Joe Rogan Experience #1130 - Adam Frank

Joe Rogan 0:01 Five, four, three, two, one. (audio cuts out)

Adam Frank 0:07 Boom.

Joe Rogan 0:08 Boom.

Adam Frank 0:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:08 Adam, what's up, man? How you doing?

Adam Frank 0:10 Hey. It's good to be here today.

Joe Rogan 0:11 It's good to be here too, uh, with you and to talk- (glass clinks) Ooh. Whoa. Look, I'm already knocking shit over.

Adam Frank 0:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:17 Can't be trusted. Um, your book, Alien Worlds-

Adam Frank 0:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:24 ... And The Fate of the Earth.

Adam Frank 0:25 Yeah. All about it.

Joe Rogan 0:27 That's deep shit, man. Just the, just the title alone, you're like, "Whoa."

Adam Frank 0:32 I love aliens. Everybody loves aliens.

Joe Rogan 0:33 Everybody does, but what are your thoughts on actual aliens and whether or not they've ever visited here?

Adam Frank 0:39 Yeah, it's interesting because, uh, you know, sorta two things. So first of all, uh-

Joe Rogan 0:44 We should tell everybody, you have a background in science.

Adam Frank 0:46 I do.

Joe Rogan 0:47 An actual scientist.

Adam Frank 0:47 I'm an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester.

Joe Rogan 0:49 So you're not-

Adam Frank 0:49 I run a research group that studies like stars and planets and shit.

Joe Rogan 0:52 So you're not a crazy person I brought on here?

Adam Frank 0:54 No, no, no.

Joe Rogan 0:55 (laughs)

Adam Frank 0:55 I'm a card-carrying scientist. I got my card and everything. Um, so yeah, I've been doing research on, you know, astronomy, astrophysics for a long time, but I also do all this popular writing, like for NPR and New York Times. Uh, and the genesis of this book came, A, because I love science fiction. I've been reading science fiction since I was a kid. Uh, but also I do a lot of work on climate change, and so I deal with a lot of climate change denial. And what I realized was that like there's this way we talk about it that is like completely forgets ab- about the fact that like we're probably not the first, you know? And, uh, that led me to a whole bunch of research that eventually led to this book, you know, including one paper that we did that showed, uh, that the odds that we're the only time it's ever happened, on- only, you know, the only civilization in the entire history of the universe, uh, the only way that that could be true is if, uh, the odds per planet are one in 10 billion trillion, right? That's pretty low, right? So, you know, the, you know, uh, the odds of anything being one in 10 billion trillion, that's pretty fricking low. So, um, it's probably happened before, you know? There's been other civilizations before ours. And once you realize that, man, that is like, you know, it changes everything about how we think about ourselves, you know, and what's happening to us right now.

Joe Rogan 2:03 So oth- other civilizations before ours that have fucked things up?

Adam Frank 2:07 Well, that's kinda the premise, right? So that's what-

Joe Rogan 2:09 Yeah.

Adam Frank 2:09 You know, when you look at climate change, right, basically what we, it is, is civilizations are giant machines for turning energy into work, right? You know, New York City, right? You sit over, and you look at Manhattan, you're like, "Holy shit," right?

Joe Rogan 2:21 Right.

Adam Frank 2:21 You know, there's all this energy flowing into it, and then there's all this work being done, you know, to keep everything moving. And, uh, you know, there's no way not to have an impact. If you build a world-girdling civilization, which, you know, that's what a civilization is, there's gonna be impact. So the whole point of my doing this book was to start looking at ourselves as just one of, you know? We're not alone. We're not the only time this has ever happened. Doesn't mean anybody's around now. Like, that's a different question. But the idea that, like, it's never happened before, it meaning like, you know, you know, civilization, what's happening around us, like this machinery and everything, that, um, you know, that just in the new world of what we understand about planets and shit, that is just like, you know, it's not tenable anymore. We gotta wake up.

Joe Rogan 3:00 The idea that some civilization has to be the first one, that's, that's what, the only, the only way you could ever think that we are the only ones is that some civilization has to be the first one, even in a universe that's infinite.

Adam Frank 3:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:15 Like, it has to happen f- one time.

Adam Frank 3:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:18 But the idea is, are the conditions ideal in, uh, you know, a trillion different spots all over the, the infinite expanse of-

Adam Frank 3:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:26 ... the universe?

Adam Frank 3:27 Yeah. And that's the thing, right? So what we've learned, so, you know, one of my, my trips right now is like, this is not your grandfather's SETI anymore, right? Our understanding, we went through this major revolution in our understanding of planets about 20 years ago. So you look back at the Greeks, right, and you can see them arguing about when he, whether any other stars had planets other than, you know, the sun.

Joe Rogan 3:45 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 3:45 Um, and, you know, it goes back and forth, you know, some of the Greeks were like, "Yeah, it's definitely happening." And then like Aristotle was like, "No, we're the only world in this whole, in the whole universe, you know, that has life." Um, and then as time goes on, it kinda goes back and forth. And even at the turn of the la- of this, uh, the 19th century, people thought planets were incredibly rare. That like the on- they thought the only way you could get a planet was if two stars passed really close to each other and they kinda like taffy pulled out stuff that would eventually form a planet. And the odds of those kinds of collisions are so small that people were like, "You know what? There's just no planets." And no planets, no life, you know, unless something really freaky is going on. Uh, but then 20 years ago, we discovered our first planet orbiting a star.

Joe Rogan 4:19 Isn't that crazy when you really think about, that 20 years is such a short amount of time.

Adam Frank 4:23 Just, right. Right.

Joe Rogan 4:24 1998.

Adam Frank 4:25 Yeah, yeah. And nobody knew before that, like nobody knew whether there were any planets, right? You know, when I was starting in astronomy, people were like, "Well, we don't know whether there's gonna be any other planets." And we went from, uh, so the first one was actually '96, I think, '95, '96. Uh, from that to now where we know that every freaking star in the sky has a planet, at least one. You know, pretty much every one, pretty ... I mean, the big, the giant ones maybe not, but pre- they're, they're so rare that, you know, pretty much every star you see in the sky has a family of planets around it.

Joe Rogan 4:54 That is so nuts.

Adam Frank 4:54 It's so nuts.

Joe Rogan 4:55 It's so nuts that this is such a new discovery.

Adam Frank 4:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:57 I mean, when we think about what we know about the universe, we think that we've had a pretty good understanding of it for a long time.

Adam Frank 5:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:04 But the fact that we didn't even know for sure that there are planets.

Adam Frank 5:07 Right, right. In my own lifetime, you know, people were teaching me when I was starting, like, you know, we just don't know, maybe they're rare. And now we know for certain that they're everywhere. And the thing people have to realize is every one of those planets is a place. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 5:18 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 5:18 It's a place you could walk around. Some of them for sure are gonna have oceans. There's gonna be mountains. There's gonna be rain falling, you know? I mean, like they're all freaking places, and they're all places where things can happen, you know? Planets are basically like nature's way of taking sunlight and doing something interesting with it. So you have 10 billion trillion planets in the universe, right? And every one of them is an experiment that's being run. So, you know, the idea that like we're the first time it's ever, now that we know that, right, now that we've gone through that revolution and understand

Adam Frank 5:48 that planets are like dime a dozen. Planets, and not, and we're not only talking about planets here. We're talking about planets that are in the right place for life to form. So there's the idea of the habitable zone, right? So, you know, Mercury sucks. You cannot, you know, Mercury's so hot that there's no way anything's gonna happen. And, you know, planets that are far, far enough out, they're gonna be so cold, you know, they're so far away from their star that they're gonna be so cold that they'll, you know, it's hard to get wa- liquid water on the surface. So we define the habitable or Goldilocks zone as the place where, um-... you can have, you can pour l- w- you know, water onto the surface and it'll just sit there. It won't freeze and it won't, uh, you know, sort of just evaporate away. So, uh, all these 10 billion, trillion planets I'm talking about are all in the right place for life to form, you know? And so, like, with that many numbers, that many experiments being run, like, you gotta be a psychotic pessimist to say that, like, this is the only time a civilization's ever happened.

Joe Rogan 6:34 Right. But there's still no evidence yet. Obviously, we didn't even know that there really absolutely were planets until 20 years ago.

Adam Frank 6:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:42 But we don't know for sure that there's something else out there. What-

Adam Frank 6:45 No, no. This is an argument by, uh, I call it, like, an argument by exhaustion.

Joe Rogan 6:49 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 6:49 You know, if I gave you a bag of 10 billion, trillion planets and you have to sort through all of them, right? The odds that you're gonna, you're never gonna find another one that, that built a civilization is pretty ... It's, now, you know, like I've said, you're really asking for really serious pessimism. But, you know, we're just getting started with this game, right?

Joe Rogan 7:03 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 7:03 Of looking for life. That's why I keep saying it's not ... This is not your grandfather's SETI where you're like, you point, you know, a- a- a- a radio telescope at a star and you kinda wait to see whether somebody's signaling you. Who knows whether they are signaling?

Joe Rogan 7:14 Right.

Adam Frank 7:14 Who knows what they'd be using? Now what we can do, 'cause we got all these planets to stare at, is, you know, we're gonna be able to, like, stare at them as they pass in front of their star and get the light that passes through their atmosphere. So we're gonna like ... Who knows what we're gonna find? You know, we're not waiting for them to signal us anymore. Over the next, I swear to God man, in the next 30 years, we're gonna have data relevant to the question of life. Maybe not civilizations, or that could happen too. But just life on other worlds, you know? And we've never had that before. All the arguments for the entire history of humanity have just been two dudes yelling at each other.

Joe Rogan 7:44 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 7:44 Right? But in the next 30 years, 'cause the stuff we're building and now that we have ... No, there's, there's, uh, uh, planets, we're gonna have real data to argue over with. So man, it's like, this is ... We're, we're in a whole nother ballgame now.

Joe Rogan 7:55 I think the big fear for a lot of people is what happens when we find out for sure that there's something else out there.

Adam Frank 8:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:00 If we really do find, like, some other Manhattan on some Goldilocks planet-

Adam Frank 8:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:06 ... that's hovering some similarly sized star a billion light years away or whatever the hell it is, that's, that's gonna be very, very, very strange.

Adam Frank 8:15 It will be. It'll be a game changer, right? 'Cause for religions, for, you know, I mean, wow, you know? What do you do if you find other intelligent creatures who are building civilizations? For me, it's-

Joe Rogan 8:23 You start making them pay taxes. That's what you do.

