Sheila Gunn-Reed and Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition argue COVID-19’s CO2 drop is a "blueprint" for green policies, calling climate change a "non-emergency" based on "immature models." They cite Ontario’s 200% electricity price surge post-coal phaseout under Dalton McGuinty and millions of bird deaths from wind turbines. Harris notes renewables provide only 16% of global energy, with fossil fuels at 84%. Gunn-Reed accuses environmentalists of aligning with authoritarian regimes by undermining North American energy independence, comparing flawed climate models to Canada’s skewed COVID-19 data. Ultimately, they claim green policies prioritize economic collapse over humanitarian concerns, violating Maslow’s hierarchy and the Kuznets curve. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Sheila Gunreed, and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my Wednesday night show, aptly called, yeah, you guessed it, The Gun Show.
Now, my guest tonight is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.
And we're talking about something I talk about a lot.
I don't know if I love to talk about it, but I do talk about it a lot.
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The entire nation is under house arrest.
Chinese-born plague is tearing through our nursing homes and killing our grandparents.
We've got double-digit unemployment, and the compassionate folks in the environmentalist movement are just waiting to pounce.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
The far left never lets a good crisis go to waste.
The government intervention into the economy and the totalitarian measures forcing people to stay home and not move have resulted in a drop in CO2 emissions.
These are welcome tactics for the environmental movement in their war on an invisible gas that plants need to grow.
CO2.
The environmental movement sees this emergency and what the government is doing as a blueprint for how they think the government should deal with this so-called climate emergency that isn't an emergency at all.
And I think that's bad news for freedom and bad news for humanity.
Wind, Solar vs. Oil Costs00:06:52
My guest tonight is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition, and he joins me from his home in Ottawa in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
Joining me now from the safety of his home in Ottawa is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition.
Tom, thanks for joining me.
You and I were sort of discussing our interview over the course of the last three days, sort of the stuff we wanted to talk about.
And you sent me this interesting but not altogether surprising article from the CBC.
And they're saying that basically what's happening in the economic shutdown should be kind of seen as an opportunity for the government to invest in, when they say invest, they always mean spend taxpayer dollars on green energy.
These people never miss a crisis.
Am I right?
Yeah, it's crazy.
When oil prices were really high, they said wind and solar is now becoming competitive with oil and natural gas and coal.
But now the prices are really low.
They say, now we have to go to wind and, you know, you know, you're dealing with fanatics when no matter what the actual events are in the world, it's always an excuse for having their particular cause.
You know, we have to remember that wind and solar power are generally speaking requiring government subsidies.
Even in provinces where you have private wind and solar power, large scale wind and solar, you still have mandates where the utilities are expected to buy a certain amount of wind and solar power.
But oil, gas, and coal, I mean, they've been incredibly successful because without government subsidies of any, you know, of any real form, they are able to compete in the marketplace.
And, you know, when they talk about using wind and solar more because of the coronavirus, it's sort of like you're in the middle of a storm in an ocean liner and the captain says, everybody into the lifeboats.
You think, what?
No, of course.
We want to have the strongest and most robust ship to protect us from the turmoil that's going on outside.
And similarly, as the economy comes back, we're going to want to have the cheapest, most robust, most reliable energy sources.
And that would be coal, oil, and natural gas, not wind and solar power.
And, you know, an interesting point here that was made to me just today by an economist.
He said, studies in Europe show that the cost of renewables raise electricity costs for consumers so much that for every job created in the renewables industry, two or three are lost in the rest of the economy.
So in fact, if you push wind and solar power, you'd have a net reduction in jobs.
Well, yeah, didn't we see something very similar to that unfold in Ontario as it pursued Gerald Butts's green energy transition, that the cost of electricity went up so high that there was somewhat of a manufacturing exodus right across the border where electricity was a lot cheaper.
You know, you're pricing these major manufacturers right out of the neighborhood when, you know, for your home outside of your mortgage, electricity is often one of the larger bills you have to pay.
The same goes for major manufacturing.
And yet, governments can't seem to put two and two together that you're chasing away your large manufacturing tax base when you pursue these inefficient green energy ideas.
And even worse, they're all just virtue signaling because you need a fossil fuel backup every time for every single green energy project.
Yeah, that's right.
And in fact, it's interesting in California, which pushed really hard on renewable sources.
Many industries have left the state, moving to places like Nevada and other states that have much lower priced electricity.
So the last thing we need, our industries have been suffering hugely from the shutdown.
