Environment and Climate News Podcast

Elon Musk’s latest fortune was built on his Tesla electric vehicles, helped in no small measure by federal tax credits so more people could afford to buy the luxury items. For years, he’s marketed them as a way to help wean the world of oil and stop the imminent “climate change meltdown.” But The Washington Post reports that Musk’s abandonment of left-wing, trendy, virtue-signaling political views not only eventually led him to Donald Trump, but maybe out of the Climate Cult, altogether. And if Musk makes it OK to leave, will more prominent business leaders and cultural trend setters soon follow?

On Episode #138 of The Climate Realism Show, The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will cover that story, as well as some of the “Crazy Climate News of the Week.” Did you know the Chinese Communist Party is sending lots of money to “green energy” groups and  support energy groups and universities in the United States? The UK’s obsession with reaching “Net Zero” is putting its military in danger on the battlefield. And you’re not going to want to miss what is perhaps the dumbest question ever asked by an anchor on CNN.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET so you can leave your questions and comments for the show in the chat.

Creators & Guests

Host
Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environmental policy at The Heartland Institute. He is also the founder and publisher of WattsUpWithThat.com, one of the most-read site on climate science and policy in the world.
Host
H. Sterling Burnett
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., hosts The Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News podcast. Burnett also is the director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, is the editor of Heartland's Climate Change Weekly email, and oversees the production of the monthly newspaper Environment & Climate News. Prior to joining The Heartland Institute in 2014, Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, ending his tenure there as senior fellow in charge of environmental policy. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations within the field. Burnett is a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission, served as chairman of the board for the Dallas Woods and Water Conservation Club, is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, works as an academic advisor for Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, is an advisory board member to the Cornwall Alliance, and is an advisor for the Energy, Natural Resources and Agricultural Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Host
Jim Lakely
Vice President and Director of Communications at The Heartland Institute
Host
Linnea Lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Before joining Heartland, Linnea was a petroleum engineer on an offshore drilling rig.

What is Environment and Climate News Podcast ?

The Heartland Institute podcast featuring scientists, authors, and policy experts who take the non-alarmist, climate-realist position on environment and energy policy.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. That's right, Greta. It is Friday. It's the best day of the week. It's the day the Heartland Institute streams the Climate Realism Show.

Jim Lakely:

I am your host, Jim Lakely. I'm the vice president of the Heartland Institute. You know, there's nothing else quite like the Climate Realization Show streaming anywhere, so I hope you will like, share, and subscribe to this channel, and also leave your comments underneath this video. All those actions convince YouTube's algorithm to smile upon this program and to get the show in front of even more people. And it's very, very important that you do that because, I'd like to have this reminder every single week Because big tech and the legacy media do not approve of the climate truth bombs that we set off on this program, Heartland's YouTube channel has been demonetized, and that's probably going to be permanent, I think.

Jim Lakely:

So if you wanna support this program, please visit heartland.org/tcrs. That's heartland.org/tcrs, which stands for the Climate Realism Show. And you can help us, make sure that this show happens every single week. I wanna thank you in advance for any support that you can give us. We also wanna thank our streaming partners who help us get this show in front of more eyes.

Jim Lakely:

That would be junk science.com, CFACT, Climate Depot, and what's up with that? You might be watching them at this very moment on the wonderful X social media, program. So let's get our program started. Today, we have with us our usual crew. Anthony Watts, he's the senior fellow at the Hartley Institute and publisher of the most influential climate website in the world, what's up with that?

Jim Lakely:

We also have with us h Sterling Burnett. He is the director of the Arthur b Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute. And, of course, Linnea Lukin. She is a research fellow for energy and environment policy at Heartland. Welcome, everyone.

Jim Lakely:

As we, Christmas is coming. I I could tell you, you know, we don't we don't we talk about climate on this on this program, of course, but, you know, weather is also important. We talk about that as well. It has been really cold here in Northern Illinois for the last several days. It was minus 17 Celsius, for our international viewers.

Jim Lakely:

We have a lot of international viewers, yesterday morning and this morning, and it's, like, gonna warm up all the way up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit today. So I'm looking forward to that. How's the

Anthony Watts:

Oh, I would remind you, Jim, that weather is not climate.

Jim Lakely:

Weather is not climate.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's not just Northern Illinois. It's it's Canada. It's, the UK. It's, all over, Europe and even parts of Asia, getting hit with really cold weather and snow. I think Pakistan got some snow.

H. Sterling Burnett:

You don't normally think of that. And speaking of all these different countries that get they're getting cold weather despite claims that it's warmer than ever and we'd never see snow again.

Jim Lakely:

Right.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I I I've gotta say, I'm always amazed. I'm always amazed at the wonders of technology because I look over in our comment section and I see that right now live, we have people watching not only from all over the United States, but at least 5, maybe 6 foreign countries online right now. New Zealand, Denmark, UK, Canada. I forget who else I saw. I'm sorry if I missed your country.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But I it just, you know, it it's really powerful. It it really moves me that, we have, people who faithfully come to our show every week Yep. And put up with us for for for not 30 minutes, not an hour, sometimes more than an hour. So, anyway, thank you all.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. We have people from Portugal. I know we have a regular viewer from Chile. You know, we're in on every continent on Earth. We just need to have somebody check-in from a weather station in Antarctica, and we will have hit every continent.

Jim Lakely:

So that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

I wanna remind you, speaking of Chile, Chile tonight, hot tamale. It's been one of my favorite weather forecast idioms for a long time.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Alright. Gosh. You get I need some sort of you need to make an eye signal or something so I can get the rim shot ready for you when you have these bad jokes coming, Anthony. So that's great.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'm glad it was. And that it was.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Alright. Maybe next time. Anyway

H. Sterling Burnett:

That that makes dad jokes, sound pretty funny.

Jim Lakely:

Yes. That's that's good. Now we do we do like to have fun on the show, which I which is why I think a lot of people come and watch it every week. We do appreciate that as we import a lot of important

Anthony Watts:

Before we before we get to the crazy climate news, I wanna ask everybody's opinion. I got some new glasses the other day, and I wanna find out what guy what do you guys think looks best? These or wait. Wait. Wait.

Anthony Watts:

I have to do it like Bill Nye or these?

Jim Lakely:

I like the one with the fake nose and the eye and the eyebrows like with Groucho.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Exactly.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Okay. Understood. Back to these.

Jim Lakely:

Oh, looks great. Looks great. Alright. You could leave your, actually, it would help our our, algorithm if you could leave your comment underneath the video to say which one of those glasses you like better on Anthony Watts. Alright.

Jim Lakely:

There you go. Speaking of Anthony, we're gonna get to our favorite, segment of our program, and that is the crazy climate news of the week. Hit it, Andy. Yes. Very dramatic, Bill Nye.

Jim Lakely:

Very dramatic, Bill Nye. Okay. Well, our our first item here is, is something we had come across I had come across on x earlier in the week. Just kind of showing how dumb our, our legacy media is. This is it's it's gonna be the, the video, earthquake and climate there, Andy.

Jim Lakely:

This is, Jake Tapper interviewing somebody who's an expert on earthquakes. I'm wondering well, I'll let him I'll let his EDC speak for itself. Go ahead, Andy.

Speaker 5:

Does climate change play any role in, the increasing severity of earthquakes?

Speaker 6:

Well, that's a yeah. That's a good question. A lot of people are trying to work on that. Sea level change could have some effect on it, but there's really no no evidence that that it has much effect at this point. But there's a lot of people digging into that question.

Speaker 6:

It's a it's a really good question.

Speaker 5:

Chris Goldfinger, thank you so much for your expertise. We appreciate it. Turning now to our other breaking news story.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. What what what I love is the long pause the guy had before answering. It's like, are you serious?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I was stupid. It burns.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Yeah. No. I I just you hear that question and you see 2 or 3 things rolled into to one question that were just wrong. First off, there's no evidence there's increasing severity of her of earthquakes.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Right.

Jim Lakely:

The very first thing he said was, is climate change causing the increase in no. There is no there's no evidence at all that there's increasing severity of earthquakes.

