Save the Whales, Kill the Turbines – The Climate Realism Show #104

On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. That is just one of many ocean mammals harassed and killed by these projects that will, at best, provide unreliable and expensive energy. Remember when “save the whales” was the cry of the environmentalists? Now they are fine with a spike in dead whales washing up on our Atlantic beaches as long as the “green energy” agenda continues apace.

The Heartland Institute is part of a lawsuit to stop to a major wind project in the Atlantic and save the right whale. We will talk about that effort with Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFACT, who are also part of the suit. Join them and host Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken to talk about that, plus the Crazy Climate News of the Week.

Episode Transcript

Craig Rucker (00:04):
And that's what climate change is about. It is
literally not figuratively aclear and present danger.

Linnea Lueken (00:10):
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.

Jim Lakely (00:13):
The ability of c 02 to do the heavy work of creating
a climate catastrophe is almostnil at this point.

Anthony Watts (00:20):
The price of oil has been artificially elevated
to the point of insanity.

Sterling Burnett (00:24):
That's not how you power a modern industrial
system. The ultimate goal ofthis renewable energy, you know,
plan is to reach the exact samepoint that we're at now. You
know who's trying that? Germany.7 straight days of no wind for
Germany.
Their factories are shuttingdown.

Linnea Lueken (00:44):
They really do act like weather didn't happen
prior to, like, 1910. Today isFriday.

Anthony Watts (00:54):
That's right, Greta, you pint sized
antagonist. It is Friday, andthis is our own personal Friday
protest, the Climate RealismShow episode 104. Save the
whales, kill the turbines. I'myour host, Anthony Watts, senior
fellow for environment andclimate at the Heartland
Institute. Joining me today, wehave our regular panelist,

(01:14):
doctor h Sterling Burnett, whois director of the Robinson
Center For Climate at theHeartland Institute, and we also
have Linnea Lukin, who is aresearch fellow with that same
outfit.
We have with a special guest,Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson
of CFAK. They're gonna betalking about something a little
bit later, but welcome, guys.Glad you could join us today.

Terry Johnson (01:36):
Yeah. Thanks for having us. To be here. Thank
you.

Anthony Watts (01:39):
Great. So on the show today, what we're gonna do
is explain that to save thewhales, we need to kill these
large, offshore wind projects.These so called wind farms,
particularly on the AtlanticCoast, are large, and they do
more environmental damage thanmost people realize. Covering
the area the size of Connecticutand Rhode Island combined, one

(02:01):
project off the mid AtlanticCoast poses a complete risk to
the critically endangered NorthAtlantic right whale. Now this
is just one of many oceanmammals that are being harassed
and killed by these projects dueto the sonic vibrations that
make it into the ocean.
Do you remember a few years agowhen people were having a cow

(02:21):
over the fact that submarineswere using sonar in this area to
do some testing? People on theleft went berserk over that.
You're killing the whales.You're killing the whales. But
now that we have these windturbines going thromp, thromp,
thromp, thromp into the ocean,That's okay.
It's rank high prophecy. Reallyis on the left. So we're gonna

(02:43):
get to that issue momentarily.But first, we wanna start off
with crazy climate news, some ofthe nuttiest eye rolling stuff
that's been on the Internet thisweek. First, we wanna go to this
Twitter link.
Now this is from doctor RyanNowley. Now he gives us this
fact check. Basically, there'sthis one guy, who's you know,

(03:04):
he's he got 224,000 followersbecause he regurgitates some of
the worst climate crap outthere. But he but Ryan Miles
calling him out Maui is callinghim on it saying, can anyone
explain why these climatedoomers are losing their minds
over a beautiful warm springday? Yeah.
Look at this. Coming up,seventies, mid seventies. Oh my

(03:25):
god. We're gonna roast. It'scrazy.
But, look, if we scroll down alittle bit on that on that
tweet, we'll see what the guy'soriginal claim is right there.
Okay. So here's the guy, Mike,Hudema, and he's got 224,000
followers. And he puts out thismap, you know, which is, of
course, is a model map. And lookat that.

(03:47):
The whole central part of Europeis baking. Climate crisis. Oh,
no. Anyway, it's 70 degrees.Nobody is roasting.
What do you think about this,guys? I mean, why do these
people go so nuts over thesemaps?

Sterling Burnett (04:04):
Not roasting. Probably some people are outside
celebrating and picking flowersand sunbathing.

Linnea Lueken (04:11):
I don't know. Some of those some of those,
Northern Europeans can getpretty, complainy about anything
over, like, 65 degrees, I'venoticed.

Sterling Burnett (04:20):
Oh, well, there you go.

Terry Johnson (04:21):
Well, it is France and then, you know, I
don't know how this impacts thewine, but I would think it would
be nicer to have your wine andcheese and crackers on a warm
day than a cold one. Yeah.

Anthony Watts (04:33):
It's just nuts. You know? It's like any anything
slightly out of the northernarea. So slightly warmer than
normal spring. It's climatechange, death, destruction,
raining from the skies.

Sterling Burnett (04:43):
Yeah. But the quest the question is, is it a
slightly warmer than normalspring? I mean, the colors he
uses make it looks makes it lookbad. But my question is,
relative to what it is therenormally in the spring, is it
that much warmer?

Anthony Watts (05:03):
Yeah. Yeah.

Terry Johnson (05:05):
I don't know. Do you vacation in France in the
spring much, Sterling?

Sterling Burnett (05:09):
No. I was there last year in in July, but,

Craig Rucker (05:13):
not the spring. The weather sounds good there.

Anthony Watts (05:20):
Anyway, our next topic, Taylor Swift and climate
change.

Craig Rucker (05:24):
I love this.

Anthony Watts (05:25):
Yes. There's been quite a number of people who've
pointed out that Taylor Swifthas a humongous carbon
footprint. Maybe the only otherlarger carbon footprint in terms
of celebrities and so forthmight be John Kerry, the climate
envoy, flying everywhere to givehis message of doom and gloom
and and stop building those coalplants while the Indians and the

(05:45):
Chinese laugh at it.

Sterling Burnett (05:47):
I think Taylor's topped him. I think
Taylor's topped him.

Anthony Watts (05:51):
Might be. Might be.

Sterling Burnett (05:53):
I mean, she's going to concerts all over the
world every day. She's flyingsomewhere.

Anthony Watts (05:58):
Yeah. Yeah. She is

Craig Rucker (06:00):
And how much is her dating Travis Kelce added to
that in that she has to make itback from her concerts to Kansas
City Chiefs games?

Anthony Watts (06:07):
Yes. Yeah. So here's the bottom line. This
study done, says that Swiftemitted 83 100 metric tons of
carbon dioxide, about 1800 timesthe average person's annual
emission, according to theCarbon Market Watch. A study
claimed Swift was the number onecelebrity responsible for c o

(06:30):
two emissions in 2022.
The study stated she spentnearly 23000 minutes in the air
about 16 days. And we have a barchart that kinda shows this this
whole summary of Taylor Swiftcompared to the rest of the
celebrities out there. Look atthis.

Sterling Burnett (06:49):
I told you. Carey doesn't even rank. You
know, look.

Terry Johnson (06:54):
I I so I'm just that. I I don't know how that
happened, but, plead innocent,whatever it is.

Sterling Burnett (07:02):
That, that that that's just her flights.
That's not even counting. Andthen the study looked at the
carbon footprint from all thevendors and all the materials
that are sold at her shows andthe energy used, in producing
her shows. And, I think theyeven tried to account for the
vehicles traveled to get to hershows. It's worse than that.

(07:27):
So now I should I should Ishould say we may be canceled by
the Swifties now. I'm surethey're going to come to her
defense. And so we may have ourshow pulled from YouTube because
not because of anything we saidabout climate, but because we've
we've said something aboutTaylor Swift.

