain planets and certain moons were formed. I mean, there's theories about how our moon was formed that are still debated, you know, in the field, but give you the link to the paper here, uh, it's a 2009 paper that talks about the origins of, you know, Titan's atmospheric methane and the, you, lakes and things like that, they call them the Titans methane lakes, um, really, there's two, two main hypotheses now, and for the longest time, uh, was a thought that, of like what he's pushing for Earth, that a process in Titan's interior, uh, potentially produce methane, and that that process is called serpentism, man, is always hard to say, serpentinization, and know know, right? So yeah.

0:27:58 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:28:31 Thomas: We got some snakes in there. We got tight Saturn moon snakes. Okay. That's a good name for a band. By the way, David Bowie's next. 70s space concept devs and Saturn moon snakes.

0:28:41 JD: The is a hydrocarbon has four hydrogen, one carbon atom, them, like, methane can form, or we could say, biogenically or abiogenically, which is without, you, biology or without, uh, processes, um, formation of it, uh, knows, pretty wife has a, this is more her wheelhouse.

0:28:42 Thomas: Bring

0:29:01 JD: But I know I really should.

0:29:00 Thomas: Her on.

0:29:05 JD: Is produced through methanogenesis, is microorganisms basically breaking down the organic matter in the absence of oxygen, and released as a byproduct, then the abiogenic process. One of those is what I said before, which was the serpentinization, which is react, certain minerals reacting with water and creating methane as a byproduct, which is just a, you know, chemical reaction. And, high pressure to that, which is what they try to get into, saying that, you know, as you get closer to the, you, pressure is a lot higher. So theoretically, um, could be produced through these chemical reactions in high pressure environments, um, could then, you, create, uh, you, the very lower crust or upper mantle, um, that, that's kind of the thought process, uh, behind, you, the methane and hydrocarbon production, but it basically falls down to, you, it comes to natural processes, you know, biogenic or abiogenic. The argument is that because it happens abiogenically on other planets or extraterrestrial bodies, that it should be happening in the same quantities here, which is just false.

0:30:07 Thomas: How, did this happen? How did we get so much methane on Titan?

0:30:11 JD: It's interesting. This is still up for debate, like geologists, you a of heated debates about how planets, how certain planets formed, how certain moons formed. Origin and, of Titan's methane, you it has about 5% methane in its atmosphere. There's two main hypotheses. And one is it's you been, know, in the last decade or so has been gaining a lot more traction. Um, the original train of thought was the serpentinization, which was uh the mineral olivin reacting with water and creating methane in Titan's interior in a high pressure environment, um, you potentially producing methane. Um, more recently uh have began to propose that methane might have been incorporated into its actual formation, which Uh, we don't know um way planets form is you start with

0:30:55 Thomas: Huh? When a mommy planet and a daddy planet love each other very much.

0:30:59 JD: Uh You're Spot on, uh, for the for the Fox News viewer, but uh, you have a cloud of and gas dust, it has a all bunch of minerals in it, and those start, you know, as they get closer, they form these clouds because of gravity, and then they start forming, you, which is like a tiny ball, and then you everything, however small, has gravity, it starts to attract more and more of this dust and gas and elements, and that basically becomes a snowball effect.

It's in what we call a planetesimal, like, um, a plantesimal is like a small planet. Uh, then eventually would become Titan. A lot of the thought now is that when this was formed there was methane that existed in a gas or a liquid form, um, more likely an ice form because of how far away it was from the sun, uh, was then incorporated into this planetesimal.

And the way that they look at this is, so every molecule kind of has what we would, what you might call like a fingerprint, tell us about like the history and where it came from. And for methane or hydrocarbons, what they look for is a ratio between two types of hydrogen, hydrogen which

0:32:15 Thomas: That an isotope of hydrogen? Is that what, yeah. And there's some of of it on on right, I think I Remember something

0:32:17 JD: Yes. Absolutely. Sorry. Called hydrogen too, and a stable isotope, it, you know, it has one, has one proton and one neutron, whereas an hydrogen atom doesn't have a neutron, so Yeah, like it, look for the the ratio of uh deuterium to the amount of Hydrogen. It's

0:32:20 Thomas: Right. Oh. Yeah. Well, Because like, so isotopes are like, they're this sort of a slight variation of the element, right, or they have more fewer neutrons, right?

