Best of The Program | Guests: Bjorn Lomborg & Steven Crowder | 8/18/20

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Hey, welcome to Tuesday.

Got a great, great show for you today.

We started with Michelle Obama and

covering the convention.

It is a wild ride.

You don't want to miss.

We had Bjorn Lomberg on with us, the skeptical environmentalist who was fantastic.

If everybody on the global warming scam

was just saying the same things he was, it wouldn't feel like a scam, and I'd be a part of it.

And I think everybody would be a part of it.

Really, really logical.

And he's got a new book out about stop saying we're all going to be dead in 10 years because it's not true.

You're scaring the kids.

We talked to him.

Also, Steven Crowder joins us today.

You don't want to miss a second.

And you can watch all of Steven Crowder's shows on Blaze TV.

Go to blazetv.com slash Glenn.

Use the promo code Glenn.

You're going to save 10 bucks.

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review to this podcast, as well as Stu Does America, also available on this platform.

And on YouTube, just search for Stu.

I'll be the first one there.

A lot of Glenn stuff is there as well.

Lots of great stuff, including a big special coming up from Glenn this week on Blaze TV.

Make sure you subscribe.

Here's the podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Oh my gosh, when the when they started with the do we have the national anthem from the DNC last night?

Oh my, when this hit,

I thought I was going to lose

my mind.

Powerful.

Oh, look.

And nobody's kneeling.

Nobody's.

That's fantastic.

Okay, stop.

I can't take it.

So you knew you were in for a very long night of agony.

A very long night of programming.

Honestly, Sesame Street has a higher standard.

For education, Sesame Street has a higher standard.

This thing was jam-packed with information for absolute morons and idiots.

You start with a national anthem.

An educated person says, how can you start with a national anthem?

Because everybody's taking a knee.

You guys aren't defending the national anthem.

You guys are saying that the national anthem is racist.

So how are you doing that without any self-awareness?

They're totally self-aware.

They are programming to morons.

They don't think you're aware of it.

They don't think you know anything that's going on.

And the people that will buy this don't.

So you have to watch it in a different way, like Michelle Obama's speech.

I'm going to try to get through.

I just have, I think, 10 pieces of her audio to get through.

I don't think I can do it.

When you listen to Michelle Obama, first of all, the worst thing anyone can do on the right is tear Michelle Obama apart as a person or anything else because she is so liked.

That's different than likable.

You don't have to like her.

You don't even have to understand how other people like her.

But you need to understand how liked she is.

We don't feel this way because I'm sure she's a wonderful person if you agreed with her.

So I don't feel this way because I know so much about her.

I know that she doesn't love America.

She said the first time she was ever proud of her nation was when Barack Obama was elected.

The first time she was proud of her nation.

We have heard too many off-camera comments from her.

I know who she hung out with.

I know her Marxist friends.

I know who she went to church with for 20 some years.

There's no way you can have the kind of love and appreciation for this country that maybe you have.

Now, maybe she appreciates it in a whole different way, like it's a great place to start all over again.

Maybe.

But we see her differently because

We've been educated.

We've paid attention.

So let's listen to her speech.

Here's cut one.

Good evening, everyone.

It's a hard time, and everyone's feeling it in different ways.

I don't like it so far.

And I know a lot of folks are reluctant to tune into a political convention right now or to politics in general.

Believe me, I get it.

Why do you hate it so far?

I just don't

get it.

I know everyone thinks she's amazing, and she's this incredible person and she's the most beautiful woman that's ever walked the face of the earth.

She's an average person.

She's an like, there's nothing wrong with being average looking, but that's just what she is.

She's an average looking person who does, who,

who, again, like I watch her speeches.

And I feel like I'm in another universe.

I watch every blue check on Twitter say how it was the most amazing thing they've ever seen.

And

I look at it and I'm like, that was, that looked like the wife of a politician trying really hard to read

a speech who was written by a pretty good speechwriter, right?

And she's overacting it and overdoing it.

