Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-19-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

12-19-25_FRIDAY_6AM

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Friday, December 19th, 47 degrees, rainbow key lighting up a little bit, but then we'll get some more a bit later this weekend, and then all next week, rainy and probably snowy in the mountains. We'll talk with Mr. Outdoors about that an hour from now. Greg Roberts.

Also want to talk a bit more about what's going on with the wolf depredation problem, because the state is now saying that they're running out of money to pay off wolf claims, but there's no problems with all the cows being chewed up. We just can't pay you for it. Yeah, yeah, okay, we're going to have the wolves come back in, but, oh, they're eating the cattle? Okay, well, we'll give you money, ranchers for this. Oh, yeah, we said we would pay you up to five times the value. No, we're running out of money.

We'll have that. I'm sure Mr. Outdoors will have an interesting comment or two. that particular sort of situation. Wow, I'll tell you, the news this morning seems to be every headline, or at least most of the major headlines here, both in Southern Oregon and nationwide, you can almost file this under the diversity is our strength sort of headline. Diversity, diversity is our strength. Well, we have authorities have not come out.

they identified the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University, Fox and other people reporting this, two students dead and nine injured. So the name is Claudio Manuel Nevis Valenti, and he was from Portugal. He was a Portugal national. And yes, they also think he killed the MIT professor, too, the physics professor. This was the professor, I guess he went to a school or attended a class or, you know, they did know each other. There was a contact there.

the MIT professor who was killed in a neighboring state murdered, I should say, and they knew each other. Still not really sure why that that targeting was going on here, but he was a fusion professor too. Yeah, trying to get that. We want to talk about the ultimate renewable energy, that sort of thing. But yeah, Claudio Manuel Nevis Valenti, who was here originally on a, and actually they called it a diversity lottery. A diversity lottery immigration program isn't that great. Hey, that's great. But yes, he's dead.

So I suppose it's kind of like a dirty hairy, self-inflicted, by the way, dirty hairy sort of thing, no trials, no reports to file, I guess. You know, that sort of thing. All right. Now, the diversity is our strength continues here to the state of Oregon. We had the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oregon, in Portland, reporting at a couple of Romanian nationals here. Unlawfully residing, in other words, illegal aliens. They appeared in court yesterday.

Conspiracy to steal more than $160,000 of snap benefits from low-income individuals and families. Alexandria Telescu and Aramis Manoilea, 35. They've been charged in a 26-count in $1,000. Gosh, I guess, according to the court document, starting in April this year, because, you know, we need diverse criminals. We need a diverse criminal class here in Oregon. A lot of other people, they would steal EBT cards in pins, and then they'd purchase SNAP eligible items, rather, infant formula and energy drinks. And they also had electronic skimmers that would skimmy-t account information and the pin numbers. from all sorts of point of sale.

They're talking like $160,000 or more, and they made their initial appearance yesterday. And also from the diversity is our strength headline for Mexican nationals, unlawfully residing in the United States, accused of illegally possessing firearms and false statements. And we're talking about a lot of false statements and a lot of firearms purchased in cave johns.

function. This is amazing. So who they have indicted. Samuel Rodrigo Santos. Samuel Amador Ortega. Aldo Amador and Oscar Amador Ortega, they're all in their 20s. Been charged for making false statements on that ATF Form 4473 when you fill that out to purchase a firearm.

and they checked that they were American citizens. Well, they were not. In fact, they were illegal aliens. And there was one firearm dealer in Cave Junction that sold these people a ton. And ATF investigators, they observed repeated sales of the same make and model of firearms by these four individuals sharing the same address,

the same address in O'Brien and Medford, Oregon. And so ATF is thinking, okay, you know, this is kind of looking like drug cartel traffickers. So in July, in July, Amador Ortega, just himself, purchased 25 of these firearms from the firearms dealer in Cave Junction, two other FFLs in Southern Oregon. And another Ortega purchased a total of 16 firearms from this one. So, boy, it would just go from a firearm shop to firearm shops. But boy, gosh, you would think that if you're selling one person, 25 firearms, you'd be

extra careful about it. But I guess, you know, they say that, you know, they are legal American citizens and yada, yada, yada, even though they were lying. So they get the, but boy, 220, what is it, 225 firearms overall purchased by illegal aliens. And they checked Mexico for the place of birth, but they checked the United States for country of citizenship and an immigration inquiry into these people included no legal status. and so ATF investigating this case with the assistance, the help of the DEA, Homeland Security too.

