Jordan Peterson: “Let’s fix global warming…it’s the kind of low resolution thinking that gets us nowhere”

Josh writes on Twitter:

Must see & hugely entertaining video segment on from the very brilliant watch from 20.:30

I did, and wow. Well said, Mr. Peterson.

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Paul Miller
November 8, 2018 1:49 am

JBP for the WIN!

Kenji
Reply to  Paul Miller
November 8, 2018 8:19 am

How is it possible that JP is the ONLY rational voice I hear coming from the world of Psychology? Every single other voice I hear speaks only to how we all need to “accept” aberrant behaviour as “normal”.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Kenji
November 8, 2018 10:15 am

The mental health/mind research fields have a well-deserved reputation for attracting students who have problems in that area. This is only natural. Many decades ago, my Psych 101 prof [I’ll call him, “Dr.D.”] was asked in class whether this were true. He readily agreed but said that as such people attain mental healing, the field loses its allure and they go on to other interests. I wish Dr. D. were alive to consult on the current situation:

(1) Children, even the long-legged variety, stay in school longer than they did then, and the social “sciences” are as good a field as any for postponing graduation. Because of readily available loans, the drop-out rate is probably lower than it was back then, so more of these people remain in psych of various sorts, healed or not.

(2) In illo tempore, graduate psych curricula required each student to get a significant number of hours of personal therapy. By twenty years ago, that number had fallen to 8 hours, give or take. I recently surveyed the curricula of a small number of schools and found that therapy, though “highly recommended,” had been mostly dropped.

(3) Nowadays, many schools have a policy of putting the easy work in the first half of the curricula, avoiding challenging students enough that they might flunk out and deprive the school of tuition fees. Nobody flunks in their first year.

(4) Schools use group projects for upper level courses, which also allows poor students to slide through on the coattails of the better students. Those courses requiring individual papers by students can be gamed by purchasing papers or theses from outside sources. Few get caught.

(5) Quotas and other PC nonsense.

(6) As a quality check, most states require supervised internships before licensing mental health professionals. I’ve personally met one individual who took care of her mandatory internships by having a friendly PhD sign off for all but a few hours. How common this is, I don’t know, but I suspect that individual is not the only Freudian to figure out this ploy.

(7) As academia has become progressively “progressive,” graduates in psych fields have inevitably swung further and further left.

So is it really any wonder that JP is one of the few remaining rational voices in the field? Personally, I love psych. I greatly regret not staying in touch with Dr. D. In fact, if I had it to do over, I’d become a psychiatrist. Alas, when I was in school, I already had the mad notion to be an engineer, and was not quite crazy enough to switch to psych.

Weylan McAnally
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
November 8, 2018 2:09 pm

Group projects/learning are the biggest bunch of crap in education. These group projects have filtered all the way down to elementary education. The bright, motivated students are grouped with dullard, lazy students for these projects. The teachers know that the bright student will do all the work needed for an A while the poor student will be rewarded with a passing grade.

One of my daughter’s teachers let the truth slip out during a social event. She confessed that she knew my daughter would do all the work for the group and that the result would be an A. Throw enough of these group projects into the grades and the teacher does not have to fail anyone.

Alan Scott
Reply to  Weylan McAnally
November 20, 2018 11:11 pm

Yep. There is that aspect. Laziness of teachers shrugging their responsibilities onto the kids to teach themselves. Another possibility in addition to that is perhaps they are unwittingly training the kids for employment. Throw a team together, your best with the rest (average). The best will do all the hard work just like the class. The project manager doesn’t have to really manage, train or discipline any individuals, especially when there are protected classes. We know who they are. Just another perspective. Maybe that’s what they mean by diversity makes us stronger!

Gamecock
Reply to  Kenji
November 13, 2018 6:56 pm

Dr John Rosemond has been speaking rationally for decades.

brians356
Reply to  Paul Miller
November 8, 2018 11:14 am

“Shot … and a goal! He beat ‘im like a rented mule!”

Lasse
November 8, 2018 1:52 am

No-the best comment on a large issue.

Our ministry of forrient affairs (Sweden)wants him to go back under a stone.
No I understand why she is scared of him-he is clear and brilliant.

Reply to  Lasse
November 8, 2018 8:06 pm

Thanks for this- JP is brilliant.

The CAGW repudiation is great (20:30), but maybe best comment, anywhere, ever (40:00):

being criticized by “social constructionist gender studies theorist types” is like being nibbled to death by ducks from a scientific perspective” Priceless…

Paul r
November 8, 2018 1:59 am

I have been watching jp clips on youtube for months now and he is absolutely brilliant.

Phil Rae
November 8, 2018 2:07 am

I have followed Jordan Petersen for quite some time. His perspicacity and excellent grasp of major issues is brilliant & refreshing. He is also an eloquent presenter and erudite debater on those same topics, whether it be CAGW or rabid, misanthropic drivel from all the usual suspects. Always great to watch him and I salute him for his courage and willingness to go head-to-head with the protagonists of these flawed philosophies.

Reply to  Phil Rae
November 8, 2018 3:11 pm

He also does not allow incorrect statements from interviewers who often look to him to agree with their points of view.

If they start their question with an incorrect generalisation or outright falsehood, he is quick to correct them with his vast knowledge of studies in many disparate areas.

He should be required reading/watching for everyone (particularly teachers)

Chris Thixton
November 8, 2018 2:28 am

The purveyors of doom must soil themselves every time this guy speaks because he scythes through every crap hypothesis they try to push down our throats. Reason over dogma.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Chris Thixton
November 8, 2018 1:28 pm

Reason over dogma.

