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Youth waking up from the climate change nightmare · 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
  Of the hundreds of conferences that I've attended in my career, the 16th International Conference on Climate Change, or ICCC 16, held on April 8th and 9th of this year in Washington, DC, stands out as one of the very best.
• 0:42
  Over 200 of the world's leading climate and energy experts and their supporters assembled in Hotel Washington, right beside the White House to celebrate climate realism rising, the very appropriate theme of the conference.
• 0:55
  It's appropriate because just as the New York Times and other media lamented, climate realists finally have our day in the sun.
• 1:03
  The Trump administration is now doing virtually everything we hoped they would do to kill the climate scare that has infected America for the past three decades.
• 1:13
  One of the most encouraging aspects of ICCC 16 was the involvement of young people.
• 1:18
  In fact, there was a whole panel called bringing youth into the climate realist fold.
• 1:24
  The panel featured meteorologist Chris Marts, social media influencer Lucy Biggers, University of Tennessee student Emma Arnes, and CO2 coalition member Annika Sweetland.
• 1:36
  Today we will be speaking with Chris Marts about the conference.
• 1:39
  He just graduated with a degree in meteorology.
• 1:42
  And besides presenting as part of the youth panel, he actually gave his own keynote speech at the final dinner on day two of the conference.
• 1:50
  Chris has become a leading voice on Twitter or X, where he's amassed over 100,000 followers.
• 1:57
  The New York Post called Chris the anti Greta and Newsmax TV called on his analytical skills to debunk alarmist rhetoric about the upcoming hurricane season.
• 2:08
  The Heartland Institute says on the ICCC 16 website, quote, rising young leaders like Chris, scare the pants off climate campaigners, unquote.
• 2:19
  Well, it's about time.
• 2:21
  So welcome to the show, Chris.
• 2:23
  Thanks for having me on, Tom.
• 2:25
  Yeah.
• 2:26
  So I understand you're now working with committee for a constructive tomorrow, at least on a part-time basis.
• 2:31
  Tell us about that group and what you're doing with them.
• 2:34
  Yeah, so CFAT, we we are an NGO, non-governmental organization that's based out of Washington, DC.
• 2:41
  Basically, if I had to summarize it in a sentence, we promote pre-market energy solutions to our energy and environmental problems of today.
• 2:50
  So we advocate for the consumer to decide which energy technologies and sources are best to run society.
• 2:57
  We get the government out of it.
• 2:59
  But we also do environmental stuff as well.
• 3:02
  We are big environmentalists in terms of what we advocate for the preservation of wildlife, specifically uh our big issue right now is saving the whales.
• 3:12
  Uh so that's the thing that we have people working on.
• 3:14
  But I mostly do stuff on climate.
• 3:16
  I'm their meteorologist on staff.
• 3:19
  So because as you know, climate's central to the whole energy policy discussion.
• 3:24
  So that's what they have me do is I'm their scientist on staff.
• 3:28
  Yeah.
• 3:29
  So it's interesting that energy is influenced by climate.
• 3:33
  But in reality, if we were worried about really severe climate change, we would want the most secure and and steady energy source.
• 3:41
  So we'd want more coal and oil and natural gas, wouldn't you say?
• 3:45
  Well, I would say that we would not want energy technologies that are what that are dependent on the weather.
• 3:51
  If if the weather is getting worse, which these people claim, why would you want to put up a you know a big solar farm that's going to get destroyed with hail or uh by a wind farm that's going to get destroyed by a tornado?
• 4:03
  And it's true that natural gas, coal plants, whatever have been hit by tornadoes and damaged, but their infrastructure is better able to withstand those strong winds and that kind of damage, able to take on uh a beating from Mother Nature.
• 4:17
  But solar and wind farms are not particularly equipped to do that kind of thing.
• 4:22
  Yeah, and uh nuclear power is probably the safest and the strongest in terms of that kind of thing.
• 4:28
  And people always accuse me of being an oil lobbyist or a coal lobbyist or whatever.
• 4:35
  I always stay very neutral.
• 4:37
  I mean, CFACT has their position on it, but because a scientist's job is to be as dispassionate and as objective as possible.
• 4:45
  I don't really endorse fossil fuels or I don't I also don't criticize them because they have afforded us remarkable things.
• 4:54
  They've they provided life-saving technologies, and they have provided us warning coordination coordination systems to alert us of you know incoming hurricanes, for example, or thunderstorms that saves lives.
• 5:06
  Um, so it's integral to our modern society.
• 5:10
  We cannot really function without fossil fuels, at least in some capacity.
• 5:14
  Um, for sure.
• 5:15
  And plastics, oh wow.
• 5:16
  Plastics everywhere, paints, all kinds of things.
• 5:20
  Yep, yep.
• 5:20
  Uh, even even medications and stuff.
• 5:23
  So the thing is is for me is that I don't I don't endorse fossil fuels, you know, promote them as a scientist, but I also don't criticize them because they're important.
• 5:32
  The only energy source that I do advocate for, and I have is that if we assume, and this is a big assumption, I don't hold this view, but if you're going to say that climate change is this existential crisis, this existential threat to the planet, then we should be looking for energy sources that are sustainable and that are quote unquote carbon-free.
• 5:51
  And that would be nuclear power.
• 5:53
  And nuclear power is a win-win for everybody.
• 5:55
  Everybody likes it that is a sensible person.
• 5:58
  So that's the only energy source I advocate.
• 6:00
  I've also advocated for more hydroelectric where it's situationally applicable or geographically applicable.
• 6:08
  Um, in the middle of the desert, it's not going to work, but uh where a laurel we have a large river, Hudson River, uh Potomac River, it could work.
• 6:15
  And then um geothermal power, where it's applicable.
• 6:18
  I like that too.
• 6:19
  So CFAD, Craig and Mark and all of them on my colleagues, they are big advocates for things like coal, natural gas, stuff like that.
• 6:27
  And it's within their prerogative.
• 6:29
  Um, but for me personally, as a scientist, I choose to try to be very neutral on that as to not have a conflict of interest.
• 6:37
  Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point.
• 6:39
  Um, yeah, I wish more of the more people were, you know, that direct and you know, it's interesting because in Canada here we have a huge amount of hydroelectric coming from Quebec, of course.
• 6:49
  It's uh powers powers a lot of New England, and you know that's wonderful.
• 6:53
  And of course, Ontario, where I live is mostly nuclear.
• 6:56
  So while of course, we use lots of fossil fuels for driving and heating our homes and stuff.
• 7:00
  And heating our homes and stuff, yeah, nuclear is our main energy source.
• 7:01
  Yeah, nuclear is our main energy source.
• 7:04
  So was this your first international climate change conference?
• 7:04
  So was this your first international climate change conference?
• 7:08
  Yeah, it was.
• 7:08
  Yeah, it was.
• 7:08
  It was my first, and hopefully not my last.
• 7:08
  It was my first, and hopefully not my last.
• 7:11
  Yeah.
• 7:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:11
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  I I went to the first one in New York City, let's see, 18 years ago.
