Renewable Revolution

Energy => Fossil Fuel Folly => Topic started by: AGelbert on June 18, 2014, 12:08:45 am


Title: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 18, 2014, 12:08:45 am
The PRICE of burning Fossil Fuels ALWAYS has been too COSTLY for planet Earth's Life Forms.

I maintain that fossil fuels, although presenting the appearance of cheapness, were and are not cheap or cost effective. The pollution price was always too high, even though we were not aware of it.

What fossil fuels really concentrated was political power to the detriment of democratic processes and the acceleration of conscience free predatory practices. Nuclear power was even worse because it began as a giant government jobs program (the Manhattan project) that has never   paid back the public for the forced investment. IT was and is a boondoggle from the word go. It's EROI, if you figure it properly, has always been negative. Blatant proof of that is the fact that private enterprise has always refused to insure those power plants and the government has always done it. It was a bad deal from the start. And no, we did not need or even want those power plants to help us make bombs. I have written about that here:  http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/no-we-never-needed-lwr-nuclear-power-plants-to-make-nuclear-weapons/

And the population increase was not due to fossil fuels but to advances in personal hygiene. You might allege that medical science obtained that information because of a fossil fuel funded increased living standard and leisure time but you would be wrong. The discovery of germs and the decrease in birth mortality from antiseptic procedures had nothing to do with industrialization.

I have written about that:

Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables
Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never Did

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables/

The problem we have is really quite simple; a leadership that is math challenged. You simply cannot talk about infinite growth in a finite biosphere, period. Predatory Capitalism insists on doing that so it will have to go and humanity has to shed it's economical delusions of infinite growth or we will be the ones "going".

The resistance to change is not simply a matter of resource availability, but who controls those resources. Fossil fuels and nuclear power destroyed the democratized world system of energy availability and concentrated it in a few greedy hands. Renewable energy returns the democratic state of affairs to humanity. AND, as a consequence, the proper use and stewardship of the biosphere because you do not have a small group devastating the planet while they live in luxury and delusions of infinite growth even as they spread war and misery and death through the biosphere. THAT leadership doesn't want their current gravy train to be derailed.

The control of energy and resources in a small concentrated group of predatory humans is the problem that the industrial revolution brought us, not the happy myths of a tremendous increase in our standard of living or that "green" revolution the fossil fuelers, with there soil destroying chemical fertilizers, claimed we "owe" them for. Any analysis of current crop nutrition shows great  increases in size and yield and weight but less actual nutrition[/I] because of the missing minerals from several decades of forcing the soil with chemical fertilizers.

That's been documented by the United Nations even though most people still believe the "green revolution" baloney pushed by the fossil fuel industry.

We need fossil and nuclear fuels like a dog needs ticks with radioactive Lyme disease.

Of course there is going to be pain in the transition. and you know who is going to feel it the most? The people at the top because they are the delusional ones, not most of the everyday people that have seen the beauty of the earth degrade, the cancer epidemic affect every family and respiratory ailments galore while we have been told for well over 80 years that "times are getting better and better".  We have been ROBBED. And now the rich do not want to pay the piper. At present, the United Nations has documented that less than 20% of the human population is causing over 80% of the damage. I think the rich owe us 80% of the costs to transition to 100% renewable energy. I have written about that too.

Why the 1% is responsible for more than 80% of humanity's carbon footprint and why Homo sapiens is doomed unless the 1% lead the way in a sustainable life style.

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/geopolitics/power-structures-in-human-society-pros-and-cons-part-1/

For the rich, the meteoric rise in standard of living has been a profit over planet rampage of over 150 years. It 's time to stop that and go to 100% renewable energy.

PETITION TO: Demand Liberty From Fossil Fuels Through 100% Renewable Energy WWII Style Effort

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/420/529/456/demand-liberty-from-fossil-fuels-through-100-renewable-energy-wwii-style-effort/

OVERVIEW:

This action is important because the health and very survival of future generations depends on it. We must strive tirelessly to provide a Viable Biosphere for our children. They deserve as beautiful a planet as the one we have lived in.

It's time to reverse all this environmental trashing and get real about the fact that sustainability is not optional for a caring, intelligent human population. We are the caretakers of the biosphere because we are self aware beings. It's high time we began living up to our responsibility to be good stewards of nature.

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children." Ancient American Indian Proverb

PETITION:

Federal agencies have a target of making their buildings carbon neutral by 2030. We can do better, much better than that. We need a WWII sized effort for the health of our country and that of future generations.

The Federal Reserve provides low interest loans for cars and houses. They can also, for the good of the economy and the future of our country, provide the same low interest loans for a nationwide massive effort to transition to 100% Renewable Energy. We did this before with the Liberty Ship building effort of WWII to help us win the war. We can win the Climate Victory with a "Liberty From Fossil Fuels Through Renewable Energy" massive manufacturing of Renewable energy machines. I have all the details and have prepared a poster campaign to get all Americans on board with the effort like we did during WWII.

Mr. President, as you know, during WWII and up to this day, a banner was (and is) flown by Blue Star Mothers (son in the service) signifying their sacrifice and patriotic commitment to the national effort in the war front and the home front. Posters were widely distributed that asked people to save fuel with a mature lady (with the Blue Star Banner in the background) asking, "Don't you want our boys to have a chance to come home?".

We can do the same thing now and get everyone on board to win the Climate Victory. The banner for all patriotic Americans to fly is the Green Leaf Star American in the Service of Future Generations" banner/flag.

My first poster in the series has a lady (with the Green Leaf Star Banner in the background) asking, "Won't you give our children a chance for a healthy future?".

The effort would provide an explosion of jobs and a real chance at an economy that bioremediates the environment, rather than trashing it. Everyone, rich and poor would benefit. It's a win, win, Mr. President, despite the fierce opposition you will encounter from the polluting nuclear and fossil fuels vested interests. We can no longer afford profit over planet business as usual.

We all need to work together in the Service of Future Generations to regain a viable biosphere. Ubi jus ibi remedium.

Let's get it done!

Respecfully,

A. G. Gelbert

Green Leaf Star American in the Service of Future Generations

Please sign the petition. The planet you save may be your own.

 http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fthankyou.gif&hash=dddf44270b9e7683ff5cbcca041427744de34fe5)

 

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 18, 2014, 10:16:35 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcRPlQol5U&feature=player_embedded
Title: Why Sterilizing the Poorest 50% of Homo Sap Won't Solve ANYTHING!
Post by: AGelbert on June 21, 2014, 03:57:08 pm
Why Sterilizing the Poorest 50% of Homo Sap Won't Solve ANYTHING!

Brainwashed Propaganda Victims and Fossil Fuelers'  REACTION to the ABOVE: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smileyvault.com%2Falbums%2Fuserpics%2F10172%2FBored-cute-big-smiley-animated-066.gif&hash=3691d0d47ac776c8e5882a7129e63affb86752c8) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6961.gif&hash=df13f27d25fd180bcc904f19809e2b35dc3309cf) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F237.gif&hash=13b71d2444f84b15c53fb1c0272c080f48a165f1)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fnocomment.gif&hash=e2062ee03ac013cc64a2d5285ec05dd9510c141b)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fbc3.gif&hash=e80a574cef1f1cd31dc58d76fe36b5ffb7fe7d5b) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F290.gif&hash=38949e35cf58eaa4218b5a8176767c806d2f8537)


The "Human Population Must Be Reduced" Propaganda Myth. Why it is a divide and conquer tactic and why it has absolutely no basis in scientific fact.


Quote

"The total biomass of all the ants on Earth is roughly equal to the total biomass of all the people on Earth.
How can this be?! Ants are so tiny, and we are so big! But scientists estimate there are at least 1.5 million ants on the planet for every human being. Over 12,000 species of ants are known to exist, on every continent except Antarctica. Most live in tropical regions. A single acre of Amazon rainforest may house 3.5 million ants."
http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/a/10-cool-facts-about-ants.htm

The Human biomass is tiny compared with thousands of species from insects to spiders to rodents, along with many marine creatures.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)

See for yourself the Evidence: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)

I will provide for you a couple of links for you to research but let me give you a brief introduction to earth's biomass pyramid.

You have different trophic levels (life forms that eat other life forms to survive).

The lower you are on the pyramid, the more collective mass you have as a segment of the biosphere. What does that mean?

Here's a quote so you can see where I'm going with this:

Quote
"An ecological pyramid is a graphical representation that shows, for a given ecosystem, the relationship between biomass or biological productivity and trophic levels.

A biomass pyramid shows the amount of biomass at each trophic level.

A productivity pyramid shows the production or turn-over in biomass at each trophic level.

An ecological pyramid provides a snapshot in time of an ecological community.

The bottom of the pyramid represents the primary producers (autotrophs). The primary producers take energy from the environment in the form of sunlight or inorganic chemicals and use it to create energy-rich molecules such as carbohydrates. This mechanism is called primary production. The pyramid then proceeds through the various trophic levels to the apex predators at the top.

When energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, typically only ten percent is used to build new biomass. The remaining ninety percent goes to metabolic processes or is dissipated as heat. This energy loss means that productivity pyramids are never inverted, and generally limits food chains to about six levels. However, in oceans, biomass pyramids can be wholly or partially inverted, with more biomass at higher levels."

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F8%2F86%2FEcological_pyramid.svg&hash=5e9eb4ac5334727418a703aa8ac02d270cc20f05)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)

Take insects as one example of the Laws of Thermodynamics as applied to life forms in the Biosphere trophic (food chain) pyramids.

In order for insects to BE food for spiders as well as many other creatures, the biomass of insects has to be much, much greater because of the heat energy losses in transferring energy from the insect to the spider (about 90% is lost in heat). The predators (that's what we are, by the way) are at the top of the pyramid and have the least total biomass of all the life forms.

Lions, tigers, sharks, whales, bears, wolves, etc. have a tiny planetary biosphere biomass in comparison with ants, earthworms, rodents, and krill (those tiny shrimp like creatures that whales eat). And the krill eat tiny nearly microscopic phytoplankton (that has more biomass than the ubiquitous krill).

Mollusks, as well as ants and several thousand other species have a larger biomass than humans. I bring up the mollusks because they have a HUGE biomass. I studied them in depth in college Zoology.

The phylum Mollusca:
Quote
"The phylum Mollusca is the second most diverse phylum after Arthropoda with over 110,000 described species. Mollusks may be primitively segmented, but all but the monoplacophorans characteristically lack segmentation and have bodies that are to some degree spirally twisted (e.g. torsion).

The Phylum Mollusca consist of 8 classes:

1. the Monoplacophora discovered in 1977;
2. the worm-like Aplacophora or solenogasters of the deep sea;
3. the also worm-like Caudofoveata;
4. the Polyplacophora, or chitons;
5. the Pelecypoda or bivalves;
6. the Gastropoda or snails;
7. the Scaphopoda, or tusk shells; and
8. the Cephalopoda that include among others squid and the octopus."

Agelbert Note: The biomass pyramid in the oceans in regard to mollusks and fish is NOT inverted. The oceanic "confusion" is due to the fact that some mollusks are apex predators like giant squid and the smaller mollusk predators like Octopodes that eat fish. Most mollusks are small to very small and are food for fish. They are the ones (bivalves near Fukushima) that concentrate radionuclides in their tissues that then get in the fish that eat them.  :( :P

The smaller mollusks (most of them are less than a foot long) are FOOD for fish. That means there HAS TO BE much more of them than there are fish. And I'm sure you don't believe the human biomass is greater than that of all the fish species, right?  ;D
.
Now for some biomass weights:
Human population = 335,000,000,000 kg.
Quote

"Human population = 335,000,000,000 kg. This figure is based on an average human weight of more than 100lbs, though (50kg, to be exact).  I don't know how accurate this estimate is, especially considering that about 1/3 of us are children.  There are supposedly around 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and, put together, they may weigh almost twice as much as our species."

Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba =  379,000,000,000 kg.
There are more ants than krill. Also, metabolism plays a role along with biomass. A "million ruby-throated hummingbirds will consume much more food than one African Elephant, even though both have about the same biomass (3,000kg, or 3.3 US tons). 

Thus, ants, as a group, may actually consume more resources per year than antarctic krill, even though both may have roughly the same biomass, because ants tend to be smaller, and live in warmer environments. Although there may be about 10-15 times the biomass of termites than cows in the world, studies have suggested that termites might produce almost 30,000 times as much methane per year because of their faster metabolism."
http://www.antweb.org/antblog/2010/10/do-ants-really-have-the-largest-biomass-of-all-species-on-earth-laurie-usa.html

So how come nobody is hollering about reducing the termite population?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imgion.com%2Fimages%2F01%2FAngry-animated-smiley.jpg&hash=84657bd1a63cad676e3551587daeb4b39411a289)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)


As the article in the quotes above points out, humans are a huge problem, not because of our biomass, but because of our carbon footprint (I.E. the use of fossil fuels!). And guess what portion of our population does over 80% of the Fossil Fuel consumption? You guessed it! The upper 20%!


 Who Done it?   (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2013/10/one-percents-planetary-assets-equals-80-responsibility-for-funding-a-100-renewable-energy-world) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-260214201233.png&hash=2c784ea86c703de06549ce14091214ff7fc0d461)
 The Global Compact: 20% using 80% of the Resources (http://www.unep.fr/shared/publications/other/DTIx0601xPA/docs/en/Module2%20-%20Session1.ppt)


To ACTUALLY address, confront and STOP the biosphere damage that Homo Sap is doing, we must face the scientifically confirmed REALITY that  if you get rid of the bottom 50% of the human population (the most poor among us) you will, I'm sorry to say, not even dent the pollution and biosphere destruction.

AS pointed out in the biomass numbers, the amount of people eating and defecating is not the problem, CARBON FOOTPRINT is the threat to a viable biosphere. We must attack that problem by reducing the carbon footprint of the most powerful people on this planet.

NOTHING ELSE WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM. The solution, in addition to a 100% transition to Renewable energy, involves eliminating corporate energy welfare queen subsidies for both fossil fuels and nuclear poison.

Democracy and a viable biosphere requires it from all of us. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)

The "let's reduce the human population" (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113183729.png&hash=d898195c8ae0a55e2e6d84fc47b9d06f8ba13f03)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-026.gif&hash=cea0c85d87fadfcde1f4ffdeb123185070f6de75) baloney is a divide and conquer tactic to avoid billing the top human pigs (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)  for the damage they do while attempting to give the rest of us  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.websmileys.com%2Fsm%2Fviolent%2Fsterb050.gif&hash=7ab92003788aa87a5cec0e350c97a7bd23eb8b44)a totally unwarranted with ZERO empirical basis ( but VERY clever (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdrphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fcherry-picking.jpg&hash=c196a0ec409afacfa8f087d5a4556de272d44c6b)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) ) guilt trip. It's a lie. Don't buy it.

What we need to do is transition to 100% renewable energy as soon as possible. That will give our future generations a chance to live in a viable biosphere.

If you agree please sign my petition and pass it on.  Here is the link to the Care2 petition to President  Obama:  http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb

Also, feel free to visit my forum and post on any subject you wish. Thank you.
 Renewable revolution  (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/index.php) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-062.gif&hash=88ceb4a34a12b2bea2fd9edd887da26d73308257)


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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 23, 2014, 03:31:12 pm
Noble Energy Spills 7,500 Gallons of Crude Oil Into Colorado’s Poudre River

EcoWatch | June 21, 2014 2:34 pm | Comments


A storage tank attached to an oil well damaged by recent flooding spilled 7,500 gallons of crude oil into the Cache la Poudre River near Windsor in Northern Colorado, reported the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) late Friday afternoon. The oil well and tank are one of thousands that are placed too close to waterways in Colorado despite environmentalists’ attempts to fight the oil and gas industry and change state regulations to better protect Colorado’s lakes, rivers and streams.


All the contents of the storage tank, 178 barrels of oil, spilled into the Poudre River. Photo credit: 7News Denver

All the contents of the storage tank, 178 barrels of oil, spilled into the Poudre River. Photo credit: 7News Denver

The spill impacted vegetation a quarter-mile downstream, but it appears no drinking water has been affected by the spill, according to COGCC spokesman Todd Hartman.


“During the floods of 2013 this kind of damage occurred on a massive scale, but Governor Hickenlooper and the COGCC made no substantive changes in regulations to avoid this now or in the future,” said Gary Wockner who directs Poudre Waterkeeper, a local affiliate of the international Waterkeeper Alliance. “Until the people of Colorado wrestle power away from the oil and gas industry’s poisonous grip on our entire political system, this pollution of our waterways, homes and democracy will continue to occur.”

The spill was discovered by the tank’s operator Noble Energy and later reported to the COGCC. All the contents of the tank, 178 barrels of oil, spilled into the river. High river flows that undercut the bank where the storage tank was sitting way too close to the river, caused the tank to drop and breaking a valve.

Clean-up crews are trying to absorb the spilled oil and a vacuum truck removed oily water from a low-lying area near the tank, according to a local news report. This spill falls right in front of an election on Tuesday, June 24, for a local moratorium on fracking in the nearby city of Loveland, and at the outset of a statewide ballot initiative in the fall of 2014 to further limit fracking in Colorado. Radio, TV and newspaper airwaves are under a deluge of advertising by the oil and gas industry to try and stop the moratoriums and ballot initiatives.

“All you have to do is turn on the TV and watch the advertisements right now—millions of dollars are being spent by this industry poisoning our political system so that they can poison our waterways and homes to earn the greatest possible profit in the shortest possible time,” said Wockner. >:(


http://ecowatch.com/2014/06/21/noble-energy-oil-spill-poudre-river/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 24, 2014, 04:17:47 pm
Hi,

 Representative Fred Upton (R-Mi6) says he supports an "all of the above" energy policy. This includes legislative favors for dirty energy's big-money interests, as well as Upton's five-year battle on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline—which he claims is part of his "vision" for the nation's "New Architecture of Abundance."

Upton’s constituents do not believe in his "vision." We see nothing new about continuing to spew fossil fuel exhaust. We see eternal abundance in wind and sunshine. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

As Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Upton spins his committee's support for dirty energy as "protecting jobs" and "taking care of the economy." Meanwhile, bills that encourage commerce in clean energy die in Upton's committee.  >:(

Upton’s constituents understand that the nation’s interest would be best served if Upton’s committee would stop doing favors for dirty energy and, instead, would encourage the research, development, production, and delivery of clean energy—the kind of commerce that would clearly benefit the environment and the economy while creating true job growth.

Upton, now in his fourth year as chairman, could have taken a leading role in the nation’s—and thereby the planet’s—all-important transition from dirty energy to clean. Instead, he lets renewable-energy initiatives die in his committee. Upton has forsaken his leadership responsibility and has capitulated to the big-money corporate interests that are pushing us toward our own extinction.

 That's why I signed a petition to Rep. Fred Upton (MI-6), which says:

 "Please stop pushing outdated big-oil energy solutions. As Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, you should be one of the nation’s strongest advocates for the business of researching, developing, and producing green energy, not black. If you can't take on that role, please retire."

 Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name:

 http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/representative-fred-upton?source=s.fwd&r_by=5769561

 Thanks!

Bruce Brown  (petitionshare@moveon.org) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 01, 2014, 01:41:58 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1p_tFnKqMA&feature=player_embedded
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/09/24/who-exclusive-gen-wesley-clark-on-oil-war-and-activism/#sthash

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 02, 2014, 01:20:21 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x43h2DX7D0&feature=player_embedded
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-Bzb-1rVB8pc%2FUfXxBekcYVI%2FAAAAAAAAEm4%2FhXUkGCzFIPg%2Fs1600%2Fgiveafuckometer-gif.gif&hash=ba12a8b5eb920e7de0ca2ba5256e06bfc2c040e7)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)                            (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 07, 2014, 02:31:33 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffiles.cdn.ecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F07%2Fquakers.jpg&hash=b87d064989fd04ab1dbfa3efe27a4d4def6aef75)
Image courtesy of 350.org

Quakers Divest From Fossil Fuels

Paula Kline, Fossil Free Friends  | July 7, 2014 12:09 pm 

Quote
“We understand that addressing the climate crisis is a moral imperative,” said Bruce Harrison of Westtown Monthly Meeting. “The divestment movement draws attention to the seriousness of climate disruption and the need to combat the powerful coal, oil and gas companies, which persist in resisting efforts to curb polluting carbon and methane emissions.”
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clker.com%2Fcliparts%2Fc%2F8%2Ff%2F8%2F11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png&hash=599691109af22b33f1d59dd61eb97448a9427020)

http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/07/quakers-divest-from-fossil-fuels/

You see folks, the Quakers live mostly in PENNSYLVANIA. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-034.gif&hash=aaa4624f4728fa49a5a4511b865e35a767958109) For those who don't know what Fracking has done, thanks to the environmental cost math challenged MKing's of this world (the fossil fuel loving crazies), just Google Frackcidents.

Here's my search results for those, unlike MKing, who can add and subtract.  https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS485US486&q=frackcidents

NOTE: fraccidents is a DIFFERENT search item. Do that one after the above one for more "externalized costs of fossil fuels" that WE-THE-PEOPLE get STUCK with.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 07, 2014, 08:52:06 pm
Along with everybody else out there that isn't bought and paid for or too propagandized by the fossil fueler planet rapists, The REAL Christians GET IT!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.websmileys.com%2Fsm%2Fviolent%2Fsterb029.gif&hash=7a43a0c106eab798f7ba6133dc5cc550647a03d2)
 


I just read from a Seniors web site (of mostly Bible believing Christians) the truth that ACTUAL Christians NEVER were supposed to agree to trashing the environment. All that mind fork injected into the so-called Fundies has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and EVERYTHING to do with a pro-war, pro fossil fuel oligarchic propaganda exercise lasting more than a century.

Quote
What's With That Dirty House Roof?

We recently celebrated "Earth Day".. From my Christian perspective, I believe we have a deep responsibility to be good stewards of the planet that God has given for each of us to use for a few years. "This Is My Father's World" Have you sung that hymn at church? I have, since I was a wee boy, and that's a long time. So then, today might be a good time for each of us to ask if we have been responsible with "our Father's world". And, how can I be more responsible tomorrow?

From a more practical perspective, what good is having all of the money or gold in the world, if we have destroyed our air, water, and land? Have you noticed how filth from the sky has fouled your roof, or the one next door. We didn't see so much of this just a few years ago. If you have a new home with a clean roof, just drive around and look at some 10-year roofs. Crud from the air has been deposited on roofs, and streaked by the rain.

If it's on the roofs, it has also been sucked into our lungs. An awful thought. It's in our air, our water, our land. We have taken God's gift to us, and polluted it. So what can we do about it? You have the answers if you - - just stop for a moment to think about it. Now - - - ACT!
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)

http://www.seniorark.com/

Now, consider the implications for the fossil fuelers all over the world WHEN, not IF, the Catholic Church DIVESTS of ALL of its billions and billions of dollars, rubles, yen, yuan, euros and whatever in fossil fuel corporations AND tells there followers over and over that NOT taking proper care (I.E. investing in or subsidizing DIRTY ENERGY) of the biosphere is a sin....
What are they gonna do? Call the Pope a Commie?   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) I don't think ANYBODY is gonna swallow THAT Propaganda TURD.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8) Yeah, they'll TRY; but it ain't gonna FLY!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F5yjbztv.gif&hash=d3dc6c69f3fc5ad39c44fb5466265476f34e5a76)



Pope Francis Calls Destruction of Nature a Modern Sin

EcoWatch | July 7, 2014 8:02 am

http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/07/pope-francis-destruction-nature-modern-sin/

Fossil fuelers here--->(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__smokelots.gif&hash=094f88de6782c1cd03ed5321b387792046eb3cdd) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-scared002.gif&hash=764898cfbf07ef2c41ffddc5e93fa0e1bed41bae) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-scared005.gif&hash=2de3525707995f1cf9333ecfafd947caca42e8eb)

 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imgion.com%2Fimages%2F01%2FAngry-animated-smiley.jpg&hash=84657bd1a63cad676e3551587daeb4b39411a289) 


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 11, 2014, 02:24:28 pm
Barre Seid   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) has admitted to being the big money behind the climate-denying Heartland Institute.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biu.ac.il%2Fbot%2F10%2FimagesHonDoc%2FBarre-Seid.jpg&hash=b5e6292fd57c7349df5ec4587ede64401a7f5995)
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-Bzb-1rVB8pc%2FUfXxBekcYVI%2FAAAAAAAAEm4%2FhXUkGCzFIPg%2Fs1600%2Fgivea%2A%2A%2A%2Aometer-gif.gif&hash=fe3c1849b6573e36170149577c8472178089ff62)


Another one of those people the fossil fuelers admire for "DOING"  so much to "earn" their wealth and "honored" place among human apex predatory ****s.  >:(

Yeah, I know. Despite the fact that I am part Jewish, I am about to be called an "anti-Semite"!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/11/1313218/-Heartland-s-Anonymous-Donor-Revealed

The pollution and GW we being assaulted with are SYMPTOMS of the DISEASE killing our biosphere, not the disease itself.

If we don't seriously address this DISEASE of S**t Canned Ethics for Short Term Profits  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00) of the fossil fuel FOOLS that are despoiling our biosphere and accelerating planetary pollution, the big die offs (including large segments of the human population) begin at 2030.

The DIRTY ENERGY SOURCES long history of profiting from our blood and treasure while they despoil the biosphere.

The following quote from a peer reviewed book is of extreme importance to all Americans:
Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Quote
"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "
  >:(

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.

This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By "funding" politicians with rather large "donations" to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.
If all this was just about power politics, I might not be that concerned. Humans, particularly the overly ambitious and aggressive ones, have always fought and schemed to control and fleece the population at large.

But now we know the future of our biosphere is at stake. Now we know the entire edifice of dirty energy is a knife in the back of the biosphere that will destroy our species and many others.

The system, as defined by the fossil fuel fascist dystopia that currently runs most of the human affairs among the 1 billion population in the developed world that is saddling the other 6 billion, who are totally free of guilt for causing it, with this climate horror we are beginning to experience, IS quite stubborn and does not wish to change the status quo.

Mother nature will force it to do so.


Whether it is done within the next two decades or not (i.e. a switch to 100% PLUS bioremediation Renewable Energy steady state economy) will dictate the size of the consequent die off, not only of humans but thousands of other species as well.

We are now in a climate cake that has been baked for about 1,000 years according to atmospheric, objective, proven with experimental data, science.

If the crash program to switch to renewable energy is to begin soon, I expect the trigger for the crash program will be the first ice free arctic summer (according to my estimates) in 2017. But millions of people demanding a transition to 100% renewable Energy will give us a fighting chance to win the Climate Victory.

You can help us leave dirty energy sources that are killing us behind. I started a petition on Care2: Demand Liberty From Fossil Fuels Through 100% Renewable Energy WWII Style Effort. I'm hoping that if enough people sign my petition, we can make a difference. I have 271 signatures. Will you help me collect more by adding your name?

Posters to download and print to publicize the petition:
http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200614004325.png
http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-190614205808.png

Here is the link to the petition:  http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300614160245.gif&hash=26cf0af4ea082bdb608bb7b2656d54ec7199969b) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcomputer3.gif&hash=cd6007945e9cbaabf029ebaef6ad36b8505bc341)


For those who don't wish to bother signing or are concerned for your "privacy". Hello? Hello? This is the year 2014! By 2030  periods where the "Humid Heat Stroke Index" is so high that the human body can no longer maintain a normal core temperature will become common. Home Sap is on the short list for extinction!

That is sorta more important than hiding from the NSA or the CIA now ISN'T IT? And I DO NOT see ANY of the home addresses or e-mail addresses anyway, Care2 does! So, if you CARE about future generations,  you  have ZERO excuse, unless you are a bought and paid for climate denying, war profiteering LOW LIFE GREEDBALL, for NOT signing.

Sign this for the sake of common decency and future generations  (and pass this on to everyone you care about to sign too!) or resign yourself  to the fact that you are a NIHILSTIC DEATH CULT ACCESSORY to the HOMO SAP SUICIDE.

Petition link:  http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 12, 2014, 07:52:14 pm
The video below is a simulation of tar oil dispersion pollution from a ruptured (proposed) pipeline due to the STRONG CURRENTS in this part of the Great Lakes. It is also a testament to the abysmal stupididy, greed and short sightedness of fossil fuelers and the government **** they buy. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELlWwTF9PDs&feature=player_embedded

Placing several of THESE DOWN THERE, instead of a pipeline for fossil fuel climate poison, would avoid the environmental hazard and, with prudent maintenance, last several decades until more efficient turbines could replace them. and GENERATE MUCH MORE POWER than the crap in a pipeline. Another PLUS is that the MTBF of these turbines (made to withstand ocean salt water conditions) would be much greater in fresh water!(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113185047.png&hash=384024358ff8d5e7133d19b6e6638da4584a8154)
 


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-GL5j1HJXNGE%2FU5HAcjeP3KI%2FAAAAAAABEGY%2FZBbqo0mVQi0%2Fs1600%2F06-06-2014c.gif&hash=2d25e7a048a40c0442d015228dddb0128d85a7b5)

We used to do OBVIOUS in this country (Canada too!). What happened? How did the fossil fuelers get (and curse our country with) such a TERMINAL CASE OF THE GREEDY DUMBASS!!!? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1402.gif&hash=704ddbc7a892750ad55e7a7bea92270b1df3ecba)

Link to story with the video:
http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/11/pipeline-rupture-beneath-great-lakes-devastate-people-planet/ 

More background info the fossil fuelers DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCMfDDcyRb0&feature=player_embedded


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 13, 2014, 06:06:19 pm
Steve from Virginia said,
Quote
95% of petroleum consumption is non-remunerative waste; transport for pleasure/for the sake of it.

Exactly! And Chief Scientist of RMI has been saying just that (and MORE - 90% of NEEDED power generated for civilization is WASTE! ), AND SHOWING HOW TO ELIMINATE THAT WASTE SO WE CAN POWER THE PLANET WITH ONE TENTH THE ENERGY WE DO NOW WITH NO REDUCTION IN STANDARD OF LIVING, for DECADES! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)


Energy efficiency 1 Amory Lovins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5txQlEI7bc#

Energy efficiency 2 Amory Lovins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUih_t9aCs#

Energy efficiency 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjcWx7U1sjQ#

Energy efficiency 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW6gWZD4394#

Energy efficiency 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-9jd2OMwJQ#

The next industrial revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zfO3HW6xCw#

Yesterday the MYTH that fossil fuel corporations don't transition to Renewable energy because fossil fuels are "cheaper" was once again trotted out. This was my answer:

"Exxon has $20 billion of cash on their balance sheet. If there were a way to make stupid money off "alternative energy", they'd be doing it. And profiting from it. At your expense."

You have that EXACTLY BACKWARDS.

The main reason that large dirty energy industries DO NOT want to transition to Renewable energy is because It has NEVER been about ENERGY beyond CONTROLLING the spigot to we-the-people.

That's why the fossil fuel industry simply didn't switch to the much more profitable and economical renewable energy technologies long ago (they certainly have the money to do so); they simply could not figure out a way to retain POWER and CONTROL with a distributed, rather than a centralized energy system.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr: In the next decade there will be an epic battle for survival for humanity against the forces of ignorance and greed. It’s going to be Armageddon, represented by the oil industry on one side, versus the renewable industry on the other. And people are going to have to choose sides – including politically. They will have to choose sides because oil and coal, they will not be able to survive – they are not going to be able to burn their proven reserves. If they do, then we are all dead. And they are quite willing to burn it. We’re all going to be part of that battle. We are going to watch governments being buffeted by the whims of money and greed on one side, and idealism and hope on the other. http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/06/interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-environmental-activism-democratization-of-energy-more/ (http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/06/interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-environmental-activism-democratization-of-energy-more/)

THIS is the way it REALLY WORKS! It's as much about welfare queen oligarchic degrading of democracy as the degrading of the biosphere!

The DIRTY ENERGY SOURCES industries have long history of profiting from our blood and treasure while they despoil the biosphere.

The following quote from a peer reviewed book is of extreme importance to all Americans:

Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.

This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By "funding" politicians with rather large "donations" to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.

If all this was just about power politics, I might not be that concerned. Humans, particularly the overly ambitious and aggressive ones, have always fought and schemed to control and fleece the population at large.

But now we know the future of our biosphere is at stake. Now we know the entire edifice of dirty energy is a knife in the back of the biosphere that will destroy our species and many others.

The system, as defined by the fossil fuel fascist dystopia that currently runs most of the human affairs among the 1 billion population in the developed world that is saddling the other 6 billion, who are totally free of guilt for causing it, with this climate horror we are beginning to experience, IS quite stubborn and does not wish to change the status quo.

Mother nature will force it to do so.

Whether it is done within the next two decades or not (i.e. a switch to 100% PLUS bioremediation Renewable Energy steady state economy) will dictate the size of the consequent die off, not only of humans but thousands of other species as well.

We are now in a climate cake that has been baked for about 1,000 years according to atmospheric, objective, proven with experimental data, science.

If the crash program to switch to renewable energy is to begin soon, I expect the trigger for the crash program will be the first ice free arctic summer (according to my estimates) in 2017. But millions of people demanding a transition to 100% renewable Energy will give us a fighting chance to win the Climate Victory.

Here is the link to the petition:  http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb (http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb)

For those who don't wish to bother signing or are concerned for your "privacy". Hello? Hello? This is the year 2014! By 2030  periods where the "Humid Heat Stroke Index" is so high that the human body can no longer maintain a normal core temperature will become common. Home Sap is on the short list for extinction!
That is sorta more important than hiding from the NSA or the CIA now ISN'T IT? And I DO NOT see ANY of the home addresses or e-mail addresses anyway, Care2 does! So, if you CARE about future generations,  you  have ZERO excuse, unless you are a bought and paid for climate denying, war profiteering LOW LIFE GREEDBALL, for NOT signing.

Sign this for the sake of common decency and future generations  (and pass this on to everyone you care about to sign too!) or resign yourself  to the fact that you are a NIHILSTIC DEATH CULT ACCESSORY to the HOMO SAP SUICIDE.

http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb (http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 19, 2014, 02:13:40 pm
EPA: Duke Energy Finished Cleaning Coal Ash From Dan River (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)

Brandon Baker | July 18, 2014 12:52 pm

Quote
“This arrogant announcement from Duke Energy is the ultimate insult to the people North Carolina and Virginia whose river has been devastated by the company’s toxic ash spill,” Waterkeeper Alliance attorney Pete Harrison—who conducted testing on the Dan River after the announcement—said in a statement.

“Worse yet, Duke doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that there’s still a public health advisory declaring that the river is not safe to fish and swim in. Duke’s celebratory announcement that it ‘completed’ the clean-up threatens to mislead the public into think the danger has passed.”

Coal ash, which contains arsenic, mercury and more, made its way into the river after a pipe collapsed at a waste dump, turning the river gray for about 70 miles.

Full article detailing the latest profit-over-planet EXTERNALIZED COST to we-the-people in the S H I T CANNED ETHICS FOR SHORT TERM PROFITS modus operandi the fossil fuel industry has espoused for about 150 YEARS! (http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/18/epa-duke-energy-dan-river)

Don't believe me? See what refinery WASTE product Rockefeller was dumping in Pennsylvania rivers in the late nineteenth century until he hit the "jackpot" by finding a market for that WASTE. It's called GASOLINE! Wake up, people! These fossil fuel f u c ks are a scourge on humanity!

The so-called PROFITABLE fossil fuel industry is based on WE-THE-PEOPLE eating the pollution costs! The INSTANT they have to pay for pollution, they STOP being "profitable". For those that can add and subtract, that means they NEVER REALLY HAVE BEEN "PROFITABLE"!  >:(
Title: Fossil Fuel Government 2 minute Video Clip
Post by: AGelbert on July 21, 2014, 07:39:02 pm
Fossil Fuel Government 2 minute Video Clip from "The Age of Stupid":   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif&hash=24570cb7e8246617010ce900a07bc85117ff78ca)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-106.gif&hash=f996659d18df7f3b445e6135e884397ac91f25b1)

http://viewrz.com/video/fossil-fuel-government

Please Pass it on. People NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 26, 2014, 01:28:48 am
New Ad Campaign Blasts U.S. Chamber’s ‘Desperate’ Attempts to Kill Clean Power Plan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irw6yco9MvE&feature=player_embedded

http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/24/ad-campaign-chamber-desperate/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 30, 2014, 02:39:53 pm
Legislators, Corporations Gather For Secret Meeting Against Clean Energy And You’re Not Invited  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)

Snippet:

Going into their annual meeting in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday, ALEC — the secretive organization that brings together conservative politicians and major corporate interests — is looking to recalibrate their approach to repealing or obstructing a range of clean energy initiatives after a year of state-level defeats. The 40-year-old group, which has been pushing a corporate-backed, free market-driven (Agelbert NOTE: see Orwell) agenda for decades, is beholden to a number of utilities and fossil fuel companies that bankroll them and they are expected to show results. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) At the same time, with renewable energy gaining momentum across the country and homeowners increasingly eager to get in on the rapid growth and falling prices, ALEC risks alienating itself from the public yet again. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-231218145827.png&hash=8d3bbb761cf17fcddac83f24088d26e316b65e33)

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/28/3461743/alec-annual-meeting-energy-climate/ (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/28/3461743/alec-annual-meeting-energy-climate/)

Some interesting comments that show the American people are AWAKE!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)
 8)


Reply ·  · 1 · July 28 at 1:52pm

Mark Beresford ·  Top Commenter · Portsmouth

A handful of billionaires have owned the US since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 by some of the worlds wealthiest men. Including John D. Rockefeller, The second Baron Rothschild etc..

 Who do you think creates the boom and bust? Democracy in the US has been dead for years as the US population were led like sheep into a Plutocracy.

 The current Rockefeller vehemently believes in the creation of a new world order.

 here is a quote

 "We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." David Rockefeller [June, 1991]

 Let us not forget his father donated the land for the UN building in New York!

 Draw your own conclusions!


Reply ·  · 7 · July 28 at 3:32pm
Dave Pavlatos ·  Top Commenter · Owner at Delavan Martial Arts Academy

ALEC....the legislative branch of The American Taliban.


Reply ·  · 21 hours ago
Mike Roddy ·  Top Commenter · UC Berkeley

ALEC support of right wing politicians is the least of our worries. The oil companies have an excellent ground game, including using attorneys to delay and effectively kill renewable energy projects. The Salton Sea, for example, has some of the best geothermal resources in North America, is less than half developed, and the power is competitive with gas and coal right now, and often cheaper. It's needed for baseload to enable wind and solar.

 Only one small 50 MGW plant has been built in 20 years. In spite of being in a barren and toxic location, using proven technology, geothermal faces dizzying and endless approval processes. Plants over 50 MGW aren't even proposed, since timelines are extended even more.

 Progressives or global warming activists need a similar ground game, including pressure for entitlement reform at the state and local levels.


Reply ·  · 13 · July 28 at 1:32pm
Patrick Thompson ·  Top Commenter

you can also invest in solar companies, buying shares directly (SPWR, FSLR, SUNE, SCTY for a few). or you can invest through a crowd-funding site like solarmosaic.com (which has around 5% yield and so far, no delinquencies)


Reply ·  · 4 · July 28 at 3:44pm
Theodora Crawford ·  Top Commenter

I really don't think they can stop solar...it's obviously too good to remain ignored.


Reply ·  · 7 · July 28 at 4:22pm
dagj2·  Top Commenter (signed in using yahoo)

They can't stop it . . . but they can sure slow it down. The fact that several states don't yet have net metering laws is disturbing. They gotta keep that monopoly to themselves.


Reply ·  · Yesterday at 10:34am
Sara Ross ·  Top Commenter · Los Angeles, California

dagj2 - right, of course the big utility cos. sure don't want folks "going off the grid"


Reply ·  · 11 minutes ago
Charles Edward Pardue ·  Top Commenter

I find it strange that many Americans believe in conspiratorial organizations like the Illuminati, the Rothschild Bank, and such, yet they are totally ignorant of groups like ALEC, the Club For Growth, and others that present a very real and present danger.

 In fact most of these organization operate in plain sight, and a little basic research easily brings them to light. The bigger question to me is why they are so ignored by the media, and the citizenry, when their operations are presented in the clear light of day?


Reply ·  · 6 · July 28 at 5:07pm
Dam Spahn ·  Top Commenter

The Kochs want dictatorial powers, and with their money and mendacity, they might just already be there.


Reply ·  · 3 · July 28 at 8:36pm
Bruce Brown ·  Top Commenter · Works at Retired

Dirty energy's only competition is clean energy, and we know which side the big money is on.


Reply ·  · 3 · July 28 at 6:18pm
Peter Mizla ·  Top Commenter · Hartford, Connecticut

What Republicans have to offer America is no different that what they 'sold' to the unknowing public in the 1920s. Many Americans today still buy the same 'kool Aid'- only today we throw in the 'elephant in the tiny bathroom' Climate change-- 'what a way to go'.......

Agelbert NOTE: Not mentioned above (but SHOULD BE) by my lefty friends is that Dumocrats  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00)  are every bit as much part of the problem as Repuke-icans! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2rzukw3.gif&hash=f0487b8f0d488ab1126ce5e031b11ea3d74b1cc2)

The only political parties that have real solutions in the USA are the Tax Wall Street Party and the Green Party. WHY? because they know EXACTLY WHERE TO GO to get the money needed to fund the 100% transition to renewable energy that would be  MEGA (permanent, not temporary) JOB BONANZA and infrastructure redesign and repair for SUSTAINABILITY instead of PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE as is the current engineering "accepted wisdom" idiocy in the USA. Amory Lovins has ALL the answers to the reset of engineering criteria for sustainability.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183515.bmp&hash=4a3ad9d0a78a7e161f53ddd84f568082a5b0d2ad)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 22, 2014, 12:51:44 pm
Satellite Map Shows Fracking Flares in Texas and North Dakota Equal to Greenhouse Emissions From 1.5 Million Cars  >:(

Anastasia Pantsios | August 22, 2014 12:32 pm

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/22/flared-gas-fracking-texas-north-dakota/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 29, 2014, 02:07:44 pm
The Fantasy of Distributed Generation, Efficiency, and Storage Raising Electric Rates   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

 Scott Sklar, The Stella Group 
 August 29, 2014

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/08/the-fantasy-of-distributed-generation-efficiency-and-storage-raising-electric-rates

Money Quote SNIPPET:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)

Quote
Whether you’re in the Tea Party staunchly against government-supported monopolies or an environmentalist severely concerned about global climate change, the one thing the entire political spectrum should agree on is that spending trillions of rate payer dollars on generation facilities will not provide stable electric rates or lower costs for consumers. In fact, the opposite is true — saving energy and meeting a significant portion of one’s own needs through private investments will insure a more effective low-cost energy system.

In the early 1970’s, the management of MA BELL, our only phone company, said cellular was a whim in a country with 99.8 percent quality service — who would pay 15 times more for a unit of communication? It’s déjŕ vu all over again. I am hearing the exact same thing from many electric utilities and their regulators. Sorry Charlie, we’ve heard that all before.
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FHjPbLbmep2aJO%2Fgiphy.gif&hash=3c7f7703f00cb341d3e9bdba607208d4204a294c)



Agelbert Comment: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca)

 A. G. Gelbert    August 29, 2014

Great article! This is sound reasoning that the fossil fuel "world" refuses to recognize.

I will add that the link between human health care costs and dirty energy costs far more to the economy than the "loss" of tax revenue from those who stop using fossil fuels for transportation and/or homes. Are they going to want to charge somebody a ridiculous surtax because they don't use heating oil any more!!?

It's time for people to make it clear to the government officials that the MATH of our economy includes ALL costs to the PEOPLE. This is supposed to be about the PEOPLE, not the welfare money for dirty energy welfare queens and politiicians looking for a revenue stream.

Health care is an enormous burden on municipal, state and national finances BECAUSE dirty energy is REWARDED for sickening our population through taxes and "subsidies" (institutionalized THEFT!). The politicians get some of the graft and the dirty energy corporations pay NONE of the costs that we-the-people have to carry.

That's not "doing the math"; that's CORRUPTION and suicidal insanity in the service of profit over planet. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)

Do your part. Raise your voice against this ridiculous, insane, corrupt and suicidal world view that babies the dirty energy producers destroying our environment.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ficare.gif&hash=7a81c13fb045a57fc456f34661fddcf04dbfe8b7) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)

DEMAND a Government backed, World War Two style transition to 100% renewable energy in a decade or less!

Progress on: Petition to Demand a WORLD WAR TWO STYLE MASSIVE, ALL OUT EFFORT to transition to 100% Renewable Energy within a DECADE
Please Pass it on. People NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH!

Ms. Jan Thomas, IL Aug 25, 06:51 # 359
OK--358 signers in two months. I guess that says something about how much we care about the most critical issue of our lives!

Ms. Pam Russell, CO Aug 08, 14:08 # 353
Please get moving on cleaning up the environmental damage; on putting all USA intellectual and technical energy, governmental funding into transitioning to CLEAN ENERGY! We the People are SO tired of waiting the "The change we can believe in." Fracking, deep sea drilling, nuclear power plants, spreading poisons over our farmlands, pouring poisons, filth, fossil fuels, etc., into our lakes and rivers, manufacturing SO MUCH JUNK THAT IS MOSTLY PLASTIC only to throw it into landfills, AND THE OCEANS - This ALL MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY!! PLEASE!

Mrs. Roshani Sahu, India Aug 08, 11:51 # 352

Dr. Zanne Thanarose, TX Aug 08, 06:00 # 351

Name not displayed, WA Aug 06, 18:01 # 350

Name not displayed, OH Aug 06, 13:18 # 349
For our sustainable civilization and prosperity, go EV and HEV plus PV!

Mr. Fred Delmer, CA Aug 05, 21:43 # 348
Grow Hemp and get paid under Farm Act to grow as biofuel herbacious feedstock.

Ms. Bonnie Jean Tucker, NC Aug 03, 15:38 # 347
President Obama if you would consider the American people over your campaign donors, this Liberty from fossil fuels could work and would help free people from the debt of rising energy bills.Fossil fuels are not sustainable and you should LEAD THE COUNTRY ON THE RIGHT PATH NOW!!!!!
Ms. Teresa Sumrall, FL Jul 31, 16:20 # 342
There is no reason that we can not move to renewable energies. We have plenty of sunshine in our country. We need to reign in the fossil fuel industry and the utility conglomerates.

Ms. Judith Mitchell, ME 0Jul 31, 16:03 # 341
This is THE most crucial, looming, unavoidable problem of our existence on this Planet, our home. There is simply no more time left for foot-dragging or dithering or catastrophic politicking -- we are hurtling toward a real doomsday. There is a huge need to educate the public, to make alternative energy available and affordable -- in my dreams, this corrupt, swollen, greed-based capitalist/oligarchic system will be supplanted by some more equitable and humane system, and solar, wind, tidal and geothermal energy will be basically everyone's birthright.

Mrs. Barbara Schumacher, NJ Jul 22, 19:52 # 329
Give it a chance, Mr. President.

Mr. Hank Stone, NY Jul 22, 05:15 # 326
My grandchildren and yours need renewable energy!

Mrs. Julie Giessler, NY Jul 22, 01:41# 324
Renewable Energy is less costly than our use of fossil fuels. Profit-driven greed is influencing our legislators. Do the research and get the truth about renewable energy.

Dr. v. E. Perkins, CO Jul 19, 18:02 # 315
This is our obligation to God and to our descendants and to our fellow creatures who should not be suffering at our hands.

Mr. Larry Gibson, CA Jul 19, 08:17 # 311
Stop the insane & corrupt oil industries (Koch brothers their minions. The Gift that is the Earth cannot sustain & in the short term heal this massive assault to all species on land & sea. These masters of insanity care only for themselves. We should be able to arrest them & their wealth they are using as an atomic bomb against Life on Our Earth.

Mr. Ron McCullough, TN Jul 18, 19:51 # 304
We as a nation have to free ourselves from the tyranny and boundless greed of the fossil fuel oligarchs that keep us in the Dark Ages of renewable energy. How is it good governance to destroy the Earth for short term gains for the 1%? It's not. It's the result of corruption and cowardice of elected officials and it must stop!

Mr. Troy Kilbourne, MN Jul 18, 18:48 # 303
A "Manhattan Project" for renewable energy is, I believe, the only thing that can reverse our course towards catastrophic climate change. We did it back then, and we can do it now.

Mr. Stephen Spaulding, NH Jul 17, 06:00 # 302
The fossil fuel industry knows its stranglehold on us inevitably has to end. It's feverishly trying every way it can to lock us into dependence for another half-century. We cannot allow this to happen.

Ms. Jean Elliott, IL Jul 16, 09:44 # 300
This is an emergency. Climate and pollution disasters loom unless we get off fossil fuels.

Please sign this petition. The Biosphere you save will be your own.
Here is the link to the petition: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb


It’s Official: USA is #1 at Climate Change Denial


http://www.care2.com/causes/its-official-usa-is-1-at-climate-change-denial.html#ixzz38Vkjei00

An intelligent comment by Gene J. on the above article:

Nothing about this issue and our denial of the evidence accruing every day before our eyes surprises me.

The money the 1% throw at this issue virtually guarantees many fools will have questions. The evidence, scientific evidence, is out there, available and unassailable - yet the republican party and its masters continue to value money over life.

Make no mistake that is what this is about. We change or we die. A mass extinction event making this planet uninhabitable for oxygen based life forms is coming, it may be a century or so before the full effects are seen, but the precursors are already here. But those who value money over human life think that because they will not be inconvenienced, it matters not.

These are the most selfish people in human history, they don't care at all about what their own heirs will face, they know they won't face it themselves and they don't care about anyone else, not even their own grandchildren.

They make me sick. Literally, because the foul effects of climate change are already affecting daily life with the ever increasing super storms, the incredible disruption in our oceans, the deteriorating quality of our air and the countless new and old diseases are children are already suffering from.

None of that matters as much as piling up money to them. Nothing will change until the people rise up.

But even that, I fear, is too little, too late at this point. We've done the damage, now we'll have to deal with the carnage to come.

I do not believe in hell, but there are times I wish I did. Because people like this deserve a special seat next to the fire for the hell they are creating for the generations to come who will live through the results of our stupidity now, until life ceases on this planet while it takes 50,000 or so years to cleanse itself of our presence. I just hope the next sentient species to arise can read, and believe, what the fossil record will tell them about how stupid we really were so that they do not repeat our mistakes.


Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/its-official-usa-is-1-at-climate-change-denial.html#ixzz38Vjj5xsi

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 01, 2014, 09:48:48 pm
Fossil Fuelers have an incredible inability to do addition and subtraction, never mind any more advance mathematical operations.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)

Consider the huge increase in Renewable Energy 24/7 global power generation if 900 BILLION DOLLARS was spent on THIS:

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010914210914.png&hash=305eb9fdf400fb82abdedb0759c8293a7f6c4455)
The above is a NO-BRAINER for logical thinking humans. The power is ENDLESS as long as the earth rotates, is available near LARGE METROPOLITAN AREAS and is built and serviced with the SAME technology developed for off shore oil platforms. There is NO EXCUSE for not building these EXCEPT you can NEVER CHARGE for fuel cost "increases" because of geopolitical fun and mayhem.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) Free fuel is against fossil fueler's religion! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183543.bmp&hash=0dd31f89969b231b56a05560331875860bb55e56)


INSTEAD, the FOSSIL FUEL EROEI challenged MORONS "invested" (practically threw away because of the low profit margin! ONLY through "subsides" and other corporate welfare queen tax breaks can they make a profit on this STUPID search for more fossil fuels (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) .)  nearly 900 BILLION BUCKS IN fossil fuel exploration. I have explained why these fossil fuelers continue to be one trick dirty energy "ponies". on the image below.  ;D
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010914214256.png&hash=72f19446830aef2fb3cbd42c92c14be6bbbfd851)
   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

You just cannot fix STUPID.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 03, 2014, 03:09:44 pm
Exxon forced our first ad, Exxon Hates Your Children, off the air.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)


Comcast and Time Warner refused to let us run Exxon Hates America.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)


So this time, we’re taking Exxon Hates the World directly to the people, by launching a major ad campaign in the New York City subway system next week.


Watch. Tell five friends. Let Exxon know that we’ve got their number and help us make Exxon Hates the World go viral.

Thanks for everything you do to make this movement real. We couldn’t have done this with you.

Sincerely,
 John Sellers, Other 98%   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa.disquscdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fmediaembed%2Fimages%2F1230%2F6680%2Foriginal.jpg&hash=bef2b475b019155b3299763f1d1962e899ec8669) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)

[embed=640,380]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juoJ_GwdeI8#[/embed]
http://exxonhates.com/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemesly.com%2Fmedia%2Fcreated%2Fyuqw1i.jpg&hash=0631241575a42c3ae2d5625d1e224a9a295e7100)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwilliamburgess.me%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F06%2F126_600.jpg&hash=b91630612ab06f7335587f72359cac5e575b7f9a)

Have FUN on the INTERNET! Give Fossil fuelers an Excedrin HEADACHE! Press the VIRAL  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3) button!
Title: Dirty Money, Dirty Fuels: Why Money in Politics Matters to the Environment
Post by: AGelbert on September 04, 2014, 08:47:06 pm
Dirty Money, Dirty Fuels: Why Money in Politics Matters to the Environment

Politics Matters to the Environment

Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth | April 30, 2014 10:09 am | Comments

What if fighting dirty money in our elections was the key to fighting dirty fuels in our economy?


That’s the question asked in a recent report released by the Sierra Club and Oil Change International. From the perspective of the fossil fuel industry, political contributions are just another form of investment. The only difference is that, for the millions polluters spend on elections, they see billions in bonus profits.

As the report says, “The return these polluters are getting on these political investments—in the form of billions in corporate tax handouts—exceed 5,000 percent, demonstrating that Congress remains the best ‘investment’ possible for the coal, oil, and gas industries.”


For dirty fossil fuel companies, a political contribution is just another investment.   >:(


The oil and gas industries are among the worst offenders. Between 2009 and 2010, the report estimates that they spent $347 million on lobbying and campaign contributions, and in return netted a handsome $20 billion in federal subsidies. Most of these came in the form of accounting gimmicks that help hide corporate profits and obscure tax breaks that help cover drilling and refining costs. Because of loopholes like these, the actual taxes paid by most big energy companies fall well below the top corporate rate of 35 percent.

You would think that at a time when both Democrats and Republicans are preoccupied with deficits and debt, cutting subsidies for polluters should be an easy move. After all, these are some of the most profitable companies in world history; surely they need government support like Bill Gates needs food stamps. The fact that many of these giveaways are nearly a century old, dating from a time when fossil fuel extraction was a much riskier game, only adds to their irrelevance. At a time of significant fiscal strain, decades-old free money for rich polluters should be the first thing on the chopping block.

Unfortunately, in the new world of campaign finance born after Citizens United and supercharged earlier this month by McCutcheon vs. FEC, money speaks much louder than fiscal and environmental sanity. The report points out that solid majorities of Americans support action on climate change, investment in renewable energy, and a repeal of fossil fuel subsidies. And yet, Congress is arguably in its most rabidly anti-environment phase in U.S. history, voting repeatedly to block action on climate change, cut support for renewable energy, and hobble enforcement of clean air and water provisions.

The only way to solve this disconnect is through a new system of public financing. As such, the Sierra Club and Oil Change International are throwing their weight behind the recently sponsored Government By The People Act, which would allow federal candidates to receive money from small donors matched on a six-to-one basis. This would not end money in politics, or even strip polluters of their ability to purchase influence.

Winning those fights has to be part of a much longer campaign against corporate personhood and the idea of money as free speech. But in the meantime, it would give candidates who share the increasingly pro-environment sentiments of the American people a chance to be heard. Friends of the Earth supports the Government By The People Act and its vision for a more healthy and just world.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/30/dirty-money-dirty-fuels-politics/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 05, 2014, 11:00:02 pm
Documentary Exposes Fossil Fuel Industries Assault   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) on the Wild West

http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/04/utah-tar-sands-oil-shale/

Excellent Comment:
Quote

AllenLadd 

"Sometimes it seems like there’s no frontier left unspoiled by greed and the potential for profit." This is a very interesting observation. The sudden onslaught of corporate assaults upon what is left of the "unspoiled frontier" makes one begin to wonder if it is truly being motivated simply by corporate greed or something even darker like a fear and hatred of "untamed" Nature itself.

It is reminiscent in fact of the Puritan's insistence on burning down primeval forests and slaughtering wild life and "wild Indians" as some how a "threat" to their salvation, a reminder that they belong to Nature first, only secondarily and belatedly to "Civilization".

What is really behind this increasing onslaught that forests, wolves, wild horses, anything original in its reminder of the innocence of Eden must be wiped out as a painful memory of Paradise Lost ? It is easy to explain the profiteer's motive behind wiping out primeval forest land in Alaska or our wild horses running free.

It is less easy to explain the public's willing apathy in the face of such relentless destruction. Have we/they become so infused with what Erich Fromm called the "fear of freedom" (also the fear of what is natural) that we are ready to bend the knee entirely to this complete domination by corporate hostility to all that is not yet tainted by its grasping taloned outreach for profit ?

Have we so receded from the memory of Eden itself, so to speak, that we now side with dark winged Lucifer himself, Mephistopheles who tempted us to choose Power over Nature instead of happy harmony within Nature ?
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 06, 2014, 02:46:38 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060914141751.png&hash=3c9db6b8eb257f8965174b95c52941d7b86ae6b2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tEuaj4h8dw&feature=player_embedded
LEARN WHY MOST of the Medals of HONOR awarded for one "battle" in U.S. History were awarded. Learn what you were never told about President Lincoln. Learn how the American Dream of PROPERTY OWNERSHIP worshiped by all "freedom loving capitalists" was USED to TAKE LAKOTAH PROPERTY AWAY FROM THEM!

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The last chapter in ANY SUCCESSFUL GENOCIDE is when the oppressor can lift up his hands and say, "My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They are killing each other!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785) What is WRONG with these people?".   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imgion.com%2Fimages%2F01%2FAngry-animated-smiley.jpg&hash=84657bd1a63cad676e3551587daeb4b39411a289) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) THIS (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) is how we came to "own" these United States.

The Unity Concert is a gathering of members of the Pte Oyate (Buffalo Nation, also called the Great Sioux Nation), artists, performers and concerned global citizens committed to educating and raising support for the Black Hills Initiative. Its organizers and participants believe that the only way for the United States of America to be truly great is to honor its word. Honor the treaties. Join us in healing the Heart of a Nation by restoring the guardianship of the Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation.

On September 13th and 14th, 2014, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, thousands of people will converge for a UNITY CONCERT -- bringing together Native American tribes with those on the right side of justice to return the guardianship of the Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ObmbahV2c&feature=player_embedded
http://www.theblackhillsarenotforsale.org/
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080814213147.png&hash=8caa9e70560c86d7f1e8f5c50cee91c97d9859f1)


To those whiteys that read this and rush to say the Lakotah have been HURT but it "wasn't MY FAULT"... Yes it IS your fault BECAUSE, as long as you think the Congressional District Boundaries in the Lakotah area are VALID, you are contributing to this ONGOING GENOCIDE. Live with it! USA! USA! USA!


No, I am not going to the concert. I am poor. But always remember, if you are white and you are well off,  it's NOT YOUR FAULT.  ;)


NOTE: The following is NOT addressed anyone here personally; It is addressed to people of good will, regardless of color:  8)


Both my wife and I are considered minority trailer trash here in Vermont. In many ways similar to the Lakotah, our lives are somewhat self destructive and counterproductive. We struggle with a Dysphoric Mood because we ARE REALISTS that whitey will ALWAYS blame on our "mental health" rather than on a SICK, GREEDBALL, PROFIT OVER PLANT, SUICIDAL SOCIETY.

My wife, who could pass for a (very tall  ;D) Lakotah any time, is used to being targeted by the cops everywhere she goes. For complaining about prejudicial treatment at a supermarket, she was FORCED to abide by an order to STAY AWAY FOR A YEAR WITHOUT HAVING COMMITED ANY FELONY OR MISDEMEANOR WHATSOEVER.

The police delivered the order to her when she tried to go grocery shopping about three years ago. The "grounds" were "creating a disturbance". She said complaining about treatment was NOT creating a disturbance and the (at this time SMIRKING) store manager (that had gotten the order through the cops) had no grounds to get a restraining order. The THREE police (two males and one female - ya always need  show of FORCE for these blackies and brownies, ya know! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)) officers repeated that she could not come on the premises or she would be arrested.

One (SMIRKING) police officer gave her a card and said "You can give my name to your lawyer (GRIN)". She obeyed the order for a year and went RIGHT BACK to shop at the same Hannaford to the horror of ALL the employees that act like King Kong just walked in the door and scatter when she comes in. My wife is a TOUGH COOKIE. But it's on the OUTSIDE only. The scars and the pain of whitey injustice for a person that graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor in Science and a Major in Chemistry go DEEP.  I understand the Lakotah QUITE WELL. I hope and pray that God will reward their tenacity, decency and love of justice.


Title: If we Manufactured and Transported stuff like nature does....
Post by: AGelbert on September 28, 2014, 03:32:44 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280914150743.png&hash=9984ad29849b40430072854768563e47a8ad24a1)
Repeat after me: Mankind's technology  is a primitive, barbaric piece of planet trashing, eating where we ****, SUICIDAL STUPIDITY. :iamwithstupid:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060914180554.png&hash=e36a3f11f68d43ebcff5cecaa9e706bcbeeafa71)
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It's time to use energy efficiently and sustainably. If we don't we die, period.  8)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fp8.gif&hash=34db9228a959b3b83fc65b38a1aa92a40d56f976)


MESSAGE TO THE DEFENDERS OF THE STATUS QUO:
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Title: Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant should be PRESIDENT of THE USA!
Post by: AGelbert on September 28, 2014, 05:20:51 pm
Don't miss Naomi calling out the Fossil fueler's "IDIOTIC BUSINESS MODEL".  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clker.com%2Fcliparts%2Fc%2F8%2Ff%2F8%2F11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png&hash=599691109af22b33f1d59dd61eb97448a9427020)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F128fs318181.gif&hash=eff6d5f3831782966c2ff2081f07bf7fc5b22a6b)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F4fvfcja.gif&hash=34a9a570347d39a0a892bc1f376c5e8b88add6b5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5YaqcPEUNc&feature=player_embedded

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Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, activist Bill McKibben, journalist Naomi Klein, Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and public radio talk show host Brian Lehrer participated in a panel discussion the night before the People’s Climate March in New York City this month.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/what_will_it_take_to_save_humanity_and_the_planet_20140927
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 01, 2014, 04:19:56 pm
How to Make a “Perfect” Solar Absorber

New system aims to harness the full spectrum of available solar radiation.


 David Chandler, MIT 
 October 01, 2014

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/10/how-to-make-a-perfect-solar-absorber#comment-135615 (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/10/how-to-make-a-perfect-solar-absorber#comment-135615)


Agelbert Comment to the latest empty promise of new technology that will SOON, real SOON, "solve our energy problems".  ::) And of course, NO MENTION of how our gooberment slaps the "national security" GAG on any patent that threatens the Fossil fuel and nuclear welfare queen gravy train. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imgion.com%2Fimages%2F01%2FAngry-animated-smiley.jpg&hash=84657bd1a63cad676e3551587daeb4b39411a289)    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)
Dave,
Thank you for this article but I must point out the pro-fossil fuel government of the USA has, for over THIRTY YEARS, possessed a technology and the patent for it that would solve this heat storage problem. Insolation can easily be captured but not stored UNLESS you have a super insulator. The tiles on the space shuttle ARE THAT SUPER INSULATOR. Every building on the entire planet could be heated (and cooled using a heat pump) with the tile technology to save over 95% of required energy for the last 30 years!

WHY hasn't it been released to the public? Because our Fossil Fuel Loving Government deemed it a National Security Patent. Sure, a space vehicle with a bomb on it CAN use those tiles as a heat shield to re-enter the atmosphere. But there is no debate about whether countries capable of ICBMs need this or would use it to compromise our national security. They ALREADY have adequate re-entry shielding. But the fossil fuel Welfare Queen, over subsidized Industry would have lost, not billions, but trillions of dollars in profit over planet "profits" they made during the last thirty years.

Get that tile technology released and it's OVER for fossil fuel heating and cooling of every building on this planet (including those in Antarctica!).

I have been 2 feet away from a man holding a piece of a space shuttle tile about 8 inches square and about 3 inches thick in his bare, unprotected hand. He applied a blow torch to one corner until that corner turned cherry red. He was STILL HOLDING the tile in his bare hand.  :o His hand was less than five inches from the cherry red tile. It would NOT travel to where his hand was. Now THAT is a SUPER insulator solving most of the world's energy for heat and cooling problems.

And that demonstration took place in 1979.
The U.S. Government, thanks to the Fossil Fuel Industry, is STILL sitting on that patent.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2rzukw3.gif&hash=f0487b8f0d488ab1126ce5e031b11ea3d74b1cc2)

This tile technology would be a nightmare for the refineries  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__smokelots.gif&hash=094f88de6782c1cd03ed5321b387792046eb3cdd)that crack crude oil for the fossil fuel welfare queens. When you crack crude , you get everything from heavy lubricants to gasoline to very toxic VOCs. You can tweak the cracking towers to get a little more of this and a little less of that but you ALWAYS get a certain amount of all the above. You cannot crack without getting the smorgasbord of petroleum "products". Those flaring torches on refineries polluting the **** out of the environment WOULD NOT be being burned if the fossil fuelers had figured out a way to get we-the-people to PAY for those poisonous, carcinogenic, toxic gasses (believe, they are ALWAYS trying to market "every part of the cow" so to speak - YOUR welfare is a marketing problem for them, not a concern.      (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)).

Rockefeller created a market for the waste product, gasoline  ;D, that was flushed down the rivers of Pennsylvania in the late 19th century  :P  by convincing car engine manufacturers to tune the carburetors to use gasoline instead of ethanol (the original fuel for the internal combustion engine in Henry Ford's cars). And by some strange coincidence, when Prohibition came about (After Rockefeller funded temperance movements for nearly a decade with millions of dollars), ethanol was illegal too!

Now if you don't think that ensuring a demand for heating oil and kerosene is not important enough for the fossil fuel industry back in 1979 to keep that shuttle tile technology out of the hands of consumers, you have a leak in your attic.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)

More info on that technology:


Quote
High-temperature reusable surface insulation (HRSI) tiles, used on the orbiter underside. Made of coated LI-900 Silica ceramics. Used where reentry temperature was below 1260 °C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system)

And that is just ONE of the several technologies the U.S. Government, on behalf of the Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Profit over Planet industries, is SITTING on. This is NOT a conspiracy theory; it is Predatory Capitalism Polluting our Government and our Planet.

The U.S. Government CAN transition to 100% Renewable Energy NOW. They just don't want to.

Petition to Demand Liberty from Fossil Fuels through a 100% Renewable Energy WWII Style Transition Effort

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/420/529/456/demand-liberty-from-fossil-fuels-through-100-renewable-energy-wwii-style-effort/ (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/420/529/456/demand-liberty-from-fossil-fuels-through-100-renewable-energy-wwii-style-effort/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 30, 2014, 01:36:40 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGd1lDKfjM&feature=player_embedded
A town and its environment  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-015.gif&hash=8e6486af5151b5eb075de7af5fb71f325d34dc0c) destroyed by Big Oil. When the people sought a remedy in  court, our bought and paid for handmaidens in our Fascist Court system shafted them with a tiny settlement in the SERVICE OF PROFIT OVER PLANET.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 30, 2014, 07:57:18 pm
Fascist Victory on June 26, 2008 Supreme Court drastically cuts payouts for plaintiffs in Exxon Valdez oil spill

Hopes of fishermen throughout Washington and Alaska were sunk Wednesday when the Supreme Court slashed the amount of punitive damages that...

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seattle Times staff reporter

An oil-soaked loon awaits transport to a bird-rescue center after the Valdez spill.
Enlarge this photo (at link)
CRAIG FUJII / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Hundreds of beach cleaners work to hose off and mop up oil along the shores of Green Island, Alaska, part of 1,300 miles of shoreline soiled by the spill.
Enlarge this photo (at link)

The Exxon Valdez is refloated after running aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound and spilling nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil in 1989.
Enlarge this photo (at link)

The spill, by the numbers

The money:

• Original damage award in 1994: $5 billion

• Amount award reduced to on appeal: $2.5 billion

• Final amount ordered Wednesday by U.S. Supreme Court: $507.5 million  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014183629.gif&hash=15481fa08b581c624351cc14f949b1557f851476)

• Valdez captain's punishment: $50,000 fine, plus 1,000 hours community service picking up trash and working at a homeless center  ::)

• Time it will take Exxon to earn current damage amount: about 12 hours of sales  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

• Amount Exxon has already paid, including cleanup and compensatory damages: $3.5 billion

• Amount Exxon actually paid, after tax write-offs and collecting insurance: $1.7 billion

The plaintiffs

• Amount average plaintiff will receive: $15,000, including interest, not including attorneys' fees   ;) or taxes.

• Amount damage award is cut for attorney's fees: nearly 25 percent  ;D

• Number of plaintiffs: More than 32,677

• Number of plaintiffs who have died since case was filed: more than 3,000

• Number of plaintiffs in Washington: 4,700

• Years case has been in court: 19

• Number of law firms involved: more than 60
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The environmental toll (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2955.gif&hash=ddc12d8bdb1bc63b7998a6b086b79a71b7bda755) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2953.gif&hash=b84c0ae260f7ac760e54bcdc33d788c36faa07c1)


• Species deemed recovered since spill: 9

• Species not recovered or still recovering: 11

• Workers deployed to clean beaches: more than 10,000

• Amount of oil estimated still on beaches: 200 tons

• Marine mammals estimated killed by spill: at least 2,662

Sources: Washington state Department of Ecology, Exxon Mobil Corp. ; Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council  ;) ; Seattle Times research

The spill and the aftermath

11 million gallons
Amount of oil spilled, enough to fill 125 Olympic swimming pools

1,300 miles

Stretch of Alaskan shoreline oiled by March 1989 spill

30,000 birds

Estimated killed

$5 billion

Original damage award


$507.5 million
Wednesday's reduced award     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2FIncredible-Hulk-animated-animation-male-smiley-emoticon-000342-large.gif&hash=db736c8c06568f1aa878171ad53d1f0301cfdff2)

$40.61 billion
Exxon's profit last year 
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$15,000
Amount average plaintiff will receive, not including attorneys' fees or taxes 
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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)


Hopes of fishermen throughout Washington and Alaska were sunk Wednesday when the Supreme Court slashed the amount of punitive damages that Exxon must pay for the epic Exxon Valdez oil spill nearly two decades ago.


The high court, in a 5-3 decision, found that punitive damages could not be larger than the compensatory damages for actual losses from the spill, which totaled $507.5 million.

The justices rejected the amount — $2.5 billion — that a federal appeals court had granted to be shared by 32,677 plaintiffs who had claimed damages from the worst oil spill in U.S. history, including fishermen, Alaska natives, local businesses and others.

That amount had been reduced from the $5 billion that a jury awarded in 1994.

The anxiously awaited decision, delivered on the eve of the Supreme Court's summer recess, brings to a close one of the longest-running class-action lawsuits in the country.

But it was not the end that many had hoped for.

"Crime pays, and environmental crime pays really well," said William Rodgers, a professor of law at the University of Washington and an expert on the Exxon Valdez case.


"I am sure they [Exxon] are sitting down and having a toast of the town.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2Fcheers-cheers-champagne-wine-smiley-emoticon-000183-large.gif&hash=bdb20f3940f60a3fa02af770c14551018df8e302)  The other lesson they have taught is scorched-earth litigation pays. Just keep litigating, making up issues."


The fight over the punitive damages reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Since then, Exxon filed more than 60 petitions and appeals, sought 23 time extensions and filed more than 1,000 motions, briefs, requests and demands. The company requested a reduction in the damages amount, a reversal of the verdict and a new trial, claiming jury misconduct and jury tampering, according to Rodgers.

More than 3,000 claimants died waiting for an outcome in the case.

The original jury award of $5 billion was intended to be the equivalent of about a year's average profits for the company. Last year, Exxon Mobil made $40 billion, the largest annual profit of any corporation in U.S. history.

Exxon has contended that it shouldn't be required to pay any punitive damages because it has already paid millions to clean up after the spill, plus criminal fines and restitution, compensation paid to more than 11,000 individuals hurt by the spill, legal fees and other costs.

"Obviously this was very much a tragic accident," said Tony Cudmore, an Exxon Mobil spokesman. "This case is not about compensation for loss, it is about whether further punishment is warranted, and in our view it is not."

As the plaintiffs took stock of Wednesday's ruling, some said they always figured that getting any payment out of Exxon was a longshot.

"I consider it kind of like buying a lottery ticket," Gig Harbor fisherman Ken Manning said.

"A lot of fishermen hate Exxon. The ill feeling I have is for the court system.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2rzukw3.gif&hash=f0487b8f0d488ab1126ce5e031b11ea3d74b1cc2) They have just strung everyone along for so long."

But other Washington state fishermen said the case wasn't about just money.

"This isn't about repaying a bunch of victims from 19 years ago," said Tom Copeland of Bellingham, who turned to farming bamboo after his fishing business suffered because of the spill.

"The important thing about punitive damages is telling them they have to clean up their act. It's important to give them the punishment they deserve, and they continue to deserve it."

Better handling of spills

The massive spill, which gushed 11 million gallons of crude into Alaska's Prince William Sound when the single-hull tanker hit a reef, transformed lives and an entire ecosystem seemingly overnight.

But it also forever changed the way government regulates spills and the transport of oil.

Congress has mandated that by 2015, all oil tankers have to have double hulls to reduce the risk of catastrophic spills.  ::) AGELBERT NOTE: Double hulls were proposed in 1980! Reagan deep sixed the proposals and contributed to the Exxon Valdez accident. We not only have a fossil fuel Government, we DO NOT have a functioning Court System EITHER! ONLY the lawyers and Exxon made out like BANDITS here!

Washington still endures some 4,000 oil spills a year, but the number of large spills has been reduced dramatically. That's because the Exxon Valdez disaster helped change the state's oil-spill prevention and response programs top to bottom, said Jon Neel of the state Department of Ecology.

In 2007, 182 tankers from all over the world called at Washington ports, 137 of them with double hulls. Petroleum products are also barged around Puget Sound and up the Columbia River, and pumped into vessels of every size every day on bodies of water all over Washington.

Some 20 billion gallons of oil move through the state as cargo and fuel each year, and some 14 billion gallons of oil are transferred, according to the Ecology Department.

Today, the state has one of the most rigorous spill-prevention programs in the country, including a 2006 initiative to place oil booms around large commercial ships and docks before transferring oil or fuel, except gasoline, when conditions allow.

The state also has a dedicated fund, staff, and full-time program to prevent and respond to oil spills — a focus that didn't exist before the Exxon Valdez spill.

The damage remains  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Two decades later, the fragile ecosystem of Prince William Sound has yet to fully recover, especially on the hardest-hit beaches. More than 200 tons of oil remain in beach sediment. Herring — which are vital as food to 40 species of birds, mammals and fish — have never returned to pre-spill populations.

"Until herring recover, we are kind of treading water," said Riki Ott, a scientist and author in Cordova, Alaska. "Prince William Sound is beautiful, but if you take a shovel all you have to do is dig down six inches and there is oil. It smells like a gas station, still, today."

The legal fights over the Exxon Valdez aren't completely over.

Still to be litigated is a claim against Exxon by the federal government and state of Alaska for $92 million in so-called "re-opener" damages, intended to help pay for environmental harm not detected at the time of the spill.

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a division of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game, last year said there are more species still suffering since the spill than have recovered.

Some Washington fishing families certainly put themselves in that category.

"Our life has been kind of on hold since the spill," said Katie Dexter, whose husband still fishes Prince William Sound.

"We have been in debt since the spill. We love Prince William Sound, and to see that kind of devastation has been hard on many levels. There is no amount of money that can really undo the damage."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com. Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.


Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2008018035_exxon26m.html


Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes on what the LAW was ALL ABOUT (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2045/#msg2045)

The Lady Justice Legal Scales mean the OPPOSITE of what you think they mean (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2041/#msg2041)

Don't count on our Court System to defend Americans from Fascism - Here's why the solution to Corporate Profit over Planet is EX CURIA (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2019/#msg2019)

How Lawyers  took the power from the King (for themselves) pretending it was FOR THE PEOPLE (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/geopolitics/key-historical-events-that-you-may-have-never-heard-of/msg2051/#msg2051)

Golden Rule Government: A Lawful System Based on Caring instead of Conquest (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2043/#msg2043)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 30, 2014, 11:29:31 pm
http://jenkinslaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Running-Aground-in-a-Sea-of-Complex-Litigation-a-Case-Comment-on-the-Exxon-Valdez-Litigation.pdf
Quote
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW [Vol. 18:151 
The purpose of this comment is to describe the history of the Exxon Valdez litigation and analyze whether the courts and corresponding laws are equipped to effectively handle mass environmental litigation.
Quote
Robert Jenkins is a J.D. Candidate, UCLA School of Law, 2000; Bachelor of Journalism, University of Texas, Austin, 1997

Agelbert NOTE: Such careful language. LOL! Notice that word, "equipped".  ::) They are EQUIPPED, alright! They are EQUIPPED to be HANDMAIDENS of Fascist Government Policies. Their coercive power shows its fangs every single time, without exception, that the state, in cahoots with a large corporation, wish to "limit" the liability.

But NO SUCH care is taken when an individual, say, starts a fire by accident on corporate or public land. This brazen display of a double standard is proof that there IS NO LAW, just service for those in power. Every law, statute, code and regulation, both civil and criminal, can be litigated around in a mockery of any ethical considerations whatsoever. The system is EQUIPPED quite well to DEFEND POWER.

So, although I understand the approach of the lawyer here to look for "reparable" flaws in the system BECAUSE he is, after all, PART of that system as a licensed attorney, I can only conclude that it is extremely myopic.

That too, is part of the design of the Court system and lawyer Training logical thought train. They wish to hair split everything down to tiny, manageable pieces of "liability" which TOTALLY IGNORES the MASSIVE Mens Rea in all planning and execution of activities in the corporate world. The Court system REFUSES to ASSUME that corporations are, by definition, GUILTY until proven innocent. Corporations have a "guilty mind" because their charter DEMANDS they eschew ethics in order to attain profits.

This hair splitting plays into the hands of lawyers because they have more to argue about and thus charge more for their services and thus limit a large portion of the population to NOT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD their services. The corporations (actually, the wealthy individuals that run the corporations - the whole "limited liability" SCAM is all about legal IRRESPONSIBILITY)  HAVE the power and the money so it serves THEM well. This corrupt, self reinforcing loop of money chasing power and shafting the poor degrades democracy and accelerates total fascist tyranny over the masses.

The end result is a Court System that is INCAPABLE (by design, NOT by accident of some "overlooked" flaw) of administering justice but coats all their pro-corporate skullduggery with the color of law (look what "color of law" means to understand that statement I just made.  ;)).

Snippet 1:
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Oil spills leave more than an environmental mess in their wake. They usually leave a mess of litigants and court dockets jammed with lawsuits filed by private and public parties, making claims for damages based upon a myriad of theories of liability.'

Snippet 2:
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.. this comment focuses almost exclusively on the litigation between the numerous plaintiffs who suffered injuries as a result of the spill and the defendant Exxon. 15 Although this paper focuses on Exxon, it is important to note that plaintiffs filed suit against other defendants who played a role in the tragedy. 16 Despite these other suits, the plaintiffs'primarily focused their efforts on Exxon.

Quote
Snippet 3:
The analysis in Part II discusses the strategies chosen by the plaintiffs for pursuing their cases against Exxon, their goals, and the strengths and weaknesses of their choices.

Part III consists of two parts:

Section A discusses the substantive and procedural tools used by Exxon to minimize the number of plaintiffs proceeding with claims and their ultimate results;

Section B analyzes Exxon's use of settlements, particularly with the governments of Alaska and the United States to limit its liability to private parties.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

Part IV describes Exxon's numerous post-trial motions and appeals as well as allegations by plaintiffs that Exxon is using delay tactics to avoid payment.   :(  >:(

Finally, the conclusion to this paper contains a general analysis of how the court system  performed  ;D in handling this complex environmental litigation. ;)

Snippet 4:
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THE PLAINTIFFS GATHER: MAY WE BE HEARD?
The litigants ... are as varied as the species of wildlife in Prince William Sound.17

The Exxon Valdez litigation began with more than 52,000 plaintiffs and 84 law firms filing more than 200 suits in both state and federal court in the first year alone. While the army of plaintiffs
were allies against a common enemy, they also had competing interests. Specifically, the plaintiffs were in disagreement on whether to proceed as individual claimants or to implement representative litigation through class certification. Those in favor of representative litigation believed it was the most effective way to combat a deep-pocket defendant like Exxon on behalf of plaintiffs who would otherwise lack the resources to pursue their claims. The plaintiffs favoring individualism through the pursuit of their own claims argued that representative litigation would be inefficient, take longer, and would deny them their constitutional right to the counsel of their choice.19  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

Exxon, for its part, argued that "certification would unnecessarily complicate the case, lead to logistical and paperwork problems, and allow for frivolous claims. "20° Exxon wanted to continue their ongoing claims-settlement program which had already paid a total of $235 million to about 10,500 claimants.2' 17. Swisher,

Agelbert NOTE: Right off the bat, we have plaintiffs approaching the COURT SYSTEM from the assumption that there is more justice for a "deep pocketed" adversary than not. This is prima facie evidence of a DYSFUNCTIONAL COURT SYSTEM.
If the Court system WAS functional, the constitutionally protected individual approach would be the obvious choice to obtain justice, rather than mass litigation.
Exxon hemmed and hawed about "frivolous" lawsuits and such because they were persuing a divide and counquer strategy through individual settlements (out of court, if possible). Exxon's legalese LIE that "certification would unnecessarily complicate the case, lead to logistical and paperwork problems, and allow for frivolous claims. " was part of it's ethics free efforts to AVOID liabiliity. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183404.bmp&hash=dc40a133c761f80036b08ef0f6c0427aaa7e9f4b)
Snippet 5:

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Another reason representative litigation was the better choice for the plaintiffs in the Valdez litigation was because litigating against Exxon meant litigating against one of the world's largest corporations.43 Representative litigation enables plaintiffs to combine resources-a more effective way for individuals with limited funds to do battle against a deep-pocket defendant with seemingly limitless resources. For example, as of March 1999, Exxon spent more than $300 million in legal fees and appears willing to spend whatever it takes to litigate the matter through every possible level.44

Agelbert NOTE: More evidence that the so-called "day in court" that the Court System "guarantees" is a polite, but cruel, fiction. As above, MONEY, not justice or ethics, dictated the approach to REPRESENTATIVE (i.e. class action scattergun mass settlement). Even though Exxon made some noises about not wanting "certification" of classes for damage awards, in a mass settlement award, The CHIEF benefactor is the corporation being sued because its legal fees are much reduced AND its liability is GAURANTEED to be limited by the settlement. That is NOT justice.

And I find it absolutely insulting for an attorny to claim representative litigation is BETTER because a Corporation CANNOT BE EASILY BANKRUPTED by the "Race to the Courthouse" of many litigants. Say WHAT? So now, all of a sudden, the guilty party has to be PROTECTED if it is a large corporation, REGARDLESS of the damages? MORE PROOF of what our Court System is REALLY all about:

Quote
Representative litigation in a case of this magnitude may also have the advantage of preventing a race to the courthouse for a limited fund. Parties might fear that their interests will be impaired by other plaintiff's judgments. Exxon's company profits for the year of the spill exceeded $4 billion.45 While it is true that Exxon had tremendous economic strength, by September 1991,
252 private lawsuits were filed seeking a total of $59 billion.46 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785)

Agelbert NOTE: The counselor is concerned about all those lawsuits. Isn't that rich! Race to the Courthouse!!? Hello? You mean judges can't prioritize damages awards? You mean Courts cannot group lawsuits under one large umbrella? That's BS! I know they can! See the massive RIP OFF minuscule award to the Navajoes ($150,000) from Uranium mining.

NOW, all of a sudden, the "day in Court" for ANYONE who suffered damages that our COURT SYSTEM is SUPPOSEDLY BASED ON in order to provide JUSTICE on an INDIVIDUAL BASIS (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8), has to take second fiddle to CONCERN for bankrupting a GUILTY AS SIN corporation or a more agile plaintiff getting all the money than the late coming, but better deserving plaintiff!!? Is this guy for REAL?

People DIED, animals DIED, nature was contaminated and people and animals are STILL suffering and dying from this but the LAWYER now claims that a REPRESNTATIVE settlement is a "Better deal" for the PLAINTIFFS (LOL!).

Soberly, he pulls out the legal FACT that punitive damages are designed to punish, not destroy. Yes that is true. That's why Exxon lawyers sought to avoid "compensatory" damages like the plague and agreed to a "punitive" damages type settlement. But our crocodile tear crying counselor does not mention that minor detail until he calls it a "victory" for Exxon further down. So this is a GAME?  ??? It's about WINNERS AND LOSERS, not Ubi jus ibi remedium?    ???

At any rate, that is an ADMISSION that, though the lawyer doesn't want to go there  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca),  even though people, animals and nature were DESTROYED, the COURT SYSTEM cannot asset strip a corporation to the last penny, if need be, to provide an equitable damages award.

Quote

Even an economic giant like Exxon could be slain and bankrupted by massive litigation.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fshame.gif&hash=88b5b0c8644862ef4930e3c7e3556db6c3bf600f) Thus, the possibility of a race for the courthouse suggests that representative litigation is a better approach for plaintiffs in environmental disasters of this magnitude To this end, the certification of a mandatory punitive damages class was also appropriate. After all, punitive damages are designed to punish and not to destroy. Courts have found that excessive damages awards can be a violation of a defendant's due process rights. These constitutional concerns could have come into play if Exxon had suffered unlimited multiple punishments.
47

Agelbert NOTE: SURE... The old "Courts have found" TRICK. Violation of the defendant's "due process rights" is code speech for limiting a corporation's LIABILITY under LEGALESE color of law. WHO, EXACTLY, decides, boys and girls, what an "excessive damages award" IS, anyway?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014182447.gif&hash=58fbc1dfd905f79b3d4bacde8e89a935c2b859ac).

RIGHT! The JUDGE, not the jury! So this baloney about "excessive damages award threat" being a logical and practical reason to go the representative litigation route is pure sophistry. I am certain a study of the stare decisis involving "excessive damages awards" is 100% about CORPORATE defendants getting coddled by the judge while the individual plaintiff gets the shaft. "Due Process", MY ARSE!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)

This ROT in or system goes back, once again , to the "limited liability" FICTION so loved by fascists the world over. So we have a logical train of thought here that claims Exxon has lots of money so it is prudent and practical to do representative litigation even though our legal system is "based on individual litigation". That is followed by the more "prudence" about individuals not having the money to go at it individually and the, really ridiculous, rationale that some individuals might have such "small" damages that they wouldn't "bother" to sue because the legal costs won't make it "worth their while".

WTF!? It's OBVIOUS that individuals in a damages lawsuit SHOULD have ALL legal costs paid by the losing party! Exxon was GUILTY from day one. The only thing to discuss was the damages, period. It should have been ASSUMED that all the plaintiffs' legal fees would be the responsibility of Exxon. But that's not how our DYSFUNCTIONAL COURT SYSTEM "works". So this lawyer is doing some "practical and prudent" pretzel logic to "justify" representative class action even though it A) will reduce the per person damages and B) the legal costs to Exxon while not helping the plaintiffs with THEIR legal costs AT ALL!   >:(

Snippet 6:

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Unlike its resistance to the certification of plaintiffs' classes for compensatory damages, Exxon pursued and supported class certification for punitive damages. Exxon scored a big victory by getting a non-opt-out mandatory class for punitive damages. Thus, there would be only one trial for punitive damages to defend and no possibility for multiple punishments. This would reduce Exxon's litigation expenses and, more importantly, limit their exposure to punitive damages.

Agelbert NOTE: So Exxon pulled the fast one on the plaintiffs by getting "punitive", rather than "compensatory" damages. See what the counselor said about "punitive" awards are to punish, not to destroy according to the law. Ethics free Exxon and its ethics free lawyers KNOW how the Court System "works". So it goes.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

To be continued:  8)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 31, 2014, 12:10:25 am
Quote
"How could we ever have imagined that the companies could turn water into sickness?” says Criollo, now 60. “When the drilling started, the oil stuck to our bodies. We cooked with poisoned water. Our children drank from the river. We were told it was safe.”
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.takepart.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Ffeature_article_hero%2Fpublic%2FAZ_TP2Hero3.jpg%3Fitok%3D7daYwZGA&hash=669df2fe298747d1d93988ffdfb1a9cceace6413)

Meet the Amazon Tribespeople Who Beat Chevron in Court  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emofaces.com%2Fpng%2F200%2Femoticons%2Ffingerscrossed.png&hash=d56f8009d18b55f4cea7be68284c0521be92fc5d)—but Are Still Fighting for Clean Water

With the judgment in their favor tied up in a New York courtroom, (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)
indigenous residents of Ecuador's oil-polluted rainforest are going back to basics.

Excellent photos and informative article on one more place and PEOPLE the fossil fuelers have DESPOILED for profit over planet at link below. These brave people ARE NOT waiting for lawyers. They know how that "works". They also have learned the hard lesson that oil companies are always trying to keep them dependent to the oil companies.
Quote

What they wanted was clean water. And they wanted to control it at the source. They told Anderson they were tired of being dependent on the duplicitous oil firms, which ran their communities as part reservation, part company town.  >:(

http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/10/30/amazon-tribes-chevron-lawsuit-ecuador-oil-pollution
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 05, 2014, 02:21:56 pm
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
 
 
WHAT MIDTERM RESULTS MEAN   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6348.gif&hash=9504ceda802b0d93a18efc33727d5044073ea428)

The new GOP Senate is already gearing up to cause climate mayhem
Ben Adler, November 5, 2014 (Grist)

“…[Republicans] biggest win by far was taking control of the U.S. Senate…This is not good news for the climate. The party that controls the majority and the committee chairmanships controls the agenda. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will now be the majority leader. McConnell deflects questions about whether he accepts climate science by saying he isn’t a scientist and citing climate-denying conservative pundit George Will. But he is clear about where he stands on fossil fuels, especially coal…Attacking President Obama for not sharing his passion for burning carbon was central to McConnell’s reelection campaign…Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska takes the gavel [of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee]. Leading climate denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma will be taking over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and fellow denier Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will be chairing the Committee on Science and Technology…The Republicans have two top energy-related demands: stop EPA from regulating CO2 and approve the Keystone XL pipeline…

Read more stomach turning proof of (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183404.bmp&hash=dc40a133c761f80036b08ef0f6c0427aaa7e9f4b) (see below  :() at link:
 http://nenmore.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-midterm-results-mean.html
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-5RW5fqOUW-A%2FUgBvfpbfOcI%2FAAAAAAAAAG0%2FX8s1iRySYsQ%2Fs1600%2Fcartoons-text-the-end-porky-pig-looney-tunes-warner-bros.-HD-Wallpapers%255B1%255D.jpg&hash=9be34e4ad4b0a8db9a004b75663a06cf07a7783b)
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-021114150033.png&hash=1a55bc1a81954375c07d21a43c3a26b4bd15b3be)
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-260914180633.png&hash=2caa418ea42c2a0ea0c364c8a51d87923b8b9507)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 20, 2014, 03:09:52 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)]


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpriceofoil.org%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F01%2Fbig-oil-5-300x279.jpg&hash=314b875a097ed6b4436e22538ea7c12b9ae3b50d)

Investigation Exposes Revolving Door Between Fossil Fuel Lobbyists and Politicians 

Anastasia Pantsios | November 20, 2014

There was much speculation about Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu‘s motivation  ;)   :evil4:  for pushing the first full Senate vote this week on approving the Keystone XL pipeline. Some revolved around her trying to improve her chances in the Dec. 6 Senate runoff against Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy (neither candidate got a majority on Nov. 4). Others say she’s likely to lose anyway and that her grandstanding was directed at oil and gas companies that might provide a lucrative landing spot for her after she leaves the Senate in January.

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Politicians and government staff become lobbyists and vice versa, and this new report follows their trails. Image credit: DeSmogBlog/Republic Report


That latter speculation isn’t idle, as a new report from DeSmogBlog and Republic Report indicates. Natural Gas Exports: Washington’s Revolving Door Fuels Climate Threat lays out how corporate lobbyists swap roles with politicians and government officials constantly, leading to excessive influence by corporations on lawmakers, the Obama administration and federal agencies. It describes how this revolving door eased the way for Big Oil to land four permits for liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities from the Obama administration since 2012. And while the report, the first salvo in an ongoing investigation of what it calls “the LNG exports influence peddling machine,” looks specifically at LNG export facilities, its conclusions could be applied to the entire machinery of climate denier influence in Washington DC.

“The 2014 U.S. congressional midterm elections are now complete, and the Republican Party controls both the House of Representatives and the Senate,” says the report. “Some have forecasted that this could have catastrophic impacts for progress on climate change and environmental protection in general. But below the radar in Washington DC—little noticed by the media or public—a major change on energy policy has already been long in the making. Corporate lobbyists have helped to engineer a transformative shift with little scrutiny or meaningful debate: plans to extract U.S. natural gas and export the gas overseas to more lucrative markets. This shift—if fully realized—will continue to transition the U.S. into a resource colony, where our communities, homes, air and water are exploited and polluted so that large multinational corporations can pursue ever-higher profits by selling U.S. fossil fuels abroad.”

Four permits for LNG export facilities have already been approved, with many more in the pipeline. To feed these facilities and as domestic gas prices rise as a result of export, there will likely be increased pressure to expand fracking dramatically.


“Big oil and gas companies have engineered  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) this policy outcome through shrewd hiring of Washington insider lobbyists and public relations professionals: Obama and Bush Administration veterans, as well as former Capitol Hill staffers, who have moved through Washington’s revolving door to high-paying influence peddling jobs,” the report authors write.

They go on to enumerate the officials who formerly served both administrations or as congressional staffers, then moved on to new jobs representing LNG companies where they now lobby their former colleagues. Conversely, the report calls out former fossil fuel industry lobbyists who are now elected officials chairing key congressional committees. It describes how many of those officials and lobbyists work specifically within the Democratic Party, often working with those who give lip service to addressing climate change while working behind the scenes to further the interests of fossil fuel companies.”Natural gas interests and the LNG lobby have in fact gone on a hiring spree targeting Democratic officials and those close to the administration,” they say.

The report includes an endless stream of revealing nuggets like this one: “When lawmakers convened for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in July 2014, they were greeted with packets reminding them of the event’s sponsors: Cheniere119 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4), the LNG firm that was the first to win an export license from the federal government, and ANGA  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400), the lobbying association pushing for more exports.”

These influence peddlers have greased the regulatory process that goes through the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), streamlining it with inadequate attention to citizen concerns about community safety, health and climate impacts, the report says. It cites Dominion’s Cove Point facility in Maryland as an example. The proposed and now approved LNG export facility led to a wave of organizing, public testimony, protests and rallies by citizen and environmental advocacy groups like Calvert Citizens for a Health Community and Chesapeake Climate Action Network, charging FERC with ignoring their input in the rush to approve it. The report names former Democratic Congressman Lewis F. Payne, Jr. of Virginia and three former congressional staff members who lobbied for Dominion on behalf of Cove Point.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F11%2FCovePoint.jpg&hash=1773b9c7ca6284988410cbe4df71576aefe1cce6)
While activists said their input on Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export facility was being ignored  :(, lobbyists for Dominion  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) were pushing to speed up the approval process. Photo Credit: Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Meanwhile, a bill was introduced in Congress called H.R. 6, which would have required the DOE to speed up the approval process for LNG export facilities.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd) The report explains that two staff members of the House committee hearing the bill were former LNG lobbyists and that among the 57 corporate or corporate-backed entities lobbying for it were “Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Anadarko, Statoil, Eastman Chemical, FirstEnergy Corp, General Electric, Halliburton, Dominion Resources, Dow Chemical, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Sempra Energy, Marathon Oil and BP. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)” The bill passed the House but not the Senate.  ;D

“Unfortunately, as lobbying and influence peddling heats up in Washington and elsewhere, so too does the planet,” report authors Lee Fang of Republic Report and Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog conclude. “Relentless fracking and opening the export floodgates with U.S.—harvested shale gas can only make the planet hotter still.”

Agelbert Comment:
The Fascist Fossil Fuel Government is a corporate creation straight from the unethical and predatory sociopathic concept of "LIMITED LIABILITY". In the physical world of cause and effect, as in the biosphere, there is NO SUCH THING as "limited liability". In nature, what goes around ALWAYS comes around. The Con artists just want we-the-people to pay for the pollution and consequent damge form climate change that THEY should be paying.

It is the criminal Homo SAPS among us that have attempted to stuff the  "limited liability" illogic down our collective throats. Limited liability is a MYTH. The biosphere is NOT impressed.

The question is, are YOU going to let the psychopaths make ALL of us pay or are we-the-people going to make the psychopaths that did the crime, PAY THE FINE AND DO THE TIME?!!!(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014182447.gif&hash=58fbc1dfd905f79b3d4bacde8e89a935c2b859ac)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014183629.gif&hash=15481fa08b581c624351cc14f949b1557f851476)



The Exxon Valdez PITTANCE of a settlement: PROOF we have a Fascist Fossil Fuel Government AND the irreparably DYSFUNCTIONAL Court System is its HANDMAIDEN (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2122/#msg2122)
TINA to a Low Carbon Economy (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg2114/#msg2114)
More Proof that Mens Rea is the DEFAULT criminal position of polluters (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuel-skulldugggery/msg2130/#msg2130)

(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/272.jpg)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 23, 2014, 01:46:05 pm

Sign the pledge: Don't buy these Koch products


by
Rachel Colyer

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Koch industries and its subsidiaries are expansive—their holdings include everything from gas stations to pipelines, paper products for everyday use, greeting cards, chemicals used to make materials, and the fabric that makes your clothing.  :o   >:(


With an interest in almost everything and status as the number two privately held company in the country–behind Cargill—Koch industries is a behemoth that is hard to avoid.

But knowledge is power and your dollar is your vote. We can become informed purchasers and refuse to support their political agenda by refusing to purchase their wares.

The internet is a wonderful place, full of handy resources. Start by memorizing and avoiding the brand logos listed, which are commonly found throughout our daily lives. Download the Buycott app on your phone and use it while you shop. Buycott has an interesting connection to the netroots you can read about here.

Do some research. Visit Koch industries, Invista, and Georgia-Pacific to see their broad range of products for home, business, construction, clothing manufacturing, farming materials, and chemical additives. They are into almost everything—including fiber optics!

If you are in charge of ordering office supplies for your business, construction materials for your job site, or products for events, catering, or restaurants—avoid buying from Georgia-Pacific and its smaller subsidiaries.

Use your purchasing power to stop adding to the Koch empire, avoid the following products as much as you can. Please sign the pledge to not buy commonly available Koch products.

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List of familiar Koch products and brands:
 -American Greetings** (took heavy Koch investment, upwards of $200 million)
 -Angel Soft
 -Angel Soft Ultra
 -Brawny paper towels
 -Dixie products
 -Insulair cups
 -Mardis Gras napkins
 -Perfect Touch cups, paper products
 -Quilted Northern
 -Sparkle paper towels
 -Vanity Fair napkins & paper towels
 -Zee Napkins

-Georgia-Pacific Office products
 -Spectrum paper
 -Georgia-Pacific's enMotion paper towel dispenser
 -Georgia-Pacific's engineered lumber

INVISTA Brands
-INVISTA’s PET polymer is used in oxygen-sensitive packaging for food and beverages.
-ADI-PURE® Adipic Acid
-ANTRON® Carpet Fiber
-C12™ Intermediates
-COMFOREL® Fiber
-COOLMAX® Fabric
-CORDURA® Fabric
-DACRON® Fiberfill
-DYTEK® Idea Intermediates
-FLEXISOLV® Solvent Solutions
-LYCRA® Fiber
-LYCRA HyFit® Fiber
-OXYCLEAR® Barrier Resin
-POLYCLEAR® PET
-POLYSHIELD® Resin
-SENZAA™ Additive
-STAINMASTER® Carpet
-SUPPLEX® Fabric
-SUPRIVA™ Fiber
-TACTEL® Fiber
-TECGEN® Garments
-TERATE® Polyols
-TERATHANE® Polyether Glycol
-TERRIN™ Polyols
-THERMOLITE® Fabric
-TORZEN® PA66 Resin

Koch Fertilizer Company's AGROTAIN® nitrogen stabilizer fertilizer products are used around the world to improve nitrogen efficiency and enhance crop productions.

If you use building materials, be sure to check out the extensive list of Georgia-Pacific building products—including their product app. 

*Disclaimer: The list is a work in progress, we are striving to keep it updated and accurate, please post corrections or additions with citations in the comments.


**Disclaimer: Note that some of these products are made in union facilities by union members. We are working to determine which those are, so you can make your best informed decisions.*

Please sign the pledge to not buy commonly available Koch products.

H/T to users kathybbb, ATexican, PeteInTX, BDA in VA, Melanie in IA, TheNewDeal00, Truth Told Here, workinguy, and geebeebee who've all posted similar information.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/01/1288957/-Sign-the-pledge-Don-t-buy-these-Koch-products

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 23, 2014, 02:41:16 pm
 ::)To be filed under a TREMEDOUS CAPACITY FOR THE OBVIOUS about the modus operandi of the  crooked, thieving, larcenous, low down, rigged, monopolistic, predatory, conscience free, polluting, etc. CESSPOOL of modern Capitalism...   :P

When a Bank Owns 100 Oil Tankers, It Can Mess With the Price of Gas  >:(

A two-year Senate investigation of the financial sector has found that banks can meddle with the economy in new and frightening ways.

The investigation was led by Carl Levin, D-Mich., and looked specifically at the impact of investments on the prices of certain commodities—things like oil and uranium.

Deregulation made it possible for firms such as Goldman Sachs to outright buy commodities and commodity suppliers. For instance, Goldman owns a coal mine in Colombia. And that fleet of 100 oil tankers? It belonged at one time to Morgan Stanley, which also held 55 million barrels of oil storage. JPMorgan Chase, according to The New York Times, once owned 31 power plants.

These are some of the same institutions that profit from your credit card debt when the price of oil goes up.

There are myriad other conflicts of interest, and general vulnerabilities besides.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/when_a_bank_owns_100_oil_tankers_it_can_mess_with_the_price_of_gas_20141119
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 26, 2014, 03:12:03 pm
Agelbert NOTE: An EXCELLENT, APTLY DESCRIPTIVE AND ACCURATE Comment  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.runemasterstudios.com%2Fgraemlins%2Fimages%2F2thumbs.gif&hash=98130be1edf2bed4a80ac8f134b0126673bd469e) on the latest Fossil Fuel "effort"   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) to use the FASCIST COURT SYSTEM to pillage the planet.

Andrew W Johnson   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3) ·  Top Commenter · Colorado State University

Quote
H. Sterling Burnett   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.u.arizona.edu%2F%7Epatricia%2Fcute-collection%2Fsmileys%2Flying-smiley.gif&hash=a34c2f7344d5f54f7009a4e684bb6c7310cdda03) - you are exactly what's wrong with conservatives today. You are so short-sighted you can't see past your brown nose up the Koch brothers' asses.

Anyone who listens to anything the Heartland Institute says about anything is an idiot and cannot be trusted. We are trying to protect our clean air and clean water in Colorado and around the world, you know, so we can continue living. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)

All you care about is putting more money into your and your friend's pockets without a care for the future of all life on Earth - which includes your own family. You are a Koch brothers supporter which means you are anti-environment, anti-renewable energy, and you use false science to "prove" you position.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)

So, every so-called fact and quote in this article can't be trusted just like you. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

Stay out of Colorado and Colorado politics.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)


Heartland Institute (otherwise known as the Koch F ARTland Bu lls hit factory  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2rzukw3.gif&hash=f0487b8f0d488ab1126ce5e031b11ea3d74b1cc2))

Colorado’s Renewable Energy Mandate Constitutionality Challenged (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)
 


http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/11/24/colorados-renewable-energy-mandate-constitutionality-challenged

 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desmogblog.com%2Fsites%2Fbeta.desmogblog.com%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Fblog_teaser%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fblog-feature-2768.jpg%3Fitok%3D_5q_ccO7&hash=a5dd5ee88589f6fb5edc3d455846f6ec285f331e)H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (PILED HIGHER AND DEEPER!) worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6)


 

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 28, 2014, 03:00:24 pm
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Why Aren’t Rural Electric Cooperatives Champions of Local Clean Power?

 John Farrell 
 November 28, 2014

When it comes to ownership, there are few better structures for keeping a community’s wealth local than a cooperative. So why is it that America’s rural electric cooperatives are tethered to dirty, old coal-fired power plants instead of local-wealth generating renewable power?

There are a lot of answers to this question, but it might start with this: electric cooperatives aren’t quite like other cooperatives.

The Seven Slipping Cooperative Principles

Cooperatives around the world adhere to the “Seven Cooperative Principles,” but electric cooperatives (at least in the United States) fail on several of these principles.

1.Voluntary and open membership. Nope. If you want electric service in cooperative territory, you sign with the cooperative. While it’s no different than rules for other types of utilities in the 30 states that grant utilities a monopoly service territory, it violates the principles of cooperatives.

2.Democratic control (one member, one vote). Not always. Some electric cooperatives award one vote per meter, and some customers (e.g. farmers, industry) have more than one meter. Furthermore, many cooperatives filter potential board candidates with “nominating committees.” And look, here’s a board election with no opposition!There’s also a big gap between cooperative member support for (paying more for) renewable energy and cooperative behavior. This 2013 survey in Minnesota, for example, shows little separation between urban and rural areas (where cooperatives are dominant) in support for renewable energy, yet cooperatives opposed every bill favoring clean energy in the 2013 legislative session.

3.Members control the capital of the cooperative.

4.Cooperatives maintain their autonomy and independence even if they enter into agreements with other entities. Questionable. Many cooperatives sign 40- or even 50-year purchase contracts with power suppliers to supply 95% of their entire sales, mostly from coal-fired power plants. Standard and Poor’s explains this in an evaluation of a Seminole Electric in Florida, a generation & transmission cooperative that sells to rural cooperatives. In their words, one of the utility’s credit strengths is, “A captive retail market and the ability to set rates through take-and-pay, all-requirements wholesale power agreements with nine of 10 members through 2045.”

5.Cooperatives provide educational opportunities to their members and the public on the benefits of cooperatives. Questionable. If you read rural electric cooperative newsletters, you’ll hear a lot about climate change but you’ll often find the phrase in quotes

6.Cooperatives work best when cooperating with other cooperatives. Questionable, refer to #4. Some of these power suppliers are “co-ops of co-ops,” but these long-term contracts have tethered the economic fortunes of cooperative members to the vagaries of the coal market (see below). More than any other type of utility (public or investor-owned), rural electric cooperatives are reliant on coal for their electricity fuel. The average U.S. utility is 38% coal-fired power.

rural electric cooperatives reliant on coal  >:( - public citizen coal prices 2000-11.001
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7.Cooperatives work for sustainable development of their community. Not enough. Most cooperatives rely heavily on imported power purchased on long-term contracts with the goal of cheap power, but that ironically leave them at the mercy of unfettered price increases. They also have missed an enormous economic development opportunity from renewable energy. For example:Renewable energy provides significant economic impacts ($1 million per megawatt of wind, $250,000 per megawatt for solar) with multipliers for local (i.e. cooperative) ownership (up to 3.5 times more local economic impact, and twice as many jobs).
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Wind and solar provide more jobs per megawatt of power capacity, as well. RE-fossil-jobs-per-MW


Finally, rural electric cooperatives have organized a 1 million comment campaign against EPA regulations of carbon pollution from power plants. Hardly a commitment to “sustainable development.”


How Can Cooperatives Change?


Restoring their 7 principles could do a lot. Improving their structure so that the cooperative directors reflect member opinion on renewable energy would restore the principle of democratic control. Avoiding ridiculously long power purchase contracts would provide local cooperatives with real autonomy and control of their energy costs and options. Broadening their focus on economic development beyond cheap power to include renewable energy would make “sustainable development” much more realistic.

Can it happen? It already has, in Iowa and on Kaua’i, and there are more tools that ever at their disposal. But as with electrification, no one will do it unless they do it themselves.

This piece originally appeared on ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell on Twitter or get the Democratic Energy weekly update.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2014/11/why-arent-rural-electric-cooperatives-champions-of-local-clean-power#comment-137671

1 Comments

A. G. Gelbert   
 November 28, 2014 

Excellent article! Thank you.

I would add that the corporate (greed is good and so is profit over planet) 'business' model has infiltrated cooperatives.

We have a grave situation where our environment AND OUR DEMOCRACY have both been degraded to a mere caricature (for propaganda purposes - see lipstick on a predator pig) to keep we-the-people in our state of ignorance about our 24/7 fascist fleecing.

Greed is bad. It's a cancer on society and the biosphere.

We either change the way we deal with each other and the other life forms that inhabit this planet in order to survive and thrive or we continue our suicidal and psychopathic path of conscience free conquest and mendacious accounting tricks criminally contrived to convince logic challenged economists that "creative destruction" is not an oxymoron.

Don't expect help from our Corrupt and irreparable Court System; it's bought and paid for by the 'greed is good' corporate+government (see the definition of Fascism) elite.


You don't believe me? You think this is hysterical hyperbole?

Read on:


The Corporate Business Model is Psychopathic (ONE MINUTE):
http://viewrz.com/video/the-corporate-business-model-is-psychopathic

All about Fracking LEGAL chemical POISONS (3 minutes 31 seconds):

http://viewrz.com/video/all-about-fracking-legal-chemical-poisons-1

Fossil Fuel Fascism in Action (3 minute lesson on our Orwellian world):

http://viewrz.com/video/fossil-fuel-fascism-in-action

Fossil Fuel Fascist Jolly Roger "business" model (8 minutes):
http://viewrz.com/video/fossil-fuel-fascist-jolly-roger-business-model

Fossil fuel Government 2 minute Video Clip from "The Age of Stupid" Video:

http://viewrz.com/video/fossil-fuel-government

FDR on Trickle Down "Economics"
http://viewrz.com/video/fdr-on-trickle-down-economics

Here's a modern example of what happens when you trust the Court System to do what they are supposed to. There is NO Ubi Jus, Ibi Remedium any more in the USA when it comes to environmental damage that brings sickness and death to people and other life forms:

The Exxon Valdez PITTANCE of a settlement: PROOF we have a Fascist Fossil Fuel Government AND the irreparably DYSFUNCTIONAL Court System is its HANDMAIDEN
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2122/#msg2122

How about Corporate control of what you eat by manipulation of our "LAWS"? See Big Ag Fascist Heaven below:


Fascist Big Ag uses Food Disparagement Law and the Patriot Act to threaten Truth tellers!
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/sustainable-food-production/msg2033/#msg2033

Read what this giant polluter and OWNER of most of the fracking machinery says about how to 'handle' environmental legislation:
Schlumberger N.V. (SLB): The BIG OIL Planet Polluter you never heard of
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuel-propaganda-modus-operandi/msg2088/#msg2088


Yes, the plutocratic marriage of corporate and government power over the Court System has been there for quite some time. But now our survival is threatened by this unsustainable paradigm of the worship of Conquest:


Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on what the LAW is ALL ABOUT
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2045/#msg2045

In any LAW dictionary you will learn that the term "Legal" is the antithesis of the term "Equitable". Look it up if you do not believe me.

 The Lady Justice Legal Scales mean the OPPOSITE of what you think they mean

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2041/#msg2041

Don't count on our Court System to defend Americans from Fascism - Here's why the solution to Corporate Profit over Planet is EX CURIA
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg2019/#msg2019


Excellent Comment in response to an Anonymous fossil fueler that pooh pooed renewable energy benefits that John Farrell touted in the above Renewable Energy World article:


Quote

John Ihle     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-081.gif&hash=5981b917cdd5e334cd69d00213b2d119acbfb380)

 November 29, 2014 

Anon, the hundreds of millions of dollars/year that are exported out of communities and into neighboring states and provinces may be or are better spent to create local jobs. When you spend more money locally some of that money benefits local stores and businesses and in fact create or support indirect jobs in addition to direct jobs.

Also, local taxes increase (which otherwise you're paying to other states). I know a lot of not wealthy people that would support renewable energy even if their rates rise, depending upon how far they rise (if they rise). It depends how those polls are worded. They've done polling in my state which supports my statements (including a majority of ratepayers would pay some percentage more for electricity for cleaner energy that has more local content) as polling in your area may support your statements (maybe?) and you have no crystal ball to suggest what utilities will "move to" or how lower cost renewables including distributed generation will impact utility business models vs transmission and long distance generation (when you can do it yourself for cheaper).

Renewables keep dropping in cost while fossil fuels continue to rise. Subsidies are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. They are helping to bring the cost of renewables down. They are relatively clean, wind and solar have no emissions (which is important to many) other than those related to manufacturing, lubricants used and perhaps decommissioning which is or may be negligible.


I am a member of an electric cooperative.
After reading the article you apparently  ;) missed some points  ;D. Electric cooperative business models have morphed from those days which the members controlled them  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183312.bmp&hash=02dafef2fe739676600fdc9bd56271f0f5ab3723).  Probably through member apathy, or maybe the business of our lives most members don't pay attention to cooperative business matters or perhaps the G&T's as well as some local cooperative managers don't want us to know that much (because we "interfere"  ;)  in a very complicated industry) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978).

Different things matter to different people and obviously cost of electricity is a big one but it may not be the biggest one. I think it depends on certain important factors. However, it does no one good to make decisions based on erroneous information generated by G&T's and/or other associations that don't necessarily serve the better interests of the local members. Each cooperative should serve the better interests of their members and those members should be making decisions cooperatively. That's a cooperative.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e) One thing that has bothered me is how "parent" G&T "non profit" for profit (sounds like an oxymoron  ;D)  businesses make several hundred million investments and billion dollar investments (with Wall Street) for the good of their member cooperatives. They are dubious investments, ie for the good of their members (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2932.gif&hash=0eaec4791a5825821998245e7fcd7744b56557fe), to saddle with debt (through long distance transmission and generation investment) often 30 years or more, at a time when the cost of DG and clean energy is coming down and the local benefits along with participation was/is totally ignored.  >:(

And that is exactly what happened with my local cooperative and the G&T who serves us with locked in contracts which a small board approved (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) without properly informing to their members. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.websmileys.com%2Fsm%2Fviolent%2Fsterb050.gif&hash=7ab92003788aa87a5cec0e350c97a7bd23eb8b44)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 10, 2014, 04:04:36 pm
Comment just posted at Renewable Energy World

 A. G. Gelbert   
 December 10, 2014 

I must say that absolutely ANY comment that focuses on the alleged LACK of cost effectiveness of PV, CSP or the latest CPV type technology when compared to the horrendously costly fossil fuels and nuclear power is the height of hypocrisy.

Where are all these "concerned citizens" so upset about wasted taxpayer money when this kind of money is HANDED out as a so called loan?

QUOTE:
Department of Energy Issues Final $12.5 Billion Advanced Nuclear Energy Loan Guarantee Solicitation December 10, 2014 - 9:01am UNQUOTE

http://energy.gov/articles/department-energy-issues-final-125-billion-advanced-nuclear-energy-loan-guarantee

WHERE are those claiming the U.S. Government should not be picking winners and losers in future applications of technology when the Chief Scientist of British Petroleum gets named to THE key position in the USA for determining what technology will get the lion's share of we-the-people's money?

QUOTE:
WASHINGTON – Dr. Ellen Williams was confirmed by the United States Senate on Monday, December 8, 2014 as the Director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). UNQUOTE

How believable is our government's "All the Above" statement about developing competing efficient energy technologies that will favor Renewable Energy in the light of billion dollar "loans" for nuclear power?

QUOTE
“With $40 billion of loan guarantee authority available to advance our all-of-the-above energy strategy...

Authorized by Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Advanced Nuclear Energy Projects Solicitation would provide loan guarantees to support the construction of innovative nuclear energy and front-end nuclear projects in the U.S. that reduce, avoid, or sequester greenhouse gas emissions.

While any project that meets the eligibility requirements may apply, the Department has identified four key technology areas of interest in the solicitation: advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors, uprates and upgrades at existing facilities, and front-end nuclear projects. UNQUOTE

How believable is our government's "All the Above" statement about developing competing efficient energy technologies that will favor Renewable Energy in the light of the naming of a fossil fuel fossil to spearhead advanced energy technology?

QUOTE:
“ARPA-E is central to the Department’s advancement of energy technology innovation, and Ellen Williams will provide outstanding leadership based upon her combination of world class research in condensed matter physics and insight into how technology impacts the energy marketplace,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. UNQUOTE

Is the above statement by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz believable? NO! Why? Because Dr, Ellen Williams was at the helm of BP when the Gulf of Mexico oil well disaster occurred. As chief scientist she was in the key position to know exactly what was happening and had the knowledge with a doctorate in Chemistry to force BP to prevent all the ensuing damage from hydrocarbons and VOCs.

We know she did next to nothing. Was she coerced to keep quiet? We will never know. She has not said.

And THAT is the kind of "leader" which kowtows for fossil fuels, even in the face of massive pollution, that we have in charge of the "all the above" disingenuous US Government policy claiming to be even handed with Renewable Energy.

QUOTE:
Prior to joining the Department, Dr. Williams was the Chief Scientist for BP, a position she has held since 2010. UNQUOTE

NOTE: The Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon" in Gulf of Mexico BEGAN on April 20, 2010 and lasted for several months.

The lack of dollars and sense perspective and common sense cost benefit analysis of the critics of Renewable Energy when compared to fossil fuels and Nuclear power, particularly in view of the FACT that the U.S. Government continues its over half century of choosing nuclear power and fossil fuels as the winners by throwing billions of taxpayer money at them while making comparatively tiny, token investments in Renewable Energy, is breathtaking, deplorable and despicably mendacious.

I urge the editors of Renewable Energy World to monitor as closely as possible the actions of Dr. Ellen Williams as the Director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).

This is a sad day for Renewable Energy in America.

I firmly believe she is a dirty energy status quo defender masquerading as a "new energy technologies" advocate.


What’s Really at Stake in the Florida Solar Battle?

Renewable Energy World Conference and Expo opens in the sunshine state just as the state takes issue with distributed solar power.

 Lisa Wood, Contributing Editor 
 December 07, 2014  |  40 Comments

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/12/whats-really-at-stake-in-the-florida-solar-battle#comment-138303
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 11, 2014, 02:48:53 pm
ANOTHER fossil fuel Stalking Horse placed in a key position to FAVOR fossil fuel when handing out we-the-people's money.  >:(

How do I know? This fine fellow was instrumental in the destruction of incentives for Renewable Energy in the 1980's. He's back! Along with the MANIPULATED massive drop in the price of crude oil, every aspect of the fossil fuel industry's "policy" in the 1980's to strangle Renewable Energy is now in place.

I don't think this skullduggery will work this time because the raison d'etre for Renewable Energy is mainly that it is sustainable, not whether it appears to cost more up front. But that doesn't mean the fossil fuel dinosaurs won't give it the old college try; they have a century of 'crime pays' success behind them in buying politicians to fleece us in order for them to continue their irrational and suicidal greedfest of profit over the planet. 

What you need to KNOW about Hezir:

QUOTE
In 1979, he became a senior budget examiner for energy technology
programs. In 1982, he joined the Corporate Planning Department of Exxon Research and Engineering Company, responsible for the development of technology forecasts used in corporate business plans.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

After returning to OMB in 1983, Mr. Hezir was chief of the Non-Nuclear Energy Branch,
responsible for energy technology R&D, conservation, and energy regulatory programs.
From 1986 to 1992, he served as the OMB Deputy Associate Director for Energy and
Science, managing a 25 person division with responsibility for budgetary, regulatory,
legislative, and policy development activities of the Department of Energy, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Tennessee
Valley Authority, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Smithsonian Institution.

He also represented OMB in developing government-wide science and technology policy
initiatives.

Mr. Hezir received the President’s Outstanding Federal Executive Award in
1989.
UNQUOTE

President Bush gave him that award...

Now for the BOILERPLATE press release that makes him appear to be pro renewable energy because of some MIT work on the "Future of Solar Energy". Right. Mr. Hezir wants to make SURE the money for solar energy technology is in the future, not the present.

QUOTE
December 4, 2014 - 10:21am

Joseph Hezir Confirmed as Chief Financial Officer

WASHINGTON – Joseph Hezir was confirmed by the Senate on December 4, 2014 as the Department of Energy’s Chief Financial Officer.

“Joe’s experience in the energy, environmental and budgetary realms and his strategic approach to challenges make him a great fit as Chief Financial Officer for the agency,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “I look forward to working with him as CFO and I thank the Senate for approving his nomination.”

As Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Hezir will work to assure the effective management and financial integrity of Department of Energy. He will help to implement and monitor Department-wide policies and systems in the areas of budget administration, program analysis and evaluation, finance and accounting, internal controls, corporate financial systems, and strategic planning.

Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Mr. Hezir worked as a Research Engineer and Executive Director of The Future of Solar Energy Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative. He was the Vice President and Managing Partner of EOP Group, Inc. and Executive Vice President of EOP Education, LLC and EOP Foundation, Inc.  Mr. Hezir also held various roles at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Exxon Research and Engineering Company, the President’s Reorganization Project, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and was an advisor to a number of public policy and public service organizations.

Mr. Hezir co-authored two books about government budget and regulation published by the EOP Foundation: Understanding the Budget of the United States Government and Understanding the Regulatory Policy of the United States Government. He also received the President’s Outstanding Federal Executive Award in 1989. Mr. Hezir attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. from the Heinz School of Public Policy.
UNQUOTE

I urge the editors of Renewable Energy World to watch carefully the allocation of government funds for energy technology that, as Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Hezir will initiate. I am certain his agenda is to preserve the welfare queen fossil fuel favoring status quo.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 17, 2014, 08:13:36 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-171214193044.png&hash=4a89e5c8279c95905df562ae5fa31bdcd689eb12)
It must be the 17th. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-171214200533.png&hash=458db0be145f07a7ec92cae5fc70f3078ded3b5a)

Swift Energy Company SFY 4.07 +1.09 (36.58%) 163.18M
Swift Energy Company is engaged in developing, exploring, acquiring, and operating oil and natural gas properties, with a focus on oil and natural gas reserves in Texas as well as onshore and in the inland waters of Louisiana.
 
Energy XXI Ltd EXXI 3.23 +0.63 (24.23%) 292.47M
Energy XXI Ltd, formerly Energy XXI (Bermuda) Limited, is an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company with operations focused in the United States Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The Company is engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development and operation of oil and natural gas properties onshore in Louisiana and Texas and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico

 Comstock Resources Inc CRK 6.85 +1.31 (23.65%) 279.00M

Comstock Resources Inc (Comstock) is engaged in the acquisition, development, production and exploration of oil and natural gas. The Company’s oil and gas operations are concentrated in East Texas/North Louisiana, South Texas and West Texas.

Approach Resources Inc. AREX 5.69 +1.01 (21.58%) 188.09M
Approach Resources Inc., is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development, production and acquisition of oil and gas properties. The Company focuses on oil and gas reserves in oil shale and tight gas sands in the Midland Basin of the greater Permian Basin in West Texas, where it leases approximately 148,000 net acres. The Company’s drilling targets include the Clearfork, Wolfcamp shale, Canyon Sands, Strawn and Ellenburger zones. It refers to the Clearfork and Wolfcamp zones together as the Wolffork, and its development project in the Permian Basin as Project Pangea, which includes the northwestern portion of Project Pangea that it refers to as Pangea West. As of December 31, 2012, it owned and operated 594 producing oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin, and had an estimated 2,983 identified drilling and recompletion locations, of which 359 were proved.

SM Energy Co SM 38.22 +6.66  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)(21.10%) 2.45B
SM Energy Company (SM Energy) is an independent energy company. The Company is engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (referred to as oil, gas, and NGLs) in onshore North America. The Company’s operations are focused on five operating areas in the onshore United States.


Bottom Feeding BONANZA!

Dumb money? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2932.gif&hash=0eaec4791a5825821998245e7fcd7744b56557fe)
Not if you understand the PLAN by the fossil fuel FASCISTS. Don't get suckered by these stocks. Let's turn this insider scam to corner the enrgy market into a path to BANKRUPTCY for fossil fuelers! These dinosaurs think they are smaht! Prove them wrong. Make them LOSE their ASS instead of letting them eat our energy lunch! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmaniac.gif&hash=9ecf389a7da25db958f3f63461cbb45a4b316c4e)


What IS IT about the 17th?
  Whatever it is, I think our Fossil Fuel Fascist GOONS have picked up on it (see fracking quakes and MH17 downed on the 17 anniversary of said airline on July 17, 2014  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)).

August 17th, 1959, the area just west of Yellowstone National Park experienced an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1402.gif&hash=704ddbc7a892750ad55e7a7bea92270b1df3ecba)

Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake.
January 17th 1995, Kobe earthquake.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-310714182509.png&hash=7a8191a3d5ff15c51ad36a342a0cd50a90b956bd)

Mar 17, 2014 KTLA Anchors dive under the NEWS DESK while a 4.4 Earthquake rumbles through Los Angeles.

April 17, 2014 3-4pm Central time there were two back to back SURFACE earthquakes at dormant Volcanoes in Nevada.
http://dutchsinse.tatoott1009.com/4182014-surface-earthquake-strikes-illinois-plumes-erupt-from-oil-gas-wells-in-midwest-yellowstone-movement/

July 17, 2014: Kansas Shaken By M3.6 Earthquake: More Fracking Quakes.

Yeah, fossil fuel fascists like to use 666 and 11 to "send messages" too.  ;)  I suggest we tell them to GO AHEAD, MAKE OUR DAY!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)


Quote
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: In the next decade there will be an epic battle for survival for humanity against the forces of ignorance and greed. It’s going to be Armageddon, represented by the oil industry on one side, versus the renewable industry on the other.

And people are going to have to choose sides – including politically. They will have to choose sides because oil and coal, they will not be able to survive – they are not going to be able to burn their proven reserves.

If they do, then we are all dead. And they are quite willing to burn it. We’re all going to be part of that battle. We are going to watch governments being buffeted by the whims of money and greed on one side, and idealism and hope on the other.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/06/interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-environmental-activism-democratization-of-energy-more/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 18, 2014, 06:50:01 pm
The Military Industrial Complex has been DOING what it DOES to SUPPRESS accurate scientific studies that endanger corporate profits for a LONG TIME.

From using CREDENTIALED bought and paid for scientists to distort studies and produce innocuos "peer reviewed" papers on the "SAFETY" of ASBESTOS (Mellon Institute), TOBACCO, Tetra Ethyl LEAD, FLUORIDATION of Water (Mellon Institute) and FRACKING (this is a tiny list of the "scientific" defenses of horribly damaging industrial pollutants and technology we have been assaulted with for about a century) to the destruction of the careers of scientists who have gone public with the truth, this profit over people and planet fascist modus operandi continues to this day.

If we do not impose ethical behavior on our scientific community and MIC, we are dooming future generations to an unsustainably degraded biosphere and corporate dictatorship. IOW, lack of ethical behavior will cause our species to go extinct.
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-021114150033.png&hash=1a55bc1a81954375c07d21a43c3a26b4bd15b3be)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 21, 2014, 05:23:49 pm
Nice video!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftreeswing.gif&hash=03d29d18183a2924176defc1df7861676abb0960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmcOknIp6YQ&feature=player_embedded
The REAL real world makes an inroad into the  "real world" of Zero Hedge, TBP, Nicole Foss, Ilargi, Gail Tverberg, Charles Hall, SLB (stock symbol) and the local Fracking defenders at the DD.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fus.cdn2.123rf.com%2F168nwm%2Flenm%2Flenm1201%2Flenm120100200%2F12107060-illustration-of-a-smiley-giving-a-thumbs-up.jpg&hash=2046bc6d662e09d3014a2c404a2af6ba17f8217c)


Renewable energy= (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014181553.gif&hash=c09667beb656b25086c168adcdaddcba59abf858)                                (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-scared002.gif&hash=764898cfbf07ef2c41ffddc5e93fa0e1bed41bae)=Fossil Fuelers
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-forum%2Fpopcorn.gif&hash=f4c8fc573041a73e34bfb823e0611fbfe8617d67)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 03, 2015, 08:45:53 pm
More Evidence that the Fossil Fuel Industry in general, and the Frackers in particular, are involved in a market cornering "cheap" oil price HEAD FAKE.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.websmileys.com%2Fsm%2Faliens%2Fhae51.gif&hash=8f03fbaf5bcbd8c47a5fc16e8cd148ffc66dda73)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)

If energy stock raters weren't convinced that dirty energy producers will be successful in their conspiracy to recapture market share, said raters would be UPGRADING Renewable Energy and DOWNGRADING Polluting Energy Stocks.


But the opposite is the case.

Exxon Mobil Co. (NYSE:XOM) was upgraded by analysts at BMO Capital Markets from an "underperform" rating to a "market perform" rating on Tuesday. Previous closing price of $92.83. The stock has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $101.55.

Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and six have given a buy rating to the company.

http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2014/12/30/exxon-mobil-upgraded-to-market-perform-by-bmo-capital-markets-xom/

Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) was upgraded by analysts at RBC Capital from a "sector perform" rating to an "outperform" rating on Tuesday. Previous closing price of $39.49. This rating was viewed 984 times.

Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) opened at 40.00 on Tuesday (December 30, 2014). Halliburton Company has a one year low of $37.21 and a one year high of $74.33. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $43.91 and its 200-day moving average is $59.81. The company has a market cap of $33.898 billion and a P/E ratio of 9.99.

Halliburton Company also saw a significant decline in short interest during the month of December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totaling 24,555,422 shares, a decline of 18.3% from the November 28th total of 30,068,632 shares. Currently, 2.9% of the shares of the stock are sold short. Based on an average trading volume of 32,742,507 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 0.7 days.

Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-three have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company.
The stock has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $68.17.

The above information was obtained at the following link: http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2014/12/30/halliburton-company-upgraded-to-outperform-by-rbc-capital/

So what do these Research Analysts know that they aren't telling us?   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-291014182422.png&hash=f5178cb31c0bf9067fb3cf408d7047840a10e3f4)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 13, 2015, 03:19:09 pm
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 13, 2015, 06:31:10 pm
How Fossil Fuel Fascists "DO THE MATH" that makes their poison "competitive".   
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130115181901.jpeg&hash=fea25c6bb33c00e3ccd04c8f9973f3d02c3b6c47)
Quote
It shows that with rising costs for hard-to-reach reserves, and falling coal and oil prices, generous public subsidies are propping up fossil fuel exploration which would otherwise be deemed uneconomic.

The worst villain is, not surprisingly, the U.S. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)
which splashed out $5.1 billion annually in subsidies for fossil fuel exploration in 2013—ironically  ;) almost double the level in 2009 when the G20 pledged to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

Although President Obama has proposed to cut subsidies, the oil-washed Congress has failed to pass any subsidy cuts.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/11/fossil-fuel-bailout/

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 27, 2015, 09:14:25 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fotherwords.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2Fwest-virginia-chemical-coal-spill-tpp-cartoon-1024x729.jpg&hash=0e4b25717f2317f2571346c5249332384baa991e)
Coal industry chemicals and waste “have tainted hundreds of waterways and groundwater supplies, spoiling private wells, shutting down fishing and rendering streams virtually lifeless,” the Associated Press reports.

And here’s the damning detail from this important AP investigation: “Because these contaminants are released gradually and in some cases not tracked or regulated, they attract much less attention than a massive spill such as the recent one in West Virginia.”

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21537-another-chapter-in-coals-trail-of-pollution


West Virginia: First State to Repeal Renewable Portolio Standard!

SustainableBusiness.com News

Congratulations, ALEC and Koch Brothers - your hard work is starting to pay off.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-Bzb-1rVB8pc%2FUfXxBekcYVI%2FAAAAAAAAEm4%2FhXUkGCzFIPg%2Fs1600%2Fgiveafuckometer-gif.gif&hash=ba12a8b5eb920e7de0ca2ba5256e06bfc2c040e7)

West Virginia is the first state to completely repeal its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) - its incentives for renewable energy. 

