a) Apples naturally fall from trees. Therefore, me shaking the tree vigorously isn't causing the apples to fall faster, they're just doing that naturally.
b) See above.
c) Most of them haven't gone bankrupt, and the government has, on the whole, recovered more in interest payments than it has lost from the companies that folded. You are literally bitching that your tax dollars were used to create more money for the government and set up successful companies at the same time. The first thing you should have asked when you were presented with the repeated news stories about failing companies is 'but how many of them are succeeding?' You never asked that, and as a result you simply assumed that the whole program was a failure. That's your laziness, not a reality.
d) Are you really trying to find a conspiracy in the fact that people on the wrong end of legislation aren't going to support it? No shit, people with a vested interest in fossil fuels are going to be targeted by regulations on fossil fuels, and they're not going to like it.
e) Actually, c is false. The rest is irrelevant bullshit.
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He uses hyperbole. That's no excuse to purposely misread the wording of what he's saying.
The planet may not catch fire, but it would only take a global shift of a handful of degrees to make enormous swaths of it pretty much uninhabitable. Have fun when places that used to be "nice" are now useless deserts and everybody wants to move to canada because it now has a climate more like texas.. (oh, and good luck feeding people when the breadbasket of the world is now a barren wasteland).
A) Cut the "oh think of the poor" horseshit, no one is buying it. The poor suffer most of climate change too.
B) The thread is about Exxon committing fraud, not Al Gore.
No. It is not.
a. is technically correct, but in context, is a deliberate and malicious lie, since the current warming trend is well outside of those natural cycles. It's like saying that trees dying is natural, as a justification for clearcutting the rainforests. It's aggressively and wilfully dishonest.
b. is also false, unless you're incapable of grasping rhetorical concepts like "metaphor". There are points of no return. We're already past some, in terms of emissions.
c. is nominally true, but also deliberately misses the point, and is fundamentally irrelevant to anything. Funds went to similar companies under the Bush administration. And the Clinton administration. You're just trying to insert partisan politics into a fundamentally science-based issue, which is non-partisan.
d. is also completely and utterly false, in just about every way imaginable. No, taxes and regulations are not the only "fix". There's a wide scope of mitigation and adaptation measures that are being implemented already which aren't reliant on any additional taxation, just adjustments to standard policies and procedures.
So the correct answer is "all of them". At best, they're trivially correct about a point that's a deliberately dishonest way to phrase the question; the equivalent of asking "when did you stop beating your wife?"
How is the investigation and subpoena depriving them of the first amendment?. Like wtf!.
This thread is awfully similar to the one we had on Facebook and their possibly fraudulent usage of the trending thingy. Maybe Exxon can pull sympathizers from the "right to editorialize" camp .
It's an election year, that's what might be driving the Attorney Generals into pushing this. Even if they are appointed they're still appointed by politicians and they may have political goals of their own.
I don't see the oil industry having many parallels to the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry intentionally tried to deceive the public, oil decided not to pursue research that would hurt their industry. The theory of Global Warming has been around since the 1800's if I'm not mistaken, it hasn't been until recently that there has been solid evidence.
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"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
-- Capt. Copeland
Yeah, no. Exxon clearly conducted their own research which confirmed global warming results back in the '70s, and they concealed that data and began funding climate change denial funding, to muddy the waters. It's exactly comparable. If anything, Exxon's actions were far worse than the tobacco industry's.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ar...ange-warnings/
If by "recently", you mean the '70s.The theory of Global Warming has been around since the 1800's if I'm not mistaken, it hasn't been until recently that there has been solid evidence.
Ahh but increasing the wages of the poor makes them worse off. Yes that really is the screwball logic these types use.
On that note I await the right-wing to argue for 90% cuts to executive pay, since if increasing wages makes people worse off then cutting them must make them better off, and we all know how much the political right cares want to improve the well-being of CEO's.
Exxon, just like every oil company, receives major subsidies from the tax payer to keep the cost down. We still have subsidies for failed drilling from 1920s, which were meant to boost oil production to encourage lower prices. Drilling that has surpassed the fail rates we pay for more than 50 years ago. We paid for the infrustracture, we paid for the pipelines, we pay for the wars, we pay to support these companies before the gas ever hits your fuel tank. Every person that takes steps to avoid paying oil companies, still does through their taxes.
Now, we bitch that oil prices are still too high. We bitch because we don't want to pay for infrustracture to level the playing field between emerging technology and that of 1920s. Strip the subsidies and our willingness to continue to build up a dying industry, then you'll have similar prices to Europe, without the hidden cost in your taxes. It's the only way that people will stop buying the bullshit from oil companies and make emerging technology cost effective, outside the silliness of argument revolving around us doing something, only if it's man made... The distance between the oil refinery and your gas station is also not man made, yet somehow the tax payer still builds those.
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
I can ask a bunch of questions as well. Where simply answering the question confirms the validity.
The Alaskan pipe line was a huge undertaking and a symbol of American advancement. If the above question was asked before building it, it would have never been built. In fact, we would most likely be living in caves. After all, man didn't put oil that far away from your gas station, then there should be no reason to build infrastructure to get you oil. It's only natural for there to nit be oil pools on every corner.a. That the planet has a cycle of warming and cooling that has existed since its formation.
This is where that question being completley irrelevant be obvious. Humanity is where it's at because we defy nature, not because we give up with a 'if we didn't put oil there, we shouldn't put it in our cars'.
We get it, you don't like Al Gore, but using him as your sole argument is pretty silly. You are making it look worse, not better.That Gore stated a point of no return in which the world would burn.
