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       #Post#: 4542--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: February 19, 2016, 5:28 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center][img
       width=640]
  HTML http://crooksandliars.com/files/imagecache/node_primary/primary_image/15/11/kochtopus.jpg[/img][/center]
       [center]Koch Brothers Plotting Multimillion Dollar War on
       Electric Vehicles
  HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-devil19.gif[/center]
       Lorraine Chow | February 19, 2016 2:45 pm
       SNIPPETS:
       Death to the electric car?
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
       />Charles and David Koch are reportedly backing a new group that
       will use millions to promote petroleum and fight against
       government subsidies for electric vehicles.
       In an effort to strike back at record-breaking EV sales, the
       fossil fuel industry is allegedly funding a new organization
       that will spend $10 million a year to push petroleum-based
       transportation fuels and attack government subsidies on EVs,
       refining industry sources told the Huffington Post.
       Elon Musk
       &#10004;  &#8206;&#8206;@elonmusk
       Worth noting that all gasoline cars are heavily subsidized via
       oil company tax credits & unpaid public health costs.
  HTML http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf
  HTML http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/koch-brothers-war-on-evs/
       Comment by renewableguy
       Fossil fuels is scared sh--less.
       Agelbert reply:
       Yep.
       Amory Lovins knows the score. The fossil fuel industry is a
       wounded beast. It's days are numbered.
       QUOTE
       Over the past 40 years, Americans have saved 31 times as much
       energy as renewables added. Those cumulative savings are
       equivalent to 21 years’ current energy use.  They’re simply
       invisible: you can’t see the energy you don’t use. But globally,
       it’s a bigger “supply” than oil, and inexorably, it’s going to
       get much, much bigger.
       Oil companies worry about climate regulation, but they’re even
       more at risk from market competition. The oil that’ll be
       unburnable for climate reasons is probably less than the oil
       that’ll be unsellable because efficiency and renewables can do
       the same job [i]cheaper.[/I]
       An oil business that sputters when oil’s at $90 a barrel, swoons
       at $50, and dies at $30 will not do well against the $25 cost of
       getting U.S. mobility—or anyone else’s, since the technologies
       are fungible—completely off oil by 2050. That cost, like the $18
       per saved barrel to make U.S. automobiles uncompromised,
       attractive, cost-effective, and oil-free, is a 2010–11 analytic
       result; today’s costs are even lower and continue to fall.
       In short, like whale oil in the 1850s, oil is becoming
       uncompetitive even at low prices [I]before[/I] it became
       unavailable even at high prices.
       UNQUOTE
       As Oil Prices Gyrate, Underlying Trends Are Shifting To Oil's
       Disadvantage
  HTML http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_02_01_as_oil_prices_gyrate_underlying_trends_are_shifting_to_oils_disadvantage
       #Post#: 4546--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: February 19, 2016, 6:44 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]Bill McKibben: It’s Not Just What Exxon Did, It’s What
       It’s Doing[/center]
       Bill McKibben, TomDispatch | February 19, 2016 9:18 am
       Here’s the story so far. We have the chief legal representatives
       of the eighth 8 and 16th largest economies on Earth (California
       and New York) probing the biggest fossil fuel company on Earth
       (ExxonMobil), while both Democratic presidential candidates are
       demanding that the federal Department of Justice join the
       investigation of what may prove to be one of the biggest
       corporate scandals in American history. And that’s just the
       beginning. As bad as Exxon has been in the past, what it’s doing
       now—entirely legally—is helping push the planet over the edge
       and into the biggest crisis in the entire span of the human
       story.
       [quote]
       As bad as Exxon has been in the past, what it’s doing
       now—entirely legally—is helping push the planet over the edge
       and into the biggest crisis in the entire span of the human
       story. [/quote]
       Back in the fall, you might have heard something about how Exxon
       had covered up what it knew early on about climate change. Maybe
       you even thought to yourself: that doesn’t surprise me. But it
       should have. Even as someone who has spent his life engaged in
       the bottomless pit of greed that is global warming, the news and
       its meaning came as a shock: we could have avoided, it turns
       out, the last quarter century of pointless climate debate.
       As a start, investigations by the Pulitzer-Prize winning Inside
       Climate News, the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism
       School revealed in extraordinary detail that Exxon’s top
       officials had known everything there was to know about climate
       change back in the 1980s. Even earlier, actually. Here’s what
       senior company scientist James Black told Exxon’s management
       committee in 1977: “In the first place, there is general
       scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which
       mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon
       dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” To determine
       if this was so, the company outfitted an oil tanker with carbon
       dioxide sensors to measure concentrations of the gas over the
       ocean and then funded elaborate computer models to help predict
       what temperatures would do in the future.
       The results of all that work were unequivocal. By 1982, in an
       internal “corporate primer,” Exxon’s leaders were told that,
       despite lingering unknowns, dealing with climate change “would
       require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.” Unless that
       happened, the primer said, citing independent experts, “there
       are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered
       … Once the effects are measurable, they might not be
       reversible.” But that document, “given wide circulation” within
       Exxon, was also stamped “Not to be distributed externally.”
       So here’s what happened. Exxon used its knowledge of climate
       change to plan its own future. The company, for instance, leased
       large tracts of the Arctic for oil exploration, territory where,
       as a company scientist pointed out in 1990, “potential global
       warming can only help lower exploration and development costs.”
       Not only that but, “from the North Sea to the Canadian Arctic,”
       Exxon and its affiliates set about “raising the decks of
       offshore platforms, protecting pipelines from increasing coastal
       erosion and designing helipads, pipelines and roads in a warming
       and buckling Arctic.” In other words, the company started
       climate-proofing its facilities to head off a future its own
       scientists knew was inevitable.
       But in public?  [img
       width=80]
  HTML http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9HT4xZyDmh4/TOHhxzA0wLI/AAAAAAAAEUk/oeHDS2cfxWQ/s200/Smiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg[/img]<br
       />There, Exxon didn’t own up to any of this. In fact, it did
       precisely the opposite. In the 1990s, it started to put money
       and muscle into obscuring the science around climate change. It
       funded think tanks that spread climate denial and even recruited
       lobbying talent from the tobacco industry. It also followed the
       tobacco playbook when it came to the defense of cigarettes by
       highlighting “uncertainty” about the science of global warming.