Now, it's only a criminal complaint, as they say, but I'm sure that once again, diversity is our strength. Diversity, diversity between the Mexicans and the Romanians and the Portugal people on diversity, on diversity visas. Yeah, your eyes start glazing over a little bit, right? Yeah, I suppose.

All right. What else can we do? You know, I haven't played this musical theme for quite some time. And what can we call this theme? Maybe the infatification of America theme, the infatification. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good idea. We'll call it that.

Now, those of you who know you're not. history from World War II. Yes, that is the Nazi theme from that 1930s, 1920s, 1930s of the horse vessel. Yeah, the Nazi party ended up using this. And there are times that our governments may not be exactly like Nazis, but they kind of rhyme in their behavior. And I bring your attention, and I thank Brad, Brad Bennington, for having gave me a link to this story here, what they're doing in New York City. Have you heard about what they're doing in New York City? Now, the reason this is so ironic is that I had that journalist on it from New York City that was putting out this book that's called Oregoners and talking about all the problems and the excrement show that the state of Oregon is engaged in. And he lives in Brooklyn.

He says, yeah, we've got some problems here. Now, I didn't know about this story when I talked to this guy. And I should have said, okay, you're worried about Oregon's craziness. I get this. But what the heck's going on in New York? This is what they are now doing if you are a motorist. It's going to be going into effect here in the next few days, of course, probably the first of the year. In New York State, in fact, they are calling this achieving the New York dream, Governor Kathy Hockel.

What are they doing? The new crackdown, a one mile per hour speed limit penalty. It goes into effect in just a few weeks. This is in the UK Star or the UK Sun that was reporting on this. I haven't seen much of the United States reporting on this. So in other words, one mile per hour over the speed limit and the cop can pull you over and give you ticket. And they're just going to say, in other words,

none of this kind of think you can go four or five. One mile per hour. Now, most of our speedometers, most of our speedometers, most of our speedometers aren't that accurate. In fact, I know that they're usually one or two miles per hour off in one way or the other. Now, my wife's car, as an example, is a 2006 facade. And it's really slow.

In other words, it says you're going much faster than you really are. You're off by about four miles per hour. You know, we figured this out after a while using a GPS speed indicator. Now, the PT, pretty close. But actually, the PT is only close. And actually, most cars are only close if your speedometer is right when the tires are new. So as the tires wear, then, of course, they'll start indicating that you're actually going faster than you really are because of the circumference. You know, that kind of thing.

But, yeah, one mile per hour. That's all they're going to do. And higher point penalties to lower license suspension thresholds. And this is Governor Kathy Hockel's achieving the New York Dream agenda. The New York dream, the New York dream being that everyone is a criminal. Everyone. All we have to do is watch you for a little bit. One mile per hour, there we go.

Buddy, there you go. and they're going to be increasing the points too. I'm sure that Governor Kotech will be looking at this and, wow, you know, I could sell this as achieving the Oregon dream. Yes, one mile per hour. Yeah, we can do this and increase the funds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Now, I do have a story which is almost like the polar opposite of the infasification.

And, you know, I can count on. one hand, the number of times I've ever agreed, that I have ever agreed with the mayor of talent. Talent Mayor Darby Ayers Flood the other day reporting this was on that K-O-B-I was watching it last night. The city of Talent is temporarily shutting off its license plate scanners. Yeah, they're doing this. And K-O-B-I reporting that various law enforcement agencies are using these scanners. They're using the flock cameras. The flock cameras, we've talked about this and interviewed people about this. And these smart cameras can be used as a public safety tool. Yes, everything. Every thing about the infasification of America is always hidden

behind this. We will keep you safe. You know, as long as we're able to database your comings and goings and, you know, we will keep you perfectly safe. Somehow criminals keep doing things, you know, around here in southern Oregon, despite the infacification. But anyway, back to the KOBI story. The technology is controversial, many raising privacy concerns. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said a flock deceived state and local and law enforcement customers about its sharing of data with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to crack down an immigration.

Oh, that's it! Oh! So I'm thinking that Talent Mayor Darby Ayers Flood wanted to do this because of the infasification. She didn't want the infasification of monitoring of cameras everywhere and databasesing your comings and going. Oh, it's only because it may be affecting illegal aliens. Is that it? Okay. So I agree with her, but not for the right reason, at least according to her.

