Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: And this is k i AM six forty Bill Handle
Speaker 2: here on a taco Tuesday, September twenty four, as we're
Speaker 2: possibly awaiting a regional war breaking out in the Mideast.
Speaker 1: Very bad stuff, all right. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: plastic recycling for a moment.
Speaker 2: There's an interesting lawsuit that has just been filed by
Speaker 2: the State of California suing Exon Mobile, accusing it of
Speaker 2: misleading the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling.
Speaker 1: Now, let's start with the fact that Exon.
Speaker 2: Mobile is a huge producer of the raw materials that
Speaker 2: create plastic bottles. Petroleum byproducts is what they use to
Speaker 2: create bottles.
Speaker 1: So here's Exon Mobile saying that.
Speaker 2: We are producing plastics and wheat which can be recycled,
Speaker 2: and we're promoting the fact that they are being or
Speaker 2: should be recycled. Well, Attorney General Rob Bonta of the
Speaker 2: State of California said or alleges that Exon Moobile is
Speaker 2: engaged in a decades long campaign of deception that cause
Speaker 2: an exacerbated the global plastic pollution crisis. So the City
Speaker 2: of California is arguing it's your fault. You've lied to
Speaker 2: us that this is recyclable and it's not being recycled.
Speaker 2: Five to six percent a quote of these plastic bottles
Speaker 2: are being recycled, and that's in the US. It's about
Speaker 2: nine percent worldwide, they do a better job. So I
Speaker 2: have my bottle of diet coke. Here my plastic bottle
Speaker 2: of diet coke, and there it is plastic bottle recycled,
Speaker 2: the little recycle sign on there, the little little icon.
Speaker 2: And here's what ends up happening in the world of recycling.
Speaker 2: And I am a fanatic recycler. That's one thing where
Speaker 2: I am environmentally conscious. I put plastic bottles, cans, cardboard,
Speaker 2: and especially cardboard because now we all have tons of
Speaker 2: it because we buy online. And those I break down
Speaker 2: and put them in a recycling bin. And my guess
Speaker 2: is the cans and the cardboard gets recycled. The rest
Speaker 2: of it is a waste of time. Why bother because
Speaker 2: it's not being recycled. And this is the argument that
Speaker 2: Robbont is making. It gets excellent. You're saying that this
Speaker 2: is recyclable and it's not being recycled.
Speaker 1: Therefore you are a bunch of liars.
Speaker 2: Therefore, we're holding you responsible for destroying the environment.
Speaker 1: What they're saying is it's recyclable.
Speaker 2: It is California's fault for not having enough programs out
Speaker 2: there to recycle.
Speaker 1: Ain't our fault.
Speaker 2: We manusfacture the stuff that can be recycled. That's why
Speaker 2: we put the little recycled or we tell the manufacturers
Speaker 2: put the little recycled icon on there, because that's what
Speaker 2: we can produce. And some plastics are recyclable, some are not.
Speaker 2: Packaging some is some isn't. But we have a government
Speaker 2: here that says it's your fault, and I tell you
Speaker 2: assuming that.
Speaker 1: And I haven't.
Speaker 2: Gone really into this because I don't when we do
Speaker 2: one undor two segments. You know, I don't spend time
Speaker 2: reading eighty one hundred pages of reports per segment. It's
Speaker 2: if it can be recycled and the packaging says this
Speaker 2: is recyclable, and it's not being recycled, then the problem
Speaker 2: is much bigger than Exxon Mobile saying we recycle or
Speaker 2: you should recycle, and this is recyclable. And these plastic
Speaker 2: bottles and this is a god awful mess because they
Speaker 2: break down into these microplastics, the nanoplastics, And we reported yesterday,
Speaker 2: we said yesterday and maybe last week that these tiny
Speaker 2: little bits of plastic, almost microscopic, are in everything all
Speaker 2: of us, all the plants in the air, what we eat,
Speaker 2: our environment, in the fish, in the cattle that we eat.
Speaker 1: It's in everything on this earth.
Speaker 2: And there was a study just came out that said
Speaker 2: the Earth's oceans contain more than one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: trillion pieces of plastic, which is going to take hundreds
Speaker 2: of years to break down.
Speaker 1: So we are full of plastic. It's that simple.
Speaker 2: And the state of California is suing Exonmobile. It's your fault,
Speaker 2: why because you've been telling us that this is recyclable
Speaker 2: and there isn't enough recycla What you really have to
Speaker 2: tell us is that it is not recyclable. Well, it
Speaker 2: is recyclable, but it's not being recycled, and therefore it's
Speaker 2: your fault. And Exon Mobil is throwing it right back
Speaker 2: in California's face and saying you're dreaming. Don't tell us
Speaker 2: about recyclable. All we make is the product. You're not
Speaker 2: doing it. By the way, California isn't alone last year
Speaker 2: New York suit PepsiCo accusing Pexico of polluting the Buffalo River.
Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, the lawsuit against Exon.
Speaker 2: Mobile is cheered by the environmental advocates and it's no
Speaker 2: surprise that is happening here in California. So am I
Speaker 2: going to take my bottle of diet coke plastic bottle
Speaker 2: this time around?
Speaker 1: And am I going.
Speaker 2: To recycle it? Yes, because it's a habit. Is this
Speaker 2: going to be recycled in anything?
Speaker 1: Probably not? And what do they recycle it in? Well?
Speaker 2: I think do they we package it into other plastic bottles.
Speaker 2: I just think they make little pellets out of it,
Speaker 2: and they use playground playground equipment with it or the
Speaker 2: flooring of playgrounds. I don't know, all right, recyclable, I
Speaker 2: think plastic. I think paper bags are a different story
Speaker 2: in terms of recycling the cardboards certainly, certainly.
Speaker 1: New Year, they just make it into a pulp start over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we do here, is we make everything into
Speaker 1: a pulp and recycle everything. Jokes stories. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good point. That's what we do, all right.
Speaker 2: Here is the dilemma I want to share with you,
Speaker 2: And this is in reference to Gavin Newsom signing a
Speaker 2: bill into law yesterday, and it has to be with
Speaker 2: students and cell phones.
Speaker 1: Now, a couple of things we absolutely know.
Speaker 2: One is that cell phones in schools, students do not
Speaker 2: pay attention to classes, lectures, or anything that's going on
Speaker 2: in the classroom when they have their cell phone and
Speaker 2: they're always either texting each other or looking things up,
Speaker 2: or going on whatever sites or chatting or whatever they do,
Speaker 2: and it disrupts school.
Speaker 1: We know that. We know that school is disrupted.
Speaker 2: We know that grades go down, we know the attention
Speaker 2: span of students in class goes way down, and it
Speaker 2: truly affects the quality of the education. Okay, number one,
Speaker 2: So that's easy. How do we get rid of that?
Speaker 2: We ban We ban cell phones.
Speaker 1: That's it. That makes it easy. Then we have the
Speaker 1: whole issue of students are.
Speaker 2: Going to do better, which they are, They're going to
Speaker 2: come out actually reading.
Speaker 1: They are. However, let's look at the other side of the.
Speaker 2: Coin, and that is whenever there is an active shooter,
Speaker 2: or there's a problem, or a kid gets hurt on
Speaker 2: the playground or has a medical issue, there's a cell
Speaker 2: phone boom. You call mom or Dad or you call
Speaker 2: nine to one one. How many times have we heard
Speaker 2: in various in every active shooter scenario in the last
Speaker 2: several years, someone in the classroom, someone at the schools
Speaker 2: picked this, Some students picked up their phone dial one
Speaker 2: one or call their parents. How do you reconcile safety
Speaker 2: and cell phones? Which is one side of this coin.
Speaker 2: The other side is the quality of education that almost
Speaker 2: collapses because of cell phones. So Newsom signed to bill
Speaker 2: yesterday will require California school districts to restrict or ban
Speaker 2: student cell phone use. By the way, we have the
Speaker 2: largest CA to twelve population in the country, and this
Speaker 2: is naturally one of the forefronts or the first laws
Speaker 2: and the nation.
Speaker 1: Naturally it is. It's called the Phone Free Schools Act.
Speaker 2: Requires the thoul in school districts in California, charter schools,
Speaker 2: county education offices to draft student cell phone policies by
Speaker 2: July one, twenty twenty six. Now this is a fun one.
Speaker 2: It's not banning cell phones in schools. What it is
Speaker 2: is creates a process.
Speaker 1: To set up task forces. Actually, it says to local schools.
Speaker 2: Figure out how cell phones should be banned.
Speaker 1: It's up to you. That's it. The only thing the law.
Speaker 2: Does say is schools have to restrict phone use in
Speaker 2: order to support pupil learning and well being.
Speaker 1: Wow, tell me that's not open ended.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, Newsom wrote in a statement after signing the bill.
Speaker 1: Which quite often happens.
Speaker 2: We know and sometimes that he says nothing, Sometimes he signs,
Speaker 2: Sometimes he sends a veto message.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a I have signed message.