The state Senate voted unanimously for repeal and the House passed the bill, 95-4 (all four are Democrats). They discussed it for about an hour before the vote.

 Enacted in 2009, the RPS requires utilities with over 30,000 residential customers to get 25% of electricity from renewables by 2025, with as much as 10% from natural gas.


It would have been phased in, reaching:
•10% renewables from 2015-2019
•15% from 2020-2024
•25% by January 1st 2025

While utilities no longer need to worry about adding renewable energy, the House bill keeps net-metering for individuals and businesses that choose to install solar. We'll see if it remains in the final legislation.

"I rise to oppose repeal of this bill," said Nancy Guthrie (D-Kanawha), one of the four Democrats that voted NO. "For the life of me, what I can't understand is why this body wants to make a name for itself," she said during the brief debate, reports WOWK TV. 

"We are running out of coal, it's that simple. We are going to wear coal around our neck like a yoke that will drag all of us down. This is just political theater, this piece of legislation," she said.

Gary Howell (R-Mineral) retorted that coal is a "diamond necklace hanging around the neck of West Virginia."    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc06.deviantart.net%2Ffs71%2Ff%2F2009%2F347%2F2%2F6%2FWTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg&hash=8ca673f8cf785d9dac626f9fd91e37a1a318c7ac)

Another legislator, Randy Smith (R-Preston), who is also a coal miner, said he ran for public office specifically to repeal the RPS.  ;)

In the Senate, Minority Leader Jeff Kessler (D-Marshall) offered an amendment asking a study of the economic and job impact of the RPS. It was rejected. 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fregion3%2Fmtntop%2Fimages%2Fmtntopwv.jpg&hash=0427a963f41e92735d039fa4a3bb66e32dfd60b7)
Mountaintop Removal Mining (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Other than North Carolina, West Virginia is the only southeastern state with an RPS - Virginia's is voluntary. Yes, coal rules in West Virginia, even though its residents suffer under an industry that doesn't care about their health or the environment. 

ALEC and Americans for Prosperity are working hard across the states to eliminate support for renewable energy.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)  Last year, Ohio voted to freeze its RPS, which has already resulted in wind and solar companies leaving the state.

Read our article, West Virginia, Where Solar Growth Would Help.

South Carolina Approves Net-Metering


Late last year, South Carolina became the 44th state to institute solar net-metering, and unlike many states, people will be paid at the full retail rate when they send excess electricity to the grid.

 "We can expect that public support for local solar power will gain more traction as customers are fairly compensated for the power they generate," Hamilton Davis of the Coastal Conservation League told The State. Environmental groups negotiated for the policy, which keeps the retail rate in place for 10 years. Also, utilities can't lobby for any fixed solar charges until 2021.

 Additionally, the state will allow third party solar leasing, one of the few in the Deep South. 

Read more about the bill:

 
Website: www.utilitydive.com/news/is-south-carolina-solar-about-to-explode/334164/

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26113

Agelbert NOTE: This is scientific evidence that the bought and paid for politicians of West Virginia are helping the biosphere naturally deselect Homo SAPS. It's wonderful to be able to watch natural selection doing what it does (i.e. SUBTRACTING faulty genetic material  ;D). I hope they enjoy the ride.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fcustom%2Fimage%2Ftongue%255E_%255Earial%255E_%255E0%255E_%255E0%255E_%255EBurning+Fossil+Fuels+IS+SUICIDE%255E_%255E.gif&hash=dddc6d85ffcc21075f53bda643372d2383013562)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 02, 2015, 11:48:15 pm
The Fossil Fuel Government OWNED UNLAWFUL COURT SYSTEM just passed the lion's share of the bill to clean up New Jersey Pollution (caused by EXXON) to WE-THE-PEOPLE. It 's the EXXON Valdez law suit PITTANCE award all over again. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

Quote
A long-fought legal battle to recover $8.9 billion in damages from Exxon Mobil Corporation for the contamination and loss of use of more than 1,500 acres of wetlands, marshes, meadows and waters in northern New Jersey has been quietly settled by the state for around $250 million.
The lawsuits, filed by the State Department of Environmental Protection in 2004, had been litigated by the administrations of four New Jersey governors, finally advancing last year to trial. By then, Exxon’s liability was no longer in dispute; the only issue was how much it would pay in damages.

...

Exxon did contribute $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association in May 2014, when Mr. Christie was serving a one-year term as its chairman; the company has contributed annually to the group since at least 2008, records show.

...

A spokesman for Mr. Christie referred questions about the settlement to the attorney general’s office. A spokesman for the acting attorney general, John J. Hoffman, said on Thursday that the office had no comment, as was its practice with pending litigation. Exxon also declined to comment on the settlement.

Democracy? Constitutional Law? A Court System that defends the right to health and well being of American Citizens? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)

 
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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fjimtheeditor.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F04%2F223163gu3xhshh5.jpg&hash=2114b9b3af6674d2920b1edcd18102bae27e3432)

Fri Feb 27, 2015 at 06:46 PM PST.

Christie Settles $9 Billion NJ Pollution Case Against Exxon for $250 Million

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/27/1367541/-Christie-Settles-9-Billion-Pollution-Case-Against-Exxon-for-250-Million

 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-011214192628.png&hash=cd524da8bb7f13a0606ef1f1d1ed8f6a1e181aed)
The Courts WILL NOT STOP EXXON AND FRIENDS FROM CONTINUING TO DO WHAT THEY DO (see below)..


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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 08, 2015, 07:07:50 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3PuCRm_Mg&feature=player_embedded

http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/08/portman-clean-power-plan/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 27, 2015, 08:49:42 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fdutchsinse.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2Ffracking-colorado-earthquake-april-27-2015.jpg&hash=81136a98b65104ea80f7e74202c36f730cbee041)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N8JU2ep8H4&feature=player_embedded


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-310714182509.png&hash=7a8191a3d5ff15c51ad36a342a0cd50a90b956bd)

http://dutchsinse.tatoott1009.com/4272015-colorado-fracking-earthquake-strikes-area-warned-forecast-area-hit/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 28, 2015, 08:34:05 pm
Quote
Net primary production—the biomass that plants make from photosynthesis every day, all over the world—is the basis of all wealth and food security. It underwrites all other human and animal activity.

Could Fracking Spark a Modern-Day Dust Bowl?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014182447.gif&hash=58fbc1dfd905f79b3d4bacde8e89a935c2b859ac)


Tim Radford, Climate News Network | April 28, 2015 11:25 am
 
Oil wells and natural gas may have made individual Americans rich, but they have impoverished the great plains of North America, according to new research.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F000370273%2Fpolls_Smiley_Angry_256x256_3451_356175_answer_4_xlarge.png&hash=15577651daa4c35ff4d6b26217f99db6ebfde0b3)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2Fdustbowl6502.jpg&hash=70c209c3f998684657d5139ecf8bf62ba521a160)
A farmer and his sons struggle through a dust storm in 1930s Oklahoma. Photo credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr

Fossil fuel prospectors have sunk 50,000 new wells a year since 2000 in three Canadian provinces and 11 U.S. states, and have damaged the foundation of all economic growth: net primary production—otherwise known as biomass, or vegetation.

Brady Allred, assistant professor of rangeland ecology at the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation, and colleagues write in the journal Science that they combined years of high-resolution satellite data with information from industry and public records to track the impact of oil drilling on natural and crop growth.

They conclude that the vegetation lost or removed by the expansion of the oil and gas business between 2000 and 2012 added up to 10 million tonnes of dry vegetation, or 4.5 million tonnes of carbon that otherwise would have been removed from the atmosphere.


Loss of fodder

Put another way, this loss amounted to the equivalent of fodder for five million cattle for one month from the rangelands, and 120 million bushels of wheat from the croplands. This wheat equivalent, they point out, adds up to the equivalent of 13 percent of the wheat exported by the U.S. in 2013.

Net primary production—the biomass that plants make from photosynthesis every day, all over the world—is the basis of all wealth and food security. It underwrites all other human and animal activity.

Human wealth depends ultimately on what grows in the ground, or what can be dug from the ground, and most of the latter—such as coal, oil and peat—was once stuff that grew in the ground.

The same net primary production is the basis of what economists sometimes call ecosystem services on which all civilisation depends: the natural replenishment of the water supply, pollination of crops, provision of natural nitrogen fertilizers, and the renewal of natural habitat for wild things.

And what worries the conservation scientists is that this loss of net primary production is likely to be “long-lasting and potentially permanent, as recovery or reclamation of previously drilled land has not kept pace with accelerated drilling.”


“This is not surprising because current reclamation practices vary by land ownership and governing body, target only limited portions of the energy landscape, require substantial funding and implementation commitments, and are often not initiated until the end life of a well.”

They say that the land actually taken up by wells, roads and storage facilities just between 2000 and 2012 is about 3 million hectares. This is the land area equivalent to three Yellowstone National Parks.


The hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” used to extract oil and gas is between 8,000 cubic meters and 50,000 cubic meters per well, which means that the total quantity of water squirted into the ground at high pressure during the 12 years to 2012 could exceed 33,900 million cubic meters. At least half of this was used in areas already defined as “water-stressed.”

New wells

The researchers considered the drilling of new wells in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, and in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming in the U.S.

Although there is legislation, it is limited to lands subject to federal jurisdiction, and 90 percent of all drilling infrastructure is now on privately-owned land—at least, in the U.S.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2Fdustdowl650.jpg&hash=60f032b13bd80cd2c679265de83d5d9064fffa59)
A tanker drives past a flaring oil well in North Dakota. Photo credit: Tim Evanson via Wikimedia Commons

The study’s authors want decision-makers to confront the challenges of this kind of ecological disruption. There are lessons from history in all this, they warn.

“In the early 20th century, rapid agricultural expansion and widespread displacement of native vegetation reduced the resilience of the region to drought, ultimately contributing to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” they write.

“It took catastrophic disruption of livelihoods and economies to trigger policy reforms that addressed environmental and social risks of land-use change.”

http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/28/fracking-dust-bowl/

Agelbert NOTE: You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. As those CONSEQUENCES arrive, expect the fossil fuelers to make SURE WE-THE-PEOPLE PAY for consequences of their biosphere trashing, profit over planet CRIME. Have a nice day.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 02, 2015, 05:04:21 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxJV-oGa2kc&feature=player_embedded

Captivating Video Shows True Cost of Offshore Oil Drilling
http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/22/offshore-oil-drilling-bp-oil-spill/

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 02, 2015, 05:33:16 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n26xYHj81s&feature=player_embedded
Earthquake Drills are now part of Oklahoma school routine. Guess why?


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 05, 2015, 05:32:56 pm
Texas Passes Ban on Fracking Bans (Yes, You Read that Right)

http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/05/texas-ban-on-fracking-bans/
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 07, 2015, 07:00:52 pm
Understanding Fossil Fueler Speak

Whenever a fossil fueler claims they are "saving the planet" (see MKing and friends    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)), what they mean is that they are SAVING THEIR ASSES in order to keep the profit over planet,  suicidal, dirty energy gravy train going.

Whenever a fossil fueler claims they want to "cut wasteful energy subsidies", what they mean is that they want to CUT the RENEWABLE ENERGY tiny subsidies and leave the giant dirty energy visible AND INVISBLE "subsidies" (THEFT from we-the-people on behalf of fossil fuel welfare queens for the last 100 years or so  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)) ON BEHALF OF the Fossil Fuel Welfare Queens.

Here is a snippet of a bill now before Congress designed to "save the planet" (see above) and "Cut wasteful energy subsidies" (see above).

Quote

114th CONGRESS
1st Session
 
H. R. 1901


To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to phaseout and repeal the credit for electricity produced from certain renewable resources, to reduce the corporate income tax, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 21, 2015

Mr. Marchant (for himself, Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Sam Johnson of Texas, Mr. Perry, Mr. Flores, Mr. Shuster, and Mr. Scalise) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means


A BILL

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to phaseout and repeal the credit for electricity produced from certain renewable resources, to reduce the corporate income tax, and for other purposes.


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,


SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “PTC Elimination Act”.

SEC. 2. Phaseout and repeal of credit for electricity produced from certain renewable resources.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

 
(a) Reduction of credit and phaseout amounts.—


(1) IN GENERAL.—Section 45(b) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by striking paragraph (2).
 

(2) CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.—Section 45(e)(2) of such Code is amended—


(A) by striking “the inflation adjustment factor and” in subparagraph (A), and
 

(B) by striking subparagraph (B) and redesignating subparagraph (C) as subparagraph (B).
 

(3) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this subsection shall apply to electricity, and refined coal  ;), produced and sold after December 31, 2015. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-291014182422.png&hash=f5178cb31c0bf9067fb3cf408d7047840a10e3f4)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)


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Agelbert NOTE: The EFFECTIVE DATE ENSURES that all future investment SCHEDULED RIGHT NOW (these things have one two and up to three year lead times) are CANCELLED in order to STRANGLE more renewable energy investment for AT LEAST the next three years while maintaining the TOTALLY UNNECESSARY fossil fuel subsidy THEFT. THAT is how they did it in Reagan's day. THAT is how they keep trying to DESTROY RENEWABLE ENERGY TODAY.

MKing supports this bill. Most people who lack empathy for their fellow earthlings do as well. This is why:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GDmhVD5GMs&feature=player_embedded
Did you know JFK wanted to repeal the Oil Depletion allowance? The "depletion" (LOL!) allowance is still there...
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 08, 2015, 04:09:30 pm
Are We Sunk? The Electric Utility’s Titanic Problem  ;D

 John Farrell 
 May 06, 2015  |  14 Comments 

In my recent report on the utility business model of the future, I laid out 5 pillars of a democratic energy system. It’s hard not to notice the contrast between this vision of the future and the 15-year business plan laid out by Xcel Energy in Minnesota, the incumbent monopoly serving about half the state’s electric customers. Like those of its peers, it’s a plan that attempts to straddle the inevitable transition toward clean energy while keeping its existing centralized power system running for as long as possible.

This inconsistency gave me the sudden image of the “Titanic,” engines thundering, smokestacks spewing, rushing toward the iceberg of financial insolvency and climate catastrophe. We’re all aboard this ship, short of life rafts and about to test whether it’s truly unsinkable.

The impending titanic impact (pardon the pun) mirrors the original naval disaster in other disturbing ways. For one, the electricity system fascination with large scale systems (like huge nuclear power plants) without making enough alternative “life boats” (like distributed solar). For another, the notion that a large ship or a large utility are both too big to fail.

But today’s electricity system differs from this ill-fated ship in one key respect: we still have the power to avoid the collision.

Too Many Years of Incremental Change

Even though most electric customers see themselves as helpless steerage passengers, the truth is that we’re in a time of tremendous opportunity to turn the ship or, failing that, set sail on some new life boats.

We’re at this moment for two reasons. First, the original rules of the electric system, made by legislatures and enforced by Public Utilities Commissions, set a course toward affordable and reliable electric service, whatever the (environmental and equity) cost. Over time it became clear that affordable and reliable were insufficient principles for organizing an electricity system with better technologies for energy efficiency and distributed renewable energy. But when we tried to change the system, it became clear that utilities that can exercise market power can also exercise political power over the rules of the system to defend their fiefdom.

So instead of seizing the opportunities presented by new technology with a wholesale course correction, we’ve nudged the direction of the “unsinkable” monopoly vessel. Renewable portfolio standards have reduced emissions, but not enough to avert the climate crisis. Energy efficiency standards have reduced, but not eliminated, growth in electricity use. Nor, in leaving the incumbent utility largely in charge, has either policy sufficiently diversified control over the electric system.

For example, the Rocky Mountain Institute illustrates that building energy use could be halved by 2050, and yet Xcel Energy’s 15-year plan includes a demand forecast that increases energy consumption.

Xcel’s 40 percent renewable forecast by 2030 seems ambitious, except that the 2,400 megawatts of solar they propose by that year represents less solar than could be installed on residential and commercial rooftops, competitive with their electricity prices, by 2022.

And, like many others, Minnesota’s titanic utility has been reluctant to change course. Just last week the utility learned that they’ll be held responsible for massive cost overruns on a retrofit to their Monticello nuclear power plant (despite numerous advance warnings). This power plant — a legacy of a utility-centric, command-and-control electricity system — is largely incompatible with the shift toward a cleaner, more distributed electricity system.

And so we surge forward toward the iceberg of climate catastrophe and electric system insolvency, because too few of the passengers realize they actually have a choice.

Avoiding the Impact

Having been put behind the wheel of the utility system decades ago, the incumbent utility has been perfectly happy to maintain a system that is (unfairly) economically and politically rewarding. But the rise of distributed generation like solar and the plateauing of energy sales have made even utilities realize that this course is unsustainable. The problem is, they don’t even understand how to change. Over half of utilities participating in a recent industry survey said that they see an opportunity in distributed energy resources, but that they don’t know how to build a business around it.

The 21st century electric utility has to be substantially different from its predecessor. In a recent report, ILSR outlined 5 pillars of an energy democracy system that overlap and go beyond the “Utility 2.0″ conversation. These pillars illustrate the primary principles that should govern our electricity system.

Five Pillars of Energy Democracy

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Filsr.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F12%2Fbeyond-utility-2.0-to-energy-democracy-graphics-ILSR.027.jpg&hash=f68568fe57e120476e6f02a5d82ff2275251b4f8)

The incumbent utility  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) won’t implement this new course   , especially since the rules they operate under don’t encourage it. Instead, the rules have to change, which means that legislation and regulation has to change to enable this new route toward a more democratic energy system. Regulators in New York are Reforming the Energy Vision, envisioning a complete overhaul to make the ship nimble enough to avoid the economic and climate pitfalls ahead. They’re joined by regulators and legislators in other states — including Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, California, and Hawaii — trying to re-engineer the driving force in the utility system.

This is a big, substantive change. It threatens utilities used to monopoly control and monopoly profits. And because there’s plenty of evidence that the utility monopoly no longer makes sense, many utilities are now fighting back.

If the Ship Can’t Turn…


what happens if policy change can’t save us from the iceberg? Electric customers have some compelling alternatives.

For one, the cost of distributed renewable energy has fallen so sharply that many people are reducing their reliance on the electric utility.
The Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that as energy storage costs start to fall with mass adoption, there’s a real possibility for (wealthier) individuals and businesses to defect from the grid, i.e. commandeer the lifeboats.

More promising is the rise of collective action. In Boulder, CO, the city has opted to seize the ship, by orchestrating a city-driven takeover of the local energy system in order to deliver more clean, local power. In Minneapolis, MN, grassroots action has driven the electric and gas utilities into a clean energy partnership with the city under the intention of meeting the city’s climate and equity goals. Citizens in Santa Fe, New Mexico, are also asking how a city-owned utility could dramatically shift investment toward a more efficient and cleaner electricity system.

We built the electric system into a fleet of centralized, monopoly Titanics (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)
at a time when all we wanted was affordable and reliable power. But technology has radically changed the horizon. There are major obstacles ahead and electric utilities aren’t likely to act quickly enough to avoid them.

We shouldn’t expect them to, because they’ve never really been in charge.

To the extent that there is a “market” in electricity, it’s entirely the creation of public policy. We christened these Titanics and gave them the power to bring light and energy to our economy. And it’s time to wake up and walk up from steerage and get behind the wheel.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2015/05/are-we-sunk-the-electric-utilitys-titanic-problem?cmpid=WNL-Friday-May8-2015

Agelbert NOTE: A revealing graph from the "Democratic" Governor's Association will guide you in understanding who has REALLY BEEN IN CHARGE of "public" policy in the USA for the last century or so.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)
 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.earthisland.org%2Felist%2Fgraphics%2Fdemocratic1.jpg&hash=553293eb07f1943cba61cf0a57d695e06fad56ee)


A. G. Gelbert
 
 May 8, 2015 

John Farrell is RIGHT! The bottom line is that the "business model" world view of EVERYBODY needs to incorporate the REAL WORLD called environmental cause and effect.

IOW. the original rules of the electric system, made by legislatures and enforced by Public Utilities Commissions, that set a course toward "affordable' and "reliable" electric service, whatever the environmental and equity cost, were NOT "practical" or "profitable", as Mr. Wootton might claim. Those rules were a 20th century profit over planet pipe dream, compliments of the fossil fuel and nuclear power dirty energy industries, PERIOD.

It's time to leave the pseudo practical "do the math" LA LA LAND of exploitation without reflection that celebrates the egocentric and the suicidal stupidity that environmental costs can be offloaded onto the poor in general and the biosphere in particular.

John talks about democracy and distributed energy. I'm all for that. But this issue goes way beyond that. This is about a flaw in human thinking that must be corrected. Doing something because we CAN is not an excuse for doing it. Of course it's immoral to exploit without reflection. But it's also illogical, stupid and suicidal too!

So for you folks that like to be "practical" and oh so careful about rocking the status quo boat, I recommend you reassess your view of the Industrial (pollution) Revolution and the "miracle" of 20th century energy products.

We DID NOT have to "remain in the caves" to avoid using dirty energy, no matter what you victims of dirty energy brainwashing may believe.

But, of course, that is polluted water under the "bridge", so to speak.

We do not need a "NEW" business model for energy because we NEVER HAD ONE. What we need, as John Farrell says in so many words, is to plug the environmental and equity costs of energy production and use into our planning and thinking in order to avoid extinction.

Accuse me of hyperbole if you like. You are wrong.
Quote

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley
Quote
"We can’t have a healthy business on a sick planet.” Ashley Orgain, manager of mission advocacy and outreach for Seventh Generation, Burlington, Vermont
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 18, 2015, 06:17:32 pm
Painting with a Broad Brush

Quote
The core responsibility assigned to governments in democracies is the public welfare, protecting the human birthright to basic needs: clean air, water, land, and a place to live, under equitable rules of access to all common property resources.

It is astonishing to discover that major political efforts in democracies can be turned to undermining the core purpose of government, destroying the factual basis for fair and effective protection of essential common property resources of all to feed the financial interests of a few. These efforts, limiting scientific research on environment, denying the validity of settled facts and natural laws, are a shameful dance, far below acceptable or reputable political behavior.

It can be treated not as a reasoned alternative, but scorned for what it is – simple thievery. —George M. Woodwell, WHRC founder


Can We Afford Not to Address Climate Change?
Dr. Philip B. Duffy
President & Executive Director
Woods Hole Research Center


SNIPPET:

Opponents of environmental protection argue that we ‘can’t afford’ to safeguard our health and that of the planet we live and depend on. The latest example  involves the EPA’s proposed regulation of existing coal-fired power plants, which a member of Congress (from a coal producing state) recently claimed would result in “electricity rate increases, reduced electrical reliability and other harmful effects.”

It seems so logical that regulation would increase costs that few people question the idea. But history shows that it’s often not true. For one thing, it’s wrong to focus narrowly on the purchase price of automobiles, electricity, or whatever is being regulated.

Pollution has real costs in terms of damage to the environment and to human health. (Because of this, polluting is a way of shifting costs onto others). For example, the Clean Air coalition estimated that fine particle pollution from existing coal plants caused nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010, plus 9,700 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks, with a total monetized value for these adverse health impacts exceeding $100 billion per year (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) . (I should add that these numbers used to be much higher but have been reduced by successful regulation of coal plants.)

But even if we focus exclusively on purchase prices, regulation can have surprisingly positive impacts.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F47b20s0.gif&hash=cc48c9af9d29b8836023c7db21103e52d1ed439e) Refrigerators provide an interesting example.

Excellent Article in the Woods Hole Research Center Newsletter revealing the thievery, duplicity and mendacity of the dirty energy producers and their political lackeys at link below:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

http://whrc.org/news/newsletter/pdf/WHRC_Newsletter_May2015.pdf
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 18, 2015, 07:27:59 pm
Reality-based conspiracies  :(

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.dailykos.com%2Fimages%2F142826%2Flightbox%2F5-10-strip-KOS.png%3F1431459777&hash=40603a3e170c861ee3b0e40c6429dac20f0313f7)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.websmileys.com%2Fsm%2Fviolent%2Fsterb050.gif&hash=7ab92003788aa87a5cec0e350c97a7bd23eb8b44)           (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)               (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170415130136.png&hash=9c15b065b8c88dced81d76d792b9375616baf040)
Welcome to DYSTOPIA
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 21, 2015, 05:57:34 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.dipity.com%2Fuploads%2Fevents%2Fb5eb627cac98adfac17b9ae3183919c6_1M.png&hash=6373678ec43bcafd1bc808153c5faf7babbb30af)

Santa Barbara Oil Spill: Another Reminder of the Price of Fossil Fuels  :P

It's happened again. On Tuesday as much as 105,000 gallons of oil spilled near Santa Barbara, Calif., sending an estimated 21,000 gallons into the Pacific Ocean, creating an oil slick about 9 miles long in the Pacific Ocean and fouling major stretches of the beach. The crude leaked from a broken pipe and flowed into the Pacific via a culvert.

 The spill happened in the same area as an oil spill in 1969 that was the country's largest until the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. Wildlife rescue teams and cleanup crews have spent the past two days responding to the spill.

 "Time and again we've seen oil foul our coasts, whether it's Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico or Santa Barbara," said the Center's Miyoko Sakash ita. "Oil spills are part of the ugly cost of fossil fuel development, made even worse by aging domestic infrastructure.  >:( It doesn't have to be this way and it shouldn't. We need to start aggressively moving away from fuel sources that are devastating for wildlife, people and our climate. If we don't, we risk continuing to see spills like we just saw in Santa Barbara."

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2015/christian-science-monitor-05-20-2015.html

Agelbert NOTE:
OF course, the profit over planet Modus Operandi ENSURES that we-the-people PAY for pollution costs IN ADDITION to "subsidizing" (see THEFT) dirty energy.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-281014151757.png&hash=1be52df5a308d583e41527f4d215eb9a81d72676)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010914214256.png&hash=72f19446830aef2fb3cbd42c92c14be6bbbfd851)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraysondemocrats.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2Fend-oil.jpg&hash=a5cf685d87ceb0f3f17eab91155ebb790707cf10)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F003730383%2F3816438968_29Oil_Subsidies_xlarge.jpeg&hash=3753b27cc6231de198f0997f1ffbb580983edeef)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-021114150033.png&hash=1a55bc1a81954375c07d21a43c3a26b4bd15b3be)

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing 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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 01, 2015, 06:58:44 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Some may question why I posted this story here. Well, this is an example of a PITTANCE going to renewable energy (see PRETEND support  ;)) while the BIG MONEY from the taxpayers is going to more fossil fuel CRAP.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-looney-toons-008.gif&hash=04158afe2649cfc41ac34d90ac720bf253ae6892)  Particularly galling is how the fossil fuel natural gas crooks have infiltrated a corporation that has been championing renewable energy.   >:(

06/01/2015 01:47 PM     

California Families Get Free Solar Thanks to Cap-And-Trade


SustainableBusiness.com News

1600 lower income families will be outfitted with solar by the end of next year thanks to California's cap-and-trade program. 

10% of the money raised in the program is funneled into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for projects that reduce greenhouse gases in the state or that improve the environment in low income neighborhoods.

 Non-profit GRID Alternatives, which is coordinating the solar installations, was awarded $14.7 million for the next two years. Local manufacturers donate the equipment, job-training programs provide the installers and homeowners either help with the installation or feed the crew.

California's cap-and-trade program, called the Western Climate Initiative now that Quebec and Ontario have joined - has raised $1.6 billion so far.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.calwatchdog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2FWCI-Inc.-logo.gif&hash=54a29dc2500888ebe817465e1eda2048ca722721)

Since 2007, SunPower has donated about $2 million in  equipment and cash from its foundation to support GRID Alternatives' work. A new investment is for the group's new high school education program.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)

Besides donating solar panels, SunEdison is investing in GRID's programs that foster greater diversity in the solar industry. The company donated $1.2 million to launch the Women in Solar Initiative, and is following up with $5 million to expand that and launch the RISE initiative, which focuses on racial and ethnic diversity.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)


Read our article, How California Will Spend the $5 Billion a Year From Cap-and-Trade.

Natural Gas versus Renewables Still An Issue


 Last week, California approved a spanking new natural gas power plant
   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183404.bmp&hash=dc40a133c761f80036b08ef0f6c0427aaa7e9f4b) to replace the old Carlsbad power plant built in the 1950s.  At $2.2 billion   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc06.deviantart.net%2Ffs71%2Ff%2F2009%2F347%2F2%2F6%2FWTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg&hash=8ca673f8cf785d9dac626f9fd91e37a1a318c7ac),  people are wondering why the state didn't install a whole lot more renewable energy instead.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)

The new plant is necessary   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2932.gif&hash=0eaec4791a5825821998245e7fcd7744b56557fe) since the San Onofre nuclear plant closed in 2013. San Diego Gas & Electric, which is buying all the power, says natural gas is still needed to fill in gaps left by solar and wind energy.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)

 Also interesting is that NRG Energy is building the plant - the utility that's most involved in and committed to renewable energy in the US (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) . And they were given the project without competing bids.  ;)
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26321

Message to San Diego Gas & Electric from We-the-People that KNOW how to add and subtract using BIOSPHERE MATH.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-090315203150.png&hash=c52cac3e4572a3609fd1a46ef50b96a57ce04554)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 02, 2015, 03:04:37 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F06%2FFracking-Protesters.jpg&hash=6a0be19e7ae37dc54e91a13da4c5b5e22eda3468)
3 Arrested in Denton As Oklahoma Joins Texas in Banning Fracking Bans

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/02/oklahoma-bans-fracking-bans/

Agelbert NOTE: Don't miss the comments! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 09, 2015, 03:01:15 pm
Josh Fox Gets Kicked Off of Fox News While Exposing Misleading Coverage of EPA Fracking Report  >:(

Lee Ziesche, Solutions Grassroots | June 8, 2015 4:56 pm

Varney said he wouldn’t frack his own land in upstate New York because it’s in a “watershed” but promoted, on air, last week (while not letting Sandra Steingraber finish a sentence) that we should frack the rest of New York.


When Fox called him out on the hypocrisy and questioned Varney’s claim that he lit his tap water on fire, Varney became irate and told Josh, “The interview is over. You are outta here young man.”

“If you said to me earlier that you would not want fracking in your own neighborhood, it’s irresponsible for you to say on air that the rest of America should frack,” Fox can be heard saying to Varney as he’s being faded out.

Fox was on the program to address untrue headlines most of the mainstream media ran with claiming fracking was safe, following the release of a long-awaited U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on the practice.

In the report, the U.S. EPA publicly confirmed for the first time that fracking contaminates groundwater. However, the EPA’s press release led with the misleading headline saying that EPA has found no “widespread” evidence of water contamination.

As Fox explains on the show this is not the first time we’ve seen the EPA release a report where the science says one thing and then their PR department slaps on a press release that says something else.

“EPA went into Dimock and said to people ‘do not drink your water,’ in private letters and then in the press they came out and said well actually this water is safe,” Josh said on the show.

Watch and share as Fox takes on the misleading EPA report, Obama administration’s support of fracking and FOX host NIMBY:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)


http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/08/josh-fox-news-epa-fracking/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 11, 2015, 09:55:15 pm
A Magical Mystery Tour of American Austerity Politics 

Posted on Jun 10, 2015

By Laura Gottesdiener, TomDispatch

SNIPPET:
Quote
That Marathon paid residents to evacuate their homes in this predominantly white section of town, while refusing to do the same in the predominantly African American 48217, which sits closer to the refinery, strikes neither Lockridge and Parker nor their neighbors as a coincidence.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_magical_mystery_tour_of_american_austerity_politics_20150610 (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_magical_mystery_tour_of_american_austerity_politics_20150610)

Agelbert NOTE: Corporate rule is Empathy Deficit behavior on STEROIDS.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-221014222208.png&hash=ae35994d8acc44c5bd0794f40f9d513715a7159f)

Quote
The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.

There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.

http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm (http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 07, 2015, 11:18:48 pm
Oil Spills Whose Fault are They Anyway?  ???

Posted on June 13, 2015  by Timothy Jacobs   
 
By: Emily Williams

“It’s not your fault.”

In the movie Goodwill Hunting, Robin Williams repeats this line over and over to Matt Damon, helping him accept that the trauma he faced, in fact, wasn’t his fault.

I can’t help that that mantra crosses my mind every time I’m confronted with anther exploding oil train or of a child diagnosed with cancer next to a power plant. “It’s not your fault.”

Two weeks ago, a pipeline that was pumping crude oil from off-shore platforms to onshore facilities ruptured in Santa Barbara County, spilling over 100,000 gallons of crude oil onto the coastline and into the sea. The slick currently spans over 10 miles of previously pristine coastline. The only silver lining is that the spill didn’t occur in a more populated area.

Yet I am completely dependent on fossil fuels. A shameless alliance of government, big oil, and king coal has ensured that our infrastructure depends entirely upon coal, oil, and natural gas. These fuels heat our homes, power our cars, produce our plastics, and power the very computer I wrote this on.

But just because we are currently reliant on something doesn’t mean we should continue to be. Our society used to rely on DDT to protect our crops from pests. Yet once it was proven how toxic the substance was, we banned it, turning to alternatives. We now know that fossil fuel extraction and combustion is more toxic to our communities and environment than DDT. When we turn on our fossil-fuel powered light, we cast an ugly shadow.

At the other end of those power lines are horrendous human rights violations and irreversible environmental degradation. This spill is not an isolated incident. Exploding oil trains, oil spills, fracking-induced earthquakes, and coal slurry mud-slides have become a staple of nighttime news.

Coal alone is estimated to have over $300 billion[1]in external costs; that is $300 billion worth of costs that the companies force onto taxpayers and the environment. In three weeks this year, three oil trains derailed and exploded, and in the case of the West Virginia exploding train, the fire that engulfed 19 rail cars burned for three days[2].

Over 25 million Americans live within the “blast zone” along oil train routes[3]. But the fossil fuel assault has a global front as well—climate change. According to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, already 400,000 people die per year as a result of climate change[4]. While this number is already too high, future generations can expect a much higher figure.

These impacts are not evenly distributed to those who are the most responsible for emissions. Fossil fuel extraction and combustion occurs mostly in or near communities of low socio-economic status–primarily communities of color. These communities are plagued with elevated rates of asthma, cardiovascular illness, and cancer, and have very little political power to fight the infrastructure. However, on the few occasions when this happens next door to the companies’ CEOs, suddenly there is an uproar. When a company wanted to install a fracking water tower on the land of Rex Tillerson—the CEO of Exxon Mobil—he fought it. Turns out Rex is only interested in fracking in other peoples’ back yards.

No matter our political inclinations, we all have to accept that these fuels are undermining the health, economy, and prosperity of our society.


So what’s the solution? Contrary to popular belief, we have the alternatives to actually transition away from fossil fuels and power our economy. Improving energy efficiency in buildings can cut 10% of emissions on its own[5]. Solar and wind are not only technically viable alternative fuels, but also financially feasible[6]. Germany, a country that lies at the same latitude as Alaska, and is covered in clouds for the majority of the year, already gets 30% of its energy from renewable sources[7].

It’s not our fault…entirely. The American public is being misled. While mainstream media debates are torn between the “skeptic” and scientist, alluding to the jury still being out, 97% of all climate scientists are in consensus that climate change is happening, the risk is great, and humans are the cause of it. How can this be? As it turns out, the fossil fuel industry pays big time for media campaigns to spread doubt and green-wash their businesses.

This “dark money” is extremely hard to trace, but what is known is that 140 fossil-fuel-financed foundations donated over $550 million to climate change denial campaigns[8]. For a more specific look, BP invests heavily in their PR campaign to recast themselves as “Beyond Petroleum”, while the company only invested $9 billion over the last decade in renewable technology development, compared to the $341 billion they spent in the same period on unconventional methods, such as fracking[9]. Comparing those figures to the $257 billion that was invested globally in 2011 in renewables, $9 is barely a drop in the ocean[10]. To top it all off, according to the IMF, the fossil fuel industry as a whole receives $10 million in subsidies per minute, accumulating to over $5 trillion annually.

In 1961, the Soviet Union announced it would send a man to the moon. Flexing its national muscle, the United States in a mere eight years went from zero to moon landing. Back on Earth, in that very same year, an oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara suffered a blow-out and spewed over 3 million gallons of oil into the channel.

If the United States could so quickly develop the technology, political will, and finance to land a man on the moon, then we can transition to a low-carbon economy. This feat will require our society to rethink our priorities. We’ll need to stop subsidizing the industry that actively blocks alternatives and start holding the industry accountable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in their most recent report that to truly tackle the issue of climate change, we need investment to spur the renewable energy revolution. We could invest that annual $5 trillion of subsidies to finance research on renewable energy technology, rather than empowering an industry whose business model continues to fight the transition to a low-carbon economy.

It’s not our fault. We haven’t been given the opportunity to own our own power, to choose our own energy provider, or to be represented by a politician who hasn’t been bought out. But it will be our fault if we remain comfortably blind to the mass profiting from what can only be called institutionalized insanity.



References

[1]External Costs of Energy

[2] http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20141208/video-boom-north-americas-explosive-oil-rail-problem

[3] http://explosive-crude-by-rail.org/

[4] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-change-kills-400-000-a-year-new-report-reveals.html

[5] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/08/energy-efficiency-carbon-savings

[6] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-age-of-wind-and-solar-is-closer-than-you-think/

[7] http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de

[8] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/

[9] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-05-10/big-oils-big-in-biofuels

[10] http://fs-unep-centre.org/publications/global-trends-renewable-energy-investment-2012

http://www.sustainabilitycoalition.org/oil-spills-whose-fault-are-they-anyway/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 08, 2015, 06:33:28 pm
Quote
“They did everything they were supposed to do. They followed the rules,” Graham said in an interview. “They went through all the proper procedures.”

But after their celebrations on the night of Nov. 4, 2014, Denton residents woke up to the reality of Texas politics: the oil and gas industry had filed lawsuits against the measure and state lawmakers promptly announced they would overturn the democratically passed ban in Denton and ensure no other jurisdiction would pursue similar restrictions.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F000370273%2Fpolls_Smiley_Angry_256x256_3451_356175_answer_4_xlarge.png&hash=15577651daa4c35ff4d6b26217f99db6ebfde0b3)


‘Don’t Frack With Denton’
http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/03/dont-frack-with-denton/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 11, 2015, 03:37:46 pm
10 Years Later: Fracking and the Halliburton Loophole  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

Wenonah Hauter | August 11, 2015 1:04 pm

This past Saturday, marked a notable 10th anniversary. But it was certainly nothing to celebrate. Ten years ago, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The giant energy bill included massive giveaways for the fossil fuel, nuclear and ethanol industries and provided only token incentives for renewables and improved energy efficiency. But the most infamous piece of the law was what is now commonly known as the “Halliburton Loophole,” an egregious regulatory exemption that ushered in the disastrous era of widespread oil and gas fracking that currently grips our nation.
Quote
Fracking—the extreme oil and gas extraction method that involves blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals underground at enormous pressures to break apart subterranean rock—has exploded in the last decade. More than 270,000 wells have been fracked in 25 states throughout the nation. More than 10 million Americans live within a mile of a fracking site. This means that 10 million Americans—and truly many more—have been placed directly in harm’s way. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have connected fracking to serious human health effects, including cancer, asthma and birth defects.


For this we can thank the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the law that holds the Halliburton Loophole.
Named after Dick Cheney and the notorious corporation he led before becoming vice president, the law (championed by Cheney and disgraced Enron founder Kenneth Lay, among others) explicitly exempted fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) These exemptions from one of America’s most fundamental environmental protection laws provided the oil and gas industry the immunity it required to develop a highly polluting process on a grand national scale.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

One of the most troubling repercussions is how fracking companies hide the contents of their toxic water and chemical solutions pumped into the ground. Contamination of underground drinking water sources from fracking fluids is a glaring threat to public health and safety. Yet even doctors responding to fracking-related health complaints can’t access data on what particular chemicals their patients may have been exposed to.




But the Halliburton Loophole wasn’t the only fracking enabler in the Energy Policy Act. The act granted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sweeping new authority to supersede state and local decision-making with regard to the citing of fracked gas pipelines and infrastructure. It also shifted to FERC industry oversight and compliance responsibility for the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, another key law. This was akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house.



As it stands, FERC is entirely unaccountable to public will. It is unaccountable to Congress and even the White House. Commissioners are appointed to five-year terms and can do as they please. Until a law reigning in FERC is passed, the commission will continue to act as a rubber-stamp for the fossil fuel industry.



Additionally, the Energy Policy Act repealed an important anti-monopoly law, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). PUHCA safeguarded consumers from the overreach of the oil and gas industry and banks that did business with those companies. It prevented the formation of giant state and regional energy cartels that could manipulate energy costs, engage in profiteering and exert undue influence over political debate. The Energy Policy Act transferred most of this oversight to FERC. Since then, the largest American energy companies have grown significantly more powerful and spent almost a billion dollars on federal lobbying, according to OpenSecrets.org.



The 10th anniversary of the Energy Policy Act is indeed a sad occasion, but it provides us with a ripe opportunity to reexamine our nation’s disastrous policy of doubling-down on fossil fuels over the last decade, thanks to the extreme process of fracking. For the sake of countless Americans who are currently suffering health effects caused by fracking and the countless more who will suffer in the future, we must immediately curtail our dependence on oil and gas and turn decisively toward a truly clean, renewable energy future.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/11/halliburton-loophole-fracking/



Agelbert NOTE:
As those of you that still possess  a modicum of reading comprehension will understand, the fossil fuel industry has ALWAYS been involved in DEGRADING OUR DEMOCRACY while they REFUSE to admit they are degrading the biosphere along the way.

A portion of the American populace, that doesn't want to face that fascist reality, continues to rationalize our "need" for this fossil fuel burning planetary plague with BALONEY about civilization, high energy density or, for those Empathy Deficit Disordered quislings that work for the planet polluters, having to pay for student loans or put food on the table.

Human society has always had Empathy Deficit Disordered people totally devoid of foresight. But only with the advent of the Industrial Revolution did these cause and effect challenged greedballs succeed in running our society. The fossil fuel industry actually believes it has a "you need us" gun to our heads. They've got power and they've got a gun. Although they are too blind, too greedy or just too stupid to see it, that gun has already gone off in their faces, as well as ours.

Let us hope that those of us that are still sane prevail.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 26, 2015, 07:11:32 pm
Truth from Thom Hartmann 

Quote
A business can operate at a profit, a break-even, or a loss. If the business is a sole proprietorship or a partnership (owned by one or a few people) and it loses more money than its assets are worth, the owners and the investors are personally responsible for the debts, which may exceed the amount they originally invested. A small-business owner could put up $10,000 of her own money to start a company, have it fail with $50,000 in debts, and be personally responsible for paying off that debt out of her own pocket.

But let's say you invest $10,000 in a limited-liability corporation, and the corporation runs up $50,000 in debts and then defaults on those debts. You would lose only your initial $10,000 investment. The remaining $40,000 wouldn't be your concern because the amount of your investment is the "limit of your liability," even if the corporation goes bankrupt, defaults in any other way, or causes millions of dollars in damage to the environment or even the deaths of people.

Who foots the bill? The creditors-the people to whom the corporation owes money-or the community that was devastated. The company took the goods or services from them, didn't pay, and leaves them with the bill, exactly as if you had put in a week's work and not gotten paid for it. Or it wreaks havoc and death and then simply shuts down, as so many asbestos companies have done recently.


"Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People." (http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/08/unequal-protection-how-corporations-became-people#sthash.ZPDSKCaR.dpuf)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 22, 2015, 09:18:10 pm
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Sign Now: Prosecute Exxon For Deliberate Climate Denial

Prosecute Exxon: Newly revealed documents show that Exxon’s own scientists were aware of and studying the dangerous impacts of greenhouse gases in the 1970s and 1980s -- until Exxon’s leadership decided to shut down the research and promote climate denial instead, in order to protect the company’s unfathomably large profits.

The United States Department of Justice has the power to prosecute Exxon’s deliberate deception under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act - just as the DOJ did to the tobacco industry for knowingly lying about the dangers of cigarette smoking.

Source: "Exxon: The Road Not Taken," InsideClimate News.


Tell U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

Launch a RICO prosecution of Exxon and its fellow fossil-fuel companies for deliberate and malicious climate deception.

http://www.climatehawksvote.com/prosecute_exxon

Quote
The headline says it all: “Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago.”

The Pulitzer-winning InsideClimate News is running a blockbuster series with incontrovertible evidence -- pulled from Exxon’s own archives -- that the oil giant’s top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse pollution, then led efforts to block solutions.  Documents show that Exxon’s own scientists were aware of and studying the dangerous impacts of greenhouse gases in the 1970s and 1980s -- until Exxon’s leadership decided to shut down the research and promote climate denial instead, in order to protect the company’s unfathomably large profits.

We’ve known for years that the oil industry finances the climate-denial network of politicians, think tanks, and right-wing media in order to protect their gargantuan profits, but now we have sufficient evidence of deliberate deceit to make a federal investigation happen.

Tell the DOJ: Prosecute Exxon's deliberate climate denial.

The United States Department of Justice has the power to prosecute Exxon’s deliberate deception under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act - just as DOJ sued the tobacco industry for knowingly lying about the dangers of cigarette smoking.

Even before these smoking-gun documents were released, climate hawks have been making calls for a RICO investigation of fossil-fueled climate denial:

•Three weeks ago, a group of top climate scientists called for an investigation, saying, “it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth's climate, before even more lasting damage is done.”


•Months earlier, climate hawk Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former state Attorney General, called for a RICO investigation of Big Oil, saying, “I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.”


Thanks to the reporters at InsideClimate News, now we have smoking-gun documents found in public archives. And there’s certain to be more. It’s up to us to demand the U.S. government immediately launch an investigation that will lead to prosecution of Exxon’s deliberate and deadly climate denial.

Please add your voice to tell U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

“Launch a RICO prosecution of Exxon and its fellow fossil-fuel companies for deliberate and malicious climate deception.”

Your fellow climate hawk,

Brad Johnson
Climate Hawks Vote Political Director


References:

“Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago,” InsideClimate News, September 16, 2015
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming

Climate scientists’ letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren, September 1, 2015
http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf

“The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Washington Post, May 29, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-campaign-to-mislead-the-american-people/2015/05/29/04a2c448-0574-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 23, 2015, 02:28:06 am
Two Powerful Studies Expose Manipulation Of Climate “Debate”

September 17th, 2015 by Sandy Dechert

Two extensive studies released yesterday (September 16, 2015) reveal a long-term betrayal of the truth about climate by major US business identities. Make-believe corporate “persons” have knowingly undermined the health, safety, and even short-term survival of real humans and other living things.

One of the studies explores the metamorphosis of ExxonMobil to “the dark side” over the past 40 years.


The other implicates almost half of the world’s 100 largest companies, including Procter & Gam ble and Duke Energy, in obstructing climate change legislation.
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F000370273%2Fpolls_Smiley_Angry_256x256_3451_356175_answer_4_xlarge.png&hash=15577651daa4c35ff4d6b26217f99db6ebfde0b3)

Full, must read, article:

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/17/two-powerful-studies-expose-manipulation-climate-debate/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 11, 2015, 12:32:28 am
10/07/2015 01:15 PM   
 
BP Settles for $20.8 Billion For Gulf Spill, Mostly A Tax Deduction (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

SustainableBusiness.com News

Five years after BP's tragic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf,  the US  Department of Justice (DOJ) settled out of court for $20.8 billion to resolve all charges related to natural resource damage and restoration.

 Before you get excited about the big charge, realize that most of it is being paid by taxpayers because ... BP can deduct $15.3 billion as a tax deduction! According to the IRS, it's an "ordinary cost of doing business." Just $5.5 billion is explicitly not deductible as a penalty under the Clean Water Act, notes US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc06.deviantart.net%2Ffs71%2Ff%2F2009%2F347%2F2%2F6%2FWTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg&hash=8ca673f8cf785d9dac626f9fd91e37a1a318c7ac)

The settlement also allows BP to claim $5.35 billion as a tax windfall, nearly offsetting the cost of the Clean Water Act penalty, says PIRG. Adding further insult, BP gets to spread the payments over 18 years.

Quote
"This not only sends the wrong message, but it also hurts taxpayers by forcing us to shoulder the burden of BP's tax windfall in the form of higher taxes, cuts to public programs, and more national debt," explains Michelle Surka at PIRG. DOJ could have specified non-deductibility as part of the settlement, but it did not.  :evil4:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.noaanews.noaa.gov%2Fstories2014%2Fimages%2Fmap_080414_deadzone.jpg&hash=0ebea46bad8a3919c85ce5becf7e8b10d63b8b8f)
Dead Zone in the Gulf, 2014 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-015.gif&hash=8e6486af5151b5eb075de7af5fb71f325d34dc0c)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F000370273%2Fpolls_Smiley_Angry_256x256_3451_356175_answer_4_xlarge.png&hash=15577651daa4c35ff4d6b26217f99db6ebfde0b3)

Quote
"This resolution is strong and fitting," says Attorney General Loretta Lynch. "BP is receiving the punishment it deserves while also providing critical compensation to the damage to the Gulf region." The settlement - which must be approved by a federal court - is the largest ever in the US with a corporation. 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-111214174727.png&hash=a0ea65f844542e4709bd444bd2f70496c434c56b)


BP has already written off the $32 billion it spent for cleanup after the spill, with a tax windfall of $10 billion. The only charge DOJ specified as non-deductible is the $4.5 billion criminal settlement for the deaths of 11 oil rig workers and for misleading shareholders on how much oil it spilled. The company also agreed to $5.9 billion in settlements with the five Gulf states.

DOJ's case is separate from the class-action settlement between BP and the businesses and individuals affected by the spill. The company has tried hard to get away with paying it, taking it all the way to the Supreme Court - which denied BP's appeal in July.   

The Obama administration announced that $8.8 billion of the settlement will go into a Gulf Restoration Fund. $5 billion of it will be used to repair Louisiana's coastal wetlands. The rest will restore habitats and water quality. Hundreds of miles of shoreline was damaged and more than a million birds and other wildlife died, according to environmental groups.

"Every penny of this BP settlement ought to be going to recovering these badly damaged Gulf ecosystems, and BP ought to be paying a fine that really hurts, rather than an amount that will barely affect its balance sheet," says Miyoko Sakash ita of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Worse yet, the Obama administration has yet to implement significant reforms to make sure this never happens again."

Recent studies show ongoing harm from the spill, such as severe lung injuries that killed dolphins, near-record lows of Kemp's Ridley sea turtle nesting, chemical dispersants still impacting corals and a "bathtub ring" of oil still on the seafloor.

For 2014, BP reported $44.3 billion in profits.
Meanwhile, while it releases reports on climate change and calls for a carbon tax,
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F40.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_lwx7wy0tIK1qd9a66o1_500.jpg&hash=35827ed8db1ceb9ade79d4881b81f54e1dab451d)
BP tops the list of companies obstructing Europe's action on climate change. It has strongly opposed even slightly higher prices for the EU's cap-and-trade program, and it is behind the weaker-than-expected renewable energy and efficiency goals in its climate pledge. 

Read more:
 
Website: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/21/bp-tops-the-list-of-firms-obstructing-climate-action-in-europe (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/21/bp-tops-the-list-of-firms-obstructing-climate-action-in-europe)

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26427 (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26427)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 15, 2015, 07:18:09 pm
U.S., Alaska end quest for damages against Exxon over 1989 spill

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - U.S. and Alaskan authorities have ended their efforts  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) to seek additional damages from Exxon Mobil Corp over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the subsequent settlement, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.

The department said in a statement that it is "bringing to a close the federal and state judicial actions" against the company and opting not to recover more damages under the reopener provision of the 1991 settlement following the spill.

Alaska Attorney General Craig Richards said in the statement that although officials were not pursuing the additional damages, authorities will consider alternatives for dealing with lingering oil sites.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-111214174727.png&hash=a0ea65f844542e4709bd444bd2f70496c434c56b)

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-alaska-end-quest-damages-124008651.html

Agelbert NOTE: ALL the details on how LEGALESE (not to be confused with the term, "legalized" (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)) was used by Empathy Deficit Disordered Lawyers who WORKED (and who continue to this day to "WORK")  THE SYSTEM to absolve Exxonmobil of full accountability for this ECOCIDE  HERE. (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2123/#msg2123)

The DETAILS of the "AWARD"   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) HERE. (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2122/#msg2122)


Prosecute Exxon For Deliberate Climate Denial (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg3873/#msg3873)


The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing 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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 15, 2015, 10:04:08 pm
https://youtu.be/dtF-4JvSh8o
See Exxon officials LIE through their TEETH!

WATCH the first use of "oil dispersing" CRAP long before it was used in the 2011 BP rig explosion and spill. To these CRIMINALS, EVERYTHING is a "business opportunity".  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 29, 2015, 08:18:40 pm
Imagine If Exxon Had Told the Truth on Climate Change

Bill McKibben    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)
| October 29, 2015 9:05 am

Like all proper scandals, the #Exxon knew revelations have begun to spin off new dramas and lines of inquiry. Presidential candidates have begun to call for Department of Justice investigations, and company spokesmen have begun to dig themselves deeper into the inevitable holes as they try to excuse the inexcusable.

(Worst idea: attack Pulitzer prize-winning reporters as “anti-oil and gas activists”)  ;D

As the latest expose installment from those hopeless radicals at the Los Angeles Times clearly shows,  Exxon made a conscious decision to adopt what a company public affairs officer called “the Exxon position.” It was simple: “Emphasize the uncertainty.” Even though they knew there was none.(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)

Someone else will have to decide if that deceit was technically illegal. Perhaps the rich and powerful have been drafting the laws for so long that Exxon will skate; I confess my confidence that the richest company in American history can be brought to justice is slight.

But quite aside from those questions about the future, let’s take a moment and just think about the past. About what might have happened differently if, in August of 1988, the “Exxon position” had been “tell the truth.”  ;D

That was a few months after NASA scientist James Hansen had told Congress the planet was heating and humans were the cause; it was amid the hottest American summer recorded to that point, with the Mississippi running so low that barges were stranded and the heat so bad that corn was withering in the fields. Imagine, amid all that, Exxon scientists had simply said: “Everything we know says Hansen is right; the planet’s in serious trouble.”

No one would, at that point, have blamed Exxon for causing the trouble—instead it would have been hailed for its forthrightness. It could have begun the task of finding alternatives to hydrocarbons, and the world could have done the same thing. This would not have been an easy job: the world was utterly dependent on coal, gas and oil. But it would have become our planet’s single-minded job. With Exxon—largest company on Earth, heir to the original oil baron, with tentacles reaching around the world—vouching for the science, there is no way we would have wasted 25 years in fruitless argument.

There’s no way, for instance, that Tim DeChristopher would have had to spend two years in jail, because it would have been obvious by the mid-2000s that the oil and gas leases he was blocking were absurd. Crystal Lameman and Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Clayton Thomas-Muller would not have had to spend their whole lives fighting tar sands mining in Alberta because no one would seriously have proposed digging up the dirtiest oil on the North American continent. Students would not have—as we speak—to be occupying administration buildings from Tasmania to Cambridge, because the fossil fuel companies would long since have become energy companies, and divesting from them would not be necessary.

More urgently, rapid development of renewables might well have kept half of Delhi’s children—2.5 million children—from developing irreversible lung damage.


The rapid spread of decentralized renewable technology might have kept oil and gas barons like the Koch Brothers from becoming, taken together, the richest man on Earth, and purchasing America’s democracy. The Earth’s oceans would be measurably less acidic—and we are, after all, an ocean planet.

Some climate change was unavoidable even by 1988—that’s about the moment when we were passing what now seems the critical 350 parts per million threshold for atmospheric CO2. And with the best will in the world it would have taken time to slow that trajectory; there’s never been an overnight fix. So we can’t say which of the various droughts and floods and famines might have been avoided. But because we wasted those critical decades, we’re now committed to far more warming than we needed to be—as one scientist after another has shown recently, our momentum has carried to us the point where stopping warming at even the disastrous 2C level may at this point be barely manageable if it’s manageable at all.

Of all the lies that Exxon leaders told about climate change, none may quite top the 1997 insistence that “it is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now.”

Exxon scientists knew that was wrong, and so did pretty much everyone else. If you could poll all the experts about to descend on Paris for UN climate talks and ask them what technology would be most useful in the fight against climate change, I’m pretty sure they’d say: a time machine that could take us back 20 years and give us those wasted decades.

And if you think it’s just scientists and environmentalists thinking this way, it’s actually almost anyone with a conscience. Here’s how the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News—Exxon’s hometown paper, the morning read of the oil patch— put it in an editorial last week:

Quote

“With profits to protect, Exxon provided climate-change doubters a bully pulpit they didn’t deserve and gave lawmakers the political cover to delay global action until long after the environmental damage had reached severe levels. That’s the inconvenient truth as we see it.”

Those years weren’t inconvenient for Exxon, of course. Year after year throughout the last two decades they’ve made more money than any company in the history of money. But poor people around the world are already paying for those profits, and every generation that follows us now will pay as well, because the “Exxon position” has helped take us over one tipping point after another. Their sins of emission, like so many other firms and individuals, are bad. But their sins of omission are truly inexcusable.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)


This op-ed first appeared in The Guardian.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/29/bill-mckibben-exxon-climate-change/ (http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/29/bill-mckibben-exxon-climate-change/)

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing 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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 07, 2015, 05:23:24 pm
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Crude-Sinks-As-Jobs-Report-Propels-Dollar-Even-Higher.html (http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Crude-Sinks-As-Jobs-Report-Propels-Dollar-Even-Higher.html)

Crude Sinks As Jobs Report Propels Dollar Even Higher

(https://oilprice.com/images/tinymce/nonfarmnov1.jpg)

We have reached a point where one cannot accept one word from the government as being true.

This is the industry that was doing all the hiring and paying well.

We have Diner Roamer as an example of this total bullsh it. A disgrace. A dumbed down populace, and a lying government, what a combo.

When 2 and 2 = 4 again, it's going to be a real horror show. The country of  fiat paper castles and make believe economic numbers, and political leaders in a two party system that make upright citizens PUKE.  :-\

Yep. I fully expect the attorney general of New York to get the "caught with a call girl" treatment now that he wants to investigate the ExxonMobil decision to fund a climate change denial disinformation campaign despite having hard scientific knowledge that fossil fuels must remain in the ground in order to avoid a global warming catastrophe.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

ExxonMobil will eventually go down by the weight of their own buy em' or bop em' track record of pis sing people off in addition to the fact that their product never really was competitive with clean energy in the real world of  energy return on investment.

But they will fight to their last fossil fuel government dollar. They are helping destroy everything vital to the biosphere and our place in it. If they aren't evil incarnate, I don't know what is.

(https://assets-production-webvanta-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/000000/44/16/original/articles/General/2015/11_Nov/Exxon_desert_tanker_1.jpg)
I sincerely hope humans, like those guys above, survive the Big Oil Bastards.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 08, 2015, 04:55:02 pm
12/07/2015 03:31 PM     

Philippines Takes Landmark Case, Investigate 50 Fossil Companies for Role in Climate Change (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)

SustainableBusiness.com News

This might be the case we've been waiting for, as the first-ever investigation of the largest fossil fuel companies proceeds in the Philippines.   

In early 2016, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines will examine the biggest 50 fossil fuel companies for their part in causing climate change and the human rights violations that have resulted. 

"The response of the Philippines' Human Rights Commission to the petition signals a turning point in the struggle to avoid catastrophic climate change. It opens a critical new avenue of struggle against the fossil fuel companies driving destructive climate change," says Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sustainablebusiness.com%2Fimageupload%2FExxonKnew-final.jpg&hash=99b13e887e95d17118fab86935b117662dd1e484)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F10%2Fbernieexxon7502.jpg&hash=0f6a4711b3b1e8bb99b42b0ecc760caf785011d8)

"This should hopefully inspire other human rights commissions around the world to take similar action. If I were a CEO of a fossil fuel company, I would be running scared. This is yet another indication that we are seeing the end of the fossil fuel era."

The petition maintains that "climate change interferes with our fundamental rights as human beings," hence, we demand accountability of those contributing to climate change." 

"This investigation is not just about how fossil fuel companies do business, but that they do business at all in the future. It's time we held to account those who are most responsible for the devastating effects of climate change," says Zelda Soriano of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

The petition was filed in September by Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Amnesty International, Union of Concerned Scientists and other organizations and 20 individuals, including survivors of the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, which killed at least 6300 people - and displace 4.1 million - in the Philippines alone.

 It asks the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines to:
•officially put the companies on notice
•request companies' plans for how they intend to eliminate, remedy and prevent further damages
•recommend to the government how climate victims can be monitored and assisted through human rights policies. 

These companies have for too long been invincible and is it time for their social license and role in climate change be called out, says Greenpeace. "This is one step in a legal strategy of making sure those complicit in climate change are held accountable," Anna Abad at Greenpeace Southeast Asia told Reuters.

"The real life pain and agony of losing loved ones, homes, farms - almost everything - during strong typhoons, droughts, and other weather extremes, as well as the everyday struggle to live, to be safe, and to be able to cope with the adverse, slow onset impacts of climate change, are beyond numbers and words."

One petitioner says her family huddled in the attic while Manila was flooded during the 2009 typhoon. "We saw floating people, floating animals, floating coffins. We could not do anything, we could not help them. It was like watching a horror movie, she told Reuters.

Investigators know it will be an uphill climb to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for deaths and financial losses, but the issue isn't about winning or compensation right now. It will strengthen growing opposition to the fossil fuel industry, turning away investors - their biggest priority.

 Roberto Cadiz, a member of the Commission, told Reuters he feels duty bound to take the case because losses from extreme weather are mounting so rapidly and because efforts to curb emissions are moving too slowly. 

Petitioners say there are lots more to come.

 Meanwhile, more than 500 institutions representing $3.4 trillion in assets are divesting from fossil fuels, up $1 trillion since September, and 20 French cities (including Paris), Melbourne, Australia and Oslo, Norway. 

Read our article, "Teenagers Win on Climate Change in Washington State Court."

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26491
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 08, 2015, 06:10:28 pm
(https://lh3.ggpht.com/7XNm8CtVvwtbRuU9njTvu3PhxHfkAnYsUtls6Ib0gMsrzn23fwIhPUz78ZoOx79oMVQ=w1264)

War & Climate Change: Jeremy Corbyn on the Brutal Quest for Oil & the Need for a Sustainable Planet: VIDEO

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/8/war_climate_change_jeremy_corbyn_on?autostart=true
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 10, 2015, 04:11:57 pm
Doubtful we'd ever get the chance to vote for a Sanders, given the way our system works. The only two candidates that offer anything that seems the least bit sensible are Sanders on the liberal side, and Paul on the conservative side. There are things about each of them that would make me have to hold my nose while I pulled the lever to vote for either one, but I would consider it.

All the other candidates fill me with fear and loathing. Every one of them is a tool of the elites. So one of them is the only choice i expect to be given at the polls.

Well, maybe Trump is not a tool of the elites...but he is an elite, as much as he pretends to be a man of the people. He's in a special class of heightened fear and loathing...as in, if he's elected, it's time to call Doug Casey and ask about condos in Uruguay.

You mean, how THEIR system works, right? If you still labor under the view that it is "our" system, you are woefully optimistic. OUR system, Eddie, does NOT work because it is dysfunctional by design.

Pondering the mere possibility that Trump is not a tool of the elite is 180 degrees out of phase. Trump is their representative and member in good standing.

And at the rate things are deteriorating, you soon will not have to hold your nose to "vote" (LOL!) for tweedledee or tweedledum.

Meanwhile, those fine credentialed University folks you and MKing so admire are doing what they do to preserve the fossil fuel government/Wall Street empathy deficit disordered SYSTEM that Trump represents.

Trump is an "independent" who is so "rational" that he gets offended at oceanic wind turbines because they  "ruin" the view for golfers at his Scottish golf course. Shame on him for pretending he is anything but an empathy deficit disordered demagogue.

All the noise he is making now is part of the campaign to KEEP COP21 OFF THE NEWS with hysteria about 'airab terrists' until next week. They started it in November. After COP21 is over, ALL OF A SUDDEN, Trump will start sounding quite conciliatory and the whole Muslim thing will not be mentioned again in the media until after Christmas shopping consumption has been boosted and some profits from stupid people buying stuff they don't need to feed a machine that kills other people and animals on the planet have been pocketed - sometime in early January 2016. It's all a murderous facade, Eddie.

Uruguay is nearly at 100% renewable energy so it is probably a good choice (until the fascist fossil fuel government decides to "make an example" of them by engaging in sabotage, bombing or some other excuse to terrorize them by branding them as "terrorist").    :P

Greenpeace Sting Exposes Academics Hired as Climate-Change Deniers

Posted on Dec 9, 2015

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

As climate change deniers face growing scrutiny and skepticism, a new undercover investigation by the environmental group Greenpeace shines new light on academics-for-hire, who are willing to accept secret payments from fossil fuel companies to sow doubt about global warming.

The sting operation publicized Tuesday involved two Greenpeace UK employees posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, and asking U.S. academics to write papers touting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels and the benefits of coal use in developing countries.

Professors from Penn State and Princeton University “agreed to write the reports and said they did not need to disclose the source of the funding,” according to reporting by Greenpeace Energydesk, a journalistic arm of the international environmental organization.

Energydesk reporters Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan continue:

Citing industry-funded documents—including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles—Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.

Among the exposé‘s other findings:

- US coal giant Peabody Energy also paid tens of thousands of dollars to an academic who produced coal-friendly research and provided testimony at state and federal climate hearings, the amount of which was never revealed.

- The Donors Trust, an organization that has been described as the “dark money ATM” of the US conservative movement, confirmed in a taped conversation with an undercover reporter that it could anonymously channel money from a fictional Middle Eastern oil and gas company to U.S. climate septic organizations.

- Princeton professor William Happer laid out details of an unofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate skeptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal.

- A recent report by the GWPF that had been through the same unofficial peer review process, was promoted as “thoroughly peer-reviewed” by influential columnist Matt Ridley—a senior figure in the organization.

Happer, the Princeton professor, was invited to speak on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate at a ‘Data or Dogma’   ;) panel organized by GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Greenpeace investigator Jesse Coleman cornered him there to ask about the revelations.

Watch the video below: (at link)

Late last month, Happer—who has said “more CO2 would benefit the world”—appeared at a climate skeptic summit in Texas, Energydesk reports. There, he defended CO2 production saying: “Our breath is not that different from a power plant.” He went on to say, “If plants could vote, they would vote for coal.”

As Carter and McClenaghan point out, the Greenpeace investigation follows recent reports showing fossil fuel companies burying the truth about climate change, while funding spurious research to cast doubt on the scientific consensus and make it “difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust.” 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/greenpeace_sting_exposes_climate-denying_academics-for-hire_20151209 (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/greenpeace_sting_exposes_climate-denying_academics-for-hire_20151209)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 28, 2015, 03:58:56 pm
Agelbert NOTE: The world's most in-your-face Welfare Queen Crooks and Liars, the Fossil Fuel Fascists, are a having a banner year at we-the-people's expense (as usual (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)).   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)

9 Gifts President Obama Gave Big Oil  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)in 2015

Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth | December 28, 2015 11:12 am

SNIPPET:

Quote

Big Oil has already received plenty of gifts this holiday season. Despite another year of record-breaking temperatures, the last 12 months have seen a wave of policy wins that could secure an oil drenched status quo for decades to come.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/28/obama-gifts-to-big-oil/

Agelbert rhetorical question: What is the reason the profit over planet "real world" (see Orwell) modus operandi continues to be aided and abetted by governments AND defended by fossil fuelers like Mking and Roamer?

WHY, despite clear revelations of their toxic activity and widespread calls to make these bastards stop their insane environmental degradation of the planet,

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140614221527.jpeg&hash=5540ceb038c219f6fd016500aa043b96dc869198)

do they continue to get away with it AND even continue to be SUBSIDIZED(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d) to DO IT!!!?  ???


Because the people that run the governments of human society who are running the biosphere into the Sixth Mass Extinction are those overwhelmingly responsible for the empathy deficit disordered profit over planet. Their "real world" is nothing but the routine fiction any criminal gang puts up to justify criminal behavior..

12/04/2015 12:12 PM     
Income Inequality = Climate Inequality, Says Oxfam

SustainableBusiness.com News

In the US, one of the major themes in our presidential campaign is income inequality between the richest 1% and the rest of our citizens.  Not surprisingly, this theme also applies to climate change.

Oxfam's new report - released at COP21 - lays bare "climate-change inequality": the world's richest 1% are also the biggest polluters by far, producing 175 times the carbon emissions as people in the bottom 10% of income.

Quote
The richest 10% are responsible for half the world's emissions, while the poorest half - roughly 3.5 billion people - produce only 10% of all emissions.

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Income inequality

And the poor are - and will - be most negatively affected by climate change. They can't move to safer ground or even insulate their homes the way rich people can. They tend to live in countries with the least capacity to adapt.

"Climate change and economic inequality are inextricably linked and together pose one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century," says Tim Gore of Oxfam.

Another report, "Carbon and Inequality: From Kyoto to Paris" comes to the same conclusion. "It is the rich Europeans, Americans and Chinese that emit the most carbon, while the emissions from the world's poorest citizens are falling. The richest 1% of Americans, Luxembourgers, Singaporeans and Saudis emit more than 200 tonnes of carbon per person per year; 2,000 times more than the poorest in Honduras, Rwanda or Malawi," says author French economist Thomas Piketty (who wrote the best seller, "Capital"). 

Both Oxfam and Pikkety conclude the rich should be held accountable for emissions, no matter where they live. 

Oxfam points out that the super rich in developing countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa have
 high and rapidly rising emissions, but are still "behind" their advanced country counterparts .. and they will soon catch up. 

 Oxfam says:

"While the richest citizens can and should contribute as individuals to cutting their own emissions through lifestyle changes, wherever they live, they can't solve the climate crisis through voluntary action alone. Their choices are often constrained by the decisions of their governments in all sorts of areas, from energy to transport policy.

"Without question, a weak agreement in Paris is no more in their interests than it is in the interests of the poorest and least responsible. Increasingly members of the richest 10% are experiencing the impacts of climate change themselves, and are mobilizing to demand action from their governments.

"The only beneficiaries of inadequate climate action in Paris and beyond are a much smaller elite with vested interests in the continuation of a high carbon and deeply unequal global economy.


Quote
The number of billionaires with interests in fossil fuel activities has risen from 54 n 2010 to 88 in 2015, while the size of their combined personal fortunes has expanded by around 50% from over $200 billion to more than $300 billion."


Poor nations haven't caused the problem
but they are most vulnerable to it. They need help to adapt so their people can live.

And the world can't afford ANY more emissions, so developing countries must get assistance to leap frog to renewable energy instead of using coal. 

Accelerating natural disasters already impacts hundreds of millions of people a year. The Rockefeller Foundation estimates that $1 out of every $3 spent on development is lost to these recurring crises - a total $3.8 trillion worldwide. Resilient societies would suffer less and recover more quickly.

Nearly 634 million people live in risk-prone coastal areas and areas at risk from droughts and floods.

Read Oxfam's report, "Extreme Carbon Inequality": 
 
Website: www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26487

Talk that blames the poor people because they "have too many babies" is irresponsible, as well as being IRRELEVANT. But, it is a devilishly clever method for taking the spotlight off the real culprits, especially those biosphere math challenged criminals among the fossil fuel worshippers.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 29, 2015, 07:54:17 pm

                                           (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140614221527.jpeg&hash=5540ceb038c219f6fd016500aa043b96dc869198)

I remember clearly the fight they put up to take lead out of gasoline, Yes LEAD.

Can you imagine 250 million vehicles on the road here 24/7 spitting out LEAD constantly.

They told everyone their cars would knock like hell and their engines would be toast after 10 thousand miles.

The real reason was the Benjamins, they didn't want to spend the dough on the advanced safer additives. Lead was just fine according to them. ::)

Yep. But it gets better.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) When Prohibition came into effect (that was REALLY about Rockefeller's Benjamins too!), farmers could no longer grow their own fuel for their tractors. You see, ethanol, known in Brazil as E100 and used routinely to run internal combustion machines efficiently (only a slightly higher compression ratio is required) was IDEAL for high compression engines. Guess who needed fuel for those engines? The aviation industry! Tetra ethyl lead makes the witches brew of VOCS (mostly toxic volatile organic compounds) and various long chained hydrocarbons (i.e. gasoline) combust more evenly at a certain temperature. The very same result was ALREADY available from ethanol because it carries its own oxygen and is only one chemical compound. Ethanol has a HIGHER octane rating than gasoline.

As more powerful and bigger engines were invented AND aviation needed high compression engines for high altitude flying efficiency, Rockefeller and his pals at Dow Chemical (or Du Pont - I can't remember right now)scramble for something to goose gasoline with. They sure as Benjamins did not want to admit ethanol was the better fuel...

Well, Prohibition ended and America began the long march to prepare for war in the air with fighters and bombers that REQUIRED high compression engines. We-the-people were STUCK with tetra ethyl lead and a spurious propaganda campaign bad mouthing ethanol, when anybody that has ever been to a drag race KNOWS alcohol is IT for high compression engine dragsters.

Finally, TO THIS DAY, it is STILL LEGAL for gasoline powered aircraft to USE LEADED GASOLINE. It's called avgas. The 130 octane stuff I used fuel Piper Navajos with has a green die to differentiate it as the "good stuff" for high compression, high horsepower engines. So, if you live under the approach end of general aviation airport, you get a routine shower of lead for your kids to enjoy, complements of the fossil fuel government.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

The laws on fuel as corrupted in this country that you CANNOT legally make ethanol for fuel UNLESS it has a REQUIRED percentage of gasoline added to it. The excuse is that it is a "safeguard" to make sure it is not sold as booze, as per the Alcohol, Drug and Tobacco portion of the fossil fuel government. But we know that is BALONEY. It's just one more hidden subsidy for the fossil fuel government profit over planet welfare queens.

As you said, it's all about the Benjamins.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 29, 2015, 08:02:16 pm
Quote
The laws on fuel as CORRUPTED in this country that you CANNOT legally make ethanol for fuel UNLESS it has a REQUIRED percentage of gasoline added to it. The excuse is that it is a "safeguard" to make sure it is not sold as booze, as per the Alcohol, Drug and Tobacco portion of the fossil fuel government. But we know that is BALONEY. It's just one more hidden subsidy for the fossil fuel government profit over planet welfare queens.

As you said, it's all about the Benjamins.

Amazing revelations in that posting Agelbert. Pains one to think these guys are still running the show.

I'm wondering when they're going to move on and take over the solar industry? Just like them, with their water boys in government, to start charging us to use the Sun?


Good point. There is ample evidence that they want to put bureaucratic fascist regulatory meter on solar power. It's really and old colonialist style modus operandi going back to the Dutch, English and Spanish Empires. The difference now is that we-the-people are the targets, not some native tribes.

As you know, the colonial MO was to prohibit finished industrial goods from being made in the colonies while the "mother" country imports all the raw materials from skins to make saddles with to ore for finished metal products to quality wood for furniture (and so on). The finished goods were then sold back to the people in the colonies for exorbitant prices.

It is mind boggling to think it was illegal to make a saddle in South America for centuries after the European invasion. It was just as hard (and illegal) to get mills going in the English colony we now know as the USA to make cloth from cotton and hemp. Making a clock in the colonies was very difficult because it was considered a "finished" industrial product. People actually made them with (illegally) wooden parts. The accuracy was, of course, not so great.

What does all this have to do with solar power? The LAW, like in colonial times, is used for the purpose of fleecing the people and defending the cartels (in this case as applied to solar energy). The power companies will push for, and win, the right to put giant solar farms here and there to centralize the energy. THAT will cost us because they will then have their typical duplicitous excuses for jacking up rates on a regular basis due "maintenance costs".     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)


At the same time, local ordinances will make it increasingly expensive to get permits for panels on your property, require a NEW roof for your house if your roof is more than X amount of years old and other economic hurdles make it more and more expensive for your to just get started. THEN they will require some annual inspection by a "designated" ass hole that will charge a fee to "make sure" your solar panel setup is not afire hazard" (or an eye sore, or "violates" some ordinance, etc).

To add insult to injury, the LAND the power company gets to put massive solar farms on will be subsidized by we-the-people. WE will also NOT be able to deduct our solar maintenance costs from our taxes because we "aren't a business" while the power company profits from subsidies AND tax deductions on maintenance costs.

The only upside is that fossil fuels will FINALLY be gradually phased out as the overwhelming evidence of how in-your-face expensive they are in comparison to renewable energy continues to cause businesses and power companies to break ranks and abandon support for and investment in fossil fuel industry crooks.

Who knows? We might even survive all this colonial MO through clever "adaptation".  ;)

But it looks pretty hopeless right now.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 29, 2015, 08:03:29 pm
I agree very much that the utilities and bureaucrats will fight tooth and nail to control solar.  I'd recommend installing solar in parallel to the grid and use it to phase out critical appliances. Use it to power small DC deep freeze which could act as a form of storage with a little forethought.  Small system decoupled from grid  to power essentials can provide fast payback, avoid utility involvement and help start the distributed solar revolution which is needed.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

One small correction. The solar revolution really started about three years ago when the cost of solar panels began dropping faster than Wile E. Coyote.  8)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F--UOgyPpdbVU%2FTgYd1mOJh-I%2FAAAAAAAAAUs%2F8L037QmwbPM%2Fs1600%2FWEC.jpg&hash=71d4d2396f92c289fe7efa0798982ffa6ea775b9)

Those were the days when the baloney was flying fast and furious from Stoneleigh and fossil fuel worshipping friends about renewable energy not amounting to a hill of energy beans (see: "drop in a bucket"). Many here thought she was an "energy expert". LOL!  Her predictions were all wrong. But she never owned up to her bad advice. So it goes. She sticks to her guns, even if they are pointed squarely at her face and are going off as we speak.

And the vertiginous drop in price of the Renewable Energy from Solar Power (that the fossil fuel shill Nicole Foss - Stoneleigh denied would ever happen) is ACCELERATING.

Solar Costs Will Fall Another 40% In 2 Years. Here’s Why. January 29th, 2015 by Giles Parkinson (http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/29/solar-costs-will-fall-40-next-2-years-heres/)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fus.123rf.com%2F400wm%2F400%2F400%2Fyayayoy%2Fyayayoy1106%2Fyayayoy110600019%2F9735563-smiling-sun-showing-thumb-up.jpg&hash=09b45642ec6d7943d30b5b87548676e3ee7dbe3d)

Meanwhile, there are developments at the Department of energy that bare watching.  8)

Dr. Cherry Murray Confirmed as Director of the Office of Science

December 11, 2015 - 3:04pm

WASHINGTON – Dr. Cherry Murray was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday, December 10, 2015 as the Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

“Dr. Murray will be an outstanding Director of the Office of Science, drawing upon her experience in academia as professor and dean of one of country’s leading universities of engineering and applied sciences, key R&D leadership roles in industry, and as former head of science and technology at one of the Department’s national laboratories, ” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “I thank the Senate for the approving her nomination and look forward to working closely with her as Director.”

As Director of the Office of Science, Dr. Murray will oversee research in the areas of advanced scientific computing, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental sciences, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics, and nuclear physics. She will have responsibility not only for supporting scientific research, but also for the development, construction, and operation of unique, open-access scientific user facilities. The Office of Science manages 10 of the Department’s 17 National Laboratories.

For the past year, Dr. Murray served as the Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy and Professor of Physics at Harvard University.  Previously she was the Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University from 2009 to 2014.  Dr. Murray served as Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2007 to 2009 and as Deputy Director for Science and Technology from 2004 to 2007.

Dr. Murray held a number of positions at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories and previously Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. from 1978 to 2004.  She began as a Member of Technical Staff within the Physical Research Laboratory and eventually finished her tenure as Senior Vice President for Physical Sciences and Wireless Research.

Dr. Murray was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and the National Academy of Engineering in 2002. Dr. Murray was appointed to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling in 2010  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df). She was also awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by the White House in 2014 for contributions to the advancement of devices for telecommunications, the use of light for studying matter, and for leadership in the development of the STEM workforce in the United States.  Dr. Murray received a B.S. and a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://energy.gov/articles/dr-cherry-murray-confirmed-director-office-science (http://energy.gov/articles/dr-cherry-murray-confirmed-director-office-science)

Agelbert NOTE: It is hoped that Dr. Murray, who has in the past  (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/documents/webpage/pga_161590.pdf) written some excellent pieces about future plentiful rooftop gardens and the potential for bountiful solar power to be used for sequestering excess CO2 from our atmosphere, has not been brought in as a stalking horse for the new "small reactor" nuclear power scam AND/OR another fossil fuel government excuse to keep burning fossil fuels through solar powered CO2 sequestering technology.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emofaces.com%2Fpng%2F200%2Femoticons%2Ffingerscrossed.png&hash=d56f8009d18b55f4cea7be68284c0521be92fc5d)

But I wouldn't put it past them.  :P

And as to Stoneleigh and anybody who thinks she is an "Energy expert", diner is served.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flucidating.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F01%2Featcrow.gif&hash=40fab0b2775d3fb285afd6c24535120837141e04)
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 29, 2015, 09:27:26 pm
Agelbert NOTE:
Here is MORE evidence that SHELL is gearing up for LNG BIG TIME, the biosphere and CO2 pollution be damned.  >:(

Fifteen New Inland Barges to Run Mostly on LNG   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seatrade-maritime.com%2Fmedia%2Fk2%2Fitems%2Fcache%2Fe74cea9f4e15981678f4853cf3bafb8e_XL.jpg&hash=71cfe10a45ef9b0d2393fe8ce7923563599293da)
LNG-powered inland barge

December 28, 2015 by gCaptain
A total of 15 LNG-powered inland barges to be chartered by Shell for use in European waterways will be equipped with Wärtsilä dual-fuel main engines running primarily on liquified natural gas, the Finnish engine manufacturer announced Monday.

The 110-meter barges are being built for Belgium-based Plouvier Transportation and will be chartered by Shell Trading Rotterdam in support of its growing operations in the ARA (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp) and Rhinetrack (Germany/Switzerland) regions.

The barges will each be equipped with a 6-cylinder Wärtsilä 20DF dual-fuel main engine operating mostly on LNG. Wärtsilä will also supply other propulsion equipment and its LNGPac fuel gas handling system.

“The specified requirements were for environmental compliance, reliability, fuel flexibility, low operational costs, and a proven concept,” Wärtsilä said in statement announcing the contract award. “The development of LNG as a cleaner fuel for shipping is supported by Shell, and these innovative new vessels represent an important endorsement of this support. They will also enhance the safety and efficiency performance of the company’s fleet.”

The ships’ hulls are under construction at the VEKA Shipyard CENTROMOST in Poland and final outfitting will be carried out at VEKA Shipyard Werkendam. Delivery of barges are expected to take place between late-2016 and mid- 2018.

https://gcaptain.com/fifteen-new-inland-barges-to-run-mostly-on-lng/

Agelbert Comment: There is no doubt that this is all part of Shell's plan to profit from exploiting the ocean bottom with the giant Prelude FLNG monstrocity.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmax-groups.com%2Fhome%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F09%2FFLNG-MAX-blog.png&hash=2e86160f8af7c6d15e8d09dd315b05afd5e85edb)

but there is more...

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.green4sea.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F12%2FShell-LNG-generic.jpg&hash=27b08b7208186ad8c405f977a8f345acb179626a)
Shell has contracted STX Offshore & Shipbuilding to build a special bunker vessel to serve ships powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG). (http://www.green4sea.com/shell-orders-lng-bunker-ship/)

At the above link you will find happy talk cheerleading for LNG as a "cleaner" fuel for ships, TOTALLY ignoring CO2 pollution or the MASSIVE amount of energy it takes to process natural gas into LNG. So it goes.  :(
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 07, 2016, 09:12:40 pm
Record Year for VLCCs in Port of Rotterdam  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vnq8dK8UXs4/maxresdefault.jpg)
VLCC tanker Genmar Vivtory

January 6, 2016 by gCaptain


The Port of Rotterdam has reported a record number of very large crude carriers in port in 2015 helped by growth in full oil supply in northwest Europe and Russian stockpiles flowing into the region.

The Port of Rotterdam Authority said Monday that in 2015, no fewer than 51 VLCCs called at the port to discharge and/or load fuel. That is 22 more VLCCs, ranging from 200,000 to 320,000 dwt, than in 2014 and 12 more than in the record year of 2012. In 2015, a total of around 28.3 billion liters of fuel oil was shipped from Rotterdam, the Port Authority said.

“The increase in the transport of fuel oil is due to a slight growth in its supply in the Northwest Europe region on the one hand,” says Ronald Backers, Business Intelligence Advisor for the Port of Rotterdam Authority. “The refineries here are operating at full capacity due to this year’s high margins.

In addition, Russia saw a large build-up of fuel oil stocks in 2014. At the beginning of 2015, this stock ‘flowed’ in the direction of Rotterdam and other ports. On the other hand, the demand for fuel oil is slightly lower. This is partly due to the introduction, in January 2015, of the requirement to use bunker fuel in the North and Baltic Seas with a maximum sulphur content of 0.5%. This was achieved by using Marine Gas Oil. All in all, this has led to a surplus of fuel oil, which had to be shifted to other markets. The market calls this a ‘supply push’.”  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) 

With last year’s 51 VLCCs, 283 of the world’s largest tankers visited Rotterdam in the last ten years. Two thirds of these discharged crude oil before leaving again with fuel oil, the Port Authority says.

“75% of the loading of the VLCCs takes place at the terminals in Rotterdam, 25% at the Caland Canal and Maasvlakte2 dolphins, Backers adds. “There is often a combination of both locations, with most of the loading taking place at a terminal and the loading being completed at the dolphins.”

The Port Authority says that average cargo volume of the mammoth tankers has increased over time by about 30,000 tonnes to 280,000 tonnes. The record in this field is still held by the TI Europe, which sailed with 353,000 tonnes of fuel oil in August 2013.

Incidentally, there was also a record number of Suezmax tankers (120,000-160,000 tonnes deadweight) in Rotterdam, the Port Authority also reported. With a total of 45, this was 4 higher than in 2014.

https://gcaptain.com/2016/01/06/record-year-for-vlcc-at-port-of-rotterdam-2015/

And, as NIGHT follows DAY, the pollution just keeps on ADDING UP. 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)   

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.environmentmagazine.org%2Fsebin%2Ff%2Ft%2Foil-pollution-1.jpg&hash=331bef0433f972f16d8490c78574639d10fe9415)
Map of oil spills listed in Table 1.

Table: Table 1A. Top 20 major oil spills from oil tankers since the Torrey Canyon in 1967, update as of 2012.

Oil Pollution in the Marine Environment I: Inputs, Big Spills, Small Spills, and Dribbles
(http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2013/November-December%202013/oil-pollution-full.html)

 

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 08, 2016, 07:49:34 pm
What fossil fuel companies knew and when they knew it

The fundamentals of global warming have been well established for generations. Fossil fuel companies have almost certainly been aware of the underlying climate science for decades.

As early as 1977, representatives from major fossil fuel companies attended dozens of congressional hearings in which the contribution of carbon emissions to the greenhouse effect was discussed. By 1981 at least one company (Exxon) was already considering the climate implications of a large fossil fuel extraction project.

In 1988, the issue moved beyond the scientific community and onto the national stage.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucsusa.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2F2015%2F06%2Fgw-graphic-new-york-times-1988-hansen-testimony-front-page.jpg&hash=b8eb01d56171b07172816f6cabe733b667bf7856)

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Full article:

The Climate Deception Dossiers (2015) (http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VpBVB_9gnm5)

 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 13, 2016, 07:32:30 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.rigzone.com%2Fimages%2Fhome%2Farticle%2Fhf_141008_article.jpg&hash=347d5ca67bff016ea9f534617def14983836bf8a)

Schlumberger (SLB), as I said a year and a half ago, is in serious financial trouble. However, they DO NOT plan to accept responsibility for their pollution or their mistakes.  >:(

SLB, true to it's excellent corruption connections with the fossil fuel bought and paid for government, has had a GIANT merger with CAM PRE-APPROVED by the "Justice" Department. No sir, no risk of a monopoly here. LOL! Think about that, sports fans.

SLB has shed 22,000 jobs in the last year and has announced that it will lay off more people this year. It's stock is in the tank. It has lost BILLIONS! It's business model is threatened, not just by lower oil prices, but by pollution lawsuits and damage claims from people and various levels of government AND the coming carbon taxation AND the end of it's subsidy welfare queen gravy train.

So what does SLB do? It fires the "salt of the earth" employees that it had promised to take care of and be loyal to (and so on ;)) on the bottom of the rubber meats the road rig totem pole. AND it plans a merger with CAM to throw off the wages bus a bunch of middle mangers too! Of course this WILL constitute a reduction of competition and an IN YOUR FACE monopolistic practice. But SO WHAT? They've got the "Justice" Department in the fossil fuel government to "take care of the legal business" for them.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)


The fact is that SLB has its ass in a giant crack and is being BABIED to enable it to survive. Do you see where I'm going with this, sports fans? The Fossil fuelers and their pals in Houston love to talk about RESPONSIBILITY and COMPETITIVE energy prices and WELFARE WHINERS that MILK THE SYSTEM. Yet that is EXACTLY what the fossil fuel industry WEFARE QUEENS in Houston have DONE in this country from the word "oil find" to the present.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)

But more to the point, what SLB is doing is an attempt to manipulate the energy field they are in by merging for price "control"   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) with the "help" of some friends in the "Justice" Department.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)

This is IRRESPONSIBLE. They SHOULD NOT be allowed to merge and they SHOULD go bankrupt because of their incorrect management decisions and their failed business model (creating polluting messes wherever they go that generate damages claims). BUT THAT ISN'T HAPPENING! WHY NOT!!!? You won't get an answer from the trolls defending fossil fuels, who think all this crooked welfare queenery is fine and dandy "corporate fiduciary responsibility", when it is exactly the opposite.


Also, Conocophilips id up to no good. I mention them here because that is MORE interesting financial information: That corporation is planning on making a killing in DIRTY (Fracked) LNG profits within the next year. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00)

Do your part. HELP profit over planet fossil fuel industry WELFARE QUEENS GO BANKRUPT!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 16, 2016, 03:41:19 pm
Agelbert NOTE: To be filed under SOCIAL ENGINEERING that is quite acceptable to those who claim they are "skeptical" of social engineering. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)  What these Capitalist/Libertarian/Game Theorists REALLY mean by that is that they are SELECTIVELY skeptical.

You see, it's fine and dandy for we-the-people to Disproportionately Subsidize Polluting Predators 'R' US  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) but it's, uh, "financially unsound social engineering" (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__smokelots.gif&hash=094f88de6782c1cd03ed5321b387792046eb3cdd) (i.e. Socialism for everybody instead of just for the elite Welfare Queens  ;)) for government money to be used to help in feeding the poor, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick or other "financially unsound" examples of altruistic "nonsense" that "SUCCESSFUL Apex Predators" should nevah, evah, evah engage in...    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)

 
01/15/2016 03:52 PM     

Little Known Fact: Renewable Energy Companies Pay Way More Than Fossil Firms to Lease Public Land

SustainableBusiness.com News

When fossil fuel companies are allowed to lease our public lands to extract oil, gas and coal, they pay close to nothing for the privilege of disrupting our climate and destroying wildlife habitat.

But for renewable energy developers it's another story. They pay top dollar to put solar or wind arrays on public lands. 

For solar, costs per acre have a huge range. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) charges between $16.50 and $6,897 and rates rise each year, but oil and gas leases are set in stone at the bargain price of $1.50 per acre per year, according to Renewable Energy World.

"It's almost embarrassing what we charge," Dick Bouts, energy program analyst at BLM told Renewable Energy World. "It's certainly pocket change for these companies that will spend millions of dollars developing a lease to get it in production, and the rent is almost nothing."

Quote
And while solar and wind projects produce energy forever, once the oil and gas is pulled from the ground, it's gone.


Mineral Leasing Act of 1920   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

It all goes back to the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, when Congress set the rates. Congress raised the fee from $1 per acre in the 1980s, but since then Congress has refused to act. Cattle and sheep ranchers can graze their animals on public lands for bargain prices for the same reason.

"Even if we were to try to do a rule making and try to raise the rate for oil and gas, BLM would get beat up so bad by the industry and by certain members of Congress," he told Renewable Energy World.

But Congress does allow BLM to set rates for renewable energy. These market rates rise every year and are based on population and GDP.
 
In addition to paying rent for the land, there are royalty fees. Oil and gas companies pay 12.5% of the value of what they extract, but various loopholes reduce it to more like 5%.
 
Solar pays a per-megawatt fee, and the bigger a project is, the price goes up for every megawatt of energy produced.
Fees are lowest for solar PV ($5,256 per MW), followed by concentrating solar without energy storage ($6,570 per MW) and are highest with energy storage ($7,884 per MW), reports Renewable Energy World.

The only other fee BLM is allowed to set rates is for oil and gas pipelines and transmission lines for renewables (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/25350) that run through federal land.

This is one more sweetheart deal that continues to subsidize fossil fuels at the expense of renewable energy.  >:(
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26521 (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26521)

Agelbert NOTE: Please repeat after me, Fossil Fuels are NOT a REsource because the CANNOT be use more than ONCE. ONLY RENEWABLE ENERGY is a RESOURCE of energy. Fossil Fuels are a SOURCE of (polluting) Energy, NOT a RESOURCE. This corruption of the language to describe energy sources by the polluters is worthy of Machiavelli in general and Game Theory in particular.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)

There is absolutely NO JUSTIFICATION (unless you are into game theory, of course (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)) for the POLLUTION of public lands and the HARM it does to wildlife for this ONE SHOT DEAL of sucking fossil fuels out of the ground while you kill every bit of wildlife that gets in your way!!!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif&hash=24570cb7e8246617010ce900a07bc85117ff78ca)

And what do the fossil fuelers/game theory worshippers/SELECTIVE Skeptics of social engineering say to above? See below.



 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 20, 2016, 09:42:52 pm
 
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California to investigate whether Exxon Mobil lied about climate-change risks   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-forum%2Fpopcorn.gif&hash=f4c8fc573041a73e34bfb823e0611fbfe8617d67)

Exxon Mobil, which operates a refinery in Torrance, above, has issued statements denying news reports that it suppressed climate-change research.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251) (Christina House / For The Times)

Ivan Penn •Contact Reporter

January 20, 2016, 3:00 AM

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris is investigating whether Exxon Mobil Corp. repeatedly lied to the public and its shareholders about the risk to its business from climate change — and whether such actions could amount to securities fraud and violations of environmental laws.


Harris' office is reviewing what Exxon Mobil knew about global warming and what the company told investors, a person close to the investigation said.

The move follows published reports, based on internal company documents, suggesting that during the 1980s and 1990s the company, then known as Exxon, used climate research as part of its planning and other business practices but simultaneously argued publicly that climate-change science was not clear cut.

Those documents were cited in stories by reporters for Columbia University Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship, published in partnership with the Los Angeles Times. The nonprofit InsideClimate News also published several stories based on the documents.

Shortly after the news reports, Harris' office launched the investigation in response to the findings, the person said. New York's attorney general also is investigating the oil company as a result of the published reports.

Special Report Investigation: How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on climate change research (http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-research/)

Exxon Mobil did not respond to several requests for comment made by telephone and email. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F290.gif&hash=38949e35cf58eaa4218b5a8176767c806d2f8537)

A spokesman for Harris declined to confirm the investigation.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)  (D-Torrance), who has called on federal authorities to investigate Exxon Mobil, praised Harris' decision.

Lieu said the investigation means that any damages won from Exxon Mobil could benefit Californians.  ;D

"I commend … Harris for taking this action," he said.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

Lieu said he has sent letters to U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission calling for federal investigations of securities fraud and violations of racketeering, consumer protection, truth in advertising, public health, shareholder protection or other laws.

Lieu said he hopes the decision by Harris, representing a state with the eighth-largest economy in the world, will prompt other states and the Justice Department to investigate.

"I think this action will be taken very seriously by Exxon Mobil  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-scared005.gif&hash=2de3525707995f1cf9333ecfafd947caca42e8eb), " Lieu said.

Richard Keil, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, previously said that the company denies any wrongdoing in regard to the climate-change reports.

"We  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) unequivocally reject allegations that Exxon Mobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports," Keil (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c) said  in a statement issued in response to the letters sent in October by Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord). Keil issued a statement with the same quote in early November when the New York investigation became public.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemecrunch.com%2Fmeme%2F5L3XX%2Fspiderman-bullshit-detector%2Fimage.jpg%3Fw%3D544%26amp%3Bc%3D1&hash=4825835b92337d62f61a3d37d282105e97ac3ee3)

Exxon Mobil continues to face calls from several current and former U.S. lawmakers for criminal investigations based on the media reports. They include Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Al Gore.

It is unclear what approach Harris intends to take in California's investigation.

Harris' office is casting a wide net and looking at a variety of issues, according to the person familiar with the matter.

What Exxon knew about the Earth's melting Arctic (http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/)

Legal experts say the SEC requires that companies disclose the risks of climate change to their business operations but that the agency has taken almost no action to enforce it.

The moves by California and New York are seen as a step to fill that void.

Exxon Mobil already has received a subpoena for documents dating from 1977 from the office of Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general.

Schneiderman has at his disposal New York's Martin Act, a law that gives the state's attorney general broad power to prosecute companies for financial fraud.

Unlike federal securities law, the New York statute does not require the state to prove that a company intended to defraud   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81) — only that it misrepresented relevant information or withheld it from investors.

The law applies to any company doing business in the state.

ivan.penn@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-exxon-global-warming-20160120-story.html

 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 25, 2016, 08:43:00 pm
6 Ways to Kick Fossil Fuel Money Out of Politics
Cassady Sharp, Greenpeace USA | January 25, 2016 2:46 pm

Last week marked the sixth anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which unleashed unlimited corporate spending on our elections. Thinking about the widespread impact of this ruling, it’s easy to get pretty down on the state of our democracy. In addition to the immediate wreckage Citizens United caused in our democracy, there was a simultaneous attack on voting rights, leaving people in this country with less access to the polls than in 1965.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F01%2Fmoneyout_750.jpg&hash=015b387342cf34882d8c359a3c126b3a463d589b)
Activists dressed as $100 bills representing “The Money” have a tug of war with activists as “The People” in front of the Supreme Court. Photo credit: Greenpeace / Robert Meyers

For instance, in this election cycle alone, employees from oil and gas companies have contributed nearly a million dollars on just three candidates, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. Hillary Clinton, respectively.

Yeah, that can be pretty disheartening.

The good news is the American people are not putting up with any of this. People from Florida to Washington are determined to build a democracy in which everyone has equal voice and can rest assured that their vote won’t be immediately squashed by corporate money.

The best part is they’re winning.

There is still a lot to be done to fix our democracy. Feast your eyes on these six beautiful reasons that solutions are possible.

6. In Tallahassee, Florida voters overwhelmingly supported a sweeping set of ethics and campaign finance laws in 2014. The reforms included the creation of an ethics board, public campaign financing and a lower cap on individual contributions to candidates.

5. A unanimous state court in Texas ruled that a voter ID law that discriminated against African-American and Hispanic voters was unconstitutional. This law had disenfranchised more than 500,000 voters.

4. Maine voters showed their support for clean elections by passing campaign finance reforms that would strengthen public financing for legislative and gubernatorial races, increase fines for violators of campaign finance laws and require groups to disclose political ad spending.

3. Meanwhile, voters in Seattle passed by a vote of 60 to 40 percent public financing of the city’s elections. This will initiate new system in which voters can distribute up to four $25 “democracy vouchers” to candidates. Who wouldn’t want a democracy voucher?

2. Hawaii typically has the lowest voter turnout nationwide. State legislators recently passed a much-needed bill that will allow residents to register and vote on the same day starting this year. This bill should increase voter participation with easier access to the polls.

1. If you listened to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week, you may have heard his tough talk on fixing democracy—“fixing our politics” to be exact. The White House reassured us this week that his strong rhetoric was not just lip service when officials said the president is seriously considering a “dark money” executive order that would require companies with government contracts to disclose their political contributions. If passed, the law would be a major step forward in increased transparency in political spending.

Now it’s time for the 2016 candidates to follow the lead of our current president by proposing real solutions to our broken, but fixable, democracy.

Send a letter today asking all the candidates to take the #fixdemocracy pledge.

Citizens United certainly damaged our democracy, but by working together and challenging our lawmakers across the country, we can fix it.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emofaces.com%2Fpng%2F200%2Femoticons%2Ffingerscrossed.png&hash=d56f8009d18b55f4cea7be68284c0521be92fc5d)

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/25/citizens-united-money-out-of-politics/

Agelbert Comment: Cancel all fossil fuel subsidies and cheap leases on government lands and outlaw flaring at both land and sea based oil rigs and fracking rigs. Then they will ALL go bankrupt. Then they will have NO MONEY to corrupt politicians with. It's really quite simple. They are welfare queens. Their "business model" cannot survive without their hand out gravy train and their externalized pollution piggery.

Then the ZIP CODE in Texas that is responsible for the MOST "campaign contributions" (percentage wise) on behalf of the fossil fuel industry (for the past several DECADES) will not be able to BUY our democracy on behalf of oligarchic profit over planet FASCISM.

2013 money - but that is the routine and continues to this day:


Quote
More oil and gas-related federal political donations have originated in Fort Worth 76102 this election cycle than in any other U.S. ZIP code.

But consider that there are about 43,000 ZIP codes in the United States, meaning this tiny plot of Texas turf packs some awfully concentrated political power. And that roughly quarter-million dollars from the 76102 ZIP code is an impressive slice of the overall $15.7 million in oil and gas-related money to so far this cycle pour into the coffers of federal-level politicians and political committees.

Epicenter of Oil & Gas Industry’s Political Influence Lies Deep in the Heart of Fort Worth, Texas  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (http://www.constantinereport.com/epicenter-of-oil-gas-industrys-political-influence-lies-deep-in-the-heart-of-fort-worth-texas/)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-281014151757.png&hash=1be52df5a308d583e41527f4d215eb9a81d72676)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 26, 2016, 11:13:54 pm
Polarcus Sets Record With Largest Man-Made Moving Object On Earth  :P

January 25, 2016 by gCaptain

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.slidesharecdn.com%2Fpolarcusparetosecuritiesoiloffshoreconferencesept2013-130905020647-%2F95%2Fpolarcus-pareto-securities-oil-offshore-conference-sept-2013-27-638.jpg%3Fcb%3D1378346874&hash=b98b150d157c154e81b14289a6b56905d1da536f)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com.uy%2Ffiles%2Farticle_gallery%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F04%2F13%2F516986d437dca.jpg&hash=e05491527be0ab7c176e082929172005adbf75e4)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffiregrader.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2FFeaturedImage_Ulsteinsx134_01.jpg&hash=e4bc46e68b0d9f0189884c7ebfcedaa8eda99256)
Polarcus Amani doing its seismic thing. They, OF COURSE, claim it is "environmentally sound" (and painted it GREEN for good measure!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) ).
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q4zji1nhGUM/maxresdefault.jpg)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)


Dubai-based  ;) Polarcus is in the process of acquiring an ultra-wide 3D marine seismic project offshore Myanmar, and is breaking acquisition performance records with the largest man-made moving object on earth.

The company’s vessel, Polarcus Amani, is towing an in-sea configuration that measures 1.8km wide across the front ends. With each of the 10 streamers separated by 200m, the total area covered by the spread is 17.6 sq.km.

This is the largest in-sea configuration ever towed by a single seismic vessel as well as the largest man-made moving object on earth, according to Polarcus.

The company is delivering up to 190 sq.km per day, a production rate that is currently unrivalled in the seismic industry.

“Such industry leading operational efficiency in Myanmar by one of our right-sized 3D seismic vessels exemplifies Polarcus’ strategy to deliver fit-for-purpose geophysical solutions to our clients. We work closely with all clients to ensure both their efficiency and data quality objectives are met and exceeded,” Polarcus COO, Duncan Eley stated.

Writing by Nadeem (c) gCaptain

http://gcaptain.com/2016/01/25/polarcus-sets-records-with-largest-man-made-moving-object-on-earth/#.Vqg3Iv9gnm4



Agelbert NOTE: WHAT do these "environmentally sound" seismic vessels DO?        (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191404.bmp&hash=007a2c20b76f970316a559a6e27cfd70c11f5998) You will never guess.     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

To be filed under breathtakingly ORWELLIAN claims.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-023.gif&hash=e72013122d6634eacda71e7e47240da3c304c286)

Quote
Polarcus Limited OSE: PLCS is an offshore geophysical company operating a fleet of seismic research vessels worldwide. The company describes itself as having a strong environmental focus that aims to decrease emissions to both sea and air.[1]  Polarcus vessels have received high energy efficiency and environmental performance ratings.[2][3]  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

Polarcus provides worldwide seismic data acquisition services and Multi-Client library data as well as seismic data imaging to help energy companies find oil and gas reserves offshore.     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

The company was founded in 2008 in Dubai, UAE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarcus

 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.ih8mud.com%2Fattachments%2Fh6a3a1d8f-jpeg.1060027%2F&hash=87f86e6f087faf3da4e4f65ca2a7fd65bbd0c27d)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 27, 2016, 03:31:52 pm
Quote
Polarcus Sets Record With Largest Man-Made Moving Object On Earth  :P

January 25, 2016 by gCaptain

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.slidesharecdn.com%2Fpolarcusparetosecuritiesoiloffshoreconferencesept2013-130905020647-%2F95%2Fpolarcus-pareto-securities-oil-offshore-conference-sept-2013-27-638.jpg%3Fcb%3D1378346874&hash=b98b150d157c154e81b14289a6b56905d1da536f)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com.uy%2Ffiles%2Farticle_gallery%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F04%2F13%2F516986d437dca.jpg&hash=e05491527be0ab7c176e082929172005adbf75e4)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffiregrader.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2FFeaturedImage_Ulsteinsx134_01.jpg&hash=e4bc46e68b0d9f0189884c7ebfcedaa8eda99256)
Polarcus Amani doing its seismic thing. They, OF COURSE, claim it is "environmentally sound" (and painted it GREEN for good measure!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) ).
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q4zji1nhGUM/maxresdefault.jpg)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

http://gcaptain.com/2016/01/25/polarcus-sets-records-with-largest-man-made-moving-object-on-earth/#.Vqg3Iv9gnm4 (http://gcaptain.com/2016/01/25/polarcus-sets-records-with-largest-man-made-moving-object-on-earth/#.Vqg3Iv9gnm4)

Agelbert NOTE: WHAT do these "environmentally sound" seismic vessels DO?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191404.bmp&hash=007a2c20b76f970316a559a6e27cfd70c11f5998)  You will never guess.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

To be filed under breathtakingly ORWELLIAN claims.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-023.gif&hash=e72013122d6634eacda71e7e47240da3c304c286)

Quote
Polarcus Limited OSE: PLCS is an offshore geophysical company operating a fleet of seismic research vessels worldwide. The company describes itself as having a strong environmental focus that aims to decrease emissions to both sea and air.[1]  Polarcus vessels have received high energy efficiency and environmental performance ratings.[2][3]  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

Polarcus provides worldwide seismic data acquisition services and Multi-Client library data as well as seismic data imaging to help energy companies find oil and gas reserves offshore.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

The company was founded in 2008 in Dubai, UAE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarcus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarcus)



I laughed out loud (ruefully) when I read this.

But, as you point out, it IS painted green, so it MUST be "environmentally sound."

Yep. sneaky bastards, aren't they? They really do believe that PRoPI (profitable return on propaganda invested) trumps  ERoEI (which, when environmental costs and subsidy swag is figured in, is below 1:1 - i.e. they do NOT have viable business model or a competitive product). Unlike these profit over planet welfare queens, the reality based community of scientists have other views.

Here's some news from those reality based scientists that keep trying to point out the INSANITY of the BASTARDS in the M.i.C. (and their fossil fuel industry war profiteering, price shock engineering and massively polluting subsidiary  :  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgreenword.ru%2Fimages%2F2014%2F02%2Fbig-cats07.jpg&hash=cec08c30a36b8c5fd94d271378e0be7e348dada1)
I may be the king of beasts but Homo SAPS own the title of King of Stupidity.


Doomsday Clock Stays at Three Minutes to Midnight: At the ‘Brink’ of Man-Made Apocalypse


With “utter dismay,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the symbolic Doomsday Clock will hold at three minutes to midnight—at the “brink” of man-made apocalypse—because world leaders have failed to take the necessary steps to protect citizens from the grave threats of   nuclear war (http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/22/plutonium-mission-japan/)and  runaway climate change (http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/).

View various charts at link:
http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/ (http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/)

“Three minutes (to midnight) is too close. Far too close,” reads the statement by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.

The decision not to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock “is not good news,” it continues, “but an expression of dismay that world leaders continue to fail to focus their efforts and the world’s attention on reducing the extreme danger posed by nuclear weapons and climate change. When we call these dangers existential, that is exactly what we mean: They threaten the very existence of civilization and therefore should be the first order of business for leaders who care about their constituents and their countries.”

The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 17 Nobel Laureates, ruled last year to move the clock forward from five minutes to midnight to three in response to the competing threats of “unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals.”

The board acknowledged some bright spots over the past year, namely the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris Climate Accord, but said that “they constitute only small bright spots in a darker world situation full of potential for catastrophe.”

The statement continues:


Even as the Iran agreement was hammered out, tensions between the U.S. and Russia rose to levels reminiscent of the worst periods of the Cold War. Conflict in Ukraine and Syria continued, accompanied by dangerous bluster and brinkmanship, with Turkey, a NATO member, shooting down a Russian warplane involved in Syria, the director of a state-run Russian news agency making statements about turning the U.S. to radioactive ash and NATO and Russia repositioning military assets and conducting significant exercises with them. Washington and Moscow continue to adhere to most existing nuclear arms control agreements, but the U.S., Russia and other nuclear weapons countries are engaged in programs to modernize their nuclear arsenals, suggesting that they plan to keep and maintain the readiness of their nuclear weapons for decades, at least—despite their pledges, codified in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, the presenters repeatedly called attention to U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to modernize   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df) the country’s nuclear arsenal.

“What message does this send to non-nuclear nations about our intention to build smaller, more useable weapons?” asked Lawrence Krauss, chair of the Board of Sponsors and foundation professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments at Arizona State University. “There is no sane strategic use of nuclear weapons. We need to reduce our nuclear arsenal, not make a new generation of weapons.”

Further, the panel described the COP21 agreement as merely a “tentative success.”

Sivan Kartha, a member of the Board and senior scientist and climate change expert with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), said national pledges to reduce carbon emissions are “manifestly, unequivocally inadequate.”

“The voluntary pledges made in Paris to limit greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to the task of averting drastic climate change,” he continued. “These incremental steps must somehow evolve into the fundamental change in world energy systems needed if climate change is to ultimately be arrested.”

Since the clock was first introduced in 1947, the hands have moved 22 times. As Rachel Bronson, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin, explained, the clock represents a “summary view of leading experts deeply engaged in the existential issues of our time.”

It has become a “universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability” and is a symbol of “how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making,” the Bulletin states. Such dangers include nuclear weapons, “climate-changing technologies, emerging biotechnologies and cybertechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation or by accident, to our way of life and to the planet.”

The clock does not move every year. In fact, prior to 2015, the countdown hadn’t changed since 2012, when it ticked ahead one minute.

A broadcast of this year’s announcement can be viewed  here. (http://clock.thebulletin.org/2016/)


Doomsday clock history video at the end of the above story. (http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/)

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/ (http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/)


The M.I.C. and their FASCIST Fossil Fuel industry pals weigh in on the above news. SEE BELOW:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickmeme.com%2Fimg%2Fbe%2Fbead363502f8e7564038c7072c490cfc0da55bf30c42bb1f04983157e9ae7125.jpg&hash=d1cd0fdeefcea255c8c08d44a2972681ba3c90a3)
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F000370273%2Fpolls_Smiley_Angry_256x256_3451_356175_answer_4_xlarge.png&hash=15577651daa4c35ff4d6b26217f99db6ebfde0b3)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 27, 2016, 10:19:30 pm
ExxonMobil: Global energy demand to grow by 25 percent by 2040  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

Staff Writers  January 27, 2016

Global energy demand is expected to grow by about 25 percent by 2040 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c) , according to a recently published report from ExxonMobil.

The report projects that energy demand in the coming decades will be driven by China, India and other non-OECD countries while demand and emissions in the United States, Europe and other OECD nations are expected to decline, even as economic output grows.

“This is a significant increase, but would have been far higher (exceeding 110 percent) if we did not foresee steep improvements in energy efficiency across all demand sectors,” the report said.

Exxon expects China and India to account for almost half of projected global demand growth to 2040 while Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand and Indonesia will account for about 30 percent of projected demand growth.

The report forecasts that global liquids output will rise to 112 million barrels a day in 2040, up from 93 million barrels per day in 2014, enough output to meet projected demand growth.

Natural gas liquid production is expected to expand “significantly” through 2040, with deepwater natural gas liquid production forecast to grow by about 70 percent from 2014 to 2040.

Oil is expected to remain the top energy source in the world to 2040, but the report said that there will be a “marked shift toward cleaner fuels, particularly natural gas.”

Unconventional oil and gas are projected to meet about one-fifth of the world’s energy needs by 2040.

“We expect that oil, natural gas and coal – the three fuels that together built the modern economy – will continue to meet almost 80 percent of the world’s energy needs through 2040,” the report said.

Global demand for oil and other liquids is projected to grow by about 20 percent from 2014 to 2040 while demand for natural gas is poised to rise by 50 percent during the same period.

“We expect 40 percent of the projected growth in global energy demand from 2014 to 2040 will be met by natural gas,” the report said.

Nuclear and renewable energy sources are likely to account for nearly 40 percent of global energy demand growth 2014 to 2040.

The majority of oil and gas exports through 2040 will likely go to the Asia Pacific region, where demand will outstrip local production growth.

North America is now on track become a net exporter around 2020 and the United States is expected to become a net liquids exporter around 2025, the report said.

Flat production growth and growing demand in the Asia Pacific region will boost that region’s net imports by more than 50 percent between 2014 and 2040.

“Europe is likely to remain the second-largest oil importing region, with imports meeting 75 percent of demand by 2040,” the report said.

Oil exports from the Middle East should continue to grow as production outpaces demand in the region, allowing the Middle East to remain the largest exporting region in the world.


http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/01/exxonmobil-global-energy-demand-to-grow-by-25-percent-by-2040/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemecrunch.com%2Fmeme%2F5L3XX%2Fspiderman-bullshit-detector%2Fimage.jpg%3Fw%3D544%26amp%3Bc%3D1&hash=4825835b92337d62f61a3d37d282105e97ac3ee3)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 09, 2016, 02:48:16 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucsusa.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2F2015%2F03%2Fgw-infographic-climate-science-vs-fossil-fiction-1200px_0.jpg&hash=8e505ccd113e7f7fa8122266ba6981b7e377746e)

Fueling a Clean Transportation Future (2016)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/02/Fueling-Clean-Transportation-Future-executive-summary.pdf
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 12, 2016, 07:41:00 pm
Patrick Parenteau:  Supreme Court plays politics with the Clean Power Plan 

Feb. 11, 2016

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Patrick Parenteau, who is a professor of law and senior counsel at the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School.

SNIPPET:

In a move that stunned even the most seasoned court watchers, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan which seeks to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. The unsigned order, without any explanation, puts a hold on the rule pending the outcome of proceedings currently underway in the D.C. Circuit, which had earlier denied a stay. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor voted against the stay.

This action is unprecedented in a number of ways.

The majority made none of the findings typically required to obtain a stay.

There is no analysis of the merits of any of petitioner’s claims.

There is no showing that the rule threatens any immediate harm to petitioners, especially given the long lead times EPA has built into the process.

There is no showing that the balance of hardships tips decidedly in favor of the petitioners, especially given the fact that most states are well into the process of developing implementation plans and those that do not want to submit a plan don’t have to.

There is no showing that the stay is in the public interest, especially given the warnings from the scientific community that time is fast running out to avoid catastrophic consequences of climate disruption.

Never before has the court interjected itself in a case with such high stakes that hasn’t even been fully briefed and argued before the lower court.

FULL ARTICLE:     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)


http://vtdigger.org/2016/02/11/patrick-parenteau-supreme-court-plays-politics-with-the-clean-power-plan/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 17, 2016, 08:23:19 pm
Second Review of EPA’s Fracking Study Urges Revisions to Major Statements in Executive Summary
Wenonah Hauter | February 16, 2016 3:46 pm

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) independent Scientific Advisory Board Members of the Hydraulic Fracturing Research Advisory Panel released today a second review of the U.S. EPA’s draft assessment saying that that they still have “concerns” regarding the clarity and adequacy of support for several findings presented in the EPA’s draft Assessment Report of the impacts of fracking on drinking water supplies in the U.S.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F02%2Fepafrackstudy750.jpg&hash=8692afef8b7b5601eb51fae74604c91e3b58e026)
Ray Kemble of Dimock, Pennsylvania, holds a jug of discolored water from his well, contaminated by nearby fracking operations while standing outside of the U.S. EPA building in Washington, DC. Photo credit: Food & Water Watch

Ray Kemble of Dimock, Pennsylvania, holds a jug of discolored water from his well, contaminated by nearby fracking operations while standing outside of the U.S. EPA building in Washington, DC. Photo credit: Food & Water Watch

This second draft report is still very critical of the EPA’s top line claim of no “widespread, systemic impacts” on drinking water from fracking and urges the agency to revise the major statements of findings in the executive summary and elsewhere in the draft Assessment report to be more precise, and to clearly link these statements to evidence.
Quote

In its own words, the EPA SAB “is concerned that these major findings as presented within the executive summary are ambiguous and appear inconsistent with the observations, data, and levels of uncertainty presented and discussed in the body of the draft Assessment Report.”

We are confident that this tension between President Obama’s EPA and the EPA’s own independent advisory board of scientists is a direct consequence of political considerations trumping scientific evidence on fracking, which demonstrates many instances and avenues of water contamination and many areas of problems and harms.

It is encouraging to see the EPA’s Science Advisory Board once again highlighting concern with what was clearly a mis-titled and misleading draft report (http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/05/epa-fracking-contaminates-drinking-water/) from the Obama Administration on fracking and drinking water. Now it’s time for action. It’s time for the administration to go back, clearly articulate the hazards its own studies have identified, and honestly address the inherent dangers of fracking we know to exist.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/16/epa-fracking-study-revisions/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 18, 2016, 08:05:54 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Below please find a typical slap on the wrist for polluters in the USA. They literally DO get away with murder.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)


Two firms fined for 2014 Colorado vapor exposure death

Staff Writers  February 18, 2016   

Two oil field services firms   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) have been fined a combined $14,800 for violations tied to the 2014 death of an oil field worker.

According to the Denver Post, Colorado-based DJ Basin Transport will pay a $5,000 fine and Texas-based Gibson Energy LLC will pay a $14,800 fine after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited both firms for failing to provide a safe working environment.

The citations were related to an incident of fatal exposure to toxic vapors that killed 57 year old John McNulty in 2014.

According to a forensic pathology report seen by the Denver Post, McNulty was working on catwalk between tanks at an oil site in Weld County, Colorado when he become unresponsive for “unknown reason.”

Federal health officials determined that McNulty likely died after he inhaled toxic vapors as he was measuring storage tanks.

OSHA cited both firms for failing to develop and use gauging and sampling procedures that did not expose employees to an oxygen deficient atmosphere or to hydrocarbon gases and vapors, the Denver Post added.

Neither firm has commented on the matter.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/02/two-firms-fined-for-2014-colorado-vapor-exposure-death/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 21, 2016, 03:34:30 pm
The Profit Over Planet PIGGERY continues. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df) Instead of investing in platforms for wind turbines, they keep making platforms for oil and gas extraction. They just don't get it. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)   :(

Quote
The new Marathon Oil Alba platform has been installed after being transported form Heerema’s Dutch fabrication yard to Equatorial Guinea.

Marathon Oil President and CEO, Lee Tillman   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0). said: “we reached a major milestone in Equatorial Guinea with the successful installation of the jacket and topsides for the Alba field compression project,”

The new platform is part of the Houston based oil company’s ongoing expansion   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fp8.gif&hash=34db9228a959b3b83fc65b38a1aa92a40d56f976)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d)into the international sectors.

https://youtu.be/Expgv5ILuBA
http://www.offshorepost.com/video-new-marathon-oil-alba-platform-installation/

The climate is going to hell in a CO2 climate change hand basket.

But all the biosphere math challenged Oil Bastards from TEXAS  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) can say is:


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.ih8mud.com%2Fattachments%2Fh6a3a1d8f-jpeg.1060027%2F&hash=87f86e6f087faf3da4e4f65ca2a7fd65bbd0c27d)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100216204839.gif&hash=19170c176bf9497627349a00623922c8e88185b1)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 28, 2016, 07:35:17 pm
Text of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s speech to the Vermont Pension Investment Committee
Feb. 24, 2016, 10:11 am by VTD Editor

Editor’s note: This is the full text of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s presentation to the Vermont Pension Investment Committee on Feb. 23. Numbered footnotes appear at the bottom.


Good morning and thank you for inviting me to talk with VPIC about the urgent need for Vermont to divest from coal and ExxonMobil stocks.

I have called for Vermont to divest from ExxonMobil stocks. As Pulitzer-prize winning journalists have uncovered, ExxonMobil spent millions trying to persuade
 the American people not to support policies to fight climate change at the same
 time that their own internal research clearly indicated climate change was real.1

In the late 1990’s, as they designed their own offshore oil rigs to account for sea
 level rise, Mobil oil paid for advertisements telling the American people that
 climate science was uncertain and that the U.S. should not join other nations in a
 global climate agreement.2 Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, the great grand-daughter
 of ExxonMobil’s founder, donated her shares this year so that the proceeds could
 be used to support nonprofit work to fight global warming.3 After 15 years of
 failed shareholder engagement and meetings between the Rockefeller family and
 ExxonMobil to encourage diversification, she declared that “I lost faith in
 ExxonMobil’s future value.”4

Let’s be clear – If the Rockefellers cannot convince ExxonMobil to change,
 Vermont will not succeed in effecting change through shareholder engagement.


Rockefeller Goodwin wonders “[h]ow different things might be if Exxon and
 others had begun to pivot away from fossil fuels 34 years ago.” Instead, as “the
 enormity of the effects of its lies becomes more evident, ExxonMobil is positioned
 to supplant Big Tobacco as global Public Enemy No. 1.”5

She goes on to say what should be evident to all of us by now, “[t]his is not good for a company’s bottom line.”6

In testimony before the House and Senate Government Operations Committees
 last week, Vermont Law School Professor and former Public Service Board Chair
 Michael Dworkin discussed how ExxonMobil has significantly underperformed the
 S&P 500 over the last five years.7

Quote
Earlier this month several investment advisors indicated they were downgrading ExxonMobil to a sell or an underperform rating.8 Raymond James senior energy analyst Pavel Molchanov said even as the oil sector hopes for a recovery of value, “Exxon is probably the last oil stock you want.”9

For these reasons, we must divest from ExxonMobil and ensure we never
 buy another penny again
.


Divest from Coal


As you know, I have also called for Vermont to follow California’s lead and divest
 from corporations that derive 50 percent or more of their revenue from coal
 mining used to generate electricity, and put in a screen to ensure we never buy
 such assets again.10 Based on conversations my staff have had with the
 Treasurer’s Office, it is my understanding that out of the roughly $4 billion
 Vermont manages in pension funds, we have approximately $600 worth of stocks
 that fit this definition.

In the VPIC invitation letter to me you suggest that when it comes to divesting,
“[m]uch of the public discourse has been more about persuasion than a real
 assessment of the costs and benefits.” So for today, let’s put aside the fact that as
 a matter of moral responsibility, Vermont should not be invested in coal when our
 state is the tailpipe to the dirty energy choices made by states to our West. Let’s
 put aside the fact that coal is responsible for acid rain which has harmed our
 forests, and mercury pollution that puts poison into our fish such that pregnant
 women and children have to limit their consumption. Let’s put aside the fact that
 coal burning is a leading contributor to global warming that threatens the future
 of our planet. Let’s put aside the fact that Vermont is a leader in combatting
 climate change and together with California we can lead the country in making
 the right choices for our planet. Clearly those arguments have not persuaded this
 committee to-date to take action.

So today let’s discuss the facts about why I believe in addition to being bad moral,
 environmental, and health policy, it is straight forward bad economic policy for
 the State of Vermont to be invested in coal stocks:
 o Financial Institutions Agree, Coal is a Bad Investment – Recognizing that for
 the planet to have any chance to slow and reverse the trends of global
 warming, many large financial institutions are exiting the coal industry. In November of 2015, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley joined Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs in pledging to “stop or scale back support for coal projects,” according to Bloomberg Business.11 In a statement Morgan Stanley said “[w]e will continue to shift our lending and capital-raising efforts toward cleaner and renewable sources of energy and reduce the proportion of our energy financing to coal mining and coal-fired power generation.”12

Wells Fargo stated that it “will continue to limit and reduce our credit exposure to the coal mining industry.”13 A new report from Citigroup delivers the news that if we are serious about meeting the agreed to climate target of 2 degrees Celsius then fossil fuel companies have stranded assets that have to stay in the ground totaling approximately $100 trillion, with coal companies accounting for more than half of that potential loss in value.14 Not the type of industry I would want my money invested in, or Vermont’s money invested in.

o Coal Use and Mining is on the Decline – In the mid-2000’s coal represented 50 percent of our nation’s power supply, today it accounts for only 35 percent according to the Energy Information Administration.15 That trend is likely to continue, because no new coal plants are being built. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, for the entirety of 2015, a total of one new coal plant came online, producing a mere 3 megawatts of capacity. Compare that to 50 new natural gas plants totaling nearly 6,000 megawatts, or 69 wind farms totaling nearly 8,000 megawatts, or 248 solar plants totaling over 2,100 megawatts.16 The market has spoken and it’s divesting itself of coal.

As we use less coal for electric generation, coal mining both in the U.S. and
 globally is stalling. Reports from China indicate that based on lower demand,
 it plans to close over 4,000 coal mines. 17 In another blow to the industry, President Obama recently took strong action to halt new coal mining leases on public lands.18 According to the New York Times, “[t]he move represents a significant setback for the coal industry, effectively freezing new coal production on federal lands and sending a signal to energy markets that could turn investors away from an already reeling industry.”19 Perhaps it is not surprising then that CNN reports that the Dow Jones U.S. Coal Index, which captures the value of large coal corporations, “has lost a stunning 95 percent of its value since July 2011.”20

o Coal Companies are Failing – As a result of the decline in coal mining, coal
 electric generation, and coal financing outlined above, coal mining companies are failing. The second-largest coal company, Arch Coal, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, and “Arch cited weakening demand for coal in filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.”21 That follows bankruptcy filings by other major coal companies such as Walter Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, and Patriot Coal.22

Let me spend just a minute talking about Alpha Natural Resources. Alpha purchased Massey Energy before going bankrupt, and Massey, if you recall, was headed by Don Blankenship, a CEO who was found guilty this past December of willfully conspiring to violate safety standards.23 Massey is the company found to have covered up safety violations related to the Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 coal miners in 2010.24 If you think this is an isolated incident, think again. An investigation by NPR in 2014 found 2,700 mine owners who collectively owe $70 million in outstanding fines for safety violations they have not paid, and who committed a total of 130,000
 violations and had nearly 4,000 worker injuries since their initial fines went unpaid.25 I want all of our friends in the Vermont labor community to remember that if we say no to divesting from coal, we are saying yes to the idea of investing your hard-earned dollars in mining companies that have not shown a high regard for the lives and welfare of their workers.

California saw the light. Their legislature passed a bill to divest from coal, Governor Jerry Brown signed it, and it had support from diverse stakeholders including the SEIU public employees union and the Insurance Commissioner.26 The Board of the California State Teachers Retirement System voted affirmatively to divest its holding from U.S. coal companies, and Investment Committee Chair Sharon Hendricks said of the decision “[w]e determined that given the financial state of the industry, the movement of the regulatory landscape and coal’s impact on the environment, its presence
 reflects a loss of value.”27

Vermont Has a Proud History of Using Divestment as a Positive Tool for Change

I know I don’t need to tell this committee that in each of the preceding three decades, Vermont has stepped up to use divestment, thoughtfully and cautiously, when other recourse for extraordinary societal challenges had been exhausted. We used divestment to get out of companies that did business with South Africa under Apartheid in the 1980’s, thanks to leadership from then-Senator Peter Welch and Governor Madeleine Kunin. Former Representative Don Hooper said that the year Nelson Mandela was released from jail he visited South Africa and asked business leaders there why Apartheid failed. The answer he got back was “Apartheid failed because all your little divestments in Madison, WI, Cambridge, MA, the state of Vermont…made South Africa an international pariah,” helping reduce capital and investment needed for economic growth.28

We used divestment, under the leadership of then-Treasurer Jim Douglas with
 support from the legislature, to get out of Big Tobacco in the 1990’s. We owned
 more than $21 million in tobacco stocks back in the late 1990’s, but somehow
 back then it was deemed prudent and within the fiduciary responsibility to get rid
 of all of them. Then-Treasurer Douglas confirmed with the Attorney General that
 divestiture does not violate the trustees’ fiduciary responsibility.29 According to
 Pensions and Investments which wrote about the divestment at the time, “[t]he
 Vermont funds have some of their tobacco investments in an index fund with
 Alliance Capital Management, but Alliance indicated it can create a tobacco-free
 index without a problem, Mr. Douglas said.”30 Today we hear the argument that
 we cannot possibly divest of $600 of coal stocks and get our fund managers to
 screen out coal, but back in the 1990’s Jim Douglas managed to divest of many
 millions in tobacco stocks and get fund managers to create a tobacco-free index
 screen without a problem.

We used divestment under the leadership of then-Treasurer Jeb Spaulding to get
 out of businesses operating in Sudan in 2007, after the tragic events in Darfur.
 Then-Treasurer Spaulding said: The Committee believed it would be prudent, from a fiduciary position, to refrain from owning securities in companies listed on the Sudan Divestment Task Force Highest Offenders list, because the value of our portfolio could suffer if we continue holding these securities while other investors take affirmative action to sell securities on the list. Personally, I hope that by joining with other institutional and individual investors, we can do our part to apply economic pressure on the Sudanese government and companies they do business with to get serious about ending the horrific atrocities still taking place in Darfur.31

I want to ask each of you here today, and I do not mean this to be rhetorical, please raise your hand if you believe Vermont should still own Big Tobacco
 stocks?

Please raise your hand if you think Vermont should not have divested from South Africa at a time when Nelson Mandela was languishing in prison?

Please raise your hand if you think Vermont should not have divested from Sudan while people were killed and starved to death?

Now please raise your hand, if you still think we should invest our money in the coal industry?

Divestment in Vermont has been a seldom-used, but necessary tool to confront major challenges and put us on the right side of history. I take issue with those who say it is a slippery slope. In our form of government, elected officials live on that slope – it’s called democracy. I take issue as well with those who view divestment as symbolic, or a meaningless gesture. If Vermont were going it alone, maybe it would be symbolic. But by divesting from coal and ExxonMobil we would be joining our $4 billion in assets with $3.4 trillion worldwide that has already committed to some type of fossil fuel divestment.32 That is not a meaningless amount of investment. That represents not just our friends in California, but also Europe’s largest insurance company, many religious and educational institutions, and many large municipal pension funds and national sovereign wealth funds around the world.

