TDS Time Machine | The War on Climate Change - podcast episode cover

TDS Time Machine | The War on Climate Change

Jan 18, 202527 min
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Episode description

Taking a look back at The Daily Show's coverage of climate change over the years. 

Jon Stewart talks climate change denialism in the U.S. Congress. Jordan Klepper investigates Trump's war on climate science. Roy Wood Jr. asks, what's wrong with our brains that we can't understand the climate threat? Trevor Noah and Ronny Chieng insist that climate change actually is real. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2

Now you may be thinking, do we really need a march to raise awareness about global climate change? I mean, it's an accepted scientific phenomenon pretty much everywhere. Here's why you need the march. It's accepted pretty much everywhere, but this one place called the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Speaker 3

This is true.

Speaker 2

Last week they held the hearing that they apparently recorded in nineteen seventy one. I guess that's the technology part of the committee name on President Obama's plan to shrink carbon emissions thirty percent by twenty thirty. The hearings SISYPHUS Presidential Science Advisor John Holdron charged the impossible task of pushing a million pounds of idiot up a mountain. Of course, like any avalanche, it began rather an act lee Texas Republican Steve Stocklin.

Speaker 4

The lead scientist that NASA, said this. He said that what ended the ice age was global wobbling. Is the wobbling of the Earth included in any of your modelings And the answer was no. When you have a model and you said, we're going to leave out the most important impact of that model out of our theory and not talk about global wobbling.

Speaker 3

How can you make projections?

Speaker 2

Oh, what's up, scientists, global wobbling bitches? He sees your so called global warming and raises you a global wobbling. Explain that, doctor Whitehouse.

Speaker 5

Global wobbling, which refers to changes in the Earth's tilt and orbit, takes place on characteristic times haales for twenty two thousand years, forty four thousand years, and one hundred thousand years. It is very slow. Global wobbling is a tiny effect on the timescale of one hundred years in which we try to run these models.

Speaker 2

I didn't know we'd be talking to an actual scientist. All right, holdre and youte the wobble warming. Riddle me this, At what.

Speaker 6

Point a level of CO two does CO two become damaging? At what level does it become harmful to human beings?

Speaker 2

Boom? How can CO two levels be dangerous when I can still breathe?

Speaker 5

Nce Chairman Robbucker. I always enjoy my interactions with you.

Speaker 2

Much in the way one enjoys playing pick a boo with a baby, or perhaps teasing a cat with a laser pointer.

Speaker 5

I have to say, with respect, that's a red herring. We are not interested in carbon dioxide concentrations because of their direct defect on human health. We're interested in them because their effect of their effect on the world's climate and climate change has health.

Speaker 2

Well, then let me get you Yet, why can't we still breathe?

Speaker 7

That's what I'm asking.

Speaker 2

I mean, you can hear me.

Speaker 8

Right with breathing.

Speaker 2

And it got more amazing as it went. Indiana's Larry Boushon, it's.

Speaker 9

Not about affecting the global temperature and climate change. There's public comments out there that that question has been asked and answered saying no, No.

Speaker 5

You should look at the at the scientific literature rather than the public comments.

Speaker 2

With all due respect, Representative Boushon, I suggest you get the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology as opposed to the YouTube comment feed of Obummer Lies seventeen seventy six. But here where Beauchamp gives away the game of all.

Speaker 9

The climatologists whose career depends on the climate changing to keep themselves publishing articles. Yes, I could read that, but I don't believe it.

Speaker 2

I do not believe the scientists because it is their profession, not their hobby. Well, since we're talking about the influence money might have on climate change opinion. It turns out Representative Beauchamp's three biggest campaign donors are Murray Energy, Coke Enterprises, and Peabody Energy.

Speaker 3

And trust me, trust.

Speaker 2

Me, those three well funded companies would love to disprove climate change to the satisfaction of the scientific community at large. So if scientists could be bought, these mothers would have already made it rain in nerd town.

Speaker 10

Trust me.

Speaker 2

And again, I cannot stress this enough. This is the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Speaker 4

P long will take for the sea level to rise two feet. I mean, think about it. If your ice cube melts in your glass, it doesn't overflow, it's displacement.

Speaker 3

I mean, this is the thing.

Speaker 4

Some of the things that they're talking about mathematically and scientifically don't make sense.

Speaker 2

Are you kidding me?

Speaker 11

Are you kidding me?

Speaker 10

I don't even know.

Speaker 11

I don't even know what to do with that.

Speaker 2

How far back to the elementary school court curriculum do we have to go to get someone on the.

