Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Debunking CBC's flawed reporting on the wood pellet industry

00:00:00.000 Dunking on, or rather debunking, CBC's fake news about the wood pellet industry here in Canada.

00:00:07.380 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gun Show.

00:00:10.160 On this edition of The Fifth Estate, wood from B.C. is being burned for fuel in the United Kingdom.

00:00:36.520 We're on the verge of losing these forests, literally on the verge of complete destruction.

00:00:42.020 The landscape scarred with clear-cut after clear-cut, and in the middle of it, a U.K. company hungry for more.

00:00:50.880 We've got a power station that's burning 25 million trees a year.

00:00:54.720 But at what cost to B.C.'s forests?

00:00:57.680 The claims that these companies are making that they're green and sustainable, this really turns that into a massive lie.

00:01:04.160 We're creating local jobs, directly and indirectly, and we're creating a product that goes to offset coal.

00:01:12.400 We need to see it for what it is. It's a money-making machine for a few people.

00:01:16.860 And who is really calling the shots in British Columbia?

00:01:21.000 This government, this institution in British Columbia is entirely captured by industry.

00:01:26.100 That right there is a clip from CBC's keynote long-form journalism show, The Fifth Estate.

00:01:37.960 The show itself has been around forever, and it makes you wonder how many other things they've gotten completely wrong.

00:01:44.500 In that episode of The Fifth Estate, they were talking about Drax Wood Pellets.

00:01:50.560 It's a company that uses Canadian waste wood to make wood pellets, and some of those wood pellets end up in the U.K. being burned for electricity,

00:02:03.820 because the environmental climate activists have forced the U.K. to get off reliable coal-fired electricity.

00:02:12.140 And with a war between Russia and Ukraine driving up the cost of natural gas, Drax itself has pivoted away from coal,

00:02:24.060 because they were told to, and now they're burning wood pellets for electricity.

00:02:28.840 If you care about the environment, this might actually be a win-win-win,

00:02:33.960 because they're using wood waste that could just end up as garbage to create electricity.

00:02:41.860 And wood is a renewable resource.

00:02:44.880 But it also creates carbon emissions, which means that environmental activists hate it enough to lie about it.

00:02:52.900 And the company itself, Drax, and CBC was happy to go along with it.

00:02:58.600 Now, my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science saw this outrage and did a series of videos pointing out,

00:03:06.140 I don't know if you could possibly point out everything that CBC got wrong.

00:03:10.340 I mean, that's a really, really, really big job.

00:03:12.300 But she pointed out some of the larger fallacies in CBC's completely unbalanced piece.

00:03:19.900 And she joins me tonight to discuss that.

00:03:22.420 But also, we're talking about the latest U.N. climate change conference taking place in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

00:03:32.280 Yes, they never hold these things in the likes of Fort McMurray or Leduc or Swift Current Alberta, do they?

00:03:39.240 Anyway, here's our interview re-recorded earlier today.

00:03:49.240 So joining me now is my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science to break down exactly what she saw,

00:03:57.580 I think immediately, wrong with CBC's Drax wood pellet story.

00:04:02.240 Michelle, thanks for doing this bit of journalism that the CBC state broadcaster just refused to do.

00:04:09.240 When I saw your video, I went back and I watched CBC's Fifth Estate, and it was so outrageously flawed.

00:04:19.440 And anybody with a little bit of common sense could see through it.

00:04:23.220 But I guess we're talking about CBC and climate activists here, so that common sense is going to be hard to find.

00:04:29.620 Tell me, like, give us a breakdown of what you saw wrong with that story.

00:04:36.220 Well, first of all, it appears to be kind of an offshoot of a tar sands type of campaign,

00:04:41.980 where they're intending to do reputational damage, specifically to a company called Drax.

00:04:47.900 And full disclosure, we have no relationship with Drax.

00:04:51.080 We have no money from Drax.

00:04:52.600 I'm speaking as an individual who's been watching CBC for a long time, and they're bad productions.

00:04:59.840 So, well, they destroyed the reputation of the Alberta oil sands with a tipping point.

00:05:04.720 So here they are destroying the reputation of Drax.

00:05:07.720 So Drax is a British company that used to have a big coal-fired power plant there.

00:05:13.320 And with all the renewables push, they said, okay, you don't want us to do coal anymore, we'll switch to biomass,

00:05:19.880 which is considered green by all of the authorities, the powers that be, because trees grow back.

00:05:27.340 And so biomass in this context is wood pellets.

00:05:31.620 So wood pellets are made from the remainder pieces and old deadwood of forests.

00:05:38.820 And so it's actually the perfect green thing, because they're actually, you know, recycling,

00:05:45.080 reusing the very last scrimpy little bits of wood and packing them into tiny little pellets.

00:05:52.740 And they do that so that they don't spontaneously combust, but they also get a better burn.

00:05:58.200 And then they're using that.

00:06:00.200 So what happened in the CBC documentary is they start off in England,

00:06:04.780 they show the Drax plant like it's a big, nasty thing.

00:06:07.800 Look at this, it's spouting steam.

00:06:10.560 That's what's coming out the top, kids.

00:06:12.680 And they have an activist flying down a train and jumping on top and making their case.

00:06:18.660 And then they have all kinds of activists from BC saying, oh, we know for sure that Drax is,

00:06:24.900 they're, look, we saw logs there.

00:06:27.560 They're actually using real logs.

00:06:29.900 Well, you know, people don't understand that British Columbia and Alberta

00:06:33.860 have about 18 square kilometers of 18 million square kilometers of dead pine from the pine beetle.

