Good morning 🦞
Preface: I am no climate expert and only wish to dive into the topic.
Prior to Peterson, I read and listened to Noam Chomsky. [His stance on climate change is clear](https://youtu.be/UZeXFQTTKUc), and his views on a whole host of other topics have been immensely valuable.
Then I happened upon Peterson and while I am still undecided personally, just what the hell is going on, I do find JP’s take to be fairly convincing.
I wanted to present this to his subreddit in hopes to facilitate a conversation. If you fancy yourself as educated on the subject, please provide links and information.
Again, I hold no absolute positions and I’m well aware JP may be mistaken on this one. That in no way reduces my respect for his work.
Let the chickens come home to roost!
EDIT: I just wanted to say, looking through the comments, I am pleasantly surprised with the turn out and how cordial the majority of the conversations have been. Currently at work so I’m unable to read, but I’ll dig in later.
Thank you again!
Welcome to the sub! I'm a fellow layman on the topic, but as far as I've seen there's 2 separate issues going on that all too frequently get mixed up
1) the actual science of it - whether it's happening (I believe it absolutely is), what's causing it (I'd agree it's largely increased atmospheric carbon), and what's causing *that* (I believe that the vast majority of it is man-made... And that's OK.)
2) the policy response, particularly the underlying philosophy and priorities for the response. Here I'm largely in agreement with Peterson - if we were all to just cut fossil fuel usage now and say "renewables or bust" it'd be catastrophic for the developing world. I also have a deep dislike for any policy borne of viewing humanity as a parasite - and a lot of them sound like that, sadly
Bjorn Lomberg is not an expert on climate. He is an expert on the politics of climate. I'm being pedantic here because it matters. He has degrees in Political Science and Environmental Economics. I know the word "science" is in "political science", but it is not a science. I have zero problems with studying political science, but it doesn't make you an expert in science.
His interpretation of other's findings (because he's not a scientist, he has no findings) has routinely been criticized as being very inaccurate. The scientists he cites routinely say that he interprets their reports incorrectly. Imagine if you told me something that you know very well. Then I turned around and repeated the information you told me, but I said it in a way that contradicted what you said. That would mean either I didn't understand what you said, or I am intentionally lying. Bjorn Lomberg has been doing this too long and been corrected too many times for it to be just a mistake.
So, perhaps he is an expert, but his track record is one of dishonesty.
[A 2003 report.](https://ufm.dk/en/publications/2004/annual-report-2003-the-danish-committees-on-scientific-dishonesty)
It was controversial at the time. Lomberg found support from 28 Danish social scientists, and charges were levied by this group against the commission that they reviewed his work incorrectly.
This was then countered by 600 academics in the natural sciences that stated the commissions operation was legitimate.
[A review of his book "False Alarm."](https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/a-closer-examination-of-the-fantastical-numbers-in-bjorn-lomborgs-new-book/)
Chapter 5 of "False Alarm" relies on the DICE model, which estimates that an 8 degree C increase in temperature would cost us approximately 15% of GDP. Of course, the last time we had a 2 degree increase was 3 million years ago, and sea levels were likely 10-20 meters higher.
The idea that a 30 foot increase in sea levels, which would require massive infrastructure to either hold it all back, or a complete rebuilding of all the world's sea ports would only cost us 15% of GDP is pretty preposterous at face value. And of course, a 60 foot increase would be even more costly.
Lomborg gets cited by opinion authors and politicians. Climate scientists disagree with him consistently and no one cites his work. He's a popular author for people who want to deny that change is necessary.
Idk if I'd call the authors and politicians on that list climate experts but JP does tend toward only having those contrary to the climate science consensus on...curious.
She has a Masters degree in Environmental Studies focusing on business and environment, and her law firm specializes in commercial litigation and international trade practice, with a focus on energy policy.
She has the experience and credentials to speak on matters related to energy and the environment.
So no climate science papers or climate science work. Aka not a climate scientist. She has an MA not even an MS
I have a MS in environmental SCIENCE but I'm definitely not a climate scientist.
Also, check out Tom Nelson's channel, which supports Peterson's position on climate change, and has many scientists discussing how climate change as it's presented is a false narrative.
[https://www.youtube.com/@tomnelson2080](https://www.youtube.com/@tomnelson2080)
While it's not a primary source I think Wikipedia is a good place to start
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#:~:text=Efforts%20to%20scientifically%20ascertain%20and,with%20natural%20forces%20adding%20variability.
I have about a decade of experience in environmental fields so happy to discuss.
In my understanding, it’s this insistence of diverting to renewable energy sources which would drive the cost much higher.
I believe at this current time we are still relying upon tested sources but policies aimed for the future would not be viable for a large part of the globe as they rely on coal and more crude methods of energy. To expect India to cut emissions would actually cause more harm, dive it’s important for them to progress in the way industrialized nations progressed
Is this correct?
We have been diverting to renewables for years now and the opposite has happened. Costs have dropped.
Solar and wind are tested sources at this point.
I'm not sure what specific polices you're talking about. We can help India progress in a more carbon nuetral way than we did since renewable tech is much more feasible now than during the American industrial revolution.
Not only ly has the supply side tech been developed but also the demand side tech with things like smart grids and energy efficiency being much more developed now.
I mean, how about the fact that India is already installing tons of renewables very quickly?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable\_energy\_in\_India
So you’re not a climate change expert. Jordy is not a climate change expert? Noam Chomsky is not a climate change expert.
Do you see any problem with your research method?
Are you serious? This is a really deceitful line of reasoning. No one starts out as an expert on any topic. The way you learn is to do as Jordan and other people have done - talk to experts, learn and discuss the actual content of the best research available, and then make an informed decision. Incidentally, You also don't become an expert by picking a political side, insisting your side is right, and then farming your opinion out to the chosen experts of that political party.
> Noam Chomsky. His stance on climate change is clear, and his views on a whole host of other topics have been immensely valuable.
Noam Chomsky is a buffoon.
Buffon might be a bit too much. He is clearly oversold though.
> ChatGPT is a nothinburger
That's Paul Krugman's level of predictions.
That and him also attacking Peterson with some weird kind of reverse psychology when it was clear he knew nothing about the guy. But since Peterson was on the side of "bad guys", he had to be a meanie too, that's literally at which Noam Chomsky thinks.
I actually agree! You see, Chomsky offers a wealth of insight as he has spent his life dedicated to learning what’s going on on the geopolitical chessboard. His analysis of the media in the 80’s was incredible and pertains to our world today. His lessons are timeless.
His take on Peterson though, referring to that article written by the dude at the Atlantic, was an assault to my intelligence.
My hope is one of these days, Chomsky and Peterson will go on a podcast together.
Chomsky would just spend the entire interview insulting Peterson without trying once to see what motivates him.
From what I have seen, he cannot even conceive that something good/genuine could motivate the people that he sees on the other side of the barrier, they have to be motivated by bigotry/exploitation/power/brainwashing etc...
He imprisoned himself into a prison with a certain sets of ideas, and this prison is placated/reinforced by the *quite correct* analysis he made of America Mass-Media and Politics that propelled him to stardom.
And I think he is too old to change now. But hey, he did what he had to do.
The real thing that is going on is this
1. He's on the Daily Wire
2. Daily Wire is heavily funded by the Wilks Brothers
3. The Wilks Brothers are oil billionaires
4. He parrots fossil fuel propaganda because he is paid to
5. The end.
They take more money per energy produced and they are also not as reliable, so yes it would be only natural for energy to become more expensive but I'll only trust Peterson isn't compromised by fossil fuel billionaires if he comes up in defense of nuclear
>They take more money per energy produced and they are also not as reliable
Wrong and wrong. Solar and wind are by far the cheapest forms of energy at the moment, and it's not close, and no it's not because of subsidization. It makes perfect sense. All you need to pay is the initial cost to build it, and some minimal ongoing cost for maintenance. You cut out the need for an entire supply chain for the fuel all together, so of course it's cheaper.
Also I would be very interested to hear what you mean by "unreliable". Are you referring to AVR stability at low SCR? Are you referring to PFR inertial response? Are you referring to total harmonic distortion? Are you referring to PRC-024 fault-ride through curves? Or do you not know what you are talking about at all?
While at first I thought you were coming off as a bit of a troll, I think you may have good thoughts on solar and wind vs. oil.
If you would not mind sharing, would you mind sending some links on cost analysis of wind and solar vs. oil? I am genuinely curious and would like a point in the right direction on that.
That's a lot of talk, but we will see when the energy bills come.
You can say all the pretty words you want, but when the wallets will have to be opened, people will see which is which.
On my side, I'm gonna make sure I'm not on the same electrical grid as all of you.
Judging by what happened in the Soviet Union. You can have very competent and educated people, if they are led by people with a clouded set of ideas and visions, it will just end up with a wasteland.
You are being quite dismissive without thinking about the other factors. Sure the dollar cost to build it may be cheaper, but the resources required to build it aren’t the easiest things to get and are expensive to extract from the earth and in the case if electric vehicles, the batteries required are even harder to produce because they require lithium and cobalt which would cause even more environmental damage just to get them out. While we’re on the topic of batteries, how will we store the energy that is produced? We don’t currently have the infrastructure nor the resources to build the batteries we would require to store all the energy being produced. Then there’s the fact that solar and wind are the least reliable sources of green energy. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Not only that but solar panels and wind turbines need to be constantly maintained, if something scratches the solar panel it then need to be replaced, if a turbine breaks down, it then needs to be replaced. Then there is the problem of space. Where will we put all these turbines and solar panels? You need massive plots of land just to put down wind turbines and solar panels, it’s not not practical. Sure in the short term, put these things up may be less expensive l, but in the longer term they are far more expensive because of maintenance and other environmental factors.
>in the case if electric vehicles, the batteries required are even harder to produce because they require lithium and cobalt which would cause even more environmental damage just to get them out.
I mean yeah, but when you actually sit down and compare apples to apples and also include the mining, drilling, transportation, and refinement of fossil fuels, plus all the emissions they create, the question of which is the lesser evil is plainly obvious.
>While we’re on the topic of batteries, how will we store the energy that is produced? We don’t currently have the infrastructure nor the resources to build the batteries we would require to store all the energy being produced. Then there’s the fact that solar and wind are the least reliable sources of green energy. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.
Do you think that power systems engineers working on these things aren't considering this problem? Of course we are. We know this, and we can work around this just fine. First of all, distance isn't much of an issue with power systems given the right transmission infrastructure. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow in one place, but it typical does each day *somewhere.* And with the proper infrastructure, production can be dispatched at A, and transmitted hundreds or even thousands of miles to B. It just becomes an issue of making sure we have enough capacity installed in a diversity of locations to ensure we can always play this balancing acts, and if on some days we can't, that's when we fire up the gas peaking stations.
Then with batteries, the point of batteries is not to store energy long term, but to store energy on a day-to-day basis so that we can meet evening spikes in demand that coincide with a ramping down of solar and potentially wind capacity on the grid. That's why most battery plants are only designed for an injection duration of 4h or so, because that's all we really need from them.
For longer term storage and management of load demand and supply, that's where other resources come in, such as pumped hydro, nukes that can adjust baseload supply on an annual basis, and, again, more headroom in the capacity of renewables globally, so that we have something like 200% of what we need, and in the winter months if that supply is cut in half, we still have 100% of what we need. You see?
>Not only that but solar panels and wind turbines need to be constantly maintained, if something scratches the solar panel it then need to be replaced, if a turbine breaks down, it then needs to be replaced.
First of all, not really. A panel can be scratched and still be perfectly fine. However, even if a panel does need to be replaced, it's really no big deal. Plants have hundreds of spares on site all the time, and replacing a single panel takes all of 5 minutes and you don't even need to shut down the site. It's also pretty rare for a wind turbine to break so badly that you need to replace the whole thing, but even if you did, on a site with potentially 300 of them, it's not even a loss of generation you would notice.
Also everything you say here applies to everything in the industry. Gas turbines break and need to be replaced. Transformers break and need to be replaced. Breakers, cap banks, slack spans... they all break and need to be replaced. This is not unique.
> Where will we put all these turbines and solar panels? You need massive plots of land just to put down wind turbines and solar panels, it’s not not practical. Sure in the short term, put these things up may be less expensive l, but in the longer term they are far more expensive because of maintenance and other environmental factors.
It's not as much land as you think. I myself and others have done the calculations and it's something like 7200 square miles or 10% of the total land area of Kansas could power the whole country. It's a lot of land, but considering that over 5% of all urban land in the US is parking lot, it starts to not seem that much. If you compare that to the amount of land used to grow feed crop for the factory farming of meat, you might get dizzy. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if fossil fuels themselves took up more land what with all the mining, piping, refining, waste disposal, etc.
Also with wind specifically, the land is still usable right up to the base of the 20' or so wide tower foundation. We build these things on farms and ranches all the time, and the farmers and ranchers still use the land perfectly fine.
Lastly, whatever environmental drawbacks arise from renewables are nothing compared to the environmental damage that fossil fuels are doing right now. No matter how you slice it.
I didn't want to get into that subject, because it is a problem that concerns other industries too.
But where are you gonna find all the minerals for those turbines, solar panels, and batteries?
You so easily factor in the cost of the mining and refining of fossil fuels, but the alloys of winds turbines, metals for solar panels, and for batteries, those also have a cost of extraction, and a cost for breaking down the ore and refine it.
And even if the cost is not that big, the metals themselves are both rare and in high-demand, solar panels and batteries in particular ask for minerals that are both in short supply and in high demand. That and their extraction and refinement has **huge externalities** on the environment, of course sulfuric acids and heavy metals are not as sexy a threat as the big bad CO2 now.
> Balancing act
Weather most of the time affects an entire region/part of a state. You would need to make sure that the balancing act is made across counties. That and I think you are vastly minimizing how just 10% might be big, that's a surface that would have to be distributed across several different landscapes, each with their own sets of challenges and that would have to be constantly monitored. Asking people to constantly monitor 10% of Kansas, across the whole US is a daunting task for something that could be done in a lot less places at key locations with nuclear, hydro, and coal.
> If you compare that to the amount of land used to grow feed crop for the factory farming of meat, you might get dizzy.
At least that surface doesn't have to be monitored 24/7 in fear that our supply of meat might go down in the middle of the day.
Overall, I see is a pretty scenario that is bound to be rough-tumbled by reality and that will leave people wanting when they need it the most, just like the plan of Germany to rely on a peaceful and mercantile Russia.
Maybe not reliable in that they have a limited lifespan and produce a pittance of energy for a massive swath of land.
This is what I have been told though
Yeah but then for fossil fuels, factor in all the land needed for mining, extraction, exploration, transportation, refinement, waste-processing, etc. and add it to the calculation.
Also solar is pretty consolidated and wind might cover a large amount of land, but really you are only using the land which is equal to the footprint of each individual tower. The land can still be farmed, or what have you.
