SGU Episode 901

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SGU Episode 901
October 15th 2022
Wreckage of TWA Flight 800
SGU 900                      SGU 902
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
We have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.
Daniel Dennett, American philosopher
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
[ https://sguforums.org/index.php?BOARD=1.0 Forum Discussion]

Introduction, Alex Jones lawsuit, conspiracy thinking

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

[00:00.000 --> 00:09.000] You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

[00:09.000 --> 00:13.000] Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

[00:13.000 --> 00:18.000] Today is Thursday, October 13th, 2022, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

[00:18.000 --> 00:20.000] Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

[00:20.000 --> 00:21.000] Hey everybody.

[00:21.000 --> 00:22.000] Kara Santamaria.

[00:22.000 --> 00:23.000] Howdy.

[00:23.000 --> 00:24.000] Jay Novella.

[00:24.000 --> 00:25.000] Hey guys.

[00:25.000 --> 00:26.000] And Evan Bernstein.

[00:26.000 --> 00:27.000] October 13th?

[00:27.000 --> 00:28.000] Happy Skeptic's Day!

[00:28.000 --> 00:30.000] Happy Skeptic's Day, everyone.

[00:30.000 --> 00:31.000] Cool.

[00:31.000 --> 00:32.000] There's a Skeptic's Day?

[00:32.000 --> 00:33.000] Yeah, we have one.

[00:33.000 --> 00:34.000] There is.

[00:34.000 --> 00:37.000] Is it self-proclaimed, or is there any officiality to it, or what's going on?

[00:37.000 --> 00:41.000] International Skeptic's Day is observed on October 13th every year,

[00:41.000 --> 00:45.000] also known as World Skeptic's Day or International Day of Scientific Skepticism.

[00:45.000 --> 00:47.000] All right, I'll buy that for a dollar.

[00:47.000 --> 00:51.000] My question is, is there any officiality to the word officiality?

[00:51.000 --> 00:54.000] It is a coincidence, but it feels like it isn't.

[00:54.000 --> 01:00.000] But we had a skeptical triumph happen this past week with Alex Jones getting screwed.

[01:00.000 --> 01:01.000] Yeah.

[01:01.000 --> 01:07.000] Yeah, one billion, basically almost a billion, a little bit less than a billion dollar judgment against him.

[01:07.000 --> 01:10.000] I mean, there's no way he's actually going to pay that money.

[01:10.000 --> 01:12.000] But that's the kind of judgment you like to see.

[01:12.000 --> 01:13.000] It's not a slap on the hand.

[01:13.000 --> 01:15.000] It's not the cost of doing business.

[01:15.000 --> 01:20.000] It is, you ruined these people's lives because you're a dick, and now we're going to ruin your life.

[01:20.000 --> 01:22.000] That's completely fair.

[01:22.000 --> 01:28.000] And so this was, just to get into more detail, this was the judgment for the lawsuits in Connecticut.

[01:28.000 --> 01:32.000] Remember, there's separate lawsuits in Texas, and Texas has different laws,

[01:32.000 --> 01:36.000] you know, that limit the amount of money you can get for punitive damages.

[01:36.000 --> 01:38.000] But apparently Connecticut, there aren't such limitations.

[01:38.000 --> 01:43.000] So, you know, because it's not just like this is the harm you caused to these families.

[01:43.000 --> 01:51.000] It's also because you're such a jerk, we're going to have to, we're going to magnify it just for punitive damages.

[01:51.000 --> 01:58.000] And Connecticut has other laws that could be triggered, and the final judgment could be ten times that

[01:58.000 --> 02:01.000] because of multipliers that could get added in.

[02:01.000 --> 02:03.000] No way. Really?

[02:03.000 --> 02:07.000] I mean, we're way past the money that he, the resources that he has.

[02:07.000 --> 02:10.000] Yeah, it's like a 500-year jail sentence at this point.

[02:10.000 --> 02:11.000] Yeah, exactly.

[02:11.000 --> 02:13.000] Yeah, exactly, like a 500-year jail sentence.

[02:13.000 --> 02:14.000] But, of course, he's crying poverty.

[02:14.000 --> 02:16.000] He's like, I don't have any money, you know.

[02:16.000 --> 02:24.000] But a forensic economist estimates that he's worth between $135 and $270 million.

[02:24.000 --> 02:25.000] That's something.

[02:25.000 --> 02:29.000] That was Bernard Peddingill Jr., who was the forensic economist.

[02:29.000 --> 02:36.000] So the lawyers for the families are going to have to just pursue him and wring every cent out of him.