0:32:44 JD: Yeah, usually based around a difference in neutrons, because in A, you, what we know is the periodic table, you have The same number of protons and neutrons in the element, um, isotopes very uh that uh

0:32:47 Thomas: And They Can be stable, and I, and if I'm remembering correctly, it can do basically everything that hydrogen does, right, and so the of how much just plain old hydrogen to how much deuterium, which is, you the isotope we're talking about, that ratio can tell you something about where this molecule came from.

0:33:11 JD: Yes, absolutely, and that's called the D, the D-H ratio, and if they've learned from the remote sensors, like Cassini is, and that the D-H ratio of methane that would have been made inside of Titan through the serpentization doesn't match what they see in Titan's atmosphere. Atmosphere, so The is that it seems more likely that Titan's methane came from the space dust and ice that formed Titan originally.

0:33:28 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh, gotcha.

0:33:38 JD: And It's kind of exciting because like the paper, um, 2009, says that if this is right, then Titan could have a lot more methane Hidden inside Of it than what we see in the atmosphere, up to a factor of like 1300 times, so As a, you, geologist, that that's really cool, and uh has a planned mission to Titan, um, they're going going to like a drone, uh

0:33:38 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, right. Right. Going to go smell it and be like, oh, methane. Holy shit. And then they're going to come back and report.

0:34:06 JD: Like, yeah, yeah, right, um, the is actually called Titan, but the drone is called the Dragonfly, um Dragonfly, it's, is a mission to send a robotic rotorcraft, like a small helicopter, to the surface of Titan, and uh, is going to basically do a fully controlled atmospheric flight and and get, we know the intention of studying the, habitability, extraterrestrial habitability, prebiotic chemistry of, the moon, which is funny because that's exactly what know they're the, talking about here.

0:34:11 Thomas: Oh, Wow. Well, there's so many questions that we're not going to answer. I would love to learn about the, that operates. Cause you got, you're going to fly some sort of helicopter related object in a methane atmosphere, but also I'm sure you got a lot less gravity, right? And there's, that's gotta be, that'S gotta be fascinating, But topic for another time. So this is really cool.

0:34:48 Thomas: So, you story short, the fact that there's methane not on Earth does not mean, A, that there were dinosaurs on that place or plankton or whatever the fuck, and B, it doesn't mean that there was some grand conspiracy of by scientists like yourself possibly to convince everyone that fossils are the only way to make certain fuels, that was then that was blown wide open by the discovery of that fuel on a place where there's no fossils. I know that's a really stupid point to have to sum up both those points, but like, I think that's where we're at, right?

0:34:47 JD: Oh, absolutely. Well, yes.

0:35:23 Thomas: In the conversation, in the debunk.

0:35:23 JD: And it's, it, yes, it's what we all know, which is that Tucker Carlson has no respect for the intelligence of his audience. So, yeah,

0:35:32 Thomas: Yeah. And we all know that, but I also wanted to use it as a chance for us to learn a little bit more about this stuff. So I guess is the surprising part, if it is really that surprising, maybe it's not to scientists, but like when I think of, you hydrocarbons and that'S apparently a very efficient source of fuel, right? And that's what, what we talk about fossil fuels and the carbon part sounds sounds like life. Cause like, ah, carbon, we're a carbon -based life form.

So that must come from life, must come från fossils, must comes from old plankton, all that kind of thing. The basic kind to get too deep into it, but the basic scientific response to that is like, I think, correct me if I'm wrong or clarify. Yeah, no carbon. There's a, the reason we're made of carbon is there was carbon around, right?

It's not like we're the only source of it our life is the only source of it, it could have formed, it sounds like possibly already in the cloud of crap that was in, you know, my couch from the kids that formed our galaxy, you know? Just the whole dust cloud, the whole gas, all that. And process in the formation of our solar system would have also produced some methane possibly that, that might be where the methane on Titan has come from. Do I have that correct?

0:36:37 JD: Yeah, precisely. Spot you're on.

0:36:38 Thomas: Interesting. Well, I have a question then. This, And do could this, be an astrophysics question, if feel free to take a pass. Why wouldn't we see methane in more places then? Like in more, you know moons or planets? Like is there a specific reason in those papers that you've researched? Does it ever talk about like why it would just be in this one specific place? Or is it just that we've yet to discover it in more places in our solar system?

