The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 A bitterly cold spate of global warming has struck the east coast, freezing harbors and

00:00:05.920 blanketing whole cities under its sweltery frost. According to the National Oceanic and

00:00:11.640 Atmospheric Administration, this bomb cyclone occurs when a cold air mass collides with a warm

00:00:17.940 air mass, and despite the intense name, the phenomenon is actually quite common, particularly

00:00:23.020 in the northern Atlantic regions. But forget all that science mumbo-jumbo. The mainstream media

00:00:28.160 have wasted no time in identifying the clear culprit behind the frigid cold front, man-caused

00:00:34.320 global warming. Now, because weather is weather, not climate, except when it's convenient for

00:00:39.800 Democrats, in which case the weather becomes the climate, we will analyze this bitterly cold

00:00:44.200 global warming with former MIT atmospheric physicist and catastrophic climate change skeptic, Richard

00:00:51.460 Linzen. Then, this day in history, I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:58.160 We have a lot to talk about today. We've got to analyze the bomb cyclone. I can't wait to get

00:01:07.480 to Richard Linzen. We're going to bring him on right at the top. The end this day in history. But

00:01:11.540 first, before we can do any of that, we've got to keep the lights on in this place. So we have to

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00:03:30.000 Slash Knowles. That's the one. Okay. So I've got family back on the East Coast in the bomb cyclone

00:03:35.020 of global warming. Things are looking pretty bad. Here are just a few photos of it. Here you can see

00:03:40.200 Niagara Falls is freezing as the water molecules prepare themselves to evaporate into the broiling

00:03:46.900 atmosphere. You can see some shoppers in Dumbo, Brooklyn. They're actually ignoring the

00:03:52.020 Do Not Cross signs as they race across the street to escape the blazing sun. Speaking of Brooklyn,

00:03:58.120 another trendy Brooklynite is donning half of a snorkel in her tropical paradise. A tractor sweeps

00:04:04.700 the bubbling asphalt off of the main drag in Bellport, New York. And look at this. A despondent puppy

00:04:10.540 in Bryant Park begs his owner to trim his coat just a little bit shorter. If only there weren't

00:04:16.600 so much man-caused global warming, three beach bros cruise Main Street, Midford, New York

00:04:21.600 on jet skis. Boy, oh boy, that man-caused global warming really is unbelievable. To help us explain

00:04:28.440 the situation, we now bring on Richard Lindzen. Richard is an atmospheric physicist specializing

00:04:34.540 in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry, all things about

00:04:41.040 which I know absolutely nothing. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. He is the

00:04:46.040 recipient of many awards, including the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger and Charney

00:04:52.020 Awards, probably mispronouncing that, the American Geophysical Union's Massell Wayne Medal, and the

00:04:57.620 Leo Prize from the Wallen Foundation in Göteborg, Sweden. He is a member of countless climate science

00:05:03.540 advisory boards, and until 2013, Richard worked for 30 years as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor

00:05:09.880 of Meteorology at MIT. How's that for an introduction? Richard, thank you for being here.

00:05:14.700 Thank you. Pleasure being with you, Michael.

00:05:17.720 So, Richard, in September, even the Washington Post, where, as you might have read, Democracy

00:05:23.040 Dies in Darkness, they reported on a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience, adjusting the

00:05:29.280 settled science of global warming. Pravda on the Potomac reports, quote, a team of 10 researchers

00:05:35.020 led by Richard Miller of the University of Oxford recalculated the carbon budget for limiting the

00:05:41.220 Earth's warming to one and a half degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above temperatures seen

00:05:46.980 in the late 19th century. It had been widely assumed that this stringent target would prove

00:05:52.260 unachievable, but the new study would appear to give us much more time to get our act together if we

00:05:57.980 want to stay below it. What this paper means is that keeping warming to one and a half degrees Celsius

00:06:03.080 still remains a geophysical possibility, contrary to quite widespread belief, Miller said in a news

00:06:11.040 briefing. Professor Lindzen, why does the so-called settled science keep changing?

