Rebel News Podcast - Green “ghouls” celebrate COVID-19 for lowering carbon emissions

00:00:00.080 Hello Rebels, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my Wednesday night show aptly called, yeah, you guessed it, The Gunn Show.

00:00:09.940 Now, my guest tonight is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.

00:00:15.040 And we're talking about something I talk about a lot.

00:00:18.080 I don't know if I love to talk about it, but I do talk about it a lot.

00:00:21.220 And it is the sinister green movement and how they're just always lurking around to capitalize on any good crisis.

00:00:28.700 Now, if you like listening to the show, then you're probably going to love watching it.

00:00:33.120 But in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:36.560 That's what we call our long-form TV-style shows here on Rebel News.

00:00:40.260 Subscribers get access to my really great show, if I do say so myself, as well as other great TV-style shows too, like Ezra's nightly Ezra Levant show.

00:00:49.200 And I'm not just saying his show is great because he's my boss, although it does help.

00:00:53.400 And David Menzies' fun Friday night show, Rebel Roundup.

00:00:57.220 It's only $8 a month to subscribe, or you can subscribe annually and get a bit of a deal.

00:01:02.920 You get two months free.

00:01:04.360 And just for my podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus membership by using the coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.

00:01:13.480 Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member.

00:01:19.200 And can you do me another favor?

00:01:22.000 Leave a five-star review on this podcast and be sure to subscribe in iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:01:29.100 Those reviews are a great way to support us here at Rebel News without ever having to spend a dime.

00:01:33.920 But it also helps other like-minded people find us on the algorithms.

00:01:41.160 And now please, enjoy this free, audio-only version of my show.

00:01:49.860 The entire nation is under house arrest.

00:02:02.280 A Chinese-born plague is tearing through our nursing homes and killing our grandparents. 1.00

00:02:06.120 We've got double-digit unemployment and the compassionate folks in the environmentalist movement are just waiting to pounce.

00:02:15.320 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:02:18.080 The far left never lets a good crisis go to waste.

00:02:39.560 The government intervention into the economy and the totalitarian measures forcing people to stay home and not move have resulted in a drop in CO2 emissions.

00:02:50.060 These are welcome tactics for the environmental movement in their war on an invisible gas that plants need to grow, CO2.

00:02:58.140 The environmental movement sees this emergency and what the government is doing as a blueprint for how they think the government should deal with this so-called climate emergency that isn't an emergency at all.

00:03:10.660 And I think that's bad news for freedom and bad news for humanity.

00:03:15.100 My guest tonight is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition and he joins me from his home in Ottawa in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:03:28.140 Joining me now from the safety of his home in Ottawa is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.

00:03:48.440 Tom, thanks for joining me.

00:03:50.080 You and I were sort of discussing our interview over the course of the last three days, sort of the stuff we wanted to talk about.

00:03:58.440 And you sent me this interesting but not altogether surprising article from the CBC.

00:04:06.220 And they're saying that basically what's happening in the economic shutdown should be kind of seen as an opportunity for the government to invest in.

00:04:20.660 When they say invest, they always mean spend taxpayer dollars on green energy.

00:04:26.060 These people never miss a crisis.

00:04:28.420 Am I right?

00:04:29.680 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:04:30.480 When oil prices were really high, they said wind and solar is now becoming competitive with oil and natural gas and coal.

00:04:38.100 But now the prices are really low.

00:04:39.480 They say now we have to go to wind and, you know, you know, you're dealing with fanatics when no matter what the actual events are in the world, it's always an excuse for having their particular cause.

00:04:50.700 You know, we have to remember that wind and solar power are generally speaking requiring government subsidies.

00:04:56.320 Even in provinces where you have private wind and solar power, large scale wind and solar, you still have mandates where the utilities are expected to buy a certain amount of wind and solar power.

