The Heartland Institute podcast featuring scientists, authors, and policy experts who take the non-alarmist, climate-realist position on environment and energy policy.
That's right, Greta. It is Friday, and I hope you're comfortable in some air conditioned location. And the same for all of you out there as well watching this stream. This is Climate Realism Show number 118, Climate Law Fair Heats Up. I'm Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute, and your guest host today.
Jim Lakely:Your regular host, Anthony Watts, is somewhere, enjoying the heart high carbon lifestyle. No doubt. There is no other show on YouTube or Rumble or other places and even Twitter quite like the Climate Realism Show. So I hope you will like this show. Share it, subscribe to our channels, and personally tell folks about it.
Jim Lakely:The more the merrier in our live chats on, on YouTube and Rumble, especially. And as a reminder, because big tech and the legacy media do not like the way we cover climate and energy news, policy on this program, Heartland's YouTube channel has been demonetized. So if you wanna support this program and, what we do on at the Heartland Institute, and I hope you do, Please visit heartland.org/tcrs.tcrs, that stands for the Climate Realism Show, and help us keep making the show happen every single week. Any support you could give is very greatly appreciated. So for today's program, we have our usual panelists.
Jim Lakely:We have doctor h Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur b Robinson Center on an on climate and environmental policy here at the Heartland Institute. We also have with us Linnea Lukin. She's a research fellow for energy environmental policy at Heartland and the star of our climate at a glance video series right here at the Heartland Institute YouTube channel and on Rumble, so be sure to check those out. We are releasing 2 new videos every week. I think there's 31 of them, and we're about halfway through.
Jim Lakely:So there's gonna be lots of programming, on Climate at a Glance all the way through the summer, and the viewership for those things just keep growing. And we are also very happy to welcome back as a special guest, the one, the only, Mark Marrano. Mark is the executive editor of climate depot.com, a project of our friends at CFACT. He's the author of several books, including the great reset, Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown, Green Fraud, Why the Green New Deal is Even Worse Than You Think, and also the politically incorrect guide to climate change. Mark is also a frequent speaker at Heartland's climate conferences and a man who relishes being called one of the most attacked men in the climate realist movement.
Jim Lakely:Congratulations on that, Mark, and welcome.
Marc Morano:Thank you, Jim. Thank you, everyone. Happy to be here today. Appreciate it.
Jim Lakely:Great. And how are you doing, Sterling and Linnea? Linnea, I understand you just, returned home from a trip.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I was in, DC this week. Very, cool conference that I went to. Interesting people. It was a lot of fun.
Linnea Lueken:A lot of people who are definitely on our side of this issue. So, that's always nice to see, especially those who, you know, might not be more on the libertarian side of politics on the right, but, definitely our allies in the fight against net zero and, stuff like that. So it was it was really cool.
Jim Lakely:Great. Great. And stuff we talk about on this program all the time. And, Sterling, you are you're coming from us from an, a bunker somewhere, in the Greater Dallas Metroplex area. We will not disclose
H. Sterling Burnett:Well what it is. If if bunkers are on 2nd floors, I guess you could call it a bunker. I I'm I'm here, fully air conditioned. You mentioned that at the outset. Yes.
H. Sterling Burnett:I'm one of those that has his air conditioning running, as my, power bill will attest, is already attesting at the end of the month. And, and and praying, by the way, that my power stays on. Not because I'm in South Texas affected by the hurricane, but because Texas legislature allowed wind and solar to, you know, take over the grid, and so every summer when the wind stops blowing in West Texas where the wind farms are located, the power drops off, and we struggle to keep the lights on. So, let's keep our fingers crossed throughout the broadcast.
Jim Lakely:Yes. For sure. You get it's you know, it always just blows my mind that Texas, depends so much on wind and solar, considering their history of fossil fuel exploration. I mean, gosh, JR Ewing is spinning in his grave and is Well, you
H. Sterling Burnett:people don't realize it, but Texas actually has huge coal reserves, and we used to burn our coal here in Texas. It's not like we had to ship it across the nation to us. No. We we we mined coal here. We delivered it, mined mouth coal power plants, and and we've shut those down.
H. Sterling Burnett:And instead, what we do is we build solar that gets smashed by hail and, wind that doesn't blow when it's not convenient. And and we have to build more natural gas, which is, of course, why my bills are going up because natural gas is peaking right now.
Jim Lakely:Yep. Alright. Well, let's go. We have a we have a pretty big show today. As I was putting the show notes together, it's like, golly, we have a lot of a lot of stuff to cover, especially on the climate law fair front.
Jim Lakely:The idea came from Sterling to do this, today, and, by golly, there is a lot of news. But I think it's important to start the program off and it's, fortuitous that we have Mark Marrano as our guest today, because this week, former United States senator from Oklahoma, senator Jim Inhofe passed away. And, you know, Mark, you were a, climate researcher for, for Jim Inhofe. Senator Inhofe had spoken at at least, I think, 2 of Heartland's climate conferences over the years. He was a, well, you know, I've spent some time in Washington.
Jim Lakely:You've spent a lot of time in Washington, Mark Marrano. You know, our congress unfortunately seems to be populated by people who are either not that bright or or not that curious or both or liars. And I think senator Unhof, distinguished himself on a topic that did not make him very popular even among even in his own caucus when it came to, fighting junk science and, you know, pushing for realist realistic climate and energy policies in the United States.
Marc Morano:Yeah. And it's a it's a it's a huge loss for anyone who cares about rational climate energy policy in America, and it's a huge personal loss for him and his family. He had, excuse me, so many children. His wife, Kaye, survives him. He had great grandchildren, and and he was just the ultimate senator to work for.
Marc Morano:And I saw talked to a lot of other staff. I worked up there a lot of years. He was none of the any of the bad stories you ever heard. He was just awesome to work for. He was kind, compassionate, decent, civil to his staff.
Marc Morano:There were no temper tantrums, no tirades. And the most important thing about him, he was a man of principle. This is a guy who in the United States said it basically stood alone. I mean, there were other senators at the time who may have, you know, agreed with him. I think Coburn from Oklahoma was 1, but they weren't in a position of power like the chair of the environment and public works committee, which is where I work for him.
Marc Morano:I was his communication director, climate I hate to say climate researcher, but we I collected all the names for the dissenting scientist report. And Inhofe stood alone. So I submit to you, for those of you who don't think one man or one woman can make a difference, I submit to you James Mountain Inhofe, James m Inhofe, who literally stood up against the United Nations. We had Rajendra Pachari come testify. He stood up against all of academia.
Marc Morano:We had endless professors. He stood up against the media. He stood up against the Republican establishment. He stood up against, the entire political uni party in Washington and said, no. We're not going to allow this to happen.
Marc Morano:And though though this was even during the Bush administration, some there there were some soundings of, early capitulation on climate policy. But when Obama was elected, I was still working for him, and he was single handedly helps derail cap and trade in the United States Senate. So effectively, I might add, that Obama's signature climate bill was so damaged by the time Jim Jim Inhofe got through with it, exposing it, even recruiting Democrats to oppose it. At one point, senators Al Franken and 7 other Rust Belt Democrats throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan basically said we can't support this bill because it was bad for America, bad for American industry. It was supporting China, and it was so embarrassing.
Marc Morano:And Inhofe was so effective that Harry Reid, the then senate majority leader, never even submitted Obama's key signature climate bill to the United States senate. That is the legacy of James Inhofe. But even beyond that, he set a legacy of changing the narrative. And in my I I if you go to Climb Depot, I have a long, tribute to James Inhof. But he did a speech in the senate floor.
Marc Morano:It was I believe it was September 2006. And it was a speech that just said absolutely not. We reject any scientific consensus. This is, none of this is true. All the claims you hear from Al Gore, the media.
Marc Morano:And it was point by point, and he went after the media and named the media. The response publicly was something the senate had never seen, and this continued for several years to the point where we actually shut down the United States senate. At the time, Drudge was a conservative libertarian website, actually had a lot of power. He would link directly to us. And I I I detailed this.
Marc Morano:When he gave that speech, our phones rang off the hook. I remember calling in Andrew Wheeler, who is chief of staff at the Senate Environment Public Works Committee, and Andrew Wheeler, later worked for Trump's EPA, obviously, and now and and even governor Youngkin. But I said, come here. Listen to this. I go I just answered.
Marc Morano:The phones were ringing. I just picked up a random call, put it on speaker, and it was person after person calling to say, thank you, senator Inhofe. I can't believe it. We always knew this was a con. Finally, a a elected official is speaking out clearly and bluntly.
Marc Morano:There was no mealy mouthed stuff, and that is the legacy of senator enough. He single handedly changed the narrative of this entire debate and built that, And this is why I think where we are today, he did it from a position that, I can tell tell you right now, almost no one else had. I mean, there was a couple others, congressman Smith from the House Science Committee in the house who came along later with a lot of climate. But Inhofe was alone. He was the pioneer.
Marc Morano:High level government official, the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, saying not only no, but we don't buy the climate BS scientific claims. And that was a shot heard around the world. And that is truly in us legacy, and the the the fruit of that is still being born today.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like you said, it's still his the agenda he had set and the positions he had taken, 20 years ago are still held by, well, all Republicans on the hill who actually know the topic.
Marc Morano:The narrative. That's that's huge.
Jim Lakely:Well, let me just ask you real quick, and I'm gonna go into a little bit of something that probably will annoy you and me and our listeners and our viewers is the coverage of his passing. But, I've I've actually, I'm curious. How did, senator Inhofe come to his position that he had held for so long on climate and energy? I mean, you you was was he in other words, was he a climate realist and somebody who understood the topic before you started working for him? Or did or did you Yeah.
Marc Morano:By the time I was working for him, but he always tells the story. Yeah. He grew up in Oklahoma, obviously, oil gas state, and and he just never paid much attention. And he always said I always assumed it was true. You know?
Marc Morano:You know, especially back in the nineties, you know, when when people were, all the scientists and you had James Hansen and these are NASA scientists. He didn't really pay much attention. He didn't really start paying attention until he realized what it was actually going to do to American energy, which he called the, you know, the the in the economic engine of the world, this beautiful machine called America our powerhouse. And that's when he started looking into it, and that's when he started realizing, wait a minute. These are crazy.