00:06:17.240 Well, obviously it's not settled. But it's equally true that there are certain problems with these

00:06:25.960 hyped-up statements. I mean, if you think about it a little bit, you know, the temperature has already gone

00:06:34.360 up since the 19th century by about a degree. This has been a period of the greatest advances in human

00:06:42.920 welfare in history. Why do we suddenly feel that the next half degree is the end of the world? It makes no sense.

00:06:52.280 Whether we'll go above that or not, I have no idea, but I'm almost sure that its consequences would be

00:07:01.720 fairly minimal. And, you know, you make a great point that whenever we're talking about this climate

00:07:07.400 debate, will the temperature go up another degree or half a degree or one and a half degrees? We're

00:07:12.520 ignoring the greatest advances in human prosperity in the history of the world. We're ignoring the

00:07:18.600 industrial revolution. You know, many distinguished scientists, including yourself, reject the so-called

00:07:25.560 climate consensus pushed by politicians. We saw 16 scientists sign that Wall Street Journal article

00:07:32.920 in 2012 arguing that decarbonizing the world economy would severely hamper economic growth,

00:07:38.920 quality of life, especially in the third world, that it's not justified by the scientific evidence.

00:07:43.960 And yet people with little to no scientific training reject all of you highly credentialed scientists

00:07:49.960 as climate deniers. Has the world turned upside down on what should be a scientific issue?

00:07:57.480 I suppose you could say that. I mean, you know, the 97 percent is a curious thing. I mean,

00:08:03.320 it's the number that they've decided on that will convince people, as you say, who don't know anything

00:08:11.080 about the subject. I wouldn't say anyone. I mean, what I find, for example, is if I, you know,

00:08:20.600 talk to my plumber or electrician or anyone like that, they don't take this seriously. I'm pretty sure

00:08:27.720 people in what we refer to as a flyover country don't take it seriously. I think the only people

00:08:34.840 who take it seriously are people who went to college, who don't understand science,

00:08:39.800 are worried about it, and are reassured if somebody tells them, however faultily, that 97 percent agree,

00:08:48.360 then they're comforted and they feel, oh, that's fine. They never check what the 97 percent refers to.

00:08:55.000 I mean, one of the studies was asking people, you know, has the climate warmed since the last 150 years

00:09:05.560 and has man played any role in it, whatever? You know, everyone who works in it would agree that,

00:09:13.000 you know, both those statements are probably correct. They have no catastrophic implication,

00:09:19.560 but they leave it to people to assume that means the end of the world is nigh. Others have done all

00:09:28.520 sorts of other fudges, but the truth of the matter is that probably if you asked weather forecasters,

00:09:36.360 media weather forecasters, it's always been over half. I don't think there's anything remarkable

00:09:42.600 happening. That number, as you say, seems perfectly tuned to be used by politicians and demagogues in

00:09:51.320 the media to convince people that something terrible is happening. And your statement on

00:09:57.880 people who are doing jobs, who maybe they don't have a bachelor's degree or they didn't go to some

00:10:02.760 elite school in the United States, they're not terribly worried. They're not screaming for their

00:10:08.280 families' welfare and saying, oh no, who cares about how much money we're making and how our

00:10:13.400 investments are doing and whether we can put the kids to college. Global warming is going to kill

00:10:18.680 us all. It seems evidence of an age-old truth that a little learning is a dangerous thing,

00:10:24.760 because if you asked any of my classmates at college or any college student today in the United States,

00:10:31.400 they would call you crazy. Yeah, I think that's true. But, you know,

00:10:34.840 I think about what education is about. I mean, you know, unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion

00:10:42.440 that for the most part, what a good student refers to is a student who has learned to rationalize

00:10:51.080 anything in order to please the professor. That's maybe a useful skill in some instances,

00:11:00.120 but it will certainly lead you astray when you're confronted by something fairly absurd,

00:11:06.280 and your special ability is you can rationalize it. That's a great point. Alan Bloom wrote about

00:11:14.120 the tenor of college students in The Closing of the American Mind. He said the best thing you could

00:11:19.880 say about them is that they're nice, and that is a damning indictment. And speaking of the university,

00:11:24.920 speaking of academic life, scientific careers, from what I have read, have been ruined for

00:11:30.040 contradicting global warming orthodoxy. I read about Murray Salby, American atmospheric physicist,

00:11:36.360 who is a so-called climate dissenter. It seems that he was fired by Macquarie University for his views.