       And it spent lavishly to back political candidates who were
       ready to downplay global warming.
       [center][IMG
       width=340]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-280714152422.png[/img][/center]
       Its CEO, Lee Raymond, even traveled to China in 1997 and urged
       government leaders there to go full steam ahead in developing a
       fossil fuel economy. The globe was cooling, not warming, he
       insisted, while his engineers were raising drilling platforms to
       compensate for rising seas. “It is highly unlikely,” he said,
       “that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be
       significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20
       years from now.” Which wasn’t just wrong, but completely and
       overwhelmingly wrong—as wrong as a man could be.
       Sins of Omission
       In fact, Exxon’s deceit—its ability to discourage regulations
       for 20 years—may turn out to be absolutely crucial in the
       planet’s geological history. It’s in those two decades that
       greenhouse gas emissions soared, as did global temperatures
       until, in the twenty-first century, “hottest year ever recorded”
       has become a tired cliché. And here’s the bottom line: had Exxon
       told the truth about what it knew back in 1990, we might not
       have wasted a quarter of a century in a phony debate about the
       science of climate change, nor would anyone have accused Exxon
       of being “alarmist.” We would simply have gotten to work.
       But Exxon didn’t tell the truth. A Yale study published last
       fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
       showed that money from Exxon and the Koch Brothers played a key
       role in polarizing the climate debate in this country.
       The company’s sins—of omission and commission—may even turn out
       to be criminal. Whether the company “lied to the public” is the
       question that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
       decided to investigate last fall in a case that could make him
       the great lawman of our era if his investigation doesn’t
       languish. There are various consumer fraud statutes that Exxon
       might have violated and it might have failed to disclose
       relevant information to investors, which is the main kind of
       lying that’s illegal in this country of ours. Now,
       Schneiderman’s got backup from California Attorney General
       Kamala Harrisand maybe—if activists continue to apply
       pressure—from the Department of Justice as well, though its
       highly publicized unwillingness to go after the big banks does
       not inspire confidence.
       Here’s the thing: all that was bad back then, but Exxon and many
       of its Big Energy peers are behaving at least as badly now when
       the pace of warming is accelerating. And it’s all
       legal—dangerous, stupid and immoral, but legal.
       On the face of things, Exxon has, in fact, changed a little in
       recent years.
       For one thing, it’s stopped denying climate change, at least in
       a modest way. Rex Tillerson, Raymond’s successor as CEO, stopped
       telling world leaders that the planet was cooling. Speaking in
       2012 at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said, “I’m not
       disputing that increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is
       going
       to have an impact. It’ll have a warming impact.”
       Of course, he immediately went on to say that its impact was
       uncertain indeed   [img
       width=30]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img],<br
       />hard to estimate and in any event entirely manageable.
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
       His language was
       striking. “We will adapt to this.
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-030815183114.gif<br
       />Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas
       around—we’ll adapt to that. It’s an engineering problem and it
       has engineering solutions.”
       [center]
       [img
       width=210]
  HTML http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bzb-1rVB8pc/UfXxBekcYVI/AAAAAAAAEm4/hXUkGCzFIPg/s1600/giveafuckometer-gif.gif[/img][/center]
       Add to that gem of a comment this one: the real problem, he
       insisted, was that “we have a society that by and large is
       illiterate in these areas, science, math and engineering, what
       we do is a mystery to them and they find it scary. And because
       of that, it creates easy opportunities for opponents of
       development, activist organizations, to manufacture fear.”
       Right. This was in 2012, within months of floods across Asia
       that displaced tens of millions and during the hottest summer
       ever recorded in the U.S., when much of our grain crop failed.
       Oh yeah and just before Hurricane Sandy.
       He’s continued the same kind of belligerent rhetoric throughout
       his tenure. At last year’s ExxonMobil shareholder meeting, for
       instance, he said that if the world had to deal with “inclement
       weather,” which “may or may not be induced by climate change,”
       we should employ unspecified “new technologies.” Mankind, he
       explained, “has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity.”
       In other words, we’re no longer talking about outright denial,
       just a denial that much really needs to be done. And even when
       the company has proposed doing something, its proposals have
       been strikingly ethereal. Exxon’s PR team, for instance, has
       discussed supporting a price on carbon, which is only what
       economists left, right and center have been recommending since
       the 1980s. But the minimal price they recommend—somewhere in the
       range of $40 to $60 a ton—wouldn’t do much to slow down their
       business. After all, they insist that all their reserves are
       still recoverable in the context of such a price increase, which
       would serve mainly to make life harder for the already terminal
       coal industry.
       But say you think it’s a great idea to put a price on
       carbon—which, in fact, it is, since every signal helps sway
       investment decisions. In that case, Exxon’s done its best to
       make sure that what they pretend to support in theory will never
       happen in practice.
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/mocantina.gif
       Consider, for instance, their political contributions. The
       website Dirty Energy Money, organized by Oil Change
       International, makes it easy to track who gave what to whom. If
       you look at all of Exxon’s political contributions from 1999 to
       the present, a huge majority of their political harem of
       politicians have signed the famous Taxpayer Protection Pledge
       from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform that binds them
       to vote against any new taxes. Norquist himself wrote Congress
       in late January that “a carbon tax is a VAT or Value Added Tax
       on training wheels. Any carbon tax would inevitably be spread
       out over wider and wider parts of the economy until we had a
       European Value Added Tax.” As he told a reporter last year, “I
       don’t see the path to getting a lot of Republican votes” for a
       carbon tax and since he’s been called “the most powerful man in
       American politics,” that seems like a good bet.
       The only Democratic senator in Exxon’s top 60 list was former
       Louisiana solon Mary Landrieu, who made a great virtue in her
       last race of the fact that she was “the key vote” in blocking
       carbon pricing in Congress. Bill Cassidy, the man who defeated
       her, is also an Exxon favorite and lost no time in co-sponsoring
       a bill opposing any carbon taxes. In other words, you could
       really call Exxon’s supposed concessions on climate change a
       Shell game. Except it’s Exxon.
