Joe Rogan Experience #1776 - Steven E. Koonin

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. SKSteven E. Koonin0:00

      (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Well, uh, thank you for being here. Thanks, uh, um, I'm really appreciative of your time and the fact that you, uh, are willing to talk about this. This is a, uh, a very interesting book and extremely controversial. And I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I think it's a part of the times we're living in.

   3. SKSteven E. Koonin0:33

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      How many co-... Your, your book is called Unsettled?

   5. SKSteven E. Koonin0:36

      Correct. That, uh, there, there it is, right?

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:38

      How many, yes. How many copies of this book have you sold?

   7. SKSteven E. Koonin0:40

      So, so we've sold, since it was published at the end of April, so about 10 months ago, we've sold more than 120,000 copies.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:47

      120,000 copies since you got it.

   9. SKSteven E. Koonin0:48

      Yeah. Which, I, you know, I don't know anything about publishing, but my agent and publisher are sort of amazed at the numbers.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       That's a lot.

   11. SKSteven E. Koonin0:55

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       And without much fanfare from the media, if any.

   13. SKSteven E. Koonin0:58

       Well, depends which media you look at. Um-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Where, where have you gotten coverage?

   15. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02

       So, so I've gotten good coverage from the Wall Street Journal. Uh, but if you look at the New York Times, Washington Post, uh, not very good coverage at all. Didn't make the New York Times bestseller list.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       That seems strange 'cause it's a lot of copies.

   17. SKSteven E. Koonin1:16

       Yeah, right. Well, you would think, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Yeah.

   19. SKSteven E. Koonin1:18

       Okay. CNN, nothing. Um, and, uh, I think, you know, people are just ignoring it, which really surprises me.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:26

       Now, your book is on the climate. It's on climate change and climate science, and we should just establish right away, um, just because I know you're gonna experience so- some criticism, right?

   21. SKSteven E. Koonin1:38

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       Clearly, um, first of all, your credentials, you graduated from high school at 16.

   23. SKSteven E. Koonin1:44

       (inhales deeply)

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       You, uh, w- went to MIT.

   25. SKSteven E. Koonin1:46

       Uh, Caltech first.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:47

       Caltech.

   27. SKSteven E. Koonin1:47

       I was an undergrad at Caltech, and then I went to MIT. I did a PhD there in theoretical physics in three years, and then I went back to Caltech, where I was on the faculty for 30 years.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:58

       And you were on the faculty at 23 years of age, which is-

   29. SKSteven E. Koonin2:01

       That's correct.

   30. JRJoe Rogan2:02

       ... pretty extraordinary.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Really? …

   1. SKSteven E. Koonin15:00

      through the bigger committee that was approving such things. People would say things like, "We can't say that even if it's true because it gives ammunition to the deniers."

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:11

      Really?

   3. SKSteven E. Koonin15:11

      Yeah, yep.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:12

      Now how frustrate... As a scientist-

   5. SKSteven E. Koonin15:14

      Well, I-

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:14

      ... how frustrating is that?

   7. SKSteven E. Koonin15:15

      I got so frustrated, 'cause I'm used to, through Jason and others, of giving advice to decision-makers. You play it straight. You, you know, you say, "This could be. This might not be. Here are the options," and so on, but you don't try to spin the advice to get one answer or another, and I was really annoyed by that. I wound up resigning from the committee, but I wound up then publishing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Um, they gave me 2,000 words, which was great. We got a couple of thousand online comments. Many people said, "Thanks for writing this, uh, and trying to expose the real science to what's going on." Uh, of course, the establishment trashed me completely, even though I'm just repeating what's actually in the reports and in the research.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:01

      And what was the nature of their criticisms when they trashed you?

   9. SKSteven E. Koonin16:03

      Oh, you know, "You're cherry..." And, and we get it to this day with the book. You know, "You're cherry-picked." Um, "You're, um, uh, misleading." Um, "What you said is actually not true," and so on, even though I point to, you know, chapter and verse in the reports where these things are said.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:22

       So is this... uh, uh, the scientists that are claiming you're cherry-picking, are they... are they signaling to the other people that follow the ideology that you're not to question climate change and that anything that you say that in any way calls doubt to the settling of the data gives some sort of ammunition to the people-

   11. SKSteven E. Koonin16:49

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:49

       ... who are the real climate deniers, who are a real problem?