00:11:42.760 The university even canceled a non-refundable return ticket from his European-speaking

00:11:48.680 engagement, all because he has dissented. Is it fair to say that there are professional incentives

00:11:57.320 to toe the line on global warming in the academy?

00:11:59.480 Of course. Of course there are. I mean, Murray's case is really sad. He's a very good atmospheric

00:12:09.000 scientist. And they not only did everything you said, but they prohibited him access to his papers

00:12:19.720 and everything. He's absolutely Stalinist. Rob, his entire career. Etch him out of photographs,

00:12:26.680 maybe. Yeah. I mean, it was that sort of thing. Truly bizarre. I would say if you're a young scientist

00:12:35.720 and don't have tenure, this will kill you if you dissent. If you are still active and senior,

00:12:46.120 you'll still be cut off from funding. So, yeah, sure. It's more than an incentive. And for university

00:12:57.160 administrations, the fact that this has become a matter of student activism, that students somehow

00:13:05.320 feel that they are displaying their virtue by condemning CO2, which happens to be vital for life. I mean,

00:13:14.840 you know, it's a bit crazy, but nothing frightens an administrator more than an activist student.

00:13:21.720 An excellent point. And did you yourself feel protected a bit? You were well ensconced,

00:13:28.200 well-established nationally and at MIT. I know I spoke to Harvey Mansfield, the tenured philosopher

00:13:35.000 at Harvard, who said that once he got tenure, he felt he could raise a little hell. Did you think

00:13:39.560 you were protected in a way that younger or less established professors were not?

00:13:43.320 Of course. Of course. You know, it's supposed to be the purpose of tenure to give you the freedom to

00:13:53.400 pursue the truth in whatever way you can. On the other hand, that is less important today than it used

00:14:03.400 to be, because your position at the university depends very critically on your ability to raise funds.

00:14:13.320 And that in turn means everyone, including senior people, have an immense incentive to

00:14:22.760 toe the line. And, you know, it's always been known that this is a danger, especially in science,

00:14:31.320 and especially in the science like atmospheric physics or climate, where the government has a

00:14:36.760 virtual monopoly on support. And an agenda. Oh yeah, that's the point. And if they have a position,

00:14:45.800 then that's going to be a real limitation on freedom of inquiry.

00:14:53.720 And in terms of this, they have this monopoly, they have an agenda, they fund all of it.

00:14:59.880 And then there's a little old us. There's the general public. So I want to get into the science

00:15:04.600 itself. What is often presented as facts to the general public are actually themselves based on a

00:15:11.720 lot of assumptions as to how to aggregate and adjust raw measurements. How do we calculate

00:15:17.800 measurements such as, say, the global mean temperature, which we all hear about? What do

00:15:22.200 those measurements tell us about the so-called consensus and the certainty of the scientific

00:15:27.560 community? Well, it's not as easy a question as you. It takes a career to figure this out,

00:15:35.880 if one even can. I mean, part of the problem is the metric of global mean temperature. Obviously,

00:15:44.120 there's no such meaningful thing. You can't average Mount Everest with the Dead Sea and get anything

00:15:53.000 meaningful. Right. You don't lift your finger into the air and say, ah, yes, I found the global mean

00:15:57.000 temperature. It's 42 degrees. No, you obviously can't do that. And they try and do something that's

00:16:04.120 a little bit more sensible. At each station, they take the average over 30 years and look at the

00:16:11.000 deviation from that average, then average those deviations over the globe, usually with area

00:16:18.840 averaging at least. But, you know, it's never perfectly clear. The most amazing thing about that number,

00:16:26.520 by the way, is that it's very close to zero. I mean, you know, one degree, half degree in a century,

00:16:37.640 or one degree in a century, that's very tiny. Ah, you know, every day here in New England,

00:16:46.680 you are talking about the cold. Today, it's actually above freezing. I mean, you know. Lucky,

00:16:51.960 lucky you. Well, it went up about 15 degrees centigrade. Um, you can't perceive one degree. It's,

00:17:01.960 as I've pointed out to people, variation in such things is essential. I mean, for instance,

00:17:09.000 uh, if you tracked your body temperature compulsively, you would discover it's not constant.

