Guest Aeuhhh???? by David Middleton
CNN: The Stupid, It Burns…
How rich people could help save the planet from climate change
By Stephanie Bailey, CNN
Updated 5:20 AM ET, Fri July 12, 2019(CNN) Rich people don’t just have bigger bank balances and more lavish lifestyles than the rest of us — they also have bigger carbon footprints.
The more stuff you own, and the more you travel, the more fossils fuels are burned, and the more greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere.
[…]
But some argue that the wealthy can do the most to help fix the climate crisis. Here’s how they could make a difference.
Spend wisely
[…]
Divestment
As well as choosing what to spend money on, rich people can choose what industries to invest in — or not to invest in.Oxfam estimates that the number of billionaires on the Forbes list with business interests in the fossil fuel sector rose from 54 in 2010 to 88 in 2015, and the size of their fortunes expanded from over $200 billion to more than $300 billion.
[…]
Wealth means power
[…]
Fund climate research
[…]
Role models
The super-rich might also have an influence on other people’s carbon emissions.“High status in our societies remains associated with high material wealth,” said Otto. “It’s an aspiration to become like the very wealthy and you imitate the lifestyles of people who you want to be like.”
For example, air travel is no longer only a treat of the super-rich. This year, budget airline Ryanair was the only non-coal plant among Europe’s top 10 emitters.[…]
Darth Vader: This is CNN
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry… How does someone get to be this fracking stupid?
“Save the planet from climate change“?
Warning: Lots of F-bombs and other profanity… but this is fracking hilarious!
Divestment
As well as choosing what to spend money on, rich people can choose what industries to invest in — or not to invest in.Oxfam estimates that the number of billionaires on the Forbes list with business interests in the fossil fuel sector rose from 54 in 2010 to 88 in 2015, and the size of their fortunes expanded from over $200 billion to more than $300 billion.
Stephie, 2018 BS in Psychology
Did Stephie or Oxfam wonder why these billionaires were investing in “the fossil fuel sector”?
But there’s a trend of wealthy investors selling their shares in climate-harming industries, known as divestment.
Over 1,100 organizations and 59,000 individuals, with combined assets totaling $8.8 trillion, have pledged to divest from fossil fuels through the online movement DivestInvest.
Stephie, 2018 BS in Psychology
Did it occur to Stephie that those “1,100 organizations and 59,000 individuals” can only “divest from fossil fuels” under the following two conditions?
- They currently own “fossil fuel sector” investments… (Shorting is not divesting).
- Other investors are willing to purchase their “fossil fuel sector” investments.
Among them is Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who signed the pledge on behalf of himself and his environment foundation — as well as a group of 22 affluent individuals from the Netherlands who pledged to remove their personal wealth from the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies.
Stephie, 2018 BS in Psychology
How are they going to “remove their personal wealth from the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies” unless there is a willing buyer?
“You don’t invest in coal, you don’t invest in oil, in gas, also in some car companies that produce normal cars, or aviation, so you direct the financial flows,” said Otto.
And with divestment, a little can go a long way. “We did some simulations that shows that with the divestment movement you don’t need everyone to divest,” said Otto. “If the minority of investors divest, the other investors will not invest in those fossil fuel assets because they will be afraid of losing money … even if they have no environmental concerns.”
Stephie, 2018 BS in Psychology
Who is this “Otto” person? And how did she manage to out-stupid Stephie?
This bears repeating…
“If the minority of investors divest, the other investors will not invest in those fossil fuel assets because they will be afraid of losing money … even if they have no environmental concerns.”
Dr. habil. Ilona M. Otto, PhD in Resource Economics , never had a real job.
How in the SAM HILL can “the minority of investors divest” if “other investors will not invest in those fossil fuel assets because they will be afraid of losing money.” At worst, they would temporarily drive the stock price down, creating buying opportunities for investors smarter than a bag of hammers. The ups and downs of stock prices don’t affect the operating income of oil & gas or coal companies. Nor does it affect the liquidity. Liquidity is the ability of a company to meet current obligations. This generally consists of cash, cash equivalents, accounts receivable, short term investments and any credit facilities. The borrowing base is generally secured with assets… like proved oil & gas reserves.