Adam Frank 8:26 (laughs) That's right.

Joe Rogan 8:26 Those fucks.

Adam Frank 8:27 You go, you go get pissed off that they're not doing what you want them to do. "You should be believing this one." You know? So, uh, but I think, you know, for me, the thing is, like, it's about climate change, 'cause what it means is, like, there's no way ... Well, from my perspective, you know, that, that if you have a civilization, you push your planet.

Joe Rogan 8:42 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 8:43 You, you know, you can't stop it in some sense. If you build a civilization, it's gonna happen.

Joe Rogan 8:46 Well, the only way around it is if you have, like, a subsistence culture, uh, indigenous-

Adam Frank 8:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:52 ... Native American culture.

Adam Frank 8:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:54 Which i- ... It seems impossible, but it existed here 200 years ago.

Adam Frank 8:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:59 Which is a blink of an eye.

Adam Frank 9:01 Right, right. I know, it's amazing it's only 200 years-

Joe Rogan 9:03 Yeah.

Adam Frank 9:03 ... since, like, this, the, the ramp up. You know that the world population only crossed of the billion mark in, like, 1850.

Joe Rogan 9:10 Whoa.

Adam Frank 9:10 You know? I mean, it's not ... There were so, so few of us on the planet for most of the time that even we've been around. Forget the planet's history.

Joe Rogan 9:16 Yeah.

Adam Frank 9:16 Uh, so, you know, I think, like, there, there is, you know, the discovery ... If we were to get any evidence, you know, and I, I think the way it's gonna happen is gonna be more by accident than by, like, signaling. You know? Like, the, so, so but if we had any evidence of another technological ... If we had any evidence of just life, right? If we just find a biosphere.

Joe Rogan 9:33 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 9:33 Evidence that, you know... And we can do that from a distance, right? I, even if the star is, you know, 30 light years away, if we get, if we see, as the light passes through the star's atmosphere for those few moments, if we see oxygen in the atmosphere, you know, we'll be able to detect that. That's what we can do with telescopes. We can tell, like, what the ... You can see the fingerprints of the different kinds of elements. If we see oxygen in that atmosphere, you know, and methane, that pretty much says that there's a biosphere there, that there's life. 'Cause you wouldn't get ... Oxygen would just, like, react away really fast if it wasn't for life. Like, in our, on, uh, on Earth, if it wasn't for life, there'd be no oxygen in the atmosphere.

Joe Rogan 10:05 What are the possibilities of life that exists in a completely different environment than we expect? Like, I know that they found life at the bottom of the ocean-

Adam Frank 10:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:13 ... in these volcanic vents.

Adam Frank 10:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:15 At extreme heats, boiling water, they didn't expect to see this.

Adam Frank 10:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:19 And this is fairly recent as well.

Adam Frank 10:20 That is. That, yeah. The idea that the, um ... 'Cause right, this whole definition of a habitable zone-

Joe Rogan 10:24 Yeah.

Adam Frank 10:24 ... was based on the idea like, oh, you gotta have a surface and it's gotta be-

Joe Rogan 10:27 Right.

Adam Frank 10:27 You know? But now with the e- ev- you know, not every, but like a bunch of the moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn and the gas giants, they have oceans under them. Like, big oceans.

Joe Rogan 10:36 Well, there's thoughts that Europa might have something below the surface, right?

Adam Frank 10:39 Yeah, yeah, because the, um, Europa is, uh, you know, it's, it's this pretty big moon and we know it's covered in ice, right? You can see it's covered in it, you know? And we think that layer of ice is maybe like, I don't know, 10 kilometers thick, and then below that there may be 100 kilometers of ocean. And because as it moves around Jupiter, it's con- the gravity of Jupiter is always squishing the insides, so there's probably volcanic activity happening at the surface. So you have hydrothermal vents, you know? Heat escaping out of the ... And chemicals escaping out of the, at the surface into the ocean. And that's how we think life formed on, uh, on Earth. That's one of the arguments for how life formed, if fir- formed first in the hydrothermal vents. So yeah, you know, it- it- it's a new d- that's another game changer, right? So then we should also be thinking not just about the, the classic, uh, the habitable zone, but now we gotta think about, like, life, and can you get civilizations in an underwater civiliza- you know, in an underwater ... Maybe you have a-

Joe Rogan 11:23 Right.

Adam Frank 11:23 ... really rich ecosystem. But, you know, with the problem with, uh, uh, you know, an underwater f- uh, uh, life or forming civilization is that you can't really do fire, right? Fire was pretty important for us for metallurgy. You know, to build advanced technology, you kind of need combustion.

Joe Rogan 11:38 Yeah.

Adam Frank 11:38 So, you know, that's kind of the open question with that.

Joe Rogan 11:40 Uh, yeah, we are not really concerned with animals. We're concerned with things that think and change their environment.

Adam Frank 11:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:46 Isn't that weird? Like, we are concerned with life, but we're only concerned with life that's at least similar or comparable to us.

Adam Frank 11:52 Yeah. Microbes don't, like ... Yeah. We don't, we don't, yeah, we, they don't, don't get too excited, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:56 We're not gonna like go to Jupiter for some microbes.

Adam Frank 11:57 (laughs) Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 11:58 But we, we, we are excited about the things that they've recently found on Mars, right? I mean there's-

Adam Frank 12:02 Yeah, last week.

Joe Rogan 12:02 ... very recent discovery.

Adam Frank 12:03 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 12:04 Yeah.

Adam Frank 12:04 So, you know, the thing is actually from the, you know, so I'm gonna ... I- I work in a lot of fields but I would also consider myself an astrobiologist, right? Which is a pretty-... kind of wild idea that you can do astrobiology, even though you only have one example, which is the Earth. But we've learned so much that now we can start asking ourselves about the possibility of life elsewhere. So finding even a microbe, like even a frigging, you know, amoeba on Mars would be com-

Joe Rogan 12:25 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 12:25 Or even evidence that there used to be amoebas on Mars.

Joe Rogan 12:27 And what is the evidence that they discovered on Mars?

Adam Frank 12:29 What they found was, um, organic chemistry, right? And so, but organic chemistry ... Man, I hated chemistry when I was growing up. Uh, and I hated organic chem (laughs) was, that's just basically chemistry involving carbon, you know? So you can have non or, you know, it doesn't, organic chemistry doesn't mean organisms.

Joe Rogan 12:45 Oh.

Adam Frank 12:45 But it's the kind of chemistry that organisms love, right? So finding evidence that there was like, they drilled, amazingly we sent a frigging robot to Mars-

Joe Rogan 12:54 Yeah.

Adam Frank 12:54 ... that could drill through a rock-

Joe Rogan 12:55 (laughs)

Adam Frank 12:55 ... you know, and then ingest the rock. And, you know, it's like ...

Joe Rogan 12:57 And then send the data back across space.

Adam Frank 13:00 And send the data back, man. We're, you know, pretty good for a bunch of hairless apes, you know?

Joe Rogan 13:02 Yeah.

Adam Frank 13:03 Um, so what, what they found was evidence for, you know, fairly complex, um, uh, you know, uh, organic chemistry. Which meant that way back when Mars, and this we know for sure, right, Mars had water on it. We know that for sure now. Mars was a blue planet for at least a while.

Joe Rogan 13:18 Did they think that Mars was hit by, uh, an asteroid or a comet or something along those lines?

Adam Frank 13:22 Well, everything got hit by comets. That's how we have, you know, we have chunks of Mars here, right?

Joe Rogan 13:26 Right.

Adam Frank 13:26 That, you know, the thing in '96 or whatever, when they were like, "Oh, we found life on Mars." You know, they thought what they found was, uh, a fossil bacteria-

Joe Rogan 13:32 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 13:33 ... in a chunk of, uh, Mars that they found in Antarctica. So the planets have been swapping spit for like the entire history of the solar system.

Joe Rogan 13:38 That's fossilized bacteria that they found, has that been confirmed that that's what it was?

Adam Frank 13:42 No. No. Uh, most people now think that the, uh, Allan Hills, uh, meteorite, that probably, you know, it's inconclusive and it's not conclusive enough to be like, "Yeah, we found life."

Joe Rogan 13:50 It's like a tiny little squiggly worm looking thing, right?

Adam Frank 13:52 That's what it was, yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:52 Yeah.

Adam Frank 13:52 But it was so small that it was like way smaller than any of the microscopic fossilized bacteria we've ever seen before. So people in general are like, nah. Um, but by fi- but that's what started, right? That's when, um, Clinton was like, "Okay, we're gonna send a lot of shit to Mars." 'Cause after, when, you know, back in 90, you know, early '90s, people were kind of done with Mars. And so that's what triggered the whole, you know, one space probe after another, the rovers. And like, so, you know, the thing we found was a direct result of that effort, which was this organic chemistry, which says that back in the day, Mars had, had a lot of this stuff lying around, had a lot of these, you know, these, these organic chemicals lying around, which if you're life, that's what you're gonna be using. So it's like one more step, like we've been putting the, the, the Lego blocks, uh, for the argument for life on Mars one piece at a time since the, you know, since the first rovers went there.

Joe Rogan 14:39 Yeah. Um, if we did discover just even plants on some other planet, even just a, a planet with some sort of plant-like life-

Adam Frank 14:47 Yeah, that would be-

Joe Rogan 14:48 ... that'd be a game changer.

Adam Frank 14:49 ... that'd be a game changer.

Joe Rogan 14:50 So-

Adam Frank 14:50 Because, you know, right now we don't know if there's ... We, you know, are we the only time in the entire history of the universe that like this crazy thing where you got, we went from non-life to life? Like, is that common or is that never, ever, ever happen? So that's the question we wanna, you know, we wanna answer. And I, you know, I mean, like, you know, that argument I was giving before is I think from the probable arguments, I'm saying it's like, you know, it's al- it's almost overwhelming that yeah, it probably happened somewhere. Again, doesn't mean anything's here. But we need evidence, right? It's science. So we gotta build that evidence.

Joe Rogan 15:19 Yeah. And if we do find something, the, the, the, one of the weirder things would be if we found something and there was a way to get there.

Adam Frank 15:26 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:27 You know, if we, we find something and we're like, "Yeah, we found something, but it's, we're pretty sure there's some kind of life and it's three billion light years away." You're like, "Well, that's cool."

Adam Frank 15:35 Yeah. What do we do? Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:36 Yeah. It's nice to know that we're not the only ones.

