PBD Podcast - Bjorn Lomborg On The Covid-19 and Climate Change Scare Tactic | Ep. 254 | Part 1

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

In this episode, Patrick Bet-David and Bjorn Lomborg will discuss: Why so many young people care about the climate AOC promoting 100 trillion environmental package Bjorn's controversial book Why people are climate change skeptics FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://minnect.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://valuetainment.com/academy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Text: PODCAST to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠310.340.1132⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get added to the distribution list --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support

I I become the number one. I love. I love. Two out of three with Patrick's ways. Yes, two out of three with Patrick's ways. We have Bjorn Lomburg. Yes, we have Bjorn Lomburg today. Let me properly introduce our guest.

He became internationally known for his best selling book and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. He's the former director of Danish government's environmental assessment institute, EAI in Copenhagen. Lumberg agrees that global warming is real and manmade and will have a serious impact. But enumerates about other disagreements with scientific consensus. In 2009, business insider claimed that Lumberg is one of the 10 most respected global warming experts. In 2009, business insider claimed that lumbering is one of the 10 most respected global warming experts. In 2004, he was listed as times 100 most influential people.

He's got a master's degree in political science and a PhD in political science, which is kind of wild. I want to ask about that as well. Having said that, it's great to have you on the podcast today. It's great to be here, Patrick. Thanks for coming out. Yes. Obviously, you were off camera. You were telling to be here, Patrick. Thanks for coming out. Yes. Obviously, you were off camera.

You were telling us your travel schedule, been all over the place. But if you don't mind before we get started, take in a minute or two and share with the audience a little bit about your background, how you went from who you were then to all of a sudden date us, statistic, climate change, global warming, and in who you are today.

Yes, and it's a weird story. And sorry, but fundamentally, I'm like I think most sort of young people I was worried about the environment. I was worried about a lot of things. I was a member of Greenpeace, not a rubber boat, but I'm worried enough had the backpack, the badge, the poster on my wall, and thought the world was coming

to an end. Seriously, literally. What age is this? So, early college, 1820. So I have that poster, I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's supposedly an Indian saying where it says, only when they caught the last fish and cut down the last tree, will they realize they can't eat gold.

Can you pull that on there real quick? Later on, of course, I realized that's actually, it's a made up quote from a movie in the 70s. Yes. Well, my post didn't look like that, but yes, it's the same quote. The fundamental point here is that I thought, like certainly most of my friends, the world was in a really bad place and getting worse and worse. Then I wrote a red, an interview with an American economist called Julian Simon in Wyatt magazine

back in 1998. And he said, pretty much everything you know about the environment is wrong. Things are in general getting better. And I was like, no, that's just crap. But he said one thing that really annoyed me because by then I was actually teaching statistics in political science. And I always told my students to go check the data and he said exactly that, go check the data.

As I figure, all right, that's a challenge. I'm going to prove him wrong. Of course he's wrong, but I will have fun. So I brought together some of my best students and you know, we bought his book and we're going to go through it and meticulously show how he's wrong, all kinds of places. Turns out that much of what he said was right. Yeah, if you think about it, it's kind of obvious. Most places in rich countries, the air has gotten much, much cleaner. And in London, we have good data back from 1585. And the London air got worse and worse and worse of the last 400 years, up to about 1890. And since 1890, it's gotten cleaner and cleaner and cleaner,

so that today, London air is cleaner than has ever been since medieval times. You need to know this. And we don't. We don't often think about this, that mostly partly because we're rich, partly because we decide to clean up. London air is better today than medieval times. Yeah, and this is true pretty much, probably not the same exact dates for Florida. But Florida air is much, much better in the US airs much better than it was four decades ago.

Because we've cleaned it up for a lot of different reasons, but mostly because we're rich and we can afford to do so. When you're poor, you'd wanna get rich. When you're rich, you actually wanna stop coughing. So this is not rocket science, but we don't know. And that's incredibly important, and it will become important as we talk about global warming, because fundamentally people think global warming, just like all the other threats, is the end of the world.

It's not. It's a slight impediment on the world getting better. So global warming means the world gets better, slightly slower. Now, that's a very different kind of worry than the world is going to end. Is there any statistics of what age bracket fears global warming the most? You know, is there a, you know, Gen Zs or Gen Ys or, you know, millennials or boomers or Gen Xs? Is there any statistics on who fears it the most? Gen Z is top of the list. But no, I'm asking,'s, is there any statistics on who fears it the most? Gen Z is top of the list.

