Rebel News Podcast - Brisk business of climate change policy slows down as the UN drags and Australia burns

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my

00:00:05.400 Wednesday night show, The Gunn Show. Tonight my guest is Tom Harris from the International Climate

00:00:12.020 Science Coalition. If you like listening to the show then you will love watching it, but in order

00:00:16.960 to watch you need to be a subscriber to premium content. That's what we call our long-form TV

00:00:21.440 style shows here on Rebel News. Subscribers get access to my show as well as other great TV style

00:00:27.640 shows too like Ezra's Nightly, Ezra Levant Show and David Menzies' fun Friday night show Rebel Roundup.

00:00:34.720 It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe or you can subscribe annually and get two months free and

00:00:40.720 just for our podcast listeners you can save an extra 10% on a new premium membership by using

00:00:44.900 the coupon code podcast when you subscribe. Just go to premium.rebelnews.com to become a member and

00:00:52.760 please leave a five-star review on this podcast and subscribe in iTunes or wherever you get your

00:00:57.960 podcasts. Those reviews are a great way to support Rebel News without ever having to spend a dime and

00:01:03.660 now please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.

00:01:22.340 Environmentalists and so-called human rights activists around the world are lamenting the

00:01:27.560 failure of the Madrid climate change talks and I couldn't be happier. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and

00:01:33.720 you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:01:34.980 The UN Madrid climate talks are being dubbed a disaster by the environmentalist global warmest

00:01:59.860 activists of the world which is I suppose great for the progress of humanity especially in the

00:02:05.400 developing world when the people who live there are so often denied access to cheap reliable fossil

00:02:11.680 fuels based on decisions made by first world environmentalists and in other narrative busting

00:02:17.640 disappointments to environmentalists it appears arson is one of the major causes of the Australian

00:02:24.500 bushfires but that hasn't stopped Hollywood and far left-wing activists from shifting the blame from

00:02:31.500 the arsonists over to your SUV. My guest on the show today is Tom Harris from the International Climate

00:02:38.240 Science Coalition and he's going to offer some counterpoints and facts to the overheated

00:02:45.040 environmentalist rhetoric polluting the mainstream media right now. Tom joins me now in an interview

00:02:52.260 we recorded yesterday afternoon. Joining me now is Executive Director of the International Climate

00:03:14.180 Science Coalition, Tom Harris. Tom, thank you so much for joining me. I haven't seen you since we were both

00:03:20.260 shivering our way through Madrid which was ironically cold for the climate change conference. I wanted to

00:03:28.960 have you back on because there's so much happening in climate science news and everybody's claiming to be a

00:03:35.340 climate scientist right now hijacking the fires in Australia for their own agenda but I thought I'd start

00:03:42.360 our conversation a little closer to home. I wanted to talk to you about the carbon tax because

00:03:47.660 the federal imposition of the carbon tax on provinces like mine that don't want a carbon tax that elected

00:03:54.580 a leader to get rid of a carbon tax happened on January 1st and I know you look at the science side

00:04:00.640 of it and I look at the economic side of it. The carbon tax isn't working even if you concede the science of

00:04:08.460 the carbon tax. The emissions aren't going down. The federal reporting to the UN, they actually pulled

00:04:17.740 their reporting back. Black Lock's reporter had an article about this because it showed that emissions

00:04:23.600 had gone up during the time that Alberta had had a carbon tax before we repealed it and BC's emissions

00:04:29.880 go up every single year and they have the highest carbon tax in the country. This is nothing more than a tax

00:04:36.020 grab. What do you say? Well and also when we were in Europe you noticed the gasoline prices were much

00:04:42.460 higher than North America, double or triple in parts of Europe and of course people are driving their cars

00:04:47.340 just as much. I mean I think the bottom line is that even if it did have an impact and even if we did

00:04:53.800 reduce our driving, Canada's impact on world greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, 1.6 percent and so you know

00:05:01.700 from all sorts of points of view the carbon tax is nothing more than virtue signaling where in fact the

00:05:07.900 government are signaling to the world and to the media and environmental groups oh we're doing our

00:05:12.600 part to stop climate change but in reality it's not reducing greenhouse gases and it's not going to have

00:05:18.740 any impact on world climate anyways. Yeah and you know that that brings me to another point again

