The Real Mike Rowe

Josh Smith is one of the most talented bladesmiths in the world. He started the @Montanaknifeco six years ago, in his garage in Missoula. Last month, he moved his operation into a 51,000 square foot manufacturing facility. bit.ly/43kqCln Josh invited me to the grand opening of his new facility, but the schedules didn’t work out. But when I saw the video online and observed hundreds of people standing in line for hours to take a tour of his new facility, I was intrigued. So, I invited Josh back onto the podcast talk about the remarkable growth of MKC, and the tricky business of making things in America. It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. It’s really, really, really hard to run a successful business that makes a quality product in this country. Some states make it harder than others, but no place makes it easy. Regulations, taxes, HR challenges, labor lawyers, and yes – tariffs – all pose enormous obstacles for entrepreneurs like Josh, and I thought it might be helpful to learn what it takes to turn a one-man knife making operation in a garage into a manufacturing triumph. I also wanted to do my part to acknowledge this extraordinary accomplishment and celebrate the way one man’s vision can transform a modest knife-making operation into a multi-million-dollar business that employs over a hundred people and does great things for the local economy. Anyone espousing the benefits of reinvigorating the skilled trades and bringing manufacturing to America should be using MKC as an example of how to do it right. Share if you concur. Our whole conversation is here. bit.ly/TWIHI485JoshSm… PS I’m also grateful that Josh has chosen mikeroweWORKS as a cause for MKC to support. Thanks to sales of The Rocker - the perfect utility blade for the workingman - Josh has raised nearly $200,000 for our work ethic scholarship program. And now, he’s made some additional blades to benefit my foundation. I’ll have more details on that in a few weeks. As always, you guys will get the first look at whatever Josh has created. They always sell out in hours…

There is no set criterion for who makes a great podcast guest. Or, if there is, it varies dramatically over the sprawling landscape of Podcastlandia. Personally, I look for people that I’d like to share a meal with. People who have lived big, adventurous, and consequential lives. People who have assumed great risk, worked hard, endured their own share of setbacks, but ultimately made the world a more civilized place without losing their sense of humor. Having shared several meals with today’s guest, I can assure you that he checks all the boxes, and I’m excited for you to meet him. Tom Albanese has spent over 30 years in the mining industry, which is, with the possible exception of agriculture, the most important industry in the world. He has run, and continues to run, some of the biggest mining companies on the planet, and worked in over a hundred countries. His latest endeavor – the one that brought us together - involves the pursuit of polymetallic nodules. These are small, spherical deposits of critical minerals that have been laying on the seafloor for many millions of years. Some are as small as a milk dud. Others, the size of a softball. The ones in the attached video are golf ball sized. In fact, imagine a massive driving range covered with billions of black golf balls. That’s what much of the seafloor looks like 20,000 feet below the surface – thousands of square miles blanketed with round rocks, all packed with critical metals. They form like pearls over millions of years, and cover much of the abyssal plane. And they are suddenly, very, very important. Along with myriad rare earths, these polymetallic nodules consist of nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese – all of which are critical to the $10 trillion infrastructure that America is now committed to building. These are the same critical minerals we’ve been mining in the rainforests for decades, except here, they’re not underground, they’re underwater. They don’t need to be mined, per se, they need to picked up and processed. Obviously, that's more complex than it sounds, but it's doable, and the United States is now fully committed to doing it. We need these metals, and we need them quickly. Tom Albanese is in charge of the only American company poised to get them. Our whole conversation is here, and it's fascinating. bit.ly/TWIHI484TomAlb…

There’s only one sensible guest for this Mother’s Day Special Edition of The Way I Heard It, and she needs no introduction. I should mention, however, that the conversation you’re about to hear between a mother and a son, was recorded in front of a live audience. Specifically, a live audience of administrators who run various Erickson retirement communities, including the one my mother calls “The Home.” I don’t know what they were expecting, but it probably wasn’t this. They did, however, seem to enjoy it – immensely. I hope you will as well. For those of you who haven’t picked up a copy of her latest book, “Oh No, Not the Home,” they are available here. bit.ly/4d0qDAF As you’ll see in the attached video, the stories therein might well inspire a spit take, so…please don’t drink and read. Our whole conversation is here and dedicated to moms everywhere. bit.ly/TWIHI483PeggyR…

Not everyone has the ability to celebrate Mother’s Day by putting their mother in a national television commercial, but I do, so I did, and the proof is attached. This ad has only been running for a few days, but dozens of people have already gone out of their way to tell me how charming my mother is, and how much further along I’d be in my own career had I inherited just a small amount of her enormous charm and charisma. People can be frightfully honest.

