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Author Topic: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus  (Read 17087 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #30 on: July 02, 2018, 07:00:18 pm »

"IT'S A SCAM!!!" Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's BRILLIANT Takedown of the Koch Brothers🦕🦖 & Donald Trump 🦀


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

Wow. An ethical congressman? Must have come here through the wormhole from a parallel universe.

I expect a fatal traffic accident momentarily. Perhaps an airplane crash. Train derailment. Something.


That option is certainly open to the bastards that run this profit over planet Capitalist Paradise, but they do not resort to bopping anyone as long as they can buy or brainwash greed loving **** to keep supporting those destroying the planet in power.

Therefore, Senator Whitehouse won't be bopped any time soon. Too many Americans are blinded by greed to do the biosphere math and actually pay attention to the truth filled presentations of Senator Whitehouse.

Stupid, Insane, Immoral and Totally Unjustified Capitalist Greed won. We are toast.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #31 on: July 02, 2018, 07:01:05 pm »
GreenCarReports

Audi CEO arrested in Germany over diesel scandal 

By Eric C. Evarts

Jun 18, 2018

VW's diesel scandal is far from over.

In the latest move on the political chessboard, German authorities arrested the head of VW's luxury division Audi at his home Monday morning according to a Reuters report. German authorities cited concerns that Stadler could obstruct their ongoing investigation into the diesel emissions cheating scandal. A German judge ordered Stadler held in custody to prevent him from obstructing or hindering the diesel investigation, the report said.

Audi and VW confirmed the arrest to Reuters and noted that under German law Stadler is presumed innocent unless proved otherwise.

Audi admitted two months after VW did that it had also installed cheat device software on its cars to fool emissions testing equipment to deliver clean readings on tests even though its cars actually emitted as much as 35 times more pollution than allowed on the road.

Although most of the attention to VW's emissions scandal has been focused on the U.S., where eight company officials have been charged, investigations are also ongoing in Germany, where the cars also failed to meet on-road emissions standards.

CHECK OUT: Audi e-Tron Electric Car To Offer 150-kW Quick Charging Sites

Stadler, the former chief of staff to VW's powerful former chairman Ferdinand Piech, had been handed the post as head of Audi in an effort to promote the automaker's transition to electric-car production. His arrest is likely to throw those restructuring efforts at VW into turmoil.

Audi announced in 2015 that it would develop a new all-electric SUV, the e-tron, and work to build a network of fast chargers around the United States to support the car. As part of a consent decree approved by the court, VW agreed to form a new division, Electrify America, to build a $2 billion network of fast chargers around the United States, and the Audi plan was rolled into that effort. Electrify America has now opened its first locations in the U.S. and laid out its plans for further

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1117271_audi-ceo-arrested-in-germany-over-diesel-scandal
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #32 on: July 02, 2018, 07:01:57 pm »
Trump's 🦀 tariffs may kill the e-bike revolution 😈 🦖

Lloyd Alter

June 22, 2018

Chinese bikes at Toronto show CC BY 2.0 Lloyd Alter

Just when the market for e-bikes was exploding, it gets blown up.  >:(

The President of the United States is unhappy with the nation's balance of trade with other countries. Fortunately, he has an easy solution.

When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018


In his trade war on China, the US is going after specific items, and e-bikes are likely to be subject to a 25 percent tariff. This, of course, at a time when e-bikes are just becoming popular and affordable, partly due to Chinese imports. And it's not like there is much of an industry in the USA to protect; according to Bicycle Retailer, most big American companies are importing their bikes.

Some bike brands say a 25 percent tariff on import cost would be multiplied roughly three times, in dollars, at retail price. So an e-bike valued at $1,000 at Customs would be slapped with a $250 tariff, resulting in a $750 increase on the sales floor...Not all e-bikes come from China, of course. But Trek, Giant, Accell, Pedego and some smaller brands all manufacture at least some e-bikes there.

This makes life very difficult for those in the industry.

The whole situation is "frustrating and distracting," said Matt Moore, who chairs the legislative committee for the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association and is general counsel for Quality Bicycle Products. "The frustration is that we all deal with a long horizon on product planning and sourcing and it's not easy to just up and change your manufacturer or assembler at the drop of a hat. It just doesn’t work that way," Moore said. "You've been planning for a product that's not going to be available for nine months or a year, and now you don't know if it's going to have a price that's competitive."

So why is the government going after e-bikes, when there isn't that much of an industry in the USA to protect? Perhaps it is because we are not alone in suggesting that e-bikes will eat cars, and that fewer e-bikes mean more cars being made, more fossil fuels being consumed, which is Trump's heaven.😈 🦖

German e-bike Lloyd Alter/ German e-bike with Bosch drive/CC BY 2.0 (at article link)

To be fair and balanced, it should be noted that the European Union, which has a lot of e-bike manufacturers, is considering a whopping 189 percent tariff on Chinese bikes. They now have a big chunk of the market and a few locals have declared bankruptcy. From the Financial Times:

“Unless we stop China dumping e-bikes they will soon control the majority of the EU market, destroying our investments, innovation and competitiveness, as well as substantial employment and the protection of the environment,” said Moreno Fioravanti, secretary-general of the European Bicycle Manufacturers Association.

But in North America, e-bikes are just getting started, and this tariff might just strangle the industry at birth. Which is probably the whole point. 😈 🦖

https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/trumps-tariffs-may-kill-e-bike-revolution.html

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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #33 on: July 02, 2018, 07:02:42 pm »
 
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.

June 28, 2018




Emails Continue to Reveal Conservative 🦖 Attacks on Science at EPA

Just because the White House didn’t let Pruitt run amok with  doesn’t mean he’s given up on appeasing his conservative denier base when it comes to attacking climate science. The batch of emails FOIA’d by the Sierra Club that’s been generating stories all month led to two more revelations this week about how the EPA tries to accommodate conservative deniers, even if it doesn’t always give them exactly what they want.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that emails between EPA staff and Pruitt’s conservative allies showed how deniers sought to have a career staffer fired as a way to stall or stop the release of the National Climate Assessment. Lisa Matthews, who played key management role in the multi-agency process, was the target of this campaign. According to the emails, David Schnare and E&E Legal (a group known for weaponizing FOIA against climate scientists--which, by the way, recently imploded due to some very juicy intrapersonal drama) talked with representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) about it, and they brought the plan to the EPA. Fortunately, the scheme failed and the NCA was published without significant or obvious denial interference. (Some might tip their hat in thanks to the NYT’s coverage of the NCA draft for making it so that any political tampering would be easily noticed.)

But of course, plans to spike the NCA wasn’t the only effort to subvert science. Yesterday Scott Waldman at E&E reported that the CEO of an Oklahoma oil company, Randy Foutch of Laredo Petroleum, spent a year going back and forth with the EPA about a potential study on the accuracy of climate models with a focus on uncertainty 😈, suggesting a clear motive of casting doubt on the science.

Foutch’s idea, which was ultimately scrapped, was to have the EPA partner with the University of Texas’s Energy Institute for the study. As the emails show, UT’s involvement was specifically to provide cover for the study’s bias. “If industry hosted such a gathering, then environmental groups might be suspicious; if government hosts the meeting then industry might be suspicious; and so forth,” the head of the institute wrote in an email. “But the idea was that if UT brought people together, we could play the role of a fair arbiter or mediator."

But there’s a difference between playing the role of a mediator, and actually being a fair arbiter. Though it might’ve appeared as unbiased, odds are slim it would have been: Foutch chairs the Energy Institute’s Board of Advisors. And as Waldman notes in his report, the Institute came under fire in 2012 for a fracking-friendly study conducted by a professor who also happens to be a paid member of an energy company’s board.