I want that on my headstone.
Thx Thixton

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Pop Piasa
November 8, 2018 1:37 pm

Ratio pro dogmatum.
Engraved in Granite.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Pop Piasa
November 8, 2018 1:53 pm

Anthony, my mentor and kind host, is there any chance of adopting that as the blog’s credo?

Old skeptic
November 8, 2018 3:01 am

Jordan Peterson is one of the very few people in the public eye that speaks so much common sense. I recommend his book “12 Rules for Life”.

Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 3:04 am

That was a great watch from 20:30-ish. He mentions there are more trees now than 100 years ago, because we started to burn coal in favour of trees!! Would we give up heating, cars, trains and Iphones? Raising people out of poverty usually results in them cleaning up the environment! Bravo! Bravo, sir!

And that reminded me DRAX in the UK is now burning pellets made from trees cut down and processed in the US and shipped to DRAX in the UK. I wonder how many present in the video actually knows that?

Bruce Ranta
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 3:57 am

Ontario refitted a coal fired electrical power plant to burn wood pellets. Another power plant in Thunder Bay imports wood pellets from overseas.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Bruce Ranta
November 8, 2018 4:37 am

Because wood is renewable. I wonder what happened on Easter Island.

Taking wood was the reason why The New Forrest was created in the UK. Not many people know that that forest is almost all man-made.

Lee L
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 6:38 am

“Because wood is renewable” …

Is it though? It’s made from solar energy, CO2, water and a variety of minerals. When burned, you get the CO2 back and water which counts as renewable. Export your wood pellets half way across the world and you export the embodied minerals as well. They don’t replenish themselves and so the source of the wood, a woodlot, will be less and less fertile with each generation of trees not left to rot in place.

Or, that’s how I see it anyway.

MJB
Reply to  Lee L
November 8, 2018 8:37 am

“they don’t replenish themselves” – I disagree.

Through atmospheric deposition and weathering of soil parent material nutrients do get replenished. It is a fair question to ask if the rate of replenishment is adequate for what is removed and how often. Thankfully this topic is being studied, including well replicated and coordinated experiments, like the North American long-term soil productivity network (example link below). After 20-ish years of monitoring, the short answer is that unless you are doing very short rotation forestry, adequate nutrients are likely to be replenished and sustained over time. Granted, this is a very-long term question, so an equivocal answer is not yet possible, and monitoring and research continues.

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/forest_mgmt/ltsp/

MJB
Reply to  Lee L
November 8, 2018 8:40 am

Oops, unequivocal……

jasg
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 7:52 am

Like the Landes forest in France. Previously it was a mosquito-ridden swamp.

Percy Jackson
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 9:24 am

The new forest was created to provide a hunting ground for rich foreigners. Just like today
they destroy the environment to provide grouse hunting estates for the rich. Not much has changed in 1000 years.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Percy Jackson
November 8, 2018 4:28 pm

Wrong! It was created for rich landed gentry. It became a national forest.

Percy Jackson
Reply to  Percy Jackson
November 8, 2018 7:54 pm

Patrick,
In 1066 the Normans were invaders and would have be considered foreigners by any
anglo-saxon living in the UK.

drednicolson
Reply to  Percy Jackson
November 9, 2018 5:23 pm

Not in the least because the Normans spoke French.

Taylor Pohlman
Reply to  Percy Jackson
November 10, 2018 6:36 am

Back to Olympus, Percy! The rich also sponsored Leonardo and Michelangelo, and built the great cathedrals. While their motives were not always pure, the results were often laudatory. And it’s worth noting that leisure time and freedom from want (often driven by global warming), provided the opportunity for such cultural luxuries.

Gay Grubbs
Reply to  Bruce Ranta
November 8, 2018 5:07 am

I worked on those projects and the data we obtained on the number of trees that would be required to operate power plants burning wood is huge. The original intent of the project was to convert all the coal fired power plants in Ontario to wood as dictated by the government. Clear cutting of many forests would have been required. The harsh jaws of reality bit the Ontario leaders in the ass.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Gay Grubbs
November 8, 2018 9:29 am

Those must be very large jaws of reality, indeed.

Robert Stewart
Reply to  Gay Grubbs
November 8, 2018 10:11 am

I knew an old timer in northern Maine who lived along the coast. The rule of thumb for “sustainable” wood heating was 13 acres of scrub forest per house. With modern materials, especially insulation, this is probably a bit more than needed. This doesn’t scale very well, as the harvesting and transport of the wood becomes increasing difficult if you locate a number of houses together in a village. With one house in the woods, you are within about 100 yards of most of the wood you will need to collect prior to winter, and it won’t be too hard to spread out the gathering. With 10 houses in a cluster, you now need to spread the gathering out a distance of about a quarter mile, if you want to distribute the harvesting effort. This very quickly devolves into something like Haiti, and they don’t need to heat in the winter.

Terry Harnden
Reply to  Robert Stewart
November 8, 2018 12:10 pm

With efficient woodstove and insulation you can get a 10-1 or even a 20-1 benefit.

Taylor Pohlman
Reply to  Robert Stewart
November 10, 2018 6:37 am

Back to Olympus, Percy! The rich also sponsored Leonardo and Michelangelo, and built the great cathedrals. While their motives were not always pure, the results were often laudatory. And it’s worth noting that leisure time and freedom from want (often driven by global warming), provided the opportunity for such cultural luxuries.

Taylor Pohlman
Reply to  Robert Stewart
November 10, 2018 6:39 am

Sorry about previous post, was intended for thread above

Taylor Pohlman
Reply to  Robert Stewart
November 10, 2018 6:50 am

As a current Mainer on the coast, I’ve heard 5 acres of mostly hardwood will be sustainable for a modest house. There are foresters who will tag trees in the best order for annual harvesting.

