The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Hugh Ross & Bret Weinstein | 5/15/24

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Glenn joins Pat and Stu in audio to discuss an absurd study from the University of Colorado that claimed social distancing and lockdowns saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross joins to discuss what happens when Earth's magnetic poles shift. Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein joins to explain how a solar flare could destroy Earth's power grid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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no amount on minimum, and no free mensuel. You're made for negotiate, and the TD is there for you aid. Welcome to the podcast, quite an adventure today. Glenn joins us as well

as Pat Gray and myself, and we were talking about all sorts of different things, including the fact that Joe Biden kind of proposed a debate out of nowhere seemingly trying to dissolve the commission on presidential debates, which by the end of the show, he succeeded in. Both, we have now two debates. We'll give you the details as we go through this. Also, we talked about how our society might be wiped off the planet due to solar flares. So it was really, we hit the entire spectrum. Today, it's all coming up on the podcast.

It was a sad day. It really was when the little McDonald's down the street lost their best burger flipper. I mean, it was a real tragedy, but young Braden, he was moving up in the world. He ditched his wagon to a distant star and would ride his way onto fame and fortune. No burger flipping for me anymore, said Braden, shaking the dust off the friolator grease from his shoes as he ambled to the parking lot towards his bicycle. From now on, I'm going to be a real estate agent. Now, if that story kind of terrifies you because you're thinking about buying or selling a house and you don't want to end up with Braden, I've got good news.

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I trust.com. That's real estate agents. itrust.com. Now, back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. I want to say hello to my good friends, Pat Gray and Stubergear, who for some reason have been with me now for almost 30 years. No one can explain it. No explanation.

I know. It's really, science is looking into it, but I don't know if we'll ever find the answer to it. We've got a couple of, we got a couple of things going on. By the way, the reason why they're with me today is I had eye surgery, and still I'm not really able to, the way everything's a little fuzzy. So, you know, I usually get the stories wrong and the name's wrong, but for a couple more days, probably it would be very bad idea just to fly solo. Anyway, there's a couple of things I want to talk about today.

one, we have a couple of experts on, I think next hour, Stu, correct me if I'm wrong, I've been really concerned about the magnetic field of Earth and the solar flares. Yesterday afternoon, we had one of the biggest solar flares happen again. It was like an, I don't remember, X5, which is a severe solar flare. It wasn't aimed at the earth, and so we, you know, we're not going to be affected by that, but we're at the peak of solar activity. Our magnetic field, north and south poles are moving at the rate of, I think, 40 miles a year, which is extraordinary.

And there's a lot of things going on, and we're going to try to figure out what we should worry about and what we shouldn't worry about. That's coming up, I think, next hour. Also, I want to get into the Trump trial. It looks like it's really falling apart. We'll get into that. But I was listening to Pat this morning as I was getting ready for the program. And Pat was talking about this new study from, I don't know, University of Colorado and I think UCLA, Pat, right?

And Pat, you have a show of your own? I do. Now, when does that occur? Where would I find something like that? It happens immediately before this show live. 6 to 8 Central, so at 7 to 9 Eastern. Or anytime in anywhere you get your performance. podcast. Wow, that's almost like a promo. Almost.

Might have to charge you for that. No, it wasn't a promo, but it was almost like one. Oh, okay, okay. I'll almost charge you that. But they say social distancing and a few other measures, like lockdowns and school closures, that saved 800,000 lives. Now, may I, you believe that? Wow. May I just say, if we could have, if we could have saved 800,000 lives by the lockdowns and the distancing. Imagine if Obama were president and we could save 800,000 jobs at the same time. Oh, the old created or saved thing from Barack Obama's day. So 800,000 lives created or saved by social business?

Well, if you're going to put created, I think it's 800 million at that point because, yes, yes, 800 million people were either created or saved. during the social distancing. Isn't it crazy we haven't had? Well, I don't think we have. I've never heard about it. We didn't have a baby boom, did we? We didn't have a COVID baby boom. Not that I know of.

Isn't that bizarre? You're locked in your house for a year, and you're like, no, not interesting. No, what can I binge on Netflix? That's what we were worried about. It's exactly right. We were in the Tiger King period. to know it was not firing people up. That is amazing.