Speaker 2: We know that excess to smartphone use increases anxiety, depression,
Speaker 2: other mental health issues. Absolutely true, and we have the
Speaker 2: power to intervene. Absolutely true. The new law will help
Speaker 2: students focus on academic, social development and the world in
Speaker 2: front of them, not their screens when they're in school.
Speaker 1: Probably true.
Speaker 2: However, let's talk about the safety of students having cell phones,
Speaker 2: which I don't think anybody can argue. A student with
Speaker 2: a cell phone has the ability of calling authorities, calling home,
Speaker 2: virtually immediately telling the cops we're hiding in this classroom.
Speaker 1: We're in number one thirty.
Speaker 2: Eight, and we have the door barred, and we're in
Speaker 2: the corner near the closet, and they know what's going on. Now,
Speaker 2: the police, I have a much more sophisticated way of
Speaker 2: entering school. They have floor plans now, and they know
Speaker 2: the way schools are set up, where how classrooms are
Speaker 2: set up. Well, how important it is for them to
Speaker 2: know what's going on inside the classroom when there is
Speaker 2: an active shooter or when there is a problem. But
Speaker 2: what if the students don't have access to phone calls?
Speaker 2: Are they're doing better in school? How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 2: And I don't think it could be reconciled now. The
Speaker 2: technology is there, right people go. One of them is, sure,
Speaker 2: use your cell phone and we're going to block it.
Speaker 2: School's going to be a building where you can't use
Speaker 2: it until someone unblocks it.
Speaker 1: That's a possibility that works.
Speaker 2: But then what if the administration doesn't know that there
Speaker 2: is someone there and is a threat and people will
Speaker 2: only find out when we have a shooter right outside
Speaker 2: the classroom walking and stocking the halls. The other way
Speaker 2: of doing it is simply collecting phone call the phones
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the school day. So the state
Speaker 2: of California and this is a neat bill because what
Speaker 2: it has said is it doesn't have specifics. It says
Speaker 2: school can't ban a pupil from having a cell phone
Speaker 2: when a licensed physician or surgeon says the student needs
Speaker 2: the device for health related reasons. Okay, so that's an exception.
Speaker 2: If you need the device, doctor says you need it,
Speaker 2: there's a doctor's note.
Speaker 1: You can have a phone. Also, students in certain.
Speaker 2: Individualized education programs, they can bypass the restrictions.
Speaker 1: And students will be.
Speaker 2: Allowed to access the phones during emergencies.
Speaker 1: Okay, how about this.
Speaker 2: The school collects the phones, which a lot of schools
Speaker 2: do at the beginning of the school day, but you.
Speaker 1: Can access them if.
Speaker 2: If there's an emergency. I don't know if it can
Speaker 2: be reconciled at all. And this is these are at
Speaker 2: least this one. Yesterday I talked about unintended consequences when
Speaker 2: bills are passed. At least this one is so vague,
Speaker 2: it is so non se consequential. It says, we agree
Speaker 2: cell phones should be banned, but you have to look
Speaker 2: at where it shouldn't be banned, and you have to
Speaker 2: set up studies that determine that schools should figure out
Speaker 2: a way to ban these phones. And it's you guys
Speaker 2: figure it out. Okay, thank you, there's the law. It's
Speaker 2: the you guys figure it out law. Now let me
Speaker 2: tell you about a flight of a Boeing Triple seven
Speaker 2: that it was an American Airlines and the captain Dan.
Speaker 1: Carey was alerted.
Speaker 2: You hear that, you know that blaring pull up, pull up,
Speaker 2: pull up, when planes are descending too low. It's with
Speaker 2: a siren, and that's what he heard. Oh going too low,
Speaker 2: pull up. He was a thirty two thousand feet and
Speaker 2: he heard it. So what the hell happened? Well, it's
Speaker 2: a kind of electronic warfare that now hundreds of civilian
Speaker 2: pilots are encountering every single day. It's GPS spoofing. Pilots
Speaker 2: use GPS for navigation.
Speaker 1: That is the way it works now. That is the.
Speaker 2: Primary way that airlines that airplanes are navigating. And these
Speaker 2: are fake signals spoofing that tells pilots a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of things. You're in the wrong place. All kinds of
Speaker 2: glitches are happening. You have to descend, you have to ascend.
Speaker 2: The airplane is not working well, and it takes the
Speaker 2: pilot a way to figure out. Primarily, the big problem
Speaker 2: right now seems to be navigation. The rest of it
Speaker 2: is just coming. And so what the pilots are being
Speaker 2: done is being being trained for this GPS.
Speaker 1: Spoofing, and they sort of have to know.
