Posted on 12/04/2006 4:21:39 AM PST by yoe
Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.
We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."
The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.
This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose....
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
It's not that they don't know. They don't care. It's just a means to an end.
I love movie!
"Run Runner!"
Fascinating, particularly the oral arguments linked in post #4.
Gee, I thought science was all about "open inquiry" and all that rot. You know, all of the guardians of science won't address the bullying from climatology (the short bus of science) nor the outright fraud (Korean stem cells) nor the scaremongering and outrageous claims (global warming) nor the preying on false hopes and outrageous claims (embryonic stem cells). No, they just get their hackles up if their precious funding is threatened (embryonic, standard line on climatology) or somebody mentions the completely unfunded intelligent design.
It seems to me that the only requirement to be a scientist these days is to hate religion. Well, unless your religion is one of the "settled" scientific theories.
Really?
Make the world turn the other way round. Faster. Slower. Now raise the sea level. Lower it. Rain. Snow. Beer.
The Earth kicks our ass, not the other way around.
Man's role in Global Warming on this Earth is misrepresented by the MSM to be sure.
The polar icecap problem on Mars, however, may be directly related to the Couch Jumper's movie.
Overpopulation. WAIT! Insufficient reproduction.
DDT. WAIT! It's OK again.
Coffee. WAIT! Good. WAIT! Bad. WAIT! Good.
High Carbs. WAIT! Low Carbs. WAIT! ...
...
Science once prescribed blood-letting and leeches, and that is everything you need to know about Global Warming.
You didn't qualify your statement until after you were called on it.
When you qualify your statement up front, there's far less confusion.
You suspect you've left this mortal coil when someone named Psycho Bunny is lecturing you on the certitude of man's impact on Nature.
Are you pink as well?
Olympia Snowe is a disgrace to the Republican party.
Green tyranny...
The more CO2 in the ocean, the more life....so goes the circle of life.
######
Back in the days before the internet, the National Geographic magazine was one regular source of good information. I remember an article showing the cycle of carbon, rising in a gas, falling in rain into the oceans, etc etc.
I will never understand how human beings can think that we are more powerful than gravity and the power of the sun, and at the same time believe implicitly that we "evolved" from nothingness to our present delicately balanced state.
Why do you even bother to post?
For further information, read this:
The Wall Street Journal vs. The Scientific Consensus
From the Sach's article in SciAm:
"Reporters for the Wall Street Journal routinely distance themselves from the editorial page. Many of the paper's own reporters laugh or cringe at the anti-scientific posture of the editorials, and advise the rest of us simply not to read them. Nevertheless, the consequences of those editorials are significant. The Wall Street Journal is the most widely read business paper in the world. Its influence is extensive. Yet it gets a free pass on editorial irresponsibility."
"As a neighbor to the paper at Columbia University, the Earth Institute has repeatedly invited the editorial team to meet with leading climate scientists. I've offered to organize such a meeting in any way that the editorial board would like. On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation."
Now that we hear radio commercials from cigarette companies telling us directly that there are "no safe cigarettes", I think eventually the oil companies like ExxonMobil will realize that fossil fuel emissions have climate consequences.
So you support the strongarming of Exxon-Mobil by Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, do you?
I don't view the letter as a strong-arm tactic. As I referred to in my first reply, it took years of increasing pressure to get the tobacco companies to admit the deleterious health consequences of smoking, and the tobacco companies paid for researchers to maintain a campaign of disinformation. Do you think that was ethical? If there had been a letter like this sent to the CEO of a major tobacco company 30-35 years ago, would you have characterized it as a strong-arm tactic then? Would your opinion of the letter have changed over the intervening years?
I provided the information on the WSJ editorial page to indicate that their characterization of the letter might be a tad biased. Given their proven editorial bias against global warming and the scientific understanding of it, the editorial page's response is unsurprising. Obviously the letter didn't have an effect because ExxonMobil responded that they are going to continue their funding patterns. It'll take market forces to make ExxonMobil understand where public opinion is really headed.
Thanks for the link. If we must do something about Global Warming, I think either the free market or your suggestion (to funnel about .1 percent of GDP into research for conservation, carbon sequestering, "Manhattan Project," etc., IIRC) would be the way to go. The alternative is taxation of carbon-based fuels and more misery for people of modest incomes in the wintertime.
I'm not sure we even need to "do something" about GW. The rising demand for carbon-based fuels (and the corresponding price increase) practically ensures that people in free societies will start conserving energy and looking elsewhere to satisfy their energy needs. Unfortunately, Congress always has an insatiable need to "do something..."
Bookmarked for later perusal of your link...
So the Dems want to make gasoline more expensive again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.