WTW145: Jordan Peterson Rises, Lazarus-like, to Do Climate Change Denial

Transcript

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

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia. How are you doing?

0:00:46 Lydia: Hi, doing pretty well. Staying nice and cool in our house. How about you?

0:00:51 Thomas: For one, am relieved that you're in charge of the episode again. There was almost a revolt among the listeners. And me, actually. It was led by me. Like, no more Thomas. No more Thomas!

0:00:55 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, I stole the reins back. No. Well, I'm sorry, because now when I'm in charge, we're going to be talking about Jordan Peterson. So I don't know if folks are going to get excited about that or want you back at the helm, honestly. I think we have, we, an interesting piece today. Um, haven't talked about Jordan Peterson in a while because he got really, really, really sick. I think we mentioned that. Um, the time when he disappeared

0:01:23 Thomas: He's always been really, really sick. I can't think of a time when he wasn't. Like, which time is this?

0:01:24 Lydia: Yeah. Like, like, no one heard from him for months. Yeah.

0:01:31 Thomas: But that was a while ago. So wait, the first time, okay.

0:01:34 Lydia: It's not the Russia time, so

0:01:35 Thomas: So That's, that's Why I wanted to make sure, because if you say the time that no one heard from for a while, I think people are probably thinking of that. Did it happen again? Oh.

0:01:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it happened again. Michaela Peterson came out and, you know, shared, um, her dad was going, going through some, like, really, really big health scares. Um, they weren't sure if he was going to make it. I don't know. I know that we've actually gotten that many details about it. He has not died, however. Um. But he he hasn't done podcasting. He hasn't any videos, nothing like that. Um he is writing again. So as he's been recovering, he started to write some more.

0:01:45 Thomas: Wow. Geez. Oh. Wow. But We don't know what was wrong with him, huh?

0:02:08 Lydia: Um it says Jordan Peterson is suffering from a medication induced neurological injury.

0:02:15 Thomas: Again? It is. Wait, is this because he doesn't believe in medicine, does weird shit? Yeah. Could be. I

0:02:15 Lydia: Yeah. Could be. Could be. But he's back to writing. Still no news on when he's gonna be back in front of a camera or on a microphone or anything like that. But I thought it'd be fun to fun. I thought It would be interesting to go through a recent piece he did for the The Telegraph. And a reasons why it's interesting. The piece of his own, I think, is worth talking about. But then there's also this interesting element of The Terograph. It is a conservative publication out of the UK, but they had sort of a warring of the op -eds happening online. 27th, one of their columnists published, Climate Change is Real and the right needs to get serious about it. Talking about the wildfires that were happening in Europe, three of the worst UK harvests on record have been in the last six years.

0:03:09 Thomas: Saw a thing where 10 years ago in some sort of dystopian fiction, there was, like, a fake weather forecast where everything was, like, super duper hot, and people made fun of it at the time. And then for the heat wave was worse than what that was. I saw that.

0:03:22 Lydia: Yeah, like impossible. Oh, yeah. Crazy. It is crazy.

0:03:28 Thomas: It's really bad. It is getting to the point where I was thinking this the other day. I was like, do people still deny it? Or are we skipping to the part where no one gets in trouble for having denied it this whole time and they just go to some other complaint? You know, I was thinking about that, like, these people should be in prison. We should, in my America, once all get on, be it resolved, pass a law that's like, hey, we're, the climate change is bad and we're dying because of it, so anyone who is a part of lying for profit in order to get people to not do anything about it, like, let's arrest them, let's, uh, there's something, pay a fine, I don't know, something, because committed a crime against humanity, like the It's literally the worst crime. You're, you're contributing to the death of the earth for the whole world. Yeah.

0:03:45 Lydia: Yeah, Yeah. Yep of the human race of

0:04:12 Thomas: But No, we'll move on. Angry

0:04:13 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah But Stanley, to his credit, you know, again, this is a conservative guy, he said that climate skepticism is angry irrelevance and also talked about, I think Yeah. And Talked about kind what other countries are doing, like kind of calling out maybe some racism in Britain, or trying to, I guess, rile up the racists in a weird way, saying, hey, Kenya is doing renewable electricity, that's going great for them, Pakistan, Pakistan has rooftop solar adoption. And it's all over the place, you guys, like, you know, look at how those countries are doing.

0:04:25 Thomas: Irrelevance. That's nice.

0:04:41 Thomas: Oh, my god. That's such a good idea.

0:04:46 Lydia: It is so smart.

0:04:46 Thomas: Hey, if these non-white people can even do it.

0:04:49 Lydia: Exactly, exactly. And he's not the only one at the Telegraph. Another senior columnist, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, also wrote a piece kind of in the same way. And then just a couple days later, July 30, we get the first piece from the other side. Sunday Telegraph editor, Alistair Heath, yeah, he argued that Britain should scrap net zero entirely because, and this is like a learned helplessness sort of argument, we've lost the war against climate change. Yeah, so what are we doing?

0:04:56 Thomas: Jesus.

0:05:05 Thomas: A lump of coal. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

0:05:15 Thomas: We're all dead. Some of you may die, that's a sacrifice I am willing to make. They're

0:05:23 Lydia: The decarbonization spending in the UK, he was considering as self -harm because it hasn't made any impact since China is, you know, ruining the climate anyway, and that we should just learn how to cope with and maybe even enjoy, in quotes, a hotter, more volatile climate, given

0:05:32 Thomas: Not though. Did he really say China is ruining the climate? I don't, I'm not sure that, I think that was a talking point that made sense, like, a decade ago, but I'm not, I could be wrong. I think, think that's out of date, because they're leading on a lot, like, their electric car production is better than anybody's in the world now.

