Heartland Daily Podcast

And that's what climate change is about. It is literally not figuratively a clear and present danger.

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. The ability of c 02

to do the heavy work of creating a climate catastrophe is almost nil at this point.

The price of oil has been artificially elevated to the point of insanity.

That's not how you power a modern industrial system.

The ultimate goal of this renewable energy, you know, plan is to reach the exact same point that we're at now.

You know who's trying that? Germany. 7 straight days of no wind for Germany. Their factories are shutting down.

They really do act like weather didn't happen prior to, like, 1910. Today is Friday.

That's right, Greta, you pint sized antagonist. It is Friday, and this is our own personal Friday protest. The Climate Realism Show, episode number 111. Biden's climate rules onslaught coming to a household near you. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute.

Joining me today, doctor h Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur b Robinson Center. Linnea will not be joining us today, and we originally had Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute scheduled. But we had a technical snafu before we started the show, and he will not be joining us. In his place is our ever reliable, Jim Lakeley, vice president of communications at the Heartland Institute, who also is a pretty good policy wonk like Marlow, and he'll be able to talk about some of those topics. Welcome, guys.

Thanks for joining in today.

Well, it's good to be here. But do we know he's not going to be on or just that he might be late because we gotta get it sorted out?

Well, we're gonna try to get it sorted out. He's in he's in here. We can do this. It's a live show, folks. So, once in a while, these things happen.

So let's see. Just as background, in case people care, we could hear Marlo, but Marlo couldn't hear us. And so, we'll see how it goes.

Yeah. Right. There's Marlo.

Here's Marlo, Lewis.

Can you hear us, Marlo?

Is Marlo able to hear

us? Yeah.

Yep. He got his know.

Alright. Alright. I'll I'll text again. We'll see if we can get him on. So go ahead.

Take take

it away, Anthony. Yeah. You know, a lot of I've done 100 and 100 of hours of live television, and I gotta tell you, it it you know, there's always something when it come to technical or whatever. Things happen at the last moment. Stuff breaks.

So, you know, it is what it is, and we just go with the flow. So today on episode 111 of the Climate Realism Show, we're gonna review a lot of the eco policies that amount to Biden's war on homeowners and the citizenry for the sake of saving the planet from climate change. We'll be discussing the Biden power plant rule, auto emissions, ESA restrictions, appliance rules, and a lot more. The rules restricting gas stoves and light bulbs and others supposedly to prevent so called climate catastrophes actually affect our everyday lives and choices. Now we'll get to that in a moment.

But first, we're gonna do our regular feature, crazy climate news, some of the nuttiest eye rolling stuff of the week. And, boy, have we got a load of stuff this week. Okay. So I get this. Climate change triggers migraines.

You know, just just reading some of the news articles on climate change lately gives me a migraine. It isn't climate change itself. It's the climate change news.

Well, that's, you know, that you're right, Anthony. It's, it it is disheartening to to read stories like this. As someone who has been a migraine sufferer since my youth, though recently, the past few years, it's been under control. I can say that long before there was climate change, there were migraines, and, I suffered more before, we started here about climate change than, than since, I've been battling this war. It's it's it's hard.

You know? Of course, climate change causes everything, so it's not surprising to me that, they're now claiming it causes migraines. It's just, it'd be nice if there was actual, I don't know, evidence for a connection.

Yeah. You know, the the media will grasp at any straw these days to try to link climate change to something. If something's wrong somewhere, somehow, this second on the planet, they'll find a way to link it to climate change.

Yeah. Well, I

mean, this post is from, the great what's up with that, which everyone should be visiting every day along with all of Heartland's climate sites written by the great Charles Rotter. But the article at NBC News, it says here, it starts with the bold assertion that migraines are increasing in frequency and intensity among Americans. Could climate change be the reason? I mean, this this is like a random word generator or it's written by AI. You could literally plug anything into that first half of that sentence.

And somewhere in the mainstream media has has followed the sentence, could climate change be a reason? And I'm with Anthony on this. The only thing that gives me a migraine is how climate alarmism has made people insane, that they think human plus climate change causes all of these catastrophes.

Right. Yeah. I get a migraine just putting the show together every week reading all the crap we have to deal with. Alright. So speaking of migraine, here's Bernie Sanders.

Bernie is a man of the people as you know. He cares about the climate. And, you know, you must vote against Trump because he's bad on that issue. Yet Bernie's fine taking private jets to wherever he needs to go. You know?

It's like, you guys remember Leona Helmsley? Yeah. Yeah. Remember The

hotel heiress little people? Yeah.

Yeah. You know? It's Well, you know that kind of mentality we're dealing with here.

I went to graduate school with a a really nice guy, from, from Sierra Leone. And, he he he he believed himself to be a communist. He said, look, I'm a communist. And, we were we went to a conference in Buffalo, and we were sitting in a hot tub with snow up to our chins because it was a conference in the middle of winter at one of the professor's houses, and we were drinking wine from his nice, his nice wine, collection. And I sat was sitting next to to my friend, I'm not gonna name him, and I said, you you you wouldn't have you would not have this under, communism.

This is a product of capitalism. And he says, oh, no. I want everyone to live like this as if it just felt like manna from heaven. Yeah. You know, he didn't understand that, you have to work for this and and, they just think it's it's magical that stuff just happens if you have the communist government in power.

And, and so, Bernie, an avowed socialist, I believe that, you know, he he is not a democrat. He's a socialist. He's he says that. Right? I think he run when he runs, he runs as a social democratic socialist.

He's getting on a private jet. He's selling millions of books. That's capitalism, folks. And it's always the elites, you know, the czars. I mean, not the czars, but, you know, Stalin didn't fly commercial and neither did Brezhnev.

It's always the powerful that wanna exempt themselves from the rules, you know, from what's good for the the proletariat.

