Environment and Climate News Podcast

On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. That is just one of many ocean mammals harassed and killed by these projects that will, at best, provide unreliable and expensive energy. Remember when “save the whales” was the cry of the environmentalists? Now they are fine with a spike in dead whales washing up on our Atlantic beaches as long as the “green energy” agenda continues apace.

The Heartland Institute is part of a lawsuit to stop to a major wind project in the Atlantic and save the right whale. We will talk about that effort with Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFACT, who are also part of the suit. Join them and host Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken to talk about that, plus the Crazy Climate News of the Week.

Creators & Guests

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

What is Environment and Climate News Podcast ?

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

Craig Rucker:

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

Linnea Lueken:

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.

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.

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.

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 antagonist. It is Friday, and this is our own personal Friday protest, the Climate Realism Show episode 104. Save the whales, kill the turbines. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Joining me today, we have our regular panelist, doctor h Sterling Burnett, who is director of the Robinson Center For Climate at the Heartland Institute, and we also have Linnea Lukin, who is a research fellow with that same outfit.

Anthony Watts:

We have with a special guest, Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFAK. They're gonna be talking about something a little bit later, but welcome, guys. Glad you could join us today.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Thanks for having us. To be here. Thank you.

Anthony Watts:

Great. So on the show today, what we're gonna do is explain that to save the whales, we need to kill these large, offshore wind projects. These so called wind farms, particularly on the Atlantic Coast, are large, and they do more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering the area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the mid Atlantic Coast poses a complete risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Now this is just one of many ocean mammals that are being harassed and killed by these projects due to the sonic vibrations that make it into the ocean.

Anthony Watts:

Do you remember a few years ago when people were having a cow over the fact that submarines were using sonar in this area to do some testing? People on the left went berserk over that. You're killing the whales. You're killing the whales. But now that we have these wind turbines going thromp, thromp, thromp, thromp into the ocean, That's okay.

Anthony Watts:

It's rank high prophecy. Really is on the left. So we're gonna get to that issue momentarily. But first, we wanna start off with crazy climate news, some of the nuttiest eye rolling stuff that's been on the Internet this week. First, we wanna go to this Twitter link.

Anthony Watts:

Now this is from doctor Ryan Nowley. Now he gives us this fact check. Basically, there's this one guy, who's you know, he's he got 224,000 followers because he regurgitates some of the worst climate crap out there. But he but Ryan Miles calling him out Maui is calling him on it saying, can anyone explain why these climate doomers are losing their minds over a beautiful warm spring day? Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

Look at this. Coming up, seventies, mid seventies. Oh my god. We're gonna roast. It's crazy.

Anthony Watts:

But, look, if we scroll down a little bit on that on that tweet, we'll see what the guy's original claim is right there. Okay. So here's the guy, Mike, Hudema, and he's got 224,000 followers. And he puts out this map, you know, which is, of course, is a model map. And look at that.

Anthony Watts:

The whole central part of Europe is baking. Climate crisis. Oh, no. Anyway, it's 70 degrees. Nobody is roasting.

Anthony Watts:

What do you think about this, guys? I mean, why do these people go so nuts over these maps?

Sterling Burnett:

Not roasting. Probably some people are outside celebrating and picking flowers and sunbathing.

Linnea Lueken:

I don't know. Some of those some of those, Northern Europeans can get pretty, complainy about anything over, like, 65 degrees, I've noticed.

Sterling Burnett:

Oh, well, there you go.

Terry Johnson:

Well, it is France and then, you know, I don't know how this impacts the wine, but I would think it would be nicer to have your wine and cheese and crackers on a warm day than a cold one. Yeah.

Anthony Watts:

It's just nuts. You know? It's like any anything slightly out of the northern area. So slightly warmer than normal spring. It's climate change, death, destruction, raining from the skies.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. But the quest the question is, is it a slightly warmer than normal spring? I mean, the colors he uses make it looks makes it look bad. But my question is, relative to what it is there normally in the spring, is it that much warmer?

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah.

Terry Johnson:

I don't know. Do you vacation in France in the spring much, Sterling?

Sterling Burnett:

No. I was there last year in in July, but,

Craig Rucker:

not the spring. The weather sounds good there.

Anthony Watts:

Anyway, our next topic, Taylor Swift and climate change.

Craig Rucker:

I love this.

Anthony Watts:

Yes. There's been quite a number of people who've pointed out that Taylor Swift has a humongous carbon footprint. Maybe the only other larger carbon footprint in terms of celebrities and so forth might be John Kerry, the climate envoy, flying everywhere to give his message of doom and gloom and and stop building those coal plants while the Indians and the Chinese laugh at it.

Sterling Burnett:

I think Taylor's topped him. I think Taylor's topped him.

Anthony Watts:

Might be. Might be.

Sterling Burnett:

I mean, she's going to concerts all over the world every day. She's flying somewhere.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah. She is

Craig Rucker:

And how much is her dating Travis Kelce added to that in that she has to make it back from her concerts to Kansas City Chiefs games?

Anthony Watts:

Yes. Yeah. So here's the bottom line. This study done, says that Swift emitted 83 100 metric tons of carbon dioxide, about 1800 times the average person's annual emission, according to the Carbon Market Watch. A study claimed Swift was the number one celebrity responsible for c o two emissions in 2022.

Anthony Watts:

The study stated she spent nearly 23000 minutes in the air about 16 days. And we have a bar chart that kinda shows this this whole summary of Taylor Swift compared to the rest of the celebrities out there. Look at this.

Sterling Burnett:

I told you. Carey doesn't even rank. You know, look.

Terry Johnson:

I I so I'm just that. I I don't know how that happened, but, plead innocent, whatever it is.

Sterling Burnett:

That, that that that's just her flights. That's not even counting. And then the study looked at the carbon footprint from all the vendors and all the materials that are sold at her shows and the energy used, in producing her shows. And, I think they even tried to account for the vehicles traveled to get to her shows. It's worse than that.

Sterling Burnett:

So now I should I should I should say we may be canceled by the Swifties now. I'm sure they're going to come to her defense. And so we may have our show pulled from YouTube because not because of anything we said about climate, but because we've we've said something about Taylor Swift.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, I'm trembling.

Sterling Burnett:

How dare you? Yes.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Was this study I I don't have the link in front of me. Was this study one that was done by, like, a university or, like, a grant receiver? Because

Sterling Burnett:

I think it's done by just a an environmental group that's out there doing it.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. Alright. That's okay then, I guess. I was about to say because if this is something that, like, some university threw together really fast, I'm just thinking tax dollars went to this. We're we're actually we're actually spending money to calculate how many emissions, celebrities are.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. No. I don't like it.