Speaker 3

House Committee on Science, Space and Technology caught up?

Speaker 2

Do we have to break out the paper machine, the baking sodace so you can make a volcano. Is that what we have to do is that how basic the science class was when you went mad? I don't need to know this anymore. I mean, for God's sakes, look here, look here, here, here, look look, here's a glass.

Speaker 3

Of ice water.

Speaker 2

Hey, that ice isn't making the water overflow because it's already.

Speaker 12

In the water.

Speaker 2

But imagine there's a whole bunch of other ice that's not in the water. It's on the land, you know, the part where the water isn't. And then when temperatures rise and the land ice melts.

Speaker 7

Enough to fall, it h everywhere.

Speaker 1

It's everywhere.

Speaker 7

Do you understand.

Speaker 2

Wait a minute, global warming, giant towels. Ultimately, the whole incredible and by all appearance, is willful misunderstanding of how the scientific method has been applied to climate change models and the effects of warming can be pardon the pun, boiled down to this exchange.

Speaker 9

That scare tactic's like that, you know, is really appalling to me to use medical information to scare parents that they're children about asthma attacks and scare people saying they're going to have heart attacks. I would argue that we should all on both sides of this discussion.

Speaker 3

Avoid scare tactics.

Speaker 2

First of all, there aren't There aren't both sides to a discussion. But he's basically saying, is it is unfair to talk to us about the scientific or medical consequences of our actions because they're scary and we really don't feel like doing anything about it anyway. So from now on, why not agree that science and the oil industry both

have opinions. Oh and before you tell your kids to wash their hands after they take so they don't spread disease, maybe we should also spend an equal amount of time hearing from big fecal. We'll be right back.

Speaker 7

Trumpe to America isn't just attacking immigrants, the transgender and apprentice ratings. It's also planning to take out climate change data. Luckily, an underground movement is trying to stop it. My first contact in this group is waiting at an undisclosed location. Score As I descended into her secret bunker, I could practically smell the pulitzer or maybe that was urine.

Speaker 3

This place was creepy. It was okay, this was taking too long.

Speaker 7

What's the situation on the ground.

Speaker 13

All references to climate change are gone from the White House website. Trump has a war against.

Speaker 7

Facts, so maybe we should hid him in a place you wouldn't look like an intelligence briefing.

Speaker 13

We can't hide the facts. We need that information to build accurate climate models.

Speaker 7

This public climate data is stored on federal websites like the EPA, NASA, and the Department of Energy, and Climate scientists depend on it for all kinds of research. But now that Trump is in charge, these scientists are worried he's going to hide or destroy that data just because he's threatened to do exactly that. So you're telling me

all this data could be completely forgotten, like Taylor Lauwner. Sorry, what I'm just saying, just because you're part of a tent pole movie doesn't mean that you're gonna have any kind of relevance five years later.

Speaker 13

What we need to do is to capture this data and make copies in lots of locations, including in Canada.

Speaker 14

Canada.

Speaker 13

Yes, we have a network of hackers working to keep this data safe. Today we're having a hackathon in Philly.

Speaker 3

I want in.

Speaker 7

These hackers were going to be even more secretive than Bethany. Given the importance of this mission. I destroyed all traces of their existence is a thirty four to twenty or thirty you know what you just put on my phone. To gain access to the hackers, I'd have to become one of them, And the only way to be a hacker is to dress like a hacker. But like the rest of America, I hadn't rollerbladed in like sixteen. Either way, it was time to meet these code breaks at their

secret underground layer. I'm looking for the hackers.

Speaker 3

We're the hackers.

Speaker 7

Seriously, yep, I thought you'd be dressed a little bit cooler, you know, like this tell me about this hacking.

Speaker 15

So what we're doing is we are seding URLs to the Internet Archive. These are basically roadmaps through these massive government websites, and we're using those to go and find where the data is and then send that to the Internet Archive.

Speaker 7

That was super boring. Do you mind explaining that with a hacking montage? So basically what happens is these nerds scroll through every single publicly available URL and document on government sites and make a carbon copy. But sometimes this data is hidden ways that can't be scraped by human nerds, so they write code to burrow into the sites and

rescue the data that's really hidden. Then they release the data on sites like Data Refuge and the Internet Archive, which is backing up everything in Canada for safekeeping.

Speaker 3

It gets really bad.

