Speaker 1: Fifty five KRC DE Talk Station eight thirty on this
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, Tax Day twenty twenty five, Dan Carroll hanging
Speaker 1: out for Brian Thomas and get to welcome in another
Speaker 1: great guest. Steve Gorm is the executive director of the
Speaker 1: Climate Science Coalition of America. He is the author of
Speaker 1: four books on energy, climate change, and sustainable development. He's
Speaker 1: got over one hundred thousand copies in print. His latest
Speaker 1: book is The Green Breakdown Becoming Renewable Energy Failure and
Speaker 1: Steve Gorm, it is great once again to welcome you
Speaker 1: to the radio and fifty five KRC. How are you today, sir?
Speaker 2: Hey, Dan, I'm doing great. Great to join you on
Speaker 2: this text day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tax Day. I hope you've got all your I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've got everything squared away and you're ready
Speaker 1: to Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: I did way too much. But while we have huge,
Speaker 2: huge changes going on in climate policy and energy right now,
Speaker 2: just big, big things, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, before we get to that, let me ask
Speaker 1: you a question. You know, we live in historic time, sure,
Speaker 1: and of course we had the spectacle yesterday of the
Speaker 1: Blue Origin rocketing into space and the six women up
Speaker 1: there doing God knows what they were, and we've got
Speaker 1: the audio of what they were doing up there. But uh,
Speaker 1: before the before the rocket took off, CBS was doing
Speaker 1: an interview with former astronaut doctor May Jamison, and one
Speaker 1: of the comments she made talking about the importance of
Speaker 1: this historic space flight was that that she claimed, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how the spaceflight figures into this, but
Speaker 1: she claimed that the Earth already no longer has an
Speaker 1: atmosphere that supports our life form. And I'm looking at
Speaker 1: that and I'm thinking about that, Well, if the Earth
Speaker 1: is not supporting our life form, how is it that
Speaker 1: you and I are here in order to have this
Speaker 1: this discussion today, and that that she's out there still
Speaker 1: drawing bread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure what she meant what she meant
Speaker 2: about that, that's uh, I mean, did she mention climate
Speaker 2: at all? Is that what she was alluding to?
Speaker 1: Because but again, while she was talking about how, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all humans and we're all connected to the Earth,
Speaker 1: and you know, when you go up and view the
Speaker 1: Earth from you know, wherever they were re viewing it from,
Speaker 1: you know, makes it makes you realize how fragile the
Speaker 1: Earth is and that the you know, that somehow we
Speaker 1: you know, we just don't aren't able to support life
Speaker 1: here on Earth anymore.
Speaker 2: Humans certainly have had a big, a big impact on
Speaker 2: the surface of the Earth. Of course, we've we have
Speaker 2: farmed it, and we have cut down forest. We've done
Speaker 2: a lot of things to transform the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the atmosphere has changed that much. So,
Speaker 2: you know, even the amounts that that humans emit in
Speaker 2: terms of carbon dioxide is only about one or two
Speaker 2: percent of well it's it's less than five percent of
Speaker 2: the CO two that nature puts into the atmosphere by itself.
Speaker 2: So we're pretty small in terms of what's going on
Speaker 2: with the atmosphere. So I don't really understand her comments there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, as CBS was also making the point that
Speaker 1: scientific experiments were being conducted on this flight. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing lasted eleven minutes. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to are you aware of any scientific experiments that can
Speaker 1: be conducted in that spent a time?
Speaker 2: That's a short one. Well, they probably had some electronic
Speaker 2: sensors that were sensing something. But you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things mister Trump has said is that in his
Speaker 2: administration is that NASA now and this wasn't a NASA thing.
Speaker 2: I think it was a private thing. But NASA must
Speaker 2: stick to space and flights into space, and they're no
Speaker 2: longer able to do climate anymore. Really a tremendous change.
Speaker 2: And they're cutting about two thirds of the budget that's
Speaker 2: associated anyway with climate change at NASA. So there's just
Speaker 2: some huge, huge policy changes in process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And speaking of Trump, Trump put out a and
Speaker 1: executive order that deals with American energy and it talks
Speaker 1: about overreach and things like that. How does that play
Speaker 1: into the whole scope of climate policy in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this just happened last week, and this is a
Speaker 2: big deal.
Speaker 1: The President.
