Juno News - Political Incivility, the Kayaker-in-Chief, and a Defence of CO2

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.740 Coming up, the death of political civility. Where in the world is Justin Trudeau?

00:00:17.760 And Patrick Moore on the issues the environmentalists should be talking about.

00:00:24.000 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:00:34.540 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:38.280 Going to be speaking later on in the program with Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace Canada.

00:00:45.040 Now one of the great men speaking truth to the climate alarmists on issues of CO2,

00:00:51.280 on issues of the government policies that they tend to shoehorn in based on what is not really a scientific,

00:00:58.180 but rather a political argument on the environment.

00:01:01.280 We'll sit down with Patrick Moore later on in the program.

00:01:04.320 But I want to begin the show by talking about this video that has gone absolutely viral for all the wrong reasons

00:01:10.760 of a man accosting a staffer at Catherine McKenna's office in Ottawa, her riding office of Ottawa Centre,

00:01:18.300 and doing so in a way that is not constructive, is not polite.

00:01:23.440 I don't think it is illegal, but certainly it's not something that we should be striving towards in the political discourse.

00:01:30.440 Now, with apologies to my videographer and editor, but I'm going to have to play this clip for you here.

00:01:36.760 Bleeped, which I know is not fun to do, but there's a lot of profanity in there,

00:01:40.360 and I want to make sure that we are not actually, you know, terrifying the poor virgin ears of our listeners here.

00:01:47.400 But let's roll this clip, and then we'll get into why there's something so wrong with this.

00:01:52.000 Hello, how are you today?

00:01:53.140 How are you?

00:01:53.920 Can I speak with Catherine?

00:01:55.020 No, sorry, your office is open to the public.

00:01:57.340 Why is that?

00:01:58.420 Go through COVID.

00:01:59.580 Okay, I got a tiny bit of an issue.

00:02:01.160 Can you help me?

00:02:02.040 She says she's spending $5 billion, $10 billion a year on infrastructure.

00:02:05.180 The PBO office, Eve Giroux, says she's only spending $5 billion a year.

00:02:09.660 What's up with that?

00:02:10.640 I don't.

00:02:11.480 I don't go to work every day and bust my f***ing ass for this f***ing b*** to steal our f***ing money.

00:02:16.140 You're all scumbags.

00:02:17.400 You're all f***ing pieces of trash.

00:02:19.860 You f***ing scumbags.

00:02:21.380 You're all kids f***ing pieces of trash, just like Justin Trudeau.

00:02:24.780 Raping kids.

00:02:25.560 We charity.

00:02:26.540 Sorry, kids in Africa. 1.00

00:02:28.080 This money isn't for you.

00:02:29.340 This money's for Justin Trudeau and his family.

00:02:31.280 They need it a lot more than you.

00:02:33.200 They need a bigger yacht.

00:02:34.240 They need a bigger watch.

00:02:35.700 They need five watches that are 20 grand.

00:02:37.900 The f***ing scumbag pieces of s***.

00:02:40.300 I hope you all burn in f***ing hell.

00:02:42.320 You're all going to get what you deserve, you f***ing traitors.

00:02:49.840 F***ing scumbag pieces of s***.

00:02:53.760 F***ing s***.

00:02:54.680 Look, he calls her the almighty word that you should never ever refer to a female by, lots of profanity, and more importantly, he takes out his anger on a woman who works in his office, or rather in Catherine McKenna's office, who is not the problem here.

00:03:12.340 Any anger you have is not directed to low-level constituency office staffers, but it's to Catherine McKenna.

00:03:18.700 Now, I want to jump around to a couple of different aspects of this, because first off, I'm a believer in free speech.

00:03:25.800 That means the right to speak freely.

00:03:27.500 That means the right to swear, the right to be angry, the right to feel just absolutely horrific things or horrible things about people, about events, whatever you want.

00:03:36.160 You have a right to do that.

00:03:37.700 I am of the mind that if you are in politics, even if you are a political staffer, but especially if you're a politician, you have to have a thick skin.

00:03:47.520 You have to have a tough exterior, not because everything that's going to be thrown at you is right or moral or just, but just because that's the nature of the beast.

00:03:55.940 You have to be able to take the punches, and not in a literal sense, but the verbal punches, and most people in politics on all sides are.

00:04:03.520 However, there is no excuse, regardless of your discontent with government, your discontent with Catherine McKenna, and your anger, to lash out in a way that this person did.

00:04:16.460 This is something that was deliberate.

00:04:18.700 The guy went out of his way to go to the office, rang the little intercom thing, berated the staffer, didn't just say, McKenna this, McKenna this, you people, all of you, traitors, terrible words.

00:04:30.440 Obviously, it was very threatening. Thankfully, the woman did the right thing. She just didn't engage, went back, locked the door, and that was that. 0.98

00:04:37.420 But there's something very wrong, and even if, even if there is no moral wrong with this in your view, surely you can agree that it isn't helping anyone.

00:04:47.420 This is not bringing anyone around to your cause. This is not making it so that people are more likely to say, oh, you know what, you raised some really good points.

00:04:54.220 I'm actually on, you know, your team now, instead of Team McKenna. So while I understand a lot of the anger, that is no excuse for the way it was expressed.

00:05:05.240 And all of us, Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Québécois, Green, PPC, all of us need to strive to a level of political civility that is getting further and further away.

00:05:16.480 And before anyone says, oh, but what about this side, and what about, I don't care. I don't care. I don't want the whataboutism where, oh, but this Liberal said that, so we're going to, you know, respond.

00:05:26.700 No. We can all do better, and leading by example is a darn good way and a darn good place to start if, in your view, the other side is not doing it.

00:05:36.500 And this is not just a social media problem. You know, if someone just, you know, says Catherine McKenna this, that on Twitter, she can block them, ignore them, do whatever.

00:05:46.120 If someone sends an email, a letter, same sort of thing. It's very different if someone is literally there with a phone in your face, which, by the way, shows that it was deliberate.

00:05:55.180 The person shoves the phone in the face of the staffer and, you know, then makes the decision to upload it to the internet.

00:06:00.760 So that's the other part is that there wasn't even, ah, you know what, I think I might have overstepped here.