Right. I can see some smiles from Marlo as he's been talking, so I think he can hear us now. Can you? We we the tech hear him.

Was at my end, folks, and I'm I'm sorry about that.

Alright. Well, I I had to I had to mute you coming in, Marlo, because your first came in, you came in a little hot. Let's say that.

Right. But I was angry just at myself. You know? So

no worries.

Alright. So let's move on to the next item. Modeling study finds the blatantly obvious. More forest fuel might burn more. Gosh.

Wow. Science. Computer models can make anything happen. They are they are like the gods of climate activism. You know?

You can make a computer model say anything you want, true or false. So to be fair,

if you've got more fuel, when a fire starts, it's likely you're gonna have more fires. I mean, you know, that that's that's when when I run a fuel in my fireplace, it doesn't burn. So as long as you've got fuel and and if c o two is creating more trees or helping trees grow better, it might tend to increase the damage from forest fires when they start. The question is, how do we manage the forest? What do we do to prevent those things?

Do we clear dead and drying brush beforehand? It's not a necessary connection, but when it occurs, if you got more fuel, I'm not surprised if if, you know, there's more fire.

Right. Malo, you got anything to add to this?

Well, sure. The other thing is that that the vast majority of wildfires are do have an anthropogenic cause. Yeah. And it's people who are careless with fire or actually, in some cases, arsonists. And so you're going to have more wildfires when you have more people, especially if more people build homes and move into what's called the urban wildland interface, which is the place where wildlands and and developed communities intersect.

And as it turns out, you know, the vast majority of new homebuilding occurs in this urban wildland interface. And I I remember reading a study. I guess it was in the mid, 2 it was in, like, around 2010, which said that, basically, the the population in these areas has tripled just over the last, I I don't know, decade or so. I mean, because it's become you know, as especially among wealthy people, they wanna move into the woods. You know?

They wanna get away from it all. And, if you move into a woods, you can feel like you're a 100 miles from anything, just by being a few miles away from, you know, things or or sometimes just acres if you just have a lot of trees in the way. But it means as as, your our hero and everybody's mutual friend, John Christie, has pointed out that it's like building in the middle of a forest of gigantic match sticks. You know? Just Tinder that's waiting to go.

And so, there's there's there's that anthropogenic factor, which I think probably overwhelms any, slight modification of of climate patterns that may have occurred or may become detectable by the year 21100.

Yeah. You had power lines that get downed, when when trees aren't maintained. You've got your charcoal barbecues that send up sparks. You've got your people dragging their boats with, you know, with their chains dragging down, sending up sparks. People out there smoking a cigarette and disposing of it or cigars, disposing of it improperly.

Lot of sources for wildfire. And then you've got, like you said, an inordinate number of them are set by people intentionally.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Apparently so a lot of them in in Canada recently, that was the case.

There you go.

And, yeah, so there was there was a let's see. There was something else I was gonna mention about forest fires. But, anyway, that is that escapes me. But, yes, I think I think, that we've we've hit the big points there.

Alright. Let's move on. So, this has been making the rounds all through the Internet this week because it's it's sort of sort of poetic justice. You know, there's this video of wind turbines and a tornado that's been going around.

Oh, yeah.

And it has been, circulated all through Twitter and Facebook and whatever, and and we have it here. And it's it's pretty funny when you think of it in the context. But, you know, I can't think of an instance anytime when a power plant such as a coal fired power plant or natural gas power plant or a nuclear power plant was struck down by a tornado. But yet here we have a wind turbine that's basically being knocked over. Ben, can you run that video for us?

We're gonna miss the right side. Debris coming down. We'll get some sun soon. Begin the path of it. I just throw it out the window.

What? Nautious weight. Woah. Wow. Oh, we gotta go.

Yikes.

Yes, sir. Oh,

it's amazing. Oh my god. It's gonna hit those wind farms. I'm parallel it. It's road wheel s.

Okay. It's going back right? Yes. Yes. Right.

It hit that. It's destroying that window. It hit the window. Shredded that window. Oh, crap.

And we

both get a There it goes. There it goes. Clunk.

You got it? Yeah.

And this is why we should not

be on green energy.

At least one of the reasons. It's just not just can't hold up with the wargos.

Look at those.

Roll the window down. Give them back to Matt. Matt. Matt. We got 3 sub vertices.

3 sub vertices. House is okay. Keep shooting it, Matt. You got it out your side. I don't have my eyes.

I'm the way I feel like I got it.

These guys are intense.

Birds in the air. Repetal on it.

Well, intense is one word. Chasing tornadoes.

Get inside the car.

University, we actually made a torn modeling chamber. Not a computer model, but an actual physical chamber that rotated where we were able to model multiple vortices and have them create in real life, you know, in about 1 1000th scale. And, there were papers published on that. It was pretty cool. Anyway I

believe that I believe that actual, wind industrial wind facility that it struck, It took down I think it it destroyed 5 turbines entirely. It may have damaged some others. So if they were 3 and a half megawatt turbines, you know, that's that's, what, 3 megawatts, 5. So that's 15 megawatts plus half, let's say, 22.5 megawatts taken offline in an instant. Not because power lines are down, though, I'm sure that may have happened too in some places, but simply because the power was turned off and that doesn't happen.

Tornado can hit a nuclear plant, I suppose. It'd be one of those things where the the plant, if you could speak, would say, do your worst. It doesn't take those things offline. And we've shown in the past here at, on the show what happens when hailstorms, come through and strike solar panels immediately. I've I've I know that Glen Rose has suffered hailstorms.

It didn't take the nuclear plant offline. It it it it the our our coal plants have been struck by hailstones. They kept functioning. A wind farm in West Texas gets Southwest Texas gets struck by hailstorms, and it's destroyed. It's decimated.

Yeah. Well, I I'm struck by just how I mean, talk about the power of nature. I mean, tornado coverage is always very compelling. That's why you have storm chasers out there, you know, filming these things. But it was like those were little balsa wood, turbines.

