Heartland Daily Podcast

Yes, it’s that time again kids, panic the American people over heat waves by blaming them on climate change.This past week several news outlets talked about the “Western Heat Wave” and tried to link it to “climate change.” Climate Central was the source of most of these stories with a press release that said:

“Between June 5-7, much of the Western United States, Mexico, and Eastern Canada are poised to experience a period of unusually hot conditions made much more likely because of human-caused climate change. During this period, over 229 million people across North America will experience extreme heat made at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change.”

We see this every year, and we’ll see it again this year as the feckless media regurgitates the heatwave hype. We will tackle this subject, as well as go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) EVERY FRIDAY to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

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Creators & Guests

Host
H. Sterling Burnett
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., hosts The Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News podcast. Burnett also is the director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, is the editor of Heartland's Climate Change Weekly email, and oversees the production of the monthly newspaper Environment & Climate News. Prior to joining The Heartland Institute in 2014, Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, ending his tenure there as senior fellow in charge of environmental policy. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations within the field. Burnett is a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission, served as chairman of the board for the Dallas Woods and Water Conservation Club, is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, works as an academic advisor for Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, is an advisory board member to the Cornwall Alliance, and is an advisor for the Energy, Natural Resources and Agricultural Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

What is Heartland Daily Podcast?

The “fire hose” of all podcasts produced by The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank.

Joe Biden:

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

Greta Thunberg:

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.

Jim Lakely:

The ability of c 02 to do the heavy work of creating a climate catastrophe is almost nil at this point.

Anthony Watts:

The price of oil has been artificially elevated to the point of insanity.

H. Sterling Burnett:

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

H. Sterling Burnett:

Their factories are shutting down.

Linnea Lueken:

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

Anthony Watts:

That's right, Greta, you pint sized protester. It is Friday, and this is our own personal Friday protest. The Climate Realism Show, episode number 114. Heat alarm heat wave alarm season is here with the same old claims, but a different year. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate with the Heartland Institute.

Anthony Watts:

Joining me today, doctor h Sterling Burnett, director of the Robinson Center for Climate, and Heartland Institute Research Fellow, Linnea Lukin. Welcome, guys. Hope you've had a good week.

Linnea Lueken:

Howdy howdy.

H. Sterling Burnett:

So far so good.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. Well, at least climate change has not reached out and bitten either of you. I'm glad to have you here. So, anyway, you know, it's that time again, kids. Time to panic about panic the American people over heat waves by blaming them on climate change.

Anthony Watts:

The media is doing that this week, past week. Several news outlets talked about the western heat wave and tried to link it to climate change. The source of this was an outfit called Climate Central. They were the source of most of these with a press release that said between June 5th 7th, much of the Western United States, Mexico, and Eastern Canada are poised to experience a period of unusually hot condition made much more likely because of human caused climate change. During this period, over 229,000,000 people across North America will experience extreme heat made at least 3 times more likely because of human caused climate change.

Anthony Watts:

We see this every year, and we'll see it again this year later in the, you know, like, in August or whatever when we have another heat wave. And the feckless media just regurgitates this heat wave hype. And we'll get to that in a moment. But first, our regular feature, the crazy climate news of the week. First one is a hat tip to our regular viewer, Bob Jay, known as the engineering guy SE on Twitter.

Anthony Watts:

And this one, I dub chime climate change idiot of the month. This is representative Brad Schneier, democrat from Illinois, and he put out this questionnaire to his constituents. And it was about cicadas. Okay? Because, you know, cicadas are are roaming throughout Illinois and causing all kinds of disruption.

Anthony Watts:

Right? So what does he do? With the emergence of this year's broods as well as the recent storms and extreme tornado events, are you worried about the impacts of climate change? Because somehow, tornadoes and cicadas and climate change are all linked together. Right?

Anthony Watts:

Oh my goodness. So I wanna point out to to representative Schneider that cicadas come in 13 17 year cycles. I know this. I'm from the Midwest. I grew up as a kid dealing with these things.

Anthony Watts:

These two cycles just happen to coincide this year. And the bugs that we're talking about

H. Sterling Burnett:

To just to mention, Anthony, which, by the way, they have done in the past, on multiple occasions.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Exactly. There's nothing new here. Right? But, you know, they're climbing, the early emergence of the cicadas is due to climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Well, it's a little warmer than usual this particular spring. That is not climate change. That's weather. What if, you know, it was the year was different? What if we had a very cold spring and the cicadas weren't coming out until later?

Anthony Watts:

Would that be climate change too? I don't know. The whole thing is just bizarre. It it just just bizarre.

Linnea Lueken:

The cicada thing is bizarre up in Illinois right now. People are are really hyped about the cicadas, or really terrified about the cicadas, and it's kinda funny to me.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Cicadas themselves are sort of bizarre, but, bizarre but cool.

Anthony Watts:

As one of the from Al Gore's website. He jumped on it too.

H. Sterling Burnett:

As a person who used to catch him.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So here's the deal. Here's the data. The, on Twitter, a guy by the name of The Monster said, with 12 to 17 year broods and 3 with 12 17 year broods and 3 13 year broods, there's a coincident emergence of 2 broods at roughly every 6 to 7 years or 36 out of 221 years in the cycle. That's not climate change.

Anthony Watts:

That's just math. Anyway Nature. So that's why representative Snyder gets the, climate change idiot of the month award.

H. Sterling Burnett:

He shares it with Al Gore, though, as you mentioned, to be fair.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. Right. Okay. So let's go on to our next one. Florida rain and flooding, brought to you by climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Yes. A $1,000,000,000 thunderstorms. Now remind me again, Sterling, are thunderstorms weather or climate?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, here in Texas, they're recurrent weather. I can't speak for the rest of the nation as a whole.

Anthony Watts:

Did didn't you have some $1,000,000,000 thunderstorms down there in Texas a little while ago?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Oh, well, you know, I don't know if they turn out to be a 1,000,000,000, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I mean, you know, like I said, every year we have something called spring here in Texas. And, when spring comes, it rains a lot and we get a lot of thunder and lightning with it. Mhmm. And we have flood except in drought years, and we do have drought years, but except in the rare drought year, we have flooding.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We have flooding near my house, and you know where they really, really have flooding? There's this little town on the coast of Texas called Houston, and, they built it on a swamp on wetlands, and it's sinking, and so when it rains, they flood. But you wouldn't know that from reading the you wouldn't know that from reading the headlines.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Lenea, do you have to deal with thunderstorms out there on the East Coast?

