Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Ottawa's ‘climate emergency’ is a cautionary tale

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

00:00:04.960 weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show. However, and I say this every week, this is the internet so

00:00:10.880 you can listen or watch whenever is convenient for you. That's the beauty of not being tied to

00:00:17.220 terrestrial TV and or radio. Now tonight my guest is Tom Harris from the International Climate

00:00:23.260 Science Coalition Canada and he's talking about the new report that he just authored

00:00:28.720 regarding the extreme cost of the climate emergency according to the city council

00:00:37.580 in Ottawa. It will cost Ottawa taxpayers close to 60 billion with a B dollars to pursue these goals.

00:00:49.760 Now if you like listening to the show then I promise you're going to love watching it

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00:01:32.780 Are climate emergency declarations really non-binding? What do you think? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed

00:01:53.220 and you're watching The Gunn Show. The city of Calgary just declared a climate emergency

00:02:14.680 and I don't think it's going to amount to just pointless virtue signaling because it never does.

00:02:19.660 The city of Ottawa is looking to spend nearly 60 billion dollars over the next 30 years to take

00:02:24.760 action on their climate emergency declaration. In the city of roughly 1 million not only will the

00:02:31.620 financial burden be enormous for every man woman and child but so will the practical burden. Solar

00:02:37.260 panels everywhere you look, electric buses that don't work in snowstorms and towering wind turbines

00:02:43.000 everywhere producing infrasound to drive you insane. My friend Tom Harris from the International

00:02:49.040 Climate Science Coalition has run the numbers in his new report about what the city of Ottawa's

00:02:55.640 climate plan really means for the long-suffering residents of that city. And he joins me tonight

00:03:01.980 to share his findings but also to warn us because this climate plan followed directly from a climate

00:03:08.900 emergency declaration and those things are happening in otherwise sensible cities all across the country.

00:03:15.020 Take a listen to what Tom had to say.

00:03:31.800 So joining me now from his home in Ottawa, I think snowy Ottawa by the way,

00:03:36.440 is my friend Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition Canada. Tom, first of all,

00:03:43.160 I heard that climate change has struck Ottawa much the same as it has struck northern Alberta this

00:03:48.980 week. Are you snowed in? Oh, we just finally took at least 24 hours to clear our road and we are not

00:03:55.920 a minor road. I mean, we're kind of an intermediate road and yet it took them over 24 hours. I think

00:04:01.420 that might be a better use for Ottawa's money than their $60 billion climate plan. But you know,

00:04:07.300 Sheila, you'd laugh because a few years ago there were a few environmental groups and they brought in,

00:04:12.760 world-class skiers to the Museum of Aviation and Space here in Ottawa and they were moaning about

00:04:20.100 the lack of snow and they were saying how we're going to see a snow-free winter in Ottawa pretty

00:04:25.500 soon and you know, this was just a disaster. So I went to the microphone and I said, well, you know,

00:04:30.580 the snow cover in Ottawa has actually been, actually North America as a whole, has been increasing

00:04:36.100 gradually for decades and they were furious with me. One woman in the audience, she stood up and she

00:04:42.300 shook her fist and she said, go home. I said, well, check the data yourself. I mean, the likelihood that

00:04:48.220 we're not going to have snow is just about zero. And I understand it would be a horrible thing for

00:04:53.640 skiers to lose all their snow, but it's not happening. Oh man, they, they were just furious.

00:04:59.180 Yeah. Don't threaten me with a good time. Less snow. Give me a break. Or real data. Yeah. Climate

00:05:07.020 change has kept my children home from school two days this week because the school buses aren't

00:05:11.860 running because we've had freezing rain and then the temperature plummeted 35 degrees and then a

00:05:18.840 blizzard with zero visibility blew in. So, you know, they keep promising me climate change, but maybe

00:05:25.100 the carbon tax is working. It's just working a lot faster. That's right. Well, you know, Ottawa is

00:05:31.000 the seventh coldest capital city in the world. And so I had in my original article that was just

00:05:37.260 published, you know, it'll be published Wednesday morning at World Commerce Review. I had that it

00:05:42.040 didn't seem to cross the city councilor's eyes that a little bit of warming might not be too

00:05:47.320 disappointing for most Ottawa's. Well, my advisory team said, oh no, you're being too sarcastic.

00:05:55.100 But I mean, it's true. A little warming isn't going to hurt Ottawa. And you know, the funny thing is

00:06:00.400 they show in their master plan, their climate change master plan, they show that the average

00:06:05.800 temperature in the summer is rising. But what they don't tell you is that the maximum temperature is

00:06:10.700 not rising. It's just that the temperature at night is not quite so cool. So you end up with a

00:06:15.920 higher average. So I say, well, so what? And you know, Sheila, that's, that's the thing that we're

00:06:23.400 just about to do is we're releasing a report on the city of Ottawa's climate change plans. They call it

00:06:29.900 their climate change master plan, you know, which is funny, because they actually released in 2019,

00:06:36.200 a declaration of climate emergency. Oh, Calgary just did one. Yeah, I heard that. It's insane.