• 7:12
  I I went to the first one in New York City, let's see, 18 years ago.
• 7:16
  And uh, so yeah, I've been following them along.
• 7:16
  And uh so yeah, I've been following them along.
• 7:19
  So, what did you think?
• 7:19
  So what did you think?
• 7:20
  What's your impression of the conference and what presentations really stood out for you?
• 7:20
  What's your impression of the conference and what presentations really stood out for you?
• 7:25
  I thought it was fantastic, and the uh it was it was it was a great experience.
• 7:25
  I thought it was fantastic, and the uh it was it was it was a great experience, and it was truly an honor that they asked me at my very first conference that I have ever spoken at.
• 7:35
  I mean, I've attended conferences, but to actually be this is the first conference I've ever spoken at and to have two slots, the youth panel, and then to also do the keynote dinner with uh my with my colleague Mark, uh he's also kind of like my boss, but Craig Craig's our big boss, but Mark Mark also is my boss.
• 7:53
  But yeah, to do that with them was incredible, and then getting to meet people that I've looked up to for so many years since I was in high school, you know, Dr.
• 8:01
  Willie Soon, I've never had never met him, and to meet Dr.
• 8:05
  Ross McKittrick, who was one of the co-authors on that DOE report, and to get to meet uh to catch up with my good friend Joe Bastardi to meet Anthony Watts uh to catch up with Will Happer, who gave me a tour at Princeton a couple years ago.
• 8:19
  Truly incredible.
• 8:20
  Uh the presentations I find and and the presentations that I watched were everybody was fantastic.
• 8:25
  My only gripe is that I wish I could have seen all of them instead of them having the split panels, the joint sessions where you had one in the Bill Gray room and the other in the main hall.
• 8:35
  Uh it was it was frustrating because I wanted to.
• 8:37
  There's a couple that were going on at the same time that I really wanted to see both, but I wasn't able to be in the same in two places at once.
• 8:45
  So but everybody that I watched was great.
• 8:47
  I really enjoyed uh Joe Bastardis as a as a fellow meteorologist.
• 8:50
  We both talk weather uh and we talk like nerds, so nobody else understands it.
• 8:55
  Um before you go on, I missed Joe's.
• 8:58
  How was it?
• 8:58
  Joe Bassardi's talk.
• 9:00
  His was good, his was really good.
• 9:02
  Um, him and John Dr.
• 9:03
  John Clauser went at it.
• 9:05
  Uh John Clausser asked a question about uh how the sea surface temperatures are measured, and Joe was trying to explain to him how that stuff works, but John kept interrupting him, and um not out of malicious intent, but it was it was kind of brash, and and and Joe didn't really Joe handled it very well, but you could tell he was getting irritated because he was trying to swing.
• 9:26
  Um but then Stanley Goldenberg from NOAA was right after him with the hurricanes, and that was a really fascinating presentation.
• 9:35
  Not too much of the information he presented was new to me.
• 9:38
  Uh, it was a lot of stuff that they've the previous work that he and Dr.
• 9:42
  Chris Lancy, uh, he's at the hurricane uh National Hurricane Center had done.
• 9:46
  But there were some charts and some visualizations that he had that I had never seen before that I thought was really intriguing.
• 9:53
  So I got a chance to catch up with him afterward, and we got to exchange phone numbers, and we've been texting, and so we're maybe going to do some collaborative work in the future.
• 10:02
  But he his presentation was good.
• 10:05
  Uh Anthony Watts was good.
• 10:06
  David Legates did a presentation on precipitation, heavy rainfall and stuff, and how they changed the measurements.
• 10:13
  So that big increase in heavy rainfall events after 1990 is an artifact of instrumentation errors and not an actual climate trend, which I was not aware of.
• 10:22
  I thought that was really great.
• 10:24
  Uh Mark Morano's presentations were great.
• 10:26
  He's always energetic and throwing in one-liners.
• 10:29
  He's a showman, eh?
• 10:31
  Yes.
• 10:31
  So overall, I thought the conference was great.
• 10:34
  It wasn't so much that I learned a whole lot.
• 10:36
  I did learn a lot of things, but it was just really great to catch up with people I hadn't seen in years and people that mentored me and people that I had ever met that I've looked up to, like they're 10 feet tall.
• 10:47
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 10:49
  Did you take in the talk by Jonathan Kohler?
• 10:52
  Um, he's a uh Yes, I was in that, I was in that room.
• 10:57
  He was just after Anthony Watts, I think.
• 11:01
  Yeah, no, that was a really interesting talk because he spoke about how the metrics that are used by the IPCC and the government, yeah, you know, it the global mean surface temperature, for example.
• 11:14
  And he also talked about um, you know, mean sea level.
• 11:17
  You know, it's interesting because I've often thought that mean sea level doesn't matter because nobody lives near a mean ocean, you know, like the the sea level where you live is what matters, and that can be largely caused by the ocean rising or the land dropping, you know, through through ocean uh land subsidence.
• 11:37
  And it's interesting, my sisters, two of them live in Nova Scotia and Halifax, they keep oh my god, look, it's the sea level's rising so fast.
• 11:44
  Well, actually, it's because Halifax is falling, because the glaciers, when the glaciers withdrew, there was a bit of a rebound where at first it went boiling up and then backed down, you know.
• 11:56
  And so this is a post-estatic adjustment.
• 12:00
  Yep.
• 12:00
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 12:01
  So half of all the sea level rise is because the land is falling, you know.
• 12:05
  So yeah, that was really interesting.
• 12:08
  But uh Kohler's presentation really kind of resonated with me because I've often thought, okay, yeah, you can calculate a so-called average surface temperature, but there's no super being straddling the planet that feels it.
• 12:22
  We all live in regions.
• 12:24
  And so here's a question for you.
• 12:26
  Tell me what you think of this.
• 12:27
  One of the things I've often thought is if half the earth got 10 degrees warmer and half the earth got 10 degrees colder, that would be enormous pressure variations.
• 12:37
  You'd have terrible extreme weather, and yet the average temperature would stay the same.
• 12:42
  So is this average temperature really?
• 12:45
  I mean, what do you think of it?
• 12:47
  Is is it a real it's not a real temperature, I know, but I mean, isn't it a misleading metric in a lot of ways?
• 12:54
  It is, and and uh Jonathan's presentation was pretty interesting and fascinating.
• 12:59
  There are some things in there that I definitely learned.
• 13:02
  And and he'll he'll frame it as in the way he'll say it on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it, he'll say that there's no such thing as a global average temperature, and I know that probably what he means by that is that it has no physical value, which he explained very well, and I wholeheartedly agree.
• 13:16
  But I would I would disagree in that you there is a global average temperature, but uh do I think it's overly meaningful?
• 13:23
  No.
• 13:24
  As you said, we live in different regions in different areas.
• 13:27
  I mean, the temperature 10 miles from where I'm I'm in Nashville, Tennessee right now.
• 13:32
  The the temperature 10 miles for me does not matter.
• 13:35
  The temperature right here in this parking spot that I'm in matters to me at this given moment.
