DeepSummary
The podcast begins with Jordan Peterson introducing Dr. Patrick Moore, a former president of Greenpeace Canada and skeptic of climate apocalypse predictions. They discuss how life flourished on Earth during periods much warmer than today with far higher CO2 levels over the last 500 million years, indicating little correlation between temperature and CO2. Moore argues that the current cold period is more unusual and that rising CO2 levels from fossil fuels are benefiting plant growth and crop yields.
Moore explains how he joined Greenpeace in the 1970s to address concerns like nuclear testing and toxic pollution but grew disillusioned as the group was infiltrated by anti-capitalist and anti-human elements in the 1980s. He left after they adopted an agenda to ban all chlorine compounds, which Moore saw as unscientific chemophobia. He now views Greenpeace's climate crisis narrative as unfounded and politically motivated.
They discuss how climate models are unreliable for long-term projections due to uncertainties around clouds, difficulties measuring global temperature, and urban heat island effects. Moore sees insisting carbon dioxide is disastrous as contradicting its role enabling life. He criticizes climate activism as ungrounded in evidence, often targeting invisible or remote issues, driven by alarmism rather than science.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The Earth has experienced dramatic swings in temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels over geological timescales, with life flourishing during much warmer, higher CO2 periods.
- Rising CO2 levels from human emissions are benefiting plant growth and crop yields, reversing a long-term decline that threatened plant life.
- Concerns over climate catastrophe are driven more by ideological agendas and unvalidated modeling than empirical evidence.
- Environmental activism has become captured by anti-capitalist, anti-human elements promoting scientifically baseless scare stories.
- Climate models have major uncertainties and limitations that make long-term catastrophic projections unreliable.
- Activism often targets invisible risks like CO2 or remote issues like polar bears that lack direct observability.
- Terms like "climate crisis" originate from rhetorical strategies to manufacture new sensationalized threats when previous ones fail to materialize.
- Opposition to nuclear power and GMOs in environmental circles reflects unscientific chemophobia more than evidence-based risk assessment.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “No, they will spread, because we're coming out right now of a period when the earth was so much warmer. The Eocene thermal maximum happened 15 million years after the dinosaur extinction, which was almost certainly caused by that asteroid that hit Yucatan and sent ash into the stratosphere, where it blocked the sun and caused plants to die and mass extinctions to occur.“ by Patrick Moore
- “The whole idea of ocean acidification emerged when the temperature started, stopped rising in the late nineties. There was a flattening out period, and everybody's going, oh, no, we have to create a new scare story because this one isn't working as well as it used to and be.“ by Patrick Moore
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Episode Information
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
4/11/24
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with industry consultant, science activist, and past president of Greenpeace Canada (1971 to 1986), Dr. Patrick Moore. They discuss his time in Greenpeace, the historic timeline of global ice ages and climate change, the clear lies being peddled to promote alarmism, and how the woke left manipulates science (and scientists) to promote a falsely perceived and politically incentivized future catastrophe.
Dr. Patrick Moore has been a leader in the international environmental field for more than 45 years. He is a co-founder of Greenpeace and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. As the leader of many campaigns Dr. Moore was a driving force shaping policy and direction for 15 years while Greenpeace became the world's largest environmental activist organization.
In recent years, Dr. Moore has been focused on the promotion of sustainability and consensus building among competing concerns. He was a member of the British Columbia government-appointed Round Table on the Environment and Economy from 1990 - 1994. In 1990, Dr. Moore founded and chaired the BC Carbon Project, a group that worked to develop a common understanding of climate change.
In 2021 Dr. Moore published "Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom" exposing the fake news and fake science around 11 claims of disaster including climate change, coral reefs, polar bears, plastic, nuclear energy, and more.
- Links -
2024 tour details can be found here https://jordanbpeterson.com/events
Peterson Academy https://petersonacademy.com/
For Dr. Patrick Moore:
On X https://twitter.com/ecosensenow?lang=en
“Fake Invisible Catastrophes And Threats of Doom” (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Fake-Invisible-Catastrophes-Threats-Doom-ebook/dp/B08T6FFY6S/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fake+invisible+catastrophe&qid=1612915229&s=digital-text&sr=1-1