Libya

[russtafa]

I agree with Ben on this issue

[Stavros]

Institutional constraints demand that they dodge the costs to others whether it's pollution -- or the big one: global warming.

Again I can't agree: global warming began before the oil industry began to dominate the energy sector; and far from dodging costs, it was the independent oil industry that began the practical measure of carbon storage and sequestration, and developed the practicalities of carbon trading; and is the sector which has actually reduced carbon emissions more, for example, than the power industry.

[Cuchulain]

Institutional constraints demand that they dodge the costs to others whether it's pollution -- or the big one: global warming.

Again I can't agree: global warming began before the oil industry began to dominate the energy sector; and far from dodging costs, it was the independent oil industry that began the practical measure of carbon storage and sequestration, and developed the practicalities of carbon trading; and is the sector which has actually reduced carbon emissions more, for example, than the power industry.

Yeah...Big Oil are the good guys. That's why they spend so much money funding junk science climate change deniers.

'Greenpeace has released the report "Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine" to expose the connections between these climate denial front groups and the secretive billionaires who are funding their efforts. The Koch brothers, their family members, and their employees direct a web of financing that supports conservative special interest groups and think-tanks, with a strong focus on fighting environmental regulation, opposing clean energy legislation, and easing limits on industrial pollution. This money is typically funneled through one of three "charitable" foundations the Kochs have set up: the Claude R. Lambe Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Foundation; and the David H. Koch Foundation.' http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campai...ch-industries/

'The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...eptics-funding

[Stavros]

I did not say the independent oil companies are the 'good guys', even if my former post might have implied so: the case of Exxon is one in which this US-based firm has to deny that the oil industry has contributed to global warming because it is terrified of being taken to court if the Sierra Club or the Wilderness Society or whoever can make a precise link between some aspect of global warming and a tangible contravention of US law. It is because global warming is not recognised in law as a factor in environmental damage that companies are not being prosecuted -at least I assume that this is the legal case. I believe there is such a thing as global warming, and that in part it must be due to human activity since the onset of the industrial revolution in the 18thc, but many people dispute what it is, and my earlier point about the measures taken by oil companies to reduce emissions and come up with other solutions, remains on file for your consideration. There is a difference between a moral argument, and a legal one. Incidentally, I understand Exxon's installations are the most carbon efficient in the world, as far as oil and gas installations can be.

ps, can we re-orient this back to Libya? Its more interesting...

[onmyknees]

Yeah...Big Oil are the good guys. That's why they spend so much money funding junk science climate change deniers.

'Greenpeace has released the report "Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine" to expose the connections between these climate denial front groups and the secretive billionaires who are funding their efforts. The Koch brothers, their family members, and their employees direct a web of financing that supports conservative special interest groups and think-tanks, with a strong focus on fighting environmental regulation, opposing clean energy legislation, and easing limits on industrial pollution. This money is typically funneled through one of three "charitable" foundations the Kochs have set up: the Claude R. Lambe Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Foundation; and the David H. Koch Foundation.' http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campai...ch-industries/

'The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...eptics-funding

Blame it on the Koch boys !! LMAO...haven't they been busy up in Wisconsin pulling Walker's Strings ? And now onto Ohio and Michigan ? My they are busy indeed.

You lament about a measly 50K donated to The Heritage Foundation ...that won't fund a foundation that size for more than a week. Doubtful they'd sell thier soul for that amount, but it does make for interesting conspiracy theories for the left.

[Cuchulain]

Blame it on the Koch boys !! LMAO...haven't they been busy up in Wisconsin pulling Walker's Strings ? And now onto Ohio and Michigan ? My they are busy indeed.

What, only two !! ? You're getting lazy in your old age, or maybe a little tendonitis? The Koch boys remind me of mega-corp 'Engulf and Devour' from Mel Brook's 'Silent Movie', whose motto was 'our fingers are in everything'.

Hard to believe that even you would deny that Big Energy is funding the climate change deniers, but then, deny and spin is what the REICHwing is all about. Karl Rove would be proud of you. Here's a summary of the Greenpeace report:
'Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/med...secretly-fund/

Selling your soul is a prerequisite for working at the Heritage Foundation. The ceremony is rumored to involve self-flagellation and the ritual sacrifice of bunnies in front of a statue of JP Morgan...

[Prospero]

This is how a British tabloid paper was covering the story today.