00:17:17.080 Um, if you look at a skyscraper, it's always, uh, swaying. Natural systems have to vary a little bit

00:17:26.200 in order to maintain stability. So to treat, you know, as people did in speaking of the hottest year

00:17:34.040 on record, it's a hundredth of a degree warmer than it was another year. This is insane. And, uh,

00:17:42.680 you're counting on the fact that people have no idea of what these quantities mean.

00:17:47.720 So you have something... I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:17:50.520 No. So you have something that hasn't changed much, but you have people arguing,

00:17:56.040 did it go up a hundredth degree? Did it go down? I'm not sure this metric means anything.

00:18:02.280 And frequently, uh, I think the, the consensus view, the popular consensus view,

00:18:07.080 is that, uh, the only way that we have stability in complex systems is total stasis, perfect stasis.

00:18:13.800 But of course, there's no reason to assume that. Obviously, these systems have variability,

00:18:19.080 as you say, just to maintain their own stability. And, uh, and also on the uncertainty of these...

00:18:26.440 Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. If you had a rigid skyscraper, what would happen to it?

00:18:33.640 It would collapse. Right. So the stasis you're talking about would be extremely dangerous.

00:18:39.880 Mm-hmm. That's absolutely... Your body temperature fluctuates

00:18:44.440 because it has a restoring force. And in, in, in terms of the uncertainty of some of these

00:18:50.680 measurements and in calculating some of the variation and some of the cost, uh, William Nordhaus,

00:18:56.440 maybe the, the, the foremost climate change economist, he has observed, uh, the, the massive

00:19:01.960 uncertainty in calculating the cost of global warming and policies to combat global warming.

00:19:07.400 So depending on the model you pick, and depending on my own, uh, uh, lack of talent at reading these

00:19:13.800 papers, but it appears that the social cost of carbon, which is the amount that you would tax carbon

00:19:19.560 to efficiently capture all of its externalities, is anywhere from around, say, 50 cents per ton of

00:19:25.320 carbon dioxide to around $50 to around $48 per ton of carbon dioxide.

00:19:30.680 They're way off. Uh, those, uh, that range is way off? Sure. It could be, uh, the wrong sign.

00:19:42.200 I mean, carbon dioxide increases agricultural productivity. Right, right.

00:19:47.000 Not swarming is a net benefit. Uh, you know, within a plausible range, uh, this might be a benefit.

00:19:56.600 The really crazy thing about it is we're talking about something that I think in all likelihood is

00:20:03.160 beneficial as something that we're supposed to be horribly afraid of.

00:20:08.440 Well, that's, well, that's an excellent point because as I was looking at those numbers,

00:20:13.080 I was just thinking of how the government would try to tax it to keep some sort of stasis or whatever.

00:20:18.840 But, and, and that's a, uh, often what is talked about is the cost of global warming.

00:20:23.800 Sure. But as you point out, it could be a benefit to the economy and it could be a benefit to the

00:20:28.280 environment. It could be a benefit to humanity. I mean, after all, I mean, uh, you know, fossil fuels

00:20:37.320 have provided the means for people to improve their life, extend their life expectancy and so on.

00:20:44.040 So, you know, even if there were drawbacks for much of the world, it would be an immense boom.

00:20:49.320 Uh, you, you see this in Germany at the moment, in the UK at the moment. They have all these tax

00:20:56.520 schemes and schemes to use renewables, which increase the cost of electricity. Suddenly have people who

00:21:03.960 are, uh, poverty stricken because they can't afford, uh, energy.

00:21:09.160 Right. That's right. And my colleague Andrew Klavan often talks about how the, the environmental left,

00:21:15.480 they love Avatar. They love the film Avatar. They say, why can't we live like that where,

00:21:19.800 with lights coming out of trees and things? And he says, uh, we can, and that's been given to us by

00:21:24.600 oil and by fossil fuels. We do live in that world. That world is a product of our own ingenuity and

00:21:30.840 using our resources wisely. And given that there is always uncertainty in modeling these long-term

00:21:38.840 outcomes. And the, the, is it a benefit? Is it, is it, is there some cost in these complex real world

00:21:44.440 systems? Uh, how would you say our lawmakers should think about making so-called science-based policy?