• 13:41
  I live in Madison, Alabama, but the temperature there right now does not affect me.
• 13:46
  It doesn't matter.
• 13:46
  So just averaging these temperatures are you know, taking the temperature in the the on the Greenland ice sheet and and then averaging it with the temperature in Laguna Beach, California makes no physical sense.
• 13:59
  It has no actual meaning.
• 14:00
  Actual meaning.
• 14:01
  Um if you average them up and down and it goes up a little bit, it's gonna go up and down, but it's not overly meaningful, it means nothing.
• 14:01
  Um and if you average them up and down and it goes up a little bit, it's gonna go up and down, but it's not overly meaningful, it means nothing.
• 14:10
  Um maybe a regional average might make a little bit more sense, but even even then it's it's it's not overly meaningful in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't affect you all that much, really.
• 14:10
  Um maybe a regional average might make a little bit more sense, but even even then it's it's it's not overly meaningful in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't affect you all that much, really.
• 14:22
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 14:22
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 14:23
  And and you know, it was interesting because after my presentation, and I was talking about the so called Canadian average.
• 14:23
  And and you know, it was interesting because after my presentation, and I was talking about the so-called Canadian average, which apparently is going up twice as fast as the global average.
• 14:33
  Somebody put up their hand and said, you know, I keep hearing all these different countries are increasing faster than the average.
• 14:39
  That must mean some countries are actually increasing slower than the average.
• 14:44
  And and I didn't quite know how to answer, but somebody sent me an email later, and they said something really interesting.
• 14:49
  I think it came from John Christie actually, and that is that because 71% of the world's surface is covered by ocean.
• 14:56
  If the ocean is warming a lot slower than the average, and I think it is, then virtually all then virtually all land area is warming faster than the average.
• 15:06
  Like so what?
• 15:08
  So what?
• 15:10
  Yeah, so that's that's that's a good point.
• 15:12
  And and it's and I've and I've seen this, and and I I've too been guilty of posting this in the past because I thought it was kind of laughable claim, you know, oh, Canada's warming twice as fast, and then the uh then it's like the India is warming twice as fast.
• 15:24
  And I was like, That you know, all these places are warming twice as fast, and that doesn't make any sense.
• 15:29
  But when you think when you include it in the global average, when you include that's with the land and the sea surface temperature together, then it makes sense because again, 71% of the Earth's surface is water.
• 15:42
  Water has a very high specific heat, which means it takes a lot of energy, a lot of joules of energy coming in to raise just one gram of that water by 10 by a degree Celsius or one Kelvin.
• 15:53
  And so it it the land and the air adjacent to it heat up a lot more than over water or the water itself.
• 16:01
  So uh that's why virtually every land area other than Antarctica is warming twice as fast as the global average.
• 16:08
  But again, we're talking we're talking tenths of a degree per decade if that.
• 16:13
  Yeah, yeah, I always find it funny when they sometimes give the average global temperature to hundreds, hundredths of a degree.
• 16:21
  I've seen I've seen people put it to thousandths of a degree.
• 16:24
  You cannot measure that.
• 16:26
  You can't even really measure it, in my opinion, at least with thermometers to the nearest tenth of a degree.
• 16:32
  Yeah.
• 16:32
  Well, and I know, and and they talk about in the last hundred years or something.
• 16:36
  Well, a hundred years ago, we had no thermocouples.
• 16:39
  We were measuring it with just some eyeball looking at a therma thermometer.
• 16:43
  So I mean, that's probably not more accurate than plus or minus half a degree, maybe even less, right?
• 16:49
  Or yeah.
• 16:50
  So that yeah, there's that.
• 16:51
  And there's also a sea surface temperature problem that people don't like to talk about on the alarmist side.
• 16:56
  And you I don't know if you're aware of this, you probably are.
• 16:58
  You've been doing this, you've been involved in this climate stuff far longer than I have.
• 17:02
  So I'm probably not presenting anything new to you.
• 17:06
  But uh, for those listening, when sea surface temperatures measurements are not really great prior to about 2004, and 2004, five, around that time is when the Argo floats came out, and that's when we got a pretty decent global measurement.
• 17:21
  Anything before that has a lot of the error bars are huge.
• 17:25
  But the oceans are probably warmer now than they were 100 years ago.
• 17:29
  But we were also we are also coming out of little ice age at that time.
• 17:32
  So at least some of that is due to the recovery from that deep minimum when we have very low solar activity and of course other lot of volcanic eruptions and stuff at that time too, where it's been where it's as recently it's been relatively quiet in terms of those major volcanic eruptions.
• 17:50
  That Tonga eruption was a bit of an anomaly because it actually caused warming versus cooling, but that's a whole other discussion.
• 17:56
  But with the sea surface temperature measurements, that's really interesting, is that back in the old days, they would take them from ships out if they're out over open ocean, but there weren't many ships, and so you're doing a lot of interpolation and guesstimation as to what the sea surface temperatures were over hundreds and thousands of miles.
• 18:15
  But the sea surface temperatures were taken, these ships would hoist buckets off the side of the ship and they'd bring a bucket of water.
• 18:22
  It's called the bucket out of water measurements, and they'd they'd reel the bucket back in.
• 18:27
  But as the bucket gets hoisted up, they the evaporation off of it because it though the motion causes the evaporational cooling, so it actually cools the water more than when it was in the water, and they stuck a thermometer in that, but they didn't know that at the time, and they wrote them down in the log book.
• 18:43
  And so those adjustments uh there should be some adjustments made to the sea surface temperatures in the official records to make them a little bit higher than they then they they were recorded.
• 18:54
  They haven't they haven't really had uh done that with good accuracy.
• 18:58
  Yeah, no, that's interesting because that suggests that the old records were really recording a lower temperature than reality.
• 19:06
  So yeah, but that would I would hurt their argument that there's being a big rise.
• 19:12
  So maybe they're not correcting it on purpose.
• 19:15
  Yeah, I'm I don't I don't know how large of an error that would introduce, and you know, I don't know.
• 19:20
  I mean maybe maybe there's some data set out there that's corrected for it, but it's something that I haven't really seen discussed a whole lot when it comes to the their homogenization methods.
• 19:30
  But but also, you know, like I sometimes do ocean swimming myself.
• 19:34
  I'm going to Spain this summer and I'm gonna swim along beside the coast, which is a nice change from swimming in the pool all the time.
• 19:40
  And I go across, yeah.
• 19:42
  I I go through you know cold areas, quite a big change, you know, there'll be cold currents and things like that with the water.
• 19:49
  Yeah, so absolutely, yeah.
• 19:50
  And I'm in cold enough that I can feel a chill when I'm swimming, and so there must be areas that are maybe four or five degrees C difference from other areas.
• 20:00
  So I mean, it sounds like a pretty inaccurate thing to just stick it in a bucket and pull it up.
• 20:06
  Well, there's there was this is interesting.
• 20:08
  Well, two points because we go to Myrtle Beach every summer, and uh even when I'm in the water there, that the the surface through the water, that skin layer is very warm.
• 20:18
  It's can be 80 something degrees, and underneath it's still pretty warm, it's usually in the 70s or whatever.