By the way, I don't know how, just knowing the physics of how life is created, I don't know that social distancing is necessarily the thing that would bring people. Really? I don't know. Like, it seems like the farther you are apart, the more difficult it is. You had a lot of people who were, you know, living together and married and everything else. And they were, you know, I understand after two years, you're like, mm-mm.

Yeah, right at the beginning? Yeah. Right at the beginning, we should have had a boom. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. I do remember people predicting that, but I don't remember seeing the research of how that ever happened. Yeah, that ever turned out. I mean, obviously, all the dating kind of went away for a while. So you lost a lot of those just out of wedlock whimsical babies that may have come. Okay. I was going to say, I don't know if you know this. Dating doesn't cause pregnancy. It does lead to the thing that does, Glenn. Yes, it does. Yes. Yes, it does. Often. Yeah. So, but I mean, it's a if you're not, you're not finding a new partner. if you happen to be alone. I mean, certainly that could be a little bit of a factor.

But generally speaking, the baby boom comes from established couples. Yes, yes, yes. The other thing is that, you know, they said that the measures they took before the vaccine are what saved all these lives. And then the vaccine came in and saved more lives. No, it didn't. Did it? Yeah, it didn't. People still died.

Everybody got it anyway. We were told that if you got the vaccine, you weren't going to get COVID, and that turned out to be a complete and total lie. And people got it anyway. So I don't know that any of the measures they took actually. Let him have it, Stu. Let him have it. Go ahead.

I know Stu's on the office side of this. No, I'm just going to tell you no COVID baby boom. No widespread baby boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, many countries experience a significant decline in birth rates. How is that possible? Again, that's the distancing. We have a few explanations if you'd like to hear them. Yes, I do.

Okay. Economic uncertainty was one of them. People not wanting to have more kids because they were worried that the economy was going to fall apart. Maybe understandable. Health concerns. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Have we suddenly, you're telling me, with all the logic that is happening in the world today,

where everybody is just dumb as a rock, you're telling me, they were like, I don't know, financially, when people came back from World War II and the whole world was destroyed and unemployment was through the roof because everybody, nobody had a job because all the men that returned,

they just were, they just didn't think about it. The people who built America were just like, you know, we're going to have a baby, I don't really care. I don't know. It's a totally, different thing though, right? Like you, you had a long period of downturn and devastation that

seemed like of big victory, right? Like, you know, it's a different vibe than we were relatively, you know, prosperous and all the sudden everything just evaporated overnight and it was a short period of time, right? Like it was, you know, I mean, how long did that really last? It was six months. Can I tell you what I really think this is? All these people are like, I don't want to bring a child into a world like this. I just can't imagine with all of the things going on, I can bring a child into a world like this with global warming and all of these things with conservatives. I can't do it. With Trump as president, how could we bring more babies into this world? Exactly right. There's some of that. They talk about also social restrictions, health concerns, delayed marriages and relationships and access to family planning services. Oh, that's an important one right there. If you can go to Planned Parenthood, then they can prevent you from having children. That much is true.

That's true. Yeah, you know, we want to have a baby. We went to Planned Parenthood, and they cut the baby out of her for some reason. We were just going for help. By the way, United States birth rate declined by about 4% in 2020. Wow. Which is incredible. Also declines in France, Italy, Spain, and some Asian countries in countries.

including Japan and South Korea, which already had low birth rates saw further declines. The world will weep when the Western world falls. The world will, they have no idea what the Judeo-Christian Western world has done for humanity. And when it's gone, they will weep. They're going to be sorry. They're going to be sorry. And right now, you know, you're talking about rates of reproducing.

We're below reproducing. replacement right now. Are we significant? Did we just hit another milestone? We're significantly behind now. Childbearing women are having 1.6 children per family. Man, I hope you're born with it. We're half a percentage point under it.

When you have that point six baby, I hope it's the head and the arms. I know. It'd be horrible. And I hope they're all attached. You know, you at least get the full. Could we get the 1.6 and take the 0.6 from one person and the point six from another and sew them together? Because they'd be super people then. I don't know if they tried that, but they should.

They should. Because then you'd have 1.2 as an individual, which would be great. All right. Let me take a quick break here. Tell you about our sponsor this F hour, which is Tunnel to Towers. Tunnel to Towers is this amazing charity. 95 cents of every dollar that goes to, you know, from you, goes directly to the, the Patriots that we have either lost or who have been injured. And when I say patriots, I mean our firefighters, our police officers, nobody really seems to care about anymore.