And she's not really great at this, but like, hey, let's.

Nice work.

Separating her from who she is and what we know about her and her politics.

Like, I just don't see her as this amazing, transformative person.

She has a way.

Everyone else does.

Okay, she has a way.

Now, remember, talking two different things.

the way you see it, and the way the half of the country sees her.

They have not been exposed, nor have they listened to all of the things that make you go,

she is not telling the truth here.

She's not telling the truth.

That's part of it.

So it's part of it.

But she hasn't said anything yet.

All she said was, you probably don't want to tune into a convention.

I was like, oh.

She also says all of the things.

Now, this is a speech writer, saying all of the things that everybody feels.

And she has a way.

She is good at one thing.

She can look into the camera and connect with an individual.

Maybe not you, but she can connect.

And that's a very rare skill.

And I do think she has that.

She seems over-actie to me, but if you're not

predisposed to think she's a fraud,

you may not feel that from her.

All right, continue.

I get that.

But I am here tonight because I love this country with all my heart.

And it pains me to see so many people hurting.

I've met so many of you.

I've heard your stories.

And through you,

I have seen this country's promise.

And thanks to so many who came before me, thanks to their toil and sweat and blood, I've been able to to live that promise myself.

That's the story of America.

Wow.

All those folks who sacrificed and overcame so much in their own times because they wanted something more, something better for their kids.

There's a lot of beauty in that story.

There's a lot of pain in it, too.

A lot of struggle and injustice and work left to do.

Okay.

And I have to tell you,

what?

What?

See, this is the problem.

They say things they don't mean.

Because if you meant that, we wouldn't have a problem.

Yes, there's a lot of pain, and let's work through that pain.

But that's not what's being said.

What's being said, there is no beauty in the people that struggled in their own time, as she said.

In their own time to make life better for their children.

They did, in their own time.

Their times were different.

So they didn't meet today's standards, but they moved the flag forward.

And now it's our job to move the flag forward even more.

But that's not what the left is saying.

That's not what the Democratic Party stands for anymore.

They call for the destruction of America, a rewriting of our our history, a washing us of everyone in their time that was trying to do the right thing for their children.

That's a real problem.

Now, let's go to SOT2.

Listen to this.

Tell me who she's describing.

I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency.

And let me once again tell you this,

the job is hard.

It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues,

a devotion to facts and history,

a moral compass, and an ability to listen,

and an abiding belief that each of the 330 million lives in this country

has meaning and worth.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Stop.

Stop.

Now, remember, she's giving the speech for Joe Biden.

So let me just go through this.

She's seen it firsthand: immense weight and awesome power of the presidency.

She's seen it.

Can we say, real quick, this country is not supposed to have an awesomely powerful

president.

President, that's not how it's supposed to work.

Yes.

So, but she's seen that.

She has seen that.

Let me once again tell you this: the job is hard.

Agree?

Sure.

Yes.

It requires clear-headed judgment.

Does Joe Biden have clear-headed judgment?

How could anyone say that with a straight face?

Can't.

How?

Can't.

A mastery of complex and competing issues.

He can't even get to multiple syllable words at this point.

He might have five years ago, ten years ago, certainly did when he was

with Barack Obama at the beginning.

Certainly did.

Now?

No.

A devotion of facts and history, no one on the left has that.

Biden didn't even have that back

when he was going with Obama.

I remember the, what was it, FDR and the television?

Right.

I mean, he just remembered having, and if I may, a devotion of facts and history.

Let me go back to Michelle Obama in 2008.

And Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices.

We are going to have to change our conversation.

We're going to have to change our traditions, our history.

We're going to have to move into a different place.

So So we're going to have to change our history.

So

a devotion of facts in history.

Does she really mean that?

And does Joe Biden have that?

A moral compass.

A guy whose son

has built with his dad millions of dollars through

gun running drug lord, you know, mafioso-style people in Ukraine and gotten deeply in bed with the communist Chinese party and made millions of dollars.

