Environment and Climate News Podcast

A very telling exposé of a meeting between leading "climate communicators" appeared on Twitter last week. In it, pictures of a slideshow mentioned things like: "Worst messages tested: electric cars, Green New Deal, frontline communities, 'Big Oil lied', and climate pollution." Essentially, the meeting described why climate alarmists have failed to capture the public’s attention with their messages. What they discovered is that lies work better than facts!

Steve Milloy of junkscience.com will join us for commentary, as he’s been following and debunking these lies for years. 

We'll also discuss the revelations of SCOTUS knocking down the Chevron doctrine and what that means for environment and climate, plus we'll examine what happened on climate in the presidential debate.

Creators & Guests

Host
Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environmental policy at The Heartland Institute. He is also the founder and publisher of WattsUpWithThat.com, one of the most-read site on climate science and policy in the world.
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.
Host
Linnea Lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Before joining Heartland, Linnea was a petroleum engineer on an offshore drilling rig.

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.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And that's what climate change is about. It is literally not figuratively a clear and present danger.

Linnea Lueken:

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.

H. Sterling Burnett:

The ability of c 02 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.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's not how you power a modern industrial system. The ultimate goal of this renewable energy, you know, plan is to reach the exact same point that we're at now. You know who's tried that? Germany. 7 straight days of no wind for Germany.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Their factories are shutting down.

Linnea Lueken:

They really do act like weather didn't happen prior to, like, 1910. Today is Friday.

Anthony Watts:

It is indeed Friday. That's right, Greta, you irrelevant pint sized protester. It is Friday, and this is our own personal Friday protest, the Climate Realism Show, episode number 116. Climate alarmist messaging decoded. Lives apparently work.

Anthony Watts:

Anyway, a very telling expose of a meeting between climate communicators appeared on Twitter last week. In it, pictures of a slideshow mentioned things like worst messages tested, electric cars, Green New Deal, frontline communities, big oil lied, climate pollution. In essence, that meeting described why climate alarmists have failed to capture the public's attention to their messages, and what they discovered in that meeting is that lies work better than facts. Yikes. We'll also discuss the revelations of the Supreme Court knocking down the Chevron doctrine today and what that means for environment and climate.

Anthony Watts:

Plus, we'll examine what happened on the presidential debate last night related to climate. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Hartnett Institute. Joining me today is Steve Malloy of junk science.com. He'll join us for expert commentary. He's been following and debunking these lies from the climate left for years.

Anthony Watts:

Plus, we have doctor h Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur b Robinson Center at the Harlan Institute, and Linnea Lukin, research fellow at the same. Welcome, guys. Happy Friday. Wow. What a week.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, just this morning.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. About 24 hours.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Wow. I mean, it was just off the charts. I looked at the New York Times this morning and all the stuff that was on there about Biden, about, you know, the fact that the, the Chevron doctrine had been cut down. I mean, it was like a huge win for us on the on the right, in the paper this morning.

Anthony Watts:

Anyway, so let's get first right away to our crazy climate news and all the crazy stuff that happened this week. First of all, Olympic teams from the United States and other countries are gonna bring their own AC units, air conditioning units to the Paris games despite their green environmental plan. I mean, what what a, a veritable slap in the face to that thing. We're not gonna sit there and sweat just simply because you want us to be green. We wanna win.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I thought I thought heat was dangerous, and you can't have heat, especially if you're working in the outdoors. So if people are there playing hard sports all day, what are they gonna go back and sit 73 degree hotel room or at the, cabins that they put up for them? No. No one's gonna put up with that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah.

Steve Milloy:

So I I call this I call this air conditioning apartheid, because what's going on so the Paris organizers have not put in air conditioning at in the dorms, so rich countries are going to bring their own air conditioners. Poor countries don't have the money for this. The washing the, I think the president of the Ugandan Olympic Committee told the Washington Post, we just don't have the money for it. And so you're gonna have rich country athletes who are gonna be cool, and poor country athletes are gonna be hot. And, you know, in addition to there not being air conditioning at the Olympics, there's gonna there won't be French fries either because apparently some sort of fire has it when you make French fries.

Steve Milloy:

But what there will be, is plenty of E. Coli in the sand for some of the swimming events. So it's a complete win for green.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So I wonder if they're going to say, for the Winter Olympics, we're not gonna provide heat.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's Paris I mean, Macron is in so much trouble. He's called a snap election. I think it's gonna be held while the Olympics are there, so he may be out of office before the Olympics are over. He, he green virtue signaled with this. Oh, we're gonna be the greenest, you know, the most sustainable Olympics ever.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And the west the, you know, the the countries that can as as Steve pointed out, the countries that could afford it said, we're going to the Olympics to compete in an athletic event, and we're gonna be in our top form, and we can't do that if we can't sleep at night because it's too hot. Yeah. Or if or if we're sitting out in the sun, between events rather than sitting in a cool tent. So, they are basically not only telling his sustainability vision, to take a flying leap, but they're undercutting his effort. Right?

H. Sterling Burnett:

My suspicion is a few central air conditioning units in these dorms is less likely you know, will will admit less carbon dioxide than everybody with their own portable, air conditioning units. You might net increase in They

Anthony Watts:

they, carbon emissions associated with the freight to get it over there. You know?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. That's right. You know, all altogether, you're you're almost certainly increasing emissions, so he can virtue signal.

Steve Milloy:

Yep. But I think, yeah, there's some good news here for the French. I think the long and and, Anthony, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the long range forecast is for cooler weather in Paris, and all of Europe, really, during the Olympics. So global warming will be taking a vacation.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. Alright. So let's talk about our next 1.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'm not talking about next stop. Athletes.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. So speaking of air conditioners, this forecast in California has gone off the rails. Look at this. 10 days out. This is from the Apple weather app, right, which, in my opinion, is a piece of garbage and 1 of the reasons I don't own an iPhone.

Anthony Watts:

But they're claiming a 125 degrees next Sunday. This is Death Valley days type temperatures. Right? And, of course, the weather service in Sacramento is stepping in on their social media and saying, no. No.

Anthony Watts:

No. This isn't right. This isn't right. It's a model. It's gone off the rails, and it and it has.

Anthony Watts:

And this is the same thing that happened with climate models. Some of these climate models just go off the rails for no reason at all and predict widely hot temperatures in the future, and they even do it on the weather model. So that's 1 of the reasons you can't trust these things.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, I

Anthony Watts:

see you're all in agreement.

Linnea Lueken:

Is this the sort of thing is this the sort of thing that's like a a glitch with their particular system that they're using, updating to the app, or is this something that, like you know, did someone actually look at this stuff and approve it to go up and say, yeah. This looks right?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, see, here's the thing. It's happened on 2 consecutive days. Yesterday, it was predicting a 120 degrees in Chico the following Saturday. Then it dropped the Saturday temperature down to a 114 degrees, which is within probability.

Anthony Watts:

But at the same time, it bumped up the Sunday temperature to a 125 over what it was yesterday, a 120, 10 days out. So, obviously, there's some flaw in the programming.

