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Author Topic: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution  (Read 30241 times)

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AGelbert

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Bernie Sanders Slams Trump: 'We Will Fight You Every Step of the Way'

SNIPPET:

President Donald Trump's executive order to wipe out President Barack Obama's climate legacy was met with widespread opposition from, well, just about anyone who cares about clean air and water.

In response to Tuesday's order, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted, "Mr. Trump, you cannot run a government by rejecting science. Listen to the scientific community, not the CEOs of the fossil fuel industry."

http://www.ecowatch.com/sanders-slam-trump-climate-2334741083.html





Süddeutsche Zeitung


German environment minister warns: America is harming itself

Following the executive order by US President Donald Trump to repeal former president Barack Obama’s “Clean Power Plan,” Germany’s Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks warned the US against “making a stand against technologic and economic change,” Michael Bauchmüller and Sacha Batthyany write in Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Anyone trying to go into reverse" would only harm their own international competitiveness, Hendricks told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

manager magazin Online

Donald Trump’s energy policy killing spree

For a long time, Germany's insistence on the energy transition raised eyebrows, Nils-Viktor Sorge writes in an opinion piece for manager magazine Online. Six years on from the Fukushima disaster, it's the USA that increasingly looks like the odd man out, Sorge argues, as Donald Trump embarks on an emotionally driven "energy policy killing spree". If Trump “gets away with it,” the biggest loser - besides the climate - will be the US itself, Sorge writes. Trump’s “abstruse pro-coal campaign slogans” will impede innovative US companies and help their counterparts in China, which is actively pushing to modernise its energy system.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/newsletter/env-min-usa-harms-itself-new-energy-policy-rwe-bets-coal



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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YES, this belongs here (SEE CVR Energy and Trump "advisor" NOT BOUND BY ETHICS  RULES OR CONFLICT OF INTEREST LAWS).



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Atlanta not doing too good these days with their road infrastructure.  ::)

RE

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/north-south-now-east-west-atlanta-highway-closes-46846491

Atlanta: Concrete highway rupture sends motorcyclist flying

    By The Associated Press

DECATUR, Ga. — Apr 17, 2017, 5:52 PM ET


This photo shows a portion of Interstate 20 that buckled because of an underground gas leak in Atlanta. (Eric Stirgus/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)


Another major highway through Atlanta was partially shut down on Monday, this one after underground utility work caused the pavement to rise up, break apart and send a passing motorcyclist flying through the air.

While the east-west highway could reopen as soon as Tuesday, the rupture proved to be another headache for Atlanta area motorists already struggling with the collapse of an overpass on a key north-south route.

Witnesses said the motorcyclist was riding in the carpool lane when the pavement suddenly rose up in front of him. Others rushed to his aid. DeKalb County spokesman Andrew Cauthen said he was hospitalized with multiple fractures.

The buckling was caused by a utility crew using machinery to bore a new natural gas pipeline under Interstate 20, authorities said.

DeKalb County police spokeswoman Shiera Campbell said a pipeline being filled with concrete ruptured, and the concrete was forced upward.

The pressure the pavement to rise and break apart, creating a mound as high as six feet (two meters) or more in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane.

"Work was being performed in the area on behalf of Atlanta Gas Light," company spokeswoman Melissa Clontz said. "This incident was not caused by and did not involve the release of natural gas."

County spokeswoman Sarah Page said all westbound lanes were closed until further notice several miles southeast of downtown Atlanta. Westbound traffic was being diverted at Interstate 285, the city's perimeter highway.

Repair crews were inspecting the area with ground-penetrating radar, said Natalie Dale, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation.

She said they are hoping to have a few of the adjacent lanes open Monday evening and the entire road open by noon on Tuesday.

This latest infrastructure problem added hassles to commutes already complicated by the collapse last month of an overpass on Interstate 85, due to a fire that police say was intentionally set.

Fossil fuels, the "gift" that never stops "giving it to us with both barrels"....

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Bill McKibben: Trudeau's Pipeline Push Makes Him a Disaster for the Climate

By Bill McKibben April 17, 2017

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it's hard to look away (especially now that he's discovered bombs). But precisely because everyone's staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don't believe me? Look one nation north, at Justin Trudeau.

Look all you want, in fact—he sure is cute, the planet's only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he's mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it's deserved: in lots of ways he's the anti-Trump, and it's no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.

But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he's a brother to the old orange guy in DC.