Marc Morano:What are they basing this on? And then he started looking into the science. One of his first big hearing well, when he first became chairman of the of the senate Republican environment and public works committee, one of the big hearings he had was to bring in meteorologist bill doctor Bill Gray and Michael Crichton, and that was 2,000, I I don't I've been at the year wrong. Either 2003 or 2005. That set the world on fire initially because you had Michael Crichton and you had a top scientist like Bill Gray basically demolishing the entire premise of man made climate change crisis and fears.
Marc Morano:And, certainly, by that time, Inhofe was fully on board with, like, this has to be exposed and that whole agenda has to be exposed.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love Michael Crichton's Climate of Fear where the climate hippies get killed and eaten, which is really great.
H. Sterling Burnett:I before we go to the headlines, can I just say one thing about my experience?
Marc Morano:Yes.
H. Sterling Burnett:So, I didn't, of course, know Jim Inhofe as closely as well as you, but I did meet him on a couple of occasions. Back before I joined Heartland, different think tank, we hosted a couple of conferences on Capitol Hill, you know, in the in the senate and in the house chambers, we we were set up. Andrew Wheeler, I think, was instrumental in in setting up one of these, and I found him to be, he'd he was principled, but he also delivered things with humor. He was he was he was a good. Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:He was a well meaning and good spirited man, and he is what I like to think of what a senator a senator of the United States should be. You gotta remember, the senate was set up to represent the separate states. It it was originally set up that the senators were appointed by their legislatures to represent that state against the to and against the federal government. And rather than being a statesman, oh, I'm gonna be the next president or whatever, like, someone like John McCain, wants to be bigger than he is, Jim Inhofe defended Oklahoma. Jim Inhofe went up there and said, I'm here first and foremost to, support and protect the citizens of my state who put me here, and so he defended its industries.
H. Sterling Burnett:He defended its people, and he's he promoted, construction and stuff in, in Oklahoma. So I, you know, I just think he really is a prime example of what a senator was is supposed to be.
Marc Morano:I agree. And that's an important point. He had a way of disarming even his harshest critics. Even, and I can't remember his name, a climate activist came to the senate to challenge Inhofe in a hallway, and he was a rude obnoxious, but I don't remember the guy's name now, but he was I think he was affiliated with CNN at the time. And he came away saying, you know, it was I I couldn't get anywhere because it was like attacking your your uncle or your favorite your favorite uncle or your grandfather or Ronald Reagan himself, and he just had this likability.
Marc Morano:Barbara Boxer's archenemy, I was with him when they went. He debated her live on Larry King. This was, I wanna say 2,009 maybe. And we went to CNN headquarters in DC. And and right before they went on air, Inhofe, they were sitting right next to each other.
Marc Morano:Inhofe messed up her hair, which she had just spent all this time. And Boxer, you know, of course, freaked out, but it was a funny moment because Boxer ended up laughing about it. They were the best of friends, actually, and they actually worked together on a lot of infrastructure bills. It was just climate that truly divide climate and energy policy that truly divided them. But it's amazing how even the harshest critics of him really liked him personally, and he was just a a great guy, a great family man, and it's a huge loss for the senate and for America.
Marc Morano:He was an American original.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, speaking of, well, he may have had people in the senate who may have disagreed with him and were still friends and friendly and civil. Can't say as much, for the mainstream media, the corporate media, the corrupt corporate media in this country. I wanna show, the viewers of our stream the New York Times headline for the passing of the great James Inhofe. James Inhofe, senator who denied climate change dies at 89.
Jim Lakely:Now let's also, show how the New York Times handled the passing of some other senators of note in recent years. Edward m Kennedy, senate stalwart dead at 77. No mention of, oh, I don't know, leaving a young woman to die in a in a car, in a in a little river. I don't know. And also Robert Seabert, a pillar of the senate dies at 92.
Jim Lakely:A Klansman, a leader in the clan, not in the headline, Yet, Jim Inoff is gonna be known to the readers of The New York Times as for only one thing and that he denied climate change, Mark Marano. Are you surprised, or do you even care?
Marc Morano:I don't care much, and I would say this. Knowing Jin Inhofe, I think he would get a chuckle, and he would be perfectly fine with that legacy because that was he knew he was unique. He knew he it was up to him in the United States Senate and the US Congress given the position of power he held, especially to be that guy. So I don't think it would have bothered him, but I think it is funny to the New York Times, you you know, again, we already know New York Times columnist, the mainstream media. To them, that's like writing, you know, he denied the holocaust.
Marc Morano:That's the equivalent when they write ridiculous headlines like that. That's how disgusted they are that someone like Jim Hinoff could even be a US senator and deny climate change. Inoff himself, I think, would get a chuckle out of that. And it is ironic, you know, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, how they get the glowing, because they were the right side of the politics of the New York Times likes.
Jim Lakely:Right. Right. Alright. Well, our second segment today, and I appreciate
H. Sterling Burnett:Before we go on, I wanna ask, Mark one thing. Y'all mentioned briefly the report you put together, while Inhofe was there. And I think it's important our readers know about it and if they can still find it somewhere.
Marc Morano:So You do have action Here's the thing that's weird about it. I have it at Climate Depot. You can go to Climate Depot. It's updated to a 1,000 dissenting scientists. Hasn't been up I mean, when I say updated from the senate days, it hasn't probably been updated in over a decade.
Marc Morano:But in the EPW website, every time there's a change of chairman, they change all the URLs, so it's very hard to find anything on the senate website anymore. But that was a report. When I first started there, it was I started there right when Al Gore's film came out in the spring of 2006. And this was a time when Rajendra Pachari and AB Alden Major Network, actually, and Al Gore and all UN chief, they were all saying there's only about a half a dozen scientists out there who don't believe global warming, and and and and they are the same ones who believe the Earth is flat or the the moon landing was faked, etcetera, etcetera. Etcetera.
Marc Morano:So we had the idea. Let's let's test that theory. So senator Inhofe and the environment public works committee, you know, we announced it and started collecting the names, soliciting names from scientists around the world. And we reached out, and it was incredible. And then when we finally released the report, it was December of, right before Chris couple weeks, like early December 2,006.
Marc Morano:And Inhofe went down to the senate floor, read the report, started reading the names. That report was the shot heard around the world because it was the first time and, again, keep in mind, this was during a time when Republicans were fully on board with this. I mean, there was almost nearly in private meetings, I remember really conservative members of the senate, Republican staffers, their chief aide, and they go, oh, our senator doesn't wanna say it. He doesn't wanna be seen as against the environment, so we're we don't know how to handle this. We're just gonna focus on only economic costs of whatever proposed legislation.
Marc Morano:But that bill, I remember it was even, Bill O'Reilly changed his coverage of climate change at the time. Fox News picked up on that. He was in talk radio. That was a seminal report in getting out a new narrative to the people that, hey. These are major prestigious scientists from, Harvard, Yale, MIT, NASA, former UN scientist, Nobel Prize winning scientist saying, no.
Marc Morano:This is not true. They don't agree with Al Gore. They don't agree with the head of the UN. And that was what was so important. And Inhof used his stature as a senator.
Marc Morano:And in the report, we even put the senate seal, which used to drive pea people nuts because we were a it was a majority report, not officially, you know, like a bipartisan report. But we put the senate seal in these reports. We had a skeptics guide to climate change, and it was just heads exploded. They were you had to put trigger warnings on them, I guess, we'd say today, on those reports. But, again, it was huge.
Marc Morano:I just can't tell you. And once Inhof left, there was actually senator Vitter from he carried on a great legacy, but I gotta say this, and I hope I don't offend anyone or, you know, the the the succeeding chairman of that committee or ranking and minority members, none of them have ever been interested in taking on the science. After senator Vitter, I believe he was the last one, from Louisiana. They all just run scared, including the the current republicans on it. They don't want anything to do with challenging the science even today, which is kinda sad, but, you know, obviously, the constituency isn't really opposed to it.
Jim Lakely:Yep. Yes. Well, thanks again, Mark, for being on the show, and, I think it was important to have that on the record for, the greatest champion for climate realism the senate has ever seen and, maybe somebody will come up to 80% of his level if we're lucky Yeah. In the near future. So let's get up to, one of our favorite segments here on the Climate Realism Show, and that is the crazy climate news of the week.
Jim Lakely:And, Mark Marrano, I'm gonna have to thank you for, giving us our first item on this, because I found this on climadepot.com. Climate activists lead a funeral procession at Citibank for causing climate death. Mourn all of those killed due to the climate crisis. So we have a there we go. There it is up on the screen.
Jim Lakely:So, yeah, I mean, just another stunt. This this was a a funeral procession led by, Bill McKibben of 3 50 dotorg, a radical environmental leftist. His organization, by the way, is called 3 50 dotorg because his contention was that if the c o two levels in the atmosphere rose above 350 parts per million, that was the tipping point in which the earth would become uninhabitable and there was really no way to recover from it. Linea, what's our parts per, million right now?
Linnea Lueken:I believe it's something around 420, but I can look.
H. Sterling Burnett:It is
Jim Lakely:420, Well, that's a nice round number. Could be that. So yeah. So it's, and we're still here. It's over 400 for sure, we're still here.
Jim Lakely:And this, this procession actually reminds me of, you know what the Heartland Institute's office, we're in the suburbs of Chicago right now, but for a long time, for most of our, 40 years of existence, we had offices in downtown Chicago. And one day I was coming back from lunch, and I, was trying to walk into the building, and there were a bunch of people laying on the sidewalk. And I wondered what the hell is going on? Why are they doing that? They were conducting a die in to protest the Heartland Institute's position on, on climate policy, because we were gonna kill them and all of their progeny and everybody else on earth because we didn't buy into the climate alarmist narrative.
Jim Lakely:I just stepped over them and went back up to the 28th floor. I got off with my day. But, hey. Well, Mark Marrano's gonna comment on this. Andy, if we wanna play the video that we have of that climate funeral, I think it's, it's quite the sight to see, especially some of those signs that are being carried around.