As for the ‘village issue’ a lot of folks I know have ‘wood lots’ of 5 acres or more in the woods outside of towns, which remain wooded vs. threatened by development, and make great habitat, disturbed only a few times a year.

William Astley
Reply to  Bruce Ranta
November 8, 2018 9:17 am

Burning wood is worse for the environment than burning coal.

Those pushing ‘green’ energy as good for the environments are either idiots or liars.

h/t to notrickzone

http://notrickszone.com/2018/11/01/paradigm-shift-the-belief-that-bioenergy-is-climate-friendly-is-now-recognized-as-a-major-error/

Governments vociferously promote bioenergy as renewable, sustainable, and carbon-neutral. But scientists are increasingly characterizing this “belief” as a “major error”, as bioenergy generates more CO2 emissions per kWh than burning coal does, and the projected rapid growth in bioenergy will serve to ‘increase atmospheric CO2 for at least a century’ as well as clear forests and destroy natural ecosystems.

“The assumption that bioenergy is inherently carbon-neutral, which is based on static forms of carbon accounting, is a major error (Haberl et al., 2012). Viewed objectively, it is quite a sweeping assumption: It asserts that a carbon flow into the atmosphere at one place and time (from bioenergy combustion) is automatically and fully offset by carbon uptake at another place and time (on ecologically productive land). Scientifically speaking, there is neither a sound basis nor a need to make this assumption. The extent to which the CO2 emitted from bioenergy use is balanced by CO2 uptake is an empirical question.”

“In short, a sound understanding of carbon-cycle dynamics shows that now and for the reasonably foreseeable future, the promotion of bioenergy is ill-premised for climate protection. This is particularly true if one respects the limited amount of ecologically productive land available for supplying food and fiber as well as sustaining and restoring biodiverse habitats.”

John Endicott
Reply to  William Astley
November 9, 2018 8:49 am

Those pushing ‘green’ energy as good for the environments are either idiots or liars.

They can be (and many times are) both

Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 10, 2018 8:35 am

I listened to the segment yesterday evening.

I was very happy to hear Jordan Peterson remark on the unreliability of climate models. He went on how the error accumulates, and that after 50 years the error bars are huge.

He then said the error bars are so large that no one can tell anything about a comparison of the real world and what the models projected.

He’s exactly right, and that all made me wonder whether JP is one of the 21,500 people who have watched the video of my 2016 DDP talk. It’d be loverly if he got his insight from there. 🙂

Steve Borodin
November 8, 2018 3:15 am

Jordan Peterson was thoughtful, intelligent and honest as usual. And well done to Cambridge Uni for having a civilized debate, in contrast to the many nurseries (aka universities) scattered around the UK and elsewhere. They seem to have abandoned rationality.

Robertvd
Reply to  Steve Borodin
November 9, 2018 4:10 pm

Cambridge Uni needs security guards to have a civilized debate these days ?

ladylifegrows
November 8, 2018 3:29 am

He still misses the most important point: a “climate optimum” is a warm period. Mann’s infamous hockey stick was of tree rings. He said trees were growing even faster than the Medieval Climate Optimum. NASA research reported here suggests he was right.

Are trees bad?

Patrick MJD
Reply to  ladylifegrows
November 8, 2018 3:45 am

Mann’s “hockey stick” was just really one tree, YAD061. It’s amazing the spin he put on that, Shane Warne (Famous Australian cricketing spin bowler) would be proud.

Paul r
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 3:50 am

More spin than the Gatting ball? Perhaps we can call it the Manning ball.

Steve O
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 4:30 am

I wonder if YAD 061 is available as a license plate in my home state…

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Steve O
November 8, 2018 4:44 am

Try New Zealand. I got “B1G P1G” for my ex-military LandRover 109 V8 FFR while I lived there!

And I had to sell the landrover for something “sensible”, kept the plate though. So, some “builders” spotted my g/f and her friend, in my Honda Civic, displaying the rego plates “B1G PiG”, stuffing themselves with (Trisha’s) pies!

Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 6:30 am

“Mann’s “hockey stick” was just really one tree, YAD061.”

Wrong. Mann’s favorite type of tree was stripbark pines out of the American southwest. Yad061 was from Briffa’s paper. See Climate Audit “The Most Influential Tree in the World”

It’s important to get these things right, otherwise we look silly.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
November 8, 2018 7:53 am

It’s important to remember that Briffa’s Yamal failings would have got him into serious trouble at the CRU if during that time someone hadn’t leaked the Climategate emails and caused a circling of the wagons.

Of course, the police investigation concluded that a Russian sleeper agent at the UEA gathered all the data into one HarryReadMe file and then called up an external hack to get it. But that convoluted conspiracy does seem to have one step too many.
Why didn’t the HarryReadMe file creator leak it himself?

Still, however it happened, it was lucky timing for Briffa.

Klem
Reply to  Patrick MJD
November 8, 2018 3:13 pm

Walk through a clear cut forest sometime and compare the tree rings visible on the tree stumps. The rings of adjacent trees almost never agree with each other.

Tree rings are less likely a reflection of weather and climate, and more likely a manifestation of the water and nutrients encountered by roots.

