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³ÉÈËXÕ¾ host John Curley brought on Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington (UW), to weigh in on a viral debate between Joe Rogan and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders over climate change.

The two debated on “The Joe Rogan Show” over an article published in 2024 by , which reported that the Earth is actually in a “cooling period” when examining its temperature patterns on a scale of hundreds of millions of years.

“This was like a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data, and kudos to them for doing that,” Rogan told Sanders. “Scientists have captured the Earth’s climate change over the last 480, 500 million years. Here’s a surprising place we stand now. Look at the far end of that graph, and you see we’re in a cooling period.”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Sanders responded. “I didn’t read that article, but the scientists who are out there, I think…”

“But there’s a lot of money involved in that too, Bernie. That’s part of the problem,” Rogan said. “There’s a lot of money involved in this whole climate change emergency issue, and there’s a lot of control, and that’s a big part of this problem. Not only that, if we’re just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint, what are we going to do about China?”

“They are the major polluter right now, in terms of carbon,” Sanders said.

Cliff Mass weighs in

“We’re in a cold period. It could go back up again, but how much is man responsible for this, and how much is CO2?” Curley asked Mass. “If CO2 is the main driver of temperature, then we can try to control CO2, a la EV cars and everything else. More science is coming out on this, Cliff.”

“Both can be true,” Mass said, weighing in on the subject. “It is true that, even without human beings doing anything, there’s a lot of natural variability. And it is true that this is one of the cooler periods in the last 500 million years. And, actually, for most of the last 500 million years, it’s been warmer than it is today. That is very, very true. It is also true that human beings putting CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet. That’s true too. If you look at that planet, there’s been a rapid rise in the last 50 years or so, and we’re certainly contributing to that. There’s no big unknown mystery here. There is a lot of natural variability in the climate, but we can affect the climate as well.”

Mass explained that there are periods when CO2 levels jump up rapidly, such as during volcanic eruptions, which release a tremendous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, and when the planet naturally warms up. Still, Mass noted that there is “no doubt” that human beings are adding some CO2 to the atmosphere, which will cause some relatively minor and modest warming.

“I get into the idea of how much it will cost us, the world, to reduce the amount of CO2 and then how much of that cost, reducing it by two degrees, one degree, how much does that have on the big effect of the just general health of the world?” Curley said. “We could spend trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars to possibly bring down a small amount of CO2 and to bring down the temperature, or maybe not bring down the temperature. And we’ve spent all of this money and affected everybody’s life in a way that, in the end, didn’t have that great of an outcome.”

Mass claimed rising levels of CO2 are something most people can adapt to.

“It turns out a warming world could, in fact, cause less deaths, “Mass said. “So, a lot of this end-of-the-world stuff that people are pushing, and this desperation to spend huge amounts of money, makes no sense at all.”

Climate Apocalypse counters Joe Rogan’s claims

However, according to on Instagram, Rogan misrepresented the article, stating the article explains that while Earth has experienced hotter climates in deep geologic time, humans evolved and built civilization during a relatively cool and stable period—the Holocene.

“Current temperatures are rapidly rising out of that cold epoch, not into it,” Climate Apocalypse wrote. “Scientists warn that without cutting greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures could rise to levels not seen in over 5 million years—approaching 17°C (62.6°F). That’s a warming trajectory, not cooling.

“The point isn’t ‘Earth has been hotter before, so we’re fine.’ The point is: our species, our crops, our cities, and our coastlines evolved in a cooler world—and now we’re breaking that foundation,” Climate Apocalypse continued.

³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Meteorologist Ted Buehner weighs in

A weather station located near the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, which first began operation in the 1950s, collects a wide range of data, including the average amount of CO2. NOAA reported in May 2022, the average amount of CO2 was 421 ppm. In May 2023, it rose to 424 ppm. In May 2024, it climbed to 427 ppm.

According to a NOAA report on average May CO2 measurements, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is similar to the Pliocene era, which occurred about 5 million years ago. At that point, global temperatures were approximately seven degrees warmer than they are today. Sea levels were anywhere from 16-82 feet higher than today, meaning south Florida was completely underwater.

“Rising global temperatures lag behind the rise of greenhouse gases, like a train leaving the station before reaching full speed,” Buehner said. “The rise in global temperatures is on track to accelerate, similar to what long-term climate models reflect.”

Buehner also noted that each year has reached a new global record high temperature average, going back 145 years. 2024 was the warmest, edging out 2023, which was warmer than 2022, and so on.

An important point regarding the world’s warming is that it has not been evenly distributed. The polar regions have seen the greatest warming, which has resulted in the thawing of permafrost that has produced infrastructure failures in the northern regions of Russia, Canada, Alaska, and elsewhere.

“That permafrost thawing is exacerbating the greenhouse gas rise,” Buehner said. “CO2 and methane trapped in the permafrost are being released back into the atmosphere. Methane is not addressed much, but it is a much better greenhouse gas than CO2.”

Buehner cited Oceanographer Yuping Gwan, who analyzed global temperatures, finding that summers are now three weeks longer, while springs, falls, and winters have all shortened.

“During the 2010s and now this decade, that longer summer trend has continued, and we have witnessed this trend, particularly with longer wildfire seasons around the globe,” Buehner said. “In the Puget Sound region, we have experienced wildfire smoke six out of the last eight summers going back to 2017, something we had not had in my lifetime.”

Listen to the full conversation here.

Contributing: Ted Buehner, ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.