00:06:46.080 I mean, you know, we're talking about global temperatures going up 1.2 degrees in since 1880.

00:06:52.420 I mean, it's almost nothing. And it's a good thing, because we were in the middle of the Little Ice

00:06:57.480 Age, or at least ending the Little Ice Age around 1880. But there were protesters outside,

00:07:02.940 and they were yelling and screaming, you know, climate emergency, end of the world.

00:07:07.140 So the city just buckled, and they passed this climate emergency. And like the city of Calgary,

00:07:12.920 I'm sure a lot of the people that work on the council probably think that there will be no

00:07:17.220 consequences. Well, there were in the case of Ottawa. And that's why the city of Ottawa is a

00:07:23.060 cautionary tale for governments around the world. In fact, that is the name, that is the title of our new

00:07:29.180 report, looking at the infeasibility of the plan, and also the negative repercussions. And by far,

00:07:37.820 the biggest negative repercussion, I would say, is that because of very flimsy wind and solar power,

00:07:44.240 which is going to become Ottawa's primary energy source, we're going to see major blackouts in the

00:07:50.680 middle of the winter, you know, minus 30, and you get a blackout, you'll have a lot of people die.

00:07:55.900 A lot of people don't realize it. But in Texas, you know, it was only a little below freezing

00:08:00.640 when they lost their power, and they lost it because the wind died just before the storm hit.

00:08:06.940 A lot of media will tell you, oh, no, it's because the fossil fuels failed. Well, the reason they

00:08:12.460 failed is because not only did they have to compensate for the extreme cold by Texas standards,

00:08:17.520 but they had to compensate for 58% of all the electricity, because a little before the storm

00:08:24.060 hit, 58% of their electricity was coming from wind and solar power. But the wind died, the solar panels

00:08:32.120 got covered with snow. And so boom, they lost 58% of the whole state's power. So the natural gas,

00:08:40.480 of course, had to ramp up quickly. They compensated to some extent. But then when it got really cold,

00:08:46.180 too, they just simply couldn't keep up. And so believe it or not, people don't know this, because

00:08:52.060 of course, media won't tell you, since it would make wind power look bad. 700 people died. 700.

00:09:00.140 Okay, and this is in a state where minus two is considered very cold. I think if it happened in

00:09:06.100 Ottawa, you'd see thousands of people die. And they came within just a few minutes of their whole

00:09:11.680 electricity system completely crashing. So that's a cautionary tale, too. And people should take that

00:09:18.760 a lot more seriously, because Texas is not cold by your standards. It's not cold by Ottawa standards.

00:09:26.640 Imagine what would happen if suddenly, bam, our electricity system collapsed and didn't come back

00:09:32.280 for weeks. I mean, we would see the whole city would be completely ruined. And you know, the funny

00:09:38.120 thing is, Sheila, we would also see pollution skyrocket. Because you know, what has actually

00:09:43.360 gone through the roof and sales over the last few years? Wood burning fireplaces? Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

00:09:49.200 That too. But home generators. Yeah, if you actually look at the statistics for the leading home

00:09:57.360 generator, producer, it's it runs with different fossil fuels, of course, it produces electricity,

00:10:05.760 so that when you have a blackout, you don't have your furnace conk out or whatever. Anyway,

00:10:10.480 their sales have gone through the roof. And an interesting article by Robert Bryce in the Wall

00:10:15.860 Street Journal said this is pretty good evidence that the system is becoming very unstable. And people

00:10:22.680 don't trust it. You know, their stock prices have gone zoom. So yeah, there are some advantages if

00:10:28.280 you're a wind and solar power manufacturer, or if you make home generators. But that would,

00:10:34.420 of course, cause a lot more pollution around the city of Ottawa.

00:10:38.320 You know, I'm glad that you called it a cautionary tale. Because, you know, especially with Calgary

00:10:44.880 and their brand new mayor, making this climate emergency declaration as Alberta experienced almost

00:10:53.100 four weeks of an incredible deep freeze. By any measure, there are some really huge price tags

00:11:01.160 attached to these virtue signaling initiatives. It may seem just like virtue signaling. But this

00:11:08.120 really costs the residents of these cities, a lot of money, besides making all those things that you

00:11:14.240 rely on, unreliable. For example, you just lived through a major snowstorm. How do you think electric

00:11:21.180 buses would have done in all of that?

00:11:23.620 Well, imagine electric snow plows. I mean, when you're ramming through like four feet of snow or

00:11:30.860 something, you don't want a little flimsy electric battery powering you. You know, that's another

00:11:35.440 element of Ottawa's plan, which is completely insane, and also very dangerous. The fact is,

00:11:41.120 they want to electrify our complete transportation infrastructure, not just the buses, not just the

00:11:47.460 snow plows, not just all the city equipment, but they want everybody in the city to drive electric

00:11:53.200 cars. And yet, electric cars are highly unreliable. Just take a step back. If we look at buses, for

00:12:00.280 example, in Berlin, Germany, just last winter, they had all sorts, you know, something like two dozen

00:12:06.560 buses break down in the middle of their routes, because they only get about half the range when it's

00:12:11.660 that cold. Minus six for them is very cold. I'm sure for us, yeah, that's right. So they're finding

00:12:19.800 a lot of them simply break down. And so Ottawa would experience that. We'd also experience, of course,

00:12:26.260 huge amounts of time to charge them up. And that actually is interesting, because one of our advisors,

00:12:33.340 Brian Leyland, who's a consulting engineer from New Zealand, he says, look, he says, look, the average car

00:12:39.440 run by gasoline goes into a service station, and in five minutes, it fills up and it's gone.