00:06:44.340 So this is just a wildfire, a catastrophic wildfire waiting to happen.

00:06:50.760 Now you have this company Drax and a few other companies who came forward and said, you know what, we can use that stuff.

00:06:57.460 So they have independent companies that go and cut the wood.

00:07:02.080 And it's true, they're not only cutting the dead wood, but they are cutting a suitable forest.

00:07:09.720 And the suitable pieces of wood, the suitable logs are scaled, they're weighed, they're sized,

00:07:16.620 and they're sent to the appropriate sawmill.

00:07:18.600 Because you can make a lot of money from selling lumber, you know.

00:07:23.200 So if you have a big log, then you cut that into planks.

00:07:26.540 But there's actually a really great visual that's in one of the two pieces that we did that shows how within the log,

00:07:34.880 you know, they can cut the big planks in the middle.

00:07:37.460 Then they can cut a slimmer one by six, say, on a side.

00:07:42.620 And then you can cut some small trim pieces.

00:07:45.980 And then there's just the bark on the outside and some little tiny pieces left that is all ground up and turned into wood pellets.

00:07:55.420 So that claim that they're using real logs, yes, they are real logs there, but they're dead wood.

00:08:05.760 Or, you know, they're bent, they're convoluted, they won't go through the industrial sawmill the way they're supposed to.

00:08:11.960 So, you know, they just really took everything completely out of context.

00:08:17.720 They took all of the activists at their word.

00:08:21.240 They showed pictures from space saying, wow, look at that.

00:08:24.740 You can see all these spaces are being cleared.

00:08:26.840 The forest is being just eaten away.

00:08:29.040 Oh, my God.

00:08:30.320 Well, because it's full of dead wood.

00:08:32.640 You want to get rid of that.

00:08:34.240 You don't want to have wildfires.

00:08:35.740 You think that climate change is going to cause more wildfires in B.C.?

00:08:39.760 Then get rid of that dead wood.

00:08:42.240 Here's a company that wants to pay to do that.

00:08:44.920 And you want to reputationally shred them and shut them down.

00:08:49.880 It's absurd.

00:08:51.820 So I was furious when I saw it.

00:08:54.700 And we also have some forestry people that we consult with.

00:08:58.140 So, you know, I said, like, what's the deal on this?

00:09:01.060 You know, give me the data.

00:09:02.320 And they sent me some reports, reports that had been issued before the show was done.

00:09:07.240 That independent audit and another report by the wood pellet industry of Canada, both of which are very detailed.

00:09:15.040 They're independently audited.

00:09:17.040 None of those facts were in the CBC show.

00:09:20.660 And we are paying $1.4 billion a year for this nonsense, for these activists to destroy the reputations of companies that come to this country to invest here, to make money for themselves, and to also make money for the communities.

00:09:37.500 You know, a lot of these forestry jobs in B.C. are in remote communities.

00:09:42.680 But, you know, you give 25, 150 jobs here and there in these remote communities, that's a huge, huge benefit to those little towns.

00:09:53.160 So, you know, and these activists who are funded by, you know, green billionaires from offshore, they're all blabbing off.

00:10:00.100 And you can tell that it's a coordinated campaign because BBC Panorama run an almost identical program a few days before.

00:10:10.940 And then Greenpeace, out of the U.K., started running a thing about Drax operations in, I think it was in Louisiana.

00:10:20.680 And they interviewed, it's a very poor area.

00:10:23.820 And so the claim was that the air quality is terrible there.

00:10:27.760 And there may be some infringement on air quality.

00:10:30.500 Every industrial operation has that.

00:10:32.560 But, I mean, they actually interviewed this one very overweight woman who said about Drax, I can't breathe.

00:10:42.480 You know, the George Floyd thing.

00:10:44.800 I mean, come on, people.

00:10:46.400 This is obviously a coordinated attack on this company and on the biomass industry.

00:10:51.700 And I suspect, you know, there may be promoters of wind there.

00:10:55.660 I mean, what's critically important for the U.K. is that Drax is one of the sole companies that provides in the U.K. dispatchable power.

00:11:08.680 And, you know, wind is not dispatchable.

00:11:11.740 You can't control it.

00:11:13.080 But biomass or coal or natural gas or nuclear is dispatchable.

00:11:18.560 You can control the flow of it.

00:11:20.240 And it hardly ever goes out, unlike wind and solar, which does this.

00:11:26.400 So, you know, the U.K. is already facing critical shortages of energy this winter.

00:11:33.280 Electricity prices are skyrocketing.

00:11:35.640 This is the last thing you want to do, is to attack a provider of dispatchable power.

00:11:42.860 People are going to die this winter.

00:11:44.700 They're going to die of heat or heat poverty.

00:11:46.320 And it will mostly be pensioners.

00:11:49.820 But there will be many other people, children, who suffer malnutrition because of the heat or heat poverty.

00:11:56.540 And so, you know, it's actually criminal what they're doing.

00:12:00.020 That's how unbalanced the show was.

00:12:02.760 That's my rant.

00:12:04.220 No, it's great.

00:12:05.360 And it goes to show that even if you try to play their game, the environmentalist game, they will come for you eventually because Drax pivoted from coal.

00:12:18.280 They said, you know what?

00:12:19.120 We need to be creating renewable electricity.

00:12:22.120 Drax is doing that using wood pellets, which is essentially garbage.

00:12:26.360 Like, if you're an environmentalist, an actual environmentalist who believes in using as much of what we harvest as possible, all parts of the buffalo, as they say, Drax is doing that.

00:12:40.920 Drax is taking the garbage parts of the wood and turning it into reliable energy for U.K. citizens who are forced off coal thanks to climate policies.