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Tunnel to towers is T2T, T2T, T the number two T dot org. Donate now T2T.org. 10 seconds, station ID. Okay. I'm sorry to play such a fool here, but I haven't not been watching TV or anything because I can't. And honestly, I just, I can't listen to it because it's driving me out of my mind. Can you guys tell me what's happening with the Trump trial now? Well, he's been a very bad boy, and I have him in front of a court to try to see how bad he's been. Michael Cohen was testifying yesterday, and he continues, I believe, today. They're trying to basically show that he's not a credible person, highlighting all of the things he said about Donald Trump in the past, which really has run the gamut of every possible opinion you could have on Donald Trump,

from the greatest man of all time who should be king of the universe for eternity all the way down to he's the worst person of all time and should be taken out back that's kind of these this the the michael cohen approach whatever benefits michael cohen at the time it's important to note that what benefits him at the time right now is to be very calm and balanced and give you know very respectful testimony in front of the court of course every major media you know institution is just just lapping this up as if he is a credible witness when really there couldn't be one that is less credible. Was there a tape that came out yesterday? Well, it's that secret tape where it's not new. It's not new. Yeah. And we know what's in it.

And it's never been very incriminating in my mind. I don't I don't think it proves the defense of the prosecutor's statements at all. It doesn't seem to back up what they're trying to prove about Trump. You know what's amazing is this is this is how. rig this thing is and correct me if I'm wrong but the judge I believe denied the former federal election commission chairman to testify to show that this was not a campaign expense right that's true they wanted they wanted an expert witness to come in and say this is not a campaign finance violation someone who's an expert in that field they denied that as a potential witness now

it's but he wasn't really an expert He was just a chairman. Right, right. Right. Okay. All right. Now, it's interesting because they, they haven't actually said that it's a campaign finance violation.

To remind people who may have been bored out of their mind about this, they basically have to tie what they say is a crime to another crime to get over the hump of making it a felony, number one, and number two, getting over the statute of limitations. So they have to say crime A, which is this record. violation is tied to crime B, but they won't tell us what crime B is. They're insinuating has something to do with campaign finance, but of course they haven't actually said that. So it's almost, you can't defend yourself against a claim that hasn't actually been brought. This is so Declaration of Independence, isn't it? I mean, this is just like everything that's in

the Declaration of Independence that the King was doing. You're like, I think they're doing that to Donald Trump. How do you defend yourself about something that? you don't even know what the crime is. Yeah. Well, it's impossible and that's the point, right? Right. So that's what they want. So the jurors, what do you think they're thinking?

Hopefully there's somebody there that's just not a New Yorker. I hate the guy. Yeah. Which is what Michael Cohen is all about. We do have some of the highlights from his testimony, if you can call it that. Some of what he said yesterday. Cut one. They say, Mr. Trump's pit bull, that I am his, I'm his right-hand man.

And I care about Mr. Trump. This is what he was saying in the past. Mr. Trump truly cares about America. He loves this country. He cares about the American people. He knows what it's going to take to fix it. But one thing Donald Trump is, he's a compassionate man. I've been saying that to you since the day that he made the announcement.

He will ultimately go down in history as the greatest president. Now in a plot twist worthy of Shakespeare, the fixer has flipped. I'm done with the lying. I am done being loyal to President Trump. My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything. My family's happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation. He did assume my freedom. He is a racist.

Oh, wow. He's a racist? He is a con man. And he is a cheat. and the guy is a narcissistic sociopath who doesn't care about anyone. This is the most embarrassing thing that I have ever seen a U.S. or a former U.S. president ever do. It's actually even embarrassing for the former guy himself. So Ben Franklin had a saying a long time ago that we're all born ignorant,

but one must work hard to remain stupid. Well, I'm talking about, yep, yours truly Donald the dope. How dangerous Donald George truly means. legitimately could be. Don't take my word for it. I want you to Google it to all of your listeners, Brian, and I want you to understand, this is not my words.

These are the words of the deranged former president who said if he wins the presidency, the first thing he's going to do is he's going to rewrite the Constitution. Oh, my gosh. Unreal. The courtroom. Unreal.

And goes right into that little cage, which is where he belongs in a fucking cage like an animal. Okay. On and on and on. Just a few of the things he said over the years. First of all, obviously, when he was a shill for Donald Trump, and now he's the biggest hater on the planet. He had no credibility in either time frame, by the way.