Sterling Burnett:

Now now I'm

Craig Rucker:

thinking about counter carbon offset because a lot of these celebrities say that, you know, yeah, maybe I jet set more, but I'm paying Africans to not Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sterling Burnett:

So I'm I'm paying Africans to stay impoverished. So

Craig Rucker:

Yeah. I mean, have we have we factored that into the equation? I mean, maybe she's

Terry Johnson:

I

Craig Rucker:

have carbon neutral.

Sterling Burnett:

Who knows? I don't think I don't think the study indicates that she's become anywhere near carbon neutral. Though they do what they do is they go about suggesting things she could do to reduce her carbon footprint in the future, like make all the memorabilia just electronic only. And, Yeah. I know.

Sterling Burnett:

I wanna take home an electronic t shirt.

Craig Rucker:

Well, if she does a benefit for Joe Biden, does that, does that also reduce her carbon footprint because she's giving to the most environmentally friendly president. You know?

Sterling Burnett:

1 I think I think that that itself is doubling it with all the hot air he puts out.

Terry Johnson:

What oh, listen. That's my cue. Can I add to the climate craziness, discussion right here? So, there was a presidential order that, the all the agencies followed to put up all these, wind, facilities off the coast. And, the order says this.

Terry Johnson:

The order says the United States and the world face a profound climate crisis. We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impact of that crisis, and it sees the opportunity for tackling climate change that climate change presents. There's little time left to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic climate trajectory. So there If

Anthony Watts:

there's no time left, why should we worry about it anymore?

Sterling Burnett:

That's Omar Khayyam, eat eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Anthony Watts:

Alright. Yeah. Well, enough of the Swifties. Here's the headline of the year. Linnea found this one.

Anthony Watts:

Oh my goodness. Climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers. Gosh. Is there nothing that climate change can't do?

Linnea Lueken:

We don't we don't have to talk about this one in detail. We're, I'm not sure that's crazy. Self explanatory. I think, it's it's yet again one of those, you know, world ends, women and minorities most affected type of stories. So

Sterling Burnett:

And you and you talk about minorities. How much more of a minority can you be than a Indonesian trans

Terry Johnson:

sex trans sex worker?

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. That's pretty that's a pretty small minority right there.

Craig Rucker:

Well, there's a lot of isn't that largely a Muslim country? I didn't think that that might be a post effort going too.

Anthony Watts:

But read this. I mean, this is the kind of journalism that passes for climate change along these days. It's joy. Don't scroll, please. Stay.

Anthony Watts:

I'm gonna read that. Joya Patheeda, a 43 year old Indonesian transgender woman, first started to notice the changing weather patterns in the mountain ring city of Bandung were affecting her income as a sex worker since a decade ago. Rainy season was lasting longer, and so she couldn't get out and ply her trade or his trade or whatever, its trade. You know? And and so it must be climate change.

Anthony Watts:

Right? Because, gosh, I noticed this in the weather. Weather is not climate. They never seem to get this.

Sterling Burnett:

It's just the the the

Craig Rucker:

I gotta I gotta wonder about the reporter. I mean, did they fly somebody over? I mean, the greenhouse emissions of going over to find a trans sex worker in Indonesia. I mean, this just seems like an assignment that, you know

Linnea Lueken:

People trying

Craig Rucker:

to find

Sterling Burnett:

like that.

Anthony Watts:

Well, they

Sterling Burnett:

don't they don't have to fly in there anymore, Craig. I mean, because they, you know, the Climate Alarm Foundations have given so many 1,000,000 of dollars to the AP and stuff. They've hired people in those in those countries just to report on climate change. Wow. So if they if they so if they don't file their reports and the reports aren't alarming, they don't get paid.

Sterling Burnett:

So they're gonna find problems. Believe me.

Linnea Lueken:

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but people online were saying that this, correspondent who wrote the article is one of the, old vice reporters that got, laid off, which is a funny joke. I don't think it's true, but that's a pretty that was pretty sharp, I thought.

Anthony Watts:

Yes. But that's where It

Craig Rucker:

just sounds like an odd thing

Anthony Watts:

to be Laid off your own.

Craig Rucker:

Fly over and just say, you know, I'm going to Indonesia. You know what? Report on the tsunami and her no. To find a transects worker who's been laid off from climate change.

Sterling Burnett:

Climate change. Assignment.

Linnea Lueken:

I think I think what ends up happening with a lot of these stories, and and Sterling probably agrees with me on this because we see it all the time for climate realism, is they have something that they want to write about. So they probably just want to write about, like, how hard it is to be a trans, Indonesian or Indonesian trans, prostitute. And, and then because they're, like they get a certain amount of funding to do climate related stuff, they just tie climate to it in order to make the headline so that they can get the funding for their, paper on it. So

Anthony Watts:

It's not about quality. It's about quantity.

Craig Rucker:

Maybe they could fly Taylor Swift over there to do a benefit concert for the trans

Sterling Burnett:

trans sex over to Indonesia. Yeah.

Craig Rucker:

Having a tough time from climate change. Just a thought.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Alright. So, the final thing, here's the future of electric vehicles. This is when you can't afford to replace your Tesla battery. Oh, thank goodness for AI generated imagery these days.

Sterling Burnett:

I like the I like the big tires they set it up on.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Off road.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Well, this is what's gonna happen to all the EVs in the western world, you know, where the owners can't afford to replace the batteries and they get scrapped. They're gonna ship them overseas, and then the the people in the 3rd world countries are gonna put big tires and donkeys on them.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Everywhere everywhere everywhere will be Cuba. The I can't wait for the day when the people who do all the hot rod, modification, made it make them into low riders that have the hydraulic shocks that bump them, bump bounce them up and down on the street. When they do that with electric vehicles and those things just explode once they're bouncing around and the battery goes off. Or they just lose their charge in mid jump and you're stuck.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. It's it's something else. Alright. So that's enough of crazy climate news. Let's go on to our main topic.

Anthony Watts:

Save the whales and kill the turbines. Now first, we wanna ex explore what is the North Atlantic right whale? And Noah has a nice page on this. And I would point out that if this was called the left whale, the environmentalists would care about it. Right?

Anthony Watts:

Right?

Terry Johnson:

Well well, the the right whale got its name because it was the right whale to kill, because it swam very slowly. It was near the coast of, New England. And once you killed it, it floated. So how much more right can you get than that? And had lots of blubber too.

Terry Johnson:

So, all of that made it very much the right right will. And there there's there's where the, the name came from.

Sterling Burnett:

Let's let let Terry, let's point out real quickly, by the way, not just the right whale, but the sperm whale and all the whales that they used to hunt. They were saved by fossil fuels. They were hunted by fuel for for for lanterns and other things, other uses. That's why they were hunted. And, when oil came along, we no longer needed that stuff, and they started to come back.