"Mike - You said on your podcast that you have "tens of thousands of unanswered emails." It’s not that I don’t believe you, but…really? Tens of thousands? How can you function knowing your inbox is that flooded? Aren’t you tortured by what might be in there? A job offer? A note from an old girlfriend? A letter from the IRS? The anxiety would kill me...Candice Ramon" Hi Candace, I've told you a million times I never exaggerate. Ha! See attached. PS. Personally, I find it harder to ignore an email once I’ve read it. That’s when it needs to filed, or replied to, or deleted. Easier to just let them pile up. There was a time when a few dozen unread emails kept me up at night, for all the reasons you mention, but then, when it became a few hundred unread emails, I started to realize I could never catch up. My email address isn’t hard to find, and being a public figure invites a lot of unsolicited queries. Also, my time is now a zero-sum game, so every moment spent reading an unsolicited email is a moment spent not doing something more important. (Like answering your question.) Several years ago, when I tried to explain this to Mary, my business partner, her left eye began to twitch. Mary had glanced down at my phone and noticed 1,100 unread emails. “Eleven hundred unread emails!! Are you kidding me??” “Yeah, it’s a lot,” I said. “More than I can handle.” Mary is a legendary multitasker. I’ve seen her read an email and send a text at the same time - often while drafting a contract and running a Zoom call during a lunch meeting. This is a talent I admire, and benefit from a great deal, but do not envy. “How can you possibly have eleven hundred unread emails?” she said, eyes bulging. “On your business account! What’s your Follow Up File look like?” “My Follow Up File? What’s a Follow Up file?” “What do you mean? How do you not know what a Follow Up file is?? It’s the most important file there is!!!” “Well,” I said, “if I don’t read my emails, there’s really nothing to follow up on, is there?” It was at this point Mary’s right eye began to twitch, so I quickly changed the subject, and got one of those privacy screens for my phone. From a business perspective, I understand her exasperation with me. There were probably some legitimate opportunities buried in those eleven hundred unread emails, along with some other interesting...offers. Today, with 39,218 unread emails, I suspect there’s even more. And by the end of this year, when I expect to cross the 50,000-threshold, (hey, it’s important to have goals!) I guess they’ll be more still. But again – in a zero-sum game, every new opportunity means that Mary has to walk something else behind the barn a shoot it. So, what’s the point? As for old girlfriends and the IRS, I suspect either will find me, if it’s really important. The bigger question, obviously, is what will happen to the rest of Mary's face if she sees this?

Xi Van Fleet is an American patriot. She was born in China, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and was sent to work in the countryside at the age of 16. After Mao's death, she was able to go to college to study English and has lived in the United States since 1986. In 2021, she attended a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, and spoke with great passion about the danger, the madness, and the abject stupidity of Critical Race Theory. Cameras were rolling, thankfully, and her remarks went viral. I was among the millions inspired by her willingness to speak out, and thought to myself, “I’d love to meet this woman someday.” Well, today is that day. @XVanFleet has written two terrific books about what America must do to resist the slow creep of communism and socialism taking root all over our country. The most recent is called Made in America, and I can’t recommend it enough. The book contends that the U.S. not only failed to understand communism, it allowed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to rise. Xi argues - very persuasively - that American business and political elites enabled this, and that the U.S. is now facing its greatest threat as a result. Xi now devotes all of her time and energy full to warning those who will listen about the dangers of communism, and the shocking parallels between what happened in China under Mao, and what’s happening in America today. I believe we ignore her at our peril. Our whole conversation is here. bit.ly/TWIHI482XiVanF…

The only thing I knew about @jasonaltmire before I invited him onto the podcast was that he’d written a terrific book about the importance of reinvigorating the skilled trades, and that he was the current President and CEO of @CECUedu, a national trade association representing private career schools and trade programs. I didn’t know he was a life-long Democrat who had served three terms in Congress. I didn’t know he lost his reelection because he voted against the Affordable Care Act, or that he had the most centrist voting record in the House when he got out of politics. All I knew was that he shared my interest in closing America’s skills gap by making a more persuasive case for the skilled trades. And now, we're friends. I have no idea what this guy might have accomplished had he survived his own primary, but he didn't, and the reason is clear - our current system is designed to smother even-handed, commonsensical, moderate voices who care about the country, on both sides of the aisle. To those of you who have urged me to enter politics, this is why I haven’t. To get the endorsement of your party, you have to fall in line. And I’m not a big fan of falling. Or lines, for that matter. And I guess, neither is Jason. Who else would object to the border fence between Mexico and the US, based on the fact that it was constructed of steel imported from China? Anyway, that’s all behind him. Like many of his predecessors, once upon a time, Jason did his time and then returned to the real world and got busy. Today, he’s focused on reimagining our workforce, and I’m super interested in what he’s already accomplished. What a fun, non-partisan, totally worthwhile conversation. A short clip is below. Our whole conversation is here. bit.ly/TWIHI481JasonA… His book, Trade Up: Why the Future Belongs to Skilled Trades and How Career Education is Transforming the Workforce, is out this week, and worth your time. tradeupbook.com

