Kevin Bae: Hey, it's August 31 2021. I'm Kevin Bae, from
kevinbae.com. This is the odcast I've chosen to call.
hat's all I got. I don't know f I'll ever be happy with the
itle of this podcast. But it is hat it is. To where I'm at I
ven use the wrong music? Didn't ? Think I did? No, I didn't.
id I? Hold on? Let me see this ther one here. Yeah, you know,
don't know, it would help. If did this on a consistent
asis, then I could remember hat I'm doing. But, as usual,
ith everything else I do, it's ind of fly by the seat of my
ants. I just kind of do it and igure it all out later on that
ive streaming this one.
Mainly because I'm just throwing this together after a podcast I
just finished and that when I got to wrap it up, because I
will be taking a trip tomorrow. So I'm trying to get these in.
And I meant to do this particular episode on Friday.
And I just didn't get to it. And I was gonna go do it yesterday.
And then I didn't get to the other podcast I was supposed to
do. So I guess this is what happens when you don't actually
depend on the podcast for any any money, or social
interaction, where you just kind of enjoy posting and talking to
yourself. I like spitting in the wind. You know, which is what I
do with my blog as well. It's like, I, you know, I've got a
bunch of readers, you know, I get maybe several 100. You know,
people reading it every day. So it's not like, you know, it's
not the drone Ma, I haven't been to the Drudge Report in such a
long time. So I didn't even know what that one looks like
anymore. But you know, it's not, it's not like that, where I'm
pulling in, you know, 100,000 or a million views a day or
anything like that. Does anybody even call them views or I missed
the days when we used to call them hits. And you can put a hit
counter up on your website. I think one of the first ones I
did before I learned any HTML and obviously before WordPress
became a thing, because now that's what I use, I use
WordPress, which makes it easy. I used Microsoft front page
after they purchased front page from someplace else and I can't
remember the company they purchased it from. But you get
to put the little banner ads, and then you get to put the hit
counter on there. And then it was kind of fun to watch the
little ticker go up. So I've had this website, I've had Kevin Bae
calm for a long time since the since the late 90s. And I've
kind of blogged on and off, here and there, I never really knew
what to do with it, I didn't really have the time either to
do much with it. So working all the time and going to school. So
I just kind of sat there and I would bring it alive every now
and again. And you know, then I would just kind of let it fall
to the side. So I got too busy. And then, you know, I decided to
quit the family business, and then I got nothing else to do.
So, you know, I'm sort of an early retirement, where I live
off of managing my investments. And then the rest is all pretty
much hobbies. So, you know, blogging is an outlet for my
skepticism and anger at the world where I get the spit in
the wind, as I like to call it because it's about as effective.
You know, blogging and doing this podcast is about as
effective as spitting in the wind. But I do it anyway. Why
not? So there was a story in the Wall Street Journal. I think it
was just yesterday. What's the date on this thing updated
August 30. So I don't know if this was posted earlier than
that, but I believe I just saw it yesterday. The headline is
climate change to be treated as a public as public health issue,
new federal offices likely to face face pushback over actions
that target health, the target health industry. So this is
where COVID has been leading all along. And you could tell them
the language that they were using. You know, this is the
first time ever, that I recall that a vaccine is being pushed
on people not to protect the person getting the vaccine
necessarily. But to protect others. Same thing with the
masks, you're not supposed to wear a mask to protect yourself.
Because if you've read enough studies now, wearing the mask,
does not protect the wearer. Now, maybe possibly, wearing a
mask could protect other people. Because if you are infected,
you're not, you know, and say you cough or you sneeze, then
you're not sending shit all out into the air. But if you're
asymptomatic, you're really not sending shit out into the air.
So you know, this push this push to not protect yourself, the
protect, but protect others, is the same language and the same
kind of guilt tripping bullshit that they've been putting into
climate change for ever. But it's never taken off. And the
reason it's never taken off is because climate change comes too
slow. Everybody knows the climate changes it has, since
the earth began over 4 billion years ago.