I mean, goodness gracious. And, you know, there were pieces of turbine all over the place Yeah. And, and that didn't strike me you guys may have more experience with this. That didn't strike me as an extremely large wind farm. It seemed like just a farmer who had, tried to make some extra income through a couple turbines up on his property.

I mean, what we see out in the oceans and what we've seen on land, especially in California and places in the desert, where I used to live, it's huge swaths of of wind turbines. So, like, it could have taken out 100 of them, and I obviously I I'd like to imagine that this person was gonna do the 2 the the 2 level green energy, with solar panels beneath the wind turbines. So I had this vision of all these pieces of wind turbines being thrown into the air and smashing into all of the solar solar panels, which are then thrown up into the air, and it just becomes a huge debris field. So

But, you know, someone someone asked a question. Someone asked a question. Why aren't the windmills spinning faster? You know, technically, the windmills, shouldn't have been turning at all. I think the speeds of the tornadoes probably ripped out the gears.

Wind turbines are are designed to, of course, they don't kick in until wind speeds are sufficient to turn them, But then if they go too fast, if if they start spinning too fast, if the wind speeds are too high, they shutter themselves so they don't shake to death. So my suspicion is the fact that they were turning it all means that it had already stripped the gears, the brakes. You know, in the in the old days when I used to travel to Tennessee, you'd see these truckers going down the sides of mountains with their doors open in case their brakes burned out. I think the turbines brakes had burned out, and that's why

it was spinning at all. Probably. Probably. It makes good sense, that analysis. Anyway, so let's move on to the next one.

You know, speaking of renewable energy, one of the big holy grails of renewable energy is because it's intermittent, well, we'll just get a bunch of big batteries and store all that intermittent power and then grab it when we need it. Right? Seems fine on paper, except here's the problem. At this huge lithium ion energy storage facility, they caught a fire, And this fire has been burning now for 5 or 6 days. And, it just you know, trying to put out a lit have you we've seen the videos where you try to put out a lithium fire, on an automobile.

Imagine something 500 times the size of that or more trying to put that thing out. We've got a, a website link for that. Can we bring that up, Jim? There it is. Yeah.

How about that? So it's just like every place you turn, whether it's windmills or lithium storage, whatever, cars, green energy is not as reliable as regular plain old coal or petroleum energy. Just you know, it's always something. I mean, we've got solar panels destroyed by hail. We've got wind, windmills destroyed by tornadoes.

We've got lithium that just self combust in cars and storage facilities. I mean, it just does not have a good track record for safety and reliability.

And we're gonna build wind turbines in areas where hurricanes are not uncommon. And Mhmm. You know, I think it was Malaysia. We we had the story maybe last week

or the week before.

We had the story of the largest floating solar farm was destroyed when a a storm came in. The waves themselves just pushed all the the panels up against each other, crunched it all. We, I've said it before, but I think it's worth repeating. We used to have a, an electric power grid designed by engineers that wasn't dependent on the weather. They they we we weren't praying to the gods that for the sun to shine and the wind to blow.

Now we've got a power system increasingly designed by politicians who aren't engineers, and we've gotta go back to praying, for good weather to keep our lights on.

Right. Right.

You know, and the other the other issue here with the batteries, of course, is cost. And our friend Francis Menten, you know, the Manhattan contrarian, has done just amazing research. But as he points out, all it takes is a 6th grade education in arithmetic in order to produce the analyses that that that he's done, at least or at least most of them. But he calculated that if New York state, which has a net 0 2050 mandate in place, worse is serious about replacing all of its backup for renewable power with batteries that if you were to use today's state of the art large Tesla batteries to back it up, it would cost $1,600,000,000,000, which just lo and behold turns out to be the GDP of New York State. So this you you have to spend a lot of money to get all this, as you say, fragile and not very reliable stuff.

Yeah. Green energy. The motto should be green energy. Costs more, works worse.

Yep. Anyhow, so pope Francis. Yes. You know, he's, had an opinion about climate change ever since he took office. And for those of you that don't know, the pope is actually elected.

He yes. He's an elected official. He's elected by the cardinals in Conclave. So he's just like any other elected official with an opinion as far as mine as far as I'm concerned. But in that particular tweet, which, had been republished by our friend Ryan Maui, he says, obviously, the pope is not well informed on climate change.

He's embracing the doomer narrative. Instead of an uplifting message, he speaks the climate allegory of hell and Dante's inferno. At this moment, the pope's climate policy is the road to deaths in parenthesis hell for the impoverished, and that's true. Expensive energy, more expensive, less reliable energy is always gonna hit the poor first.

Or or in the case of the the most impoverished countries, no energy. They can't have they can't have energy because that would be bad for the planet. So they've got to die now so future generations of coastal residents in New England, don't get their feet wet. Right.

Right. And, you know, the it it's just been the the Catholic church is full disclosure. I'm Catholic. The Catholic church's track record on science is really bad all through history. No matter who it was that challenged, you know, the dogma of the Catholic church's view on science and the universe never worked out well.

The church almost always seems to be wrong about such things, and I believe they're wrong here in this particular thing. But what do I know? Okay. Cartoons. This isn't a cartoon, but it really, really should be.

This is from Jesse Kelly on Twitter, And he's got this video that you have to kinda see to believe. There's not a better description of America in 2024, he writes, than a dude pretending to be a woman doing a video where he also pretends manmade climate change is real while also pretending that the fictional manmade climate change is targeting black people. Honestly, this is perfect. Watch.

Hello. I'm admiral Rachel Levine. This Black History Month, I'm pleased to partner with OMH in advancing better health through better understanding for black communities. Climate change is having a disproportionate effect on the physical and mental health of black communities. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to live in areas in housing that increase their susceptibility to climate related health issues.