Sterling Burnett:

So they were saved by fossil fuels.

Anthony Watts:

Exactly. Yeah. Totally. Left ever pays attention to this.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. I mean, if if, some substitute for whale oil and come along, I mean, there'd be 0 whales, out there. But, fortunately, it did, in the 18 fifties in, Pennsylvania. And, the whales got a break. However, this particular species, the right whale, didn't, get enough of break until now when there are only about 300 and 50 of them left in the world.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. And, they're, they're in trouble.

Anthony Watts:

So let's, let's talk about what's actually happening and and why do we have, these whale deaths. And and and, Craig, if you can kinda give us a background about what's been happening over the past few years and why this is a concern now, that'll help the discussion.

Sterling Burnett:

Before we do that, can I just say real quick? You have to understand why the North Atlantic right whale is important. It has been on the endangered species list since the list inception. So since the early 19 seventies, there are between 323140, total whales in existence North Atlantic right whales in existence. That number is declining despite efforts to save it for, what, 50 years now.

Sterling Burnett:

And, now they're putting more barriers to its continued existence. It's protected by the ESA and the Marine Mammals Protection Act, but they're offering no protection right now. So, Craig, take over.

Craig Rucker:

Well, I'm gonna just here.

Anthony Watts:

According to the graph there that we have on the previous image, it seems like the population peaked around 2010. And I would point out that around that same time, that's when these wind projects started really getting going out on the Atlantic. Am I right?

Craig Rucker:

You are right. Actually, since 2017, there's been about 40 of them that have been that they found are dead. And even this year alone, there's been 4 of them, that have, passed away, probably a 5th one because the last one was was a female and likely had a calf, that will also perish too. A lot of them that perished that do out in the ocean, they don't know about as much, unless a ship happens to come across them. They do float, as Terry said, but a lot of them also wash up on the beach.

Craig Rucker:

So what wound up happening is that, there's been a push for offshore wind that, predates actually both, back, before Biden, before Trump going back to Obama. But it really took off in 2017 with the, lot of the northeastern governors in particular trying to, project, you know, and get, offshore wind in order to handle the climate crisis. Biden, when he came in, made it a real priority by wanting to get, 30 gigawatts or 30,000 megawatts of offshore in by the year 2030 and, made that a a big priority. So, it's, you know, they've just gone gangbusters. The problem is that they're putting these wind offshore wind farms, there's about 20, 30 projects of them, about 15 to 30 miles off the shore, right in the lane of about 30 different whale species that go up the coast.

Craig Rucker:

The most important one that we talked about is the right whale and, because it's the most endangered. And, since then there's just been, even by the, government's own standards, a unusual mortality event as whales have been beaching themselves, washing up on shores. It's made news, and, a lot of people, perceive that much of the problem is caused by the pile driving and the sonar blasting to map the ocean floor, things that interfere with its sonar navigation. That is likely a culprit.

Sterling Burnett:

The the you know, I I would I would be interested to see when the Scott, government, UK government first started putting in wind farms off in the in the in the North Sea because that may correspond with the initial decline. Because they've been doing this they've they've been erecting them for longer than us. They've got a a big set out there.

Craig Rucker:

It's What's what's particularly, amazing about this particular issue is, of course, many of the green groups, which made made their, you know, in their heyday were save the whales people. You had, Greenpeace and all these other organizations that were out there that, that's their raison d'etre. And, today, they're silent. They're actually on the side of the wind farms. Many of them actually receive and it's been documented money from them.

Craig Rucker:

And in conversations with them, I often ask them, I said, hey, whatever happened to save the whales? I've actually personally been told, you know, we get it, we're concerned about the whales, but climate change is a bigger issue. Since we're all going to be wiped out by climate change, if a few species maybe have to go in order for us to take the types of actions such as get renewable energy in, and the whales have to bite the dust a few of them, that may be the price we have to pay to tackle a even greater emergency. And that's kind of their logic.

Sterling Burnett:

But here's the problem. Illogic. I I mean, here's the problem. In law, according to the law, the regulations say the government's own estimates say that you can't the right North Atlantic right whale can't suffer a single additional death above natural mortality in any single year and still be on the path to survival. Not 1.

Sterling Burnett:

0.7, in fact.

Terry Johnson:

7 10ths. Right?

Sterling Burnett:

So that's that's the law. That should be restraining all activities because the ESA could shut down oil anywhere. It can shut down anything anywhere else, but it can't shut down an executive order that Biden has to start building these things. Now they claim, oh, well, we've done that crop on the 4 whales we've looked at. None of them have had burst eardrums, so it's not the sonar.

Sterling Burnett:

Now when I I actually testified a few years ago on behalf of mapping for oil and gas off the northeast coast, and it was brought up, oh, what about the Northland? Well? I said, well, you don't have to do the sonar when they're passing through. They migrate. Only do it, but that's not what the wind people are doing, and they're saying the sound doesn't bother them now.

Sterling Burnett:

They do it year round while they're trying to map the floor to see where we can set these things. And they're saying that sound doesn't, doesn't bother the whales, except it's the same sound that they said was bothering the whales, would bother the whales if it was oil and gas doing it. In in in the end, they say

Anthony Watts:

hypocrisy on this.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. In the end, it's not the sound. It it doesn't have to be the sound, I should say. It's the additional shipping traffic. Shipping is the number one known, human killer of not just right whales, but all sorts of marine mammals.

Sterling Burnett:

And so we put additional ships in their way, and the sound is forcing them out of their traditional route into the busiest shipping lane in America. So that it's it's an indirect it could be an indirect effect, but they're not accounting for that.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. I wanna point out that the National Institutes of Health published a study called health effects related to wind turbine sound, an update. And this is the effects on humans. And we've seen this time and time again where someone build the wind farm and the subsonic vibrations that that goes on with these wind turbines affects the health and not just the the mental health, but the physical health of people. So why would it not affect another mammal, such as a whale?

Anthony Watts:

Or the left says, oh, no. There's no problem at all. No problem at all. Not being bothered by this. But these same people, these hypocrites out there were saying, as as Sterling rightly points out, that SONAR was bothering and killing these whales before associated with navy test and so forth.

Anthony Watts:

The hypocrisy is just absolutely rank with the left on this. They're more interested in their green agenda than they are in saving an endangered species, in my opinion.

Terry Johnson:

They're they're more interested in money. I mean, that's what it comes down to. They've all bought into the notion that we have a climate crisis and therefore, we you need to send us your money to solve the climate crisis. And, if the whales get killed out, you know, hey. Tough luck.