Speaker 2: I was watching a documentary yesterday again I love these things,
Speaker 2: and it's about the Cold War. And there was one
Speaker 2: incident nineteen eighty three in which the Russian, the new
Speaker 2: Russian version of NORAD and that is trying to figure
Speaker 2: out American missiles, nuclear ballistic missiles coming into Russia.
Speaker 1: And there it showed on his screen.
Speaker 2: The guy was running that particular department at the time,
Speaker 2: he was the overnight guy, and there he sees on
Speaker 2: his screen four missiles from the United States coming in,
Speaker 2: nuclear missiles coming in to attack the US. And he decided,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't trust the computer. I think the
Speaker 2: computer's wrong on this. Even though I'm being told that's
Speaker 2: what's happening. It doesn't make a lot of sense. If
Speaker 2: the US were going to attack RuSHA, it wouldn't do
Speaker 2: it with four or five missiles. It would do it
Speaker 2: with hundreds of missiles.
Speaker 1: And so he stopped it cold. He wouldn't go up.
Speaker 2: Up the food chain, basically stopped World War II from happening.
Speaker 1: By the way, he lost his job.
Speaker 2: Instead of being a hero, he was nailed for it
Speaker 2: because he embarrassed the higher ups who had put in
Speaker 2: this system that was faulty. The point is he didn't
Speaker 2: trust the computers.
Speaker 1: He didn't trust his system.
Speaker 2: And the shame of it is when you think of airplanes,
Speaker 2: and I've said this and this is a universality.
Speaker 1: Always trust the instruments. Always trust the instruments.
Speaker 2: They are far more effective than anything the eyeball can do.
Speaker 1: For example, the horizon. John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy Junior boom went right into the augured into the
Speaker 2: sea because he was looking at the horizon and he
Speaker 2: lost it. The instruments tell you where it is, and
Speaker 2: he wasn't paying attention. So pilots are now trained when
Speaker 2: it comes to these glitches, don't trust the instruments, go to.
Speaker 1: Your gut feeling.
Speaker 2: For example, Captain carry, Now this was an easy one.
Speaker 1: Right pull up, pull up, pull up. I'm a thirty
Speaker 1: two thousand feet Where am I going to pull up from? No?
Speaker 1: I don't have problem here.
Speaker 2: But when you have, for example, the GPS telling you
Speaker 2: you're off course when in fact you are on course,
Speaker 2: how do they deal with it?
Speaker 1: Well, one is training and now.
Speaker 2: There's but that's something else pilots have to deal with
Speaker 2: on top of everything they have to deal with, on
Speaker 2: top of the fact that they're working overtime, on top
Speaker 2: of the fact that falling asleep, on top of the
Speaker 2: fact there aren't enough pilots out there, on top of
Speaker 2: the fact that they're not now hiring pilots with fewer
Speaker 2: hours in the air, so it is not being a
Speaker 2: pilot today is far more difficult and a lot more
Speaker 2: tiring than it used to be and dealing with now
Speaker 2: in this case the GPS spoofy are there end a rounds? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they have other ways of figuring out navigation. There are
Speaker 2: there are systems that are in place that use things
Speaker 2: other than GPS.
Speaker 1: I mean, GPS is fairly new. You know.
Speaker 2: Airplanes have been flying overseas and have been flying along
Speaker 2: distance a lot longer than GPS has been around. But
Speaker 2: we're going to as a matter of fact, it all
Speaker 2: goes down to straight dead reckoning no airplanes. If you
Speaker 2: look at some older airplanes, there's a little bubble on
Speaker 2: top of the cockpit and they used to use when
Speaker 2: it was you know, instruments were fairly new and pilots
Speaker 2: were all trained to take a sexton and look at
Speaker 2: the night sky and navigate dead reckoning.
Speaker 1: Of course they don't do that anymore, but that was part.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I wonder if pilots are still trained in that. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think there's too many redundancies in the GPS. I
Speaker 2: have to look that up, by the way, I really do.
Speaker 2: I'll do that during the break. Hey, siri, are pilots
Speaker 2: trained in dead reckoning anymore?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Pilots are still trained in dead reckoning? Okay, Hey, pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: I want to share something with you, and this has
Speaker 2: to do with a kind of tourism, and it's called
Speaker 2: glacier tourism.
Speaker 1: And there's a guy, no I.
Speaker 2: Think three years ago, Zach Sheldon was watching was up
Speaker 2: near Valdez Glacier in Alaska, and he was watching these
Speaker 2: huge chunks of ice breakoff and go into.
Speaker 1: Into the ocean. Calved.