H. Sterling Burnett:

My suspicion is

Linnea Lueken:

Sorry. Go ahead, Sterling.

H. Sterling Burnett:

My suspicion is it's an AI, produced forecast, and the AI is informed by climate alarm and climate models.

Anthony Watts:

Could be. Who knows if anything's possible?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Female What happens if the meteorologists we have?

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Right.

Steve Milloy:

Supposed to predict weather and, you know, AI for weather? Come on.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It it it would be bad it would be bad for them to consult, actual knowledgeable people on this as opposed to their models.

Linnea Lueken:

We've got a viewer who asks, is that heat and humidity? I could see it feeling like 125 with the heat index.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well

Linnea Lueken:

Or the feels like.

Anthony Watts:

It you know, I can't say for sure because on the left, they seem to think that the heat index is the same as temperature now. I've seen, even TV meteorologists going out and pushing the heat index instead of the temperature for forecast. It's just nuts. You won't experience those kinds of things inside. But, anyway, speaking of nuts, our favorite nut, professor Michael E.

Anthony Watts:

Mann says that Chris Martz is the Matt Wolicki of Jobastartes. Wow.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I I can't I don't even know what that means.

Anthony Watts:

I don't know either, but Chris responded, I'm living rent free in his head and indeed. You know, I think every 1 of us at some time has lived rent free in Michael Mann's head right before he blocks us. You know?

Steve Milloy:

Right. And and, you know, I cannot hear the name Michael Mann without reminding everyone that, you know, this man has falsely claimed multiple times to be a Nobel Prize winner, and it's an easily verifiable fact that he is not. Yet simultaneously, he expects you to believe his black box science on climate. I mean, it's really incredible.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So here's the reason that man was upset. On this next graphic here, this thing went viral, this graphic that Chris Marks produced. And he says, I've made the headlines. The not to be picked it up along with other Twitter followers because in 1 graphic, he summed it up.

Anthony Watts:

That heat wave last week that everybody was saying was climate change, well, no. Not really. And then what we also had at the same time this cool snowy weather in Montana and Idaho and Northern Wyoming. That's just weather, apparently. You know?

Anthony Watts:

It's just weather if it's cold, and it's climate change if it's hot. And he's pointing that out. And, of course, man doesn't like that because it just makes him look bad or stupid or both. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Snow snow snow in Canada, an unusually cold June in in the UK and in Europe. Ignore ignore that. You know, Michael Mann is the the the the Al Sharpton, a climate scientist, back when Sharpton brought the twine.

Anthony Watts:

Oh my god. Sterling, we're gonna have to set up a fund for you. You're gonna be sued now.

Steve Milloy:

Oh my god. Maybe you haven't heard.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I I

H. Sterling Burnett:

just remember when that guy came to Flint. Yeah. I

Anthony Watts:

Man, oh, man. Alright. Speaking of crazy stuff, you know, the extinction rebellion I mean, everybody in the on the planet, it seems, except for these people, have come to dislike them because they do stupid stuff that people say is pointless and dumb. You know? And so they went up to, a golf tournament and decided to disrupt it by spraying, you know, their their orange paint all over the place or whatever it is.

Anthony Watts:

Last week, it was Stonehenge, and then it was priceless works of art before that. I mean, would you guys just hurry up and extinct yourselves, please?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, you know, I like these guys

Linnea Lueken:

for the ground.

Steve Milloy:

Because they make people hate their cause, so I support.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, when

H. Sterling Burnett:

when they started tapping people's golf, then you know, they've gone off the rails.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It's it's not and then they double down. They double down and release a statement saying there's no golf on a dead planet. You know? Actually, that's not true because during the Apollo missions, I believe it was I believe it was Cernan.

Anthony Watts:

I'm not sure. But 1 of the astronauts took a golf ball and a club to the moon, and he whacked the ball, you know, went, like, a mile, in the low gravity up there. So, yes, there is golf on a dead planet, you retards.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Can you imagine if John Daly had hit that drive on the moon?

Steve Milloy:

Oh my god.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That would be in orbit.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Anyway I

Linnea Lueken:

was I was thinking when I heard that they had it, that they, you know, went after the PGA tour. I was like, man, if John Daly's there, if anyone's gonna hit someone with a with a wedge or a 9 iron or something, it would be John Daly.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It wouldn't be paint on the greens.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Finally. This 1 is, we've had a lot of nutty off the rails stuff so far.

Anthony Watts:

This 1 takes the cake. This is an actual study that somebody funded. It's a peer reviewed paper. And get this. It's on the effective temperature on language complexity, evidence from 7, 000, 000 parliamentary speeches.

Anthony Watts:

In other words, let's study what politicians say, compare it to climate change trends, and see if we can find a correlation is not causation sort of a relationship. I mean, how did this stuff get published?

Steve Milloy:

All you need to do is label it climate. Say something bad about fossil fuels, and it's there. Right?

Anthony Watts:

I mean, it's just this has summed it up. This stupid this week. It burns.

H. Sterling Burnett:

The the the sad sad part of all that is, you you know taxpayers somewhere had something to do with funding that research. Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it it it it it was university research.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Somebody paid for it, and I guarantee you it wasn't the students. It was taxpayers through some government agency funded this crap. And, you know, 1 of the real serious problems with government funded science, It goes to the attractive the thing that's gonna get the most funding and climate change is it. So everything's tied to climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Okay. So let's go on to our cartoons for this week. Remember this article that we had on climate realism where we talk about Africa that was, writing stuff on cardboard and holding it up, and and Linnea wrote the story. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

And this guy is basically becoming a a climate star, an anti climate star, pardon me, in Kenya. Basically saying, we're poor. We need energy to do stuff. Right? And so, what happens?

Anthony Watts:

The the there's a hit piece put out on him, basically saying he's bad. He's doing the things wrong. You know? He's hurting the planet, all this stuff. I mean, it it just but the person who wrote it, you know, well, let's look at what their their day was like.

Anthony Watts:

You know? The the Josh put this cartoon together that shows really how these folks think. I just love this cartoon. I'm gonna read it off because we, do run this in audio as well about video. So this is the day in the life of a climate journalist.

Anthony Watts:

Day 1, coffee made by subsistence farmers in Kenya. Delicious. Oh, and I gotta check my ex account in 8 AM in the morning. 801. 0MGA poor person in Africa wants to improve his life in Africa using fossil fuels.

Anthony Watts:

How dare they? Next, I'll drive to the office and write a hit piece. He's driving his Tesla at 9 AM. At 10 AM, he's working on the piece. Denyer.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Like the holocaust are there. Lunch lunchtime. Tofu from Korea, sushi from Japan, avocado from Brazil, and mango from India. Yum.

Anthony Watts:

Then I'll post. I'll go there. 6 PM, I'm home. What shall I binge on? Out of Africa.