But no, I'm asking, like, is there actually statistics? So, it used to be that young people were it more. So, global warming age gap, younger Americans most worried, 70% 18 to 34, 56% 55, and older, how about the ones in between? Are they confused? Like, what about the age, can you go a little higher? I'm just curious you know what this okay. There's 15 to 34 so less and less thing global warming will pose a serious threat in your lifetime Well, yeah, but that's because when you're old

You know what shows that people fear it less Yes, as they age then those like 55 and older, they don't even think about it, 29%. But the younger audience, 82%, understanding global warming issues, why is it that it's normally younger students, 18, 20, 22, that fear this the most? I'll give you my perspective real quick. I grew up in LA and he immigrated to LA. and I remember growing up with the smog and Los Angeles and we were born within three years of each other and you probably read about it

that the air in Los Angeles was horrible. The joke was I don't touch I don't I don't trust air I can't touch but the smog was so bad. You can see the pictures from Los Angeles through the 70s. They went to unleletted fuel and other things that happen with power plants. Santa Nofray went online, which is an old nuclear power plant in Southern California. And so I have a perspective in my own lifetime that I have seen L.A.'s air get much better. I don't look at this as, oh, screw the grandkids. I'm out of here in 40 years, so you know, I'm not worried about it. I don't look at it that way. I have perspective on Los Angeles,

which was a horribly filthy city, and now you take a look. Yeah, and again, there's my mask in this question because you'll hear stuff like, you know, Greta talk about in 12 years, we're all gonna be dead and how dare you, you know, an AOC gets up 12 years if we don't use this 30 trillion dollars. Why does this resonate with kids

more than it does to people who are older? I think in some sense, it's just because they live longer, they have more likelihood of experiencing the really bad impacts of climate change, but probably also because we're, when you're young, certainly I have that experience, you just hear all these scary stories and you think, oh you're young, certainly I have that experience.

You just hear all these scary stories and you think, oh my God, the world is gonna end. If you're a little older, you've heard a lot of other scary stories. I mean, if you think back to the first environment summit in the, in the UN in 1972 and Stockholm, the head of that environment conference told the world, we have just 10 years left in 1972. So, you know, we constantly hear this and there's always the next thing around that's gonna destroy us all.

And once you've heard a few of them, maybe you become a little more skeptical about the next one and you should. Look, there's a real problem. Since certainly it was a real problem in Los Angeles with the air pollution. But we fix these problems, and remember, we fix them by being smart. So, you know, the main thing that actually fixed the Los Angeles air pollution was the innovation of the catalytic converter. because most air pollution, and the Los Angeles cost by cars. It was basically that every car got its own little,

you know, cleaning facility. And unadded fuel, you know, they're talking about now by 2035, a certain percent of cars and they're sold in California have to be electric. Well, there was a time where they said, by a certain date, all cars have to be unletted fuel, but unletted fuel in the catalytic converter, you're right. Combined to make a huge change.

Unlettered fuel was a fantastic idea, but it didn't actually increase the air pollution, but it's very, very polluting. But it's not part of the air pollution. It sits on the ground and it infects everything you eat and the vegetables, that kind of thing. But yes, absolutely. So, you know, so you were saying, so the biggest difference, I just sent you,

if you should show the picture of LA before LA now, you said the biggest difference was catalytic converter. The catalytic converter. It's a thing they invented in 1974, and it basically takes out a lot of the pollution from the exhaust pipe. It cost a couple hundred dollars, so, you know, it's not free,

but it's not a big deal. And we put it on, we enforced it, and now the air is much, much cleaner. And this also tells you how we fix most problems. We don't fix problems by telling everyone, I'm sorry, could you imagine telling most Los Angeles, Los Angeles is that the word? Yeah, you got that thing. Telling, sorry, you can't drive. You have to walk, run or something. That's never going to work, right? But you can tell them, put on this catalytic converter, and then we fix much of the problem.

So instead of what we're also trying to do now today with global warming, telling everyone, I'm sorry, could you be a little poor, a little colder, a little warmer, a little more uncomfortable, eat a little less and have a little less of all the fun stuff. But then we'll try and fix global warming. That'll never work. You know yesterday, we have technology. Yesterday we had Charlie Kirk on. And one of the things we were talking about

is the conversation came about the Santa's and Trump. And I asked the question, I said, so if the Santa's goes against Trump, who win? He says, no, Trump's gonna win. I said, if you're the Santa's, do you go in? He says, absolutely. He says, no, Trump's gonna win. I said, if you're the Santa's do you go in? He says, absolutely. He says, because you have to go in to learn how to win the fight. He says, you know, Reagan didn't win the first time.

This person didn't win the first time. He kind of going through the process, right? He made a very good point. So the first time you write a book called the skeptical environmentalist, 2001. You coming out, you got some data you're confident. But now you're a bolsa, you got some data, you're confident. But now you're a bullseye, you're a target, right? And everybody wants to prove you wrong, which forces you

to go and get better at your arguments, to make your arguments stronger. What areas at first when you wrote your first book, were were some of the leaks where you're like, okay, these guys do have a good point. Let me go look at this a little bit further. Oh, Karen, think about this one here. Oh, no, I am right in this part. Cause I know the whole thing when you went back and forth, they wanted to say that your book was an opinion piece and then I don't know how many people wrote against two hundred sixty seven people appeal to say,

I can't believe you're doing this. And then eventually they let your book stay. You ended up essentially winning the fact that the book stayed. But what change from the first time you wrote that book were some areas you knew you had to do even more research in? So it's a difficult question because fundamentally I think I came in as a newbie. I wrote a lot of stuff that I think actually held up really well,

but there's a lot of stuff I didn't know very well. I think the big difference is that now I get a lot more of the backside of all those stories. I think most of the data that I told already back in 2001 was correct simply because I wasn't telling, I wasn't saying, hey, I found this. This was what the international organizations were telling us. I've never dispute global warming. I think the UN climate panel is the right ones to take that conversation. But what I actually did was read them.

