Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country. Mister Gorbachev, tear
Speaker 1: down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Yward and Charles C. W. Cook.
Speaker 2: I'm James Lylyax. Today we talked to Robert Bryce about energy,
Speaker 2: so let's ever seve a podcast moment.
Speaker 1: For the moment.
Speaker 3: Supply has already been restored in several territories in the
Speaker 3: north and south of the peninsula thanks to the interconnections
Speaker 3: with France and Morocco countries, to which I would also
Speaker 3: like to thank for their solidarity.
Speaker 2: At this time.
Speaker 3: Combined cycles and hydroelectric plants have also been reactivated throughout
Speaker 3: the country, something that should allow us to recover supply
Speaker 3: throughout Spain.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Pond Gust number seven
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty nine. I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis, where
Speaker 2: it appears to be trending towards precipitation this afternoon in
Speaker 2: meteorological terms, or gosh, looks like rain. You bet, you're sure. See.
Speaker 2: I can code talk just like Tim won't say. I
Speaker 2: can switch with ease between the various ways of communicating
Speaker 2: with people that's why they chose me here for the podcast.
Speaker 2: And I'm joined by other great choices, those being Stephen
Speaker 2: Hereward and Journals C. W. Cook. Gentlemen, Hello, Hello, Hi James.
Speaker 2: How are things where you are? Well?
Speaker 1: Things are just fine out here on the left coast.
Speaker 1: It's foggy and cloudy, as it has been all week,
Speaker 1: but at least we're not facing rain. And I saw
Speaker 1: some weather map. There's some weird weather phenomenon that has
Speaker 1: you guys up, and I don't know, it just all
Speaker 1: looks very strange.
Speaker 2: Well, earlier, earlier this week, there was some it was
Speaker 2: like a fist, like a boxing glove, that was heading
Speaker 2: straight toward us. We were warned that there would be hail.
Speaker 2: We were warned there was a twenty percent chance of
Speaker 2: tornadoes here in the city. We had missed, I believe,
Speaker 2: just gentle not even qualifying as drizzle. And Charles, of course,
Speaker 2: is in subtropical Florida, which I assume is starting to
Speaker 2: get into its humid season. But politically speaking, we are,
Speaker 2: of course here to discuss a variety of other wonderful things.
Speaker 2: Where do we begin to tell the sweet love story? Well,
Speaker 2: let's say it's been a couple of weeks some immigration news,
Speaker 2: although that story seems to have been muted somewhat. There
Speaker 2: was the arrest of the Wisconsin judge for facilitating the
Speaker 2: escape of somebody out the back door, which really needed
Speaker 2: sort of a smoking in the bandit banjo, you know,
Speaker 2: country western kind of caper music soundtrack. There was the
Speaker 2: gentleman who was ordered released from federal immigration custody on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: The Columbia activist Colleen No one seems to be talking
Speaker 2: much about Maryland Dad anymore. So is this just a
Speaker 2: function of the media pipelines in which I am being
Speaker 2: shot through? Or is the vibe shifted to elsewhere? And
Speaker 2: if so, what is the current terror? The current panic?
Speaker 2: You guys, tell me what you think.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there's a third of judicial development this week,
Speaker 1: which was a federal judge in Texas, a Trump appointee,
Speaker 1: it should be noted, who barred further deportations under the
Speaker 1: Alien Enemies Act of what seventeen ninety seven or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, And so that's going to slow things up.
Speaker 1: I'm a little puzzled by that, not because it's a
Speaker 1: Trump judge, but only on the broader constitutional grounds that
Speaker 1: I think determining what constitutes a threat to America and
Speaker 1: whether that satisfies the terms of the statute of invasion
Speaker 1: or I forget the actual terms in the law, but
Speaker 1: seems to me that's an executive determination entirely within the
Speaker 1: Commander in chief powers, and not a judicial one.
Speaker 2: But I could be wrong. As they say, Charles, what
Speaker 2: do you believe is the basis for that?
Speaker 4: Well, this is a difficult one because the practice, as
Speaker 4: Steve implies, of the judicial branch for a long time,
Speaker 4: has been not to make that sort of determination, that is,
Speaker 4: to leave the factual questions to the political branches and
Speaker 4: deem them non justiceiable. But it doesn't have to in
Speaker 4: the sense that there is enough elastic within our system
Speaker 4: that if a court is reviewing a statute, and the
Speaker 4: Alien Enemies Act is a statute, it is empowered under
Speaker 4: Marbury to say what that statute means, thereby to make
Speaker 4: some factual determinations along the way. So I was also
Speaker 4: surprised by this, not because I necessarily disagreed with the conclusion,
Speaker 4: or because I'm necessarily against courts making some factual determinations,
Speaker 4: but just because.
Speaker 2: They normally don't.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't even the Supreme Court doing it, which
Speaker 4: would have been interesting. This was a judge at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the food chain, so not outraged by it,
Speaker 4: but that did surprise me too.
Speaker 2: Explain to people if you can exactly how it happens
Speaker 2: that a Texas judge just pops up with something like
Speaker 2: this and it has an effect that just stops what
Speaker 2: the government is doing. Did the judge get up in
Speaker 2: the morning and say, you know, this is really nagging
Speaker 2: at me. I'm gonna call the press conference. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: bang my gavel down. Or does somebody does somebody have
Speaker 2: to go around and say we need to we need
Speaker 2: to find a judge to do this, and you know,
Speaker 2: they start going through the rolodex and saying, well, here's
Speaker 2: one in Texas, you know, go and give her a call.
Speaker 2: I mean, how does that work?
Speaker 1: Well, you have to follow the bouncing ball several weeks
Speaker 1: back to when I forget which level appeals court it
Speaker 1: might have been, it was a Supreme Court ultimately that said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't a person in Texas and Louisiana file with
Speaker 1: a district judge in Washington, d C. To get relief
Speaker 1: and do process. You have to file where you're being held,
Speaker 1: which was Texas. So I think this case follows the
Speaker 1: process more correctly that it's brought in the venue where
Speaker 1: the people who are eligible or you know, on the
Speaker 1: docket for deep rotation actually are residing at the moment.
Speaker 1: I think it's just that simple. I think the your
Speaker 1: other question you raised, James, though, James, is uh, why
Speaker 1: have we forgotten suddenly about Maryland Man? Well, more and more,
Speaker 1: more and more data is coming out, including some uh
Speaker 1: uh you police, uh video camera footage of a traffic stop,
Speaker 1: and and more documents about how this guy had been a.
Speaker 2: Wife beater and so forth.
Speaker 1: Uh, And all of a sudden, even Democrats are saying,
Speaker 1: you know, And in fact, the story reported this week
Speaker 1: is that Hakeem Jefferies, the Democratic House leader, told his
Speaker 1: caucus no more trips to l Salvador.
Speaker 2: I think they realized that.
Speaker 1: Trump is out smarter than once again by getting them
Speaker 1: to defend a person who's not very appealing, uh, and
Speaker 1: leave aside the you know, the the various legal issues
Speaker 1: which you're serious. But I think Trump and his people thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, if we're stubborn, uh, we're gonna win this.
Speaker 2: And I think they probably are.
Speaker 1: And then finally, uh, the guy Badawi who has released
Speaker 1: the Columbia graduate student. Well, it turns out there's some
Speaker 1: affidavits from ten years ago where he says directly, I
Speaker 1: want to kill Jews. That seems fairly cut and dry.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta find it. There's writing, Charlie Love.
Speaker 1: You know there is a I looked this up once
Speaker 1: and I should find it again because it's it's gristed
Speaker 1: for you, James. It's the visa application form to visit
Speaker 1: the United States, and it has these ludicrous questions in
Speaker 1: it that include things like, and this is pretty close
Speaker 1: for memory, do you seek to enter the United States
Speaker 1: for purposes of terrorism?