To extrapolate global climate from tree rings is voodoo witchcraft.

rishrac
Reply to  ladylifegrows
November 8, 2018 4:25 am

@ lady life,
He cut down 70+ trees to get the one tree ring that fit his agenda. You can look the files up here on WUWT and the arguments.
I will strongly assert that the width of tree rings are not a good way of reconstructing temperature. Too many other over riding variables that affect the width. There is a different method that uses the isotopic bonding in the tree ring itself. AGW used their own co2 levels to determine the temperature reconstruction during the MCA and LIA. That reconstruction does not agree with historical accounts, the isotopic bonding, or the drilling program that looked at the ebb and flow of floral. All these were world wide and not local as asserted by AGW. Nor as AGW now asserts that it wasn’t as warm or cold, it was both warmer and colder during those times. Either AGW’s use of the co2 data is wrong or they have to come up with an explanation as to how it became warmer and colder without co2 and how that differs from today. … I think they fixed the co2 record.
NASA, in regards to climate, is to be looked at with a cautious eye.

Harkin
Reply to  rishrac
November 8, 2018 5:02 am

I always assumed he cored the trees and did not ‘cut them down’.

StephenP
Reply to  Harkin
November 8, 2018 5:38 am

There is that picture of him holding a slice through a tree. If it is the Yamal YAD061 then I am puzzled as to which radius he used to measure the temperature.

Reply to  StephenP
November 8, 2018 6:33 am

You guys are off-base here, and clearly haven’t read up on this. YAD061 was a Siberian tree core that was used by Keith Briffa. Mann did not use YAD061 in his classic hockey stick recon. He abused stripbark pines, and not just one core. Please don’t spread disinformation.

Reply to  StephenP
November 8, 2018 3:08 pm

Jeff Alberts is correct.
Jeff mentions tree cores collected by Briffa.

Not slices!
Sample tree cores.

Then check Steve McIntyre’s and Ross McKitrick’s excellent analysis.

Reply to  StephenP
November 10, 2018 11:50 am

LOL! Check out figure 2 on page two of the linked item above. Is that a double middle finger or what?

Greg F
Reply to  rishrac
November 8, 2018 3:03 pm

I will strongly assert that the width of tree rings are not a good way of reconstructing temperature.

I worked at a museum where one of the exhibits showed how the environment affected tree growth. There was a slice from 2 trees with one twice the diameter of the other. Both trees were the same age and grew 20 feet from each other. The larger diameter tree was closer to a swamp. The irony was that the museum was staffed with global warming true believers.

Reply to  Greg F
November 8, 2018 6:03 pm

I have two English Walnut trees in my yard, side by side. The trunks are only about 20 feet apart, if that. one is slightly north of the other. If I had to guess I’d say they are in excess of 40 years old. The slightly northern one is smaller, and loses its leaves earlier in the fall than the southerly one. I wonder what their rings look like?

James Francisco
Reply to  Greg F
November 10, 2018 12:45 pm

I had a similar situation with willow trees in my back yard. One of the four trees, all planted at the same time, was about three feet in diameter. The others about six inches. Pretty sure the large one had tapped into my septic system, it is now a stump. The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

Reply to  ladylifegrows
November 8, 2018 2:53 pm

“ladylifegrows November 8, 2018 at 3:29 am
He still misses the most important point: a “climate optimum” is a warm period. Mann’s infamous hockey stick was of tree rings. He said trees were growing even faster than the Medieval Climate Optimum. NASA research reported here suggests he was right.

Are trees bad?”

Stripped of the excess words, to seek clarity:

“ladylifegrows November 8, 2018 at 3:29 am”
* He (Jordan Peterson?) misses the most important point:
* a “climate optimum” is a warm period.
* Mann’s said trees growing faster than Medieval Climate Optimum.
* NASA research reported here suggests he (manniacal?, Peterson?) was right.
* Are trees bad?”

No links to support your quoted hearsay.
No clarification of your claims or even whom stated what.

Then the final question where trees are implied bad…

1) Exactly what is the most important point?
2) Perhaps you have seen pictures of manniacal at his office, and on travel?
Does manniacal have the appearance of a forester spending months in forests studying trees?
Why would anyone think manniacal can authoritatively speak to tree growth?
3) Exactly what NASA research are you suggesting supports your tree growth/bad?

a) Are we in an Optimum? Well, it is warming, a bit.
Iceland isn’t planting warm loving crops, yet.
Great Britain, Finland, Norway, Siberia, boreal Canada are not growing warmth loving crops.

So no, not an Optimum. Check again, in a hundred or two hundred years.
So far, we are really only in a warming since the early 1980s.

b) Trees grow annual layers. Do all trees grow exactly the same width annual rings with every annul ring even throughout 360°? No!

Do all trees grow solely based upon warmth? So thicker annual rings = warmer weather? No!
Trees respond to any one of their growth requirements;
water,
CO₂,
sufficient warmth,
sufficient light for photosynthesis,
sufficient oxygen for respiration,
critical nutrients.

Starve a tree of any requirement(s), and the annual rings will be narrower.

Then there is the problem with the growing layer of trees; i.e. the cambium layer. Damage to the cambium layer is reflected in a tree’s growth.

One never knows about a tree’s life. The longer lived the tree, the more likely that tree had a wide range of experiences.
https://youtu.be/AihvuZiDhsg

Brett Keane
Reply to  ATheoK
November 8, 2018 3:42 pm

Of course, Mann’s algorithm proved to create a hockey stick from random noise! That was the crowning Trick. Brett

ladylifegrows
Reply to  ladylifegrows
November 9, 2018 3:34 pm

Yes, I know Mann cherry-picked his trees and was otherwise unscientific and absurd. None of that matters. The point is everybody focuses on temperature. What he actually said was Trees Are Growing.

The whole alarmism thing is an attack on the biosphere.

What would happen if you woke up to that?

Crispin in Waterloo
November 8, 2018 3:55 am

J Peterson is of course indirectly responsible for the kerfuffle here in Waterloo at Laurier University when a video of his was shown to a class as a ‘second point of view’. That is never permitted at Laurier, apparently, and the story is hilarious if you don’t mind the diversion from ‘climate’. It is not over yet as the law suits are ongoing.

