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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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It's been a while since we visited the deeds of derring do by the friends and allies of big oil, big coal. These boys have been busy despoiling the environment and killing workers, and have been caught at it. Two interesting updates:
| Quote: | Don Blankenship didn’t get what he deserves in his federal trial, but he definitely deserves what he got.
“Guilty,” declared all 12 West Virginia jurors who pondered the charge that this arrogant and avaricious CEO of Massey Energy Company willfully conspired to violate America’s mine safety laws. As a result of that conspiracy, 29 miners were essentially murdered by the corporation on April 5, 2010, in a horrific explosion deep inside Massey’s Upper Big Branch coal mine.
Blankenship, a multimillionaire right-wing ideologue, union-buster, and political heavyweight, ran the Upper Big Branch mine like a lawless third-world operator. It was one of the most dangerous workplaces in the country, because this kingpin of King Coal relentlessly put profit over people, recklessly endangering miners. But coal is, indeed, king in West Virginia, so the laws are written to coddle the royals of the industry. |
Of course, Blankenship has been donating heavily to Republicans who profess the denier faith, and to disinformation organizations:
| Quote: | In recent years, Blankenship’s largest contributions have been to committees working to elect Republican candidates to Congress: $30,400 each to the National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2010, and a combined $25,000 to the NRCC in 2012, according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Political MoneyLine data.
Neither the NRCC nor NRSC responded to multiple requests for comment regarding the contributions, but in 2010, Brian Walsh, the NRSC’s communications director, told OpenSecrets the committee had no plans to refund the contribution: “At this point in time the NRSC has no intention of returning the money. There is no reason to,” Walsh said.
At the state level, Blankenship gave $10,000 to the Republican Party of Kentucky in 2010, $10,000 to the West Virginia Republican Party in both 2010 and 2012, and $10,000 to the Kentucky State Democratic Central Executive Committee in 2012. None of the three state committees responded to multiple requests for comment by ThinkProgress.
Blankenship has donated to several individual candidates in recent years, as well. The only federal candidate to receive money from Blankenship in 2014 was Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who took $2,600. Blankenship and Inhofe are both fervent deniers of human-caused global warming and routinely disparage the EPA and any sort of government regulation, particularly those that relate to coal. Inhofe also received a combined $3,300 from Blankenship in 2008.
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Then there is the tale of Duke Energy, and their quest to find a cheap place to dump coal ash and have regulators look the other way. Successful with the regulators in North Carolina--but not with the courts. http://www.wral.com/judge-questions-beneficial-use-of-coal-ash-dump/15161111/?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=24383650&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_k5Ir10st4tVCfLMyrOXlqNU9_ps1KuSOC6wflKJIDjx4O5aSNg8kN8wICCPdCvvkqiPBGINtNrdkmUavK_HW_r00ATw&_hsmi=24383650
| Quote: | By Kathryn Brown
RALEIGH, N.C. — A state judge on Monday questioned why environmental regulators granted permits for Duke Energy to dump coal ash from its power plants into open-pit clay mines in Chatham and Lee counties.
The state Department of Environmental Quality in June approved the sites to accept coal ash as "engineered structural fill." Duke started moving ash to the Brickhaven mine near Moncure in October and is expected to start dumping ash at the Colon site near Sanford next year.
Coal ash is the material left after coal is burned for fuel. While the bulk of it is inert, it does contain heavy metals and other toxins, including arsenic, chromium, selenium and mercury, that can harm fish, wildlife and people.
After a ruptured stormwater line under an ash pit in Eden dumped tons of sludge into the Dan River last year, lawmakers ordered Duke to close all of its ash pits statewide by 2029 and created a state commission to oversee the process.
"This is just one step of many over many years that will be taken to take care of the entire problem," Edward Mussler, solid waste permitting supervisor of DEQ's Division of Waste Management, said of burying ash in the clay mines.
Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump and Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League challenged the legality of the state permits, arguing that the clay mines are more akin to solid waste landfills than mine reclamation projects and should meet the stiffer design, construction and operational regulations of a landfill.