Speaker 2: Have you ever used to say?
Speaker 1: Have you ever been a member of the Nazi Party
Speaker 1: or any other group that advocates genocide? And of course
Speaker 1: you can see so yes, I'm for genocide. I'm here
Speaker 1: to do And but finally you get to the end
Speaker 1: of this. Charlie's laughing. You've probably seen these. You get
Speaker 1: to the end of this and it says a yes
Speaker 1: answer to any of the preceding question does not automatically
Speaker 1: disqualify you from receiving a visa. But if you've answered yes,
Speaker 1: you may want to schedule a visit to the local
Speaker 1: consulate for an interview. So here's guy who, in an
Speaker 1: affidavit said I want to kill Jews, and we're still gee.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the Trump administration is, you know, persecuting
Speaker 1: some guy for free speech. I don't think let's.
Speaker 2: Let's get this guy in here to tease out the
Speaker 2: nuances of what he does sitting down. Okay, So, so
Speaker 2: is this a statement that you want to kill Jews?
Speaker 2: Is a blanket way, a modus operende, a modus vivende.
Speaker 2: Shall we say, or are there specific Jews in certain
Speaker 2: situations that you're talking about? And of course the person
Speaker 2: would say, well, of course it's specific Jews in certain situations.
Speaker 2: It would be the Zionist element if they're a non Zionist.
Speaker 4: To understand that. In the original Arabic kill is more
Speaker 4: akin to say, wrestle with right.
Speaker 2: Exactly a ba right. It's a spiritual contest. So yeah, well,
Speaker 2: and of course what we're going to hear again and
Speaker 2: again and again is that the desire to deport this
Speaker 2: guy who wants to kill Jews is proof that we
Speaker 2: are living under a Nazi regime. I mean, there's absolutely
Speaker 2: the ability to switch between those two concepts is remarkable
Speaker 2: and almost unnotable at this point. So, yeah, he is
Speaker 2: not the best you know example, maybe perhaps for them
Speaker 2: to show. But then again, you know, when they're talking
Speaker 2: about the guy Maryland Dad being accused of being a
Speaker 2: wife beater or human drafficking or the rest of it,
Speaker 2: people will say, and probably correctly, and Charles can expand
Speaker 2: on this, that it's not so much. I mean, the
Speaker 2: fact that he's a bad guy doesn't mean that he
Speaker 2: should be sent to El Salvador, or when specifically the
Speaker 2: arguments or the documents that he should not be sent
Speaker 2: to El Salvador.
Speaker 5: But that seems to be.
Speaker 2: One of those little legal technicalities that make people shrug
Speaker 2: and throw up their hands and say, you know what
Speaker 2: about that. I care not a whit what counts as
Speaker 2: getting the guy out because he's bad and he wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to be here, and that's how you sort of
Speaker 2: lose the specific ad adherence to the rule of law.
Speaker 4: They'll say, yes, that's true, and I have some time
Speaker 4: for that. The problem is that democrats can't help themselves
Speaker 4: but make the wrong arguments here. So I am a
Speaker 4: classical liberal, and I am, on some of these questions
Speaker 4: much more of a squish than many conservatives. But the
Speaker 4: argument that the classical liberal squish must make is as follows.
Speaker 4: There are lots of very bad people, but our law
Speaker 4: requires us to treat them in a certain way. If,
Speaker 4: for example, you go back through all of the cases
Speaker 4: that we now know habitually as Americans, Miranda, for example,
Speaker 4: and you look at the people after whom they are named,
Speaker 4: they are invariably terrible, terrible sorts. They are rapists and
Speaker 4: pedophiles and serial killers, and are guilty of assault and
Speaker 4: bank robbery and so forth. And the argument ought to
Speaker 4: be okay, but they still get due process. Okay, but
Speaker 4: they still get a trial. Okay, But that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: you could talk to them or what you are. That
Speaker 4: is the argument that I believe in, and I will
Speaker 4: make till I'm blue in the face. Most recently, in
Speaker 4: the case of Rahemi was assumed pre caught decision on
Speaker 4: the question of Second Amendment rights. Rahimi was a terrible,
Speaker 4: terrible man, But the question at stake was are you
Speaker 4: allowed to remove somebody's Second Amendment rights without a court decision? Not?
Speaker 6: Do you like Rahimi.
Speaker 4: The problem that Democrats have jensis that they can't help
Speaker 4: but lionize the people in the cases. And then they
Speaker 4: turn around and they say, well, it shouldn't matter. Agreed,
Speaker 4: it shouldn't matter. But you put these people on the
Speaker 4: Senate Democrats Twitter feed. You told us it was just
Speaker 4: a good old Maryland dad. And if you go back
Speaker 4: five years during the George Floyd hysteria, they did it
Speaker 4: every single time there was a police shooting. The argument wasn't, well,
Speaker 4: this maybe did not necessitate lethal force, although in many
Speaker 4: cases it of course did. They said, this man, had
Speaker 4: he been left alive, would have gone on to cure cancer.
Speaker 6: He was a wonderful human being.
Speaker 2: He was a giant.
Speaker 4: And you look at what they'd done, and they'd been caught,
Speaker 4: you know, shooting a pregnant woman and slapping her mum about,
Speaker 4: and they're like, okay, fine, we can argue whether or
Speaker 4: not they deserve to be shot in the altercation that ensued,
Speaker 4: but don't pretend that they were gandy. And I just
Speaker 4: I find this baffling that the Democrats keep doing this,
Speaker 4: because then it opens themselves up to other people saying, well, no,
Speaker 4: actually he was illegal immigrant gangbanger who was guilty of
Speaker 4: domestic violence.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's built in nineteen sixty. It's built into the
Speaker 2: da DNA of nineteen sixties radicalism, where you've allorized the
Speaker 2: antisocial person because they are making a stand and a
Speaker 2: strike against an illegitimate order o chay wovarav being a
Speaker 2: perfect example. But I love the idea, as you noticed,
Speaker 2: that bad people may produce laws that are court decisions
Speaker 2: that are necessary and safeguard the rights of all. For example,
Speaker 2: if the police were to barge into somebody's house without
Speaker 2: a warrant and find a whole bunch of quicklime in
Speaker 2: the basement under the stairs and bodies therein and took
Speaker 2: it to the Supreme Court and won, I would not
Speaker 2: want to be a lawyer who said, well, under John
Speaker 2: Wayne Gacy v. Chicago v. Cicero Police, my client not
Speaker 2: being convicted. I would be saying, could you find another
Speaker 2: case that isn't gaycy maybe to back me up. Well,
Speaker 2: there's there's that, and there's also as long as we're
Speaker 2: in the history or on the topic of people who
Speaker 2: are just having a problem with Zionists, not Jews Zionists,
Speaker 2: mind you, Harvard has issued some statements about what's been
Speaker 2: going on at that August institution, and those of us
Speaker 2: who believe these to be final Glass's ivy colored palaces
Speaker 2: in which the Western values are transmitted to a hungry
Speaker 2: new generation, maybe a tad surprised, Steve, Have you taken
Speaker 2: a look at the recent report on campus anti semitism
Speaker 2: at Harvard?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: Have i?
Speaker 2: Ever?
Speaker 1: I mean it's three hundred over three hundred pages long,
Speaker 1: and I didn't read every word of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's that's too infuriating to do because it's example after
Speaker 1: example of complete moral failure on the part of Harvard.