00:05:24.680 closer to home. You and I are having this discussion and we're having a discussion that is a fact-based

00:05:29.960 discussion. You can measure you know the I don't even know how they do it but it's calculable

00:05:36.540 the amount of CO2 emissions and how they increase year over year in British Columbia and federally

00:05:42.840 but there are journalists in this country who would love to shut you and I up and you know you sent me this

00:05:52.300 article earlier this week it's in the Winnipeg free press the free press of all you know the

00:05:59.880 ironically named Winnipeg free press and it's an editorial um an unsigned editorial by the way

00:06:06.440 that says it's time to silence the voices of denial and then they show a scary picture of a burning tree

00:06:14.720 um I think this is the way the conversation's going as the science doesn't play out um the way

00:06:22.180 um the alarmists would like they just want us to shut up. Yeah exactly because I mean all the alarmists

00:06:29.120 all you know what they're really afraid of is that the public realize that all we have to do is lift

00:06:34.000 the the lid off the Pandora's box of real science because real science is all over the map. I mean

00:06:40.780 there are many thousands of scientists who think this is completely ridiculous. You probably heard of the

00:06:45.640 world climate declaration it was originally the European climate declaration they had 600 signatures

00:06:51.860 of leading experts in the field they wrote to the UN and and they actually said there is no climate

00:06:58.380 emergency and those are the first words in this now world climate declaration. The last I saw there

00:07:05.260 were 800 signatures of leading experts across the world. Now of course people don't hear about that

00:07:11.140 because the Winnipeg free press and the rest of the media don't tell us and when I show people this

00:07:18.420 you know they're very surprised they say oh geez we never heard of that and that's the problem. This is all

00:07:24.380 a strategy right out of 1984 where in fact the government and their allies in the media actually shape

00:07:31.200 the news. They don't report the news they actually create the news to get across uh the kind of points of view

00:07:38.260 that they want people to think and I wrote an article about this recently in America Out Loud and you

00:07:44.700 remember we talked about newspeak and duck speak. In 1984 they created a new language and a new vocabulary

00:07:52.420 and certain thoughts and certain words like dissent or debate or things like that they didn't exist.

00:07:59.440 They only fell under the category of thought crime okay and that's what's happening in the climate debate.

00:08:05.760 We have of course the newspeak and duck speak of carbon pollution when it's not pollution and it's

00:08:12.040 not carbon. We also then have thought crime which is climate change denial and of course the Winnipeg 0.67

00:08:18.640 free press our editorial was ridiculous because they said people who are denying climate change must be

00:08:24.260 silenced you know that's the kind of thing they said but nobody's denying climate change. Obviously if we

00:08:30.360 had no climate change we'd still be stuck in the last ice age. So the whole point of it is ridiculous

00:08:35.620 and very much opposed to the whole idea of free speech. Now one of the things here's the thing that's a

00:08:43.740 great segue because Amnesty International uh this human rights organization or they paint themselves as a

00:08:51.820 human rights organization has said nothing about you know these ideas about silencing critical journalists

00:08:57.860 yet they have penned articles lamenting the failure of the Madrid climate talks. I don't even know how

00:09:05.520 that is on Amnesty International's radar. Has China released all their political prisoners or something

00:09:10.820 and I just missed it because it seems to me that Amnesty International is way out of their lane worrying

00:09:17.180 about the Madrid climate talks. You know what they're saying is that it's a social justice issue that in fact

00:09:23.140 the poor around the world will be most impacted by man-made climate change and how this is just

00:09:28.500 completely unfair. But you know the point is they're actually missing the boat totally on this

00:09:33.180 because the real social justice issue is the impact of climate policies on the poor. The very fact that

00:09:40.360 in Ontario for example our electricity rates since 2002 at peak time of day have gone up something like

00:09:46.580 200 percent. I mean that's a social justice issue and that was driven largely by Dalton McGinty saying

00:09:53.440 we're going to lead the world on climate change and get rid of our coal-fired stations. So yeah there are

00:09:58.900 social justice issues. That's one of them. The fact that indeed you know electricity prices go through

00:10:04.760 the roof because of climate policy and they should be concerned about that. The other one is that the

00:10:10.800 developed world are trying to stop developing countries from using their own fossil fuels coal

