Who to Trust More: The GOP Deregulationists or the Statists

found online by Raymond

 
From Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara at Principled Perspectives:

The credibility of this rant against deregulation collapses with a single statement; “Odd, we thought . . . people were learning that burning fossil fuels threatens everything we value.”

If this is the mindset of the people making environmental regulations—and there is every indication that it is—then every environmental regulation is suspect.

The fossil fuel industry is a heroic, morally virtuous industry that provides, and will be needed for the foreseeable future to provide, the vast bulk of the energy that drives our industrial economy, and thus the well-being of human beings. The benefits far outweigh the negatives, yet the environmentalist mindset is blinding hostility toward the fossil fuel industry, despite its huge value.

Just who is the fossil fuel industry? Its investors, employees, and customers—in other words, all of us. If we value our lives—and the Star-Ledger apparently believes nobody values their lives—then it is the enemies of fossil fuels who threaten everything we value.

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7 thoughts on “Who to Trust More: The GOP Deregulationists or the Statists”

  1. The fossil fuel industry is a heroic, morally virtuous industry

    Right. It’s not enough that a corporation can be a person, they are revered as”heroic and morally virtuous” by the Rand Cult.

    An industry that dumps toxins and pollutes with no guilt, buys political corruption, and lies about climate change can be seen as “morally virtuous” only by someone totally whacked out of reality.

    That Randroid Koolade is a powerful hallucinogen. I’d suggest he try LSD for clearer vision and a more evolved conscience.

  2. Of course Mr. Dubya doesn’t drive a car or ride in anything with an internal combustion engine so that he can do his part to save the world from non-existent anthropogenic global warming… or climate change… or whatever the government-funded scientists have their marketing calling it this year.

  3. Thank you, Mr. Paine, for the reality check.

    Now, if you could only help me see through that climate change hoax that you and Mr. Trump are too clever to be duped into believing?

    Record temperatures, vanishing glaciers, warming oceans, thawing permafrost, northward migration of plants and animals, record low levels of Arctic Sea ice, and other slick tricks by liberal operatives have me spellbound and confused.

    I’m sure you’re knowledge is beyond that of the international group of socialist swindlers and their liberally biased thermometers and ice monitoring technology.

    Do you recall when I recently showed that every denier you promoted had been sponsored by the Kochs and Big Oil through the Heartland Institute?

    Let’s follow the money.

    The Heartland Institute is connected to the Koch brothers and their network of right-wing donors. In the past, the Institute has accepted $40,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation and $62,578 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Both organizations are members of the Koch Family Foundations. Heartland received more than $675,000 from ExxonMobil from 1997-2006.

    Of course we don’t have the current numbers, but someone is certainly promoting a political agenda.

    I may require more than the reassurances of your “heroic and morally virtuous” oilmen to liberate my mind from the dark spell of the Global Conspiracy of Evil Climate Scientists.

    Help me see the light. And go ahead, use an oil lamp if that’s what it takes. None so blind and all.

  4. Dave, I didn’t deny that the earth may indeed be warming, even though Antarctic ice is at record levels. What I did say is that I don’t believe that anthropogenic (MAN-CAUSED) global warming is necessarily factual.

    So I find scientists that think as I do, and you discount them as all being oil-funded hacks. Some may indeed even be so. And then again, some may have reached their conclusions and then been supported by the fossil fuel industry after the fact.

    On the other hand, most every U.N. or university group that believes in AGW is supported by tax-payer grants and funding. So of course, they have no skin in the game if they are proven to be as wrong as they were when they said the earth was cooling in the 1970’s, right? “The earth is warming even more! We need more tax payer money to prove it really is ‘settled science’! “.

  5. TP,
    Thank you for your un-scientific expertise. I was hoping for more.

    I didn’t deny that the earth may indeed be warming

    OK. Now these words are confusing me:

    ”…non-existent anthropogenic global warming… or climate change… or whatever the government-funded scientists have their marketing calling it this year.”

    This looks exactly like denying global warming, does it not?

    Please don’t take me into a Trumpian circle of illogic and Orwellain doublethink. Climate change denial is the religion of the Right. Capitalism is their god. Corporations are the prophets. I get it. Most Americans are becoming more enlightened, but the powerful elites and their party of Trump are working against science, humanity and the planet.

    Since you have ignored facts (That’s your secret, isn’t it?) and offered nothing based on measurable evidence, all I’m left with again are the reassurances of your “heroic and morally virtuous” oilmen. Thank you for your opinion in lieu of evidence, it seems all you need for your side.

    I believe scientists have skin in the game, as they must as well, being residents of planet Earth. Maybe you can understand this someday. Your silly red herring about “cooling in the ‘70s” was one or two articles, not a scientific consensus. But I’m sure you already know this.

    And so far you have not given the name of a single climate change denier NOT paid by Heartland, let along other fossil fuel interests. Your faith in them is strong indeed. Seeing them as “heroic and morally virtuous” surely offers you a sense of comfort, certainty, and safety.

    Again, not to bore you with facts, but record temperatures, vanishing glaciers, warming oceans, thawing permafrost, northward migration of plants and animals, record low levels of Arctic Sea ice, and other slick tricks by liberal operatives are all real.