Fortunately, the study didn’t happen. But Pruitt does still need it, or something like it, because of the lawsuit requesting the records of what science he was referring to when he said last year that humans aren’t the “primary contributor” to climate change. E&E reported yesterday that the EPA is yet again requesting more time to produce those records.

Apparently it takes a while to produce evidence that doesn’t exist.

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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #34 on: July 03, 2018, 01:37:36 pm »
The Age of STUPID


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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #35 on: July 03, 2018, 07:02:49 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: Isn't it just AMAZING how now it is "mankind" in general, and not the Fossil Fuel 🦕🦖 Crooks and Liars IN PARTICULAR, that created one of the biggest environmental disasters in history?  Sure, Yeah, we are "all guilty".


Read about the horrendous habitat destroying effects that continue to degrade the ocean environment in the Gulf of Mexico PLUS harm the flora and fauna in the USA and Mexican land areas. That oil dispersant Corexit ☠️ POISON that Halliburton was paid for, which FURTHER polluted the Gulf on the U.S. taxpayer dime, added MORE grievous harm to numerous species.

The Hydrocarbon Hustlers are destroying this planet's biosphere for short term profit. We stop burning hydrocarbons or we are all dead, PERIOD.



The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was 8 years ago. The ocean is still struggling to recover

LAST UPDATED ON JULY 3RD, 2018 AT 3:36 PM BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Eight years ago, mankind created one of the biggest environmental disasters in history. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to the discharge of 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3) of oil, and nature still hasn’t recovered, a new study has found.

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill approaching the coast of Mobile, Alabama, on May 6, 2010. (at article link)

The spill area hosts 8,332 species, all of which are threatened by the hydrocarbon leaks. A 2014 study of the effects of the oil spill on bluefin tuna found that toxins from oil spills can cause irregular heartbeats leading to cardiac arrest. A further study also found that the toxins could severely damage the internal organs of predators and even humans in the area — directly contradicting BP, the oil company responsible for the spill.

To make matters even worse, the oil dispersant Corexit, previously only used as a surface application, was released underwater in unprecedented amounts. The goal was to make oil more easily biodegradable, but the plan backfired as the oil and dispersant mixture permeated the food chain through zooplankton — from which it proceeded to spread across the entire ecosystem. Chemicals from the spill were found in migratory birds as far away as Minnesota, with a devastating effect on marine wildlife. A 2016 study reported that 88% of 360 baby or stillborn dolphins within the spill area “had abnormal or underdeveloped lungs”, compared to 15% in other areas.

Birds were also severely affected, both directly and indirectly. Here, an oiled brown pelican near Grand Isle, Louisiana. Image credits: Governor Bobby Jindal. (at article link)

No matter where and how you look, the scale of the disaster is shocking. Alas, it gets even worse: new study found that the basic building blocks of life in the ocean have been altered, indicating that the ocean still hasn’t recovered from the oil spill.

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,” study lead author and University of Southern Mississippi microbial ecologist Leila Hamdan told The Guardian. “There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida. It’s premature to imagine that all the effects of the spill are over and remediated,” she said.

Researchers took sediment samples from shipwrecks scattered up to 150 km (93 miles) from the spill site to study how and if micro-biodiversity has recovered. Shipwrecks are biodiversity hotspots, so it’s a good place to see how life recovered. Researchers wrote:

“More than 2,000 historic shipwrecks spanning 500 years of history, rest on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor. Shipwrecks serve as artificial reefs and hotspots of biodiversity by providing hard substrate, something rare in deep ocean regions. The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) spill discharged crude oil into the deep Gulf. Because of physical, biological, and chemical interactions, DWH oil was deposited on the seafloor, where historic shipwrecks are present. This study examined sediment microbiomes at seven historic shipwrecks.”

Results weren’t encouraging. Microbes are still struggling to recover, and since they are affected, the entire food chain that’s built upon them is also affected. There’s a good chance we have still yet to see all the far-reaching consequences of this event.

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road,” she said. “Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients. I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

The timing of the study is also very fitting — it comes just as a new measure by the Trump 🦀 administration opens up 90% of U.S. coasts to offshore oil drilling, dismantling ocean conservation measures put in place by former president Barack Obama in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon calamity. This means that this type of disaster will become much more likely in the future, much to the chagrin of scientists and conservationists.

Journal Reference: Leila J. Hamdan, Jennifer L. Salerno, Allen Reed, Samantha B. Joye & Melanie Damour. “The impact of the Deepwater Horizon blowout on historic shipwreck-associated sediment microbiomes in the northern Gulf of Mexico,” Scientific Reports.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/deepwater-oil-spill-disaster-01072018/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #36 on: July 09, 2018, 01:13:35 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: This old article is more applicable than ever today.

TAE (The Automatic Earth web site is the home of fracked gas cheerleader "energy expert" Nicole Foss 🦖)
 
Waste Based Society: Solutions and Alternatives

Published June 12, 2012

Quote
Are there viable solutions and alternatives to the Energy intensive Waste Based Society we currently live in, which do not entail a return to Paleolithic levels of technology?  Diner and TAE Commentariat member A. G. Gelbert outlines a myriad of technologies which might be employed to maintain a higher technological base for society.

RE

Solutions and Alternatives to the Waste Based Society

by A. G. Gelbert

We are cursed with a rather effective propaganda machine that defends the status quo and works mightily to provide allegedly iron clad arguments exposing our desperate dependence on fossil fuels and the enormous debt we owe to them for our ‘wonderful civilization’. The media has cleverly weaved fact and fiction to present plausible arguments against the practicality of going cold turkey on fossil fuels and 100% on renewables.

Not one word about the fact that fossil fuels are easy to meter and conveniently provide a constant revenue stream for the rich along with governmental control of a populace that simply cannot move or function without daily use of fossil fuels ever seems to be mentioned. Not one word about how renewables cannot be metered or taxed easily and how that feature gives everyone a large degree of independence aand flexibility in disaster situations to help themselves or a less fortunate neighbor is mentioned.

On the other hand, the continuous and vociferous denial of the link between fossil fuels and environmental problems, regardless of scientific concensus on this very real link, never seems to go away either. The actual history of the industrial revolution involving some very brutal measures to coerce humans to abandon horses, as only one of many coercive measures, for tranportation and farming are always ignored and replaced with a stream of pejorative comments about horse dung in big cities. People did not want to get rid of their horses!

I am not simply talking about city ordinances and fines targeting horses. Right around 1865 a big push began to sell farm machinery. Amazingly, a huge horse plague hit the U.S. that year that killed a massive amount of horses. No explanation beyond “Civil War stress” blarney was ever given. These horses were not just city horses in population centers but out in the country as well.

The move to horseless carriages began on the farm with steam power and hydrocarbon lubricants. The automobile came later along with the bone cancer. Bone cancer from the original automoblie fuel, benzene, is seldom mentioned by the media and apparently is considered no big deal in comparison to horseshit odor. Moving on to the early 20th century, Rockefeller has a waste product in his refinery cracking towers (after separating all those great heavy and light lubricants) called gasolene and he talks Henry Ford into modifying the carburators to run on it.


Of course the ‘minor’ problem with benzene fuel may have helped make the switch. There were electric cars on the road at the time. Cleveland had wind generators creating electricity at that time! You’ll never guess what happened to them and the electric trolleys all over many towns in the USA. So, enough of that. Everyone here knows how predatory capitalism attempts to game the system to achieve price control and a monopoly. Once much more efficient and sustainable technologies are shoved aside by hook or by crook, the distorted and mendacious meme that our current technology is the result of friendly capitalist competition in the ‘free market’ is pushed.