• 20:24
  Uh, but sometimes I'll be out on like I'll be at a sandbar or something, and then I'll go to the other side of it, and that top layer of water is really warm, but then you have a current underneath that's like 10, 20 degrees Fahrenheit colder, or maybe you know, maybe about five, ten Celsius cooler or whatever, but it's very different with the way that water is coming in from deep in the ocean.
• 20:48
  And so this idea that the sea surface temperature measurements give a good idea of what the real bulk ocean is, is just kind of laughable.
• 20:56
  Second thing I want to point out is that you're absolutely right that these these temper water temperatures differ over over periods of miles or whatever.
• 21:00
  That these these temper water temperatures differ over periods of miles or whatever.
• 21:05
  And there was a recent documentary I saw about the Titanic.
• 21:05
  And there was a recent documentary I saw about the Titanic, and one of the reasons, and I'm and don't quote me on this exactly.
• 21:09
  And one of the reasons, and I'm and don't quote me on this exactly.
• 21:13
  Uh you can you could it's for those listening, they can probably find it.
• 21:13
  You can you could for those listening, they can probably find it.
• 21:16
  But one of the reasons that they couldn't see the iceberg was because of the difference in the water densities and stuff and how that affected the it created a mirage.
• 21:16
  But one of the reasons that they couldn't see the iceberg was because of the difference in the water densities and stuff and how that affected the it created a mirage, kind of like when you see a desert, you know, the the heat coming off the road.
• 21:26
  Kind of like when you see a desert, you know, the heat coming off the road.
• 21:29
  Well, the way that there was a cool the water was warmer, the water was cold.
• 21:34
  But there was a uh I think there was either a colder or a warmer current or something that created a mirage that that masked the view of the iceberg.
• 21:42
  So even though the water was really still and there were only stars and there was no moon, I think.
• 21:48
  Still, even with that, they should they should have still been able to see the iceberg, but because of the way the currents run through there, something was created with a sea surface temperature differences, and they couldn't see the iceberg until it was too late.
• 21:59
  There was a new research that was published about that.
• 22:02
  I don't remember exactly how it worked, but it's uh it was really interesting.
• 22:06
  Well, you know, it's interesting.
• 22:07
  Last night for the first time, I saw a video where this woman actually took sketches from the Titanic, uh, you know, all the different rooms and everything, and she assembled a complete virtual reality of her walking through the Titanic and actually trying to warn the captain about the iceberg.
• 22:24
  And it was a very I'll I'll send it to you and I'll include it in the references under the link because it's a very nice piece of history.
• 22:30
  And you're right, she's standing on the bow of the ship, and it's very dark.
• 22:35
  It's very dark.
• 22:36
  There was no moon that night, at least in this video.
• 22:38
  So when did you first come to the realization that the climate scare was not really based on reliable science?
• 22:46
  Well, uh I always had this view.
• 22:49
  Well, as I said in my presentation that the ICCC 16.
• 22:53
  I've always grown up in a conservative family.
• 22:55
  You know, my dad's my dad's very pro-Trump, and my mom has my mom's conservative, but she has mixed feelings about Trump.
• 23:02
  Yeah, most ladies do.
• 23:04
  She she well, my mom, my mom and I are more along the lines of Ron DeSantis politically or Rand Paul, and my dad's more along the lines of Trump.
• 23:16
  So we have interesting debates and stuff.
• 23:18
  But that being said, you know, I always grew up in a conservative family, but from a very young age, I was always told that science is something my mom is a scientist, by the way.
• 23:27
  She's an environmental biologist.
• 23:30
  So I've always was told that science is science.
• 23:33
  Science doesn't care who you voted for, what your religion is, science is just it's its own thing, it's its own entity.
• 23:40
  And you can't let your political views influence how you interpret scientific data.
• 23:46
  So my middle school and high school teachers, they taught from the textbook.
• 23:51
  These individuals didn't really have specialized training in atmospheric science or meteorology.
• 23:57
  They uh, you know, some of them had chemistry, some of them are biology, uh, others were just generic education majors that got assigned to teach science out of a textbook.
• 24:06
  And so they weren't necessarily indoctrinating me and my classmates.
• 24:11
  They were just reading from the textbook, and but the textbook had this alarmist messaging.
• 24:16
  Yeah, and so I became really concerned about the whole climate thing.
• 24:19
  I'm like, well, this is you know, oh, more storms and more of this and more of that, higher temperatures.
• 24:24
  This is greenhouse gases.
• 24:26
  This is we're all gonna die, essentially.
• 24:28
  Yeah, and we had a very, very warm December in 2015.
• 24:32
  Temperatures were running 10 degrees above average.
• 24:35
  We had several days in the 60s and 70s that month.
• 24:38
  And I thought that this, well, gosh, this has never happened before.
• 24:40
  This isn't normal.
• 24:42
  And my dad and I will get into arguments about it, and he's telling me that there's been warm December before, one of them being in 1982 when it was 70 degrees on Christmas Day.
• 24:50
  And I, of course, said that he was full of it and he didn't know anything.
• 24:53
  And it turned it turned out he was right.
• 24:55
  It was actually 70 degrees on Christmas Day.
• 24:57
  Actually, warmest Christmas on record for DC, which is near where I grew up, was 72 degrees in 1964.
• 25:04
  So then we had Hurricane Harvey a couple years later.
• 25:07
  And Tom, did he stop?
• 25:10
  Yeah.
• 25:11
  Yeah, I'm uh I don't hear him right now.
• 25:13
  He's frozen on he's frozen on my screen.
• 25:16
  Yeah, oh, that's not good.
• 25:19
  Yeah, hopefully he'll get back in.
• 25:20
  You know, I follow him on Twitter.
• 25:22
  He's oh, is that right?
• 25:23
  He's a fascinating follow.
• 25:25
  People people get very angry, you know, for as far as the show.
• 25:29
  Uh we can keep this people get very angry with him.
• 25:32
  Oh, yeah.
• 25:33
  He's very factual, he's he's pretty witty, pretty audite guy.
• 25:38
  Yeah, yeah.
• 25:39
  She just tell our listening audience we've lost Chris.
• 25:41
  So Todd and I are going to talk for a few minutes, and hopefully Chris will rejoin us.
• 25:46
  But um Yeah, I think what's fascinating about him, Tom, is that you have this guy, he's got this degree in meteorology, he's smart, he can write, he can debate, he understands social media, and then he'll get attacked by you know, quote unquote, you know, the the science.
• 26:03
  And again, you look up and go, wait a minute, he's got a degree in meteorology, so why do you not listen to him if you listen to a mentally disturbed teenager, now even more disturbed adult.
• 26:14
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 26:15
  And also Chris is actually a very good communicator.
• 26:17
  I don't know if you noticed, but he was not only on the youth panel at ICCC 16, but he also gave a keynote presentation, if you can believe that just be just before Mark Morano at the at the final dinner.
• 26:33
  I mean, I've never I I've never had that honor.
• 26:36
  Okay, so it was really good.