Speaker 1: The irony is, Oh, by the way, as we are
Speaker 1: sitting down to record here Friday morning, Trump has put
Speaker 1: out a social media post saying he is going to
Speaker 1: strip Harvard of its tax exempt staff and point does
Speaker 1: that warm my cockles for this Friday? And I think
Speaker 1: they originally deserve it, and we'll leave aside the legalities
Speaker 1: and precedents for that, which I think are pretty strong.
Speaker 1: But the irony here is that the current leadership of Harvard,
Speaker 1: Alan Garber, the president, and especially the provost John Manning,
Speaker 1: they're as close as you're going to get to a
Speaker 1: sort of centered with some people with conservative sympathies as
Speaker 1: you're ever going to get at an Ivy League school.
Speaker 1: I mean, John Manning was dean of Harvard Law for
Speaker 1: a while, he was a clerk for Scalia. He's known
Speaker 1: to be a Federal Society participant. Now he seemed kind
Speaker 1: of weak to me. But on the other hand, on
Speaker 1: the relative scale, he and Garber are. You know the
Speaker 1: fact that the Harvard Water Trustee said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we need to stop the identity politics and getting and
Speaker 1: get back to having some white guys in charge who
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, so they'd like to clean things up.
Speaker 1: They've got all the usual constraints of a faculty that
Speaker 1: was able to show Larry Summers the door twenty years
Speaker 1: ago for making one comment about women that went against
Speaker 1: the orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: So you know, they got a.
Speaker 1: Lot on their hands, and it's too bad that they're
Speaker 1: taking the heat that the university deserves for decades of mouthfeasance.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, among other things, some of the
Speaker 1: things they describe and report, and kudos for putting it
Speaker 1: out and not sugarcoating it, although they say in the
Speaker 1: opening statement, we worry that this essentially what they say
Speaker 1: is We're worried this report is going to give Trump
Speaker 1: ammunition against us, but we have to put it out anyway.
Speaker 2: So good for them.
Speaker 1: But they have a story after story testimony from students
Speaker 1: of the treatment of Jews on campus that if it
Speaker 1: was any other minority group would be front page news
Speaker 1: for weeks and weeks, and calls if it was a
Speaker 1: Democratic president calls for stripping that institution of tax exempt
Speaker 1: status for its blatant civil rights violation. So they richly
Speaker 1: deserve what is happening to them, and I want more.
Speaker 2: I know your cagos are warmed, but I am still
Speaker 2: hung up on that whole legality thing, the whole means
Speaker 2: by which they could The president could do this with
Speaker 2: a stroke of the pen or call of the you know,
Speaker 2: or using the phone phone and dependent, as another man said,
Speaker 2: you can't just say yay, I like this, do it,
Speaker 2: but he can't. Oh, but do it. I mean, we'll
Speaker 2: we'll see. Well, hold on a second. I mean this
Speaker 2: is worth I don't know, So that's why I'm asking,
Speaker 2: But I'm not going to say. It seems to me
Speaker 2: that the legalities are very very important.
Speaker 5: Part of this.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I think it's actually pretty strong. Just the
Speaker 1: twenty seconds on this, which is when the Bob Jones
Speaker 1: case came down in the eighties. And remember the Reagan
Speaker 1: administration said, we don't think the IRS has the authority
Speaker 1: to strip the tax exempt status. That's for the Justice
Speaker 1: Department Civil Rights Division to look at, not the IRS.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court said, no, the IRS gets to and
Speaker 1: then the Rega administration said, fine, but just you know,
Speaker 1: limit their federal funding that was part of it, or
Speaker 1: eligibility just to the programs that are discriminatory. And the
Speaker 1: Democrats said no, we want to be able to punish
Speaker 1: the entire universe for any lapse in any department of
Speaker 1: civil rights law, and they passed a statute over Reagan's
Speaker 1: veto to do that. That's why I say, I think
Speaker 1: the legal basis here is very strong, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's time to make the left live by their own
Speaker 1: rules and the brand.
Speaker 4: Charlette, well, I agree with half of that in that
Speaker 4: I think we need to make the left live by
Speaker 4: their own rules. And this has been an annoying feature
Speaker 4: of civil rights enforcement in general now for years. The
Speaker 4: left has never explained why it took a different position
Speaker 4: in Bob Jones and it's now taking.
Speaker 6: In relation to Harvard.
Speaker 4: I would like to see a universal enforcement of the
Speaker 4: rules in the other direction. That is to say, I
Speaker 4: don't mind that Harvard has an exemption, but I don't
Speaker 4: want to live in a country in which Harvard gets
Speaker 4: its exemption, but people that the left dislikes don't. So
Speaker 4: I'm half or maybe more than half with Steve. I
Speaker 4: prefer that we have had a classically liberal order in
Speaker 4: which we could have tax exempt institutions that were all
Speaker 4: treated the same. But until we get that, this is
Speaker 4: the sort of threat or possibly execution that we are
Speaker 4: going to need. And that really is one of the
Speaker 4: stories of the last four or five years. It's been
Speaker 4: a big story here in Florida with DeSantis approach, where
Speaker 4: he has shepherded through and signed a bunch of laws that,
Speaker 4: for example, say that you're not allowed to run workplace
Speaker 4: trainings that imply that white people are a problem. And
Speaker 4: when he's done that, people have said, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 4: is this government overreach. I thought you wanted small government,
Speaker 4: or I thought you were against this. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 4: not against it if it only runs in one direction.
Speaker 4: If you are allowed, as some middle manager at Unilever
Speaker 4: to be forced to attend a session in which you
Speaker 4: were told that you are awful, then the government is
Speaker 4: allowed to step in and say, now, that's against the
Speaker 4: equal protection of the laws and existing civil rights statute.
Speaker 4: So I have no issue with Trump doing this, but
Speaker 4: I would rather have a system in which no one
Speaker 4: did it.
Speaker 2: Well, you know this is twice now. You refer to
Speaker 2: yourself as a classical liberal, and I too, and I
Speaker 2: too like to claim that mettal as well. But being
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Speaker 2: now we welcome to the podcast. Robert bryce So writer public
Speaker 2: speaker who's concentrated on energy Policy's the author of five
Speaker 2: books on the subject, including Pipe Dreams, Greed, Ego, and
Speaker 2: the Death of Enron, and most recently A Question of Power,
Speaker 2: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. You can find his
Speaker 2: work at Robert Bryce dot substack dot com. I'll have
Speaker 2: that link at ricochet dot com. Robert welcome, hi all,
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. You know, Spain touted, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure of course you knew where we're going to go
Speaker 2: with this one hundred percent renewable energy. Look at us,
Speaker 2: Look at us. We're no longer burning those liquefied dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: We don't have those nasty, you know, smoke stacks belching out.
Speaker 2: We are clean and we are green, and days later
Speaker 2: in the dark. Now, I've been reading an awful lot
Speaker 2: about what happened, and the minute that I started reading
Speaker 2: people who seem to know what they're talking about, it
Speaker 2: vaults into an area of expertise and technical details about
Speaker 2: grid and balance and deviations and the rest of It's
Speaker 2: very complex for people to figure out. What they do
Speaker 2: know is that Spain went dark. Portugal too, what happened, Well, it.
Speaker 7: Was only fifty five million people who are so it's
Speaker 7: not that not that big of a deal. And yes,
Speaker 7: you're right. I mean the timing of this was pretty rich.
Speaker 7: I think it was eight days before the blackout or so.
Speaker 7: The Spanish government was bragging, Oh, for a few minutes,
Speaker 7: we were one hundred percent renewable. Well, what's that old
Speaker 7: mine about pride goeth before the fall. But this is
Speaker 7: just a simple result, a very obvious result, rather of
Speaker 7: bad energy policy. And the socialist government under the Prime
Speaker 7: Minister of Pedro Sanchez, has made net zero their target.
