In the first half, speaker, author, and environmental researcher Steve Goreham discussed the latest developments in the fight against mandatory electric vehicles, the vast subsidies needed to maintain green energy, and how the need for AI bandwidth and energy could drive up the availability and cost of energy. A recent study found that 46% of EV owners in the US want to switch back to gasoline cars for their next vehicle purchase primarily because of charging infrastructure issues, he reported. Further, the charging stations are losing money as they are costly to put in and have been subsidized by state and federal funding.
Goreham warned of a coming electric power shortage in the US, with the decreased usage of coal and natural gas. More electricity is needed to power EVs, appliances in the home (with the phasing out of natural gas), and the upcoming green hydrogen fuel industry, which uses electricity to break apart water molecules, he stated. However, the biggest demand for electricity comes from the burgeoning AI field, which depends on huge data centers and cloud operations. "It's projected that the data center consumption is going to rise from 4% to 20% of power demand within ten years," he cautioned. On the issue of global warming, Goreham argued that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but rather a harmless gas that plants thrive on.
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In the latter half, C2C's investigative reporter Cheryll Jones presented her interview with researcher David Toon, who shared details of Apophis, the asteroid projected to head toward Earth in 2029, the Webb Telescope's look back in time, and "technosignatures" that reveal evidence of other intelligent life. Describing himself as a citizen scientist with a passion for astrobiology, David warned Cheryll about the enormous size of Apophis, which is around 1100 feet across, and traveling at 28,000 miles an hour. NASA says it will get within 20,000 miles of Earth, which he considers a bit too close for comfort, and we may possibly have some issues with satellite collisions.
Scientists used the James Webb telescope to look back at the Big Bang, but surprisingly, they found a couple of galaxies that were 300-400 million years old, which is not what you would expect to see at "the beginning of time." This finding is really shaking up the world of astrophysicists, he commented. A technosignature, he explained, is a sign of advanced life and the ability to control the environment. By studying NASA satellite images and data, he has identified thousands of these possible signatures. "They have shapes that are not circular, like a comet or an asteroid, but organized like a series of lights, like a teardrop of lights, of individual lights, shapes like a cross...[and] the letter Y," he said, adding that these unusual shapes do not conform to natural celestial bodies.