Jay Lair, a 84-year-old climate skeptic and senior policy analyst at the International Climate Science Coalition, predicts U.S. economic collapse under Biden’s Paris Agreement return, citing Texas’s 2021 blackout (4.5M affected) as proof of wind/solar unreliability. He claims fossil fuels are essential for grid stability, dismisses CO₂’s role in warming as "zero impact," and warns of carbon taxes, China alignment, and tech censorship—all part of a "socialist-communist" agenda. Optimistic about a conservative backlash within two years, Lair insists climate narratives are "the biggest lie" and directs listeners to CFACT.org and AmericaOutLoud.com for his dissent. [Automatically generated summary]
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Behind Closed Doors At UN Climate Conferences00:02:43
Green energy incentives have created an electricity catastrophe in Texas after just one snowstorm.
Will Canada learn anything from this?
Probably not.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I'm back home in my studio momentarily this week.
Now, I want to tell you a little story.
One of the first trips I took abroad as a rebel journalist was to the UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco.
I think the year was 2016.
I was one of the few skeptical journalists allowed into the UN complex.
And I got to be honest with you, I did.
I took full advantage of being behind the curtain.
I wanted to show you at home what goes on at the UN Climate Change Conferences behind closed doors when they think nobody's watching.
And I also wanted to ask tough questions that these warmists had never had posed to them before, like, how did you get here?
Now, because I did that, the Canadian government then asked the UN to keep me out of any future UN climate change conferences, and the United Nations was happy to oblige.
They banned me and all my colleagues from any subsequent UN conferences of any kind.
And I suppose that ban is in perpetuity.
But while I was in Marrakesh, Morocco, Mark Moreno from Climate Depot shredded a copy of the Paris Accord in the middle of the complex to symbolize newly elected at the time, President Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Global Warming Treaty.
It was a beautiful stunt.
But that was five years ago.
And the United States has a brand new president, Joe Biden, and he is rejoining that globalist Paris climate agreement.
So joining me tonight to discuss America rejoining all the horrible UN agreements.
And we're discussing Keystone XL, those green energy chickens coming home to roost in Texas.
And why, despite all of this, he remains optimistic for the future, is Jay Lair from CFACT and the International Climate Science Coalition in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
Joining me now is Dr. Jay Lair.
Dismantling Coal Plants?00:14:52
He's an author and an optimist.
He describes himself as.
And we were just talking about that off air.
And he is more optimistic than me, but he's a senior policy analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and a former science director at the Heartland Institute.
So Dr. Jay is an expert in his field, and I'm glad to have him on for his analysis.
The first thing that I want to talk to you about is one of those things that is the top of the mind for so many Western Canadians here, and that's the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline by Joe Biden.
So many thousands of blue-collar jobs are being absolutely nuked by Joe Biden, and yet he still gets this treatment as though he's Joe Lunchbox.
Well, you're talking about treatment from the media.
It's going to be a love affair between the media and Biden for the next two years.
And, you know, the media is just a strong arm of the Democrat Socialist Party.
So you would expect nothing else.
Your statement just now almost tells me that it hasn't quite got through to you that the media is no longer an independent investigatory branch.
It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Socialist Party.
And you can expect treatment of him and everything he does.
It's going to be wonderful.
But obviously, a lot of people lost their jobs, thousands.
Many of them voted for him.
They'll not vote for him the next time.
They'll not vote for Democratic congressmen in their district next time.
So it's really the beginning of the base of my optimism.
I predict it and continue to predict we will have blackouts and brownouts across the country for the next few years as they dismantle coal plants and natural gas plants and shut down pipelines as they did with the XL and try to run the country on wind and solar.
It cannot be done.
It's frivolous.
It's stupid.
100% of any amount of wind and solar on any electric grid in Canada or in the United States has to be backed up by 100% petroleum-based fuels running 100% level and ready to go online in seconds when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.
That is what happened in Texas with this tremendous cold freeze they had.
Four and a half million people have been without power.
But it's going to be, it's going to happen all across the country without such severe weather conditions and people will begin to realize that putting your money on wind and solar is stupid.