Predation occurs followed by propaganda versions of history. That is the real history of the industrial revolution in regard to our choices of energy production. Renewables got squeezed out, not because they couldn’t compete favorably, but because the pollution and health costs of fossil fuels got ‘externalized’. Along the way, the independence of the mostly agrarian American in energy production and use was crushed.

A love afffair with the car was fostered to the point that in the late 1920’s more Americans had cars than flush toilets. Of course they were better off, ecologically speaking, without flush toilets, but the point is the job of selling Americans on fossil fuels was a done deal by that time.

So please remember that nobody was doing us any favors, like the media wants to claim; they were selling us something in order to concentrate wealth and power in a few hands. They were using us as a cash cow to the point of introducing planned obsolecence, rampant consumerism to keep the factories going and simultaneously thwarting moves to sustainability like Henry Ford’s plan to make cars out of hemp plastic in the early1940s.

We like new stuff and are always looking for the latest model year of the car or whatever because we have been manipulated by experts to do so. It has absolutely nothing to do with our health, well being or happiness. Bernays really messed us up. Fast forward to the present where the witches brew of ecological harm brought about by industrialization has caught up with us. And NOW, all of a sudden, we just can’t live without all this ‘wonderful’ energy packed fossil fuel economy.

Methinks somebody wants to slap a guilt trip on the chumps so they agree to clean up the mess even though the media keeps claiming there isn’t really that much of a mess. We, the masses, are accused of being wasteful pigs that bred like rats thanks to fossil fuels.

Where to begin? How about the fact that family size has been decreasing, not increasing, througout the industrial revolution? That’s right. The numbers were baked in by 1800 and the wars slowed them down a bit. Louis Pasteur and Lister did a hell of a lot more to create our present population ‘problem’ than fossil fuels. Most of the key scientific advancements in medicine were not exactly high tech and fossil fuel dependent. A human makes it past 5 years of age and he has a huge chance of living out his 3 score and ten. It was the enormous reduction in infant mortality brought about by antiseptic procedures that caused the population explosion, not fossil fuels. It’s a stretch to say that fossil fuels alowed people to obtain clean water to wash their hands before delivering a baby, but I’m sure the media verbal contortionists would toss it out there to further muddy the waters of historical truth.

The much touted plumbing advancements that require machinery and factories powered by fossil fuels, while they did reduce disease in population centers and prolonged life, were setting us up for more fossil fuel use through improper humanure handling. I maintain that the main cause of our population explosion is knowledge of disease microbes, their propagation methods and our changes in hygiene as a result.

Edward Bernays

What about all this waste we now produce that we have been folded, spindled and mentally mutilated through Freud’s nephew Wall Street amygdala reptilian brain control propaganda? They set us up and now WE are the bad guys? They want us to shop till we drop and WE are the problem? And how much ‘waste’ do WE actually produce on a carbon footprint basis compared to the global 1%?

Well, Senator Bernie Sanders stated recently that less than 1% of the U.S. owns about 40% of the assets (I’m not talking about income increases although they have gotten the lion’s share over the last ten years as well). Yes, I know he talks about banks too but he mentions those 400 or so elite families every now and then. Now figure the carbon footprint of those people and compare it with the rest of us. All those endless films about diapers, milk gallons and so on used in our middle class lifetimes with the obligatory landfill mountains thrown in are nothing compared with the horrendous and gigantic amount of crap these families generate. Isn’t it amazing that when it comes to pollution and wasteful habits, we are ‘all in this together’? No attempt is made to segregate out the worst offenders. On the contrary, the poor and middle class are constantly demonized as being irresponsible useless eaters. It’s all quite Orwellian on the part of the media.

But yeah, we do waste, and we have a waste problem that is real, so let’s talk about it.

Waste can certainly destroy a society, species or most of the ecosphere if, as many point out, we continue with the ridiculous paradigm that we can industrially do multi-generational damage to the life support systems humans depend on and not define this as suicide. It’s almost like our nuclear nuts and oil fetish **** have morphed us into a mass version of the heaven’s gate cult. Those people thought they could hitch a ride on a comet by commiting suicide. Every single step in industrializaton has, for anyone willing to do the TOTAL math, NOT been ecospherically cost effective. The fact that a small group of humans has temporarily benefited at the expense of the overwhelming majority of humans and all other earthlings right now, not to mention the obvious acceleration in environmental degradation promising a super bleak future, seems to go right over the heads of way to many otherwise intelligent people.

Heaven's Gate Cult Leader that convinced many to commit suicide

Just like the heaven’s gate cult, people are addicted to a dream that never was, PERIOD. All talk about this and that from our youth and how much fun we all had and how nostalgic we are for those nicer times is the exact same phenomenum of a drug addict longing for his first high. LISTEN UP! We are a function of the ecosphere. We DO NOT, despite all the best propaganda efforts of our scientific community, understand the mechanism of the ecosphere sufficently to tinker with it, let alone wantonly pollute it with “externalisms”. EXTERNALISMS!? That’s just some economist bullshit! There are NO externalisms inside the life bubble called the ecosphere; it just takes a while to catch up with you when you mine, bomb and toxify with chemicals NIMBY areas for a few centuries. We are there and yet our scientific community and our financial community and our political wheeler and dealer con-artists with their new techno death toys and ‘miracle’ GMO crops and drug after drug to replace patent expirations, new ripoff scams, more war profiteering and emotional button pushing divide and conquer racist crap just DO NOT GET IT (or maybe they do get it and are insanely trying to make hay out of it).

The people in charge of our dysfunctional clusterfuck are akin to that psycho Whiteapple that led the heaven’s gate cult. They will not change to a sustainable paradigm because THAT requires subordination to the reality that we are a product of the ecosphere and the humble acceptance that we do not understand it yet so, until we do, we must henceforth emulate natural processes of cradle to grave recycling in all industrial technology and outlaw destructive activities like war or perish. No, they prefer to insanely reduce the world population by environmental collapse in the ridiculous la-la land elite hope that then the ecosphere will cure itself and they can continue their merry resource extraction paradigm as if nothing happened. It won’t work because these reductionist morons in power with their scientific priesthood of techno nut balls are so full of pride from all their tremendous ‘contributions’ over the last two centuries that they cannot see the monstrous downside of the technology explosion and that, yes, technology can be developed and used in an environmentally friendly manner. They don’t want to do the work. They are supremely irresponsible and supremely greedy and incredibly stupid.

Instead of doing a rethink, they are just flooring the accelerator and increasing their propaganda blitz.

I am not against technology. Since about 1970 we have had the knowledge to use technology to produce an environmentally friendly and sustainable society free of poisons in food and industry in the scientific literature. It has been deliberately supressed time and time again. Imagine what it cost to cover the country with roads and power lines. Well, decentralized power, food and transportation would cost a hell of a lot less. It’s total bullshit that we can’t do this or that we are ‘hooked’ on oil or nuclear or natural gas. We could have switched away decades ago. In the 70s NASA used solar panels to bring electricity to a Navajo community which was not served by the local electric utilities in a southwestern state. It worked great and the utilities went ballistic. They wrote to NASA requesting the solar panel project be stopped because, even though those areas targeted by NASA were not adequately served by the utilities, the fossil fuel free energy would ‘force’ the utilities to lower their rates. NASA stopped the project.

The planet earth DOES NOT have an energy crisis. For you engineering types out there, just do the math on the energy required daily to lift trillions of tons of water vapor out of the rivers, lakes and oceans and deposit this at higher elevations in the form of rain and then try to tell me about how much it COSTS (ZERO!) and how we are running out of energy. What the planet earth has, is a HUMAN GREED AND STUPIDITY crisis among the 1%. But suppose we could dispense with all the agenda laced perjorative propaganda about renewables, agree to clean up the planet and eliminate fossil fuel, nuclear and any other kind of poisonous technology because we have no other choice?

Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done? Probably not. I just heard today (June 11, 2012) on the Thom Hartmann show that phytoplankton replacement in a bay in Maine has dropped 500% over a period of a decade or so. The phenomenum has now been confirmed as occurring globally. Phytoplankton produce approximately 50% of the oxygen on this planet through photosynthesis. They are not regenerating adequately because increased ppm of CO2 (now 400 ppm) is acidifying the oceans and killing them. Can the elite be so insane that they plan to meter our oxygen? I hope not. At any rate, we must accept that the fossil fuel economy is not an exercise in fun conveniences or a requirement to maintain ‘civilization’; it’s killing our oxygen supply now as well. We must switch to renewables.

In regard to available energy to maintain some level of ‘civilization’ with renewables, when I mentioned the world evaporation energy example,  I wasn’t alluding to energy collection through hydroelectric power (although dams certainly help as long as salmon runs aren’t thwarted), but using this vast amount of energy available free to shed light on the scientifically bankrupt view of quantifying energy by using bomb calorimeters like we did in college and energy mass per mole in rapid oxidation. Nature has never done it that way. Everything in our culture always wants to scale up a process or else judge it as wanting. That is assbackwards from a sustainable biological process point of view. In our bodies, the reason we have enzymes lowering the energy of activation in myriad chemical reactions occurring per second is to keep us from overheating and/or rapid ph changes that would kill us but the fact is that the enzymes accomplish a task with less energy than a straight forward math computation of the chemical reaction energy requires.

Capillary processes in us are unconcerned with “stream head'” like scientists or engineers are when they want to build a dam yet they work just fine manipulating Bernoulli forces to use the absolute minimum energy needed to move that blood so the heart pump doesn’t have to work as hard against vessel friction and pressure changes. In our techno-love affair, everything we do is geared to centralized and maximum power. For example we really do not need a lot of stream head to power a house because we can gradually pump water up to a reservoir in our house to give us electricity on demand. But the techno math says you need X amount of head for Y amount of kilowatts. That’s only true if you need all of that all the time. Sure, not everyone lives by a river or a stream but that is simply a small example. A giant Sequoia pumps over one hundred gallons of water hundreds of feet up every day through transpiration. The tracheal elements can stretch water molecules 27 atmospheres as long as the vacuum holds. The technology to make artificial tree water pumps has been around for decades but our society is STUCK on the energy density per mole fixation like a teenager that wants a hot car to ride to school instead of a small electric rechargable scooter.

Have you heard about the roaring forties?


That’s an area of latitude in the oceans of the southern hemisphere that is always turbulent. They alone could power the world’s energy demands after a ten year installation of wave and undersea current power collection systems that are already being deployed off of England and Scotland. In regard to corrosion issues with sea water and maintenance of deep water (massive pressures to deal with), I only ask that you consider technology equivalence hurdles that have long since been surmounted in nuclear power plants (the ultimate in corrosion challenges including hydrogen embrittlement that is not present with sea water) and oil undersea pipelines (pump sea water to a land reservoir and start the power cables from there as a cost effective low maintenance option).

At present, ocean oil rigs (which are mostly metal) have sacrificial anodes placed on them so electrolysis in most areas is thwarted. The anodes are replaced as they are used up.  And remember all we have learned through space exploration about metallurgy, high temperature insulation during re-entry and don’t forget microwave power transmission technology. We can do all this stuff. It’s really not as hard as putting a robot vehicle on Mars or building a space station in orbit.

It’s telling that Einstein described the photoelectric effect at the very beginning of the 20th century but the US government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to develop solar panels (we only did it when we needed them in space) but it spent a fortune on the development of the bomb in the 30s while a large part of our populace was going hungry.

Have you ever wondered why the oil lobby never attacks nuclear power but spares no expense to demonize renewables with disingenuous propaganda and mendacity? Think about that a while. If you come to the conclusion that the nuclear power plants were put out there to make bomb material and get you to pay for it and were never, ever considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels for the production of electricity or a serious source of oil lobby competition, you win the prize.

There is also no excuse whatsoever for not using solar and electric power to run every single ship in the ocean. It would be child’s play to switch all automobiles and trucks to full electric as long we had geothermal, wind, tide and ocean current derived power 24/7, not to mention solar panels.

Do you know what oil tankers do after they offload the oil? They fill huge portions of the holds with sea water (for ballast) and then dump it when they get back to reload with oil. This massive pollution goes on day in and day out. We have a guaranteed continuous oil spill as long as we have a fossil fuel ocean tanker economy.

As for fertilizers and food production machinery requiring a massive amount of fossil fuels to feed 7 billlion humans, the fact is that using decentralized permaculture with humanure (after appropriate and low tech local processing to avoid disease pathogens) along with greenhouse technology for nordic climates can replace the fossil fuel required to run tractors, make fertilizer and insecticides and herbicides.


I mention farm machinery because there is increasing evidence that plowing needs to be replaced by non-plowing with perennial crops in order to stop the massive top soil loss and lowered nutrition of crop yield (they look the same but don’t have the same nutritional content). Other posters here are up on humanure and they are right. I recommend anyone repulsed by this to think again. Feces are an inseparable part of being human and it’s high time we stopped with this Victorian idiocy of seeing it as bad stuff; it’s part of our salvation as a species. An added plus with humanure through the avoidance of chemical fertilizers is no more ocean dead zones and massive top soil degradation. Also the energy and water savings in not pumping human waste to be treated with chemicals (made with fossil fuels) in a sewage treatment plant would save billons of dollars.

Examples of how renewables can switch us off of fossil fuels  quickly: www.euronews.com/2012/05/27/germany-breaks-solar-energy-record
www.euronews.com/2012/06/06/solar-plane-completes-maiden-intercontinental-flight www.euronews.com/2012/03/05/sea-solution-to-future-energy-needs www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html

Pelamis wave power device that looks like a giant snake: www.weirdlyodd.com/10-renewable-energy-sources/

Zero energy balance hotel: www.euronews.com/2012/05/16/go-green-get-growing

I think this can be done in TEN years, not forty: www.euronews.com/2012/05/18/in-40-years-every-home-every-building-will-be-a-power-plant-says-jeremy-rifki

Growing food and the fossil fuel ‘requirement’ is a dependency created by the fossil fuel industry but we CAN shake that dependency without mass starvation and depopulation: www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/85/1/Fuel-and-food.html

“The strategic goal of biofuel is to supplement or even replace fossil fuels, the amount of which is constantly and rapidly diminishing.” haitireconstruction.ning.com/page/biofuel-1

I’ve already mentioned my views on the population explosion and its causes but I wish to point out how the oil lobby has tried to make fossil fuel brownie points out of it.

Remember the green revolution of the 60s, 70s and 80s that supposedly caused the population explosion? The numbers are in. The yields are not statistically different with all the fossil fuel fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides than without them. The green revolution is a lie fostered by, you guessed it, the fossil fuel lobby.

Their only valid claim is the fuel for machinery which now turns out to lower crop nutrition from top soil plowing degradation. This degradation is caused by a combination of chemical fertilizers and plowing (bare soil tends to blow away when dry or erode when wet) which leaches the soil of trace minerals needed to produce nutritious and tasty as opposed to bland crops. The way things stand right now, agricultural guidelines in the U.S. state that it’s okay to lose 4 tons of top soil per acre per year from ‘modern’ farming techniques. The government claims it is the price we pay for high ‘yields’. Are you comfortable with that? I’m not. Considering top soil regeneration takes over 100 years, I cannot believe we are doing anything but losing massive amounts every year.

