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Upon taking office in 2025, Donald Trump immediately got busy reversing and defunding the previous administration’s radical climate and energy agenda. That sent a message to the world: You may still cast America as the “villain” in your narrative of panic, but America will no longer play the fool.
Net Zero may still be official policy in several European countries, but it’s clear they are decreasingly serious about implementing it. Governments are pushing once-critical deadlines to achieve Net Zero farther out into the future, or signaling the project will be wholly abandoned. Even Germany, once the poster child of Net Zero zealousness, is bringing fossil fuels back. Many private-sector titans joined the Net Zero craze with their own virtue-signaling promises. Those, too, are proving to be as reliable as a dieter who will always start tomorrow.
On Episode #201 of The Climate Realism Show, The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Sterling Burnett, and Jim Lakely will talk about all this, and more, including the Crazy Climate News of the Week. You can add getting old to the list of things that cause climate change. Did Al Gore really just say we now need to worry about a coming ice age? Bugs are off the menu again. And the newest threat to the climate is something we all do: get older.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.
Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals
Net Zero may still be official policy in several European countries, but it’s clear they are decreasingly serious about implementing it. Governments are pushing once-critical deadlines to achieve Net Zero farther out into the future, or signaling the project will be wholly abandoned. Even Germany, once the poster child of Net Zero zealousness, is bringing fossil fuels back. Many private-sector titans joined the Net Zero craze with their own virtue-signaling promises. Those, too, are proving to be as reliable as a dieter who will always start tomorrow.
On Episode #201 of The Climate Realism Show, The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Sterling Burnett, and Jim Lakely will talk about all this, and more, including the Crazy Climate News of the Week. You can add getting old to the list of things that cause climate change. Did Al Gore really just say we now need to worry about a coming ice age? Bugs are off the menu again. And the newest threat to the climate is something we all do: get older.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.
Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals
In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!
Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!
Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
H. Sterling Burnett
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., hosts The Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News podcast. Burnett also is the director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, is the editor of Heartland's Climate Change Weekly email, and oversees the production of the monthly newspaper Environment & Climate News. Prior to joining The Heartland Institute in 2014, Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, ending his tenure there as senior fellow in charge of environmental policy. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations within the field. Burnett is a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission, served as chairman of the board for the Dallas Woods and Water Conservation Club, is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, works as an academic advisor for Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, is an advisory board member to the Cornwall Alliance, and is an advisor for the Energy, Natural Resources and Agricultural Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
What is Environment and Climate News Podcast ?
The Heartland Institute podcast featuring scientists, authors, and policy experts who take the non-alarmist, climate-realist position on environment and energy policy.
One of the most urgent tasks of our country is to decisively defeat the climate hysteria hoax.
Linnea Lueken:We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
Jim Lakely:The ability of c o two to do the heavy work of creating a climate catastrophe is almost nil at this point.
Anthony Watts:The price of oil has been artificially elevated to the point of insanity.
Sterling Burnett:That's not how you power a modern industrial system.
Speaker 5:The ultimate goal of this renewable energy, you know, plan is to reach the exact same point that we're at now.
Sterling Burnett:You know who's tried that? Germany. Seven straight days of no wind for Germany. Their factories are shutting down.
Linnea Lueken:They really do act like weather didn't happen prior to, like, 1910. Today is Friday.
Jim Lakely:That's right, Bretta. It is Friday, and this is the best day of the week. Not just because it's UFO disclosure day and not just because the weekend is almost here, but because this is the day the Heartland Institute broadcasts the climate realism show. My name is Jim Lakely. I am your host and the executive vice president of the Heartland Institute.
Jim Lakely:We are a free market think tank that's been around for forty two years, and we are known as the leading global think tank pushing back on climate alarmism. Heartland end this show bringing the data, the science, the truth that you've been, that counters the climate alarmist narrative. You've been fed every single day of your life. There is nothing else quite like the climate realism show streaming anywhere. So I hope you will help us out by bringing friends to stream to view this livestream every Friday at 1PM eastern time, and also like, share, and subscribe, and be sure to leave comments underneath this video.
Jim Lakely:We do read them. These all convince YouTube's very mysterious algorithm to smile upon this program, and that gets the show in front of even more people. And as a reminder, because Big Tech and the legacy media are not big fans of the way we cover energy and climate on this program. Heartland's YouTube channel has been demonetized. So if you wanna support the program, and I really hope you do, please visit heartland.org/tcrs.
Jim Lakely:That's heartland.org/tcrs, or you can scan the code right here on the screen. And you can join other friends of this program who who help bring it to the world every single week. And we also wanna thank our streaming partners, junkscience.com, CFACT, The c o two Coalition, Watts up with that, and our friends at Heartland UK Europe. Let's get started. We have a very big show today.
Jim Lakely:We have with us, as usual, Anthony Watts. He is the c senior fellow at the Heartland Institute and publisher of the world's most viewed website on climate change. What's up with that? We have Sterling Burnett, the archbishop of Renterbury, who is also the director of the Arthur b Robinson Center for Climate and Environment Policy at the Heartland Institute, and Linnea Lueken, senior fellow for energy and environmental policy at Heartland. And we have two producers behind the scenes, Andy Singer, who has to leave very soon, and Keely Drewcala.
Jim Lakely:Thank you to you both for helping to bring the show, and we'll do our best to be as smooth as possible. But, know, usually, we don't have any chitchat, but I'm gonna ask you something, Linnea. I'll I'll just spring it on you. You know, this is UFO disclosure day, and I tweeted actually this last night. I tweeted, unless half the stuff I've seen on the y files concerning aliens and UFOs comes true, I'm gonna be very disappointed.
Jim Lakely:What do you think of UFO disclosure day so far?
Linnea Lueken:Well, we got another video of a little blob zipping around. I have not I actually have not had time yet today to look into it. You know me though, Jim. I'm gonna be all over that, like, white on rice later. Right.
Linnea Lueken:I I I am a big fan of the UFO community. I'm not bought in fully, I'll admit, but I love it anyway. Kind of like I love the Sasquatch stuff. I love all of that stuff. I love cryptozoology, all of it, just for fun.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Entertain. And the UFO stuff is very fun. There are some there are some things that are more compelling videos and and evidences than others. That's for sure.
Linnea Lueken:One of the fun things about the UFO community are the, you know, the I want to believe, but I'm very much willing to debunk, you know, any given video. And I think I would probably categorize myself in that category, the I want to believe, but I can easily tell how some of these are just not what they're saying they are. And so I have fun. I my current the audience might hate me for this. My current position on on most of the UFOs that we've seen, even the ones with with what appears to be extremely strange, you know, movement and stuff is that they're ours and that they don't belong to aliens.
Linnea Lueken:So that's my that's my theory right now.
Sterling Burnett:I I'd like to say that look. I believe there's gotta be life in the universe somewhere. Whether they've mastered the, ability to travel the long distances in the time required to, to get here and visit us and not conquerors at the same time. I I have questions about that. If they're an exploring race like human beings have been in a exploring race, we we we'd be in trouble.
Sterling Burnett:But con concerning Sasquatch, I know he exists. And the reason I know this is because I watched Kansas City Royal baseball games, he's a baseball fan. Every time Vinny Pascantino hits a home run, he runs across the back of the outfield out there. It's it's all over the cameras. They've got video evidence, so that's true.
Jim Lakely:Well, I got I got some I got some good news for for for Anthony here. In one of the UFO disclosures today, have discovered that it is UFOs that are actually the ones responsible for chemtrails. So
Anthony Watts:Oh, well, I thought sure it was gonna be UFOs are responsible for climate change.
Sterling Burnett:There you go.
Anthony Watts:We'll we'll go with Kim Trails. That's easy.
Sterling Burnett:Never with Kim Trails. Right. So it There was a there was a film about that back in the eighties or nineties, Charlie Sheen, if you can believe it, he was a meteorologist. And, evidently, aliens were here juicing the c o two increase to make the Earth habitable for them.
Jim Lakely:Nice. Alright. Well, I I should have resisted. Look at this. Our show was already derailed.
Jim Lakely:I know how we can get it back. We could get it back by covering the crazy climate news of the week. Hit it, Keely. Thank you very much, Bill Nye. Okay.