The last thing we need is to discourage them even further by making the electricity prices go even higher.
I mean, since 2002, when Dalton McGuinty said that we were going to get rid of our coal-fired stations, which at that time provided a quarter of Ontario's electricity, we've seen electricity prices go up something like 200%.
Now, if you were a real social justice warrior and you were really concerned about the poor, this would really offend you.
But, you know, that's another example of when, in fact, the climate issue helps violate the causes that many on the left say they hold dear.
And of course, the wind turbines kill so many birds.
You know, it's interesting.
I was in Spain.
Well, we talked about it in Spain.
They're killing millions of birds and bats in Spain.
In California, at the Altamont Wind Turbine Farm, since the 1980s, they're talking about 3,000 golden eagles being killed.
Okay.
So again, if you're concerned about the environment and protecting species at risk, the last thing you want is wind turbines.
So yeah, this whole thing doesn't really make any sense.
And, you know, you have to get some idea of the magnitude of wind and solar power in comparison with oil, coal, and natural gas across the world.
I mean, fossil fuels provide about 84% of the world's energy.
And it's interesting that the growth, just the growth in oil and gas use from 2017 to 2018 was higher across the world than the total use of renewables in the whole of 2018.
So, I mean, the amount they contribute is trivial.
And as I say, it's very much like abandoning a sturdy ocean liner in the middle of a storm and getting into lifeboats.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all.
Well, yeah.
And I mean, you couldn't find a bunch of people working harder for Russia than the people who say that, you know, Donald Trump is in the pocket of Russia.
These green environmentalists, you know, the more they pursue green energy and walk away from American and North American energy independence, the more the likes of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela step up to fill the gap.
I mean, if you want to see people who are useful idiots for Russia, just look at the green movement because they're lining Putin's pocket.
Models Without Data00:06:01
Yeah.
China as well.
I mean, China have the biggest solar company in the world.
They're the biggest producer of all sorts of renewable energy.
You know, it's really interesting.
There was an open letter to world leaders sent from a group in Europe called the Climate Intelligence Foundation.
And here's what they said.
Compared to COVID-19, climate change is a non-problem.
It is, and I'll send you the link to this, okay?
Please.
It's based on immature computer models and it looks into the distant future.
In the current health emergency, however, your attention to people's needs is today.
Please don't continue pushing your zero carbon emission ambition in a time when the world is dealing with a deadly global crisis.
Yes, there is an emergency, but it's not climate.
You know, it's funny.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow is canceled.
I thought it was kind of funny that after all their screaming about an emergency in the climate, an actual emergency caused them to cancel it.
For all their preening, they could never cancel that conference.
They needed their private jets.
They needed their private parties.
They needed their little get-togethers and their banquets and their glad handing and patting each other on the back.
They needed that.
None of the climate emergency was ever enough to cancel that.
An actual disease, an emergency, actually did do it.
So, I mean, it just reveals their own, how seriously they take their own talking points.
And speaking of computer models, you actually have an article in America Out Loud.
It looks like you wrote it with your regular article writing partner, Dr. Jay Lair.
And I thought it was a great article because you pointed out like the flawed COVID-19 models are very similar to the flawed climate science models.
We just get to see them play out a lot sooner.
Yeah, yeah, this is like death by models.
You know, I mean, obviously, the coronavirus is far more serious because real people are sick and real people are dying.
But there's some really fundamental similarities between the climate scare and the COVID scare.
Both of them are being driven by computer model forecasts of the future, and both of them lack adequate input data.
Okay.
In the case of the climate issue, for example, for the whole of northern Canada to the World Climate Data Network that they're using, they have one data point, and that's at Eureka.
Okay, one data point for the whole of northern Canada, which is ridiculous.
But similarly, for the COVID virus, the Ontario government, for example, say that they're doing 10,000 tests a day.
I don't know if they really are, but the trouble is they're focused on testing people who have symptoms, okay, as well as first response people and other kind of care workers.
So what you have then is a population of people who are far more likely to have the disease, okay, to begin with.
Now, if in fact they did a general random sample across the society, in other words, properly stratifying it so that you had people of different age groups, different locations, different health standards, then you would get a much better idea as to how much this disease is spread through the society.
And you would then better understand how dangerous is it really.
Now, they did a study actually in two places I'm aware of like this.
In a small town in Italy, they actually found that up to 75% of people had the virus but had no symptoms.
Okay, so those people in Ontario wouldn't be being tested at all.
Same thing in Santa Clara in California.