And last but not least, the militaries of the world are the most voracious users of fossil fuel. We sure as hell do not need them to keep 7 billion fed and clothed. The U.S. Navy, in particular, has the top spot as fossil fuel user AND polluter.


We need gradual, decentralized trickle charge or slow pumping energy storage systems for sustainable humanity. Anything else is not viable for the planet. If we want to zip around at high speed and be able to have instant this and that, yes we have an energy crisis. If we want to emulate biological processes and eschew the love affair with higher energy density per mole of fossil and or nuclear poisons killing the planet, we don’t have an energy crisis.

Nature paces everything; so should we.

All that said, there is the 1% with their hubris and arrogance and there is the rest of humanity. The agenda of the 1% is a tad different from the rest of us. I agree the knockdown is coming. The people controlling the levers of innovation and adaptation in our governments and the elite parasites that own them want this knockdown so it will come. I maintain that the false notion of a causal relationship between a large population and a polluted, unsustainable, fossil fuel dependent human society is the driving force behind this elite desire for a knockdown. The elites are the only truly unsustainable population on this earth because of their mega-carbon footprints.

So, in true Wall Street Orwellian fashion, they blame the bulk of the 7 billion humans for THEIR piggery and slavish dependency on fossil fuels. The 1% that owns our governments loves the predatory resource extraction paradigm despite the fact that some of them probably suspect that it will cause a population knockdown, not from lack of fossil fuels, but from environmental collapse. Billions of humans dying is considered a good thing by the 1%. They think it will solve the world’s environmental problems and provide a more manageable population of slaves. The 1% probably grumble about minimum gene pool diversity species population required in order to perpetuate homo sapiens. The 1% think robots will take care of all the ‘important’ work while medical technology available to the 1% will provide them with 150 year plus lifetimes. They are wrong and they are the cancer that is destroying humanity.

There’s a way to clean up this world and live sustainably. Killing off several billion is a straw man. It’s typical elite bullshit adding two an two and getting whatever answer keeps them in the catbird seat. The media will continue to block the truth from the people 24/7.

I apologize if I tried to cover too much ground here but this situation we are in has matured for well over a century and we need to see how we got here to understand, if we survive, how to prevent a new set of snakes from selling us snake oil in the future.

Feel free to pass all or any part of this rant with or without attribution.

Everything I wrote can be researched free on the internet if you want to post links about horse plagues, NASA correspondence with utilities, Henry Ford and hemp plastic, Rockefeller chicanery, U.S. solar panel development reasons, Americans starving while the bomb was being developed, Bernays propaganda tools, etc.

A.G. Gelbert

Posted in Energy, Home | Tagged Automobiles, Energy, Fetilizer, Horses, Oil, Permaculture, Propaganda, Sustainability, Waste


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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #37 on: July 12, 2018, 11:42:22 pm »
JUL 11, 2018TD ORIGINALS

Scott Pruitt 🦖Got Off Easy: Ecocide Is No Small Matter

By Paul Street

SNIPPET:

Billionaire climate-denying and planet-cooking savages like Donald Trump 🦀, the Kochs 🦖 and Harold Hamm 🦕 and their servants like Scott Pruitt 🐒 hardly invented our “ecological rift,” which is rooted in what John Bellamy Foster rightly calls “capitalism’s [longstanding] war on Earth.” With the U.S. in the oil-coal-and-gas-addicted, commons-plundering and poisoning lead, humanity has been steering madly toward the cliff of environmental self-extermination for decades. But with his determination to “deregulate energy”—to go full bore with the greenhouse gassing to death of life on earth (a crime destined to the make the Nazis look like small-time criminals)—Trump represents what Chomsky has called “almost a death knell for the species.” The Trump presidency’s extreme commitment to fossil fuels is no small part of why the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock ahead by 30 seconds to two minutes to midnight.

A young mother with her baby in her arms confronted Pruitt at a Washington restaurant just days before his resignation. “Hi” she said, “I just wanted to urge you to resign because of what you’re doing to the environment and our country. This is my son. He loves animals. He loves clean air. He loves clean water. Meanwhile, you’re slashing strong fuel standards for cars and trucks, for the benefit of big corporations.”

Pruitt took his two bodyguards and left in shame before the mother and her child could return to their seats.

He got off easy. The loss of a government job and public humiliation is a small price to pay for playing a leading role in the eco-exterminist destruction of livable ecology.

People like Pruitt should feel lucky to be able to walk freely and breathe fresh air, or what’s left of it on a planet he’s been trying to destroy.

Four terrible things are darkly noteworthy about Pruitt’s forced resignation last week. First, it was absurdly belated. The fact that he lasted as long as he did atop the EPA makes one wonder just how far one of Trump’s favorite petro-plutocratic swamp creatures has to sink before he can lose his job in Washington. Pruitt’s departure came after months of seemingly endless controversy surrounding his personal corruption. The Pruitt scandal timeline includes the following:

● April 12, 2017: The Washington Post revealed Pruitt requested and received an around-the-clock security detail at huge cost to taxpayers (nearly $3.5 million during his first year in office).

Full article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/scott-pruitt-got-off-easy-ecocide-is-no-small-matter/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #38 on: July 20, 2018, 09:41:59 pm »
 
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.

July 19, 2018



Mining Magnate  Revealed as Main Funder  of Australia’s Climate Denial Org 

India Pale Ales, or IPAs, can be a divisive drink among beer enthusiasts. Many, particularly of the hipster persuasion, swear by the hoppy and sometimes floral flavors of IPAs, eschewing more normal lagers and pilsners as boring swill. Normal people, on the other hand, often consider IPAs far too bitter to enjoy in any significant quantity.

We’d recommend settling in with a brew of your choice to deal with the overload of denial from down under to come: today we’re talking about an entirely different IPA, Australia’s Institute for Public Affairs.

IPA is basically Australia’s Heartland or Heritage. They’re ostensibly a nonprofit think tank, but in practice they act a whole lot like an arm of the conservative political movement and fossil fuel industry. Now, thanks to court filings reported on by Graham Readfearn this week in DeSmog, we know that IPA is also funded by a major mining interest: Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.

Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting Proprietary Ltd (HPPL), gave nearly $5 million to IPA in 2016 and 2017, according to documents produced as part of a lawsuit brought by Gina’s daughter Bianca accusing her mother of mismanaging company funds.

This is particularly problematic for IPA, Readfearn notes, because it directly contradicts the organization’s own tax reporting. In 2017, IPA reported that 86 percent of its $6.1 million income for the year came from individuals, and only 1 percent from businesses. But that’s hard to square with the fact that it got $2.2 million from HPPL that year--a full third of its income. Similar story for 2016: IPA claimed that 90 percent of its income was from individuals, despite getting nearly half of its income from an HPPL donation. (For the record, Bianca’s argument, as described in the court proceedings, is that IPA’s reporting implies that the HPPL donations are actually from her mother Gina as an individual, not HPPL as a business.)

Astonishing, though, that a group that promotes climate denial would be so loose with the truth about its industry backers! Something like that could never happen here in the US, right? Especially with the IRS relaxing reporting requirements, making it even easier for dark money groups to hide their funding?

Surely not! And we’re sure that had Scott Pruitt known that the IPA was so heavily reliant on polluter funding, he never would have spent $45,000 sending aides to Australia ahead of a trip he planned to take there to, at least in part, meet with the IPA. A trip that was being planned in part by consultant Matthew Freedman, who once worked for Paul Manafort helping Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. (The Wiki page for Marcos has a whole section on his human rights abuses, ranging from abductions to torture to massacres. Marcos also lootied billions from the country’s coffers, in part to feed his wife’s extensive shoe collection.)   

Had Pruitt known the IPA was industry-backed, certainly he would’ve canceled the trip (which he did anyway because of last year’s hurricanes).