Adam Frank 15:39 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:39 And-

Adam Frank 15:40 Well, you know, it's interesting, like how much would that, that change? You know, even if we found like evidence for ... This, because this is a debate, like if we found evidence of a technological civilization, we saw like alien mega structures, like that star they thought about.

Joe Rogan 15:50 Yeah. What was that nonsense?

Adam Frank 15:51 Uh, it wasn't really nonsense. It was, I, you know-

Joe Rogan 15:53 It was something floating around, right?

Adam Frank 15:55 Right. So here's what they saw. So that, you know, the way we discover planets is we look for when the s- the planet passes in front of the star, you get a little dip in the light, right? It blocks out a little bit of light.

Joe Rogan 16:04 Right.

Adam Frank 16:04 It's like a little eclipse. Um, and so, you know, we've now, that's how we know that every star in the sky has planets. But there's like, they found one that just made no sense. Like, the light would dip, then it would stop dipping, then it would dip again three times, then it would stop dipping. Sometimes it was lower, sometimes it was higher. Um, and, you know, for a year or so, people were like, "What the fuck is this?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:21 Right.

Adam Frank 16:21 You know? And so, you know, um, uh, Jason Wright and others, uh, Jason's a friend of mine, you know, they wrote a paper where they were like, "Hey, you know, at least ... Because this is what the future's gonna look like. We can't say, we can't ... We have to at least consider the possibility that these are artificial structures that are like orbiting the star or, you know, and it's a-"

Joe Rogan 16:38 It would have to be ungodly huge.

Adam Frank 16:40 Ungodly huge. Alien mega structures. Like, that's the best word ever.

Joe Rogan 16:43 Right. Like, like the size of a country, right?

Adam Frank 16:45 Yeah, yeah. These things would be huge, right? But that's what people think, like, you know, when people think about advanced alien civilizations, the idea of building large scale structures is, you think that may be the next thing you do once you reach a certain point. Like, um, you know, the Dyson sphere, the idea that you could collect all of the sun's energy and use it for yourself by building a giant sphere around the sun with solar panels on the inside. People think like, that goes back to Kardashev, the idea of this Kardashev scale back in the '60s where he is like, "Look, there's gonna be a natural progression of civilizations that goes first you collect all the energy you can from your planet, and then you use that to do amazing things. And then you collect all the energy from your star, and then you do that amaz- you know, you do amazing shit with that. And then, you know, the whole galaxy." So he, you know, Kardashev thought there was a scale that, that civilizations naturally progress through. So-

Joe Rogan 17:29 And you hopefully don't blow yourself up along the way.

Adam Frank 17:32 Well, I think that's the question. I mean, I've criticized the Kar- the Kardashev scale in one of the papers I recently did, because what it fails to take into account is the fact that like, you know, on your way up to the type one. Type one is when you harvest all the energy from your planet, which basically means somehow covering your planet in, in, uh, uh, you know, solar panels or something. That neglects what we've learned since Kardashev wrote his paper in '64 is that, you know, planets don't like that shit. Like, planets, the planet's gonna feedback. You try and build-

Joe Rogan 17:55 Hmm.

Adam Frank 17:55 ... you know, massive shit on your planet, the planet has its own, you know, biosphere is pretty powerful and you gotta take the biosphere into account or you get climate change, you get, you know, the, the planet being pushed off in another direction. So, but whatever. So for the, um, for the alien mega structures, people thought like, oh, maybe this is like a piece of a, uh, of a Dyson sphere, right? This is like, you know.

Joe Rogan 18:12 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 18:12 And so, you know, when he proposed this, people went bonkers over this, right?

Joe Rogan 18:16 Yeah.

Adam Frank 18:16 He was just saying, he's like, "Look, here's the 15 different things could be, and I'm gonna have to at least consider the possibility that it's artificial."Um, but for me, and some people got really angry and everything, but I thought like, "This is ... look-"

Joe Rogan 18:26 Why'd they get angry?

Adam Frank 18:27 Because there's been a thing in the community over the years, you know, SETI got a bad name, right?

Joe Rogan 18:33 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 18:33 SETI for a bunch of ... SETI was sort of thought as being like, oh, only whack-a-doodles do that and, you know.

Joe Rogan 18:37 But why? Why is that? Just because there was no results?

Adam Frank 18:40 Uh, I just think, you know, (sighs) there was, uh, you know what it is? It's because of shitty TV. (laughs) You know? I mean, I real ... In some ways, right? It's all, you know, it's prosthetic foreheads, right? It's the whole, we've had so much kinda crappy, you know, speculation about aliens, that trying to do anything scientific always had this whiff of sort of being a little, you know. And then there's the UFO stuff, you know, which is completely separate, has nothing to do with it.

Joe Rogan 19:01 But SET- SETI never really achieved any results, right? There was that one big blip that was highly popularized.

Adam Frank 19:08 The Wow! Signal.

Joe Rogan 19:09 Yeah.

Adam Frank 19:10 Yeah. But here's the thing about SETI. We never really did SETI that much, you know what I mean? Like, people have this idea like, "Wow, we've got telescopes all over the world-"

Joe Rogan 19:16 No.

Adam Frank 19:16 "... and they're looking." You know, so the government never funded a SETI study, a bi- anything major, right? So people, you know, all that SETI has done is like basically, you know, some dudes on a telescope get a little extra time, they're like, "Hey man, quick, let's go look at a star."

Joe Rogan 19:29 Right.

Adam Frank 19:29 You know? So, um, Jill Tarter, who's one of the, you know, the founders, one of the g- greats of SETI, she compares it to like, you know, we got an ocean that we need to look at and we've, so far we've looked at a thimble, right?

Joe Rogan 19:39 Was she the Jodie Foster character?

Adam Frank 19:40 She's the Jodie Foster character. Yeah, wearing the head-

Joe Rogan 19:42 In Contact?

Adam Frank 19:43 ... things and everything. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:43 Yeah.

Adam Frank 19:43 Yeah. So she's la- and it's a good point. Like, we haven't really looked yet.

Joe Rogan 19:47 Yeah.

Adam Frank 19:47 So the idea that, you know, the stars are silent or anything, it's like, man, come on, we haven't even begun to do a comprehensive survey.

Joe Rogan 19:54 TH- SETI makes me sad.

Adam Frank 19:55 Why?

Joe Rogan 19:56 Because I feel like they're wasting their time. And, uh, there's a, there was a documentary I saw once about some biologist who was convinced that the giant sloth was still alive, and that there was examples of them in South America. And this poor bastard had spent-

Adam Frank 20:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:11 ... uh, uh, more than a decade-

Adam Frank 20:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:13 ... looking for this giant sloth in South America. And, um, there was, there was this moment where he was chasing down this supposed dung pile and they were looking for it and they were, you know-

Adam Frank 20:26 I found it.

Joe Rogan 20:26 Yeah, someone was li- he, and he had this look in his eyes where like, he was like, "Holy shit, what if I waste my fucking life-"

Adam Frank 20:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:33 "... and my academic career-"

Adam Frank 20:34 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:35 "... chasing down something that's not even real?"

Adam Frank 20:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:37 That's kinda how I've always felt about SETI.

Adam Frank 20:39 Yeah, but that's not the way the people ... I mean, I, everybody who's involved in it, um, you know, I don't do SETI, you know? I mean, you know, I respect the people who are doing it, it's not, you know. But, you know, most of them are like, "Look, this is just a multi-generational thing."

Joe Rogan 20:50 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 20:51 You know? And if even if I don't find it, I'm laying the founda-

Joe Rogan 20:53 Right.

Adam Frank 20:53 It's like, you know, cathedrals, right?

Joe Rogan 20:54 Right.

Adam Frank 20:54 It took like, how many generations did it take to build a cathedral in medieval Europe, right?

Joe Rogan 20:57 Right, sure.

Adam Frank 20:58 So the first guy who laid the stone was like, "I'm not gonna see this." You know, "Maybe my great-grandkid."

Joe Rogan 21:02 Right.

Adam Frank 21:02 So most of them are like, you know, they're, you know, they know that this is gonna, you know, this is a h- this is a hu- it's like the most important question in humanity, right?

Joe Rogan 21:10 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 21:10 Are we alone? And they're willing to accept that. Like, you know, if you're gonna do it scientifically, you're gonna have to do it brick by fricking brick, you know? And so you just have to accept that and, you know, go on.

Joe Rogan 21:19 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 21:20 So, uh, but like I said, I think we've, we're, we're, you know, this is a new era now, so the idea of like, looking for signals, which assumes that somebody's putting out signals, right? That's, that's a huge assumption right there. But with ... Now that we know that there's all these planets and we're staring at all these planets, it's kind of, we need to be thinking differently about, you know, we need to be prepared for like w- what happens when we see something we don't understand.

Joe Rogan 21:39 Well it's also, we don't even use radio anymore.

Adam Frank 21:42 Right. Right. Cable and ...

Joe Rogan 21:43 I mean, ra- radio is dying-

Adam Frank 21:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 21:45 ... slowly but surely.

Adam Frank 21:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:46 Local radio is ...

Adam Frank 21:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:48 I mean, it's, it's kind of a, a thing of the past.

Adam Frank 21:50 Yeah. Right. The only thing that's really we're beaming out l- large scale is, uh, military radars.

Joe Rogan 21:55 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 21:55 You know? That's the main thing.

Joe Rogan 21:57 So there'd be some kind of signal, it wouldn't necessarily have to be radar or, or radio. It would just have to be something that we could detect.

Adam Frank 22:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:05 Some form of anomaly that seemed to be artificial.

Adam Frank 22:07 Right. Right. So here's like, here's some of the suggestions that people are talking about. So Avi Loeb at Harvard talks about the idea that, you know, maybe what you need, and you're gonna need the sensitivity for this. You're gonna see like rocket engines going back and forth between, you know, uh, but you have a planet, you have an, uh, a multi-planet civilization on in some-

Joe Rogan 22:22 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 22:23 And you're gonna see little flares as rockets decelerate and accelerate back and forth. People have talked about seeing city lights. You know? The telescopes are getting (laughs) you know, we're, we're, we're building these giant telescopes that are like 30 meters across.

Joe Rogan 22:33 Where there may be potential one day to see a city light.

Adam Frank 22:36 You could see city lights when the, you know, the, you're gonna see the planet come around. Like, this is all like, you know, we're, we're not-

Joe Rogan 22:40 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 22:40 We're not there yet.

Joe Rogan 22:41 Right.

Adam Frank 22:41 But, um, people talk-

Joe Rogan 22:42 20 years, 30 years.