H. Sterling Burnett:

No. So that that was just stupid. Yeah. And the idea of trying to link climate change to it. What was interesting is after the guy, the dumbfounded respondent, tried to make a nice, you know, tried to make him feel good by saying, oh, yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We're looking into that. That's a good question. You know, I I was always raised. There are no dumb questions. That proves that there are

Jim Lakely:

dumb questions.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah.

Jim Lakely:

Well, let me He was he was

Anthony Watts:

using his words very carefully. I could see that He was. He wanted to say, are you freaking kidding me? And then he's like, alright.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's a good that's a good question. And there but the the the the disturbing part of his response was that he says, people are actually looking into this.

Jim Lakely:

Right. We we spending now.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We are spending govern which means which means we are spending government funds,

Jim Lakely:

taxpayers' money, deficit spending to fund stupid research into where the climate change is causing earthquakes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lynnea, you know, when I we had a good laugh when I shared that clip on Slack to use it in the show this week. And you said you've actually heard these arguments before.

Jim Lakely:

I mean, maybe Jake Tapper did too, but he was gullible enough to believe them, I guess.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Well, I mean, that that guy was not lying when he said that they have been doing research on it, or at least people have been making computer models showing how it could happen. And it has a lot to do with, you know, like sea level rise and like redistribution of pressure from seawater. It's not it's very stupid because of how slow sea level rises in particular. It's also not clear that water pressure like that actually has an impact on, like, tectonic plate movement.

Linnea Lueken:

So it's and, but, you know, whatever. I won't say that there's no chance that, like, some there might be some, like, microscopic impact over the next 1000 years of of climate change. But I think that probably plate tectonics will will be the the main driver of that kind of activity. So they are they do. There are there are several, I can think of.

Linnea Lueken:

There's probably at least, like, 5 research papers that I've shown that I've seen that are postulating how it could happen. But there is no data or evidence that supports that it is happening or that it will happen.

Anthony Watts:

Well, you know, we could somebody could create a model to show how carbon dioxide is causing increased earthquakes. And, you know, from their perspective, a model output is just as good as actual measured data. Right?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Oh, yeah.

Jim Lakely:

Here here's exactly what would what what you could do. You could you could pitch a research paper, climate changes effect on earthquakes, and you would get money in an in

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's right. You'd get money for it. But I just just should say officially on this on this channel, I'm shocked shocked that porlinea has been suckered into this believing that there's a billionth of a chance that this might be true at some time

Linnea Lueken:

in the

H. Sterling Burnett:

next 1000 years. You've been suckered in, Lynnea.

Linnea Lueken:

This The only reason why I'll even, like, halfway entertain that it could have that there could be some immeasurable effect over time is that, while we know that surface activity can cause some plate some issues with small faults and stuff. So I wouldn't say, you know, but the the time frames that we're talking about are are not the kind of thing that is worth bringing up on a Right. Other channel news story. Like Well,

H. Sterling Burnett:

you know, I don't know if this would have anything to do with earthquake. You know, there's some evidence that, to the extent that ice is melting in Greenland, there's what they what's the isotonic rebound or something like that where the earth is, you know, the earth is rising. And, and maybe that could

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Maybe. I don't know. I'm not studying that. I hope we're not spending a lot of money studying that. But,

Linnea Lueken:

No. And that sounds I mean, at first glance, it sounds plausible. I don't know how the mechanics actually would work with that. But

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I I would say that the whole earthquakes versus global warming linkage is a faulty field of study.

H. Sterling Burnett:

No. He's not a

Jim Lakely:

Very late, but I did it anyway. Hell with it. Yeah. You know, I mean, this is kinda like, you know, a butterfly beats its wings in Japan, and then they forget to put extra pickles on my cheeseburger. I mean, I guess you could make any connection you want, with that sort of thing.

Jim Lakely:

Alright. Okay. So we're gonna go on to our second item. This was this one has a little bit more weight and some more seriousness seriousness

H. Sterling Burnett:

More more weight.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. A little more weight. Yeah. This is from, that's not the story, Andy. This is the one from the Washington free beacon.

Jim Lakely:

This is, from our friends at the Washington Free Beacon. X, CCP, that's, the Chinese Communist Party, officials funneled millions to US universities, non and, comma, nonprofits to promote green energy tax forms show. It says here that a climate nonprofit run by former Chinese Communist Party officials funneled 1,000,000 of dollars to US universities and left wing groups to promote replacing fossil fuels with green energy, tax forms reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon Show. The climate nonprofit, formerly known as the Energy Foundation, but which dubs itself Energy Foundation China, that's nice, wired grants to Harvard College, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Maryland to support research and education on building, quote, a clean energy future and advancing, quote, low carbon cities. The Energy Foundation gave a total of $630,000 to 4 universities in 2023.

Jim Lakely:

All 4 of those universities promote far left climate policies. The Energy Foundation also funneled another $1,500,000 to the following left wing climate nonprofits. 1, the Rocky Mountain Institute. 2, International Council on Clean Transportation. 3, Institute For Transportation and Development Policy.

Jim Lakely:

And 4, Natural Resources Defense Council. Now, I have heard of definitely, I've heard of 2 of those, and I'm sure a lot of our viewers and listeners have as well. Those groups are all dedicated to promoting the phase out of fossil fuels and mass expansion of costly green energy alternatives. Now, Anthony, now I wanna start with you. Of course, our corrupt legacy media doesn't have any interest in covering the fact that the Chinese Communist Party, that is ignoring all of the climate rules that are gonna be imposed upon everybody in the West, including the United States, they're not gonna be covering any of this.

Jim Lakely:

In fact, Fox News won't be covering any of this, and I imagine that this kind of thing is just the tip of the iceberg. And in fact, it reminds me of when Russia we found out that Russia was funding US nonprofits that were against against fracking. I guess that's died down. But, you know, you see this a lot, and you're not seeing a lot of reportage of it, but you're seeing it covered on this show.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. You know, I would say that these things are stranger than you can even possibly imagine. I mean, the stuff that goes on in the back rooms, you know, the back channels, the chats, that kind of stuff, we've seen this again and again and again. Like, Bill McKibben, for example, and his 350 dotorg organization. We had a secret meeting down in La Jolla, California to figure out how they were going to nail Exxon with Exxon new.

Anthony Watts:

Right? That turned out to be total garbage, but, you know, that doesn't stop them. These folks are zealots. They are religious zealots, essentially. They believe that climate change is going to be the end all of humanity and we have to do something right now.

Anthony Watts:

They can't seem to assimilate new data or or new studies that refute some of the things that they have been taught. It's a it's, it's a terrible case of bias that they have that prevents them from looking at reality like we do here on Climate Realism.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I

Jim Lakely:

there there are 2 things

H. Sterling Burnett:

I wanna say. First off, I feel my I I feel this is the second time today that I I'm like Claude Raines in, Casablanca when he says, I'm shocked shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment. Well, I'm shocked shocked to find that China is funding, groups in the US, universities and groups in the US, that would shut down the US economy by ending fossil fuel use. I'm shocked that they would subvert our economy in that fashion. I'm I'm shocked that, these left wing universities and the, environmental groups would take this money.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I'm shocked that China would support their industries at our expense by, you know, of course, when they shut down our fossil fuels, they'll keep using them. We'll ship our oil to them, and they'll ship us all that green energy technology that we are gonna be using, you know, in in in instead. So, nothing surprises me about this at all, but my question is, how many Biden Biden Harris administration officials are lining up to work at these universities and at these think tanks using funding from the Chinese Communist Party?

Jim Lakely:

That is a good question. I mean, on last week's show, Lene, maybe you can jump in here. But, you know, the people who were here last week, we covered, that guy at the EPA whose job it was was to shovel money out the door as fast possible, especially because, the Biden gravy train was gonna be ending any you know, well, I guess, in 40 or so days. And, you know, he was even said on those clips from project Veritas that once he's done shoveling our money to these nonprofit groups in the United States that are on the left and are leftist nutjob climate activist groups, he hopes to get a job at one of those places one day. So he's using our money to to bribe someone, basically, to give him a job when his, you know, make work of my job at the EPA is done.