Not rhetorically. Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He's got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet. Everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too—it was Canadian diplomats, and the country's environment minister Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet's rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that's exactly what Trudeau is doing. He's hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the U.S. to carry yet more oil out of Alberta's tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

Last month, speaking at a Houston petroleum industry gathering, he got a standing ovation from the oilmen for saying "No country would find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there."

That is to say Canada, which represents one-half of one percent of the planet's population, is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth's remaining carbon budget. That is to say, Trump is a creep and a danger and unpleasant to look at, but at least he's not a stunning hypocrite.

Yes, 173bn barrels is indeed the estimate for recoverable oil in the tar sands. So let's do some math. If Canada digs up that oil and sells it to people to burn, it will produce, according to the math whizzes at Oil Change International, 30 percent of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5 degree target that Canada helped set in Paris.

This having-your-cake-and-burning-it-too is central to Canada's self-image/energy policy. McKenna, confronted by Canada's veteran environmentalist David Suzuki, said tartly, "We have an incredible climate change plan that includes putting a price on carbon pollution, also investing in clean innovation. But we also know we need to get our natural resources to market and we're doing both." Right.

But doing the second negates the first—in fact, it completely overwhelms it. If Canada is busy shipping carbon all over the world, it doesn't matter all that much if every Tim Horton's stopped selling donuts and started peddling solar panels instead.

Canada's got company in this scam. Australia's Malcolm Turnbull is supposed to be more sensitive than his predecessor, a Trump-like blowhard. When he signed on his nation to the Paris climate accords, he said, "It is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point and the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanized the international community and spurred on global action."

Which is a fine thing to say, or would be, if your government wasn't backing plans for the largest coal mine on earth. That single mine, in a country of 20 million, will produce 362 percent of the annual carbon emissions that everyone in the Philippines produces in the course of a year. It is, obviously, mathematically and morally absurd.

Trump, of course, is working just as eagerly to please the fossil fuel industry—he's instructed the Bureau of Land Management to make permitting even easier for new oil and gas projects, for instance. And frackers won't even have to keep track of how much methane they're spewing under his new guidelines. And why should they? If you believe, as Trump apparently does, that global warming is a delusion, a hoax, a mirage, you might as well get out of the way.

Trump's insulting the planet, in other words. But at least he's not pretending otherwise.

http://www.ecowatch.com/trudeau-pipeline-push-climate-2365186512.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Confirmation that the fossil Fuel Industry OWNS TRUMP (LAVISHLY funded Inauguration)   
 


We Now Know Who Funded Trump's Inauguration

Exxon, Chevron and other fossil fuel interests wrote big checks to fund President Trump's inaugural festivities, according to Federal Election Commission filings released Wednesday.

Contributions from the energy industry totaled more than $7 million, with Hess Corp CEO John Hess donating $1 million, Exxon, Chevron, BP and Citgo Petroleum each chipping in $500k. Coal company Murray Energy, which gave enthusiastically to the Trump campaign while simultaneously laying off workers, threw in $300k.

For many of these donors, the early months of the Trump administration have been particularly fruitful: Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren, who donated $250k, saw the president sign an executive memo ordering the construction of the ETP-owned Dakota Access Pipeline merely four days after the inauguration.

More than 1,500 corporate and individual funders for the inauguration raised $107 million all together—twice as much as Barack Obama's inauguration raised in 2009, and more than any other inaugural event in history.

http://www.ecowatch.com/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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I calculated a couple of years ago that the value of all the estimated recoverable crude oil in all the oil fields in the world was only worth 20 trillion USD or so at current prices. This did not include tight oil only recoverable with fracking, but it's a number that says a lot about the debt level and the likelihood of it ever being paid back.

We are all dead if they even get to burn a tenth of that oil...




But we get to die from lots of other profit over planet  reasons even before that.   :P

Here’s where you’re most likely to die from air pollution

But don't worry, Pruitt and Trump have a plan....
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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100 Days Into the "For-Profit Presidency"   

Published on Apr 27, 2017

On tonight’s Big Picture, Thom discusses Trump’s first 100 days in office and whether he’s turned government into a business with Susan Harley of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. Then, Thom talks to Rob Mariani of the Daily Caller and Vien Truong of Green for All about Trump’s plan to renegotiate NAFTA and California lawmakers moving forward with a single-payer health plan.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Is A Republican Rift Forming? ??? 3 Republican Senators Break With The Pollution Party On Methane Rule  8)

May 10th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

SNIPPET:

Members of the Republican Party sitting in Congress have been particularly good at sticking with the “party line” on a wide range of issues — even when that means pouring more pollution into their constituents’ throats, working to increase the number of superstorms that slam the East Coast and the dramatic droughts that destroy the Southwest, voting through health care bills or amendments that make it much more expensive for normal Americans to get health care (apparently, just so the richest among us can keep more money in overinflated bank accounts), and pretending Donald Trump’s potentially corrupt connections and actions in regard to Russia wouldn’t have their faces exploding with range if it had been Obama in such a situation.