Terry Johnson:

That's too bad. Of course, that's not what the law says. The endangered species act is very, clear on this, that, they're they're they're breaking the law. And, hopefully, we're gonna be able to pin that on when we, you know, have our card case.

Sterling Burnett:

Well, Terry, you you can't make a wind omelet if you don't break a few whales.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Good one. Yeah. No. I haven't thought of it that way, but that's true.

Terry Johnson:

They're, they're, very, clearly, financially tied into this notion of the, the climate crisis. And, it's been hard to, get the courts to acknowledge that this is a problem for the well, but we're we're taking a different approach, which I'll get into in a little bit, but hopefully that's gonna work.

Craig Rucker:

And and I might wanna add there's not there's other issues. I saw one of the people put up on the screen here while we were talking that it's not just the sonar blasting or the clanging from the pile driving. Even the operational noise, once these things are up and running, have many people concerned about what, could could be a continuation of, problems for whales. You got, some 3,000 turbines that are I mean, these things are huge. 800, 850 feet tall.

Craig Rucker:

I think their propellers go over a 1000 feet. You're talking about perpetual noise clanging right in up and down the East Coast in a, in a massive vibration that could put these things off. There's other impacts as well. There's been studies showing that the zooplankton behind these, it kinda creates a desert effect where the wind turbines change the water temperature, but also have a tendency to kill the other marine life that the, that the whales feed on near them as well.

Sterling Burnett:

So Yeah. The the study out of Scotland, what it showed, a, it it took oxygen out of the water, and and the the the plankton it feeds on, they're not mammals. They actually need the oxygen. So it it deoxygenates or lessens the oxygen in the water. It affects where they are, so they'll shift and so the whales must shift.

Sterling Burnett:

In addition, just the just the piles, the the the, the post in the the floor themselves. That's creating new obstacles that the whales now have to avoid. It's not that they can't do it. They have sonar. But why are we creating more obstacles for these whales?

Sterling Burnett:

They're going to have to use more calories to go around these things in and out of them. You know, they're going to have to come NASCAR drivers. You know, like like, when you're going in and out of those pylon things, that's what they're gonna have to do to to avoid these dead gum wind turbines where there's less oxygen in the water, where there's less food. And, nearby, there's that great shipping lane that you're gonna be, now dining and and commuting in, migrating in.

Craig Rucker:

Well, here's this hypocrisy. You know this this was offshore oil or gas. And you had this sort of mortality event going up, an unusual mortality event coming up right during the construction of it.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah.

Craig Rucker:

And you had all these different, concerns. They would vet each one of these. Every environmental group would be out there, protesting it on their ships and yelling at the crews that are going out there, but instead, they attack those of us who are saying, woah. Let's do the environmental impact statements in that based on the fact that they say, oh, they're climate denialists and things of that sort. They're looking at it wrong.

Craig Rucker:

The reason this is the this is the consequence of unfounded fears of climate, you know, ones that you exaggerate it. You do rash things like put in these wind farms that actually do harm animals, potentially, anyway, at least it should be looked at.

Sterling Burnett:

Well, we know they do birds and bats and other things.

Craig Rucker:

Right. Because you're you're going crazy over these, this climate alarmism, which is void of substance on almost every issue.

Sterling Burnett:

Well, it's it's it's worse than that, Craig. Of course, we wouldn't have gotten to this stage had it been oil and gas or almost anything else Because we have for your requirements, not just I'm sorry, not for your requirements. We have, NEPA requirements.

Terry Johnson:

NEPA.

Sterling Burnett:

NEPA requirements. And they have to anticipate in these NEPA reports what the potential impacts might be, and, they have to be pretty far reaching. Those take years, not the months. You know, any pipeline think about the years years it takes to get a simple pipeline done, because of the NEPA requirements. They they've largely been waived or they've been, it's been very slapdash.

Sterling Burnett:

And, of course, as we know, one of the things that's part of the the new court filing we're doing is they've hidden the information. Dominion Energy, who is the target of our, our lawsuit, has if you read the report where it says impacts on whales, it basically says I forget the actual wording. It's like proprietary information, redacted. And then you say, well, what are the mitigation measures? And you go to the section on mitigation, Proprietary info business information redacted.

Sterling Burnett:

You couldn't have that in any other project anywhere. No. It's not proprietary what your impact on the spaces would be. So you couldn't even you couldn't even have a public credible trans public comment because there's no transparency on the harm.

Anthony Watts:

So, Craig, I wanna ask you. What would it take in your mind, and Terry too? What would it take in your mind for someone like Noah to finally recognize what seems very obvious to the rest of us?

Craig Rucker:

I'll take that, Terry, first.

Terry Johnson:

I would say regime change in November. That's what would change it. They're they're they're they're they're bought into and their budgets and everything else, to this notion of climate crisis and to the notion that you have to build wind. People say farms. I I really prefer factories because that's what they are.

Sterling Burnett:

Building factories. Yeah.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. And and, as long as the direction from the top comes down to the agencies that this is what you will do, that is what they will do. They will do any I've I've run a federal agency. I know how it works. You do what gets your budget, and what's gets the budget is, buying into this notion of, climate crisis.

Terry Johnson:

And, therefore, it won't change until there's change at the top. Now in the meantime, in the meantime, I do think we have very good chance of, having some kind of court relief, that we're bringing right now. It could, succeed. It's, you know, one of those things that, a little that depends on what kind of judge we have and so on and so forth. But, taking the approach we have is definitely one that meets the letter of the law.

Terry Johnson:

It meets the facts, and, should succeed in stopping this, at least until November. And then, we'll we'll see what happens at the time. You know,

Sterling Burnett:

tell talk about you you said what we hope, but talk about what what we're suing over there, Terry or Craig. Explain explain what the lawsuit is requesting. I wanna say, by the way, Noah, to be fair, Noah's biologists were very clear that this could be harmful to the whales, and they were ignored by the management. When things like that happened under Trump, when when when the biologists spoke and, Trump officials said, ah, we don't care about that, They got sued. Nobody you know, we're having to sue, the government here.

Craig Rucker:

Well, I just said is what Terry Forry says is I think another thing that's a big factor in this is the money. You got the inflation reduction act. I mean, a lot of this money is finding its way, to promote things like offshore wind. You got sweetheart deals that are being made with offshore wind companies. And by the way, most of these are not American companies.

Craig Rucker:

They're Avangrid, they're BP from England, they're,

Terry Johnson:

Orsted Orsted.

Craig Rucker:

Norway, Equinor. These are all companies, mostly European companies, that are given, just incredible sweetheart deals. For example, they usually do it by the megawatt hour charge. It would be like $30, $60 if you had a natural gas plant or a coal fired plant or something of that sort. These guys are getting a $120 a $120 per megawatt hour, and they want even a higher net of $177 in the case of, New York State's Empire Wind 2 project.

