I can't read minds but it appears modern marketing is pretty effective at manipulating public sentiment.
Not sure that's the best argument in favor of fossil fuels...
So you believe making fossil fuels more expensive and harder to extract will somehow hurt industry profits. The fossil fuel industry is already checking all the ESG/DEI boxes thrown in their path. Look at how much food (corn) has been diverted to ethanol making food/feed more expensive.
Respectfully, you do not get to state what I believe. I certainly said nothing like that.
You're the one literally saying "follow the money".
Mind reading, John.
indeed... sorry, please explain what you mean.
Yes... the money I refer to, is grants and awards for climate studies.Only the "scientists" (cough) who deliver the desired results, get the budgets.
yes it appears so... mea culpa
I am not aware of any serious, thoughtful denial of climate change. Temperature is an objective fact, while the chicken little crowd recently played some games with averaging temperature calculations claiming that this 4th of July was the hottest day "ever"!
the government has pretty deep pockets too.
I am surely repeating myself but the Koonin book "Unsettled" explores the numerous flawed conclusions made by climate spokespeople. I repeat, many probably have good intentions, even when fudging models to make more scary results to motivate the ignorant population to do the right thing.
I have been writing about this subject right here for years. The real debate should be about what is a sensible response to the actual warming, that is an objective fact.
P&L profit and loss statements. Big oil sells lots of oil, for lots of dollars. Of course some people think wealth is evil.
You and others malign and mischaracterize profits and profit margins of "Big Oil" while failing to compare it to other large companies. In the comparative charts I included it is obvious that AAPL, corporate beacon of progressive values (and Chinese slave labor), with the largest market cap of any corporation on Earth, has both higher profits and higher margins than ExxonMobile which is the largest US oil company. Why aren't their obscene profits scrutinized and castigated in The Guardian, Vice, HuffPo, and here in The Brewery?
I admit I am using the phrase "climate change denial" to refer generally to certain factions' shifting views on the matter, which went from denying temperature change, to admitting it's real but denying that it's result of human actions, to admiting it's man made but denying it needs to be addressed. It was not that long ago a certain Senator brought a snowball into floor to demonstrate that climate change is a hoax. Meanwhile the overall consensus in the scientific community has been consistent.
I am unclear on what you think "the government" has to gain here. See also the existence of government actors like Senator Snowball...
Undisputed. Not clear on how that's a response to anything I said or why the charts are comparing ExxonMobil with Apple.
I have to pick you up on this point. It is the climate community that keeps changing the goal posts. In the early days they used to refer to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) which is quite specific that they mean man made warming. Later they changed it to global warming, presumably because by then they assumed everybody believed that only humans could contribute to increased global temperatures (false). Now they just call it climate change with the implication that any change in climate is our fault (also false).
Not sure how I've done that. I have noted that the fossil fuel industry, like pretty much any industry, has a vested interested in protecting its profits and track record of doing so. If studies, think tanks, etc. are suspect because of their funding, i.e. "follow the money", surely this cuts both ways.
Why would anyone do this when the topic is climate change?
They have changed the nomenclature but I don't see how that's moving the goal posts. They've been consistent in stating that the average temperature is not simply rising but is doing so at an abnormally high rate, and that this unusual rate of change will be disruptive, and is primarly caused by humans.
If it indeed cuts both ways, how is it that companies that offshore their manufacturing to countries with no environmental controls, no labor protection, and which are thousands of miles away from their customers (petroleum-burning ships and planes transport the products) get a pass on their negative effects on the environment? Oil is in demand to move materials and products thousands of miles. Coal is in demand to power the facilities in China (and India) where manufacturing occurs.
For the obvious reasons above and more.
Consistent? You may not remember back in the 70s when Carl Sagan warned about "Nuclear Winter". This was anti nuclear weapons but again trying to scare the public with threat of global disaster. I see your "senator snowball" and raise you the Greta crowd who have been claiming that we would be underwater by now. Al Gore, has a nice little business making up BS about the climate. Seriously? they want to control the public and everything they can about the private sector. By claiming that climate change is an existential threat they claim that it is an emergency that justifies extraordinary measures. Not unlike the imaginary dog food crisis.
Probably trying to diffuse the theme that profits are bad.
Yes, everybody operates in their own self interest (including scientists and government bureaucracies).
In my judgement the topic is "what should we do about climate change". IMO we should be doing more research and less trying to scare the low information public into subservience.
Yet only one of the dozen climate models used by our own government shows rapid temperature rise. the rest show only low single digit temperature (?) rises a century into the future. The 1.5'C temperature rise target is purely arbitrary used to help anchor a public response.
Me and my other local utility customers still have to pay for the white elephant "clean coal" power plant that was built to reduce carbon emissions into the environment. This power plant suffered massive cost over runs (in part because of changing government regulations) and now ironically it isn't even burning local coal, but is instead burning natural gas, because it is cheaper. The utility regulators didn't allow them to immediately charge us for the cost over runs, but converted it to debt that we must service and ultimately pay down over time. Gotta love that government help.
Undoubtedly cheaper than the half-functioning nuclear plant that we Georgians have had to pay for. It's been more than a decade that we (not the Southern Co., which gets to keep its profits high in spite of massive delays and cost overruns) have been paying for this thing, and just this year one of two units finally got connected to the grid--accompanied by yet another rate hike.
Vogtle 3 and 4?
The government has passed little meaningful legislation and countering viewpoints are freely, widely available. I genuinely don't understand what "subservience" you think "the low-information public" is being bent towards. As a side note, your propensity to label those you disagree with as "low information" is odd, given that your viewpoint is at odds with peer-reviewed science.
Perhaps, but if nothing else nuclear is very, very expensive and takes a long time to implement.
I was talking about sources of funding for climate research, not whether practices of any large industries in general cause environmental harm. If want to rant about people not talking about issues in the exact way you deem fit, there's no need to quote me first.
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