00:21:51.240 Well, let me give you an example that we've run into. You know, lawmakers are increasingly asking for

00:21:59.640 regional forecasts. You know, how are things going to be in Colorado or in California or in Southern

00:22:06.440 California or Massachusetts? Now they're using models and, uh, they're running them. And if they

00:22:16.680 look carefully, they'd find that the models are giving them any answer they want. They're all over

00:22:22.120 the place. The fundamental question they should ask is, uh, you know, for instance, in any given season,

00:22:30.040 there's a regional distribution of the seasonal climate. Do these models depict this correctly?

00:22:39.080 The answer is no. Uh, can they handle the seasonal cycle in general? The answer for most models,

00:22:45.800 in fact, all of them, as far as I can tell is they do that very poorly. So if they don't even meet

00:22:51.480 elementary tests, uh, you have to accept, you don't know. And then you run into the insanity of the

00:23:00.280 precautionary principle says you don't have to know, you just have to worry. And that's enough to

00:23:05.880 legislate. And that's, that's something that's sort of more scary than global warming.

00:23:11.560 Absolutely right. And, uh, with organizations like the IPCC with which you have been involved

00:23:21.000 and, uh, organizations that seem to be largely influenced by politics and, uh, largely are

00:23:27.640 trying to influence governments to take preventative measures and damage their own economies or the

00:23:33.160 global economy. Is there any way to get the politics out of it, uh, and to get the demagoguery out

00:23:41.160 of it? Or are those, uh, groups and, uh, organizations formed by say the United Nations, are they too

00:23:47.880 hopelessly foregone to be brought back to any sort of academic freedom and rigor?

00:23:53.240 You know, I don't know the answer to that. And I'll explain why I don't know the answer to that.

00:24:00.200 The part of the IPCC that I was associated with for at least the first three, uh, run throughs of it,

00:24:07.880 was working group one, dealing with the science. And to be sure it was biased,

00:24:16.280 but in general, it wasn't that bad. Um, it, uh, you know, had this sort of summary statement.

00:24:26.120 And you should think about that a little bit. You know, they came out with a statement there,

00:24:30.840 they're pretty darn sure that most of the warming over the last 50 years was due to man.

00:24:38.120 And you had politicians like, uh, Lieberman and McCain and so on saying,

00:24:43.640 see, we've got the smoking gun. We have to do something. The world is coming to an end.

00:24:48.280 That statement had no such meaning. In fact, it was most consistent with the statement,

00:24:54.440 this where there's no problem. Uh, the politicians have taken the view that if man has any impact at

00:25:02.040 all, that's a disaster. That's a disaster and it has to be corrected. And this gets to an,

00:25:08.840 another real, uh, politicized aspect of this science, which is that term consensus keeps being

00:25:15.160 thrown around. We talked earlier about the 97% number. Lord only knows where they got that number

00:25:21.480 from and which surveys went, went into arriving at that number. The same place they got polar bears

00:25:27.320 from. I'm sure it was focus groups. Right. What number will have the best impact?

00:25:33.400 Those poor polar bears. I, we must have really done something right because I hear their populations

00:25:38.040 have increased actually over the last century. Lucky them. Sure. Yeah. It's just, you know,

00:25:43.800 they'll attack human beings without provocation, but they look cute and they're good for propaganda.

00:25:50.120 Yeah. Very cuddly. You know, at least the, the plush animals of them are very cuddly,

00:25:54.040 but this word consensus, two days, the word consensus is bandied about. It reminds me of that

00:26:02.680 scene in the princess bride where you say, you keep using that word. I don't think you,

00:26:06.280 I don't think that word means what you think it means. Uh, why the focus on consensus? The last time

00:26:11.080 that I checked a scientific advancements are not made by democratic or popular vote. Uh, why have they

00:26:17.960 glommed onto that? And does the so-called scientific consensus have much bearing in the, uh, in the

00:26:24.920 pursuit of science itself? No, not as a rule. I mean, you know, it tends to influence things like funding

00:26:33.080 and so on, because peer review is something that is very much designed to maintain consensus.

00:26:40.360 That is to say, you have to convince your peers that you agree with them.

00:26:43.880 Or, you know, so in that sense, it's, it's important, but no, in terms of scientific progress,

00:26:51.960 uh, it's always been pretty much something that goes outside the consensus that turns out to be

00:26:58.760 important. Uh, no, I think, uh, what this is appealing to is that people have a herd instinct.

00:27:09.240 And if you tell them everyone agrees with something that will convince them.

00:27:15.560 That's right. And, uh, my, my final question, uh, I suppose I'm asking for a prediction and I know

00:27:21.080 that all of the climate predictions have been so far off, but I, I say I'm a big fan of yours,

00:27:26.680 not because of any of your immense body of scientific work about which I know absolutely

00:27:31.400 nothing. And I understand very little, but I'm a big fan that you are heterodox in the academy,

00:27:37.960 at the university. You have contravened, uh, academic and political orthodoxies of recent years.

00:27:43.800 Do you see that situation improving on the American campus in, in the near future,

00:27:49.560 or are things going to just keep getting worse and worse and it's always darkest before it gets even

00:27:54.040 darker?

00:27:54.440 Uh, I like to think it's always darkest before the dawn.

00:28:02.200 One hopes. That's the other, that's the other view, I suppose.

00:28:04.600 But yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, I, what I find with students is they realize that they've been

00:28:14.360 pushed into a corner. I find that the activists among the students are not a majority, but they

00:28:22.280 certainly have the power to intimidate their peers, largely through the accommodations of the

00:28:30.280 administrators at universities. University administrators have become a kind of disaster area.

00:28:36.680 Mm-hmm. And they keep increasing. They keep hiring more and more assistant dean of this.

00:28:41.640 Yeah. Oh, it's outrageous. I mean, at MIT, I don't think the faculty or student numbers

00:28:48.760 have changed all that much since 1960, but administrators are all over the place.

00:28:55.320 Uh, and of course they need the grant overhead to support themselves.

00:29:01.640 Uh, you know, it's, it's not a good situation. And I think students to some extent realize that. So

00:29:11.320 there's some hope, maybe they'll take inspiration from, uh, you know, an uprising in Iran and realize

00:29:19.000 that, uh, they have mullahs that they have to overthrow as well.

00:29:22.600 They, they do. And you, you identified the problem. I, I noticed that people ask all the

00:29:28.360 time because all of the craziness on campuses these days, I'm sorry to report comes from dear old Yale.

00:29:34.280 And I, they, they say, well, when you were there, was it as crazy and the students on this? So the

00:29:39.320 problem really wasn't the students. And I never found it to be the faculty. I had wonderfully

00:29:44.760 Marxist faculty who were quite accommodating and serious and dealt with me very well. It's these

00:29:50.040 administrators who have let the, the whole place run amok and have really hollowed it out from within.

00:29:55.480 So I suppose we can hope that, uh, they, they get what's theirs and we riot in the streets and throw

00:30:01.560 out our academic mullahs. That's a wonderful, hopeful note to end on Richard Lindzen. Thank you

00:30:07.160 so much for being here. You've cleared this up a lot for us. We really appreciate it. And we'll have

00:30:12.280 to have you back on sometime. Have a good year as well. Okay. We have got to get to this day in

00:30:20.840 history, but first before we do that, I'm sorry, folks, if you're on Facebook or YouTube, we appreciate

00:30:26.760 having you, but you got to go to the daily wire.com right now. If you already subscribed,

00:30:31.080 thank you. You keep the lights on. You keep Covfefe in my cup. Uh, if not go to dailywire.com

00:30:37.640 right now, you will get me. You'll get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show,

00:30:40.920 blah, blah, blah, but you will get the leftist tears tumbler. Now look, there, there is a, a cyclone

00:30:49.800 bomb in the East coast. There are deluges of floods on the West coast. There is very bitterly cold

00:30:58.520 global warming. All of this extreme weather is going to end in a Noah hide, a Noah like flood

00:31:05.640 of salty, delicious leftist tears. Do not be caught unawares. You do not know the day or the hour that it

00:31:12.040 will come. Get your leftist tears tumbler. Go to dailywire.com right now. We'll be right back.

00:31:27.480 Speaking of the climate variations on a theme, it's time for this day in history,

00:31:31.800 this day in history. On this day in history, nearly an inch of snow fell every hour for 16

00:31:40.960 consecutive hours, starving cattle and ruining ranchers in the American West. No, that extreme

00:31:47.060 weather didn't happen last year or the year before that, or the year before that. Nope. The worst day

00:31:52.080 of the worst winter in the West took place 131 years ago, long before Democrat hacks ever blamed

00:31:58.800 weather events on unfalsifiable apocalyptic theories. Plains ranchers in Montana, Wyoming,

00:32:04.680 and the Dakotas knew nothing of the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect or political demagogues seizing

00:32:10.400 upon any natural phenomenon to tighten their grip on power. If they had, surely they would have blamed

00:32:15.720 the unseasonably hot and dry summer of 1886 on, I don't know, industrialization or deforestation or

00:32:23.660 whatever. That unseasonably dry autumn left the range almost completely barren of grass with

00:32:29.260 vulnerable cattle herds wandering around hungry. Worse yet, the snows came early that year, beginning

00:32:35.460 in November and blanketing the plains by January with record snowfall. The cold front even reached

00:32:40.840 the Pacific Ocean, dropping an all-time record 3.7 inches of snowfall in downtown San Francisco on

00:32:47.660 February 5th. Although a warm wind briefly melted top layers of January, that actually turned out

00:32:54.060 worse because the returning cold created a thick layer of ice over the entire ground, making it

00:32:59.360 virtually impossible for cattle to dig through to the remaining grass beneath. Futile attempts on the

00:33:05.940 part of man to predict the weather years out compounded the problem. By the mid-1880s, after several

00:33:11.900 consecutive warm winters, the warmest winters on record, they probably thought, proto-climatologists

00:33:17.740 in the West started overstocking the ranges with cattle while they simultaneously stopped storing away

00:33:23.020 winter feed for a snowy day. Modern climatologists can simply change their models, hide the decline when

00:33:29.440 their predictions don't come to fruition, while political hacks explain away their failures and at

00:33:34.340 the same time double down on their own hysterical claims. The Plains Ranchers of 1886 and 1887

00:33:40.240 weren't so lucky. They had to sit by and watch as their cattle slowly died. Historian Joseph Kinsey Howard

00:33:46.100 recalled, starving cattle staggered through village streets and collapsed and died in dooryards. 5,000 of the

00:33:53.700 animals stormed the outskirts of Great Falls, devouring what little the townspeople had only just planted and

00:34:00.040 crying from hunger as they died. The Great Die-Up, as it came to be called because the American West is very

00:34:05.740 whimsical, killed off millions of cattle, including half of Montana's entire herd. Their carcasses lined the

00:34:12.220 countryside. Hundreds of ranchers fell into sudden bankruptcy. Some modern climate prognosticators are

00:34:18.980 willing to send whole national economies into bankruptcy, even as their predictions continually

00:34:23.700 prove just as inaccurate as Western speculators in the 1880s. But the alarmists keep up their hysterical

00:34:30.900 drumbeat. The science has settled, they say. The solutions are obvious. It's just common sense.

00:34:36.740 We have seen the future, and it works. Right. Also on this day in history, in 1776, Thomas Paine published

00:34:44.440 his pamphlet Common Sense. In it, he writes, quote, a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a

00:34:50.160 superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

00:34:55.840 Time makes more converts than reason. Paine may have been more right than he knew. In decadent times,

00:35:02.020 common sense is anything but sensible. As the predictions of self-appointed elites prove wrong

00:35:06.720 time and time again, don't be fooled by superficial appearances, and do not forfeit your own capacity to

00:35:13.180 reason. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. Get your mailbag

00:35:17.860 questions in for Thursday. Tune in tomorrow, and we'll do it all again.

00:35:25.840 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior

00:35:32.140 producer, Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:35:38.740 Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:35:45.540 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.

00:35:55.840 The Michael Knowles Show.

Ep. 84 - Bitterly Cold Global Warming ft. Richard Lindzen

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