Anthony Watts:

11 years as a slave. Zulu. These folks that write these pieces that sit in their air conditioned offices and drive their their their electric cars and eat, you know, avocado toast and special tea and all that kind of stuff, do not have a clue how hard life is for people in third world countries just to stay alive. And for them to go and bash this makes me angry, I have to say the least.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, and I wanna point out too, so, Jasper, he all he does is he posts, you know, pictures from his farm life and stuff, and he'll make these little signs where it'll say, you know, if this would be a lot easier if I had access to a tractor and to, you know, chemical fertilizers and stuff like that, which only fossil fuels can give to you. But in this particular BBC BBC piece, the the author himself is so unbelievably deceptive that you know, and I'm not the only 1 to point this out, but I'll I'll read you just a little a brief, sentence from that article that he wrote. He goes, when we spoke, Jesper told me his beliefs are shared by many people in Africa, but I found that most users engaging with his x x accounts are actually based in the US, the UK, and Canada. What what an obvious bait and switch there. You know, this guy, Jesper, lives in Africa.

Linnea Lueken:

He is talking to people who are other sustenance farmers every single day, and he says, you know, a lot of people agree with me on this, we would like to improve our lives. And he ends this jerk from the BBC goes, well, actually you're mostly followed on x, which is mostly populated by Westerners by Westerners. It's just it's so gross. I can't believe that someone doesn't write that and then have, like, a little, like, conscience, like Jiminy Cricket start beating him, you know, in the head. I I don't know how people do it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, he's he's somebody in the, you know, cartoons or movies where they'd have the angel and the devil on his shoulder on 1 shoulder and the devil on the other. In this case, the devil has beaten the angel to death, and so he's only got 1 1 voice. So he can ignore the fact that most of the Africans who are his neighbors probably don't have Twitter accounts and couldn't comment, if they wanted to.

Steve Milloy:

So, I'm just gonna toss in there

Anthony Watts:

the I wanna see a cartoon like that with Bill McKibben on 1 shoulder and Steve Malloy on the other.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Yeah. The the greens the the greens wanna get rid of most people on the planet, and they wanna start with the Africans, and they've been after the Africans for a long time. When EPA banned DDT, in 1970 2, the people that paid the price were, you know, not Americans, but it was, you know, poor black and brown people around the world where the ban was exported to. And tens of millions of people have died from malaria and other mosquito borne diseases.

Steve Milloy:

And so climate is just the latest way that, the west is trying to kill off Africa. You have the Biden administration is in trying to block natural resource development, trying to block fossil fuel production, agriculture in Africa? How are these people supposed to live and develop? How are they supposed to become as wealthy as we are so they can have, you know, decent standards of living? Well, every you know, the all of Europe and and the United States are trying to thwart them as Roy said.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's green colonialism.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. The, I I have a comment from 1 of our viewers that lives in South Africa that I think would be, interesting to show here. He says, the successful farmers here in Africa build their own infrastructure and get 0 help from governments or the United Nations. We do help small sustenance farmers, but it's a lost cause with the corrupt government.

Anthony Watts:

That sounds about right. Yep. Yeah. Alright. Next cartoon.

Anthony Watts:

This is our final cartoon for crazy climate news today, and, this is a commentary on the heat wave. It's hotter than, meanwhile, the devil walks by with an umbrella saying, ain't that the truth? Well, guess what, folks? It gets hotter every summer. Not hotter.

Anthony Watts:

It gets hot every summer. This is not news. And as many people have pointed out over the last week, the so called heat wave that we had didn't even break any records. Of course, the media went berserkle over it talking about how climate change is making it worse, but in the end, it was kinda like Biden's climate speech last night. It was a big nothing burger.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. Speaking of Biden's climate speech, let's talk about that. Now, Steve, I want you to give your commentary on it. And, of course, I'm Sterling and Linnea jump in, but let's watch what happened last night at the climate debate and what, Biden said to everybody. And and this it's, well, it's interesting.

Anthony Watts:

It's entertaining. Let's have that video.

H. Sterling Burnett:

He had done a damn thing with the environment. He out of the Paris Peace Accord, Climate Accord. I immediately joined it because if we reach for 1.5 degrees Celsius at any 1 point where there's no way back, the only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn't do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I've done.

Anthony Watts:

Of course, he didn't do a damn thing about it. What was your agenda?

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. So it's always, you know, for me and probably for you guys too, it's really cringey to hear politicians talk about climate. You know, it's something that we have done for decades every day. So we know it inside and out, and you have these guys that, you know, don't really know anything, trying to formulate sentences under pressure, and it's just not gonna work out. You know, I credit president Trump for getting out green new scam, I think, which pretty much some you don't need to know anything else.

Steve Milloy:

It's just green new scam. You know, I'll I'll note today that the New York Times tried to fact check Trump yesterday. They they Trump said that, the Paris Climate Agreement was gonna cost us $1, 000, 000, 000, 000, and Lisa Friedman of The New York Times, you know, tried to fact check him by saying, oh, Biden only agreed to give 11, 000, 000, 000 to poor countries for climate. Of course, you know, that overlooks the whole inflation reduction act, which Goldman Sachs is priced at as costing over a $1, 000, 000, 000, 000 in subsidies. So yet again yeah.

Steve Milloy:

Trump was right again, and New York Times is wrong again.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And it also didn't include what they give to Africa as a pittance of what Americans are spending on the greener energy that he's enforcing on us to fight climate change and the cost of, the EV subsidies and the EV build out and and all that stuff gotta go in there, and that's that's more than a $1, 000, 000, 000, 000. I I like the fact that, much to my ignorance, I didn't realize that, Trump had pulled us out of the Paris Peace Accords, but, I know he pulled us out of the the climate accords, but, you know, they never should have been in place, and by which I mean, not that just that it was a stupid idea. It is a stupid idea. There's no evidence that 1.5 degrees is an existential threat. At at least he didn't call Trump.

H. Sterling Burnett:

You know, he admitted there's only 1 existential threat and ain't Trump. But, there is no evidence that the Paris Accords will do anything to prevent climate change. And, more importantly, if it is so important, it's a treaty. And Obama never submitted to the senate. Trump pulls out of it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Biden has never submitted it to the senate. We aren't bound by an accord. You want the US to be forced to cut emissions to meet some kind of international agreement. It's a treaty, and you submit it to the senate and see if you can get a 2 thirds, majority or 3 quarter. I forget what it is.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think it's 2 thirds. 2 thirds. Vote. You won't get it. That's why no 1 submitted it, by the way, because they know the senate will reject it, and it'll be dead.

Anthony Watts:

Anyway, the climate issue really got overshadowed last night by the fact that Biden couldn't, form a coherent sentence in most cases. He did a lot of mumbling and a lot of zoning, And so that's been the real debate. And, of course, you know, he talked about Trump not doing a damn thing about climate. Well, if Trump gets back into the White House, you can bet. He's not only gone not gonna do a damn thing about climate.

Anthony Watts:

He's gonna gut all those climate things out there if he can. Yep. Anyway, speaking of gutting things, wow. The Chevron doctrine got blown up in the US, in the, Supreme Court of the United States. It was announced this morning.