I guess, but anyway, back to the story, the mayor says, while this technology has always been helpful, has already been helpful in supporting investigations in talent, it has also become controversial nationwide due to concerns about data retention, alleged misuse of information sharing, that's about the illegal alien catching, and the potential for surveillance to extend beyond its original intent. Okay, so I can partially agree with her, but you know how, you know, I almost never agree with talent mayor Darby Ayers Flood on most things political. But I can agree with you on this,

even though you're probably more concerned about illegal aliens in the Phoenix talent area that might be caught by the flock deal. So they're shutting off. They're shutting off the license plate scanners in talent, which I think means that if you are a diverse illegal alien, go ahead and drive all you want, and the license plate readers are not going to be sent back to the U.S. attorneys and to the ICE folks.

I think that's what that means, all right? And you won't be able to go over to that gun dealer, the FFL in Cave Junction, and buy 25 more guns and say that you're, you know, an American citizen. Just saying. So it's kind of a mixed bag, huh? 625. This is the Bill Myers Show. You're on KMED.

Driving a commercial truck in winter weather. Winter for all vehicles and coverage selections. Hi, I'm Charlene. owner of American Industrial Door, and I'm on 106.7, KMED. 628. Happy to have you join in, 7705, 633-770 KMED. Like I said, it's fascinating how many of the headlines this morning were all about the diversity is their strength thing.

Just astounds me, but maybe it shouldn't. So let's see, what else happened? Oh, okay. they had another of those non-meeting meetings yesterday at the Josephine County Commission. They ended up by doing their thing with, well, I shouldn't say they. It was Chris Barnett. Commissioner Chris Barnett was there. Once again, Commissioner Ron Smith did not show up.

And so the denial of quorum and the I'm going to stand on my principles and not choose because people are trying to lobby me on this, you know, that kind of thing that Commissioner Ron Smith. And by the way, it gives me no pleasure. It gives me no pleasure to pick on Commissioner Ron Smith, except that, in my opinion, his reasoning is just absolute total nonsense BS. And it's because he just doesn't want to make a tough decision on this one. That's my opinion.

That's the only way I looked at it. he was on NBC 5 last night. I didn't bother watching it because it's like, okay, I've learned everything I needed, I think, from that conversation. And by the way, this is not just saying I'm just in the bag or in the tank for Commissioner Chris Barnett. I'm just saying, make a decision, just do your job and choose who you would like to be the next county commission, a commissioner, rather. Chris chooses his. Go on the record. And then if you don't agree, if you can't come to an agreement on something, you know, if you're not able to figure this out, then turn it over to the other elected officials. But you're both county commissioners. You're the top dogs. You're

the people hired by the people to make tough decisions. And it just makes no sense to me. Now, interestingly enough, the Daily Courier was running a poll. In fact, they still are running a poll up there. And I'm a subscriber. And so they said, well, do you agree with Commissioner Ron Smith's stance on this? And I find this interesting that 88% of the people who voted, in other words, daily courier subscribers who voted in this poll, 88% approve of Commissioner Smith's stance.

Well, 12%, that was the side I voted on, did not. So we have a huge majority of daily courier subscribers. And I have no doubt those are rock-ribbed conservative GOP voters. Okay. So I'll tell you, there's nothing like having the Daily Courier readers loving your stance commissioner smith just just saying i well it could be good maybe it's maybe it's true all the all the gop voters ended up going in there yeah i agree with ron about that i'm sorry i i just can't go there i just can't go there may grab a quick call here too good morning hi

this is bill who's this martin josephine county hey how you doing what's up holly We're having fun down here. Yeah, the courier, I mean, those sorts of polls in the courier are so biased because the people who read the courier are, you know, are biased so far to the left. Well, I know. Boy, that's what I was, that's why I was teasing about it, Holly, because, you know, there's nothing like, you know, the judge, there is nothing that any commissioner has ever been able to get anything positive reported until you have Ron Smith saying, I don't want to choose. And then all of a sudden, oh, we like him. Well, this is such a ridiculous scenario, but what people need to understand is that when Andreas Fleck came in, his goal was to improve the fiscal situation of the county. And that's critically important, because ultimately the money for everything has to come from somewhere.