0:05:42 Lydia: China's output regarding emissions.

0:05:57 Thomas: Um, I'd be surprised if that's still true, but I can look it up.

0:05:50 Lydia: Yeah. Incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the next day, July 31st, Jordan Peterson's piece comes out. And it further. It's not just that net zero doesn't work. Why are we bothering? It's the entire climate movement is a leftist project intent on destroying capitalism. Because of course it is. And so we're going to dig into that piece specifically and potentially things are getting so heated at the Telegraph, some funding behind that. Yeah. Unintended, folks. I don't come up with those things intentionally. I'm not that quick. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it and do some debunking along the way on

0:06:28 Thomas: Um, sorry.

0:06:39 Thomas: Just doing a quick fact check. This is not something that I, like, stress tested, but I'm juste, you know, for, think that's an old talking point. So total annual emissions, sure, China, 30 percent of the global total. Per capita, it's still us. So, I mean, like, I guess it still matters that China, yeah, like, they are a massive emitter, but they're also way more people. So, I mean, in some ways you could be like, well, why should we do anything when the whole rest of the world combined is like eight, 90% % of it. And it's like, okay, but we're a big part of it and we're capita, we're huge. We're like the worst by far. And here's another one, cumulative historical, the US and Europe are way higher. So if you look at like like if you count.

0:07:08 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. I am Sorry. We have to pay for the sins of the industrial revolution at you guys like

0:07:24 Thomas: Right, exactly. It's like it's not even the sins. It'S like whatever. It' s just it's just fact. Like it just happened. You know what I mean? Like I t I don'T know the people in the 1800s knew necessarily what was going on. But either way, they put this shit in the world and that happened. And here's the other thing. China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months.

0:07:25 Lydia: Yeah I know I know, yep.

0:07:37 Lydia: Oh Wow, nice.

0:07:44 Thomas: And one forecast that has the 2026 emissions down one to two percent below 2025. Meanwhile, ours rose 2 .4 percent, reversing years of decline. Decline, uh, and I have to imagine some of that is weather related, like when the weather's worse we have to, it's been like, you know, more AC, more heat, um, but also I don't even know if this is counting, um, Iran, like don't think the, a lot of the measures, and again, I'm talking off the cuff, but I remember reading something about how, like, they don't really even include the massive CO2 costs of the stupid fucking wars we do, and just hard to count because a a lot of it is unknown. So that's another wrinkle. Like, imagine how much CO2 involved, whether directly or indirectly, through, like, the bombs and shit and all the infrastructure and all the, all the weapons that have been made and all that. Imagine all the emissions that goes into the making of that material and all that and blowing that all up, you know, in a pointless war. So, yeah, no, I think we're, we're more of a problem.

0:07:44 Lydia: Wow Oh God yeah yeah Agreed, and we'll get into why Jordan Peterson doesn't think that's so after the break.

0:08:50 Thomas: Right. Let's. Let's do it all right well hey support the show. patreon.com, where there's, well, get the goodies, get the bonuses, uh, it's fun times, and support Lydia's sexy voice. Yeah.

0:09:03 Lydia: Just had a bonus come, come out. Yeah. Thanksgiving Oh Thank you. It was pre -sexy voice. Yeah.

0:09:04 Thomas: We did it was your sexy voice. Oh No, yeah, it was, uh, yeah it Was a, it was a Thanksgiving. I, I took a guess as to when Thanksgiving is. I guessed wrong. Uh, no I'm just kidding. Yeah, stuff on hung and Thanksgiving and, uh, that fiasco, uh, uh, I think it was fun. We went through a little bit of history. We went through the, you know, the history of that little, um, -up or mishap, and, uh, yeah, so if you want to hear that, that's on the Patreon feed, patreon.com slash where there's woke. Learn about both what went wrong with, uh, candidate and her tweets about Thanksgiving, and also what went wrong with Thanksgiving. All right Where shall we, we begin?

0:09:13 Lydia: Francesca Shall Start with the headline, uh, this article, "Climate Change Catastrophism Is a Leftist Weapon to Destroy Capitalism." So

0:09:43 Thomas: Oh My god, dude, this is like, that's so, like, 2007. Yeah.

0:09:56 Lydia: 2000 and late, yeah.

0:09:58 Thomas: It is 2000 and late. It's, it's both 2008 and 2000 late now. Oh, the

0:09:58 Lydia: Yeah yeah and And true to Jordan Peterson as a person, this article goes on forever. It is ridiculous. So I'm obviously not going to read all of it, but we're gonna clue in on some things here that I think are worthwhile to, to take down. I

0:10:10 Thomas: Verbosity do You want me to read because your voice is messed up and you're in charge of the podcast episode? Okay all

0:10:24 Lydia: I want to read. I feel more connected to the material that way. But So

0:10:27 Thomas: Right. I guess I'll do you nothing. It's

0:10:31 Lydia: I, I'm going to start, though, by reading his, his setup, up, because I do think, is this worth kind of seeing like, oh, you know, the world is painting for us here. Veritable moral panic over air conditioning is raging rather surreally across the West as high summer temperatures produce the usual flood of exaggerated concerns.