0:36:38 JD: Yeah.

0:37:01 JD: Mean, there's spacecraft the or the instrument on may not have, we checked every single planetary body for single element, right?

0:37:06 Thomas: No, be plausible that, you could be other places could be in other moons of Saturn, I imagine, right? I mean, unless there's some reason specific to Titan that would somehow have, if you I understand you right in the theory is that it came from the, the kind of formation of the solar solar system, possibly rather than a specific process within the moon of Titan, then you would think it would be other places possibly in, in the solar system.

0:37:30 JD: And Dr. Soon even brings up uh, whole, um, uh, which is, uh, on Mars, he brings up, um, found like traces of benzene on certain rocks on Mars.

0:37:33 Thomas: Benzene. So So what's benzene?

0:37:40 JD: Benzene is another, it's you six carbons, six hydrogens. Open question as that in my advisor's planetary, planetary geology class, we discussed, you, it make more sense for it to have come from internal, an process, you, that would have been abiogenic, or is, could it have potentially originated from organic life that used to exist on Mars, which is still an open question, you, why we keep sending all these rovers and instruments to Mars to see a lot. Mission objectives for Mars missions are to try and find more evidence, try and find more geologic evidence of past biological life on Martian surface. Surface, and we even talk about how, hey, you know, that can be produced below the crust of planets, of, as well, uh, the surface of planets, uh, um, surfaces don't just have a crust, they're just straight rock all the way through, uh,

0:37:44 Thomas: Okay. Okay.

0:38:33 Thomas: It sounds like it's not very surprising that methane was on, on, Titan. Sounds It like there's plenty of potential explanations and also other things within our solar system that, that are sort of like that, like other hydrocarbons that maybe could be from life or maybe could be from other things. So not surprising. So I consider that bullshit debunked. You, so why are they doing all this bullshit about, doesn't even sound like this is new. Was there some recent news item? Him, why was, or is this part of Dr. Soon's just fucking propaganda pitch, because you were talking about 2009, like, it doesn't seem like this is some hot off the press's new discovery, so why is he bringing this up, why is even talking about this, right?

0:39:08 JD: Solar variations over time and how that affects the climate, which it absolutely does. As we've seen, because he's been funded by fuels, it's not a matter of whether or not solar variations contribute to climate change. It's a matter of percentage. He also talks about orbital variations. Again, because of small orbital variations and perturbations around the sun, climate can change. But amount and the percentage of that contribution to the climate change that we see is so much lower than our our contribution of, of CO2 and, and carbon emissions. So, he is trying to make the argument that It is not CO2. And that CO2 is the chemical of life, I believe he calls it, or something along those lines, which is absolute, Garbage. But, but the talk of finding hydrocarbons or methane on other planets, like Titan, is a giant red herring. The entire idea of scientists, um, fossil fuel as a function of their limited nature, is a giant red herring as to why we should limit, stop their use, or transition to other sources of energy, uh,

0:39:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:57 Thomas: Which It's Like what, yeah.

0:40:20 Thomas: Let me see if I can catch the audience up. I think, so what's, if I follow the train of thought, he, his overall, one of his main quests, one of the main objectives is to be a mouthpiece for fucking big oil, uh, and to explain away climate change in a way that doesn't, know, implicate, um, big oil, which, so incredible to me because we know now that big oil already knew all about that, like, I think we're past that point.

Well, I think we all know big oil knows that climate change is man -made etc., and, and now it's like they're trying to find other ways to bullshit us about it. So it's weird that he's still even doing this, but set that aside. He goes through in the interview, um, talks about like, well, the sun is responsible for climate change, that's what's responsible, it's the sun. And you kind of allude to that.

It's either the orbital variations or it's like, you know, sunspot or other solar activity. And that's, you know, impossible to predict because it's the sun, the sun's weird. And there's, that kind of thing.

And also, like, a claim as though our argument, and I say "our" like the, the environmentalist type argument, is that we shouldn't use oil and fossil fuels because we're going to run out, and not something that I've really, I mean, I, has been a topic of like, are we going to ran out of easily accessible oil, um, could, could probably tell more on this than I could, but my, my general recollection is, you, it is a finite resource, but like anything else, once it gets harder and harder to get, the, the price goes up until it's like it's not worth it anymore.