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, yeah. Pretty much everywhere. The worst thunderstorms I ever got were when I lived in Illinois though. That was this time of year just rocking and rolling. It was a lot of fun actually.

Linnea Lueken:

Nice because for most of the time that I lived there, I lived in a big brick house, so you felt pretty well secure from it.

Anthony Watts:

Well, that's good. You don't have to worry about the big bad wolf either. Yeah. Climate change is the big bad wolf. Right?

Linnea Lueken:

Right.

Anthony Watts:

So, anyway, so the the media is out there touting these these flooding going on in Florida, you know, as being indicative of climate change. But, you know, we always go straight to the science here. And, of course, the IPCC says, uh-uh. Now this is the table from chapter 12 of the UN IPCC with thick assessment report. And if you look at the section on wet and dry, mean precipitation has not emerged in the current period as being driven by climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Heavy precipitation and pluvial flood also has not emerged as a, a signature of climate change. So, you know, I'm sorry, Bloomberg. You're just wrong. Right?

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. They sorry. I had to spell I needed.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's okay. I don't know if we should follow the science, but we should definitely believe the science when it's clear like this.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of of believing or not believing science, we have our mister science y, Michael Mann. He posted something this week that was just, oh my goodness, over the top. So here he is.

Anthony Watts:

He's responding to Sabine Hasenfelder. Now Sabine is a a well known lukewarmer. She thinks, yeah, climate change is happening. Maybe it's not a biggest problem. And so she writes, climate change is bad.

Anthony Watts:

We hear this a lot, but this isn't the full story. Climate change also had benefit, something we talk about at the at the Art Institute a lot. And I think we need to talk about those too. Some region to this planet will see milder climate and better condition from agriculture. We'll see fewer people freeze to death, and, yes, some plants actually benefit from carbon dioxide.

Anthony Watts:

We should hire that girl. She writes much like what we write on climate realism every day. But here's the thing. Mann said, well, I'm sure you're right, but this is a talking point that comes straight out of the Heartland Institute. So in essence, Mann is saying, with, you know, talking point of the Heartland Institute, and I'm sure you're right, Man finally admits the Heartland Institute is right.

Anthony Watts:

Hoorah. Hoorah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, if that's not crazy, I don't know what is. Man, agreeing with us that, I I am looking to the skies to see if they open and 4 horsemen come out.

Linnea Lueken:

The fact that he would say this is is funny since, you know, it kind of comes off as man admitting that he's one of those people who, you know, if the Heartland Institute said that the sky is blue, he would be like, well, you know, we can debate some of this. And he can he'd he'd or he'd outright disagree and try to say that this guy's actually green. He's, yeah, he's a character. That's for sure.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Right. He'd say he'd say, well, yeah, it is blue, but that's not the important point.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

The important point is, the blueness is getting less blue, and that's harming our visual acuity.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, the final word on blueness, the atmosphere, the sky, Israeli scattering, so I'll leave it at that. Anyway, but here's the kicker. You know, man is the most intolerant scientist on the face of the planet, at least as of we know. And, you know, he just can't tolerate any kind of, well, anything that's against him.

Anthony Watts:

But what does he do? Check this out. He blocks, sir, for suggesting what that climate change might have some benefits. And, you know, and he said, well, you might be right. And do you know what he blocked me for, she says?

Anthony Watts:

For pointing out that his attempt at dictating others what they're allowed to say is fueling the fires of climate change deniers. Wow. What a piece of work.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But he's a defender of democracy, I'm sure.

Anthony Watts:

As long as the democracy agrees with him.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Authoritarian democracy. That's what he's all about.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right. Okay. Onto the cartoons this week. Wait.

Anthony Watts:

Wait. Wait. Wait. Please. Oh, hold on.

Anthony Watts:

Okay.

H. Sterling Burnett:

One more crazy climate news of the week I want to inject. The crazy climate is, as our audience knows, last week, they couldn't, monetize us. They couldn't give, financial donations to our, broadcast. Right?

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, it turns out it's not just, this broadcast. It it it's across, a lot of Heartland's platform. We've been demonetized because of evil, Linnea. She has done this series of videos, which are engaging and highly popular, but, YouTube determined that they, are controversial and harmful to people. You know, she's video video, drone like, reaching out of the screen and actually harming people, and so they demonetized us.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think we have a graphic of what what,

Anthony Watts:

YouTube said. You should stop being so cheerful and educational. You're hurting people.

Linnea Lueken:

I know. It's terrible.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yep. So if you wondered what happened, it it wasn't a glitch on our part. It was YouTube actually taking action to say, oh, no. We can't, allow people to finance this.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So much tolerance. So much tolerance. Okay. So speaking of disinformation, here's our first cartoon of the week from Henry Payne.

Anthony Watts:

And, it's about the lie top, which is kind of a a euphemism for everything that's going on in the media these days. You know, that we were told that Hunter's laptop didn't exist. It's Russian disinformation. And then it was put into, the trial this past week, admitted as evidence. Oops.

Anthony Watts:

But, you know, at the same time, we have the same kind of crazy headlines coming from the media. Mask up. Stop COVID, Fred. Gasoline cards cause bad weather. Ugh.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It's it's just the way of the world with the media these days. This one's kinda funny. Solar powered chainsaw makes me feel less guilty about clearing trees to make way for a wind farm. Kinda like those people that are down there in the Joshua tree in the national wilderness, cutting down all those Joshua trees to make way for solar system.

Anthony Watts:

Right?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Protect protect by the way, protected Joshua trees or the the area of Scotland that's been denuded for wind farms. They they they cut down the trees, thousands and thousands of trees, which, remove carbon from the atmosphere if you if you're concerned about that type of thing, or if you just like wild habitat. They're cutting down all the trees to build wind farms. It's a great win for environmentalism.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. Yep. It's it's amazing. You know? It's the left will make exceptions for anything they deem appropriate.