And he's so unlikable. Have you ever seen a person less likable than him? Or less of a connection to the English language? Right. So bad. He is just awful. Like yours truly, somebody else. What?

More unlikable. Likeable? Yeah, I think anybody in the Cuomo family. Ah, okay. You're preaching my language right there. You know, I mean, I like it. I like where you're going there. The Cuomo family.

By the way, Cohen was in direct contact with Chris Cuomo throughout all of this and stuff. And, you know, going back all the way to 2016. In fact, some of the texts that came out in the trial, this is sort of a side point. But he was texting Chris Cuomo to figure out a way out of the Access Hollywood. tape going back all the way back to those days. So, a little connection there that we didn't necessarily know about. CNN does business in an interesting way now,

don't they? Yeah, they do. But like Cohen has no credit. I mean, anything that he says that you don't have multiple other witnesses to, it's just completely worthless. I mean,

the man has no credibility. Yeah, you'd have to have more than one witness. But if you are somebody who hates Donald Trump, you could so easily, just say, well, he was lying back then, but he's telling the truth. I mean, he had to do what he had to do. He wanted a job.

He was, you know, good guy trying in there to stop Donald Trump. And, you know, he just couldn't take it anymore. I mean, that's the kind of games we play now instead of saying, I don't know when you were lying. You were lying then, you're lying now. I don't know. Hopefully the jury will come to that conclusion? Yes. But we'll see.

We'll see. I mean, they certainly should. This all seems to be. working in Trump's favor right now. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. I want to talk to you about my Patriot Supply, and you might actually understand why we're talking about it with renewed zeal. It's coming, and it's coming down fast.

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Hugh Ross, astrophysicist, he is also the founder of reasons to believe and senior scholar. He's an amazing guy. He's been on with us before I did a podcast a few weeks ago with him. He found Christ. He found God through looking at the stars. An astrophysicist is somebody who looks deep into the past and tries to. see what the you know what what creation was what was happening millions of years ago Hugh thank you so much for being on the program oh my pleasure so there was

something that and I've been I've been reading stuff about this for I don't know 30 years it's always fascinated me but I I'm you know I'm not a I'm not a scientist or anything like it and so I have such a base understanding of it last week we had a we had a major solar flare solar flares can affect like an EMP can affect our power grid if they're bad enough and we're also going through a time period where while the sun is at its peak activity right now our magnetic field is weak because our poles are drifting at about 40 miles per year which is pretty extraordinary isn't it Yeah, the pole, it's quite a bit faster than it was the previous century, but it's not out of the ordinary. And so when you do get a reversal of the magnetic pole, you do get rapid motion. We're nowhere near that degree of rapid motion yet. And that could be a thousand years, right?

I mean, rapid for the earth could be a thousand years from now. Yes, it could even be a million years from now. So, and there have been hundreds of pole reversals in the past, and that none of them have done serious damage to life. But it is true that when you approach, you know, a pole reversal, the magnetic field weakens. And our magnetic field has been weakening by about 6% per century. But again, that's not of the ordinary. Our magnetic field always varies, either goes down slowly or up slowly, right, now it's going down slowly and you may actually turn around and start to go up a little bit.

So the variation in the field, the movement of the magnetic pole, none of that's sort of the ordinary. On the other hand, we can't rule out the possibility. We're heading towards a magnetic reversal. So what does that mean? The North Pole becomes the South Pole? Yes. Well, what actually happens is the, you can think of the Earth's made any field like a bar magnet with a North and South Pole.

that's called a dipole field. What happens is when the mini field begins to weaken, it transitions from being a dipole to being a multipole, where you've got more than two poles. And that could last for a period of, say, a century or two or thousands of years, and it then becomes north and south, but what was north is now south, but as south is now north. What does that do?

I mean, that whole shift what what you know and and let's use a thousand year timetable because we don't know could it happen quickly first of all it could happen quickly but that's rare usually it's a rather slow gradual onset and I mean physicists are watching this to see what's happening

but right now we're not seeing anything that's really outstanding or out of the ordinary okay so what happens as it starts, I assume they drift, and they're not connected per se, because I think the south pole is actually moving slower than the north, but as they go towards, like, east and west, right? Moved past the north pole, the axis. It used to be in northern Canada, and over the past 150 years, it's moved a little bit past the North Pole, and it could switch and go east and west

instead of north and south. You know, businesses have been mapping this polar wandering. They've had the magnetic pole for quite some time. Right. There's been over 100 reversals in the past history of the Earth. And we do know that the magnetic field weakens what happens, weakens by about a factor of 10. But even a factor of 10 weakening is not devastating to life.

