Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Manhattan Contrarian is a voice of reason in a sea of climate change insanity

Transcript

Manhattan Contrarian is a voice of reason in a sea of climate change insanity · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:07
  Mainstream media has betrayed our trust.
• 0:10
  Rather than tell us the whole story about the important issues of the day, they tell us only what they want us to hear.
• 0:16
  Your hosts, Tom Harris and Todd Royal will bring you the other side of the story.
• 0:27
  Today we're going to get into what is real and what is fantasy in the fields of climate change and energy.
• 0:34
  And to help us do that, we have invited Francis Menton, who runs the blog Manhattan Contrarian at ManhattanContrarian.com to be our guest today.
• 0:43
  Francis has a BA in economics and mathematics from Yale University and a jurisdictor degree from Harvard Law School.
• 0:50
  In 1975, he joined the law firm Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, LLP, as an associate, becoming a partner in 1984 and retiring after 40 years in 2016.
• 1:02
  During his legal career, Francis specialized in the field of commercial litigation.
• 1:07
  He was best known for cases involving complex and technical subject matters, such as innovative financial and insurance products or the malpractice of actuaries.
• 1:17
  In 2012, Francis lost the Manhattan Contrarian blog, which again, for people to check out because it's amazing, lots of really good articles.
• 1:26
  ManhattanContrarian.com, where he has published well over a thousand articles on issues of public policy.
• 1:33
  Many of them deal with the subject of climate change and energy.
• 1:36
  His blog is a platform for challenging conventional and often misguided wisdom and offering alternative perspectives on economics, governance, and environmental policy.
• 1:47
  So welcome to the show, Francis.
• 1:49
  And thank you so much for having me, Tom.
• 1:52
  Yeah, it's great to have you.
• 1:53
  So Todd will join us in five or ten minutes.
• 1:56
  But uh in the meantime, let's get going.
• 1:58
  And could you give us a latest on the newly anointed mayor elect of New York City, Zoran Mam Dami?
• 2:05
  Is that how you pronounce his name?
• 2:06
  No, no, no, you have it completely wrong because it's the first one is an M and the second one is an N.
• 2:13
  So it's Mamdanny.
• 2:16
  Oh, okay.
• 2:17
  Sounds like it.
• 2:18
  And it's it's totally um contrary to what your tongue wants to say.
• 2:23
  Your tongue wants to say Mom Dami, but it's not that, it's Mom Dani.
• 2:30
  Okay.
• 2:31
  Well, anyway, he's quite young, eh?
• 2:33
  And he was a he's a socialist who was born where?
• 2:36
  Somewhere overseas.
• 2:37
  You know, do I know where he was born?
• 2:39
  I know he lived his early life in Uganda.
• 2:42
  He might have been born in India, but he lived in Uganda, but not to an old age.
• 2:47
  So I think he came to the United States at the age of maybe six.
• 2:51
  He was born in 1991.
• 2:54
  He was born in October of 1991.
• 2:57
  So as I think I pointed out on a recent post, he was born approximately seven or eight weeks before the final collapse of the Soviet Union.
• 3:07
  So I guess he wasn't old enough to have any personal memory of that.
• 3:13
  The Soviet Union, the final, I think Mikhail Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day, 1991, and uh and the Soviet Union turned over the keys to the new guys on the on Boxing Day.
• 3:27
  So uh Zoran has not actually experienced communism in Russia in real time.
• 3:33
  Uh well not only hasn't experienced it by being there, but he hasn't even experienced it by reading about it.
• 3:41
  So are media exaggerating when they say he's gonna bring communism to New York City?
• 3:46
  Well, yeah, yes, clearly the media are exaggerating that, not because he wouldn't if he could, but because he's just the mayor of New York City.
• 3:56
  Now, the mayor of New York City is a very powerful office.
• 3:59
  New York City is our only local government here.
• 4:03
  We don't have like, for example, a separate county government or a separate town government or a separate school district or a separate water district or anything like that.
• 4:13
  The only government, local government in New York City is the city of New York.
• 4:18
  So and the mayor runs it all, and all the commissioners report to him, so it's a very powerful office uh in that sense, but the city is a creature of the state, and the state legislature and the state governor control many, many things about the city, including almost everything about taxes.
• 4:42
  Uh certainly he has no ability to change the property ownership rules, which would be fundamental to communism if he wanted to try to implement that.
• 4:55
  Uh I mean I could give many other examples, but it but he has very large, I mean, if if you're talking about running the sanitation department, he has the complete control over it.
• 5:04
  If you're talking about changing property ownership rules, I don't think he has much control.
• 5:09
  Yeah.
• 5:09
  So what do you think will be the impact of having him as mayor?
• 5:13
  Yes, and this is a subject I've written about many, many times.
• 5:16
  What is the subject that puts putting what is the result of putting socialists in control of things?
• 5:23
  And my observation, I could give you many examples is the result is gradual relative decline.
• 5:30
  And and what socialism means as a practical matter, and what it is highly likely to mean as a practical matter in New York City, is that he will raise taxes to the extent he can, and he will increase spending to the extent he can on various programs that are currently in fashion among the left.
• 5:54
  Like all socialists, he's extremely enumerate.
• 5:57
  He has no sense of priorities, and that if you spend too much money on one thing, you won't have anything left for something important.
• 6:04
  He has no sense of that whatsoever.
• 6:06
  So he'll undoubtedly grab a hold of and expand several new spending programs, which will be in any rational world low priority and of no help to the citizens, and he'll increase taxes to the extent he can.
• 6:22
  There will be limits.
• 6:23
  But so what will be the result of that?
• 6:25
  Well, we become a higher tax and higher spending jurisdiction, and anybody who looks out around the world or around the United States can very quickly see that the high tax, high spending jurisdictions are in a state of decline relative to the low-text, low spending jurisdictions that are in a state of growth and advancement.
• 6:46
  So we're already in a state of relative decline, and it I guess it'll get a little worse before it gets it correct when they say that Wall Street essentially is moving to Florida.
• 6:59
  Well, there's an element of truth in it, but uh if Wall Street could just pick up and move in a day, I think it would have gone already.
• 7:10
  Uh, but what you see, it's not so much that Wall Street picks up and moves, but uh as an example, and by the way, it's both Florida and Texas and more Texas than Florida, but both.