00:12:45.440 If you're trying to fill a electric car, you know, charge it up, it's going to take you anywhere from

00:12:51.300 half an hour to an hour. So at least six times longer. So what you're going to need is six times

00:12:57.740 more filling stations, because you have to have enough, enough space for them to sit while they're

00:13:02.960 being charged. So suddenly a city like Ottawa, which might have, I don't know, 200 gas stations or

00:13:08.360 something, you have to multiply that times at least six. So suddenly they're going to be like

00:13:13.720 everywhere, you know, so the costs are incredible with respect to that. And, you know, Brian also

00:13:19.820 says something really quite interesting. He says, you know, generally speaking, when you move forward

00:13:24.760 with new technologies, you're doing it because it's greater convenience, you know, they're more

00:13:29.820 efficient, everything else. He said, for example, the Model T, it was a big improvement over the

00:13:36.560 horse and buggy. But he says the electric car is a step backwards to a car with a tiny petroleum

00:13:43.760 tank, as he calls it. And it takes forever to charge. He says, enormously inconvenient, you don't

00:13:50.460 want to break down in the winter, because how quickly would you have battery power, if you're

00:13:55.360 actually heating your vehicle with battery power. So all in all, what you're going to see is Ottawa

00:14:01.820 citizens being left stranded on street corners at the coldest weather, because the buses will break

00:14:07.680 down, and they cost twice as much. And yet they're spending a billion dollars on all these new buses,

00:14:14.820 you know, and as we've talked about before, one of the consequences of this is huge increases in the

00:14:20.600 cost of living. We were talking earlier, I think in a previous interview about a 40% rise,

00:14:26.560 approximately, in property taxes, just to pay for their climate plan. You know, so the other thing

00:14:32.900 is, of course, many of the things they're putting up are not particularly safe. If you look at industrial

00:14:38.600 wind turbines, just before the interview, we were talking about those turbines that collapsed, or a

00:14:43.540 turbine that collapsed in New Brunswick. Now, these are 100 meter tall turbines, okay, they're higher than

00:14:49.720 the peace tower. And that's what Ottawa wants to put in, to the tune of 710 industrial wind turbines

00:14:57.160 all over the city. Now, in New Brunswick, what happened is a turbine fell down because they were

00:15:04.240 faults in the foundation, they were actually design flaws. So the company that built them decided, well,

00:15:10.260 we better look at our other 55 turbines, and see if their problems are similar. And they found that of

00:15:16.920 the 55 turbines, 50 of them have to be taken down. And the cost is unbelievable. 75 to 100 million

00:15:25.760 dollars is the cost to take down these turbines and fix the foundations. And it's going to take

00:15:31.820 them two years. All to ratepayers too, by the way, all this, the company does not eat this cost,

00:15:37.980 it gets passed along to the ratepayer. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, just recently in near

00:15:42.980 Sault Ste. Marie in September, one of the turbines completely collapsed and threw blades all over the

00:15:47.820 place. You know, in Ontario, you're allowed to have a turbine, I think it's a half a kilometer,

00:15:53.200 or it's less than a kilometer anyways, from nearby homes. In other places in the world where they have

00:15:58.760 had experience with turbine fires, because, you know, you get a fire 60 stories up, you don't put it

00:16:04.140 out easily. And of course, with some of the materials like lithium and whatever burning in the

00:16:08.980 green technology, you can't even put them out. You know, it's interesting, the fire chief in Austin,

00:16:15.860 Texas, where they've had, you know, various issues like this, he says that the amount of water required

00:16:21.900 to cool, you can't actually put out a lithium battery fire in an electric vehicle. It's easily

00:16:28.600 10 times more than the amount of water required in the case of a normal gasoline-powered car.

00:16:35.500 And, and you can't put them out. I mean, they just burn until they just burn themselves out.

00:16:41.440 And so in places like Germany, they've actually banned parking electric vehicles in underground

00:16:47.360 parking lots or indoor parking lots. So it's not safe. It doesn't work very well. It costs a fortune.

00:16:54.640 Sounds like a good deal.

00:16:58.460 You know, let's talk about, you touched on the increase to property taxes to pursue what the

00:17:04.900 city of Ottawa wants to do. You guys have broken down the numbers in your study here. And it's

00:17:10.860 frightening. How many people are in the city of Ottawa?

00:17:14.680 Well, there's a million. And so when you end up with almost a $60 billion plan.

00:17:21.840 Hang on, let's stop right there. $60 billion to pursue the climate plans in one city, Ottawa,

00:17:32.100 between now and 2050. Please tell us what this means to the individual taxpayer.