We can't document a single extinction of a species during a magnetic reversal. But it could impact health. I mean, when you got a weaker minutey field, you've got more cosmic radiation coming in. It's like if you live in Denver, you get exposed to more cosmic radiation, and your average lifespan gets lessened by three months. And is that because of all the progressive laws that are there? Well, it could be. No, you do get a few more cosmic rays if you live at high elevation.

Okay. But, hey, you've got healthier lifestyles. I'm like counteracted. I know that we are, they've had to adjust the GPS system. And is that because of the poles shifting? Well, you do have to adjust the clocks because the earth is very slowly spinning down. So, you know, every New Year's, physicists celebrate New Year's Day by adjusting all their atomic clocks by a few microsy. seconds, just a few microseconds.

So, but okay, but I've heard that it used to be, anyway, the, the end of the story is that they're now adjusting them every six months. Is that true? Yeah, one or two centimeters. Which case they're going to have to be making even more frequent adjustments, but the adjustments are tiny. So when I was probably 25 years old, I wrote, I read this great book, and I have no idea if it's scientifically sound or not.

But it talked about a catastrophic polar shift that the crust of the earth that some of the continents may have moved. And their theory was that Atlantis was Antarctica, et cetera, et cetera. But what fascinated me, and I know you're a religious guy, when it comes to, you know, end times, it says, and the stars will fall. the only way that I could think of in God's, you know, magnificent math to make it look like stars fall would be some sort of a shift in the continents as we would look up. We would be moving, but it would look like the stars are falling.

Have you ever thought of that? Or is that nonsense? Well, the continents moved, and so the continents moved by a few centimeters per year. So I don't think that's what's happening. The word there for star in Greek is astor, and that could include meteors. So maybe the stars falling is referring to a meteor shower. Okay.

Or it could be referring to the stars dimming in light, like if there is widespread forest and grassfire, stars. In fact, that text says the sun moon and stars dim what happened if you were surrounded by smoke. you know we're we're talking to dr hugh ross and uh the thing i don't like about this interview is he's so smart he makes me look like an idiot uh which nobody usually does but i usually do that on my own um uh hugh um so tell me the um all of the stuff on the uh aurora the the lights that we're looking at there is i've read a lot and i don't know don't know if this is true, that because of the magnetic field and if we have a massive, I think we had a, I don't even know, an X-5 solar flare yesterday, it was not headed in our direction,

that that kind of stuff could blank out everything. It's like an EMP. Yeah, that could happen. In 1859, there was a huge solar flare that struck the earth. and knocked out telegraph systems, if that were to happen today, it could knock out most of the world's power grids, and that would mean you'd be without electricity, not just for a few hours, but for weeks, months, maybe even years.

And that would be catastrophic, because today we're very dependent on electricity. Think of refrigeration. You got no refrigeration, what does that do to your food supply? Right. So, and that kind of a flip, It happens about once every one or two hundred years. But hey, it happened in 1859.

And I've written a book making the point. It would be wise for us to protect our power grids. Amen. There is one that's protected, and that's in Quebec. And it got knocked out in 1989 by a flare like the one that happened, you know, just this past Friday. But that's the only protected power grid in the world. in the world? Yeah, I mean, they were close to the geomagnetic pole,

so they took the most damage. And it was $11 billion of damage. And they, but they now have a surge protector on it, so it's protected. But if we were to get a flare like we had in 1859, the damage to the U.S. alone would be over $2 trillion, and you would have millions of people dying. Geez.

The sun is reversing its poles as well, but that happens like every 11 years? Yes, we're at solar maxim right now. Every 11 years, you get more flaring activity, more sunspots. And so, yeah, for the next year, we can expect to see more Aurora displays like we had last Friday. And hopefully we're not going to get a flare hitting us like what happened in 18. 59. Yeah. When does the sun start to go into solar minimum?