Speaker 7: They have pushed hard for for wind and solar energy.
Speaker 7: I don't call them renewables, it's alt energy, alternative energy.
Speaker 7: And the short answer is why did this happen? Well,
Speaker 7: you fragilize the grid by adding these what are called
Speaker 7: asynchronous forms of generation or wind and solar don't add
Speaker 7: the kind of oomph you call it grid inertia to
Speaker 7: the grid, and so the grid becomes less less stable.
Speaker 7: And there was a small some it appears to be
Speaker 7: some kind of falter interruption or disturbance on the grid,
Speaker 7: and the wind and solar capacity couldn't respond and flatten
Speaker 7: out that that disturbance, and so the system tripped and
Speaker 7: grid went down.
Speaker 2: First of all, fragilized is a word I don't think
Speaker 2: I've encountered before, and I now love it, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to incorporate that into a.
Speaker 5: Merry body be my guest, my compliments.
Speaker 2: Secondly, a lot of people in the green side were
Speaker 2: saying after this, well, what this proves is that we
Speaker 2: just need better battery technology that when you lose from this,
Speaker 2: where they can just power up the batteries and they
Speaker 2: sort of imagine that there's these large, ever ready copper
Speaker 2: tops sitting around somewhere that they can just plug right in.
Speaker 2: Before we go further into this, how I mean, I
Speaker 2: know Elon Musk and the rest of the guys are
Speaker 2: keen on battery technology, but how good are we getting.
Speaker 2: Are we getting anything to the point where we can
Speaker 2: actually maintain the base currency that is needed to keep
Speaker 2: these systems online.
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's important before we talk about batteries
Speaker 7: just to put this in context about what's happening in Spain.
Speaker 7: So just at the moment of the collapse, more than
Speaker 7: is about sixty percent of all the electricity on the
Speaker 7: Spanish grid was coming from wind and solar. But remember
Speaker 7: this Spanish government is aiming to have eighty one percent
Speaker 7: renewables by twenty thirty and they're also aiming to shudder
Speaker 7: all of their nuclear plants by twenty thirty five, and
Speaker 7: those nuclear plants provide twenty percent of the power in
Speaker 7: Spain today. So I'm just finishing an article for Substack
Speaker 7: on this right now. But that you know, this is
Speaker 7: just a recipe for disaster. Whether they try and add
Speaker 7: batteries and do so quickly, we'll have to see. But
Speaker 7: there are all these other costs that they're going to
Speaker 7: have to ladle on top of the existing costs on
Speaker 7: the grid in order to accommodate this, all this intermittent generation.
Speaker 7: So you know, this is just a glimpse of what
Speaker 7: could happen if Spain continues with this terrible energy policy.
Speaker 2: Is the King behind this? Only because I want to
Speaker 2: say the pain in Spain falls mostly on his rain? Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm done, I'm done.
Speaker 5: I's done, really bad, really bad.
Speaker 7: Ton I will say, I have no idea about the
Speaker 7: king and don't really care about kings.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: My variation of what James said a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: with your use of fragilized is being out here in California,
Speaker 1: were at the cutting edge of a lot of this nonsense.
Speaker 1: With apologies to Mary Poppins, it seems to me you
Speaker 1: can say Spain and others are super cowy fragilizing. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that's even worse, right, Charlie Cook, I hope
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 7: I mean it's a low bar these guys, so please
Speaker 7: chime in.
Speaker 4: I have an actual, actual question, not a Mary Poppins.
Speaker 6: So this is of course me being a typical right
Speaker 6: wing mini.
Speaker 4: But I really like nuclear power, and maybe you'll correct me,
Speaker 4: maybe I'm wrong, but I was given to understand that France,
Speaker 4: which is next to Spain, is really heavily invested in
Speaker 4: nuclear power, has been since the fifties, and in America,
Speaker 4: nuclear power has become more and more popular if you
Speaker 4: look at opinion polls. I'm sure people will bulk a
Speaker 4: little when they told the station will be built in
Speaker 4: their backyard, but as a general matter, it's increased in popularity.
Speaker 4: But you just said Spain is getting rid of it's
Speaker 4: nuclear power. Can you talk me through that decision? Because
Speaker 4: Spain's next to France, surely they can see it works.
Speaker 4: So what is it that level of environmental isn't that
Speaker 4: they can't even stomach that?
Speaker 7: You know, Charlie, I'd say I just correct you. It's
Speaker 7: not environmentalism, it's ideology. And I mean, there's just no
Speaker 7: cure for I mean, you're a brit Look at the Brits.
Speaker 7: They're following Germany's example of driving their economies straight into
Speaker 7: the ditch with this, I mean, frankly just idiotic energy policy,
Speaker 7: anti nuclear, anti hydrocarbon, claiming that they can run their
Speaker 7: systems on wind and solar and batteries and unicorn farts alone,
Speaker 7: and it just doesn't work. And there was a great quote,
Speaker 7: in fact, it just came down in l pais today,
Speaker 7: the English version, and it was a quote and this,
Speaker 7: you know, it's interesting you point out there is the
Speaker 7: you know, Conservatives, Republicans tend to be more pro nuclear,
Speaker 7: and Democrats and particularly the US Democratic Party has been
Speaker 7: anti nuclear for fifty years. Now that's changing some a
Speaker 7: little bit. But anyway, here's the key quote. It was
Speaker 7: from Alberto Nunez Feju, who's the leader of the People's
Speaker 7: Party and Conservative Party pro nuclear People's Party in Spain,
Speaker 7: said that he was talking about what happened and he said,
Speaker 7: our energy system is being managed with an enormous ideological bias.
Speaker 7: And I think that's exactly right. You know, you need
Speaker 7: engineers to run the grid, not ideologues, and that unfortunately,
Speaker 7: that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 2: They really got.
Speaker 1: Started with their nuclear building program in the late seventies
Speaker 1: after the first energy crisis, and I think I think
Speaker 1: three quarters of their fleet they have now was built
Speaker 1: in the eighties when we built none, or I think
Speaker 1: we finished maybe two long running projects were finished in
Speaker 1: the eighties, one of them Diablo Canyon that I live near.
Speaker 1: I did ask a Frenchman once, a libertarian guy who
Speaker 1: Max Falk was his name, and I said, how did
Speaker 1: you guys build all this nuclear power when we stopped?
Speaker 2: And he said, oh, it's very simple.
Speaker 1: You see, he says, in France, our communists supported nuclear power,
Speaker 1: whereas in your country, your communists opposed it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds about right, and you had more to that.
Speaker 1: But I want to do this, Robert, I want to
Speaker 1: go back to this grid question for a moment, because
Speaker 1: you know, most Americans, and I'm one of them to
Speaker 1: some extent, have a simple minded view that, well, electricity,
Speaker 1: it comes from you know, power plants and wind and solar,
Speaker 1: and isn't it great? And we just throw it on
Speaker 1: wires and it comes into our house and we turn
Speaker 1: on our lights. And I try to explain the grid
Speaker 1: in simple terms as well. Think of it as something
Speaker 1: like your garden hose. It's got to be filled with
Speaker 1: water and has to have adequate pressure to keep the
Speaker 1: water moving. But I think that's not quite adequate. Can
Speaker 1: you do you know a minute of grid one oh
Speaker 1: one so that you know, a five year old can
Speaker 1: understand it because we keep hearing these terms like you
Speaker 1: know it's got to be at fifty hurtz and you
Speaker 1: know this and that, and your eyes glaze over really fast.
Speaker 1: But it turns out to be the key part of
Speaker 1: the story more than generation.