I know the argument to-date seems to be around the process for making this decision. However, it does not matter if the legislature passes a bill, or if VPIC decides to make the right decision. The process is not ultimately what this is about. It is about Vermont using our power as an investor to put pressure on coal companies economically, and to protect our pensioners from holding securities that have a bleak future. As the coal industry continues to suffer economically and harm our environment and our health, and as ExxonMobil continues to oppose changing its business model even at the urging of our own Treasurer, this committee can continue to delay and to study. Or this committee can take action. I believe the time has come to act on our values, and divest.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)


1 Amy Lieberman and Susan Rust, LA Times “Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought regulations,” Dec. 31,
 2015, available at: http://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/
 2
 Id.
 3 Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, LA Times (published in Valley News), “Giving Up On ExxonMobil,” February 16, 2016,
 available at: http://www.vnews.com/opinion/21086384-95/column-giving-up-on-exxon-mobil?print=true
 4
 Id.
 11 Alex Nussbaum, Bloomberg Business, “Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley Join Banks Edging Away from Coal,”
November 30, 2015, available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-30/wells-fargo-morganstanley-join-banks-edging-away-from-coal
 5
 Id.
 6
 Id.
 7 Michael Dworkin, Testimony before Vermont House and Senate Government Operations Committee, February
 19, 2016.
 8 Tom DeChristopher and Christine Wang, CNBC, “ExxonMobil Posts Earnings of 67 cents a share vs 63 cents
 estimate,” February 2, 2016, available at: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/02/exxon-mobil-reports-fourth-quarter-
2015-earnings.html.
 9
 Id.
 10 Chris Megerian, LA Times, “California Pension Funds to Drop Coal-Mining Companies,” October 8, 2015, available
 at: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84561954/.
 12 Id.
 13 Id.
 14 Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy, “Citigroup Sees $100 Trillion of Stranded Assets if Paris Succeeds,” August 25,
 2015, available at: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/citigroup-sees-100-trillion-of-stranded-assets-if-parissucceeds-13431.
 15 Rory Carroll, Reuters, “California Insurance Commissioner Calls for Coal Divestment,” Jan 25, 2016, available at:
 16 FERC Office of Energy Projects, Energy Infrastructure Update, December 2015, available at:
17 Daniel Cohan, The Hill “Plummeting Coal Use and Peaking Stockpiles,” February 17, 2016, available at:
 18 Coral Davenport, NY Times, “In Climate move, Obama Halts New Coal Mining Leases on Public Lands,” Jan 14,
 2016, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/us/politics/in-climate-move-obama-to-halt-new-coalmining-leases-on-public-lands.html?_r=0
 19 Id.
 20 Matt Egan, CNN Money “Wall Street Cuts Lending to Coal,” December 1, 2015, available at:
 21 Timothy Cama, The Hill, “Major coal mining company files for bankruptcy,” January 11, 2016, available at:
 22 Id.
 23 Bourree Lam, The Atlantic, “A Guilty Verdict in Don Blankenship’s Trial,” December 3, 2015, available at:
 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/blankenship-trial-verdict/418641/; Clifford Krauss, NY
 Times, “Alpha Natural Resources, a Onetime Coal Giant, Files for Bankruptcy Protection,” August 3, 2015, available
 at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/business/energy-environment/alpha-natural-resources-a-onetime-coalgiant-files-for-bankruptcy-protecton.html?_r=0
 24 Id.
 25 Howard Berkes, NRP, “Fines Don’t Appear to Deter Mine Safety Violations,” November 16, 2014, available at:

 26 Rory Carroll, Reuters, “California Insurance Commissioner Calls for Coal Divestment,” January 25, 2016, available

 at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-insurance-coal-idUSKCN0V32SM; Press Release, 350.org
“”Unions Add Voice In Support of California Thermal Coal Divestment,” June 12, 2015;
 27 Press Release, California State Teachers Retirement System, February 3, 2016, available at:

 28 Don Hooper, Written Testimony, Vermont Senate Government Operations Committee, February 11, 2016.
 29 Vineeta Anand, Pensions and Investments, “Funds Feeling Heat From Tobacco Investments,” April 28, 1997,
 available at: http://www.pionline.com/article/19970428/PRINT/704280770/funds-feeling-heat-from-tobaccoinvestments
 30 Id.
 31 Treasurer Jeb Spaulding, news release, February 20, 2007, available at:

32 Alex Nussbaum, Bloomberg, “Fossil Fuel Divestment Tops $3.4 Trillion Mark, Activists Say,” December 2, 2015,
 available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-02/fossil-fuel-divestment-tops-3-4-trillion-markactivists-say

http://vtdigger.org/2016/02/24/gov-peter-shumlins-speech-to-the-vermont-pension-investment-committee/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 03, 2016, 01:03:03 am
The Party is OVER

https://youtu.be/6rVuquKd7Rg

Agelbert NOTE: Whereas I agree with Richard that the fossil fuel based energy "party" is definitely over, I believe his proposed method for transitioning to clean energy lacks teeth. He totally ignores the political power of entrenched dirty energy interests. They will NOT be convinced nicely on a "make profits from clean energy" argument, no matter how proven and admittedly valid it is, BECAUSE clean energy is mostly distributed energy which is difficult to game through price shocks and fabricated scarcity though convenient wars and war scares.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

THAT is "real world" that the propagandists for the fossil fuel industry ALWAYS remind us of when we show, point by point, that renewable energy is actually cheaper than dirty energy above and beyond environmental considerations.

What the fossil fuelers WILL NOT SAY until you carefully destroy their "we are your loyal energy supplying servants doing it all for your own human civilization good and you owe us for it"    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) is that the fossil fuel industry's POWER in the market place is POLITICAL POWER, not competitive energy source power from "supply and demand".

This edifice of degraded democracy requires centralized political corruption, as well as gamed energy pricing (i. e. control of the energy spigot). Without this control, their "business model" collapses in a tsunami of bankruptcies and the abandonment of all their "help" by their friends in government who they can no longer buy. The "real world" also involves BOPPING, not just buying. But the fossil fuel industry relies on purchased friends in government to do that when gamed laws and regulations don't suffice.

That "real world" was always a clever, but ruthless, scam to market an uncompetitive dirty energy resource.

That is why I do not believe the transition to clean energy will be as painful as Richard Heinberg believes. However, he is right that fossil fuels, even with their "subsidy" swag, are no longer affordable simply because, besides the added expense of obtaining them, we can no longer "afford" (as if we ever could) to ignore the damage that burning them visits on our biosphere in general and Homo SAPS in particular. The "business model" of the fossil fuel industry, by definition, REQUIRES the rejection of any responsibility for the deleterious effect their product has on the perpetuation of the human species.

IOW, the "real world" of the fossil fuelers is a type of cherry picking insanity. They really do believe that they can industrially **** where everybody but them eats in a finite biosphere where EVERY pollutant reduces the viability of the biosphere that their "real world" REQUIRES in order for them to survive.

Basically, the fossil fuel industry is composed of thugs. Those thugs can continue to be murderous thugs as long as they can funnel a lot of money into their pockets and into the pockets of the governments they corrupt.

All we have to do is NOT "return to the caves", as the propagandist **** will claim, but reduce our footprint to the bare necessities and continue to use more clean energy and less dirty energy. Then the money for the thugs will dry up as it is starting to do now. To clarify how that works, please understand that the fossil fuel industry relies on volume sales. Profits from volume sales operate on the margins. All you need is a 5% to 10% annual INCREASE (i.e. decrease in demand for fossil fuels) in demand destruction from renewable energy for a decade or so to destroy the fossil fuel empire.

Then the crooks they can no longer buy in government will "get the renewable energy religion".  ;)    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca) That is why the fossil fuelers like the Koch Brothers are always trying to pre-empt the growth of (E.g. Electric vehicles and wind turbines) products that run on and/or generate Renewable Energy. The fossil fuel industry is far more fragile than the MKing's of this world will have you believe. They are fighting to keep their swag and protection racket going. It worked for the last 50 years.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)


But the annual DROP in volume sales is killing the fossil fuel industry    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf). THAT is the REAL real world of clean energy thermodynamic efficiency overcoming the corrupt fabrication the fossil fuel industry has saddled us with for about a century. Let's hope it's not too late. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emofaces.com%2Fpng%2F200%2Femoticons%2Ffingerscrossed.png&hash=d56f8009d18b55f4cea7be68284c0521be92fc5d)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 07, 2016, 08:23:10 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Is it the petroleum fumes in the air in Heinous Houston that makes the fossil fuelers there such greedy crooks? Only their hairdresser  (or mistress) knows.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) 

At any rate, now that the profit over planet  'pickins' are getting rather slim, the fossil fuelers have begun to fight among themselves in their time honored Predators 'R' US fashion.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-monster-002.gif&hash=9c21652dd6fa1da404f46ec8352a1224793f5dcf)      (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-misc-027.gif&hash=4bf89a85f707853b671d31fcde3389475002b7d6)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flogosandbrands.directory%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fdirectorypress%2Fthumbs%2FOccidental-Petroleum-Corporation-logo.jpg&hash=8737c0928a3c37901cd9e643a21d4b932a9bb4c7)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6869.gif&hash=f94938471d343a09155d1f60eefacdb2ceab2457)


Court news: Ecuador workers sue Occident Petroleum in Houston for slice of settlement (read the complaint here)

Staff Writers February 29, 2016

A group of Ecuadorean workers is suing Occidental Petroleum for a slice of the nearly $1 billion asset seizure settlement the company won from Ecuador’s government earlier this year.

The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Occidental Petroleum and Occidental Exploration and Production in Houston last week, seeking class certification and damages of $265.4 million to be paid to over 300 workers.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas on Feburary 22 and has been assigned to Judge Lynn N. Hughes, according to court documents seen by PGN.

The lead plaintiff is represented by Michael David Sydow of the Houston-based Sydow Firm.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-F66PxaSGNyM%2FUsVwtcJMdRI%2FAAAAAAAA9uE%2F2t2MW9yYTrw%2Fs1600%2F11shark-lawyers.gif&hash=b50153c99ab6d382229dee759facb670ee9ead09)

The plaintiffs claim that Occidental failed to redistribute 15 percent of its annual profits to its employees as mandated by Ecuadorian law.

The damages amount is tied to a $980 million settlement Occidental won in January after the Ecuadorean government seized an Occidental field in 2006 ( Courthouse News Service, (http://d38dna9mawrik4.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Class-action-complaint-against-Occidental-Petroleum.pdf)).

According to Occidental’s website, the company no longer operates in Ecuador.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

Ecuador seized Block 15 from Occidental in 2006 claiming that the company sold the asset to China’s Andes Petroleum without government approval.

The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes had initially awarded Occidental a $1.77 billion award in 2012 but cut the award by 40 percent in November 2015, Reuters said.

The World Bank said the award was cut to reflect Occidental’s sale of Block 15 to Andes Petroleum. 

Ecuadorean Attorney General Diego Garcia told Reuters in January that Ecuador will pay the $980 million settlement by April of this year, although it remains opposed to the committee’s decision.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/02/court-news-ecuador-workers-sue-occident-petroleum-in-houston-for-slice-of-settlement-read-the-complaint-here/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 07, 2016, 08:55:41 pm
Two former Houston supply firm execs plead guilty to international kick back scheme

Staff Writers March 2, 2016

Two former executives at a Houston-based supply firm pleaded guilty Friday to fraud charges for their role in a kick back scheme tied to oil projects in Latin America.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Franklin Marsan, 51, and Eduardo Betancourt, 48, both of Spring, Texas, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to the plea agreements, Marsan and Betancourt worked for a Texas-based supply company that paid third-party sales agents to promote and sell its products to customers outside the United States.

Marsan   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) and Betancourt   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) ran the company’s Latin American operations from offices located in Houston.

As part of their guilty pleas, Marsan and Betancourt admitted that, from at least 2008 until at least March 2011, they received kickbacks from commissions the third-party sales agents earned for sales in several Latin American countries.


Marsan and Betancourt admitted that they received kickbacks totaling at least $150,000, mostly in cash, and that they “actively concealed” the payments from the company.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)

----------------------
Agelbert NOTE: Yes, of course I'm certain that these fellows were not aware of the fun and games said supply firm used in their dial-a-price marketing to certain places in Latin America... They were just "bad apples"... And, they certainly aren't "taking the fall" in order to prevent public disclosure of the SOP price massaging and kickback practices of U.S. based corporations when dealing with Latin America. My daddy worked for one after he retired from the U.S Army. He traveled all over south America selling the SAME industrial products for a fascinating array of DIFFERENT prices. That was in 1965. I imagine that's all been corrected by now, of course...   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-026.gif&hash=cea0c85d87fadfcde1f4ffdeb123185070f6de75)
----------------------


Both men will be sentenced on July 1, 2016, by U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon of the Southern District of Texas, who accepted also accepted their plea agreements last Friday.

As part of their plea agreements, Marsan and Betancourt agreed to pay restitution to their former employer.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/two-former-houston-supply-firm-execs-plead-guilty-international-kick-back-scheme/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2016, 08:26:58 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230216221448.png&hash=94af4f1b4c63e415fffb3622699c1e3d9910ce19)
Shell faces new Nigeria spill lawsuits in UK

Staff Writers March 3, 2016

A U.K court ruled on Wednesday that two groups of Nigerian villagers can pursue lawsuits against Royal Dutch Shell for alleged damages caused by oil spills in the Niger Delta region.

According to the BBC, the Technology and Construction Court found that the claimants can pursue cases against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and its parent company in the UK.

Shell has not commented on the ruling.

The two separate actions are being brought by the Bille and Ogale communities who are being represented by UK-based Leigh Day.

In a statement, Leigh Day said the clean up costs for both communities could “run into several hundred million pounds.”

“The claims from the thousands of individuals affected by this pollution, could run into tens of millions of pounds given the impact on these communities,” Leigh Day added.

Leigh Day confirmed on Wednesday that formal legal proceedings will now move forward against Royal Dutch Shell and the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria in the High Court in London.

Shell told CNBC that it believes that the cases should be heard in Nigeria.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

The Ogale community claims that Shell has not followed the recommendations of a 2011 report from the United Nations Environmental Program that found emergency measures should be undertaken to provide residents with clean water.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif&hash=24570cb7e8246617010ce900a07bc85117ff78ca)

The report found at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water “contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons,” with residents in the Nisisioken Ogale community drinking water from wells contaminated with benzene at levels “over 900 times above World Health Organization guidelines.”

The Bille community alleges that oil spilling out of the Nembe Creek 30” Trunkline since the replacement of the pipeline’s Bille section in 2010 has damaged 13,200 hectares of mangroves.

Shell refuted the allegations, telling CNBC that the company’s Nigerian subsidiary had “initiated action” to address the recommendations made in the United Nations report.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)

“In mid-2015 SPDC JV, along with the government, UNEP and representatives of the Ogoni community, agreed to an 18-month roadmap to fast-track the environmental clean-up and remediation of Ogoniland which includes a governance framework,” Shell added.

No further hearing dates have been set for the two cases yet.

Shell has long contended with pipeline spills in the Niger Delta region that it has said were caused by sabotage or thieves breaking into the pipelines to steal oil.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

Managing Director of Shell Nigeria Mutiu Sunmonu said in August 2011 that the company has “always accepted responsibility for paying compensation when [spills] occur as a result of operational failure.”  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)

“Even when, as is true in the great majority of cases, spills are caused by illegal activity such as sabotage or theft, we are also committed to cleaning up spilt  oil and restoring the surrounding land,” Sunmonu added. 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-090315203150.png&hash=c52cac3e4572a3609fd1a46ef50b96a57ce04554)

Leigh Day also represented the Bodo community of Nigeria who reached an $83 million settlement with Shell in January 2015 for two 2008 pipeline spills.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clipartbest.com%2Fcliparts%2Fxig%2Fojx%2Fxigojx6KT.png&hash=6706182c9f1427099a77e10d1758e61d9cadb701)


http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/shell-facing-nigeria-spill-lawsuit-uk/

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2016, 09:09:13 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)


Aubrey McClendon’s Legacy Serves as Another Warning That the Age of Oil Barons Must End
http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/04/aubrey-mcclendon-indictment/
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraysondemocrats.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2Fend-oil.jpg&hash=a5cf685d87ceb0f3f17eab91155ebb790707cf10)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F003730383%2F3816438968_29Oil_Subsidies_xlarge.jpeg&hash=3753b27cc6231de198f0997f1ffbb580983edeef)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 15, 2016, 08:37:57 pm
One dead after Green Canyon platform accident in Gulf of Mexico

Nicolas Torres March 14, 2016

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmaritime-executive.com%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2Farticle%2FPhotos%2FOil_Gas_Energy%2FCropped%2FWhistlerGC18Platform-gulf%252016x9.jpg&hash=b25ea2060a7612cfd50611e35d74c8419698ccd0)
Platform A at Green Canyon Block 18. Image courtesy of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) is investigating a platform accident in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico that left one worker dead.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said an offshore worker was fatally injured on Friday while working on Platform A at the Green Canyon Block 18 in the Gulf of Mexico, 150 miles south of New Orleans.
Further details about the accident have not been disclosed yet.

There was no pollution
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) or additional injuries reported.
 
The platform’s operator, Whistler Energy II, has suspended all drilling operations at the platform and operations will remain suspended until the BSEE grants approval to restart drilling.

However, because the rig has a separate production deck, production will be allowed to continue.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

The BSEE said its investigators are actively engaging with the operator and will investigate the incident.

As weather permits, BSEE inspectors and investigators will visit the location.

According to Whistler Energy, the GC 18 platform was originally set in 1987 and is rated at 30,000 barrels of oil per day.

The platform is a 30-slot, 25,000-ton structure located in 760 ft of water, 79 miles south of Port of Fourchon.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/one-dead-green-canyon-platform-accident-gulf-mexico/

Agelbert NOTE: No pollution may have been connected to the accident, but the FLARING REQUIRED to get up to 30,000 barrels of oil per day 24/7 spews MASSIVE toxic gases pollution.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fvertassets.blob.core.windows.net%2Fimage%2Fe235b708%2Fe235b708-88c9-4573-95df-3a3ec2845aab%2Fq4000andenterprisesmall.jpg&hash=c83d6aeb93e6090924c18c46bd4e04d8465be91e)

Ask a fossil fueler to explain to you what the WATER CURTAIN is and WHY they invented it. HINT: If they didn't have it, their would be a lot more sick and cancer stricken "salt of the earth" workers on those platforms than there are now from TOXIC, CARCINOGENIC flared gases (you know, those gases the fossil fuelers claim can be flared without endangering your health or that of the biosphere...).

Quote

"The Water Curtain® is the original Rig Cooling system designed to provide a protective "curtain," or barrier of water between high risk flaring systems and valuable personnel, equipment and facilities."   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)
http://www.oilandgasonline.com/doc/the-water-curtain-0001
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 17, 2016, 08:50:33 pm
The documentary he Koch Brothers Don't want you to see

The Kochs control one to two million acres of tar sands in Alberta, Canada, worth tens of billions of dollars. But climate scientists say up to 240 billion tons of carbon would be released into the atmosphere if the oil sands are developed.

Meanwhile, the Kochs’ are waging well-financed campaigns to deny climate change and using their wealth to get conservatives elected to office to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and further their corporate interests.

https://youtu.be/dLj5WugkzHQ

Quote

"The Koch Brothers fortune was made refining Canadian Oil."(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) 

http://salsa4.salsalabs.com/o/51329/p/salsa/web/common/public/content?content_item_KEY=14565
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 22, 2016, 10:44:06 pm
The Oilman Who Loved Dictators, or How Texaco Supported Fascism

Posted on Mar 21, 2016

SNIPPET:

Quote
No corporations have been more aggressive in forging their own foreign policies than the big oil companies. With operations spanning the world, they—and not the governments who weakly try to tax or regulate them—largely decide whom they do business with and how. In its quest for oil in the anarchic Niger Delta, according to journalist Steve Coll, ExxonMobil, for example, gave boats to the Nigerian navy, and recruited and supplied part of the country’s army, while local police sported the company’s red flying horse logo on their uniforms.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn-6.famouslogos.us%2Fimages%2Fmobil-logo.jpg&hash=5b708b780b64083f03ea7e5134fbda05657c8234)


Jane Mayer’s new book, Dark Money, on how the brothers and oil magnates Charles and David Koch spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the Republican Party and America’s democratic politics, offers a vivid account of the way their father Fred launched the energy business they would inherit.  It was a classic case of not letting “attachments” stand in the way of gain.  Fred happily set up oil installations for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin before the United States recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, and then helped Adolf Hitler build one of Nazi Germany’s largest oil refineries that would later supply fuel to its air force, the Luftwaffe.

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/86/e7/14/86e7141a14e24b97d0593e397cbf59f3.jpg)

His unsavory tale is now part of the historical record, thanks to Mayer.  That of another American oil tycoon of the 1930s, who quietly lent a helping hand to a different grim dictator, has, however, gone almost unnoticed.  In our world where the big oil outfits have become powerful forces and his company, Texaco, became part of the oil giant Chevron, it’s an instructive tale.  He helped determine the course of a war that would shape our world for decades to come.

Flying the Skull and Crossbones Atop an Empire of Oil
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_oilman_who_loved_dictators_or_how_texaco_supported_fascism_20160321
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 23, 2016, 03:48:51 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Another example of "responsible behavior" by a proud, prudent, hard working corporation of the fossil Fuel Industry (i. e. the old Chapter 11 TRICK)...

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffm.cnbc.com%2Fapplications%2Fcnbc.com%2Fresources%2Fimg%2Feditorial%2F2016%2F03%2F18%2F103480986-GettyImages-105189939.530x298.jpg%3Fv%3D1458316374&hash=edeea4c55e4ce2155d23a32e456e082a858d9639)
Venoco files for bankruptcy a year after California spill

Nicolas Torres  March 23, 2016   

Colorado-based private upstream Venoco has become the latest firm to file for bankruptcy protection, citing continued financial strain stemming from a 2015 pipeline spill in California.

The company said Friday that it has reached an agreement with its senior lenders to reduce its debt load  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) and restructure its balance sheet.

Venoco cited low oil prices and the shutdown of Line 901 following a May 2015 oil spill in Santa Barbara as “serious problems” for the firm. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785)

According to a court filing seen by Bloomberg, the shutdown also halted production at the company’s South Elwood Field located about two miles off the coast of Santa Barbara.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said last month that preliminary findings indicate the spill was most likely caused by external pipeline corrosion.

The 48,000 barrel per day Line 901, operated by Plains All American, has been shutdown since the spill along with the nearby Line 903.

Venoco did not disclose the financial impact of the pipeline shutdowns.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F290.gif&hash=38949e35cf58eaa4218b5a8176767c806d2f8537)

“It is unfortunate that a third party pipeline spill has impacted Venoco, but this process  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) will make it stronger and ensure its continued contributions to the Santa Barbara County community,” Venoco founder Tim Marquez.

Under the terms of the agreement, the company’s senior lenders have agreed to support a restructuring transaction that will eliminate about $1 billion of debt from Venoco’s balance sheet.

To facilitate the restructuring, Venoco filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on March 18.

The company expects to maintain all operations during the restructuring process.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

“While we continue to be in a strong cash position, the declining price of oil and the ongoing closure of Plains All American pipeline 901 continue to be serious problems. With this agreement, Venoco will be in a much stronger position to withstand these challenges and others that may follow,” Venoco CEO Mark DePuy  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) said.

The company said it has sufficient liquidity to continue its normal oil and gas activities and meet its ongoing financial and regulatory obligations.

Venoco expects existing liquidity and generated cash from ongoing operations will be used to support the company during the restructuring process once it receives approval from the Bankruptcy Court.

Marquez will remain executive chairman during the restructuring process and has been retained to “provide leadership and strategic counsel” to the firm after the restructuring is complete.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/venoco-files-for-bankruptcy-a-year-after-california-spill/

Would you like to learn a thing or two about how the oil industry operates in California?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) Would you like to know why those anti-monopoly laws passed in 1911 (and ignored by Reagan in order to look the other way while 2,000 plus oil industry mergers took place in the 1980s) were called "anti-trust" and not called "anti-corporate monopoly" laws?

Please watch this video:
https://youtu.be/cIkPX7CCd7w


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 23, 2016, 04:14:59 pm
Agelbert NOTE: As you know if you haven't been living under a rock for the past year, SHELL lost a lot of money DUE DIRECTLY to decisions by MANAGEMENT, not just due to the cratering crude oil prices. The appropriate response to MISMANAGEMENT (see fiduciary obligations often brought up by fossil fuelers as a "justification/obligation" for their profit over planet MO) for stockholders with controlling interest in the board of directors is to reduce compensation or demote or fire give the CEO a raise, obviously.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230216221448.png&hash=94af4f1b4c63e415fffb3622699c1e3d9910ce19)
  Shell CEO wins bigger 2015 pay package  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58)

Staff Writers  March 21, 2016   

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden saw his annual bonus climb about 6 percent in 2015 despite weak oil prices.

According to the Evening Standard, van Beurden’s bonus ticked up 6 percent to $3.83 million (Ł2.7 million) in 2015 from the previous year while his basic pay package climbed to $1.62 million.


In its annual report, Shell said that van Beurden’s basic salary grew 2.1 percent year-over-year while employee salaries climbed 3.7 percent from 2014 levels.


The annual report also noted that annual employee bonuses fell 17 percent from year ago levels.

Van Beurden earned a total pay package of about $26 million in 2014 when he was appointed CEO, but that package was impacted by tax benefits and other payments tied to his promotion.

The pay bump comes despite over a year of weak oil prices and Shell’s disappointing Arctic exploration campaign.

Last year, van Buerden guided Shell through its $70 billion merger with BG Group that was officially completed in February.

In an op-ed published by The Times when the deal closed, van Beurden said the merger is expected to “provide a strong injection to our operating cashflow” despite tough market condition.

Van Buerden’s 2015 pay package was dwarfed by the $20 million pay package BP CEO Bob Dudley took home last year.

According to Reuters, Dudley saw his pay jump by nearly 20 percent in 2015 despite BP falling to a $6.5 billion loss for the full year.

Shell’s fourth quarter 2015 current cost of supplies (CCS) earnings fell to $1.84 billion, a 56 percent drop compared to the same quarter last year, while full year 2015 CCS earnings fell 80 percent year-over-year to $3.84 billion.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/shell-ceo-wins-bigger-2015-pay-package/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 23, 2016, 07:21:09 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsierraclub.typepad.com%2F.a%2F6a00d83451b96069e2019104abf432970c-pi&hash=17e38b3fa5d86f235c200840bc89bb1165277808)

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-106.gif&hash=f996659d18df7f3b445e6135e884397ac91f25b1) Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-106.gif&hash=f996659d18df7f3b445e6135e884397ac91f25b1)


Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.

By Bill McKibben

SNIPPET:
Quote
Howarth and Ingraffea  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3) began producing a series of papers claiming that if even a small percentage of the methane leaked—maybe as little as 3 percent—then fracked gas would do more climate damage than coal. And their preliminary data showed that leak rates could be at least that high: that somewhere between 3.6 and 7.9 percent of methane gas from shale-drilling operations actually escapes into the atmosphere.

To say that no one in power wanted to hear this would be an understatement (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ffly.gif&hash=b0526635e8b47d751b0e429925d73d78f9d79fc6). The two scientists were roundly attacked (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) by the industry; one trade group   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) called their study the “Ivory Tower’s latest fact-free assault on shale gas exploration.” Most of the energy establishment joined in. An MIT team, for instance, had just finished an industry-funded  ;D report that found “the environmental impacts of shale development are challenging but manageable”   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6); one of its lead authors, the ur-establishment energy expert Henry Jacoby  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6), described the Cornell research as “very weak.” One of its other authors, Ernest Moniz (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400), would soon become the US secretary of energy; in his nomination hearings in 2013, he lauded the “stunning increase” in natural gas as a “revolution” and pledged to increase its use domestically. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c)

The trouble for the fracking establishment  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F290.gif&hash=38949e35cf58eaa4218b5a8176767c806d2f8537) was that new research kept backing up Howarth and Ingraffea. In January 2013, for instance, aerial overflights of fracking basins in Utah found leak rates as high as 9 percent. “We were expecting to see high methane levels, but I don’t think anybody really comprehended the true magnitude of what we would see,” said the study’s director. But such work was always piecemeal, one area at a time, while other studies—often conducted with industry-supplied data—came up with lower numbers.

* * *

That’s why last month’s Harvard study came as such a shock. It used satellite data from across the country over a span of more than a decade to demonstrate that US methane emissions had spiked 30 percent since 2002.(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Fc6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e%2Ftumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=4b1cad5ea13f7430a0c01f3065039d21d78da398)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2F302d5f12cc0718fa860d4eb3560c6813%2Ftumblr_inline_mr7yzosKkc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=959ec57a0f0c635329f6a25ee0df1224254728b7)

The EPA had been insisting throughout that period that methane emissions were actually falling, but it was clearly wrong—on a massive scale. In fact, emissions “are substantially higher than we’ve understood,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted in early March.

The Harvard study wasn’t designed to show why US methane emissions were growing—in other parts of the world, as new research makes clear, cattle and wetlands seem to be causing emissions to accelerate. But the spike that the satellites recorded coincided almost perfectly with the era when fracking went big-time.

 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.duke.edu%2Fbassconnectionsinenergy%2Ffiles%2F2014%2F12%2Fgas_flare.jpg&hash=ea7a33018177c02e4da29299224d46f092118e01)
 
To make matters worse, during the same decade, experts had become steadily more worried about the effects of methane in any quantity on the atmosphere.

Everyone agrees that, molecule for molecule, methane traps far more heat than CO2—but exactly how much wasn’t clear. One reason the EPA estimates of America’s greenhouse-gas emissions showed such improvement was because the agency, following standard procedures, was assigning a low value to methane   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) and measuring its impact over a 100-year period. But a methane molecule lasts only a couple of decades in the air, compared with centuries for CO2. That’s good news, in that methane’s effects are transient—and very bad news because that transient but intense effect happens right now, when we’re breaking the back of the planet’s climate.

The EPA’s old chemistry and 100-year time frame assigned methane a heating value of 28 to 36 times that of carbon dioxide; a more accurate figure, says Howarth, is between 86 and 105 times the potency of CO2 over the next decade or two.

If you combine Howarth’s estimates of leakage rates and the new standard values for the heat-trapping potential of methane, then the picture of America’s total greenhouse-gas emissions over the last 15 years looks very different: Instead of peaking in 2007 and then trending downward, as the EPA has maintained, our combined emissions of methane and carbon dioxide have gone steadily and sharply up during the Obama years, Howarth says.

We closed coal plants and opened methane leaks, and the result is that things have gotten worse.

Full article
with irrefutable hard scientific data (that the liars and crooks working for the fossil fuel industry will, of course, rush to try to deny with mendacious propaganda  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)


http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/

Please pass this on (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266). These dirty stinking fossil fuel industry crooks, their front men in government, their bought and paid for scientists and their propagandist scum need to be held accountable for degrading our biosphere AND our democracy.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 24, 2016, 04:08:36 pm
03/23/2016 03:10 PM     

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-106.gif&hash=f996659d18df7f3b445e6135e884397ac91f25b1) Mass Protests In April, May in US and Around the World
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240316150731.png&hash=7fd6eecc7b69b43108d43ea2cbf09a0fdf1e72aa)

SustainableBusiness.com News

This spring, huge rallies and protests are planned around the world against fossil fuels and to restore Democracy in the US.

On April 16-18, Democracy Awakening takes place in Washington DC.


We can't protect the environment without democracy, and environmental groups are joining with activists across the social spectrum to preserve our voice, such as labor, students and civil rights advocates.

"Corporate interests are holding our democracy hostage   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df). Voter suppression is running rampant   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df), fossil fuel money is warping our electoral process and now (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df), leaders in Congress are even blocking fair consideration of a Supreme Court nominee (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df) ," says Rachel Rye Butler of Greenpeace.

Democracy Awakening is about: 

•Restoring Voting rights by stopping voter suppression.


This is the first presidential election where state voter suppression laws are in force, making it much harder for students, minorities and older people to vote.

In Texas, for example, a special state-issued ID is required to vote, a drivers license or a student ID won't work. In North Carolina and Wisconsin, university students can't vote if their families live elsewhere, and so many campus voting places have been eliminated that it can take hours to even find a place to vote.
 
•Getting Money Out of politics through campaign finance reform, transparency and overturning Citizens United

Without fossil fuel interests (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) knocking on every Congressperson's door, a renewable energy economy is within our reach, for example.

They are calling for:

•Voting Rights Advancement Act: to restore and increase protection against voting discrimination.

•Voter Empowerment Act: to modernize voter registration and ensure equal access to voting for all.

•Democracy For All Amendment: would overturn Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and limit influence of money in politics.

•Government By the People Act/Fair Elections Now Act: would amplify small contributions from everyday Americans.

May 4-15, Break Free From Fossil Fuels

People are mobilizing across the world to demand a rapid transition to renewable energy, and an end to taking fossil fuels out of the ground.

Globally coordinated mass actions are planned in the UK, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines Nigeria, South Africa, Canada and across the US.

They plan to occupy major fossil fuel sites, such as the largest coal mine in South Wales, where another may be built next door.

In the US, there will be "mass trespass at fracking sites", blockades at oil refineries and trains carrying oil.

The goal is to disrupt the power of the fossil fuel industry through "a series of peaceful, escalating actions...targeting the world's most dangerous and unnecessary fossil fuel projects," says organizer 350.org.

"The fossil fuel industry faces an unprecedented crisis - from collapsing prices, a new global climate deal, and an ever-growing movement calling for change.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmaniac.gif&hash=9ecf389a7da25db958f3f63461cbb45a4b316c4e)

We have never had a better chance in history to break free from fossil fuels and build a just transition to clean and renewable energy," they say.

"There are no major economic or technical barriers to a future supported by renewable energy. Any new infrastructure built to support fossil fuel expansion, such as coal mines, power plants, oil rigs and export terminals will be a waste of money and further lock us into a path to irreversible climate change," states Arif Fiyanto, Coal Campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26586 (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26586)

Agelbert NOTE: Yes, the goons for the fossil fuel industry in the USA and abroad will be waiting for the protesters defending democracy and demanding the end of profit over planet. Yes, the "authorities", the media and the police will ensure the responsible citizens of this world present will be demonized, brutalized, tased, shot at and, when they aren't arrested, even murdered.

AND THAT VIOLENCE will spell the final doom of the fossil fuel fascist pigs EVERYWHERE. Of course the bought and paid for media will do their damnedest to prevent those who died from being given martyr status. They will fail.

And for those of you clever bastards working for the fossil fuel industry that think your fascist intimidation tactics will work (as usual), let me remind you that the people you have hired to do your murder and mayhem will overreach in their violence. If you think you can "damage control" the fallout from the violence your goons love to dish out, you are going to be very disappointed. All those thousands of fossil fuel industry employees just fired and police with families experiencing the health downsides of petroleum pollution are not going to remain "loyal" to the profit over planet "business model".

Everyday people will WELCOME severe energy disruption and rolling black outs just to see the end of subsidy swag and the pollution buck passing from the fossil fuel fascists jumping on the Chapter 11 "bankruptcy" wagon.

The people finally KNOW that the fossil fuel industry Modus Operandi has NEVER been abut providing low priced energy and has ALWAYS been about competitor destruction through government corruption based monopoly price control.

The fossil fuel industry has lost the support of the people. When that happens to any industry or government, no matter how effective its police state tactics are, it FALLS. The quislings in government, Wall Street and Main Street will rush to the support of the fossil fuel profit over planet "business model", but they will not be able to prevent the FALL of the fossil fuel industry/GOVERNMENT. 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F_mVwqnQbJWtE%2FS68gmIavrtI%2FAAAAAAAABC0%2FBVdXP5ZUe50%2Fs400%2Fconsent.jpg&hash=21be973d2651eb73a9b4324cf6d0350e4db3125c)

TWO historical examples of what is about to happen: 

Truman wasn't the only president that pushed the use of nuclear weapons. Eisenhower wanted to nuke North Korea in the 1950s and Nixon wanted to nuke North Korea in 1969 as a "scare the commies" tactic to end the Viet Nam War. Eisenhower telegraphed his intent with a nukes=bullets speech that caused such an uproar he had to hastily shelve his "nuke bullets" (as you can see he, really did not believe the bomb was such an "awful thing" as he claimed). Nixon was convinced by the MASSES of people around the White House and across the country demanding an end to the Viet Nam War that he would be run out of office if he executed his nuke barbarity (I will provide documented evidence of what I just said to anyone interested.  ;D).

The fossil fuel industry, a business that became powerful and influential through corruption and violence, with a stranglehold on governments all over the world, is about to learn a lesson (see: French Revolution times 1000).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270915171817.jpeg&hash=adb2c3a602a0a59d1303318d67d1711bfe308ff6)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 26, 2016, 02:28:07 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)

SEC Forces Exxon to Bring Climate-Friendly Accounting to Shareholder Vote

As You Sow | March 25, 2016 12:37 pm

SNIPPET:

In a key win  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf),
the Oakland-based non-profit advocacy group, As You Sow defeated ExxonMobil’s attempt to suppress an innovative, first of its kind shareholder resolution. The resolution asks Exxon to report its energy resources in an energy-neutral metric—BTUs—in addition to the traditional “barrels of oil equivalent” standard.

Establishing a climate-friendly measure of energy reserves is a key step in incentivizing management, and the market, to support the transition to a clean energy economy.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/25/exxon-climate-friendly-accounting/

Agelbert COMMENT: The fossil fuel industry, a business that became powerful and influential through corruption and violence, with a stranglehold on governments all over the world, is about to learn a lesson.

A "barrel of oil" is a polluting energy resource, NOT an energy resource.

The BTU standard should REQUIRE that the BTUs needed to bio-remediate the pollution produced by each barrel of oil be SUBTRACTED from that energy return on energy invested (ERoEI) of said barrel of oil.

The fossil fuel industry's "business model" is not profitable when all the energy math is done. They know that. That is why do everything they can to corrupt government officials.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 26, 2016, 03:31:25 pm
Mark Ruffalo and Annie Leonard: We Must Rebuild Our Democracy

Annie Leonard and Mark Ruffalo | March 25, 2016 8:23 am

SNIPPET:

2016 will be the first American presidential election since 1965 with major new voting restrictions—photo identification requirements, cuts to early voting and the elimination of same day voting registration are just a few of the roadblocks thrown up by special interests in 15 states.

Not only that, but once voters overcome these obstacles to actually vote, the candidates they have to choose from will be largely self-selected from the economic elites  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400), looking out for banks like Goldman Sachs instead of everyday people.

Quote
Rather than a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have a government of super-PACs and dark money, by the 1% and for corporate interests.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/25/ruffalo-leonard-democracy-awakening/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 27, 2016, 04:35:57 pm
Rockefeller Fund Votes to Divest, Knocks Exxon

SNIPPET:

The Rockefeller Family Fund will divest from fossil fuels and ditch its holdings of Exxon Mobil, citing the oil giant’s "morally reprehensible” stance on climate change issues. John D. Rockefeller, the fund’s founding father, made his fortune on Exxon’s predecessor, Standard Oil, but spokespeople for Rockefeller stated,
Quote

"There is no sane rationale for companies to continue to explore for new sources of hydrocarbons."  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)
Fossil-fuel investments make up about 6 percent of the Rockefeller Family Fund’s $130 million endowment.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/23/rockefeller-fund-divestment-fossil-fuel-companies-oil-coal-climate-change
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 27, 2016, 05:58:00 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdl10.glitter-graphics.net%2Fpub%2F2491%2F2491210ovie015m90.gif&hash=c2edc7e32994c57779427e0df75cabac786a12bf)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-260316150432.jpeg&hash=7cfd135aeb8fc3178f30c021e8714e76fb0d65e2)
Protesters against a Vermont Gas natural gas pipeline hold a banner in front of the building that houses the Department of Public Service and Public Service Board on Montpelier’s State Street. Photo by C.B. Hall/VTDigger

Public  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)  Service  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6) Board (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) considers barring public from Vermont Gas (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) eminent domain hearings

Mar. 26, 2016, 5:24 am by Mike Polhamus

The Vermont Public Service Board is considering whether to bar the public from attending eminent domain hearings for a controversial gas pipeline.

The board has asked participants in the Vermont Gas Systems hearings for comment by March 31.

Protesters have interrupted eminent domain proceedings, the March 17 court order says, “by shouting, singing loudly, and leaving their seats to crowd the physical space around many of the parties and the court reporter.”

Law enforcement officials have expressed doubt over whether they can prevent protesters from disrupting future hearings.  ;D

The board’s request for comment was issued in part out of concern for the safety of participants and others who may be in attendance at the hearings.

Jim Dumont, an attorney for several of the private landowners, wrote in a response to the board’s order that it is wrong for the board to treat peaceful protesters as a threat to public safety.

“One may disagree with the protesters’ views on the efficacy or style of their protests, but I think it ill serves reasonable public debate about this terribly important subject to suggest that their actions have been tainted by threats of violence,” Dumont wrote.

Dumont told the board to do whatever they consider necessary to maintain order during the proceedings, but said it would be inappropriate to exclude the public. That would go against the First Amendment, the Vermont Constitution, and Vermont’s open meetings laws, he said.

“Any member of the public who disrupts the proceedings can be removed by law enforcement,” he said. “There is no legitimate reason to exclude members of the public who do not disrupt the proceedings.”

One of the protesters said he plans to continue agitating against the pipeline as long as he is able.
“If there are more eminent domain hearings, there will be protests,” said Alex Porlman, an organizer with the anti-pipeline group Rising Tide Vermont.

Quote
“The eminent domain process is structured so that the company is always going to win (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) at the end of the day,” he said.
“It’s just the most egregious example of the state working with the company to pave the way for the pipeline. It’s worth fighting against, and we’ll definitely keep doing so.”(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

Vermont Gas
spokeswoman Beth Parent said she couldn’t comment on the company’s response to the board’s order because it has not yet been submitted.

Protesters have forestalled several attempts by the Public Service Board to conduct hearings on eminent domain proceedings against landowners across whose property Vermont Gas would bury the pipeline. Protesters have also prevented multiple attempts by appraisers to valuate the land.  ;D

Vermont Gas has built an 11 mile a loop between Colchester to Williston, which is part of the 41-mile project. When complete it will extend to Middlebury.

The company has negotiated agreements from 98 percent of landowners to build a pipeline through Addison County.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecology.iww.org%2Fimages%2FSMcMillan1.jpg&hash=71a5ded42adb67f357b284d15e8292c4e9fb1ad1)
http://vtdigger.org/2016/03/26/public-service-board-considers-barring-public-from-vermont-gas-eminent-domain-hearings/

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 01, 2016, 10:12:24 pm
Agelbert NOTE: The old Chapter 11 Bankruptcy SCAM (Expect the Fossil Fuel Corporations, who have always yammered about being "responsible" to shaft ALL their non-executive employees  as they go the way of the Dodo Bird).

These fossil fuel Corporate crooks and liars are always yammering about "responsibility and hard work". But when things get a little tight, they throw their non-executive employees in the street and do the old Chapter 11 trick to weasel their way out of debts, retirement obligations and health care.

And they DO all this "limited liability" = BREACH OF CONTRACT with the full legalese approval of a bought and paid Bankruptcy Court Judge while the executives rob the corporation blind with golden parachutes. AND, our "Justice" Department just says it's all part of the "limited liability" way of our grand and glorious "democratic system"...
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flibertyblitzkrieg.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F09%2FScreen-Shot-2015-09-11-at-10.03.46-AM.jpg&hash=26bc1f4dbf463a0fe84973be044cd0cab2f4dfa7)

So much for the "sanctity of contracts" that the fossil fuel corporations in general, and all the conservatives in particular, solemnly claim is part of our system.


These Corporations Have **** the Land and Robbed the People
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58)

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/03/these-corporations-have-****-land-and-robbed-people
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 03, 2016, 08:44:49 pm
Agelbert NOTE: GUESS what buyer our shale gas polluting pigs have found? These criminals will not stop until somebody STOPS them!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)


U.S. Taps India as Asia’s Debut Buyer of American Shale Gas  :P

April 1, 2016 by Bloomberg
 
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LNG carrier Asia Vision. Photo credit: Chevron

By Debjit Chakraborty, Anna Shiryaevskaya and Harry R. Weber

(Bloomberg) — Gail India Ltd. bought the second shipment of liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana in a deal that makes it the first Asian importer of U.S. shale gas.

The nation’s biggest supplier will receive the cargo, bought on spot basis, at the Dabhol import terminal on the country’s west coast by mid-April, Vandana Chanana, a company spokeswoman, said Friday by e-mail. Faith Parker, a spokeswoman at Cheniere in Houston, didn’t immediately respond to a voice mail left outside office hours and an e-mail sent Friday morning.

The deal marks the beginning of U.S. LNG exports into the world’s biggest importing region of the super-chilled fuel, just as regional producers from Australia to Papua New Guinea ramp up supplies. India last year overtook South Korea as the world’s second-biggest importer of the fuel on a spot and short-term basis as buyers took advantage of a slump in prices brought on by the crash in crude oil and an oversupply.

“This is the first and definitely will not be the last shipment to go to India from the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Chris Rumley, a senior LNG and natural gas consultant at Poten & Partners, said by telephone from Houston on Friday. “There is terminal capacity in India and if the price is competitive against alternative fuels, then there’s a market there for it.”

Higher Price

The delivered price of the cargo is about $5 per million British thermal units, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Chanana declined to comment on commercial terms.

That’s higher than the $4.30 per million British thermal units now paid by customers in northeast Asia for spot cargoes, according to assessments by the World Gas Intelligence publication. Prices crashed 78 percent from the peak in February 2014.

The price slump supported demand for spot cargoes in India. Imports rose 45 percent to 9.7 million tons in 2015, the biggest increase in spot and short-term traded volumes last year, according to the International Group of LNG importers annual report published this week. India imported a total of 14.6 million tons of LNG last year, unchanged from a year earlier, according to the group.

Tanker Route

The Clean Ocean LNG tanker left Sabine Pass on March 15 after loading the second export cargo from the terminal. It’s sailing toward South Africa, according to ship-tracking data on Friday.

Some analysts had expected the vessel to go elsewhere, perhaps to South America because of demand there for the power-plant fuel and because of the content of the gas Cheniere was producing.

“We initially thought when it left it would be Rio or Kuwait, because of there being hotter gas, meaning higher ethane and C+ content, in the tanks when they started to liquefy,” Jason Lord, LNG analyst for energy data provider Genscape Inc., said by telephone from Boulder, Colorado. “Their regas facilities and grid tend to be able to handle that better in the Atlantic basin. Potentially, this one in India can handle that.”

The first batch of LNG from the Cheniere terminal was shipped to Brazil in February, marking the start of U.S. shale gas exports. The third cargo on the GasLog Salem is also set to go to Brazil, while the destination of the fourth shipment on the Energy Atlantic is still unclear, according to the ship-tracking data.

Eight Cargoes

Cheniere plans to ship as many as eight cargoes of LNG from its Sabine Pass project by May, the Houston-based company said in a February notice to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Cheniere’s initial exports are commissioning cargoes as part of the startup process to ensure the terminal is fully operational. Once that’s complete, Cheniere will need regulatory approval to operate the terminal commercially.

Gail India has agreed to buy 3.5 million metric tons of LNG a year for two decades from Sabine Pass. It has also booked 2.3 million tons a year capacity in the Cove Point LNG liquefaction terminal in Maryland. The shipments are expected to start in 2017 or 2018.

Gail will import around 6 million metric tons of gas from the U.S. from 2018, India’s Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in an interview in New Delhi on March 28.

–With assistance from Naureen S. Malik.

© 2016 Bloomberg L.P

https://gcaptain.com/u-s-taps-india-as-asias-debut-buyer-of-american-shale-gas/


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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 04, 2016, 03:07:22 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F03%2Fpeabodyenergyfb.jpg&hash=703e1d37ef863578443fbd1353fb174c837cf7b0)

The Big Coal Bailout of 2016   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

Carl Pope | March 31, 2016 9:20 am

SNIPPET:


Finally, in February 2015, the Administration moved, proposing a “Power Plus” plan to help protect miner’s pensions, health care and the economic based on coal dependent communities. (It also moved in the same month to reform royalty abuses).

But, of course, by this time such aid required Congressional appropriations. Bankruptcy courts had already let Patriot and other companies dump their pension and health care obligations. The same Republican leaders who blasted Obama for making war on coal denounced the new plan. Leading the charge? Kentucky Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made it clear that his hostility towards the United Mines Workers trumped whatever concern he might have had for Kentucky coal miners. In December, McConnell personally blocked efforts to include community and pension rescue efforts in the budget deal Republicans cut with Obama.

Here there is a partisan difference. Democrats who are waging “War on Coal” favor keeping the promise America made to coal miners. Hilary Clinton has strongly advocated help for the workers and communities.

How do conservatives justify this stand? By calling any effort to ensure that miners get the pensions they earned yes, “a bailout.” But conservative attacks on such efforts to protect pensions simply don’t mention the shenanigans by which companies like Peabody got rid of their debts. These are actually worse than bailouts. In a bailout the calculation is that a healthy enterprise emerges. But there is no prospect in these cases that Patriot, Arch or Shortly Peabody is going to bounce back.

Quote
These are give-aways.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif&hash=24570cb7e8246617010ce900a07bc85117ff78ca) What is hard to calculate is how big and costly they are.

The UMW Pension fund, for example, protects more than 100,000 coal miners and former miners. It has $3.8 billion in assets, but must pay out about $600 million a year—so if it goes bankrupt, (ignoring the likely collateral damage to the whole U.S. pension insurance system) over a decade $6 billion could be transferred from the coal industry to the public—12 Solydras!

How much are the reclamation costs being forgiven? Well, an earlier generation of mining reclamation costs are now estimated to cost $17 billion—34 Solyndras.

And the pending defaults on self-bonded mining costs seem likely to run another $2.7 billion. So the total give-aways to coal companies as they race towards bankruptcy seems to be over $25 billion—almost 50 Solyndras.

That’s quite a bailout—the GM bailout cost taxpayers only $11.2 billion, less than half as much and the taxpayers got a healthy GM out of the deal—we get nothing from coal give-aways.

So the next time some economist earnestly lectures you on the need to avoid subsidizing clean energy, or a Republican says government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, ask them to show you where—and how loudly—they denounced the Big Coal Bailout of 2016.
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http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/31/big-coal-bailout-2016/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 04, 2016, 03:38:21 pm
How Much Money Has Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Taken From the Fossil Fuel Industry?  ???

Democracy Now! | April 4, 2016 11:18 am

According to a new report by Greenpeace, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting her have received $138,400 from fossil fuel lobbyists and $1,327,210 from bundlers, totaling more than $4.5 million from lobbyists, bundlers and large donors connected the fossil fuel industry  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400). Clinton maintains that she’s received only about $330,000 from individuals who work for fossil fuel companies—about 0.2 percent of the total raised by her campaign.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

We speak with Charlie Cray, research specialist for Greenpeace and lead researcher on the fossil fuel lobbyists’ contributions to the Clinton campaign, as well as Eva Resnick-Day, a democracy organizer for Greenpeace who confronted Clinton at a rally.

Watch here:

https://youtu.be/BqwZyZjIFCQ


With the Wisconsin primary just a day away, Democratic presidential challengers Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred over the weekend over whether fossil fuel lobbyists are funding Clinton’s campaign. The dispute took center stage after video emerged of Greenpeace activist Eva Resnick-Day questioning Clinton at a campaign rally at the State University of New York in Purchase on Thursday. Resnick-Day has been working on a Greenpeace campaign to get candidates to take a pledge rejecting future donations from oil, gas and coal lobbyists, and executives.

“These lobbyists are people whose job it is to make connections with Senator Clinton to influence her policy going forward. And giving her money in the campaign, they’re clearly trying to find influence,” says Resnick-Day. “I don’t think that that is how democracy should work.”

We speak with Resnick-Day, the democracy organizer for Greenpeace who confronted Clinton.

Watch here:

https://youtu.be/zVCUlnVTYzc


http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/04/clinton-fossil-fuel-money/

Agelbert NOTE: Senator Sanders says below, what Hillary Clinton NEVER will say or even admit.

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 06, 2016, 04:20:17 pm
(https://g.foolcdn.com/editorial/images/172278/sandridge-energy-tanks_large.jpg)
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SandRidge Energy, with $3.6 billion debt, flags bankruptcy risk

Nicolas Torres April 4, 2016

Oklahoma-based SandRidge Energy confirmed on Wednesday that it has hired advisers to evaluate potential restructuring options.

SandRidge said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it has engaged advisers to evaluate strategic alternatives that could include restructuring, refinancing of existing debt through a private restructuring or reogranizaiton under Chapter 11.

“As a result of these uncertainties and the likelihood of a restructuring or reorganization, management has concluded that there is substantial doubt regarding the company’s ability to continue as a going concern as it is currently structured,” SandRidge said.

SandRidge’s total debt stood at $3.6 billion as of December 31.
The company also had $11 million in outstanding letters of credit as of December 31 and preferred stock outstanding with an aggregate liquidation preference of $542 million.

The company said its “substantial level of indebtedness” and dividends tied to its outstanding preferred stock increase the possibility that it may be unable to generate enough cash to make principal, interest or divided payments.

SandRidge added that the inclusion of a statement in its full year consolidated financial statements citing the firm’s “substantial doubt” about its ability to remain a going concern could result in a default under the terms of its senior secured revolving credit facility.

If SandRidge  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) does not obtain a waiver for that covenant within 30 calendar days its senior credit facility lenders will be able to accelerate maturity of the debt.

“These defaults create additional uncertainty associated with the company’s ability to repay its outstanding long-term debt obligations as they become due and further reinforces the substantial doubt over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” SandRidge said.

The company elected to take a 30 day grace period last month to defer making $21.7 million in interest payments that were due February 16.

SandRidge said it had sufficient liquidity to make the payments but chose to use the grace period to continue its “ongoing discussions with stakeholders.”

The New York Stock Exchange delisted shares of SandRidge in late January after the stock’s price stayed below $1 per share for more than seven months.

SandRidge booked a fourth quarter 2015 adjusted EBITDA of$79 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, down from $239 million in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Full year adjusted EBITDA for 2015 was $589 million, down from $873 million in 2014.

SandRidge is also dealing with a class action lawsuit filed earlier this month against the firm, SandRidge’s former CEO Tom Ward and Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy.

The lawsuit, filed by Dallas-based law firm Burns Charest in an Oklahoma federal court, alleges that the “defendants violated federal antitrust laws by rigging bids and limiting competition for oil and gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.”

The defendants listed in the suit have not commented on the matter.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F290.gif&hash=38949e35cf58eaa4218b5a8176767c806d2f8537)

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/sandridge-energy-3-6-billion-debt-flags-bankruptcy-risk/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 06, 2016, 10:13:06 pm
Oil and Gas Companies   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) Stiff 29,000 Workers Out of $40 Million

America's fracking boom promised big paychecks, but thousands of workers were exploited, the Labor Department says.


By Alan Neuhauser April 4, 2016, at 12:30 p.m.

Like beacons in the night, the flares burning over America's oil and gas fields drew tens of thousands of workers over the past decade, promising big paydays and new pickup trucks, even for those who had just graduated high school.

But in an industry sector recently plagued by plunging oil prices that have forced thousands of rigs to go idle, many of those workers have been feeling even more financial pain, having been forced to wait for their full paychecks.

More than 29,000 oil and gas employees have been stiffed over $40 million in back wages, according to findings from more than 1,100 investigations launched since 2012 by the Labor Department.

Despite booming industry profits and record oil and gas output – which together rejuvenated the country's economy and transformed the U.S. into the world's top oil and gas producer in 2014 and 2015 – companies misclassified their workers and failed to pay them required overtime, even as they put in long workdays in often dangerous conditions.

"We continue to find unacceptably high numbers of violations in the oil and gas (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)  industry," Betty Campbell, regional administrator for the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest, said in a statement.

The most recent violations were announced last month, when more than 2,500 employees for four companies – Jet Specialties, Frank's International, Viking Onshore Drilling and Stream-Flo USA – were found to be owed $1.6 million in back wages.  >:(

Violations ranged from failing to pay production bonuses to wrongly  ;) considering employees as "exempt" from overtime requirements, paying them flat salaries regardless of how many hours they worked.

The specific investigations of Frank's International and Stream-Flo USA began in the Northeast, and ultimately encompassed employees from Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, the Labor Department said. Employers who violate the law in their pay practices harm workers, their families and law-abiding industry employers," Campbell said.

The Wage and Hour Division's inquiries into the energy industry began in the agency's Northeast regional offices in Pennsylvania. The state, sitting atop the Marcellus Shale formation, was one of the country's biggest fracking hubs, and jobs nationwide eventually surged past 191,000 on the extraction side alone by the end of 2012, not including service companies and other related sectors. By comparison, there were around 179,000 such employees last month.

Investigators soon discovered the sector was rife with wage problems.

"Investigations in the [Northeast] region in 2012 revealed that the violations were widespread," says Robin Mallett, a Wage and Hour Division district director in Houston, whose office led two of the most recent investigations in March. The initiative rapidly spread west, involving offices in Chicago and Texas.

Mallett stopped short of saying whether the violations were systemic. But jobs were often not nearly as lucratively as they seemed, she says.

Quote
"Even though they have a reputation, the industry, for paying high wages," Mallett says, "sometimes the economic reality of it is the workers are receiving these hefty paychecks simply because of the sheer number of hours that they're working – really it was not that high a rate of pay."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/oil-and-gas-companies-stiff-29-000-workers-out-of-40-million

Agelbert NOTE: If the above surprises you, then you do not understand the "philosopy" of life of the Predators 'R' US crowd that run the fossil fuel corporations. Their "business model" REQUIRES that they "externalize" pollution costs to the population and biosphere while they fleece the same population through "subsidy" swag and various bought and paid for tax fraud loopholes.

IOW, they make money because they CHEAT. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)

There is NO WAY that Fracking OR ocean rigs could have EVER made money if they were not able to flare all those toxic gases into the atmosphere and had to capture and process them.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthebakkenshale.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F10%2F2014%2F03%2Fbakken-flaring.jpg&hash=312a135b361c8e28bc0f7e51562605d944b10a3e)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Felqahera-trading.com%2Fhome%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2Fdollar-sign-thumbnail1.jpg&hash=e1962ecaa694d312d50a9984ee058a45aed1e860)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)


These psychopaths will OBVIOUSLY not hesitate to SHAFT their "salt of the earth" employees (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil19.gif&hash=6eeb0dbc471743691793f5130640fdcbd1f77b5c) the INSTANT anything gets in the way of the SWAG for the management.

You are seeing JUST THE TIP OF A MASSIVE "iceberg" turd defined as the Corporate Tyranny of Big Oil.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20)


We need fossil fuel corporations like a HOLE IN THE HEAD. As long as they have a nickel, they will spend it to crap all over the people and the planet. Ethical business practices are a JOKE to them.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df) The sooner all fossil fuel corporate polluting pigs get selected out of human civilization, the BETTER!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)



(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220815161550.png&hash=f95989290a4fca22333fc772d8abd90a6764d4d8)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 15, 2016, 11:19:17 pm
The only way DESTRUCTION (i.e. pollution catastrophe) can "creative" (i.e. profit over planet)     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) is if you can FRAUDULENLY "legally" DEDUCT IT from your Tax Liability so that WE-the-PEOPLE PAY for MOST OF THE POLLUTION CLEANUP COSTS.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fearly-response-_-USCG.jpg&hash=20160e776274292db66fb2b226c60970ae14519a)
Deepwater Horizon future tax deduction (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)



Report: BP can deduct majority of Deepwater Horizon settlement
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Staff Writers April 12, 2016

BP may be able to deduct the majority of the record-setting $20 billion settlement it reached for claims tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy group, said Tuesday that BP may be able to claim up to $15.3 billion of the settlement as a tax deduction.

While corporations are not able to deduct penalties or fines paid to the government penalties only account for a small portion of the settlement.

BP will pay a Clean Water Act penalty of $5.5 billion plus interest.

The company will pay $8.1 billion in natural resource damages and up to an additional $700 million to address injuries to natural resources that are presently unknown, according to a statement released by the DOJ late last month.

BP will also pay $600 million for other claims, including claims under the False Claims Act, royalties and reimbursement of natural resource damage assessment costs and other expenses tied to the accident.

The settlement will be paid out over the course of 16 years.
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The deal was approved by a federal judge on Monday and will also allow for the implementation of a related settlement of economic damage claims for five Gulf states and local governments.

The five states included in the settlement are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

According to BP’s 2015 annual report, the company has taken a cumulative pre-tax income statement charge of $55.5 billion as a result of the incident. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Fsmileys%2Fsmiley-devil12.gif&hash=d1822754cefdd0f77369dacd157d00f5f8d3fff9)

That sum excludes amounts that BP said were not “possible to measure reliably at this time.”    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

The settlement is the single largest settlement the DOJ has ever reached with a single entity.

The deal resolves all of the government’s civil claims against BP related to the April 2010 Macondo well blowout that caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history and killed 11 people.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/report-bp-can-deduct-majority-deepwater-horizon-settlement/


Agelbert  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-023.gif&hash=e72013122d6634eacda71e7e47240da3c304c286) NOTE: The fossil fuel government strikes AGAIN:
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 15, 2016, 11:47:09 pm
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We Can't Afford The Fossil Fuel Industry

&&Apr. 14, 2016 2:38 pm

By Thom Hartmann

We're constantly told that we can't afford to enact the bold climate solutions necessary to make the switch to 100 percent renewable energy.
Quote
But, the people who say such things often leave out the hefty price that taxpayers are already paying to cover the cost of dirty fossil fuel energy.

In addition to the twenty-or-so billion dollars that oil and gas companies receive in direct subsidies from the government,
Quote
they rake in billions more in bailouts in the form of tax write-offs, subsidized clean up costs, and mandated customer fees.


Last week alone there were two glaring examples of fossil fuels company bailouts that stuck taxpayers with the bill, even though they never got a vote.

First, utility customers in Ohio learned that they would be stuck paying billions in fees to prop up aging coal and nuclear plants in their state.

Then, Gulf Coast residents learned that BP will be permitted to write off $15.3 billion dollars of the settlement resulting from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill.

In both cases, the fossil fuel industry benefited from billions of dollars in subsidies on the front end, only to ask for another hand out when their failure to update plants or install appropriate safety mechanisms got them into trouble. And, they are both perfect examples of why people claim that oil and gas are still cheaper than clean energy.

If you never include the external costs or the numerous taxpayer-funded bailouts, it is easy to make fossil fuels appear cheaper than the alternative.

If oil and gas actually had to compete on a level playing field, no one would consider pollution, oil spills, and fracking earthquakes reasonable side effects of energy production.

If we want solar, wind, and other renewable sources to flourish in our nation, all we have to do is stop the massive subsidies that perpetuate our addiction to fossil fuels.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/04/we-cant-afford-fossil-fuel-industry#sthash.8mcwFoGD.dpuf (http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/04/we-cant-afford-fossil-fuel-industry#sthash.8mcwFoGD.dpuf)
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 23, 2016, 07:31:27 pm
  April 20, 2016

Why BP's $20 Billion Settlement is Business as Usual (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) in the Gulf of Mexico


Antonia Juhasz analyses the lasting devastation from the spill in the Gulf and the renewed commitments to offshore drilling   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)
https://youtu.be/1AY9REs-mS0

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 26, 2016, 10:49:42 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Below please find a line of doubletalk and science free bullshit that is typical of the fossil fuel industry influence over the U.S. government. This "study" is the fig leaf that the fossil fuelers will now use to cut corners on their rig structure and flood the arctic with rigs considered "safe".

A few years from now, the fossil fuel industry lawyers will turn to this very "study" when one of their platforms in the arctic causes a massive oil Deep Horizon style  blow out from a large chunk of ice impacting and toppling a rig, killing thousands of fish and other arctic marine and land life, as well as polluting the beaches nearby.

They will seek, as they successfully did in the Exxon Valdez disaster and the Deep Horizon disaster, to limit the liability of the oil rig owner to less than a tenth of the ACTUAL damage visited on the biosphere.

Have a nice day.

Existing Offshore Platforms Strong Enough for Arctic Operations, BSEE Study Finds

April 25, 2016 by gCaptain 

The U.S Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has determined the designs of existing offshore platforms are strong enough to survive extreme Arctic conditions and sea ice experienced offshore northern Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.
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The determination  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6) was made following a recently completed research study by the BSEE, in partnership with the University of Alaska, that examined the ability of current offshore structural designs to successfully survive sea ice demands under extreme Arctic conditions.

The objective of the study was to produce information that will be used to supplement current standards and recommendations such as ISO 19906 Standard: Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries – Arctic Offshore Structures. The findings of the study are to support regulatory decision making and ensures that industry operations offshore incorporate the best available and safest technologies as required by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and Energy Policy Act.

Over a two-year period, researchers gathered data from 16 seasons of ice measurements from the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, providing comparisons of various sea ice parameters like first and last ice occurrence, level of ice, rubble fields, ridges and ice movement. After a full analysis, the research team was then able to analyze a range of annual values to develop averages and draw conclusions from what was witnessed.

The study identified critical keel depth and provided an assessment of the suitability of the current ISO 19906 recommendations for estimating global ice forces on offshore structures. Following the collection of additional data, analysis and thorough review of recorded events, the researchers concluded that it appears the current standard of practice cited in ISO 19906 is conservative for current structural design parameters and is capable of surviving the demands from sea ice.

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BSEE has a dedicated program coordinator in Alaska who assists with identifying research that advances BSEE’s regulatory objectives in the Arctic. There are currently seven studies ongoing that assess offshore engineering technology and conditions operators face in harsh Arctic conditions. All of these efforts assist BSEE in understanding how conditions in the Arctic could impact future regulatory standards.

The sea ice study will be presented when the Bureau hosts representatives from regulatory authorities of six Arctic nations next week in Washington, D.C. as part of a meeting of the Arctic Offshore Regulators Forum (AORF).

The AORF, which addresses a specific recommendation of the Arctic Council’s Task Force on Arctic Marine Oil Pollution Prevention, is an Arctic forum of technical and operational offshore petroleum safety regulators whose members are dedicated to the common cause of continually improving offshore safety outcomes.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6) 

Its primary scope is the exchange of information, best practices and relevant experiences learned from regulatory efforts related to developing petroleum resources in the Arctic.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)
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https://gcaptain.com/existing-offshore-platforms-strong-enough-for-arctic-operations-bsee-study-finds/


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 02, 2016, 02:46:00 pm
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There's a lot of talk about fighting the power of Big Oil's political money, but too often it feels like we can't make a difference. Here's one key opportunity.

In California’s 44th Congressional district, the contrast between the two leading candidates couldn’t be clearer. Nanette Barragán stands for clean air, clean water, and a better future for the working class families of her district. Isadore Hall cozies up to Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and the gambling industry. It’s a very competitive primary in a deep blue district.

Nanette Barragán fights Big Oil.
Quote
As mayor pro tem of Hermosa Beach, she stumped for “No On O” to keep oil exploration out of her city and off Los Angeles-area beaches, and won in a landslide.
Barragán is the 12th child of Mexican immigrants, a fact that matters in a district that is 70 percent Latino. She’s passionate about bringing good, clean jobs to her district.

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Nanette Barragán



By sharp contrast, her primary opponent fights for Big Oil.
Isadore Hall III has worked to shield oil and gas companies from carbon pollution fees, to protect them from fracking-chemical disclosure, and voted in support of natural-gas pipelines for his campaign donor Sempra Energy.

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Isadore Hall III

Hall's campaign is funded by the gambling, tobacco, and oil industries. In the state Senate, Hall chairs the Governmental Organization committee in charge of regulating gambling and tobacco. Those industries are not allowed to give to his state Senate campaign — so they’ve been giving to his Congressional campaign. Under his leadership, the committee has become well known for stalling, tabling, amending, and killing tobacco legislation opposed by his donors.

Hall has received nearly $150,000 from the oil and gas industry in campaign contributions, and if elected he’ll be California’s oiliest Democrat for a long time.

The seat is open, as the incumbent Janice Hahn is retiring. Thanks to California’s top-two rule, the top two vote-getters in June will face each other again in November — so Nanette needs to make a strong showing now to be able to win this fall.

Climate Hawks Vote endorsed early, nearly a year before the primary in this solidly Democratic district. We’ve been joined by Democracy For America, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, Emily’s List, BOLD PAC and PODER PAC, many members of Congress, and local leaders. But Hall has corporate support and the backing of the California Democratic machine — so we can’t rest easy.

With a June 7 primary approaching, our plan is to begin an aggressive outreach program to identify and turn out Barragán supporters in this highly diverse district. We’re hiring Spanish and Tagalog speakers to reach newly registered Democrats and other high-reward voters in California’s open primary. This low-cost, high-return effort will also be turning out new Bernie Sanders voters for the crucial presidential primary.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fd3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net%2Fclimatehawksvote%2Fpages%2F48%2Fmeta_images%2Foriginal%2FCHV_Logo2.jpg%3F1430847358&hash=4b576460c515dea42c074db8a99ceec9a4b1ffc0)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Femoticon-object-106.gif&hash=f996659d18df7f3b445e6135e884397ac91f25b1) If you know anyone who lives in California’s 44th Congressional district, please send this to them and ask them to pass it on to their friends and neighbors. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femoticons%2Ftuzki-bunnys%2Ftuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif&hash=24570cb7e8246617010ce900a07bc85117ff78ca)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 05, 2016, 03:53:03 pm

Groups Sue  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2mo5pow.gif&hash=995f9f6c08dcd54f18425f2bfbe138901cf052b1) EPA  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) Demanding Stricter Fracking Waste Rules

Natural Resources Defense Council | May 5, 2016 10:14 am

A coalition of community and environmental organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wednesday calling for regulations to stop oil and gas companies from disposing and handling drilling and fracking wastes in ways that threaten public health and the environment.

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Fracking fluid and other drilling wastes are dumped into an unlined pit. Photo credit: Faces of Fracking / Flickr

Quote
Waste from the oil and gas industry is very often toxic and should be treated that way,”
Amy Mall, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “Right now, companies can get rid of their toxic mess in any number of dangerous ways—from spraying it on icy roads, to sending it to landfills with our everyday household trash, to injecting it underground where it can endanger drinking water and trigger earthquakes. EPA must step in and protect our communities and drinking water from the carcinogens, radioactive material and other dangerous substances that go hand-in-hand with oil and gas waste.”

The organizations are pushing the EPA to issue rules that address problems including the disposal of fracking wastewater in underground injection wells, which accept hundreds of millions of gallons of oil and gas wastewater and have been linked to numerous earthquakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.

Quote
“Updated rules for oil and gas wastes are almost 30 years overdue and we need them now more than ever,”
Adam Kron, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project, said. “Each well now generates millions of gallons of wastewater and hundreds of tons of solid wastes and yet EPA’s inaction has kept the most basic, inadequate rules in place. The public deserves better than this.”

The groups filing suit include the Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthworks, Responsible Drilling Alliance, San Juan Citizens Alliance, West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, calls on the court to set strict deadlines for the EPA to comply with its long-overdue obligations to update waste disposal rules that should have been revised more than a quarter century ago.

The organizations are urging the EPA to ban the practice of spreading fracking wastewater onto roads or fields, which allows toxic pollutants to run off and contaminate streams. And the EPA should require landfills and ponds that receive drilling and fracking waste to be built with adequate liners and structural integrity to prevent spills and leaks into groundwater and streams.

The groups filed a notice of their intent to sue the EPA last August, warning the agency a lawsuit would follow unless it complied with its duty under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to review and revise the federal regulations and guidelines governing how oil and gas waste must be handled and disposed. RCRA requires that the EPA review the regulations and state plan guidelines at least every three years and, if necessary, revise them. The agency determined in 1988 that such revisions of the regulations were necessary to address specific concerns with oil and gas wastes, yet has failed to meet its legal responsibility to act for nearly three decades.

Background   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) 

Over the last decade, the oil and gas industry’s fracking-based boom has produced a vast amount of solid and liquid waste. Each well produces millions of gallons of wastewater and hundreds of tons of drill cuttings, which contain contaminants that pose serious risks to human health. These include known carcinogens such as benzene, toxic metals such as mercury and radioactive materials. However, the current RCRA rules that govern oil and gas wastes are too weak because they are the same rules that apply to all “non-hazardous” wastes, including household trash.

As a result, oil and gas companies are disposing, storing, transporting and handling these wastes in a number of troublesome ways. These include: spraying fracking waste fluids onto roads and land near where people live and work; disposing of billions of gallons of oil and gas wastewater in underground injection wells; sending the drill cuttings and fracking sands to landfills not designed to handle toxic or radioactive materials; and storing and disposing of wastewater in pits and ponds, which often leak. Across the U.S., there are numerous instances of wastes leaking out of ponds and pits into nearby streams and the groundwater beneath and operators often “close” the pits by simply burying the wastes on site.“

In 1988, the EPA promised  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) to require oil and gas companies to handle this waste more carefully,” said Aaron Mintzes, Policy Advocate for Earthworks. “Yet neither EPA nor the states have acted. Today’s suit just says 28 years is too long for communities to wait for protections from this industry’s hazardous waste.”

The following are some examples of problems caused by the improper disposal and handling of fracking and drilling waste:

•Ohio: Underground injection wells in Ohio accepted 1.2 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater for disposal in 2015, more than double the amount in 2011. Half this wastewater came from out of state. This has resulted in scores of earthquakes in the well-dense Youngstown area, with one well alone linked to 77 earthquakes. The Ohio Oil and Gas Commission recently noted that regulations “have not kept pace” with the problem and that (to an extent) both the state and industry are “working with their eyes closed.” Other states that have experienced increased seismic events in the proximity of injection wells include Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

•Pennsylvania: In May 2012, a six-million-gallon industrial pond holding fracking wastewater in Tioga County leaked pollutants, including arsenic and strontium, through holes in its liner into groundwater and a nearby trout stream.

•West Virginia: Oil and gas wastewater dumped or spilled in rivers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania contains high levels of potentially hazardous ammonium and iodide, according to a study by Duke University scientists.

•North Dakota:
In January 2015, three million gallons of drilling wastewater spilled from a leaky pipe outside Williston, polluting a tributary of the Missouri River. In July 2011, a pipeline serving a well in Bottineau County leaked over two million gallons of fracking wastewater, damaging 24 acres of private land.

•Colorado: A contractor for a pipeline services firm gave a detailed account of sand-blasting pulverized waste buildup (called “scale”) from pipeline seals directly into the air outdoors without a filter, even though such dust can be radioactive and cause damage to lungs.

•Across the Marcellus region: Over the past several years, landfills in states around the Marcellus shale formation—even in New York, where fracking is prohibited—have experienced increasing shipments of drill cuttings that contain high levels of radiation. Many of the landfills do not test for radiation and do not have adequate controls to prevent the often toxic and radioactive “leachate” from seeping into groundwater.

“Although West Virginia has taken some steps to improve regulation, the state’s approach has been to permit horizontal drilling without carefully considering whether current methods of waste disposal are appropriate or adequate,” Julie Archer, project manager at the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, said. “It’s past time for the EPA to provide clear guidance on how these wastes should be handled to protect our communities.”

EPA’s current regulations do not take into account the dangerous contents of oil and gas wastes or their unique handling and disposal practices.

Since 1988, the agency has acknowledged the shortcoming of its basic rules for solid waste management and has indicated that it needs to create enhanced rules tailored to the oil and gas industry. However, the agency has yet to take any action to develop these updated regulations.

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc06.deviantart.net%2Ffs71%2Ff%2F2009%2F347%2F2%2F6%2FWTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg&hash=8ca673f8cf785d9dac626f9fd91e37a1a318c7ac)

“A major reason for the industry’s use of injection wells to dispose of toxic fracking waste is the low disposal cost,” Teresa Mills, director of the Ohio field office for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, said. “We reject this reasoning because the public’s health and safety must come first.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)
“As an organization representing hundreds of families living in close proximity to oil and gas operations, we see not only the physical pollution, but also the psychological toll that oil and gas waste exacts on communities,” Dan Olson, executive director of the Colorado-based San Juan Citizens Alliance, said. “That the EPA is 30 years overdue in creating common sense rules for managing toxic waste from oil and gas operations is a cause of great concern for everyone living near these sources of improperly regulated industrial pollution.”

http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/05/groups-sue-epa-fracking-waste/

Agelbert: This is why the "promise" of the EPA in 1988 was not worth the paper it was printed on:

What really Happened at the EPA (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg3619/#msg3619) 

Cathie Reid: You must get this action through and legislation enacted ... before any further disastrous TTP or other "Investor Protection and profit over Health and environmental/climate sustainability" Acts are passed that strip civilization of the frameworks and levers of equitable/peaceful prosperity.
 
frackugee: If the oil and gas industry are such great companies that we sooo need and are on here all the time saying how awesome they are(matt Jason) then they will have no problem accepting the fact that their waste is hazardous material and pay for that accordingly-oh wait that would stop the fracking they do today immediately as they will not spend 46$ a barrel for its proper disposal, that's right hazardous waste costs more to dispose of correctly then oil and gas are worth and the testing of the waste to determine what it is would blow the lid off the toxic brew they create at every single well. They are not good neighbor companies like they profess, every other corporation in this country plays by rules not these guys and they are called out on it all the time with video and complaints to epa at state and fed level and are never held accountable Shame on all of them

agelbert > frackugee: 

Well said.

There is also ZERO excuse for the oil and gas "externalization" of the toxic brew of gases they flare 24/7 at both land and ocean rig sites. It's time they be ordered to capture and package all those carcinogenic gases that they now dump on us for profit over planet.

They KNOW how toxic those gases are because the ocean rigs have a "water curtain" technology to keep the flared gas fumes from degrading the health of rig workers.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fvertassets.blob.core.windows.net%2Fimage%2Fe235b708%2Fe235b708-88c9-4573-95df-3a3ec2845aab%2Fq4000andenterprisesmall.jpg&hash=c83d6aeb93e6090924c18c46bd4e04d8465be91e)
Water curtain in use - cleverly labeled "Water Curtain Rig Cooling Offshore Heat Suppression" as if "heat" was the anything but a side issue in the flared fumes toxins (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)


IOW, the oil and gas pigs are polluting the ocean near the rigs along with the world's atmosphere. Flared gas fumes cause respiratory illnesses in the short term and cancer and global warming in the long term.

It's TIME the oil and gas corporations be STOPPED from polluting for profit!

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing 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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)

(https://allthoughtsworkoutdoors.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/p9047017-030close-up.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 13, 2016, 08:49:32 pm
The arsonists of Fort McMurray have a name

Fossil fuel corporations are causing the climate change fuelling mega-fires – and they should be footing the bill for the devastation
   
(picture at story link)
A charred vehicle and homes are pictured in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, May 9, 2016 after wildfires forced the evacuation of the town.  Photograph: Chris Wattie/AFP/Getty Images

@Martin_Lukacs
   
Thursday 12 May 2016 08.23 EDT  Last modified on Friday 13 May 2016 18.17 EDT 

As the fire that ravaged Fort McMurray finally moves past the city, and the province tallies the heartbreaking damage, a search will begin to discover the source of the destruction.

Investigators will comb the nearby forests for clues, tracing the fire’s path to what they call its “point of origin.” They’ll interview witnesses, collect satellite imagery, and rule out natural causes—much like the work of detectives.

Except in the age of climate change-fuelled mega-fires, this truly is a crime scene.

Not, I mean, the handiwork of troublesome teenagers, nor a campfire left accidentally burning. The devastation of Fort McMurray is the predictable outcome of arson on an entirely different scale.

These arsonists have a name and they’re hiding in plain view—because their actions, at the moment, are still considered legal. They’re the companies that helped turn the boreal forest into a flammable tinder-box. The same companies that have undermined attempts to rein in carbon emissions. The same companies that, by their very design, chase profits with no mind for the ecological and human consequences.

Yet in the fire’s aftermath, it has seemed impossible to name them: fossil fuel corporations. Of course they’re not the only ones who have fuelled climate change: all of us consume oil at every level of our lives. But the record is clear that we are not equally responsible: an astonishing 90 companies alone have caused two-thirds of global carbon emissions. And all the oil giants involved in the Alberta tar sands are among them: ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Total, CNRL, Chevron.

Alberta wildfires leave Fort McMurray charred and desolate – in pictures
(pictures at story link)
 
In the last week, these corporations have escaped accountability as quickly as ordinary Albertans have risen to action. Across the province, people have opened their homes to evacuees, offered gas, shared food. The most marginalized have given the most: First Nations welcoming thousands to their communities; Muslims praying for rain at the Alberta legislature; and Syrian refugees, barely resettled in the province, gathering donations. Stories of heroism have abounded: like the school principal who drove a bus full of children out of the burning city, reuniting each one with their families, and filling extra seats with strangers from the roadside. At almost a moment’s notice, a province often written off as dog-eat-dog individualists proved the naysayers wrong: they have come together in a spirt of fellowship and solidarity.

1:39 video (at story link)


Alberta wildfires: key facts and figures in a historic disaster

Most of these people had no idea of the disaster that was coming. But there were some who did: the corporate arsonists themselves. As far back as forty-five years ago, certain Canadian oil corporations already knew the lethal climate consequences of their business model. Last month, building on similar revelations about US companies, investigative reporters discovered stunning proof in the archives of a Calgary museum—a clue as good as any about this mega-fire’s “point of origin.”

An uncovered report produced in 1970 by Imperial Oil, the Canadian branch of ExxonMobil, put it crystal clear: “Since pollution means disaster to the affected species, the only satisfactory course of action is to prevent it.” Except the oil company proceeded to spend decades lying about what they knew, and ensured the disaster would be as profound as possible. Little wonder the same company report branded its own actions as “anti-social.”

The very picture of anti-social? A fire ripping through a city. The incineration of homes. Irreplaceable possessions and family albums burned to ash. Climate refugees spilling across a province and country, stripped of their livelihoods and uncertain of their future.


  A burnt vehicle in Fort McMurray, 10 May 2016 Photograph: Amru Salahuddien/EPA  (picture at story link)

Science may not show a direct link between climate change and the existence of one particular fire, but there is no doubt why the blaze that devoured the Alberta town was so powerful.

“We have loaded the dice for more extreme wildfires,” says Mike Flannigan, a wildfire scientist at the University of Alberta. “We attribute the increase in wildfires and their severity and intensity to human-caused climate change. We’ve been saying it for years. Many of us saw a Fort McMurray-like situation coming, but none of us expected anything as horrific as what has happened.”

Today, twice as much land in Canada is being devoured by fires as in the 1970s—and that will double or quadruple again in the decades to come. Climate change is putting such pressure on the boreal, which covers most of northern Canada, that a study published last year in the journal Science issued a stark warning: “this forest will convert to a type of savannah.”

To remain mute about those responsible for this devastation is not an act of sensitivity toward the citizens of Fort McMurray. It is to stand idly by while these corporations move on to claim their next victims. To argue, as prime minister Justin Trudeau has, that making the connection between climate change and this infernal fire isn’t “helpful,” is not a gesture of statesmanly maturity. It is the prevarication of political cowards.

Other politicians have adopted an even more toxic approach: not letting the crisis go to waste. Former Conservative natural resources minister Joe Oliver argued on national television that Trudeau should seize the fire as an opportunity to force through a tar sands pipeline to the coast. And British Columbia premier Christy Clark insisted the economic impact of the blaze could be balanced by ramming oil and liquified natural gas projects through the regulatory process—doubling down on what helped cause this crisis in the first place. In the days ahead, watch for this argument to grow even louder.

But the greatest model of insensitivity is this: the arsonists don’t seem content with the burning of just one Canadian town. The latest climate science has told us exactly how much fossil fuels we can burn before we lock in catastrophic warming—warming that will make today’s mega-fire look modest. But companies have access to four or five times that amount in their reserves. They plan to extract and burn it all.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

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If we want to contain warming to the Paris climate accord’s target of 1.5 degrees, we will need to keep most fossil fuels in the ground—to strand these assets and shift to clean energy. But corporations have no such intention. “We don’t see any stranded assets. We think all our assets will be required,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said after the signing of the Paris accord. It “reinforces our approach,” Shell added. In other words, they’re bent on arson on a global scale.

The law is finally catching up to this planet-altering recklessness. In the United States, both California and New York’s attorneys general are investigating ExxonMobil for spending decades misleading the public about its knowledge of the risks of climate change. Meanwhile, both Democratic presidential candidates have joined the chorus of voices demanding the federal Department of Justice join the investigation. Last month, lawyers in the Philippines launched another precedent-setting case: a lawsuit against fifty of the world’s fossil fuel companies for damages the country has suffered from climate change-driven hurricanes.

This path should show the way forward for Canada, entrenching a basic moral principle: the polluter pays. Fossil fuel companies shouldn’t be celebrated for the minimal corporate paternalism they are now demonstrating—housing, feeding and flying evacuated workers out of Fort McMurray and the surrounding work camps. They should be footing the bill for the devastation. They invested billions in an industry knowing it would prove destructive to the air, water, climate, and health of Albertans? It’s time to put our hands—through higher taxes, royalties, even a public takeover—on some of their gargantuan profits, and use them to transition to a new economy full of good clean jobs and beyond these dangerous energy sources.

That would mean rejecting the lopsided sacrifice currently demanded of us: that corporations derive the rewards while we cover their damages. Canada’s fossil fuel companies have vacuumed billions in profits out of Alberta, and used their political influence to prevent the emergence of a more diversified economy in a province with incredible renewable energy potential. Yet the relief and recovery effort, which may cost upward of $10bn, will be paid for by the government and taxpayers. The donations offered by individual Canadians are a testament to incredible generosity: they also represent an outsourcing of responsibility.

But that spirit of solidarity and mutual aid, of compassion and confidence in each other, is the best expression of ourselves. It points the way forward. Two people tragically died in the evacuation of Fort McMurray—but many more no doubt were saved, by courage and heroism and the deep care and love for fellow citizens that can flourish in a period of catastrophe. Such are the values we will need to mount a collective fight against the unfolding disaster of climate change.

Imagine these values actually governing our society—for a start, relaxing EI rules to ensure dignity for all of the evacuated workers. Imagine this resiliency, courage and generosity being harnessed to lead the transition to a healthier, more just post-carbon society—helping prevent even more extreme weather to come. Imagine the rebuilding of Fort McMurray being not just a page turned on an unprecedented disaster, but the beginning of a new direction.

If that can happen, the smoke will truly lift from this country and this town.

On Twitter: @Martin_Lukacs

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2016/may/12/the-arsonists-of-fort-mcmurray-have-a-name
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 18, 2016, 03:52:35 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280714152422.png&hash=d3a9c8a33ce2d0c503aef35f0bca11b77d792eaa)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.climate-lab-book.ac.uk%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F05%2Fspiral_optimized.gif&hash=1f62715fdadba0d51d7bd1e34e194763632c1d66)

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/05/disastrous-climate-change-exposed-one-gif

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270915171817.jpeg&hash=adb2c3a602a0a59d1303318d67d1711bfe308ff6)


I wonder what corrections, adjustments, extrapolations, interpolations and correlations were used on what original temperature data to create the cool graphic?

Well, considering the fact that you are a word twisting propagandist out to justify the use of fossil fuels come hell or high water, I don't wonder that you will engage in every hair splitting excuse you can think of to question reality. The answer to your futile, but clever, exercise in hairsplitting was partially provided at the link to Thom Hartmann's article. But, as usual, you prefer to snipe than to study.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/05/disastrous-climate-change-exposed-one-gif (http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/05/disastrous-climate-change-exposed-one-gif)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)

YOU, the alleged "expert" in supply and demand for fossil fuels, continue to ignore the FACT that, at present, the world is producing over 1,000,000 bpd MORE than it uses. YET, you have the brass balls, or simply world class ignorance, to claim the recent rise in the price of crude is "based on fundamentals", instead of the commodities futures speculation CRAP that is ACTUALLY making the price artificially go up.

But hey, congratulations are in order to your welfare queen fossil fuel and nuclear pals. Just like YOU, they can't make any money without stealing money from we-the-people, so the fossil fuel OWNED politicians just rode in to BAIL DIRTY ENERGY ASSES (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) OUT AGAIN.

Happy day for MKing  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2Fcheers-cheers-champagne-wine-smiley-emoticon-000183-large.gif&hash=bdb20f3940f60a3fa02af770c14551018df8e302)
and his biosphere math challenged, empathy deficit disordered pals!
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)


05/16/2016 04:03 PM   

Fossil-Heavy Energy & Water Appropriations Bill Passes Senate

SustainableBusiness.com News


Last week, the US Senate passed the first appropriations bill for the 2017 budget, funding energy and water programs with $37.5 billion.

We're surprised that it passed 90-8, given that it clearly prioritizes fossil and nuclear energy over renewables. President Obama threatens to veto it for that reason. Where are the Democrats on this? ? ? ?

$9.3 billion of the $37.5 billion total is for nuclear weapons programs. $808 million is cut from the non-defense side of the Department of Energy, while the nuclear side gets $355 million more to "ensure nuclear stockpile readiness."

The White House says, "The bill "fails to put us on an achievable path toward doubling clean energy research and development by FY2021. Specifically, the Administration objects to the low funding levels provided for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)."   

"Funding at this level also would impede development of solutions to reduce U.S. dependence on oil and reduce energy waste, and undermine the Nation's competitiveness in the future global clean energy economy," the White House continues. 
 

Exactly What's Intended (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) says the bill prioritizes defense, nuclear weapons priorities and fossil fuel R&D, while reining in President Obama's out-of-bounds renewable energy agenda.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-111214174727.png&hash=a0ea65f844542e4709bd444bd2f70496c434c56b)

It "rebalances the portfolio to provide a true all-of-the-above strategy. It includes strong funding for nuclear energy, providing research and development to ensure a safe, efficient, reliable nuclear fleet, and laying the foundation for the next generation of nuclear reactors.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emofaces.com%2Fen%2Femoticons%2Fn%2Fnuclear-emoticon.gif&hash=e4e4a2a7087fe69ad666bbc193626b4bf13857a8)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)



 "It puts more money into fossil fuel  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frs165.pbsrc.com%2Falbums%2Fu55%2FBJ_BOBBI_JO9%2FSummer%2520and%2520Spring%2520activties%2Fsterb038.gif%7Ec100&hash=4bfe69c61e0459e68422b031f8e8f2eaf6b5a7bd) energy and less into renewables  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4), to ensure the nation is utilizing its abundant fossil energy resources as efficiently and safely as possible, he says." 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemecrunch.com%2Fmeme%2F5L3XX%2Fspiderman-bullshit-detector%2Fimage.jpg%3Fw%3D544%26amp%3Bc%3D1&hash=4825835b92337d62f61a3d37d282105e97ac3ee3)

The one thing Democrats didn't budge on was the attempt to undercut EPA's Waters of the US rule  by eliminating its funding. ::)  It restores protection for two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, allowing it to safeguard drinking water supplies for a third of Americans, and for ecosystems. Calling it "massive overreach, it is currently on hold by a federal court.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)

They also voted down an amendment from Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) to wind down the Energy Department's Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Loan program.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) says, "We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change. And yet, the energy efficiency and renewable energy account would be funded at $248 million below the president's request. An annual appropriations bill is not the place to amend or significantly change the Clean Water Act or restrict gun laws. These efforts year after year imperil the appropriations process.   

Some Details   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

Compared to Obama's 2017 budget, ARPA-E gets 16% less and EERE gets a 26% cut for renewable energy, 27% less for sustainable transportation and 20% less for energy efficiency. 

Obama's budget doubles funding for clean energy R&D, as 20 nations promised to do under Mission Innovation at the Paris Climate Summit. And it includes the nation's first carbon tax, which would fund a 21st century low-carbon transportation system.

Read our article,  What's In Obama's 2017 Budget: Energy & Environment, called "dead on arrival" by the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) Congressional majority. (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26546)

On the positive side, Obama supports the bill's investments in restoring aquatic ecosystems and helping communities reduce the risk of floods - improving resilience against climate impacts. It meets his budget request for restoration of the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem, Columbia River, South Florida Ecosystem, and Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Recovery.

The bill now goes to the House for a vote. 

Read the White House statement on the appropriations bill:
 
Website: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/114/saphr2028s_20160420.pdf (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/114/saphr2028s_20160420.pdf)

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26546 (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26546)

Agelbert NOTE: You may THINK you have won, MKing. But, as usual, you have cognitive problems with cause and effect.

You see, the fossil fuel government in the USA is NOT going to keep your precious welfare queen fossil fuel industry from going the way of the dodo bird. Sure, you have obtained your typical reprieve on we-the-people's money in the USA.

But you neglect the FACT, one that you have been eyeing over the past decade and not said SH IT about in this forum, that fossil fuels have been steadily losing energy market share, NOT because of any renewable energy subsidy, but because they have ZERO fuel costs. Once the Renewable energy infrastructure is installed (which gets cheaper every year to manufacture and install), fossil fuels simply cannot compete with ZERO clean energy fuel costs.

YOU said, a couple of days ago (and you repeat that wishful thinking frequently), that the fossil fuel industry would recover when the price comes back up, as it did in the 1980's. The problem with that thinking is that Dirty energy does not have a snowball's chance in hell of recovering it's lost energy market share from a 70 to 1 Renewable to fossil fuel new generation installation rate.

This is not the 1980's, when the available renewable energy (apart from hydro) was a drop in the energy market share bucket compared to fossil fuels and nuclear power. But you desperately want to believe it is.   

The ONLY common thread between the 1980's and now is the WELFARE QUEEN SWAG coming from the U.S. Government. You irresponsible CROOKS talk about "responsibility" in business practices when you get babied six ways from Sunday every time you get you ass in a debt crack. HYPOCRITES! LIARS! CHEATS!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)


Now that my rant is over  ;D, this the message you may continue to try to deny with your wishful thinking, Mr. Supply and Demand Math Challenged Fossil Fuel Fascist:

No matter how much welfare queen swag you get from the fossil fuel government and no matter how much your bought and paid for politicians try to strange Renewable Energy by killing subsidies and inventing rules, regulations and laws, like you did in the 1980's, there is NO WAY that the fossil fuel industry will EVER be able to recapture their lost energy use market share in ANY of the high Renewable Energy percentage countries like Scotland (and Portugal and Costa Rica and Spain and the Netherlands and Sweden and Norway and Germany - and so one, etc.).

No matter how many politicians the fossil fuel fascists BUY to make fossil fuels artificially cheap through hidden and not so hidden "subsidies" (free passes on pollution and government money coerced from we-the-people), the fossil fuel industry simply cannot compete with Renewable Energy.

And smart people in the USA, England, France, Australia, south Africa, Italy, Japan (and so on - you get the idea) are certainly NOT going to go back to fossil fuels with a ZERO fuel cost on their current Renewable energy Infrastructure (which gets cheaper to manufacture and install every year). Even the "natural" gas fired power plants used for peak power grid demand balancing that now use Fracked gas can be run from TRULY NATURAL gas produced from methane harvesters on cattle and pig farms in these countries. Germany is already doing quite a bit of animal based methane harvesting with a nice side benefit that pumps out a NON-fossil fuel based NATURAL fertilizer product added profit stream.  ;D

Continually shrinking market share is a death sentence for an energy producer. That is why the fossil fuel industry is doomed to shrink into bankrupt welfare queen, has been irrelevance.           

Anybody that thinks we are in a repeat of the 1980's doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 18, 2016, 06:00:36 pm
Agelbert NOTE: A fossil fuel industry propagandist using the MKing handle he WON'T use his NAME   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)) made an interesting claim recently. He said that he spoke to the governor of North Dakota.

Exact Quote from MKing:
Quote
I've actually spoken with the ND Governor back when things were blowing and going, as well as the Federal land managers of MT and ND, and there was a perspective there of 40 years of drilling to be had. Discussing why that might not be the most likely outcome, and that the amount of oil they were counting on might not be as large as they expected, was quite a chore. My presentation on this topic to Lynn Helms went over better.
  ::)

I rather doubt that.

Doubt it all you'd like, it doesn't change the facts. And I won't mention the other folks in the room, because it would give away the exact meeting, and my place in it.

Quote from: agelbert

People who refuse to make their name public should not resort to such puffery.

Who said anything about my name not being public? RE and Surly have been going through my decades of science, not finding as much as a misspelled word, are you saying they didn't include you when passing this information around? You should ask for it.

And I have explained previously why I consider low profiles quite excellent. Go reread that.

Quote from: agelbert
But if some fossil fuel front man defending Fracking in North Dakota did speak to the governor, I am certain the following was accidently on purpose not mentioned in the conversation.  ;) Yes, the study was just published. But if you think the Frackers were unaware of these ""externalized" costs dumped on we-the-people so they could make more profit over planet, you do not understand the MKings of this world. They know. They know.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

If I was a front man, they never would have let me in the door. Get caught playing advocate as a scientist Anthony, and the credibility that took decades to establish through proper science can go right out the door.

A nice collection of non-answers from the MKing troll    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0), as usual.

Your NAME, you know, the one on your birth certificate, is NOT public until you post it HERE, just like I post mine, regardless of whether Surly and RE AND Eddie are in on your precious "Public" identity (that we "low life degree lacking plebeians" aren't "worthy" of knowing).

What "facts"? You mean the Monday morning quaterbacking bullshit? Post the "presentation" to the Governor of N.D. HERE with all those "warnings" about how "things would get worse" for fracking in the future or STFU.

Your "low profile" MO claim is only valid contingent on you not making name dropping boasts about your "presentations" to a state governor or your conference attendances with your "pal", Harold Hamm. Otherwise, not using your name publicly is a cheap dodge worthy of disdain. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00)


When you post your NAME here, not just to the ADMINS, you MIGHT get some credibility as one of Billionaire Fracker Harold Hamm's FRONT MEN. You have alluded to that from time to time as if Hamm was anything but a welfare queen, tax dodging, pollution externalizing ASS HOLE.

Until then, I suggest you but your zero credibility boasts where the sun doesn't shine, Mr. fossil fuel industry propagandist.

And as for your typical response to the following  that you have a degree and I don't, SO WHAT?

There are scores of engineers and scientists BOUGHT by the fossil fuel and chemical industries with "advanced" degrees in science that lie on a daily basis.

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6)

I don't have a degree but I have forgotten more physics and thermodynamics than you ever learned in your pathetic efforts to justify fossil fuel industry profit over planet.

People like you still think human nutrient processing oxidation for caloric intake is equivalent to hydrocarbon combustion oxidation. People like you think enzyme mediated active transport is something that goes on in a chemical factory. People like you cannot see all the pollution holes in the thermodynamic constants used to determine enthalpy of formation of hydrocarbons using Hess's Law.

You claim, repeatedly (and erroneously), that fossil fuels are "cheaper" than Renewable energy harvesting technologies.

Every time I or somebody else points out that the fossil fuel industry CANNOT survive without subsidies, you change the subject or resort to mockery and derision.

When someone PROVES that Fracking MUST FLARE (POLLUTE WE-THE-PEOPLE) up to one third by volume the gases coming up a fracked well in order to make a profit, you puff about your "knowledge" and how "only ignorant people" question your "eminent" scientific background INSTEAD OF TALKING FACTS.

When a post comes up PROVING you frackers MUST discharge your wastewater crap free of any environmental regulatory constraints (i.e. POLLUTE willy nilly) in order, and in addition to, flaring, BECAUSE OF THE COSTS of avoiding said pollution, you ignore the post.

And you have, FOR YEARS, denied the FACT that over 90% of all well casings in fracked wells leak CRAP into the aquifers within five years.

You have consistently DENIED the fact that, had Cheney not gamed the water quality laws to give Fracking a polluting free-for-all, there would BE NO FRACKING BOOM, PERIOD.

YOU and the BASTARDS you represent made money BECAUSE, and ONLY BECAUSE, you could POLLUTE your way to obtaining the fossil fuels AND be welfare queen subsidized on top of that!

AND ALL those posts about Fracking piggery are based on PEER REVIEWED scientific studies, not on my opinion.

YET, you ALWAYS try to make this about me instead of the subject of the ECONOMIC STUPIDITY and environmental HARM of fossil fuels.

And YOU do that because you don't have an argument.
   
So you have a degree. SO WHAT? There are scores of engineers and scientists that have one that lie for money on a daily basis. You are one of them.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 18, 2016, 07:43:43 pm
Agelbert NOTE: This article is a little over two monts old. But the information is instructive in showing HOW the crude oil "supply" is gamed DOWN to engineer (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) a higher price based on, "Fundamentals" of demand. So, when you look at those EIA numbers MKing likes to trot out to defend "fundamentals" of supply and demand, take a grain of salt to the "prudent case for future fossil fuel industry recovery through higher prices" BULLSHIT. 

The Curious Case Of The 550 Million Missing Barrels Of Crude Oil  ;)

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/09/2016

SNIPPET 1:

Quote
As Reuters reports, crude oil production exceeded consumption by an average of 0.9 million barrels per day in 2014 and 2.0 million bpd in 2015. Of this 1 billion barrels which the IEA believes was produced but not consumer, some 420 million are said to be stored on land in OECD member countries and another 75 million can be found stored at sea or in transit by tanker somewhere from the oil fields to the refineries. This means that as of this moment, about 550 million "missing barrels" are unaccounted for "apparently produced but not consumed and not visible in the inventory statistics."

As John Kemp writes, like most "plugs", the missing barrels are recorded in the "miscellaneous to balance" line of the IEA's monthly Oil Market Report as the difference between production, consumption and reported stock changes. The miscellaneous item reflects errors in data from OECD countries, errors in the agency's estimates for supply and demand in non-OECD countries, and stockpile changes outside the OECD that go unrecorded.

The current IEA data reveals that there is a miscellaneous to balance item of 0.5 million barrels per day in 2014 and 1.0 million barrels per day in 2015.

This is not new: missing barrels have been a feature of IEA statistics since the 1970s, and as Reuters adds over time, errors have occurred in both directions  ;), and have ranged up to 1 million or even 2 million barrels per day.

SNIPPET 2:

Quote
And as Reuters adds, while most of the time, the oil market ignores the miscellaneous to balance item, but it tends to become controversial when it becomes very large, either positive or negative. Such as now. Furthermore, the situation is additionally compounded by the massive documented inventory glut not only in the US but around the globe, and certainly in China which, as reported yesterday, reported a record amount of oil in January even as demand is said to have been declining.

This is what happened the last time there was an implied glut on par with the current one:


The last time the miscellaneous to balance item was this large and positive (implying an oversupplied market) was in 1997/98 when the issue triggered fierce criticism of the IEA's statistics.

Critics accused the IEA of over-estimating supply, under-estimating demand, contributing to perception of a glut, depressing prices, and causing unnecessary hardship to the oil industry. Senator Pete Domenici, chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the IEA's statistics and the question of missing barrels. In a report published in May 1999, GAO concluded "missing barrels are not a new condition, and the amount and direction of missing barrels have fluctuated over time".

Agelbert NOTE: Yeah, right. any time the fossil fuel welfare queens have issues with low prices, all of a sudden their bought and paid for sacred IEA is accused of fibbing to hurt the poor little fossil fuel industry.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) But when the REVERSE is going on, the fossil fuelers like MKing worship at the "EIA is Gospel truth" altar.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

Quote
"At any point in time, the historical oil supply and demand as well as the stock data reported by IEA could be overstated or understated by an unknown magnitude." The GAO concluded then that it was not possible to "quantify how much of the missing barrels are due to statistical limitations and how much are the result of physical oil storage in unreported stocks".  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)


Some other comparisons:


In 1997/98, the market was oversupplied by 2.1 million barrels per day compared with total demand of around 74 million barrels per day, according to the IEA.

In 2015, the oil market was also oversupplied by 2.0 million barrels per day but consumption was running at more than 94 million barrels per day, around 25 percent higher.


To be sure, episodes of massive imbalance usually even out  ;), and following the 1997/98 episode, the missing barrels that accumulated in unreported non-OECD storage were drawn down in 1999, according to the IEA ("Oil Market Report", IEA, Dec 1999). In December 1999, the IEA wrote: "The weight of (the) evidence is that the missing barrels did exist and that they have now returned to the market."

What helped the 1998 glut was that by the end of 1999, the oil market was seeing excess demand and prices were rising. But the rapid recovery depended on very strong economic growth in North America and Asia (after the East Asian financial crisis in 1997/98). 

Another critical factor was the substantial production cuts by OPEC in conjunction with production restraint from non-OPEC countries. And it was both heralded and caused by a shift in the forward price curve from contango to a state of backwardation.

As Reuters concludes, the events of 1999 illustrate the factors needed to clear an inherited glut of oil (strong demand, production restraint and a shift in the shape of the forward price curve).

There are two major problems: this time around demand is declining - especially in trade-dependent distillate demand  - while debt across the entire world is at record highs,
and makes a fiscal stimulus improbable. Worse, following the November 2014 OPEC fiasco, the cartel effectively no longer exists. Furthermore, major oil exporting countries have not so far agreed to cut production, unlike 1998/99, and in fact Saudi Arabia has openly rejected the idea.  And finally, futures prices remain resolutely in contango, which is both a symptom of excess stockpiles and creates a financial incentive to continue holding them. As Reuters observes, there is no sign of the market moving into backwardation yet, which would indicate the supply-demand balance was shifting and would also create a financial incentive to release oil from storage.

Kemp's conclusion:

Several key OPEC and non-OPEC producers have announced a provisional production freeze which could speed up the rebalancing, assuming it is implemented. 

But it might not be enough to eliminate the glut quickly; outright production cuts may be needed to accelerate the process, depending on what happens to demand and production from other countries.

This is also why Goldman yesterday released its latest bearish report on oil, in which it said the
"commodity rally is not sustainable" and worse, "the force of their reversal has created a new trend in market positioning that could run further. However, the longer they run, the more destabilizing they become to the nascent rebalancing they are trying to price."



In other words, the sharp, brief rebound in prices, means that a long-term sustainable rebound in prices becomes that much less probable.


The bottom line is that the IEA's calculations are likely correct, and end markets are merely misreporting due to commercial interests:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) "In 1997/98 episode, the IEA concluded most of the missing barrels went into non-OECD storage and uncounted OECD inventories . In the current episode, it is also very likely some of the 550 million barrels unaccounted for in 2014/15 have gone into unreported storage outside the OECD." (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-09/curious-case-550-million-missing-barrels-crude-oil (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-09/curious-case-550-million-missing-barrels-crude-oil)


"Hitting peak oil will come faster than any of us think. But don't blame dwindling supply — it's all about disappearing demand" Amory Lovins
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 23, 2016, 10:54:15 pm
Exxon Developed Low Emissions Technology, Lobbied Against It (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The precursors of ExxonMobil have been patenting technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles since as early as 1963 while fighting against government funding for the same research.

Newly discovered records show that the oil giants like Esso had as many as 18 patents, including a process to produce electricity in a fuel cell and engine technology to reduce emissions and increase fuel efficiency.

At the same time, the main oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, opposed government funding, saying they took “exception to the basic assumption”   ;)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) that clean air is possible only through an alternative to oil-burning vehicles.

Alan Jeffers, an Exxon spokesman, refused to comment on the documents. (Guardian, Gizmodo, MSNBC)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/20/oil-company-records-exxon-co2-emission-reduction-patents

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fquotes.lifehack.org%2Fmedia%2Fquotes%2Fquote-John-D.-Rockefeller-competition-is-a-sin-42310.png&hash=df3d95b1663c8112e1e85dc8ae158724c1b6f949)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 24, 2016, 07:19:42 pm
Big Oil Could Have Put A Dent In CO2 Emissions In 1970s - But Did Nothing

According to new documents from the Center for International Environmental Law, the industry chose to prioritize costs over the planet.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

The new documents show oil companies chose to invest in climate denying instead of on technologies to reduce emissions.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, the industry also financed studies into how petroleum products could be used to control the climate.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The research included burning oil to clear areas of fog and smog, and constructing massive "artificial heat mountains" out of asphalt to increase rainfall.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fp8.gif&hash=34db9228a959b3b83fc65b38a1aa92a40d56f976)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d)


As early as the 1980s, oil companies were beginning to invest in taller oil rigs that could withstand rising sea levels.

Tom Sanzillo, finance director at the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Vice there is a clear potential, perhaps even likelihood, that these documents will result in litigation against oil companies.

Sanzillo said, "This looks like it's pretty serious, and it just seems to get worse."

 -Thom

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/05/big-oil-could-have-put-dent-co2-emissions-1970s-%E2%80%94-did-nothing
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 25, 2016, 06:19:30 pm
(https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/lightbox_image/public/images/article/2016/05/coal-financing.png?itok=mg3zd4fD)

Germany urged to end coal financing / 'Save the Energiewende' protests

Reuters

Campaigners urge Germany to stop financing coal projects abroad

Environmental groups urged G7 nations led by Japan and Germany to stop financing coal projects abroad, reports Alister Doyle for Reuters.

The study, released before the G7 summit in Japan this week by groups including the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), WWF and Oil Change International, said Germany provided nine billion euros between 2007 and 2015, second behind Japan with 22 billion.

Read the Reuters article in English  here. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-coal-idUSKCN0YF1PD)

SWEPT UNDER THE RUG: How G7 Nations Conceal Public Financing for Coal Around the World (https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/swept-under-rug-coal-financing-report.pdf)


pv magazine
“Moment of warning: five minutes to midnight”

Associations for renewable energies have joined forces with the Industrial Union of Metalworkers (IG Metall) to organise a “moment of warning” as part of the campaign “Save the Energiewende”, reports pv magazine.

Protesters wanted to gather today in numerous locations across Germany to demonstrate against current government plans to slow down renewables development.

The organisers say that the development has advanced too much “to be stopped without collateral damage” and call for a “solid regulatory framework for a renewable energy system”  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039), writes pv magazine. 

Find more information in CLEW's factsheets EEG reform 2016 – switching to auctions for renewables (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/eeg-reform-2016-switching-auctions-renewables)  and Defining features of the Renewable Energy Act. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/defining-features-renewable-energy-act-eeg)

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-urged-end-coal-financing-save-energiewende-protests
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 25, 2016, 07:54:53 pm
Headlines that Evidence the Fossil Fuel Industry Consistent LACK of Ethics: 


My father warned Exxon about climate change in the 1970s. They didn't listen (Guardian, Claudia Black-Kalinsky op-ed)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/25/exxon-climate-change-greenhouse-gasses?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco



ExxonMobil tried to censor climate scientists to Congress during Bush era
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/25/exxonmobil-climate-change-scientists-congress-george-w-bush



Shell CEO warns renewables shift could spell end if too swift   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fshame.gif&hash=88b5b0c8644862ef4930e3c7e3556db6c3bf600f)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/shell-agm-climatechange-idUKL5N18L36K



Lawmakers  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) approve bill to cut NOAA, climate research (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) (E&E News $)
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/05/25/stories/1060037824

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210316151047.png&hash=322a7c76731414f0f2ba44f8649e39de889b4bd6)
The "logic" of the fossil Fuel Industry and their bought and paid for "Lawmakers"



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 30, 2016, 07:33:19 pm
(https://www.popularresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1bakken.jpg)

Emails Confirm Hillary Clinton Used Her State Department Role to Press Countries to Embrace Fracking

Posted on May 28, 2016

A campaign commercial that aired in upstate New York in April touted Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state forcing “some of the world’s worst polluters” to make “real change.” Then she promised to “stand firm with New Yorkers opposing fracking, giving communities the right to say ‘no.’ ”   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

Lee Fang and Steve Horn reported at The Intercept on Monday:

The television spot, which was not announced and does not appear on the official campaign YouTube page with most of Clinton’s other ads, implied a history of opposition to fracking, here and abroad. But emails obtained by The Intercept from the Department of State reveal new details of behind-the-scenes efforts by Clinton and her close aides to export American-style hydraulic fracturing — the horizontal drilling technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

Far from challenging fossil fuel companies, the emails obtained by The Intercept show that State Department officials worked closely with private sector oil and gas companies (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605), pressed other agencies within the Obama administration to commit federal government resources including technical assistance for locating shale reserves, and distributed agreements with partner nations pledging to help secure investments for new fracking projects. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

Brought to you by the patriotic profit over planet efforts of the fossil fuel government   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) and their loyal servant, Hillary Clinton.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)

The documents also reveal the department’s role in bringing foreign dignitaries to a fracking site in Pennsylvania, and its plans to make Poland a “laboratory for testing whether US success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country,” particularly in Europe, where local governments had expressed opposition and in some cases even banned fracking.

The campaign included plans to spread the drilling technique to China, South Africa, Romania, Morocco, Bulgaria, Chile, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia, and Ukraine.

In 2014, Mother Jones reporter Mariah Blake used diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks and other records to uncover how Clinton “sold fracking to the world.” The emails obtained by The Intercept through a separate Freedom of Information Act request provide a new layer of detail.

Continue reading. (https://theintercept.com/2016/05/23/hillary-clinton-fracking/)

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 01, 2016, 02:52:52 pm
It’s Time to Break Saudi’s Oil Monopoly and Embrace Clean Transportation

Carl Pope | May 31, 2016 9:15 am

Oil touched $50 last week, close to double its slump price earlier this year, before falling slightly below that benchmark. Short-term impacts—the wildfire in Canada and outages in Nigeria—helped reduce stocks and drive up the price; then Iraq production increases stalled the rally. The market seemed to have averted the risk of an extended period of $20-30 prices, unsustainable for oil dependent nations, even the richest like the Saudis, whose “pump and dump” strategy lies behind the current low-price environment.


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F05%2Fev_oil_750.jpg&hash=62b4bc95eac35c41b7bec1275f8b8ffc418874c4)
What is lacking, particularly in the U.S., is a robust public conversation about breaking oil’s monopoly and replacing it with cleaner transportation.

At $40-60/barrel, however, the Saudis can stay the course. They can afford that price in terms of their budget deficit, if not easily. Some U.S. shale plays come back into production, but the capital heavy projects in the Arctic, ultra-deep ocean or Canadian tar sands are still off the table as prudent investments. Medium term, as non-OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries], non-shale production falls, with no new big ticket projects coming on-line to replace depleted wells, reserves fall. Increasing demand will then require increasing dependence on OPEC and soaring prices. Even if U.S. shale roars back in response, it can’t make up for an investment slump everywhere else. The Saudis can then set the price they want.

Western governments know this. They treat the Kingdom with kid gloves. In Kossovo, even while it was effectively an American protectorate, the Saudis were allowed to implant jihadi mullahs to create an ideological base for their Wahhabi Islam. In the process they “transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremists and a pipeline for jihadists.” Kossovo now sends more recruits to ISIS than any nation in Europe: 314 identified to date from a tiny country.

Kossovo is not alone. Wiki-Leaks found that the Saudi consulate in New Delhi had 140 imams on its payroll—and Indian Muslims lament the erosion of the tolerant Islam that was indigenous to their country.


In Washington, efforts to disclose the role of the Saudis in the 9-11 attacks, laid out in 28 still secret pages of the 9-11 Commission Report, are still stalled by counter-lobbying from the Saudi Government—although some of its representatives have previously asserted they have nothing to hide and would welcome the release of the documents.

So cheaper oil, even oil below $50, has not freed the U.S. from the security threats of oil’s monopoly over global transportation, while it has threatened to continue (or even exacerbate) the escalating disruption of global climate stemming from continued reliance on oil and other fossil fuels.

The Saudi Strategy to extend oil’s hegemony seems to be gathering steam.

But technology and politics are hinting there is a pathway to a world Beyond Oil. Recent months have been full of breakthroughs among advocates of clean transportation technologies like EV’s. The biggest splash was Elon Musk’s staggering 400,000 early orders for the launch of his Model 3. But significant new opportunities for EV’s were also signaled by the declaration by Indian Energy Minister Piyush Goyal that he wanted a national goal of complete electrification of the Indian motor vehicle fleet by 2030! The German government, its market lagging the rest of Europe in EU sales, committed $1.4 billion to catch up. The Austrian Ministry of Agriculture and Environment is working on a plan that would ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2020. Lawmakers in the lower house of the Dutch Parliament approved a motion in March that would ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars five years later.

Quote
These kinds of policy support for a more rapid transition to cleaner, non-petroleum based transportation choices matter—a lot.

Indeed, even if clean transportation vehicles have higher sticker prices than diesel or gasoline engines, their positive impact on future oil prices makes them a very good deal for oil importers like the EU, the U.S., India and China. A recent study by Cambridge Econometrics, Oil Market Futures, concluded that investing in clean transportation could help head off the next oil price spike. It also found that without such leadership, oil prices could easily reach $130 by 2050, even though most of the U.S. shale reserves would become profitable again once prices reach $80. Importantly, it estimated public policies to encourage reduced reliance on oil could save $33 trillion in transportation spending over the decade from 2020-2030.

What is lacking, particularly in the U.S. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4),  is a robust public conversation about breaking oil’s monopoly and replacing it with cleaner transportation. While states on the West Coast and in the Northeast push for lower oil dependence and the Obama Administration works on fuel economy standards, the oil and auto industries are gearing up a massive political assault on these efforts. Oil companies are pouring tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions into California legislative efforts. The President has done little to make the fight to get off oil a clear priority for his final year in office. Donald Trump, of course, thinks the answer is simply to drill even more wells, precisely the strategy that has left us vulnerable to the Russians and Saudis today.

But one intriguing idea has been offered up—that the next president should set up a National Commission to investigate the manipulation of the global oil market by exporters like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran. The idea was offered by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a coalition of business and national security leaders. SAFE’s goal is not so much to discover new conspiracies—OPEC conducts its market manipulation in the broad light of day and economists have agreed for decades that in a competitive oil market, prices would be far lower.

But what has been lacking is a mechanism to focus public attention on the problem and the solution—ensuring that Americans have genuine transportation choices rather than being forced to fuel up with gasoline, diesel or jet fuel all derived from crude oil. SAFE’s proposed OPEC Commission could serve that function, forcing Washington to address the problem. The first Congressional support for the idea came from some interesting sources: Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franks, Minnesota Democrat Colin Peterson and Donald Trump’s own energy advisor, North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer. (Trump himself did not embrace the idea, nor have either of the Democratic Presidential candidates).

So right now the Saudi bet is paying off—now it’s up to oil importing nations like the U.S. to decide if they want to be whipsawed by $100 oil (or higher) yet one more time—or if they will embrace clean transportation, save trillions, defang Russia and the Wahhabis, with pollution free alternatives to oil.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/31/saudi-oil-monopoly/

Agelbert COMMENT: Step one is to get rid of the "subsidies" for any and all fossil fuel exploration, exploitation and products from the well to the refinery to the gas station. There is absolutely no reason why we should dig our own grave supporting these polluting welfare queens.

Senator Sanders, now running for President, has repeatedly submitted legislation to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies over the last decade.

ALL the subsidy money hitherto earmarked for dirty energy MUST be spent on Renewable energy Infrastructure.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 02, 2016, 09:30:59 pm
Sanders Touts Fracking Ban as Clinton Pushes Renewables Plan Just Days Before California Primary

Lorraine Chow | June 2, 2016 1:25 pm

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are ramping up their green bona fides before the Golden State’s crucial Democratic primary Tuesday. The Democratic presidential candidates recently elaborated their national energy plans, with Sanders calling for a nationwide ban on fracking and Clinton pledging to use federal lands to enable the nation’s transition to more renewable energy.


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2Fbernie_hillary_750.jpg&hash=4d7b0f57cac6156f203f2707880c4d00a5cbca55)

Bernie Sanders
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“If elected president, we will not need state-by-state, county-by-county action, because we are going to ban fracking in 50 states in this country,” the Vermont Senator said at a press conference in Spreckels, California. “I hope very much that Monterey County will continue the momentum that makes it clear that fracking is not safe, is not what we want for our kids.”


He also called Clinton out for being weak on fracking regulations. The former Secretary of State has been attacked for her enthusiasm for fracking and natural gas, and for saying at a December 2014 New York City speech before the League of Conservation Voters, “If we are smart about this and put in place the right safeguards, natural gas can play an important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner energy economy.”

“Secretary Clinton and I obviously have many, many differences of opinions on many issues, but on the issue of fracking, our differences of opinion are pretty profound,” he said. “I think it is too late for regulation. I think fracking ought to be banned in America.”

During his speech, Sanders said that the Democratic Party as a whole should also adopt a fracking ban on its platform.

“I would hope the Democratic Party makes it clear that it has the guts to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them that their short-term profits are not more important than the health of our children or the future of our planet,” he said.

https://youtu.be/U2iKxIxhzQU

Sanders said he will be fighting Clinton all the way to the Democratic National Convention in late July, even though at this point it is mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination based on pledged delegates alone.

However, as Grist noted, even if he loses the nomination, one of the candidate’s biggest contributions is pulling Clinton and the party to the left. Additionally, as the publication observed, he was recently awarded five out of 15 slots on the all-important Democratic Party Platform Drafting Committee, ensuring that his environmental and progressive legacy will live on if he doesn’t win.

Sanders’s candidates include academic and political activist Cornel West, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, Arab American Institute head James Zogby, Native American activist Deborah Parker and climate activist Bill McKibben.


Hillary Clinton

“Now, as we work to combat climate change and build America into the world’s clean energy superpower, our public lands can once again play a key role in unlocking the resources we need,” Clinton wrote in an editorial in the Mercury News published Wednesday.

She continued, “We can accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy by increasing renewable energy generation on public lands and offshore waters tenfold within a decade.” 

According to her campaign website, Clinton has set a goal to generate enough renewable energy to power every home in the country. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)

“To help meet this goal, Clinton will expand energy production on public lands and waters ten-fold within ten years of taking office, while reforming federal fossil fuel leasing,” the site states.

Clinton, who has a narrow two-point lead over Sanders in California, recently received a rare endorsement from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)’s Action Fund, the first time the NRDC has backed a presidential candidate.

“Hillary Clinton is an environmental champion   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6) with the passion, experience and savvy to build on President Obama’s environmental legacy,” Rhea Suh, president of the NRDC Action fund, said. “More than any other candidate running, Hillary Clinton understands the environmental challenges America faces, and her approach to solving them is grounded in the possibility and promise our democracy affords.”

Michael Brune, Sierra Club’s executive director, also praised Clinton’s environmental stewardship plan, calling it a “huge step forward that would build on the progress President Obama has made to keep our cherished public lands public.”

He said that Clinton’s proposal pushes for reforms of oil and gas leasing programs, and “ends the debate once and for all surrounding offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic.”

“This detailed, specific plan also reaffirms our belief that everyone should have the same opportunities to enjoy and explore our parks, and boosts the American outdoor economy that creates jobs and generates billions of dollars. Additionally, Clinton is committing to protect our forests and expanding the resources available to fight devastating wildfires,” Brune added.

“We applaud this proposal that makes conservation central to Clinton’s campaign and offers powerful solutions to protect our treasured lands and make them more accessible and available for generations to come.”

The Sierra Club has not endorsed a presidential candidate.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/02/sanders-clinton-california/

Comment Thread:


agelbert  • 7 hours ago 

Hillary Clinton is a friend of the fossil fuel industry, their polluting practices and their welfare queen subsisdies, every bit as much as Donald Trump is.

Senator Sanders has repeatedly submitted legislation over the last decade to eliminate the welfare queens subsides we-the-people are saddled with on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

Senator Sanders is credible on Renewable energy and reducing pollution from fossil fuels through the elimination of subsidies and a ban on Fracking.

Hillary Clinton is Trump in drag.
 
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Rob Brown > agelbert  • 7 hours ago 

agelbert,

I'm not sure I quite agree with your last sentence! Literary fluorishes are always welcome but...... Otherwise you are making fair comments!
 
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agelbert > Rob Brown  • 6 hours ago 

I just couldn't resist. You are right, of course. There are differences between Trump and Clinton.

But, as far as what needs to be done to provide a viable biosphere, Sanders has the track record and credibility to do it and both Clinton and Trump do not.
 
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Edit


agelbert  • 5 hours ago 

“The Future of U.S. Climate Policy: Coal, Carbon Markets and the Clean Air Act.” - U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse October 29, 2014

“Pollution-driven climate change hurts our economy, damages our infrastructure and harms public health,” he told his audience. “However, none of these costs are factored into the price of the coal or oil that’s burned to release this carbon. The big oil and coal companies have offloaded those costs onto society. Economics 101 tells us that’s a market failure; in the jargon, that negative externalities are inefficient. If a company participates in an activity that causes harm, it should have to compensate those harmed.”

“By making carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually,” he continued. “By making carbon pollution free, we fix the game, favoring polluters over newer and cleaner technologies that harvest the wind, sun and waves. Corporate polluters, not bearing the costs of their products, are in effect cheating their competitors.”

http://ecowatch.com/2014/10/29...

Cummulative subsidies pie chart:
http://www.createaforum.com/ga...
 
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agelbert  • 6 hours ago 

Hillary Clinton REFUSES to support legislation to eliminate fossil fuels. Senator Sanders has repeatedly introduced legislation to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, advocated for Fracking and sweetheart deals for U.S. Oil and Gas corporations to to several countries. Senator Sanders has been consistently calling for a ban on Fracking.

Senator Sanders cares about we-the-people. Hillary Clinton does not.

Reflections From Below The Fossil Subsidy Iceberg

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/...
 
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agelbert  • 6 hours ago 

01/30/2015 12:47 PM

Fossil Fuel Subsidies Finally Trending Down, But Not In US  :>(

SustainableBusiness.com News

Now that deep sea oil drilling projects are being cancelled across the world because of low petroleum prices, governments should use this opportunity to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

And at least 27 countries are doing so, they say. It started in 2013, when fossil subsidies declined by $27 billion to $548 billion, while renewable energy support rose $11 billion to $96.5 billion. The process is accelerating with low oil prices.  

"In the absence of subsidies, all of the main renewable energy technologies would be competitive with oil-fired plants," says Faith Birol, Chief Economist at IEA.  

IEA calculates that for every $1 that subsidizes renewable energy, $6 is spent to subsidize fossil fuels - precious funds that could be used for sustainable development.  

Countries cutting subsides range from Mexico to Germany, from Morocco to Malaysia, mostly in the form of higher gas prices - everyone except the US, as usual! There's no need to subsidize fossil fuel consumption when prices are so low, saving governments lots of money and leveling the playing field for renewable energy.  

India, for example, has been spending 2.2% of GDP on fossil subsidies to keep electric and fuel prices artificially low.  

Fossil Fuel Subsidies US 

Countries need to stop providing subsidies to stoke exploration and production - amounting to about $88 billion last year. The UK, for example, is considering incentives for drilling in the North Sea, and the US - the biggest subsidizer - has a new offshore oil leasing plan. 

IEA has been fervently calling for an end to fossil subsides - that alone, would reduce global emissions 13% - while making it much easier for renewable sources to compete. It would also reduce air and water pollution and free up funding for the Green Climate Fund.  

Efforts to cut emissions by using more renewable energy can't do the job if fossil fuel use keeps growing, says IEA. If the status quo continues, global energy demand will rise 37% and carbon emissions 20% by 2040. That would lead to a 3.6°C (6.5°F) temperature rise - making catastrophic sea level rise, polar ice cap melt, water shortages and other severe effects inevitable.  

To get fossil subsidies down faster, the Center for American Progress is promoting "SPARC Bonds," which would be repaid with savings from reduced subsidies. Read more:

Website: www.americanprogress.org/issue...

http://www.sustainablebusiness...
 
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agelbert  • 6 hours ago 

SNIPPET from an article by Bill Ritter, Colorado’s 41st governor.

Fossil fuels enjoy a variety of targeted tax benefits as well as MLPs. Denying the same mix to renewable energy investors perpetuates federal policies that have long picked fossil fuels as the winners. The PTC/ITC and MLPs should not be an either/or issue. Both belong in an intelligent mix of tax policies that create more robust market competition on a more level playing field.

In addition, opening MLPs to renewable-energy investment is consistent with the "all of the above" energy strategy advocated both by President Obama and the Republican Party. I am confident that as various renewable energy technologies become ready for full-scale commercialization, they will compete very well.

In the absence of access to MLPs, private investors and state governments are creating other ways to capitalize emerging clean-energy technologies. Renewable-energy bonds, green-energy banks, crowdfunding and "yield cos" are among recent innovations.

Nevertheless, a great deal of private capital remains sidelined, waiting for stable and equitable federal energy policies. If we really believe in letting all market-ready energy options slug it out in robust competition, then we shouldn’t ask that federal policies fix the fight. But that is what happens when renewable-energy investors are barred from the tax incentives that investors in fossil fuels enjoy.

Bill Ritter served as Colorado’s 41st governor. He is currently the director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.

http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2...
 
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agelbert  • 6 hours ago 

Unnatural Gas: How Government Made Fracking Profitable (and Left Renewables Behind)

To paraphrase Samuel Clemens in regard to some of his experiences with people that make holes in the ground to get stuff out of and sell to us for "profit", a FRACKING site is a hole the ground with a bunch of LIARS on top.

Here's an article the fossil fuelers will disagree with and ridicule as "garden variety" or "irrelevant" or disdain with some other pejorative bit of puffery.

The only part of the article the fossil fuel funded propagandists will agree with is that the Oil and Gas industry ACTUALLY gave solar power technology development a boost back in the 70s because PV supplied power to very remote locations the fossil fuelers tend be located for new profit over planet piggery.

The FULL story of how we-the-people have supported these fossil fuel and nuclear welfare queens is there from the start until this day. The appearance of fossil duel industry profitability ignores our tax money for research and continuous subsidy.

Fossil fuelers have an amazing ability to ignore, not just externalized costs, but the giveaways from we-the-people! They have the gall to compute those subsidies as part of the ROI (Return On Investment). That's a blatant accounting falsehood. Without subsides they are not profitable, period. But the fossil fuelers will continue with their fantasies, come hell or high water. So it goes.

SNIPPPET 1:
Quote
The bias against renewable funding and support is clear. Recent analysis found that over the first fifteen years an industry receives a subsidy, nuclear energy received an average of $3.3 billion, oil and gas averaged $1.8 billion,Fto and renewables averaged less than $0.4 billion.

Renewables received less than one-quarter of the support of oil and gas and less than one-eighth of the support that nuclear received during the early years of development, when strong investment can make a big difference. Yet even with this disparity, more of our energy supply now comes from renewables than from nuclear, which indicates the strength of renewables as a potential energy source.

SNIPPET 2:
Quote
The President Carter supported momentum behind renewable development came to a rapid halt as soon as Ronald Reagan was elected president. Not only did he remove the solar panels atop the White House, he also gutted funding for solar development and poured billions into developing a dirty synthetic fuel that was never brought to market.

Unnatural Gas: How Government Made Fracking Profitable (and Left Renewables Behind)

http://www.dissentmagazine.org...
 
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agelbert  • 6 hours ago 

The quagmire that faces industrialized civilization is that much of it was built using "cheap" fossil fuels which were, not only subsidized directly, but in nearly all cases the externalities were never factored in so the damage and costs associated with fossil fuel were lugged to the general population/wildlife/environment.

The other important thing is energy, especially artificially cheap energy, acts as an enabler of other resources.

This means if it is cheap to procure energy then the costs of getting other resources lessens and when you reduce the price of any commodity you encourage its consumption. As consumption increases you not only encourage more wasteful consumption but you also make it viable to mine big fields that could only be economic under the current regime of fossil fuels.

Think of all those gold mines or other rare metal mines that need to be treated with harsh chemicals. None of those projects would be viable if there was no "cheap" energy so this is another hidden associated cost of fossil fuels.
 
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agelbert  • 7 hours ago 

Legislation to End Fossil Fuel Tax Breaks Introduced by Sen. Sanders, Rep. Ellison Friday, November 22, 2013

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 – As House and Senate budget negotiators look for ways to lower deficits,

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) today introduced legislation to eliminate tax loopholes and subsidies that support the oil, gas and coal industries.

The End Polluter Welfare Act of 2013 would remove tax breaks, close loopholes, end taxpayer-funded fossil fuel research and prevent companies from escaping liability for spills or deducting cleanup costs. Under current law, these subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers more than $100 billion in the coming decade.

The White House budget proposal for next year calls for eliminating several of the same provisions that the legislation by Sanders and Ellison would end.

"At a time when fossil fuel companies are racking up record profits, it is time to end the absurdity of American taxpayers providing massive subsidies to these hugely profitable fossil fuel corporations," Sanders said.

"The five biggest oil companies made $23 billion in the third quarter of 2013 alone. They don’t need any more tax giveaways," Ellison said. "We should invest in the American people by creating good jobs and ending cuts to food assistance instead of throwing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars at one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the world." 

The five most profitable oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhilips) together made more than $1 trillion in profits over the past decade. 

The Sanders and Ellison legislation is supported by environmental groups including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International and 350.org. 

The fiscal watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, which has worked for nearly two decades to eliminate wasteful energy subsidies, also supports the bills.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/...

Hillary Clinton was silent as DEATH on the above legislation which failed due to Republican pandering to the Fossil Fuel Industry. Hillary Clinton did NOT, and DOES NOT, support the elimination of fossil fuel industry welfare queen subsidies.
 