When you read most of this stuff in the newspaper, like you just mentioned AOC telling us, we only have 12 years left. Look, this is the public sort of PR version of the story. What is actually the background is politicians ask the UN Climate Panel, the IPC, what will it take to stay at below 1.5 degrees centigrade, which is this made-up target? And it's basically incredibly difficult to do. So the UN came back and said, if you want to do this almost impossible task, you have to do almost impossible stuff. You

have to change your entire economy, the entire global setup in 12 years. That's how the 12 years ended up. It's basically saying, if you want to do something impossible, you've got to do in 12 years. Now, that's a technically true statement that the UN climate panel never says you should do this. They're simply saying if you want, you know, it's a little bit like saying what would it take to stop all traffic deaths, you know, about 40,000 people dying in traffic every year in the US? What would it take to stop all of it? Well, one suggestion would be to set the speed limit at three miles an hour. Nobody would die. But of course, there is some enforcement issues. And I think maybe

a lot of people would not feel particularly comfortable about that. But it's true to say, if you want to get rid of 40,000 people dying over year on the road, one solution could be to set the speed limit three miles an hour. But it's not actually recommending that. Nobody would want that. And it doesn't take into account. We have other things that we like as well, like being able to get to a family in time. Can I follow up on that? These days, I think that there's such a craving

from most people for just universal truths. Like, what is actually the truth? Don't get me a narrative. Don't get me your opinion. whether it's with COVID, whether it's with inflation, whether it's, you know, is, are we in recession? Are we not? Like, everyone wants to push their narrative. I think what would be helpful is, what are the resounding universal truths that everyone

can full on agree upon? Like, forget about your opinion, buddy. This is the truth of this matter when it comes to climate. Like you've been pretty clear that climate change is real. Man, some of it is man-made. What is people on the left, the right, up, down, what are the most universal basic truths that everyone agrees upon from there?

I'm gonna give you first the thing. Everyone agrees on then what? Most people agree on and then maybe we'll get it to be. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so everyone, pretty much everyone agrees. We're emitting CO2, this is main greenhouse gas, because we burn a lot of fossil fuel. CO2 wraps around the world, makes the world a little bit more

sort of holding back infrared radiation, so it actually heats up the world a little bit. That's what everybody agrees on. That's the basic sort of greenhouse effect or what we call global warming or maybe even climate change. So CO2 check. Not good. We're putting out CO2 and that causes the world to warm up. Copy that. It's also universally accepted that if you change the world's temperature, that will have a cost. Look at Miami and look at

Boston. They're both pretty good cities to live in. They've certainly been adapting, you know, lots of air conditioning in Miami, lots of heating in Boston. Both of these places would be off if the temperature gets warmer or if it gets colder because all of the infrastructure, all the buildings have been built to that particular temperature. If it gets warmer, if it gets colder because all of the infrastructure, all the buildings have been built to that particular temperature. If it gets warmer, Miami will have to put in more air conditioning and Boston will have to put in more air conditioning. Likewise, if it gets colder, you'll need to have more heating, both of them.

It's fundamentally costly when the weather or the climate tracks off from what it used to be. That's the main reason why global warming is a problem. Global warming is a problem because we track off from what our infrastructure is adjusted to everywhere on the planet. It's not the end of the world. A couple of degrees of temperature change

is not suddenly going to make Miami or anywhere else unlivable. It's just simply going to present somewhat of a problem. Now, everybody would agree with the first part of it, but now I'm tracking into what most climate economists try to focus on. So, climatologists, all the natural scientists, they look at what will happen when you put in more CO2

and how much does the temperature go up. But economists then try to say, what's the total impact of that? What are all the bats and's the total impact of that? What are all the bats and ups, the positives of that? Remember, as it gets warmer, we'll also be able to produce more food. We'll have more growth days, many places in the world, because CO2's also fertilized, so we'll also have more green stuff. We'll probably be able to produce more. Overall, when you add up all of this, it's a negative.

That's why it's a problem. But you need to add up all of it. Most economists will tell you that the impact of global warming over the century will be in the order of, say, 4% of GDP. So it means that by the end of the century, if we do nothing about climate, it'll feel like we're 4% less well off than we otherwise would have been. There's two almost like inflation for the world. It's like a couple one or two years of recession over the next 80 years, which

is why most economists say it's a problem. It's not the end of the world. This is not 100%. Remember also at the same time, and this is a little hard to hold in your head, but the UN estimate that will be much richer by the end of the century. Just like, you know, from 1900 to 2000, the world got incredibly much richer. The UN and the standard scenario estimate that each person in the planet will be 450% as rich as he or she is today. That's an astounding and wonderful achievement.

That means, you know, especially of the world's poor will be pulled out of poverty. Lots of great things from that. Because of global warming, we will not be as rich. Instead of being 450% as rich as we are today, it'll feel like we're only 434% as rich. Yes, that's a problem. No it's not the end of the world.