Stephie, you’ve earned eleventy gazillion Billy Madisons… and Dr. Otto, you’ve just set a new world record: 42 x 1042 Billy Madisons and a lifetime achievement award from Ron White.
David
In the absence of the ability to use terminology that would get me banned from WUWT, I think your mood might best be described as bewildered. 🙂 🙂 🙂
The game show host in the Billy Madison video best reflects my reaction to this
article.
David…you post the ‘Billy Madison’ clip often, due to the vast amount of stupidity coming from the climate crisis industry on an almost daily basis. I know what the clip says. I have watched it dozens of times. When I see it on the screen in front of me, I realize that I do not need to watch it again. But I do. And damn if I don’t laugh again.
But what if this isn’t really about promoting divestment from fossil fuel companies? What if this is really about what the man in the clip says: “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.” ?
Is it possible that the real purpose of the moronic statements from the climate crisis industry is to make everyone dumber; literally too stupid to figure out that they are being scammed? If that is the case, it may actually be a brilliant, although diabolical, tactic. Certainly the people I know who have been listening to the main-stream media speak about climate are now dumber than the use to be. There ability to reason and think has been generally impaired in a noticeable way.
While we focus on refuting their inane arguments on any given subject, we may be missing what they are actually doing. Their arguments aren’t meant to be rationally convincing. Their arguments are simply designed to destroy the intelligence of anyone who listens to them!
I laugh at Dean Wormer saying, “Zero point zero” every time I watch it.
I don’t know if the Climate Crisis Industry is trying to literally make everyone dumber, or just assumes that everyone is as dumb as they are… I may need to watch Billy Madison again
Maybe bewildered is closer to the state of the disinvestment for artificial reasons crowd, because a lot of account managers, mine included, are watching for artificially low stock prices. Why? Because in most business transactions the profit comes at the buy and not at the sell. So, persons want to virtue-signal by dumping stocks from healthy companies and therein drive the price down, and account managers swoop in and collect them, who is winning here? If David is bewildered, as he sometimes appears to be, in this case it is to realize how stupid disinvestment really is.
Those who recommend divestment are proving themselves incompetent inat least two areas – climatlgyand investments. There folks are operating at a third grade level.
Oxfam? Those commies? I’m divesting in THEM forthwith. No more donations from ME to fifth-columnists who seek to undermine capitalism.
Bull Sheisse in psychology?
CNN – Clinton News Network or Communist News Network or Confused News Network
Counterfeit News Network.
Cartoon News Network
CNN- Crummy News Network
CNN – Crappy News Network
Hmmm . . . CNN may have cameras present when Epstein mysteriously dies in jail.
Complete Nonsense Network
I will be happy when it becomes Completely Nonexistent Network.
I’m with you on that 100% ! It’s nice to hear that CNN’s ratings have been in the toilet.Let’s hope the sh!# storm over there continues until they’re flushed away for good!
For all reasonable calculations your carbon footprint (what a stupid term) is proportional to your income. And therefore if you want to reduce your carbon footprint you just get a less well paid job. Indeed, this is exactly the policy of the Greens: to wreck the economy so much that in effect everyone has less income and less ability to consume.
And that is why the left so love the Climate Cult … because they can achieve their destruction of the economy without publicly admitting that all they want to do is destroy the economy.
Good comment. The Greens want to give us their climate knee print and worse.
They still want a carbon tax.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/454819-carbon-tax-shows-new-signs-of-life-in-congress
Hey if anyone has read the post and is feeling sanguine about the opportunities available in pure Natural Gas plays in Alberta, I have some gently used Manitok shares that I would like to ‘divest’.
You should have divested before the bankruptcy. While bankruptcy generally wipes out stock equity, it doesn’t keep the oil & gas in the ground.
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/manitok-energy-inc-provides-update-on-restructuring-and-appointment-of-receiver-674719043.html
A lot of oil & gas companies were forced into bankruptcy by the price crash in 2014-2016… creating buying opportunities for those that weren’t.
