When Science YouTubers Abandon Science for Clicks

The tragic tale of Insane Curiosity

*Check out my recent articles in the Annapurna Express, on the issue of brain drain in Nepal, and the Tibetan Review, on the issue of fighting for the rights of Tibetans.

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Introduction

I watch a lot of YouTube. Despite the app’s turn plunge into exploiting its users, numerous creators continue to generate excellent content. It is a great place for an introduction to ideas of which one can (and should) explore further among more reliable sources. Unfortunately, sometimes good channels abandon their mission to provide legitimate content in pursuit of other, less noble goals.

This seems to be the case for the channel Insane Curiosity, a channel with nearly a half million subscribers. The channel’s about page lays out its purpose as follows:

Insane Curiosity is a channel of astronomy, physics and future technology, which teach mostly about Space, Recent Space Discoveries/News, Future Events, The Solar System, Exoplanets, Mars, Colonization Plans, etc.). We prepare New videos almost every day. Learn With us and Stay Insanely Curious!

I subscribed to this channel because it once produced solid content. After watching the decidedly unscientific and purposely provocative piece described below, however, I am forced to leave it. Once credibility collapses, it is difficult to gain back any trust. Given the diversity of content across YouTube, there seems little point in wasting time with a channel once that confidence is gone. Let this be a lesson to current creators.

When a channel goes awry

I embedded the video above to allow you to follow along with my breakdown. Timestamps direct you to the relevant points. Before diving into the content, however, one should pay attention to the thumbnail itself. Its language (spelling errors notwithstanding) indicates the character of the content, specifically portraying the issue into one divided by two camps.

As I discussed in detail in a previous piece, when narrators do this it is to corner the recipient into an ideological trap. When the premise itself is characterized as extreme before the presentation of evidence, here by aligning the primary viewpoints as belonging to either the “catastrophists” or “skeptics,” the narrator intends to impose an opinion rather than to offer facts to allow the viewer to form his own.

For the viewer to deem himself rational in this situation, he is left to agree with whatever the narrator proffers, as it remains—by process of elimination—the only reasonable position. Indeed, this is buttressed by the video’s subtitle’s final clause, “Who is Fooling Us?” The implied perpetrator is one or both of the extremists.

Once can see the effectiveness in this strategy reflected in the comments:

—As with almost every other politically charged topic, if one side is saying we are facing certain doom and the other side says nothing is happening, it's probably somewhere in the middle.

—Anything where you can't ask questions or see the data you should probably ask questions and to see the Data.

—I don’t think there is any doubt that the climate changes and cycles .. I think we affect the climate . Having said that I also think we are in far more danger from climate alarmists and others making a living from climate doom

These comments represent three general positions viewers take after watching the video. The first is that the viewer uncritically agrees that there are two equally outrageous sides. The second is that both of these sides exist, but their crime is “hiding” things from the public (implying a nefarious intent). The third is the ‘centrist' view wherein the viewer disagrees to some extent with the video’s premise, but nonetheless accepts the two-sided extremist argument.

All these viewpoints themselves are unsupported by an abundance of evidence. Like most arguments driven by the emotional clinging to an ideological position, however, the commenters will twist their view to fit within cherrypicked pieces of evidence (or altogether ignore them). In this way, they uncritically assume that this video must be offering the rational view (and thereby giving what’s “true”) because what it proposes falls between these extremes positioned as the only ‘other’ viewpoints.

Interestingly, many do speak up about the slew of errors and misrepresentations in this video, but as the internet is wont to do, they are simply attacked by others. Nonetheless, pervasive internet trolls only make the case for debunking misinformation with even greater vigor. So, with that, here is the breakdown of some of what this video claims.

Reviewing the scientific literature

Just ten seconds in, the video makes this claim:

Upon reviewing the scientific articles published on the subject thus far, one is left astonished.

An immediate red flag waves with this statement. Nowhere in the video does the narrator cite a single paper, nor does the description link to any. Instead, it notes only that for 35 years the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified the use of fossil fuels as a substantial contributor to the warming of the climate.