Just kidding! He would’ve gone regardless, but probably would have scrubbed the calendar record of the meetings.

Good thing Pruitt’s out and Andrew Wheeler is in. After all, it’s not like a major coal magnate just indicated at a public event that Wheeler has worked for him for 20 years, implying that Wheeler was doing coal’s bidding while a government employee.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s happened.

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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #39 on: July 21, 2018, 06:01:06 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: The following three quotes explain the incredibly CROOKED Decision of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge John F. Keenan 🐩 described in the included Ecowatch article:

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

Quote
"When we are swiftly shuttling ourselves down the path of irreversible climate cataclysm, the only unreasonable option is to double down on the status quo."

Quote
Totalitarianism  " A society living by and for continuous warfare in which the ruling caste have ceased to have any real function but succeed in clinging to power through force and fraud" - George Orwell


EcoWatch

By Olivia Rosane

Jul. 20, 2018 11:46AM EST

The Big Apple Loses to Big Oil 🦕🦖 as Judge 🐵 💵 🎩 Dismisses Climate Liability Suit

A federal judge ruled on Thursday in favor of a motion by five big oil companies to dismiss a lawsuit brought against them by New York City, which demanded they pay the costs of adapting the city's infrastructure to climate change, The New York Times reported.

The ruling comes nearly a month after a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed a similar case brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco.

In his decision Thursday, Judge John F. Keenan of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York echoed the reasoning of Federal Judge William Alsup when he dismissed the San Francisco and Oakland case.

While both judges acknowledged the reality of climate change, they thought that crafting policy around it was too large an issue for the courts to settle.

"Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government," Keenan wrote in his decision.

But environmentalists pointed out that fossil fuel companies like the defendants had done everything in their power to stop the other branches of government from acting.


"There is a grave irony here. The fossil fuel company defendants claimed in court—and the judge 🐒 apparently agreed—that it is entirely up to Congress and the President to address climate change. But these same defendants 🦖😈 and their trade 💵 🎩 groups have fought successfully against even modest laws and regulations to cut the carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels that causes global warming," Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmel said in a statement reported by Climate Liability News.



Like San Francisco, New York City spokesperson Seth Stein said the city would appeal the decision.

"The mayor believes big polluters must be held accountable for their contributions to climate change and the damage it will cause New York City. We intend to appeal this decision and to keep fighting for New Yorkers who will bear the brunt of climate change," he told The New York Times.

The city had argued that the defendants―Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell―had known about the risks posed by burning fossil fuels since the 1950s and had "engaged in an overt public relations campaign intended to cast doubt on climate science," an argument Keenan acknowledged in his decision.

The cases brought by New York, San Francisco, Oakland and other municipalities attempt to sue oil companies using state public nuisance law that allows courts to find defendants liable for interfering with the use of property, according to The New York Times.

Attempts to sue oil companies over climate change under federal nuisance law led to a Supreme Court decision in 2011 ruling that the Clean Air Act displaced nuisance law on the federal level and put the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in charge of dealing with the issue.

The new batch of lawsuits argues state nuisance law still applies, but Keenan rejected the idea that state law would apply to the city's lawsuit, saying climate change was an area of "federal concern," The New York Times reported.

However, environmental law experts said judges trying similar cases in state courts might rule differently.

"The cases that are either filed in federal court or—as with the San Francisco and Oakland cases—removed to federal court are decided under federal law," University of California Los Angeles environmental law professor Ann Carlson told Climate Liability News. "Federal nuisance law is much less favorable for the cities and counties than state law is. The state courts are where we are likely to see interesting and perhaps surprising rulings."

There are currently similar cases pending in courts in California, Washington, Colorado and Rhode Island, Climate Liability News reported.

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-liability-lawsuit-new-york-2588447153.html

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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #40 on: July 24, 2018, 06:12:53 pm »
July 24, 2018

The Private Sector & Climate Change: Holding Corporations Accountable

by  The Sanders Institute



There are a number of actions that our country could be taking to reduce our carbon footprint and lessen the progress of climate change, however, there are significant barriers in place that hinder these efforts.

Many of these barriers stem from corporate action. Companies that benefit from the continued use of energy sources that contribute to climate change have a vested interest in hindering the progress of solutions that will move us away from the status quo. Below are a few examples of how corporations have done this:

In the six years prior to 2017, rooftop solar panel installations grew by as much as 900% in the United States. Each year, more and more Americans were taking steps to install solar panels on their roofs, lessen their carbon footprint, and contribute excess energy back into the grid to further diminish the carbon footprint of others who could not afford solar panels. The New York Times reports that in 2017, growth in solar panel installations came “to a shuttering stop.” This was largely because of “a concerted and well-funded lobbying campaign by traditional utilities, which have been working in state capitals across the country to reverse incentives for homeowners to install solar panels.”

In addition, Instead of cutting residents a break for helping solve the climate crisis, the utility companies —led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Edison Electric Institute (whose lobbying efforts ratepayers actually underwrite)—are lobbying for the end of “net-metering” laws that let customers sell excess power they generate back to the grid.

Moreover, lobbying is frequently combined with political contributions to, and coordination with politicians.  Arizona, whose capital lies in the “Valley of the Sun,” has incredible potential for solar power. However, according to Tuscon.com, last year in May, "A federal grand jury has indicted a former state utility regulator and his wife for taking bribes.” The former regulator took those bribes for approving a rate hike for the areas utility company. Despite this indictment, coordination between politicians and utilities in Arizona has not stopped. For instance, environmental groups in Arizona have proposed a constitutional amendment to the Arizona ballot that would require that 50% of Arizona’s energy needs be met with renewable energy sources by 2030.Inside Climate News reports that “a senate committee passed a separate bill—which an APS spokeswoman said the utility had proposed—that would add a second ballot initiative with a nearly identical title” The most recent bill has similar language to the one proposed by environmentalists but includes a “safety valve” that would not allow full implementation of the bill. This approach is designed to confuse and halt progress toward renewable energy.

Arizona is not the only state that has experienced corporate lobbying against climate change solutions, nor is net metering the only issue where corporations have succeeded in moving forward with policies and activities that demonstratively harm the environment. For instance, fracking continues despite numerous studies that show significant damage to  the environment and public health.

There are a number of ways that we can hold corporations accountable and stop actions that negatively affect the environment.

Get Money Out of Politics

Too frequently, our politicians are able to be swayed by campaign contributions that lead to decisions that harm the American people, and put the future of our planet in jeopardy.  It is all too easy to find the enormous contributions made by companies that contribute to our carbon footprint:

According to Open Secrets: Oil and gas companies have so far contributed over $14 million to all candidates in the 2018 election cycle, electric utilities have contributed over $11 million, natural gas pipeline companies have contributed almost $2 million, and coal mining companies have contributed over $800 thousand. 

If we get money out of politics legislators might be more likely to vote for policies and ideas that benefit their constituents, the environment, and the world.


Taxes That Reflect The True Cost of Pollution

A “Carbon Tax” is traditionally considered an “economist’s solution” to fighting climate change. In short, the Carbon Tax Center describes that “A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels.” There are two strong arguments for why a carbon tax is both necessary and would work.

It holds carbon producers and consumers accountable for the damage that their actions have on the environment. To put that damage in perspective, National Geographic reports that “Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, along with the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, has cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year over the past ten years.”Economics Help describes that “The idea of a tax is to make consumers and producers pay the full social cost of producing pollution.” Money raised by the government from this tax could be used to finance initiatives that will further reduce carbon emissions (e.g. subsidizing renewable energy or carbon capture.)

It creates incentives to for both consumers and producers to act in ways that will reduce their carbon footprint. Producers may invest in ideas that will reduce their carbon emissions to avoid paying as much in taxes. Price increases on items or utilities that include this carbon tax may result in consumers looking to alternative energy sources, or consuming less.