I don't start going into solar minimum in about a couple of years. I mean, it's an 11-year cycle, and so for about a two-year period, you're at maximum, and then you head towards minimum, and then we go back to maximum again. And is there any correlation in your mind between the solar activity and maximum and minimum, and global warming? No, there's really no connection between what's happening with the sun. The sun is getting brighter,

but it's going to be a few million years before you notice a difference. So even if the sun is very active, it doesn't affect our temperatures or anything? It has no effect. What's happening here on Earth is what you've got to watch, not what's going on in the sun. You're listening to The Best of Glenn Beck.

Check out the full show podcast to listen to the rest of this interview. Welcome to the Glenn Beck program. I read a great article late last week by Brett Weinstein. He's an evolutionary biologist. He's the co-host of Dark Horse. And he was writing about the solar flares. Hey, look at the pretty lights in the sky. And he, thank God, was one of them.

that actually said, hey, yeah, those pretty lights can put out all of our lights. What are we thinking? Brett, welcome to the program. How are you? I'm well. It's good to be with you, Lan. Thank you. Wasn't it yesterday, didn't we, wasn't there a solar flare yesterday that was, I don't

know, X6 or I don't even understand the classifications, but it was a big one. They said it was the 17th largest on record, but it wasn't headed our way. It was in, it said, larger than all of the storms that we took last week or over the weekend combined. It was a very large flare. And the dynamics work this way. The sunspots are actually rotating around the sun. And there was a very large, very active cluster that fired seven blasts of plasma at us. And what happened yesterday happened.

from that same sunspot group as it was rotating away from the earth-facing side of the sun. So a lot of plasma came off the sun, but it will not hit the earth. What would an, first of all, can you explain X8? Yeah, it's a non-linear scale that measures the, essentially the hazard from the solar flare injections. It's like a Richter scale. It doesn't go one, two, three, four. It, it, it, it's magnitude.

Yeah, okay. It's been compressed so that it can cover a much wider range of events. And X is the most dangerous, right? There are different categories, but once you get into the X category, that's, that's really bad. Yeah, that's really bad. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty in any given flare and chrono mass ejection, the amount of material that's flung off. you know, if you had a photograph of a, it'd be very hard to predict who in the crowd was going to be hit by shrapnel.

And the Earth is sort of in that, in that condition. We orbit around the sun. Coronal mass ejections happen all the time. Mostly they miss us. Sometimes they hit us, but most of the energy and plasma does not. Sometimes they hit us square on. It's a roll of the dice every time. So when, when we have a mass.

ejection from the sun and it's headed our way. This is akin to a global EMP? Yes, it can be. It could be. So, you know, there's a lot of subtlety in the way these things are measured. When we have a flare, there's an immediate burst of electromagnetic energy, x-rays, radio, waves, microwaves, that sort of thing that hits the earth just like, light does in about eight minutes. It travels at the speed of light. And then there is plasma, which is not always ejected during these flares, but often is. And that takes days to travel the distance between the sun and the earth. And so it's that second, both things are important. The x-rays can knock out communications almost immediately on the earth, on the sun-facing side

of the earth. But it's these coronal mass ejections of plasma that threaten to take out the grid. But they last for days. Like we, I think we're out of this last solar storm that hit us over the weekend. But it took days, did it not? Well, it did, but it was the result of a series of coronal mass ejections emerging from the same highly active, large group of sunspots that happened to release these plasma bursts while they were facing. the earth. So it's now just about rotated out of view and it released this last largest

burst right as it was on the horizon. It may not survive to point back at Earth again. We won't know for another two weeks as it's on the far side of the sun rotating around. It may disintegrate, it may return, it could be

less active, it might be more active. We don't know and we won't know anything about it until it's back in view. So this is the most perplexing thing I have ever seen because it's it's in the range, I think, of about $10 billion to protect our infrastructure. And there's for some reason nobody wants to do it. Why? I've never been able to answer that question. It is, if you understand the risk we are taking threats that we have prioritized above this one,

one, the relatively small amount of money it would take to make us much safer. And the one that really gets me is I can't figure out who would profit from us remaining vulnerable. It seems to me that essentially everyone on earth would benefit from fixing this problem and nobody would notice the small increase in required revenue necessary. to cover a large. Is that estimate that I gave you? Is that accurate or close? You know, it's a little hard to say

because there's a question about what exactly you're going to do. Nothing will make us perfectly safe. Right. But hardening the grid, which is largely a matter of making the transformers on which the grid depends

robust so that they don't fry during one of these solar storms. Right. And the problem with them frying is not only does that take the grid down, but these transformers are not something that you, it's not a commodity. You have to order them. And they take something like a year,

up to three years to be delivered. So it's bad enough if you lose one, but if the earth suddenly needed many of them, who knows how long the weight would be. And many of us believe it's likely the lights would simply not come back on over large segments of the continent or worse. So this is one of those low probability problems, but massively high impact.