Anthony Watts:

Now many of you may not be familiar with it, but what is it? Well, in in simple terms, the Chevron doctrine shows that if a court cannot identify a clear congressional authority disapproving what an agency proposes to do, such as the EPA, the court should uphold the agency action if it is reasonable. So that's been struck down. That law has been struck down, and what it means is is that rules like EPA's endangerment finding are now fair game for going on and attacking and getting removed. Right, Steve?

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. I think it opens up virtually all of what EPA has done since I've been doing this starting in 1990. You know, Congress has written vague statutes with vague wording. EPA has given all these words, you know, controversial meaning, and, knowing that it could survive review under Chevron. And as you said, Chevron gives deference to the agencies in, interpreting statutes where, there is vagueness.

Steve Milloy:

And so that is now over, and it's unequivocally over. Neil Gorsuch wrote that this is that this decision is the tombstone of Chevron, so Chevron does not exist anymore. And, you know, to put this in context now, so we have the 2022 decision in West Virginia EPA where congress said, EPA, you can only do what congress has authorized you to do. And then now we have this new decision overturning Chevron where where the court has said, EPA, you must follow the exact language that congress gives you, and if there's, you know, if interpretation needs to be done, well, it's gonna be done by the judiciary, not EPA. So between those 2 decisions, I mean, EPA is in the in a between a rock and a hard place.

Steve Milloy:

And then if we have a Trump administration coming in where Trump controls EPA and the Department of Justice, which does all the litigation, the EPA is kinda gonna be shut down. And I can just see waves of reg overregulation being overturned.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's not just EPA. It's it's that decision is is really broad. Yeah. It It overturns DOE regulate, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Housing and Human Services, OSHA.

Steve Milloy:

FDA.

H. Sterling Burnett:

FDA, Fish and Wildlife, you know, in the end, administrative agencies never should have been given that kind of discretion. The court in Chevron created, some kind of penundrum, the penumbra of regulation authority. Yeah. Is that this time, it wasn't defending some so called rights of the people. It was defending the power Yep.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Of regulatory agencies over the people.

Anthony Watts:

Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, they're only given the power I mean, Congress shouldn't even be able to delegate certain things. If if you read the constitution, it is the sole, branch of government allowed to create laws.

Steve Milloy:

Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, you could say, oh, well, it's too complex for them. Look. They're the ones that elected to do it. That's that's why I argue for what's called the REINS Act, which is regulations of the executive in need of scrutiny. If a if a regulation is gonna cost over x number of dollars to the economy, the regulation, after it's written, should have to go back to congress for an up or down vote.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And if they don't approve it, then it's not the regulation.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, conceivably, this is really gonna force congress to write, you know, far more specific laws so that there's, you know, they can't just say regulate to a safe level. They're gonna have to kind of decide what that safe level is, and that's gonna be extremely controversial.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So there's gonna be a flood of lawsuits now, you can just bet, by the industries out there that are affected to overturn thousands of regulations that have been implemented because of the Chevron doctrine. I mean, the floodgates are open, folks, and everything is fair game at this point. Yeah. Just just 1 quick comment.

Steve Milloy:

So conservatives have been against so so called sue and settle for years where EPA is sued by an environmental group, and they settle out of court and created a de facto regulation in their settlement. So, you know, now this gives, businesses and conservative groups the opportunity to do the same thing, and I don't know. I might all of a sudden decide that soon settles a great thing.

Anthony Watts:

Let's start a class action lawsuit against the EPA just because they, but whatever. Alright. Let's I don't know. We're not

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'd like to point out in my reading of I haven't read the whole decision, but John Roberts said that this ruling doesn't necessarily overturn all the regulations that occurred before now. So I mean, you might hope there's a flood of lawsuits to overturn past regulations. I'm not sure, especially if they've been on the books for a number of years, how successful those will be because it may be dead going forward, but it doesn't necessarily imply they're gonna revisit every ruling they've made so far.

Steve Milloy:

No. But they may not have to, Sterling. I mean, you may be able to petition the govern petition EPA. EPA can, you know, start a new rulemaking. It just it just opens up it gives a future, you know, Republican administration a lot more leeway to do things.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yep. I agree.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. Nona, you got anything to add? You've been pretty quiet.

Linnea Lueken:

No. You guys have been working on this issue for way longer than I have, so I think you guys are the experts here.

Anthony Watts:

Okay. Now we're under our main topic, which originally was gonna be the focus of the show before everything blew up this week. This is on what's up with that. We started this story here. Climate communicators discovered the best way to persuade voters is to lie to them.

Anthony Watts:

Now what had happened here is this guy, Laith Phillips, had been to this this convo of all these climate communicators, and they were putting up slides on messaging and so forth. And, you know, they're talking about their worst messages on climate change, basically, how they're failing. And so they they they put out these messages that are just crazy, you know, to try to scare people. For example, way back in 1989, there's an example of a very, very old climate lie that happened from the UN in 1989. And there's an associated press story that talks about this, and I we've we've used this again and again.

Anthony Watts:

But, basically, it's from the United Nations covered by the AP, and it says this is in 1989. A senior UN official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Well, 24 years later and nothing's happened. You know? There those cities are still there.

Anthony Watts:

So we

H. Sterling Burnett:

go to the the the

Anthony Watts:

New York Times. Now on April 6th this year, they had a an article about why time is running out on the Maldives. Now the Maldives Island Group has been begging for money to solve their climate crisis for decades now, and they don't solve their climate crisis with that money. The money that people throw at them for that ends up being used for increasing tourism, building airports, and so forth. I mean, we've documented this.

Anthony Watts:

But get this. Today at The New York Times, they did a complete 180. The vanishing islands that failed to vanish. We have been talking about this for a number of years. I think we go back 5 or 6 years on this particular issue when, a writer at WhatsApp at that, Willis Eschenbach, went in and showed that these islands don't sink.

Anthony Watts:

They build up. The coral builds up in response to rising sea levels. They just keep getting taller because it's it's a living island as opposed to just a piece of rock. And so that's what's happened here. In the story they have today, which, you know, we brought up 5 years ago, they're saying, hey.

Anthony Watts:

Look. It this island's actually growing and not disappearing at all.

Steve Milloy:

Well so, you know, the interesting thing to me is the study that they cite in that New York Times article is from 2018, and and the study reported that 89% of 709 islands surveyed in the Pacific, had either stabilized or increased, and only 11% had shrunk in size, and no island larger than 25 acres had shrunk. And so the interesting thing to me is, like, why did they bring this up? It just seems so gratuitous. They're not being I find it hard to believe they're being they decided to be honest because, well, there's lots of things they could start with before Pacific Islands. So I you know, why would they reach back 5 years and bring this up now?

H. Sterling Burnett:

You know, you could go on and on against lies in the messaging that they've had, both from the UN and from others. The ocean acidification scare. Look, people dip their feet in the oceans every day as far as I can tell, and none of them walk out screaming, watching their, flesh erode off their bones, unless they've been attacked by sharks. That that's been happening more lately. They they, so that that was a bunk.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's still a bunk. There's there's no evidence the oceans are soon to become acidic. The UN itself, Pachere, back when he ran the UN, oh, the Himalayan glaciers have till 2030, they will completely disappear. And the scientists in the Himalayan said, where the hell are you getting that? We've done this study.