Speaker 2: Issued an executive order called Protecting American Energy from State Overreach,
Speaker 2: and he said that state laws were seeking to regulate
Speaker 2: energy beyond their constitutional statutory authorities, and he actually called
Speaker 2: them extortion laws. And he mentioned New York, in Vermont,
Speaker 2: and California, and he directed the US Attorney General of
Speaker 2: Pam Bondi to identify these laws that were burdening domestic
Speaker 2: energy resources or may or may not be unconstitutional, preempted
Speaker 2: by federal law, or otherwise unenforceable. Within sixty days and
Speaker 2: to recommend actions to change this. So we're actually going
Speaker 2: to we have the federal government that are suing the
Speaker 2: states for their climate laws. This has not happened to
Speaker 2: my knowledge, to any extent over the last years. Really
Speaker 2: a huge change, and we haven't heard much about it
Speaker 2: in the press.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, if the press has their way, anything that
Speaker 1: doesn't fit their particular climate narrative, we won't hear much
Speaker 1: about it at all. I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: solar panels and windmills, but we got to get to
Speaker 1: a quick break here, So Steve Gorham, if you would
Speaker 1: just hang on and we'll get right back to you
Speaker 1: as we roll on on fifty five KRC, the Talk Station.
Speaker 2: This is fifty five KRC and iHeartRadio Station.
Speaker 1: The Talk station, continuing our conversation with Steve Gorham, executive
Speaker 1: director of the Climate Science Coalition of America. And Steve Gorham.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Donald Trump has done is
Speaker 1: imposed tariffs on China, and this is going to have
Speaker 1: a pretty major effect on China because they send us
Speaker 1: so many solar panels and so many elements that are
Speaker 1: involved in the construction of an operating of the windmills
Speaker 1: and the turbines and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is going to be the biggest impact. He
Speaker 2: has kept ten percent tariffs on every nation. He also
Speaker 2: has twenty five percent on steel, aluminum, and automobiles. He's
Speaker 2: pretty much backed off on everything else. I think he's negotiating.
Speaker 2: They're negotiating with more than one hundred countries now over
Speaker 2: the next ninety days. But China has not said they
Speaker 2: want to negotiate. They've just retaliated with terraffs, and so
Speaker 2: now China and the US both have terrors over one
Speaker 2: hundred percent on imports and exports, I think. And this
Speaker 2: is really, as you say, this is going to hammer
Speaker 2: a renewable energy equipment. Eighty percent of the world's solar
Speaker 2: cells and panels are made by China or they are
Speaker 2: using components from China. Also, these big grid scale batteries
Speaker 2: that California and New York and some other states want
Speaker 2: to put in place to back up wind and solar,
Speaker 2: most of those batteries, or at least the metals for
Speaker 2: the batteries come from China. And so these prices are
Speaker 2: going to skyrocket. It's going to have a huge impact
Speaker 2: and just another another problem with green equipment, green Energy,
Speaker 2: it's just going to stop stop by green Energy and
Speaker 2: its tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with and with all the subsidies that are
Speaker 1: being cut off as well. We are seeing and the
Speaker 1: reports still come in almost daily of this wind farm
Speaker 1: that is shutting down, this solar panel project that is
Speaker 1: that has run out of money. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've had a chance to ask you about this,
Speaker 1: but I know I read an article not that long
Speaker 1: ago talking about once these solar panels come to the
Speaker 1: end of their life, that we really don't have a
Speaker 1: good way to dispose of these solar panels because I
Speaker 1: guess they're necessarily going to have to go into a landfill.
Speaker 1: But there's so many toxic chemicals that are involved in
Speaker 1: producing these solar panels that eventually these things leach out
Speaker 1: into the ground and calls all sorts of other problems
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Well. I think I think most of our landfills now
Speaker 2: have canvas and other things to prevent stuff from leaching.
Speaker 2: But the amount of waste really is huge. You know.
Speaker 2: It's when you're using hydrocarbons, you're basically burning up the
Speaker 2: fuel and there's nothing left except the water, vapor and
Speaker 2: the carbon acid that goes in the atmosphere. And you
Speaker 2: don't replace power plants, you know, maybe once every fifty
Speaker 2: sixty years, but if you're replacing the solar panels every
Speaker 2: twenty years. Now in California, for example, our federal agencies
Speaker 2: have said it costs about twenty to twenty five dollars
Speaker 2: to try and recycle materials from a solar panel, but
Speaker 2: you only get about four dollars worth of useful metals
Speaker 2: out of it. And if you were to send it
Speaker 2: to the landfill and only costs one or two dollars.
Speaker 2: So nobody's going to recycle these things unless there's huge
Speaker 2: state or federal subsidies to do so, they're going to
Speaker 2: send them to landfills. And so as we put more
Speaker 2: and more of these in, we send them to landfills.