And 65% of black Americans report feeling anxious about climate change's impact. Through our Office of Climate Change and Health Equity and the Office of Environmental Justice, we're working with providers and community leaders to identify innovative approaches that empower communities to address the health consequences linked to climate change. Visit HHS.gov for more information, and tune in next Thursday to hear from another HHS leader on how you can contribute to advancing better health for black communities.

Alright. Our listener our watchers scream.

Our watchers are so, spot on and funny. I mean, their quips are really, really good. Yeah. Good old good old admiral Rachel Levine, or is it Rachel? I forget it.

Telling us that, climate change is racist. It's just hard to know what what to say to stuff like that. I mean, is it the case that more minorities live in poor neighborhoods with poor infrastructure? Yep. It is.

But, is it the case that climate picks those neighborhoods for particular damage? No. It doesn't. It turns out that if you live in a poor neighborhood on the coast, hurricanes are gonna strike you more. You're gonna be worse impact when they do.

If you live in flood plains because they're typically less expensive properties and more minorities are poor, then you're gonna be affected more. But guess what? Anyone who's poor that lives in those neighborhoods is affected the same way.

Yeah. Apparently, he's never heard of UHI, you know, in cities. But alright. Well, also,

I just add one one point here, which I think, you know, Sterling was also making, which is that the real vulnerability here is not due to being black, but it's due to being poor. And so if you are concerned about the additional risk that climate change may pose to a person because he's poor or she's poor, then what you would wanna do is have a society which maximizes economic opportunities so that more poor people can become middle income people and more in middle income people can become rich people. Okay? But all of these climate policies, like the ones that the electrification mandates for motor vehicles are pricing middle income households, let alone lower income households out of the market for new cars, and the power plant rules are gonna make electricity more expensive. So so if you're really concerned about the poor in general and for some reason you think weather related risks in relation to the poor are are some, you know, special category, still, what you should want is an economy that grows as fast as possible, and, allows the the the greatest number of people to participate.

And erecting new regulatory barriers and making everything more expensive is counterproductive to that to those objectives.

Yeah. Yep. Alright. So our final crazy climate news of the week is a cartoon. You know, we've always been an advocate of nuclear power, but here's the deal.

Climate change is gonna kill us all, so let's dismantle our socioeconomic system to prevent it. He say, how about nuclear power? I don't want nuclear power. I wanna dismantle our socioeconomic system, and that's the truth. You can't talk sense with some of these folks that are out there pushing for, you know, green energy or whatever.

They don't they they're against capitalism, plain and simple. That's all that matters for them. Okay. Let's

Well, it's just

like that it's like that old sauce. Like, you can't reason someone out of out of a position that they did not reach by reason. So that's kind of, where we're where we're at in this debate. Although we keep trying, I think we have some effect.

Yep. Alright. So let's get on to our main topic, which is the onslaught of regulations that light that Biden is trying to ram through. Apparently, you have to get them up a 180 days before the election so that Trump, if he takes office, can't, you know, just write them out with a single signature. So he's pushing to get all kinds of stuff through right now.

So, Sterling, you're our resident policy wonk. I'm the science guy. So I'm gonna let you take this and and and move along with this, and and take the helm. Go ahead.

Well, I mean, you know, it's why I wanted, Marlowe on. I I consider him as much or more of an expert on some of these things than me. But, you know, actually, I can't read the screen, so I don't know which story is up. If you could blow it up for a second. It's too small for me.

Just tell me what it's about. Is this the car one or the power plant rule? I can't read it.

This this I see

all of you along the top of my screen as opposed to just the big Alright.

This says that the Biden administration is pumping out dozens of federal rules this spring in a mad dash to submit president's legacy. And so, you know, they're trying yeah. Go ahead.

The the so so here's the deal. It's harder to remove regulations that have been approved and on the books, for a long time. And, a 188 days out before the next president takes office, if it's not Biden, if it's Trump, any rule that comes in before after a 180 days out, he can with the stroke of a pen on day 1, cancel the rule. So they are in a mad dash to get as many new regulations passed as possible. It's not just climate regulations, but a lot of them are climate regulations.

That's because for Biden, climate change is the biggest issue. It's the existential threat to our humanity. So they're passing rules on power plants. They're passing rules on cars. They're passing rules on appliances.

They're passing rules endangered species rules that are killing species, but that's okay because we're protecting the climate. They're passing rules on, housing, new housing across the different agencies. Every agency now has an office devoted to climate change. And they're getting rules on the books as fast as they can, so they don't surpass that deadline where Trump can just cancel him if he becomes president. You can still reverse him.

It's possible. It's just harder to do. You have to go through a a set regulatory process of of, reviewing the rule, taking public comments, giving certain notices. And so they wanna avoid that. They wanna make it as hard as possible to reverse Biden's radical, you know, radical big government socialist agenda that happens to be tied to climate change.

Yeah. And the problem is that once this stuff gets passed, you know, it it make it's really difficult to make it go away because all sorts of bureaucratic junk gets applied to it, and it's hard to get rid of bureaucracy. It's kinda like roaches. You know? You can't ever really get rid of them.

Also, you know, Anthony, even if a rule is ultimately repealed or or struck down by a court, the rule can do a lot of the intended damage to its or it can do a lot of damage to its intended victims. Like, the classic case, of course, was the Mercury power plant rule Mhmm. Which, which was adopted in 2,011 and and basically vacated with remander so that the agency haven't had a chance to to do something a little different, in, in 2016, I believe. So, you know, so there were 6 years, basically, where the the industry, the coal industry, and and coal fired power plants were rolled back tremendously in in terms of their market share, the overall output of electric, generation of coal by a rule that was ultimately overturned. So and Gina McCarthy, who was, Biden's climate czar for the first part of his, his his his his for his first two years and was also the head of EPA, under Obama.