Anthony Watts:

You know? But they won't make exceptions for any common sense stuff or anything that that, you know, is proactive in terms of, you know, helping people. It's all about for them. They seem to be object oriented. They seem to be more about, you know, getting solar panels and wind turbines and so forth.

Anthony Watts:

But when it comes to actually helping people, representing their constituents, that sort of thing, that just you know, we need more climate change result, that kind of stuff. That's what we need. That's the ticket. Yeah. Alright.

Anthony Watts:

Our final title, our final, cartoon today Oh, there you go. Pretty much sums this up. They're out there late saying, what a terrible environment we live in, and then, you know, they pave it with solar panels and put up wind farms, and boom. Everything's better. It's just like unicorn world.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, you don't have the the belching, farting cows and sheep and and the the birds that emit, you know, methane. They're all wiped out, plus you got all that clean energy. So it's it is a green utopia there.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. So that's pretty much the left this week. They're just out of control as usual. Alright. Let's get on to our main topic.

Anthony Watts:

Our main topic is Climate Central released some propaganda this week. Climate Central is run by, former, weather channel, meteorologist Heidi Cullen, and it's all grant funded, of course. And so they, released this signature of, climate change, the fingerprint on heat from climate change. Now notice it only shows the Western United States here for this. But see, here's the interesting thing.

Anthony Watts:

When you actually go and look at data, not manipulated data, things are different. Now what is this particular thing representing? Is this data? I mean, does this look like data to you? Well, on the face of it, it sure does.

Anthony Watts:

Temperature departure, climate shift index, that looks like real data. But when you actually look at their website and read what they say about it, they say, how do we know climate change is influencing this heat? Well, they say the climate shift index uses peer reviewed methodology to estimate how climate change has increased. Now note that keyword there, estimate how climate change has increased the likelihood of a particular daily temperature. It can be run using historical or forecast temperatures.

Anthony Watts:

Using computer models, we compare the likelihood that these temperatures would occur in a world without carbon emissions released by humans versus today's world with decades of carbon emissions building up in the atmosphere. This is an established scientific method to determine how much climate change has or has not affected individual extreme weather events. Right? Computer models, that's the ticket.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Control for everything but carbon, and carbon must be the cause. Yeah. Ignore every every other factor. But what's unusual or what's not unusual because it's common in climate science, I like the second bullet point. Phoenix, Tucson, Las Cruces, Las Vegas.

H. Sterling Burnett:

What are some of the fastest growing cities in the United States today? Phoenix, Las Vegas, huge population growth, huge development growth. Right? The populations don't go and live in the desert, they actually pave it over and build houses and withdraw water, a lot of concrete, and we all know what that brings with it. Anthony?

Anthony Watts:

I guess you could say that Phoenix is full of climate refugees, except they're migrating toward the heat. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. And and Vegas and Vegas too. Right? Uh-huh. At one time, it was for gamblers who never left the casino, so, you know, it was air conditioned, so they didn't care.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But now I'm told that Vegas is family friendly. We we want families to move here. Kids walking down the the strip. So, evidently, they're not that concerned about the heat.

Anthony Watts:

Apparently not. And get this. Now look at bullet points 34 there. They're talking about how unusual is this heat event? Well, there'll be high temperatures of a 105 to a 112.

Anthony Watts:

Gosh. In the desert. Oh, no. That's never happened.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's never happened. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Oh, oh, and there's elevated nighttime temperatures in the 70 3 to 83 degree range expected across much of this reason. Gosh. That's never happened before. Must be climate change.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think that that part of it is telling. Right? I mean, that's what all of your work a lot of your work is about, Anthony. That's what a lot of, John Christie's and Roy Spencer's work is about. Elevated nighttime temperatures indicate what?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Not global warming, but the urban heat island effect as as the heat stored in the concrete and and and the bricks and everything is slowly released at night, raising the nighttime temperatures.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Get you

H. Sterling Burnett:

know, they they need to get a clue. I also wanna point out, you at the very first, you said, oh, look where they're not showing. I live in Texas. I have a pool. I'm not in my pool yet.

H. Sterling Burnett:

There's a reason. At night, the temperatures are getting down too low still, and we're getting a lot of rain. We are not above average. We're below average for this time of year, and a lot of the United States, the parts of it they didn't show on their little map are not in excessive heat.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I should point out that where I live, I don't have a pool because I didn't get my yearly check from Big O'Weil. Anyway Mhmm. So how unusual is this heat event? Well, it's not unusual at all.

Anthony Watts:

Let's look at this graph from the EPA showing heat wave index. Now we've used this before, and this is from the EPA. Right? This is real data. This is not climate model.

Anthony Watts:

And it showed in the United States in the 19 thirties, that's when the biggest heat waves happened, well before carbon dioxide was ever an issue, well before it built up in the atmosphere. So what caused that? Hey. All you scientists up there at Climate Realism I mean, at at at Climate Central, what what's the deal? How did that happen?

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, have you heard their what they're trying to say now, Anthony?

Anthony Watts:

No. What?

Linnea Lueken:

They're trying to say that, the the dust bowl and the temperatures and stuff of the dust bowl were exclusively caused exclusively or primarily caused by, poor farming practices. And that some dude plowing up his field is the reason why these graphs look like this.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right. Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, you know, humans cause global warming. Farmers cause global warming in the thirties, I guess. You know? It's still it's still humans. It's still humans.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. That's what it is.

Anthony Watts:

Okay. So let's just say the dust bowl doesn't really have anything to do with it. Let's just go to our next You know? And this is for the whole nation. This isn't just for the dust bowl area.

Anthony Watts:

You know? And this is for the whole nation. This isn't just for the dust bowl area. This is for everywhere. And look at that.

Anthony Watts:

Same kind of pattern. And the current period, not so much. Bottom line here is that weather was much worse than the past. Temperatures in the summer were much worse in the past. And yet somehow, it's really worse today if you believe the computer models.

Anthony Watts:

Right? Never mind that data. That data is just that's old stuff. Computer model data, that's the real that's the new thing.

H. Sterling Burnett:

The people at Noah are like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz when little when Toto pulls back the curtain, And and Noah's concerning data is saying, ignore the man behind the curtain. Ignore the data. Ignore the see the big thing I'm flashing on the screen. That's what's important.