Adam Frank 22:43 30 years, 40 years. You know, this is a long game.

Joe Rogan 22:45 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 22:45 And you gotta be playing the long game. At some point, we're gonna need to build stuff in space that's even larger so we can collect more light. Um-

Joe Rogan 22:50 And won't the issue also be that if we do see these city lights, we're seeing city lights from millions of years ago?

Adam Frank 22:55 Well, it depends. Like you ten- you know, a planet's at, that's, uh, in a star 10 light years ago, that's 10 years ago. So it's not like, you know, these things could still be around.

Joe Rogan 23:03 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Adam Frank 23:03 Here's a really interesting idea. Like, um, because you know, one of the things that I'm talking about in my book is like, how long does any civilization last, right? That's the real ques- all of this stuff is re- super relevant for us now, because the question is, what is the average lifetime of a civilization? So you might be able to see artifacts from civilizations that are gone. Like imagine if a civilization covered one of its moons in, in, um, uh, uh, uh, solar panels, right? The reflected light is gonna show a spectral signature of the, uh, the panels.

Joe Rogan 23:32 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 23:32 You know? So it's like they don't even have to necessarily be alive now that we still might be able to see stuff from their, you know, or, uh, evidence of like artificial structures or something that's not natural around them. So, you know, that's the thing, man. It's like we're really, we're just, we're about to take this step in st- in astrobiology, where we're, you know, we're already running models of, uh, uh, exobiospheres, right? Which we're asking like, "Oh, what kind of chemistry can you have if you don't ..." Like, if you have, uh, photosynthesis and it's, uh, on a planet around a, a star that's smaller than ours, that star is gonna be mostly red as opposed to yellow like our ... So the light that's coming off it is gonna be different. Can you have photosynthesis in that case? And people are like, "Yeah, you probably could." And what would it look like? So we're already doing the work to be ready for exobiospheres. So exocivilizations, we kinda need to be prepared for that too, looking for, you know, what, what could be the traces? What might we see from a distance from an exocivilization? They don't have to be signaling us, you know? They're just there and we're gonna catch some aspect of their being around.

Joe Rogan 24:27 I mean, if we did see rocket-... if we did see some sort of a signature from rockets going back and forth, or the m- w- we would have to assume that this is a similarly aged civilization to ours, whereas if we saw something that was a thousand, a hundred thousand years advanced-

Adam Frank 24:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:44 ... we probably wouldn't see that anymore.

Adam Frank 24:46 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 24:46 We'd probably see some sort of a manipulation of time and space.

Adam Frank 24:49 Right. If that's possible, right?

Joe Rogan 24:51 If it's possible.

Adam Frank 24:51 If it's possible, yeah, yeah. So that's... I mean, of course, that is one of the problems is that, um, when you start, you know, when you start pushing... It's just like saying, like, you know, "What is the, what is the, what are we gonna be like in a million years?"

Joe Rogan 25:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 25:00 Who the frig knows, you know?

Joe Rogan 25:01 Right.

Adam Frank 25:01 I mean, it's so long. So I think you start with what you know. And yet the cool thing about the planet part though is that, you know, unless they become, like, energy beings, you know, they're gonna have an effect on their planet. So looking at their planets to look for, you know, for spectral indications, that's pr- Even after they die, there might even be things. So that's, I think, a, you know, a good way to go.

Joe Rogan 25:22 Yeah, I'm k- uh, you know, I'm so curious as to what we're going to be able to do in a thousand years, in 10,000 years, in 100,000 years-

Adam Frank 25:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:30 ... if, if c- civilization does stay al- around and we figure out how to not melt the Earth or-

Adam Frank 25:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:36 ... boil the oceans or whatev- whatever the fuck we're doing wrong.

Adam Frank 25:38 All the other crap we're doing, yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 25:39 But there's, you know, a bunch of science fiction films that do speculate of what, what's going to be possible in the future and one of 'em was, uh, what was that recent one with, um, what's his name? All right, all right. What's his name? The fuck's his name?

Adam Frank 25:53 Matthew McConaughey? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:53 Matthew McConaughey. (laughs)

Adam Frank 25:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:55 That guy. Um, the one where they go through the wormholes, you know?

Adam Frank 25:59 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 25:59 How much do those movies piss you off?

Adam Frank 26:00 They don't. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 26:01 They don't at all?

Adam Frank 26:01 I, I do not... I mean-

Joe Rogan 26:03 But they get sub-

Adam Frank 26:04 So, science fiction. So, you know, I mean, I do not need my science fiction-

Joe Rogan 26:08 To be correct?

Adam Frank 26:08 ... to be correct. I mean-

Joe Rogan 26:10 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 26:10 ... it's, you know, if they wanna make it, you know? So I love The Expanse. The Expanse is my favorite show ever. I will talk about it forever.

Joe Rogan 26:15 What is The Expanse?

Adam Frank 26:15 The Expanse, yeah, The Expanse.

Joe Rogan 26:16 I don't even know.

Adam Frank 26:17 Yes, it's Expanse.

Joe Rogan 26:17 Thank you. Help me.

Adam Frank 26:19 Um, so The Expanse, it's a series of books, first of all, that I think are the best science fiction books in the last 15 years.

Joe Rogan 26:24 Really?

Adam Frank 26:25 Um, and then they made 'em into, made it into a show, uh, on Syfy. And then they had three years of it and, you know, at first people were like, "Oh, this is kinda hard to follow," 'cause, you know, it's a lot of stories coming together.

Joe Rogan 26:33 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 26:34 And then, um, you know, uh, this year it got 100%, uh, uh, uh, uh, ratings or- uh, it's- um, um, what is it?

Joe Rogan 26:41 Rotten Tomatoes?

Adam Frank 26:42 Rotten Tomatoes, 100% or 95%. Like, it- people love the show.

Joe Rogan 26:44 Really?

Adam Frank 26:44 And then frigging Syfy canceled it, you know? And so then Jeff Bezos just- yeah, Jeff Bezos just picked it up.

Joe Rogan 26:49 Oh, good for you, Jeff.

Adam Frank 26:49 Because people love this show, man.

Joe Rogan 26:51 Fuck yeah, rich man. (laughs)

Adam Frank 26:52 All right, so let me tell you why this show is amazing, right? So, um, it takes place about 200 years from now and we are truly a multiplanet species. Like, Mars now has, you know, you know, a billion people on it, uh, and it's become its own political power, right? It- it's separated from the Earth. And then the asteroid belt has also... People are colonizing and, you know, uh, living on the asteroid belt to, you know, mine resources. But the Belters, as they call them, are like, they're like second-class citizens. They're basically, like, super poor and they're, you know, they- they got the, the boot on their necks by either Earth or Mars. And so there's this whole interplanetary kinda political shit going on, which is just great, you know? Um, and then there's... You enter into this... They discover, like, the- what they call the protomolecule, like, you know, it was... This is basically this alien molecule that was really a device that some aliens threw our way billions of years ago that was, you know... I don't... How much am I supposed to give away, you know? I don't wanna... So no, not too much spoiler alerts.

Joe Rogan 27:45 It's okay. No one's gonna remember.

Adam Frank 27:46 All right. Good, good. Uh, so that-

Joe Rogan 27:47 It's so complicated.

Adam Frank 27:48 So that, you know, that becomes kind of a weapon in this, th- this political intrigue. So it's just a great story. It's kinda what people call it, like, the Game of Thrones in space.

Joe Rogan 27:57 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 27:57 But I'll tell you what I love about it is that this is what it's gonna look like. Like, they get the science on this show so right, as much as you can, right?

Joe Rogan 28:04 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 28:04 So, you know, in space, if your rocket motors are on, there's gravity because, you know, the rocket motors push up towards you and so yeah, you got gravity. You can walk around. When you turn the rocket motors off, you float around, right? On spinning things, you know, anything... So, you know, in the, in, in this universe, you know, in this, the, the fictional universe, they've taken the big asteroids and they've hollowed them out and spun 'em up. So people live on the inside, you know?

Joe Rogan 28:25 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 28:26 And, um, so at one point, like, the, the, one of the characters, the, the private eye, they got this great sort of film noir thing going on. And he pours a drink, you know, some whiskey, and the whiskey does this. It spirals into this... So they got, like, the Coriolis effect.

Joe Rogan 28:37 Ah.

Adam Frank 28:38 I felt like I peed in my pants. I was like-

Joe Rogan 28:39 (laughs)

Adam Frank 28:39 ... "Oh my God, they got the Coriolis effect right." So it's like, this is really what it's gonna look like. You know what I mean? This is-

Joe Rogan 28:45 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 28:45 If you wanna imagine 200 years from now, which I think is completely feasible that we have millions of people living in space, um-

Joe Rogan 28:51 Do they d- make any advances socially?

Adam Frank 28:54 Uh, no, no. (laughs) I mean, that's-

Joe Rogan 28:56 No?

Adam Frank 28:57 So, pretty much people are assholes to each other.

Joe Rogan 28:58 Oh.

Adam Frank 28:59 And that's what makes it-

Joe Rogan 29:00 Come on.

Adam Frank 29:00 Yeah. But it's only 200 years. That's a lot to ask for-

Joe Rogan 29:02 Uh, well, think about how different we are from people that lived 50 years ago.

Adam Frank 29:06 I mean, are we that different? I don't think-

Joe Rogan 29:07 I think we're quite a bit different.

Adam Frank 29:08 In what way? What do you think? Like, uh-

Joe Rogan 29:09 I think we're... Well, we have this ability to communicate now that we never did before.

Adam Frank 29:13 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:13 Where everybody has an ability to say their piece about how they-

Adam Frank 29:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:17 ... feel about how things are going.

Adam Frank 29:18 Yeah. No, that's interesting, right? And that has changed a lot of things-

Joe Rogan 29:21 Yeah.

Adam Frank 29:21 ... in a lot of ways. But I mean, has it changed who we are? I mean, I think evolution-

Joe Rogan 29:26 I think it's, I think it's chipping away at who we are-

Adam Frank 29:27 Yeah. Well, that would be good if it could.

Joe Rogan 29:28 ... in a good way. Um, you know.