There are many issues on which Republicans in Congress vote against the preferences of their constituents simply because that’s what the party leaders say they need to do, but there may be no topic where this is more the case than the topic of energy.


Pollution industries (coal, oil, and gas) send nearly 100% of their political cash to Republicans.


It’s a strikingly one-sided story for them. Incidentally, the Republican Party votes on the side of these pollution industries nearly 100% of the time. And by “Republican Party,” that basically means every single Republican. The thing is, even if some sensible, science-respecting, health-concerned, humanity-loving Republicans want to vote on the side of clean air and a livable climate, they know that the Koch Brothers, Chevron, Exxon, or other pollution giants will heavily fund a Republican primary challenger to remove them from Congress if they break rank. Among other reasons, this is likely a core reason why these cowardly politicians don’t follow their own moral compass.

Frankly, I think Democrats would be wise to put a lot more attention on this matter and label the GOP the “Pollution Party,” but I’m not sure if I have the connections needed to get that message across. (That said, Bernie Sanders did share one of our stories on Facebook yesterday!)

The good news is that some Republicans in Congress seem to be growing a moral backbone on the greatest threat to the human race … maybe. As Steve wrote the other day, there’s now a Climate Solutions Caucus in Congress. It is bringing together both Democrats and Republicans who want to work on stopping global warming.


https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/10/republican-rift-forming-3-republican-senators-break-pollution-party-methane-rule/
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AGelbert

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Krugman Talks About The Great Betrayal Today, Must Read - with Extra Background here.

By xaxnar   

Friday May 12, 2017 · 11:21 AM EDT

 35   Comments  (29 New)   

#CharlesPPierce #ConMen #HeritageFoundation #JaneMayer #MitchMcConnell
 
#movementconservatism #NewYorkTimes #OntheMedia #PaulKrugman
 
#PaulWeyrich #PowellMemo #Recommended #RickPerlstein #SnakeOil
 
#WAMC #Wisconsin #WNYC #DarkMoney #PaulRyan #TheBaffler
 
#theLongCon #RewritingTheRight

Paul Krugman pulls no punches with Judas, Tax Cuts and the Great Betrayal.

The denarius, ancient Rome’s silver coin, was supposedly the daily wageof a manual worker. If so, the tax cuts that the richest 1 percent of Americans will receive if the Affordable Care Act is repealed — tax cuts that are, obviously, the real reason for repeal — would amount to the equivalent of around 500 pieces of silver each year.

What inspired this calculation? The spectacle of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, defending Donald Trump’s firing of James Comey.

Modern conservatives are obsessed with cutting taxes. It’s the one thing they always try to do regardless of whatever other hobby horses they might be riding. So…

So here’s where we stood as of Thursday evening: 138 Democrats and independents had called for the appointment of a special prosecutor; just one Republican had joined that call. Another 84 Democrats had called for an independent investigation, joined by only six Republicans.

At this point, in other words, almost an entire party appears to have decided that potential treason in the cause of tax cuts for the wealthy is no vice. And that’s barely hyperbole.

emphasis added

Read the Whole Thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/judas-tax-cuts-and-the-great-betrayal.html


So How Did We Get Here? ???

Late last night, I caught a radio show via my local NPR station which was re-airing the latest episode of WNYC’s On The Media: Rewriting The Right. The portion of the show that really hit home was a segment with Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. We are where we are today, because as Mayer explains, we’re at the end of the long game played by the wealthy going back a hundred years to the 16th Amendment and the imposition of the income tax. From the show description,

Although the Republican healthcare bill is still a long way from being a law, its passage in the House of Representatives was seen as a victory for conservative orthodoxy, a triumph in the name of limited government, states rights and lowered taxes. But this orthodoxy did not spring up with the election of Trump or with Paul Ryan's ascension to Speaker of the House. Rather, conservative billionaires have worked for decades to develop a sturdy infrastructure -- from think tanks to the media to academia to churches -- to help propagate conservative ideology and protect their interests.

emphasis added

Listen to the audio at the link. It’s compelling. (It also demonstrates why conservatives are determined to stamp out public radio and public TV — they have this thing about turning up inconvenient truths.)
http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2017-05-05/

The short version is that the wealthy accepted paying income taxes — barely —  only when they were given the option of making charitable contributions in lieu of taxes to the government they did not support. It’s how we ended up with things like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller foundation. The original intent was to do public good without an overt political agenda — produce objective policy research, fund worthy endeavors, etc.