0:10:53 Thomas: The normal thing. Look, this is, he's really saying it's normal that every year is the hottest year on record, guys. It's been happening for like 10 straight years. Get used to it. No,

0:11:00 Lydia: Yeah, guys complain about it every single year. Here. Britons have been summarily ordered to remove already installed AC units under net zero rules, as The Telegraph has reported. France's climate minister expressed horror at the very notion of artificial indoor cooling. Do you think that's going to prevent forest fires, she said? Do you thinkthat's goingto prevent a crop from dying?

0:11:23 Thomas: Only you can prevent forest fires. Yeah.

0:11:25 Lydia: Germany's state broadcaster added to, quote, climate awareness with this pearl of wisdom, quote, "Air conditioners, what cools us down heats up the earth." The European Commission, for its part, shut down the AC in its headquarters in June due to a heat wave, but only on floors one to seven where the peons worked. President Ursula, or also because heat rises, and so maybe it's hotter, like, they're trying to be mindful of the temperature and where it's actually going to matter. President Ursa Vonderland and her commissioners, by contrast, remained comfortably cool, presumably on the six remaining upper floors of the 13-story building.

He says presumably regarding if they were comfortably cool. I guess he doesn't want to assume. The Atlantic, in an area we know very well, or kind of well, New York's newly elected socialist mayor, Zoran Mamdani, took to X with a plea for virtuous conservation during a concurrent heat wave. Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights and electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can.

This, despite his office simultaneously simultaneously issuing weather warnings advising the use of air conditioning for safety in the city's newly passed Cool All Act, requiring landlords to provide that same environmentally desolating service to tenants. Okay, he is trying to say that's a contradiction. It's

0:12:37 Lydia: Not a contradiction, have an AC installed.

0:12:36 Thomas: So Don't waste AC is the same as saying don't use it ever at all, even if you're gonna die. Yeah.

0:12:45 Lydia: Yeah, Exactly. No, it's about responsible usage in the same way that we have responsible water usage in California in an area that is prone to droughts. Exactly.

0:12:45 Thomas: Yeah. Oh I can't drink water now. Yeah.

0:12:55 Lydia: It's the same argument, right? That, like, that's the same thing that he's saying. It's crazy how the world, did we get here, how did something as personal as home or workplace temperature

0:12:58 Thomas: Oh I'll tell you why.

0:13:04 Lydia: No.

0:13:04 Thomas: Oh, I thought you were asking me. Uh, yeah, whiny man babies control everything and react to everything in this exact way. This exact thing is how we got here, actually. It's everything. If someone has any desire whatsoever, expresses the slightest sentiment that maybe you should modify your behavior slightly, you get to do the, "Oh, I'm sorry, no, no, no, I don't get to live." Okay.

0:13:13 Lydia: -huh uh-uh. How did something as personal is home or work place temperature become an ecological sin requiring both state condemnation and centralized control? How

0:13:39 Thomas: I'll grant you home temperature could be personal. I'd still argue that it's not if you're doing something that's affecting everybody, but I'll just grant you that one. Work temperature, that's not personal, that's like definitionally not personal, unless you own your own building and you're the only one who works in it?

0:13:51 Lydia: Also Where in this is there any, like, criminal consequence for you setting your home AC to a temperature that the state deems inappropriate? There, there is no. Exactly.

0:14:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Then they just say like, Hey, please don't.

0:14:10 Lydia: Like, he says centralized control. There, there is no centralized control over what you're setting your personal AC to.

0:14:15 Thomas: Well, it's central air, but okay.

0:14:15 Lydia: Okay. Fair enough, fair enough. How did government intervention this invasive and totalizing

0:14:26 Thomas: Intervention this invasive and totalizing leaving virtually nothing outside its purview. What? Even even if I granted you that, like, it's going to put some limits on like AC or something, how does that leave virtually nothing outside? It's purview God. They're all, they are like, they're the fucking, he has a PhD in slippery slope. That's all. It's like, that might as well be his like Hi. Yes. I have a doctorate in slippery slope. Maybe you should not waste AC. Oh, nothing's beyond your purview, is it?

0:14:44 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:15:01 Lydia: And the declared moral ideal, what we drive how we heat our homes. Yeah, yeah, what we eat, how much water we use, every modern activity. Okay, and is modern about the what we ate we only started eating modern in modern times increases industrial CO2 emissions in a manner not dissimilar to air conditioning. Do all such intimate local decisions therefore necessitate governmental oversight and regulation? And if so, what freedoms can possibly remain? Yeah.

0:15:04 Thomas: It's not a moral ideal. It's that we're killing the earth.

0:15:16 Thomas: We only started using water recently. Yeah, I'm an idiot and not going to look into anything. I'm just going to pose questions about like if you regulate one thing, then does that mean you can regulate every single thing? Well, no. Um, do you know how, like, government works, man? I mean, you're talking about the UK, I guess, but I'll just speak for America for one. There is no regulation ever passed anymore, ever, until we take control of stuff, so that's not happening. Everything's been deregulated. But let's Let's pretend we lived in a country where, like, something happened like this. It's going to be based on them passing laws that enable people to regulate, enable commissions or enable federal agencies to regulate stuff, and those are usually tailored pretty neatly. You know why? Because of fucking greedy corporations lobbying everything down to oblivion. This is the least

0:15:37 Lydia: Yeah. Mm. -hmm. Right. Right. Yep. Yep. So

0:16:19 Thomas: Thing you need to worry about in the world. There's, they're fine. The corporations have plenty of defense without you, Jordan Peterson. Yeah.