H. Sterling Burnett:So, Mark, you ever been to
Jim Lakely:one of these? Not a time or a funeral.
Marc Morano:I've been to sim I it's I feel like I've been seen similar at UN Summit. They've had but
Jim Lakely:not with this not with coffin, but I'm just kidding. I And I think the bagpiper is a nice cut.
Marc Morano:You know? As a
Jim Lakely:businessman, I, I admire that.
H. Sterling Burnett:Except Scotland right now is going through a very, very cold summer, so I'm surprised they could could have Scott produced it.
Linnea Lueken:They're such they're such cowards wearing sackcloth over their normal clothes.
Marc Morano:There you go. They're supposed to
Linnea Lueken:wear it against your skin, so it's painful. There's
Jim Lakely:posers. Complete posers for sure.
H. Sterling Burnett:I mean, gosh. Well, I think it shows that, they have no respect for the climate. When I go to a funeral, I dress in a suit, not sackcloth.
Marc Morano:That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It should pop there. And just put it.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, actually, maybe Mark and and you guys can speak to this. I mean, it it's not as if these things just spontaneously rot out of the ground like a mushroom after a rain. You know, the environmental left, and the activist, all these organizations are extremely well funded, and organized as opposed to climate realism, which is populated by normal people who have normal lives and things to do. Yes.
Jim Lakely:So, you know, it seems like we're always, our side is always having to fight these well funded professional agitators and loons.
Marc Morano:Yeah. Well, one of the things I like to point out is if you look at, like, extinction rebellion or just stop oil, these these are as diluted and wacky as these individuals are who get arrested and spray paint and just, you know, vandalize the Mona Lisa or disrupt traffic or interrupt the football game or spray paint a building. They are literally the spokesman for our ruling class governing elite. Hollywood directors give the 1,000,000, the Getty Foundation. I think you have Rockefellers.
Marc Morano:Eileen Getty, of course, is one of the biggest funders of these. They are the voice of our ruling class. And how can you prove that beyond the the money trail? Listen to what they say. They sound like Al Gore.
Marc Morano:They sound like the UN secretary general. They sound like any average college professor with the climate tripe that they spew out. There's nothing interesting that they have to say. Well, we're in a climate emergency. Blah blah blah.
Marc Morano:And they actually pathetically think, well, I'm sticking it to the man by being here. And it's like, no. You're not sticking it to the man. You're the spokesman for the man with this kind of crap. And the same there.
Marc Morano:I I don't exactly know who funds I mean, Bill McKibben, a lot of shadowy money. He was actually made fun of by Michael Moore in his film, planet of the what was it? I can't remember now. Plan I wanna say planet of the progressives, but that's not Planet
Jim Lakely:of the humans. Planet of the humans.
Marc Morano:Planet of the humans. Yeah. He was exiled from planet of the progressives for that movie. But in the movie, they have Bill McKibben unsure of who funds him. He doesn't know he he can't answer any of the most basic questions.
Marc Morano:They sort of go after him in that film. Well, this thing with Citibank, of course, is part of a larger issue. They wanna turn this into sort of this tobacco settlement. They want it's a shakedown of corporate America. So the idea of doing this funeral is silly on one hand, but I just wanted to read you a couple of their actual claims.
Marc Morano:If you read the tombstones, this is hilarious. This is the proof that they have why Citibank is liable for people dying. One tombstone reads, man found in car on hot day. Window rolled down. Flat tire, heat death.
Marc Morano:This is what that's what you're supposed to look at and say, oh my god. Citibank. And then here's another one. The other one is about a lady hiking with her husband. Here it is.
Marc Morano:44 year old woman dies of heat stroke while hiking with her husband and 2 children in Sedona. That's Citibank's fault. That's why Citibank needs to pay up. That's why all of corporate America needs to pay up if they're financing any fossil fuels. This is truly, you know, just beyond bonkers, but this is, again, this is a message that the ruling class likes because it's creating the chaos and it's advancing their agenda.
H. Sterling Burnett:Remind me, Sedona, that's that's like Norway. Right?
Marc Morano:I think it's Arizona.
Jim Lakely:It's a
H. Sterling Burnett:it's a yeah. No. I'm I'm kidding. Yeah. It's a it's it's not some Nordic country.
H. Sterling Burnett:It's a desert. It's in in the desert of Arizona. It's a beautiful place, but it is not a place that, you know, you go hiking merrily without lots of water and and, you know, letting people know where you're at. Every year, people die there in the snow.
Jim Lakely:Also have
Marc Morano:a thing called a weather forecast. If you know it's gonna be a really hot day, take precautions. It's not like it surprises you.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Right. Well, actually, Mark, what what you just brought up there is a perfect segue to, my second crazy climate news of the week, and it's not exactly news. It's not exactly new, but I did find it again through the great climadepot.com. And it is, let's see.
Jim Lakely:It's it's a story that is headlined, calls to add climate change to death certificates. New study demands climate change be added as a preexisting condition. Now this was a study, as you explained there, published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet in 2020 by 2 PhDs, lamenting that, quote, climate change is a killer, but we don't acknowledge it on death certificates. Says one of the authors, quote, we can make a diagnosis of disease like coronavirus, but we are less literate in environmental determinants like hot weather or bushfire smoke. So, quote, if you have an asthma attack and die during heavy smoke exposure from bushfires, the death certificate should include that information.
Jim Lakely:Now, guys, I think if you give yourself an aneurysm, for instance, because you're falsely and tragically worried out of your mind that this planet isn't about to be uninhabitable by 2021, that might be a death attributable to not climate change, but climate panic. Maybe it's just climate adjacent. I don't know.
Linnea Lueken:Climate adjacent.
Jim Lakely:This idea of putting, climate change on death certificates, this is actually gonna segue again into one of the, the items on climate law fair that's coming up. Who wants to jump in on that one?
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, I would say, So they mentioned brush fires. Right? The smoke from brush fires. And they mentioned what was the other thing they mentioned as a possible example?
Jim Lakely:Let's see. Oh, hot weather and brush fires. Hot weather.
H. Sterling Burnett:So okay. So we never had brush fires before there was so called climate change. People people never died from smoke inhalation. People never had heat stroke before we had climate. How you I I acknowledge that on death security, you just you could you're able to say heat stroke, but you shouldn't be able to say it's climate because it existed before climate.
H. Sterling Burnett:There's no evidence climate change has has changed any of that. They're trying to make, a weather related death into a climate related death, and they're 2 different things.
Jim Lakely:Well, it's not even just that it's a climate related death. It's that it's a human caused climate change related death. In other words, that human emissions of carbon dioxide is what is causing intense heat more intense heat waves, more brush fires, and, you know, the research and the things we cover on the Climate Realism Show and the stuff that Mark Marrano posts on climadepot.com, debunk all of this garbage because human activity is not changing the climate in ways that would make these things more more severe and certainly not severe enough to put it on someone's death certificate, Mark.
Marc Morano:Yeah. And what's funny about this is this was right after March of 2020. They did this study in the journal Lancet after the COVID lockdowns began and the whole idea of COVID death counts and everything else. So this was the beginning of the movement. Now I always say at first, the climate activists were jealous of the COVID lockdown saying, hey.
Marc Morano:That's what we want. And then shortly after they recovered is that we won in. That's why you had, like, teen Vogue magazine saying, you know, if we can shut down the world for a virus, we can do the same thing for climate change. Remember, it was during COVID that they got to shut down the economy, which is what climate wanted to do for years with the degrowth movement, with planned recessions to fight climate change. They even got to have kids skip school, which is what, Greta wanted to do.
Marc Morano:Well, they got to do that when COVID hit. So there was all that. So this was part of the modeling. So this study, adding climate change as a cause in your death certificate is a way to start what? Climate death counts.
Marc Morano:Same time, a year later, the doctor in British Columbia, the head of the emergency room, and then a group of doctors were formed after this, was the first doctor to medically diagnose a patient as suffering from climate change. He actually wrote it on her chart. It was a woman who was suffering from heat stroke, and he put down your condition is climate change. So you can actually get diagnosed by a doctor now with climate change. You can have it added as a cause of death on your death certificate.
Marc Morano:And the Harvard Law Review, just a few I I guess it was a year a little over a year ago, had a study claiming the Harvard Environmental Law Review saying that there's a climate homicide is something we should be pursuing because all these people are dying. You you need lawsuits, which is what we're gonna get into, I think, with the next story on the law fair. And the bottom line with all of this is this is modeled after the tobacco industry, and this is all part of merging climate change into a public health threat. That's why you had 200 medical journals saying climate is a public health threat. That's why you have the Harvard School of Medicine claiming unchecked climate change leads to more COVID like viruses.
Marc Morano:So if you don't support the Green New Deal, you're a grandma killer. So this death certificate thing that you touched on here, is just the tip of the iceberg that puts in this whole big picture of what's not only what they wanna do, but what they're actually doing. And by the way, the federal agency, the Obama administration is gonna start counting heat wave deaths. We're not far from the day where CNN's gonna say, like, summer heat wave, you know, Adalia has now killed 400 people. The death toll rises.
Marc Morano:You know? Did they die with climate change or because of climate change? That's what we'll be asking ourselves.
Jim Lakely:Well, the the question they could ask, and Sterling, I'm sure can can jump to this. So if they're gonna be counting heat related deaths, are they gonna be counting cold related deaths? Because the data shows that more people die from cold than heat, and it's not a close call.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. No. That 17 times more people die from cold than heat. And and the thing is, they they won't acknowledge that, cold deaths are going down in part due to the modest warming, not not solely, but in part. But when people do die during cold weather, they still like to blame climate change.
H. Sterling Burnett:They, oh,
Marc Morano:it's just no.
H. Sterling Burnett:It hadn't fallen so much. If it hadn't been so extremely cold, we had a a polar vortex blow in. Oh, it's climate change. So you you remember, climate change is the cause that never has to say it's sorry because it can't be wrong. Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:It it it is it is the end all and be all. It defies logic. It can you it can be colder than average or warmer than average. Evidently, it's the same place at the same time. It defies physics.