Jim Lakely:So I'm gonna play a couple videos here for you. The headline here is new Al Gore idiocy. It's hard to resist playing clips from him and and commenting. A couple weeks ago, The Hollywood Reporter and the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance teamed up for an inaugural celebration of Hollywood's environmentalism with a special appearance from former vice president Al Gore. I I actually cannot believe this was the first time they've ever done this, to be honest.
Jim Lakely:The sustainability and entertainment honors event held at Hotel Bel Air was timed to the Hollywood Reporter's annual sustainability issue and was led by a keynote conversation between gore and actor Bradley Whitford in honor of the twentieth anniversary of An Inconvenient Truth. Now you might remember Bradley Whitford. He was great in Billy Madison. That's his greatest role. I highly recommend it.
Jim Lakely:Anyway, Al Gore made two claims. In one, it was said that he said that a new ice age was coming. I don't think he quite said that, although what Bradley Whitford was trying to get him to say. That's what he was trying to get him to say. Let's just play the video here.
Jim Lakely:Let's let me put this in show on stage, and let's bring up video. Play. There we
Speaker 6:go. That movie that I mentioned, the day after about the Gulf Stream shutting down? Well, in this morning, in one of the English newspapers, there's a whole big article summarizing the recent dire warnings of the scientists who found yet more confirmatory information that this is a very real threat within the next twenty five years.
Speaker 5:Right. And for people who don't remember from the movie, talk very explicitly about if the Greenland ice shelf melts to a certain point, which seems probable given what happened in Antarctica.
Speaker 6:In Greenland Greenland today, Greenland is losing 30,000,000 tons of ice per hour, night night and day.
Speaker 5:And if there is a tipping point here where the gradual threat of climate change becomes immediate, where if that happens and the Gulf Stream ceases to exist as we know it, we're in an ice age in like ten years.
Anthony Watts:No. No. No.
Speaker 6:It would take long. It it I mean, I'm not Just go with me.
Speaker 5:Go with me. I wear makeup out.
Speaker 6:Version, but I but I I've spent a lot of time with him. Go. But it it would be bad. It would be very bad, and it would be bad on a scale that is beyond our anything we can compare it to today.
Jim Lakely:Right. Okay. There there's a couple of things I wanna parse from that clip. And, Linnea, I'd like to actually start with you. I think it's important for us to be a lot more fair with Al Gore in a saintly way compared to the way Al Gore is and his alarmist cabal are to our side of this argument.
Jim Lakely:It seemed that, obviously, Bradley Whitford believes that the day after tomorrow and the inconvenient truth are actually part one and part two of the same film. But you know? So I because we've had friends reach out to us and say, I I think I heard somewhere someone said that Al Gore said that a new ice age is upon us. In fact, I got a link to a story that said that Al Gore said that, but when you look at the video, he really doesn't say it. But it seemed like he really wanted to.
Linnea Lueken:Well, I'm first gonna address what you said earlier about the show being derailed. That was all you, Jim. That was all you talking about aliens. So you don't get to you don't get to blame us for that one. Alright.
Linnea Lueken:Second, yeah, speaking of aliens, so Al Gore up there doing his his same old song and dance. I I suppose that if the Antarctic or the Arctic suddenly lost all of its land ice and dumped it all into the ocean, that I would believe that it would have some pretty extreme impact on the weather, at least in Europe and North America. I don't think that very many scientists are actually suggesting at anywhere near the rate that it would require to to make some kind of a huge impact on AMOC. I think that all of this stuff is coming from Anthony can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's all coming from, like, one particular guy who just keeps putting these Amox studies out. And they all are, you know, pretty alarmist.
Linnea Lueken:But at the same time, you can go right now into probably nature or somewhere like that and find studies saying that it's doing the opposite. It's know, these that these patterns are strengthening or they're weakening or they're not doing anything at all. You can find just as many papers saying different things based on these different computer model scenarios. I I just you know, I guess he's not he he may or may not be around ten, twenty five, thirty years when they do this reevaluation of whether or not we are, you know, covering the Statue Of Liberty in a in a glacier, like, in, like, in the day after tomorrow, but I don't know. He I don't think he knows what he's talking about.
Linnea Lueken:He just says stuff that he sees in the news.
Anthony Watts:We just recently ran a piece on climate realism on the AMOC. The USA Today covered it as if it were fact. Gore talked about, you know, one of the newspapers in Britain, you know, talking about it. Well, guess who that was? It was the Guardian.
Anthony Watts:You know? Anything alarmist is reliably alarmist there and doubled down on. And so here's this article that I wrote for climate realism. Keely, if you can bring that up, you can see that I thoroughly debunked this. There's an a complete complete lack of any proof whatsoever that the AMOC is gonna shut down.
Anthony Watts:And a and USA Today used the same stupid comparison saying, oh, this is just like the day after tomorrow. Oh, no. You know? And it's just bogus beyond belief. It's all fear mongering, and it's all about the script that these media outlets keep following.
Anthony Watts:They find some paper, and the paper says x. And then they say, oh, that's bad. Well, let's take that and make it x plus seven or x squared, you know, and let's let's go with that headline. And that's what they do. They make these things into these scary headlines for two reasons.
Anthony Watts:Number one, they truly believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket from climate change. There's no debate about that. And secondly, clickbait sells, and that's all this stuff is. It's it is irresponsible junk journalism clickbait.
Sterling Burnett:But they can't decide what disaster is gonna come to pass. If the ice caps grow, then sea level rise will reverse. And yet I keep getting things saying sea level rise is increasing faster. Well, that can't be the case if the ice caps are gonna grow. In addition, you know, Gore Jim is right.
Sterling Burnett:Gore didn't Gore didn't say that we'd have a day after tomorrow, twenty four hours, everything goes haywire. Or that even
Jim Lakely:a new ice age is coming.
Sterling Burnett:Or even that a new ice age is coming. You know, he not be smart enough to know that the ice age is driven by, the the tilt of the earth and the sun, very long cycles. It has nothing to do with c o two levels. But he did say it seemed to me early on in in his response, he did say, you're right. Evidence is mounting or the science is becoming something like that.
Sterling Burnett:And I'm sorry. A paper based on climate model projections is not evidence or data. I I repeat again. Climate models are tools. They don't provide data.
Sterling Burnett:They don't provide evidence. And what evidence does exist is all over the map. Some say it's slowing down. Some say it's speeding up. Some say it's staying about the same as for the last sixty years.
Sterling Burnett:And as far as his I think Jim's gonna go go ahead and go back to Jim.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I I just wanted to just to get get to another point. Another thing I wanted to parse out of that is the the way Al Gore described how much ice is melting at Greenland. I forget the precise number that he had, but it reminded me of a post that Chris Martz, our friend, Chris Martz, the meteorologist, had posted. He's actually covered this a lot, and I I don't wanna bring it up on screen, but I I remember that he noted that the Greenland ice sheet and you can correct any of these things if they're wrong, team.
Jim Lakely:But he said the Greenland ice sheet contains 2,900,000 gigatons of ice. That's equivalent to 2,900,000 tons. And that at the rate that Greenland ice is melting, if that, that number is accurate, it would take more than eleven thousand years for the entire Greenland ice sheet to melt. Do do those numbers sound right
Sterling Burnett:to you? Well, here's the you know? No. They don't sound right. I mean, the the the the amount of ice sounds right.
Sterling Burnett:That sounds right.
Jim Lakely:Right.
Sterling Burnett:But the idea that I think he said 60, I don't know, 60,000 tons, 60,000,000 tons of ice are melting a day, twenty four hours a day, That's just a lie. That this is just false. He's gotta know it's false. Because what happens is every year every year, now in the past throughout history, ice melts at Greenland during the summer months and regains ice during the winter months. But if the ice was melting at the rate he's talking about, it wouldn't be, it it wouldn't show in the total ice mash measurable.
Sterling Burnett:And Anthony has a there there's Anthony's comment at a glance post on that and Linnea's video. We've covered this. But more importantly, what this study did not say, or or does not look at is the fact that or I'm sorry. What Al Gore is ignoring is the melting. Often, the melting occurs inland, creates a pool.
Sterling Burnett:The melting occurs one day and refreezes the next day. It never reaches the ocean. So you can melt all the all the ice inland that you want to so long as it's refreezing, inland, and it has no impact on the of the ocean currents, the AMOC, or sea level rise. Either one. It can affect either one if it all refreezes.