0:16:26 Lydia: Me talk really quickly just about this this first claim he makes that the UK, you know, ordered residents to remove their AC units, right? That this happened, you, the United Kingdom, was unfortunately spread by a lot of people across the media, so much so that the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government had to issue an entire press release about this, about their air conditioning rules. It says, "There has been media coverage this week suggesting that air conditioning is banned in homes. This is incorrect." Correct.

Air conditioning can be installed in both existing and new homes. In most cases, planning permission is not required to install it for a small home if it would not materially affect the appearance of the building from outside. However, there is no blanket rule. People should speak with their local council to check the rules, and councils should take a common-sense approach. There are other measures in place to make sure people's homes are cool.

Building regulations already require new residential buildings, including houses, flats, student accommodation, residential care homes, and children's homes, to be designed to to minimize overheating, and that they're reviewing relevant building regulation to ensure it's effective and proportionate. So basically, like, stop saying that air conditioning units are banned. They're not banned. And even if there were regulations regarding air conditioning units, it's going to be specific to your local council. So stop saying it's the entire UK. Stop saying, you know, X, Y, and Z. Just completely blown out of proportion about what's actually going on here. I think it's like, it's also one of those things where as Californians, we and I guess we don'T live in like, San Francisco, where AC is not very common. We're in Sacramento, where ac is very, very common, so I

0:18:01 Lydia: Think it's also hard.

0:18:01 Thomas: I'm I'm breathing directly out of one, like I hook it up to my lungs. Yeah.

0:18:03 Lydia: Yeah, it's Interesting to consider, like, you know, there's a lot of places that are very old, a lot of older buildings that weren't, first of all, were not built with AC to begin with, because that's still a pretty modern thing, um, two, a lot of times can't even be retrofitted to have proper AC.

0:18:19 Thomas: They're so inefficient. That's What drives me nuts about this is, like, I get being, especially, again, in the heat of California, I get being mad if someone was like, "You're not allowed to run your AC ever." First off, that's not what's happening. Secondly, so much of the problem is, to your point, stuff is old, shitty, inefficient, and most of the restrictions, by the way, they're never, I would say, I'm just realizing now, maybe I can't speak for Europe again, but in the U.S., restrictions on AC are never, ever, ever because of fucking climate change. It's because it'll kill the power grid. They're just like, we don't want to black out. I, maybe somebody somewhere there's probably.

0:18:21 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:18:56 Lydia: And die from that, Yeah.

0:19:00 Thomas: Yeah, there's probably, uh, knows, maybe plenty of lefty people have said like, hey, please try to limit your use, but there's never been a fucking law passed. And if there is, the, like, hey, alert, warning, plea, like, you use your AC, it's because it's the fucking power grid is going to fail, and that makes it worse. Then nobody can use their AC. It's, this is not real, but anyway, I have my AC in this room, and modern AC with modern, like, efficient stuff is like no power, and our solar panels on a roof actually power all of it. So It's like, if you actually just did the stuff that we've been asking you to do for 30 fucking years at least if you just listen to Al Gore once, then make it fucking fucking freezing in my room, Jordan Peterson. I can have it. I can make it 30. Lydia will test. Sometimes she comes

0:19:15 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Invest in the infrastructure.

0:19:46 Thomas: In here. It's 30 fucking degrees. I've used like one ounce of power. It's it's so efficient.

0:19:46 Lydia: It's so cold Well, And didn't you talk about Australia, what, what just recently happened with Australia, yeah?

0:19:53 Thomas: I heard that on Ezra Klein like Australia produces so much solar now that power is free during the day is what he said or his expert said.

0:20:01 Lydia: Now their problem is, like, where to store all their extra power.

0:20:04 Thomas: They just don't even charge for electricity during the day because there's too much because solar is that good there. I mean, there's a lot of sun there. They have, they have their, their own son, like another star that's there, uh, yeah.

0:20:04 Lydia: Yeah. But Still, I mean, like

0:20:15 Thomas: It's amazing

0:20:15 Lydia: Like if you figure out storage and, and transportation of that, potentially, like, then

0:20:16 Thomas: Yeah. Or even if all the power you needed to actually kind of burn was at night, that wouldn't be that much, like The people always take these totalizing things. Jordan Peterson is especially, it's This very stupid black and white thinking where you put something in a category, and then therefore, because they're kind of asking you to do something along this category, that means they can do the maximizing thing in not Not only that category of thing, but every category of thing. It's just a stupid, childish way to argue, you know? In the end, Mom Donnie said, maybe don't waste stuff. And then let's... The jackbooted thugs are coming to... You know, it's like, come on.

0:20:19 Lydia: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

0:21:00 Lydia: First way that he ties climate change, you know, awareness and, and advocacy for improvements, the first way he ties that to this is all like leftist propaganda intent to destroy capitalism. He does highlight, like, a couple things from the 60s and 70s, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

0:21:18 Thomas: Well, what I know. If anyone was ever wrong about any prediction about climate change ever in the last hundred years, then it's bullshit.