Speaker 2: And you know, I sent you a little image of
Speaker 2: this picture in New York, which is also in my
Speaker 2: last book, Green Breakdown. There's a congressman standing next to
Speaker 2: this huge pile of wind turbine blades, which which is
Speaker 2: thirty forty feet high in New York. And when the
Speaker 2: wind turbines blades we're out, they have to they have
Speaker 2: to chop them up or burn them, they're too big
Speaker 2: for landfills. It's it's really a significant problem that is
Speaker 2: getting bigger and bigger as we put more of these
Speaker 2: things in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking I'm looking at it right now. It
Speaker 1: is it is an astonishing photograph, and I think, really
Speaker 1: it gets to the point of just the absolute mountain
Speaker 1: of waste that these things create. All right, have you
Speaker 1: been surprised at all by the amount of waste frawden
Speaker 1: abuse that Lee Zelden has uncovered at the EPA.
Speaker 2: Well, I you know, it really is amazing. And you know,
Speaker 2: mister Musk and his Doage group has gone through a
Speaker 2: lot of those and I just I just wrote an
Speaker 2: article about the Department of Defense. Pete Haigseth has said,
Speaker 2: we do not do climate change crap, and he's cutting
Speaker 2: out all the climate programs. But listen to some of
Speaker 2: these programs. They published a paper in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: lauding the things they did in they did in climate.
Speaker 2: This was the US Navy lauding the different different things
Speaker 2: they did for the climates, and one of them was
Speaker 2: studying climate change in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam with
Speaker 2: the government of Vietnam. This is a Navy project. Another
Speaker 2: one was a California organic recycling and composting Another one
Speaker 2: was a partnership with the Armed Forces of Ghana to
Speaker 2: combat vector born diseases. This is the United States Navy
Speaker 2: putting money out for these things. None of these things
Speaker 2: improved Navy military readiness in any way. And this is
Speaker 2: just and you know, I just found this look at online.
Speaker 2: It's off that the Navy was publishing. There's this, there's
Speaker 2: this analyst amounts of this government money that's going into
Speaker 2: stuff that doesn't do anything really useful as far as
Speaker 2: military purposes.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, it wasn't that long ago. We had
Speaker 1: a commander in chief and a chairman of the Joint
Speaker 1: Chiefs of Staff tell our graduating cadets at the Army
Speaker 1: and our midshipman at the Navy that the number one
Speaker 1: threat to America was climate change. You know that, Never
Speaker 1: mind Russia, never mind North Korea, never mind China, it's
Speaker 1: climate change. And I love this chart you put out
Speaker 1: of US military emissions by service and equipment type. And
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the Air Force has got fifty
Speaker 1: six percent of emissions. And then you know, different aircraft
Speaker 1: than the Navy and then you got a little small
Speaker 1: sliver down there with the Marine Corps only puts out
Speaker 1: five percent of our emissions. That would figure that. You know,
Speaker 1: they're probably the most efficient out of all the military services.
Speaker 1: And they've got, you know, the I guess, the smallest
Speaker 1: carbon footprint you can possibly have.
Speaker 2: That came from the Department of Defense, and President Biden
Speaker 2: hit them all marching down this, we're going to do
Speaker 2: climate stuff. I mean, the Army even was going to
Speaker 2: take all of its field technical vehicles, including the heavy ones,
Speaker 2: including tanks, and run them on electric engines. And they
Speaker 2: also they were developing battlefield chargers. If you can imagine,
Speaker 2: they're going to drive chargers out, sit them somewhere and
Speaker 2: have these tanks sitting next to them for an hour
Speaker 2: or two at a time. I mean, this stuff is fantasy.
Speaker 2: It does nothing for our military capability. It's just there
Speaker 2: for climates. And Pete higgsuff is cutting all this stuff out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank god. I don't know how anyone in
Speaker 1: their right mind could look at that and in a
Speaker 1: practical sense think that that is a good idea. And
Speaker 1: you know, Steve Gorham, I mean that's the thing to me,
Speaker 1: was so much of this stuff that in a practical
Speaker 1: sense and when you you know, when you talk about
Speaker 1: the economics of it, and you know, and everything else
Speaker 1: that goes into all the you know, the different wind
Speaker 1: turbines and the solar panels and green energy this and
Speaker 1: the biofuels and everything else that and on economic sense,
Speaker 1: you know, none of this stuff exists but for government subsidies.