Speaker 7

That's where I come in, taking this data to Canada to save the world. Let's do this. So with the data safely secured away, I began the long journey north. It wasn't easy, but after what felt like a lifetime, I made it to the airport for my almost hour long flight to Canada. Time to hit up my connect code name Poutine, a professor from the University of Toronto who's been collecting all this data, which was feeling pretty ripe at this point.

Speaker 3

Poutine, Poutine, Poutine.

Speaker 7

Are you guys here for a client DestinE meaning no Poutine, are you mischelle? Yeah, here's the data, all the way from America.

Speaker 11

Okay, what is this?

Speaker 7

It's all that hack climate. We received this through the cloud, the cloud, so I didn't have to smuggle this thing up my ass.

Speaker 11

I'm I'm nope, I'm sorry to tell you kidding me well, getting this data is a good start, but it's not enough. What we're seeing is the dismantlement of environmental science from a country that is one of the greatest contributors to climate change that you're talking about us.

Speaker 7

Yes, she was right. While Canada was snowing, America was burning. Do you mind actually keeping a couple other things from America safe?

Speaker 3

Uh?

Speaker 7

Okay, you hold on to the Bill of Rights. This is birth control, Meryl Streep's oscars, and then I'll be back like Ford. Let's just say eight years to be safe. And just like that, it took an American to save the day.

Speaker 16

Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing the planet right now, and even though we all know that the Earth is in trouble, most of us aren't doing anything to help. Roywood Junr went to find out why.

Speaker 17

Climate change, climate change, climate change everybody's talking about. Just turn on the TV and you'll hear stuff like this.

Speaker 2

Climate related disasters, from wildfires to more intense storms, extreme rain events and floods are already getting worse.

Speaker 5

And this the mass invasion of polar bears. Experts say melting ice has forced the polar bears to migrate and hunt for food.

Speaker 16

Now on land.

Speaker 17

Polar bear invasion, I thought they would chill cartoon's drink of Coca cola. Climate change is getting apocalyptic. But do you see me taking the bus or going vegan after this burger? After this burger, I'm done with the after there's I know the world's ending, So why is it so hard to do anything about it? What the hell is wrong with me?

Speaker 8

High blame evolution.

Speaker 17

Meet author Van Gardner. He believes my willingness to sacrifice Antartica, California, and most of the Eastern Seaboard for a delicious burger isn't my fault.

Speaker 8

Throughout most of the history of our species, we lived as stone age hunter gatherers. We had to deal with certain types of threats immedia scary threats. A lion emerging from the long grass did immediately intuitively sense that that's a threat. Climate change is too abstract and distance of a threat to feel fear.

Speaker 17

So it's a learning disability that we all have from when we were cavemen.

Speaker 8

Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 17

Try to explain climate change to me, I've been a cave man.

Speaker 8

You try to explain, Well, here's one way you want to use who are you? I'm here to explain the steps you can take to try and prevent him kill him.

Speaker 17

Well, Dan explained that we evolved to have two systems of thinking. System one it's the Caveman brain, fast, intuitive, instinctual, and System two it's the analytical, scientific Albert Einstein part of our brain. Now, who do you think it when in the science. That's the reason. No matter how many facts we tell people about climate change, if the temperature goes up even two degrees, we won't even have coffee anymore.

Speaker 10

Funny stuff, Roy.

Speaker 17

It does get through because we're only talking to the Einstein part of the brain. System two.

Speaker 16

Ooh, that's milk.

Speaker 17

Won't be no more milk wind the cows. So how do we explain the world is ending to what cave Man?

Speaker 8

We want to make System one and system two come into alignment. So the system one feels what system too understands. It means portraying climate change in terms of immediate, visceral, vivid threats because System one understands those sorts of threats.

Speaker 17

Ooh, I just need to trick my brain into really fearing climate change. All right, I'm gonna put on this shot collar. You told me something scary about climate change and give me a shock when you say it.

Speaker 8

Okay, how about climate change is causing global sea levels to rise?

Speaker 18

Hello?

Speaker 17

Bench, you shot me for real, do that.

Speaker 2

That's wrong with you?

Speaker 17

But after three and a half painful hours, I was scared of climate change and I would never peel on the rug again. If I was going to save the planet, I had to make my coworkers truly fear the melting ice caps, the heat of wildfires, the unstoppable sea level rise of climate change. And I knew just how to get through to them.

Speaker 3

Get used to it.

Speaker 17

The oceans are rising. This is our harvest gonna be if you don't stop driving that damn thing and get on a bike.

Speaker 1

Go, get on the bike.

Speaker 17

Get on the damn bike. Yeah yeah, Oh, sea level rising, ice trapped, melting, super hurricanes up. I I heard you was going around doing this.