She laughed. She said, well, you know, we got what we wanted out of the rule, which was to basically, you know, cut dramatically, the the percentage of of coal generation and the nation's electricity fuel mix. So these these regulations can do a lot of damage, rate'll, impose a lot of costs even if they're ultimately overturned. You know? So, I mean, Sterling is absolutely right, and and so are you, Anthony.

It's the sooner, the better. You know? The sooner you can nip these things in the bud, the less damage they'll do even if they're not eternal.

Yeah. With the, with the power plant rule with the mercury power plant rule, It was overturned. It was gross over overreach. But the problem for rules is especially rules that affect large industries like utilities, they don't plan for next year or the year out. They plan 5 10 years in the future what their resources will be.

And so as soon as that rule hit, they said, hold it. We're not gonna be able to to meet that rule. So they're gonna challenge it in court, but in the end, they had to start planning for the retirement of, of still valuable coal plants because that was the rule, and they couldn't be confident. They couldn't be confident it would be overturned.

Right.

You know, it ultimately was, but like you said, the damage was done. I think that was to some extent, I think that was, to some extent, a learning moment for the court because they have been quicker with subsequent rules, lower courts at least, taking, the Supreme Court sort of guidance from that case to issue stays on new major rules since then. And, of course, now the court has come out and talked about the major rule doctrine. So, hopefully, we'll have less instances. That was really egregious.

That was that was particularly egregious. But, hopefully, we'll have less of that in future. I mean, Biden, Obama's power plant rule never came into effect

Right.

Because the courts had hold it. We we went through this with Mercury. I don't think we're gonna make the same mistake. We're gonna issue a stay. Now they subsequently did the same thing with Trump's power plant rule.

Now we've got Biden's new power plant rule 3 years in, and it's being challenged by, I think, 20 20 5, 26 states plus a couple of, different industries. So, you you talk we we we talk constantly about, legislative gridlock to some extent, and maybe this is a blessing. We've got some regulatory gridlock.

Mhmm.

Because they keep the government keeps trying to overreach, and,

it gets

shut down. It doesn't stop them from trying to do it again. They've done it with the endangered species, some of the endangered species stuff, but, and wetlands. But, we have I

would argue the power plant rule. Well, first of all, you're absolutely right. The supreme court actually cited the, the Mercury case as a reason why, you know, why they would why they had to stay the clean power plant and then why they were so quick finally to, you know, to to, put in put an end to it. And, but, you know, the but the the Biden power plant rule is in is in several ways. It's more extreme than the clean power plant.

Mhmm. You know? And, and and and they even they even stay up front, I mean, in their in their, regulatory impact assessment that compared to the the pre, the the the previous current policy baseline before they adopted this rule, if you just look at, you know, what their projection of coal generation would be, that this rule will decrease it by 89%, you know, below what it what they would have projected it to be by the by the year 2045. So, the clean power plan didn't I mean, they're basically going to take coal generation down to less than 1% of the nation's generation by 2045. That's their goal.

And the clean power plan, was, you know, knocking coal generation back from 38% to 27%. So this is far more aggressive. They also and and they're doing it based on a technology, which everybody you know, every informed person will acknowledge is not adequately demonstrated as cost effective, which is carbon capture and storage. And and that not only are they going to apply this to existing coal power plants, if you wanna be a coal power plant and stay in business after 2039, you've gotta capture 90% of your carbon dioxide emissions. But if you're a new natural gas baseload power plant, you've gotta capture 90% of your carbon dioxide emissions.

And there isn't a single natural gas carbon capture plant power plant anywhere in the world. There are at least 2 small ones here in North America for coal. Okay? And and both of them built with lavish subsidies, both history of technical problems, but the the there was only one natural gas power plant in the history of the world, a small unit out in out in Massachusetts, Bellingham, I think it was, owned by Florida Light and Power, and it closed in the year 2,005. You know?

And it was just a pilot program. And so that's their basis for now mandating this as an industry wide requirement for the entire country. This is, I mean, this is so over the top. It's

Yeah.

You know, it's like it's like they they just they're they're not it's blatantly defying the supreme court and sort of daring them to to, you know, to vacate this rule as well. And maybe they're hoping that by that time, you know, the next Biden administration will pack the court and maybe Yep. In that way.

There it's it's it's it's egregious in, in a in a couple of ways. 1st, the EPA is supposed to be, to the extent that it, dictates technology. It's supposed to be commercially available, proven technologies. This does not satisfy that requirement. Secondly oh, I forgot what I was gonna say.

But it's, the Biden administration's approach to regulations to fight climate change seems to be, let's throw as much as we can against the wall and see what sticks after the courts are done with it. And oftentimes, even when the courts have done with it and dealt with it, the Biden administration then goes on to ignore their rulings like they have done with various, petroleum, you know, oil and gas production off the coast. The the the courts say or in public lands. The courts say you must hold a lease auction. That's what the law that's what the law says.

You must hold an auction, and the Biden administration says, we'll get around to it sometime.

Yeah. I wanna clarify something I said earlier.

All these debts,

you know? Clarify something I said earlier. I was talking about the fact that bureaucracy is a little bit like roaches, and it occurred to me that yeah. Because you can't never really totally get rid of them. It occurred to me that, you know, they've always said roaches are the only thing that's gonna survive nuclear holocaust.

Well, so would the bureaucrats because they've got their bunkers, you know, go there where they go to be safe in the nuclear holocaust while less more peasants, you know, sit out there on the radiation. So what we're gonna have after the nuclear holocaust is bureaucrats and roaches.

And and then the bureaucrats, of course, will die because they don't know how

it to do actually anything practical. Yep. Yep. And they'll have they can they can self regulate themselves, but there'll be nothing left.

They they they they will, by then, have regulated themselves out of existence.

But but wait, guys. Isn't there a certain segment of the environmental movement or the climate movement that thinks that bugs are a great source of protein?