Is that a moral compass that you think he has?

I'm not saying, let's not, we don't have to compare.

We could say Donald Trump, just assume, haven't seen it, but just assume, oh, his kids are dirty as hell too.

Well, A, haven't seen that evidence,

but B,

we're talking about Michelle Obama saying we need a moral compass.

Does Joe Biden have that moral compass?

Oh, and an ability to listen.

The only reason why he's listening is because he can't speak anymore.

I mean, who is she describing here?

I mean, it's almost as if she's just, she's making the case that they should not nominate Joe Biden.

Right.

It's almost like she's saying, like, you know what?

They should give the job to me or Kamala or somebody else.

You know, it's almost like she says, look, you know, me, and I...

I've seen it.

Job's hard.

Clear-headed judgment, mastery of complex and competing issues, devotion of facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen.

That's why we picked Kamala to be on the ticket

because she's got that.

Joe has lost it a long time ago, but he's not really going to be president.

You can, with a straight face, make that statement about Joe Biden.

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This is the Glendeck program.

Joined now by Stephen Crowder, Blaze TV host Louder with Crowder.

Did you watch the convention last night, Stephen?

No.

No, I did not.

We'll be live streaming Thursday because that's when Biden and Kamala Harris will be there.

But we plan on live streaming every night, and thank God we didn't because nothing happened other than Michelle Obama saying that Donald Trump is not good.

Oh my gosh, it was bad.

It was bad.

How they opened with the Star Spangled Banner is beyond me.

But, Stephen, first of all, congratulations on getting

remonetized on YouTube.

Let's just say next time we go out for dinner, you're picking up the check.

Well, I can pick up a portion of the hors d'oeuvres.

No oysters.

Let's just, you know, like some mozzarella sticks.

Yeah.

I'll make sure it's nice.

And I actually wouldn't do that to you because I don't think it's going to last long.

How, first of all, you have a great attorney.

How did this happen, and how long do you think it's going to last?

Well, to answer the second part, your guess is as good as mine, probably a week.

But this has been going on for 14 months.

For 14 months, it's been going on with the Vox apocalypse.

People need to understand that YouTube changed their rules because we didn't violate any guidelines.

Those were the words uttered by the YouTube CEO, Susan Wojitsky, herself.

So then they changed it and created new guidelines for advertising and then new community guidelines where you can't really insult people because we, listen, we understand that it's YouTube's playground and we play by the rules.

And then they've changed the rules.

And then there were some things behind the scenes where they tried to do a little more massaging and tweaking of the rules with which I was no longer comfortable.

And now here we are.

I sign in and it's a big remonetized symbol.

But the weird thing is, you know, YouTube let us know that we will be remonetized last Thursday.

And everyone knows us at the Blaze because we said, hey, this is going to happen.

Don't let anyone know.

We're going to announce it Thursday.

YouTube requested that.

It's just them and us.

We're the only ones who know.

And lo and behold, two days before that, it gets leaked to The Verge, owned by Vox and the little buddies at Mashable.

So I have no idea how that got out.

Wow.

But, you know, it's

well, it

wasn't anybody on

your staff or our staff that leaked that to Vox.

Gee, I wonder how that happened.

I thought you have Ezra Klein on speed diet.

That's what I was thinking.

Let me.

You did an amazing interview with David Dorn, his wife.

David Dorn is the

former police police captain in St.

Louis that was guarding and helping out at a pawn shop, and somebody came in to steal a t-shirt and killed him over that.

Really a hair-raising and gut-wrenching scene.

Wasn't really, didn't

make a difference, really, to the mainstream media.

But anybody who really watched it was touched by this.

First of all,

how did you get the interview with his wife?

Well, you know, I can't, that's credit to my dad.

He's the booker for our show, and that really happened because everyone else was too afraid to book the show.

So thanks, dad.

So he's gotten a lot of these interviews.

You know, Stephen Williford after the Sutherland Springs shooter.