Linnea Lueken (07:45):
Oh, I'm trembling.

Sterling Burnett (07:48):
How dare you? Yes.

Linnea Lueken (07:50):
Yeah. Was this study I I don't have the link in
front of me. Was this study onethat was done by, like, a
university or, like, a grantreceiver? Because

Sterling Burnett (08:02):
I think it's done by just a an environmental
group that's out there doing it.

Linnea Lueken (08:06):
Okay. Alright. That's okay then, I guess. I was
about to say because if this issomething that, like, some
university threw together reallyfast, I'm just thinking tax
dollars went to this. We'rewe're actually we're actually
spending money to calculate howmany emissions, celebrities are.
Yeah. No. I don't like it.

Sterling Burnett (08:27):
Now now I'm

Craig Rucker (08:27):
thinking about counter carbon offset because a
lot of these celebrities saythat, you know, yeah, maybe I
jet set more, but I'm payingAfricans to not Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Sterling Burnett (08:38):
So I'm I'm paying Africans to stay
impoverished. So

Craig Rucker (08:42):
Yeah. I mean, have we have we factored that into
the equation? I mean, maybeshe's

Terry Johnson (08:46):
I

Craig Rucker (08:46):
have carbon neutral.

Sterling Burnett (08:48):
Who knows? I don't think I don't think the
study indicates that she'sbecome anywhere near carbon
neutral. Though they do whatthey do is they go about
suggesting things she could doto reduce her carbon footprint
in the future, like make all thememorabilia just electronic
only. And, Yeah. I know.
I wanna take home an electronict shirt.

Craig Rucker (09:10):
Well, if she does a benefit for Joe Biden, does
that, does that also reduce hercarbon footprint because she's
giving to the mostenvironmentally friendly
president. You know?

Sterling Burnett (09:20):
1 I think I think that that itself is
doubling it with all the hot airhe puts out.

Terry Johnson (09:26):
What oh, listen. That's my cue. Can I add to the
climate craziness, discussionright here? So, there was a
presidential order that, the allthe agencies followed to put up
all these, wind, facilities offthe coast. And, the order says
this.
The order says the United Statesand the world face a profound

(09:49):
climate crisis. We have a narrowmoment to pursue action at home
and abroad in order to avoid themost catastrophic impact of that
crisis, and it sees theopportunity for tackling climate
change that climate changepresents. There's little time
left to avoid setting the worldon a dangerous, potentially
catastrophic climate trajectory.So there If

Anthony Watts (10:11):
there's no time left, why should we worry about
it anymore?

Sterling Burnett (10:17):
That's Omar Khayyam, eat eat, drink, and be
merry for tomorrow we die.

Anthony Watts (10:25):
Alright. Yeah. Well, enough of the Swifties.
Here's the headline of the year.Linnea found this one.
Oh my goodness. Climate changeis hitting vulnerable Indonesian
trans sex workers. Gosh. Isthere nothing that climate
change can't do?

Linnea Lueken (10:43):
We don't we don't have to talk about this one in
detail. We're, I'm not surethat's crazy. Self explanatory.
I think, it's it's yet again oneof those, you know, world ends,
women and minorities mostaffected type of stories. So

Sterling Burnett (11:01):
And you and you talk about minorities. How
much more of a minority can yoube than a Indonesian trans

Terry Johnson (11:07):
sex trans sex worker?

Sterling Burnett (11:09):
Yeah. That's pretty that's a pretty small
minority right there.

Craig Rucker (11:12):
Well, there's a lot of isn't that largely a
Muslim country? I didn't thinkthat that might be a post effort
going too.

Anthony Watts (11:20):
But read this. I mean, this is the kind of
journalism that passes forclimate change along these days.
It's joy. Don't scroll, please.Stay.
I'm gonna read that. JoyaPatheeda, a 43 year old
Indonesian transgender woman,first started to notice the
changing weather patterns in themountain ring city of Bandung

(11:40):
were affecting her income as asex worker since a decade ago.
Rainy season was lasting longer,and so she couldn't get out and
ply her trade or his trade orwhatever, its trade. You know?
And and so it must be climatechange.
Right? Because, gosh, I noticedthis in the weather. Weather is

(12:01):
not climate. They never seem toget this.

Sterling Burnett (12:05):
It's just the the the

Craig Rucker (12:07):
I gotta I gotta wonder about the reporter. I
mean, did they fly somebodyover? I mean, the greenhouse
emissions of going over to finda trans sex worker in Indonesia.
I mean, this just seems like anassignment that, you know

Linnea Lueken (12:19):
People trying

Craig Rucker (12:21):
to find

Sterling Burnett (12:21):
like that.

Anthony Watts (12:22):
Well, they

Sterling Burnett (12:22):
don't they don't have to fly in there
anymore, Craig. I mean, becausethey, you know, the Climate
Alarm Foundations have given somany 1,000,000 of dollars to the
AP and stuff. They've hiredpeople in those in those
countries just to report onclimate change. Wow. So if they
if they so if they don't filetheir reports and the reports
aren't alarming, they don't getpaid.
So they're gonna find problems.Believe me.

Linnea Lueken (12:45):
I'm not sure if this is accurate, but people
online were saying that this,correspondent who wrote the
article is one of the, old vicereporters that got, laid off,
which is a funny joke. I don'tthink it's true, but that's a
pretty that was pretty sharp, Ithought.

Anthony Watts (13:05):
Yes. But that's where It

Craig Rucker (13:06):
just sounds like an odd thing

Anthony Watts (13:08):
to be Laid off your own.

Craig Rucker (13:09):
Fly over and just say, you know, I'm going to
Indonesia. You know what? Reporton the tsunami and her no. To
find a transects worker who'sbeen laid off from climate
change.

Sterling Burnett (13:18):
Climate change. Assignment.

Linnea Lueken (13:20):
I think I think what ends up happening with a
lot of these stories, and andSterling probably agrees with me
on this because we see it allthe time for climate realism, is
they have something that theywant to write about. So they
probably just want to writeabout, like, how hard it is to
be a trans, Indonesian orIndonesian trans, prostitute.

(13:41):
And, and then because they're,like they get a certain amount
of funding to do climate relatedstuff, they just tie climate to
it in order to make the headlineso that they can get the funding
for their, paper on it. So

Anthony Watts (13:56):
It's not about quality. It's about quantity.

Craig Rucker (13:59):
Maybe they could fly Taylor Swift over there to
do a benefit concert for thetrans

Sterling Burnett (14:03):
trans sex over to Indonesia. Yeah.

Craig Rucker (14:05):
Having a tough time from climate change. Just a
thought.

Anthony Watts (14:10):
Yeah. Alright. So, the final thing, here's the
future of electric vehicles.This is when you can't afford to
replace your Tesla battery. Oh,thank goodness for AI generated
imagery these days.

Sterling Burnett (14:25):
I like the I like the big tires they set it
up on.

Linnea Lueken (14:28):
Yeah. Off road.

Anthony Watts (14:30):
Yeah. Well, this is what's gonna happen to all
the EVs in the western world,you know, where the owners can't
afford to replace the batteriesand they get scrapped. They're
gonna ship them overseas, andthen the the people in the 3rd
world countries are gonna putbig tires and donkeys on them.

Sterling Burnett (14:45):
Yeah. Everywhere everywhere everywhere
will be Cuba. The I can't waitfor the day when the people who
do all the hot rod,modification, made it make them
into low riders that have thehydraulic shocks that bump them,

(15:06):
bump bounce them up and down onthe street. When they do that
with electric vehicles and thosethings just explode once they're
bouncing around and the batterygoes off. Or they just lose
their charge in mid jump andyou're stuck.

