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.

5 1 vote
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

116 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
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.