   13. SKSteven E. Koonin16:52

       Yes.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:52

       You-

   15. SKSteven E. Koonin16:52

       Indeed, indeed.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:53

       Yeah.

   17. SKSteven E. Koonin16:53

       And, look, um, my sense is that this is a problem. It's not an existential threat by any means, and it's a problem that we have time to deal with, and we should deal with it, uh, in time in a graceful way. But I think... You know, when the book first came out, there appeared an article in Scientific American written by, I think, 13 mainstream climate scientists that was a couple thousand words of mostly ad hominem criticisms, a couple of substantive criticisms, which I have rebutted, I think, quite effectively. Um, but it, it, you know, put a, a marker in the ground that people who didn't want to have the book understood, uh, could point to and said, "Aha!" You know, "Those guys said Koonin's an idiot."

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:38

       Now what, what criticisms made sense that you could rebut?

   19. SKSteven E. Koonin17:43

       Um, well, you know, they said, for example, I said sea level rise was not accelerating. And of course, I got a whole chapter that talks about the ups and downs of sea level rise. But they would criticize, uh, a review of what I said by somebody else, or they would say sometimes, you know, "Koonin said that, and it's true, but it's not important because of A, B, and C."

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:09

       If you don't mind, pull that microphone just a little closer to your face there.

   21. SKSteven E. Koonin18:12

       Yeah, sure, sure. How's that?

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:13

       Perfect.

   23. SKSteven E. Koonin18:13

       Great, okay.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:13

       Now, so these criticisms that were levied against you, did, did anyone, uh, of prominence that is a climate scientist come out and say, "This is a very interesting analysis of the data. These are things that I hadn't considered. Koonin makes a lot of really good points"?

   25. SKSteven E. Koonin18:29

       Uh, not in public.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:30

       Not in public.

   27. SKSteven E. Koonin18:30

       Not in public. In private. You know, when I first sorta came out in, uh, that Wall Street op-ed in 2014, uh, I had a chat afterward with a... the chair of a very prominent earth science department at one of our best universities.I won't say who or where, but suffice it to say, it's somebody who is firmly in the business. And he said, "You know, Steve, I agree with almost everything you said, but I don't dare say it in public."

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:00

       Wow.

   29. SKSteven E. Koonin19:01

       All right? You know, there's a whole organization called Covering Climate Now, which is a consortium of media, including the BBC and NPR, I think, and so on, who have ... you can look them up on the web. And they have signed an agreement, or made an agreement, that they will not cover anything that diverges from the narrative.

   30. JRJoe Rogan19:23

       And who establishes the narrative? Like, where, wh- what's the top of the heap?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   And this is from…

   1. SKSteven E. Koonin30:00

      second thing to notice is that in the most recent decades, at the right-hand end of the chart, Greenland is actually starting to melt less rapidly than more rapidly. Even as the globe has been warming.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:15

      And this is from 2010 to 2020?

   3. SKSteven E. Koonin30:18

      Yeah. Correct. And then, if you go back to 1930, you can see it was melting just as rapidly in 1930...

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      Mm.

   5. SKSteven E. Koonin30:27

      ... as it was in the last decade or two. And the human influences were less than a fifth of what they are today in 1930.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:38

      So what are the other influences if they're not just-

   7. SKSteven E. Koonin30:40

      That- that's an excellent, uh, question, and the answer is, this has got to do a lot with the long-term money decade cycles of ocean currents and winds in the North Atlantic. And you can find papers that say that.All right? And there are research papers. Uh, but you don't hear any of that from the official reports or the media.

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:04

      So the, the, the different factors that play into what we think the different factors are that play into the melting is greenhouse gases-

   9. SKSteven E. Koonin31:14

      Warming. Yes, warming.