00:12:52.100 And yet still, that's not good enough.

00:12:55.740 And there was a thing in your video that really struck me that was left out of the CBC piece.

00:13:02.480 Drax doesn't harvest the wood.

00:13:05.120 Drax, they don't have a contract to go out and harvest the wood. 1.00

00:13:08.440 So they are only getting wood from companies that are paid to harvest lumber.

00:13:14.620 Those companies are naturally not going to sell their wood for waste as pellets.

00:13:20.060 They're going, lumber is outrageous.

00:13:21.600 If anybody's trying to build something in the last 18 months, you know that lumber is at an outrageous price.

00:13:27.440 So these companies are not going to say, okay, well, this usable old growth forest, we're just going to turn into pellets and sell at a reduced cost for electricity.

00:13:38.640 It was just so flawed.

00:13:41.220 But as you say, CBC is so ideologically blinded that they just went along with the narrative.

00:13:46.000 Yeah, and I don't know how they can get away with it.

00:13:51.780 I don't know why the company itself hasn't said anything.

00:13:56.260 I haven't seen anything.

00:13:57.220 Maybe they will.

00:13:57.820 But to me, like we just wrote a letter to the Competition Bureau about eco-justice and their complaint to the Competition Bureau, excuse me, about RBC, Royal Bank of Canada, supposedly greenwashing.

00:14:18.320 And in that complaint, we noted to the Competition Bureau and the Charities Directorate that Todd Paglia of the Forest Ethics, now Stand Earth, at one point had said something to the effect that, you know, if these companies want to do things, don't want to do things the easy way, then we'll make it hard for them.

00:14:42.980 And we can do a lot of reputational damage.

00:14:46.180 So I would say that that applies in this instance.

00:14:49.000 I don't know what they're trying to get out of Drax or what, you know, they're typically trying to get some compliance issue like forest certification program or carbon credits.

00:15:01.920 Or there's always something in the background that the public is not aware of.

00:15:06.660 But, you know, these groups have shredded the reputation of so many companies in Canada and the U.S. on environmental grounds.

00:15:15.100 I mean, they're just basically reputationally kneecapping companies.

00:15:19.840 But that means people lose jobs.

00:15:22.220 Companies lose money.

00:15:23.360 They lose share value.

00:15:24.940 You can see that immediately after this came out, Drax share value dropped like a stone.

00:15:30.080 You know, maybe it's because actually in Europe, there are many people in the U.K. who are saying, you know, let's open up the coal again because we're all going to freeze to death.

00:15:44.080 So maybe they're trying to prevent Drax from saying, well, we have this coal plant, you know, that we could turn back.

00:15:50.980 I don't know.

00:15:51.560 It probably would cost a fortune to do that.

00:15:53.360 But why don't we as Canadians embrace them and say, thank you for taking all that deadwood off our hands?

00:16:00.020 Yeah.

00:16:00.600 Take the deadwood off our hands and create Canadian jobs and help our U.K. friends not freeze to death this winter.

00:16:07.260 It seems like a win, win, win.

00:16:09.080 But of course, you've got the environmental activists in the middle of this.

00:16:11.740 And this is not the first time they've done this to a forestry company.

00:16:14.740 Let us never forget what Greenpeace did to Resolute in Quebec.

00:16:19.000 Resolute to their credit immediately.

00:16:21.040 Instead of taking it lying down, they started fighting back instantly.

00:16:23.980 They've got a website that's still up.

00:16:25.800 If you want to see all the things that Greenpeace tried to do with their lies to Resolute Forestry, they put up a website, ResoluteVGreenpeace.com.

00:16:36.080 You can see all of their filings.

00:16:37.800 You can see all of their rebuttals.

00:16:39.800 They filed a racketeering case against Greenpeace in U.S. federal court.

00:16:45.880 They're very transparent.

00:16:47.440 They are calling Greenpeace liars and they lay it all out.

00:16:50.560 The purpose of the website is great.

00:16:52.200 We established this website to catalog information and progress reports on the case and also, when necessary, to set the record straight as the facts warrant.

00:17:01.360 Standing up for our integrity is a moral obligation.

00:17:05.060 We intend to see it fully through.

00:17:06.860 And I think in 2020, although it was a small monetary award, a great moral victory for truth when Resolute was awarded a $1 million judgment against Greenpeace.

00:17:18.660 Again, not even close to the reputational damage that Greenpeace did to them, but it's a moral victory.

00:17:25.060 It shows that, you know, they were lying.

00:17:28.200 They did damage this company.

00:17:30.360 And Resolute is not guilty of those things that Greenpeace said they were, including, they said they abandoned First Nations communities that they said they would work with.

00:17:40.980 And Resolute works directly with First Nations communities to provide jobs to them in their own communities, which I think is a great benefit to Indigenous communities.

00:17:49.780 They get to stay.

00:17:51.120 Their young people get to stay and have jobs in the place where they grew up, which is something everybody wants for their kids.

00:17:57.020 Right.

00:17:58.880 And I think also in the U.S. case, but, you know, I'm not 100% sure, but at one point, Greenpeace said, well, you know, these are just opinions.

00:18:10.080 Nobody believes us because they know we're just, you know, we're just saying things off the top of our head.

00:18:16.220 Why would anyone believe that?

00:18:18.180 You know that we're spreading propaganda.

00:18:21.220 It's just like, holy dinah, unbelievable.

00:18:24.240 Yeah, there was one like Resolute.