I can't take credit for it.

Really, we've been blessed with that.

And

to brief people in the story, yeah, we do have this shirt.

It's the David Dorn shirt.

You can go to lottery with crowdershop.com.

100% of the profits are going to go directly to his family and his wife.

Excellent.

Excellent.

It was over 30 years that he was with the St.

Louis Police Department, but I think the story is more important because he was off duty and he came in to help a friend to answer a call in distress, a pawn shop that was being looted.

And he was shot.

He was a black man, black police officer, who served a black community for a very long time, served it well.

You can't really find any dirt on this guy, which in 2020 is

almost impossible.

And believe me, we really tried to search to see if there were any skeletons in this closet.

No, there was nothing there that we found thus far.

You know, no one's perfect.

And he was shot over a Visio by another black gentleman in that community.

And this is someone, the reason I think it's an important story is not just because it's a black police officer and these people have been left out in the cold, despite the fact that there are more minorities in the police force than in the general population at large, and that's because they see it as a way to serve their community.

We also see over 80% of black Americans who want at least as much police presence, if not more.

So Black Lives Matter doesn't speak for them.

They just have a megaphone with the media.

But this is a man who not only is an example for the black community, but anyone, any young man.

I mean, if we want to talk about heroes, a guy who served his community for 30-plus years was answering a call off duty and was shot dead while protecting his neighborhood.

That is a hero.

And you know why?

Because no one would have ever known if he never responded to that call.

That wasn't a police call.

There was no record of it.

No one would have cared.

No one would have judged him for staying home in his comfortable bed sheets with a soft pillow.

And instead, he was going out doing the right thing when no one was watching, no one cared, and unfortunately, no one cared after he died in the media.

And so we've really tried to take it upon ourselves to make sure that his story gets told.

And, you know, you know, Glenn, I will say this: I've watched you quite a bit in the past and present.

You've had a lot of big interviews, and I always struggle with these because I never want to be, you know, I never want to exploit somebody, but I also want to ask the questions that I think everyone would like to have answered.

I don't want to be Barbara Walters, you know, asking them what kind of tree they would be, or Oprah, getting them to cry.

So it's always tough for me, and I hope I struck that balance because I really do admire both the late Officer Dorn and his wife, who, by the way, is also a police officer.

They were married police officers, and they started programs to help youth in their community and even help them enroll in the police force.

So when people talk about reforming the police, when people talk about making it better, when people talk about tangible solutions, right, solutions that have observable metrics, these people dedicated their life to it, were shot dead for it, and no one tells their story.

So that's a shame.

Let me play a couple of clips.

Here she is.

This is Sergeant Andorn

talking about why her husband's death wasn't covered in the media.

Listen.

Why do you think it is that this story with your husband has received comparatively so little media coverage?

And we've done everything that we can, but we're obviously only one show.

But the ABC, NBC, CBS, almost nothing.

The easiest answer is it doesn't fit their narrative.

It doesn't fit the narrative of,

you know, a policeman killing

a black man.

It doesn't, you know, it's a black-on-black crime.

We have those every day in St.

Louis, and I hate to say that.

It's very sad.

That's one component that we need to fix with this peace march and we need to address.

You know, all lives are precious.

Right.

Every life out there is precious.

And he just didn't fit the narrative.

Yeah.

Then cut two, please.

He went out fighting, you know, the good fight, helping people.

I believe everything happens for a reason.

And,

you know, he's going to speak through me.

And I'm hoping the reason is to help heal the city, to realize, hey, he didn't have to die.

You know, the young man didn't have to pull that trigger.

You know, there's all triggers.

There was no reason to pull the trigger and take David's life.

Yeah.

David, you you know, David went out honorably, you know, fighting.

So

I can't ask for anything more.

I don't, I wouldn't have wanted it to happen that way.

I'd like to grow old with him.

Right.

But

if he had to die this, oh, you know, like this, then yes.

Yeah.

You know, he went out of here.