[02:36.000 --> 02:37.000] Yeah, for the rest of his life.

[02:37.000 --> 02:38.000] Yeah, basically.

[02:38.000 --> 02:39.000] He's got five houses in Texas.

[02:39.000 --> 02:40.000] Yeah.

[02:40.000 --> 02:45.000] And according to Texas law, I mean, you can't, you know, you can't lose a house that way if you use it for your business,

[02:45.000 --> 02:46.000] which is, all right, whatever.

[02:46.000 --> 02:50.000] So at the very least, he's going to probably lose those four of the five houses.

[02:50.000 --> 02:51.000] Yeah.

[02:51.000 --> 02:55.000] And he transferred them over to like his wife or ex-wife or whoever.

[02:55.000 --> 02:56.000] There's been a lot of shenanigans, yeah.

[02:56.000 --> 03:02.000] But there's even ways around that because even the court can say, no, these are fraudulent transfers

[03:02.000 --> 03:05.000] because they were obviously intentionally done to avoid creditors.

[03:05.000 --> 03:06.000] Yeah.

[03:06.000 --> 03:09.000] And he could declare bankruptcy, and he already has.

[03:09.000 --> 03:13.000] He already has declared bankruptcy, and that can delay it.

[03:13.000 --> 03:17.000] But I think the courts will probably not care about that, you know,

[03:17.000 --> 03:22.000] because Jones' actions were willful and malicious enough that they're probably going to say, so what?

[03:22.000 --> 03:24.000] Bankruptcy court's not going to help you.

[03:24.000 --> 03:28.000] And people are saying that, some people, you know, lawyers and stuff are saying,

[03:28.000 --> 03:31.000] this is going to impact his livelihood for the rest of his life.

[03:31.000 --> 03:35.000] He's going to be feeling the pain forever.

[03:35.000 --> 03:38.000] So that's pretty much the best we could hope for.

[03:38.000 --> 03:39.000] That's awesome.

[03:39.000 --> 03:40.000] Yeah.

[03:40.000 --> 03:41.000] Right.

[03:41.000 --> 03:45.000] And the lawyers at this point, once they've won the judgment, you know, it's a huge amount,

[03:45.000 --> 03:48.000] whatever the, you know, with appeals and everything, whatever the final amount turns out to be,

[03:48.000 --> 03:50.000] it's going to be massive.

[03:50.000 --> 03:56.000] So they have every motivation to spend a lot of time and resources bringing money out of him forever,

[03:56.000 --> 03:58.000] you know, because they get some of that money, right?

[03:58.000 --> 04:03.000] They're probably getting 30% or whatever they get out of Jones.

[04:03.000 --> 04:08.000] Yeah, this will also mean that his future endeavors will be tied up in a sense.

[04:08.000 --> 04:12.000] He won't be able, but he won't be able to partner with other companies or organizations.

[04:12.000 --> 04:14.000] Obviously, they won't want to.

[04:14.000 --> 04:19.000] But anything, anything that leads him to a new stream of income will automatically be,

[04:19.000 --> 04:21.000] should automatically be tapped, is my understanding.

[04:21.000 --> 04:24.000] So this severely hinders him from doing,

[04:24.000 --> 04:29.000] branching out into future types of businesses or avenues in which he can find new revenue streams.

[04:29.000 --> 04:31.000] No, they could liquidate everything he owns.

[04:31.000 --> 04:38.000] I mean, they could just, it's a huge win and it sends out a incredibly important message,

[04:38.000 --> 04:44.000] which means that you can get yourself in serious legal trouble for, you know, for spreading misinformation

[04:44.000 --> 04:48.000] and it could cost you and it can cost you an immense amount of money.

[04:48.000 --> 04:54.000] But yeah, the thing is, though, while that is true, Alex Jones is like the perfect storm because...

[04:54.000 --> 04:56.000] It is. It doesn't get much worse than that.

[04:56.000 --> 05:00.000] I know. I mean, if he couldn't get hit with a big judgment, then the system is broken

[05:00.000 --> 05:02.000] because, you know, he had a terrible defense.

[05:02.000 --> 05:05.000] He didn't even bother to defend himself a lot of the times.

[05:05.000 --> 05:08.000] He was clearly, you know, malicious.

[05:08.000 --> 05:14.000] He's got all this other stuff going on where he says, like, I'm, you know, a character that I play.

[05:14.000 --> 05:19.000] So in terms of, he made it so easy to prove that he was just lying for money

[05:19.000 --> 05:22.000] and he didn't care that he was destroying these people's lives.