Adam Frank 29:29 'Cause one of the things, my thing... So it- what's interesting about this fictional world too is that, like, climate, you know, the Earth is dealing with climate. The Earth has, like, 30 billion people on it and, you know, New York is halfway underwater. And so that's part of the story too, is that-

Joe Rogan 29:39 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 29:39 ... you know, so we're trying to navigate our way through now becoming a multiplanet species. Um, so, you know, that is a version of at least 200 years where you can really extrapolate the technologies and ask yourself... 'Cause that's real. I mean, I think that's really gonna happen. If we make it through climate change, that's the g- that's the prize at the end of the, you know, uh, uh, of the, of the story. If we make it through climate change, you know, with the stuff that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are doing, man, that's real. Like, that-

Joe Rogan 30:04 Is this what your number one concern is, climate change?

Adam Frank 30:06 My cli- I'm a single voter, yeah, climate change. 'Cause it's like, it is an existential dilemma, you know?

Joe Rogan 30:12 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 30:12 And I- because of all the writing I did for NPR and The New York Times, I have dealt with a lot of climate change denialists, man, and it drives me bananas.

Joe Rogan 30:18 What is their big... What's the big... 'Cause I, I recently had a discussion with someone on the podcast that didn't believe in climate change.

Adam Frank 30:24 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 30:24 And it was, it was a weird thing. It's- 'cause I kept pulling up all the different scientific consensus studies, all the different studies that show that we were having an impact. It's an undeniable impact.

Adam Frank 30:35 Undeniable.

Joe Rogan 30:35 Yeah.

Adam Frank 30:35 I mean, 30 years of science. Uh, yeah. No, I saw that. And she was-

Joe Rogan 30:38 (laughs)

Adam Frank 30:38 ... like, you know, "Well, that's what you say."

Joe Rogan 30:40 Well, I don't think that she's really thinking about the... In her case it was, uh-I don't think she really thinks about it. I think she-

Adam Frank 30:46 No.

Joe Rogan 30:46 ... just has this stance that she believes that that group that she's a part of-

Adam Frank 30:51 That's what it is.

Joe Rogan 30:51 ... subscribes to, so there's an ideological-

Adam Frank 30:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:54 ... uh, b- aspect of it-

Adam Frank 30:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:55 ... where you, you kinda... You have a predetermined pattern that you're supposed to follow-

Adam Frank 30:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:59 ... when you're on one side.

Adam Frank 31:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:00 You have to be pro-life. You have to be pro-S-

Adam Frank 31:03 All this whole-

Joe Rogan 31:03 ... Second Amendment.

Adam Frank 31:04 ... bucket of stuff that you gotta-

Joe Rogan 31:04 There's a bucket of stuff.

Adam Frank 31:05 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:06 Yeah, and that's... I think it's a giant problem with our culture-

Adam Frank 31:08 Oh, it's huge.

Joe Rogan 31:09 ... that w- there are two groups of people-

Adam Frank 31:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:11 ... that you can't... Like, to truly be an independent thinker, you're like one of these weirdos that's off in the fringe.

Adam Frank 31:16 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:16 You know, to, to be independent of either party.

Adam Frank 31:18 Right. Right. And the thing about science is the whole point of science, uh-

Joe Rogan 31:21 Is to be independent.

Adam Frank 31:22 ... is to be, and to have a, you know, the, the, what science is-

Joe Rogan 31:24 Facts.

Adam Frank 31:24 Science is a way of having public knowledge.

Joe Rogan 31:27 Yes.

Adam Frank 31:27 You know what I mean? Like, everybody has their opinions, whatever, but science is about the p- the stuff we can all be like, "Oh, yeah. That for sure." You know? It's this whole process that we've evolved over 400 years. And with climate denial, man, sometimes, you know, it's just, uh, you know, you wanna be like, "What? What are you saying, man?" Like, what? Uh, you know, read a book 'cause they'll say stuff. Like, here's my favorite one. "Uh, climate's always changing. Hey, man. Climate's always changing, man."

Joe Rogan 31:47 Which is true, right?

Adam Frank 31:48 Yeah, but if... So, so if somebody comes to me... 'Cause you know, what I want most for people, like I consider myself an evangelist of science.

Joe Rogan 31:54 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 31:54 I love science. And so if people come to me and they say, "Hey, man. Isn't the climate always changing?" I'm like, "Oh, man. Great question. You know, we actually know the answer to that." Yeah, it's changing, but it's changing... Like, what's the timescale?

Joe Rogan 32:04 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 32:04 You know? So it changes often on million-year timescales. But like from the, the last 10,000 years, since the last Ice Age, which was 10,000 years ago, which is amazing. Like there used to be a mile of ice above our heads, you know-

Joe Rogan 32:15 Right here.

Adam Frank 32:15 ... 10,000 years ago. Climate has been remarkably stable. Yeah, there's been little blips in it, but no major changes, right? So like, and I can show them the graph of this and everything. So if you're, if, you know, if they're interested, you know? I mean if they're... So if they're asking the question 'cause they wanna know, I'm, I'm all, I'm down to talk until, you know, the cows come home. But that's not what a cl- what typical deniers are. Deniers are like, "Yeah, climate's changing all the time."

Joe Rogan 32:35 But isn't it-

Adam Frank 32:35 And they're not interested in the answer, you know?

Joe Rogan 32:36 But isn't it, it's n- not only are they not interested in the answer, they're just trying to win.

Adam Frank 32:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:42 It's, it's not a real conversation because l- it's a really complex thing. If you dig an ice core and y- you, you tap down to 50,000-

Adam Frank 32:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:51 ... 80,000, 100,000 years, you see all these bizarre shifts of the climate-

Adam Frank 32:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:56 ... that could be indicative of super volcanoes and asteroidal impacts and solar flares. A lot of shit happens-

Adam Frank 33:02 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:02 ... over the course of a million years.

Adam Frank 33:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:04 But, uh, to, to w- hang all your ideas on the party's ideology-

Adam Frank 33:13 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 33:13 ... and to deny all this really interesting stuff and, and, and all these variables-

Adam Frank 33:19 That's what, that's what pisses me off. It's like, you know, what I try and tell people is like, "Look, climate science is like awesome." Like, it's science. It's got these amazing stories to tell about, you know, yeah, the Earth... I mean, Earth, over the past 4.5 billion years, the Earth has gone through the most profound changes and we've learned about... Aren't you interested in that? But no, right? They're, the, the, they basically have this thing where like, you know, "I'm, I'm part of this group and therefore I have to have this opinion." And I'm like, "Dude, it's science." Science doesn't care who you voted for, you know what I mean? Like the, the, uh, radiative properties of a CO2 molecule doesn't care whether you're wearing a blue tie or a red tie. And the fact that people can't make that distinction... And here's the real problem. Once you go down this slippery road of denying, of saying like, "Okay, that kind of science, I hate, man. They're all a hoax." Well, you know, America's prosperity and our safety has been built on science over the last 200 years. You know, you start to erode the whole thing. You can't just like call one group of, you know, scientists hoaxsters, you know, and say they're only doing it for... And not have it slowly infect everything else to the point where like, you know, China will be happy to eat our lunch, you know, when it comes scientifically. China's pumping huge amounts of money into science. They're not doing this. So like, you know, we're, we're limiting... And here's the other thing that really bums me out. Science is not a, uh, uh, it's not a lunch buffet. You know what I mean? You can't be like, "Oh man, can I have some of those antibiotics? I love antibiotics." And, "Oh yeah, the cell phone's great. I'll use that." And, "I really wanna fly in a plane, but climate change is bullshit."

Joe Rogan 34:38 Right.

Adam Frank 34:38 You know? I mean like, you know, either you accept that you live in a scientific society, it doesn't mean like you're slavishly adhered to anything's, you know, comes out in a journal late yesterday. But, you know, either you adhere to the idea that this method has produced miracles for us or, you know, give me the cell phone back (laughs) you know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 34:53 Right.

Adam Frank 34:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:54 Well, the scientific method is what has established the actual real facts of how things interact with each other that's allowed us to create technology.

Adam Frank 35:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:03 And I think they, they, they split that distinction.

Adam Frank 35:06 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 35:06 They focus on the technology and commerce-

Adam Frank 35:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:09 ... which is more important-

Adam Frank 35:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:11 ... in their eyes than the, the, the, the consequences of the environment.

Adam Frank 35:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:16 Or, what's gonna happen to the environment.

Adam Frank 35:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:18 There, this is... The big hope is that we're gonna figure it out, and I'm hopeful of that too, is that we're going to figure out some way to extract carbon from the atmosphere with devices or some enormous... Like there was some, uh, I don't know if it was a working prototype or it's just a concept, but there was an enormous building that was really an air filter.

Adam Frank 35:36 Yeah. Yeah, they're starting to look at carbon capture again. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:39 With places like Hong Kong-

Adam Frank 35:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:41 ... and places where they have ter- Beijing, where they have terrible, terrible pollution and more importantly, particulates in the atmosphere.

Adam Frank 35:47 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:48 So it's not just, uh, a, like a carbon thing. It's like they have shit in their air.

Adam Frank 35:52 Right, right. (laughs) That they're breathing into their lungs, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:54 Yeah. It's awful, man.

Adam Frank 35:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:55 It's-

Adam Frank 35:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:56 You know, I went to Mexico City a couple years back. Uh, I've been there twice, but I went there for a UFC and when we were flying in, I took photos and I put them on my Instagram. See, see if you can find those. They're fucking shocking, man.

Adam Frank 36:07 It's unbelievable, right?

Joe Rogan 36:08 It's like, what kind of a creepy animal is the human-

Adam Frank 36:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:12 ... where the, the human is capable of burning smoke-

Adam Frank 36:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:16 ... into the very air-

Adam Frank 36:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:17 ... that we need to take into our lungs-

Adam Frank 36:19 And you can see it and it's like a cloud.

Joe Rogan 36:19 ... to keep our body alive?

Adam Frank 36:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:21 Oh, you see it's so bad.

Adam Frank 36:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:22 People who've never been to Mexico City-

Adam Frank 36:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:24 ... like it's a stunner. Dude, my fucking head was killing me-

Adam Frank 36:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:27 ... after two days there.

Adam Frank 36:28 Yeah. Well, that's what like happened with Beijing when they had the Olympics, right?

Joe Rogan 36:30 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 36:30 They had to like, uh, you know, they had to stop all industrial activity-

Joe Rogan 36:33 Look at this.

Adam Frank 36:33 ... for like two months. Right. This is-

Joe Rogan 36:34 Well, LA used to look like this, right?

Adam Frank 36:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:36 Before the Clean Air Act, LA would have routine smog alerts. That's what I wrote. I wrote, "Mexico's LA on steroids."

Adam Frank 36:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:41 Mexico City is LA on steroids.