But then fracking and, and other, you know, advances made it so we actually can get way more oil than we thought we could out of some of these places, which, that fucking sucks. My point is, I don't really think that's like, like a major cornerstone of my argument against fossil fuel use, like it's

0:41:57 JD: Absolutely.

0:41:58 Thomas: Not that, maybe they're taking like, oh, because it's a limited resource, we say that we should rely, or invent, or, or funding into renewable resources, and this is like their counter to that, because his point with that is, well, if there's methane on this fucking moon of, then, Titan, it's, it's not, it's at all limited, and there's plenty, there's plenty out there for us to get. There's plenty of fossil fuels. So that's my understanding of this batshit argument, and this, you, fuel shilling argument, to just make it clear for the audience. So, so talk about all that, if you will.

0:42:32 JD: And up a good point that like, on geologic timescales, for all intents and purposes, it absolutely is a limited resource Because whole argument and concept of peak oil, which, definition of which is up for debate, which is, when we going to reach a point where continuing to drill or try and get to it is not a worthwhile investment due to how much is left? You brought up fracking. And it, squeezing oil from a stone, or, you know, know trying to use

0:42:40 Thomas: Sure.

0:43:00 Thomas: Or polluting a town's drinking water by, yeah.

0:43:02 JD: Oh, Yeah. Set, setting your sink water on fire, but He brings up that the ultimate resource is the human mind, which, if I don't know if you want to play that one, but, like, there's a, yeah, that

0:43:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. This will give you guys an indication of this tone of this interview is just this guy who is a scientist spewing on and on and on, and one out of every 10 maybe sentences is something kind of relevant to the points they're making. But the rest is just like kind semi related quips and stories and anecdotes and whatever. And Tucker Carlson, and I don't blame him as someone who does interviews, I definitely way out of Tucker Carlston's depth. And he's just somebody, the guest is somebody who clearly rambles on and on and on. So Tucker says like three things in this hour long interview, 'cause he just, there's nothing for him to say. He's just like, okay, so yeah, so therefore climate, I don't know what you just, you just told me eight stories and one involved Einstein. And I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And so that's the tone of it. Mixed among all that is this gem that you want to have me play here. I'll just push play for a little bit.

0:44:03 Clip: In the ocean, you have only 17 million tons of it, there, gold, copper, what do you want on the ocean, it's all there, except they're in very dilute form. Yeah, clearly, so the ultimate resource actually is not that, is the human mind, it's the innovation.

0:44:19 Thomas: What?

0:44:20 Clip: Part of it, I think, I like that principle a lot, and it fits very well in terms of saying that it's a matter of course, even oil, most, I don't know if any of, you know, the audience know that 50 to 60 percent of the, the, all, actually all the oil that you already drilled, the drill hole, yeah, you can only pull out 40 to 50 percent of it, 60 of that remains in it because, simply because there's not enough pressure to get it out. This is why that the idea of a biogenic oil is interesting, is true, clearly true, it's all a matter of course, really, because this thing has to fall way inside the earth, the mantle, which is 50 to 100, 100, hundred miles, right? Human, how deep have we ever drill, only the skin, which is only five miles.

0:45:06 Clip: Maximum, five to six miles, basically, that's at least that we can do, and then all this stuff, so I

0:45:05 Thomas: The earth's skin. I don't know when you want me to stop, but that just give people an idea of what, why it might be a little difficult to frame our conversation around this nonsense is just, it is so gish gallopy.

0:45:13 JD: Know that that, that's fine. Yeah. The first time I listened to it, I, I almost rolled my eyes because when to say, well, yeah, like, well, the ultimate human resource is the human mind and its ability to innovate, and he uses that to say, like, well, like, and then I started thinking about fracking and I'm like, oh, okay.

0:45:25 Thomas: It's almost.

0:45:38 Thomas: Uh -huh. Yeah.

0:45:40 JD: So what he's trying to say is that, yeah, these abiogenic reservoirs clearly exist, which, which, no, they don't clearly exist.

0:45:40 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, so he's not even talking about real demonstrated reservoirs of oil. He's talking about like, maybe there's a biogenic reservoirs that we have because of this discovery.

0:45:52 JD: No. Yes. And that the thing that's stopping us from getting to them is that we haven't developed the technology yet.

