Sheila Gunn-Reed and Tom Harris critique the UN’s Madrid climate talks, dismissed as a failure by activists, while exposing how carbon taxes—like Alberta’s pre-2017 hike and BC’s 80 CAD/tonne levy—fail to cut emissions despite Canada’s tiny 1.6% global share. The World Climate Declaration’s 800 signatories and Ontario’s 200% electricity price surge since 2002 reveal policies prioritizing virtue signaling over poverty relief, such as blocking South Africa’s Madupi Power Station loan. Two-thirds of Australia’s bushfires stem from arson, yet media blames SUVs while ignoring climate policies’ unintended harms—like wind turbines killing 3,000 golden eagles at Altamont Pass or Fort McMurray’s duck fines. Gunn-Reed champions skepticism over alarmist narratives, urging listeners to explore independent scientists like Naomi Seibt via climatechangereconsidered.org and heartland.org. [Automatically generated summary]
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Environmentalists and so-called human rights activists around the world are lamenting the failure of the Madrid climate change talks, and I couldn't be happier.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
The UN Madrid climate talks are being dubbed a disaster by the environmentalist, global, warmest activists of the world, which is, I suppose, great for the progress of humanity, especially in the developing world.
when the people who live there are so often denied access to cheap, reliable fossil fuels based on decisions made by first world environmentalists.
And in other narrative-busting disappointments to environmentalists, it appears arson is one of the major causes of the Australian bushfires.
But that hasn't stopped Hollywood and far-left-wing activists from shifting the blame from the arsonists over to your SUV.
Blaming SUVs for Bushfires00:15:44
My guest on the show today is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition, and he's going to offer some counterpoints and facts to the overheated environmentalist rhetoric polluting the mainstream media right now.
Tom joins me now in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
Joining me now is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, Tom Harris.
Tom, thank you so much for joining me.
I haven't seen you since we were both shivering our way through Madrid, which was ironically cold for the climate change conference.
I wanted to have you back on because there's so much happening in climate science news, and everybody's claiming to be a climate scientist right now, hijacking the fires in Australia for their own agenda.
But I thought I'd start our conversation a little closer to home.
I wanted to talk to you about the carbon tax because the federal imposition of the carbon tax on provinces like mine that don't want a carbon tax that elected a leader to get rid of a carbon tax happened on January 1st.
And I know you look at the science side of it and I look at the economic side of it.
The carbon tax isn't working.
Even if you concede the science of the carbon tax, the emissions aren't going down.
The federal reporting to the UN, they actually pulled their reporting back.
BlackLock's reporter had an article about this because it showed that emissions had gone up during the time that Alberta had had a carbon tax before we repealed it.
And BC's emissions go up every single year and they have the highest carbon tax in the country.
This is nothing more than a tax grab.
What do you say?
Well, and also when we were in Europe, you noticed the gasoline prices were much higher than North America, double or triple in parts of Europe.
And of course, people are driving their cars just as much.
I mean, I think the bottom line is that even if it did have an impact, and even if we did reduce our driving, Canada's impact on world greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, 1.6%.
And so, you know, from all sorts of points of view, the carbon tax is nothing more than virtue signaling, where in fact, the government are signaling to the world and to the media and environmental groups, oh, we're doing our part to stop climate change.
But in reality, it's not reducing greenhouse gases and it's not going to have any impact on world climate anyways.
Yeah.
And, you know, that brings me to another point, again, closer to home.
You and I are having this discussion, and we're having a discussion that is a fact-based discussion.
You can measure, you know, I don't even know how they do it, but it's calculable, the amount of CO2 emissions and how they increase year over year in British Columbia and federally.
But there are journalists in this country who would love to shut you and I up.
And, you know, you sent me this article earlier this week.
It's in the Winnipeg Free Press, the free press of all the, you know, the ironically named Winnipeg Free Press.
And it's an editorial, an unsigned editorial, by the way, that says it's time to silence the voices of denial.
And then they show a scary picture of a burning tree.
I think this is the way the conversation's going.
As the science doesn't play out the way the alarmists would like, they just want us to shut up.
Yeah, exactly.
Because, I mean, all the alarmists, you know, what they're really afraid of is that the public realize that all we have to do is lift the lid off the Pandora's box of real science, because real science is all over the map.
I mean, there are many thousands of scientists who think this is completely ridiculous.