Jim Lakely:

And here we have cases. You know, people always say follow the money, Linnea. And so let's follow that money. Why is the why are the Chinese communists giving money to all these left wing groups, and why you know, what do you think they wanna get out of it? I think we know.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, gee. I don't know. Destabilizing a political enemy comes to mind. And the fact that, you know, we've got China funding all of our green groups. It is.

Linnea Lueken:

I think you mentioned this, but I was reading the comment section, so I might have missed it. But, you know, that Russia funded a lot of the anti fracking activism that was going on in the UK because they were interested in maintaining, you know, in or keeping the British reliant on Russian gas. Right. So so they're doing the same thing. And to think that they're not is crazy.

Linnea Lueken:

And to think that they don't want us to keep buying their solar panels and their components and their magnets and stuff because they they have control over something like 90 or 80% of all the, like industrial magnet resources on the planet and all of these. Yeah, right. You know, and on top of that, China is like, you know, the China is like Smog. He's like the it's like the dragon in The Lord of the Rings, except instead of hoarding treasure, it's hoarding coal. And it's he wants to keep buying up all the coal from every country on the planet.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. I think they're like the number one importer of coal. It's astonishing that people don't or that people refuse to make this connection because I think that it's so obvious that that our friends on the left have to know that that's what's going on, but they're happy to go along with it because they have similar goals.

Anthony Watts:

Speaking of coal, I would highly recommend that everyone watching this program look up Michael Mann doctor Michael Mann's email or not email address, but physical address at the University of Pennsylvania and send him a lump of coal for Christmas.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, it's a

Jim Lakely:

good thing we're already demonetized. That's, that's fine.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

And what gives us much more latitude now?

H. Sterling Burnett:

If we weren't if we weren't before, we sure would have been now.

Jim Lakely:

Will be now. Yeah. So so, yeah. I mean but but China is also you know, the it it's remarkable that, again, that this is so unknown, and a lot of people, you know, if we didn't do this for a living, looking out for this sort of news and wanting to share with our audience every week, and now our audience knows this, that China is funding left wing, climate groups in this country. And, they get to still wear the mantle of moral superiority over the rest of us who want to live normal lives, who understand that to live a normal life and not have out of control inflation, that you need to have cheap, reliable energy.

Jim Lakely:

And China is undermining all of that by supporting, the radical left climate movement, you know, machine in this country. You think it doesn't already have enough advantages with having the media take everything it says at face value and promoting it for free. And now we have China who wants to destroy the US economy, who wants to make it so that we have to play by the rules of, that come out of every conference of the parties or COP by the UN in their climate conferences while they run away scot free. And as we actually discussed, I think last week as well, they're part of BRICS, which wants to, you know, with Brazil and the other emerging economies in India, are trying to set themselves up as a counterweight to United Nations. So, you know, you almost got to tip your hat to, to China.

Jim Lakely:

Their dedication to destroying the United States and the west in general is, is quite comprehensive, and it's going on in a lot of places, big and small.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It it's it's I just got a comment,

Anthony Watts:

you know, on chat that came up. I wanna bring up. It's from Alex Pope. He says, Michael Mann would likely sue every person who sent coal. That's probably true.

Anthony Watts:

And so Can you sue for a gift? Good idea to poke the bear.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Can you sue for a gift? You're not slandering anyone. I I I don't know under what,

Linnea Lueken:

It probably depends on the gift, Sterling.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I imagine there are a handful of things you could mail to someone that they might be able to Very very you're right about that. Yeah. I'm not convinced China is just trying to destroy the West, because they they wanna sell all their goods to us to us. They certainly wanna sell all their goods to us, but they're trying to, become the dominant economic power. It's not just about military.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's it's about the economy, And they're they're doing it to they're they're cutting their their own deal with Europe. Europe's gonna, trash itself with its ESG policies, but they won't apply those to China's goods.

Jim Lakely:

Mhmm.

Anthony Watts:

They

H. Sterling Burnett:

will apply them to the US goods, but not to China's goods. China wants to sell us all the solar power. I don't see Chinese armies invading the US to destroy us. I think I think they just want us in decline and them in ascendance. And they're doing and they're they are in a very calculated, self interested fashion, doing everything they can to promote themselves as we self destruct.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They they they can't beat us, but we can beat ourselves. Look. This has been going on for more than a decade. Trump talked about this his first time. He said, look, the Chinese are smart.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They're they're putting China first. I we should put America first. And how they're doing that? Well, the belt and road initiative all over Africa, we won't we won't fund coal plants. We won't fund, fossil fuels there.

H. Sterling Burnett:

So China says, hey. We'll give you some money to build some infrastructure. All you gotta do is seed us some land, and make sure we get all your, you know, we get all these resources, and and we'll help you build things. So China is filling the gap that we are stupidly leaving.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Well, maybe not for long. Yeah. And speaking of, invasions of the military, let's go to our 3rd item here. That's the idea of going to war with electric vehicles.

Jim Lakely:

We'll see how that might work out. This is from GBN, which is from Great Britain. Net zero could put British army at risk as ministers forge ahead with use of electric vehicles despite military warnings. Now I know this has been talked about a little bit in the United States, but, apparently, the UK is determined to be the world leader in this nonsense. I'll read a bit from the story here.

Jim Lakely:

The government has positioned net zero goals as central to its defense industrial strategy, which was unveiled alongside Sir Keir Starmer's policy reset speech this week. Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, colonel Richard Kemp, condemned the initiative as, quote, virtue signaling by the minister Ministry of Defense trying to get into the climate change agenda. He warned that current technology is insufficient for battlefield demands, claiming, quote, it's hard enough to keep the current vehicle supplied with fuel. I just can't see how it could possibly work with EVs. And the, min a Ministry of Defense spokesman defended the plans though, saying, quote, the rapid advancement of electrical of electric vehicle technology has opened up new possibilities for military applications.

Jim Lakely:

This is making me long for the days of the $4,000 toilet seats and the, $500 hammer, but, here in the United States. But, you you read in that article and it it talks about how, yeah, that that that this is advancing, that EV technology is advancing so that you could put these things on the battlefield. I know that here in the United States that, there was talk, at least early in the Biden administration, about converting some of our military vehicles to electric. And I think, not that it's, you know, much better, but I think, in this case, the British military might only apply the electric vehicles to troop transports. I don't know.

Jim Lakely:

I think it's pretty important to be able to transport your troops where they need to be as quickly as possible and as reliably as possible. But, you know, what do you know? I don't work for the Ministry of Defense in the UK. And before I ask Sterling to comment on this first, I wanna thank the reason this is in the, climate crazy climate news of the week is because one of our viewers, reached out to us, via x and requested it. So thank you very much.

Anthony Watts:

What do

Jim Lakely:

you think, Sterling?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, I think, I have a very, very, clever plan. So we don't now we don't need to send more, military aid and and and munitions to the to Ukraine because Great Britain can send all the vehicles they are going to, mothball to Ukraine, lend lease. After Ukraine you know, after the war's over, Ukraine can pay them back, and they can use that to purchase all the electric vehicles. So it's a win win for everybody. We're we're, I'm all in on this, except the first time the UK gets invaded again.

H. Sterling Burnett:

They're you know, remember, they're not part of, the EU anymore, will end up coming to their rescue once more.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Well, Anthony Watts, you're the you're the only person on this panel who has actually owned an electric vehicle. Do you think an electric vehicle is in any way I

Anthony Watts:

wanna make make sure you understand that's past tense.

Jim Lakely:

Past tense. That's right. But you you do have experience with electric with an EV. I mean, the practicality of this has to be minus 0. Right?

Anthony Watts:

Minus 0. I don't know. That's a phrase I've never heard, but it's applicable, I guess, because I mean, just think about it. So you let's say you get these things all charged up, and you gotta rush them out into the battlefield. And so maybe the front, the the line moves.

Anthony Watts:

The the line of battle moves further along, and all of a sudden, it's beyond the range of this electric transport vehicle. What are you gonna do then? Tell the troops to get out and hike the rest of the way, you know, while they're under fire and so forth? And then how are you gonna get the damn thing back? There's no charging stations on the battlefield.

Anthony Watts:

What?