It makes no sense physically.
It simply cannot be done.
That's the core of my optimism.
Everything they do is going to fail.
And one day, everybody across North America is going to wake up and say, these people are nuts.
Now, Jay, just to be clear, I fully understand how in the bag the mainstream media is for Joe Biden.
I mean, if the mainstream media weren't biased towards progressives and liberals, I wouldn't have a job telling the other side of this story.
It's just fascinating as a Canadian to see how in the bag they are in the United States, because I know why they're in the bag here in Canada.
Justin Trudeau gives them money because their industry is failing.
So he's their paymaster.
Of course, they're going to prop him up because he props them up.
I just don't understand why they're doing it in the United States.
There's really nothing in it for them except, I suppose, to push their message and push their agenda.
I guess they're true believers.
Yes, they are true believers.
And they, you know, when you tell a lie often enough, eventually people begin to think it's true.
And they've been sold a bill of goods on what they call renewable energy, wind, and solar.
I call it unreliable energy because we've all witnessed over and over again that the sun doesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow, and the grids crash.
And what people don't understand with regard to wind and solar, there must be an absolute equality in supply and demand on a grid.
You can't have the grid just miss out on a little bit of supply.
It all crashes.
It has to equal all the time.
Now, we know their blackouts and we know their brownouts.
And so electric companies have a few options.
If the wind and solar is part of what's on their grid and it goes down, they either reduce voltage to everybody on the grid or they have contracts they make with companies.
Maybe they give them a good rate of electricity, knowing that when things go bad, they're going to brown them out.
They're going to cut off some of the electricity.
A supermarket may give up some of their lighting.
Any number of manufacturers will reduce their electric power.
And that's how they handle it.
But it's got to happen all the time all over the country periodically because of the unreliability of it.
And this is a sham.
There's nothing wrong with fossil fuel.
Not only is carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
The whole world is greening on a continuous basis because carbon dioxide supports the vegetation.
It supports the animals.
It supports us.
It's the biggest lie in the history of mankind, but it's not going to last.
That's my optimism.
You can get away with this for just so long.
I am so glad they're in charge.
I'm so glad they're in charge because now they have to run the country on the basis of their insanity and it is going to be a disaster.
So we're going to have to pay a price for the next couple of years before the whole nation wakes up.
And 85% will wake up.
Only 15% of the people in the United States are radical leftists that no matter what happens, they're all for it.
I mean, it's basically a socialist communist takeover.
And that 15%, that's really who they are.
The other 85% are just not well trained.
They don't understand the science.
They hear the lie over and over again.
They're all going to wake up in the next two years.
Now, I was saying to you off camera, you just two short months ago with your writing partner, Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition, good friend of the show, friend of mine, you wrote an article that predicted exactly what is happening in Texas right now, that nationwide blackouts would happen if Biden wins.
Now, maybe you could expand on how a state like Texas, so rich in fossil fuels, in oil and gas, how did they end up with this unreliable green electrical grid?
It's my understanding that green companies were incentivized by Obama to build these wind turbines.
And now, when push comes to shove, they don't work.
And now Texans are left with no power, no food, and sky-high electricity bills.
Well, because you think of Texas as a conservative state and a lot of petroleum, that the petroleum people run the state.
They really don't.
There's a huge bunch of liberals there.
The incentives that the state of Texas put in, that the federal government has put in, has really controlled things.
Some of the richest people in Texas have been making a fortune from the subsidies to wind and solar and building one wind turbine after the other and one solar farm after the other.
So because Texas has so much oil, we think oil runs the state.
It absolutely does not.
And even the powers that be in Texas are not even willing to accept that it was all about wind and solar that shut them down last week.
They're blaming it on not enough natural gas and they're trying to lay the blame everywhere other than wind and solar because they're in the pocket of people that have been making a fortune on these absurd subsidies of an energy supply that is ridiculous.
It may be a niche.
If you live out in the middle of nowhere and you have a windmill that will supply your home with a little electricity, that's fine.