Craig Rucker:

So they're getting, like, double, triple the amount that you would get to produce electricity intermittently because these things generally only operate at full capacity about 35 to 45% of the time. And I think the money is also a huge factor. And once that gets chopped off, and as Terry said with regime change, if it can get chopped off, I think you'll see these things collapse as you have been seeing them collapse, because they're not sustainable economically without gover influx of government money and very generous deals by, you know, the public utility commissions of the various states.

Sterling Burnett:

I wanna follow-up on what you just said. They are already collapsing, Craig. Look. Dominion has the sweetest of sweetheart deals. All the others had to bid in for their projects.

Sterling Burnett:

They bid in it prices that are 5, 6 times higher than any other source of energy. And the government says, yep. Yep. Sounds good to us. We don't need onshore wind or solar.

Sterling Burnett:

We don't need coal or nuclear. No. We need that really, really expensive offshore wind. And so we'll give you 5 or 6 times. And then what what happened was, well, inflation hit, supply chain issues hit, and they can't even make money at 5 and 6 times, normal rates, and so they're collapsing.

Sterling Burnett:

Companies are pulling out. They're going bankrupt. They're saying we're not gonna do this project unless you come back and give us even more money, but not Dominion. Dominion was smarter than the rest of them. They said we're gonna finance it all ourself.

Sterling Burnett:

All we want you to do is let us pass on any cost we incur to the ratepayer. We don't need to come back to you. We're not bidding in because we're gonna we're gonna build it ourselves. Just let us pass on the cost. So as costs have risen, it just gets piled more and more on the right pair because they got the best sweetheart deal of all.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah. They they do. And and, Sean, to answer your question about about the lawsuit, what the endangered species act says is when you have a federal action, there needs to be an opinion as to whether this is going to harm endangered species. And so, what the companies have done and what BOEM, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has done is that, okay.

Terry Johnson:

We'll take a look at the action. And the action is going to be one little piece of this entire proposal. And if you put up that map, you'll show, show you, that, there are 32. There there they are. There are the 32 wind places that have been, established by the government.

Terry Johnson:

And, what, BOEM has said is, well, we'll look at one little piece. We'll look at one little piece at the middle, one little piece at the top, and see if that has, some kind of harm to the, right whale and to other species. And, of course, they found no. It doesn't. Well, the law says you can't do that.

Terry Johnson:

You can't, determine impact by carving stuff in in little pieces and thereby understate and under account what the impact is. That's that's wrong. That's a procedural error. And so that's what we're suing on, this procedural error that, they committed in looking at this on a piecemeal fashion. And, no other suit has done that before.

Terry Johnson:

And so, therefore, we think our suit has a good chance of succeeding because it's following the law and following the facts and following logic. People understand that that you can't take a, what something that has 32 pieces to it and pick one little piece and decide that that's gonna be the one that you make your determination about impact on. You can't do that.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. When you do a pipeline when you do a pipeline or something, you have to look at the

Terry Johnson:

whole pipeline. We'll see. We'll see. We, we filed that, a couple of weeks ago. We're gonna move for a preliminary injunction, in about a week.

Terry Johnson:

And that's gonna be when we'll really find out if, we've got, gonna be able to get any release of the courts.

Sterling Burnett:

Because they start they they're supposed to start driving piles in May, May 1st.

Terry Johnson:

Correct.

Sterling Burnett:

So we gotta stop we need to stop it before then, At least get that stay. Well, like you said, to do one thing, one thing only comply with the law as it's written, which means the cumulative impact of all these things. But I think you made one mistake when you when you said Terry. You said, yeah, this one segment doesn't have an impact. No.

Sterling Burnett:

No. No. Even Dominion's segment, they're having to get take permits. Right? Because of level b harassment.

Sterling Burnett:

Take permits for up to 3 whales. We can harass up to 3 whales. Sorry.

Terry Johnson:

That's right.

Sterling Burnett:

The harassment is a potential death, now for those 3 whales because if you harass them, it could disrupt their feeding, their breeding, their transit. It could put them into shipping lanes. Those are all indirect harms which could result in their death. And leaving aside the poor North Atlantic right whale, tens of thousands of dolphins, porpoises and other marine mammals will be affected. And those they're not endangered species, or at least most of them are not, but they are still protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Sterling Burnett:

And they're giving no protection. They're giving no protection whatsoever. So it's not that even this one little segment doesn't have an impact. It does. But cumulatively, it's a disaster.

Craig Rucker:

And I would even add to that. It's, it you know, they if you do to all these individual, they call them level b harassment where they're not technically allowed to kill them, but they can harass them. But these harassments could by if you read them, they can make them move into other shipping lanes. So, yes, they can kill them even though it's a level b harassment that they're authorizing. And secondly, when they did their biological opinion, like take Dominion an example, they'll say, well, we did do a biological opinion, but they redacted much of what it is when it comes to the right whale.

Craig Rucker:

You can't even read, and they're asking for public comment on some of these biological opinions, and and they cover up everything that deals with what sort of mitigation they're gonna do or what are the potential impacts to the right whale. So the public doesn't even see them. So one of the other things we're doing, is to trying to get that, you know, opened up so we can actually read what the biological opinion says in its fault.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. We followed the the second the second part of the of what we're doing right now. The first thing is we're trying to get a a stay while they conduct a a real, environmental impact assessment for the whales. But the the second thing is we're trying to get we've we're filing a freedom we're about to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the hidden information.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Exactly. It's one thing to say that there's, no impact, and then there's another thing to say, well, we won't tell you why we even think there's no impact. Yeah. Because, we're redacting it and and declaring it to be proprietary and confidential, which is, I mean, just another layer of absurdity this whole time.

Sterling Burnett:

It's like them saying, trust us. We really, really promise there's no impact on the whales. You don't need to you know, don't look behind the curtain, you know, nor the data behind the curtain.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah. Double swear, you know, finger pinky swear. It's, it's absolutely not no problem. No problem, Emma.

Sterling Burnett:

I I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine what could be proprietary about an impact. Are they in judging the impact, are they saying something about how their technology is so different from every other kind of technology that even talking about the potential impact would would disclose proprietary commercial information? Because that's basically what they're claiming.

Craig Rucker:

You know, I I I'm a little more I don't know how you put it, skeptical of the whole thing. I think that they they did uncover some stuff, and I think they're afraid to, release it to the public. Another reason these companies are going bankrupt, to a degree is they are facing significant grassroots opposition, not just from, you know, groups that might be considered climate realists or skeptics like us who have been raising alarm about it, but many even on the political left. We've staged some boat protests and and, you know, street theater on the beaches, and a lot of the people who participate are people that would be ideologically opposed. I'm more conservative.