0:45:59 Thomas: Oh. We haven't got Bruce Willis to, you know, the good enough equipment to drill it. Yeah.

0:46:03 JD: Because they would be... Precisely. It's little bit darker than that. And it goes into the idea of techno-optimism or technological optimism, which in some instances might be a positive thing because you look at techno-optimism as a way, you know, a faith in progress, you know. But what especially it comes to climate change deniers or climate change deniers that can no longer deny it because the evidence is right in front of them, is that, well, we're not going to to stop drilling anyway science and technology will save us it will allow us to adapt it will so that what I'm seeing when I see him say that is

0:46:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep. A brilliant point. Didn't I actually put all that together. I think I actually, now that you say that, I think you absolutely nailed what he's saying. I And I think that has another effect, which is, yeah, so because the technology is going to us save and all that, you know, maybe we ought to fund oil companies research into, you know, looking into how to get this stuff more. You know, it's like I'm not I don't know if he's explicitly saying that, but I would imagine the sort of broader theme of what he's getting to is maybe these oil companies, maybe these these these people aren't so bad. Maybe we ought to be celebrating that they want to innovate and do a bunch of stuff and money going to them in the form of fucking tax breaks or whatever is not such a bad idea. I that seems right on to me. I think you put your finger on what he's getting at, was not easy to do. I can't I can't express enough how much that was not obvious from the 14 different anecdotes he made there.

0:47:25 JD: It's yeah It's difficult, um, continues to talk about like the tyranny of the minority, uh, that, like, there's and dark and potentially anti-Semitic they that wants us to stop using fossil fuels. Because whenever I hear somebody say they, I think of Alex Jones. Like, when you say it ominously, like – oh, it's they, they, the people in power.

0:47:36 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. But this guy's current references are still Al Gore and John Kerry.

0:47:57 JD: Like, Kerry. Yep.

0:47:58 Thomas: And I'm like, what century are you living in, man?

0:47:58 JD: Yeah. Which, like, I'll tell you, it's said that they can't explain how greenhouse gases work, which I think is completely false. Like, I have I have my problems with the way that an inconvenient truth is presented, but that's not one Of them. So

0:48:07 Thomas: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's well understood. Oh, you mean that movie from literally 20 something years ago that's not even relevant at all to today's climate change debate? Is that is that what you mean? Like, like that? Look, I didn't I never even watch that fucking thing. My understanding is, yeah, think it largely holds up, but I'm sure they got some stuff wrong, but who fucking cares? That's the hallmark of bullshit is you're hanging on to maybe something that was incorrect from 25 years ago, as though that means all of the science developed prior to, and since then is wrong because of a movie that was not quite right. You know, it's just nonsense, right?

0:48:23 JD: I mean And don't know how deep you want to go into that, but he, they keep bringing up, man, they spend a ton of time on, uh, on Michael Man and, uh, Man's hockey stick graph, uh, was basically the, you, incident of a convenient truth, if you will, um, know, Michael Mann, a climatologist, um, used a lot of things like ice core samples and, you, tree rings, a lot of this additional data, because, look back further in time to when we didn't have temperature records to then, you, show, know that around, I to say, you, the mid -1900s right, at even the 1900s. Like I'm talking late Late 1800s.

0:49:19 Thomas: No, it was just late 1800s, I think. Industrial

0:49:22 JD: Yeah.

0:49:22 Thomas: Revolution.

0:49:23 JD: Revolution. Yes. That, that, you, temperatures just shot up and, with, with, increase in fossil emissions. Still trying to debunk, uh, hockey stick using the same tired arguments, even though, uh, it's been continuously, over and over again, re-proof, like it's redone this, they've, Mann himself has gone back and refined the data as, as he's you re-looked at the data or found additional data, uh, get more and more core samples, or core samples every time there's a mission to Antarctica. So you're new data to put into this model, and it continues to show this, like, well, you know, temperature started going up before the, a, you, significant increase in, uh, emissions. And so I'm like, is, is that true? So what I did, I literally pulled the hockey stick graph, I found a graph of, of CO2 emissions, and I

0:49:23 Thomas: Yeah. Really? Okay. I have a hockey stick if that would... I can go get... Does that help? No. Okay. Never mind.