Tax payer funds already go to oil companies. Some for drilling that has surpassed technological advances for over 50 years. We built the pipelines, we built the infrustracture, we fought the wars. Yes, even with the subsidies that has been introduces, it has not been enouph to match the infrustracture and subsidy of oil companies that have existed for nearly 100 years. Your argument should show you how fixed the system is against emerging technology in energy, but instead you complain about subsidies, which pale in comparison for what you continue to get pay to oil companies.That tax payer funds have been handed to companies friendly to the Obama administration in order to develop "green technology" only they go bankrupt without ever producing a thing while the exes walk away with millions.
I understand if you are an oil company, I'd be weary of a another technology taking my free money. But, as a tax payer, paying for oil companies domestically through tax payer built pipelines and the relevance of Middle East through our wars defending it's stability, complaining about Obama's failed subsidy should show you how screwed our system is in favor of oil companies. Instead... Obama!!!!
Oh, you mean you prefer the side that pays oil companies to keep prices lower? Why is there even a side that is aligned to keep emerging technology from being funded? If the same was true for IT, it would still be too much to build high speed infrustracture, because snail mail lobby enouph to hold a side of government as their own.That the so called "fix" for AGW is taxes and regulation which just so happens to be aimed at people who aren't aligned with the political side of those trying to implement the taxes/regulations.
No, the answer is that oil companies are too big to fail.The correct answer is E.
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
Relevant info about Lamar Smith:
Not a bit of shame and couldn't be more transparent. But anyway, let's look a bit more:As of 2015, Smith has received more than $600,000 from the fossil fuel industry during his career in Congress.[45] In 2014, Smith got more money from fossil fuels than he did from any other industry.[46] Smith is publicly skeptic of global warming.[47][48][49] Under his leadership, the House Science committee has held hearings that feature the views of skeptics,[50] subpoenaed the records and communications of scientists who published papers that Smith disapproved of,[47] and attempted to cut NASA's earth sciences budget.[51] He has been criticized for conducting "witch hunts" against climate scientists.[46] In his capacity as Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Smith issued more subpoenas in his first three years than the committee had for its entire 54-year history.[46]
So, what the hell is a Christian Scientist, you might ask? I'm glad you asked! They believe this:Smith is a Christian Scientist. In 1992, he married Elizabeth Lynn Schaefer,[54] a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, as was his first wife, Jane Shoultz, before her death in 1991.
Science and Health expanded on Eddy's view that sickness was a mental error.[n 30] People said that simply reading Science and Health had healed them; cures were claimed for everything from cancer to blindness. Eddy wrote in the New York Sun in December 1898, in an article called "To the Christian World," that she had personally healed tuberculosis, diphtheria and "at one visit a cancer that had eaten the flesh of the neck and exposed the jugular vein so that it stood out like a cord. I have physically restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and have made the lame walk."[n 31] Eddy wrote that her views had derived, in part, from having witnessed the apparent recovery of patients she had treated with homeopathic remedies so diluted they were drinking plain water. She concluded that Divine Mind was the healer...Well, OK, that's kooky, but lots of people might nominally believe kooky things, but not really act on them right? Well, yeah, but these guys are serious:She argued that even naming and reading about disease could turn thoughts into physical symptoms, and that the recording of ages might reduce the human lifespan.[176] To explain how individuals could be harmed by poison without holding beliefs about it, she referred to the power of majority opinion.[177] Eddy allowed exceptions from Christian Science prayer, including for dentistry, optometry and broken limbs; she said she had healed broken bones using "mental surgery," but that this skill would be the last to be learned.[n 32] But for the most part (then and now), Christian Scientists believe that medicine and Christian Science are incompatible. Medicine asserts that something needs to be fixed, while Christian Science asserts that spiritual reality is perfect and beliefs to the contrary need to be corrected.[12]
All in all, Smith seems like a great guy that should definitely be the chair of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. After all, that seems like a good place for someone who believes climate change is a hoax and that rejects modern medicine.In over 50 cases between 1887 and the early 1990s, prosecutors charged Christian Scientists after adults and children died of treatable illnesses without medical care.[339][n 49] The death in 1967 of five-year-old Lisa Sheridan of pneumonia, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was the first of several in the 20th century known within the church as the "child cases," according to Fraser. Her mother was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years' probation.[341] It was after this prosecution that the church began lobbying for religious exemptions.[331]
I guess the one thing we could say in his favor is that he might not be lying - he might just be an actual kook.
Errr what? The oil industry has intentionally tried to deceive the public. It has funded groups that put out false information that AGW does not exist when it knew internally that was a lie. That is absolutely no different than the tobacco companies which in the past put out false information on smoking stating that it was not harmful when internally they knew that it was a lie.
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Why are you angry? Surely this is the opportunity you have been looking for? You can now get your side into a court of law and argue before an impartial judge and prove to the world AGW is a hoax and a global conspiracy. I mean what could be better than this for those like you? So why are you not ecstatic with joy?
I don't get it.
Let the regular people ride in overcrowded unsanitary dangerous cattle cars while the elite take multi-car motorcades to their private jets.
Sounds like the sort of "do as I say not as I do" mentality indicative of the radicalized Left.
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Nope, I've never made any of those.
I believe in keeping costs down not driving costs up then demanding wage increases match them.
I'm not falling for the one-two punch scam going on here.
Punch One: Over-regulate and over-tax the energy sector driving up the costs on literally everything in our economy.
Punch Two: Turn right back around to that same economy and demand it take another wealth-redistribution hit by paying only certain people more for their contributions even though costs have gone up for everybody.
No thanks, keep costs down.
CSSBB
MAGA
When all you do is WIN WIN WIN