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Big Oil’s Tea Party

https://www.desmogblog.com/astro-turf-wars-uncovered-new-undercover-documentary

If you, dear Reader, are a Republican American, and you are demographically “middle class”, and you support the Tea Party movement, you are likely to have been seriously deceived – by Big Energy. Or Big Mining.

Who are these “Big Diggers”, propagandising the naive, well-intentioned, right-wing citizens of the United States of America, so they don’t realise they’re thinking somebody else’s thoughts, shouting somebody else’s slogans, riding somebody else’s train ?

One of the key players is a company whose environmental record is exemplary, whose commitment to the rules of the EPA is legendary :-

https://www.kochind.com/newsroom/KochandtheEnvironment.aspx

They cannot be faulted.

It may be useful to do some reading…

https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/

https://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-called-superb-book-former-time-editor

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/exxon-continued-to-fund-climate-denial-in-200/blog/26100

Don’t believe that it’s fair to support your fellow citizens who get ill ? You’ve probably been listening to the words of the health insurance firms who want to carry on creaming off a profit from your medical care.

Don’t believe that Climate Change is real and dangerous and happening now, and that we must inevitably change the sources of the energy we are using ? You’ve probably been listening to the words of one of the big oil, gas or mining companies who want to say in business in fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

You might have joined a group fighting for small government, against so-called “red tape”. You might have a pathological aversion to community-backed health insurance. You might believe that free enterprise needs to have less regulation, less legislation, so it can create more (part-time, low-paid, insecure) employment. You might believe that the rich need to pay less taxes. You might believe you have the right to keep your uninsulated home heated to 24 degrees in winter, and drive an SUV. You might think that petroleum gasoline still flows from Iraq by the forces of the free market (we won’t mention the other “forces”). You might think that Canada’s a big enough place to cope with the tailing ponds from mining Tar Sands. You may have heard that some poor people in farming counties have received lots of cash for gas locked up in the rocks under their wells. You may think that economic “recovery” is just a new credit card away. You may even think that coal-fired electricity generation is “clean”.

But why do you believe these things ?

Grassroots campaigning ? Who’s paying for it ?

You have been suckered.

3 replies on “Big Oil’s Tea Party”

I think you are the ones who have been suckered. It’s called Climategate. Perhaps you should try augmenting your reading. Try Wattsupwiththat, The Air Vent or Climate Audit.

Maybe you should take a look at the Climate Alarmist money trail, the attempts at Global Governance via Climate and the near sociopathic hypocrisy of the AGW crowd.

How many Private jets went to Copenhagen? What is the average energy usage in any of Al Gore’s mansions? How about the average energy consumption of the delagates at Kyoto or Copenhagen. And don’t these same delegates travel in those very same SUV’s you criticize or even worse via limousine? What is the carbon footprint of these same delegates? Hmm? Did they bike there? Did they swim to the Seychelles Conference? Private jets? Are you kidding me. I hereby agree to use less energy than Al Gore and/or any member of the House of Lords, or Prince Charles for that matter…I’m sure I’ll find a way to get by.

How much energy do the WordPress server farms use that host this site? Should they go dark 12 hours a day? Who’s to decide what is “appropriate” energy consumption and what is “too much” the market place? or UN bureaucrats?

And while Shale, traditional Oil etc may not be the long term answer, it will bridge the gap until

1. The Greenies are crushed in 2010 and 2012 and Nuclear fission plants are built here or

2. Nuclear fusion (arguably a green energy source) with 10’s of Billions being invested by our current and many previous administrations (As well as the EU), comes on line a few decades.

Got news for you, as you will see in a few weeks…The USA is fundamentally Conservative…Tea Partyish you might say.

I can assure you that input from across the pond on US energy policy is neither welcome nor solicited, and is actually more likely to have the reverse effect than the one intended. Maybe the UK should take care of its own house, and when you have created the Utopia you dream of, that works for your citizens, and you have solved all of your many problems, then feel free to chime in on US Policy. I’m sure just taking care of your own Islands is more than a full time job. We got things covered over here.

@AfterSeven

Just for your information, this web log is entirely solar-powered, and I buy green power to run the computer on.

One day, the whole Internet will be run this way.

I note for the record that you choose to criticise the Carbon Dioxide emissions of people in the public eye, but you fail to produce anything that de-supports Climate Change Science. Bit of a hole in your argument, really.

As for energy policy – I think the British Government is about three decades behind the rest of North-Western Europe – and I say so frequently.

What makes you think that the push for new Nuclear Power will ever amount to much ?

The plants are prone to constant problems :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-11476351

And they produce uneconomical waste – and your country just used a large part of the “green stimulus” on it – what a complete misallocation of funds !

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201010041520dowjonesdjonline000292&title=energy-dept-spends-20of-stimulus-dollars-on-nuclear-waste

“Energy Dept Spends 20% Of Stimulus Dollars On Nuclear Waste : By Tennille Tracy : WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- President Barack Obama vowed to use stimulus spending to help grow a new clean energy economy, but the U.S. Energy Department spent a large chunk of stimulus money to clean up a radioactive mess from the Cold War. The Energy Department allocated $6 billion, nearly 20% of its stimulus budget, to clean and decontaminate nuclear waste sites across the country. Chief recipients are the Savannah River site in South Carolina and the Hanford site in Washington, which produced plutonium for the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The department allocated a total of $3.5 billion to the Savannah River and Hanford sites, according to an analysis by Dow Jones Newswires, and created or salvaged about 6,100 jobs as a result. “We were looking at specific activities that would create jobs … shovel- ready projects that were focused on decommissioning and decontamination,” Ines Triay, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management, said in an interview with Dow Jones…”

“Shovel-ready” projects to clean up radioactive waste are not going to produce sustainable power generation assets for the future.

Maybe your country needs some help after all.

DOE paying over half a million a head for shovel work?

Jo, you make a powerful argument for electing tea party candidates.

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