H. Sterling Burnett:

There's no evidence of that whatsoever. And you look back in the UN report, it's like, oh, well, 1 environmental group said it, the blue literature, and we just said whatever it said. So it it is the messaging. They understand scary stories sell, though polling seems to indicate they're sell it's selling less and less. People are getting tired of the lies.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They're getting tired of the predictions that don't come true, but they have to lie because the facts aren't on their side. They have to lie because the data doesn't support their claims of a climate catastrophe or an existential threat.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I think the most offensive part of this is that that they're presenting it as if this is new information. That, like, scientists just discovered that coral atolls grow with sea level changes or they grow and retreat with sea level changes when in fact, Charles Darwin was the 1 who wrote the initial theory on how that how and why that happens or how and why, coral and Tolls appear the way that they are. So this has been well over a 100 years in the making And, and he actually got quite a bit of that theory right actually, even though he was working on very incomplete information. But and then in 19 fifties they did, some core drilling surveys and some atolls and found, you know, yeah, this stuff is this goes down forever.

Linnea Lueken:

There's thousands of feet of coral buildup here and it appears to be changing, depending on what, you know, sea level conditions were. So, all the scientists who work in this area know this and yet they just let this, lie persist in the media. Why? It doesn't yeah. It's, very fishy.

H. Sterling Burnett:

If I if if So with

Anthony Watts:

that, I propose that we give all of the media that covers climate in this way a Darwin award. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'll say this. I'll I didn't know I didn't know I wanna

Anthony Watts:

go back I wanna go back to the WhatsApp with that article because here's the revealing part where they talk about the best messages that they've ever tested. And when they talk about testing messages, it means they're making stuff up. They're going out there and trying to find out what resonates with voters so they can make up stuff. And so the best messages that we've ever tested are, you know, the green agenda will save on energy bills and lower energy cost. No.

Anthony Watts:

It doesn't. It it it's gonna change your kitchen sink cost, you know, creating good stable jobs, investments in transit, infrastructure, manufacturing, r and d, clean energy, all that. That's all a lie. None of this stuff happens. It's the exact opposite.

Anthony Watts:

You know? The green agenda has made energy more expensive. It's made life more expensive, food more expensive, travel more expensive, electricity more expensive, everything more expensive. And that's the big lie. They push these things saying, you know, it's gonna be unicorns and rainbows, and it ends up being something entirely different.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And it creates some jobs, but it destroys others. It it it's it's not a it's not a net creation. It's a it's it's a trade off, and so you're creating not as well paid installer jobs for solar panels and destroying, petroleum engineers that that, you know, make 100 of 1000 a year. It's it's it's ridiculous.

Steve Milloy:

Well and I'm gonna bring up the, coal miners. You know, the Washington toast years ago bragged about Obama killing 50, 000, coal miner jobs, and those are all very well paying jobs, that produce, you know, produce the useful product that powered our economy. And not only did those miners lose their jobs, but their communities lost their source of revenue. And so lots of other jobs were, you know, disappeared in addition to those 50, 000 mining jobs, and it's just been a tragedy because what else is there to do in these these coal communities were built around coal? And if you can't if you can't mine coal, what can you do?

Steve Milloy:

You can only just, you know, disappear and go away.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I believe he told them learn to code, which is just grapes. I love turning that 1 around on the journalists when they start getting laid off the last couple of when they were when they started getting laid off in mass the last couple of years.

Steve Milloy:

Right. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

So bottom line is they go out and they test these messages, you know, that makes it sound like green energy. It's gonna be wonderful. Life is gonna be great. You know? It's gonna lower cost.

Anthony Watts:

You're gonna have solar on your home. It's gonna be wonderful. You know? But look what happened in California. People went and put solar on their home, and now PG and E is rescinding on their their promises to buy back electricity at a certain rate.

Anthony Watts:

And the the and the the number of installs for solar now in California has dropped off a cliff because it's no longer viable to put solar on your home because it doesn't pay itself back at any time soon. It doesn't pay it back in in time for you to gain anything, you know, versus the cost of the solar. And so the whole thing is a big line. Yeah. Whole thing is a big line.

Anthony Watts:

When

H. Sterling Burnett:

over a decade ago, when I worked for a different organization, there was a community outside of Austin being built that said it was gonna be net net 0, the net 0 community. And how are they gonna do that? Oh, it was gonna be solar, water heater, solar panels, and they they they gave the numbers, but they didn't they didn't calculate what those numbers meant. And so they said the solar panels would the the the cost of the solar panels would pay off the extra energy cost it cost you in 30 years over the life of the mortgage. However, the solar panels only last 20 years.

Steve Milloy:

So

H. Sterling Burnett:

even if they're providing full energy for those those 20 years, they're 10 years short of ever paying themselves off before we had put on new solar panels or just hooked back up to the grid. It's like, do you not listen to yourself when you say some of these things?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It's it's just bizarre. Now if you'll scroll up a little bit, Andy, I wanna illustrate this tweet right there. Right there. Okay.

Anthony Watts:

Bring that up on full screen if you will. And, so they're talking about nobody's AOC published this this tweet a few years ago back in 2019, and she put up this fact about beef and so forth. And this was from an article that was in The New York Times. But, no, the Green New Deal does not ban beef. And while cutting back on burgers, you can help your own health and blah blah blah.

Anthony Watts:

They're doing that positive lie messaging there. They're basically saying, no. We're

H. Sterling Burnett:

not getting rid of beef. We're working on fixing your health. Right? So scroll down a

Anthony Watts:

little bit, and let's see what actually was published by by AOC. She points out in her facts, controversial arguments such as compulsory veganism. That was the messaging that they were pushing, and she got a huge amount of blowback

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

For speaking the truth about their agenda for once, and it and she took the tweak down. I mean, there there's just there's they have no scruples.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. So, you know, back to the theme of lying. So, you know, I am as, some people may think that I can be kind of extreme, but I'm extreme because I've been doing this for a long time, almost 34 years now. I have never seen environmentalists, EPA, regulators really tell the truth about a whole lot. I think in the case of EPA I think EPA the only the only thing they correctly concluded in in in my working lifetime has been that Roundup doesn't cause cancer.

Steve Milloy:

But aside from that, EPA is always on the wrong side of the truth and the issue every and science every time. And and it's and it and it's all it's not even difficult to debunk. I mean, it's very easy. And, you know, and it and it's it's so much. I almost think, like, you know, they they lie so much on purpose because so that no 1 will believe someone like me because, well, EPA can't be lying all the time.

Steve Milloy:

Well, they do.

Anthony Watts:

It it's it's just it's sad, but it's it's been that way since the beginning. I would point out, and many people don't know the story, but you can find it on WhatsApp with them. At the beginning of the whole global warming crusade, June 1988, doctor James Hansen of NASA GISS, along with Timothy Wirth, a senator from Colorado who was his sponsor, went into the hearing chambers the night before that we're gonna talk about global warming, for the first time. They went in and opened up all the windows. But before that, they actually, talked to the weather bureau to find out what was going to be the hottest day in June, and they scheduled the hearing for that hottest day.