If you live in a sunny area and you want to put a solar panel on your roof, I mean, that's fine.
You wouldn't do it without government subsidies.
It's only economical for anybody because the government pays about 55 cents on the dollar.
But Texas is no better than any other state.
Also, you got to understand a lot of people from California have been moving to Texas and bringing their politics with them.
So Texas is slowly turning into another California.
I don't think it'll last.
I don't think they'll be turned totally.
But this disaster is going to weigh on them for quite a long time.
Yeah, I think I'm like you where I think that these sorts of catastrophic disasters where it's fossil fuels to the rescue, these often serve as a come to Jesus moment where people are mugged by the reality of their own bad ideas and have to backtrack.
And hopefully that's what happens when it comes to Texas and what they've done to their electricity grid.
Yes, and there's a saying that you know well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
This is basically what is happening in Texas, and it will make them stronger.
It'll make the whole country stronger because this is not the end of it.
Without major weather disasters, we're going to see blackouts and brownouts across the country as the liberals, Democrat Socialist Party removes as much fossil fuel from the grid as possible and adds as much wind and solar to the grid as possible.
California has been having thousands of blackouts for years.
Texas actually isn't that far behind and everybody's going to experience.
And so my optimism is based on the fact in the next 18 months before the next election cycle begins, the vast majority of this country is going to feel pain and they're going to know where to put the blame.
Right.
You wrote an article to that effect saying a Biden-Harris administration may just end America's dance with socialism.
And the first paragraph is amazing.
You write, socialism has destroyed every country it has ever invaded.
Like a thief who tells you it's for your own good to cooperate and then steals you blind, socialism will rob you of your dignity and your self-worth.
To this day, America has been socialism's main enemy.
The question millions of Americans are wondering now is how extensive the damage will be if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are successful in stealing the presidential election.
Well, they did that.
Is America on the precipice of becoming a socialist state?
And how does that bode for our future?
I think you're making the same argument here that you've just made for Texas, that it might take two years for the American people to really get mugged by the reality of this whole affair and realize the drastic mistake they've made.
We did the same thing here in Alberta in 2015 in an act of reflexive rebellion.
We voted against 41 years of corruption or more than 41 years of corruption of our conservative movement.
And the people, not me, but the people voted for a socialist government and it absolutely destroyed the province and people instantly changed their mind four years later.
And I think that's the argument you're making here is because of the American election cycles every two years, that can happen a lot quicker in the United States.
Yes, and it is going to happen.
I'm one of the few people, while I think Trump was among the best presidents in the history of the nation, certainly the best in my lifetime.
I was not, I was much against the fraud or they stole the election, but I was less disappointed that Trump did not win than most people.
Because another four years of Trump, while he'd accomplished some more good things that he did in his last four, we'd have the drumbeat of the hate from the media and all the anti-Trump.
Giving people a chance to rule when they have bad ideas is not a bad idea.
You give them enough rope to hang themselves.
It's an old expression, but that's what we've done.
And I don't think they can do enough damage in two years before the next election cycle to make it worthwhile for Trump to have won.
They're going to show everybody all their ideas are terrible.
And the vast majority of people are going to suffer.
They're going to suffer through higher electric bills, higher gas at the gas pump, higher taxes, less freedom of speech.
We're seeing that people being shut off all the platforms of social media.
So the expression, give them enough rope to hang themselves, I know they will give them enough rope.
We're not going to have election reform to protect us from voter fraud next time around.
But next time around, they've got to cheat in 500 legislative districts that are up for election.
And they own, the Democrats own 411 of those seats.
We won 15 from them in this past election.
They're not going to be able to cheat in the 211 Democratic seats or all 500 collectively.
And without election reform, we will take the country back in two years.
But the cycle really begins in 18 months.
That's when there'll be people running in every district.
In 18 months, we'll get the Senate back the same way.
We get a third of the senators will be running for reelection.
We're going to get them back.
In the end, as I said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
In the end, this is really good for the country to suffer at the hands of these terrible people.
Well, I think it might be good for the Democrat Party to learn things the hard way.
