SHEILA GUNN REID | The Annual UN Climate Change prom is upon us once again
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Summary
In this episode, I chat with Robert Lyman, a contributor to the International Climate Science Coalition and a regular contributor at the Financial Post, about his views on climate change and global warming. We talk about what it means to be a climate skeptic, and why we should all be worried about climate change.
Transcript
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It's time again for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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You know, when the weather turns cold and you need a break,
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well, if you're an activist, bureaucrat, or politician,
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because you get to go to the United Nations Annual Climate Change Conference.
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You get to hop on a jet and fly halfway around the world
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and enjoy a little party for a couple of weeks in a city you may never get to.
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before you turn to scolding normal people about using fossil fuels to stay alive.
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That's what these UN Climate Change Conferences are all about.
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I'm not going to this one this year, held in the United Arab Emirates,
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one of the most expensive, exotic, and energy-intensive cities on the entire face of the earth
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because of their onerous reporting restrictions.
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I'm not allowed inside the conference because a few years ago,
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I asked a prickly question to a Canadian delegate when the conference was held in Morocco
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and I got, well, the entire company banned from the conferences in perpetuity.
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And that ban came at the request of the Canadian delegation.
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Yeah, they're censoring me in other countries now.
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I thought I would call in an expert on climate economics and policies.
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And so joining me today in an interview I recorded earlier is Robert Lyman.
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He's a contributor to the International Climate Science Coalition
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and he's also a contributor at Friends of Science.
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And he is a careful watcher of these sorts of things.
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And he is able to break down just how much these bad ideas from these globalists
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So joining me now is someone that I've never actually interviewed,
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but I follow his work very closely through his roles with Friends of Science
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and the International Climate Science Coalition.
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So joining me now is Robert Lyman, also frequently published in the Financial Post.
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Usually around this time of the year, I check in with my fellow travelers
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in this climate skeptic movement as we approach the UN Climate Change Summit.
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Because, you know, as I was saying before we started rolling,
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some of your greatest critics are people who watched Greta Thunberg
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But you actually have, I would say, a generation's worth of knowledge
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So tell us a little bit about who and what you are.
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for the International Climate Science Coalition Canada.
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Over a 27-year career in the federal government,
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I provided a great deal of analysis and policy advice to ministers
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regarding climate issues and other energy and environmental issues.
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I'm someone who cares deeply about the need for a fair and open public dialogue
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You know, and that really is the problem in all of this,
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is that there's just this approved homogeneity of opinions
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on issues around climate change, climate science.
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Are my emissions in my comfortable SUV going to kill all life on Earth as we know it?
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It seems to be that hyperbole on issues of climate change,
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people like my friend Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition,
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people like my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science,
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you are trying to take the hyperbole and hysteria out of the conversation
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And my particular niche in that regard is the information and analysis
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that is how the government of Canada makes its decisions on climate,
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That includes following the international developments,
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such as those that are about to take place in Dubai,
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of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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So it's really all about bringing some facts and analysis to bear
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because, yeah, there's just so much hysteria and feelings.
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But, you know, the energy companies, you know, the natural gas company,
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they don't take hysteria in the form of payment these days.
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it was published this morning in the Financial Post,
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breaking down the big numbers of what's called COP28,
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that's government and global summit parlance for the annual meeting of the UN,
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wherein they talk about their plans to control your life through climate policy.
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Tell us a little bit about what we can find in your article.
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the scope of the dollars and cents of some of the bad ideas
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a glimpse at one of the key issues that will be dealt with
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In trying to portray to people what's actually going on there,
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I frequently find that people get confused by large numbers.
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basically, what's the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion.
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And yet, understanding those differences are particularly important
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to understand what this conference will talk about
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in terms of the funding that is being asked by the developing countries
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to pay for their climate measures in the period from 2025 to 2030.
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the developing countries are asking for $2 trillion per year
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And if you break that down in terms of the percentages
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And that works out to just under $5,000 per Canadian household
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Now, and I thought getting the big numbers down
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I mean, we're in the middle of an inflationary crisis.
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More people are using food banks than in recent history.
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People are, as my friend Michelle Sterling says,
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faced in some instances with heat or eat poverty.
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And the government is expecting us to pay $5,000 per household
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Well, that's what's being asked by the developing countries.
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In fact, I think that it's almost impossible to imagine
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that the governments of the OECD countries would agree to do that.
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Because if they did, the reaction of their citizens,
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as in Canada, would be to basically throw out of office
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And it's an interesting question as to whether,
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to tell you the truth, they're really serious about it.
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Because it's so far beyond the pale that it may well be
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that what they're doing is using that as a negotiating tactic
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in the hopes that maybe they won't get $2 trillion,
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or they'll get some other extraordinarily large number.
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unless they get funded by the developed countries.
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the developed countries refuse to provide that funding,
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They don't have to do any things to reduce emissions.
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So make the ask so great that nobody's going to pay it.
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So you just get to keep doing whatever you're doing.
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at one of the Friends of Sciences annual conferences
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of the present federal government's climate policies
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at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.