To throw shade on this, the narrator later engages in ad hominem (ad institutionis?) attacks against the IPCC, and the video’s closed captioning puts the phrase global warming in quotations rendering it as a pejorative. In short, the narrator is claiming that information relayed by the IPCC does not comport with many or most of the “scientific articles,” suggesting that that organization is fabricating a “climate crisis” (another phrase the closed captioning puts into quotes).

To substantiate its pronounced skepticism, the video then makes this assertion:

Our skepticism is motivated by the fact that over the years, a gigantic propaganda apparatus has been constructed, piecing together—like Frankenstein's monster—the malevolent contributions of various lobbies, starting with those in science, politics, and economics. All this to induce entire generations to believe—from school desks to university—in this imaginary “climate crisis.” In these summer days, we are witnessing a further dramatization of the issue and the discomposed exasperation against the so-called “deniers,” even accused of “crimes against humanity,” a sign of deep personal malaise and goals that have nothing to do with those of a normal scientific dispute. (00:38)

Therein lies a series of bold allegations: “gigantic propaganda apparatus,” “malevolent contributions,” having “nothing to do [with] a normal scientific dispute.” This is a lot of specious rhetoric if it lacks further validation. So, does the video validate any of these claims? No.

On the division among scientists

The entrance into its scientific discussion starts on a noticeably bad footing:

The Scientific Community has never appeared so divided: on one side stand the “catastrophists,” on the other the “skeptics.”

Ignoring the deprecatory characterizations of scientists, the division presented here is patently false. For example, in a survey of 10,929 geoscientists of whom 2,780 responded, researchers found:

agreement on anthropogenic global warming is high (91% to 100%) and generally increases with expertise. Out of a group of 153 independently confirmed climate experts, 98.7% of those scientists indicated that the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels. Among those with the highest level of expertise (independently confirmed climate experts who each published 20+ peer reviewed papers on climate change between 2015 and 2019) there was 100% agreement that the Earth is warming mostly because of human activity. [Emphasis added]

Six other studies, published collectively back in 2016, showed that 97% of scientists across 11,944 papers concurred that climate change is primarily caused by human activity. They also determined that the rate among skeptics “correlates with expertise in climate science,” meaning that it is the people who have limited understanding of how things work that are the ones making outlying assertions about how things work.

Insane Curiosity, then, has built its entire video off a false, or at least significantly misleading, premise.

The IPCC

The narrator first attempts to delegitimize the IPCC with this statement, “It is considered the ‘voice of science,’ but it is not; it is a political body” (4:28)

Every IPCC report is reviewed and commented upon by experts in the related fields addressed before it is published. The people who partake in the drafting process of each report are identified in the reports themselves. For example, Chapter 1 of the report on warming of 1.5 ºC, there are 28 contributing authors and 3 review editors. These include:

• Purnamita Dasgupta

  • Chair in Environmental Economics and Head, Environmental and Resource Economics Unit Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave, Delhi, India

• Hallie Eakin

  • Professor, School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University

• Wolfgang Cramer

  • Director of Research (CNRS), Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for marine and terrestrial biodiversity and ecology (IMBE),
    Aix Marseille Université

• Natalie M. Mahowald

  • Chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University

Go through every report by the IPCC and you will find similarly highly credentialed scientists among a variety of fields as lead, co-, or contributing authors. Thus, Insane Curiosity in less than five minutes has started with a false premise and falsely impugned a major body involved in the scientific analyses and recommendations related to the issue.

CO2 and plants

At 8:28, the video asks “have these greenhouse gases only increased now? Is anything known about the quantities of CO2 from the distant past?” It points out that CO2 levels have varied from 180 parts per million (ppm) to 320 ppm over the human era. Today, the level ranges around 420 ppm. From this, the video proclaims:

Even at these levels, plants are “partially starved of CO2.” Indeed, standard procedures for commercial greenhouse growers include increasing CO2 to 800–1200 ppm; this improves crop growth and yield by about 20–50%. (8:53)

This is an overgeneralized claim that borders on the untrue. First, it assumes—as many incorrectly do—that elevated CO2 is intrinsically good for plant life, as if that occurs in a vacuum. As Thomas Bytnerowicz, a postdoc scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, explains “It’s looking at one little mechanism while missing the broader picture.”