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agelbert  • 7 hours ago 

Here's the main problem I have with the defense of the fossil fuel energy status quo as if it was something reasonably priced, economical, viable and sane as opposed to the continuous fossil fuel industry disngenuous insistence on claiming that renewable energy is "too costly and/or unreliable":

Fossil fuel energy was never, and I mean never, cost effective.

In a sane society that doesn't pretend you can add and subtract whatever factors you wish in order to come up with a profit that will attract investment capital, you figure in all the costs to human society.

From the moment John D. Rockefeller started flushing gasoline down the rivers in Pennsylvania in the late 19th century (it was a waste product then) after refining crude oil for lubricants and lamp oil, huge costs were being foisted on society.

Coal is even worse. Fossil fuelers pretend all that is water under the bridge. Fossil fuelers pretend all the benefits of modern society are an acceptable tradeoff.

Well, they aren't. The only premise that is logical and sane now, with the continued damage that adds insult to injury to the biosphere we all depend on, is to admit that fossil fuels were never a viable, cost effective, sustainable source of energy for mankind and press on to renewable energy simply because there is no other alternative.

A sane person would not argue this isn't real and those who defend fossil fuel energy are not in la la land in regard to the actual cost of these poisons,

The subsidies the fossil-fuel (and nuclear) industry receive — and have received for many years — make their product "affordable." Those subsidies take many forms, but the most significant are their "externalities." Externalities are real costs, but they are foisted off on the community instead of being paid by the companies that caused them.[18]

Paul Epstein, director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, has examined the health and environmental impacts of coal, including: mining, transportation, combustion in power plants and the impact of coal’s waste stream. He found that the "life cycle effects of coal and its waste cost the American public $333 billion to over $500 billion dollars annually". These are costs the coal industry is not paying and which fall to the community in general. Eliminating that subsidy would dramatically increase the price of coal-fired electricity.[18]

IEA position on subsidies

According to IEA (2011) energy subsidies artificially lower the price of energy paid by consumers, raise the price received by producers or lower the cost of production. ,"Fossil fuels subsidies costs generally outweigh the benefits.

Subsidies to renewables and low-carbon energy technologies can bring long-term economic and environmental benefits".[19] In November 2011, an IEA report entitled Deploying Renewables 2011 said "subsidies in green energy technologies that were not yet competitive are justified in order to give an incentive to investing into technologies with clear environmental and energy security benefits".

The IEA's report disagreed with claims that renewable energy technologies are only viable through costly subsidies and not able to produce energy reliably to meet demand. "A portfolio of renewable energy technologies is becoming cost-competitive in an increasingly broad range of circumstances, in some cases providing investment opportunities without the need for specific economic support," the IEA said, and added that "cost reductions in critical technologies, such as wind and solar, are set to continue."[20]

Fossil-fuel consumption subsidies were $409 billion in 2010, oil products claim half of it. Renewable-energy subsidies were $66 billion in 2010 and will reach according to IEA $250 billion by 2035. Renewable energy is subsidized in order to compete in the market, increase their volume and develop the technology so that the subsidies become unnecessary with the development.

Eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies could bring economic and environmental benefits. Phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies by 2020 would cut primary energy demand 5%. Since the start of 2010, at least 15 countries have taken steps to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

I say they should take the subsidy money presently assigned to fossil fuels and transfer all of it to renewable energy subsidies.

Fossil fuel was never a viable energy option for mankind. We cannot afford to burn fossil fuels, period.
 
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agelbert  • 7 hours ago 

Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S

What is a fossil fuel subsidy?

A fossil fuel subsidy is any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers. There are a lot of activities under this simple definition—tax breaks and giveaways, but also loans at favorable rates, price controls, purchase requirements and a whole lot of other things.

How much money does the U.S. government give oil, gas and coal companies?

In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $14 billion to $52 billion annually, while even efforts to remove small portions of those subsidies have been defeated in Congress, as shown in the graphic below 

http://priceofoil.org/content/...

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-f...
 
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agelbert  • 5 hours ago 

Here's some more real world science that motivates the efforts Senator Sanders. He is the only presidential candidate that understands the gravity of our situation and will to do something to lessen the impact of catastrophic climate change.

quote:The troposphere is warmed in part through absorption of radiation by H2O and CO2, the stratosphere is warmed, indeed created, through absorption of radiation by O3. unquote

quote: the absorption of terrestrial radiation is dominated by triatomic molecules – O3 in the UV, H2O, CO2 and others in the IR (infrared) because it so happens that triatomic molecules have rotational and vibrational modes that can easily be excited by radiation with wavelengths in the IR. These molecules are present in tiny concentrations (see Table 1.2) but play a key role in the absorption of terrestrial radiation (see Fig.2.6). They are known as Greenhouse gases.

This is the fundamental reason why atmospheric radiation may be so vulnerable to the human-induced changes in composition shown in Fig.1.3. p46. unquote

quote: The most important negative feedback regulating the temperature of the planet is the dependence of the outgoing longwave radiation on temperature. p53. unquote

IR (infrared) is longwave radiation.

THE HOTTER IT GETS, the less effective the negative feedback mechanisms that were hitherto keeping a cooling balance on our planet are. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the greater the positive feedback mechanisms heating our planet are.

THAT is why it is called a runaway greenhouse; the hotter it gets, the faster the rate of heating increases.
 
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agelbert > agelbert  • 5 hours ago 

NOTE to EchoWatch AND Disqus. Every single time I have made the above post, it has been flagged as spam. I have not place a link to the studies because this web site has link bounce software that seems to be triggered after about four posts. I have filled my "quota" today, I guess.

This link bounce practice is un-American. Please stop it. In a couple of hours, if this post is still here, I will post the link to the studies irrefutably connecting GHG(s) in general, and CO2 in particular, as THE cause of global warming.

The fossil fuel industry is the culprit. They must go or we will.
 
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agelbert > agelbert  • 16 minutes ago 

Well and good. The post explaining the runaway greenhouse hasn't been attacked as "spam".

Here are the links the data came from:

Absorption frequencies for energy transfer and info on water and CO2 molecules as well as uv energy.

http://gs105cocc.wikispaces.co...

1. http://www.3sc.net/solarm/solr...

2. http://www.grida.no/files/publ...

3. http://www.grida.no/publicatio...

4. http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.go...

5. http://paoc.mit.edu/labweb/not...

6 .http://paoc.mit.edu/labweb/notes/chap...
 
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karen orlando
  • 6 hours ago 

Quite a few people listed in this article like bill mckibben and Michael brune aren't terrifically impressive on climate progress as both are antifracking and anti natural gas. Clearly Bernie is their candidate because his climate platform is also against nuclear. Seems backward thinking to me but that's their choice. Clinton has a briefing fact sheet which doesn't appear to be anti natural gas.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com...
 
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agelbert > karen orlando  • 5 hours ago 

Talk is cheap. The WALK provides incriminating evidence.

Emails Confirm Hillary Clinton Used Her State Department Role to Press Countries to Embrace Fracking

Posted on May 28, 2016

SNIPPET:

The documents also reveal the department’s role in bringing foreign dignitaries to a fracking site in Pennsylvania, and its plans to make Poland a “laboratory for testing whether US success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country,” particularly in Europe, where local governments had expressed opposition and in some cases even banned fracking.

The campaign included plans to spread the drilling technique to China, South Africa, Romania, Morocco, Bulgaria, Chile, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia, and Ukraine.

In 2014, Mother Jones reporter Mariah Blake used diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks and other records to uncover how Clinton “sold fracking to the world.”

The emails obtained by The Intercept through a separate Freedom of Information Act request provide a new layer of detail.

https://theintercept.com/2016/...
 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 04, 2016, 08:28:42 pm
(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/ambiente-01.jpg?w=529&h=237)

Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment will be in bookstores this Tuesday, June 7.

Emily Wurth, Food& Water Watch act@fwwatch.org
 
Fracking isn't new. Oil and gas industry influence isn't new. But do you ever wonder how we got into this mess?

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter's new book — Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment — exposes the handful of corporations, financial institutions and individuals that have shaped the policies that keep us reliant on dirty energy sources. With the same forces in play, learning this history is critical to finally moving beyond fracking and fossil fuels.

Our current crisis is no accident. It took over 100 years for the oil and gas industry to accumulate the power they still wield today.

In a recent example, ExxonMobil’s own researchers were aware of the devastating climate impact of fossil fuel extraction and consumption in the late 1970s. Despite what it knew, ExxonMobil has spent $31 million since 1998 to fund climate-denier think tanks and politicians, while keeping its research out of the hands of the concerned public.

The good news: We've already seen that the growing grassroots movement can overcome the biggest and the baddest efforts of the dirty energy industry. Communities are fighting back, and in a big way — and it’s been nothing short of inspiring.

We put together this video to give a taste of what you’ll find in Frackopoly:

Take a look at the video, then sign the petition to stop the Frackopoly:

https://youtu.be/BeGmMhfIJ4E

Thanks for taking action,

Emily Wurth
 Water Program Director
 Food & Water Watch
 ewurth(at)fwwatch(dot)org

Emily Wurth,Food& Water Watch act@fwwatch.org
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 05, 2016, 07:28:54 pm
The PERFIDY of the Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-050616182206.jpeg&hash=7e0c2b801ff7e6293beeeb961ef1b91f53ad994e)

EIA  Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Power Friendly Charts Consistently Low Ball Renewable Energy

These charts by the fossil fuel friendly EIA severely understate the Renewable energy share of U.S. energy consumption BECAUSE they ONLY measure REPORTED energy use, not NEGAWATTS (off grid, non-metered and efficiency based energy demand destruction). The Rocky Mountain Institute has reported that over one third of all global rural electrical production is now Renewable Energy based.

So, why do I present these charts? Because even the EIA cannot disguise how Renewable Energy is taking market share away from the fossil fuel industry (although they do their level best to try).

Notice the change from 2012 through 2015 and you will see evidence of the Renewable Energy caused fossil fuel demand destruction. This is also the main cause of the persistently low price of oil and gas driving, at last count, over 60 oil and gas polluters into bankruptcy.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fenergyexplained%2Fimages%2Fcharts%2Fenergy_consumption_by_source_2012-large.jpg&hash=189a1821728e18a06838572c5d78b19063284f99) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fenergyexplained%2Fimages%2Fcharts%2Fenergy_consumption_by_source_2015-large.jpg&hash=6c70e2d0ed4d559fd41846ea9cdeff5aba8c6332)

AS you can see, our loyal servants in the EIA were magnanimous enough to admit ONE PERCENT increase for Renewable Energy for 2012 through 2015. Not only is that a bad joke, but excluding coal, it is downright embarrassingly defensive of the polluters from the fossil fuel AND nuclear power industries. WHY?

First,
despite the MASSIVE economic disruptions during that time and the MASSIVE increase in Renewable energy capacity during that time period, let us ass-u-me, as the charts claim, that the total energy consumption increased 2.7 quadrillion btu from 2012 through 2015. They drop 2% off of coal but, despite  some closings of nuclear power plants, ADD a percent to nuclear power! But it gets better.

Second, they REFUSE to lower the percentage for Petroleum while adding 2 percent to fossil "natural" (i.e. FRACKED) gas. The disclaimer about "the sum of components not adding to 100%", even though in the 2015 chart they DO add up, is ridiculous.  They don't even update their boilerplate. These people have no shame.

Third, they have the unadulterated brass to claim, not just that there was a ONE PERCENT ONLY increase in the Renewable Energy share of consumption rom 2012 through 2015, but that WIND POWER added a mere 2 percent of the Renewable energy mix in FOUR YEARS!

Now take a look at 2014's fossil fuel and nuclear power friendly EIA chart next to the 2015 chart. They are DESPERATE to hide the massive increase in Renewables.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fenergyexplained%2Fimages%2Fcharts%2Fenergy_consumption_by_source_2014-large.jpg&hash=018461d22f7fb7b860ebb81568cd02b69acd0e53) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fenergyexplained%2Fimages%2Fcharts%2Fenergy_consumption_by_source_2015-large.jpg&hash=6c70e2d0ed4d559fd41846ea9cdeff5aba8c6332)

2015 was a banner year for BOTH wind and solar power. 2015 saw massive demand destruction for fossil fuels causing over 60 oil and gas bankruptcies and cratering price of fossil fuels. Renewable energy use INCREASED while USE of fossil fuels due to a depressed economy and added Renewable infrastructure, DECREASED.

YET, according to our EIA bean counters, there was NO INCREASE in the Renewable energy SHARE of consumption OR A DECREASE in the oil and gas energy share from 2014 to 2015! To make it look good, they took one percent away from petroleum and handed it to "natural" FRACKED gas. LOL!  Renewable Energy consumption is allegedly STILL only 10% after a BANNER YEAR!

BULLSHIT!

The EIA admits, inaccurately (remember they count only REPORTED energy from utilities, not negawatts), that 0.1 quadrillion Btu of Renewable Energy  was added. Point one quadrillion Btu DOES NOT CUT IT for a banner year in both wind and solar. They give solar a mere  2% increase and give wind, which REALLY jumped in 2015, a mere ONE PERCENT increase in the Renewable Energy mix.

BULLSHIT!

The PRICE of oil and gas is not low because we are "consuming them at the same percentage"; it's low because we are consuming them at a LOWER percentage. The oil and gas pigs are not known for charitable gestures.

The PRICE of Renewable Energy infrastructure is coming down from mass production and installation. The ratio of Renewable energy installation to fossil fuel based infrastructure new installation in 2015 (which has continued into this year) is 70 to one. 

When the EV market takes off in 2017, the end will come quickly for the fossil fuel industry because they cannot make a profit when over 50% of the refinery product is for transportation fuels they cannot sell. And even without the loss of the polluting fuels product profit, the fossil fuel industry would self destruct without all their subsidy swag. But the EIA plays dumb about the all the pollution costs that we-the-people are paying.
 

Renewable energy is easily already over 25% of total Energy consumption in the U.S.,
though the EIA will never admit it until they "revise" the data a couple of decades from now.  ;)

Renewable Energy Growth Blows EIA Forecasts Out of the Water, Again

by Ben Jervey, originally published by DeSmog Blog | Mar 14, 2016
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-03-14/renewable-energy-growth-blows-eia-forecasts-out-of-the-water-again

EIA 2040 Forecast Understates Renewables, Policy, Contingencies
April 20th, 2015 by Sandy Dechert

MONEY QUOTES:


So far more possibilities exist than those indicated by the narrow range of assumptions that EIA has included in this latest assessment. Respected voices are saying that America can, and should, get 100% of its energy from renewables by 2050, that 80% would be good enough, or 100% by 2100, or that 50% is attainable in the next 35 years, and so on. EIA’s limited focus can support none of these.

The organization claims in Figure 4 to cover “scenarios that encompass a wide range of future crude oil price paths.” Great to have such a diverse oil perspective, but the exploration of renewable and other scenarios seems puny by comparison.

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/20/eia-2040-forecast-understates-renewables-policy-contingencies/

EIA responds that it never told a lie, fudged the stats or gamed the predicted numbers to favor fossil fuels and low ball Renewable Energy.

Quote
Turning to projections, some critics have argued that EIA's recent AEO Reference case projections have consistently understated the adoption of wind and solar power.

A review of past performance of EIA's projections does not offer much support for this argument, particularly when it is recognized that AEO Reference case projections deliberately incorporate existing laws and regulations that are in effect at the time the Reference case projections are developed and do not attempt to forecast future policy decisions.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25512

Don't you just love that "does not offer much support for this argument"  pseudo erudite exercise in dismissive type fallacious debating techniques? Do all these fossil fuel tools go to the same school of double talk sophistry?

The above defense is ludicrous in the light of the FACT that their projections for fossil fuel use and nuclear power have CONSISTENTLY IGNORED the ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS (that the EPA has danced around and refused to try to enforce or over 30 years, even though they ARE on the books) that militate for a REDUCTION in the energy market share of fossil fuels and nuclear power.

NOT ONE closing of nuclear power plants was predicted by the EIA. Even the now vertiginous descent in coal use was NOT even remotely foreseen by these dirty energy defending tools, never mind the current descent in the demand for oil and gas (that they CONTINUE to low ball).

And now they want to talk about legislation as the "logical" basis for their grossly inaccurate Renewable Energy projections?   

The EIA can come up with all sorts of hemming and hawing excuses about inconsistent application of laws favoring Renewables, as if that had beans to do with the ACTUAL Renewables track record of their installation and use (which is what unbiased energy experts use to project future use and market share), but give fossil fuels and nuclear power the most rosy energy use projection scenario as the "prudent" and "most realistic" outlook...   

But the last paragraph in their response PLAINLY states WHO they are going to defend in their cherry picking energy bean counting (hint - dirty energy producers = industry stakeholders):
Quote

EIA continues to work with industry stakeholders to ensure its assumptions and analytic methodologies provide accurate data and appropriate projections for wind, solar, and other renewables. A more extensive review of EIA's data and projections for wind and solar technologies is available in a recent EIA report, Wind and Solar Data and Projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration: Past Performance and Ongoing Enhancements.

Principal contributors: Chris Namovicz

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25512

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-050616182935.png&hash=48c7067c6c5343f7e7c8c5220e0431cfc609e2ae)

Now you know why certain fossil fuelers love to quote the "reliability" of the energy use stats and projections from the EIA.

Have a nice day.

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing 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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 06, 2016, 02:40:50 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fthankyou.gif&hash=dddf44270b9e7683ff5cbcca041427744de34fe5) Thank you James Cromwell and John “J.G.” Hertzler of Star Trek fame and 17 area residents. These fine people know that there isn't any way we can live long and prosper if we keep burning fossil fuels.

https://youtu.be/Lw9sbdWIIag (https://youtu.be/Lw9sbdWIIag)

Star Trek Actors Arrested, Call on Gov. Cuomo to Boldly Go Beyond Fossil Fuels

Sandra Steingraber | June 6, 2016 12:52 pm

Early this morning on a hillside above Seneca Lake, actors James Cromwell and John “J.G.” Hertzler of Star Trek fame joined 17 area residents in an act of civil disobedience that is part of an ongoing citizen campaign against salt cavern gas storage.

While blockading the main entrance to the Crestwood compressor station, the two actors urged Gov. Cuomo to stand up to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for green-lighting an expansion of this fracked gas infrastructure project against overwhelming local opposition and for undermining the governor’s own stated commitment to a rapid transition to renewable energy.

Starting at 6:45 a.m. and continuing until their arrests by Schuyler County deputies shortly before 7:30 a.m., the protesters blocked all traffic from leaving and entering the facility, including two Crestwood tanker trucks. All 19 were transported to the Schuyler County sheriff’s department, charged with disorderly conduct, ticketed and released.

“The prettiest place I’ve ever seen is right here: the Finger Lakes region of New York … Governor Cuomo, we, the people, do not want to see these pristine lakes turned into cheap, contaminated, industrialized storage facilities for Crestwood and Con Ed. Stand with us, Governor!,” John Hertzler, 66, who played Klingon General Martok on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, said.

“Defend your own program for getting New York State off of fossil fuels and transitioned to renewable energy. FERC—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—seeks to keep us chained to the energy of the past and, in so doing, threatens our water, our lands, our safety and the very climate of this, our planet. Boldly go with us, Governor Cuomo, into a renewable energy future.”

Hertzler lives in the Finger Lakes region with his family in the town of Ulysses where he serves on the town board.

James Cromwell, 76, who played Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact and who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Farmer Arthur Hoggett in Babe, called on New Yorkers to join the We Are Seneca Lake movement.

“FERC-approved fracked gas infrastructure projects are taking over our entire state—from the crumbly salt caverns of Seneca Lake, where the gas will be stored, to the pipelines and compressor stations that devastate our farmlands, wetlands and maple groves, all the way to the burner tips of the natural gas-fired power plants that are planned for downstate,” he said. “
Quote
With all of New York under attack by the fossil fuel industry and by the rogue agency called FERC, all New Yorkers now need to stand up, stand together and say no.”

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2Fseneca_750.jpg&hash=30717eaa59e6a6d557b71422f7296589d53ae052)
Photo credit: We Are Seneca Lake

Referencing the films in which the two have appeared, protesters held banners and signs that read, “We Are Seneca Lake, Babe/And We Will Not Be FERC-ed” and “Trekkies Against Crestwood-Con Ed Boldly Going Toward Renewables.”

The total number of arrests in the 20-month-old We Are Seneca Lake civil disobedience campaign now stands at 604.

Crestwood’s methane gas storage expansion project was originally approved by FERC in October 2014 in the face of broad public opposition and unresolved questions about geological instabilities, fault lines and possible salinization of Seneca Lake, which serves as a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. In spite of near-unanimous citizen opposition, FERC’s last-minute permit extension on May 16 gave Crestwood’s Arlington subsidiary another two years to build out its natural gas storage facility.

Salt cavern storage accounts for only seven percent of total underground storage of natural gas in the U.S. but, since 1972, is responsible for 100 percent of the catastrophic accidents that has resulted in loss of life.

Crestwood also seeks to store two other products of fracking in Seneca Lake salt caverns—propane and butane (so-called Liquefied Petroleum Gases, LPG)—for which it is awaiting a decision by Gov. Cuomo’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2Fseneca3_750.jpg&hash=10a0c709cd0031c0c2f8230e7d27ad9b7e596915)
John Hertzler. Photo credit: We Are Seneca Lake

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecowatch.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2Fseneca2_750.jpg&hash=4e36458bf6b1bad129a85a8d7be5cc6c840a3e57)
James Cromwell. Photo credit: We Are Seneca Lake

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/06/star-trek-actors-arrested/ (http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/06/star-trek-actors-arrested/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 08, 2016, 07:26:36 pm
EIA talks construction cost, never mind what happens after it is built and DOES what it is DESIGNED to DO (i.e. GENERATE energy).  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

EIA: Constructing  ;) a natural gas plant is cheaper than other options

By Robert Walton | June 7, 2016
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300416161529.png&hash=7e65b1d0ab888d4250eab0ffe7403e18a942f2ed)


HAPPY TALK SNIPPET:
Quote

•The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently began collecting data on the cost to construct electric power generators, showing gas capacity to be the cheapest widely-used generation  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c) and wind (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) to be the least-expensive renewable resource.  ;)

•In 2013, the first year for which the agency collected data, natural gas generation on a capacity-weighted basis averaged $965/kW  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c) , compared with $1,895/kW for wind and $3,705/kW for solar.

•More than 7,400 MW of gas capacity was added that year, compared with 2,600 MW of solar and 860 MW of wind.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/eia-constructing-a-natural-gas-plant-is-cheaper-than-other-options/420453/

Agelbert NOTE: Doesn't that sound so nice and objective? That sweet talk about wind being the Cheapest Renewable Energy source is the set up for the sucker punch chart they rigged showing the "natural" gas power plants as MUCH "cheaper".  And WTF is the idea of limiting the COST of infrastructure to the initial construction costs? HELLO? Power Plants operate for at least THIRTY YEARS! It's BOLD FACED mendacity and disingenuous duplicity to claim one system is "cheaper" than another just from initial construction costs! Talk about PICKING WINNERS by excluding pollution costs after operation begins!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

And, by the way, it's 2016. What's with  the 2013 stats (2014 and 2015 were BOTH BANNER YEARS for wind that saw construction costs GO DOWN!) to try to make Gas Power Plants look good?

Then they have the brass to publish a ridiculous cost comparison chart excluding fossil fuel pollution costs!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The "capacity" talk is a deliberate conflation of construction costs with generation costs to pull the wool over your eyes. The EIA  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00) has no shame.  ANY study of capacity for ANY Renewable energy source in general, and wind in particular, evidences VAST more energy capacity than fossil fuel power plants BECAUSE the fuel is FREE.

What these fossil fuel friendly bastards in the EIA are doing here is going back to "high energy density" of hydrocarbons to justify a gamed "capacity".

In a sane world, the INSTANT you talk about energy density, you MUST talk about polluting products COSTS. If you don't, then you are cherry picking fossil fuels as WINNERS, PERIOD. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdrphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fcherry-picking.jpg&hash=c196a0ec409afacfa8f087d5a4556de272d44c6b)

HERE'S what the fossil fuel friendly EIA does not want YOU to know:

Quote
Wind energy is now as cheap as natural gas, and solar is getting close
And it's only getting cheaper.

BEC CREW  7 OCT 2015

Wind power is now comparable in price to fossil fuels, and solar is well on its way, according to a new report that confirms earlier predictions that renewables aren't just the best option for the environment - they’re unequivocally the smartest long-term investment you can make on energy.

The report, by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, found that in the second half of 2015, the global average cost of onshore wind energy will be $83 per megawatt-hour of electricity (which is down $2 from the first half of the year), and for thin film solar photovoltaics, the cost is $122 per megawatt-hour (down $7 in the past six months).
http://www.sciencealert.com/wind-energy-is-now-as-cheap-as-natural-gas-and-solar-is-getting-close


Quote
Natural Gas Health and Environmental Hazards

Natural gas power plants are significant air pollution sources, releasing hazardous air pollutants, global warming pollution and fine particulate matter.

Natural gas is worse than coal for global warming

While the smokestack emissions from gas-burning power plants are lower than coal, gas is worse because of the leakage from the wells to the pipelines and compressor stations to the end-uses -- since methane (the principle component of natural gas) is far more potent at heating the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (which is produced when coal or gas are burned).

The newest science on methane's global warming potential shows that it's far more potent than previously thought:

http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 09, 2016, 05:55:26 pm
Sierra Club Endorses Hillary Clinton

Allison Chin, Sierra Club | June 9, 2016 12:34 pm

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/09/sierra-club-endorses-hillary-clinton/ (http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/09/sierra-club-endorses-hillary-clinton/)

Agelbert COMMENT: Thank you Sierra Club, for paving the way for Hillary Clinton to remove any and all barriers to Fracking in the USA and the world, as she did during her tenure as Secretary of State.

We are also pleased that Victoria Nuland is President Hillary Clinton's pick for Secretary of State.

Thank you Sierra Club, for ensuring a huge increase in the price of fossil fuels (i.e. price shock bonanza!) from the war tensions that Victoria Nuland, neocon State Department queen of the "let's go to war with Russia" group will joyfully generate.

We are ready, willing and able to patriotically and in altruistic fashion (OF COURSE!), work arm in arm with the Clinton Administration to provide peace, prosperity and lots of cheap, clean energy to the world for the welfare of all humanity.


Signed,

Your Loyal Servants and Political Campaign Friends from Exxon, Schlumberger, Halliburton, etc. (you get the idea).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fquotes.lifehack.org%2Fmedia%2Fquotes%2Fquote-Albert-Camus-the-welfare-of-the-people-in-particular-102493_1.png&hash=f1662e70d144d45c860b4931cd77e84a1f442fa8)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 13, 2016, 07:49:50 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120616193700.png&hash=58cbcb664babb47b3064a341fc7227c773722390)

For those who can still add and subtract, the following FACTS about fossil fuel ERoEI thermodynamic efficiency (That is, the Fossil fuel ERoEI math, that Gail Tverberg and at least 54% of the Renewable Energy survey participants swear by, including Palloy, DELIBERATELY IGNORES THE FACT that, in the real world of the science of thermodynamics, Energy RETURN MINUS WASTE HEAT EQUALS work (as defined by physics) )  reveal the error of assuming fossil fuels have a higher ERoEI than Renewable Energy technologies.

The fossil fuel industry originated disingenuous trick is to FIRST hammer the "high energy density" (excluding waste heat, of course) Hess Law based thermodynamics into us while avoiding discussions of waste heat like the plague. When they have established the FALSE MEME that fossil fuels have a "higher energy density" than Renewable Energy technologies, they cleverly create a false equivalence between the cherry picked "higher" fossil fuels ERoEI and "higher" MONETARY Profits.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

Massive Fossil Fuel Industry Welfare Queen Subsides, COSTS to we-the-people, which are TOTALLY UNRELATED to ERoEI thermodynamics, ALWAYS make it to the "higher" MONETARY profits happy talk.  ;)

However, the SCC (social Cost of Carbon), like waste heat thermodynamics, never gets included in the fossil fuel ERoEI happy talk OR the false equivalence "higher" MONETARY Profits fossil fuel happy talk, even though ALL MONETARY INVESTMENT DECISIONS, on which energy sources to use, are based on ALL COSTS.

HELLO? Is anybody there?

If we are going to talk about how much MONEY to invest in an energy source, based on how much MONEY it will cost to DO THAT, and how much MONEY we can get in a RETURN on our IVESTMENT, it is customary (if you aren't Gail Tverberg doing the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdrphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fcherry-picking.jpg&hash=c196a0ec409afacfa8f087d5a4556de272d44c6b) bidding of the fossil fuel industry) to SUBTRACT all the COSTS of said energy source.
 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010216161405.jpeg&hash=30019c75d68ced7a1be7edcb92daabd1510873a2)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 13, 2016, 11:52:41 pm
Quote
AG: Energy RETURN EQUALS work (as defined by physics) MINUS WASTE HEAT)

Wrong again.   :emthdown:
Waste Heat is what it says it is - waste, it doesn't do work by definition.


Instead of wasting electrons on this load of crap, you should learn some Physics first.

Palloy reaches for some of these, AGAIN:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yellowdoggereldemocrat.org%2Fimages%2F20071010_GraspingAtStrawsSign.jpg&hash=654a39eeb09b96607cab97cefabc4f842ba4d0fb)

I apologize for the confusing statement about waste heat. I was trying to say ENERGY RETURN should EXCLUDE WASTE HEAT because WASTE HEAT doesn't contribute to Energy Return, but it came out a bit mangled. I suppose you will want me to study English too. ::)

So, let me fix the phrase so you can understand it: Energy RETURN MINUS WASTE HEAT EQUALS work (as defined by physics).

The old "dismissal" type fallacious argument technique, complete with aspersions to the opponent's level of intelligence and education is really tired, but thanks for the great laugh, Palloy.   

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-050616182935.png&hash=48c7067c6c5343f7e7c8c5220e0431cfc609e2ae)
Here's to waste heat electrons   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191456.bmp&hash=a239c2fd76d20d142f1c54b961e22ebd0d2a4808)

And as to your laughable claim to know what you are talking about, you just exposed yourself as being an abysmally, and embarrassingly, ignorant example of one BESOTTED (your adjective for me is far more applicable to you  ;D) with fossil fuel love. 

What you just said about WASTE HEAT is RIDICULOUS!

WHY? Because, although it is true that WORK excludes WASTE HEAT because WASTE HEAT DOESN'T DO WORK, ENERGY RETURN, as calculated by the fossil fuel industry cherry pickers, ASSUMES that WASTE HEAT CONTRIBUTES to the "HIGH" ENERGY DENSITY. You are trying to talk your way around that.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

It's just MORE science challenged BULLSHIT from Palloy, the biosphere math challenged mathematician.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)

How stupid can you be to claim WASTE HEAT isn't figured in the ENERGY in ALL the enthalpy of formation tables known to thermodynamics?

ALL HEAT is ENERGY. THAT is where the fossil fuel ERoEI MATH gets it's BASIC DATA. 

ONLY when it cannot do MECHANICAL WORK is it CLASSIFIED as "WASTE", you ignorant, double talking fossil fueler.
 
When you figure out how Hess's Law works, THEN you can make some intelligent remarks about physics in general and thermodynamics in particular, instead of displaying your abysmal ignorance of science side by side with your brain dead bias for fossil fuels.

I have met some stubborn, hide bound, recalcitrant sophists in my day, but you take the prize for STRAW GRASPING DENIAL of reality.

Have a nice day.

THE FACTS Palloy wants to pretend do not exist:

If we are going to talk about how much MONEY to invest in an energy source, based on how much MONEY it will cost to DO THAT, and how much MONEY we can get in a RETURN on our INVESTMENT, it is customary (if you aren't Gail Tverberg or PALLOY doing the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdrphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fcherry-picking.jpg&hash=c196a0ec409afacfa8f087d5a4556de272d44c6b) bidding of the fossil fuel industry) to SUBTRACT all the COSTS of said energy source.
 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010216161405.jpeg&hash=30019c75d68ced7a1be7edcb92daabd1510873a2)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 15, 2016, 06:26:43 pm
Quote
AG: What you just said about WASTE HEAT is RIDICULOUS! WHY, because, although it is true that WORK excludes WASTE HEAT because WASTE HEAT DOESN'T DO WORK, ENERGY RETURN, as calculated by the fossil fuel industry cherry pickers, ASSUMES that WASTE HEAT CONTRIBUTES the ENERGY DENSITY. You are trying to talk your way around that.

I'll try and decipher what you mean by that garbled nonsense.  Then you might learn something.

Energy Density is how much Energy a fuel contains per unit of Volume or Mass.  In the case of FFs, you extract that Energy by burning the fuel, producing Heat Energy.  After that, what you do with the energy is up to you - no doubt some of it will be wasted, and some will do work.  But Energy Density is a feature that the fuel has BEFORE it is burned, when there is no waste. 

The percentage of Energy that ends up doing useful Work via an engine, is called the engine's Efficiency.  An engine doesn't have to be a FF-to-mechanical engine - a solar panel is a sunlight-to-electricity engine.

The problem of both FFs and solar panels (and every other kind of engine) is that the engine's manufacture itself takes Energy.  So in an increasingly energy-constrained world, building NEW engines is not a solution, even if they are more efficient.  This is NOT an argument in favour of FFs.

Got it now?

That you are as arrogantly insulting as ever is what I get from your post. You are the one that doesn't get the fossil fuel favoring "high" energy density con. I'll try again for the benefit of readers here.

Quote

Palloy:  This is NOT an argument in favour of FFs.
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Yes it is. You cannot arrive at efficiency assumptions without FIRST starting out with an energy density figure. THOSE energy density calculations FAVOR fossil fuels because the false equivalence between gross high energy density and  "high" Fossil Fuels ERoEI is peddled by the fossil fuel industry.

Although the subject of engine design is appropriate BECAUSE our entire civilization routinely replaces most engines manufactured in a 20 year cycle, there are more significant factors at play here. Your claim that the high thermal processes required by industry requires fossil fuels ignores the fact that electric arc furnaces can be powered quite well by electricity, at least the last time I checked. There is nothing in industry that beats electric arc furnaces at rapid heat increase and easily controllable temperatures for smelting metal alloys. PV and wind can supply that electricity quite well. No combustion is required to make PV and wind infrastructure, even though we stupidly still do a lot of that, to the joy of the fossil fuel industry. But that is a political/corporate issue, not one that has beans to do with thermodynamics or energy density.

I am referring to the fact that enthalpy values are based on scientific measurements of EXTERNAL combustion, not INTERNAL combustion.         

Energy density is a function of the total amount of energy in a chemical compound that will be released when combusted.  You are the one that does not get Hess's Law flaws.

Hess's Law is used to determine, in energy units per mass units, the thermodynamic release (for exothermic reactions) or absorption (for endothermic reactions) of energy in the form of heat energy (enthalpy).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-020216004023.png&hash=4bde6a4d6bf48056fe8a99e184f40d26c14dfda1)

Hess's Law DOES NOT differentiate between WASTE HEAT ENERGY and USEFUL HEAT ENERGY. The Hess Law ASSUMPTION that the total CHANGE in ENTHALPY (sum=Σ of changes=Δ  in enthalpy=H°f in intermediate reactions= Σ ΔH°f )  can be used to arrive at an enthalpy value ASSUMES that WASTE HEAT  is USEFUL HEAT.

Yes, HEAT IS a form of energy. But Hess's Law LOWBALLS the enthalpy of LOW WASTE HEAT biofuels like ETHANOL because they have LESS waste heat than hydrocarbons.

In a sane world of thermodynamics calculations on chemical compound combustion, the WASTE HEAT should be SUBTRACTED from the figure arrived at using Hess's Law.

BUT, it is NOT subtracted. Therefore, oxidized (i.e. combusted) compounds with LOW waste heat like ETHANOL appear ERRONEOUSLY to have LOWER enthalpy values than compounds with HIGH waste heat (i.e. ALL HYDROCARBONS - i.e. fossil fuels). This Hess Law ERROR is reflected in the published tables in chemistry texts for the Enthalpy of Combustion of chemical reactants AND makes its way to ERoEI values.

The following table is factual, though the reasonable facsimile of Agelbert  ;D saying "NO WAY" is also accurate.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010216235741.png&hash=d3f7ac7d063a01f0dafc03903149079938b50944)

If we used fossil fuels exclusively to boil water, the above table is accurate BECAUSE the "work" of boiling water (or running a steam engine) makes them the winners.

But if you combust the above compounds in the above table in an INTERNAL combustion engine, ETHANOL is the WINNER. You cannot understand that, for some reason.

As to the energy density of PV and Wind, they are far and away above that of fossil fuels and even ethanol, regardless of what you wish to believe.

In closing, I recommend your "erudite mathematical highness" to be sure and tell Richard Heinberg he does not "get it" and needs to go study physics.

How We Get to a 100% Renewable Energy Future

Richard Heinberg | June 15, 2016 12:20 pm

I spent the last year working with co-author David Fridley and Post Carbon Institute staff on a just-published book, Our Renewable Future. The process was a pleasure: everyone involved (including the twenty or so experts we interviewed or consulted) was delightful to work with and I personally learned an enormous amount along the way. But we also encountered a prickly challenge in striking a tone that would inform but not alienate the book’s potential audience.

As just about everyone knows, there are gaping chasms separating the worldviews of fossil fuel promoters, nuclear power advocates and renewable energy supporters. But crucially, even among those who disdain fossils and nukes, there is a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between those who say that solar and wind power have unstoppable momentum and will eventually bring with them lower energy prices and millions of jobs and those who say these intermittent energy sources are inherently incapable of sustaining modern industrial societies and can make headway only with massive government subsidies.

We didn’t set out to support or undermine either of the latter two messages. Instead, we wanted to see for ourselves what renewable energy sources are capable of doing and how the transition toward them is going. We did start with two assumptions of our own (based on prior research and analysis), about which we are perfectly frank: one way or another fossil fuels are on their way out and nuclear power is not a realistic substitute. That leaves renewable solar and wind, for better or worse, as society’s primary future energy sources.

In our work on this project, we used only the best publicly available data and we explored as much of the relevant peer-reviewed literature as we could identify. But that required sorting and evaluation: Which data are important? And which studies are more credible and useful? Some researchers claim that solar PV electricity has an energy return on the energy invested in producing it (EROEI) of about 20:1, roughly on par with electricity from some fossil sources, while others peg that return figure at less than 3:1.

This wide divergence in results of course has enormous implications for the ultimate economic viability of solar technology. Some studies say a full transition to renewable energy will be cheap and easy, while others say it will be extremely difficult or practically impossible. We tried to get at the assumptions that give rise to these competing claims, assertions and findings, and that lead either to renewables euphoria or gloom. We wanted to judge for ourselves whether those assumptions are realistic.

That’s not the same as simply seeking a middle ground between optimism and pessimism. Renewable energy is a complicated subject and a fact-based, robust assessment of it should be honest and informative; its aim should be to start new and deeper conversations, not merely to shout down either criticism or boosterism.

Unfortunately, the debate is already quite polarized and politicized. As a result, realism and nuance may not have much of a constituency.

This is especially the case because our ultimate conclusion was that, while renewable energy can indeed power industrial societies, there is probably no credible future scenario in which humanity will maintain current levels of energy use (on either a per capita or total basis). Therefore current levels of resource extraction, industrial production and consumption are unlikely to be sustained—much less can they perpetually grow. Further, getting to an optimal all-renewable energy future will require hard work, investment, adaptation and innovation on a nearly unprecedented scale. We will be changing more than our energy sources; we’ll be transforming both the ways we use energy and the amounts we use. Our ultimate success will depend on our ability to dramatically reduce energy demand in industrialized nations, shorten supply chains, electrify as much usage as possible and adapt to economic stasis at a lower overall level of energy and materials throughput. Absent widespread informed popular support, the political roadblocks (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)
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to such a project  will be overwhelming.

That’s not what most people want to hear. And therefore, frankly, we need some help getting this analysis out to the sorts of people who might benefit from it. Post Carbon Institute’s communications and media outreach capabilities are limited. Meanwhile the need for the energy transition is urgent and the longer it is delayed, the less desirable the outcome will be. It is no exaggeration to say that the transition from climate-damaging and depleting fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is the central cause of our times. And it will demand action from each and every one of us.

You can help by visiting the Our Renewable Future website (http://ourrenewablefuture.org/), familiarizing yourself with the issue, sharing your thoughts and spreading the word with friends, family, colleagues and allies.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/15/our-renewable-future-heinberg/ (http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/15/our-renewable-future-heinberg/)

Rob Brown: Great column. To have a future, humanity has to embrace renewable energy. We may never get to 100% renewables but, unless targets are set, progress will not be made. A number of countries have reached the 50%+ barrier on renewable power. These countries have been steadily reducing CO2 emissions and other types of pollution for decades. Sweden is a good example.

https://sweden.se/society/ener... (https://sweden.se/society/ener...)
 
agelbert > Rob Brown

"To have a future, humanity has to embrace renewable energy. "

Exactly right.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

And Amory Lovins has shown how to do that. The Post Carbon Institute's insistence that a 100% Renewable Energy powered civilization, in order to be sustainable, requires a lower energy use is true. BUT, their attempt to equate a lower total energy use to an obligatory lower standard of living is flawed because, as Amory Lovins painstakingly proves in his peer reviewed work titled Reinventing Fire, Renewable Energy plus energy use efficiency improvements can shave over 80% of current energy demand off of our civilization without any lowering of our standard of living.

Richard Heinberg portrays this 'type of energy use' argument as two sides of a polarized, and irrational, debate. It's not. Those defending unsustainable dirty energy have conclusively been proven to be, not just wrong, but an existential threat to our biosphere.

Richard Heinberg fails to point out the fact that political roadblocks to 100% Renewable energy have zero basis in science, both from an energy density happy talk for fossil fuels point of view, and climate cause and effect. It is those vested interests in a dirty energy status quo who don't want to hear the facts, not those advocating a 100% Renewable Erengy transition.

This is not, as Heinberg claims, about what "people want to hear" about the transition to Renewable Energy. This is about, as he points out without sufficient emphasis, the FACT that any dirty energy scenario is not optional to a 100% Renewable energy scenario, PERIOD.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 15, 2016, 10:36:42 pm
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AG: Hess's Law DOES NOT differentiate between WASTE HEAT ENERGY and USEFUL HEAT ENERGY.

True.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)

As I said before:
Quote
Palloy: Energy Density is how much Energy a fuel contains per unit of Volume or Mass.  In the case of FFs, you extract that Energy by burning the fuel, producing Heat Energy.  After that, what you do with the energy is up to you - no doubt some of it will be wasted, and some will do work.  But Energy Density is a feature that the fuel has BEFORE it is burned, when there is no waste.

There is definitely no inefficiency in Hess's Law - Thermodynamics wouldn't work if there was.
CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O (steam) + energy
∆H: -74.81 + 0 = -393.5 + 2*( -241.8 ) + X
X = 393.5 + 2*241.8 - 74.81
X = 802.29 kJ/mol

A mol of Methane has a Mass of (12 + 4*1) = 16 grams
So Methane has an Energy Density of 50.143 kJ/gram
This differs from your quoted figure of 55.496 kJ/gram because that assumes burning Methane produces liquid water, not Steam (they have different ∆H: -241.8 and -285.8 ).  If liquid water remained in the furnace, it would eventually flood the reaction, so the furnace output (not the boiler) MUST be steam.  The difference between your figure and the correct one is the energy it takes to turn the liquid H2O to steam.
Isn't Hess's Law neat?

Quote
AG: But Hess's Law LOWBALLS the enthalpy of LOW WASTE HEAT biofuels like ETHANOL because they have LESS waste heat than hydrocarbons.

In a sane world of thermodynamics calculations on chemical compound combustion, the WASTE HEAT should be SUBTRACTED from the figure arrived at using Hess's Law.

No, that is wrong. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113183729.png&hash=d898195c8ae0a55e2e6d84fc47b9d06f8ba13f03)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113183729.png&hash=d898195c8ae0a55e2e6d84fc47b9d06f8ba13f03)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113183729.png&hash=d898195c8ae0a55e2e6d84fc47b9d06f8ba13f03)

Hess's Law describes the chemical reaction - it doesn't say anything about what you are going to do with the heat after you've got it.

OK, so now you have your heat, 50.143 kJ/gram of Methane, what are you going to do with it? - boil water to produce steam.  Try as you might, that process is going to be less than 100% efficient because some heat will always be lost through the walls of the boiler to the atmosphere.  That Energy is Waste Heat, but it is NOT the fault of Hess's Law, it is the fault of the boiler's efficiency (an engine).

Then you are going to take that steam and run it through a steam turbine (maybe several in cascade).  That is another engine and it will have an efficiency of less than 100%.

Then you are going to take the Energy of the spinning shaft and couple it to an electrical generator, another engine, again with an efficiency of less than 100%.

So the complete process is:
(Mass of Methane * Energy Density) = Fuel Energy
and Fuel Energy * efficiency of boiler * efficiency of turbine * efficiency of generator = Electrical Energy
and (Electrical Energy / Fuel Energy) is the efficiency of the whole system.

Now the amount of Methane entering the system is known, and the amount of electrical energy leaving the system is known, so the efficiency of the whole system is known, and that is what is used in ERoEI calculations.

I can't see what your problem is, except that your 55.496 figure is wrong, it should be 50.143.
Hess's Law and its table of ∆H values is 100% correct and is nothing to do with waste.

Don't you ever get tired of thumbs down? Talk about wasting electrons.

What, exactly, is your problem with the enthalpy of COMBUSTION table I just gave you?

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010216235741.png&hash=d3f7ac7d063a01f0dafc03903149079938b50944)

My math comes from published tables. If you have a problem with them, argue with wikipeda, not me.

You can rant and rave about efficiency and there allegedly not being any "inefficiencies" in Hess's Law until the cows come home, but I never said beans about the Hess Law "inefficiencies". I merely stated that the experimental basis for obtaining the energy density values, WHEN THEY CAN OBTAIN THEM (which is simply impossible in some cases), is through measurement of EXTERNAL combustion.

What part of that is too difficult for you to understand?

Every time the subject of the higher ERoEI of ethanol than other hydrocarbons comes up, you have spasms of uncontrollable twitching, for some reason.

You have often gone into great detail about how much of this, that and the other is fossil fuel based to deny the cost effectiveness of SEVERAL Renewable Energy technologies, not just ethanol and other biofuels.

YET, when I point out peer reviewed studies  that prove ethanol beats hydrocarbon fuels, you pull out your down thumb smiley. LOL!

Hess's Law had its place in contributing to the Law of Conservation of Energy, but it is an inappropriate method of basing the start of ERoEI calculations. Even wikipeda agrees that ERoEI calculation should ONLY INCLUDE USEFUL ENERGY. Gross Energy density values include potentially useful and potentially useless energy known as waste. Deny it all you wish, but those are the thermodynamic facts.

Quote
In physics, energy economics, and ecological energetics, energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI); or energy return on investment (EROI), is the ratio of the amount of usable energy delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy used to obtain that energy resource.[1][2] It is a distinct measure from energy efficiency as it does not measure the primary energy inputs to the system, only usable energy.

A fuel or energy must have an EROEI ratio of at least 3:1 to be considered viable as a prominent fuel or energy source.[3][4]

The irony of the above quote is that wikipeda then proceeds to post all the Charles Hall fossil fuel and nuclear power happy talk ERoEI charts.

But, to their credit, they do admit that ERoEI calculations have no actual standard rigorous and required inputs. Therefore, ERoEI math is a fossil fuel industry cherry picking paradise.

Quote

Measuring the EROEI of a single physical process is unambiguous, but there is no agreed-upon standard on which activities should be included in measuring the EROEI of an economic process. In addition, the form of energy of the input can be completely different from the output. For example, energy in the form of coal could be used in the production of ethanol. This might have an EROEI of less than one, but could still be desirable due to the benefits of liquid fuels.

How deep should the probing in the supply chain of the tools being used to generate energy go? For example, if steel is being used to drill for oil or construct a nuclear power plant, should the energy input of the steel be taken into account, should the energy input into building the factory being used to construct the steel be taken into account and amortized? Should the energy input of the roads which are used to ferry the goods be taken into account? What about the energy used to cook the steelworker's breakfasts? These are complex questions evading simple answers.[28] A full accounting would require considerations of opportunity costs and comparing total energy expenditures in the presence and absence of this economic activity.

However, when comparing two energy sources a standard practice for the supply chain energy input can be adopted. For example, consider the steel, but don't consider the energy invested in factories deeper than the first level in the supply chain.

Energy return on energy invested does not take into account the factor of time. Energy invested in creating a solar panel may have consumed energy from a high power source like coal, but the return happens very slowly, i.e. over many years. If energy is increasing in relative value this should favour delayed returns. Some believe this means the EROEI measure should be refined further.

Conventional economic analysis has no formal accounting rules for the consideration of waste products that are created in the production of the ultimate output. For example, differing economic and energy values placed on the waste products generated in the production of ethanol makes the calculation of this fuel's true EROEI extremely difficult.

They also break down the three prominent ERoEI calculations, while ignoring the fact that the Charles Hall type SUNY "studies", whether they allegedly  ;) use 'point of use' or 'extended' (FORGET 'societal' - the dirty energy corporations don't DO 'societal') exclude inconvenient costs and include gamed dirty energy subsidies that artificially give fossil fuel and nuclear power "high" ERoEI and lowball Renewable Eenrgy ERoEI.

Quote
There are three prominent expanded EROEI calculations, they are point of use, extended and societal. Point of Use EROEI expands the calculation to include the cost of refining and transporting the fuel during the refining process. Since this expands the bounds of the calculation to include more production process EROEI will decrease.[21]

Extended EROEI includes point of use expansions as well as including the cost of creating the infrastructure needed for transportation of the energy or fuel once refined.[30]

Societal EROI is a sum of all the EROEIs of all the fuels used in a society or nation. A societal EROI has never been calculated and researchers believe it may currently be impossible to know all variables necessary to complete the calculation, but attempted estimates have been made for some nations.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested)




Things were simpler in the middle of the 19th Century

Hess's Law of the constant summation of heat was obviously a special case of the law of the conservation of energy, which had not yet been formally stated.

But that was then. NOW the polluters use Hess's Law to our detriment and their profit.
 
The REALITY of WASTE HEAT in fuels for internal combustion engines, as well as the ENERGY REQUIRED to ameliorate the POLLUTION those fuels produce when combusted, is excluded. This convenient fiction distorts the value of selected energy sources, resulting in the use of NEGATIVE ERoEI, inefficient and polluting, hydrocarbon fuels to run industrial civilization.

In the REAL world we live in called the biosphere, this is unsustainable because the balance of energy radiated to space versus that received from the sun is altered towards life destroying heat.

It IS a closed system. ALL factors must be computed. Hess's Law is an ABERRATION of the Law of Conservation of Energy because it reduces the concept of "energy" to heat, whether or not it is waste (i.e. USELESS for work and damaging to the biosphere) heat.

TODAY, Hess's Law is used BY THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY and the CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY to arbitrarily to exclude inconvenient thermodynamic FACTS in order to downplay the value of Renewable energy based technologies that produce fuels, textiles, plastics, medicines, etc.

Hess's Law, because it is the most basic enthalpy step to obtain energy density values for chemical compounds that are subsequently used in Energy Return on Energy Density (ERoEI) calculations, has helped the Fossil Fuel Industry Perpetuate the following MYTH: It Takes More Energy to ­Produce Ethanol than You Get from It! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)


Most ethanol research over the past 25 years has been on the topic of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). Public discussion has been dominated by the American Petroleum Institute’s aggressive distribution of the work of Cornell professor David Pimentel (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6) and his numerous, deeply flawed studies. Pimentel stands virtually alone in portraying alcohol as having a negative EROEI—producing less energy than is used in its production.

In fact, it’s oil that has a negative EROEI. (http://www.permaculture.com/node/490) Because oil is both the raw material and the energy source for production of gasoline, it comes out to about 20% negative.

That’s just common sense; some of the oil is itself used up in the process of refining and delivering it (from the Persian Gulf, a distance of 11,000 miles in tanker travel).

The most exhaustive study on ethanol’s EROEI, by Isaias de Carvalho Macedo, shows an alcohol energy return of more than eight units of output for every unit of input—and this study accounts for everything right down to smelting the ore to make the steel for tractors.

But perhaps more important than ERoEI is the energy return on fossil fuel input. Using this criterion, the energy returned from alcohol fuel per fossil energy input is much higher. In a system that supplies almost all of its energy from biomass, the ratio of return could be positive by hundreds to one.

Put your DOWN THUMB out there all you want, Palloy. You are wrong about high ERoEI for fossil fuels and low ERoEI for Renewable energy..
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 16, 2016, 09:52:02 pm
RE,
I am having some difficulties with Hess Law calculations. Even though I have performed them repeatedly, I get values that are inaccurate. Therefore, I must be doing something wrong. These calculations deal with the combustion of Hydrogen gas versus the combustion of the hydrocarbon methane. Since the water gas product, in a standard atmosphere, immediately goes to its lower energy state of a liquid, I am using the liquid water enthalpy value in both reactions.

I would appreciate the use of your Columbia University graduated Chemist brain.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140216175259.jpeg&hash=7dcbd0d54491041bdaff11b661f748ea5085cd34)

This is what I have calculated:

Combusting the common hydrocarbon CH4 gas (methane), we get CO2 plus water. According to the Standard Enthalpy of Formation table, CH4 has a value of -74.81  kJ/mol, CO2 −393.509 kJ/mol and water (liquid) −285.8 kJ/mol.

CH4 + 2(O2) --> CO2 + 2(H2O) The enthalpy of the reactants is subtracted from the enthalpy of the products after accounting for the molar quantities.

The enthalpy of the reactants equals ONE mole of CH4 (ignoring the two moles of O2 gas because, according to Hess Law convention, elements in their standard state have an ARBITRARY VALUE OF ZERO) =  -74.81 kJ

The enthalpy of the products equals One mole of CO2 + TWO moles of H2O = 965.509 kJ.

−393.509 kJ + [2(-285.8 kJ) MINUS [(-74.81 kJ) + (2 (ZERO))] = -890.299 kJ/mole


That was pretty straightforward. :icon_sunny: Now for the combustion of hydrogen gas.

In the following reaction (Thermochemical Properties of selected substances at 298 degrees Kelvin and 1 atmosphere of pressure.), oxygen gas + hydrogen gas = water gas. WATER gas has an enthalpy of formation of −241.818 kJ/mol.

That means that an Exothemic (energy releasing reaction) sent out (a certain amount of) kJ/mole of ENERGY from two gases.

When hydrogen gas combusts with oxygen gas, we get water gas, which quickly turns into to liquid in a standard atmosphere.

2(H2) + O2 --> 2(H2O) The enthalpy of the reactants is subtracted from the enthalpy of the products after accounting for the molar quantities.

The total enthalpy of the reactants is, according to Hess's Law, ZERO.

The enthalpy of the products equals one mole of water (liquid) −285.8 kJ/mole.

-285kj - [(2 times ZERO) + ZERO] =  −285.8 kJ/mole

So, it appears that burning methane releases (890.299 kJ minus 285.8 kJ) 679.709 kJ/mole (about 76%) MORE ENERGY than burning hydrogen. This is inaccurate.  :(  :emthdown:

I did some checking and the more accurate figure for the energy given off by the combustion of one mole of methane is 802 kJ.

THE ENERGY FACTS:

Quote
"Since there are 500 moles of hydrogen gas in a kilogram, this means that burning a kilogram of hydrogen gas releases 500 times as much energy, or 121 MJ (million joules), assuming that the water comes out as a gas, as is usually the case in a combustion process."

"The energy given off by the combustion of one mole of methane turns out to be 802 kJ. The combustion of one kilogram of methane releases 50 MJ. Heavier hydrocarbons generally yield more energy per mole, but approximately the same energy on a per-kilogram basis. Gasoline, a mixture of hexane, heptane, octane, and various other hydrocarbons, yields about 44 MJ per kilogram."

http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/eee/chapter4.pdf (http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/eee/chapter4.pdf)

NASA preferred Hydrogen over methane in their main space shuttle tank for a no bullshit thermodynamic higher energy release per unit mass reason. Yes, I know the fossil fuel industry peddles the "hydrogen is just an energy carrier, not a source" baloney 24/7. Bad mouthing Hydrogen as an energy source is right behind ethanol in the  fossil fuel propaganda fun and games.  :evil4:  But somehow they couldn't convince NASA of that  ;). 

 
So, what am I doing wrong that I can't make Hess's Law math come out right for the chemical reaction of hydrogen gas with oxygen gas?


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4)          (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407)         ???         (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1402.gif&hash=704ddbc7a892750ad55e7a7bea92270b1df3ecba)
[/size].

For each bond you break through oxidation, burning H2 gas gives you more energy back than each bond you break in the oxidation of methane.  The bond energy for  H-H is 432 Kj/mole.  The bond energy for the C-H bond in Methane (and all the single bonded alkanes +/- a bit) is 410 Kj/mole.  So for an equal number of moles of H2, you have more energy stored in the Hydrogen than the methane.  However, in the Gas phase, methane is more energy dense than hydrogen, because each molecule has 4 C-H bonds to break, whereas each molecule of H2 only has one bond to break.  So it is almost 4X less efficient a store of energy in the gas phase, even though each individual bond holds greater energy.

This changes if you liquify the gas though.  In this case, an equal amount of liquid hydrogen to liquid methane would contain more energy and release it on oxidation.  For space applications, it is not that energy consumptive to keep these gases liquified, because space itself is so cold.  On earth, this is a much bigger problem.  So NASA for space uses Hydrogen, but on earth generally methane works better with a higher energy density in the gas phase.

Liquid Alkanes (basically pentane and up at normal earth temps) pack a lot more punch than both hydrogen and methane by volume, because they are liquid at normal earth temps.  To keep Hydrogen gas liquified at earth surface temps would itself expend tremendous energy, so it is not a practical alternative on earth.

You can't just apply Hess' Law without dealing with the Phase Change problems here between Liquids and Gases.

RE

Note: This assumes both Hydrogen Gas and Methane Gas operate according to the combined gas laws PV=nRT.  Both gases do operate very closely to that law except at very low temps or very high pressures.


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fthankyou.gif&hash=dddf44270b9e7683ff5cbcca041427744de34fe5)

Although a certain member of the peanut gallery will vociferously disagree (and hurl ridicule and ad hominem  arrogant insults along with bullshit about Hess Law "beauty") at what I am about to say, you have confirmed my view that Hess's Law belongs in the dust bin of thermodynamics history.

When Hess's Law was formulated, bond energies were not known. It was not until many, many years later that Linus Pauling's table of electronegativity was published. This aided in the knowledge of chemical reactions in regard to the positioning of molecular bonds between adjacent reactants and atomic orbitals in what physical chemistry now knows about the energy required to break bonds and the energy released (in exothermic reactions) when they are reformed.

As you pointed out in so many words, Bond energies, not Hess's Law, is the only accurate way, when gas phase changes are involved, to calculate energy density AND how much energy is released in a chemical reaction.

The following graphic illustrates the bond energy values, NOT AVAILABLE when using Hess's Law, whether phase changes are involved or not, that accurately reflect the high energy density of H2

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-160616190052.jpeg&hash=38533afcb55268f82e8589d4fbf22d28a421baae)

Although you mentioned that in certain states, methane is more energy dense that hydrogen, as a rule, that's a technicality that doesn't justify methane over hydrogen. For example, a very long chained hydrocarbon is much more energy dense than a short chained one.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-160616185642.png&hash=52ebbffbb7bb4302ad1905459b81db6acef81fb8)

HOWEVER, the refining process, using a massive amount of heat, probably a greater amount than that required to keep hydrogen cool prior to combustion, produces short chains and VOCs at the top of the cracking tower.

BEFORE you get to the point where those short chains are massaged chemically and thermally to get long chains so your internal combustion engine will actually run, you have gone through one hell of a lot of energy per unit mass. This makes the CH4 (and every other hydrocarbon liquid or gas) perceived advantage in energy density at certain gaseous states as insufficient to prefer it to Hydrogen gas as an energy source, regardless of the energy required to keep hydrogen gas at a low temperature.

Hess's Law confuses this issue, not just in regard to gases involving phase changes, but in arbitrarily assigning ZERO enthalpy of formation values to ALL elements in their ground state, be they gas or liquid. This fails to account for, among other things, catalytic energy of activation lowering action based on element or compound electronegativity differences, to the unwarranted perceived advantage of fossil fuels.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-160616192637.png&hash=de1eb5330b7ff9d15eb50c4b39d048c94c53430c)

We KNOW the bond energies. We DON'T NEED Hess's Law any more to estimate energy density. As you pointed out, energy density varies by temperature and pressure. As I point out very often, the fossil fuel industry people peddle the energy density data according to Hess's Law without absolutely any regard for the vast amount of energy they expend to package their product. They will ENDLESSLY go into detail about all the energy difficulties of packaging hydrogen for combustion, but are silent as DEATH about the much greater energy expended to prepare gasoline or methane for the market.

I know you and I disagree on this. You often mention the high energy density of fossil fuels as the reason we still use them instead of a hydrogen plus solar plus wind EV run world. I simply ask you to remember the energy cost of packaging fossil fuels in addition to the energy cost of cleaning up after the pollution they expel. Hydrogen has always been more efficient in energy and cheaper in dollars, if fossil fuels were not subsidized.

One more thing that Hess's Law does not account for, but bond energies (with some detailed internal combustion physical chemistry) do account for, is the energy density of oxygen carrying fuels like ethanol. Measurements based on external combustion ignore some thermodynamic realities that molecular electronegativity evidence. When you are oxidizing a substance through combustion, the efficiency of that reaction is contingent on the availability of oxygen. Nobody wants to talk about that elephant in the fossil fuel energy density room (except for maybe Palloy with a thumb down following ridicule and huffing and puffing  ;)).

There is simply NO WAY for a hydrocarbon to combust as efficiently and cleanly as an oxygen carrying fuel like ethanol in an atmosphere of 21 to 23% oxygen. As you know, the formation of incomplete combustion products in a combustion chamber is caused by the lack of sufficient oxygen reactant.

Gasoline never even releases, in the time it has to combust in the chamber, all of its energy density that SHOULD BE USEFUL ENERGY, never mind the waste heat, because of the lack of oxygen. Incomplete combustion is the NORM in gasoline. YET, Charles Hall deliberately ignored that in his ERoEI calculations with his erroneous assumption of complete combustion. Simply put, that was thermodynamic mendacity to make gasoline look better than ethanol.   

That is one of the reasons that it is CRAP compared with ethanol. The other reason is that ethanol complete combustion reduces waste heat and engine friction. 

Although I have never been able to convince you of the superiority of ethanol over gasoline or diesel, I hope that you consider agreeing with me that bond energy math is preferable to Hess's Law in computing energy density in elements and chemical compounds in a standard atmosphere, as well as the only truly accurate way to measure energy release in exothermic reactions and energy absorption in endothermic reactions.       


Bond Enthalpies, NOT Hess's Law, should be the gold standard used to base ALL assumptions about energy density in chemical compounds and elements:


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwps.prenhall.com%2Fwps%2Fmedia%2Fobjects%2F165%2F169060%2Ftool0801.gif&hash=c7a209f3a25787d9fe3121d0e67422ef6cd716b1)

If you don't agree, that's okay. Thanks again for the info.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191456.bmp&hash=a239c2fd76d20d142f1c54b961e22ebd0d2a4808)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 18, 2016, 06:42:31 pm
The Unfractured Future

https://youtu.be/pdwCKzqVRdQ

Hear Native American leaders wisdom about fracking and why it must be banned. It is nothing less than a system that is going to pollute the veins of Mother Earth.

We hear Senator James Inhofe (R- OK) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) enthusiastically declare that there is enough natural gas to supply our needs for the next 35 years in the Marcellus Shale (NY- PA).

The film then directs our attention to the following: It's about our needs vs. our children's future.

Where is the long term thinking and responsible leadership? ??? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407)

"Regulations and fines do not protect the environment. There is no way to undo the harm hydro fracking will cause" says Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation. "When you sit and you counsel for the welfare of the people, think not of yourself, nor of your family, nor even your generation. Make decisions on behalf of the 7th generation coming... you have to defend and protect them so that they may enjoy what you enjoy today."

--Bibi Farber

This video was made by "Reel Change for Nonprofits" participants Tracy Basile and Scott Halfmann of WESPAC and Friends of Turtle Island.
http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/anti-fracking/the-unfractured-.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 22, 2016, 08:35:55 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fclimatenexus.org%2Fsites%2Fall%2Fthemes%2Fclimatenexus%2Flogo.png&hash=15b1ba7cb09e37216d4efcca26e9e31ee74ed1a4)

Fossil Fuel Profits Eclipsed By Pollution’s Cost

 A common refrain of those advocating against climate action has been that the economic benefits of the fossil fuel industry outweigh the costs of switching to clean energy.

A new working paper out of Cambridge provides some numbers to show that this is not an even remotely legitimate claim. Researchers compared how much the top 20 fossil fuel companies profited between 2008 and 2012 with the social cost of the carbon emissions in their reserves. (At Vox, Dave Roberts goes into a little detail on the paper and explaining the social cost of carbon, for those who’d like a refresher.)

The results of the analysis show that: "For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after-tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008.” So if companies had to pay to clean up their carbon emissions, instead of foisting that expense on the public, none of them would be making any money.

For coal companies, every dollar of revenue translated to somewhere between $2 and $9 in climate costs borne by society. This means that if the world ever gets around to putting a price on carbon that accurately reflects the social costs, it’s doubtful that any fossil fuel company could stay in business without making some major changes.

Despite their current earnings, this tells us that fossil fuel companies aren’t a net positive economic force on the planet, undercutting the popular denier excuse for inaction.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them any less of a source of income  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)  for those with "vested interest in carbon dioxide emissions” (http://www.desmog.uk/2015/08/10/matt-king-coal-ridley-admits-fossil-fuel-investments-may-cloud-views-climate-change) who are eager to tell us all about how “Fossil Fuels Will Save The World (Really).”  (http://www.wsj.com/articles/fossil-fuels-will-save-the-world-really-1426282420)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 25, 2016, 02:09:45 pm
Agelbert NOTE: So much for the USA National Sovereignty based  Keystone XL Rejection.  >:(  The lawyer lackeys for the corporate crooks are using NAFTA to bypass national sovereignty as if it was not there.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

TransCanada Files NAFTA (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) Suit Demanding More Than $15 Billion for Keystone XL Rejection

Michael Brune | June 25, 2016 10:16 am

On June 24, foreign oil company TransCanada filed a lawsuit against the U.S. under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that the U.S. rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline violated NAFTA’s broad rights for foreign investors by thwarting the company’s “expectations.” As compensation, TransCanada is demanding more than $15 billion from U.S. taxpayers.

TransCanada’s case will be heard in a private tribunal of three lawyers who are not accountable to any domestic legal system, thanks to NAFTA’s “investor-state” system, which is also included in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The controversial TPP would empower thousands of additional corporations, including major polluters, to follow TransCanada’s example and use this private tribunal system to challenge U.S. climate and environmental policies.

TransCanada’s Request for Arbitration follows the Notice of Intent to submit a claim to arbitration that it filed on Jan. 6.

TransCanada’s attempt to make American taxpayers hand over more than $15 billion because the company’s dirty Keystone XL pipeline was rejected shows exactly why NAFTA was wrong and why the even more dangerous and far-reaching Trans-Pacific Partnership must be stopped in its tracks.


The TPP would empower thousands of new firms operating in the U.S, including major polluters, to follow in TransCanada’s footsteps and undermine our critical climate safeguards in private trade tribunals.

Today, we have a prime example of how polluter-friendly trade deals threaten our efforts to tackle the climate crisis, spotlighting the need for a new model of trade model that supports rather than undermines climate action. We urge our members of Congress to learn from this historic moment and commit to reject the TPP.

Here’s more information on the TPP:

Environmental opposition to the TPP is mounting. Earlier in June, more than 450 environmental, landowner, Indigenous rights, and allied organizations sent a letter to Congress warning that pending trade deals like the TPP threaten efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Read the Sierra Club’s report on how the TPP would roughly double the number of corporations that could follow TransCanada’s example and challenge U.S. safeguards in private, unaccountable tribunals.

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The corporations that would gain this ability include hundreds of foreign-owned fossil fuel firms, such as the U.S. subsidiaries of BHP Billiton, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters and one of the U.S.’s largest foreign investors in fracking and offshore drilling.

The TPP would nearly double the number of foreign fracking firms that could challenge new U.S. fracking restrictions in private tribunals.

The deal also would enable oil and gas corporations with nearly 1 million acres’ worth of U.S. offshore drilling leases to use this private tribunal system to try to undermine new restrictions on offshore drilling. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

No prior U.S. trade deal has granted such broad rights to corporations with such broad interests in maintaining U.S. fossil fuel dependency.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/25/transcanada-nafta-keystone-xl-tpp/

We do not have to let these crooks get away with this THEFT under the color of law.

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_An6iCCo62M/hqdefault.jpg)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 27, 2016, 06:39:18 pm

U.S. states, Rockefellers clash with U.S. House panel on Exxon climate probes

Fri Jun 24, 2016 6:20pm EDT HOUSTON  |  By Terry Wade

With a number of U.S. states proceeding with investigations of Exxon Mobil Corp's (XOM.N) record on climate change, the attorney general of Massachusetts and investment funds of the Rockefeller family on Friday told a Congressional committee it lacked powers to oversee those probes.

The pushback is the latest chapter in a high-stakes fight between the world's largest publicly traded oil company and a coalition of state attorneys general who have said they would go after Exxon to try and force action to tackle climate change.

The House Committee (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) on Science, Space and Technology (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251) last week reiterated demands(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__fishing.gif&hash=bdfc21d44b32b6a3ece7b2a8ec345c781d972327)  that state attorneys general hand over any records of consultations the prosecutors had with ]outside environmental groups before their probes were opened.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.wp.com%2Fwww.pharmaciststeve.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F06%2Fwitchhunt.jpg&hash=e9c8b4e4934e770d4a2477ca5e3560156be1e2ab)

Republicans on the committee have said about 20 state officials overreached when they jointly said in March they would participate in inquiries into whether Exxon executives misled the public by contradicting research from company scientists that spelled out the threats of climate change.
 
State officials have said the committee has no right to get involved.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)

Quote
"The Committee lacks authority to interfere with an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office into possible violations of Massachusetts law by ExxonMobil,"
said a letter to the committee from the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey that was seen by Reuters.
 
In another letter to the House panel seen by Reuters, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, two investment funds that have been critical of fossil fuels linked to climate change, said the committee's request "imperiled the funds' First Amendment rights" and said "Congress's investigatory power is not unlimited."

Last week, Exxon asked a federal court to throw out a subpoena that would force it to hand over decades of documents on climate change to Healey's office.
 
Both sides in the standoff have sought to use the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom speech and freedom of assembly, among other protections, to press their cases.

The House committee has complained the inquiries risk stifling free speech and scientific inquiry, and that state officials were coordinating with special interest groups.

Exxon , which declined to comment on Friday, has repeatedly said that it has acknowledged the reality of climate change for years and communicated this to investors. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-climatechange-idUSKCN0ZA3KX

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251114234300.png&hash=51842c367517a00ea79aa01afee06164b200d5bc)

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220915211154.png&hash=a72353bbc11b90505e2804ba0d8fd2b4679a2998)



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 05, 2016, 02:38:59 pm
Although Mr. Farage has said some hard truths from time to time, I cannot accept the "National sovereignty" excuse he gave for pushing BREXIT BECAUSE he is a global warming DENIER.

IOW, he WANTS MORE fossil fuel AND nuclear power "investment" and LESS "regulation" from EU environmental standards requiring LESS emissions.

He is, therefore, incapable of doing the right thing for future generations. EVERY OTHER ISSUE is subordinate to the issue of CO2 pollution and the sixth mass extinction it has triggered.

Nigel Blowhard Farage  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) does not understand that
.

Besides being a climate change denier, NF has a lot of other despicable opinions and traits.  He's a xenophobe and a capitalist to begin with.

However, he did serve as a good Monkey Wrench messing up the works in the EU, which is a good thing.  The EU is just Nazism with Window Dressing.  I just finished an article on this topic for next week's Sunday Brunch on the Diner.

Besides that, NF is funny, in an In Your Face sort of way.  He regularly pitched some fabulous insults at the rest of the Clowns & Jokers in the EU Parliament.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca)


RE

Yup. The whole BREXIT thing is just a turf battle between two elite empathy deficit disordered fascist groups.

You may disagree, but the EU fascists have more CFS (Common F'n Sense) than the British fascists.

Time to leverage the Brexit into a nice oil company lobbyist position.

Eddie has the picture of what BREXIT is ALL ABOUT for the British oligarchs.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)

Nigel Farage is, like those he backs, a suicidal, dirty energy supporting greed ball pushing "national sovereignty" bullshit while endangering future generations with his actions.

I'm sure he and his pals find it very amusing.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 27, 2016, 09:38:10 pm
Agelbert NOTE: To be filed in the "Just what we did NOT need" category (Giant Gas Discovery)  >:(.

Giant Gas Discovery Made By International Team
Published at 04:35PM - 26/07/16
 
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced it has discovered “large deposits of potentially producible gas hydrate” in the Indian Ocean, in a partnership with the government of India and Japan.

According to the USGS, this discovery of highly enriched accumulations of natural gas hydrate in the Bay of Bengal is the first of its kind in the Indian Ocean with the potential to be producible.

“Advanced like the Bay of Bengal discovery will help unlock the global energy resource potential of gas hydrates as well as help define the technology needed to safely produce them”, said Walter Guidroz, USGS Energy Resources Programme coordinator.
Giant Gas Discovery Made By International Team (https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/stupid-im-with-arrow-left.gif)

“The USGS is proud  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) to have played a key role on this project in collaboration with our international partner, the Indian government,” he added.

USGS Scientists Dr. William Waite (Right) and Dr. Pamela Swarzenski (picture of two brain dead scientists at article link)

The international team responsible for the finding was led by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of India on behalf of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas India, in cooperation with the USGS, the Japanese Drilling Company and the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

The scientists involved conducted ocean drilling, conventional sediment coring, pressure coring, downhole logging and analytical activities to assess the geological occurrence, regional context and features of the deposits.

Scientists Analyse Energy Potential in Gas Hydrates

“The results from this expedition mark a critical step forward to understanding the energy resource potential of gas hydrates,” USGS Senior Scientist Tim Collet, who participated in the programme, said.

“The discovery is what we believe to be several of the largest and most concentrated gas hydrate accumulations yet found in the world will yield the geologic and engineering data needed to better understand the geologic controls on the occurrence of gas hydrate in nature and to assess the technologies needed to safely produce gas hydrates,” he added.

The research expedition – Indian National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 02 – is the second joint exploration for gas hydrate potential in the Indian Ocean.

http://www.offshorepost.com/giant-gas-discovery-made-by-international-team/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 30, 2016, 10:23:52 pm
Wolf Richter has an article up about the numbers here.  We're already at 100 BKs of major companies halfway through the year, set to surpass the record of 180 in 2009.  More to come after that in 2017.

RE


Well, the important thing to understand about fossil fuel corporations in general, and oil and gas majors in particular, is that they LIE to EVERYBODY, even the bankruptcy courts that BABY them back to life when there is NO REASON to allow them to restructure. MOST of the bankruptcies in Texas that have been allowed to limp along on chapter 11 were based on $65 a barrel or MORE prices materializing in 2016. It HASN'T happened.

Now imagine if a solar panel, wind turbine or EV corporation was bleeding the same way. Renewable energy providers would NOT be given a snowball's chance in hell by bankruptcy courts or Wall Street of obtaining a Chapter 11 restructuring.

I turn blue in the face just thinking about how much THEFT is going on 24/7 by these oil and gas bastards. For example, that giant loss that Exxon just posted is probably about HALF what they ACTUALLY are bleeding.

IOW, what we are seeing is MUCH WORSE than the reality. AND it has BEEN GOING ON FOR OVER TWO YEARS!

What we find out is about two years behind and thoroughly watered down.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

The incredible accounting jabberwoky the fossil fuel pigs make up as they go along involves 24/7 TOTAL MENS REA.

They need to be destroyed for the good of humanity.


 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 31, 2016, 07:07:56 pm

The incredible accounting jabberwoky the fossil fuel pigs make up as they go along involves 24/7 TOTAL MENS REA.

They need to be destroyed for the good of humanity.


In the end, the REAL MATH cannot be falsified by accounting gimmicks.  They're at the wall now AG. Consumers cannot afford to retire the debts they accumulate.  Banks will take the losses, their losses absorbed by Central Banks, then finally they will go **** Up.  Unless the Ferengi arrive with Starship Freighters loaded with Gold Pressed Latinum and Dilithium Crystals, there is nobody left after the CBs to pick up the tab.  PAHHTY IS OVAH, the band stops playing and the beer has run out.

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/O5zGkqAWsWE/maxresdefault.jpg)

Down goes the Titanic.

Have a little patience.  It's coming.

RE


From your lips to God's ears.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 01, 2016, 04:10:59 pm
RE,  The model has oil going to $20 per barrel by 2019 with a well defined curve, if you really knew that you would buy any dips below min sell before median.  Then reverse positions and short sell any significant dips above median.  You'd lose some but if your model held you'd win more.

This explanation excludes the pertinent fact that when you SHORT a commodity, the upside is limited and the down side is unlimited. The 'market jitters' are far more applicable than supply and demand in dealing with the price of crude BECAUSE market manipulation speculation and war scares have a FAR greater effect on the price rigging of this polluting fossil fuel crap.

Consequently, shorting oil is NOT a sure winner, even if the demand destruction going on could be accurately predicted to destroy the oil and gas producing pigs.

Quote
... I certainly haven't gone into a cocoon and become a peak oil denier, ... 

Peak oil is irrelevant; demand Destruction of fossil fuels is. The USGS just found a giant gas deposit near India. There is a multi-billion barrel crude oil find off of the Falklands that has barely begun to be tapped, Another fairly large find was made near Norway. AND, GDP is rising in industrialized countries while energy demand is stable or dropping, putting the lie to the old talking point from Gail Tverberg and fossil fuel friends that GDP is a function of energy use.

Quote
... , nor am I looking to pick a bullshit internet napalm war.

I disagree. Your expressed umbrage at having your views challenged is the basic ingredient of an internet food fight.

Your basic view of the future of fossil fuels is flawed due to your lack of objectivity in regard to their actual costs to society.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240216231558.png&hash=b4f8cd9560e2a5b9cbd3f100f8c1435f9a4e5618)


The following method of obtaining CH4 has far more future than anything the oil and gas industry polluters 'R' US puts out.

 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-310716184445.png&hash=453484644837f51084f727fa2a4207429ec0b407)
Heartland biogas digester makes CH4 from rejected produce and cow poop

"Hitting peak oil will come faster than any of us think. But don't blame dwindling supply — it's all about disappearing demand" Amory Lovins
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 03, 2016, 08:46:55 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Please observe the brave activists hanging from the bridge.

WATCH: Shell Icebreaker Threads Bridge Hanger’s Barricade

July 31, 2015 by Reuters

Reuters By Shelby Sebens

PORTLAND, Ore., July 30 (Reuters) – An icebreaking vessel key to Royal Dutch Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic departed Portland, Oregon, late on Thursday, navigating between a narrow gap of environmental activists dangling from a bridge after a two-day human blockade.

Several Greenpeace activists appeared to bow to orders from police to lower themselves into watercraft in the Willamette River after spending more than 40 hours suspended from a bridge as temperatures soared over 100 F (30 C).

The Fennica threaded a narrow gap under St. John’s bridge just before 6 p.m. local time (0100 GMT) while several of 13 original activists remained dangling in air, backed by dozens of kayaks in the river and onlookers in a nearby park who cheered their cause.

Here’s some video from the scene (warning: language  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)):

https://youtu.be/JA8rXG4BH2A

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230216221448.png&hash=94af4f1b4c63e415fffb3622699c1e3d9910ce19) aims to return to the Arctic for the first time since 2012, when it experienced a series of mishaps including the grounding of an oil rig.

It is not allowed to start drilling without the Fennica, which is carrying emergency equipment that would cap any blown-out well, and the drilling season ends in October, when sea ice forms.

Greenpeace says Arctic drilling could be damaging to populations of whales, polar bears and walrus in the event of an oil spill.

Earlier this month, Shell crew on the Fennica icebreaker found a 39-inch (1 meter) gash in the hull, possibly caused by an uncharted shoal, and sent it to Portland for repairs.

The icebreaker’s departure on Thursday triggered a chaotic waterborne tussle between law enforcement boats and obstinate activist kayakers who took to the river again after originally being moved to the side by police using loudspeakers.

Police boats made waves that tossed some kayakers overboard and police dragged them into boats.

At least two activists were arrested, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Steve Alexander said. Earlier, two activists were issued police citations, Greenpeace said.

The activists are the latest group to stage demonstrations over the past three months, seeking to disrupt Shell ships from heading north from Pacific Northwest port areas.

On Thursday morning, they successfully forced the Fennica to return to a dry dock.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clipartbest.com%2Fcliparts%2Fxig%2Fojx%2Fxigojx6KT.png&hash=6706182c9f1427099a77e10d1758e61d9cadb701)


The icebreaker stalled ;D when it neared the bridge on the Willamette, which leads to the Pacific Ocean, met by protesters waving large red and yellow banners, at times chanting
“(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230216221448.png&hash=94af4f1b4c63e415fffb3622699c1e3d9910ce19)  No.”
“When that ship turned, that was history   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F128fs318181.gif&hash=eff6d5f3831782966c2ff2081f07bf7fc5b22a6b),” kayaker Michael Foster told Reuters.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fgas2.org%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F05%2Fstupid.png&hash=03f34f8c94a314e127f3ee8c4872e721e1b04063) said the company respects the rights of individuals to protest but added “the staging of protesters in Portland was not safe nor was it lawful.”  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

As the protests stretched into the afternoon, a U.S. judge (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)  in Alaska held Greenpeace in contempt and ordered it to pay fines of $2,500 per hour if the protest continued, with fines increasing daily to a rolling $10,000 per hour after Aug. 2.

It was not immediately known how much Greenpeace would have to pay in fines, nor if its members planned new protests.

“While we respect the courts, we also respect the increasingly urgent science that tells us Arctic oil needs to stay underground,” Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard said in a statement. (Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Eric M. Johnson, Sandra Maler and Ken Wills)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015.

http://gcaptain.com/watch-shell-icebreaker-breaks-through-bridge-hangers-barricade/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 07, 2016, 08:17:57 pm
MORE oil discovered!      (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.cdn-seekingalpha.com%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F10%2F26%2F12290461-1414313702745208-Fun-Trading_origin.jpg&hash=51280c92be704a441d1e5b750b690a224d8f988a)

Agelbert NOTE::Ocean Valiant (WHERE do they get these names? - are all fossil fuelers victims of illusions of grandeur? ???) Oil Drilling Facility shown above finds 2 Billion barrels and promptly plugs the well for OBVIOUS market price reasons. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)

But don't think these biosphere math challenged oil and gas pigs aren't planning to access that crap later on. They simply cannot wrap their heads around the well established scientific consensus that there are a LOT of fossil fuels that cannot be burned without catastrophic consequences. The following graphic is beyond their cognitive grasp:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240216231558.png&hash=b4f8cd9560e2a5b9cbd3f100f8c1435f9a4e5618)
WHY can't they get the above through their thick heads? ???

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210316151047.png&hash=322a7c76731414f0f2ba44f8649e39de889b4bd6)
BECAUSE THEY ARE BIOSPHERE MATH CHALLENGED, GREED WORSHIPPING CRAZIES.

Forget Peal Oil; Peak DEMAND for Oil is now in the rear view mirror BECAUSE the oil and gas pigs have better technology to find fossil fuels coupled with the accelerating demand destruction due to Renewable Energy infrastructure, increased efficiency AND cratering world economies. Amory Lovins predicted all this several years ago.   
Quote
"Hitting peak oil will come faster than any of us think. But don't blame dwindling supply — it's all about disappearing demand" Amory Lovins

Premier Finds Oil in Bagpuss Well  :P

Published at 08:12AM - 05/08/16

Premier Oil announced today it has found oil in the Bagpuss prospect, located in the UK sector of the North Sea.

According to the company, the discovery proved “a significant volume of oil in place”.

“We will now work with our partners to carry out a full analysis of the hydrocarbons and reservoir encountered to ascertain whether commerciality can be explained,” Premier Oil Director of Exploration and North Sea, Robin Allan, said.

The 13/25-1 well targeting the Bagpuss prospect on the Halibut Horst in the Outer Moray Firth reached a total depth of 1,532 feet in granite basement, Premier explained in a statement.

Overall, the well encountered 41 feet of hydrocarbon-bearing sands within a 68 feet hydrocarbon column, which is in line with pre-drill estimates, Premier added.

The sands have between 25% and 33% porosity and indications are that the oil is heavy. The well is now being plugged and abandoned.

According to a previous report by North Sea Energy, Bagpuss operations started on July 14th and the well was spud on July 18th.


Bagpuss and Blofeld Could Contain 2bn Oil Barrels


The well was drilled by Diamond Offshore’s Ocean Valiant drilling facility, which had previously worked on the Solan development, located west of Shetland.

The joint venture (JV) partners in the prospect are Maersk Oil UK (25%), North Sea Energy (15%), Premier Oil (40.1%, operator), EnCounter Oil (13.27%) and Groliffe (6.63%).

According to a previous statement by North Sea Energy, the cost of drilling the Bagpuss prospect are 100% funded through a farm-in agreement with Maersk and are 50% of North Sea Energy’s costs of a Bagpuss subsequent well, should one be drilled.

An analysis by Premier Oil on previous tests on the discovery suggested that Bagpuss and the nearby Blofeld heavy oil prospects together could contain up to 2 billion barrels of oil in place.

According to analysts at Wood Mackenzie (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d), this could imply the opening of a new play. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/stupid-im-with-arrow-left.gif)

http://www.offshorepost.com/premier-finds-oil-bagpuss-well/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300915135643.png&hash=34da07af28fdf36925e39dce5464fb17688d404e)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 08, 2016, 07:34:21 pm
Got a couple of politically incorrect issues here AG....

1) All this talk of drillin' for oil & then pluggin' the hole ! mmm mmmmmm
This might get some diners a little excited and cause some blow back my good man.

2) That cartoon of Anu the great  big 9ft. white lizard god of the J.W.'s may be offensive.
It's best we watch this type of humor in the future.

Carry on.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca)



Yep.
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I would say those are, not just incisive and brilliant, but also 100% accurate observations on your part.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F128fs318181.gif&hash=eff6d5f3831782966c2ff2081f07bf7fc5b22a6b)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)

You and I share a rather unique ability get people's drawers in a bunch. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F4fvfcja.gif&hash=34a9a570347d39a0a892bc1f376c5e8b88add6b5) It's a skill that we aquired through frequent contact with non-intelligent, though devilishly clever and hopelessly crooked, life forms normally classified as members of Homo Sapdom.

We straight shooters aren't real popular, but you must admit we have a lot of fun telling it like it IS.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)

Agelbert is shown below asking himself a philosophical question:
  :icon_mrgreen:

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What is it about reality that bothers crooks and liars so much? ???  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 08, 2016, 09:21:42 pm
There are 3 things in life that are 100% accurate.
1) Death
2) Taxes
3) Chickens always come home to roost. We are gonna' have us a very messy hen house ....

I just heard, I'm not sure if it was on your newz channel or not that BMW will no longer be making fossil fuel car within the next 5 years.

It may have been on the Real Verbz you tube channel. That channel deals with electro magnetic propulsion.

The mans name is Jason Verbelli & he has an amazing channel.

By the time mankind is done with the oil industry & all their chicanery we'll be lucky if they'll be a can of WD-40 on Wal-mart shelves to buy.

Old man Porsche had patents on electric vehicles in like 1901. Are you kidding me ?

This circle jerk has gone on long enuf! What a waste of time & money. Who gives a rats ass about variable valve timing.

You can put a used washing machine motor in an old V Dub Beetle, power it with nickle iron batteries & be down the road for less than 5 g's.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgpiN9i45XM&feature=player_embedded
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Yes, Germany (and Daimler - BMW too) is going to ban the manufacture of internal combustion powered cars after 2020 or 2025, depending on how much blowback from the auto manufacturers they get.

Of course the fossil fuel lobby is fighting this tooth and nail. Let us hope that common sense prevails over polluter stupidity.

And yeah, electrics were a big deal in New York in the year 1900. Rockefeller took advantage of the low level of battery technology back then. 

NOW, battery technology makes gasoline guzzlers look totally stupid and inefficient for general transportation on the roads, on the farms and even on ships.

Aircraft will take a little longer, but they can be powered, as a certain 15 year old giant drone now is, by hydrogen. Also, jet engine biofuel from algae is now being used by some airliners.

The gaming of all things energy by the oil and gas crooks has been going on for over a century. From the 19th century post-Civil War tax on alcohol that gave Rockefeller his start, BEFORE cars, to Prohibition that destroyed the ethanol competition, DESPITE it being a superior fuel, followed by wave after wave of TOTALLY unjustified "subsidies" and land lease giveaways, we-the-people have been robbed blind.

 
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It's TIME that we-the-people listened to other species in the biosphere and told the fossil fueler crooks what they can DO with their polluting CRAP.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 10, 2016, 09:01:28 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Perhaps this Transocean Rig was given an inappropriate name. Hubris has a way of catching up on people with illusions of grandeur. 
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Transocean Rig Runs Aground

Published at 11:53AM - 08/08/16

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Attention all rig crewmembers: I think we just found England.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__smokelots.gif&hash=094f88de6782c1cd03ed5321b387792046eb3cdd)

The Transocean-owned semi-submersible drilling rig Transocean Winner  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8) has reportedly run aground in the UK after being struck by a severe storm.

According to the BBC, the 17,000 tonne rig was blown ashore on the Western Isles while under tow west of Lewis.

“Transocean and ALP Marine have established their emergency response rooms, SMIT salvage has been mobilised to deal with the incident,” the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) was quoted as saying.

Transocean Rig Runs Aground

The rig detached from its tug boat overnight before running aground at the beach of Dalmore, Carloway.

The rig had remained in contact with the tug Alp Forward, but was unable to make headway with the tow.

Earlier today, the master of the tug reported the tow line had parted and was unable to reconnect due to severe weather.

In the meantime, the MCA deployed emergency vessels from Orkney on Sunday to assist.

“The MCA’s counter pollution branch and Secretary Of State’s Representative for Salvage and Intervention (SOSREP) are monitoring the situation. Local authority and Marine Scotland have been notified,” the MCA was quoted as saying.

Transocean Winner Hit by Storm  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs15.rimg.info%2Fdcda0e08e538cb37431314e6bd49279b.gif&hash=4e8b4ba5ce94991ab2f42c4c663e9f6991bbf4f4)


According to the Stornoway Coastguard, there were no personnel on board and no risk to life. However, access to the beach has been blocked.

The semi-submersible was being towed from Norway to Malta and had recently ended a contract with Marathon Oil in the Norwegian North Sea.

The incident follows weather warnings put in place for much of the north of the UK as the country was hit by winds of up to 70 miles per hour.

Transocean Winner is a GVA 4000-design rig built in 1983 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and upgraded in 2006.

The facility was contracted early this year to work in the Norwegian North Sea for Det norske, at the Volund oil and gas field.

http://www.offshorepost.com/transocean-rig-runs-aground/

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A pictorial metaphor: The future of the fossil fuel industry.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fminzdr.gif&hash=f5927d7395d8a28c69df2a0a3a98660932c6903f)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 11, 2016, 03:52:07 pm
The REAL World of POLLUTION & CORRUPTION Since Spindletop in Images & Numbers

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(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/snap-2013-11-06-at-14-31-28.png)

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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icheme.org%2F%7E%2Fmedia%2FImages%2FMember%2520Groups%2FHull%2FCO2-emissions.jpg&hash=b86d95a8a0718615e1a4b6ad8e2f48e6bed1d150)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F26.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_m0dlrgOuiH1rpa034o1_250.jpg&hash=58d49f6aa5da4f193314b1ff4a6f7d3d07f6b713)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 11, 2016, 09:43:23 pm
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Massachusetts AG defends climate investigation against Exxon
   
By Timothy Cama - 08/08/16 05:25 PM EDT

Massachusetts’s attorney general is fighting Exxon Mobil Corp.’s attempts to have a Texas court block its climate change investigation into the oil giant.

Maura Healey (D), the state’s top lawyer, filed a pair of briefs late Monday in the Texas federal court where Exxon sued to stop Healey’s wide-ranging demand for documents related to its stance on climate change going back to the 1970s.

Healey believes Exxon might have violated state law and committed fraud by understating the company’s research into global warming and trying to sow public doubt about the role of fossil fuels in climate change. She sent her civil investigative demand — similar to a subpoena — earlier this year.

Now Healey is accusing Exxon of “forum-shopping,” or trying to get a Texas court to intervene in a matter that should be handled in Massachusetts.

“This court should reject Exxon’s transparent attempt at forum-shopping and dismiss this case,” Douglas Cawley, who is representing Healey’s office, wrote in a brief with the federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

“Exxon has challenged the validity of the [demand] in Massachusetts state court and will have a full and fair opportunity to press its claims there,” he said. “Notwithstanding that fact, Exxon also elected to file a nearly identical suit in this court and asks the court to exercise personal jurisdiction over Attorney General Healey — despite the fact that all relevant events alleged in the complaint occurred in Massachusetts or New York and no relevant events occurred in Texas.”

Healey also filed a brief opposing Exxon’s attempt in the Texas court to get a preliminary injunction against the investigative demand while the litigation is ongoing.

The court, Cawley wrote in the brief, “need not reach Exxon’s preliminary injunction motion because it should dismiss Exxon’s suit for lack of personal jurisdiction over Attorney General Healey, as well as on the other grounds set forth in her motion to dismiss.”

Healey and her colleagues in New York, California and the Virgin Islands have launched investigations into Exxon’s stance on climate.

Healey agreed last month to hold off on enforcing her investigative demand while Texas challenges it in court, a standard practice in similar cases.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/290790-massachusetts-ag-defends-climate-investigation-against-exxon

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 19, 2016, 04:21:48 pm
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Deepwater Mexico: Exxon, Chevron & Hess Bid To Drill Oil

August 18, 2016 by Bloomberg
 
(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ixyKzNv1r3Ow/v0/190x-1.jpg)
A general view of the Tonal sea platform oil rig for Mexican oil company PEMEX, located 65 miles northeast of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico, on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010. Pemex is Latin AmericaŐs biggest oil producer. Photographer: Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg

by Adam Williams (Bloomberg) Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Hess Corp. have agreed to bid together for rights to drill for crude in Mexico’s deepwater oil areas, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.

The three U.S.-based producers have reached a Joint Operating Agreement   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c), which allows the consortium  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)to bid to produce oil in the 10 areas up for auction on Dec. 5, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. A Joint Operating Agreement is a contract  ;) that establishes the role and obligation of each company in the accord, and designates the party that will act as the operator of a production area should it be awarded in the auction. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)
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Mexico hopes to raise $44 billion in its first-ever sale of deepwater drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, located in the Perdido area near the maritime border with the U.S. and in the southern Gulf’s Cuenca Salina. Seventy-six percent of the country’s prospective oil resources are located offshore in deep waters, according to Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell.


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PEMEX Offshore Platforms DOING what the DO (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

The country approved final legislation in 2014 to allow foreign crude producers to operate in Mexico for the first time since 1938, in an effort to reverse an 11-year decline in production. The Dec. 5 auction has been lauded by the government as the most likely to attract large foreign oil operators that possess the expertise and capital to produce crude miles below the surface of the Gulf, which Pemex has been unable to exploit because it lacks the technology to do so.

All of the 26 companies that qualified to bid in the auction, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Statoil ASA, and BP Plc, are expected to sign similar agreements because the government’s capital requirements for bidding are considered too large for individual producers to do so alone. Petroleos Mexicanos, the country’s state-owned oil company, announced in May that they were in talks with Exxon, Chevron and Total SA to sign agreements of mutual interest to consider the possibility of bidding together in the deepwater round.

A Joint Operating Agreement can be dissolved if one of the companies withdraws its intention to participate in the contract, and the companies may opt not to bid even if the consortium is still in place.

Quote
A Chevron spokesperson said that the company could not comment on “speculation.” Hess spokesmen didn’t immediately respond to calls and e-mails after normal business hours. Exxon would not comment on the proceedings, according to a press official at the company’s Mexico offices.

©2016 Bloomberg News

https://gcaptain.com/deepwater-mexico-exxon-chevron-hess-bid-to-drill/

Agelbert NOTE: As usual, the price of oil goes up, as it has done in the last three or for days, NOT because of supply and demand, but because of SPECULATION by traders that count on their pals in fossil fuel corrupted governments to give them a profit over people and planet HAND OUT.

In addition to the totally RIGGED bidding for oil drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, speculation is being fueled by a tanker swarm headed for the USA to "take advantage of" some MORE WELFARE QUEEN CRAP on behalf of the fossil fuel industry corrupt and unsustainable "business model".

Oil Traders Rush To Dispatch Tankers To U.S. Ports

By Reuters on Aug 18, 2016 02:12 pm

SNIPPET:

By Catherine Ngai (Reuters) A rare opening of an export window for crude moving from the U.S. Gulf to Western Europe has caused a flurry of interest among oil traders, with at least two securing vessels.

On Tuesday, global marker Brent’s premium traded to as much as $2.50 a barrel over U.S. crude futures, the most since late February.  ;)

https://gcaptain.com/oil-traders-rush-to-dispatch-tankers-to-u-s-ports/

"Supply and Demand", MY ASS!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 24, 2016, 02:39:25 pm
Agelbert NOTE: I am posting a link to this article, but not because of the minor environmental damage caused by a fossil fuel corporation, while the State Government does everything it can to exonerate them.

I am posting a link to this article because the comments clearly show that responsible, intelligent, caring people are not fooled by this pretense of governmental environmental defense.

Of course, in addition to the responsible voices, perfidious cheerleaders for the polluting energy "real world" always weigh in using cherry picked hyperbole to try to link the environmental damage to Renewable Energy infrastructure or downplay the (SEE: "tempest in a teapot"  and "get over it" typical fossil fueler type mocking) the danger to society of this 24/7 corruption of Government by Oil & Gas corporations. The people that peddle this propaganda are a danger to themselves and future generations. They pretend to care, but they don't care about anything but the money in their bank account.

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State: Vermont Gas likely won’t face fines for killing flowers  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

Aug. 23, 2016, 8:43 pm by Mike Polhamus 5 Comments

SNIPPET:
The company’s contractors destroyed 77 of what are called harsh sunflowers while cutting other vegetation July 18. Contractors had considered moving the plants but tried instead to drill horizontally beneath them for the pipeline. The flowers died during preparations for the drilling.

http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/23/state-vermont-gas-likely-wont-face-fines-killing-flowers/

UP votes left of DOWN votes

Annette Smith   (https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/stupid-im-with-arrow-left.gif)
This is what Shumlin’s government does about bats killed by wind turbines, too. Sure, let ’em die, and from the ANR perspective it appears that the more killed the better because for every bat killed, the wind developers have to pay into a fund that deals with bats in people’s homes. This administration can’t be out of office soon enough, our state’s democracy and environment are a shambles thanks to the blind support for build build build.
7 | -1 

Rich Lachapelle  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)
They will grow back… The demise of a few plants, endangered or not is part of the price we all pay for an energy distribution infrastructure that benefits thousands of people. Municipalities host sewage treatment facilities for the public good and occasionally these facilities allow raw sewage to enter public waterways. How many times does this scenario result in fines? In the scheme of things, with Vermont’s junkie apocalypse, our world war with radical islam, and the climate armageddon, a few dead flowers is but a tempest in a teapot. Get over it.
0 | -1 

Barbie Alsop
Given that Vermont Gas is also willy-nilly insistent on going through wetlands that house an endangered bird in Geprags Park in Hinesburg, I suggest this behavior is the norm, not a singular mistake, and the Vermont Gas thinks that if it owns up after the damage is done, it will avoid penalties. As the saying goes, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and this is the modus operandi of VG in this ill-advised pipeline. It was required to have all its permits in place before starting to build out, an it did so by misleading the regulators about the protected land and birds in Geprags. But the state’s regulators just casually allow it to continue, rather than penalizing a corporation that has no interest in doing anything other than make money before we finally see the light, and ban fossil fuels.
12 | -2 

Kate Porter
“Vermont Gas appears not to have profited off the plants’ destruction, Porter said.”
How absurd. They’re profitting off of the whole enterprise. That’s why they’re there. That’s what they do. That’s the name of the game. Make them pay, they can, they should, and it will give them some incentive to be more responsible in the future. Don’t go belly up, they’re big boys, they can handle it.
9 | -2

Kate Porter

Many don’t realize it but all of life on this planet is in crisis due to epic species extinction. How epic? Oh, about 65 Million years worth of epic, that was earth’s last big extinction event. We are losing species at a rate of a minimum of 1000 times the natural rate of extinction. Why is this important? Life requires ecosystems, ecosystems only stay stable when they are in balance, when one thing goes out of whack it affects other things. We are changing the balance, sooner or later are going to feel it. Things will change. In the meantime we make all other life pay for our blunders and our insatiable desire for more of everything including energy. All of life deserves our utmost respect. We are horribly arrogant, and cruisin for a bruisin.
10 | -4 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 25, 2016, 03:21:54 pm
Water Is Life, Oil Is Death: The People vs. the Bakken Pipeline in Iowa and the Dakotas

Posted on Aug 22, 2016

By Paul Street
 
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People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline project, also known as the Bakken pipeline, rally in Des Moines, Iowa. (Barbara Rodriguez / AP)

The American version of democracy focuses on elections and candidates. As the venerable left intellectual Noam Chomsky observed in June, “Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It’s a very destructive ideology … a way of making people passive, submissive objects.” Chomsky added that we “ought to teach kids that elections take place, but that’s not [all of] politics.” There’s also the more urgent and serious politics of popular social movements and direct action beneath and beyond the election cycle.

We might refine Chomsky’s maxim to read “and let rich guys run the world into the ground” or “let rich guys ruin the world.” With anthropogenic (really “capitalogenic”) global warming, the nation and world’s corporate and financial oligarchs are bringing the planet to the brink of an epic ecosystem collapse.

We might also put some meat on the bones of Chomsky’s pedagogical advice by “teach[ing] kids” about the people’s politics being practiced in the upper Midwest and northern Great Plains by citizen activists fighting to help avert ecological calamity by blocking construction of what North Dakota Sioux leader David Archambault II calls “a black snake” of “greed.” The snake in question is the planet-baking Dakota Access/Bakken pipeline, what Iowa activists call “The Next Keystone XL.”

While Iowa Berned, Dakota Access Worked Behind the Scenes  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

As progressives flocked to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ impressive rallies in Iowa over the past year, the Texas-based company Dakota Access LLC, a division of the ecocidal corporation Energy Transfer Partners LP, moved methodically ahead with its plan to build the Bakken pipeline. This $3.8 billion, 1,134-mile project would carry 540,000 barrels of primarily fracked crude oil from North Dakota’s “Bakken oil patch” daily on a diagonal course through sacred North Dakota Sioux tribal sites and burial grounds, South Dakota, Iowa, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and many other major waterways, to Patoka, Ill. It would link with another pipeline that will transport the black gold to terminals and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico for export to the global market.

In March, five weeks after Sanders essentially tied Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, the corporate-captive Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) approved the giant Iowa portion of the project, granting Dakota Access eminent domain across the entire route through 18 counties—the last major administrative hurdle for the project. The “regulatory” boards in the other three states had already signed off. There was still some slim hope that the Army Corps of Engineers could be persuaded to block the project. That hope was dashed July 25. 

Dakota Access construction crews have begun moving dirt and tearing up farmers’ crops along the pipeline’s projected path. Pipeline workers with out-of-state license plates are showing up in hotels, motels and camps—and on dating sites like “Plenty of Fish”—along the route. Construction began in South Dakota, North Dakota and Illinois in May. Pipe has been laid in Lee County in Iowa’s southeast corner and Lyon County in the northwest. Last week, a pipeline trench crossed the popular Chichaqua Valley Trail in central Iowa. A young woman from central Iowa reports that a local dating website is “swarming” with out-of-state pipeline workers staying in campsites and elsewhere.

Dakota Access first applied to the IUB for a pipeline permit in the fall of 2014, just before Sanders’ first visit to Iowa. Slowly but surely, as media-driven popular excitement over the largely Iowa-focused presidential contest built last year, the company quietly pressed ahead with a public relations offensive (with a strong emphasis on “jobs for Iowans”) against the opposition of environmentalists and concerned citizens. There was only one formal IUB public hearing, and it lasted just one day. The opponents of the pipeline represented a cross-section of Iowans. The proponents were almost entirely from construction unions, many from out of state. Opponents who attended multiple “informational meetings” staged by Dakota Access reported numerous blatant inconsistencies, contradictions and lies in the “facts” presented by the company. While the state dived further into the quadrennial caucus commotion, Dakota Access moved the pipeline through the required administrative and public relations hoops under the media-politics radar.

The stakes are high in the fight against the project. “If the Bakken Pipeline is built,” the progressive lobbying organization Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) notes, “it would seriously harm Iowa’s already impaired water quality, threaten the integrity of the fertile farmland of thousands of everyday Iowans, and contribute to our dependence on fossil fuels. This steers us away from developing renewable energy infrastructure and curbing the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.” CCI is part of a broad statewide anti-Bakken group called the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition (BPRC) that includes more than 30 organizations. BPRC is engaged in the difficult work of grass-roots politics and direct action—both legal and extra-legal—beneath and beyond the major-party and candidate-centered presidential election extravaganzas that take early root in Iowa (thanks to its first-in-the-nation caucuses) every four years.

A Fake ‘Public Utility’

The IUB’s decision in March was rich with Orwellian irony. Iowa law forbids the condemning of agricultural land for private development. It is true, as Dakota Access argues, that the law excludes utilities under the jurisdiction of the IUB from the private development limitation. And that includes pipelines if they serve a “public purpose.” But this pipeline would simply transport oil through Iowa and therefore serve no discernible public good for the state and, in fact, promises to do considerable harm to the state’s environmental and financial health. Opponents rightly point out that like all pipelines, it will eventually spill, and Dakota Access LLC will leave Iowa holding the bag for the cleanup.

Like something out of Kafka, the IUB will have no power to enforce any kind of public regulations whatsoever on the operators of the private interstate pipeline they approved as a “public utility.” 

The IUB’s decision was another example among many that Iowa is up for sale to big business under the right-wing administration of Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.

The giant Canadian pipeline company Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum are impressed by Dakota Access’ success in gaining the approval of “regulators.” The two corporations recently put up $2 billion ($1.5 billion from Enbridge and $500,000 from Marathon) to purchase 49 percent of the Bakken pipeline. A likely consequence if the project is completed is that Canadian tar-sands oil will flow through the pipeline—and Iowa—toward the Gulf Coast. That oil is one of the most carbon-rich, planet-cooking fossil fuels on earth. Dire environmental concern about the mining of Canadian tar sands oil was the main reason climate activists like Bill McKibben engaged in high-profile protests of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline—a leading news story a few years ago.

Read the other two pages of this three page article at link below:
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/water_life_oil_death_people_vs_bakken_pipeline_in_iowa_dakotas_20160822

Agelbert NOTE: The concentration of Mens Rea Criminal Corporate Corruption of the Federal and many State Governments in the USA (and the world, for that matter) based in TEXAS is evidence that the Nietzsche style Empathy Deficit Disordered Territorial Imperative is an integral part of the MORALLY BANKRUPT Texan culture and world view. TEXANS, of all people on the planet, are the greatest threat to the biosphere that humanity has ever faced.

One way or the other, the TEXAN Oil & Gas worshipping culture will soon end.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210316151047.png&hash=322a7c76731414f0f2ba44f8649e39de889b4bd6)
TEXAN has his morning coffee

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The Fossil Fuelers in general, and TEXANS IN PARTICULAR,    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!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 27, 2016, 02:21:02 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fclimatenexus.org%2Fsites%2Fall%2Fthemes%2Fclimatenexus%2Flogo.png&hash=15b1ba7cb09e37216d4efcca26e9e31ee74ed1a4)

Polluting Dogs (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) Have Their Day: Clean Power Plan Arguments Begin
 
 Oral arguments on the legality of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) begin today, kicking off a series of arguments, appeals and apparently, advertisements. And regardless of how these judges (six appointed by Ds, four by Rs) rule in the D.C. District Court, a West Virginia vs EPA Supreme Court showdown is nearly a sure thing. 
 
 So here’s a run-down of preliminary coverage. Two GOP-appointed EPA administrators penned an op-ed for the NY Times that explains Why Obama is right on clean energy. Their main point is that the CPP is in line with 45 years of the federal government’s power to set standards that states find ways to meet. Also at NYT is an explainer about why the clerical error that stipulates that the EPA can’t regulate something twice (think double jeopardy) has bearing on the ruling. But one expert was quoted saying such an interpretation is not likely to be endorsed by the court, as it is “like exempting restaurants from food handling requirements because they are subject to the fire code.”
 
Law professor Alice Kaswan explains in The Hill that aside from the climate benefits, “the rule could prevent 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks, and 300,000 missed work and school days each year, leading to air quality-related economic benefits of at least $11 to $28 billion by 2030.”


But you wouldn’t hear that from the WSJ, who offered up about a third of yesterday’s opinion page for attacks on the CPP, with an editorial as well as an op-ed by lawyers Rivkin and Grossman. Both pieces clutch their pearls and stick to tired talking points. Even their rhetoric remains the same, as this week’s editorial headline, The ‘Clean Power’ Putsch, echoes one published last year when they dubbed it the Climate-Change Putsch. (They have yet to fully break Godwin’s law and refer in name to Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, so cheers to that...)
 
 The fossil fuel industry’s full court press extends beyond the WSJ. The “clean coal” lobby has taken the unusual (but not unprecedented) approach of running fear-mongering radio ads about how the life and climate-saving CPP will render legislators incapable of protecting their constituents (apparently “constituents” means fossil fuel companies). This hyperbolic ad sounds like a parody of melodramatic movie trailers, made complete by the video version that literally shows the constitution burning. That bit of over-the-top imagery is based on a quote from Peabody Energy’s lawyer Lawrence Tribe, but as PoliticoPro’s coverage explains, the ad flirts with rules prohibiting lawyers communicating with judges outside the courtroom. Using of one of the lawyer’s quotes is, if nothing else, “highly unprofessional,” according to an ethics lawyer from the George W. Bush administration.
 
 Whether or not the judges will be persuaded remains to be seen. Since recent reporting shows most of the states suing over the plan being too burdensome are nevertheless already on track to meet its targets, challengers have an uphill battle. But unfortunately, even if the plan goes ahead, we’ll still need more emission reductions to meet the Paris goals, as evidenced by another new study. (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bad3b09fd1694027882aeb2013c44696/us-not-track-meet-2025-carbon-pollution-cutting-goal)
 
 By striking the plan down then, we’d be even further from climate safety. So this courtroom drama is truly courting disaster.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 29, 2016, 06:59:26 pm
For those who labor under the view that the reversal of fortunes for Renewable Energy in the early 1980s was just ignorance, supply and demand and big oil wasn't INSTRUMENTAL in bringing it about.

Oh, and about NON-HYDRO renewable energy being THROTTLED shortly after the technology was proven competitive with fossil fuels. You mean you DIDN"T KNOW there was SIGNIFICANT PROMISING  RENEWABLE ENERGY NON-HYDRO COST COMPETITIVE TECHNOLOGY BEFORE 1980? ???

I understand that the media BURIED the FACT that IT HAPPENED TO WIND TURBINE TECHNOLOGY shortly after 1980 when Carter left office!

 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Fc6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e%2Ftumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=4b1cad5ea13f7430a0c01f3065039d21d78da398)

It was SHELVED -DEEP SIXED - LEFT TO DIE UNTIL RESURRECTED in the mid to late 1990s (BUT NOT BY THE USA!)

The GREATEST PENETRATION OF PURE HYDRO renewable energy in the USA was in 1940.
Quote
Over 1500 hydroelectric facilities produce about one third of the United States' electrical energy.

http://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/history.html (http://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/history.html)

It was ALL DOWN HILL FOR HYDRO AS A PERCENTAGE of electrical energy generated FROM THEN ON.

The NEW CSP, wind turbine and, to a lesser but still important extent PV technologies, were being assiduously developed during the late 1970s.

Power companies closed ranks AGAINST that technology. Even places WITHOUT electricity like a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico triggered angry letters from the utility to NASA to STOP putting solar panels for water pumping there because it COULD "force electrical rates DOWN IN THE FUTURE".  NASA STOPPED but Carter kept pushing until 1980.          GET IT? ???  ;)

NO?

Check THIS out:

 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.doomsteaddiner.net%2Fforum%2FMGalleryItem.php%3Fid%3D1843&hash=3e7b71001e64cfce5aa67a7f6d3034072c4586df)

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Westinghouse uprated version, the Mod-0A. Four Mod-0A protototypes were installed (Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Hawaii & Rhode Island).
[/i]

When do you think the above pictures were taken, dear readers? Would you believe THIRTY EIGHT YEARS AGO!!?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)
 


Wind Energy Comes of Age

By Paul Gipe

Pag 103

Quote
After the moon landings, the space program began winding down, and with it the space agency.

NASA was scrambling to redefine itself, to find new "missions," when opportunity struck in the form of the oil embargo.

What began as mere tinkering by researchers at the agency's Lewis research center near Sandusky, Ohio quickly evolved into the most costly wind energy R&D program in the world.

NASA began translating all known documents on wind energy worldwide.
They consulted with Hutter and Putnam and studied the operation of Juul's machine at Gedser. In the end they started down a path blazed years before by Putnam. The result, the Mod-0, resembled neither Hutter's lightweight, flexible, downwind design nor Juul's rigid thee bladed upwind design. NASA's Mod-0 incorproated none of the lessons of Europe, while abandoning Putnam's most significant design element, his hinged blades.

Westinghouse, the contractor on the Mod-0, was subsequently hired to build an uprated version, the Mod-0A, for extended field tests. Four Mod-0A prototypes were installed (Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Hawaii & Rhode Island).

All were scraped when none of the host utilities wanted to assume maintenance of the turbines.

http://www.worldbooksonline.info/Wind-Energy-Comes-of-Age-9780471109242 (http://www.worldbooksonline.info/Wind-Energy-Comes-of-Age-9780471109242)

The book goes on to explain, in detail, how various R&D goals of a high MTBF "couldn't seem to be achieved" in order for these machines to be considered "reliable".   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

They could build rockets to the moon, supersonic aircraft, high speed jet turbines with micrometer tolerances but making gears, housings and transmissions for a glacially slow giant propeller to generate electricity was just "too hard".


If you believe that, I have time shares in a black hole at the core of the milky way to sell you cheap. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fsnapoutofit.gif&hash=911b14b142101df534f739771fb2d3836a807d19)


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Call 1-800-BIG OIL for your time share reservations. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)
 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 30, 2016, 01:07:21 pm
For those who labor under the view that the reversal of fortunes for Renewable Energy in the early 1980s was just ignorance, supply and demand and big oil wasn't INSTRUMENTAL in bringing it about.

Oh, and about NON-HYDRO renewable energy being THROTTLED shortly after the technology was proven competitive with fossil fuels. You mean you DIDN"T KNOW there was SIGNIFICANT PROMISING  RENEWABLE ENERGY NON-HYDRO COST COMPETITIVE TECHNOLOGY BEFORE 1980? ???

I understand that the media BURIED the FACT that IT HAPPENED TO WIND TURBINE TECHNOLOGY shortly after 1980 when Carter left office!

Maybe I missed a class, AG, but I thought it was pretty clear that Reagan tilted US energy policy firmly towards oil within 30 seconds of taking office. I particularly remember the celebrated removal of the solar panels from the White House. A symbolic act if ever there was one.

Most people still take the knee at an image of St. Reagan, whereas I've seen him as a fraud and charlatan since he was elected. But then I've been out of step with this culture since 1979.


Agreed. However, the push back from the fossil Fuel Industry actually began during the Carter Administration, as the NASA documents evidence. Reagan was a tool, as well as a dangerous fool.

Most people still take the knee at an image of St. Reagan, whereas I've seen him as a fraud and charlatan since he was elected. But then I've been out of step with this culture since 1979.

Russians think Stalin was a great man now, in large part, even though he killed 60 million people. Go figure. History is written by the victors ignorant-ass survivors.

Reagan did much to put us in the **** we're in today, as far as the US economy. Bush Jr. put us where we are in terms of war and the bankruptcy that goes with that. Whatever blame Obama deserves (which is not zero), he didn't set the wheels in motion on any of it.


While it is true that the historical narrative is routinely distorted to sanitize the mens rea reality behind empathy deficit disordered national actions on behalf of a greedy, corrupt and murderous elite, more and more people today understand that the happy talk and flag waving bullshit is just that.

For example, the role the U.S. played in doing absolutely everything possible to destroy Russia from the moment it attempted (but failed miserably, thanks to U.S. efforts) to embrace socialism, is documented. These efforts, to a significant degree (that you refuse to recognize), polarized the Russians into a paranoid dictatorship which wreaked havoc on its citizens.

Would Stalin have been as ruthless if WE had treated Russia with respect and not tried to undermine them at every turn? I doubt it.

As to the "victors" writing history, there will be no victors in a polluted and dying biosphere, regardless of the happy talk and other assorted myth making by mendacious and duplicitous historians.
  (https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/snap-2013-11-06-at-14-31-28.png)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 30, 2016, 02:25:29 pm
Would Stalin have been as ruthless if WE had treated Russia with respect and not tried to undermine them at every turn? I doubt it.

No disrespect, but I think you are almost as ignorant about Stalin as the average Russian.

From the moment Lenin died (1924), Stalin ruthlessly consolidated his power, even going to great lengths to hunt down and exterminate people who were heroes of the Marxist revolution.

He hunted Leon Trotsky for FIFTEEN YEARS, and had him killed by one of his agents, who took more than year to build a false persona that allowed him to get Trotsky into a situation where he was vulnerable. 

If that us what you consider no disrespect, I shudder to think of what you consider gratuitous disrespect   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300714025456.bmp&hash=f4e4a260bd60d3f34ca86fed93c47d5fb4117cfd).

YOU were the one who brought up Stalin in a discussion about Reagan. I normally consider that type of diversionary discourse as an attempt at establishing a false equivalence, but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and see how you would respond to historically valid cause and effect.

When comparing Reagan with Stalin, the issue is not Trotsky. The issue is U.S. belligerent and unnecessary involvement. If I was to go into some DETAILS about what our intelligence services have done ROUTINELY for over 70 years, the Trotsky set up would look like a Sunday School Picnic. But I see I am wasting my time trying to enlighten you on what the US actually did to stimulate the paranoia and police state in Russia.

Have a nice day.

 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 08, 2016, 12:57:41 pm
Agelbert NOTE: To be filed in the WTF!!??? file of exactly what we need to accelerate our path to extinction.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300115234833.gif&hash=20e82f36f361174e6f8f07e11c36330842502bab)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fhelpparentsagewell.files.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F01%2Fimage0012.jpg&hash=b2914ac7dbe12344be4dfae7913d273b137e42e4)

World-Class Oil Discovery Made Offshore Alaska

Published at 10:20AM - 05/10/16


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A Texas(https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/stupid-im-with-arrow-left.gif)-based  oil company (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) announced it has made a large-scale oil discovery offshore Alaska.

According to Caelus Energy Alaska  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d) , the finding could amount to 6 billion barrels of light oil in the Arctic Oceans of Smith Bay.

“It has the size and scale to play a meaningful role in sustaining the Alaskan oil business over the next three or four decades,” Chief Operating Officer Jim Musselman, said.

US Firm Makes World-Class (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) Oil Find Offshore Alaska


According to Caelus, if estimates prove to be true, this “world class” oil discovery could be one of the largest ever in Alaska.

The development could deliver 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of light oil to the trans-Alaska pipeline, the company explained.

As well as this, such a discovery could increase volume and reduce the average viscosity of oil, which would help extend its viability, the company added.

The discovery is based on 126 square miles of three-dimensional seismic data and two wells drilled this year from ice pads.

Smith Bay Could Hold 10 Bn Barrels

The company did not conduct flow tests to verify the well’s capabilities “due to seasonal time constraints”, but “extensive sidewall coring and subsequent lab analyses confirm the presence of reservoir-quality sandstones containing oil,” Caelus explained in a statement.

Another appraisal well and seismic work is planned to improve estimates of the oil in place, with hopes that the Smith Bay complex could hold a total of 10 billion barrels of oil.

According to Sullivan, it will be years before the discovery starts production, with the next appraisal well planned for 2018.

If everything goes according to plan, the CEO explained, oil could flow to the trans-Alaska pipeline in 2022.

Meanwhile, Caelus is assessing options for a drilling platform.

Caelus Energy Alaska Smith Bay has a 75% ownership in the state leases at Smith bay, while NordAq Energy Inc. holds a 17.5% interest and L71 Resources a 7.5% interest.

http://www.offshorepost.com/world-class-oil-discovery-offshore-alaska/

Agelbert NOTE: Thank you, brain dead, evolutionary dead end Texan oil companies for the lion's share of the profit over planet pollution that will rid the planet of homo sapdom. The wages of sin are death. Payday is coming, Amen.

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If fossil fuelers had another brain, it would be lonesome.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 12, 2016, 02:26:12 pm
The Union of Concerned Scientists
Science for a healthy planet and safer world

October 6, 2016

New Study Ranks Eight Major Fossil Fuel Companies on Their Climate Change Actions

ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and Others Assessed on 30 Metrics, Including Statements on Climate Science, Support for Climate Deception and Disclosure of Climate Risks

WASHINGTON (October 6, 2016)—An in-depth analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) of eight leading fossil fuel companies found significant variations in how they are addressing global warming, but none has made a clean break from disinformation on climate science and policy. Likewise, none is adequately planning for a world free from carbon pollution, as laid out by the international climate agreement expected to take effect this year.

The “Climate Accountability Scorecard: Ranking Major Fossil Fuel Companies on Deception, Disclosure, and Climate Action” used 30 metrics to examine Arch Coal, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, CONSOL Energy, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and Royal Dutch Shell. The top score, “advanced,” reflected best practices. “Egregious” was the lowest score, indicating a corporation was acting very irresponsibly. No company scored better than the others in all categories, and several were relative leaders in some areas and laggards in others.

“Across the board, these eight companies continue to disparage the science and undermine the urgency of action—either directly or through the trade associations and industry groups they support,” said Kathy Mulvey, lead author of the report and Climate Accountability Campaign manager at UCS.

Quote
“In the wake of numerous exposés that revealed companies’ records of working to deceive the public about global warming, many of the companies now insist that they no longer promote denial and accept the reality of climate change. This study belies those claims.”

The analysis revealed:
 
Only two of the eight companies (BP and Shell) consistently affirm in their direct public statements the legitimacy of climate science and the consequential need for swift and deep reductions in fossil fuel emissions. Shell received a score of “advanced;” BP scored “good.” At the opposite end of the spectrum, ExxonMobil scored “egregious” for its climate science statements after CEO Rex Tillerson cast doubt on the accuracy and competency of climate models as recently as this year.

All eight companies (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) belong to key trade associations or industry groups that spread disinformation and seek to block climate action. All five oil companies in the study are members of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), a trade group that used misleading claims and scare tactics as part of a multi-million dollar campaign to block key provisions of a clean energy bill enacted in California.

Yet several of these companies have proven that they can distance themselves from industry groups that misrepresent climate science. BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell have left the American Legislative Exchange Council, with Shell stating that it disagreed with the lobby group’s climate denial and opposition to climate action.

Only half of the companies have begun to disclose climate risks to investors. Four companies scored “fair” (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and CONSOL Energy) and four companies scored “poor” (Arch Coal, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and Shell).

Two companies were found to be “good” (BP and ConocoPhillips) in supporting fair and effective climate policies, a category that takes into consideration companies’ disclosure, policies, and oversight related to political spending in general.Three companies were “fair” and three “poor” (Arch Coal, CONSOL Energy, and Peabody Energy).

Seven out of eight companies have not begun to plan for a world free from carbon pollution, even since countries worldwide committed to ambitious targets to reduce emissions in the international climate agreement reached in Paris last December. Shell received a “fair” ranking; all other companies ranked “poor” (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil) or “egregious” (Arch Coal, CONSOL Energy and Peabody Energy).

The study comes at a time when fossil fuel companies are facing increased scrutiny and pressure. At least two state attorneys general are investigating whether ExxonMobil intentionally misled its shareholders and the public about the threat of climate change, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how the company has valued its oil reserves in anticipation of potential carbon emission cuts. Meanwhile, shareholders at five of the eight companies filed resolutions related to climate change this year.

“Now that the nations of the world have committed to address climate change, investors and policy makers need information about how all companies are reducing their climate impacts and managing their climate risks—including the physical, regulatory, and market risks that climate change poses to their businesses,” said Paul Dickinson, Co-founder and Executive Chair of CDP.  “Reports and analyses such as this one are a vital resource for decision makers, including the senior leadership of major fossil fuel companies.”

In addition to calling for disclosure of climate risks that could affect companies’ bottom lines, investors also want to know whether companies continue to fund climate disinformation. The report highlights just how much further these companies need to go to disavow their decades-long efforts to confuse the public about the realities and risks of climate change and block policies to address it—work that continues today. Since 1988—after major fossil fuel companies unequivocally should have known about the risks of their products—more than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released into the atmosphere. The products of the eight companies analyzed are responsible for nearly 15 percent of industrial carbon emissions since 1850.

Quote
“It’s time for these major corporations to steer their companies and trade groups away from denying climate change and toward engaging constructively in policy discussions,” said Mulvey. “To evolve as energy companies, they must align their businesses with the Paris Agreement goals and help keep the global temperature increase well below two degrees Celsius.”

Quote
The report calls on major fossil fuel producers to accept their role in contributing to the problem of climate change and take action in several areas:

Stop spreading or supporting the spread of disinformation on climate science and policy:
The corporations should leave groups that spread disinformation or publicly distance themselves from those groups’ climate-related positions.

Fully disclose climate risks:
The corporations should disclose how climate change is putting at risk their infrastructure, reserve assets and future profits.

Plan for a world free from carbon pollution: The corporations should align their business models with a carbon-constrained world consistent with the international climate agreement’s goal of keeping the globe’s average temperature well below a 2 degrees Celsius increase above pre-industrial levels.

Support fair and effective climate policies: The corporations should consistently and actively advocate for fair and effective state, federal and international policies to reduce global warming.

Pay their share of climate costs.
No fossil fuel company has even begun to pay its share of the costs of climate damages and adaptation, so the report did not assess company performance or make specific recommendations in this area.   

The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems. Joining with citizens across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.

http://www.ucsusa.org/press/2016/new-study-ranks-eight-major-fossil-fuel-companies-their-climate-change-actions#.V_51cGcVDm4
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 14, 2016, 07:58:12 pm
Global Energy News | Mon Nov 14, 2016 | 4:49am EST
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Trump looking at fast ways to quit global climate deal: source 

By Valerie Volcovici and Alister Doyle | WASHINGTON/MARRAKESH, Morocco

President-elect Donald Trump is seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying broad global backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Since Trump's election victory on Tuesday, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris agreement during climate talks involving 200 nations set to run until Friday in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Trump has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement, which was strongly supported by outgoing Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama.

Trump's advisers are considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source, who works on Trump's transition team for international energy and climate policy.

"It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election" on Tuesday, the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Paris accord won enough backing for entry into force on Nov. 4, four days before the election.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday in New Zealand the Obama administration would do everything it could to implement the Paris accord before Trump takes office.  ;D

The accord says in its Article 28 that any country wanting to pull out after signing on has to wait four years. In theory, the earliest date for withdrawal would be Nov. 4, 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election.

The source said the future Trump administration is weighing alternatives to accelerate the pull-out: sending a letter withdrawing from the 1992 international framework accord that is the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement; voiding U.S. involvement in both in a year's time; or issuing a presidential order simply deleting the U.S. signature from the Paris accord.
 
Withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be controversial, partly because it was signed by former Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and approved by the U.S. Senate. The action also could antagonize many other countries. [L8N1DB41L]

The UNFCCC sets a goal of avoiding "dangerous" man-made damage to the climate to avert more heat waves, downpours, floods, extinctions of animals and plants and rising sea levels.

The 2015 Paris Agreement is much more explicit, seeking to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of the century and limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

Many nations have expressed hope that the United States will stay. But the host of the current round of climate negotiations, Morocco, said the pact that seeks to phase out greenhouse gases in the second half of the century was strong enough to survive a pullout.
 
One party deciding to withdraw would not call the agreement into question, Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar told a news conference.

In Beijing on Monday, the foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told a regular news briefing that China would like to continue working with all countries, including the United States, in the global fight against climate change.

The agreement was reached by almost 200 nations in December and, as of Saturday, has been formally ratified by 109 representing 76 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States with 18 percent.

The accord seeks to limit rising temperatures that have been linked to increasing economic damage from desertification, extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels.

U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa declined to comment on the Trump source's remarks to Reuters.
 
"The Paris Agreement carries an enormous amount of weight and credibility," Espinosa told a news conference.

She said the United Nations hoped for a strong and constructive relationship with Trump.

The Trump source said the president-elect's transition team is aware of the likely international backlash but said Republicans in the U.S. Congress have given ample warning that a Republican administration would take action to reverse course.

"The Republican Party (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) on multiple occasions has sent signals to the international community signaling that it doesn't agree with the pact. We've gone out of our way to give notice," the source said.

The source blamed Obama for joining up by an executive order, without getting approval from the U.S. Senate.

"There wouldn't be this diplomatic fallout on the broader international agenda if Obama hadn't rushed the adoption," the source said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Alister Doyle in Morocco; Additional reporting by Sue-Lin Wong in Beijing; Editing by John Stonestreet and Clarence Fernandez)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climatechange-accord-idUSKBN1370JX
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 19, 2016, 09:37:20 pm
NZ receives ‘Fossil of the Day’ (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) at UN climate conference

Thursday, 17 November 2016, 10:23 am

Press Release: New Zealand Youth Delegation   

New Zealand receives ‘Fossil of the Day’ award at United Nations climate change conference

New Zealand has been awarded the notorious ‘Fossil of the Day’ award at the 22nd annual United Nations climate change conference for showing hypocrisy towards fossil fuel subsidy reforms. New Zealand was exposed in its support of the oil and gas industries despite having ratified the Paris Agreement, under which goals have been set which would require at least 80% of fossil fuels needing to remain unburned globally.

“This afternoon, Climate Change Ambassador Mark Sinclair chaired a side event on the need to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and will likely encourage other countries to remove those subsidies.  At the same time, the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise website advertises the exciting oil and gas exploration prospects that are available in our country, stating the Government's aim to increase the value of New Zealand petroleum tenfold a year by 2025,” Alex Johnston, member of New Zealand Youth Delegation and Fossil Free UoA explains.

New Zealand is a founding member and champion of the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16), a group whose aim is to eliminate inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. New Zealand’s policies have been reviewed by Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), who found that they do not have any inefficient subsidies encouraging wasteful consumption of fossil fuels.

However, the quote from the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise website makes the hypocrisy of the country’s presence in such a group clear.

“Not only is the New Zealand government hoping to increase the value of petroleum exports in the future (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da)they’re already providing tax breaks and funding the scientific research that is needed by these industries before they will commit to exploration in New Zealand waters.”

The support provided by the government to the oil and gas industries amounted to $46 million NZD in 2012/2013 as identified by WWF New Zealand.

© Scoop Media

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1611/S00222/nz-receives-fossil-of-the-day-at-un-climate-conference.htm

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 01, 2016, 04:46:46 pm
Trump Watch | Nov. 30, 2016 11:54AM EST

Two More Trump Cabinet Picks Value 'Fossil Fuel Profits Above All Else'

Climate Nexus

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-chao-fallin-2119868573.html

Agelbert NOTE: The Cabinet Picks for the Trailer Trash Trump Administration all have one thing in common, the same meter reading (SEE BELOW) in regard to the biosphere and the health and welfare of future generations.