Sterling Burnett:And if you ignore that refreezing, then, you know, you're just you're cherry picking what you wanna talk about.
Anthony Watts:They ignore everything. Right? You know, they only look at, oh, the milk. But, you know, when you look at the total amount of ice on this graph here, it tells it all. It completely tells the story of how incompetent the media is.
Anthony Watts:You look at the the magnified graph of ice loss. You know? Oh, no. And then you compare it to the total amount of ice that's in Greenland. It isn't even a blip.
Anthony Watts:It's nothing. It's inconsequential. And, you know, every year, you know, Greenland melts, icebergs calve into the ocean and so forth, and then new snow piles on in the winter, and and it it adds to it. So, yes, there's been a net loss over the past few years. But is that relevant?
Anthony Watts:Who knows? It you know, you don't know how long this has been going on. You don't know what the trends are in Greenland. And the biggest failure of humans who think that climate change is a real threat is the fact that they don't have any real understanding of the long lifespans and the long cycles that go on in the earth. The cycles that go on in the earth, you know, melting, freezing, ocean currents, whatever it is, lava, magma, volcanoes, earthquakes, all of this stuff is extremely long term compared to the human lifespan.
Anthony Watts:And so people only focus on what's happening now, and what's happening now isn't relative relevant to the long term trend.
Sterling Burnett:The, you know, one more thing to think of. You know, Anthony is right. We we think of these short terms. We do know a little bit something based on proxy data about the past in Greenland. And we know that even during the since the agricultural revolution, since the last ice age came, so twelve thousand years ago, we know Greenland ice has been smaller, and Greenland had had more land exposed than it has now, that the ice sheets have grown over time even during this interglacial period.
Sterling Burnett:And how do we know that? They find shells,
Jim Lakely:shell
Sterling Burnett:middens inland, dozens of miles from the sea where they should be, but they were covered by ice. That means that that was open area underwater before then. They they find all sorts of data like that that shows, sorry, folks. The ice waxes and wanes, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with human activities.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Well, there's an there's an other geez. My notes are a little screwed up here. There's a second video here from Gord that I wanted to play, and well, this is a topic we have to touch on here and there. I'll just let the video speak for itself, if you can add that up there, Keely.
Speaker 6:But the the fossil fuel industry has become hegemonic where all areas of policy that affect their business model is concerned. If you go to the international conferences, this year, it'll be in Turkey. Last year, it was in Belem in Brazil, etcetera etcetera. The largest delegation larger than the other 10 largest delegations put together are fossil fuel lobbyists. And they've spent billions and billions of of dollars deceiving people using the same model, and you know the the the book and the movie, The Merchants of Doubt.
Speaker 6:The the model was written by the tobacco industry, and it was taken and adopted by the fossil fuel industry, and they're still at it. They even run-in school board elections in in some key states. No kidding. And and and local election. They have such a huge amount of money focused on this task.
Speaker 6:And, you know, they're way better at capturing politicians than emissions. And they and and all around the world, they have captured enough of the politicians and policy makers to be in effective control of the policies that affect their business model.
Jim Lakely:Show me the money. I've been waiting to get that drop in for quite a while. Anthony, if the fossil fuel industry has such a huge amount of money focused on this task, where's our money? I am so sick of this talking point by them. Al Gore has a net worth of $300,000,000.
Jim Lakely:His monthly carbon footprint is bigger than all of us on this stream together over a year, possibly over several years. I know this this this is a topic that that gets under your skin too.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Well, you know, part of it had to do with, you know, he sold that TV channel of his, which was all about climate change, and he sold it to, drum roll, please, the Arabs. Yep. Oil is to the Arabs. Big oil.
Anthony Watts:Oh, gosh. You know, I would really like to see somebody stand up in the audience when he starts spouting this stuff and say, mister Gore, mister Gore, can you answer this question, please? How did you arrive here at this venue? Oh, I I took private plane. What did that private plane run on?
Anthony Watts:Oh, wow. You know, I'm on the spot. He's talking about how terrible fossil fuels are and big oil is, and yet he uses it every day. What a hypocrite.
Jim Lakely:Yep.
Linnea Lueken:I don't I don't have too much to add here. It's the same old song and dance every single time. It doesn't I mean, I guess I guess it's effective for rhetoric whether or not it's true. But how does he explain why oil and gas companies are some of the biggest investors in the world in green technology? Why why do they lobby for more regulation on oil and gas?
Linnea Lueken:Because they do.
Jim Lakely:They got it.
Linnea Lueken:Especially the big the, you know, big oil. A lot of
Jim Lakely:these excel they got Keystone excel shut down.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. So what again, as as you already said, where where is the money? Where is the money going? They they have they have spun they have made so much headway with the Exxon thing where they had, like, some guys at Exxon, some scientists at Exxon who were not convinced by the climate alarmist kind of rhetoric that was starting to spin up at the time in the eighties and nineties. And so Exxon was like, okay.
Linnea Lueken:We're gonna look into this. And what did Exxon end up doing? They ended up being one of the biggest investors in green stuff. Yeah. It's it's completely ridiculous.
Sterling Burnett:BP went beyond petroleum. Shell became a big wind company. They all lobbied for carbon taxes. Why? Because it shuts down their small competitors.
Sterling Burnett:They can pay it. The competitors can't. They go out of business. That helps their hedge hegemony, which is what Gore was trying to say. The problem is if they were so power they were so all powerful.
Sterling Burnett:He made it sound like they are the death star that that, you know, that, Darth Vader, is is, working at the behest of big oil, and they have that kind of control. If that was true, why would they be in dozens of courtrooms and probably hundreds of courtrooms across the country fighting climate lawsuits if they could just shut it all down? If, why, are they one of the most regulated industries in the country and probably the world? You know, you gotta remember, outside of The US, most countries don't have private oil companies. The largest oil company in the world is called Saudi Aramco, and it's owned by the government, the the the sheikhs.
Sterling Burnett:In Nigeria, private companies don't own the oil. The the the government does. That's true as well almost everywhere else, even even in England, the North Sea, that's controlled by the government. So, it's not oil companies. It's governments.
Sterling Burnett:And it's the most regulated industry that I'm aware of. If if they really had the kind of power, they would wave their magic wand, say there's no place like America. Oh, click our click our little red shoes together. There's no place like America. And they get rid of all the regulations.
Sterling Burnett:The lawsuits would end, and they wouldn't be spending money and all this stuff. But they are.
Jim Lakely:Yeah.
Sterling Burnett:So it's just a false narrative.
Jim Lakely:And I just wanna
Sterling Burnett:That's what Gore is is famous for doing. You know? He he put out not a documentary. He put out a docuganda. It's propaganda posing as a documentary, and he was rewarded with an Academy Award for it because the left in Hollywood ate it up.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Just just before we leave this topic, there's just one more thing about that quote from or that clip from Gore that got under my skin. He said, quote, they have captured enough of the politicians and policymakers to be in effective control of the policies that affect their business model, unquote. Okay. If I wanna grant you that, how long has that control been in effect exactly?
Jim Lakely:About a year and a couple of months. Biden gave the Greens everything they wanted, as as Linnea has said, and more, including direct payments of billions of dollars, our money. And the green agenda has been on the rise and dominant for most of the last two decades. Al Gore is full of it, and he's losing. He knows he's losing.
Jim Lakely:And he actually even alluded to what's gonna be our main topic today. So I think it's time for us to move on. I usually only Jim rant on the In the Tank podcast, but I just couldn't help myself. God, that guy drives me insane.
Sterling Burnett:Well, Jim, wait. Wait. Wait. Just just before you leave. You're right.
Sterling Burnett:Look. Biden, four years. Obama, eight years. But even going back to Bush, what did Bush say when he was president, the second Bush? Bush Bush junior.
Sterling Burnett:He said we were addicted. He he called it an addiction to oil and gas.
Jim Lakely:You know? He was in the business for crying out loud.
Sterling Burnett:And he was in the business. So let's not pretend that, the government has been giving oil and gas everything it's wanted for all time. It hasn't. You're you're a 100% right there, Jim. But it's not just the four years of of Biden.
Sterling Burnett:We've had nearly twenty years now of massive incursions into the private sector to restrict and restrain oil, gas, and coal use.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. The the Biden EPA was not, throwing gold bars off the Titanic at us. They were throwing it at their green friends, and so and that's corruption to the highest level. And I hope someday somebody gets arrested for that.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. Yeah. I just for me sorry, Jim. I just one one more thing. For me, that's, like, that's a that's just a conversation ender immediately.