Economics Help describes that “the social marginal cost (SMC) of producing the good is greater than the private marginal cost (PMC) The difference is the external cost of the pollution. The tax shifts the supply curve to S2 and therefore, consumers are forced to pay the full social marginal cost. This reduces the quantity consumed to Q2, which is the socially efficient outcome (because the SMC=SMB)”  Therefore, the tax adjusts the price of good to take into account the harm that it is doing.


The impact of a carbon tax can be seen in the graph below:

True Cost of Pollution Source: EconomicsHelp

Carbon Taxes are also proven to have worked elsewhere in the world. British Columbia imposed a carbon tax of 10 Canadian dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in 2008 and then raised that tax to 30 Canadian dollars per ton by 2012. The New York Times reports that the tax “reduced emissions by 5 to 15 percent with ‘negligible effects on aggregate economic performance… It encouraged people to drive somewhat less and be more careful about heating and cooling their homes. Businesses invested in energy efficiency measures and switched to less polluting fuels.”

Get the Incentives Right

Each year, the U.S. government subsidizes a range of economic activities. It is important that those subsidies encourage economic activity that will help reduce our carbon footprint and climate change.

Unfortunately, many subsidies support industries that are contributing to climate change. Researchers at Oil Change International recently found that “Government giveaways in the form of permanent tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry – one of which is over a century old – are seven times larger than those to the renewable energy sector.” These fossil fuel subsidies, including both federal subsidies and state subsidies, total to $20 billion annually.

That said, the renewable energy industry has also received a number of subsidies through the years (varying though different administrations and not to the level of those for the fossil fuel industry). These subsidies have contributed to substantial growth in the renewable energy sector. Eighteen percent of the United States energy needs are now provided by renewable energy. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute states that the U.S. has reduced its emissions “by about 760 million metric tons since 2005.” The increase in renewable energy usage has contributed significantly to that reduction.

These subsidies for renewable energy There are also other benefits to renewable energy subsidies. Quartz Media reported that “the fossil fuels not burnt because of wind and solar energy helped avoid between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths in the US between 2007 and 2015” and that “the US saved between $35 billion and $220 billion in that period because of avoided deaths, fewer sick days, and climate-change mitigation.”

Incentives need to reflect economic activities that will help the environment, Americans, and the world, not harm them.


Get the Penalties Right

While incentives are important for companies that are working to help the environment, it is equally important to include penalties for companies that are harming the environment.

Most Americans are familiar with the largest oil spills in the United States like the BP oil spill, also called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in 2010. However, large spills that get covered in the news are only a portion of the problem. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, excluding the BP oil spill, 287,416 barrels of oil (or 12 million gallons of oil) were spilled in the U.S. between 1964 and 2015. That equals over two hundred thousand gallons of oil a year. The BP oil spill added another 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled, totaling over two hundred million gallons of oil. (There are 42 gallons of oil in a barrel.)

A number of news organizations reported in 2015 that BP would pay more than $20 billion in settlement claims as punishment for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Justice Department called the settlement historic and quoted Attorney General Loretta Lynch in saying “Building on prior actions against BP and its subsidiaries by the Department of Justice, this historic resolution is a strong and fitting response to the worst environmental disaster in American history...BP is receiving the punishment it deserves, while also providing critical compensation for the injuries it caused to the environment and the economy of the Gulf region.”

However, when you dig deeper into that settlement, that “historic” amount of money isn’t so large when you take into account U.S. tax laws that allow corporations to write off natural resource damage payments, restoration, and reimbursement of government costs. Forbes reports that ultimately “BP should be able to deduct the vast majority, a whopping $15.3 billion, on its U.S. tax return. That means American taxpayers are contributing quite a lot to this settlement, whether they know it or not.”

In other cases, companies are given penalties that can be considered negligible when their annual earnings are taken into account. The Real News reports that “In the last 12 years, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, who manage one of the largest petroleum pipeline networks in the U.S., has had 61 incidents... including recent spill of 42,000 gallons of diesel. In the same week they had to pay A fine of three hundred thousand dollars for another spill last year.” In reference to this three hundred thousand dollar fine, Sierra Club’s Jodi Perras pointed out that Marathon is “a 13.8 billion dollar company.... they will expect to have a 330 million dollar profit this year. And so they are paying $335,000 for that spill in 2016. That's pennies to a company like that.” Ultimately, Marathon Petroleum Corporation is being fined 0.001% of their annual profits.

Penalties should be large enough to encourage constructive steps towards reducing future accidents and harm to the environment, and when they are large enough, the burden to pay them should be placed on the company, not taxpayers.

Tags: Carbon Tax,  Climate Change,  Incentives,  Penalties,  Private Sector,  Subsidies

https://www.sandersinstitute.com/blog/the-private-sector-and-climate-change-holding-corporations-accountable


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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #41 on: July 25, 2018, 06:43:31 pm »
Agnotology: Part six of six parts


Agnotology: Part one of six parts

Agnotology: Part two of six parts

Agnotology: Part three of six parts

Agnotology: Part four of six parts

Agnotology: Part five of six parts


Fox 😈🦕🦖 news Climate change coverage

A truthful image from the UCS about Media propaganda.







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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #42 on: July 27, 2018, 05:44:00 pm »
Oil Change International  Exposing the true costs of fossil fuels

Dozens of Advocacy Groups Refute Energy Department 🦕🦖 Report Touting LNG Export Demand and Feasibility

Collin Rees, July 27, 2018 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 27, 2018

CONTACT: Seth Gladstone, seth [at] fwwatch.org
Lorne Stockman, lorne [at] priceofoil.org

Dozens of Advocacy Groups Refute Energy Department Report Touting LNG Export Demand and Feasibility

In Submitted Public Comments, Fundamental Flaws and Biases of Study Are Listed

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In comments submitted to the Energy Department today, dozens of national and international advocacy groups highlighted fundamental flaws in a draft federal study that is intended to assess the macroeconomic impacts of expanded liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. The comments were submitted by groups including Food & Water Watch, Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth-US, 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for International Environmental Law, and dozens of local community groups fighting gas infrastructure in their areas.

The joint submission criticizes the study for: a failure to consider expanding state-based restrictions on fossil fuel extraction; a failure to consider expanding economic costs of fossil fuel-driven climate chaos; a failure to consider the increasing production and decreasing cost of clean energy sources; and a dismissal of growing international pressure to solve the climate crisis and rein in fossil fuels that will increasingly impact overseas demand for LNG.

The comments focus primarily on a blatant statement of bias made in the study that undermines its credibility. The study authors dismiss the potential impact on LNG demand of the Paris Agreement on climate change, something almost every nation other than the United States is working to implement, with what would appear to be their personal opinion that “future progress will (not) be very much greater than the past”. With this they assign a very low probability (5%) to the possibility of tepid future demand for LNG.

The draft study is deeply flawed, as the authors chose to ignore both climate science and climate action in favor of what appears to be a political imperative over any objective analysis. In my experience, this would not stand up to peer review in any academic institution,” said Lorne Stockman, Senior Research Analyst with Oil Change International and lead author of the comments. “The authors need to start again using robust methods for assessing the impact of climate policy on future global LNG demand. Anything less is doing a disservice to the taxpayers that paid for the study.”

While a number of states and most countries are smartly turning away from filthy, antiquated fossil fuels, the Trump administration is senselessly pushing ahead with climate-killing LNG exports. The world will increasingly reject our gas exports in favor of truly clean, renewable power, and as a result the costs of this policy to Americans will skyrocket. Trump makes up his own science, and our country and the world suffers,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, the group that co-authored the joint comment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to promote and expand LNG exports on all fronts. This week it finalized a rule expediting the approval of “small-scale” LNG exports. The rule applies to LNG shipments destined for countries without free-trade agreements with the United States, which have generally been subject to a higher degree of agency scrutiny.