Over time that changed, and Mayer explains how and when, going back to the creation of the Heritage Foundation among others and things like the Powell memo. Scholarly institutions were weaponized into propaganda mills and centers of radical political activism. The web of dark money has spread across the land reaching into every corner. (Charles P. Pierce has a case study here.)

And the thing is, this is largely invisible to the public and the press unless something outrageous draws attention for a moment or two. Democrats focus on big races; Republicans are in it for the long haul — and they’re there now.

And if you’re wondering why so much of the conservative movement has attracted con men engaging in outright fraud and other chicanery, it’s the natural result of billionaires looking to throw their money around, and the marks they’re targeting. Honey draws flies; so does bullshit. Both are in over supply in movement conservatism. Rick Perlstein’s The Long Con has been out for a while but it’s still very relevant. While he was talking about Mitt Romney at the time, this quote is even more pertinent today:


...Publics are amorphous, protean, fuzzy; they don’t leave behind neat documentary trails. Studying the leaders they choose helps us see them more sharply. Political theorist James MacGregor Burns’s classic book Leadership explains that “leadership over human beings is exercised when persons with certain motives and purposes mobilize, in competition or conflict with others, institutional, political, psychological, and other resources so as to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers . . . in order to realize goals mutually held by both leaders and followers.” Watching charismatic people try to seize their attention and win their allegiance becomes the intellectual whetstone. As political psychologist Harold Lasswell once put it, a successful aspirant to leadership is one whose “private motives are displaced onto public objects and rationalized in terms of public interest.” Watching those private motives at work, the public they seek to convince comes into focus.

All righty, then: both the rank-and-file voters and the governing elites of a major American political party chose as their standardbearer a pathological liar. What does that reveal about them?

emphasis added

If you wonder how people like Ryan and McConnell expect to get away with what they’re doing, Perlstein gives you a look into the world they’re coming from. Mayer talks about Paul Weyrich and his role in the Heritage Foundation; Perlstein shows you what he does.

...Following the standard scare-mongering playbook of the fundraising Right, Weyrich launched his appeal with some horrifying eventuality that sounded both entirely specific and hair-raisingly imminent (“all-out assault on our traditional family structure”—or, in the case of a 1976 pitch signed by Senator Jesse Helms, taxpayer-supported “grade school courses that teach our children that cannibalism, wife swapping, and the murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior”; or, to take one from not too long ago, the white-slavery style claim that “babies are being harvested and sold on the black market by Planned Parenthood”).

And…

Weyrich’s letter concludes by proposing an entirely specific, real-world remedy: slaying the wicked can easily be hastened for the low, low price of a $5, $10, or $25 contribution from you, the humble citizen-warrior.

These are bedtime stories, meant for childlike minds. Or, more to the point, they are in the business of producing childlike minds. Conjuring up the most garishly insatiable monsters precisely in order to banish them from underneath the bed, they aim to put the target to sleep.

To get back to Paul Krugman, the Great Betrayal is in the DNA of movement conservatism. It is founded on fraud, lies, and promises they have no intention of keeping. It is the selling of snake oil on steroids. It has been made possible by a systematic dumbing down of America, a war on rational thought in the service of “the gut” which is easily led around by the nose and bumfoozled.

And it will continue until we openly acknowledge it and move to fight back. They’ve spent decades on this; rolling it back won’t happen overnight or with one “wave election”. We have to strike deeper, fight harder, and we must persist. Eternal vigilance, because it’s never over.

Resist.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/5/12/1661605/-Krugman-Talks-About-The-Great-Betrayal-Today-Must-Read-with-Extra-Background-here#comment_66462733
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AGelbert

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Quote
The Great Betrayal is in the DNA of movement conservatism. It is founded on fraud, lies, and promises they have no intention of keeping. It is the selling of snake oil on steroids. It has been made possible by a systematic dumbing down of America, a war on rational thought in the service of “the gut” which is easily led around by the nose and bumfoozled.

And it will continue until we openly acknowledge it and move to fight back. They’ve spent decades on this; rolling it back won’t happen overnight or with one “wave election”. We have to strike deeper, fight harder, and we must persist. Eternal vigilance, because it’s never over.

"Bumfoozled." Perfect.

Rust never sleeps.

Quote of the year.


Yup. But the sheer criminality, malice and aforethought of even coming up with this "strategy" boggles the mind.