Speaker 1

If that cup up my office.

Speaker 17

Look, I know I'm being over the top, but it's time for everyone to be over the top about climate change now. I feel excuse me. Time to bring these no chill polar bears to LFE. Sure feels good. Save the Earth, and finally use my polar bear costume for non sexual reasons.

Speaker 16

This week, there have been a tone of stories developing every day. Congress is trying to avert another shutdown, Britain is still on the brink of a disastrous Brexit, and Venezuela is inching closer to civil war. But nobody cares about any of that today because it's too damn cold.

Speaker 15

Cities across the Midwest are scrambling to protect people from this deadly polar vortex that is blasting the region with what is called the coldest air in decades.

Speaker 12

Plunging to as low as seventy degrees below zero in some cities. It's so cold outside the US Postal Service, which almost never stops delivering, suspending service in eleven mid wae Western states because of safety concerns.

Speaker 3

We can't say it enough.

Speaker 16

Before it's all said and done, the windshield here will feel like.

Speaker 3

It's fifty to sixty degrees below. So if you I can stay inside, please do so. It's important.

Speaker 16

Yeah, we're all inside because we're not idiots. Why are you outside, news man? You know, seriously, I never get why reporters have to go into the bad weather to warn us about it. Like, just tell us from the studio. We believe you. Like if you're sitting at the desk and you tell me it's cold, I'm not sitting at home, Like, is it don't let me see you nipples.

Speaker 10

They don't do this for any other type of story.

Speaker 16

They never like Earlier today a man was shot in the like and it looked like this ba ah. But the point is it is incredibly cold in America right now, like super cold. It's so cold that I looked in the mirror this morning and told myself to go back to Africa. We're talking minus seventy. Anytime you're in negative numbers, you know the things out of hand because you realize when they may zero, they thought that would be the lowest.

That's why zero. If they thought there was going to be anything lower, then they would have made that zero. But somehow we are way below zero. In fact, right now, America might be the coldest place on Earth and beyond.

Speaker 9

People in the Dakotas in northern Minnesota saw wind chills plummet's all minus fifty.

Speaker 3

That's colder than the top of Mount Everest.

Speaker 16

Colder than Antarctica, Siberia and Mount Everest.

Speaker 11

It will be colder in Chicago than it is in Antarctica, or Alaska or.

Speaker 15

The North Pole combined.

Speaker 17

Believe it or not.

Speaker 12

At times, it's actually colder in some parts of the country than the surface of Mars.

Speaker 16

God, damn colder than Mars. I guess that means it's really cold, because I gotta be honest, I have no idea what the weather.

Speaker 1

Is on Mars.

Speaker 16

If I had to guess, I'd be like, it's sandy.

Speaker 10

Is that a weather? Is that a thing?

Speaker 16

I don't understand why they do this something used? Why using Mars as a reference for it? None of us have been there.

Speaker 10

It's colder than Mars.

Speaker 16

Oh yeah, I spent summer in Mars. That was rather cold. I don't know what's happening on other planets. I barely know about anything on Earth and I live here. You could tell me Mars was named after Bruno Mars, and I'll be like, yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 18

Yeah, he's a popular guy.

Speaker 16

But the news is always explaining things with the most random comparisons. And asteroids headed towards the Earth and it weighs as much as five thousand elephants. That's not helpful to anyone. Okay, no one knows how heavy an elephant is, Like, well, it's the Americans don't. Because in Africa we measure everything in elephants. It works for us, Like, yeah, we'll just.

Speaker 14

Be like, as you can see, this is a very specialist property. If forty elephants big and it has a baby hippo jacuzzi and I know what you're thinking, this probably costs three tigers. No, there's no tagers in Africa.

Speaker 16

You're racist. Yeah, and uh, if you don't understand what colder than Mars means, don't worry because maybe a few scientific demonstrations will help.

Speaker 3

This is a clear piece of glasses.

Speaker 6

You can see out.

Speaker 17

Some water in my hand. I'm gonna pour it on here.

Speaker 11

You see that.

Speaker 3

Look it's gonna freeze in.

Speaker 17

You see it crystallizing right there.

Speaker 9

This cold is absolutely no joke.

Speaker 3

Put a poor little water on Barbie's hair. We'll give it a few seconds and you'll see how fast her hair is going to freeze out here.

Speaker 12

And one man actually turned this super frozen banana into a makeshift hammer.