Speaker 7: I think, yeah, well, and that's the way even engineers,
Speaker 7: because electricity is it's complicated, I mean just everything about
Speaker 7: the grid and it's it's this massive machine with all
Speaker 7: these different parts and it's amazing it all works, I
Speaker 7: mean just incredible. And the electricity phenomenon itself is difficult
Speaker 7: to understand. But nevertheless, your idea about water is the
Speaker 7: right analogy, and engineers even do this to compare it
Speaker 7: to water. The difference between your garden hose example, is
Speaker 7: that say you're you know, you're filling your swimming pool,
Speaker 7: and I've been to your house the Olympic sized swimming
Speaker 7: pool in your case, say you put your garden hose
Speaker 7: in there and the pressure in the hose drops a
Speaker 7: little bit, well, it just takes you a little longer
Speaker 7: to fill the hoe, fill the pool, or take a shower,
Speaker 7: wash the dishes or whatever, because that difference in water
Speaker 7: flow doesn't matter very much ultimately to you as a
Speaker 7: cut consumer. The electric grid works differently in that that
Speaker 7: pressure and the water flow has to be constant and
Speaker 7: has to maintain in the US at sixty hertz, in
Speaker 7: the Europe fifty hertz. It has to be maintained around
Speaker 7: that frequency or and if that frequency varies too much,
Speaker 7: the system shuts down. And that's what we saw in Spain,
Speaker 7: this slight change in frequency, a sub frequency drop or
Speaker 7: a surge. And because of that lack of pressure. Think
Speaker 7: of the power generation systems in general. Have our water
Speaker 7: pumps or electricity pumps, and they operate at very high pressure. Well,
Speaker 7: wind and solar don't provide that same pressure that you
Speaker 7: get from nuclear plants and gas fired power plants, hydro plants,
Speaker 7: et cetera, and so they don't provide that Inertia is
Speaker 7: the term of art that keeps that pressure and frequency
Speaker 7: at the same at the exact same level and it's clear.
Speaker 7: And the piece that I'm writing is saying, yes, we
Speaker 7: can blame solar for the blackouts.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go back to batteries for a minute, as
Speaker 1: James brought that up. And so it's one thing to have,
Speaker 1: you know, the Tesla power wall in your house, which
Speaker 1: can I guess if you get a couple of them,
Speaker 1: and depending on your power needs, can run your house
Speaker 1: overnight if the power goes out. But these good storage
Speaker 1: batteries we're talking about, that would be you know the
Speaker 1: size of a small house and you need what thirty
Speaker 1: of them or something for a small town. And I
Speaker 1: think I've seen some figures from you and others that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't last very long. Oh and that leave us
Speaker 1: and maybe you want to talk about this too, but
Speaker 1: maybe it's asking too much. The supply chain requirements to
Speaker 1: build all those batteries are massive, and if we're doing
Speaker 1: it to save greenhouse gas emissions, it's not even clear
Speaker 1: it's net plus for that accounting game, right, So the
Speaker 1: battery fantasy is really I think my opinion and it'll stop,
Speaker 1: is it's a way to keep solar and wind power
Speaker 1: viable quote unquote for the greenies who are made religion
Speaker 1: out of pushing it so hard.
Speaker 5: Sure. Well, a couple of quick thoughts.
Speaker 7: One is I'm starting to come around to some of
Speaker 7: the battery storage, like here in Texas. You know, they
Speaker 7: can be valuable for peak peak shaving right when the
Speaker 7: demand is very high. So I'm coming around to some
Speaker 7: of their utility in terms of overall grid management. However,
Speaker 7: what we saw in Spain is that the power went
Speaker 7: out for twelve fifteen sixteen. I don't know how many
Speaker 7: hours it berries on the region. There are no batteries
Speaker 7: that are going to last all day. They're generally meant
Speaker 7: for about four hours. To other quick points, one is
Speaker 7: that the battery supply chain is almost completely dependent on China,
Speaker 7: and you know China. China is not our friend. I
Speaker 7: think we can all agree on this, but I think
Speaker 7: I'd like to just steer the conversation just a little
Speaker 7: bit if I could. On the other issue in Spain,
Speaker 7: and you know, Charles, you know from the UK, it's
Speaker 7: all across Europe. Land use conflicts around renewable energy projects,
Speaker 7: whether it's a wind or solar or high voltage transmission.
Speaker 7: I've documented them here in the US, and the renewable
Speaker 7: rejection database. It's on my website. I've also started the
Speaker 7: Global renewable rejection database now at one hundred and three
Speaker 7: and of those rejections in Ireland, Scotland, in the UK
Speaker 7: just this year, just since January first, there have been
Speaker 7: twenty three rejections. Well, look at what's happening in Spain.
Speaker 7: Just In and Bloomberg reported on this. I'm just finishing
Speaker 7: this piece was Reuter's reported on a storm of lawsuits
Speaker 7: against wind energy projects in Galicia. In February, officials in
Speaker 7: Tora Vieja stopped the construction of the solar project for
Speaker 7: a desil plant in Galicia. They've implemented a new rule
Speaker 7: on wind projects in that area. So what you know,
Speaker 7: This idea that Spain is going to get to eighty
Speaker 7: percent renewals is just hogwashed. They're never going to be
Speaker 7: able to do it because they don't have enough land.
Speaker 7: And that's the same the thing that is hindering a
Speaker 7: hamstring will always hamstring wind and solar projects is they're
Speaker 7: just the amount of land they require is just cartoonish.
Speaker 4: On that, I have another nuclear power question. Sure again,
Speaker 4: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember
Speaker 4: reading that with nuclear power. Once it's on, you know
Speaker 4: exactly how much power you're getting out of it per generator, right,
Speaker 4: because there's no variability of the input. So given that
Speaker 4: we know that, how many nuclear stations, and accounting for geography,
Speaker 4: because I understand how much energy you lose over distance,
Speaker 4: how many would we need realistically to completely nuclearize the
Speaker 4: United States?
Speaker 5: Huh? Okay, Well let me just do some back into them. Okay.
Speaker 7: So Spain gets about twenty percent of its power from
Speaker 7: nuclear plants. It has five plants. In the US, we
Speaker 7: have ninety some odd nuclear plants. Some of them are
Speaker 7: twin reactors, some of them I think Palo Verde has four.
Speaker 7: In any case, we get about roughly twenty percent from
Speaker 7: let's call it one hundred, So we'd need four hundred
Speaker 7: more to meet be one hundred percent nuclear power in
Speaker 7: the US and something like that.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: So I'm with you, Charles. I'm adamantly pro nuclear. Ive
Speaker 7: been saying the same thing for fifteen years. If we're
Speaker 7: serious about decarbonization, serious about reducing CO two emissions and
Speaker 7: sparing land, which is what I'm in favor of. I'm
Speaker 7: a point watcher, I'm a bad, bad enthusiast landscape enthusiast
Speaker 7: hiker natural. As for nuclear preserved, they have high power density,
Speaker 7: which is key. But let we have to be very
Speaker 7: sober about where nuclear is in the United States. It's
Speaker 7: the rollout is going to be slow, and I wish
Speaker 7: if I had one wish for the Trump administration, get
Speaker 7: on it, man, get on it. We have to solve
Speaker 7: the capital, the fuel, the regulation, and the waste problem.
Speaker 7: We got to get on it right away.
Speaker 2: Nixon wanted a thousand plants. That was one of the reaction. No,
Speaker 2: he did, he absolutely did, and it would have provided
Speaker 2: like something like two hundred percent of the projected power
Speaker 2: and it would have been great. Of course, the Left
Speaker 2: would have spent a great deal of time shutting them
Speaker 2: down because they made Bruce Springsteen unhappy.
Speaker 5: But here's Jackson Brown.