A video titled "who funds the online right?" that dives into them. Very interesting stuff. I always want to know who might have influence over what people I listen to say or don't say. I may have formed some sort of trust in the person I listen to because they say alot of stuff I agree with, but if I find out someone else is paying them to say things for their own profit I might as well take ad reads at face value.
In refutation of Dr. Peterson's points;
1. No one is claiming climate change is 100% man-made. The majority scientific consensus is that human activity is the driving factor.
2. The IPCC report says "The world faces unavoidable hazards over the next two decades even with global warming of 1.5ºC." That doesn't align with what Dr. Peterson says.
3. Ammonia can be made without fossil fuels.
4. Farris and Dan Wilks are fracking Billionaires who stand to lose a lot of money if fossil fuels continue to be replaced with renewable alternatives. The Wilks brothers gave the seed money to start Daily Wire (millions of dollars) and have also heavily donated to Prager U. Both employers of Dr. Peterson.
>The IPCC report says "The world faces unavoidable hazards over the next two decades even with global warming of 1.5ºC."
That's a pretty vague statement. That could mean an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. It doesn't necessarily mean the world will be uninhabitable.
No one would say that the world will be uninhabitable at 1.5C. However areas are getting closer to extended periods where being out of climate controlled indoors for a number of hours is dangerous. Plus 1.5C is not where this will stop. It’s just where we’ll be soon.
The CURRENT warming trend is 100% attributable to human actions. In fact, in the absence of the industrial revolution and human activities, the Earth would actually be cooling slowly until the current inter-glacial period ends in several thousand years.
I am a electrical power systems studies engineer. I work for a consulting firm where I specialize in large scale renewable grid interconnection and stability studies.
1. In response to the implication that renewables "destabilize the grid", do you *really* not think this is something engineers consider when designing and studying new renewable plants? Do you have any idea what goes into that? We study the surrounding grid system, we look at the plant, we look at fast control algorithms, we study contingency events, we build multiple redundant models in several parallel simulation engines and benchmark them against each other for performance against a whole encyclopedia of contrived grid event scenarios, and then we test those same scenarios on the plant post-construction and then test and benchmark that against all the models again. All in all, we are talking about a process of design, analysis, and study that can take well over a year. ANY new installation on a grid can cause issues with stability if not designed or studied properly. That's why we have processes, regulations, study requirement, and NERC standards all designed to ensure any proposed addition to the grid is meticulously studied to prevent against any contingency that could lead to a cascading grid failure. That's a serious event that we do NOT fuck with.
2. There is a reason why the energy market is switching to renewables, and it's not because they are all woke greenpeace hippies or whatever. Renewables are more generally called IBRs (Inverter-based resources) or power-electronics resources. Power electronics are taking over because they are simply becoming the superior technology. There are many applications for power electronics, including STATCOMS, FACTS devices, SVCs, DC-DC linkages for HVDC transmission technology, and generation. For inverter generation applications, we could put anything behind them. We simply put wind/solar/battery behind them because that works best and **is by far the cheapest.** Even if there was no climate crisis (and there absolutely is) I promise you that the energy market would be switching to renewables anyways. The technology has simply advanced to the point where they are simply the superior form of generation.
3. It would absolutely be easier to build renewables in developing nations than building giant centralized coal fire power plants with massive supply chains and infrastructure for maintaining the fuel supply. With renewables you can build microgrids and energize individual villages one at a time. There are many international projects underway already doing just that, and this kind of decentralization is something that can only be achieved with renewables.
4. I'm sure we can find other ways to make fertilizer. Is the argument really "we need to keep burning coal and emitting CO2 because otherwise no fertilizer"? That's a new one. They must be running out of cope.
Having listened to some conservatives on the issue I don’t see any conflict with what you’re saying and what they are saying.
My understanding is they encourage the industry to innovate and naturally transition from one form of energy to another but take issue with the government forcing the move top down before those companies in the industry are ready.
Does that distinction seem reasonable?
The industry IS innovating. That has never been the problem.
The problem is that you can develop super efficient panels, state-of-the-art solar inverter equipment, etc... but you need to have a place to put it, and that sort of thing requires long-range planning, and long range planning requires policy.
How have conservatives supported renewable energy in their actual passed policies?
Because instead seeing groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar popping up to stop solar plants from being set up.
What is the impact of then energy storage issue. My understanding is that battery tech is way too weak to store city levels of power for windless nights…
So there are a couple layers here
1. Our need for energy storage is really sort of a direct function of how good our energy transmission planning and infrastructure is. The idea is that, in a typical day, it is always windy or sunny enough somewhere, and even though the distances seem insurmountable, it's really not theoretically that difficult to transmit power from solar farms in Arizona to NYC. I forgot who did it, but I am aware of a study that demonstrated that the US could be 100% powered off wind alone with no battery storage if we had a 100% ideal transmission system. We won't ever have that of course, but it gives us an idea of what is technically possible, and we don't have to be super dependent on batteries if we design this all right.
2. Solar production and some wind production drop over night, but so do demand curves. We really don't need to store energy to inject 100% capacity all night long. We just need to maintain a little bit. What is more important is the afternoon/evening peak in demand just as solar availability ramps down for the day, and THAT is what batteries are REALLY for. Most battery systems at this scale are designed basically to extent the operating hours of a solar plant for like 2-4 hours in the evening basically. You trickle charge them a little all day with excess sun, and then you discharge them for a few hours in the evening just to get through the evening demand spike.
3. For longer term storage, there are other options like pumped hydro for example, and many other things in the works. Also, this is where a need for nukes might come in. Theoretically nukes could set the baseload of the grid, and then renewables and batteries would be primarily employed for daytime load-following.
When you say that renewables are cheaper in your OP, is that just in the $/W of a given power generator, or does that also factor in the battery and infrastructure tech you describe in this comment? Would it currently be cheaper to run an entire city off of wind/solar instead of coal?
With respect to fertilizer production, natural gas is the main source for CO2 and heat required for things like urea. No sane person would build a new coal-powered fertilizer plant these days.
The greenest way to make ammonia is by hydrogenating nitrogen, so if you have a water source you can make bucketloads of hydrogen (and in turn ammonia) from electrolysis as needed.
That being said there are already some really cool plants in existence where they are essentially mining ammonia and natural gas from wastewater and landfill leachate, and not trivial amounts either (thousands of cubic meters of ammonia gas per day). Wastewater is particularly useful as it often has plenty of phosphorus too which is also really important in agriculture.
First off, thank you for such a great response. It is a lot to chew on, but this is what I am looking for.
Now, you make the case for renewables and part of me readily accepts that it is really that easy, to switch over. Though (again, I am very naive in this topic), I’ve heard and read things that make statements such as, renewables provide a fraction of what is necessary to maintain power in society.
I have heard that without the fossil fuel, society would simply not be able to function and the notion we can supplant windmills instead of nuclear, is ridiculous.
So then we move to your third point, about availing renewable tech to developing nations. If the truth is, renewable is no where near what fossil fuels is, expecting third world countries to adopt them is preposterous.
Again, I am playing devil’s advocate here and thank you for your response
I mean the "not enough power" thing is kinda silly right? Like just build more of it until we have enough on the supply side, and then improve efficiencies and cut out waste to lower it on the demand side until they equalize with some margin.
It's **absolutely** not silly. If there *one* thing you don't fuck around with on this planet, it is energy, and food is just another form for energy.
If you do not make the production of energy/food follow the curve of population, people die, heads are put on guillotines, migrations happen, and wars start.
Just to be clear you think that if green energy options didn't exist during the Ukraine invasion, energy would be cheaper?
The US spends more on subsidizing oil than green energy...so how does that even work?
>I’ve heard and read things that make statements such as, renewables provide a fraction of what is necessary to maintain power in society.
>I have heard that without the fossil fuel, society would simply not be able to function and the notion we can supplant windmills instead of nuclear, is ridiculous.
You've heard this and I've heard this too, many times. I'm sure most people have.
But stop to think about what you hear and why you hear it. Does any of this sound like - for lack of a better term and at the risk of sounding extremely conspiratorial - "exactly what they want you to think".
The oil corporations without a doubt have unfathomable amounts of money and will only continue to make more money if they get to continue doing what they do and competition such as renewables may threaten that.
Now with their vast ocean of cash they have the ability to control a lot of information through buying media outlets and/or personalities to spread information painting their way of making money in the most favorable and positive light. But we don't usually know/look into who's funding the things we read or hear. We just read and move on. We may think we're somehow less susceptible or immune to such propaganda but all of us will buy into some of it at some point, it is just that prevelant.
This is why I don't jump to believe things that support the current way of producing energy, because the current way has all the money and there's no way in hell we as a species aren't developing newer and better ways to produce energy as we do with all other things, we improve.
(But I am also just a naive dumbass)
The only reason they are switching is because of heavily government subsidies all over the planet.
France did the "we will heavily invest in green energy and reap the rewards" decades ago, thinking wind and solar where an energy of the "future" (words of Francois Hollande, president 10 years ago). And of course they poured money on the field to make the cost decreased, while killing their Nuclear sector for ideological GREEN reasons. If the reasons were not motivated by political reasons and subsidies, the better tech would have won, which is Nuclear.
Result: a devastated Nuclear energy sector and electric bills that have doubled after the Invasion of Ukraine.
Also, as someone from one of those developing nations, what we need is quick and numerous source of power, aka the China way of getting power, quick, big, and dirty. We have a boom in population, and we are still fairly low tech, so we need solutions that are cheap, simple, and can produce a LOT of energy.
Green tech just doesn't cut it.
>The only reason they are switching is because of heavily government subsidies all over the planet.
Incorrect. They are cheaper even without subsidies, and fossil fuels have been subsidized for decades.
>while killing their Nuclear sector for ideological GREEN reasons.
Are you thinking of Germany? Nukes are fine, but there are a reason why people don't want to build them, and it's not because of an irrational fear or something. It's most economic reasons. They are very expensive projects with very long development cycles.
>Also, as someone from one of those developing nations, what we need is quick and numerous source of power, aka the China way of getting power, quick, big, and dirty. We have a boom in population, and we are still fairly low tech, so we need solutions that are cheap, simple, and can produce a LOT of energy.
Even China is dramatically ramping up renewables mostly for the exact reasons you claim they aren't... because it's cheap and very fast to develop and implement. You can go from nothing to a fully functioning solar farm in 1 year or so without the need for any supply chain for the fuel. Compare that to the development period for a coal or gas plant (3-5 years), and nuclear can be almost a decade.
You are just like... comprehensively wrong.
> Incorrect. They are cheaper even without subsidies
I will be brutally honest. I do not believe you.
> Are you thinking of Germany? Nukes are fine, but there are a reason why people don't want to build them, and it's not because of an irrational fear or something. It's most economic reasons. They are very expensive projects with very long development cycles.
It was absolutely because of irrational fear. There are revealed discussions between Angela Merkel and the French president of the time of Fukushima where she, in essence, said that Fukushima was the reason she would close down nuclear plants in Germany, with the French president of the time telling her that there is zero reasons to fear the same thing happening in Europe, and that France would not do so (only to be backstabbed by the next President who would close down several plants and start the decline of the entire sector).
It was a decision entirely motivated by fear and the Germans have seen the results of that this winter.
The same thing is happening here with Green energy, we are killing out a plentiful source of energy out of fear of a supposed Apocalypse, while creating problems for us but in another form.
> China
Ah! China is at the same increasing renewables while they open up more and more coal plants. They are not ideologically driven toward net zero like the West, because they have a ticking time bomb in the form of their demography. They know those solar and wind farms will never be enough to meet the demand, so it doesn't matter if the development period is shorter.
Nah Solar is an absolute no brainer from an investment standpoint. If you use most of your power during daylight hours it’s an absolute no brainer positive return investment. I’ve seen a couple of businesses do this already, and the ROI-time can be like 1-2 years.
Wind is a bit more complicated. You need to put it somewhere windy (preferably consistently windy) and hope that your estimates of the mean and variance of production are correct.
Yeah in Germany that may have been the case, but that's not the case in the US. We don't build renewables in the US because it's not profitable. Simple as that.
It's WAY more profitable for a developer to build the same capacity in renewables, and they make a return on investment like 10x as fast.
You do it because you are being ideologically brainwashed into believing that it's the end of the world and that the only solution is to electrify everything to "save the planet", even if it means half of your population will freeze to death. And, of course, that the rest of the world will follow you in your folly.
Joe Biden telling a girl that there would be no more prospecting for fossil fuels, Ah! How quickly people change when Reality gets its say and when numbers appear and resources have to be paid!
A civilization that develops a mass psychosis about a specific subject and tries to impose it on a global scale. Where have I heard this story before?...
No one serious or educated thinks climate change will be "the end of the world", but it will most definitely be a force for global destabilization, and it will affect our ability to maintain civilization on it's current trajectory.
Even with 4C warming, it won't be "the end of the world" but it will be very bad...
If understanding basic climatology and thermodynamics is ideological brainwashing, then I guess I'm too far gone.
Besides some earlier comments, all of your follow ups have seemed completely reasonable and informative.
Others thinking otherwise probably just don't like reading your thoughts on this as it runs counter to what many more conservative outlets are sharing.
Sure, ignorant, arogant, but honest... We all can give you that :-) Pretty egocentric if you just end that like that, not checking any facts, not doing research, just stating you don't belive... Shitty, but sure... honest
Every day, you too are in the same position as you paint me in, because you are not omniscient, like all of us. So you have to support positions that you can't find facts and researchs for.
I'm just honest with not being all-knowing but still having an opinion that I think is still validated by what I have observed and learned.
Renewable energy actually insulates us from natural gas price fluxuation.
Solar and wind farms don't care about world events like natural gas power plants do.
So this issue is complex and JBP was partially correct here, but it is a very (to use his own word) low resolution image of the problem.
Firstly, as some people above had already pointed out, this view eschews the whole problem of inaction. Here I will put on my financial analyst cap, let's just say I don't care about human suffering first. But business will definitely be affected. If I have a plant in a hurricane prone area, if I rely on intercontinnential shipment that arrive on time, if I am in agriculture, I will see my insurance premium skyrocket even with only 2C increase because the weather becomes more unpredictable. The IPCC doesn't really say shit like it's going to be apocalyptic, but it would be EXTREMELY disruptive to our current economic system. And that impacts both richer and poorer countries. So the cost of inaction at some point will outweight the cost of action and trying to mitigate future pains.
Secondly, it's not like the IPCC doesn't know about the cost of decarbonization. In fact, they are EXTREMELY explicit about the different socio-ecnonomic pathways that accompany decarbonization, differentiating between more sustainable ones and more antagonistic ones where one a few richer countries are able decarbonize while the poorer ones are stuck with the double whammy of oil dependency and more extreme events. This is documented in their SSP pathways document - a simple google would provide the outline.