#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/column… I was delighted to interview this guy a few months ago on my podcast, and today, I'm doubly delighted to see him featured in a terrific article by The Great @ZitoSalena. Thomas Tull is the kind of American billionaire you wish every American billionaire would emulate. Under the radar, generous, patriotic, self-made, and determined to make our country a better place for everyone in it. Knowing him as I do, I can assure you that this article made him blush. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's turned his phone off, given the response an article like this is sure to generate from those surprised to see him speaking out so publicly. Begging the obvious question, why would he risk his legendary privacy to speak out at such a time as this? Why would he agree to be interviewed by the likes of me and The Great Salena Zito? In short, because Thomas is worried - seriously worried - about the state of our workforce, the state of vocational education, and America's ability to complete a $10 trillion infrastructure build-out that will determine our place in the world. The stakes are very high, and Thomas is going all in to back the home team. We're lucky to have him and could use a few more like him. PS. We could also use a few more writers and journalists like Salena. No one has written more, or more eloquently, about manufacturing, reshoring, reindustrialization, and workforce than Salena. Or, for that matter, quoted me more kindly, and done more for mikeroweWORKS. Thanks Salena! Keep 'em coming!

Matt Ebert was an average teenager from the Midwest when he wrecked his parent’s car, learned how to fix it, got hired to work in a garage, wrecked another car, fixed that one, opened up his own garage, and went on to launch Crash Champions, a national chain of auto-body repair shops in 38 states with over 650 locations currently worth $3 billion. I met Matt last year in Atlanta, where I was speaking at the annual Skills USA competition. Matt was there to recruit the most promising competitors right off the competition floor and get them started with an AI-proof (for now, anyway) six-figure job. (He employs 11,000 and could easily hire hundreds more today.) He was not there to buy me and my crew dinner, but when he saw us in the hotel restaurant, he couldn’t help himself. He left before I could thank him, but I tracked him down the next day and expressed my gratitude. “It’s the least I can do, Mike Rowe. I loved Dirty Jobs, and I appreciate what you’re doing to reinvigorate the skilled trades.” He said some other nice things, but I was already sufficiently flattered and invited him to come on the podcast anytime. It took a year, (Matt’s busy building an empire,) but the schedules finally lined up, and we were able to sit down for a proper chat last month, which I think you’ll enjoy. It’s a great American success story, but it’s also further proof that opportunity is alive and well in these United States, and available to anyone with a modicum of ambition, a refusal to take no for an answer, and a relentless work ethic. Our whole conversation is here. bit.ly/TWIHI480MattEb…

Take a breath, Exhale. I can prove every single thing I’ve ever claimed. In fact, I have, time and time again over the last 18 years, on every major network, and every major publication. And for the record, no one is making 300 grand a year “shoveling dirt.“ But running electric? Absolutely, positively.

@BitcoinSapiens no, they're not. this guy is constantly on fox news saying knuckle dragging retards are making 300k a year shoveling dirt. he's been doing this for years.

Young data center electricians in Texas are earning $240K–$280K/year with zero college debt.

coffeeandcovid.com/p/800-million-… A reasonable person who spent the last 24 hours scouring the Internet searching for an accurate understanding of what just happened to The Southern Poverty Law Center could not be blamed for coming away from the process less informed and more ignorant than they were this time yesterday. The amount of irrelevant and inaccurate information around this story is extraordinary. Most of the analyses, on both sides of the aisle, focus on the informants, and whether or not they were paid by the SPLC to foment racism within the very organizations they claim oppose. (The KKK and the Charlottesville debacle, in particular.) But most of these articles miss the larger point, i.e., the underlying financial crimes that led to an $800 million dollar war chest that will now likely be frozen, thanks to years of bank fraud and illegal fundraising. Columns like the one I’ve attached are why I invited @jchilders98 onto the podcast last month. Jeff has a way of cutting through the clutter on days like today, when both sides miss the larger point. Yes, Jeff writes from a right of center perspective, and unapologetically so. But he’s also a lawyer with tons of experience in this area, and a lot of useful insight. So, if you're curious about what all this means from a legal perspective, or the black-letter law that governs financial crimes like those alleged, this column is definitely worth your time. Likewise, if you’re one of the many Americans who have financially supported The Southern Poverty Law Center over the years, this will be an essential, albeit very painful read. PS If you like his blog, you'll love the episode we recorded last month. bit.ly/41L81yj It's been amazing to watch the C&C Army grow...