• 26:38
  I should also point out before we go to break, because we do have to go up for a break in a minute, um, that it was quite refreshing because they had a youth panel which is giving a youth perspective on all of this.
• 26:49
  And uh, yeah, it was it was very interesting.
• 26:52
  And virtually all of them were on the other side to begin with.
• 26:56
  You know, they were they were told that this was a catastrophe and they were so worried and everything else.
• 27:01
  And and you know, it's I imagine a lot of young people are in that boat where they are legitimately concerned because they're believing what they're taught.
• 27:10
  And you know, it's interesting because uh Annika Sweetland, who actually works with CO2 coalition, she said that the rise in um serious anxiety issues, depression, all sorts of things among UK teenagers has tripled since 2020.
• 27:28
  Yeah, and the United States apparently has doubled.
• 27:30
  So I mean, you can almost call this child abuse, you know.
• 27:34
  I I think you I think you actually literally could.
• 27:37
  Um you said we need to go for a break, and then I'd love to uh kind of come back and ask Chris something about him being the anti-greta.
• 27:45
  Yeah, for sure.
• 27:46
  Okay, so Tom and uh Todd will be right back, and hopefully we'll be rejoined by our guest, Chris Marks.
• 27:54
  His phone is overheated, but it's real radio, it's not make believe, that's for sure.
• 27:58
  So stay tuned, we'll be right back after the break.
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• 32:37
  Chris, hey, I'm I've been a follower of yours for I think about a year now.
• 32:42
  Picked you up uh a year and a half ago, maybe even longer.
• 32:46
  So uh share and joy stuff on Twitter.
• 32:49
  Curious, I know you and Tom have been able to get us some good specifics.
• 32:53
  How does it feel to be the anti-Greta?
• 32:57
  So that's the first question.
• 32:58
  And then number two, you know, when you look at your Twitter account, you'll typically be blasted by people like how dare you, you don't have a PhD, you're you know, you don't have peer-reviewed research, etc.
• 33:11
  Yet in that anti-Greta thing, you had a true mentally disturbed teenager who I would make an argument was frankly abused by her parents and people who were using her as a prop.
• 33:22
  So how do you deal how do you deal with all of that?
• 33:25
  I think it's fun to be to be the anti-greta.
• 33:29
  Uh, because it's it's it's nice to have some counter-narrative voices in the fold, and it's nice to have that platform where I can educate people because I like I like to educate people and give them facts and to arm them with when they get into a debate.
• 33:45
  Because quite frankly, even on the skeptic side, there's a lot of there's a lot of bad science as well.
• 33:51
  And people make bad claims and it makes it because our side, we're we are scrutinized very heavily.
• 33:57
  If we get one little thing wrong, they they it's it's a lot different than the alarmist side because they got the the mainstream backers.
• 34:04
  But for people attack me, you know, very few people ever really challenge my fact, the facts or the data that I present.
• 34:13
  They always attack that you don't have a PhD, which you mentioned.
• 34:18
  And my my response to that is that you know, a piece of paper does not make you more knowledgeable or more of an expert than anybody else, especially today.
• 34:28
  I mean, the credentialism card is overplayed way too much.
• 34:33
  I think COVID really exposed that.
• 34:35
  It did with people.
• 34:36
  Yeah.
• 34:36
  And you know, when it comes to peer review paper, sure, that maybe it'd be nice to have some, I guess, but it's not the be all and end all to whether or not a claim is true.
• 34:46
  So talk to me just briefly as far as like this whole, you know, the anti-Greta thing.
• 34:52
  You know, has that become a thing?
• 34:54
  Is it, you know, how do you, you know, how do you feel about it?
• 34:57
  I think it's great.
• 34:58
  Um, it's it's not always great.
• 35:00
  Let me let me rephrase that.
• 35:01
  Let me rephrase that.
• 35:02
  Um, obviously when I started going viral and having viral posts and stuff like that, people started paying attention.
• 35:02
  Um, obviously, when I started going viral and having viral posts and stuff like that, people started paying attention.
• 35:10
  It was great because I have lawmakers that follow me.
• 35:10
  It was great because I have lawmakers that follow me.
• 35:12
  I have celebrities who follow me.
• 35:12
  I have celebrities who follow me.
• 35:14
  I've become friends with a couple celebrities.
• 35:14
  I've become friends with a couple celebrities.
• 35:16
  Uh Dean Kane and uh Larry the Cable Guy and Nick Searcy, and actually got to film a scene in an upcoming film that's going to be in theaters, I think this fall, that Dean is he's directing, writing.
• 35:16
  Uh Dean Kane and uh Larry the Cable Guy and Nick Searcy, and actually got to film a scene in an upcoming film that's gonna be in theaters, I think this fall, that Dean is he's directing, writing, and is acting in, and then that's how I met Nick Searcy, and so they're all huge fans of mine.
• 35:35
  And uh just becoming friends with people like that is is really cool.
• 35:39
  So that's been great, but it's also been not the greatest thing because it gives you a lot of unwanted attention.
• 35:44
  Um Media Matters did a hit piece on me recently, me and my colleague Toronto recently uh and they called me a political commentator instead of the the fact they completely ignored the fact that I'm a meteorologist.
• 35:58
  Um another thing that was interesting too was during my college career when I was getting my bachelor's of science degree at Millroseville, uh, a lot of people started writing into my professors and the university officials saying that they're asking if this is what they taught their students, and if so, who you know, they need to be fired, and then if they're not teaching that, then why and why am I allowed to have my platform and and spread supposed misinformation?
• 36:27
  So that was what they uh they accused me of, and so they tried really hard to get me kicked out of the meteorology program.
• 36:34
  Ah wow, wow, that's amazing.
• 36:36
  So, you know, it's interesting.
• 36:38
  It sounds like a lot of young people are still asleep, they're not yet waking up to climate realism.
• 36:43
  Is that what you find?
• 36:45
  I I find something a little bit different, and I'm sure that the numbers, if you look at the polling and stuff, it probably does show that young people have a greater concern about it.
• 36:54
  However, as somebody that you know, when I was in college, me and my buddies, we'd always go up to the the bars and sing karaoke and party and stuff, and so when we would meet people, whether it was guys or girls or whatever, we or we'd go to Ocean City, Maryland to the nightclubs and stuff and just interact with people, and we start up a conversation, they'd say, Hey, what do you do?
• 37:12
  Oh, I'm gonna be meteorologist.
• 37:13
  Oh, cool, what you got you into that?
• 37:14
  I said, Well, the climate stuff, and they're like, Oh, are you one of those climate people?
• 37:18
  And these are people my age, and I'm like, No, no, I'm I challenge that stuff.
• 37:22
  Like, oh dude, you're cool.
• 37:23
  And so I mean, these are you know that's great.
• 37:27
  And these are these are of course, you know, this the stereotypical frat bro, uh or you know, attractive chick girls or whatever that that really find it cool.
• 37:36
  You're not gonna you're at the nightclubs and parties and bars and all that, you're not gonna necessarily find you know, the the bookworms and stuff like that.