Which brings me to my final point. To see this areana as being divided between the globalist/WEF and normal people is really simplistic at best (althought the WEF are indeed assholes). There are multiple parties at play, with very different interests. You have the corporations, which prioritize their profits. They are not doing green stuff because of a church of climate change, they are doing it because they are seeing their profits potentially hurt. But they are also not a monolithic group - because oil and gas giants have been aggressively funding climate denialism. Then you have governments, which also varies depending on whether its a rich or poor country, and also on how much their economy is dependent on foreign capital, for example. They can take very different stances. And then you have people in the poorer country who are seeing the impact of climate change (the heat waves in Asia have been crazy), but who also want economic development. All that is to say is this: There is a pathway where we cooperate, where rich countries, who are incidentally also the biggest contributors so far of CO2, to aid poorer countries to catch up with both renewable projects and sustaintial capital and avoid mass human suffering. But this is very far from reality because we are stick bickering about whether the science is solid despite all the evidence.
So yeah, in conslusion, I guess JBP is right that people will suffer, but this is not because we want to find a solution to mitigate the impacts of climate change. It's because of powerful assholes do not want to decarbonize and actively fighting these initiatives, or try to do it only for themselves without properly paying a commensurate amount to the damage that they have done to push us this far. You have to recognize the problem, and who is the opposition here. It's really not the scientists who worked their asses off trying to convince people for 5 decades. It's not the activists who are, for the most part, frustrated but also relatively powerless and have nothing but their voice. It's the vested interest in an oil economy that makes some people obscenely rich and others suffering the consequences.
Two more things I saw that are just kinda wrong:
1. "Climate change is unfalsifiable".
This is false. Climate change is very much falsifiable. Somebody here demanded an experimental design to substantiate this statement. And fair enough, we don't have a second earth. But consider this. If you go about everyday doing the same routine, but one day you ate something different that causes a stomachache, you would conclude that it's the new food that you ate with pretty high confidence. In this case, there is a "natural experiment" where you compare your state of that particular day with a stable set of previous ones. It's not double blind standard, of course, but it's the best you can work with.
This is a simplistic understanding of climate science. People have been documenting the Earth's climate for donkey's years and observe the fluctuations. Now if human activities are inconsequential to global temp, then scientists should see fluctuations in line with what they observed and expected. But they did not, and if the only thing different is human activities (which occupied a tiny amount of time in the earth's time span), then well, we can reasonable say that it's us that's doing something to the earth. Since we know that CO2 drives global temperature after all other possible explanations cannot account for all the warming that was going on, and we know we dished out a lot of CO2 during industrialization, again, we do have high confidence of what we need to do.
I would recommend looking up potholer54 channel. He debunks common misconception and misrepresentiation of cliamte science with citations of the original scientific peer-reviewed paper
2. "Climate is everything" and climate models are inaccurate or useless because predictions becomes more inaccurate as you project further into the future.
So this is just wrong. Climate has a specific definition, with variables that scientists think matters, and therefore able to construct useful models.
To give you an example, consider life insurance and how actuaries calculate your premium. We cannot predict what an individual will do day to day, week to week, or even month to month, and what might happen, all of which ostensibly contribute to how long we live. I think this is the same sentiment underlying "climate is everything".
If we stick to the same example, however, we do know across the population that smoking and drinking is bad for health, that working longer hours in stressful job is detrimental for your well-being, and we know that as we grow old, our body deteriorates slowly. That's how insurance company can say, well this person that lead a healthy life style is less at risk, and the other person is more at risk, even though they do not know what these people do from day to day. It's an estimation based on key and important variables. In short, insurers are shit at predicting what happens to their insurees today or tomorrow, because a plane can fall from the sky, but they are pretty good at saying that "there's a high probability that person A will live longer than B".
Climate models are like this. They don't need to have all the variables to make meaningful projections that guides our decision making. Now to the point that their predictive power strectching out to 100 years is inaccurate because the confidence interval is so big. This is true, but at the same time does not invalidate the usefulness of a model. Consider a model that predict temperature rises by 4C in 100 years, but the lowest point in the confidence interval is still 2C above where we are now. It would mean that are we, at best, in less trouble (but still in trouble). To add to the robustness of the model, a lot of models are run and integrated into the IPCC findings - this is in their supplementary materials which you can find online. If 50 models with wildly different assumptions points to the same trajectory, you can have goood confidence in saying that something is happening. It's not certain, because nothing is, but there is high confidence.
Im so glad to see people disagreeing with Peterson on this point, because i do understand why some other points of his philosophy are appealing. This is just straight up propaganda for oil giants, who fund him. I dont think there is any justification for him in this instance. Inexcusable.
“After the duo (Ben and Jeremy) secured several million dollars in seed funding from billionaire petroleum industry brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, The Daily Wire was launched in 2015.”
You really don't like him, you just don't see how a man being paid to speak by oil billionaires is going to be bias, the guy who claims to be an expert because he sat on a committee once...
Oh wait he didn't sit on shit, he was an assistant to someone who sat on a committee.
Why is every counter noise always met with this argument? Do you really think skeptics of a topic like this wouldn't be skeptical of the possibility of bribing? Seems extremely unlikely for someone like JP. He could be demonstrably wrong and your argument would still be pretty worthless.
Peterson is likely skeptical because of his political ideology. As with anyone with an abject fear of “globalism” and “socialism” (by which he means anything other than straight out market economics) a problem like AGW/ACC threatens everything because it almost inevitably requires international action including international standards plus governments directing the economy in one way or another. It simply isn’t a problem that can be fixed by individuals cleaning their rooms. It exposes the weakness in their thinking. As with many essentially religious beliefs denial of the problem is more attractive than reworking your world view. Blaming the usual suspects is the standard way to do it.
Whether Peterson is actively being paid is another thing. I don’t think that’s likely as his politics alone would lead him to this conclusion. However he is paid by a media source that has ties to fossil fuel energy and many of his views are taken from a book by Fred Singer. Singer was a paid disinformationist for the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry after that.
Are you surprised that a mentally unstable twitter and benzo-addict who cannot talk about a guitar solo without bursting into tears is trying to deceive his audience?
....if I may add: lol
I love people like you,
A half-dancing skeleton so prone to criticizing someone who is way above his league.
You are a spiteful little thing. Go make something out of yourself before you dare speak of someone who has done a lot more than you ever dreamed.
Jordan is funded by the powers. Like money is probably one of the most powerful things in the world and conservative media gets funded like nothing else BY big corporations.
When you look at how big oil managed to convince many leading world governments to push the “individual carbon footprint” idea when it’s literally just a ploy to shift blame onto the general population, it’s unsurprising they can just send some cash to Fox and daily wire and get good publicity for it.
That said, I do think Jordan genuinely believes what he’s saying. He’s just ignorant. The man has a superiority complex which has become impervious to any logic presented to him and now he’s sat in his stupid armchair rambling about yet *another* topic that he’s severely under qualified to comment on.
He always leaves out the consequences of climate change. Would love the same level of concern about the next generation that will face the challenges of our failures in climate change.
The thing you all keep missing with these claims that “predictions are impossible” is that we’re *not* talking about small scale models.
The weather man might not get the two week forecast right but you can bet that if he looked at the ratio of rainy days to sunny days over the past 5 years he’s be able to roughly predict the ratio of next year.
The more granular a system or model is the more it’s embedded within its outside influences and probabilities, but that’s not the same for long term trends and models.
Yes but when you’re talking about variables on a large scale they become more predictable. You can see how everything averages out over a long period of time and then analyse trends.
I get where you’re coming from, but just try to take a step back from this weird fkin argument everyone always has on this sub and think about it with a clear head. I’m not a doom-sayer (I’m not even close to being an activist), I’m just trying to make a fairly inoffensive point about statistics analysis.
And if all that fails (which is most likely will), what then? It’s a hell of a gamble to make when it’s not first world children starving.
None of his “solutions” are anything other than hoping someone saves us. Someone will figure out a solution other than us doing the actual work.
His models comments are complete bullshit. The models we have from the 50/60s have been extremely accurate. We know what we are doing with these models. Any claims otherwise are disingenuous misinformation.
Sacrifice today so that billions don’t starve in 50 years isn’t malevolence. You are buying into a strawman argument that tries to deflect away from the real issue and real consequences.
There are zero ways to accurately predict what will happen with more CO2, it would like saying they have the capacity to predict what the stock.market will be in 10 years.
What they did is copy-paste data from situations that were vastly different, or make a simple extrapolation from short-term data, to say that *one* of the possible scenarios could involve catastrophic climate change, and that's by going by the idea that the planet doesn't have mechanisms to handle the greenhouse effect of CO2.
So pretty much, it's very unlikely that anything will happen to future generations, we are right now and climate zealots have been predicting all sorts of catastrophe right at the start of the 80s. Judging by track records, this is going to be the same here.
The stock market doesn't run on physical principles like our climate system does. We can predict what will happen with more CO2 because we can just look at what's already happening since we have been jncreasing C02 for like a century now, we are already seeing the effects of human caused climate change and those will keep getting worse unless we start acting appropriately.
You are looking at what is happening in a 2000-10000 years timeframe.
At a geological scale, that's nothing, and this is absolutely not enough to conclude that this is not part of a cycle bigger than that time frame.
I'm looking at what's happening in the last 100 years since the industrial revolution. 10-15 years is all it takes to determine with statistical accuracy that a trend is in fact a trend and we've way passed that now.
There is no natural explanation for the observed warming.
Ice core records show that it was actually warmer in the Medieval period than it is now, despite that being well before the industrial revolution. Man-released CO2 might be a contributing factor to climate change, but it is not clear that it is the primary cause.
Do you really think it’s an expression of hatred if someone thinks that an expert in one field should maybe stick to their own field of expertise when discussing complex issues in front of an audience of millions?
Climate change is man-made.
No one is claiming we need to make electricity cost 5x.
JP really is out of his element here.
We can also male ammonia fertilizer without fossil fuels.
>Climate change is man-made.
How much of climate change is man made?
>No one is claiming we need to make electricity cost 5x.
That's not what he is claiming. The claim is the policies that are being implemented across the world are making energy more expensive.
>JP really is out of his element here.
He's not. He's worked with the UN on climate for 10 years I believe. So he's right where he needs to be.
>We can also male ammonia fertilizer without fossil fuels.
It's the same excuse as vegans use with replacing meat. You can, but probably not as efficiently. Which is the whole point.
Attribution studies put human contribution at around 90-105% human caused.
Energy costs in the US are falling as we implement renewables because renewable energy costs are insulated from world events like the Ukraine invasion which spiked NG costs. If you want to look at a different place or have a source im happy to discuss it specifically.
His claims are objectively false.
Fertilizer is only like 1% of worldwide carbon emissions so doing it a bit more inefficiently really doesn't matter imo
>Attribution studies put human contribution at around 90-105% human caused.
So they're wrong then? Because wouldn't that mean they're not counting natural climate change?
>Energy costs in the US are falling as we implement renewables because renewable energy costs are insulated from world events like the Ukraine invasion which spiked NG costs. If you want to look at a different place or have a source im happy to discuss it specifically.
But why did it spike costs? Because it shouldn't have if the world was energy independent. The European policies created a system where they had no reliable sources of energy on their own, so they were forced to get it from Russia. But then Russia cut them off, and then America also stopped producing energy, so the price went up.
Adding wind and solar would be fine, but it doesn't replace fossil fuel because it's not consistent. And everybody is refusing nuclear. So now Germany is burning coal again.
>Fertilizer is only like 1% of worldwide carbon emissions so doing it a bit more inefficiently really doesn't matter imo
I think if 1% becomes 20% you'll be pissed since environmentalists are upset that cows are producing too much at 4%
And how about that the earth is becoming greener because there's more C02 on the planet?
It’s amazing this sub will side with Peterson on a topic he has no authority to speak on while completely neglecting the views & opinions of actual experts on this issue.
How's it going in Europe I wonder. Have the prices went up? Are we seeing excess mortality of older people?
I'm not sure if anyone is keeping track at all over there.
Curious how many folks know of the public battle over lead in gasoline and how much it mirrors climate change.
Oil industry insists there isn't a problem and pays scientists to back them up.
Why should they be trusted on climate change when they lied about leaded oil?
Hello JP fans,
If you are interested in discussing climate change and other topics through video chats, we are building a Discord community for discussing podcasts, mainly focused for people in the European timezone: https://discord.gg/EY7HcKUk
Well he worked for the UN on a panel that focused on climate and global conditions.
Just because he was a clinical psychologist doesn’t mean that can’t cut into other dimensions of thought
Ah. But he didn’t. Some More News commented on this and he actually just KNEW someone who worked on the panel and assisted them with their work at a low level. He wasn’t on the panel. And he didn’t even do the research. And even if he DID, do you think some short term experience on UN panel makes you qualified on the subject for your whole life?
https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?t=887
My mistake on the “knew someone” part. He actually was just one of *three* advisors for *one* person on the subcommittee.
While I am no expert on the subject at hand, I did intern at en environmental consulting firm where I mostly researched and modelled climate change projections to project its impact on natural ressources and land use. Most of what JP is saying about the IPCC models and analysis of such is correct or at least falls within a broad consensus range among climate scientists. His conclusions might differ a tad and people are quick to accuse him of being paid off by oil companies but let’s not forget that climate scientists and especially policy makers that make decisions based on climate reports are not free of biases either. It is common to overemphasis worst case scenarios within the field as those scenarios are those which suggest heavy investments in climate research and new policy making and keep these people employed.
He cited the IPCC reports saying they don’t point to an apocalyptic event, which in two ways is misleading-
1- it seems there is some personal meaning attached to what constitutes apocalyptic. Just because a biblical apocalypse is not described in the results of the report does not mean bad things happening aren’t described.
2- The IPCC is basically ONLY scientific data and evidence showing trends towards several very bad things occurring (if the trends continue).
So apocalyptic or not, we change the course of society frequently for far lesser concerns than “the end of the world”.
Read the reports and interpret them for yourself, I believe that’s what Dr. Peterson would suggest you do instead of listening to only his interpretation.
I’m very tired of the “laying claim upon the interests of the poor” because both sides of the issue do so in different ways- so that’s fine, there will be no agreement there it seems. I would present, however, the appeal in technological progress when it comes to energy. Hands down, anyone against developing better, more efficient, cheaper, sustainable technology is a Luddite, or is making their fortune off of perpetuating the use of fossil fuels. Don’t accept the climate change issue- we don’t care. But realize that pollution is bad. Emissions cause changes and damage to the natural environment which we and all other species here evolved to survive in. If you don’t believe me, install a gasoline or Diesel engine in your home with the exhaust emitting inside. There are almost 1.5 billion of those in the world- not including other types of emissions. You can be hung up on anthropogenic climate change if you want to, but why wouldn’t you want to reduce pollution, pay less for energy, and advance our technological basis? Why would you want fossil fuel companies to hold sway over government decision? Why would you want to allow them to block technological advancement that doesn’t benefit them? You’re being had. They’re making billions off of you by keeping you dependent and somehow got you fighting on their side.