And it will always change whether we're here or not.
modern humans doing modern human things hasn't been around that
long. You know, you're talking in the hundreds of years,
basically, for any kind of modern use of fossil fuels. You
don't even talking 1000s of years. And 1000s of years as
well is nothing compared to the earth. And its climate.
You know, you have to get into 10s of 1000s of years, hundreds
of 1000s of years. In order to really talk about a changing
climate, a changing landscape. You know, we have the earth has
tectonic plates, continents drift and shift. You know, if
you follow, you know, the, again, those are theories.
They're not actual facts, or laws or whatever you want to
call them. You know, we can watch the plates shift, but
because the continents move so slow. It's only really a theory
as to whether or not this was one solid landmass before or how
the landmass has moved. And those are things that can
actually be measured. You know, they can measure continental
drift using satellites. And they can see direct causes of
continental drift with you know, the plates under the ocean
floor. It kind of spew rock magma out from underneath. You
know, I'm probably not using all the correct terms. But you know,
you can watch any PBS documentary on shifting tectonic
plates and it's fairly easy thing to understand. But even
that something that's easy, very easily measured can't be said
for sure. Because it happens over such a long period of time
and we haven't been around long enough. So same thing for
climate change. You know, the call the call to to do something
about climate Change was always done in, under the guise of, you
have to help somebody else, you have to do this for the planet,
do this for your children do this for the poor people in
undeveloped countries that haven't had a chance to have
running water and electricity like, like the rest of us. So
now the Department of Health and Human Services, they've launched
an office that will treat climate change as a public
health issue. And that's how it ties to COVID. COVID was the
thing of okay. You have to, we have to marshal a global
response. Not to help yourself, but to help everybody else. And
if we can do that, think of what we can do for climate change.
That was the push that was a push for a long time in it. And
if you think that Joe Biden chose his own campaign, stret
campaign slogan of build back better by himself. That's a lie,
because build back better was part of the climate movement.
For quite some time by the academics, they came back with,
they came up with the lame slogan of build back better.
And through that through COVID, the governments of the world
found out how easily it is for them to control this.
Look at all the in consistencies. Don't wear a
mask, wear a mask, no vaccine passports. Now we're going to
have vaccine passports. And look at what look at what they're
doing in Australia. They're building actual COVID camps,
quarantine camps. They go into lockdown. If somebody so much is
caught. They've stripped everybody away of their they
stripped every rights away every right away from everybody.
They're arresting children for being outside without a mask.
And you look at Canada, Canada, Canada, their their police state
and their Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vaccine passports. Now,
you know, this asshole comes out and says you don't have to get a
vaccine, we won't force it on you. But if you don't get one,
you can't get on a plane or train us get into public
buildings probably can't even get into your own grocery store.
So yeah, you've got the freedom to not get it. You just don't
have the freedom not to get it. All of this surrounding the
facts that have not changed around COVID. That if you're
under the age of 70, you have about a 99.5% chance of
surviving infection.
But they found out how easy it was to control everybody. And so
now they they are proposing this office, Office of climate change
and health equity. And it's going to report to a White House
climate Task Force. They were outlined in a January executive
order on climate part of Biden's efforts to use the power of the
federal government to address environmental effects of
changing weather. Listen to that stupid sentence, the
environmental effects of changing weather. So the new
office is supposed to spur different things, different
initiatives, touching on all different kinds of things in
healthcare. The let's see in the Wall Street Journal article they
say the HHS announced Monday expected to offer protections
for populations most at risks at risk, including elderly the
elderly, minorities, rural community, communities and
children. Do it for the children and the office could eventually
compel hospitals and others care facilities to reduce carbon
emissions. This ties into another video, I'm going to play
in just a minute here of Coca Cola and Microsoft, investing in
a company that's sucking carbon dioxide out of the air at great
cost.
These are the kinds of things that really pissed me off. You
know, how far are they going to go to take control of our lives
in the name of something
they're going to get OSHA involved.