Anthony Watts:

Then they went in the night before, opened up the windows, and disabled the air conditioning. The reason? So that the next day, when people are giving testimony, they're sweating for the cameras while we're talking about global warming. And Timothy Wirth went on frontline and talked about this, and he said it was bliss watching these people sweat on cameras. So if your science is so strong, why do you need this spacecraft?

Anthony Watts:

They were lying from the get go.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, of

Steve Milloy:

course, the irony on that, Anthony, is, like, that particular day, I think it it it was a 101 degrees in Washington. It was very hot. I think it may have been in the, you know, the calendar day record. And just last week, when that day came around again, or maybe it was earlier this week, you know, the calendar day was a lot cooler. And, you know, it's an irony completely missed by all these people here.

Steve Milloy:

36 years later, it's actually cooler in the summer on a during a heat wave.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right. And it's it's been that way for everything they message. You know, they talk about a heat wave being unprecedented, you know, or whatever, and it's a lie. They don't look at the 19 thirties.

Anthony Watts:

You go back and look at you know, the 1 thing that the EPA did message fruitfully is the fact that they have a graph on their website. There's the heat index going all the way back to around 18 90 or whatever. And in the 19 thirties, the heat indexes are not, the the, heat wave index, pardon me, is so much larger then than it is today. And they just they forget the they forget about this stuff when they talk about the current weather. And this is what people like Chris Marks do on x.

Anthony Watts:

They point out these facts. You know? And then people go, why? You're not giving us the truth. It's really the hottest ever, and we're gonna die and all this other stuff.

Anthony Watts:

This the the the lying sells.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Yeah. So I stand corrected. That's the other thing EPA has been honest about.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, honest honest about before they pulled it off and you have to say it in the way back machine. Right?

H. Sterling Burnett:

They were they were honest before they were dishonest.

Steve Milloy:

Well, actually, you know, the so the, Obama National Monument had this graph or or or a line drawn version of it and, then somehow disappeared on EPA. So I don't know.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It's strange that they haven't taken it down yet. Yeah. I mean, for another a good example of of a lie is, the National Interagency Fire Center. Now a few years ago, we had data that showed wildfires all the way back into the, around 1926, I believe, is when they started with the data.

Anthony Watts:

And it showed from around 1926 to around 1940 or so, there was a huge amount of wildfire in the United States. Huge amount. And compared to present day, it was like an an order of magnitude bigger. So what happened is that started to be a talking point for climate realists like us, and we were using that data to show that, you know, hey. It's been worse in the past with wildfires in the United States.

Anthony Watts:

So what happens? The interagency fires and makes a declaration. Well, that data back then, it's no good anymore. We discovered that it wasn't, you know, measured correctly and so forth and so on. Even though there were peer reviewed papers that used that data, they just basically said, we're only gonna display it, since around 1985, I think it was.

Anthony Watts:

And so now all of a sudden, there's a positive trend through the wildfires in the United States where they can say, see. Told you, while ignoring all the other data. And and, again, it's a lie. It's a lie of omission.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Earlier, Andy, earlier this week, there was a study in Nature claiming that wildfires had increased over the past 20 years, the number of wildfires anyway. And so I just you know, it it takes, like, less than a minute to debunk this crap. You know, I found a nature paper from a couple years earlier that showed how wild fires globally have dropped off a cliff since 19 thirties, and, you know, even in the last 20 years, a wildfire acreage burn has declined. The number of fires has increased, but, of course, it's probably due to, you know, changes in how we count and what we count and, things like that, and more opportunities for people to set fire, you know, because the woods are are increasingly mismanaged.

Steve Milloy:

But, yeah, but you're absolutely right. This is a great example where they just, you know, chop off the data and and manipulate the data to prove what they want.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I wanna say, Steve, even where in the West, you've seen, an increase in wildfires in the Western United States. They're lower than they were historically, when they had tremendous they had 2 to 400 2 to 4000000 acres wildfires, decade after decade, year after year, historically. They're they're not that every year now. But more importantly, my understanding is that climate change is a global phenomenon. And, Unless we say it isn't.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Unless yeah. Until we wanna ignore the global data. But the global data from NASA and the European Space Agency agree. Wildfires are down Yeah. 20 to 25% over the last 3 decades.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's what the data shows. Yep. So there's no increase in wildfires.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. No. Agree.

H. Sterling Burnett:

There there's a a regional increase, and it's due to the things you said. A change in forest management or radical change for forest management. But the point is, despite all the C02 emissions, wildfires are down. And who says so? NASA and the European Space Agency.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They agree.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Globally. And, you know, what are you gonna do? They have control of the media. They have control of the educational system.

Anthony Watts:

And so they push these these omissions, these lies, basically for propaganda purposes because it sells. And when it sells, it creates funding. It creates donations. There's a whole industry now about climate change, and that's why it's so hard to stamp this out with facts. They don't care about the facts.

Anthony Watts:

They only care about whether their messaging is effective and whether we can make money on it at this point. Yeah.

Steve Milloy:

Well, you know, not not to pat ourselves on the back, but we kinda do a remarkable job of beating this stuff back. There's just a handful of us. They have 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars, every major media, even even, you know, conservative media is often terrible on our issues, just repeating, you know, myths. So, you know, I think we do a pretty good job pushing back. We got a lot more work to do, and, I think we'll be fully employed, though, for decades.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. We're gonna move to our question and answer period now. Linea, take it away.

Linnea Lueken:

Sure thing. Okay. We've got a good number of questions today. I'm gonna start with, 1 of our, our resident alarmists and ask questions because I think that this is actually a good thing to, hit out of the park very easily. This is about Exxon Nu.

Linnea Lueken:

Alright. Question. Did oil companies hire scientists to study the effect of oil and gas production and use? And when they said it would lead to climate change, they ignored them and spread misinformation.

Anthony Watts:

That's the old Exxon lied thing.

Steve Milloy:

Yep. Well yeah. So, look, Exxon talked about climate change, since James Hansen and before. I mean, the US government LBJ, the Johnson administration had a, there was a report on climate change to, you know, the president. So, you know, the government knew before Exxon knew.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But but let's be clear.

Steve Milloy:

Do what?

H. Sterling Burnett:

A, they didn't hire Exxon didn't hire scientists to study climate change. They had scientists on staff, and they examined the impact of emissions. And some of them went came to 1 conclusion, and some of them came to a very different conclusion. It wasn't as if the scientists that Exxon spoke has 1. But you know what?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Exxon is not a scientific or a government agency. It's in the business of making money by satisfying customers, and they sell a product that we use. They didn't lie about that. This is an addiction. Bush got off the just was idiotic when he said we're addicted to oil.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We're not addicted. No 1 joneses if they don't go out and drive a day every day or or goes goes to the pump and pump some gasoline. It's something we use because it is useful. Fossil fuels are useful. They make life better, and Exxon didn't have to tell us that or lie about that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We know that from experience. Even the even the even the cities, even the states that are suing the oil companies continue to use fossil fuels as they sue them. They probably drive to the courthouse in fossil fuel vehicles.