00:05:07.600 But, you know, oil, gas and coal, I mean, they've been incredibly successful because without government subsidies of any, you know, of any real form, they are able to compete in the marketplace.

00:05:19.320 And, you know, when they talk about using wind and solar more because of the coronavirus, it's sort of like you're in the middle of a storm in an ocean liner and the captain says, everybody into the lifeboats.

00:05:33.780 You think, what?

00:05:34.780 No, of course, we want to have the strongest and most robust ship to protect us from the turmoil that's going on outside.

00:05:42.480 And similarly, as the economy comes back, we're going to want to have the cheapest, most robust, most reliable energy sources.

00:05:50.760 And that would be coal, oil and natural gas, not wind and solar power.

00:05:55.340 And, you know, an interesting point here that was made to me just today by an economist.

00:06:00.100 He said, studies in Europe show that the cost of renewables raise electricity costs for consumers so much that for every job created in the renewables industry, two or three are lost in the rest of the economy.

00:06:16.060 So, in fact, if you push wind and solar power, you'd have a net reduction in jobs.

00:06:21.980 Well, yeah, didn't we see something very similar to that unfold in Ontario as it pursued Gerald Butts' green energy transition, that the cost of electricity went up so high that there was somewhat of a manufacturing exodus right across the border where electricity was a lot cheaper.

00:06:44.280 You know, you're pricing these major manufacturers right out of the neighborhood when, you know, for your home outside of your mortgage, electricity is often one of the larger bills you have to pay.

00:07:00.160 The same goes for major manufacturing.

00:07:02.120 And yet, governments can't seem to put two and two together, that you're chasing away your large manufacturing tax base when you pursue these inefficient green energy ideas.

00:07:15.020 And even worse, they're all just virtue signaling because you need fossil fuel backup every time for every single green energy project.

00:07:25.600 Yeah, that's right. And, in fact, it's interesting in California, which pushed really hard on renewable sources, many industries have left the state, moving to places like Nevada and other states that have much lower priced electricity.

00:07:38.880 So, the last thing we need, our industries have been suffering hugely from the shutdown.

00:07:43.660 The last thing we need is to discourage them even further by making the electricity prices go even higher.

00:07:49.360 I mean, since 2002, when Dalton McGinty said that we were going to get rid of our coal-fired stations, which at that time provided a quarter of Ontario's electricity, we've seen electricity prices go up something like 200%.

00:08:03.400 Now, if you were a real social justice warrior and you were really concerned about the poor, this would really offend you.

00:08:11.340 But, you know, that's another example of when, in fact, the climate issue helps violate the causes that many on the left say they hold dear.

00:08:20.180 And, of course, the wind turbines kill so many birds.

00:08:23.440 You know, it's interesting. I was in Spain as well. We talked about it in Spain.

00:08:27.560 They're killing millions of birds and bats in Spain.

00:08:30.720 In California, at the Altamont Wind Turbine Farm, since the 1980s, they're talking about 3,000 golden eagles being killed.

00:08:39.460 OK, so, again, if you're concerned about the environment and protecting species at risk, the last thing you want is wind turbines.

00:08:48.040 So, yeah, this whole thing doesn't really make any sense.

00:08:50.760 And, you know, you have to get some idea of the magnitude of wind and solar power in comparison with oil, coal and natural gas across the world.

00:08:59.480 I mean, all the fossil fuels provide about 84 percent of the world's energy.

00:09:04.260 And it's interesting that the growth, just the growth in oil and gas use from 2017 to 2018 was higher across the world than the total use of renewables in the whole of 2018.

00:09:17.180 So, I mean, the amount they contribute is trivial.

00:09:20.600 And as I say, it's very much like abandoning a sturdy ocean liner in the middle of a in the middle of a storm and getting into lifeboats.

00:09:29.060 I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all.

00:09:30.840 Oh, yeah. And I mean, you couldn't find a bunch of people working harder for Russia than the people who say that, you know, Donald Trump is in the pocket of Russia.