       [center]  [img
       width=640]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-010914214256.png[/img]
       [/center]
       [center]The Never-Ending Big Dig[/center]
       Even that’s not the deepest problem.
       The deepest problem is Exxon’s business plan. The company spends
       huge amounts of money searching for new hydrocarbons. Given the
       recent plunge in oil prices, its capital spending and
       exploration budget was indeed cut by 12 percent in 2015 to $34
       billion and another 25 percent in 2016 to $23.2 billion. In
       2015, that meant Exxon was spending $63 million a day “as it
       continues to bring new projects on line.” They are still
       spending a cool $1.57 billion a year looking for new sources of
       hydrocarbons—$4 million a day, every day.
       As Exxon looks ahead, despite the current bargain basement price
       of oil, it still boasts of expansion plans in the Gulf of
       Mexico, eastern Canada, Indonesia, Australia, the Russian far
       east, Angola and Nigeria. “The strength of our global
       organization allows us to explore across all geological and
       geographical environments, using industry-leading technology and
       capabilities.” And its willingness to get in bed with just about
       any regime out there makes it even easier. Somewhere in his
       trophy case, for instance, Rex Tillerson has an Order of
       Friendship medal from one Vladimir Putin. All it took was a
       joint energy venture estimated to be worth $500 billion.
       But, you say, that’s what oil companies do, go find new oil,
       right? Unfortunately, that’s precisely what we can’t have them
       doing any more.
  HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/tuzki-bunnys/tuzki-bunny-emoticon-028.gif
       About a decade ago, scientists first began figuring out a
       “carbon budget” for the planet—an estimate for how much more
       carbon we could burn before we completely overheated the Earth.
       There are potentially many thousands of gigatons of carbon that
       could be extracted from the planet if we keep exploring. The
       fossil fuel industry has already identified at least 5,000
       gigatons of carbon that it has told regulators, shareholders and
       banks it plans to extract. However, we can only burn about
       another 900 gigatons of carbon before we disastrously overheat
       the planet. On our current trajectory, we’d burn through that
       “budget” in about a couple of decades. The carbon we’ve burned
       has already raised the planet’s temperature a degree Celsius and
       on our present course we’ll burn enough to take us past two
       degrees in less than 20 years.
       At this point, in fact, no climate scientist thinks that even a
       two-degree rise in temperature is a safe target, since one
       degree is already melting the ice caps. (Indeed, new data
       released this month shows that, if we hit the two-degree mark,
       we’ll be living with drastically raised sea levels for, oh,
       twice as long as human civilization has existed to date.) That’s
       why in November world leaders in Paris agreed to try to limit
       the planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius or just
       under three degrees Fahrenheit. If you wanted to meet that
       target, however, you would need to be done burning fossil fuels
       by perhaps 2020, which is in technical terms just about now.
       [quote]That’s why it’s wildly irresponsible for a company to be
       leading the world in oil exploration when, as scientists have
       carefully explained, we already have access to four or five
       times as much carbon in the Earth as we can safely burn.
       [/quote]
       We have it, as it were, on the shelf. So why would we go looking
       for more? Scientists have even done us the useful service of
       identifying precisely the kinds of fossil fuels we should never
       dig up and—what do you know—an awful lot of them are on Exxon’s
       future wish list, including the tar sands of Canada, a
       particularly carbon-filthy, environmentally destructive fuel to
       produce and burn.
       Even Exxon’s one attempt to profit from stanching global warming
       has started to come apart. Several years ago, the company began
       a calculated pivot in the direction of natural gas, which
       produces less carbon than oil when burned. In 2009, Exxon
       acquired XTO Energy, a company that had mastered the art of
       extracting gas from shale via hydraulic fracturing. By now,
       Exxon has become America’s leading fracker and a pioneer in
       natural gas markets around the world. The trouble with fracked
       natural gas—other than what Tillerson once called “farmer Joe’s
       lit his faucet on fire”—is this: in recent years, it’s become
       clear that the process of fracking for gas releases large
       amounts of methane into the atmosphere and methane is a far more
       potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As Cornell University
       scientist Robert Howarth has recently established, burning
       natural gas to produce electricity probably warms the planet
       faster than burning coal or crude oil.
       Exxon’s insistence on finding and producing ever more fossil
       fuels certainly benefited its shareholders for a time, even if
       it cost the Earth dearly. Five of the 10 largest annual profits
       ever reported by any company belonged to Exxon in these years.
       Even the financial argument is now, however, weakening. Over the
       last five years, Exxon has lagged behind many of its competitors
       as well as the broader market and a big reason, according to the
       Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), is its heavy investment in
       particularly expensive, hard-to-recover oil and gas.
       In 2007, as CTI reported, Canadian tar sands and similar “heavy
       oil” deposits accounted for 7.5 percent of Exxon’s proven
       reserves. By 2013, that number had risen to 17 percent. A smart
       business strategy for the company, according to CTI, would
       involve shrinking its exploration budget, concentrating on the
       oil fields it has access to that can still be pumped profitably
       at low prices and using the cash flow to buy back shares or
       otherwise reward investors.
       That would, however, mean exchanging Exxon’s Texan-style
       big-is-good approach for something far more modest. And since
       we’re speaking about what was the biggest company on the planet
       for a significant part of the twentieth century, Exxon seems to
       be set on continuing down that bigger-is-better path. They’re
       betting that the price of oil will rise in the reasonably near
       future
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gen152.gif,
       that
       alternative energy won’t develop fast enough and that the world
       won’t aggressively tackle climate change. And the company will
       keep trying to cover those bets by aggressively backing
       politicians capable of ensuring that nothing happens.
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp
       Can Exxon Be Pressured?  ???
       Next to that fierce stance on the planet’s future, the mild
       requests of activists for the last 25 years seem … well, next to
       pointless. At the 2015 ExxonMobil shareholder meeting, for
       instance, religious shareholder activists asked for the
       umpteenth time that the company at least make public its plans
       for managing climate risks. Even BP, Shell and Statoil had
       agreed to that much. Instead, Exxon’s management campaigned
       against the resolution and it got only 9.6 percent of
       shareholder votes, a tally so low it can’t even be brought up
       again for another three years. By which time we’ll have burned
       through … oh, never mind.
