How do we know that Solyndra and First Solar and Fisker Automotive and thirty other failed Obama-subsidized green energy ventures are (or were) highly moral enterprises? Because they are all going bankrupt. They all produce less value for consumers than they cost in resources. That’s good because producing net value—making money—is the criterion of immorality.
Such, at least, is the message from ExxonHatesYourChildren.com, where an actor pretending to speak for Exxon smugly plays the Grinch:
Here at Exxon we hate your children. We all know the climate crisis will rip their world apart but we don’t care, because it’s making us rich.
Wait a minute. If they are getting rich, doesn’t that mean they have to be creating quite a bit of value? Doesn’t it mean that people need the gasoline that Exxon is producing and find it’s price inexpensive compared to the value they get out of it? Indeed, if gasoline producers stopped producing, wouldn’t everyone, including the children, die practically on the spot?
Condemning energy suppliers is just as perverse as condemning food suppliers. Unfortunately we have to take these people seriously because the country just re-elected a president who thinks much the same way, so witness the dripping hatred for mankind, made palatable (to some) by a sugar coating of anti-capitalism and class warfare. Here’s the video:
Here at Exxon we hate your children. We all know the climate crisis will rip their world apart but we don’t care, because it’s making us rich. That’s right, every year Congress gives the fossil fuel industry over ten billion dollars in subsidies. That’s your tax dollars lining our pockets, making a fortune destroying your kids’ future. At Exxon, that’s what we call ‘good business’.
The ExxonHatesYourChildren.com website was created by Andrew Boyd, an eco-leftist activist who was an originator of the class-war demagoguery of the Occupy movement. That’s why Boyd’s group is called “The Other 98%.” Boyd got in early, before his Occupy comrades decided that 98 to 2 was not enough advantage and changed their slogan to “the 99%.” These people have backing all the way to the top of the Democratic Party. New Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren claims to have laid the intellectual foundation for the Occupy movement and Obama himself endorses it (“we are on their side“).
Where are the REAL subsidies going?
Of course Boyd’s demagoguery goes beyond his explicit appeal to class warfare. His group is also fabulously dishonest. When they (and Obama) claim that oil companies are getting billions in subsidies what they mean is that Exxon gets to take advantage of the same tax breaks that other businesses do in order to keep a bit more of the money they earned. Keeping your own money is not a subsidy.
Want to see some real subsidies? Check out Obama’s bankrupt 33 (from The Heritage Foundation), with the amounts of direct taxpayer funding each received from the Obama Administration. The 19 asterisked companies have already filed for bankruptcy. The others are near bankruptcy:
1.Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2.SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3.Solyndra ($535 million)*
4.Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5.Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6.SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7.First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8.Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9.EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10.Amonix ($5.9 million)
11.Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12.Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13.A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14.Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15.Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16.Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17.ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18.Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19.Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20.Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21.Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22.Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23.Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24.Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25.Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26.GreenVolts ($500,000)
27.Vestas ($50 million)
28.LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29.Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30.Navistar ($39 million)
31.Satcon ($3 million)*
32.Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33.Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
As for “tax subsidies” (letting earners keep their money), the vast majority of those also go to “green” energy. From the Congressional Budget Office:
Since green energy is tiny compared to brown energy, the subsidy as a percentage of the industry is vastly larger for green energy than even this graph indicates. Heritage has run the numbers:
…wind energy companies, for instance, get about 1000 times the subsidies that oil companies do, per kilowatt-hour of energy produced.
Just for fun, somebody should ask some actual children what they would think of a character who tried to turn off the electricity and take away gasoline. It’s like the villain in a superhero movie. And that “climate crisis” that is supposedly going to “rip their world apart”? Notice that Boyd et al. lack the conviction to even call it “global warming.” Apparently they know full well that global temperature has not risen significantly in over a decade but are unwilling to relinquish the demagogic power that comes from blaming natural phenomena on their capitalist enemy.
D Böehm, thank you for presenting another positive reason for voting for Obama! While both sides have their ideological nut cases, your testimony offers a good explanation of why Romney lost. He had to appeal to extremists for whom facts and history were inconvenient truths. Like many, I loved Ron Paul’s authenticity, but Romney and Obama needed to appeal to a much more diverse constituency, many of whom they, no doubt, disagreed with. That’s politics, and makes it difficult to be or even appear authentic. Thus, on either side, the haters are able to, and will, attribute those most extreme positions to the candidates themselves. Nothing new there. Judith Curry talks about tribalism in the climate wars, but it’s pretty much a subset of political tribalism, isn’t it. For extremeists like D Boehm, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” I like another Moynihan quote even better because it speaks to the irrationality and tribalism that characterizes so much of politics, and the climate wars, and life, “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” Count me among the honorary Irish!