Linnea Lueken:

It is telling when you read these reports and you look at the data as they present it and then you look at their commentary about it. There's often quite a bit of a disconnect. You know, they'll they'll hype up a trend that is, you know, I guess, you know, it's it's kind of, they they, I think, rely on those 5 year average bars to kind of goose the appearance of trends where there aren't in some cases. I've noticed that a lot. They'll they'll ignore the, so the on these charts, I'll explain it so that because I don't think we have that part of the caption in in the image here for the audience.

Linnea Lueken:

But those yellow bars on this graph are 5 year averages of temperatures or the number of hot days, and then the black dots are actually the the actual data points. So they'll if you took away the yellow bars, especially on many of these charts, the trend kind of goes away. It's it's their it's their average trends that or the the averaging of 5 year clumps or 6 year clumps if the, data doesn't line up properly, that kind of gives the impression. But when you look at the data by itself, it really I mean, it's pretty questionable whether or not there even is any kind of significant trend on a lot of this data.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah. Well,

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'm just looking at it in sort of a blown up fashion and looking at the peak points.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And the and the ones just below the peak. It looks to me I haven't drawn a, a line. I don't have the data numbers, but looks to me, if anything, there's a decline since twenties. Twenties were as hotter hotter than today, almost consistently. The 19 tens.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Look at that. They're all hotter than, than today. The trend line, if anything, is down. The fifties were hotter, both 5 year averages and the 3 3 or 4 peak points. Like I said, it's not clear to me.

H. Sterling Burnett:

You you said it's not clear if there's a trend. I'd be interested in plotting it and see it if it hasn't declined since the early part of the century.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So here's the data analysis that I have on it. The average number of days greater than 95 degrees Fahrenheit or 35 degrees centigrade declined by 18% during the 60 year period between 1961 and 2020, the right side of the graph. That was much more than the 60 year period, 8 between 1901 1960. But this thing's a good metric for determining how summer is in terms of heat wave intensity and frequency.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, you're muted.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I know. I'm suffering a little bit from allergies here, so I'm coughing fat.

Linnea Lueken:

Alright.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. That's probably gonna change too. Anyway Probably. Probably. Right.

Anthony Watts:

What happened to Sterling? He disappeared. Oh, wait. He's on the other side of the screen. I just I don't think covered him up with one of my windows.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. So let's go on to this next graphic. Now they're talking about Las Vegas, you know, being hit by these temperatures. Las Vegas is a really interesting place because you can track the growth the economic growth of Las Vegas and the infrastructure along with temperature really well. So they're saying, you know, with the high temperature on June 6th of a 103.9, Las Vegas is 14 degrees above the supposed normal.

Anthony Watts:

Alright? Well, that's all well and good, but why is it above normal? So let's go look at this first graph, and I wanna say this is prepared by the National Weather Service in Las Vegas. Now I got this several years ago around 2014, almost 10 years old, and it since disappeared from the National Weather Service website in Las Vegas, probably because someone told them to. Well, this is the average annual temperature from Las Vegas from 1937 up to around 2014.

Anthony Watts:

And you could see, you know, it's gradually increasing just a little bit. And then around 1979, 1980, it starts going upward significantly. Okay? But in the next graph, which is, overnight temperatures, the minimum temperatures. Look at that.

Anthony Watts:

It's been steadily increasing, much more so. But, you know, they're claiming Las Vegas is getting hotter. Right? Well, let's look at the maximum temperatures in Las Vegas. The maximum temperatures for Las Vegas aren't getting hotter at all during that period.

Anthony Watts:

In fact, they're going down. So what is this? It seems to be the signature of UHI. It's pushing the average temperature up because the infrastructure is absorbing all of this, you know, solar energy during the day and releasing it at night and causing the nighttime minimum temperature to increase. And here's the other thing.

Anthony Watts:

There seems to be no increase in high temperatures beyond the level first noted when record keeping began in 1937. No new maximum temperatures have exceeded the 117 degree record set on July 24th 1942, but they were tied back in 2021 and at a 117 degrees in night in in 2021. So why did it take so long for the high temperature to be tied if climate change is making it hotter in Las Vegas?

H. Sterling Burnett:

80 years of warming ago was when the record was set initially. You know, I would wager, Anthony, that if you had plotted the population growth in Las Vegas along the same axis, you'd find a pretty good correspondence between the spike in temperatures, the nighttime temperatures, and the, overall temperature trend. I I would wager it would go up like that.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Now we have another graph that says the highest maximum temperature by year at Las Vegas. Next one, please. The highest maximum temperature by year at Las Vegas. So look at that.

Anthony Watts:

You know, we had the temperatures up to a 117 degrees in 1942, and then none since then. What's up with that? You know, with what happened? Did the climate change cause lower high temperatures, or is climate climate change not involved at all? Well, that's how I view it.

Anthony Watts:

Climate change really is not affecting temperatures in Vegas. It's the infrastructure more than anything.

H. Sterling Burnett:

What's up with that would make a good name for a website, Anthony? You gotta check into that.

Anthony Watts:

Check. It's taken. So one of the most interesting studies of the past couple of years has been done by doctor Roy Spencer, and he plotted UHI data, something nobody else has done. You know? Noah didn't do it.

Anthony Watts:

You know? Climate Central didn't do it. You made this map, and this is huge. This June 18 50 is at the top, and June 2023 is at the bottom. If we can zoom in on that a little bit and look at the top graph, you can see that much of the Western United States is completely devoid of, urban heat island effects, and there were moderate to mild urban heat island effects throughout the highly populated East Coast and eastern Midwest, Indiana, Ohio, and so forth.

Anthony Watts:

You know? The this is when the population started moving west. Right? So go to then to June 2023 and boom. Look at all of these red dots.

Anthony Watts:

What are those red dots? Those are cities. And if you look carefully, you can see a big red dot for Los Angeles and San Diego in the southwest, but just up to the northeast of it, there's a dot. And guess what? That's Las Vegas.

Anthony Watts:

And up to the north of that, it's Salt Lake City. So with these kinds of values of data out there, you can see clearly that UHI is is a huge effect on these cities. But yet somehow, you know, people like Climate Central, they refuse to acknowledge this. They they they insist that climate change is the issue, and UHI has nothing to do with it. And, oh, we got that handled, or we we adjusted that out or, you know, it doesn't correspond with the climate model or whatever their excuse is.