       What we need from Exxon is what they’ll never give: a pledge to
       keep most of their reserves underground, an end to new
       exploration and a promise to stay away from the political
       system. Don’t hold your breath.
       But if Exxon seems hopelessly set in its ways, revulsion is
       growing.
  HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_0293.gif<br
       />The investigations by the New York and California attorneys
       general mean that the company will have to turn over lots of
       documents. If journalists could find out as much as they did
       about Exxon’s deceit in public archives, think what someone with
       subpoena power might accomplish. Many other jurisdictions could
       jump in, too.
       At the Paris climate talks in December, a panel of law
       professors led a well-attended session on the different legal
       theories that courts around the world might apply to the
       company’s deceptive behavior. When that begins to happen, count
       on one thing: the spotlight won’t shine exclusively on Exxon. As
       with the tobacco companies in the decades when they were
       covering up the dangers of cigarettes, there’s a good chance
       that the Big Energy companies were in this together through
       their trade associations and other front groups. In fact, just
       before Christmas, Inside Climate News published some revealing
       new documents about the role that Texaco, Shell and other majors
       played in an American Petroleum Institute study of climate
       change back in the early 1980s. A trial would be a
       transformative event—a reckoning for the crime of the
       millennium.
       But while we’re waiting for the various investigations to play
       out, there’s lots of organizing going at the state and local
       level when it comes to Exxon, climate change and fossil
       fuels—everything from politely asking more states to join the
       legal process to politely shutting down gas stations for a few
       hours to pointing out to New York and California that they might
       not want to hold millions of dollars of stock in a company
       they’re investigating. It may even be starting to work.
       Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, for instance, singled Exxon out in
       his state of the state address last month. He called on the
       legislature to divest the state of its holdings in the company
       because of its deceptions.
       [quote] “This is a page right out of Big Tobacco,” he said,
       “which for decades denied the health risks of their product as
       they were killing people. Owning ExxonMobil stock is not a
       business Vermont should be in.”
       [/quote]The question is: Why on God’s-not-so-green-Earth-anymore
       would anyone want to be Exxon’s partner?  ???
  HTML http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/exxon-climate-change-crime/3/
       [move][I][font=impact]The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate
       Trashing, human health depleteing CRIME,[COLOR=BROWN]   but
       since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks,
       they are trying to AVOID [/color]  DOING THE TIME or     PAYING
       THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/176.gif[/font][/I][/move]
       #Post#: 4568--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: February 23, 2016, 9:18 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center][img
       width=440]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-230216221448.png[/img][/center]
       [center]Three U.S. House Reps call for DOJ to investigate Shell
       climate probe  [img
       width=60]
  HTML http://us.cdn2.123rf.com/168nwm/lenm/lenm1201/lenm120100200/12107060-illustration-of-a-smiley-giving-a-thumbs-up.jpg[/img][/center]
       Staff Writers  &#61463;February 23, 2016
       
       Three U.S. House Democrats are calling for the Department of
       Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether Shell Oil misled the public
       about climate change.
       According to the L.A. Times, U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California,
       Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and Rep. Matt Cartwright of
       Pennsylvania sent a letter earlier this week asking the DOJ to
       investigate whether Shell “intentionally” hid information about
       climate change and engaged in a “misinformation” campaign.
       [quote]The letter also suggests that Shell, ExxonMobil and
       potentially other energy firms were involved in a conspiracy to
       obscure the impact of climate change.[/quote]
       The letter cites an L.A. Times investigation published in
       December that claims Shell redesigned a $3 billion North Sea
       platform to allow the facility to operate amid rising sea
       levels.
       A Shell spokesman told the paper that Shell has included
       information about climate change and the challenges it poses in
       its publications, including its annual reports and
       Sustainability Report, for over 10 years.
       “Recognizing the climate challenge and the role energy has in
       enabling a decent quality of life, we continue to pursue and
       advance constructive dialogue on this topic as the challenge is
       one for all of society,” the spokesman told the L.A. Times.
       In October, Lieu sent a letter to the DOJ asking it to determine
       if Exxon misled the public about climate change and violated the
       Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly
       known as RICO.
       Citing investigations conducted by the L.A. Times, Inside
       Climate News and Columbia University’s Energy and Environmental
       Reporting Project, Lieu also asked the DOJ to determine if Exxon
       violated shareholder protection, public health, truth in
       advertising, consumer protection and other laws.
       Exxon has denied any wrongdoing and said it has provided
       “continuous and publicly available climate research” that
       refutes claims that the firm deliberately suppressed data.”
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-030815183114.gif<br
       />
       “These activists took those statements out of context and
       ignored other readily available statements demonstrating that
       our researchers recognized the developing nature of climate
       science at the time which, in fact, mirrored global
       understanding,” Exxon vice president of public and government
       affairs Ken Cohen said in response to Lieu’s letter.
       Exxon confirmed in November that it received a subpoena from the
       attorney general of New York relating to climate change
       documents.
       Exxon added that it has included information about the business
       risk posed by climate change for many years in its 10-K,
       Corporate Citizenship Report and in other reports to
       shareholders.  ;)
       The New York Times reported that month that New York Attorney
       General Eric Schneiderman has been investigating the company for
       about a year and may be looking at information dating back to
       the 1970s.
       Schneiderman is reportedly investigating whether Exxon misled
       investors by failing to disclose the potential impact climate
       change could have on its business.
       The New York Attorney General’s Office has not commented on the
       matter.
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/02/california-congressman-call-for-shell-climate-probe/
       #Post#: 4624--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: March 3, 2016, 1:31 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Did he know too much?  It's not hard to MAKE somebody drive into
       a wall with a vehicle that does the job and drives away.
       [center]  [img
       width=30]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-300714025456.bmp[/img]<br
       />
       [/center]
       [center]
       Indicted ex-Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon dies in car
       wreck[/center]
       &#61447;Staff Writers  &#61463;March 2, 2016
       
       Ex-Chesapeake CEO and early pioneer of the American shale
       industry was killed in a single car accident in Oklahoma City
       today, one day after he was indicted for conspiracy to rig lease
       bids.