Things will be much better but slightly less much better. That's why I'm marking and most climate economists are arguing this is not the end of the world. Actually most other things that happen the 21st century will probably be much more important like for instance our pension problems, you know, most countries in the world, especially of rich world, I'm not saving enough for old time, for people when they get old. All the other problems, infrastructure, how do we deal with the fact that, you know, the world is aging, so we have ever fewer young people supporting evermore old people.

And there are lots of other challenges for the world. Those are probably going to be much bigger. I just, I just learned that term, by the way. I've heard of climate scientists. This is a new term, climate economist. What's the difference in those two people? So, the climate scientists are the ones who've run the computer models. They're all natural scientists. They'd be like physicist sort of thing. And they basically look at all the natural effects and try to estimate the natural variables to say if you put an extra ton of CO2, how much warmer does it get? That's what they ask. The climate economists will say, all right, so temperature goes up by this. We take that from the climate

economist, sorry, from the climate scientist. How much will that impact our economy? How much worse is that going gonna make you? Who's more important, are they both obviously equally important? You need both, but unfortunately, we've had very little conversation. So look, one of the climate economists, his name is William Northhouse,

he's a professor at Yale University. He's the only climate economist to get the Nobel Prize in 2018. So these are important people. But when you talk to most of the climate conversation, it's all natural science. And that's wrong because you need to actually say how much is this going to affect us. Take one thing that's incredibly important for Florida, sea level rise. Yeah.

Obviously, you know, as temperatures rise, water, just like everything else expands, and that means you get higher sea levels. That's also absolutely uncommon. I live in Miami. I see the sea level. The streets get flooded. It's insane. They've raised the roads significantly over the last few years.

So we absolutely will have a problem with sea level rise. Now, the question is, is this going to be unmanageable or not? And the simple simple answers, no, we know how to do that. And a good example is Holland. Holland basically has 40% of its area below sea level. And yet, most people live there fine. If you have ever flown into Amsterdam, they're one of the fewer reports in the world. I'm sure who on their website proudly point out that they are the

only major airport that was formerly a site of a naval battle. But, yeah, you fly in there, there's no, there's no water. You don't have to worry about this. And they fixed the whole thing. So the total cost of all the Holland has done over the last 50 years is about $10 billion. So yeah, it's not nothing, but it's not a big thing for rich country over 50 years. Here's a question for you. Like for me, the ability to sell something. You'll see a lot of gas lighting, you'll see a lot of exaggerating, you know, why use this to ask 40 amount of money that they ask? What was the amount they ask in Paris Accord or even AOC's proposal? I think AOC's was 30 trillion.

Paris Accord was around what, 100 trillion? The number is a big number. They're like ridiculously large numbers. And but you did a video and you said the fact that the improvement, you know, it would only improve the temperature by what? 0.3 degrees, I think that was the number that you set in an article with the Paris Accord, $100 trillion. If you're saying there's more efficient ways to fix this,

you'll see reports and they'll say, well, here's what we got. Capacity factor by Energy Source in 2020. You got nuclear options, geothermal, natural gas, hydropower, coal, wind, solar. What is the most efficient way for us to be able to catalytic convert a 200 bucks you were talking about, right? That's kind of what fixed L.A. Yes. What are some of the things we individually could do? And what are some of the things the government can do to help with this? So I'm going to disappoint you right off the bat and say, this is not a problem that individuals can fix.

People love to talk about, oh, you should take your car a little less. You should eat a little. So paper straws are not going to fix climate change? No. So these are all good things. And they're a lot of time. Please feel free to do them. And they're probably good for other things. But don, I can. Please feel free to do them, and they're probably good

for other things. But don't believe that this is a question about us, doing a little less than them, we've fixed it. The main issue here is that there is about, somewhere between four and six billion people out there, the non-rich people in this world, who want to be rich. That's China, India, Africa. And they want to get out of poverty and you can't blame them. They will want to do that by producing much more by becoming

rich, just like we are. And that will emit a lot more CO2, unless we have a different technology to take over. And that gets back to the whole point of the catalytic converter. Instead of making this about us feeling guilty right now, and we got to cut in the next three years, which will be fantastically costly lead to a lot of voters saying no. If you remember back in France in 2018, you had the yellow vest that were basically revolting because they said, I don't wanna pay more for my gas. And you will get these sorts of protests once people start seeing the incredible price hikes that those kinds of policies will lead to.

You will not be able to do it. And even if you do, you will only be able to do that for the rich countries, which is a small fraction of the total emissions. This is about finding a way that the world can both become richer and better off in so many other ways and also cut its emissions. That's not easy. So people, you know, the people can do nothing about it on a day-to-day basis.

So keep driving your gas cars, keep smoking cigarettes, matter of fact, double down on cigarettes, cigars, smoke out of them. But now you're slightly skewing my point. But yes, look, this is not predominantly about what each one of us do. Because the reason I asked this question is because you'll hear the argument. I'm obviously being a little bit sarcastic here.