H. Sterling Burnett:

And and and if you're using electric vehicles, the first thing an enemy will do is strike your power plants. So you you know, or your transmission lines so you can't charge those vehicles. Right. The beauty of fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, that sort

Anthony Watts:

of thing, is it's self contained energy. You don't have to worry about replenishing it per se like a battery. You've you can transport that. I mean, you can you can drag a tank of of of diesel fuel behind your transport to keep you ready to go. You know?

Anthony Watts:

You you you can't really do that with an electric vehicle. I mean, I suppose you can lug an extra lithium ion battery behind it, but then there's another point. We've all seen these videos of lithium ion batteries and EVs going kaboom. Yep. So do you really wanna load up your transport vehicles with explosives?

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. I mean, you know, the the irony is that, you know, like it or not, war advances human technology. I mean, all the way from the stirrups that, the Mongols used to take over all of Asia, to trebuchets, to to airplanes in World War 1 were first used in war in that time. And here we are, of course, in the 21st century, we are going backwards. We are we are putting worse technology onto the battlefield be at a virtue signaling.

Jim Lakely:

And if I'm a British if I'm a young British man, I am not joining any military that has this sort of attitude, because they obviously want me dead. They don't want me to live. They're gonna put me in electric vehicle on the battlefield.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But Mhmm. The the the next, they'll be trying to put sails back on ships. Oh, wait. They are.

Jim Lakely:

They are. They are.

Linnea Lueken:

I'm trying so hard to find this hilarious tweet I

Anthony Watts:

saw a

Linnea Lueken:

while back.

Jim Lakely:

Sales.

Linnea Lueken:

From I think it was Lockheed Martin that was bragging about how one of their ICBMs or something is, like, the most low emissions ICBM. I'm trying to find it. It might have been fake, but I saw it, like, a year ago. And,

H. Sterling Burnett:

we're just

Linnea Lueken:

maybe the funniest thing.

Anthony Watts:

Laying waste to the landscape, but it's low emissions. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It's it's it's the it's the, it's the 21st century equivalent of the neutron bomb. We kill everybody, but we leave the buildings behind. Well, we kill everybody, but the earth but the earth but mother earth is happy. Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

It's it was very, very ironic and funny, and now I can't find it.

Jim Lakely:

Oh, well, keep looking. We'll still by the end of the show. It's it's pretty good. Well, if you could find it, we'll we'll show it. Alright.

Jim Lakely:

Well, let's move on to our, another fun, part of the show is our memes of the week, and we have this one. This actually comes from Chris Martz, our friend, the soon to be, with a meteorologically meteorological degree, from a Pennsylvania, university, who I saw this on his x feed this week. And, you know, if you think if you think this is destroying the planet, being a a pasture of cows, and this is saving it, then you're a moron. And the bottom picture, of course, are, mountain tops covered in solar panels.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. You know, actually, it's I think it's more moot than a moron.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Oh my god.

Jim Lakely:

Just Yes. Alright. And our and then our second one, is not really funny, but it's something that, Anthony did wanna bring up this week, him being a meteorologist meteorologist himself. I don't know why I can't say that out out loud. But this is, this is kind of a family photo, a group family photo of all the hurricanes, in this season.

Jim Lakely:

And, well, Anthony, this this, this family photo doesn't have as many members of the family in it as some as one Michael Mann insisted we'd have.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. He said, you know, 33 named storms this year in the Atlantic, and people that were actually in the know and were not climate zealots said, are you out of your mind? And so he stuck with it. You know? He doubled down on it.

Anthony Watts:

And so now he owns it. 18 named storms, not 33, and not a whole lot of damage in the US. We I mean, we did have a couple of storms, but nothing like it could have been. Certainly nothing like 33. You know?

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, I don't

Linnea Lueken:

know about that.

Anthony Watts:

To show how how hyped up they are on, you you know, climate pushing disaster. I'm sorry, Lenny. Go ahead.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. No. I'm sorry. I was just I was just disagreeing a bit about the, like, amount of damage. I mean, I would say that, like, Appalachia is in a pretty bad state.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's true.

Linnea Lueken:

But that was, you know, like, post tropical rather than, like, the full slamming of a hurricane. But, yeah, it was, not ideal. But you're a 100% right that the season was not as bad as Michael Mann.

Anthony Watts:

Right. And I wanna point out about the the stuff that went on in North Carolina, particularly around Asheville. Asheville had the opportunity to get some dams installed by the Tennessee Valley Authority back in the, I think it was the late thirties, and they voted it down. The the town got together and said, no. We don't want a dam.

Anthony Watts:

And they did that for aesthetic and outdoor reasons and so forth. And they had had a catastrophic flood before, but still, they didn't want a dam. And so now the same set of scenarios popped up with all of this rain from a post tropical cyclone, and they got huge amounts of rain, which overflowed the river and caused all kind of damage. So climate change was not to blame for what happened in Western North Carolina.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and it's just the idea that that, you know, the way the climate is changing now, where however you put assign blame to that, whether, and of course, we believe the nature drives the climate, not human activity. But, just this constant idea, this constant, panic mongering every single hurricane season that it's going to be worse, that every storm that forms in the Gulf is worse than it would have been 10 years ago if we weren't driving our SUVs. You know, and Anthony, you say this, you know, all through hurricane season that there is no evidence to support any of that kind of fear mongering.

Jim Lakely:

And, you know, and that's the point. So not only are the storms not getting stronger than they have been in the past, but the number of storms we were we were promised by Al Gore that we would have and we were promised by Michael Mann, we'd have more than 2 dozen named storms, and we didn't get them. And so we just wanna hold them accountable for their brummy predictions.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And I think if we don't

Jim Lakely:

do it here, nobody else is gonna do it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And and we haven't talked about it. Well, you gotta remember why they claimed it was gonna be so, bad this year. Because the oceans were hotter than ever, because the temperatures were hotter than ever, so the conditions were ideal for a record setting hurricane season. You you have these necessary conditions, and suddenly that's supposed to be sufficient for record setting hurricanes, but two necessary conditions aren't sufficient. There's a lot of conditions that go into it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, you know, what was it? I think I saw today, at RealClear Climate, they talked about there were 6 major hurricanes slammed the US, I think, in 1926, including one that flooded the White House, you know, that flooded Washington DC, talking about having to drain the swamp. So there's no evidence over the past 150 years and more that hurricanes speeds have been increasing, that hurricane severity hasn't been increasing, that hurricane numbers have increased, that major storms, minor storms, they ain't going in the direction climate models and alarmists say they should be going. Yep. Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Despite ideal conditions.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And the downside of all of this is that the media has got their climate alarm permanently turned up to 11. It just no matter what happens, they're gonna make some climate alarm out of it.

Jim Lakely:

And that's the game.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. We had a couple years where there weren't really very many big storms at all, at least that they didn't do anywhere near the damage that you would expect. And, they still were trying to connect connect every single storm, to climate change. It was inevitable that we would eventually get a year that had some bad ones. Luckily, I think we're we're outside of the season now, and next year should be less because, El Nino is over.

Linnea Lueken:

Right, Anthony? I'm assuming. Last time I checked it, it was in the middle zone.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It it's there's 2 trains of thoughts on that. Right now, those people saying that it's gonna be a La Nina year, and some people are saying it's gonna be a neutral year. It's hard to say at this point, but I will say this. All the fear mongering that's happened over the excessive temperatures for the globe, that's gonna start changing here pretty soon.

Anthony Watts:

We've already seen some beginnings of that data showing a downtrend. So, they're not gonna have a whole lot to talk about next year or the year after when it comes to the global temperature because it's going to go against the narrative. That's my view anyway, my my prediction. Yep. Yep.

Anthony Watts:

Alright.

Jim Lakely:

Well and we will be here to cover it as we are every, every single every single Friday and all year. This is our 138th show, so, we're gonna be having a lot more next year as well. Let's get into our main topic today, and that's, something that we came across. We and our allies sometimes share stories with each other, and this one, caught my fancy for sure. And it was the idea that maybe Elon Musk is abandoning the climate cult.