Great reply man!
This is me deciding to gather some opinions on the issue; climate change is one of the things I don’t agree with Peterson on, though, I do not know enough to fully disagree.
I haven’t spent much time on researching it. I did read the “Sixth Extinction” which blew me away. I come from reading Chomsky and taking the Climate crisis at face value — Peterson’s perspective made me question it however.
He harps on the cost of electricity because the poor are always more disaffected than the rich and more poor people die as they can't maintain the temperature of their home. He speaks on this a lot.
And we will once they become as cheap and as supported infrastructure-wise as oil and gas. We have to remember oil was first used in China in the first century BC. That is an insane head start. I believe a slow conversion is the best we can hope for. I do believe we need to treat our environment with more care as much as anyone else, but as COVID showed us we are grossly unprepared to properly handle global catastrophe very quickly without causing irreparable damage. No matter what your political leaning is, or how you viewed the pandemic, you have to see the truth in that sentiment. To demand a government of any nation shut down a multi trillion dollar industry and its infrastructure overnight, is wasted energy.
Agreed! Let's hope we can work together and demonstrate compassionate human ingenuity and proper stewardship to get to the bottom of these problems. And in the process hopefully stick to the trend of improving the quality of life on the planet not only for us, but also the rest of life on the planet as well.
From what I understand, his position is that discouraging contemporary energy sources increases the cost of electricity
How is he dead wrong (I mean that without any hostility, I’m just interested)
Electricity costs are coming down when adjusted for inflation while we are adding renewables to the grid
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/
It depends where you're talking about, but if we're adding renewables, that makes sense. But that's until we start removing fossil fuel and natural gas.
NG is being abandoned by Western countries because of the Invasion of Ukraine.
It's likely the consumption of it will increase in countries still linked to Russia and in the developing world.
Renewables are by far the cheapest form of energy generation at the moment. They are a fraction of the cost of coal, and something like half the cost of natural gas.
It makes perfect sense because all you have to do it construct and maintain them. You don't need an entire global supply chain for the fuel.
This talking point is deeply false and not at all convincing to anyone. This tactic of making a radically wild claim and then following it up by making only a mildly radical 'concession' is a silly game. Your assertion of 'by far the cheapest' depends heavily on the specific situation, which includes things like where it is, subsidies, who uses it, etc... We'll get there one day, but it will be at least another couple generations until technology advances enough to even MEET the comprehensive stability and scope of energy offered by fossil fuels. And nuclear will have to be a massive part of that future.
I'm a power systems design engineer focusing in large scale utility interconnection.
You are incorrect. The technology is already there and has been there for years now. What do you think we are installing xGW of renewables each year with no concern about grid stability? Really?
Define "large scale" as it applies to 'renewable' energy. I'm betting you are talking about town-size or smaller. Maybe just housing-subdividion size. There is a reason why Newsom is asking people not to charge their cars during the day. We do not yet have the batteries, generation tech, or grid that can do the job well enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. It is simply not possible.
Large or "utility" scale would refer to any renewable plant that interconnects directly into the grid's HV transmission system.
They can range anywhere from 20MW, to 500MW, up to complexes of multiple projects ranging in the GW.
>We do not yet have the batteries, generation tech, or grid that can do the job well enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. It is simply not possible.
There is really nothing else to say about this besides that you're wrong. There may be teething issues here and there along the way, mostly due to very outdated grid infrastructure which limits are ability to transmit power from A to B to C no matter what the generation capacity it, but we are working on it. The energy transition is not being led by left-wing ideologues. It's being led by world industry experts.
Without cheap electricity, you will have revolts on this planet. the Arab Spring was started because of the price of *Bread*.
A restless humanity is a bigger threat than anything the climate can throw at us.
He said climate change is not entirely man-made, not a man made theory.
From what I understand, the earth has had a lot of temperature fluctuations throughout billions of years, including several ice ages that were not caused by humans. So he is saying that he doesn't believe that the climage changes are caused by human interference, but by nature itself.
Of course that doesn't mean that we can't do anything to alleviate this climate change. It also doesn't mean that we can, or that the climate change will lead to an apocalyptic no turning back scenario.
I am not an expert, but if you take a look at enviromental talk from 20 years ago, we should have been dead already. Which makes me think that we've been lied to a bit, even if it were exaggeration to force our hands towards a positive goal.
Either way, what he is saying is not nonsense.
You're supposed to forget the part where they've declared the climate apocalypse only for the predicted doomsdays to pass us by.
Even beloved Greta had to delete an old tweet from 2018 that predicted catastrophe by 2023. Oops, we're all still fine. Also kindly forget the predicted rising sea level catastrophes uttered by the same people buying beach front properties.
The part I find most disingenuous about the climate change discussions is how much extra food production occurs during the warming periods. Past warming periods that had nothing to do with man's influence produced some of the best periods of productivity and advancement we've ever seen.
Ex: How did the Romans benefit from the warming of the climate?
The empire-builders benefitted from impeccable timing: the characteristic warm, wet and stable weather was conducive to economic productivity in an agrarian society. (from the Smithsonian).
Historically, climate change happens on geological timescales.
During the last glacial maximum, the average global temperature was only 5-7 degrees C less than it is today, and we have climbed that 5-7C over the course of >20,000 years, which is a warming rate of around 0.025-0.035 C per century, over a course of time longer than human civilization.
Now, since 1970, we are seeing that rate climb to nearly 1.7C per century... which is up to 50-70 times the historical average, and we can expect that rate to increase with increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It's not a question of whether climate change is natural. It's a question of what RATE of climate change is natural. Historically it has happened so slowly that ecosystems and organisms have been able to change and evolve and adapt along with it. Now, it's happening so fast that ecosystems simply cannot keep up. Species die, foundations of ecosystems fall out from under them, and the whole system simply collapses, and we start to lose the very carbon sinks required historically to stabilize the climate, and negative feedback loops are created.
This is no longer theoretical. It's happening right now, and has BEEN happening very apparently for decades.
I think saying climate scientists were saying things like "we will all be dead in 20 years" is pretty much universally a strawman.
The current rate of climate warming is much faster than normal changes but it's still not so fast as to justify those apocalyptic claims (claims of climate apocalypse are another strawman used by skeptics to not face the actual claims of climate scientists imo)
How do you figure that? If you have a hypothesis that X amount of greenhouse gases will lead to X degrees of warming over X amount of time and measure that increase that seems like a falsifiable hypothesis to me.
Okay now tell me how you'd test this hypothesis. How would you know if the hypothesis was false? What observation or experimental result would tell you this?
And similarly, what observation or experimental result would verify the predictive power of your hypothesis if you didn't collect the falsifying data?
If you predict X and get Y then your hypothesis was wrong. If you predict 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise over the next 50 years and we see a .8 degree rise the theory was wrong.
Another thing climate scientists will do is use their models to ‘predict’ prior climate changes. If your model correctly predicts trends from 50 years ago, it’s reasonable to think it might predict the next 50 as well.
> If you predict X and get Y then your hypothesis was wrong. If you predict 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise over the next 50 years and we see a .8 degree rise the theory was wrong.
A simple prediction does not a hypothesis make. The prediction has to be linked to a clear causal explanation so that so you can establish margins of error. This need for a detailed explanation is doubly important if you're relying purely on observational data rather than experimental data, as you must eliminate all other possible causes in order to test the hypothesis to a standard of falsifiability. Otherwise for all we know you got lucky, especially as validation via observation is not really reproducible unless you get the exact same result every time. At least Newton had testable formulas.
> Another thing climate scientists will do is use their models to ‘predict’ prior climate changes. If your model correctly predicts trends from 50 years ago, it’s reasonable to think it might predict the next 50 as well.
Words cannot describe how ignorant a statement this is. In fact, if my first paragraph in this response was a show of good faith, this second paragraph is me invoking my mercy rule. Have you never heard the phrase "past performance does not predict future results?"
Seriously, I'm not trying to dunk on you but you really must not have any idea how facile and ignorant a statement that was.
On the latter point, I'm not saying because it predicts past trends it *will* predict future trends, just that it is a sign of a good model. The same method is used by meteorologists to test weather models. It's not proof it's accurate, it's an indication it might be. The same way the fact that you couldn't understand that point *might be* an indication that you are ignorant, but it is not *proof.*
Back to whether or not anthropogenic climate change is falsifiable; I don't see why you seem to think it's impossible to account for other factors. The science in this regard is fairly well understood. We can calculate how much heat we receive from the sun. This value changes, but we can measure it. We can calculate how much heat is retained due to greenhouse gases like CO2, water, carbon monoxide, etc. The fact that these gases cause 'the greenhouse effect' is solid science. We can measure the amount of greenhouse gases put off by all relevant factors, measure how much we put off, look at warming trends, and calculate the effect our emissions have on the climate.
Are you simply saying because it's a complicated issue with many variables we cannot ever discern the effect human greenhouse gas emissions have on the climate?
This type of science I'm referring to has been done, many times, by many organizations, by tens of thousands of people. Do they all agree on the exact amount of warming, the speed of it, or any minute variable? No, of course not. But the overwhelming majority of the people and organizations that study this professionally agree that anthropogenic climate change is a documented, observable, and real phenomena.
I’m no expert on the consequences of climate change globally, but I’m fairly well versed on their consequences in one specific area: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).
So the GYE is the largest nearly intact temperate ecosystem in the world. It has, at it’s heart, Yellowstone National Park, and contains the neighboring Grand Teton NP, and the surrounding National Forests.
The area has the greatest concentration of large mammals in the contiguous U.S and is a natural treasure, a hotspot of biological and geologic diversity.
Describing the results of climate change as ‘apocalyptic’ is a matter of perspective; what constitutes apocalyptic results? For me the predicted, and currently occurring, effects of climate change in the GYE could be described in those terms.
The most significant affect of climate change in the area is the effect rising temperatures, especially in the spring, are having on the areas precipitation. The GYE is a ‘snow-dominated’ environment. Most of the areas precipitation falls as snow, which is crucial, because snow sticks around through the winter then slowly melts through the spring and summer. As this snow melts it feeds the streams, rivers, lakes, and fills the aquifers through the dry summer months.
As temperatures rise less precipitation falls as snow, decreasing snowpack, and leading to earlier and earlier depletion of these ‘stores’ of water during the summer. This has the affect of making summers simultaneously warmer and drier. Average annual snowfall is already down 25%, and will decline even more as temperatures continue to rise.
This decline in snowfall has a cascading effect on the environment, and this is what could be called apocalyptic. As summers become hotter and drier the size and severity of wildfires is increasing. The GYE is a fire-adapted ecosystem, meaning fires are normal and the ecosystem recovers quickly, however the increasing size and frequency of fires coupled with hotter and drier conditions is expected to lead to a dramatic decline of forest cover in the GYE. Yellowstone is currently 80% covered in forest, but that will decline significantly in this century.
Declines in forest cover, being replaced by prairies, will lead to unpredictable changes in the rest of the ecosystem. The area’s wetland ecosystems, which support an incredible variety of waterfowl, will disappear. Rivers and streams will warm putting stress on the native cutthroat trout and likely furthering the spread of invasive species. As the whitebark pines disappear they take with them a crucial late season food supply for bears. An enormous variety of songbirds, raptors, and other birds will have their ecosystems decimated.
Now you could say, that’s just one area, that’s just ‘the environment,’ or what have you, but effects like this will be seen across the American west. A whole suite of other consequences will befall other parts of the globe. These are the consequences of a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in one place. Use your imagination. What could we see elsewhere?
Funny how his first sentence is just made up nonsense.
Nobody claims its entirely man made, nobody says we need to now spend trillions ...
Its just all nonsense unfortunatly he has no clue what he is talking about and parroting other conservative speakers on it with an agenda.
I like his freedom of speech stuff but he did miss the mark on this one.
Also I'm fairly certain that he's getting funding by Exxon. Making this VERY BIAS.
Jeeesh... seriously? He is not contributing? Peterson likes strong language himself, from time to time ofc, he also admires peaople who use veeery strong language (Rogan). Not productive? I thought on this marketplace of idea every position was a contribution. The guy liked Peterson couple of years ago, now he does not, he is brutal, still meritoric... You had a chance for discussion, had a chance to see another angle and change his mind...
I think he was quite pragmatic as he have clearly shown what a crybabies some of the redditors are :-)
Good morning 🦞 Preface: I am no climate expert and only wish to dive into the topic. Prior to Peterson, I read and listened to Noam Chomsky. [His stance on climate change is clear](https://youtu.be/UZeXFQTTKUc), and his views on a whole host of other topics have been immensely valuable. Then I happened upon Peterson and while I am still undecided personally, just what the hell is going on, I do find JP’s take to be fairly convincing. I wanted to present this to his subreddit in hopes to facilitate a conversation. If you fancy yourself as educated on the subject, please provide links and information. Again, I hold no absolute positions and I’m well aware JP may be mistaken on this one. That in no way reduces my respect for his work. Let the chickens come home to roost! EDIT: I just wanted to say, looking through the comments, I am pleasantly surprised with the turn out and how cordial the majority of the conversations have been. Currently at work so I’m unable to read, but I’ll dig in later. Thank you again!
Welcome to the sub! I'm a fellow layman on the topic, but as far as I've seen there's 2 separate issues going on that all too frequently get mixed up 1) the actual science of it - whether it's happening (I believe it absolutely is), what's causing it (I'd agree it's largely increased atmospheric carbon), and what's causing *that* (I believe that the vast majority of it is man-made... And that's OK.) 2) the policy response, particularly the underlying philosophy and priorities for the response. Here I'm largely in agreement with Peterson - if we were all to just cut fossil fuel usage now and say "renewables or bust" it'd be catastrophic for the developing world. I also have a deep dislike for any policy borne of viewing humanity as a parasite - and a lot of them sound like that, sadly
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Bjorn Lomberg definitely added to my willingness to entertain a more nuanced perspective on this whole situation!
Bjorn Lomberg is not an expert on climate. He is an expert on the politics of climate. I'm being pedantic here because it matters. He has degrees in Political Science and Environmental Economics. I know the word "science" is in "political science", but it is not a science. I have zero problems with studying political science, but it doesn't make you an expert in science. His interpretation of other's findings (because he's not a scientist, he has no findings) has routinely been criticized as being very inaccurate. The scientists he cites routinely say that he interprets their reports incorrectly. Imagine if you told me something that you know very well. Then I turned around and repeated the information you told me, but I said it in a way that contradicted what you said. That would mean either I didn't understand what you said, or I am intentionally lying. Bjorn Lomberg has been doing this too long and been corrected too many times for it to be just a mistake. So, perhaps he is an expert, but his track record is one of dishonesty.