0:50:19 JD: Yeah, I'm wearing my Colorado Avalanche jersey, so but

0:50:23 Thomas: Oh. You lucky fan of a good team, you bastard.

0:50:25 JD: Oh, we could talk about that later, but yeah, yeah, it is, uh, but, um, just curious, I'm like, well, you know what, I want to look at a graph of Co3 emissions, emissions over time, and I want to compare it to what, you know, and he's, it's absolutely wrong, like so like, it's, it's funny because like, you can see right around the start of, the, I believe technically the start of the Industrial Revolution was about 1840, if you're going to put a mark on it, you see the emissions graph start to go up slowly in 1850, and it continues to go slowly up until around 1950, when the slope just goes insane, and

0:50:28 Thomas: Another time.

0:50:40 Thomas: No. No.

0:51:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:51:03 JD: Like the emissions go up, but it's still a steady increase for 100 years, and because the line of the temperature shoots up in slope around the slope goes up in the emissions, he's like, well, that was a significant increase that didn't correlate with the significant increase in, uh, in fossil fuel usage. But here's the thing, it still went from pre-industrial revolution to, you, it's still billions of tons of CO2 emissions, emissions. So, you know, it's just it's the difference between it's a difference between like four billion tons, and then in 1950, you, shoots from five billion tons up to like 10 billion tons, it's just a lot, you, of an increase in the emissions, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't already an effect on the temperature at that point. And to his point, to his entire research, that Sun is causing this, the way, this, the way the Sun and its effect on climate is measured, it's called Total Solar Irradiance.

0:51:31 Thomas: It's just obvious. Yeah, sure.

0:51:57 JD: TSI, and I have paper a that, out, send that you as a link, they looked at TSI a over 1980 to 2020, and goes in cycles, you know, over years, up and down and up and down, but then they averaged it from the beginning to the end, from 1980 to 2020, Total Solar Irradiance went down, me that it absolutely is not the primary cause of climate change. Oh,

0:52:08 Thomas: Yeah it's So ridiculous. I, stepping back, I, thanks for looking into all that, and absolutely, but like, there is no, no fucking way in the universe that any of these explanations would be remotely plausible if there weren't a huge agenda trying behind to find an alternative explanation, right? I mean, like there's, there's no way it lines up. Like, you look at that hockey stick graph, there's a lot to talk about here. I wasn't sure I, you know, I've seen some of the propaganda on that. And I would have, like, if you, if someone had asked me just before any of this, I would would have said, oh, I think maybe vaguely there was some problem with that graph that Republicans made a huge deal about, but maybe it wasn't a big deal.

And my response would have been, it's sort of like how religious people stick to constantly debunking like Darwin himself, or they'll be like, Darvin didn't even know about, you, how, or something, it's like, yeah, but we've done a lot since then, you don't, you don't just pause at 18 fucking whenever, and that use some mistake, mistake made then to represent all of science.

And similarly, I know this graph is newer than that, but like this graph, it's relatively new, but it's also two and a half decades old. And if someone made a mistake somewhere, broadly speaking, the whole thing holds up pretty well, is my understanding. But I, sounds like you're even little stronger on that, that there isn't really a problem with Mann's graph.

And so I guess the point is, all of this, this data shows you, around the time when we started putting fucking shit into the atmosphere, the temperature started getting warmer to a degree that is painfully obvious. Like there's no, there's no reason a priori you would expect, well, it must be that the Sun also happened to get just a lot hotter exactly at that time, or that, you know, it's just nonsense.

It's the only thing, it's the, it's the kind of thing you would only believe if you were desperately grasping for some other explanation, so that you could just, for fucking political reasons, for any, any reasons, it's not scientific at all.

0:52:45 JD: Absolutely oh, % Like an answer in In Search of a Problem, that is ironic, because I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he accused IPCC, you, of doing, is, answer is that it's not fossil fuels, so he's trying to figure out what's the problem with the people who are saying that it is, uh, grasping at straws over, yeah, like you said, like with things that are decades old at this point.