• 37:44
  So um maybe my perception is skewed, but a lot of young people follow me.
• 37:48
  I have a huge yeah, I think close to 30% of my audience on X is 18 to 34 years old.
• 37:54
  So that's an incredible number.
• 37:56
  So that's hope that's hopeful for the future because these people these people will eventually end up in charge, you know.
• 38:02
  If we're maybe we're bringing up a generation of realists, it sounds like absolutely.
• 38:08
  Yeah, for sure.
• 38:09
  Now we only have a few minutes left.
• 38:11
  I'd like to really focus on the topic of your uh presentation at the keynote address in particular, because it was very well received, you know, and and I think it it's pretty awesome that at your first ICCC, you were not only on a panel, but you also gave a keynote presentation.
• 38:27
  Could you summarize what did you talk about in the keynote presentation?
• 38:31
  So Heartland asked me, they said, Well, Chris, we're gonna have you do a keynote.
• 38:36
  And that was something that um my my my my friend Jim Lakeley, who's the vice president, really advocated for.
• 38:42
  And I I really really he's like, we gotta get Chris in for a keynote, and that really meant a lot to me that he pulled for me to to have that at my first conference.
• 38:50
  And so I I I I owe him a beer or something, but he uh but he I I was I'm really grateful for that.
• 38:57
  And they said, Well, you know, I asked them what what what's the keynote?
• 39:00
  What should I talk about?
• 39:01
  And he said they they said, Well, you can talk about anything, really.
• 39:04
  So I looked at what the other panels were on, and they had an extreme weather panel.
• 39:08
  I was like, okay, well, I kind of wish I was on that, but they got me on the youth panel, so that's equally exciting.
• 39:14
  So I decided that for the youth panel, I was gonna talk about just what my story, uh, kind of like uh a longer version of this interview, and why I do what I do.
• 39:23
  And for the keynote, I decided, well, they got an extreme weather panel, but I think that as a meteorologist, it's appropriate for me to talk about extreme weather.
• 39:32
  And one of the things that I do for CFAC, and it's a collaborative thing with Heartland Institute and CEI and a couple other organizations, but we do the what's called the monthly climate fact check.
• 39:44
  And I do a lot of the legwork with getting the the the information down, although uh there's a lot of contributors, you know, Linnea Lucan, I pull some stuff from that she's written, Anthony Watts, and then Sterling at the Heartland also helps with editing a lot of that.
• 40:00
  So it's a big collaborative effort.
• 40:02
  So I decided to take some of my favorite fact checks that I had done over the last year, uh ones that were my own that I had done my own data analysis on, etc.
• 40:11
  And most of them were extreme weather claims, so I decided to take a look at you know the the Pacific Palisades fire.
• 40:18
  I did the recent cold wave in January, for example, and I looked at what the data show on that versus what reality uh or what what the claim what their claims were versus what the reality is, what the actual data show.
• 40:30
  And so that was a really well received.
• 40:33
  I explained my methodology and the scientific robustness of the measurements that I was presenting to really land home my point, and I think that the audience really liked it.
• 40:42
  I heard I heard from my boss Craig Rucker, and I heard from several other people that everybody was like they had their face on their chin, like leaning on the table, leaning trying to look closer because they were fascinated.
• 40:53
  And so that's the kind of response that I really want to hear.
• 40:56
  Uh because I wanted that presentation to be super serious and factual.
• 41:00
  And the youth panel, I just wanted to crack some jokes and show my humorous side off.
• 41:04
  But when it comes to really presenting a keynote, it's important to be to captivate an audience, yes, have a little bit of humor, but to be really serious and you know, to be taken seriously, and that's what I wanted to be there for.
• 41:16
  Yeah.
• 41:17
  So tell us about the Palisades.
• 41:19
  Was that caused by climate change?
• 41:22
  No, it was actually as an arson caused wildfire.
• 41:25
  It was the rekindling of a previous arson caused wildfire to be more specific.
• 41:29
  And um what's interesting is that yeah, it was one of the worst fires in history, but that fire would not have happened if somebody didn't set fire.
• 41:38
  And what's funny about this whole California fire thing is that fires have increased there in recent decades a little bit.
• 41:46
  There's not been much of a trend in the last 20 years, though.
• 41:48
  And but prior to European settlement, back in the early or late 19th uh century, you're uh the present-day California, if you were to draw the borders and do reconstructions, there's been papers that have found that California on average burned between four and a half to twelve million acres of land per year.
• 42:00
  Orders and do reconstructions.
• 42:01
  There's been papers that have found that California on average burned between four and a half to twelve million acres of land per year.
• 42:08
  2020's record breaking fire year was 4.2 million acres.
• 42:08
  2020's record breaking fire year was 4.2 million acres.
• 42:12
  It wasn't even the lower bound of what was typical during the um seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even early nineteenth centuries.
• 42:12
  It wasn't even the lower bound of what was typical during the um 17th and 18th centuries and even early 19th centuries.
• 42:20
  So and in a lot of cases, modern day back then, modern day California burned more than the entire United States burns today in a lot of in several cases.
• 42:20
  So and in a lot of cases, modern day back then, modern day California burned more than the entire United States burns today in a lot of in several cases.
• 42:29
  So
• 42:29
  So some years had a lot more fire burn area than what we see in modern times across the entire country, which is a really eye-opening statistic.
• 42:38
  Yeah, it's interesting.
• 42:38
  I think the natural background state.
• 42:40
  Yeah.
• 42:41
  It's interesting.
• 42:42
  I know a fellow by the name of Stephen Pine, who actually, I'm not sure if he's still at Arizona State University West, but he was.
• 42:49
  And he looked at the fire frequency before Europeans came to North America, and he said that they would have fires that would roar across the countryside.
• 42:57
  And the only thing that stopped them were natural barriers like the Mississippi or the Rocky Mountains.
• 43:03
  He said areas the whole size of Nebraska would be on fire.
• 43:06
  And that this was a this was a normal thing.
• 43:09
  So the idea that somehow we've increased it, that's that's just not true.
• 43:14
  Yeah, you're right.
• 43:15
  And there was a um documentary I was watching.
• 43:17
  It's a really good documentary for those that like history.
• 43:20
  It's called America, The Story of Us.
• 43:22
  It was on History Channel.
• 43:23
  And they had a segment on Westward Expansion where they talked about settling the Great Plains.
• 43:29
  And they talked about how during the summers in the Great Plains, like Oklahoma in particular was highlighted, the entire just grass, the prairie would just be ablaze in fire all summer long.
• 43:40
  Worse than anything we've seen today, temperatures, you know, it would be fueled by really dry conditions and air temperatures would soar to 110 degrees, which we rarely see these days.
• 43:50
  This is back in the mid, you know, the mid-19th century, early 19th century, during westward expansion.
• 43:56
  And so you got to ask yourself if if that's what happened then, you know, we're not really prepared for what's gonna what could happen in the future because that's what naturally happens.
• 44:05
  Yeah, and there are papers, you know, people talk about the dust pole, right?
• 44:08
  The 1930s drought.