       According to Capt. Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City Police
       Department, McClendon, 56, crashed into an embankment while
       traveling at a “high rate of speed” in Oklahoma City just after
       9 a.m.
       [quote]“He pretty much drove straight into the wall,”[/quote]
       Balderrama said.
       McClendon’s 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe was immediately engulfed in
       flames.
       He stepped down from Chesapeake Energy in 2013, a company he
       co-founded in 1989.
       An federal grand jury indicted McClendon yesterday on conspiracy
       charges for his alleged involvement in fixing Oklahoma land
       lease bids.
       “His actions put company profits ahead of the interests of
       leaseholders entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights
       on their land. Executives who abuse their positions as leaders
       of major corporations to organize criminal activity must be held
       accountable for their actions,” Assistant Attorney General of
       the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Bill Baer said.
       McClendon was one of the highest paid executives in the United
       States for many years. In 2008, his pay package was $112
       million. The following year, Chesapeake offered him a five-year
       retention contract, including a $75 million bonus.
       He was a part owner of the NBA team, Oklahoma City Thunder.
       After he left Chesapeake Energy, McClendon founded American
       Energy Partners in 2013 and served as its CEO.
       “Aubrey’s tremendous leadership, vision, and passion for the
       energy industry had an impact on the community, the country, and
       the world.  ::)  We are tremendously proud of his legacy  [img
       width=20]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-070814193155.png[/img]<br
       />and will continue to work hard to live up to the unmatched
       standards he set for excellence and integrity,”  ::)  American
       Energy Partners
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
       />said in a statement.
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/indicted-ex-chesapeake-ceo-aubrey-mcclendon-dies-car-wreck/
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/indicted-ex-chesapeake-ceo-aubrey-mcclendon-dies-car-wreck/
       [center] [img
       width=340]
  HTML http://forum.ih8mud.com/attachments/h6a3a1d8f-jpeg.1060027/[/img][/center]
       Agelbert NOTE: For those who may find the tone of my post
       "inappropriate and offensive", here is some background on
       McClendon's "unmatched standards of excellency and integrity"...
       SNIPPET:
       [quote]March 2, 2016
       The indictment was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court
       for the Western District of Oklahoma.
       It alleges that McClendon “orchestrated” a conspiracy between
       “two large” oil and gas companies from December 2007 to March
       2012 to collaborate on bids for oil and gas leases in northwest
       Oklahoma.
       The conspirators allegedly decided who would place the winning
       bid ahead of time, with the winner then allocating an interest
       in the lease to the other company.
       McClendon also allegedly instructed his subordinates to execute
       the conspiratorial agreement, including withdrawing bids on
       leases and agreeing on how the stakes in the leases would be
       divided between the two companies.
       “His actions put company profits ahead of the interests of
       leaseholders
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
       />entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights on their
       land.  Executives who abuse their positions as leaders of major
       corporations to organize criminal activity must be held
       accountable for their actions,” Assistant Attorney General of
       the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Bill Baer said.
       McClendon left Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy in January 2013
       and currently serves as the CEO of American Energy Partners.
       Each violation of the Sherman Act carries a maximum penalty of
       10 years in prison and a $1 million fine for individuals.
       McClendon has denied any wrongdoing.
       [/quote]
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/feds-indict-aubrey-mcclendon-for-rigging-oklahoma-lease-bids/
       #Post#: 4627--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: March 3, 2016, 2:32 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]Aubrey McClendon’s car will tell whether he killed
       himself[/center]
       SNIPPET:
       [quote]Aubrey McClendon left a mystery: Did he deliberately
       drive his 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe SUV into a bridge support at high
       speed? Or did something else that he couldn’t control, such as a
       heart attack or other emergency, cause the crash?[/quote]
  HTML http://finance.yahoo.com/news/aubrey-mcclendon-s-car-will-tell-if-he-killed-himself-182023313.html#
       #Post#: 4706--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: March 16, 2016, 8:32 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Agelbert NOTE: More evidence that the fossil fuel industry is
       "responsible" and always "behaves ethically" towards its
       employees who are considered, as MKing the fossil fueler will be
       quick to tell you, the  "salt of the earth"...
       [center]
       [img
       width=100]
  HTML http://pm1.narvii.com/5869/6a64193d6770c3afd17406c78686c0eda32ded1c_hq.jpg[/img][/center]
       [center]Four oil and gas firms
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/2z6in9g.gif
       owe $1.6 million in
       back wages, Feds say[/center]
       Staff Writers March 16, 2016
       The U.S. Department of Labor said Monday it has identified $1.6
       million in back wages owed to oil and gas workers at four
       different firms.
       The DOL said investigations of Jet Specialties Inc. of Boerne,
       Texas, Frank’s International LLC and Stream-Flo USA LLC, of
       Houston and Viking Onshore Drilling LLC, of Odessa, Texas found
       violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime
       provisions.
       The four companies have more than 2,500 employees combined and
       owe employees a combined $1.6 million in back wages.
       According to the DOL, Jet Specialties considered salaried
       employees exempt from overtime requirements, failed to pay an
       overtime premium regardless of how many hours employees worked
       and failed to include bonus payments workers received as part of
       their regular pay rates when calculating overtime.
       Frank’s International failed to “pay proper overtime” after not
       including bonus payments in workers’ regular pay rates when
       computing overtime, and Stream-Flo USA paid nonexempt workers
       flat salaries without regard to how many hours they worked.
       Investigations of Frank’s International and Stream-Flo USA began
       in the Northeast and expanded to other U.S. locations, the
       agency said.
       Affected employees for both companies live in Colorado,
       Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,
       Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
       Viking Onshore Drilling failed to include bonus payments in
       workers’ regular rates when determining overtime pay, according
       to the DOL.
       Investigators found violations related to Viking Onshore
       Drilling operations in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
       “We continue to find unacceptably high numbers of violations in
       the oil and gas industry. We must ensure that employers pay
       workers the hard-earned wages they have rightfully earned,”
       regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division in the
       Southwest Betty Campbell said.