Linnea Lueken:Like, if someone comes, you know, I you know, we all get this all the time in emails and in comments and whatever. If someone, like, opens their conversation or has a major part of their point against you is that you're funded by fossil fuel interests or whatever, I just tune out pretty much. I I'm not interested in people who don't even care enough to to figure out what the reality of the world is at that basic of a level. I just don't have time for it.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, you know what? I'm going to pull Linnea, and I'm gonna talk about gold bars, but not the ones that are being thrown off the Titanic. I'm gonna be talking about the gold bars and other precious metals you can get from the sponsor of this program, and that is Advisor Metals. And I just surprised our producer, so hopefully she can bring it up on the screen.
Jim Lakely:If you're like me, you listen to a ton of conservative shows on YouTube and Rumble and other places, and you hear tons of pitches for buying gold and silver
Speaker 6:and gold. Fuel industry.
Jim Lakely:Oops. That's alright. There we go. But yeah. So if you if you you see you hear tons of companies that are pitching you to purchase precious metals for your retirement and for just your portfolio in general, and there's a ton of companies out there that can provide that service, but I wanna tell you why you should go with the sponsor of this program, and that's Advisor Metals.
Jim Lakely:And it's because of the man who runs that company, and his name is Ira Brashatsky. He is the managing member of Advisor Metals, and he's not gonna wanna be one of those guys that employs these high pressure tactics or engages in deceptive marketing ploys. You get a lot of that in big gold. He also doesn't deal in so called rare coins. When you buy gold and the precious metals from Advisor Metals, you are dealing in quality bullion, and that is so much better to have on hand when it comes to liquidate this very valuable physical asset.
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Jim Lakely:So if wanna you device diversify your investment portfolio or if you wanna back up your IRA with real physical bullion of precious metals, please go to climaterealismshow.com/metals. You can leave your information there, and Ira will be in contact with you to make the whole process so very easy. Again, that's climatorealismshow.com/metals, and be sure to tell them who sent you because that helps us in this program while you're helping yourself. Thank you for your attention to this matter, and thank you to Scott in the comments who told me that's a great segue. You should just do the ad read now, and so I did.
Jim Lakely:But we can move on now to our second item. It's the first time you've ever done that, Scott, so thanks for the suggestion. Our second item today in the crazy crazy climate news of the week is I call it, we can't sell zebugs. This comes from our friends at climate change dispatch. Bugout, major Swiss grocer ditches insect based foods after years of poor sales.
Jim Lakely:And, of course, we have to go to we were told for years we have to go to insect based proteins because it's harmful to the environment and we cause climate change by wanting to eat meat. Let me read a little bit for you. The Swiss retail group, Koop, is largely removing insect based food products from its product range. This decision follows years of weak sales figures since their launch in 2017. Back in 2022, competitor Migros had already withdrawn comparable products from its shelves even though the retailer had previously offered cooking classes related to them.
Jim Lakely:At that time, Switzerland legalized mealworms, crickets, and grasshoppers as food. Hoop subsequently launched products from the supplier, Ascento. However, customers rarely purchased them. Therefore, is now is now selling off the remaining stock. Linnea, you gotta get on the phone right now.
Jim Lakely:You can act now and have a great deal for for food for your chickens.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. That's true. Now just wait until they go on sale at Tractor Supply again. I still have most of the or, like, maybe a fourth left of the five pound bag I bought last time we talked about this. So the chickens love it.
Linnea Lueken:The bluebirds love it. Cardinals love it.
Sterling Burnett:You know,
Anthony Watts:I think the reason that that these insect based
Jim Lakely:Anthony, you're having a little bit of audio problems. Go ahead, Anthony. I'm sorry. You're having a little bit of audio problem there because you're remote, I know. It's okay.
Jim Lakely:Sterling, would you like to weigh in before Anthony gets, comes back?
Sterling Burnett:For once, it's Anthony and not me. My first my first thought. I guess my second thought is the reason there's a poor sales is because, you know, I think Barnum said you could fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. Well, there were very, very, very few people. That said that small sum of the people you could fool all the time that ever bought into buying insects for food.
Sterling Burnett:I I I've I've seen those gourmand pop pop parties where they do the tasting and someone says, oh, I'll eat we'll eat a cricket. I I've never seen them where they say, I'll eat a mealworm. But I have seen people eat crickets. But, look, this was never ever going to be you you can't fool all the people. You can't fool most of the people on eating insects.
Sterling Burnett:They their their ancestors spent generations developing food products so they wouldn't have to scrabble in the dirt and eat insects for protein. I I I can't imagine. I'm I'm honestly a bit befuddled as to how this ever ever even became, an honest topic of food, you know, eating. I don't know anyone who wants to eat insects. I I just don't.
Sterling Burnett:And and it's not because I only run-in conservative circles. I've never run into someone and said, you know, we had this great party last weekend where we served a a mealworm souffle. I I've never met that person. I I just, how they ever thought they were gonna pull this off? They just really thought that the world would be blinkered by the the term climate change and believe.
Sterling Burnett:And yet, you know, less than half the people think it's gonna affect them in their lives. That those the the half and even the ones that do of the of the 47, 46% that do, they're not willing to spend a dollar a month on their electric bills to fight climate change. So they're gonna start eating bugs? That's like that of all the things they could restrictions they could impose on me, they could say, you can't drive. And I'd say, well, I'm not happy about it, but I won't drive.
Sterling Burnett:Oh, you can't you can't you you've gotta, you know, set your thermostat much higher and much lower. I'm not happy about it, but I won't do it. You have to eat insects. That's the last one. That's where I I I I I go to the gun safe, start loading up.
Sterling Burnett:It's like, no. I'm not eating insects.
Jim Lakely:Anthony, I I think it's really funny that they've been for years flying to Davos for the World Economic Forum on private jets to try to convince the world for years to eat bugs because that's best for the environment while they're on private jet.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Well, you know, I think the re the real reason behind the failure of people to embrace eating bugs is the lack of complementary products showing up in the grocery store. For example, you've never seen Cricket Helper on the shelves. I
Jim Lakely:knew a joke was coming.
Sterling Burnett:I just A TV a TV dinner with, mealworms.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Well yep. So, yeah, Linnea doesn't do it. She doesn't do her grocery shopping at Tractor Supply, and we're not going to pretend we're in Tractor Supply while we're shopping either in the regular grocery store. So alright.
Jim Lakely:Our third item today in the crazy climate news is, oh, getting old causes climate change. This comes from our friends at actually, I have the wrong link in there for you, Keely. That's my mistake. But this is from What's Up With That. I'm afraid I got some bad news for many people in our audience as well as all but one person on that show.
Jim Lakely:And it's because the headline from this from What's Up With That is apparently getting old causes climate change. From our friend and frequent chat participant, Charles Roder, there was a time when the climate conversation had villains you could point to without needing a spreadsheet. Smoke stacks, jet engines, maybe a coal plant belching away like it had a personal grudge against the atmosphere. Simple, tangible, satisfying. Then things got creative.
Jim Lakely:First, it was your car, then it was your diet, then your vacation, then your thermostat, then your dog, then your coffee habit. And at some point, the message quietly shifted to from some activities produce emissions to your existence is a rounding error away from a policy problem. And now we've reached the next logical frontier, aging. Charles cites a paper from the journal I'm sorry, from the journal energy energy policy. Anthony, this this was on your on your site.
Jim Lakely:I'm sure you're familiar with there it is. Thank you for finding that, Keely. I'll let you take a whack at this first. I don't wanna say you're the oldest on here. I'll just say that you should go first.
Anthony Watts:Are you somehow saying I'm the oldest? That what you're saying here?
Jim Lakely:We may not have enough time for you to get through this. You better go. Oh,
Anthony Watts:thanks. Well, you know, when I first saw this, I thought this has to be a joke. I mean and then I thought, well, maybe they're blaming it on maybe old people have more fluctuance than methane or something. I don't know. But it just it just goes to show you the length at which these climate alarmists will go to try to prove something and basically say, you know, everything causes climate change.
Anthony Watts:Everything that you do in your life is bad. You know? The lack of eating bugs is bad. The eating meat is bad. You know?
