Science enthusiast exposes misleading claim from viral podcast moment: 'He looked at the pictures'

While visual aids can be useful tools for understanding data, they can be misleading if you're not armed with the right information — as one science enthusiast underscored on TikTok. 

Chase (@burnerlearner) is an Iowa-based content creator who makes videos discussing politics and other topics he finds interesting. 

@burnerlearner

Joe Rogan on climate change is as dumb as you'd expect

♬ original sound - Chase

After Joe Rogan spread climate misinformation on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience — which has tens of millions of listeners — Chase made a short video to debunk the claims. 

In his podcast, Rogan shares a screenshot of a graph published in a report from The Washington Post. The article's title reads: "Scientists have captured Earth's climate over the last 485 million years. Here's the surprising place we stand now."

"Look at the dip at the end. That's where we are. That's reality," Rogan says, implying the Earth's overheating isn't a matter of concern. He also notes how the graph shows fluctuations in Earth's temperatures before humans existed. 

While his claims may initially seem to be sound, they miss the mark if you dig a little deeper. 

First, it's worth acknowledging that some changes in climate do occur naturally. According to NASA, the Earth has cycled through eight ice ages and warming periods over the past 800,000 years, with many of these changes associated with minor variations in the planet's orbit. 

However, more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific studies agree that modern human activities are causing Earth to overheat at an accelerated rate. 

The burning of dirty fuels like gas, oil, and coal is of particular concern, as they produce the majority of the heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere, supercharging extreme weather events. That is one reason why governments are transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which can also provide electricity at a lower price point.  

So, given those facts, why would the graph show a dip? 

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"This chart is 485 million years, so any changes you see on it are over tens of millions of years, not a few years," Chase explains. "So that little spike you see over the last 200 years is unprecedented. The rate [of warming] is unprecedented." 

As Chase notes, this unprecedented warming should warrant our attention, given what we know about Earth's "scorching past," according to the Post. 

"The timeline illustrates how swift and dramatic temperature shifts were associated with many of the world's worst moments — including a mass extinction that wiped out roughly 90% of all species," the Post wrote, summarizing an explanation of the data from Emily Judd, a University of Arizona researcher who specializes in ancient climates and the study's lead author. 

"Joe didn't read the article," one commenter wrote. "He looked at the pictures."

"I love how he accepts the graph as valid but not the conclusions about climate change drawn by the same people," another person observed. 

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