Anthony Watts (15:22):
Yeah. It's it's something else. Alright. So
that's enough of crazy climatenews. Let's go on to our main
topic.
Save the whales and kill theturbines. Now first, we wanna ex
explore what is the NorthAtlantic right whale? And Noah
has a nice page on this. And Iwould point out that if this was
called the left whale, theenvironmentalists would care

(15:45):
about it. Right?
Right?

Terry Johnson (15:48):
Well well, the the right whale got its name
because it was the right whaleto kill, because it swam very
slowly. It was near the coastof, New England. And once you
killed it, it floated. So howmuch more right can you get than
that? And had lots of blubbertoo.

(16:09):
So, all of that made it verymuch the right right will. And
there there's there's where the,the name came from.

Sterling Burnett (16:19):
Let's let let Terry, let's point out real
quickly, by the way, not justthe right whale, but the sperm
whale and all the whales thatthey used to hunt. They were
saved by fossil fuels. They werehunted by fuel for for for
lanterns and other things, otheruses. That's why they were
hunted. And, when oil camealong, we no longer needed that

(16:39):
stuff, and they started to comeback.
So they were saved by fossilfuels.

Anthony Watts (16:44):
Exactly. Yeah. Totally. Left ever pays
attention to this.

Terry Johnson (16:51):
Yeah. I mean, if if, some substitute for whale
oil and come along, I mean,there'd be 0 whales, out there.
But, fortunately, it did, in the18 fifties in, Pennsylvania.
And, the whales got a break.However, this particular
species, the right whale,didn't, get enough of break

(17:15):
until now when there are onlyabout 300 and 50 of them left in
the world.
Yeah. And, they're, they're introuble.

Anthony Watts (17:26):
So let's, let's talk about what's actually
happening and and why do wehave, these whale deaths. And
and and, Craig, if you can kindagive us a background about
what's been happening over thepast few years and why this is a
concern now, that'll help thediscussion.

Sterling Burnett (17:45):
Before we do that, can I just say real quick?
You have to understand why theNorth Atlantic right whale is
important. It has been on theendangered species list since
the list inception. So since theearly 19 seventies, there are
between 323140, total whales inexistence North Atlantic right

(18:07):
whales in existence. That numberis declining despite efforts to
save it for, what, 50 years now.
And, now they're putting morebarriers to its continued
existence. It's protected by theESA and the Marine Mammals
Protection Act, but they'reoffering no protection right

(18:27):
now. So, Craig, take over.

Craig Rucker (18:29):
Well, I'm gonna just here.

Anthony Watts (18:31):
According to the graph there that we have on the
previous image, it seems likethe population peaked around
2010. And I would point out thataround that same time, that's
when these wind projects startedreally getting going out on the
Atlantic. Am I right?

Craig Rucker (18:45):
You are right. Actually, since 2017, there's
been about 40 of them that havebeen that they found are dead.
And even this year alone,there's been 4 of them, that
have, passed away, probably a5th one because the last one was
was a female and likely had acalf, that will also perish too.
A lot of them that perished thatdo out in the ocean, they don't

(19:07):
know about as much, unless aship happens to come across
them. They do float, as Terrysaid, but a lot of them also
wash up on the beach.
So what wound up happening isthat, there's been a push for
offshore wind that, predatesactually both, back, before
Biden, before Trump going backto Obama. But it really took off
in 2017 with the, lot of thenortheastern governors in

(19:32):
particular trying to, project,you know, and get, offshore wind
in order to handle the climatecrisis. Biden, when he came in,
made it a real priority bywanting to get, 30 gigawatts or
30,000 megawatts of offshore inby the year 2030 and, made that
a a big priority. So, it's, youknow, they've just gone

(19:55):
gangbusters. The problem is thatthey're putting these wind
offshore wind farms, there'sabout 20, 30 projects of them,
about 15 to 30 miles off theshore, right in the lane of
about 30 different whale speciesthat go up the coast.
The most important one that wetalked about is the right whale
and, because it's the mostendangered. And, since then

(20:16):
there's just been, even by the,government's own standards, a
unusual mortality event aswhales have been beaching
themselves, washing up onshores. It's made news, and, a
lot of people, perceive thatmuch of the problem is caused by
the pile driving and the sonarblasting to map the ocean floor,
things that interfere with itssonar navigation. That is likely

(20:40):
a culprit.

Sterling Burnett (20:42):
The the you know, I I would I would be
interested to see when theScott, government, UK government
first started putting in windfarms off in the in the in the
North Sea because that maycorrespond with the initial
decline. Because they've beendoing this they've they've been
erecting them for longer thanus. They've got a a big set out

(21:03):
there.

Craig Rucker (21:05):
It's What's what's particularly, amazing about this
particular issue is, of course,many of the green groups, which
made made their, you know, intheir heyday were save the
whales people. You had,Greenpeace and all these other
organizations that were outthere that, that's their raison
d'etre. And, today, they'resilent. They're actually on the

(21:27):
side of the wind farms. Many ofthem actually receive and it's
been documented money from them.
And in conversations with them,I often ask them, I said, hey,
whatever happened to save thewhales? I've actually personally
been told, you know, we get it,we're concerned about the
whales, but climate change is abigger issue. Since we're all
going to be wiped out by climatechange, if a few species maybe

(21:48):
have to go in order for us totake the types of actions such
as get renewable energy in, andthe whales have to bite the dust
a few of them, that may be theprice we have to pay to tackle a
even greater emergency. Andthat's kind of their logic.

Sterling Burnett (22:02):
But here's the problem. Illogic. I I mean,
here's the problem. In law,according to the law, the
regulations say the government'sown estimates say that you can't
the right North Atlantic rightwhale can't suffer a single
additional death above naturalmortality in any single year and

(22:22):
still be on the path tosurvival. Not 1.
0.7, in fact.

Terry Johnson (22:28):
7 10ths. Right?

Sterling Burnett (22:29):
So that's that's the law. That should be
restraining all activitiesbecause the ESA could shut down
oil anywhere. It can shut downanything anywhere else, but it
can't shut down an executiveorder that Biden has to start
building these things. Now theyclaim, oh, well, we've done that
crop on the 4 whales we'velooked at. None of them have had

(22:50):
burst eardrums, so it's not thesonar.
Now when I I actually testifieda few years ago on behalf of
mapping for oil and gas off thenortheast coast, and it was
brought up, oh, what about theNorthland? Well? I said, well,
you don't have to do the sonarwhen they're passing through.
They migrate. Only do it, butthat's not what the wind people

(23:10):
are doing, and they're sayingthe sound doesn't bother them
now.
They do it year round whilethey're trying to map the floor
to see where we can set thesethings. And they're saying that
sound doesn't, doesn't botherthe whales, except it's the same
sound that they said wasbothering the whales, would
bother the whales if it was oiland gas doing it. In in in the
end, they say

Anthony Watts (23:29):
hypocrisy on this.

Sterling Burnett (23:31):
Yeah. In the end, it's not the sound. It it
doesn't have to be the sound, Ishould say. It's the additional
shipping traffic. Shipping isthe number one known, human
killer of not just right whales,but all sorts of marine mammals.
And so we put additional shipsin their way, and the sound is

(23:53):
forcing them out of theirtraditional route into the
busiest shipping lane inAmerica. So that it's it's an
indirect it could be an indirecteffect, but they're not
accounting for that.

Anthony Watts (24:04):
Yeah. I wanna point out that the National
Institutes of Health published astudy called health effects
related to wind turbine sound,an update. And this is the
effects on humans. And we'veseen this time and time again
where someone build the windfarm and the subsonic vibrations
that that goes on with thesewind turbines affects the health

(24:27):
and not just the the mentalhealth, but the physical health
of people. So why would it notaffect another mammal, such as a
whale?
Or the left says, oh, no.There's no problem at all. No
problem at all. Not beingbothered by this. But these same
people, these hypocrites outthere were saying, as as
Sterling rightly points out,that SONAR was bothering and

(24:49):
killing these whales beforeassociated with navy test and so
forth.
The hypocrisy is just absolutelyrank with the left on this.
They're more interested in theirgreen agenda than they are in
saving an endangered species, inmy opinion.