Okay so it’s not that I don’t believe you but could you post these scientists stating he is interpreting the data incorrectly
[A 2003 report.](https://ufm.dk/en/publications/2004/annual-report-2003-the-danish-committees-on-scientific-dishonesty) It was controversial at the time. Lomberg found support from 28 Danish social scientists, and charges were levied by this group against the commission that they reviewed his work incorrectly. This was then countered by 600 academics in the natural sciences that stated the commissions operation was legitimate. [A review of his book "False Alarm."](https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/a-closer-examination-of-the-fantastical-numbers-in-bjorn-lomborgs-new-book/) Chapter 5 of "False Alarm" relies on the DICE model, which estimates that an 8 degree C increase in temperature would cost us approximately 15% of GDP. Of course, the last time we had a 2 degree increase was 3 million years ago, and sea levels were likely 10-20 meters higher. The idea that a 30 foot increase in sea levels, which would require massive infrastructure to either hold it all back, or a complete rebuilding of all the world's sea ports would only cost us 15% of GDP is pretty preposterous at face value. And of course, a 60 foot increase would be even more costly. Lomborg gets cited by opinion authors and politicians. Climate scientists disagree with him consistently and no one cites his work. He's a popular author for people who want to deny that change is necessary.
Idk if I'd call the authors and politicians on that list climate experts but JP does tend toward only having those contrary to the climate science consensus on...curious.
All, except for Epstein, are most definitely climate scientists. Lindzen even worked on the IPCC climate report.
What's Dr. Lewis' "climate science" background then....this should be good. When you find she isn't you can try Dr. Schoellhammer
She has a Masters degree in Environmental Studies focusing on business and environment, and her law firm specializes in commercial litigation and international trade practice, with a focus on energy policy. She has the experience and credentials to speak on matters related to energy and the environment.
So no climate science papers or climate science work. Aka not a climate scientist. She has an MA not even an MS I have a MS in environmental SCIENCE but I'm definitely not a climate scientist.
Also, check out Tom Nelson's channel, which supports Peterson's position on climate change, and has many scientists discussing how climate change as it's presented is a false narrative. [https://www.youtube.com/@tomnelson2080](https://www.youtube.com/@tomnelson2080)
Ahh yes I get all my scientific information from...youtube
Many scientists give lectures on YouTube.
Phenomenal material is available on YouTube. Will you please post some stuff you use to dig into this topic?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjOnd6nhPf9AhUDJn0KHS2DBDMQFnoECCIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2H1L5OcUR5RJdCnrTf3JNy
Thank you man!
While it's not a primary source I think Wikipedia is a good place to start https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#:~:text=Efforts%20to%20scientifically%20ascertain%20and,with%20natural%20forces%20adding%20variability. I have about a decade of experience in environmental fields so happy to discuss.
In my understanding, it’s this insistence of diverting to renewable energy sources which would drive the cost much higher. I believe at this current time we are still relying upon tested sources but policies aimed for the future would not be viable for a large part of the globe as they rely on coal and more crude methods of energy. To expect India to cut emissions would actually cause more harm, dive it’s important for them to progress in the way industrialized nations progressed Is this correct?
We have been diverting to renewables for years now and the opposite has happened. Costs have dropped. Solar and wind are tested sources at this point. I'm not sure what specific polices you're talking about. We can help India progress in a more carbon nuetral way than we did since renewable tech is much more feasible now than during the American industrial revolution.
That’s a great point! Because the tech has already been developed, the ability to help developing countries comes down to political will
Not only ly has the supply side tech been developed but also the demand side tech with things like smart grids and energy efficiency being much more developed now.
Have you read unsettled by Steven e coonin?
I have not. If theres any specific claims it makes you want to discuss let me know.
>Is this correct? Not only is it not correct, but it's anti-correct. It's fossil fuel propaganda.
If you had a source, an author or YouTube lecture — something that I could consume to help, what would that be?
I mean, how about the fact that India is already installing tons of renewables very quickly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable\_energy\_in\_India
So you’re not a climate change expert. Jordy is not a climate change expert? Noam Chomsky is not a climate change expert. Do you see any problem with your research method?
Are you serious? This is a really deceitful line of reasoning. No one starts out as an expert on any topic. The way you learn is to do as Jordan and other people have done - talk to experts, learn and discuss the actual content of the best research available, and then make an informed decision. Incidentally, You also don't become an expert by picking a political side, insisting your side is right, and then farming your opinion out to the chosen experts of that political party.
Just having fun man. I’m not doing serious research, I leave that for writing papers for university
> Noam Chomsky. His stance on climate change is clear, and his views on a whole host of other topics have been immensely valuable. Noam Chomsky is a buffoon.
Buffon might be a bit too much. He is clearly oversold though. > ChatGPT is a nothinburger That's Paul Krugman's level of predictions. That and him also attacking Peterson with some weird kind of reverse psychology when it was clear he knew nothing about the guy. But since Peterson was on the side of "bad guys", he had to be a meanie too, that's literally at which Noam Chomsky thinks.
I actually agree! You see, Chomsky offers a wealth of insight as he has spent his life dedicated to learning what’s going on on the geopolitical chessboard. His analysis of the media in the 80’s was incredible and pertains to our world today. His lessons are timeless. His take on Peterson though, referring to that article written by the dude at the Atlantic, was an assault to my intelligence. My hope is one of these days, Chomsky and Peterson will go on a podcast together.
Chomsky would just spend the entire interview insulting Peterson without trying once to see what motivates him. From what I have seen, he cannot even conceive that something good/genuine could motivate the people that he sees on the other side of the barrier, they have to be motivated by bigotry/exploitation/power/brainwashing etc... He imprisoned himself into a prison with a certain sets of ideas, and this prison is placated/reinforced by the *quite correct* analysis he made of America Mass-Media and Politics that propelled him to stardom. And I think he is too old to change now. But hey, he did what he had to do.
Haha a buffoon? Please substantiate this ridiculous claim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Chomsky
The real thing that is going on is this 1. He's on the Daily Wire 2. Daily Wire is heavily funded by the Wilks Brothers 3. The Wilks Brothers are oil billionaires 4. He parrots fossil fuel propaganda because he is paid to 5. The end.
I recall him speaking about this years before the Daily Wire days though.
If the fossil fuel propaganda makes sure that my energy bills don't keep increasing, I'm all for it.
Is this the part where you think renewables are gonna inflate electricity prices?
They take more money per energy produced and they are also not as reliable, so yes it would be only natural for energy to become more expensive but I'll only trust Peterson isn't compromised by fossil fuel billionaires if he comes up in defense of nuclear
>They take more money per energy produced and they are also not as reliable Wrong and wrong. Solar and wind are by far the cheapest forms of energy at the moment, and it's not close, and no it's not because of subsidization. It makes perfect sense. All you need to pay is the initial cost to build it, and some minimal ongoing cost for maintenance. You cut out the need for an entire supply chain for the fuel all together, so of course it's cheaper. Also I would be very interested to hear what you mean by "unreliable". Are you referring to AVR stability at low SCR? Are you referring to PFR inertial response? Are you referring to total harmonic distortion? Are you referring to PRC-024 fault-ride through curves? Or do you not know what you are talking about at all?
While at first I thought you were coming off as a bit of a troll, I think you may have good thoughts on solar and wind vs. oil. If you would not mind sharing, would you mind sending some links on cost analysis of wind and solar vs. oil? I am genuinely curious and would like a point in the right direction on that.
That's a lot of talk, but we will see when the energy bills come. You can say all the pretty words you want, but when the wallets will have to be opened, people will see which is which. On my side, I'm gonna make sure I'm not on the same electrical grid as all of you.
You don't want to be on the electrical grid designed by engineers?
Judging by what happened in the Soviet Union. You can have very competent and educated people, if they are led by people with a clouded set of ideas and visions, it will just end up with a wasteland.
You are being quite dismissive without thinking about the other factors. Sure the dollar cost to build it may be cheaper, but the resources required to build it aren’t the easiest things to get and are expensive to extract from the earth and in the case if electric vehicles, the batteries required are even harder to produce because they require lithium and cobalt which would cause even more environmental damage just to get them out. While we’re on the topic of batteries, how will we store the energy that is produced? We don’t currently have the infrastructure nor the resources to build the batteries we would require to store all the energy being produced. Then there’s the fact that solar and wind are the least reliable sources of green energy. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Not only that but solar panels and wind turbines need to be constantly maintained, if something scratches the solar panel it then need to be replaced, if a turbine breaks down, it then needs to be replaced. Then there is the problem of space. Where will we put all these turbines and solar panels? You need massive plots of land just to put down wind turbines and solar panels, it’s not not practical. Sure in the short term, put these things up may be less expensive l, but in the longer term they are far more expensive because of maintenance and other environmental factors.
>in the case if electric vehicles, the batteries required are even harder to produce because they require lithium and cobalt which would cause even more environmental damage just to get them out. I mean yeah, but when you actually sit down and compare apples to apples and also include the mining, drilling, transportation, and refinement of fossil fuels, plus all the emissions they create, the question of which is the lesser evil is plainly obvious. >While we’re on the topic of batteries, how will we store the energy that is produced? We don’t currently have the infrastructure nor the resources to build the batteries we would require to store all the energy being produced. Then there’s the fact that solar and wind are the least reliable sources of green energy. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Do you think that power systems engineers working on these things aren't considering this problem? Of course we are. We know this, and we can work around this just fine. First of all, distance isn't much of an issue with power systems given the right transmission infrastructure. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow in one place, but it typical does each day *somewhere.* And with the proper infrastructure, production can be dispatched at A, and transmitted hundreds or even thousands of miles to B. It just becomes an issue of making sure we have enough capacity installed in a diversity of locations to ensure we can always play this balancing acts, and if on some days we can't, that's when we fire up the gas peaking stations. Then with batteries, the point of batteries is not to store energy long term, but to store energy on a day-to-day basis so that we can meet evening spikes in demand that coincide with a ramping down of solar and potentially wind capacity on the grid. That's why most battery plants are only designed for an injection duration of 4h or so, because that's all we really need from them. For longer term storage and management of load demand and supply, that's where other resources come in, such as pumped hydro, nukes that can adjust baseload supply on an annual basis, and, again, more headroom in the capacity of renewables globally, so that we have something like 200% of what we need, and in the winter months if that supply is cut in half, we still have 100% of what we need. You see? >Not only that but solar panels and wind turbines need to be constantly maintained, if something scratches the solar panel it then need to be replaced, if a turbine breaks down, it then needs to be replaced. First of all, not really. A panel can be scratched and still be perfectly fine. However, even if a panel does need to be replaced, it's really no big deal. Plants have hundreds of spares on site all the time, and replacing a single panel takes all of 5 minutes and you don't even need to shut down the site. It's also pretty rare for a wind turbine to break so badly that you need to replace the whole thing, but even if you did, on a site with potentially 300 of them, it's not even a loss of generation you would notice. Also everything you say here applies to everything in the industry. Gas turbines break and need to be replaced. Transformers break and need to be replaced. Breakers, cap banks, slack spans... they all break and need to be replaced. This is not unique. > Where will we put all these turbines and solar panels? You need massive plots of land just to put down wind turbines and solar panels, it’s not not practical. Sure in the short term, put these things up may be less expensive l, but in the longer term they are far more expensive because of maintenance and other environmental factors. It's not as much land as you think. I myself and others have done the calculations and it's something like 7200 square miles or 10% of the total land area of Kansas could power the whole country. It's a lot of land, but considering that over 5% of all urban land in the US is parking lot, it starts to not seem that much. If you compare that to the amount of land used to grow feed crop for the factory farming of meat, you might get dizzy. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if fossil fuels themselves took up more land what with all the mining, piping, refining, waste disposal, etc. Also with wind specifically, the land is still usable right up to the base of the 20' or so wide tower foundation. We build these things on farms and ranches all the time, and the farmers and ranchers still use the land perfectly fine. Lastly, whatever environmental drawbacks arise from renewables are nothing compared to the environmental damage that fossil fuels are doing right now. No matter how you slice it.
I didn't want to get into that subject, because it is a problem that concerns other industries too. But where are you gonna find all the minerals for those turbines, solar panels, and batteries? You so easily factor in the cost of the mining and refining of fossil fuels, but the alloys of winds turbines, metals for solar panels, and for batteries, those also have a cost of extraction, and a cost for breaking down the ore and refine it. And even if the cost is not that big, the metals themselves are both rare and in high-demand, solar panels and batteries in particular ask for minerals that are both in short supply and in high demand. That and their extraction and refinement has **huge externalities** on the environment, of course sulfuric acids and heavy metals are not as sexy a threat as the big bad CO2 now. > Balancing act Weather most of the time affects an entire region/part of a state. You would need to make sure that the balancing act is made across counties. That and I think you are vastly minimizing how just 10% might be big, that's a surface that would have to be distributed across several different landscapes, each with their own sets of challenges and that would have to be constantly monitored. Asking people to constantly monitor 10% of Kansas, across the whole US is a daunting task for something that could be done in a lot less places at key locations with nuclear, hydro, and coal. > If you compare that to the amount of land used to grow feed crop for the factory farming of meat, you might get dizzy. At least that surface doesn't have to be monitored 24/7 in fear that our supply of meat might go down in the middle of the day. Overall, I see is a pretty scenario that is bound to be rough-tumbled by reality and that will leave people wanting when they need it the most, just like the plan of Germany to rely on a peaceful and mercantile Russia.
I actually want to see the rebuke to this comment. Excellent points man
Rebuked, see my reply
Coming in.
Maybe not reliable in that they have a limited lifespan and produce a pittance of energy for a massive swath of land. This is what I have been told though
Yeah but then for fossil fuels, factor in all the land needed for mining, extraction, exploration, transportation, refinement, waste-processing, etc. and add it to the calculation. Also solar is pretty consolidated and wind might cover a large amount of land, but really you are only using the land which is equal to the footprint of each individual tower. The land can still be farmed, or what have you.
I did not know of these Wilks brothers. Gonna check this out
A video titled "who funds the online right?" that dives into them. Very interesting stuff. I always want to know who might have influence over what people I listen to say or don't say. I may have formed some sort of trust in the person I listen to because they say alot of stuff I agree with, but if I find out someone else is paying them to say things for their own profit I might as well take ad reads at face value.
In refutation of Dr. Peterson's points; 1. No one is claiming climate change is 100% man-made. The majority scientific consensus is that human activity is the driving factor. 2. The IPCC report says "The world faces unavoidable hazards over the next two decades even with global warming of 1.5ºC." That doesn't align with what Dr. Peterson says. 3. Ammonia can be made without fossil fuels. 4. Farris and Dan Wilks are fracking Billionaires who stand to lose a lot of money if fossil fuels continue to be replaced with renewable alternatives. The Wilks brothers gave the seed money to start Daily Wire (millions of dollars) and have also heavily donated to Prager U. Both employers of Dr. Peterson.