And I'm just hoping I can bring meaning to it.

She was very composed up until

that, when she started talking about growing old with him.

you can tell how much

she loved him.

Do you think that there is a problem

and racism in the media itself?

The fact that she is white and he is black, do you think that played a role in this not being covered, Stephen?

You know, I don't even know if they got that far along the trail.

Just like with the hydroxychloroquine lady who clearly, well, who I believe probably knocked off her husband, they didn't do any research and find out that she was an anti-Trump activist and donor to the DNC.

I think this was a story that didn't interest them from the get-go, just like last night or yesterday when a man was beaten within an inch of his life, dragged out of his truck by Antifa and Black Lives Matter activists.

I just don't think that it suits their narrative.

And I know that that's a phrase that's used a lot, doesn't suit their narrative, but I don't think it's ever been on more crystal clear display for everyone to see.

Because if we're talking about Black Lives That Matter, and all Black Lives Do Matter, and all Lives Matter, but let's say all black lives matter so that you know we're not accused of burning crosses and having a white hood if you say all lives matter but all black lives certainly matter wouldn't it stand to reason to look at the number one cause of death number one cause of death for all black males under age 44 it's it's homicide it's not even close death from police officers doesn't even crack the top of the list do you know that a black police officer any police officer is actually 18 times more likely to be shot by a black man, a young black man, than he is to shoot them.

So if we're talking about, hey, all black lives matter and we want to help the black community, which is what David Dorn and his wife dedicated their entire lives to serve.

It wasn't a hashtag they were doing this when no one was watching before.

Hashtags were a thing.

We should be talking about how to curb homicide with young black males in the community.

And I want to be clear, I'm not like a Nick Cannon saying that homicide is because of melanin the skin.

You know, he thinks that white folks don't have souls because it's melanin.

No, I think we have a spiritual and a culturally broken problem in the United States.

I think it's across all colors, but I think particularly in the black community, and David Dorn obviously knew this because he served the youth, they are raised in fatherless households, and not only that, but in communities where there aren't other dads.

And so you have record numbers of black lives being taken by other young black males.

So, Stephen, I've got 90 seconds left.

I've seen so many of your Change My Minds recently,

and

I wanted to to get a sense from you.

When it comes to Black Lives Matter, when it comes to Marxism and everything else, are you seeing a turn at all, even a small turn, or

is everyone just locked into that that Black Lives Matter Inc.

is good?

Here's the thing.

People hear the term Black Lives Matter, think it's good, right?

If you pull people, just like don't kick puppies.

Okay, that's good.

When you actually read the demands and you read the history and the charter from Black Lives Matter and their founders, nearly everyone unilaterally disagrees with them, most of all, black Americans.

So, Black Lives Matter, the idea?

We're all on board with Black Lives Matter, the organization, just like Antifa is a domestic terror organization.

$600 million in property damage, 14,000 arrests, 900 officer casualties, over 20 people dead.

If you don't call that a riot, I don't know what is.

Stephen Crowder, thank you so much.

By the way, become a Mug Club member.

Just if you're not a Blaze TV subscriber, go to Blazetv.com slash Crowder and join today.

You'll get interviews like Stephen just did with David Doran's wife that aren't available anyplace else.

Blazetv.com slash Crowder.

Join now and make sure that you get one of the t-shirts.

Like he said, 100%

of

the profits on that will go

to his wife and family.

Thank you so much, Stephen.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Glenn.

God bless.

God bless.

Man, we have such a great group of people on our network now.

It's really, you're missing out if you're not part of the Blaze TV.

Join us.

This

is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Jorn Lomberg, author of False Alarm, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, visiting fellow from the Hoover Institution.

I believe he was part of our first climate special that we did at CNN back when CNN actually would have opposing views on.

Kind of.

It took everything in them to let us do that special.

But I am somebody who

owns property out west in the mountains.

I believe in the environment.

I love trees.

I love animals.

And I want to keep our water and our air clean and pure.