00:18:27.120 If anybody gets a chance to read this website, it's kind of funny and snarky at the same time, but also full of facts where they say, among the other things, the complaint explains that far from being a forest destroyer, as Greenpeace calls Resolute, Resolute has planted well over a billion trees in the boreal, which is a billion more than Greenpeace.

00:18:47.880 Which is what they say on the website, which is pretty funny.

00:18:51.280 But I mean, for those people out there who think that these attacks are only directed at oil and gas, they are directed at the next carbon-based fuel, and that's forestry.

00:19:04.160 That's wood.

00:19:04.860 And they won't be satisfied until we've all reached net zero, which is net zero jobs, net zero money in your bank account, and green murder, which takes me to my next topic I wanted to talk to you about. 0.93

00:19:20.200 And that is the ongoing UN climate change conference in, well, authoritarian regime, Egypt.

00:19:27.900 It's in Sharm el-Sheikh this year, which is sort of the Cancun of Egypt, of course, because these things have to be held in very nice places so that the people making decisions don't have to see the poor people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

00:19:44.860 They'd rather have it in a resort community, but that's a big push this year at the UN climate change conference.

00:19:52.080 They call it COP27, the conference of the parties.

00:19:54.920 It's net zero health care.

00:19:56.360 And as you accurately describe it, screen murder.

00:19:58.780 Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting in Alberta and Canadian taxpayers should be aware that there's a whole contingent of Canadian doctors who are part of CAPE, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

00:20:15.080 Albertans will know the president, Dr. Joe Vipond, who is very active in full phase out and lockdown.

00:20:21.760 Yes, well, he's traveling over there to present, I think it's on November the 10th, at the Canadian Pavilion.

00:20:29.440 And guess what these doctors are advocating for?

00:20:32.280 The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

00:20:34.800 They want to phase out fossil fuels.

00:20:36.980 I mean, do these people not know where modern medicine runs on, what it's made from, what makes it possible?

00:20:44.220 Do they really want to go back to kitchen table surgery and using, you know, boiled blankets and sheets for bandages?

00:20:53.180 And I mean, it's absurd.

00:20:55.000 It's totally absurd.

00:20:55.860 And we taxpayers are paying for it.

00:20:57.760 And I don't understand why tax funded paid doctors and medical associations, and some of these are also funded by tax funded charities.

00:21:07.980 I don't understand why they are allowed to denigrate the oil and gas industry, which actually pays their salary and builds their hospitals and provides them with all the PPEs and all the other sterile use, single use plastics that you need for modern day surgery.

00:21:29.560 And all the pharmaceuticals.

00:21:31.300 You can't make medicine without oil, gas and coal.

00:21:34.500 So you can't make a CT scanner without it.

00:21:37.280 You know, you can't build a hospital without it.

00:21:40.760 So it's endlessly frustrating that these people are there promoting, you know, climate change solutions, all of which rely on oil, gas and coal.

00:21:51.100 Yeah.

00:21:51.780 And denigrating on one of our main industries.

00:21:54.640 It's, I think it's completely wrong.

00:21:57.380 It's immoral.

00:21:58.400 It's immoral.

00:21:59.280 Exactly.

00:21:59.920 And they're on the African continent.

00:22:01.460 So if they want to see net what net zero health care really looks like, they don't have to go all that far where they can see the infant and maternal mortality rate compared to the Western world just hit the absolute rock bottom.

00:22:16.300 And that has a lot to do with the fact that you cannot fuel and autoclave on wind and solar.

00:22:24.660 Right.

00:22:25.400 And, you know, they like to say, oh, well, you know, fossil fuel emissions are causing millions of deaths around the world.

00:22:31.280 Well, no, actually, the place where there's the most deaths in the world from air pollution, noxious air pollution is Africa and India and China.

00:22:41.760 These are places where people are burning animal dung, bits of wood scraps, biomass.

00:22:48.380 They probably wish that Drax was there.

00:22:51.740 And, you know, they're burning it over open flames in their little huts.

00:22:56.700 And that's where people are breathing in all these noxious emissions.

00:23:00.560 If they had grid scale power, they would have pumped water.

00:23:03.860 They would have proper sanitation.

00:23:07.080 They would have lighting 24-7 so they could have real industry and have real jobs.

00:23:12.300 And, in fact, despite the fact that many people are critical of Egypt in terms of its human rights record, you know, we also did a video about Nomi Klein and Bill McGibbon.

00:23:25.680 They were promoting that kids, climate kids, should make public complaints about the case of this one young man who is in jail there.

00:23:36.520 His case is related to the Arab Spring of 2011.

00:23:39.540 And I'm not going to go into the details of his case.

00:23:43.500 Of course, any family member with someone in jail would want to free them.

00:23:49.160 But Egypt's situation is very, very complex.

00:23:53.280 And Bill McGibbon actually said, well, you know, there's going to be 3,000 or 4,000 journalists sitting around with nothing to do.

00:24:00.580 So why waste that opportunity, you know, to make a statement?

00:24:06.540 Well, the reason is because you might get thrown in jail.

00:24:09.680 And why doesn't Bill do it?

00:24:12.420 That's right.

00:24:13.180 And why doesn't Nomi do it?

00:24:14.720 This irritates me so much.

00:24:16.280 You see this in pipeline protests all the time.

00:24:18.520 You've got people like Sappora Berman saying to other people, more easily influenced people, chain yourself to the pipeline.

00:24:27.120 Chain yourself to this.

00:24:28.700 Lay on the ground.

00:24:29.480 Do this.

00:24:29.880 Do that.

00:24:30.280 Get yourself arrested.

00:24:31.460 But it's very rarely, almost never, the well-funded climate activists at the top doing the things.