Oh Chris B- tell that to my liberal friends- ha!
@Zeke: Your first link, a guest post by Craig Rucker, has no links to scientific literature. There are links to the Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily; not the same things.
In your 2nd reference, I clicked on reference links 6 and 7 for more info on the science, but I get ‘Not found’ errors. Also, some of the references didn’t seem like good primary lines of evidence and reasoning. If 550 year old mummies had more mercury in their hair then current humans, that’s interesting, but how do I know if they didn’t die from some mercury related cause of death? Also, their sources of mercury contamination might not have been via the atmosphere, but an atmospheric vector may be a more toxic pathway for contamination to affect humans.
Finally, a quick Google Scholar search for ‘atmospheric mercury sources’ generates an awful lot of hits. E.g., this one: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GB001847.shtml
which says, “There is no evidence of a significant enhancement in the atmospheric Hg flux as a result of preindustrial (<1900 c.e. (Common Era)) activities such as the extensive Au and Ag mining in the Americas. (3) A factor of 3 and 5x increase in the deposition of Hg to the lake sediment archives was observed since the advent of the industrial revolution in New Zealand and Nova Scotia respectively, suggesting a worldwide increase in the atmospheric deposition of Hg. Furthermore, this increase is synchronous with increases in the release of CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels on a global scale."
This suggests an anthropogenic contribution of mercury to the atmosphere of ~80%, not 0.5%.
Has Soon published anything in peer reviewed literature about anthropogenic Hg? I'm not getting that impression….
Minority opinion: There are other reasons why Romney lost. 3 million people who voted for McCain did not turn out to vote for the former Gov of Mass. He did not run against Obamacare and he did not run against emissions reductions/renewables legislation. He was deeply invested in both of those, while all of the Representatives in the House who voted – 30 times – to repeal ObamaRomneycare are safely re-elected, enjoying the fruits of doing the right thing. We had a lot of flat tax candidates who were outspent by a factor of 5-20 in every state by the Romney 8-year Presidential Campaign. Ron Paul, most conveniently for Romney, dropped out of the race after the nomination.
Chris B says of Doug Allen:
“A window into the uncensored mind of a liberal thinker. I can see the far side, unobstructed.”
Yes, they are quite wacked out, no doubt about it. If it were not for psychological projection, they wouldn’t have much to say. Allen labels me an “extremeist” [sic]. That is projection, because all I want is for the government to follow the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That’s all.
That doesn’t make me an “extremeist”, that makes me an ordinary American. The extremists are those [on the Right or the Left] who want to be the totalitarians. Currently that job description applies almost exclusively to the Left. For proof, see here.
That is typical extremist tyranny, just like the EPA’s ruling [recently reversed by the Supreme Court] that a temporary mud puddle in a homeowner’s yard made his property a “wetland”.
These anti-Constitutional ‘czars’ decisions come straight from the most extreme tyrant who has ever held the office: Obama himself. Can there be any doubt? Doug Allen is a craven Obama apologist. I wonder how his projecting extremist mindset will allow him to give this destruction of a business on trumped-up charges a free pass? I suppose cognitive dissonance might explain it. Or more likely, Allen’s hatred for a free society.
Some facts about the taxes that oil companies contribute to our treasury. Of course other companies contribute similar funds. This is from an earlier financial report: (note that over 50% of Exxon Mobil incomes from overseas investments which possibly explains how they actually paid more than they earned in the US)
“ExxonMobil is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States
Last year, our total taxes and duties to the U.S. government topped $9.8 billion, which includes an income tax expense of $1.6 billion. Over the past five years, we incurred a total U.S. tax expense of almost $59 billion, which is $18 billion more than we earned in the United States during the same period. Critics often try to ignore these facts by saying the oil and gas industry receives “subsidies.” But what they really mean is that they want to increase our taxes by taking away long-standing deductions for our industry while leaving these same deductions in place for other sectors of the economy”
Then there are lease expenses and royalities which until recently contributed more to the treasury than any other source except income tax. Lease $$ fell dramatically under the current administration as the number of leases fell. This from the API:
CLAIM: The American people aren’t getting their fair share from oil and gas companies drilling and producing on federal lands in and in federal waters. FACT: The U.S. government’s revenues from federal oil and gas production and leasing is on par with the rest of the world when bonus bids – the upfront fees paid by oil and natural gas companies to purchase leases – are factored in. In 2008, the U.S. collected almost $23 billion in revenues from federal oil and gas production and leases: $13 billion in royalties and $10 billion in bonus bids.
Guess how much green energy contributed to the treasury?
According to Romney the taxpayers contributed 80-90 billion and I can’t see very many BTU’s from that “investment..