Steve Milloy:

And if Exxon knew, that means they were right. And I'm trying to figure out what Exxon has been right about about climate, and no 1 has ever That's right. Say what Exxon has ever been right about on climate. So they produce like Sterling says, they're great at producing oil. I don't know if they're any better at climate than Michael Mann.

Linnea Lueken:

Alright. So here's our next question goes to Anthony. Trump did well last night, but missed an opportunity when asked about the warmest ever in the climate crisis. Should he have a GOAT's weather station at Mar a Lago and or the White House?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna respond to that very simply. We have vase. We are working on these things.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Well, hey. If Trump if Trump wants to to place 1 at Mar a Lago and he can find a place that can a space that complies with Noah's, Noah's quality control, we'd be happy to have 1 there.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I'll volunteer to go set it up.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. It might take you longer than normal setup. I have a I

Linnea Lueken:

have a feeling like a month or 2.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. It take a week or so to accept that 1 up.

Linnea Lueken:

Just to make sure it's extra well put together. Okay. Really. Is there evidence of a 1.5 degree increase? If so, it sure took a whole lot a long time for that.

Linnea Lueken:

Also, is that increase locked in or has that been in flux over yearly stats and decadal stats? Even so, I'm glad it might, cause a warmer world than a 150 years ago.

Anthony Watts:

Well, yes. And regarding flux, it's fluxed up, let me tell you. We have seen a 1.5 degree increase, not in the United States, but in Europe. And, I I've got this on our our website climate at a glance where we're talking about the 1.5 degree centigrade temperature rise. It's already happened in Europe since about 1850, 1840 thereabouts, where there's actually been a 2 degree c increase in temperature for that region.

Anthony Watts:

And, you know, Europe hasn't fallen off the map. You know? No disaster has come down, from that. In fact, many places like, you know, Finland and Sweden are actually they're doing pretty good. You know?

Anthony Watts:

Like, it's a little warmer there. They're not having to, you know, to to where park is in the summer. So it's it's actually happened. And as far as the radiative transfer of sunlight and so forth, the flux that you speak of, well, we've had cleaner air since around 1970. You may remember seeing Los Angeles.

Anthony Watts:

Just you couldn't see 2 miles, because of all the spock. And so that would filter out the sunlight. It would reflect the sunlight back into space. Now that we've cleaned up pollution in lots of places, or rather exported pollution to China, which is really what happened, we've seen radiative numbers for sunlight hitting the ground increase. And so what does that do?

Anthony Watts:

It warms the ground, which warms the air, which brings up the temperature. That's

H. Sterling Burnett:

in some cases,

Anthony Watts:

people claim that's global warming. Well, it sorta is.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But, you know, in China

Anthony Watts:

where they've got so much pollution now, where we've exported so much of our industry and manufacturing to buy back from China, you now see, cooler temperatures in a lot of places because sunlight's not getting through past evolution.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. And and we'd be remiss in in not reminding viewers and listeners that 1.5 c is not a scientific based number. It's just, as Phil Jones admitted in Climategate, just plucked out of thin air.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. We have a yeah. We had a question that were that was asking that as well. Remind us where that limit came from.

Steve Milloy:

Well, I think it came from a 19 either 19 eighties or 19 nineties paper by The Economist who suggested limiting, temperature increase to 2.02.2 c. And that's what I Phil Jones is actually commenting about. And I believe, during Paris, you know, it autumn it it just got ratcheted down to 1.5c because, you know, if 2 c is gonna cause hysteria, the 1.5 c will cause more hysteria.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. There was a it was a political decision. There's there's no scientific basis for it. Yep. Oh, I'm sorry.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It was consensus. Yep. It tells you right there it's not scientific.

Anthony Watts:

Alright.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. A couple of these are about the, Chevron deference case. The first 1 is, can Steve give an example of what Congress will have to be specific about? And I think this is in reference to, when they're making, future bills, that are gonna be So by the administrative agencies.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. So the, what comes to mind immediately is in the Clean Air Act, it says that EPA has set regulations, at basically a safe level. And, of course, safe is a vague term. It doesn't really mean anything. And if you know how EPA does science, there's there's safe, and then there's regulatory safe, and then there's 0.

Steve Milloy:

And EPA often just goes straight to 0. So congress would have to actually set the limits and have EPA enforce the limits. It'll be challenging for congress to come to a number.

H. Sterling Burnett:

In addition, from the same act, right, congress did set specific labels, certain things as pollutants in the in the law. They're called criteria pollutants.

Steve Milloy:

Yep.

H. Sterling Burnett:

You know what wasn't in there? Carbon dioxide.

Steve Milloy:

Right. That's another example.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Carbon dioxide wasn't in there. It's made up.

Steve Milloy:

Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's EPA's expansion of its authority. And an earlier court decision, the West Virginia decision said, no. No. That's a major, a major case. And in such instances, you know, if you're gonna have a major impact, Congress needs to specifically act on that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And and by the way, Congress has not been remiss in taking up CO 2. They've considered it a number of times. They've never enacted a law to regulate it. So they've had their option. They've refused to do so.

H. Sterling Burnett:

EPA can't do it in act in absence of their action. Yep. I think that's gonna I think that's really gonna muck up the recent clean, the recent, power plant rule. Because once again, it's going after c02, and it ain't in there.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. Well, it's gonna bulk up everything EPA does because the laws are so vague, and EPA has to do a lot of interpretation, and they always interpret it, you know, more extreme than even Congress ever interpret ever imagined. So this this could be a big change.

Linnea Lueken:

So adding to that, what injured or persecuted parties do you think will benefit most from the Chevron decision? And right here, I would say, well, the ones who just won the suit to start with, those East Coast fishermen, They're they're probably pretty darn happy. They're about as embattled an industry as the oil industry is at this point, especially on the East Coast?

Steve Milloy:

Well, every every business has been regulated, especially by, EPA and OSHA. The standard you know, the the standards have are all arbitrary for the most part, or interpretive, you know, to put a generous spin on it. You know, and congress is gonna have to determine exactly what the standards are and maybe even and if congress can't determine them, congress is gonna have to say, EPA, you go propose some standards to us and, you know, then we'll okay those because everything else is gonna be interpreted by the agency and that's, you know, verboten now, under this decision.

Linnea Lueken:

This one's also for you. What do you think about the repeatability crisis in science, or could you explain what that is?

Steve Milloy:

Well, so I've been publishing junk science now since junkscience.com since 1995, and, most of what is for most of what is published is junk science. I mean, there's just this there's, there are myriad journals that publish crap all the time, especially for epidemiology. We saw during COVID, what what passes for science, which is just nothing. And so, yeah, you know, these we we're at a point now where you can take journals to publish your study, and it's all it's all just junk. There's just so much stuff out there.