00:17:38.660 Well, that works out to $60,000 for every man, woman and child in Ottawa. And Bob Lyman,

00:17:45.940 our economics advisor, he wrote part of the report, of course, that we put out actually

00:17:50.400 Wednesday morning, which will be this morning as a result of our broadcasting the next day.

00:17:55.340 And here are a couple of quotes. He said, the plan includes suggestions for several additional

00:18:00.660 taxes and fees that could be imposed on city residents, the largest of which are road tolls,

00:18:06.440 $1.6 billion on road tolls, congestion charges, $388 million, development charges, $234 million,

00:18:15.420 road user fees, $188 million, and land transfer tax increase, $130 million.

00:18:22.320 And he concludes this part of the report. I'm sure this was tongue in cheek. He says,

00:18:27.120 no doubt the imposition of such charges will create some controversy.

00:18:31.820 I love the way Bob sort of understates things. It's just beautiful. Because I mean, this is going

00:18:40.200 to make Ottawa, you know, they say, oh, we want a robust, you know, advanced, clean city. It's going

00:18:45.520 to make us highly flimsy with a very pathetic, weak electrical grid and transportation system.

00:18:52.100 It's going to make us more polluted. It's going to make us bankrupt. I mean, it would simply ruin the

00:18:57.240 city. And you know, you'd laugh one of our donors from British Columbia, I shared our report with

00:19:02.600 them just confidentially ahead of time. And he said, oh, I really hope Ottawa does do this.

00:19:08.140 Because then you'd have lots of people dying in a total catastrophe. And then they won't do that here.

00:19:14.620 Yeah, yeah, it's just too bad. It would take absolute carnage in the capital city for the rest

00:19:19.520 of the country to learn its lesson. But sometimes people do need to learn things the hard way.

00:19:23.720 And some of these ideas that you have noted in your report, sound like they are just cooked up in a

00:19:30.400 fifth grade classroom, where they're like, you know what we need solar panels, where are we going

00:19:34.840 to put acres of solar panels, actually 36 square kilometers, as you've examined 36 square kilometers,

00:19:42.440 we're just going to put them on the roof. No big deal, it'll be fine.

00:19:45.700 And you know, the percent increase over the amount they have now is hundreds of thousands of percent,

00:19:51.080 161 and a half thousand percent.

00:19:55.200 Oh, yeah, just a little bit.

00:19:57.660 And where do you think you're going to put them all? I mean, you know, the Ontario provincial or

00:20:02.780 what are they professional associations, they talk about the fact that we don't have adequate

00:20:07.340 recycling capability, even for the amount of green energy that we have right now. I mean,

00:20:13.620 if you take you take solar panels, and you just dump them in landfills,

00:20:17.200 then what happens is they break down with the weather, and they leach lead and all kinds of

00:20:23.140 toxic substances into the soil. So of course, we ship them to China where they throw them in the 0.95

00:20:27.680 ground. And now they can leak on your house, though. Now, just leak on the roof of your house and just

00:20:34.640 leach down into your house and make it a toxic waste site.

00:20:38.700 Well, you know, Alan McRae in, I think, in Calgary, he's done all kinds of very interesting

00:20:44.260 calculations on this whole issue. And he, I think it was him who actually calculated that

00:20:50.380 the amount of energy it actually takes to make a solar panel, to, you know, ship it to its location,

00:20:56.820 to install it, to maintain it, and eventually to dispose of it is more than the amount of energy

00:21:01.560 that you get from these things. And so, in fact, what they are called is non-negative on net energy.

00:21:08.040 Okay, so if you have a country which brings in more and more and more of these kinds of energy

00:21:13.040 sources, you're going to have to import more and more electricity, okay, or import more and more

00:21:18.120 energy or get energy from other sources to compensate for these things. You know, that's

00:21:23.360 something a lot of people don't realize is that the amount of energy that they put out is very,

00:21:28.400 very variable as well. I mean, obviously, and if you look at the Ontario statistics for the amount

00:21:34.080 of energy they expect to get from wind and solar, you can see that the capacity factor or the fraction

00:21:40.400 of the amount of energy that you get versus what you think you're going to get. In the wintertime,

00:21:45.900 it goes to zero for solar. And I wonder why? Well, maybe it's because they're covered with snow.

00:21:52.080 We have five hours of daylight?

00:21:54.940 Yeah, that's right. That wouldn't help either. But wind is the opposite, actually. You get most of

00:21:59.260 your wind in the winter. And then in the summer, it goes down to something like 13%. So they're very,

00:22:04.620 very poor energy sources. And even environmentalists like Robert Kennedy Jr. say that if you build wind

00:22:10.520 power, you're building natural gas, because you need to have something that can ramp up and down

00:22:15.780 quickly to compensate for when the wind dies. Okay, that nuclear power doesn't do that. Hydro doesn't

00:22:21.660 do that. You really need natural gas because it reacts quickly. You can get the turbines to generate

00:22:26.680 power suddenly, you know, when you need it. And so, you know, I asked Ronald Stein, who's a