Anthony Watts:Driving a car is bad. All these things. They want you to live in mud huts like people in Africa. You know? And they're even finding ways to basically say that's bad too.
Anthony Watts:The thing is is that this is just another modeling study. And as Sterling loves to point out, modeling is not data. It's not reality. And so this is just another alternate form of reality that these people come up with. Basically, they're saying that because of the sedentary lifestyle and certain things that older people tend to do, that causes more climate change.
Anthony Watts:Well, boo hoo. Who cares? I sure don't. You know? And it's the the most disturbing thing about this particular article and this paper behind it, in the scientific paper, they get into politics, and they basically say there needs to be policy put in place to mitigate this.
Anthony Watts:So the first thing I thought of when I saw that was this is just like the movie Soylent Green. You know? You get old, you get recycled for the sake of the planet. That's what these people think.
Sterling Burnett:You know, it it could be like Swirl Green. You're right. Honestly, I'd eat Swirl It Green before I'd eat insects, so, you know, cannibalism before mealworms. But I guess my thinking is maybe they're saying and I and I've gotta admit, I I haven't read the study. Maybe they're saying because older people in general have more disposable income.
Sterling Burnett:You know, the the the wealthiest segment of society is the oldest segment of society. Maybe and because we know that wealthy people spend you know, do more emissions, study after study has shown they emit more per capita than than other people, maybe, that's what they're blaming. But, of course, you know, they've been they've been blaming old people for stuff for a long time. Back in the seventies, I think the saying was don't trust anyone over 30. And then, when I was young, there was a movie called called what was it?
Sterling Burnett:It wasn't Soylent. Soylent Green was one, but, it was filmed here in Dallas. It had Michael York. They, basically, when you reach a certain age, you went to this ceremony and they celebrated you reaching this age, and then you were sent off to a one Logan's Run. There it is.
Sterling Burnett:Thank you, Peter Halligan. Logan's Run, where you were supposedly sent off to this wonderful place, and it turns out what they were doing was they're killing you. I think you reached 30, and they were gonna kill you. And and, supposedly, they weren't killing you. They were sending you to this wonderful place, and someone found out.
Sterling Burnett:It's like, hold it. I'm not I'm about to turn 30. I don't wanna die. So it's like, these that's what these people are all about. They're missing tropes.
Sterling Burnett:The younger generation is typically more worried about climate change than the older generation, and so they wanna blame the older generation. They're already blaming them for climate change. Right? It's it's their their parents' fault. They live cushy lifestyles.
Sterling Burnett:They were raised in cushy lifestyles. They were raised in homes with, with, you know, indoor plumbing and, climate control indoors where we really can control the climate. And they have their PowerBooks and their iPads and their cell phones charged all the time unless they lose their chargers. And then they say, mom, dad, buy me a new charger. And yet they wanna say that you've destroyed the planet.
Sterling Burnett:I'm gonna TikTok about it. It's it's, it's a sad statement, about the state of, climate alarm that just just an age just aging gets you blamed.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. This is this is more of what we talk about all the time, the, like, stupid modeling studies that don't matter. Like, what? Are they gonna put a cap on how old? I mean, I I say that, but I do believe that they would do that in places like Canada and The Netherlands and whatnot.
Linnea Lueken:They would put a cap on on how old you're allowed to be. I think if if you got
Anthony Watts:You know, people fleeing
Linnea Lueken:strong enough.
Anthony Watts:People fleeing the country would be the first climate refugees.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Really. But, no, these people I mean, I'm not gonna say this for all climate alarmists because I think there are a lot of true believers out there. But there is a huge chunk of them who don't love the environment. They don't love the planet.
Linnea Lueken:They just hate people.
Jim Lakely:Mhmm.
Linnea Lueken:They just hate human beings. Yep. And and that hatred drives all sorts of insanity. And it's why they take great pleasure in in trying to suggest that they take away things from average people that they enjoy, you know, like eating meat or, like, driving your own car, that kind of thing. They hate you.
Linnea Lueken:They want you to suffer. They do not love the planet. So I and I, of course, not you know, hashtag not all, but it's I I really think that that is the driving philosophy behind a lot of these people.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. They hate they hate people who don't agree with them and who aren't their friends. Right? I keep hearing how billionaires are the the problem, how we hate billionaires, how we need to tax billionaires. The left is unified.
Sterling Burnett:Bernie Sanders, AOC, what's your name in Massachusetts? Pocahontas. They all hate billionaires, but they're all getting behind a billionaire, Tom Steyer, for governor of California. Because there's a billionaire we can agree with.
Jim Lakely:Yeah.
Sterling Burnett:You know?
Jim Lakely:But, you know, it just you know, it it was important. It is a crazy climate news item because it is, Linnea said, it's it's a climate alarmism is just ultimately, at at its core, a dystopian anti human human movement. Our our friend Patrick Moore, who was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, has talked about this quite a lot. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it on why he left Greenpeace, and it's because he joined Greenpeace to save the whales and to oppose not nuclear energy, but the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And one day, he looked around, listening to his fellow Greenpeace people, looked around the room and said, you guys hate human beings.
Jim Lakely:I'm not in that business. I'm not here. I don't I love humanity. I love life. What are you guys doing?
Jim Lakely:And he left. And, unfortunately, it's just been this way for decades.
Anthony Watts:There should be a movie about it. Fear and loathing fear and self loathing on planet Earth.
Sterling Burnett:You go. There you go.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Now this is the time where I usually do our ad read, and I'll just mention again, please go to climaterealismshow.com/metals if you're interested in adding precious metals to your to your portfolio. But we can go right now to the main topic of this, and the I love the thumbnail that Donald Kendall from Heartland made for us today. This is based our main topic today is based on a piece written for the May first edition of Climate Change Weekly. You can go to heartland.org, and up at the top there is a button called subscribe, and then you can get the email newsletter sent to you every Friday, almost every Friday.
Jim Lakely:Sometimes sometimes Sterling is slacking, and he takes a Friday off once in a while. But we still call it climate change weekly, and it's a it's a great roundup. If you like this show, you're gonna love that newsletter. So I hope you will go over and check it out. But, you know, the idea was that net zero on the you know, which is now a global movement, and it certainly was when Biden was was in the White House, but it's it's been dominating the politics and the policy of Europe now for for many years, but that is now dying of a thousand cuts.
Jim Lakely:And his headline here in his first item in the Climate Change Weekly from May 1 is countries and industries are abandoning or reducing net zero commitments. And I'm gonna read a bit from it and have Sterling take it from there. Since the swearing in of Donald Trump as the forty seventh president of The United States, climate alarmism, and the political machinations in the public and private sector it spawned have experienced the death of a thousand cuts. Sterling writes, I have previously described here at Climate Change Weekly some of Trump's actions that are draining the climate swamp of resources, supporters, spirit, and momentum. These include defunding climate boondoggles across federal agencies, pulling The United States out of the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing The United States from dozens of climate monitoring and wealth transfer organizations, most importantly, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and rescinding the greenhouse gas endangerment finding.
Jim Lakely:All these actions and more have left the progressive climate elite bereft and seeking solace and continued support, with said solace and support waning in both the public and private sectors in The United States and internationally. The cuts are coming fast and furious. Evidence suggests that with America no longer playing the fool, cast as a villain in the climate scam, other countries and companies around the globe are increasingly refusing to do so. Some entities are withdrawing from their climate commitments entirely and re embracing fossil fuels. Others, while still embracing climate alarm to a degree, are reducing their emission reduction pledges, cutting funding for wind and solar, pushing out the timeline for net zero, acknowledging the continued necessity of fossil fuels, for a while at least or some combination of above.
Jim Lakely:Now, you know, Sterling, you cite in this piece several specific examples of one of those thousand cuts that are killing net zero around the world. Maybe you can run through some of them for us.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. Well, let's look at the international stage. Two things happened recently. The sub meeting of the international, of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the IPCC met to determine when they would publish the next, assessment report. They, adjourned after a week or more of meetings, and their conclusion was, we can't even determine when we're gonna publish the next report.
Sterling Burnett:You know, without the next report, how are we gonna buy guide policy? They couldn't even decide on when they would publish the next report. Another meeting held in Colombia of, it it wasn't the a UN sponsored thing. It was a a meeting of, what I like to call the the coalition of the willfully stupid. 60 countries got together in Colombia and agreed, they agreed, by the way, that they're gonna phase out fossil fuels.