Oil & gas gluts due to the Shale Revolution are a much greater threat to the industry than all of the greentards in the world.
WUWT article writers – and. I presume, readers – continuously seem to think that the proposals of Warmists are made from some logical base of understanding. From some kind of position that they believe in.
They are not.
Rather similar to those who argue for the UK to remain in the EU, they start with a position that they want to achieve, and then create stories to justify that position. Frequently, the stories are made up, complete fabrications, but this does not matter. The whole point is that they have created another argument for their political position.
It is useless, therefore, to examine their argument logically. They know that it does not stack up – they do not care, and they will certainly not descend into discussion with you on the topic. They have simply made the assertion so that they can justify ignoring any real evidence.
Much the same thing happened in the Middle Ages with the boom in relics of saints and other holy objects. It became obvious – given the number of ‘fragments of the Holy Cross’ in existence, that the original would have had to have been gigantic. The Church solved this conundrum by asserting that ‘miraculous multiplication’ had taken place. That was not a justification susceptible to logic – it was simply a glib excuse intended to shut down argument – and a warning not to embarrass the Church by pointing out where it was wrong.
And that is what these mindless puff pieces are….
I just like to ridicule idiots.
Mirror mirror on the wall,
who’s the dumbest one of all?
“It became obvious – given the number of ‘fragments of the Holy Cross’ in existence, that the original would have had to have been gigantic. The Church solved this conundrum by asserting that ‘miraculous multiplication’ had taken place.”
Bad example of faulty reasoning, I’m afraid. The Banach-Tarski “paradox” is a proven theorem in set-theoretic geometry which states, roughly, that any solid object having three or more dimensions can be divided into sub-objects, then reassembled into two identical copies of itself of the exact same size, without deforming or stretching the sub-objects in any way.
“A stronger form of the theorem implies that given any two “reasonable” solid objects (such as a small ball and a huge ball), the cut pieces of either one can be reassembled into the other. This is often stated informally as “a pea can be chopped up and reassembled into the Sun” and called the “pea and the Sun paradox”.”
A somewhat weaker form of the theorem, popular in the 1970s, stated that a furniture object consisting of a cupboard, usually surmounted by open shelves, can be subdivided into cut pieces and reassembled into two exact copies of itself. This is the well-known Tarski-Hutch theorem, which was used by Ikea to build its furniture empire.
Then there is Gamecock’s Third Corollary of Parkinson’s Law. It applies to homes.
“The junk will expand to fill the available space.”
Quoting article comment:
Exactly right, And when the daily news tells ya about the stock markets or stock prices being “up or down” it doesn’t mean diddly poop other than the “betting” (raises & calls) that is associated with those big “poker games”.
The only way those announced “stock prices” can affect you is if you decide to place a “bet” or ”call”.
A company with no debt is unaffected by stock market fluctuations. I would imagine… I couldn’t find one.
Other companies with debt, are profoundly affected by stock price fluctuations. Trident Exploration was affected.
It depends on their bank covenants. If their debt facilities are linked to capitalization, then their borrowing base can be affected by the stock price. That’s why it’s better to collateralize with actual assets.
Why did the football coach return to the bank? To get his quarter back.
Why did the banker break up with his girl friend? Because he lost interest.
Argh… Who was the mobster who said, “Because that’s where the money was,” when asked “Why did you rob banks?”
I believe it was Willie Horton.
I thought it was Willi “The Actor” Sutton.
To the extent Trident had any assets, they didn’t vanish with the company, which was not public…
https://globalnews.ca/news/5238873/trident-exploration-orphan-well-association-receiver-appointed/
The privately held company’s demise was due to low product prices, over-taxation and lack of pipeline access.
Concerning the “price of stocks” that are bought/sold via US Stock Markets, ….. someone ought to explain to Randy Wester what is meant by “privately held company”.
Yes, rich people could do more to pay for climate change – but it is the poor people who will actually carry the burdens.
Actually, I agree with the thesis of this article completely.