They already adopted standards during the pandemic to improve
workplace safety. So now hospitals that have had to run
air purification systems have to run them at a higher level
resulting resulting in increased energy use and more carbon
emissions because of the pandemic. So they're going to be
made to purchase carbon offsets, I'm sure. Which, if you, you
know, if anybody's thinking logically purchasing a carbon
offset does nothing to limit carbon dioxide, all it is, is a
wealth shift. If I'm a company putting out x number of tons of
carbon dioxide into the air, but I'm paying this other company
that's supposed to be sucking the carbon dioxide out of the
air is that really reducing or keeping it even? Especially when
you think about the energy it takes to remove carbon dioxide
from the air. So all that is it's like it's just a shift of
money.
The H H s initiative This is in the Wall Street Journal still is
based on a significant body of research finding specific
populations are disproportionately affected by
climate change. These include those with chronic illnesses or
mobility challenges. The elderly, the poor, the isolated,
black and indigenous populations and other people of color,
certain occupational groups, women and girls. I mean, it
doesn't tell you that this is a social program, it is not going
to do a damn thing. For climate change. This is just a way to
take money from the taxpayers and move it to be able to do
things in areas of the country where they feel they can buy
votes. There is a book. Oh, let me find the book. I should have
had this one. already ready. I read it not that long ago. And I
should put these things up on my website, but I never remember.
Let me check this out here. Is a compelling that listen to me
typing. All right, I can't find it. Let's see, let me go to my
digital hoarders. Not that one, not that one, or that one or
that one. I ordered too much music. Yes, I do still buy music
because at some point, I will stop paying subscription fees.
So I buy the music. So I can start here. The name of the book
is unsettled with climate science, what climate science
tells us what it doesn't and why it matters by Steven Kuhn. Now
in that book, it points out and illustrates what they're looking
at when they're talking about extreme weather. And that, in
fact, we are not having more hurricanes. We're not having
more severe hurricanes. We're not having more droughts, we're
not having more floods, we're not having more tornadoes. That
when the data is looked at, over a sufficiently long period of
time, we can see that generally. Weather itself localized
weather, hurricanes, floods, heat waves, droughts, tornadoes,
there are less of those things happening than before. It
doesn't deny that maybe temperatures are rising thing
very slowly. But it does present the argument that rising
temperatures are generally good for human life, not bad. More
people die when the temperatures drop, then when the temperatures
rise.
So I would go seek out that book. Again, I'll put a link on
my website called unsettled, what climate science tells us
what it doesn't and why it matters. The author Steven
couldn't his first name is spelled STV n s t e v NSTEVEN.
Last name coonan spelled k o ni n. And it's a good book. It's in
plain language easy to understand. And just points out
all the bullshit that that you're being sold.
In this wall street journal article about climate change
being treated as a public health issue. They say minorities are
exposed to higher levels of air pollution, which may be true.
They're saying the average person of color lives in a
census tract with higher urban heat intensity now that that
just means that the living in the city, it's not the heat
intensity, that's the problem. And it used to be the problem
with lead gas, lead gasoline that was in cars, which hasn't
existed for a long time. modern cars with catalytic converters
basically put out water vapor. Cars are extremely clean
burning. There's no more lead being pumped out of out of
tailpipes. So the air and cities are much cleaner than it used to
be. If there's a problem with the air quality, it's due to
other factors. Most likely none of them due to climate change.
So they're going to open this office. And what are they going
to do to us? In the name of climate change and public
health? It's kind of all encompassing, when you think
about this, just a little bit. Climate change is global. And
climate change can mean anything. It can mean almost
anything. And you know, I mean, you've seen the news reports and
the stories. You know, you get a hurricane due to climate change.
You don't get a hurricane due to climate change. You know, you
get some some record temperature climate change, you get some
record low climate change. You get hit with a blizzard. Climate
change. So it's all encompassing. And if they're
going to make that a public health issue, then and with the
push with COVID. Okay, no, hang in there. If you can't put these
two things together, probably I'm not explaining it well. But
COVID they're pushing, or they're trying to push at least
in the United States, which I guess we seem to be fighting
back more than other countries, but the mask mandates, the
vaccine mandates. That's being pushed as a public health issue.
So now of climate change as a public health issue. What can
they make you do? What can they make you eat? What can they make
you not eat? You know, if anything, the federal
government, the US government, has been horrible at anything to
do with public health. Since the Department of Education was
formed back in the 70s. Childhood Obesity has just
exploded. And it's one of my nagging theories, just because
of the correlation and time is that when the Department of
Education was formed, that's when the federal government
started paying for school lunch. school lunch was a program
instituted largely to do something with all the excess
food being produced by the nation's farms? And what kind of
food were they pushing? They were pushing high carbohydrate
foods. Lots of sugar, lots of wheat.
They don't know what's been responsible for this increase in
obesity, nobody seems to know. But it seems to me it correlates
perfectly with providing free lunches, free breakfast. And in
some cases of free after school meal.
And you look at the standard American diet, the standard
American diet, it's terrible for people terrible for most people.
If half the country is obese, or classified as obese, there's no
way they should be eating a low fat, high carb diet, which is
what the standard American diet is. So what can they do to us
with climate change being a public health issue, when it
comes to food, they're gonna make your hamburger cost a
million dollars here. You know, right now you go to McDonald's,
and you're already spending. You know, I forget, what did I even
purchased a quarter pounder with cheese in a while, but you know,
it might be eight or $9. To get a McDonald's value meal with a
quarter pounder with cheese fries and a coke. You know,
they're gonna make that double, they're gonna make it 15 bucks,
20 bucks. Because cows are supposedly a major real problem
for climate change. So your steak, that right now might be,
you know, $15 a pound. Maybe it'll be 30 your ground beef
that you go buy in the store for maybe three bucks a pound, you
know, maybe 10 or 15 bucks a pound? Who knows? Because
they're going to be able to do anything. As long as it's a
public health issue.
You know, and then you get idiotic companies like Coca
Cola, and Microsoft. They're investing in a giant co2 vacuum
cleaner.
Unknown: This is like a giant Switzerland. And it could be one
answer to slashing Earth's carbon emissions,
Kevin Bae: return that up, we take it out of the air. So we
reverse climate change. There, this system is cleaning up some
of the 33 billion tons of they're sucking, she says we
take it out of the air so we can reverse climate change. And if
you look at this factory, there's a video I'm going to
post a video on my website. It's from the Wall Street Journal. So
probably will not be totally legal for me to post the video.
But it's important, I think, because they think this company
thinks that they're going to be able to make dioxide that humans
will release into the atmosphere by the end of the year, they're
gonna be able to suck energy, co2 out of the air and somehow
mitigate the problem. Well, if you believe it's a problem,
Unknown: companies are increasingly facing pressure
from consumers and investors to reduce their carbon footprints.
So some are turning to the carbon capture industry that's
forecasted to be worth approximately $15 billion by
2027. Now,
Kevin Bae: when you look at this,
Unknown: there's a bunch of fans in this technology. Well, Coca
Cola is purchasing the carbon that's caught. We believe it's
Kevin Bae: so Coca Cola, okay, Microsoft is investing in that
company. They're, they're an investor in the company that
will remove carbon from the air and what you see in this
factory, it's like a factory with a whole bunch of fans. And
the fans are blowing air into some substance that is supposed
to be capturing the carbon dioxide. So Microsoft is funding
this now Coca Cola Coca Cola in Switzerland is buying the co2
that's captured.
I mean, it's just it's so bizarre to me to have this
happen,
Unknown: one of the solutions to fight climate change,
but some climate experts doubt the technology can have a
meaningful impact on the environment.
Probably one of the biggest challenges here is having
captured it. What can you do with it?
We visit one of the largest open air carbon capture facilities on
the planet to see how it absorbs then sells its co2 and how that
could help company He's become cleaner.
Kevin Bae: And then they show you smokestacks. Which
smokestacks which you know, that's why they like to talk
about carbon because it puts you in the mind of this black soot
even though the smokestacks they're showing at least it's
white smoke coming out of it. But smokestacks in general you
know are not putting out carbon dioxide they're putting out
other stuff. You know, there may be carbon dioxide Miss mixed in
there but when you talk about pollutants, you know, carbon
dioxide, you don't see it, it doesn't you it's a colorless
gas, so you can't see it. And it's certainly not coming out as
white smoke out of a stack of companies are trying to remove
carbon dioxide from the air show a lot of them the one of them
here, this one here is black smoke, which, you know, is
certainly not
Unknown: carbon dioxide directly by attaching filters on trucks
and factories or by installing ventilation systems. In meeting
rooms here we basically have air being pumped inside this
chamber. But climeworks takes carbon dioxide directly out of
the atmosphere. We blow air through this collector standing
in front of the big fan. That co2 inside this box and stays
there.
Kevin Bae: sticks in stays there. I can't tell if she's
serious or not.
Unknown: Natalie cost us leads climeworks research program. She
says this facility is made up of 30 ventilators that can pull in
about 1500 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
every year
1500 times inside the collector we have a filter material, this
filter material is able to catch co2.
kasaa says the biggest challenge is making it affordable to set
up and use building and installing just one of these
ventilators here at this facility costs as much as
$220,000. And it also needs a lot more electricity. So to
clean up the amount of co2 someone in the US would
typically produce in about a month. That's everything from
commuting to work to consuming food and watching TV. The
company says it would cost around anywhere from 600 to
nearly $900
Kevin Bae: that 600 to $900 for one tonne of co2. Multiply that
by 1500. The target of course
Unknown: is to bring costs down to bring the energy requirements
down and to make it easily scalable.
So Cassius has been working on designing larger plants that
would use renewable energy sources and require less steel.
But one of the most promising ways to offset the costs has
been tapping directly into the captured co2 climate stores. The
carbon dioxide collects into these tanks, then it sells it to
this Coca Cola factory that produces bottled water. Here
recycled carbon dioxide is injected in the water to make it
Kevin Bae: recycled. recycled carbon dioxide there's nothing
recycled about it. It's captured carbon dioxide. You know
recycling brings to mind like an aluminum can that you've put in
your Recycle Bin that now gets melted down and and gets
produced into something new. Carbon dioxide is not like that
you're not they're not taking carbon and oxygen out of the
atmosphere, combining them to make co2 and then selling it.
They're just taking the air out of the air and then extracting
the co2 out of it. And co2 makes up such a tiny part of the air
out there in the world. It's the dumbest way to capture carbon
dioxide.
Unknown: 30% of our production is done with the recycled co2
from climeworks
Patrick Wyler oversees the carbon dioxide project at Coca
Cola. He says early on there were challenges like turning the
carbon dioxide into the right kind of liquefied form.
We run a lot of tests and validations just to be sure that
the quality remains on the highest level.
Wyler says using recycled co2 is significantly more expensive
than the commercial climb. The
Kevin Bae: coca core expense admitted to I just talked over
the higher mental footprint. This is like taking you know
recycled co2 is like like Coca Cola, taking water out of the
tap and selling it as recycled water
Unknown: over time he expects the cost to diminish and that
would allow the company to expand the use of recycled co2
from bottled water to other drinks like Coke.
Kevin Bae: Putting in a coke yet we look
Unknown: into further expansion.
Making drinks busy it's just one way to use recycled co2. Carbon
Capture startups have also been experimenting with creating fuel
toothpastes and plastic. Clem marks also has another way to
profit from the carbon it captures the start of cells what
it calls at Carbon removal service so that individuals or
companies like Shopify and Adi can offset their own emissions
who are flying to Majorca. And but I know it's not so good for
the environment, I really want to compensate, you can buy
carbon dioxide.
Kevin Bae: So you're just paying them you're just you're just
paying them for a credit. And they're, I mean, it's it's such
a scam. It's such a scam. So you're flying somewhere and you
say, Okay, I feel guilty about the carbon dioxide used by the
jet, even though the jet is going to go there no matter
what. So I'm going to buy this carbon offset for this company
that's going to run their fan to suck carbon dioxide out of the
air. There's no real carbon dioxide being reduced in the
atmosphere when they do this. It's just it's just the same
you're not reducing anything.
Unknown: This part of the industry is booming and fast
evolving as regulators and climate analysts debate how to
best price this type of service.
Kevin Bae: There have been a wise of here's where this woman
Sandra Kentish, chemical and biomedical engineer, Professor
University of Melbourne, she points out how stupid This is.
She doesn't say it here. But they they include her because
she points out that there's such little carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere that what this company is doing what Microsoft
is investing in, and what Coca Cola is paying for, is so
inefficient. that the best way if they're, if they're going to
do any carbon capture, the best way to do it, or I should say
carbon dioxide capture, the best way to do it as at the source.
So if you're running a factory and you're putting out x number
of tons of carbon dioxide, you're better off capturing at
the at the point when you make the emission, because once it
gets out into the air, it gets so diluted with the rest of the
oxygen and nitrogen and the other stuff that's in our, in
our atmosphere, capturing it and extracting it. It's just not
cost effective.
Unknown: Capturing the carbon dioxide that they're using.
Sandra Kentish is a professor at the University of Melbourne who
tracks and compares carbon capture systems around the
world. She says it's harder to absorb co2 from the atmosphere
rather than a direct source of pollution,
the co2 concentration in the atmosphere is only about point
04 percent point
Kevin Bae: 04 percent. That's what they're trying to capture
Unknown: cement production as an example, co2 concentrations
around 30%. So it's hundreds of times easier to capture from
something like a cement flue gas that will be for directly from
the atmosphere.
Kevin Bae: So I mean, think about how much cheaper it would
be, you know, say you're a concrete manufacturer, why would
it? I guess, because it's not their core competency or, or the
business that they're in. But they could buy some unit that
captures the carbon dioxide and bottles it up, and then they
could sell it to Coke, I think that would be a much better or
more efficient way of doing something with with the carbon
dioxide if something's going to be done with it at all. You
know, now mind you, this co2 is it's not it's not like it's
going to decrease. It's just that whoever's bottling it up
gets to sell it. You know, because if you think about it,
the concrete manufacturing company, say they put out, you
know, 1000 tons of co2. And Coca Cola buys 1000 tons of co2 from
them, puts it in their bottled water or Coca Cola, and somebody
drinks it and poof, goes right back out there into the air. How
was that? capturing it? Or, you know, offsetting it.
Unknown: This inefficiency means that to capture 1% of the
world's emissions in a year climeworks would have to build
around 800,000 ventilator 800,000
Kevin Bae: ventilator. Because I says the company's technology
can still make a difference.
Unknown: Unfortunately, the mess is already here. So we need to
take out co2
and climeworks plants to take out more co2 with the new
facility in Iceland that was built with some funding from
Microsoft. When it opens in September. The company says the
plant will be able to absorb about four times more than its
Swiss facility. But this time the carbon dioxide won't be
recycled. It'll be injected in the ground and turned into a
rock. These are these white crystals.
So this co2 is actual co2 which was in the air
Kevin Bae: and this is holding up this little rock. It's just
got like little white stains in it here. This is the co2 bring
your waste to reduce their own emissions. That's the end of the
video. It's a ridiculous video. It would be funny, I guess if it
wasn't so sad. But they're coming for us, the United States
government is coming for us in the in the guise of climate
change in the guise of helping your fellow man instead of doing
it in a way that's more natural for human beings to help each
other, you know, through just doing what humans doing and
selling what they do. It's called capitalism. You know,
this this whole? What did they call this stupid office? Office
of climate change and health equity? What the fuck is health
equity? Can somebody tell me what health equity is? Am I
supposed to make myself less healthy to give it to somebody
else? How do you give somebody help? How do you make health
equitable?
I don't know. I really don't know. That's why I'm gonna take
a trip. And then do some hikes. Get out in the in the nice,
cool, crisp mountain air and leave this stuff behind at least
until I get off the mountain. That's the end of this. Because
that is all I've got, or actually that it's titled,
that's all I got. So I gotta come up with a better way to end
it. And I've been saying that for weeks, weeks and weeks and
weeks. But we'll see. I'm going to try to podcast from the road
and see if I can do a better job of it than I tried the last time
which didn't really work out but such as life. So that's it. I'll
talk to you next week. That's all I got.