And we're rolling. How are you Barbara? What's happening? I'm good Joe. How are you?

Pleasure to meet you. How did you get started on this and how did how did you get

interested in the subject? I got interested in this subject through climate

change, climate denial specifically. I'm an environmental attorney and back in the

1990s I worked for the state of Minnesota and we found ourselves very briefly sort of on the

front lines of the scientific debate over climate change and the way that happened was the state had passed a law saying that utilities regulators should try to estimate the costs to the environment of generating electricity.

We get most of our power from coal or we did then. And so we looked at coal emissions.

We looked at the traditional pollutants that we had regulated for a long time and my client was the pollution control agency so I was familiar with those.

What we also looked at though and I wasn't familiar with was CO2 and its effect on climate change because while that was a big issue

globally there was already a global treaty signed to fight climate change.

States had not taken a look at that.

And what happened was we struck a nerve with the coal industry.

And they sent to Minnesota a bunch of witnesses, a bunch of scientists to testify that we did not have to worry about climate change and it wasn't going to happen.

Or if it did, it would be just a little and we'd like it and that all of those

scientists, the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, those scientists that the rest of the world, including the

U.S. government in the treaty signed by George H.W. Bush, the ones that they were

relying on. Those scientists were basically biased they were biased because

they they were in it for the money somehow they wanted research grants or they had some

political agenda it was kind of vague but but it was clear they did not

want us worrying about this issue at all.

They told you that it would be just a little and that you would like it? Oh yeah. Well a couple of

things one of the arguments and you will still hear this sometimes is that

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