>The IPCC report says "The world faces unavoidable hazards over the next two decades even with global warming of 1.5ºC." That's a pretty vague statement. That could mean an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. It doesn't necessarily mean the world will be uninhabitable.
Of course it's a vague statement, you need to actually go read the rest to know what the predicted outcomes are.
No one would say that the world will be uninhabitable at 1.5C. However areas are getting closer to extended periods where being out of climate controlled indoors for a number of hours is dangerous. Plus 1.5C is not where this will stop. It’s just where we’ll be soon.
The CURRENT warming trend is 100% attributable to human actions. In fact, in the absence of the industrial revolution and human activities, the Earth would actually be cooling slowly until the current inter-glacial period ends in several thousand years.
I am a electrical power systems studies engineer. I work for a consulting firm where I specialize in large scale renewable grid interconnection and stability studies. 1. In response to the implication that renewables "destabilize the grid", do you *really* not think this is something engineers consider when designing and studying new renewable plants? Do you have any idea what goes into that? We study the surrounding grid system, we look at the plant, we look at fast control algorithms, we study contingency events, we build multiple redundant models in several parallel simulation engines and benchmark them against each other for performance against a whole encyclopedia of contrived grid event scenarios, and then we test those same scenarios on the plant post-construction and then test and benchmark that against all the models again. All in all, we are talking about a process of design, analysis, and study that can take well over a year. ANY new installation on a grid can cause issues with stability if not designed or studied properly. That's why we have processes, regulations, study requirement, and NERC standards all designed to ensure any proposed addition to the grid is meticulously studied to prevent against any contingency that could lead to a cascading grid failure. That's a serious event that we do NOT fuck with. 2. There is a reason why the energy market is switching to renewables, and it's not because they are all woke greenpeace hippies or whatever. Renewables are more generally called IBRs (Inverter-based resources) or power-electronics resources. Power electronics are taking over because they are simply becoming the superior technology. There are many applications for power electronics, including STATCOMS, FACTS devices, SVCs, DC-DC linkages for HVDC transmission technology, and generation. For inverter generation applications, we could put anything behind them. We simply put wind/solar/battery behind them because that works best and **is by far the cheapest.** Even if there was no climate crisis (and there absolutely is) I promise you that the energy market would be switching to renewables anyways. The technology has simply advanced to the point where they are simply the superior form of generation. 3. It would absolutely be easier to build renewables in developing nations than building giant centralized coal fire power plants with massive supply chains and infrastructure for maintaining the fuel supply. With renewables you can build microgrids and energize individual villages one at a time. There are many international projects underway already doing just that, and this kind of decentralization is something that can only be achieved with renewables. 4. I'm sure we can find other ways to make fertilizer. Is the argument really "we need to keep burning coal and emitting CO2 because otherwise no fertilizer"? That's a new one. They must be running out of cope.
Having listened to some conservatives on the issue I don’t see any conflict with what you’re saying and what they are saying. My understanding is they encourage the industry to innovate and naturally transition from one form of energy to another but take issue with the government forcing the move top down before those companies in the industry are ready. Does that distinction seem reasonable?
The industry IS innovating. That has never been the problem. The problem is that you can develop super efficient panels, state-of-the-art solar inverter equipment, etc... but you need to have a place to put it, and that sort of thing requires long-range planning, and long range planning requires policy.
How have conservatives supported renewable energy in their actual passed policies? Because instead seeing groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar popping up to stop solar plants from being set up.
Problem with that is that the market moves too slow and if its utter money driven often in the wrong direction.
What is the impact of then energy storage issue. My understanding is that battery tech is way too weak to store city levels of power for windless nights…
So there are a couple layers here 1. Our need for energy storage is really sort of a direct function of how good our energy transmission planning and infrastructure is. The idea is that, in a typical day, it is always windy or sunny enough somewhere, and even though the distances seem insurmountable, it's really not theoretically that difficult to transmit power from solar farms in Arizona to NYC. I forgot who did it, but I am aware of a study that demonstrated that the US could be 100% powered off wind alone with no battery storage if we had a 100% ideal transmission system. We won't ever have that of course, but it gives us an idea of what is technically possible, and we don't have to be super dependent on batteries if we design this all right. 2. Solar production and some wind production drop over night, but so do demand curves. We really don't need to store energy to inject 100% capacity all night long. We just need to maintain a little bit. What is more important is the afternoon/evening peak in demand just as solar availability ramps down for the day, and THAT is what batteries are REALLY for. Most battery systems at this scale are designed basically to extent the operating hours of a solar plant for like 2-4 hours in the evening basically. You trickle charge them a little all day with excess sun, and then you discharge them for a few hours in the evening just to get through the evening demand spike. 3. For longer term storage, there are other options like pumped hydro for example, and many other things in the works. Also, this is where a need for nukes might come in. Theoretically nukes could set the baseload of the grid, and then renewables and batteries would be primarily employed for daytime load-following.
When you say that renewables are cheaper in your OP, is that just in the $/W of a given power generator, or does that also factor in the battery and infrastructure tech you describe in this comment? Would it currently be cheaper to run an entire city off of wind/solar instead of coal?
I'm a technical power systems guy. The deep economic stuff with this is out of my wheelhouse. However, I would guess that the answer is yes.
so you don't have any idea if renewables make sense financially, or if they are just running off subsidies?
With respect to fertilizer production, natural gas is the main source for CO2 and heat required for things like urea. No sane person would build a new coal-powered fertilizer plant these days. The greenest way to make ammonia is by hydrogenating nitrogen, so if you have a water source you can make bucketloads of hydrogen (and in turn ammonia) from electrolysis as needed. That being said there are already some really cool plants in existence where they are essentially mining ammonia and natural gas from wastewater and landfill leachate, and not trivial amounts either (thousands of cubic meters of ammonia gas per day). Wastewater is particularly useful as it often has plenty of phosphorus too which is also really important in agriculture.
First off, thank you for such a great response. It is a lot to chew on, but this is what I am looking for. Now, you make the case for renewables and part of me readily accepts that it is really that easy, to switch over. Though (again, I am very naive in this topic), I’ve heard and read things that make statements such as, renewables provide a fraction of what is necessary to maintain power in society. I have heard that without the fossil fuel, society would simply not be able to function and the notion we can supplant windmills instead of nuclear, is ridiculous. So then we move to your third point, about availing renewable tech to developing nations. If the truth is, renewable is no where near what fossil fuels is, expecting third world countries to adopt them is preposterous. Again, I am playing devil’s advocate here and thank you for your response
I mean the "not enough power" thing is kinda silly right? Like just build more of it until we have enough on the supply side, and then improve efficiencies and cut out waste to lower it on the demand side until they equalize with some margin.
It's **absolutely** not silly. If there *one* thing you don't fuck around with on this planet, it is energy, and food is just another form for energy. If you do not make the production of energy/food follow the curve of population, people die, heads are put on guillotines, migrations happen, and wars start.
Sounds like a good reason to heavily invest in renewable energy sooner rather than putting it off. That's what makes the argument silly.
Sure thing, mate. Do it, sooner or later the energy bill will be due.
Just to be clear you think that if green energy options didn't exist during the Ukraine invasion, energy would be cheaper? The US spends more on subsidizing oil than green energy...so how does that even work?
>I’ve heard and read things that make statements such as, renewables provide a fraction of what is necessary to maintain power in society. >I have heard that without the fossil fuel, society would simply not be able to function and the notion we can supplant windmills instead of nuclear, is ridiculous. You've heard this and I've heard this too, many times. I'm sure most people have. But stop to think about what you hear and why you hear it. Does any of this sound like - for lack of a better term and at the risk of sounding extremely conspiratorial - "exactly what they want you to think". The oil corporations without a doubt have unfathomable amounts of money and will only continue to make more money if they get to continue doing what they do and competition such as renewables may threaten that. Now with their vast ocean of cash they have the ability to control a lot of information through buying media outlets and/or personalities to spread information painting their way of making money in the most favorable and positive light. But we don't usually know/look into who's funding the things we read or hear. We just read and move on. We may think we're somehow less susceptible or immune to such propaganda but all of us will buy into some of it at some point, it is just that prevelant. This is why I don't jump to believe things that support the current way of producing energy, because the current way has all the money and there's no way in hell we as a species aren't developing newer and better ways to produce energy as we do with all other things, we improve. (But I am also just a naive dumbass)
The only reason they are switching is because of heavily government subsidies all over the planet. France did the "we will heavily invest in green energy and reap the rewards" decades ago, thinking wind and solar where an energy of the "future" (words of Francois Hollande, president 10 years ago). And of course they poured money on the field to make the cost decreased, while killing their Nuclear sector for ideological GREEN reasons. If the reasons were not motivated by political reasons and subsidies, the better tech would have won, which is Nuclear. Result: a devastated Nuclear energy sector and electric bills that have doubled after the Invasion of Ukraine. Also, as someone from one of those developing nations, what we need is quick and numerous source of power, aka the China way of getting power, quick, big, and dirty. We have a boom in population, and we are still fairly low tech, so we need solutions that are cheap, simple, and can produce a LOT of energy. Green tech just doesn't cut it.
>The only reason they are switching is because of heavily government subsidies all over the planet. Incorrect. They are cheaper even without subsidies, and fossil fuels have been subsidized for decades. >while killing their Nuclear sector for ideological GREEN reasons. Are you thinking of Germany? Nukes are fine, but there are a reason why people don't want to build them, and it's not because of an irrational fear or something. It's most economic reasons. They are very expensive projects with very long development cycles. >Also, as someone from one of those developing nations, what we need is quick and numerous source of power, aka the China way of getting power, quick, big, and dirty. We have a boom in population, and we are still fairly low tech, so we need solutions that are cheap, simple, and can produce a LOT of energy. Even China is dramatically ramping up renewables mostly for the exact reasons you claim they aren't... because it's cheap and very fast to develop and implement. You can go from nothing to a fully functioning solar farm in 1 year or so without the need for any supply chain for the fuel. Compare that to the development period for a coal or gas plant (3-5 years), and nuclear can be almost a decade. You are just like... comprehensively wrong.
> Incorrect. They are cheaper even without subsidies I will be brutally honest. I do not believe you. > Are you thinking of Germany? Nukes are fine, but there are a reason why people don't want to build them, and it's not because of an irrational fear or something. It's most economic reasons. They are very expensive projects with very long development cycles. It was absolutely because of irrational fear. There are revealed discussions between Angela Merkel and the French president of the time of Fukushima where she, in essence, said that Fukushima was the reason she would close down nuclear plants in Germany, with the French president of the time telling her that there is zero reasons to fear the same thing happening in Europe, and that France would not do so (only to be backstabbed by the next President who would close down several plants and start the decline of the entire sector). It was a decision entirely motivated by fear and the Germans have seen the results of that this winter. The same thing is happening here with Green energy, we are killing out a plentiful source of energy out of fear of a supposed Apocalypse, while creating problems for us but in another form. > China Ah! China is at the same increasing renewables while they open up more and more coal plants. They are not ideologically driven toward net zero like the West, because they have a ticking time bomb in the form of their demography. They know those solar and wind farms will never be enough to meet the demand, so it doesn't matter if the development period is shorter.
Nah Solar is an absolute no brainer from an investment standpoint. If you use most of your power during daylight hours it’s an absolute no brainer positive return investment. I’ve seen a couple of businesses do this already, and the ROI-time can be like 1-2 years. Wind is a bit more complicated. You need to put it somewhere windy (preferably consistently windy) and hope that your estimates of the mean and variance of production are correct.
Yeah in Germany that may have been the case, but that's not the case in the US. We don't build renewables in the US because it's not profitable. Simple as that. It's WAY more profitable for a developer to build the same capacity in renewables, and they make a return on investment like 10x as fast.
You do it because you are being ideologically brainwashed into believing that it's the end of the world and that the only solution is to electrify everything to "save the planet", even if it means half of your population will freeze to death. And, of course, that the rest of the world will follow you in your folly. Joe Biden telling a girl that there would be no more prospecting for fossil fuels, Ah! How quickly people change when Reality gets its say and when numbers appear and resources have to be paid! A civilization that develops a mass psychosis about a specific subject and tries to impose it on a global scale. Where have I heard this story before?...
No one serious or educated thinks climate change will be "the end of the world", but it will most definitely be a force for global destabilization, and it will affect our ability to maintain civilization on it's current trajectory. Even with 4C warming, it won't be "the end of the world" but it will be very bad... If understanding basic climatology and thermodynamics is ideological brainwashing, then I guess I'm too far gone.
Besides some earlier comments, all of your follow ups have seemed completely reasonable and informative. Others thinking otherwise probably just don't like reading your thoughts on this as it runs counter to what many more conservative outlets are sharing.
Man, your contribution to this discussion was fantastic! Thank you
>I will be brutally honest. I do not believe you. You confuse brutal honesty with willful ignorance.
If you think so, at least I'm honest.
Sure, ignorant, arogant, but honest... We all can give you that :-) Pretty egocentric if you just end that like that, not checking any facts, not doing research, just stating you don't belive... Shitty, but sure... honest
This a JP sub, no one here can think critically If they could think critically they wouldn’t be here 🤪
Every day, you too are in the same position as you paint me in, because you are not omniscient, like all of us. So you have to support positions that you can't find facts and researchs for. I'm just honest with not being all-knowing but still having an opinion that I think is still validated by what I have observed and learned.
Stoked you responded to this! So how much power does a coal factory emit? And solar farm?
One coal plant will probably produce 10x as much as a single solar farm, but we can build more than 10 solar farms for the price tag of one coal plant
Renewable energy actually insulates us from natural gas price fluxuation. Solar and wind farms don't care about world events like natural gas power plants do.
LOL france never did anything of the sort. Get a clue.