• 7:21
  Um, but what you see is that the financial companies, the big banks, the investment banks, the hedge funds, uh, and related financial entities haven't moved out of New York, but they have opened facilities in these other states, or new hedge funds have opened in these other states, and the growth is in the other states.
• 7:44
  So it was recently pointed out in the press, JP Morgan Chase.
• 7:49
  It's it's the company that owns Chase Bank, has more employees now in Texas than in New York.
• 7:55
  Now, Chase Bank has just built a gigantic new skyscraper uh on Park Avenue, right above Grand Central.
• 8:03
  They're not moving out.
• 8:04
  Jamie Diamond lives in New York, but he now has more employees in Texas than New York, and I think the growth is going to be preferentially toward Texas.
• 8:13
  And I I could talk about hedge funds.
• 8:15
  I actually somehow have gotten to known a bunch of people in the in the hedge fund community.
• 8:20
  I mean, Paul Singer.
• 8:21
  I don't know if that name means anything to you.
• 8:23
  That's Elliott Capital Hedge Fund, moved it to Florida.
• 8:27
  Uh Citadel, Citadel started a gigantic hedge fund.
• 8:31
  Citadel started in Chicago.
• 8:34
  They put a lot of employees in New York.
• 8:36
  They occupy almost a million square feet in New York, but their headquarters is now in Florida.
• 8:41
  The head guy Griffin, I'm sure that his, I'm sure that he doesn't pay income taxes to either Illinois or New York.
• 8:48
  I can't imagine why he would.
• 8:50
  He put the headquarters of his company in Florida.
• 8:53
  He also is building a gigantic new skyscraper in New York.
• 8:57
  He's going to have lots and lots of young, eager beavers working there, but he is not going to pay New York City taxes.
• 9:05
  And I could go on with examples.
• 9:07
  Yeah.
• 9:08
  I think this is the way it's going in the future.
• 9:10
  It's it's not that Wall Street is picking up and moving.
• 9:13
  It's that the growth is elsewhere.
• 9:15
  Yeah.
• 9:15
  Dallas is in Dallas, Texas.
• 9:17
  Goldman Sachs is building a massive new building.
• 9:20
  There you go.
• 9:21
  Right in downtown Dallas.
• 9:22
  I think they're consolidating large parts of their U.S.
• 9:26
  operations in Dallas right now.
• 9:29
  Not surprised.
• 9:30
  Yeah.
• 9:31
  Number of jobs.
• 9:31
  I tend to think of Dami that what you're really going to see is corruption and graft.
• 9:37
  Because you have a guy that has zero administrative experience, has zero ideas of how to run anything, hire anybody.
• 9:47
  Nothing.
• 9:49
  That's a reasonable prediction.
• 9:51
  I am not going to accuse Mamdani uh of graft before it's known.
• 9:58
  So I would be hopeful.
• 10:00
  About it, but but the simple proposition is that as government does more and more things, everything that is done by government is subject to graft.
• 10:12
  I mean, private business is not subject to graph.
• 10:14
  In private business, it's legit to be out for your own interest and looking for money.
• 10:19
  And people don't want to pay you the price you want, they don't have to do business with you.
• 10:23
  In government, it's not legit to be out looking for money for yourself.
• 10:28
  And but however, an awful lot of people can't make that distinction.
• 10:33
  Yeah.
• 10:33
  Now, you living in New York City, you would actually Manhattan Manhattan.
• 10:37
  Uh surely the crime statistics are of interest to you.
• 10:41
  And it's interesting because on one of your blogs, you showed these statistics of actual murders.
• 10:47
  And uh, it's really down now in comparison with, say, 30, 40 years ago.
• 10:51
  So I mean, is that a reflection of a change of kind of government?
• 10:55
  Like, do you think with socialism there'll be more murders?
• 10:59
  Well, I I don't know what here's the question.
• 11:03
  What is socialism mean?
• 11:04
  I I wrote about this in that recent blog.
• 11:07
  Social is classic socialism is seizure of the means of production.
• 11:11
  Yeah, that he can't be talking about that.
• 11:13
  There aren't any means of production to seize in New York.
• 11:16
  We don't have factories anymore.
• 11:17
  We don't have industrial facilities, we don't have any.
• 11:20
  So what is what is socialism mean?
• 11:23
  And I as I think I described it means higher tax and higher spending.
• 11:27
  Well, one of his programs is actually in uh lower spending on what, of course, it's the police.
• 11:35
  Ah that's not good.
• 11:38
  Well, and then he says, Well, I'm not really going to do away with law enforcement.
• 11:43
  I'm going to create a social services, something or other to respond to domestic violence or something.
• 11:49
  I mean, I can't wait for I can't wait for this to happen and see what it is.
• 11:52
  Yeah, the social workers showing up and things like that.
• 11:56
  When there's a guy with a gun shooting, I don't know.
• 12:01
  But um I I did put on that recent blog post a chart of murders in New York, which is quite informative because it does it it it follows a pattern that you may be aware of, but maybe not.
• 12:15
  But crime from historically a 200-year period was at a pretty standard level in New York City of about five murders per 100,000 per year, and maybe it fluctuated once or twice up to 10.
• 12:34
  Five to 10 murders per 100,000 population per year, going back to the 1800s, even 1700s, and then in the late 60s, it took off and it got to a high of over 30.
• 12:49
  Wow.
• 12:50
  So from five to 30.
• 12:53
  And I don't know how much you know about murder statistics and crime statistics.
• 12:57
  It's a very interesting thing to follow.
• 12:59
  30 is a high level.
• 13:01
  The current level in Chicago is about 25.
• 13:05
  And then you get to the really deadly cities in the United States, like St.
• 13:09
  Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, uh, Memphis.
• 13:14
  There are others, but theirs is more fluctuates more because the population is smaller.
• 13:20
  So 10 extra murders can jack it up in one year versus another.
• 13:24
  But in those cities, it varies between 40 and 80, but those are very deadly cities.
• 13:32
  And then you look at New York, and our murder rate is about six right now, six per hundred.
• 13:38
  So, really in the long time range.
• 13:40
  However, it from the late 60s to the early 90s, it went up to 30, and then it came back down.