Terry Johnson (25:04):
They're they're more interested in money. I
mean, that's what it comes downto. They've all bought into the
notion that we have a climatecrisis and therefore, we you
need to send us your money tosolve the climate crisis. And,
if the whales get killed out,you know, hey. Tough luck.
That's too bad. Of course,that's not what the law says.

(25:27):
The endangered species act isvery, clear on this, that,
they're they're they're breakingthe law. And, hopefully, we're
gonna be able to pin that onwhen we, you know, have our card
case.

Sterling Burnett (25:41):
Well, Terry, you you can't make a wind omelet
if you don't break a few whales.

Terry Johnson (25:45):
Yeah. Good one. Yeah. No. I haven't thought of
it that way, but that's true.
They're, they're, very, clearly,financially tied into this
notion of the, the climatecrisis. And, it's been hard to,
get the courts to acknowledgethat this is a problem for the

(26:10):
well, but we're we're taking adifferent approach, which I'll
get into in a little bit, buthopefully that's gonna work.

Craig Rucker (26:16):
And and I might wanna add there's not there's
other issues. I saw one of thepeople put up on the screen here
while we were talking that it'snot just the sonar blasting or
the clanging from the piledriving. Even the operational
noise, once these things are upand running, have many people
concerned about what, couldcould be a continuation of,
problems for whales. You got,some 3,000 turbines that are I

(26:40):
mean, these things are huge.800, 850 feet tall.
I think their propellers go overa 1000 feet. You're talking
about perpetual noise clangingright in up and down the East
Coast in a, in a massivevibration that could put these
things off. There's otherimpacts as well. There's been
studies showing that thezooplankton behind these, it

(27:01):
kinda creates a desert effectwhere the wind turbines change
the water temperature, but alsohave a tendency to kill the
other marine life that the, thatthe whales feed on near them as
well.

Sterling Burnett (27:15):
So Yeah. The the study out of Scotland, what
it showed, a, it it took oxygenout of the water, and and the
the the plankton it feeds on,they're not mammals. They
actually need the oxygen. So itit deoxygenates or lessens the
oxygen in the water. It affectswhere they are, so they'll shift
and so the whales must shift.
In addition, just the just thepiles, the the the, the post in

(27:41):
the the floor themselves. That'screating new obstacles that the
whales now have to avoid. It'snot that they can't do it. They
have sonar. But why are wecreating more obstacles for
these whales?
They're going to have to usemore calories to go around these
things in and out of them. Youknow, they're going to have to
come NASCAR drivers. You know,like like, when you're going in

(28:03):
and out of those pylon things,that's what they're gonna have
to do to to avoid these dead gumwind turbines where there's less
oxygen in the water, wherethere's less food. And, nearby,
there's that great shipping lanethat you're gonna be, now dining
and and commuting in, migratingin.

Craig Rucker (28:23):
Well, here's this hypocrisy. You know this this
was offshore oil or gas. And youhad this sort of mortality event
going up, an unusual mortalityevent coming up right during the
construction of it.

Terry Johnson (28:34):
Yeah.

Craig Rucker (28:35):
And you had all these different, concerns. They
would vet each one of these.Every environmental group would
be out there, protesting it ontheir ships and yelling at the
crews that are going out there,but instead, they attack those
of us who are saying, woah.Let's do the environmental
impact statements in that basedon the fact that they say, oh,

(28:56):
they're climate denialists andthings of that sort. They're
looking at it wrong.
The reason this is the this isthe consequence of unfounded
fears of climate, you know, onesthat you exaggerate it. You do
rash things like put in thesewind farms that actually do harm
animals, potentially, anyway, atleast it should be looked at.

Sterling Burnett (29:17):
Well, we know they do birds and bats and other
things.

Craig Rucker (29:20):
Right. Because you're you're going crazy over
these, this climate alarmism,which is void of substance on
almost every issue.

Sterling Burnett (29:29):
Well, it's it's it's worse than that,
Craig. Of course, we wouldn'thave gotten to this stage had it
been oil and gas or almostanything else Because we have
for your requirements, not justI'm sorry, not for your
requirements. We have, NEPArequirements.

Terry Johnson (29:47):
NEPA.

Sterling Burnett (29:47):
NEPA requirements. And they have to
anticipate in these NEPA reportswhat the potential impacts might
be, and, they have to be prettyfar reaching. Those take years,
not the months. You know, anypipeline think about the years
years it takes to get a simplepipeline done, because of the

(30:11):
NEPA requirements. They they'velargely been waived or they've
been, it's been very slapdash.
And, of course, as we know, oneof the things that's part of the
the new court filing we're doingis they've hidden the
information. Dominion Energy,who is the target of our, our

(30:32):
lawsuit, has if you read thereport where it says impacts on
whales, it basically says Iforget the actual wording. It's
like proprietary information,redacted. And then you say,
well, what are the mitigationmeasures? And you go to the
section on mitigation,Proprietary info business
information redacted.
You couldn't have that in anyother project anywhere. No. It's

(30:54):
not proprietary what your impacton the spaces would be. So you
couldn't even you couldn't evenhave a public credible trans
public comment because there'sno transparency on the harm.

Anthony Watts (31:08):
So, Craig, I wanna ask you. What would it
take in your mind, and Terrytoo? What would it take in your
mind for someone like Noah tofinally recognize what seems
very obvious to the rest of us?

Craig Rucker (31:23):
I'll take that, Terry, first.

Terry Johnson (31:26):
I would say regime change in November.
That's what would change it.They're they're they're they're
they're bought into and theirbudgets and everything else, to
this notion of climate crisisand to the notion that you have
to build wind. People say farms.I I really prefer factories

(31:50):
because that's what they are.

Sterling Burnett (31:51):
Building factories. Yeah.

Terry Johnson (31:53):
Yeah. And and, as long as the direction from the
top comes down to the agenciesthat this is what you will do,
that is what they will do. Theywill do any I've I've run a
federal agency. I know how itworks. You do what gets your
budget, and what's gets thebudget is, buying into this

(32:15):
notion of, climate crisis.
And, therefore, it won't changeuntil there's change at the top.
Now in the meantime, in themeantime, I do think we have
very good chance of, having somekind of court relief, that we're
bringing right now. It could,succeed. It's, you know, one of

(32:36):
those things that, a little thatdepends on what kind of judge we
have and so on and so forth.But, taking the approach we have
is definitely one that meets theletter of the law.
It meets the facts, and, shouldsucceed in stopping this, at
least until November. And then,we'll we'll see what happens at

(32:59):
the time. You know,

Sterling Burnett (33:02):
tell talk about you you said what we hope,
but talk about what what we'resuing over there, Terry or
Craig. Explain explain what thelawsuit is requesting. I wanna
say, by the way, Noah, to befair, Noah's biologists were
very clear that this could beharmful to the whales, and they
were ignored by the management.When things like that happened

(33:23):
under Trump, when when when thebiologists spoke and, Trump
officials said, ah, we don'tcare about that, They got sued.
Nobody you know, we're having tosue, the government here.

Craig Rucker (33:36):
Well, I just said is what Terry Forry says is I
think another thing that's a bigfactor in this is the money. You
got the inflation reduction act.I mean, a lot of this money is
finding its way, to promotethings like offshore wind. You
got sweetheart deals that arebeing made with offshore wind
companies. And by the way, mostof these are not American

(33:56):
companies.
They're Avangrid, they're BPfrom England, they're,

Terry Johnson (34:02):
Orsted Orsted.