Whether CO2 helps with “greening” the planet, the benefits and negatives are neither simple nor straightforward. Greening—the increased growth of plants in response to elevated CO2 levels—is happening the fastest in the Arctic regions, where it creates an overall detriment.

Donatella Zona, a biologist who studies the arctic tundra explained that heightened greening there does not increase carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, but causes a number of other problems. One of which involves the melting of permafrost that releases stored carbon in flora carbon sinks, causing a net increase in emissions. Moreover, many plant species’ response to short-term, high-speed changes in CO2 lead to the hoarding of water, which reduces evaporative cooling causing increases in the adjacent surface temperature.

At 9:20, the narrator asserts that greening also “substantially improv[es] agricultural production.” This is, at best, misleading. A study in 2016, for example, found that:

There is growing evidence demonstrating a clear link between crop growth at projected increases in [CO2] and [negative] changes in nutritional quality including, but not limited to, protein, secondary compounds, and minerals.

It also outlined deficiencies in vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, and B9. Lower nutritional values in agricultural crops is exacerbating an already extraordinary problem. Another report explains:

Hidden hunger, that is, the insufficient supply of vitamins and minerals like zinc or iron in diets with sufficient calorie content, currently affects about two billion people and the problem is amplified by food price volatility.

Growing a higher volume of crops (the presumed positive effect of additional atmospheric CO2) would still lead to a net nutritional deficiency for a quarter of the population.

And still another study reported:

At [current CO2] concentrations, we find that the edible portions of many of the key crops for human nutrition have decreased nutritional value when compared with the same plants grown under identical conditions but at present ambient [CO2].

These problems will be worsened by increased crop loss due to “invasive crop pests,” which are already spreading across the globe as more regions warm to amenable temperatures to these kinds of bugs. Overall, then, “crop pests are expected to benefit from current and future climate change” and crop output will suffer.

Crop loss to pests will add to losses from drought, which current trends indicate will triple by the end of the century. These combined factors are already significantly increasing food prices, leading to further malnutrition among the poorest of the world, which currently affects at least one quarter of the population.

Put simply, the video’s claim about “substantially improved agricultural production” is certainly not going to manifest globally. In regions where climate change does improve production, heightened levels of CO2 will lead to reduced nutritional value.

There is no evidence that farmers living in areas with climate changes favorable to enhanced growth will achieve the necessary production volume to accommodate CO2-driven nutritional deficiency. Even if they do, there are a variety of other obstacles to realizing the benefits of improved production, such as economic and supply chain problems.

Here, Insane Curiosity takes an issue that seems logical on its face—that heightened CO2 increases plant growth because plants live off of it—and makes unsubstantiated or false follow-up assertions. The problem is that complex problems rarely follow simple trajectories. Even seemingly logical presumptions do not always manifest in reality, which is precisely the case with this argument. To ignore all these challenges in order to distill the idea into a favorable piece of ‘evidence’ that favors the larger, poorly constructed argument is deceptive and insulting to the viewers.

Weird Math

At 9:50, the narrator states:

The catastrophists estimate that human-associated industrial emissions could have contributed 135 ppm, and "natural causes" for the remaining 5 ppm. But is it true? Let's do some calculations...

The narrator articulates the math upon which the video is about to undertake this way:

Each human exhales about 1 kg of CO2 per day, which means that the 8 billion people on Earth produce 8 billion kg of CO2 daily. But humans represent only 1/40 of all life that emits CO2 on Earth. Multiplying 8 billion kg by 40 gives us 320 billion kg of CO2 per day.

The problem with this is that it simply makes no sense. Human breathing is part of a closed loop that has no impact on the net value of atmospheric CO2. Penny Chisholm, MIT professor of biology, articulates why:

There's no net increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, because it just came from the atmosphere via plants, went into you, and went back out.

It is the insertion of carbon into the atmosphere that occurs outside of this loop that matters. For a concise video explaining this phenomenon, see here. Animal relationships are somewhat more complex, but that only further reveals the elementary mistake of claiming that multiplying human CO2 expiration volume by 40 has any validity whatsoever. Wildlife have almost exclusively net positive effects on global emissions, so adding their expiration volume to this calculation is equally nonsensical.