I can't think of something that is a higher impact than, you know, a solar flare that knocks the Earth's electricity grid down. Yeah, I think this is as dangerous as nuclear war, but I do want to correct one thing you said. Okay. It's low probability in any individual instance. it is actually extremely high probability on the scale of decades. Over a decade, we take something like one in eight chance of a large piece of the grid

going down in an unrecoverable way. That's enough to create chaos. And why we would take a one and eight risk every decade is hard to fathom. Last week, how close was that? Can you explain the Carrington event? for anybody who doesn't know. And, I mean, it hasn't happened in 150 years or whatever. I mean, it sounds like it could be due for one again.

Can you explain that? Sure. In 1859, an astronomer named Carrington noticed flaring activity from sunspots. It was correlated to auroras and a spectacular break. breakdown of the electrical systems of Earth, which at the time basically meant the telegraph system. What happened with the telegraph system is that the solar storm induced currents in the wires that were enough to shock operators sitting at their desks, start fires, and in fact, allow people to send messages though the grid was not energized because the energy that had been

induced by the solar storm was sufficient to transmit. So because the Earth was not a highly electrical place at the time, that was a highly manageable, though interesting event. The problem is, if that happens again, and really it's not an if, it's a when, we now live on a planet in which everything depends on electricity, everything from the distribution of food and water to communications. All of our lives have electrical components. And what's worse, they're not even just electrical anymore.

They're electronic, which means they're highly sensitive. Solar storm, that is like the Carrington event of 1859, would create catastrophic disruption of our systems. And, well, as I said before, we can't be perfectly safe. We could be a great deal safer than we are. and there is very little movement in that direction. Is there anything that the individual can do? Like I have, you know, my own power source and everything else I'm, you know, off the grid.

Is there something like, can you, EMP proof? Is that enough for this? Well, significance of the EMP ranges. So there's probably nothing you could do about an absolute. worst case scenario, but there are many scenarios that are far less dire. And what one discovers when you try to prepare for such things is that you should probably ignore the absolute worst case because you could spend every dollar you have and every hour you have trying to make yourself safe from it and you probably wouldn't.

so it's not worth it. But the much more likely scenarios involve things that you can do. You know, how many can you go a month? If the grid were to go down, that's a good start. Can you go a year? Do you have a plan to establish communications with the people who are, you know, let's say within 100 miles of you, your friends and family, who you would gather with in such a circumstance?

All those things are worth doing. But the primary thing would require us to act to harden the grid. And I would argue we have compounded the danger of a grid failure with the way we have treated our nuclear reactors and the spent fuel that sits in the fuel pools. That spent fuel has to be actively cooled to keep it from catching fire. Oh, geez. Once it's been in those pools for something like five years, the rods can be removed and they can be put in what's called a dry cask. And a dry cask does not require active cooling. But it's expensive to do.

And so there's been resistance to moving that fuel into these stable containers, which means that if the grid were to go down, all nuclear powers require active electrical inputs to keep them from melting down. If you were to get a meltdown, you would lose control of the nuclear material in these reactors, and that would include all of the decades of spent fuel that's accumulated in the fuel pools. Oh, my gosh. So we could greatly reduce that hazard by simply taking the stuff that is cool enough to put in a dry cask and getting it there as quickly as possible. And from the point of view, I know when people hear this kind of information, They panic. That's not the right reaction.

We have been running this risk and getting lucky for many decades. We are probably going to get through this 11-year solar maximum. What I would do, if it were mine to say, is I would focus on being prepared for the next solar maximum in something like 11 years. So that when that one comes, we are in a much better position to endure whatever the sun throws at us. Brett, I thank you.

I felt your article last week was really eye-opening and thank you for briefing everybody on that. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much, Glenn. Thank you. Look, Air Canada, does a sold world. Super, an offer for the assort.

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