    It is your Global Conspiracy of Evil Climate Scientists that is not real, like Obama’s order to wiretap Trump, or Dear Leader’s “Chinese hoax” as an explanation of climate change.

    I want to believe you. I certainly don’t want catastrophic climate change. Unfortunately the Pentagon also acts like climate change is real. You and Trump have your work cut out, disproving the scientific AND military consensus. Actually you cannot disprove them, only deny, deny, and deny.

    At least you have your “heroic and morally virtuous” oilmen for comfort. However, I remember when “heroic and morally virtuous” tobacco men offered the same comfort to smokers.

    Do you?

  6. Okay, Mr. Dubya, I evidently need to slow things down. Let me try to clarify once more for you.

    I believe that the data suggests an overall warming of the earth in the last generation or so.

    I do NOT believe that this warming is necessarily caused by human involvement.
    (Do you understand the difference now, sir?)

    That is, if you don’t take into account the falsified data from “objective” climate scientists, the cherry picked readings, the inaccurate computer models, and the statements from some of the former leaders of environmental organizations, such as the founder of Green Peace, saying that the movement has been hijacked by political ideologies and promulgated by many non-scientists. If you mean THAT kind of human involvement in declaring global warming, then I agree with you.

    When we have had this debate in the past, you ignore the cherry-picking of data, the inaccurate modeling, and even emails (such as from East Anglia) explaining that anthropogenic global warming is more of an invention than reality. You resort to tried arguments that everyone that disagrees must be in cahoots with the fossil fuel industry, while failing to acknowledge the financial windfalls that these “climate scientists” have recognized in their continuing “research” into something which does not definitively exist. (Again, so I don’t confuse you, I am referring to MAN-CAUSED global warming here and not simply natural cyclical global warming.)

    Last, the fact that you continuously try and tie me to Trump and his asinine actions and rhetoric is quite annoying since I have disavowed him and his arrogant buffoonery far more times than I can tally. I suppose that is precisely why you do it though, huh?

    The bottom line is this: Al Gore did not invent the internet. He invented anthropogenic global warming.

  7. TP,

    It shouldn’t be too difficult making your case to someone who wishes you were correct in that air pollution wasn’t effecting our atmosphere and climate. After all, I do drive a motor vehicle. Although how that should insulate Big Oil from criticism still eludes me. Again I thank you for your un-scientific expertise. I was hoping for more facts and less contradiction.

    I believe that the data suggests an overall warming of the earth in the last generation or so.
    That would be correct, and measurably so. Very good. I’m relieved to hear that. But:

    “…falsified data from “objective” climate scientists, the cherry picked readings, the inaccurate computer models… and even emails”

    Do you see the problem here? You could clarify by citing facts, but muddy the water with your own cherry picked allegations, my friend. Are greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and Methane also a fabrication by Al Gore?

    He invented anthropogenic global warming. I would call this false statement a lie, but in your case, let’s say it’s an “alternative fact” or hyperbole, not to be too Trumpian about it.

    I believe I have shown you evidence that oil companies have noted climate effects from greenhouse gasses, but then moved to suppress their own studies.

    Shell made a film about climate change in 1991 (then neglected to heed its own warning)

    The film narrator asks, “Whether or not the threat of global warming proves as grave as the scientists predict, is it too much to hope that it might act as the stimulus, the catalyst, to a new era of technical and economic cooperation? Our numbers are many and infinitely diverse, but the problems and dilemmas of climatic change concern us all.”

    BTW, the film narrator was not Al Gore.

    Gore was also absent from this little scenario too:

    Exxon: The Road Not Taken

    Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago

    Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions.

    At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.

    “In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.

    It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

    I hope I’m wrong if I predict this information will not pass your filters, and I will need to remind you for a third or fourth time down the road.

    Your additional erroneous assertion that impedes me from sharing your beliefs is your repeating the falsehood about the “founder of Green Peace”. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve told you this is not true. He was not “the founder”, and Patrick Moore was NEVER a climate scientist. He has left activism and taken money from the Heartland Institute. Greenpeace used to list Moore among “founders and first members” but has later stated that while Moore was a significant early member, he was not among the founders of Greenpeace in 1970.

    With your “financial windfalls” point you are arguing in effect that a Global Conspiracy of Evil Climate Scientists falsifies data to get more money. Even if that were true, who really gets more “financial windfalls” by politicizing the issue?

    It is interesting that you suspect those under a peer-reviewed scientific process, but not corporate PR from your “heroic and morally virtuous” oilmen who really do benefit from the huge “financial windfalls”. Now maybe you see where I get my notion that capitalism is your god and corporations are your prophets. I’m not referring to your Catholic faith, but your more earthly belief system that seems incapable of doubting corporate PR.

    In addition to your faith and loyalty to “corporate prophets”, I suspect you are convinced that liberals are simply wrong about everything, therefore human influenced climate change cannot be real if liberals say so, even when citing the scientific consensus or when they find themselves in agreement with the Pentagon’s assessment that climate change is real.

    As much as I wish greenhouse gasses were fiction, and air pollution has no effect on climate change, I still need data, evidence and information, rather than alternative facts, to convince me of your case, good sir.

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