They actually found that, in fact, the virus may not be anywhere near as deadly as people are worried because many, many people who are not being tested are carrying the virus.
Now, that's a bad thing and a good thing.
It's a bad thing because, of course, they can spread it and it can become more prevalent in your society.
But what it also means is that the death rate may be much, much lower than what they're calculating based on these surveys.
So we're working on an article, the president of the Peace Order and Good Government group here in Ottawa about the kind of sampling that's needed to properly make policy concerning COVID.
What they need to do is have random sampling, as I say, properly stratified through the population across the society.
And then they'll have an idea, is this really that much more severe than pneumonia or the flu that occur?
And we certainly don't shut down society for it.
So that's the first thing we have to do.
The models themselves in both cases are not necessarily very accurate.
In the case of the climate, it's really just guesswork because we don't have a theory of climate.
So it's really just curve fitting.
So those models are terrible.
The models in the COVID case still need a lot of improvement as well because the virus itself is very much unknown.
So indeed, there's a very strong similarity.
We're being driven by models, which in both cases don't have adequate data and the models themselves are suspect.
So yeah, there's a strong correlation there.
And, you know, I think what we need to do is get the data and then make the decisions based on real world situations.
If it turns out to be no more dangerous to the average population than the flu, then we should quarantine the people who are at risk.
In other words, in nursing homes and things like that, much better.
But closing the whole society down doesn't make any sense at all.
Yeah, you know, when I was reading your article, it reminded me, you know, when you pointed out the testing in Ontario that they're testing symptomatic people and that's how they're getting their modeling, it reminded me of when they put these climate science weather stations in parking lots on top of buildings so that they get these skewers that skew hotter.
Yeah.
You know, it's the same thing.
Why Environmentalists Misinterpret Data00:09:34
And you'd laugh, Sheila, because the place they have the temperature sensing station in Canada's Arctic is in Eureka.
And Eureka is what's called a refugia, which is actually warmer than usual area.
And of course, the reason for that is simply that the scientists want to live in a place that's sort of habitable.
So they have their actual temperature sensing station in an unusually warm part of the Arctic.
So when they say, oh my God, the Arctic is warming.
Well, they don't have a clue.
And the same thing with this virus thing.
I mean, the truth is the government's flying blind until they do proper testing.
It's not that they need to do more testing because 10,000 a day is plenty in Ontario anyway, but they have to do it in a much more general random sense so they get a real idea of what's happening.
Now, I wanted to move along because I noticed that you have this article in the Chronicle and you had referred to it in another interview that you had had done.
I think it was with Heritage or Heartland.
I'm not sure.
You'll correct me.
Heartland.
And I noticed that you had touched on this article.
You're not the author of it, but it's a very interesting article, unless you are the author.
I'm a co-author.
Just as co-authors, as chief editor.
And the article makes the case that environmentalists should hope for a quick economic rebound instead of doing what they're doing now, which is cheering for a complete and total economic collapse so that they can just rewrite the economy in their own special little green way.
Yeah.
Now, you see, they're actually mistaking short-term benefits for long-term problems.
Because you see, what's happening is that, yes, in the short term, we're seeing a reduction in air pollution and water pollution and all that sort of thing.
But in the long term, if society doesn't rebound, and Suzuki was saying in his article, I guess it was on the CBC site back on the 1st of April, at least it was revised then.
He was saying, you know, are we going to rebound and come back to the way things were?
Well, of course, what I said was that I sure hope we do because a poor society ultimately will not protect its environment.
I mean, if you look at if you look at places like Somalia, okay, do you think they care much about their environment?
I mean, Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows very clearly that until you have your basic things handled, things like food and drinking water and sanitation and safety, until those things are satisfied, people don't really care about lesser concerns, such as the state of your environment.
Now, the state of the environment, of course, is very important, but you need to have a certain wealth before you can actually properly protect your environment.
And that is what we've talked about earlier.
It's the Kuznets curve.
Okay, if you were to plot income versus environmental degradation, what you find is that as a poor society starts to evolve, at first the pollution increases, it increases and they're getting wealthier, but it's increasing, but they get to a certain point where they actually care about the environment.
And then the environment gets better and better as people become more wealthy.
So in fact, what we should be doing is encouraging society to get right back to work, save our economy, then we'll have the resources to protect our environment.
So the environmentalists are missing the boat on this one totally.
They seem to think that, you know, make society poor.
You don't have much going on and therefore you'll have less pollution.