00:10:17.060 oil and gas to develop and pull their people out of poverty. And you know I've given this example before

00:10:22.720 the Madhupi power station in South Africa you know they applied to the World Bank to get a loan to pull

00:10:28.540 their people out of poverty by generating electricity a social justice issue. But the United States and four

00:10:34.940 European countries abstained from voting because of their concerns about climate change. Okay now it did

00:10:41.800 pass. That was because developing countries ganged up and voted in favor of the loan because they

00:10:47.620 understand what real social justice issues are giving people electricity so they can do refrigeration and

00:10:54.680 all the other things needed to help improve life for the poor. So unfortunately Amnesty International has it

00:11:00.740 backwards. It's climate policies that are a threat to social justice not the Madrid conference or

00:11:07.780 whatever. You know that that is again you're really good at this Tom that's a great segue into your next

00:11:14.280 article because you wrote an article in America Out Loud titled Time to Fan the Flames of Civil War

00:11:20.980 Between Climate Alarmists and Their Influential Allies. And you know at what point are anti-poverty activists

00:11:29.800 going to turn on the climate alarmists and the deep-pocketed climate alarmists for exactly how you

00:11:39.180 explain how climate policies are affecting the poor. I think you know it'd be great to drive a wedge

00:11:47.100 right in the middle of the social justice left because as you know as you point out it is the poor

00:11:56.120 who pay the highest cost for climate policies right down to medicine and electricity in hospitals

00:12:06.240 in the developing world. Where are the feminists speaking out for the girls who can't go to school 1.00

00:12:13.020 because they don't have fossil fuels on the farm in Africa and they have to do labor on their own

00:12:18.560 or the lighting just lighting on the streets that keeps vulnerable women safe. Where are the feminists? 1.00

00:12:24.960 I'd love to just hammer a wedge right into the middle of the left and say look you guys have to

00:12:30.360 pick a side. Are you against fossil fuels or are you for the betterment of humanity? Well that's right

00:12:36.440 and also it applies to environmental controls and the environment that are truly concerned about nature.

00:12:42.260 You know in Spain for example and we talked about this in Madrid there are 18,000 industrial wind

00:12:48.380 turbines which are of course supposedly trying to stop climate change which won't happen and they

00:12:53.920 estimate that 200 birds per year per turbine are being killed and 400 bats per year per turbine because

00:13:01.020 the bats don't even have to be hit by a blade to be killed by the turbines even if they just fly into

00:13:05.980 the low pressure zone behind the blade it turns out that their lungs burst and they die. So what you

00:13:12.160 end up with is and you know the estimates are pretty approximate but they say anywhere from 6 to 18

00:13:17.200 million birds and bats are killed by Spain's wind turbines alone. Now it's interesting because I have

00:13:24.240 some friends that are at a bird sanctuary they're they're looking after birds of prey and they hate

00:13:29.940 wind turbines totally because you know people will say well cats kill more birds than wind turbines. Yes but

00:13:35.880 cats don't kill hawks and eagles and and golden eagles and things like that. Condors yeah. Yeah exactly.

00:13:42.000 So I mean that's another wedge we have to drive between the uh environmentalists who are focused

00:13:47.940 on climate change and those who are focused on real conservation issues. I mean just take one wind

00:13:53.280 farm in California the Altamont Pass for example they estimate that 3,000 golden eagles have been killed

00:14:01.180 in that wind farm since it opened in the 80s. 3,000 golden eagles. So I mean anyone who cares about

00:14:07.880 nature should abhor the wind turbines that's for sure. Yeah I'm old enough to remember when a bunch

00:14:14.420 of ducks landed in a tailings pond in Fort McMurray during an uh a freak spring snowstorm and millions

00:14:23.120 of dollars in fines were handed out to the oil company. Imagine if green energy had to follow the 0.66

00:14:30.260 same rules as fossil fuels when it comes to um endangering wildlife and you know as far as I know

00:14:35.880 ducks aren't endangered but wind turbines are blending up all kinds of endangered species

00:14:41.460 all the time and it gets to retain the green label just because it doesn't use fossil fuels. Now I

00:14:49.700 wanted to um well I wanted to pat you on the back a little bit because um as I was saying off the air

00:14:57.100 you and Dr. Tim Ball are more accurate in your predictions than any climate model I've ever