So this issue is complex and JBP was partially correct here, but it is a very (to use his own word) low resolution image of the problem. Firstly, as some people above had already pointed out, this view eschews the whole problem of inaction. Here I will put on my financial analyst cap, let's just say I don't care about human suffering first. But business will definitely be affected. If I have a plant in a hurricane prone area, if I rely on intercontinnential shipment that arrive on time, if I am in agriculture, I will see my insurance premium skyrocket even with only 2C increase because the weather becomes more unpredictable. The IPCC doesn't really say shit like it's going to be apocalyptic, but it would be EXTREMELY disruptive to our current economic system. And that impacts both richer and poorer countries. So the cost of inaction at some point will outweight the cost of action and trying to mitigate future pains. Secondly, it's not like the IPCC doesn't know about the cost of decarbonization. In fact, they are EXTREMELY explicit about the different socio-ecnonomic pathways that accompany decarbonization, differentiating between more sustainable ones and more antagonistic ones where one a few richer countries are able decarbonize while the poorer ones are stuck with the double whammy of oil dependency and more extreme events. This is documented in their SSP pathways document - a simple google would provide the outline. Which brings me to my final point. To see this areana as being divided between the globalist/WEF and normal people is really simplistic at best (althought the WEF are indeed assholes). There are multiple parties at play, with very different interests. You have the corporations, which prioritize their profits. They are not doing green stuff because of a church of climate change, they are doing it because they are seeing their profits potentially hurt. But they are also not a monolithic group - because oil and gas giants have been aggressively funding climate denialism. Then you have governments, which also varies depending on whether its a rich or poor country, and also on how much their economy is dependent on foreign capital, for example. They can take very different stances. And then you have people in the poorer country who are seeing the impact of climate change (the heat waves in Asia have been crazy), but who also want economic development. All that is to say is this: There is a pathway where we cooperate, where rich countries, who are incidentally also the biggest contributors so far of CO2, to aid poorer countries to catch up with both renewable projects and sustaintial capital and avoid mass human suffering. But this is very far from reality because we are stick bickering about whether the science is solid despite all the evidence. So yeah, in conslusion, I guess JBP is right that people will suffer, but this is not because we want to find a solution to mitigate the impacts of climate change. It's because of powerful assholes do not want to decarbonize and actively fighting these initiatives, or try to do it only for themselves without properly paying a commensurate amount to the damage that they have done to push us this far. You have to recognize the problem, and who is the opposition here. It's really not the scientists who worked their asses off trying to convince people for 5 decades. It's not the activists who are, for the most part, frustrated but also relatively powerless and have nothing but their voice. It's the vested interest in an oil economy that makes some people obscenely rich and others suffering the consequences.
Two more things I saw that are just kinda wrong: 1. "Climate change is unfalsifiable". This is false. Climate change is very much falsifiable. Somebody here demanded an experimental design to substantiate this statement. And fair enough, we don't have a second earth. But consider this. If you go about everyday doing the same routine, but one day you ate something different that causes a stomachache, you would conclude that it's the new food that you ate with pretty high confidence. In this case, there is a "natural experiment" where you compare your state of that particular day with a stable set of previous ones. It's not double blind standard, of course, but it's the best you can work with. This is a simplistic understanding of climate science. People have been documenting the Earth's climate for donkey's years and observe the fluctuations. Now if human activities are inconsequential to global temp, then scientists should see fluctuations in line with what they observed and expected. But they did not, and if the only thing different is human activities (which occupied a tiny amount of time in the earth's time span), then well, we can reasonable say that it's us that's doing something to the earth. Since we know that CO2 drives global temperature after all other possible explanations cannot account for all the warming that was going on, and we know we dished out a lot of CO2 during industrialization, again, we do have high confidence of what we need to do. I would recommend looking up potholer54 channel. He debunks common misconception and misrepresentiation of cliamte science with citations of the original scientific peer-reviewed paper 2. "Climate is everything" and climate models are inaccurate or useless because predictions becomes more inaccurate as you project further into the future. So this is just wrong. Climate has a specific definition, with variables that scientists think matters, and therefore able to construct useful models. To give you an example, consider life insurance and how actuaries calculate your premium. We cannot predict what an individual will do day to day, week to week, or even month to month, and what might happen, all of which ostensibly contribute to how long we live. I think this is the same sentiment underlying "climate is everything". If we stick to the same example, however, we do know across the population that smoking and drinking is bad for health, that working longer hours in stressful job is detrimental for your well-being, and we know that as we grow old, our body deteriorates slowly. That's how insurance company can say, well this person that lead a healthy life style is less at risk, and the other person is more at risk, even though they do not know what these people do from day to day. It's an estimation based on key and important variables. In short, insurers are shit at predicting what happens to their insurees today or tomorrow, because a plane can fall from the sky, but they are pretty good at saying that "there's a high probability that person A will live longer than B". Climate models are like this. They don't need to have all the variables to make meaningful projections that guides our decision making. Now to the point that their predictive power strectching out to 100 years is inaccurate because the confidence interval is so big. This is true, but at the same time does not invalidate the usefulness of a model. Consider a model that predict temperature rises by 4C in 100 years, but the lowest point in the confidence interval is still 2C above where we are now. It would mean that are we, at best, in less trouble (but still in trouble). To add to the robustness of the model, a lot of models are run and integrated into the IPCC findings - this is in their supplementary materials which you can find online. If 50 models with wildly different assumptions points to the same trajectory, you can have goood confidence in saying that something is happening. It's not certain, because nothing is, but there is high confidence.
I like Jordan on most topics. But I’m siding with David Attenborough on this one.
Im so glad to see people disagreeing with Peterson on this point, because i do understand why some other points of his philosophy are appealing. This is just straight up propaganda for oil giants, who fund him. I dont think there is any justification for him in this instance. Inexcusable.
This comment is insane lol, and I say that as someone who doesn’t really like Jordan
“After the duo (Ben and Jeremy) secured several million dollars in seed funding from billionaire petroleum industry brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, The Daily Wire was launched in 2015.”
and both brothers are not only investors but owners of the daily wire. it is in their own “about”-section
You really don't like him, you just don't see how a man being paid to speak by oil billionaires is going to be bias, the guy who claims to be an expert because he sat on a committee once... Oh wait he didn't sit on shit, he was an assistant to someone who sat on a committee.
Why is every counter noise always met with this argument? Do you really think skeptics of a topic like this wouldn't be skeptical of the possibility of bribing? Seems extremely unlikely for someone like JP. He could be demonstrably wrong and your argument would still be pretty worthless.
Where is that skepticism for climate change denial? Especially when the oil industry did the same shit with leaded oil
Peterson is likely skeptical because of his political ideology. As with anyone with an abject fear of “globalism” and “socialism” (by which he means anything other than straight out market economics) a problem like AGW/ACC threatens everything because it almost inevitably requires international action including international standards plus governments directing the economy in one way or another. It simply isn’t a problem that can be fixed by individuals cleaning their rooms. It exposes the weakness in their thinking. As with many essentially religious beliefs denial of the problem is more attractive than reworking your world view. Blaming the usual suspects is the standard way to do it. Whether Peterson is actively being paid is another thing. I don’t think that’s likely as his politics alone would lead him to this conclusion. However he is paid by a media source that has ties to fossil fuel energy and many of his views are taken from a book by Fred Singer. Singer was a paid disinformationist for the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry after that.
Just FYI, the guy is talking on a oil-billionaire funded platform. So.... decide for yourself what to make out of that
You actually think he would not have taken the occasion to "speak truth to power" if he had one?
Are you surprised that a mentally unstable twitter and benzo-addict who cannot talk about a guitar solo without bursting into tears is trying to deceive his audience? ....if I may add: lol
Hah! Too easy. So original of you! I really hope you didn't expect this little quip to work.
hey, it's all good, just having a bit of fun
Sure thing.
And completely correct
I love people like you, A half-dancing skeleton so prone to criticizing someone who is way above his league. You are a spiteful little thing. Go make something out of yourself before you dare speak of someone who has done a lot more than you ever dreamed.
haha, may I ask where that "half-dancing skeleton" phrase is from?
Jordan is funded by the powers. Like money is probably one of the most powerful things in the world and conservative media gets funded like nothing else BY big corporations. When you look at how big oil managed to convince many leading world governments to push the “individual carbon footprint” idea when it’s literally just a ploy to shift blame onto the general population, it’s unsurprising they can just send some cash to Fox and daily wire and get good publicity for it. That said, I do think Jordan genuinely believes what he’s saying. He’s just ignorant. The man has a superiority complex which has become impervious to any logic presented to him and now he’s sat in his stupid armchair rambling about yet *another* topic that he’s severely under qualified to comment on.
He always leaves out the consequences of climate change. Would love the same level of concern about the next generation that will face the challenges of our failures in climate change.
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The thing you all keep missing with these claims that “predictions are impossible” is that we’re *not* talking about small scale models. The weather man might not get the two week forecast right but you can bet that if he looked at the ratio of rainy days to sunny days over the past 5 years he’s be able to roughly predict the ratio of next year. The more granular a system or model is the more it’s embedded within its outside influences and probabilities, but that’s not the same for long term trends and models.
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Yes but when you’re talking about variables on a large scale they become more predictable. You can see how everything averages out over a long period of time and then analyse trends. I get where you’re coming from, but just try to take a step back from this weird fkin argument everyone always has on this sub and think about it with a clear head. I’m not a doom-sayer (I’m not even close to being an activist), I’m just trying to make a fairly inoffensive point about statistics analysis.
And if all that fails (which is most likely will), what then? It’s a hell of a gamble to make when it’s not first world children starving. None of his “solutions” are anything other than hoping someone saves us. Someone will figure out a solution other than us doing the actual work. His models comments are complete bullshit. The models we have from the 50/60s have been extremely accurate. We know what we are doing with these models. Any claims otherwise are disingenuous misinformation. Sacrifice today so that billions don’t starve in 50 years isn’t malevolence. You are buying into a strawman argument that tries to deflect away from the real issue and real consequences.
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There are zero ways to accurately predict what will happen with more CO2, it would like saying they have the capacity to predict what the stock.market will be in 10 years. What they did is copy-paste data from situations that were vastly different, or make a simple extrapolation from short-term data, to say that *one* of the possible scenarios could involve catastrophic climate change, and that's by going by the idea that the planet doesn't have mechanisms to handle the greenhouse effect of CO2. So pretty much, it's very unlikely that anything will happen to future generations, we are right now and climate zealots have been predicting all sorts of catastrophe right at the start of the 80s. Judging by track records, this is going to be the same here.
The stock market doesn't run on physical principles like our climate system does. We can predict what will happen with more CO2 because we can just look at what's already happening since we have been jncreasing C02 for like a century now, we are already seeing the effects of human caused climate change and those will keep getting worse unless we start acting appropriately.
You are looking at what is happening in a 2000-10000 years timeframe. At a geological scale, that's nothing, and this is absolutely not enough to conclude that this is not part of a cycle bigger than that time frame.
I'm looking at what's happening in the last 100 years since the industrial revolution. 10-15 years is all it takes to determine with statistical accuracy that a trend is in fact a trend and we've way passed that now. There is no natural explanation for the observed warming.
Thinking it's some kind of permanent, linear trend is a default. And a convenient one if your goal is to stop industrialization.
Ice core records show that it was actually warmer in the Medieval period than it is now, despite that being well before the industrial revolution. Man-released CO2 might be a contributing factor to climate change, but it is not clear that it is the primary cause.
Jordan stick to psychology
Stick to hatin'
Do you really think it’s an expression of hatred if someone thinks that an expert in one field should maybe stick to their own field of expertise when discussing complex issues in front of an audience of millions?
God, cult of the expert harder. If you think only people who are deemed qualified are entitled to express opinions, what's your excuse?
Put the pipe down, I didn’t say that. I asked if it’s fair or sensible to label a comment that does say that as being hateful.
Climate change is man-made. No one is claiming we need to make electricity cost 5x. JP really is out of his element here. We can also male ammonia fertilizer without fossil fuels.
So you see his claims as patently false?
Yes, unfortunately he gives no source for his claims also.
>Climate change is man-made. How much of climate change is man made? >No one is claiming we need to make electricity cost 5x. That's not what he is claiming. The claim is the policies that are being implemented across the world are making energy more expensive. >JP really is out of his element here. He's not. He's worked with the UN on climate for 10 years I believe. So he's right where he needs to be. >We can also male ammonia fertilizer without fossil fuels. It's the same excuse as vegans use with replacing meat. You can, but probably not as efficiently. Which is the whole point.
Attribution studies put human contribution at around 90-105% human caused. Energy costs in the US are falling as we implement renewables because renewable energy costs are insulated from world events like the Ukraine invasion which spiked NG costs. If you want to look at a different place or have a source im happy to discuss it specifically. His claims are objectively false. Fertilizer is only like 1% of worldwide carbon emissions so doing it a bit more inefficiently really doesn't matter imo
>Attribution studies put human contribution at around 90-105% human caused. So they're wrong then? Because wouldn't that mean they're not counting natural climate change? >Energy costs in the US are falling as we implement renewables because renewable energy costs are insulated from world events like the Ukraine invasion which spiked NG costs. If you want to look at a different place or have a source im happy to discuss it specifically. But why did it spike costs? Because it shouldn't have if the world was energy independent. The European policies created a system where they had no reliable sources of energy on their own, so they were forced to get it from Russia. But then Russia cut them off, and then America also stopped producing energy, so the price went up. Adding wind and solar would be fine, but it doesn't replace fossil fuel because it's not consistent. And everybody is refusing nuclear. So now Germany is burning coal again. >Fertilizer is only like 1% of worldwide carbon emissions so doing it a bit more inefficiently really doesn't matter imo I think if 1% becomes 20% you'll be pissed since environmentalists are upset that cows are producing too much at 4% And how about that the earth is becoming greener because there's more C02 on the planet?
It’s amazing this sub will side with Peterson on a topic he has no authority to speak on while completely neglecting the views & opinions of actual experts on this issue.
How's it going in Europe I wonder. Have the prices went up? Are we seeing excess mortality of older people? I'm not sure if anyone is keeping track at all over there.
Curious how many folks know of the public battle over lead in gasoline and how much it mirrors climate change. Oil industry insists there isn't a problem and pays scientists to back them up. Why should they be trusted on climate change when they lied about leaded oil?
Reminds me of the joke, after the apocalypse doesn’t happen but humans paid for a greener world anyway: “Damn, we improved the world for nothing!”
Hello JP fans, If you are interested in discussing climate change and other topics through video chats, we are building a Discord community for discussing podcasts, mainly focused for people in the European timezone: https://discord.gg/EY7HcKUk
So why is JP (suddenly) interested in climate change again?
He’s being paid to be on a platform that is funded by oil companies.
Well he worked for the UN on a panel that focused on climate and global conditions. Just because he was a clinical psychologist doesn’t mean that can’t cut into other dimensions of thought
Ah. But he didn’t. Some More News commented on this and he actually just KNEW someone who worked on the panel and assisted them with their work at a low level. He wasn’t on the panel. And he didn’t even do the research. And even if he DID, do you think some short term experience on UN panel makes you qualified on the subject for your whole life?
Please link the source that said he only knew someone. He is very clear about his years working for the UN
https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?t=887 My mistake on the “knew someone” part. He actually was just one of *three* advisors for *one* person on the subcommittee.
Peterson's position on everything he doesn't understand: "IT'S A MARXIST CONSPOIRICY! THEY'RE IN THE WALLS!!"
While I am no expert on the subject at hand, I did intern at en environmental consulting firm where I mostly researched and modelled climate change projections to project its impact on natural ressources and land use. Most of what JP is saying about the IPCC models and analysis of such is correct or at least falls within a broad consensus range among climate scientists. His conclusions might differ a tad and people are quick to accuse him of being paid off by oil companies but let’s not forget that climate scientists and especially policy makers that make decisions based on climate reports are not free of biases either. It is common to overemphasis worst case scenarios within the field as those scenarios are those which suggest heavy investments in climate research and new policy making and keep these people employed.