Why did the buzzard cross the road?

This is not a political ad, even though I congratulate the Governor of Montana for doing something good. Nor is it a commercial for a big national bank, even though I congratulate @WellsFargo for doing something good. This is actually an ad for mikeroweWORKS, even though I don’t mention my foundation by name until the last few seconds, or congratulate myself for doing anything at all. And yet, every time this ad airs, hundreds of people run to mikeroweWORKS.org to apply for a work ethic scholarship or donate to the cause. For that reason, I’d be grateful if you shared this. As you may have heard, we’ve got $10 million set aside for this next round of scholarships, and I’m doing what I can to make this our biggest year so far. I’m also curious about any theories you might have, as to why an ad that was filmed on my iPhone and cost exactly zero dollars to produce is outperforming all the others.

fortune.com/2026/04/14/mik… Aside from needing a haircut, this one is worth a share. For the record, the $10 million is not coming from me, it's coming from my foundation. I've always supported mikeroweWORKS financially, but, sadly, I'm not yet able to write checks for $10 million. Others however, including the people on this page and a handful of very generous corporations, are supporting our efforts in a meaningful way. More on them, later. For now, the only thing I'll add to this very kind dispatch, is an invitation to apply for a work ethic scholarship at mikeroweWORKS.org. The money is there, and waiting to help train the next generation of skilled workers. Go get some!

When I first met Evan Voyles in his sweatbox of a workshop in Austin, back in 2015, I knew it would only be a matter of time until I hired him to make me a neon sign. I was there to film an episode of Somebody’s Gotta Do It, with a man my producer described The Undisputed King of Neon, which was certainly apt. But Evan is so much more than an entrepreneur who built a thriving business around a colorless, odorless, and chemically inert noble gas; he’s also an artist who turned the world around him into his canvas, and a natural-born philosopher whose worldview I found every bit as compelling as his indisputable talent. Shame on me for taking so long to place a commission, but I finally got around to it earlier this year, which is why my podcast studio is now awash in the warm glow of not one, but two examples of Evan’s artistry - the mikeroweWORKS logo which now appears over my head, and The Way I Heard It logo which appears over the heads of all those guests who graciously agree to appear on my podcast. Both are awesome and dramatically improve the vibe of the place I used to call a bedroom, back when mikeroweWORKS was just getting started. Today, I want you to meet the man behind the gas, as it were, and catch up with one of the most unique craftsmen working today. Our conversation was everything I knew it would be, and more. Watch our entire conversation here: bit.ly/TWIHI479EvanVo…

nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/… Cui bono? Hard to imagine a film with a more deceptive title, or a more disastrous legacy than this one. An Inconvenient Truth scared the hell out of millions of people. It predicted all kinds of climate-related catastrophes and polluted the minds of concerned citizens in countries all over the world with apocalyptic levels of fear and misunderstanding. It led to countless policies and regulations that wasted trillions of dollars, vilified the fossil fuel industry, and in the process, doomed millions of poor countries to another generation of “energy-poverty,” which is of course, no different than “poverty-poverty.” It gave us Greta Thunberg, and countless other misinformed activists who chained themselves to bridges, glued themselves to roads, and threw paint on priceless works of art in their misguided attempts to save the planet. It also won two Academy Awards and made Al Gore a very rich man. It seems obvious today that climate change is real, but that its impact on the planet has been wildly and irresponsibly overstated, primarily by people who have prospered from scaring us. It’s an old grift, but it always works, and I’m happy to share the attached article - an unsparing but very fair analysis of Al Gore's movie 20 years after it became the most profitable and influential environmental documentary ever produced. I thought the same thing last month when Paul Ehrlich died, and people finally began to acknowledge the false catastrophism that made him famous, thanks his bestselling horror story, The Population Bomb. It too, scared the hell out millions of people and caused a level of economic and psychological damage that’s simply incalculable. It also made Paul Ehrlich a rich man. Among other things, Ehrlich predicted that, by 1980, the average American lifespan would decline to just 42 years. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” Ehrlich wrote in 1969. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years,” he declared the following year. By 1971, Ehrlich was willing to “take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Roughly 100 to 200 million people, he assumed, would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989 in what he deemed “the Great Die-Off.” Paul Ehrlich was a distinguished evolutionary biologist who spent most of his career at Stanford University. He was also a highly respected environmentalist with all the proper credentials, and a media darling. (Johnny Carson alone had him on over a dozen times.) The Population Bomb was read by millions of people and reprinted no less than 20 times, making it one of the most consequential environmental books of the 20th century. And, just like An Inconvenient Truth, it was complete and total fiction. Opportunists like Gore and Ehrlich have always been with us and always will be. The most charitable thing we can say about them today is that they were wrong, but I’m not feeling charitable these days. I’m looking instead for the next grifter who wants to prosper by scaring me about the coming apocalypse, in whatever form it might take. And I’m asking myself a simple question, famously posed by Cicero a long time ago. “Cui bono?” Who benefits? It’s well and fine to caution America about the odds of another pandemic, or the impact of AI, or the effect of processed foods, or the addictive qualities of social media, or in my case, the consequences of failing to close our ever-widening skills gap. (It won't be the end of the world, simply the end of America.) But if those warnings come with Oscars and bestsellers and large piles of money, remember Cicero’s question. And heed the answer... PS. Here's the article, if the link doesn't get you there... Two decades have passed since Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth hit theaters, in May 2006, catapulting climate change into the global spotlight. The film, with its dramatic visuals and dire warnings, transformed the issue from a niche ecological concern into a front-page crisis. World leaders in rich countries began labeling it an “existential threat,” and it dominated international agendas. Gore’s message especially resonated with the elites who travel by private jet to attend global conferences, and it inspired a generation of influencers, activists, and policymakers. As we approach the film’s 20th anniversary, it’s a time to reflect on not just its impact but its accuracy. The film’s predictions of escalating catastrophes have largely failed to materialize, its policy prescriptions have fallen short, and the $16 trillion currently spent in pursuit of its vision has delivered scant benefits. An Inconvenient Truth encapsulates the past two decades of climate debate: heavy on emotion and costs, light on evidence and benefits. Let’s start with the film’s core narrative: that climate change is driving ever-worsening disasters. Gore painted a picture of a world besieged by floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires, with humanity on the brink. The data tells a different story. Over the past century, as the global population quadrupled, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted. In the 1920s, an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events. Today, that number is under 10,000 — a decline of more than 97 percent. This isn’t because disasters have vanished. It’s because wealthier, more resilient societies have adapted through better infrastructure, early warnings, and disaster management. Richer, smarter societies have made us dramatically safer, proving that adaptation and resilience work far better than alarmists suggest. Gore’s movie famously warned of vanishing polar bears, using poignant computer-generated images to suggest they were drowning because of melting ice. Again, reality is starkly different: Polar bear populations have increased from around 12,000 in the 1960s to more than 26,000 today, according to the best available evidence, including from the Polar Bear Specialist Group under the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The primary historical threat was overhunting, not climate change. While future warming poses risks, the apocalyptic narrative is undermined by the data. Hurricanes were another bogeyman. The film notably claimed that we would see more frequent and stronger storms; its poster cunningly showed a hurricane coming out of a smokestack. But global data from satellites actually show a slight decline in hurricane frequency since 1980. While Al Gore blamed Hurricane Katrina on climate change, just one year later, the U.S. began an unprecedentedly long streak of eleven years without major hurricane landfall. Indeed, the longest reliable data series for landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. has shown a decline since the year 1900, and major hurricanes are about as frequent as they were in the past. When adjusted for more people and more houses, the damages from U.S. hurricanes have declined, not increased. Wildfires follow a similar pattern. Media hype suggests a planet ablaze, but global burned area has decreased by 25 percent since 2001, according to NASA data. Each year, the reduction spares from the flames an area larger than Texas and California combined. In the U.S., while recent years have seen large fires, the 1930s Dust Bowl was five times worse. Fires are down everywhere else in the satellite era: They’re trending lower in Australia, Europe, and South America; Asia hit its third-lowest annual burned area, and Africa (the biggest burner by far) posted its all-time low in 2025. North America’s woes to a large extent stem from mismanagement: We’ve skipped the prescribed burns that lower long-term fire risk; a century of this fire suppression has built up undergrowth fuel and created tinderboxes. Yet this is spun as “climate change,” not policy failure. Even CO2 emissions from wildfires are plummeting. The year 2025 saw the lowest-ever-recorded emissions in the satellite era, down 3 gigatons from early-2000s levels — equivalent to wiping out the annual emissions of Brazil and Indonesia combined. This undercuts the core argument that rising global temperatures are supercharging fires and feedback loops of carbon release. This decline isn’t new; it’s a century-long pattern driven by human adaptation. People hate fires, so we prevent them. In the early 1900s, nearly 4 percent of global land burned yearly — two Indias’ worth. Today, it’s nearly halved, to 2.2 percent, sparing almost one India ablaze annually. Better land management, farming practices, and fire suppression have tamed blazes worldwide. Air pollution from fires follows suit. Globally, reduced burning means cleaner air. The risk of death from fire-related pollution has dropped significantly, likely saving tens of thousands of lives yearly, especially among vulnerable infants. Global fires are dramatically down, with lower emissions, pollution, and intensity — all facts that challenge the alarmism. In the wake of Gore’s film, media and activists have worked overtime to amplify every weather event as “unprecedented,” but the evidence shows that humanity is safer than ever from climate disasters. Climate change is real, but its impacts on extreme weather are dramatically overstated. Now consider the policy fallout. Gore’s call to action spurred trillions of dollars in spending to reduce emissions. Yet global fossil-fuel emissions have set records nearly every year since 2006, and they again set a record in 2025. Fossil fuels still dominate because countries want cheap and reliable power. In 2006, the world got 82.6 percent of