The identitarian politically manipulating bods at Laurier objected to Peterson announcing that what he called legally ‘compelled speech’ was off his vocabulary from now on. No more “ze” for “he” or “she”, not because he didn’t already do that for people who requested it, but that the Ontario Liberal Party had snuck through the first law that demanded it, with penalties for not complying. Suck on that, Colorado.

Well, you can imagine the response in Toronto where 28 such personal pronouns find oxygen. A lefty U of T psychology prof refusing the latest totalitarian move to direct society towards manufactured mores? Betrayal! Call him a right wing bigot!! Ban him from speaking on any campus!! Break windows!! And they did.

Peterson doesn’t dumb down his vocabulary during interviews. That is refreshing. He is a symbol of the title “Learned”.

One of his Rules for Life is: always assume the person you are talking to knows something you don’t. Find out what it is.

That is a good attitude to bring to WUWT. There’s many a candle hidden under an ordinary-looking bushel.

Ed Bo
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
November 8, 2018 7:44 am

Crispin: That wasn’t even one of JP’s own videos — it was short debate he participated in on a CBC news show. Can’t let undergraduates see that…

Chris
Reply to  Ed Bo
November 8, 2018 1:34 pm

It was actually a TVO show. The agenda.

November 8, 2018 4:00 am

The Socialist can’t call him a Climate Denier.
So Expect them to call him a Climate Nihilist.
.

Alan the Brit
November 8, 2018 4:03 am

Excellent presentation by Dr Peterson, well worth taking time out of my day to watch & listen! He is excellent. He will never be out gunned by the liberal left in any way! AtB.

John
November 8, 2018 4:11 am

Love what he’s doing on tour. He is fighting the narrative and changing the collective mindset.

More power to him. He’s a champion of free speech and free thinking.

Non Nomen
November 8, 2018 4:14 am

Jordan Peterson deserves more than a standing ovation. Concise and very much to the point, that man. with a good sense of humour. I love it.

mark breckenridge
November 8, 2018 4:23 am

Saw one of his lectures. His my version of a night in shining armor.

Reply to  mark breckenridge
November 8, 2018 6:34 am

“night in shining armor.”

That would be pretty uncomfortable. But a knight in shining armor might not be. 🙂

commieBob
November 8, 2018 4:37 am

The video is long. The good bit starts at around 20:45 and goes to around 27:00.

Someone asked if we could unite humanity behind a campaign to solve global warming. “No” was the immediate answer. The next six minutes was amazingly clear and to the point.

Dr. Peterson talked about some work reported by Bjorn Lomborg in which teams of experts (mostly economists I think) got together to prioritize the UN’s development goals. It seems to have been a big project with a lot of participants.

They could get a treasure trove of ideas from some of the world’s top economists. In a new book, these economists summarize humanity’s smartest ideas and best investments. Given that we have very limited funds, we need to prioritize: they generated ideas and then ranked the best ways to spend $75 billion more over the next four years and dramatically help hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. link

Global warming didn’t even make the list.

Peterson points out that global warming is a complete waste of time and keeps from doing things that would actually do some good.

Dr. Peterson never ceases to amaze.

November 8, 2018 4:38 am

Partial transcript here.

Also a transcript of his answers to climate change questions in a recent interview for GQ magazine.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Paul Matthews
November 8, 2018 8:57 am

Thanks, Paul.

Peta of Newark
November 8, 2018 4:39 am

I told you so.
Ages ago.
Many times.

Namely:
1. Be disagreeable, as per his answer to the long rambling question and as per Mr Trump (Hoax and No respectively)
In actuality, disagree with the GHGE

2. As JP says,

Increase child nutrition

To quote myself:
Do Not feed them fake baby milk up to age = 30 months.
Vegetable fat is NOT suitable for the construction of a properly functioning human brain. It gives them Kwaskior = low intelligence, poor learning ability plus belligerence.
From age 3, Do Not force feed them vegetables (which they always resist strongly) and even worse, Do Not bribe them into doing so with refined sugar, optionally and often mixed with caffeine.
Because those are exactly the things that bring on the nightmares that Peterson mentions.

A little while ago, I pointed us all to a little podcast, done by an avid music collector. Who lives near me, is also tee-total and when he mentioned how other people feel cold in situations where he doesn’t
He did another where he described visiting the local Mega Shopping Mall – called Meadowhall, locally = Meddowhell.
Why Meddowhell?
Because it is full of Zombies. Walking dead. Empty faces. Empty eyes. Folks so engrossed in themselves or their cell-phones they hardly seem to know where they are or, hence the hell part of it, where you are. They walk straight into you.
And THAT is what eating, not only refined sugar but, Cooked Starch does to you.
Even before alcohol delivers, quite often, a knockout blow.
But, The Zombies recognise threats.
The Biggest Threat to any Zombie, is someone who is not A Zombie.
Now do we understand why so many people so dislike Mr Trump? He has a clear head and a quick wit and could run rings around them in any situation. Hence why he is/was The Successful Businessman. He has empathy and Zombies don’t.
Because every time that green aeroplane thumbnail shows up around here, the Green Pass, demonstrates a total lack of empathy from Warmists as all they while they claim the opposite. That the do care. haha

Don’t believe me? Call me crazy.
Fine.
But before next time you call me crazy or try shoot me, Do Some Science.
Run The Experiment.
Stop the booze, don’t even look at vegetable oil and as far as you can, ditch the cooked starch from your diet.
Eat saturated fat and flavour it up with sodium chloride. Its all you need.
IOW, Wilfully ignore what nearly all the Zombified doctors and scientists say.