00:06:05.320 So even if you agree with everything that was said, surely you can agree this is not the way you make a point.

00:06:13.160 And this is not helping anyone. And more importantly, it actually turns people away and off of you because now Catherine McKenna is a victim in the sense that she is the one that more people are siding with.

00:06:25.700 Now, she's put out a statement that actually indicates that whole tough skin approach I mentioned.

00:06:30.560 She said, Thursday's incident was not a one-off or an isolated occurrence.

00:06:34.040 Since my family, my staff and I deal with abusive behavior on a regular basis, that is unacceptable and I am committed to working across party lines to make it stop.

00:06:43.240 The statement goes on and says this is, these people just want attention.

00:06:48.440 The only attention they should get is from law enforcement. The proper authorities have been notified.

00:06:53.460 Now, whether this is or should be a police matter is a different story altogether.

00:07:00.280 And I tend to believe that for anything speech related, there has to be a fairly high bar.

00:07:05.940 What I don't at all buy into is police responding by saying this is going to be a hate crime investigation.

00:07:12.680 The Ottawa police have said their hate crimes unit is the one that's now looking after this.

00:07:17.860 I think that, again, there is a very high bar for hate crimes.

00:07:21.700 I think legislating intent and emotion behind certain things is never a good idea.

00:07:27.420 So I would say that there's definitely a case of the hand being overplayed here.

00:07:32.480 But the interesting thing about this whole thing is that, you know, no one was hurt, no one was harmed, and we can be grateful for that.

00:07:41.160 These are the types of situations that if someone responds the wrong way, it's easy to see it getting to the point of escalation.

00:07:49.120 But rather than saying what Catherine McKenna did here, which is that, you know what, we need to work across party lines to ensure that we have respectful discourse.

00:07:57.820 The liberals actually blamed this in a way on Pierre Polyev.

00:08:02.600 And this is, again, talk about taking something that's bad that everyone agrees is bad and pushing just a couple of steps further and blaming all conservatives for it based on Pierre Polyev standing up as conservative finance critic.

00:08:15.760 This is from a segment on CBC's power and politics in which Liberal MP Adam van Koverden apologized to all of the Dutch listeners if I butchered the last name.

00:08:25.840 But I'm going just phonetically here and realizing that I've never actually heard his name said out loud.

00:08:30.060 But Adam van Koverden, who's somewhat of a star member of the Liberal Caucus, who says that Pierre Polyev questioning the government is what's responsible for this outburst at Catherine McKenna's office.

00:08:42.280 I would just point out that the type of baseless allegations that Mr. Polyev keeps making about our government is one of the things that's fueling the type of action that we saw at Minister McKenna's office today.

00:08:52.480 I would beg him to please provide, like, good, constructive criticism when necessary.

00:08:56.960 But the baseless allegations, these assumptions and the rhetoric that there's always a scandal is one of the things that's fueling a lot of the difficulty that people are experiencing.

00:09:05.840 And I would just ask for more truth.

00:09:07.280 OK, I had to let Mr. Polyev respond to that.

00:09:08.900 Mr. Polyev, go ahead.

00:09:10.420 Well, that's disgusting.

00:09:11.220 Our job is to hold this government to account.

00:09:14.700 They shoveled a half a billion dollars to an organization that had paid the prime minister's family a half a million dollars and gave an illegal $41,000 vacation to the finance minister.

00:09:26.660 They then gave another contract to a company whose vice president is married to the chief of staff.

00:09:32.640 This is the behavior of their government, and they can expect that our opposition is going to hold them to account for it.

00:09:37.920 We're not going to be intimidated into silence.

00:09:39.760 An account is fine, but the baseless allegations and the speculation needs to stop.

00:09:44.820 What is false that I said?

00:09:46.640 Give me an example.

00:09:47.960 You said maybe.

00:09:48.740 You said maybe like four times.

00:09:50.140 You said maybe this is true.

00:09:51.360 Maybe it's a coincidence.

00:09:52.220 Those are speculations, Mr. Polyev.

00:09:54.020 And that's what's driving a lot of this.

00:09:55.980 You can't name a single example of a false statement I've made because everything I've said is factual.

00:10:01.120 And it's not as a speculation.

00:10:02.460 It's a false, I think it's speculation.

00:10:04.600 Baseless speculation.

00:10:05.680 That's a statement.

00:10:06.580 Well, I'm glad Pierre Polyev, in true Pierre Polyev fashion, decided to just stick that exactly where it needed to, which is, you know, just punt that ball right out of the court and say, you know, you're out to lunch if you think this is a conservative problem.

00:10:19.960 But this is, again, the challenge when you're talking about discourse is that to liberals, saying that, you know, Catherine McKenna is an effing C word is the same as saying, you know what, Justin Trudeau is behaving in a corrupt fashion.

00:10:34.040 Like, they view any criticism of them as being the same and as being offensive.

00:10:39.660 And when the liberal government right now is so thin-skinned that it thinks everything is just an affront to their delicate sensibilities, it makes it very difficult to have that cross-party line approach to discourse that Catherine McKenna seemed to want.

00:10:53.700 And by the way, this is coming at a time when, as Mr. Polyev pointed out, nothing that he said was untrue.

00:11:00.360 The liberals are doing exactly what it is they've been accused of doing.

00:11:04.780 And Brian Lilly had a great scoop in the Toronto Sun.

00:11:07.760 He had done a lot of the legwork on something that was circulating on Twitter.

00:11:11.400 This week, Justin Trudeau's office had put out an itinerary saying he was in Ottawa for private meetings.

00:11:16.840 And in actuality, he was at a cottage in Georgian Bay.

00:11:21.140 And there was photo evidence of this.

00:11:23.060 Now, they later corrected this in a subsequent itinerary that just said on August 11th he was in Ontario.

00:11:30.000 So they realized that they were, you know, busted lying about where Justin Trudeau was when he was actually, you know, having a good time on vacation.

00:11:37.660 Then they decided to just say he's somewhere in Ontario.

00:11:40.160 So it's like, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

00:11:43.580 Where in Ontario is Justin Trudeau?