And when we run out of money, and we're getting close to that now. Yeah, I understand that the reserves are really low in Joe County right now, aren't they? Those are $4 million or something. So what has to happen is, you know, the money has to come from taxpayers. So what people need to realize is their wallets are on the line right now. So they're going to be handing the, you know, what Ron's goal to do is to hand all the department heads. The department heads, many of whom have been around for a while, get paid, you know, $150,000, $200,000 a year. You know, well, the thing is, though, now he can't hand it to the department heads, or are you talking about elected department heads who are,

elected officials. Right. Okay. There will be six, there will be six department heads who will be making this decision if it goes the way Ron wants to go. Okay, so why should the hire and help who just happen to be elected be better at doing this than Ron or Chris? I think it's, I don't think it's a good idea at all because basically you, those are the people who have the greatest need to keep their jobs. And what Andreas Bleck had tried to do was cut out some of the fat from local government because we simply can't afford it. I think it was a little, I think the attempt, though, was a little ham-handed. Would you agree with me on that? The attempt to that, the reform attempts were kind of ham-handed. I think that whole thing when they handed over the hiring and firing

authority was not a good thing. I don't think that was. Well, it's very difficult to handle personnel matters. Because in order to have a public meeting, you have to disclose something that you might not want to disclose. And I know I've handled a lot of personal matters in my time, and you don't want to do it in a public forum. So I understand why they did that. I think they did that. And I think wrong was keenly aware of it. Yeah, but I think, but I think they also, though, it gives the appearance of non-transparency. That adds fuel to the fire. You don't need any more fire like that in Joe County. You just don't. That's true. But the actual fact is that in business and in personal matters, there is rarely transparency.

Well, no, in business, that's one thing. But Josephine County is not a business. It's a government. So it operates under different rules. Well, I understand that. But you still have the legal obligation not to make everybody's personal matters private. Now, I would agree with you all that. Even in county government, that's the case.

Okay. It could be. How would you, you know, so I could see why they would do that. So how do you think this is going to play out, Holly? Well, I think Ron's going to try to run the clock out because he doesn't want to be involved. I mean, Ron is, you know, he's in a very tough spot. He is clinging to this job. The best job he's ever had in his life.

He just bought a new house. He's depending on this job. And there's a problem, though, depending on being a Josephine County Commissioner as your job, that is a very iffy prospect. You know, as far as employment prospects, you know, I'd like to be a lifetime commissioner. Good luck on that, right? Well, he's a cat on a hot tin roof. Got it.

All right. Thanks, Ollie. Appreciate that. Let me grab another quick call. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. This is Minor Dave.

Yeah, Dave. What's up? It's been raining all night. Yeah, I'll bet it has. And I'm assuming it's raining and, you know, up river from the Klamis River. So I'd be looking for sediment moving down the river. Oh, no, that sediment is going to be good sediment. It'll be restoring the salmon runs, all the clay moving down with all the rain.

This is a good thing. This is a wonderful thing, Minor Dave. Yeah, I don't think so. And I agree with you. Well, to talk Captain Bill about that next week, okay? Thanks, Dave. 635 at KMED. Do a quick home health check.

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CCB173547. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. Jackson County DA Patrick Green is claiming victory this after dozens of felons were released early from prison by the Oregon Department of Corrections after they purposefully misinterpreted in Oregon's Supreme Court decision. Those released are now being returned to jail. Green was at the forefront of challenging the state decision guided by Governor Tina Kotech and the Attorney General's office by taking the DOC to court among those released. Twelve were from Jackson County. They include four child rapists. All are now behind bars again.

Two people from Romania in the U.S. illegally are accused of stealing more than $160,000 in food benefits with stolen SNAP account information and card skimmers. Prosecutors say Alexandra Telescu and Aramis Manioli defrauded the SNAP system, purchasing food items in Oregon and selling them in other states. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden says President Trump didn't go far enough in rescheduling marijuana from his Schedule 1 to a less dangerous Schedule 3 drug. Widen once it legalized. Bill London, KMED. See, I wonder if the legalization would actually take congressional action, Senator, but we'd be wrong about that. 637 at the Bill Myers Show. All right, death and taxes and, well, you need insurance, right?

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to notice is that the green energy agenda although organ is very strong and still totally in on the stupidity economics and truth ultimately win out now one of the talk with steve gorham about about that Steve Gorham is executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America. He's the author of four books on energy, climate change, sustainable development. Boy, I have to say it with that kind of incipid tone. Over 100,000 copies in print, too. Steve's latest book is Green Breakdown, the coming Renewable Energy Failure. How you doing this morning, Steve?

Welcome back. Good to have you on. Hi, Bill. Great to join you. And I'm in Chicago. and we've had 10 inches of snow at the end of November. We had two days last weekend that were zero. And so I've got some friends saying,

boy, I hope we get out of fall fast here. You know, my question is how deeply is Illinois in on the green energy scam, too? You tell us? Yeah, we're in quite deeply on it as well. There's many of these states that are. But you know, something just came up about three years ago that nobody expected. And that's the artificial intelligence revolution. Chad GPT released their AI chatbot in November of 2022, and AI has exploded.

