Joe Rogan's podcast is no stranger to controversy, but a recent clip downplaying the changing climate has people turning up the heat.
In a clip that's been circulating online, Rogan references a Washington Post article while suggesting that concerns about the warming planet are overblown.
@evanjmez Joe Rogan gets debunked by his own article when attempting to argue with Bernie Sanders about the existence of global warming. #debunk #debate #joerogan #berniesanders ♬ original sound - Evan James
Rogan uses the article to support the idea that Earth's shifting climate is simply part of natural cycles.
"Scientists have captured the Earth's climate change of the last 485 million years. Here's a surprising place we stand now, so look at the far end of that graph and you see we're in a cooling period," he states.
That's where TikToker Evan James (@evanjmez) steps in, calling out Rogan for cherry-picking information and misleading audiences.
The creator points out that the article, which you can read for yourself here, actually states the opposite.
"At the tail end of the graph you will see a major spike in global temperatures during recent human history. The article literally says human-caused emissions in recent centuries have pushed the rate of warming into unprecedented territory," James said.
While Earth has experienced glacial and interglacial cycles in its history and the Earth had been in a cooling trend until recently, those shifts unfolded over tens of thousands of years. By contrast, the dramatic warming observed since the Industrial Revolution has happened in less than two centuries.
This distinction is critical: Natural cycles explain long-term ice ages, but they cannot account for the unprecedented pace and scale of warming seen today. When dirty fuels burn, they release carbon dioxide, a harmful gas that traps heat in Earth's atmosphere and accelerates warming far beyond natural rates.
"Joe Rogan does not read articles; he only reads headlines. And, this is a perfect example of him spreading misinformation. You just take a few minutes to read this article, you would know that the researchers findings actually support the existence of man made climate change," James emphasizes.
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Yes — everywhere 👏 Commenters were quick to push back against the podcast's framing, too.
"Y'all humans have extracted over 135 BILLION TONS of petroleum (carbon) from the earth and COMBUSTED most of it. (creates carbon dioxide) releasing it into our atmosphere. how can u think that that would not do anything to the earth!!!!!!???" said one commenter.
To that point, the "natural" climate cycles that dismissers of modern science often point to are what happens with natural cycles of environmental processes, such as trees growing, trees burning, volcanoes erupting, and so on, but only humans in the entire Earth's history have been able to extract "fossil" plant matter from often millions of years ago and burn it all into the air in a short period of time.
Some of the same can be said for battery materials, but at least with batteries, they can be reused many times and then recycled to reclaim around 95% of those materials; they require some fossil fuels during extraction, but it's a more sustainable and valuable result of that pollution, as the battery materials are not burned into the air.
Another pointed out the contradiction in the host's approach: "He says I think it's a very complicated topic, then proceeds to interpret something he knows absolutely nothing about."
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