Jim Lakely:So, it Well, the alarmist the alarmist do have do do tell a love story of death when it comes to, climate alarmism. I think about 6 people of the 500 watching will get that reference, but thanks to Sterling. So alright. But appreciate that, guys. Yes.
Jim Lakely:And so let's, there's just one more thing I wanted to share, and then a pretty funny cartoon that Anthony shared with us before he left. A friend of yours, Mark, and mine, and, well, everybody on this on this podcast and, many of the people watching, I'm sure. Steve Malloy, he tweeted out, something that went, very viral for Twitter x. A tweet that says, 91 years of global warming down the drain. June 2024 US max temps cooler than June 1933 despite many emissions and much urban heat island effect.
Jim Lakely:Ask a climate hoaxer to explain that. You know, and what's crazy about it is that this tweet was viewed 1,000,000 times, and when I took the screen cap, in just 24 hours, and that's the second time Steve Molloy at junk science dot com has pulled off that trick. And but I don't think Elon Musk had anything to with this one. He didn't, retweet it, so kudos, to Steve. Linnea, you're on you're on, on Twitter.
Jim Lakely:You have your Twitter handle up there. You're I'm sorry. X handle up there at Linnea Lukin. You know, this is something that's you know, guys like Chris Martz, who we had on this program a while back, Matthew, who we've also had on the program in the past and hope to have on again. X is becoming a platform.
Jim Lakely:Thanks to Elon Musk purchasing it and making it a private company again, and he refuses to be swayed by the government sensors and the climate alarmist and allows people to speak their minds. And in this case, speak the scientific truth that, if you're that it was hotter in the 19 thirties in June in the United States than it was in supposedly the hottest summer in a 120,000 years.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Of course. This is, one of the funniest things that Steve regularly does is use the exact same kind of arguments that the alarmists, especially the the very poorly informed alarmists tend to use, which is a, you know, oh, this month was hotter than average according to some arbitrary length of time. And then and then, of course, and then he can pull the same same card here where he goes and pulls that this is actually cooler than it was, a 100 years of warming ago. Right?
Linnea Lueken:So, I and, no, it cracks me up every time because it drives them absolutely ballistic. It makes them go completely insane in his comments. And and this is the kind of stuff that that people enjoy. I think especially, it's not just about the the factual presentation of the actual data here. It is also, that it's kind of poking in the eye of the alarmists.
Linnea Lueken:Right? Because it's funny. And and that's part of what, Chris Martz does too. That's so successful and so great. Mhmm.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I I do wanna point out, though, that I'm still a little bit mad at Elon when it comes to x because the Heartland Institute's Twitter account still can't be searched. Like, I have to in order for me to find the Heartland, it doesn't come across my feed in order for me to to type it into their search and then click on, like, your account or another account that links back to the Heartland Institute account. It's, it's still shadow banned, so he's gotta get on that for us.
Jim Lakely:Are you listening, Elon? I know you're listening, Elon. You'll get on that right away for sure. Alright. And then this one last quick item, shared with us by, Anthony Watts, before he took the week off.
Jim Lakely:This is a cartoon from Scott Adams, famous, of course, as the creator of Dilbert. This is from his new web comic strip robots read news and is a commentary on our always wrong corrupt media. Do you remember us telling you for the past 4 years that Biden's brain was better than ever? Oh, I just figured he couldn't shake his cold. In our defense, there were no clear signs of any, kind of mental decline.
Jim Lakely:It was hidden. I mean, once you point it out, sure. But the climate crisis is still totally real. You'll be dead by Tuesday. But even if I recycle that's right.
Jim Lakely:Even if you recycle. So there you have it. That's for you, Anthony Watts. I know you're watching, or will be watching later. Salute you.
Jim Lakely:Alright. On our main topic, and that is climate law fair. To be honest, I asked when when when Sterling proposed this as our topic today, I was like, is there really any new climate law fair stuff? And I thought we were kinda winning. I thought climate law fair was fizzling out.
Jim Lakely:And as we had to make the title of this podcast today, climate law fair really is heating up. And I wanna start with one of the recent stories here, that is actually the most serious, and then we'll get down to maybe, I don't know, less serious things. And that's the story from The Hill, where a prosecutor outlines the homicide case against Big Oil. Let's see here. Yep.
Jim Lakely:There we go. So, last summer says so it says the story. Last summer, an unusually long and brutal heat wave killed hundreds of people in Maricopa County, Arizona. That's in the Phoenix area. Quote, far more than all the murders the county experienced that year, former federal prosecutor Cindy Cho wrote on Wednesday.
Jim Lakely:These deaths range from homeless to the wealthy, elderly people at home, to a 31 year old engineer who died on a hike. And while tragic, Cho argued that these deaths were not accidental, but the result of a reckless action by a clear perpetrator, the fossil fuel industry. Linea, you are a former petroleum engineer, so you should pay attention. This is very important news for you and very grim. The memo, which Cho prepared for civil society group public citizen, comes on the heels of a push by congressional Democrats for federal prosecution of oil companies for alleged price fixing and what Democrats view as their role in covering up the climate crisis, something that one former federal prosecutor told congress was analogous to criminal racketeering by the tobacco industry.
Jim Lakely:And you just mentioned that earlier, Mark Marrano. Just a little bit more here. But whatever decision federal prosecutors make, Cho argued, local prosecutors like those in Maricopa County have their own clear pathway for prosecution for second degree murder. 2nd degree murder. This memo focuses on, quote, 8 of the world's largest investor owned fossil fuel companies and a national oil and gas trade association.
Jim Lakely:Each of these, Cho argued, quote, are collectively responsible for a substantial portion of all global greenhouse emissions that are actively participated in a conspiracy to spread climate disinformation. I mean, I could read more, you can read this for yourself, in the show notes, but, guys, I don't know about you, but the concept of collective guilt seems a little un American to me. It seems, what's that word the left uses all the time? Oh, fascist. That's right.
Jim Lakely:Fascist. And I'm gonna get out of the way here before I get myself into even more trouble. Sterling, why don't you get yourself in trouble?
H. Sterling Burnett:I've I got yeah. I got 2 thoughts. First off, I guess I'm looking forward to seeing, Linnea in a blaze orange jump suit 1 z or, black and white stripes like from the old thirties and fifties films, her prison attire, because she did work for the industry. Secondly, you know, in in the criminal law, I'm not a lawyer, but I watch enough of them on TV. As I understand in the criminal law, there must be a direct connection, you know, something clear, beyond a reasonable doubt that x actor this isn't they're not talking about civil suits here.
H. Sterling Burnett:Right? Civil suits is preponderance of the evidence. You know, you weigh relative benefits and and and cost and and contributions. In the criminal laws, x caused y beyond a clear, beyond a reasonable doubt. You'd have to show me you'd have to prove to me that any executive at Exxon caused any individual identifiable death.
H. Sterling Burnett:That's what it means. You have to point to the person, be able to prove that they were caused by the emissions from that executive's company, and they can't do it. That's impossible as a matter of criminal law. That doesn't say mean they won't try. That doesn't mean that the court system might, with a wink and a nod, say, oh, well, you know, it's just, it's so bad that we've got to do something, even though, let's face it, the courts, well, I I won't go on.
H. Sterling Burnett:Some of the courts are are have been better than others on this, but I don't know any of them that have said, we can breach the criminal law like this.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Mark, I wanna I wanna throw it to you. I mean, you know, the the topic of this actually, I don't even I've known you for a long time. You're not an attorney, are you? You know, you can say yes.
Jim Lakely:It It won't make me think any less of you. But
Marc Morano:No. I'm not. I might play 1 on TV, but not
Jim Lakely:on camera. Not great. You know? But this kind of law fair, I mean, I know you have had, you know, you've had a lot of great personal attacks against you, and I'm sure that there are, let's just say, Obama era attorney, former US attorneys who would love to prosecute a case against organizations like CFACT. Go to cfact.org to learn more about that.
Jim Lakely:And the Heartland Institute and Linnea and Sterling and and anybody really who dares to challenge the false climate narrative of human caused fossil fuel burned, c02 emissions causing not just a climate catastrophe, but direct deaths to people for which a second degree murder charge would be warranted.
Marc Morano:Yeah. Well, this is okay. I've mentioned earlier about the Biden administration. This was according to NBC News about 8 months ago. The White House is planning on unveiling a national dashboard for tracking heat related illnesses nationwide doing due to the growing impacts of climate change.
Marc Morano:So they wanna have that death count. Now this story you read in mentioning Maricopa County, this was picked up public citizen and a former federal prosecutor named Cindy Cho is now coming out saying second degree murder against big oil for the heat waves death, and it's basically the same story. But the key to this is they're they're they're using these climate models, and the evidence that they use by public citizen is according to this latest climate model study, in quotes, this heat wave in Arizona would have been, I don't know, virtually impossible without mankind's contribution to c o two. That's their hard science. That's their story.
Marc Morano:That's what they're sticking to. And as we mentioned, they're ignoring the fact that cold deaths are are higher, much higher 8 to 20 times higher than warm deaths. They're forgetting the fact that there's been a 99% drop in climate related deaths over the last 100 years, probably mostly in part due to fossil fuels and the technological revolution in the structure you build
H. Sterling Burnett:up.
Marc Morano:And instead, they're just looking to shake down companies. And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, big oil capitulates to this at some point because they don't seem to have that many principles. If they think you could get them off the hook, they probably would agree to some settlement, and, of course, it it wouldn't end. There's no criteria by which you could ever say, well, we have enough money or we've solved climate change, therefore, we don't need to prosecute this. But remember, this goes back to academia.
Marc Morano:Over a year ago, Harvard Law Harvard Environmental Law Review actually said the phrase climate homicide needs to be introduced as a legal, principle, and this is where we're headed. This is a shakedown. Make no mistake about it. Your driving that SUV caused this storm. You eating hamburgers caused it.
Marc Morano:You keeping your air conditioner too cold. And I hope, Sterling, that you have your air conditioner at the federal guideline of 78. I think it's 78 in the day and 82 at night Fahrenheit. I hope I hope you're sticking straight to that.