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 02, 2016, 03:03:37 pm
From Fracking Enthusiast to Exxon CEO: Trump's Latest Picks

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http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-cooke-tillerson-2123963114.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 07, 2016, 07:37:51 pm
Trump Watch| Dec. 07, 2016 04:09PM EST


Trump Picks Scott Pruitt,  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)  'Puppet of the Fossil Fuel Industry,'  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) to Head EPA

Lorraine Chow

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2955.gif&hash=ddc12d8bdb1bc63b7998a6b086b79a71b7bda755)          (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2953.gif&hash=b84c0ae260f7ac760e54bcdc33d788c36faa07c1)

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-appoint-scott-pruitt-epa-2134133576.html


 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 08, 2016, 01:09:07 pm
Scott Pruitt  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) is anti immigration, antiObamacare and anti criminal justice reform—and he doesn't believe in the idea of human-made climate change.

Quote
After weeks of speculation, the president-elect has decided who will head the EPA. His name is Scott Pruitt. As Oklahoma attorney general since 2010, Pruitt has been staunchly anti-EPA: He’s been involved in at least nine lawsuits with the federal agency, often challenging its power over state governments.

Like the majority of President-elect Donald Trump’s staff picks, Pruitt does not agree with the science behind climate change. In May, he wrote for the National Review that the global warming debate “is far from settled”—even though 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is real and that humans are behind it.

Now, as head of the EPA, Pruitt will have the power to enforce—or, rather, not—the federal regulations created by the agency that are meant to protect the health of the planet and its inhabitants. Policies like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act will be under his control. So will the agency's environmental justice program, which arguably already exhibits a lack of concern for environmental discrimination, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Pruitt has also argued that the EPA oversteps its duties, so he will likely minimize the agency's involvement in state decisions, granting states the power to pollute and emit carbon as they desire. This aligns with Trump's plan to revive the coal industry, reduce regulation and ignore the climate catastrophe. Trump can't take these actions alone—he needs the support of the EPA, which he has now ensured.

http://www.colorlines.com/articles/3-things-people-color-need-know-about-trumps-epa-pick
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 08, 2016, 02:30:58 pm
 (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/avatars/ClimateNexus-73_140.jpg)


With EPA Admin Pick
, Trump Says to Polluters: Do It Pruitt. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)
 
 In the struggle between polluters and the people, polluters have long had an ally in Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. Given their campaign contributions, even though he couldn’t run for re-election, “ally” might not be a strong enough word. As RL Miller of Climate Hawks put it, “Pruitt is simply a blunt tool of the fossil fuel industry.”
 
When polluters needed someone to sue the EPA to keep the Clean Power Plan from regulating their products, Pruitt was there. When ExxonMobil needed defending from the #ExxonKnew investigations, Pruitt was there. When Devon Energy needed someone to put their name on a letter the company wrote to the EPA alleging federal regulators were overestimating pollution from energy companies, Pruitt was there.
 
 Now these polluters (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) won’t even have to go through the trouble of passing off their opinion as Pruitt’s. They’ll be able to call him directly, as he has reportedly been tapped by Trump to be EPA administrator.
 
 The phrase “fox guarding the henhouse” has been tossed around a lot lately, but is now more applicable than ever. Pruitt was not only at the center of the New York Times’ investigation that discovered a "unprecedented, secretive alliance" between the fossil fuel industry and Republican Attorneys General (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=3) but is also a foe of the Humane Society of the United States.
 
 Yes, the man responsible for protecting animals and the environment in the Trump administration has harassed and criticized the most well-known animal-protecting charity in America, where people go to adopt puppies and help kitties find a home. Pruitt antagonized the group to the point that his predecessor, former Oklahoma AG Drew Edmondson, sued Pruitt on behalf of the Humane Society.
 
 Hopefully Congress can be persuaded to refuse his confirmation and force Trump to choose someone who at least pretends to prioritize people and the planet over fossil fuel profits.
 
 If not, history books will likely have a short answer to the question of how the EPA became a blunt tool of the fossil fuel industry: Pruitt was there.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)

 
Like an exploding oil pipeline, they’ll say, during his tenure at the EPA, Scott Pruitt up.
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 09, 2016, 08:30:14 pm
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/avatars/ClimateNexus-73_140.jpg)

Fear and Loathing at Koch-Funded Trump “Shadow Transition Team” Event

Science gives way to science fiction at an ominous meeting of fossil fuel elites  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)


By Philip Newell


https://nexusmedianews.com/fear-and-loathing-at-koch-funded-trump-shadow-transition-team-event-34d2b2e72043#.ti2vj8j0w
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 13, 2016, 06:23:08 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)
December 12, 2016

Trump Pick of ExxonMobil CEO for Secretary of State Would Lead to Corruption and Cronyism

Janet Redman of Oil Change International says we should feel no relief if Rex Tillerson were to divest all his shares and no longer head ExxonMobil.

https://youtu.be/K2_L7mjSX6g

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17908



Will Trump Scrap NASA’s Climate Research Mission?

Posted on Dec 12, 2016

By Andrew Revkin / ProPublica

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/will_trump_scrap_nasas_climate_research_mission_20161212

Agelbert NOTE:
In regard to the above question, see wild bears and their habits in the woods...

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/8b/30/b3/8b30b31e87dddef823ce634725ac42d3.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 16, 2016, 09:34:38 pm
Why Trump's Win is Koch Coup of Our Democracy 

https://youtu.be/gD5UXL8t3Do

Published on Dec 15, 2016


Thom talks with America's Lawyer Mike Papantonio about Republican the latest Republican skulduggery in North Carolina, Big Oil taking over our government, and the ongoing Koch coup of our democracy.

Later on in the program, Thom talks with Kymone Freeman of We Act Radio and Angela Morabito of StandUnited.org about the Republican war on the New Deal, the coming crackdown on climate science, and how Portland is taking a stand against outrageous CEO pay.


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 17, 2016, 04:16:00 pm
Gov. Brown to (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2mo5pow.gif&hash=995f9f6c08dcd54f18425f2bfbe138901cf052b1) Trump: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) 'We’ve got Scientists, We’ve Got Lawyers and We’re Ready to Fight' (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)


https://youtu.be/5MLHWFO6DwE

FULL ARTICLE with added video:

http://www.ecowatch.com/brown-trump-climate-change-nasa-2151171091.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 22, 2016, 06:27:58 pm
Finally, The REAL REASON Why Trump Picked Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson AND Why He's Taking a 99% PAY CUT  ;)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

Published on Dec 16, 2016

This Exclusive Report FINALLY Explains the mystery surrounding WHY Trump Picked the filthy-rich CEO of Exxon Mobile Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

He certainly is not a household name and most American's have never heard of him. Trump who has been selecting mostly loyalists, didn't even know Tillerson previously.

Rachel Maddow explains just how Tillerson made it on Trump's radar and also why Tillerson, who's never worked anywhere but Exxon, would take a job that's offering a 99% PAY DECREASE.

This is an extremely tangled web which only Rachel could properly navigate through. It's FASCINATING information that everyone should be aware of. Great Reporting.

https://youtu.be/CgtFBI2I0eM
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 23, 2016, 08:22:44 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecology.iww.org%2Fimages%2FSMcMillan1.jpg&hash=71a5ded42adb67f357b284d15e8292c4e9fb1ad1)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

December 23, 2016

Canadian PM Trudeau Signals He'll Work with Trump to Restart Keystone XL  :P  >:(

DeSmog Blog's Steve Horn says the move would be an environmental and ecological disaster

https://youtu.be/pnwnpVIH1ic

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18009

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 03, 2017, 01:37:19 pm
January 3, 2017

Oil, Arms and Militant Wahhabism is the Basis of US-Saudi Relationship (1/2)

Medea Benjamin and Paul Jay examine how 115 billion dollars in recent US arms sales and a dictatorship that helps dominate the oil rich region is the reason for the lasting "friendship"

https://youtu.be/d-2fURt0QQo

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18050
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 04, 2017, 02:58:36 pm
Agelbert translation of the following news: Exxon Mobil, Tillerson agree to sell we-the-people the Brooklyn Bridge. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-111214174727.png&hash=a0ea65f844542e4709bd444bd2f70496c434c56b)

Wed Jan 4, 2017 | 11:39am EST

Exxon Mobil, Tillerson agree to cut all ties (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

http://www.marketbeat.com/stories.aspx?story=http%3a%2f%2ffeeds.reuters.com%2f%7er%2freuters%2fbusinessNews%2f%7e3%2fslltHMJMv_s%2fus-exxon-mobil-tillerson-idUSKBN14O08N (http://www.marketbeat.com/stories.aspx?story=http%3a%2f%2ffeeds.reuters.com%2f%7er%2freuters%2fbusinessNews%2f%7e3%2fslltHMJMv_s%2fus-exxon-mobil-tillerson-idUSKBN14O08N)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-090315203150.png&hash=c52cac3e4572a3609fd1a46ef50b96a57ce04554)

The NEW Exxon US Foreign Policy: Today the USA, tomorrow DA WOID!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 05, 2017, 09:53:44 pm
January 4, 2017

Oil, Arms and Militant Wahhabism is the Basis of US-Saudi Relationship (2/2)


Medea Benjamin and Paul Jay discuss how Trump and Pence will look for ways to weaken Iran by abrogating the nuclear deal, reimposing sanctions, and a possible military attack all in alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

https://youtu.be/F6bAHaI8oVY

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18058
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 12, 2017, 01:48:36 pm
Tillerson Confirmation Hearings: USA! USA! Oil good! Climate Change ho-hum...

I listened to and watched nearly 4 HOURS of the C-SPAN Tillerson Confirmation Hearings. Our Senators mostly live in an alternate universe where flag waving propaganda about how the US giving aid to all those corrupt countries that abuse our infinite kindness and good intentions is so sad and we have so many enemies and we have to stop terrorism and, interspersed with the occasional concern about whether Tillerson will go after Russia even if Exxon has control of land in Russia the size of Wyoming is, some mild climate change concerns. It's great gallows humor if you like that sort of thing.  :P

Tillerson must have trained fossil fuel industry propagandists liars on public discourse!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) I've gotta admit, the guy dances with the best liars around. His body language when Chad came up was the give away that he was nervous. They didn't press him on that DELIBERATE interference against US policy to GUARANTEE Exxon/Chad Dictator sponsored CORRUPTION and Resource theft (of course  ;)).

All that said, he WILL help keep the crazies in Congress from trying to nuke Russia in order to enable the fossil fuel industry corrupted US Government to finish the destructive degradation of the biosphere...

But, hey, it will take longer to overheat than to die from being nuked, right?

Count your blessings, fellow Homo SAPS!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F5yjbztv.gif&hash=d3dc6c69f3fc5ad39c44fb5466265476f34e5a76)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3018 (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3018)

Finally, The REAL REASON Why Trump Picked Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson AND Why He's Taking a 99% PAY CUT  ;)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

Published on Dec 16, 2016

This Exclusive Report FINALLY Explains the mystery surrounding WHY Trump Picked the filthy-rich CEO of Exxon Mobile Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

He certainly is not a household name and most American's have never heard of him. Trump who has been selecting mostly loyalists, didn't even know Tillerson previously.

Rachel Maddow explains just how Tillerson made it on Trump's radar and also why Tillerson, who's never worked anywhere but Exxon, would take a job that's offering a 99% PAY DECREASE.

This is an extremely tangled web which only Rachel could properly navigate through. It's FASCINATING information that everyone should be aware of. Great Reporting.


https://youtu.be/CgtFBI2I0eM

Agelbert NOTE: Unfortunately, since I posted this on my forum back in December 22, the above video has been, uh, made unavailable due to copyright and third party and (you get the idea). (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 12, 2017, 02:00:33 pm
Tillerson Confirmation Hearings: USA! USA! Oil good! Climate Change ho-hum...

I listened to and watched nearly 4 HOURS of the C-SPAN Tillerson Confirmation Hearings. Our Senators mostly live in an alternate universe where flag waving propaganda about how the US giving aid to all those corrupt countries that abuse our infinite kindness and good intentions is so sad and we have so many enemies and we have to stop terrorism and, interspersed with the occasional concern about whether Tillerson will go after Russia even if Exxon has control of land in Russia the size of Wyoming is, some mild climate change concerns. It's great gallows humor if you like that sort of thing.  :P

Tillerson must have trained Mking on public discourse!  :evil4: I've gotta admit, the guy dances with the best liars around. His body language when Chad came up was the give away that he was nervous. They didn't press him on that DELIBERATE interference against US policy to GUARANTEE Exxon/Chad Dictator sponsored CORRUPTION and Resource theft (of course  ;))).

All that said, he WILL help keep the crazies in Congress from trying to nuke Russia in order to enable the fossil fuel industry corrupted US Government to finish the destructive degradation of the biosphere...

But, hey, it will take longer to overheat than to die from being nuked, right?

Count your blessings, fellow Homo SAPS!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F5yjbztv.gif&hash=d3dc6c69f3fc5ad39c44fb5466265476f34e5a76)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3018 (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3018)

Finally, The REAL REASON Why Trump Picked Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson AND Why He's Taking a 99% PAY CUT  ;)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)

Published on Dec 16, 2016

This Exclusive Report FINALLY Explains the mystery surrounding WHY Trump Picked the filthy-rich CEO of Exxon Mobile Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

He certainly is not a household name and most American's have never heard of him. Trump who has been selecting mostly loyalists, didn't even know Tillerson previously.

Rachel Maddow explains just how Tillerson made it on Trump's radar and also why Tillerson, who's never worked anywhere but Exxon, would take a job that's offering a 99% PAY DECREASE.

This is an extremely tangled web which only Rachel could properly navigate through. It's FASCINATING information that everyone should be aware of. Great Reporting.


https://youtu.be/CgtFBI2I0eM

Agelbert NOTE: Unfortunately, since I posted this on my forum back in December 22, the above video has been, uh, made unavailable due to copyright and third party and (you get the idea). (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 12, 2017, 05:21:21 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

January 12, 2017

Tillerson (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) Would Conduct U.S. Foreign Policy on Behalf of Oil and Natural Gas Interests 

The Former ExxonMobil CEO has failed to demonstrate he would recuse himself from decisions that would affect his former employer, and he also does not grasp the urgency of climate change, says Jamie Henn and Antonia Juhasz  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3).

https://youtu.be/oS9W_FgKokE

biography

Jamie Henn is a co-founder and strategy and communications director of 350.org, an international climate. He has helped lead 350.org's fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, their work supporting the growing fossil fuel divestment campaign, and their past international days of climate action, which have brought together more than 20,000 demonstrations in over 182 countries around the world. He recently coordinated communications efforts for the recent People's Climate March, which brought over 400,000 people to the streets of New York City and garnered over 6,000 news articles and front pages worldwide. He is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, a regular contributor to news outlets such as MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Progressive, and the co-author of Fight Global Warming Now.

Antonia Juhasz is a leading energy analyst, author, and investigative journalist specializing in oil. An award-winning writer, her articles appear in Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, CNN.com among others. Juhasz is the author of three books: Black Tide (2011), The Tyranny of Oil (2008), and The Bush Agenda (2006).



Video transcript

KIM BROWN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Kim Brown in Baltimore.

   Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday for his appointment as Secretary of State.

   Now, Tillerson spent over 40 years at ExxonMobil and has never served in public office before. Controversial issues around Tillerson's appointment include his position on climate change and on his relationship with Russia. During his opening statement Tillerson addressed Russia, an issue about which many Republicans have expressed concern.

(video clip)
TILLERSON: Russia today poses a danger, but it is not unpredictable in advancing its own interest. It has invaded the Ukraine, including the taking of Crimea. It supported Syrian forces that brutally violates the laws of war. Our NATO allies are right to be alarmed at a resurgent Russia.
(end video clip)

KIM BROWN: Also, sporadic protests broke out during the hearing which protesters raised ExxonMobil's record on derailing climate change negotiations.

PROTESTERS: (chanting) Hey hey, ho ho! Tillerson has got to go! Hey hey, ho ho! Tillerson has got to go!

KIM BROWN: Joining us to talk about the Tillerson hearings are Antonia Juhasz and Jamie Henn.

   Antonia is a leading energy analyst. She's also an author and investigative journalist specializing in oil. She's also an award-winning writer. Her articles appear in Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Harper's, The Atlantic and more.

   Jamie is the Communications Director and the Co-founder of 350.org, which is one of the main grassroots climate movements fighting for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you, Antonia and Jamie, for joining us today.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thanks for having us.

JAMIE HENN: Good to be with you.


KIM BROWN: Antonia, let's start with you because, as mentioned in my introduction, Russia has been one of the main issues during this hearing and you recently wrote an in-depth analysis for In These Times in which you take a close look at Tillerson's connections to Russia. So tell us a little bit about these connections and how they could influence U.S. foreign policy towards Russia.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, absolutely. And the article is actually a broad scope piece, it's 5,000 words that goes into many of the reasons why I believe and the title is that "Rex Tillerson Could Be America's Most Dangerous Secretary of State."

Look, Russia is a good example because it demonstrates Exxon's commitment to oil above any and all other concerns. And so Tillerson negotiated deals with Russia whereby ExxonMobil now has five times more holdings in Russia than it does in the United States, and the United States are its second largest holdings. And a large chunk of those holdings are in the Russian Arctic. And this was a huge big deal for Tillerson to sign these agreements with Rosneft the Russian state-controlled oil company. And that was because Tillerson, who'd just retired from Exxon, is leaving the company in worse shape than he found it. And one of the things that he needs to prop it up is access to more oil and he got that oil in Russia. But then President Obama put in place sanctions against Russia for the incursion in Crimea and those sanctions make it impossible for Exxon to take advantage of a lot of those Russian operations.

And those operations are problematic for a lot of reasons, one of which is they're in the Russian Arctic. And, in the United States, President Obama put in place a virtual ban on drilling in most of the U.S. Arctic, or a full ban on drilling in most of the U.S. Arctic, and the Canadians put in place a full ban on drilling in the Arctic. Because this is an area that pretty much everyone can agree, if we're going to start keeping oil in the ground a good place to do it is in one of the most treacherous, difficult to get to environments in the world where communities that live around the Arctic are deeply dependent on the resources they get from it. But this is an area where Tillerson is eager to get drilling and to get access to resources, and to get access to those resources he's formed a very firm partnership with the Russians. And, of course, as you say, many Republicans, in particular, have extreme problems with that relationship.

KIM BROWN: Jamie, today Tillerson deflected any concerns that he would go after anyone currently working for the State Department that had been involved in climate change or gender equity programs and discussions. But talk about the case against Exxon, on their previous science-based knowledge of the effects of their oil and gas activities on extreme climate change and what role Tillerson played.

JAMIE HENN: Sure. Well, it's good to see Senator Tim Kaine and others today really begin to grill Rex Tillerson about Exxon's history of climate denial. Last year, reports came out that Exxon scientists knew about climate change since the 1970s, but then CEOs at the company went on to cover up the truth and fund front groups that were spreading misinformation. And that practice was really in place during the 1990s but it continued under Tillerson.

Tillerson has said some things about climate change, saying he acknowledges the threat but continued to fund front groups like The American Petroleum Institute, ALEC and others who are spreading misinformation. When he was grilled on that, Tillerson basically said, "I can't talk about it. I refuse to because I no longer work at ExxonMobil."

This is a guy whose only job in his adult life has been working at Exxon. He was there for over 41 years. He was there as of only a couple of weeks ago. For him to not talk about the company's track record of spreading misinformation, the role that it played in delaying climate change and the role that it continues to play in blocking progress is really problematic.

So I think that now, Rex, yes, he said that climate change is real. He's still spreading the same misinformation and doubt and delay that Exxon has been doing for years and it's another reason why he's not qualified to be Secretary of State.

KIM BROWN: Antonia, Rex Tillerson or T-Rex as his friends call him, is reportedly worth over $400 million. So why do you think he wants the job of Secretary of State? It really doesn't pay as good as CEO.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: It's an excellent question that I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to answer. He is right now ranked as one of the most powerful men in the world by Forbes. And he ranks significantly higher on that list than does President Obama, and our current Secretary of State doesn't even appear on the list. So why would he want this job?

One is the problem that I posed at the beginning which is, as Jamie said, Rex Tillerson has worked at ExxonMobil his entire adult life, as have most executives there. The company is often referred to by those who work there as "Mother Exxon". They have a tight connection to this company, it's described often by executives of other companies as a cult. It's very insular and they have a deep belief in the success of Exxon and their ties to it.

And when Tillerson was being grilled in this hearing, by the way, he had a very difficult time deviating when asked about things. For example, "Is there any country in the world you wouldn't work with because of its human rights record, when you were CEO of Exxon?" The only answers he could give were business-based answers. Because ExxonMobil has worked with just about every dictator in the world and still does.

But he's very tied to this company, and I think one of the answers to your question is that he faced force retirement this year. He turns 65 in March, he was going to have to retire in March, instead he retired in January. Also, he has business he wants to still see accomplished. He doesn't want to leave Exxon, I believe, in worse shape than when he found it, which is where it is right now. He has financial ties to the company. They worked out a deal where he wouldn't be able to invest in Exxon for 10 years. But 10 years in the life of an oil company is a short amount of time. So that means that in 10 years he's fully allowed to put his wealth back into Exxon. And, as you say, he's getting this big $180 million payout.

   The Bush administration, which Exxon has deep ties to, has come out in full force in support of Rex Tillerson. George Bush, himself, contacted Senator Corker, who's the head of the Confirmation Committee. We've had Dick Cheney, we've had Condoleeza Rice, we've had Gates, we've had Hadley -- they've all come out and said, "Tillerson needs this job." That's deeply worrying. And what it says to me is that the Republican establishment and, in particular, the Republican oil establishment, doesn't trust Donald Trump.

And I think that Rex Tillerson is going to be their man in charge. And that he'll be there to make sure that Trump does what needs to be done from this perspective. And we've seen what the combination of Bush administration plus oil interests, or Bush administration and oil interests, has done to the world and in the world. And, of course, the Iraq War, which we're still suffering the consequences of, and of which ExxonMobil was one of the biggest victors, is one of those clear outcomes. The Bush administration had Iran next in its sights, as does the Trump administration -- and that makes me deeply concerned about what the agenda of Rex Tillerson will be if he gets confirmed as Secretary of State.

KIM BROWN: Jamie, under ethics rules, he will probably have divest of his millions of dollars of stock in ExxonMobil. So do you think there will still be a conflict of interest with the oil lobby interest if he gets the job?

JAMIE HENN: Yeah, most definitely. I will say when we started the fossil fuel divestment campaign, we never quite pictured the CEO of ExxonMobil divesting from his own company. But, obviously, it doesn't actually help us in any way.

It was interesting at the hearing, when Tillerson was pushed this morning about whether or not after a year, where he's prevented from directly being in contact with Exxon and collaborating with them in any way, if he'd continue to separate that and recuse himself from decisions that affect ExxonMobil, he refused to say so. And, in a way, it would be impossible for him to do so. Exxon has tentacles all over the world, as Antonia said, they're wrapped up in foreign policy from war in the Middle East to the work that they've done in Africa to human rights violations in Indonesia -- this is a company that operates around the world often, working with brutal dictatorships to get at their resources.

So the idea that the Secretary of State could somehow separate that agenda from the agenda of this company is just unbelievable -- especially when you take into account Tillerson's long history at ExxonMobil, and as Antonia said, the way that the company infuses this ideology of the way that the world should work.

You know, Steve Cole's long book on Exxon, the definitive history of the company was called "Private Empire" for a reason. This is a company that sees itself as above the law. Their previous CEO Lee Raymond(?) said very explicitly that they don't see themselves as an American company, but they see themselves as representing the interest of ExxonMobil and ExxonMobil alone. So there's no evidence that Tillerson would do anything else when he was Secretary of State. And when it comes to the climate that's incredibly damaging.

He had a chance today to try and assure Democratic senators, to try and assure the public that some of the rhetoric that Exxon has put out on climate change, saying it's a threat, saying action needs to take place, wasn't just icing on the cake or window dressing or greenwash, but was something serious that the company was taking into account. He did the opposite. He basically said, "My views are different than ExxonMobil's. I have some concerns but I'm not sure if human activity is causing climate change. I don't know what the impacts are going to be." If anything, he went more back into climate denial than the company had been previously talking about.

So this is all incredibly concerning and, again, I think it reinforces the role that Exxon has played for a long time, which is continuing to spread misinformation, continuing to sow doubt in the public. And that's especially egregious considering how long they've known about climate change and how long they've been very clear that their product is at the root of this crisis, just like cigarettes were causing cancer. This is going to come back and have serious consequences this company in the future if Senators can continue to do their job and really push Tillerson the rest of today and, hopefully into the future, on the connections between what Exxon knew about climate change and the way that they continue to lie to the American people about the crisis.

KIM BROWN: So, Jamie, in the Tillerson hearing today, on Wednesday, he said that he supported a carbon tax as a solution to climate change. But it was about his role if he were to get the job as Secretary of State. So does this surprise you? And what would you have liked the Senators to have asked him vis-ŕ-vis the legal case against Exxon led by the Attorney General from New York State, Eric Schneiderman, over what Exxon knew and whether it properly disclosed the risk of climate change to shareholders and investors and to the public at large?

JAMIE HENN: Well, I think the Senate needs to do a much better job of really grilling Tillerson and the company. I mean, we should get the new CEO of ExxonMobil in front of a senate committee. We've long said that Exxon and Rex Tillerson, in particular, deserve a federal investigation, not a congressional appointment or a cabinet appointment.

So, no, we need to see much more of an interrogation of this company and what's taking place. That said, when it comes to the carbon price and Exxon's supposed leadership on this issue, it's important to actually look at the record. Exxon only came out in favor of a carbon price when the Cap and Trade Bill looked like it was going to move through the Senate during Obama's first term. They did so, in order to get a seat at the table so that they could weaken the Cap and Trade legislation. And, in fact, they put forward a carbon price very explicitly as a contrast to Cap and Trade to help undermine the potential of that legislation to move forward.

As Antonio's written about and pointed out well, ExxonMobil's core business right now is, especially in the United States, natural gas, fracking and light crude that's they've always been in. And a very low price on carbon would actually help ExxonMobil by driving coal out of the market, replacing it with natural gas, but not making a price on carbon too high so that Exxon's business actually suffered.

So as usual, this is a plan to help ExxonMobil, it is not a serious plan to address climate change. And that's the real worry with someone like Tillerson who admits climate change is real, but then proposes these false solutions that would actually only get us further into the crisis.

KIM BROWN: Antonia, Hillary Clinton came under fire for promoting fracking abroad while she was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and helping to push through Mexican offshore oil drilling opening it up for U.S. drilling companies. So how do you think his role as Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, that is, will affect U.S. interests at home and abroad and will it just be more of the same?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: I'm unable to articulate the difference between Rex Tillerson and Hillary Clinton. So, you know, Clinton did have ties with the oil industry and did perpetuate a fracking model and did work to see fracking open up in countries abroad. Rex Tillerson's only mindset is oil and natural gas. And there is a quote that I have in my article from a vice-president at ExxonMobil in 2008 under Tillerson, and he said in a hearing before Congress about the pursuit of alternative energy, he said, "The pursuit of alternative energy should not, in any way, dissuade from or interrupt or disrupt the pursuit of oil and gas." And I think that you can basically fill in any concept that we would expect of a just Secretary of State and fill in alternative energy with that phrase. So the pursuit of peace, the pursuit of human rights, the pursuit of equality -- and oil and gas really just have to take precedent.

And I think that that is the mindset of Rex Tillerson, and I think in the questions during the hearing this also came out. I think he was asked, for example, about sanctions. And the first thing he had to say about sanctions was, "Well, sanctions are bad for U.S. business." And I believe it was Senator Menendez who was doing the questioning and he said, "Well, actually, the sanctions, the objective is a foreign policy objective, a human rights objective." And he said, "Well, you know, it may have those other objectives," Tillerson said, "But it does hurt U.S. business." And his framework and his answer to almost every single question was through the eyes of a CEO, which is who he is and what he had been doing until 11 days ago. And the CEO of the world's largest oil company and the oldest major oil company, as well, because, of course, ExxonMobil is the direct descendant and largest descendant of Standard Oil.

And I interviewed, in this article, a human rights lawyer who is the lawyer who's been fighting a case in which Rex Tillerson is named. And Tillerson is named in this case which alleges that the Indonesian military turned into private security under the employ of ExxonMobil engaged in serious human rights abuses including murder, including torture, including sexual assault and that this took place from 2000 to 2004. And the complaint names Rex Tillerson in his role as President of ExxonMobil within that suit. And I don't know what's going to happen with that case or what Rex Tillerson may or may not be charged with.

I do think the fact that the company, however, does not argue that the human rights abuses did not occur; rather argues that the company should not be liable for them. And the fact that ExxonMobil under Tillerson continues to work with Angola and Equatorial Guinea, all around the world, shows us that there is one objective -- and that is oil and natural gas. And that that objective is deeply problematic right now for a number of reasons, just one of which is that most scientists in the world agree that at least 80% of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground if we're going to avert the worst of climate catastrophe.

And Rex Tillerson, when he talks about climate change, uses very particular language.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)  He talks about risk -- the risks of climate change. And that puts climate change as a problem into the future. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8) It ignores the fact that some 400,000 people a year are already estimated to be dying right now because of climate change. So if his full agenda -- and one that I believe he thinks is certainly good for business, and maybe even good for the United States -- is the pursuit of oil and gas that that will make the deals that Hillary Clinton made look like small change when you add, not only that oil and natural gas will be the full agenda of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, but then he'll be the Secretary of State for Donald Trump's presidency, those two things in combination... oh, and with Bolton as his Undersecretary of State, that should make us all very concerned.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300714025456.bmp&hash=f4e4a260bd60d3f34ca86fed93c47d5fb4117cfd) 

KIM BROWN: Indeed. That's Antonia Juhasz a leading energy analyst, also investigative journalist and author. We've also been joined with Jamie Henn, Communications Director and Co-Founder of 350.org. We've been discussing the Senate Confirmation Hearings of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and his bid to be confirmed as the next Secretary of State under President-elect Donald Trump. Thank you both for joining us.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thank you.

JAMIE HENN: Thanks a lot.

KIM BROWN: And thank you for watching The Real News Network.


-------------------------
END

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18089
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 17, 2017, 02:21:02 pm
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CONGRESSMAN LIEU STATEMENT ON THE CONFIRMATION HEARING OF REX TILLERSON
January 11, 2017

WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) issued the following statement on the confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of State:

“#RexTillersonKnew.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/13/1620274/-Congressman-Ted-Lieu-issues-one-word-statement-on-Rex-Tillerson-s-confirmation-hearing

GREAT Comments!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)


PRESSmUP
Jan 13 · 07:05:54 PM
 
Sorry….there are just too many different things flying about to pin down to just one item…knew what?

Milkmaid  PRESSmUP

Jan 13 · 09:24:45 PM 
 
I'm thinking 1) knew about climate change, 2) knew Russia hacked us, 3) knew Trump was in Putin's pocket.

Xonic  Milkmaid
Jan 14 · 02:33:47 AM
 
...and 4) Is in Putins pocket himself.

TRPChicago  PRESSmUP
Jan 13 · 11:03:03 PM 
 
At his hearings, Tillerson said he didn’t know a number of things on a number of topics he should have been aware of or at least briefed on. Especially Exxon activities and policies when he was its CEO.

He didn’t know about too many things.  ;)


squarewheel  TRPChicago

Jan 14 · 01:25:09 AM 
 
well he was only CEO, so you know, he doesn’t know every little detail that goes on at Exxon.

But everything good that happened was his fault and he did know about it and he should get a big fat bonus for it.
 
RatWhisperer  squarewheel
Jan 14 · 01:56:38 AM 
 
That’s called the Trump rule, isn’t it??  ;D

rktect  squarewheel
Jan 14 · 05:23:41 AM
 
We could think of confirmation hearings as a second or third round final job interview, or the sort of a PHD defense that qualifies a person to be considered worthy of a doctorate in academia.

We might ask Tillerson as the crux of his final exam in engineering.

“You have stated for the record that you are an engineer. When you are hiring people we expect you apply your engineering experience and are looking to test whether the candidates can defend a proposed solution in a way that passes or fails your analysis.

You might on the one hand observe that there are many positive aspects to a proposed engineering solution, but if in the end you run the numbers and it fails to carry the required load don’t you have to reject it, and the candidate that failed to properly defend it?

Wouldn’t you agree, that here when we ask you questions, and you respond you don’t know, you are failing to carry the load we expect of a successful solution?”

Slashpot  rktect
Jan 14 · 02:24:15 PM 
 
I hadn’t realized how these confirmation hearings work. I am stupefied! They ask a bunch of questions which basically amount to “Are you an evil person?”, Will you use your position to enrich yourself?”, and so on. How devilishly clever! This process will absolutely catch out any honest man, no doubt about it! What could possibly go wrong?

I must admit I did find it a tad humorous that to get a pass from these brilliant & perspicacious  ;) seekers of truth  ;D, one has to disavow any agreement with Trump’s stated policies.

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 18, 2017, 05:54:45 pm
$135 billion reasons Rex Tillerson is wrong

 By Lukas Ross, opinion contributor - 01/17/17 03:20 PM EST 

It happened about four hours into Rex Tillerson’s marathon confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Senator Jeanne Shaheen

 (D-N.H.) was grilling the former ExxonMobil CEO and Secretary of State nominee about the billions in subsidies the oil industry receives every year — and his answer left much to be desired.

“I’m not aware of anything the fossil fuel industry gets that I would characterize as a subsidy,” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c) he said.
“Rather it is simply an application of the tax code.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

Even If we give Tillerson the benefit of the doubt, his comment is still somewhere between a gross mischaracterization and a bald-faced lie. The truth is that the fossil fuel industry has enjoyed over a hundred years of special interest subsidies, and if nothing changes the bill for the next decade could reach $135 billion.

The biggest and most expensive of these giveaways are part of the tax code  >:(, which is probably why Tillerson (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fbc3.gif&hash=e80a574cef1f1cd31dc58d76fe36b5ffb7fe7d5b)  wants to pretend they don’t exist.(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F237.gif&hash=13b71d2444f84b15c53fb1c0272c080f48a165f1) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ffly.gif&hash=b0526635e8b47d751b0e429925d73d78f9d79fc6) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-281014151757.png&hash=1be52df5a308d583e41527f4d215eb9a81d72676)

Take a century-old goodie like the deduction for intangible drilling costs. This allows companies like ExxonMobil to immediately reduce their taxable income by the cost of developing an oil well. Almost all other long lasting assets like these are required to deduct capital costs slowly over their useful life.

But not oil wells. The result is hundreds of millions in deferred taxes over decades. This amounts to an interest free loan for billions of dollars to Exxon from the federal government.

Are they giving those to you and me? There isn’t another way to describe this except as a subsidy. And it isn’t cheap either: intangible drilling costs are projected to cost U.S. taxpayers $2.3 billion next year alone.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraysondemocrats.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2Fend-oil.jpg&hash=a5cf685d87ceb0f3f17eab91155ebb790707cf10) 

Not only are these tax breaks real, but recent research indicates that they are essential to Big Oil’s future profits. Without state and federal subsidies, a recent report from the Stockholm Environment Institute shows that as much as 20 billion barrels of oil would stay in the ground, and as much as half of future U.S. oil production would be unprofitable. Exxon itself is expected to rake in between $700 million and a billion this year alone.

The horror is that if Tillerson becomes Secretary of State, he could bring his self-serving definition of what counts as a subsidy to international forums. He would have the ability to undermine the G20, which committed to a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies in 2009 thank to U.S. leadership. You have to ask, what happens to this pledge if suddenly our chief diplomat is a lifetime oilman who denies that U.S. oil subsidies even exist?

Nothing that Tillerson said yesterday was comforting to anyone concerned about climate change. He refused to give a straight answer about decades of funding for climate denial after Exxon’s own models confirmed what was happening. And he pulled from patently false denier talking points by claiming that our ability to predict its effects were “very limited.”

Climate change is real, Exxon knew about it, and yes, we can predict its effects.
Fossil fuel subsidies are real, they drive investment decisions, and yes, we can count the costs to taxpayers and the climate.

If you want to be Secretary of State, believing both of these things needs to be a given. Any Senator who votes to confirm Rex Tillerson is voting to confirm a climate denier.

Lukas Ross is a campaigner or Friends of the Earth U.S. Climate and Energy.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/314634-135-billion-reasons-rex-tillerson-is-wrong
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 19, 2017, 08:47:54 pm
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Fossil Fuels Ghazal
Caroylne Wright

                “Let’s give earth time enough to tell the whole truth.”
                    —Mahmoud Darwish


Quote
Does everything depend upon the price of oil?
 How much will we consumers spend upon the price of oil?

 How many economists must we call
 to change a light bulb or expound upon the price of oil?

 Whose fortunes rise, whose fortunes fall
 when cartels get their hands upon the price of oil?

 Shaherazad spun her life’s thread, tale by tale,
 where a thousand nights’ lamps flamed upon the price of oil.

 Mad Ahab went down raging with the Great White Whale
 whose cool, spermaceti-bathed brain turned upon the price of oil.

 Soothsayers of the future!  Speak to us now—tell
 which nations will expand upon the price of oil.

 The Baghdad Caliphate collapsed.  The true heir?  Will
 he touch his forehead to the sand upon the price of oil?

 Routed from Kuwait, the crazed fake-general
 torched the wells:  Hell’s wand upon the price of oil.

 Our Babel’s towers toppled, our flaming chariots fell
 into 9/11’s pall—they met their ends upon the price of oil.

 No photos of the War Department’s burning wall?
No comment: nothing to amend upon the price of oil.

No Blood for Oil! Cries rose from every capital
 before the rockets’ red glare could land upon the price of oil.

 The hunt for weapons? Mushroom clouds? Were mobile
 labs or yellow cake ever found upon the price of oil?

 Doctors of truth! Why do you spin like dervishes, hurl
 distracting repetends upon the price of oil?

Which leaders lie, which leaders smile,
 and fix the facts around the price of oil?

 Who prophesies and who denies the clouds shall
 part, the Son of Man descend upon the price of oil?

 Shall we hurry up the Last Days?  Shall the final
 trumpets sound upon the price of oil?

 Darwish wrote, “Let’s give earth time enough to tell
 the whole truth”—if truth not bend upon the price of oil

 Darwish and Bly, Carruth and Dove, Forché, Hamill, Wright and Bell . . .
 What poet doesn’t want these wars to end upon the price of oil?



Audio at link:

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/poet_asks_does_everything_depend_upon_price_oil_her_fossil_fuels_20170118

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200914193029.png&hash=728bdda741ba73675753acf67d5deb8e6f9e3ef0)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 20, 2017, 05:41:34 pm
Trump Administration  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) Scrubs Mentions of Climate and Renewables From White House Website

“The requested page ‘/energy/climate-change’ could not be found.”

by Julian Spector 
 January 20, 2017

A change has come to Whitehouse.gov.

Immediately after Donald Trump assumed the office of president Friday, the presidential URL changed. Where there once was "Energy," now there is "An America First Energy Plan." And where there once was a climate action plan, now there is no mention of it.

The social cost of carbon -- gone. The Clean Power Plan -- gone.

The vestigial page titles still appear in a Google search, but the links lead nowhere.

During and after the election, Trump had spoken derisively of federal efforts to combat climate change, but had also signaled a willingness to embrace renewables as a domestically produced energy source and jobs driver. After months of speculation about how Trump would act toward clean energy once in office, the administration has clearly signaled its intent to erase President Barack Obama's clean energy policies.

The Obama-era website lives on here, so the content itself will not be lost. The scrubbing, though, indicates that the peaceful transition of power need not coincide with a continuity of facts.

Instead, the America First Energy Plan lays out a new course: "President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule."

Right there, as explicitly as it can be written: The Trump administration plans to kill Obama's climate policies. And it starts with the website.

A search within the site for the phrase "climate change" turns up one page, a biography of former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. The article references the climate of San Antonio, as well as the word "changes" in a non-climatic context.

The new plan also asserts the value of domestic energy production: "In addition to being good for our economy, boosting domestic energy production is in America’s national security interest." The policy lists the domestic energy sources that qualify: shale, oil, natural gas and coal.

Clean coal technology, which is only just beginning to prove itself at commercial scale, gets a shout-out. But renewables, which accounted for the majority of new energy capacity added last year, don't earn a mention.

While declaring a need to develop energy at home and cast off the nation's dependence on oil cartel OPEC, the statement also makes an ominous reference to expansion abroad: "At the same time, we will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy." This presages a strategy of fossil-fuel exploration not just at home, but overseas, replacing Paris treaty climate commitments with help for new drilling.

Even basic landing pages for White House organizational divisions have disappeared. Try searching for the Council on Environmental Quality or the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Meanwhile, the landing page for Statements and Releases from the Press Office has gone blank, so a casual reader won't stumble upon any mentions of the danger of climate change or the jobs created by the clean energy industry while scrolling back through the archives.

The website of the Environmental Protection Agency, which crafted the CPP, had not been touched as of this writing.

Clean energy industry groups are gearing up to pitch wind and solar as major job creators. They'll have their work cut out for them to even gain recognition in the new president's energy policy. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_2955.gif&hash=ddc12d8bdb1bc63b7998a6b086b79a71b7bda755)

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/trump-administration-scrubbed-mentions-of-climate-change
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 23, 2017, 08:51:51 pm
This time it’s the Big Sky State of Montana that’s in the TRUMP crosshairs.

A proposal by Trump’s Bureau of Land Management stands to let Cloud Peak Energy (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fgas2.org%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F05%2Fstupid.png&hash=03f34f8c94a314e127f3ee8c4872e721e1b04063) , one of the largest coal companies in the United States, strip mine more than 2,000 acres at the company’s Spring Creek mine.

The mining would occur right along Montana’s Tongue River, a vital tributary to the Yellowstone River and within miles of the historic Rosebud Battlefield.

What’s worse is that Cloud Peak expects to export coal from its Spring Creek mine overseas.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmlkshk.com%2Fr%2F3CER&hash=8a4074823e356e37d685c49c66c351bc44cefeb8)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 25, 2017, 10:43:42 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_IPZX1n_gnIM%2FTBxKST8wgBI%2FAAAAAAAAFxM%2F52D2UaemhQE%2Fs400%2FGas-Oil-Petroleum385.jpg&hash=733743a5d6af9b5085d12db935373e34c5e356fd)

Agelbert Note: The Fossil Fuel Industry Fascist POS POTUS STRIKES AGAIN!

Trump puts EPA's ethanol program on ice

By John Siciliano • 1/24/17 2:15 PM

SNIPPET:

The Environmental Protection Agency's renewable fuel program faces a temporary freeze as President Trump's regulatory chill kicks in this week.
 
The Trump administration will use that time to review the regulations and decide if any further action is warranted based on an executive order Trump signed after being sworn in as the 45th president on Friday, according to a notice that the EPA's acting administrator, Catherine McCabe, issued late Monday.
 
McCabe lists the fuel program among 30 regulations, issued from Oct. 28 to Jan. 17, that Trump has ordered the agency to freeze temporarily by delaying them all by one month. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)
 
"The temporary delay in effective dates until March 21, 2017, is necessary to give agency officials the opportunity for further review and consideration of new regulations," a pre-publication copy of the notice reads. The notice will be published in Thursday's Federal Register as a final rule.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-puts-epas-ethanol-program-on-ice/article/2612836


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 26, 2017, 09:01:01 pm
Jan. 24, 2017 7:16 pm

Where The Kochs Are Influencing Trump The Most

https://youtu.be/7y7RhAjIvCY

Alex Kotch PhD, Investigative Journalist. The Koch brothers refused to support Trump in the election, but now it looks like the band of billionaires are ready to work together to screw the American people. Alex Kotch reported at Alternet that so far, fully one-third of the Trump team has ties to the Koch brothers. But where does it look like the Kochs are trying to influence Trump the most? The Koch Brothers are Smiling...  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fgas2.org%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F05%2Fstupid.png&hash=03f34f8c94a314e127f3ee8c4872e721e1b04063)

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/where-kochs-are-influencing-trump-most


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 16, 2017, 11:59:43 am
Fracking Rule Text Disappears From Interior Department Website  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

SNIPPET:

Also removed was text within a section on the Interior Department's hydraulic fracturing rule, Obama's primary attempt to limit the impacts of the controversial oil and gas extraction method. The page still notes that the rule exists but it no longer describes what it does. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The deleted text stated that the regulation was meant "to ensure that when operations are undertaken on lands where a BLM permit is required, steps are taken to ensure wellbore integrity, proper waste water management and greater transparency about the process, including information about the composition of fracturing fluids."

http://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-rule-disappears-blm-2263527541.html

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 17, 2017, 06:43:39 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241216151049.png&hash=78206393ea158485b779ed06d0fb0f84172b645d)

Agelbert NOTE: The Fossil Fuel Crooks and Liars Front Man (Pruitt for the castration of the EPA) has now been rushed through the Senate to ensure that the he is IN before the e-mails from his Fossil Fuel partners in crime are made public next Tuesday (Court Order of an Oklahoma Judge). This Senate move is the latest bit of in-your-face corruption on behalf of the polluters.

 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

DENIER ROUNDUP
Senate Debates and Likely Confirms Pruitt for EPA Admin. Next Up, Red Queen for Head of Neurology.  ;)

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealingwax, of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.”


...

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter, “You’ve had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?” But answer came there none-- and this was scarcely odd, because they’d eaten every one.” 

A little over two months after the Walrus nominated the Carpenter to disassemble the EPA, it looks like finally, the time has come. Barring something truly frabjous, the Senate will confirm Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the agency he has sued 14 times. His nom comes despite the fact that he appears to have lied under oathabout his (lack of) action as Oklahoma Attorney General to fight pollution.

 Suffice to say that the oysters of the EPA, generally happy as clams to fight pollution, are none too pleased about new leadership. Nearly 800 former EPA employees signed a letter to the Senate in opposition to Pruitt and are otherwise protesting and calling their senators.

 In addition to rolling back regulations to safeguard the sea becoming boiling hot (okay maybe not literally boiling, but perhaps oxygen-less…), what else are they worried about?

 For one, there’s the return of David Schnare, former lawyer and analyst at the EPA. Marianne Lavelle at InsideClimate News’s feature on Schnare provides a window into the staffing decisions being made by whatever Cheshire cat is calling Trump’s shots at this point. Once an EPA oyster but now quite rotten, Schnare’s more recent work has been misleading courts to get climate scientists’ emails on behalf of coal-funded EELI.

 Speaking of emails, as the Senate was “debating” Pruitt’s nomination yesterday, a judge ruled that Pruitt’s correspondence with industry and lobby groups have to be turned over either to the Center on Media and Democracy or the court by Tuesday. As of the time of writing, the Senate vote is still today.

 Meanwhile, at the mad tea party of a Heritage Foundation (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) Event on climate models, we saw the same performance we’ve seen for years: models are unreliable, social cost of carbon is bad, we won’t see much warming in the future anyway, we should use a 7% discount rate instead of the 3% many experts already consider too high, etc.

 Ironically, during one speaker’s presentation of how they know better than real scientists, the laptop shut off. Over the next seven minutes, panelists had to walk away from their chairs so the laptop could be plugged in, computer restarted, password entered, and presentation reloaded. They filled the down time with questions from the audience.

 No one asked the obvious question of Heritage’s Tweedle Dees and Dums: “Why should we trust you to run complex computer models to help us plan for the future, when you didn’t even plan far enough ahead to plug in your laptop?”

But you know who is thinking ahead? The EPA. Yesterday, in response to the many FOIAs for its online content, they  uploaded a mirror of their pre-Trump website (http://gizmodo.com/the-epa-just-posted-a-mirror-website-of-the-one-trump-p-1792430343), as it was before we went through the looking glass.


/i]
It appears that God has responded to the Senate's confirmation of Fossil Fuel Friend Pruitt.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b)

Pruitt, you see, was the Attorney General of Oklahoma that fought tooth hand nail to allow the frackers to run wild, which caused the increase in earthquakes there. But ALSO, he sued the EPA several times to allow he frackers to "regulate themselves". He didn't want the EPA "interfering"" with frackers by making them undertake "costly and unnecessary" safety measures according to EPA REGULATIONS.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)

Well, Oklahoma just reaped some more of what Pruitt and his fossil fuel pals sowed:

Oklahoma rocked by natural gas well explosion
By John Siciliano • 2/16/17 4:36 PM

SNIPPET:

A natural gas well exploded in Oklahoma Thursday afternoon, with reports of multiple injuries in Pittsburg County.
 
A number of state and local emergency agencies responded to the well explosion, which occurred near the town of Quinton, about 150 miles east of Oklahoma City.
 
The Quinton Police Department said the explosion in the major fossil fuel-producing state happened when the top of a natural gas well blew off, according to local channel News 9.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/oklahoma-rocked-by-natural-gas-well-explosion/article/2615085

(https://ofcommonsense.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/free-choice-not-consequences.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 18, 2017, 12:40:52 pm
https://youtu.be/0sAyCaVy-3U
Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) WORKS for the Fossil Fuel Industry  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) , NOT we-the-people   

Published on Feb 17, 2017

On tonight’s Big Picture, Thom discusses Scott Pruitt’s confirmation to head the EPA and what it means for environmental protections in the United States with Naomi Ages of Greenpeace.

Then, Thom talks to Scott Greer of the Daily Caller and political strategist Sam Bennett about Trump’s bizarre press conference and interaction with the media, and a House vote paving the way to defund Planned Parenthood.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 18, 2017, 01:26:31 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Pruitt will now proceed, with the help of the Trumper now running the DOJ, to make sure these Pruitt e-mails never affect his planned destruction of the EPA.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

February 17, 2017

Court Rules Newly Confirmed EPA Head Must Release Thousands of Emails

Republicans pushed to confirm Scott Pruitt before his communications with fossil fuel companies could be made public, says Nick Surgey of the Center for Media & Democracy


https://youtu.be/UXQFeWn1O1w

KIM BROWN: Welcome to the Real News Network in Baltimore. I'm Kim Brown.

   Oklahoma Attorney General, Scott Pruitt was confirmed and sworn in as the Fourteenth Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, according to the EPA's press office.

   The EPA runs on an annual budget of about $8 billion with 15,000 employees. As the key U.S. agency dealing with climate change, this may be the most consequential of all of Donald Trump's cabinet appointments as the world enters a period of uncharted global warming. The U.S. Senate voted 54 to 46 to advance Scott Pruitt's nomination to head up the EPA on Friday after a 30-hour debate. Two democrats and one republican broke ranks but otherwise the vote was split along party lines with a Republican majority supporting the nomination.

   Now Pruitt has sued the EPA more than a dozen times in his role as former Attorney General of Oklahoma, against environmental regulations. Democrats tried to block the vote stating that senate members did not have all of the information to make an informed decision due to the nominee blocking access to his communications with the fossil fuel lobby, in what could be construed as a conflict of interest.

   Here is Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley along with other democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, calling for a delay in the senate's vote on Scott Pruitt's nomination to be the EPA administrator.

JEFF MERKLEY: For two years now the Attorney General of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, has stonewalled attempts to make public, the record of over 3000 e-mail communications with members of the fossil fuel industry. Two years ago, the Center for Media and Democracy requested those e-mails through the Oklahoma Open Records Act. And the person who decides to release those records, the Attorney of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, our nominee for the EPA. When Democrats on the Environmental and Works Committee requested those records from Mr. Pruitt, during his confirmation process, his answer was, and I quote, “I would direct you to make a request of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office, under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.” There is something particularly strange about the nominee who controls the records, saying, “Ask me in my official capacity as AG.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) Knowing that he has not responded to those requests, year after year.

KIM BROWN: Also on Friday the Oklahoma County Court found Scott Pruitt in violation of the State's Open Records Act as Senator Merkley mentioned, the Centre for Media and Democracy filed a lawsuit against Pruitt for improperly withholding public records. And the court ordered his office to release thousands of e-mails in a matter of days.

   And with us to discuss this victory for transparency and open democracy, we're joined by Nick Surgey, who is the Centre for Media and Democracy's, Director of Research, and an investigative reporter. His work has been featured in The Guardian, New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and in The Washington Post and many other places, including The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Nick was previously Staff Council at Common Cause, where he led the research in legal work on their ALEC and Supreme Court Ethics Projects.

   Nick, welcome back to The Real News. It's been a long time since we've had you on.

NICK SURGEY: Thanks, Kim.

KIM BROWN: So, Nick, basically congratulations on the legal victory. So is this bittersweet for you in that Scott Pruitt is still going to be confirmed. By the time this interview airs he will be sworn in as head of the EPA?

NICK SURGEY: Yeah, it is somewhat. Pruitt's set to be sworn in this afternoon. You know, we had this victory in our court case and we will get to see Scott Pruitt's e-mail communications, adding any appeals that they may try and bring. But today was also a big win for the fossil fuel industry. It's really a bad guy going to be heading up the Environmental Protection Agency. I think if you have asked the collective oil, coal and gas industries who they would want to have at the Environmental Protection Agency, somebody who would have their back, they might want to pick Scott Pruitt. He probably would have been on their list. He's been a leading opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency, leading opponent of rules that the EPA has brought, in order to try and protect the environment over the last several years. And now he finds himself heading up that agency and that's very troubling.

KIM BROWN: So, talk about why your organization filed the lawsuit and why it's important that we see the contents of thousands of e-mails with energy companies and the fossil fuel lobby and Oklahoma Attorney General, Scott Pruitt.

NICK SURGEY: Sure. I mean, we've been trying to get records from Scott Pruitt's office now for more than two years. We filed our first Public Records request which were seeking e-mails between Scott Pruitt and a couple of his senior staffers, his chief of staff and a list of coal, oil and gas companies and some organizations that they fund. We have been told that they found thousands, more than three thousand e-mails between Pruitt's office and these companies. And they have been dragging their feet really to not release them. They released a partial set of 411 but that's a lot less than more than three thousand. In fact, it means that they held back about 85% of the e-mails that they'd identified and it seems that they held back some pretty embarrassing e-mails. And the reason that we know that is because two and a half years ago, they had released some records to The New York Times... somewhat different request that they made, but there's some overlap in what we were asking for. And there are e-mails that The New York Times got that ended up in a series of stories that won the Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times, that was looking at Scott Pruitt's relationship, in particular with Devon Energy, a big fracking company, based in Oklahoma. And they showed Scott Pruitt, willingly putting his name to letters that were drafted by Devon Energy, almost completely with just changing a few words and then submitting them to federal agencies on issues that effects Devon's bottom line. Putting the Attorney General of Oklahoma's letterhead on those letters and willingly being a mouthpiece for companies, as Attorney General and even more so, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, that he's supposed to be regulating. He should have a distance from those companies. And so, we think it's really important that these e-mails are released but just too late in order for it to factor in his confirmation process. And that was obviously intentional on the part of the Republicans. They were really pushing his votes to take place this afternoon. Because we're talking about just Tuesday. Tuesday next week is when we're going to get those e-mails and the Republicans, against the objections of the Democrats were like, "No. We have to take a vote today. We cannot wait 'til weekend. We have to immediately do so." Because, of course, we assume because they're afraid of what these e-mails are going to show.

KIM BROWN: Now Nick, you have done research and legal work on the American Legislative Exchange Council otherwise known as ALEC which is an organization which we know to heavily influence state law and has powerful ties to the fossil fuel billionaires, Charles and David Koch, as outlined in The Real News's documentary, The Koch Brothers War on Climate Science. So, based on your research, how deep are the ties between Scott Pruitt and the fossil fuel interests?

NICK SURGEY: Well, they're very deep. And we know that because of several years ago, this award winning investigation by the New York Times. And we know that because he raises a very large amount of money from those industries. We know that because he regularly attends industry conferences. We know that because he has said that he is going to change the policies in the Environmental Protection Agency, in order to stop the war on fossil fuels. There hasn't been a war on fossil fuels, there's been sensible regulations that puts a check on pollution which effects people's lives. But he has consistently been on the side of these industries and he's attended meetings of groups like ALEC. He's attended meetings and he spoke at one particular breakfast conference at ALEC, at which he was railing on the over-reach of The Environmental Protection Agency. And that breakfast meeting, I think it should come as no surprise, was sponsored by a coal company, Peabody Energy.

So, he's consistently been very, very close to industry. He's been close to groups like ALEC and it's now very difficult to imagine that he's going to distance himself from his close friends, the companies that have backed his campaigns, that have put him where he now is, when he's head of The Environmental Protection Agency.

KIM BROWN: So, what's next after the e-mails are made public? I mean, if a clear conflict of interest can be made of Scott Pruitt's heading up the EPA, couldn't there be legal repercussions?

NICK SURGEY: Well, you know, a case may be made that he has to recuse himself from certain positions. I mean that's possible. It's hard to know until we get these e-mails. Of course, the problem is that who's going to force him to recuse himself? That's the problem. But it would be up to the EPA to determine when he should recuse himself. There's a designated agency ethics office and there are certain agreements that have been made already about scenarios when Pruitt might have to recuse. But the problem is that we haven't got the full facts. There were questions that were asked throughout his confirmation process by democrats on the Environment Public Works Committee that were not answered. There were questions that were asked about his ties to Koch industries. To groups like ALEC, to big fracking companies like Devon Energy. And Pruitt didn't want to answer those questions. And, in fact, the democrats objected, they said, "We cannot take a vote on Scott Pruitt," this was at the committee stage, "We can't take a vote as to whether he should move forward for a full vote of the senate until he's answered these questions. And the republicans suspended the rules so that they could push him through without him having answered any of these questions. And then the republicans, today, pushed through the objections of democrats, mostly, Susan Collins and one Republican who voted against Pruitt to push his vote through when there were a lot of calls for not a significant delay, a slight pause so that these e-mails could come out and they could adequately vet his record.

KIM BROWN: So, we should mention, that there has been an unprecedented show of resistance on the part of the EPA scientists, environmental lawyers and policy experts in both public demonstrations and in calling their senators across the country to block Scott Pruitt's nomination. So, if normally quiet bureaucrats and scientists are risking their jobs to speak out, it seems that we should all be paying attention. So how far could Pruitt go to undo Environmental Protection?

NICK SURGEY: Well, he could do a lot. You know, there's some executive orders that have been rumored to be coming from the Trump administration. But, Pruitt is going to be setting the direction of the organization of the agency. And it's not just repeal of regulations. He could slow walk them. He could have a significant influence over enforcement. There are enforcement officers of the EPA that distribute it all around the country. And what direction are they going to get from the agency about enforcement? And if they're not going in and checking on these crimes, either reports from whistleblowers or from individuals or their regular routine investigations, if that's not taking place then there will not be prosecutions brought forward. And if that's the case then industry will have an excuse to not abide by the regulations. So there's possibility of regulations that will get repealed by congress. There are executive orders that could be issued by the president. And there could be a slow-walking of enforcement and direction that is set by Pruitt, as head of the agency that could really stall all of the advances that have been taking place over decades.

   You know, this used to be bipartisan. The EPA was set up by Nixon, it was set up under Republican, it was renewed under a republican congress and this didn't used to be a purely partisan issue and democrats were in favor of environmental protections, republicans were opposed to them. And we really have to return to that if we're going to tackle these big problems that we really have to face now. There's been too many years of inaction on big problems like climate change. And I don't think that we're going to get to see a solution when we have somebody like Scott Pruitt, who's a climate change denier, and a consistent thorn against the EPA, running that agency,

KIM BROWN: Indeed. We've been speaking with Nick Surgey. He is from the Centre for Media and democracy. He's the Director of Research, also an investigative reporter. The Centre for Media and Democracy scored a court victory in Oklahoma, getting a judge to agree to have Scott Pruitt’s, thousands of his e-mails while he served as Attorney General of that state, to be disclosed. However, that won't happen until next week. And on Friday, today, Scott Pruitt was confirmed by the Senate, to be the Head administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

   So, Nick, congratulations. I'm sorry this is a bittersweet victory for you but we definitely appreciate the work that you and your center do. So best of luck and good luck.

NICK SURGEY: Thanks, Kim. It's good to be on here.

KIM BROWN: Thanks. And thank you guys for watching The Real News Network.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18427
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 19, 2017, 03:00:30 pm
Pruitt  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)  Ignored Cries to Regulate Fracking in Oklahoma. Now Residents Face Big Oil on Their Own

 Sunday, February 19, 2017 

By Adam Lynch, YES! Magazine | Report

SNIPPET:

Valerie Branyan is thankful that she and her husband were together with their two children when the 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Cushing, Oklahoma, early in November. The couple clutched their kids, eyed the ceiling, and waited. While there were no injuries and only minor damage to their home, properties they own near downtown didn't fare so well. The brickwork of one building toppled to the street, while a third building housing their family business suffered more than $100,000 in ruined walls and structural damage.

Then, a few days later, residents reported another tremor. And then another, and another.
More than 2,350 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater rocked Oklahoma between 2010 and 2016, making the state the most seismically active in the U.S., outpacing even California.

This isn't tectonics. This is tampering.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39544-pruitt-ignored-cries-to-regulate-fracking-in-oklahoma-now-residents-face-big-oil-on-their-own
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 23, 2017, 02:31:27 pm
The Intercept

February, 22, 2017

Quote
Methane Regulation

On May 2, 2013, Scott Pruitt and 12 other attorneys general sent a letter to the EPA urging the agency to avoid regulating methane emissions.

The emails released Tuesday make clear that Devon Energy had a hand in drafting the letter, which argued that voluntary ;)  industry efforts to restrict emissions (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) were sufficient (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8), that federal emissions estimates were inaccurate, and that regulating methane fell outside the purview of the law.(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemecrunch.com%2Fmeme%2F5L3XX%2Fspiderman-bullshit-detector%2Fimage.jpg%3Fw%3D544%26amp%3Bc%3D1&hash=4825835b92337d62f61a3d37d282105e97ac3ee3)

The letter was meant to counter threats by northeastern states that they would file a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to regulate methane. “In sum,” the letter reads, “regulation of methane emissions from oil and gas facilities is not ‘appropriate’ under the analysis contemplated by [the Clean Air Act].” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

Emails Reveal EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s Dirty Dealings With Oil and Gas Industry

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/emails-reveal-epa-chief-scott-pruitts-dirty-dealings-with-oil-and-gas-industry/

Agelbert NOTE: As you will learn in the article, even those e-mails that have been released ARE NOT the whole story because they have been redacted along with a bunch others that have NOT been released because the holy A.G. office of Oklahoma considers them "privileged". These fossil fuel TOOLS never stop prevaricating and double talking to cover their crimes and corruption. Prison is too good for those destroyers of our biosphere. (https://allthoughtsworkoutdoors.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/p9047017-030close-up.jpg)

The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 27, 2017, 06:12:36 pm
Feb. 23, 2017 8:12 pm

Has Big Oil Staged A Coup Of Our Government? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2FIncredible-Hulk-animated-animation-male-smiley-emoticon-000342-large.gif&hash=db736c8c06568f1aa878171ad53d1f0301cfdff2)
https://youtu.be/3E33phgcoA0

Farron Cousins, Ring of Fire Radio/DeSmog Blog/Trial Lawyer Magazine. When Scott Pruitt gave his first official speech as EPA administrator earlier this week - he didn't even mention global warming once.

Apparently - the fate of the planet isn't something the nation's top environmental regulator thinks he should be worrying about. Instead, he's spent a good portion of his career SUING the agency he's now leading - and to put it bluntly - is a basically glorified lackey for the fossil fuel industry.   >:(

That has now been made abundantly clear thanks to the Center for Media Democracy - which this week secured the release of around 7,500 previously withheld emails from Scott Pruitt's time as Oklahoma Attorney General.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230117172434.jpeg&hash=f6a5f0c75dd5f4e3147d4da23ced0dac928aff0f)

Agelbert NOTE: With Trump and Pruitt and Tillerson (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605), EVERY operation on the following map of Federal lands that the fossil fuelers drill for and extract hydrocarbons has NOW been "freed" from any environmental regulations. IOW indiscriminate POLLUTION from flaring, leaks and spills is NOW the "incentive" that Trump just gave them to INCREASE production more, uh "profitably". Have a nice day.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-111216161727.png&hash=ce90156081e530f533917fbf37b789c94ae1c8df)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_IPZX1n_gnIM%2FTBxKST8wgBI%2FAAAAAAAAFxM%2F52D2UaemhQE%2Fs400%2FGas-Oil-Petroleum385.jpg&hash=733743a5d6af9b5085d12db935373e34c5e356fd)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 21, 2017, 02:18:43 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

Trump  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs2277341.gif&hash=1a8375f11d76a653bcb48e30eaa7b652175f029d) Promises To Bring Back Coal...: Speaking at a rally in Kentucky Monday night, President Trump told the crowd his administration is "preparing new executive actions to save our coal industry and to save our wonderful coal miners from continuing to be put out of work." The president also promised to "turn the EPA from a job-killer into a job creator." The timing of the executive order in question, which reportedly includes ordering a rewrite of the Clean Power Plan and threats to the social cost of carbon, was pushed back again by the White House on Monday. The president will reportedly sign the order by the end of this month. Speaking of job killers versus job creators, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed vowed Saturday to oppose the Trump budget's proposed cuts  :o  ;D to the Appalachian Regional Commission, which helps with economic revitalization in areas devastated by coal's decline. (Trump rally: Reuters. EO: Politico Pro $, The Hill, Washington Examiner. McConnell: AP, E&E $. Commentary: The Hill, Dan Cohan op-ed)

...But Coal Hasn't Gotten the Message: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca) Hours before Trump's rally, electric company Dayton Power & Light announced plans to close two of its coal-fired plants in Ohio by next June. The company announced in a statement that, "without significant changes in market conditions," the J.M. Stuart and Killen plants would not be "economically viable beyond mid-2018." The plants, which sit at the heart of a region Trump promised to revitalize, generate 3,000 MW of energy and employ nearly 500 workers. In a settlement reached earlier this year with groups including the Sierra Club, the company will invest in 300 MW of solar and wind projects by 2022 and provide a $2 million fund for the communities affected by the plants' closures. (Reuters, The Hill, Dayton Daily News, Dayton Business Journal. Commentary: Axios, Shane Savitsky analysis)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)Where Are Your Emails, Wayne? The Massachusetts attorney general's office sent ExxonMobil a letter Monday ordering the company to preserve all executive emails, including emails sent from "alias" addresses. The letter specifically calls out the emails sent by then-CEO Rex Tillerson under the "Wayne Tracker" moniker, reminding the company that "Exxon is required to preserve all potentially responsive documents" under the subpoena issued last year by New York and Massachusetts AGs seeking information on how much the company knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change. In a separate order, lawyers for the 21 children and teens suing the government over climate policy also asked the company to turn over the Wayne Tracker emails Monday. Exxon admitted last week that Tillerson's emails under the Wayne.Tracker@exxonmobil.com address may have been deleted. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) (MA AG: AP, InsideClimate News. Climate kids: Reuters. Deleted emails: Buzzfeed)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 23, 2017, 07:43:07 pm
The True Legacy of David Rockefeller

Mar. 21, 2017 02:36PM EST

MintPress News


SNIPPET:

No one person encapsulates the enduring legacy of the "robber barons" of the Industrial Age quite like David Rockefeller. Rockefeller, who died Monday at the age of 101, was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon who became America's first billionaire and the patriarch of what would become one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in American history. David Rockefeller, an undeniable product of American nobility, lived his entire life in the echelons of U.S. society, becoming symbolic of the elite who often direct public policy to a much greater extent than many realize, albeit often from the shadows.
 
Rockefeller made it clear that he preferred to operate out of public view despite his great influence in American—and international—politics. Due to his birthright, Rockefeller served as an advisor to every president since Eisenhower, but when offered powerful positions such as Federal Reserve chairman and Secretary of the Treasury—he declined, preferring "a private role."

As evidenced by the numerous obituaries bemoaning the loss of the last of the Rockefeller's grandsons, he was largely successful in hiding his most significant wrongdoings from public view, as evidenced by his characterization as a generous philanthropist and influential banker.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)

But as is often the case, Rockefeller's true legacy is much more mired in controversy than major publications seem willing to admit. In addition to having the ear of every U.S. president for the better part of the last 70 or so years, Rockefeller—once again operating "behind the scenes"—was instrumental in shaping the more cringe-worthy aspects of U.S. policy during that time, as well as being a major force in establishing banking policies that led to debt crises in the developing world.

Rockefeller—as the head of Chase Manhattan Bank from 1969 to 1981—worked with government and multinational corporations throughout the world to create a "global order" unequivocally dominated by the 1 percent, of which his family was a part.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Faidc.org.za%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F01%2F654a90a3b3b267a602c37366c7fc9844.jpg&hash=5d243dd1c813786cb4f64f920599f3ac3bc39c3f)
Image added by Agelbert  ;D

Full Article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

http://www.ecowatch.com/legacy-david-rockefeller-2323255278.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 24, 2017, 09:26:13 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Excellent explanation of how, exactly, the fossil fuel industry PURCHASED our government.

(Republicans) Have Polluted Our Minds as Well as Our Air & Water (w/Guest Jeffrey Sachs)

https://youtu.be/deMZI-QMUnQ

Published on Mar 24, 2017

Thom talks with Jeffrey Sachs (Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, Author - Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, & Sustainable) about some of the current challenges facing the country and what we'll have to deal with in the near future.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 24, 2017, 09:40:43 pm
Koch Brothers Sabotage Trump's Big Plans BECAUSE TRUMP'S plan, as cruel as it is, isn't CRUEL ENOUGH FOR THEM (03/23/17)

https://youtu.be/oMNTy43dLdo

Published on Mar 24, 2017

The Koch brothers want Trump to know who’s really in charge of the Republican party. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, tell you how they’re sabotaging Trump’s healthcare efforts

“Washington (CNN) In a last-minute effort to sink the Republican health care bill, a powerful network of conservative donors said Wednesday it would create a new fund for Republican 2018 reelection races -- but they'll only open it up to GOPers who vote against the bill.

The advocacy groups helmed by Charles and David Koch have unveiled a new pool of money for advertisements, field programs and mailings that would exclude those who vote for the health care bill they oppose on Thursday. The effort, which they described as worth millions of dollars, is an explicit warning to on-the-fence Republicans from one of the most influential players in electoral politics not to cross them.

The Koch-aligned networks oppose the bill because they think it does not do enough to scale back former President Barack Obama's health care policies.”

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theecologist.org%2Fsiteimage%2Fscale%2F800%2F600%2F378372.png&hash=c3c62ac5212ab19ed4139a7834270505685d13e0)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 27, 2017, 02:32:45 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210316151047.png&hash=322a7c76731414f0f2ba44f8649e39de889b4bd6)
Trump Team Wrecking Crew SLAVE of Fossil Fuel Industry having his morning Joe

Trump   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fp8.gif&hash=34db9228a959b3b83fc65b38a1aa92a40d56f976) to Roll Back Obama Climate Plan, Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) Calls Paris Agreement a 'Bad Deal'  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)
 
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

President Trump will sign an executive order aimed at rolling back energy and environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan, on Tuesday, officials have confirmed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt promoted the long-awaited executive order during his appearance on ABC's This Week Sunday, as he promised that the order would "bring back manufacturing jobs across the country, coal jobs across the country" and shilled a "a pro-growth and pro-environment approach" from the White House.

Pruitt also used his Sunday show slot to blast the Paris agreement, calling it a "bad deal" and questioning why the U.S. "penalized [itself] through lost jobs."

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, was appalled at Pruitt's statement.

"Scott Pruitt, who lacks a fifth-grader's understanding of what's causing global warming
, says the Paris climate treaty was a 'bad deal.' But the bad deal is what America's getting from this administration," Cook said
Quote
. "This decision to vacate the U.S. commitment to combat climate change is the latest evidence that this administration doesn't have a clue about what's needed to keep Americans—and the world—safe and healthy. Tragically, everyone on Earth will pay the price."

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-roll-back-climate-plan-2331820968.html

Agelbert NOTE: The Trump team is busy, busy, busy workin' hahd to make America GREAT (for Tardigrades). There's lots of GREAT news evidencing Trump Team Wrecking Crew efforts on behalf of the Fossil Fuel Planet Eaters that OWN the Trump Team (SEE BELOW).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)

Tillerson Wastes No Time: State Department Rewrites Climate Change Page

SNIPPET:
Quote
On the face of it, Tillerson's carefully worded comment might sound like he is in support of climate action, but the phrasing is broad enough to allow the U.S. to rewrite the terms of the deal or withdraw from it altogether, which is likely what Trump wants to do.

http://www.ecowatch.com/tillerson-rewrite-climate-change-page-2328242116.html

Agelbert Pep Talk: But  don't give up folks. There is still some hope out there that is NOT "hopium". That's right, California is going to bat against the Cretin Fossil Planet Parasites infesting our gooberment.

 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

California Snubs Trump, Sets Stronger Standards Than Federal Government

California's clean air agency finalized the state's strict emissions standards for vehicles Friday, potentially foreshadowing a conflict with Washington following President Trump's promise to the auto industry last week to roll back emissions rules nationally.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously to keep the standards, which are followed by 12 other states, for vehicles produced from 2022 to 2025. The rules also include requirements for automakers to sell more zero-emissions vehicles in California, the country's biggest auto market.

http://www.ecowatch.com/california-emissions-standards-2331874570.html


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)Remember the Agelbert mouse motto  (see below):

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270317142022.png&hash=cc4dab8ff3e2d5b51acc393917751d9837eaf785)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 27, 2017, 07:00:46 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecology.iww.org%2Fimages%2FSMcMillan1.jpg&hash=71a5ded42adb67f357b284d15e8292c4e9fb1ad1)

 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

  March 27, 2017
Nebraskan Landowners Resist Keystone XL By Refusing to Sell Their Property to TransCanada


Retired school teacher and farmer Art Tanderup says he and nearly a hundred other landowners are pushing the Public Service Commission in Nebraska to deny permits for the pipeline 


https://youtu.be/vi7s-m7vA78

Agelbert COMMENT:The pipeline is NOT to "create American jobs"; it's to provide Koch Refineries in Corpus Christie, Texas with the thick tar sludge they NO LONGER GET from Venezuela. Koch refineries CANNOT refine normal Texas tea (euphemism for light crude from Texas). AND, Koch plans to EXPORT the product. So, EVERYTHING TRUMP SAID about "jobs" in the video is a BOLD FACED LIE! The Koch Brothers OWN Trump!

IFG's Kochtopus - Mapping the Influence of Koch Cash


https://prezi.com/5xzibopikc3a/ifgs-kochtopus-mapping-the-influence-of-koch-cash/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 28, 2017, 01:23:46 pm
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cf/8a/30/cf8a30175caa24791525e458580f7b7f.jpg)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftnp.gif&hash=00b6ab61584d51d7649e7ff4b2a7b7b719019acf) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/imgpress.jpg?w=529&h=472)

March 19, 2017 | Rona Fried | Policy/Trends, Transportation

Auto Industry(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496) Gets Fuel Economy Bailout, While Oil Industry (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) Goes After Electric Cars

While health care, Trump’s sledgehammer budget and hearings dominate the news, Trump has begun to roll back another Obama signature policy – fuel economy standards for cars and trucks.

Fuel economy standards are the single biggest energy efficiency policy of the Obama administration, and auto makers agreed to the deal as part of the historic bailout of their businesses.  Since 2009, they have added 700,000 jobs and have beaten the standards with innovations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Individuals and businesses really like going further on a tank of gas. Americans have already saved $35 billion on gas, while avoiding consumption of 270 million barrels of oil, cutting cancer-causing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, all since 2011. Transportation accounts for a third of US emissions.

Automakers met the first goal – fleets averaging 35.5 mpg by 2016 – and the next milestone is 54 mpg by 2025. That’s the goal they are agitating against because low gas prices over the past few years have translated into another boom for very profitable gas-guzzling SUV and pick-up trucks.  And electric car sales are slow, they say. They pressured Obama’s EPA – and now are thrilled to have Trump, who they know will be anxious to eliminate any “burden” on industry.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)

After seeing how much gas passenger and light-duty trucks were saving, the trucking industry ASKED for standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks, which are also progressing. Turns out, getting 6 mpg isn’t great for trucking companies! “Fuel is an enormous expense for our industry – and carbon emissions carry an enormous cost for our planet,” said Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Association.

Have you ever seen an ad for plug-in or electric cars?  The answer is No or Rarely. Have you seen ads for SUVs? The answer is Constantly.

Research on national TV ads confirms this, and there’s also a dearth of electric vehicles (EVs) at dealerships. Either don’t stock EVs at all or have a few hidden in the back. Forget a test drive! Salespeople aren’t trained on their benefits and often aren’t aware of state and federal tax credits and rebates. Another survey finds that 60% of Americans don’t even know that plug-ins exist and that 80% have never been in an EV.

After seeing how much gas passenger and light-duty trucks were saving, the trucking industry ASKED for standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks, which are also progressing. Turns out, getting 6 mpg isn’t great for trucking companies! “Fuel is an enormous expense for our industry – and carbon emissions carry an enormous cost for our planet,” said Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Association.

Have you ever seen an ad for plug-in or electric cars?  The answer is No or Rarely. Have you seen ads for SUVs? The answer is Constantly.

Research on national TV ads confirms this, and there’s also a dearth of electric vehicles (EVs) at dealerships. Either don’t stock EVs at all or have a few hidden in the back. Forget a test drive! Salespeople aren’t trained on their benefits and often aren’t aware of state and federal tax credits and rebates. Another survey finds that 60% of Americans don’t even know that plug-ins exist and that 80% have never been in an EV.  :( :P

In Fact, 2025 Standards Could Be Stronger

in the waning days of the Obama Administration, the EPA released a comprehensive analysis of the 2025 standards as pressure mounted to ease the burden from the auto industry.  The 1200-page report concludes auto manufacturers can meet the 2025 standards both in terms of cost and technical achievement. Technologies are developing more quickly and at even lower costs than EPA originally projected, it says, and cars purchased in 2025 will save about $1 trillion in gas over their lifetime, while avoiding pollution equivalent to that produced by the entire United States for a solid year.

“Although EPA’s technical analysis indicates the standards could be strengthened for model years 2022-2025, proposing to leave the current standards in place provides greater certainty to the auto industry for product planning and engineering,” says the report.

A new study confirms EPA’s analysis: “Our research casts fresh doubt on automakers’ claims that the standards are too difficult and costly to meet,” says the International Council on Clean Transportation. Automakers are inflating the costs by at least 35%.

81% of Americans support the Clean Car standards
, according to a 2016 Consumer Federation of America survey, and “UAW members know firsthand that these standards have spurred investments in new products that employ tens of thousands of our members.”

Problems for auto manufacturers come from concessions they extracted from Obama’s EPA. They negotiated:

◾Gradual improvements in fuel mileage in the early years, followed by steep increases in the final years of 2021-2025.

◾Weaker standards for larger vehicles

◾Special exemptions for SUVs and vans: they are classified as light trucks, which have weaker standards than cars.

Even with these loopholes,  vehicle carbon emissions have been declining by an average 2.3% a year, reports Yale360.  “Before the election, automakers had plans well underway to re-engineer their vehicles in line with tighter standards over the coming decade. Ample technology is in the pipeline for making steady gains in efficiency (and steady cuts in CO2 emission rates) for years to come. The feasibility of meeting the standards has been studied exhaustively for many years now. These studies all conclude that steady refinements of gasoline engines — cutting excess mass through high-strength steel and other advanced materials — and further streamlining would not only enable automakers to reach the standards now targeted for 2025, but also continue improving efficiency beyond that. Over the five-year phase-in leading up to the 2025 target, the incremental cost per vehicle will average only $240 per year,” says Yale360.

But instead of following through on their 2015 commitment, automakers want another bailout. And that’s even with numerous models already close to meeting the target – the Honda Civic, for example, already meets 2023 standards.

Then there’s the issue of industry competitiveness.  Canada, the EU, China, India, South Korea and other countries all have similar, if not stronger standards to meet. Before the US instituted our standards, car companies produced more efficient vehicles in Europe and less efficient ones in the US, all the while claiming they couldn’t do any better.

“Our cars and trucks are not nearly as clean as they should be, but they’re a lot cleaner than they used to be – more than 40% less polluting than they were 20 years ago,” says Heather Leibowitz, Director of Environment New York.

Trump Rolls Them Back Anyway

Now Trump is directing his EPA to do the analysis again, due April 2018. It will have to substantiate any recommendation to rollback the rules, they can’t just “do it.” And they must hold the same series of hearings and get public input to unravel them as Obama’s EPA did to put the rules in place.

US automakers are known for “sky is falling” howls. They protested requirements for seat belts, air bags, catalytic converters and then low emission vehicles, claiming they would kill the industry. Lee Iacocca famously argued against the 1970 Clean Air Act because it “could prevent continued production of automobiles … threatening the entire American economy.”

“These claims have proven false time and again and EPA’s Phase II Clean Cars standards are no different. They have helped spur U.S. automakers to offer a more diverse and more efficient mix of vehicles. As a result, their fleets will remain attractive to consumers in the years ahead, especially when gas prices inevitably rise again,” says Environmental Defense Fund.

Cities and States Push Back


Will Trump also demand the rollback of California’s waiver, which allows the state to go beyond federal rules? We don’t know yet.

Nine states have followed California’s lead requiring automakers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles. They must reach 4.5% of sales in those states by 2018, rising to 22% in 2025. The states are: Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Oregon – all blue states, of course.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is coordinating electric vehicle purchases for 30 cities who want to spend $10 billion on electric cars and trucks to demonstrate demand to automakers. Their RFP asks automakers for the cost of supplying 114,000 electric vehicles for their fleets of police cars and trucks like garbage haulers.

In 2016, 160,000 plug-ins sold in the US.

Attorney Generals from the same 10 states released a joint statement vowing to “vigorously oppose attempts by the Trump Administration to weaken vehicle emission policies and put our public health at risk,” as well as their right to adopt even stricter pollution standards. California and New York will intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers this week to weaken the 54 mpg goal.


“California is forward-leaning. For us, clean air, good-paying jobs and quality of life go hand-in-hand. There’s no turning back in the fight against pollution, states Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

Auto and Oil Industry versus Utilities?


While automakers want the rules relaxed to save them money, the oil industry stands to gain from people using more gas to run their vehicles. But utilities really like EVs because they will sell a lot more electricity without the expense of building more power plants.

Kansas City Power & Light, for example, is investing $20 million on 1000 charging stations and in the process, creating one of the fastest-growing markets for EVs in the country. Charges are at workplaces, apartment garages, grocery stores, parking lots and malls, and stadiums. Best yet, the electricity increasingly comes from wind.

Read our article, Utilities Get Paid to Build Out Washington State’s Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure.

PushBack Against EVs Grows Stronger


Like we’ve seen from utilities adding fees because they are threatened by solar, the oil industry is working to discourage adoption of EVs.  The Koch Brothers and their peers convinced 10 states to charge fees to hybrid and EV owners, varying from $50 to $300 per driver per year.  Eight more states are moving in that direction this year.

Since Georgia replaced its $5000 tax credit with a $200 annual fee, sales of EVs plunged 80% after being the second-largest market in the US. Only 16 of the 25 states that offered financial incentives for EV purchases still have them, thanks to the Koch Brothers and ALEC (the Koch’s are among its biggest funders).

A new group formed by the Koch Brothers is spending $10 million a year to convince Americans to stay away from EVs and stick with good ‘ole petroleum. ALEC’s resolution, which discourages states from supporting EVs, is making its way across the country.

Utah just voted down a bill to extend its $1500 tax credit for EVs through 2021 and Colorado will soon vote on whether to continue its $6000 tax credit – the most generous in the US, reports DeSmog Blog.

The oil industry has also been trying to keep the biofuels industry down – another potential competitor, but now they have found common ground in working together to oppose all financial support for EVs.

There’s reason for big oil to be scared. In 2015, 13 US states and four countries signed onto the International Zero Emission Alliance, pledging that all new passenger vehicles sold will be zero emissions no later than by 2050.

By 2020, EV prices are expected to be much lower, and by 2040, they are expected to have a 35% market share, according to Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Read our article, 2016 Has Been A Great Year for Electric Cars.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/auto-industry-gets-fuel-economy-bailout-oil-industry-goes-electric-cars/

Agelbert NOTE: Below, please find, evidence that the propaganda tsunami from the Fossil Fuel Planet Eaters for the past half century has been successful in dumbing down most (only 11% of those in the survey below retain the ability to see through the Polluter Propaganda) Americans:

(https://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-120616193700.png)


(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/05/c7/d8/05c7d881009dec85c4f24ed8561bf288.jpg)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 28, 2017, 07:30:45 pm
Agelbert NOTE: The Koch Brothers will SELL the refined Tar sands ruinously polluting oil to CHINA!

Greg Palast - Koch Bros' Bribery & TrumpCare

 by Thom Hartmann (03/27/17))

https://youtu.be/Zk4OQVYWOrM

Published on Mar 27, 2017

Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy/OpEdNews/The Guardian. As Donald Trump continues to rack up the losses - the Koch brothers are re-emerging as major power players in Washington, DC. Is this the beginning of a billionaire coup?

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/8b/30/b3/8b30b31e87dddef823ce634725ac42d3.jpg)


The REST of the Koch Bro's Fascist story:

https://youtu.be/YKQxa-zHqWI





Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 29, 2017, 03:27:29 pm
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


(https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/all/themes/clew/logo.png)


Süddeutsche Zeitung


German environment minister warns: America is harming itself

Following the executive order by US President Donald Trump (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270117175421.png&hash=cf39e823dd9156833bfa885808a876bf518bd0d6) 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



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 29, 2017, 07:05:32 pm
YES, this belongs here (SEE CVR Energy and Trump "advisor" NOT BOUND BY ETHICS  RULES OR CONFLICT OF INTEREST LAWS).

https://youtu.be/xQlfE2U1Bco

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 18, 2017, 02:25:44 pm
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 (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

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa.abcnews.com%2Fimages%2FUS%2FWireAP_f7fa022ce3ff44a69a61185162d6c041_12x5_1600.jpg&hash=a515e85ea504528e2549710599b55f225f585dd6)
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"....

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 19, 2017, 05:32:13 pm
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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

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
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 20, 2017, 09:28:33 pm
Confirmation that the fossil Fuel Industry OWNS TRUMP (LAVISHLY funded Inauguration)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)
 

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_IPZX1n_gnIM%2FTBxKST8wgBI%2FAAAAAAAAFxM%2F52D2UaemhQE%2Fs400%2FGas-Oil-Petroleum385.jpg&hash=733743a5d6af9b5085d12db935373e34c5e356fd)

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/ (http://www.ecowatch.com/)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 21, 2017, 06:53:20 pm
(https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2015/05/unburnable-fossil-fuels.jpg.696x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg)

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...

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgualerzi.blogautore.repubblica.it%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F07%2Fcarbon_bubble_graphic-532x350.png&hash=b05d5320788d08ec1612b2e7111a990eecfec8a2)


But we get to die from lots of other profit over planet  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20) reasons even before that.   :P

Here’s where you’re most likely to die from air pollution
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Feoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov%2Fimages%2Fimagerecords%2F82000%2F82087%2Fpollution_excess_deaths_lrg.png&hash=5ea8f6b888def6ad777fa4c3dd938b803a86a180)
http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-where-youre-most-likely-to-die-from-air-pollution (http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-where-youre-most-likely-to-die-from-air-pollution)

But don't worry, Pruitt and Trump have a plan....
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-180914234909.png&hash=fc56316b310f0a7da1295846e1001ccd53f221ef)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 27, 2017, 08:54:18 pm
100 Days Into the "For-Profit Presidency"  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) 
https://youtu.be/uOwUr6JbAt0

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.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 10, 2017, 11:17:48 pm
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.

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2016/08/oil-and-gas-political-donations.png)

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

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_IPZX1n_gnIM%2FTBxKST8wgBI%2FAAAAAAAAFxM%2F52D2UaemhQE%2Fs400%2FGas-Oil-Petroleum385.jpg&hash=733743a5d6af9b5085d12db935373e34c5e356fd)

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/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 12, 2017, 05:18:54 pm
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
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 13, 2017, 01:58:23 pm
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"  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) 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 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)  on the Rise of Conservative (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) Orthodoxy

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

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 15, 2017, 01:47:02 pm
(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/05/Jim-Comey.jpg)
Russian Oil Billionaires, Trump World, Russian Hacking, & Firing FBI Director Comey … For Democracy?

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010215143525.png&hash=5bd7bd57f7d770273b7d73d29697fe3a0cc11e8f)


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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)

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?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F128fs318181.gif&hash=eff6d5f3831782966c2ff2081f07bf7fc5b22a6b)

How would a petrostate kleptocracy act differently than the Republican Party and Donald Trump are operating today?   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_1730.gif&hash=cdaf50326d98ff7b051a9c49e83d51c7bb687407)

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?      (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs3187425.gif&hash=698371058827d6a11faaaa56c2531639421f9477)

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2016/08/oil-and-gas-political-donations.png)

And is it really surprising that Republican “leadership” in Congress  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) 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?    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F126fs3187425.gif&hash=698371058827d6a11faaaa56c2531639421f9477)


After all, as Susan wrote in December, “What’s Good for Putin is Good for ExxonMobil.” (https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/12/putin-wants-trump-kleptocracy/)

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://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

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

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FHjPbLbmep2aJO%2Fgiphy.gif&hash=3c7f7703f00cb341d3e9bdba607208d4204a294c)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 25, 2017, 07:16:51 pm
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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_0293.gif&hash=b1af4868ed8f18c30e637f8cbcb79002f6f71039)


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 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) , 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.     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0)


Eric Schneiderman for president in 2020.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F19.gif&hash=3f9f2fc2285bc756137e21463bc2a4c420b15ac3)
 



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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 29, 2017, 08:57:33 pm
(https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/all/themes/clew/logo.png)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.opednews.com%2Fpopulum%2Fuploaded%2Fwemeantwell-23439-20130307-234.jpg&hash=5d94476d7e46b55b11262b914d406946bde61c41)

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 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df) 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
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 30, 2017, 01:35:51 pm
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.

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/05/Direct-Gas-Injection-Bosch.jpg)
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   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)


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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf) 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://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FHjPbLbmep2aJO%2Fgiphy.gif&hash=3c7f7703f00cb341d3e9bdba607208d4204a294c)

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! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6869.gif&hash=f94938471d343a09155d1f60eefacdb2ceab2457)

And you too, you propagandized intelliburros defending the "real world" of fossil fueldom "high energy density" BALONEY!   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2rzukw3.gif&hash=f0487b8f0d488ab1126ce5e031b11ea3d74b1cc2)

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200914193029.png&hash=728bdda741ba73675753acf67d5deb8e6f9e3ef0)

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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 31, 2017, 01:42:06 pm
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.”

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/05/Trump-Germany-1.jpg)
Image by Kürschner, art produced and displayed in Germany  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf)

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/ (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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmaniac.gif&hash=9ecf389a7da25db958f3f63461cbb45a4b316c4e)

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. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)


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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  (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/28/19/a4/2819a41b7f78b5c07b4ab59c364c5c0f.jpg)  ;D) on behalf Trump's fossil fuel polluter OWNERS that are "concerned"   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__smokelots.gif&hash=094f88de6782c1cd03ed5321b387792046eb3cdd), 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).

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 01, 2017, 05:29:51 pm
Nixon oversaw US Peak Crude Oil, when in 1970 the Texas Railroad Commission who effectively limited Texan oil production to maintain price stability, lifted all restrictions on production. Nixon could forsee that decreasing US oil production would lead to increasing oil imports and huge outgoings of Dollars.  So he decoupled the Dollar from Gold allowing it to float, effectively removing all limits on money-printing. He also realised that publicly acknowledging Peak Oil would have dramatic effects on the oil majors future prospects, and share price, so Peak Oil was never to be acknowledged.

By 1977 the situation had become:
(https://doomsteaddiner.net/palloy/images/US. oil.imprts.png)

Carter's "Fireside chat" of 1977 shows he clearly understood about Peak Oil and its consequences.

https://youtu.be/MmlcLNA8Zhc

as did Obama's in his 2013 speech
:
Quote
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/remarks-president-climate-change
What is true is that we can’t just drill our way out of the energy and climate challenge that we face.  (Applause.)  That’s not possible.

And while the climate challenge would bite some time after 2030   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b), the energy challenge will bite before 2020   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b). Which would worry you more?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fbc3.gif&hash=e80a574cef1f1cd31dc58d76fe36b5ffb7fe7d5b)

How could they NOT know, with all the experts and unpublished data that they have access to, and internal oil company forecasts for production that they are privy to?  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fbc3.gif&hash=e80a574cef1f1cd31dc58d76fe36b5ffb7fe7d5b)


So Trump must know that too, even if he doesn't want to believe it. He probably knows the exact year that the Peak Oil problem will become impossible to hide, and what year the whole economy will collapse, and how much longer it can be put off by how much more money-printing. It's not something that can be set aside for idealogical reasons. The next crash will be the last.


Your grasp of the peak oil math is accurate, but your grasp of the relative importance of catastrophic climate change versus peak oil is woefully inaccurate, if not sadly upside down. WHY?

Before I answer that, please realize that that Big Oil, despite knowing the peak oil math, stubbornly have tried to cling to their UPSTREAM "business model". The following graphic is irrefutable evidence that Big Oil, HAVING THE MONEY to transition to clean energy, IGNORED their own peak oil research and DOUBLED DOWN on UPSTREAM (i.e. exploration for, and exploitation of, oil and gas sources   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)) investments:
 
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They certainly could have spent that 900 BILLION DOLLARS in Renewable energy, but greedily (and stupidly ) decided NOT TO on the basis of extending the day of reckoning for peak oil (and BLATANTLY ignoring the fact that said upstream activity would goose catastrophic climate change even more). So, that gigantic amount of money argues against all the claims you just made about Big Oil (and Trump) "knowing the score", even though Carter and Nixon DID know the score (Obama did NOT really know the score! His mealy mouthed attempts to do "all the above" in energy technologies was clear evidence of that.)

Yet, you continue to believe that Big Oil is acting rationally by giving more importance to fueling civilization than trying to stop polluting it to extinction. The two dangers cannot be weighed logically as you continue to attempt to do. Now to answer the "WHY?" I first presented to you above.

(https://www.nwclimatescience.org/sites/default/files/Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 10.15.44 AM.png)

Let us assume, for the sake of non-argument, that your RCP 4.5 scenario assumptions, which is probably where you get the rationale for the year 2030 being the leading front of costly climate change impacts, are accurate (I think we are in RCP 8.5 or worse territory now, but we have argued that before and you are sticking with your conservative RCP 4.5 view no matter what.  :P ).

Peak civilization sustaining ENERGY (which is what you REALLY MEAN by "peak oil"  ;)) is, as you claim, a sort of light switch type (i.e. sudden) event that triggers a major collapse.

Of course we all want to avoid that. Of course, the trajectory we are on NOW will definitely produce that collapse eventually.

However, your estimate of the date of said collapse being around 10 years prior to the major catastrophic climate events is NOT a proper or reasonable rationale for prioritizing looking for more fossil fuels above transitioning to clean energy and banning fossil fuel use BECAUSE:

1) Lack of energy for most people to live a decent life will cause a lot of death and misery, but won't make us go extinct. After the main event, a new equilibrium will be established within a few decades or less. It is NOT the end of the world and should NOT be treated like the number one priority for the perpetuation of a viable biosphere and the human species.

2) Lack of energy will NOT cause multiple biosphere species extinctions, many of which WE NEED to avoid going extinct ourselves.

3) Catastrophic climate change will continue to WORSEN for over a CENTURY (or up to 1,000 YEARS!) after the first impacts are felt (as they are NOW, not in 2030, being felt).

I really do not see why this is so hard for you to grasp. We live in an interconnected system of biological activity. THAT is in DANGER. THAT is the first, 2nd, 3rd, (keep going for over a 100 years counting) PRIORITY  for action in the defense of the biosphere, if we wish to survive.

An integral part of surviving is to STOP POLLUTING THE PLANET. Any claim to "delaying" the collapse, as a rationale to engage in MORE oil and gas UPSTREAM investment and exploitation    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da), actually makes the collapse MORE LIKELY SOONER, in addition to increasing the probability of our extinction for not taking timely action to preserve the biosphere.

This is not all that hard to figure, Palloy. The fossil fuel "industry" doesn't want to let go of their "business model". So they keep making excuses that counteract the good advice of their own scientists. As long as the fossil fuelers like Putin and Exxon etc, et al call the shots and pull the Trump strings, we ARE SCREWED. Greed has destroyed their ability to reason. It's time you accepted that sad reality is based on irrational greed, not "peak oil" math.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-260217143301.png&hash=d9e2c205c423ed80cf612dbac84f6a589693ceea)

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(https://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/made/content/images/articles/Pfund-subsidies_618_275.jpg)

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(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/dc/d5/f1/dcd5f1ac950c860ad7839325f4eafc84.jpg)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 01, 2017, 07:26:41 pm
The Epic Battle Between Big Oil  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) and the People of California

Published on May 27th, 2017

Quote
“In California, for all of the progress made, we have enormous problems that aren’t being addressed by the elected leaders to date,” said Adam Scow, California Director of Food and Water Watch. “It is an embarrassment that Maryland and New York have banned fracking, but California has not. We need our elected officials to enact a real progressive agenda banning fracking & fossil fuels. Anything less is unacceptable.”

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)
http://redgreenandblue.org/2017/05/27/epic-battle-big-oil-people-california/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 02, 2017, 10:16:21 pm
Trump Says Drop Dead To Planet  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58)

https://youtu.be/ocdEjjNqvsU

June 2, 2017

Big Picture Interview: Mike Papantonio, America's Lawyer (RT America)/Ring of Fire Radio/Law and Disorder. After days of speculation - Donald Trump announced today that he would pull the US out of the Paris Climate Deal. Why is this so-called nationalist president trying to surrender America's climate leadership role to China?

Agelbert NOTE: I disagree that the problem is Trump's "lack of intelligence". The PROBLEM is that Trump was BOUGHT by the fossil fuel fascists (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) to DO what he is DOING! ALL of this was TOTALLY predictable!
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 15, 2017, 01:28:50 pm
Quote
Just days after President Trump’s inauguration, his administration hastily issued federal permits authorizing construction of the pipeline across the Missouri River, just upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation. Today a federal judge ruled that those permits violated the law. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clker.com%2Fcliparts%2Fc%2F8%2Ff%2F8%2F11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png&hash=599691109af22b33f1d59dd61eb97448a9427020)

The Corps relied on flawed, one-sided analysis prepared by DAPL—and never subjected to any independent review—minimizing the risks of oil spill, and ignored the Tribe’s treaty rights to water, fishing, and hunting. In December 2016, the Corps correctly found that those issues needed further consideration through an EIS process. On his second full day in office, the Trump administration overruled the Corps and ordered the permits to be granted. Standing Rock Chairman Archambault was on his way to meet with the White House when the easement was issued—no one from the Trump administration ever talked to a representative of the Tribe before ordering the project to go forward.

The new administration failed to engage in good faith in the process.

Timeline of Events:

July 27, 2016
The Tribe files a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C., where it was assigned to U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg.

August 4, 2016
The Tribe asks the Court for a preliminary injunction since the pipeline is already under construction and would be finished before the case could be formally decided.

August 24, 2016
Judge Boasberg holds a hearing on the motion in Washington, D.C. Over 500 people participated in an action outside the federal courthouse in support of the Tribe. The Judge indicated that he would rule in roughly two weeks.

Sept. 3, 2016
While the parties are awaiting the Court’s decision, Dakota Access bulldozed an area of the pipeline corridor filled with Tribal sacred sites and burials that had been identified to the Court just the previous day. Demonstrators trying to prevent the destruction of the sacred site were pepper sprayed and attacked by guard dogs (as documented by Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now camera crew.) On Sept. 4, the Tribe files an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to block the construction until a decision is reached on the injunction motion.

Sept. 6, 2016
Judge Boasberg holds a hearing on the emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. The Judge issues a temporary restraining order for the pipeline corridor nearest the Missouri River but declines to halt construction on the portion of the pipeline route that had recently been identified as sacred tribal burial ground.

Sept. 9, 2016
The Court denies the Tribe’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Minutes later, three federal agencies—The Department of Justice, Department of the Army and Department of the Interior—issue a joint statement announcing that the federal agencies will halt any additional permitting and reconsider its past permits of the project. The statement states that while it appreciates the Court’s review, the government believes that the Tribe has raised some important issues worthy of additional consideration. It also called for a national review of the government’s approach to Tribal consultation for major fossil fuel projects.

Sept. 12, 2016
After filing an appeal of the District Court’s decision with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Tribe files a request for an injunction pending appeal. The motion asks the Court to make the Government’s request for a voluntary pause on construction within 20 miles of Lake Oahe an enforceable requirement while the appeal process goes forward.

Sept. 16, 2016
The Court issues an order issuing an “administrative injunction … to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for injunction pending appeal.” The court directed “that Dakota Access LLC be enjoined pending further order of the court from construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for 20 miles on both sides of the Missouri River at Lake Oahe.”

Oct. 5, 2016
Oral arguments on the emergency motion for injunction are held at the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. A ruling was not issued, keeping the temporary halt to construction in place until the Court issues a decision.

Oct. 9, 2016
The D.C. Circuit issues a ruling denying the tribe’s request for an injunction pending appeal but emphasizes that it hoped that the “spirit of Section 106 [of the National Historic Preservation Act] may yet prevail” as the Court did not have the last word, and decisions still need to be made at the permit crossing at Lake Oahe. Both the appeal and the district court litigation will proceed, but the injunction covering work in the pipeline corridor has ceased.

Oct. 10, 2016
The Department of Justice, Department of the Army and Department of the Interior issue a joint statement following the court order which says in part: “The Army continues to review issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Tribal nations and their members and hopes to conclude its ongoing review soon. In the interim, the Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access Pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe. We repeat our request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.”

Dakota Access has forcefully rejected the Government’s request for a voluntary pause, and continues to pursue construction ever closer to the Missouri River and the camps of protesters.

Oct. 20, 2016
The Army Corps conducts a site visit to the area bulldozed over Labor Day to determine whether Dakota Access violated federal law by knowingly damaging a tribal sacred site. Under federal law, if Dakota Access is found to have knowingly damaged a historic or cultural resource with the intent of sidestepping the National Historic Preservation Act, the Corps cannot issue the easement. No determination has been finalized.

Oct. 24, 2016
As confrontations between Tribal water protectors and an increasingly militarized construction effort heat up, Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II calls on the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into heavy-handed police tactics and violations of civil rights.

Nov. 2, 2016
Following comments from President Obama in an interview on Nov. 1, Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II issues a statement, saying in part, “While the Army Corps of Engineers is examining this issue we call on the Administration and the Corps to issue an immediate ‘stop work order’ on the Dakota Access Pipeline.” Read the Tribe's full statement.

“Earthjustice is honored to represent the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in court as it seeks to protect its people’s sacred lands and water from the Dakota Access pipeline,” said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, also in response to President Obama's Nov. 1 remarks. “We also want to reiterate the Chairman’s call for a full environmental impact statement. No such careful review has occurred to date. Considering all that’s at stake, that’s simply unacceptable.” Read Earthjustice's full statement.

Nov. 3, 2016
An independent expert hired by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Richard Kuprewicz of Accufacts, Inc., a consulting firm that advises government agencies and industry about pipelines) finds that the government’s environmental assessment of the Dakota Access pipeline’s environmental impact was inadequate. In light of Kuprewicz’s report and the deficiencies contained in the environmental assessment, Tribe Chairman Archambault II asked for the government to reconsider its early decisions and disallow the easement for the pipeline crossing. Read the letter to Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy. Read the Accufacts report. Read the news release.

Nov. 10, 2016
The Department of Justice announces in federal court that it will be announcing the next steps on a 'path forward' for the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing at Lake Oahe. Read the Tribe's statement.

Nov. 14, 2016
The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers announces they are delaying an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline project until it conducts further environmental review with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “We are encouraged and know that the peaceful prayer and demonstration at Standing Rock have powerfully brought to light the unjust narrative suffered by tribal nations and Native Americans across the country,” says Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair David Archambault II.

Nov. 15, 2016
Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline files a lawsuit charging the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers has no right to delay easement to pipeline construction.

Nov. 21, 2016
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe issues a statement calling on President Obama to deny easement, investigate pipeline safety and protect tribal sovereignty. Read the Tribe's statement.

Nov. 25, 2016
Federal officials announce that a decision had been made to close access to the entire area north of the Cannonball River including the Standing Rock protest campsite at Oceti Sakowin. They said the decision was made because of public safety concerns and that a 'free speech zone' to the south of Cannonball River would be created. Anyone on the closed land after Dec. 5 could be charged with trespassing. Read the Tribe's statement.

Nov. 28, 2016
The Water Protector Legal Collective, an initiative of the National Lawyers Guild, files a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Morton County, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirschmeier, and other law enforcement agencies for using excessive force against peaceful protesters near the Standing Rock protest camp on the night of November 20. More details. (Earthjustice, representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in litigation against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is not involved in this class action lawsuit.)

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II responds to Gov. Dalrymple's Nov. 28 executive order calling for mandatory evacuation of all campers located on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lands (also known as the Oceti Sakowin camp), saying, in part, "If the true concern is for public safety than the Governor should clear the blockade and the county law enforcement should cease all use of flash grenades, high-pressure water cannons in freezing temperatures, dog kennels for temporary human jails, and any harmful weaponry against human beings." Read the Tribe's full statement.

Dec. 2, 2016
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Yankton Sioux Tribe ask the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to stop the violence against water protectors at Standing Rock. An official petition has been submitted to the IACHR.

Dec. 4, 2016
The Dakota Access Corporation is not granted the easement needed for construction under Lake Oahe. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moves to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for alternative routes. Read more.

Dec. 5, 2016
DAPL files a motion for summary judgment. Read the legal document.

Dec. 9, 2016
Tribal representatives testify at a hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The hearing examined the impact of extractive industries and projects on the human rights of indigenous peoples, focusing on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Jan. 6, 2017
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe files a motion with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., asking District Judge James Boasberg to throw out Dakota Access’s lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. The Department of Justice, which represents the Corps, files a similar motion.

Jan. 18, 2017
The scoping notice soliciting public comment on the Environmental Impact Statement process for the Dakota Access Pipeline is published in the Federal Register. The notice opens the public scoping phase and invites interested parties to identify potential issues, concerns, and reasonable alternatives that should be considered in an EIS. Comments from the public are being requested through Feb. 20.

Jan. 24, 2017
President Donald Trump takes executive action towards an approval of an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline, risking contaminating tribal and American water supplies while disregarding treaty rights. “The existing pipeline route risks infringing on our treaty rights, contaminating our water and the water of 17 million Americans downstream,” said Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “We are not opposed to energy independence. We are opposed to reckless and politically motivated development projects, like DAPL, that ignore our treaty rights and risk our water. Creating a second Flint does not make America great again.” Read full statement from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Read statement from Earthjustice.

Feb. 1, 2017
Senators Cantwell, Tester and Udall send a letter to the White House expressing their concern about the Presidential Memorandum issued January 24 and reports that the Army Corps of Engineers intends to grant a final easement allowing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline without appropriate consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and due process. Read the letter.

Feb. 7, 2017
The Army Corps of Engineers notifies Congress that—within the next 24 hours—it will issue an easement to allow the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation. Read the EIS termination. Read the Army memorandum.

Feb. 8, 2017
The easement is issued.

Feb. 14, 2017
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe files a motion for summary judgment, asking the Court to overturn recent Army Corps of Engineers permits of the pipeline issued without environmental review or consideration of treaty rights. The lawsuit challenges the Corps’ hasty and unexplained departure from its previous decision, and explains how the Corps ignored the Tribe’s treaty rights and seeks to destroy culturally significant and sacred sites. It also explains how the Corps violated federal statutes requiring close environmental analysis of significant and controversial agency actions. Read the legal document.

Feb. 15, 2017
North Dakota Gov. Burgum issues an emergency evacuation order of the Oceti Sakowin camp, ordering that the site be vacated by 2:00pm local time on Feb. 22. In a statement on Feb. 7, Standing Rock Chairman Archambault II had asked supporters to “please respect our people and do not come to Standing Rock and instead exercise your First Amendment rights and take this fight to your respective state capitols, to your members of Congress, and to Washington, D.C.”

Feb. 23, 2017
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe issues Setting The Record Straight, documenting engagement on the Dakota Access pipeline.

Feb. 24, 2017
A buried memo from Interior Department's top lawyer surfaces in legal filings. The 35-page formal legal opinion, dated Dec. 4, found that the existing environmental assessment for the Dakota Access pipeline suffered from fatal flaws. The Trump administration quietly suspended the opinion as it prepared to approve the pipeline. Of the Trump administration's attempts to bury the memo, Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman said, "The Standing Rock Sioux deserve better. That's why we have courts." Read details.

Apr. 5, 2017
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe applauds BNP Paribas’ decision to divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline. “As corporate greed continues to fuel dirty energy projects on our land, it is heartening to see that some banks recognize the imminent harm to our people posed by DAPL, and are taking actions accordingly,” said Dave Archambault, Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “We appreciate BNP Paribas, ING and DNB leadership and their advanced understanding and respect of tribal sovereignty and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”

May 10, 2017
The local South Dakota outlet Aberdeen News reports that a leak occurred in the not-yet completed Dakota Access pipeline on April 6. “Our lawsuit challenging this dangerous project is ongoing, and it’s more important than ever for the court to step in and halt additional accidents before they happen—not just for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and our resources, but for the 17 million people whose drinking water is at risk,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II.

June 14, 2017
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe wins a significant victory, when Judge James Boasberg rules that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects. The Court did not determine whether pipeline operations should be shut off, requesting additional briefing on the subject and a status conference for the following week. Read the court opinion (http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/DAPL-order.pdf).

http://earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-litigation?crm
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 16, 2017, 09:23:30 pm
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WT1gJl0EL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)

What is the Actual Hidden Agenda of the Radical Right? (w/Guest Nancy MacLean)

https://youtu.be/3k-cbF5rtn4

June 15, 2017

Thom speaks with guest Professor Nancy MacLean (William Chafe Professor of History & Public Policy - Duke University, Author - Democracy In Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America) about the true motives behind what the right supports in terms of policy and public perception. (Pt 1/2)


https://youtu.be/iHve1Vc-qng

Thom speaks with guest Professor Nancy MacLean (William Chafe Professor of History & Public Policy - Duke University, Author - Democracy In Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America) about the true motives behind what the right supports in terms of policy and public perception. (Pt 2/2)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 27, 2017, 02:54:28 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-150317134140.jpeg&hash=a4a9f5561a49455c2e952efd32c247e8ffe353ea)
Tanker Dumping Ballast Polluted Water with BMS (Ballast Management System). BMS is a fig leaf for in-your-face ocean pollution for fossil fuel profits.

The Booming Texas Port (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) at the Center of U.S. Oil Exports

June 26, 2017 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET:

Last quarter, ships carrying about 22 million barrels destined for foreign countries left Corpus, government data show. That was almost 30 percent of the country’s total exports. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Daily export capacity could grow to 2.8 million barrels from 960,000 now, according to port officials. Houston, the second-biggest crude exporting hub, can ship 1.7 million barrels a day, said New York-based Timm Schneider, senior managing director for financial consultant Evercore ISI.

Right now, most of the ships handling crude in the port are Aframax carriers that hold about 600,000 barrels of crude. Once the dredging project is complete, Corpus Christi would be able to handle Suezmax tankers that load about 1 million barrels. The VLCCs like Anne hold as much as 2 million barrels, so they remain too big for the channel.

But producers are looking toward a day when the port can handle those big tankers, too. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

http://gcaptain.com/booming-texas-port-center-us-oil-exports/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 13, 2017, 10:48:45 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)


Tillerson is as bad a Secretary of State as you’d expect the CEO of Exxon Mobil to be

State Dept. science adviser quits amid fears the Trump administration is ruining the agency for ‘decades to come.

Snippet:

Tillerson’s blindness to the growing risk to oil prices from climate change is no surprise given that, during his time at the company, ExxonMobil became a leading purveyor and funder of climate disinformation.

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

https://thinkprogress.org/tillerson-is-as-bad-a-secretary-of-state-as-youd-expect-the-ceo-of-exxon-mobil-to-be-a150206a3b0c




Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 14, 2017, 02:37:25 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

Denier Roundup

Regulatory Resistance Ramps Up as Red/Blue Team Regulation Emerges

As we pull our hair out about the ridiculous red/blue team effort Scott “Hi Hungry, I’m Dad” Pruitt has begun, the legal types have begun strategizing. That was the thrust of Maria Hegstad’s InsideEPA story yesterday, which highlights a little-known (but soon to be important) law regulating administrative advisory panels. 

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) provides guidance on how advisory panels are staffed and operated. Pruitt’s (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) desire to stack boards with industry voices   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) and put on a red/blue team dog and pony show will have to be very carefully arranged if he hopes to avoid legal challenge. FACA stipulates that advisory panels must not be “inappropriately influenced” by either the political leadership (in this case, Pruitt) or special interests (Pruitt’s fossil fuel friends).

Unfortunately, the law is hard to enforce, in part because litigants would have to prove that they’ve been injured by the decisions made. That’s why there is little precedent to gauge whether or not this will really be an effective avenue of resistance. But it is something to keep an eye on.

There is no doubt that this law requiring honest and impartial advisory panels will be unwelcome news for Pruitt. (We assume this law is news to him anyway. After all, if he truly believed the advisory boards were inappropriately biased before he joined the EPA, why didn’t he ever sue over it? With his failing record for suing the EPA, it’s not like he’s opposed to losing lawsuits.)

Also unlikely to please Pruitt, if he finds out, is the release of a guide for how the public can resist Trump’s de-regulatory agenda. Produced by a volunteer group of former EPA employees organized as SaveEPA, the PDF walks readers through why Trump’s anti-regulatory talking points are false, how regulations are written, how the public can participate in the process, what they can do outside the official process and gives resources for tracking regulations and the Federal Register.

So Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6869.gif&hash=f94938471d343a09155d1f60eefacdb2ceab2457), you better have your ducks in a row when you set up your sham of a climate debate and try and stock advisory panels with industry shills. Climate advocates are watching, and unless you are really looking forward to defending the EPA in court instead of suing it like you’re used to, you better be real FACA’n careful. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fcowboypistol.gif&hash=2dc97f743dffca22404e6e4e0822765e60b33f38)

https://insideepaclimate.com/daily-news/pruitt-faces-faca-rules-bid-climate-debate-advisory-panel-reforms     
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 18, 2017, 08:50:35 pm
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN CALIFORNIA FILE COMMON LAW CLAIMS AGAINST  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2mo5pow.gif&hash=995f9f6c08dcd54f18425f2bfbe138901cf052b1) LARGEST FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6)


Posted on July 18th, 2017 by Romany Webb
     
By Michael Burger

Yesterday, three local governments in California (San Mateo County, Marin County and the City of Imperial Beach) filed potentially groundbreaking climate change lawsuits in California state courts, each one charging a group of 20 fossil fuel companies with liability for public nuisance, failure to warn, design defect, private nuisance, negligence, and trespass. (The complaints will be available in an updated version of this post as soon as we have them available.) This type of state common law climate litigation has been a long time coming, and these cases may well represent the first of a slew of similar cases nationwide. Here, I summarize several interesting aspects of the complaints, and offer some first blush thoughts on both the legal hurdles they might face and the potential outcomes they might produce.


The Lawsuits (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27)

Each of the complaints presents the same simple, compelling storyline: These fossil fuel companies knew. They knew that climate change was happening, that fossil fuel production and use was causing it, and that continued fossil fuel production and use would only make it worse. They knew this, but they hid it. And then they lied about it, and paid other people to lie about it for them. All the while they profited from it, and plotted to profit more. Ultimately, their actions caused sea levels to rise, and thereby caused harm, are continuing to cause harm, and are contributing to future harm to the plaintiff governments and their residents. Accordingly, the complaints claim that the defendant companies should be held liable and forced to pay, both for the costs the local governments are incurring to adapt to sea level rise and for the companies’ own willful, deceptive, and malicious behavior.

The named defendants include Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Citgo, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Peabody Energy, Total, Eni, Arch Coal, Rio Tinto, Statoil, Anadarko, Occidental, Repsol, Marathon, Hess, Devon, Encana, Apache, and unspecified “Company Does.” According to the plaintiffs, these companies are responsible for about 20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that were emitted during the period from 1965 to 2015, an amount which the complaints argue is a “substantial portion” of the climate change problem. The “substantial portion” claim is legally significant.

To show that the defendants are liable, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they caused the alleged harms. Climate change, of course, is caused by many different actors; sea level rise and resulting impacts are attributable to climate change and, in some instances, other factors. Thus, it may be argued that the defendants are not the only parties who can or should bear responsibility, or blame. However, as a matter of law, causation can be shown by proving that the defendants are a “substantial factor,” or that they contributed significantly to the harm. Relying on a cumulative carbon analysis, plaintiffs make a strong case that that standard is met.

The timeframe plaintiffs employ for the cumulative carbon analysis is an important one, for both its legal and narrative impact. In rough terms, it corresponds with what Will Steffen calls the “Great Acceleration,” the years since the 1960s in which approximately 75% of all historic industrial emissions have occurred, and in which the rate of fossil fuel production and consumption has significantly increased. The specific years also mark notable bookends in climate change history. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Scientific Advisory Committee Panel on Environmental Pollution reported that unabated CO2 emissions would, by 2000, alter the climate, and Johnson charged Congress to address the problem. In 2015 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just issued its Fifth Assessment Report, relaying the state of the art in climate science and understanding, and the global community signed the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The plaintiffs recite an increasingly well-documented, and familiar, timeline regarding what the fossil fuel companies knew and understood about climate change, and what they said and did (or did not do) about it. Several aspects of the story jumped out to me:

In 1980, Imperial Oil (a Canadian company in which Exxon owns a super-majority stake), reported to Exxon and Esso that power plant carbon capture technology was technologically feasible, but that it would “double the cost of power generation.” (Carbon capture is not yet deployed at scale in the power sector.)
Some fossil fuel exploration and production companies started climate proofing their own infrastructure around 20 years ago. They started investing in Arctic development capacity even further back, likely in anticipation of new exploration and production opportunities in a melting region.

In 1988, industry fundamentally shifted its stance towards climate change, turning away from independent research and outward statements favoring action, and turning towards the strategies and tactics documented in Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt, further revealed through reporting by the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University, and the ongoing subject of investigations by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others. That year, according to the complaint, the political will to take on the climate change challenge was becoming increasingly evident. The insinuation one draws is that once industry sensed the real possibility of a commitment to international cooperation and domestic regulation it began to mount its overt and covert defenses.

Current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was an active participant in fossil fuel companies’ coordinated effort to resist climate change regulations.

According to the plaintiffs, the consequence of the cumulative emissions put into the market by defendants, and of the disinformation campaign waged by certain industry leaders and the think tanks, communications shops, and lobbying operations they funded and hired, are rising sea levels that have already impacted local governments and residents, and that will continue to do so, in ever more extreme ways, in the years to come. These impacts include inundation of public beaches and coastal property, and more frequent and extreme flooding and storm surge, resulting in some permanent property losses and requiring expenditure of funds for impact assessment, as well as adaptation and emergency response planning and implementation.

And so they have sued, seeking damages, both compensatory and punitive, under a range of common law theories that place blame on and assign responsibility to these defendants   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) because of their knowledge, their resistance to mitigation, and their various roles in fossil fuel exploration, production, marketing, and consumption.

The Legal Obstacles 

Scholars and practitioners have theorized this type of climate action for years. For example, in 2011, my colleague Michael Gerrard wrote this piece, surveying a host of issues such cases will inevitably encounter, and Doug Kysar of Yale early on wrote this piece on how climate change may itself influence the future shape of tort law. Tracy Hester at the University of Houston has written this analysis of the different elements of state common law climate cases. Thinking on this goes further back, to the state common law public nuisance claims included – but never decided – in Connecticut v. American Electric Power.

Importantly, these cases have been filed at a particular moment in time, when scientific consensus on and understanding of climate change is at an all-time high but the federal government’s commitment to addressing the problem is at an all-time low. In fact, it’s in negative territory, with a president, an EPA administrator and an Interior secretary determined to ramp up fossil fuel production and consumption while doing nothing to mitigate emissions or adapt to impacts. And the fossil fuel industry’s active role in fighting against climate action continues to come to light, making comparisons to the tobacco litigation (like this one) increasingly accurate.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280714152422.png&hash=d3a9c8a33ce2d0c503aef35f0bca11b77d792eaa)


Without detracting from the many other legal issues likely to arise in the lawsuits, here are three that come immediately to mind.

Standing: The first issue that tends to come up in thinking about climate change litigation is standing. Standing is a threshold issue in any challenge to government action, or inaction, in the climate change arena. But these are common law tort claims. The elements of standing – injury, causation, redressability – constitute the merits of the case. Were plaintiffs harmed in a tortious manner? Did defendants cause that harm? Are plaintiffs entitled to damages? That’s the whole case, not a preliminary matter to determine jurisdiction. Accordingly, it seems that a standing challenge should not, in theory, succeed; at least, not before the merits of the case are determined. Nonetheless, standing was an issue in Connecticut v. AEP, where the Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether a federal common law public nuisance claim could proceed. In her opinion finding the federal nuisance claim displaced by the federal Clean Air Act, Justice Ginsburg noted that “[f]our members of the Court would hold that at least some plaintiffs have Article III standing.” Justice Sotomayor did not participate in that decision, meaning that Justice Kennedy voted to uphold his own opinion from Massachusetts v. EPA, which found states had standing to sue due to injuries they suffered from climate change. Thus, at the moment, there are likely at least five votes for the broad proposition that states have standing to sue for climate change. The opinion in Mass. v. EPA, however, relied on the “special solicitude” owed states due to their quasi-sovereign status. Here, plaintiffs are local governments, which may or may not be given a similar weighting by Justice Kennedy and others.

Political Question: In Connecticut v. AEP, the federal district court originally found that there were no judicially manageable standards by which to adjudicate a public nuisance claim brought by states, cities, national environmental organizations, and three private land trusts against five power companies, and that the cases raised a political question necessarily left for the political branches. The Second Circuit reversed this judgment, finding that courts have long adjudicated complex environmental nuisance cases, and that the political question doctrine did not pose a bar. The Supreme Court’s view of the matter is a little obscure. Justice Ginsburg noted that “at least four judges” found that neither standing nor any other “threshold obstacle bars review.” The infamous footnote 6 in that opinion refers to the political question doctrine, but neither it nor the text offers an explanation of exactly how the justices voted on the matter. All of which leaves the political question issue unresolved.

The 9th Circuit, in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., another federal common law nuisance case, did not directly address the political question doctrine, relying instead on the displacement analysis from Connecticut v. AEP. In Comer v. Murphy Oil, a Fifth Circuit panel found that the political question doctrine did not bar state tort claims brought against several companies for their contributions to climate change. However, that decision was later vacated in a uniquely bizarre procedural sequence.

The facts of this case, however, are different. Plaintiffs have framed their case not about climate change policy in the abstract, and not only about a specific quantity of emissions contributing to climate change, but also about these private actors’ individual and collective conduct, which includes not only producing GHG emissions but interacting with the market and with regulators in a sustained disinformation campaign. Plaintiffs are not seeking to establish a specific policy in regards to GHG emissions, public lands management, or other matters of federal agency discretion. Rather, they are seeking damages for harms caused by market behavior they claim was, among other things, knowing, negligent, and intentionally misleading.

Preemption: In Connecticut v. AEP, the Supreme Court found that a public nuisance case brought in federal court under federal common law had been displaced by the Clean Air Act. Because the Court had previously held in Mass v. EPA that EPA was authorized to regulate GHGs by the federal legislation, there was no longer room for federal common law. However, the court did not reach the state common law claims also plead in that case. It remains an open question whether state claims such as those plead here are preempted by federal legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Mineral Leasing Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and other statutes setting federal GHG emissions and fossil fuel extraction, transportation, and consumption policy. In Comer, the original Fifth Circuit panel concluded that federal preemption was inapplicable to plaintiffs state common law claims; but, as noted, that decision was vacated and has no precedential value. Its reasoning, of course, nonetheless bears consideration.

One preemption case that defendants may seek to invoke is the Fourth Circuit decision in North Carolina v. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). There, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a common law nuisance action brought by the state of North Carolina against TVA. The action focused on emissions from TVA-operated power plants in Alabama and Tennessee, which were alleged to cause air pollution and associated health problems in North Carolina. Even if this were the case, however, TVA would not be liable for public nuisance according to the Fourth Circuit. In reaching this decision, the Fourth Circuit noted that “[c]ourts have traditionally been reluctant to enjoin as a public nuisance activities which have been considered and specifically authorized by the government,” such as under the Clean Air Act. The Fourth Circuit reasoned that “TVA’s plants cannot logically be public nuisances where TVA is in compliance” with the Clean Air Act, and its plants have been permitted by the states in which they operate. Defendants will likely cite to this case to argue that federally permitted activities cannot be the subject of nuisance suits.

Assuming arguendo that North Carolina v. TVA was rightly decided (and there are arguments to be made that it was not  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F128fs318181.gif&hash=eff6d5f3831782966c2ff2081f07bf7fc5b22a6b)), there is at least one key distinction between it and these newly filed cases – the facilities in that case were specifically permitted to pollute under the standards set through the Clean Air Act, and the permits in question authorized the pollution in question. Here, by contrast, none of the federal programs through which defendants have operated, and none of the foreign governments that have permitted them to operate in other jurisdictions, have thoroughly considered, far less sought to regulate, the downstream GHG emissions associated with their activities. What’s more, given the Trump Administration’s outright resistance to using the federal statutes to regulate GHGs at any stage there can be no conflict between state law and federal law, and state law cannot be said to be an obstacle to achieving any particular federal goals. Defendants might argue that state common law liability would conflict with the Trump Administration’s decision to not protect public health and welfare, or to pursue “energy dominance,” or some other such thing, but we have to hope that that line of reasoning will not find sympathetic audiences in court.

Possible Outcomes

As with the case of Juliana v. United States, currently winding its way towards a trial date next year, these cases face significant legal hurdles. Success on the merits is far from assured. But it could happen. The facts are there, making the case for causation and culpability, and the law can accommodate these claims. What’s more, if other cases in other jurisdictions are brought, we may ultimately see a large-scale settlement similar to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, or perhaps establishment of a fund through federal legislation, along the lines of the Superfund program established under CERCLA.

However, and again as with Juliana, there are also potential outcomes short of success on the merits that could still advance the ball on climate change. For one thing, these cases represent a new pressure point on the fossil fuel industry, and a new spotlight on that industry’s engagement with climate law and policy. They make the case that these companies are bad actors, who have lied for years to continue to generate profits at the expense of the local governments and individual citizens and residents who bear the costs of climate impacts. The drama of the courtroom setting could mobilize the public’s interest and give life to local activism on these issues, much as Juliana has captured the youth climate movement and given it voice. Moreover, the prospect of judicial judgment affirming plaintiffs’ case might nudge these companies to accelerate their own transition away from past practices, towards new approaches to providing energy to consumers.

http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2017/07/18/local-governments-in-california-file-common-law-claims-against-largest-fossil-fuel-companies/

Agelbert NOTE: This WILL go all the way to the supremely Supine Supreme Court BECAUSE Big Oil OWNS them.

BUT, Big Oil will LOSE the war, even as they "win" this battle with the help of their fascist judge pals.

WHY? Because every day that Big Oil doesn't bite the bullet and accept their responsibility for all this pollution is another day that Catastrophic  Climate Change paints them as a bad actor. They can't PR their way around the floods, droughts, storms, heat waves, melting ice, etc., though that is the way they have ALWAYS danced around this, even while they planned, ALL ALONG, to pass the buck of the Catastrophic climate change costs to we-the-people, as they did in (on a much smaller scale, but it is still horrendous Stare decisis - Case Law precedent - that favors the polluters - See: Damages for "Important" corporations like Exxon "cannot be punitive" because that would "hurt" the economy...(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)) the Exxon Valdez damages reduction by the Supreme Court to ONE TENTH the original amount that was ruled.

SNIPPET:

Quote

"Crime pays, and environmental crime pays really well," said William Rodgers, a professor of law at the University of Washington and an expert on the Exxon Valdez case. "I am sure they [Exxon] are sitting down and having a toast of the town.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2Fcheers-cheers-champagne-wine-smiley-emoticon-000183-large.gif&hash=bdb20f3940f60a3fa02af770c14551018df8e302)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)
The other lesson they have taught is scorched-earth litigation pays. Just keep litigating, making up issues."

Full article:
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The Exxon Valdez PITTANCE of a settlement (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg2122/#msg2122)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 25, 2017, 02:53:51 pm
Congress’ biggest climate denier visited the Arctic.

(https://images.newrepublic.com/b81627b96b30395de7eeabe15fc15db0481fb4b0.jpeg?w=1000&q=65&dpi=1.25&fm=pjpg&h=667)
Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas

What happened next will disappoint you.

Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News reported that Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas—perhaps the most relentless critic of mainstream climate science on Capitol Hill, aside from Senator Jim Inhofe—went to the Arctic to meet with climate scientists. He didn’t publicize the trip on social media or his website, and scientists who met with him “were instructed not to talk about” what happened. Smith, who was joined by some of his colleagues on the House Science Committee, also cancelled an interview about the trip at the last minute.

The secrecy led some to express hope that Smith would change his tune on climate science. Alas, Smith penned a column in the Daily Signal on Monday titled:

 “Don’t Believe the Hysteria Over Carbon Dioxide”:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

Quote
The benefits   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) of a changing climate are often ignored and under-researched. Our climate is too complex and the consequences of misguided policies too harsh to discount the positive effects of carbon enrichment. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

Quote
A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would aid photosynthesis, which in turn contributes to increased plant growth. This correlates to a greater volume of food production and better quality food. Studies indicate that crops would utilize water more efficiently, requiring less water. And colder areas along the farm belt will experience longer growing seasons.
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Smith  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) is still relying on tired, well-debunked tropes. The “CO2 is plant food” argument is overly simplistic; as the website Skeptical Science notes, plants don’t live on CO2 alone—they need water. And contrary to Smith’s claims, plants absorbing more CO2 need extra water, “both to maintain their larger growth as well as to compensate for greater moisture evaporation as the heat increases.” What’s more, climate change will increase deserts and other dry lands—not great for crop production or plants that need more water. Indeed, the vast majority of studies show climate change is a threat to global food security, not the other way around.

This is to say nothing of the fact that the excess carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, which is caused by humans, is the main reason for global warming. But such arguments won’t change Smith’s mind. Honestly, if a week-long trip to the Arctic doesn’t do it, nothing will.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/144011/congress-biggest-climate-denier-visited-arctic-happened-next-will-disappoint-you

Agelbert NOTE: I am certain that the ONLY reason this fossil fuel fascist front man Lamar Smith visited the arctic is to figure out how soon Big Oil can count on it being ice free for more profit over planet piggery. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) These Dirty Energy Worshiping Dinosaurs will only learn when it is too late (see below).

Tomorrow is Yesterday...
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 31, 2017, 08:38:09 pm
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Billionaires stopping climate change action have a hold on Trump, GOP

BY MARK FEINBERG, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/30/17 09:20 AM EDT

SNIPPET:

These are the three conservative billionaire-class power centers we must confront: the Koch brothers, the Mercers, and the Murdoch family. How to oppose them, and with what strategy? First, apply pressure where they are vulnerable: their businesses. We should start to use boycott and protest pressure against the billionaires’ companies, such as Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, and on the banks and other business partners of their companies.

Detail packed article on the ongoing profit over people and planet skullduggery:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/348480-the-billionaires-funding-climate-change-denial-have

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 31, 2017, 08:49:10 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010617195330.jpeg&hash=86a17332dc08dce2277a49b169d640d7f9e9c150)

Trump team politicizes superstorm Harvey by attacking scientists for doing their job

By rejecting science, EPA and Trump ensure we'll see many more Harveys and be unprepared for all of them.


JOE ROMM AUG 30, 2017, 4:55 PM

SNIPPET:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday rejected climate scientists’ efforts to explain that global warming worsened Harvey’s impacts, calling the explanations “attempts to politicize” the historic flooding in Texas.