00:22:32.500 California-based electric vehicle expert. He's an engineer. He was on our radio show on America Out

00:22:38.460 Loud. And I asked him, I said, when you count the source of the electricity and how you have to make

00:22:44.400 the batteries and largely in China, you know, with materials mined by slave labor in the Congo,

00:22:50.420 I mean, when you actually take that, if you ignore how it's made, and you don't care about human rights

00:22:55.120 or environment, do you actually save in greenhouse gases when you drive an electric vehicle? And he

00:23:01.680 said, no, he said, you're just moving it to another location. Because if you're getting your power from

00:23:07.100 a source that, well, natural gas, for example, that produces greenhouse gases, and if you're making it

00:23:13.360 and processing it and highly energetic required materials, okay, to make these things takes a lot

00:23:19.520 more energy than just to make a normal car, then he says you don't save in greenhouse gas emissions

00:23:25.860 anyways. Now, whether it's worth reducing greenhouse gases, I mean, that's another topic. But if you

00:23:31.360 think it is, and I say this to the city of Ottawa, if you're trying to reduce greenhouse gases, don't

00:23:37.100 bring in electric vehicles, you know, don't bring in high, you know, wind turbines and solar panels,

00:23:42.660 that's going to increase real pollution. It's going to kill, of course, millions of birds and bats.

00:23:47.660 That sounds very environmentally friendly to me. Yeah, you know, Sheila, one of the things that's

00:23:52.680 very weird is they keep talking about wind power as being environmentally friendly. Well, you should

00:23:59.180 go to Michael Moore's video. And you know, he's a well known left winger. So I mean, you would think

00:24:05.560 that he's not going to attack something that is a favorite of the left. But he shows in his movie

00:24:11.420 Planet of the Humans, if people do a search on Planet of the Humans. And there's a two minute clip in

00:24:16.440 there that shows how wind and solar power machines are made. And they're highly toxic. In fact,

00:24:22.320 they're highly polluting. I would say that per megawatt, they're the most polluting energy sources

00:24:27.360 on the planet. And they kill huge numbers of wildlife, and in particular, the bats that are

00:24:33.880 killed by wind turbines. You see, when a large wind turbine blade crosses the sky, right behind it is a

00:24:40.360 low pressure zone. And that low pressure zone is low enough that it actually bursts the lungs

00:24:46.500 of bats. And so the bats die in their own blood. I have an expert who's a friend who's a, I have a

00:24:53.020 friend who's an expert in bats. And he loves bats. He thinks they're the greatest thing on earth. And

00:24:59.480 they are. I mean, they eat thousands of mosquitoes every night, every bat. And he says that the wind

00:25:04.900 turbine expansion, and you know, there's, there's a third of a million industrial wind turbines around

00:25:10.320 the world. And these are huge, eh? Like 60 stories high. He says it's going to drive some species of bats

00:25:16.200 to complete extinction. And as I say, that has a big impact on the mosquito population in the area.

00:25:22.320 I'm sure if mosquitoes were voters, they would vote for wind turbines. Get rid of those nasty bats. But birds, 0.95

00:25:29.580 and of course, some people say, oh, well, you know, there's more birds killed by cats. But cats don't kill

00:25:34.860 condors and golden eagles and things like that. You know, the Altamont wind farm in California,

00:25:40.620 it's killed something like 3000 golden eagles since it was commissioned about so three or four

00:25:46.980 decades ago. Thousands of golden eagles. As I say, cats don't kill golden eagles.

00:25:51.960 Cats are part of nature. The cats are doing what cats do. Cats go and eat birds and mice,

00:25:58.000 and all of those sorts of things. They are part of nature, for vines or not.

00:26:04.860 Yeah. So I think what's going to happen is, I mean, I don't think they'll ever fully enable the

00:26:10.220 plan. Because when you start to have massive blackouts, people dying and things like that,

00:26:15.220 the public are going to go up in arms, and they're going to vote out any politician that supported

00:26:19.400 this. The sad thing is, it will take many years to undo the damage. You know, Rod Stein pointed out

00:26:25.820 in our interview on America Out Loud this week, he pointed out that what will happen is that when they

00:26:32.120 close down coal stations, and by the way, there's no reason to close coal stations.

00:26:36.680 No.

00:26:36.820 I mean, coal stations can be made very, very clean if they use the latest technology.

00:26:41.300 It's a great energy source. And you know, one of the things that people don't realize about coal,

00:26:45.760 same thing with nuclear, is that it actually is a very secure energy source. Because these,

00:26:52.480 the raw materials that are needed to run nuclear stations and coal stations,

00:26:56.020 you can get like a year's supply, pile it up on the property, and you don't have to rely on

00:27:01.580 shipments or gas pipelines or whatever. So I mean, they are a very, very secure energy source. In fact,

00:27:07.780 there's a group in the United States called Secure the Grid. And they promote energy sources that don't

00:27:13.440 require having more pipelines coming in or shipments or whatever else. And the point they're making,

00:27:19.100 of course, is that you have a much more secure grid if you have enough coal on site to last for a

00:27:25.540 year or two, or enough nuclear in the case, well, that might last for 15 years. So if you really