Craig Rucker:

They'd be more on the liberal side, opposed to this. And they've been launching their own lawsuits, and they've been filing their own complaints as well. And this is delaying the process in many cases and also adding to the expense to a degree for these companies. And I think that, it's been kinda refreshing that, Biden and the offshore wind industry is actually bringing right and left together against the Biden offshore wind policy. So, my hope is that we'll see this continue, and they will open this up because I think they're afraid to show it, because it'll just open them up to more criticism from the grassroots groups that are already upset.

Craig Rucker:

Every time a, a whale beaches itself or is found dead, again, it just, it just captures the news and rekindles the fires of people that are very upset about this all up and down the coast.

Sterling Burnett:

Let's talk about one of the things they did as a pre oh, I'm sorry. Linnea, you wanna

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, I was just gonna bring up real quick. We have a very nice super chat from one of our viewers with a nice compliment. Great show again today, guys. Very appreciated. Well, we appreciate you, Dean, so thank you.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. Alright. And I would add that £10 that we got is nothing compared to the claims that we get money from big oil, which we never do.

Craig Rucker:

We don't either.

Sterling Burnett:

I wish we one thing

Terry Johnson:

which thing.

Sterling Burnett:

Where where is

Terry Johnson:

that money? I've been waiting. I've been looking in my mailbox every day. There's and there's no checks, no money. It's I'm I'm getting discouraged that we're gonna get any oil and and gas money.

Sterling Burnett:

But I just wanna

Terry Johnson:

Hey, look. Maybe I'm just, you know, not looking in the right place. I don't know.

Sterling Burnett:

Could talk I wanna talk about precursor to these things. There have been objections from coastal communities for a long time against this stuff. Even Democratic one, you know, ones with Democratic City Council, Democratic boards of governors and and gov and mayors. And, to avoid all that, the states conveniently pass laws saying locals locals can't stop these projects.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah.

Sterling Burnett:

So they're having all these impacts. People onshore are complaining. Even in the in the prestaging when they're constructing these things, when they're building transfer stations for the power, when they're running the lines across their land. They're losing their rights left and right. You know, the tourism bureaus are very upset.

Sterling Burnett:

The people who live near shore are complaining about noise already when they're just preconstructing some of these things. But that's all been voided by state governments buying into Biden's climate alarmism and and, basically, more importantly, Biden's big money funnel.

Linnea Lueken:

You know, about the noise thing, though, I would be curious to hear from some of the people who live in, like, off, in, like, Scotland and, near some of those offshore wind facilities because water carries sound pretty significantly. You know, if you live anywhere near, like, a lake or anything, you know that someone could be just, like, chatting on the other side of the lake at a normal sound level, and you'll be able to hear them crystal clear. So I'd be curious to know if the impacts of sound from wind turbines are if they're actually worse, if you live, like, in a beach house near one of these installations.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. I don't know about that, but, Sterling's right that, the, the noise already from onshore construction that's got to be done in order to facilitate, the offshore. I mean, just think about offshore. You've got not just the offshore, monopiles, but you've got all the rock that need to go around them and all the cables that need to connect the offshore to the the, onshore and then the substations that need to be put in. I mean, it it's just it's just a massive complex.

Terry Johnson:

And, even the onshore people now are saying, wait a second. Yeah. We we we don't we didn't buy any of this. And in Virginia, it's very interesting that there's a separate line now for the costs that are gonna be paid by the consumer, by the ratepayer for this for the wind projects. And and that's only appeared about the last year, And it's gonna be interesting to see as that number goes up and up whether people are gonna begin to say, wait a minute.

Terry Johnson:

You told us that this was gonna be really good and cost free and everything else, and now I gotta pay another $10 a month. What what are you talking about? So, it's it's it's, it's something that's, I think, going to ultimately possibly implode on itself. But in the meantime, we've gotta stop what they're doing right now, and that's that's why we're bringing the lawsuit.

Sterling Burnett:

You know, a couple of things I'm sorry.

Craig Rucker:

I was gonna say, Terry, brings it. We gotta stop it for right now. I'll tell you they're getting creative with how they're trying to buy off the public. In a number of communities, we're getting word, particularly in the Massachusetts and Rhode Island area, but also in New York. They're making donations to local governments to help them Oh, yeah.

Craig Rucker:

Educate their people. They're having town hall meetings with the fishermen who are very concerned about this could be the death knell of their industry, as the offshore wind is something they're very opposed to. But they are getting money, some of them are, by the, offshore wind industry to compensate them for potential losses to their catch as a result of these wind farms. So, they're busy at work trying to pay off people and, even some of the environmental groups, to get to make sure because this is a big cash cow to them. They get these wind farms in, rate payers will get harmed, but the, companies will rake in.

Craig Rucker:

And you look at countries like Denmark, for example, big on wind energy. They're paying about 35¢, 40¢ a kilowatt hour. In America, it's about 10, 12¢ a kilowatt hour. Their rates are 3, 4 times higher than what we're paying, and a lot you know, renewable energy is not ready for prime time. It's always been way more expensive and less reliable.

Sterling Burnett:

I would say, you know, we it's not a part of the lawsuit. It's not a part of the things that when I'm putting my public comments on this. But since, I put in my public comments, it's we become aware of the fact that these wind turbines are shredding. In in Scotland, they the the the edges are being shredded by wind action, and so microplastics are going everywhere. And and supposedly, the environmentalists care about microplastics.

Sterling Burnett:

I hear a lot about microplastics in the great ocean plastic problem. This is gonna be putting microplastics all over into the oceans, which will be fed on by the fish and, you know, enter the food chain, blah blah blah, but they don't care about that. In addition, some people here in the US may have noticed, we get some hurricanes on the, East Coast of the United States. It's unclear to me how well these wind turbines are gonna hold up to hurricane force winds.

Anthony Watts:

Yeah. Yeah. They they said pointed out I wanna point out that the namesake that we've been talking about, Save the Whales, there's actually an organization called save the whales.org, and they have a whole section on concerns of their organization on wind farm proposals. And they go through all the different points in this. Now when an organization like save the whales.org steps up and says wind farms are a problem, you would think someone would stand up and listen.

Anthony Watts:

But these people over, you know, on the left who are pushing their agenda don't seem to care. And that's why at the beginning of this show, I've called this whole issue rank hypocrisy on the part of the left and the part of the climate agenda people.

Sterling Burnett:

Except except for the except for Greenpeace, which used to be a big whale group. That was that that and nuclear was why it how they started. All the whale groups, the groups that are specifically focused on protecting sea mammals and whales, they are have followed that 10 of them filed letters opposing and saying, you need to study this more. All the banks main environmental groups, which are getting money from big wind, which are concerned about climate change more than anything, they are supporting these things. So if you're concerned about whales, the whale groups are against it.