[05:22.000 --> 05:26.000] And it's almost like not even just for a secondary gain.

[05:26.000 --> 05:31.000] Like with Alex Jones, there was almost this like extra layer of disgust.

[05:31.000 --> 05:36.000] You know, like we talk about, oh, you can like intentionally mislead or, you know, like Jay,

[05:36.000 --> 05:40.000] I can't remember exactly how you worded it, but you were saying, you know, that somebody can like spread misinformation.

[05:40.000 --> 05:44.000] And it's like with Alex Jones, it was so much more than spreading misinformation.

[05:44.000 --> 05:46.000] It was like akin to like a hate crime.

[05:46.000 --> 05:48.000] He weaponized it.

[05:48.000 --> 05:53.000] Yeah, he weaponized this to harm people who lost their children in a violent setting.

[05:53.000 --> 05:55.000] Like it was disgusting.

[05:55.000 --> 06:01.000] I mean, maybe it was just to make money, but I think it was also a power trip that this guy has.

[06:01.000 --> 06:05.000] Oh, sure. He got caught up in himself in all of this. Absolutely.

[06:05.000 --> 06:08.000] He definitely has an out of control ego.

[06:08.000 --> 06:11.000] I mean, it's borderline if not fully blown narcissism at this point.

[06:11.000 --> 06:15.000] Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure it's narcissism, like megalomaniac.

[06:15.000 --> 06:18.000] I mean, it's up there. It's really up there.

[06:18.000 --> 06:22.000] I suppose you can't cop an insanity plea when it comes to these kind of civil suits.

[06:22.000 --> 06:27.000] I don't know that for sure, but wouldn't that have been attacked for him to take legally if that would have been the case?

[06:27.000 --> 06:29.000] He never would have passed that, though, ever.

[06:29.000 --> 06:35.000] If he's got capacity to run a radio show, there is no way that he didn't have capacity.

[06:35.000 --> 06:41.000] Like that's a really high bar to prove that you were incompetent.

[06:41.000 --> 06:49.000] I think not for the judgment, but for the amount, there is going to be mitigating factors and exacerbating factors.

[06:49.000 --> 06:53.000] And he's a big ball of exacerbating factors, basically.

[06:53.000 --> 06:55.000] That's kind of what I'm saying.

[06:55.000 --> 07:03.000] He was like the perfect storm of why a judge would say, I'm going to basically hit you with freaking everything because you deserve it.

[07:03.000 --> 07:05.000] You know, and there's no remorse.

[07:05.000 --> 07:07.000] He's still casting doubt on it.

[07:07.000 --> 07:11.000] He's still saying on his show, like, there's reason to doubt the official story of that.

[07:11.000 --> 07:14.000] You know, it's when he's got really. Yeah, yeah.

[07:14.000 --> 07:16.000] Still going there. Wow.

[07:16.000 --> 07:18.000] When he's got to know that it's BS.

[07:18.000 --> 07:29.000] I mean, it just takes three minutes of thinking halfway reasonably to understand that there's no possible way that this shooting was a hoax.

[07:29.000 --> 07:30.000] Right, right.

[07:30.000 --> 07:35.000] So there's something severely wrong with Alex Jones and how his brain works, I think.

[07:35.000 --> 07:36.000] Or he doesn't believe it.

[07:36.000 --> 07:39.000] That the simpler thing is he's a psychopath who doesn't believe it for one second.

[07:39.000 --> 07:40.000] It's all greed.

[07:40.000 --> 07:41.000] He's playing a part.

[07:41.000 --> 07:44.000] And I mean, some people you could always say, do they really believe it or not?

[07:44.000 --> 07:46.000] And most of the time you don't know.

[07:46.000 --> 07:49.000] And clearly a lot of people do believe this crazy stuff.

[07:49.000 --> 07:52.000] But in my opinion, he believes none of this.

[07:52.000 --> 07:58.000] And this is just part of his of his whole scheme of the character he's playing that he's admitted to.

[07:58.000 --> 08:08.000] And he and this is all this is all the interstitials in between the bits on his show where he he begs for money for crappy products or just just to give him money.

[08:08.000 --> 08:10.000] That's that's all this is.

[08:10.000 --> 08:15.000] And it turned out to be the most expensive piece of role playing in history.

[08:15.000 --> 08:17.000] The greatest cost ever by.

[08:17.000 --> 08:18.000] Well, we say that.

