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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast,

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Speaker 1: from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight from Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and welcome back to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast George and Oria with You've got a

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Speaker 1: great program for you tonight. Steve Gorham as an informative,

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Speaker 1: engaging speaker delivering compelling, provocative programs to businesses, universities, diverse organizations.

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Speaker 1: He's an independent scholar, researcher, futurist in the fields of

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Speaker 1: energy and environmental policy, as well as a former engineer

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Speaker 1: and business executive with thirty plus years of experience at

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Speaker 1: Fortune one hundred and private companies. He's the executive director

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Speaker 1: of the Climate Science Coalition of America, which is an independent,

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Speaker 1: non political association of scientists and concerned citizens focusing on

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Speaker 1: informing all of us about the realities of climate science

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Speaker 1: and energy economics. His book Outside the Green Box is

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Speaker 1: in my hand right now, Steve. Welcome to the program.

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Speaker 1: Good to have you with us. A very good night

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Speaker 1: to you, George, and great to join you. I was

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Speaker 1: just mentioning Climate Week were just wrapped up in New York.

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Speaker 1: What what do they do anyway? Well, they had a

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Speaker 1: lot of people. There are a lot of dignitaries. Their

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Speaker 1: goals from the website where that they were running to

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Speaker 1: raise ambition, reduced climate change and accelerate climate action. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Some big notables Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of England spoke,

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Speaker 1: Bonkie Moon from the United Nations UM actor, Hugh Jackman,

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Speaker 1: the wolf Wolf the Wolverine spoke and so quite a

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Speaker 1: quite a big group. Also a big public relations deal,

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Speaker 1: a claim five million people were reached and three news

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Speaker 1: articles written. So kind of an interesting thing. But I

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Speaker 1: would and a lot of the folks there, I think,

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Speaker 1: believe that if they change light bulbs, they can save

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Speaker 1: polar bears. If we all drive electric cars, we can

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Speaker 1: stop the oceans from rising, and if we build wind

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Speaker 1: turbine towers, we can make the storms less frequent and

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Speaker 1: less severe. And George, we live in a in a

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Speaker 1: modern age of superstition. There's really no empirical evidence to

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Speaker 1: support those sorts of beliefs. So they are definitely man

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Speaker 1: made global warming proponents, aren't they. They are. I have

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Speaker 1: never been a fan of that because you know, I

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Speaker 1: think one Stephen, I think you agree we're polluting the planet.

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Speaker 1: There's no question about that, and we need to fix that.

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Speaker 1: There's a real pollution we need to fix. That's correct.

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Speaker 1: But I don't think the pollution is caused what they

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Speaker 1: say man made climate change. I think we're in solar cycles.

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Speaker 1: I think this this planet has been warmer during the

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Speaker 1: dinosaur days and we didn't have cars and all the

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Speaker 1: carbons in the atmosphere and anything like that. There are

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Speaker 1: at least four periods of the last ten thousand years

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Speaker 1: when it was warmer. A matter of fact, it was

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Speaker 1: about two to three degrees celsius warmer according to a

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Speaker 1: geologists eight thousand years ago, and we've been gently cooling

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Speaker 1: since then. Although the temperatures go up and they go

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Speaker 1: down And you know the other thing about pollution, As

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Speaker 1: you say, we were, many people are conflating what i'll

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Speaker 1: call real air pollution that can harm people, are harm

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Speaker 1: the environment, things like carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulfur, dioti,

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Speaker 1: mercury particulates with carbon dioxide, which is a odorless, harmless,

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Speaker 1: invisible gas. And when I speak to groups, I like

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Speaker 1: to say to them, what do cannabis growers know that

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Speaker 1: the climate scientists apparently don't know? Why do you believe

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Speaker 1: that there are so many proponents for man made at

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Speaker 1: climate change? Well, it's a bit of a long story. Back.

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Speaker 1: Doctor James Hansen of NASA came and testified before Congress,

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Speaker 1: and it was on a very hot summer day, and

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Speaker 1: he said he was sure that the Earth was warming

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Speaker 1: and humans were causing it. He was a computer modeler.

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Speaker 1: And within a year and a half the United Nations

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Speaker 1: formed the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, and just

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Speaker 1: three years later we had forty one nations and the

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Speaker 1: European community sign a treaty saying they would reduce greenhouse gases. So,

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Speaker 1: in my opinion that the first thing is that the

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Speaker 1: world kind of jumped to a conclusion quickly on this.

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Speaker 1: But you know, for the last thirty years or so,

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Speaker 1: the computer models have been predicting very fast warming and

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Speaker 1: we haven't seen it to temperate years of warm just

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Speaker 1: a little. Storms aren't stronger, the polar bears are doing fine.

