Tucker [00:00:00] In the United States, we often refer to our main sources of energy as fossil fuels. Oil, natural gas, coal. They're fossil fuels because they come from fossils, ancient organic material, forests, jungles, plankton, dinosaurs held under the ground for millennia. They transform into oil, gas and coal. Everybody thinks that's true. On the other hand, there's evidence that maybe it's not the whole story. If that's where fossil fuels come from, if that's how hydrocarbons are made, then how come they're found so deep under the oceans and at the top of the Earth? How come one of Saturn's moons, according to scientists, has more oil and natural gas than Earth? Were there dinosaurs and planktons and forests at one point on one of Saturn's moons? Probably not. So if all hydrocarbons aren't from fossils, where are they from? And why isn't this commonly known? And what are the implications of it? And what does it tell us about our modern climate change policy? These are not just esoteric questions. They're central questions. Actually, as we chart the future of energy usage in the world. Willie Soon has been thinking about this for a long time. He's an astrophysicist and geoscientist who's spent 31 years at Harvard. He recently left, and he joins us here. Doctor Soon, thank you so much.
Dr Willie Soon [00:01:28] Thank you, Tucker, a blessing to be able to come on your show.
Tucker [00:01:31] Well, it's a blessing to have you. And this is such an interesting question with so many implications. Um, and I want to spend most of our time talking about the implications, but just to the strict question of where hydrocarbons come from. It sounds like they're not necessarily all from ancient forests or plankton or dinosaurs, are they?
Dr Willie Soon [00:01:49] Yes. The story can be a bit long, so give me a few minutes to explain. You are certainly right, but most important to clarify is that the information that is found on the largest moon on Saturn, which is called Titan, is actually results from NASA, European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency who built this spacecraft called Cassini. And actually one of my thesis advisor committee is actually built the UV spectrometer. But the one that they use to discover this, basically the ocean liquid form of methane, which is in ethane form, which is much more complicated than hydrocarbon, is whole ocean of it, because Titan is in such a way that is very cold, by the way, it's always -290 degree Fahrenheit. Hint hint hint, where is the global warming there right, if is full of methane then, right. That's another problem because it's far away from the sun. That's what it is. And clearly that the question of a biogenic method, which mean, dont you, no need of any biology is true because we know, actually one experimental experiment was done in 2009. It was done in Swedish Royal Academy, one of those group, but it's done by one Russian leader. He was able to show that if you squeeze methane, CH4 in chemical formula. So four hydrogen one carbon, squeeze them in a form that in which to simulate the condition of the Earth, menthol which is 1800 miles deep kind of below the surface because the Earth is deeper. Right. And within this 18, but basically the condition there is only about 40 to 150 miles in that you actually can form complex hydrocarbon. You got benzene, you got ethane, you got all these other stuff forming so that prove beyond doubt that you have such a way to make this plus that Python proof beyond doubt. You actually see methane also in all the atmosphere. Jupiter, you know, you even find benzene in the rocks of, uh, Mars. And then for me, astrophysicists, I can tell you even more. You find this complex hydrocarbon called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. It's another one of those complex hydrocarbon that actually you found in interstellar space between space, within stars, intergalactic space. These are everywhere because temperature, there are coal and probably the right pressure condition, all these, well, complex hydrocarbons.
Tucker [00:04:22] It's it's kind of incredible because all of us and including myself until very recently, assumed that all of our main energy sources are these so-called fossil fuels, and of course their existence is going to be limited by the amount of fossils, by the amount of decaying organic material.
Dr Willie Soon [00:04:40] Not so.
Dr Willie Soon [00:04:44] A lot, I think this one fit into a paradigm a famous economist that I like very much. His name is, Simon. Do you know about this guy named Simon?
Tucker [00:04:55] Julian Simon.
[00:04:55] Juian Simon. Yeah. The key guy. University of Illinois and then Maryland. He was the same, he was the guy who said that the ultimate resource of humanity or Earth is actually not all this material thing like uranium gold. Because uranium, there is far more uranium in the oceans than on the land. Right? You have 4.5 billion tons of uranium in the ocean. You have only 17 million tons of gold, copper. What do you want on the ocean? It's all there. Except there in very dilute form. Clearly. So the ultimate resource actually is not that, its the human mind, its the innovation part of it. I think I like that principle a lot, and it fits very well in terms of saying that it's all a matter of cause. Even oil, most I don't know if any idea of, you know, the audience know that 50 to 60% of the, actually all the oil that you already drilled, the drill hole. You can only pull out 40 to 50% of it. 60% of that remains in it because simply because there's not enough pressure to get it up. This is why the the idea of a biogenic oil is interesting is true. Clearly true. It's all a matter of course. Really, because this thing has to form way inside the Earth, the mantle, which is 50 to 100, 100 miles. Right. Human. How deep have we ever drill? Only the skin, which is only five miles maximum five to, you know, six mile, basically. That's at most that we can drill. And then all this stuff had to permeate into the reservoir. I got this information from the top people that physically have to look for oil every day. One of my friends, Joseph Leimkuhler from beacon energy, offshore energy. Those are the guys who work day in and day out to bring us the energy, actually. The oil that we need.