00:24:40.540 They break in the cash. 0.99

00:24:42.680 They make low liability statements for themselves, while other people, the useful idiots, unfortunately, they're the ones who end up putting themselves in jail. 0.99

00:24:52.180 And to advise young people to do this in a place like Egypt, where they have jails full of political dissidents, it's outrageous and irresponsible. 0.99

00:25:01.500 Right.

00:25:02.080 And not only that, in that same webinar that Klein ran with McGibbon, there was another fellow there who mocked the Egyptian government, saying, you know, yeah, well, you know, LCC is really making the effort to keep the lights on.

00:25:15.100 And it's kind of like, yay, you know, everyone across Europe and in the UK would wish that their government would be making an effort to keep the lights on.

00:25:25.500 And, you know, he was, they were complaining, oh, you know, they've got a lot of cement production there.

00:25:30.120 They're doing a lot of building.

00:25:31.820 Well, you know.

00:25:33.360 They don't have trees.

00:25:34.320 But that's true.

00:25:36.640 And also, in 2006, the World Bank issued a report stating that by 2020, there would be 100 million young Arabs coming to age without jobs.

00:25:46.920 So, you know, this is a government that's saying, you know what, maybe we can't get you all into high tech, but here's a job.

00:25:53.500 You can build this building.

00:25:54.580 Like, you know, you don't need a lot of high tech skills for many building jobs, but you do get work and employment.

00:26:02.060 You can feed yourself.

00:26:02.880 So, we did a fairly comprehensive review of that.

00:26:06.580 And, you know, Egypt is a really critical partner to the world right now.

00:26:11.120 People have to realize that they're a big supplier of natural gas to the region, to Europe, and to Asia.

00:26:19.240 And there's a shortage of natural gas because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

00:26:24.460 So, they're a critical supplier of that.

00:26:26.240 They are a critical supervisor and manager, operator of the Suez Canal, which allows shipping from Asia to Europe and North America without having to go around the south of Africa.

00:26:38.980 You know, the Cape down there in South Africa, which is another, I don't know, a thousand miles or something.

00:26:46.760 It's a lot.

00:26:47.920 It extends the trip a lot.

00:26:49.700 But they're also, you know, a very unique country in that almost all of their plus hundred million population live along the Nile Delta.

00:27:02.360 You know, so that compromises kind of how they can manage the country and what they can do there.

00:27:07.260 And so, I think we have to understand that they're facing different challenges than North Americans.

00:27:12.580 Like, imagine if the U.S., with its 300 million people, had everyone living only along the Mississippi Delta.

00:27:21.000 You know, that's kind of a comparable quandary, if you like.

00:27:25.140 So, as much as everybody would like the world to be, you know, democratic, we've seen in Canada that when people complain too much, the Emergencies Act is invoked and innocent people are thrown into jail on very nominal charges.

00:27:43.300 So, I'm not sure that we in North America, and particularly in Canada now, are in a position to make, you know, bombastic statements about how other states run their human rights and justice systems.

00:27:57.000 You are right.

00:27:59.760 Also, I noticed from our friends at Climate Depot who are there, I see Mark Morano and Craig Rucker.

00:28:07.160 They glued themselves to museum glass on the outside.

00:28:11.800 They didn't damage any artwork.

00:28:14.040 So, but every year they do something where they take the activism of the left and then flip it on its head and see how everybody reacts to it.

00:28:24.280 So, they glued themselves to museum glass in Egypt and they were removed by security.

00:28:29.600 One year, they tried to board a coal, or no, sorry, Greenpeace had boarded a coal ship the night before in Bonn, Germany.

00:28:37.060 So, then they went the next day dressed as the captain from the love boat and tried to board the Greenpeace ship and the cops, Greenpeace called the cops.

00:28:45.320 They like to point out the hypocrisy of the left.

00:28:47.620 But on their website today at climatedepot.com, they're talking about how really this thing, again, is not actually focused all that much on climate change,

00:28:56.780 but as always on the wealth transfer from the Western world, where now, apparently, my comfortable and reliable SUV has done it again.

00:29:07.020 So, that when the developing world faces a natural disaster of some kind, a tsunami caused by an earthquake or some sort of typhoon,

00:29:23.340 that the Western world has to pay climate reparations.

00:29:28.220 It's just, it's just a wealth transfer, really.

00:29:34.440 Well, it is a wealth transfer and it's, you know, when they talk circular economy, what I think they really mean is that they say to a country,

00:29:41.700 we think you should build a solar farm.

00:29:44.380 And the country says, well, we don't have the money.

00:29:46.760 And they go, okay, here, we'll give you the money, but you have to use our engineers and you have to buy our equipment.

00:29:54.120 So, they create a circular economy and who's paying for that?

00:29:57.700 It's you because the carbon taxes are being skimmed off to finance this whole charade.

00:30:05.520 And, of course, the wind and solar in most cases is virtually useless.

00:30:10.860 It's only ever complimentary on the grid.

00:30:13.120 You always need to maintain a real power grid using conventional power.

00:30:19.100 So, you know, it's really a charade.

00:30:21.440 And, actually, we have a new report by Robert Lyman called The Unstoppable Growth of GHG Emissions.

00:30:28.340 And in it, he assesses work by Andrew Roman, excuse me, who's a retired lawyer.

00:30:34.440 And they looked at the original United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

00:30:40.960 And in it, basically, none of the developing nations ever have to reduce their emissions.

00:30:47.760 Only the West.

00:30:50.080 And the West has done that.

00:30:51.520 And we can't really do any more because we'll all die.

00:30:55.960 So, you know, and no cost benefit analysis has been done on this claim of net zero.