       
       Company Name
       Jet Specialties Inc.
       
       Frank’s International LLC
       Viking Onshore Drilling LLC
       Stream-Flo USA LLC
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/four-oil-gas-firms-owe-1-6-million-back-wages-feds-say/
  HTML http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/four-oil-gas-firms-owe-1-6-million-back-wages-feds-say/
       #Post#: 5389--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: June 27, 2016, 6:47 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]Our Opinion: Stifling renewables [/center]
       Posted: Friday, June 24, 2016 12:00 am
       Some N.C. politicians say they oppose tax credits and subsidies
       because they don’t think the government should be picking
       winners and losers in private industry. But they are clearly
       doing just that in regard to the state’s energy future.
       Bills in the N.C. House and Senate would deliver a knockout
       punch for solar and wind power development in North Carolina.
       [img
       width=60]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-041115022304.png[/img]
       House Bill 763  :evil4: , which cleared the Senate on Monday,
       would render most of eastern North Carolina off limits to wind
       farms, supposedly to protect current and future military bases.
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-220216203149.gif
       This economically disadvantaged area of the state, [I]which is
       uniquely suited to wind farms[/i], stands to lose two wind
       projects currently in the pipeline that total $700 million in
       investment.
       [center] [img
       width=150]
  HTML http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2009/347/2/6/WTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg[/img][/center]
       The permitting process in place already allows the military to
       weigh in on potential projects.
       Senate Bill 843 would require wind and solar farms to get a
       state permit and build a 1.5-mile buffer from neighboring
       property lines, including a landscape buffer for solar farms.
       Compare that to setbacks for facilities that are clearly
       noxious: 200 feet for hazardous waste landfills and 500 feet for
       swine waste lagoons. The setbacks currently proposed for natural
       gas fracking wells are 650 feet from an occupied building and
       200 feet from surface waters. The bill also requires renewable
       energy developers to guarantee millions of dollars to cover
       future costs of decommissioning, or removing the energy project
       at the end of its lifetime.
       [center] [img
       width=200]
  HTML http://media.tumblr.com/c6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e/tumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif[/img]<br
       />                            [img
       width=200]
  HTML http://media.tumblr.com/302d5f12cc0718fa860d4eb3560c6813/tumblr_inline_mr7yzosKkc1qz4rgp.gif[/img]
       [/center]
       Sen. Bill Cook (R-Beaufort) [img
       width=40]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013200859.png[/img]<br
       />said SB 843 stemmed from concerns he’d heard from coastal
       residents about environmental damage from wind and solar farms.
       Cook contends that solar farms permanently ruin farmland through
       land clearing, storm runoff, soil erosion and herbicide use.
       Hmm. Sounds like the same problems you encounter with an actual
       farm.
       [center] [img
       width=300]
  HTML http://memecrunch.com/meme/5L3XX/spiderman-bullshit-detector/image.jpg?w=544&c=1[/img]
       [/center]
       The state currently ranks third in overall solar capacity,
       thanks in large part to the renewable energy portfolio standard
       passed in 2007, which requires large utility companies like Duke
       Energy to provide increasing amounts of energy from renewable
       sources. [img
       width=70]
  HTML http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/yayayoy/yayayoy1106/yayayoy110600019/9735563-smiling-sun-showing-thumb-up.jpg[/img]<br
       />
       Some GOP legislators have been trying to repeal the renewable
       energy portfolio since 2013. House Bill 332 would freeze at 6
       percent the percentage of renewable energy that utility
       companies are required to provide. That percentage was scheduled
       to increase to 12.5 percent by 2021. Last year, the legislature
       ended the tax credit program for renewable energy development.
       State lawmakers are using every tactic to suppress this
       burgeoning industry, which added 3,000 jobs in the state last
       year, and invested $12 billion since 2007. The cost of solar has
       dropped significantly, and its addition to the power grid will
       eventually lower utility bills for everyone.
       SB 843 is titled Renewable Energy Property Protection
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/ugly004.gif,
       and HB 763 is called
       the Military Operations Protection Act  ::), but the real
       purpose of both is protecting big energy.
       [quote]Meanwhile, the legislature
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/d2.gif
       
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
       has done little to
       protect people or property in its rules for fracking [img
       width=30]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-070814193155.png[/img]<br
       />or its oversight of coal ash clean-up [img
       width=30]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-070814193155.png[/img].<br
       /> [/quote]
       Renewable energy companies can and will go elsewhere if the
       state creates a hostile environment. But the real losers will be
       the citizens of North Carolina.
       They will pay higher power bills, and watch as the state’s air,
       land and water are further degraded by dirty energy sources like
       coal, nuclear and natural gas.
  HTML http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-stifling-renewables/article_e342d5ff-07c5-5671-9bc2-5a39f06b86ee.html
  HTML http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-stifling-renewables/article_e342d5ff-07c5-5671-9bc2-5a39f06b86ee.html
       #Post#: 5471--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: July 16, 2016, 3:52 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote author=Eddie link=topic=3282.msg108547#msg108547
       date=1468694604]
       [quote author=knarf link=topic=3282.msg108532#msg108532
       date=1468679633]
       'Pence is going to help Trump with voters who can't decide if
       they're more worried that gay people will get a wedding cake or
       healthcare'.
       Presumptive Republican nominee for president Donald Trump
       announced Friday that he has chosen Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as
       his running mate.
       Gov. Pence is famously—or infamously—right-wing, and a
       particular darling of far-right Evangelical voters.
       Pundits surmised that Trump is attempting to sway the
       conservative Christian portion of the Republican party, which
       had previously rallied behind Ted Cruz.
       Progressives decried the decision. Leftists pointed out Pence's
       plethora of policy stances and decisions that have threatened
       civil rights, women's health, the environment, and the welfare
       of the most vulnerable since he was elected to Congress in 2000
       and then as Indiana's governor in 2012.
