Prof. Brian Cox Has a Maddening Conversation with a Climate Science-Denying Politician

Accord­ing to NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute for Space Stud­ies, July 2016 was the warmest month ever record­ed. 2016 will like­ly be the warmest year on record. And the decades ahead will only get worse, much worse.

And yet, notes physi­cist Lawrence Krauss in The New York­er this week­end, we have the GOP’s Franken­stein try­ing to dem­a­gogue his way into the pres­i­den­cy by call­ing cli­mate sci­ence into ques­tion. Krauss writes:

In May, for instance, while speak­ing to an audi­ence of West Vir­ginia coal min­ers, Trump com­plained that reg­u­la­tions designed to pro­tect the ozone lay­er had com­pro­mised the qual­i­ty of his hair spray. Those reg­u­la­tions, he con­tin­ued, were mis­guid­ed, because hair spray is used main­ly indoors, and so can have no effect on the atmos­phere out­side.…

Often, Trump is sim­ply wrong about sci­ence, even though he should know bet­ter. Just as he was a per­sis­tent “birther” even after the evi­dence con­vinc­ing­ly showed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was born in the Unit­ed States, Trump now con­tin­ues to prop­a­gate the notion that vac­cines cause autism in spite of con­vinc­ing and wide­ly cit­ed evi­dence to the con­trary… In oth­er cas­es, Trump treats sci­en­tif­ic facts the way he treats oth­er facts—he ignores or dis­torts them when­ev­er it’s con­ve­nient. He has denied that cli­mate change is real, call­ing it pseu­do­science and advanc­ing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that “the con­cept of glob­al warm­ing was cre­at­ed by and for the Chi­nese in order to make U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing non­com­pet­i­tive.”

And way across the pond, we have anoth­er politi­cian, Aus­tralian Sen­a­tor Mal­colm Roberts, mak­ing his own kind of laugh­able claims. In a recent tele­vi­sion broad­cast, Roberts asks physi­cist Bri­an Cox for empir­i­cal proof that cli­mate change exists. Cox offers evi­dence gath­ered by NASA, to which Roberts responds, NASA’s “data has been cor­rupt­ed and manip­u­lat­ed.” Not good enough. If you reg­u­lar­ly read our site, you know that this is not the first time that NASA has been accused of manip­u­lat­ing data. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have long accused NASA and Stan­ley Kubrick of fak­ing the moon land­ing in 1969. Roberts bris­tles at being asso­ci­at­ed with these loons. But frankly it’s an apt com­par­i­son. And if any­one should be both­ered by the com­par­i­son, it’s the moon land­ing con­spir­acists. How­ev­er strange their the­o­ries might be, no one doubts that they’re heart­felt, gen­uine, and seem­ing­ly free from the hint of polit­i­cal and finan­cial influ­ence.

In the mean­time, in a new video from NASA, you can see the Arc­tic ice lev­els retreat­ing to one of the low­est lev­els in record­ed his­to­ry. Call the video “cor­rupt­ed” and “manip­u­lat­ed” at your own per­il.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves


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Comments (5)
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  • Michael Burns says:

    The mas­sive amount of mon­ey being made on the issue of AGW is stag­ger­ing the say the least. Car­bon tax­es, car­bon tick­ets; even to the point of tax­a­tion for breath­ing.
    AGW is not con­sen­sus issue,the con­sen­sus 500 years ago believed the world flat, believ­ing does not sim­ply make it so.

    AGW is in fact the great­est hoax pulled on mankind.

    There is a nat­ur­al car­bon sink on this plan­et, the most per­fect of all. it is called veg­e­ta­tion. the more car­bon that is in the atmos­phere the faster and more lush and dense the veg­e­ta­tion on plan­et earth.

    It is impor­tant to note that no men­tion was made of the the chem­i­cal spray­ing of the atmos­phere, which in fact has been going on since the for­ties and has nev­er been more cal­caulat­ed and intense than in present day earth. This tech­nol­o­gy involv­ing both HAARP and the chem­i­cal dis­per­sion of numer­ous chem­i­cal has not been acknowl­edged in the AGW mod­els.

    Anoth­er amongst the myr­i­ad of facts that can be pre­sent­ed is the ever chang­ing sun which is not rec­og­nized as the main dri­ver of cli­mate on this plan­et, in fact it should be not­ed we are in the atmos­phere of the sun.

  • marcel says:

    Sir, ever heard that veg­e­ta­tion (through pho­to­syn­the­sis) takes car­bon (CO2) from the atmos­phere and returns oxy­gen?. and that, the more the CO2 con­tents, the high­er the tem­per­a­ture, thus the more acute the drought ‑and that veg­e­ta­tion NEEDS water?. The atmos­phere of the sun?. lots of oxy­gen there, too.

  • Larry Gilliam says:

    Please the native peo­ple in the north have seen extra­or­di­nary changes in their frozen world. Melt­ing ice­caps, food is not as plen­ti­ful and these are peo­ple who know-they live there.
    Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly the cor­rale in the Aus­tralia is dying due to the warmth of the sea. That is a sci­en­tif­ic proof.
    As you know, Sci­en­tists do not know the exact lifes­pan of dinosaurs, but they esti­mate that they lived about 75 to 300 years. Ani­mal lifes­pans relate in part to their body size and in part to their type of metab­o­lism. There are rem­nants of dinosaurs today yet the major­i­ty are gone. My argu­ment is the dinosaurs lived long with­out human indus­try and humans have been here per­haps based on evi­dence sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand years dis­re­gard­ing find­ings of Leakey. So what is caus­ing the heat­ing of the earth? Any­one thinks it is nat­ur­al, so be it and those who argue it is human so be it; the out­come is the same. Good­night human race..

  • Hanoch says:

    I don’t know any­thing about Mr. Trump’s com­ments, but “call­ing cli­mate sci­ence into ques­tion” is actu­al­ly some­thing that cli­mate sci­en­tists them­selves cur­rent­ly do. Appar­ent­ly, future cli­mate change, and caus­es of cli­mate changes that occur over time, are far from set­tled issue among sci­en­tists. You can watch a short video on the sub­ject by Richard S. Lindzen, a Pro­fes­sor of Mete­o­rol­o­gy at MIT here: https://youtu.be/OwqIy8Ikv‑c.

  • Ronny says:

    Sad­ly we have a lot of nut­ters in Aus­tralian gov­ern­memt at present, and a lot of nut­ters who insist on con­tin­u­ing to vote for them.

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