Metamars says:
[Peer reviewed paper] says, “There is no evidence of a significant enhancement in the atmospheric Hg flux as a result of preindustrial (<1900 c.e. (Common Era)) activities such as the extensive Au and Ag mining in the Americas. (3) A factor of 3 and 5x increase in the deposition of Hg to the lake sediment archives was observed since the advent of the industrial revolution in New Zealand and Nova Scotia respectively, suggesting a worldwide increase in the atmospheric deposition of Hg."
The statement, “There is no evidence of significant atmospheric Hg flux as a result of mining” is an opinion, not a fact. And we are not talking about mining, but the burning of biomass.
The statement “A factor of 3 and 5x increase in the deposition of Hg to the lake sediment archives was observed since the advent of the industrial revolution in New Zealand and Nova Scotia respectively, suggesting a worldwide increase in the atmospheric deposition of Hg” is also an opinion not a fact. It is a suggestion, on its face, as the paper says. There is no reason to consider coal to be toxic on the basis of this thin and shoddy lake sediment study.
Notice how metamars
1.) uses the appeal to authority – peer reviewed literature – and
2.) dodges the point that there are many natural sources of Hg in our hydrologic and biospheric cycles.
This she does with the left hand, while claiming to advance the use of LENR with the other. Cold fusion has been declared impossible by the DOE and has very little peer reviewed papers supporting the physics, which are unknown even by those developing the technology.
all but about 5 of the govts in the EU are rightwing, and the EU is now ground zero for all CAGW carbon dioxide scams, i wonder when the penny will drop for the anti-oil CAGW-ers that Big Oil is their “friend” and, even in the US, there are Republicans still pushing the agenda:
6 Dec: San Francisco Chronicle: David R. Baker: California faces carbon conundrum
Refineries in California participating in the cap-and-trade system could be double taxed if the U.S. institutes a carbon-emissions levy…
A carbon tax even has the backing of Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp. He prefers the predictability of a tax to the wild price swings possible under cap and trade…
And while many Republicans reject the idea, that opposition isn’t universal. Arthur Laffer, former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, both support carbon pricing.
“There is an impeccable conservative lineage for this thing,” Muro said. His proposal calls for a carbon tax of $20 per ton, rising 4 percent each year. Of the $150 billion raised annually, $30 billion would go toward clean-energy research, while the rest would go to cutting other taxes and reducing the deficit…
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/California-faces-carbon-conundrum-4098030.php#page-1
10 Dec: The Hill: Ben Geman: House Energy Chairman Upton: Exxon’s support for carbon tax isn’t ‘very serious’
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) suggested Monday that Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t pushing lawmakers especially hard for a carbon tax despite the company’s public embrace of the idea.
“I don’t think it is a very serious effort on their part,” Upton said on Fox News. Upton said he told Exxon representatives personally that it’s a nonstarter…
Upton made the comments when asked about support for a carbon tax from Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.
However, a tax isn’t Shell’s preferred option. Shell, in a joint statement in November with a range of businesses, affirmed its support for somehow creating a cost for carbon emissions.
But the company said its preferred approach for pricing carbon is a more flexible system such as pollution permit trading under an emissions cap (known as cap-and-trade). Exxon, in contrast, says a tax would be better policy…
“Combined with further advances in energy efficiency and new technologies spurred by market innovation, a well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” an Exxon spokeswoman told Bloomberg in November…
Carbon-tax proposals have, however, gained traction in climate policy circles of late despite the dim political prospects.
For instance, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently launched a new energy program at George Mason University, is pushing for a tax on fossil fuel production that would be offset by reductions in income taxes…
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/271877-rep-upton-exxon-carbon-tax-support-isnt-very-serious
pat says:
“all but about 5 of the govts in the EU are rightwing”
How can that possibly be?? It must mean that we have differing definitions of “right wing”. To me, they are all either Left, or Far Left, or Far, Far Left.
But that’s just how I see it. I suppose I could be wrong.
left/right is just sideways because what signifies is who’s on top and who’s on the bottom. 🙂
you get what you bend over for, pretty much.
D Böehm says:
December 10, 2012 at 7:48 pm
======================
The Left considers anyone disagreeing with them is “Right Wing” because there is no one to their left. The Right thinks they are in the Center because they aren’t either fascists, or socialists.
“Sera”: the mask may be silicone or other plastics – the essential question in this thread is what raw material is used to make the particular plastic in the mask. Is the raw material a form of petroleum?
(Beyond that, the mask must be non-allergenic, flexible over a temperature range, good seal at the edges, low cost, …. attributes that take skill and dedication, which will not occur if the capriciousness of government force is widespread as there is high risk that effort will not be rewarded – remember “you didn’t build that”.)