00:15:04.200 looked at. In 2018 you guys wrote an article saying that extreme wildfires are caused by extreme

00:15:13.680 stupidity and not global warming and as it turns out um a year and a half two years later that's exactly

00:15:22.720 what's happening in Australia isn't it? Oh yeah in fact two-thirds of the wildfires are apparently

00:15:28.360 caused by human intervention and in particular deliberate intervention. I mean a lot of it is

00:15:34.080 arson and you know the whole concept that rising CO2 and rising temperature will lead to more wildfires

00:15:40.880 is entirely backwards and here's the logic that we used in that article. As CO2 rises the stomata on

00:15:48.340 plants which absorb CO2 don't have to be as big so they shrink so you actually lose less water from

00:15:55.280 the plants through the stomata because the holes are smaller these are the small pores on plants

00:15:59.840 so more water is left in the plant and in the soil. Similarly when temperature rises you have more

00:16:06.480 evaporation you have more rainfall and again the soil is moister so the risk of fire is actually less.

00:16:13.660 You know they say that the droughts are being caused we'll see how what they say exactly they were saying

00:16:20.220 that the um high temperature was causing the droughts well in fact it's actually backwards if you have a

00:16:27.360 drought in a particular region you're not going to have very much water to evaporate so you're not

00:16:32.340 removing from the surface the energy of evaporation and so in fact the temperature goes up so you know what

00:16:39.240 you're finding is that their arguments are entirely backwards if you go back in history what you find

00:16:44.340 is that the droughts in the 30s and the 40s in Australia would last for decades much longer you

00:16:50.880 know and they also give an example on what's up with that in the article I sent you of a far worse

00:16:55.860 period of fires in the 1800s I believe it was called Black Thursday and that was during a cold period

00:17:02.760 because we're still in the end of the little ice age so once again like in so many of the climate

00:17:08.020 issues they actually have it entirely backwards if they want to stop fires they have to stop people

00:17:14.320 setting fires and also of course they have to clean up the underbrush which which is a tinderbox just

00:17:20.680 waiting to be ignited when you do have arsonists so they have to maintain their forests better and

00:17:26.260 that's a major factor that in fact the liberal MP that was being interviewed by the BBC brought up and

00:17:32.120 of course he was attacked for it as being a climate denier but he's completely right I mean part of

00:17:37.000 you know reducing wildfires is forest maintenance yeah and that's another environmental policy or lack

00:17:45.240 thereof that hurts people who are on the ground dealing with environmental policy when you have

00:17:53.840 an aging forest or underbrush you the forest becomes a tinderbox you know and and and fire suppression

00:18:02.580 practices sometimes the forest needs to burn to renew itself so that it is not all old all at once causing

00:18:10.720 these huge blazes but you know 100 years of fire suppression has turned our uh forests and it here in Alberta

00:18:20.700 for example it at sometimes it really is a tinderbox and it's funny to see environmentalists completely

00:18:28.580 glaze over arson to blame my SUV the same thing happened in British Columbia uh the massive fire

00:18:37.060 forest fires a couple years back were determined by the RCMP to be arson yeah and yet you know these

00:18:45.380 climate alarmists really are an arsonist's best friend well that's right and I gotta write about the

00:18:49.940 fact that the uh fires are mostly being found in parts of Australia that are actually cooler than normal

00:18:56.420 because you know if you actually look at the map of where all these fires are occurring they're occurring

00:19:02.460 mostly in regions that are cooler not warmer so the idea that an average global temperature or sorry an average

00:19:08.540 continental temperature in the case of Australia is somehow contributing to the fires is also completely wrong

00:19:13.980 so you know I really have to write about this because we wrote about it as you say a year and a half ago

00:19:18.880 it's time for a new uh wildfires article yeah and that's the thing too in in the modern age there's so

00:19:26.680 much data and so much historical data that you can dig up that you're not going to hear about um if you get

00:19:34.620 all your climate science from a celebrity lecturing you at the Golden Globes yeah exactly and and you know I

00:19:41.760 think it's one thing that is happening though that's good is you probably heard of Naomi's site

00:19:46.780 and she is actually now working closer and closer with Heartland we're going to hear a lot more from

00:19:51.960 her and that's going to be a nice breath of fresh air after this ridiculous Greta Thunberg stuff 1.00