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       ... warming.

   11. SKSteven E. Koonin31:16

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:16

       And what are the other ones?

   13. SKSteven E. Koonin31:17

       The others are ocean currents that have their own dynamics that are not, you know, just getting warmer. They get warmer and colder. And the, the weather, if you like, because how much ice Greenland loses every year is a balance between how much snow accumulates, that's the weather, and how much flows out from the glaciers.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       And those are the only factors?

   15. SKSteven E. Koonin31:38

       Basically. There's a little bit of melting and so on that you have to worry about, but those ups and downs are really weather.

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:44

       Does anything have to do with, uh, the, where the sun aligns with the earth and the cycle-

   17. SKSteven E. Koonin31:50

       Uh, well, yeah. So, so-

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:51

       ... procession of the equinoxes?

   19. SKSteven E. Koonin31:52

       So, uh, well, no that's much too slow. I mean, over this period, year by year, uh, it certainly has a seasonal effect. These are though annual values, so they average out the seasons. But of course, the ice grows in the winter and then it melts in the, uh, summertime.

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:08

       So there's all this data that shows the ups and the downs and there's all this data that shows that sometimes it's l- you... they're losing ice and sometimes-

   21. SKSteven E. Koonin32:15

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:15

       ... they're losing less ice and gaining ice.

   23. SKSteven E. Koonin32:17

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:17

       Like, w- w- how do they know what is causing this or the... do they just assume that there's these, this series of factors and h-

   25. SKSteven E. Koonin32:26

       They don't. They don't, okay? It, it is... you know, it's a combination of modeling and physical principles and other data that let them try to say how much is natural variability and how much is human influence. There's no doubt that if the globe keeps warming, that that warming might eventually come to dominate the ice loss, the melting. But right now, and for the foreseeable many decades, uh, it is these natural variabilities. And instead, in the media, all you hear is that it's been melting faster and faster over the last two decades.

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:02

       And this media narrative, do you think this is just one of those things where people gravitate towards the most alarmist perspective so that's the one that makes the headline? Is it because of the green e- energy industry-

   27. SKSteven E. Koonin33:18

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:18

       ... that-

   29. SKSteven E. Koonin33:18

       It, uh, it's all of the above, but, uh, you know, I put a lot of it on activist reporters. So this statement that Greenland was melting just as fast in the 1930s as it is today, I made that... I got fact-checked by a reporter, John Greenberg at PolitiFact, and he deemed the statement mostly false. Okay? And you can look at how he analyzed things. He talked to some experts. It's entirely misleading. All right? So I got a non-expert reporter with an agenda and a platform criticizing what's actually in the data.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:51

       So the non-expert reporter with an agenda, in order for him to print something that's gonna get the response that he's looking for, he's looking for a positive response from the people that are climate... th- that, that believe these models-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Wow. …

   1. SKSteven E. Koonin45:00

      to understand. You know, climate literacy and energy literacy, we haven't talked yet much about energy, are so important, and, uh, people need to understand. Let me give you an example, uh, of a different field that I think is a terrible example. So there's this guy named Jonathan Gruber, who's a professor of economics at MIT, and he was one of the principal architects of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, okay? Now whatever you might think about Obamacare, what he said at one point was, "The only way we could get a principal provision of that act passed was to rely on the basic ignorance of the American people."

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:45

      Wow.

   3. SKSteven E. Koonin45:45

      All right? And, you know, there's a videotape of him saying this at a conference.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:48

      That's a crazy thing to say.

   5. SKSteven E. Koonin45:49

      And, you know, for an educator-

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:51

      Yeah.

   7. SKSteven E. Koonin45:51

      ... and for an advisor-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:53

      Right.

   9. SKSteven E. Koonin45:53

      ... to say that is terrible. By overhyping the climate threat, we've taken away from non-experts the ability to make their own judgments. We have displaced other priorities, and we've got so many priorities that are beyond climate. Uh, we have scared the bejesus out of young people, right? You talk to young people and they think the world is gonna end.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:18

       Yeah.