Craig Rucker (34:03):
Norway, Equinor. These are all companies, mostly
European companies, that aregiven, just incredible
sweetheart deals. For example,they usually do it by the
megawatt hour charge. It wouldbe like $30, $60 if you had a
natural gas plant or a coalfired plant or something of that

(34:24):
sort. These guys are getting a$120 a $120 per megawatt hour,
and they want even a higher netof $177 in the case of, New York
State's Empire Wind 2 project.
So they're getting, like,double, triple the amount that
you would get to produceelectricity intermittently
because these things generallyonly operate at full capacity

(34:46):
about 35 to 45% of the time. AndI think the money is also a huge
factor. And once that getschopped off, and as Terry said
with regime change, if it canget chopped off, I think you'll
see these things collapse as youhave been seeing them collapse,
because they're not sustainableeconomically without gover
influx of government money andvery generous deals by, you

(35:09):
know, the public utilitycommissions of the various
states.

Sterling Burnett (35:12):
I wanna follow-up on what you just said.
They are already collapsing,Craig. Look. Dominion has the
sweetest of sweetheart deals.All the others had to bid in for
their projects.
They bid in it prices that are5, 6 times higher than any other
source of energy. And thegovernment says, yep. Yep.
Sounds good to us. We don't needonshore wind or solar.

(35:33):
We don't need coal or nuclear.No. We need that really, really
expensive offshore wind. And sowe'll give you 5 or 6 times. And
then what what happened was,well, inflation hit, supply
chain issues hit, and they can'teven make money at 5 and 6
times, normal rates, and sothey're collapsing.
Companies are pulling out.They're going bankrupt. They're

(35:55):
saying we're not gonna do thisproject unless you come back and
give us even more money, but notDominion. Dominion was smarter
than the rest of them. They saidwe're gonna finance it all
ourself.
All we want you to do is let uspass on any cost we incur to the
ratepayer. We don't need to comeback to you. We're not bidding
in because we're gonna we'regonna build it ourselves. Just

(36:16):
let us pass on the cost. So ascosts have risen, it just gets
piled more and more on the rightpair because they got the best
sweetheart deal of all.

Terry Johnson (36:24):
Yeah. Yeah. They they do. And and, Sean, to
answer your question about aboutthe lawsuit, what the endangered
species act says is when youhave a federal action, there
needs to be an opinion as towhether this is going to harm
endangered species. And so, whatthe companies have done and what

(36:47):
BOEM, Bureau of Ocean EnergyManagement has done is that,
okay.
We'll take a look at the action.And the action is going to be
one little piece of this entireproposal. And if you put up that
map, you'll show, show you,that, there are 32. There there
they are. There are the 32 windplaces that have been,

(37:08):
established by the government.
And, what, BOEM has said is,well, we'll look at one little
piece. We'll look at one littlepiece at the middle, one little
piece at the top, and see ifthat has, some kind of harm to
the, right whale and to otherspecies. And, of course, they
found no. It doesn't. Well, thelaw says you can't do that.

(37:33):
You can't, determine impact bycarving stuff in in little
pieces and thereby understateand under account what the
impact is. That's that's wrong.That's a procedural error. And
so that's what we're suing on,this procedural error that, they
committed in looking at this ona piecemeal fashion. And, no

(37:54):
other suit has done that before.
And so, therefore, we think oursuit has a good chance of
succeeding because it'sfollowing the law and following
the facts and following logic.People understand that that you
can't take a, what somethingthat has 32 pieces to it and
pick one little piece and decidethat that's gonna be the one
that you make your determinationabout impact on. You can't do

(38:17):
that.

Sterling Burnett (38:17):
Yeah. When you do a pipeline when you do a
pipeline or something, you haveto look at the

Terry Johnson (38:21):
whole pipeline. We'll see. We'll see. We, we
filed that, a couple of weeksago. We're gonna move for a
preliminary injunction, in abouta week.
And that's gonna be when we'llreally find out if, we've got,
gonna be able to get any releaseof the courts.

Sterling Burnett (38:39):
Because they start they they're supposed to
start driving piles in May, May1st.

Terry Johnson (38:44):
Correct.

Sterling Burnett (38:44):
So we gotta stop we need to stop it before
then, At least get that stay.Well, like you said, to do one
thing, one thing only complywith the law as it's written,
which means the cumulativeimpact of all these things. But
I think you made one mistakewhen you when you said Terry.
You said, yeah, this one segmentdoesn't have an impact. No.

(39:07):
No. No. Even Dominion's segment,they're having to get take
permits. Right? Because of levelb harassment.
Take permits for up to 3 whales.We can harass up to 3 whales.
Sorry.

Terry Johnson (39:19):
That's right.

Sterling Burnett (39:19):
The harassment is a potential death, now for
those 3 whales because if youharass them, it could disrupt
their feeding, their breeding,their transit. It could put them
into shipping lanes. Those areall indirect harms which could
result in their death. Andleaving aside the poor North

(39:43):
Atlantic right whale, tens ofthousands of dolphins, porpoises
and other marine mammals will beaffected. And those they're not
endangered species, or at leastmost of them are not, but they
are still protected by theMarine Mammal Protection Act.
And they're giving noprotection. They're giving no
protection whatsoever. So it'snot that even this one little

(40:03):
segment doesn't have an impact.It does. But cumulatively, it's
a disaster.

Craig Rucker (40:09):
And I would even add to that. It's, it you know,
they if you do to all theseindividual, they call them level
b harassment where they're nottechnically allowed to kill
them, but they can harass them.But these harassments could by
if you read them, they can makethem move into other shipping
lanes. So, yes, they can killthem even though it's a level b

(40:29):
harassment that they'reauthorizing. And secondly, when
they did their biologicalopinion, like take Dominion an
example, they'll say, well, wedid do a biological opinion, but
they redacted much of what it iswhen it comes to the right
whale.
You can't even read, and they'reasking for public comment on
some of these biologicalopinions, and and they cover up
everything that deals with whatsort of mitigation they're gonna

(40:51):
do or what are the potentialimpacts to the right whale. So
the public doesn't even seethem. So one of the other things
we're doing, is to trying to getthat, you know, opened up so we
can actually read what thebiological opinion says in its
fault.

Sterling Burnett (41:06):
Yeah. We followed the the second the
second part of the of what we'redoing right now. The first thing
is we're trying to get a a staywhile they conduct a a real,
environmental impact assessmentfor the whales. But the the
second thing is we're trying toget we've we're filing a freedom
we're about to file a Freedom ofInformation Act request for the

(41:27):
hidden information.

Terry Johnson (41:30):
Yeah. Exactly. It's one thing to say that
there's, no impact, and thenthere's another thing to say,
well, we won't tell you why weeven think there's no impact.
Yeah. Because, we're redactingit and and declaring it to be
proprietary and confidential,which is, I mean, just another

(41:51):
layer of absurdity this wholetime.

Sterling Burnett (41:53):
It's like them saying, trust us. We really,
really promise there's no impacton the whales. You don't need to
you know, don't look behind thecurtain, you know, nor the data
behind the curtain.

Terry Johnson (42:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Double swear, you know, finger
pinky swear. It's, it'sabsolutely not no problem. No
problem, Emma.

Sterling Burnett (42:15):
I I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine
what could be proprietary aboutan impact. Are they in judging
the impact, are they sayingsomething about how their
technology is so different fromevery other kind of technology
that even talking about thepotential impact would would
disclose proprietary commercialinformation? Because that's

(42:36):
basically what they're claiming.