I'm all for my political enemies learning things the hard way.
And maybe this is the gut check that they need, that they have moved so far left that they are truly, absolutely, completely out of line with the vast majority of the American people.
Mr. Biden's Global Challenge00:08:57
And it doesn't matter what the mainstream media is telling you, and it doesn't really matter what the echo chambers of social media are telling you.
It is not reflective of how the American people truly feel.
Sheila, I don't think they're going to learn a thing.
As I labeled one of my editorials, you know, the end of socialism in America, it's going to be the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.
A new party may emerge.
I mean, they may throw off the AOC wing of terrible liberal people that don't want to see America survive.
But they're not going to, the people in power aren't going to learn anything.
They're going to lose.
They're going to lose big.
I think that in four years, we'll have a candidate that will be acceptable to everybody.
Trump was easy to hate because he wasn't the establishment.
We'll find someone that isn't quite as far non-establishment as Trump, but somebody that everybody can go along with.
We'll have a candidate they won't be able to hate, and the country will get together behind it.
Well, who's the optimist now?
I'm the optimist about the Democrat Party, and you're the pessimist.
I wanted to ask you about Joe Biden sort of re-engaging with every awful aspect of the United Nations, and in particular, the Paris Climate Accord.
Now, I was there in Marrakesh, Morocco, when Mark Moreno famously shredded the Paris Accord in the UN complex.
And then the UN security officials took him away, and I never saw my microphone ever again.
But that was a great day for, I think, for American sovereignty.
And now it seems as though Joe Biden is trading that right back to the globalists and elitists and the control freaks at the United Nations.
What does that mean for the American worker?
Well, first, let me straighten you out.
It has nothing to do with Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is a puppet of a cabal of socialists, really on the verge of communist oligarchs who are running the show.
You know that he signed, what, 45 executive orders his first day of office.
You don't think he wrote a single word of any of those executive orders.
He just said, was told to sign his name.
I think people who think he's going to be gone in two years and Ms. Harris is going to take over, I think are quite wrong.
I think he and his wife love being in the White House and they'll hang on and he's a perfect puppet for them.
So they're evil people pulling the strings behind them.
And they basically want a one world government.
They really want a socialist communist government.
And the UN is capable of installing it, a one-world government.
And they want to give nuclear arms to Iran.
And they want to be part of the Paris Accord.
The Paris Accord is absolutely a joke.
I mean, they admit it has nothing to do with changing the temperature of the planet.
It is wealth distribution.
And wealth distribution to people who aren't earning it is socialism, ultimately communism.
They get money.
They get no freedom.
You know, they get no human rights, but they are locked in by being given money.
Obama wrote a check for $500 million to the Accord, and being part of the Accord required the government to spend to give the Accord $3 billion to be redistributed to the developing countries that signed on to the Accord.
So Obama gave them a check for $500 million.
I'm sure Mr. Biden will write another check for 500 million.
And it's all virtue signaling on an issue that is a joke.
Carbon dioxide has zero to do with the temperature of the planet, number one.
A warmer planet is a better planet, a greener planet, number two.
So they have everything backwards.
And you're absolutely right.
For whatever reason, the cabal that pulls Mr. Biden's strings will rejoin every hateful aspect of the world.
They'll be in bed with China more than ever.
I mean, Mr. Biden and his son make money from businesses in China, so we'll get closer to them.
I don't know how terrible that will be.
We know that China is an evil empire, and whatever the government we do with them, it'll take jobs from the United States.
There'll be more factories in China.
Again, I think we can withstand it.
It's part of the pain that we will suffer in these next two years.
Now, I wanted to ask you: what do you think is coming next?
So they're signing on to the Paris Accord.
They're going back to that awful Iranian deal.
What's coming next?
I predict the push for carbon taxes in the United States.
And I worry that Biden and Trudeau, those two mental lightweights, it's going to be just a constant one-upmanship of who's greener, who's more woke.
And, you know, at the end of the day, it's Canadians and Americans who are paying the price for all of it.
Well, you're exactly right, Sheila.