Anthony Watts:

They can continually ignore it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I I mean, look at those red dots. Put the put the ground back up, please. Look at those red dots all along the the the West Coast. So if you look north of California, well, there's Portland. I can see it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

There's Seattle. If you look to the center part of the country oh, wow. There's 3 or 4 red dots clumped right there in a place called Colorado that was barely populated in the early part of the century in 18 or in 1850. I look at Texas. I know a little bit about it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Boy, that's a big clump right there where, Dallas and Fort Worth is. Another big clump where Houston is in the Galveston area. There's Austin. I can see it. San Antonio.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Chicago right there on the lakes. Green Green Bay. You know? The point is, every place you see those big red dots, all of Florida, god, the whole entire coast of Florida. That's not coincidence, folks.

Anthony Watts:

No. It's not. And here's the point. Temperature is measured where people are, not where people aren't. All those gray areas there, that's where people aren't.

Anthony Watts:

There's no temperature measurements there. So that's why we're getting this UHI affecting everything. That's why, you know, when I did my report 2 years ago, and I found that 96% of the stations operated by NOAA in the United States are compromised. They're compromised because they're too close to heat sources. They're not paying attention to their own siding rules.

Anthony Watts:

And that's the big thing. It pushes the nighttime temperature up, pushing the nighttime temperature up, you know, because of that retained heat, that UHI pushes the average temperature up, and average is what they use to track climate change. And there you go. It's just that simple.

Linnea Lueken:

Anthony, have you have you looked into some of the objections you know, you know, specific, counters to them? Well,

Anthony Watts:

not really. They they don't they just seem to tend to wanna ignore UHI altogether. They don't really wanna argue it. I mean, this is why doctor Spencer put this together because no one else has. You would think that Noah would put this together themselves.

Anthony Watts:

They have not.

H. Sterling Burnett:

When I when I see Gavin talk about it, it seems to me he says, yes. We know UHI exist, but we have adjusted for it. We've homogenized the data. We've taken the rural stations and we've blended them. Well, that's like taking, dirty water and blending it with clean water and expecting to get clean water.

H. Sterling Burnett:

No. It's it's dirtying up the clean data. They they they and and how do they adjust it? Well, they put it through a computer model that says what we think it should be based on, no c02. It's

Anthony Watts:

Right. They just they just ignore this. They just simply pay no attention to the fact that, you know, the data is dirty, and their their cleansing methods don't work, you know, because it's it's it's their preconceived notion that climate change is causing warmer temperatures, and therefore, you know, here they are. We got these warmer temperatures, and there it is. It's proven climate change.

Anthony Watts:

They don't look any deeper than that. They don't want to.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

It's true. Confirmation bias.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. As I said, it's a logical fallacy. It's it's because there's a an effect, it's claiming that there is what the what the cause is based on the effect.

Anthony Watts:

Right. And that's it right there. Ed Reed says, we've got models. We don't need no stinking data. We don't need no stinking badges.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. So that's the sum total of, you know, the problem that we're having here, and that's what people like Climate Dental are ignoring. And then they're pushing that out to the media. And, unfortunately and this is an even bigger problem as we learn on a daily basis here at the Heartland Institute. When we write articles, you know, pushing back on the media, most of the media doesn't have a clue about science.

Anthony Watts:

I mean, they don't even bother to scratch the surface and dig a little bit to see if some claim made is come true or not. And this is why they get caught with their pants down a lot, and this is why, climate realism.com exists. I mean, one of my favorite examples was last year when on July 4th when somebody got ahold of some data at the climate reanalyzer from the University of Maine.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Not data. Model projections.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And they went and said, you know, July 4th is the hottest ever. It's the hottest ever. It's record. It's terrifying.

Anthony Watts:

1 of

H. Sterling Burnett:

them 5000 years. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Terrifying. And the the Associated Press at least had a small caveat in them in their in their July 5th story. But by the time July 7th rolled around, the, the Associated Press had to put a retraction in because they discovered that the data from Climate Reanalyzer out of the University of Maine was not suitable for purpose because it was reanalyzed data. It was yet another model.

Anthony Watts:

They were taking this data, reconfiguring it, spitting it back out, and presenting it as data. It's not. It's it's a an analysis. It's a

H. Sterling Burnett:

it's it's it's a problem. Is what it is. What's that? It's jiggery pokery is what it is.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And so Fiddle with it

H. Sterling Burnett:

enough, you'll get the result you want.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. The media couldn't even find this. They they they just simply completely missed it. You know? And then when the attract, retraction went out there from The Associated Press, that little note that they stuck on it, nobody bothered to put a full scale retracting out there.

Anthony Watts:

Oh, you remember those hottest ever record temperatures that were terrifying 2 days ago? Never mind. No. They didn't do that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. The AP was the Emily Latella of, of, well, may people on here may not remember Harry Not Loves Emily Latella by Gilda Radnor, but that's what her response was always, never mind.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, it it doesn't matter, and it and they know it. The journalists know it That if they put out a false report about climate change or something that's or about the weather or whatever that's or even something that's, like, only a little bit true, they know that the next day they can put a retraction or a little edit on their article. And everyone or the the vast majority of people who are gonna read the article already read it and are not going to see the retraction. They're fully aware of that. It's not an accident.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think I think Anthony is, you know, as usual, far kinder than me. He he believes that it's ignorance that they could correct. I believe it's intentional, not ignorance. They know that data exists. They can check data.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They have entire staffs that are supposed to fact check articles that they don't do, before they go out. So, my belief is they're more environment you know, especially the science and environmental journalists, they're more about pushing the narrative that they believe because they want control. They they think there are certain controls and lifestyles that people, that they should control people's lives because they know best. And so it's not that they, it's intentionally ignoring countervailing data. It's not it's not an accident.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's not it's not even laziness on their part. It's it's we don't want to know. We we we it's intentional ignorance. We don't wanna know that we're wrong because what's important is the end, which is pushing climate alarm and climate policies.

Anthony Watts:

Right. You know, I guess being a journalist today means never having to say you're sorry. Where would we hear that from? Okay. So, you guys have seen these stories out there.