But what I'm saying is, it's the blame is on the people. You know, here's who it is. We cause this. This is because of us. And it is catastrophic. If we don't fix it, you know, it's going to be the end of the world. And what about you and not a, okay, so. Yeah.

So I'll do something about it. And I think this is the main point. If you think this is the end of the world, and a lot of people have been led to believe that it's the end of the world. Certainly the media, sort of narrative. Yeah. A recent OECD survey showed that all the rich countries, about 60% of all people now believe that global warming is likely or very likely to lead to the extinction of mankind.

That's just, you know, that's crazy. That's not at all what the UN is telling us, and it's 4,000 pages long report. This is not the story. It's the media story. So if you think global warming is this meteor hurtling towards her, that's all you should be concerned about. That's the AOC point. If we have 12 years left, and I get why she thinks I get why Greta Tunberg thinks you've they've heard constantly

and over again on the media. This is the end of the world. If that's true, this should be our only concern. That's absolutely correct. But it's not that's not actually what global warming is. Global warming is a problem, not the end of the world. And it's one that we can fix very not the end of the world, and it's one that we can fix very poorly right now, but that we can fix fairly effectively over a longer term. And that is through innovation. So again, if we could come up with the equivalent of the catalytic converter for climate change, we could fix. Can you give us some more examples of catalytic converters? And I'm being serious, like what are some things we've done? Whether it's entrepreneurs, military, whether it's got whoever it is, what are some things we've done? So, if I had the full example, we'd already have solved it, and I'd be a very rich man.

So I'm going to give you examples, but they're not. Well, I want you to be rich. Yeah, I'll thank you. I want to be rich, and I want you to be rich. So, fourth generation nuclear. Basically, it's a new technology. So we have third generation right now. It promises to be incredibly safe and incredibly cheap. Now, remember, that was what they said about the other three generations. So, you know, I'm a little skeptical. But let's see, it, there's a lot of good arguments. It seems reasonable. If that's true, we could basically have incredibly cheap electricity in the future that would be entirely CO2 free. How cool would that

be? So that's one very obvious solution. Now remember, electricity is only about 20% of our emissions. We can make it more, but it's still not a solution for most of the emissions. But it would be a fantastic start. So that's one, Craig Ventur, the guy who cracked the human genome back in 2000, may remember him. He has some crazy ideas and some of them are fun crazy. So one of them is that he has this plan to take genetically modified algae, put them out on the ocean surface and let them grow.

There they will suck up sunlight and CO2 and create oil. We could basically grow our own Saudi Arabia's out on the ocean surface. Then we'd harvest them, we could keep our entire fossil fuel infrastructure and remember because the oil has just been grown out on the ocean surface, you know, half a year ago, it would be CO2 neutral. Now, the important point to remember is this does not work yet. It sort of works in a laboratory. Is this what you... Yes, that's what you're saying.

Generating a point of care. Exonclaim algae biofuel breakthrough. We're still not much closer to commercialized algae biofuels. But so the point here again is, I'm not advocating for this. I'm saying this is one of many many ideas those are the kinds of things that could power humanity and the rest of the 21st century So the point is not to come up and say, oh, this is the one that's going to be the winner There are tons of these ideas out there

We just need one of them to work So my point is we should be investing a lot more in those researchers because research is cheap. And imagine if we could come up with one. Imagine if this Craig Venter innovation actually could become true. Everyone would buy it, not just rich, well-meaning Americans, but also the Chinese, the Indians, and the Africans. So, the whole point here is to say, this is just like we did with the catalytic converter.

We're going to solve this with technology, not by moral exhortations, is that the word? You know, thou shall not. By the way, did you ever see that speech that was given that guy Constantine Kissen? It was sort of what they do, I think in Oxford University. And he's a comedian and he kind of basically went in on the, I sent this to you on Slack, where

I could kind of, you kind of went in on the, the woke climate change agenda, you familiar with this? I saw it. And he brilliantly just took that down one by one by one, it's on Slack. This guy, did you ever see this? Can we play that? It's seven minutes. I know an open-sorational argument. A small minority, I accept. Because one of the tenets of workness is, of course, that your feelings matter more than the truth. But I believe in you.

I believe there are those of you here who are work, who are open-sorational arguments. So let me make one. We are told that your generation cares more than any other about one issue in particular. international arguments, so let me make one. We are told that your generation cares more than any other about one issue in particular, and that issues climate change. We're told that many of you suffer from climate anxiety. You wish to save the planet. And for tonight and tonight only, I will join you. I will join you in worshiping at the feet of St. Gretto of climate change. Let us

all accept right here right now that we are living through a climate emergency and our stocks of polar bears are running extremely low. I join you in this view. I truly do. Now, what are we to do about this huge problem facing humanity? What can we in Britain do? We can only do one thing. You know why? This country is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions, which means that if Britain was to sink into the sea right now, it would make absolutely no difference to the issue of climate change.

You know why? Because the future of the climate is going to be decided in Asia and in Latin America by poor people who couldn't give a shit about saving the planet. And that I don't know if we want to continue watching the video. It goes to your point where you talked about China, India, and Africa and he added Latin America. They are concerned of poverty. That's their main concern. So we have the luxury here in the United States or in the EU to things are so good.