"It will affect the community with their wells and the property values," Sanford resident Keely Puricz said Monday. "Who wants to be living next to a five-story toxic dump? That’s what it is. Let’s call it what it is. It is a dump." |
That tough legislature gave Duke until 2029 to clean up its mess. There's something about the south...Oh, it's the money:
| Quote: | Duke Energy’s federal political action committee (PAC) spent 1,985,2981 in the 2014 midterm elections. Over the last twenty years, Duke’s PAC spending on federal elections has increased from about $75,000 in the 1994 elections to nearly $2 million in the 2014 elections. In addition to Duke’s federal political spending, it is estimated that Duke spent over $2.4 million on state candidates, committees, and ballot measures in the 2014 midterms.
In April 2015, Democracy North Carolina revealed that Duke Energy has also contributed over $3 million to the Republican Governors Association, making the company the RGA’s top corporate donor and second largest funder, behind Las Vegas Sands billionaire owner Sheldon Adelson, who have $3.5 million to the RGA. The contributions Duke Energy gives to other electoral organizations that do not disclose its donors remains unknown. |
from Common Cause |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:46 am Post subject: |
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Coverage not available from Ailes publications:
| Quote: | There is a constant flow of headlines these days confirming the mess we’ve made: “Looks Like Rain Again. And Again”; “Alaska Will Keep Melting”; “Climate Change a Worry to Central Bankers, Too”; “Warning on Climate Risk: Worst to Come.”
This is far from a natural phenomenon. A handful of corporate interests are causing these catastrophes. Oil, coal, auto and a few other industrial powers have profited for decades by spewing fossil fuel contaminants into the world’s atmosphere.
Some experts were speaking out about this mess nearly 40 years ago:
“There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” wrote James Black in 1978.
“Over the past several years, a clear scientific consensus has emerged,” said Roger Cohen in September 1982. “There is unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the Earth’s climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere.”
The significance of these early calls to action is that they came from Exxon!
Inside Climate News revealed in an investigative series released this fall that the oil superpower (now infamous for its relentless campaign of lies to discredit climate science) was briefly a paragon of scientific integrity. From 1978 through the ’80s the corporation’s research headquarters were a buzzing hive of farsighted inquiry into the “greenhouse effect,” as the process of climate change was then called.
But in 1988, the elegant space inhabited by principle was suddenly invaded by the indelicate demands of profit. Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s renowned climate expert, testified to Congress that fossil pollution of Earth’s atmosphere had already surpassed the crisis point. “Global warming has begun,” Hanson concluded.
Then the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change issued an authoritative study in 1990 concluding that the warming was happening and the cause was emissions from fossil fuels.
With that, Exxon dismantled and defunded its research team. Ever since, it’s been the shameful, self-serving leader of a voodoo “science” campaign to keep the world hooked on the fossil fuels that provide its profits.
Their strategy was to create an incessant noise machine, fueled with hundreds of millions of industry dollars, to spread the false narrative that scientists are “uncertain” about climate change. In a confidential 1998 memo, ExxonMobil’s senior environmental lobbyist stated the Orwellian goal of this corporate campaign: “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ uncertainties in climate science,” and when “recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'”
Their many tactics included: forming a lobbying combine in 1989 to sow doubt among public officials about the need for government action; placing a very costly, decade-long series of essays in newspapers denigrating the very scientists it previously nurtured and the science reports that it published; and trying to get the government’s chief global warming official to decry the uncertainty of climate research (then, when he refused, got the incoming Bush-Cheney regime to fire him). They also made their CEOs into hucksters of bunkum, with such lines as “the earth is cooler today than it was 20 years ago” and “it is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now” and “what if everything we do, it turns out that our (climate) models are lousy, and we don’t get the (rising temperatures) we predict?”
If these denials of reality sound familiar, that’s because they’re exactly the same ones we’re now hearing from such Einsteins as The Donald (who recently tweeted, “I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax”), The Cruzer (who claimed that climate change is a liberal plot for “massive government control of the economy … and every aspect of our lives”) and Jeb (who said, “It’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant”).