00:09:42.660 These green environmentalists, you know, the more they pursue green energy and walk away from American and North American energy independence,

00:09:53.220 the more the likes of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela step up to fill the gap.

00:09:58.360 I mean, if you if you want to see people who are useful idiots for Russia, just look at the green movement because they're lining Putin's pocket. 0.57

00:10:08.020 Yeah. China as well.

00:10:09.560 I mean, China have the biggest solar company in the world.

00:10:12.800 They're the biggest produced producer of all sorts of renewable energy.

00:10:16.680 You know, it's really interesting.

00:10:17.700 There was an open letter to world leaders sent from a group in Europe called the Climate Intelligence Foundation.

00:10:23.820 And here's what they said. Compared to COVID-19, climate change is a non-problem.

00:10:30.880 It is. And I'll send you the link to this. OK, please.

00:10:32.980 It's based on immature computer models and it looks into the distant future in the current health emergency.

00:10:39.740 However, your attention to people's needs is today.

00:10:43.900 Please don't continue pushing your zero carbon emission ambition in a time when the world is dealing with a deadly global crisis.

00:10:51.700 Yes, there is an emergency, but it's not climate.

00:10:56.340 You know, it's funny.

00:10:58.780 The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow is cancelled.

00:11:03.900 I thought it was kind of funny that after all they're screaming about an emergency.

00:11:09.420 Yeah.

00:11:10.020 In the climate, an actual emergency caused them to cancel it.

00:11:14.280 For all their preening, they could never cancel that conference.

00:11:18.880 They needed their private jets.

00:11:20.380 They needed their private parties.

00:11:21.920 They needed their little get togethers and their banquets and their glad handing and patting each other on the back.

00:11:27.180 They needed that.

00:11:28.340 None of the climate emergency was ever enough to cancel that.

00:11:31.540 An actual disease, an emergency actually did do it.

00:11:34.920 So, I mean, it just reveals their own, how seriously they take their own talking points.

00:11:42.880 And speaking of computer models, you actually have an article in America Out Loud.

00:11:48.720 Looks like you wrote it with your regular article writing partner, Dr. Jay Lair.

00:11:54.960 And I thought it was a great article because you pointed out, like, the flawed COVID-19 models are very similar to the flawed climate science models.

00:12:05.960 We just get to see them play out a lot sooner.

00:12:08.360 Yeah.

00:12:08.940 Yeah.

00:12:09.100 This is like death by models.

00:12:11.360 You know, I mean, obviously, the coronavirus is far more serious because real people are sick and real people are dying.

00:12:16.920 But there's some really fundamental similarities between the climate scare and the COVID scare.

00:12:22.720 Both of them are being driven by computer model forecasts of the future.

00:12:27.260 And both of them lack adequate input data.

00:12:30.460 Okay.

00:12:30.680 In the case of the climate issue, for example, for the whole of northern Canada to the World Climate Data Network that they're using, they have one data point.

00:12:39.800 And that's at Eureka.

00:12:41.020 Okay.

00:12:41.400 One data point for the whole of northern Canada, which is ridiculous.

00:12:44.840 But similarly, for the COVID virus, the Ontario government, for example, say that they're doing 10,000 tests a day.

00:12:51.400 I don't know if they really are.

00:12:52.640 But the trouble is they're focused on testing people who have symptoms.

00:12:57.460 Okay.

00:12:57.720 As well as first response people and other kind of care workers.

00:13:02.960 So what you have then is a population of people who are far more likely to have the disease.

00:13:07.880 Okay.

00:13:08.320 To begin with.

00:13:09.120 Now, if, in fact, they did a general random sample across the society, in other words, properly stratifying it so that you had people of different age groups, different locations, different health standards,

00:13:22.820 then you would get a much better idea as to how much this disease is spread through the society.

00:13:28.040 And you would then better understand how dangerous is it, really.