Speaker 2: Don't forget Jackson Brown and everybody else who required undependable
Speaker 2: energy sources to do their concerts.
Speaker 5: But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, there is something I suppose that stirs
Speaker 2: the heart of the European breast when they see a windmill.
Speaker 2: I know that when I go to England and we're
Speaker 2: driving around Sussex and we come around it. We always
Speaker 2: come around a bend and there's It always startles me
Speaker 2: to see these dark satanic blades just slowly moving. And
Speaker 2: some people see these enormous structures as signs of hope,
Speaker 2: when I think, you know, you don't have to dodg
Speaker 2: your countryside with these things everywhere, You don't have to
Speaker 2: have shiny walls of mirrors. You can build a nuke.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing you mentioned before, an ideological attachment
Speaker 2: to these things. And I don't think that anybody believes that, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I do. There's the notion of de growth, that
Speaker 2: if that there's something wrong about the fact that Western
Speaker 2: society continues to grow and invent and spread, and that
Speaker 2: this is some sort of cancerous fungus on the planet
Speaker 2: on Guia's face, and what we ought to do is
Speaker 2: to be less and less and less. And there's something
Speaker 2: about the unstanding ability of nuclear power to provide this
Speaker 2: that they don't like because it suggests abundance. And I
Speaker 2: know that's sort of a complicated psychological take on it,
Speaker 2: but I think that's part of it. I think that
Speaker 2: if you say this grid is less dependable, what they
Speaker 2: will say is you're going to you will adapt, You'll
Speaker 2: be fine. If the power isn't on between one and two,
Speaker 2: will all be better for it? If the power goes
Speaker 2: down to fifty percent? Ten? Am I wrong?
Speaker 5: Well where to start? You've made a.
Speaker 7: Lot of points there, I think in the seventy and
Speaker 7: you know, I'm going to be sixty five this year,
Speaker 7: so I'm not quite as old as Steve Hayward. No
Speaker 7: it is, but I'm you know, getting I'm getting older.
Speaker 7: But you know, in the sixties and seventies, the anti
Speaker 7: nuclear movement was really propelled by this kind of anti
Speaker 7: nuclear weapon view, right, that the conflation of nuclear energy
Speaker 7: with nuclear weaponry was really the main thing. Right, So
Speaker 7: that's kind of changed over time, and now the ardent
Speaker 7: nuclear opponents are saying, oh, we can't deal with the waste,
Speaker 7: and you know it's too long lived. But but it's
Speaker 7: all this has just been the ideology of the left
Speaker 7: in America really since the sixties and particularly after the
Speaker 7: end of the Cold War. You know that nuclear energy
Speaker 7: is bad and that that alt energy renewables are good,
Speaker 7: regardless of whether you know the intermittency or whatever. But
Speaker 7: I'll quote Jesse Osibel, a friend of mine who has
Speaker 7: influenced my thinking on this greatly. He said, you know,
Speaker 7: wind and solar may be renewable, but they are not green.
Speaker 7: And I think that's just such a great summation of that.
Speaker 7: And that's why one of the reasons why I'm so
Speaker 7: pro nuclear is a small footprint and power density. High
Speaker 7: power density is key. It is green, and that is
Speaker 7: something where the I think this environmental betrayal by the
Speaker 7: left in favor of offshore wind, which I cannot stand,
Speaker 7: is just this incredible betrayal of the environment. But you know,
Speaker 7: I think it's all just motivated by money, and the
Speaker 7: NGOs are allied with big banks, big law firms and
Speaker 7: big business to promote this wind and solar. I think
Speaker 7: it's just that simple.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Billy Bob Thornton has a speech
Speaker 2: and Landman that addressed the very greenish yeah, talking about
Speaker 2: it and as they love to debunk it, I love
Speaker 2: to listen to it. Steven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Actually, Robert, do your three keys to thinking about energy? Briefly?
Speaker 1: I use them for my students, and I got them
Speaker 1: from you.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, the density, cost, and scale.
Speaker 1: If you need to prompt.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, Well, it's it's what I call the four imperatives.
Speaker 7: And I'm in my fourth book power Hungry, power density,
Speaker 7: energy density, cost and scale. So why are our energy
Speaker 7: systems why have they developed the way they have over
Speaker 7: the past, you know, two centuries really in the in
Speaker 7: the in the since in the beginning of the industrial age. Well,
Speaker 7: it's power density. And what is power density. It's a
Speaker 7: measure of energy flow that could be harnessed in a
Speaker 7: given area of volume or mass. That's not power and
Speaker 7: energy are not the same thing. Power is the ability power.
Speaker 7: Energy is the ability to do work. Powers the rate
Speaker 7: at which work gets done. Okay, so power density is
Speaker 7: a measure of energy flow in a certain time. And
Speaker 7: so that's why again going back to nuclear and natural
Speaker 7: gas and and even coal mines underground coal mines are
Speaker 7: super high power density. Energy density is the amount of
Speaker 7: energy that's contained in a certain weight or mass or volume.
Speaker 7: So this bottle here has water in it, but if
Speaker 7: it had you know, leaves or sawdust, and it would
Speaker 7: have lower energy density than if I fill it with
Speaker 7: gasoline or kerosene. And then costs and scale are obvious,
Speaker 7: right you know, And so uh these then the lower
Speaker 7: one other quick point is the lower the power density,
Speaker 7: the higher the resource intensity. And that's what we see
Speaker 7: with corn ethanol, with wind, with solar, they just require
Speaker 7: massive amounts of land because they produce very small energy
Speaker 7: flows from the relative footprint. So it's a you know,
Speaker 7: basic physics, but unfortunately, very very few people understand it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean what I what I do Robert with students,
Speaker 1: is I show them I use music because I can
Speaker 1: understand this. I show them an old a track tape
Speaker 1: which they've never seen, and a cassette tape. By by
Speaker 1: the way, you have an old a tract tape of
Speaker 1: electric light orchestra to make it topical. And then I'll
Speaker 1: show them, you know, cassette tape, a record album, and
Speaker 1: then I'll show them an old iPod or you know,
Speaker 1: well you could you have ten.
Speaker 5: Songs, right, or a little flash drive flash drive.
Speaker 1: Right, and that that's an easy way to get the
Speaker 1: energy density question across. And then what do you want
Speaker 1: where do you want to get your music from? You know,
Speaker 1: a hardboard box full of eight tracks with fifty songs,
Speaker 1: or your little device that's not even a square ranch
Speaker 1: that has a thousand songs and they understand that.
Speaker 7: So you can play that eight track in your vintage
Speaker 7: firebird their right right, that's the image that comes to people.
Speaker 2: We let you go, Robert. Then one related question that
Speaker 2: brings us all together. What is the gauge on the
Speaker 2: top east ring on that stratocaster hanging on the wall.
Speaker 5: Well, it's E, right, it's E.
Speaker 2: But use a nine gauge, ten gauge eleven.
Speaker 7: Oh gosh, I think those are ten gauge strings. I'm
Speaker 7: I'm a perennial beginner when it comes to the to
Speaker 7: the guitar, but I have a I think I worked
Speaker 7: too much to play all the time. But yes, but
Speaker 7: I love my guitar collection.
Speaker 2: But nine is great for soloing because you can really
Speaker 2: bend that baby. I always found the elevens would just
Speaker 2: pop like crazy. They would, they would even and you
Speaker 2: Miami bar takes it out of tune, and then you've
Speaker 2: got to even bend it even more than it snaps,
Speaker 2: which is why I actually it's more of a Gibson man,
Speaker 2: even though I love my strat Well, next time, practice
Speaker 2: a little bit more. You can play us out. But
Speaker 2: for the moment, we're going to tell everybody that a necessary, important,
Speaker 2: and incredibly relevant book to our times today is a
Speaker 2: question of power electricity and the wealth of nations. Robert Bryce,
Speaker 2: thanks for joining us today. Fascinating. Could have done another
Speaker 2: hour and someday soon I hope that we will. Robert,
Speaker 2: see you later.