You do have ‘will’ don’t you? or have the ideas of moderation and/or social drinking destroyed it?
Come back in 12 months time and tell us all how you feel and how you see the world……

NB. I am not espousing Prohibition, EXCEPT for:
Our leaders and their close advisors
Our scientists, educators and healthcare managers inc all practising doctors.
Everyone else can carry on partying.

Was I being disagreeable up there?
If so, I was practising what Jordan Peterson told me in the first ever interview I saw of him.
(He demolished a (female) interviewer on Channel 4, not hard to find, IF you have The Will)

Peta of Newark
Reply to  Peta of Newark
November 8, 2018 5:09 am

and a lovely little example almost everyone will know is:
“Don’t eat cheese before bedtime, it will cause nightmares”

A perfect example of Cause & Effect mangulation.

Because by implication, it says to eat something/anything that is NOT fat and/or protein as your last meal of the day.
IOW: Eat sugar

And it works soooo well. What are Horlicks, Ovaltine, Hot Chocolate drinks etc etc all about?
And how many Cowboys & Indian films have we all seen where The (wounded) Hero is advised to swig half a bottle of Whiskey in the moments before the arrow/bullet/spear is removed from blood-soaked personage?
The sugar does as the whiskey does, effectively knocks you out.
Hence forth, unconscious people don’t/can’t feel pain or have nightmares. Simples.

*Exactly* the sort of junk science he alludes to somewhere in there and perfectly describes the GHGE and all the effects it is going to have…

Or *do* they, is that their memory is simultaneously trashed by the sugar?

They don’t, in actuality, sleep too well either.
Hence why they *need* coffee in the morning. How crazy is that, after 8, 9 or 10 hours sleep you *NEED* coffee to wake yourself up. Utterly insane yet accepted as The Norm.
The Norm for Zombies, yes.

But you’ll find that, *when* you Run The Experiment.

Randle Dewees
Reply to  Peta of Newark
November 8, 2018 6:27 am

Peta, I usually read your posts as I find them entertaining- I don’t disagree with your diet philosophy, but you seem to leave out the big moderating factor for health, physical activity. If you are active enough it matters little what you are throwing into the burner. So there is another dimension for your phase space of diet and well being. There are others too.

Ozonebust
Reply to  Randle Dewees
November 8, 2018 8:22 am

Handle
It does matter what you put into the burner. It is not only about energy

Regards

Reply to  Peta of Newark
November 8, 2018 6:04 pm

blah blah blah

November 8, 2018 4:41 am

“I spent a lot of time reading – I worked for a UN committee for 2 years on sustainable economic and ecological development, and read a very large amount during that period of time and learned a lot, much of which made me much more optimistic than I had been before I read the relevant literature, which was a real shock to me.

But the climate change is issue is an absolutely catastrophic nightmarish mess, and the idea that that will unite us, that’s not going to unite us. First of all it’s very difficult to separate the science from the politics, and second, even if the claims, the more radical claims are true we have no idea what to do about it, and so, no.

Besides it’s even worse than that, here’s one of the worst things about the whole mess — as you project outwards, with regard to your climate change projections, which are quite unreliable to begin with, the unreliability of the measurement magnifies as you move forward in time, obviously, because the errors accumulate, so if you go out 50 years the error bars around the projections are already so wide that we won’t be able to measure the positive or negative effects of anything we do right now, so how in the world are you going to solve a problem when you can’t even measure the consequence of your actions, how is that even possible?”

Frenchie77
Reply to  Paul Matthews
November 8, 2018 4:53 am

“……so how in the world are you going to solve a problem when you can’t even measure the consequence of your actions, how is that even possible?”

Well, we all know, climate change activists would be out of a job and lose the ability to virtue signal if the problem was solved. Therefore, the problem never be solved. Now, consider the benefits to politicians who are claiming to want to solve the problem, what benefit is it to them, to their political careers, to actually solve the problem. Again, none – in fact it is most useful to keep the problem.

michael hart
Reply to  Frenchie77
November 8, 2018 8:47 am

Yes.
And pharmaceutical companies make more money from medicines that need to be taken every day for the rest of your life. Quickly curing a disease is rather less profitable. And I say that as a statement of truth, not that they conspire to make it so. I have earned a living, indirectly, from the industry and still support its aims.

The fossil fuel industry industry is not evil either, despite the silly claims of environmentalists. It brings much benefit to us all and tends to go where rational actions to meet customer demand and the profit motive drive it.

Mickey Reno
Reply to  Paul Matthews
November 8, 2018 7:15 am

The nature of GCM climate models, which stands for General Circulation Model, not Global Climate Model, is that they attempt to “physically calculate” the energy flowing in and out of very large (so large as to be unrepresentative) Hadley cells to actually model the flow of energy in 3 dimensions throughout our atmosphere over time. This virtual exercise guarantees that any error, no matter how tiny, will be multiplied by trillions of times if you extend your simulation by any appreciable time period, be it 1 year, 2 or 50 or 100 years into the future. There is no way in hell that anyone should ever give a single crap about the results of these virtual toys. These things are now malicious jobs programs for people who should be working in another industry, preferably not in academe and certainly not in the public policy arena. The USA and all nations need to get out of the UNFCCC so that we discontinue the funding of people who are bound up in these jobs programs. Of course, research universities and government bureaucracies won’t like that, and will fight like hell to protect their rice bowls. But tough titties, cut them off to save our children from growing up with artificially induced phobias. It’s for the children, fer godssakes.