0:21:18 Lydia: Um Yeah. Uh, Carl Marx, of course, because we're going to be talking about the leftists and how they're all, you know, communists and, and yada, yada yada. And that the communist manifesto is like the actual ideological root of change activists, I guess. But Al Gore, he has to talk about An Inconvenient Truth for a while.

0:21:31 Thomas: Hated AC.

0:21:43 Thomas: Yeah. So he's doing a history deep dive of how we got to this fascist regime of of kind of limiting your AC. Maybe just because the grid.

0:21:46 Lydia: And yes. 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth proved far more effective than any prior academic report or specialist warning at propelling climate change from scientific and policy circles into mainstream cultural consciousness. Okay, so it was an effective documentary.

0:22:04 Thomas: Why? Hold on. Why was it in scientific circles?

0:22:04 Lydia: Yeah. Why was it something that they were already exploring among experts? Huh, I wonder. At the same time, it entrenched the intensely emotional and partisan almost religious tone.

0:22:10 Thomas: Weird. Yeah. Guys, I'm sorry, I do get a little emotional about, you know, millions upon millions of people dying and the planet fucking dying and species going extinct, stink and trees dying and the ice. But yeah, I get a little emotional about mass death and, and death to our environment that's happening. I do get a tad sad about that sometimes. Cool.

0:22:40 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then I want to call out this piece because we'll have a little bit of a rebuttal in a bit. Observers, including the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, assert that global average temperature has risen between 1.1 and 1.5 degrees Celsius since the 1850 to 1900 establishment of reliable instrumental records and the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution. The same experts attribute most of this warming to human technological activity and the consequent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

0:23:08 Thomas: I no problem with that paragraph, they they do exist.

0:23:10 Lydia: Criticisms of such estimates do do exist. To 1900 period is often used as a starting point as it is the period from which accurate thermometer readings began, but it is situated at the tail end of the Little Ice Age, a relatively cool period. Thus, its use as a baseline may inflate the apparent magnitude of subsequent warming. Using the medieval warm period results in more modest estimates, and reasonable disagreement persists over which starting point best captures the relevant signal. Okay, yeah.

0:23:40 Thomas: They've done all this, yeah.

0:23:41 Lydia: I'm sorry, also, like, what are you going to trust more, like, like an accurate thermometer or someone wrote down one time it is really hot, like the medieval times, like what, what is going to be more accurate yeah I know, I know I'm being flippant but yeah.

0:23:53 Thomas: I mean they have really cool scientific ways of determining determining what the temperature was, but yeah, I know. But it's also like it, they've done all this. Like you don't, you don't think they want, this is the way they're so stupid. The scientists would really, really love to discover that this was all bullshit. They would fucking love it. They'd be like, Oh my God, guys, we thought the literal earth was dying, but someone didn't carry a seven and now it's fine. You know how much they would love that? I would love of that.

I would full on celebrate in the streets if tomorrow it turned out that the science was wrong and there's no climate change. That would be, I really worry about climate change, don't, there's this is beyond politics or scoring points, I just really am worried about the world we're giving our children, so if any, anyone, you know how many scientists there are, like who just want to like publish something groundbreaking, imagine if they're like, oh here we go, I found that it's, you complete bullshit.

Oh, but you know what? I kind of like complaining about climate change. So I'm not, I'm just going to, I're not going to publish this. You know, they've done these comparisons and yeah, you can control for all this and it's still really bad. You know even then he said an estimate of 1 .1 to 1 .5 C, which is a pretty big range actually.

0:24:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah,

0:25:08 Thomas: I would imagine that the 1. 5 C is on one set of assumptions and the 1 point 1 is like the most, you or liberal, vice versa assumptions. That's probably what he's talking about. I don't think it, I don'T think you use the medieval age and then it's like, actually we're cold now. I DON'T think that's how it goes.

0:25:24 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Everyone was freezing. Then the next piece of his article goes into, like, the price that we pay, literally, for this belief in climate change and that we should do something to stop it. Says that polarization that is happening politically with regard to climate change was no coincidence. It reflected and actively reinforced the deeper hijacking of the climate issue by a set of a priori political and moral commitments.

0:25:55 Thomas: Hijacking.

0:25:56 Lydia: Hijacking.

0:25:56 Thomas: So that means there was an issue. You can't hijack a plane if there's no plane.

0:25:59 Lydia: Right. Interesting. I like that. Talks about, you know, that the spending Spending regarding energy transitions is in, you trillion dollars amount. Cumulative spending since the release of an inconvenient truth reaching 10 trillion to 15 trillion dollars. Global expenditure.

0:26:18 Thomas: That's, Jesus Christ, what a stupid stat. At worth 40 trillion in debt right now because of fucking Trump's. And what was the measure on that? Something like a third. Off the top of my head, but something like a third, or 25 percent at least, of all of that debt, 40 trillion and national debt, is because of Trump, like his fucking tax breaks and all that, in the war and everything that's responsible for, like, an obscene amount of this 40 trillion dollar debt, which, you know, I think the debt is something that Republicans care about when it's a Democrat in office and don't when it was Republican. I think that it like mostly doesn't matter as much as they think, but it will get to a point where it does matter if it gets super duper high. And a way to avoid that is not having wars in the Middle East for no reason. That's one big way. And also, you Know, taxing people. But the point is, anyway, sorry, off topic point is for you're taking 20 years worldwide.

0:27:11 Lydia: Worldwide.

0:27:12 Thomas: The spending on what was it just like mitigation or something?