Anthony Watts:

What are some of your favorite examples of of where the media just goes off the rails with high temperatures? Any thoughts? Uh-huh.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Re recently, temperature stories about India and and, New Delhi and and, and in Pakistan in recent years. Oh my god. They've never seen, temperatures like that. No. They see them every year.

Anthony Watts:

And and and so comes and they go away.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And and and yeah. Yeah. Well, there's there's an there's another example is they have a bad they they have a low monsoon season. It's climate change. They have a high monsoon season.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's climate change. They can't make up their mind.

Anthony Watts:

But, no,

H. Sterling Burnett:

they've made up their mind. It's all climate change. No matter what the effect is, it's climate change. And when they look at, you know, the India stories, or, when they've said things that a couple years ago, Texas was was was relatively hot, and they said, oh, oh, it's climate change. So probably 30% chance greater chance of climate change of of these temperatures due climate change.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's like, well, a, that's not what history shows. B, if it were lower, you wouldn't say the same thing, and it's lower now, and, you can't attribute these things. There's no way of doing it. You make things up with attribution models. It's like, attribution models are the modern day equivalent of a crystal ball.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, the attribution models really By

Anthony Watts:

the way, I wanna point out that meteorologists do it with crystal balls.

Linnea Lueken:

But I I do think that one of the most egregious trends in media right now, and it has to be on purpose. I really, like, very intentional, as in design for this purpose. I really think that the attribution science, organization, World Weather Attribution, whoever they are, specifically exists in order to give headlines to the AP and to, other news organizations to blast out because it is it's too tightly linked every single time there is any kind of extreme weather ever. You know, World Weather Attribution doesn't even have their study published yet, and it's already released to the media. And the media is already claiming that it proves x y z effect is due to climate change.

Linnea Lueken:

Or x y z flood is like 10000 times more likely with climate change than without or whatever it happens to be. It's really gross. It's not science. Every time I'm reading an article and they make some kind of a claim along those lines like, oh, and this, you know, this is 10 times more likely because of the warming temperatures of the Earth. I click on their stupid hyperlink every single time it's world weather attribution.

Linnea Lueken:

I I have to think that a lot of the scientists, because they are science desk reporters, which doesn't always mean that they have any kind of background in science whatsoever. Most of them don't. Most of them have like a fruity gender studies degree or something like that, but they're gonna they're gonna go ahead. They they know. They know that this stuff is being tailor made for them and they run with it.

Linnea Lueken:

Because, like Sterling said, it's not about reporting on science. It's about using scientific language and the appearance of scientific rigor to push an agenda.

Anthony Watts:

I mean, why? But in the background in the background of all of this, it really is just this. It's spinning the wheel of climate where, you know, it's warm winter or cold winter or snow or no snow. See? Told you.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Well, world weather attribution, it's amazing. Linnea says, oh, before they've even published their studies, my suspicion is that most of their studies never get published, certainly not peer reviewed. It's once they release the initial headlines, that's that is put aside, and it's on to the next attribution. And the way it works is, you know, studies take time.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They take looking at

Anthony Watts:

data rapid attribution studies.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying is is real studies, peer reviewed studies, take time. We don't have time. We don't need stinking we don't have stinking time. We gotta get the headlines, and the headlines are, so we release a study within a day or 2 days of a particular event, and we say it couldn't have happened with without climate change.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But how do we know that? Well, we, we ran our models, our particular brand of models that says, could this have happened without climate change? Let's take out c 02 and run it and and run it with c02 rising. Whoop. It's climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. And, you know, we just had a comment up there talking about, the turbulence issue with the Singapore Airlines. And that was a perfect example of how the media just went berserk over an incident. You know, some people were injured. Some people were injured on a flight.

Anthony Watts:

There was turbulence. It must be climate change. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead, Linnea. We've got, there it is.

Anthony Watts:

There's our article on climate realism. And anytime you see this BS happening in the media, you can be assured that's gonna be a rebuttal upon climate realism. And take that and run with it and post it up on social media and tell people their argument is, well, just doesn't hold water.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. Sterling wrote this one. This, this one was particularly egregious, I think. Died, you know, in severe turbulence.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. The guy died. They and they're vultures. They're just vultures. It's like every time, a shooting happens, they say, oh, guns caused this.

H. Sterling Burnett:

The next day, without looking at the motives, without looking at who the people are, what their supposed grievance was, and whether they might have done other kinds of damage, had they not had guns? No. It's it's guns. Well, turbulence is climate change as if we never had turbulence before, and I think in that in that article, I look at the statistics pretty good. Turbulence isn't worsening.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Injuries from turbulence are not getting worse despite more air travelers and air miles traveled. Target say climate change is making something worse if nothing's getting worse.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Oh, but they'll always try anyways. It's not gonna stop them. You can't let facts get in the way of this one. Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay.

H. Sterling Burnett:

So Energy energy colonizer got it right. He he quotes Rahm Emanuel. I've quoted it before. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Linnea Lueken:

Mhmm. Yep.

Anthony Watts:

Exactly. Very good. Go ahead, Amelia.

Linnea Lueken:

Sure. Let's get to question and answer. Maybe we'll get a little bit more, chat going here. So this is a funny comment that I I pinned here for us to look at slash kind of a question from Andrew Goderich. He says, I'll post $20 to the Heartland Institute from England.

Linnea Lueken:

YouTube can't stop the old fashioned postal service or can they? I don't know. Susan might be able to try. She might sneak into the mail and steal it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. I I guess it's whether the postmaster and his his minions have have or were appointed by by Biden, and they're searching mail for climate skeptic funding.

Linnea Lueken:

You know, we might have to go to snail mail at some point if this gets bad enough.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right. But the weather's I mean, then, the postal service is going through modernization. And I I gotta tell you this

H. Sterling Burnett:

story. Modernization. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

This is happening here this is happening here in Reno, and this is no joke. The postal service has decided through this modernization program that it's going to be more efficient in Reno to move the sorting center that they've had in Reno since, you know, Reno existed for the postal service. Move it to Sacramento. And so we will get all of the snail mail coming into that. We'll put it on trucks, and we will send it across highway 80, interstate 80, across the top of Sierra Nevada down into Sacramento where it would get sorted and then brought back up over the hill so that it can be distributed in Reno.