[08:18.000 --> 08:24.000] But honestly, I want to see a in the grand scheme of things like kind of after all the dust has settled,

[08:24.000 --> 08:28.000] how much actually gets collected compared to how much he earned over the course of this career.

[08:28.000 --> 08:33.000] Because I have a feeling he didn't lose everything and he's not going to lose everything.

[08:33.000 --> 08:37.000] And I will be I will be happy to leave him like in a trailer park in a T-shirt.

[08:37.000 --> 08:40.000] And really, if you're just looking at it.

[08:40.000 --> 08:46.000] Yeah, even if it's a function of like he lost everything because he also lost a lot of his money over over time.

[08:46.000 --> 08:50.000] But what I'm saying is that if we looked like month to month at his earnings,

[08:50.000 --> 08:54.000] I don't think this judgment is going to wipe away every cent he ever made.

[08:54.000 --> 08:57.000] Yeah, well, he's from jobs. He spent a lot of it already.

[08:57.000 --> 09:00.000] He lived his life comfortably for years.

[09:00.000 --> 09:05.000] I've heard estimates of him spending three hundred thousand dollars a month.

[09:05.000 --> 09:07.000] Oh, my God.

[09:07.000 --> 09:10.000] It's amazing that people gave him so much money.

[09:10.000 --> 09:12.000] But do we know what his net worth is?

[09:12.000 --> 09:16.000] Well, that's somewhere between one hundred thirty and two hundred sixty million dollars.

[09:16.000 --> 09:21.000] And he's claiming, I think, what, three that he's three million, three and a half.

[09:21.000 --> 09:24.000] And he's, you know, one house.

[09:24.000 --> 09:26.000] His watch is worth more than that.

[09:26.000 --> 09:29.000] Yeah. Five houses in Texas.

[09:29.000 --> 09:32.000] That's the other thing. You look at a character like Alex Jones.

[09:32.000 --> 09:35.000] First of all, you listen to him speaking for 30 seconds.

[09:35.000 --> 09:38.000] If you don't immediately react to that,

[09:38.000 --> 09:42.000] you know, listening to him speak by thinking this guy is a raving lunatic.

[09:42.000 --> 09:48.000] Right. If that's not your immediate reaction, you have to seriously rethink your life.

[09:48.000 --> 09:49.000] You know, seriously.

[09:49.000 --> 09:55.000] But the other thing is you think that, all right, so this guy's making millions of dollars selling,

[09:55.000 --> 10:01.000] you know, supplements and whatever prepper crap, you know, selling all this stuff

[10:01.000 --> 10:04.000] that he's then promoting with his conspiracy theories.

[10:04.000 --> 10:06.000] Like, that's the guy I'm going to believe.

[10:06.000 --> 10:12.000] That's the guy, the guy who's making hundreds of millions of dollars off of saying what he's saying.

[10:12.000 --> 10:15.000] He's speaking truth to power. This guy.

[10:15.000 --> 10:20.000] That requires people having the ability to part the curtain, which they can't do.

[10:20.000 --> 10:27.000] Right. And I think that that's I did this series called Pulling the Thread for World Channel PBS,

[10:27.000 --> 10:30.000] where it's like a multipart series about like why people believe in conspiracy theories.

[10:30.000 --> 10:34.000] And we focus specifically on one of the episodes focused on this Alex Jones thing.

[10:34.000 --> 10:38.000] And there were some deep dives with some psychologists into the people.

[10:38.000 --> 10:42.000] So not about Alex, whatever, but about the people who actually like believe this conspiracy

[10:42.000 --> 10:44.000] because he has like followers, right?

[10:44.000 --> 10:47.000] And they're not all narcissistic, megalomaniacal people.

[10:47.000 --> 10:50.000] Like some people, it's like, how did you get baited?

[10:50.000 --> 10:52.000] How did you get hooked here?

[10:52.000 --> 10:58.000] And one of the kind of hypotheses, the working hypotheses that these individuals said

[10:58.000 --> 11:07.000] was the idea of the atrocity that occurred at Sandy Hook was so psychologically devastating to some people.

[11:07.000 --> 11:15.000] Like the idea that that random cruelty and violence could exist in the world is so hard for some people to swallow

[11:15.000 --> 11:22.000] that even an extravagant alternative, which is that it was made up, was more palatable for some people.

[11:22.000 --> 11:26.000] And so they got hooked in in that way because it gave order to their chaos.

[11:26.000 --> 11:29.000] And I think you see this a lot with religion as well.