00:11:45.880 Except Carmen Sandiego, I think, is actually getting things done when she's on the road. 0.57

00:11:49.600 Whereas Trudeau is just, you know, pretending to be doing meetings and actually kayaking.

00:11:53.740 So right now, all of the liberals that are having to defend Justin Trudeau would, according to Adam Van Koverden, say that this is all just stoking really nasty negativity to start asking questions, to hold the government to account.

00:12:08.700 Which is, by the way, inherent in the name of the conservatives in politics right now, the official opposition.

00:12:15.520 As in the party that is there to oppose the government and to hold the government to account.

00:12:21.620 And incidentally, it doesn't seem like the conservatives are alone in being displeased with Justin Trudeau's government right now.

00:12:29.860 Specifically, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who is perhaps not even respected within his own party right now.

00:12:38.820 This is, I think, fantastic.

00:12:40.660 And if you're, not for Bill Morneau, it's terrible for him.

00:12:43.100 But for, you know, everyone else in Canada, this is just great political theater right now.

00:12:47.120 There have been some rumors that Bill Morneau was clashing with Justin Trudeau about how best to respond to the pandemic.

00:12:53.920 And this is something that the Globe and Mail published a story saying may be the case that Morneau is on his way out.

00:13:01.740 Maybe he's not the right guy to maintain the role of Finance Minister.

00:13:06.140 This is the great story, though.

00:13:08.340 From Reuters, Trudeau's office asked whether he still had faith in Morneau, said it would respond later.

00:13:15.860 Morneau's office did not reply to a request for comment.

00:13:19.400 So this is the phone call.

00:13:20.680 Hey, you know, Prime Minister's office, Cameron or Chantel, we're asking you, does Justin Trudeau have faith in his Finance Minister, Bill Morneau?

00:13:28.920 I'll call you back.

00:13:31.800 Basically what they're doing, or maybe it was even better.

00:13:33.640 Maybe it was in an email.

00:13:34.560 We'll have to get back to you on this one.

00:13:36.660 So there isn't actually an answer that the Trudeau government can give right away as to whether they have confidence in their Finance Minister,

00:13:45.680 which in and of itself shows a lack of confidence.

00:13:49.060 The fact that they can't even answer without saying, we'll get back to you.

00:13:52.340 And I read the whole story.

00:13:53.620 It doesn't sound like they ever did get back to them.

00:13:55.500 So maybe it was lost in the mail or whatever.

00:13:57.540 Or maybe the message just didn't get to Trudeau and Georgian Bay.

00:14:00.700 And it's entirely innocent that he was just, you know, out on the Georgian Bay at the time with his kayak.

00:14:05.840 He was kayaking past.

00:14:07.540 What is it they have?

00:14:08.180 The Grotto or Indian Head Cove there.

00:14:10.280 And a beautiful part of Ontario, if you've never been.

00:14:12.660 And Justin Trudeau perhaps was there and they couldn't get to him to ask him,

00:14:17.440 hey, in the middle of this pandemic, the middle of this crisis, the middle of this economic situation that's causing millions of Canadians to be on unemployment,

00:14:24.860 do you have confidence in your Finance Minister?

00:14:27.740 And then he says, I can't hear you.

00:14:29.360 I'll talk to you when I'm back to shore.

00:14:30.900 That's basically what's happened here.

00:14:32.540 And the part that I found so hilarious about this is like after going to a reporter and saying, yeah, we'll get back to you on that and then not getting back to that.

00:14:42.020 So something that in and of itself they know is a vote of non-confidence, basically.

00:14:47.800 The PMO then sends this absolutely glowing tribute to Bill Morneau out to at least some media.

00:14:54.440 I know CBC's David Cochran got it.

00:14:56.820 And that note, I won't read the whole thing.

00:14:58.820 Maybe I will.

00:14:59.240 So since we formed government, Minister Morneau has worked relentlessly with all colleagues and closely with the Prime Minister to deliver critical support for Canadians to build a strong and resilient economy.

00:15:10.620 In particular, Minister Morneau played a central role that saw Canada develop one of the best economies in the G7.

00:15:17.000 A million new jobs over the first mandate.

00:15:19.240 OK, no, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

00:15:20.760 Yada, yada, yada, yada.

00:15:22.160 Goes on.

00:15:22.920 Then it talks about how his work continued throughout the pandemic with CERB and the wage subsidy and all of these other things.

00:15:28.560 And then finally, of course, the Prime Minister has the full confidence in Minister Morneau and any statement to the contrary is false.

00:15:36.440 The Prime Minister knows that Minister Morneau and the entire team of cabinet ministers will keep doing the work that Canadians rely on to get them through this pandemic.

00:15:46.220 Now, I like that they say, of course he does, as though like the statements came from their non-statements.

00:15:52.840 Like the statements to the contrary came because they didn't say anything.

00:15:56.700 And what's that old saying?

00:15:57.920 That nature abhors a vacuum so people fill it with whatever they can.

00:16:02.420 So I wonder if, and this is purely speculative on my part, I wonder if they had to kind of negotiate with Morneau behind the scenes on are you going to play ball?

00:16:11.360 Are you going to do what we want?

00:16:12.300 Are you going to do X, Y, Z?

00:16:13.160 Or if this is literally just bumbling fools that, you know, can't figure out their left hand from their right hand and that's why this happens.

00:16:23.240 I mean, what is that, you know, that idea that you have to put forward?

00:16:27.080 Always incompetence versus malice.

00:16:29.460 Sometimes it's both with this government.

00:16:32.320 I honestly don't know a lot of the times whether it's option A, option B, or a fusion version of it and option C.

00:16:39.880 But ultimately, I find this just, again, just terrible if you're Bill Morneau, but hilarious if you're someone else.

00:16:45.580 That they can't even figure out in due course whether they have confidence in the finance minister until they do.

00:16:50.740 And then it's like, well, how could anyone think otherwise?

00:16:53.300 Well, look in the mirror.

00:16:54.620 So, yes, the importance of having political discourse at its finest is there.

00:17:00.660 We need civility.

00:17:01.880 But to say that criticizing these liberals is in and of itself uncivil, give me a break.

00:17:09.640 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:17:16.820 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:19.560 Welcome back to the show.