And this:
I suggest that the wealthy, well heeled investors like Leonardo DiCaprio, start a whole new class of investment. They should take on the role of what is known as “Angel Investors”. Those fearless investors who provide the startup capital for new ventures, especially in new fields. They could invest in all manner of new “Clean”, and “Green”, and “Environmental”, and “Sustainable”, whatever comes along.
They could call it *Woke* investing!
Of course, it will need a catchy tag line to seize the public’s imagination. I would suggest something like:
Saving The World One Bankruptcy At A Time!
and the ever popular
Get Woke, Go Broke!
It would solve a lot of problems.
If that article had a thesis, I suppose it would be that beer and wine money can’t do much of anything that’s new, until it becomes concentrated into brewery and winery money.
I think that’s backwards thinking, it’s the car customer who decides which cars get built, not the CEO It’s the diner who decides what gets cooked.
It’s actually called an ‘order’ for a reason. Rich individuals get to place more orders, more often, but collectively, the middle class chooses where more of the money is spent.
The very stupid Synod of the Church of England will disinvest in fossil fuels unless companies conform to the Paris Agreement! How? I asked the Bishop of Salisbury who leads and got a lot of blather about how some minor obeisances to CC had been made. Are they to cut production? Give Saudi a boost? There was a proposal in the Synod minutes that companies should give up exploration within four years. Not accepted which gives you a feel for the Synod’a hypocrisy. No discussion about the effect on the pension fund for poor threadbare retired priests. And consistent in this unchristian body’s lack of care for the world’s poor. Makes me sick
Well, that’s easy. Every fossil fuel company is already ‘comforming’ to the Paris Agreement.
Challenge them to cancel all aid money to those countries not reducing their carbon dioxide emissions.
Actually people that are true believers in this nonsense should do much more than just manipulate their financial holdings. They should refuse to use fossil fuels at all. Period. In their entire life, which will be very short.
It should not take long to breed out this stupidity from the human race, if they will just follow their convictions instead of trying to impose it on the rest of us.
Car production is falling as people have stopped buying cars due to the confusion created by governments. The auto companies have a problem in that they are being forced into spending money on battery cars the masses don’t want to buy even with a bribe of taxpayer cash. They are also chasing the insane dream of driverless cars but there is a bit more realisation of the mass of problems they face.
The politicians who have been all so willing to promise the most stupid things to get votes from Greens, will soon find that for every green vote they got promising some lunacy policy, they will lose a hundred or thousand fold due to the cost if they ever make them reality.
For example, the UK politicians recently – without ever once putting it to the Uk electorate (like joining the EU) – committed the country to what the treasury say is £1trillion of spending which would pay for 300,000 nurses for 100 years. I don’t agree with their costings. I think the cost of “zero carbon” will be nearer £7trillion or …the average cost of a house for everyone in the country.
But £30,000 or £200,000 … what’s the difference when the average voter won’t vote for a party that will spend £1000 of theirs on this climate cult.
“Fund climate research”
Make the poor “climate scientists” rich, that’ll solve everything!
/sarc
Did you hear about the scientist who ONLY had a knocker hanging on his door? He ended up winning the no bell prize.
He didn’t get the Chloris Leachman prize?
Young Frankenstein? Or Last Picture Show?
David
I was thinking of the scene in Young Frankenstein where, standing outside the castle doors, Gene Wilder says, “What magnificent knockers!”
I think he was referring to Teri Garr.
David,
You are right, it was “Inga” who responded to the remark about the knockers. Its been awhile since I saw the movie.
Which came first – the Stupid or the Warmunist Belief system? Does Warmunism make people stupid, or stupider? My guess is the latter.
It would have to be stupider… Because you have to start from stupid.
What is it that these people do not get, fossil fuel demand continues to grow and will do so till at least 2030.
They should stick to brainwashing impressionable school kids and uni students.
Wasting their time on rational adults.
I think Al Gore the bore forgot to pay his brain bill.
Gee – like Steyer or Soros?
But…but…I thought it was immoral (or something like that) to be “Rich”?