[11:29.000 --> 11:34.000] Things feel too complicated, too dark, too weird, and you get hooked.

[11:34.000 --> 11:38.000] And then the conspiracy becomes complicated and dark and weird, but by then you're in it already.

[11:38.000 --> 11:43.000] Right, right. And you do give money to those kinds of, you know, Peter Popov's of the world.

[11:43.000 --> 11:49.000] There's a whole list of the religious, of the religious sects out there who have done this over time.

[11:49.000 --> 11:54.000] And they've become multi, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars poured into those people's pockets.

[11:54.000 --> 11:57.000] So I think you're right. Mainstream religions do the same thing.

[11:57.000 --> 12:02.000] Right. Even like super like the Catholic Church, like, you know, like how much money do they make off of individuals

[12:02.000 --> 12:06.000] and what are they offering people? Like when you really get into the lore, it's bananas.

[12:06.000 --> 12:11.000] But they're not diving into the deep end. They're getting drawn in in the shallow end.

[12:11.000 --> 12:16.000] Oh, yeah. It's like Scientology. They don't come out with Xenu bullshit right out of the gate.

[12:16.000 --> 12:19.000] Yeah, they don't hit you with the heavy stuff.

[12:19.000 --> 12:22.000] You got to level up a few times before you get to that stuff.

[12:22.000 --> 12:26.000] You're already committed in deep by the time you hear that word.

[12:26.000 --> 12:28.000] There's a sunk cost fallacy. Yeah.

[12:28.000 --> 12:30.000] You're literally, yeah, you're pot committed. Yeah.

[12:30.000 --> 12:34.000] Kara, that does make sense. You know, I could that could rationalize what you're saying there.

[12:34.000 --> 12:42.000] But the reality of that, though, is that people are incapable of facing the seriousness of the world that we live in.

[12:42.000 --> 12:46.000] Oh, yeah. It's existentially too painful for them.

[12:46.000 --> 12:48.000] I think some people that might have been the pathway.

[12:48.000 --> 12:54.000] But I know people who believe that who did not get there that by that pathway, they were already conspiracy loons.

[12:54.000 --> 12:59.000] Right. What happened? So, yeah, there's multiple paths into that rabbit hole.

[12:59.000 --> 13:02.000] But you're right. Once you get into it, it's self reinforcing.

[13:02.000 --> 13:08.000] It's hard to get out of it unless you have critical thinking skills, which these people clearly don't.

[13:08.000 --> 13:10.000] And it's super hard for people on the outside to understand.

[13:10.000 --> 13:13.000] It's like anybody who's found themselves in a cult.

[13:13.000 --> 13:16.000] You look at them and you go, how the hell do you believe what they're saying?

[13:16.000 --> 13:20.000] How did you get in so deep? And it's so hard for us to see it because we're not in it.

[13:20.000 --> 13:25.000] Yeah. The boiling frog or an abusive relationship, you know, or an abusive relationship.

[13:25.000 --> 13:31.000] Exactly. Because it doesn't. Have you guys have you guys seen Made on Netflix?

[13:31.000 --> 13:33.000] I have not. Oh, it's stunning.

[13:33.000 --> 13:44.000] Highly, highly recommend the series. And there's a perfect example of that, Steve, where long story short, it's a story of a girl who is in an kind of emotionally abusive relationship and leaves.

[13:44.000 --> 13:46.000] And there's just a lot of mental health issues and stuff.

[13:46.000 --> 13:52.000] She becomes a maid and she's struggling to keep food in her mouth and to keep out of homelessness and take care of her daughter.

[13:52.000 --> 13:57.000] But she's talking to a girl in the in the shelter and she's like, well, he didn't really hit me.

[13:57.000 --> 14:00.000] Like these people are actually abused. Look, she has a black guy.

[14:00.000 --> 14:03.000] He didn't really hit me. And she's like, so he still was abusive.

[14:03.000 --> 14:09.000] And she's like, yeah, but he never hit me. She's like, do you think that my boyfriend on our first date choked me out?

[14:09.000 --> 14:11.000] Like, of course not. I wouldn't have been with him.

[14:11.000 --> 14:21.000] It's like it builds up. It's like a little thing you forgive here, a tiny little violent tendency that you forgive there until you're financially dependent on them and you're in so deep.

[14:21.000 --> 14:26.000] And I think it's the same thing with cults, with conspiracy theories, these little nibbles.

[14:26.000 --> 14:32.000] And then eventually you've given them so much money, you've given them so much time, you're pot committed, like we said.