And artificial intelligence is now driving electric power all across the United States. And just a huge change. We have started 2024. We had 2,700 data centers in the United States. Now we have over 4,000 in less than two years of 15. percent increase. And these are being built to drive, to do artificial intelligence tasks. And so just a huge change where we had the country shutting down coal plants. Now we have coal plants that are being extended in many states past their deadlines. We have nuclear plants that are

being restarted. And we have over 200 gas plants under construction or in planning. So just a tremendous change from the net zero policies that we're all trying to do about three years ago. In fact, you were telling me yesterday that politically, net zero is starting to lose and lose big. Could you explain what your research is showing around the world? It's not just the United States, but political parties. Five major political parties now that have come out against net zero. I think you could say the Republicans under President Trump here in the U.S. are doing that. They haven't said that specifically, but the policies show.

Then across the world, we have Reform U.K., which has been polling for many months now as the leading party in the U.K. under Nigel Farage. They have coined the phrase net stupid zero. By the way, net zero is the idea that by 2050 we would get rid of all of our coal oil and gas and our carbon dioxide emitting sources and do wind solar and biofuels. Yeah, oddly enough, there are, ironically, the world is a wash and crude oil right now, which is why the price is relatively low by historical standards. In Germany, we have the alternative for Deutschland, and they have in their party, they want to tear down all the wind turbines in Germany. That's part of their party plank. They're polling number two in the polls right now. Now, that's interesting.

Why would you want to, now I can certainly understand not wanting to build them or keep them up, but why would you want to tear them down? because I would be one of those people that would say, hey, I'm flying with natural gas and the fossils and everything else and coal. I mean, nuclear, you name it. But why would they want to tear them down? Curious about that. Once they're up, you know, you would think they want to keep them. Though I've driven through North Germany,

and there's an awful lot of wind turbines. And I think the people kind of don't like them on their landscape. And then just within the last two months, we have two parties in Australia, the nationals and the liberals have both voted to, get rid of net zero. They say they still want to reduce emissions, but they say it's just too expensive. So these are big, big changes, and we're starting to see this spread across the world. What is happening in the state of Oregon, though, they seem to be putting their thumb on

the scale of reducing demand. We're going to elbow or we're going to twist the arm of Pacific power as an example. They want you to start doing more smart meter use and time of use is what they would like to get in. And that's still part of a net zero policy, isn't it really, when you see them do that? Get rid of the use of electricity. It's sort of a little like electric vehicles. When you get electric vehicles, you can't drive as far. But, you know, we've seen this in Europe already. Europe is the biggest continent that has gone for net zero. By the way, they have been in Germany and Denmark, the electricity prices are three times the United States price. Wow. And a little bit more than that for Oregon. But if you look at the usage of

electricity, since 2005, 20 years ago, the average person in France is using 16% less electricity. The average person in Germany using 19% less. And in England, the average person is using 33% less electricity than they did 20 years ago. Now, is this because they're that much more efficient or the cost has gone up so high that people are being forced to be extremely frugal. Yeah, the biggest factor is the price. The price has gone up very, very high. England, it's risen faster than even California, which has gone up more than 100% in 15 years.

The other thing in England, the, you know, a lot of the manufacturing is moving out of the country, and so that reduces the demand as well. But, you know, they're on the road to being a zero electricity society if you extend things out. Isn't that astounding when they, because here, they want you to have electricity on everything. They don't want you to do natural gas if you can or propane. We really want you on the

grid and we want you on electricity and we want your car on electricity too. But at the same time we replace all of these steady states of power with intermittent and chaotic. You know, the wind doesn't always blow. In fact, sometimes in the wintertime

we'll have these cold spells in which the wind doesn't blow for days at a time. No, that's true. Oregon's still pretty sensible, though. You have the national average, 24, was about 16.5 cents per kilowatt hour, the price. Oregon was below that at 14.6. And you're still getting, I think, 56% of your electricity from natural gas and about another 25% or 30% from hydro.

Yeah, except that they want to pull the hydro out. I mean, the gang greeners, they want the dams gone. You know that, Steve, right? Well, yeah, that's another problem. And, you know, it's not, I would worry about the floods. You start pulling these dams out, and then anybody near a river is now being put at risk. Oh, no, you have to have to understand that the gangrenees would like the floods, too. You know why?