00:17:25.400 You may remember a few months ago I spoke with Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace Canada,

00:17:30.800 after he was summarily uninvited from giving a talk that the city of Regina was putting on at a conference,

00:17:37.680 which now has had to be canceled altogether.

00:17:40.820 So the joke was on them.

00:17:42.480 But Patrick Moore is a climate denier in the eyes of the climate alarmist.

00:17:48.660 But in actuality, he's a scientist who speaks about a narrative that the mainstream media

00:17:53.600 and the well-funded scientific community doesn't want to talk about, by and large.

00:17:58.760 So I actually caught up with Patrick Moore in Calgary a few weeks ago.

00:18:02.880 He was speaking at the Freedom Talk conference, at which I was also an esteemed speaker,

00:18:07.260 although not nearly as esteemed as Patrick Moore.

00:18:10.100 And I was very gracious after we had spoken by phone a couple of months back

00:18:13.880 that Patrick Moore was available to sit down in person.

00:18:16.940 Now, he's supposed to be speaking at a rescheduled event that Ezra Levant over at our friends The Rebel have put on.

00:18:23.460 We don't know if that's going to go ahead yet because it's scheduled for September.

00:18:26.560 And obviously, we're getting close to there.

00:18:28.460 And it's not clear what events are allowed or not allowed.

00:18:31.500 So I don't know for sure if that event is going ahead.

00:18:34.300 But stay tuned.

00:18:35.280 And I'm sure Rebel will have the details out when they're available.

00:18:38.540 But my interview with Patrick Moore.

00:18:40.700 So you and I spoke last when you had been cancelled from speaking at an event in Regina.

00:18:46.780 And of course, the great irony is that the whole event had to be cancelled because of everything to do with the coronavirus.

00:18:52.600 And, you know, one of the things that I found interesting is that your radical proposition

00:18:57.120 that I guess makes you so cancelable in the eyes of people is that you believe that CO2 is a net positive,

00:19:04.380 whereas the prevailing wisdom and, you know, take from that word what you will from all of the so-called experts

00:19:10.120 is that CO2 is destroying the planet.

00:19:12.220 And how is something so fundamentally at odds with what the main narrative we hear from the alarmists?

00:19:20.420 How can you deviate so radically from that and still be in a minority?

00:19:24.320 It's they who deviate.

00:19:25.860 How you can think the most important molecule for life, carbon dioxide,

00:19:30.900 which is where all the carbon in all life comes from, and we are a carbon-based life form,

00:19:36.760 how you can think that could possibly be net negative is just beyond the pale.

00:19:41.540 I mean, it's basically throwing science and logic out the window altogether.

00:19:47.600 The big talk we hear from a lot of the carbon tax proponents in Canada and other jurisdictions

00:19:53.500 is that greenhouse gas emissions are the big enemy of everything

00:19:57.340 and that you have to then to deal with that, tax it to disincentivize production of it.

00:20:02.760 CO2 gets lumped in very easily by a lot of these people with the other greenhouse gases

00:20:08.700 that are supposedly so harmful.

00:20:10.000 So do you think that it's just CO2 that needs to be isolated from that discussion?

00:20:13.840 Or do you think that, by and large, on all of the things that we hear referred to as greenhouse gases,

00:20:17.840 we need to rethink whether they're as negative as people are saying?

00:20:21.800 Well, first, if there were no greenhouse gases, there'd be no life on the Earth.

00:20:25.760 The greenhouse gases, water of which is the most important one by far,

00:20:29.180 so I don't think they're against water vapor, last time I looked as it being some kind of poison,

00:20:34.900 but water vapor and clouds and ice control the climate so much more than anything else.

00:20:41.780 If it were not for the greenhouse gases, the Earth would be 33 Celsius colder and life could not be here.

00:20:48.060 So the greenhouse gases are necessary for life, and CO2 is necessary as a food for life.

00:20:55.660 They're two completely different things.

00:20:57.200 CO2 is also a greenhouse gas as well as being the primary food for all life.

00:21:01.240 But the most important point is there is no historical evidence that CO2 causes the temperature of the Earth to change in any way.

00:21:12.400 None whatsoever.

00:21:13.640 You can look at the historical evidence in the glacial periods.

00:21:17.740 You can look at the historical evidence back 500 million years ago.

00:21:21.800 And the ice ages, for example, when the Earth gets cold, have nothing to do with the CO2 levels.

00:21:27.800 Sometimes there's an ice age when CO2 is very high.

00:21:30.280 Sometimes there's one when it's very low, and vice versa.

00:21:33.340 Sometimes they go in completely opposite directions for tens of millions of years.

00:21:37.780 While CO2 goes up, temperature goes down.

00:21:39.820 And while CO2 goes down, then temperature goes up.

00:21:42.300 This is in the historical record.

00:21:44.560 The only evidence that CO2 causes warming is in computer models that are built to say it does.

00:21:50.740 People don't realize that computer models are not a crystal ball that can predict the future.

00:21:55.780 There is no such thing as a crystal ball.

00:21:57.740 It's a mythical object, like reading your palm, right, and trying to tell the future by reading your palm.

00:22:04.340 A computer model, you put your assumptions in it, and what your assumptions are come out the other end of it.

00:22:11.280 It's based on what you assumed was the correct number.

00:22:14.380 And they just assume that CO2 will cause warming, so they put that in the computer.

00:22:19.020 And, of course, the computer shows warming.

00:22:21.120 But just because CO2 is going up now and temperature is going up now in this modern warm period does not mean there is a cause-effect relationship between the two.

00:22:29.740 And the only times there seems to be a cause-effect relationship between the two is when temperature drives CO2, not the other way around.

00:22:38.040 When the ocean's warm, CO2 comes out of it.

00:22:40.660 When the ocean's cool, CO2 goes into it, changing the amount of CO2 there is in the atmosphere.

00:22:47.560 But it isn't what's changing the temperature.

00:22:50.280 The temperature is being changed on cycles that are with the Milankovitch cycle, which is solar cycles.

00:22:56.600 Solar and Earth tilt cycles.

00:22:58.920 It's right there for anyone to see.

00:23:01.500 But these people don't want to know anything that happened before 1850.