00:27:31.000 want a secure grid, you want to have coal and nuclear part of your grid. One of the things that's

00:27:36.680 really unfortunate is in the City of Ottawa climate change plan, they don't even use the word nuclear

00:27:42.180 once, not even once. You know, they keep talking about reducing greenhouse gases. And their main way

00:27:47.720 of doing that is through these nonsensical wind and solar panels, which, of course, won't do that,

00:27:53.240 because you'll need lots of natural gas to back it up. But they don't talk about nuclear. And what they

00:27:58.160 don't realize is there's a new technology called small nuclear, small modular reactors, SMRs. And these

00:28:05.680 are being built around the world. And they can power a city like Ottawa, for example, with six small

00:28:11.040 modular reactors, you know, that would be sort of typical for a city. And they're very safe, you know, you can

00:28:16.820 put them, you don't need a lot of space for them. That's the other thing, of course, that people don't

00:28:20.980 realize, is that wind turbines have to be spaced apart far enough, that the second wind turbine has

00:28:27.420 some wind to actually generate it. Because you're taking energy out of the wind. I mean, that's how

00:28:33.040 the wind turbine works. And so if you put another one too close behind it, the wind is very weak. And so

00:28:38.580 you wouldn't get much power. So you need to have them spaced apart a certain amount. And as I said,

00:28:43.540 in places like Europe, where they actually have had serious wind turbine problems, you know, in

00:28:48.560 Denmark, you can cross the country by foot, from one side to the other, and never lose sight of an

00:28:55.000 industrial wind turbine. Not once. Okay, I suppose if you suck your head in a hole, you wouldn't see it.

00:29:00.200 But aside from that, you see them everywhere. And I mean that literally. And so they have in Europe,

00:29:07.140 a two kilometer setback in many countries, because they recognize they're they're unsightly. And anybody

00:29:13.100 who lives near them. I mean, we have a whole section in our report on the infrasound, this is low

00:29:19.260 frequency sound, the lump, lump, what that goes through the wall through your body through your

00:29:24.680 skeleton. Yeah. And there are all kinds of reports of people who develop nausea, you know, migraine

00:29:30.680 headaches, constantly feeling sick, panic attacks. And as soon as they move away from the turbine goes

00:29:36.360 away, as soon as they move back, it comes back. And so the negative impact to Ottawa's health,

00:29:42.520 of unreal 710 industrial wind turbines, I don't know where they're going to put them all. I mean, if you do

00:29:48.600 space them apart two kilometers, which they're not currently required to do, would they be able to fit

00:29:54.500 710 of them into the city? I don't know. But the bottom line is talk to somebody like Shelly Correa, for

00:30:00.700 example, from Lincoln County, she moved there because she had a boy who would benefit from a nice tranquil

00:30:07.880 environment. And Lincoln County was like Mayberry, you know, from Andy of Mayberry. I mean, it was a

00:30:13.920 wonderful place to live. And they promised they would not put up any industrial wind turbines. Well,

00:30:19.120 guess what? I think it's a half a kilometer from her house, you know, approximately, they put up a 60

00:30:24.680 story wind turbine. You know, and people who live near these things, they give you firsthand evidence,

00:30:30.080 I'm quoting it in our report, where it's actually horrible for people's local health,

00:30:35.720 okay, for the residents that live nearby. So when you look at the Ottawa plan, from a health

00:30:41.040 perspective, from a pollution perspective, from a safety perspective, from a finance perspective,

00:30:47.240 from and even from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective, or the human rights perspective,

00:30:51.900 as you put, as you mentioned, it 40,000 children working in these dangerous rare earth mineral

00:30:59.920 mines to produce batteries, so that people in Ottawa can pat themselves on the back about how green they

00:31:07.540 are. Well, that's right. In fact, Ron Stein, along with Todd Royal wrote a book called clean energy

00:31:13.720 exploitations, I believe is the title. I'll send you the link and you can put it up. Because it's an

00:31:18.840 amazing book, it goes through where do all these materials come from. And the sad thing is, unlike fossil

00:31:25.080 fuels, which are found throughout the world, and especially in Canada, I mean, it's wonderful,

00:31:29.020 we have so much of it. These sources of energy, these sources of raw materials, the rare earths,

00:31:35.420 the cobalts, the things like that, they're found in countries that have massive human rights abuses,

00:31:40.960 they have virtually no environmental protection. And a great example is cobalt. Cobalt,

00:31:47.440 artesian cobalt comes from the Congo, mostly. Interestingly enough, all the mines are pretty well

00:31:52.360 owned by China. So they ship them to China, where they use extremely good environmental controls to

00:31:57.880 produce their batteries. Not. Anyway, the bottom line is they got 40,000 children working in mines,

00:32:05.400 mining cobalt in the Congo, for example, in addition to what you were saying. And what we have

00:32:11.300 is because the spaces they have to get into to get some of the cobalt is quite small. They use children,

00:32:18.000 and they're working for something like a dollar a day under virtually slave labor conditions.