   11. SKSteven E. Koonin46:18

       And so, you know, that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, is to just try to get people to understand.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:23

       Did you see that woman, I believe it was in Canada, but they listed her cause of death as climate change?

   13. SKSteven E. Koonin46:30

       No, I've not seen that. Um-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:31

       You haven't seen that?

   15. SKSteven E. Koonin46:32

       No, but I'm not surprised (laughs) .

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       You need to see that, because the first time I saw that, I was like, "Oh my god, here it comes."

   17. SKSteven E. Koonin46:38

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       Because, uh, and then, uh, I mean, I should say before I read your book, I was fairly convinced that we're in for a horrible next 50 years of climate change and rise of-

   19. SKSteven E. Koonin46:50

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       ... sea level-

   21. SKSteven E. Koonin46:51

       Yeah, yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       ... and, and I was, I was buying all the catastrophic inc- I mean, I, you know, I bought it all. And then w- Peter Attia turned me onto your book.

   23. SKSteven E. Koonin47:01

       Mm-hmm. Yep, yep.

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:01

       I started reading it. I started listening to it, rather-

   25. SKSteven E. Koonin47:03

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:03

       ... and I was just like, "Okay, this guy, I need to talk to him."

   27. SKSteven E. Koonin47:08

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:08

       I need to find out what's going on. Let me see, see if you can find that. Have you found the article? Yeah, but Hold on. No one can hear you. I'm trying to confirm its accuracy 'cause when I Googled it, it wasn't coming up a lot of places. I had to, like- I told you. DuckDuckGo, son. Okay, when I looked on the internet for it- (laughs) ... it was coming up only in one very specific spot, so I'm trying to find out, like, why. Is it in, uh, a bad, uh, source? Uh, it does. It's, it's a interesting source, so I'm just trying to see, like- Okay. Got it.

   29. SKSteven E. Koonin47:35

       Uh, when, when you find it, I wanna talk about economic impact a little bit because that's another interesting story.

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:41

       Yeah. Um, and then, uh ... There's, there's a lot of factors that lead to a narrative being established. What, what year do you think? Wh- is, is there a time you can pinpoint when this sort of alarmist perspective really took f- took root?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   I'm not exactly sure…

   1. SKSteven E. Koonin1:00:00

      4% of the US economy in 2100, okay?

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

      I'm not exactly sure what that means.

   3. SKSteven E. Koonin1:00:07

      That means that the economy ... If the temperature were to go up, the economy would be 4% smaller in 2100 than it would've been otherwise.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      Now, does that take into account the growth of the economy overall?

   5. SKSteven E. Koonin1:00:19

      No, it d- well, it's a relative statement.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:21

      Okay.

   7. SKSteven E. Koonin1:00:21

      So if we go to the next chart, uh, that's a wonderful question. There's what would happen. So I'll show you the US economy starting from 2000 up to the end of the century. Uh, if it grows at 2% a year, which is kinda what everybody thinks it should be doing and might do, you get that curve. If you assume a 4% impact at the end of the century, or even a 10% impact, you just delay the growth by two years or a few years in 2100, 80 years from now. All right? So this is not the climate crisis, okay? The economic impact is projected to be minimal.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:01

      And this is the economic impact of ... As the way things stand today, without any major interventions, in terms of-

   9. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:08

      That's correct. That's cor- ... Well, it's ... No, it's really ... It's done as ... Depending upon how much warmer the globe gets.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:14

       Right.

   11. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:14

       Okay? So remember, the Paris Agreement is trying to hold things to two degrees centigrade, or about four degrees Fahrenheit, which is a few percent damage to the economy, okay? In 2100.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:27

       Yes.

   13. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:27

       Okay? Whereas the economy is gonna grow by 2% a year. All right? So instead of 70 or 80 years from now, it being, you know, um, let's say 400-... uh, well, the US economy, instead of being $80 trillion, it would be $76 trillion or something like that in 2100.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

       That seems like a lot of money.

   15. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:52

       Well, not as a percentage.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       (laughs) Right.

