
After the recent campaign to cancel Joe Rogan, he publicly committed to “balance things out” by airing guests who represent “both sides” of divisive issues back-to-back. It seemed to appease the radical woke progressive narrative pushers who were freaking out.
And it’s honestly the best possible thing Rogan could have done because, as it turns out, this more clearly shows exactly how manipulated the approved narrative is. Here’s the low-down if you don’t have 7 hours to listen to the podcasts. But you really should…
The other day Joe Rogan hosted Steven Koonin, a highly credentialed and highly published PhD physicist, professor, and former Chief Scientist for the BP Petroleum company who deals in climate-related science. Koonin’s general opinion was that yes, climate change is real and yes, humans are impacting that change, but it’s not at all what you’ve been led to believe because the official climate change narrative is different from the actual climate change science, which isn’t settled and isn’t nearly as catastrophic as climate activists would lead you to believe. A major part of his discussion with Rogan was that his study has led him to realize that climate science really isn’t settled and there is so much yet to be determined and discussed. He extended an invitation to scientists to connect with him to dialogue, debate, and coordinate for superior scientific understanding. He rightly feels that science itself is challenging findings, proving or disproving theories, and testing new hypotheses.
Making good on his promise, Joe Rogan then had Andrew Dessler on his show, a climate scientist and professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, who represents the “other side” of the climate issue. The “approved climate narrative,” if you will. And I’ll tell you what. I’m honestly so glad that Rogan did this because, wow. It was really eye-opening, mostly because it did not actually go that well for Dessler, the “mainstream narrative” guy.
I listened to both episodes, I learned important things from both, I appreciated both perspectives, and had questions for both. But if I’m going to be completely honest, Dessler didn’t really answer any of the hard questions. He sort of dodged them. He was defensive of the the mainstream climate narrative pretty much from the get-go. While he made some good points to refute specific claims by Koonin, he also kept making this weird “defense lawyer” analogy that was mostly aimed at discrediting and denigrating Koonin and his expert opinions.
By the end of the podcast, Dessler had mostly convinced me that Koonin’s overall assessments are closer to correct, and he certainly convinced me that I trust Koonin more
I’m certainly not the only one to feel this way, as twitter was filled with this kind of analysis of the episodes.
It’s funny. @joerogan has these controversial pods with @RobertmaloneMD1 or Steve Koonin and they just seem to know so much and calmly explain things. Then he has guys on like @drsanjaygupta or @AndrewDessler and they stutter a lot and can’t answer any question lmao.
— Patrick O’Shea (@PatrickOshea71) February 16, 2022
But Dessler put the final nail in his own coffin when Joe Rogan asked him if he would be willing to debate someone like Koonin for the best interest of the public understanding, and Dessler flat-out refused.
Staying true to his word, Joe Rogan brought Andrew Dessler the “other side” on to represent the mainstream narrative on climate science.
When asked if he would ever debate Dessler states “I won’t debate the science, the science is set”.
Sound familiar? pic.twitter.com/fAuMVIvvqg
— Mythinformed MKE (@MythinformedMKE) February 17, 2022
This is a great example of how both sides of numerous socio-politico-scientific issues conduct themselves these days.
One side would love to discuss, debate, ask questions, challenge conclusions, present supporting evidence, refute presented evidence, and have discourse between socio-politico-scientific opinions to better understand and form new opinions about what may or may not be correct, be decided, or need to be re-examined.
The other side believes their socio-politico-scientific opinion is the only possible truth and all other opinions are not only incorrect but unworthy even of consideration or discussion and probably tantamount to dangerous disinformation.
In fact, Professor Michael E. Mann proves exactly this phenomenon when he was mentioned in the podcast and responded on Twitter by refusing to debate Koonin and entirely dismissing him as a “denier and disinformer.” He then links to his own article dedicated to bashing Koonin, as though that proves he is righteous for refusing to debate him.
Sorry @JoeRogan: I don’t debate deniers & disinformers.
Here’s the low-down on Steven Koonin via @SciAM: https://t.co/PfYxbYzeDx https://t.co/vZnLnR0PPy— Prof Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) February 12, 2022
Sanjay Gupta’s episode on Joe Rogan was the exact same way for me. He went on to be the “other side” of COVID vaccine and general COVID-related science. He had some decent points and some very informative perspectives and data. But by the end of his episode, he had convinced me that he was being at least somewhat intentionally disingenuous, and I felt like he was trying very hard to run cover for the political COVID narrative without overtly lying to the public in a way that might come back to bite him. There were times where I thought he was almost pretending not to understand what Rogan was asking him and overtly dodging the real questions by pretending to answer the question he was acting like he thought Rogan meant to ask him, even though Rogan was very pointedly challenging and questioning specific issues and data. Gupta pretty much convinced me that I didn’t trust him and I certainly didn’t the mainstream narrative that he was trying to defend.
Overall, I think it’s a great idea for Rogan to do these back-to-back kind of episodes, and I’m all for it because, in his attempt to appease the narrative pushers, he’s actually more effectively undermining their narrative.