Because then it's returning nature. It's returning the natural state. And that means the humans get killed, okay? You know, that's the natural state of being, I think, for the gang green world. I'm being a little sarcastic, only just a little bit, okay? Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting for people to realize how big this is. Let me give you an example. Please. Meta Facebook is claiming to build the biggest data center in the Western Hemisphere. This is in northeast Louisiana.

And the utility there is putting in three on-site gas power plants, three plants to power this thing. When it gets done in five years, it's expected to consume twice as much power as the city of New Orleans. That's how big some of these developments are. It's just astronomical. I'm talking with Steve Gorham once again. His latest book is Green Breakdown, The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. So you're saying that, in essence, the AI and the data center, the huge push for this, will kill the Green Deal? Is that what you're thinking?

Well, I think it will. As a matter of fact, when I present to groups, I have this one slide which shows a tidal wave about 70 or 80 feet tall images. of that, and I call that the artificial intelligence revolution. And then down at the bottom is this little tiny sailboat, and that is net zero. And I think the AI revolution is just going to wash away net zero. There's no way this is going to happen. I mean, my state of Illinois is the same way. They're trying to put in solar, and they're now running out of power because of all these data centers. You just can't do it with wind and solar. You need 24-hour, seven-day-a-week power. and not only that, wind and solar are scattered over wide areas,

and you have to build transmission out to all these places, very expensive and takes a very long time to do it. Yes, we're talking copper, steel, glass, all these things. It's not like all of a sudden huge cables just materialized. It has to be dug out of the ground, smelted, transported, formed into useful situations, useful materials, I guess. So here's the thing, though. Is this going to be the next attack, though, because I have issues with artificial intelligence. I think artificial intelligence could end up being the other, not the dot-com boom, but, you know, there were companies that went all in on doing fiber optic internet back at the late 1990s.

I forget which company was it, Cisco or other ones, but they all ended up going bankrupt, and there's been so much money put into this one. They still haven't figured out the way that you're going to invest all these trillions of dollars and actually make it profitable. Now, of course, maybe this is outside of your wheelhouse, but isn't that a possible or a probable outcome? Well, I think that is a possibility. A lot of people have talked about a bubble and a boom. I tend to think, you know, there's going to be some poolback. We have some firms that are just producing, they're borrowing huge amounts of money and trying to produce all these data centers. Yeah, huge amounts of capital going into this one.

And what I get concerned about is that, yep, it may kill net zero, but I also wonder if it ends up killing the investment markets ultimately, too, because where are the profits going to come from to pay that all back, right? Yeah, there's bound to be some pullback. The thing about this is, though, we have big established companies. We have Microsoft and Google and Amazon and META, and people like Microsoft have said that their demand for AI is doubling every six months, months, the actual market demand.

So, and those four firms and a couple more have invested $380 billion this year in AI, and that is, that's bigger than the gross domestic product of more than 100 nations on Earth. That's how big this thing is. That, in essence, has been the economy and the stock market this year, too, you know, ultimately. But you're right, there are a lot of issues, and one is they use a lot of electric power. And if these data centers aren't building their own power plants, then, the rates can go up for all the citizens nearby. They also use a lot of water.

And the environmentalists, of course, are really unhappy that this is probably causing greenhouse gas emissions to rise. Which brings us then to what Bernie was talking about. Senator Bernie Sanders coming out now. And they're actually discussing opposition or actually legislation to oppose the wholesale creation of data centers everywhere. Boy, this is – now, that's going to be the other side of the net zero. conversation, right? Well, we'll just stop the data centers, right? That kind of thing. I think we're going to have a big battle in your 2026 over this. Yeah, Bernie, this week came out against, he said we ought to halt AI data center construction. He says it's just

the wealthy folks, the 1% that are making all this money, the billionaires, and he wants to more. No, no, no, Steve, you have to say that differently. The billion is. The billion is. The billion is. The billion is. All right, there you go. Now, he follows a letter that came out last week that went to Congress, 230 environmental groups sent a letter to Congress calling for a halt to data center construction in the U.S. So the battle is joined. And by the way, there were a bunch of environmental groups here, including Earth U.S., Friends of Earth, U.S., Greenpeace USA, and the U.S. Climate Action Network. But there are also Democrat organizations that signed this memo, this letter. the Progressive Democrats of America, New York Progressive Action Network,

the Seattle Democratic Socialists to America, and now Senator Sanders has come out for this. So we may say a huge battle in 2026. If the Democrat Party decides they're going to post data centers, that would just be a huge, huge thing going on. That is fascinating to me, Steve Gorham, because you think about it how the Democrats, of course, were firmly implanted up the behind of...

of big tech, you know, for a long, long time. And also for donors, too. So is this all being flipped around just because of the current administration or is there something bigger in play here, you think? Well, I think I think it's the AI revolution. And you're right. All the big tech firms, Microsoft, for example, and Google and all, they've all said they want to be net zero emissions by 2030.