its total energy (not just electricity) from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Annual fossil-fuel consumption rose 26 percent between then and 2023, the last year with global data. Even though renewables had also grown spectacularly, the world was still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels delivering 81.1 percent of global energy. On current trends, it will take until the year 2708 to reach zero. Gore explicitly claimed that the solutions to climate change were already at hand — especially solar and wind. Implementing these technologies swiftly and decisively, he said, required only sufficient political will from especially rich nations. This missed the fact that solar and wind are still not cheap and that much of the non-rich world has leaned even more into fossil fuels. Although solar and wind technologies have become dramatically cheaper in recent years, they remain fundamentally intermittent: They generate power only when the sun shines or the wind blows, not satisfying demand around the clock. Modern societies require reliable, 24/7 electricity, which means any heavy reliance on renewables necessitates substantial backup systems — typically fossil-fuel plants (like natural gas) that can ramp up quickly to fill the gaps during extended periods of low generation. People think that batteries can play a large role, but almost everywhere, we have battery backup for just tens of minutes, whereas weeks or months would be needed — which would entail a prohibitive cost. The result is that citizens and economies end up paying nearly twice. While we save on fossil-fuel costs, we have to pay once for the renewables themselves (including their installation, grid integration, and subsidies) and again for the reliable backup infrastructure that will keep the lights on. Studies examining real-world grids in places such as China, Germany, and Texas show that, after properly accounting for these backup costs, the true all-in price of solar and wind power often turns out to be significantly higher than claimed — sometimes twice as expensive as coal, and many times more than fossil fuels when reliability is factored in. We’re constantly bombarded with the narrative that solar and wind are the cheapest energy sources around — an idea that Gore did much to sell. But look at the real-world data: As nations ramp up their share of these intermittent renewables, electricity prices soar. Countries such as Denmark and Germany, for instance, get more than 40 percent of their power from solar and wind, but they face electricity costs double or triple those in China or the U.S., which use these renewables far less. And it turns out that even China, which is often rumored to be going green, is really overwhelmingly fossil-fuel-based. The solar panels and wind turbines China sells the rest of the world are mostly made with fossil fuels. An Inconvenient Truth’s naïve framing — that we already possess affordable, scalable solutions and merely lack the resolve to deploy them — ignored these practical engineering and economic realities. Estimates vary, but climate policies since 2006 have cost more than $16 trillion globally, including subsidies, regulations, and infrastructure. In the U.S. alone, the Inflation Reduction Act poured hundreds of billions into green tech. Yet emissions climb because the rich world’s efforts ignore the developing world’s realities. Here’s the crux: An Inconvenient Truth focused on what rich countries should do: cut emissions drastically. But rich nations (OECD countries) will account for only about 13 percent of remaining 21st-century emissions. Emerging giants including China, India, and Africa drive the rest. Even if all rich countries achieved net-zero by mid-century, it would avert less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by 2100, using the U.N. climate panel’s own model. That’s negligible. This missing sense of proportion from Al Gore continues to stoke climate agitation, with activists happily glueing themselves to roads and vandalizing paintings in the U.S. and Europe, blaming Western countries for not reducing their carbon footprint enough. Meanwhile, the agitators ignore the real elephants in the room. As other global challenges — poverty, disease, education — demand attention, the costs of climate policy must be weighed. The best economic evidence suggests that unmitigated warming might shave 2–3 percent off global GDP by 2100. That’s not trivial, but context matters: Under baseline growth, the average person’s income globally would rise 450 percent by this century’s end; taking into account the impact of climate change, it would feel as if that person would be “only” 435 percent richer. We’re talking about being vastly richer, just slightly less so. Current net-zero policies, however, are fantastically expensive with minimal benefits. One set of analyses pegs global net-zero costs at $27 trillion annually across the 21st century, yielding just $4.5 trillion in annual avoided damages. That means for every dollar spent on today’s climate policies, we waste over 80 cents. Where Gore’s movie failed most was in neglecting to make the case for smarter approaches. Instead of panic-driven mandates, we need to prioritize innovation. R&D into green tech — better batteries, advanced nuclear, carbon capture — could slash costs, making a transition affordable or even desirable for all. Adaptation saves lives cheaply: seawalls, drought-resistant crops, early warnings. And finally, development lifts billions out of poverty, building resilience. If we’re actually going to tackle climate change, we will need to pivot from Gore’s alarmist playbook to evidence-based strategies that deliver results. Central to this is ramping up innovation through green research and development. History shows that humanity solves big problems not by rationing or banning but by inventing breakthroughs. We didn’t end air pollution by banning cars; we innovated the catalytic converter. Hunger wasn’t curbed by telling people to eat less; it was the Green Revolution — developing and spreading high-yield crop varieties alongside modern inputs like synthetic fertilizers, irrigation, and improved farming techniques — that dramatically boosted harvests and helped feed billions. But governments have neglected climate R&D for decades. In the 1980s, rich countries spent nearly 8 cents per $100 of GDP on low-carbon tech. Today, it’s less than 4 cents. Nations promised to double this in 2015 but fell far short. Economists, including Nobel laureates, estimate that boosting global green R&D to $100 billion annually — still far less than the $2.3 trillion spent on green energy last year — could make future decarbonization cheap enough for everyone, including the developing world. This would accelerate advancements in fission, fusion, advanced geothermal, and efficient storage, outpacing the costly rollout of current, inefficient renewables. Adaptation must complement innovation, as it’s often the most cost-effective way to build resilience and save lives and livelihoods. We’re already adapting successfully, which is why wildfire deaths are down; flood deaths have likewise plummeted with adaptation and warnings. In low-lying nations such as Bangladesh, cyclone mortality has fallen sharply with shelters and better forecasts: from the global record death toll of more than 300,000 in 1970 to fewer than 200 dead per year since 2008. Investing in resilient infrastructure — such as the Netherlands’ seawalls, which protect against rises far beyond current projections, or adaptations like drought-resistant seeds — could avert damages at a fraction of mitigation costs. Adaptation gets just a fraction of climate funding, overshadowed by a drive for cuts in emissions that yield tiny temperature benefits. Finally, we need to prioritize development to build inherent resilience. Poverty is the real killer in disasters: A hurricane hitting rich Florida causes economic damage but few deaths, while the same hurricane hitting poor Haiti will kill hundreds and devastate the economy. Lifting billions out of poverty through education, health, and economic growth creates societies that can withstand warming. Much more important, such advances also create huge humanitarian and quality-of-life benefits. In Africa and Asia, where emissions will surge, affordable energy fuels this progress; forcing expensive green energy will stall progress. Gore’s vision ignored all these factors; 20 years later, it’s time to embrace them. Climate policy must ultimately serve people, especially the billions facing poverty, hunger, and preventable disease. Green policies can help a tiny bit, though they come at a huge cost, but the greatest threats to human welfare remain those immediate killers. We should allocate our limited resources in proportion to how effectively they can mitigate suffering — tackling malaria, malnutrition, and lack of access to basic energy first, while advancing clean innovations that make reliable power affordable for everyone. This shift in focus, particularly in the world’s poorest places, will create far more resilient societies than rigid emissions targets alone ever could. Two decades on, An Inconvenient Truth reminds us that claiming to care about the planet and future generations is not enough. Alarmism has cost trillions but achieved little. We need to embrace the evidence: Climate change is a challenge, not a catastrophe. And there are cost-effective solutions such as innovation, adaptation, and development, even if they are not as morally satisfying as the exhortations in Gore’s movie.