I don't know of anybody who doesn't care about that.

I'm sure they exist, but I don't know anybody who doesn't care about that.

The problem seems to be with taking the climate change attitude and then applying it into an emergency panic.

Everybody's going to die quickly.

And so we have to do this.

Well, what should we do?

Bjorn Lomberg is joining us now.

Bjorn, how are you, sir?

Hey, Clint.

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm very good.

So

we wanted to talk to you about a couple of things, the alarmism, but first,

who is this book targeted to?

So, look, I talk to a lot of people, and very many people are really, really worried about global warming.

And especially their kids are worried about global warming.

Lots of kids are saying, why should I study if there's no future for me because of global warming?

And that certainly is what we're being told.

A new survey showed that almost half of the entire global population now believes that global warming will lead to the extinction of the human race.

And that is simply crazy.

Look, global warming is a real problem.

It's something we should fix.

But we need to get a sense of proportion.

The UN Climate Panel tells us that by the 2070s, the impact of global warming will be equivalent to somewhere between 0.2 and 2% reduction in your average income.

Remember, by then, the UN expects that we'll be two and a half times richer.

So instead of being two and a half times richer, we'll be slightly less than two and a half times richer by 2017.

That's a problem.

That's not the end of the world.

So this book is really to all the people who are worried, and of course, all the people they know who are worried, and telling, look, it's a problem, not the end of the world.

So you are kind of in the category of Michael Schellenberger, that, except you're probably more in line with the IPCC.

You take those reports as gospel and say, look, we're just going to accept this as fact,

but then you look for the things that we can do that will actually make a difference.

Would you put yourself kind of in Michael Schellenberger's kind of place?

Oh, sure.

And I think there's a lot of people in that camp, because honestly, what that means is you take what the science is telling us, there is a problem, but then you also insist we need to look at the economics of climate change and actually take the best science there.

And most people don't.

Remember, I take my starting point in the guy who actually got the only Nobel Prize in climate economics, William Lordhaus from Yale University.

And he says, as do almost everyone in climate economics, that there is a real problem with climate change, so probably in the order of 3% to 4% GDP by the end of the century.

That means if you can fix a substantial part for a low cost, that's a good idea.

But it's crazy to try to fix a 3% to 4%

problem by incurring policies that will cost 15 to 30% of your GDP.

And that's what you're, I mean, you did an article in USA Today, Climate Change, Democratic Alarmism Leads to Failing Policies.

Can you take us through that?

Yeah.

So, look, the Democrats have a good intention.

They are pointing out, look, there's a real problem, but then they go on to say, and much to, you know, as you pointed out, they believe that this is going to lead to the end of the world in 10 years.

And that's just not the case.

If it was the case, if this was a

meteor hurtling towards Earth, the only thing you should be doing would be to worry about global warming.

You'd just throw everything in the kitchen sink of this, send up Bruce Willis and everybody else, and fix that meteor.

But the reality is this is a minor problem.

It's not a zero problem.

It's a 3% to 4% problem over the next 80 years.

And so the risk, and what they're clearly suggesting is, you know, we should have no new gasoline cars by 2035 and fossil fuels and power sector in 2040.

Basically get the U.S.

to net zero, so emit no new CO2 in 2050.

That is going to be phenomenally expensive.

Remember, we only have one estimate that actually shows how costly that will be.

So, lots of nations have promised to do this.

Only one nation was brave enough to actually ask, so how much is that going to cost?

That was New Zealand.

So, you know, left-wing New Zealand actually asked, How much is this going to cost them?

Their preeminent estimate was: this is going to cost us at least 16% of our GDP, more likely around 30%.

Oh, my gosh.

That for the U.S.

is equivalent to paying $5 to $10 trillion every year.

Remember, that's more than what the entire national

federal budget is right now.

Every year.

It's twice the $5 trillion is twice the revenues of the United States of America.

So you tax

it's twice the revenues just for that.

Yeah.

And remember, it would not fix global warming.

It would slightly reduce the impact because most of the problem from global warming does not actually come from rich countries because we've already sort of peaked and we're increasingly going towards just producing services, which emits very little CO2.

But most of the rest of the world, so China, India, Africa, Latin America, still want to get rich.

They want to get to where we are today.

And they will mostly be able to do that.

by using much more cheap and readily available energy.

And try and telling them, I'm sorry, you can't do what we did.

Unbelievable.

You'll just have to stay poor.

Yeah,

it's absolutely irresponsible.

But you're not talking about, when you talk to global warming people,

the zealots, you can't get them to talk about nuclear energy, the cleanest and the safest energy out there.

You can't get them to talk about that.

You can't talk to them about let's help Africa grow to be a richer and

an industrial nation and go through the industrial revolution, but in a clean way, we can help them get into the 21st century by giving them power.

Nobody wants to help them

get richer and live our kind of lifestyle.

They're trying to just bring everybody down to their lifestyle instead of bringing them up to our lifestyle.

There's certainly a lot of truth to that.

I actually find that when you confront most people with this, especially well-meaning,

sort of left-leaning people, they also want that.

And so you expose in some way a very clear

twist in their minds between, on the one side, they want to help Africa and the world's poor, but they also want to fix global warming.

And of course, what ends up is very often they throw the Africans under the bus because they care too much about climate change.

Again, if you think it's because it's the end of the world, that makes sense.

But if you actually realize, oh, wait, this is a problem like many others we need to fix, you need to get much smarter on this issue.

And that's, of course, one of the reasons also why I wrote this book, that there are actually really smart ways to fix climate, just not the typical ways that we use right now.

Talking to Bjorn Lumborg, the book is False Alarm.

It's a great one.

Bjorn, take us through some of this alarmism.

One example you talk about in the book, and I've heard it from a million places, is that it's 170 million people are going to be displaced by climate change

coming up fairly soon.

And that's what the science says.

You go through that claim and kind of show what it actually is trying, the story is trying to tell is a totally different perception.

Can you walk us through that one?

Yeah.

I mean, so look, if you just look at rising temperatures will mean rising sea levels.

That's very simple and that's very true.

Rising sea levels, all other things equal, will mean that more people will get inundated inundated and eventually have to move.

And of course, the more alarmist will tell us, oh my God, they're all going to drown.

But the reality is, of course, we actually adapt all of these estimates.

So one very, very

highly quoted estimate said 187 million people are going to get flooded or are going to have to move by the end of the century because of global warming.

That assumes no one does anything.

So it assumes that everybody sit on the beach and watch as the waves start lapping up over their ankles and knees and a belly, they have to move or they drown.

But of course, in reality, over the next 80 years, we will adapt.

We will build better sea defenses, we'll build more dikes, we'll build more nourished beaches and all these different technologies that we've known since 5,000 or 6,000 years ago.

We know how to do this.

And that's why all the studies, and this particular study that generated headlines across all of the U.S.

and Washington Post and around the world, it tells you that if you do nothing, you're going to see 187 million people being displaced.

But if you do realistic assessments of what people will do, you will see 305,000 people having to move.

Remember, that's half the number of people that move out of California every year.

Of course, we can handle that.

globally over the next 80 years.

So you're being told a story that's 600 times more alarming.

And that's why you get really scared.

And if this was just one single example, maybe it wouldn't matter all that much.

But unfortunately, this is almost entirely how we're seeing climate change reported.

We're telling you stories that are only true under very specific and very unrealistic assumptions like you don't do anything that you don't make any adaptation.

And of course, in the real world, you will do.

So I want to talk to you,

Bjorn Lombard,

when we come back.

I want to take a one-minute break, but I want to come back and talk a little bit more about this.

For instance, hurricanes and the damage that is being done by hurricanes.

There's a real clear reason for that.

We'll get into that coming up.

Author of the book, False Alarm, Bjorn Lomberg.