00:31:01.980 There's a fellow named Simon Misho, who's from Finland, from their geological survey group.

00:31:08.560 I think it's called GKS or something like that.

00:31:10.760 And he's done a very detailed analysis.

00:31:15.260 His background is as a mining engineer.

00:31:17.040 So, he started saying, well, if we wanted to flip the world to net zero, then we'd have to mine more minerals.

00:31:23.580 And we'd have to, you know, the numbers that he comes up with is that it would take like 7,000 years to mine sufficient copper at the rate of 2019.

00:31:34.960 But that would be the copper required for this net zero transition in the next eight years or 20 years.

00:31:42.360 And he notes that most mines, you know, take at least 15 years to get up and operating, let alone delivering to market.

00:31:50.720 So, you know, it's an impossible scenario.

00:31:54.280 And as you say, it's really just, you know, impoverishing people in the West.

00:32:01.440 It's not really helping the people in developing nations.

00:32:04.460 It's just exploiting them, denying them conventional grid scale power.

00:32:10.040 And in the middle, we have these climate activists moralizing.

00:32:14.880 So, you may be wondering why I'm wearing my T-shirt and hat.

00:32:19.460 Of course, this is in honor of Sharm el-Sheikh.

00:32:22.060 I'm not there.

00:32:22.880 It's minus 22 today here in Alberta or feels like that.

00:32:26.700 But I'm wearing my T-shirt because Greta's book just came out, you know, on all the cover of her book, the climate book, are a bunch of stripes.

00:32:35.380 Well, her stripes are over here. 0.98

00:32:39.460 But my stripes are 2,000 years.

00:32:42.080 And you can see very clearly that climate is cyclical.

00:32:45.720 So, it's not you and it's not CO2.

00:32:48.160 And, you know, the public are just being royally scammed by the climate community.

00:32:54.820 And that doesn't mean that we don't affect climate.

00:32:57.300 We do.

00:32:58.060 There are constructive things we can do for climate change and for the environment.

00:33:02.700 The biggest thing is, you know, urban heat island.

00:33:05.360 That's a very real thing.

00:33:08.280 But, you know, there's a new presentation out by Clintel with Professor Wiss Yim.

00:33:15.320 And he very convincingly shows that underwater volcanic activity is really what's driven the recent warming.

00:33:23.040 You're not going to stop that by taxing CO2 from your SUV or by making us eat bugs.

00:33:32.640 Yeah.

00:33:33.320 And people seem to forget the very real tangible thing.

00:33:37.960 You point out the weather here right now.

00:33:40.040 There's this strive to get to net zero in the Western world.

00:33:43.160 But the Western world is cold.

00:33:44.980 And the developing world is not.

00:33:46.960 We can only get down to a certain emissions level.

00:33:51.180 And beyond that, like you say, people start to die.

00:33:54.900 But the people pushing this stuff, a lot of them don't have a plan to get to net zero themselves.

00:34:00.080 I did a story wherein I asked CBC for their net zero plan.

00:34:05.140 And they said they didn't have one.

00:34:07.160 And so I went on their website.

00:34:08.880 And at that moment, they had nearly 2,000 different stories pushing the benefits of net zero.

00:34:16.420 But when I asked them, what's your plan to get to net zero?

00:34:19.060 Oh, we don't have a plan.

00:34:20.180 So then I started poking around saying, OK, well, they're getting new cars at CBC.

00:34:26.900 What kind of cars are they ordering?

00:34:28.720 Their only requirement was that they be white and roadworthy. 0.89

00:34:32.300 They weren't even electric. 1.00

00:34:34.520 So I'm like, what a bunch of hypocrites. 0.96

00:34:36.160 I'm supposed to drive a car that will definitely not start in this weather and might not get me to town and back. 0.96

00:34:44.220 But CBC with net zero pushers, not for them.

00:34:48.380 Yes, I want to issue a warning to your viewers.

00:34:53.840 And that is at COP27, the Canadian government is expected to announce that they're going to try and introduce legislation that will make it impossible for any subsequent government to cancel the carbon tax and the carbon tax rise to $170 a ton.

00:35:11.060 So Max Fawcett did a story on this, and it was part of the recent net zero 2030 in focus presentation.

00:35:21.060 And we did a short video explainer showing why this was a very dumb idea, and we included some of Robert Lyman's comments.

00:35:29.380 Of course, he was a federal public servant for 27 years, a diplomat for 10 years, and he was outraged by the hubris that these people think they can put a law in cement in a Canadian constitutional monarchy democratic context that no other government could ever change.

00:35:50.240 And this whole idea of the contract for differences is really a way to, I guess, make us into carbon serfs for the rest of our lives.

00:36:01.700 So people better watch out for that and better speak to whoever they can to make sure that doesn't happen.

00:36:08.940 I mean, really, we're slipping toward an eco-dictatorship when those kind of moves are happening.

00:36:14.340 Yeah, we're worried about Egypt being undemocratic, but that sure seems like it's disenfranchising every single voter going forward here in Canada if you cannot vote down the previous government's bad policy.

00:36:28.960 Yeah, that's exactly it.

00:36:30.780 And it's absurd, and they're cheerleading it.

00:36:34.720 CBC was cheerleading it earlier in the year, and now National Observer is cheerleading it.

00:36:39.480 The Corporate Knights, of course, are cheerleading it.

00:36:42.480 And, you know, people have to start to see this whole network of green ENGOs and groups like the Corporate Knights,

00:36:50.660 and even their tie-in to, say, the Globe and Mail, which are, it's really a climate activist newspaper.