Like a lot of people in California, myself included, @AdamCarolla is worried about the future of this state, and frustrated with our elected officials. He would prefer to make jokes and tell amusing stories, which he’s very good at, but it’s impossible to live in Malibu and ignore the breathtaking incompetence and self-defeating policies that are making it impossible to rebuild after the fires. And so, Adam has been using his considerable platform to keep his enormous audience updated on the Idiocracy in which we find ourselves living. He’s been documenting the madness, vlogging every month, and talking every day to whoever will listen about the rank ineptitude on constant display, and the extraordinary arrogance that defines California governance. Today, he’s talking to me, and I’m encouraging you to listen, and take heed between the laughs. Our whole conversation is here. bit.ly/TWIHI477AdamCa…

finance.yahoo.com/economy/articl… In today’s episode of "Mike Rowe Says the Same Thing He's Been Saying for the Last Eighteen Years Because People are Finally Paying Attention to Him," I submit for your consideration an article that just appeared on MoneyWise, which I'm pleased to say accurately distills a previous interview I did for The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, but was too busy to share at the time because I've been preoccupied saying the same thing I've been saying for the last eighteen years because people are finally paying attention to me... As always, I encourage you to share these little mentions in the mainstream media. Not only because it's personally gratifying to be vindicated after all these years, but because I'm providing this helpful link to mikeroweworks.org/scholarship, where ten million dollars in scholarship funds have been set aside to help train the next generation of skilled workers, (assuming we can find them.) The APPLY button is big and red and hard to miss. I'm also told by the people I employ to tell me things, that every time I share an article like this, a healthy number of concerned citizens are inspired to donate to my foundation. This of course, is the reason we're able to award so many work ethic scholarships in the first place, and a fine way to replenish the coffers. Donate at mikeroweworks.org/donate/ The DONATE button is big and red and hard to miss.