The deniers are not only on the wrong side of science and history, but also on the wrong side of most voters. A New York Times poll taken last January found that only 13 percent of our people (and only 24 percent of Repubs) said they would be more likely to vote for 2016 presidential candidates who contend that climate change is a hoax and America should keep burning oil and coal. A September poll by three GOP firms found that 56 percent of Republicans agree that the climate is changing and 72 percent support accelerating the use of renewable fuels.
The real power, and our great hope, is in the People’s rebellion: marches, civil disobedience, trainings, teach-ins and other actions to pressure leaders to put people and the planet over corporate profiteering, while also raising global public awareness about the crucial need to get off of fossil fuels and into renewable energy. As 350.org puts it, “Politicians aren’t the only ones with power.” So the coalition will be in the global streets, on the Internet, in schools, churches and all other available forums, to rally you and me to save ourselves.
To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM
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What was mrgybe's role in these decades of lies? Paid to lie? Friend to the liars? Or just an honest doubter? |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2015 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| While it is amusing to read the ramblings of rabid lefty Jim Hightower, penned presumably on a day off from campaigning for Bernie Sanders, he sadly displays the same difficulty with the truth as our poster from Berkeley. As a wise poster said in another thread, the opinions, and frequent accusations spouted by the ill-informed whose principal source of knowledge is Wikipedia and publications that reinforce their prejudices, are worthless. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2015 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Very funny. Rather than acknowledge the well-established fact that Exxon decided to lie about global warming, mrgybe focuses on this particular source, Jim Hightower. Certainly not John Birchey enough for you--but you fail to answer the fundamental question--were you one that was paid to lie, did you lie for free, or do you post the nonsense you post because you don't understand the science? |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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| mac wrote: | | Rather than acknowledge the well-established fact that Exxon decided to lie about global warming |
See how it works? A hopelessly biased publication picks up a few snippets of information from more than 4 decades ago, adds a generous helping of pure speculation and invents motivations that suit their biases to condemn a company they despise. Their ideologue readers, panting for any ammunition that will reinforce their prejudices, eagerly seize on these fabrications and......voila!........pure speculation becomes "well established fact". Is it any wonder that they slavishly eat up all the other half truths on which they lean so heavily and those too becomes "facts"..........e.g. 97% of all climate scientists agree that global warming is a serious threat and is caused by humans. Unquestioning drones ideally suited to a life as a government worker. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2015 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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| It was well established fact in the mid-1980's when I was in graduate school, well known to Exxon. So you just don't understand the science. That much is clear. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2015 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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Friends of mrgybe passed these bills:
President Barack Obama has vetoed two bills that would have blocked steps that his administration is taking to address climate change.
| Quote: | One bill would have nullified carbon pollution standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The second bill would have voided a set of national standards designed to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution from existing power plants.
In a letter notifying Congress of his decision, Obama says climate change is a "profound threat" that must be addressed.
Some Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates [and uninformed windsurfers] scoff at the climate science.
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2016 10:51 am Post subject: |
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What a surprise:
| Quote: | By Kurt Orzeck
Law360, Los Angeles (January 13, 2016, 11:02 PM ET) -- ExxonMobil Corp.’s safety-management problems contributed to last year's explosion at the energy giant's refinery in Torrance, California, that injured four workers and threatened the lives of nearby residents, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said Wednesday.
In its preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation into the February 2015 incident, the board said a large piece of debris from the blast hit scaffolding in the refinery’s alkylation unit and narrowly missed a tank containing tens of thousands of pounds of modified hydrofluoric acid. |
Some will continue to argue that California refineries have not expanded because of crazy opposition from crazy enviros. That accusation is simply crazy. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2016 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting:
| Quote: | | ExxonMobil failed to find enough new oil and gas to replace what it produced last year for the first time since 1994. The company only replaced two-thirds of its 2015 output, a reflection of the impact of low oil prices on energy companies. (The Wall Street Journal) |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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You mean it was poor maintenance?
| Quote: | | A California federal jury on Monday cleared an Edison unit of allegations it negligently caused power outages at an ExxonMobil refinery that purportedly led to nearly $32 million in lost profits and other damages. |
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