00:36:57.180 People have to see these things for what they are.

00:37:00.040 They're just consensus-making groups, and they really have no interest for you at heart.

00:37:08.600 They are self-interested.

00:37:10.680 It's how they get funding.

00:37:11.840 It's how they raise donations.

00:37:13.600 And it's how they're going to destroy the life that we enjoy today if we let them.

00:37:18.660 Now, Michelle, you are up against the Corporate Knights, the federal government who often funds a lot of these ENGOs,

00:37:28.280 the foreign money flowing into the NGOs, and you guys are just a little, I don't want to say mom-and-pop shop,

00:37:34.720 because you have experts on staff and experts that you rely on, but you don't have big federal funding.

00:37:42.740 I don't think you'd take it anyway.

00:37:44.300 Anyway, so tell us, how do people support you in your pursuit of providing a counterbalance to the constant fear-mongering?

00:37:54.320 Well, if you'd like to become a member, you can do that on our website.

00:37:57.740 It's $40 for one year or $80 for three years.

00:38:01.400 And that would get you our Cli-Sci and Extracts, which are kind of roundups of recent climate science

00:38:07.540 or climate politics and policies from around the world, news that you probably won't see in the mainstream.

00:38:16.200 And you can also just give us a donation if you like.

00:38:20.960 We've been asking people to just give us a $20 donation because it's our 20th year of operation.

00:38:26.960 And we know people are tight for money right now.

00:38:28.980 And you can share our material.

00:38:30.160 So that would be great.

00:38:32.400 You know, we really need people taking our stuff to others because, you know, we're not in Ottawa.

00:38:41.000 We're not registered lobbyists.

00:38:42.940 We don't lobby the government.

00:38:44.960 There are hundreds of ENGO lobbyists in Canada.

00:38:49.180 You just have to go on the Canadian Lobbyist Registry site.

00:38:52.820 And you can see that every single one of these big ENGOs has five to 12 lobbyists.

00:38:58.660 And they're in and out of every single department every week.

00:39:03.240 So if you wonder why your world is turning upside down, that's why.

00:39:07.840 Yeah.

00:39:08.020 And I really appreciate your YouTube channel.

00:39:10.540 You take these big, I think, purposefully complicated arguments from the environmentalists

00:39:15.980 left, and you just cut through the baloney, cut the jargon out, and make it very easy for

00:39:22.840 normals like me to understand what these crazy policies are going to do to you, your family,

00:39:28.220 your bank account, and your lifestyle.

00:39:30.840 So friends, do not neglect the Friends of Science YouTube page.

00:39:35.980 It's just an absolute goldmine of arguments you can carry with you into the rest of the world.

00:39:41.540 Thank you.

00:39:42.300 Well, Michelle, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:39:46.280 You're always so generous with your time.

00:39:48.160 And you have a heart for the people affected by these policies.

00:39:53.040 It's not just financial for you.

00:39:54.500 You really see these as something that will endanger life as we know it.

00:39:59.020 So I think that's what makes you unique in the landscape.

00:40:02.860 Thank you.

00:40:03.500 I just want to mention one more thing.

00:40:05.340 Sure.

00:40:05.500 Freedom Talk is coming up in Red Deer on the 11th and 12th of this week.

00:40:11.100 And there will be a memorial service at Freedom Talk on the 11th in honor of Remembrance Day.

00:40:19.440 But, you know, if people want to join in, you can go online, freedomtalk.ca.

00:40:26.240 I understand that the premier was going to speak, but there's a conflict of interest or a conflict of timing, you know, of meetings.

00:40:36.900 So I don't think that you will be able to appear.

00:40:39.420 But there are many other great speakers.

00:40:41.780 And, of course, I'm one of them.

00:40:43.300 But I'll be talking about stop making our kids feel guilty.

00:40:47.240 You know, it's all about family.

00:40:48.620 So you can sign up to go online or you can go in person.

00:40:54.480 Yeah, it's a great Freedom Talk.

00:40:56.860 It's called Family and Freedom, Our Choice, Our Future.

00:41:01.020 And Danny Hozak always puts on a great event, lots of different speakers.

00:41:05.800 And there's always something there for everybody.

00:41:07.660 And I'm happy to hear that you're speaking again.

00:41:09.600 I always look forward to your speeches.

00:41:11.860 Thank you.

00:41:13.100 Thanks, Michelle.

00:41:13.760 We'll have you on again very, very soon.

00:41:16.960 Okay.

00:41:17.600 Thanks, Sheila.

00:41:18.120 Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show where I invite your viewer feedback.

00:41:30.120 I actually care about what you think about what we're doing here at Rebel News,

00:41:34.780 but also what you think about the people that we're talking to as guests.

00:41:38.080 It's the reason I give out my email address at this portion of the show.

00:41:41.420 It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.

00:41:44.440 Put gun show letters in the subject line if you want me to see it.

00:41:47.340 That's G-U-N-N. 1.00

00:41:49.560 Don't put gun show in the subject line.

00:41:53.240 I'll never find it because, as you know, based on my personal interest, there are a lot of emails

00:41:57.960 probably getting dumped into my inbox relating to gun shows in general and guns in general.

00:42:06.920 Anyway, I would also encourage you to leave comments on some of the other platforms where

00:42:13.020 you might be watching us.

00:42:14.240 For example, if you're still watching us on the censorship platform of YouTube, leave a comment there.

00:42:20.640 And maybe you're watching us on the free speech platform of Rumble.

00:42:25.840 Do leave a comment there.

00:42:26.880 I do go looking at those places to find my comments and even show ideas.

00:42:34.480 Do put them in there.