Jim Lakely:

And this is from, legacy media outlet, The Washington Post, the headline, Musk's politics hadn't seeped into Tesla, then he axed its eco car of the future. I'll read it. It's a it's a I recommend you look for this story and check it out. I'll read a little bit from it. Once one of the most vocal American executives on the dangers of climate change, Elon Musk called for a, quote, popular uprising against the fossil fuel industry in a 2016 film.

Jim Lakely:

At Tesla, every internal slide presentation had to include figures from former vice president Al Gore's documentary, an inconvenient truth, citing rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and a reminder of the company's mission. Now, again, he he founded Tesla, and you all know this if you've watched any of, you know, any of his public appearances, he presents the, you know, the Tesla electric vehicle as a solution to climate change that humans are causing. I'll continue here in the story. But the paragraph about global warming is no longer required in Tesla's presentation desk decks and climate change has plummeted on Musk's list of priorities. In an August livestream on X, he told Trump, quote, we don't need to rush to solve the climate crisis.

Jim Lakely:

People familiar with Musk's thinking say, the billionaire still believes in global warming and that it's a problem, a point he made online as recently as last year. But now he, but he now thinks the existential risks from the climate related disasters have been overstated. Maybe he's watching the show. Musk's transformation on climate change has been years in the making, sources said, sparked by a variety of influences, battles with environmental groups, tensions within, within the Biden administration, and a rightward shift related to the pandemic, which has exposed him to new experts and ideas. Wow.

Jim Lakely:

Quote, he used to be a Democrat who believed everything he was told was true about this, said one of the sources. And now he thinks for himself and realizes, yes, climate change is real, but it's not nearly among the top problems right now. Anything the left says was conspiratorial and bullshit, said one of the sources familiar with Musk's thinking. Now, before we kick this over to the panel, that's quite a story. Like I said, I definitely recommend you guys go and read that.

Jim Lakely:

We'll put it in the show notes. I'll I'll put a link to it in the description after the program today. But, Musk tweeted, prolifically 5 years ago, all the time, about limiting carbon dioxide emissions, reminding people that, quote, Tesla is working hard to stop to help stop global warming, unquote. He warned of an impending, quote, climate change meltdown, unquote, and he has publicly advocated for a carbon dioxide tax. And, he also once gave $6,000,000 did that Elon Musk, to the Sierra Club.

Jim Lakely:

And then that group and others on the environmental left tried to stop him from building a, a Tesla plant in Texas. This is where, the, the the reality hits the road as it were for the electric vehicles. And, so I think this is a really great sign, and I love the way it's described even in the legacy, the corrupt legacy Washington Post, that him getting closer to Donald Trump exposed him to people who think differently and also know what they're talking about, and it happened to change his mind on this very topic.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And, you know, I think this is, this is an indication of how powerful the climate skeptic movement is in general. I mean, there are 1,000, if not 100 of 1,000 of climate skeptics on x slash Twitter, and they're constantly posting content that we put out here, you know, at the Heartland Institute from what's up with that. I mean, this stuff gets retweeted. Musk has had to have seen some of this stuff, and a lot of the stuff that we produce are the one of those things that make you go, you know, you look at it, and all of a sudden, the data doesn't support the claims of the left.

Anthony Watts:

And this is an ongoing theme that climate skeptics have had for almost 2 decades now where we've been putting out, you know, reality as opposed to hype. And so, eventually, that's gotta sink into to people. And I wanna point out that Donald Trump himself has retweeted, some of the post from what's up with that. And so I'm I'm proud to say that we have influenced his thinking. I

H. Sterling Burnett:

I got, I guess, 2 two thoughts. For my first thought is I need to correct something I said earlier because I don't wanna be accused of being a liar or, not thoughtful. It was not the White House, but but the White House South, Mar a Lago, the the the New White House South, that was flooded in 26 when these storm after storm after storm hit the coast. But my thoughts on Musk are this. I think he lived in a world of rational ignorance that most people live in.

H. Sterling Burnett:

He can know a lot about the things that he is expert in, and he could be interested in a lot of other things. But I think on climate change, he just wasn't educated. He saw what the mainstream media was saying. He saw what his friends, the elites, were saying. And he said, well, these these are the guys that know about this stuff.

H. Sterling Burnett:

If they say climate change is happening, we gotta do something about it. He just went along. Not not that he bought into it. It it's just that's what everyone said. He didn't know better.

H. Sterling Burnett:

He didn't have time to it wasn't his main interest, and so he went along and and and sort of repeated it. But once he started looking into it, once he actually took an interest and, you know, maybe us or groups like us have played a a modest role in that, he saw that the emperor wears no clothes. And, and he sees as as the show with the Tesla factory that, the the people pushing climate alarm were opposed to his personal interest, his scientific interest, his economic interest. So, you know, it was an evolution, but I don't think it was an evolution from true believing climate alarmist to climate skeptic. I think it was an evolution from a rationally ignorant believer in the in so called consensus, to skeptic.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But maybe I'm wrong.

Linnea Lueken:

I I I'll I have a couple of thoughts on this one. I'm coming around on Musk, but I'm still you know, I I would still probably myself kind of hold him at arm's length if only because we on the right tend to have a kind of bad habit of very quickly, maybe too quickly embracing people who come over to our side, and we give them a lot more pull and a lot more, like, control over our movements, than we probably should from a prudential perspective. So I would say there there should be some caution there. However, based on the kind of work that he does and the kind of, like, sense of humor that he has and stuff, which might seem like a minor thing, but I'm not sure that it is a minor thing. He's doing stuff with, like, SpaceX that he really does not need to be doing.

Linnea Lueken:

That is a forward looking, hopeful, like return to greatness. Kind of. I don't know. It's the kind of thing that the left has been making fun of for decades now. Right.

Linnea Lueken:

Like, they they hate that Elon Musk is doing better than NASA at catching a rocket on a on a on a pad and being able to, you know, land shuttles and stuff all the time, not having to waste capsules into the ocean and whatnot. They hate that. He doesn't have to be doing it that way. He's he has a genuine interest in technology, and he has goals. And his goals are he wants to put a flag on Mars, and he wants people to stop being woke and annoying on the platform that he likes.

Linnea Lueken:

So

H. Sterling Burnett:

It doesn't have too much. Yeah. I

Jim Lakely:

think it's it might be easier to get to Mars than to do the second one. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

No. I think

H. Sterling Burnett:

so. He's he's so protect. Right? He he wants, he he believes implants and humans would be helpful for a number of things.

Linnea Lueken:

Which is stuff that I'm skeptical about.

Jim Lakely:

No. Yeah. Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

But

H. Sterling Burnett:

But he's a he's really, he is tech tech tech forward forward forward. He he really believes in all the great tech. He believes in AI, though I think he warns about AI some.

Jim Lakely:

He does. He's very worried about it, actually.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But it it's gonna be integral to his chips in the brains. He wants to not just plant a flag on Mars and leave. We did that on the moon. He wants to set up colonies. He wants transportation that goes underground at that's I don't know.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Think the speed of light, but, you know, very fast these vacuum tube things that he wants to build underground, he's that he was trying to do in California. If it's tech and cutting edge, Elon, a, is fascinated by it, and b, wants to be at the forefront of it. And, I don't think you can be at the forefront of tech if you're, you know, if on the other hand, you're destroying the technologies that make that tech possible and run.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And, you know, Sterling on and Jim, you know, you mentioned earlier about the problems that Musk had down in Texas with SpaceX, you know, and or not SpaceX, but building a a Tesla plant down there. Right? Well, he's had similar problems with SpaceX, and I just sent a link to our private chat here. Maybe you can bring it up.

Anthony Watts:

But get this. And this is probably one of the things that turned him around. His SpaceX was fined a $150,000 after actions put local area at risk. Basically, the Environmental Protection Agency basically said that the water that's coming off of the pad to cool the rockets and to keep the shock waves from happening and blowing things up was wastewater and because he didn't have a permit to dump wastewater, you know, and it wasn't really wastewater. It was just cooling it cooling water.