Speaker 16

Okay, this this this didn't teach me how cold it is, but it did teach me how weird this guy is. His wife is probably like, honey, can you shovel the driveway?

Speaker 10

And he's like, I can't.

Speaker 16

I'm testing different fruits to say if they can be hammers, And after that I'm building a birdhouse out of Kiwis Now. It goes without saying most of us are miserable when it's this cold, but apparently there's one group that is having a blast right now.

Speaker 1

The police a sheriff's department in Minnesota using the cold to freeze a uniform in place so it stands on its own. Yeah. Meanwhile, some police officers in central Illinois say they caught the criminal responsible for.

Speaker 7

This brutal weather and they're not letting her go.

Speaker 1

Elsa, the snow Queen from Frozen, was taken in to custody. Police in Missouri asking criminals to take a break because it's too cold to fight crime.

Speaker 10

That's right.

Speaker 16

It's so cold that the police are sending out tweets just asking criminals to please not commit any crimes. Yeah, they're basically just asking the criminals to stop the crime for them, which is ridiculous. What's next, And he's gonna ask people to arrest themselves, just gonna be like, yeah, we're gonna mail you a self arrest kit. It's got a Miranda, right, so handcuffs, some drugs to plant on yourself,

and a body camp. But whatever you do, don't turn it on Okay, it causes more trouble than it's worth. Just keep right off, trust me.

Speaker 10

But look, it is dangerous outside.

Speaker 16

It's super cold, so stay home if you can, stay warm, if you go out, and if you see someone in need, please help them out. This is one of the most vulnerable periods for anybody who does not have a place to stay, because right now there are millions of people in harm's way. And yet even with that many people affected, President Trump has found a way to steal the spotlights.

Speaker 19

The President sees this and it prompts him to tweet the following. In the beautiful Midwest, wind chill temperatures are reaching minus sixty degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days expected to get even colder. People can't last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with global whamming? Please come back fast.

Speaker 6

We need you.

Speaker 16

Ah some brilliant analysis from French Fry the science guy. Yeah, according to the presidents, a cold snap is proof that global whamming isn't real. Like I'm just like Trump never stops even the coldest day of the year. The rest of us are having a brain freeze, and He's like nothing.

Speaker 18

A freeze year firing in our cylinders.

Speaker 16

I won't lie. I want lie. Let me tell you this, if I was ever trapped in the Alps, I would hope that I get trapped with Trump. I won't lie because the cold clearly doesn't affect him like I would probably be there like so cold, We've got to do something, and he'd be like, you're right, We've got to build a wall.

Speaker 18

Nancy Pelosi, crooket Hillary, I'll be like, I'm getting it die. Of course, you got a diet Trevor, I'm a thirteen coming over the border.

Speaker 10

They're coming.

Speaker 16

But once again, the president of the United States is the leading voice of climate change denial. So to help us clear up these misconceptions, please welcome back our senior science correspondent. We're only trying everybody.

Speaker 10

Monny, can you can.

Speaker 16

You explain to people like President Trump how a cold snap doesn't mean there's no global warming?

Speaker 20

Nose Trever, I can't. I'm sick of this shit. Every time Trump sees an ice cube, he's all, well, where's the global warming? And then all US journalists have to come on TV and explain the difference between weather and climate, even though it's the simplest thing.

Speaker 11

In the world.

Speaker 3

Everyone understands it.

Speaker 20

Kids get it, I'll get it. Even my idiot boss gets it. The only person who doesn't get it is President Frosty the slow man.

Speaker 16

Runnie, Runnie. Come on, maybe if we keep explaining it, Trump will eventually understand. You know, this is the model. We have no manchild left behind.

Speaker 20

Oh oh really, Trevor, this is it. This is We're gonna change mine this time. All right, okay, sure fine, Okay, here.

Speaker 1

We go again.

Speaker 20

Look you see this. You see this line. It's global temperatures, okay, and it's going up.

Speaker 11

It's going up.

Speaker 15

If this was going.

Speaker 20

Down, you'll be right and we beat the dumbasses.

Speaker 17

But it's going up, so you're wrong and you're the dumb ass.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Speaker 21

Even if you flip the chart upside down, it's still going up. So it doesn't matter if it's sometimes cold in Cincinnati because the line keeps going.

Speaker 10

The hap top.

Speaker 20

Sorry I tried, but I just can't do it anymore.

Speaker 16

Actually, I think you explained pretty perfectly, Ronny Shang everybody.

Speaker 10

We'll be right back. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount plus

Speaker 3

Paramount Podcasts.

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