Craig Rucker (42:38):
You know, I I I'm a little more I don't know how
you put it, skeptical of thewhole thing. I think that they
they did uncover some stuff, andI think they're afraid to,
release it to the public.Another reason these companies
are going bankrupt, to a degreeis they are facing significant
grassroots opposition, not justfrom, you know, groups that

(42:59):
might be considered climaterealists or skeptics like us who
have been raising alarm aboutit, but many even on the
political left. We've stagedsome boat protests and and, you
know, street theater on thebeaches, and a lot of the people
who participate are people thatwould be ideologically opposed.
I'm more conservative.
They'd be more on the liberalside, opposed to this. And

(43:22):
they've been launching their ownlawsuits, and they've been
filing their own complaints aswell. And this is delaying the
process in many cases and alsoadding to the expense to a
degree for these companies. AndI think that, it's been kinda
refreshing that, Biden and theoffshore wind industry is
actually bringing right and lefttogether against the Biden

(43:43):
offshore wind policy. So, myhope is that we'll see this
continue, and they will openthis up because I think they're
afraid to show it, because it'lljust open them up to more
criticism from the grassrootsgroups that are already upset.
Every time a, a whale beachesitself or is found dead, again,
it just, it just captures thenews and rekindles the fires of

(44:07):
people that are very upset aboutthis all up and down the coast.

Sterling Burnett (44:11):
Let's talk about one of the things they did
as a pre oh, I'm sorry. Linnea,you wanna

Linnea Lueken (44:15):
Oh, I was just gonna bring up real quick. We
have a very nice super chat fromone of our viewers with a nice
compliment. Great show againtoday, guys. Very appreciated.
Well, we appreciate you, Dean,so thank you.

Anthony Watts (44:28):
Yep. Alright. And I would add that £10 that we got
is nothing compared to theclaims that we get money from
big oil, which we never do.

Craig Rucker (44:37):
We don't either.

Sterling Burnett (44:39):
I wish we one thing

Terry Johnson (44:40):
which thing.

Sterling Burnett (44:41):
Where where is

Terry Johnson (44:42):
that money? I've been waiting. I've been looking
in my mailbox every day. There'sand there's no checks, no money.
It's I'm I'm getting discouragedthat we're gonna get any oil and
and gas money.

Sterling Burnett (44:54):
But I just wanna

Terry Johnson (44:56):
Hey, look. Maybe I'm just, you know, not looking
in the right place. I don'tknow.

Sterling Burnett (45:00):
Could talk I wanna talk about precursor to
these things. There have beenobjections from coastal
communities for a long timeagainst this stuff. Even
Democratic one, you know, oneswith Democratic City Council,
Democratic boards of governorsand and gov and mayors. And, to
avoid all that, the statesconveniently pass laws saying

(45:21):
locals locals can't stop theseprojects.

Anthony Watts (45:24):
Yeah.

Sterling Burnett (45:24):
So they're having all these impacts. People
onshore are complaining. Even inthe in the prestaging when
they're constructing thesethings, when they're building
transfer stations for the power,when they're running the lines
across their land. They'relosing their rights left and
right. You know, the tourismbureaus are very upset.
The people who live near shoreare complaining about noise
already when they're justpreconstructing some of these

(45:48):
things. But that's all beenvoided by state governments
buying into Biden's climatealarmism and and, basically,
more importantly, Biden's bigmoney funnel.

Linnea Lueken (45:57):
You know, about the noise thing, though, I would
be curious to hear from some ofthe people who live in, like,
off, in, like, Scotland and,near some of those offshore wind
facilities because water carriessound pretty significantly. You
know, if you live anywhere near,like, a lake or anything, you
know that someone could be just,like, chatting on the other side

(46:18):
of the lake at a normal soundlevel, and you'll be able to
hear them crystal clear. So I'dbe curious to know if the
impacts of sound from windturbines are if they're actually
worse, if you live, like, in abeach house near one of these
installations.

Terry Johnson (46:35):
Yeah. I don't know about that, but, Sterling's
right that, the, the noisealready from onshore
construction that's got to bedone in order to facilitate, the
offshore. I mean, just thinkabout offshore. You've got not
just the offshore, monopiles,but you've got all the rock that
need to go around them and allthe cables that need to connect

(46:57):
the offshore to the the, onshoreand then the substations that
need to be put in. I mean, itit's just it's just a massive
complex.
And, even the onshore people noware saying, wait a second. Yeah.
We we we don't we didn't buy anyof this. And in Virginia, it's

(47:18):
very interesting that there's aseparate line now for the costs
that are gonna be paid by theconsumer, by the ratepayer for
this for the wind projects. Andand that's only appeared about
the last year, And it's gonna beinteresting to see as that
number goes up and up whetherpeople are gonna begin to say,
wait a minute.

(47:38):
You told us that this was gonnabe really good and cost free and
everything else, and now I gottapay another $10 a month. What
what are you talking about? So,it's it's it's, it's something
that's, I think, going toultimately possibly implode on
itself. But in the meantime,we've gotta stop what they're
doing right now, and that'sthat's why we're bringing the

(48:00):
lawsuit.

Sterling Burnett (48:01):
You know, a couple of things I'm sorry.

Craig Rucker (48:03):
I was gonna say, Terry, brings it. We gotta stop
it for right now. I'll tell youthey're getting creative with
how they're trying to buy offthe public. In a number of
communities, we're getting word,particularly in the
Massachusetts and Rhode Islandarea, but also in New York.
They're making donations tolocal governments to help them

(48:23):
Oh, yeah.
Educate their people. They'rehaving town hall meetings with
the fishermen who are veryconcerned about this could be
the death knell of theirindustry, as the offshore wind
is something they're veryopposed to. But they are getting
money, some of them are, by the,offshore wind industry to
compensate them for potentiallosses to their catch as a

(48:45):
result of these wind farms. So,they're busy at work trying to
pay off people and, even some ofthe environmental groups, to get
to make sure because this is abig cash cow to them. They get
these wind farms in, rate payerswill get harmed, but the,
companies will rake in.
And you look at countries likeDenmark, for example, big on
wind energy. They're payingabout 35¢, 40¢ a kilowatt hour.

(49:10):
In America, it's about 10, 12¢ akilowatt hour. Their rates are
3, 4 times higher than whatwe're paying, and a lot you
know, renewable energy is notready for prime time. It's
always been way more expensiveand less reliable.

Sterling Burnett (49:23):
I would say, you know, we it's not a part of
the lawsuit. It's not a part ofthe things that when I'm putting
my public comments on this. Butsince, I put in my public
comments, it's we become awareof the fact that these wind
turbines are shredding. In inScotland, they the the the edges
are being shredded by windaction, and so microplastics are

(49:46):
going everywhere. And andsupposedly, the
environmentalists care aboutmicroplastics.
I hear a lot about microplasticsin the great ocean plastic
problem. This is gonna beputting microplastics all over
into the oceans, which will befed on by the fish and, you
know, enter the food chain, blahblah blah, but they don't care
about that. In addition, somepeople here in the US may have

(50:11):
noticed, we get some hurricaneson the, East Coast of the United
States. It's unclear to me howwell these wind turbines are
gonna hold up to hurricane forcewinds.

Anthony Watts (50:24):
Yeah. Yeah. They they said pointed out I wanna
point out that the namesake thatwe've been talking about, Save
the Whales, there's actually anorganization called save the
whales.org, and they have awhole section on concerns of
their organization on wind farmproposals. And they go through

(50:47):
all the different points inthis. Now when an organization
like save the whales.org stepsup and says wind farms are a
problem, you would think someonewould stand up and listen.
But these people over, you know,on the left who are pushing
their agenda don't seem to care.And that's why at the beginning
of this show, I've called thiswhole issue rank hypocrisy on

(51:11):
the part of the left and thepart of the climate agenda
people.