The EPA’s cynical statement is not only wrong, it indicates that the Trump administration will fail a critical test for this natural disaster — figuring out how to prevent future such catastrophes.

Full article:

https://thinkprogress.org/by-politicizing-harvey-trump-administration-fails-critical-test-bed81da2edb8/

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 31, 2017, 09:02:26 pm
An Inconvenient Crowd Size: Climate Change Denial From Trump Administration

August 29, 2017

https://youtu.be/20NlgQNWnqk

Hurricane Harvey Storm totals 8/27/17
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Hurricane Harvey Storm totals 8/28/17
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 08, 2017, 06:59:53 pm
 (https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia_en/I/m/Center_for_Biological_Diversity_logo.jpg)

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Harvey: Refineries Spewed 1 Million Lbs. of Seven Air Toxics (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Amid Harvey's devastation the Center for Biological Diversity analyzed industry data. We found that south Texas refineries and petrochemical plants released nearly 1 million pounds of seven dangerous air pollutants through flaring and spills during storm flooding.

A staggering 951,000 pounds of pollutants known to seriously harm people — including by causing cancer — were emitted by Aug. 31 from oil and gas facilities. The pollutants are benzene, 1,3-butadiene, hexane, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, toluene and xylene.

"Oil-industry facilities spewed tons of truly dangerous chemicals into defenseless communities, despite ample warnings about hurricane risk," said Shaye Wolf, the Center scientist who compiled the analysis. "The petroleum industry seems unwilling to take responsibility for operating safely, even as climate change makes storms like Harvey more destructive."

Full article:
http://www.salon.com/2017/09/07/bigger-stronger-storms-will-mean-more-post-hurricane-pollution-does-trump-even-care/

Agelbert NOTE: Please remember that there is NO ZONING in Houston. So when you look at the following pictures, do not be lulled into thinking that the waters and the air and the ground in those fancy neighborhoods is not being subject to toxic chemicals after the flood, even if the polltion went mostly to the poor and middle class before.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080917163653.png&hash=3db732db4af6c8d18f134a8792cd6991e58e4fce)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080917163749.png&hash=e5d273a0a2f13b61e45adee796e1c8373c3936a7)

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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080917164332.png&hash=996b2f3a31716daa0e330624fea72ff1b88ea26b)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080917164432.png&hash=d487c734e775e7822a00e6bbc73c5c1698c69466)

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Quote
"We've seen the future and it looks a lot like Houston."  Rhea Suh President, NRDC

The irony for the fossil fuel and chemical industry polluters (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) that set up this toxic profit over people and planet "business friendly" MESS in Houston is that after this storm, all those privileged zip codes (that had a much higher life expentancy than the poorer neighborhoods near the refineries and chemical plants) will NOW be visited with silent, but deadly, attacks on the immune system of the people living there.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F09%2FDamage-7.jpeg&hash=0e7eb3775167af6e608fb9f0afe72a07125d40fa)


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[/center]


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Agelbert NOTE: Check out where three barges like the ones above ended up in the video below:  :o

Below is a video of Thursday’s flyover of the port of Corpus Christi area.

https://youtu.be/IbPjDWoWPZQ

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The Paragon Offshore drillship (the former Noble Phoenix  ::)) which at the entrance to the ship channel in Port Aransas, leading to Corpus Christi, is still aground as of Friday.The Coast Guard assessed damage and offered search and rescue assistance during an overflight from Port Aransas to Port O’Connor, Texas, Aug. 26, 2017.. U.S. Coast Guard Photo

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The above picture appears to show Southwest Shipyard’s facility on Brady Island, located on the Buffalo Bayou which flows into the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay.

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Agelbert NOTE: Yes, I know the Fossil Fuel Industry crooks and liars will try to pass this pollution buck onto we-the-people, as they have ALWAYS done. The following quote explains their mental condition:

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/06/ab/a5/06aba53f54b873b730b842f3fc97aa9c--nuest-jr-wise-words.jpg)

Nature has a message for all the polluters (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) in general and the Fossil Fuel Industry (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) in particular (see below):

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(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/snap-2013-11-06-at-14-31-28.png)


The Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 08, 2017, 10:49:11 pm
We Have To Call Out
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2mo5pow.gif&hash=995f9f6c08dcd54f18425f2bfbe138901cf052b1) Climate Deniers (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) or we'll have more Climate Refugees!

Sep. 7, 2017 3:00 pm

https://youtu.be/NYdQEA9lw5U

Thom rants against the companies profiting off climate change and the media and politicians letting them get away with, we have Climate refugees all over the world and there is going to be more of them unless we do something now! Get out there, get active, Tag you're it! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 12, 2017, 07:38:29 pm
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(https://www.afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/u1752/Truthout%20logo.jpg)

As Hurricanes Intensify,
So Does Resistance to (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2mo5pow.gif&hash=995f9f6c08dcd54f18425f2bfbe138901cf052b1) Big Oil  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) in the Gulf

Sunday, September 10, 2017

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

SNIPPET:

Resistance in Climate Ground Zero

As Kelley and his family began putting their lives back together in Port Arthur, activist and L'eau Est La Vie organizer Cherri Foytlin was volunteering at an evacuation center an hour's drive east in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where people were arriving with only "the clothes on their back."

Foytlin said one of the big concerns among people showing up from Port Arthur was whether cancerous chemicals like benzene were floating in the floodwaters they waded through to get to and from their homes. The health effects of chemicals leaching from damaged refineries and flaring into the air may not become apparent until years down the road.

"Most of those refineries, if not all of them, went underwater, and there were a lot of concerns about what was actually in the water, and we don't know because it's proprietary information," Foytlin told Truthout on Wednesday.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41891-as-hurricanes-intensify-so-does-resistance-to-big-oil-in-the-gulf



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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 14, 2017, 02:27:30 pm
 (https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia_en/I/m/Center_for_Biological_Diversity_logo.jpg)

Trump OKs Coal Mining in Roadless Colorado Forest
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Thompson Divide, Colo.

Trump's Forest Service has given an initial OK for Arch Coal to expand mining leases into 1,700 acres of roadless wildlands in Colorado's Gunnison National Forest.

The company wants to mine 17 million tons of coal in this pristine forest — home to black bears, elk, beavers and lynx. The coal would generate at least 49 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution.

"The Trump administration is doubling down on coal and sacrificing our climate and Colorado's spectacular high-country forest," said the Center's Michael Saul.

Read More:

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/coal-09-07-2017.php

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 21, 2017, 06:03:14 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Trump, as he has done from the  beginning (see graphic below), continues to prove he is a Fossil Fuel Industry profit over people and planet TOOL.(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030817202100.gif&hash=945ff8755d52c0782cfbf4768dea2118b5acb235)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170117173547.png&hash=4ae972ee500b6529adec068835b6dbd146376bc5)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200317134631.png&hash=3ec83ab2cb9a9acaf485fff7312df6381c25c2fd)

Trump’s NASA nominee (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) denies climate change on Earth, says NASA should study climate change on Mars instead
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817122018.gif&hash=74d86c1f35e2f61ea38c9bfa392f84a92631b96e)

LAST UPDATED ON SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2017 AT 11:22 AM BY MIHAI ANDREI

Oh God, please make it stop. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2FIncredible-Hulk-animated-animation-male-smiley-emoticon-000342-large.gif&hash=db736c8c06568f1aa878171ad53d1f0301cfdff2)


SNIPPET:

Trump’s “scientific” nominees are getting more and more absurd. Even as his NASA nominee denies climate change on Earth, he wants to study it on Mars.

Jim Bridenstine  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fwww_MyEmoticons_com__burp.gif&hash=8ff3ef6c016d8baf5f61ed5e8db58f069b64da00), the nominee for NASA leadership, is your run-of-the-mill Trump Republican: an anti-science climate change denier with a long history of false claims and manipulation.

He also has no formal scientific or engineering education which, naturally, makes him unfit to lead an organization like NASA.

He is also a Congressman and were he confirmed, he would be the first member of Congress to lead NASA. But as we’ve already seen time and time again, none of this matters. Instead of qualified professionals, instead of someone who actually knows what science and space exploration mean, we get a political ally.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgrist.files.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F11%2Faaa-spill-popcorn-mean-girls.gif%3Fw%3D350%26amp%3Bh%3D219&hash=99f72e20a39f0c4fbd255f2f7d8237849f03f83e)

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Bring your barf bag for full article:

http://www.zmescience.com/science/nasa-nominee-climate-change-21092017/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 28, 2017, 08:02:24 pm
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f0/92/9b/f0929b63ac30ab2620d94a5d8921d0f5--bernie-sanders-puppet.jpg)
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Bernie Sanders & Robert Reich discuss how we defeat Republicans' horrid 'health care' proposal

https://youtu.be/fPr118V982g

Sitervain

Published on Sep 23, 2017
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 30, 2017, 03:27:21 pm
Fossil Fuel Industry  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) Has Cost USA $240 Billion A Year Over Last Decade Via Air Pollution & Extreme Weather, Study Finds
September 30th, 2017 by James Ayre

SNIPPET:

The fossil fuel industry has cost the US around $240 billion a year over the last decade through the effects of extreme weather and air pollution, according to a new study from the non-profit Universal Ecological Fund. That’s $240 billion per year.

That figure represents an average, of course, with year-by-year variations being present depending upon circumstances. This year, for instance, is already approaching the $300 billion mark (by estimation), owing to widespread and damaging wildfires and the fact that multiple powerful hurricanes have struck the US mainland.

“The evidence is undeniable: the more fossil fuels we burn, the faster the climate continues to change,” researchers wrote in the new study.

While extreme weather events are what grabs the headlines, the new study makes it clear that the effects of air pollution on human/worker health are far more damaging. Of the $240 billion a year figure quoted above, an average of $188 billion relates to the effects of air pollution, and “just” $52 billion relates to extreme weather events.

Full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/fossil-fuel-industry-cost-usa-240-billion-year-last-decade-via-extreme-weather-air-pollution-study-finds/

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 26, 2017, 06:18:04 pm
(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/015c2e1a3250a81ec5409760e4636175a6f565f23a75028afb5f451719fdccb3.jpg)

The Core (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) Problem With US Policies

October 26th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

Originally published on Planetsave.

Hello, my name is Zach Shahan, and I have a problem. I’m a political nut.

More seriously, I’ll admit that I’m strongly drawn to politics, follow policy & politics closely (some might say obsessively), and have sometimes struggled with how much time and emotion I invest into all of that.

If I step back a bit and reflect on that passion and involvement, what often drives me in this matter is a desire for fair, humane, compassionate systems and policies. There are other ideals people bring with them into the political arena. Some want the most hyper-efficient economic and technological progress possible, for example. Either way, though, if you look at the US political system and economy objectively, I think it’s absolutely clear that we have a problem. Yes, the US has a problem. Shocked?

This is not even about Donald Trump, but Donald has drunk so heavily from the Fox News fountain and is so allergic to details and research* that he’s essentially the perfect tool to demonstrate the problem — especially since he’s been elevated to the most powerful stage in the country, providing a pretty dire lab demonstration of what happens when nonsensical Republican talking points get put into action. (*Note: I actually think Donald doesn’t understand the scientific method.)

If you talk to someone from the other side of the aisle about political issues and they’re actually able to converse with you without splattering spittle in your face while yelling that you worship the devil, the discussion often turns into vague statements about “values” and “business” and “equality” and “the free market” and “conservatism.”

But how much do people actually understand about the details of what they’re discussing? Even at this “high level” of discussion, I think there’s basically a fundamental misunderstanding of reality across much of the Republican leadership (the ones who are actually in politics because of ideals, of course — never mind the ones who are just there for power and money). These party leaders often think that certain policy theories/approaches are absolutely good and others are absolutely bad. They don’t typically acknowledge that there is variation, nuance, and relativity involved. They don’t acknowledge — and maybe don’t understand — that salt is good but not if you consume too much of it.

Too Much Salt = Disaster

A top-down, communist political system is not a good end goal, but neither is a libertarian anarchy void of any government regulation or oversight. Remember, a democratic government is of the people and by the people — in ideal form. Sure, there’s some corruption at play in reality (I’ll get to that in a moment), but the basic point is that it’s sometimes helpful if society as a whole (aka government) keeps an eye on the rules of the game and makes sure no specific companies, individuals, or industries are unfairly tilting the playing field or stabbing everyone in the eye so that they can perform better in the marketplace.

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/10/deregulation-cartoon-0.jpg)

Democrats routinely note the importance of a free market, competitive enterprise, and efficient regulation. I don’t recall ever hearing a Democrat say that we should move to a non-free market system. On the other hand, significant arms of the Republican Party want to abolish regulations and the government’s role in managing broad societal challenges and externalities. There are places where it’s useful to pool our resources through an official process, but a certain portion of the Republican Party is unwilling to acknowledge this and seem to assume that federal government is inherently and wholly evil and bad. Pooling our resources in an official fashion in order to ensure a basic quality of life across the population is somehow a horrible thing to do.

To emphasize: there isn’t a significant arm of the Democratic Party that wants to put everything in the federal government’s control. Yes, they want to put a few basic human or American rights under the guidance and fair rulebook of the federal government — access to adequate health care (similar to what every other developed nation has for its citizens), access to satisfactory education, and access to energy, for example. The aim isn’t to turn these sectors into full government, top-down markets — it’s to just make sure some basics are covered and no American will get left without healthcare, with an inadequate education, and without energy simply because they’re poor or going through difficult times.

Democrats don’t want a fully powerful federal government — not even close. But Republicans apparently want a fully incapable, neutered federal government (aside from a completely bloated military that apparently has to be prepared to fight the entire world).

This stark difference in where the party ideologies end captures the core point of this article: The “middle point” is abnormally far to the right in the US, so far to the right that our political system is out of balance.

The core problem with the Republican Party is it doesn’t understand (or won’t admit) that there are aspects of society that need strong federal government involvement and regulation in order to function well.

∴  Our air should be clean enough that kids aren’t collecting cancer from the overwhelming pollution.

∴  Our health care system should provide people in need with life-saving medical care without leaving them a $500,000 medical bill.

∴  Our climate should be protected … if we want to leave our future generations a livable world.

∴  Wall Street gamblers and mega corporations need oversight to ensure they don’t crash our economy and leave hundreds of millions of people struggling.

∴  Pharmaceutical companies need to be regulated to ensure they aren’t turning the country into population of drug addicts and then draining their bank accounts while depleting their physical and mental capacities.


The problem that far too many Americans don’t understand is that regulation is needed to put a safe limit on industries that are polluting our air, polluting our water, selling us drugs of “medical” varieties, and gambling with our economy.

     
(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/10/deregulation-cartoon-1.jpg)

 
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The problem in the US is very specifically not over-regulation, but under-regulation. Under-regulation is what harms our health — the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Under-regulation is what led to our last gigantic economic recession (under-regulation that went all the way back to the Ronald Reagan era and deceivingly hit us decades later). Under-regulation is why the United States is facing public health epidemics that other countries aren’t facing.

We need better regulation of industries that are naturally inclined to abuse the American public. We do not less regulation.

Furthermore, regulation often creates jobs — because it forces innovation. The political assumption on both sides of the aisle is often that regulations somehow cost us jobs, but research has found that forcing companies to innovate, do things in safer ways, and do things in better ways often results in more jobs. It makes complete sense, but we have been so brainwashed with a certain party’s anti-regulation talking points that we typically don’t realize this.

Unfortunately, as I noted above, Donald Trump is more or less an angry old grandpa who hasn’t just watched far too much Fox News, but also has Sean Hannity’s phone number! He has been so heavily fed the “regulation is killing you” nonsense that he genuinely thinks the best thing he can do is destroy as many regulations and as many regulatory agencies as possible. (Remember, this is a man who isn’t convinced asbestos is dangerous. …)

As such, Trump has appointed the worst possible people to head several US agencies, often people who simply supported him or did him favors. Talk about crony capitalism! He has put people in the highest positions of government power who fully work to boost specific corporate profits rather than protect human health, the American economy, and American jobs. These people are indeed crushing regulations that were designed to protect Republicans and Democrats alike. They are engaged in departmental suicide, with the apparent assumption that entire departments set up to benefit American society shouldn’t exist. These are governmental departments that have been working hard (if at times slowly) to improve quality of life in the United States. Donald Trump and his corrupted corporate friends, at the incessant request of Fox News and its extremist ideology, have been fully engaged in crushing these departments. The results will be devastating for millions of Americans — no, hundreds of millions of Americans.

It’s a tragedy of the first order.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-041115022304.png&hash=cd8cb8e28ab8f7fc78c1ea00d30a661bd937aed5)

https://youtu.be/Sa1SVq2X3ow

Follow The Money

It also doesn’t help that certain industries fund the Republican Party and basically buy the policy approach they want. Pollution industries — oil & gas, coal, and others — heavily fund the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. This is a departure from several industries where the largest companies put significant resources into both parties. Without morals or by simply convincing themselves of a convenient non-truth, Republicans in power return the favor by consistently voting to allow pollution, to let companies pump out carcinogens, to facilitate the premature deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands of Americans — not tens of Americans, not hundreds of Americans, not thousands of Americans, but hundreds of thousands of Americans.

 
(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2016/08/Coal-political-donations.png)

These Republicans tie their decisions to some kind of “pure” conservative ideology — “less regulation is always good.” They don’t pay attention to the details, to the nuance. They apparently assume that even if people prematurely die from the corporate permission to do anything they want, some kind of higher (religious?) preference for no societal/governmental oversight is going to magically end up creating a net benefit. Those lost lives were just sacrifices for a better society.

It’s nonsense, of course. Republican voters understand that. They understand that pollution should be prevented and Wall Street billionaires shouldn’t be able to play risky games with our economy. But they are sold on these vague promises of “less regulation” and “more jobs,” so they vote Republican not fully realizing what they are getting into.

If a company or industry can choose an option that doesn’t kill or harm humans instead of an old, polluting, harmful option, the company or industry should be forced to choose that more human option. It should not be allowed to funnel a bit more cash into billionaire bank accounts by stripping less rich humans of their lives.

But as it stands right now, simple obsession with “free markets” and “less regulation” means that one party is trying to deregulate an already under-regulated country. It is trying to heal a wound by making a deeper cut. it is trying to cure a sickness by throwing you out into the cold rain with no clothes on. It is insane.

How could the story be changed? Well …

more involvement in politics from people who know better, and

better candidates running on a platform that is focused on helping average Americans, not poisoning them.

Do your part. A government will only be as good as the people involved in running it.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/26/core-problem-us-policies/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 28, 2017, 02:20:18 pm
(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c9604f5a5b095bd9b9cef8602a0211319abf5b194eb41e5b7a39136f1c19bc5.jpg)

Fake News B.S. — A Lesson In Communications

October 27th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017143841.jpeg&hash=21f142befe4ed82f10ef0bdba11c22bbd3051289)Full article with some VERY informative and educational videos (for those who still use reason and logic):

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/27/fake-news-b-s-lesson-communications/

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b1/07/dc/b107dcbaadea84c1c28a2e47049eb2ec.jpg)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 03, 2017, 01:53:51 pm
Quote
“The tax overhaul proposed in the U.S. House is a better bet for oil and gas companies than solar developers or electric car buyers, keeping with President Donald Trump’s decidedly fossil-fuel friendly views.

Long-Awaited US Tax Reform Signals Continued Undermining Of Renewables

November 3rd, 2017 by Joshua S Hill

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/03/long-awaited-us-tax-reform-signals-continued-undermining-renewables

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 05, 2017, 10:04:23 pm
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Trump administration to double down on carbon fuels at UN Conference

(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)

Trump team (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) to preach virtues of fossil fuels and nuclear power at Bonn climate change conference

Peabody Energy, NuScale Power and LNG exporter Tellurian among US companies (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) promoting national energy interests in Germany
 
The Independent (U.K.), Nov. 3, 2017
 
The Trump administration will promote coal, natural gas and nuclear energy as an answer to climate change at a presentation during a UN global warming conference this month, the White House has confirmed.

The programme is billed as a discussion of how US energy resources, particularly fossil fuels, can help poor countries meet electricity needs and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Titled “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation,” it will feature speakers from Peabody Energy, a coal company; NuScale Power, a nuclear engineering firm; and Tellurian, a liquefied natural gas exporter.

“As the world seeks to reduce emissions while promoting economic prosperity, fossil fuels will continue to play a central role in the energy mix,” a preview of the 13 November presentation says.

The programme is likely to provoke strong reactions at the UN conference gathering in Bonn, Germany, beginning on Monday for two weeks of negotiations on ways to keep rising global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels. Most climate experts contend the world must shift from fossil fuels to cleaner alternatives to meet emissions targets. Nuclear power, which does not produce earth-warming emissions, is viewed with scepticism by many environmental activists, who say its dangers outweigh its benefits.

No major funding announcements are expected during the event. Delegates from 195 countries will work on a “rule book” for implementation of the Paris agreement.

Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Paris agreement, calling it “a deal that punishes the United States.” But under the rules of the deal, the United States cannot withdraw until 2020. Until then, the administration has said, it will continue to work toward bringing the Paris agreement into force. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16)

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Barry K. Worthington, executive director of the US Energy Association, said he hoped to deliver a dose of reality about the future of fossil fuels at a forum. He argued that “no credible projection” shows fossil fuels meeting less than 40 percent of global energy demand by mid-century.

The administration’s emphasis on fossil fuels represents a sharp break from the Obama administration, which focused on renewable energy abroad.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat-Hawaii. “After forfeiting international leadership on climate, the Trump White House is compounding their error with a silly stunt. Fossil fuel companies are not clean energy companies, and no amount of spin will change that.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/donald-trump-fossil-fuels-nuclear-power-bonn-climate-change-conference-coal-natural-gas-a8035121.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 01, 2017, 01:40:39 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)

Quote
The 44 Koch Cronies (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) Staffing 45’s (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270117175421.png&hash=cf39e823dd9156833bfa885808a876bf518bd0d6) Administration


 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncc-1776.org%2Ftle-pics%2FFlag_of_the_United_States.png&hash=dde5dffb8a9710e499636687519ddca19367732a)

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e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It’s no secret that despite Trump’s campaign bluster about being immune to influence by the Koch Brothers (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c), they have effectively become the Administration of 45th President of the United States.

From VP Pence’s well-documented Koch connections to the appointees now serving obscure positions within agencies, it’s hard to get a sense of just how effective the Koch network has been at infiltrating the administration.

Fortunately, Public Citizen gives us a good idea with its new report, aptly titled The Koch Government, which identifies 44 Trump appointees with ties to the Kochs. In some cases, like Mick Mulvaney and Rick Perry, it’s politicians whose campaigns received Koch donations now serving in leadership positions. Current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, for example (who is also rumored to be the replacement for Tillerson at the Department of State) represented the Koch’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas and earned a reputation as the billionaire brother’s “favorite congressman.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)

Then there are the people who worked for the Koch Foundation before arriving in the administration. Some of the folks Public Citizen takes a look at were officially hired Koch lobbyists, while others acted as unofficial lobbyists employed by the vast web of nonprofits funded by the Kochs.

The web is wide and diverse: at the EPA, we’re talking about Pruitt, who’s worked in concert with the Kochs, Samantha Dravis, who was counsel for Koch’s Freedom Partners, Charles Munoz, who was a field organizer for the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4), and more.

Meanwhile, over at Interior, Koch ties manifest in the background of people like Freedom Partners’s Gary Lawkowski, the Charles Koch Institute’s Daniel Jorjani and Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Doug Domenech (and their employee, Kathleen Hartnett White, who is likely to soon be confirmed as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality). At DoE, it’s Koch-donation-receiving Rick Perry, Koch lobbyist Mark Menezes, and people employed by Koch-funded groups like Travis Fisher, Doug Matheny and Alex Fitzsimmons.   

And it’s not just the Pruitts and Perrys at EPA and DOE, where we would expect to find people to advance oily Koch interests. The Koch network has also installed operatives at the Department of Education to carry out the Kochs’ longtime agenda against public education under the guise of promoting charter schools.

Public Citizen’s report also includes a list of 16 major targets for the Trump administration, as detailed by the Koch’s Freedom Partners “Roadmap to Repeal” deregulatory agenda document released in January.

Of the 16 issues, the Kochs can count nine clear wins, including rolling back the Clean Power Plan and exiting Paris, which Pruitt’s started, rescinding the moratorium on federal coal leases, repealing the Stream Protection Rule, killing an overtime pay rule, and more.  There’s one likely win, 4 issues still unclear, and only 2 losses.

Half the Koch’s wishlist already checked off? And people say Trump hasn’t accomplished anything!

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-180914234909.png&hash=fc56316b310f0a7da1295846e1001ccd53f221ef)

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It REALLY WAS a good ride, not for you and me, but for TPTB. So expect them to do WHATEVER to prolong their RIDE, against all scientific evidence that EXPLOITATION WITHOUT REFLECTION OF FELLOW EARTHLINGS OF ALL SPECIES (not just humans) AND THE BIOSPHERE FOR PROFIT OVER PLANET is deleterious (i.e. SUICIDAL/abysmally STUPID) to the Homo SAP species.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070815234504.png&hash=985389b97dcdb7597d06de1ad53ff044c1fca800)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 01, 2017, 04:08:46 pm
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)

Quote
The 44 Koch Cronies (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fmocantina.gif&hash=d013c741bcf9a78776eec19c2c3aac449c35d75c) Staffing 45’s (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270117175421.png&hash=cf39e823dd9156833bfa885808a876bf518bd0d6) Administration


 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncc-1776.org%2Ftle-pics%2FFlag_of_the_United_States.png&hash=dde5dffb8a9710e499636687519ddca19367732a)

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e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It’s no secret that despite Trump’s campaign bluster about being immune to influence by the Koch Brothers (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c), they have effectively become the Administration of 45th President of the United States.

From VP Pence’s well-documented Koch connections to the appointees now serving obscure positions within agencies, it’s hard to get a sense of just how effective the Koch network has been at infiltrating the administration.

Fortunately, Public Citizen gives us a good idea with its new report, aptly titled The Koch Government, which identifies 44 Trump appointees with ties to the Kochs. In some cases, like Mick Mulvaney and Rick Perry, it’s politicians whose campaigns received Koch donations now serving in leadership positions. Current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, for example (who is also rumored to be the replacement for Tillerson at the Department of State) represented the Koch’s hometown of Wichita, Kansas and earned a reputation as the billionaire brother’s “favorite congressman.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)

Then there are the people who worked for the Koch Foundation before arriving in the administration. Some of the folks Public Citizen takes a look at were officially hired Koch lobbyists, while others acted as unofficial lobbyists employed by the vast web of nonprofits funded by the Kochs.

The web is wide and diverse: at the EPA, we’re talking about Pruitt, who’s worked in concert with the Kochs, Samantha Dravis, who was counsel for Koch’s Freedom Partners, Charles Munoz, who was a field organizer for the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4), and more.

Meanwhile, over at Interior, Koch ties manifest in the background of people like Freedom Partners’s Gary Lawkowski, the Charles Koch Institute’s Daniel Jorjani and Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Doug Domenech (and their employee, Kathleen Hartnett White, who is likely to soon be confirmed as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality). At DoE, it’s Koch-donation-receiving Rick Perry, Koch lobbyist Mark Menezes, and people employed by Koch-funded groups like Travis Fisher, Doug Matheny and Alex Fitzsimmons.   

And it’s not just the Pruitts and Perrys at EPA and DOE, where we would expect to find people to advance oily Koch interests. The Koch network has also installed operatives at the Department of Education to carry out the Kochs’ longtime agenda against public education under the guise of promoting charter schools.

Public Citizen’s report also includes a list of 16 major targets for the Trump administration, as detailed by the Koch’s Freedom Partners “Roadmap to Repeal” deregulatory agenda document released in January.

Of the 16 issues, the Kochs can count nine clear wins, including rolling back the Clean Power Plan and exiting Paris, which Pruitt’s started, rescinding the moratorium on federal coal leases, repealing the Stream Protection Rule, killing an overtime pay rule, and more.  There’s one likely win, 4 issues still unclear, and only 2 losses.

Half the Koch’s wishlist already checked off? And people say Trump hasn’t accomplished anything!

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-180914234909.png&hash=fc56316b310f0a7da1295846e1001ccd53f221ef)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200415173810.png&hash=1fb0b0ce108410936220e3ce43d93e5c617979f3)
It REALLY WAS a good ride, not for you and me, but for TPTB. So expect them to do WHATEVER to prolong their RIDE, against all scientific evidence that EXPLOITATION WITHOUT REFLECTION OF FELLOW EARTHLINGS OF ALL SPECIES (not just humans) AND THE BIOSPHERE FOR PROFIT OVER PLANET is deleterious (i.e. SUICIDAL/abysmally STUPID) to the Homo SAP species.

[/center]
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It obviously started when Pence was selected as running mate, because he was the Koch go-to guy in Washington for years when he was in congress. I think there is evidence that Trump then kissed the Koch ring and swore fealty sometime between the election and the inauguration.

The Koch brothers money has done as much or more damage in state elections as it has done in DC. That's what's behind the shift to the right in the general population.

It's a bought-and-paid-for coup d'etat, and now they are buying all the media outlets to silence the voices of opposition. Game, set , match. We are so fu ck ed.


I do not think the "shift to the right in the general population" is anything but a Koch bought-and-paid for media (false) perception. When honest polls have been done, the fact is that that the general population of the USA favors Socialism in government, not profit over people and planet Capitalism. Deliberately targeted voter disenfranchisement and undemocratic gerrymandering has more to do with getting Kochroachs "elected" to State and Federal government positions than anything else.

I know you do not believe that, but I agree with you that our country and our planet is in dire straits.

(https://previews.123rf.com/images/iqoncept/iqoncept1007/iqoncept100700021/7352606-The-planet-Earth-is-flushed-down-a-toilet-symbolizing-the-wasting-of-its-resources-Stock-Photo.jpg)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 01, 2017, 05:39:05 pm
(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2016/02/Koch-Brothers.jpeg)
The above two greedy bastards talk "liberty" while they connive, collude, bribe and lie 24/7 to steal ours.


Caca From Koch Brothers Creates Cacophony Of Cuckoo Commentary

November 30th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

SNIPPET 1:

Quote
Liberty, in the Byzantine world of the Koch brothers, means grabbing all the government subsidies you can, including favorable laws and regulations, while screaming bloody murder if anyone else gets any.

SNIPPET 2:

Quote
Those Koch fellows are big on wrapping themselves in the flag and screaming about freedom, but the freedom they crave is the ability to shovel even more money into their already overstuffed wallets regardless of the social, ethical, or environmental consequences. They are the prime movers behind the plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the Republican tax bill that will shower billions of dollars on America’s most wealthy citizens — especially themselves.

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/30/caca-koch-brothers-creates-cacophony-cuckoo-commentary/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 05, 2017, 04:38:36 pm
(https://lh6.ggpht.com/sw_iT7GZASdAYeiecsZEHJE-EgDhdK2rCWUzZOJS0OFiGpoi9qn8iMH2nuXHgWg2PA=h900)

https://youtu.be/c98MihpgcJ0

https://act.350.org/donate/naomiklein2017/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 14, 2017, 10:49:12 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141217224005.png&hash=11207215de9b59067f9c64c5b0afb16b7d99f7f1)
Members of the National Petroleum War Service Committee, pictured here in Standard Oil’s boardroom (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605)in 1918, helped create the American Petroleum Institute.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)National Archives and Records Administration


The United States of Petroleum  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400)

by Jie Jenny Zou

December 12, 2017

The Great War began in 1914 with cavalrymen on horseback and ended four years later with armored tanks and airplanes. It was, as one scholar put it, the “first war to run on oil.”

To ensure a steady flow of fuel, petroleum executives met regularly with federal officials in Standard Oil’s oak-paneled boardroom on Wall Street. The same industry broken up as an illegal monopoly in 1911 had become a quasi-arm of government.

As the Allies brokered peace in the spring of 1919, the American Petroleum Institute was born in a ballroom at New York’s Biltmore Hotel. Among its founding members were the same regulators entrusted to oversee the industry.

Over the course of a century, API has embedded itself in the U.S. government. Decades ago, the institute embarked on a campaign to sell Americans on a fossil-fuel future, despite having heard dire warnings of climate change as early as 1959. With more than 650 corporate members, the group now encompasses every sector of the oil and gas industry, from drilling to plastics manufacturing.

Big Oil’s influence has come at a steep cost to the public. From Kyoto to Paris, the institute has helped block or stall action on climate change, consistently putting profit ahead of health. API is now working to undermine bedrock environmental laws that promise Americans clean air and water — all while promoting deeper and riskier drilling in places long off limits.

Though the institute has for decades championed free-market economics, its success has been predicated on government buy-in at every level. Since the Wilson administration, API’s directors have enjoyed unfettered access to the White House and federal agencies, thwarting or slowing progress on everything from leaded gasoline to smog. With Donald Trump in the White House, the organization sees an unprecedented window of opportunity.

The story, in three chapters:(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/

(https://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/made/content/images/articles/Pfund-subsidies_618_275.jpg)

The Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 16, 2017, 07:10:49 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)[/center]

Goldman Says Big Oil Is Poised for Its Best Year in Decades  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

December 14, 2017 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET:

By Kelly Gilblom and Nejra Cehic (Bloomberg) — Big Oil’s slump is over and industry domination beckons, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

In 2018, companies from Royal Dutch Shell Plc to Exxon Mobil Corp. will find themselves with a surplus of cash to fund dividends, ruling the world of deep water mega-projects and even coming out ahead in tax negotiations with oil-reliant governments around the globe, according to Michele Della Vigna, Goldman’s head of energy-industry research.

The industry’s success in cutting costs, paired with a low oil price that keeps smaller competitors out of the biggest projects, has created an environment where only major players can compete, Vigna said. That should bolster earnings and return the industry giants to a position of dominance not seen in 20 years. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/goldman-says-big-oil-poised-best-year-decades/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210516165122.jpeg&hash=d773f8f1ecba3640f8e56b034781204d35319f2b)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040417131033.jpeg&hash=c3c9e3cced8af544267cb6a5b9ee696a653e31a7)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 16, 2017, 07:38:20 pm
EcoWatch

Toyota Urged to Reject Tainted 'Partnership' Claimed by Destructive EPA Chief

By Environmental Working Group

Dec. 13, 2017 01:32PM EST

SNIPPET:

Toyota's website states: "Let's face it: there's only one planet Earth. That's why we focus on environmentally sustainable solutions in everything we do and every vehicle we make." The company touts its Environmental Challenge 2050 goals of achieving zero or near-zero air pollution emissions from its vehicles, production and disposal processes, and facilities."

By contrast, in his first year at the helm of the EPA, Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) has reversed, or is seeking to reverse regulations to boost automobile fuel economy standards and other clean air initiatives, as well as rules on clean water, pesticides and toxic chemicals. He's advocated crippling cuts to the agency's budget, ignored career scientists and other experts in favor of political appointees from the industries they now regulate, and replaced independent scientific advisors with consultants whose work has been funded by big polluters.

Full article:

https://www.ecowatch.com/toyota-epa-ewg-2517194211.html

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241216151049.png&hash=78206393ea158485b779ed06d0fb0f84172b645d)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 19, 2017, 01:32:06 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191217132907.jpeg&hash=fd1f8e2397996e6662ae8aa82ac19f78781d580f)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 05, 2018, 08:04:52 pm
Defend the Arctic from Trump’s Attack on Our Oceans
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)

(https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5a4e8a411d00003e005c2482.jpg?ops=scalefit_820_noupscale)

The Trump administration just announced plans to vastly expand offshore drilling by leasing all federal waters in the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Burning the fossil fuels in these areas would contribute 49.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide pollution, the equivalent of the emissions from 10.6 billion cars driven for a year, according to an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity.

The unprecedented proposal seeks to offer oil leases off every single coast, even areas that have been long-protected from drilling. I’m horrified by the prospect of more drilling rigs and oil spills off the California coast where I surf and play with my kids.

Yet it isn’t enough for Californians or East Coast residents to oppose Trump’s reckless push to let oil companies drill off our coasts, as important as that is. We must also draw the line further north — in the Arctic.

Trump’s push to open up the Arctic Ocean to offshore drilling is irresponsible and dangerous. The remote, harsh Arctic waters have been largely off limits to oil development for good reason. An oil spill would be impossible to clean up and would imperil endangered polar bears and bowhead whales.

This is about more than just doing the right thing for the communities and wildlife of the Arctic, because Arctic drilling is a carbon bomb that will affect everyone. Expanded Arctic drilling would threaten California and coastal areas around the world. Sea-level rise and ocean warming and acidification will all be worse if Trump allows offshore drilling in the far North. Climate change is a top driver of wildlife extinction, so his plan would also accelerate the current mass extinction crisis.

I plan to do everything I can to prevent Trump from offering the first federal leases off California’s coast in more than 30 years. I know that my friends in Virginia and Florida plan to fight like hell to protect the Atlantic, too, and I want them to succeed.

But even if we win those battles, we’ll still lose the war against climate chaos if the Arctic is spoiled with platforms, pipelines and pollution. We’re being tested, and Trump will conquer us if he can divide us.

The Arctic is warming at twice the global rate, and it’s starting to release massive amounts of carbon contained in the permafrost. Tapping the vast stores of oil under the Chukchi and Beaufort seas would accelerate global warming more than any other decision the president could make.

Coastal cities from San Francisco to New York to Miami are already struggling to prepare for rising seas that even moderate forecasts say will flood critical infrastructure. The worst sea-level scenarios would inundate coastal cities around the world and drive millions of people from their homes.

Arctic drilling would also change the temperature and chemistry of the Pacific and other oceans, affecting marine life and the communities that depend on it. Ocean warming and acidification off California’s coast will change coastal culture as we know it, throwing a wrench in the engine of the world’s sixth-largest economy.

One recent example was the toxic algae outbreak that poisoned sea lions and shellfish in California. Studies show that such outbreaks will be more common and toxic as the ocean warms and acidifies.

But Californians must go beyond just protecting our 1,100-mile coastline from the direct threat posed by offshore drilling and fracking. Indeed, a good sign is that cities across California have called for a robust, united stance opposing leasing not only in the Pacific, but also shunning expansion in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic in Trump’s new five-year offshore leasing plan.

We must all also use our voices and political power to protect the Arctic.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/defend-the-arctic-from-trumps-attack-on-our-oceans_us_5a4e87d1e4b0cd114bdb3198

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301216165623.jpeg&hash=1ccfee6aaf9d939cca294a849774cff11e462e59)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 06, 2018, 04:25:22 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2F14991553180_3f8f61644b_k-2.jpg&hash=3aeebe8cc0c55d699a6af7de493afaa6c320f74c)
Aerial view of the Auger Tension Leg Platform in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico in foreground. Noble Jim Thompson drilling rig in background. Photo credit: Royal Dutch Shell (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)

Will Oil Majors (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) Actually Sink Money Into America’s Waters?

January 5, 2018 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET 1:

It’s not that there aren’t potentially good prospects out there. Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico are obviously well-developed in certain areas already. The waters off southern California are also tempting. Meanwhile, using a little Pangaean jigsaw-puzzling, West Africa’s prolific fields suggest there may be similar riches (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) off the Eastern Seaboard.

And it’s not like major oil companies are brimming with exploration prospects right now. The energy crash crushed spending on discoveries, with 2017 seeing the fewest on record, according to Rystad Energy, a consultancy. Another firm, Wood Mackenzie, estimates just $37 billion will be spent on exploration this year, down more than 60 percent from 2015.

There are two big complications when it comes to capitalizing on America’s federal waters, though: politics and time.

SNIPPET 2:

Offshore spending isn’t dead.Some operators, such as Norway’s Statoil ASA, have worked hard to cut costs and shorten schedules to make projects work at lower prices.

In the Gulf of Mexico, William Turner of Wood Mackenzie authored a recent report forecasting oil and gas production to reach a record of 1.94 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2018.

However, he cautions that exploration spending there will remain flat this year and activity will focus on less-ambitious projects, such as those tying back to existing fields and infrastructure. Current energy pricing, and the renewed focus on staying nimble when it comes to deploying capital, are powerful restraints.

And these challenges would be magnified in new, relatively undeveloped areas. Turner points out, for example, that the swiftness of the Gulf Stream, a wide current running parallel to the Eastern Seaboard, could present big challenges to drilling on the Atlantic shelf.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/ (http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/)

Agelbert NOTE: The problem humanity has is NOT lack of hydrocarbons; it is the adamant and totally unreasonable refusal to accept the FACT that we have ALREADY exceeded the "carbon budget" for a FOUR DEGREE C rise in average global temperature, never mind a TWO DEGREE C "target". We are now on our way to 10 DEGREES C PLUS! The worse scenario the IPCC came up with (BAU RCP-8.5) is too conservative a projection of the heat increase (it is MUCH, MUCH WORSE! (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg8731/#msg8731)).

Anyone telling you that fossil fuels are "running out" needs to read the published figures from the oil and gas producing nations of this planet. The emissions are INCREASING, NOT "leveling off or decreasing". PLUS, tropical rain forests AND permafrost melt are now ADDING to the carbon emissions! GHG is GHG. no matter where it is coming from! You are NOT going to turn this heat engine off easily. Several heat adding feedbacks we have triggered by burning too much fossil fuels are NOT in our control, PERIOD.

Where in God's good earth these fossil fueler wishful thinking FOOLS think that we are somehow going to get a handle on this massive heating NOW IN THE Global Warming radiative forcing INERTIA pipeline, even if we stopped all hydrocarbon burning today (rather than the present tragic reality of increased burning), is a mystery to me. They certainly DO NOT get this idea from empirical evidence or sound science. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

This stubborn clinging to a happy talk myth about some "quick recovery from fossil fuel burning caused global warming" is a testament to the extremes people in denial of an extinction threat reality will go to.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

And for the propagandist liars that know the truth and push the happy talk for money, I can only say that they are greater fools than those naive folks that believe the fossil fuel fascist funded happy talk lies and distortions. These bought and paid for propagandists are behaving as STUPIDLY as any person possibly can. You STUPID, MONEY LOVING BASTARDS deserve the Darwin Evolutionary Dead End Award.

(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 06, 2018, 05:07:24 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2F14991553180_3f8f61644b_k-2.jpg&hash=3aeebe8cc0c55d699a6af7de493afaa6c320f74c)
Aerial view of the Auger Tension Leg Platform in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico in foreground. Noble Jim Thompson drilling rig in background. Photo credit: Royal Dutch Shell (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)

Will Oil Majors (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) Actually Sink Money Into America’s Waters?

January 5, 2018 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET 1:

It’s not that there aren’t potentially good prospects out there. Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico are obviously well-developed in certain areas already. The waters off southern California are also tempting. Meanwhile, using a little Pangaean jigsaw-puzzling, West Africa’s prolific fields suggest there may be similar riches (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) off the Eastern Seaboard.

And it’s not like major oil companies are brimming with exploration prospects right now. The energy crash crushed spending on discoveries, with 2017 seeing the fewest on record, according to Rystad Energy, a consultancy. Another firm, Wood Mackenzie, estimates just $37 billion will be spent on exploration this year, down more than 60 percent from 2015.

There are two big complications when it comes to capitalizing on America’s federal waters, though: politics and time.

SNIPPET 2:

Offshore spending isn’t dead.Some operators, such as Norway’s Statoil ASA, have worked hard to cut costs and shorten schedules to make projects work at lower prices.

In the Gulf of Mexico, William Turner of Wood Mackenzie authored a recent report forecasting oil and gas production to reach a record of 1.94 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2018.

However, he cautions that exploration spending there will remain flat this year and activity will focus on less-ambitious projects, such as those tying back to existing fields and infrastructure. Current energy pricing, and the renewed focus on staying nimble when it comes to deploying capital, are powerful restraints.

And these challenges would be magnified in new, relatively undeveloped areas. Turner points out, for example, that the swiftness of the Gulf Stream, a wide current running parallel to the Eastern Seaboard, could present big challenges to drilling on the Atlantic shelf.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/ (http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/)

Agelbert NOTE: The problem humanity has is NOT lack of hydrocarbons; it is the adamant and totally unreasonable refusal to accept the FACT that we have ALREADY exceeded the "carbon budget" for a FOUR DEGREE C rise in average global temperature, never mind a TWO DEGREE C "target". We are now on our way to 10 DEGREES C PLUS! The worse scenario the IPCC came up with (BAU RCP-8.5) is too conservative a projection of the heat increase (it is MUCH, MUCH WORSE! (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg8731/#msg8731)).

Anyone telling you that fossil fuels are "running out" needs to read the published figures from the oil and gas producing nations of this planet. The emissions are INCREASING, NOT "leveling off or decreasing". PLUS, tropical rain forests AND permafrost melt are now ADDING to the carbon emissions! GHG is GHG. no matter where it is coming from! You are NOT going to turn this heat engine off easily. Several heat adding feedbacks we have triggered by burning too much fossil fuels are NOT in our control, PERIOD.

Where in God's good earth these fossil fueler wishful thinking FOOLS think that we are somehow going to get a handle on this massive heating NOW IN THE Global Warming radiative forcing INERTIA pipeline, even if we stopped all hydrocarbon burning today (rather than the present tragic reality of increased burning), is a mystery to me. They certainly DO NOT get this idea from empirical evidence or sound science. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

This stubborn clinging to a happy talk myth about some "quick recovery from fossil fuel burning caused global warming" is a testament to the extremes people in denial of an extinction threat reality will go to.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

And for the propagandist liars that know the truth and push the happy talk for money, I can only say that they are greater fools than those naive folks that believe the fossil fuel fascist funded happy talk lies and distortions. These bought and paid for propagandists are behaving as STUPIDLY as any person possibly can. You STUPID, MONEY LOVING BASTARDS deserve the Darwin Evolutionary Dead End Award.

(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)


Unlikely unless the price of Oil goes up substantially.  Investment cost is too high, and consumers can't afford the price already.  Huge infrastructure build out to do this, they would need to run pipelines from all the offshore drilling rigs.  Unlikely to happen in the near term.

RE

Yes, RE. That's what the article made clear. The article also made clear that production of oil and gas is going to the moon.  :P And as to the rig business and the OBVIOUS plan to use said rigs to drill somewhere, already the first one of 2018 was delivered.

World’s Biggest Rig Builder Delivers First Rig of 2018

January 5, 2018 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET:

The world’s largest rig builder, Keppel FELS, has delivered its first rig of 2018 and the first of five jackups that it is building for Borr Drilling.

The jackup rig, SAGA, was delivered by Keppel FELS in Singapore. Keppel FELS is a subsidiary of Keppel Offshore & Marine.

“We are pleased  :evil4: to deliver the first rig to our new customer Borr Drilling,” said Mr Chris Ong, CEO of Keppel O&M. “As the drilling market recovers, the quality and capabilities of our KFELS B Class designs would be important differentiators for rig owners seeking efficient and reliable operations. Our rigs have set the industry benchmark and we are confident that this rig will be just as successful when deployed.”

The KFELS Super B Class rigs are designed to operate in 400 feet water depth and drill to 35,000 feet. They are equipped with a two million pound drilling system and a maximum combined cantilever load of 3,700 kips for high horsepower during drilling operation.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/worlds-biggest-rig-builder-delivers-first-rig-2018/ (http://gcaptain.com/worlds-biggest-rig-builder-delivers-first-rig-2018/)

RE, they are NOT going to stop drilling until we-the-people MAKE THEM stop drilling. All this talk about what people can "afford" is not going to stop the plans of these bastards. These 5 rigs, of which the first one was just delivered, were ordered in the oil and gas price market levels for the past year, which was actually LOWER than what it is now. It is wishful thinking to think that they won't drill unless state governments stop them.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 06, 2018, 06:16:13 pm
RE, they are NOT going to stop drilling until we-the-people MAKE THEM stop drilling.

We'll make them stop drilling when we run out of money to buy and burn the gas.

RE


  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-010215143525.png&hash=5bd7bd57f7d770273b7d73d29697fe3a0cc11e8f)


If that is the only way to "make" (i.e. coerce these crooks to stop pollutiing), then we are toast. You always forget that MINOR DETAIL that these bastards are SUBSIDIZED.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-230717132319.png&hash=1ede940fc3f651f4cd5da64c8a2443edecaae476)

When, and if, they actually have to price their product WITHOUT welfare queen subsidies, they will certainly go out of business. But you know God Damned good and well that THAT is NOT going to happen any time soon.

WHERE do you get the idea that the military of the USA, the greatest consumer of fossil fuels in our country, is not going to be able to "afford" to buy fossil fuels? It's NOT GONNA HAPPEN. RE, Even if all the rest of us are doing without due to high prices, the fossil fuel industry will CONTINUE to "profit" through their GOD DAMNED SUBSIDIES and WELFARE QUEEN MILITARY SALES! What part of that do you have difficulty understanding, Godfader?

In a just world, the courts will be the way forward to MAKE (i.e. shut the  fossil fuelers down) them stop polluting. Your way will NEVER stop them. Those bastards haven't marketed a profitable product for AT LEAST 30 years! They are STILL THERE because of SUBSIDIES, not because of a "competitive" product.

THE FOLLOWING is a step in the  right direction (that Trump and friends will do everything they can to stop - if they succeed, we are all DEAD!).

 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

January 5, 2018

Oregon Court: Banning Fossil Fuel Facilities is Constitutional (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)
 


An Oregon appeals court ruled that restricting fossil fuel infrastructure is constitutional, overruling a lower appeals court decision. It's an important victory in the fight against climate change, and for local self-determination, says Nicholas Caleb of the Center for Sustainable Economy

https://youtu.be/F7wRA4jzyqE
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 12, 2018, 06:23:23 pm
About-Face Tweet on Florida Drilling May Backfire on Agency’s Plan  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113185047.png&hash=384024358ff8d5e7133d19b6e6638da4584a8154)

January 11, 2018 by Bloomberg

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke just handed offshore drilling foes ammunition for lawsuits  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clker.com%2Fcliparts%2Fc%2F8%2Ff%2F8%2F11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png&hash=599691109af22b33f1d59dd61eb97448a9427020) by declaring the Florida coast off limits.

http://gcaptain.com/face-tweet-florida-drilling-may-backfire-agency/


U.S. Senators From 12 States Seek Offshore Drilling Exemptions Like Florida’s  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

January 11, 2018 by Reuters

SNIPPET:

“Just like Florida, our states are unique with vibrant coastal economies,” wrote the 22 senators, who include Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California. “Providing all of our states with the same exemption from dangerous offshore oil and gas drilling would ensure that vital industries from tourism to recreation to fishing are not needlessly placed in harm’s way,” they wrote.

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said Zinke intends to meet with every coastal governor affected by the agency’s proposed offshore drilling plan, a process that could take a year.

full article:
http://gcaptain.com/u-s-senators-from-12-states-seek-offshore-drilling-exemptions-like-floridas/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120118181944.png&hash=bd1f420590db5a3213f18c2338839318746c937a)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 21, 2018, 07:58:30 pm
Norway Aiming For 🔥 Oil & Gas Output To Reach Record Highs By ~2022

January 21st, 2018 by James Ayre

SNIPPET:
Quote

“Norway’s combined output of oil and gas is expected to hit 4.4 million barrels per day of oil equivalents in 2022, the NPD said, a rise of 10% from the forecast 4 million barrels per day of oil equivalents seen for 2018. Investments, excluding exploration cost, were expected to rise marginally in 2018 to 122 billion Norwegian crowns ($15.13 billion) and to about 140 billion crowns in each of the years 2019 and 2020, the NPD said.”

So, the “good news” I guess is that Norway will be able to maintain the currently extravagant lifestyle expectations of its population for longer than expected … by continuing to sell fossil crack co caine to the rest of the world.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fd2.gif&hash=98d536bf1047a88ef91e9c45e08b725347c9fe13) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Frapgenius%2F1375371542_tumblr_m7jevgcaFm1qzqdem.gif&hash=1a2fe8d9567770e89661ad82a4e03b115e0f5358)



full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/21/norway-aiming-oil-gas-output-reach-record-highs-2022/ (https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/21/norway-aiming-oil-gas-output-reach-record-highs-2022/)


Agelbert REACTION: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sherv.net%2Fcm%2Femoticons%2Fsick%2Fbarfing-smiley-emoticon.gif&hash=36f6791510582d9f9f48af1d4d1a006a5681103b)
Quote

George Danchev 🦖 • 13 hours ago
There is a crucial difference here, we could have the same Norway exporting oil and gas without doing anything on the renewable front. The reality is that Norway is the only one repurposing big oil and gas money to renewables on per capita basis.

There is another big thing - the Norwegian power grid is 100% renewable... okay 99%... so they are internally almost non-dependant on it, so exporting the crack until there is anyone to buy it and investing the cash wisely is a name of a pretty good game. Norway not exporting the crack literally means someone else will deliver for their share and do nothing on the renewables front. So long live Norway.

Quote
Are Hansen > George Danchev • 13 hours ago
I disagree. Being the richest country in the world, I would say Norway has a moral obligation to do what it can afford: to stop further petro exploration, invest heavily in RE internationally, and in RE tech domestically. That wouldn't even affect our extravagant life style for most people here.

Where is the huge research center for wave power? Build a beautiful modern campus, complete with wave tanks and all kinds of laboratories, nice student accommodation with enticing student financing, create a bunch of professorships and get the best people from all over the world.

That would be the logical next step. And with 2000 km of windy Atlantic coasts the potential for wave energy is stupendous.


agelbert  > Are Hansen • 22 minutes ago

Yep, and Norway is, despite all their Renewable Energy at home, hurting future generations all over the planet by continuing to extract fossil fuels.

To those in Norway who believe extracting fossil fuels from the earth in order to sell them for profit so somebody can burn them is  a good idea:

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080814212951.png&hash=ab5aaa6da3fa802ad904fa82e6a3ab7725b1aa38)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270716175152.png&hash=b70c2464becd1a34ba8ac64a9a410881246bc249)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 21, 2018, 08:49:08 pm
Another report by BP and Oxford Institute ofr Energy Studies, trying to pretend that Peak Oil doesn't matter. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121649.png&hash=4554f7e59701d12857946aece16bceb973c997b3)

But it does.  As soon as the oil price recovers to profitable levels, demand will fall, and the oil price will collapse to uneconomic levels again.  There is no oil company whose share price can withstand that, and so their share price will implode and their ability to borrow will collapse with it.  Venezuela (which boasts the world's biggest reserves) cannot borrow due to US blockading them financially, and their slow-motion train wreck is happening right now - it's not pretty, and coming to a state near you, guaranteed.

Of course oilprice.com is facing the same kind of train wreck, but the final paragraph shows they know what will happen.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Oil-Demand-Is-A-Slow-Motion-Train-Wreck.html (https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Oil-Demand-Is-A-Slow-Motion-Train-Wreck.html)
Peak Oil Demand Is A Slow-Motion Train Wreck
Nick Cunningham
Jan 18, 2018

Will oil demand peak within five years? 15 years? Or not until 2040 or 2050?

The precise date at which oil demand hits a high point and then enters into decline has been the subject of much debate, and a topic that has attracted a lot of interest just in the last few years. Consumption levels in some parts of the world have already begun to stagnate, and more and more automakers have begun to ratchet up their plans for electric vehicles.

But the exact date the world will hit peak demand kind of misses the whole point, argues a new report, which is notable since it is coauthored by BP’s chief economist Spencer Dale, along with Bassam Fattouh, the director of The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

They argue that the focus shouldn’t be on the date at which oil demand peaks, but rather the fact that the peak is coming at all. “The significance of peak oil is that it signals a shift from an age of perceived scarcity to an age of abundance,” they wrote. In other words, oil won’t be on the only game in town when it comes to fueling the global transportation system, which will have far-reaching consequences for oil producers and consumers alike.


The exact date is unknowable, and in any event, the year in which the world does hit peak consumption won’t result in some abrupt “discontinuity of behavior,” the report argues. Demand growth will slow and then decline, but probably won’t fall off a cliff. So, the exact date of peak oil demand is “not particularly interesting.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

Nevertheless, the implications of a looming peak in oil consumption are massive. Without an economic transformation, or at least serious diversification, oil-producing nations that depend on oil revenues for both economic growth and to finance public spending, face an uncertain future.

And slowing demand growth is occurring at a time when supply is less of a concern than it used to be, in large part because new drilling technologies have led to a wave of supply from shale. “The world isn’t going to run out of oil. Rather, it seems increasingly likely that significant amounts of recoverable oil will never be extracted,” the authors wrote.

One of the more intriguing conclusions from the report is that this new “age of abundance” could alter behavior from oil producers. In the past, some countries (notably OPEC members) restrained output, husbanding resources for the future, betting that scarcity would increase the value of their holdings over time. “A high reserves-to-production ratio — implying a country could continue producing oil at the same rate for 80, 90, 100+ years — was a sign of both strength and intergenerational fairness,” the report said.

However, looking forward, if a peak in demand looms just over the horizon, oil producers could rush to maximize their production in order to get as much value for their reserves while they can. “Better to have money in the bank than oil in the ground.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

To complicate matters further, maximizing production to fight for market share would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment. For instance, Rystad Energy predicts upstream spending will stand at $510 billion in 2018 (which is sharply lower than in years past). Huge sums will be required even just to maintain current levels of production.

That creates another problem. As the FT notes, extending the life of oil fields, let alone investing in new ones, will require marshalling such large volumes of capital, but that might be met with skepticism from wary investors when demand begins to peak. “When that shift occurs, from a growing industry to one in decline, you change investors’ perception,” Jason Bordoff at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told the FT. It will be difficult to attract investment to a shrinking industry, particularly if margins continued to get squeezed. In In that sense, the timing of peak oil demand does in fact matter.

Either way, peak demand should be an alarming prospect for OPEC, Russia, the oil majors — basically any and all oil producers who will find themselves fighting more aggressively for a shrinking pie. “Faced with the possibility that significant amounts of recoverable oil may never be extracted, low-cost producers have a strong incentive to use their comparative advantage to squeeze out high-cost producers and gain market share — just as with any other competitive market,” Dale and Fattouh wrote. 

Oil producers will need to adapt to a “higher volume, lower price” environment. For consumers, however, the shift will bring benefits, including more options and cheaper energy.

At the country level, this is scary stuff. Many oil producers have hefty spending requirements to satisfy their populaces, including for healthcare, housing, employment, etc. Ample global oil supply for the foreseeable future, combined with an eventual peak in demand, threatens persistent fiscal deficits and some hard choices.

Saudi Arabia has offered up its Vision 2030, which the report by Dale and Fattouh say is probably “the most prominent example of a major oil producer responding to the changing environment,” but economic transformations are incredibly difficult and would conceivably take decades to pull off.

It’s hard to imagine countries that depend on oil for more than 90 percent of their export revenue adapting well — it’s a slow-motion train wreck. Dale and Fattouh say it may require “an eventual adjustment in living standards,” which is a rather diplomatic way of putting it.

To claim the oil majors do not concern themselves with Peak DEMAND is ridiculous. The REASON they buy governments so regulations won't force them to price carbon correctly is to PROTECT DEMAND for fossil fuels. Anyone who knows even a tiny bit about the modus operandi of fossil fuel corporations KNOWS the welfare queen treatment (i.e. subsidies plus free pass on pollution) is sine qua non to their "profitable" business model. THAT is not free. They HAVE TO bribe politicians to keep from going BANKRUPT. And that BANKRUPTCY they sweat will come about EXCLUSIVELY because of a massive drop in DEMAND from CHEAPER Renewable Energy sources. So, they LIE about peak demand "not beng a big deal". It's HUGE DEAL!   

PEAK OIL AND GAS? ??? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040817140651.png&hash=c43dc47dbb4ef892fb7c5680dba982b56fdad700) Slow Motion Train Wreck? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) Peak Oil Demand, YES. Peak Oil, my ARSE!

Norway Aiming For 🔥 Oil & Gas Output To Reach Record Highs By ~2022

January 21st, 2018 by James Ayre

SNIPPET:
Quote

“Norway’s combined output of oil and gas is expected to hit 4.4 million barrels per day of oil equivalents in 2022, the NPD said, a rise of 10% from the forecast 4 million barrels per day of oil equivalents seen for 2018. Investments, excluding exploration cost, were expected to rise marginally in 2018 to 122 billion Norwegian crowns ($15.13 billion) and to about 140 billion crowns in each of the years 2019 and 2020, the NPD said.”

So, the “good news” I guess is that Norway will be able to maintain the currently extravagant lifestyle expectations of its population for longer than expected … by continuing to sell fossil crack co caine to the rest of the world.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fd2.gif&hash=98d536bf1047a88ef91e9c45e08b725347c9fe13) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Frapgenius%2F1375371542_tumblr_m7jevgcaFm1qzqdem.gif&hash=1a2fe8d9567770e89661ad82a4e03b115e0f5358)



full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/21/norway-aiming-oil-gas-output-reach-record-highs-2022/ (https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/21/norway-aiming-oil-gas-output-reach-record-highs-2022/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2F14991553180_3f8f61644b_k-2.jpg&hash=3aeebe8cc0c55d699a6af7de493afaa6c320f74c)
Aerial view of the Auger Tension Leg Platform in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico in foreground. Noble Jim Thompson drilling rig in background. Photo credit: Royal Dutch Shell (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)

Will Oil Majors (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) Actually Sink Money Into America’s Waters?

January 5, 2018 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET 1:

It’s not that there aren’t potentially good prospects out there. Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico are obviously well-developed in certain areas already. The waters off southern California are also tempting. Meanwhile, using a little Pangaean jigsaw-puzzling, West Africa’s prolific fields suggest there may be similar riches (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) off the Eastern Seaboard.

And it’s not like major oil companies are brimming with exploration prospects right now. The energy crash crushed spending on discoveries, with 2017 seeing the fewest on record, according to Rystad Energy, a consultancy. Another firm, Wood Mackenzie, estimates just $37 billion will be spent on exploration this year, down more than 60 percent from 2015.

There are two big complications when it comes to capitalizing on America’s federal waters, though: politics and time.

SNIPPET 2:

Offshore spending isn’t dead.Some operators, such as Norway’s Statoil ASA, have worked hard to cut costs and shorten schedules to make projects work at lower prices.

In the Gulf of Mexico, William Turner of Wood Mackenzie authored a recent report forecasting oil and gas production to reach a record of 1.94 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2018.

However, he cautions that exploration spending there will remain flat this year and activity will focus on less-ambitious projects, such as those tying back to existing fields and infrastructure. Current energy pricing, and the renewed focus on staying nimble when it comes to deploying capital, are powerful restraints.

And these challenges would be magnified in new, relatively undeveloped areas. Turner points out, for example, that the swiftness of the Gulf Stream, a wide current running parallel to the Eastern Seaboard, could present big challenges to drilling on the Atlantic shelf.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/ (http://gcaptain.com/will-oil-majors-actually-sink-money-americas-waters/)


Russia Posts Highest-Ever Natural Gas Output in Expansion Drive

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F12%2FChristophe-de-Margerie.jpg&hash=53d9e27fe629c0e842e85ae9594c4d80295ed3a2)
The Christophe de Margerie, the first of 15 icebreaking LNG carriers ordered for the Yamal LNG project to provide transport of LNG year-round in the Arctic, loads its first cargo at the Yamal LNG plant at the Port of Sabetta on the Yamal Peninsula, December 8, 2017. Photo: SCF Group


January 2, 2018 by Bloomberg

By Elena Mazneva and Jake Rudnitsky (Bloomberg) — Russia registered its highest-ever natural gas production last year amid plans to expand into China and boost sales of liquefied natural gas.

The nation’s output of the fuel jumped 7.9 percent to 690.5 billion cubic meters, according to data emailed Tuesday by the Russian Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit. That beat the previous record, set in 2011, by 2.9 percent.

Russia, the world’s largest gas exporter, is working to boost output with plans to increase production of LNG with new plants in an area that stretches from the Baltic region to its Pacific coast. That will put the country up against the biggest producers of the super-chilled fuel, including Qatar, Australia and the U.S. Russia has resources to increase its LNG production almost 10 times by 2035, led by the privately-owned Novatek PJSC in the Arctic, according to the nation’s Energy Ministry.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/russia-posts-highest-ever-natural-gas-output-in-expansion-drive/ (http://gcaptain.com/russia-posts-highest-ever-natural-gas-output-in-expansion-drive/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070815234504.png&hash=985389b97dcdb7597d06de1ad53ff044c1fca800)

Don't forget to laugh in any person's face who claims that fossil fuel use is going down (DEMAND is GOING UP, NOT DOWN!). Gallows humor is appropriate at this time of abysmal Russian AND U.S. stupidity.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

Try again when global warming HELL forces us to stop being STUPID (about ten or fifteen years at the most). By then people that live in jungles will be crispy critters in a toasted arid wasteland.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fdesertsmile.gif&hash=293fbde1c87dec2d81c5907e3fbac7d8e5bba7a9)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)


Putin's Natural Gas BRIDGE to the FUTURE is the SAME "bridge" the frackers in the USA are BUILDING.
(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tKBsTGeWsKc/VznRUcnfo1I/AAAAAAAAyok/paDRwKq7pxQvOB0MOBc7Y7FOeBpjxwj6wCLcB/s1600/fracked%2Bgas%2Bis%2Ba%2Bbridge%2Bto%2Bnowhere.PNG)
Russia is the world's largest exporter of "Natural" Gas.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 24, 2018, 08:10:06 pm
It’s Official: China Passes South Korea as World’s No. 2 LNG Importer (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913)

January 23, 2018 by Bloomberg

By Bloomberg News (Bloomberg) — China’s General Administration of Customs just confirmed what liquefied natural gas industry insiders have been speculating for weeks: There’s a new No. 2 in town.

China imported 38.1 million tons of LNG in 2017, according to customs data released Tuesday. That’s more than the 37.6 million tons that South Korea imported last year, according to customs data that country released last week. In 2016, South Korea imported 33.5 million tons to China’s 26.1 million, according to customs data. Japan, the world’s largest importer, had shipped in 72.3 million tons through the end of November, according to government data.

China’s surge stems from President Xi Jinping’s efforts to clean the air in smoggy cities by replacing coal-burning furnaces with cleaner natural gas. The push resulted in winter gas shortages in parts of the country where infrastructure wasn’t prepared to handle the increased demand. Additional LNG buying has also inflated spot prices, which have more than doubled since June to $11.40 per million British thermal units, according to industry publication World Gas Intelligence.

Gas consumption in China is expected to continue its rise as the government still has room to improve air quality, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysts including Neil Beveridge said in a Jan. 18 research note. China could overtake Japan as the world’s No. 1 LNG importer as soon as 2025, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts.

© 2018 Bloomberg L.P

http://gcaptain.com/official-china-passes-south-korea-worlds-no-2-lng-importer/

Agelbert NOTE: Allthough burning coal produces more lung damaging particulates, the replacement of coal with LNG (Liquified "Natural" Gas) actually INCREASES the GHG (Greenhouse gas) radiative forcing 🔥 on the planet's atmosphere. IOW, this move will produce clearer skies in China while simultaneously exacerbating Catastrophic Climate Change🌪 by increasing the rate of Global Warming 🔥 from GHG pollution.    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 01, 2018, 06:52:08 pm
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Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

February 1, 2018

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Kathleen Hartnett White in Hot Water ;D as Carper Holds EPA Nominees

EPA Admin Scott Pruitt and ranking Dem Tom Carper had a private chat following the fireworks at Tuesday’s Senate hearing, according to a Politico Pro story. Carper reportedly told Pruitt that he would be blocking two of Pruitt’s nominees until Kathleen Hartnett White withdraws from consideration as head of the Council on Environmental Quality.

One of Pruitt’s now-stalled nominees is Holly Greaves as Chief Financial Officer, which is remarkable only in that she doesn’t seem to be directly connected with the fossil fuel industry, like so many other nominees. One of these industry shills happens to be Andrew Wheeler, the other now-blocked nominee who Pruitt wants a his Deputy Administrator. Given that Wheeler lobbied for coal, he and fossil-fuel-friendly Pruitt are two peas in a pod🦕🦖. (And since Wheeler also thought Trump is a bully, clearly he and Pruitt will get along.)

Hopefully, Pruitt’s desire to have a fellow fossil fuel lover at his right hand means he’ll push Trump to rescind Hartnett White’s nomination. Or, with the writing on the wall, hopefully Hartnett White will get the hint and resign.

As we’ve discussed before, Hartnett White could not be further from the ideal choice to advise the White House on the state of the environment. A fresh Daily Beast story published yesterday reiterates some of the many reasons why Carper and dozens of other Senators have been so opposed to her nomination.

In her first committee hearing-- an appearance Carper tells the Daily Beast was “excruciating”--she admitted to not knowing if water expands as it warms (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da). Then there’s the fact that she copied and pasted a bunch of her written answers to committee questions from Scott Pruitt and Bill Wehrum’s answers.

Even before these missteps, she was always a bad choice for CEQ.

First there are all the examples of writing standard denier nonsense like writing that carbon dioxide can’t be pollution because “Our flesh, blood and bones are built of carbon,”   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coh2.org%2Fimages%2FSmileys%2Fhuhsign.gif&hash=3732d0427be65896527fc3805c5be54a33cffd3b) and advanced nonsense, like that there is “a historical connection” between fossil fuels and ending slavery. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817122018.gif&hash=74d86c1f35e2f61ea38c9bfa392f84a92631b96e)

The fact that the group she currently works for, the Texas Public Policy Foundation is funded by the Kochs and Exxon and Big Tobacco and so many others makes Hartnett White’s crazy denier-fuelled answers a little more explainable.  ;)

And with that, there’s no surprise that during her tenure as a commissioner of the Texas Council on Environmental Quality, the agency broke federal EPA rules to hide information about radioactive water from the public. Hartnett White was so brazenly pro-fossil fuels during her tenure at the TCEQ that the Dallas Morning News, a paper in the heart of the oil industry, called her a “apologist for polluters” and wrote her exit from the agency “welcome news.”

Her exit from the national CEQ nomination would also be welcome news. And with Carper’s pressure on Pruitt, she’s certainly in hot water. Just don’t ask her if that water’s expanding…  :D

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 02, 2018, 02:53:39 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Please remember this Trump (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fd2.gif&hash=98d536bf1047a88ef91e9c45e08b725347c9fe13) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) GOVERNMENT HAND OUT to the Fossil Fuel WELFARE QUEENS, the next time you read about how "profitable" the fossil Fuel Fascists are.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

The tax cut is a $6 billion gift to Exxon  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978)  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)


by Matt Egan   @MattEganCNN

February 2, 2018: 9:52 AM ET

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Freading.gif&hash=63e3e644b39258d4c4eedbcdaf322315b1856723)    

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/02/investing/exxon-earnings-tax-law-oil/index.html


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014020143.png&hash=d335639ca99ac947e1274fe54602d96b30b4360e)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 12, 2018, 01:12:32 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Another one of the questions in the "Does a wild bear go poop in the woods?" category.

February 11, 2018

Is the Oil Industry 🐉🦕🦖  Canada's 'Deep State'🦀?

Justin Trudeau and Canada's political elite are fighting for the Tar Sands and oil industry's interests, even if it means Canada misses all of its climate targets. We speak to experts such as Kevin Taft, ex-Liberal Party politician and author of 'Oil's Deep State'

https://youtu.be/HbBAiVypjMY

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/8b/30/b3/8b30b31e87dddef823ce634725ac42d3.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 13, 2018, 06:29:22 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

February 13, 2018

Confronting Trudeau 🦍 on Climate Lies and Kinder Morgan 🦀 Pipeline

TRNN speaks with Clayton Thomas-Muller, an indigenous and environmental activist who challenged Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's pro-pipeline rhetoric during the PM's cross-country town hall tour

https://youtu.be/6NM3i91TrX8

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21095%27%20style=%27color:#000;
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 15, 2018, 02:37:44 pm
The LOOP’s About-Face on Oil Imports Cues U.S. Drive Into Global Market

February 14, 2018 by Bloomberg

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F02%2FU.S.-Oil-Exports.jpg&hash=43ffe40ab846d8a5341c73b0b2e481a69af9c3a2)

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/the-loops-about-face-on-oil-imports-cues-u-s-drive-into-global-market/

Agelbert NOTE: Trump 🦀 and his Fascist Fossil Fuel owned wrecking crew 🐉🦕🦖 doom us all.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)


The Fossil Fuelers 🦖  DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)

(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tKBsTGeWsKc/VznRUcnfo1I/AAAAAAAAyok/paDRwKq7pxQvOB0MOBc7Y7FOeBpjxwj6wCLcB/s1600/fracked%2Bgas%2Bis%2Ba%2Bbridge%2Bto%2Bnowhere.PNG)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 15, 2018, 05:40:45 pm
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-121217195108.png&hash=34ddc1fd5afeb976b36342e73738ef155008be6d)

February 15, 2018

EPA Admin Scott Pruitt’s  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) First Class Security Blanket Putting Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fswear1.gif&hash=87347674f9297191f3f8a447208170617da4caf6) in Hot Seat 

There are lots of great reasons to want Scott Pruitt out of the EPA, and his obvious prioritization of industry over public health is right at the top of the list.

But of course, the big Pruitt story this week is his tens of thousands of dollars of first class travel expenses. After the initial Washington Post report Sunday, CBS ran their own segment yesterday and revealed Pruitt took a first-class Arab Emirates flight in May (and got Republican Senator John Kennedy on the record criticising the waste). Politico ran another follow-up story yesterday featuring several other Republican senators questioning the first class flights. In hindsight, Pruitt’s tweets about making pasta and eating prosciutto in Italy don’t exactly convey a seriousness of purpose for his $43,000 trip.

The EPA’s defense is that because of security concerns, Pruitt has a “blanket waiver” to always fly first class to avoid terrible threats like the one from a woman who got drunk while watching Rachel Maddow and fired off an angry tweet. But why the concern for air travel? While we know there’s a curtain keeping us peasants out of first class, we’d have to agree with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who told ABC “If you're on an airplane, you don't have any more problems than anybody else has."

Just what sort of mid-air attack is Pruitt worried about anyway? Someone throwing a tiny tube of toothpaste at him? Is this an attempt by his security detail to protect his feelings by insulating him from the general public with this blanket waiver for first class flight? Like some sort of... security blanket? 

More seriously, where did this supposed blanket waiver come from, and who signed to approve? After Politico’s Emily Holden asked the EPA, the agency said she should file a FOIA to find out. Thing is, Politico already filed one--seven and a half months ago. Despite the one-month statutory deadline, the EPA still hasn’t responded. And apparently federal ethics officials weren’t the ones to grant it, either.

While the first class travel may be enjoyable for Pruitt in the short-term, his first class security blanket (waiver) is worsening a long-term problem for his image as the costs rise. Spending scandals like these only serve to make taxpayers more and more hot under the collar. With even the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner calling for Trump to “drain the swamp” of Pruitt because of his waste, efforts to oust Pruitt are really starting to heat up.

Sure, Pruitt has plenty of practice ignoring such things, but with even conservatives turning against him, it’s going to be hard for Pruitt to pretend he’s not feeling how his security blanket is increasing the heat of this political climate.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 15, 2018, 08:27:40 pm
 
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn2.theinertia.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F03%2Fwarm.jpg&hash=ddb929d877c49358047aae0a93b2b584be1eca4a)


Chris Hedges (Jan 31, 2018) - interviews Noam Chomsky, The Best Speech Of All Time

https://youtu.be/JoMsXh7h3sk

15,150 views

Felix Eastham

Published on Jan 30, 2018

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 17, 2018, 06:01:56 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Trump 🦀   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58) Administration Sets March Date for Largest Oil and Gas Lease Auction 🐉🦕 🦖 in U.S. History
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.zaazu.com%2Fimg%2FIncredible-Hulk-animated-animation-male-smiley-emoticon-000342-large.gif&hash=db736c8c06568f1aa878171ad53d1f0301cfdff2)
February 16, 2018 by Reuters

SNIPPET:

The Interior Department  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) said it would offer 77.3 million acres (31.3 mln hectares) offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida for oil and gas development, an auction that includes all available unleased areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The blocks are from 3 to 231 miles (5 to 372 km) offshore and in waters 9 to 11,115 feet (3 to 3,390 meters) deep.

Full BARFICLE: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sherv.net%2Fcm%2Femoticons%2Fsick%2Fbarfing-smiley-emoticon.gif&hash=36f6791510582d9f9f48af1d4d1a006a5681103b)

http://gcaptain.com/trump-administration-sets-march-date-largest-oil-gas-lease-auction-us-history/

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/dc/d5/f1/dcd5f1ac950c860ad7839325f4eafc84.jpg)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F_IPZX1n_gnIM%2FTBxKST8wgBI%2FAAAAAAAAFxM%2F52D2UaemhQE%2Fs400%2FGas-Oil-Petroleum385.jpg&hash=733743a5d6af9b5085d12db935373e34c5e356fd)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014141830.png&hash=5319d4dcf7ff24e048aa47d746f07b83bedcc1c0)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 23, 2018, 04:54:21 pm
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February 23, 2018

(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/img_03911.jpg)

Big Energy(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fpirates5B15D_th.gif&hash=32438e1ed2c4d1823d4ed2a193286525c840a605) Spends Billion To Avoid Climate Responsibility

A  new report released yesterday by the 50/50 Climate Project (https://5050climate.org/news/new-report-spending-change/) looks at how 21 of the US’s largest utilities 🐉 and energy companies 🦕 🦖 are preparing for a future where low-carbon energy and fossil fuel regulations are the norm. The report finds that instead of managing these climate risks to protect shareholder value, companies are instead spending hundreds of millions on influencing elections and regulations.

Despite the existential threat posed by climate change and regulations to address it, these companies have done next to nothing to adapt their fossil-fueled business model. For example, 20 of the 21 companies highlighted in the report don’t even mention climate change in corporate governance documents. Six of them, including Scott Pruitt’s friends at Devon Energy, don’t even have a board-level environmental risk management function.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-021114150033.png&hash=1a55bc1a81954375c07d21a43c3a26b4bd15b3be)

What’s more is that these companies are actively fighting against public protections. They’ve spent over $50 million to fight citizen initiatives for clean energy and greenhouse gas reductions, the report finds, putting them (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) in direct opposition with voter-led ballot measures.

But this spending pales in comparison to the $673 million spent over the last six years on influencing policy and supporting candidates that are friendly to their dirty energy. The report finds that ExxonMobil, the company claiming in court that its actions are consistent with climate science, spent the most on political activity and lobbying with $96.9 million spent--beating out both Chevron ($95.1 million) and Southern ($88.6 million). Exxon also spent the most on PACs, so while the company is no climate champ, it’s definitely a leader in something...

And all that spending doesn’t even count the “dark money” given to groups like ALEC, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute (all three of which count ExxonMobil as a member.)

The report’s focus is on protecting shareholders by revealing information that these companies should be disclosing. After all, these companies operate with shareholder’s money--doesn’t that mean they should let them know what they’re doing with the funds? More importantly, shouldn’t companies disclose how planning to continue to provide profit for their shareholders in a carbon-constrained future?

Corporations may not really be people, but when they’re shielding information from their own shareholders, it’s hard not to think that they’re ashamed of their secretive and anti-democratic spending.

Imagine instead of lobbying to stave off regulations, energy giants used those millions of dollars to study the impacts of their products and then invested heavily in renewables. At a minimum, Exxon wouldn’t have to worry about #ExxonKnew, and maybe we’d instead be talking about how #ExxonGrew...


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270716175152.png&hash=b70c2464becd1a34ba8ac64a9a410881246bc249)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 25, 2018, 10:15:30 pm
I’m a climate scientist. And I’m not letting trickle-down ignorance 🦖 win.

How to fight ⚡ the Trump 🦀 administration's darkness (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6869.gif&hash=f94938471d343a09155d1f60eefacdb2ceab2457)


By Ben Santer July 5, 2017

Ben Santer is a climate scientist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

SNIPPET 1:

I’ve been a mountaineer for most of my life. Mountains are in my blood. In my early 20s, while climbing in France, I fell into a crevasse on the Milieu Glacier, at the start of the normal route on the Aiguille d’Argentiere. Remarkably, I was unhurt. From the grip of the banded ice, I saw a thin slit of blue sky 120 feet above me. The math was simple: Climb 120 feet. If I reached that slit of blue sky, I would live. If I didn’t, I’d freeze to death in the cold and dark.

Now, more than 40 years later, it feels like I’m in a different kind of darkness — the darkness of the Trump administration’s scientific ignorance. This is just as real as the darkness of the Milieu Glacier’s interior and just as life-threatening. This time, I’m not alone. The consequences of this ignorance affect every person on the planet.

Imagine, if you will, that you spend your entire professional life trying to do one thing to the best of your ability. In my case, that one thing is to study the nature and causes of climate change. You put in a long apprenticeship. You spend years learning about the climate system, computer models of climate and climate observations. You start filling a tool kit with the statistical and mathematical methods you’ll need for analyzing complex data sets. You are taught how electrical engineers detect signals embedded in noisy data. You apply those engineering insights to the detection of a human-caused warming signal buried in the natural “noise” of Earth’s climate. Eventually, you learn that human activities are warming Earth’s surface, and you publish this finding in peer-reviewed literature.


SNIPPET 2:

You encounter valid scientific criticism. You also encounter nonscientific criticism from powerful forces of unreason🦖, who harbor no personal animus toward you but don’t like what you’ve learned and published — it’s bad for their 🦖 business 🦀.


SNIPPET 3:

Over time, the evidence for a discernible human influence on global climate becomes overwhelming. The evidence is internally and physically consistent. It’s in climate measurements made from the ground, from weather balloons and from space — measurements of dozens of different climate variables made by hundreds of different research groups around the world. You write more papers, examine more uncertainties and participate in more scientific assessments. You tell others what you’ve done, what you’ve learned and what the climatic “shape of things to come” might look like if we do nothing to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. You speak not only to your scientific peers but also to a wide variety of audiences, some of which are skeptical about you and everything you do. You enter the public arena and make yourself accountable.

After decades of seeking to advance scientific understanding, reality suddenly shifts, and you are back in the cold darkness of ignorance. The ignorance starts at the top, with President Trump 🦀. It starts with untruths and alternative facts. The untruth that climate change is a “hoax” engineered by the Chinese. The alternative fact that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. These untruths and alternative facts are repeated again and again. They serve as talking points for other members of the administration. From the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who has spent his career fighting climate change science, we learn the alternative fact that satellite data shows “a leveling off of warming ” over the past two decades. The energy secretary tells us the fairy tale that climate change is primarily due to “ocean waters and this environment that we live in.” Ignorance trickles down from the president to members of his administration, eventually filtering into the public’s consciousness.

Getting out of this metaphorical darkness is going to be tough.

Full article:  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clker.com%2Fcliparts%2Fc%2F8%2Ff%2F8%2F11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png&hash=599691109af22b33f1d59dd61eb97448a9427020)


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/07/05/im-a-climate-scientist-and-im-not-letting-trickle-down-ignorance-win/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 03, 2018, 03:44:00 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Just for the Hell of it, HERE are some recent Fossil Fuel BOOM (AND WORLDWIDE ECONOMY BOOM) EVIDENCE articles Palloy, and all those who labor under the PATHETIC belief that a 'collapse of civilization from LACK of fossil fuels will save us from the horrendously deleterious existential threat of Catastrophic Climate Change' (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8), DON'T READ.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2Fshutterstock_313054091.jpg&hash=2109b85f0dac13bebf935e513c5636103c881800)

Supertankers Sailing from U.S. to Cut Time, Money and Traders

February 26, 2018 by Bloomberg

SNIPPET:

The first fully laden supertanker sailed from America earlier this month, leaving for China from LOOP’s deep-water facility — the only one in the U.S. capable of filling some of the industry’s biggest tankers. In the wake of an end to a four decade-ban on exports and as OPEC curbed output to clear a glut, a stream of shipments from the Gulf Coast headed east as major buyers such as India and South Korea looked farther for supplies.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/supertankers-sailing-from-u-s-to-cut-time-money-and-traders/ (http://gcaptain.com/supertankers-sailing-from-u-s-to-cut-time-money-and-traders/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)

How Shell Hid a ‘Whale’ Well Before Placing Mexican Oil Bet

March 2, 2018 by Reuters

SNIPPET for the brain impaired true believers  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgen152.gif&hash=d5b10968fe56c4cb95fae17cee3cb420a5f4e2da) in 'peak oil':

The company, like many of its peers, was forced to dramatically slash spending in recent years because of weak oil prices, with its exploration budgets hit particularly hard. Now that prices have recovered to a near three-year high of around $65 a barrel, firms feel more confident to once again invest in expensive offshore developments.

Shell owns a 60 percent stake in the Whale discovery with the remaining 40 percent held by Chevron, which is mainly shale-focused.

The reservoir is located in the Perdido area, which has become a heartland of Shell’s deepwater activities in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/how-shell-hid-a-whale-well-before-placing-mexican-oil-bet/ (http://gcaptain.com/how-shell-hid-a-whale-well-before-placing-mexican-oil-bet/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F02%2FSEA_FAITH.jpg&hash=852204b8b92b2eb6975da1ee5cfe6e5d8aa34a2e)

Tanker Operator, Master Plead Guilty to Oil and Garbage Dumping Crimes in U.S.

February 27, 2018 by gCaptain

http://gcaptain.com/tanker-operator-master-plead-guilty-to-oil-and-garbage-dumping-crimes-in-u-s/ (http://gcaptain.com/tanker-operator-master-plead-guilty-to-oil-and-garbage-dumping-crimes-in-u-s/)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F04%2F2017-04-27T160747Z_2140944990_RC169A3BC640_RTRMADP_3_USA-ECONOMY.jpg&hash=fd7172f3bad88cf2733e12b3122081cb3ce203c9)
DP World May Develop $1.2 Billion Port at Banana on Congo Coast

March 2, 2018 by Bloomberg

http://gcaptain.com/dp-world-may-develop-1-2-billion-port-at-banana-on-congo-coast/ (http://gcaptain.com/dp-world-may-develop-1-2-billion-port-at-banana-on-congo-coast/)

Trump Administration Sets March Date for Largest Oil and Gas Lease Auction in U.S. History

February 16, 2018 by Reuters

SNIPPET:

The Interior Department said it would offer 77.3 million acres (31.3 mln hectares) offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida for oil and gas development, an auction that includes all available unleased areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The blocks are from 3 to 231 miles (5 to 372 km) offshore and in waters 9 to 11,115 feet (3 to 3,390 meters) deep.

full article:

http://gcaptain.com/trump-administration-sets-march-date-largest-oil-gas-lease-auction-us-history/ (http://gcaptain.com/trump-administration-sets-march-date-largest-oil-gas-lease-auction-us-history/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2Fshutterstock_400578562.jpg&hash=a8156eabb107cd03d59b88d591d656b6d8e29247)

NGO Shipbreaking Platform: 80% of Tonnage Sold for Scrap in 2017 Ended Up on South Asia’s Beaches

February 22, 2018 by Mike Schuler

http://gcaptain.com/ngo-shipbreaking-platform-80-of-tonnage-sold-for-scrap-in-2017-ended-up-on-south-asias-beaches/ (http://gcaptain.com/ngo-shipbreaking-platform-80-of-tonnage-sold-for-scrap-in-2017-ended-up-on-south-asias-beaches/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-031014020143.png&hash=d335639ca99ac947e1274fe54602d96b30b4360e)

U.S. drillers boost oil rig count to highest nearly three years: Baker Hughes

COMMODITIES FEBRUARY 9, 2018 / 1:23 PM

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-rigs-baker-hughes/u-s-drillers-boost-oil-rig-count-to-highest-nearly-three-years-baker-hughes-idUSKBN1FT2MC (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-rigs-baker-hughes/u-s-drillers-boost-oil-rig-count-to-highest-nearly-three-years-baker-hughes-idUSKBN1FT2MC)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2FDJI_0154.jpg&hash=4bcafcb90eaf7e4e27ae88a459bab5f7e40191dc)


PHOTOS: Teekay’s New Icebreaker LNG Carrier ‘Eduard Toll’

November 10, 2017 by Mike Schuler

SNIPPET for Palloy (and anyone else who shares his fantasy filled world view) who claims "you can't say Russia is outputting more FF because because, uh, Russia does not publish their Fossil Fuel production levels".  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) 

Construction of the Eduard Toll began in early 2016 at the DSME shipyard in South Korea.

The vessel is the first of Teekay LNG Partners’ six 172,000 cubic meter ARC7 LNG carrier newbuildings to be constructed for the Yamal LNG project in the Russian Arctic.

Yamal is expected to produce 16.5 million metric tons of LNG annually by 2019, which will require a total of 15 ARC7 icebreaker LNG carriers. The first shipment from the project is planned for this month, with the receiver rumored to be China.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F%5Burl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2FScreen-Shot-2017-11-10-at-11.07.47-AM.png%5Dhttp%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2FScreen-Shot-2017-11-10-at-11.07.47-AM.png%5B%2Furl%5D&hash=32656e8222f1ed2c28d15722fdcb6531ca26cc57)

full article:

http://gcaptain.com/photos-teekays-new-icebreaker-lng-carrier-eduard-toll/ (http://gcaptain.com/photos-teekays-new-icebreaker-lng-carrier-eduard-toll/)

Gulf Coast Shipping Boom: U.S. Oil Exports Pour Into Worldwide Markets

February 8, 2018 by Reuters

SNIPPET for those poor wishful thinking fools who think less fossil fuels are being produced because, uh, we are 'running out' (any day now, yep, sure, right...):

Between 2010 and 2017, U.S. oil production rose from 5.5 million barrels a day to 10 million bpd – approaching a record set in 1970 – as shale fields in west Texas and North Dakota lured massive new drilling investments. That brings national production in line with Saudi Arabia and close to top-producer Russia’s 10.9 million barrels a day.

Saudi Arabia cut output last year as part of OPEC’s 2016 deal to reduce supply – after losing a price war with U.S. shale producers that created a global glut.

Most forecasts show U.S. crude output growing about 500,000 to 600,000 barrels per day through the end of 2018, said David Fyfe, chief economist at global commodity trading firm Gunvor Group in Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. Energy Department is even more optimistic, now expecting growth to rise by 1.2 million bpd – hitting 11 million bpd by year-end.

full article:

http://gcaptain.com/gulf-coast-shipping-boom-us-oil-exports-pour-into-worldwide-markets/ (http://gcaptain.com/gulf-coast-shipping-boom-us-oil-exports-pour-into-worldwide-markets/)

Agelbert NOTE: What does all the above have to do with the claim I have made SEVERAL TIMES (Reality is WORSE than the WORSE CASE BAU RCP-8.5 IPCC scenario! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F301.gif&hash=0291ed4abf2d80e420d1aa00d4eb3c5dd6bbfb53)) , that Palloy always tries to hair split his way around? 

It's all about Radiative Forcing, folks. That "8.5" number on the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) stands for approximately 8.5 watts per square meter.  We are NOW getting MORE THAN THAT. We will NOT get LESS than that for over TWO HUNDRED YEARS, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels TODAY.

Palloy cannot accept that scientifically predicted HARD REALITY. The reason he cannot accept that is because, if he did, he would realize that a civilizational collapse from 'lack of fossil fuels' (LOL!) is not going to do a God Damned THING to slow down the Sixth Great Extinction we are now in. So, he makes happy talk stuff up about the IPCC models that simply DO NOT NOW, and never have, accounted for in order to keep pushing his 'collapse will save us' happy talk. This Happy Talk is nothing but an unprincipled and heinous back door defense of the fossil fuel profit over planet polluting 🦖 status quo , PERIOD.


IPCC RCP 8.5 business as usual scenario is too conservative. ALL the climate models low ball global warming (see below).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-151217143801.png&hash=cea7d138d7e8c34fbb02ac194675918ab9d43056)

Agelbert NOTE: The problem humanity has is NOT lack of hydrocarbons; it is the adamant and totally unreasonable refusal to accept the FACT that we have ALREADY exceeded the "carbon budget" for a FOUR DEGREE C rise in average global temperature, never mind a TWO DEGREE C "target".

The worse case scenario the IPCC came up with (BAU RCP-8.5) is too conservative a projection of the heat increase (it is MUCH, MUCH WORSE! (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg8731/#msg8731)).
Climate Dynamics:

Facing the Harsh Realities of Now

Climate Sensitivity, Target Temperature & the Carbon Budget
Guidelines for Strategic Action

Apollo-Gaia Project

Director: David Wasdell

It is with the utmost concern that we draw your attention to the fundamental methodological flaw in the determination of the value of Climate Sensitivity that is embedded in the Summary for Policymakers of the Scientific Workgroup of the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC. The error was replicated in the Reports of Workgroups 2 and 3 and carried forward into the Synthesis Report. It has been used as the given basis for every subsequent publication. Our radical analysis of Climate Dynamics has generated a new and robust value of "Earth System Sensitivity" which has profound implications for:

֍ The relationship between temperature change and cumulative carbon emissions.

֍ The calculation of "available carbon budget".

֍ The evaluation of the INDCs.

֍ The terms of reference of COP21 in Paris (30 November - 11 December 2015).

֍ The future global strategy for climate stabilisation.
 
Our analysis is published in dual media (triple-screen video and fully illustrated PDF). These can be used separately or in combination.


Video of the above and Table of Contents at link below.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017143841.jpeg&hash=21f142befe4ed82f10ef0bdba11c22bbd3051289) Agelbert NOTE: If you care about humanity, you will watch it and pass it on to friends and family. If, because you have been paid or propagandized to think the continued burning of fossil fuels is "good for mankind", you either don't watch it, or do watch it so you can to claim "it is global warming hoax" propaganda (or if if you are more "sophisticated", like certain pseudo-scientists (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whydidyouwearthat.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F01%2Ftumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg&hash=1ddbeb4da161820b2cf932e6f5f740e80f5bada6) who claim IPCC scenarios "have taken all the possible warming feedback loops into consideration in the models and we can keep burning fossil fuels for a few more decades"), you doom yourself and future generations (i.e. you are willfully stupid).

Don't be stupid. The fossil fuel industry murdering crooks and liars do not own you.

http://www.apollo-gaia.org/harsh-realities-of-now.html (http://www.apollo-gaia.org/harsh-realities-of-now.html)

(https://rlv.zcache.co.uk/no_planet_b_round_sticker-rcb9b00ae55034b85b5cb888d8eb0a2c6_v9waf_8byvr_324.jpg)


Anyone telling you that fossil fuels are "running out" needs to read the published figures from the oil and gas producing nations of this planet. The emissions are INCREASING, NOT "leveling off or decreasing". PLUS, tropical rain forests AND permafrost melt are now ADDING to the carbon emissions! GHG is GHG. no matter where it is coming from! You are NOT going to turn this heat engine off easily. Several heat adding feedbacks we have triggered by burning too much fossil fuels are NOT in our control, PERIOD.

Where in God's good earth these fossil fueler wishful thinking FOOLS think that we are somehow going to get a handle on this massive heating NOW IN THE Global Warming radiative forcing INERTIA pipeline, even if we stopped all hydrocarbon burning today (rather than the present tragic reality of increased burning), is a mystery to me. They certainly DO NOT get this idea from empirical evidence or sound science. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

This stubborn clinging to a happy talk myth about some "quick recovery from fossil fuel burning caused globle warming" is a testament to the extremes people in denial of an extinction threat reality will go to.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

And for the propagandist liars that know the truth and push the happy talk for money, I can only say that they are greater fools than those naive folks that believe the fossil fuel fascist funded happy talk lies and distortions. These bought and paid for propagandists are behaving as STUPIDLY as any person possibly can. You STUPID, MONEY LOVING BASTARDS deserve the Darwin Evolutionary Dead End Award.

(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg06.deviantart.net%2Fbb6a%2Fi%2F2011%2F120%2Ff%2F6%2Fcorporate_pollution_by_jakejames-d3512u1.jpg&hash=30ead896a22d9a93df54de278d32cb3822d4a3ce)
ENJOY THE OIL AND GAS BOOM, SUCKERS (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The Fossil Fuelers 🦖  DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F176.gif&hash=121533221905789c6b8d57a9603883266d349266)



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 05, 2018, 01:09:31 pm
Agelbert NOTE: The story of a 7.5 billion dollar hole in the ground with a lot of liars on top.  >:(

How Lies, Greed, & Mismanagement Blew Up The “Clean Coal” Myth

March 5th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

SNIPPET:

Clean coal. It was supposed to be the alchemist’s dream, the real world equivalent of spinning straw into gold. Or making a silk purse from a sow’s ear, if you are a Linda Ronstadt fan. What clean coal is all about is taking lignite, the lowest grade of coal, often called brown coal, and putting it into a pressurized chamber, then heating it to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit under great pressure. The resulting gas is collected and used to make electricity, sequestering most of the carbon emissions from the lignite at the same time.

Carbon Capture Is The Key
(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2014/12/itQWX4c8EeMc.jpg)
Kemper clean (NOT) coal plant,

Kemper clean coal plant, If it worked, the clean coal and carbon capture process would not only make electricity, it would do so with the lowest carbon footprint of any fossil fuel, including natural gas. It would be a two-fer, a daily double, and a twin killing all rolled into one. The carbon capture piece of the puzzle is what attracted attention from people around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Norway.

According to an article in The Guardian, Jukka Uosukainen, the United Nations director for the Climate Technology Center and Network, toured the site of the proposed plant in Kemper County, Mississippi in 2014 and said, “I’m impressed,” before adding, “Maybe using coal in the future is possible.”

Clean Coal Technology Fails — Big Time

The problem is, the clean coal technology, which was helped along by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and research, doesn’t work. The problems started when the first of two high pressure, high temperature gasifier units arrived. During testing, moisture trapped in the concrete liner turned to steam and exploded, ruining the unit. No one had any realistic idea how to fix the problem.

Later, the 174-foot tall concrete sphere where the coal would be stored began to crack almost as soon as it was completed. Soon, there was a hole in the dome a large as small house. The entire structure had to be torn down and rebuilt. The original budget of around $2.5 billion arrived at a decade ago ballooned over time to more than $7.5 billion before the Southern Company called a halt to the project last year.

Lies And Deception Abound

But that’s not the real story. Not all new technologies are able to make the leap from the laboratory to the real world. What is really at issue here is the lies, double dealing, deliberate misrepresentations, and obfuscations carried out at the highest levels of the Southern Company with the aid of Mississippi officials. In America today, nuns protesting insane immigration policies get arrested and charged with crimes.  Officials involved in covering up a massive scandal that bilked stockholders and utility customers out of billions are allowed to retire quietly to their oceanside mansions. The United States has a legal system. What it lacks is any semblance of a justice system.

As the first concrete dome was being torn down and before it was rebuilt, Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Company, was telling a bald faced lie to investors. During an April 24, 2013 earnings call he told them that “tremendous progress” was being made at the construction site and that “the scheduled in-service date” was feasible. He added that most of the key components for the facility — including the dome — were already “in place.” They were not.

Bureaucracy Fails

The Mississippi Public Service Commission was part of the problem as well. On March 15, 2012, the Mississippi supreme court ruled in favor of a petition by The Sierra Club to shut the project down. Shortly thereafter, the PSC renewed the company’s permission to build the plant, effectively bypassing the supreme court ruling. But it insisted on an absolutely final, no wiggle room, hard cap on the cost of the project of $2.8 billion. The company was way beyond that limit at the time. The next few years were taken up as much with cooking the books to keep the PSC in the dark as continuing construction on the Kemper plant.

The Guardian reviewed more than 5,000 pages of documents and e-mails in order to put its story together and we encourage you to read its entire exposé if  you want all the gory details. They also interviewed several current and former engineers who worked on the Kemper program. The story that unfolds details in exquisite detail the pressure put on those people to fudge the numbers to keep the state authorities from pulling the plug.

Lying From The Start

One of the key components to the clean coal plant — which would feature more than 900,000 feet of piping — was the availability rate, the percentage of the time it could be expected to be up and running versus down for maintenance and repairs. The Kemper facility needed to have an availability rate of 80% in order to be financially successful.

An independent audit requested and paid for by Southern Company just as construction was getting underway found the actual availability rate would be more in the range of 30% to 45% during the first 3 to 5 years of operation with the 80% figure not likely until at least 10 years out — if ever. Later, an internal review came to much the same conclusion. None of that information was shared with federal or state officials or investors. Instead, Southern Company employees were pressured to alter key documents to make it appear as thought things were moving along as planned.

Incentivizing Greed

A large part of the Kemper clean coal debacle involved the way utility companies earn their living. In many parts of the country, they are able to attract investors because they are guaranteed a designated rate of return on the investments they make in power generation facilities and infrastructure. Want to make more money? Spend more money. It’s easy. The law guarantees a fixed rate of return whether your investments are wise or not. Great for utility company executives and their generous compensation plans. Not so great for the members of the public who see their rates increase to cover the costs of those expansionist policies.

Mississippi and several of its neighboring states have only themselves to blame. Like giving free money to compulsive gamblers, they passed laws in the early years of this century that allowed utility companies to start earning their financial rewards before projects were even completed. This “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” philosophy ratcheted up the incentives to spend big by Southern Company and other utilities.

Full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/05/lies-greed-mismanagement-blew-clean-coal-myth/

Agelbert COMMENT:  These scam artists never stop doing what they do. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) once noted their mens rea modus operandi in regard to gold mines.
Quote
"A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top."

The "Carbon Capture" Technology is, and always will be, baloney. When they tell you a nuclear submarine can keep the atmosphere below 350 PPM of carbon dioxide, THEN, and ONLY then, can it be said that mankind has the carbon capture technology to keep us from becoming crispy critters from Catastrophic Climate Change.

At present, nuclear submarine CO2 scrubbing technology can achieve around 8,000 PPM of CO2 levels, and that for about six months, at which time they are forced to surface to keep the CO2 levels from harming the crew.

When the fossil fuelers tell you that carbon capture and sequestration is doable with present technology, please show them the following meter reading:

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121829.png&hash=035f25ddb6d065f1533ce03c1c07f5fddcbbc83c)

As if that wasn't enough to warrant a crash program to get back to 350 PPM of CO2, the methane bomb is orders of magnitude worse.

Eminent Russian Scientist Dr. Natalia Shakhova (International Arctic Research Center) (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg9195/#msg9195)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 05, 2018, 07:21:30 pm
Short Video where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 🕊 Exposes Nathan Thurm Fossil Fueler 🦖 Crook

https://youtu.be/FOLBQxk72NY
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 08, 2018, 02:53:11 pm
The Fossil Fuel Mania Insanity Spreads (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fgaah.gif&hash=e43fa6be4258ba495007b2bbb3e7dd2f60288fcd)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

In the 03/07/2018 edition:

U.S. Navy Releases Proposal Request for Coast Guard’s New Heavy Polar Icebreaker

Dominican Republic to Join Caribbean Energy Exploration Rush

Pemex 😈 Invites Partners Offshore

Does Galveston Need A $14 Billion Storm Barrier? Agelbert NOTE: I increased the font on this one because it is TYPICAL Fossil Fuel Fascist 🐉🦕🦖(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Facigar.gif&hash=dc9dccf92c6c88c99611b06c86d92629d69f2978) socializing the costs  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F2z6in9g.gif&hash=771b084a0f186d9cc14f31defd98a6c90b69b84f) of Climate change while pocketing the heavily subsidized by we-the-people welfare queen profits 💵 from the very same crap that is causing those Climate change costs! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300115234833.gif&hash=20e82f36f361174e6f8f07e11c36330842502bab)

http://gcaptain.com/galveston-need-14-billion-storm-barrier/ (http://gcaptain.com/galveston-need-14-billion-storm-barrier/)

U.S. Navy Releases Proposal Request for Coast Guard’s New Heavy Polar Icebreaker

By gCaptain on Mar 06, 2018 07:08 pm

uscgc polar starThe U.S. Navy, in collaboration with the U.S. Coast Guard, has released a request for proposal for the advance procurement and detail design work for the USCG’s first new heavy polar icebreaker in more than 40 years. The RFP, which was issued March 2, also includes options for the detail design and construction (DD&C) of […]

The post U.S. Navy Releases Proposal Request for Coast Guard’s New Heavy Polar Icebreaker appeared first on gCaptain.

Read in browser » http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navy-releases-proposal-request-for-coast-guards-new-heavy-polar-icebreaker/ (http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navy-releases-proposal-request-for-coast-guards-new-heavy-polar-icebreaker/)


Dominican Republic to Join Caribbean Energy 🦖 Exploration Rush

By Bloomberg on Mar 06, 2018 04:11 pm

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Photo: By Brian McDonald / Shutterstock

SNIPPET:

By Ezra Fieser (Bloomberg) — The Dominican Republic expects to draw interest from energy titans BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. when it opens the country to natural gas and oil exploration for the first time later this month, joining a push by governments across the Caribbean to develop energy production.

The government plans to open two land blocks for oil exploration and two offshore blocks for natural gas exploratory drilling by the end of March, said Energy and Mining Minister Isa Conde in an interview in Santo Domingo. An Exxon spokeswoman said in an email that the company does not comment on future business plans. BP did not respond to an email seeking comment.

“This is completely virgin territory for us,” Conde said. “But we would not be going forward if we had not received assurances from international companies 🦖 and investors 🦀 that there was substantial interest.’’

Full article:  :(

http://gcaptain.com/dominican-republic-join-caribbean-energy-exploration-rush/ (http://gcaptain.com/dominican-republic-join-caribbean-energy-exploration-rush/)

Pemex ☠️ Invites Partners 🦀 Offshore

March 6, 2018 by Reuters

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Photo by curraheeshutter, Shutterstock

SNIPPET:

by Marianna Parraga (Reuters) – Mexico’s state-run Pemex [PEMX.UL] might bring partners into two heavy crude oilfields in the Gulf’s shallow waters, the company’s chief said on Tuesday, move that could help ease a lack of heavy barrels in the Atlantic basin.

After nine bidding rounds in just three years and a presidential election scheduled in July, Mexico’s oil regulator has started a campaign to convince Pemex and foreign investors that this is the moment to develop much needed extra-heavy oil reserves.

“We are looking to increase production, including heavy crude, so we might put on the table some farmouts mainly for those fields that need secondary recovery strategies,” Pemex’s CEO Carlos Trevino said during a news conference during the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

On Monday, Trevino said Pemex was looking for partners for its deepwater Nobilis-Maximino and Ayin-Batsil projects.

Full farticle: 🤬


http://gcaptain.com/pemex-invites-partners-offshore/ (http://gcaptain.com/pemex-invites-partners-offshore/)

😨 🔫 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2018, 02:15:51 pm
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God's Reps 🕊 Are Not Into Offshore Drilling

Brian Kahn

March 8, 2018 5:04pm Filed to: ANSWERING TO A HIGHER POWER   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

First Florida Governor Rick Scott asked for a waiver. Then other governors jumped on board. Now the good Lord has weighed in through earthly representatives to register opposition to the Interior Department’s plans to drill large swaths of the oceans around the U.S.

On Thursday, a group of more than 300 priests, nuns, reverends, and other men and women of the cloth sent a letter to Zinke and his boss Donald Trump. In it, they said they couldn’t support a plan that “brings unacceptable risks to God’s oceans and coastal communities.”

Currently, 94 percent of U.S. coastal waters are closed to drilling. The Zinke 😈 plan would radically alter that math, opening almost every corner U.S. oceans and the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration ☠️.

There are political, economic, and environmental reasons for opposing the plan. The letter touches on some of those and couches them in a religious context. Its signatories are members of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a group of religious leaders from various faiths who see the planet as a resource to be cherished rather than ravished. They explained why drilling in the oceans is a terrible idea and why the administration should be focusing its energy efforts on renewables instead:

Quote
God created the oceans with an abundance of life and, as stewards of God’s earth, we should work to preserve and protect God’s marine creation. As people of faith, we also uphold our duty to love our neighbors. Oceans provide food sources and livelihoods for millions in the U.S. and globally.

We urge the Trump Administration to focus on investments in renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, as well as maximize our energy efficiency, instead of looking to expand fossil fuel exploration in God’s ocean. God entrusts us to be good stewards of God’s oceans and coasts. We should honor this sacred duty and position our country as a global leader in energy stewardship.

We ask you to join us as God’s steward of the oceans and to respect the local residents, businesses, and millions of Americans who have already made clear their support for preserving, not drilling off our nation’s beaches.

This isn’t the first time religious leaders have waded into the politics around resource extraction. Late last year, a dozen nuns from the Sisters of Mercy sent a letter to Congress asking representatives and senators to not open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. And then there’s Pope Francis himself who has shared a consistently pro-environmental protection message with his billion-plus followers.

The nuns lost that battle, but the fight over offshore drilling has some powerful constituencies pushing back against the plan from both sides of the aisle. In addition to the bipartisan group of governors asking for waivers, 200 bipartisan state representatives sent a letter registering their displeasure with the plan as well.

The only constituency that seems on board with this plan is the oil and gas industry 🦖, which is the only group the Trump 🦀 administration consistently  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fd2.gif&hash=98d536bf1047a88ef91e9c45e08b725347c9fe13) 🦖 thinks about. But clergy members are trying to remind them there’s a higher power they might just have to answer to.

https://earther.com/gods-reps-are-not-into-offshore-drilling-1823625382

(https://ofcommonsense.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/free-choice-not-consequences.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2018, 07:30:49 pm
You know what the number one destroyer of net worth is?

Divorce.

People work like crazy, try to get ahead, make some gains, and then more times than not  it all goes up in smoke when they pay attorneys and courts to get them out of the marriage that they just knew was going to last forever. And they then repeat the same mistake a second or a third time.
I find this thread quite extraordinary.  How are the government going to provide everyone with affordable gasoline for another 16 years? How are they going to provide electricity to keep the markets operating, so that you can sell your shares and bonds?  What will be the Collapse that has happened, even though BAU seems to be carrying on as before?  No wonder everyone here is bored with all this collapse talk.  There's no sense of urgency.

This is all fantasyland stuff.  You will be happy enough to barter a 1 oz gold coin for a loaf of bread if you are hungry enough (it only takes a week without food) without worrying about whether you got 3%/year advantage out of it.

16 years !!!

Well, as you know I basically agree with you on this, which is why the plan I propose is weighted heavily toward hard goods.

The folks who talk about "retirement savings" are first off ones who are high income earners, and second they believe in (hope for) a "slow catabolic collapse" of the JMG Mr. Wizard variety.  A slow winding down of the economy but not a complete and immediate collapse of the monetary system.

RE

That's crap. Lots of lower middle class people save for retirement. Not burger flippers, no. But you're wrong on your assumptions that there aren't many with some kind of employer provided retirement plan. Millions of people have the opportunity to participate in those and they do. They just tend to make bad decisions, because they don't understand the game.
I find this thread quite extraordinary.  How are the government going to provide everyone with affordable gasoline for another 16 years? How are they going to provide electricity to keep the markets operating, so that you can sell your shares and bonds?  What will be the Collapse that has happened, even though BAU seems to be carrying on as before?  No wonder everyone here is bored with all this collapse talk.  There's no sense of urgency.

This is all fantasyland stuff.  You will be happy enough to barter a 1 oz gold coin for a loaf of bread if you are hungry enough (it only takes a week without food) without worrying about whether you got 3%/year advantage out of it.

16 years !!!

BAU is relevant to all our lives, including yours, until the day it all seizes up. I wouldn't be surprised if you don't live to see it, even though I know you'd very much like to.

We all understand the problems around oil. There are many reasons a lack of cheap oil can result in a collapse, but the oil itself will not run out in 16 years. What we are witnessing right now appears to be a political will to allow whatever oil is left anywhere to be extracted with a minimum of interference. All environmental concerns are being ignored. Finance reality is being suspended to allow financing of very questionable projects. Next I expect there will be open warfare to claim rights to the fields that are not yet depleted. I think it's very hard to say when it all finally goes off the tracks, and until it does, it's best to consider that it might be longer than you think.

 I think it could easily be a decade or even two before Peak Oil starts to have the kind of effects that would prevent the US government from taking money from some people and giving it to other people.

It's easy for you to think differently. Your future is shorter than people the age of my kids, and you have no one besides yourself to worry about.

You are missing my main point altogether, which is that retirement plans are a tax dodge for working people, one that helps people hold on to their hard-earned money...that happens in the present, not the future.



Eddie, to your last three posts, I can only say the following about every word you posted!

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FHjPbLbmep2aJO%2Fgiphy.gif&hash=3c7f7703f00cb341d3e9bdba607208d4204a294c)

The CEO of Shell (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf) just said that by 2050, they will be producing more gas then than oil now. He drives an EV (LOL!). What Palloy cannot wrap his head around is the fact that Climate Change is the ONLY thing that is going to cause a collapse of civilization simply because, as you said, and I have written about for the last year or so, the mania for MORE fossil fuels has been completely freed from any environmental concerns.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2018, 07:38:41 pm
COVERAGE OF CERAWEEKMARCH 7, 2018 / 11:34 AM / 2 DAYS AGO

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 Shell's gas production could be triple oil by 2050: CEO

SNIPPET:

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell could boost its share of natural gas production to triple that of oil in order to meet self-imposed goals to halve carbon emissions by 2050, Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said on Wednesday.

Full farticle:


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ceraweek-energy-shell/shells-gas-production-could-be-triple-oil-by-2050-ceo-idUSKCN1GJ2H6 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ceraweek-energy-shell/shells-gas-production-could-be-triple-oil-by-2050-ceo-idUSKCN1GJ2H6)

Palloy, you are the one in fantasyland if you think anything but Catastrophic Climate Change caused collapse will stop Shell, Exxon, Chevron, etc. et al from continuing to DO what they DO.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 09, 2018, 07:46:55 pm
I don't know if peak Oil will make the credit system tank. It could. I do see climate change as the more ultimately dangerous horseman of the apocalyse, because it keeps going after the inputs stop.

Peak Oil might or might not end BAU in the next few years or months. But if we are unlucky and it does not, then that makes it even more likely that climate change will render much if not all the planet uninhabitable. Nobody escapes that.

Palloy is convinced PO will take care of climate change. I am definitely not in that camp. I'd love for him to be right however. It's a lesser problem.

I get it AG.


You and me both hope Palloy is right.

It's just those reality based dots, that I agree you certainly do get, that argue otherwise.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 14, 2018, 07:41:51 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

March 14, 2016

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Tillerson’s 🦖 Setting, Koch Star Pompeo 🦀 and Kudlow 🐊 On The Rise

Back in October of 2017, the world found out that Department of State head Rex Tillerson called President Donald Trump “a fu ck ing moron” in a July meeting. It apparently took Trump a while to either build up the courage to act, or remember his catchphrase. Yesterday, right after Tillerson criticized Russia, Trump did the decent thing  ;)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)  and took to twitter to fire Tillerson via tweet, with no warning or explanation. (And when a top State Department appointee and Tillerson aide contradicted the White House’s claim otherwise, he too was fired.)

While he was a moderating force on Trump, Tillerson 🐽 will hardly be missed at State. Turns out he ran the Department like he did Exxon: poorly. The question is, will Exxon finish paying for Tillerson’s mistakes before the State Department gets itself back up to speed after Tillerson destroyed it? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desismileys.com%2Fsmileys%2Fdesismileys_6656.gif&hash=2038f9b45636a93e5c0f4ee508ce29778fe9e9b4)

Either way, Trump has tapped Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson, who holds the record for “the all-time biggest recipient of campaign funding from Koch Industries… and their affiliates   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6).” Prior to being Trump’s CIA director, Pompeo represented Wichita, Kansas, which is also home to Koch Industries, making him both figuratively and literally the Kochs’ congressman. Certainly that had no bearing on his 2012 Politico op-ed whining that everyone should “Stop harassing the Koch brothers.”

In an ideal world, the US diplomatic corps as a force for defending the silenced and marginalized from their corporate and state oppressors. It’s comforting to know this charge will now be led by a man who isn’t afraid of speaking up on behalf of a population as oppressed and under-resourced as the Kochs.

Needless to say, deniers are thrilled with the news that one of theirs is stepping up and an alarmist stepping down. (Remember that Exxon is part of “the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement" even though it’s given millions to denial organizations after it promised to stop.) Myron Ebell, of Koch-funded CEI, told Alex Kaufman of HuffPo that the move is “good news for us,” and that Ebell expects “very good things from him at the State Department.”

In other “replacing disappointingly ineffective, relatively moderate, pro-Paris agreement voices with Koch cranks” news, rumor has it Trump is replacing erstwhile economic advisor Gary Cohn with former Democrat, Reason editor, Reagan advisor and cable news pundit Larry Kudlow. Stephen Moore 🐍  of Koch-funded 🦕 Heritage Foundation is as happy about that possibility as Ebell 🦍 is of Pompeo, telling E&E that Kudlow is his “first choice, for sure.” As E&E points to a number of examples of Kudlow’s anti-climate stance, including praising a Paris pull-out, his preference makes sense. 

If Kudlow’s selected to serve as Trump’s lead economic council, he’ll join plenty of other Koch adherents already staffing the swamp. While Kudlow 🐊 may not be quite as kochzy with the Koch brothers as Pompeo 🦀, he too has bravely offered up a “Defense Of The Vilified-By-The-Left Koch Brothers.”  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2F165fs373950.gif&hash=ad797fcc08a061d3ae50ee49ccd9f3d517fb7496)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Ftissue.gif&hash=f8d05db8e11569882e0effbdd719e2b2e95c6785)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fshame.gif&hash=88b5b0c8644862ef4930e3c7e3556db6c3bf600f)


With Tillerson and Cohn, Trump was not exactly taking the high road, but with these new Koch cronies, he’s definitely taking Kudlow road. 

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 21, 2018, 08:39:59 pm
 (https://wiki-gateway.eudic.net/wikipedia_en/I/m/Center_for_Biological_Diversity_logo.jpg)

March 19, 2018

Trump Administration 🦀 Offers 77 Million Acres in Gulf of Mexico to Oil Industry 🦕🦖

The Trump administration is holding the biggest offshore oil and gas lease auction in U.S. history Wednesday, offering all 77 million acres of unleased, available federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The sale comes as administration officials seek to rescind drilling safety rules approved after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, reduce royalties paid by oil companies, and expand offshore drilling into every ocean in the country.

"Trump is selling off our oceans and selling out coastal communities and marine life to the oil industry," said Kristen Monsell, oceans program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Whales, dolphins and Gulf seafood are already marinating in oil spills and industry wastewater. More drilling and less regulation will make the next Deepwater Horizon disaster only a matter of time."

The Center for Biological Diversity last month sued the Trump administration for failing to evaluate how oil wastewater dumping in the Gulf harms wildlife.

Oil companies have drilled more than 52,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico and installed more than 7,000 platforms, many of which are inactive and still littering the Gulf. A recent New York Times investigation found dangerous conditions on Gulf platforms and taxpayers being left to cover the costs of cleanups and decommissioning of old drilling infrastructure.

Whales, sea turtles and other imperiled wildlife are being harmed by offshore oil drilling and exploration. A federal study conducted as part of the settlement of a lawsuit involving the Center for Biological Diversity found more than 30 million marine mammals in the Gulf would be harmed by seismic oil and gas exploration.

Oil spills are a routine part of offshore drilling. The Center for Biological Diversity has calculated that drilling the offshore parcels being offered in today's lease could result in about 2,700 oil spills dumping more than 16.7 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over the life of the lease, based on industry data. That doesn't include catastrophic spills such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 oil workers and thousands of marine animals, from which the Gulf still hasn't recovered.

The federal government also allows toxic fracking chemicals and other oil wastewater to be dumped into the Gulf without regard for its harm to wildlife. Federal documents show more than 75 billion gallons of oil wastewater were dumped into the Gulf in 2014 alone.

The federal government approved more than 1,500 fracks in offshore oil wells in the Gulf in one recent five-year period. Center for Biological Diversity scientists have found that at least 10 toxic chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking could kill or harm several marine species, including marine mammals and fish.

"Trump is turning over Gulf waters to oil companies with no regard for the devastating consequences," Monsell said. "This is a bad deal for people and the planet."

https://www.ecowatch.com/gulf-of-mexico-oil-leases-2550890044.html

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 26, 2018, 05:59:23 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

March 26, 2018

Mike Pompeo 🦀: A Koch Brothers 🦕 🦖  Ally Just Became a Global Threat

If the Senate confirms longtime climate denier Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, it would put a Koch Brothers proxy in one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government. Pompeo's "history of business subservience" doesn't bode well for climate policy, says Greenpeace researcher Connor Gibson

https://youtu.be/gli7lYFcGYc

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21417
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 30, 2018, 02:47:50 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealnews.com%2Ft2%2Ftemplates%2Fgk_twn%2Fimages%2Flogo3.png&hash=4b5cf976827a8d50b9a86730b78230c107b3cf62)

March 30, 2018

Big Oil (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) and Climate Science (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fearthhug.gif&hash=3abcf70466f34337f2d702ebd9e02c650d5c4c20)on Trial

Climate change science is basis of San Francisco and Oakland's legal case against Big Oil companies, to make them pay billions for rising public cost of rising sea level due to global warming. In a surprise move, Chevron admits humans are causing climate change but says the company is not liable (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pic4ever.com%2Fimages%2Fugly004.gif&hash=c56db4280057389afd154a1cb4057410151579c8)

https://youtu.be/pV06eBVYcUA

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21481%27%20style=%27color:#000;


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fslideplayer.com%2Fslide%2F5842021%2F19%2Fimages%2F8%2FMatthew%2B18%3A7%2BWoe%2Bunto%2Bthe%2Bworld%2Bbecause%2Bof%2Boffences%21%2Bfor%2Bit%2Bmust%2Bneeds%2Bbe%2Bthat%2Boffences%2Bcome%3B%2Bbut%2Bwoe%2Bto%2Bthat%2Bman%2Bby%2Bwhom%2Bthe%2Boffence%2Bcometh%21.jpg&hash=77e791ed0dbe3bd9aae7071fe3af1d96a534a92d)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 06, 2018, 02:17:32 pm
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

April 6, 2018

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For the EPA, Denier Science is A-OK to Roll Back Clean Car Standards

The EPA has the authority to decide whether the Obama era Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards are appropriate. Suprising few who have been following Trump’s denier-filled swamp, on Monday, the agency officially declared “no.”

We’ve known for some time that the EPA would challenge the current CAFE standards, which call for passenger cars for model years 2022-25 to meet a fleet average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Less of a given were the reasons the EPA would cite for the rollback.

The EPA expressed concern this week for consumer cost, choice, and safety, but the agency’s decision comes after months of lobbying on the part of the Auto Alliance. Since Trump took office, the Auto Alliance — which represents 12 major automakers and 70% of all car and light truck sales in the U.S. — has been pestering the administration to rollback current CAFE standards.

A month into the Trump 🦀 administration, the CEO of the Auto Alliance, Mitch Bainwol, filed a request with Administrator Pruitt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) to let the EPA know the Alliance’s strong preference that the CAFE standards be deemed inappropriate at the midterm evaluation, which is what transpired this past Monday.

In February 2018, the Alliance submitted a report — written by industry shills with ties to the Heartland Institute and General Motors — to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is responsible for proposing new CAFE rules. The report called into question the impacts of climate change and tailpipe pollutants in an effort to undercut the need for fuel economy regulation.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a great summary of the strategy the Alliance report used to mislead on the science. Some highlights:

֍ The papers cited to support weakening environmental protections are often paid for by industry and/or published in journals with weak peer-review standards and disclosure policies.

֍ Two authors cited by the Alliance (Stanley Young and Tony Cox) are now in advisory roles for the EPA as part of the administration’s move toward soliciting their advice from industry-funded scientists.

֍ The report cherry-picks studies to weaken the case for acting on climate and reducing emissions from vehicles, either by selecting outliers or misconstruing the findings of the research.

This week, in response to EPA’s CAFE standard decision, prominent news outlets devoted editorial space to some of the same industry shills promoting automakers interests.

Marlo Lewis 👹 of the Competitive Enterprise institute 😈has an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that “cutting tailpipe emission [is] not that effective against global warming.”

Sam Kazman  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) of CEI and Heartland 😈has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where he tries to make the case, scientifically, that “bigger, heavier vehicles are safer.” Ironically, the op-ed cited language from a 1992 court case, Competitive Enterprise Institute v. NHTSA, to claim that bad science was used by NHTSA to create strict fuel efficiency standards. What the op-ed failed to mention, of course, was that the courts ruled in favor of NHTSA, saying that the agency had "sufficient support" to uphold its stricter standards.

All of these efforts support the reality that automakers 🐉🦕🦖 want weaker standards and fewer environmental protections to protect their profits. By pushing for weaker standards that would increase the many and great risks of climate change, automakers indicate they only care about consumer choice, safety, and cost inasmuch as these affect their bottom line.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 10, 2018, 03:03:28 pm
(https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/all/themes/clew/logo.png)

April 10, 2018

Study denounces German coal & nuclear subsidies / Dirty diesel exports

#Climate & CO2 #Cost & Prices #Policy

Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Study offers critical look at German government energy subsidies

A new report published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy examines the use and costs of government subsidies in German industry, including controversial areas such as coal production, nuclear waste disposal or industry rebates on energy taxes. The report, written by Claus-Friedrich Laaser and Astrid Rosenschon, points out that once introduced, subsidies often burden the state budget for decades.

In 2017, the federal government spent 2.6 billion euros to subsidise hard coal mining despite the fact the government had agreed a decade ago to end unprofitable hard coal production.

While coal subsidies will end this year, the government will continue to pay for the environmental damage caused by coal mining, as well as to support miners, the authors say. Similarly, taxpayers are still funding nuclear power despite the nuclear phase-out.

To date, the disposal of radioactive waste has cost the federal government some 150 million euros a year on average. The researchers also criticise “contradictory” subsidies, such as energy tax exemptions for energy-intensive industries.

These amount to “a subsidy of production procedures that are especially damaging for the environment or use a lot of energy,” meaning that a full tax on these companies could be particularly effective.

The current exemption system “renders the entire energy and environmental policy absurd,” the authors write.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/study-denounces-german-coal-nuclear-subsidies-dirty-diesel-exports

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 16, 2018, 01:59:12 pm
Canada’s Prime Minister 🐒: We’ll Offer Aid To Ensure That Kinder Morgan 🦕 Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline Expansion Gets Built

April 16th, 2018 by James Ayre

The Kinder Morgan Canada Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project will go ahead even if the federal government has to offer financial aid, despite strong resistance from the government of British Columbia and activists there, according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The comments follow comments from Kinder Morgan Canada execs that the firm may end up walking away from the project if greater clarity isn’t provided about the legal path forward — that being a reference to efforts by the government of the province of British Columbia to block the C$7.4 billion project on environmental grounds.

To explain that a bit more, the idea of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project is to increase the capacity of the pipeline in question (3 times over), and thereby improve its selling position. As it stands, Canada is mostly dependent upon the USA as an oil buyer because of a lack of pipeline capacity to the Pacific coast — and thus sells much of its crude oil at a discount as compared to the benchmark CLc1. (Much of Canada’s oil is extracted in the inland province of Alberta.)

“Construction will go ahead,” stated Trudeau. “I have instructed the minister of finance to initiate formal financial discussions with Kinder Morgan, the result of which will be to remove the uncertainty overhanging the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.”

He then referred to the pipeline expansion as “a vital strategic interest to Canada.”

Trudeau also obliquely referenced earlier talk of the federal government taking a stake in the expansion project (in order to support it), by noting that “we are actively pursuing legislative options that will assert and reinforce the government of Canada’s jurisdiction in this matter.”

The above comments were made to reporters following an emergency summit with the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia that Trudeau took part in.

So, why is the Canadian government now seemingly pursuing what could be considered to be a “bailout” for an oil giant? Reportedly due to: worries that already declining foreign investment levels could fall even further if the expansion project doesn’t go through, and strong pressure from the connected business community.

Informally, I’ll also speculate here that officials representing China have told Canada’s federal government to make sure that the expansion happens. Obviously, I can’t prove such speculation, but “foreign investment” when it comes to Canada largely refers to China, and how much autonomy does Canada even have at this point?

The reality is that Canada is pretty much dependent on foreign investment and on its oil industry for the maintenance of its current way of life. Without both, the country is facing a steep decline in its average standard of living.

Reuters provides a bit more on the immediate situation: “Although Trudeau’s Liberal government could invoke emergency powers to ensure the project goes ahead, that would most likely anger voters in British Columbia and cost the Liberals support in a federal election in October 2019.

“Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who also attended the talks in Ottawa, said she was convinced the expansion would be built if the financial assistance deal could be worked out. … British Columbia Premier John Horgan said after the meeting he had not changed his position that the risks of a spill from the pipeline were too great.

“Horgan wants Ottawa to refer the matter to the Supreme Court but the Liberals are not interested, saying it is already clear the federal government has jurisdiction over the project. Horgan also said he would ask the courts in British Columbia to make clear how much powers the province had to protect the provincial environment. Federal officials complain this is a time-wasting tactic.”

On that note, some 200+ protestors have been arrested by police at Trans Mountain facilities in British Columbia over the last few months, despite official opposition to the expansion project. That, taken together with the current stalemate between the provincial government and the federal one, brings to clear contrast just how large the cultural differences are between the west and east coasts of Canada.

As a reminder here, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are continuing to rise at a rapid clip — due to the fact that fossil fuel usage remains right around all-time highs. If anthropogenic climate weirding and warming is to be limited to any real degree, then oil use will have to fall drastically within just the next few years.


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https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/16/canadas-prime-minister-well-offer-aid-to-ensure-that-kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-oil-pipeline-expansion-gets-built/

Agelbert COMMMENT:
Kinder Morgan is being welfare queened by the Trudeau fossil fuel industry puppet.  👎👎👎

This is the corrupt legacy of fossil fuel profit over planet for the last century. 

The Catastrophic climate change bill is coming due. We will all pay for the suicidal fossil fuel welfare queening stupidiity.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060714185706.gif&hash=bd19395e80fdeaff0e65411e22dd6ff03ffde1c3)

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Quote
eveee  > Agelbert • 10 minutes ago

This needs to be stopped. Protest now. Really. When else? After? You'll be waiting the rest of your life. Its now or never.

Fossil Fuel Welfare Queening Stupidity.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 16, 2018, 02:20:26 pm
Canada’s Prime Minister 🐒: We’ll Offer Aid To Ensure That Kinder Morgan 🦕 Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline Expansion Gets Built

April 16th, 2018 by James Ayre

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/16/canadas-prime-minister-well-offer-aid-to-ensure-that-kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-oil-pipeline-expansion-gets-built/

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2018/04/Justin-Trudeau.jpg)
🐒

Quote
eveee • 29 minutes ago
Wipe that smile off Trudeau. You are a turncoat and a slimy weasel.


•Reply•Share ›
Avatar
Steve_Ohr >  eveee • 26 minutes ago
I'm disappointed as well, but restricting supply is largely irrelevant.

Reducing demand is the real fight, and Trudeau leads on that.

The carbon tax is vastly more important. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251)


•Reply•Share ›
Avatar
eveee >  Steve_Ohr • 11 minutes ago
Yes, but I can't stand political weasels. He has not loyalty to anything, not his own words, and I don't believe he has only real loyalty to the environment.

Coal, oil pipelines, those are our biggest problems. He's not helping.

I doubt it will have any effect on oil prices. Meanwhile, GW dries the forest and the fires burned the oil sands region. Whats it going to take?


•Reply•Share ›

Avatar
agelbert > Steve_Ohr • 8 minutes ago
The problem is Catastrophic Climate Change. Corrupt bought and paid for puppets like Trudeau are just one symptom. As long as the cost of fossil fuels is kept artificially low with welfare queen subsidies and other forms of corrupt profit over planet practices, the demand destruction that a carbon tax theoretically is supposed to obtain, will not materialize. A carbon tax is an empty gesture unless it is coupled with a policy to use all the subsidy money, hitherto given to the fossil fuel industry, totally to fund Renewable Energy Technologies.

As the article above stated, " As a reminder here, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are continuing to rise at a rapid clip — due to the fact that fossil fuel usage remains right around all-time highs. If anthropogenic climate weirding and warming is to be limited to any real degree, then oil use will have to fall drastically within just the next few years."

We are basically out of time for half measures. There is no way whatsoever that we can match the reduction required by the Paris Agreement any more (see below).
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240318144053.png&hash=103269aba4a7ae936ff86a180a7a15090190a1a0)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 27, 2018, 06:09:52 pm
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🐭Hey humans! Sorry about talking with a mouthfull, but all decent field mice would be grateful to you if read the following article. 🐭


The Missing Maths: The Human Cost of Fossil Fuels (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/26/the-missing-maths-the-human-cost-of-fossil-fuels)

Agelbert NOTE: In order for us to have the correct, real world perspective in regard to the real human cost of burning fossil fuels, it is absolutely imperative that we compare Renewable Energy technologies (i.e. solar, wind, biomass, tidal, hydro, storage, etc.) with polluting energy tecnologies.