We forget how good we have it here. That we'll move on to other issues that are so magnified beyond our daily living that we are going to St. Greta of climate change, right? Whereas people struggling to put food on the table in poor countries or countries that have famines or countries where wealth inequality is completely exacerbated, their day-to-day living concerns

are not the global climate. And that's kind of what you were saying initially, right? Yeah, and look, we got to realize that we're not going to fix climate change. Again, his point is absolutely right. If all of the rich countries were to vanish tomorrow or basically stop emitting CO2, just remember how terrible this would be. You would not be able to move. You'd not be able to keep cool down here in Miami or warm and Boston. Half of all food would not be available. There'd be a lot of terrible consequences. But even if you did this, the net impact would be a reduction of about one degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

We would be able to measure it, but not very much, and certainly not before mid-century. It would have no impact. So we have no sense of how little we matter. What really matters is to convince all the people who you rightly point out, have more important priorities, like feeding their kids and making sure they don't die from easily-carabbal infectious diseases and basically pull people out of poverty. We are not going to convince most of the world to do this by being poor. We're only going to convince most of the world to do this by being

poor. We're only going to convince people to do this if it actually makes them at least as rich and preferably even richer. Who makes the money, Tom, with, you know, follow the money concept? Who makes the money? Who wants this? Like who wants this hundred trillion dollar or thirty trillion? who's going to benefit the most if AOC, Paris Accord, if they're successful, who gets this money? Okay, I mean, need you to help me here. I have heard and read more than once that both AOC and Coffey know that these immense quantities of money and the things they're gonna be thrown at

is really a wealth distribution. It's really a tax and it's a wealth distribution. That the ultimate differences that are in there are well known. And when I look at it, I say to myself, okay, Pat, where's the money going? And I've seen, and I haven't done this exhaustively, and this is where I need to back up.

I see traditional energy companies getting billions of dollars in grants to go study, well, algae biofuel, which seems on the surface to be a very interesting and good thing. But I kind of see a lot of that happening, but what I don't see is, hey, you know what? One half of China is delivering in poverty. We cannot even fathom because we don't see it. The visuals are suppressed. And they want electricity, a washer, dryer, and a car. And when you multiply that times billions

of people, it's not 1%. It's 5, 6, 7%, correct? That's really what we're talking about. Is the modernization and mechanization of the large poor economies results in tremendous amounts of CO2, which is also the argument for Gen3, Gen4 nuclear and electric cars that are discharged by the cleaner, more efficient nuclear, so that you get out in front of the creation. But where do you use it? Because this is what I've seen with the money. The money's going in grants.

The money's going to think tanks. It actually doesn't end up on the table to help make lives better on a lower CO2 basis in Uganda. So it absolutely doesn't go to Uganda, but I would actually argue that the grants are the kind of things that I'm also arguing for. That's the research, but that's a tiny fraction of where the money goes. The vast majority simply goes to buy stuff that we already know. And your research you're talking about, like the consensus groups, like the one in Australia.

No, I'm talking about that. We should absolutely be researching the fourth generation nuclear power plants or the next generation biofuels, those kinds of things, because that's really, really cheap. That's basically buying researchers. They cost nothing. What we spend most of our money on is subsidizing existing solar panels,

existing wind turbines, existing technology that we know is ineffective, but we just put up more of it. So back in 2009 when we had one of these endless climate summits in Copenhagen, we have the world's biggest wind farm produce of Vestas you may know. And so when everybody in the world descended, we were gonna save the planet back then. And on all metro stations, Vestas had put up posters and advertising everywhere with said, make a good climate deal.

Now, they're probably nice people and they want to do that, but it's also very clear that they would make a ton of money from such a good agreement, right? Because that agreement would be- Because they're going to go build wind farms out of their product. It basically says use a lot of Vestus products. So follow the money as you- There's going to be a- well, it's not surprising that there's a lot of money when you distribute

100 trillion dollars. A lot of people are gonna get rich. But I think also politicians love this, not predominantly because they, it goes to any particular place, but because they get to distribute the money, and because politicians live off of producing fear, if you will, they get to say,

the world is ending, but if you vote for me, I can make it stop, kind of thing. And that's an incredibly powerful metaphor. I want to show you this. If you can go up to the vitamin article that was written about new vaccines analysis that just came up of, you have the link. If you just go to vitamin.com, it'll come up. Just go to vitamin.com, it's on the home.

Rob, just go to vitamin.com, It'll come up. Go to vitamin. There you go. It's on the top right. Story right there. To your right. Perfect. Okay. So if you look at this, so new vaccine analysis reveals 300,000 excess US deaths, 147 billion orders and damages. We are living in one of the most revealing years of our lifetime, particularly when it comes on the glorious life savings COVID-19 vaccine, but just how life saving is it? Or was it? Time reveals all as research continuously points

to the vaccines and effectiveness, especially how it was initially sold to Americans, recent data keeps exposing its fallacies and fatality, according to researchers behind a new analysis by human projects, a wing of Portugal-based research from finance, technologies, and the US COVID-19 vaccines injured 26.6 million people, disabled 1.36 million people, and cost 300,000 excess deaths. The economic cost of damage is resulted in 147 billion dollars in 2022 alone.