H. Sterling Burnett:You you you hope in vain. That's that's not where my, air conditioning is set. But, you know, we didn't talk about what law fair is. It's the use of the courts
Marc Morano:Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:To try and extort concessions. They they they can't go through the messy process. They keep saying, oh, we're we're champions democracy. We're fighting fascism. Democracy is you go to the legislature and you convince enough legislators to pass a law.
H. Sterling Burnett:This is the use of courts to circumvent the law and the legislature. And this would be a bastardization of the criminal law. I mean, it's bad enough that they're using torch to try and extort concessions. If if Exxon says, okay, I'm just willing to pay you off, how much would it take to get you out of my business in a in a tort lawsuit? That's one thing.
H. Sterling Burnett:I don't think any of those executives is willing to go to jail. I think they'll this they'll fight, you know, homicide second degree homicides, 20 to 20 years to life in most jurisdictions. So I don't think the head of Exxon's gonna give up on this one. I I or the head of Chevron. This would be a bastardization of the criminal law.
H. Sterling Burnett:And if you can do it to Exxon, what is to stop them from doing it to you, me, or even the attorney himself who's taking that case to court. Right? Driving his SUV or, you know, if the Manhattan DA, stretch limo, who who is immune and and and then it would not just be climate. It would be any other thing that they could say deaths resulted from this. And had this industry not been do you know, the agriculture industry.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, people wouldn't be having heart attacks if if they weren't growing me you know, if they weren't raising cattle and doing dairy, we know that's bad for you. So they're killing people. We gotta go after them next. It's it's meat homicide. You know?
H. Sterling Burnett:And and, of course, the Smiths, meet his murder. They they did that, what, 40 years ago. But, the point is, they it will it will twist it will take all meaning out of the criminal law. It will it will done the, separation between criminal and tort law, and it will it will it will end modern civilization because no one will be able to do anything without fear that they will then be blamed for homicide because something that can't be proven, but more importantly, it can't be disproven. You know, what what's how can Exxon disprove that its emissions didn't cause?
H. Sterling Burnett:That's their whole point.
Marc Morano:The the the only counter I have to that is if you browbeat an industry enough and you threaten them, I'm not saying they'll ever gonna face I don't think they're actually realistically ever be faced with a climate second degree murder charge. But if we have the buy say Biden wins and look what they did with EVs. They have you know, you have all these EV automakers going against their own interest. That's because these are the regulators forcing it on them. You have the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, former president saying we're not gonna finance these car loans.
Marc Morano:You have the bank saying we're not gonna we're not gonna finance gas powered cars at the automaker level. You have banks saying we're not gonna give out gas powered car loans to consumers. You have cities banning creation of new gas stations. When they put the fix in, they can put the pressure on. So what I'm saying is if Biden comes out with a heat wave death count, public health merges climate successfully, if the world health already has a climate toolkit for doctors, and they start fingering the these increasing unprecedented health, heat deaths, and the and then you have, you know, prosecutors, state attorney generals.
Marc Morano:You're gonna have federal regulators if Biden wins again. Going after these companies, at some point, they might say, hey. It's cheaper to pay some kind of settlement figure modeled after, like, tobacco than to deal with all this with all these laws and coming after us. Because when they get the fix in, they can make a pretty incessant and nonstop case to go after an industry, and that's what they're good at. And and that and that that's why I think they could get some money out of industry from this even if it's, you know, much smaller.
Marc Morano:But I don't think it's I don't think they're ever really intending to go through with the threat of charging them successfully with secondary climate murder. But there's a it's a tool to browbeat them and to shake it down for money.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, I mean so, yeah, criminal prosecution, not off the table, not necessarily going to happen. But here, we got another story here, from The Telegraph, via Yahoo News. Climate campaigners bombard courts with action against oil execs. Clamp climate campaigners are are bombarding the courts with lawsuits against energy companies in a new attempt to end the use of fossil fuels.
Jim Lakely:A report from the London School of Economics has found there are 132 climate cases in the British legal system at present. The LSE found up from a a 102 a year ago, it makes this country, England, the 3rd highest center for climate litigation in the world after, shocker, the United States and a little surprising, Australia. And the LSC suggested this year that, it will set a new record for the number of cases with a further wave of action expected as environmental lawyers increasingly pioneer new legal concepts such as ecocide. And their aim is to tie up oil and gas company executives with legal action or even trials over accusations that the emissions of their products killed people. So, you know, much like, Lana, I think I'll go to you on this if you like.
Jim Lakely:The, Somebody who's a former employee of an oil company, a petroleum engineer, you know, they're targeting your former industry, I should say, with as many lawsuits as possible. Flood the zone. Flood the zone so that, to be as annoying as possible, to be as expensive as possible, and to, you know, you know, death by a 1,000 cuts, I suppose, is what they're going for. And that the process, much like, when Michael Mann sued Mark Stein, it's the process that's the punishment. They they might not even really think or believe that they will be successful because a lot of the lawsuits are right are very frivolous just on first examination, but it's the it's the process that is supposed to punish, you know, people that are actually providing not just a valuable service to the world, but the most valuable service and product that humanity has ever known.
Linnea Lueken:Right. And I I would love to say that I feel bad for these companies, but I actually don't at all. They've been setting themselves up for this for decades at this point. If you go right now to ExxonMobil's website, and I checked this while we were talking here just to make sure that they haven't changed anything, but it's still the case, and it's actually even more extreme than it was last time I checked it a couple of weeks ago. ExxonMobil's front page is all about reducing carbon emissions.
Linnea Lueken:That is that is their main thrust of their website design right now is sustainability and reducing emissions, reducing methane emissions. The API, which I think is the organization that's also being sued with the American Petroleum Institute, has been advertising on their website about how good they are about emissions or how we're how they're, lobbying for methane regulations and stuff. What do you what do you mean? I I thought, you know, if your product isn't hurting the planet, then why are you advertising about reducing the use of your product? If you're if you're and and also I I've made this point to someone at the conference I went to this week.
Linnea Lueken:But, you know, if I when I was working in the, in the industry, if I thought that the product that I was helping to produce was destroying the planet, I would not be working in that industry.
Jim Lakely:I
Linnea Lueken:I wouldn't be able to do it. And yet there are people in the industry at high levels that are shilling climate change. Catastrophe narrative while also working to produce more of the product that they claim is destroying the planet. So are they evil or stupid? I don't know.
H. Sterling Burnett:I don't know. They're they're
Jim Lakely:I I always embrace the power of and don't don't discount and. That's the way I always think
Linnea Lueken:about it. I'm so mad at I I'm it's one of my favorite op eds I ever wrote was for human events, and it was where I I pointed out all of the sections on BP and Exxon and be especially ask these smaller industry or these smaller companies and smaller industries that they've been screwing over by lobbying for methane emissions regulations for years now. And they're gonna ask them to help them, you know, prepare to defeat these lawsuits. No. No.
Linnea Lueken:It's no longer,
H. Sterling Burnett:you know, it's no longer
Linnea Lueken:You make your bed. I'm mad at them.
H. Sterling Burnett:It's no longer with Exxon. Put a tiger in your tank. It's now put a carbon capture and storage unit in your tank.
Linnea Lueken:Right. Yeah. God.
H. Sterling Burnett:You're I mean, you're right. They they they have long led to their doom. Remember, first, they they the first fossil fuel they they threw under the bus was coal. Right? Natural gas said, oh, yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:You're right. Coal is terrible. It's it's causing emissions. It's it's climate change, but natural gas is a transition fuel. We we we're so much cleaner.
H. Sterling Burnett:So
Linnea Lueken:imagine imagine describing your product that way. My product is a transition product. Yeah. Like, I'm gonna stop using this soon.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. We're transitioning you from a a fast death to a slower death. Right. We're gonna you know, what is it? The the the guy that they said, someone asked him, have you have you stopped beating your wife?
H. Sterling Burnett:And he says, oh, well, I'm doing it less than I used to, and I expect in the future to stop altogether. Well, sorry. That's not, sufficient.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, Mark Mark Marrano, I mean, this actually would would Linnea had described there and, how fortuitous again for her to look at the Xi website to confirm what she knew in her heart to be true because we all know this. And it is that big oil gave up on supporting climate realism a long time ago, and that, it goes without saying that big oil, does not contribute to organizations like CFACT and the Heartland Institute and the c o two coalition and a lot of other a lot of our other allies in the climate realism movement, they long ago sold out to the to the green gravy train, and I'll I'll never forget that I I remember seeing a British Petroleum BP, commercial on TV where the logos swirled and then the words beyond petroleum came out for a petroleum company for crying out loud, Mark Marrano.
Marc Morano:Yeah. In fact, this when I was in the US senate, it was I wanna say it was a Rockefeller senator from West Virginia and maybe it was Dianne Feinstein or Boxer who did this letter, impassion letter to ExxonMobil. But here's the thing. Even when ExxonMobil gave to skeptic groups back in the nineties and up to, I guess, early 2000, it was actually the general conservative groups in general who maybe 5%, 2% was dealing with climate. It wasn't specifically to deny climate change.
Marc Morano:And what's interesting is that Union of Concerned Scientists, this was back 20 years ago now, did a study claiming ExxonMobil gave, you know, 16 or 17,000,000 to groups skeptical of climate change since the early 19 nineties, like, over 2 decades. One United States Department of Agricultural Farm grant for $20,000,000 exceeded all the money Exxon Mobile was ever accused of giving to climate skeptics, and this farm grant was to study global warming farm orders on global warming. So it just goes to show you how what a pittance. First of all, big companies like ExxonMobil ever even gave. It didn't even equal one USDA Farm Grant.
Marc Morano:Secondly, when you look at the the big picture, these people always say, it's ExxonMobil talking point. What? ExxonMobil was Rex Tillerson, probably the worst one of Trump's worst cabinet picks, and that's saying something.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah.
Marc Morano:One of his first acts was going to the Arctic to sign the UN climate declaration. He supported carbon taxes. He supported the UN Paris agreement. All of big oil does. So the whole concept of this is why would they give us money when we're actively opposed to all that?