View the following graphics to get an idea of how continuing to use polluting energy technologies is uneconomical, unhealthy, and downright stupid.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030717124706.png&hash=29b2775c10e706e6e1e8379be787ff9419743d33)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030717124824.png&hash=cf87418a0f45d867ac6a470ebf2451cd10c60d27)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030717132029.jpeg&hash=d325014aed4082f6a9baa0a7c139e9ea2e307464)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030717131919.jpeg&hash=cf119341471394eddb15eb09714c929a396db1ae)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017143841.jpeg&hash=21f142befe4ed82f10ef0bdba11c22bbd3051289) Please do your part to continue sending the Trump 🦀 Fossil Fuel Industry 🐉🦕🦖 TOOL the message that he is WRONG to welfare queen baby the polluters and undermine Clean Renewable Energy (see below).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-150417160902.png&hash=b1ac320fc5f1b8ca4aca0ddfcbcc059fbe0ca67e)

The Fossil Fuelers 🦖  DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!   

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270317142022.png&hash=cc4dab8ff3e2d5b51acc393917751d9837eaf785)




Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 28, 2018, 08:31:18 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Trump Administration 🦀 Moving to Relax Some Offshore Drilling Rules Put in Place After Deepwater Horizon 🤬

April 27, 2018 by Bloomberg

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The Discoverer Enterprise and the Q4000 work to plug the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico more than two months after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, killing 11 people. Photo taken June 26, 2010. Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg)

SNIPPET:

Environmentalists argued the changes were not necessary and could jeopardize safety improvements. Oil companies didn’t lose control of any offshore wells in U.S. waters last year — down from eight such episodes in 2013, said Lois Epstein, an engineer with The Wilderness Society.

“The rule works and is vital to safer offshore operations,” Epstein said in an emailed statement. “Weakening it would not only increase the risk of environmental disaster, it could cost lives.”

Representative Raul Grijalva  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf), a Democrat from Arizona, cast the effort as part of “this administration’s obsession with more drilling and fewer regulations — whatever the cost” and said that was “the same attitude that produced Deepwater Horizon in the first place.”

Full Article:


http://gcaptain.com/trump-administration-moving-to-relax-offshore-drilling-rules-put-in-place-after-deepwater-horizon/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 01, 2018, 08:27:15 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

May 1, 2018

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(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpg)

What’re the Kochs 🦕 🦖  Up To Lately? Ruining the Planet, As Per Usual.

With all the fireworks around Pruitt’s neverending scandalrama, and the other uproars over all “the best people” in the Trump administration, the Koch brothers are enjoying a moment of relative obscurity.

But a group of six senators are aiming to change that. The lawmakers sent letters last week the White House and eight regulatory bodies soliciting information about how the Koch network has infiltrated the Trump administration.

Their concerns are certainly well-founded, and they’ve documented multiple employees whose CVs brag about their Koch network gigs, like Doug Domenech. But we’re surprised it’s taken this long to become a concern worthy of a letter...

After all, we raised this flag back in November 2016, pointing to Pence, Pompeo, and Domenech’s Kochnecctions. Then nearly a year later in October ‘17, there was the Jane Mayer profile of Pence’s career as a Koch crony. Then in December ‘17 Public Citizen’s Koch Government report detailed the 44 Kochs in 45’s cabinet, and of course replacing Tillerson with Pompeo was another chance to call out the Kochs.

All the while, the Koch operatives who haven’t (yet) been invited into Trump’s cabinet of puppets continue trying to subvert democracy for their funders profit. Case in point: a collection of Koch groups submitted a lengthy public comment on the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan last week. And the Koch-funded Daily Caller was, of course, all too happy to do PR for them, eschewing any funding information and instead calling them “free market groups.” 

Fortunately, the constellation of Koch groups are up against a formidable foe. Beyond the reality of climate change and the Endangerment Finding, last week a group of 27 states, counties and cities announced their support for the CPP and opposition to Pruitt’s “error-filled” attempts to justify the repeal.

And a second coalition of 15 local governments submitted a comment alleging that Pruitt’s repeated criticisms of the CPP, and promises to repeal it, constitute a “lack of due process and fairness” that renders the public comment period moot because Pruitt’s already made up his mind to repeal. They assert that Pruitt’s “involvement has irreparably tainted the current administrative process, and as a result, EPA must withdraw the proposed CPP repeal.”

If Pruitt’s still EPA Administrator, playing in the big league so to speak, by the time the CPP repeal goes through, he’ll be facing some stiff courtroom opposition. As Kamala Harris once pointed out, Pruitt’s record in suing the EPA was… not good, “Baseball fan Pruitt lost 6 of 7 lawsuits against the EPA,” Harris Tweeted last year. “That would be a mediocre .142 batting average.”

Now that Pruitt would be defending the EPA instead of suing it, we’re wondering if he will get sent back down to the Koch’s (coal and oil-) miner league.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 27, 2018, 03:18:34 pm
Agelbert NOTE:  🤬 Another 29,000 ft deep MASSIVE pollution accident waiting to happen along with MORE OIL production (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c), not less.   

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf)
Shell Makes Large Deepwater Discovery in U.S. Gulf of Mexico

May 25, 2018 by gCaptain

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2Fdeepwater-poseidon.jpg&hash=45a417a77a15835d6650a2d08541d8c2328df43a)
deepwater poseidon drillship

Royal Dutch Shell has announced a large deepwater discovery in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico approximately 170 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

Shell Offshore Inc. said Thursday the exploration discovery was made in the Norphlet geologic play at the 100 percent Shell-controlled Dover well.

The well was drilled in Mississippi Canyon Block 612, located approximately 170 miles (273 kilometers) offshore southeast of New Orleans, in a water depth of 7,500 feet (2,280 meters) to a total vertical drilling depth of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters) measured depth. The discovery was more than 800 net feet of pay (244 meters), Shell said.

The Dover discovery is Shell’s sixth in the Norphlet.

Shell says the discovery is located approximately 13 miles from the Appomattox host platform, making it an attractive potential tieback.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2Fdover-discovery.jpeg&hash=846533142036c827b0b0e358f0eca5b20bdd0e5c)

“Dover showcases our expertise in discovering new, commercial resources in a heartland helping deliver our deep water growth priority,” said Andy Brown, Upstream Director for Royal Dutch Shell. “By focusing on near-field exploration opportunities in the Norphlet, we are adding to our resource base in a prolific basin that will be anchored by the Appomattox development.”

Shell’s semi-submersible Appomattox host platform has now arrived on location in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and is expected to start production before the end of 2019.

“Shell’s major, deep-water hubs are well positioned for production expansion through near-field exploration and additional subsea tiebacks,” the company says. “The company expects its global, deep-water production to exceed 900,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2020, from already discovered, established areas.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58)

The Appomattox host platform is owned by Shell 🦖 (79%)  and Nexen Petroleum Offshore USA Inc. 🦕 (21%) .

http://gcaptain.com/shell-makes-large-deepwater-discovery-in-u-s-gulf-of-mexico/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240318144202.png&hash=67d3472635864fab08695b17d484c5e84f3a7457)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 04, 2018, 11:02:11 pm
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

June 4, 2018

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Hungry Hungry Hypocrites: Trump 🦀 and Perry’s😈 Coal Bailouts and Pruitt’s 😈 Pricey Pens

Last week, Scott Pruitt went on a conservative media blitz hitting up friendly outlets for softball interviews. In a chat with former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, of Trump-friendly Sinclair, Pruitt claims he cares “so much about taxpayer money.” Given Pruitt’s first class travel on the taxpayer dime and new reports that he spent $1,560 on a dozen personalized pens, it doesn’t take too keen an eye to see some hypocrisy. But in so much as Pruitt cares about the money because he likes to spend it, he might not be lying. (On the other hand, if he said he cared about taxpayer’s health…)

On the same note, it doesn’t take a sharp eye to spot the hypocrisy of Trump’s decision to invoke national security powers to bail out coal and nuclear plants. Dictating the operations of the electricity grid is a classic example of liberal “command and control” policy--an odd decision from the party ostensibly for personal responsibility, small government and the free market.

In terms of climate, “command and control” hasn’t really been a liberal policy preference for years. Instead, democrats have supported conservative-friendly free market-based policies like cap and trade, a price on carbon, and subsidies for renewables. But if Trump can demand the free market buy coal, why can’t liberals demand the opposite?

Coincidently, that’s more or less the subject of a new open access paper in Climatic Change, which looks at the sort of supply side policies that could tackle fossil fuel use. David Roberts at Vox breaks down the paper, which looks at the differences between supply- and demand-side policies.

Traditionally, climate policy has focused on the demand side of things: the free market friendly policies that seek out ways to reduce the demand for fossil fuels. But supply side remedies, like the opposite of Trump’s “buy uneconomical coal” policy, potentially offer stronger solutions. Whether it’s just putting an end to fossil fuel subsidies or straight up banning their use, or direct subsidies for renewable infrastructure or requiring their use (like California’s solar rooftop mandate) the simplicity and directness of these policies offer a certainty not found in cap and trade. And now that Trump’s given lie to the “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers” rhetoric that’s never really been true, there’s no reason for Democrats not to embrace a command and control, supply-side approach.

After all, Trump’s exercising his authority to nationalize private industry under a pair of national security laws. And there is a compelling argument that a World War II-scale mobilization is what’s needed to truly tackle climate change. Now that Trump’s invoked a grand national security move in the name of outdated energy sources, conservatives who aren’t staunchly and publicly registering their opposition to this policy can no longer argue in good faith that government shouldn’t tinker with the free market.

At this point in the Trump presidency, of course, we have only faint hope for a modicum of intellectual honesty and consistency. We’re sure Trump, Perry and Pruitt will continue prattling on with the obvious lie about not picking winners and losers.

To be fair, that’s half right. By focusing on the failing industries who can’t cut it in the free market and not caring “so much about taxpayer money” that gets wasted supporting them, Pruitt, Trump and Perry aren’t picking winners and losers.

They’re just picking losers.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 08, 2018, 02:59:05 pm
June 8, 2018

Murray's (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) Ideas to Bail Out His Industry Look Very Familiar

Coal magnate Bob Murray sent six sample executive orders to bail out the industry to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and EPA chief Scott Pruitt that contain concepts closely mirroring actions taken by the administration, according to new documents obtained by E&E News.

One of the draft orders, sent days before a meeting between Murray and Perry last March facilitated by now-EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, instructs President Trump to exit the Paris Agreement, while another orders the DOE to "issue an emergency directive" to study grid resiliency and halt power plant shutdowns for the duration of the two-year study.

Emails obtained by E&E also show efforts from utility FirstEnergy, which asked the administration in March to use emergency powers to bail out its struggling plants, to set up a meeting between Perry and its CEO last year.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/06/coal-industry-documents-show-extent-effort-influence-trump/679728002/ (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/06/coal-industry-documents-show-extent-effort-influence-trump/679728002/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 10, 2018, 12:19:47 pm
If Venezuela continues to lose production, and price reacts as expected, US shale producers are just going to make a killing. They figured out how to continue to increase oil production at $50/bbl, goodness only knows what happens if they begin getting $100 or $150.

I sincerely hope Oil prices go above $100 or $150/bbl, but given the current situation in the Gulf fo Mexico ((https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf) Shell just opened a well they claim they can get gas from at SUPER cheap cost), the rapidly expanding Russian and other areas (excluding Venezuela , which is cratering) of fossil fuel production AND the cheap power from Wind and solar, that ain't gonna happen. The competition is just too fierce.

Shell Starts Production at Kaikias at $30 Break-Even Price 👀

June 1, 2018 by gCaptain

SNIPPET:

Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, announced Thursday the early start of production at the first phase of Kaikias, which has an estimated peak production of 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), around one-year ahead of schedule.

Shell says it has reduced costs by around 30% at this deep-water project since taking the investment decision in early 2017, lowering the forward-looking, break-even price to less than $30 per barrel of oil.

“We believe Kaikias is the most competitive subsea development in the Gulf of Mexico and a prime example of the deep-water opportunities we’re able to advance with our technical expertise and capital discipline,” said Andy Brown, Upstream Director, Royal Dutch Shell. “In addition to accelerating production for Kaikias, we reduced costs with a simplified well design and the incorporation of existing subsea and processing equipment.”

Kaikias is located in the prolific Mars-Ursa basin around 130 miles (210 kilometres) from the Louisiana coast and is owned by Shell (80% working interest), as operator, and MOEX North America LLC (20% working interest), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsui Oil Exploration Co., Ltd.

full article:

http://gcaptain.com/shell-starts-production-at-kaikias-at-30-break-even-price/ (http://gcaptain.com/shell-starts-production-at-kaikias-at-30-break-even-price/)

Unfortunately for the environment, (SEE: GUARANTEED Catastrophic climate Change (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn2.theinertia.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F03%2Fwarm.jpg&hash=ddb929d877c49358047aae0a93b2b584be1eca4a)), there's a LOT more gas where that came from:  :P

Shell Makes Large Deepwater Discovery in U.S. Gulf of Mexico

May 25, 2018 by gCaptain

SNIPPET:

“Shell’s major, deep-water hubs are well positioned for production expansion through near-field exploration and additional subsea tiebacks,” the company says. “The company expects its global, deep-water production to exceed 900,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2020, from already discovered, established areas.”

The Appomattox host platform is owned by Shell (79%) and Nexen Petroleum Offshore USA Inc. (21%).

Full article:

http://gcaptain.com/shell-makes-large-deepwater-discovery-in-u-s-gulf-of-mexico/ (http://gcaptain.com/shell-makes-large-deepwater-discovery-in-u-s-gulf-of-mexico/)


Also, THIS threat (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191258.bmp&hash=e4ed21caaca822f7445ccafd39f49a9f84be90ca) to all things fossil fuel is NOT going to go away, but will continue to effectively exert downward pressure on oil and gas prices.


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

June 8, 2018 by Bloomberg

Next Offshore Wind in U.S. Can Compete With Gas, Developer Says (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121649.png&hash=4554f7e59701d12857946aece16bceb973c997b3)

By Jim Efstathiou Jr. (Bloomberg) — Massive offshore wind turbines keep getting bigger, and that’s helping make the power cheaper — to the point where developers say new projects in U.S. waters can compete with natural gas.

The price “is going to be a real eye-opener,” said Bryan Martin, chairman of Deepwater Wind LLC, which won an auction in May to build a 400-megawatt wind farm southeast of Rhode Island.

Deepwater built the only U.S. offshore wind farm, a 30-megawatt project that was completed south of Block Island in 2016. The company’s bid was selected by Rhode Island the same day that Massachusetts picked Vineyard Wind to build an 800-megawatt wind farm in the same area.

Bigger turbines that make more electricity have cut the cost per megawatt by about half, said Tom Harries, a wind analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That also reduces maintenance expenses and installation time. All of this is helping offshore wind vie with conventional power plants.

See Also: Massachusetts, Rhode Island Award Major Offshore Wind Contracts

“You could not build a thermal gas plant in New England for the price of the wind bids in Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” Martin said Friday at the U.S. Offshore Wind Conference in Boston. “It’s very cost-effective for consumers.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121424.gif&hash=384c17a4d2be4831084933b91808f8a60f73f7f5)

read more:

http://gcaptain.com/next-offshore-wind-in-u-s-can-compete-with-gas-developer-says/ (http://gcaptain.com/next-offshore-wind-in-u-s-can-compete-with-gas-developer-says/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 11, 2018, 08:32:20 pm
 (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/545693884664119297/mCDJfUgm.jpeg)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

June 11, 2018

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-121217195108.png&hash=34ddc1fd5afeb976b36342e73738ef155008be6d)

Major GOP Donor 😈 💵 🎩  Suggested Someone Join EPA Advisory Board. Pruitt 🦖 Made Him Chair.

Over the past year, we’ve kept a close eye on the questionable legality of Pruitt’s industry-driven sabotage of the EPA’s Science Advisory Boards. Now, emails obtained via FOIA by The Sierra Club and covered by Politico Friday reveal that last August, major Republican donor Doug Deason passed Pruitt a list of suggested new board members compiled by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an industry front group. (By the way, Deason’s on the TPPF board.)

The person who assembled the TPPF list was apparently Kathleen Hartnett-White, who withdrew from her nomination to head up the Council on Environmental Quality after an absolutely disastrous Senate hearing. With this administration, corruption seems to always be paired with incompetence.

One of Hartnett-White’s top recommendations, per Deason’s list, was Michael Honeycutt, who Pruitt ultimately selected last October as chair of the board. Honeycutt, a key player in Pruitt’s War on Air Pollution Science, is a rare breed, doubting not just climate science but also denying the even more rudimentary and well-established link between particulate matters and public health.

Even with a slate of Pruitt-appointed members, when the board (finally) met for the first time since Trump’s election a couple weeks ago, it decided to examine a variety of Pruitt’s efforts. The board members will take a look at Pruitt’s shoddy excuses for repealing the Clean Power Plan, including the social cost of carbon calculations; the oil and gas industry’s methane rules; the fuel efficiency rule and the glider truck rule, as well as the pro-polluter secret science policy. 

We’re hopeful that despite Pruitt’s industry advocates on the board, this will be a thorough review, and that it will provide an indisputable body of evidence detailing the arbitrary and capricious (and therefore illegal) nature of Pruitt’s policies.

First, though, Pruitt has to agree to accept the board’s recommendation to review the policies, then actually provide them with the requested information. Given that Pruitt ignored past invitations to meet with the group, and that he doesn’t exactly seem like the type that’s eager for scientific feedback, whether or not he takes the offer remains to be seen.

And of course it will take some time for the group to study the different issues and come to some sort of agreement as to a recommendation.

This fall, Pruitt will get another chance to appease his industry masters by replacing SAB members whose appointments are expiring with those more amenable to his pro-polluter policies.

But by that point, who knows how many other mattresses and lotions and fast food franchises and weird grifty scandals (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/if395n/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-scott-pruitt-s-petty-side-hustles)Scott Fancy Little Snack Boy Pruitt will have seen, and how many of the fake Pruitt headlines will have come true.

Maybe Pruitt will have bigger problems by then, what with the emerging potential for a criminal investigation into his misuse of his position. Or that Trump recently said he thinks Pruitt “is doing a great job within the walls of the EPA,” but ended the thought with an ominous “we’ll see what happens.”

We can’t wait.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 14, 2018, 01:55:44 pm
Oil Producers and Their Governments

June 14, 2018

Off the keyboard of Steve Ludlum

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017143841.jpeg&hash=21f142befe4ed82f10ef0bdba11c22bbd3051289) While I certainly agree that Oil Producers and the governments they 🐉🦕🦖 have ALWAYS CORRUPTED Their Governments are a pack of profit over planet criminal greedballs doing whatever they can, no matter how environmentally damaging (i.e. STUPID), unprincipled AND ERoEI math challenged, to keep their 😈 UNCOMPETITIVE POLLUTING CRAP PRODUCT in our faces, I have a "renewable energy isn't practical" bone to pick with you.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418201722.png&hash=5299cc10ee42beae76e4d3b7c79dbf5f4c0addac)

Hey Steve, do you STILL think 100% Renewable energy is a "pipe dream", as you tirelessly proclaimed for YEARS on this forum?

It's time for you to APOLOGIZE for pushing the erroneous hypothesis that Renewable Enegy would NEVER be price competitive with fossil fuels.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120418140613.png&hash=0887597e31f38d3ea7b51e06a506f157e44587c5)

Or, just pretend I did not post this and have no "basis" for my "groundless" assertion.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F5869%2F6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg&hash=fedf26e48d67cdd1e932380c7336ac18486d3fee)

Easiest Way To Counterattack Russia — Go Electric

June 14th, 2018 by Zachary Shahan

SNIPPET:

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2018/03/from-Russia-with-Love.gif)

Russia is highly dependent on its oil & gas industry. Its economy is already quite weak and its people suffer under a low quality of life as a result, but it’ll get worse if Russia’s oil & gas business is harmed. And, more importantly for the Russian oligarchs running the show over there, it gets much worse for them if they can’t hoard another billion or 10 from oil & gas sales.

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2018/03/Russia-Oil-Economy.jpg)

Put your own sanctions on Russia, as well as on the sketchy, corrupt, humanity-threatening work of US oil & gas companies, European oil & gas companies, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Lay a smackdown on these anti-social jacktards to the greatest degree you personally can. Go electric. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418201112.png&hash=679f4583d6861313c256e8762c40929af1ac667e)

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/09/electric-car-fleet.jpg)
2017 Electric ⚡ Vehicles  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fus.cdn2.123rf.com%2F168nwm%2Flenm%2Flenm1201%2Flenm120100200%2F12107060-illustration-of-a-smiley-giving-a-thumbs-up.jpg&hash=2046bc6d662e09d3014a2c404a2af6ba17f8217c)

Full article:

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/14/easiest-way-to-counterattack-russia-go-electric/ (https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/14/easiest-way-to-counterattack-russia-go-electric/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 18, 2018, 08:14:58 pm
June 18, 2018

Story Transcript

SNIPPET:

SHARMINI PERIES: And one cannot ignore the fact that this is, of course, playing out well in Canada. As you cite, the polls are reflecting that. But he’s also stepping into a year next year where he will have to stand for re-election.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: That is undoubtedly influencing Justin Trudeau. In fact, recent polls show that his party is more or less tied with that of the conservative party of Andrew Scheer. And there is a lot of disenchantment in this country about his failure to follow through with main, very important campaign commitments, for example, on fighting climate change. His purchase of the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline cannot be reconciled with his commitment on climate change.

He promised that this would be, or the last election would be the last election in which we use the first-past-the-post electoral system, which results in parties that have a minority of the vote obtaining a majority of the seats in parliament. He’s not reforming the electoral electoral system at all. And there have been other- oh, and also, he’d promised to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, but in fact, has maintained them. So, there have been a whole range of promises that have really put him on thin ice with the Canadian electorate. I have no doubt that that is weighing heavily in the minds of the liberal leadership as the 2019 election approaches.

SHARMINI PERIES: Now Dimitri, one of the agenda items at the G7 summit was a reaffirmation of the commitments of the G7 countries to the Paris climate agreement. And now, partly all of this was derailed by Trump arriving at the G7 and the tariffs and so on. But give us a sense of Justin Trudeau appearing as a climate ambassador as something that he is committed to doing, and reducing emissions, and the contradictions in that appearance of a climate advocate.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: You know, when dealing with the Trudeau administration or government, as is so often the case in Western politics, one must always compare the reality to the rhetoric. The reality is that Canada is on a path to greatly exceed its commitment under the Paris climate accord. And in fact, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, not necessarily an objective source, but nonetheless, what they have to say is something that we should pay attention to when we’re talking about prognostications about future oil use in this country. They just issued a report predicting that the tar sands production will increase by fifty percent ☠️ in the coming years.

What we need to be doing is phasing out the tar sands as rapidly as we can do so, consistently with a reasonably healthy economy. The Trudeau government is running in the opposite direction, and as I just mentioned, not only is it determined to go ahead with building fossil infrastructure to support the tar sands industry. It has failed. It’s now had three years to do it. It has failed to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, which is the ultimate insanity. Why you would subsidize fossil fuels when we need to be keeping them in the ground is simply inexplicable. So, saying at the G7, we want to reaffirm our leadership in the Paris climate accord, or in terms of ensuring its respect, saying that is one thing. There is absolutely no action of any substance to back up that reaffirmation, unfortunately.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Dimitri, Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada just had made a commitment, just a few weeks ago, to buy the Kinder Morgan Pipeline at some five billion dollars. And now, all of this is taking place at the same time when the Pope, trying to enforce his Encyclical about the environment and climate change, is actually meeting with the fossil fuel industry, asking them to curtail the emissions and save the earth. And and the G7 is talking about reaffirming the Paris climate agreement, yet Trudeau’s contradictions are just too much to handle here.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: You know, as we reported earlier this week, Sharmini, the Pope told senior executives of the world’s leading oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and BP, who were at the Vatican to hear his speech, and I’m quoting the Pope, “There is no time to lose.” And it is absolutely imperative that we begin to phase out tar sands. There’s simply no escaping that reality. And not only is Trudeau not doing that, but he’s being urged to even sacrifice Canadian lives by leaders on the Bay Street.

I mean, we had the most remarkable statement by the former governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge 🦖, a couple of days ago at a conference in Edmonton, that- he said definitively, “Canadians will die resisting this pipeline.” And then he went on to say, but Justin Trudeau must have the “fortitude,” the fortitude to stand up and complete the construction of this project, which is going to increase by a factor of three. The amount of diluted bitumen coming from the tar sands to the west coast of Canada is going to increase by a factor of seven, oil tanker traffic on the on the west coast of Canada. You know, what Justin Trudeau is doing cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be reconciled either with the Paris climate accord or with the Pope’s exhortations to take action now.

SHARMINI PERIES: Dimitri, are any of these contradictions on the part of Trudeau’s leadership, or lack thereof, when it comes to the climate being realized by all these young people that ended up supporting him in the last election and wanted some serious action on the climate?

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Well, I think the fact that he had a forty percent approval rating after being wildly popular outside of his government, I think that says quite a bit about how the population and particularly young people, who have given him a lot of support the last election, feel about his broken promises, particularly with respect to the climate change. I think he has a bit of an ace- I wouldn’t go so far as to state as an ace in the hole, but it certainly is a card that he can play to strengthen his standing amongst young voters.

And that is, he does appear to remain committed to the legalization, or at least the quasi-legalization, of cannabis in Canada. And so, there is legislation being advanced, and that’s a policy that’s very popular amongst young voters. So, he may be able to rehabilitate his image amongst them between now and the election next year, in large part by pursuing that initiative and fulfilling that campaign promise. But I don’t think anybody’s going to forget entirely how badly he’s betrayed his commitment to be a climate champion.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, in relation to the climate, again, here. The newly elected premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, had a few things to say about cap and trade this week. Give us the highlights of that statement.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So, Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, entered into a cap and trade system with its neighboring province of Quebec and with the state of California in January of this year. And Doug Ford, the conservative premier-elect, campaigned explicitly on a promise to take Ontario out of that cap and trade system. The province has raised nearly two point nine billion dollars from the sale of carbon credits, according to a report issued last month. The money goes toward the operation of something called the Green Ontario Fund to pay for climate-friendly programs, rebates for home upgrades and clean technology pilot projects. Ford’s Conservative Party criticized the program because it results in higher costs to consumers for natural gas and gasoline. But Sharmini, that’s exactly what it is supposed to do. And that’s exactly what we should be doing.

We need to be deterring people from consuming fossil fuels by raising the cost of these polluting substances. We should not be encouraging fossil fuels consumption by lowering the cost of polluting. And yet, Doug Ford said, right out of the gate yesterday, that the first piece of legislation he intends to put forward is legislation withdrawing Ontario from the cap and trade system. Quebec is alarmed by this, understandably so, and they pointed out that their economy is going strong. In fact, Quebec, where I live, and as part of that system, has full employment and a growing economy. The whole notion that this is injurious to the economy is bogus, frankly, and it seems like nothing other than a sort of right-wing ideology that fits nicely within the agenda of the fossil fuels industry in Canada, which has quite a bit of power.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Dimitri. I thank you so much for joining us today on The Real News Network and giving us this Canada update. I know there’s so much more to talk about, so I will look forward to having you back next week.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Always a pleasure, Sharmini, thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

https://therealnews.com/stories/trudeau-imposes-retaliatory-trade-tariffs-against-the-u-s
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 19, 2018, 09:35:01 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fourwinds10.net%2Fresources%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2Fdissolving%2520the%2520planet%2520for%2520oil.jpg&hash=4e454194b388f35b4beee87072d010f6bf35af46)

"IT'S A SCAM!!!" Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's BRILLIANT Takedown of the Koch Brothers🦕🦖 & Donald Trump 🦀

https://youtu.be/YYH3xrAt-lo

Dose of Dissonance

Published on Apr 24, 2018

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse delivers a fiery speech on the corrupting influence of "creepy billionaires!" BUY TRUMP TOILET PAPER! http://amzn.to/2Fe08tb (Affiliate Link)

Support Dose of Dissonance's mission @ https://www.patreon.com/DoseofDissonance
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 25, 2018, 04:22:12 pm

Az, I am of the studied opinion that the Earth ain't hollow. Sure, one can speculate that there may be a lot of something in the center that has some pockets due to some weird gravitational anomallies that exist at the center of mass that science has not discovered yet, but nuttin'can live below the lithosphere, as far as Im concerned. The rock eating bacteria critters that they have discovered in deep, deep places are still part of the biosphere. Even they cannot live above a certain temperature, which, by the way, gets too high even before the outer reaches of the lithosphere.

The folowing graphic is, IMHO, fairly accurate. Notice how far up the lithosphere is compared to all that matter below it. We've never gotten through it, you know.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Earth-cutaway-schematic-english.svg)

If that Brooks pickup truck is powered with fork lift Trojan lead acid batteries, as it appears to me, the range is about the length of an average 18 hole golf course. That ain't competition for Musk. It wouldn't look too pretty on a golf course, either. ;)

A couple of years ago I read about a Russian boring project that was, at least at that time, the deepest penetration into the earth.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole was just 9 inches in diameter, but at 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) reigns as the deepest hole. It took almost 20 years to reach that 7.5-mile depth—only half the distance or less to the mantle.

Interesting article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-whats-deepest-hole-ever-dug-180954349/ (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-whats-deepest-hole-ever-dug-180954349/)


 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf) Yep. I read about that project. They had a hell of a time with melted drill bits. It's HOT down there! In a sane world, we would be getting all that free heat piped up to geothermal plants to run our civilization. There I go again, pretending humans have a lick oof sense. That is so yesterday.  :(

Anyway, I'll try to keep posting. Surly, I learned something today that Palloy and the peak oil crowd will find some way to dance around, but it confirmed my worst fears about how SCREWED we are. I'll post the Gcaptain article in the "How long before the oil runs out?" thread I started. I don't often use this language, and Palloy will, of course, claim I am being "hysterical" and "alarmist" and so on, but we are TRULY ****! 🤬 😱
 
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 25, 2018, 04:23:24 pm
Agelbert RANT: HAPPY **** DAY! MORE FOSSIL FUEL PROFITS! CAPITALISM HAS TRIUMPHED OVER THE BIOSPHERE. WHO CARES ABOUT POLLUTION WHEN WE'VE GOT OIL? Collapse? ARE YOU SHITTING ME? WE'VE GOT OIL INCREASED OUTPUT ALL THE WAY TO 2025. But don't you worry about a ting, folks, after 2025 all those naughty nasty fossil fuels will suddenly DISAPPEAR and we'll have a nice civilizational collapse and we can all hunt snakes with spears in the jungle in our pristine atmosphere. That is, after you pay me for the Brooklyn Bridge I just sold you, you **** IDIOTS! YOU SUICIDAL BIOSPHERE KILLING CAPITALIST MOTHER **** SONS OF A ****! **** YOU FOSSIL FUEL FOOLS! **** YOU! YOU GOD DAMNED MORONIC DEVILS! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300115234833.gif&hash=20e82f36f361174e6f8f07e11c36330842502bab)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Norway’s Wildcat Wells Get Best Results Since 2010 Bonanza

June 22, 2018 by Bloomberg

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F05%2FWest20Hercules20in20th.jpeg&hash=c366649ba8330598259767d4a812df6b9944d740)
File photo credit: Ole Jřrgen Bratland / Statoil

By Mikael Holter (Bloomberg) — Oil companies in Norway have more to rejoice about than just higher crude prices: they’re now boasting the best exploration results in almost a decade. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

If they keep that pace up, explorers could find close to 1 billion barrels of new oil and gas this year for the first time since the landmark discovery of the giant Johan Sverdrup oil field in 2010. 🤬 😱

The results are a welcome boost to Norway, which depends on exploration success to replenish a dwindling project pipeline and limit a drop in production from the middle of the next decade. The nation is emerging from a bruising three-year slump that saw oil companies cut budgets to the bone, strangling exploration activity. Results in the promising Arctic Barents Sea, which saw record efforts last year despite the downturn, were also a disappointment.

The tide could now be turning: with 10 wildcat wells completed in 2018, explorers have found about 330 million barrels of oil equivalent, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the mid-point estimate for all discoveries reported by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. That’s already more than what the 24 wildcat wells delivered last year. And it’s the best performance per well since the Sverdrup discovery pushed the 2010 average to almost 100 million barrels.

Companies that focused on exploration near infrastructure over the past couple of years are now taking more risk, said Torgeir Stordal, the NPD’s exploration director.

“Prices are now coming back up, so activity is picking up, and they’ll want to drill wells that they might have held back on when oil prices were low,” he said in an interview in Stavanger on Thursday. “It’s a positive development.”

The NPD expects as many as 50 exploration wells this year, up from 36 last year, it said in a report published on Thursday. About 30 could be wildcat wells testing new prospects, meaning discovered resources could reach a total of 1 billion barrels if explorers maintain their efficiency.

“We’re drilling more wells and are being more aggressive,” said Gro Haatvedt, head of exploration at Aker BP ASA, one of the most active explorers offshore Norway. “High oil prices are helping, because we’re getting more money for exploration.”

Exploration successes so far this year include the double Hades and Iris discovery that OMV AG made with a single well in the Norwegian Sea. Together, they have a mid-point estimate of more than 140 million barrels of gas and condensate. Wintershall AG, Aker BP and Equinor ASA, the biggest Norwegian oil company, have also made discoveries.

Explorers will drill about 25 wells in the North Sea and 10 each in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea, Stordal said. Given current oil-price forecasts, the NPD expects overall exploration activity to be maintained in 2019, he said.

To be sure, explorers are still far from replacing production of oil and gas, which reached about 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in 2017. Output is expected to test records by 2023, thanks to new fields and efficiency gains, before it drops from about 2025.

Discoveries are also smaller than they used to be — even the frontier Barents Sea, thought to hold two-thirds of Norway’s undiscovered oil and gas, has failed to deliver giants like the North Sea’s Sverdrup, Troll or Statfjord.

But small discoveries can be profitable if they’re close to existing infrastructure. For example, Equinor expects to develop this year’s 25 million barrel Lille Prinsen discovery in the North Sea.

“It’s important to have a balanced approach to both prospects near infrastructure and frontier areas,” the NPD’s Stordal said.

© 2018 Bloomberg L.P

http://gcaptain.com/norways-wildcat-wells-get-best-results-since-2010-bonanza/ (http://gcaptain.com/norways-wildcat-wells-get-best-results-since-2010-bonanza/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110117131220.gif&hash=6ffcf5b4bdbc0ddfcdd694a9e3c348f82f3ed601)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 25, 2018, 04:28:11 pm
So with the world's consumption running at 33.6 billion barrels per year, you think it's good to have discovered 330 million barrels, with a hope to find 1 billion?  If that the best since 2010, then we are in real trouble.
Where would I find a fairly balanced guide to consumption, projected consumption, current production, and discovery that charts past present and future. It seems the peak oil stats run out around 2008-10 and the discoveries project into the future. Who brings both of those pictures together without an agenda? Forgive my wording let me know if my meaning is not clear.  It really seems that we cook ourselves AND run out of economically viable FF. I would like some numbers though to bring those two narratives together in my mind.

Palloy is, as usual, playing mathematical word games with the FACT that there CAN BE NO COLLAPSE, at least until the magical disappearance of oil after 2025. Don't hold your breath waiting for Palloy to ever use hard numbers to base his Confirmation Bias on. He USES Fossil Fuel Industry published numbers when it suits him and, when it does NOT, as the article I posted at the begining of this thread makes CLEAR, he claims the "Fossil Fuel Industry is making it up". How cleverly sophistic of him.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdrphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fcherry-picking.jpg&hash=c196a0ec409afacfa8f087d5a4556de272d44c6b)


David, here is an article that gives you an idea of how the real world has responded, for the past ten years, to the "Peak Oil" scaremongering.

As to reliable numbers, go to the initial article on this thread and research the ZME science web site. They do not DO false propaganda or fake numbers. If you believe Palloy more than them, then you are being taken for a ride, PERIOD.

What Ever Happened to ‘Peak Oil’?

Media 'retreats' from doomsday theory as U.S. production spikes
BY: Elizabeth Harrington

February 2, 2018 4:13 pm


"From the steps of the Supreme Court to the White House press room, from global trading exchanges to the snowy reaches of Alaska — over the last week, you could hear the creak of history as it began to pivot in a half-dozen locales," an editorial in the New York Times read.

"The Age of Oil is at an end. Maybe not this year. Maybe not for five years. But signs of the coming collapse are evident."

The article, with the stark headline, "Oil's End," ran in March 2008. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-280515145049.png&hash=84e87515e750391c1f1bca6d6ae06485972bfa81)

Ten years later, we're still waiting for that "coming collapse." ::)

In fact, this week we learned the U.S. topped 10 million barrels a day in oil production in November, a level not reached since 1970. We hit that mark four months ahead of schedule, largely on the back of the shale industry, "once dismissed" by global oil exporters.

For years we heard about "peak oil," the theory of hitting a maximum amount of oil production and waiting for it to run out, none louder than in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Paul Krugman told us we were "running out of planet to exploit" in 2008, warning, "this time may be different."

By September 2010, the Times green blog was circulating a study projecting the world would hit peak oil that year, leading to a "dire global economic crisis" by 2025 as a "result of a peak and an irreversible decline in world oil supplies."

By November: "Peak oil is not just here — it's behind us already."

Quoting from the International Energy Agency, the Times blog reported that crude oil production "probably topped out for good in 2006, at about 70 million barrels a day."

Of course by 2016, the IEA reported world production of 96 million barrels of oil per day, or 35 billion barrels a year.

The Times peak oil scare was not limited to its editorial pages. In June 2010, the Times profiled environmentalist "survivalists" who were stocking up on seeds and supplies out of fear the world would run out of oil.

Raven Gray, the leader of Transition US, a group helping towns "brace for life after oil," said, "There's lot of apocalyptic people in environmental circles." You don't say?

The Washington Post was also a bit premature on its peak oil scare. "Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster," an editorial read in May 2008. The editorial advocated changes to the "way we produce food, "conduct commerce and trade," the "way we travel," the "way we occupy the land," and the "way we acquire and spend capital," in response to peak oil.

The next month, the Post, remarked that the "world may have arrived at Peak Oil," while acknowledging that "this may not be literally true."

"[E]stimates of vast undiscovered oil reservoirs imply that Peak Oil is decades away," said Robert J. Samuelson. "But governments that control 75 percent or more of known reserves are behaving as if Peak Oil is already here."

"The grim price outlook by [economist Jeffrey] Rubin and others presumes that this situation persists," he said.

"Of course, they could be wrong."

By December 2011 the Post pronounced, "Oil's getting harder and harder to come by."

But, of course, they could be wrong.

In 2015 the Post and Samuelson declared, "The retreat of ‘peak oil.'"

"Oil is a finite natural resource," Samuelson said. "There's only so much of it. When it's gone, it's gone."

"The trouble is," Samuelson added, "that this compelling logic has yet to play out in the real world."

http://freebeacon.com/blog/whatever-happened-peak-oil/ (http://freebeacon.com/blog/whatever-happened-peak-oil/)

Agelbert NOTE: The above article contains several links that you may wish to peruse to get to the truth. You don't need to believe a word Palloy or I say. You are, as far as I can tell, fairly objective about this. If you do all the proper research, you will come to the conclusion that Peak Oil is not a problem, or an obstacle so insurmountable as to cause a collapse, and never was, as far as obtaining energy to run this Polluting Monstrocity called Human civilization.

THIS IS THE TRUTH:

Quote
So, how long before we run out of fossil fuels? In order to project how much time we have left before the world runs out of oil, gas, and coal, one method is measuring the R/P ratios — that is the ratio of reserves to current rates of production. At the current rates of production, oil will run out in 53 years, natural gas in 54, and coal in 110. This is bearing in mind a 2015 World Energy Outlook study by the International Energy Agency, which predicted fossil fuels will constitute 59% of the total primary energy demand in 2040, even despite aggressive climate action policies.

Other researchers, organizations, and governments have different deadlines for fossil fuel exhaustion, depending on the data and assumptions that they make, as well as political affiliation and interests. The American Petroleum Institute estimated in 1999 the world’s oil supply would be depleted between 2062 and 2094, assuming total world oil reserves at between 1.4 and 2 trillion barrels. In 2006, however, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) predicted that 3.74 trillion barrels of oil remained in the Earth — three times the number estimated by peak oil proponents. 👀


Is Peak Oil behind us? Not clear

While we know for sure that the exploitation of fossil fuels is limited, estimates can vary wildly because new deposits are sometimes found and new technology enables access to previously untapped oil or gas fields or allows more efficient extraction. So, the challenge in estimating a timescale for fossil fuel depletion lies in the fact that new resources are added fairly regularly. Therefore, we have to keep in mind that all of these estimates are based on R/P ratios and thereby only consider proven reserves, not probable or possible reserves of resources. For instance, in 1980, the R/P ratio suggested only 32 years of oil production from existing reserves. 

A 1977 report issued by the Energy Information Administration concluded that the United States could only access 32 billion barrels of oil reserves and 207 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. But from then to 2010, the country extracted 84 billion barrels of oil (2.6 times more than the initial estimate) and 610 trillion cubic feet of gas (2.9 times the initial reserve estimate). What’s more, reserves are growing. Today, the U.S. has increased the size of its reserves by a third since 2011 thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking which enable access to oil and gas trapped in underground rock formation. Previously, it wasn’t economically feasible to extract these resources.

As technology continues to improve, both governments and oil & gas companies will be able to access new reserves — some that can’t currently be exploited and others that are still unidentified.

https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/how-long-fossil-fuels-last-43432/ (https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/how-long-fossil-fuels-last-43432/)

Palloy cannot handle the truth, so he claims the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) numbers are "fake news".  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220216203149.gif&hash=bd184b6edccce4045e246847a0c84e89bd5a18b6)

Here are a few token examples of what is really going on out there. You know the  Canada tar sands part and the USA fracking part that are both producing monstrous amounts of fossil fuels. You probably know about the Troll A (which cost about 15 billion dollars to build and plant on the North Sea bottom) ocean platform that is pumping oil and gas in mega amounts.
 
There are many, many untapped fields like the one they found near the Falklands two years ago with several BILLIONS of barrels of oil waiting to be extracted when the price is right.

Shell JUST BEGAN to pump gas from the Gulf of Mexico at $30 a BOE. Does that sound like a well they want to husband because its going to run out quick? I don't think so.

Shell just made operational the largest floating structure ever made by humans, the purpose of which is to drill for and pump gas out of the ocean bottom at multi-well rates.

Exxon is busy doing all sorts of production I do not have time to go into. They are producing MORE, not less, hydrocarbon product. Then there is China, Russia the Saudis, Qatar, Iran, Norway etc.

ONE THIRD of the traffic in the Panama Canal is now gas bulk carriers, when less than 5 years go, it was ZIP!

As K-Dog stated, we've got coal out the whazzo. Even if every oil and gas well petered out tomorrow, a ridiculously unlikely scenario, coal, through the process you have probably read about called gassification, can be feed stock for any and all hydrocarbon crap we now use to make plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, gasolne, diesel (and so on).

Yeah, it's the MOTHER of pollution generating processes, but so what? Almost everybody on this forum is so f u c k i ng fixated on ENERGY, that pollution does not seem to be an issue. Okay, if we don't give a flat f u c k about pollution, then we simply do not have to worry about peak fossil fuels, even if the oil and gas peter out on Palloy's alarmist "the sky is falling" schedule. This is logical. This is objective. The peak oil meme is not applicable in the real world, period.

The "hydrocarbon burning pollution will kill us" IS applicable for those who inhabit the reality based community.

Did you know that Trumpy just reversed an Obama rule that would not allow drilling for oil and gas in those Great Lakes that border your country? Yeah, he just did that this month. I don't think that is too encouraging to people who like clean water, do you?

The discovery made in the article I posted yesterday is just ONE, of many that are going on as we speak all over this God forskaen, fossil fuel loving, screwed up world. Celebrate cheap oil if you wish, but don't believe the bullshit about it running out, at least not in your lifetime.

On this thread, I will make it a habit of posting articles on oil production rates and new discoveries of fossil fuels that can be tapped with present technology. It will be entertaining to watch Palloy try to talk his way around those news items. Stay tuned.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 25, 2018, 09:01:41 pm
Quote
AG: Palloy cannot handle the truth, so he claims the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) numbers are "fake news". 

No, since 2003 when I realised Peak Oil was real and urgent, CERA has been out there trying to bamboozle people with briefings and stats on why Peak Oil isn't true.  Why does AG quote them and the stupid journos that believe CERA's BAU future?  Because he is a shill for the fossil fuel industry, or is so ignorant on physics he doesn't know what is true.  His disbelief of Hess's Law is PROOF of that. His insistence that I am a shill for the the FF industry, or ignorant of his "biosphere math" (which he made up and doesn't exist in anyone's scientific view).

CERA is a FF industry fake news source.  No need to use fake figures.

Quote
Don't hold your breath waiting for Palloy to ever use hard numbers to base his Confirmation Bias on

Quote
So with the world's consumption running at 33.6 billion barrels per year, [do] you think it's good to have discovered 330 million barrels, with a hope to find 1 billion?

Answer my question, AG.

I never said I "disbelieved" Hess's Law, BULLSHIT ARTIST. I SAID, over a year ago, that Hess's Law enthalpy numbers INCLUDE WASTE HEAT, which makes them faulty when applied to ENERGY RETURNED in a combustion chamber, DUMKOFF! Now, if you consider that "proof of my ignorance", that's fine with me. Just don't say I doubt that the energy needed to boil water with an open flame is incorrect in Hess's Law numbers. It's correct, as far as that goes. So, you can take all the words you are putting in my mouth to discredit my knowledge of this issue and put them where the sun doesn't shine, Einstein.

As to your question, let me remind you that the subject HERE is the alleged "collapse" that "PEAK OIL" will trigger. It's a pretty silly question you are posing, because you know damned good and well that I do not consider ANY new oil or gas find to be "good". It is BAD for the biosphere. THAT is why in bends me out of shape when ANOTHER big find (yes, Einstein, it IS a big find! - not all the 33.6 Billion BOE is one place - nice try, though  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)) is announced. Have you ever heard about the Biosphere Camel's back and the straws? That new find is a big assed STRAW!

Tell me WHY a new find does not erode the Peak Oil Meme? Spare me the bullshit that because the find is "less than world annual consumption", it is not relevant. We've been down this road before. You always want to isolate each and every bit of evidence of increased global producton by claiming it is not "valid" in the overall trend towards collapse. That is the kind of "logic" that refuses to connect the dots because those dots undermine your Confirmation Bias.  👎

Tell me why the billions of BOE that are NOT being exploited until the price is right is "evidence" of looming collapse? And YEAH, THAT's why all those oil rigs hither and yon shut down massively in 2014 and stayed that way for about three years. "Peak oil" did not have JACK SH IT to do with reduced production. Now that the price is gettin' better, the FF upstream maniacs are going out to get oil and gas like gangbusters, and YOU KNOW IT (or should).

Please answer the question NOW.

Tell me, Mathematician, how much BOE of all the world's fossil fuels from coal, oil, tar sands and gas we MUST have to prevent a collapse? You really need to state a number and stand by it, you know. ;D  If you think we MUST HAVE 35 billion BOE a year to prevent the collapse of civilization, SAY SO.

If you do not want to give a number, then you are playing fast and loose with the concept of peak oil. I will call you a bullshit artist if you do not answer, NOW, what the minimum amount of FF (available to be sold and  burned on the market AFTER they have been extracted) ARE REQUIRED ANNUALLY in order to prevent the collapse of civilization.

If you say it is 35 billion BOE, I will laugh in your face, with hard data from, among other sources, the Rocky Mountain Institute. They will really get your drawers in a bunch because they are so "irrationally optimistic", from your fascinating point of view, that they make the "outrageous" claim that the world can run on 80% LESS FOSSIL FUELS, annually, than we use now, WITHOUT a drop in our current standard of living. Yeah, sure, SCOFF all you want. That's how you roll.  👎

Regardless of your habit of scoffing and sniping quips, you NEED TO ANSWER THE QUESTION about minimum FF needed annually to prevent a collapse, or you have ZERO credibility in your "collapse will save us" pitch.

Why do you refuse to address all the other real increases in FF production out there?


Answer the question with DATA, not a negative quip, please.

Why are you fixating on this ONE story, that, whether you want to believe it or not, is symptomatic of a much broader trend? This is not the first story I have posted that you tried to yawn about. I jumped because, unlike you, I DO research a few times a week what the fossil Fuelers are up to. Right now the workers on some of the ocean platforms are calling for a strike. They want more money. Expect the price to go up pronto. I like that. ;D Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. For me, the higher the price, the BETTER. Yes, that will bring MORE FF exploitation activity as they try to cash in, but they still will have to compete with that clean renewable energy technology that Palloy is ALWAYS quick to claim (a TOTAL FABRICATION, by the way) is "ERoEI negative". I've tried to show you how wrong you are on that and you just will not listen. Fine. Others here do know how to add and subtract in Energy math, never mind the Biosphere Math you avoid like the plague, where POLLUTION costs need to be SUBTRACTED from energy returned.

I've been a bit long winded here so I will repeat the question:
 
Why are you fixating on this ONE story, that, whether you want to believe it or not, is symptomatic of a much broader trend? 

Answer the question with DATA, not a negative quip, please.

Why do you refuse to adress the present trend of increased production and consumption?

Answer the question with DATA, not a negative quip, please.

What is your evidence that ZME is not a reputable news site and CERA is a FF industry fake news source?

Answer the question with DATA, not a negative quip, please.

Why did you not address the part of the February 2018  article that stated the following?
Quote
In fact, this week we learned the U.S. topped 10 million barrels a day in oil production in November, a level not reached since 1970.


If you do not want answer, then STFU about Peak oil, please.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 12:12:03 pm
Agelbert NOTE: I am posting these two articles here because they are applicable to the discussion. My suspicions from what I read in the first article were confirmed when I subsequently read the second article while perusing my e-mails. This is absolutely tragic for the biosphere. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201604.png&hash=3793102f2f335b7a8fe106d54eac4db31f2674eb) This is more evidence that Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from the burning of hydrocarbons are the real threat to our civilization, not and peak oil (AND peak ALL Fossil Fuels). We will cook from Catastrophic Climate Change 😟 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240618220633.png&hash=08f72489bcdde0ee21950ce1ef2af818eb619e93)long before we run out of hydrocarbons to burn.

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Solar Prices Nosedive After China Pullback Floods Global Market

June 21, 2018

By Christopher Martin, Bloomberg
         
Solar panels were already getting cheaper this year, and then China pulled the plug this month on about 20 GW of domestic installations. The result was a glut of global inventories, and now prices are plunging even faster.

China, the world’s biggest solar market, on June 1 slammed the brakes on new projects that would have had as much capacity as about 20 nuclear power plants. With a global panel glut it’s a buyer’s market and developers in other countries are delaying purchases, holding out for even lower prices.

The average price for a polysilicon module slumped 4.79 percent since May 30, reaching a record low of 27.8 cents a watt Wednesday, according to PVInsights. That’s on track to be the biggest monthly decline since December 2016, the last time the industry was facing a global oversupply. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s solar components.

The decline will hurt the largest manufacturers like JinkoSolar Holding Co. and is a boon for developers like Sunrun Inc., which are expected to benefit from lower costs.

“Chinese and international project developers are putting their orders on hold as modules get cheaper,” Yali Jiang, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in a research note Tuesday. By the end of the year, she expects module prices will slide to 24 cents a watt 👀, down 35 percent from 37 cents at the end of 2017.

©2018 Bloomberg News

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2018/06/solar-prices-nosedive-after-china-pullback-floods-global-market.html
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Agelbert NOTE: Why don't I think this news is actually good? Because, to anyone that reads between the lines, it means China is, rather than contiinuing the big push for total Renewable Energy, is finding it cheaper (when the pollution issue is ignored, of course -replacing coal with GAS cuts down on particulates, but does nothing to slow GHG pollution) to buy GAS for energy than to get it from Solar Panels. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714183337.bmp&hash=fd5a6df63c32bd65dda7b6d93e788647ca3829df)

They are probably suddenly getting GAS real cheap, some of which comes from the USA, not just the usual suspects like Russia and Iran. This "bridge fuel" means an INCREASE in global emissions in an already runaway GHG situation 🔥. China uses a LOT OF ENERGY!

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I'm sure the Fossil Fuel funded Climate Change Deniers will tell us this is "no big deal"😈.

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I think it is one more straw breaking the Biosphere Camel's Back. IOW, it's probably just about (see below) for Human civilization, even if it takes another two or three decades to feel the full brunt of Catastrophic climate Change.

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China Sails Past Japan to Become World’s Largest Buyer of Natural Gas


June 24, 2018 by Bloomberg

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Photo: VladSV / Shutterstock.com

By Dan Murtaugh (Bloomberg) — China’s drive for cleaner skies has pushed it past Japan to become the world’s largest buyer of natural gas, a milestone for a nation that wasn’t even importing the fuel 15 years ago.

The development underscores how rapidly China is boosting natural gas use at the expense of dirtier fuels like oil and coal to meet President Xi Jinping’s pollution-cutting goals. Governments, especially in the country’s northern regions, have forced millions of homes and factories to replace coal boilers with gas burners.

China imported 7.41 million metric tons of natural gas through pipelines and seaborne tankers in May, according to data released Saturday by the General Administration of Customs. That puts it at 34.9 million tons for the first five months of the year. Japan’s imports during that period total 34.5 million tons, according to its Ministry of Finance. China bought more than Japan in some months last year, but this is the first time its cumulative imports during a year have been higher.

The nation’s soaring natural gas demand has been a boon for the global liquefied natural gas market. China’s on track to become the world’s biggest LNG importer by 2021 as growth in domestic production and pipelines won’t be able to keep pace with needs, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a report June 15.

LNG became the biggest source of China’s overseas gas supply most months over the past year. The nation imported 4.15 million tons of the fuel via tanker last month, compared with 3.27 million tons by pipeline, Saturday’s data show. Piped gas supplies could get a boost late next year when Russia starts up its Power of Siberia pipeline  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20).

China’s first liquefied natural gas terminal opened in 2004 and its first major import pipeline was commissioned in 2009.

© 2018 Bloomberg L.P

http://gcaptain.com/china-sails-past-japan-to-become-worlds-largest-buyer-of-natural-gas/

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 02:54:33 pm
You're more than capable of standing up for yourself. If you needed a mod, you'd get one.

Your own rhetoric, while less colorful, is equally objectionable at times.

You're assertion that AG "doesn't know what he's about" because he used the term "negative EROEI" when he really meant EROEI<1 was obviously intended to be some kind of authoritarian rebuke, since you and I and everyone else around here knew exactly what he meant, although his language might have been imprecise.

Each of you could afford to show a bit more respect to the other. The discussion is a good one, and you both can argue the points. Stick to that.

You too AG.


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I here ya, Eddie. You are right. I'll try to dial back my Kansas Ruffian angry Jayhawker rhetoric. I agree it really does not shed any light on my claim that peak oil is not a real concern and Catastrophic Climate Change is a dire concern.

As you just read from Palloy, he refused to answer my questions, especially that one about the minimum FF needed to prevent a collapse. After quickly Ad homing my questions and my logic, he, proceeded to parade his "razor sharp brain" (that's his own term, not mine) with a discussion of thermodynamics.

Since you do have a profound knowlege of the science here, AND you figured out quickly what I really meant by the "negative ERoEI" term I used, let me add a couple of past history nuggets from my knock down drag out argument with Palloy about the flaws in Hess's Law, as applied to combustion chambers:

When the enthalpy for various combustible substances, from hydrocarbons (long or short chained to the simplest, like CH4 - ethene is there too but it is a plant hormone, as you know, and not applicable to this discussion) is calculated, there is no time constraint for the combustion process. Consequently, the energy they measure to boil a certain amount of water, in an open flame, not a combustion chamber, is the total energy released from complete combustion.

Gasolene is a mix of several long and short chained hydrocarbons, all of which have different time requirements for complete combustion to be achieved. When gasolene is used to boil water in an open flame, all the Hess Law numbers represent the actual amount of energy released. The Fossil Fuel industry uses these enthalpy numbers to come up with the "higher energy density" assumptions they use for gasolene versus other fuels like Ethanol. This is happy talk bullshit.

The reason it is prevaricating horse poopy is that gasolene never completely combusts in a combustion chamber for the two real world physics reasons I just gave: There ain't enough time AND the hydrocarbons are a mix of long and short chains.

As you know, and Palloy knows too, but he doesn't like to talk about it  ;D, incomplete combustion results, not just in less energy than the complete combustion numbers from Hess's Law enthalpy calculations exhibit, but an efficiency destroying phenomenon called waste heat.

The incomplete combustion products like buckyball carbon soot substances and others (Gasolene has other chemical substances that are not hydrocarbons there to keep the mixture as homogenous as possible - they slow combustion for reasons of octane rating requirements in the internal combustion engine - this compromise increases waste heat) increase engine wear and shorten the MTBF of the mechanical parts.

Those parts need to be manufactured. That takes energy from fossil fuels. All that extra energy is never subtracted from the Hess's Law complete combustion happy numbers used for hydrocarbons in a combustion chamber.

That entire argument was based on my studied claim, backed by none other than Thomas Edison and the US Naval Laboratories in 1906, that ethanol is a superior fuel. Palloy vigorously attempted to refute my claim by citing numbers from HESS'S LAW. The reason he grabbed for Hess's Law numbers is that Hess's Law gives ethanol a lower enthalpy than most hydrocarbons.

I calmly explained that, the totally homogenous nature of ethanol, and the fact that it carries its own oxygen to the combustion chamber to aid in the combustion process, gives it a much higher percentage of burning towards complete combustion. In fact, due to that oxygen ethanol carries, even in the split seconds it has to combust in a cylinder under high compression (a requirement for ethanol efficiency is high compression, as you know), complete combustion is the norm.

But it does not stop there. Ethanol requires no additives to keep the mixture homogenous. So, because it completely combusts and has no additives, it produces such a small amount of waste heat that you can put your hand on an engine's manifold that has been running on ethanol over an hour and you will not get burned. You can keep your hand there. That means that mechanical parts wear does not occur at anywhere near the rate it does with gasolene. That means the metal parts last longer. That means the energy not needed for said engine MTBF parts replacement ADDS to the true energy density calculation of ethanol, making it far superior to gasolene. Hess's Law does not goes there. That's why the Fossil Fuelers like Charles Hall used Hess's Law to come up with their "high energy density" calculations. It is nothing but pseudo- erudite BULLSHIT.

In summary, The energy density of gasolene is, in the real world of the physics of internal combustion engines, lower than that of ethanol. The only caveat is that you must have a high compression engine and you must not have fuel lines and a tank that made of some plastic or rubber substance which can dry and crack from ethanol exposure ( as you know, alcohol is a drying agent). The BULLSHIT about ethanol "attracting water" is assed backwards, as I explained to Surly well over a year ago in a post (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/ethanol/msg26/#msg26) about my days as an air taxi pilot, when we had to fill the Piper Navajo Aircraft fuel tanks after the last flight or the air gap would produce condensation (temperatures go down at night and cool the air in the  tank), which would sink to the bottom and, when it got in the fuel lines, cause engine failure when you least wanted it too. Ethanol ALWAYS mixes completely with any water present, unlike gasolene. Anyone that has drank whiskey and water understands that.  ;D

That ethanol rabbit hole goes even deeper. Because it has such low waste heat, a high compression engine could be made two thirds lighter. However, said engine would be rapidly destroyed if you tried to run gasolene in it. It is little wonder that the LAW in the Fossil Fuel States of Amerika makes it ILLEGAL to make ethanol for fuel inless it is "fuel grade" (i.e. has a minimum amount of GASOLENE in it 😈).

Eddie, I am tired of Palloy's prevarication. His obssession with the "peak oil" is not reality based. The fact that he refuses to give a number of minimum FF required annually to prevent a collapse of Human Civilization is evidence that there is nuttin' to his "peak oil will save us" claim.



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 05:30:43 pm
I don't expect this to be resolved completely, but I appreciate you being willing to keep it a bit more friendly. I see your point on ethanol, which makes sense in the context you're describing.

I'm not sure what Palloy's background is, because he never shares much personal info, but my guess is that he's coming from a teaching background in addition to having been an IT professional. His POV is one I'd expect from an experienced and knowledgable teacher who taught exceptional high school students or college students.

Although he likes to say the word mathematics, he is equally schooled on physics and physical chemistry (and general chemistry, including solutions). His arguments do tend to place emphasis on calculated theoretical thermodynamic results and ignore the sort of real world deviations from that (like incomplete combustion) that would be of more of interest to an engineer or someone actually building real engines.

But it's really good to have someone smart and well educated on the Diner who can debunk obvious bullshit, which he is good at. There are a bunch of people who want to believe in magic, when it comes to understanding FF's. (And renewables, unfortunately).

It is my studied opinion that the advocates of a 100% Renewable Energy Transition are far more reality based than the fossil fuel funded happy talkers, endlessly reminding us, with a litany of half-truths, how much we "owe" the fossil fuel welfare queen Industry for destroying our democracy by buying our politiicans giving us such a high standard of living. Never mind the "irrelevant" MASSIVE, biosphere DESTROYNG pollution issue. Belief in magic solutions, (See: Trust us, we'll think of something) is what the Fossil Fuel Fascists specialize in.  😈🦕

One salient point that must never be left out of the discussion about readership in the Doomstead Diner is the fact that it is based on collapse being triggered by peak oil.

When what actually materializes is a global multi-government fascist pollution producing monstrocity that prefers to see the entire biopshere go **** up than to allow a collapse, the interest in this forum will fade. As RE says, this is part of Collapsenicksphere, or something like that.

I see galloping fascism. I see increased human depravity and ruthless high tech cruelty like has never been seen before. I see massive inceases in pollution. I see more and more species we depend on being so depleted, even before they go extinct, that TPTB start engineering a human population "useless eater" die-off so that they can enjoy their Libertarian Wet Dream for another century or so (until they end up as crispy critters while trying to move to Mars).

I do not see a collapse. I entertained that idea for a while back in 2012. After much study, research and reading, I am convinced that collapse talk is "high energy density" hot air that makes fossil fuels appear "precious", rather than the biosphere killing poisons that they actually are. That is profit over planet stupidity.

I sincerely wish Palloy is right and I am wrong.

But, unlike Palloy, I live in the real world of cause and effect. Tesla understood people like Palloy. So do I.

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 06:36:44 pm
Peak Oil: Problems And Possibilities

By Scott Hornby

SNIPPET 1:

The nonrenewable status of fossil fuels isn't up for debate - we've run out of dinosaurs - but the timing and consequences of peak oil are controversial. Some believe that we are already on the down slope, while others believe this is nothing but fear mongering.

SNIPPET 2:

Hubbert predicted a global peak around the year 2000. This is where things get muddy. Often, the only way to be certain of a long-term trend is in retrospect. Some experts believe we have already reached a peak or that one is imminent, while others predict a peak in 2020 or later. A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy titled "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk" (2005), also called the Hirsch Report, summarizes some of the major predictions that have been published by energy and economics experts:

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As you can see from the chart above, an exact date for a peak is difficult to predict even for those involved in the industry. Many experts say we have already crested the peak or that it will come before 2010, while others forecast that it will occur a decade or more later.

The difficulty in pinning down an exact date is due to geological complexities, measurement problems, pricing variations, demand elasticity and political influences. What is clear, however, is that we don't have another hundred years of seemingly limitless supply.

SNIPPET 3:

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) - an energy advisor to companies, governments, financial institutions and technology providers - sees peak oil as an opportunity. CERA predicts an oil plateau after 2030, rather than a peak or bell-shaped curve, during which oil production levels off. This scenario would provide time for unconventional liquid fuels to fill the gap. CERA points to production from heavy oil sands, gas-related liquids (condensate and natural gas liquids), gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids.

Full article:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/peak-oil-reality.asp#ixzz5JZWGegAb (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/peak-oil-reality.asp#ixzz5JZWGegAb)

Agelbert NOTE: While CERA, the alleged shills for the Fossil Fuel Industry (according to Palloy) are perhaps more "irrationally positive" about the availability of hydrocarbons, their "production from heavy oil sands, gas-related liquids (condensate and natural gas liquids), gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids" scenario, while ruinously polluting, is based on REAL WORLD sources of hydrocarbons and PRESENT Coal Gassification technology. Don't tell me they won't resort to that as long as they CONTINUE to IGNORE the GHG pollution reality on behalf of Hydrocarbon Industry PROFITS.

And furthermore, we may not have another hundred years of seemingly limitless supply, but there is no mention in the above, well referenced article, of a collapse any time soon.

If the issue was so dire, they would have mentioned how a gradual depletion of hydrocarbons would cause a collapse. They did not.


There are actually THREE Peak Oil scenarios, not one. Unfortunately for the readers of this investment advice article, they completely ignore the pollution costs. This is a grievous error, but I post this so you can understand why most people do not take GHG pollution, or the reality that Renewable Energy CAN, AND MUST, totally replace hydrocarbon burning if we are to survive, seriously. :(

(https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/06/oil-collapse.jpg)


Quote
A Peak Oil Primer

Simply put, peak oil is the recognition that there will be a day in the future when oil production enters an irreversible decline. This situation can evolve through a few different scenarios, including:

A. A production decline, when new deposits prove too difficult to tap and existing reserves start to draw down. (Also see, The Cost of Shale Oil Versus Conventional Oil.)

B. A production decline when oil alternatives become more cost effective, pricing oil out of the market, and making exploration and production unprofitable.

C. A production decline when all the oil deposits on earth have been exploited, and there is simply no more to be had no matter the price or difficulty.

Full article:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/060116/was-peak-oil-myth.asp#ixzz5JZaqJYnJ (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/060116/was-peak-oil-myth.asp#ixzz5JZaqJYnJ)


The REAL Bottom Line
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 07:09:53 pm
Jeffrey Phillips, Sr. Graphic Designer, Webber Energy Group, The University of Texas at Austin

Apr 30, 2016

(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e8d60a9b34cb6576272e539a8cb8bd65.webp)

Quote
Transportation is the big user of petroleum, 92% vs just 1% for generating electricity. Turning off the lights doesn't save oil.

Electric generation is the single largest consumer of primary energy, and 65% of that comes from fossil fuels, mostly coal, then natural gas. That mix is changing, with gas use growing  as environmental regulations raise the cost of using dirty coal.

https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-biggest-fossil-fuel-users (https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-biggest-fossil-fuel-users)

Agelbert NOTE: Jeffrey Phillips wrote the above before Trump came to power. I guess they don't have to "worry" about all those pesky environmental regulations any more.   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200714191329.bmp&hash=4764bfbe6bb0e11ca61102efa97a932a824f47e0) USA! USA!

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.words-and-dirt.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F10%2Fcollapse.jpg&hash=f0822c393ad6a3e9a0fa8c3647373864caf9251b)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 08:23:06 pm
Agelbert NOTE: Another 'more oil and gas to be pulled out of the oceans' DOT to connect for those who have eyes to see. 8)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Jack-Up Specialist Shelf Drilling Falls in Oslo Debut, But Optimistic on Rising 🦖 Rig Rates

June 25, 2018 by Reuters

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jack-up rig Lukasz Z / Shutterstock

reuters

By Nerijus Adomaitis OSLO, June 25 (Reuters) – A fall in equities and oil markets knocked shares in Shelf Drilling on their Oslo market debut on Monday, although the world’s largest owner of shallow water rigs was optimistic rig rates are set to rise.

The Dubai-based company’s shares were trading at 63.64 Norwegian crowns at 1400 GMT, below their initial public offering (IPO) price of 65.35 crowns.

“I think it (the share price move) is more of a response to a broader market movement than anything specific to the company,” Chief Executive David Mullen said.

Stocks in Asia and Europe fell on concerns about a trade dispute between the United States and other major economies, while Brent crude eased after a deal between OPEC and other oil producers to increase production.

Shelf Drilling’s debut came four years after it abandoned plans to list in London in the wake of an oil price downturn.

The company raised about $225 million in the offering, it said on Friday, the latest drilling firm to list in Oslo to raise capital.

Mullen told Reuters on Monday the company expected to see higher rig rates in 2019 and more consolidation of the fragmented market.

He forecast utilisation of marketed rigs would rise to near 80 percent by the end of this year from 74 percent currently, giving rig owners more leverage to ask for higher prices.

Offshore Oil Recovery Beginning in World’s Harshest Environments

“So going into 2019 we should see some pricing power, and some real price movements,” he said in an interview, adding the Middle East, North Sea and West Africa were the most promising regions for jack-up rigs.

About 80 percent of Shelf Drilling’s current business relates to drilling extra wells at existing oilfields to help to drain the reservoirs or to repair existing wells.

As a recovery in crude oil prices increases oil companies’ interest in offshore exploration and field developments, Mullen plans to acquire more so-called premium rigs, better suited to search for new resources than standard specification rigs.

“Today we have eight premium jack-ups and we want to see that grow … I would like to ultimately grow to a fleet of 15, maybe 20, premium jack-up rigs,” Mullen said.

Mullen also said he expected more consolidation in the drilling rig market between small players, and big deals too.

Borr Drilling to Acquire Paragon Offshore in Push to Consolidate Jack-Up Rig Market

“I think you are going to see some big mergers … but we are more interested in acquiring assets, not so much interested in doing broad M&A deals,” he said.

Copenhagen-listed conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk is expected to try to sell its drilling arm, Maersk Drilling, but has not found a buyer so far.

Mullen said Shelf Drilling itself was not seeking a broad deal with Maersk, but could be interested in buying some of the Danish company’s benign environment jack-up rigs.

($1 = 8.1000 Norwegian crowns) (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Jane Merriman and Mark Potter)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2018.

http://gcaptain.com/jack-up-specialist-shelf-drilling-falls-in-oslo-debut/ (http://gcaptain.com/jack-up-specialist-shelf-drilling-falls-in-oslo-debut/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 26, 2018, 09:43:51 pm
AG, your attempts to deluge the argument with volumes of stuff doesn't help. I will try and answer your last three posts, and leave the others for my next post.

You are saying that the heat produced from burning gasoline according to Hess's Law is incorrect because when you burn gasoline in an ICE it doesn't all get burnt.  That is hardly the fault of Hess's Law, is it?  It is clearly the fault of the ICE - it produces a hot exhaust, waste heat.  All the values for the Table of Standard Molar Enthalpy are arrived at by actual real calorimetry experiments, where all burning is complete and no heat is lost.


What is the minimum amount of fossil fuels we must burn each year to prevent a collapse of civilization during that year?

I HAVE already answered that question, but you didn't read it:
Quote
It is a silly question to ask "at what exact figure will it all collapse?", it is a matter of confidence that the oil is there to be had.  When the confidence goes, the oil majors' shares will collapse, and with it the financial system.

If there is not enough fuel (of the right types) to keep running the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Cyber Force, Police, Ambulance, Emergency Services, Courts, Prisons, Public Transport, TV, radio, the mobile phone system, the landline phone system, the banking system, hospitals and a host of other "essential services", then society will collapse.  Any attempt at establishing a figure for this is pointless, as it cannot possibly be accurate. 

The most critical element in that list is the banking system, as without a payments system running, no one can buy anything, including electricity (which involves getting coal miners to work on time and paying them so they can buy food). Once the electricity goes off, the internet goes down, water stops coming out the taps, toilets won't flush, and the zombies take to the streets, armed to the teeth.



The Hirsch Report (2005) (Page 5) says:
Quote
1. When world oil peaking will occur is not known with certainty. A fundamental problem in predicting oil peaking is the poor quality of and possible political biases in world oil reserves data. Some experts believe peaking may occur soon. This study indicates that “soon” is within 20 years.

2. The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past “energy crisis” experience will provide  relatively little guidance. The challenge of oil peaking deserves immediate, serious attention, if risks are to be fully understood and mitigation begun on a timely basis.

6. Mitigation will require a minimum of a decade of intense, expensive effort, because the scale of liquid fuels mitigation is inherently extremely large.

7. While greater end-use efficiency is essential, increased efficiency alone will be neither sufficient nor timely enough to solve the problem. Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels will be required. A number of commercial or near-commercial substitute fuel production technologies are currently available for deployment, so the production of vast amounts of substitute liquid fuels is feasible with existing technology.

Hirsch was an independent contractor, contracted to produce the report by DoE.  He put the report up on the DoE website, but it was taken down when the Peak Oilers started quoting from it and asking DoE difficult questions.  Fortunately a school science website had downloaded a copy of it, and I downloaded it from them and put it on my RunningOnEmpty website.

It is all about mitigating the Peak Oil problem, so wouldn't have happened if DoE had thought Peak Oil wasn't real.

Here is Hirsch going through all the points, but you don't need it if you already Peak Oil aware:

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PVoDYha8ZRM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

I  am "deluging" nothing. If you are dot connecting challenged, that's your problem, Palloy.

Oh, and I just read your post. That is a NON-answer to my question. Give me A NUMBER, Palloy.

My number is around 7 Billion BOE plus or minus a billion BOE annually. As long as there is that minimum amount, which there certainly WILL BE for at least 50 YEARS,  there will BE NO COLLAPSE, PERIOD.

The speculation by the Hirsch Report cherry picked section that you put in red is just speculation, nothing more. You cannot base your collapse scenario on it. Stay on the subject Palloy. I am NOT discussing Renewable Energy technology with you. You cannot handle that discussion objectively.

Mitigation ain't your thing either. It never was. I've got a nice quote of yours from two years or so back that shows what you REALLY think about pollution costs. I'll post it here when I decide it needs to be posted.

 Have nice day.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 28, 2018, 09:55:27 pm
The Expanded Panama Canal Just Turned Two: Here Are Some Facts, Figures and Highlights the First Few Years of Operation
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

June 27, 2018 by gCaptain

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F10%2FDJI_0719-tonelaje-fiscal-2017.jpg&hash=08fd1f0ee81e69300be607680d171cb844cad3bf)
Photo: Panama Canal Authority

The Panama Canal on Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of the inauguration of Expanded Panama Canal, the largest enhancement project in the waterway’s 103-year history.

To date, the Canal has transited 3,745 Neopanamax vessels, exceeding the performance exceptions of Expanded Canal’s Neopanamax Locks.

“Two years ago, we pledged to usher in a new era for world commerce,” said Panama Canal Administrator Jorge L. Quijano. “Today, as we reflect upon our countless achievements and ever-expanding impact, we proudly reaffirm this commitment to the global maritime community.”

Over the past two years, the Panama Canal has recorded a number of notable milestones thanks to expansion project. In May, the canal set a new monthly tonnage record of 38.1 million tons (PC/UMS), the third such time the waterway has set a monthly tonnage record in the past two years.

May also saw the transit of the Panama Canal’s largest cruise ship to date, the Norwegian Bliss, at more than 168,000 gross tons and carrying nearly 5,000 passengers.

The transit of the largest capacity container vessel to-date, the CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt, with a Total TEU Allowance (TTA) of 14,863.

The Panama Canal Authority, which is responsible for managing the canal, says increased experience with the Neopanamax Locks and continued investment into its operations have allowed the waterway to provide additional capacity, flexibility and efficiency to shippers.

Recent offerings include two additional reservation slots for the Neopanamax Locks, bringing the total number of slots from six (at the time of the inauguration) to eight.

Starting this month, the Panama Canal Authority also increased the maximum allowable beam for vessels transiting the Neopanamax Locks to accommodate larger vessels and greater tonnage.

While the container segment makes up the more than half of transits through the Expanded Panama Canal, the impact of the Neopanamax Locks has been seen across all segments.

Perhaps the greatest impact has been seen in LNG, an entirely new segment for the waterway, which has emerged as the waterway’s fastest growing. In just the past two years, the segment has seen a total of 358 LNG 🦖 transits through the Neopanamax locks.

Some other notable LNG highlights include the transit of three LNG vessels in one day in April 2018 as well as the transit of the “first of many” LNG cargoes from the Dominion Cove Point terminal in Maryland to Japan, taking place that same month.

Moving forward, the Canal’s LNG traffic is expected to grow by 50 percent by the end of FY 2018 compared to FY 2017, increasing from 163 to approximately 244 transits.

The Panama Canal is currently offering one of the eight Neopanamax reservation slots per day to LNG shippers, but the Canal Authority says it has transited to LNG vessels in one day on 14 separate occasions
. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

The Expanded Canal is redrawing global trade routes, in the LNG industry and across segments, as shippers have more opportunity to take advantage of the economies of scale provided with the Neopanamax Locks,” said Deputy Administrator Manuel E. Benitez. “Thanks to the careful planning and strategic optimization of our operations, we’re confident the Expanded Canal will facilitate further growth in international trade and have a far-reaching impact in communities around the world.”

http://gcaptain.com/the-expanded-panama-canal-just-turned-two-here-are-some-facts-figures-and-highlights-from-its-first-few-years-in-operation/ (http://gcaptain.com/the-expanded-panama-canal-just-turned-two-here-are-some-facts-figures-and-highlights-from-its-first-few-years-in-operation/)

Yeah, lots of growth will result in a far reaching IMPACT, 🔥🌪☠️ for sure (see "Natural" Gas BRIDGE FUEL to the FUTURE BELOW).

(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tKBsTGeWsKc/VznRUcnfo1I/AAAAAAAAyok/paDRwKq7pxQvOB0MOBc7Y7FOeBpjxwj6wCLcB/s1600/fracked%2Bgas%2Bis%2Ba%2Bbridge%2Bto%2Bnowhere.PNG)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-240318143912.png&hash=0c7b550e9d49462e187b3c3bb4de1e960b6185df)


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 29, 2018, 01:58:51 pm
🦖🦀🐉 versus 🦕🦍

Fossil Fuelers BATTLE for world hydrocarbon profits in BOOMING world economy 💵 🎩 🏴‍☠️



Trump 🦖🦀🐉 Firmly In the Twilight Zone: Threatens Nord Stream 2🦕🦍 With Sanctions

(https://imageproxy.themaven.net/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fmaven-user-photos%2Fmishtalk%2Feconomics%2FzmfATcSa4EegwR7v_znq6Q%2FV-60_NWHskaTtH7QcTrPgw?w=1368&q=75&h=909&auto=format&fit=crop)

June 29, 2017

by Mike Mish Shedlock

Trump's 🦀 vise on the EU started with steel, progressed to cars, then to Iran, and now to a gas pipeline vital to the EU.

The story of the day, not discussed in mainstream media, involves Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline between Russia and the EU. The feature image is from Gazprom🦕🦍.

Gazprom says "The new pipeline, similar to the one in operation, will establish a direct link between Gazprom and the European consumers. It will also ensure a highly reliable supply of Russian gas to Europe."

Some suggest the EU is unwise to depend on Russia. That is nonsense. Why?

Free trade stops wars!

Regardless, it is the EU's decision to make, not Trump's 🦀, and the deal is already underway.

Gazprom, Partners Invest €4.8 Billion Nord Stream 2 Construction

TASS, the Russian news agency reports Gazprom, Partners Invest €4.8 Billion Nord Stream 2 Construction. (http://tass.com/economy/1011281)

Believe that? Why not? There is no dispute from the EU.

My point is the investment.

Russia’s gas producer Gazprom 🦕 and its Nord Stream 2 partners 🦍 💵 🎩 have invested a total of 4.8 bln euro in the project on natural gas pipeline construction as of the end of June, Chief Financial Officer of Nord Stream 2 AG, the operator of the pipeline construction, Paul Corcoran told journalists on Thursday.

Quote
"We have received 96% of the pipes, we have concrete coated 55% of those pipes and we mobilized vessels for the pipelines. So we are quite well prepared on track and on time for the project," CFO added.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is expected to come into service at the end of 2019.

Stop It All Says Trump🦀🦖🐉

Eurointelligence reports Trump 🦀now gunning for Nord Stream 2 (http://www.eurointelligence.com/professional/briefings/2018-06-28.html)

As if the tariffs on steel and aluminium - and soon cars - were not enough, the US administration🦀🦖🐉  is now preparing sanctions against five European companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Those sanctions previously had the status of a rumour. But FAZ reports this morning that it received confirmation from a senior US official, at the World Gas Conference (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)in Washington, that the administration is formally considering an application to impose such sanctions. There are two German companies involved, Wintershall und Uniper, as well as OMV from Austria, Engie from France and Royal Dutch Shell. Together they fund 50% of the project. Gazprom funds the other 50%.

FAZ notes that Uniper, one of the German companies, would be particularly hard-hit. The company is a big player in the US coal trade. The company's CEO is quoted as saying that he continues to believe in the necessity of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to secure gas supplies for the EU. It remains to be seen whether the companies will back off from the project once the sanctions are actually imposed.

Twilight Zone
(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c9604f5a5b095bd9b9cef8602a0211319abf5b194eb41e5b7a39136f1c19bc5.jpg)

Trump's 🦀 Iran sanctions are absurd. His Nord Stream 2 demands are so far beyond absurd as to be in the Twilight Zone.

Does Trump 🦀 have a yes or no vote on any and every trade agreement in the world?

It appears so.

The EU and all the countries that border the pipeline agreed to this deal. They invested heavily in it. Construction is underway.

What's Next?

This is so damn absurd, it's logical to conclude there is no way the EU will back down.


However, logic and reality can be quite different things. Trump 🦀 is proof enough. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121649.png&hash=4554f7e59701d12857946aece16bceb973c997b3)

Either way, the problem is "what's next?"

History suggests that when trade stops, war soon follows.

https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/trump-firmly-in-the-twilight-zone-threatens-nord-stream-2-with-sanctions-8couEtZfM0SUSGhhgQhJTQ/ (https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/trump-firmly-in-the-twilight-zone-threatens-nord-stream-2-with-sanctions-8couEtZfM0SUSGhhgQhJTQ/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 30, 2018, 05:53:26 pm
More Profit over Planet on behalf of Hydrocarbon Hustlers 🦖 comin' our way.  :(

League of Conservation Voters

June 30, 2018

House rushes forward on four drilling bills

Here's a partial list of these bills:

H.R. 6087, introduced by Wyoming's Rep Liz Cheney 🦖, requires citizens and groups to pay exorbitant fees to protest oil and gas leasing. If passed, the per page fee proposed in this bill could cost thousands of dollars per submission. Here's the rub: oil and gas companies don't have to pay a fee for expressing interest in these very same parcels.

H.R. 6106 and H.R. 6107, introduced by New Mexico's Rep Steve Pearce 🐉, would gut federal oversight over drilling projects for environmental, safety, or public health impacts.

H.R. 6088, introduced by Utah's Rep John Curtis 🦕, would move to hand out drilling permits as quickly as possible. Only the Interior Secretary could object to the permit — and there would be no site inspections or environmental review.

These attacks on public lands are directly aligned with the Trump administration, which over the past 18 months has sold out more federal land to drilling interests than any previous administration.

President Trump 🦀  and Interior Secretary Zinke 😈 want nothing more than to open up millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas drilling and mining. And Republican leaders in Congress are doing everything legislatively available to assist Trump and Zinke in their efforts.

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 03, 2018, 07:50:17 pm
July 3, 2018

Rhode Island (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27) Sues Oil Giants 🐉🦕🦖

 Rhode Island became the first state to sue oil and gas companies for the impacts of climate change on Monday, filing suit against 21 of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers. State Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said yesterday that the state was especially vulnerable to the impacts of rising seas and extreme weather as he announced the suit with Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo against a stretch of the state’s 400-mile coastline.

“The defendants' actions for the past several decades are already having and will continue to have a significant and detrimental impact on our infrastructure, economy, public health, and our eco-systems, and will force the state to divert already-limited resources to mitigate the effects of climate change, thereby diminishing resources for other vital programs and services,” Kilmartin said.

The suit joins a group of cases across the country brought by cities including New York and municipalities in California and Colorado.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/rhode-island-sues-oil-companies-over-climate-change-first-state-to-do-so
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 05, 2018, 09:48:10 pm
Scandal Ridden Pruitt 🦖 Finally Resigns (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311017193926.png&hash=135a7bcd2093b679e425bbd2086adb8ddfd2e7b5) from EPA, Leaving Another Climate Denier 🦕 in Charge 👎

July 5, 2018

Sierra Club’s Mary Anne Hitt says Pruitt’s long list of scandals is only matched by his long list of attempted environmental rollbacks, and new acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler will advance the same deregulatory agenda

https://youtu.be/j-pcZc8INgU

Story Transcript

DHARNA NOOR: It’s The Real News. I’m Dharna Noor.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt resigned on Thursday amidst numerous allegations of ethical and legal violations. Trump announced Pruitt’s resignation via Twitter, where he also said that EPA Deputy Administrator and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler will assume the role of acting administrator this Monday. Just hours before Pruitt resigned, two congressmen called upon the EPA’s inspector general to investigate allegations that Pruitt has been hiding and falsifying calendar records of his meetings with industry officials. And these came in a slew of new allegations reported by The Washington Post on Monday. Aides also said that the administrator asked EPA staffers to help his wife get a six-figure job, and to perform many other nonofficial tasks.

Here to talk about all of this is Mary Anne Hitt. She’s the director of the Beyond Coal Campaign at the Sierra Club. Thanks for joining us today.

MARY ANNE HITT: Thanks for having me.

DHARNA NOOR: So first let’s talk a little bit about what we’re losing in Scott Pruitt. Let’s assess his record a little bit. So as you know, and many of you probably know, on Monday a schoolteacher named Kristen Mink actually confronted Pruitt in a D.C. restaurant and asked him to resign. Let’s see that clip.

KRISTIN MINK: I just wanted to urge you to resign because of what you’re doing to the environment in our country. Meanwhile, you’re slashing strong standards for cars and trucks for the benefits of big corporations. We deserve to have somebody at the EPA who actually does protect our environment, someone who believes in climate change and takes it seriously for the benefit of all of us, including our children. So I would urge you to resign before your scandals push you out.

DHARNA NOOR: So Mink castigated Pruitt for being a climate denier, for attacking clean air and water standards, for renting a condo from the spouse of a prominent fossil fuel lobbyist with whom he was in talks. This was just as a reminder at the time that he actually approved the Alberta Clipper pipeline, allowing hundreds of thousands more barrels of oil per day to flow to the United States from Canada’s tar sands. Talk a little bit about his record generally, and what Pruitt’s environmental impact was, and about his deregulatory agenda.

MARY ANNE HITT: Well, let me say first that I am a mom of an 8-year-old, and I found it very heartwarming when that mom stood up and I think said what a lot of us moms wish we could say to Scott Pruitt in person, which is that it’s our clean air and our clean water and the very safety of our kids that is on the line. And Scott Pruitt from day one in office was, frankly, working to dismantle the EPA. It was his life’s work formerly as the Oklahoma attorney general to try to find shortcuts or loopholes around our clean air and clean water standards, and from his first day on the job he began working at the behest of polluters to do just that.

And in doing so, if that wasn’t bad enough, he also was just-. It was just, frankly, a bottomless pit of scandals, of corruption, from multi-hundred dollar fountain pens, to accepting cheap rent from a lobbyist for a fossil fuel company, to tactical paants that were bought for him for the price of hundreds of dollars a pair. So it was really, frankly, I think-. Again, as a mom, as someone who’s worried about the safety of your air and water, the fact that he was that corrupt in his personal dealings was one thing. The fact that he was playing fast and loose with the water that we all drink and the air that we all breathe was what was truly scary about Scott Pruitt.

DHARNA NOOR: Talk a little bit more about what some of the impacts that he had were on clean air and clean water regulations. Talk a little bit more specifically about what some of his legacies will be, moving on from the EPA.

MARY ANNE HITT: Well, the long list of Scott Pruitt’s ethical scandals is only matched by a long list of air and water and climate regulations that he tried to roll back in his tenure at EPA. Everything from standards for how to dispose of toxic coal ash safely so it doesn’t end up in the drinking water, so you don’t have things like arsenic in your drinking water from coal ash, to the first ever climate standards that we had as a nation to reduce climate pollution from power plants. He was working to repeal and revoke those. You can talk about the safety of pesticides. You can talk about-. Really, Scott Pruitt never met an environmental regulation that he didn’t want to try to roll back or repeal. And the good news, if there is any, is that he didn’t get too far in that agenda. A lot of what he was trying to do, we believe, was illegal. And the Sierra Club and other groups were challenging him in court every step of the way. So he set a lot of bad things in motion. And we are worried that Andrew Wheeler, the number two at the EPA who is now in charge, will continue on that toxic agenda. But we also are very determined to fight them every step of the way.

DHARNA NOOR: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit more about Andrew Wheeler. Again, he’s a former coal lobbyist. And I understand that your organization actually obtained emails between him and Scott Pruitt through the Freedom of Information Act. What did you find from those emails, and what do you generally expect from him as an EPA administrator?

MARY ANNE HITT: Well, I want to give a special shoutout to our attorneys and press folks at the Sierra Club. They paged through, I am not kidding you, almost 60000 pages of FOIA documents from the EPA that are the source of the information about a lot of these scandals that you saw on the news and you wrote about on the front pages of the newspaper. And Wheeler and Pruitt were definitely partners in crime, working to advance this agenda of rolling back our environmental safeguards that they’re going to continue full speed ahead with Wheeler at the helm, to try to get that agenda over the finish line. And we are going to be fighting at the Sierra Club and with all of our partners every step of the way to prevent that from happening. Because it really is, you know, just as the mom who confronted Scott Pruitt in the restaurant put it so so beautifully, it’s our kids future. It’s the safety of the water we drink and the air that we breathe. And that, that is what they are playing fast and loose with to benefit their polluter buddies.

DHARNA NOOR: And then, lastly, how can people hold the EPA administrator, whether it’s Pruitt, Wheeler, or somebody else accountable? What are some actions that people can take to ensure that, you know, we don’t have another EPA administrator like Scott Pruitt? Is that even possible?

MARY ANNE HITT: Well, the Sierra Club tonight is reaching out to all of our members and supporters and asking them to call their members of Congress, because Congress is the agency that does have oversight over the EPA. And obviously Trump is happy to have folks reading the EPA doing the bidding of polluters. And so our check on that is the Congress. And Scott Pruitt did get a lot of a lot of very hard questions, increasingly hard questions, every time he appeared before the Congress and before the Senate. That was a lot of what put him on the hot seat and, again, exposed some of this corruption.

And so we’re going to be counting on members of Congress now to do the same thing with Wheeler who, again, he’s a coal lobbyist. He has a very long and not very pretty track record when it comes to clean air, clean water. He’s got the same agenda as Pruitt and Trump, which is to dismantle all of our environmental safeguards. And so folks should call their members of Congress and ask them to oppose Wheeler and Trump’s agenda, and to actually put someone in charge of EPA who will let the EPA do its job and fulfill its mission. I’m sure the very hardworking folks at EPA are breathing a sigh of relief tonight, and would just like to be able to do their jobs to make sure our air and water are safe. And the Congress needs to allow the EPA to do just that. That’s what the American people are counting on.

DHARNA NOOR: All right. Well, Marianne, as we see what Wheeler and others do in the EPA we’ll be sure to check in again with you. Thanks so much for coming on today.

MARY ANNE HITT: Thank you so much for having me.

DHARNA NOOR: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

https://therealnews.com/stories/scandal-ridden-pruitt-finally-resigns-from-epa-leaving-another-climate-denier-in-charge
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 05, 2018, 10:13:05 pm
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The Koch Brothers' 😈 👹 Best Investment

KAYLA KITSON JUNE 28, 2018

How a $40 million political outlay yields a $500 million tax cut.

This article appears in the Summer 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

The sprawling political network backed by billionaire brothers Charles 🦕 and David 🦖Koch will spend $20 million ahead of the midterm elections to convince voters that the Trump tax cuts are good for the country and the middle class. That’s on top of the $20 million they spent to promote the 2017 Republican tax bill’s passage. All told, the network plans to spend $400 million on candidates and issues this election cycle, up from $250 million in the last one.

Most of the money will be spent on TV ads targeting vulnerable Democratic senators for opposing the tax cuts. As of early May, the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), had already run more than 8,000 ads targeting Democratic Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

The campaign also includes door-to-door canvassing, in which AFP employees and volunteers talk up the new tax law with voters. AFP is calling the campaign the “American Pay Raise.” Of course, if you have to spend tens of millions of dollars to convince working families that tax cuts are good for them, that should tell you there’s something fundamentally wrong with your tax cuts, which go mostly to corporations and the rich.

Nobody better personifies this tilt better than the Koch brothers themselves. The immense amounts shelled out by the Koch network to pass and promote the GOP tax law are just drops in the bucket compared with the tax windfall the Koch brothers will reap from the new law.

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the Kochs and their conglomerate Koch Industries will likely save between $840 million and $1.4 billion in income taxes each year. That’s a return on investment of at least 4,100 percent on the $20 million they spent to pass the law.

Estimating the potential tax savings for the Koch brothers is not an exact science. Koch Industries, the nation’s second-largest private corporation, does not publicly reveal its financial statements or how its individual companies are structured for tax purposes. Some may be C corporations, which would benefit from the lower corporate tax rate. Others are likely pass-through entities, so their tax savings would flow directly through to the individual tax returns of their owners, primarily Charles and David Koch.

Koch Industries brought in about $100 billion in revenue last year, according to Forbes. Assuming the conglomerate has a (relatively modest) pretax profit margin of 10 percent, Koch Industries’ profits would be around $10 billion before taxes. Let’s say that all the Koch companies are organized as pass-through entities, so all the income is taxed at the individual level. Let’s further assume that these profits are divided equally between the two brothers, so each reports $5 billion of business income. Under the new law, the Kochs will be able to deduct 20 percent of that income, so each will have $1 billion in tax-free income.

The tax law also reduced the top income tax bracket—which now applies to income over $600,000 for a married couple—from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. Under the new law, Charles and David Koch could pay about $1.5 billion in taxes each on their business income, versus the nearly $2 billion they would have owed under previous law. These two provisions alone could save them about $500 million each, or $1 billion in total.


To be fair, each brother owns a 42 percent stake in the business, so 16 percent of the profits will pass through to the other owners. Assuming that each brother reports 42 percent of the $10 billion in estimated profits doesn’t significantly change the magnitude of the estimated tax savings—each brother would still get about $420 million.

If we instead assume that all the Koch companies are taxed at the corporate level, the tax savings for Koch Industries could be up to $1.4 billion. This assumes that the Koch companies previously paid the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, in which case Koch industries would have owed $3.5 billion in taxes on its $10 billion in profits. Under the new law, it would only owe 21 percent, or $2.1 billion.

Most corporations pay less than the statutory rate due to myriad tax loopholes. Koch Industries could have already paid a low effective tax rate under prior law, meaning its benefit from the tax law would be less than estimated here—especially if loopholes that it relied on were closed. Even so, the lower rates in the new law will save them a bundle. And luckily for Koch Industries, which has substantial oil and gas operations, most of the loopholes for this industry remain wide open.

The propaganda for the Republican Tax Act portrays it as good for investment. It’s hard to find an investment in the real economy that paid off as handsomely as the Koch brothers’ political spending.

http://prospect.org/article/koch-brothers-best-investment

(https://img.ifcdn.com/images/d273dcf4828ebb04f55f650ce7e7b61133f10a0bc872adf4b502fdebf24a20a4_1.jpg)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-310717232714.jpeg&hash=68ec2687cad360aed0465d51ce0d503486027a69)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 06, 2018, 12:59:47 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Ghost Ships No More: Seismic Vessels (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) Resume Oil and Gas Search as Prices Perk Up (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdl8.glitter-graphics.net%2Fpub%2F1238%2F1238988d68zgywbnq.gif&hash=c662377c3c5c857bf12634da220486c6543941bd)🤬
(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)

July 4, 2018 by Reuters

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seismic survey vessel Photo: CutePloy / Shutterstock
reuters

SNIPPET:

By Florence Tan and Gavin Maguire SINGAPORE, July 5 (Reuters) – A growing fleet of ships is scanning oceans in search of new oil and gas fields as energy companies, now with more cash thanks to stronger crude prices, gradually resume spending on seismic services after a four-year downturn.

A doubling in the area contracted for seismic work in the first quarter this year from the last three months of 2017 has injected optimism into surveillance firms, with a global fleet of about 24 vessels, most of whom struggled to survive in the past years.

But they say the road to recovery remains bumpy with producers big and small not keen on drilling for new reserves unless oil prices, which have more than doubled from 2016 lows, stay high for at least a year.

Still, with crude prices stabilising well above $60 a barrel in the past six months, companies including mid- and small-sized independents such as Woodside Petroleum Ltd, Kosmos Energy Ltd and Tullow Oil PLC have helped boost demand for surveillance.

The total area tendered by upstream companies 🦖 for seismic work doubled to 40,000 square kilometres in the first quarter this year from October-December last year, said Duncan Eley, chief executive officer at Polarcus which owns a seismic fleet.

“That’s positive in isolation,” said Eley, keeping his optimism in check even as he pointed to a busy fourth quarter for geophysical work in Asia Pacific, particularly for gas with demand forecast to soar in coming decades.
(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tKBsTGeWsKc/VznRUcnfo1I/AAAAAAAAyok/paDRwKq7pxQvOB0MOBc7Y7FOeBpjxwj6wCLcB/s1600/fracked%2Bgas%2Bis%2Ba%2Bbridge%2Bto%2Bnowhere.PNG)

Gas projects 🦖 in Myanmar could take two to three vessels from the global fleet, while there are also potential activities in Malaysia, Australia, India and Papua New Guinea, where Exxon Mobil and Total plan to feed more gas into their existing liquefied natural gas infrastructure, Eley said.

That marks a stark change from the dark days of 2015 and 2016 when orders for geophysical survey work came to a grinding halt as oil prices plummeted from over $100 a barrel to less than $50.

Petroleum Geo Services (PGS)🦖, the world’s largest seismic operator, was also seeing better opportunities now than last year.

“The recent increases we’ve seen are primarily driven by Africa and Brazil when it comes to bidding for contract work,” said Bĺrd Stenberg, PGS’ senior vice president for investor relations and communication.

Demand for geophysical data at producing oil and gas fields, also known as 4D seismic survey, has also increased as explorers sought to maximise output from these assets ☠️, the two executives 😈 👹 said.

PGS expects to secure between 20 and 25 4D seismic jobs this year, up from 16-17 in 2017, Stenberg said, with most of it located in the North Sea, West Africa and Brazil.

OIL PRICE IS KEY  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Frapgenius%2F1375371542_tumblr_m7jevgcaFm1qzqdem.gif&hash=1a2fe8d9567770e89661ad82a4e03b115e0f5358) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162655-14231561.gif&hash=98b427175ee380f6d3c313520cc8668c10f2172a)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-190318152544.png&hash=f9c3636b6ca81d8a7b9c7b8182c3367edbb8a377)

The increased work should help improve the company’s earnings which remain well below pre-crisis levels.

Full FARTICLE:

http://gcaptain.com/ghost-ships-no-more-seismic-vessels-resume-oil-and-gas-search-as-prices-perk-up/

Agelbert NOTE: Corruptio Optimi Pessima (evidenced in the video below).

In the year 2050, most humans alive today..., WON'T BE ☠️.

The Age of Stupid
https://youtu.be/va_MVxpboqg
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-151217143801.png&hash=cea7d138d7e8c34fbb02ac194675918ab9d43056)
https://youtu.be/8PdM9_cDL5Y

Dr. Brown is the guy in the video. His credentials are World Class.

Patrick T. Brown, PhD

Curriculum vitae

CURRENT POSITION

Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University
Postdoctoral Research Scientist (under Ken Caldeira)

EDUCATION

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Doctor of Philosophy, Earth and Ocean Science, 2016
San Jose State University, San Jose, California
Master of Science, Meteorology and Climate Science, 2012
University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
Bachelor of Science, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2008

https://patricktbrown.org/


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 08, 2018, 06:06:20 pm
This 2012 Article is even more applicable today.

Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables 🌿 Why They Work and Polluting Fuels ☠️ Never Did (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/blasts-form-the-2012-to-2013-past-when-there-was-more-hope/msg10213/#msg10213)

The Fossil Fuelers 🦖  DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!   

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 18, 2018, 12:48:14 pm
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Oil Change International

Jul. 17, 2018 11:38AM EST

'Traitor' Trump 'Colludes' With Putin Over Oil 🐉🦕🦖

By Andy Rowell

A "traitor." "Putin's Poodle." "Open Treason." These are just some of the harsh headlines to greet Trump after yesterday's summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The papers back home were indignant with rage. The New York Times called Trump Putin's "lackey." The paper said that this was the summit that Putin had dreamed of for eighteen years, and Trump had willingly obliged.

The Washington Post's bruising editorial headline was "Trump just colluded with Russia. Openly."

The paper thundered "Trump appeared to align himself with the Kremlin against American law enforcement before the Russian ruler and a global audience … Trump in fact was openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power."

It was not just the press who criticized the president, as he also received cross-party political condemnation.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement: "For the president of the United States to side with President Putin against American law enforcement, American defense officials, and American intelligence agencies is thoughtless, dangerous and weak. The president is putting himself over our country."

John Brennan, the CIA director under Barack Obama, said: "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin," he tweeted.

Arizona Republican senator John McCain added it was "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory … It is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake … no prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant."

The condemnation is everywhere, filling column inches after column inches in the press. Another headline in the Post stated "Trump is a Putin Fanboy: Someday we will know why."

There are many reasons why Trump is a "fanboy" of Putin. And we can guess why. As well as finding common cause to dismiss the evidence of Russian meddling in the flawed election he won, the egotistical narcissistic hard men have much in common, too. And one of those issues is oil.

As one news outlet, CNBC, put it: "Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Moscow and Washington could cooperate to soothe volatility in the oil market that has roiled the industry in recent years."

Putin said at the conference: "I think that we as a major oil and gas power, and the United States as a major oil and gas power as well, we could work together on regulation of international markets, because neither of us is actually interested in the plummeting of the prices."

Putin added: "But nor are we interested in driving prices up because it will drain a lot of juices from all other sectors of the economy, so we do have space for cooperation here."

Indeed the meteorologist Eric Holthaus, writing in Grist, also picks up the oil theme: "There's no way to understand Trump's 🦀 relationship with Russia 🦕 without putting oil and climate politics at its center" he wrote. "If you're upset at Trump and Putin for undermining our democracy, just wait until you find out that they are likely colluding to destroy our planet's climate system, too." (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2Fthumb_3-271114005231.jpeg&hash=2962d87464833e5ab2b6fde9d6478e8fe9881d5f)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251117173905.jpeg&hash=3ee1f30d42d58a5d6488780f315a4177ea456938)

He added: "After Monday's meeting in Helsinki, it's clearer than ever that we are at a crucial moment in our American democracy as well as in the biggest and most important fight we've ever had—the fight against climate change."

Holthaus continued: "Russia is a petrostate 🦕, and the U.S.🦖 is now, too. In fact, the two countries are the world's largest non-OPEC oil producers, extracting nearly as much as all OPEC countries combined … By working together, they can keep the global economy swimming in oil and gas."

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fourwinds10.net%2Fresources%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2Fdissolving%2520the%2520planet%2520for%2520oil.jpg&hash=4e454194b388f35b4beee87072d010f6bf35af46)


The two hardmen are propped up by fossil fuels and our addiction to oil and gas. So Holthaus finishes by arguing, "The quicker we resolve to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels, the quicker Putin and Trump will become powerless." (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparts.co%2Fcliparts%2FBig%2FEgq%2FBigEgqBMT.png&hash=e7eec62f009cdd686ce795fad0a53c6befe748e9)

And that can only be a good thing. For all of us. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203111.png&hash=e8f61baab9b9d36eaf1c4087927f321bf883250c)

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-putin-oil-2587581476.html
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 28, 2018, 06:52:03 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210516165122.jpeg&hash=d773f8f1ecba3640f8e56b034781204d35319f2b)

Many Russians Think Climate Change is Propaganda to Weaken Their Economy – RAI with A. Buzgalin (11/12)


July 27, 2018

On Reality Asserts Itself, Prof. Alexandr Buzgalin says Russian oligarchs 🦖🐉🦕 find an oil based economy too profitable  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) to consider transitioning away from  it – with host Paul Jay

https://youtu.be/w1DJ7D97DaE

Story Transcript

PAUL JAY: Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay, and we’re continuing our discussion with Alexander Buzgalin. Thanks for joining us again. And one more time, Professor Buzgalin is the director of the Center for Modern Marxist studies at Moscow State University. In the United States, Canada, most of the West and much of the South, meaning Latin America, Africa and many places in Asia, people recognize the critical necessity of facing the challenge of the climate crisis. The science is clear, we’re facing an existential threat. And in the wisdom of the American political system, a climate denier gets elected in a moment where it couldn’t be more critical to actually have policies that address the question. But in Russia, you more or less have a climate denier who supported Trump. And clearly, the importance of fossil fuel to the Russian economy. One understands his position, but still, this is an existential threat. How much is this discussion and debate going on in Russia?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Unfortunately, not too much. It’s one of the problems of our society which is far from really global problems and this is partly a result of Westernization, partly a result of the opposition to Westernization. It’s like a paradox but it’s true.

PAUL JAY: This is seen like a Westernized argument, climate change.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah. Of course, it’s not an idea, this might be a propagandistic slogan or something like that, that all these climate questions are inspired by the West, and this is part of the blah, blah, blah, and real problems are very far from this, and so on and so forth. It’s games of the rich countries. They didn’t understand that, I don’t know, what will be with climate, but today we are poor, we will build strong industries, they don’t want us to have strong industry, that’s why they created all this climate agenda. This is one approach. Of course, this is not true, but it’s more or less popular. 😟

PAUL JAY: Here too.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah. Second variant, we have our problems, let’s forget about all these Western talks. Russia is strong enough, we have enough nature and everything, so we much protect our nature. And this is maybe important, but the most important problem is to build our industry. So, two variants of the same game, which is not good game at all, but this is more or less a reality. More or less because we have, of course, a green movement, we have opposition, we have people who are talking about this seriously. That we must have another social organization in order to overcome global problems, and global warming is one of these problems. It is normal for left intellectuals, and not only intellectuals, in Russia.

PAUL JAY: Because if it’s as I think it is, that scientists in Russia have more voice and are more respected than here? At least that was certainly the tradition. I know when I was in Eastern Europe, back during the Soviet days, scientists were rock stars. If they were prominent, they’d be on T.V. all the time. Is it still anything like that? Are the scientists raising their voices?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Unfortunately, it’s not the case now. We had terrible decline of the popularity of science, education, in mass consciousness, partly because of the primitive capitalization, this primitive accumulation of capital led to the destruction of fundamental science in many ways.

PAUL JAY: The asset grab in the ‘90s.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah. Plus, social status of scientists now in Russia is very low. Of course, money is not main illustration, but just to give you example, full professor in Moscow State University, best university, the best, the highest status, the wage is the same as for the driver of the subway train. And if you have PhD and start your career, you will have to two hundred dollars per month in Moscow, where prices are more or less like in New York. And this is a reflection of the social atmosphere. We still have some interesting cultural traditions, respect to science, but it’s more tradition than reality. More memories than modern situation.

PAUL JAY: If the West and the South gets really serious about policy to deal with climate change, it’s going to tremendously affect the Russian economy. I mean, if the world starts really getting off fossil fuel, getting off oil, the Russian economy is going to be hollowed, to say the least, which one, gives one a reason to understand why Putin would want a climate denier to become president of the United States, and maybe appreciate climate deniers having strength in Europe as well. On the other hand, you’d think there’d have to be a serious conversation about the future of the Russian economy. They’re having it even in places like Saudi Arabia, where they’re talking openly about having to plan for getting off an oil-based economy, they seem to be doing it. Qatar seems to be investing a lot of oil money now to develop what they’re calling this “knowledge-based economy.” I’m not saying they’re all for this, but at least there’s a conversation at high levels going on. If they’re not thinking and planning about this in Russia, it’s a problem.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: In Russia we have very big debates about oil dependence and this is a real problem for Russia. And we must overcome this dependence. And we must build another economy. And we have internal struggle, and one of the main ideas of opposition is to decrease the role of oil and gas export and the extraction of oil and gas, and to move towards the high-tech industry, education, science, medicine, and so on, as key branches of economy. And it’s possible. We have very good intellectual potential, potential in the sphere of creativity. And so, that’s why for Russia, the climate problem is not a threat to be killed. I mean, it’s not a threat for the economy. It’s a threat for this type of economy which is very profitable for oligarchs and which is very inefficient for Russian population and for the development of the country. Plus, oil can be used not only for fuel, not only to make energy. Oil can be used for production of different chemical things, and it can be very useful. And it’s necessary to have in other technologies.

And finally, it will be not one day no oil at all. It will be twenty, thirty years transitional period. And this is a good idea to change the economic situation. But here, we must have strong industrial policy. We must have plans, I’m not afraid of this word. We must have structural changes in the economy. And for that, we must realize, introduce a new economic model, and at least have very deep reforms of capitalist system, as minimum, very deep reforms of capitalist system. With modern system of capitalism in Russia, we will not move in this direction. That’s why we have, together, problems of political opposition, social opposition, a necessity to develop our life and necessity to solve ecological problems. It’s in one basket, in one sphere, in one political problem.

PAUL JAY: Okay, in the next segment we’ll talk about what the possibilities are for this next step, which I know you think is a socialism and a step towards communism, and whether there are actually conditions for this.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yes, it’s true.

PAUL JAY: So, please join us for the next and last segment of our interview, at least last for now, on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.

https://therealnews.com/stories/many-russians-think-climate-change-is-propaganda-to-weaken-their-economy-rai-with-a-buzgalin-11-12

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 12, 2018, 05:30:52 am
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Quote
There will come a day, for example, as with all financial bubbles, when the wildly optimistic projected profits of industries such as fracking will no longer be an effective excuse to keep pumping money into failing businesses burdened by debt they cannot repay.

“The 60 biggest exploration and production firms are not generating enough cash from their operations to cover their operating and capital expenses,” Bethany McLean writes of the fracking industry in an article titled “The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground” that appeared in The New York Times. “In aggregate, from mid-2012 to mid-2017, they had negative free cash flow of $9 billion per quarter.”

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https://www.truthdig.com/articles/conjuring-up-the-next-depression/

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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718204746.gif&hash=ef3006b22f07724d45868cab1dae91b1dff31327)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 02, 2018, 10:36:48 am
CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica’s work via donations on Patreon or PayPal!

Or just go buy a cool t-shirt, cup, baby outfit, bag, or hoodie. (https://cleantechnica.com/shop/#!/)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818163123-1664600.png&hash=d609f7e4847e25e034ca7c7b11e75234ba2a0afd) Coal & Gas Are Too Variable To Be Worth Considering

October 1st, 2018 by George Harvey

In one extremely important way, coal and gas are too variable to be worth considering.

We have heard it over and over. People whose thoughts go no deeper than common knowledge make the statement, “The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.” They seem to say this as though they think it is profound.

I will suggest a counter. “The variable nature of thermal power will kill natural gas just as surely as it is killing coal.” Thermal plants that are dependent on coal, gas, or nuclear fuel have one part of their nature that is too variable for them even to be worth considering in many places where they are used.

What matters to industry is not whether a given wind turbine is turning. What matters is getting the power when it is needed at a reasonable rate. Sign a power purchase agreement (PPA) at the right rate, and it is up to the supplier to make sure the power is there. If the seller cannot deliver, it will have to buy power to replace it. Therefore, the user can go for the least expensive power sources around with a fair amount of confidence that the power will be delivered at the proper price. And the least expensive resources happen to be renewable.

The CleanTechnica article, “Lazard: Wind & Solar Power Costs Continue To Fall, Putting Coal & Nuclear At A Disadvantage,” describes this. While that article is ten months old, the situation has only got worse for thermal power, as solar prices have continued to fall (see many articles HERE).

This is not as risky for the seller as it might sound. The buyer is looking for renewable energy, and renewable energy comes in many forms. A wind farm selling energy to a business can, for example, buy solar power to resell when it has insufficient wind. Since wind power is lowest during the daytime and during the summer, the very times that the sun shines brightest, solar power can provide a lot of the backup it needs. The wind farm can also call for hydro power, which is just about always available. It can also get power from geothermal plants, or biodigesters, or batteries. With today’s highly efficient transmission lines, it could buy the power cost-effectively from hundreds or thousands of miles away. There are a lot of options, and the power seller can either own those types of power plants itself, or it can enter into cooperative power agreements with other providers who do.

There is another thing that needs to be considered. Baseload power plants that are fueled by coal, gas, or nuclear materials are inflexible and cannot change their output to accommodate changes in demand. Because of their inflexible nature, they rely on plants called peakers, which are purposely built to provide variable or intermittent power. This is the old paradigm.

The new paradigm can rely on a smart grid. Renewable energy sources can be matched to demand. And demand response systems can adjust demand, if that becomes necessary.

So we have two ways of doing things. We can use the old paradigm, in which as much as possible of the constantly varying demand is met by inflexible power sources. Or we can use the new paradigm, in which the variable demand can be matched rather precisely by variable resources of many kinds, in many places.

Now comes the catch for thermal power, such as coal, nuclear, and thermal gas. Variability is not an issue that ends with the supply and demand of electricity. It also relates to the supply and demand of fuel, along with other variable costs. Thermal power is variable in one respect where renewable power is not, and that is its cost to the wholesale customer.

An article from Bloomberg, “Tech Investments Are Powering Up Clean Energy,” puts this very nicely. It says, “Corporations sign these purchase agreements for a number of reasons (sustainability goals and positive media coverage certainly being two), but the main reason is that long-term contracts with generators that have no variable costs are good for business. They give companies visibility on their power prices for several decades and, at least historically, have offered cheaper prices than what the grid provides.”

Commercial customers need to be able to have predictable costs. The fuel for solar and wind production will cost exactly the same twenty years from now as it does today. When you take that to the bank, you are pretty likely to be believed. That will not happen with coal, gas, or nuclear power. And that difference is very important when you are dealing with large amounts of money. All else being the same, it is easier to get a bond to build a power plant without variable costs than one for which some costs are unpredictable.

Solar and wind power are absolutely predictable when it comes to variable costs. By contrast, coal and gas power are altogether too variable to be reliable.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/01/coal-gas-are-too-variable-to-be-worth-considering/

Agelbert COMMENT: Excellent article! 👍🌞

Here are some quotes that add support to the article's validity:

Quote
"There is a nice legal concept called estoppel. If you argue that you didn't kill the Major in the library with the Ming vase because you were in bed with his wife, you are estopped from pleading self-defence. In the same way, polluters are estopped from arguing that they were only complying with public policy as laid down in the law, because they spent tens of millions shaping those policies and laws to their advantage." James Wimberley

"We do not need a 'new' business model for energy because we never had one. What we need, if we wish to avoid extinction, is to plug the environmental and equity costs of energy production and use into our planning and thinking. " -- A.G. Gelbert

Quote
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

Quote
"We can’t have a healthy business on a sick planet."-- Ashley Orgain, manager of mission advocacy and outreach for Seventh Generation, Burlington, Vermont

"Technical knowledge of Carrying Capacity will not save us; only a massive increase in Caring Capacity will." -- A. G. Gelbert

Quote
"The core responsibility assigned to governments in democracies is the public welfare, protecting the human birthright to basic needs: clean air, water, land, and a place to live, under equitable rules of access to all common property resources.

It is astonishing to discover that major political efforts in democracies can be turned to undermining the core purpose of government, destroying the factual basis for fair and effective protection of essential common property resources of all to feed the financial interests of a few.

These efforts, limiting scientific research on environment, denying the validity of settled facts and natural laws, are a shameful dance, far below acceptable or reputable political behavior.

It can be treated not as a reasoned alternative, but scorned for what it is – simple thievery." —George M. Woodwell, Woods Hole Research Center founder

Quote
"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new paradigm without dying right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 02, 2018, 12:29:52 pm
How Well Does Fossil Fuel Divestment Combat Climate Change?  ???

October 1, 2018

As the fossil fuel divestment movement grows around the world, a new study suggests its economic impact might be overstated. Leaders in the environmental movement respond to PERI economist Robert Pollin

https://youtu.be/O_bLfqsBK5A

https://therealnews.com/stories/how-well-does-fossil-fuel-divestment-combat-climate-change

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 17, 2018, 05:56:33 pm
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Paul Jay on the US🦖-Saud🦕 ‘Special Relationship’ 😈👹💵 🎩🍌🏴‍☠️

October 16, 2018

The likely murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi has inspired a new debate about the US’s “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. TRNN’s Paul Jay and Ben Norton discuss why America sees the Saudi monarchy as a key player in its global empire, and the key role of arms sales and fossil fuels in geopolitics.

https://youtu.be/aNaW1gV7DHU

https://therealnews.com/stories/paul-jay-on-the-us-saudi-special-relationship

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fourwinds10.net%2Fresources%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2Fdissolving%2520the%2520planet%2520for%2520oil.jpg&hash=4e454194b388f35b4beee87072d010f6bf35af46)
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 18, 2018, 04:32:51 pm
Agelbert NOTE: YES, this certainly DOES belong in this topic thread. WHY? Because the murderous crook Kissinger (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) was instrumental in doing the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn's 🦖  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) bidding by setting up the Petro-dollar when Nixon (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205137.gif&hash=7a79df8ecf1b29d8599c26fe550e664c6c5e24bd) closed (i.e.  reneged on U.S. Financial Treaty obligations with France) the Gold window in 1972.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326)

October 18, 2018

SNIPPET:

Quote
The groups penned and signed a letter urging the “NYU community” to reconsider hosting Kissinger.

Mr. Kissinger has left a legacy of economic devastation, physical destruction, violence, human misery, and death,” the letter states. “His greatest contributions to U.S. history are those of illegal bombing campaigns, failed military threats, direct involvement in coups and support for dictatorships, and the elongation of devastating, bloody wars for his own political gain.”

He was the architect of programs which were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the destabilization of several nations, and the enabling of brutal, genocidal regimes,” the letter continues. “He leaves behind a legacy of decisions and policies so violent and horrific that any acknowledgement [sic], or validation of him by NYU is an indefensible act at odds with the values NYU claims to represent and the values of the NYU student body and faculty at large.”

read more:

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418201302.png&hash=1e849526e5e1fde614fb21346869666fd34fa3dd) Henry Kissinger (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418201722.png&hash=5299cc10ee42beae76e4d3b7c79dbf5f4c0addac) Heckled At NYU, Told To "Rot In Hell" (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-18/henry-kissinger-heckled-nyu-told-rot-hell)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 23, 2018, 06:11:44 pm
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Saudis🦕 a Pillar for US 🦖🦍 Domination of Middle East – Q&A with Paul Jay (Pt 1/6)

October 22, 2018

Paul Jay with host Ben Norton discusses the history of how US foreign policy has used the Saudi claim to lead the Islamic world to fight nationalism and socialism in the Middle East – From a live recording on October 16th, 2018

https://youtu.be/3AUCIR-QVGc

https://therealnews.com/stories/saudis-a-pillar-for-us-domination-of-middle-east-qa-with-paul-jay-pt-1-6



Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on October 25, 2018, 01:43:12 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

U.S. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326) Approves First Oil Production Facility from Manmade 😈Island Offshore Alaska  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185038-1648302.gif&hash=46bf8a149f1786d9be67deeb16a50826c5945856)

October 24, 2018 by Bloomberg

(https://3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/arctic-drilling-alaska.jpg)
arctic drilling alaska File: U.S. Department of Interior

SNIPPET:

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg) — The Trump administration 🐉🦕🦖 has authorized Hilcorp Energy Co.’s 🦕 plan to build an artificial gravel island in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and use it to extract crude — marking the first approval of an oil production facility in federal Arctic waters.

Full BARFicle: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132421-16911675.gif&hash=b337cdc73ae0e451ca134d064ea3363d3de56665)

https://gcaptain.com/u-s-approves-first-oil-production-facility-from-manmade-island-offshore-alaska/

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 13, 2018, 05:01:41 pm
EcoWatch

(https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/iKNGulyu0oT272xsljPlVQCyFiC9YXUt77U6mEgaxesB7MQiBVNtz1Ase19z_cbPeENNLH3mle-fs9tPGBxU9bK6VYEe7X3IfrDeFbYHFVGiLnrW0iMxkwCrfsyPpdjzn1Kf9p1u3BElpqyr2YPO7htD3YDMFK12i24=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec/images/4297e473-6117-4c0d-b27e-90e053eb6418.jpg)

Judge: Wildlife Must Be Considered Before Permitting Fracking Off SoCal Coast

By Olivia Rosane

Nov. 12, 2018 08:38AM EST

SNIPPET:

In what environmentalists are calling a major victory, a California judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration cannot approve any new fracking off the state's southern coast until a full review is done assessing the controversial technique's impact on endangered species and coastal resources, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"Endangered sea otters and other critters just won a reprieve from the Trump 🦀 administration's (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a) 🐉🦕 assault on our oceans for dirty oil    🦖," Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) Oceans Program Legal Director Kristen Monsell said in a press release. "We plan to celebrate this great victory in the fight against climate change and dirty fossil fuels."

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

https://www.ecowatch.com/judge-halts-fracking-off-socal-coast-2619347365.html

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-081014144000.jpeg&hash=1a953046340686c5595fd5e288f3abc9af675a85)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 13, 2018, 07:29:07 pm
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November 13, 2018
   
Dear Anthony,

Our efforts to pressure fossil fuel companies is really having an effect. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil and Chevron finally releasing climate risk disclosure reports and ConocoPhillips agreed to disclose its lobbying efforts. And now, a prominent corporate responsibility group is securing responses from major fossil fuel companies in response to our recent Climate Accountability Scorecard. Our work to hold these corporations accountable for years of deception and climate impacts is working—unfortunately, it’s not enough. Just last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest report showing that every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid matters. The report calls for ‘rapid and far-reaching’ action. And we needn’t look farther than the fires currently rampaging through Californian communities to understand how urgent the situation is. We need to keep the pressure on fossil fuel corporations to make real change and take responsibility for the impacts of their business.  —Katy

Fossil Fuel Giants 🦕🦖 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)Are Pumping Out Greenwashing—Their Tricks Won’t Work (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132421-16902.gif&hash=deba9f0f91ecd7d65bbdeb78786bef4a98cb1a7e)  (https://blog.ucsusa.org/kathy-mulvey/fossil-fuel-giants-are-pumping-out-greenwashing-their-tricks-wont-work)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 15, 2018, 02:27:39 pm
(https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/zZrmEdig0XkLj4i1xgItoAetZM9Wo-bCbDFZfojf2El7kVx_99biMcwT2V8qqrUFW_EfI13hISvlP8CobJDFVxKREId6igDYyUKWZbfVk34sEokri-5HOnrJaaMjvYGrKaKmAyPd83FUzuM5rLoRZFQIV17PgDJgCNvq9Nc9KkdkMqKgm1pc3fSflyWfOMFC-g=s0-d-e1-ft#https://nvlupin.blob.core.windows.net/images/van/CBD/CBD/1/61429/images/Actions/Email600x250/Revelator_600x214_WithSubline.jpg)

Quote

No. 54, Nov. 15, 2018

SNIPPET:

Fossil fuels 🏴‍☠️ are driving our climate problems, as we all know, and a surplus of fracked shale gas is poised to make that even worse. The petrochemical industry🐉🦕🦖 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) 😈 👹 is ramping up production of plastics  (https://therevelator.org/plastics-fracking-climate/)thanks to fracking, with dire consequences for the climate and the health of residents in the Rust Belt, where many new pipelines and production facilities are being built.

Subscriber bonus:

We have a special thank you for our subscribers this week: a free copy of Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science [/font]by John Grant, courtesy of publisher See Sharp Press. This must-read new book dives into the sordid history of how corporations and politicians — including the Trump administration — have twisted or attacked scientific expertise. As a subscriber, you can download the e-book in any of these formats: PDF,  (http://www.seesharppress.com/CorruptedScience.pdf)Mobi (Kindle) or Epub. Enjoy — and thanks for subscribing!


Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on November 27, 2018, 07:33:36 pm
Laura Flanders Show: Divest to Decolonize

November 25, 2018

At the traditional start of the holiday season, many in the US come together with family and friends to celebrate and give thanks. Though for indigenous peoples around the world perhaps apologies, even recompense, would be more in order. We hear from Native American activists Michelle Cook and Hartman Deetz about the ongoing struggle for autonomy and environmental protection

https://youtu.be/mOdUCAWNIvA

https://therealnews.com/stories/laura-flanders-show-divest-to-decolonize

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCi1IdQWYAAcO5Y.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 11, 2018, 07:44:59 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326)

How The Koch Brothers (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) Broke Democracy & Stuck Taxpayers With The Bill

December 11th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

This is a story of how a small group of wealthy white men can hijack an entire nation, destroy its founding principles, and force those most affected by their deeds to pay for the damage. The background for this piece is Jane Mayer’s (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185038-16442135.gif&hash=52927992b43007fa5c5eb6ffcb453ae29948c356) extraordinary book Dark Money 🦕🦖 (http://parkour.negaah.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Dark-Money-Jane-Mayer.pdf), which came out earlier this year. The subtitle says it all: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) Radical Right.

If you follow the link above, you can read the entire book in PDF form but be warned — the subject matter deals with such sleaze, so much self dealing, and so many crooked dealings in the halls of power, you will need a strong stomach not to feel sick to your stomach as you read it.

The principle characters in Mayer’s book are Charles and David Koch. Taken together, they are the richest people on the face of the Earth. They are also the sons of Fred Koch, who made his fortune supplying gasoline and diesel fuel to Josef Stalin and later Adolf Hitler. In December, 1958, the elder Koch became one of the founders of the John Birch Society, a radical right wing organization that has metastasized over the decades into dozens of right wing propaganda organizations, think tanks, and so-called “institutes.”


Weaponized 😈👹💵 🎩🍌 🏴‍☠️🚩 Philanthropy

You may never have heard of Charles and David Koch, but they have touched the lives of every American. Many of the coded phrases that have infected political discourse over the past 50 years are attributable to them — “trickle down economics,” “welfare Cadillac,” “shrink the size of government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub,” “Citizens United,” “the death tax,” “death panels,” “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” “the Federalist Society,” and the “Tea Party” are phrases familiar to us all that trace their lineage to the Kochs.

Trickle Down EconomicsHow did this happen? According to Mayer, the Kochs were making little headway with their ultra right wing ideas until they figured out how to turn the tax code to their advantage. For generations, wealthy people were encouraged to donate to charities like hospitals, the Red Cross, and humanitarian causes because they could deduct their contributions from their taxable income.

What the Kochs (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) did was take the charitable deduction process and stand it on its head.  They created their own “charities,” then funded them lavishly with money that qualified for tax deductions. Non-profits with patriotic sounding names like the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans For Prosperity, and the Cato Institute have become powerful lobbying groups supported by non-taxable contributions.

Their methodology is always the same. Hire well-paid “researchers” who are smart enough to produce reports that support the positions espoused by the Koch Brothers and keep their mouths shut. Those reports, studies, and white papers are disseminated throughout the highest levels of government to elected officials who owe their seats to campaign contributions from the Koch Brothers. It’s a nice little sweetheart deal that was called racketeering when the Mafia did it, but is considered perfectly appropriate today.


Out Of Sight And Underground (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c)

Writing in The Guardian this week, columnist George Monbiot prefaced a story about how the Kochs have exported their ultra right wing agenda to the UK with this summary.

“Dark money is among the greatest current threats to democracy. It means money spent below the public radar, that seeks to change political outcomes. It enables very rich people and corporations to influence politics without showing their hands.

“Among the world’s biggest political spenders are Charles and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries, a vast private conglomerate of oil pipelines and refineries, chemicals, timber and paper companies, commodity trading firms and cattle ranches. If their two fortunes were rolled into one, Charles David Koch, with $120bn, would be the richest man on Earth.

“In a rare public statement, in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch explained his objective. ‘Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.’ As Jane Mayer records in her book Dark Money, the Kochs’ ideology — lower taxes and looser regulations — and their business interests ‘dovetailed so seamlessly it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.’

“Over the years, she notes, ‘the company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance’. Koch Industries paid massive fines for oil spills, illegal benzene emissions and ammonia pollution. In 1999, a jury found that Koch Industries had knowingly used a corroded pipeline to carry butane, which caused an explosion in which two people died. Company Town, a film released last year, tells the story of local people’s long fight against pollution from a huge paper mill owned by the Koch brothers.

“The Kochs’ chief political lieutenant, Richard Fink, developed what he called a three-stage model of social change. Universities would produce ‘the intellectual raw materials.’ Think tanks would transform them into ‘a more practical or usable form.’ Then ‘citizen activist’ groups would ‘press for the implementation of policy change.’

To these ends the Kochs set up bodies in all three categories themselves, such as the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Cato Institute and the “citizens’ group” Americans for Prosperity. But for the most part they funded existing organisations that met their criteria. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a network of academic departments, think tanks, journals. and movements. And they appear to have been remarkably successful.

“As researchers at Harvard and Columbia universities have found, Americans for Prosperity alone now rivals the Republican party in terms of size, staffing and organisational capacity (emphasis added). It has pulled ‘the Republican party to the far right on economic, tax and regulatory issues’. It was crucial to the success of the Tea Party movement, the ousting of Democrats from Congress, and the staffing of Trump’s transition team. The Koch network has helped secure massive tax cuts, the smashing of trade unions, and the dismantling of environmental legislation.

“But their hands, for the most part, remain invisible. A Republican consultant who has worked for Charles and David Koch told Mayer that ‘to call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground.'”


Funding The End Of Democracy

Koch-inspired and funded groups have led the campaign to gerrymander voting districts in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina. The current maps were drawn by ultra right wing partisans using artificial intelligence. The intent was to make it impossible for Democrats to gain a majority of seats in the legislatures of those states no matter how many people voted for them.

The strategy has been phenomenally successful. In the election last month, Republican Scott Walker was given his walking papers by the voters, but even though Democrats got 54% of the votes cast, they were able to win only 36 of the 99 seats in the state assembly thanks to the anti-democratic bias created by gerrymandering.

Writing in The Guardian, law professor Lawrence Douglas says, “Pundits have described these actions as Republicans playing ‘hardball,’ though the description obscures a noxious reality: Republicans aren’t playing ball at all — they are rejecting the basic rules of the game. The notion that elections count only when our side wins is nothing short of a repudiation of democracy. Republicans, on both the national and state level, are essentially staging minor coups.”


Democracy Is Socialism   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060518153110.png&hash=39d587c31b7f7e66b30d7e59bb560e2ad0662eee)

We hear a lot of talk from conservatives reactionaries these days about socialism. Most of them have no idea they are spouting Koch Brothers-inspired dogma that has been injected into the national conversation at the highest levels and become part of the political landscape. But democracy itself is socialism. It is a contract between the people of a nation that says the government will be elected by the will of the majority. Any policy that interferes with that core principle is undemocratic and an affront to America’s heritage.

Asked in Philadelphia “What sort of government have you given us?” Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, “A republic — if you can keep it.” Largely through the unrelenting efforts of the Koch Brothers — efforts that have been generously subsidized by American taxpayers — the prospect of America ceasing to be a republic is becoming more real every day.

Republic is another way of saying a representative democracy. Since all 330 million Americans cannot assemble in one place for a national conversation, they elect people to represent their interests. But the Kochs have broken the link between the people and their representatives.

Today, most government officials are looking out for the interests of the Kochs and their super rich colleagues, not those of the people who elected them. The only way to make America great again is to restore the democratic system of government the Founding Fathers envisioned.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/11/how-the-koch-brothers-broke-democracy-stuck-taxpayers-with-the-bill/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120118181944.png&hash=bd1f420590db5a3213f18c2338839318746c937a)

 
The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!   
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 17, 2018, 08:33:30 pm
What a Gag — BY MR. FISH
(https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/DbZmjfSJd_EazyUHdBIFpChtBX6PAwMa_KNwG3VTKKs-f6Rzp0NXFk2Vp4RUFNT3Fli9GxwuV9sL_YVOTQ-tBnTzZ1QTnEuSzcRXukP4TKCnOXUSnbxqybvACtimSlWF=s0-d-e1-ft#https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SHHHHHHHHHHit-850x543.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on December 19, 2018, 08:26:33 pm
TRUTHDIG

DEC 18, 2018

Quote
David Sirota, who told people “Something I didn’t know: Beto O’Rourke (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a) is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress.” Sirota provided a link to campaign finance data.