Speaker 5: Thanks y'all.
Speaker 2: So Charles, I believe that you had something you didn't
Speaker 2: want to burden the fellow with an anecdte. No I
Speaker 2: us burden us if you will.
Speaker 4: So fay globalist elite that I am. I just came
Speaker 4: back from France. I spent a lovely ten days and
Speaker 4: we drove across much of the country and my favorite
Speaker 4: wine regions were on our schedule. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that I saw that I just would not have
Speaker 4: seen on my many trips to Front's as a kid.
Speaker 4: Also driving trips with these wind farms that are everywhere.
Speaker 4: Now you see them in this beautiful countryside, but it's
Speaker 4: marred by all these horrible War of the World style machines.
Speaker 4: But here's a funny little insight into what people really think.
Speaker 4: Spit of wine torn Burgundy, and between where we were
Speaker 4: staying and the vineyards, there are all.
Speaker 6: These wind farms. And I said to the lady, I said, why,
Speaker 6: why why are they there? You have all this nuclear power.
Speaker 4: This is just vanity, right, and she felt a bit defensive,
Speaker 4: you know, so I said, no, no, no, they are fine.
Speaker 6: They do not look too bad. We have these these
Speaker 6: bring electricity to the villages. They are fine, you know.
Speaker 6: We drive on a little bit.
Speaker 4: Eventually we end up near Bone in Burgundy, a middle
Speaker 4: all the vineyards, and I said to her, you know,
Speaker 4: I noticed.
Speaker 6: There aren't any windmills here, and she said, have those
Speaker 6: things near the grapes.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I thought, that somehow the vibration caused
Speaker 2: by these things would somehow affect the tanning gas and somebody.
Speaker 6: Now I get it, I get it.
Speaker 4: People put these things in different places, but it's like
Speaker 4: when they're ruining a beautiful landscape. She was like, no,
Speaker 4: they're beautiful, while you said, you feel is dying. And
Speaker 4: then the minute I'm like, well there they aren't near
Speaker 4: the grape, She's like, those disgusting tall, mud and swingy things,
Speaker 4: we kind of put them near the wine.
Speaker 6: I just I think that's what they actually think, right.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, you can always tell what people want
Speaker 4: when you say let's put it in your backyard.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, well it requires a lot of substances, which
Speaker 2: is copper, and everybody is complaining here because Trump is
Speaker 2: threatening to open up areas near our beloved boundary waters
Speaker 2: to mining to get copper because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: copper up here. Because you can't use old copper, recycled copper.
Speaker 2: You need lots of virgin copper for these things. But
Speaker 2: somehow we'll have to get it from someplace else. We'll
Speaker 2: get it from China. Well maybe not the way things
Speaker 2: are going. We have seen interesting stories this week about
Speaker 2: reshoring of several things, from electronics to I think Eli
Speaker 2: Lilly is committed like five billion dollars or something, don't
Speaker 2: quote me on building pharmacy complants here, which is great,
Speaker 2: which is really nice, because I'd like for us to
Speaker 2: not have to depend on China four that stuff. We
Speaker 2: had that spasm in twenty twenty when we're realizing, oh
Speaker 2: wait a minute, we all need masks, we didn't and
Speaker 2: China is the only guys who have them, and they
Speaker 2: did to tie back to electricity, so ied. I saw
Speaker 2: an interview with the guy, and I can't vouch for
Speaker 2: any of this. I probably shouldn't say it, but he
Speaker 2: was talking about the fact that we get most of
Speaker 2: our transformers. It seems from China. And if you were
Speaker 2: the Chinese government and you were selling transformers to the
Speaker 2: grid of a nation for whom you have a certain
Speaker 2: amount of antagonism, wouldn't you just build a back door
Speaker 2: into every single one of them.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's one reason why we don't want stuff from
Speaker 4: Wua Wai on a Internet precisely, person like the British
Speaker 4: who decided that that was all fine.
Speaker 2: It's as if it's xenophobic to somehow say that China
Speaker 2: would be installing all sorts of spyware and back doors
Speaker 2: into their stuff. I mean, it's simple national self interest.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't they, especially when they have a trading partner
Speaker 2: like us who's so credule has to believe that they're
Speaker 2: behaving completely above board. When I mean, I wish I
Speaker 2: could show you. I have two electric razors. One is
Speaker 2: by Phillips, the others by some Chinese fly by nine company,
Speaker 2: and they are exactly the same. They are precisely the
Speaker 2: same in terms of their design, They have everything about
Speaker 2: them you can just tell China stole it.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 4: We do expect this, though, James, because we don't allow
Speaker 4: China to sell us anything that is used in our
Speaker 4: military equipment, so we do know, yeah, likely to do this.
Speaker 4: I mean this is a very very small example. But
Speaker 4: I am, as you know, a big technod and I've
Speaker 4: installed all manner of smart devices in my house, most
Speaker 4: of which are either proprietorial or I built myself, or
Speaker 4: are not linked to the cloud or whatever. Well anyway,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of custom code that I have running them.
Speaker 4: But I have these two devices in the house that
Speaker 4: were made in China because there's nowhere else that I
Speaker 4: can get them. Long story short, and those two devices
Speaker 4: constantly and of course I've stopped them. They're the only
Speaker 4: two devices in the whole lot that constantly try to
Speaker 4: ping China on the network.
Speaker 2: They're phoning home all the time, phoning home.
Speaker 6: All the time.
Speaker 4: So I got rid of them because it's like, I
Speaker 4: can't have that in my house. I can't people say, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: you're so paranoid. Do you think they care how often
Speaker 4: you open your garage door? I don't know, but I
Speaker 4: don't want them knowing that.
Speaker 5: Who are they pinging?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I mean you can you can get did
Speaker 2: you use little snitch or did you just look at
Speaker 2: your logs?
Speaker 4: Well, I have a whole server room full of equipment
Speaker 4: that runs my network. So I see all of the
Speaker 4: packets that go in and out, and I can say, so,
Speaker 4: who's it trying to I don't know, but it's the manufacturer,
Speaker 4: I guess. In Chinese IP addresses, you can't really tell
Speaker 4: where they're going inside China because China has this bpeak
Speaker 4: firewall around the country and it translates everything into subnets.
Speaker 6: So I don't know. But it's also just even.
Speaker 4: If they were pinging Tampa, it would still be different
Speaker 4: than everything else on the network. Now of the light
Speaker 4: switches in my house, I'm trying to ping Amazon websites. Right,
Speaker 4: It's just these two Chinese made devices. It's fascinating, right.
Speaker 2: Pitch them out, pitch them out. Well. Also, we need
Speaker 2: rare earth, we need minerals, we need stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and as it turns out, Ukraine has got a lot
Speaker 2: of them, and including Neon, which I'm very happy about.
Speaker 2: The fact that we have struck a trade deal with
Speaker 2: Ukraine for Neon means that the American Renaissance can possibly
Speaker 2: bring back to the downtowns and the drive ins more.