Sterling Burnett (51:14):
Except except for the except for Greenpeace,
which used to be a big whalegroup. That was that that and
nuclear was why it how theystarted. All the whale groups,
the groups that are specificallyfocused on protecting sea
mammals and whales, they arehave followed that 10 of them
filed letters opposing andsaying, you need to study this
more. All the banks mainenvironmental groups, which are

(51:38):
getting money from big wind,which are concerned about
climate change more thananything, they are supporting
these things. So if you'reconcerned about whales, the
whale groups are against it.
The environmental groups, theythey don't care about the
whales. Right.

Anthony Watts (51:51):
Okay. So we've kind of, talked this out. Now
we're gonna go to our questionand answer period, and, Linea,
take it away.

Linnea Lueken (51:58):
Sure thing. Okay. So we have a a couple of good
questions here today. 1st, let'spull up right here. Alright.
When the offshore wind farmseventually prove useless, who
will remove them? I thinkthey'll be left to rot. And I
can comment on that. So this isactually one of the problems
about wind that's not really aproblem. Like, it I mean, it

(52:23):
depends.
It depends on how they do it.So, usually, what they do for,
like, semipermanent, offshoreoil platforms, like production
platforms, is they cut them offat a certain distance underneath
the waterline, and then theysink the whole thing because it
creates an artificial reefstructure, and it's actually can
be very beneficial a lot ofanimals will probably colonize

(52:46):
those, a lot of animals willprobably colonize those, you
know, kind of, rotted out holesas long as they take out, you
know, the, like, fluids andstuff that are in there, which
I'm sure they would. So that'snot something that I'm overly
concerned about. I would becurious to know if they have to

(53:08):
actively keep critters, likebarnacles and stuff, from
growing on those pylons, if thatends up being a problem for them
or not. And then I also wannamention as long as we're on this
topic regarding hurricanes, I'mnot overly worried about these
things getting ripped apart byhurricanes.

(53:29):
And my justification for that isthat they have them in the North
Sea. And as far as I can tell,they're not getting, like,
wholesale torn apart by the waveaction there, which can be very
extreme, even when there isn'tthis major storm coming through.
So I'm not too worried about thestructural, competency, I guess,

(53:51):
of the, wind turbines. I thinkthe major problem here is just
the disturbances, the fact thatit's not a good energy source to
begin with, and the sound issue.

Sterling Burnett (54:02):
Well, the wave the wave thing is one thing, but
the wind thing is another. Andwe do know that winds knocked
down turbines across Europe andin America on occasion when
they're supposed to flutter,when they're supposed to shut
down, and they don't because thegears break, the brakes break,
or, even when they are shutdown. And the North Sea doesn't
often get class 5 hurricanes orclass 4 hurricanes. They make it

(54:25):
high winds, low hurricane forcewinds, but I doubt that they get
some of the hurricanes we get inthe up and down the Atlantic
coast. As far as thedecommissioning on land in
Hawaii and in California, you'rejust seeing these things rot
when they break.

Craig Rucker (54:42):
They just sit

Anthony Watts (54:43):
there and rot. I've been to South Point,
Hawaii, and I can tell youyou're exactly right. They leave
a whole bunch of these windturbines on South Point, Hawaii,
and they're they've been leftthere to rot for over a decade
or more.

Sterling Burnett (54:54):
They just rot. Now maybe they'll have to do
something in the ocean. I don'tknow. You may know more about
this, Linnea, but, oil platformsare mostly, I would guess, steel
and metal, not microplastics andplastics and and graphite. And
and that's what these things aremade of.

(55:15):
They're not made for the mostpart of steel and things. And so
I don't know how well, firstoff, do you wanna dump tons of
plastic in the ocean? I'm toldwe don't. I'm told that that's a
terrible thing. So are we justgoing to put a big

Linnea Lueken (55:31):
My guess

Sterling Burnett (55:31):
is I

Craig Rucker (55:32):
mean, we've we've done stuff in CPAC and offshore
platforms, and they are good,especially in shallow waters.
And I'm I agree with you inbiodiversity. Just so you are
aware though, the and you knowthis, of course. The greens are
opposed to that. They've alwayswanted them torn up because
they've said these platformswere awful in the ocean and need
to be decommissioned, and we'vemade the argument that actually

(55:52):
they are good for biodiversity.
The, will the greens actuallychange course here? And when it
comes to wind farms, all of asudden agree with us and say,
maybe you should shop below thewater. That's okay. We're with
you what you're saying. I don'tknow about that because they are
talking about recycling thesethings.
And the unfortunate thing is alot of the wind parts, including

(56:13):
the propellers, are made withcomponents that don't recycle
easy.

Terry Johnson (56:16):
They can't be recycled.

Linnea Lueken (56:17):
Right. Right.

Craig Rucker (56:18):
So they're Or not. Landfills, and, and they're
clogging them up as the LA Timesrecently mentioned. All the
solar panel, wind farm stuff.This is a liberal LA Times
talking about it becoming aproblem in California because
they've been at Wind Energy fora long time.

Linnea Lueken (56:33):
Oh, yeah. Well and and, certainly, they're not
going to sink the, like,fiberglass parts of it because
it, you know, that that wouldn'tmake any sense at all. But I
just mean in terms of the, like,concrete, foundational
structures and stuff. I'm surethey'll leave them, and I'm not
sure that that's, like, aterrible thing. But, the, yeah,
I if they do end up just, like,leaving them above the

(56:55):
waterline, sitting there deadforever, and they just keep
building new ones, that would beman, what a good representation
of modern environmentalism.
Right? Yeah. So okay. Here's,here's another question. We've
got, How does offshore wind at25¢ a kilowatt hour lead to
lower energy bills?

Sterling Burnett (57:17):
25¢ would be cheap for offshore wind.

Craig Rucker (57:19):
That's that's actually cheap. That's it's
higher than that.

Terry Johnson (57:24):
Yeah. Much higher

Linnea Lueken (57:24):
than that. Say it doesn't.

Sterling Burnett (57:26):
No. That's it it doesn't lower energy bills.
They don't they don't claim itwill. What they claim is it's
got to be done to fight climatechange. It's cheaper to build
onshore wind.
It's cheaper to build onshoresolar. I mean, as bad as those
things are, that's cheaper. Thisis just where they can get the
most money.

Anthony Watts (57:43):
Yep. Well, the next step is off off the planet
wind and solar.

Sterling Burnett (57:50):
Oh, that would be geoengineering. We don't we
can't have that.

Linnea Lueken (57:53):
Alright. This one's kind of a funny one just
for fun. I liked this, so I'mputting it up. Aren't there some
hippies who think dolphins arelike star seeds or something?
What do the dolphins have to sayabout the windmills?

Sterling Burnett (58:11):
I think I think translated that was
object. Yeah. No. That's theproblem. The Dolphins and the
porpoises, if you look at theseif you look at just what we can
read in the government's owndocuments, for them, they're
talking about thousands of thembeing affected and possibly
killed by these things.

Terry Johnson (58:32):
Yeah. It's not it's not just Thousands. There
will

Sterling Burnett (58:33):
be a few North Atlantic right whales. Thousands
of dolphins and porpoises andhundreds of other types of
whales and and sea mammals willbe impacted.

Linnea Lueken (58:43):
Yeah. Yep. And this is this kind of expands on
that. This is referring toearlier when we were talking
about the number of whales thathave been killed. This person
asks, is that per station?
And the answer to that is no.But it's not 3 whales per wind
turbine. But

Sterling Burnett (58:56):
It's it's per the project, which is a 100
which I think is a 176 fordominions.

Craig Rucker (59:01):
Right.

Terry Johnson (59:04):
Yeah. Well, we're talking about whales that have
been killed before they've evenerected the first, monopile. You
know, they they're they're doingthe the sonar mapping of the
floor, which is sonar blastingof the floor. And, these
animals, especially rightwhales, they they live and die

(59:24):
by sound. They don't see verywell and live and die by sound.
You interfere with what they'resaying, you you're killing them.
And that's what's gonna happen,if these things get built, but,
not good. Hopefully, that won'thappen if we succeed legally.