00:23:04.480 Like, for them, that's when the life began and the Earth began or whatever.

00:23:08.580 That's the only years they're really interested in.

00:23:10.860 They deny that the medieval warm period existed.

00:23:13.240 They deny that the Roman warm period existed, but they did exist.

00:23:17.820 And they just ignore the Holocene.

00:23:20.420 This is the interglacial.

00:23:21.600 It's called the Holocene right now.

00:23:23.060 It's 10,000, 11,000 years long.

00:23:25.260 The first half of it was warmer than it is now.

00:23:27.840 That was called the Holocene climatic optimum.

00:23:30.440 And everybody who studies climate knows that's there, that it was warmer then.

00:23:34.940 The Sahara was actually green.

00:23:36.300 There were goat and cattle herders all across the whole Sahara up until about 6,000 years ago when it suddenly broke.

00:23:46.360 The Sahara dried out.

00:23:47.800 And since then, it's been getting colder.

00:23:49.860 But it's been getting colder, but we're in a little warm blip now.

00:23:53.840 But before that, it was the Little Ice Age.

00:23:56.240 Then it was here.

00:23:57.460 Then it was there.

00:23:58.140 Then it was here.

00:23:58.740 Then it was there.

00:23:59.280 Then it was here.

00:23:59.840 Then it was there.

00:24:00.400 So that's going backwards.

00:24:01.280 It's been cooling for 6,000 years.

00:24:04.580 And that's all in the Greenland ice cores.

00:24:07.300 Anybody can see it.

00:24:08.760 So your position is not that the warming isn't happening, which is, I think, another position that you hear from some of your colleagues that are classed as deniers by people.

00:24:17.960 You're saying that the warming is not anthropogenic.

00:24:21.120 It's not man-made.

00:24:21.980 And that it's also not all that atypical.

00:24:24.320 It certainly is not atypical at all.

00:24:26.840 Even during this last 10,000 years, there's been periods of warming and cooling that have been more rapid than this 1 degree in 300 years.

00:24:34.340 That's all it is, you know.

00:24:35.640 It's 1 degree Celsius in 300 years since the peak of the Little Ice Age in 1700, 300 years ago.

00:24:43.500 That is what has happened, slight warming.

00:24:46.020 We would have expected that because it was in the same cycle as from the Roman warm period into the Dark Ages cold period into the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago into the Little Ice Age.

00:24:58.400 The Little Ice Age peaked in 1700, and now we're in the modern warm period.

00:25:02.020 So we would have been expecting a warming.

00:25:04.460 Those other cycles had nothing to do with CO2 because it stayed the same the whole time, 280 ppm.

00:25:10.360 We've raised it up to 415, and it hasn't changed the rate of warming at all.

00:25:16.800 The rate of warming is 1 degree per 300 years, which is like the United Nations is predicting amounts up to 5 times or more than that to occur.

00:25:27.100 But again, those are all based on computer models, not on real measurements.

00:25:30.900 You can't measure the future yet.

00:25:33.080 That's the problem.

00:25:33.900 And people are acting as though you can know what the temperature is going to be in 80 years from now.

00:25:39.460 Well, and also with great precision about, you know, we've all heard the cataclysmic predictions that we've got 12 years left, basically, and all of these sorts of things.

00:25:47.440 But it's not just that things are getting worse that these people say.

00:25:51.740 It's that they know with certainty.

00:25:53.920 And the flip side, though, I think is almost more dangerous, which is, well, it's a possibility, so shouldn't we prepare for it?

00:26:00.880 And then they use that as a justification for all sorts of dangerous economic policies and other public policies.

00:26:06.600 We should prepare for an invasion by Martians. 1.00

00:26:09.960 Well, but to your point that you can't predict the future, how do you push back against these people that say it's a possibility?

00:26:15.840 Because that's almost more dangerous than the people that are claiming it's a certainty, the ones that say, well, it may or may not happen, but these are all the things we should do anyway.

00:26:23.920 Well, you don't spend half of civilization's wealth on something that might not be true.

00:26:30.560 I mean, you have to wait before you do that.

00:26:33.200 We didn't prepare for the virus before it happened.

00:26:36.880 I mean, sure, we have health agencies and stuff, but you can't do anything about something until it happens.

00:26:42.380 And nothing is happening right now.

00:26:44.280 The weather is happening, just like it always has.

00:26:47.640 So people are trying to make out as if there's unusual things happening now.

00:26:51.820 There aren't.

00:26:53.040 Even the United Nations IPCC says there is no increase in drought, flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, or tornadoes.

00:27:01.860 It's normal.

00:27:03.700 And some of them are actually declining.

00:27:06.260 And in a warming world, we would actually expect hurricanes to decline because they depend on the difference in temperature between tropical air and temperate air in the north.

00:27:15.780 It's where those air masses meet. 0.60

00:27:17.640 That's why you don't have hurricanes on the equator because the air is all hot there.

00:27:22.240 But where the cold air and the warm air meet is where these cyclones are formed.

00:27:26.620 And that should go down as the temperature when the earth warms, it warms inadvertently towards the poles.

00:27:33.320 It doesn't really change at the equator any significant amount.

00:27:36.420 And that's how they can get away with saying Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world because the whole northern hemisphere is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

00:27:46.540 It's called maybe a degree and a half instead of 0.5 at the equator.

00:27:51.520 You know, it's always that way when the earth warms and cools.

00:27:55.660 It does so inadvertently towards the poles.

00:27:58.040 That's why they're so cold and the equator is still so warm.

00:28:01.840 But when the earth warms into the greenhouse ages, which are when the earth is warm everywhere, there were forests on Canada's tropical forests at one time on Canada's Arctic islands.

00:28:16.480 And then as the world cooled over the last 50,000 years, we're at the tail end of a 50,000 year cooling.

00:28:22.780 I've got to get my numbers right.

00:28:24.840 We're at the tail end of a 50 million year cooling period today.

00:28:29.220 50 million years ago was the Eocene Thermal Maximum.

00:28:32.660 And it has been cooling in fits and starts over that whole 50 million period until we get to the glaciation we're in now, the Pleistocene Ice Age.