Marc Morano:And they're they love all those these rules because, a, it crushes the smaller competition. It gives they have the best lawyers and lobbyists. They get the best deals. They get to absorb all the smaller companies that can't afford the climate compliance cost. Same reason all of them a lot of big companies supported Obamacare, health care.
Marc Morano:It's always the big players that love more government because they can manipulate the government to their interest the best. Yep.
H. Sterling Burnett:What I'm You know, I just wanna ask or, you know, a thought occurs to me every time I see another lawsuit filed, because they're, you know, what they say, in England, a 160 something cases. I I I'll wager there's probably 500 or more in the US right now, including the states, the cities, the children, you know, the interest groups. If they never pay out a dime, if they didn't if they don't lose a single case ever, in any of these court cases, I wonder how many 1,000,000,000 or 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars they spend just fighting these things. And I can't help but wonder what better uses those resources could have been put to, either for energy efficiency, better refining technologies, better production, different alternative, energy technologies, you know, or just return to their shareholders in profits, so that they can make their own decisions about whether's where to spend the money and what they're concerned about. I mean, the vast waste of resources in fighting these lawsuits.
H. Sterling Burnett:I understand why they're fighting them. I want them to fight them. I wish they fought them on the science, but even if they never lose, society has lost.
Jim Lakely:Yep. Yep. Exactly. So I I wanna get to a couple more lawsuits here, real quick before, we take it to questions because we always love the q and a from the chat here, on our livestream. And, this is something that I would say close to your heart, Sterling, but I think it's more close to, the spot in your body that, it holds all of your annoyance and is probably closer to Linae's heart.
Jim Lakely:And it's youth climate youth lawsuits. Yeah. Our our favorites right here. Mhmm. So, we got one here from the Associated Press in in Hawaii.
Jim Lakely:So apparently, Hawaii settles lawsuit from use over climate change, and here's what to know about the historic deal. After about 2 years, 13 children and teens sued Hawaii over the threat posed by climate change, and both sides reached a settlement that includes an ambitious requirement to decarbonize the state's transportation system over the next 21 years. It's another example of a younger generation channeling their frustration with the government's response to the climate crisis into a legal battle. I guess this is when you take brainwashing and indoctrination, into into court. This is what you end up with.
Jim Lakely:So apparently, they're going to decarbonize the public transportation system, in Hawaii. Although the weather is usually so nice, people should probably be walking anyway or on little scooters, so that may not have a huge huge deal. Second story here is Montana Supreme Court hears arguments held in, I'm sorry. Montana Supreme Court hears arguments in held youth climate lawsuit. Wednesday, that was just, yeah, this week, 2 days ago, marked the long awaited next step in a lawsuit that challenged the state of Montana over climate change.
Jim Lakely:The lawsuit held versus Montana drew a ton of attention when it was heard in a state district court last year. The pattern continues as justices of the Montana Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Helena. The chamber is already full, was already full 45 minutes before the arguments began and dozens more people watched the livestream in the overflow next door. And the held case, which started back in 2020, when 16 young plaintiffs between the ages of 5 and 22 filed suit against the state, they claim Montana's policies on greenhouse gas emissions were contributing to the climate change and harming their right to, quote, a clean and healthful environment. And, Sterling, you follow these cases, quite a bit.
Jim Lakely:You write about them a lot in, the Heartland Institute's Climate Change Weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to by going to heartlanddot org. It's a great weekly roundup of sometimes nutty stories like this, but you do cover pretty, pretty closely these sorts of climate lawsuits. Why don't you take it from the Montana one, and this idea of getting children to be just like Greta. Right? Just like Greta, using children as the vehicle for, for these sorts of nonsense.
H. Sterling Burnett:Dozens of lawsuits like that. I I think the first one arose out of Oregon. It's already gone to federal court twice and been been knocked back. Hawaii's I I I'm not surprised Hawaii, I I wouldn't call it caved. I thought I think they collaborated with the use.
H. Sterling Burnett:They wanna do, do stuff on climate change. I don't know how it's gonna affect the tourism industry, but maybe the Hawaiians don't like tourists anymore, because I assure you that we won't have jets in 2021 that are carbon neutral. I mean, in in in 21 years, but, the Montana case is the only one of these cases that ever really worried me. And that's because Montana has a provision of its constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to a clean and helpful environment. Now I I'm not sure how you do that since there are natural toxins and things, but it's in there.
H. Sterling Burnett:And so I always thought that had the that case had the, most, likelihood of, being victorious. Now you have to define clean and helpful. You have to just show, I think, that, fossil fuel use is making it less clean and helpful and damaging their health. But the lower court held that it they'd made that case. Now it has to go to the Supreme Court where, you know, I'm it's unclear to me whether they'll overturn that lower court's decision because it's not a matter here, it's not a matter of balancing the benefits of fossil fuels versus the potential harms if we can make that connection.
H. Sterling Burnett:Here it's they have a constitutional provision that says they get a clean, healthy environment, and it's just a matter of the courts deciding what a clean and healthy environment means. And if they think that fossil fuels dirty up the environment, then, you know, so be it. That it's a dangerous that was a dangerous case, but it's really relatively limited. Let's face it. It's not clear to me that they can sue anyone outside of Montana.
H. Sterling Burnett:And as much as I love Montana and have have lived there twice, if if, the emissions from Montana go away and all transportation in Montana goes electric and no one flies into Montana anymore or vacations there, and those who live there can't get from their ranches downtown to the grocery store, it will be a bad thing, but the United States will not fall.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Alright. Let me just let me throw one more, one more case here, and then maybe Mark, can weigh in a little bit, and then we'll get to q and a. And that is, Sterling, you shared this with me, and it's supposedly good news.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yep.
Jim Lakely:And that is, from the Baltimore Sun, actually, from, from Forbes. You sent me the Baltimore SunLink. That's behind a paywall, Sterling. I am not going to spend a thin dime giving money to the mainstream media. Sorry.
Jim Lakely:I had to find it elsewhere.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah.
Jim Lakely:But, the story reads, BP wins key ruling in city of Baltimore climate change lawsuit. In a ruling that could impact, if we're lucky, dozens of legal actions in what has become a coordinated lawfare effort to damage the US oil and gas industry, and a city circuit judge in Baltimore, Maryland tossed out a local government's lawsuit that sought to hold oil companies financially liable for alleged impacts of climate change on Thursday. The opinion begins with the judge affirmatively stating in her view that there is no question that global warming and climate change are wreaking havoc on our environment. However, the lawsuit goes beyond the limits of Maryland state law. And then, you know, there's other cases like this around the country where cities are are suing big oil for supposedly rising seas, washing out beaches or sidewalks or whatever.
Jim Lakely:I know, Mark, you you look at this stuff too, but color me shocked that a that a judge in a in United States of America who is at heart a climate alarmist, nonetheless, applies the actual law to to a case like this and doesn't just rule what they think in their heart they know to be true.
H. Sterling Burnett:Democratic judge, by the way. Crisis. A Democratic judge, by the way.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Of course.
Marc Morano:It's it's impressive, actually, because that's never usually doesn't stop them, from ever imposing what they believe should happen. And this is a lot of these cases are just, extrapolate beyond whatever the law says because they wanna get to that goal. And this in the case of this Baltimore, thing, this is just another example of trying to blame any bad weather. What they say is climate change will cause many bad weather events. When something bad happens, they say, we we told you so.
Marc Morano:See? And you're still using fossil fuels. We have to go after these people. It's insane because you could actually and you guys know this better than anyone, scientifically say. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts, none of them.
Marc Morano:If you look at the peer reviewed study of a climate time scales, 30, 51 100 years either. No trend, declining trend, nothing unprecedented happening. So it's complete scientific nonsense from the beginning. But then the other key thing to mention here, Jim, this is important, especially going back to the Hawaii lawsuit. Mhmm.
Marc Morano:The legislator is not involved. This is the Hawaiian. This would be the government and prosecutors agreeing with these kids to then impose these new things as their court ordered. Remember, the court's ordering this. You don't have to vote on it.
Marc Morano:This is no you don't need democracy. Similar things happen when, like, in Netherlands when the prime minister would, go and agree to a UN climate summit net zero, and then the courts would order the farmers, you know, the nitrogen bans on farmers, and then the farmers fought back. They're looking for all kinds of layers of coverage and they're looking for ways to bypass democracy. And these lawsuits offer a great way to, quote, settle your way to bypass democracy for legislation that you probably couldn't get right away. And that's why these lawsuits are important in addition, of course, to the financial shakedown element.
Jim Lakely:Right. I mean, that's that's the title of this podcast. Climate Lawfare Heats Up. And, frankly, these these sorts of questions need to be settled in the political realm, not in the judicial realm, and it needs to be based on, hearings where, for instance, there's a balanced presentation of the science instead of just, one way. And so, you know, that's what Mark Marano has been doing for his his professional life as his job ever since he was with, the great senator Jim Inhofe and now with climate, now with climatedepot.com, and, of course, the great CFAAC, one of our best friends here in this movement.
Jim Lakely:Yes. Alright. It is That's by the way
H. Sterling Burnett:that's by the way what this judge ruled. That's what this judge ruled. It says, this is belongs in the political realm and in particular, the federal political realm. Correct. The feds make energy policy.
H. Sterling Burnett:It's for the feds to decide this, not a state court.
Jim Lakely:But one side of this argue one side of this debate is very impatient, very, very impatient. It's kind of their defining characteristic, to be honest. Alright. It is, one of our favorite parts of the program, and that is q and a time. And, Linea has been monitoring the chat here on YouTube mostly, and I think there's a few people on on Rumble who are also leaving some some comments.
Jim Lakely:So, Linea, let's get to it.
Linnea Lueken:Sure thing. I have not seen questions come across Rumble. I have seen comments. If you have a a link, Jim, that shows questions coming in from Rumble, if you would shoot it to me, that'd be good because I'd like to make sure we get them too in case they're not coming across our live feed here on, StreamYard. First question that we got today, though, was this one from Diane Selby, who's a pretty regular viewer.