       Science Denier
       "Look, I don't know that [climate change] is a resolved issue in
       science today."—Gov. Mike Pence, 2014
       Regarding Pence's climate stance, Greenpeace listed the many
       times in which Pence [img
       width=40]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013200859.png[/img]acted<br
       />against the climate and for the oil and gas industry:
       As a Congressman, Pence consistently voted true to his
       climate denial, voting to prevent the EPA from regulating
       greenhouse gases, to reverse President Obama's Offshore
       Moratorium Act, and against enforcing limits on global carbon
       dioxide emissions. He was also a vocal critic of the Clean Power
       Plan, insisting in a letter to President Obama that Indiana
       would not comply.
       Pence joined his fellow House Republicans in
       opportunistically using the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to
       call for energy independence built on access to all of our
       domestic resources, including more offshore drilling. (Never
       mind that Deepwater Horizon was an offshore drilling rig in U.S.
       waters.)
       During his tenure as governor, he has overseen the expansion
       of the Whiting Refinery to process increasingly risky forms of
       fossil fuels, particularly petcoke and tar sands coming in from
       Canada. It is the 3rd largest tar sands refinery in the country,
       and its processing of petcoke, a byproduct of tar sands
       extraction that is cheaper and way dirtier than coal, has
       tripled in recent years.
       Pence has also expressed doubt regarding evolution. "Do I
       believe in evolution? I embrace the view that God created the
       heavens and the earth, the seas and all that's in them," he said
       on MSNBC in 2008.
       In the late 1990s, long after scientists had conclusively shown
       that cigarette smoking was linked to lung cancer, Pence
       dismissed such claims as "hysteria."
       Attacked Women's Rights
       In March, Pence signed into law what reproductive rights
       activists characterized as "one of the worst anti-abortion bills
       in the country." As Common Dreams reported:
       The law, which Pence said he signed "with a prayer," makes
       Indiana the second state in the nation, after North Dakota, to
       ban abortion in cases where a fetal anomaly is detected.
       It also mandates the burial and cremation of miscarried or
       aborted remains; restricts fetal tissue donation; and requires
       doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a
       hospital or to have an agreement with a doctor who does.
       Civil rights groups subsequently sued the state over what they
       described as a "cynical, deceptive attempt to ban abortions."
       Pence also joined many right-wingers in attacking Planned
       Parenthood in response to a fake video purporting to show the
       group selling bodily tissues. (The filmmakers were eventually
       indicted for tampering with government records.)
       Legalized Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination
       Last year, Pence signed into law the so-called "Religious
       Freedom Restoration Act" that gave "legal cover, under the guise
       of 'religious liberties,' to any businesses or individuals who
       wish to violate anti-discrimination laws," as Common Dreams
       reported.
       As Rolling Stone's Jeb Lund wrote:
       Pence and Indiana Republicans capitalized on a decades-long
       manipulation of "religious freedom" as an excuse to exclude and
       punish groups they see as immoral or repugnant, leveraging
       religion's perquisites to create a bubble of legitimated
       pre-Civil Rights Era prejudice (and tax avoidance). Only Pence
       and company went too far: Indiana's RFRA didn't just protect
       religious intolerance from government interference but actually
       empowered business to discriminate against immoral other folk
       without risk of civil rights lawsuits. Only, when pressed even
       to answer yes or no as to whether Pence had just signed a bill
       that legalized religious discrimination of gays, he sputtered
       and retreated. Typically, the Onion did the best job of anyone
       when it came to nailing him to a wall.
       Tried to Privatize Social Security
       "Governor Pence has a long history of fighting to cut and
       privatize Social Security," writes Nancy Altman, co-director of
       the progressive group Social Security Works. Altman released the
       following statement in reaction to Trump's choice of Pence for
       VP:
       In 2005, [Pence] was the leader of a group of House
       Republicans who criticized George W. Bush’s Social Security
       privatization plan for not being extreme enough! He supports
       raising the retirement age and other cuts to Social Security
       benefits. This despite the fact that the nation is facing a
       looming retirement income crisis, which is likely to be harshest
       for younger Americans.
       Pence has shown his desire to dismantle Social Security
       brick by brick, or even faster. He insultingly calls our Social
       Security system an “entitlement” rather than the earned benefit
       that it is. This attitude towards Social Security, the people’s
       pension, fits in perfectly with Donald Trump’s outrageous claim
       that Social Security is an illegal Ponzi Scheme. This name
       calling is an insult to every worker and Social Security
       beneficiary. It is an insult to all of us.
       Iraq War Propagandist
       Igor Volposky, deputy director of the Campaign for America's
       Future Action Fund, dug into congressional records and
       discovered that during his tenure in the House of
       Representatives, Pence had served as "Bush's chief war
       propagandist" when it came to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
       "Before he became governor of Indiana and a candidate to be
       Donald Trump's vice-presidential nominee, Mike Pence was a
       congressman, and he voted for every free-trade agreement that
       came before him," the Washington Post wrote.
       Pence's stance has apparently already hurt his state's workers:
       "This year, Pence urged an Indiana manufacturer, Carrier Corp.,
       to reconsider a decision to move 1,400 jobs from Indiana to
       Mexico. The company is continuing with the plans but agreed to
       repay some state and local tax incentives," the Post reported.
       "After meeting with the company, Pence said he did not want to
       give Indiana workers 'false hope' that the jobs would stay in
       their state."
       Anti-Immigrants
       Service Employees International Union (SEIU) executive vice
       president Rocio Saenz condemned Pence's record on immigration in
       a statement released Friday:
       [Pence's] positions on immigration are anti-immigrant and
       anti-family. If Donald Trump wasn’t enough to alienate Latino
       voters, a Trump/Pence ticket will be the ultimate deal breaker
       for one of the fastest-growing demographics.
       His latest attack against immigrants and their American
       children came when he joined 25 other Republican governors in a
       lawsuit that blocked Obama’s executive initiatives on
       immigration, DAPA and DACA that would have shielded
       approximately five million undocumented immigrants from
       deportation.
       Governor Pence is not a friend of the immigrant community.
       And in response to Trump's decision, Twitter erupted on Friday
       with comments both decrying and quipping about Trump's choice.
  HTML http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/15/anti-women-anti-immigrant-anti-lgbtq-crusader-trump-finds-perfect-match-pence-vp
  HTML http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/15/anti-women-anti-immigrant-anti-lgbtq-crusader-trump-finds-perfect-match-pence-vp
       [/quote]
       Definitely a marriage of convenience designed to deliver the
       powerful religious know-nothing vote.