Adam Frank 36:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:42 I mean, it's so dark.

Adam Frank 36:44 It's so dark. You know the, uh, this whole question of what we'll do, like this brings us back to the aliens, right? What... So my, my, my point is, is that, you know, we're not the first time this has happened.Pretty much if you build a civilization, anybody who builds a civilization like we've done is gonna trigger climate change, right? It's like it's kind of unavoidable, right? So that's, goes back to the denier thing. You know, one of the things I'm trying to do with the book is flip the script, right? Because you talk to climate denialists and it's the same freaking set of things that like, "You know, man, dude we've been here before. We've, the question's been answered." But I'm trying to like flip it to show that like the whole question of, uh, you know, did we change the climate? That's what everybody focuses on. Did we, did we not, you know?

Joe Rogan 37:18 Right.

Adam Frank 37:18 And, uh, you know, from, when you take the 10,000 light year view, then what you realize is like, what did you expect? Like, we built a world-girdling civilization that uses a quarter almost of all the energy the biosphere uses, right? So you know, ev- you know, every day the biosphere has like, you know, 200 terawatts of energy that it's producing in sugars. We use about a quarter of that. Like, how did you expect there wasn't gonna be an impact, right?

Joe Rogan 37:41 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 37:41 So this changes the whole way we look at it. We don't need to argue about like did we or didn't we. Of course we did. This is what happens when you reach this level. And the other thing that, uh, you know, in the book that I'm trying to argue that also kind of pushes back against the deniers is like, well, climate deniers are human haters. You know? They're all like, you know, like the, you know, we did this amazing thing. We changed the atmosphere of an entire planet, right? Climate change shows on one level how freaking awesome we are. You know, how far we've gotten. And this, if you look at the, you know, from the, uh, perspective of, you know, species doing this again and again across the universe, this shows that we've reached a level, right? We have, we've leveled up, right?

Joe Rogan 38:16 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 38:16 You know I play a lot of video games, right? And so that whole thing when you level up and, you know, you get the, the sniper rifle. We've leveled up. And so now the question is, are we smart enough, you know, to see what we've done and make the right choices? 'Cause that's what the universe is gonna be. There's gonna be species that trigger climate change, it's gonna happen all the time, and some are gonna be like, "Oh, man. We need to do something." Right? And they'll make the actions, they'll be able to work it out, get it together. And other ones, you know, are just gonna end up in the cosmic waste pile. So we're like cosmic teenagers, and just like when you're a teenager and you're, you know, uh, you, you start to drive, right? Either you figure it out, you know, either you're drinking and you're partying and you drive the car off a cliff or you figure out how to handle your responsibility, and that's us now, you know?

Joe Rogan 38:52 Yeah, no, I agree with you. And uh, I, I feel like there's a fundamen- fundamental problem with the way people approach ideas. And uh, I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about right versus left, or-

Adam Frank 39:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:04 ... you know, Republican versus Democrat. They're not thinking of the consequences of arguing for, uh, against the possibility that climate change is a human-caused thing. They're not thinking of the consequences. They just wanna win.

Adam Frank 39:14 Right, right. And the thing-

Joe Rogan 39:15 They want their side to be right.

Adam Frank 39:16 They want their side to be right, and that, you know, what, what bums me out is they don't understand the, the consequences of that for the m- both the American enterprise and the human enterprise, right?

Joe Rogan 39:25 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 39:25 I mean, because you know, uh, if you, if you keep calling one branch of science a hoax, then what's to say the other branches like ... Well, you know, then you just, you're d- you're rolling down this, you know, slippery slope where like the other countries ... You know, like so most of the, of the, um, Nobel Prizes Americans have won were people from other countries. They came here to do their science because we had the best scientific enterprise.

Joe Rogan 39:47 Right.

Adam Frank 39:47 You know, uh, the next generation will just go somewhere else. They'll go to China, you know? So, um, there's that part of it and the other part is like, dude, it's just science. It doesn't care about your political views. And you know, it's not fair to use the cellphone and take the antibiotics and then turn around and like, and then suddenly treat this thing as if it was another thing in your bucket of, you know, ideologies.

Joe Rogan 40:08 I think also people think it, if you somehow or another compromise industry's ability to, to work that you're gonna kill jobs and you're gonna damage the economy and that's more important.

Adam Frank 40:19 Yeah, but I think it's the exact opposite, right? And if people really saw, right, I mean, um, you know, again, just like I'm saying climate change shows how powerful people have become and it also shows how powerful our, our enterprise, right? We did this by, you know, building businesses, by building enterprise, by ... And, and we built this world-girdling machine of civilization and it, you know, it, uh, the planet actually noticed.

Joe Rogan 40:41 Why do you like that term world-girdling?

Adam Frank 40:44 Because that's, it gives me the, and it's actually from-

Joe Rogan 40:45 Like a girdle that's wrapping around the Earth.

Adam Frank 40:47 (laughs) It comes from actually, I think it's because, it's from like, uh, Shakespeare, like from, uh, uh, uh, Caesar or something. I always thought of it as a good-

Joe Rogan 40:53 Hmm.

Adam Frank 40:53 But it's the idea that like, you know, in, um, the Foundation trilogy, the Isaac Asimov, you know, classic science fiction thing that there's this city of, uh, the planet of Trantor, which is the center of the, uh, the empire, the galactic empire.

Joe Rogan 41:03 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 41:04 And it's a, you know, it's basically the whole planet's been covered in city, you know? Like the, you know, the planet ha- You got to go down like 500 levels before you get to the, the surface. So that idea, you know, I mean, what I like about it is the idea that like, you know, we've done something, we're kind of covered the planet in our, our effect, you know?

Joe Rogan 41:19 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 41:19 Cover- covered the planet in our enterprise. So this issue of business is that like, um, there's a place I can stand in Rochester, I did this for NPR, and there's the Erie Canal, I can stand right on the edge of the Erie Canal, then there's the train tracks, you know? The tracks was laid, those tracks were laid back in, you know, the original line back in the 18, you know, whatever, 70s. Then there's a highway and then there's the airport right over there. Four different infrastructures, you know, which e- every one took huge amounts of money to build, one of which we don't even use anymore, right? So the idea of building an- a- a, uh, the, an infrastructure that will, that will not be carbon polluting, will not trigger climate change, it's like, dude, this is what we do, you know? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:56 Right.

Adam Frank 41:56 So the idea that it, it ... There's gonna be more jobs that come out of this than there could ever come out of fossil fuels, you know?

Joe Rogan 42:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 42:00 It's not a big deal for human beings 'cause that's what we do to switch infrastructures. And there will be a lot of wealth generated, uh, by, you know, uh, just like there was, you know, when we switched f- to the trains, you know?

Joe Rogan 42:12 Well, where is the argument coming that we, uh, 'cause, uh, there are people that just adopt the, the party line, the party line that, you know, human, climates always change and human beings barely affect it and it's not something to concentrate on. Where's that coming from?

Adam Frank 42:24 Again, I think it's the, you know, the gradual political polo- polarization of everything. You know, 'cause if you look at in the, um-Uh, we're now at the f- uh, what is it? 30-year anniversary of, um, Jim Hansen, who was, you know, the famous climate scientist, giving his testimony in front of Congress in 1988 on a hot sweltering summer day. We said, "Climate change is already happening," you know. And that made news everywhere and that was the first, like, public awakening that this was happening. And if you look at the first Bush administration, they were like, "Oh, yeah. We're ready to do something about this. Sure, we can do it." You know? Um, and then, it just gradually over time, as the whole political polarization thing happened, you can actually see the, uh, the, the very purposeful denial, right? They took a page out of the cigarette companies. You know, it's... For years, right? Cigarettes were like, "Ugh," and the cigarette companies were like, "No, it's not a problem." So, they were purposefully... You know, there were people who had money invested, right? You know, who, like, didn't want this change to happen.

Joe Rogan 43:11 Well, there's a, there's a documentary that, that goes into that. Um, what is the name of that? Merchants of Doubt?

Adam Frank 43:17 Merchants of Doubt.

Joe Rogan 43:18 Yeah. That's a good-

Adam Frank 43:19 That's a great book, man.

Joe Rogan 43:19 That's a-

Adam Frank 43:20 That's a really good book, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:21 Um-

Adam Frank 43:21 And the, and the documentary's really good too.

Joe Rogan 43:22 Yeah, but-

Adam Frank 43:23 So, it was purposeful, you know?

Joe Rogan 43:24 But it's... That's... It's also confusing. It's like, why are they doing that? Like, who's paying them to do that? Obviously, the cigarette companies would be paying the same people-

Adam Frank 43:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:32 ... to, um, put doubt into the idea that cigarettes are addictive or cigarettes cause cancer.

Adam Frank 43:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:38 And this is what had been done in the past.

Adam Frank 43:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:40 Now, the same people are involved in doing it with climate change.

Adam Frank 43:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:43 But why?

Adam Frank 43:44 Uh, well, you know, uh, one time, I wrote a piece for the NPR that was kind of positive about like, "Yeah, we can switch infrastructures," like I'm saying. And some guy wrote me back very angry and he said, "You know, the proven reserves," you know, the stuff, the oil that's in the ground, "has a wealth," you know? Has a val- monetary value, like, you know, that's in their, in their, the oil company's banks, you know? The... In their bank accounts, of like $1.5 trillion. And the guy said, "Dude, you know, people have gone to war for a lot less than $1.5 trillion."

Joe Rogan 44:11 Right.

Adam Frank 44:11 So, you know, i- i- if, if we were to really be like, "Hey, man. We can't burn that," you know? "You're gonna have to leave that in the ground," that's like th- their bank accounts going like (imitates cash register) you know?

Joe Rogan 44:19 Right.

Adam Frank 44:19 Down to zero pretty fast. So, what I don't get-

Joe Rogan 44:22 So, it's those industries?

Adam Frank 44:23 I think that's part of it, and then it gets... You get linked to other things and then it becomes this sort of like mass, uh... You know, becomes the political pol-... They use the political polarization to sort of, you know, sort of make this happen. It doesn't ha-... And, and you look... Other countries aren't doing this, right? That's the important thing.

Joe Rogan 44:37 Right.

Adam Frank 44:37 You know, other countries, there's always a little bit of climate denial going on, but we're like the only country that's got... As you can see 'cause we're the only ones who are not part of the, the Paris Accord.

Joe Rogan 44:45 Well, it's one of the weirder things about this right/left thing is the left is always supporting the environment. The, the left is all about the environment. The left is about clean air and clean water.