Quote
“While O’Rourke 🦖 steadily avoided left-wing legislation, he went above and beyond to ally himself to the corporate wing of the Democratic Party,” Jilani reported.

Read more: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

Democrats Deserve Better Than Beto O'Rourke 🦖 (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/democrats-deserve-better-than-beto-orourke/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 02, 2019, 12:21:06 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-061217183404.png&hash=51932b5d38303829f7e7fe72cc20951ed138f3e6)

Updated January 2, 2019 Filed to: POLITICAL CLIMATE CHANGE

By Maddie Stone

SNIPPET:

Castor  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-241013183046.jpeg&hash=51c9c4f17e747698c76c65c7c1814eff4f32c400) herself has also sparked controversy since rumors began swirling that she would lead whatever committee was being put together. Despite her solidly pro-environment record, she drew the ire (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817134648.gif&hash=d24c66a26329a19150a175d576b631d10f631ee8) of climate activists last week when she suggested congresspeople 🐵😈🦕 shouldn’t be disqualified (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Fc6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e%2Ftumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=4b1cad5ea13f7430a0c01f3065039d21d78da398)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817122018.gif&hash=74d86c1f35e2f61ea38c9bfa392f84a92631b96e) from serving 🐵😈🦕 on a climate committee if they’d taken campaign contributions from the fossil fuel 🦕🦖 industry.

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-041115022304.png&hash=cd8cb8e28ab8f7fc78c1ea00d30a661bd937aed5)

'Not the Leadership This Moment Calls For': Progressives Blast Nancy Pelosi's New 'Climate Crisis' Committee (https://earther.gizmodo.com/not-the-leadership-this-moment-calls-for-progressives-1831364598)

 
The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!   

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 09, 2019, 09:35:48 pm
Bill McKibben ✨: The Fossil Fuel Industry 🦕🦖 Has Money, But We Have Movements (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27)

January 9, 2019

At the Sanders Institute Gathering, Bill McKibben says that a Green New Deal must address climate change, immigration, and unemployment, or we’re headed “if not to Hell, then to a place with a very similar temperature.

https://youtu.be/uBzLrT8w3jI

https://therealnews.com/stories/bill-mckibben-the-fossil-fuel-industry-has-money-but-we-have-movements
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 04, 2019, 07:00:52 pm
 
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Iwt1Obw1A9OF4rmgyl-UYRo4MEJDf68gFtbGNW6JHUtpykjdICNc8oASCFbrYsucF5Fg17XbLG86FfHFO8yE4EkX6gjGVlOvmRAD7s5dGscLlHcisQ_pzhkscbiV_-D4oBdJi6nkSe_a2el9qT1VJhzoNSsAEZvHHg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/d1f5797e59060083034310930/images/2f11cead-050f-4018-bfed-c12fb45691e5.png)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

March 4, 2019     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060914180936.jpeg&hash=5e39d70fafe4e7190a6eebce34b740c58721de3f)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818163123-1664600.png&hash=d609f7e4847e25e034ca7c7b11e75234ba2a0afd) Coal Ash Leaks, Republican ‘Conservation Caucus’ & More (https://mailchi.mp/climatenexus/coal-ash-leaks-republican-conservation-caucus-more?e=0fd17c5b57)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 06, 2019, 08:13:46 pm
 
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Iwt1Obw1A9OF4rmgyl-UYRo4MEJDf68gFtbGNW6JHUtpykjdICNc8oASCFbrYsucF5Fg17XbLG86FfHFO8yE4EkX6gjGVlOvmRAD7s5dGscLlHcisQ_pzhkscbiV_-D4oBdJi6nkSe_a2el9qT1VJhzoNSsAEZvHHg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/d1f5797e59060083034310930/images/2f11cead-050f-4018-bfed-c12fb45691e5.png)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

March 6, 2019     (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132422-1692935.gif&hash=94922268ae283c7009e29067ba89220f466726ec)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818163123-1664600.png&hash=d609f7e4847e25e034ca7c7b11e75234ba2a0afd)EPA 🦕😈 nixed pollution plane for Houston 🤬, CO2 ramifications ☠️ of Trump 🦀 rollbacks, & more (https://mailchi.mp/climatenexus/epa-nixed-pollution-plane-for-houston-co2-ramifications-of-trump-rollbacks-more?e=0fd17c5b57)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 13, 2019, 04:41:27 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100718164155-14511755.jpeg&hash=1c62dd0525852ffbbcbc7f2459189db15d6435c6)
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March 13, 2019

Are the Fossil Fuel Industry's Days Numbered?

By MIKE LUDWIG, TRUTHOUT

The oil and gas industry has "no greater friend" than President Trump, as Vice President Mike Pence recently pointed out. Now with deadlines to avert climate catastrophe looming, the debate over fossil fuels in the U.S. has never been so partisan and polarized among candidates and elected leaders. Each side of the debate presents starkly different visions of the future.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4) Read the Article → (https://truthout.org/articles/are-the-fossil-fuel-industrys-days-numbered/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on March 28, 2019, 07:16:35 pm
Wed 27 Mar 2019 10.48 EDT Last modified on Wed 27 Mar 2019 15.02 EDT

Quote
Republicans are doing everything in their power to kneecap the country’s ability to respond to climate change  >:(

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100718164155-14511755.jpeg&hash=1c62dd0525852ffbbcbc7f2459189db15d6435c6)

The Republican party is the political arm 🦍 of the fossil fuel 🦕🦖(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4) industry (The Guardian, Kate Aronoff analysis) (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/27/climate-change-green-new-deal-republicans)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-050517161058.png&hash=94c79544d8a323318b666564282959e638ba59c3)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fourwinds10.net%2Fresources%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2Fdissolving%2520the%2520planet%2520for%2520oil.jpg&hash=4e454194b388f35b4beee87072d010f6bf35af46)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174458.png&hash=6bb5ca428108e395c1760e25a8a07f7c434e448c)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 02, 2019, 12:31:59 pm
 
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Iwt1Obw1A9OF4rmgyl-UYRo4MEJDf68gFtbGNW6JHUtpykjdICNc8oASCFbrYsucF5Fg17XbLG86FfHFO8yE4EkX6gjGVlOvmRAD7s5dGscLlHcisQ_pzhkscbiV_-D4oBdJi6nkSe_a2el9qT1VJhzoNSsAEZvHHg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/d1f5797e59060083034310930/images/2f11cead-050f-4018-bfed-c12fb45691e5.png)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.


April 2, 2019

The push to make Puerto Rico an LNG 🦕 hub 🙃 >:(,  Duke ordered to excavate coal ash pits, & more (https://mailchi.mp/climatenexus/the-push-to-make-puerto-rico-an-lng-hub-duke-ordered-to-excavate-coal-ash-pits-more)

The BRIDGE to the Future made by LNG 🦕 "BRIDGE FUEL"
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-270718182509.png&hash=8110b0df1390c9a9c94421957777b40a38eb1cae)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1041369712087769088/pu/img/xwZC6tJr1oQH35da?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 05, 2019, 06:00:20 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326)


(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-061217183404.png&hash=51932b5d38303829f7e7fe72cc20951ed138f3e6)

April 4, 2019

The First Meeting of the House ‘Climate Crisis’ Committee Did Not Go So Well

SNIPPET:

“Forget about being on the right side of history,” Piper said in his testimony. “If there even are history books, it will be because of the efforts that we are taking today. Be on the side of young people right now.”

That may well be true, but what happened today will be part of the record until said record is swallowed by the sea or burned up in a wildfire. And let the record show that it was problematic. There was a lot praise for the young adults for being there and calls for bipartisanship. But the Republicans on the committee appeared to largely view climate change not as a crisis but as a threat to fossil fuel (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100718164155-14511755.jpeg&hash=1c62dd0525852ffbbcbc7f2459189db15d6435c6) production and deregulation. From the looks of it, their 🦕🦖 goal on the committee is to delay action as much as possible.

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)

https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-first-meeting-of-the-house-climate-crisis-committ-1833812915

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-251218182908-20901632.png&hash=2b6075e12f4a219126dfe505e6f6f99d6247399b)

 
The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, 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!   
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 06, 2019, 01:31:29 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

April 5, 2019 by Bloomberg

(https://3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/shutterstock_435369952.jpg)
(https://i.imgflip.com/eghas.jpg)

Gasoline Cargoes Traveling 16,000-Mile Reveal Dysfunctional Trade (https://gcaptain.com/gasoline-cargoes-dysfunctional-trade/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 10, 2019, 09:58:17 pm
AOC (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf) Calls Out GOP for Attacking Green New Deal While Supporting Oil 🦕🦖  Subsidies

JAKE JOHNSON, COMMON DREAMS

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Republicans for attacking the Green New Deal as "socialism," while simultaneously supporting billions of dollars in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Ocasio-Cortez also slammed Republicans for fervently criticizing the Green New Deal resolution without appearing to have read the short document.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100718164155-14511755.jpeg&hash=1c62dd0525852ffbbcbc7f2459189db15d6435c6)

 Read the Article → (https://truthout.org/articles/aoc-calls-out-gop-for-attacking-green-new-deal-while-supporting-oil-subsidies/) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 12, 2019, 02:48:45 pm
SNIPPET:

PAUL JAY: Eugene, what do you think?

EUGENE PURYEAR: Well, I have to say, this is one of the areas I’m most critical of Bernie. I mean, I think that he’s defining as socialism is really just a New Deal, Great Society liberalism, which certainly is good as far as it goes, it’s certainly much better than the unrealized dreams of those eras. It’s certainly a much better state of affairs than what we have now. But I think he was unable to really hit the core of the difference between capitalism and socialism and the idea that capitalism is a system where everything is produced for profit to be a commodity, and socialism is a system where the basic goods that people need to live, survive, and thrive are also not commodities. And certainly, he mentions healthcare, education, and things of that nature, but what about clothing, what about food, what about shelter?

And I think above and beyond anything else, I think also it’s to me a little bit of a naive presentation from the point of view of sort of the U.S. political structure which enshrines, in and of itself, and this is certainly the contravention of what Trump was saying, of course, property above all other interests. Certainly, that was rooted in the slave system, and the control of land that resulted in slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, that ultimately, what do you do in this kind of context in the United States when say the Fifth Amendment, for instance, comes up against the desire to be able to decarbonize the economy? I mean, it says that you can’t take property without paying people for it. Well, if the health of the planet is at stake and the cost is too high, well what are you going to do? Are you going to take over and shut down all the oil companies and save the planet or are you going to go with the U.S. Constitution?

So I think the reality is is perhaps what Bernie is portraying is as much as you can do within the U.S. system, but I think it’s not actually socialism. And I think that that is in and of itself an important distinction that I think has to be made here, that socialism is a system where profit is never going to be able to succeed over the needs of people. And I think that goes beyond what he was willing to say, despite the fact that certainly, all the things he’s saying I think, would be good and should be instituted right away. And there’s actually really almost no reason why all of them couldn’t be instituted tomorrow except for a lack of political will.

Read more or view full video:


Is Sanders’ Democratic Socialism … Socialism? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132332-16812332.gif&hash=ca61f76f711b4ad81f3e665376f43c8076f05b1d)

March 8, 2019

Sanders says that medicare for all, a living wage, and other reforms is the socialism that’s possible, but is he too reserved on strengthening public ownership? - with Jacqueline Luqman, Eugene Puryear, Norman Solomon and host Paul Jay

https://youtu.be/sTd049NLrOs

https://therealnews.com/stories/is-sanders-democratic-socialism-socialism
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 16, 2019, 01:38:18 pm
Quote
Warren said in a post on Medium that she would sign an executive order on her first day in office for a “total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases including for drilling offshore and on public lands.” “We must not allow 🦕🦖 corporations (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) to pillage our public lands and leave taxpayers to clean up the mess,” she wrote.

Warren’s stance on public lands contrasts starkly with that of President (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a) Donald Trump, whose Interior Department has sped up permitting for drilling and mining on public lands as a part of the administration’s “energy 🐉🦕🦖 dominance” agenda.

April 15, 2019 by Reuters (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

U.S. Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Calls for Total Moratorium on New Oil and Gas Leases ‘On First Day’ (https://gcaptain.com/elizabeth-warren-drilling-moratorium/)

Quote
Warren also said she would expand renewable energy projects on federal lands.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-221017161839.png&hash=7d34712243960aa20883775dad728bc2115ed6fe)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on April 30, 2019, 01:32:58 pm
Tue 30 Apr 2019

By Clive Lewis

Why are taxpayers subsidising the 🦕🦖 oil and gas companies that jeopardise our future? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c)

Instead of hoping market forces solve the climate crisis, the government needs to stop giving tax breaks to  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) polluters

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/30/taxpayers-subsidising-oil-gas-companies-jeopardise-future
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 03, 2019, 12:10:29 pm
CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica’s work via donations on Patreon or PayPal!

Or just go buy a cool t-shirt, cup, baby outfit, bag, or hoodie. (https://cleantechnica.com/shop/#!/)


May 2nd, 2019 by Matt Pressman
Originally posted on EVANNEX.

Republican States Have The Loneliest (& Dirties) Commutes — Infographic (https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/02/republican-states-have-the-loneliest-dirties-commutes-infographic/)

SNIPPET:
(https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0196/5170/files/how-different-states-commutes-affect-our-clima.width-800.png?v=1556305582)

Full article:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/02/republican-states-have-the-loneliest-dirties-commutes-infographic/

Agelbert COMMENT: Of course. 😠 Republican mens rea modus operandi has always been about keeping most people down and desperate in order to preserve the power of a few empathy deficit disordered oligarchs. Conserving Oligarchy and a dumbed down, poor and powerless populace, the exact opposite of democracy, is what 😈💵🎩 Republicans REALLY mean when they proudly say they are "conservatives".

That is why they ALWAYS CONSERVE subsidy WELFARE QUEEN HANDOUTS to the polluter hydrocarbon hellspawn and nuke pukes. 😡

It is high time we called the Republican PIRATES on their never ending attack on democracy on behalf of profit over people and planet. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c)

END the Republican planet killing pirates party NOW!
END polluter subsidies NOW!

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174458.png&hash=6bb5ca428108e395c1760e25a8a07f7c434e448c)

Make industrial polluting for profit illegal NOW! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284)


 

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on May 04, 2019, 03:45:00 pm
Agelbert NOTE: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-240718213433-14592370.png&hash=303e851c5feb196224d3a901ee609fed6437375d) To filed under "Orwellian mindfork (https://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/thumbs/240/apple/118/pile-of-poo_1f4a9.png)". ONLY a government, nearly 100% corrupted by the 🦕👹🦖 hydrocarbon hellspawn, as the U.S. Government is, could come up with the mind bogglingly Orwellian claim that a terminal for LNG ships does not harm the environment. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

Louisiana LNG Export Terminal Passes Environmental Test
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251117175700.png&hash=00439d30db6e35817ea0d1fbcba614f1f971448e)


By Reuters on May 03, 2019 07:38 pm

(https://3kbo302xo3lg2i1rj8450xje-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/shutterstock_33420946.jpg)
LNG tanker ship

May 3 (Reuters) – Venture Global’s 😈 Plaquemines liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana took a step toward receiving federal approval for construction on Friday after 🦕😈🦖 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a) U.S. energy regulators issued a final environmental report. In the report, known as an environmental impact statement (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48), staff (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that construction […] 

Read full (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sherv.net%2Fcm%2Femoticons%2Fsick%2Fbarfing-smiley-emoticon.gif&hash=36f6791510582d9f9f48af1d4d1a006a5681103b) story... (https://gcaptain.com/louisiana-lng-passes-environmental-test/)


Quote
Since shipping out the first LNG cargo from the Lower 48 in 2016, the United States (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326) become the third biggest LNG exporter in the world by capacity by the end of 2018. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino Editing by Marguerita Choy)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-270718182509.png&hash=8110b0df1390c9a9c94421957777b40a38eb1cae)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817134803.gif&hash=27a64c4d2c644227b9d5197d345c7c2bf4305e4c)

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 10, 2019, 05:36:06 pm
Trump Administration Asks Congress to Make Disrupting Pipeline Construction a Crime Punishable by 20 Years in Prison (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/general-discussion/doomstead-diner-daily/msg12546/#msg12546)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-240718213435-14601598.gif&hash=d55f80ee79b668f6fafd534ef6d94b3c0d8992f6) Why am I not surprised? Probably for the same reason I am not surprised that, as per another pertinent article you just posted, despite unending gushers of red ink from the frackers since 2014 (at least), those Hydrocarbon Hellspawn beloved and Welfare Queen babied by the OIL-igarchy that runs the USA continue to have access to a Federal Reserve Funds WINDOW that provides millions and millions of dollars in loans at interest rates you and I will never be privy to (unless we are buying a gas guzzler, of course). 

I am also not surprised by the Hosting 2020 Debate on Climate Crisis "Not Practical" (https://truthout.org/articles/dnc-chair-says-hosting-2020-debate-on-climate-crisis-not-practical/) statement by the DNC Chair for the same reason (see below).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326)


Title: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on June 29, 2019, 06:54:54 pm
The situation just gets worse, not better. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc)

China just came up with the following planet killing 🦖 VLCC MONSTROCITY, named (in typical hydrocarbon hellspawn Orwellian fashion), "New Journey".

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

June 28, 2019 by Mike Schuler

China Delivers First ‘Smart’ VLCC (https://gcaptain.com/china-delivers-first-smart-vlcc/)

https://youtu.be/V5VQi3w-1do

This isn't a new journey; it's a continuation of TPTB's hydrocarbon worshipping JOURNEY TO CLIMATE HELL!

Listen to the Creedence Clearwater Revival Sing a Prophecy Now Coming True Near me and YOU:

https://youtu.be/w6iRNVwslM4

(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Iqseo2pRwtg/XRTayEokARI/AAAAAAAArfA/X1tzXpYlE0g5QxX8edsA2vP4Fr155VuNwCLcBGAs/s640/book.jpg)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 06, 2019, 03:06:25 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

July 6, 2019 by Reuters

Arctic Sea Route Opens For Yamal LNG Cargo (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc)

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Teekay’s M/V Eduard Toll is the fourth of 15 Arctic LNG carriers being built for the Yamal LNG project and Teekay’s first of six LNG Carrier Newbuildings. Photo via Teekay

by Sabina Zawadzki (Reuters) – A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker carrying a cargo from the Yamal LNG plant has spent this week making its way through Arctic waters north of Russia towards Asia, marking the first voyage of the 2019 summer season across the Northern Sea Route. The Vladimir Rusanov, an Arc7-classed LNG tanker that can plough through semi-cleared waters, left the Sabetta port on June 29 and is in the Chukchi Sea close to the Bering Strait.

Read full 🦕☠️🦖 story (https://gcaptain.com/arctic-sea-route-yamal-lng/)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-270718182509.png&hash=8110b0df1390c9a9c94421957777b40a38eb1cae) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140415130805.png&hash=23d2e6dc6311a26c399bf0cb60868bcff2781a58)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 09, 2019, 09:52:18 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210516165122.jpeg&hash=d773f8f1ecba3640f8e56b034781204d35319f2b)(https://yp6uap4od3sncuze-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/national-security-cartoon.jpg)

Lessons From the Natural World on Washington's Unnatural Wars

WILLIAM J. ASTORE, TOMDISPATCH

Nineteen years into a new century, with its forever wars on terror still ongoing across startlingly large stretches of the planet, the U.S. military is now turning to preparations for future wars with its so-called peer competitors. No surprise, then, that the country seems to be drowning in militarism and exhausting what's left of our "democratic spirit."

Read the Article → (https://truthout.org/articles/lessons-from-the-natural-world-on-washingtons-unnatural-wars/)
Title: Does a wild bear go poop in the woods?
Post by: AGelbert on July 26, 2019, 04:07:36 pm
Is it Time to Nationalize the 🦕😈🦖 Fossil Fuel Industry?
July 26, 2019

In part 2 of her interview, Democracy Collaborative’s Johanna Bozuwa argues that the fastest way for the U.S. to lower greenhouse gas emissions and create a just transition is to buy out the entire fossil fuel industry

https://youtu.be/L8kW0G9BC9Y

https://therealnews.com/stories/is-it-time-to-nationalize-the-fossil-fuel-industry

Agelbert COMMENT: Does a wild bear go poop in the woods?

Do you want humanity to survive Catastrophic Climate Change?

Sure, but there is a problem. As George Carlin said many years ago, "The USA is an 🦕😈🦖 Oil Corporation with an 🦍 Army".

Do not expect that (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326) Oil Corporation to willingly give up THEIR ARMY!

Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on July 30, 2019, 01:24:33 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

By Mike Schuler on Jul 29, 2019 12:36 pm

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LNG🦖 Carrier ‘Vladimir Rusanov’ Opens Northern Sea Route Summer Navigation Season (https://gcaptain.com/lng-carrier-vladimir-rusanov-opens-northern-sea-route-summer-navigation-season/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Gcaptain+%28gCaptain.com%29&goal=0_f50174ef03-42d97dbf64-169600093&mc_cid=42d97dbf64&mc_eid=1855a0727e)

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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 02, 2019, 09:58:35 pm
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Kochland 🦕🦖 Koch Brothers Koch Island Christopher Leonard
1,108 views

https://youtu.be/N-1SWWql5j4

Thom Hartmann Program
Published on Aug 2, 2019

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Category News & Politics

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Title: Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
Post by: AGelbert on August 12, 2019, 05:47:49 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a)

Jane Mayer / The 🦕🦖 Koch Brothers
and the 😈 Weaponizing of Philanthropy
33,169 views

https://youtu.be/AFaSCOqumpM

EthicsinSociety
Published on Apr 6, 2016

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the
desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been
defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do
hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The
conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the
ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as author Jane Mayer shows in
her powerful, meticulously reported new book, a network of exceedingly wealthy people
with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally
alter the American political system. 

Mayer was in conversation with Rob Reich and Lucy Bernholz to discuss the future of
American democracy.

This event was co-sponsored with Stanford PACS, and was part of The Ethics of Democracy
series.

The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society is committed to bringing ethical reflection to
bear on important social problems through research, teaching, and engagement. Visit the
Center's website for more information: http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu

Category Education
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 15, 2019, 04:09:59 pm
Donald 🦀 Trump has even found a way to ruin the Statue of Liberty


Robert Harrington | 12:01 pm EDT August 15, 2019
Palmer Report » Analysis

I recall a time when white nationalist talking points inserted into any discussion about the Statue of Liberty would have been politically dangerous, even for a Republican. Lest we forget, a mere seven years ago a Republican candidate for president of the United States was castigated endlessly (and, let’s face it, fatuously) for referring to “binders full of women.” We knew what he meant, and, what he meant was clumsily put, albeit innocently intended, and the backlash was a simple case of taking cynicism too far. The truth was then much easier to come by than it is now. Mitt Romney shouldn’t have become president of the United States, not because he kept actual women locked up in actual binders, but because he was a weak-minded fool and a coward, and Americans understood that.

But if one could add another verse to the Book of Ecclesiastes (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+3&version=KJV), one would be forgiven for wishing to include “a time to be cynical,” because that time is certainly now. These days there are fewer and fewer instances where extreme reactions to mildly and (ostensibly) innocently-phrased pronouncements are not warranted – barring irresponsible accusations of murder without evidence, of course.

When the concluding lines of the sonnet “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus, was first cast in bronze in 1903, and added to the plinth of the Statue of Liberty 17 years after Lady Liberty first lifted her lamp beside the golden door of New York Harbor, I doubt any realized then how pregnant with dangerous meaning those 17 years “too late” would become, in the hard and humorless eyes of white nationalists a century later. That 17 year gap in time subverted, in their view, “what the statute originally meant,” and hastily, they insist, tacked on this popular nonsense about letting brown people come flooding in, for goodness’ sake.

Never mind that the poem was actually written in 1883, three years before the statue was dedicated. Never mind it was written precisely to raise money for the very plinth upon which Lady Liberty was to rest and to which the poem was ultimately affixed. Just don’t confuse a white nationalist with the facts. Besides, if we destroy this precious little talking point of theirs they’ll jolly well go in search of another.For those of you who don’t know or have forgotten what the plaque says, here is the entire text:

Give me your tired, your poor,
 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

All of which brings me to 🐍 Ken Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli is the Trump administration’s acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was he who in a recent PBS interview changed the words of the poem. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Cuccinelli began, then he added the words, “who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

All of which is to distract Americans into believing that immigrants are an undue strain on the system, despite the fact that they pay billions in taxes, billions into social security, and, for those who are undocumented, are not allowed to vote, collect benefits or qualify for Medicare. It was immigrants who helped build Trump Tower at the below-minimum-wage rate of $4 an hour. And, no, it was not millions of undocumented immigrants who voted for Hillary Clinton. No matter how much Trump would love to blame them for that, Hillary legitimately won the popular vote in 2016.

Donald Trump’s recent disavowal of white supremacy rings hollow in the shadow of Cuccinelli’s rewrite of the Statue of Liberty poem. Insisting that however duck-like the appearance, the walk and the quack may be, that this administration is not a duck is laughable. We know what the poem on Lady Liberty says, we know what it means and we know when it was written. All Americans ought to understand this, particularly a man named “Cuccilini.”

All of which puts me in mind of another poem written by another woman, Marya Mannes ✨:

Borders are scratched across the
hearts of men

By strangers with a calm, judicial

pen,

And when the borders bleed we
watch with dread

The lines of ink across the map
turn red.


Help fund Palmer Report's editorial takedown of Donald Trump!

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/statue-of-liberty-ruin-donald-trump/20056/

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Agelbert NOTE: Speaking of PUBLIC  🦕 CHARGES (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smilies.4-user.de%2Finclude%2FSpiele%2Fsmilie_game_017.gif&hash=e8548890f80af23241a1d43a1ab1ca8031301f20)  >:(, you never will hear any members of Trump's Wrecking Crew utter a peep about the MASSIVE CHARGES the Federal Government bills we-the-people for each and every day in the form of "Subsidies"for the Hydrocarbon 🦕🦖 "Industries", which MUST HAVE those GOVERNMENT HANDOUTS in order to "stand on their own two feet". IOW, everything Ken (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) Cuccinelli said is (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017140758.jpeg&hash=8c0a35a928dcda3c1a8714ab03f4924a1a775851).

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Title: Just How Dangerous Is ☠️ Fracking?
Post by: AGelbert on August 22, 2019, 06:56:17 pm
Just How Dangerous Is ☠️ Fracking?
1,771 views

https://youtu.be/m0pK3XG5mNs


Thom Hartmann Program
Published on Aug 21, 2019

Is there any way fracking can be done safely, for both humans and the environment?

Newly published reports show  that not even the strongest regulations can not  make fracking any safer for the environment or for wildlife or people.

Fracking can be used for both oil and gas and is an industrialized process. Fracking blasts a lot of water and chemicals underground, with hundreds of trucks bring in materials. Fracking is very expensive, and the industry is barely covering its costs. It isn’t always economic to transport the gas produced by fracking and it is burned off, making the whole process pointless while destroying the surface of the ground and deep down.

What Are the Risks of Fracking to People Who Live Close-by?

There are concerns with water and the water table becoming contaminated with chemicals. Wastewater can sometimes be dumped into streams, which could impact drinking water and wildlife.

Environmental journalist, Tara Lohan 👍 joined Thom Hartmann.

📽️ WATCH NEXT: The Science Revolution:
https://youtu.be/44I4IW55igM
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on August 23, 2019, 04:10:21 pm
August 23, 2019, 07:12:33 am News digest brought to you by the Doomstead Diner. (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/general-discussion/doomstead-diner-daily/msg13347/#msg13347)

🦉 Well, amid that avalanche of horrible news for the biosphere in general, and humans of good will in particular, there is some good news (see below).

🦖 David Koch has died at age 79: Billionaire businessman was influential GOP donor ... cnn.com (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-dead/index.html)

CNN tries to frame 🦖 David Koch as the "enemy" of Trump 🦀. That's total BULLSHIT. The well positioned Kochroaches within the Trump (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) Administration, now wreaking hydrocarbon havoc on wildlife, public lands and also very busy sabotaging previously approved large offshore wind renewable energy projects, gives the lie to any claim that the Trump 🐉🦕🦖 Wrecking Crew isn't composed MOSTLY of the following:
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Title: Trump 🦕🦖 admin readies Methane Rollbacks As Some In Industry Worry: 🤬
Post by: AGelbert on August 29, 2019, 05:29:59 pm
 
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Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

August 29, 2019  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

Greta lands in NYC, (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301216165623.jpeg&hash=1ccfee6aaf9d939cca294a849774cff11e462e59) Trump 🦕🦖 admin readies methane rollbacks (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185038-1649349.gif&hash=17e5f9a00437fbab9a49c6ce2bd7d563eb15ed9c), & more (https://mailchi.mp/8451cd86aba7/greta-lands-in-nyc-trump-admin-readies-methane-rollbacks-more?e=0fd17c5b57)
Title: The Entire Global Economy Is Complicit In The Destruction Of The Amazon
Post by: Surly1 on August 30, 2019, 07:13:32 am
The Entire Global Economy Is Complicit In The Destruction Of The Amazon (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amazon-deforestation-consumerism_n_5d66f174e4b022fbceb5a02b)
Hundreds of global corporations have promised to help limit deforestation. None of them is meeting that goal.


(https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5d66f28f2500003400887a07.jpeg?cache=5kdmixjsvw&ops=1778_1000)

(https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5d66f3b02500004e00887ae2.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)Cattle in confined feed lots in a deforested Amazonian area in Brazil’s central state of Para on May 3, 2009. Soon thousands of cows will graze on the freshly cleared land in Para. PAULO WHITAKER/BRAZIL ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIETY VIA REUTERS

(https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5d66f5492500003400887c23.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)A truck transports logs that were illegally extracted from Amazon rainforest on Tuesday. NACHO DOCE/REUTERS

Name any fast-food restaurant, personal care product or home good you have bought recently, and chances are it contributed to the deforestation of the Amazon. Now name a big bank &#38;#38;#8213; any big bank, really. More than likely it has helped finance that destruction. 

Furniture companies like IKEA and La-Z-Boy, and footwear giants like Nike, Adidas and New Balance, are customers of Chinese manufacturers that source leather from Brazilian cattle ranches. Palm oil, produced in Brazil and elsewhere, is used in everything from pizza dough and ice cream to lipstick and shampoo. Soy, paper and wood products that come directly from the Amazon are omnipresent. 

It’s not hard to pinpoint our unquenchable thirst for cattle, soy, timber, palm oil and other commodities as the main driver of Amazonian deforestation and the underlying cause of the record number of fires this year. 

What’s more difficult is figuring out what to do about it. The sheer scale of the global economy and the complexity of the supply chains and financial systems that make it work mean that nearly every company, corporation and banking and investment institution on the planet is complicit in the destruction of the Amazon and other forest ecosystems around the world. 

Although hundreds of companies have made high-profile public commitments to combating deforestation, none is doing enough to actually limit &#38;#38;#8213; much less end &#38;#38;#8213; the practice. 

“It’s very challenging to live your day without touching deforestation,” said Stephen Donofrio, a senior adviser at Forest Trends, a nonprofit that tracks corporate deforestation.

The world loses 30 football fields of trees to deforestation every minute, but few places highlight the problem quite like the Amazon, a rainforest that has been the subject of extensive global attention and protectionist efforts from past Brazilian leaders and conservation groups for decades. 

Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has reversed many gains made under past administrations. Since taking office in January, he has gutted Brazil’s environmental agencies and moved to strip protections from the Amazon and indigenous land there. But he has not acted alone: A vast network of U.S. and European corporations, backed by large financial institutions and supplied by smaller Brazilian companies, farmers and ranchers, are also playing a part, as the environmental nonprofit Amazon Watch highlighted in an April report.  

The Amazon Watch report named the world’s largest soy trading companies &#38;#38;#8213; Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, known collectively as the ABCDs &#38;#38;#8213; along with smaller, lesser-known corporations linked to timber, beef and palm oil production that had helped spur deforestation. 

In 2014, Cargill was among the hundreds of global companies that pledged to limit its effect on global forests, including the Amazon, by refusing to purchase commodities from suppliers that deforested the land to produce them. This year, it has touted its efforts to build “deforestation-free supply chains” by 2030 and said it would no longer rely on suppliers that violated that aim. 

But in June, Cargill told Brazilian farmers that it opposed a moratorium on soy production in the Cerrado, a savannah region of Brazil, a priority for environmental groups that had already helped establish a similar moratorium in the Amazon more than a decade ago. Cargill’s justification was that other companies and suppliers would continue producing soy and destroying forests even if it stopped; indeed, other soy giants had also resisted the moratorium. 

Instead, the company committed to spending $30 million to fund new ideas to meet its goal of limiting deforestation, but environmental groups have criticized the company for its inability to choose between its destructive suppliers and its sustainability goals, which Cargill has admitted it is still not on track to meet.

Cargill declined to comment and referred HuffPost to the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, or ABIOVE, which represents its industry in Brazil.

ABIOVE responded late Wednesday that “it is a mistake to affirm that soy crop is a driver of deforestation,” noting that soybean production is occurring in “only 1.14%” of the entire Amazon biome. The statement also said, in part:

“Brazilian environmental legislation is one of the strictest and most complete on the world. The challenge is to prove that this legislation is, in fact, complied and monitored. So, ABIOVE will continue committed not to trade soy produced on properties with deforested areas, or those embargoed by environmental monitoring entities.”

Together, soy and cattle production accounts for almost 80% of Amazon deforestation, and the April report pointed, too, to Brazilian meat giants, such as JBS, a company that also operates in the U.S. and Europe and, together with two other Brazilian corporations, is responsible for roughly 70% of Brazil’s beef exports to the United States and Europe. 

JBS faced millions of dollars in fines for buying cattle raised on protected lands in 2017, and earlier this year, it was among the Brazilian meat companies linked to similar practices in a joint investigation published by The Guardian, Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The financial institutions that provide financing to those companies are also responsible. 

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is a “key financier of the agribusiness giants most implicated in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon,” the report said, noting that it holds more than $2.5 billion worth of shares in Brazil’s largest agribusiness companies.

BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, the report noted, has earned the reputation as “the conscience of Wall Street” for his public positioning of the company as one committed to sustainability. At the same time, it remains “the common denominator in the financing of some of the most destructive industries on the planet,” said Christian Porier, a program director at Amazon Watch and the lead author of the April report. (Amazon Watch launched a campaign against BlackRock this year, seeking to “hold it accountable.”)

BlackRock, according to the report, has provided financing to both Cargill and Bunge, both of which faced fines from the Brazilian government last year for purchasing grain linked to illegal deforestation. Both companies disputed the fines and said they had complied with the law. 

In a lengthy email statement that never mentioned the Amazon, BlackRock spokesman Farrell Denby said the the majority of the company’s holdings are held through index and exchange-traded funds that are selected by its investor clients and that its “obligation as an asset manager and a fiduciary is to manage our clients’ assets consistent with their investment priorities.” He said BlackRock encourages clients “to adopt the robust business practices consistent with sustainable long-term performance” and, when it has concerns, stands “ready to vote against proposals from management or the board.” Denby did not respond to a question about whether BlackRock is taking any steps in light on the record number of fires in the rainforest.

Banks including Santander, JPMorgan Chase and Barclay’s have also provided financing to JBS, according to the report. Other large financial institutions, including HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Credit Suisse, have underwritten Marfrig and Minerva, two other large beef companies based in Brazil, over the last five years, the report said.

Many of the world’s largest banks, especially those based in Europe and the United States, have in recent years announced plans to reduce their financing of companies linked to deforestation. In 2017, for instance, HSBC implemented a “no deforestation” policy in response to a Greenpeace report that linked the bank to more than $16 billion in investments into firms accused of illegally deforesting land. Barclay’s and Credit Suisse were among a group of financial institutions that in 2014 committed to reaching zero net deforestation, meaning they’d help mitigate the loss by replanting elsewhere. 

Marfrig, meanwhile, has touted its compliance with Amazon conservation standards but has been linked to ranchers and beef suppliers who have recently faced fines for illegal deforestation from Brazil’s environmental ministry. 

But that highlights a larger issue with corporate efforts to limit their destructive practices: Though they claim to meet sustainability standards, they often only account for the practices of their immediate partners and don’t take responsibility for what happens further down the supply chain. 

Many companies “can demonstrate [compliance] in terms of their primary suppliers, but...their supply chain due diligence ends there,” Porier said. 

That isn’t always a result of nefarious practices. Companies often simply don’t have the information they need to get on board with efforts to better protect ecosystems like the Amazon, said Michael Coe, an earth system scientist and director of the Amazon program at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.  

“We have to think about all the different players and ask what levers are there that we can try to apply to reduce the demand to deforest,” he said. 

Intact ecosystems are becoming increasingly key. The United Nations warned in a report this month that unsustainable land use has helped drive atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to their highest levels in human history and devastated natural buffers against planetary warming. And even before the U.N.’s warnings turned increasingly urgent, the global environmental crisis had led to an increased focus on sustainable products from consumers and corporations alike. 

Whether the cause is a lack of information or a drive for profits, there remains a significant gap between what companies say they are doing to combat deforestation and what they’re actually accomplishing when it comes to limiting it.

In 2014, hundreds of companies pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains and financial portfolios by 2020. But less than six months before that deadline arrives, not a single one of them is on track to meet the goal, according to Global Canopy, a British nonprofit that tracks more than 500 companies and financial institutions that put forests at risk through their reliance on or financing of commodity-rich supply chains. 

The Carbon Disclosure Project, another British nonprofit, has attempted to persuade corporations to be more transparent about their environmentally destructive practices in an effort to improve them. 

But more than 70% of the 1,500 companies it asked to disclose information on timber, palm oil, cattle and soy production in 2018 didn’t share data, and more than 350 of them &#38;#38;#8213; including companies like Dominos Pizza and Mondelez, the Illinois-based food company whose top brands include Oreo, Nabisco and Kraft Foods &#38;#38;#8213; haven’t disclosed information in any of the last three years.  

Nearly 25% of the companies that did share data said they have taken no action at all to limit their effect on deforestation or have moved to address it on only one of the four commodity groups. The survey also showed that a third of the responding companies had yet to start working with suppliers to limit deforestation.

More than half of the 865 companies whose practices risk contributing to deforestation have committed to relying on sustainable commodities, Forest Trends said in a June report

But it found than less than 10% of them have committed to net-zero deforestation, and fewer than a third of those have reported making substantive progress toward the goal. 

“Despite the commitments that have been made,” Global Canopy said in its annual “Forest 500” report, “evidence shows that rates of commodity-driven deforestation have not decreased.”

Title: 'Biden, 🐍 Biden, you can’t hide, we can see your 🦕 greedy side!”
Post by: AGelbert on September 06, 2019, 03:39:24 pm
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2019
“Biden, 🐍 Biden, you can’t hide, we can see your 🦕 greedy side!”


Protests Erupt (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284) Outside Fundraiser for 🐍 Biden Co-Hosted by 🦕 Natural Gas Executives

JAKE JOHNSON, COMMON DREAMS

Dozens of environmentalists gathered outside the New York home of investment banker David Solomon on Thursday to protest 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden's decision to attend a fundraiser there. Biden attended the event despite calls for him to cancel it following news of the co-host's deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. The high-dollar fundraiser came just 24 hours after Biden participated in a CNN presidential town hall on the climate crisis.

Read the Article → (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

https://truthout.org/articles/protests-erupt-outside-fundraiser-for-biden-co-hosted-by-natural-gas-executives/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3114_Business%2520as%2520usual.png&hash=fd83c55bdd8a6becd193e40a1c1267d8356b49bc)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 17, 2019, 05:50:18 pm
 
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Iwt1Obw1A9OF4rmgyl-UYRo4MEJDf68gFtbGNW6JHUtpykjdICNc8oASCFbrYsucF5Fg17XbLG86FfHFO8yE4EkX6gjGVlOvmRAD7s5dGscLlHcisQ_pzhkscbiV_-D4oBdJi6nkSe_a2el9qT1VJhzoNSsAEZvHHg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/d1f5797e59060083034310930/images/2f11cead-050f-4018-bfed-c12fb45691e5.png)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa) to subscribe.

September 17, 2019

Top candidates (excluding Senator Sanders 👍) to skip MSNBC climate forum 👎, 'Trollbots' swarm twitter with attacks on climate science ahead of UN summit, & more (https://mailchi.mp/be18fbe8333a/top-candidates-to-skip-msnbc-climate-forum-fifth-il-coal-plant-to-shutter-more?e=0fd17c5b57)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on September 20, 2019, 12:05:59 am
September 19th, 2019 by Steve Hanley

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California Plans Aggressive Response To🦖 Trump Waiver Revocation (https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/19/california-plans-aggressive-response-to-trump-waiver-revocation/)

Title: Rachel Maddow's 'Blowout' exposes the corruption at the core of the fossil fuel industry
Post by: AGelbert on October 13, 2019, 09:33:25 pm
By Susan Grigsby for Daily Kos Community

Sunday October 13, 2019 · 6:20 PM EDT (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)

Rachel Maddow's 'Blowout' exposes the 👹 corruption at the core of the 🦕🦖 fossil  fuel industry (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/13/1891482/-Rachel-Maddow-s-Blowout-exposes-the-corruption-at-the-core-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry#comment_75208552)

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Title: Re: Rachel Maddow's 'Blowout' exposes the corruption at the core of the fossil fuel industry
Post by: Surly1 on October 14, 2019, 03:00:59 pm

Rachel Maddow's 'Blowout' exposes the 👹 corruption at the core of the 🦕🦖 fossil  fuel industry (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/13/1891482/-Rachel-Maddow-s-Blowout-exposes-the-corruption-at-the-core-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry#comment_75208552)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326)

Got to be worth a read.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: Surly1 on October 14, 2019, 03:03:27 pm
George Monbiot: Oil Strike (https://voxpopulisphere.com/2019/10/14/george-monbiot-oil-strike/)
by Vox Populi
The oil companies have successfully transferred blame for their actions to us. It is time to fight back.

 

Let’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the First Great Extermination. A recent essay by the environmental historian Justin McBrien argues that describing the current eradication of living systems (including human societies) as an extinction event makes this catastrophe sound like a passive accident. 

While we are all participants in the First Great Extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. The impacts of most of the world’s people are minimal. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action shaped in large part by corporations. 

The Guardian’s new Polluters series reveals that just 20 fossil fuel companies, some owned by states, some by shareholders, have produced 35% of the carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities since 1965. This was the year in which the president of the American Petroleum Institute told his members that the carbon dioxide they produced could cause “marked changes in climate” by the year 2000. They knew what they were doing.

Even as their own scientists warned that the continued extraction of fossil fuels could cause “catastrophic” consequences, the oil companies poured billions of dollars into thwarting government action. They funded think tanks and paid retired scientists and fake grassroots organisations to pour doubt and scorn on climate science. They sponsored politicians, particularly in the US Congress, to block international attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. They invested heavily in greenwashing their public image.

These efforts continue today, with advertisements by Shell    and Exxon which create the misleading impression that they’re switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In reality, Shell’s annual report reveals that it invested $25 billion in oil and gas last year. But it provides no figure for its much-trumpeted investments in low carbon technologies. Nor was the company able to do so when I challenged it

paper published in Nature shows that we have little chance of preventing more than 1.5°C of global heating unless existing fossil fuel infrastructure is retired. Instead, the fossil fuel industry intends to accelerate production, spending nearly $5 trillion in the next 10 years on developing new reserves. It is committed to ecocide.

But the biggest and most successful lie it tells is this: that the First Great Extermination is a matter of consumer choice. In response to the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they are not responsible for our decisions to use their products. But we are embedded in a system of their creation, a political, economic and physical infrastructure that creates an illusion of choice while, in reality, closing it down.

We are guided by an ideology so familiar and pervasive that we do not even recognise it as an ideology. It is called consumerism. It has been crafted with the help of skilful advertisers and marketers, by corporate celebrity culture, and by a media that casts us as the recipients of goods and services rather than the creators of political reality. It is locked in by transport, town planning and energy systems that make good choices all but impossible. It spreads like a stain through political systems, which have been systematically captured by lobbying and campaign finance, until political leaders cease to represent us, and work instead for the pollutocrats who fund them.

Within such a system, individual choices are lost in the noise. Attempts to organise boycotts are notoriously difficult, and tend to work only when there is a narrow and immediate aim. The ideology of consumerism is highly effective at shifting blame: witness the current ranting in the billionaire press about the alleged hypocrisy of environmental activists. Everywhere I see rich Westerners blaming planetary destruction on the birth rates of much poorer people, or on “the Chinese”. This individuation of responsibility, intrinsic to consumerism, blinds us to the real drivers of destruction. 

The power of consumerism is that it renders us powerless. It traps us within a narrow circle of decision-making, in which we mistake insignificant choices between different varieties of destruction for effective change. It is, we must admit, a brilliant con.

It’s the system we need to change, rather than the products of the system. It is as citizens that we must act, rather than as consumers. But how? Part of the answer is provided in a short book published by one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, called Common Sense for the 21st Century. I don’t agree with everything it says, but the rigour and sweep of its analysis will, I think, ensure that it becomes a classic of political theory.

It begins with the premise that gradualist campaigns making small demands cannot prevent the gathering catastrophes of climate and ecological breakdown. Only mass political disruption, out of which can be built new and more responsive democratic structures, can deliver the necessary transformation. 

By studying successful mobilisations, such as the Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, that played a critical role in ending racial segregation, the Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig in 1989, that snowballed until they helped bring down the East German regime, and the Jana Andolan movement in Nepal in 2005, that brought down the absolute power of the monarchy and helped end the armed insurgency, Hallam has developed a formula for effective “dilemma actions”. A dilemma action is one that puts the authorities in an awkward position. Either the police allow civil disobedience to continue, thereby encouraging more people to join, or they attack the protesters, creating a powerful “symbolism of fearless sacrifice”… thereby encouraging more people to join. If you get it right, the authorities can’t win.

Among the crucial common elements, he found, are assembling thousands of people in the centre of the capital city, maintaining a strictly non-violent discipline, focusing on the government and continuing for days or weeks at a time. Radical change, his research reveals, “is primarily a numbers game. Ten thousand people breaking the law has historically had more impact than small-scale, high-risk activism.” The key challenge is to organise actions that encourage as many people as possible to join. This means they should be openly planned, inclusive, entertaining, peaceful and actively respectful. You can join such an action today, convened by Extinction Rebellion in central London.

Hallam’s research suggests that this approach offers at least a possibility of breaking the infrastructure of lies the fossil fuel companies have created, and developing a politics matched to the scale of the challenges we face. It is difficult and uncertain of success. But, he points out, the chances that politics as usual will meet our massive predicament with effective action are zero. Mass dilemma actions could be our last, best chance of preventing the great extermination.


Copyright George Monbiot. First published in the Guardian 10th October 2019.

Title: picture a person waking up from a self induced catatonic state inside a coffin buried six feet unde
Post by: AGelbert on October 15, 2019, 02:30:46 pm
George Monbiot: Oil Strike (https://voxpopulisphere.com/2019/10/14/george-monbiot-oil-strike/)
by Vox Populi
The 🦕🦖 oil 😈 companies have successfully transferred blame for their actions to us. It is time to fight back.
Let’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the First Great Extermination. ...

... Mass dilemma actions could be our last, best chance of preventing the great extermination.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F848_Exxon%2520knew%25201.png&hash=1682fa38da6787f92a0a263f2d06400217e476e7)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-161218193528.png&hash=638de94da4704f04462bf03a8a6af48a526382b3)

I Agree that there is a great extermination taking place. I disagree that it can be stopped, though I will do all I can to stop and reverse it, as George Monbiot 👍 and XR 👍 are doing. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-140216175259.jpeg&hash=128079ac7036df5bba09b5391709ac9c092d3ee7) It ain't over till it's over. Hope springs eternal and all that. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-221017161839.png&hash=7d34712243960aa20883775dad728bc2115ed6fe)

Even if we are toast, there is, believe it or not, an upside to this. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205434.png&hash=f935da2cb5d2746b1d817ec9a4feb3a04f3f8075)

You see, the elite  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) greedballs are going to die even more painfullly and horribly than the 99% that dies from Catastrophic Climate Change before they do. These elites, with their bunkers and 100 year food supplies and renewable energy powered air conditioning, water purification and so on, will get to see and experience, up close and personal, the HORROR of climate 2 degrees C on up to 10 degrees C above pre-industrial causing ALL vertebrate species to go extinct.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3398_Bottom%2520Line%2520Waking%2520the%2520climate%2520giant.png&hash=dd85cd9391ee156f7df73dfc716aa005364c4952)

Since these money loving BASTARDS are in 100% "Might is right" Satanic brainfuck lockstep (see: "game theory") mode from the time they reach the age of "reason", they simply cannot wrap their materialistic heads around the consequences of industrially shitting where they eat.

So, they will only realize how abysmally stupid they have been when they see that there is NO THERE OUT THERE to rapaciously exploit when their bunker food runs out. Earth's spectacular, majestic life giving biosphere will become a polluted, toxic pile of (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3104_shit%2520bitmap.png&hash=13c3368bd73680b8cbcbaaa8e306e42cb17d4d41).

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-220815161550.png&hash=f95989290a4fca22333fc772d8abd90a6764d4d8)

In order to fully appreciate what these Hellspawn Scum of the Earth will experience when it dawns on them that THEIR ANTI-EMPATHY WORLD VIEW CAUSED THIS EXTERMINATION, picture a person waking up from a self-induced catatonic state inside a coffin buried six feet under ground.

It won't be pretty. But, it will be JUST. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838)  They will scream in terror while desperately scratching and pushing with all their might as they lose consciousness and die from lack of oxygen in a state of total panic.

(https://ofcommonsense.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/free-choice-not-consequences.jpg)

And then their real punishment will begin.

  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200914193029.png&hash=728bdda741ba73675753acf67d5deb8e6f9e3ef0)

Surly, if God wants to save the biosphere, He will save it. As to TPTB Homo SAPs running this (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3104_shit%2520bitmap.png&hash=13c3368bd73680b8cbcbaaa8e306e42cb17d4d41) show, I see ZERO evidence that they want to save it. Therefore, it is logical for an atheist to harbor no hope for our species. Yet, with the exception of the 'Nature Bats Last' crowd, most atheists out there do not want to engage in that, from their own "god ain't there" professed world view, INESCAPABLE logic, do they? Their God is humanity. Good luck with that...

IF, and ONLY IF, TPTB experience a spiritual awakening and embrace 100% ETHICAL BEHAVIOR, there is hope. That is one way that God could intervene through the minds and hearts of humans.

You and I aren't going to talk TPTB into an embrace of ethical behavior. XR is not going to talk TPTB into an embrace of ethical behavior. Violent bloody revolution (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284) is not going convince TPTB to embrace ethical behavior either.

All the writings of every religion and philosophy that edify our discourse by repeatedly warning, in no uncertain terms, that ethical behavior is Sine qua non  for the successful perpetuation of the human family, HAVE NOT convinced TPTB to embrace ethical behavior.

God has shown the way. The most ambitious, intelligent, ethics rejecting humans have cheated, lied and murdered their way to the catbird seat. They have given God the finger. They ARE TPTB at present. Jesus Christ, while He was dying on the cross, said, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do." Well, that is no longer the case. TPTB KNOW EXACTLY what they are doing to their fellow humans and the rest of the biosphere.

I can't speak for God, but it don't look good for humanity, bro.

Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. Ps 119:136 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+119&version=KJV)
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Title: #Sludge Report — Who 👹💵🎩 Is Funding The 🦖 Fossil Fuel 😈 Industry?
Post by: AGelbert on October 17, 2019, 11:15:38 pm
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#Sludge Report — Who 👹💵🎩 Is Funding The 🦖 Fossil Fuel 😈 Industry?

October 17th, 2019 by Steve Hanley

SNIPPET:

Other top financiers of fossil fuel companies include Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. In all, 33 financial institutions provided approximately $1.9 trillion in funding to the  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) fossil fuel sector between 2016 and 2018. The analysis was done for The Guardian by Rainforest Action Network, a US-based environmental organization using Bloomberg financial data and publicly available company disclosures.

The figures show Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America ponied up about $80 billion to finance fracking operations in the Permian basin in Texas over the past three years.  The financing of the tar sands crude oil projects in Alberta, Canada, is dominated by Canadian banks, led by the Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto Dominion. The big four state-owned Chinese banks, which have no fossil fuel financing policies, have dominated services for coal mining and coal generating plants since 2016.

Asked to comment on the findings, (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205808.gif&hash=5c451456a306c150d3555c49e31a2f47d6f369a9) JPMorgan Chase offered a typically mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded response, saying it recognizes the complexity of climate change (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017140758.jpeg&hash=8c0a35a928dcda3c1a8714ab03f4924a1a775851) and is actively engaging with all stakeholders on the issue. Isn’t that like saying we will continue to help (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/5482_label%20for%20the%20word%20rape.png) and pillage the Earth until someone forces us to stop? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c)

Full article (https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/17/sludge-report-who-is-funding-the-fossil-fuel-industry/) (https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/304fa75d7ed32d56ae1ff3a796933cb65eac738511bb960bc4a77bb2f67c0af6.gif)


Title: Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors
Post by: Surly1 on October 18, 2019, 07:55:39 am
For some reason, this story really struck me to drive home the point that we are well and truly **** as humanity. Faced with catastrophic climate change, our response is to air condition the stadiums. Because money. And we know better, but just don't care.

Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/?utm_source=reddit.com&wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1)

(https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/06/31/67/18456012/3/920x920.jpg)

DOHA, Qatar — It was 116 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade outside the new Al Janoub soccer stadium, and the air felt to air-conditioning expert Saud Ghani as if God had pointed “a giant hair dryer” at Qatar.

Yet inside the open-air stadium, a cool breeze was blowing. Beneath each of the 40,000 seats, small grates adorned with Arabic-style patterns were pushing out cool air at ankle level. And since cool air sinks, waves of it rolled gently down to the grassy playing field. Vents the size of soccer balls fed more cold air onto the field.

Ghani, an engineering professor at Qatar University, designed the system at Al Janoub, one of eight stadiums that the tiny but fabulously rich Qatar must get in shape for the 2022 World Cup. His breakthrough realization was that he had to cool only people, not the upper reaches of the stadium — a graceful structure designed by the famed Zaha Hadid Architects and inspired by traditional boats known as dhows.

“I don’t need to cool the birds,” Ghani said.

Qatar, the world's leading exporter of liquefied natural gas, may be able to cool its stadiums, but it cannot cool the entire country. Fears that the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans might wilt or even die while shuttling between stadiums and metros and hotels in the unforgiving summer heat prompted the decision to delay the World Cup by five months. It is now scheduled for November, during Qatar's milder winter.

The change in the World Cup date is a symptom of a larger problem — climate change.

Already one of the hottest places on Earth, Qatar has seen average temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, the current international goal for limiting the damage of global warming. The 2015 Paris climate summit said it would be better to keep temperatures "well below" that, ideally to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Over the past three decades, temperature increases in Qatar have been accelerating. That’s because of the uneven nature of climate change as well as the surge in construction that drives local climate conditions around Doha, the capital. The temperatures are also rising because Qatar, slightly smaller than Connecticut, juts out from Saudi Arabia into the rapidly warming waters of the Persian Gulf.

In a July 2010 heat wave, the temperature hit an all-time high of 50.4 degrees Celsius.

“Qatar is one of the fastest warming areas of the world, at least outside of the Arctic,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate data scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit temperature analysis group. “Changes there can help give us a sense of what the rest of the world can expect if we do not take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”

While climate change inflicts suffering in the world’s poorest places from Somalia to Syria, from Guatemala to Bangladesh, in rich places such as the United States, Europe and Qatar global warming poses an engineering problem, not an existential one. And it can be addressed, at least temporarily, with gobs of money and a little technology.

To survive the summer heat, Qatar not only air-conditions its soccer stadiums, but also the outdoors — in markets, along sidewalks, even at outdoor malls so people can window shop with a cool breeze. “If you turn off air conditioners, it will be unbearable. You cannot function effectively,” says Yousef al-Horr, founder of the Gulf Organization for Research and Development.

Yet outdoor air conditioning is part of a vicious cycle. Carbon emissions create global warming, which creates the desire for air conditioning, which creates the need for burning fuels that emit more carbon dioxide. In Qatar, total cooling capacity is expected to nearly double from 2016 to 2030, according to the International District Cooling & Heating Conference.

And it’s going to get hotter.

By the time average global warming hits 2 degrees Celsius, Qatar’s temperatures would soar, said Mohammed Ayoub, senior research director at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute. In rapidly growing urban areas throughout the Middle East, some predict cities could become uninhabitable.

“We’re talking about 4 to 6 degrees Celsius increase in an area that already experiences high temperatures,” Ayoub said. “So, what we’re looking at more is a question of how does this impact the health and productivity of the population.”

The danger is acute in Qatar because of the Persian Gulf humidity. The human body cools off when its sweat evaporates. But when humidity is very high, evaporation slows or stops. “If it’s hot and humid and the relative humidity is close to 100 percent, you can die from the heat you produce yourself,” said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany who is an expert on Middle East climate.

That became abundantly clear in late September, as Doha hosted the 2019 World Athletics Championships. It moved the start time for the women’s marathon to midnight Sept. 28. Water stations handed out sponges dipped in ice-cold water. First-aid responders outnumbered the contestants. But temperatures hovered around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 28 of the 68 starters failed to finish, some taken off in wheelchairs.

Workers are particularly at risk. A German television report alleged hundreds of deaths among foreign workers in Qatar in recent years, prompting new limits on outdoor work. A July article in the journal Cardiology said that 200 of 571 fatal cardiac problems among Nepalese migrants working there were caused by “severe heat stress” and could have been avoided.

The U.S. Air Force calls very hot days “black flag days” and limits exposure of troops stationed at al-Udeid Air Base. Personnel conducting patrols or aircraft maintenance work for 20 minutes, then rest for 40 minutes and drink two bottles of water an hour. People doing heavy work in the fire department or aircraft repair may work for only 10 minutes at a time, followed by 50 minutes of rest, according to a spokesman for the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.

In early July, Qatar’s Civil Defense Command warned against doing outdoor work between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., putting gas cylinders in the sun, turning on water heaters, completely filling fuel tanks or car tires, or needlessly running the air conditioner. It urged people to drink plenty of fluids — and to beware of snakes and scorpions.

‘Expect Amazing’

For now, managing climate change in a place like Qatar, whose slogan for the World Cup is “Expect Amazing,” is primarily a matter of money.

And Qatar has plenty. Its sovereign wealth fund is worth about $320 billion. A few of its stakes include Harrods department store, London’s gigantic Canary Wharf, the Paris Saint-Germain soccer club, the CityCenterDC office and residential development and a 10 percent stake in the Empire State Building.

Qatar has used its riches to great effect at home, where 11 winners of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize have built striking high-rises and stadiums. The result is a strange combination of avant-garde architecture, oil wealth, Islamic conservatism, shopping malls and climate change that Qatari American artist Sophia al-Maria has dubbed “Gulf Futurism.”

“With the coming global environmental collapse, to live completely indoors is like, the only way we’ll be able to survive. The Gulf’s a prophecy of what’s to come,” she said in an interview in Dazed Digital, an online magazine covering fashion and culture.

So far, Qatar has maintained outdoor life through a vast expansion of outdoor air conditioning. In the restored Souq Waqif market, a maze of shops, restaurants and small hotels, three- to four-foot-high air-conditioning units blow cool air onto cafe customers. At a cost of $80 to $250 each depending on the quality, they are the only things that make outdoor dining possible in a place where overnight low temperatures in summer rarely dip below 90 degrees.

Recently, the luxury French department store Galeries Lafayette opened in a shopping mall that features stylish air-conditioning grates in the broad cobblestone walkways outside. Each of the vents, about 1 by 6 feet, has a decorative design. Many of them hug the outside of buildings, cooling off window shoppers looking at expensive fashions. Though nearly deserted in the heat, by 5 p.m. some people begin to emerge to sit outside places like Cafe Pouchkine.

One recent afternoon as the temperature eased to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, Aida Adi Baziac, an interior designer, was sharing iced lattes with a friend. They had just finished work and were perched over a cooling grate at an outdoor table at Joe’s Cafe.

“I would say it’s wasteful,” Adi Baziac said. “I know how it impacts the environment negatively.”

But it allows them to enjoy the outdoors in the summer, she added. “We can sit outside in an air-conditioned, controlled area, and we sit and mix and mingle.”

Even Qatar’s small band of climate activists sympathize. Asked about the outdoor air conditioners, Neeshad Shafi, executive director of Arab Youth Climate Movement Qatar, said, “That’s about survival. It’s too hot. That’s the reality.”

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/img/1800/NL4CY6XF64I6TMFGHUBXEG4F54.jpg)
Al Janoub stadium is one of eight soccer stadiums that Qatar is prepping for the 2022 World Cup.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/img/1800/NF5VEPHF64I6TMFGHUBXEG4F54.jpg)
Engineering professor Saud Ghani designed the open-air stadium's air-conditioning system.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/img/1800/N6EGTLGUBII6TCJEDW35VR4X7M.jpg)
Small vents push cool air at ankle level inside the stadium.

See the rest of the article, plus more photographs and interactive graphics here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/?utm_source=reddit.com&wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/?utm_source=reddit.com&wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1)
Title: Re: Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors
Post by: AGelbert on October 18, 2019, 12:14:31 pm
For some reason, this story really struck me to drive home the point that we are well and truly **** as humanity. Faced with catastrophic climate change, our response is to air condition the stadiums. Because money. And we know better, but just don't care.

Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/?utm_source=reddit.com&wpisrc=nl_powerup&wpmm=1)

Yep. Qatar's outdoor air conditioning is definitely Prima facie evidence of insanity.

Tomorrow is Yesterday...
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Title: key sticking point was over how much the U.S., the LARGEST 🦖 fossil fuels EMITTER, owes rest of the
Post by: AGelbert on December 19, 2019, 07:21:41 pm
Quote
Cruelly, it’s those places that are already being hammered by the impacts of fossil-fueled development in the “global north”; climate equity advocates argue that larger economies which have benefited from historical processes like colonialism and slavery have the capacity to transition more quickly, and should allow countries and people that have traditionally been exploited the time and capacity to catch up. Throughout Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States’ team of career State 🦕🦖🐍 Department negotiators have spent years stymying calls for more ambitious climate policy, coming most vocally from “global south” countries already experiencing the climate emergency. Climate finance, in particular, has been their bęte noire.

The
Intercept_


🦀🦕🦖 RICH NATIONS (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78), AFTER DRIVING CLIMATE DISASTER, 🦍 BLOCK ALL PROGRESS AT U.N. TALKS (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013200859.png&hash=a7aaaa9f04c1e3e2c948723b5f8c13fe814dacd4)

By Kate Aronoff

December 18 2019, 1:26 p.m.

SNIPPET:

LAST WEDNESDAY, over 300 demonstrators at COP25 in Madrid — this year’s 14-day U.N. climate talks, the group’s longest ever — watched from the courtyard of a conference center as a metal wall rose up seemingly out of nowhere, locking civil society observers literally out in the cold. Moments earlier, some had had their entry badges snatched off them by U.N. guards in skirmishes outside the main plenary hall before they were cordoned off. Security prevented them from speaking even to the press; all civil society observers had been barred from entering the conference center. With access to the venue now blocked, protesters marched out the back entrance, where they were greeted by Spanish police.

The protest was intended to call out the widespread lack of ambition coming from some of the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses, calling on countries in the “global north” to provide support for climate mitigation, adaptation, and recovery, plus excise loopholes that would give polluters a way out to keep on with business as usual. Demonstrators’ credentials were restored a few hours later, but the talks had done little to address their concerns. By Saturday afternoon — two days after talks were set to end — there was little agreement as to what would come out of them. “There is no one issue that is completely resolved,” Harjeet Singh, who leads up global climate work for ActionAid, told me. By the end of the closing plenary the next day, most major issues had been punted to future meetings. Even U.N. Secretary General António Guterres expressed his dissatisfaction on Twitter.

“There is no doubt: rich countries have been blocking progress across the board,” Singh said.

On that front, not ...

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-231218145827.png&hash=8d3bbb761cf17fcddac83f24088d26e316b65e33)
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/18/un-climate-cop25/
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 01, 2020, 08:37:45 pm
(https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/106_lng_carrier_northwest_shearwater.jpg)

Stop the Spread of Liquefied 💣 Natural Gas — Before It’s Too  💥 Late (https://truthout.org/articles/stop-the-spread-of-liquefied-natural-gas-before-its-too-late/)

Title: Australia’s prime minister pledges to outlaw climate boycotts
Post by: Surly1 on January 03, 2020, 08:23:16 am
Meanwhile, back from his Hawaiian holiday and brimming with Christopathic hubris, Prime Minister Fuckstick opines on the most important issue facing Australia.

The money shot:
Quote
🦖 Morrison, an evangelical Christian (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-TzWpwHzCvCI%2FT_sBEnhCCpI%2FAAAAAAAAME8%2FIsLpuU8HYxc%2Fs1600%2Fnooo-way-smiley.gif&hash=b8545bd420b1e2f2c7b9f665d2093523e4ad2251) and a vocal supporter of President 🦖 Trump, finds himself aligned with the U.S. leader on support for the coal industry.

Don't forget to towel off.

Australia’s 🦖😈 prime minister pledges to outlaw climate boycotts, arguing they threaten the economy (https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/01/australias-prime-minister-pledges-outlaw-climate-boycotts-arguing-they-threaten-economy)

(https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w540/s/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/AVVFVXXTGII6TMWSD434TWBNXM.jpg)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-020320122222.png&hash=6aa13c886f2edbb773c47ec59e451818ef54e286)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his wife Jenny leave after attending the inauguration of Indonesian President Joko Widodo for a second term, in Jakarta on Oct. 20, 2019. (ADEK BERRY/POOL/AFP/Getty Images)


Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison railed against environmental protesters in a lunchtime speech on Friday, warning of a new breed of radical activism that was apocalyptic  ::) in tone and pledging to outlaw boycott campaigns that he argued could hurt the country's mining industry. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017140758.jpeg&hash=8c0a35a928dcda3c1a8714ab03f4924a1a775851)

The remarks were made to an audience at the Queensland Resources Council, an organization that represents peak mining interests in the northeastern Australian state. The proposed limits on protest quickly drew condemnation from human rights groups and activists.

From ending slavery to stopping apartheid, boycott campaigns have played a critical role in achieving many social advances that we now take for granted, Hugh de Kretser 👍, executive director of the Human Rights Law Center, said in a statement.

Morrison, an evangelical Christian (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48) and a vocal supporter of President 🦀Trump, finds himself aligned with the U.S. leader on support for the coal industry. Australia is one of the largest coal producers on earth, with the industry supplying roughly 50,000 jobs but disproportionately targeted as responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.

During his speech, Morrison said his government was looking at serious mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten the livelihoods of fellow Australians.He argued that the right to protest does not mean there is an unlimited license to disrupt people's lives and disrespect your fellow Australians. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251117175700.png&hash=00439d30db6e35817ea0d1fbcba614f1f971448e)

Businesses linked to climate change were being refused banking, insurance and consulting services, Morrison said, due to the demands of activists. I think some of our largest corporations should listen to and engage to their quiet shareholders, not just the noisy ones, he said.

The Australian prime minister's remarks took aim at secondary boycotts, in particular the boycotts that target firms that work with the Adani company in opening a controversial new mine in Queensland. In an interview with 3AW radio on Friday, Morrison said that secondary boycotts were targeting decent small businesses who are providing services to the mining industry.

They are being black-banned, and they are being harassed, Morrison (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) said. And this is not something that any Australian should have to put up with.

Morrison told 3AW that he was considering whether secondary boycotts for environmental reasons could be made illegal. Australia, like the United States, already has laws that ban secondary boycotts run by labor unions. It's not okay for environmental . . . well, they're not environmental, they are activist groups. That's what they are, 🦕 Morrison said.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmemecrunch.com%2Fmeme%2F5L3XX%2Fspiderman-bullshit-detector%2Fimage.jpg%3Fw%3D544%26amp%3Bc%3D1&hash=4825835b92337d62f61a3d37d282105e97ac3ee3)

Over the past year, there has been a surge in environmental demonstrations all around the world, including the Extinction Rebellion protests. Last month, millions of people in all corners of the globe took part in a youth-led protest movement to demand that governments do more to combat climate change. Just last week, there were violent clashes outside a coal conference in Melbourne

Boycotts of businesses are one of many tactics used in the environmental movement. Prominent figures such as South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu are among those who have urged consumers to stop giving money to companies that contribute to climate change.

But Morrison's surprise victory in Australia's general election in May shows support for anti-activist policies, too (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190419232147.png&hash=b9d818543137cfd7ac4b712c1c25fe3b94b6d174). The incumbent prime minister, dogged by controversy and poor polling numbers, managed to cling to power, in part by portraying himself as a pro-business, center-right ally of Australia's coal industry.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten, tapped as the likely winner in the election, had proposed that Australia move away from exploiting its large coal reserves and instead take steps to generate half of its electricity from solar, wind and other renewable sources by 2030. The move appeared to backfire electorally especially in Queensland, where voters swung to the government in large numbers.

I hear a lot about progressivism at the moment, Morrison said in his speech. The word sounds lovely and gives you a warm glow, he added. I will tell you what it means, the prime minister continued. Those who claim the title want to tell you where to live, what job you can have, what you can say and what you can think and tax you more for the privilege of all of those instructions that are directed to you. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121829.png&hash=035f25ddb6d065f1533ce03c1c07f5fddcbbc83c)

Title: They don’t expect the government to protect private residences, just 🦖 industry infrastructure that
Post by: AGelbert on January 03, 2020, 05:58:59 pm
CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica’s work via donations on Patreon or PayPal!

Or just go buy a cool t-shirt, cup, baby outfit, bag, or hoodie. (https://cleantechnica.com/shop/#!/)

January 3rd, 2020 by Steve Hanley  (https://media3.giphy.com/media/kHmINzGsY6xbwgSo3J/source.gif)

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🦕 🦖 Oil & 🐍 Petrochemical Companies Want YOU To Pay To Protect Them From Climate Change! (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16181943.gif&hash=0b93e71ee5e24bbe02555e0d648a1283e0e9651d) (https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/03/oil-petrochemical-companies-want-you-to-pay-to-protect-them-from-climate-change/)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 21, 2020, 01:29:28 pm
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January 21, 2020

Court tosses youth climate case (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc), fire smoke slows down coal production in Australia, & more

Court Throws Out Kids' Climate Suit: An appeals court Friday threw out a landmark case brought by a group of 21 young people charging the federal government with not taking sufficient action on climate change. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to dismiss the Juliana vs. United States suit, which was originally brought against the Obama administration in 2015, saying that "the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large" rather than decided in the courts. Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit backing the suit, has vowed to appeal the decision, with the Trust's lead lawyer Julia Olson telling the New York Times that the case is "far from over." (New York Times $, Washington Post $, Reuters, AP, Vox (https://www.vox.com/2020/1/17/21070810/climate-change-lawsuit-juliana-vs-us-our-childrens-trust-9th-circuit), Politico Pro $)

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Fossil Fuels' Radioactive Problem: Oil and gas production releases certain radioactive waste products that have led to a slew of cancer cases in workers, according to a new investigation from Rolling Stone. The investigation lays out how runoff from oil and gas wells, known as brine, can contain high levels of radionuclide, which may be an understudied public health risk to workers and communities across the country. The industry claims that radioactivity in the waste is harmless, so workers continue to be unprotected and brine storage facilities largely unregulated. "If I had a beaker of that on my desk and accidentally dropped it on the floor, they would shut the place down," Yuri Gorby, a former radioactivity expert at the Department of Energy, told Rolling Stone about high levels of radioactivity found in brine from the Marcellus shale. "And if I dumped it down the sink, I could go to jail.” (Rolling Stone (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/))
 
Big oil is the new big tobacco. Congress must use its power to investigate (The Guardian, Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran op-ed) (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/big-oil-congress-climate-change)

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Taking A Peek At Upcoming Fossil Fuel Propaganda and Policy on Methane, Gas Bans, Coal and Protests

We hit the ground running this year, so today we’re going to do a bit of stock-taking about what 2020 is going to bring us from the 🦕👹🦖 fossil fuel industry.


Right now, the industry is not exactly in a happy place. Public polling from Yale shows that the “alarmed” portion of Americans is now the largest of the six segments at 31% of the population (compared to just 10% who are doubtful or dismissive of climate concerns). Last week, TIME’s Justin Worland published a piece based on an interview with Shell’s CEO, who’s feeling the pressure from climate activists and the realities of climate science. (Makes sense, given that last week Extinction Rebellion blockaded Shell offices.) The industry certainly has a problem with public perception, particularly but not solely among the youth, as protests from Harvard Law and Oxford, among others, show.   

Step one, then, for the fossil fuel industry is to make it harder for those pesky protestors to shine a spotlight on companies. As the Heartland Institute gratefully reminded us with a timely post last week, back in November of 2019 Wisconsin became the 17th state to criminalize protests with new stronger penalties including a $10,000 fine and six years in jail if protests trespass on energy company property. 

Step two is to pretend like the industry is doing something about pollution, to undercut calls for regulation. That’s the approach the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute are taking for their new Natural Gas Sustainability Initiative, a draft of which E&E obtained. To address the fact that methane emissions are a powerful greenhouse gas, the initiative is completely voluntary, and only working on a reporting protocol. Drillers can choose to report how much they’re polluting, but won’t actually be pressured to do anything. 

But what about policies that are already being rolled out? To see how the industry is responding to the emerging trend of local municipalities banning natural gas use all together, check out this post from the oil industry’s Energy in Depth. It lays out the four narrative responses the industry will use to these local decisions. 

The first is an implicit admission that they’re a problem, in that they allege that gas bans won’t reduce emissions as much as efficiency measures or methane capture in landfills. (But obviously banning gas hardly means cities can’t also take efficiency measures or capture methane from garbage!) After that, cry crocodile tears for low-income populations by pointing out that electric heat can be more expensive than a natural gas furnace, that consumers appear to prefer gas to electric heat, and that gas is more efficient than electric.

None of this changes the simple fact that natural gas use is incompatible with fighting climate change. 

That’s why the industry is making last-ditch efforts to use their political sway to protect their business. The latest comes from Indiana, which introduced a bill last week to make it illegal to close down a coal plant unless the federal government (but NOT the EPA) gives a direct mandate to do so. The hypocrisy the party of free market worship and “not picking winners and losers” picking the losing coal industry to win legal protection from economic competition could not be more palpable. 

Even if it is eventually signed into law, eventually those plants will close. And when they do, surely the industry will be good neighbors and clean up the mess they left behind, right? 

Obviously not. In Ohio, a new analysis shows that while drilling companies are required to set aside either $5,000 to clean up a spent well, or $15,000 for all of their wells, the average cost of plugging one well is $110,000. Even worse, once the well is plugged, the companies get that money back, leaving the public to pay the rest. That is, if they even bother to clean it themselves. Ohio alone has a confirmed 900 orphaned wells, with potentially another 18,000 hiding away in homes or school gyms or farm fields or basements or anywhere else. When one considers what the costs would be if Ohio was representative of the whole country, it’d mean a price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Which of course begs a question the industry is desperate to keep the public from asking: How are we going to pay for that?

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Title: Gas Export’s Dirty Secret: A Carbon Footprint Rivaling Coal’s
Post by: AGelbert on January 24, 2020, 04:25:18 pm
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Jan 23, 2020 02:15 pm By Catherine Traywick, Stephen Cunningham, Naureen Malik and Dave Merrill (Bloomberg)

Gas 🦕 Export’s Dirty Secret: A Carbon Footprint Rivaling Coal’s (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c)

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The six export terminals currently in operation aren’t yet running at full capacity. At current operating levels, their maximum potential CO2 emissions are equivalent to those of 5.2 coal-fired plants, according to Bloomberg calculations.


In May, while President 🦀 Donald Trump toured a new $10 billion plant designed to prepare natural gas for export, he made a vow. Such facilities would be good for the environment, he said, or they won’t get approved. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)  The (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205137.gif&hash=7a79df8ecf1b29d8599c26fe550e664c6c5e24bd) president has greenlit 11 projects […]  Read full story... (https://gcaptain.com/gas-exports-dirty-secret-a-carbon-footprint-rivaling-coals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Gcaptain+%28gCaptain.com%29&goal=0_f50174ef03-a57579dcbf-169600093&mc_cid=a57579dcbf&mc_eid=1855a0727e)

Quote
If the amount of methane leaked during gas production and transportation exceeds 3.1% over a 20-year period, LNG’s lifecycle emissions become comparable to those of locally mined coal, according to the agency. A 2018 report published in the journal Nature found that leaks across the U.S. now total 2.3% of oil and natural gas production. In the Permian basin, the world’s highest-producing oil field, the largest 🦕😈🦖 producers are 🔥 burning off methane at a rate of 5.1%, according to Rystad Energy.
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 31, 2020, 09:42:34 pm
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/w-y99y2aVn3DIV8jTk2xpSbhLnmta_gdK20ddv3Ru1KZvZqfzYlWnVsZWhNmsb6aO5zWfIdtE_W2lhUDMK0cA9xQYzUWsaaCazGilU6Ql6k6nv079Vx6ChOeWq6Q2hANk6ql9MnxICFkz4mwMD_Y-coWxwryBJwONnY=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/ca4ff3016df790ab4c04c0ddd/images/b20e0a15-dc3a-4e17-b47e-7e79dba9db26.png) Davos 💵🎩 financial 🐍 players pump US$1.4 trillion into🦕🦖  fossil fuels (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132421-16911675.gif&hash=b337cdc73ae0e451ca134d064ea3363d3de56665)

Greenpeace

21 Jan 2020

Banks and pension funds with CEOs attending the World Economic Forum are collectively exposed to fossil fuels to the tune of US$1.4 trillion. This is the major finding in a new Greenpeace International report “It’s the finance sector, stupid,” based on data from the Banking on Climate Change – Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2019 showing the financial sector is as culpable for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel industry. Read more. (https://www.banktrack.org/article/davos_financial_players_pump_us1_4_trillion_into_fossil_fuels_new_greenpeace_report)

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Title: 🦖 Exxon to Congress: Lift Cyprus Arms Embargo, There’s Gas Nearby 😈
Post by: AGelbert on February 07, 2020, 06:06:07 pm
🦖 Exxon to Congress: Lift Cyprus Arms Embargo, There’s Gas Nearby 😈
February 7, 2020

https://youtu.be/oZkN-GghYAE


TRNN's Steve Horn and The Intercept's Lee Fang say a bill to lift the arms embargo on Cyprus and promote offshore gas in the region received lobbying support from ExxonMobil, and the pro-Israel and pro-Greece lobbies.

https://therealnews.com/stories/exxon-congress-cyprus-arms-embargo-natural-gas
Title: Global 🐍 🎩 Banks INCREASING Fossil 🦖 Fuel Investments! 🤬
Post by: AGelbert on March 18, 2020, 05:29:07 pm
(https://mcusercontent.com/ca4ff3016df790ab4c04c0ddd/images/5d8768a7-51d0-4e93-ad04-ab20304d5fe4.png)

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New Report Reveals 👹 Global 🐍 🎩 Banks Funneled $2.7 Trillion into 🦕🦖 Fossil Fuels Since Paris Climate Agreement, with Financing on the Rise Each Year (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c) (https://mailchi.mp/banktrack/new-report-reveals-global-banks-funneled-27-trillion-into-fossil-fuels-since-paris-climate-agreement-with-financing-on-the-rise-each-year?e=8a41a36a6d)
Title: The banks financing the companies involved with this project should demand their clients to withdraw
Post by: AGelbert on March 31, 2020, 05:00:37 pm
BANKTRACK

Wink to Webster 🦕 Pipeline

March 17, 2020

The Wink to Webster Pipeline is a planned 650-mile (1,046 kilometre) pipeline that would run from the Permian Basin in west Texas to the Gulf Coast near Houston. When completed, the pipeline will carry over one million barrels of fracked oil per day. The project is a joint venture of 🦖 ExxonMobil, 😈 👉 Plains All American Pipeline, 👉 MPLX, 👉 Delek US, 👉 Lotus Midstream, and 👉 Rattler Midstream LP. Operations are planned to commence in the first half of 2021. Read more...(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/304fa75d7ed32d56ae1ff3a796933cb65eac738511bb960bc4a77bb2f67c0af6.gif)
 (https://www.banktrack.org/project/wink_to_webster_pipeline)

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Title: President 🦖 Donald Trump resuscitated it in the early days of his administration, The Associated Pre
Post by: AGelbert on April 17, 2020, 05:41:26 pm
EcoWatch

April 17, 2020

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Judge 🗽 Tosses Major 🦖 Keystone XL Permit (https://www.ecowatch.com/keystone-xl-pipeline-permit-2645731994.html?utm_source=EcoWatch+List&utm_campaign=3f94a4d94b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_49c7d43dc9-3f94a4d94b-86021645)
Title: A Day Of Superlatives For 🍃Climate Advocates And 🦖Big Oil
Post by: AGelbert on May 27, 2021, 01:22:05 pm
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May 27, 2021

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-301014182902.gif&hash=1dec33f3f6c520ffeac0082b58f46ffa3ed7cedb) A Day Of (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160019-22712315.png) Superlatives For 🍃Climate Advocates (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040817183318.gif&hash=85dbde0ecc986da6385d09f4df76d45028b7062d) And 🦖Big Oil

Outlets and analysts used a variety of words and phrases to describe developments in the oil and gas sector yesterday, but the consensus was clear: rebel shareholders won breakthrough victories over Exxon and Chevron while a Dutch court wrecked (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frealsociology.edublogs.org%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F08%2F460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_shell_skull_colour.jpg&hash=a4c0baea5ec89328a16e21f3820975938465eadf). (Some outlets were even more succinct.) All told, it was a breakthrough, no good, very bad, watershed day of reckoning for Big Oil and Gas  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-141113185047.png&hash=384024358ff8d5e7133d19b6e6638da4584a8154) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185037-1642624.gif&hash=fe7423f4901eb0bee44568fd766e4b036cb0e131). The shareholder wins over Exxon and Chevron show the increasing power of investment managers to force businesses and CEOs to pursue environmental and social goals, and the Dutch court's decision could set a new precedent that oil companies must dramatically change in order to meet Paris Agreement pledges. (CNN, Bloomberg $, The Verge (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VW5rzl92v0nsW30SRQX5ZkMjJVBzM2_4s4td_N7lCf0N3p_b1V1-WJV7CgVsVW4xy_qv5rFbg7VvvGBm20qVqpW24Gfy86wvfd3W5vNP4g69nDJ0W7_tQpg7k_Z7_W1zrgfz4Y3bPKW4WKskQ5gH-zBW24ntK77MTyc3W3zD7GJ2mCWGTW6g_YqB5tV7WbW8YFqW94kFPHmW3KcXDw8h5xfQW8GD1_s3VnlsTW4hbl7D7C5s0BVfPFcm3x0F0MW5QBBb-58MS8kW40vH5n7HKQQnN9kclN9DlJwLW4jx8KG1jqGLJW36j-QT93Clz3W4D3VXL1MzmS4W5bzBhr7WXgq6W4fGLBV6QjmpXW6Kmy_x2mX9czW9cLCh95yPT7DVHcWXn54WlFLW76VZ4b4FnJyXW8zppn67N4-H_W8x3Y-L32Cf4sW84LQmn4LYP7J3cc71), FT $; Commentary: The New Yorker, Bill McKibben column $)

֍ Little Engine No.1 That Could Hands Exxon Stunning Defeat (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818180844.png&hash=d74cfbba22967e53f7eb6202dffdd50b3e520fe2)
ExxonMobil shareholders elected at least two new board members with climate and clean energy expertise, nominated by activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 and opposed by the company's management. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, supported three of the four nominees put forward by Engine No. 1, joining other institutional investors including multiple state pension funds to send a clear signal to the company’s notoriously climate-unfriendly management. Even with two of the board's 12 seats still undetermined, as of Thursday morning, this is a stunning rebuke of Exxon leadership, who have rejected calls to take climate change more seriously. (New York Times $, Washington Post $, AP, Earther, E&E $, The Hill, CNBC, Bloomberg $, Reuters, The Guardian, FT $, InsideClimate News (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VW5rzl92v0nsW30SRQX5ZkMjJVBzM2_4s4td_N7lCf0t3p_9LV1-WJV7Cg--2W1FQqdj6Hv3dgW1BShJJ6gbMNTW2dNjNM4wsMlhW7C5KzK60LMknW3vv2nh6hDbB-W54HfZP25nm5NW83bLjQ4C_zGyW48-pgV10qfhrW5Ntdtx11xdgYW2938Jn1qk_jCW666qnP6Y0lVrW8KflV27bvypxW5Lfp_v1jT6WHW39gVQl7K8_17W2_bkXr4V2gp3VCXzG28jBbMQW7bf8Tb3BVyjzW1zkSFD5bLZ48W68gQM05WW4b3W43xKjJ3-8Tv0W3LW1N6837PZMW8M7Z1T1JgR25W3nj9by2sqgx6W8YdR7j8v2dNMW7MPTMc5JW3X0N5v5xQ7zfg7kN7m3-z-H7Tw3W96DGm26zcW183dp61), Axios; Vote tallies: Bloomberg $)

֍ Dutch Court Gives Shell A Shellacking (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190419235756.png&hash=ddd7a71acf6ff0420a63e797c27fdcad27734e3e)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185040-1659929.gif&hash=0a9ca0c1f083655b821cbf024422e55e009a6d8d)
A Dutch court yesterday ruled Shell must slash its carbon pollution by 45% by the end of 2030 compared to 2019 levels to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The landmark decision held that Shell's 2050 net-zero goal was too vague and thus failed to meet its duty of care to reduce emissions, which are on par with Russia’s, the fourth largest emitter in the world. Though questions remain about the enforcement of the ruling, which will be appealed, the court's decision could have wide-ranging impacts for oil majors around the world, and the 1,800 court cases challenging them. One of the lawyers on the Shell case told Dutch news site NU, via Earther, that because the company is headquartered in the Netherlands, “a Dutch judge can impose a judgment that should be enforced in the 80 countries where Shell is active.” (New York Times $, Earther (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VW5rzl92v0nsW30SRQX5ZkMjJVBzM2_4s4td_N7lCf0t3p_9LV1-WJV7CgMCVW8-hgcH2mPwbbW50Zsgr9bzWhwW2cyRPk18QkjYW5blx3-4j76PmN1G-v4lWys0YTnRwp6fmQVGW999wR_2Qm5sXVnJWxN7VTlnxW3B8YV012q-mdW6wzlFJ1MPHtcW3ByW4M3dsPkFW7w6wzT14B0Z6W8xzY4_18KvBWW92Rqtr72WdvlW1PGHrC7S4XhcW85x7zX1_G8DFVgHpS31f5fktW4CM-LN8Wbc-4W4CbLTs9dZLmZW5_Hlkh2XSRpNW9k1M9j4ZtT_hW6cLRZZ1-868zW65dDXm6pzzCCW1KdY2l9cz2-wW33VWyP3rdHzqW5PGLBL4zbm96W6rGngR6s3Kk1W8HTyhD8Rx4hF3h9N1), AP, The Guardian, CNN, Reuters, FT $, Axios, The Hill, CNBC, InsideClimate News, Bloomberg $, Reuters, Climate Home (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VW5rzl92v0nsW30SRQX5ZkMjJVBzM2_4s4td_N7lCd-J5nxG7V3Zsc37CgKmGW8Gh95Y5zWPJxN4kdYm83DQ9XW8Bcwl36Xs9N3W4YqTCk2LFG8VW949QkQ6-1lG2V4jN0M14xc0BW4hl98Y1VNycjW4Wqg-52YpCW_W7ZMtfn541FC3W5_B37q1gcYggW5LNcQ6805Rx4N1l2cFN5WGnJW7DXdpW2Jp10rW6Tsf8F8MvmMKW35GMkb36Z5wyN1bzKj1wrNb9W8RwNBF20P6B6W1cs0Dp9gWDsBW1gVmkZ6Xdx_dW4xf3-_8nX289W9fxQhK2QQd0KW53rx6d1yzhVLW38-3Zj18FlfgN2_SkKXr86B_W26DL7j8fNJfkW6nVJ403MCq8wW4byfDd1gjqbmW8SpdQ02NJ1YXW1pqMGp2w6p-3W1222P17n5vHnW2QGsn961D0DfT20fN95JKvR329s1), BBC)

֍ Chevron Shareholders (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284) Defeat (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418195803.png&hash=2ff05bac59ce8d16643fd4159b563943ac729a6f) 🦖 Management, Demand Scope 3 Emissions Cuts
 Chevron investors adopted a proposal yesterday — over the objections of management — calling for the company to "substantially" cut climate pollution from consumers' combustion of its products. The resolution calling for Scope 3 emissions cuts, adopted with 61% approval, does not specify a specific size or timeline of the cuts, but its overwhelming support underlines shareholders' frustration with companies failing to sufficiently address climate change. Two other resolutions, one requiring a report on the business impact of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and another requiring lobbying disclosures, narrowly failed with 48% support for each. Chevron has not set any long-term targets for achieving net-zero emissions. (Reuters, Bloomberg $, S&P Global, The Guardian (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VW5rzl92v0nsW30SRQX5ZkMjJVBzM2_4s4td_N7lCd-J5nxG7V3Zsc37CgJlFW6FWKZP3D12Z8W466cRb7pqvW5W32SZ645_5C7pW901rd05WJ73vW8xJcTy4kcKZcN8q-TcN7frLyW2GZr0f2w6M99W24J91W23fT0YW3wf5W38L4LMzW5X5bkt6_pXjTN87SFK_Bk-WMVrMk0g21w7WNW5zjDQX4V23wFN6mFP8P2d8zzW3k2lCh5s04jpW91qhHx8S92QmW3fclVN4xPfSzW57c8_N7DX4kRVWHQbk5CkH5JN8mLMzcfRRXqW6XyqBS1ns_-KW11MVXG7jygDvW26rD7G4VW1tcW7GZQV4636dpTW3VQkgZ1hWsQQW55JhBG3gqMdnW5qhkm31N-cJbW1XJs3F7Z5FJfMYf-mkqbYYvW886FfG3Ncdj4W9djmlR7W3l3rVCstXS67vy0q39561), Seeking Alpha)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-010519192158-2201430.jpeg&hash=e912e1f5bdc041c35e217478b14ba3f7960e2037) Shape of things to come song video
https://youtu.be/pEqWCH_4srU
There's a new sun Risin' up angry in the sky (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-010519192157-21991391.gif&hash=23f4739dccefe9965ebeb7eede0b245645f5e5ff)
And there's a new voice Sayin': "we're not afraid to die!"
Let the old world make believe It's blind and deaf and dumb, but
Nothing can change the shape of things to come

There are changes Lyin' ahead in every road
And there are new thoughts Ready and waiting to 💥 explode
When tomorrow is today The bells may toll for some, but
Nothing can change the shape of things to come

The future's comin' in, now Sweet and strong Ain't no-one gonna hold it back for long
There are new dreams Crowdin' out old realities
There's revolution Sweepin' in like a fresh new breeze
Let the 🐘🦕💰🎩🦖👿🐍🦍 old world make believe It's blind and deaf and dumb, but
Nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things to come
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818221632-1610966.gif&hash=e878dd8cdc23a6ed7f551880f2c20745d49a7567)
Title: Biden Suspends ANWR Leases
Post by: AGelbert on June 02, 2021, 03:37:26 pm
June 2, 2021

Biden Suspends ANWR 🦕🦖 Leases (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818180844.png&hash=d74cfbba22967e53f7eb6202dffdd50b3e520fe2)

The Biden administration suspended 🦕🦖 oil drilling leases in ANWR. The formal order from DOI Secretary Deb Haaland, if unsurprising, starts what will likely be a lengthy process to undo one of the Trump administration's biggest (anti-)environmental actions. The sale of ANWR leases, described as "absolutely bonkers" by climate advocates at the time it was announced last year, culminated in a hurried and ultimately underwhelming lease sale just days before Trump left office. Those existing ANWR leases could be canceled if the administration determines they were granted illegally by the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) Trump administration; the Biden administration has defended the legal process by which the Trump administration issues leases elsewhere. Last month, the notoriously pro-oil IEA said all new exploration for oil and gas must end immediately if the world is to limit global warming and avoid the worst and most destructive impacts of climate change.

Read more: The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/22463784/oil-gas-leases-suspended-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-alaska)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3114_Business%2520as%2520usual.png&hash=fd83c55bdd8a6becd193e40a1c1267d8356b49bc)
Title: 🦖 US has emitted more carbon dioxide than any other country to date.
Post by: AGelbert on June 10, 2021, 12:06:50 pm
From Senator Patrick Leahy <Senator_Leahy@leahy.senate.gov>
Wed, Jun 9, 5:55 PM
 
Dear Mr. Gelbert:

Thank you for contacting me about oil and gas exports.  I appreciate hearing from you about this important issue.

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. There is no doubt that climate change is both real and caused by human activity.  What’s more, the United States bears a good deal of responsibility for the climate crisis.  Our 🦖 country has emitted more carbon dioxide than any other country to date.  Since 1751, the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg&hash=bfa44b2ee2b1d6d1ea71a024b1bd6e9cf1328326) United States has emitted 400 billion tons 🚩 of the greenhouse gas, making us responsible for 25 percent of all historical emissions. And in 2020, as we faced the crossroads of both the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States became a net 🦕 oil exporter for the first time in a generation, exporting over 8.5 million barrels per day of petroleum.  I agree with you that we must urgently divest from fossil fuels and invest in a fossil fuel economy, not double down on supplying harmful fuels to international markets.

On April 28, 2021, Senator Ed Markey introduced the Block All New (BAN) Oil Exports Act, S. 1415.  This bill would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and reinstate the ban on exporting American crude oil and natural gas abroad.  It has been referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, of which I am not a member.  Please know that I will keep your thoughts in mind should this bill come before the full Senate for consideration.

Again, thank you for contacting me.  Please keep in touch.

Sincerely,

PATRICK LEAHY
United States Senator
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132400-1685431.gif&hash=770de9d7a4fd6b31ea7d9b45e544cc00777d8029)


Thu, Jun 10, 11:47 AM 

Dear Mr. Gelbert:

Thank you for contacting me about reforming energy leasing.  I appreciate hearing from you about this important issue.

🦖 Fossil fuel extraction on public lands is responsible for nearly a quarter of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. The leasing of subsurface rights for federal lands and waters to oil and gas companies can harm local communities by compromising opportunities for outdoor recreation and can lead to irreparable environmental damage on some of our nation’s most precious landscapes.  What’s more, I firmly believe that it is past time to stop investing in fossil fuels and transition to a renewable energy future in order to prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Senator Jeff Merkley introduced S. 1115, the Keep it in the Ground Act, on April 14, 2021.  This bill would end all new federal leases for oil, gas, or coal extraction on public lands and waters.  Further, it aims to keep over ninety percent of the potential carbon emissions from fossil fuels on federal lands and waters in the ground.  I am proud to cosponsor this important legislation, which has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  Please know that the Keep it in the Ground Act will receive my full support should it come before the full Senate for consideration.

Again, thank you for contacting me.  Please keep in touch.

Sincerely,

PATRICK LEAHY (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311017193926.png&hash=135a7bcd2093b679e425bbd2086adb8ddfd2e7b5)
United States Senator


 
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME. 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)

 
(https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/snap-2013-11-06-at-14-31-28.png)
Title: Chamber of 🦕😈 Commerce Still Fighting Climate Action 😠
Post by: AGelbert on June 15, 2021, 01:42:22 pm
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-270521170028.png&hash=92129a17735574ea3529027b3624336a00cc89b9)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-news/) to subscribe.

Mon, Jun 14, 2021

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-121217195108.png&hash=34ddc1fd5afeb976b36342e73738ef155008be6d)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818220747-15881860.jpeg&hash=8fb3f3248f288a2308882f8f50bfc01c5066d417)
Chamber of (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)🦖🐍 Commerce Still Fighting Climate Action (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160019-22721213.gif), Spurring Call For Companies To Drop Their Membership (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185040-1659929.gif&hash=0a9ca0c1f083655b821cbf024422e55e009a6d8d)

Last week, Change the Chamber, a student-led coalition of 100+ youth groups supported by more than two dozen national climate organizations, sent an open letter to companies still paying dues to be part of the Chamber of Commerce, calling on them to leave the trade group if it doesn’t stop lobbying against climate action.

The letter highlights the “two unacceptable risks” created by companies that support the Chamber, given its lobbying on climate. First is the obvious risk the warming planet poses to their bottom line as extreme weather complicates supply chains and drought, fires and other extreme weather events upend years-long corporate plans. The second is the reputational risk posed by their membership in the anti-climate-policy-lobby-group.

Youth, journalists, civil society groups, shareholders, and consumers (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-081019223703.jpeg) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-080515182559.png&hash=d4dfa952fa0f817bf30a8059a4c88d6fb05ee1bf) are increasingly turning their attention to how trade associations play a 😈 key role in diluting science-based climate action. Prominent brands that fund obstructionist lobbying groups,” the letter warns, “will ultimately be held to account.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190419235756.png&hash=ddd7a71acf6ff0420a63e797c27fdcad27734e3e)

But wait, some might say the Chamber has already improved! After all, in the past couple years it’s acknowledged climate change, and totally changed its approach to politics (by subverting democracy and protecting polluters) so shouldn’t they just get the benefit of the doubt? (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185040-16582181.gif&hash=0d99dd3e7a01101b8b7d5d1d810050efa1fc13df)

Mmmm, no, not really- “even Royal Dutch Shell recently critiqued the U.S. Chamber” the letter explains, because the lobby group hasn’t even bothered to state a position on net zero or nature-based carbon-capture policies, or make statements in support of carbon pricing, or against weakening fuel economy standards set by California.

Yes, that's an oil company’s assessment that the Chamber’s supposedly pro-climate position is nothing more than words (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) on a website. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-120716190938.png)

The Change the Chamber letter links to a list of the business lobby’s most recent actions to obstruct climate action. They have 10 different 😈 examples (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VX6qTX6C19znW4VNJz34d87wzW2XSKgS4sQ1kJMrH-TN3p_b1V1-WJV7CgG1XW176RTb125jg6W4gWjkP11MGJTVlcxzw5_9sz7W6pXPvb6vgx8HW21MBcn4HgfVZW8RzsBL1vBZjTW7JcC7m7JRK1LN29J_B-12nQpW79qmBB312Y31W852rmC8FVmlgW573jrh5xmX4XW97LXlD8xS_HrW7rrFMw34zsB3W9fWFh-93h8cpW2cxLfd5RxT69V693783cP2nQN3-JVVr9c95TW898tZt8Kk9ylW69rQbP8-dKl7W4F2GsG2ppNDmW70_rtt22BrWWW6YTl0h7Z9M2xW56NNKH82xh4pW601yjl12HMPNW64jc7v2G3RfwW6K-bJL2rfxQvW2242zv75nkxpW7ThxB55Z2mSCVGp_j_7N9CMQN3kDmB-Dp-5J3gDl1) of the Chamber of Commerce filing legal briefs in favor of polluters like Enbridge, pleading for more coal use, lobbying against Biden’s agenda with API, and making statements against climate-friendly decisions.

The kicker is that the 10 examples are all just from the first quarter of 2021. In just a handful of months, the US Chamber of Commerce  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162655-14231561.gif&hash=98b427175ee380f6d3c313520cc8668c10f2172a)🦖🐍 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) has repeatedly proven its loyalty is to polluters.  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185039-1650578.gif&hash=f338daee4cd9cad66dc5bc5437615c9725fbc67d)

As such, the letter calls on companies to make their own statements to distinguish themselves from the Chamber’s position. It also requests meetings with the companies to pressure them to support climate action or leave the 🦖👿🐍 Chamber. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190419235756.png&hash=ddd7a71acf6ff0420a63e797c27fdcad27734e3e)

And that’s really where it’s headed, because clearly the Chamber is more interested in looking like it’s changing on climate change than it is actually changing its position. So as Senator Whitehouse (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185038-16442135.gif&hash=52927992b43007fa5c5eb6ffcb453ae29948c356) said (https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/tc/VX6qTX6C19znW4VNJz34d87wzW2XSKgS4sQ1kJMrH-T93p_9rV1-WJV7CgZksVfWMvs1DYPttW1fDP7h7dSSxzW1p3Bwq4X43K4W51yPy12J-Q4xW2QWl1K2rgRzWW4ZsM3b5qQ6MrW2BcH5R5tVz2RW4BT15-8-9zKXW65r26z4BmQ0JVgd7FN3RGvgFW44HLf05FRxxrV2XBkZ1kJhG_W8sHkkJ7ycfbnW2Mm9218gz9zjW3kFyGB6YrmP6W6_dRsz10pqtLW18C_6715Q2j4W8-_7_Y2zykx0N4zPj6j18sCFW7FGWXW1c4tmhW4Z7-z240vnzNW5wh9q76BzvjMW4W_lnZ47xn2MW57QSpS7JTzHCW9fwqM448_1pTW2vcP0t1Y3kYS3c0V1), “Change the Chamber or QUIT the Chamber” because “We need climate action NOW.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818221632-1610966.gif&hash=e878dd8cdc23a6ed7f551880f2c20745d49a7567)

Title: Government handing your hard-earned tax dollars to Big Oil
Post by: AGelbert on July 07, 2021, 12:13:00 pm
Friends of the Earth <foe@foe.org>
July 7, 2021 10:36 AM

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-081019223703.jpeg)
Your Signature is Needed: Government handing your hard-earned tax dollars to 😈 Big 🦖 Oil (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160017-22191429.png)

Sign Now (https://action.foe.org/page/31068/action/1?ea.url.id=914458&forwarded=true) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-300614160245.gif&hash=26cf0af4ea082bdb608bb7b2656d54ec7199969b) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818180844.png&hash=d74cfbba22967e53f7eb6202dffdd50b3e520fe2) to stop Big Oil from using your tax dollars to pollute the planet.

Government funding for fossil fuels adds up to well over $5,000,000,000,000 annually -- yes, that is $5 TRILLION -- worldwide. And that money is used to back Big Oil projects that worsen pollution. Take action now. (https://action.foe.org/page/31068/action/1?ea.url.id=914458&forwarded=true) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284)   (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-060518153110.png&hash=39d587c31b7f7e66b30d7e59bb560e2ad0662eee)
 
The oil, gas, and coal industries poison communities, harm wildlife, and drive climate chaos using your tax dollars. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818204546.gif&hash=ffeafdfa24208fe5070639ffa682bb2ad041737c)

That is why I need you to help cut off the money driving fossil fuel pollution.

Sign Now  (https://action.foe.org/page/31068/action/1?ea.url.id=914458&forwarded=true)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190119153601.gif&hash=336ba78f7f18ff5829ef3722f89b4258d2315284) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818180844.png&hash=d74cfbba22967e53f7eb6202dffdd50b3e520fe2) to cut off the funding for Big Oil, Gas, and Coal!

The U.S. government has been financing fossil fuels for over a hundred years. It props up pollution, climate-harming emissions, and the destruction of habitats for threatened species.

The U.S. provides funds to countries to roll out the red carpet to the fossil fuel industry -- encouraging them to change their policies to benefit Big Oil. (https://media3.giphy.com/media/kHmINzGsY6xbwgSo3J/source.gif)

From coal in Mongolia to liquified natural gas development in Mozambique -- these projects drive people out of their homes and spur violence and human rights abuses. And that’s on top of the environmental destruction. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc)

Demand Big Oil’s funding gets stopped immediately. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174458.png&hash=6bb5ca428108e395c1760e25a8a07f7c434e448c)

Sign Now (https://action.foe.org/page/31068/action/1?ea.url.id=914458&forwarded=true) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-210614221847.gif&hash=54129e3b65760aaddc6f2d7f42b34a7d839d2f27) 🦖 Oil, 🦕 gas, and 🐍 coal (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) companies disproportionately pollute low income countries and Black and Brown communities. People living near polluting projects experience headaches, nausea, and higher instances of cancer.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162656-14241872.gif&hash=6c39a3206e2b2a3d652adee626b5eee8ab5b15bf)  (https://media.tenor.com/images/5423e809b1a22096b6925bf9bc3fd1cb/tenor.gif) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160019-22721213.gif)

Our leaders cannot claim to be serious about environmental justice and climate change if they continue to hand money to Big Polluters.

Our grandchildren deserve to grow up in a livable climate, with clean air and water. But if nothing is done to rein in Big Oil, they could be burdened with more toxic pollution and climate chaos. I need your help to cut off the money for fossil fuels worldwide.

Demand (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838) the United States stop its support for fossil fuel projects.

Sign Now (https://action.foe.org/page/31068/action/1?ea.url.id=914458&forwarded=true) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817121424.gif&hash=384c17a4d2be4831084933b91808f8a60f73f7f5) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-210818180844.png&hash=d74cfbba22967e53f7eb6202dffdd50b3e520fe2)
Standing with you,
Luisa Galvao (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185037-16412296.gif&hash=c8a4038d309a0f49ca4a7a464f30f9a340049cac),
International policy campaigner,
Friends of the Earth

 
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME. 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!    (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)
Title: Maersk 🦖 Voyager is a 7th generation high-spec ultra-deepwater drillship which was delivered in 2014.
Post by: AGelbert on October 23, 2021, 03:49:48 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-170218174357.png&hash=296cf589ab13b3bca649d79db1953fa2289b1563)

October 23, 2021 By Mike Schuler

(https://gcaptain.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/maersk-voyager-3.jpg)
Maersk Voyager
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-020320122222.png&hash=6aa13c886f2edbb773c47ec59e451818ef54e286)

Maersk Drillship Going for New Water Depth World Record Off Angola (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc)

SNIPPETS:

The Ondjaba-1 well   🚩 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-310119164115.gif&hash=1f6e8c58bc6dac8dbce60f7d9ba64fb0f0f62cca)will be drilled at a new world record water depth of 3,628 meters, or about 2 1/4 miles below the water’s surface. The current world record is 3,400 meters, set by Maersk 🦖 Voyager’s sister drillship, 🦖 Maersk Venturer, when it drilled the Raya-1 well for 🦖 TotalEnergies offshore Uruguay in 2016. ...   ...

“We’re thrilled to be able to confirm that we indeed will be drilling for a new world record. Ondjaba-1 was part of Maersk Voyager’s original contract in Angola, but the rig’s drilling programme has undergone several changes due to the unprecedented circumstances the world has faced since early 2020. With this contract option called, we’re now looking forward to proving that Maersk Drilling and the highly capable Voyager crew can once again break existing boundaries in close collaboration with 🦍 TotalEnergies,” says COO Morten Kelstrup  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)of Maersk Drilling.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-251218182749-2077960.jpeg&hash=7108aa9f39d01ac52536ef968848e6d2f343b1c4)

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-231021162042.gif&hash=00e4320679640dee23728d47c759036bfc6c91cb)
https://gcaptain.com/maersk-drillship-going-for-new-water-depth-world-record-off-angola/

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-251218182854-20872494.png&hash=58e757be1db55c41a6651df17cfbba97b037853b)
Title: Old Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Habits Die Hard.
Post by: AGelbert on November 10, 2021, 08:13:10 pm
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-270521170028.png&hash=92129a17735574ea3529027b3624336a00cc89b9)

Nov 10, 2021

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-161214184005.gif&hash=790fccea0d3d68b5b44d57af37de299aa3832417)

🦖 Fossil Fuels 💰😈🎩 Well-Represented At COP26 , Unlike Civil Society (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-221215212409.png&hash=a468474328aca658690b57ec357614360c510849)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110117131220.gif&hash=6ffcf5b4bdbc0ddfcdd694a9e3c348f82f3ed601)

The (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) largest delegation at COP26 represents the fossil fuel industry that profits from the climate crisis, according to an analysis from Global Witness. More than 500 😈🐍 lobbyists from over 100 🦕 fossil fuel companies are in Glasgow. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-231021162042.gif&hash=00e4320679640dee23728d47c759036bfc6c91cb)

There are more fossil fuel lobbyists at COP26 than there are delegates from Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti, the Philippines, Mozambique, the Bahamas, Bangladesh and Pakistan — combined   >:( — and more than double the official Indigenous constituency. Meanwhile civil society groups have been largely excluded from the talks.

Activists also sharply criticized a leaked decision text draft for failing to mention fossil fuels or the need to stop burning them. (Fossil fuel delegation: Washington Post $, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now, Earther (https://gizmodo.com/big-oil-was-told-it-wasn-t-welcome-at-un-climate-talks-1848015074?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=180734360&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_-ZRjSVvaYA1IOx3KK8E6EiMTlwxQPtFCgujyvidlfxaPuK3jAHclUwIOnKrEatpUuxtmvgDhYY8xGxpTrNe0Y7jD72A&utm_content=180734360&utm_source=hs_email); Civil society exclusion: The Guardian; Draft text: The Hill)
 

🐍 Obama  Addresses COP26 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251117175700.png&hash=00439d30db6e35817ea0d1fbcba614f1f971448e)

Former President Obama received a welcome so warm it verged on metaphor inside COP26 on Monday, though the youth activists outside, to whom he directed much of his speech, gave him a far chillier reception.

Obama said it was "particularly discouraging" that China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin did not attend the conference. He also criticized U.S. Republicans for their "express active hostility toward climate science and [decision to] make climate change a partisan issue.” The former leader of the world's wealthiest nation and largest historical contributor to the climate crisis exhorted young activists to "stay angry" but not to be "too pure" for politics because "we will not have more ambitious climate plans coming out of governments unless governments feel some pressure from voters."

Obama acknowledged "Those of us who live in big wealthy nations, those of us who helped to precipitate the problem, we have an added burden to make sure that we are working with and helping and assisting those who are less responsible and less able and more vulnerable to this oncoming crisis.” (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-101121203748.png&hash=9b411c1bc4a06f028f2ef4175ea91568f9b18002) The United States and other wealthy nations have long resisted any agreement that could open them to liability for the losses and damages suffered by more vulnerable countries."

I was 13 when you [Obama] promised $100 billion" in climate aid, Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate said on Twitter — a promise rich countries have repeatedly failed to honor. “The US has broken that promise, it will cost lives in Africa,” she added. “You want to meet #COP26 youth. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818201709-1487784.jpeg&hash=754bc53844608ac752c6a8806772bdf8daa7d068) We want action.”

In addition to his plenary address, Obama met with leaders of several island nations, a closed-door meeting with the High Ambition Coalition, and a roundtable of youth organized by his foundation. (New York Times $, Reuters, The Guardian, Forbes, Reuters, BBC, AP, Washington Post $, WBUR, Axios (https://www.axios.com/obama-trump-hostility-climate-change-science-biden-db81175b-6f87-4e4b-b62d-a77b431d0948.html?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=180734360&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--1cxQ2DaMx4p6V9cMTb5IgSDijE2TzC0njNCuQY4UMGoc2mbC_jc7NlaHuApUcJXOL7vH1t0q9CUx-7dXUt9JkU3ITrg&utm_content=180734360&utm_source=hs_email), Politico, AP, The Guardian, Washington Post $, Bloomberg $, The Hill, Business Insider, CNN, E&E News, NBC)
Title: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Happily Profit Over Planet Price Gouge Americans
Post by: AGelbert on December 07, 2021, 12:08:40 pm
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-270521170028.png&hash=92129a17735574ea3529027b3624336a00cc89b9)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/) to subscribe.

December 7, 2021

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F4132_bigoil.jpeg&hash=5af1b6781383d5856c3204af544458e90a67d52c)

Oil And Gas Industry Raking In Record Profits (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-291021175322.gif&hash=b75a58cc0c75ff3a7264e74c7217391d1e70d860)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16271224.gif&hash=c2a9bfbff23e2414975829eb4b3655af12eb02cc)

While the oil and gas industry was spending millions of dollars lobbying against clean energy investments (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/api-koch-network-spend-big-to-stymie-biden-climate-agenda/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=192277930&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-84uxdkjyWcDPmerVpsRiYyGg1XK6GCthlV0F1lm3jnwNNz_MdE3NNlQTazVnU2itvyszuRCb4nlkeexq84wbCcj-BVGg&utm_content=192277930&utm_source=hs_email) in the Build Back Better Act, and American motorists faced the highest gasoline prices in seven years, 24 major oil and gas companies raked in $174 billion in profits, the Guardian reports. Exxon pulled down $6.75 billion profit in Q3 alone while BP netted $3.3 billion. “Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800) line their own pockets rather than lower gas prices with the billions of dollars in profit big oil rakes in month after month,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, told the Guardian. The oil and gas industry has worked for decades to deceive the public on climate science (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/perjury-on-big-oil-ceos-minds-as-they-prep-for-congressional-hearing/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=192277930&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--DowG6dVsTDvTn4XvGA2tDGAj3ABnDLvVm0n3nKWzY38PJt9-cjcBF0_gFc2ccUcVz7ElPBuRPh51SwFzHGkusA1UicA&utm_content=192277930&utm_source=hs_email) and is responsible for killing 8.7 million people (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/deaths-from-fossil-fuels-equal-8-7-million-annually/?swcfpc=1&utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=192277930&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--GIgqMjs7wUCrJ5tUANt0bwRz9h9G3Qkpww8x1u-1inRqdja3NrvmAMQArhqkMfv43KaKz_FQc4aKcjLqSQFqGyiOk1w&utm_content=192277930&utm_source=hs_email) every year. (The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/06/oil-companies-profits-exxon-chevron-shell-exclusive?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=192277930&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--LNJC3IZp80c2W4jQYtpyReq7zyiBeR1LO3iT-Wkoo1iyHE4l5bY6tkyELEZfhiF0SkZ70ohUmiaz0wyyAV-RjS2t93Q&utm_content=192277930&utm_source=hs_email))

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-020818220747-15881860.jpeg&hash=8fb3f3248f288a2308882f8f50bfc01c5066d417)
  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-200914193029.png&hash=728bdda741ba73675753acf67d5deb8e6f9e3ef0)

The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)
Title: There are NO EXCUSES for Continuing to Depend on Polluting Fuels!
Post by: AGelbert on December 20, 2021, 03:37:44 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-251218182854-20872494.png&hash=58e757be1db55c41a6651df17cfbba97b037853b)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-201221153151.jpeg&hash=d2238acc321315c6b88dff7674bf976f93aadaa8)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3076_Independence%2520from%2520Fossil%2520Fuels.png&hash=f0d4b7b582dbd6cc2137bda1e27e46464e1ef0d2)
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)
Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on January 22, 2022, 02:26:15 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838) Agelbert NOTE: To be filed under I told you so. 👉 April 10, 2020 Readers, save this list of the craven corrupt similarities of Trump with Biden to repeat them over and over to people that do not know the score with Biden: 👀 (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg16271/#msg16271).

(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/bMi5K4CDjFlORKNzbtb8lit774Y1msNFvqsbSgXnjuUWN_dpHltajASyKjxYyLW_EG-St1vg9JhrJR1vAL8SwjJmNeDervxCdhNS7cu1ZyWAx3J0=s0-d-e1-ft#https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/truthout_logo.jpg)

January 20 2022,

Sunrise 🌞 Movement Calls Out  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418201302.png&hash=1e849526e5e1fde614fb21346869666fd34fa3dd) Biden (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919164824.png) for Siding With 🦖😈 Fossil Fuels

SNIPPET:

In a statement marking the one-year anniversary of the president’s inauguration, Sunrise executive director Varshini Prakash said that “Biden is failing us — he’s failing young people and the millions of people that took a chance on him in 2020 because he refuses to meet the moment we’re in right now — from the climate crisis to the student debt crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Read more: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-161221153554.gif&hash=f2226e030eb20f25bf44fb0903eba9765a040727)
https://truthout.org/articles/sunrise-movement-calls-out-biden-for-siding-with-fossil-fuels/

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(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-301021140812.gif)
April 10, 2020, 07:05:42 pm 🕯️ That ideological alignment between Biden and Trump is a ☠️ death sentence for we-the-people in the USA, and possibly the entire human species. For that reason alone, no rational person can support either one or the Profit Over People and Planet Duopoly they serve. (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/climate-change/global-warming-is-with-us/msg16277/#msg16277)

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Title: 🦉👉 For those who thought Biden wasn't bought and paid for by 🦖.
Post by: AGelbert on January 25, 2022, 04:00:33 pm
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-290919201928.png&hash=8d6bb0ceffed4f232b762ba66ebb633c2b624b86) Agelbert NOTE: Whoever (hint:🦕) keeps locking this topic does not understand what a futile gesture that is. In fact, it works sort of backwards. Whenever I spot a locked topic, not only do I unlock it right away, but I am motivated to post in that topic.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-270521170028.png&hash=92129a17735574ea3529027b3624336a00cc89b9)
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January 24, 2022

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162655-14231561.gif&hash=98b427175ee380f6d3c313520cc8668c10f2172a)🦖Biden Issues More Public Lands Drilling Permits Than (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-270117175421.png&hash=cf39e823dd9156833bfa885808a876bf518bd0d6) Trump In First Year (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-120716190938.png)

The 🐀 Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands during its first year, almost 900 more than the previous administration approved during its first year in office, an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity found.

Many of the permits were for oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin region of New Mexico (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/navajo-nation-methane-pollution-rate-double-national-average/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_3wAqbPlYxToQuZzzWNd8mys1JPlZrXad80yzCq0QeyGjMwkPHLpIkG9Z1EM24d2F8IKJWymMarvGB0tUfTb8aobsLFQ&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email). Oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin are a major source (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/permian-oil-and-gas-operations-still-leaking-methane/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_Uhbevx5gN49TXU9CDiyBbeUbtYoAc_s3Pdwm8Jb9iuWpFhI7Li3wMa6TjuEKexlBsXdGv45u1T1Bl3zhlZfMNO9QsyQ&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email) of methane (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/shells-permian-sell-off-unlikely-to-reduce-climate-pollution/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_nCuRuHG9G5tfvSnrGJygzvi70dTQ3R9L5uCDKMfME_kaMbUqgIWXmSpMu3c-kCM9pNGe1DNgkABJXOkNtzDHpYlWiqA&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email) pollution.

A new report from EDF and Carbon Mapper based on aerial surveys found just 30 oil and gas sites in Texas (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/texas-oil-fields-full-of-lawless-flaring/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-81oM8TBQvZyJtdN82mlWZV6Cxy1ioFjDkMWObSGv-PRCYqnmTiQAv-72OC0CeWTsfs-Ttr4FMEcwbATtkQYneTNQXTzg&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email) and New Mexico released methane pollution equivalent to the climate pollution of half a million cars over the last three years.

The Biden administration was also criticized last week by Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) for continued offshore oil and gas leaking and lacking "the political courage necessary to confront the realities of climate change." (More leasing than Trump: Politico Pro $ (https://login.politicopro.com/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fsubscriber.politicopro.com%2Farticle%2F2022%2F01%2Fbiden-interior-surpasses-trump-in-drilling-permits-issued-in-first-year); Permian methane: Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/aerial-surveys-detect-dozens-methane-super-emitters-permian-2022-01-24/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9HQpyd2tfIiQceeuNf-PfO_yiOkRHeEZsmU7Jm852GcSdr15xG9vtl4DBHXE9vmImgJsK9TeodE4__5cLqruGNrqcItw&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email); Offshore permits: E&E $ (https://login.politicopro.com/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fsubscriber.politicopro.com%2Farticle%2Feenews%2F2022%2F01%2F21%2Fdems-blame-biden-for-continued-offshore-leasing-285425%3Futm_campaign%3DHot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201730379&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8k325bz1K3SaKb_aTlM3GzX6N-ClTWj670Sx0nK-lVHhyXp-OW6KskXLMrC5TnNm6MVUnLLm4oA3nopu3uFAFkaBJ6Nw&utm_content=201730379&utm_source=hs_email&s=eenews))

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-190122175138-31061096.jpeg&hash=c7637413b67a85f35c3c0cb0661fb353f95ad379)
https://www.permianclimatebomb.org/chapter-6
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-110217171320.png&hash=ce2d04bf18b3ed3114a9164a1694684e359e4f1c)
Title: Local Democratic lawmaker Nancy Peoples Guthrie told Waldman all about 🦖 Manchin
Post by: AGelbert on February 04, 2022, 02:10:32 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-270521170028.png&hash=92129a17735574ea3529027b3624336a00cc89b9)
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February 3, 2022

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-121217195108.png&hash=34ddc1fd5afeb976b36342e73738ef155008be6d)

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205808.gif&hash=5c451456a306c150d3555c49e31a2f47d6f369a9) Joe Manchin is in Politics to Protect Joe Manchin’s Coal Business, Poisoning West Virginians While Raising Their Power Bills

In an ideal world, Joe Manchin’s decades-long dedication to preventing meaningful climate action would be driven by nothing more than service to the people of his state, West Virginia, and its reliance on coal. 

Safe to say though, this is not an ideal world. And as Scott Waldman meticulously details in a new investigation into🐀 Manchin’s political history (https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-manchin-used-politics-to-protect-his-coal-company/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=202818517&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8L9mokfCGGGszr4zNBpoiFzFQtZNsatqlf_V4O4KtE8pU17ylHbIIV-crPQnpfJ2Lyyy9D1zMWmqvJCo88MkgcgN_kxA&utm_content=202818517&utm_source=hs_email), Manchin has time and again made political decisions that strictly benefit his own coal ash business, at the literal expense of West Virginians, who are left paying an additional hundred million dollars for power from a plant that pollutes their air and water. 

The examples are as numerous as they are damning, making it impossible to imagine Manchin will now suddenly start negotiating on Build Back Better with any sort of intention of passing meaningful climate policy. An impossibility even more clear after he declared the bill "dead" on Tuesday.

For example, one of Manchin’s last moves as governor of West Virginia was to push for the state’s clean energy bill to include waste coal (one of the most carbon-intensive fuels in the U.S.) as “alternative energy,” putting it on par with wind and solar. As a result, Manchin’s company could sell that waste, and Manchin would then pocket millions of dollars from his company selling waste coal to power plants. 

There’s just one power plant left burning the waste coal Manchin’s Enersystems Inc collects and sells, and Manchin made multiple moves to keep that Grant Town plant running, despite the fact that doing so required the utility company to jack up the prices for ratepayers- the people Manchin pretends to be protecting when opposing climate policy.

Back in 1995, Waldman reports, was “the first recorded incident of Manchin using his political position to treat the plant favorably,” when he “backed a measure that would give tax breaks to power plants in West Virginia that burned waste coal.” 

In 2006, as governor, Manchin’s appointee approved a rate hike to keep the Grant Town plant open by charging the state’s customers higher rates. “Those changes still reverberate today,” Waldman reports, as the state’s “loyalty for coal” is a factor in the state having “some of the highest electricity rate increases in the nation.”

Rates in the state have risen five times the national average, while others around it have instead fallen–in no small part because no politicians who make money off of burning dirty coal waste have propped up un-economical coal plants.

Later, when the Obama administration moved to regulate toxic coal ash, it likely would have closed the Grant Town plant Manchin also profits from by carting away the even dirtier discarded coal ash than what it trucked in. Naturally, Manchin helped spike the rule, and instead successfully pushed a bill that let states set their own standards, letting West Virginia set looser standards that allowed Manchin’s business to keep making him money, and “importantly, it also blocked an EPA rule finalized in 2015 that permitted states to sue other states with weak coal ash disposal standards.” This meant that now even other states couldn’t sue West Virginia to force it to clean up its coal standards, despite its pollution running into other states. 

Last year, Waldman notes, “Manchin crafted a bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes a provision to increase federal funding for clearing abandoned mine sites of waste coal and other contaminants — the type of work that’s performed by Enersystems. President Biden signed the legislation into law.” 

Manchin negotiated the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the premise that it was half of the Democratic package, with Build Back Better being the other half. As everyone should have expected, Manchin passed the bipartisan package that helped his business, and then found one flimsy excuse after another to avoid passing the BBB bill that would have actually done something to fight climate change (like reduce coal use). 

And now, yet again, Grant Town is, per Waldman, “warning again that it's facing dire financial circumstances,” and oddly, the utility it contracts with seems keen to keep it afloat despite the costs. “Grant Town’s financial struggles,” Waldman reports, “have cost FirstEnergy ratepayers an additional $117 million over the last five years,” and yet the company remains committed to keeping it online. 

Why? Well it turns out that the 🦖 utility company is “a top campaign 💵 contributor to a Manchin-affiliated political action committee,” and is lobbying Manchin on 😈 “seperate energy legislation.” Specifically, a bill “that steers money toward abandoned mine land cleanup, the type of work that Manchin’s family company is engaged in” and another that “would boost carbon capture for aging coal plants and allow them to operate longer.” 

Local Democratic lawmaker Nancy Peoples Guthrie 👍 told Waldman that “all you need to know about Joe Manchin” is that "everything that he does, everything that he did when he was governor, everything that he has done while he is a senator, is going to advance his best interest and the interest of the people who put money in his pocket, period.”

 
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Title: Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution
Post by: AGelbert on February 13, 2022, 05:37:18 pm
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Title: A systemic ecological mobilization at a fast pace, with necessary sacrifices, has been needed to avoid further climate c
Post by: AGelbert on February 27, 2022, 02:23:43 pm
COUNTERPUNCH

FEBRUARY 25, 2022 BY JONATHAN FELDMAN

Mutually Assured Paranoia in the Ukraine Crisis: The Failures of Elite Planning

SNIPPET:
Media Confusion will Cloud Common Sense

Listening to the 🐍(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) radio and 🐍(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) TV this morning, it’s clear that Western champions of NATO or its silent investors have learned nothing from their failed militarist managerial expansion. What was needed is a systematic mobilization based on converting from an 🦖 oil and 🦍 conflict regime system (tied to the military managerialism of leading political blocs) to a clean energy and authentic diplomacy regime based on accelerated investments in clean energy and constraints on militarist expansionism.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stopped one form of NATO expansion, but years of military exercises and arms build ups on all sides have helped neutralize the diplomatic frontier. Yes, Russia should be condemned in the strongest of terms, but that means little when those doing the condemning have themselves contributed to a failed frontier for authentic diplomacy, i.e. a diplomacy based on creating neutral zones between Russia and the EU, where possible.

Full article: (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418200416.png&hash=15d789b29124aa5a1f1ea397ce630913734b20a4)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/mutually-assured-paranoia-in-the-ukraine-crisis-the-failures-of-elite-planning/

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51981zskAPL._SX342_.jpg)
Title: ... It’s dishonest and utterly shameful.”
Post by: AGelbert on March 01, 2022, 04:53:29 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-270521170028.png)
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here (https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/) to subscribe.

March 1, 2022

US (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg) Sought To 😈 Strike Loss And Damage, Adaptation Finance From IPCC SPM

🦕🦖🐍 Developed (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif) nations, including the U.S., pushed to remove key phrases and figures relating to adaptation finance, nature-based solutions and solar geoengineering from the Summary For Policymakers of yesterday's blockbuster IPCC report (https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/impacts-of-climate-change-escalating-dangerously-ipcc-report/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=205415989&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_0ZablMtgLRhX4x3m0ckrjg0f4u26x9NLfM6xEmY6Z68logNUrt7mTw5F5vx6jthVhcpvxtdqqEhsgUSgWzD3T0gvDxg&utm_content=205415989&utm_source=hs_email), Climate Home reports. The (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205137.gif) U.S. led a (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif) bloc including Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Norway in pushing to replace the phrase "losses and damages" with (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3/3-101121203748.png) "adverse impacts." (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-050921221152.jpeg)
 (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-251021154305.gif) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-120716190938.png)

In the context of international climate negotiations, "loss and damage" refers to a provision of the Paris Agreement in which signatories agreed to aid those hurt by climate impacts. Wealthy countries have fought hard against specific financing for those losses and refuse to accept any liability for their causation of climate change.

The U.S., unsuccessfully in the face of opposition from developing nations led by India, also sought to replace "finance for adaptation" with " investment,"(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) ;)😈  and pushed for more focus on 💰🎩 private funding.

“The Biden administration is not only shutting their eyes to the reality of the climate crisis – they’re trying to blindfold the rest of the world too,” said Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International. “They appear to wear a badge of  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-050921221152.jpeg) climate leadership, while doing all they can to block those most in need from getting help. It’s dishonest and utterly shameful.” (Climate Home (https://climatechangenews.com/2022/02/28/revealed-how-rich-and-at-risk-nations-fought-over-science-of-climate-impacts/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=205415989&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-85tKdmgdUr6mFg8uaZ7ql6JWLcbJ7dM3pV5xEGmzIrfQIXhOptJQUVbwr4OXzPhvjt0xOvC3zmT0USccm_9PP7NF5-tw&utm_content=205415989&utm_source=hs_email))
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-200419205214.png)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418193910.gif)crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/3114_Business%20as%20usual.png)
Title: Bill McKibben finally faces reality.
Post by: AGelbert on March 02, 2022, 01:43:18 pm
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-210818163123-16652282.gif) Agelbert Observation: Bill McKibben finally faces our hydrocarbon hellspawn corrupted (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) bi-partisan reality (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162656-14241872.gif&hash=6c39a3206e2b2a3d652adee626b5eee8ab5b15bf). Better late than never, I guess.

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-081121145123.png&hash=41b64d9fed99a1b959cf136efbd5b9a96e73eb83)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-221215212409.png&hash=a468474328aca658690b57ec357614360c510849)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3/3-191121131711.png)

"I’ve begun to lose faith in the energy officials of the (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162655-14231561.gif&hash=98b427175ee380f6d3c313520cc8668c10f2172a)🦖 Biden administration. So far they’ve been great friends to our oil and gas industry, granting more drilling leases than the Trump administration. >:(

And in the Ukraine crisis they’ve mainly toed the line of the fossil fuel industry, which is that 😈 we should ship natural 🦕 gas to Europe as a replacement for Russian gas. Cheniere 🦕 Energy, the big 🦕 gas exporter, which has deep ties to Democratic party elites, is emerging (https://newrepublic.com/article/165487/russia-war-ukraine-us-oil-gas-profits) as one of the winners (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)in the crisis." -- Bill McKibben (https://renewablejuneau.org/2022/03/01/heat-pumps-for-peace-and-freedom/) (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185037-16412296.gif&hash=c8a4038d309a0f49ca4a7a464f30f9a340049cac) February 27, 2022

Agelbert added NOTE: The fossil fuelers don't want you to read what Bill McKibben said in the link above, so they have tried to get Norton to flag it as a "Phishing" site. I have submitted a dispute to this malicious, defamatory attempt by the hydrocarbon industry toadies. Norton says it is "under review" (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48) at this time. I'll check back again (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-110821160125.png) tomorrow. Bill McKibben's article, titled, Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom - Joe Biden Could Damage Putin Badly--and He Doesn't Have to Ask Joe Manchin (https://renewablejuneau.org/2022/03/01/heat-pumps-for-peace-and-freedom/), is well worth the read. Ignore any malicious attempts to label his site as "dangerous". ANYTHING posted at https://billmckibben.substack.com is important for those who care about our environment. (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418202709.png&hash=7503265ec59e4c28d735afb762bc39f4674bd838) 
UPDATE from Norton:
Dear Customer,
This is an important message from Norton Safe Web. We have recently re-evaluated the contents of https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/heat-pumps-for-peace-and-freedom?.

The website rating is successfully changed.

For details about this site report, you can go to: http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show_mobile?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbillmckibben.substack.com%2Fp%2Fheat-pumps-for-peace-and-freedom%3F

Thank You!
Norton Safe Web 👍

(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-051121205214-29972136.jpeg&hash=2a041e220a3a36704d3ccc127ecd3c92bc1d2da9)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-190122175138-31061096.jpeg&hash=c7637413b67a85f35c3c0cb0661fb353f95ad379)
SEE THE POWER of BIDEN'S BI-PARTISAN EXAMPLE BELOW:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3%2F3-040222194158-33512349.png&hash=93062ee473323108f9f703afe5a3b4dff128e998)(https://revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/crimogenic-capitalism.jpg)
The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting CRIME. Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800)(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!  (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png)