• 13:48
  Well, what happened in the early 90s to the 2018s to bring it down from 30 back to six, and actually there was a year when it was four, from 30 all the way to four.
• 14:03
  And what happened was they grew the police department substantially, and they got serious about law enforcement and particularly about focusing the law enforcement on the high crime areas.
• 14:16
  And most of this happened during the mayoralties of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, which was a 20-year period from 1993 to 2013.
• 14:27
  Didn't they also institute the James Q.
• 14:29
  Wilson broken windows theory of policing and yeah, you know, I wouldn't say it wasn't announced formally, but yes, and and so they put large numbers of police in the high crime areas, and they started arresting people for jumping the subway turnstile or urinating on the street, or things that are legitimate crimes but not all that serious.
• 14:55
  Well, it turns out the people who commit those very minor crimes are the same people who commit the major crimes in many instances.
• 15:03
  Uh not every, but many instances.
• 15:05
  So if you arrest those people and take them out of commission, suddenly the and by the way, the prison population went way up.
• 15:13
  Oh, okay.
• 15:14
  Um so your murderers were behind jail or behind bars.
• 15:18
  This is something I and you may have read about this.
• 15:21
  It's called the Fox Butterfield effect.
• 15:23
  Have you ever heard of the Fox Butterfield effect?
• 15:25
  Yeah.
• 15:25
  The Fox Butterfield was a reporter for the New York Times who wrote an article, and I'm gonna say it was late 90s or early 2000s in the New York Times, and the headline was a crime way down, despite prison population being up.
• 15:42
  Couldn't understand it.
• 15:43
  If what prison population is up, why would the crime be going down?
• 15:46
  But of course, it's because the criminals were behind bars.
• 15:48
  He imagine that.
• 15:50
  Imagine the cause of effect backwards.
• 15:53
  Imagine that.
• 15:54
  Hey, I wanted to ask you, because you you did an excellent article recently on climate leadership and community protection act.
• 16:03
  You've also done great work, and I know Tom and I want to talk to you about it.
• 16:07
  You talk about how you should do you know a city of 10,000 people or so and make it only renewables.
• 16:12
  But can we start with just tell us what is the climate leadership and community protection act of New York State?
• 16:19
  Um, and didn't I believe also some different climate activists took the state to court recently for meeting one of the acts target dates?
• 16:27
  Can you just talk to us about that?
• 16:28
  That's that the last part is brand new news.
• 16:31
  So the climate leadership and community protection act, and I love the leadership thing.
• 16:37
  This was passed in 20 uh 19, I believe June of 2019 by the New York State Legislature.
• 16:44
  And what you should know about that is that essentially forever, back as far as human memory goes back, the Republicans in New York who are an ineffective bunch, but they managed to keep some kind of a hold on the state senate.
• 17:00
  And for a long time, they had a one or two-seat majority there, and then they lost that, but they managed to get a couple of democrats to caucus with them, and then they made five Democrats who caucus with them.
• 17:11
  And for a long time, they were able to block destructive uh climate litigation in New York.
• 17:19
  And then in the election in 2018, so this is the election where Trump has now been in office for two years, and New York decided they hated him and we would punish him by electing a heavily democratic New York state legislature.
• 17:34
  So we got that in the 2018 election, and they took office in 2019.
• 17:40
  And now we have the climate activists in control in New York and horribly embarrassed that California is showing us up in being the leader among climate activist jurisdictions.
• 17:54
  So they passed the climate leadership and community protection act in the legislature session of 2019, and that act is still with us.
• 18:04
  So that act provides for uh a series of mandates on how we are going to zero out our carbon emissions in short order.
• 18:14
  And there's a lot of detail to it, but the the top three mandates I can list off the top of my head.
• 18:22
  One is 70 percent of electricity from renewables by 2030.
• 18:31
  So that's that's the first one.
• 18:33
  70 percent of electricity.
• 18:34
  Can I ask you something real quick?
• 18:35
  Yeah, and and Tom and I talk about this often on this show in renewables and climate.
• 18:40
  Does anybody even understand what it would take and just from the land and materials and all of that, what it would take to even attempt to build that out?
• 18:50
  Yeah, plenty of people understand it.
• 18:52
  I I give you uh exhibit A would be Mark Mills, Mark Mills understands it.
• 18:56
  Well, no, I'm talking about in New York.
• 18:58
  I know people who understand it.
• 18:59
  Okay, yeah, I understand it, Tom understands.
• 19:02
  I'm talking about people who vote for this stuff and do this.
• 19:06
  I always wonder, do they think it's really gonna happen, or are they obviously just doing it to get themselves elected by their democratic constituencies?
• 19:14
  I think by the way, I just spent the morning and part of the afternoon today with some of these people.
• 19:21
  Uh I think the answer is there are some charlatan academics out there, yeah, like Mark Jacobson, like Robert Howarth, Howard.
• 19:32
  I just can't believe Stanford keeps Jacobson.
• 19:34
  They have the Hoover Institute, but yet they keep Jacobs in one of my best professors from from graduate schools at the Hoover Institution.
• 19:41
  I always wonder how are Jacobson and this gentleman on the same campus.
• 19:45
  Is is uh a bunch of freaks across the way, and Jacobson is mainstream, is is is the answer to that.
• 19:52
  Of course.
• 19:53
  So anyway, Mark uh Mark Jacobson, Robert Howarth is a Jacobson acolyte who is a
• 20:00
  Biologist, but he works at Cornell, and he has gotten himself on the climate, this and that panels and advisors in New York.
• 20:08
  These are the people who have the ear of the legislature.
• 20:11
  They are saying this is easy.
• 20:14
  All it takes is a little political will.
• 20:16
  In fact, part of their message is not only is it easy, it's cheap.
• 20:20
  The renewables are cheaper.
• 20:22
  The only reason that they're not being adopted is that there's a cabal of oil companies and fossil fuel interests that are preventing them from being adopted.
• 20:31
  All you have to do is say you have to build wind and solar, and it'll happen with a snap of the fingers.
• 20:37
  And these are the people who have the ear of the legislature.
• 20:40
  And if you try to talk to any of the legis legislators about the subject and tell them they're they are being tricked, they can't believe it.
• 20:49
  They think you're an idiot.