You probably heard of the World Climate Declaration.
It was originally the European Climate Declaration.
They had 600 signatures of leading experts in the field.
They wrote to the UN and they actually said there is no climate emergency.
And those are the first words in this now world climate declaration.
The last I saw, there were 800 signatures of leading experts across the world.
Now, of course, people don't hear about that because the Winnipeg Free Press and the rest of the media don't tell us.
And when I show people this, you know, they're very surprised.
They say, oh, geez, we never heard of that.
And that's the problem.
This is all a strategy right out of 1984, where in fact, the government and their allies in the media actually shape the news.
They don't report the news.
They actually create the news to get across the kind of points of view that they want people to think.
And I wrote an article about this recently in America Out Loud.
And you remember we talked about NewSpeak and DuckSpeak.
In 1984, they created a new language and a new vocabulary.
And certain thoughts and certain words like dissent or debate or things like that, they didn't exist.
They only fell under the category of thought crime, okay?
And that's what's happening in the climate debate.
We have, of course, the new speak and duck speak of carbon pollution when it's not pollution and it's not carbon.
We also then have thought crime, which is climate change denial.
And of course, the Winnipeg Free Press editorial was ridiculous because they said people who are denying climate change must be silenced.
You know, that's the kind of thing they said.
But nobody's denying climate change.
Obviously, if we had no climate change, we'd still be stuck in the last ice age.
So the whole point of it is ridiculous and very much opposed to the whole idea of free speech.
Now, one of the things, here's the thing, that's a great segue because Amnesty International, this human rights organization, or they paint themselves as a human rights organization, has said nothing about, you know, these ideas about silencing critical journalists, yet they have penned articles lamenting the failure of the Madrid climate talks.
I don't even know how that is on Amnesty International's radar.
Has China released all their political prisoners or something and I just missed it?
Because it seems to me that Amnesty International is way out of their lane worrying about the Madrid climate talks.
Yeah, well, what they're saying is that it's a social justice issue, that in fact, the poor around the world will be most impacted by man-made climate change and how this is just completely unfair.
But, you know, the point is they're actually missing the boat totally on this because the real social justice issue is the impact of climate policies on the poor.
The very fact that in Ontario, for example, our electricity rates since 2002 at peak time of day have gone up something like 200%.
I mean, that's a social justice issue.
And that was driven largely by Dalton McGuinty saying, we're going to lead the world on climate change and get rid of our coal-fired stations.
So yeah, there are social justice issues.
That's one of them.
The fact that indeed, you know, electricity prices go through the roof because of climate policy.
And they should be concerned about that.
The other one is that the developed world are trying to stop developing countries from using their own fossil fuels, coal, oil, and gas, to develop and pull their people out of poverty.
And, you know, I've given this example before, the Madupi Power Station in South Africa, you know, they applied to the World Bank to get a loan to pull their people out of poverty by generating electricity, a social justice issue.
But the United States and four European countries abstained from voting because of their concerns about climate change.
Okay, now it did pass.
That was because developing countries ganged up and voted in favor of the loan because they understand what real social justice issues are, giving people electricity so they can do refrigeration and all the other things needed to help improve life for the poor.
So unfortunately, Amnesty International has it backwards.
It's climate policies that are a threat to social justice, not the Madrid conference or whatever.
You know, that is, again, you're really good at this, Tom.
That's a great segue into your next article because you wrote an article in America Out Loud titled Time to Fan the Flames of Civil War Between Climate Alarmists and Their Influential Allies.
And, you know, at what point are anti-poverty activists going to turn on the climate alarmists and the deep-pocketed climate alarmists for exactly how you explain how climate policies are affecting the poor?
I think, you know, it'd be great to drive a wedge right in the middle of the social justice left because As it, you know, as you point out, um, it is the poor who pay the highest cost for climate policies, uh, right down to medicine and electricity in hospitals in the developing world.
Where are the feminists speaking out for the girls who can't go to school because they don't have fossil fuels on the farm in Africa and they have to do labor on their own or the lighting, just lighting on the streets that keeps vulnerable women safe?
Where are the feminists?
I love to just hammer a wedge right into the middle of the left and say, Look, you guys have to pick a side.
Are you against fossil fuels or are you for the betterment of humanity?
Well, that's right.
And also, it applies to environmental controls and the environment that are truly concerned about nature.