So the bureaucrat the bureaucrats will be eating cockroaches. That's what they'll have left.

They are cockroaches. Jeez. Alright.

Alright. Well, no comment for me on that. Those kinds of remarks sometimes can get you in trouble. So I would just I would just leave it at saying that, yeah, I mean, if you think that bugs are a great source of protein, we're never gonna run out of roaches. So

True.

So be happy. Yeah.

Right. Before we move on, I wanted to thank, Dean O for, giving us £10, £10, British in the super chat and appreciating that, we're keeping the faith on keeping the science in the climate debate globally. So thanks very much, Dean. Appreciate it very much.

Way to go, Dino. Alright. So what are the topics that we got about the the Biden administration pushing stuff down the population's throat that we don't want?

Yeah. Well, another big one is their, vehicle emissions rules. Right? It's for automobiles. You gotta have, what, 2 thirds of the automobiles have to be electric, by, I think, 20 30, 2035.

Yeah. It's it's

And that's 2030 2.

2032. And that's why all the automakers are pulling back on their manufacturer of electric vehicles saying, it's impossible. People don't want it. We're losing too much money. And then they also passed the truck rule that said, big rigs.

Yeah. Mind you, big rigs are way behind the curve compared to automobiles on electric vehicles. Right? That you're adding tremendous amounts of weight to an already really, really, really heavy vehicle when you make them all electric. They're you're creating bulldozers on wheels that go really, really fast.

And I've got a we got a lawyer here in Texas called the he calls himself the Texas hammer. I won't say his name. But he's always talking about how big rig accidents. I'm gonna defend you. You're gonna win lots of money.

I can't even imagine the kind of accidents that these big rigs will, the the disaster that these big rigs will cause cause when they're in accidents, if they can even bring them to market, by

the way.

Yeah. And, you know, you're absolutely right, Sterling. The these batteries that are required to operate a big rig literally weigh 3 times as much as a current diesel truck engine. I mean, it's it's it's it's tens of 1,000 of pounds. I think it's, you know, it could be like like or 18,000 extra pounds.

And so what it means is, among other things, is that the rig the big rigs are are are gonna have to carry that much less weight in freight. Right? And, and so that means that they'll have to make more trips, plus the fact Or

they just triple the number of vehicles on the road. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. Because these these these vehicles can't go as far on a single charge as a as a big rig. I mean, a big rig apparently, you know, can go practically 24 hours when they fuel up with diesel. You know?

But in this case, they might have to recharge every 6 hours, and and that would and then they'd have to spend an hour or so waiting to recharge. And so you're gonna need more more of them to to deliver the same amount of freight. So, of course, this is not going to affect the cost of any goods that are transported by truck, will it? No. Well, of course, it'll it'll it'll dramatically increase the cost of everything we buy.

But as you say, there will be a lot there will be a lot more of these big rigs on the road, which means more accidents, which means more more fatalities, and more congestion. I mean, it's just, I mean, it's just bonkers. But here's here's something. I got this from a a very smart guy that that I've known here for, I don't know, 20 years in Washington. His name is Phil Kurpin, and he he works with the, committee to unleash prosperity.

And he did this nice chart, which shows that the EPA's greenhouse gas emission standards for passenger cars and light trucks pickups is just is basically just California's gas powered car more ban, you know, but with a 2 year delay and the out years hidden, concealed from view. So if you if you compare these standards to California's, they're just 2 years behind. So wherever California is in the year 2032 on its way to a 0, you know, a complete ban on sales of gasoline and diesel powered powered cars in the year 2035, The EPA standards are just 2 years behind. But then the EPA standards only go out to 2032, so they don't show you what's gonna come next. But, of course, we know what's gonna come next.

You know? And so so they're they're just trying to ram these things down our throat, and it's completely illegal. Just come I mean, it's illegal under the major questions doctrine that the Supreme Court so clearly articulated in the in the decision that overturned the clean power plan. It's basically if it's, if it's a major question of public policy, like, should we ban the internal combustion engine? If there was a major question, it would be that.

I mean, the political and economic significance of that question is obvious. Then it then an agency should not do it unless it can find a very clear statement authorizing it in its organic statute. Well, there's nothing like that in the clean in the in the Clean Air Act at all. So there's that. But then, also, the the EPA has basically licensed California, deputized California to be the vanguard in this electrification agenda because it grants California what's called a waiver under the Clean Air Act, which which preempts state regulation of motor vehicle emissions, but then makes an exception for California if EPA waives the preemption.

Well, they're gonna waive their preemption. The problem is is that when you're dealing with tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions, you're just dealing with fuel economy by another name because an automobile's emissions carbon dioxide emissions per mile are directly proportional to its fuel consumption per mile. So if you're regulating tailpipe c 02 emissions, you're regulating fuel consumption, which is to say you're regulating fuel economy, and there's a our basic national fuel economy statute, the Energy Policy Conservation Act, says states may not

Right.

Adopt laws or regulations that are even related to fuel economy standards, and there's no waiver provision. It's it's a categorical preemption. So I would argue that the whole kit and caboodle is illegal, and I hope and pray that someday it makes it its way to the Supreme Court before Biden and company pack the Supreme Court.

Yeah. Oh, I agree. I agree, 100% with that analysis.

Okay. So what do you think's gonna happen if if, Trump takes office after all of this onslaught of all these environmental rules?

You asking, Sterling or me? Both? I I mean, I think he's gonna try to reverse he's gonna try to reverse all of it. You know? And and then the other team will complain.

Oh, you're you're you the we what the industry really needs is regulatory predictability. Yeah. But your idea of predictability is is the certainty of death. We're gonna regulate you out. You're you're we're gonna regulate you out of business on this timetable.

There's your predictability. And so

We'll give you enough time to find a new business, to go into. Right?