I want to apologize for not responding to any of the 22 thousand comments my last post inspired. I’ve been filming all week and just noticed my observations about Jimmy Kimmel and a former plumber named Markwayne Mullin have gone viral. I've also noticed that many of the comments are from people who genuinely seem to believe that Jimmy wasn’t belittling plumbers at all, but was instead, simply trying to point out that Mullin is not qualified to lead the DHS. Here's a small smattering... Roger Bicknell... Mikey stop. Kimmel wasn't making fun of plumbers he was making fun of Mullin. Rebecca Piatt Gonzalez... Dearest Mike, it's not anything to do with his being a plumber. It's him NOT being skilled in Homeland Security. Patrick Wise... Being a plumber qualifies you to be a plumber. Period. The issue Jimmy and the rest of us at the adult table recognize is that jobs require certain training and experience and being a plumber does not qualify you to be Sec of DHS. Had Roger, Rebecca, Patrick and all the others who rushed to Jimmy’s Kimmel’s defense actually read what I had written, they would see that I did not suggest - even remotely - that a plumber was inherently qualified to hold a cabinet position. What I said was that being a plumber should not disqualify a person from holding such a position. Big difference. Doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, fireman, and university professors are no more or less qualified to run the DHS than plumbers, electricians, or carpenters – but should they all be dismissed as “unqualified” simply because they made a living in some other vocation? As I wrote in my original post, credentials and diplomas are great ways to bolster a person’s credibility, especially if we’re talking about mastering a specific skill. I think we can all agree that plumbers, accountants, mechanics, and surgeons should all have to prove themselves competent before hanging out a shingle. But what do their credentials and diplomas have to do with their actual competency? Are we not already surrounded by a legion of perfectly qualified experts who don't know what the hell they're doing? Moreover, what do credentials and experience have to do with wisdom, honesty, common sense, integrity, courage, the ability to lead, or any other virtue we’d like to have in our elected officials? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to question Mullin’s suitability for this role. But there’s no legitimate reason to disqualify him simply because he used to be a plumber. Just as there was no legitimate reason to dismiss AOC because she used to tend bar. As for the joke itself, here’s an honest question. If Senator Mullin was a retired doctor instead of a retired plumber, do you believe he would have would made the same joke? Roger, Rebecca, Patrick...be honest. Do you really think Jimmy would have said to his audience, "So, now we have a DOCTOR in charge of protecting us from terrorism? Hey – it worked for Dr. Suess – maybe it’ll work for Markwayne!" Personally, I don't. Not in a million years. Why? Because no one would have found it funny, that’s why. Even though doctors are no more “qualified” to protect us from terrorists than plumbers are, Jimmy knows that doctors are widely respected in society, and that plumbers are not. He knows that medical degrees and doctorates are aspirational credentials, whereas plumbing certificates are not. The entire premise of his joke was based on a personal bias that he knew his audience shared – a bias that presupposes plumbers are uneducated, one-dimensional workers who never made it to college, and are therefore "unqualified" to do anything but plumb. Jimmy is entitled to his opinion, along with anyone else who believes that Mullin is unqualified to lead the DHS. The Constitution, however, says otherwise, and so does the Senate. Likewise, reasonable people can disagree as to what is funny and what isn’t. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. What I do care about, is the extraordinary shortage of plumbers and electricians our country is facing, and the longstanding stigmas and stereotypes that continue to discourage people from considering a lucrative career in the skilled trades. Jimmy’s joke – and his audience’s reaction to it – is proof positive that those stigmas and stereotypes are alive and well. PS. We have a lot of money set aside to help train the next generation of plumbers. Apply for a scholarship at mikeroweworks.org Who knows? Could be the first step on your road to President..