0:27:15 Lydia: Transition is what it called. So, I mean, that could include a lot of things.

0:27:20 Thomas: That's, that also referred to as, like, building infrastructure, like, he's acting like, like, gonna say, even if that were all money that you're ironically just putting into a burn pit, that still is not very much in the scheme, if it's in service of avoiding the earth dying. But it's not that, like, we spent money on solar panels, like, that is an investment that eventually pays you, like, event, I mean, it's like it depends, ends to varying degrees. Like, this infrastructure that's being built, acting like that expense is entirely nothing, like, is that's in place of likely a lot of other infrastructure that oil, you know, burning fossil fuels that would have been built and there would have been trillions being spent on that. Yeah.

0:27:59 Lydia: Would have been spent already anyway. Exactly. Exactly. So what's the actual difference?

0:28:03 Thomas: It's at this point, It's especially, looking at that time period, pretty negligible and very worthwhile. Yeah.

0:28:04 Lydia: Yep. Yep. He disagrees. So he says, "The sheer magnitude of these sums is difficult to grasp, but one fact remains unassailable. Every dollar directed toward this enterprise is a dollar unavailable for other purposes. Any error or exaggeration in the narrative, therefore, carries profound opportunity costs, crowding out priorities valued by the progressive left as much as those valued by the conservative right." The idea there is so frustrating. It's like, if we can agree that the earth, you be in trouble or is in trouble. I mean, I think it's very clear it's in trouble. If the temperature is just out of control, then why can't that be the number one priority, like any It's unavailable for other purposes. That's fine because what we're doing is we're ensuring that humanity isn't destroyed.

0:28:50 Thomas: It should be Yeah. I can't think of a better thing to spend money on. Uh, You want to hear about this little ice age thing real quick? Okay.

0:28:55 Lydia: Right. Oh. Yes. Tell me. Mm.

0:29:01 Thomas: So, um, numbers he cites are basically, okay, he's not, not, like, making up numbers in terms of that first thing. Um, here's a funny thing, when it says most of the warming that's actually wrong because the, uh, the estimate is that 1.07 of the 1.06 observed is human, so, like more than even is observed. Uh, that is part of it. Uh, is kind of the little ice age thing is, you know, sort of real but it doesn't change things. It's kind of what I already said, like it doesn't really change things much, like it might change it by like 0.05 Celsius or it may just not even change it, depending on how you do that. Um, also, here's another point: using the medieval warm warm period wouldn't really change much other than, like, overall number, but the fucking rate wouldn't change at all. The rate of warming is insane. That doesn't change regardless of what period you use. The weight is still the rate and it's insane right now.

0:29:11 Lydia: -hmm. Oh. Wow. Right. Yeah. Right. So basically, is it the idea that it could push off catastrophe by like a few decades or something if we start at a different time?

0:30:12 Thomas: Because those are absolute numbers. Those are Like, hey, we are screwed if we get to X Celsius and it is already now, but this is just saying, okay, the, the cite as to how much temperatures have quote unquote gone up is, know, like you said earlier, we're using when we had good thermometer readings, if you go back arbitrarily to like a warmer time, yeah, it'll kind of change it in, like, terms of how much it's risen since then, but for one, I don't think that really matters, and for two, it doesn't change the rate at all.

It's, you still see the hockey stick fucking growth, like it doesn't, I mean, in theory you could go back to like when the planet was lava and be like, we're way down from that, but like, does that change anything, like, does it, it was lava, so I mean, it's, I'm exaggerating a little bit, like that's kind of what, it's not meaningful really because like, the number that matters isn't necessarily, like, oh, we're up 1.5 C, like, yeah. It sort of matters, but, like, if you pick a different time period and say, oh, no, we're only up 0.8 C, okay, but we're still at the point where weather is fucking insane, the ice caps are melting, like, it doesn't matter,

0:30:13 Lydia: Okay, okay. Mm hmm. Right, right. We're doing well. Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm.

0:31:19 Thomas: You know what I mean? Sort of irrelevant. Also, here's a real interesting point that medieval warm period describes real thing, but it doesn't yield more modest warming estimates because the medieval warm period wasn't globally warmer than now. It and place.

0:31:19 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah. Regional. Sure.

0:31:35 Thomas: Paleoclimate database analysis found that there's been no warm or cool period in the last 2,000 years, including the period that occurred globally and synchronously. So like, there are fluctuations, and it's true that in a particular place, it was warmer during the medieval warm period. But there's evidence actually that the entire planet at that time may have been slightly cooler, because there's other like deposits, lake deposits and tree rings and stuff that suggest the entire planet may have been cooler at that time.

0:32:05 Lydia: Interesting.

0:32:05 Thomas: Yeah, so it's like, this is so obvious. It's the entire planet. The entire plant is getting warmer at a rate that is alarming, that is really bad, that is already causing excess deaths, as it has been causing excess deaths for decades now. It's

0:32:21 Lydia: Insane natural disasters, the hurricanes, the monsoons, yeah everything.

0:32:24 Thomas: No. Amount, amount of... oh, but what if we only counted back starting when it was warm? Like, that doesn't change that. Hmm.

0:32:31 Lydia: He ends the section saying, it may be true that CO2 levels have risen due to industrial activity and contributed to global warming. The importance of those facts, however, and especially their implications for action, remains an entirely different matter. Insistence that they constitute an existential crisis of apocalyptic proportions is not a scientific claim. It is instead a dogmatic and partisan assertion.