Well, in the long run, that will backfire because people will stop funding environmental programs because they'll be just struggling to survive.
Yeah, you know, environmentalists don't have to go as far as Somalia to care about those kinds or to see examples of those kind of things.
They just have to go to poorer neighborhoods in the cities in which they live.
But environmentalists don't like to venture out and see the real societal and social problems that are right underneath their noses.
They just, you know, they could go to a poorer neighborhood and see how the houses look, how the yards look, the kind of cars people drive, the garbage and sanitation situation in those neighborhoods.
But that would be looking at a tangible problem that they could fix right in front of them.
Instead, they have to look at this sort of theoretical problem that may or may not exist that we may or may not be contributing to.
It's very strange.
Just for one quick point is if people want to learn more about this and actually see the numbers, at which point societies turn around and start caring about the environment, I encourage them to go to climatechange reconsidered.org because they actually have a very good report there that talks about you need to have wealth to have environmental protection.
I sent you an article too, also before when we were sort of planning out the scope of our interview.
We never actually discussed people at home.
Just so you know, we never actually discuss what we're going to talk about, but I do send my guests some interesting things that are sort of on my mind.
And I think that they would be on their mind too.
This isn't just this idea that we should use the coronavirus as an opportunity to rewrite the entire world.
This isn't just something that's being rolled around in the minds of radical environmentalists, the likes of Extinction Rebellion.
This is coming out of the United Nations.
Oh, yeah.
This I've got on my computer screen here, skynews.com.
They have an article saying that the UN Climate Change Fund calls the coronavirus a quote opportunity.
So people's dead grandparents, the economy shut down, people in complete financial distress.
It's an opportunity for the fancy people at the UN to reshape the world.
It's really shocking and anti-human.
People can push back on this a little bit because you remember there was a poll that was done My World, the UN, in which they actually polled the world's people and 9 million people voted and climate change came out dead last.
Well, of course, the UN weren't very happy with that, I'm sure, because that did not give them the results they wanted.
In fact, they listed climate change first when they gave you your choices.
They now have a new poll online, and I'll send you a link to it right after we speak.
It's My World 2030, and they're asking you to prioritize the things that you'd like to see the world work on, including things like climate change.
And sadly, there's only about 500 people in Canada who have voted so far, and climate change is leading the pack.
Okay, so I encourage people, get into that poll.
I'll send you the link because if we can show again that the world's people put climate change at the bottom, which they did in the previous poll, then it's going to be harder and harder for the UN to say it's our most important crisis.
Well, it obviously isn't their most important crisis because again, they canceled their climate change conference because of an actual crisis.
Yeah, a real crisis.
Now, Tom, I know time is short.
You are a very, people want to talk to you.
And I know somebody after me wants to talk to you.
So I'll let you go.
But I wanted to give you a chance to let people know where they can find you and how they can support the work that you do and some of the little projects that you're working on right now.
Yeah, sure.
Our webpage is climate scienceinternational.org, and we accept contributions from anybody.
Donations, you click the donate button and you can give us five bucks or five thousand, whatever you want, and we'll keep you totally up to date on all of our activities.
We're also in the process of starting a new group, Climate Realism Canada.
And when that one's all ready, we'll actually let you know.
Right now, we're doing a lot of the background boilerplating.
It's not a good idea to launch a new group in the middle of a pandemic.
So we're getting things all ready for that.
And again, I also alert people to climatechange reconsider.org, which is an amazing site with reports, thousands of references that support what you and I are saying.
Also, the podcast.
Oh, thank you.
Tom Harris, Exploratory Journeys.
That's the first thing on our website at climate change.
Sorry, climate scienceinternational.org.
Great.
Thank you, Tom.
I want you to please promise me you're going to stay healthy.
And if you run afoul of the tyrannical municipal government in Ottawa, let us know.
We'd love to help you.
Right.
Thanks a lot, Sheila.
Thanks, Tom.
There was a report today in the Globe and Mail talking about how a number of small businesses are just opting to throw in the towel and close their doors instead of digging a deeper financial hole trying to ride out this pandemic shutdown.
A report from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy notes that for every 1% rise in unemployment, 16 more Albertans will die by suicide.
My friend Tom is right.
If the far left considers themselves to be true humanitarians, they need to start caring about the human cost of their bad ideas, like phasing out an entire industry in the pursuit of lowered emissions.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.
Congratulations, I guess, on surviving another Earth Day.
Stay safe, stay healthy.
I'll see you back here in the same time in the same place next week.