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Speaker 1: And then the second factor though, is I think much

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Speaker 1: of this is being driven forward by momentum, by money.

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Speaker 1: We have wind and solar and biofuel industries. We have

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Speaker 1: deans of sustainability at the university's vice president sustainability of corporations,

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Speaker 1: and there are over there's over two hundred fifty billion

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Speaker 1: dollars a year spent every year on renewables to try

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Speaker 1: and stop the planet from warming. So the first is

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Speaker 1: the world jumped to a conclusion. Second is there's there's

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Speaker 1: just a huge amount of money momentum behind all of this.

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Speaker 1: It's amazing what's been going on in lately the last

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Speaker 1: couple of days, they've been talking about fears of one

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Speaker 1: or two degrees affecting everything. What's going on with that? Well,

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Speaker 1: you know that is really remarkable. To Jay Insley, governor

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Speaker 1: of Washington State, just post an article in CNN quote

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Speaker 1: how to show Trump you care about climate change? And

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Speaker 1: he's made statements saying that the forests are a lot warmer,

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Speaker 1: and that's why we're seeing these forest fire as well.

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Speaker 1: We've had one degree of warming in the last hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirty years, one degree, and I think it came

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Speaker 1: from the sun. Well I think so too, but that

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Speaker 1: comes straight from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia

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Speaker 1: in England, the number one authority on this one degree.

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Speaker 1: So so in the last decade, maybe we've had a

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Speaker 1: tenth of degree in in Washington forests. And to say

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Speaker 1: that all these forest fires are caused by a tenth

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Speaker 1: of a degree change, I mean, that just doesn't make

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Speaker 1: any sense. So people need to get a little perspective.

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Speaker 1: There's probably other bigger factors at work. Um, the way

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Speaker 1: we take our forests. For example, are you concerned Steve,

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Speaker 1: that we're headed down the wrong direction here with climate change? Oh? Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: This is a tremendous misallocation of resources. As you say,

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Speaker 1: there are there are major pollution issues to be solved.

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Speaker 1: Today eight percent of the world's wastewater is discharged untreated

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Speaker 1: into lakes, rivers and streams the ocean. If you remember

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Speaker 1: a few years ago in Brazil, the swimmers didn't want

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Speaker 1: to swim in the water. Um, and they're just building

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Speaker 1: the first water treatment plants down in Brazil. So that's

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Speaker 1: a real problem we need to solve. We have two

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Speaker 1: billion people trying to live on two U S dollars

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Speaker 1: a day. One point two billion don't have electricity, we

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Speaker 1: have two point five billion without proper sanitation. Millions die

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Speaker 1: from disease. Yet we're spending all this money to try

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Speaker 1: and keep the planet from warming. And the bottom line

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Speaker 1: is the planet is dominated by natural factors, as you say, oceans, weather,

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Speaker 1: driven by the sun. It's unlikely that we're going to

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Speaker 1: be able to make a measurable difference with all the

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Speaker 1: things you're doing in California and everywhere else on global temperatures.

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Speaker 1: There's no question that the you know, the the groups

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Speaker 1: that are pro or coln what's happening with timate change

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Speaker 1: keep butting heads. But I'm beginning to see at least

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Speaker 1: more scientists beginning to feel the way you do, that

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Speaker 1: we're dealing with a different kind of climate change. Well,

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Speaker 1: if you again, if you look at at any of

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Speaker 1: the well any of the predictions about climate change, and

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Speaker 1: you see a lot of articles, you saw articles written about, um,

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Speaker 1: what was the hurricane Florence and last year we had

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Speaker 1: a couple of major hurricanes. We had Harvey hit Texas.

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Speaker 1: We had another one hit I think was Irma hit Florida.

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Speaker 1: But if you look back at history, this has happened before.

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Speaker 1: We've had twelve years since nineteen hundred when two or

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Speaker 1: more major hurricanes have made landfall in the United States.

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Speaker 1: These are this is really nothing new. A hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy hurricanes made landfall during the twentieth century there and

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Speaker 1: if you look at the act of evidence, you don't

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Speaker 1: see that storms are either getting more frequent or stronger.

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Speaker 1: The US government also has data on uh droughts and floods.

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Speaker 1: If you look for the lower forty eight states over

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Speaker 1: the last hundred years, there's no indication we're seeing more

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Speaker 1: floods or more droughts. We had more droughts in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. We have three times the polar bears that

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Speaker 1: we had in nineteen sixty. So the dire consequences are

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Speaker 1: just not occurring as people are predicting, and people still

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Speaker 1: write these articles, but they never show data comparing the

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Speaker 1: past to the present. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: am every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go

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