Anthony Watts:

And it's absurd. And so, I mean, he he tweeted about this as being, are you freaking kidding me? And, you know, that's the kind of overreak we get from the EPA that tend to turn people around when they see things that absurd and so just out of place that, it makes them to start thinking, you know, maybe this, an enviro stuff isn't such a great idea after.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, in the end, I believe that they've overturned that, fine because Texas said, you know what? We did approve his technology to do this. Secondly, a $150,000 is beneath his margin of error at any bank he holds his resources.

Anthony Watts:

I know, but it's the principal involved.

Jim Lakely:

Well, it irritate it irritates Elon Musk, and he's spoken about this openly that that the the government is getting in in the way. I mean, the the NASA Yep. NASA is never gonna get to Mars. He can. NASA can't even get our astronauts off the International Space Station after they screw it up using Boeing to get them there in the first place.

Jim Lakely:

And so, he's he's constantly frustrated. You know, you kinda get he was I think he always had libertarian leanings. But then when you start really advancing in your companies, especially SpaceX and, actually, the I always think it's really funny how he talks about or he talked about it. He probably won't talk about it as much anymore, but that Tesla is one of the products that's gonna help save us from, it's gonna reduce c o two emissions and save the planet. Meanwhile, his goal is to send up another, extremely emitting, rocket up to space, literally every hour on the hour for, I would presume, weeks on end for a Mars mission.

Jim Lakely:

You know, those two things just don't they're not very compatible. But, you know, he is an innovative thinker. He's somebody who is a creative thinker, and he's an he has an open mind. You you're not as successful as Elon Musk is, on your own basically, by innovating and and doing things. I mean, the boring company that he does, like, to drill, there's there's no money in that yet, but he's spending lots of money to do it.

Jim Lakely:

But, you know, your your mind has to be open to new things. And I just think it's it's noteworthy for sure that, Elon Musk with really, I think the eyes of the world upon him right now and certainly for the next few years is a person who, while he may have been indoctrinated by the left because a lot of people could just be passively indoctrinated into these things. You know? Just believe them because everybody you talk to believes in them. But once you're exposed to real facts instead of propaganda, your mind, it starts to take hold, and you start to think for yourself.

Jim Lakely:

And that's what this show is about. That's what Climate Realism is about. That's why What's Up With That is a very popular website, and why we're so grateful for everybody in this audience and everybody who supports the Heartland Institute because that's what we're in the business of, opening people's minds and telling them the truth. The truth is the truth. Your mind just has to be open to it.

H. Sterling Burnett:

It just occurred to me. Yep. No. That's well said. It just occurred to me that, Anthony and Jim have used Musk's transporter technology because, just noticed Jim's glasses look a lot like the second pair that Anthony wore.

Anthony Watts:

I've I've

H. Sterling Burnett:

had this for lunch. Oh, so, Anthony, it was flatter. It was flattery. Anthony was just glomming on to, there we go. Look.

H. Sterling Burnett:

You are fake. I don't make these things up.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Yeah. Linea, who wore them better? Right? That's that's that's me.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Who who gets out there? Now they could

Linnea Lueken:

be in I've got glasses too somewhere, but they're in the other room, so I'm not gonna go get them.

Jim Lakely:

Alright. Well, we we do have some q and a to get to. Thanks, everybody, for your, contributions to these parts of it, but we actually really do enjoy interacting with our wonderful audience here in the chat. And so, Linea, take it away. Oh, you're muted.

Jim Lakely:

You just pulled a gym. Oh my god.

Linnea Lueken:

You got me. You got me this time, Jim. Okay. Yeah. 1st, I would like to open it up by saying that once again, one of our very favorite viewers, Andrew Godridge, has sent us a real $20 bill in the mail because because, YouTube has blocked our ability to make money off of this channel.

Linnea Lueken:

So thank you very much. We appreciate that so much, Andrew. It's it absolutely makes my day every time I see, that you sent us a letter. So it's fantastic. I hope the postal work I

Jim Lakely:

hope the postal work that delivers our mail didn't see you say that because, now he'll be on the lookout for any packages from Andrew Goderich in the future.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Well so thank you very much. Now we can get 2 questions. Let's see. 2 are so I'm gonna pull this one up right now.

Linnea Lueken:

I don't know if any of you guys know who this this Scott Horton is, but, fighting Xenithian. Part of the reason why we don't often answer questions like this on the live chat is because a lot of times we don't know who you're talking about, and we would rather not accidentally, like, promote or something, someone who may or may not be a friend of the show, actually. So, you know, we we appreciate your viewership and everything. We'll have to look into that. Libertarian Institute definitely sounds like something that Heartland would, talk to, but I am not familiar with them.

Linnea Lueken:

Is anyone on the panel familiar?

H. Sterling Burnett:

No. And if he focuses on war, it's not really sort of

Jim Lakely:

Andy Andy, the producer is familiar. He loves them. So that that goes a long way. We'll see.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. So Andy knows them. So we'll we'll look into it. But usually we don't, address these questions. So just for future for other viewers, if you wanna ask these questions, chat or, like, the comment section underneath the YouTube video or on x is a good way to ask us about this kind of thing.

Linnea Lueken:

So if we're not answering these questions when you get when you post them in the chat, usually, that's why it's not because we're ignoring you or we don't care what you have to say. It's just that we can never be sure. Okay. Let's see. Let's go got a few here.

Linnea Lueken:

This is a a good tongue and cheek question from our friend, Mikhail, who says clean transportation. Does that mean they are going to clean the trains and buses? Not a chance. Not a chance at all.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. They'll still smell like urine. You know? Nothing you can do to get that out.

Anthony Watts:

Nothing like mobile filth. Right?

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Okay. Bob Johnson, friend of the show, asks, what a volcanic activity? I think that's with regards to could climate change impact volcanic activity? And my honest answer to that is I do not know, but I doubt it, at least not on timescales that matter.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think it I think the causation, if there's any, would be the other way. Volcanic activity could impact the climate, especially if it sort of look, there are some scientists, and Joe Bostardi agrees with them, Arthur Rotarito that argues that some of the warming is caused by an increase in volcanic subsurface volcanic activity in the oceans.

Anthony Watts:

Mhmm.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But, it's it's not climate change causing volcanic activity. It's volcanic activity contributing to climate change. And, of course, if there's a huge, you know, what what was it? Hunga Tonga.

Anthony Watts:

Hunga Tonga. Yep.

H. Sterling Burnett:

When you add when you add 10% of the total of water vapor into the atmosphere, you might get the next year being one of the warmest recorded, which is what happened. So there could be some causation, but it's from volcanoes to climate, not the other way around.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And the other side of the coin is we had another experiment in modern times in 1992 when Mount Pinatubo erupted, and it threw a tremendous amount of sulfur dioxide and ash into the atmosphere. And there were, recorded drops in temperature all around the planet due to all of that, all of those particles reflecting more sunlight into space than normally would be happening. And so, yeah, climate change can both warm or rather volcanoes can both warm and cool the planet.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. I mean, we had the same the same experiment, real life experiment, Krakatoa and and and tambora before.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. As well as historical anecdotes, Greenland volcanoes went off shortly before the famine that struck that set off the French revolution. They had days of darkness in Europe. Temperatures plummeted. It was a total nightmare for farmers.

Linnea Lueken:

So, yeah, it definitely it depends.

Jim Lakely:

And I I think I saw a documentary. I think I think the year is, like, 536, the worst year in history or something like that, where a where a volcano went off and and, very much damaged agriculture in Europe and killed, you know, it was just terrible. So, yeah, it's definitely the other way around.

Linnea Lueken:

Alrighty. This is a question from above us only Sky who says, was there a change from El Nino or was the change from El Nino to La Nina a factor in this year, not being as high of a hurricane season as Mann was predicting? Anthony?

Anthony Watts:

Well, the jury is still out on that one. There was other things going on. There was wind shear and so forth and so on. But the the I would point out that, you know, Mann predicting 33 named storms, of course, fell flat, but it also underscores the lack of true understanding that we have of our atmosphere even on a weather basis, much less climate basis. You know?