Speaker 2: Neon a wonderful American art form. But for all those
Speaker 2: people who are saying that you know, Trump's is going
Speaker 2: to abandon Ukraine. It seems as if struck a deal
Speaker 2: whereby we get access to the minerals in exchange for security,
Speaker 2: really and they trust us. What do you think of
Speaker 2: the deal? Well, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've thought from the beginning that this was
Speaker 1: quite a significant idea on several grounds, But the main
Speaker 1: one is you just mentioned it if the United and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we're actually taking co ownership, which
Speaker 1: was one of the original ideas, or whether we're just
Speaker 1: going to get favorable terms and be first in line
Speaker 1: to buy Ukrainian mineral exports. I prefer the former because
Speaker 1: then it gives the United States a direct national interest
Speaker 1: in the survival of Ukraine, and that tells Russia that right,
Speaker 1: you're right, Johns. Another guarantee on paper is not worked
Speaker 1: very much from us, since we didn't follow the previous
Speaker 1: one from thirty years ago that said give up your
Speaker 1: nukes and we'll guarantee your security.
Speaker 2: Well, we didn't live up to that.
Speaker 1: So the point is is that now you have a
Speaker 1: real tangible economic interest, it sends a signal to Russia
Speaker 1: hands off Ukraine. So I kind of like that people
Speaker 1: all like to say, well, this is Trump being an
Speaker 1: economic imperial I don't know what they're saying, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's Trump's deal making. I kind of think it reminds
Speaker 1: me a little bit of the len Lease Act back
Speaker 1: and len Ley's actions of Roosevelt back on the eve
Speaker 1: of World War Two, where because we had constraints in
Speaker 1: the law, the Neutrality Act, we were lending destroyers to
Speaker 1: Britain which were maybe obsolete, but it was a political
Speaker 1: statement that was important. But in return, we got some
Speaker 1: British bases in the Caribbean that they weren't likely to
Speaker 1: be needing anytime.
Speaker 2: Soon at the outset of that war.
Speaker 1: And so I don't think this is entirely unprecedented or
Speaker 1: without any parallels in our past. And I'm rather encouraged
Speaker 1: by it as someone who wants to see Ukraine survive.
Speaker 1: And I'll just sort of stop there and see what
Speaker 1: Charlie thinks of any of that.
Speaker 6: Well, do you know when the British finally paid off Lendleys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the nineteen nineties or something, or two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: It, Yes, I knew it was recent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's certainly, as you say, not new a
Speaker 4: lot of the coverage of this is implied this is
Speaker 4: some monstrous innovation on the parts of the Trump administration,
Speaker 4: but it's not. I'm pleased about it for a couple
Speaker 4: of reasons. First because its signals that we're going to
Speaker 4: be siting with Ukraine rather than Russia, which we should be.
Speaker 6: And second because I don't.
Speaker 4: See a great problem in them helping us pay them
Speaker 4: to fight Russia. No, I think we should be helping them,
Speaker 4: but there's nothing written in the stars that says we
Speaker 4: can't ever get anything in return.
Speaker 6: I don't I don't have an issue with it.
Speaker 2: No, I agree completely. It was after the Iraq War
Speaker 2: and Sodomusine was toppled and they were selling the oil leases,
Speaker 2: the oil rights around. I don't believe that the United
Speaker 2: States companies came in the top two or three. I
Speaker 2: think it was total Fena and I think it was France.
Speaker 2: I think these guys bid us. So, I mean, we
Speaker 2: didn't get the oil out of that, and if we had,
Speaker 2: it would have been, well, it's blood for oil. No,
Speaker 2: we're just ye. So I agree with Charlie. There's there's
Speaker 2: no reason that Ukraine can't slip a couple of bucks
Speaker 2: our way and we'll all be together. It just may seem, however,
Speaker 2: when you look back at all the shouting and the
Speaker 2: bluster and the Putin cozening and the rest of it,
Speaker 2: that we saw somebody staking out absurd, irrational position and
Speaker 2: getting people to the table and eventually moving more towards
Speaker 2: the center. I keep being told that that's what's always
Speaker 2: going on, and sometimes I actually kind of sort of
Speaker 2: believe it, credulous soul that I am. Well, Stephen, before
Speaker 2: we go, I believe that you would like to let
Speaker 2: the world know of an absolutely brilliant, pithy Charles able
Speaker 2: to cook tweet. Yeah, that sums it all up.
Speaker 1: Charles wins Twitter for this week. In my mind, at
Speaker 1: least my humble opinion, there was that if you missed this,
Speaker 1: Sir James, a what a squib in the New York
Speaker 1: Times or a quote in the mainstream media saying there's
Speaker 1: a clamoring among Democrats to have Kamala Harris re emerged.
Speaker 1: She's the only leader to speak up against Trump when
Speaker 1: there's clamoring going on. Charles, I had a great laugh
Speaker 1: out of your tweet, which I'll read to our listeners.
Speaker 1: There is not there has in fact, never ever been
Speaker 1: less of a clamoring for anything that is on off
Speaker 1: for In the history of clamoring, no people has ever
Speaker 1: clamored less than the American people are clamoring for Kamala
Speaker 1: Harrison's voice. She is clamorless. She is a hollow clamorree
Speaker 1: and that's it. And I thought, you know what, were
Speaker 1: you subconsciously channeling John Clees and the Parent Shop about
Speaker 1: the I was wondering was the inspiration?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: That was fabulous, Charles. I envy your your style with
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 6: Wow, thank you. I stepped.
Speaker 4: Back to my computer and found that that story and
Speaker 4: I a couldn't believe the claim that was being made,
Speaker 4: but even better, I couldn't believe that the claim had
Speaker 4: been made on background. So she had managed whoever said
Speaker 4: that had managed to get permission to say it anonymously,
Speaker 4: because why why do you need.
Speaker 6: Anonymity to praise your former boss? It was osity bizarre
Speaker 6: whole thing.
Speaker 2: Is right well? I saw a re emerging a clip
Speaker 2: that was going around where she was referencing some TikTok
Speaker 2: or YouTube video about what elephants at the zoo do
Speaker 2: when there's an earthquake. Apparently they form a circle with
Speaker 2: their butts all together and write it out. And she
Speaker 2: was saying that that's what the Democrats should do. And
Speaker 2: I thought, here's a perfect example of Kamala Harris. She's cackling,
Speaker 2: she's loud, she's beaming, she's rambling on about a video,
Speaker 2: and she is using as a symbol of what the
Speaker 2: Democrats ought to do, the literal representation of the Republican icon,
Speaker 2: which is the elephant. And it was in Comarington Sparkley,
Speaker 2: and she didn't explain everything right, but she was just
Speaker 2: going right, you've seen it right, right, like we're all
Speaker 2: still back in Brat's summer, and God help me if
Speaker 2: ever that comes back again. I have only to say, however,
Speaker 2: that if you, by any means, after your lunch, find
Speaker 2: yourself a little bit or breakfast or dinner or whatever.
Speaker 2: You're an evening ice cream aunt when you'll listen to this,
Speaker 2: if you find yourself a bit logi, you might want
Speaker 2: to check your metabolism and Lumen is the device for that.
Speaker 2: You might also want to go to iTunes. They still
Speaker 2: call with that Nah music podcast wherever you get your podcast,
Speaker 2: and they have the opportunity to rate us, Why don't
Speaker 2: you rate us. Don't want to be like that guy
Speaker 2: who's I was sending you this stuff saying good Joe,
Speaker 2: please rate us. But I am that guy. I guess
Speaker 2: and five stars helps why services the podcast, More people
Speaker 2: listen to it, more people go to ricochet dot com
Speaker 2: to figure out what it is. And what it is
Speaker 2: is that same civil center, right place you've been looking
Speaker 2: for on the internet all your born days. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can read the main page for free member pages, where
Speaker 2: many friendships and interesting conversations form. Give it a look.
Speaker 2: Charles Cook, Stephen Hayward, It's been a pleasure. I'm James
Speaker 2: Lilacs and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet
Speaker 2: four point oh bye bye