Linnea Lueken (59:42):
Alright. If tax credits were removed, what is
the financial viability of thesewind projects?

Craig Rucker (59:49):
You could actually just go to the companies. The
companies themselves say unlessthey get these tax credits,
unless they are able to get theprice per, you know, kilowatt
hour or the price per megawatthour that they're asking for,
which is 3 times higher thanregular electricity, they can't
make it. And they're pullthey're paying bucks in many
case to get out of here. I thinkit was BP and Ecuador paid, what

(01:00:12):
was it, it, $40,000,000 to breaka contract. I

Sterling Burnett (01:00:16):
think I think paying to break its contract as
well. But one of them

Craig Rucker (01:00:20):
They're paying big bucks to get out of the contract
unless they can get the taxcredits and everything else, You
know? Because they're it's ait's a loser unless they get the
financial arrangement.

Terry Johnson (01:00:31):
These these projects live and die on
subsidies. You take care of thesubsidies that that collapse.

Sterling Burnett (01:00:36):
And that's by the way, to be fair, that's true
of onshore wind and solar aswell. Yeah.

Terry Johnson (01:00:41):
Yeah. Probably. Yeah.

Sterling Burnett (01:00:43):
Every year every year, when you got these
omnibus bills come because wenever get our budgets done.
Right? If the tax credit forwind, the onshore wind lapses,
factory shut down the day afterit lapses until the omnibus is
passed that re ups it. Now onoffshore wind, the most

(01:01:03):
expensive form of electricpower, I think, except for
batteries. Batteries may be moreexpensive.
These projects wouldn't exist.But for Biden pushing it and
Biden's pushing it with dollars,states are getting dollars. And
how are they? It's not just taxcredits. It's them passing along

(01:01:25):
the bill to rate payers.
It's not just that me and Texasare subsidizing these projects
offshore wind through my throughtax credits. It's that in
Virginia, whatever Dominiondoes, they just get to pass it
on to their ratepayers. If noother utility. I'm sorry. I in
Texas, there's not a singleutility in Texas.
You can just say, can we pass onany costs that we have on the

(01:01:48):
ratepayers regardless of what itis? No. You don't get to do that
anywhere else. In Dominion in inVirginia does. They don't get to
do that in any of the other windfarms.
They had to bid in, and nowthey're getting out.

Terry Johnson (01:02:01):
Correct.

Craig Rucker (01:02:01):
It's it's not like they're providing power
constantly all up and down. Imean, these projects go from the
Carolinas up to Massachusetts.You got all these states buying
into it. If you were tocumulatively take how much
electricity they're all gonnaproduce within a year, you
couldn't power all these states.You could only power maybe one
of them, New York State, forhalf a year, and that's the best

(01:02:22):
you could do.
So it augments, it's notreplacing anything and you will
need back backup gas and coal oror nuclear or something to back
it up because it even despiteall these costs and everything,
it's still not gonna provide ahuge amount of the energy needs
for the, states up and down thecoast.

Sterling Burnett (01:02:42):
Yeah. And it goes it goes farther than
Massachusetts. It goes up toMaine because, Maine has already
got some some turbines they putin experimentally, and, they're
bucking for more or they were.

Terry Johnson (01:02:54):
There's some people interesting to see how
they do in a main winter. Youknow?

Sterling Burnett (01:02:58):
Yeah. Well, a main winner and, you know, who's
fighting it there, the the leadfight there is the lobster
fisherman.

Terry Johnson (01:03:05):
Yeah. True. Yeah.

Craig Rucker (01:03:06):
We were just contacted by a state legislator
who is organizing. A lot of thenative Americans don't like it
either because they're, going tobe using as a jump point in
Maine some pristine wildernessarea that they want to develop,
which is actually kind ofcontradictory rather than using
an already developed area ofMaine, not that there's a whole
lot of them. They actually wannause an an area that's kind of

(01:03:29):
pristine and known for that, touse as a construction site to
get these things up there.

Sterling Burnett (01:03:34):
That'll be interesting to see because there
you have a conflict within theBiden administration's own push.
Because they're pushing offshorewind, but they're also pushing
to include Native Americans andminority communities. You know,
it's environmental justice inevery project. And so if this
is, undermining it it seems tome one part of his plan is
undermining another, so we'llsee how the conflict plays out

(01:03:54):
there.

Linnea Lueken (01:03:55):
Yeah. We'll just see where what what goal is
higher on the hierarchy. That'sall.

Terry Johnson (01:04:01):
Yeah. And don't don't forget the Asian trans sex
workers too. They they need tobe.

Craig Rucker (01:04:07):
And what does Anna and Swift think of all these
things?

Linnea Lueken (01:04:12):
Okay. So we have one more question, but it's a
little bit off topic, but Ithink we could probably give a
little bit of information aboutthis. So this is, any news on
Mark Stein's appeal? Well, I cananswer part of this. If you go
on his website, I think the lasttime that he posted something
about it was March 10th, andthey have, him and his lawyers

(01:04:35):
have brought forward a couple ofmotions.
So they have a motion to stayexecution of the judgment, which
is them complaining about the,$1,000,000 punitive damages.
They have a motion for judgmentas a matter of law and a motion
for a new trial. So they areawaiting, I believe, the results

(01:04:58):
of those.

Sterling Burnett (01:04:58):
Yeah. The judge the second motion you
mentioned, motion for judgmentis a matter of law. I I think
the the judge never should letthe court the court hear the
case. But once he did, sincethey came back with almost no
damage, no actual damages, Ithink he should dismiss it as a

(01:05:21):
judgment of, you know, dismissalof the court, not
notwithstanding the judgment ofthe jury, because it largely
being in line with the judgmentof the jury, which is there were
no damages. So,

Craig Rucker (01:05:32):
but they send a message.

Sterling Burnett (01:05:33):
But they haven't done that yet. He had
the the deport hasn't ruled.

Terry Johnson (01:05:37):
Say, proud to say I'm a founding member of the
Mark Stein Club. He's one of thebest.

Anthony Watts (01:05:43):
Good for you. Good for you. Alright. I think
that pretty well wraps it up forus today. We've discussed right
whales, left whales, up and downwhales, whales everywhere.
And the hypocrisy of the left innot saving the whales is fairly
obvious here. So I wanna thankall of our guests, from CFAC,
Terry and Craig, and, of course,Linnea and doctor Burnett for

(01:06:07):
their discussions and andcommentary today. Wanna remind
you all to visit our websitesthat we have new information on
regularly. Climateataglance.com, which have a new
post up there today, aboutglobal wildfires, which will be
useful in the coming months, anda plenty of other information on
there that you can use to refutethe insanity when you're online

(01:06:30):
or writing letters to the editoror giving talks, and I encourage
you to do so. There's alsoclimate realism.com where we
take the media down every day.
Every day, we point out theinsanity of some of the claims
made in the media about climate,and we back it up with facts.
And then, of course, there'senergy ataglamps.com, which

(01:06:50):
talks about all these differentissues, wind power, solar power,
and so forth and so on, and thefolly of some of them. And then,
of course, my own personalwebsite, what's up with that dot
com. Be sure to visit all ofthese websites for the best
ammunition you can possibly getin order to refute the climate
insanity out there. So I'mAnthony Watts, senior fellow for

(01:07:12):
environment and climate at theHeartland Institute, thanking
you all for being here and, ofcourse, our viewers too.
Wishing you all a great Fridayand a fantastic weekend. Bye
bye.

Terry Johnson (01:07:24):
Bye. Thanks for having us.

Craig Rucker (01:07:43):
Who's a lion dog faced pony soldier?