Steve Milloy:

We're not really learning anything new compared to how many journals we have. It's just it it's, and and but, of course, no 1 has time to go back and check all this work, and the peer reviewed peer reviewed process doesn't really work. Science is not what it's cracked up to be. People think have always or have thought that, you know, scientists are some sort of special breed of human that, you know, doesn't lie, but scientists are just like everybody else, and they have the same faults as, you know, used car salesmen, for example. And And in a lot of cases, they're worse than used car salesman because at least the used cars will get you off the lot.

Linnea Lueken:

Hopefully. Alright. This is a tongue in cheek question from Chris. He says, why is it that inadequately educated idiots believe and promulgate lies? There's your answer.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. And I I have another funny question I'm just gonna throw up here for a second for everyone to laugh. I have a serious question. Why didn't the hobbits just ride the eagles to Mount Doom? I love getting this question on this show.

Linnea Lueken:

It's, very pertinent and important for us to cover. Thank you very much, Skiladunge. Okay. Here's a serious 1. Is it better to not display the old data like with the wildfires or to adjust it like with temperature data?

Linnea Lueken:

Anthony, you're muted. Whoops.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Okay. How how

Linnea Lueken:

can he you're muted, Anthony.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Until he gets on. Thank you.

Anthony Watts:

I I was saying that, I don't like either of these. And I think that when you adjust data, it's equivalent to lying because you're basically presenting something that isn't true. Yes. Error correction, that's 1 thing. You know?

Anthony Watts:

I mean, if someone submits temperature data from a weather station that says that it's a 147 degrees yesterday, you know that's wrong, and you wanna either discard that or call them up and get the right number and correct it. That's 1 thing. But just simply adjusting it to fit preconceived notions, that's just wrong. In my view, you should always display all the data. And if you make some assumptions on filtering or other things to get to an end result, still display the raw data to begin with so you can show the path of where that came from instead of just the result.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And be it. And then be transparent about the assumptions in the ways that you're you're, you know, you're you're fixing the data. Where why there's a problem and what you're doing to adjust it, and why that would make it more accurate. But as far as past data, past data is what it is. Going back and saying it's wrong, that's an assumption.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And and there's no way of verifying your assumption is correct. Right. It's it's just made up. You have data that's given to you from, say, 19 thirties about temperature or 19 twenties about wildfires. This is the data we have.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, suddenly, a 100 year well, we've decided that's wrong. On what basis? Mhmm. What data or evidence do you have to prove that the raw that the the previous set of data was mistaken? Not based on some commuter model that tells you it probably was mistaken.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Evidence. Computer models aren't evidence.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And, you know, when you basically hide the data, you know, because you think it's not right, you know, or you come up with a a rationale to say that the data is not right. You're basically lying to people. You know? And we went and looked at that US wildfire data, and there was studies that were saying how this was gathered and used and so forth and so on.

Anthony Watts:

And there was really nothing wrong with it except that it was inconvenient for them.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. You know, in addition, they cause problems for themselves, right, when they remove this data, because then it just stokes the wildfires for conspiracy theorist. And maybe they're not conspiracist after all. You know, what's what's the what's he saying? You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you, or just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, when

H. Sterling Burnett:

they start when they start disappearing past data because it's inconvenient, it sure gives people a lot of time, you know, a lot of tongues, reason to whack. Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. Exactly. Okay. This is an interesting question, 1 that we enjoy answering at Climate Realism, and that is, is there any way warming could be considered beneficial?

Steve Milloy:

Well, of course. Look. We've had warming, yes, compare well, it's been warming, since the end of the little ice age or the bottom of the little ice age in the at the end of 17th century. And since that time, we've the human population has gone from about 500, 000, 000 to more than 8, 000, 000, 000, people living longer, wealthier, healthier lives, freer lives, in warmer weather, and so warming has been great. I mean, warming grows the food that we need to feed 8, 000, 000, 000 people, and, you know, we can we we can certainly handle more people on this planet, thanks to warming.

Linnea Lueken:

So we have 1 more question. This is 1 that we've been asked a couple times in the past. I don't think we mind going over it again, but we probably shouldn't answer it again like every time it comes up because it comes up a lot and that is, isn't there a math formula in chemistry that proves insufficient CO2 exists in the to turn saltwater acidic. This is related to, some of the

Anthony Watts:

Ocean acidification claims.

Linnea Lueken:

Equation questions. Yeah. Okay.

Anthony Watts:

Well,

Linnea Lueken:

Anthony, if you wanna take this 1.

Anthony Watts:

I don't know if there's a specific math formula on this, but, I will say this. The whole ocean acidification thing is based on a model, not a measurement, and and we cover this in Climate at a Glance. This is something where they model the increase from 1850 based on their calculation, you know, and so forth and so on. They didn't actually have data to give you what really happened between 1850 and now. And that was Kevin Trendberg at NCAR that did this.

Anthony Watts:

And I was shocked when I found out there is no actual measurement of ocean acidification. It's just a model guesswork between then and now.

Steve Milloy:

Yeah. So I I have 2 points to make. So even if the ocean is becoming slightly less basic, that is not becoming more acidic. You know, 2 is not more negative than 3. And then the second point I wanna make is that, years ago, I did a foil request to NOAA about ocean acidification.

Steve Milloy:

I got back emails where the NOAA scientists are saying, what what ocean acidification? This is not happening there. We we haven't seen any adverse effects from any change in in pH of the ocean. So, you know, ocean acidification is not 1 of these made up things.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Ocean acidification is 1 of the biggest fabrications in climate science. Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, I think kind of what it is is it's climate alarmists in government and in in the scientific communities that are taking advantage of the fact that people don't have a super good education on what this stuff means. So they tell them it's acidifying with the full knowledge that people are going to, like, exaggerate that in their mind and think that it's gonna be, like, in Dante's peak when that lake turned to acid

Anthony Watts:

Alright.

Linnea Lueken:

And and, like, killed the grandma or whatever. I think that's what they're counting on, and they just don't clarify for that reason. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I get the idea that there's not gonna be any more lobster and crab at Red Lobster because they're all just developing in the ocean.

Steve Milloy:

Well, and then, you know, in in coastal areas, pH changes quite rapidly. You know, with currents and rain, and it's just it's all over the place. We will we don't have any information on this.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Alright. That wraps up our show for today. I wanna thank everybody for watching and all your great comments and questions. And I wanna say, please visit the websites that we, use every day to debunk this stuff.

Anthony Watts:

First of all, Steve Molloy is excellent, junk science.com. Great place to look at, what's happening in current events and climate and so forth. Climateataglance.com or those hard facts debunking the alarmism that we've discussed today. Climaterealism.com, where every day we push back against the media and tell you why their messaging is wrong. And energy at a glance.com, Linnea's website, where we talk about how energy is you transported and so forth and so on.

Anthony Watts:

Good facts there. And finally, of course, the biggest website in climate on the world, what's up with that.com. My website, I hope you'll visit that too.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Thank you, Linnea. Thank you, Steve, and

Anthony Watts:

thank you, Sterling, and thank you, Andy, our producer, for being with us today. That's our show. I wanna remind you to, tune in next week again at noon, central time. There's Andy, and then there he goes. Alright.

Anthony Watts:

That's it. Have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend, everybody. Bye bye.