00:32:23.060 You know, they're breathing in terrible fumes, radioactive dust, everything else. And this is

00:32:29.080 going to make supposedly clean energy. You know, one of the points we make is that if Ottawa went full

00:32:35.140 blast into wind and solar power, as they're saying they will, they would be supporting some of the

00:32:41.080 worst environmental and human rights abuses on the planet. Yeah. Okay. And for nothing,

00:32:47.240 for nothing except virtue signaling, because the fraction of greenhouse gases of the world that

00:32:53.640 Ottawa produces, get this, Canada is 1.6%. Ottawa is less than a hundredth of that. So it's 0.014%.

00:33:05.260 And, you know, I contacted one of our experts in the United States, Pat Michaels, who used to be

00:33:10.200 state climatologist in Virginia. He was saying that, okay, if we use the EPA's model for what

00:33:18.440 temperature change would occur as a result of Ottawa's climate change plan, and if it continued

00:33:24.420 all the way to the year 2100, what he figured was that the temperature change would be about

00:33:30.900 one ten thousandths of a degree. We saved the world, Tom.

00:33:35.740 So if you take that number, and, you know, one of our allies, he actually took that number,

00:33:41.360 and he said, okay, if we want to reduce global temperature by two degrees or whatever,

00:33:47.200 what would it cost? It turns out there isn't enough money in the entire world

00:33:50.680 at that kind of a rate. You know, now, of course, the calculation doesn't really make much sense,

00:33:56.320 because it assumes that we are the master controllers of climate, and all we have to do is

00:34:01.280 spend enough money, and we can pull it down. But I mean, it just shows how ludicrous Ottawa's

00:34:05.620 plan is. I mean, we're spending $60,000 for every man, woman, and child in Ottawa to get

00:34:12.040 one ten thousandths of a degree change, which is at least two or three orders of magnitude lower than

00:34:18.820 anything you could ever measure, let alone feel. And, you know, this brings up a really interesting

00:34:24.320 point. Richard Lindzen was saying that if, in fact, there weren't any meteorologists and

00:34:31.160 climatologists telling people, the temperature change in their lifetime would be so small,

00:34:35.900 they would not even notice. Right, right.

00:34:38.260 They would not even notice. I mean, 1.2 degrees on a global average, which is kind of meaningless,

00:34:43.740 because nobody lives in a globe. We all live in regions. But a 1.2 degree change, first of all,

00:34:50.040 would be beneficial, because we were in the Little Ice Age. But nobody's going to feel that. I mean,

00:34:55.020 in your entire life, climate catastrophe, climate crisis, they keep saying, but nobody can even feel

00:35:01.100 what's happening. You know, in Ottawa, for example, if you look at some stations, they're actually

00:35:06.980 cooling. Like on Hogsback, for example, it's actually gradual decline. And that is indeed what should

00:35:13.660 really concern Ottawa residents. Because as such a cold city, if what some of the solar scientists are

00:35:20.860 saying is true, then we're headed for global cooling. Because by the middle of the century,

00:35:25.840 we're supposed to actually be at a grand solar minimum, when all the different cycles in the sun,

00:35:31.840 they all hit rock bottom at the same time. And the last time this happened, a few hundred years ago,

00:35:37.780 it was so cold that the Thames River in London froze a meter thick, a meter thick. It never freezes,

00:35:45.040 even in the winter now. So, you know, if we're headed back to those conditions, that is far,

00:35:50.860 far more dangerous than a little bit of warming. As we say in our report, 20 times more people around

00:35:56.700 the world die to excessive cold than due to warming. And yet the city of Ottawa says nothing

00:36:03.500 about adapting to cold. They say nothing about adapting to cooling. They're all focused on

00:36:08.900 warming in a cold city. Like it is completely crazy. So, I mean, yes, we should plan for climate

00:36:16.060 change. We should adapt. We should make sure we have lots of robust energy. Because if it cools,

00:36:22.680 that's the big threat. If it cools, cities like Ottawa are going to be creamed. If all they did

00:36:28.140 was prepare for warming and put up the most flimsy and most environmentally damaging energy

00:36:33.520 sources, I mean, we'll be in very hot water because it'll be so cold.

00:36:39.680 You know, it's funny. You mentioned the two timelines are going to converge and someone's

00:36:44.880 going to be right. And someone's going to be really, really wrong. And because it's happening,

00:36:48.740 supposed to happen for both of these around the middle of the century. So Ottawa is supposed to

00:36:54.260 achieve their climate goals by 2050. And we might get mugged by reality by a cooling trend,

00:37:01.340 a solar cooling trend at roughly the same time. So someone's going to be right. Someone's going to be

00:37:05.900 wrong. But in the end, I think we all pay for it. Tom, I hear that your voice is slightly giving

00:37:11.040 way. So I'm going to ask you, where can people find your report, which is very comprehensive and

00:37:18.360 very common sense, but also support some of the other work that you're doing, both at the

00:37:24.820 Climate Science Coalition, but outside of the Climate Science Coalition. And don't forget your

00:37:30.860 podcast, Tom, you're the worst at self-promotion. First of all, the podcast, we have two podcasts