You know, in Spain, for example, and we talked about this in Madrid, there are 18,000 industrial wind turbines, which are, of course, supposedly trying to stop climate change, which won't happen.
And they estimate that 200 birds per year per turbine are being killed and 400 bats per year per turbine, because the bats don't even have to be hit by a blade to be killed by the turbines, even if they just fly into the low-pressure zone behind the blade.
It turns out that their lungs burst and they die.
So, what you end up with is, and you know, the estimates are pretty approximate, but they say anywhere from 6 to 18 million birds and bats are killed by Spain's wind turbines alone.
Now, it's interesting because I have some friends that are at a bird sanctuary, they're looking after birds of prey, and they hate wind turbines totally.
Because, you know, people will say, Well, cats kill more birds than wind turbines.
Yes, but cats don't kill hawks and eagles and golden eagles and things like that.
Pondors, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, that's another wedge we have to drive between the environmentalists who are focused on climate change and those who are focused on real conservation issues.
I mean, just take one wind farm in California, the Altamont Pass, for example.
They estimate that 3,000 golden eagles have been killed in that wind farm since it opened in the 80s.
3,000 golden eagles.
So, I mean, anyone who cares about nature should abhor the wind turbines, that's for sure.
Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when a bunch of ducks landed in a tailings pond in Fort McMurray during a freak spring snowstorm, and millions of dollars in fines were handed out to the oil company.
Imagine if green energy had to follow the same rules as fossil fuels when it comes to endangering wildlife.
And, you know, as far as I know, ducks aren't endangered, but wind turbines are blending up all kinds of endangered species all the time.
And it gets to retain the green label just because it doesn't use fossil fuels.
Now, I wanted to, well, I wanted to pat you on the back a little bit because, as I was saying off air, you and Dr. Tim Ball are more accurate in your predictions than any climate model I've ever looked at.
In 2018, you guys wrote an article saying that extreme wildfires are caused by extreme stupidity and not global warming.
And as it turns out, a year and a half, two years later, that's exactly what's happening in Australia, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
In fact, two-thirds of the wildfires are apparently caused by human intervention and in particular, deliberate intervention.
I mean, a lot of it is arson.
And, you know, the whole concept that rising CO2 and rising temperature will lead to more wildfires is entirely backwards.
And here's the logic that we used in that article.
As CO2 rises, the stomata on plants, which absorb CO2, don't have to be as big.
So they shrink.
So you actually lose less water from the plants through the stomata because the holes are smaller.
These are the small pores on plants.
So more water is left in the plant and in the soil.
Similarly, when temperature rises, you have more evaporation, you have more rainfall, and again, the soil is moisture.
So the risk of fire is actually less.
You know, they say that the droughts are being caused.
We'll see how what they say exactly.
They were saying that the high temperature was causing the droughts.
Well, in fact, it's actually backwards.
If you have a drought in a particular region, you're not going to have very much water to evaporate.
So you're not removing from the surface the energy of evaporation.
And so, in fact, the temperature goes up.
So, you know, what you're finding is that their arguments are entirely backwards.
If you go back in history, what you find is that the droughts in the 30s and the 40s in Australia would last for decades, much longer.
You know, and they also give an example on what's up with that in the article I sent you of a far worse period of fires in the 1800s.
I believe it was called Black Thursday.
And that was during a cold period because we're still in the end of the little ice age.
So, once again, like in so many of the climate issues, they actually have it entirely backwards.
If they want to stop fires, they have to stop people setting fires.
And also, of course, they have to clean up the underbrush, which is a tinderbox just waiting to be ignited when you do have arsonous.
So they have to maintain their forest better.
And that's a major factor that, in fact, the liberal MP that was being interviewed by the BBC brought up.
And of course, he was attacked for it as being a climate denier, but he's completely right.
I mean, part of reducing wildfires is forest maintenance.
Yeah, and that's another environmental policy or lack thereof that hurts people who are on the ground dealing with environmental policy.
When you have an aging forest or underbrush, the forest becomes a tinderbox.
And fire suppression practices.
Sometimes the forest needs to burn to renew itself so that it is not all old all at once, causing these huge blazes.
But, you know, 100 years of fire suppression has turned our forests.
Young Voices Question Authority00:04:31
And here in Alberta, for example, at some times, it really is a tinderbox.