0:32:51 Thomas: Is It wait.

0:32:55 Lydia: Don't think so.

0:32:56 Thomas: This is really funny looking back at, at arguing. It's so, it's so pathetic. Again, 10 to 15 trillion in 20 years in the world. And then he's like, the sheer magnitude is difficult to grasp, and it's like one, mean, one, one Trump tax bill, basically. And dollar, by the way, every dollar directed toward this enterprise is a dollar unavailable for other purposes.

0:33:06 Lydia: Globally.

0:33:21 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Tell that to any other cause. Why is that? Why would you not write this 1800 different times for all the bullshit that Trump is doing or that, you know, like weird that you only pick now about when it's It's about this particular thing, but this paragraph you skipped and I get why, but it's also so funny. Serious environmental concerns unrelated to CO2, such as oceanic over -harvesting, have received comparatively little attention. That's not true. I know about that.

0:33:20 Lydia: Don't think so. Yeah.

0:33:50 Thomas: I'm worried about that, and be tracking it globally, he says, for $50 billion a year, about 140th the current annual green transition spending. Okay, first it's two different things. Like, we don't need to take away from the green transition, which is not only, by the way, not only valuable, would also help this. Could just take 50 billion from something else if you want. Hey, why don't you just campaign for that, man?

0:33:50 Lydia: Yeah, the things that he lists, malnutrition, malaria, HIV, education, clean water, sanitation. Oh, you know what organization actually really was helpful in providing relief for that worldwide? Oh, USAID. And does that not exist anymore? Then is this something worth spending on or not?

0:34:23 Thomas: Yeah. He only cares when the oil companies

0:34:28 Lydia: Yeah. So

0:34:28 Thomas: Are sad. That's the only time he cares.

0:34:30 Lydia: Stupid.

0:34:30 Thomas: And the idea that, like, the importance of the CO2, the thing you read, the Important of those facts, and especially their implications for actions, remains an entirely different matter. Matter entirely. The insistence that they constitute an existential crisis of apocalyptic proportions is not a scientific claim. Well, that's it is like literally I

0:34:31 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:50 Lydia: Think you can make that claim through science, because you demonstrate what the consequences are. Going to be. Yeah.

0:34:56 Thomas: You can literally only make that claim through science, like You can say you disagree with it, like I, the only reason I can think that he even wrote that is because he thinks people are just exaggerating. And so they're pulling it out their ass. But like, yeah, know what 1.5 to see what that means without science. You could tell me that risen to Celsius. Any science knowledge, I'd be like, OK, that that good, good, bad. Bad is that and you wouldn't know you. It's only through science that you can be like, it's fucking apocalyptic, because the this is happens and this happens and they're all feedback loops that have been scientifically studied that make it worse. That's the only way you could say something was apocalyptic, right? It's not apocalyptic 'cause we hate it. It's like a moral claim. What other kind of claim is it? And

0:34:59 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:35:46 Lydia: Yeah, clearly, geez. So he goes back to the 70s and early 80s saying, hey, people were really, really pessimistic about the climate back then and saying like unless we do something, like, things are going to get worse. And things actually got better for a little bit, so, you know I don't know that that's what he says, um, saying that the models from back then have failed. Well, but but also, like, why are you going all the way back to the 70s and criticizing their models, like with what's current, what's relevant now? We have scientists working on this now who are evaluating this in real time, who continue to update their models based off of new evidence, based off of new research. Why, why are you having to travel back, you know, I can't do math, uh

0:35:56 Thomas: They were right yeah sure they did have they yeah yeah yeah

0:36:27 Lydia: 50 years? You call out the scientists from back back then. Okay. So what

0:36:30 Thomas: Yeah It's like the pre-germ theory science, those models failed, so we can't listen to anything for that has biology done since then, you know? It's like, yeah. Well, first off, I don't even know that that's right. Like, I think these have shown to be under, if anything. But second, to your point, if you can go back far enough to where a model was wrong or someone made mistake a mistake in a particular model, okay, that's nothing.

0:36:37 Lydia: Yeah yeah Like he just really wants to, yeah, pick and choose his comparison points, right? And the same thing with medieval warm period. He's like, well, I decided we're going to use that, I think that's a better starting point. And I decided that we're going to critique the models from the 70s because I think that's better, you for my argument. Okay, Jordan, um I'm gonna actually pause there on the Jordan Peterson article. We're gonna get into it a little bit more because there's something I want to dive a little deeper in on, you know, we can talk about leftist activists and stuff and, and how we're all psychopaths we're

0:37:31 Thomas: So much more I want to say why it's stupid. But hold off.

0:37:35 Lydia: Gonna have to pause there. Um, instead I want to pivot a little bit to why is the Telegraph running so much about climate change. Um It seemed weird to me, so I dug into the research there a little bit and has been on people's minds. But this is not this summer. This is not just the Telegraph is talking about climate change a lot this summer and how it's fake a lot this summer. It's something that they actually do pretty frequently, so much so that DeSmog, it's an independent watchdog, and I've used them before for some other we've done on the show. They have done audits of Telegraph climate coverage repeatedly. They've done this several times, they looked at the opinion pieces in the Telegraph and they found that 10 opinion writers for the Telegraph were board members or academic advisors at

0:37:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. There has been a horrendous heat wave, so it's on people's minds, right? Mm.