00:37:37.800 that we've pre-recorded, which are going to go up talking specifically about the problems with the

00:37:43.560 Ottawa Climate Change Plan. And that's Exploratory Journeys. And you can go to icsc-canada.com

00:37:49.660 and you click on the resources at the top and you go down, you choose Exploratory Journeys. And you can

00:37:55.340 listen to our two podcasts specifically that'll be uploaded in the next day or two about the Ottawa

00:38:00.320 plan. So our web, our homepage is icsccanada.com. And in fact, it's icsc-canada.com. And you'll see

00:38:10.160 an advertisement for our report in an article that was just published. It'll be Wednesday morning by

00:38:15.940 the time this is aired in World Commerce Review. Now the report itself is 25,000 words. And so not

00:38:22.600 too many people are going to want to read that, but you'll be happy to hear that the World Commerce

00:38:27.200 Review article is only a little over 3,000 words. And that one should be on the web as well. So we'll

00:38:32.520 be advertising all of that on the icsc-canada.com website. And we're pushing hard to get a lot of

00:38:40.360 publicity for this because this is a cautionary tale, not just for Canadian cities, but for cities

00:38:45.640 around the world that are thinking that they can actually yield to environmental activists and get

00:38:52.580 away with it. The fact is they can't because these people will use the climate emergency in Calgary,

00:38:58.280 for example, they'll use it as a lever to force you to try to get a master plan because they'll say,

00:39:05.060 well, if there's an emergency, then you've got to do something. So get to it. And if the city is like

00:39:10.280 in Calgary, like our weaklings in Ottawa, they will develop a multi-billion dollar plan. So you really

00:39:17.240 have to stop it now because the environmentalists will never be pleased. I mean, never. If you achieve

00:39:22.680 one target, they're just going to move the goalposts until you achieve that. And so you got to stand up

00:39:28.260 to them at some point, unless you're prepared to totally ruin your society. So, you know, these

00:39:34.060 politicians who think they're going to get a free ride in Calgary by declaring a climate emergency,

00:39:38.700 oh, and then they've solved it, they can go away. No, they're going to have massive consequences.

00:39:42.940 They have to stand up to the environmentalists now, before you get to the point like Ottawa,

00:39:48.360 where you're absolutely creaming the city with huge expenses. And if they enable these things,

00:39:54.360 a lot of deaths, okay, all for environmental destruction worse than you would have with

00:40:00.060 any fossil fuel plan. So yeah, they have to stand up to this. And if people want to help support us,

00:40:05.100 because this isn't our first report, we're going to put out lots of reports on these kinds of things.

00:40:09.700 They can go to icsc-canada.com, and we'd be very happy to accept their donations.

00:40:17.200 Well, you know, you're one of just a couple of small

00:40:21.220 organizations who are doing this sort of work yourself and Friends of Science and a couple other

00:40:26.940 organizations. That's it. And you're up against the foreign funding on the other side. They,

00:40:33.980 you know, they just keep getting foreign money dumped in so that they have these fossil fuel

00:40:39.060 demarketing campaigns and they are affecting our municipalities and people who say, well,

00:40:43.980 I don't work in oil and gas. It doesn't affect me. I don't care. You pay a carbon tax,

00:40:48.980 you pay municipal taxes, and that's where all these bad ideas manifest for the normal people.

00:40:54.540 So Tom, thanks so much for your hard work on this and making these big complex issues

00:40:59.980 easily digestible for normal lay people and non-scientists, because that's who it affects,

00:41:06.220 is the non-scientists.

00:41:08.000 Oh, yeah. And when people hear the price tag, they say, what? $60 billion? Like, that's insane.

00:41:13.940 That's like too much for a country, let alone a city.

00:41:16.140 Yeah. If Justin Trudeau had a bad idea that cost $60 billion, we'd all be lighting our hair on fire.

00:41:22.080 But this is just the city of Ottawa. People need to understand that. Tom, I could talk to you all day

00:41:28.220 about how bad the environmentalist movement is, but I know that you're recovering from something.

00:41:33.020 And I want to thank you so much for taking the time, and we'll have you back on again

00:41:36.120 very soon when the second half of this report comes out.

00:41:39.300 Okay. Thank you.

00:41:40.760 Thanks, Tom.

00:41:41.660 Bye-bye.

00:41:42.140 You know, the federal politicians told us that the Paris Climate Agreement was non-binding,

00:41:57.680 so we shouldn't have to worry about it. But now they're bringing in federal legislation to make

00:42:01.720 the targets binding. We also saw politicians tell us that the UN Compact on Migration was

00:42:08.200 non-binding. But then we saw the federal government partner with George Soros on immigration policies

00:42:14.340 right after that. When a politician tells you that a climate emergency declaration or any

00:42:20.040 declaration agreement is non-binding, they're lying to you, and you should hold on to your wallet.

00:42:26.520 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody

00:42:30.400 back here in the same time, in the same place next week. And remember, don't let the government

00:42:35.360 tell you that you've had too much to think.

Rebel News Podcast - January 20, 2022

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Ottawa's ‘climate emergency’ is a cautionary tale

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