00:42:35.660 I like to hear what you guys are thinking.

00:42:37.680 Now, today's comments are actually from the censorship platform of YouTube because

00:42:41.600 while I intensely dislike YouTube and the big tech oligarchy of which they're a part,

00:42:50.000 I like the people who watch us over there, by and large.

00:42:53.880 Some of you are hate watching me, but that's fine too.

00:42:55.760 A click is a click.

00:42:56.980 Now, the comments that I'm taking today are on my interview with Tom Harris from the International

00:43:02.780 Climate Science Coalition Canada.

00:43:04.980 He had been organizing Ottawa residents to turn up at the mayoral forums to put questions

00:43:11.680 to the candidates about the tangibles of climate change policy, about what climate change policies

00:43:19.820 mean for human rights in the developing world when you have young children mining for cobalt 0.98

00:43:24.560 in the Congo, or, you know, just how much is all of this garbage going to cost us for 0.99

00:43:29.760 absolutely no impact on the global temperatures.

00:43:34.780 Now, in Ottawa, and I think Tom played a real part in this, they actually voted for a

00:43:41.500 centrist.

00:43:42.320 And I would say he's a progressive centrist.

00:43:44.200 He's definitely not a conservative, but he's not a wild-eyed radical like his competition,

00:43:49.680 Catherine McKinney, who has been featured prominently at the Trucker Commission as one of the

00:43:56.380 bizarrest anti-convoy local politicians that I think anybody could find on the ground in

00:44:06.760 Ottawa.

00:44:07.060 If you want to see our coverage, by the way, it's truckercommission.ca.

00:44:10.640 Anyway, Mark Sutcliffe, who, as I say, is a progressive centrist, he won the mayorship

00:44:18.800 in Ottawa.

00:44:20.140 And frankly, I think that's really as good as it gets in Ottawa.

00:44:22.860 I don't think you're ever going to see a conservative elected there.

00:44:25.740 I think you just want someone who's not going to be pushed in a more radical direction by local

00:44:32.280 activists.

00:44:32.800 So, let's go over to YouTube, let's take a look at some of the comments, because as I

00:44:37.920 said, I like the people who watch on YouTube.

00:44:41.340 But YouTube, I don't like you very much, or frankly, at all.

00:44:45.140 Anyway, Obnoxious Oyster writes, three comments to make, maybe ICSC's Tom Harris, that's International

00:44:52.080 Climate Science Coalition's Tom Harris, helped play a part in this win for common sense as

00:44:57.100 he appeared about three weeks ago on Fox News.

00:44:59.380 Yes, he did.

00:45:00.280 He did indeed.

00:45:01.340 But you know what, Fox News, back off.

00:45:02.880 We saw Tom first, and we liked him first.

00:45:05.580 Although I'm happy to see Tom get featured prominently on Fox News for some of his great

00:45:11.140 work.

00:45:12.260 Number two, when is Calgary City Council's next climate conference?

00:45:17.040 Calgary City Council is more progressive than Ottawa's right now.

00:45:22.960 Mayor Gioti Gondik is a wild-eyed radical akin to Catherine McKinney, the city councillor

00:45:32.000 in Ottawa who lost the mayor race.

00:45:35.840 And their climate change plan is more expensive than Ottawa's.

00:45:41.980 We fancy ourselves to be very conservative here in Alberta, and by and large we are, but

00:45:46.620 we are not watching municipal politics closely enough.

00:45:51.000 And that's, you know, why I think Tom was so successful, is when people started watching.

00:45:57.260 They started realizing how gross it was and just how much it matters.

00:46:00.560 And number three, the point, I have to thank Sheila for actually reading many of the comments

00:46:05.400 on her posts.

00:46:06.620 Well done.

00:46:07.180 Thank you, Sheila.

00:46:07.760 You know what I do?

00:46:08.520 I try to read some of them.

00:46:10.480 Some are just trolling comments, and literally who cares?

00:46:13.440 Um, but every trolling comment you make also puts more eyeballs on my work.

00:46:18.240 So, I guess, you know what? 0.95

00:46:20.580 Thanks again, trolls.

00:46:22.040 Thanks again.

00:46:22.940 Second comment is from Flying Beaver.

00:46:25.260 Not sure if that's a real name either.

00:46:27.400 Flying Beaver writes, great job, Tom.

00:46:29.460 I'm an Ottawa citizen.

00:46:30.720 I definitely saw Mark Sutcliffe, the actual mayor, as the only choice for mayor.

00:46:36.100 He was speaking some rhetoric early on in his campaign of overhauling all city vehicles

00:46:40.520 to electric over an aggressive timetable.

00:46:44.760 Not a great idea.

00:46:46.780 I hope he's reconsidering this waste of taxpayer funds to follow the climate change narrative.

00:46:51.620 I would welcome connecting locally with you.

00:46:54.840 Well, if you go back and watch my interview with Tom, he actually gives out his contact

00:46:58.440 information.

00:46:59.000 So, if you're interested in replicating what Tom and the gang did in Ottawa in your own

00:47:05.000 community, you can do that.

00:47:06.740 Tom will help walk you through it.

00:47:09.520 You know what?

00:47:10.260 Frankly, as I said to Tom, even if you are a true believer in climate change, just the

00:47:18.400 cost-benefit analysis should turn you off the idea of these massive climate change policies.

00:47:26.140 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:47:27.540 Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.

00:47:29.780 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:47:33.280 And, of course, as always, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:47:57.540 Thank you.

00:48:07.920 Thank you.

00:48:08.020 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - November 09, 2022

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Debunking CBC's flawed reporting on the wood pellet industry

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