I’ve never read Rolling Stone. The name seems junky. But in some circles it’s considered a serious mag. Why, I have no idea. This foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy whack job piece was featured at 1.0 as a “must read”. It lists the 17 “climate killers”, who want the climate dead. They’re described as “17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming”.
So who are these “polluters and deniers”? Top of the list: Warren Buffett:
Despite being a key adviser to Obama during the financial crisis, America’s best-known investor has been blasting the president’s push to curb global warming — using the same lying points promoted by far-right Republicans.
Hyperventilate much? The rest of the Buffet screed says zero about climate science, and rants about how he’s making bets in the market that carbon controls will fail. No shiite, Sherlock. That’s what investors do. They make bets. Idiot.
Number 2 is Rupert Murdoch. Again, not a word about the validity of the science, only a sob story about how Murdoch isn’t cheerleading the climate church.
Number 3, is the head of the American Petroleum Institute, and 4, the CEO of ExxonMobil. The grievance, again, is that they’re not supporting the political movement.
This is not the first time that API has been at the center of a secretive campaign to derail carbon controls. In the late 1990s, the institute conspired with Exxon and a cadre of right-wing think tanks to create the “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan” — an $8 million effort to fund climate research that hypes the “weaknesses in scientific understanding” of global warming. “Victory will be achieved,” the plan explained, when “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”
OMG!!! Ponies!!! The industry is resisting the people trying to put a noose around their necks. Imagine that! Again, not a word about the validity of the science.
Number 5. “The Dirty Democrat” Sen. Mary Landrieu. How dare a donkey step out of line!
Landrieu — who boasts of being “the most fervent pro-drilling Democrat in the Senate” — has assured oil interests that she’ll be “putting the brakes” on current efforts to cap carbon pollution.
Who’da ever thunk that a politician from a major oil producing and refining state might actually represent the economic base of her state?
6 & 7: Marc Moreno and James Inhofe.
“He’s a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” says Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace.
Repeat after me. There is no climate…There is no climate…There is no climate…
8 is the CEO of The Southern Company. Well, if they’re Southern, that’s all I need to know.
Ratcliffe, the head of America’s second-dirtiest electric utility, has assembled an army of 63 lobbyists — almost twice as many as any other company — to defeat climate legislation.
And the “dirt” is measured exactly how? Can’t have that. I’m still waiting for a single word in this 16-page piece on the science itself.
9 is none other than…Dick Gephardt. Wait a minute. I thought Landreau was The Dirty Democrat.
The former House majority leader now uses his considerable political clout as a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company. Working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Gephardt has emerged as the most credible proponent of “clean coal” — an imaginary technology being touted by the industry as an alternative to limits on carbon pollution. (“Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes,” says Al Gore. “It does not exist.”)
I have to stop here and marvel at the chutzpah of quoting Al Gore on anything at all, and the double chutzpah of Democrat ex-senator Gore from a tobacco state saying that about Democrat ex-senator Gephardt.
#10 is George Will?
Leveraging his status as the nation’s most recognizable pundit, Will has become a one-man front for corporate-funded “science” that denies the existence of global warming.
Please show me where Dr. Will has denied global warming anywhere. Anyone? Buhler?
To buttress such wild-eyed denial, Will cherry-picks data points — or simply makes them up, as when he claimed in a recent column that “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade” and that “global sea-ice levels now equal those of 1979.” Both assertions are flat-out wrong: Eleven of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years, and researchers have recorded a decrease in global sea ice bigger than Texas and California combined.
Well! Finally they talked about climate science. What they said is 100% pure unadulterated bullshit, but at least they finally got around to talking about the subject of the article.
#11 – Tom Donohue of the US Chamber of Commerce:
As the de facto chief of American business and industry, Donohue has turned the biggest lobbying presence on Capitol Hill into the biggest friend of climate polluters.
Can’t have them polluting the climate now, can we? I mean if the climate gets polluted, it might get behind the wheel of a car and wrap itself around a tree or something.
12 – CEO, Massey Energy.
The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will.
Jeebers. He looks like a bad guy. That’s all I need, where do I sign?
#13: Fred Singer “The Hack Scientist”.
This one puzzles me. I thought the villain was Pat Michaels. Or was it Richard Lindzen? Or Steve McIntyre? So many scientists and mathematicians not on the “team”!
Last year, Singer served as a lead author of “Climate Change Reconsidered” — an 880-page report by the right-wing Heartland Institute that was laughably presented as a counterweight to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s scientific authority on global warming.
Sho be. That IPCC with such illustrious authors as Michael Mann and Phil Jones, and all the rest of the CRU crew?
14 doesn’t make any sense, either: John McCain.
McCain has been one of the Senate’s biggest climate champions since 2003, when he introduced a bill with Joe Lieberman to create a “cap and trade” system similar to the one currently being debated. But since losing the presidency to Barack Obama, McCain is taking his pique out on the planet.
I’ll show that planet…take that, earth!!!
15 is a congressman; Joe Barton form Texas.
As ranking Republican on the House energy committee, Barton is a mini version of Sen. James Inhofe.
Well, that settles that.
16 and 17 are – get ready for it – you’re going to love this –
Charles and David Koch; the tea partiers!!!!!!!!!
The multibillionaire brothers not only run the nation’s largest private energy company, they rival Exxon in funding the front groups that spread disinformation about the dangers of climate change.
You heard that right, folks the tea parties are just front groups for the evil Exxon and coal barons and all those mean people who want to poke voodoo needles into mother earth. Jeebers, can they get any cornier?
So to summarize. I don’t know Rolling Stone from Rolling Rock. Well, I have had a few Rolling Rocks. But WTF is this? A 16 page article on this massive conspiracy to resist the Church of the Boiling Planet, and the closest they get to actually talking about the science is splitting a few hairs over a George Will column?
These guys are stoned. This is their acid vision:
Bum trip, huh?
Tags: Conspiracy Theories