00:28:43.780 We are still in the Pleistocene Ice Age.

00:28:45.700 It is not over.

00:28:46.920 People think the last glaciation was the end of the Ice Age.

00:28:51.400 That was just one of about 45 glaciations that have come and gone during the Pleistocene Ice Age,

00:28:58.340 where the temperature has sunk to lower than it has been in the last 250 million years since the last Ice Age,

00:29:05.020 which was the Karoo, which ended 250 million years ago after 100 million years.

00:29:11.240 That Ice Age lasted 100 million years.

00:29:13.860 We know that.

00:29:14.580 It's true.

00:29:15.040 You never hear these people talking about what the real climate change that's happened on this Earth from Ice Age to Greenhouse Age back to Ice Age again over a 350 million year period.

00:29:26.720 Those are the real changes in climate.

00:29:29.440 What we're in now is nothing.

00:29:30.980 This is just normal weather in a Holocene interglacial period of which there have been 45.

00:29:36.640 And they've all been on the cycles of the Earth's tilt or the cycles of the Earth's orbit.

00:29:43.240 We know that for sure.

00:29:44.320 You said earlier on that all of the climate researchers know this stuff.

00:29:50.000 They all know about the cycles.

00:29:51.440 They know about the history.

00:29:52.980 They know about the trajectories you've described here.

00:29:55.120 Are they just ideologues?

00:29:58.480 They're so hell-bent on this alarmist narrative that they're kind of overlooking things that are fully within the realm of their research and all of that?

00:30:06.480 Or is it just about the money?

00:30:08.660 And I've heard that argument that, you know, there's no grant funding for proving a negative, but there's lots for proving that it's a problem.

00:30:14.080 Is it just about the money?

00:30:15.060 Or do you think there is an ideological thing that's sweeping?

00:30:17.800 Well, there is ideology involved.

00:30:21.340 Nobody would say the world is going to end in 12 years if it wasn't kind of like a religious cult, right?

00:30:27.900 It isn't going.

00:30:28.680 What does the world ending look like anyways?

00:30:30.720 Is it going to blow up?

00:30:31.800 Is it melting?

00:30:32.600 Is it all the water dries up?

00:30:34.420 No, nothing like that's going to happen.

00:30:36.300 And it's just silly, actually.

00:30:37.700 It's childish to say the world is going to end in 12 years or even 1,200 years.

00:30:43.080 I mean, it is not going to end anytime soon.

00:30:45.560 It's been here for 4.5 billion years, and life started 3.5 billion years ago.

00:30:51.340 And 500 million years ago, modern life emerged.

00:30:54.640 And we are now at the highest biodiversity the planet has ever been.

00:30:58.880 Biodiversity has simply increased all every time, even when there's an extinction.

00:31:03.120 It comes back more biodiverse than it was before.

00:31:06.020 And National Geographic published that graph in 1999, February 1999.

00:31:11.200 They published the graph of global biodiversity.

00:31:13.880 And it shows it higher now than it's ever been in the history of life.

00:31:17.580 And we're told that half the species are going extinct any day now.

00:31:20.500 We hear this about wildfires as well, where every time there's a wildfire, it always comes

00:31:24.460 back with a lot more vibrance.

00:31:26.620 They say, yes.

00:31:28.220 The wildfires in the U.S. were so much more extensive in around 1900 to 1930.

00:31:34.800 That's when people started managing for wildfire prevention.

00:31:37.840 And the reason they've been rising in the last 20 years is because urban greens have got

00:31:42.540 control over the management of rural forests.

00:31:45.080 And the foresters are no longer managing them.

00:31:47.480 And also because they're building their houses in coniferous forests on either side.

00:31:51.640 You know, 120-foot trees of needle trees, which are pitchy.

00:31:55.460 And when their crowns catch fire, that's the end of it.

00:31:57.620 The wind just takes them 100 miles an hour, and nothing can outrun that.

00:32:01.240 And all their houses burn down.

00:32:03.460 That's just stupid planning.

00:32:05.660 But, you know, the fact is, in the United States, where there's a lot of public forest

00:32:09.700 and a lot of private forest, the private forests almost never burn.

00:32:14.560 The public forests burn because they're mismanaged.

00:32:17.340 So we're told by a lot of the, again, I keep going back to so-called experts.

00:32:22.440 I don't know what else we can describe them as that's not terribly unflattering, that everything

00:32:27.400 is a symptom of climate change.

00:32:28.920 Wildfires are climate change, cold weather, warm weather, droughts, everything is climate

00:32:34.020 change.

00:32:34.700 And how do you push back against that narrative when it seems like there's not a single piece

00:32:39.980 of evidence that would ever refute what they believe?

00:32:42.180 Because they view everything.

00:32:43.520 They weave it into that overarching narrative.

00:32:45.760 So I know you've been very frustrated by this because you've been talking about these

00:32:49.300 things for decades now.

00:32:51.120 How do you think we need to?

00:32:53.580 The climate has hardly changed.

00:32:55.520 They're talking about the future that's going to be dramatic changes in the climate.

00:33:00.480 You know, climate, the official definition of climate is the average weather over the

00:33:05.100 last 30 years.

00:33:06.080 So it's a moving average, right?

00:33:08.240 And if you take the climate of this earth, all it's done for the last 300 years is get

00:33:14.500 a little bit warmer.

00:33:16.940 And a lot less people are freezing to death than did back then.

00:33:20.540 20 times as many people die from the cold as die from the warmth.

00:33:23.780 The only climate refugees in this world are people flying south from the winters in the 1.00

00:33:29.660 north.

00:33:30.700 Yeah, no one from Florida is spending their summers in Canada or their winters in Canada.

00:33:35.180 No, they're not.

00:33:35.980 Well, they might come here in the summer because it can long nights and long days and sunny

00:33:41.020 weather.

00:33:41.880 It's a nice time to come to Canada.

00:33:43.300 That's when most people do come to Canada.

00:33:45.320 But they don't come here in the winter except the people who come skiing.

00:33:49.120 They'll come here in the winter because that's fun to do in the snow and they might not have

00:33:52.760 any snow in their country.

00:33:54.120 But the bulk of people who are going to another place are people going from cold places to

00:33:59.140 warm places.