• 20:55
  How are they reconciling their desire now for nuclear?
• 20:59
  At least they're studying it, they're considering it.
• 21:02
  How are they reconciling that that they would possibly need nuclear power?
• 21:07
  Okay.
• 21:08
  There's different actors and players involved.
• 21:10
  I was just talking about the legislature that passed the CLCPA in 2019 and it was signed by then governor Andrew Cuomo.
• 21:19
  Now we're talking about Cuomo resigned in 2021.
• 21:24
  The lieutenant governor took over.
• 21:25
  That was Kathy Hokel.
• 21:27
  She ran for re-election in 2022, and she won a full term.
• 21:32
  She's now up for re-election in 2026.
• 21:36
  And she has some people on staff who are apparently not complete idiots.
• 21:41
  And she is realizing that the renewable drive is driving up the costs.
• 21:47
  And particularly there have been big rate increases in the upstate electric utilities, and there are some coming down the pike in downstate Con Edison.
• 21:57
  And Hogel is realizing this.
• 22:00
  And so she has started to talk about quote unquote all of the above energy strategy.
• 22:07
  Now, this is just HOCL.
• 22:09
  The legislature is 200 people, and obviously 200 people have different views.
• 22:15
  So but but the leadership of the legislature is very much progressive, far left over the top.
• 22:22
  Now you then have a Republicans who I believe have just enough votes in the state Senate, but not in the assembly to prevent to uh sustain a veto.
• 22:35
  Hokel has started about started to talk about an all of all of the above energy strategy.
• 22:41
  Over in the legislature, the leadership is totally all in on the climate act.
• 22:47
  And I would say that there are a few the Republicans are totally opposed to another Republican to their credit.
• 22:55
  The Republicans have become the anti uh net zero policy, I believe unanimously in New York.
• 23:04
  I don't there may be an exception or two.
• 23:06
  And there are also some cracks on the Democratic side, but a handful, and they have a huge majority.
• 23:10
  So in the legislature, it's not going far.
• 23:14
  Now, Kathy Hokel.
• 23:16
  The the mentioning of nuclear power recently is Kathy Hochel.
• 23:21
  So she has she announced that she has given to a New York state agency called the New York Power Authority, NYPA, uh a mission to develop one gigawatt capacity nuclear power plant.
• 23:38
  And she did that with great fanfare, and and some publicity person from the New York Power Authority called me and tried to get me to become part of promoting this thing.
• 23:50
  And I said to her, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of.
• 23:53
  It's a total drop in the bucket.
• 23:55
  It's it's insignificant, and it'll be 15 years before it's built.
• 23:59
  And all these it if you started today and had everybody on board, they don't even have a site.
• 24:07
  They don't even have a site for it.
• 24:09
  So I think it's it's complete blather, but but anyway, that's that's what it is.
• 24:15
  Uh-huh.
• 24:16
  Now now, concerning this climate climate leadership and community protection act.
• 24:21
  Apparently, it set mandatory emission targets for reduction in greenhouse gases.
• 24:26
  And um they're not gonna likely meet it, are they?
• 24:30
  And it sounds like they've been sued for this.
• 24:32
  I was I was uh starting to tell you about the the mandate.
• 24:35
  So there are three main mandates 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030, 100% of electricity from zero carbon sources, not quite the same as renewables by 2040, and 85 percent of all energy, not just electricity from zero carbon sources by 2050.
• 25:04
  So these are the alleged goals of the climate act.
• 25:10
  Now, there's one other goal that it was not an emissions reduction goal, or one other uh instruction, which is that the act instructed a state agency called the Department of Environmental Conservation to promulgate regulations to tell us how we are going to achieve these goals, and the deadline for the regulations was January 1, 2024.
• 25:35
  So that one went by and went by, Hokel was the governor because she took over in 2022, and this department reports to her, and the and the deadline went by, and nobody said a word.
• 25:51
  And then a year passed, and now we're in um 2025, and still nothing, nothing happens.
• 25:59
  And so I believe in April, a group of environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the Albany County, that's the capital city, Albany County uh state court, uh asking for uh a court ruling compelling the state to issue these regulations.
• 26:20
  And that um so that case was filed in April, and the judge issued a ruling in I believe October, might have been September, but I think it was October.
• 26:32
  It's recent.
• 26:33
  So we're now right up to about up to date.
• 26:36
  And the judge issued a ruling, said the statute explicitly says you must issue these regulations.
• 26:42
  I don't have any discretion here.
• 26:43
  You have to do it, so I order you to do it.
• 26:46
  However, he ordered them to, he gave them a deadline, his own deadline of February 6th to do it.
• 26:54
  And the reason he uh gave them a few months was because he said, you know, you can go back to the legislature and ask them to change the law, and I can't really make you do this before the legislature is back in session.
• 27:09
  So they don't come back in session until January.
• 27:11
  So he gave them until the beginning of February to do this.
• 27:15
  Uh so that is out there.
• 27:17
  So two other things about that.
• 27:19
  First of all, I believe the state has appealed his ruling, and the and the appeal stays the ruling, I think.
• 27:26
  So the ruling is actually stayed.
• 27:29
  So the February 6th deadline is off unless the appeals court should act more quickly, and they don't really act that quickly.
• 27:36
  So I think the February 6th deadline is not going to happen.
• 27:40
  But the most interesting thing that happened is that in the briefing on this, the state put in a letter brief in August on August 11, which is put in on behalf of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
• 27:57
  It doesn't mention the governor's name, but that department is not some kind of independent agency.
• 28:02
  It is something that reports to the governor.
• 28:05
  So it's the it's the governor.
• 28:07
  And the letter is signed by the attorney general's office, not by the attorney general herself, but by one of her deputies, but it's on the attorney general's stationary.
• 28:17
  And it says, Dear judge, here's the reason why you should not why you should not enforce this deadline.
• 28:23
  The reason you should not enforce the deadline is that the mandates of the Climate Act are infeasible.
• 28:30
  That's that's their work.
• 28:32
  In there, what are you going to do with that?
• 28:35
  Francis, why why don't they go ahead though?
• 28:37
  And and because I mean, I've read Mark Jacobson's work.
• 28:41
  I've cited it.
• 28:43
  I've cited it before in one of my books.