• 44:10
  Well, the dust bowl itself was actually only confined to the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma panhandle, parts of Kansas and Eastern Colorado.
• 44:18
  The the whole drought, the the drought itself and the heat were continental in scale.
• 44:23
  And dust pole and and and droughts like the 1930s, um, happen about once or twice per century, historically, going back to the last 10,000 years.
• 44:34
  And there have been far worse droughts in the Dust Bowl that occurred in centuries past.
• 44:39
  And in the 18 1810s and 1820s, there was a drought so bad, and this was about that same time, that the Great Plains essentially turned into a desert.
• 44:49
  There were sand dunes there.
• 44:51
  We don't see it.
• 44:52
  It's a lot more lush there now than it was then.
• 44:54
  But well, also starting to interrupt, but didn't they used to call that region the Great American Desert?
• 45:00
  Yes.
• 45:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:02
  Yep.
• 45:02
  So that and you know, I heard that the more uh precipitous time, that's wetter time, that that's a more recent thing, and that we'll eventually return to a very, very dry Midwest.
• 45:14
  Do you think that's going to come back?
• 45:16
  I think it very well could, and we and I'm not to fearmonger, but we might to potentially be starting to see that come back because the United States is in a very bad drought right now, uh you know, across the entire country, and it's very similar to what happened in 1934.
• 45:34
  We've had a lot of La Niñas recently.
• 45:36
  Uh that we're going into a major El Niña right now.
• 45:38
  We're NSA neutral, but we're gonna probably be in a strong or very strong El Nina by the end of the year, and that should help alleviate some drought conditions.
• 45:47
  But we've been seeing a lot more La Niña's, like the last 10, 15 years have most mostly been La Niña.
• 45:52
  And when you have that cool equatorial Pacific, you've reduced the rate of evaporation.
• 45:57
  You have that you have less moisture flux, and we have a warm North Atlantic, like we've had, you get a that ridging pattern that gets uh warm air from the Gulf Gulf and it vects it northward, and so and it gets trapped beneath these ridges of high pressure that form every summer, and so it dries the land out.
• 46:14
  And that's what we saw.
• 46:15
  That's that's what triggered the dust bowl.
• 46:17
  Well, they call it the dust bowl, but it's really the dust ball, as I said, was very localized.
• 46:21
  They uh what I really prefer calling it's the 1930s drought because that was continental in scale.
• 46:27
  What happened then is what we've been seeing happen the last couple years, and my my concern is that we could be returning to a period like that.
• 46:35
  And back then it wasn't much of an it wasn't an issue because very few people lived there.
• 46:39
  Uh the natives could migrate to where there were water sources.
• 46:43
  Now we have cities and tens of millions of people that rely on water supply, hundreds of millions of people.
• 46:49
  And so if a thing like that were to happen today, we're not prepared for it, and it could be a huge water crisis and you know, uh a sort of uh humanitarian disaster, not a climate disaster because it's not uh you know, it's not man-made climate change that's causing this, it's just part of what naturally happens.
• 47:08
  And I worry that we might be starting to see uh that come back.
• 47:12
  I don't know if it is or not, but the thing is is that climate models predicted that we'd see more El Niño events, which we will make things wetter.
• 47:20
  Instead, we've been seeing more La Niñas, which was not predicted by the models.
• 47:24
  Uh and this is what natural variability itself is doing.
• 47:27
  So we're not prepared for it if it does happen.
• 47:30
  Yeah, for sure.
• 47:31
  Um, I had a question, and this is perfect time to ask it because you're a meteorologist.
• 47:36
  When I look at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, extreme weather database, I noticed some interesting trends.
• 47:43
  For example, there were records set, 27 records were set, extreme weather records, like you know, highest temperature, most wind, biggest tailstone, most rain, things like that.
• 47:53
  In 1936, there were 27 extreme weather records set on a statewide basis that still stand today.
• 48:01
  And yet last year, 2025, I don't think there were any records set at all on a statewide basis.
• 48:06
  There might have been one.
• 48:07
  I know in 2024 there was none.
• 48:10
  Is this just significant observation with regards to the idea that extreme weather is not increasing?
• 48:17
  Oh, yeah, 100%.
• 48:19
  You know, we the the I think 28 of the U.S.
• 48:23
  statewide record high temperatures, 28 of the no thirty, no, thirty-eight.
• 48:27
  It's actually thirty-eight of the fifty statewide high temperature records were set before 1975.
• 48:34
  Uh-huh.
• 48:35
  So it's even bigger number than that.
• 48:38
  And we haven't really seen a whole lot of new state records set in recent years.
• 48:43
  Um we did see, like if you go by a month like January records, February records, we did see a lot happen this past March.
• 48:50
  Uh there were several out west that there was, I think close to 10 states that set new record highs for March during that heat wave.
• 48:57
  But again, but again, in the in the terms of the scope of the records we have, I mean, the Earth's what four and a half billion years old.
• 49:00
  Of the scope of the records we have.
• 49:01
  I mean, the Earth's what four and a half billion years old.
• 49:04
  We have records going back uh, you know, 150 years versus even less than that in this case.
• 49:04
  We have records going back, you know, 150 years versus even less than that in this case.
• 49:09
  So it's a blink of an eye.
• 49:09
  So it's a blink of an eye.
• 49:11
  Yes.
• 49:11
  Yes.
• 49:12
  So these this kind of events probably happened before.
• 49:12
  So these this kind of events probably happened before.
• 49:15
  Um I was looking at some data from it was called it's called Fort Data, and it predates the weather service records, the NOAA records.
• 49:16
  And I was looking at some data from it was called it's called Fort Data, and it predates the weather service records, the NOAA records.
• 49:23
  These were done by Army the uh Army surgeon general, each of the each of the.
• 49:23
  These were done by Army, the uh Army Surgeon General, each of the each of the like kind of the military force that they had, they took weather observations.
• 49:33
  And Fort McDowell, which is near Phoenix recorded seven days at or above 100 in March 1879.
• 49:41
  Around that same time, uh, which was so I think they had six this year, which was a record, air quotes.
• 49:48
  But they peaked at 112 degrees on March 30th.
• 49:51
  Around that same time, Los Angeles and San Diego were both 99 degrees, which are their March records, and they're actually higher than their April records for I think both cities.
• 50:00
  Um we know that there was probably a widespread heat wave in 1879.
• 50:06
  And there were stations in Northern California that reached the the low 80s, and and this is in degrees Fahrenheit.
• 50:12
  So uh obviously that was Celsius, that'd be a big problem.
• 50:14
  We might actually have a climate crisis.
• 50:16
  Yeah.
• 50:17
  But they didn't read they only got into the 70s during this past event.
• 50:20
  So there's some uncertainty there.
• 50:22
  I can't say for certain that there was a worse heat wave uh in 1879, March 1879, but there's some indication that there might have been a similar event at that time to what happened this past March.
• 50:33
  So we just don't know.
• 50:35
  The records are sparse.
• 50:36
  One of the things that concerns me when you talk about extreme heat waves and things, is people don't seem to be accounting for the urban heat island.