So, you know you know, I like I like, I like this the following version of predictability. We're gonna let the marketplace operate, and you take your chances along with everyone else.

1st, you gotta hope Right. That, Trump pays a little bit more attention this time to his appointees. Getting them appointed faster

Yeah.

Having them in in mind before he goes in.

Yep.

Because unless you have good people under you to take on the challenges right away, it's it's gonna be down the road and down the road and down the road before you can reverse anything that comes before the 180 days. He he can reverse the things after the 180 days. The question is, will he really focus on that? Some of the big ticket items, I suspect he will. He says wind farms, day 1, gone offshore wind farms, day 1, gone.

I suspect he'll look at that and see to the extent he can do that. But there's literally 100 of small, little bitty, the death of a 1000 cut regulations that is he gonna go through it all on day 1? I don't think unless it's brought to his attention by somebody he's found to put in place quickly that will go in and do that for him and then say, look, these are the things we need to get rid of, and we are able to without much hassle. Will that get done? Then the other things, they just have to go through the regulatory process.

Yeah. Well, I wanna go to appliances real quick. You know? Yeah. The thing that really hits home to most people is, you know, when you go to buy a new appliance, you have to get the new energy superstar extra green appliance.

Right? And you get in home, and then you realize, well, I've gotta run the dishwasher 2 cycles instead of 1 because it doesn't work as well as it used to because it's saving water and energy. Or, you know, you've got a microwave that that has, you know, less power than it used to or stove that you know, you can't even buy a gas stove maybe sometime in the future. These things really hit home and resonate with people. Do.

What do you guys think about that?

Yeah. Well, my colleague, Ben Lieberman, you know, who whom you are highlighting there, he he's he's been predicting for years years, and I have to say that he met with a lot of skepticism that there was a consumer backlash just waiting to happen. And it would happen sooner or later because these appliances are very personal to people. You know? And and, also, the, the problems that are created by regulation are touch so many people that eventually people would compare notes and realize it's not just me.

You know? We had a we actually had a a a an an infomercial campaign here, which had the slogan, stop making our appliances even crappier. You know? Because the first round of any of your energy efficiency standards impaired, for example, the the the the, ability of washing machines to get or or dishwashers to get the job done quickly and in one washing. You know?

And so the gas stoves, that really hit home with a lot of people because, you know, there's all there are tens of millions of people who have gas stoves, and they really like them. And the whole idea that they might not be you know, the next house they have or or maybe, you know, there'd even be some you know, a ban. And, I mean, the the consumer product safety commission was considering a ban. And then when it was discovered, they said, oh, this is this is a cultural culture war talking point. No.

It was for real. And they and as and as my colleague Ben Lieberman has has, you know, documented, When when the word ban became so radioactive, then they just then they did what they always do. They tried to see how many new standards they could concoct that would effectively ban, you know, gas up gas powered appliances by making them too costly. You know?

Manufacturers now have to plan for obsolescence just because of the regulatory environment. Mhmm. Look. You you can't say, I'm gonna oh, I wanna manufacture, an air conditioning system, furnace and everything. It's gonna last you a decade or decade and a half.

My last air conditioning system was 24 years it lasted. 24 years. That's pretty good. Mhmm. I was told when they installed my new one, you can expect maybe to get a decade out of it.

Because even if it doesn't break before then, they will have changed the rules such that, you can't use the, inputs, the chemical inputs, like the CFCs, whatever it is that we will put in, the HCFCs, whatever the new replacement is. But you're gonna have to replace the system because, of efficiency upgrades. It we won't just be able to keep repairing old systems. So, I've now got a dishwasher that, it takes 3 hours to wash a load, as opposed to the hour it used to take. I've got a washing machine that, I'll say it does a pretty good job of cleaning the clothes, but my dryer doesn't dry in nearly the time Mhmm.

That my old dryer used to.

I think what what I got is

it's saving me I'm sure every load it's saving me 20¢, per cycle, except that I now have to do multiple cycles. So they are they I've read the constitution. I don't see where the federal government is charged in the constitution with, deciding how much energy a home uses, or what its cooking surfaces should look like. It's just not in there. And the fact that the courts have with a a wink and a nod allowed things like the Department of Energy to regulate what kind of lighting people have in their homes, That's egregious to me.

Mhmm. If you wanna use incandescence, that's your business, not the government's business. And for them to say, oh, but we're gonna save you money in the long term, maybe that's not my concern. Maybe I don't like, the kind of light that, different lighting systems put out. Maybe it gives me migraines.

Maybe I like the warmth because it cuts down on my heating bill during the winter.

Okay. Good points. Good points. You know, they say that you deserve the government you vote for, but do we really deserve the bureaucracy we never voted for? I think not.

And that's the problem we've got here agree. Yep. With the energy situation. You know, it occurred to me you know how it is in Cuba? You know, once Cuba became a communist nation that they couldn't get any, you know, new products brought in.

You know? And so we've got these 1955 Chevrolets running around the streets, you know, as taxis and things like that, and they keep repairing them and keeping them going. And I think the same kind of thing is gonna happen with appliances if these rules actually take effect. We're gonna see people fixing up old stoves. You know?

I think there's gonna be a booming market for appliance repair, trying to keep the older appliances running because they work better than these newfangled, you know, super efficient, Renoramic type things. I think that's what's gonna happen. It's gonna be like Cuba for appliances.

Brian, I wanna The Maytag repairman will be lonely no more.

It's gonna happen to so much then for vehicles too, Anthony. You know? I mean, there are a lot of people won't be able to afford an electric vehicle, but so they'll keep their older cars longer, and some mechanics will think, here's a market that I can serve now. You know? Right.

Right. And and the market for used electric vehicles is 0. I mean, that's where reasons why Hertz, abandoned they quickly in in high profile, we're going electric. Yay. And I don't know what would it take them 9 months to say, wow.