0:38:25 Thomas: Jesus.

0:38:26 Lydia: The Global Warming Policy Foundation specifically. And this is the UK's main climate science denial group. This is not just a random little, you know, podunk group of ragtag people or whatever. This is their main, their main organization that goes against climate science. Those 10 writers, those 10 opinion writers, published about 144 pieces during the window of time that they reviewed, which came out to about two and a half times per week, there was going to be two and half opinions regarding climate change is fake, or something, you know, related to that.

And not only that, they never disclose their affiliation with that organization ever in those 144 opinion pieces yeah that's that is wrong that is so wrong um of those folks are Allison Pearson Telegraph chief interviewer she also hosts Planet Normal podcast and she's been a director since 2023 with GWPF Lord David Frost he's a regular columnist he's the director of their campaigning arm Net Zero Watch and now he's also the director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Matt Ridley um another advisor at GWPF those are kind of their main opinion writers who do this stuff um is also the hub of what's called the 55 Tufton Street network which is just a bunch of think tanks that it's unclear where their money exactly comes from and all these tanks lobby together against climate action in the UK. It is consistently rated the lowest transparency grade by Open Democracies Who Funds You Index.

0:38:56 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Fucking lock them up. It's just this is goddamn criminal. Yeah. Well, wait.

0:40:01 Lydia: It does not declare any of its major funders. So that's why we you know, we're unsure exactly how it's funded, but we have some ideas. There are a couple of documented sources of funding. It includes the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Foundation, um, foundation holds about 30 million dollars in shares with Exxon and Chevron. Um, Donors Trust, which is basically a organization that's used to anonymize fossil fuel link donations. You can go through Donors Trust to try and, like, hide that. Um, additionally, uh, party donors gave about 6.8 million pounds to Tufton Street think tank since 2019. So again, we're talking about this money flowing in to 55 Tufton Street, which GWPF is the hub of. And 10 opinion writers at the Telegraph are board members or academic advisors at GWPF and published 144 pieces in this time period that d smog looked at. So you can see how all of this stuff is connected. Um, not to say that Jordan Peterson is part, I'm not asserting that at all. But this is why the Telegraph is constantly doing climate change denialism, and well, I guess not why necessarily.

0:41:11 Thomas: Sorry, that's why they're doing it, or that's who's doing it? Why are they doing it? And well, who owns the Telegraph? The oil monster from Fern Galley or whatever the hell that is. What is that thing? Pollution. It's been a long time.

0:41:16 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Get firmly held beliefs potentially, but a conservative publication. It's changed hands actually quite a bit. I yeah. Yeah, that guy. I know. I love that movie. It has changed hands quite a bit right now. Let's see. As of March 2026, it was acquired by Axel Springer, which owns a variety of other news organizations. Axel Springer, CEO of Dofner, expressed a desire for The Telegraph to become a global center-right news platform, wanting to expand into U.S., Asia, and Latin American areas. That they are going to be moved any left. Anything, they're going to Be digging their heels more, and they are trying to just make it more of a global consumption of this garbage. Same week that the op-eds were running that I talked about, you know, from late July, in put its North Sea business up for sale. We're looking at two and a half billion dollars of potential sale that has confirmed bitter interest and bitter So like people are looking to buy their North Sea business.

0:42:21 Thomas: What was confirmed? Confirmed bid interest.

0:42:28 Lydia: Bitter, B -I -D -D.

0:42:28 Thomas: What Bitter. Oh, God, I did not understand what you're talking about.

0:42:29 Lydia: Yeah. We're looking at is, you know, this huge oil company in the North Sea. They are citing repeated changes in UK policy on oil and gas for why they are exiting that.

0:42:45 Thomas: Victory.

0:42:46 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. So, there's this element to have like, you kind of seeing the consequences of these things happening, that maybe the Telegraph and these opinion writers are kind of and the organizations that they're affiliated with, they're trying to kind of come on the other end. And dig their heels in more because of this potential loss of oil and gas opportunities, I guess. I don't know.

0:43:08 Thomas: One way or the other, somebody has a financial interest in this and should not allow media to be controlled by people with financial interest in lying. Like, I don't know what the solution is, but what doing now could lead to the end of the planet, so, you know, extreme opinion, if something leads to the end of the planet, it wasn't a good policy.

0:43:30 Lydia: Yeah.

0:43:30 Thomas: I know we love freedom of speech, and I love freedom of speech for sure, and there's definitely, like, trying to restrict speech, but can there be some way that we ensure media isn't owned by oligarchs who lie? Like, isn't there some way to balance between those two things somehow? I don't know. Spitballing, but we maybe shouldn't allow that.

0:43:53 Lydia: Next time we will get more into all of us leftist activists are psychopaths. And why Jordan Peterson thinks that and the study that he cites to try and make those claims.

0:44:05 Thomas: Can't wait. Yeah, there's so much more to talk about. Imagine coming back from being sick just to be this wrong.

0:44:12 Lydia: I thought you were talking about me with my voice being gone. I was like, okay, geez.

0:44:14 Thomas: Not you. He's making his big return in order to ruin the world a little more. And then cool, cool legacy, dude.

0:44:22 Lydia: Yep, yep. Incredible.

0:44:46 Thomas: Guess I'll do you nothing it's if you regulate one thing, then does that mean you can regulate every single thing? Well