[14:32.000 --> 14:40.000] And then and then soon they're literally choking you out and you don't even realize it's happening or you realize it's happening, but you don't see an exit.

[14:40.000 --> 14:48.000] And yeah, at some point you'd have to admit so much personal failure that you can't do it, you know.

Quickie with Bob (14:50)

• [link_URL TITLE]

[14:48.000 --> 14:50.000] All right, Bob, you're going to start us off with a quickie.

[14:50.000 --> 14:54.000] Thank you, Steve. This is your Quickie with Bob. Gird your loins, people.

[14:54.000 --> 15:01.000] You wouldn't think ship sales could be super high tech and smart for super heavy ships, but they are.

[15:01.000 --> 15:13.000] The China Merchant Energy Shipping Company has rolled out a three hundred and thirty three meter supertanker with four forty meter carbon fiber composite blades or sails for them.

[15:13.000 --> 15:16.000] Twelve hundred square feet altogether. That's the surface area.

[15:16.000 --> 15:20.000] Now they're retractable at the push of a button, totally computer controlled.

[15:20.000 --> 15:29.000] The system can monitor the weather and navigation data and maximize the use of available wind to pull every every ounce of energy from that wind.

[15:29.000 --> 15:32.000] You know, this ship still primarily uses diesel.

[15:32.000 --> 15:38.000] That's you know, that's the mainstay. But estimates say that it could reduce fuel consumption by almost 10 percent,

[15:38.000 --> 15:45.000] which could amount to a whopping twenty nine hundred tons of carbon dioxide not released every trip, every trip.

[15:45.000 --> 15:49.000] Twenty nine hundred, almost three thousand tons of carbon dioxide not released.

[15:49.000 --> 15:51.000] And this is only, you know, with a 10 percent savings.

[15:51.000 --> 15:58.000] Pretty astonishing numbers there, because that's that could in terms of climate change and just money.

[15:58.000 --> 16:02.000] That's a lot. And, you know, money speaks and multiply that multiply that savings.

[16:02.000 --> 16:06.000] And this is just basically a test bed. This isn't this isn't like a dedicated, you know,

[16:06.000 --> 16:12.000] attempt to see how much we could, you know, we could use wind to move the ship instead of the diesel engine.

[16:12.000 --> 16:18.000] So multiply that times some or all of the fifty thousand merchant ships that are plying the waves.

[16:18.000 --> 16:24.000] And yet could seriously whack back that one point seven percent of global greenhouse emissions that they all contribute.

[16:24.000 --> 16:28.000] One point seven percent. All of these merchant ships. That's a lot.

[16:28.000 --> 16:33.000] Now, the idea has been attempted. You know, this isn't this didn't leap out of a vacuum in the past couple of years.

[16:33.000 --> 16:36.000] It's been talked about going back a couple of decades. Attempts have been made.

[16:36.000 --> 16:40.000] There's been there's some serious other plans that are going on, but they're not, you know,

[16:40.000 --> 16:42.000] they're not going to be real for another few years.

[16:42.000 --> 16:51.000] And this is one of the best attempts at this idea of these of sales of hard sales on big ships to save from using fossil fuels that I've heard.

[16:51.000 --> 16:53.000] It's really intriguing. The ship's cool.

[16:53.000 --> 17:03.000] I mean, the obvious hope here is that that this will inspire other ship designers and that are also looking not only to to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions,

[17:03.000 --> 17:06.000] but also, you know, save some money, too, which is a great combination.

[17:06.000 --> 17:15.000] Now, of course, the mad irony here is that this ship was made to transport not solar panels or even Halloween skulls,

[17:15.000 --> 17:19.000] but two million barrels of fossil fuel all over the planet.

[17:19.000 --> 17:23.000] It brings millions of barrels of this stuff all over.

[17:23.000 --> 17:29.000] So, yeah, this is like, woohoo, here's another drop in the bucket that we're saving here while we're transporting the fossil fuel.

[17:29.000 --> 17:31.000] So, yeah, that irony has not been lost.

[17:31.000 --> 17:35.000] But hopefully it's it's something that will that will inspire people in the future.

[17:35.000 --> 17:37.000] And hopefully we'll see a lot more of these.

[17:37.000 --> 17:39.000] I'd love to see how big some of these hard sales can get.

[17:39.000 --> 17:42.000] That'd be pretty cool. So, loins unguarded.

[17:42.000 --> 17:45.000] This has been your Quickie with Bob. I hope it was good for you, too.

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Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

We have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.
– Daniel Dennett, American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist

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