Kaiser Derden
November 8, 2018 5:08 am

Mic Drop !!! and I love the barely contained contempt for the ignorance of the questioner …

James Clarke
November 8, 2018 5:17 am

The great tragedy of our time is that Jordan Peterson is an anomaly of common sense in a vast wasteland of human thought.

He comes by his wisdom in a most unusual way: he reads the works of previously great thinkers! This bizarre behavior use to be called education. It was routinely encouraged and, at times, required for young people. Many of the great thinkers, however, happen to be white males, due to a myriad of cultural, economic and technological circumstances that culminated in the European Renaissance; a time and place where logical thought was increasingly prized and rewarded.

Today, our education system is much more focused on getting students in touch with their feelings, particularly the feelings of anger and self righteousness associated with victimhood; a form of human neurosis; a psychological disease!

leitmotif
November 8, 2018 5:19 am

I’m surprised that there wasn’t an added introduction by Stephen Sackur to say why Jordan Peterson is wrong. Or Cathy Newman, planted in the audience, repeatedly asking, “So you’re saying …. ?”

Coach Springer
November 8, 2018 6:52 am

At times like these, I don’t ask myself what Prince Charles and Al Gore would do.

The climate posing questioner clearly expected everyone to have already accepted that finding a cause to “unite” the world was the main goal. Also the main goal of everyone from Genghis Kahn to Mohammed to Joseph Stalin (Hitler’s not the only one) to the United Nations. The goal of unity first begs the question “In what?” If the goal of unity isn’t sufficient to unify in its own right, then unity is always a very unnecessary and bad thing.

Observer
November 8, 2018 8:02 am

Boring but useful: you can link to a specific time in the youtube video by adding the following to the URL (in this case for a 20:30 offset)

&t=20m30s

This doesn’t work with all styles of links but it’s good to know about. You can also see a “Copy video URL at current time” option when right-clicking to get a link.

u.k.(us)
Reply to  Observer
November 8, 2018 9:07 am

Interesting, but then don’t you also have to explain to the audience that you have, in fact, edited for effect.
I kinda like Josh’s method.

November 8, 2018 8:12 am

Love Jordan. Marked up his 12 Rules. He’s incredibly inspirational, for young and old. He makes us think harder and live more meaningfully, while still having fun.

I am a caregiver for a son with schizophrenia. He’s 29 now. It’s been 8 years since his break. He used to argue with me about global warming and socialism, when he was younger. I miss that.

Through all that he endures, I am very optimistic about his future. But, it is like John Nash … a long and winding road for both of us. His recovery is at glacial increments, but you see it.

I duck in here on occasion to read the latest discussion. Was glad to see this video posted.

J Wurts
Reply to  W. Corey Trench
November 9, 2018 3:59 pm

Mr(?) Trench

Offered as a thought:

http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_anecdote.html

Abram Hoffer was a brilliant research physician.

Jack

Bruce Cobb
November 8, 2018 8:29 am

Excellent. Watched the whole video, just not all at once. He’s blunt, precise, and very rational, which is uncommon these days. Loved the long, rhetorical “question” about “global warming” and his reply of “No”. Followed, of course with an explanation.

Lizzie
November 8, 2018 9:08 am

I am very entertained by Jordan Peterson

Earthling2
November 8, 2018 9:53 am

Wow! This is definitely going to raise some eyebrows in academia. How are they going to justify continuing this nonsense reductio ad absurdum argument when a world famous psychologist has just given the science a diagnosis?

“the unreliability of the measurement magnifies as you move forward in time, obviously, because the errors accumulate, so if you go out 50 years the error bars around the projections are already so wide that we won’t be able to measure the positive or negative effects of anything we do right now, so how in the world are you going to solve a problem when you can’t even measure the consequence of your actions, how is that even possible?”

That was the brilliant part. And the other was we weren’t going to do much about it anyway. Were we all going to stop heating our homes, driving our cars or stop charging our cell phones? No, nobody is going retrograde on any advancements we have made as a human society. Human ingenuity will find solutions when the problem is actually identified correctly. Global warming isn’t a problem, just as all climate optimums of the past were never a problem for humanity. On the contrary, they were always periods of vast opportunities to advance civilization. Climate change is just a straw man argument that has no real meaning. As compared to what? The CC narrative has a hole in it so big, it isn’t even a rational argument since it can mean anything anyone wants it to be.

Robert Stewart
November 8, 2018 10:35 am

I am a great fan of Jordan Peterson. He’s been to Seattle twice this year (May and June.) We had tickets for the June visit, but I had a terrible cough so I didn’t go. My wife and our youngest son, now 30, went and had a great time. This being Seattle, I was concerned for their safety, but they said everything was calm and orderly outside the theatre, with no black masked thugs burning stores and breaking windows. Perhaps they were out of town on assignment in Portland that week.

Every time I listen to him, or reread a passage in “12 Rules for Life”, I find something of note. The thing that caught my attention this time was Jordan’s use of “scalability” to explain why those who dabble in things can multiply their profits, while those who dabble in interpersonal relationships can not. Of course, he is making a large number of “personal” connections with his writing and his lectures, so he’s “scaled” his effort. But the principle is true.

Looking at the audience at the close of the dialogue, I’d say that 80% of the males were enthusiastically clapping, and 40% (or less) of the females. And the moderator seemed to feel more and more uncomfortable as time passed. A moth before a candle?

u.k.(us)
Reply to  Robert Stewart
November 8, 2018 11:14 am

“A moth before a candle?”
============
More like a mouse before a cat that is swishing its tail ?