Sterling Burnett:

The environmental groups, they they don't care about the whales. Right.

Anthony Watts:

Okay. So we've kind of, talked this out. Now we're gonna go to our question and answer period, and, Linea, take it away.

Linnea Lueken:

Sure thing. Okay. So we have a a couple of good questions here today. 1st, let's pull up right here. Alright.

Linnea Lueken:

When the offshore wind farms eventually prove useless, who will remove them? I think they'll be left to rot. And I can comment on that. So this is actually one of the problems about wind that's not really a problem. Like, it I mean, it depends.

Linnea Lueken:

It depends on how they do it. So, usually, what they do for, like, semipermanent, offshore oil platforms, like production platforms, is they cut them off at a certain distance underneath the waterline, and then they sink the whole thing because it creates an artificial reef structure, and it's actually can be very beneficial a lot of animals will probably colonize those, a lot of animals will probably colonize those, you know, kind of, rotted out holes as long as they take out, you know, the, like, fluids and stuff that are in there, which I'm sure they would. So that's not something that I'm overly concerned about. I would be curious to know if they have to actively keep critters, like barnacles and stuff, from growing on those pylons, if that ends up being a problem for them or not. And then I also wanna mention as long as we're on this topic regarding hurricanes, I'm not overly worried about these things getting ripped apart by hurricanes.

Linnea Lueken:

And my justification for that is that they have them in the North Sea. And as far as I can tell, they're not getting, like, wholesale torn apart by the wave action there, which can be very extreme, even when there isn't this major storm coming through. So I'm not too worried about the structural, competency, I guess, of the, wind turbines. I think the major problem here is just the disturbances, the fact that it's not a good energy source to begin with, and the sound issue.

Sterling Burnett:

Well, the wave the wave thing is one thing, but the wind thing is another. And we do know that winds knocked down turbines across Europe and in America on occasion when they're supposed to flutter, when they're supposed to shut down, and they don't because the gears break, the brakes break, or, even when they are shut down. And the North Sea doesn't often get class 5 hurricanes or class 4 hurricanes. They make it high winds, low hurricane force winds, but I doubt that they get some of the hurricanes we get in the up and down the Atlantic coast. As far as the decommissioning on land in Hawaii and in California, you're just seeing these things rot when they break.

Craig Rucker:

They just sit

Anthony Watts:

there and rot. I've been to South Point, Hawaii, and I can tell you you're exactly right. They leave a whole bunch of these wind turbines on South Point, Hawaii, and they're they've been left there to rot for over a decade or more.

Sterling Burnett:

They just rot. Now maybe they'll have to do something in the ocean. I don't know. You may know more about this, Linnea, but, oil platforms are mostly, I would guess, steel and metal, not microplastics and plastics and and graphite. And and that's what these things are made of.

Sterling Burnett:

They're not made for the most part of steel and things. And so I don't know how well, first off, do you wanna dump tons of plastic in the ocean? I'm told we don't. I'm told that that's a terrible thing. So are we just going to put a big

Linnea Lueken:

My guess

Sterling Burnett:

is I

Craig Rucker:

mean, we've we've done stuff in CPAC and offshore platforms, and they are good, especially in shallow waters. And I'm I agree with you in biodiversity. Just so you are aware though, the and you know this, of course. The greens are opposed to that. They've always wanted them torn up because they've said these platforms were awful in the ocean and need to be decommissioned, and we've made the argument that actually they are good for biodiversity.

Craig Rucker:

The, will the greens actually change course here? And when it comes to wind farms, all of a sudden agree with us and say, maybe you should shop below the water. That's okay. We're with you what you're saying. I don't know about that because they are talking about recycling these things.

Craig Rucker:

And the unfortunate thing is a lot of the wind parts, including the propellers, are made with components that don't recycle easy.

Terry Johnson:

They can't be recycled.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. Right.

Craig Rucker:

So they're Or not. Landfills, and, and they're clogging them up as the LA Times recently mentioned. All the solar panel, wind farm stuff. This is a liberal LA Times talking about it becoming a problem in California because they've been at Wind Energy for a long time.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, yeah. Well and and, certainly, they're not going to sink the, like, fiberglass parts of it because it, you know, that that wouldn't make any sense at all. But I just mean in terms of the, like, concrete, foundational structures and stuff. I'm sure they'll leave them, and I'm not sure that that's, like, a terrible thing. But, the, yeah, I if they do end up just, like, leaving them above the waterline, sitting there dead forever, and they just keep building new ones, that would be man, what a good representation of modern environmentalism.

Linnea Lueken:

Right? Yeah. So okay. Here's, here's another question. We've got, How does offshore wind at 25¢ a kilowatt hour lead to lower energy bills?

Sterling Burnett:

25¢ would be cheap for offshore wind.

Craig Rucker:

That's that's actually cheap. That's it's higher than that.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Much higher

Linnea Lueken:

than that. Say it doesn't.

Sterling Burnett:

No. That's it it doesn't lower energy bills. They don't they don't claim it will. What they claim is it's got to be done to fight climate change. It's cheaper to build onshore wind.

Sterling Burnett:

It's cheaper to build onshore solar. I mean, as bad as those things are, that's cheaper. This is just where they can get the most money.

Anthony Watts:

Yep. Well, the next step is off off the planet wind and solar.

Sterling Burnett:

Oh, that would be geoengineering. We don't we can't have that.

Linnea Lueken:

Alright. This one's kind of a funny one just for fun. I liked this, so I'm putting it up. Aren't there some hippies who think dolphins are like star seeds or something? What do the dolphins have to say about the windmills?

Sterling Burnett:

I think I think translated that was object. Yeah. No. That's the problem. The Dolphins and the porpoises, if you look at these if you look at just what we can read in the government's own documents, for them, they're talking about thousands of them being affected and possibly killed by these things.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. It's not it's not just Thousands. There will

Sterling Burnett:

be a few North Atlantic right whales. Thousands of dolphins and porpoises and hundreds of other types of whales and and sea mammals will be impacted.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Yep. And this is this kind of expands on that. This is referring to earlier when we were talking about the number of whales that have been killed. This person asks, is that per station?

Linnea Lueken:

And the answer to that is no. But it's not 3 whales per wind turbine. But

Sterling Burnett:

It's it's per the project, which is a 100 which I think is a 176 for dominions.

Craig Rucker:

Right.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Well, we're talking about whales that have been killed before they've even erected the first, monopile. You know, they they're they're doing the the sonar mapping of the floor, which is sonar blasting of the floor. And, these animals, especially right whales, they they live and die by sound. They don't see very well and live and die by sound.