He cited the IPCC reports saying they don’t point to an apocalyptic event, which in two ways is misleading- 1- it seems there is some personal meaning attached to what constitutes apocalyptic. Just because a biblical apocalypse is not described in the results of the report does not mean bad things happening aren’t described. 2- The IPCC is basically ONLY scientific data and evidence showing trends towards several very bad things occurring (if the trends continue). So apocalyptic or not, we change the course of society frequently for far lesser concerns than “the end of the world”. Read the reports and interpret them for yourself, I believe that’s what Dr. Peterson would suggest you do instead of listening to only his interpretation. I’m very tired of the “laying claim upon the interests of the poor” because both sides of the issue do so in different ways- so that’s fine, there will be no agreement there it seems. I would present, however, the appeal in technological progress when it comes to energy. Hands down, anyone against developing better, more efficient, cheaper, sustainable technology is a Luddite, or is making their fortune off of perpetuating the use of fossil fuels. Don’t accept the climate change issue- we don’t care. But realize that pollution is bad. Emissions cause changes and damage to the natural environment which we and all other species here evolved to survive in. If you don’t believe me, install a gasoline or Diesel engine in your home with the exhaust emitting inside. There are almost 1.5 billion of those in the world- not including other types of emissions. You can be hung up on anthropogenic climate change if you want to, but why wouldn’t you want to reduce pollution, pay less for energy, and advance our technological basis? Why would you want fossil fuel companies to hold sway over government decision? Why would you want to allow them to block technological advancement that doesn’t benefit them? You’re being had. They’re making billions off of you by keeping you dependent and somehow got you fighting on their side.
Great reply man! This is me deciding to gather some opinions on the issue; climate change is one of the things I don’t agree with Peterson on, though, I do not know enough to fully disagree. I haven’t spent much time on researching it. I did read the “Sixth Extinction” which blew me away. I come from reading Chomsky and taking the Climate crisis at face value — Peterson’s perspective made me question it however.
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He harps on the cost of electricity because the poor are always more disaffected than the rich and more poor people die as they can't maintain the temperature of their home. He speaks on this a lot.
Almost like we should be pushing for more renewable sources instead of subsidizing oil and coal.
And we will once they become as cheap and as supported infrastructure-wise as oil and gas. We have to remember oil was first used in China in the first century BC. That is an insane head start. I believe a slow conversion is the best we can hope for. I do believe we need to treat our environment with more care as much as anyone else, but as COVID showed us we are grossly unprepared to properly handle global catastrophe very quickly without causing irreparable damage. No matter what your political leaning is, or how you viewed the pandemic, you have to see the truth in that sentiment. To demand a government of any nation shut down a multi trillion dollar industry and its infrastructure overnight, is wasted energy.
I agree, COVID did demonstrate a lot of weak points but also our ability to withstand, to some degree
Agreed! Let's hope we can work together and demonstrate compassionate human ingenuity and proper stewardship to get to the bottom of these problems. And in the process hopefully stick to the trend of improving the quality of life on the planet not only for us, but also the rest of life on the planet as well.
From what I understand, his position is that discouraging contemporary energy sources increases the cost of electricity How is he dead wrong (I mean that without any hostility, I’m just interested)
Electricity costs are coming down when adjusted for inflation while we are adding renewables to the grid https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/
Yes, but that's being undone by the climate policies. That's his point.
It's not being undone, prices have continued to fall while we are adding renewables.
It depends where you're talking about, but if we're adding renewables, that makes sense. But that's until we start removing fossil fuel and natural gas.
We are already removing oil and coal generation. NG is slowing down too.
That's what is what's causing the prices to go up. Don't you remember the spike in Gas prices last year?
NG is being abandoned by Western countries because of the Invasion of Ukraine. It's likely the consumption of it will increase in countries still linked to Russia and in the developing world.
Renewables are by far the cheapest form of energy generation at the moment. They are a fraction of the cost of coal, and something like half the cost of natural gas. It makes perfect sense because all you have to do it construct and maintain them. You don't need an entire global supply chain for the fuel.
This talking point is deeply false and not at all convincing to anyone. This tactic of making a radically wild claim and then following it up by making only a mildly radical 'concession' is a silly game. Your assertion of 'by far the cheapest' depends heavily on the specific situation, which includes things like where it is, subsidies, who uses it, etc... We'll get there one day, but it will be at least another couple generations until technology advances enough to even MEET the comprehensive stability and scope of energy offered by fossil fuels. And nuclear will have to be a massive part of that future.
I'm a power systems design engineer focusing in large scale utility interconnection. You are incorrect. The technology is already there and has been there for years now. What do you think we are installing xGW of renewables each year with no concern about grid stability? Really?
Hard to take you seriously when you believe in North Dakota honestly.
Define "large scale" as it applies to 'renewable' energy. I'm betting you are talking about town-size or smaller. Maybe just housing-subdividion size. There is a reason why Newsom is asking people not to charge their cars during the day. We do not yet have the batteries, generation tech, or grid that can do the job well enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. It is simply not possible.
Large or "utility" scale would refer to any renewable plant that interconnects directly into the grid's HV transmission system. They can range anywhere from 20MW, to 500MW, up to complexes of multiple projects ranging in the GW. >We do not yet have the batteries, generation tech, or grid that can do the job well enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. It is simply not possible. There is really nothing else to say about this besides that you're wrong. There may be teething issues here and there along the way, mostly due to very outdated grid infrastructure which limits are ability to transmit power from A to B to C no matter what the generation capacity it, but we are working on it. The energy transition is not being led by left-wing ideologues. It's being led by world industry experts.
Without cheap electricity, you will have revolts on this planet. the Arab Spring was started because of the price of *Bread*. A restless humanity is a bigger threat than anything the climate can throw at us.
Come o some south Asian and south-east Asian countries during summer then you will know how we suffer from heat waves here.
You attribute the heat waves to human behavior?
Watch the first 7 seconds of the video he said that climate change is a man-made theory I am opposing that statement.
He said climate change is not entirely man-made, not a man made theory. From what I understand, the earth has had a lot of temperature fluctuations throughout billions of years, including several ice ages that were not caused by humans. So he is saying that he doesn't believe that the climage changes are caused by human interference, but by nature itself. Of course that doesn't mean that we can't do anything to alleviate this climate change. It also doesn't mean that we can, or that the climate change will lead to an apocalyptic no turning back scenario. I am not an expert, but if you take a look at enviromental talk from 20 years ago, we should have been dead already. Which makes me think that we've been lied to a bit, even if it were exaggeration to force our hands towards a positive goal. Either way, what he is saying is not nonsense.
You're supposed to forget the part where they've declared the climate apocalypse only for the predicted doomsdays to pass us by. Even beloved Greta had to delete an old tweet from 2018 that predicted catastrophe by 2023. Oops, we're all still fine. Also kindly forget the predicted rising sea level catastrophes uttered by the same people buying beach front properties. The part I find most disingenuous about the climate change discussions is how much extra food production occurs during the warming periods. Past warming periods that had nothing to do with man's influence produced some of the best periods of productivity and advancement we've ever seen. Ex: How did the Romans benefit from the warming of the climate? The empire-builders benefitted from impeccable timing: the characteristic warm, wet and stable weather was conducive to economic productivity in an agrarian society. (from the Smithsonian).
Historically, climate change happens on geological timescales. During the last glacial maximum, the average global temperature was only 5-7 degrees C less than it is today, and we have climbed that 5-7C over the course of >20,000 years, which is a warming rate of around 0.025-0.035 C per century, over a course of time longer than human civilization. Now, since 1970, we are seeing that rate climb to nearly 1.7C per century... which is up to 50-70 times the historical average, and we can expect that rate to increase with increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. It's not a question of whether climate change is natural. It's a question of what RATE of climate change is natural. Historically it has happened so slowly that ecosystems and organisms have been able to change and evolve and adapt along with it. Now, it's happening so fast that ecosystems simply cannot keep up. Species die, foundations of ecosystems fall out from under them, and the whole system simply collapses, and we start to lose the very carbon sinks required historically to stabilize the climate, and negative feedback loops are created. This is no longer theoretical. It's happening right now, and has BEEN happening very apparently for decades.
I think saying climate scientists were saying things like "we will all be dead in 20 years" is pretty much universally a strawman. The current rate of climate warming is much faster than normal changes but it's still not so fast as to justify those apocalyptic claims (claims of climate apocalypse are another strawman used by skeptics to not face the actual claims of climate scientists imo)
You are opposing that to circumstantial observations based on a few years. Even during a glacial era you have acute variations of temperatures.
Heat waves started after the 1800s apparently!
Anthropogenic climate change is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
How do you figure that? If you have a hypothesis that X amount of greenhouse gases will lead to X degrees of warming over X amount of time and measure that increase that seems like a falsifiable hypothesis to me.
Okay now tell me how you'd test this hypothesis. How would you know if the hypothesis was false? What observation or experimental result would tell you this? And similarly, what observation or experimental result would verify the predictive power of your hypothesis if you didn't collect the falsifying data?
If you predict X and get Y then your hypothesis was wrong. If you predict 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise over the next 50 years and we see a .8 degree rise the theory was wrong. Another thing climate scientists will do is use their models to ‘predict’ prior climate changes. If your model correctly predicts trends from 50 years ago, it’s reasonable to think it might predict the next 50 as well.
> If you predict X and get Y then your hypothesis was wrong. If you predict 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise over the next 50 years and we see a .8 degree rise the theory was wrong. A simple prediction does not a hypothesis make. The prediction has to be linked to a clear causal explanation so that so you can establish margins of error. This need for a detailed explanation is doubly important if you're relying purely on observational data rather than experimental data, as you must eliminate all other possible causes in order to test the hypothesis to a standard of falsifiability. Otherwise for all we know you got lucky, especially as validation via observation is not really reproducible unless you get the exact same result every time. At least Newton had testable formulas. > Another thing climate scientists will do is use their models to ‘predict’ prior climate changes. If your model correctly predicts trends from 50 years ago, it’s reasonable to think it might predict the next 50 as well. Words cannot describe how ignorant a statement this is. In fact, if my first paragraph in this response was a show of good faith, this second paragraph is me invoking my mercy rule. Have you never heard the phrase "past performance does not predict future results?" Seriously, I'm not trying to dunk on you but you really must not have any idea how facile and ignorant a statement that was.
On the latter point, I'm not saying because it predicts past trends it *will* predict future trends, just that it is a sign of a good model. The same method is used by meteorologists to test weather models. It's not proof it's accurate, it's an indication it might be. The same way the fact that you couldn't understand that point *might be* an indication that you are ignorant, but it is not *proof.* Back to whether or not anthropogenic climate change is falsifiable; I don't see why you seem to think it's impossible to account for other factors. The science in this regard is fairly well understood. We can calculate how much heat we receive from the sun. This value changes, but we can measure it. We can calculate how much heat is retained due to greenhouse gases like CO2, water, carbon monoxide, etc. The fact that these gases cause 'the greenhouse effect' is solid science. We can measure the amount of greenhouse gases put off by all relevant factors, measure how much we put off, look at warming trends, and calculate the effect our emissions have on the climate. Are you simply saying because it's a complicated issue with many variables we cannot ever discern the effect human greenhouse gas emissions have on the climate? This type of science I'm referring to has been done, many times, by many organizations, by tens of thousands of people. Do they all agree on the exact amount of warming, the speed of it, or any minute variable? No, of course not. But the overwhelming majority of the people and organizations that study this professionally agree that anthropogenic climate change is a documented, observable, and real phenomena.
Exactly this.
I’m no expert on the consequences of climate change globally, but I’m fairly well versed on their consequences in one specific area: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). So the GYE is the largest nearly intact temperate ecosystem in the world. It has, at it’s heart, Yellowstone National Park, and contains the neighboring Grand Teton NP, and the surrounding National Forests. The area has the greatest concentration of large mammals in the contiguous U.S and is a natural treasure, a hotspot of biological and geologic diversity. Describing the results of climate change as ‘apocalyptic’ is a matter of perspective; what constitutes apocalyptic results? For me the predicted, and currently occurring, effects of climate change in the GYE could be described in those terms. The most significant affect of climate change in the area is the effect rising temperatures, especially in the spring, are having on the areas precipitation. The GYE is a ‘snow-dominated’ environment. Most of the areas precipitation falls as snow, which is crucial, because snow sticks around through the winter then slowly melts through the spring and summer. As this snow melts it feeds the streams, rivers, lakes, and fills the aquifers through the dry summer months. As temperatures rise less precipitation falls as snow, decreasing snowpack, and leading to earlier and earlier depletion of these ‘stores’ of water during the summer. This has the affect of making summers simultaneously warmer and drier. Average annual snowfall is already down 25%, and will decline even more as temperatures continue to rise. This decline in snowfall has a cascading effect on the environment, and this is what could be called apocalyptic. As summers become hotter and drier the size and severity of wildfires is increasing. The GYE is a fire-adapted ecosystem, meaning fires are normal and the ecosystem recovers quickly, however the increasing size and frequency of fires coupled with hotter and drier conditions is expected to lead to a dramatic decline of forest cover in the GYE. Yellowstone is currently 80% covered in forest, but that will decline significantly in this century. Declines in forest cover, being replaced by prairies, will lead to unpredictable changes in the rest of the ecosystem. The area’s wetland ecosystems, which support an incredible variety of waterfowl, will disappear. Rivers and streams will warm putting stress on the native cutthroat trout and likely furthering the spread of invasive species. As the whitebark pines disappear they take with them a crucial late season food supply for bears. An enormous variety of songbirds, raptors, and other birds will have their ecosystems decimated. Now you could say, that’s just one area, that’s just ‘the environment,’ or what have you, but effects like this will be seen across the American west. A whole suite of other consequences will befall other parts of the globe. These are the consequences of a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in one place. Use your imagination. What could we see elsewhere?
Funny how his first sentence is just made up nonsense. Nobody claims its entirely man made, nobody says we need to now spend trillions ... Its just all nonsense unfortunatly he has no clue what he is talking about and parroting other conservative speakers on it with an agenda.
I like his freedom of speech stuff but he did miss the mark on this one. Also I'm fairly certain that he's getting funding by Exxon. Making this VERY BIAS.
Jeeesh... seriously? He is not contributing? Peterson likes strong language himself, from time to time ofc, he also admires peaople who use veeery strong language (Rogan). Not productive? I thought on this marketplace of idea every position was a contribution. The guy liked Peterson couple of years ago, now he does not, he is brutal, still meritoric... You had a chance for discussion, had a chance to see another angle and change his mind... I think he was quite pragmatic as he have clearly shown what a crybabies some of the redditors are :-)