[The mods wonder at the relative rank of a cat chasing a laser pointer in this series. .mod]

u.k.(us)
Reply to  u.k.(us)
November 8, 2018 12:10 pm

I’m sure I’m missing the point Mod, but I’ve learned from painful experience with my sisters cats, that when the tail starts swishing, it is just the cat waiting for the perfect time to pounce.

Robert Stewart
Reply to  u.k.(us)
November 8, 2018 1:18 pm

I was trying to find the right metaphor. And failed. From the very start you could see that the moderator expected the conversation to go in one direction, but Jordan didn’t fall for his traps. Jordan even spent five minutes explaining that since the age of 25, he’d been trying to hone his messages. I was wondering why Jordan picked that theme. Later it became apparent that Jordan’s warning had blunted some of the more superficial attacks the moderator might have planned. But the moderator fell back into the preplanned attack when he first asked for questions from the audience. Notice how quickly and decisively he spotted the Global Warming munchkin. No scanning the audience to see if there were any questions, just a single focus on one area, looking for one person. I hope, for his sake, that the moderator doesn’t play poker.

My choice of the moth was driven by the thought that as the moderator got close, he got singed, but he couldn’t just walk away. He had to keep trying.

u.k.(us)
Reply to  u.k.(us)
November 8, 2018 3:03 pm

I finally got it, it was the use of the term “series” that threw me off. Sorry.

Terry Harnden
November 8, 2018 10:43 am

Jordan is the best defence we have against the MkUltra MSM NWO pharma attack on humanity

ResourceGuy
November 8, 2018 10:50 am

Okay, I’ll go look it up and the others. Sounds like a new discovery in an otherwise closed society.

Harry Passfield
November 8, 2018 11:18 am

JP’s on BBC1 tonight 10:45 (GMT) – Question Time. Could be worth staying up for. Especially as he’s up against the likes of Diane Abbott.

Nigel Sherratt
Reply to  Harry Passfield
November 8, 2018 12:01 pm

JBP both David and Goliath in that contest.

J Wurts
Reply to  Harry Passfield
November 9, 2018 4:05 pm
Nigel Sherratt
November 8, 2018 11:31 am

Interesting and chilling that level of security was required.

Nigel Sherratt
November 8, 2018 11:39 am

“So, no!” excellent response to the first question.

Nigel Sherratt
November 8, 2018 11:54 am

The lady struggling with autism was excellent. At least she’s in the right place with Prof. Simon Baron-Coen at Trinity.

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/simon-baron-cohen

ge
November 8, 2018 12:05 pm

Climate Change wasn’t on the agenda at the Cambridge debate, but the first question from the audience put it there. Here’s how it began:

Member of audience:
“Drought, flooding and ocean acidification unanticipated for 65 million years all result from climate change, according to over 700 of your fellow scientists. So I was wondering whether you thought climate change could be an issue that could unite us all on left and right moving us beyond debates about C16 to discussions at the UN at Katowice next month, where perhaps humanity might discover its global map of meaning?”

Jordan Peterson: No.

[ten seconds of laughter and applause from the audience]

StephenP
Reply to  ge
November 8, 2018 1:10 pm

I bet the questioner regrets asking the question. I think JP may have made most of the audience revise their thinking on AGW, and hopefully be a bit more sceptical about what they are told is ‘settled science’.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  ge
November 8, 2018 1:30 pm

“Drought, flooding and ocean acidification unanticipated for 65 million years all result from climate change …”.
Lord save us from bright-eyed seekers of ‘global maps of meaning’ and how can such a deeply ignorant person get admittance to any university — even Cambridge?

ResourceGuy
Reply to  ge
November 8, 2018 2:52 pm

Maybe the audience will then think about what they need to do to catch up on the topic as a supposedly educated people with at least the capacity for critical thinking and data evaluation. What better way to set that in motion for them than an extreme juxtaposition of claims and debate. The dinosaur ending asteroid is closing in on ground zero–or not. Now do your homework and along the way you might discover some other side stories like differences between hard science and very soft science, policy misdirection, advocacy science, and ingredients of good science process itself. I guess the worst case scenario is that they are not up to the task or really not interested in “oceans boiling off tomorrow” and “mass evacuation of coastal areas” claims and will leave it to trendy leaders to take care of it all.

Let’s see now, what percent of awarded degrees in 2017 were in STEM fields?

Nigel Sherratt
November 8, 2018 12:23 pm

“and hopelessness, don’t forget hoplessness!”

Definitely worth watching again, thanks to Josh as ever.

ResourceGuy
November 8, 2018 2:38 pm

“Getting us nowhere” is the perfect vehicle for low-resolution uses of the new slush fund revenue stream. Anything will do actually.

November 8, 2018 4:18 pm

The intersection of Jordan Peterson and Warmista misinformation, is a very interesting place:

brent
November 8, 2018 4:57 pm

It’s instructive after hearing that unctuous question about finding Meaning in Climate Change, to compare to what Richard Lindzen quotes from Mike Hulme’s book. Questioner has bought into Mike Hulme’s PNS hook line and sinker.
Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. Lecture Deconstructs Global Warming Hysteria
https://tinyurl.com/mml5aca
3 min to 5:15

Mike Hulme “Why We Disagree About Climate Change”

“The Idea of Climate Change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change but what climate change can do for us”
“Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical and spiritual needs”
“We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects”
“These myths transcend the scientific categories of true and false”

Marcus
November 9, 2018 2:04 am

‘Crawl back under your rock,’ Swedish foreign minister tells Canadian professor Jordan B Peterson

https://www.thelocal.se/…/crawl-back-under-your-rock-swedis…

Stan Sexton
November 10, 2018 6:24 pm

Why should we fight global warming when the 3rd World gets a free pass to pollute? Work on China, India, Brazil and many countries trying to go 1st World.