Climate Science

Attorney General of New York investigating ExxonMobil for lying about the risks of climate change

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Back in July, I  posted about the ‘disinformation’ campaigns, from tobacco to climate science:

In 1994, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, subpoenaed the top executives of the seven largest U.S. tobacco companies and asked them to testify under oath whether they believed nicotine to be addictive.

Screenshot from 2015-07-12 14:12:37

All of the tobacco executives testified under oath that “I believe that nicotine is not addictive.” Tobacco CEO’s Statement to Congress.

The Waxman hearings represented the pinnacle of the tobacco industry’s decades long campaign to collude together to mislead the public by promoting “controvery” about the harmful effects of smoking and the addictiveness of nicotine.

Just four years later, the four largest U.S. tobacco companies entered into a “global settlement agreement,” i.e., the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, in which the attorneys general of 46 states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health-care costs — but also exempted the companies from private tort liability regarding harm caused by tobacco use. In exchange, the tobacco companies agreed to curtail or cease certain tobacco marketing practices, as well as to pay, in perpetuity, various annual payments to the states to compensate them for some of the medical costs of caring for persons with smoking-related illnesses.

History is repeating itself with the Carbon Monopoly’s decades long campaign to collude together to mislead the public by promoting “controvery” about the harmful effects of global warming and climate change.

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Pope Francis at the White House

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pope_whitehouse_09There has been a great deal of speculation and conjecture in recent weeks by reporters and pundits about what Pope Francis would say when he was welcomed to the White House, and in his address to a joint session of Congress.

I prefer to wait to hear what “Papa Fancesca” actually had to say. A number of pundits were suggesting that Pope Francis would be political, but after listening to both speeches, anyone familiar with Catholic teachings knows that the Pope was being pastoral, teaching by homily from Catholic doctrines.

Pope Francis at the White House:

Mr. President, I am deeply grateful for your welcome in the name of all Americans. As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families.

In his opening comments Pope Francis, the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, reminds Americans that we are a nation of immigrants, the “great melting pot” of many people and many nationalities. E pluribus unum: out of many, one.

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Environmental Briefs

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With President Obama in Alaska this week talking about the effects of climate change on the Arctic, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting at the Bonn Climate Change Conference, it is a good time to try to catch up on the environmental and climate science news reported over the past month.

WeathermanBelow is just a sampling from the Washington Post’s “Energy and Environment” reporting, and Think Progress “Climate” reporting. There has been much more environment and climate science reporting over the past month.

You should ask yourself why the media in Arizona does not report environmental and climate science news, especially those bobble-head “meteorologists” on your local TV news who repeat the same damn weather report at least four times every half hour. If they really are “meteorologists,” shouldn’t they be using some of their time to educate and inform their viewers about the environment and climate science?

Perhaps the lack of quality science reporting by the media is why Americans, and Arizonans in particular, are so damn ignorant about the environment and climate science (you know who you are). It’s not like quality science reporting is not available. It is a conscience editorial decision to not report on the environment and climate science — unless it is to provide an echo chamber for Republican attacks on the EPA, or to promote their major advertiser, a utility company from the Carbon Monopoly.

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