Sterling Burnett:Let's talk about some of the countries that weren't there. China, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The US, India, Russia. In other words, all the major emitting countries failed to go to Colombia to sign this agreement. In fact, it it's worse than that.
Sterling Burnett:It's not just that there are four or five countries that are big, but they decided not to go. No. 60 countries. That sounds imprisonment until you realize more than 200 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement. So less than a third of the countries that were on board with Paris are on board with this new agreement.
Sterling Burnett:That's a drop off. That's a loss, not a victory. You go to, Germany. They have decided that we still keep our goals, our our climate goals, but we're not gonna penalize people if they don't make the changes. So we will still support you if you wanna install, you know, you you wanna move to certain vehicles, you want a heat pump, wanna you install a heat pump, we'll still give you subsidies.
Sterling Burnett:But unlike when we said, by law, you must do these things, now we've said, we'll give you support, but we're not gonna penalize you if you don't actually meet the deadlines. Other countries are doing the same thing, and and this is important. Private industry is backing out. As soon as Trump was elected, even before he swore the oath of office, banks had pulled out of all the the net zero banking alliances. Now automobile manufacturers, 18 major manufacturers said they are either scaling back or ending their EV programs.
Sterling Burnett:Did that coincidentally coincide with the fact that subsidies dropped off the table in The US? Not coincidentally, by the way. You know? Even and the thing is that's that's that's ridiculous. The people that were buying these things didn't need the subsidies, but as soon as the subsidies went away, they stopped buying them.
Sterling Burnett:So, that's happened. As we mentioned earlier, oil companies oh, well, oil companies look. They're spending $25,000,000,000 on climate crap. But for the first time in eight years, that spending declined. It declined for more than $38,000,000,000.
Sterling Burnett:So they're going backwards. The point is with the Duke University has said we're we're ending our, 4,000,000,000 spending on sustainability and climate. It's just one thing after the other after the other in the private sector, in the public sector. As soon as Trump stops funding something and gets us out of these things, these countries say, well, if we can't rely on The US to give us money, if we can't rely on The US to be the patsy, we can't afford to do it. And what does that say?
Sterling Burnett:If you really believed if you really believed the world was gonna end because of climate change. Just because The US doesn't do it, does that mean you're not gonna do it too? It seems to me you redouble your commitment to save the Earth, to save yourselves. You you say you're gonna be destroyed. So you redouble your commitment to make up for what The US isn't doing.
Sterling Burnett:Instead, they're backing off. Means they didn't really believe it in the first place. Just like Obama didn't believe Caesar rising, and that's evidenced by the fact that he bought a beachfront property as soon as he left that office.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. If Europe thought if European countries thought that China and India were, you know, causing the planet to hurdle towards, total destruction, they'd be, like, bombing coal plants and stuff in China. Well, I mean, I guess with with as much as they could anyway. They they'd be they'd be doing sanctions against China until they stopped, you know, their industry and stuff. They'd be doing all these things against the real big polluters and also big carbon dioxide emitters, but they're not because they don't actually think that it's a world ending problem.
Linnea Lueken:I yeah. It's good riddance kick rocks. Net zero. Sorry to our European audience that, you know, your countries are still kind of hoping that they can continue this until Trump is out of office, but I think you're gonna run out of money before before he's out of office on these programs, especially if the cuts keep coming. So, yeah, I I think that they're in a whole lot of trouble in the net zero area.
Linnea Lueken:But, you know, they I think that the IPCC and a lot of the kind of international organizations on climate made a big miscalculation about a decade or so ago. Because I I it seems when you when you read the history of this stuff that they're, like, alarmist, but fairly moderately alarmist on it, you know, into the eighties and nineties and maybe earlier February. And I think they began to feel like people weren't alarmed enough or they weren't taking it seriously enough. And so they tried to kick the fear into a higher gear on it. And and they started saying a bunch of stuff that just wasn't even in their AR reports, you know, like hurricanes are getting worse, that kind of thing.
Linnea Lueken:That doesn't show up in their actual scientific reports. But they started advertising that and pushing it in the media. They came up with all of these different organizations that were targeted towards ramping up the fear in the general public. And what happened instead of people becoming more alarmed outside of some activists about climate change, people just tuned it out. They just decided either one that it's so extreme and such a huge problem that they couldn't possibly do anything about it.
Linnea Lueken:And the they're looking around at their governments not doing enough to stop the catastrophe that's just around the corner. And so they get frustrated and give up because they're like, well, the world is over anyway, so who cares? Or people look at their extreme forecasts and their extreme, you know, the things that they're they're asking you to give up and stuff. And they say, I just I just don't buy it. It's just not showing up in reality.
Linnea Lueken:It's just not showing up in, you know, what I experience from day to day. So, you know, I'm just this just doesn't come across as believable to me. And they move on. I think I think that they made a big miscalculation in trying to ramp up the fear on that stuff. If they just had said, you know, oh, you know, we're gonna have some sea level rise because of melting ice caps or whatever.
Linnea Lueken:And coastal communities need to invest in infrastructure to accommodate that.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. What they say sorry.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I don't and and I don't think anybody would have been, like, you know, for opposed to that. I certainly wouldn't be. But instead, what they say is you have to give up meat. You have to give up all fossil fuels and all of the downstream products of fossil fuel processing.
Linnea Lueken:You have to all of it needs to go away and it has to happen right now or else the entire world is just gonna explode. It's just not compelling. No. I'm not gonna give you control over the entire global economy to prevent a couple of millimeters a year of sea level rise. Sorry.
Linnea Lueken:No.
Jim Lakely:Or a fraction of a degree in Celsius in the temperature one hundred years from now.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. What they what they started saying, you're right about that, Linnea, is after AR six came out, maybe a little before, but certainly after, they really ramped up the claim that, oh, the IPCCC is it's too cautious. It it's it's it doesn't go far enough because, it's really worse than they say. So, yeah, it's the gold standard. They always say it's the gold standard, but they they're too cautious.
Sterling Burnett:They don't they're not even following the science. It's worse than you thought. I will say this about the EU. You know, I mentioned this in my article. I forgot to say it before.
Sterling Burnett:So Germany is backing off some of its stuff, but the EU as a as a whole is backing off some stuff. Simple things like reporting requirements. The EU had demanded that companies, above a certain numb level of, revenue have to report their their, greenhouse gas emissions and start reducing. Now they've scaled it back. So 80 the 80% of the country companies that were covered before are no longer covered.
Sterling Burnett:And why is that? Well, it's not because they think climate change is any less scary. It's because their economic prospects and and more importantly, their electoral prospects are even more scary. You know, right wing parties are rising, and they do not believe in a climate hoax. And people are tired of paying higher energy bills and being put out of work when their factory moves overseas.
Sterling Burnett:And, they say, oh, we can't afford that. So they're even scaling you know, even EU as a whole is scaling back some.
Jim Lakely:Well, in in The United Kingdom and I know we have a lot of viewers in in The UK. We have guests, on this show from, UK, quite often. I can try to get one on today, but they couldn't be on because it's such a crazy and busy and happy day in in Great Britain because of the election local election results yesterday where the labor where labor got absolutely shellacked. I saw clips on Twitter last night of you know, they said, well, we thought last time was bad when they lost 66% of the seats they tried to defend. Last I looked last night, I didn't check this morning, but it was, like, 83, 85% of the seats that the labour was trying to defend last night were were lost.
Jim Lakely:This was the first national election in which, I think you would fairly say that Reform UK was actually on full footing. And Reform UK had a fantastic, fantastic night last night in the elections in Great Britain. And what is one of the main pillars of their agenda? Getting that rid of net zero because it is a economically disastrous policy. It's a freedom stripping policy.
Jim Lakely:It's it's a policy that will drive your country even farther and faster into absolute ruin, and it won in a sprint last night in in The UK. So I think these are I think you're right, Sterling. I think NetZero has been dying of a thousand cuts. It got hit in the face with a sledgehammer or with a scimitar or or an axe just last night in in in Britain.
Sterling Burnett:Yep. Maybe it's not a thousand cuts. Maybe they're just be it's being bludgeoned to the into submission.
Jim Lakely:At this point. Yep. Yep. Alright. Well, I think we can now go to everyone's favorite segment of this show, and that is q and a.