   17. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:54

       I- it grows by 2% a year.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:56

       Right.

   19. SKSteven E. Koonin1:01:56

       So it's a two-year delay in the growth.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

       Two-year delay in the growth.

   21. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02:00

       Okay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:01

       And now, if major policy changes-

   23. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02:05

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:05

       ... are implemented-

   25. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02:06

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:06

       ... that are gonna shift, like, the sales of the combustion vehicles being banned, which is what they're doing in California-

   27. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02:14

       Yep, yep.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:14

       Did that pass in California? Do you know?

   29. SKSteven E. Koonin1:02:16

       I think that is the, the current policy in California.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:18

       I believe it's 2035.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:26:45

   Yeah. Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

   2. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:00

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      ... then it becomes detrimental?

   4. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:01

      Yes. So, so there's a lot of controversy about that. Some people say, you know, eventually you're gonna be limited by water or nutrients in the soil.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:09

      But we haven't seen it yet.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:10

      All right. We haven't seen it yet.

   8. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:13

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:13

      Um, so these factors that lead to climate change, the, the human contributions-

   10. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:20

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

       ... of agriculture, transportation, uh, all the various ones that you discussed earlier, how much of that can be eliminated?

   12. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:31

       At what cost, all right? And, and, and here I wanna take a global view, okay?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:15:37

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SKSteven E. Koonin1:15:38

       We, in the US, have a very distorted view of the world. We're a big country. Many people don't travel. They have no sense of what's going on in the rest of the world. In the developed world, the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and so on, about one and a half billion people, and we have high energy use and we have a pretty good standard of living. There are six billion other people in the world who need energy in order to improve their economic lot. One point something billion people in China, another one point something billion people in India, and so on. The best way for them to get their energy, in terms of reliability and convenience, is fossil fuels. And who are we to tell them, "No, you can't do that?" All right? That's a moral issue, as Alex Epstein, for example, has pointed out. And so when you say, "Can we reduce?" and "What's it gonna cost?" I think you have to distinguish between those of us in the developed world, where we can do it, you know? We can cut our emissions if we have enough financial capital and political capital to do it. But what are you gonna do about the people in Indonesia, China, India who need the energy? What do you tell them? And nobody has a good answer for that.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:17:07

       So, we're looking at it from a perspective of this first-world country, and we're not taking into consideration that there's a lot of countries, particularly third-world countries, that are already struggling, and if we implemented these radical restrictions, it would devastate their economy?

   16. SKSteven E. Koonin1:17:24

       Well, we can't implement restrictions-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:17:25

       Right.

   18. SKSteven E. Koonin1:17:25

       ... on them. We can implement restrictions on ourselves, which will come at some cost and benefit, uh, cost, minimal benefit. We're only 13... in the US, 13% of emissions, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:36

       Now, when we look at all these factors, agriculture, transportation, all these different things, if you eliminated that, how much of an impact would that have on overall climate change and-

   20. SKSteven E. Koonin1:17:48

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:48

       ... you know, warming?

   22. SKSteven E. Koonin1:17:49

       Yeah. So you wanna do that for the world as a whole or just for the US?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:52

       Let's just do it for the US.

   24. SKSteven E. Koonin1:17:54

       Yeah. So we're 13% of emissions. What you need to understand is that emissions accumulate in the atmosphere. And so by eliminating US emissions, you have only slowed down the rate at which the amount in the atmosphere accumulates.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:18:11

       When you say we're thir- so we're thirp- 13% globally?

   26. SKSteven E. Koonin1:18:14

       Globally, correct.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:18:15

       Okay.

   28. SKSteven E. Koonin1:18:15

       Correct. Uh, so the rest of the world, the emissions are growing because they're burning coal and they're burning oil and gas, because they need all that. All right? So our 13% decrease, if we could do it tomorrow, would be wiped out by about a decade's worth of growth in the rest of the world.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:18:33

       Hm. So the growth in the rest of the world, they would just contribute-

   30. SKSteven E. Koonin1:18:37

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:03:15