• 28:45
  I mean, I've I've looked at it, I've read, I've read what he says, I've seen some of it.
• 28:51
  I've even, I've even looked at some of the math, some of his, I think he's got some different regressions with it.
• 28:56
  Why wouldn't they just take if if they follow Mark?
• 28:59
  I mean, I'm just I'm being a little devil's advocate here.
• 29:02
  Why not just take Professor Jacobson's work and put that as your as your feasibility because he's I mean, he is put out directly.
• 29:10
  The entire United States could be run on renewables, and he gives a plan.
• 29:15
  I mean, he he lays it out there.
• 29:17
  I'm curious why they wouldn't um bring his over, bring over his plan.
• 29:22
  Well, uh I think the answer is maybe they did.
• 29:25
  I mean, so they have put out a series of documents, not regulations.
• 29:31
  So the thing that they didn't put out was regulations to instruct the unwashed masses what they have to do to comply here.
• 29:41
  But they have put out at least a couple of things.
• 29:43
  One they one thing that they put out was called the scoping plan.
• 29:49
  And that was also provided for by the act, and they met the deadline.
• 29:52
  It came out in 2022.
• 29:54
  And so the scoping plan was like an 800 page document that supposedly.
• 30:00
  Scopes out how this is going to be done.
• 30:02
  And I think why scope?
• 30:04
  I mean, I think it's because how many megawatts of this and how many gigawatts of that do we need, and how much wind versus solar are we going to do?
• 30:12
  And you know, but uh it's 800 pages long, but they put that document out.
• 30:16
  And now they have just put out in 2025, I believe it came out in July, something called the state energy plan, which is put out by a somewhat different but substantially overlapping alphabet soup of bureaucracies, uh, like an alliance of 12 different agencies with their fingers in the climate pie somehow.
• 30:42
  Uh, and that document is again like a 500 or 700 page document called the energy plan.
• 30:50
  And uh I in a blog post I wrote about that.
• 30:53
  I called it hundreds and hundreds of pages of fluff.
• 30:56
  I mean, you you you read through this thing, and it's things like we are the leader, it is so exciting, we are ahead of the curve, we have a five-point plan for this and a seven-point plan for that, and on and on and on and on.
• 31:11
  And there's nothing remotely comparable to a feasibility study or a cost study or anything that you would actually need if you were serious about doing this.
• 31:23
  It's it's uh it's obviously, and these are non-serious documents, but they do exist.
• 31:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 31:30
  Sadly, we have to go for a break now.
• 31:32
  Our guest today is Francis Manton.
• 31:34
  He's with the Manhattan Contrarian and ManhattanContrarian.com.
• 31:38
  So stay tuned.
• 31:39
  We'll be right back after the break.
• 31:40
  And we're going to talk about will New York be able to meet these targets.
• 31:44
  Because it sounds like they're pretty impossible.
• 31:46
  So stay tuned, we'll be right back after the break.
• 31:48
  Your heart is the most crucial muscle in your body.
• 31:51
  Are you doing enough to keep it strong?
• 31:53
  Introducing the wellness company's breakthrough healthy heart formula.
• 31:56
  Designed by Dr.
• 31:57
  Peter McCullough, now upgraded with taurine.
• 32:00
  This daily supplement supports cardiovascular health and works to protect cells against oxidative stress.
• 32:05
  Packed with D-ribose to boost heart function, taurine to help maintain heart and muscular health, coenzyme Q10 and selenium citrate to help reduce risk of cardiac disease.
• 32:16
  And a vitamin B complex with L-carnitine for energy and muscle support.
• 32:20
  Endorsed by the wellness company's chief medical board.
• 32:23
  This formula is your ally for heart health.
• 32:25
  Reclaim your health now at TWC.
• 32:34
  I'm Doug Evans, author of the Sprout Book.
• 32:37
  And I've devoted my life to helping people reconnect with food at its most alive stage, the sprout.
• 32:45
  When you germinate a seed, you're not just growing food, you're activating potential.
• 32:50
  Sprouts grow without soil, sunshine, or fertilizer right on your kitchen countertop.
• 32:56
  They're organic, fresh, and cost less than a dollar a serving.
• 33:00
  It's nature's fastest form of farming, accessible to anyone anywhere.
• 33:06
  Discover the joy of growing your own food and the power of living nutrition.
• 33:10
  Visit the sprouting company.com and use the code Out Loud for an exclusive offer.
• 33:16
  During COVID, we got educated on the power of natural virus protection and immune boosting using vitamins A, C, D, Zinc, and Quircetin.
• 33:26
  The problem getting them at the right dosage from truly natural sources that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
• 33:32
  Enter the daily V stack using breakthrough cellular absorption technology.
• 33:37
  We put those vitamins together and supercharge them with a complete multi-mineral complex.
• 33:42
  The Daily V Stack is basically an oral IV of six products all in one at an affordable price.
• 33:49
  Go to chemicalfree body.com forward slash out loud today.
• 33:53
  Get the daily V stack, protect yourself, boost your immune system, and save 20% on your first order.
• 34:00
  You wouldn't go a day without brushing your teeth or washing your hands.
• 34:04
  What about washing your nose?
• 34:06
  I mean, your nose does filter the air you breathe, air loaded with bacteria, viruses, and irritants.
• 34:11
  Make nasal hygiene part of your routine with clear.
• 34:15
  No messy bottles to fill, no drowning sensation.
• 34:18
  Clear is a natural drug-free saline with the added benefit of xylitol, which blocks bacterial and viral adhesion.
• 34:25
  Available in stores and online at clear.com.
• 34:28
  That is XLEAR.com.
• 34:30
  Prepare for the next pandemic with the wellness company's contagion emergency kit designed by Dr.
• 34:34
  Peter McCullough.
• 34:35
  Get life-saving medications like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, plus a free nebulizer and a guidebook for safe use.
• 34:41
  Order now by going to TWC.health forward slash out loud and use code Outloud for 65 off your first order plus free shipping.
• 34:50
  A man's country is not a certain area of land of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle.
• 34:58
  And patriotism is loyal to that principle.
• 35:02
  I'm happy to report that American patriotism flows freely once again.
• 35:10
  America Outloud dot news is that place to awaken your heart, soul, and mind to the outlountry.