The mask and whatever is attached to the bottom must have good air replacement characteristics, otherwise the buildup of CO2 from the breathing process will result in a serious problem – need oxygen in, CO2 purged. (The vent holes that appear to be in that mask may suffice if there is flow of fresh air into the mask, as there is with a CPAP sleeping mask.)
D Boehm –
apologies for not providing a link re EU govts. i normally would paste an Independent headline from about a year ago which i think was “all but five EU govts on the right” but can’t locate it just now. however:
June 2011: Economist: Europe’s Left: Left Out
Today, following the defeat of the ruling Socialists in Portugal’s general election on June 5th, the left is in charge of just five: Spain, Greece, Austria, Slovenia and Cyprus. In Spain, by far the largest of these, polls suggest the Socialists will be removed from office at an election that must be held by next March…
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/europes-left
Update: Spain is now rightwing, Greece also. France has turned left.
June 2009: PressEurop: Europe is right-wing but…
Most of the governments of the European Union’s 27 member countries are conservative, as are the bulk of the European Council and the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso. The current European Parliament, which is to be reshuffled within a matter of days, is for the most part centre-right.
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/15371-europe-right-wing
CAGW is a bipartisan scam, in my opinion, but this is hidden from the public. Australia’s former PM, John Howard, like US’s George W. Bush, was constantly castigated by the MSM as a non-believer, yet all the architecture of CAGW was set up while they were in power. meanwhile, the so-called Left were being groomed & portrayed as the coming saviours of the CAGW scam, hence US and Australia now have so-called Leftwing Govts and it is extremely difficult to break the CAGW meme that it’s a left/right thing. me, i was on the left, i then read the climategate material, and now i vote informally. a pox on all of them for this power grab.
Pat,
I generally agree with all of your posts, so I think the problem is in our definition of Left/Right.
I believe in limited government; the smaller the better. The EU is a suffocating monster run by opaque, unaccountable bureaucrats, and as such it is totalitarian in nature. They all play word games trying to paint themselves as egalitarian, but they are no such thing. They do not believe in democracy; note the [illegally] repeated Irish vote that was necessary to suport the EU’s policies.
Every EU country is heading toward totalitarianism, some just more than others. The average EU citizen is the target. EU citizens are expected to work for the State. That is, of course, backward.
The same thing is happening in the U.S. But the change here is stark because we are used to relatively fair play. That has gone by the wayside. Now, the Statists have control, and they will not willingly give it up. The self-serving totalitarians are neither left nor right, they are totalitarians. Ordinary citizens like myself are the target of their greed for power. They want a much bigger cut of our income, because money is power. They are buying government employed supporters with our earnings.
No EU country is in favor of the individual. They are all leftist totalitarian wannabe’s. The only choice the average EU citizen has is to forfeit well over half of his income to the State. And for what? For meaningless platitudes that do nothing to ease the average worker’s lot.
I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure others that I am very sorry for him, and wish to ease his lot by all possible means — except by getting off his back.
~ Leo Tolstoy
pat says:
December 11, 2012 at 3:13 pm
D Boehm –
“… i normally would paste an Independent headline from about a year ago which i think was “all but five EU govts on the right”
The right is just not quite so left in Europe and the left is left indeed. The Democrats in the US are considered left, but they are right of EU’s right.
Gary, that reminds me of who’s on first. Very funny post!!!!!
Think of the children!
Just the money given to Evergreen Solar ($25 million) would have funded almost a third of the money given to Miss for a year of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (the WIC program).
So why worry about whether the children can breathe – they’ll starve first.
I didn’t say “fusion,” I said “cold fusion” (and “LENR,” or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, its euphemism):
D Boehm –
don’t worry. like u i believe we are headed for totalitarianism, or already there, in many countries. whether it’s left or right totalitarianism, i don’t care.
all i know is govts are too big, but not too big to fail!
as to how we get back to some form of democracy, that i don’t know. but i do feel individuals from across the political spectrum can bring down the CAGW grab for more power, thanx to anthony and others who have provided a platform for expressing alternative views, and real science as opposed to political science.
The attempt to smear Exxon seems to use a common fallacy peddled by neo-Marxists, that tax money is taking back what rightfully belongs to the collective.
That’s consistent with Marxism’s fixed-pie and exploitation theories, which have been well disproven in reality.
The root of those theories is a view of humans as uncreative and untrustworthy. If nothing more is created then anyone who has more must have taken it from someone else. Marxism denies that humans will act for good. In contrast, Ayn Rand explained how rational thinking and avoiding initiating force is life sustaining.”