Tucker [00:06:42] So why don't most people know this? Why do most people think that the the gasoline in their car was by definition-
Dr Willie Soon [00:06:50] Have to be limited? Yeah.
Tucker [00:06:52] Yeah. That there's that there's just a tiny amount and it's going away. We'll never find more.
Dr Willie Soon [00:06:57] The world is full of untruth and half truth. Right. That's a whole problem. Right? That's why for so long, even the idea that we are not limited and bounded by availability of, let's say gasoline, petroleum or coal, coal, now, they won't allow us to use, right. As you know, in Cop meeting in Dubai that just ended a day ago, they just physically declared them so that we should stop using fossil fuel, basically petroleum, natural gas and even coal. All right, these people are insane, I really insane. I think they're going to harm more people with their own delusion. Plus, they always remember, these are people who actually don't represent the majority. Since when has this put up the word, it's always about this minority, the tyranny of the few, always robbing the whole census, the good census of the good people. This is part of the reason why, as a scientist, I also speak out. I feel I'm not afraid of anything, except for just telling the truth. And I'm glad to have this opportunity to say such things in your show.
Tucker [00:07:54] So, I mean, if we haven't been told the truth about where hydrocarbons come from, and we haven't, I mean I've never met a single person in my life who said, wait a second, they're not all fossil fuels. Then we keep hearing there's a scientific consensus on climate change, every scientist believes the same thing about it. Believes Al Gore and John Kerry. Maybe that's not true either.
Dr Willie Soon [00:08:19] Oh, thatI can tell you, please. Thank you for asking that question, Tucker. I've been working on this subject of CO2 causing climate change, or what other factors we can ask that caused climate to change, for close to as long as since my postdoctoral year, 1991, I was about 32, 31 years, 32 years. And on this question, I think we have a very definitive answer. What we know now is CO2 ain't gonna cause nothing. It's not gonna change much of the climatic system, which means it won't change the speed of the hurricane. It won't change how fast or how frequent tornado's form. It won't even actually make any difference with the polar bear population. It's all conservation issue, right? On polar bear. It won't even cause how much fish you don't catch. Or catch, you know. It won't even cause what they call ocean acidification. It won't even cause this problem that they claim. It's all artificial. Everything they do, it's all a dream from their model and the tyranny of the few again, that those few people just dream up this scary story. That it just ain't true. And then, when you come down to the most responsible group for this kind of bad stuff, I was reminded by my colleague Doctor Ronan Connolly and Michael Connolly, my two coworkers with me on my group is to say that since, you know, since I work so carefully and I have about more than 100 scientists the last three years alone working with me, so I don't speak on behalf of them. I speak on behalf of myself. My view is that the UN, IPCC, United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of the primary problem, which means they're have been misleading people. They've been using authority of science, which is not true, right? It's all governmental hackers, basically. Right. People like John Kerry, who I guess can barely take a proper physics class, who keep claiming that greenhouse effect is so simple. Right. And then he refused to explain. How does it work, right? I mean, he did all of that. That is very terrible. That really embarrassing to America. He did that in Bali, in Indonesia several years back. That is just so embarassing.
Tucker [00:10:27] Do you think he can explain how it works?
Dr Willie Soon [00:10:28] No, I don't think so. Even Al Gore, who claimed to be, knows something about science. I challenge Al Gore. I did some of that, with in his face actually. I have, I was lucky enough to be in one of those Wall Street Journal eco conference and I was giving, you know, setting up with all of UC Santa Barbara students. Please make sure when the questions come out, give me the mic. I was making friends with them the night before. I explained all my details of my work, so I got the mike and ask questions about Al Gore, because one of the primary sad thing that they refused to recognize that I know you know that in even grade school, uh, sciences, CO2 is a gas of life. When you have more CO2, the plant kingdom, the whole ecology, even the oceans going to have more basically ability, more fishes, more everything.
Tucker [00:11:22] More Life.
Dr Willie Soon [00:11:22] More life essentially. That's why it's called gas of life. And these people want to demonize it as some gas that can cause global warming, can cause hurricanes to run faster or weaker. I don't know what they want to have more rain, more droughts and all this other nonsense that they claim. All of that, its just insult. That's the problem. By the way, this is how serious I am. I check everything they say, I check. As a scientist, you cannot just dismiss them. You cannot laugh at them. You cannot, you know, chide them. You cannot just make joke of them. You check everything. So as a very serious scientist and I published scientific paper refuting all of this argument, scientific papers maybe mean nothing to the average people. But it's really important its like a document that you have the document, and then put out the proper scientific arguments about what is right, what is wrong. So that's what we have been doing at my particular Santa course series, dash sign dot com. So anybody who wants more information about this, please go to the website. Right. And study what we do there, because we are the one that is truly independent from any funding agency, any money that you could possibly give me. Like Bill Gates, please don't give me money. Thank you. And Al Gore. Please don't give me money or don't give me any money if you tell me what to do, you know, even some of your money, I might not want it. But the point is that, I want to be independent. Just like you in the media. I want to be fearless. I have just set my own agenda. You don't tell me what to research either. I research what I want to research. So we've been researching on many, many topics. So on the climate change issue, I'm fully convinced after all these years, even though we may not know exactly what is causing climate change, we suspect its the sun. We have a lot of evidence to show that it's probably the sun. Very high percentage, you know, like was I would say 90% we're sure, but not 100%. But, we know carbon dioxide is not the gas. It's not the what you call the, like your thermometer in your room, can adjust up and down that you can set the temperature to be whatever level you want it. First of all, they can never tell us what temperature do they want it at. What is the temperature you want to set the global temperature? Al Gore has not been able to answer that. John Kerry has not been able to answer that. Because we know the temperature from the coldest in Siberia to the desert in Sahara. I mean, these are huge, at least 100 degree or more kind of differences.
Tucker [00:13:45] Yes.
Dr Willie Soon [00:13:46] I mean, who are you to tell me which temperature is the correct temperature? Where you guys are talking like that, they are talking as if they are pseudo god, they are God themselves. I mean, these people are so ambitious that in some sense, I think we have to keep the ambition down a little bit. I mean, these people are not content that just like what you put on there. You cannot be ambitious when you are content, but these people are so out of their mind in some sense that I think is misleading. And somebody had to speak out against them. I think you are one of those who consistently point out the hypocrisy, right? And I really find that the whole problem of this global warming is a complete nothing, which means we should do nothing about it. Just go on and live life and adapt to it. Right?
Tucker [00:14:27] So what I, here is, of course I agree completely. But here's what I don't understand. Global temperatures have dramatically fluctuated within, the period that humans left records. I mean, not that long ago. I mean, there are cities underwater because sea levels have risen within recorded history. The signs of the glaciers are all around us.
Dr Willie Soon [00:14:50] Yes.
Tucker [00:14:51] So that was all before the internal combustion engine? How do they explain that?
Dr Willie Soon [00:14:56] This is the problem. They admitted to a lot of it, they willingly admit that you can read all.
Tucker [00:15:02] You can't deny it. I mean, we had glaciers and then they melted because of global warming.
Dr Willie Soon [00:15:05] Because they have cause to confess. I mean, these are the confessions. Time is the sun. Actually, that does a lot of this. The glacial like, like this period called Little Ice Age from about 1300 to 1900. Right. You know, very cool. And then there's a beautiful, warm period from 880 to about 1200. You know, it was warm. I mean, you can grow wine in England, right? And now you cannot grow wine, right? Things like that. I mean, Greenland was green back then. But now it's full of glaciers, ice is coming in. So what are you talking about exactly? And it was the sun. Actually, the sun fit quite well as far as we know. In terms of did that, deducing the information of how does the sun how bright was it, how dim was it basically just like that, just the amount of light coming out from the sun. Very tiny percentage, by the way. Very small is on the order of less than a percent. But it's more than enough because there's another effect that is very, very important. It's basically because the sun, the earth is forced to go around the sun, and then the orbit change ever so slightly because of perturbation from all the other planets. Know Jupiter, Saturn and even Venus and Mars, they are actually controlling what we do. And the moon as well is very important. But that other factors, the orbits plus the changes of the sun by itself, between how bright, how dim it is. These two factors can explain just about everything that we know. All the data that I have, actually. So I've been stuck. This is why I was so fascinated in in studying this issue. I spend my whole life actually studying this. Nothing but doing just this. And the more I understand, the more I think that, wow, it's just a gap that we fill in. We have too much information that. And then these people come along and say that CO2 is causing everything. I check. Oh, maybe they're right. I check. As a scientist, I have to check them. But then it's not even close. I mean, these people are talking about things, that is, I mean, you there's a famous phrase by a very famous, Wisconsin meteorologist. His name is professor Reed Bryson. He's one of the fathers of climatology, reallly. He just said just say that you go out, and then you might as well, Ii you think CO2 is so, then you might as well spit into the air and see what happened to the air flow. He was just basically saying that CO2 is nothing, can not cause the climate to change, or anything. It doesn't change anything actually, it's the sun. Why you think the most important things that you should talk about, they never talk about that. They always want to average the data. The most important thing they should talk about, you know, what is the season? Every I have no two winters are the same. No two summers are the same. And they never explain that it's actually the orbits with the sun changing it ever so slightly. I'm not talking. I have published papers, papers and papers and papers like that on all these to show and document why and how. That's what the fun part of doing science is, not only not chit chatting, hand-waving like crazy. You have to be. Even though I may look like one now, but I always very calm when you write down you know, like my every time I have to write a paper, I always tell my wife, please don't disturb me for a few days. I'l be back. Things like that. Of course, working at home. But I'll, I'll be back.
Tucker [00:18:12] So is there any way to predict what climate change will be based on-
Tucker [00:21:50] Why would they try and change that?
Dr Willie Soon [00:21:52] Oh, I don't know. Because they want to say the CO2 is controlling everything. They kind of want to have CO2 as the prime driver of everything. This is part of the problem that I find.
Tucker [00:22:01] Well, that's not science. That's lying.
Dr Willie Soon [00:22:03] Uh, it's bad. It's bad in science. This is why in science, now, I rather say this thing outright. I want, I rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned. Because these people are just offering you the answer. And then you should just shut up. Like you say, don't ask any questions, don't criticize, don't even bother to think. Just accept what we say. I mean, you may have known actually, if you want to get there, I can talk about this because this is rather famous because the other person is still around. He's the one who's shouting up and down these two last two days to say that, oh, we must stop fossil fuel. GOP is so evil, we must stop all of them because we are the, GOP are the evil political bodies in America that causes all this fossil fuel to be, we are using fossil fuel and all that. His name is Professor Michael Mann. He's at University of Pennsylvania. Yes. He created a paper. We call it a hockey schtick. You know, it's schtick paper.
Tucker [00:22:56] The hockey schtick.
Dr Willie Soon [00:22:57] He basically said that the temperature history, first of all, the true temperature history looked like this. That it was very warm from 880, let's say warm, warm. And then it cools down, about 1300 started to go down. Cool. And then since about 1900 century it started to warm back up. Way, way before CO2 is important, okay. That's another puzzle that they never want to explain. Now look like this. That's the real story. Michael Mann came along said that well, he use mathematical algorithm. Okay, you can use fancy words, but believe me, it's just mathematical algorithm that he produced a stick for one 880 to about 1980 its all flat because it changed. It changed very tiny amount. So small that actually it doesn't mean anything. Point one or point two degrees Celsius. So small doesn't mean the one that I talk about to change is one degree at least, you know, so five, six times bigger than what he say. And he just say these like this. And they one part because like the blade, which is the warming because of rising carbon dioxide. But he forgot to explain to you this, this warming of the temperature started way before even the human part of the atmospheric carbon dioxide could be anything meaningful. This is part of the problem. It's all been crazy from day one when I, when this thing was published in 1999, I was the first few guys who raised a hand at the back of the class and said, excuse me, Professor Man, he used to be my friend, by the way, now he will never answer me. He used to exchange email with me because, you know, we more or less share the same passion. Want to understanding. Now he just say that his story is the only one that is correct. But it's not barred out by any data that we know, that's the problem. It's all mathematical products. This is how scary the whole world can be and unite the nation. The IPCC group that I mentioned promoted his work. Turned him into a major hero because he has solved one of this old, puzzle problems that climatologist over millennia has been trying to solve, since the day of the Greeks. To try to understand how climate changed, and this guy come along, say that it looks like this, only CO2 does it, and that's the problem. So, I mean-.
Dr Willie Soon [00:25:08] It just ain't so.
Tucker [00:25:08] So what you're I mean, some of this is very complex, but in the way you're describing it, if he's saying the warming period began before there was a meaningful addition of CO2 into the atmosphere caused by humans, even I can understand that.
Dr Willie Soon [00:25:22] Yes, that's the truth.
Tucker [00:25:24] So I would assume that lots of scientists who do this for a living might be asking the same question. Why don't they speak up?
Dr Willie Soon [00:25:31] This is the problem. The whole problem in science these days is related to funding, how science is funded, that natural, that philosophy. I wish to not get too much into it. This is part of the reason why I want to be totally independent. I get out of this whole system right? But it's how science is about funding. Even if you don't get money directly, it will influence the graduate students. And on and on and so forth. All these other related effects, you know, and many people are afraid to speak out. But I tell you, if you really put all the scientists to an honest kind of polling, if you're science. But science is not about polling too. All it takes is one to be correct. That's the problem, right? Einstein, when he formulated the famous general relativity or special relativity, actually, that was criticized that basically talk about speed or light, a constant. So time and space are relative. Right. Time can be dilated. Space is also slightly different because the speed of light is constant. Special relativity is based on that concept. Then 100 of this Berlin academicians trying to wrote a pamphlet saying that Einstein is wrong but never offer why. What is the details that is wrong? And then Einstein indeed answer like this. Why would you need a hundred? You know, if I were to be wrong, one would suffice. I mean, that's it. That's the theme of the science. Science is so bad because it's so totally upside down, inside out. Covid is another case, you know. So let's stick to climate stuff. People are afraid to speak up. I don't know why, actually. I was young. I have to worry about my three kids where they eat and all that stuff. You know, buffet all the time. Just kidding. The greatest American invention. What, are you kidding me? This is truly entrepreneur, by the way. Anyway, we have enough food. No problem. That's my food. I don't think it's also a problem in this world. Even material resources. Right? All you thing is have to think like Julian Simon type. You know, we can generate everything. The only problem we have is lack of imagination. Narrow mindedness and all this. And the America sentiment. Put it this way. America is among the best hope for humanity. You know, to put forward we have the foundation document the Constitution, for God's sake. That is the most beautiful thing that we could ever imagine. And why don't we use it properly? Right. People just trashing on it every day, right? Anyway, I digress. Anyway, so yes, I think science is a problem now because of funding structure. People won't speak up. I don't know why. I think it's natural for people to be afraid. But you can only be afraid for so long. For me, I was frustrated because I was not afraid. Ever since I was in science. Because I'm in science becuase I love science. This is why, from my own perspective, I'm just very sad to see that science is being trampled by all these other non-science forces. You know, that's why when I look at Covid also, I cannot stand by and say nothing on Covid 19. There are so many thing wrong with it. That's why I want to pre-advertise with my group series dash sign dot com. We work with a bunch of people. One of the good guests for you potential, will be Professor Harvey Rich. He say he's been interviewed by you twice? Even guys like Bob Malone. We work together, produce a paper, so when the paper comes out, hopefully we can have them on your show so that you can tell more story. We want to provide the medical community or even the world to document this episode of Dark Ages in Medical Sciences. Something went terribly wrong. The mask never really worked, the vaccine never really worked. All of this doesn't work. The lockdown doesn't work. And why are we doing this? Now they're trying to scare with another newscast. All over the world now, newspaper this morning, I just got one newspaper from my sister who's had a oh, they start masking up in Malaysia now because cases increase. The usual story. I laugh, in a serious way because I see this is as another one of those attempts again to try to scare people. So I do digress now, science is just so complicated now that every aspect of the science that I look at, I have become very unhappy. Science is no longer able to do where science lead. This is the theme of my series that science.com with few only colleagues. I don't have enough funding. I just hope to get as many donations right away. Donate. But don't tell us anything. Do anything. Trust us because we are decent scientists. You can look at our publication record that we are able to produce the most interesting and pure work like IPCC. They have to reply to us. Two years ago we published a very important paper. One of my journalists friend, a colleague, wrote a paper, newspaper article, and then he go and ask IPCC, why are you guys not signing this paper? They use the excuse to say that, these people publish late. We have a deadline here, red line. Or if you don't publish before some date, like 2021, okay, like January of 2021, then we won't include your work. So we publish in August. So they wouldn't include my work, but they forgot to say that they are, they claim them, so they proclaim are you, IPCC proclaim that we have to be the best of the scientific world, produce the most updated and all that. But immediately their report came out, they are already outdated because they haven't included my work, which is the most comprehensive review of how the sun effects the climate. That's the work we did. So this year, just two months ago, we published two more papers convincingly show that even the thermometer data that they show you is not what it is. It's actually not measuring climate. It's measuring urban heat and island changes. Something that I think everybody can understand. If you go to the inner part of the big city like TC's, one of the best example I have graph to show that you go to inner city is much warmer than outside because of concrete retaining all the heat, or you change all the surfaces of the, you know the service become impervious, which means there's no breathing, no water going in and out, things like that. And it's what we show is that it's not a phenomenon just on local signs. You average over this. You can see the effect all over the northern hemisphere. This is very powerful new work that we show.
Tucker [00:31:34] And concrete and asphalt raise the temperatures more than CO2.
Dr Willie Soon [00:31:38] And that's what they are measuring. And then they tell you this is global temperature. And then we provide an alternative. We say, why don't we go look at rural station that is available. And guess what our result found. Completely different story from the picture, the narrative that's coming out from this data set. Thermometer data that shows that combining urban and rural okay, we show rural only we can tell you that you can immediately offer a different answer. For example, it's the sun that does it, that does it. We show that, but we don't know that is the answer. We just simply show you that the IPCC and all these so-called scientists from NASA, NOAA, and all of them are not doing their due diligence. They are putting you very bad quality data products. Not only that, they hide it. Some of them is so difficult to get the data. Okay.
Tucker [00:32:30] But it should never be difficult to get data.
Dr Willie Soon [00:32:32] I'm sorry. Tucker. This is how the problem in science now is so many.
Tucker [00:32:36] I thought transparency of data was science.
Dr Willie Soon [00:32:38] I was hoping. I always believed in that. That's why everything that we publish is there. Because we got it from somewhere. Here's the data. Use it. Check us. If we're wrong, tell us we're wrong. That is one thing that I can always promise you. I'm not here to try to gain favor or anything. If I'm wrong and I don't know, I tell you. I dont know Tucker. A lot of these things, are really under a lot of careful consideration. Really a lot of deep meditation, thinking about this topic. What I think is very problematic. I'm so glad to have this opportunity to go this far to to be able to talk for this long. Now, is that really the IPCC product is actually substandard. Of course, they have a different mandate. Yeah a mandate is political, right to provide policy. We understand that. But how many people really understand that pure science doesn't support anything they say? I mean, in the beginning of this Cop 28 meeting, the chairman or this guy from UAE, United Arab Emirates, the chairman, I don't know his name, Sultan Al Djaber, something. He was saying that there's no scientific reasoning to say that we should phase out fossil fuels. He's right! But then he back off because of all this, everybody's herd mentality. Everybody's doing a mad thing. Everybody science is not about that. They all agree. Now they all agree to phase out, right, for some kind of agreement. You know, that everybody declare that they're going to do that, that they're going to phase off. I don't even know how actually. Why are you doing this? And then one of the claims is that they're going to triple the amount of solar and wind power. That is a sad story. You know, of the amount that we spend that we can document some three, $3.6 trillion dollars. They spend almost $2 trillion on solar and wind power over the last, I don't know, five, ten years or so. And then what they did is that they spend more of the money 2 trillion on solar and wind. And solar and wind can only account for only 3% of the world power, 85% from fossil fuel. As you can see, hydropower and nuclear. Nuclear is another puzzle. I checked with all my nuclear expert friends, that been working for years on nuclear power. Nuclear power is one of the saddest story. I believe that we actually have almost a solution in hand. Not the fusion, of course, is the, you know, the fast reactor or the good generation of the of nuclear power, peaceful use of that won't even generate nuclear weapon. We can do all of that technology. The only thing barrier is red tapes environmentally scare of radiation. All these are the problem. We almost have all of that in in hand. The power can last. One estimate shows that if we were to use it at the demand of that by 2050, we can have enough power for 2700 years. That's far more than any of the fossil fuel can promise. And then, and we are still not doing it. We are not doing. America is so far behind now we are. We just make one in Georgia, one of the nuclear plant. There's so over cost because of all the red tape. That is so embarrassing. Their numbers, I mean its costing 1000 or 2000 times even more than what Korea and, you know, even Korea now is, is a major guy who make this nuclear power plant for, for any country who wants to do it. Right. I mean, Korea, India, and they are making at much cheaper cost. And the design French design not the best. Right. French. They are doing that and we're not doing it. China of course left and right. Doing that. But we're not doing anything. Oh we tried to tell you that we got to shut off fossil fuel, increase solar and wind. Are you joking? Even three times more will be 9% I don't know. Can you turn on your light only 9%? Now you should shut all this light off. No, you're overusing it.
Tucker [00:36:25] And it destroys the actual environment.
Dr Willie Soon [00:36:28] Exactly.
Tucker [00:36:28] Wind farms, Solar farms.
Dr Willie Soon [00:36:28] This is a kind of a very bad incentive that they don't realize is about this kind of people. They are so out of their mind, in my view, that they really should be cautious. Somebody should just, on the hip, guys don't keep saying those things. You better think twice or consult somebody that knows something that is honest, you know,
Tucker [00:36:51] You spent 31 years at Harvard. Would you be able to say this out loud at Harvard?
Dr Willie Soon [00:36:56] Actually, back then I also didn't care. But most of the time I get called into the director's office this and that. They always trying to tell, oh, why are you saying that? Why are you saying this? I say, well, I'm a scientist. I should say whatever I want to say. Not only that, the problem in when I was at Harvard, part of the reason I quit, as I tried to explain, is about chap requirement. But another one is a bit of censorship. I can only do certain things. I cannot do certain things. Like I would never be able to write a paper on Covid 19. I would never be able to work on, let's say, environmental air pollution issues, you know, like, you know, so-called Nox and Sox and all these other thing on Mercury and things like that. I have a lot, I study a lot on those issues because I personally are concerned, so I dig into the literature, one thing after another. Basically because I sleep very little, so I really do a lot of things. I flip every rock pebbles, anything you want. So I study a lot. I produce a result that is good enough, that can be making a lot of scientific, but I never publish them because they simply won't allow.
Tucker [00:37:55] They wouldn't allow you?
Dr Willie Soon [00:37:57] Yes, it's about a allowing because they say it doesn't fit the theme of the center for astrophysics. So I don't want to talk back about the institution, but it is the finest astrophysics institution in the world in terms of instrument building, in terms of technology. We can produce the best. You know, you often look at the the X-ray picture of the sun. Those are from very fine camera that we build that with multi coding layers with. Because the x ray they come in very slowly and then they, they're going to diffuse come up. But we make very fine way to catch them so they can come up. So the image are crystal clear. You can see all the structure on the sun is made by my center. They are they are good scientists. Except that when it come down to a larger picture of science, shush, don't say this, don't say that. This and that, and then all of that. This is why, even at Harvard, I quit taking money from NASA and NSF, all these other place in 2004, because I beginning to think that science being so unaccountable, funded by taxpayer that all these people, it's so unconscionable. So I personally chose that, that is nobody to blame but myself. But I chose to take only from foundation who are willing to give me money. Right. So I wrote those kind of proposal and then got to go to the director's office, this and that. Right. I have a very, very happy and fruitful career. Everybody can look up my publication list, its very long. And not only that, it's not the number that counts, it's the quality of the paper. I always want to remind people I don't like talking about how many thousands of paper you write. This and that, its not important. Which paper, that is really important for certain issues. That's important that you, if you are able to show that, that's good. That's what I mean. All my papers are basically under a lot of this serious, serious thinking and serious evaluation, checking and rechecking before I would care to write about anything because you don't want to write anything that is wrong tomorrow.
Tucker [00:39:48] Of course.
[00:39:49] Something that can, right, but science is basically garbage can now. This scientific papers. I categorically would even make this statement. I would make the statement that about 80 to 90% of the paper published in so-called climate science today, should not be published. But, everybody have NSF grant, everybody have all this grant. You see how the inflation goes. You know, just like the other day. You hear that, Yale University, you know, a large part of it, like most of the students on, 20, 22 or something, all got great, A grade, you know, great. And it diluted the great. But Harvey Rich assured me that in medical sciences and hot sciences, Harvey Rich is the professor at Yale University. He teach in the medical school. So he say no, not true. So he tried to assure me he has quality. Maybe not in his class, but Harvey, not in any other class, right? Anyway.
Tucker [00:40:41] So I want to ask you this is it kind of last topic which is not related to this, but we talked about it off the air, and I think it's really interesting. You were telling me that you see God or evidence of God in math.
Dr Willie Soon [00:40:55] Well-
Tucker [00:40:57] Can you explain what you were saying? And maybe I misread what you were saying.
Dr Willie Soon [00:41:00] No no, you did not. I mean, I have been closer and closer to God in the sense that because it takes me a long time, I'm rather rebellious, you know, I have to say, damn it, God, you've got to prove it to me. Show it to me, buddy. Just kidding. Oh. I'm sorry. To anybody, I will offend. But I really say it in that way. You know, you talk to yourself in a sense, but in many, many moments in history or physics or mathematics, things come out. You see mathematics, you know, it's this very pure word that it seems to have no connection to.
Tucker [00:41:31] Yes. That's right.
Dr Willie Soon [00:41:31] It's true. Its complex numbers, its of them is. But they appear in quantum mechanics. Right. It's so beautiful. But one of the things that sometimes you see in the equation is so amazing when you formula, you know, maybe it is not right. Maybe its this and that maybe, you know, you doubt yourself. But one of the most beautiful equation was the one that derived by Paul Dirac is a professor at Cambridge University. But he retired in Florida. By the way, he died in Florida. In Tallahassee. I mean, it's a refuge for him because he doesn't like to talk. He would sit there for five days and don't talk. One day, all of a sudden he talk. But anyway, he formulated, he's a beautiful man. He, you know, Paul Dirac. He formulate this relativistic equation of, for electrons. But in one of the equations, the solution come out to be a negative sign. Not only that, there's a square root involved. So it's strange behavior. There's a negative sign in law, but it has an exact property, like an electron and all that stuff. How come everybody say Ukraine is stupid? Isn't that right? He's not even wait, he didn't, no sweat buddy. He just say "I am right". Many years later, few years later, it is shown in Caltech by Carl Anderson to show there's actually such a thing called positron. You know the opposite, the brothers of electron. That's such a thing. And then if you ask yourself, how is it possible? Right. That's something this is out of, out of nowhere. Where does this thing come from? And then in mathematical sciences, there's a lot of things like this. Like job geometry. There's an even more famous thing about in geometry is called Calabi-Yau manifold that related to string theory. This thing was basically a revisit of Einstein's general relativity equation, asking itself whether is it possible to have close curvature in space time that you actually don't require even gravity to be there? And they show that Calabi was trying to prove this. Yao one of the great mathematicians. He's at Harvard, but he retired. Now he go to China, right. He was the one who tried to disprove this thing, but he turns out to be true. That is true that you can have close curvature space time that without gravity even. That added even more rich in this world that from mathematics to real world, we already having a hard time understanding Einstein and this guy added even more. And his discovery was in the 70s and things like that, you know, so there are so many example, an incident like this just have to tell you that you have to bow down. You have to occasionally take a deep breath, you know, and maybe some ever presence of this forces, this forces that allow us to illuminate our life. And I tell you, God has given us this, all the light that tell us that we have to follow the light and do the best we can, rather than every day devouring planet Earth, saying that we are the Satan. We are the evil people. You know, these people are constantly trying to, you know, make all of us a lesser human being. I would never allow them anyway. So good luck. You know, for those people like Al Gore and all them who think that they're high and mighty right, and trying to always, always lecture us on on, got to cut down on fossil fuel because we're going to hurt the planet Earth. I say, Al Gore, do you ever think twice? Who are you to think that you can actually try to save the planet Earth, even because they always use the word I'm trying to save the planet Earth. I don't know who gives them the right to save the planet Earth. Same with this experiment that they're trying to do, by the way, the experiment to say that we must cut now CO2 emission. I told you CO2 is good for, you know for life. Because I asked Al Gore, indeed, when I asked Al Gore, the question in UC Santa Barbara is what, is that CO2 is gas of life. Who give you the audacity to cut down this then? And you? Are you going to be responsible for the ecological and humanitarian, all this crisis. Even we know, rising CO2 affect even plants. I don't know, especially food production. Right? Maybe not exact number we know, but it does positively, right. We have technology to help it better seed, better all this fertilization, all this other thing. But who give them the idea to do that, to cut down it, because it's generally going to be good for life because you have to push them around because nobody should give them authority. So far, I don't think anyone can answer that question for me. So I tell them to please bow down to God. Really answer to that question first before you do anything else, because it's ridiculous for them to keep the claim that they have the upper moral and ethical high ground, to try to prescribe everybody to live in certain condition that they choose, but they themselves don't follow the rules. And they tell us to take a bus. Al Gore always tell me, even tells me when to take a bus, Al Gore. My God, I say, Al Gore, you take a bus from Tennessee to Massachusetts. I'll be waiting for you down there, please. I mean, this guy is out of this world man. I'm sorry, Al Gore, but you can still call me.
Tucker [00:46:35] Can you, really soon. Thank you. But before you go, last thing for viewers who want to know more about what you do, can you say once again where they can read it.
Dr Willie Soon [00:46:46] Yes. Please. I hope that, I don't disappoint anyone, but please come to series dash sign dot com. And I want to make one plug for my good friend, Hal Shurtleff. As I get older and older, including my own kids. Three kids has been going to the cam constitution at New Hampshire. And we also wanted to invited Tucker Carlson to come, because Vivek Ramaswamy came last summer. And because we are very small group, we are a tiny little group called Cam Constitution. So cam constitution.net. We offer, basically family kind of a Christian kind of a background, but we don't talk about Christ all the time. But we talk about Bibles, we talk about Constitution, we talk about science. So I'm the science instructor. I've been doing that for almost six, seven years now. So I've been doing every year I will give 1 or 2 classes. Depends on how many, whatever they want me to do, I will do. And my own kids came to those things. And then, you know, we play music. We have campfire. It's a family event. Used to be this focus on kids. But this day I'm sorry, too many adults started to come. And so we have even people like my good friend, Lloyd Christopher, among them from England. He spoke twice. So small little group. But if anybody who thinks that, you know, you have the time and even come and learn what we do here and emulate in your own city and towns and all that, you know, people from Wisconsin, please come. People from California, please come. You know, we have it in New Hampshire every year, every summer we have this camp. And this is a very good thing. So cam constitution dot net. Okay. And I talk to your friend Vince, uh, Allison from Maryland. I also call him before I came. He's one of the good guys, right? Yeah.
Tucker [00:48:27] Amazing. Willie Soon. That was the most interesting conversation I've heard in a long time.
Dr Willie Soon [00:48:31] Well, thank you for your time.
Tucker [00:48:33] I appreciate it. Thank you.
Dr Willie Soon [00:48:34] Thanks.
www.livescience.com
