Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Richard Lindzen & William Happer (2025) - Climate Science, CO2 and Political Corruption

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Richard Lindzen & William Happer (2025) - Climate Science, CO2 and Political Corruption · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap. For today's Deep Dive, we're
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  digging into a conversation with two pretty heavy hitting
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  scientists, Richard Linson, who was at MIT for ages, and William
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  Happer from Princeton. They shared some really
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  skeptical views on the whole climate change narrative.
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  Exactly. And our mission here is to
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  really distill their arguments for you.
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  Yeah, We want to give you a clear picture of why these
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  academics with, you know, decades of high level experience
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  are saying the whole climate discussion got hijacked by
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  politics and, frankly, money. So we'll focus on their points
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  about the science being uncertain, the massive role of
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  funding and what they describe as well suppression of
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  dissenting views. Yeah, that's the core of it,
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  isn't it? These aren't outsiders looking
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  in. They were inside the system.
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  Lindson, Harvard doctorate, the 35 years at MIT.
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  He literally said the joy of his atmospheric science work just
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  died when global warming became the dominant.
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  Right. And Haber story really sets the
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  scene. He was director of energy
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  research under Bush Cangier. He talked about inviting
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  scientists over to discuss their research funding.
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  You know, taxpayer money. Most were apparently happy to
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  explain their work, except the climate scientists.
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  He described them as resentful and crucially, they apparently
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  said they worked for Senator Gore, not the agency funding
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  them. Wow, so even back.
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  Then yeah, I'd suggest the political lines were drawn
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  really early on, long before it became this huge public issue.
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  It also makes you think about how these big environmental
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  fears shift, doesn't it? Happer mentioned growing up when
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  the big scare was an impending Ice Age.
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  Remember Leonard Nimoy? And In Search of Oh yeah, and
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  then boom, total switch to global warming.
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  That pivot is actually central to their skepticism.
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  They point out the temperatures were cooling from the 1930s to
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  the 70s. Back then, the blame was put on
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  sulfates from coal burning reflecting sunlight.
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  But when the temperature started warming again in the late 70's,
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  the narrative, they argue, just shifted.
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  Suddenly, CO2 became the villain instead of sulfates.
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  It kept the focus and maybe the funding going.
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  So how did they turn CO2, which they initially said?
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  Was it a main driver, into the primary cause for alarm?
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  That seems like a big leap. Well, that's where they get into
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  the modeling. They bring up Mana B's early
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  work. His calculations apparently show
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  that if you just double CO2, you only get about half a degree
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  Celsius of warming. Pretty small, relatively
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  speaking. Half a degree.
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  That doesn't sound like the catastrophe we hear about.
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  Exactly. Their point is that the big
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  warming predictions come from an assumption built into the
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  climate models. The models assume that relative
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  humidity stays constant as the planet warms slightly from CO2.
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  And why is that specific assumption so important?
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  Because water vapor is a much much stronger greenhouse gas in
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  CO2. So if you assume constant
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  relative humidity, as the temperature ticks up that half
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  degree from CO2, the air holds more absolute moisture, more
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  water vapor. That extra water vapor then
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  traps more heat, amplifying the initial CO2 warming.
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  It might double it, maybe more deending on the model.
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  OK, so the huge warming effect isn't just CO2, it's CO2 plus
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  this assumed water vapor feedback.
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  Precisely. And Lindzen and Happer argue
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  that this feedback, this assumption about water vapor and
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  clouds, is where the major uncertainty lies.
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  They say it's not well understood at all.
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  And this scientific uncertainty, they connect directly to money,
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  big money. They argue the environmental
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  movement figured this out. It wasn't just about saving the
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  whales anymore. It shifted to the energy sector.
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  And that's, that's trillions of dollars we're talking about.
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  Trillions. Yeah, they estimate that these
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  net 0 policies could cost hundreds of trillions globally
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  if fully implemented. With that kind of money
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  involved, it creates this enormous political and financial
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  pull, a gravity well. Basically, the narrative has to
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  continue almost regardless of the scientific details because
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  so much is riding on. It and the practical result of
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  that is you can't question it. That's their claim.
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  Make the science sound settled, and then anyone who brings up,
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  say, the water vapor issue or historical climate cycles gets
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  labeled a climate change denier. It effectively shuts down
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  scientific debate, they argue. It's a pretty stark accusation.