And it's funny to see environmentalists completely glaze over arson to blame my SUV.
The same thing happened in British Columbia.
The massive forest fires a couple years back were determined by the RCMP to be arson.
And yet, you know, these climate alarmists really are an arsonist's best friend.
Well, that's right.
And I've got to write about the fact that the fires are mostly being found in parts of Australia that are actually cooler than normal.
Because, you know, if you actually look at the map of where all these fires are occurring, they're occurring mostly in regions that are cooler, not warmer.
So the idea that an average global temperature, or sorry, an average continental temperature in the case of Australia is somehow contributing to the fires is also completely wrong.
So, you know, I really have to write about this because we wrote about it, as you say, a year and a half ago.
It's time for a new wildfires article.
Yeah, and that's the thing, too.
In the modern age, there's so much data and so much historical data that you can dig up that you're not going to hear about if you get all your climate science from a celebrity lecturing you at the Golden Globes.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, I think it's one thing that is happening, though, that's good is you've probably heard of Naomi Seit, and she is actually now working closer and closer with Heartland.
And we're going to hear a lot more from her.
And that's going to be a nice breath of fresh air after this ridiculous Greta Thunberg stuff.
And so I encourage people to look up Naomi's site.
I have an interview with her that I did on my podcast just a few days ago.
I'll be putting it up on our webpage.
By the way, our webpage is climate scienceinternational.org.
And people can listen to the new.
She doesn't like to be called an anti-Greta because she's not a puppet.
She thinks for herself.
So if people want to hear a refreshing perspective from a person a lot younger than me, just go to our website.
I'd say tomorrow and we'll have it up there.
Yeah, she's just a tiny little thing.
We interviewed her in Madrid also.
And, you know, she's a free thinker.
Nobody tells her what to think.
You know, she digs deep into the issue.
And I think actually she's indicative probably of the vast majority of young people, but young people like her don't get on the mainstream media and they don't get to tour around the world with a BBC reality crew like Greta Dunberg is.
Are there any other places, Tom, that people can find your work, get a hold of you, or support what you do?
Because you, you know, if the Winnipeg Free Press had their way, you'd be shut right up.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, actually, what I always recommend people do since I've contributed to it and I think it's an extremely good set of documents is the Climate Change Reconsidered series.
I was one of the editors of some of those documents.
And you can get to that webpage by going to climate reconsidered.org.
These are the reports of the non-governmental international panel on climate change.
And if they're too voluminous, a thousand pages each to go through, just read the summaries because at the beginning of them, they've done an extremely good job of summarizing a lot of these things.
Just one quick point.
I'm really disappointed that young people are not more questioning.
I know in my generation, it was normal and we wanted to question the status quo.
We didn't want to follow political correctness.
And I'm surprised that young people are not doing what Naomi Site is doing a lot more, and that is questioning their teachers.
I used to speak in high schools, and it was interesting because the students were intrigued.
They like questioning authority.
It was the principals that wanted to shut me up.
You know, Tom, maybe it's a regional thing.
Because, or maybe it's just my own kids and their friends, but they are pretty prickly when it comes to authority.
And I think maybe as skeptics and myself within, you know, the nonpartisan conservative movement, maybe we need to do a better job communicating to young people that, you know, that feeling of not liking being told what to do and not believing that adult filling you with BS, that's conservatism.
And hang on to that.
Communicating Conservatism00:01:36
Exactly.
And I encourage people to go to the heartland.org website because they're working with Naomi now.
And we're going to see videos from her, I think, pretty well every week.
So she got 130,000 views on her little five-minute speech in Madrid, which is far more than any of the scientists at our conference.
But we're going to hear more from her, and that's a good thing.
That's fantastic, Tom.
Thanks for being so generous with your time.
And we shouldn't leave it this long until you're back on the show next time.
Okay, that's great.
Great.
Thank you, Tom.
It's so great to hear the other side of the story, especially when we can't turn on the TV or open up any social media site without some so-called news agency or Hollywood half-wit telling you that it's your carbon footprint causing problems actually created by arsonists in Australia.
Now, just a quick point of clarification: these things happen when you're unscripted the way my conversations are with my guests.
Tom mentioned a website and he said climate reconsidered.org.
However, it's actually climatechangereconsidered.org.
That's climatechange reconsidered.org.
I don't want to send you to a dead end place when you're out there desperately searching for some facts.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.