CO2 to Temperature Correlation

The video says this at 11:05:

[I]n the ice cores of the last 800,000 years, a clear correlation between CO2 and  temperature has never been identified. The anthropogenic origin of global warming is an unproven conjecture, deduced only from some climate models, i.e., complex computer  programs called General Circulation Models.

On the contrary, the scientific literature has increasingly highlighted the existence of natural climate variability that the models are unable to reproduce. [Emphasis added]

A General Circulation Model is a representation of the “physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface.” There are many specific models used to make predictions about climate change and other ecological aspects. These include Earth-system models of intermediate complexity (EMIC), Radiative-convective models (RCM), regional models, and others.

Before data from a climate model is used to make predictions, the model is tested on historical information. The results are compared to observations in the real world. While this seems simple enough, the process is quite complex as described here. Models have generally increased in accuracy over the years, but even older models performed quite well. To say that they cannot account for “natural climate variability” is simply wrong.

The Broecker model, for example, published in 1975, predicted an atmospheric ppm of 373 in the year 2000; measurements that year established the amount at 370 ppm—a fractional deviation. NASA’s Dr James Hansen published a model in 1981 that predicted global temperatures to 2016, based on estimated emissions volume. His team’s temperature average deviated 20% lower than the real world result, but this was largely due to an underestimation of the emission trend in the 21st century.

Natural Variability in Temperature

Next, the video states:

This natural variability explains a significant part of the global warming observed since 1850. The anthropogenic responsibility for the climate change observed in the last century is therefore unjustifiably exaggerated, and the catastrophic predictions are not realistic. (11:38)

It interweaves further false claims about the role of climate modeling to account for natural warming, but the point is obvious. The problem here is two-fold. First, the data across dozens of sources renders this impossible on its face. Second, despite the obvious conclusions one can draw from the data, scientists have nevertheless disproved this contention virtually ad nauseum.

NASA enumerates the many methodologies in which the “natural causes” argument has been defeated: “ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun.”

Ice Core studies indicate that both current temperatures and CO2 levels exceed any natural rates going back millions of years. There are numerous resources that explain how scientists use ice cores to determine atmospheric CO2 and temperature. A good example can be found here.

In any case, this study found CO2 rates ranged between 172–300 ppm over the last 800,000 years. The researchers added:

[W]e find that atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature throughout eight glacial cycles but with significantly lower concentrations between 650,000 and 750,000 yr before present.

Another scientific team, employing a new method for retrieving core samples, analyzed 2.5 million year old ice. Even over that much longer timeframe, the CO2 level did not exceed 300 ppm. Between the publication of these two studies, a separate group analyzed million-year-old ice. There, the CO2 levels also correlated with temperature values discovered by the other two. All three temperature analyses correlated with results from modeling. Moreover, this data clearly articulated the difference between the pre-industrial era and the anthropogenic causation following.

Scientists have further corroborated these results using the other methodologies articulated above.

The video proclaims that climate models:

do not reconstruct the warm periods of the last 10,000 years. These have recurred about every thousand years and include the well-known Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and generally broad warm periods during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. 

These past periods were also warmer than the present period, despite the CO2 concentration. (12:10)

Data from multiple methodological studies easily debunk this claim about warm periods occurring “every thousand years.” A detailed analysis conducted in 2013 from seventy-three different temperature-record sources concluded:

Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began.

Another study focused on the last 24,000 years and traced the increase in temperature, noting it has changed by an order of magnitude in the last two centuries compared to the more than twenty millennia before.

From Physics.org: The blue line shows globally averaged surface air temperature since the last ice age, 24,000 years ago, created by assimilating paleoclimate records with a computer model of the climate system. Time is stretched for the past 1,000 years to visualize recent changes. Warming begins at the end of the last ice age, roughly 18,000 years ago, then temperatures stabilize. While previous studies showed a slight cooling over the past 10,000 years, the new analysis shows a slight warming trend. The curve steepens in recent decades with the accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Credit: Osman et al./Nature

The examples that the video provides do not substantiate its own claims being made. The Medieval Warm Period occurred over about 600 years from the 8th to the 14th century. Using it as an example is a poor choice. First, this warming period was not a global event. Some regions did see significant warming, slightly above the rate the world saw between 1960 and 1990, but other areas simultaneously cooled.