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  And they point to a paradox they see even within the official
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  IPCC reports. Those reports apparently admit
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  that major factors like clouds and water vapor, which they
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  acknowledge are way bigger climate drivers than CO2, are
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  quote not understood at all. So how can the science be
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  settled if the biggest pieces of the puzzle are still missing?
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  OK, let's dig into the university side of this.
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  How does this massive funding pressure actually work inside
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  academia? It's not just abstract
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  trillions, right? No, it gets very concrete.
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  They explain this university overhead system.
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  When researchers get large government grants, especially in
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  climate science, the university often takes a huge cut off the
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  top, like 50 or even 60% is overhead. 50 to 60% just skimmed
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  off. Yeah, that money doesn't go to
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  the actual research project. It goes straight to the
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  university administration. Think buildings, administrative
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  salaries expansion. So the institution itself has a
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  massive financial stake in keeping those climate grants
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  flowing. That's exactly their argument.
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  Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake for the
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  university's bottom line, so there's immense pressure from
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  the top down not to rock the boat.
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  Don't challenge the narrative that brings in the cash.
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  And this pressure effects individual scientists.
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  Directly, Lindsen shared his own experience.
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  He said he published a paper questioning some aspect of the
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  narrative, and the editor of the journal who published it fired
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  immediately. They said this happened twice,
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  decades apart, with different journals.
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  And that ties into those Climategate emails that came out
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  years ago, remember, where scientists were caught
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  discussing how to quote, block publication of skeptical papers
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  and even get rid of editors who didn't toe the line?
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  So peer review isn't necessarily about catching errors anymore.
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  In this field, they argue, it's shifted.
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  It's less about checking the math or preventing plagiarism
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  and more about enforcing conformity, ensuring everyone
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  sticks to the accepted narrative.
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  And the real world impact of all this, they argue, hits the
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  developing world hardest. Yeah, they really stressed this
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  point. Pushing for net zero makes
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  energy incredibly expensive. That means poorer countries
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  can't afford to build the power plants they need, even modern,
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  cleaner coal or natural gas plants.
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  They argue it's keeping billions of people poorer longer.
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  They pointed to the UK, where electricity prices have tripled,
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  as an example of the pain even in a rich country.
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  OK, let's shift gears a bit. They also talked about the
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  actual science of CO2 itself, didn't they?
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  Right. The sort of inconvenient thing
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  about CO2, as they put it, is that it's plant food.
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  The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has actually led to a
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  measurable greening of the planet.
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  More plant growth, more arable land.
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  They mentioned an anecdote from EO Wilson, the biologist.
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  Yeah, that was fascinating. Wilson apparently pointed out
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  that during the last Ice Age, the last glacial maximum, CO2
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  levels dropped really low, down to about 180 parts per million.
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  That's dangerously close to 150 PPM, which is like the
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  starvation level for plants, Wilson suggested This low CO2
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  nearly caused a complete wipeout of humans because the food
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  supply collapsed. That really puts today's levels
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  around 404 thirty PPM in a different perspective.
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  It does, and it also highlights the scale issue they kept
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  bringing up. People panic about half a degree
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  or 1° of warming, but the difference between the peak or
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  the last Ice Age, you know, massive ice sheets covering
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  continents and today was only about 5°C globally.
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  They're questioning if the current level of alarm is
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  proportional to the actual numbers involved.
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  And they also emphasized that CO2 isn't the only thing
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  changing the climate. Not by a long shot.
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  They talked about the big external drivers, things like
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  the Milenkovic cycles, these long slow changes in Earth's
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  orbit and tilt. Those are what really control
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  the Ice Age rhythms based on how much summer sun hits the Arctic.
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  And the sun itself. Absolutely the sun is in
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  constant. They mentioned using proxies
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  like carbon 14 and beryllium 10 isotopes to track past solar
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  activity. This data shows the sun changes
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  and it's linked to significant climate shifts in the past, like
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  the Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD.
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  That's when the Norse were farming Greenland, clearly much
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  warmer than today, and obviously long before industrial CO2
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  emissions. So based on all this, Happer
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  seemed to suggest the whole approach is flawed science.