00:13:33.400 Now, they did a study, actually, in two places I'm aware of like this.

00:13:37.020 In a small town in Italy, they actually found that up to 75% of people had the virus but had no symptoms.

00:13:46.200 Okay.

00:13:46.640 So those people in Ontario wouldn't be being tested at all.

00:13:49.680 Same thing in Santa Clara in California.

00:13:51.660 They actually found that, in fact, the virus may not be anywhere near as deadly as people are worried because many, many people who are not being tested are carrying the virus.

00:14:02.280 Now, that's a bad thing and a good thing.

00:14:03.980 It's a bad thing because, of course, they can spread it and it can become, you know, more prevalent in your society.

00:14:09.020 But what it also means is that the death rate may be much, much lower than what they're calculating based on these surveys.

00:14:15.920 So, you know, we're working on an article, the president of the Peace Order and Good Government group here in Ottawa, about the kind of sampling that's needed to properly make policy concerning COVID.

00:14:29.340 What they need to do is have random sampling, as I say, properly stratified through the population across the society.

00:14:36.440 And then they'll have an idea, is this really that much more severe than pneumonia or the flu that occur and we certainly don't shut down society for it.

00:14:45.920 So that's the first thing we have to do.

00:14:48.320 The models themselves in both cases are not necessarily very accurate.

00:14:53.020 In the case of the climate, it's really just guesswork because we don't have a theory of climate.

00:14:57.540 So it's really just curve fitting.

00:14:59.220 So those models are terrible.

00:15:00.820 The models in the COVID case still need a lot of improvement as well because the virus itself is very much unknown.

00:15:08.060 So, indeed, there's a very strong similarity.

00:15:10.500 We're being driven by models which in both cases don't have adequate data and the models themselves are suspect.

00:15:18.200 So, yeah, there's a strong correlation there.

00:15:20.180 And, you know, I think what we need to do is get the data and then make the decisions based on real world situations.

00:15:26.660 If it turns out to be no more dangerous to the average population than the flu, then we should quarantine the people who are at risk.

00:15:36.180 In other words, in nursing homes and things like that, much better.

00:15:39.220 But closing the whole society down doesn't make any sense at all.

00:15:42.100 Yeah, you know, when I was reading your article, it reminded me, you know, when you pointed out the testing in Ontario that they're testing symptomatic people and that's how they're getting their their modeling.

00:15:54.680 It reminded me of when they put these climate science weather stations in parking lots on top of buildings so that they get these that skew hotter.

00:16:08.140 Yeah.

00:16:08.340 And you'd laugh, Sheila, because the place they have the temperature sensing station in Canada's Arctic is in Eureka.

00:16:16.160 And Eureka is what's called a refugia, which is actually warmer than usual area.

00:16:21.400 And, of course, the reason for that is simply that that's the scientists want to live in a place that's sort of habitable.

00:16:27.200 So they have their actual temperature sensing station in an unusually warm part of the Arctic.

00:16:32.020 So when they say, oh, my God, the Arctic is warming.

00:16:34.920 Well, they don't have a clue.

00:16:36.720 And the same thing with with this virus thing.

00:16:39.080 I mean, the truth is the government's flying blind until they do proper testing.

00:16:43.680 It's not that they need to do more testing because 10,000 a day is plenty in Ontario anyway.

00:16:48.860 But they have to do it in a much more a more general random sense.

00:16:53.380 So they get a real idea of what's happening.

00:16:55.160 Now, I wanted to move along because I noticed that you have this article in the Chronicle and you had referred to it in another interview that you had had done.

00:17:08.920 I think it was with Heritage or Heartland.

00:17:10.860 I'm not sure you'll correct me.

00:17:12.660 Heartland.

00:17:13.700 And I noticed that you had touched on this article.

00:17:15.980 You're not the author of it, but it's a very interesting article.

00:17:18.580 Unless you are the author.

