Scientists have hit out at climate crisis comments made by controversial Canadian author Jordan Peterson.
Peterson told The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast on Spotify, that scientific models used to predict future climate developments are not reliable.
He said: “Another problem that bedevils climate modelling, too, which is that as you stretch out the models across time, the errors increase radically. And so maybe you can predict out a week or three weeks or a month or a year, but the farther out you predict, the more your model is in error.
“And that’s a huge problem when you’re trying to model over 100 years because the errors compound just like interest.”
‘Errors compound just like interest’
He added that if climate is “about everything”, then “models aren’t right”, because they cannot include everything, The Guardian has reported.
But climate scientists slammed Peterson’s comments.
Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, climate scientist at the University of New South Wales Canberra, said: “He seems to think we model the future climate the same way we do the weather. He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong.
“He has no frickin’ idea.”
Professor Steve Sherwood, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, said Peterson made “the ancient climate sceptic error of mixing up weather and climate”.
Sherwood argued climate models are different to weather ones and predict how the climate would respond to different factors such as CO2 increases.
‘Ancient climate sceptic error’
Meanwhile, Professor Michael Mann, atmospheric scientist at the Pennsylvania State University, said Peterson’s comments and their broadcast by Rogan were an “almost comedic type of nihilism” which would amuse people if they were not dangerous.
And Professor John Abraham, climate scientist at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, said the broadcast is “a word salad of nonsense spoken by people who have no sense when it comes to climate.”
“To say that climate model errors increase like compound interest is laughable. Jordan Peterson displays a near complete misunderstanding of climate change, and the tools climate scientists use to understand what is happening to our planet.
“It’s as if someone, with zero expertise and knowledge, made comments about something he knows little about.”
Neil Young row with Spotify
The backlash comes as Spotify removed the music of songwriter Neil Young after Young accused Rogan’s show of “misinformation” about the Covid pandemic.
Rogan’s podcast has previously broadcasted claims that hospitals are paid to give false diagnoses of death caused by Covid, and that world leaders have brainwashed people to back the jabs.
In a letter to his management, Young said about Spotify: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Related: Reactions as Eric Clapton says vaccinated people are victims of ‘hypnosis’