Researchers behind vaccine damage projects said they ought to estimate the human costs, including that's caused or hasten by the vaccines, as well as the impact of the overall economy of each aspect of the vaccine damage. So if you go lower, this is from Edward Dowd, we had him on a couple of months ago. A couple months ago, a doubt. So he shows the numbers at the top estimated human cost, estimated economic cost, injuries, 89.9 billion, disabilities, 52.2 billion, excess death, 5.6 billion, but go all the way to the bottom, all the way to the bottom,

all the way to the bottom, all the way to the right there, okay, right there on that tweet right there. Pfizer Moderna 2020 to combines COVID-19 vaccine revenue in the US of 11.5 billion dollars. So for every one dollar they made, it cost a US economy, 13 dollars. Quite the negative social, social ROI largest crime scene in history

multiply this across the globe numbers. Now, you have to know that this research is coming from this organization. You have to go test the research. You have to go do your own, do diligence on this to see where it's at, but Ed Doud is also a data guy. He's done very well for himself and he went from being a financial guy

to wanting to study all the statistics, wrote a book about it and boom. Everybody wants to talk about it and read about it. But here's the question. I asked this because we went down this rabbit hole with COVID and we thought, oh my God, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be great.

A New York Post story came up that said, with the expert COVID view blown up, green terror must be next. Okay, this just came up a month ago. I'm sure you've seen the story. It is necessary to consider with the arguments of courageous skeptics like Bjorn Lomburg and others who have long documented the disconnects

from reality in the climate change discourse. Despite the alarm predictions of climate catastrophes, many of these forecasts have been consistently off the mark. For example, at the 2021 Glasgow UN Climate Summit, John Kerry claimed we have now only nine years left to stop global warming. That's pathetic to even say something like that. This followed Prince, now King, Charles 2019 claimed

that we had only 18 months left, and AOC claimed the same year that we had only 12 years left, at least she's more optimistic. These predictions conflict with the 2004 prediction, with the British Greens that climate change would destroy all human civilization by 2020. Thank God we're still around. Additionally, the climate refugees prediction has been repeatedly overblown in 2005 the United Nations Environment Program forecasted that 50 million climate refugees would be created by 2010, but this massive migration flow failed to materialize. The proposed solutions, such as banning gas stoves,

mandating Teslas, and eating meal warms are nonsensical and catered to the emotions of rich progressives rather than addressing the actual risk of climate change. So this is the part where the average person is sitting there who doesn't have all day all night, doesn't get paid to do research, they have a family, they have a wife,

they have kids, they have a husband, they have a job, they have responsibilities, they have things they wanna do, they wanna take care of their health, they wanna increase their financial situation in a better place, but they're trying to reason and say, okay, Mr. Expert, Mrs. Expert, okay, government, you're here to help us.

Every time you do, I'm a little bit worried and paranoid. Why was it that COVID that was supposed to be so beneficial for us for us to go do all this up with vaccines? Now, everybody's turning around and not looking good, especially the experts. If that's the case, you asked for all this money.

Why should we trust you with climate change? Maybe you're using the same method to get money out of us and use fear tactics to get us to fall for this crap. Do you see the credibility why the same people that don't trust the COVID argument, now we're having a hard time saying, is this the next thing? Oh, absolutely.

So Patrick, again, I'm the kind of guy that will read the UN Climate Panel report and actually mostly believe that the climate scientists are doing good work. But some of their policy recommendations are not very good. I would probably do the same with the COVID. I'm not, I should just say I'm not a COVID expert, whatsoever, but I know a lot of these people.

You know, fundamentally, I probably don't, I would tend to not agree with the whole idea that vaccines were a terrible sort of scam. But it was very clear that we were being told in the COVID conversation that this is going to be the end of mankind we need to do drastic things. And one of the drastic things we did, which a lot of people were already skeptical about when we did them, was to close drastic things. And one of the drastic things we did, which a lot of people were really skeptical about when we did them, was to close our schools. We now know that that was a terribly bad idea in so many different ways. So the World Bank has shown that it basically cost a lot of kids, you know, a year or more of their education around the world. And this makes kids everywhere poor. The World Bank estimate,

it will cost the world about $1.4 trillion per year starting in 2040. Because these kids will now be out in the employment market, and they will be less productive because they just lost a year of schooling around the world. This is terrible. And we knew back then what that tells you is we need to have a less biased conversation. We need to have, and then a conversation where it's allowed to say, wait a minute, is that a good idea? And that was not allowed because we're so panicked in the COVID conversation. And likewise, we seem to be so panicked in the climate conversation that we often don't ask the same question. So I absolutely agree with you.