0:54:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:41 Thomas: And, and, so obvious. It's the same way. If you look at, a, you, lot of campaigns of misinformation, information, or conspiracy theories have these same hallmarks because of a fundamental thing that's going on, which is you're trying to get to not the truth. And so when you're trying to desperately get to something other than the truth, you're going to have to piece together things in disparate ways that aren't, don't, logically speaking, how you would ever go about doing it, if what you were trying to do is just honestly seek out the answer. This reminds me of 9/11 truth, where it's like, that's a tough one, cause you are, you, you're trying to prove something happened that is just so far from reality, you know, and like it's so counter to what we all saw and know happened, that the way they do it is zooming in on just tons of little, tiny, disparate, you, that don't quite add up, you a hallmark of this kind of thing. And I think it's what's going on here. We could go on forever about this because it's so fun and fascinating and also frustrating. But

0:55:26 JD: Absolutely, um, that final point, which I'm sure you got a kick out of, which was the whole, you're telling me that you see evidence of God in math.

0:55:42 Thomas: Oh, God. Yeah. Then it's just, I mean, again, he talks for this 49 minutes of thing and it's all over the place. I mean that's coming from me too. I mean, like yeah, because you have a math Background. Okay, maybe we should, should we play it? I forgot about that Let's do it all right mathematician you tell us why God exists from this, just for fun, uh,

0:55:52 JD: Don't know what I expected, but I was so disappointed. Because it just, like, for it. Yeah, yeah, go go for it I

0:56:04 Clip: Want to ask you This is a kind of last topic, which is not really into this, but we talked about it off the air, and I think it's really interesting. You were telling me that you see God, or evidence of God, in math. Well, can you explain what you were saying and maybe I misread what you were saying. No, no, no, you did not. I mean, I I have been closer and closer to God, in the sense that, because it takes me a long time, I'm rather rebellious, you know. I have to say, "Damn it, God, you gotta prove it to me. Show it to my buddy." Just kidding, I'm sorry for anybody. No, no, but I really say it in that way, you know, you talk to yourself in a sense. But in many, many moments in history of physics or mathematics, things come out. You see, mathematics, you know, it's this very pure world that it seems to have no connection to. Yeah, that's right, it's true, it's complex

0:56:19 Thomas: Love that response okay okay

0:56:55 Clip: Numbers, all of them, but they appear in quantum mechanics, right? It's so beautiful. But one of the things that sometimes you see in the equation is so amazing. When you formulate, maybe it's not right, maybe it's this and that, you know, you doubt yourself. But one of the most beautiful equation was the one that derived by Paul Dirac. Is a professor at Cambridge University, but he retired in Florida by the way, he died in Florida, Tallahassee, uh, it's

0:57:14 Thomas: Here we we go, what does that have to fucking do with it just get okay get

0:57:20 Clip: A refuge for him because he doesn't like to talk, he will sit there for five days, he don't talk, one day all of a sudden he talked, but anyway, he formulated that he's a beautiful man, you know, Paul Dirack, he formulated a relativistic equation of, uh, for electrons, but in one of the equations the solution come out to be a negative sign, not only that, there's a square root involved, so there's strange behavior, there's negative sign in love, but it has the exact property like an electron and all that stuff. How come everybody say you crazy, you still do this and that, right? He's not even, wait, he didn't, no sweat buddy, he just say, "I am right."

0:57:26 Thomas: To the mathematical proof about god what

0:57:27 JD: Precise

0:57:39 Thomas: Okay well okay I, I want to give him credit, I've, I said this, like, unfortunately, exact same thing, that, like, it is pretty cool that, like, I, you know, like, complex numbers are somehow useful, and in whatever, I, I you know, I don't think it's because of God, like, why would, would that be?

0:58:15 JD: I mean, like, exactly, I mean, heck, that's the reason my undergraduate degree is in mathematics, and it's partially because I loved how elegant it could be. It gave me, like, even today, like, is, is working on optimization problems, things like integer programming, to find optimal answers to things, which, to me, is, you naively believe that there's still ways to mathematically look issues, nuanced issues.

0:58:23 Thomas: Oh, that sounds so cool.