• 35:23
  We are back with Francis Mitt of the Manhattan Contrarian.
• 35:27
  I highly recommend this to anybody.
• 35:29
  If you're not reading this, if you're not subscribed to him, follow him.
• 35:34
  He does really some of the most unique writings on energy renewables.
• 35:39
  He's got a battery study that I'd recommend to anyone to read.
• 35:43
  But one of the things I believe you're most well known for kind of tying into New York, wanting to go full renewables, is you've written many articles, and I'd love you to explain it on if you want to do renewables only for electricity.
• 35:57
  Why don't we get 10,000 people, build a city, and let it only run on wind and solar, and maybe we'll throw some batteries in there as well.
• 36:06
  Would you kind of talk to the audience, talk to me and Tom how you came up with that, your writings on it, and just how the feasibility of it?
• 36:14
  Well, it what's most remarkable to me is that why I'm the only person who thought of this.
• 36:19
  It's it's crazy.
• 36:20
  I mean, let's talk about how did electricity ever get started in the world?
• 36:25
  Well, there was Thomas Edison, and Thomas Edison came up with a system he thought would work.
• 36:33
  And what was his next step?
• 36:35
  His next step was to build a demonstration project.
• 36:38
  He started, I think he had one in London before Imagine that.
• 36:43
  He built a very small one in London, and then he built one in New York, which is actually within a stone's throw of where I'm sitting right now.
• 36:52
  It was in the financial district in Manhattan on Pearl Street, maybe three or four blocks from where I am right now.
• 36:59
  And I would say it was pretty primitive by today's standards.
• 37:03
  It was direct current, it's not alternating.
• 37:06
  It didn't they didn't hadn't figured out transmission very well.
• 37:09
  It was only for a very local area.
• 37:11
  Uh, but anyway, they built a uh a demonstration project and got it up and running, and then they started improving it, and and and that's how it was done.
• 37:21
  So now people talk about we're gonna convert everything to wind and solar.
• 37:24
  Well, can anybody point to where there is a completely fossil fuel-free wind solar battery or energy storage system that provides all the electricity for a grid?
• 37:41
  It doesn't exist anywhere in the world.
• 37:43
  Has anybody tried building a demonstration project?
• 37:46
  Well, in fact, there is something which maybe it is a demonstration project, except the people who built it won't call it that because it's a failure.
• 37:56
  And it's a very expensive failure, and it's a failure from which people can learn a lot.
• 38:01
  And it's it's so it's called El Hiero Island, E L H I R R O.
• 38:08
  I mean the hero, it's a Spanish islands, part of the Canary Islands, and it's about 10,000 people, and they they put up enough uh wind turbines there to supply about double of peak electricity usage if the wind is blowing full strength.
• 38:24
  And they put up a pumped storage energy storage facility.
• 38:30
  So this is a volcanic island, so they have a place where the volcano volcano rises straight up out of the sea, and that it has a an extinct crater at the top, a big crater, they can build a huge reservoir and with a big vertical drop, which is like 2,000 feet straight down to the sea.
• 38:48
  And so they could build a lower reservoir and upper reservoir and using pump the water up to store the energy and let it go back down to use it.
• 38:56
  Yeah, just before you go on.
• 38:57
  This is an important thing for people to understand.
• 38:59
  Pump storage is when you have more energy from the wind that you than you need, you use that energy to pump the water up to the high reservoir.
• 39:08
  And then when you need the energy and you don't have as much from the from the wind, you let it run down through turbines to actually give you electricity back.
• 39:16
  That's the concept.
• 39:17
  That's the concept.
• 39:18
  It's not so different from batteries.
• 39:20
  Again, in order to have a battery system work, you have to have periods of excess production to charge the batteries.
• 39:27
  Yeah.
• 39:27
  So it really is the same.
• 39:29
  Pump storage is a lot better than batteries as a storage mechanism in many ways because it's not it.
• 39:37
  Well, first of all, if you pump the water up the hill, you can leave it there for a year, it'll still be there.
• 39:42
  If you charge a battery and you leave it there for a year, it won't still be there.
• 39:46
  The second thing is if if you pump the water up the hill, it's not dangerous.
• 39:51
  Batteries are dangerous.
• 39:52
  Batteries, which store which store gigawatt hours worth of energy can explode suddenly, and they're enormous.
• 40:00
  Dangerous.
• 40:01
  And so but pump storage is far superior.
• 40:05
  But the trouble is, in order to have a pump storage system that that's worth anything, you have to have a uh a cliff, and you have to have an ability to get water up to the top of that cliff in enormous amounts and then back down and then pump it back up.
• 40:22
  That this sites for pump storage don't exist, but they they happen to have a site on El Hierro Island.
• 40:28
  So they use Francis, can you uh it's so important though, can you talk about batteries just real quick because I want people to realize that you have uh and we'll Tom which put in the show notes that you have an outstandingly good study for the global warming policy foundation on batteries because most people think hey, just do a battery and uh a Tesla power wall, but like a bat a battery energy storage system at grid scale, tip you know, once it's done by how long do they normally can how long can that normally store electricity?
• 41:02
  Well, I'm not sure I know the answer to it.
• 41:04
  I I know I know if you think if you think it can store electricity for a year, I think you're kidding yourself.
• 41:10
  Yes, yes, yeah, and and the problem is if it can't store electricity for a year, it's not worth anything.
• 41:17
  And why is that and the answer is that wind and solar are seasonal, and it's less obvious for wind than it is for solar.
• 41:29
  The seasonality of solar, I think is obvious to everybody.
• 41:32
  You get a lot more sun in the summer than the winter, and so if you have a solar system that can produce enough energy to get you through a year, it's gonna produce a lot more of it in the summer than the winter, and you're going to have to store electricity energy from the summer to the winter in order to make that thing work full year round, and that ought to be obvious to everybody, and it's not just from the summer to the winter, you have to store energy from when you from when you first start exceeding your usage, which would be like in April, and you have to store it all the way until the last day when your usage exceeds your generation, and that would be March.
• 42:17
  So you really have to store energy for a full year.
• 42:22
  And the battery technology to store energy for a full year does not exist, and they they think they're solving the problem by making batteries that can be charged during the day and discharged overnight, like your cell phone.