Terry Johnson:

You interfere with what they're saying, you you're killing them. And that's what's gonna happen, if these things get built, but, not good. Hopefully, that won't happen if we succeed legally.

Linnea Lueken:

Alright. If tax credits were removed, what is the financial viability of these wind projects?

Craig Rucker:

You could actually just go to the companies. The companies themselves say unless they get these tax credits, unless they are able to get the price per, you know, kilowatt hour or the price per megawatt hour that they're asking for, which is 3 times higher than regular electricity, they can't make it. And they're pull they're paying bucks in many case to get out of here. I think it was BP and Ecuador paid, what was it, it, $40,000,000 to break a contract. I

Sterling Burnett:

think I think paying to break its contract as well. But one of them

Craig Rucker:

They're paying big bucks to get out of the contract unless they can get the tax credits and everything else, You know? Because they're it's a it's a loser unless they get the financial arrangement.

Terry Johnson:

These these projects live and die on subsidies. You take care of the subsidies that that collapse.

Sterling Burnett:

And that's by the way, to be fair, that's true of onshore wind and solar as well. Yeah.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. Probably. Yeah.

Sterling Burnett:

Every year every year, when you got these omnibus bills come because we never get our budgets done. Right? If the tax credit for wind, the onshore wind lapses, factory shut down the day after it lapses until the omnibus is passed that re ups it. Now on offshore wind, the most expensive form of electric power, I think, except for batteries. Batteries may be more expensive.

Sterling Burnett:

These projects wouldn't exist. But for Biden pushing it and Biden's pushing it with dollars, states are getting dollars. And how are they? It's not just tax credits. It's them passing along the bill to rate payers.

Sterling Burnett:

It's not just that me and Texas are subsidizing these projects offshore wind through my through tax credits. It's that in Virginia, whatever Dominion does, they just get to pass it on to their ratepayers. If no other utility. I'm sorry. I in Texas, there's not a single utility in Texas.

Sterling Burnett:

You can just say, can we pass on any costs that we have on the ratepayers regardless of what it is? No. You don't get to do that anywhere else. In Dominion in in Virginia does. They don't get to do that in any of the other wind farms.

Sterling Burnett:

They had to bid in, and now they're getting out.

Terry Johnson:

Correct.

Craig Rucker:

It's it's not like they're providing power constantly all up and down. I mean, these projects go from the Carolinas up to Massachusetts. You got all these states buying into it. If you were to cumulatively take how much electricity they're all gonna produce within a year, you couldn't power all these states. You could only power maybe one of them, New York State, for half a year, and that's the best you could do.

Craig Rucker:

So it augments, it's not replacing anything and you will need back backup gas and coal or or nuclear or something to back it up because it even despite all these costs and everything, it's still not gonna provide a huge amount of the energy needs for the, states up and down the coast.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. And it goes it goes farther than Massachusetts. It goes up to Maine because, Maine has already got some some turbines they put in experimentally, and, they're bucking for more or they were.

Terry Johnson:

There's some people interesting to see how they do in a main winter. You know?

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. Well, a main winner and, you know, who's fighting it there, the the lead fight there is the lobster fisherman.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. True. Yeah.

Craig Rucker:

We were just contacted by a state legislator who is organizing. A lot of the native Americans don't like it either because they're, going to be using as a jump point in Maine some pristine wilderness area that they want to develop, which is actually kind of contradictory rather than using an already developed area of Maine, not that there's a whole lot of them. They actually wanna use an an area that's kind of pristine and known for that, to use as a construction site to get these things up there.

Sterling Burnett:

That'll be interesting to see because there you have a conflict within the Biden administration's own push. Because they're pushing offshore wind, but they're also pushing to include Native Americans and minority communities. You know, it's environmental justice in every project. And so if this is, undermining it it seems to me one part of his plan is undermining another, so we'll see how the conflict plays out there.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. We'll just see where what what goal is higher on the hierarchy. That's all.

Terry Johnson:

Yeah. And don't don't forget the Asian trans sex workers too. They they need to be.

Craig Rucker:

And what does Anna and Swift think of all these things?

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. So we have one more question, but it's a little bit off topic, but I think we could probably give a little bit of information about this. So this is, any news on Mark Stein's appeal? Well, I can answer part of this. If you go on his website, I think the last time that he posted something about it was March 10th, and they have, him and his lawyers have brought forward a couple of motions.

Linnea Lueken:

So they have a motion to stay execution of the judgment, which is them complaining about the, $1,000,000 punitive damages. They have a motion for judgment as a matter of law and a motion for a new trial. So they are awaiting, I believe, the results of those.

Sterling Burnett:

Yeah. The judge the second motion you mentioned, motion for judgment is a matter of law. I I think the the judge never should let the court the court hear the case. But once he did, since they came back with almost no damage, no actual damages, I think he should dismiss it as a judgment of, you know, dismissal of the court, not notwithstanding the judgment of the jury, because it largely being in line with the judgment of the jury, which is there were no damages. So,

Craig Rucker:

but they send a message.

Sterling Burnett:

But they haven't done that yet. He had the the deport hasn't ruled.

Terry Johnson:

Say, proud to say I'm a founding member of the Mark Stein Club. He's one of the best.

Anthony Watts:

Good for you. Good for you. Alright. I think that pretty well wraps it up for us today. We've discussed right whales, left whales, up and down whales, whales everywhere.

Anthony Watts:

And the hypocrisy of the left in not saving the whales is fairly obvious here. So I wanna thank all of our guests, from CFAC, Terry and Craig, and, of course, Linnea and doctor Burnett for their discussions and and commentary today. Wanna remind you all to visit our websites that we have new information on regularly. Climate ataglance.com, which have a new post up there today, about global wildfires, which will be useful in the coming months, and a plenty of other information on there that you can use to refute the insanity when you're online or writing letters to the editor or giving talks, and I encourage you to do so. There's also climate realism.com where we take the media down every day.

Anthony Watts:

Every day, we point out the insanity of some of the claims made in the media about climate, and we back it up with facts. And then, of course, there's energy ataglamps.com, which talks about all these different issues, wind power, solar power, and so forth and so on, and the folly of some of them. And then, of course, my own personal website, what's up with that dot com. Be sure to visit all of these websites for the best ammunition you can possibly get in order to refute the climate insanity out there. So I'm Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute, thanking you all for being here and, of course, our viewers too.

Anthony Watts:

Wishing you all a great Friday and a fantastic weekend. Bye bye.

Terry Johnson:

Bye. Thanks for having us.

Craig Rucker:

Who's a lion dog faced pony soldier?