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  Yeah, his point was that science is supposed to be a methodology,
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  not an unquestionable authority. You make predictions based on
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  your theory. If the predictions fail, like
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  they argue Al Gore's 2006 predictions did, you're supposed
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  to fix the theory. But that's not what happens.
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  They say no. Instead of fixing the models or
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  questioning the core assumptions, the goal posts just
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  get moved. The fear shifts from just
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  warming to say, extreme weather, something harder to disprove
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  definitively. They compared it to theology,
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  where you adjust the interpretation rather than the
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  core belief when evidence contradicts it.
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  That leads into a really powerful and maybe controversial
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  parallel Happer Drew. Yes, the eugenics movement in
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  the early 20th century. He pointed out that eugenics
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  wasn't some fringe idea back then.
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  It was supported by the presidents of Harvard and
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  Princeton, published and respected learning journals.
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  It was considered settled science by the elite, and it LED
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  directly to terrible policy like the deeply discriminatory 1924
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  Immigration Act in the US. So the.
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  Warning is just because the establishment says trust the
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  science doesn't mean the science hasn't been captured by
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  ideology. That's the core of the warning.
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  History shows that scientific consensus, when influenced by
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  politics or social pressure, can lead down some very dark paths.
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  Science isn't immune to groupthink or fanaticism.
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  And they see examples of this kind of thinking today.
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  Absolutely. They pointed to Germany shutting
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  down its perfectly good nuclear power plants because of green
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  ideology. The result?
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  Increased reliance on Russian gas, then scrambling to buy
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  nuclear power back from France. It makes no logical sense from
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  an energy or climate perspective, they argue.
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  It's pure ideology. They also mentioned the focus
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  shifting towards extreme weather scarce.
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  Right, because it provides dramatic visuals for the news,
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  even if the actual data they claim doesn't show a significant
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  increase in hurricane frequency or intensity, for example.
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  And this kind of fear driven narrative can lead to desperate
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  measures. Like geoengineering?
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  Exactly. They expressed real concern
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  about proposals like Bill Gates funding research into spraying
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  reflective particles in the atmosphere to dim the sun.
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  They worry that politicians panicked by the narrative might
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  actually authorize something like that based on flawed models
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  with potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences.
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  It seems like the scale just keeps getting more extreme from
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  CO2 models to global geoengineering.
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  And sometimes it gets almost absurdly specific, like the
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  focus on methane from livestock. Yes, the cow farts issue.
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  Ireland talking about coming cattle herds.
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  They use this as a prime example of what they called innumeracy,
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  the inability to grasp numbers and scale.
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  Yes, a methane molecule traps more heat than a CO2 molecule.
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  It's more potent, but there's vastly, vastly less of it in the
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  atmosphere. They argue that even if you
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  eliminated all man made methane emissions tomorrow, the effect
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  on global temperature would be negligible.
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  Tiny. Yet you have policies causing
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  real economic pain to farmers based on this because the simple
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  cows or bad story is easier to sell than the atmosphere of
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  chemistry. OK, so wrapping this all up, the
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  core message from Lindsay and Happer in this deep dive seems
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  to be what? It's that the climate narrative
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  you hear constantly isn't primarily driven by settled,
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  robust science, they argue, it's driven by money, those massive
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  energy sector dollars and university overheads, political
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  power and a kind of ideological fervor.
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  This, they claim, has created a cult like atmosphere where
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  questioning is forbidden and genuine scientific debate is
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  suppressed. So what's their proposed
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  solution? How do you fix something like
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  that? It comes back to the funding.
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  Stop pouring billions into only one side of the argument.
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  Open up funding for research into alternate theories of
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  climate change, maybe focusing more on solar cycles, ocean
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  currents, natural variability. Let rigorous science with
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  competing hypotheses actually happen.
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  For you, the listener, what's the final take away here?
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  It's probably that old Russian proverb Reagan liked trust but
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  verify. Now, now, verifying complex
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  climate science is obviously hard for most people, so maybe
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  the check is common sense in observing behavior.
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  They stress that, you know, destroying the world is not an
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  easy thing to do. It probably shouldn't be your
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  absolute top worry. And perhaps look at what the
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  elites actually do, not just what they say.
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  When you see prominent figures who preach about rising sea
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  level buying massive mansions right on the coast, well, it's
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  just their actual concern level might not match their public
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  statements.