But a year ago, I think Microsoft admitted that their emissions were up 40% in the last five years. So they're really not getting close. And so they've kind of, they're building all these data centers all over and using all this electrical power. And yet they have these goals to be net zero. So it, you know, it just doesn't make sense. Steve Gorham, his latest book, Green Breakdown, The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. And the part that they can't fix no matter how they try to, and I'm talking about governments everywhere, Steve, they can't make batteries inexpensive and they can't make wind turbines and solar cells deliver power all the time. And these are things that take resources. They have their use in the grid, though. I'm not throwing all of that

stuff under the bus here. The part that I'm wondering is, why hasn't there been a bigger push on the nuclear side and especially distributed nuclear power, given that the technology is there now? Now, Oregon won't go for it because, you know, reasons, because that's the state of Oregon. But How do you see this? Well, there is a big push going on right now, and I actually had an article published talking about a possible resurgence of nuclear. First, we have the Trump administration that's pushing for this. Back in May, President Trump signed four executive orders on nuclear, and one of them

called for U.S. nuclear capacity to quadruple by 2050. Our nation gets 18 percent of its electricity right now from nuclear, and Trump wants to increase that by huge amounts. But that's great, though, but an executive order can be trounced out by the next person who is in there. It's not legislation. Yes. I kind of wish that there would be more legislation working on this because it's of a more permanent nature. Yeah.

Well, nuclear has some big problems, so it's very, very expensive. It costs maybe four or five times as much as gas to produce the plants. It can take more than a decade to put them in. But now we have new developments also called small modular reactors, SMRs, where companies are trying to make little reactors and factories be able to put them on trains or trucks and take them to the site. And that way, really get the cost down. And as a matter of fact, the current administration has awarded 10 contracts to SMR countries to build reactors. They want to get some of these built by next year, which would really be – it's probably unlikely.

That would be fascinating if it did, if they did. Wow. It really is a big push for nuclear. By the way, we have four nuclear plants that are being restarted, one in Iowa. one in Michigan, one in Pennsylvania, and then a couple that weren't constructed in South Carolina, that construction has been resumed. So nuclear is restarting. We'll see if they can get the cost down. They still need to do that.

Otherwise, they're going to have to be subsidized forever, which is not the best thing either. Yeah, I would agree. But I find it ironic that because I'm kind of in between and sort of iffy on the AI revolution, because I can see good coming out of this, and I can also see potentially a lot of bad there, too. But I do find it ironic that the huge push for this may single-handedly absolutely destroy the net zero gang-green agenda that has been out there for a long, long time. I don't think I ever envisioned this one. Did you see this one coming? Well, no, I don't think anybody did.

And, as a matter of fact, I have a bunch of quotes in my articles from utility owners, and our power usage was flat for two decades. all of a sudden that we've got this tremendous ramp up, and they'll say, how did we miss this? You know, we're really surprised by this. So they're scrambling to figure out how to get more power, and more often it is like PJM interconnect is saying, if you want a data center, you've got to build a power plant right on your site. You can't just take it from the grid, so that's what's going on. You know, one of my favorite jokes has been that we all need to, as individual Americans, have ourselves declared a data center.

So this way we have access to cheap power. Do you think that might be the way we have to go? That is a unique idea. Steve Gorham is with me, too. And anyway, let me talk with... I think this is Tom. Tom, you had a question or comment for Steve Gorham? Go ahead, please.

Yeah, Ashland is getting set to put a six-acre solar park on the entrance to the north end of Ashland. Hey, that's great, Tom. That's great, Tom. Yeah, certainly. And I was just wondering, from Steve, your point of view, what's the downside of solar panels as compared to, say, oil and so forth and so on, environmentally speaking, and so forth? I know the intermittent business is on, but what's your thoughts on solar parks? Well, I'm not a big fan of solar. I'm not necessarily against it.