00:34:00.000 When you're a climate refugee yourself, because you moved from BC to Mexico, did you not?

00:34:03.960 Well, we have a place there, yes.

00:34:06.080 Yeah.

00:34:06.460 And we go there in the winter.

00:34:07.500 If you were from Mexico, you probably wouldn't have a winter home in northern Alberta or something. 1.00

00:34:12.020 No, not likely.

00:34:13.340 And why then do we hear this rhetoric from the Liberal government in Canada, for example,

00:34:19.640 about climate refugees from Africa?

00:34:22.000 I mean, again, I have no frame of reference having never been there, not being an expert

00:34:25.180 on this.

00:34:25.600 But, you know, we're told the portrait is a very grim one, that you've got communities

00:34:29.520 that can't grow food, that don't have water, all because of climate change.

00:34:33.300 It's all lies.

00:34:34.340 They're coming here because they want to come to a better country that's got a higher standard

00:34:38.120 of living and better education, better health care, and all that.

00:34:41.880 One of the reasons that people in Africa are still in such a dire strait is we won't let 1.00

00:34:47.900 them use fossil fuels to make electricity.

00:34:51.040 We won't help them.

00:34:52.740 That's why China- 0.92

00:34:53.040 We're imposing our environmental virtue signaling on African nations. 1.00

00:34:56.980 Yes.

00:34:57.520 Meanwhile, we use a lot more fossil fuels than they do.

00:35:01.100 But that is why China is expanding its influence so much into Africa and South America, is because

00:35:06.780 they will build the coal plants and then take 10% interest on the revenue from them, just

00:35:12.860 like any business would do.

00:35:14.380 But then the people have electricity and can build their society up.

00:35:18.540 There's also still, of course, a lot of tribalism in Africa.

00:35:21.540 It's nascent there.

00:35:22.860 And I've been through lots of sub-Saharan Africa, and it's pretty tough in parts.

00:35:29.480 I think we should be doing more to encourage them to develop a decent energy infrastructure,

00:35:34.040 because that is definitely the basis of a large part of our standard of living, is the fact

00:35:39.360 that we have electricity and fuel, the energy to run our system with.

00:35:43.680 And I think, you know, a lot of the climate alarmists, the real climate alarmists like

00:35:49.940 Al Gore, who isn't a scientist, and the people- there's so many of them that aren't scientists

00:35:56.640 who are the leaders of the alarmism.

00:35:58.680 Then the scientists who are alarmists, are like Michael Mann, he is actually a complete

00:36:03.820 fraud.

00:36:04.400 I mean, he denies the history of science.

00:36:06.840 He projects these horrible future scenarios.

00:36:10.100 And he basically assassinates the character of everybody around him.

00:36:17.740 And Google's in on it, Facebook's in on it, Twitter's in on it.

00:36:22.460 If you Google me, you will find that all the character assassination websites come first.

00:36:28.100 Not what I've done in my life, not who I am or, you know, all of the things-

00:36:32.160 But all of the denunciations from Greenpeace.

00:36:34.040 Yes, and it's just character assassination.

00:36:36.980 It's that I'm in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry, and I work for polluting industries.

00:36:42.720 Like, they use the term polluting industry.

00:36:45.240 Actually, they say the word industry like it's a swear word.

00:36:47.940 Like, he works for industry.

00:36:49.540 Yeah.

00:36:50.000 Well, that's the thing.

00:36:50.660 I mean, when you talk about investment in Africa and infrastructure and anywhere in the

00:36:54.040 world, it's very difficult when the alarmists view industry itself as the enemy.

00:36:59.860 Yes.

00:37:00.260 They view true progress as being the enemy.

00:37:02.300 Yeah, and actually, where are things made by industry, right?

00:37:07.460 And science used to be actually more done by the private sector.

00:37:11.740 And when the private sector invests in science, they actually expect something useful might

00:37:15.360 come out of it.

00:37:16.180 Well, actually, something useful does come out of the government-funded science, fear.

00:37:21.260 Fear of the future and fear of the climate.

00:37:23.360 So that helps the politicians.

00:37:25.000 And one of my hypotheses, and I'm writing a book that will include this, I think this

00:37:31.620 is a really important insight in many ways, in that nearly all the scare stories today

00:37:36.080 are about things that are invisible, like CO2.

00:37:39.700 Like, you can't point over there and say, look what the CO2 is doing over there.

00:37:43.280 So, and, or so remote that nobody can go and observe them for themselves.

00:37:47.940 So, because you can't observe it directly yourself, which is the first basis of science,

00:37:53.300 is observation.

00:37:55.180 Seeing something happen and saying, oh, maybe this is causing this, and then doing an experiment

00:37:59.560 to verify whether or not there is a cause-effect relationship there.

00:38:03.140 And then giving it out to be replicated by independent people, other people than you.

00:38:08.020 So then, pretty soon, you've got a hypothesis that's turning into a theory.

00:38:12.260 And, but you can't do that with things that are invisible very easily.

00:38:15.060 So, if something, if you're basing your story on something that is invisible, you depend on

00:38:22.300 the activists, the media, the politicians, and the scientists, all of whom have lots of skin

00:38:28.880 in that game.

00:38:30.460 You depend on them to tell you what's really happening.

00:38:32.480 So, when they tell you that CO2 is causing this or that or the other, you can't see it.

00:38:38.000 You have to believe them.

00:38:39.760 And then you expand that to the media, and as you were saying, the tech companies.

00:38:42.700 Yes, and the tech companies, and the politicians who want scare stories that they can tell their

00:38:48.980 voters they're going to save them and their children from. 0.90

00:38:51.560 You know, you're driving down the highway in your SUV, you're afraid you're killing your

00:38:55.560 children and your grandchildren, right?

00:38:57.540 So, you get guilty about that.

00:38:59.120 And then you send a big check to Greenpeace or one of these other so-called charities that

00:39:03.140 are going to save the world for you.

00:39:04.640 That's how that works.

00:39:05.740 They are very good at getting their hands in other people's pockets and extracting money

00:39:11.740 from them, like up to half a billion dollars going into Greenpeace and these other groups.