Linnea Lueken:She says mainstream media is focused on the number of heat deaths experienced right now across the USA. Can you show data again that shows a higher death rate from cold rather than hot? And we do have that data lurking somewhere, So we might have to spend a minute to bring it up. But, yes, Diane, we would love
Jim Lakely:to show her
Linnea Lueken:because that is the case.
H. Sterling Burnett:Go to Climate at a Glance. Yeah. And and and look, we show data we show the data and graphics. I would we didn't have it teed up. We didn't know this question would come.
H. Sterling Burnett:But we show the data and the graphics that show not only our heat deaths down, but deaths due to extreme weather are down.
Marc Morano:Yeah. And not only that, but Biden's own EPA shows the heat waves were far worse in the 19 thirties. So much so that you have professors now wanting to eliminate the 19 thirties EPA heatwave data. So the the idea that anything unprecedented now with heat is just not scientifically tenable, ask the Biden administration's EPA about it.
H. Sterling Burnett:There you go. There you go.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. This this chart is for total climate related deaths. This is, including flood, drought, storms, extreme temperatures in both hot and cold. But this at least shows, that that the trends overall have been greatly decreasing. But there was a study that was published in, I think, 2022.
Linnea Lueken:Right, Sterling? In The Lancet.
H. Sterling Burnett:There was a massive study published in 2015 and a second study published in 2022 that came to the same conclusion. One of them was 10 times more deaths from cold than heat and, deaths from temperatures were declining. And the second one was 17 times more deaths from cold than heat, and the deaths from temperatures were declining.
Marc Morano:Yeah. I I have here the Lancet study for UK 2,000 since 2,085 times more UK excess deaths due to cold than heat. Three studies concluded the 21st century cold temperatures led to 7 times more deaths than the warm temps. And Beyond Lomborg put it in very simple terms, global warming, Warming temperature saves a 166,000 lives each year because heat days heat deaths make up 1% of global fatalities. A year, almost 600,000, but cold kills 8 times as many people or 4,500,000.
Marc Morano:So that's the hard numbers, and that's all readily available. This is not in dispute. It's not like other people say, oh, no. There's I have a study showing cold is much less killer than heat. Pretty much across the board, I've never seen anything else.
Marc Morano:So it's not an it's not a controversial, claim or, you know, it's easy to back up with multiple studies.
H. Sterling Burnett:No one's ever come out and said, oh, you can't trust The Lancet on this stuff. The Lancet's a terrible journal. It's not peer reviewed. No. No one says that.
H. Sterling Burnett:You know, to take a a more recent example, recently, what, 1300 people died during the Hajj, when it was held recently. There were more than 2,000,000 people there in in I believe it was 1920, so a 124 years ago. 15 to 1600 people died during the Hajj, and there were only 50,000 people there. Talk about the, percentage of deaths per, attendees. Massive difference.
H. Sterling Burnett:Imagine, if there had been 2,000,000 there back in, 19, 20.
Linnea Lueken:Can't go confusing people with facts and statistics like this, Sterling. Okay. We've got a a comment actually from Doug Pollock, who's a great friend of ours. He goes to a lot of our, conferences. He has a comment for you, Mark.
Linnea Lueken:He says, congratulations to Mark for the tremendous interview to a French media in Vienna where he said everything without mincing words.
Marc Morano:Oh, yeah. That Doug was there with us. I was at the Vienna Climate Conference where we had John Clauser and, James Taylor, your president speak. It was it was, I believe it was European Public TV and the film crew was from France. So we know what they're gonna do with all this footage.
Marc Morano:You know, it's obviously gonna be it's very similar to a PBS, a public broadcasting in the US did a story about climate deniers. But I had some fun, with the interview, but, of course, it'll probably end up on the cutting room floor a lot of it. Who knows?
Linnea Lueken:For sure. Okay. We have this question. This is, Kite Man Music. He says, hi from England.
Linnea Lueken:A lot of viewers from here. Any comments on the heat wave situation at the moment? I have heard from people over there in the UK that their news is telling them breathlessly every day that they're having the worst heat ever. Well, many of them have turned on heaters in their homes this, early summer. So
H. Sterling Burnett:Maybe maybe some isolated places. I know that Scotland has been in a a unusual cold. They got snow just last week. It it's it's some of their resorts or not resorts. What do they call them?
H. Sterling Burnett:I forget what they call their ski areas. But an Arctic, you know, an Arctic, cold wave is affecting Scotland. I can't speak for lower England. But nationally worldwide. I mean, globally.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yes. Some places are setting records. Some places set records every year, just like some places set records for cold every year. But all the stuff, all the headlines, you know, point out the fact that more than 80% of, say, the US isn't in a heatwave. So, they're they're talking about just the 20% and just the 20% where daily, not, not summer records, but daily records, not the the maximum heat for the summer, but the record on a particular date was broken.
H. Sterling Burnett:Right.
Linnea Lueken:And that's something, guys, that to our audience, you know, I saw a few audience members say, well, we have been seeing breaking records here in California or here wherever. A day to day climate record. I mean, if you wanted to, you could you could schedule it down to the hour and then you would have even more records being broken all the time because you've just created a massive amount of data. And, Mark, I know that you've, you've fought this issue a bit too.
Marc Morano:Yeah. I was gonna say is your chance of winning the lottery is very low. The chance of someone somewhere winning the lottery is very high. And that's what basically when they say there's a record temperature broken, it's like, yeah, someone won the lottery too. There's always gonna be temperatures breaking.
Marc Morano:I liken it to the casino promotion department. Everyone knows you go in a casino, you see the slot machine, see the photos of people holding up. I won 10,000, a big cardboard check. Someone else has a $100,000 cardboard check of 50. You walk around the casino and look at all their promotion.
Marc Morano:You start thinking, everyone's winning at slots. I have to play slots. They're paying out records amount. That's what the media does with heat waves. They ignore the fact that in the 19 thirties, we had much higher heat waves, 8 to 10 times higher based on the EPA heat wave index of the Biden administration.
Marc Morano:Higher than the national climate 19 thirties also show higher than 19 in the national climate assessment. John Christie has done the analysis. 75% of heat temperature records, were state high temperature records were broken before 1955. Every measure we can look at in the United States shows that we're not seeing anything like the past in heat waves. So, of course, they're gonna promote every broken record.
Marc Morano:And, again, it's just like a casino. You get the impression that records are breaking everywhere. No. That's what happened. Records are always gonna be broken somewhere, but you wanna look at long term climate time scale trends, and that's where the whole argument falls apart.
Linnea Lueken:Right. Excellent. Okay. So next we have this one. I think there might be a little bit of a typo in this one, but I'm gonna read it anyway.
Linnea Lueken:And we're gonna try and figure out, what our friend Peter here is asking. He says, hey, guys. Love the show and I try to promote it. Lakeland Watts and the team are excellent. Will the US and EU have to cut even more emissions post Aetna?
Linnea Lueken:And I'm not sure what he means by Aetna. Anyone?
Marc Morano:Volcano? Is he is he saying that volcano gave so much emissions that now we have to cut even more to compensate because of that negative
Linnea Lueken:Maybe. That could be it.
Marc Morano:I'm assuming what they means. But yeah. I mean, that deal I don't know. Yeah. It's a good point.
Marc Morano:I mean, if they're looking at a total accounting budget, whether it's volcanoes or oceans outgassing suit, whatever it is, they could claim, you know, oh, well, we have to tighten up even more because we didn't expect that volcano to mess up the greenhouse gas, you know, our carbon budget or our emission budget. Who knows what they'll come up with, but I'm sure they'll claim at the very least. It's more urgent than ever that you give up that gas powered car and turn that thermostat warm in the summer.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. Awesome. Alright. This one is from Leah. This is a 2 parter, so I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of quickly review it.
Linnea Lueken:Seen and heard the chart that Noah and someone else were stating how many more hurricanes are gonna be in in the US this year and how much worse right through the year. How can you be, how can you know this is gonna happen when they can't predict the weather accurately? Well, I would I would defend because we have some friends of of climate realism who work, for the Hurricane Prediction Center. And it's not that modeling science and that that technology is totally worthless. You know?
Linnea Lueken:Like, it's, you know, it's not that it's great. It's not perfect. It's not always going to give you, any kind of precision. But the the the Hurricane Prediction Center does a pretty good job. They give you a range.
Linnea Lueken:Usually, they're not going to say, you know, there's going to be 25 hurricanes this year. Count on it. They have been wrong in the past, but they they go with what a lot of times the historical data suggests will probably happen. I'm going to yeah, I'm going to defend them because the it's the the media that tends to take it and exaggerate it quite a bit, not so much the actual, researchers on that end.
Marc Morano:I I I'd like to see them every time they make forecast. It'd be great. I don't know if they do this. They open up and say, here's what we predicted last year. Here's what actually happened.
Marc Morano:Now we'll tell you what we think is gonna happen next year. That would be incredible. I always whenever anyone makes annual predictions, I always think they should open with how their prediction did for the previous year or even previous 5 years, decade. I don't know that enough people do that, and I'm not gonna comment because I don't watch the hurricane forecast enough or see what they say closely enough to know if they actually do that. But I think that would be a good thing to start adding if they don't do it.
H. Sterling Burnett:I mean, just in the past week, what I've seen about hurricanes is we still expect, an above average season. They talk about barrel being the first cat 5 hurricane ever to form this early. But then they also say, but El Nino is off to a slow start, and that is, keeping ocean temperatures cooler than they would otherwise be. So by the time late August, September comes, we'll get more, but it's not happening quite like we had said, when we predicted just 2 months ago. In 2022, they predicted an above average year.
H. Sterling Burnett:We didn't get it. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, like Lynette says, they give a range, but it's not set in stone. And whether you have an above average year or below average year, it doesn't mean climate change had anything to do with it whatsoever. What what to to to make a climate connection, you need to see long term trends in a direction. And that's what you don't have with hurricanes, with tornadoes, with, you know, some some trends that we do have, they're going down, not up.
H. Sterling Burnett:But you don't have any long term increasing trend for any of these natural disasters, that would, you know, maybe indite climate change.
Linnea Lueken:Right. Thank you. So we have a question. For some reason, our comments, from Rumble Rumble are not quite working properly, but we do have a question, and someone donated $1 for us. This is, from user data 12.