We need to ask these questions, and I think a lot of experts seem to just jump on this one solution. Now the solution, no matter what the problem is, the solution is always solar panels and wind turbines, no matter what you ask. And that's probably not correct. It's a little part of the solution,

but it's not a very large part of it. Can I channel something you said respectfully? You just said, let's have a less ado on, on respect. Oh, damn. Well, with an arms reach of you, I'll do it respectfully. You say, let's have a less biased, you know, discussion. How do you do that when so many of these scientific things inevitably become political and political has policy and policy issues. We got two sides of the aisle, regardless of the country you're in. Because in politics, I think we can agree, boogie men get created. Each side creates a boogie man. And then they can control the outcome, which leads to policies and

benefactors. In the case of COVID, COVID was a boogie man. The control was masking and civic controls. Policies got put in place for education. The benefactor now we turn out, billions and billions of dollars went to pharmaceutical companies and others. That's always where it is. How do you have a less biased discussion on this?

This is my question for you and my challenge to you, because you yourself have twice been part of a good, not good nature, but good logical attempts to create like the Copenhagen consensus, the Australian consensus, and both of those failed. How do we have a less biased conversation on this? I should just say Copenhagen consensus hasn't actually failed yet, at least. No, no, no, no, I'll say, okay, I'll get back. I'll get back. They didn't come to consensus.

There was an awful lot of shouting. Oh, God, yes. So anyway, you're absolutely right. Maybe a little... Polyannic? Yeah, well, or a naive or hopeful. I tend to believe that when you work with people who disagree with you a lot, it's worthwhile to be polite and it's worthwhile to try to sort of engage them

in polite conversation because it's worthwhile to try to sort of engage them in polite conversation because it also makes all the people who listen in much more likely to say, oh, maybe he has an argument. And so I agree with you that it is hard to get people, especially sort of in the very religious environmental movement to get them to move. But I think, and that's back to you, Patrick, your point of saying, most people have kids to pick up from school.

They have other and more important things to do. And so in some sense, it's about convincing them that there is a problem, for instance, with climate change. But it's not as big as it's been promoted. It's not the end of the world, it's a problem. And many of the solutions are actually quite expensive and will deliver quite little. And having that conversation and having it respectfully,

I think, can help make it more likely that many people are gonna say, all right, I actually, I think that makes some sense. Maybe we should start looking more for where can we get the biggest bang for our buck, what can we actually do? And that of course goes back to the whole idea of saying, this is all about research. This is about making sure that we find these innovations that will make the world able

to do this at an affordable cost. Right. Because you go back to Al Gore, he created the Boogeyman and convenient truth, and you will jump to Pat in less than 10 seconds here. But we just read here that the Great Barrier Reef, the pictures he showed was a natural life cycle happening on one side, and there's actually a monstrous bloom simultaneously having on the other side.

And now the Great Barrier Reef is actually bigger. So what, you know, Gore would be accused of, not accused of, but proven rather selective imagery and editing in building that. And then the polar bears have come back and everything. So people go, Oh, well, you said this about COVID, you said this about inconvenient truth and you were wrong and you were wrong. Yeah, he won an Oscar for that.

Correct. And now we look back in 2006, one in Oscar for that. Well, let's just say no opinion. We can factually say not the best scientific indicator. Right. But the point is, but to you, you said, we understand that I stopped watching the Oscars a long time ago, but I mean, this year, the movie that won, or the, anyways,

I don't even wanna get into it, it's very weird what things they do there. But, you know, to the average person, being an Oscar award-winning documentary means you kinda know what you're talking about. You know, the whole film created media, credit, collective rating, rotten tomatoes was 51%, and 61% for meta-critic.

If you can go to the article, you would just show in a minute prior to this, Rob, what you had on, you had an right there. It says don't forget the helpless critters, greens, love to hype up, remember to vanish in polar bear, Keystone is alga, there's moral panic masterpiece

and in communion true turns out their numbers are up from two and a half to five times since the 60s, the allegedly dying coral of the Great Barrier Reef now holds more than more coral than any time since record keeping began. This is where they lose credibility this. And they should because they're not telling us the full story. Now remember,

again, the polar bears, and I've been pointing this out for quite a while, we have more polar bears than we've had since the 1960s. We have much more, and this is mostly not anything to do with climate change, but because we stopped shooting polar bears. We actually enacted a global treaty back in 1976, where we dramatically reduced the number of polar bears we shoot, which has led happily to the fact that we now have many, many more polar bears. And again, one of the points I try to emphasize is if you actually cared about polar bears and if you want it to protect them even more, shouldn't we be a little concerned about the fact that we, this year and every year, we shoot about 700 polar bears out of the 26,500 polar bears that are.

If you want to do something to help polar bears instead of not driving tomorrow, maybe you should enact not shooting 700 polar bears. Again, this is not rocket science. And if we can stop having this very, very polarized conversation, we can actually get somewhere with, you know, smart, simple policies. It's interesting here what you're talking about. The agreement on the conservation of polar bears came into effect in May 26th of 1974 in an effort to protect the species through a coordinated approach by the five polar bear range states, Soviet, what is it? Russia, Norway, Greenland, Denmark,

and US and Canada. 700 a year, 26,000. And now it's what? No, sorry, we used to shoot about 15, 14, 1500, and then it went down to 700. And remember, 700 is mostly in Canada because it's in with that allowed to catch them. So it's both caught by you know it. It's also sold as a trophy hunting and a way to bring in money to the local community.