Anthony Watts:

This is part of their modernization effort. Right? Mhmm. Apparently, no one told them or they never figured out on their own that interstate 80 is regularly closed by winter storms and traffic jams and accidents and fires and all kinds of stuff. And so the public here has gone berserk over this.

Anthony Watts:

They're like, are you out of your mind? To the point of the district attorney for Washoe County in Reno said enough of this. I am filing a lawsuit against the postal service to stop this idiocy. Yay for him. You know?

Anthony Watts:

But they're saying on one hand, well, climate change is making weather worse, and so now we've got a a a government entity who's supposed to be listening to climate change saying, well, we're gonna ship it across, you know, where the weather won't be a problem. That's how crazy it's gotten out there, folks.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But we still despite all that, despite the fears that the postal service may be compromised, we do advocate. You cut that check.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. You you

H. Sterling Burnett:

said let don't let us dissuade you from sending money.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. Here's here's a question from our good friend, Albert. He says, question. MIT claimed that light at a 45 degree angle can evaporate water. How could that, if true, impact our understanding of cloud formation and weather model improvements?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. This is a new finding that was recently published in scientific journals and got a lot of press, basically saying that the old idea of evaporation through, you know, molecular pop off due to warmer temperatures, isn't the only mechanism by which evaporation can occur. You know? And it typically like this. If you got cold water, it doesn't evaporate as fast as warm water.

Anthony Watts:

And, of course, the, you know, warmer ocean temperatures, causing more evaporation, causing more water vapor in the atmosphere, That is their the the basis of some of the climate change arguments that we've got this positive feedback for water vapor. But there's this new discovery that found that photons themselves, when they hit the surface of the water, can cause a molecule of water to jump off the surface and get into the atmosphere. And it's a new finding. They never expected it. But what does this mean?

Anthony Watts:

Well, I would say that the effect overall globally is tiny. It's it's certainly not negligible, but it's probably a lot smaller than just regular evaporation. But here's the here's the thing. The earth is self regulating. The inner tropical convergence zone around the the equator self regulates Earth's temperature every day.

Anthony Watts:

Water vapor evaporates into the atmosphere, thunderstorm is formed. They go up into the higher atmosphere, produce rain cooling effects, and the process is a thermostat, and it keeps doing that. So, I don't think it'll appreciably change climate science. I think they'll ignore it pretty much, but it certainly is interesting.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I I just don't think we know enough about that. You know, it's one study, and the question is, will its data, will its methodologies be confirmed after continued, examination, or will it be an outlier that's ultimately dismissed? But but I don't think we know that yet.

Linnea Lueken:

And the cloud issue is already complicated enough. Can't wait can't wait to see what this does to clouds, you know, to being able to put them into the models. Okay. Here is Jim asking, how do the alarmists get the science to say this is the hottest time in the last 100000 years?

Anthony Watts:

Well, they just make shit up.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Look. There is no the science. There is no official thing called the science, and it's like like a looming character in a South Park episode. The science says, no. They're science, and science is a method, and the method doesn't dictate the outcome.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It it, produces results, and they didn't rely on that. They are sciency, not science executors or followers.

Anthony Watts:

Right. They,

H. Sterling Burnett:

they jump. Temperatures high. Cause must be climate change. How high? Highest ever.

H. Sterling Burnett:

There's no science. There's no research. There's no body of evidence that showed that last, July was the hottest in a 120 5000 years, that's it was speculation.

Anthony Watts:

Yes. Exactly. That's the point. They use a computer model to produce an up, what they consider to be a plausible output, and then they, adapt that with speculation saying, well, it must be the hottest and then whatever time. And they they point to these proxies that are used to look at, you know, estimate temperatures that happened in the past.

Anthony Watts:

And that's the big keyword here. These are estimates. One of the biggest failures of proxies is tree rings, Michael Mann's favorite. The problem with tree rings is really simple. They are not exclusively an indicator of past temperatures.

Anthony Watts:

Why? Because plants conform to something called Liebig's law. Liebig's law, the minimum. Any plant that's growing, whether it's a beanstalk or a tree or a cornstalk or a weed, conform to this. The bottom line is is that the least available, growth factor is the limiting factor in the growth of any plant.

Anthony Watts:

So on the case of a tree, you know, let's say we had a very warm year. Right? Well, that might make the tree grow more. But if it was also a very dry year, the lack of water could have limited its growth. You know?

Anthony Watts:

Or let's say we had a very wet year. You know? That could have caused more growth even that although the temperature didn't change much. Or we could have had a situation where it was a cloudy year. We had a lot of cloud cover, so there wasn't a lot of photosynthesis going on.

Anthony Watts:

You know?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Shortage shortage of minerals in the soil or a perturbation. I mean, anything that might, affect the plant. So, a bear came along and rubbed up against his back up against a a younger tree and, scraped off some bark and bent it, well, that could affect its growth in the growth rings, All sorts of things. And, you know, the other proxy data, stoma data. Well, stoma data.

H. Sterling Burnett:

When they look at even when they're looking at tree rings, if you take it at face value, when you look at shell middens, if you take them at face value, if you look at stoma data, it is not to a 10th of a degree or even to a degree. It's within a range of degrees, and they're guessing about which part of the range it was.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. And it's all an estimate. It's not an actual thermometer. You know? It's a guess.

Anthony Watts:

So let's see what else we got question wise.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. This is from Tom White. He says, which is more accurate to use, the logarithmic effect or the saturation of c o two and its ability to absorb infrared

Anthony Watts:

waves? The first and second part of that question don't necessarily connect for me, so I don't quite understand it.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I'm not sure either because the logarithmic effect is measuring the effect of c02 saturation on absorption. So

Anthony Watts:

I would say if

H. Sterling Burnett:

you're still

Anthony Watts:

hearing representative of reality. What's more representative, not necessarily accurate, is a logarithmic scale for carbon dioxide because it does indeed show that the first couple hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere has the most effect on temperature. And then as you get more and more saturation up at the top, you get a flat curve, and it becomes less effective at warming the atmosphere. And that's why, many people say that at the current levels that we're experiencing, 4 20 arc per million plus, it's not really gonna make a whole lot of difference if it goes up to 500 because the effect in that top part of the logarithmic scale is minimal.