Linnea Lueken:And he asked, what would be the top two questions that could turn a court from supporting lawfare against states like Alaska and Montana and people like Mark Stein?
H. Sterling Burnett:So
Marc Morano:what would repeat that part. What would be the key piece of evidence?
Linnea Lueken:He says, what would be the top two questions that could turn a court from supporting lawfare against, well, let's say things like Alaska, Montana, and Mark Stein? So I'm guessing
Marc Morano:You mean, like, a scientific case or, yeah, it's not your legal jurisdiction or the scientific case is absurd from beginning to end, you know, that the level of c o two are historically low given the geologic history. Nothing unprecedented is happening with the weather. No extreme weather incur I mean, you could go through a litany. I don't know the top 2. Problem is none of that's ultimately gonna matter if you have an activist judge and you have weak sorry.
Marc Morano:Weak defend, the people who the defense usually doesn't wanna challenge any of the scientific claims. They'll they're gonna wanna argue only on either jurisdiction, legal grounds. It's very it's it's a huge advantage for the climate alarmist because they go in there with absurd scientific claims that are almost never refuted scientifically. A few exceptions. I think Montana actually did bring in a lot of scientists.
Marc Morano:But most of the time, republican even if there's a republican state, they're too timid to even come back and challenge any of the climate claims, scientific claims.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. Actually, what happened go ahead.
Jim Lakely:I was I was gonna say the 2 questions actually should occur during the confirmation process. Number 1, are you a climate alarmist? Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:Do you believe that humans
Jim Lakely:are causing a climate catastrophe? Okay. I'm gonna write that one down. Yeah. And, do you believe that the constitution means what it says?
Jim Lakely:Okay.
H. Sterling Burnett:Interesting. Yeah. Are you Move along. In in the Montana case, Mark, they had scientists lined up. They took their briefs, but then they disinvited them.
Marc Morano:To to actually I remember that now. Yeah. So they never actually testified. Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:So, there's a problem there. Yeah. I don't know that there's 2 questions that would be definitive. You know, I think the overall, the overarching theme for all these cases should be what level of government is specifically delegated and assigned the power to regulate interstate commerce? There is only one, that is the congress of the United States, not a state court, not a state legislature, not federal courts.
H. Sterling Burnett:Congress of the United States regulates interstate commerce, and if anything is interstate and international commerce, it's oil and gas. It's energy. And so that should the the the the door to the courthouse should be closed to all these cases on that grounds alone. The court should say, you have no standing. Take it to the US Congress who has the authority, the sole delegated authority to regulate interstate commerce.
H. Sterling Burnett:Now we may not we we may not like what congress comes up with, but that's why you vote. Right now, congress has considered climate legislation a number of times. It's never enacted any. So, I I think that should be the you know, every court should say, well, this is interstate commerce. What does who regulates interstate commerce?
H. Sterling Burnett:The constitution says the US Congress does.
Linnea Lueken:Thank you, Sterling. And I'm actually gonna pitch this next question back to you, Sterling, because this is a a subject that I think that you will answer very, succinctly. And that is a question from our resident. I don't wanna be mean to him and call him an alarmist, but he's at the very least very pro, green energy guy. He says, do you think that wind and solar and battery backup will be cheaper than fossil fuels for electricity production without government subsidies?
Linnea Lueken:Question 2, is fossil fuels economics viable without subsidies?
H. Sterling Burnett:The the subsidies that fossil fuels get globally, and you talk I hear a lot about this. Oh, they get far more are not to the industry, but they're to retail. They're to you and I, not here in the US. The fossil fuel industry gets almost no subsidies in the US, but where my wife's from in Venezuela and in Saudi Arabia and other places, the consumers are subsidized. They sell gasoline to them at rates that are well below, the market rate.
H. Sterling Burnett:They get their gasoline cheap. That's a subsidy to consumers, not to the industry. Concerning, will will, wind and solar and battery backup be cheaper than fossil fuels on their own without subsidies? Well, I was told 20 years ago by people who are promoting the industry that they would be, they're still not. Battery backup, rivals only, offshore wind as the highest cost source of energy.
H. Sterling Burnett:So anytime you're gonna move to that for backup, and I mean reliable long term back not not 4 minutes on a grid, not 4 hours, but 24 hours if the wind goes down, and you don't have enough solar, it will never be oh, I I I should I should never say never, not in the foreseeable future. Wind and so and and you know this every time every year. Every time the subsidies for wind and solar by subsidies, I mean, direct payments, the production tax credit, and the, the property value tax credits go away at states or the federal level. The industry shuts down the next day. Factories are closed.
H. Sterling Burnett:They rely solely they exist solely because of government subsidy support and mandates. And when those support and mandates go away, they will go away too, except for boutique uses. Look. Someone in Montana that's not connected to the grid, the solar panel makes a lot of sense with diesel generator backup. But for Dallas, Texas in the middle of summer, wind and solar don't make a lot of sense.
H. Sterling Burnett:You'd say, oh, why not solar? Well, I'll tell you. A lot of people don't know this. So temperatures in Dallas routinely are above a 100 degrees. When you get above a certain, temperature on solar panels, they start to lose efficiency pretty radically.
H. Sterling Burnett:The the the way the electrons work, don't work as well. And so you lose power there. The wind in West Texas is blowing. It doesn't make sense, but we pay more for gas because, well, it has to switch on and off for when the wind does blow. So you gotta pay for it when it's there.
H. Sterling Burnett:They gotta ramp it up. I don't see them being in my lifetime, you know, who knows how many years I have left, less than I've seen already, being cost competitive with fossil fuels, absent subsidies and mandates, and the subsidies for fossil fuels in the US almost nonexistent. Most of it's going to carbon capture.
Linnea Lueken:Right. That's true, Sterling. That's something that a lot of people don't point out is that the pretty much all of the and that we did a deep dive into this because the, the EIA releases, these statistics, yearly, I'm pretty sure. They, we looked into exactly where the direct subsidies to fossil fuels went, And it was all for carbon capture. It was all for that's yeah.
Linnea Lueken:So, it's kind of a trick question there. Okay. So we have a final question, but I'm actually combining 2 people's questions. And, Mark, I'm gonna pitch it to you. The first question or the first part of this combined question comes from Chris Nizbit, who says, do courts understand that fossil fuels have made it possible for humans to protect themselves against bad weather?
Linnea Lueken:And then the second is from slur Slardabartfest, whose name I always stumble over. And he asks, how many lives have fossil fuels saved? Heating, air conditioning, ambulances, fire brigade, etcetera.
Marc Morano:Yeah. Well, that's one of the funny things. If you again, the 99% drop in climate related deaths is due in large part to fossil fuel technology in the building of the infrastructure made possible with fossil fuels. You know, I think it was Alex Epstein who says it most eloquently. You know, we've taken an unsafe climate and made it safe for humans.
Marc Morano:That's what fossil fuel development did. So, you know, that's one of the reasons you have the 99% drop in death. And just in terms of fossil fuels, they have been one of the greatest liberators in mankind in the history of our planet. Long life, lower infant mortality, modern dentistry, cleaner air, cleaner water. Yes.
Marc Morano:You go through a period of rapid industrialization and then eventually you get to the point where wealth, prosperity, technology take over, and you can have like the United States does according to the World Health Organization among the cleanest air air in the world, the cleanest environments in the world. And that is what is the key to all of this is you have to embrace both sides of the equation. Is there negatives to fossil fuels? Yes. Is there negatives to solar wind?
Marc Morano:Yes. Is there negatives to any form of energy? Yes. Does it outweigh the positives? Not even by a close shot when it comes to fossil fuels.
Marc Morano:It's been the most prohuman prosperity, life giving substance that we've seen in the last several centuries. Nothing comes close in terms of our technological inventions.
H. Sterling Burnett:I'd like to add 2 things there. I just did a piece that will be coming out shortly on hurricane barrel in response to Bloomberg. And the the writer for Bloomberg points out that natural disaster costs, weather related costs to Texas, he's speaking of Texas particularly, were $350,000,000,000 since 1980. Oh my god. You know, that that sounds pretty high.
H. Sterling Burnett:1 year of, oil and gas wholesaling in in Texas, $496,000,000,000 more than all of the costs since 1980. You know, that that that puts it in in in perspective a bit. And to Mark's point, he was just talking about the decline in deaths due to weather and temperatures. What about the massive decline in hunger and starvation due to c o two fertilization and the use of fossil fuels for agriculture that have occurred. The fewest number of, starvation deaths in history declining.
H. Sterling Burnett:That's not magic. It's not it's not manna from heaven. It's fossil fuels, folks. Yep.
Jim Lakely:Indeed. Well, I think that'll do it for today. I really appreciate, everyone being here. I wanna thank Mark Marrano, who Thank you. Is coming to us from Washington, DC, although actually in front of a green screen, but that's okay.
Jim Lakely:I know you're in the in the area.
Marc Morano:I got my puppy here too, so you'd say she is
Jim Lakely:Isn't that nice?
Marc Morano:How can you how can you hate me now?
H. Sterling Burnett:It's all good.
Jim Lakely:They'll find a way, Mark. That's right. They will find a way. You can learn and find more about, Mark Marano at the absolutely essential website, climadepot.com, where he has been, debunking and having a lot of fun, climate nonsense for many, many years. And also visit cfact.org.
Jim Lakely:Of course, myself and Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lukin are all, worked we all work at the Heartland Institute, and you can learn more about us at the very simple to remember website heartland.org. You can also go to climate ataglance.com, a place where you can get, our app for the Climate at a Glance book that we have that it gives you all the information you need to battle climate alarmists wherever you may find them. Also, visit energy ataglance.com, and, really the website that was kind of the spur for this entire show to begin with, climate realism.com, where Sterling and Linnea and Anthony Watts and sometimes James Taylor debunk the crazy climate and inaccurate news of the week. I wanna thank you all for watching this edition of the Climate Realism Show, and we will see you next Friday. Bye bye.
Jim Lakely:Thank you.
H. Sterling Burnett:He's a lion dog faced pony soldier.