Speaker 1: And once you wipe those out, well, these are these
Speaker 1: things they fold like a chief suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of bankruptcies too with
Speaker 2: all this stuff. As you say, cutting funding across all
Speaker 2: these different industries, we're also they're also laying off a
Speaker 2: lot of headcount. I mentioned NASA and Noah, but they're
Speaker 2: they're cutting headcount. The Environmental Protection Agency, they just shut
Speaker 2: down a museum at the Environmental Protection Agency. They had
Speaker 2: their own museum, but it costs per visitor. It was
Speaker 2: costing them over three hundred dollars because they didn't have
Speaker 2: any visitors. The museum was expensive. Well, anyway, lies all
Speaker 2: them to shuttle it down. The Federal Energy Management Agency
Speaker 2: is shutting down their climate programs as well. And if
Speaker 2: you have anything any research project that says climate on it,
Speaker 2: that is going away in the federal government. Mister Trump
Speaker 2: is completely transforming it top to bottom.
Speaker 1: So with your book, is green breakdown the coming renewable
Speaker 1: energy failure? Are we already here? Have we reached that
Speaker 1: stage already with the renewable energy failure? Is that upon
Speaker 1: us right now?
Speaker 2: Now? This is quicker than I expected. I thought this
Speaker 2: would take several decades, and it probably will around the world.
Speaker 2: But mister Trump is accelerating this green breakdown. It's a
Speaker 2: very readable book. It has the science economics, and it
Speaker 2: also got one hundred and fifty color side bars. One
Speaker 2: of those is this headline Britain's advice to stop showering
Speaker 2: to conserve energy, And there was also a minister in
Speaker 2: Switzerland who said that people should shower with a friend
Speaker 2: to conserve energy. But you know, these are the crazy
Speaker 2: things that are going on. But the book captures all
Speaker 2: this funny stuff and gives people the real background they
Speaker 2: need to see the crazy state the world is in
Speaker 2: and how it's going to change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you and I always talk when these
Speaker 1: world climate gatherings take place, you know, under the auspices
Speaker 1: of the United Nations or whatever organization it is. If
Speaker 1: the United States no longer is going to participate in
Speaker 1: these sort of events. Do they have any impact, any
Speaker 1: meaning at all if the United States isn't there.
Speaker 2: Well, right off the bat, there's about eight billion dollars
Speaker 2: a year that comes out of it. Mister Trump has
Speaker 2: shut that off. As part of the USA they were
Speaker 2: giving money, and then the US federal government was giving money.
Speaker 2: That's been shut off. And it is a big thing.
Speaker 2: And I do think that this is different than his
Speaker 2: first term. I think the world is ready. By the way,
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, doctor Benny Piyser in Europe, says
Speaker 2: that people are just jaded with his climate stuff. He
Speaker 2: thinks more than half the population over there doesn't believe
Speaker 2: what leaders is telling him anymore. So I think we're
Speaker 2: about to see a big revolution. People are going to
Speaker 2: get out of the climate business. We're going to get
Speaker 2: back to sensible energy policy. But it is going to
Speaker 2: take quite a bit more for this to occur.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, and I don't know if you want
Speaker 1: to answer this question or not, but with all this
Speaker 1: money that was changing hands, what percentage of that was
Speaker 1: finding its way into the pockets of a lot of
Speaker 1: these people who promote this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, there is a bunch of that, I think Leezeldon
Speaker 2: and the EPA has pointed out that there was something
Speaker 2: like twenty billion dollars that the EPA granted in the
Speaker 2: last couple months of the Trump administration to a number
Speaker 2: of non governmental organizations to do climate stuff. It went
Speaker 2: to I think the City Bank or somebody. There really
Speaker 2: wasn't a lot of audit on it or tracking, just
Speaker 2: a big shoveling of money. So you know, I've always
Speaker 2: said the biggest the bigger government gets, the more waste
Speaker 2: you have. And we really need the lean government. We
Speaker 2: need to get back to the markets and let companies
Speaker 2: do their sorts of thing, and these programs that forced
Speaker 2: everybody to do certain things to try and save the
Speaker 2: climate are really very foolish.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Steve Gorham, with that, we will let
Speaker 1: you go. If people want to find out more about
Speaker 1: you and the Climate Science Coalition of America, how do
Speaker 1: they do that?
Speaker 2: Go to my website Steve Goorham dot com. G O
Speaker 2: R E H A M. I'll send them a sign
Speaker 2: copy of any of my four books they can order.
Speaker 2: They can also get them on Amazon and there are
Speaker 2: e books available as well.
Speaker 1: Steve Gorham always appreciate the time, Thank you, sir, and
Speaker 1: we'll do it again before too long.
Speaker 2: Thank you Dan.
Speaker 1: All Right, there you go, Steve Gorham of the client,
Speaker 1: the Climate Science Coalition of America. A little late for
Speaker 1: a break here on fifty five KRC DE talk Station
Speaker 1: fifty five KRC