Jim Lakely:Take it away, Linnea. Yay.
Linnea Lueken:Alrighty. Let's see. Okay. So our our friend Mike here asks, if the ice caps melt a bit because temperatures go up, do we know how much water will be absorbed into, for example, the Sahara and just land in general via rain and life versus just raising ocean levels. I mean, some I mean, it's gonna go into the water cycle.
Linnea Lueken:Right?
Sterling Burnett:Presumably, but I've got no idea how much and and how we'll change water cycles. Maybe Anthony has a better feel.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I and Anthony has dropped out, so we'll get him back in a bit. I think his the Wi Fi was not so good.
Jim Lakely:He told us that his Wi Fi was gonna turn back into a pumpkin at the top of the hour, and that's exactly what happened.
Linnea Lueken:So Oh.
Jim Lakely:I think he's going for good.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. Well, yeah, I I wouldn't even begin to be able to guess that that calculation. I mean, it takes a while for water to move through the water cycle. So one of the one of the effects of diluting seawater is that it can evaporate more, and you get some evaporative cooling as well at a local level. I don't know if we can even calculate how much that would be impacted over time.
Sterling Burnett:But you know what? You know what it would impact
Linnea Lueken:that are just
Sterling Burnett:yeah. You know what it would impact that no one's talked about? So you're right. It cools it cools the oceans. Everyone's saying, oh, the oceans are heating up faster than the rest of the world.
Sterling Burnett:Oh, it's it's it's more proof of global warming. Well, it cools the oceans. You know, one of the, the, main components of sea level rise according to climate change theory is thermal expansion.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah.
Sterling Burnett:And this is as the water heats up, it expands, and so that's part of the rise. Well, if if this cools it, that means thermal expansion is going down, so sea level rise should slow.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I so there there is quite a bit of complicated calculations that go into this, and I'm sure that I'm sure that they try to put those those downstream effects into their modeling, but I'm not sure how accurate it it is. And I and I'm sure that they don't know.
Sterling Burnett:I bet they don't even try and do it. Remember, they they said they can't model clams. They said they can't model all sorts of things. I bet they haven't even looked at this because it might undercut alarm.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Okay. So, Pill and Clam says that the answer is 42. I agree. I think that's a problem.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. Kite Man Music has a funny question. Is it true that polar bears have gone extinct in Antarctica? And the answer is yes. They've gone so extinct that they were never there.
Linnea Lueken:It's they actually, like, went back in time and removed them from history. That's how extinct they are in Antarctica.
Sterling Burnett:Like like, like the song American Pie, they took the last train for the coast a long time ago.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Alright. William says, why aren't Greenies celebrating the Iran war for raising oil prices by about $20 a barrel? Just because it's temporary?
Sterling Burnett:They are celebrating it. I've seen dozens of articles saying this proved the need to get off oil and and build more wind and solar. This shows that we were right all along that you can't rely on oil and gas, that it's it it it it's cost you too much. It's not reliable, so we need more wind and solar. Now, if if you need more wind and solar, if it's so cost competitive, the subsidies can still stay gone, and they'll be building wind and solar, except that's not what's happening.
Sterling Burnett:So, that that tells me but but they are celebrating it. They love they love it.
Jim Lakely:And it and it is a temporary blip. Actually, I think I saw this week that The United States has now has now become the number one oil exporter in the world. I think, you know, jumping over the whatever Gulf state was number one, and it's because of the problems in the Persian Gulf, which will not be permanent. They will be ending hopefully sooner rather than later. The good news is we're still gonna be ramping that up.
Jim Lakely:And so, yeah, oil price is gonna be coming down in the next few months, I think.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I mean, I my my bet would be not this summer because oil prices almost always go up in the summer anyway, but it might moderate and certainly in the fall. But I have no idea because I am not the foreign policy person. But okay. So this comment from John, I just wanted to bring it up because John said they did learn out west that when you drain lakes, it undermines the aquifers and they collapse, which also affects ground surface level, which is true.
Linnea Lueken:And it also is true on the coasts when you drain aquifers for water. That's part of what relative sea level rise is in certain areas, especially in the Southeast. But that just gave me an idea for a nonsense study. We need to contract someone to do this for climate purposes. We're gonna we're gonna get a study going where we are going to see we're gonna do a we're gonna make an engineering model of a pipeline for water from our the Arctic to the Southwest.
Linnea Lueken:And we're just instead of the sea instead of the melt going into the ocean, it's gonna go to Nevada. And and we have just solved two problems at once. So government, send me some money and I will work up the coolest crayon drawing you've ever seen to show how this would work. Alright.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. Well and and we need is to do some, some deep drilling. But on a small scale, lots of lots and lots of little bitty holes to allow the water to go all the way down to the aquifers really quick.
Linnea Lueken:Mhmm.
Sterling Burnett:It's just an engineering it's just an engineering problem. Just like providing water for the coast when your aquifers are drained. We we call it desalinization. We can figure this stuff out if we really need to.
Linnea Lueken:Absolutely. Alright. Mike asks, do we have any indication that the ex vice president actually knows what those currents are? No.
Sterling Burnett:I have no evidence I have no evidence of that. Yeah. He often quotes his mentor, Roger Ravel, a climate scientist he learned under. He he supposedly learned under, in college, and then he basically misstates his position on climate change. So if he can't get that right, I'm not sure he knows what, those currents are really.
Linnea Lueken:Alright.
Sterling Burnett:But but to be fair, neither do the climate models. They can't incorporate the large scale ocean currents.
Linnea Lueken:So, Sammy the Smooth has a question that we definitely know the answer to. So there were COVID restrictions that lasted a long time. How much did that have an effect on anything? Nothing. So carbon dioxide emissions did not go down in any way that was significant, like, noticeable
Jim Lakely:Right.
Linnea Lueken:When it's charted out. There's not even a blip on the Mauna Loa tracker. So take that for what you will. Let's see. Peter says, now the IPCC has dropped the RCP eight point five and seven point o scenarios.
Linnea Lueken:Will all of them have to be recalibrated? I see they still have global population growing to 14,000,000,005 times more coal being burnt. Do we know? I don't know. I don't I don't think they have to recalibrate because this the scenarios are the scenarios that they have them programmed to a certain emissions level at a certain time periods and certain population growth and all that.
Linnea Lueken:They're dropping 8.5 at least because it's just totally improbable at best.
Sterling Burnett:If yeah.
Jim Lakely:If you
Sterling Burnett:had a no. It's impossible. If they had
Anthony Watts:a bell curve of models,
Sterling Burnett:8.5 was at the far end of the right, and they're just they're just truncating it. That will move it all backwards. Now I didn't know that they're still keeping global population at 14,000,000,005 times more coal. I think the coal is what was used, for 8.5. So I'm not sure they're still doing that.
Sterling Burnett:But I I don't think they'll have to re recalibrate. They'll just lop off the extreme on one end and keep, you know, keep the extreme on the other end. So there's there's no evidence, Oh, no. The good side, that can't happen either. The bad side's gone.
Sterling Burnett:The good side will still stay at the low end, and they'll just, move the bell curve. In the end, it's a modeling exercise. The models run way too hot, and that was before eight point five.
Jim Lakely:You know? Yeah. Well, let let let me ask this question related to that. So, you know, the use of fossil fuels has continued to go up. Yep.
Jim Lakely:The percentage of total energy use that is attributed to fossil fuels is pretty much the same, has been the same for decades. But yet our energy use, our use of fossil fuels keeps going up. But the temperature rise has not been commiserate with the increase in in our use of fossil fuels. So why aren't they adjusting their scenarios downward just based on that observation over the last twenty years?
Sterling Burnett:Well, they just did. They dropped 8.5.
Jim Lakely:I know. What about
Sterling Burnett:the ones in the middle? No. You know, look. There's there's a problem. There's a a serious problem there in that every new report, the the, upper and lower range of where it could be almost never changes.
Sterling Burnett:It changes by a little bit. If your models are better, we're constantly told every new iteration of the report that the models have improved. Well, when models improve, the range of possible outcomes shrink, and you you should, over time, settle on whatever the midrange likely value is. It never shrinks. So the models haven't improved.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. Alright. Bogus says that my study idea is worth a $2,000,000,000 grant. I agree. Let's get on that.
Linnea Lueken:Come on, Chris Wright. We'll call it an energy project. Alright.