There will be an effort to pass carbon taxes.
I don't think they'll be able to get away with that because it's not a total one-side versus the other side, Democratic, Republican.
But they will try to do everything that will hurt the U.S. economy.
But I think the worst part of it really is losing the freedom of speech.
The oligarchs, and we can call them oligarchs now that run Amazon and Google and Facebook.
These are billionaires that if you think about it, they have nothing left to live for.
They have all that money can buy.
They have all the homes and all the riches.
What don't they have?
Power.
They really want to rule the world.
It's sad that it seems to happen to the brains of so many people that are become billionaires, that that's the next thing to conquer, and that is literally to rule the world.
So we're seeing free speech moved off one platform after another.
I think we'll fight back and win that.
But that's the real bigger problem than the Paris Accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and being in bed with China.
And it's something that more and more Americans are waking up to.
They're seeing things just taken off the internet, one after the other.
And I think that's my catches.
Love it.
So again, I think they're going too far.
They're absolutely going too far.
And they're going too far because they think they can.
They just think they can do all this, and people will just sit by idly and twiddle their thumb.
It's not so.
The individualism that created America didn't go away.
It's going to keep, it's going to be there.
It's going to wake up.
Again, I'm more optimistic than anybody.
Most people don't believe me.
One of the things most people don't believe is carbon dioxide has zero impact on the thermometer of this planet.
Most people say, well, maybe it's 0.0004.
You know, that would be what?
400,000.
Stupid.
We don't know what it is.
So you have to accept zero, but nobody wants to.
Everybody has a horse in the race.
I don't have a horse in the race.
I can be 100% honest and predict what I think is true.
And that's why I'm so optimistic.
Now, speaking of free speech, you've been speaking out and writing about issues of climate and climate politics for a very long time.
Please tell us where people can find your work while they still can before some crony in the Obama administration decides they need to censor you.
Well, Sheila, thank you for that opportunity.
I write weekly for two groups: one called the Committee for Advancing Tomorrow CFACT.org.
I write weekly by myself, sometimes with a co-author, Terry Siccioni, who he and I wrote a book together last year called The Hitchhiker's Journey Through Climate Change.
And I write weekly at America Out Loud with your friend Tom Harris.
And it's AmericaOutLoud.com.
And that is a conservative platform that's on the radio 24-7, has articles by a dozen writers like myself.
Commit Daily00:02:29
And it's becoming more and more popular.
It's just all about free speech.
So CFACT, C-F-A-C-T.org, AmericaOutLoud.com are the two places to find my writings every week.
Before the China virus, I was on the road lecturing all the time.
Now I'm writing and I have a bigger following as a writer than as a lecturer.
And I love what I'm doing.
And I'll never run out of stuff.
As long as these people commit the evils they commit, I'll never run out of subject matter.
Well, you know, on one hand, I'm happy that you're speaking out, but on the other hand, that just means that, like you say, people are being evil.
So I wish that you could enjoy your retirement and people would just be less evil.
Retirement to me is a dirty word.
I will be working every day I'm breathing.
I am 84 years old.
I may be the healthiest 84-year-old around.
I've never been in a real doctor's office.
I've used orthopedic surgeons from athletic injuries, but I think one of the, I'm healthy because I exercise a lot.
I'm healthy because I work every day.
I have an interesting work schedule.
I work five hours a day, seven days a week, and I play the rest.
Wow.
Well, Jay, thank you so much for taking the time.
You make me feel like I don't have enough energy.
We'll have you back on again this show very soon.
Thanks, Sheila.
Appreciate it.
Anytime.
Thanks.
In Alberta, former socialist premier Rachel Notley tried to incentivize the creation of green energy infrastructure so that it could be added to our power grid.
And Justin Trudeau has been doing this for years, throwing good money after bad, giving money to green energy companies so that they can create unreliable systems to infest our electricity grid.
There's a green energy catastrophe in Texas right now, but I don't think the liberals will learn anything from any of it.
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, or not.
I could be anywhere.
Who even knows what the news will bring a week from now?