• 42:37
  And your cell phone, you can do it that way, but you can't do that with the sun to charge your electricity grid because the sun produces so much more in June than it does in December, and you can't change that.
• 42:51
  But I I'm really keen though, I'm sorry to jump back because we have limited time to this El Hero Island where they actually tried to run the society on purely renewable energy, like and it sounds like they had an ideal opportunity there because of the the wind, because of the difference in elevation for storage.
• 43:08
  So did they succeed?
• 43:11
  And and the answer is, and I'm I'll I'll just go over to my my other screen here and look at my chart that I have uh sitting here, which is a chart of the production out of El Hiero Island.
• 43:25
  And the answer is that uh they opened this thing up in 2012, and I don't think there has ever been a year when they got as much as 50 percent of the electricity for the island from the wind and storage system, and not only that, but it varies tremendously month to month.
• 43:45
  It turns out they're the summer months are very windy, but the spring and fall aren't, and so but they have months when they get as much as 90 and 95 percent.
• 43:56
  I've never had 100, but they've had they certainly have days when they get more than 100% of their electricity from the wind, they've never had a month, but they get months in the 80s and 90s, and they also get months of seven percent and 12 percent, and for the over the course of a year, it averages under 50 percent, like 40, 45, and that's what this huge system.
• 44:22
  So, where do they get all the rest of the electricity?
• 44:24
  And the answer is they have a diesel generator.
• 44:27
  Okay, uh, but the funny thing is the diesel generator has the complete ability to provide all the power they need because there are times when the wind system produces nothing, so in fact, they don't need the wind system at all because the diesel generator can produce all the power they need, and yeah, this is the closest thing we have to a demonstration project, and it's it's an abject failure.
• 44:52
  Well, it's interesting.
• 44:53
  My daughter did a uh YouTube video in which she said describing what you just said, not about that particular place, but the fact that if you have that backup and they can provide all the power that's needed, then the wind turbines are just for show.
• 45:06
  I mean, they're not even needed.
• 45:09
  Exactly right.
• 45:10
  Well, so I've suggested for New York State, I have the perfect idea of a town to be the guinea pig, which is Ithaca, site of Cornell University, it's bigger than 10,000.
• 45:22
  It's it's more like uh it's it's under 100, but it might be 50 or 70.
• 45:27
  But and there's a city and a county of Ithaca, which are separate, but but I say build it there.
• 45:32
  I mean these people are they're they're true believers, let them be the guinea pigs.
• 45:38
  Why should every every non-willing involuntary person in New York State be a guinea pig for something which you and I know is never going to work?
• 45:48
  Let the people in Ithaca who are true believers let them be the guinea pigs.
• 45:52
  Yeah, no, this is so important.
• 45:53
  The idea that you have a demonstration of the technique before you massively try to expand it across the state.
• 46:00
  I mean, it's so obvious.
• 46:01
  You know, it's funny because a teacher uh was actually giving a presentation to the city of Ottawa, and she challenged them.
• 46:08
  She said, Well, if you really think you can do this, why don't you volunteer along with your friends to have a small community in which you live a hundred percent the way you want us to live?
• 46:17
  You know, just have electric vehicles and and walk and do all these things.
• 46:22
  And the city council just laughed.
• 46:25
  So I think that they must know in the back of their mind that it's not possible, or do you think they still think it is?
• 46:31
  Um hard to read their mind, eh?
• 46:34
  Yeah, so you're asking me to read their minds, and so that's why I'm a little stumped.
• 46:38
  And I think that some people believe it's possible, but I also think that when you get to the level that the sufficient level of true believerdom to believe this is possible at that level of true believerdom, they are totally into the idea of that we have to sacrifice to save the planet.
• 47:01
  So if this means that there's a few days a year when I have to go without heat or hot water or something, well, that's that's what my religion demands, right?
• 47:14
  No, unfortunately, asking people to go without heat and hot water uh is is a big ask.
• 47:21
  I don't think people should ask to go without heat and hot water.
• 47:24
  It's especially in the winter.
• 47:27
  I mean, this is New York.
• 47:29
  We we got serious winters around here.
• 47:31
  Uh in Ottawa, you have even more serious weather.
• 47:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 47:36
  So we should we should harp on that issue, you know, and in particular bring up this El Hero Island, which actually did try it.
• 47:42
  So I'm gonna take off on that.
• 47:44
  I'm gonna write some articles on that.
• 47:46
  Now, I was hoping in the time remaining, we have about uh seven minutes to go.
• 47:50
  Can you give us an update on the collapse of the climate scare?
• 47:54
  Because there are indications that it is a bit creaky at this point.
• 47:58
  There are there are certainly indications.
• 48:01
  Um, but I want to tell you that I just went to a conference today, and I went to that conference for the purpose of making fun of it on my blog, which I oh fun.
• 48:14
  And it was called, I believe, the energy of the future conference, New York Energy of the Future Conference, and it had a collection of what I call grifters who were there who are people who are promoting one thing or another, or there was a battery guy there, and there was there were some uh wind guys there, and and um various state bureaucracies who think that they are facilitating the transition, and you certainly would not have gotten a one of them to admit that this was all finished, they certainly did admit that they are facing certain headwinds by the withdrawal of federal funding, and one after another, they said, Well, we were expecting this grant and that grant, and it we didn't get it, and we don't know if we're gonna get it, we're probably not gonna get it.
• 49:08
  Uh, so we're working on trying to figure something out for our next step, and there's a lot of we need funding sources.
• 49:14
  There was a lot of we want the state to fund us when the feds won't, but uh that we're saying out loud that this is finished and we need to get a new job.
• 49:25
  Um they were not saying that quite yet.
• 49:28
  They're they're not saying it out loud.
• 49:30
  Now, however, I think I think it's completely clear that it's finished.
• 49:36
  Uh however, the the people who are in it are are not going down easy.
• 49:43
  And the New York State legislature, uh, you know, they they see a uh opening for themselves to blame the failure of everything on Donald Trump and to continue to ride this as a political positive for them.
• 49:59
  And
• 50:00
  I can't say that it's not.
• 50:02
  It might be a political positive for them, at least in the short term.
• 50:05
  Now as you see out in other states or out around the country, as you see the whole wind and solar business falling apart, which I think is clearly going to happen.