• 50:44
  And so from that point of view, is statewide records more significant when we're looking at whether extreme weather is increasing or not.
• 50:53
  Is that more significant than looking at city records, which are obviously hugely influenced by urban infrastructure?
• 51:01
  Definitely when it comes to all-time records, you don't want to you don't want to use urban data because there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of things that are biased there.
• 51:09
  For example, uh Columbia, um Columbia, South Carolina, where the university is, they had a record high, I think in June of 2012.
• 51:19
  That was 113 degrees.
• 51:20
  Now that was a hot that was a massive heat wave.
• 51:22
  It reached 105 degrees in Washington, DC, just before that duration that duratio came through, and I remember that very well.
• 51:29
  But the stations around Columbia were the near the next hottest was 107.
• 51:33
  So there's a six degree difference there between the and that and that the South Carolina's state climatologist office, they verified that as an official new state record high, 113 degrees from June, I think 27th or 29th, 2012.
• 51:50
  But the nearest next nearest station, if you look at the map of them, the next nearest station, or the highest, and you look at all the stations around it within say a 25, 30 mile radius, then the next hottest was 107.
• 52:01
  So there's clearly some urbanization influence there.
• 52:04
  That's not really what you want to have.
• 52:06
  I think the actual record, if you if you were in that's not the official record, but the one that should be, I think it's 111 degrees from 1954, which was around that time that uh Missouri was like 118 degrees, and Illinois, I think was 117, that was where the records set during July that year.
• 52:24
  So I think the actual record is about 111 degrees.
• 52:28
  Um so those are those real records and real significant records are taken in urban areas or rural areas.
• 52:36
  Well, the state records are usually taken most of them happen to be in rural areas, but the ones from South Carolina, their their official all-time state record happens to be in Columbia, which is a major urban heat island where that station is located.
• 52:49
  Uh, I think it's next to a I think it's if I'm and I have to have to verify this, but I'm pretty sure it's adjacent to a parking lot.
• 52:55
  And they for some reason they verify that as the state record when the real records 111 degrees, two degrees cooler uh from 1954, some somewhere uh I forget where it was at.
• 53:06
  But the point is is that now had the Columbia record had had there been a rural station that was 100 and you know, 110 or 111 degrees, they might have some merit with that.
• 53:16
  But the fact that the next hottest was 107 calls into question the accuracy of that reading in terms of it being a legitimate uh weather artifact and not an urbanization artifact.
• 53:26
  Yeah, for sure.
• 53:27
  Just to end off the interview on something uh a little humorous, and that is what did you think of the um young people that came in and disrupted the meeting?
• 53:36
  You know, it's funny because when I saw it, I thought, oh, this is a play.
• 53:40
  This is uh, you know, they're acting because it was so silly, it was so stupid.
• 53:44
  Were you there when of course you were yeah, you were on the panel when they jumped up and started saying, Oh, yeah.
• 53:49
  Yeah, well, one of them, one of them interrupted me.
• 53:51
  One the first one interrupted Lucy.
• 53:54
  Oh, okay.
• 53:55
  Then the other one, the other one interrupted me, and the one that interrupted me actually sort of coming towards the stage.
• 54:01
  So now I wasn't intimidated, I would have I would have used physical force if I had to, but um, he looked like it was comical.
• 54:11
  Yeah, his baseball cap sideways, he looked like a goof.
• 54:14
  I I thought, oh, come on, this is a parody trying to make the uh clim climate protesters look ridiculous.
• 54:20
  Yeah, but he was he was serious.
• 54:24
  Yeah, I thought it was because the the one that interrupted Lucy, I thought at first we kind of looked at each other, me and Annika and uh Emma, we looked at each other and we said, Oh, this this has to be a parody.
• 54:34
  This this has to be part of like this has to be part of Lucy's skit.
• 54:38
  And then we realized that oh and then we realized it wasn't, and then we thought it was over and done, but then another protester interrupted me.
• 54:47
  And so then and then and that one was coming towards the stage, and that was a little bit more serious.
• 54:52
  We had to take that a lot more seriously.
• 54:54
  And two more people were identified and thrown out.
• 54:56
  Uh oh yeah during that time.
• 54:58
  So it was comical, it was it was pretty funny.
• 55:02
  But um, but they it was just it was these people have no facts.
• 55:06
  That's right.
• 55:07
  It's all it's all emotion.
• 55:09
  The guy that interrupted Lucy, uh, Dr.
• 55:12
  Will Happer dragged him by the collar.
• 55:14
  Oh, yeah.
• 55:16
  Happer's 86 years old.
• 55:18
  And the fact that a 20, maybe 30-something year old guy got manhandled by an 86-year-old man, is pretty pathetic.
• 55:29
  So that's that's about when I realized, oh, this is real, and Will Happer, 86-year-old, is is ejecting the protester.
• 55:37
  Good for Will.
• 55:38
  Yeah, for those listening, I mean, Will Happer might be 86, but that dude is has the energy of a 20-year-old.
• 55:45
  Uh I've I've I've got the chance to sit down and spend a whole day with him at Princeton a couple years ago.
• 55:51
  What a guy.
• 55:52
  Well, he's such a such a gentleman and such a just wonderful, wonderfully smart man.
• 55:56
  I've I he's the smartest person I think I have ever met.
• 56:00
  Well, and one of the beauties is that he will help you.
• 56:00
  Well, and one of the beauties is that he will help you.
• 56:02
  He answers emails.
• 56:02
  He answers emails, you know, like when I have questions, he answers them.
• 56:04
  You know, like when I have questions, he answers them.
• 56:06
  He's the first to answer.
• 56:06
  He's the first to answer.
• 56:08
  And and he also is now a bouncer.
• 56:08
  And he also is now a bouncer.
• 56:11
  He'll eject these people from a conference.
• 56:12
  He'll eject these people from a conference.
• 56:14
  That was great.
• 56:14
  That was great.
• 56:14
  I love that.
• 56:14
  I love it.
• 56:15
  I should get it.
• 56:15
  I should get a I should make a t-shirt for him.
• 56:16
  I should make a t shirt for him.
• 56:17
  Yeah, exactly.
• 56:17
  Yeah, exactly.
• 56:18
  Official Heartland bouncer.
• 56:18
  Official Heartland bouncer.
• 56:21
  Yeah.
• 56:21
  Yeah.
• 56:22
  Anyway, we got to wrap up, Chris, but it's been great talking with you.
• 56:22
  Anyway, we gotta wrap up, Chris, but it's been great talking with you.
• 56:25
  And it's also inspiring to see, you know, how young people are waking up.
• 56:25
  And it's also inspiring to see, you know, how young people are waking up.
• 56:29
  So I
• 56:29
  So I I really appreciate your time today.
• 56:31
  Thank you for having me on, Tom.
• 56:33
  I'll hope we get the chance to talk again and uh hope to see you at the next conference.
• 56:36
  Yeah, for sure.
• 56:37
  So this is Tom Harrison, Todd Royal, and our guest, a young younger person than usual, uh Chris Mart, the meteorologist with CFAC, signing out from the other side of the story.