00:19:57.260 and uh so I encourage people to look up Naomi's site we I have an interview with her that I did on

00:20:02.340 my podcast uh just a few days ago I'll be putting it up on our web page uh by the way our web page is

00:20:07.840 climate science international dot o-r-g and people can listen to the new um she doesn't like to be 0.95

00:20:14.360 called an anti-Greta because no she doesn't no she's not a puppet she thinks for herself so if people

00:20:20.100 want to hear a refreshing perspective from a person a lot younger than me just go to our website I'd say

00:20:26.660 tomorrow and we'll have it up there yeah she's just a tiny little thing we interviewed her in Madrid 0.51

00:20:32.380 also and uh you know she's she's a free thinker nobody tells her what to think you know she digs

00:20:38.280 deep into the issue um and I think actually she's indicative probably of the vast majority of young

00:20:43.800 people but young people like her don't get on the mainstream media and they don't get to tour around

00:20:48.280 the world with a BBC reality crew like Greta Thunberg is um are there any other places Tom that people

00:20:57.720 can can uh find your work get a hold of you or support what you do because you um you know if the

00:21:04.860 Winnipeg Free Press had their way you'd be shut right up yeah exactly well actually what I always

00:21:09.720 recommend people do since I've contributed to it and I think it's uh an extremely good set of documents

00:21:15.200 is the uh climate change reconsidered series I was one of the editors of some of those documents

00:21:21.380 and you can get to that web page by going to climate reconsidered dot o-r-g these are the

00:21:27.540 reports of the non-governmental international panel on climate change and if they're too voluminous at

00:21:33.000 thousand pages each to go through just read the summaries because at the beginning of them

00:21:37.140 they've done an extremely good job of summarizing a lot of these things just one quick point I'm

00:21:43.420 really disappointed that young people are not more questioning I know in my generation it was normal

00:21:49.660 and we wanted to question the status quo we didn't want to follow political correctness

00:21:54.100 um and I'm surprised that young people are not doing what Naomi Seif is doing a lot more and that

00:22:00.380 is questioning their teachers I used to speak in high schools and it was interesting because the

00:22:04.940 students were intrigued they like questioning authority it was yeah isn't the principals that

00:22:10.060 wanted to shut me up you know Tom maybe it's a regional thing um because uh or maybe it's just my

00:22:18.980 own kids and their friends but um they are pretty uh prickly when it comes to authority um and I think

00:22:29.040 maybe as um skeptics and myself within you know the non-partisan conservative movement maybe we need to

00:22:35.700 do a better job communicating to young people that you know that feeling of not liking being told what to

00:22:42.800 do and not believing that adult filling you with bs that's conservatism and hang on to that exactly

00:22:51.540 and I encourage people to go to the heartland.org website because now working they're working with

00:22:56.700 Naomi now and we're going to see videos from her I think pretty well every week uh so you know we got

00:23:03.960 130,000 views on her little five minute speech in Madrid uh which is far more than any of the scientists

00:23:10.560 at our conference but we're going to hear more from her and that's that's a good thing that's

00:23:14.960 fantastic Tom uh thanks for being so generous with your time and we shouldn't leave it this long until

00:23:20.540 you're back on the show next time okay that's great great thank you Tom thank you

00:23:25.360 it's so great to hear the other side of the story especially when we can't turn on the tv or open up any

00:23:38.680 social media site without some so-called news agency or Hollywood halfwit telling you that it's

00:23:45.060 your carbon footprint causing problems actually created by arsonists in Australia now just a quick

00:23:51.800 point of clarification these things happen when you're unscripted the way my conversations are with

00:23:58.660 my guests Tom mentioned a website and he said climatereconsidered.org however it's actually

00:24:06.740 climatereconsidered.org that's climatereconsidered.org I don't want to send you to a dead-end place when

00:24:15.960 you're out there desperately searching for some facts well everybody that's the show for tonight

00:24:20.860 thank you so much as always for tuning in I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same

00:24:27.000 place next week and remember don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think

00:24:31.400 so

00:24:32.200 yeah

00:24:44.840 so

00:24:49.460 You

Rebel News Podcast - January 09, 2020

Brisk business of climate change policy slows down as the UN drags and Australia burns

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript