This was an outstanding episode of the Energy Realities podcast with our special Guest,
. He has been on the podcast before, and this time was a great treat for our listeners, and the comments from the live audience was fantastic!This was very enlightening and entertaining, as we are seeing a change in the world, and it normally starts with banks and insurance companies.
When Tom brought up some Key points about his post on Substack, and Larry Fink’s admission, or omission, of ESG and climate in his year-end financial reports was HUGE.
Tammy was spot on with how the UK and Canada are handling Net Zero, and you need to follow her Substack as well.
We also covered the new report from the United States Department of Energy. DOE’s Grid Reliability Report Sounds the Alarm: Opportunities for Investors in a Strained Energy Landscape. Secretary Chris Wright’s team has done a great job getting the numbers together for how they are going to ensure grid reliability. You can get the full report here: DOE Final EO Report (FINAL JULY 7)_0
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – Intro and Guest Introduction
02:14 – CNN Poll on Climate Fear
06:30 – Climate Sentiment in UK and Canada
12:13 – Tom Nelson’s “Climate Scam Collapse” List
15:02 – Renewables vs. Reliable Energy
16:53 – Future U.S. Energy Policy Direction
21:23 – ESG and Larry Fink Reversal
25:37 – Tom on Information Sources & Free Speech
29:56 – Cultural Shift Against Climate Alarmism
33:39 – The Role of Modular Nuclear Reactors
37:48 – Nuclear Waste and Overcoming Fear
40:19 – Modular Reactor Development Pace
47:12 – AI’s Role in Grid Demand and Solutions
52:59 – Projections on AI-Driven Power Demand
55:36 – Public vs. Private Generation Competition
56:31 – Final Thoughts on Renewables and Storage
59:35 – Wrap-Up & Where to Find the Hosts
Full Transcript, and we disavow any errors unless they make Stu look better.
Stuart Turley [00:00:11] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Realities podcast. My name's Stu Turley, President and CEO of the Sandstone Group. Today is an outstandingly special day that we get to talk with our special guest today. We're gonna introduce him here in a sec, but let's start with David Blackmon. David Blackmon is just not a author. He is the favorite author of the Energy realities from Forbes. The Daily Caller, his own substack, the Energy Absurdities, how are you today, almighty one?
David Blackmon [00:00:42] I am just wonderful. It's raining again in North Texas and my grass is green. So that always makes me happy in the middle of July when that's going on.
Stuart Turley [00:00:52] So you can go out and graze later.
David Blackmon [00:00:55] Absolutely, I mean, a lot of roughage.
Stuart Turley [00:00:57] All right. And then we have Dr. Tammy Nemeth. How are you today? You have got a great substack. You're a world traveler and authoress and podcast host. How're you today.
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:10] I'm doing great, Stu. Thanks so much for asking here in the UK. It's cooler today. My grass is brown. I feel like I'm back in Saskatchewan in summer, but I'm sure it'll be raining soon enough and we'll be lamenting all the rain.
Stuart Turley [00:01:26] How fun. And today we have Tom Nelson. Tom's a friend of the Energy Realities podcast. He's got his own podcast and we've got quite a bit of things to talk about today. Welcome, Tom, and we sure appreciate you.
Tom Nelson [00:01:43] Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate you.
Stuart Turley [00:01:46] Tell us a little bit about your podcast
Tom Nelson [00:01:49] Yeah, I started it almost exactly three years ago. And my thing is I just invite all sorts of people for about an hour at a time and just let them talk. I try to just get out of the way. But I've had a lot of people talking about climate and energy. I've Richard Lindzen and Will Happer and a lot people that you might have heard of if you're interested in the climate debate. And I've really learned so much by doing that. I just love to listen to them live. And then as I'm editing, I listen again. And it's been a really fun experience for me.
Stuart Turley [00:02:14] And one of the fun things, David, you want to tell us a little bit about what you had found over the weekend and what prompted this podcast this morning?
David Blackmon [00:02:23] Well, I'm sure most of our audience is familiar with Harry Enton, the hyperactive polling analyst at CNN. He's one of the most entertaining people on cable news, although I never watch him live, but I see him and see his clips out on X and he's, he's really, he is actually very good at what he does. And he had, he did an analysis of a poll taken last week. Asking people if they are afraid of climate change, asking Americans, American adults. And, uh, this is the year 2025, just 40% of the adults surveyed. And that poll said, yes, they are occasionally afraid of climate change. Now, what makes this poll so stunning to me and to Harry and the host he was on with, Tom Berman, is that... Is that that is exactly the same percentage of Americans surveyed in the year 2000, who said they're occasionally, at least sometimes afraid of climate change, but that is astonishing result. When you consider, uh, Steve Malloy, a really astute guy, uh who posts on X he asked Grok to do an analysis of how much in the United States has been invested in climate alarm propaganda since the year 2000. And Grok came back with an answer of $722 billion in direct advertising and earned media. And I think that's probably a very significant underestimate of what it really has been because every nook and cranny of our entertainment and news sector in our economy and our education system has been chock full of climate propaganda since that time. So in 25 years, $722 billion invested in trying to brainwash the American public to be afraid of climate change. They haven't moved the needle even 1%. I mean, it's just extraordinary how ineffective all that money invested in all that propaganda has been. And the reason why is obvious because People don't see this impacting them in their daily lives. They haven't suffered any consequences from anything related to weather. 95% of the public. Yes, there are tornadoes. There have always been tornadoes, yes. There are hurricanes. There have always been hurricanes. Yes. There are wildfires due to drought and other causes and not mainly arson in California. And, uh, guess what? The frequency and intensity of wildfires is significantly lower today than it was in the year 2000. And so all these fright tactics, all the scare tactics about how any hurricane pass that passes or hits the U S mainland is because of climate change. We hear it every time, every time there's a hurricane or a tornado or any other weather event, it's always because of climate change, people don't believe it. And why don't they believe it? Because it manifestly is not true. So I just thought it was extraordinary. The result was extraordinary and it was really interesting to me. That CNN allowed Harry Hinton to actually do that signal on its airtime, you know, because CNN has been one of the biggest boosters of this propaganda throughout that entire quarter of the century. So anyway, I just thought that was really interesting. It just shows, maybe, also shows that we may be having an impact in what all of us are doing in this realm these days and have been for years. Uh... Maybe we're having uh... A positive effect on public opinion to
Tammy Nemeth [00:06:24] Yeah, which is why they want to criminalize it now.
David Blackmon [00:06:27] Of course, I mean, that's inevitable.
Stuart Turley [00:06:30] Well, Tammy, in the UK, is climate change, do you think that they've spent that much money? Cause it seems like the UK the EU and Canada are all in, and then they're continuing to further this with the fear-mongering from our favorite muppet, Ed Millibrand seems to be all in board on this.
Tammy Nemeth [00:06:55] Yeah, I mean, the UK is doubling down and at this, you know, there's these polls where the public is saying, you what, I think I'd rather be able to turn my light on and have electricity there, rather than worry about the climate at some point in 2100 or 2200 or whenever, or whatever arbitrary date they pick. And, you know, if they did polling about concern. I'm sure people would say, oh yeah, I'm really concerned, especially when there's bad weather, because quite often climate is being conflated with weather. So, you get a heat wave or something like that, which is, or there's a big rainstorm or something along those lines. And then they say, well, that's extreme weather caused by climate change instead of, well there's ups and downs in different systems that make things different at different times of the year and so on. But yeah, the UK, Canada for sure, even though everyone's trying to say that Mark Carney's a pragmatist and all this kind of thing, they're making all these deals with the EU. They're making deals with UK to double down on this stuff. So what's interesting is that it seems like there were lots of polls done around climate over the past few weeks. Canada had at least two of them. Roger Pilkey jr. I did one through the American Enterprise Institute and their results were very similar to what the CNN one demonstrated. So if you go to Roger Pilkey's Substack or even to the American enterprise Institute, aee.org, they talk about the survey. And what's interesting is, Roger Pilkey Jr. Says, basically, Americans are really pragmatic. And the number one thing they care about is power is available when I need it. Number two is cost of energy. Or sorry, those are reversed. It's like 1% difference. So 36% said they want power is available when they need it, and the second thing, or 37% was the cost of energy is really, really important to people. And as we've talked about often, on the Energy Realities podcast, and Tom talks to people like that around these issues, is that it's so expensive. They keep telling us that renewables are cheaper and it's much cheaper to put wind and solar and batteries on the grid. And the reality is that everywhere they're introduced, the prices go like this. It's not da-da-da, you know, nice and flat and maybe a little marginal increase. No, it's like really a steep. A steep curve for price increases and so on. So I encourage people to take a look at that polling. In Canada, there were two different polls. So the ones asked how concerned are you about climate change? And they did the poll right in the middle when there's the annual forest fires happening. So people see forest fires like, oh my gosh, and they're being told relentlessly on the mainstream media that this is because of climate. It's using, CO2 is causing fires. It's drying out the air. It's doing all this stuff. And unfortunately, I think more Canadians probably believe it than in the United States. But then the poll goes on to ask, so how would you prioritize it? And they give 13 different things. Climate's number eight. So clearly, you know, okay, yeah, I'm concerned, but as a priority in everyday life, not so concerned unless they're evacuating my town because of a forest fire that someone probably started. 80% of Canadian wildfires tend to be through people doing it, whether it's inadvertently or intentionally or whatever. And then another poll in Canada also showed that people just weren't, they were concerned about weather, but it wasn't a priority. So that seems to be. I don't know if the CNN poll talked about it very much, where you can be concerned, and it may be the same as people felt about it in 2000, but as a priority of their everyday life, number one is cost of living, right? Two is making sure that the electricity that they have isn't like crazy expensive, which is all part of cost of Living. So yeah, that's the sort of Canadian UK. And I'm sure if they did a poll in Europe right now, because now there's flooding in Spain. There's been a heat dome. I don't know where they get these terms from.
David Blackmon [00:11:43] Self-created flooding in Spain, right?
Tammy Nemeth [00:11:46] And it's been hot in the Mediterranean, like it's never hot in summer.
Stuart Turley [00:11:53] Well, Tom, your substack is a great one. And I highly recommend everybody go over to Tom Nelson's substack. Tell us how long, uh, this has been out there over 30 items here. Evidence that climate scam is collapsing. Tell us what you were thinking on this one. This is incredible.
Tom Nelson [00:12:13] I think it's been out there about three months or so. I put it up on Substack, I put up on X and like I was telling you before that I started this with a over 30, one post on X and then several times a week I'm adding new stuff to the bottom. It just goes on and on as the whole thing is collapsing. It's very encouraging for me as a climate realist to see the banks leaving, just people are fleeing the scam because it was too stupid to ever last forever and it's collapsing in front of us right now. On Twitter I think it's got hundreds of thousands of views as people keep looking at it.
Stuart Turley [00:12:47] Isn't that fun? So what are some of your hot buttons that you're seeing out there?
Tom Nelson [00:12:53] Well, let's see. I think it's just the banks, I think is one of the biggest ones because they were some of the big pushers of this that they were going so hard on this whole climate scam thing. And now they're just saying, just kidding, we're out over and over one at a time. We're out. We're not doing this anymore, which it's fantastic. And yeah, I don't know how they're going to recover from this. Some people are saying, oh, if there's a different election results in the US, they're all going to jump back in. I don't think that's going to happen. I just had Tony Heller on my podcast and I really trust his opinion. And he is very cheerful about what's going on in the US. He thinks in other countries, there's still a lot of work to do, but especially in the U.S., this thing is collapsing.
Stuart Turley [00:13:33] I think that this, uh, net zero, the rush to net zero and climate advertising and, uh manipulation of people's minds, they run in the same group and we're seeing this same group bifurcate. You've heard me say this before. We're going to see a bifrication of markets, those on net zero and climate fear mongering. And those that are going to a new way and that new model of trading is going to outdo the EU, the UK, and Canada. Anybody that goes to the net zero is not going to be in the big boy pants. But this is an amazing, because they're tied together, climate fear-mongering, Net zero energy policies. And fiscal failure. Tammy, you said it best just a minute ago. I like the way that you were going down that path on the nameplate and the cost. People are really concerned about the cost and I believe that we only get 10 to 17%. I have to check, fact check myself all the time. Is it 10 to 70% of nameplate solar and wind farm that we get something like that? It's not much.
Tammy Nemeth [00:15:02] It depends, I think, on the jurisdiction and the type of turbine, how old it is and all of these other things. But the thing is with coal, for example, or with natural gas, what are you getting? What's your nameplate, right? And how much of that are you producing?
David Blackmon [00:15:18] Yeah, when they're on there, you're generating the full nameplate, right? Yeah. Most of the time.
Tammy Nemeth [00:15:24] On most of the time except for maintenance so you know when when you're putting that on the grid you're pretty much guaranteed that that power but with wind and solar you always have to take into account that well in these conditions what if it's a super hot still period of time you know or what what happens if you get dunkelflaute you know that kind of stuff so I love that word.
David Blackmon [00:15:49] I love dunkelflocken, that is such a hilarious thing. It's not really hilarious, but it's a hilarious word if you're not German.
Stuart Turley [00:15:59] What is it, a dufenflockn?
Tammy Nemeth [00:16:02] Dunkel flaute, which is the dark doldrums.
Stuart Turley [00:16:04] The Dark Doldrums.
Stuart Turley [00:16:09] No. Kidding, I thought it was a new car.
Tammy Nemeth [00:16:11] Yeah, could be. Maybe they'll be made in Canada. All EVs.
Stuart Turley [00:16:17] So David, where do we go from here? We know that our energy secretary, Chris Wright is not a fan of climate change. In fact, I modeled my podcast years ago after meeting Chris Wright, maybe five or six years ago, six years. And seeing his presentation on energy. And how it needs to elevate everyone from energy poverty. I mean, he is truly about elevating humanity out of energy poverty, where do you see is going on this?
David Blackmon [00:16:53] Well, I think we see a clear direction in the United States, and I agree with the statement before that the concerns that Tony Heller expresses that we're going in one direction here in the united states, but in the rest of the western world, they're still going down this path, building more solar, more wind, emasculating their base load power sectors, de-industrializing. Their economies, and so you're getting this bifurcation in a formerly unified Western world on this huge issue in the Trump administration now. By the time the Trump Administration is over at the end of 2028, because of the big new beautiful bill, the provisions that are in there, as well as all the things the administration is doing to shift energy policy. It's going to be, it really is going to be as if the Biden administration never happened where energy and climate policy is concerned, especially if EPA gets rid of the endangerment finding which Lee Zeldin's working on right now. And so we're going back, we're gonna go back to baseload in the United States. And that means that the 120 coal fire power plants that are currently scheduled to be retired in the united States, most of them are not gonna be retired. The government's gonna have to intervene. And prevent those power generators from retiring those coal plants. We're gonna have to build a lot more new natural gas plants. And as I've been saying for a couple of years now, we're also gonna see state and the federal government, states like Texas, begin to permit the building of new coal fire power plants. And because you're gonna to have to have it to meet demands. I just did an interview last week with Daniel Jurgen, talking about, you know, the, He believes we're just incredibly unprepared to really meet what demand is really going to be from all the data centers, AI technology, and other technology advancements that are incredible data hogs. Military is going to need a lot more copper, a lot of more electricity, a lot, more of these rare earth minerals and critical energy minerals because events Enhanced budget out of big new beautiful bill and so You know, we're gonna have to have a lot more gas, a lot more coal in the near term. We're also going to have to have a pretty rapid build out a development and build out of new nuclear facilities as well. And ultimately in the longer term, Chris Wright's vision is, yeah, we're going to have to add more gas and coal in the short term, but in the longer term nuclear is going to become the main driver of base load generation. In the United States and a lot of those coal plants will ultimately go away. But it's not going to be next year. It's going to. 10, 15, 20 years from now, you bet those coal plants get retired. So that's the vision of the Trump administration. The democratic party currently is in full, uh, collapse. I mean, I don't know another way to describe what's happening with that insane political party. Now. And so it seems likely, at least as we sit here today, that you're probably going to have a Republican successor to Donald Trump in 2028, the odds are pretty good, and if that happens, then this change in energy policy direction is just going to become even more difficult for another Democratic president to try to reverse again. So.
Stuart Turley [00:20:32] The problem you just went into, David, is you brought up 19,000 fantastic points. But let me start on another filibuster. No, you did great. Uh, we've got, uh, Rodney, uh. I want to give you a shout out. Hopefully ESG collapses a total distraction from the company's mission to focus on quality and value and product services. Uh, Rodney outstanding point and Tom, to your outstanding point earlier with the banks, uh, Larry Fink just basically said a few days ago, I believe is when I saw it. He could have said it earlier, but he said, we can't talk about ESG anymore because it means nothing. Uh, whoa, we're just kidding. Just kidding. We don't mean to. Uh, I thought that was pretty cool. Did you see that announcement? I don't know. Um,
Tom Nelson [00:21:23] Anyway, I did I'd like to throw in one thing about Larry Fink here that I mentioned here that He mentioned climate a total of 29 times in his 2020 letter to CEOs and then zero in 25. I think that's huge That's wow Climate what climate? Yeah, it's amazing
Stuart Turley [00:21:39] What climate? David, your point with Chris Wright and DOE's reliability grid report. I wrote this article on energynewsbeat.co and I included the entire report. The entire report's phenomenal. They know they got a problem and I'm very proud of our Secretary of Energy for going through this, but this number is critical in here. Take a look at this. Uh, 104 gigawatts of retirements by 2030, mostly coal with only 22 gigawatt of firm base load for natural gas and nuclear. Let me say that again. Only 22 on the board right now for gigawatts for firm base load of natural gas in nuclear from the 209 gigawats planned addition. The rest of that is wind and solar bool hockey that is not really going to really impact the grid. So they understand it's a holy cow Batman moment and they got all hands on deck. We would be in a real disaster, but they go into this report, Tami, and to your point, they understand and they said blackouts will be a hundred fold increase. This is huge.
Tammy Nemeth [00:23:09] Yeah, and you know what's interesting is that one of the Netherlands electricity provider companies on the weekend, the Financial Times, had an article about it where they said in the title it was supposed to be rationing. They're going to have to be rationaling people in the Netherlands because it's so unreliable. They say there's increased demand, they need to improve the infrastructure, get more stable stuff on the grid, and that this, they said. Other jurisdictions need to learn from their mistakes, to learn from the mistakes of the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and they listed off another country. And I'm like, wow, I'm surprised the financial times ran that. Um, but it's good to see that the U S is starting to realize that. And, you know, when the public starts to not have the electricity when they want it or need it, then that, you know, that changes things. Right now they talk about load control, which is a euphemism for rationing. They'll voluntarily pressure consumers to reduce the usage, but the reality is eventually, if there's not enough, then they're gonna have to do something that's more drastic. So, Tom, if I could just ask you about some of the other items. I know you had the Larry Fink one there on your list. I thought what was really fascinating were the number of organizations that used to have certain climate centers or whatever have folded. Like number, what was it, 32, the Daily Cost Climate Denier Roundup page abruptly stopped posting. Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future hasn't been updated for three years. Wow. And there was a couple of other groups that. Um just stop posting or they've gone defunct and just stop oil has lost its funding so now they're saying well we're not going to be doing aggressive things like throwing soup and stuff at paintings anymore but that's mainly because their main backer decided well i've i supported labor and i'm getting lots of stuff so i don't want you to embarrass me anymore but um you know with your list how do you So how do you find all this information and... And what do you make of these changes?
Tom Nelson [00:25:37] I just do a lot of Google searches, tons of Google searches, Google News and Twitter. I have tweet deck up with many different searches for keywords. So I'm just looking everywhere all the time and it's very fun for me. A couple other items I wanted to point out here is the US EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin said we are driving a dagger through the heart of the climate change religion. And then Chris Wright that you mentioned before, he called climate change alarmism, a quasi-cult religion. So that type of straight talk. I've been around looking at the news on this stuff since 2006 or something. And people were not talking like that at all back then. So people, I think there's strength in numbers and people, as more people speak out, more more people, speak out. It's snowballing. It's absolutely happening. Another thing I wanted to mention is that I didn't put on here is Al Gore just put up a tweet saying whatever deniers are wrong, whatever. And I went through all the responses at one time. There's like 500 responses and almost all of them were saying, shut up, Al. You're a fraud. In the past you would have got support, but I think people who would have supported them, I think most of them fled to blue sky, but there's just tons of people now who are speaking out against this thing and it's heartwarming. I love every minute of it.
Stuart Turley [00:26:48] Isn't that great? Al Gore, what a waste of skin. That poor man just needs to go sit on an iceberg.
David Blackmon [00:26:56] Anything that's bad for Al Gore is good for America.
Stuart Turley [00:26:59] Isn't that great? I'll tell you what Al Gore, uh, he needs to go sit on an iceberg and talk to polar bears, but, uh this one in here, Greenpeace was just hit with a $667 million judgment. I absolutely love my two, two hour. Each podcast was two hours with Dr. Patrick Moore, the founder of Greenpeace and Greenpeace was, was hijacked. By the climate mongers. And I mean, it was not originally, you see a man trying to stop nuclear proliferation out on a zodiac, trying to stop nuclear things and doing that. Dr. Patrick Moore's got it all together. And I did not associate a cool cat with Greenpeace. And Dr. Moore, one of the founders of it is a cool cat. Um, but it just Greenpeace was hijacked. And I just, I just noticed that one was just 167 million. I like that. Maybe the law, uh, lawfare will go away.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:06] Good luck. Well, you know, USAID, I think, was probably paying for some of that stuff. And but Tom, I wanted to ask you, so are you concerned at all? Like there's that that tortoise media hot air thing where they're trying to name and shame people who are, you know so called deniers and they break it down into three different streams of what they consider to be misinformation, which is delay, deny and something else I can't remember. But are you concerned after this UN report that's come out, where I would say over the past five or six years, they've been laying the groundwork, maybe even longer, laying the ground work for this idea that it would be okay to criminalize speaking out against some of this climate change stuff. Are you ever worried that that would become a reality? They'd come after you.
Tom Nelson [00:29:03] Uh, maybe I should be, but in the U S I'm not, I'm not worried in the US because I think people don't believe in the scam. And I think COVID woke up so many people. I hear that over and over that I was believing the media and scientists, blah, blah blah. And now I'm I don't because of COVID. So I'm, I've not worried in the us, but maybe in other countries, it sounds like a, I don't know, maybe in the UK that that is still a thing that could happen, but we'll have to see one other thing I wanted to mention is that on this list. There's this warmest Sabina Hassenfelder, who is a big YouTuber, huge audience. And she said, she lamented, everyone is giving up on climate goals. Global businesses are done pretending they care about climate neutral, about carbon neutrality. I think it's important that her, from her side, she's saying it, it's not just us on our side saying that they're giving up. She's throwing in a towel on their side. And there's a lot of that happening, which again is fantastic.
Stuart Turley [00:29:56] I love Joe Rogan and his huge audience. He's, he's making fun of it as well. Um,
Tammy Nemeth [00:30:02] If I could just reply to to what Tom's saying I think you're right that the United States is a different type of situation compared to Places like the UK or even Germany where they're you know They've got this kind of social media police going around arresting people and fining them Just for insulting politicians or whatever so it wouldn't take much for them to push it You know this much further, but the EU has some new rules coming in these regulations, which are ESG on steroids and there was I think it was a paper out of heartland by Justin Haskins Where they were talking about how? The the European Union's corporate social Something directive is CS triple D and basically every company that deals with the European company will have to comply with with all of this massive ESG accounting and and it kicks in this year. So they were trying to raise the alarm to the Trump administration that, you know, maybe when you're having these tariff talks with the European Union, you need to be mentioning that this is something we, that American companies shouldn't have to comply with. And then they also want to extend it to natural gas imports. So they want companies to, um, report on their methane emissions and all those other kinds of stuff in order to export. Their natural gas to the European Union and Qatar said, well, we're not following that. That's stupid. So I don't know what what the American companies are going to do. The Qatari company is different. It's state owned and they can take that kind of position. But with the, you know, corporate America, I don't know.
Stuart Turley [00:31:46] It's going to take legislation, Tammy, and I've already been writing about it and, and, uh, trying to get appointments in Washington to go talk about it. And, uh it's tough. Uh, but let me give this shout out. Uh, Bruce Fellen, uh with the U S wanting to go more nuclear, what's the fallout if the U.S globally of having these sites is modular, safer, and in a better way? I wanna answer this in about 16 different ways. Great comment on David's LinkedIn. I'm interviewing Jay Yu. He's the founder of Nano Nuclear Energy. This will be my second interview with him. And I've also entered, he's the Founder. And then I've interviewed his President and CEO of Nano nuclear. They've got an outstanding fleet of modular reactors that are in process of being approved and starting to roll forward. I'll have more of an update there. Modular reactors are outstanding. We've been running nuclear reactors in our military fleet for a very long time. They can be controlled, they can be assembled, they can controlled in a very good controlled environment. I love modular reactors and that fits with where the grid is going to have to go. And I believe the grid grid is gonna have to go to decentralized rather than centralized because right now we are going to be in a micro grid world. Those that can afford a microgrid will have power and be happy. Uh, we're approaching that very soon. So, anyway. That being said, that was a great comment on modular. What do you guys think about nuclear?
David Blackmon [00:33:39] Well, thorium and molten salt reactors are definitely far safer than the old generation nuclear, the enormous plants that we built in the 60s and 70s here in the United States. But even the technology for those bigger plants, vastly superior, vastly safer than what we had before. So I mean, it's like any other technology. It always, it constantly advances and gets safer and better. This time goes on. The modular sites though, we have a molten salt reactor being built on the campus at Abilene Christian University right now. It's part of a joint project between ACU, the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Georgia Tech. It's gonna be a 500 megawatt reactor. It is completely safe. There are zero concerns about any sort of radiation leaks or meltdowns. It is totally safe and that's the technology that's being developed right now. And if you can agree to a standard model for that technology that can be easily permitted by the regulatory commission and sped through the process then you can start putting units like that in the demand centers which would dramatically decrease the investment you're gonna have to make in transmission. To bring electricity from wind farms 400 miles away in West Texas to Dallas, for example, which we do in Texas now. And so it's just a vastly superior kind of zero carbon generation that's gonna be the real answer to the future if people want to have, you know, if countries still believe it's necessary to strive for this net zero by X year goal, it's not gonna be 2050, but it might be 2080 or or 2100, you could get there with nuclear. You can't get there with wind and solar and batteries.
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:48] Tom, what do you think? Tom, what do you think about that?
Tom Nelson [00:35:49] I don't have anything useful to add about the different types of nuclear power. I totally defer to you guys on that one. I've had a lot of people talk about it on my podcast, but I defer to.
David Blackmon [00:36:02] By the way folks, if you're not watching Tom's podcast, you're really missing a lot of incredibly valuable information, and I really appreciate you, Tom.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:13] Yeah for sure you know there's um people always get concerned about the potential for the waste and and what that what that means were you going to put it in all this kind of stuff and i thought michael schellenberger did an amazing job we're on his website talking about what happens you know when apocalypse never and then on his website he has all these slides and showing he went and went to see where does this stuff go how much. Is how much waste is created and so on, and quite often you can reuse some of it. And there's a geologist, a retired geologist professor, Ian D. Clark, used to teach at the University of Ottawa, where he has been looking to find stable places in Canada where nuclear waste could be stored permanently and in deep shafts in the Canadian Shield, which is quite stable geologically and so one. And I had him on my podcast a couple of years ago, and what an incredible resource in just explaining how safe really nuclear is. And yeah, he's an amazing guy and talks about how we can store it safely and whatnot. So it's possible, it's doable, but we have to get over the fear mongering. And I think that's been the big problem, just like with climate, it fear 24 seven. And if you can't get over the fear, then you can be making the proper rational decisions that are required for our society to prosper and thrive.
Tom Nelson [00:37:48] So you mentioned Schellenberger. I just wanted to throw this related thing in here. There's a person called Lucy Biggers. She was heavily on the other side and she was getting, writing up. She was an influencer on the alarmist side. She was photographed with AOC and with Greta. And at some point she read Schellenburger's book and she read Unsettled by Steve Coonan and she has completely flipped to our side. And now she's on the side of climate realism. She's gonna be my podcast guest pretty soon. And I just love that type of story. There's a lot of that type of thing happening where people are waking up, they're looking at the facts and when they do, they find out that the whole alarmism thing is not founded by reality at all.
Stuart Turley [00:38:26] Tom, I did not have Alcoholics Anonymous running a whole new group. Hi, my name is so-and-so and I'm now a former climate, climate.
Tammy Nemeth [00:38:38] Alarmist.
David Blackmon [00:38:40] A 12-step program for climate alarmists, that's what it is.
Stuart Turley [00:38:42] Yeah, thank you, David. I was looking for the right way to say that.
Tom Nelson [00:38:47] But there are a lot of people that used to believe at some level, because even me, I believed at some level, I never marched for climate. But there was a time when I thought, oh, scientists, they figured this out. It must be a problem. And Tony Heller, there was a time he believed, Anthony Watts. And so there's hope for everyone. There really is.
Stuart Turley [00:39:04] That's absolutely fun. There is hope for everyone. I love the way you think that. Yes. My wife of 39 years, there is hope for me yet still. Um, I'll tell you what, this is actually fun. I love Brian. Also, I want to give Brian a shout out. Ontario's new 300 megawatt SMR reactors just started construction. The 20.9 billion cost is equal to the entire Saskatchewan budget. I absolutely love Brian, you're a cool cat and always a regular watcher up here. So, uh, thank you, Brian, for that great info. I interviewed several years ago. Thomas Jam, who is the CEO of Copenhagen Atomics, and I just recently reached out to him to interview with him again. His goal was to be building 300 modular thorium reactors a day, a year. I mean, that is a modular reactor type goal that, you know, he was really trying to get rolling in and he could take nuclear waste and turn it into thorium type fuel. So.
David Blackmon [00:40:19] Well, it's so, and that's what's important. You have to get to where you're cranking them out at that kind of a pace. Exactly.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:27] Exactly. Yeah. And then that can lower the cost. Hopefully. Hopefully
David Blackmon [00:40:31] And you can't have a 30 year long permitting process like we do in the United States, that's almost impossible to meet has to be one to two years permitting, process, get into manufacturing, get them out, get them installed and once you, once you can build and that's what Chris Wright is really working on trying to figure out what you have to do in the federal government, in our regulatory system to get to that point, to speed the progress of this industry up in the United States.
Stuart Turley [00:41:00] Well, when we get our interview in Washington with them, David, we're going to ask him, say, Hey, uh, is it true that because you're allowing nuclear development on federal lands, I have a feeling they're going to be able to fast track a lot. He's already said that he's wants three new nuclear reactors running next, next year. So
David Blackmon [00:41:20] And that's what's happened with this Abilene Christian project, by the way, because it's a joint university research project. They've been able to cut the timeline down. They got it permitted very quickly. They began the project started in 2021. It's going to go live until next year, but by the end of next year. And we'll be at full capacity by the end of 2027, so that's a very speedy time frame in the United States for this kind of thing.
Tammy Nemeth [00:41:47] Well, you know, interestingly, to compare with China, China, on average, is between four to six years to bring a new nuclear power plant online. So from reactor design, project management and and the regulatory process, the construction and all that usually is between 4 to 6 years. So, I mean, that's what we're competing against. Yeah. And yeah, I don't know how long it takes to build a coal fired power plant. But if you need stable energy until you can get, stable and reliable and cheap energy, until you get the more nuclear online that helps lower costs for everybody, then we should be building the coal. And maybe the various jurisdictions in the United States that need to prolong the life of their coal plants, maybe they could talk to Saskatchewan since they're going to be extending the life of their coals in the face of. Federal regulations.
David Blackmon [00:42:48] Yeah. And it's just, it's a necessity. It's not something that these governments necessarily want to do, right? And Saskatchewan, I don't know the politics there. But, you know, my sense is probably the government would rather not be extending those coal plants, right, if you had a viable alternative. But what we have found out in the last few years with this experiment during the Biden administration. Wind and solar and current battery technology cannot displace coal, period. Cannot do it, not capable. And even when you get the new solid state batteries or molten metal batteries, still not going to work because you have to maintain inertia on the grid and those technologies will not do that. You're gonna have to have real base load. And real base low means a spinning turbine. Uh, powered by natural gas, coal or nuclear. And you have to have a very ample supply of that, which we are losing in the United States and the rest of the Western world. And so as a result, we saw that blackout in Spain and Portugal. We're going to continue to see more and more of those kinds of blackouts until countries and provinces like Saskatchewan realize the error they've made and begin to reverse it. And that's what, I mean, that's really the central. Central objective of the Trump, Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, Lee Zeldin Energy and Climate Policy Suite is to restore that reliability on the grid and get back to real energy and power in the United States.
Stuart Turley [00:44:34] It's kind of refreshing. Uh, sorry, Tammy. Um, it's refreshing to have a government in the United States that is pro actively trying to say we get retro. We have a problem right before the Scooby van hits a wall. Uh, they've already got a report out. They've already gotten it very well documented. This is the problem. I thought it was an outstanding report, Tammy, I apologize. I didn't mean to step on you there.
Tammy Nemeth [00:45:02] Oh, no, that's OK. I noticed, Tom, that you had Catherine Porter on a little while ago talking about the UK, I assume, and whatnot. So what did you make of what she had to say?
Tom Nelson [00:45:14] Oh, I just became a huge new fan of hers. I thought she's got incredible insights. She's been doing some bigger podcasts too lately. I really enjoy what she's doing. I think she has her head on straight. And I also had Meredith Anguinn on a couple of times and she mentioned Meredith. So I think there's a lot of people doing really good work and injecting some sanity into this. I think it's critical that she's saying what she saying.
Stuart Turley [00:45:38] We got to give the electric grandmother, grandma a shout out. I absolutely love Meredith Angwin shorting the grid. It is a book that is, is in my other office and I have it all the time. I got a question. I'm always flipping through that thing. It is my grid Bible.
David Blackmon [00:45:58] Yeah, I think we should also point out that Katherine Porter tends to have that same effect on everyone who interviews her, right? Yeah. You're immediately a fan. You understand this is somebody who really knows what she's talking about, has really done the research and the work. And the stuff she puts out, you know, is just, it's indisputable. And she's just an incredible resource.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:21] Yeah, for sure. So, you know, Tom, you've you've done your podcast for about three years now. Is that right? About three years? So have you seen that like the The response to the the people that you have on there has that changed over time?
Tom Nelson [00:46:37] Let's see, that's a good question. It's just the channel is growing. I'm getting more and more people in as it's gaining momentum. And a lot of very well-informed commenters, I think that's just been a general trend for years that as time goes on, more and more people have taken the time to dig in and I'm getting so many good comments, both on, on YouTube. And I guess I'm on like 16 platforms, a lot of different stuff's coming in. Yeah, it's heartwarming to me that people are digging in and there's just thousands and thousands of people that know way more about this stuff than Greta does, for example. I love it.
Stuart Turley [00:47:12] Oh, my God, she pro Palestinian now and no longer climate geek.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:18] Yeah, she's kind of pivoted now. That's the because that's the new thing, right? Oh, that that sort of pro Palestine and whatever.
Stuart Turley [00:47:26] I loved it when she went for a pro-Palestinian on a three-hour cruise on the USS Mino. I thought that was absolutely hilarious.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:36] Typical kind of thing.
Stuart Turley [00:47:40] Now AI is really an interesting cat. I've had very, very good interviews with AI and I've got a theories with John Bruton and AI. And I love this one. Uh, Patrick, we love you. Um, Greta who she, she's now met. She's on the cast of Gilligan in a time warp. Was it a butterfly effect? I guess, but when we sit back and And I forgot what point I was going to make. It was a very valid-.
David Blackmon [00:48:11] I did that every day.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:11] Interviewing AI.
Stuart Turley [00:48:13] John Bruton with AI, he has got a new patent that allows to validate and verify the effects of AI instead of AI just creating a random answer, which I have found. And it's like Grok is really cool. But chat GPT and you compare them and you got to go, hey, wait a minute, that ain't so hot. You got to compare them. And he's now got a patent on how to do that. I believe that we will see AI's influence in unbelievable influence. And either you're going to be a leader in AI or you're gonna be owned by AI. So it's going to be very critical for our grid. And I'm glad that the Trump administration and the Department of Energy recognize that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:07] Well, there was like, I forget, there was an article not too long ago where they actually calculated how much energy is used for every silly little AI question people ask, like when you go to Google and then you use their little assist button or whatever it is. And it's an extraordinary amount of electricity, an extraordinary for every one of these little queries, which is... You know, why there's all this competition on the grid for the data centers to be able to answer these questions. And at some point, people have to ask themselves, is that something worthwhile to ask that question and have my power bill go up in order to pay for all that kind of stuff?
David Blackmon [00:49:57] Can I address that from Patrick? Voices I've heard about Grok 4 is sometimes inaccurate and is left-wing biased. I think that's true of every AI tool that's out there because they're heavily biased towards obtaining their information from mainstream propaganda media sites like ABC, CBS, CNN, et cetera, New York Times, Washington Post. And so, you know, they have to collect their data from somewhere. ROC4 collects data mainly from those legacy sites. And from posts on X that are from sources it considers to be authoritative. And so anything you get back from Grok or whatever the tool is, I mean, before you just go post it somewhere, you better do a fact check on it because a lot of the stuff that, you know, Grok will tell you, you when I've used Grok and I've, I've use it quite a lot. It as a research tool, like it will return initial results. And then you go back and you ask it, well, where did you get this bit of information from, give me the source for that. And if it's not a source, you trust, tell it, you don't trust that source. Tell it to verify that information. It'll go out there and do that. And if, if the information is wrong, the great thing about grok and I assume the others is that it'll come back and say, you know what, I was wrong. And here's what it really is. And so, but you have to be really careful with it because it does return biased and inaccurate information.
Tom Nelson [00:51:30] One thing that Tony Heller stresses is that he's used AI a lot and he has not learned at all. He'll go through it. He'll teach it stuff. It'll say I was wrong, but then it completely forgets that later and it starts right up wrong again. Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:51:44] Yeah, I've had a different experience with Grok. Now I haven't used any of the other tools. So, I mean, I'll only use Grok and it has learned from me now and it remembers, I go back a week later and it remember our previous interactions. And so I don't know what to make of that. I'm not sure what the difference is between the tools.
Stuart Turley [00:52:05] I'm I'm finding that as I'm using it as a tool, I will give it the when you want to when I ask it to write a article for me, I will give left wing and then I give it my energynewsbeat dot co site. And then I gave it David Blackmon site and then I give Forbes I give the list of areas to go and I get a better article written when I give you a balanced thing to And I've noticed that grok four will go through 35 to 50 websites and everything else and then give me a better balance. So I think part of it is how you ask it as well. This one, I wanna get back to Bruce. Bruce, is there a good prediction for future power demand due to AI? It's coming. I agree, I think that- All over the place.
David Blackmon [00:52:59] The predictions are all.
Tammy Nemeth [00:53:00] Over the place.
Stuart Turley [00:53:02] Um, but here's, uh, what is going to happen. It, I think it's really, there's a, uh. Oxymoron if you would call me a moron, not a Mormon, but a moran. And, and, and that is when you sit back and kind of think, um, AI is causing the demand growth in the United States and the world. However, AI may solve the decentralized grid problems. So, you know, it may cause the problem that it may be required in order to solve the problem. So I think that's kind of a interesting spin there.
David Blackmon [00:53:44] On the, on the projections being all over the place, just one quick example. Urquhart says it's a, it projects that, uh, power needs on the Texas grid are going to double by 2033. Right. And so that's just eight years down the road. We're going to need twice as much generation as we have today. But embarrassed did a study and they came back with a much more modest projection of a 30% growth in that timeframe. And so... You know, I mean, it's just, it going to rise. There's no question it's a driver of increased demand. The magnitude of that is in dispute.
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:22] So Columbia University last year did a report, their Center on Global Energy Policy, excuse me, and their projections were 14 gigawatts per year by 2030 for large language models in the United States. Now, some say, wow, that's not taking potential efficiencies into account or Whatever, but so I'm wondering how these, the power will get calculated if the data centers use their own power generators or something. Is it just overall use? Is it drains on the grid? People are going to have to be competing. I think you have to compete for power with the data center, you know.
David Blackmon [00:55:13] Well, that's my concern, you know, is the capital invested in behind the meter generation for these data centers, for the ones that are doing it, is going to diminish the available capital to continue building additional generation on the public grid. And so you're going to have this competition for capital that's going to be, I think it's gonna be a significant.
Stuart Turley [00:55:36] One of the key things out of the report that I found, this is the report I report that I'm showing right here from the DOE, is that they said out of all of the grid areas, there was a massive rut row for not being ready for this. So this is definitely worth, you can go to energynewsbeat.co and then take a look at the this article and I've got the link to it so you can download the report there. Um, it is a heck of a report. Um, and I hats off, but it is very frightening to realize how many trillions of dollars have been spent on wind, solar and storage, and we are not going to make it.
David Blackmon [00:56:31] Oh, you're right. It's, it's amazing to me, Elon Musk will tell you though, that we can power the whole world, the whole world with a solar array, uh, that's 100 square miles in the Saharan desert, you can power the whole, I love you to say that. It's just unbelievable that. I mean, he just won't give up that, that crazy, insane talking point. It's just,
Tammy Nemeth [00:56:58] But he has to believe it. Because if you're on Mars, you don't have hydrocarbons. And so if he's trying to establish some kind of settlement on Mars and I think he's super serious about that as the whole purpose of SpaceX and why he has the boring machine, why you would need an electric vehicle, but then how are you going to charge it. So he's got to think that solar can can do the job with his battery, the Tesla power walls, which are kind of cool. How they're gonna get all that. To Mars. Well, I suppose they did use the rocket and everything. But yeah, he's I think in order to fulfill that dream of Mars, he has to believe that
Stuart Turley [00:57:39] I want to ask this of any of our listeners that are, that are on here. We've hit 400 live listeners so far today. Um, if you have a Tesla power wall or a Tesla in your car or an electric vehicle in your house, has your insurance homeowners insurance and your car insurance doubled? Like I've been hearing, uh, honestly, cause, uh the fires in the AIDS for anybody that had a Tesla power wall. Couldn't be put out. So is insurance going to stop home storage? I'm just asking a question. I don't know the answer to that.
David Blackmon [00:58:22] Me too neither. Brian Zinchuk, there's little oceans of hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon Triton. Maybe they could go there.
Stuart Turley [00:58:38] And we've got a great question biofuel question is the usage of I went to Oklahoma State and I can barely read as an ocean and iron blooms over become plausible, scalable option. Not sure but I love the way you're thinking
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:57] Well, I mean, I was at a conference, I don't know, 10 or 11 years ago where they were talking about phytoplankting as biofuel, and they're still talking about it. So it's one of these things where they do lots of research, sounds really interesting, very promising. What you can do in the lab is very different than what you can on a commercialization basis. So, I I don't know, it's an interesting thing, it depends. Um, maybe at some point in the future, is it like fusion where it's always at some point down the road? I don't know, but a good question.
Stuart Turley [00:59:35] All right, with that, we've run out of time and Tom, I want to just give you a shout out. Thank you. How do people contact you and how do people get a hold of you?
Tom Nelson [00:59:46] Let's see. You can just Google Tom Nelson podcast to find my work. And you can, in the About section, you can even email me there. On my YouTube channel, you can find out more information me there.
Stuart Turley [00:59:59] Okay, that sounds great. David, how do people find you?
David Blackmon [01:00:04] Blackmon.substack.com. Everything I do ends up there in one way or another. All right, Tammy, how about you?
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:11] I'm at theNemethTeport.com and I try to publish regularly at TheNemethreport.substack.com. Great place.
Stuart Turley [01:00:20] All right. And with that, I appreciate all of our live listeners today. What a wonderful podcast, Tom, thank you again. And Tammy and David, I just appreciate truly both of you. My name is Stu Turley president CEO of the sandstone group. You can find me on the energy newsbeat.co or you can find me at the energynewsbeat.substack.com. Thanks. Have a great time. See you guys.
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:44] Thanks everybody. Bye.
David Blackmon [01:00:45] Bye everybody.
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