00:17:19.760 I'm a co-author.

00:17:20.460 Just as co-authors, as chief editor.

00:17:24.320 And the article makes the case that environmentalists should hope for a quick economic rebound instead of doing what they're doing now,

00:17:32.920 which is cheering for a complete and total economic collapse so that they can just rewrite the economy in their own special little green way.

00:17:40.380 Yeah, see, they're actually mistaking short-term benefits for long-term problems because, you see, what's happening is that, yes, in the short term, we're seeing a reduction in air pollution and water pollution and all that sort of thing.

00:17:53.580 But in the long term, if society doesn't rebound, and Suzuki was saying in his article, I guess it was on the CBC site back on the 1st of April, at least it was revised then, he was saying, you know, are we going to rebound and come back to the way things were?

00:18:08.660 Well, of course, what I said was that I sure hope we do, because a poor society ultimately will not protect its environment.

00:18:16.820 I mean, if you look at places like Somalia, okay, do you think they care much about their environment? 0.98

00:18:22.800 I mean, Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows very clearly that until you have your basic things handled, things like food and drinking water and sanitation and safety, until those things are satisfied, people don't really care about lesser concerns, such as the state of your environment.

00:18:40.840 Now, the state of the environment, of course, is very important, but you need to have a certain wealth before you can actually properly protect your environment, and that is what we've talked about earlier.

00:18:50.140 It's the Kuznets curve, okay?

00:18:52.100 If you were to plot income versus environmental degradation, what you find is that as a poor society starts to evolve, at first, the pollution increases.

00:19:03.220 It increases, and they're getting wealthier, but it's increasing, but they get to a certain point where they actually care about the environment, and then the environment gets better and better as people become more wealthy.

00:19:16.000 So, in fact, what we should be doing is encouraging society to get right back to work, save our economy, then we'll have the resources to protect our environment.

00:19:25.060 So, the environmentalists are missing the boat on this one, totally.

00:19:28.880 They seem to think that, you know, make society poor, you don't have much going on, and therefore you'll have less pollution.

00:19:35.300 Well, in the long run, that will backfire because people will stop funding environmental programs because they'll be just struggling to survive.

00:19:43.740 Yeah, you know, environmentalists don't have to go as far as Somalia to care about those, or to see examples of those kind of things.

00:19:51.400 They just have to go to poorer neighborhoods in the cities in which they live, but environmentalists don't like to venture out and see the real societal and social problems that are right underneath their noses.

00:20:03.680 They just, you know, they could go to a poorer neighborhood and see how the houses look, how the yards look, the kind of cars people drive, the garbage and sanitation situation in those neighborhoods.

00:20:13.840 But that would be looking at a tangible problem that they could fix right in front of them.

00:20:19.780 Instead, they have to look at this sort of theoretical problem that may or may not exist that we may or may not be contributing to.

00:20:27.740 It's very strange.

00:20:28.840 Yeah, you know, just for one quick point is if people want to learn more about this and actually see the numbers at which point societies turn around and start caring about the environment, I encourage them to go to climatechangereconsidered.org because they actually have a very good report there that talks about you need to have wealth to have environmental protection.

00:20:50.100 I sent you an article, too, also before when we were sort of planning out the scope of our interview, we never actually discussed people at home just so you know, we never actually discuss what we're going to talk about.

00:21:02.420 But I do send my guests some interesting things that are sort of on my mind and I think that they would would be on their mind, too.

00:21:10.640 The if this isn't just this idea that we should use the coronavirus as an opportunity to rewrite the entire world, this isn't just something that's being rolled around in the minds of radical environmentalists, the likes of Extinction Rebellion.

00:21:29.400 This is coming out of the United Nations.

00:21:32.680 Oh, yeah, this I've got on my computer screen here.

00:21:36.520 Sky News dot com.

00:21:37.660 They have an article saying that the UN Climate Change Fund calls the coronavirus a, quote, opportunity.