I listened to that radio show I posted about earlier and the portion where Jane Meyer describes  the step by step MENS REA of these Capitalist Republican bastard "think tanks" (MOSTLY FUNDED BY THE FOSSIL FUEL "industry"  subsidy welfare queens ) to twist. lie and distort the truth to serve profit over people and planet is enough, in a sane society, to put them in prison for a LONG TIME, after all their ill gotten assets are stripped from them, of course.  ;D

Jane Mayer   on the Rise of Conservative Orthodoxy

http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2017-05-05/

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Russian Oil Billionaires, Trump World, Russian Hacking, & Firing FBI Director Comey … For Democracy?

 


May 15th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

Agelbert NOTE: This must read article has two videos and eye opening graphics about the true motive behind Trump and Republican profit over people and planet nefarious actions. Don't forget to feast on the full article at the link following the snippet.

SNIPPET:

As much as we like to think of the United States as a clean democracy, one of our two political parties is all in with the oil & gas industry. Almost all political funding from the US oil & gas industry goes to the Republican Party. The Republican Party, meanwhile, votes on energy, air, climate, and water issues as if it is a heartless Chevron robot voting on these things.

The US is not a petrostate, but the Republican Party — which is now in control of the presidency, the House of Representatives, and Congress — treats any related policies as if the US is a petrostate (and should remain one). For all effective purposes, what’s the difference when Republicans are in power?

Think of the fact that longtime ExxonMobil CEO and “Friend of Russia” Rex Tillerson is now US Secretary of State (that’s not more suspicious than Hillary Clinton using a convenient private server set up for her former president husband, eh?), the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now Scott Pruitt (a man who let oil companies write letters for him to send to the EPA when he was attorney general of Oklahoma and who repeatedly sued the EPA), and the head of the Department of Energy (DOE) is a former governor of oil & gas state Texas who has financial ties to the oil & gas industry and vowed as a presidential candidate in 2015 to eliminate the DOE if he was elected president.

Does that not sound like a petrostate to you? 

How would a petrostate kleptocracy act differently than the Republican Party and Donald Trump are operating today?   

Despite all the hype about American patriotism and democracy, is it really a surprise that the oil-soaked Republican Party and Russia-friendly Donald Trump are acting as the political arm of ExxonMobil and Russia’s oil billionaires?     


And is it really surprising that Republican “leadership” in Congress  has essentially let Donald Trump get away with firing Republican FBI Director Jim Comey just as the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia seemed to be heating up?   


After all, as Susan wrote in December, “What’s Good for Putin is Good for ExxonMobil.”

Again, bike or drive electric, and don’t vote Republican — work to dismantle oil-soaked corruption, kleptocracies, and autocracies around the world, including in the USA. It’s sort of a big deal.

MORE:
:o  :o

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/15/russian-oil-russian-billions-trump-world-russian-hacking-fbi-director-firing-democracy/



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Exxon loses in court and must turn over documents to NY AG Schneiderman  ;D

By DWG 
Wednesday May 24, 2017 · 12:45 PM EDT

Exxon must now submit to a document proctological exam conducted by NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. From Reuters:

May 23 A New York state appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Exxon Mobil Corp should be compelled to turn over records in an investigation into how much the company knew about global warming as it continued to publicly downplay the effects it was expected to have on the fossil fuel industry.

Exxon has been battling subpoenas from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is probing the company for fraud in its public statements about climate change. The appeals court upheld a lower court's decision, rejecting Exxon's argument that the court did not properly consider which state's laws on turning over evidence in an investigation should apply in the case. The investigation is taking place in New York, but Exxon's headquarters are in Texas.

This is a big deal.


In his filing in federal court on Friday, Schneiderman revealed his office had interviewed witnesses who could help them learn more about the kind of records Exxon might have showing internal discussions about climate change. He described the move as an attempt to keep Exxon from destroying relevant records before they were required to be turned over in the investigation.
Here is a familiar name:

The investigation has already led to one public revelation: that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson , who until December was chief executive of Exxon, used a separate email address and an alias, "Wayne Tracker," to discuss climate change-related issues while at the company.     


Eric Schneiderman for president in 2020. 



http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/5/24/1665585/-Exxon-loses-in-court-and-must-turn-over-documents-to-NY-AG-Schneiderman

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
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Merkel’s Green Hypocrisy

Angela Merkel never tires of calling for international action to stop global warming. But critics say she’s at risk of losing her green credentials at home.