0:58:42 JD: But it's of mathematical elegance and its connection to scientific discovery, and the interpretation of that, like, people see it as evidence of a deeper, possibly divine order, while others, like you and I, we view it as a natural feature of a universe that's governed by coherent and discoverable rules so

0:58:59 Thomas: Well, I think it's so funny. It's so human to be like, look, if the equation that described electrons was just like, you know, 5n plus 7x squared, no God. But if it's negative I squared, you're just like why the fuck would that, What does that have to do with anything? Why would that? It's such a weird, like, you're seeking, you something to be true. They want there to be God. And so you look at something a little counterintuitive mathematically to say, ah, that must be proof. But like, where are your intuitions coming from? Why is your intuition about what a math equation should look like that describes an electron's behavior? Why in the world would that be proof of anything? That's nothing. Our intuitions about that are based on stuff that may or may not have any relationship to reality. Like, it might just be our evolutionary history. It might be stuff that we like that looks nice, that looks neat. You know, it has nothing to do with anything.

0:59:12 JD: Yeah I of my favorite quotes, oddly, was from a different mathematician, uh, because it's kind of cheeky, but, um, name was, he's a Hungarian mathematician in the 20th century, named Paul Erdős, and, uh, he's known for just being one of the most prolific, uh, mathematical writers, um, of ever, but he, he was very cynical and sarcastic a lot of the time, and one of his quotes was, "I'm not qualified to say whether or not God exists, and I kind of doubt that he does, nevertheless, I'm always saying that the SF," which the funniest thing was that he called it of a God, the SF meaning the Supreme Fascist.

1:00:13 Thomas: Hmm.

1:00:29 Thomas: I was trying to figure out what that was. Okay.

1:00:31 JD: Yeah. He's like, I'm always saying that the SF, the Supreme Fascious, has a trans finite book, which trans finite being a concept of mathematics that is larger than infinite, that contains the best proofs of all mathematical theorems, proofs, and that are elegant and perfect. Meaning that he believed that out there, like, they're, I said, naively, that, that out there, like, not that there's a God out there that has a book that has all the, you know, proofs in it, just that they were discoverable, just that they're out there to be discovered, and you, even the ones that we've already discovered, maybe there's more elegant and better ways to find them. But, you know, I always loved reading, I, his biography, because he just, just because of the Supreme Fascist remark it always cracked me up

1:00:32 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. So, I think we've debunked enough here. There's no proof of God by mathematics. And also, it's fine that there's methane and titan. It doesn't mean that there are dinosaurs there. It doesn't mean there's a grand conspiracy. I'm just trying to sum up everywhere we got to. Let's see. The hockey stick graph basically holds up. The sun didn't just decide to be way fucking hotter starting in circa 1850 or whatever to now, you know, like that. And it's accelerating to like that thing must really be mad at us. That sun. I don't know. Yeah, crazy. Crazy.

1:01:19 JD: Good lord, yeah

1:01:39 Thomas: Like at the same time, obviously some of his research, I think you alluded to it. It's certainly interesting to know if there's any other contributors like, like the sun or orbital, whatever, like nothing wrong with knowing that. But if you're trying to do that with an agenda to disprove the vast, overwhelming consensus that climate change is caused by, you know, greenhouse gases and all that, then, then you're just doing a bad thing for fossil fuel companies. So there you have it. Did I miss anything? What else did we accomplish here today? Did I get it all?

1:01:34 JD: Yeah yeah yeah all right yeah no I think you, I hit it on the head, I think, yeah, it's, it's, it's frustrating, because his research is interesting, it's interesting to me, like, I, you know, I learned a couple things about, and, and, and how they could potentially affect, uh, on earth and stuff, you, that he's written books about, but he's, he's using his power for evil, I suppose.

1:02:25 Thomas: Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. You so much. Think that, you know, you probably had 400 pages of notes we didn't get to. But that's the problem when you have a guy gish galloping, you know, it's really hard to know how to handle that. And I think we got a lot of good stuff out of this. JD, is there anywhere you want to point people? Anything you want to plug?

1:02:32 JD: That's fine. Not necessarily. I know right now I'm just a student. So, you

1:02:49 Thomas: So go Avalanche. I mean, you know, take anything, anything you want.

1:02:51 JD: Yeah. Oh, go, go abs, go Nuggets. But yeah.

1:02:54 Thomas: Thank you so much for coming on. This was a pleasure. I think there's more we can talk about another time about space mining because we didn't even get to that. So we'll have to maybe reschedule for another time on that. But this was a lot of fun debunking the person talking to the most fucking corrupt scientist. You know, that's a bad, bad combination. All right. Take care.

1:03:02 JD: Yeah. Yeah. Not great. Not great, not great.