Speaker 2: It was actually next to a lake at Calved in
Speaker 2: the lake below. And then he's looking there and they
Speaker 2: find two bodies clinging to a canoe, a third about
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty feet away. They were too close
Speaker 2: to the glacier's edge and they got caught up in
Speaker 2: the ice. Not necessarily ice falling on top of them,
Speaker 2: but the wave that was created and they're too close
Speaker 2: and you don't want to go in the water, not
Speaker 2: in that temperature. They were boating on Valdez Lake, two
Speaker 2: Germans and an Austrian.
Speaker 1: And why did they go? Because they wanted to see
Speaker 1: these glaciers. They're fast disappearing.
Speaker 2: Glacier tourism has exploded in recent years, and.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 2: One to fulfill a bucket list stream And I will
Speaker 2: tell you, and I've said this before, if you're going
Speaker 2: to go on cruises, there's three or four places in
Speaker 2: the world you.
Speaker 1: Want to go to. One of them Alaska the inland.
Speaker 2: Passage where part of it you go into Glacier Bay
Speaker 2: or other to see the glaciers. And guess what, there
Speaker 2: ain't many glaciers left. Climate change has just wiped out glaciers.
Speaker 2: If you ever go to Juno, and i'd been. My
Speaker 2: first Alaska trip was maybe thirty five years ago on
Speaker 2: a cruise and you get off and you spend the day.
Speaker 2: Juno Mendenhall Glacier is the big glacier outside of Juno.
Speaker 2: And when I went there thirty five years ago, it
Speaker 2: was a few hundred yards from the town, the outskirts
Speaker 2: of the town. I mean walk right there today, it's
Speaker 2: five miles away. It has retreated, it is shrinking, and
Speaker 2: you can see what's going on. So one reason is
Speaker 2: to fill a bucket list dream. Another to get close
Speaker 2: to a natural phenomenon. This is absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Some for adventure, but I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2: Another reason has come up, another motivation to see the
Speaker 2: glaciers before they disappear. And it's called last chance tourism.
Speaker 2: Usually tourism is you want to be the first or
Speaker 2: one of the first, you know, sailing across the stretch
Speaker 2: of water, if you're crazy enough, first.
Speaker 1: One, climbing a mountain. Now it's about lasts.
Speaker 2: Glaciers are becoming the poster child for last chance destinations.
Speaker 2: And even under the best case scenario. According to recent
Speaker 2: papers that have been done best case scenario, half the
Speaker 2: world's glaciers will be gone by twenty one hundred, and
Speaker 2: they become more accessible as they melt, they're more dangerous,
Speaker 2: they're becoming more unstable.
Speaker 1: Last month, for example, there was an American.
Speaker 2: Tourist died when an ice cave collapse in Iceland, and
Speaker 2: it was at the Brio Breo Meta Ameda Quarter Joe
Speaker 2: Cool Glacier in Iceland, and the reason he died is
Speaker 2: because the guide spent so much time pronouncing the name
Speaker 2: of the glacier that he couldn't quite get out in
Speaker 2: time trying to understand what happened.
Speaker 1: And there are deaths all over the.
Speaker 2: World, and it is really unfortunate. It's been a lot
Speaker 2: of years since I've been to Alaska, and now there's
Speaker 2: eight zillion cruise lines as that go up there, and
Speaker 2: I don't know how many go into.
Speaker 1: These various glacier lakes. Used to be you go into
Speaker 1: Glacier Bay.
Speaker 2: Now you've got four four ships allowed in there because
Speaker 2: it's just so dangerous and you have to you can't
Speaker 2: get that close. So that is that certainly is fairly safe.
Speaker 2: And I could take a big cruise line that close.
Speaker 2: Although you can hear the calving and you hear what
Speaker 2: appeared to be right here rifle shots and that's the
Speaker 2: ice that's moving. Is kind of interesting, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: I mean, these are national parks. Doesn't stop anybody for
Speaker 2: taking a canoe and going up there and dying, and
Speaker 2: so it's a shame. I think you can still take
Speaker 2: a helicopter out of Juno and land on the men
Speaker 2: in the Hall glacier and they're pretty careful. The guides
Speaker 2: go out in the morning and they make sure that
Speaker 2: they're safe places and there are the area is flagged off,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of neat walking around on top of
Speaker 2: a glacier. Now, unfortunately you fall through and it's it's
Speaker 2: a heartbreaker. That's just one of the issues of climate change.
Speaker 2: And you know, thank goodness, I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: around twenty thirty forty years from now because that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that you're just not going to have
Speaker 2: the advantage of doing it.
Speaker 1: It's a shame. It is a shame. You know, glaciers
Speaker 1: are melting. They are all right.
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