The Koch Brothers and climate change

[Prospero]

It's hardly news that the infamous Koch Brothers have been funding right wing causes - including substantial support for the Tea Party. It now emerges with ever greater clarity the role they are playing in bogus research to debunk evidence of climate change.

This appeared in Scientific American a few months back

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ontrariness-on

and today The Independent Newspaper in the UK had an expose of their tricks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...e-8466312.html

This was a report from December 2012.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/...global_warming


Surely it is time the US government did something concrete to stop these people and their lies?

[fivekatz]

Sadly with the way the SCOTUS is stacked, the Koch's have more cover than ever before to create astroturf groups with nifty names like "Citizens for Health Air" that when translated into action means Koch Bros. for Burning More Coal."

[Prospero]

Sadly I think you are right fivekatz... but the more light shone on the Koch's nefariousness, the better.

[Jamie Michelle]

It's hardly news that the infamous Koch Brothers have been funding right wing causes - including substantial support for the Tea Party. It now emerges with ever greater clarity the role they are playing in bogus research to debunk evidence of climate change.

This appeared in Scientific American a few months back

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ontrariness-on

and today The Independent Newspaper in the UK had an expose of their tricks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...e-8466312.html

This was a report from December 2012.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/...global_warming


Surely it is time the US government did something concrete to stop these people and their lies?

The Koch brothers are etatists who have been directing the supposedly "libertarian" Cato Institute toward being supine apologists of the government.

If what you want is massive government having total control over your life, then the Koch brothers represent no threat to that and are in fact your friend.

Regarding the Tea Party, it is not a formal organization. Your characterization of it being right-wing is incorrect, as it is in fact left-wing and liberal in its origins. The modern Tea Party began on December 16, 2006 in order to promote 9/11 Truth: the event involved dumping copies of the 9/11 Commission Report into the Boston Harbor. It later became a part of the Dr. Ron Paul movement, as many 9/11 Truth members rolled it over into supporting him. For example, see the following two items:

"Boston Tea Party 2006", 911Truth.org, Dec. 16, 2006 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?...61217193729511 , http://www.webcitation.org/6DyCCNpBa , http://wayback.archive.org/web/20080...61217193729511 , http://www.webcitation.org/6DyCNKImo

"Kevin Barrett at Boston Tea Party For 911 Truth", RadicalPragmatist, Dec. 18, 2006

So calm down, as the last thing in the world the Koch brothers are going to do is get the government out of our lives concerning supposed "environmental" matters.

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.

[broncofan]

The only people who think the discussion is a simple matter of pro-government v. anti-government are deranged religious fundamentalists^^with zero capacity for rational thought. The Koch Brothers may not oppose government intervention on all matters (only unrealistic, unemployed potheads do) but they clearly are not environmentalists, nor do they believe the government has a constructive role in correcting market failures such as the externalities presented by the industrial pollution of natural resources.

It seems that the question of whether the tea party is liberal in its origins or began as a 9/11 truther organization is irrelevant to what it is that they support today. Of course this is the first time I've heard an organization defended based on its origins as a pseudo-scientific quack mill. What's next you're going to bolster their credibility by claiming they were formed by alchemists and flat-earthers? Today they support politicans who are regressive when it comes to women's rights, who believe conception following rape can be a gift from the almighty, who oppose progressive taxes unless they come on the back of a myriad of program cuts, and who stand mostly in opposition to gay marriage.

Presenting the tea party as left-wing is something only an individual who inhabits a separate universe would find sensible.

[fivekatz]

The Tea Party's origins mean very little considering the name applied by the media for the Tea Party took its full traction in 2009.

Originally seen as a backlash against government intervention in the financial meltdown, it quickly became a movement that made its signature issues health care reform and the 44th President. Many of the political figures they have brought to the forefront have been quite entertaining (Bachman, Palin, Ayers, etc).

Koch Bros interests in libertarian thought IMHO is motivated by the fact that any informed oversight by the government would for the most part limit their accumulation of wealth. Not eliminate it by any means, which is the ironic part of the capitalists resistance to any intervention and unfettered capitalism.

Without some sort of safety nets, government building infrastructure and pushing towards strategic directions with a longer view the the next quarterly earnings statements, capitalists are sure to suffer far more harm than they will from restriction on their production or net income.

Sadly these folks can't see beyond winning "the game" and every round of "the game" possible. It is what on one hand makes them prolific earners but dangerous citizens and when the SCOTUS confused free speech with unfettered cash expenditure to amplify speech, it empowered a very dangerous force.

[Jamie Michelle]

The only people who think the discussion is a simple matter of pro-government v. anti-government are deranged religious fundamentalists^^with zero capacity for rational thought. The Koch Brothers may not oppose government intervention on all matters (only unrealistic, unemployed potheads do) but they clearly are not environmentalists, nor do they believe the government has a constructive role in correcting market failures such as the externalities presented by the industrial pollution of natural resources.

It seems that the question of whether the tea party is liberal in its origins or began as a 9/11 truther organization is irrelevant to what it is that they support today. Of course this is the first time I've heard an organization defended based on its origins as a pseudo-scientific quack mill. What's next you're going to bolster their credibility by claiming they were formed by alchemists and flat-earthers? Today they support politicans who are regressive when it comes to women's rights, who believe conception following rape can be a gift from the almighty, who oppose progressive taxes unless they come on the back of a myriad of program cuts, and who stand mostly in opposition to gay marriage.

Presenting the tea party as left-wing is something only an individual who inhabits a separate universe would find sensible.

I suppose you meant your above response to be in reply to my above post.

I see that you are a government religionist. The same governments (including the United Nations) that gave us the Vietnam War, the Iraq War (both of them), Afghanistan, Libya, and so on and on: these are the governments which you want to save us from some supposed environmental cataclysm? Really? These gaggle of warmongers, war-profiteers, merchants of death, mass-murderers and liars are supposed to be our saviors?

The Tea Party has now been taken over by the political establishment. Your conception of political reality is false. The Democrat and Republican establishment are two arms on the same beast. Both arms work together to screw-over the US public. It doesn't matter if you get in an Obama or Romney, as both are members of the Bilderberg Group. Whoever is in office, the same agenda continues: unlimited government.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."—H. L. Mencken, "Women as Outlaws", A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), p. 29. This essay was first published in The Smart Set, December 1921.

For much more concerning the above matters, see under the heading "The New World Order: Government’s Attempt at Autoapotheosis", pp. 87-98 of my following article, being sure to read the footnotes, since much of the information on this is contained within said footnotes:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysic...ryOfEverything , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redfor...ics-of-God.pdf , http://www.scribd.com/doc/79273334

[martin48]

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.

I'm so pleased to see reasoned and rational, not to say moderate, views expressed here. This "God" of yours looks like a nice guy.

[Jamie Michelle]

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.

I'm so pleased to see reasoned and rational, not to say moderate, views expressed here. This "God" of yours looks like a nice guy.

That "God"--i.e., government--is by far the most prolific serial-killer and mass-murderer that has ever existed. Government is the most massive death-cult in human history. For much more on this, see Sec. 8.2: "Ponerology Vis-à-Vis Politics" of my following article:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysic...ryOfEverything , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redfor...ics-of-God.pdf , http://www.scribd.com/doc/79273334

[Stavros]

A bogus claim denied by the history of illness and disease -I did point this out to you in an earlier exchange but you refused to debate it. Your ignorance of the plague and various other diseases that wiped out large percentages of humanity doesn't fit your pseudo-political agenda.