Adam Frank 44:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:54 And-

Adam Frank 44:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:54 How did that happen? I don't understand it.

Adam Frank 44:55 Yeah, yeah. I don't understand that either. Well-

Joe Rogan 44:56 The whole thing is very strange.

Adam Frank 44:58 Well, I got, you know... I mean, I have issues with, uh, you know, environmentalists too-

Joe Rogan 45:02 Yeah.

Adam Frank 45:02 ... because, um, I think at one of your shows I was watching, uh, you know, the whole idea of eco bros, right? And you get eco bro-ed by people.

Joe Rogan 45:08 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 45:08 And I've... You know, so I have a piece in the New York Times today, an op-ed, where I'm basically saying like, "Look, man. The planet's gonna be fine." Like, you know, long term, there's nothing we can throw at the biosphere that is gonna kill it. We're... It's not about saving the planet. The Earth is not a fuzzy little bunny, you know? The planet is powerful and it's really about saving us. Let's be honest about what's going on and there's gonna be all kinds of ethical choices that go on that... You know, the polar bears may not be able to come along with us on the ride here, you know? We need a healthy biosphere with div- you know, a lot of biodiversity, but, you know, we're part of it and we're gonna have an impact. There's no such thing as no impact. And, you know, already I'm getting eco bro-ed. People are like, "Hey, man. Dude, you just... You don't, you don't care about life. Yeah, what about..." I just like, "Oh, come on, man." And I just put it in the thing. I said, "We need to be wise and compassionate," you know? But they're like, "Man."

Joe Rogan 45:49 Well, people have convenient opinions. I mean, this is, this is one of the, the things you get involved with when you start talking with people about really important issues. I mean, it's like what we were talking about earlier. They wanna be right.

Adam Frank 46:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:02 And they wanna be on the side that's righteous and with virtue and ethics.

Adam Frank 46:06 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 46:07 And they find anything that, that you disagree-

Adam Frank 46:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:09 ... or that they disagree with what you're saying, they don't ask you questions. They don't go, "What do you think the-"

Adam Frank 46:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:14 "... implications are?"

Adam Frank 46:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:15 Or like, "How do you... How do we minimize the effects and the negative consequences-"

Adam Frank 46:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:18 "... of our..." They just immediately wanna say, "You are-"

Adam Frank 46:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:22 "... insensitive."

Adam Frank 46:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:23 "You are an asshole."

Adam Frank 46:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:25 "You are the problem."

Adam Frank 46:26 Yeah. Y- you know my way around that? And that's what the whole book is about, is to like... When you've got a polarization, right? You know, where, you know, you're either this or you're that. The thing that... And this is like a mathematical idea, is to go orthogonal, you know? When you d- when you, you know, you go... Because, you know, it's a line basically, right?

Joe Rogan 46:40 Right.

Adam Frank 46:40 You're either on this side or that side. Go 90 degrees to it, now you're in a whole new space, right?

Joe Rogan 46:44 Now you're up and down instead of left and right.

Adam Frank 46:46 Exactly. And now, like, the questions that... So, you see this in, like, revolutions in science, right? So, you know, look at Einstein and what happened when Einstein came up with, uh, relativity. Everybody at the time was like, you know, um... They were all concerned with what they called the luminiferous ether that... You know, light needed... Light's a wave and everybody thought it needed something to propagate through, right? Radio w- or, um, water waves go through water. Soundwave goes through air. So, you know, the whole thing was about this ether, the luminous ether. Is this... Does it exist? Does it not exist? Blah, blah, blah. Einstein was like, "You know, I'm not really interested in that problem. I'm not even gonna do it." He just like changed the whole thing and he just said, "Look. Here's two new ideas. They have nothing to do with the luminous ever- ether." And like, all the old questions, all the old battles kinda just fell away and they didn't even make sense anymore. So, that's what I'm trying to do in the book, is say, "Look. When you look at climate change as a planetary transition, a predictable planetary transition, the whole idea of like environmentalism versus, you know, business interests and, uh, you know, right, Republicans versus Democrats, it just doesn't... You know, it's not even relevant anymore." What matters is that this is gonna happen. We should have expected it to happen and now the question is, do we become a cosmic winner or a cosmic loser? And we have to think about the biosphere differently. We have to think about our place in the biosphere differently. And the old arguments... So, that's why, you know, sometimes (laughs) with climate change deniers, I'll throw this stuff at them and it's really kind of fun to watch 'em be like, "Bleh," 'cause they're expecting me to say like A, B, and C, and they've got D, E, and F in response. And I throw this stuff at 'em and they're just like, "Eh." You know?

Joe Rogan 48:07 (laughs)

Adam Frank 48:07 And I'm not doing it just to fight with climate change, but I'm... You know, I think it's true, but...

Joe Rogan 48:10 Well, w- who was it that was on the podcast that was talking about climate stabilization techniques and that this is probably the future? Was it Boyan? Maybe. I don't know. Um, anyway. What people are really worried about when, when you talk to people that understand the history of the human race and the history of the earth is climate cooling. They think that climate cooling is far more terrifying than climate warming 'cause if we go into a giant ice age again-

Adam Frank 48:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:35 ... I mean, way more people are gonna die, a terrible loss of resources, and it could be devastating to the human race.But that is ... Is, is that, does, is that something you agree with?

Adam Frank 48:46 Yeah. No, I don't think so. I mean, it's, it's true. You know, and here's inter- something interesting. We're kinda overdue for an ice age, right?

Joe Rogan 48:52 Yeah. Well, that was the thing in the '70s. They were saying that we're in the verge of an ice age.

Adam Frank 48:56 Yeah. I mean that, you know, there, there was just a couple of guy ... I mean that whole th- You know, 'cause that, that's often something that climate deniers will throw at you, "In the '70s, every-"

Joe Rogan 49:02 Mm-hmm. Right.

Adam Frank 49:02 You know, it was like, there was like one or two guys who said that, and then it got picked up on the news. But the climate community at that time was not like, "Oh my God, it's cooling."

Joe Rogan 49:08 Right.

Adam Frank 49:08 But here's the interesting thing for me, and it fits into this whole idea, is that like we're holding off an ice age. Like, there may never be ... If human- humanity is successful and we navigate the, uh, Anthropocene ... You know that term, the Anthropocene, that we've now entered, we've now entered the human-dominated era. We've been, for the last 10,000 years, the geological epoch has been what they call the Holocene. That's all of human civilization happened in the Holocene. You know, it's pretty warm, it's pretty wet, moist. You know, everything's not locked up in ice. Um, and it's an interglacial period. And if we weren't around, yeah, in another 1,000, 3,000, 5,000 years there'd be another, uh, ice age. But the Anthropocene that we're triggering, um, could hold off ice ages forever, right? As long as we're around, there won't be another ice age 'cause we've already added enough warmth to the planet that it overcomes the effects that trigger an ice age. So like, what are the ethical responsibilities of that? That's what I try and tell the, you know, the environmentalists. Like, you know, you got this image like, oh, we gotta save the Earth. But they're thinking of like the Holocene. And it's like, well, you know, the, the planet, even with us, even if we successfully keep biodiversity rich and ... It's not gonna be the Earth we started with, you know, 'cause we're here. So yeah, what about the species that never form because we held off the ice age? You know? I mean, forever. Like, what about the ethical responsibility to those? So like, it opens-

Joe Rogan 50:20 Boy, that is a long equation though, isn't it?

Adam Frank 50:24 Uh, in what way?

Joe Rogan 50:25 T- to try to contemplate what species would've existed if we allowed the Earth to cool, and our responsibility for allowing the Earth to cool so that the potential for new species to advance.

Adam Frank 50:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:35 That's like, fuck those species. Let's keep, let's keep this place warm so we can stay alive.

Adam Frank 50:39 (laughs) Well, all I'm saying, and the only reason I'm raising that ... I'm not, you know, I'm raising that because-

Joe Rogan 50:42 Right.

Adam Frank 50:43 ... we don't ... When we talk about climate change, what you get sometimes with the environmental movement is this sort of like, "The polar bear, the polar bear."

Joe Rogan 50:48 Right.

Adam Frank 50:48 And it's like, what I'm trying to say is look, I love polar bears. Kinda funny that polar bears are always a thing because polar bears will rip your head off and drink your blood.

Joe Rogan 50:54 They're fucking ruthless.

Adam Frank 50:55 In a second. (laughs) Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 50:55 The most ruthless.

Adam Frank 50:56 Apex predator, man. But-

Joe Rogan 50:57 Not only that, they're one of the rare bears that doesn't eat anything but meat.

Adam Frank 51:00 Yeah. Right, right. And so it's so funny that we're like, "Oh, polar bears." Like, uh, polar bear-

Joe Rogan 51:03 My friend Kevin is a biologist and he said like when you get polar bear babies, like right out of the womb, he said they're like the p- like the alien from the chest, you know, the chest burster scene.

Adam Frank 51:13 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:13 He said they're literally like (chattering)

Adam Frank 51:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:16 Like, right out of the womb-

Adam Frank 51:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:17 ... they're looking to kill and eat.

Adam Frank 51:18 Yeah. You're like, "Oh, you're so cu- ... Oh, whoa. Wait a minute." Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:20 Yeah. It's like, that is a fucking ... Obviously p- people have tamed them and-

Adam Frank 51:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:23 ... fed them to the point where they don't ... never worry about-

Adam Frank 51:26 They're not looking to chew your head off.

Joe Rogan 51:27 Yeah.

Adam Frank 51:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:27 But that's a fucking predatory-

Adam Frank 51:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:29 ... enormous-

Adam Frank 51:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:30 ... animal.

Adam Frank 51:31 Yeah. So I'm, I'm raising that point to say like, look, the thing we're going through now is a ... It's an epoch-making planetary transition. We n- ... And we're part of it, right?

Joe Rogan 51:39 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 51:39 And whether or not we're still part. That's the question, whether or not we're still part of it (laughs) a thousand years from now, you know, is the big issue. So you know, there are ethical issues about the polar bear, right?

Joe Rogan 51:48 Right.

Adam Frank 51:48 But there are also ethical issu- th- you know, th- we can't just return the Earth to some pristine state. We're here. There's seven billion of us.