Jim Lakely:Chat. Come on, chat GPT. Crank that up for me this afternoon.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I would never. Alrighty. So David Voatz says, do the climate alarmists think we are headed the way of Venus? I have seen this in the news.
Linnea Lueken:I have. I've I've seen articles, I'm guessing probably in the Guardian or maybe in the conversation that say that, you know, the the cause of Venus's current conditions was runaway climate change. And so as if they're, like, implying that that is anywhere in the cards for the state of this planet. Yeah. I I've seen it I've seen it gently pitched as just kind of like a scare story because people know that Venus is, you know, Venus.
Linnea Lueken:It's utterly uninhabitable. But, yeah, that that's I I have seen it.
Sterling Burnett:Uninhabitable? Does that mean I have to cancel my vacation plans there?
Linnea Lueken:Well, you can you can ask the aliens that we're finding out about this week.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Maybe they can they they're gonna be your travel agent for you, Sterling. They'll take care of you.
Sterling Burnett:There you go.
Linnea Lueken:So Steven Lindsay says, have you noticed this year is cooler than last year? Snow extent at a twenty year high for week 18 from as as Rutgers says and also UAH statistics. Yeah. This year is cooler than last year. The El Nino ended temporarily.
Linnea Lueken:It seems like it's probably gonna come back this fall, but El Nino ended. The worst of the effects of Honga Tonga have kind of settled a little bit, although it'll probably persist for quite a bit longer in the upper atmosphere. You know, you can I can I can't pull it up right now, but the, you know, month by month temperature reports definitely show that this year is cooler? So I'm not not too worried about it. I'm not gonna say that a single year is evidence of a trend.
Linnea Lueken:That's for sure.
Jim Lakely:No. No. But, you know, it's been actually a lot cooler here in Northern Illinois this year than I can remember over the past several years. Today, it's 65 degrees, absolutely gorgeous, but it's been very chilly. And we're here almost in the May.
Jim Lakely:It's it's I'm glad to get the warm weather.
Linnea Lueken:What aliens lived on Venus that caused climate change, says energy colonizer. See, we're we're bringing the show together. We're looping it back to what we talked about at the top of the at the beginning of the show here.
Jim Lakely:I didn't I didn't derail the show. I actually set it up for success.
Sterling Burnett:You you you'd have to read the full reports to know that, and I haven't read the tens of thousands of documents they've released to know which aliens from Venus are causing climate change.
Linnea Lueken:The Algardians. I'd believe that. Yeah.
Sterling Burnett:The man the man bear pigs.
Linnea Lueken:Is it is it Venusians or or is it well, if you're CS Lewis, it's pearlandrins. I don't know. I just don't know. Let's see. Another question.
Linnea Lueken:I think I'm all out of questions, actually. Now we're just chilling with the chat.
Sterling Burnett:There you go.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. They use too many fossil fuels. Let's see. Yeah. Michael and Michael here is coming in to ruin everything for all of us with facts by saying we are not tidal locked to show one side to the sun, so we will not have a Venus climate.
Linnea Lueken:You're you're ruining the fantasy, Michael. We're gonna
Sterling Burnett:That you know, that's the problem with our audience. They bring in too many facts.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah.
Sterling Burnett:They do this. All they care about is facts and data, not not fantasies. So there you go.
Linnea Lueken:People in our chat really know a lot about the planet Venus. So e j worm says I'm sorry if it's actually a real name. I I don't know how to read that out loud. High in Venus's atmosphere where the air pressure is close to one bar. The temperature is quite livable higher than Earth but consistent with the distance to the sun.
Linnea Lueken:I have I've seen concepts of like the the Venus cloud cities. That's a very cool sci fi concept. That's a good one. Venus is cooked. That's true.
Jim Lakely:Mars is ours. I like it.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. Absolutely. Thank you, guys. Alright. Well, we have we've we've definitely run out the chat.
Linnea Lueken:Although Peter asks, must be more hurricanes on the way. Right? Depends on who you ask. I think did Noah put out their hurricane forecast? I think it's supposed to be about normal this year, actually, even though I haven't seen it should be above normal.
Sterling Burnett:I haven't seen the pulmonary hurricane, but we do know that more hurricanes are on the way because we're entering hurricane season. There'll be more than they were last month and the month before that.
Jim Lakely:Yep. We'll be covering hurricane season as we normally do now. It's kind of an annual thing with with some hurricane experts come early June.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Once we get the report, I don't actually think that Noah has put out their report yet or their prediction for the season yet. Not not the, the latest one anyway.
Sterling Burnett:I'm gonna make I'm gonna make several predictions. I don't normally do this, but I've been I've been struck recently. It's you know, my psychic powers have really improved. I'm gonna predict that we are soon to see more wildfires for the year, that we are soon to see more heat for the year, and we will probably have some hot temperature records broken, this year. And I'm I'm willing to put money on all those predictions.
Linnea Lueken:I think you might be right. I I I my prediction for the summer and into the fall is that somewhere on the planet, a crop of some kind is gonna have a bad harvest.
Sterling Burnett:Oh, you're you're sticking you're sticking your neck out there, Linnea.
Jim Lakely:The the the mealworm harvest is gonna be absolutely crappy this year. That's for that's for guaranteed. Hey. You know, Linnea, there's there's some there's some questions, I think. I see them in the in the starred chat that we that we how we save these questions.
Jim Lakely:I see some that were from last week. Do not see them?
Linnea Lueken:I I already got rid of them. I don't see any.
Jim Lakely:I see them. Here, let me try. Do you see that up on the screen?
Linnea Lueken:Oh, yeah. I do
Jim Lakely:now. Okay. Well, this so Albert, this might have been from last week, I think. Says he saw a science paper saying that Hunga Tonga Volcano will have an impact at least until 2030. Have you guys seen that?
Jim Lakely:Do you have any thoughts?
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I've seen people saying that, but I I can't weigh in on that. I have no idea. Absolutely no clue.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. So That
Linnea Lueken:would be an Anthony question.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. That would be an Anthony question, but it's my understanding that water vapor cycles out of the system much faster than that. It's a 10% increase, but what what what Hunga Tonga won't do is keep increasing temperature because it's going down over time. Mhmm.
Jim Lakely:Well, you know, I actually have a question just related to that now that and I think it is there anything comparable to Hunga Tonga in the in the in the scientific record or in in observational? It it seems when it happened, it was described as all all but unprecedented, and so there was really no way to really predict. I mean, was there anything else that you guys recall?
Linnea Lueken:It's underwater. I think it'd be pretty hard. I'm sure there have been previous underwater major hurricane or major hurricane major volcano eruptions. But I would venture to guess that most of them have not occurred in the satellite era, so it might have been harder to, you know, be even measuring or impossible really to measure water vapor content in the upper atmosphere.
Sterling Burnett:Yeah. I mean, that we just can't know. And and, when it happened in the past since we couldn't measure either c o two or water vapor, anything in the proxy data that would show an increase of temperatures based on tree rings or whatever, it'd be hard to tease out whether it was due to an increase in water vapor, c o two, or something else.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I think so. And Polly asks, isn't the Honga Tonga eruption effect multiple times more than the COVID pandemic, like, decrease, I would say? Yes. But wasn't Honga Tonga in 2023?
Linnea Lueken:Maybe I'm forgetting what year it was.
Sterling Burnett:It was after
Linnea Lueken:It was after the big shutdowns, I think.
Jim Lakely:Yep.
Linnea Lueken:Alrighty. Well, I guess I'll hand it back to you, Jim. I as much fun as I have, chatting with chat, I will pass it back to you.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Thank you very much, Linnea. And thank you to everybody in the chat, everybody participating in the show today. It's always so much fun being with all of you every single Friday. Thank you very much, Anthony Watts, who got kicked off his hotel Wi Fi about twenty three minutes ago.
Jim Lakely:So I hope you enjoyed his time on the show. Thank you very much Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken from the Heartland Institute. I also wanna thank again our streaming partners, junkscience.com, CFACT, The c o two Coalition, Climate Depot, Watts Up With That, and our friends at Heartland UK Europe. Find them online and in their socials, please give them a good follow. And, again, I wanna thank our wonderful audience.
Jim Lakely:It's so much fun bringing this show to the world every single week, and all of you here live with us make it even more fun. Thanks again, and we will talk to you again next week. Bye bye.