       It's a big **** (typical Trump behavior?), and bound to have
       lots of fall-out.
       Begs, the question, "Whose idea was this?"
       Maybe Newt Gingrich told him to do it. I don't think it was The
       Donald's idea.
       [/quote]
       Pence is, ABOVE ALL, a Koch Brothers TOOL. He has his head so
       far up the fossil fuel industry descending colon that he peddles
       the BULLSHIT that global warming is a "myth".
       [center] [img
       width=540]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-171015155423.jpeg[/img][/center]
       [center]Pence
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gen152.gif<br
       />enjoying a day at the beach.
  HTML https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/stupid-im-with-arrow-left.gif<br
       />[/center]
       #Post#: 5492--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: July 25, 2016, 11:29 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       July 25, 2016
       [center] DENIER ROUNDUP by  [img
       width=140]
  HTML http://climatenexus.org/sites/all/themes/climatenexus/logo.png[/img]
       [/center]
       Agelbert NOTE: The Fossil Fuel Industry CORRUPTED Gooberment is
       DOING WHAT THEY DO to defend Profit over People and Planet.
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714183337.bmp
       [quote] [center]ICYMI: FBI Infiltrates 350.org, API Infiltrates
       RNC/DNC, And More[/center]
       [size=10pt]There was a lot that happened last week, and a lot of
       stories we didn’t get to. So to start off the new week, let’s
       quickly go through some of the great content you might have
       missed:
       First, there’s Lee Fang and Steve Horn’s piece in The Intercept
       about how local and federal law enforcement agencies went
       undercover into fracking protest groups, including local
       branches of 350.org. Emails obtained through FOIA requests show
       law enforcement working closely with the corporations whose
       activities were being protested. Of course they didn’t find
       anything criminal in the peaceful protests, just like the FBI’s
       past investigation into Keystone XL protests turned up nothing
       to justify the surveillance of private citizens meeting
       peacefully to express themselves.
       Next there is the Alex Emmons piece, again in The Intercept,
       about how the Washington Post and The Atlantic push the limits
       of ethical journalism by hosting panel events sponsored by the
       American Petroleum Institute at the RNC, where climate deniers
       went basically unchallenged when repeating myths (like they did
       on regular programming on Fox News). There are similar,
       API-sponsored events planned for the DNC, and as reporting in
       The Intercept earlier this month showed, Politico and The Hill
       are also cashing in on the sponsored content gravy train.
       Meanwhile, the congressional speeches documenting the Koch and
       Exxon #WebofDenial have been annotated for future reference. And
       eight of the senators who spoke also penned a letter in response
       to the #WebofDenial groups that criticized the effort, asking
       those groups to reveal their funders to prove that they really
       do, as the web of groups claim, “represent many, many millions
       of Americans.” The senators suspect the groups really just
       represent the “many, many millions” of dollars funneled through
       “identity scrubbing” organizations like Donors Trust that
       conceal just how much the Kochs or ExxonMobil dole out.
       Speaking of ExxonMobil, the Union of Concerned Scientists pushed
       back on fossil-fuel-funded Lamar Smith’s unconstitutional and
       McCarthy-based subpoena of the #ExxonKnew investigators with an
       op-ed in the New York Times, while NCSE wrote a blog of their
       own on the issue. Dana Nuccitelli at the Guardian laid out the
       tobacco court case parallels, while Senator Elizabeth Warren
       (D-MA) pushed back on Smith and Exxon in a tweetstorm so intense
       it generated press.
       Though maybe the fossil fuel and tobacco narrative isn’t exactly
       what we thought it to be after all. Documents unearthed by the
       Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and published
       on their Smoke and Fumes page suggest that the oil industry
       didn’t actually use the tobacco industry’s playbook. Instead, it
       looks like Big Oil wrote the PR playbook back in the 1950s, then
       tobacco picked it up and followed! According to CIEL president
       Carroll Muffett, having done PR work for the oil industry “was a
       pedigree the tobacco companies recognized and sought out.”
       So what did we learn last week, besides that The Intercept is
       doing great investigative journalism? Well for one thing, if
       you’re the conductor of the fossil fuel gravy train, you can buy
       panels at political events to blur the line between news and
       advertisements.
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
       Oh, and that suspiciously well-groomed protester who just showed
       up? He might be a narc. Because infiltrating advocacy
       organizations that are expressing their rights to assemble and
       free speech without any evidence of any wrongdoing is apparently
       just fine when corporate profits are at stake.
       But if a non-profit organization requests the investigation of a
       [b]corporation’s decades-long history of potential fraud  [img
       width=40]
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/pirates5B15D_th.gif[/img][/b]...well<br
       />then you’re a threat to free speech  ::), and a congressperson
       riding the gravy train might just subpoena your organization.
  HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/2z6in9g.gif
       In other words, go up against the fossil fuel gravy train, and
       you might get railed.
  HTML http://dl8.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1238/1238988d68zgywbnq.gif[/quote]<br
       />
       [center][img
       width=100]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-120716190938.png[/img][/center]
       #Post#: 5495--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
       By: AGelbert Date: July 27, 2016, 2:39 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]New York, Mass. AGs Reject Subpoena Request   [img
       width=50]
  HTML http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/xig/ojx/xigojx6KT.png[/img]
       [/center]
       The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts said they
       will refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena for records
       on their investigations into ExxonMobil. A letter from New York
       AG Eric Schneiderman’s council called the July 13 subpoena from
       Lamar Smith  [img
       width=40]
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013200859.png[/img],<br
       />Chairman of the House Science Committee, “an unprecedented
       effort” to target the ongoing investigations.
       Massachusetts AG Maura Healey’s council issued a similar letter,
       calling the subpoena an “unconstitutional and unwarranted
       interference.” Smith, who had set a deadline of today for all
       subpoenaed parties to respond, said he was “disappointed that
       Schneiderman and Healey refused to comply.”
  HTML http://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-climatechange-idUSKCN1062GX?il=0
       *****************************************************
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