By Silke Kersting Published on 26. May 2017, 09:39

A decade ago, Angela Merkel was feted as the “climate chancellor” for championing the fight against global warming. In 2007, she persuaded President George W. Bush to sign up to a pledge to limit global temperature rises to two degrees over pre-industrial levels. A few years later, she launched Germany’s green energy revolution to wean the country off fossil fuel by 2050.

This week, she once again urged nations to work together to fight climate change and said there would be economic benefits in doing so. That remark was an apparent bid to persuade US President Donald Trump to drop any plans to ditch the Paris climate accord, which seeks to stop the world using fossil fuels this century.

“We are responsible for each other,” Ms. Merkel told a meeting of about 30 nations in Berlin on Tuesday, preparing for global talks on climate change in November. “I am trying to convince doubters. There is still work to do.”

It was a message she likely reinforced at a meeting of Group of Seven (G7) leaders from the world’s leading industrial nations this weekend. But environmental experts said Ms. Merkel has long since stopped practicing what she preaches. “Not much is left of the climate chancellor of 10 years ago,” said Jan Kowalzig, a climate change analyst at Oxfam in Germany.

Around half the decline in German greenhouse gas emissions has resulted not from green policies but from the restructuring of the smoke-belching industry of the former communist eastern Germany following unification in 1990, said Mr. Kowalzig.

“She rallies the international community behind decarbonization but in Germany she hasn’t dared to set a clear timetable to phase out coal.”  >:(

Christoph Bals, Political director of Germanwatch

Since that revamp has been completed, the decline in German CO2 emissions has been modest and Germany will miss the target it set itself in 2007 of cutting its emission by 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, he said.

“There have been no remarks by the chancellor let alone countermeasures,” he said.

Ms. Merkel has also intervened to delay and weaken EU reforms on vehicle emissions to protect the German auto industry, famed for its production of high-performance limousines and SUVs, green experts complained. Mr. Kowalzig accused Ms. Merkel of “going on her knees to the auto industry” even though it was the only sector that had failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.

Christoph Bals, political director of Germanwatch, a think tank, described the chancellor’s commitment to climate protection as “ambivalent.”

“Internationally she carries weight by stressing the importance of implementing climate goals but in the EU she picks up the phone to pare back CO2 standards for cars, and readily accepts that Germany is about to miss the 40 percent reduction goal by miles,” he said.

“She rallies the international community behind decarbonization but in Germany she hasn’t dared to set a clear timetable to phase out coal.”

In addition, Ms. Merkel’s coalition of conservatives and center-left Social Democrats has slowed down the expansion of renewable energy generation by setting upper limits, said environmental groups.

Meanwhile the reform of the EU’s CO2 permit trading scheme for cutting carbon emissions by European industries has been so tentative that it will fail to have much real impact on corporate investments until after 2030, they added.

Quote
And instead of taxing coal-fired power stations to make them less attractive to run, the government has agreed to pay utilities billions of euros in taxpayers’ money to keep them as a reserve source of energy.  ::)

Environmental experts said the new government formed after the next general election in September must implement the German Climate Action Plan 2050, approved by Ms. Merkel’s coalition last year to fulfil the nation’s obligations under the Paris climate agreement.

Top of its to-do list will be the phaseout of German coal mining and coal-fired power generation by 2030 or 2035 at the latest. Coal still accounts for around 40 percent of electricity generated :P in Germany and is viewed as an important pillar of the power supply as the country exits nuclear energy by 2022 and shifts to renewable energy.

If Ms. Merkel wins a fourth term, her coal policy will decide “whether she will bury the Paris climate agreement or become its strongest activist,” said Mr. Kowalzig.


Silke Kersting reports for Handelsblatt from Berlin, focusing on consumer protection, construction, environmental policy and climate change. To contact the author: kersting@handelsblatt.com

https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/merkels-green-hypocrisy-771843
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Gas Cars Much Dirtier Than Expected

May 29th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

Originally published on Gas2.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that pollution from diesel engines was far worse than from gasoline engines for two reasons: First, diesel exhaust fumes are known to contain nitrous oxide emissions. Second, they also contain particulates, small molecules that are too small to see. Both are believed to cause serious damage to human lungs.

Particulate Emissions From Gasoline Engines

Now it turns out that conventional wisdom is wrong. ;D A study by researchers at the Materials, Science, and Technology Laboratory in Switzerland claims that particulate emissions from gasoline engines can be far greater than those from diesel engines.

The laboratory studied the emissions of 7 gas engine vehicles equipped with direct-fuel-injection systems. The research found that they emit from 10 to 100 times more particulates than modern diesel engines. In fact, they have higher particulate emissions than older diesel without particulate filters.