[Ben]

Be Consistent—Invade Saudi Arabia
by Robert Scheer

It’s the black gold that drives nations mad and inevitably raises the question of whether America and the former European colonial powers give a damn about human rights as the basis for military intervention. If Libya didn’t have more oil than any other nation in Africa would the West be unleashing high-tech military mayhem to contain what is essentially a tribal-based civil war? Once again an American president summons the passions of a human rights crusade against a reprehensible ruler whose crimes, while considerable, are not significantly different from those of dictators the U.S routinely protects.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Moammar Gadhafi must now go not because his human rights record is egregious but rather because his erratic hold on power seems spent. After all, from the London School of Economics to Harvard, influential foreign policy experts were all too happy until quite recently to accept Libyan payoffs in exchange for a more benign view of Gadhafi’s prospects for change under the gentle guidance of what Harvard’s Joseph Nye celebrated as “soft power.”
But that revisionist appraisal of Gadhafi suddenly became an embarrassment when this nutty dictator—whom few in the world could ever understand, let alone warm to—was exposed by defections from his own armed forces to be akin to rotten fruit destined to drop. Libya’s honeymoon with the West, during which leaders led by Tony Blair and George W. Bush thought Col. Gadhafi might finally prove to be a worthy partner more concerned with reliably exporting oil than ineffectively ranting against Western imperialism, has suddenly been abandoned as no longer necessary. As with former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein before him, the Libyan strongman now seemed an awkward relic of a time that had passed him by, and easily replaceable. Not so the royal ruler of Saudi Arabia and the surrogates he finances in Yemen and Bahrain; their suppression of their peoples still falls within acceptable limits because of the vast resources the king manages in a manner that Western leaders have long found agreeable.
But this time, in the glaring light of the democratic currents sweeping through the Mideast, the contradictions in supporting one set of dictators while toppling others may prove impossible for the U.S. and its allies to effectively manage. The recognition, widely demanded throughout the region, that even ordinary Middle Easterners have inalienable rights is a sobering notion not easily co-opted. Why don’t those rights to self-determination extend to Shiites in the richest oil province in Saudi Arabia or for that matter to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza?
The fallback position for U.S. policymakers is the “war on terror” standard under which our dictators are needed to control super-fanatic Muslims. That’s why the U.S trained the Republican Guard led by the son of the despised ruler of Yemen as the counterterrorism liaison with Washington. On Tuesday it was the tanks of the lavishly U.S-equipped Republican Guard that stood as the final line of support surrounding the Presidential Palace as calls for departure of Yemen’s dictator increased in intensity. The U.S. was still following the lead of Saudi Arabia, long a financier of the Yemeni ruler.
The Saudi lead was made clearer in the kingdom’s support for the royal family in neighboring Bahrain as Saudi troops were sent in along with forces from the United Arab Emirates to suppress Bahraini democracy advocates claiming that freedom would enhance the power of the majority Shiite population. The fraud here is to locate Shiite Iran as the center of terrorism when it was the Sunni monarchies that were most closely identified with the problems that gave rise to al-Qaida. Not only did 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 come from Saudi Arabia but Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Pakistan, were the only countries to diplomatically recognize the Taliban regime that harbored al-Qaida. In Bahrain the majority Shiite population is dismissed as potentially under the sway of the rulers of Iran without strong evidence to that effect. Once again it is convenient to ignore the fact that Iran, as was the case with Saddam’s Iraq, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack that launched the U.S. war on terror.
All of which elevates the question of how long will the U.S. and its allies ignore the elephant in the room posed by an alliance for human rights and anti-terrorism with regimes in the Middle East that stand for neither? While the jury is still out on whether the West’s attack on Libya will prove to be a boon for that nation’s population, at the very least it should expose the deep hypocrisy of continuing to sell huge amounts of arms and otherwise supporting Saudi Arabia and its contingent tyrannies.

[muhmuh]

This is how a British tabloid paper was covering the story today.

i think they have gaddafi and berlusconi confused
then again they wouldnt be virgins if it were silvio

[onmyknees]

Yeah...Big Oil are the good guys. That's why they spend so much money funding junk science climate change deniers.

'Greenpeace has released the report "Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine" to expose the connections between these climate denial front groups and the secretive billionaires who are funding their efforts. The Koch brothers, their family members, and their employees direct a web of financing that supports conservative special interest groups and think-tanks, with a strong focus on fighting environmental regulation, opposing clean energy legislation, and easing limits on industrial pollution. This money is typically funneled through one of three "charitable" foundations the Kochs have set up: the Claude R. Lambe Foundation; the Charles G. Koch Foundation; and the David H. Koch Foundation.' http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campai...ch-industries/

'The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...eptics-funding

You're funny. I don't think big oil is neither bad....nor good. I think they act in thier best self interest as any other industry. Shocking revelation for you.....but if you've ever been to K Street in DC, you know Big Oil is hardly the only industry with lobbyists !! Shocking...I know. How about Health Care Lobbyists? Barry's pretty cozy with those folks !

You want to make big oil irrelevent ??....advocat for a cogent energy policy cause windmills tilting in the wind in Iowa and electric cars ain't gettin' it !!!!!!!!!