Most scientists believe the variations across the planet occurred because of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. This best explains the disparities among regions with some warming and some cooling. When compared to present conditions from a global perspective, the Medieval Warm Period is barely a statistical blip. The same problem exists for the Roman Warm Period and the Holocene Climatic Optimum.

All of this data proves this statement in the video is false:

These past periods were also warmer than the present period, despite the CO2 concentration. (12:27)

Maunder Solar Minimum

Still driving on the natural causes argument, the video continues:

[T]he coldest period of the last 10,000 years (corresponding to that millennial minimum of solar activity that astronomers call the Maunder Solar Minimum). Since then, solar activity, following its millennial cycle, has increased, warming the Earth's surface. (12:51)

The Maunder period occurred between 1645 to 1715. It describes a period of substantially reduced solar activity. From this, some have hypothesized that periods of solar minimums correlate with (and thereby cause) periods of cooling and vice-versa.

Recent studies indicate that while these solar cycles do affect the planet’s climate, the effect is neither globally uniform nor consistent. Moreover, even comparing the lowest periods of solar activity during human history, the effects would not reverse, and barely mitigate, the current rate of warming. This suggests that the effect of solar variation is only partial, at most.

Scientists remain unclear on discerning the precise quantitative effect of the sun on the climate over previous millennia. New studies have helped refine the investigative process, but these continue to undergo enhancement and verification. What they do agree upon, however, is that observations of solar activity over the past 150 to 200 years—a period during which there are much more substantial and robust records—do not provide evidence to conclude that solar activity can explain much of the warming trend during that time period. To suggest otherwise is simply false.

The Point is made

Insane Curiosity’s video is just under twenty-one minutes long. Having covered more than half of it, there seems little point in continuing. At the time of this writing, the video only received about 9,000 views. Given the number of subscribers to the channel, however, that number will surely rise.

Looking back at its previous videos, its viewership per entry varies substantially, with a low of around 4,000 views to a high of over a million (a considerable outlier compared to videos of more recent times). Analyzing the stats of 22 recent videos (excluding the lowest, highest and current week), the average views per video hovered around 31,000. Its lifetime total views divided by total number of videos results in an average of around 48,000 per video. From this, it seems probable that the channel was seeking to play off the contrived controversy about climate change to increase the number of clicks to elevate its YouTube stats.

Since starting this article to today (about 3 days), the channel’s commenters have shown an increased hostility toward the utterly unscientific approach taken by these creators. The channel’s creators seem to have taken note. Indeed, while the video remains accessible on YouTube, the channel no longer features it on its page. Perhaps others like me have chosen to unsubscribe and the channel’s creators are scrambling to stem the bleeding.

Normally, I am willing to overlook harmless or innocent errors. YouTube channel creators struggle to carve out a living amidst a huge number of competitors, in an economic framework that does not favor them or help them in any reasonable way (another reason why YouTube as a platform is an exploitative shell of its previous self). Mistakes due to rushed productions happen.

Still, despite these challenges, creators have an obligation to their audience. In this case, as a channel that proclaims to exist for the purpose of educating the public on science issues, its abundance of misrepresentations or outright lies is a critical failure in its mission. It deserves to lose its subscribers and potential income for its betrayal.

This is not to say one has to “agree” on the issues of climate change, but there are baseline facts from which the debate should begin. This video only contributes to the sea of nonsense where people quibble over basic tenets of unarguable reality, which forever prevents them from reaching a discussion about the actual problem and its potential solutions.

I think the only thing that could save this channel would be to produce a heartfelt apology and candid explanation for its decisions. If only the internet actually worked that way.

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For another case of junk propaganda pretending to be environmental science, click below.

I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history.

Today I work both in the United States and Nepal, and I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas. In addition, I teach Tibetan history and culture, and courses on the environmental issues of the Himalayas both in Nepal and on the Tibetan plateau. For detailed analyses on law and politics involving the United States, head over to my Medium page.