• 50:19
  Uh I'm I'm sure it's going to change over time, but they're they're not going away overnight, is the answer.
• 50:25
  Yeah, it's interesting.
• 50:26
  I just wrote an article about something called the Denning Kruger effect.
• 50:30
  I don't know if you've heard of that, but they did a study looking at various different sort of ideas, and they quizzed people uh about those, and they found that the people that knew the least were the most confident in their answers.
• 50:44
  And the people who knew the most actually were less confident.
• 50:48
  And it strikes me that these people who think that we can run the world on renewables fall into that first category.
• 50:54
  They don't know much, but they're so confident.
• 50:57
  They know it's going to happen, but they don't actually know what they're talking about.
• 51:01
  You know, yes, I definitely find on my blog that I have a commenting community, which has a lot of energy engineers and people in the electricity business in one way, shape, or form.
• 51:19
  And they have a very sensible idea of where this is going.
• 51:24
  But then you have, I mean, who are Zoran Man Mamdani's people?
• 51:29
  Zoranis people are recent college graduates, and it could be 10 or even 20 years ago, but that's a lot more recent than me.
• 51:39
  Recent post graduates, mostly in the humanities, or maybe social science, uh, certainly not electrical engineering, who think that uh the world should be run by the smart people like them and the and yeah, who can decree how things ought to be done, and then the little people, like the electrical electrical engineers will figure out the details.
• 52:06
  So can we have a zero emissions electricity system?
• 52:11
  Well, sure.
• 52:12
  That's easy.
• 52:13
  We um decree it, we order it out, yeah.
• 52:18
  And we turn the task over to the little people, and they'll figure it out.
• 52:24
  Yeah, so the people making the rules in many cases don't know the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt hour.
• 52:30
  You all you always see that when they talk about energy in the wrong units.
• 52:34
  Well, and storage and energy storage, both megawatts and megawatt hours are relevant to the energy storage problem, but megawatts is the far less relevant, and megawatt hours is the far more relevant unit.
• 52:49
  Yeah, or much about whether energy storage is going to work.
• 52:52
  And all I I told you about all these big New York documents like the energy plan and the and the climate scoping plan.
• 53:00
  Yeah, they all talk about megawatts and not megawatt hours.
• 53:03
  They they don't realize that you need to know how many hours of storage you have in storage to know whether you're going to get through the winter, and they don't know it.
• 53:14
  They simply don't know it.
• 53:16
  So we're being driven by people who are not really understanding what they're driving us towards.
• 53:21
  I mean, yeah, yeah.
• 53:24
  Okay, so we only have a couple of minutes left.
• 53:27
  I don't know if this is too big a topic to bring up, but what are you talking about in the looking glass world of climate injustice?
• 53:34
  Okay, can you give us like a 60 second overview so it'll inspire people to read that?
• 53:39
  That goes back.
• 53:40
  That's one of the first things I wrote in this um uh on this blog.
• 53:45
  It probably goes back to 2012 or 13 when I wrote that.
• 53:48
  But it that's an article that's gotten a lot of play, and I put it in a special section on the blog.
• 53:53
  Oh, okay.
• 53:54
  Off by itself.
• 53:55
  And I actually back in those days, I was invited multiple times to give give speeches about it.
• 54:00
  But but the basic idea was climate justice, which is a crumb that was all over this conference I was at today.
• 54:08
  Climate justice.
• 54:09
  We need we need a transformed energy system for climate justice for the poor and the oppressed.
• 54:16
  And and what I was saying in that article was they need the poor and the oppressed need cheap energy.
• 54:22
  For God's sake, don't inflict them with wind and solar intermittent expensive energy.
• 54:28
  That's the worst thing for the poor.
• 54:29
  Give let them not give them, let them have cheap energy.
• 54:34
  That's how that's how the non-poor got out of poverty.
• 54:37
  So by looking glass world, I mean, I'm saying they're proposing the exact opposite solution of what the world needs.
• 54:46
  Yeah, exactly.
• 54:47
  And when you look at the funding that goes into climate research, they're spending all their time trying to stop climate change instead of helping people adapt to it.
• 54:55
  So, you know, the climate policy initiative out of San Francisco, they track down how much is spent in those two different areas, and they found that something like 90% of it goes to trying to stop climate change, and there's almost nothing going to how help people adapt.
• 55:11
  So that's a looking glass world thing as well.
• 55:14
  Yeah, how to stop climate change.
• 55:15
  That that's like how to change the weather.
• 55:18
  Well, I got this clear you can't change the weather, and yeah, you think you can change climate, but you can't change climate either.
• 55:25
  Yeah, it's even harder because it's long-term weather.
• 55:28
  Well, it's long-term weather, and uh somebody I was challenging somebody, some idiot at this conference today, uh, who who was talking about how much the how much the uh temperature is gonna go up and we're all gonna burn.
• 55:42
  And I said, Well, you know what?
• 55:45
  Go over to China and talk to them, and and when you've got them convinced to get rid of all their coal plants, then come back and because because China, the emissions of China are a hundred times or more the emissions of the state of New York.
• 56:01
  Oh, god, yeah.
• 56:03
  So you go over and convince China to do what you're talking about, and when you're done with that, come back and and we'll talk about the one percent or fraction of one percent of the state of New York.
• 56:14
  Yeah, well, you'd laugh because in the Ottawa election, we actually had a candidate who said he was going to go to China and convince them to follow Ottawa.
• 56:22
  And Ottawa puts out as much emissions in a year as China does in four and a half hours.
• 56:28
  So it's that much.
• 56:30
  Yeah, exactly.
• 56:31
  Well, we have to wrap up now.
• 56:33
  Our guest today has been Francis Manton.
• 56:35
  Francis runs the site, man.
• 56:37
  Manhattan Contrarian.
• 56:39
  It's a blog that I really encourage people to read.
• 56:41
  It's actually fun too.
• 56:42
  It's not just informative, it's very entertaining reading.
• 56:45
  So thanks for being our guest today, Francis.
• 56:47
  Thank you for having me, Tom.
• 56:49
  I really enjoyed it.
• 56:50
  Okay, that was fun.
• 56:51
  Okay, so this is Tom Harris, my co host Todd Royal, and our guest Francis Manton signing out from the other side of the story.