That was a big mistake? Because they make a lot of their revenue by selling their rented cars, to to make money, and nobody wants a used used up battery that's only got 70% charge on the very best conditions, after somebody's used it for 5 years. So there there's not gonna be a used EV market. It's ridiculous.

Right. Exactly. Alright. Let's move on. It's, we're past the top of the hour.

Let's move on to question and answers. Jim, take it away.

Sure thing. Above us only Sky, who gave us £4.99. Thank you very much. Above us only Sky asks, will the demand for power required by AI bring down the whole renewable energy house of cards as unsustainable?

Well, I think this is the real Skynet right here. You know? It's gonna get it's gonna grow. The AI thing is gonna grow so big. It's gonna suck up all the available power, we won't even be able to turn on our televisions to find out about it.

Well, we we had talked we had talked about this very topic, and I think we might even bring it up again on the In The Tank podcast, which you can watch every Thursday at 1 PM EST noon CST on this very channel. Larry Fink gave a was on a panel at the WEF, I believe it was, and talked about how, he talked to the the people who are developing artificial intelligence and the data, the data that is necessary and the power that is necessary for those data centers. And he they said in, like, in another 5 years or by 2030, each data center that this guy runs will will need enough power that you could run an entire city on. We're talking terawatts of power just for the data center, and that's that guy's data center, not all the data centers everywhere. So, Mark Zuckerberg has actually actually brought this up.

So, I think I think, above us only sky is onto something. I think, maybe, finally, that's the reality that hits the climate alarmist in the face, the fact that there's not gonna be enough power to lead the AI revolution and also charge up our electric vehicles and, I don't know, keep our refrigerators running. Reality is really gonna hit the hit the fan when all that comes together.

The AI guys don't care whether your refrigerator's running. They they just as soon see all the power diverted to them, my suspicion is. But they are recognizing it, and it's not just things like that. So Biden has talked a good game. He hasn't he hasn't run a good game, but he's talked a good game about bringing technology home.

And we're gonna build all these things with American parts. So as part of that, they now have in Kansas, I've mentioned this before, they now have in Kansas a new battery factory where they're gonna they're they're gonna assemble lithium ion batteries there. It's not gonna be Chinese stuff. That's all well and good, but it turns out that battery factory takes a lot of power.

Yep.

And so what they did is they pleaded with the state of Kansas's Public Utility Commission to you know that coal plant you had planned on shutting down? Could you just keep that open for a little while longer so we can actually operate and not be dependent on your new wind turbines and stuff and and and crank these things out. So, you know, lithium ion batteries themselves may be high-tech, but factories making them, I don't think, are that high-tech, but they need coal too.

Yep. That's that's really true. And I I may have the these numbers mixed up, but what I recall is that, a a truck stop that caters to electric trucks would need to consume as much power as a city with about 16,000 homes. You know? It's And and so at the very time that they're ramping up, then, of course, they wanna bring all the chip manufacturing home to the United States, which is very, electric intensive.

And at the same time they they're they're doing this, they're they're adopting these power plant rules that basically make it impossible to build a new natural gas power plant or to keep a coal fired power plant of any size in operation past 2039. And so there is a, the the potential for a train wreck here seems pretty obvious.

Not just a train wreck, a truck wreck. Imagine this. Imagine this. Right now, there are filling stations and service stations all along the highways of this nation. And you get off the highway on a service road, and you pull in, and you fill up in 5:5 minutes or less.

Right? You can set your card. Truckers take longer. Can you imagine the train of trucks at a single electric truck service station? They will be backed out onto the highway, stopping it up, coming off the highway.

Traffic will come to its stance. And with just the trucks trying to get, hoping and praying to get to the charging station before their charge runs out, and they have to be towed to the charging station.

Yeah. It's worse than it's a worse problem than trying to make it to the bathroom. Alright. Let's see our next question, Jim.

Yep. So we'll we'll just have this because there we had some other questions, but I think we kind of hit that in the other, questions people had. Thank you, Luke and, Chris. But this is from Douglas Pollock, who's a friend of ours from down, in South America, and he asked, do you think that if Trump is elected, that all of this that we've been talking about will not even be an issue anymore?

Oh, no. Try to try to to take care of this. He'll try to get rid of some of these ridiculous rules, but he's gonna be fought tooth and nail by the left and the greenies. It will be it will be

the policy battle of our lifetime. I mean, look. Remember, the entire media will organize in defense of the regulatory status quo. There will be all kinds of lawsuits. So it's it no.

It'll it'll it'll be a it'll be a pitched battle, I think, every minute of his of his of his administration if Trump is elected.

Well, as it was in the last administration when he was in office. Right? I mean, he did a lot. He halted a lot of bad stuff. He rolled back some old bad stuff and implemented some improved regulations, most of which have been overturned subsequently.

But whether it's Reagan or Trump, he was right. You have to drain the swamp until you cut the bureaucracies themselves, until there are smaller agencies with more focused missions, with fewer staff to permission creep. You'll never get rid of it all, and one president can't do it by himself.

Mhmm. Yep. There's their end music that says we're out of time for this episode of the Climate Realism Show. I wanna thank Marlo Lewis of CEI for joining us today and for your expert commentary. Also, Sterling for your expert commentary as well.

And, Jim, for your expert commentary color and for running the production in a pinch, we appreciate it. I wanna remind everyone to visit our websites, climate ataglance.com, where you can find factual rebuttals to science based topics. Climaterealism.com, where we rebut the media on a regular basis, energy at a glance.com, where we talk about what's real and what isn't when it comes to energy. And, of course, my website, what's up with that dot com. I wanna thank all of you, our viewers, for joining us today and every Friday, and we hope to see you here again next week when we're gonna talk about the hurricane season.

I'm Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate for the Heartland Institute, wishing you all a great holiday weekend. Bye bye.

He's a lion dog faced pony soldier.