H. Sterling Burnett:

My thought on this is that, to answer that question well, we need an atmospheric physicist who's actually studied this, and I'm not going to, try and

Linnea Lueken:

answer it. Is it your thought, Anthony, that, you know, if we got a time machine and we jumped forward a 100 years, then and and if carbon dioxide continued to rise during that time, that you would see a pretty significant decoupling of the trend between any kind of what warming trend there might be, you know, depending on who you ask and what data you consult and the c o two measurements that we get from, like, Mauna Loa. What? Sorry. Do you

Anthony Watts:

I every once in a while, I I, you know, I just I try I try to follow something, and then it's like, I lost I lost the plot. Go ahead.

Linnea Lueken:

Do you do you think do you do you think over time, the more the more we get, you know, in terms of if if carbon dioxide emissions from oceans or wherever, from people, whatever, keep going up, You're gonna see less and less of a seemingly connected trend between whatever warming is being measured through satellite data or whatever minus the UHI, will that be decoupling more and more over time?

Anthony Watts:

I agree. Yes. It will be decoupling more and more. And it's already happening. If you look at, like, some of the temperature data we've seen, most of the gains in temperature have happened since 1850 up to, you know, well before that.

Anthony Watts:

In fact, the the rate of warming happened just as fast in the early part as it has the second part. The point is is that as we get more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the effect is gonna be less, and we're not gonna see that coupling or that that correlation to be as tight as it used to be. And so they're gonna have to get creative to try to keep this going.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. This looks like the last question that we have got. Didn't we have ice ages when c02 was at 2,000 parts per million?

Anthony Watts:

Not that I recall.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. The ice the ice ages that we're talking about, I think 4 or 5 of them have all been in the last, you know, a 1000000 years or so, maybe a1000000 and a half years or so. And there were periods where it was cooler than today where c o two levels were much higher than today, 2,000, 5000 parts per million. And there were periods long periods of time over the Earth's history, where c o two levels were much lower than today, or not much lower. They haven't been much lower, but lower than today where it was hotter.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But that's we're talking not just since the ice age cycle started, which is relatively new in g geological history, but, you know, 50, a 100, 1000000 years ago. You you look back at the but I I could be wrong, but I don't think, there were any times in the last, million, million and a half years where the CO 2 was 2,000 parts per million.

Anthony Watts:

Right. The last ice age, we saw a huge reduction of c02 Yep. In the atmosphere, and it got down to the danger level. You know, at a 150 part per million, plants stop photosynthesis. There's not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to support it.

Anthony Watts:

And I think during the last ice age, we got down to something like a 180. Yeah. 180. Yeah. And if it had gone 30 parts per 1000000 more, we we may have lost all plant life on the planet.

Anthony Watts:

So

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, what what's been you know, over time, over the history of the Earth, what's been happening is slowly, c o two has been drawn out of the atmosphere by plants, and then the plants die and get compressed and over time and heat, turn into carbonaceous rocks, that store carbon dioxide. We're releasing some of that now, but, the estimates are that at the current rate of reduction, if the ice ages continued the way they did, probably in a couple of 1000000 years, we would have reached that, based on the trend, just based on the trend, we would have reached that danger zone. That would have been multiple, ice age cycles in the future. They last about a 100, a 150,000 years, but, and we may have prevented that, And that hey, folks. That's a good thing.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We're keeping plants alive.

Anthony Watts:

Right. Right. So okay. Next question.

Linnea Lueken:

I think that's all we got.

Anthony Watts:

Oh, alright then. I think we were

H. Sterling Burnett:

gonna go to videos.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, we've got some great videos. I I don't know if you folks know or not, but Lamea has been taking what we've done on climate at a glance and turning them into these short videos and, talking about, you know, bullet points, in a, a calm, reasonable, and pleasant manner, which, of course, immediately got us demonetized, but, you know, that's YouTube. Point is is that these videos that we have at heartland.org talk about all of the issues associated with climate change and do it in a in a an easy to watch, encapsulated short video that doesn't throw a lot of hype at you, you know, or no hype at all, in fact. It's just plain old facts.

Anthony Watts:

And has done a fantastic job at presenting these things, and, I'd advise you to go take a look. The sea level rise video that we have is one of the most popular, and, you might check that one out. Leah, you have any comments on this?

Linnea Lueken:

Not any more than I I've had when we've talked about it before, but for the case of new listeners, this has been this was a project that was pretty long in the making. We spent quite a bit of time writing out all these scripts and getting a, like, real professional camera crew in to do it, so we're really excited about this project. We're trying really hard to keep them pretty short in that 3 minute range so that they're more easily accessible to a wider audience, and we can put them on different platforms and stuff. We've also been cutting them into YouTube Shorts. So if you go to our YouTube page and look at the Shorts tab, we have some of them in, like, even smaller clips there.

Linnea Lueken:

And, I think it's all yeah. I think it's a great project. I'm excited about it.

Anthony Watts:

Well, good. I hope that

Linnea Lueken:

And it got us a lot of questions. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

Who managed your wardrobe during this whole thing? I noticed you have a different wardrobe for every video.

Linnea Lueken:

Me. I did. I no. I I packed, like, I don't know, 5 jackets and 8 shirts or something and switched between them and, yeah, it it worked out.

Anthony Watts:

Well, see, you know, that's I wanna make the point that for, although people seem to think that the Heartland Institute is flushed with big oil cash, We don't even have enough money to get poor Linnea, a wardrobe manager. Yeah. Well, I think that pretty well wraps it up for this episode of Climate Realism Show. Thank you, Linnea and Sterling, for joining us today. Thank you, Jim Lakeley and, Keely Drakala in the background doing producing for us and making sure all the graphics pop up and the questions pop up.

Anthony Watts:

And, I wanna thank all of our viewers for joining us. I wanna remind you to visit our website, climate at a glance.com, climaterealism.com, energy@aglamps.com, and what's up with that dot com for the latest in climate debunking and climate facts. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute, wishing you a great Friday and a fantastic weekend. Bye bye.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's a lion dog faced party, so