Joe Rogan 51:55 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 51:56 You know. So you know, you have to ... We're gonna have to understand like there's this deeper ethical question about what does an Earth look like that's been changed by us that's healthy but, uh, still has us on it? It may not have polar bears, you know? It may have rich phytoplankton, you know? Uh, and it may be, be, uh, very species diverse, but some of the species may not come with us. So like we can't ... This sort of like thing of like, oh, the pristine Earth. There is no more pristine Earth, we ... You know? We've been changing the Earth since we were here. So it's like, how do we have a healthy, a rich healthy biosphere with us and our civilization still in it?

Joe Rogan 52:28 And the thing about things that have gone an- ins- extinct in the past, and more than 90% of everything that's ever existed is extinct, the problem is we didn't know then.

Adam Frank 52:38 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 52:39 We didn't have a, you know, a, a checklist.

Adam Frank 52:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:42 Like, oh, w- spotted owl. Check. Got it.

Adam Frank 52:45 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:45 You know, tree frog. Check. Got it.

Adam Frank 52:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:47 Now we do, and when one goes away we kinda freak out.

Adam Frank 52:50 Yeah. And that's ... You know, I mean, you know, we have to have compassion for life 'cause we're part of it. Like, without the compassion, you know, we end up with, uh, as, uh, uh, Gavin Schmitt, a friend of mine, calls econo- We have ecological hooliganism, right?

Joe Rogan 53:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 53:00 We just do crazy ... We're just dumping shit into rivers like ... You know, you don't have to do that, man. Um, but you know, one ... In my talks on this, I'll show like the polar bear, the lonely polar bear on the-

Joe Rogan 53:09 Yeah.

Adam Frank 53:09 ... island. And you know, like, "Oh yeah, everyone's really, you know, bummed out about this." And then I'll show like a velociraptor, right? You know? Who's crying for the velociraptor, right?

Joe Rogan 53:16 Right.

Adam Frank 53:17 Species come and go, so we have to ... You know, and the Earth goes through these huge transitions. I'm not saying be like, don't care about those species. But you gotta have the bigger picture with us in it. Here's the problem with cl- the, with the, uh, uh, the environmental movements. You know, with the w- sometimes the way it gets framed ... It's not just the environment movement. It's the way we talk about climate change. We think of ourselves as being a plague, right? "Oh, human beings, we suck." Right? That's the basics. That's the only story. You have ... We have two stories: it's not happening, or we suck. And my whole thing is like, that is the wrong ... Not only is that story wrong, it's unhelpful. You know? We are what the biosphere is doing now. You know, millions of years ago it was grasslands. You know, grasslands were a new innovation and they changed the planet. You have a lot of grass- You know, the biosphere evolved grasslands. It- they swept across the planet. They changed how the planet worked, and then the Earth moved on with it, went on to the new experiment. We are what the p- We're exactly that. We are like the dinosaurs or the grasslands or the blue-green algae that created, uh, the oxygen in the atmosphere. And like, you know, we're not ... We're ... You know, there's no difference between a city and a forest on some bi- biospheric level. We don't suck. The question is whether we're smart enough to still be part of what the, what the biosphere is using us to trigger. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 54:28 Mm-hmm. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the, the reintroduction of extinct animals through genetic cloning?

Adam Frank 54:34 Uh, you know, I watched Jurassic Park. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:38 Yeah. But they're, they're, they're talking about doing it, like with woolly mammoths.

Adam Frank 54:41 Yeah. Well-

Joe Rogan 54:42 This is a real possibility someday.

Adam Frank 54:44 Yeah. I know.

Joe Rogan 54:44 Because-... the close ancestor of the woolly mammoth is still alive.

Adam Frank 54:48 Right. I know. I'd be down for seeing a woolly mammoth. In my, in my... the, the-

Joe Rogan 54:51 Hmm.

Adam Frank 54:51 ... Science Museum in Rochester, there's a woolly mammoth that they found, you know. And sometimes I'm looking at that thing like, "That's a giant hairy-ass elephant, man." And it was walking around right in my... You know. I think, like, depending on what you do with it, you know, trying to reintroduce it into the biosphere could be a little dangerous. I mean, the thing... Look, climate change is, uh... This is something I like to say, climate change is not our fault. And what I mean by that is we, uh, you know, we found fossil fuels and they were awesome, you know, and they were just a continuation of what we'd always done, you know. And so we inadvertently... Climate change was a mistake, you know. Now, if we don't do something about it, it's our fault, right? But, you know. And so you want to be really careful about unintended consequences, you know. So this is my same thing with, uh, uh, with geoengineering. People talk like, "Oh, we should, you know, put, uh, uh, partic- particulates in the atmosphere to make it more reflective."

Joe Rogan 55:37 Hmm.

Adam Frank 55:37 I'm like, "Man, dude, we triggered the whole... We triggered climate change because, you know, we didn't know what we were doing, we didn't know what the consequences were."

Joe Rogan 55:42 If we put those particles up there, how do we get them out?

Adam Frank 55:44 Well-

Joe Rogan 55:45 Are we gonna scoop them out with a net? Like, what if-

Adam Frank 55:46 Well, no, no, no. They'll rain down.

Joe Rogan 55:47 ... what if it goes bad?

Adam Frank 55:47 You gotta keep putting them in, that's the problem.

Joe Rogan 55:49 Oh.

Adam Frank 55:49 You gotta keep putting them in. So what happens if, like, one nation decides they don't want to do it anymore, you know, and, or-

Joe Rogan 55:54 Right.

Adam Frank 55:54 ... the whole thing falls apart? Now, suddenly, you're gonna get massive changes in... So, like, anything like that, like, why don't we just work on not using fossil fuels (laughs) you know what I mean? Like-

Joe Rogan 56:03 Right.

Adam Frank 56:03 ... why take the hardest solution that's got the most uncertainty as opposed to the simpler solution, which just means building a different infrastructure?

Joe Rogan 56:09 Yeah. And, well, especially in California. I mean, this is one of the weirder places ever to not see solar power when it never-

Adam Frank 56:16 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:16 ... s- it never rains.

Adam Frank 56:17 Should be everywhere.

Joe Rogan 56:18 Everywhere.

Adam Frank 56:18 Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:19 Like, most things should be run on solar power.

Adam Frank 56:20 Yeah. Why not, man? You got... And solar's so efficient now. Like, those, those panels.

Joe Rogan 56:23 Well, it's also very difficult to get it up and running. Like, I had a friend of mine who had his done for four or five months before he got approved-

Adam Frank 56:31 Wow.

Joe Rogan 56:32 ... because he said they, they p- r- they make it difficult-

Adam Frank 56:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:35 ... for you.

Adam Frank 56:36 Yeah, which is crazy, right? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:37 Yeah. To, to be on solar power and not be on the grid.

Adam Frank 56:39 Yeah. So, you know, I mean, these are all the kinds of things that we're gonna have to work out. I, I'm hopeful. People are like, "Are you hopeful or not hopeful?" 'Cause, you know, I mean, I ran these... I did these models. One of the pieces of research we did was we modeled planets and civilizations, like alien civilizations.

Joe Rogan 56:51 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 56:52 We, you know, developed a simple mathematical model about, you know, how a civilization will use a planet's resources to make more babies, alien babies, and then how the... You know, by using those resources, you feed back on the planet, right? And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to model the possible outcomes, like what is the generic outcome, you know? If I've got 100,000 civilizations all being born in different places, what's the... You know, in general, what happens? And what we found is, like, basically four different possibilities. One was good news. Like, in these models, there was like, you know, the, the population shoots up, the planet's temperature shoots up, but they come to a nice steady state. Like, you know, you know, the population's stable, everything's good. So there, in those models, was hope. We also saw die-off, where, like, the population, you know, skyrockets, the planet, uh... They overshoot the carrying capacity of their planet, and then you get something like 70% of the population dying off. So, like, o- you know, seven out of every 10 people you know is gone. So, you know... But then you come to a steady state. So lo- maybe if you can survive the disaster, you can... You're still there. But we also-

Joe Rogan 57:49 And the real problem with surviving the disaster is how much of the information gets restored.

Adam Frank 57:53 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 57:53 Because you think about if you're killing seven out of ten people, how many of those seven people are the ones who know how to make cell phones?

Adam Frank 57:58 Yeah, exactly. That's a dark age, right?

Joe Rogan 58:00 Yeah.

Adam Frank 58:00 That's what happens in the Dark Age. I remember the first time I went to Europe and I saw those Roman, you know, the aqueducts, man, like five stories tall carrying water. You know, and by the, uh, 900 AD, nobody knew how they got built, you know?

Joe Rogan 58:09 Yeah. There's a few of those dips in human civilization.

Adam Frank 58:12 Right, right. And so it's not clear, especially with a society as complex as ours, right? If, like, the food doesn't arrive in my grocery store, what do I do?

Joe Rogan 58:19 Right.

Adam Frank 58:20 Right? You know, I garden, but, you know, (laughs) I'm not, you know...

Joe Rogan 58:22 It's not enough.

Adam Frank 58:22 Not enough, right?

Joe Rogan 58:23 It's not gonna keep you alive.

Adam Frank 58:24 Yeah. So for a complex civilization like ours, even if you don't go extinct, you may not be able to have this kind of civilization.

Joe Rogan 58:30 Hmm.

Adam Frank 58:30 But we did find collapse. We did find complete, like, extinction curves as well, where, you know, the, uh, population went way up and then boom, dropped like a stone. And when even... We've found those... We built into the models the possibility for the civilization to switch from a high impact resource to a low impact resource, like fossil to solar.

Joe Rogan 58:46 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 58:46 And sometimes... 'Cause, you know, planets have minds of their own, you know?

Joe Rogan 58:49 Right.

Adam Frank 58:49 There's an internal dynamics to planets and you push them far enough and they're just gonna roll off. So we'd have ones where the, the population went way up, they made the switch, and then the population started to come down, the planet started to cool down and then...

Joe Rogan 59:00 Did you factor in random geological events, random-

Adam Frank 59:04 No.

Joe Rogan 59:04 ... solar events, random-

Adam Frank 59:06 No.

Joe Rogan 59:06 ... asteroid events?

Adam Frank 59:07 This was just... Yeah. This was really all about just planet, uh, civilization and its feedback on the planet.

Joe Rogan 59:11 Mm-hmm. Right.

Adam Frank 59:12 You could, we could build models like that, but-

Joe Rogan 59:13 That would be one of the major issues with any advanced civilizations. It's a matter of time before something happens.

Adam Frank 59:20 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:20 Right? As we said, you know, we know that Mars has been hit before.

Adam Frank 59:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 59:23 We know Earth's been hit, the moon's been hit.

Adam Frank 59:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:25 Everything... I mean, the