Now the answer to our “moral obligation” to save the planet from the boogeyman de-jour to make more “immoral rich”?
Returning to the Synod of the Church of England question. The Bishop of Salisbury is a believer in the IPCC’s SR1.5 study and says that multitudes of people and organisations worldwide are following its diktats. He has not read the devastating criticism by the GWPF or Dublin University who conclude that it is unsuitable for policy making. (What marvellously restrained language!). I’m one of the rare people who have read (a lot of) it’s 700 pages. It is drivelling cloud cuckoo land and it’s surprising that Katowice even ‘took’ it. Fortunately the C of E counts for little these days politically. Spiritually not so much with this epic stupidity.
So where is the BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement against China because of all the coal-fired power plants they are building?
I’m not a financial wiz’, so I’m open to comments or constructive criticism. However, it is my understanding that companies offer stocks, with the incentive of paying dividends from profits, to raise working capital. As stocks change hands, the company doesn’t really see any additional income; the dividends just get sent to a different individual.
Now, if those individuals or financial institutions holding FF stocks were to divest, and drive down the stock price, it might create an opportunity for the FF companies to buy back their stock at bargain prices, thus saving them the dividends they might otherwise have to pay out. That is, they would become more profitable, to the benefit of themselves and those who steadfastly held onto their stocks.
Did I miss something here, or just reinforce David’s contention that those recommending divestment are indeed stupid?
I remember when one was supposed to ‘divest’ all investments in companies that made weapons of war. My Dad tried ‘divesting’ in the government – kepping back the portion of income tax that went to the Canadian military. I never heard what happened after, but all his taxes were paid up when he died. I think he found out the government had other ways of collecting the money, like docking his state pension and old age supplement.
In general, the ‘clean’ investments were in real estate. He made a lot of money on some canny deals, buying up development land when someone else was hit by increased interest rates for cash, and holding it until the market rose. My Mum dealt with the money – 87 ‘charities’ were deducting monthly from her account when she died.
“…creating buying opportunities for investors smarter than a bag of hammers.”
Most people I know would have said “…smarter than a box of rocks” so is the “bag of hammers” expression unique to geologists because they are unwilling to demean rocks but are less fond of hammers?
We like hammers too… We hit rocks with them… Well I did in college… I hardly ever look at actual rocks at work.
What is the difference between a geologist and a geophysicist?
A geologist hits rocks with hammers.
A geophysicist hits rocks with dynamite.
I’ve done both… But I haven’t visited a dynamite crew since my East Texas days back in the mid-1980’s… much more fun than Vibroseis!
It’s just more virtue signalling and prevents awkward people from asking them why they are effectively living on immoral earnings. The questions these people should be asked when they announce that they have sold off their fossil fuel holdings are:
‘How much profit did you make?’
And
‘How much are you now going to invest in renewable energy?’
Willie “the actor” Sutton robbed banks because “that’s where the money is”. Willie Horton was a murderer. Just like to keep this site factual.
If you were worried about the Noah’s Ark II like Ellen apparently is with her stance on climate change then naturally you’d divest the beach shack to some awful skeptic/denier type in order to teach them a lesson presumably-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/homeandproperty/ellen-degeneres-sells-dollar23-million-beach-house-to-cosmetics-mogul/ar-AAEVmT0
This Green divestment thing is a tough gig and I trust Ellen made sure the buyers were evil skeptic/denier types before dumping it on them. Off to the mountains with the true believers now Ellen?
My old university and many of its colleges are under pressure from students and some of their staff to divest from fossil fuels.
Most of the students have not lived through enough time to experience the normal range of weather, and seem to think that every unusual weather occurrence is unprecedented.
As said above, any divestment seems to be a buying opportunity for those who are prepared to wait until the penny drops that renewables are not reliable and fossil fuels will still have a place in the overall energy mix, like it or not.
Certainly the first thing is for the wealthy people to stop flying to their exotic holiday destinations, which will impact on the economies of said locations.
They can then send the money saved to these locations as a for of social security payment.
Is there an echo in here?