00:39:16.620 So, you still do this.

00:39:18.600 You still talk about these issues.

00:39:19.960 You still write about them.

00:39:21.560 Is there still a bit of hope or optimism that you have?

00:39:25.000 Well, the reason I'm writing the book I'm writing now is so that it's there as a record of what

00:39:29.940 I believed at this time in history, and I think it will bear out.

00:39:33.600 As a matter of fact, I know it will.

00:39:35.960 The scare, for example, about GMOs, genetically modified foods, have they ever shown you what

00:39:43.980 it is that's in there that is harmful?

00:39:45.960 No.

00:39:46.380 Under a microscope?

00:39:47.040 I'm told I have to be against them, but no one's told me why.

00:39:51.200 Well, it's because it's invisible, right?

00:39:53.660 Radiation is invisible, so they can make up all kinds of scare stories about it.

00:39:58.560 And pesticide residues in food are invisible, so that gives the organic people, which in

00:40:04.380 the sense of food, the word organic is strictly a marketing term.

00:40:07.880 It has no scientific basis to it whatsoever.

00:40:10.480 Organic in chemistry means the chemistry of carbon, which is all food, pretty much, because

00:40:15.460 all the food is from living things that are based on carbon.

00:40:20.140 So all our food is organic in that sense, except maybe salt.

00:40:25.200 Beyond meat burgers.

00:40:26.780 Well, they're organic, yeah, no matter what they've got in them.

00:40:30.740 The other things, though, are almost all caused by CO2.

00:40:35.120 They say that the coral reefs are dying from CO2.

00:40:37.680 How many people can go and see if CO2 is killing the coral reefs?

00:40:41.800 First, you can't see the CO2.

00:40:43.580 Secondly, the coral reefs are underwater.

00:40:45.460 And not that many people go there.

00:40:47.620 So the scientists who are studying the coral reefs and making the headlines, 93% of the

00:40:52.120 coral reefs are dying.

00:40:53.880 93% of the coral reefs are nearly dead.

00:40:57.780 93% of the coral reefs are terminal.

00:41:00.380 None of those things are dead, right?

00:41:02.400 Dying, nearly dead, and terminal are not dead, right?

00:41:05.880 So they can get away with saying that, because if someone goes there and say, well, they're

00:41:09.020 not dead, they can say, well, we didn't really say they were dead.

00:41:12.600 But we said they were almost there.

00:41:14.260 Yeah.

00:41:14.580 Well, yeah, I mean, my wife and I moved into a house and we inherited a garden, not having

00:41:19.460 any ability to do any gardening.

00:41:21.240 And there are lots of flowers there that don't look all that good.

00:41:23.700 But that does not mean that the garden is dead.

00:41:25.360 It doesn't mean it's over.

00:41:26.180 There's a cycle to these things.

00:41:27.560 Yes.

00:41:27.860 They grow, they go away.

00:41:29.780 Everything dies.

00:41:31.820 That's what people don't seem to get.

00:41:33.720 There's nothing that doesn't die, doesn't have an end of life, right?

00:41:37.000 And then a new one is born, hopefully, usually.

00:41:40.460 And coral reefs are no different.

00:41:42.380 Parts of them die all the time.

00:41:44.660 And sometimes hurricanes smash them up.

00:41:47.420 Sometimes boats run into them and damage them.

00:41:50.780 Sometimes people overfish them.

00:41:52.960 And so it's not that there's no issues with reefs, but reefs are thriving all around the

00:41:59.500 world where reefs can grow.

00:42:01.180 And the proof of this thing about them dying because the seas are too hot, the richest coral

00:42:07.720 reefs in the world, with the most reef fish too, the most biodiversity of corals and reef

00:42:12.420 fish, is in the warmest oceans of the world, which is the Indonesian Archipelago Sea, which

00:42:18.300 is a shallow sea, it's year-round, for year-round, it's the warmest ocean in the world, and it

00:42:24.080 has the highest biodiversity, is actually a kind of sanctuary.

00:42:27.320 As the world has cooled over the last 50 million years, the range of corals has shrunk into

00:42:32.860 a much smaller space near the equator than it was when the world was hot.

00:42:37.640 That's just it.

00:42:38.260 So really, yes, it's cold that has reduced the area of coral, not heat.

00:42:43.880 Hmm.

00:42:45.040 Well, glad we can have you here to break through a lot of the noise on this.

00:42:48.620 We've talked about the sea, the air, the land.

00:42:50.260 I think we've pretty much covered all the bases.

00:42:52.160 We'll get you on space next time.

00:42:53.800 Patrick Moore, thank you so much.

00:42:55.240 Thank you, Andrew.

00:42:56.440 Always fun to sit down with people like Patrick.

00:42:59.280 And incidentally, I was glad, especially to be at Freedom Talk, because I don't know if

00:43:03.040 you've noticed, but all of the conferences now are going virtual.

00:43:06.520 So I've received all these emails from invitations of, oh, come to this year's virtual conference

00:43:11.000 and come to this virtual conference, this virtual meeting.

00:43:13.580 And I don't like conferences in general.

00:43:15.820 The only thing that makes them good is talking to people, the socializing and networking and

00:43:21.280 sometimes the travel to a place.

00:43:22.860 So the idea of like an online conference, which is basically just like staring at boring seminars

00:43:27.220 for eight hours on Zoom, doesn't strike me as all that enjoyable.

00:43:30.600 So I hope we get to have some in-person conferences again so we can have more conversations like that

00:43:35.520 one with Patrick Moore.

00:43:37.180 We have a really special bonus episode coming up on Friday here on The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:43.600 That's all I'm going to give you for now.

00:43:45.140 If it doesn't happen, then we'll never speak of it again because something fell through.

00:43:48.160 But I think it's going to happen and I think it's going to be a good one. 0.84

00:43:51.040 And we'll be back with the regularly scheduled programming next week.

00:43:54.440 My thanks to all of you who tuned in.

00:43:56.520 We'll talk to you soon.

00:43:57.520 Thank you.

00:43:58.080 God bless and good day, Canada.

00:43:59.580 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:01.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - August 12, 2020

Political Incivility, the Kayaker-in-Chief, and a Defence of CO2

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