Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed geologist and author Gregory Wrightstone to discuss his book, Inconvenient Facts and the motivation behind the climate change narrative.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line author Gregory Wrightstone. He’s been a geologist for 35 years and the author of a book called Inconvenient Facts, which takes on all the phony claims about climate change being man-made and all the Al Gore kind of solutions for that “man-made climate change.” Welcome, Gregory. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Wrightstone: It’s really good to be on with you once again. And as usual, there’s so much to talk about when it comes to climate change. It seems to be either the subject or the second subject, and just about every news report we hear now.
Leahy: So you wrote this book called Inconvenient Facts. Let’s start with this fact. Has the average temperature of the Earth increased since 1900?
Wrightstone: Yes, it’s increased a little less than one-degree centigrades. That’s maybe 1.6 Fahrenheit, but it’s been around one-degree centigrade since 1850. So is the earth warming? Yes. And I will add a comma, thankfully.
The Earth’s temperature has been increasing in temperature slightly for more than 300 years. And that’s the important point here. It started warming in the late 17th century and we’ve been warming in fits and starts for 300-plus years.
Leahy: Gregory, is this all the consequence of man-made activities, of putting all that carbon dioxide up in the atmosphere through our industrial base? Are we responsible for this? Are you responsible at all?
Wrightstone: Not at all. Not at all. We started adding CO2 and significant amounts in the mid-20th century in that post-World War II economic boom. So the first 250 years of that warming had to be entirely or nearly entirely naturally driven. And in fact, you can see there was about a 30-year period in the early 1900s that was naturally driven.
And I’ve concurred that in my new book that I’m writing about the 30-year period prior to 1998, you can’t tell the difference between those two periods. One that is naturally driven and one that’s supposedly man-made driven.
And the key here that we never hear about, and again, I’m finishing up my second book and I’ve got a large section there on the strong relationship between human history and temperature history.
And we find that the warming periods in the past before climate science became politicized were called climate optima. And that’s because humanity and the human condition just thrived and prospered. Food was bountiful in these past warming periods.
And every single time over the last five or 6,000 years, dating back to the first great empires and civilizations, when it started to get cold, bad, bad, bad things happened. In fact, horrific events occurred and we saw crop failure, famine, pestilence, and mass depopulation accompanying the cold periods.
So it’s just the opposite of what you and your listeners are being told. Your listeners are being told, oh we can’t let it get another degree and a half or degree warm or we’re all going to die. There’s going to be famine, drought, and starvation. It’s going to be really bad. But that’s not what human history tells us.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you.
Carmichael: Gregory, I understand what you’re saying, and I agree with it. My question to you is, what do you think? Is it just pure money and power that’s motivating the so-called Green Revolution?
Wrightstone: Yes. Basically, you’re asking me why are they lying to us?
Carmichael: Right. Exactly.
Wrightstone:Â And I get asked that a lot. I’m going to give you the same answer I give to the other people that pose it. I can’t look inside men’s and women’s souls to see what their motivation is. But I will tell you as a scientist, this is what they’re telling you, and then this is what the facts are. And they are lying to you.
But you and every single one of your listeners are just as qualified as I am to say why they’re doing it. Is it money? Is it power? Is it greed? Is it funding? Is it control? Are they going to be able to raise more taxes? I don’t know.
I don’t know what it is. But what I can, as a scientist tell you, yes, they are. We can go through each one of these, what I call the climate apocalypse events, fire, and flood.
Carmichael: Please do that. Pick your top three.
Wrightstone: The perfect example is in this latest COP meeting that was held the nation of Prime Minister of Vanuatu or whatever the name is Pacific Island nation that’s the second most at-risk the most island in the Maldives. These are less than 12ft above sea level at the highest point. Okay.
He says they’re going to be overwhelmed with rising sea levels because of our warming. Okay. 20,000 years ago, Vanuatu was also slightly above sea level. Since then, the sea level has risen 400ft. So what they’re telling you and that these islands also grow as the sea level rises.
It’s a geologic process called accretion. It just happens. What they’re telling you is, well, sea level has risen 400ft, but that next eight inches was going to put us under, and that’s what the rate of sea level rise will be by 2100 will be another eight inches, barely above your ankles.
Well, okay, it’s risen 400ft, but that next eight inches is going to be more than we can handle. No, it’s not, because we’ve seen for many, many thousands of years, these islands around the world have accreted and grown along with the sea level rise.
And it’s just a shining example of the just like what you’ve said, the lies of these people. We know why these island nations are doing it because they’ve got their hand out.
Leahy: They want money?
Wrightstone: Yes. They’re calling it climate reparations. For sure, I can tell you they’re doing it for the money.
Leahy: No kidding.
Wrightstone: But the scientists, I don’t know about them.
Leahy:Â You’ve been a geologist for 35 years. How have you earned your living until you started writing your book? What kind of geology work did you do?
Wrightstone: I was an exploration geologist. I did natural gas exploration. In fact, I was the co-author of the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive paper on the largest natural gas field in the world, the Marcellus Shale. And I did that, published a lot, did a lot of just really fascinating work. And then I started getting into this subject, and I just got hooked.
Leahy: Were you employed by the natural gas companies or who employed you?
Wrightstone: Yes, I was actually an entrepreneur. I was a founding partner of a company. And then I got into this, and it angered me what I found. This was a personal search for the truth for me. And what I found, just as a scientist, truly angered me.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Gregory Wrightstone” by Inconvenient Facts. Photo “Inconvenient Facts” by Inconvenient Facts.