I mean, if you're in Hawaii and there's no pipelines out there and the sun shines all the time, the wind blows all the time, solar and wind are good. It makes great sense. If you're in the south, but if you're in a place and you've got the atmospheric rivers coming through and it rains all day long, you're getting zero from the solar. So, you know, it's kind of a mix. They have their own environmental problems. For example, California right now, they're replacing a lot of these panels that are 20 years old that are on rooftops. And it costs $20 to $25 per solar panel to try and recycle it. and you only get $4 worth of useful materials out of it.

If you carry it to a landfill, you get one or $2, you know, the cost is $1 or $2 to put in the landfill. So nobody's going to recycle these things unless there's massive government subsidies. They're big waste things once they get done and you have to tear them down. So you're looking at the end-of-life problems, which have not really been discussed greatly, huh? Right. There's problems with every energy source. I just don't think we ought to be subsidizing them with the idea that we can stop the oceans from rising if we all put in solar. I mean, that's just, that's modern superstition.

Did it answer you? Did that answer your question there, Tom? Yeah, pretty much. I was kind of curious about besides the end-of-life chemicals and so forth coming out of that. And, you know, the construction of it and, you know, just the overhead and so forth. efficient they are. Well, they take huge amounts of land. If you put in, if you try and match solar to nuclear, for example, it takes a hundred times the land to produce the same average output. An example is the Ivimpah facility in California, in Mojave Desert. They're

shutting that down after only 10 years. It can't put out enough power. It cost over $2 billion to build. But it just doesn't match up again. And that one, for example, takes more than a hundred times the land to produce the same electricity as the Diablo nuclear plant, California. If it weren't for the fair man-made warming, I don't think people would consider these big solar or wind systems environmentally friendly. All right. Tom, I appreciate the call there. What I'm kind of curious about, Steve, is what is it or what level of renewable G on a grid can you have until it starts causing more problems.

it solves. You know, when it ends up being so unstable that you, that you don't have enough other alternative base load powers that can take over the load. Do you know, is there like a formula you can figure out that says, okay, once you get to be about 20%, you're in real trouble? What do you say? Well, there have been a number of studies that have done this, and I have them in my books as well. For example, they've looked at California, and as you add more and more wind and solar, you still have to maintain the existing power plants and keep them running, but you just run them at lower utilization. But they have to be back up for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

And then there is a stability issue. You're right. Now, when you have gas and coal and hydro, for that matter, you're powering a spinning turbine, which has a certain inertia. It has a mechanical inertia. Electricity has to be balanced between supply and demand. almost exactly throughout operation. Otherwise, the frequency starts changing or the voltage starts changing,

and the system can go down. In May, they had this problem in Spain. They went to over 60% wind and solar, and their entire system in the Iberian Peninsula went down. 60 million people went down, and that went down in less than a minute. The entire thing shut down. And part of the reason is you have no stability with wind and solar, once they shut down, they go instantaneously, and it's very hard to balance them.

So there are stability issues as well, as you say. I think it's a very important takeaway from this. And the beauty of our hydropower, and that's been able to save us to a certain extent, though, is that that inertia, the turbine, the generator is spinning. It's not like the water just vanishes all of a sudden like the sun can or the wind can, that sort of deal. and that makes it very important. This is why baseload power is such an importance. And now they're talking about the soaring rate of the potential for huge blackouts here in the Northwest

because of their renewable energy plan. Steve Gorham's latest book, once again, Green Breakdown, the Coming Renewable Energy Failure. And Steve, why don't you tell us the best ways for people to get in touch with you and also to read this book and find out more about everything you're doing? Yeah, Bill, thanks. Yeah, they can get Green Breakdown if they like to sign copy. They can order one for my website, Steve Gorham, G-O-R-E-H-A-M.com. By the way, these are fun books.

Not only do you get the science and economics, but they're color paperbacks. And they have about 150 color sidebars, which are real headlines today. And here's one of them in Green Breakdown. This is from Miami New Times a few years ago. It said, quote, global warming makes couples cheat. It says a dating website. So now you have an excuse. Honey, climate change made me do it.

Okay. Yeah, I don't think I would try that in a divorce case, all right? Your Honor, I'm sorry. I had to have her because global warming. Okay. Oh, boy. Well, the nonsense. Steve, I really appreciate it.

They're also on Amazon and e-books available as well. All right, very good. Steve, I appreciate the call. Thanks for joining, and let's hope that this dies a sooner death and later death, okay? Thanks so much. Be well. Thank you, Bill. This is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG Grants Pass.

It's the holiday alone.