Anthony Watts:

And so we've got predictions all over the road for hurricane season, and they haven't got that nailed down yet. So it's just you know, it it's almost a crapshoot when they make these forecasts. Almost.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I agree with Anthony that we just don't know yet. This the the research isn't in.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. But if you want to know about if you wanna follow some people who are good, forecasters, you should look at friends of our show, like Joe Bistarte and Stan Goldenberg, who do really, really good work in the hurricane space. And, Ryan Maui, I would recommend. Let's see. This is from Slardabartfast, who says, was Musk really a climate alarmist or was he just great at spotting an upcoming trend and profiting from it?

Linnea Lueken:

It's a bit of a cynical view, and I don't I don't think it's outrageous to suggest something like this. But I don't I don't know Musk as a person, so I wouldn't be able to comment on something like that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yep. I can't numb I can't none of us, I think, can know Musk's true motives.

Anthony Watts:

I would say, though, that history has shown that some of the most successful industrialist and capitalist have followed trends.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Mhmm. Not followed them, have foreseen trends.

Anthony Watts:

And Yes. There you go.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Nope. Look at that. Hello from Wyoming. Hello.

Linnea Lueken:

I'm also a fan of Wyoming. Okay. Let's see. Kite Man Music says, why did they blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? All they needed to do is turn off the tap.

Linnea Lueken:

Maybe in the future, it could be turned on again if Russia played the game. Well, I think that depends on who you mean by they when it comes to blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. I think it's pretty clear that it wasn't Russia that did that. In terms of could they just turn off the tap? You need people upstream and downstream.

Linnea Lueken:

If the if you mean by they Russia, that Russia could turn off the tap, then yes. But if you mean like Germany could turn off the tap, I don't I don't think it's quite that simple.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But Russia and and, of course, Russia would have no interest in turning off the tap. They wanted to move as much gas as they could.

Linnea Lueken:

They're making a lot of money off of it. Yep. And to fund the war effort. So yeah. But I would I would suggest that probably it wasn't Russia that would blow up their own pipeline.

Linnea Lueken:

This is from Energy Colonizer who says, what is the panel's take on future secretary energy, secretary of energy Chris Wright? What kind of domestic energy expansion can we see with him? I'm so glad you asked, energy colonizer. We just completed a climate realism on this subject, which will go up sometime next week and, or climate realism post that is. And I'm working on an op ed about it.

Linnea Lueken:

He is a fantastic pick. I am, like, floored that he that Trump even knew who Chris Wright was to find him to put him on up for consideration. He is a phenomenal friend of climate realism, not necessarily the show, but climate realism in general. And also, we have people at Heartland who have met him before, including myself, and he's a cool person. I recommend that everyone go to the Liberty Energy website and read their ESG report, which is a lot more of a like anti ESG report than anything else.

Linnea Lueken:

It's actually very funny to read if you're familiar with other corporate ESG reports.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah, I found it.

Linnea Lueken:

He doesn't apologize. He's Liberty Energy is probably one of the only oil company, oil companies out there that doesn't run around acting as though their product is killing the planet. So it's it's very refreshing. I I think he's gonna be great.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. And I found out this week from a reputable source, one of his relatives, that he reads what's up with that daily. Thank you, Chris.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I'm liking this pickle. I'm very excited about it. What kind of domestic energy expansion could we see with him was the second part to that question. I would just say that he's almost certainly going to be helping to fight some of the overregulation that we've already had.

Linnea Lueken:

And it's a lot of what we have going on with domestic oil production has to do with our refinery capacity and pipeline capacity because you can't just keep taking oil and gas out of the ground if you don't have any way to put it. So that does kind of have a little bit of a hindering effect on how much domestic production we can do. But I imagine that some of his first recommendations are going to involve removing a lot of the regulatory overburden that that exists right now. Sterling, if you have a, like Yeah.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, you've got to remember, despite the fact that it's called the DOE, a lot of its, authority is over. It it it it deals with nuclear a lot, and it deals but where he can have a big role is in appliance standards and, even to some lesser extent vehicle standards, because the DOE is the one that keeps going in and rationing up the appliance standards and taking away our choice in appliances. However, as far as, the impact on oil and gas production, most of that is, done out of the the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Interior, they control the lands. The DOD doesn't have control over that. So, he can affect some things, but whether we get more production from public lands, whether, leases go forward, as they're required to do by law in a timely fashion, whether the, once the leases are are sold, whether the proposals to drill are approved, that's really run by another department, not the DOE, like, you would think from the the title of the department.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. Let's see here. We have a lot of really good questions today, guys. Thanks. I'm sorry.

Linnea Lueken:

We're going a little bit over, but these are there's a lot of really good ones. Above us only, Skye asks question from the UK about net zero. What actually happens if and when we achieve net zero, and how will we know when we've achieved it?

Anthony Watts:

When nothing works anymore.

Jim Lakely:

When you're dead. When we're all dead, we'll have achieved that 0. You know? The ultimate goal.

H. Sterling Burnett:

When when me and people like myself are suddenly the kings of the planet because we've been providing our own food with weapons all along and, aren't dependent on people shipping their food from long distances. And people look to us and they say, please save us. Provide us with venison and, and muscox and whatever, then you'll know net zero has been effective.

Jim Lakely:

Well, I I think what's actually at the heart of that question is, how will how will we know? It's like, who who calculates whether or not, say, the UK gets to net 0, and what are their motivations for doing so? And I think if their motivations are to continue to crush your freedom and make energy more expensive, they will tell you we have not yet reached net 0, and they will show you a formula that says that. If they wanna end it all, they will send they will have a formula that says we have reached net 0. We've made it.

Jim Lakely:

Now let's stay.

Linnea Lueken:

That's a great point, Jim, because it's a lot of accounting trickery to come up with net 0, especially when you look at the corporate level. They they pay entire that's the reason why all these corporations have huge ESG tied departments and stuff is so that they can do as much tricky accounting as they can to come up with the idea that their company is either on the path or already is net zero.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

Jackie Layton asks, what would need to happen for the UK government to wake up?

Jim Lakely:

You're like Nigel Farage.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Nigel Farage for prime minister. I don't know. That's a tricky one. We've had episodes before where we had, individuals who are, you know, experts, in UK policy.

Linnea Lueken:

People like,

Jim Lakely:

Lois and

Linnea Lueken:

yeah. And others who they have they have quite a hopeful outlook. It looks kind of bad from our end looking over. But, hey, we just we just got rid of a president in a popular vote landslide for a Republican for the first time in decades. I would not say that it's impossible for your government to turn around.

H. Sterling Burnett:

I I would suggest one thing, supporting the Heartland Institute because, Jim, is is it too early to, talk about what's going on in the UK with us?

Jim Lakely:

Yes. It's too early. Okay. Well, then I will

H. Sterling Burnett:

next week, we will announce a thing that will drive climate policy in the UK and across Europe.

Linnea Lueken:

Yes. Alrighty. Let's go. Okay. How about this?

Linnea Lueken:

This is from Nude Mano who I'm sorry if I butchered that name. Are you aware of the global carbon project and the sinks like oceans do not even allow an accumulation of CO 2 in the atmosphere? I'm gonna push that to Anthony because that sounds like something up his alley.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I'm gonna give a short answer on this. I am aware of it. I have been aware of it, and now I ignore it. It's just that simple.

Anthony Watts:

It's there's nothing of of merit there with the global carbon project. It's just another another way to try to achieve this bogus net zero thing, and they come up with all these arguments about, you know, this and that or whatever, but there's nothing of merit, nothing of substance there.

Linnea Lueken:

What is it exactly? What what is the, I don't know what the global carbon project project is. I haven't heard of it before.

Anthony Watts:

The global carbon project. Well, first of all, it's misnamed. You know? Carbon is not the problem. Carbon dioxide is what they claim the problem to be, but they just shorten it to carbon because they're sloppy to begin with.

Anthony Watts:

You know, as if there's carbon going into the atmosphere, and that's not necessarily true. Now every time I've seen carbon go into the atmosphere as a badly tuned diesel engine. But, basically, that whole project is all about coming up with ways to monitor and and shame, industry people, politicians, into thinking that what's going on with normal life is a detriment to the planet, and therefore, you need to do something about it or you need to stop it. It's just basically a pressure group. That's all.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, yeah. Those are a dime a dozen. Okay. Asks, wasn't there a fairly recent paper indicating that there are many more hot smokers on the ocean floor as previously thought. My I I I'm not familiar with that paper.