Read the full joint comment: http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2018/07/Comments-on-Draft-of-Macroeconomic-Outcomes-of-Market-Determined-Levels-of-US-LNG-Exports-Final.pdf

http://priceofoil.org/2018/07/27/advocacy-groups-refute-doe-lng-export-study/



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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #43 on: July 28, 2018, 07:22:13 pm »

Trump 🦀 Expected to Roll Back California’s Clean Air Plan

July 25, 2018

The Environmental Protection Agency will revoke California’s exception to the Clean Air Act that had allowed it to set higher clean air standards than the rest of the nation. This means auto manufacturers will be allowed to follow lower fuel efficiency standards and do not need to sell as many electric vehicles. We talk to Paul Cort of EarthJustice about the legal and environmental ramifications


Story Transcript

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

The Trump administration has not only withdrawn from the Paris climate accord, but it is now expected to present a new plan this week to revoke California’s ability to set state vehicle emissions standards and to mandate electric vehicle sales. If implemented, and all signs are that it will be, this represents a major blow to California’s leadership role in setting emissions standards for the country. In addition, the new rules will roll back federal rules to boost fuel efficiency that are currently in place into the next decade.

Now joining me to discuss the consequences of this latest assault on carbon emissions and the standards is Paul Cort. Paul is a staff attorney with the organization Earthjustice in California, and at its regional office in San Francisco. Paul, I thank you so much for joining us today.

PAUL CORT: Thank you for having me.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Paul, let’s begin with these latest regulatory rollbacks with regard to fuel emissions standards. What are they, and what will it do?

PAUL CORT: Well, this is all still in the rumor stage, but it sounds like there are two pieces. The first piece would be to roll back the federal fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas emissions standards. So EPA in 2013 under Obama entered into an agreement with California and the auto manufacturers to establish fuel economy standards that would ratchet down over the next 10-plus years, through 2025. Trump administration, not surprisingly, wants to roll those back. It does not want the standards to continue to tighten through 2025, and has said that their preference would be to freeze those standards at 2020 levels and keep fuel economy at that level.

The second part is that they realize that what they’re proposing would be to split the standards. So they would loosen the federal standards, but California still has the ability to adopt more stringent emission standards. And so the Trump administration, recognizing that they don’t want to create two sets of standards, is not only going to roll back the federal standards, but go after California’s ability to set its own standards.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Paul, what does this mean in terms of emission controls?

PAUL CORT: Well, what the Trump administration is proposing to do by freezing that fuel economy standard is going to mean that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise. And the proposal would be the equivalent of adding 43 coal-fired power plants in the United States. It’s that level of greenhouse gas emissions that we would have avoided with the Obama standards.

SHARMINI PERIES: And not only, as I said off the top, since California is known for setting regulatory standards that other states then follow, this means an increase in emissions across the country, and not meeting the standards we had hoped for under the Obama plan.

PAUL CORT: Right. Well, the California standards are both about greenhouse gases but also about just basic air pollutants. The emissions that create smog and soot pollution in California, and in 13 other states across the country. So they want to go after the ability of those states not just to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but just to protect air quality in those polluted regions.

SHARMINI PERIES: And California had set those standards a while ago, because I remember when it was almost impossible to go to L.A. because the smog was so bad.

PAUL CORT: Yeah, so California’s had this special provision carved out in law in the Clean Air Act since it was adopted in 1970, because as far back as the 1950s and ’60s, California had recognized the need to clean up cars. California was responsible for the development of the catalytic converter. It was California standards, really, that have driven the advancement of automotive technology for going on 50 years now.

SHARMINI PERIES: Paul, it’s it’s rather ironic that a conservative president, President Trump, is insisting on regulating what a state can and cannot do. Because traditionally, the conservatives, or Republicans, have always stood up for the rights of states to regulate itself. What do you make of this political shift?

PAUL CORT: I mean, it’s clearly not principled or consistent with traditional conservative values about state leadership. And it’s not based in reality, either. Because again, the states, especially in this field, have been the innovators, have driven the technology. And, you know, all the ways that state leadership matters, here’s proof that having that state authority can lead to superior results.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, as far as justice is concerned, is this a done deal? Or are you going to plan to fight back?

PAUL CORT: I mean, all the rumors point to this proposal coming out. But we’re still puzzled whose interest this serves, really. The auto manufacturers don’t want this fight. They don’t want to have multiple standards out there. They don’t want the uncertainty that’s bound to come as a result of litigation. You know, maybe this is about the oil industry. But you know, I haven’t heard anyone, other than folks within the administration, pushing for these changes.

California has reached out and has offered to, you know, make slight changes to the program to account for some of the complaints that they’re hearing. But I’m not hearing anybody actually support this proposal. So at that level, I guess we’re holding out hope that someone will come to their senses and, and pivot before they finalize this. But this is the way it’s-.

SHARMINI PERIES: Paul, is there any chance that the car manufacturers themselves will proceed with the standards that they were expecting to deliver, regardless of what the federal government regulates?

PAUL CORT: I think, well, it’s hard to say. I mean, I think- you know, California and the United States will probably end up getting dirtier cars. But I think the, the ironic part about all this is that there are countries around the world, China, many countries in Europe, who are moving away from fossil fuels. And so for our industries to compete in those markets they’re going to have to develop these cleaner cars. And the result may be that those countries get the cleaner cars while we get stuck with the dirty ones.

SHARMINI PERIES: And what’s the deal with electric car vehicle sales? What is it that the federal government wants to do in that regard?

PAUL CORT: Well, they want to take away, again, California’s ability to require that auto manufacturers sell a certain percentage of zero emission vehicles. California adopted a mandate for zero emission vehicles even before they were talking about greenhouse gases. Because California realized again to meet just the smog standards in places like L.A. and the Central Valley that we need to move away from combustion in cars. And so it’s always been tied to meeting basic air quality standards. But EPA, again, according to the rumors, is going to argue that that’s about greenhouse gases, and that’s outside of California’s authority.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Paul, I thank you so much for joining us. I’ve been speaking with Paul Cort with Earthjustice. I thank you.

PAUL CORT: Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

https://therealnews.com/stories/trump-expected-to-roll-back-californias-clean-air-plan




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

AGelbert

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Re: Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Mens Rea Actus Reus
« Reply #44 on: July 31, 2018, 02:19:17 pm »

July 31, 2018

Pence's Family Business Cost Taxpayers Over $20 Million In Environmental Cleanup. Make Them Pay Us Back!

by: OD Action

recipient: Vice President Mike Pence and his brother, Greg Pence


63,094

The family business of Vice President Mike Pence, Kiel Bros. Oil Co, went under in 2004, making millions for the Pences but leaving a trail of environmental wreckage and dangerous chemicals behind. Almost a decade and a half later, the cleanup cost has exceeded $22 million and counting.

And guess who's paying the majority of the Pences' tab — taxpayers. We refuse to stand for it and demand Mike Pence and his family fully reimburse the public for the fallout from their reckless business practices.

Pence and his Republican Party claim to loathe government spending and love "personal responsibility," using that ideology to deny millions of Americans lifesaving healthcare, food assistance, and housing — among other things.

But that is clearly a lie. When it comes to cleaning up the mistakes of businessmen born to privilege, Pence and his ilk are more than happy to let us pay their debts.

We think it's time for the Vice President to take a little personal responsibility of his own. Add your name to demand the Pence family pay back the tens of millions that taxpayers have paid to clean up their toxic mess!

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/514/802/478/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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