Do you remember being on our special on CNN?

Of course I do.

It was a pleasure.

It was a different time back then.

And it's gotten worse because we can't talk about things anymore.

And you're immediately called a science denier.

And we've always wanted to base everything on science.

And I happen to believe that there is climate change.

It seems natural to me.

It also seems unreasonable to me that man, with all that we have done, is not affecting the earth in some way or another, of course.

So I want to get into some of the things that individuals can do, because that's the way it's always pitched.

You know, we all have to do everything we can.

So so let's get to the real things that we can.

But before we go there, let's talk about the hurricanes.

Hurricanes, and this drives me nuts.

People are saying, oh, the cost of hurricanes.

Well, hurricanes are going up because we didn't used to live right on the beach.

And one of the reasons we didn't live on the beach is because the federal government didn't insure people.

You couldn't get insurance for your house if you lived right there on the beach where there's hurricanes.

But then the federal government said, oh, we'll insure you.

And now there's a right to live on the beach.

And of course, we're doing more damage.

Is that reasonable?

Well, it's certainly the right way to describe this.

So remember, the number of hurricanes hitting the continental U.S.

has actually declined since 1900.

That's also true for the major hurricanes, so category three and over.

And exactly what you say, the main reason why damages keep going up is because many more people live much closer to harm's way with much more stuff.

So remember, Florida, in 1900, there was virtually nobody there.

The population of the coastal counties in Florida has increased 67-fold since 1900, whereas the U.S.

population has only increased four-fold.

So obviously, much more stuff much closer to harm's way.

You're going to get much bigger damage.

That does not mean this is because of global warming.

And again, if you want to fix it, as you point out, maybe you should stop subsidizing people's insurance.

Then they would build more responsibly.

So let's talk about another thing.

The Amazon.

Of course, everybody knows now that this is

the planet's lungs.

True or false?

That's false.

A stable ecosystem like the Amazon emits no net

oxygen.

So it's one of those many, many myths that we hear.

The world is on fire.

You know, you're clearly a denier here.

World is on fire.

The lungs were on fire.

Down on the bottom end,

there was a ring of fire in

Australia.

California is on fire.

What's causing that except global warming?

So fundamentally, we need to recognize that we've seen a dramatic decline of fire over the last 150 years, basically because we've gotten richer and we've got much more careful with our environment.

It actually matters to most people to make sure it doesn't burn.

So burning rates also in the U.S.

have gone down by five to ten times compared to the early part of last century.

But there is a problem with global warming.

It's likely that global warming will lead to somewhat higher burn rates, still much less than what we used to have, but it is a problem.

And again, we need to ask them, is the right way to deal with this is that to cut CO2?

We should probably do that a little bit.

We shouldn't do this because of fire.

If you want to help people, you should perhaps make them stop building in what is essentially tinder boxes.

Those are simple ways to make sure that you zone people out of very, very dense forests where they're likely to get burnt, like in Paradise and other places in California.

Do you believe in controlled burns?

I mean, we stopped that in the 70s.

Sure.

Yeah.

And

again, it seems like that is a very good idea most places.

And we know how to do that.

That's also one of the reasons why we've seen much, much less burn.

Global, we've seen burn rates decrease about 25% just over the last 25 years.

So we've seen a dramatic reduction.

There is part of this that's due to global warming.

But again, the extrapolation, the alarmism that we see in the media makes this very hard to understand, partly that this is not mostly caused by global warming, and that our best efforts, our best policies, have virtually nothing to do with global warming if you actually want to help us.

30 seconds before the break, is this alarmism is really hurting because people won't pay attention once it doesn't happen, right?

Don't you think?

Well, I think alarmism hurts because it both makes us spend much, much more.

We're going to spend trillions and achieve almost nothing.

And it makes us fail to focus on the things that really will matter, both solutions to climate, but also all the other problems that still are there.

Okay, we're coming back with Bjorn Lomberg, and we'll talk about the things that we can do that we should be talking about.