Linnea Lueken:

My initial impression would be that I'm not surprised by that because we really don't have the ocean floor as well mapped as you would think that we do. So but it doesn't surprise me at all that we have a lot more, deep water, you know, hydrothermal stuff going on.

H. Sterling Burnett:

We may we may know less about, our own ocean floors than we know about the moon, for instance.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I was thinking about the same thing.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And, I don't know that particular paper. I'd be interested who the author was, but like I said, a geologist we've worked with for a few years, Arthur Peter Vittarito has written a lot about subsurface volcanic activity and when it has ramped up and what it's, the coral correlation with rising temperatures has been. Some some people dispute Viterito's claim. They claim that it's it's due to better monitoring than we had before, and, I'm not ready to wait into that. But I'm not familiar with this paper, but I'd be interested in it actually if they wanted to send a link.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. Now we have a question from Gustavo who says, do you think the ridiculously small role of c o two and warming will ever be acknowledged by everyone? In other words, what does it take for all this nonsense to end? It has to start there.

Anthony Watts:

Well, I think that it's it's a follow the money scenario again, just like, you know, Watergate. There's so much money being put into climate change research, climate change grifters, you know, whatever you wanna call it, that to stop it is to basically shut off your own food supply. And so the acknowledgment that carbon dioxide isn't really gonna be driving the planet's demise is gonna be a very tough pill for them to swallow. The only thing that can happen to start pushing this stuff down, I think, is to shut off the money tap, and maybe, just maybe, our change in government after January 20th will start that. And we'll see some of this money drying up, and these people will act actually have to get a real life and a real job and do something, well, you know, positive as opposed to just trying to tear down society.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you. Okay. I can only take 2 more questions here. That's all we have time for. But okay.

Linnea Lueken:

So I'm gonna do this one. There's a couple of typos in this one, so I'm gonna read it as best as I can. But this is from nothing as it seems, who I have not seen in our comments section before. So thank you so much for coming around and chatting with us. They say, so you so you think if this administration can clean up the

Jim Lakely:

EPA, will they stop allowing the exceptions for California clear

Linnea Lueken:

air clean air or net zero goals? For California clear air clean air or net zero goals? So this is one I'd probably pitch to Sterling,

H. Sterling Burnett:

I think. Well,

Linnea Lueken:

no. I think there's a good chance that they will

H. Sterling Burnett:

attempt to, end the waiver, under Okay. The to be clear, it's not just a regulation. It's part of the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act allowed the EPA to grant states, the power to set stricter emission standards, stricter pollution standards than, the federal government did. Because some states, California being the prime, had really steeper air problems, not not c o two, but, you know, real smog and things like that.

H. Sterling Burnett:

And so in the cleaner act, they were allowed the EPA was allowed to grant a waiver, which it did. And it also allowed states to adopt California's rules. Now this has been used, by California, to basically set, a tailpipe. It was it was in the Clean Air Act, it was for industry. Under Massachusetts v EPA, once the EPA was told by the courts that c o two was pollution, which is what they ruled, because it was emitted into the air and anything emitted is pollution.

H. Sterling Burnett:

That's how the court reasoned. The EPA then had to decide whether it, it was it it caused danger. It cited the the rather than actually looking at real data and research, it cited the IPCC to say it did. So it said issued an endangerment finding, and then California said, we want a waiver to fight c 02 from tailpipes, and EPA granted under under under Biden. I mean, no, under Obama.

H. Sterling Burnett:

So it's it's that's the long technical story of it. The EPA, could withdraw the waiver. If it did so, it would, save save the auto industry, I think. It would affect not just California, but all the states that have adopted California's rules. Some states have adopted some of the rules and not others.

H. Sterling Burnett:

But the the key the key would be for, the new EPA administrator to have the agency re reanalyze its endangerment finding itself and find that c o two is not a pollutant or or or it's not a danger. The court says it's pollutant. The EPA could find it's not in danger, that it's that it's affected, a beneficial gas that we all admit. And when we breathe out, we're not polluting.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you very much. That was so thorough. Thank you. Okay. This is our final question from Wyo Fett.

Linnea Lueken:

I love that name. Says hello from Wyoming. Could y'all please explain the idiocy of Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon's statement saying that Wyoming will become carbon negative? Yes, it is an idiot statement. If there's any states that could possibly achieve something like that, it could be Wyoming if you shut down all of your essential industries.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Well, it's already pretty it doesn't have much of a population. If everyone just moved out, it would be carbon negative.

Linnea Lueken:

The the majority, I believe, I I could be wrong on this. But last time I checked, I think I saw that the majority of emissions of, greenhouse gases in the United States comes from the transportation sector. Having driven a lot on the terrifying expanse of I I-eighty between Cheyenne and Laramie, I will say that there is, you know, it's it's probably not the highest traffic, location in the United States. So maybe if you guys all went back to, the the stage coach, you might be able to eliminate your emissions.

Anthony Watts:

They'd have to shut down interstate 80. They go carbon negative.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, definitely. Oh, you would a 100% have to. Unless They

H. Sterling Burnett:

have they have to they have to end they have to end all the coal bed mining, which, of course, Biden is doing his best to do that right now. That they've said they're not gonna approve any new, coal operations. They're trying to shut down existing ones. But those are the kinds of things, and that's why, the governor is so stupid to say that.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, there is a silver lining to this idea, and that is if they did go carbon negative and shut down everything, the, supercomputing facility, just over the border from Colorado or or wherever, run by the National Center For Atmospheric Research, one of these giant supercomputers that comes up with all of these fantastic climate model projections would be shut down. And why did they put it in Wyoming? Because the energy is cheaper there. Why is the energy cheaper there?

Anthony Watts:

Because it's powered by coal.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. And, you know, what joking aside, Wyoming's oil and gas industries are obviously not something that governor Gordon is out loud saying that he's going to go after. What he usually is leaning in on is the carbon capture, utilization and storage or sometimes not even including the utilization part, which is the dumbest version of sorry. Let me rephrase that. Carbon capture utilization is the least dumb version of carbon capture because you're using the carbon dioxide to basically do, like, well stimulation.

Linnea Lueken:

So you're recycling it. Right? You're pumping it down into the well to help push more oil and gas out of it. Carbon capture and storage, which is where you create a reservoir to just inject carbon dioxide into or even like carbon. Concentrate tubes, like nanotubes kind of things and not using them for anything, but just sticking them underground is very stupid.

Linnea Lueken:

And it is it's kind of like the like I don't know, shaking or breaking windows or something. But a lot of big oil companies and a lot of kind of rhino Republicans seem to think that this is the way that they can save the oil industry. What they don't realize is that the greens and especially those in our government are not interested in stopping emissions. They are interested in shutting down oil and gas.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

So carbon capture is not going to save the oil industry.

H. Sterling Burnett:

This this should make everyone long for the days before Texas became part of the union and part of Texas stretched into New Mexico and through and and into Wyoming because we would not have any of this nonsense from our governor.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Carbon capture is the, is them letting you tie your own noose. How nice of them instead of tagging yourself. So alright. Well, thank you, thank you everyone here for being on the show.

Jim Lakely:

We had, including on X and Rumble and Facebook and YouTube today, we had, we're close to 2,300 live viewers tuning in today. So, that is fantastic. So I wanna thank everybody in our audience who helps spread the word of this show so that we can continue to grow and get even more people watching live. I wanna remind you to always visit climate realism.com. That's one of the websites of the Heartland Institute that we talk about quite a bit on this program.

Jim Lakely:

Visitclimate@glance.com where you can get, a copy of the Climate at Glance book and all the information you need to counter climate alarmist BS. Always visit what's up with that every single day like, apparently, our incoming energy secretary does. Go to heartland.org, where you can subscribe to the climate change weekly newsletter, which I know a lot of listeners to this program also get. And, I wanna have wish everyone a very good Friday and a very good weekend, and we will talk to you again next week. Bye bye.

H. Sterling Burnett:

Come on, man.