00:21:46.460 So people's dead grandparents, the economy shut down, people in complete financial distress.

00:21:54.680 It's an opportunity for the fancy people at the UN to reshape the world.

00:22:01.700 It's really shocking and anti-human.

00:22:04.200 People can push back on this a little bit because you remember there was a poll that was done, My World, the UN, in which they actually polled the world's people and nine million people voted and climate change came out dead last.

00:22:17.400 Well, of course, the UN weren't very happy with that, I'm sure, because that did not give them the results they wanted.

00:22:22.500 In fact, they listed climate change first when they gave you your choices.

00:22:25.360 They now have a new poll online, and I'll send you a link to it right after we speak.

00:22:29.800 It's My World 2030, and they're asking you to prioritize the things that you'd like to see the world work on, including things like climate change.

00:22:38.820 And sadly, there's only about 500 people in Canada who have voted so far, and climate change is leading the pack.

00:22:45.860 Okay, so I encourage people, get into that poll, I'll send you the link, because if we can show again that the world's people put climate change at the bottom, which they did in the previous poll, then it's going to be harder and harder for the UN to say it's our most important crisis.

00:23:01.740 Well, it obviously isn't their most important crisis, because again, they canceled their climate change conference because of an actual crisis.

00:23:08.380 Yeah, a real crisis.

00:23:09.440 Now, Tom, I know time is short. You are a very, people want to talk to you, and I know somebody after me wants to talk to you, so I'll let you go.

00:23:20.240 But I wanted to give you a chance to let people know where they can find you and how they can support the work that you do and some of the little projects that you're working on right now.

00:23:29.600 Yeah, sure. Our webpage is climatescienceinternational.org, and we accept contributions from anybody, donations.

00:23:37.920 You click the donate button, and you can give us $5 or $5,000 or whatever you want, and we'll keep you totally up to date on all of our activities.

00:23:45.540 We're also in the process of starting a new group, Climate Realism Canada, and when that one's all ready, we'll actually let you know.

00:23:52.400 Right now, we're doing a lot of the background boilerplating. It's not a good idea to launch a new group in the middle of a pandemic.

00:23:59.360 We've got the time.

00:24:00.200 Yeah, so we're getting things all ready for that. And again, I also alert people to climatechangereconsidered.org, which is an amazing site with reports, thousands of references that support what you and I are saying.

00:24:14.740 Also the podcast.

00:24:16.600 Oh, podcast.

00:24:18.260 Tom Harris, Exploratory Journeys. That's the first thing on our website at climate change, sorry, climatescienceinternational.org.

00:24:25.900 Great. Thank you, Tom. I want you to please promise me you're going to stay healthy, and if you run afoul of the tyrannical municipal government in Ottawa, let us know.

00:24:36.460 Yeah.

00:24:36.940 Because we'd love to help you.

00:24:38.640 Right. Thanks a lot, Sheila.

00:24:40.180 Thanks, Tom.

00:24:40.720 There was a report today in the Globe and Mail talking about how a number of small businesses are just opting to throw in the towel and close their doors instead of digging a deeper financial hole trying to ride out this pandemic shutdown.

00:25:02.860 A report from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy notes that for every 1% rise in unemployment, 16 more Albertans will die by suicide.

00:25:15.420 My friend Tom is right. If the far left considers themselves to be true humanitarians, they need to start caring about the human cost of their bad ideas, like phasing out an entire industry in the pursuit of lowered emissions.

00:25:29.360 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.

00:25:34.740 Congratulations, I guess, on surviving another Earth Day.

00:25:38.280 Stay safe. Stay healthy. I'll see you back here in the same time, in the same place, next week.

00:25:43.680 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:25:59.360 you

00:26:10.220 on

00:26:10.820 you

Rebel News Podcast - April 23, 2020

Green “ghouls” celebrate COVID-19 for lowering carbon emissions

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript