Tom Harris, an engineer and ICSC representative, challenges the "catastrophic human-caused warming" narrative, citing geologist Tim Patterson’s findings that CO₂ spikes don’t correlate with temperature. He notes Trump’s skepticism of climate alarmism, warning of a 2060 solar minimum threatening agriculture more than warming, while criticizing anti-GMO policies like Alberta’s canola restrictions. Harris highlights Ontario’s 200% electricity price hike post-coal phaseout and China’s UNFCCC loophole until 2030, exposing how climate policies harm the poor while favoring corporate interests over evidence-based adaptation. [Automatically generated summary]
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.
My guest tonight is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.
Heavy emphasis on the word science.
If you like listening to this podcast, then you will love watching it.
But in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to premium content.
That's what we call our long-form TV-style shows here on The Rebel.
Subscribers get access to watching my weekly show as well as other great TV-style shows too, like Ezra's Nightly, Ezra Levant show, and David Menzies' fun Friday night show, Rebel Roundup.
It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe, or you can subscribe annually and get two months free.
And just for our podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new premium membership by using the coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.
Just go to the rebel.media/slash shows to become a member.
And please leave a five-star review on this podcast and subscribe in iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Those reviews are a great way to support the Rebel without ever having to spend a dime.
And now please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
President Donald Trump questions the contributions of humanity to global warming, and that's put him under fire from the media.
My guest tonight has some advice for the president.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
What happens if you question the so-called consensus theory of catastrophic global warming being caused by us pesky humans?
Well, if you're the president of the United States, you are then relentlessly mocked for it by the mainstream media, the elites of society, and your political enemies.
And if you're a scientist, like a geophysicist or a geologist, you can be stripped of your achievements and awards by the scientific professional organizations to which you belong.
Yeah, if you ever wondered why more Earth scientists, you know, people who know stuff about the Earth's history, don't come out to debate the theory of global warming, that's why your life's achievements can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye for being a dissenter.
My guest tonight has been covering this topic for years.
He regularly contributes to PJ Media, and he's also at the Heartland Institute.
Basing Climate Scare on Models00:07:09
Joining me tonight in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon to discuss all this and more is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.
So joining me now from Ottawa is Tom Harris with the International Climate Science Coalition.
Tom, thanks for joining me.
You are probably going to be a bit of a new face to some of our Rebel viewers, although I know we have a pretty strong climate change skeptic contingent among our viewership.
Why don't you give us a brief synopsis of about what your organization does and maybe even a little bit of your own background, both scientific and otherwise?
Yeah, sure.
I'm an engineer by training, aerospace and mechanical.
And I, generally speaking, supported the climate scare until the late 1990s when I met Professor Tim Patterson.
And he invited me into his laboratory and he showed me that in the geologic record, because he's a geologist at Carleton University, there was essentially no correlation between CO2 and temperature.
I mean, sometimes CO2 could be 1,100% of today, 1,100%.
We're not talking about a 30%, 40% rise like we've seen in the last century.
We're talking about 1,100%.
And that was about 450 million years ago.
And the Earth was in its coldest period in the last half billion years.
So I started to realize that, no, there's actually a lot of problems with the science.
And he exposed me to all kinds of scientists all across the political spectrum, not just right-wing, not just centrist, but left-wing as well, who say this climate scare is not based on good science.
So I guess, what is it based on?
Is it just the means of a wealth transfer?
Is it just the means of perpetuating grant applications for a certain subsect of scientists?
Like, what is this all about?
Well, there's many different drivers for the climate scare.
I mean, some people believe, like you say, that there should be a distribution of wealth to the developing world, that somehow we are evil and we have to pay for our sins.
But, you know, the scientists themselves who support the climate scare, they're basing their fears on computer models.
They're not basing it on real-world observations because even NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who are, nobody would accuse them of being climate deniers, they actually say that the Earth's temperature on average has gone up only just over one degree Celsius since 1880, even though there's been a 40% rise in CO2.
So obviously the atmosphere is not very sensitive to CO2.
So what are they basing the climate scare on?
They're basing it only on computer models, forecasts of the future.
But the problem is those models don't work.
In fact, Dr. Craig Itzu from the CO2 science group in the U.S. in Phoenix or Arizona anyway, he says he showed graphs which show that the computer models, they overforecasted the warming of the last three decades by three times.
So you can't use those models to forecast climate for the simple reason that A, we don't have a theory of climate.
The science is really not understood.
And B, the models don't work when we look at what's really happened on the real Earth.
So the whole climate scare is based on something that doesn't work.
Now, you have co-authored a very popular article.
Actually, you've co-authored quite a few very popular articles in PJ media.
And for those people out there who don't follow PJ media, they were around before Breitpart.
They were the original right-wing media, it feels like.
And you co-authored an article that titled, Media Attacks Should Be a Signal to Trump to Focus on Flawed Climate Science.
And then you go on to detail just some of the, I suppose, more egregious and crazier attacks that Trump is somehow a climate denialist when he does exactly the opposite, doesn't he?
Yeah, he says, well, look, climate changes.
I mean, get used to it.
It's part of nature.
If climate didn't change, then there would be two kilometers of ice over my head right now.
Because, you know, only 18,000 years ago, we were in a real serious glacial period.
So obviously climate changes.
And Trump says that.
He's not a climate change denier, but sensibly he questions the causes of climate change.
And the interesting thing is I had a friend, he passed away just recently.
I think he was 97.
He was a World War II Lancaster bomber pilot, Sandy Mutch.
And he was a climate realist.
Okay.
He understood that climate changes naturally all the time and our impact is almost certainly slow.
He told me one day when I was sort of complaining about all the attacks.
He said, no, he said, Tom, that's great.
The fact that you're being attacked tells you that you're right over the target.
They wouldn't bother wasting their time if you weren't actually hitting a vulnerable resource and also an important resource.
And in this case, the most important resource in the climate war is the science.
Because if you don't have solid science, then none of these plans make any sense at all.
And it's also super vulnerable.
Okay, there are documents like this one, for example, put out by the non-governmental international climate change, or sorry, non-governmental international panel on climate change, which uniquely is called the NIPCC.
It's 780 pages.
It's huge.
There's another one by them.
Okay, these documents contain literally thousands of references from peer-reviewed science journals showing that the climate scare is either wrong or highly debatable.
Okay, so when they talk about the science being settled, I mean, oh yeah, a thousand pages of debate.
That doesn't sound very settled to me.
So Sandy Mutch said, look, when we were flying over Germany and we were bombing, if we came back and nobody shot at us, we were in the wrong place.
When we were shot at, when we got the most flack, and this is a standard Air Force saying, when you get the most flack, you must be over your enemy's very valuable target and a vulnerable target they're afraid you're going to hit.
So that's exactly why media gets so angry at Donald Trump, because he's hitting the nail on the head.
The science is not there.
Well, I mean, and that's the thing.
When, you know, Trump has his new panel that he's convened.
The name of the panel escapes me right now.
I'm sure you know better than I do.
They're talking about, they haven't finalized it.
Yeah.
They're talking about a commission, a presidential commission.
Thank you.
Yeah, on climate security, I think it was one of the titles.
It would hypothetically be headed by Dr. William Happer.
He's a wonderful man.
He's 79 years old from Princeton.
I know him and he's just a great guy.
And he is a climate realist.
China's Coal Dilemma00:07:50
He says, sure, climate changes.
Help people adapt to real climate change.
That's a real thing.
But the idea that we have this magical wand where we can forecast climate in the year 2050 and actually control it, I don't know about you, but the weather forecasts for Ottawa are pretty lousy when you get to a week out.
Think of what, you know, they're expecting us to believe there's going to be more of this, that, you know, more snow, more rain, whatever in the year 2050.
I mean, they have no clue.
And in fact, not only do we not know how much it's going to warm or whatever it's going to do, we don't even know if it's going to warm or cool because the sun enters into what's called a grand solar minimum around 2060 when all the various cycles of the sun hit rock bottom.
And at that time, the forecast by people like Professor Abdu Sematov from the Polkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg in Russia is that we will be actually in very cold conditions, similar to a few centuries ago when the sun also was in a low phase.
Now, if that's going to happen, that is infinitely more dangerous to Canada than a bit of warming.
Because think about it, you have a degree or two lower on the prairies, you're going to lose a lot of your wheat crop.
If it gets a bit warmer, that doesn't matter.
We just adopt farming practices used in Arkansas, but there's nobody farming north of us.
So the federal government in preparing only for warming is preparing for something that is relatively benign.
And they're not preparing for cooling, which could be very dangerous.
And in fact, if you look at human history, as I'm sure you know, cooling has always been coincident with bad times, with famine, with war and unrest, because food was not as available.
So that's what we should be afraid of is natural cooling, not man-made global warming, which is pretty near not happening if it's happening at all.
Well, and then you get into the whole debate around GMOs.
The same people who are pushing the global warming fear-mongering are also very opposed to genetically modified foods and food crops.
And much of the farming we do here in northern Alberta is canola, which is a genetically modified crop.
The reason it can grow here so fast, so well in our unpredictable and short growing season is because it's genetically modified.
But the same people pushing for this idea that we only have 11 and one-third years left on our Armageddon doomsday clock are also the people who are opposed to this very solutions if indeed their problem is occurring.
Yeah.
And you know, one of the dumbest things, Sheila, is that social justice warriors say they care about the poor, but they want us to switch from our inexpensive coal-fired electricity to super expensive wind and solar power.
Here in Ontario, we got rid of all of our coal-fired power starting in 2002.
We had about a quarter of our power from coal, and it was very inexpensive.
But Dalton McGuinty decided we were going to lead the world on climate change.
The fact that we only put out a half of 1% of world emissions in Ontario didn't seem to cross their mind as not being very significant.
But regardless, they completely got rid of our coal.
And that's one of the major reasons why electricity prices at the peak time of day have gone up more than 200%.
Okay, now who does that hurt?
That hurts the poor, you know, and the disadvantaged.
So why on earth would social justice warriors push the climate scare?
The solutions in that and in other areas hurt the poor more than anyone.
Well, the same thing was happening here under the NDP, and we'll see if Jason Kenney reverses those changes.
There are indications that he will, but in practice, who knows?
But I mean, Alberta really is the Saudi Arabia of coal in some respects, and we do have the technology to burn it cleanly.
It's some of the cleanest burning coal on the planet, and yet it was under the NDP that we made this move to shut down our coal-fired generation plants and then caused utter chaos in our electricity system.
You and I were talking off air that while Doug Ford in Ontario and Jason Kenney here in Alberta have made some indications publicly that they are opposed to Justin Trudeau's carbon tax, they've kept some parts of it in place, have they not?
Yes.
In fact, Premier Ford in Ontario has a virtual carbon copy of Shrudeau's industrial carbon tax plan.
So here he was campaigning against it, and he's retaining a big chunk of it.
And I understand that in Alberta, Jason Kenney has kept the carbon tax on large emitters as well.
So, I mean, the problem is people campaign on one side of an issue.
They get into power and the deep state, you know, the people who are behind the scenes running the show, basically make it so awkward and uncomfortable for them.
They, yeah, they go along with whatever they're being.
And, you know, that's really unfortunate because Canada has the potential to be a world leader in so many ways.
But if we're going to cripple ourselves in ways that are not crippling countries like China, you know, we're going to really lose out.
People have to understand that if we close our coal stations, if we cut down on our emissions, do they think China's going to do it?
Well, no way.
Even under the Paris Agreement, if they followed it, they can increase emissions all the way to 2030.
Now, after that, people say, yes, that's when China will actually limit emissions.
Well, guess what?
There's an escape clause.
In the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was part of, you know, was signed at the Rio Summit in 1992.
It says, and they will not change it, the first and overriding priority of developing country parties, which China, by the way, is still considered, is poverty alleviation development.
So what's going to happen is come 2030, people are going to say, China, okay, now you have to cap your emissions.
And they'll say, nope, we do not because our first priority is poverty alleviation and development.
And the cheapest form of power is coal.
You think we're going to turn that off?
No way.
So they're going to continue to grow emissions.
They're already twice as big as the United States in emissions.
And we're just going to be suckers because we'll have sacrificed, even if you believe the climate scare, even if you think that we cause dangerous climate change, if the biggest emitters are not limiting, then what we do isn't going to have any impact.
So, you know, as you're talking there, it occurred to me that that's the United Nations with that escape clause admitting that fossil fuel use and fossil fuel development alleviates poverty.
I mean, they're admitting that when they put that, you know, that parachute clause in there for China.
But why is it that way for China and not, for example, the same for coal miners in West Virginia who just want to go to work?
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, it's interesting because they confronted the Chinese negotiator at the Peru Conference of the Parties, I think it was 2014, and they asked him, would you consider changing this particular part, Article 4 of the Framework Convention?
And he said, no, our purpose is to enforce the Framework Convention, not to change it, because they know they have a sweetheart deal.
Okay, they can say, oh, yeah, we're following all the rules.
You know, why aren't you Canada?
Part of the rules, and it only applies to developing countries, is that they don't have to do it basically if it interferes with their first priority, which sensibly is poverty of alleviation and development.
So we're being taken for a ride here.
Yeah, we're crippling our own economy while our geopolitical foes are overtaking us, really.
I mean, they don't have to overtake us militarily as long as the UN is helping them cripple our economies.
Yeah, exactly.
Public Uncertainty in Climate Science00:08:17
Now, I wanted to ask you about another fantastic article that you wrote or co-authored in PJ Media.
And it's called Science's Untold Scandal, The Lockstep March of Professional Societies to Promote the Climate Change Scare.
And I found this article very fascinating because it has an Alberta connection where Alberta's Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists basically silenced a longtime member of their organization with a strong science background because he expressed some skeptical opinions about the so-called science of climate change.
Yeah, I understand, and I'm learning this from Alan McRae.
He's a master's of science and is a very established engineer in the petroleum area, that his award was, you know, he had a major award because he did some things that actually resulted in life-saving and very important advances for society.
And his award apparently was withdrawn, if I understand correctly.
It was apparently withdrawn because of his point of view on climate change.
Okay, so the society has a very strong point of view, which, you know, you have to wonder, does this really represent their members?
As far as I know, there is no professional society in the world who has polled their members and showed that a majority of them support the climate scare.
And a really good example is the Royal Society of Canada.
A few years ago, Archie Robertson, that's his name, he was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he learned via the media that his society was supporting the climate scare.
So he called them up and he said, gee, you know, I'm a fellow in the society.
Nobody consulted me.
And they said, oh, well, you know, the president signed it.
Considered it consistent with world view and the world consensus, which of course doesn't exist.
And so he was astounded that the society would actually sign on to it when indeed they hadn't even consulted one of their leading fellows and an energy expert, no less.
And this kind of thing is happening all over the world where small groups within the professional societies are supporting the politically correct point of view while many of their members disagree.
So, you know, as I say, I've asked various societies, can you show us a poll that indicates that your members actually support this point of view?
And so far, I've never seen a poll anywhere.
And of course, I think the reason we haven't is because a lot of them would say, I don't know.
And a lot of them would say, no, we don't support it, especially in the geosciences.
Because, and you know, that's a group of people you don't hear very much of in the climate debate because those people have a long timeframe perspective.
They know that we're at one of the lowest levels of CO2 in Earth's history.
Okay.
If we go too much lower, plants are in danger of dying.
So we're much low, we're much closer to a lower limit than we are to any upper limit.
I mean, you know, in a typical conference room, the CO2 level will be about 1,200 parts per million.
Okay.
And, you know, that's four, that's three times atmospheric level.
And it doesn't hurt people in the least.
1,200 parts per million is actually a target that we should try to get to.
People say, oh my God, we're going to triple CO2 levels.
Yes, we could triple CO2 levels and plants would love it because plants, generally speaking, on the earth, many of them evolved at a time when CO2 was around triple the current level.
It has no detrimental effect to humans and almost certainly has no effect on climate.
So yes, if CO2 continues to rise, we should cheer.
CO2science.org show its website in the US run by Dr. Craig Idso, the fellow I introduced earlier.
He shows the impact of CO2 rising on crop yield.
It's not just that the plants grow faster, they need less water.
So parts of the earth that currently cannot grow plants will be able to as CO2 rises.
So CO2 is a life giver.
The last thing we should do is be having a carbon tax trying to restrict plant food.
You know, going back to the topic of the professional associations, in your article, you have the story of Dr. Hal Lewis, and he tried to prove to his own professional organization that the members of the American Physics Association did not believe in what he calls the global warming scam.
And when he tried to confront the members of the American Physics Society, when he tried to confront the leadership of the organization with that evidence, they basically shut him right down.
It's the same thing as the Trump's willingness to examine the science.
Nobody wants to examine any of the fine details in the facts here because once you tear that band-aid off, boy oh boy, the truth isn't how it's been presented to us at all.
Yeah, in fact, the analogy I use, it's like they want to keep the lid on the Pandora's box.
Because if you open it up and the public see how uncertain the science is, we don't even have to prove our point of view that the science is wrong.
All we have to do is show it's vastly uncertain because then people will say, wow, you're spending over a billion dollars a day around the world.
And that's what they're spending.
Okay.
People talk about the climate policy initiative out of San Francisco and they say that's not enough.
They say we should spend much more.
It's over a billion a day, most of it going to mitigation, trying to stop climate change.
And by the way, that is a real scandal as well, because the UN wanted half the money to go to helping people adapt to climate change, which makes sense.
I mean, climate always changes and people need help.
They wanted half of it to go to people helping them adapt and half of it go to trying to stop climate change, which of course is ridiculous.
But you know what the actual ratio is?
It's 95% of that over a billion dollars a day.
95% of it actually goes to trying to stop climate change.
Only 5% is left over to help real people adapt to climate change.
And that is a scandal.
If you're a social justice warrior and you're saying, look, all this money is going to wind turbine producers and almost nothing goes to the boots on the ground to help people build wells and move to safer areas, that to me is just complete injustice.
Well, I think it's a testament to just how anti-human the global warming movement really is.
You know, it's a movement that will make life miserable, short, and cold for much of the planet.
And, you know, just agony and human suffering to limit the use of fossil fuels in the developing world or anywhere in the world, quite frankly.
But I mean, no surprise.
No surprise that it goes to line the pockets of rich corporations.
I should just alert you to one thing coming up on the 25th of this month is the, let's see, it's International Climate Change Conference number 13.
It's going to be held in Washington, D.C.
And I'll be introducing a panel specifically on fossil fuels and, you know, things to do with prosperity.
And, you know, we'll also be talking about climate policy.
But people can check it out on heartland.org because the Heartland Institute are putting on this conference.
It's their 13th called the International Climate Change Conference 13 in Washington, D.C.
And then people will see, yeah, we need fossil fuels desperately.
The last thing we should do is close it down in an effort to control climate.
That doesn't make any sense.
Tom, I want to thank you so much for your generosity with your time today.
What's the best way that people can see some of the work that you're doing with the International Climate Science Coalition?
I know they can find your articles on PJ Media, but where else can they find you?
Yeah, the best place is to go to our homepage, which is climate scienceinternational.org.
Fossil Fuels and Climate Policy00:01:16
Great, Tom.
Thank you so much.
Hopefully we can have you back on the show sometime soon, maybe after your Heartland conference in Washington.
Oh, yeah, I can tell you all about it.
I'm sure it's going to be pretty fun.
Thank you.
Thank you.
When the other side of the human-caused climate change debate trots out how there is broad consensus amongst scientists, we need only to look at the experiences of Alan McRae at APEGA and Dr. Hal Lewis at the American Physical Society as proof that that's not the case.
These men were effectively unpersoned and disowned by their own professional societies for engaging in rigorous scientific debate about a scientific theory.
And these organizations are those who pride themselves on being the keepers of professional scientific standards.
We know the upper echelons of these societies are probably just as infested with green activists as all the other major institutions in our lives.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.