Wait, did you read that right? Gasoline engines spew out up to one hundred times more particulates that a modern diesel engine equipped with a particulate filter? Yes, you read that right. Yikes. And people wonder why the incidence of asthma and other lung related diseases is on the rise!

Researchers Find Carcinogens In Gas Engine Exhaust

The researchers, led by Norbert Heeb, who has 25 years of experience analyzing emissions from diesel engines and designing filter systems, showed that the particles are the same size as those from older diesel engines. They measure between 10 and 20 nanometers and clump together into particles between 80 and 100 nanometers before they leave the exhaust system.

The gas engines were also found to discharge unburned hydrocarbons in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), along with other liquid and solid toxins which accumulate on the surface of the emitted particles.

Particulates Penetrate The Lungs

Heeb says the particles are so small they penetrate lung tissue and pass into the bloodstream, bringing those toxins with them. Is this beginning to sound like the days when researchers first told the world about all the nasty stuff contained in cigarette smoke? It should, because it turns out there is a connection to smoking. The researchers also found that the exhaust gasses coming out ot the tailpipes of the cars with gas engines also contain benzo-α-pyrene, a carcinogenic produced when tobacco is burned.

A Call For Particulate Filters

He urgently suggests that carmakers begin equipping their gas-powered cars with particulate filters. “New exhaust emission technologies launched on the market typically need about 13 years to become fully effective. Only after that period of time will 9 out of 10 cars in the vehicle fleet be replaced,” he says. “So, the faster particle filters are mandatory in gasoline cars, the better it will be for everyone’s health.”

Direct Injection Is The Cause

The culprit in all of this appears to be direct-injection systems themselves. Gasoline engines do not inherently form particulates in the exhaust. In older electronic fuel injection systems with an injector located in the intake tract, fuel is added at the end of the exhaust stroke as the piston is travelling away from the combustion chamber.

In direct injection engines, the fuel is added as the piston is headed back toward the combustion chamber after the end of the intake stroke. This gives the fuel less time to evaporate, claims Heeb, which results in more more unburned hydrocarbons, which means more soot.

Direct injection allows more precisely controlling the fuel delivery process, leading to better fuel economy and lower carbon dioxide emissions. Apparently, few people have tested gas-powered cars equipped with direct-injection systems for anything other than CO2 until now.

Another Reason To Go Electric   


What’s the bottom line? Just this: Thanks to the Swiss researchers, now we know that our cars are slowly killing us and the planet we live on. It is time to end the reign of the internal combustion engine and push forward with the transition from fossil fuel cars to zero-emissions electrics. Our health depends on it.


https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/29/gas-cars-much-dirtier-expected/

Agelbert NOTE: Take THAT, Charles Hall, Gail Tverberg  and all you other bought and paid for "energy expert" prevaricating propagandists cheerleading fossil fuels to the detriment of people and planet! LIARS! CROOKS!

And you too, you propagandized intelliburros defending the "real world" of fossil fueldom "high energy density" BALONEY!   

 

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Another Way Donald Pissed Off Germany

May 29th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

Originally published on Gas2.

Donald Trump is suffering from oral diarrhea again. On May 25, while attending a NATO function in Brussels, the braying jackass masquerading as America’s putative president told the assembled officials, “The Germans are bad, very bad. Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US. We will stop this.”

Image by Kürschner, art produced and displayed in Germany 
His remarks were first reported by German newspaper Der Spiegel and some have suggested that translation issues may have been responsible for a misunderstanding. However, Der Spiegel claims a number of people heard The Donald’s intemperate remarks and interpreted them the same way. Remember, this is the same little boy in grownup clothes who handed Angela Merkel a bill for the cost of keeping American troops on German soil for the past 50 years when she visited Washington earlier this year.

This is not the first time Trump has had vacuous things to say about German carmakers. In January, he said much the same thing, complaining he sees nothing but Mercedes in Manhattan but no Cadillacs in Europe. He threatened back then to impose a 35% import duty on German cars, which spurred one German car company executive to quip that America should “build better cars.”

Trump repeated his threat to slap a high tariff on German cars again in Brussels, blissfully unaware that Volkswagen and BMW manufacture large number of cars in the US. His remarks are just another example of someone who shoots from the lip without any knowledge of the subject he is talking about. As one person commented on Jalopnik, “The working assumption now is that Donald Trump doesn’t know anything, period.”

“According to MIT’s Observatory of Economic Complexity, a visualization tool for international trade data, Germany has a $252 billion positive trade balance, with the majority of goods being cars, which make up 12 percent of all exports,” Jalopnik writes. “The top destination for German export goods, the OEC shows, is the U.S., representing 9.9 percent of all export value, or $122 billion.”

Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, says the press is blowing this all out of proportion. “He did say, ‘They’re very bad on trade,’” Cohn admits, but he claims his boss doesn’t have a problem with Germany. “He said his dad is from Germany. He said, ‘I don’t have a problem with Germany, I have a problem with German trade.’”

But another German newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, claims European officials who heard Trump’s remarks were horrified at our Dear Leader’s lack of the most basic understanding of international trade agreements. He continues to spout ignorance every time he opens his mouth and did little on his grand tour to the G7 meeting other than convince world leaders he is a dangerous lunatic who is best ignored. Sadly, America’s position on the world stage is being greatly diminished by Trump’s stupidity. Soon, the world will move on to more important things and leave America to stew in its own hyper-nationalistic juices.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/29/another-way-donald-pissed-off-germany/

Good Point.

What could trump have meant?  Is he not a free-trade capitalist?  Was the trade deal between US and Germany not negotiated and sign off by both sides?  Is no one allowed to export more than they import otherwise the US will impose tariffs to even things up?


Trump is a  liar. He is also a bully. Scratch a bully and you find a coward. His mission was to offend those that threaten polluter interests in the USA (and Russia). Do you think that shove Trumpy gave the Montenegro guy was extemporaneous? Montenegro is on  the Paruski poop list right now. Trumpy is just showing his loyalty to the mafia that owns him. And as for Germany, they have managed to really make the polluters in the USA lose a lot of money with the popularity and growth of Energiewende.

Trumpy "wrote" a book some years ago about negotiation. Part of his approach is, of course, intimidation. But he isn't stupid enough to not check out who he is going to intimidate before he puts on the performance of being a loose cannon with no holds barred. That's all show business for the rubes. When the doors are closed, he says he wants this and that and he will make life real hard for the other party if they don't go along to get along.

At that point in the negotiation, the other party gets huffy and Trumpy puts on the charm to "compromise" with what he was expecting to accomplish from the start.

HOWEVER, when he has NO INTENTION of negotiating anything at all, and is, instead, on a mission to denigrate some party that is giving those that own him some heartburn, he just plays the bull in a China shop  routine. That's what all that noise about "trade" with Germany was about.

All that works in the corrupt world of business oligarchs. However, diplomacy is more nuanced than Trumpy can handle, IMHO.  Trumpy's big problem is that he thinks ANY publicity is "good" publicity, like show ratings. In politics, people have longer memories and loyalties of diplomats are not always a function of how much bribes they get. So Trumpy really messed up in carrying water for polluters. That will help bring him down  HERE due to a cascade of complex diplomatic back channel loyalties  people HERE have with Europe.

Germans are not a people to be trifled with. They have a lot more influence in the USA than Trump and his Wrecking Crew can afford to ignore or deliberately offend. They will enthusiastically help sabotage everything he wants to do for his fascist polluter owners.

All that is just my opinion, which you probably totally disagree with. ;D  But so far, Trumpy is acting pretty much in the exact way I expected him to when I told Golden Oxen in November of 2016, right after the election, that Trump would be pure poison for this country.

The longer he stays, the worse things will get HERE. But perhaps that will work out to Russia's benefit. I certainly don't see a long Trump presidency doing anything but bringing utter chaos to the USA.



Well. I don't disagree entirely, it just that are car exports the central issue here? OR is it symbolic of something else, like paying NATO fees?

IMHO both the "trade" noise and the "NATO fees" noise are part of the Grumpy Trumpy bull in a china shop noise (VERY counterproductive, when you are dealing with Germans - You, as a dog breeder, know that dog that Germans bred called the German Shepard is will be your best friend or your worse enemy - and lets not forget those Rottweilers    ;D) on behalf Trump's fossil fuel polluter OWNERS that are "concerned"   , about German Renewable Energy in general AND the big push in German major cities to BAN vehicles that run on internal combustion engines in particular. WHY? Because a transition to EVs DESTROYS the fossil fuel  refinery product demand balance. Refineries CANNOT just make lubricants and raw material for plastics, pharmaceuticals and fertilizers; they HAVE TO output a MAJOR percentage of each each and every barrel of crude in VOCs and the long chain hydrocarbon witches brew called gasoline. LOSING that market means massive and continuous lLACK of profits from each and every barrel of crude, PERIOD. Rockefeller got his big boost when he didn't need to flush the WASTE from refineries (i.e. gasoline) into the rivers of Pennsylvania that had the farmers there wanting to kill him (their animals downstream of the refinery kept dying for some reason).

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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