This. They use very similar tactics for very similar reasons. Sometimes it's even the same groups doing the dirty work (the Heartland Institute, for example). It's actually a bit mind boggling to me that people even work there. Imagine getting up in the morning to screw up scientific research and block legislation that could save millions. Sick life.

I havent read it but I hear that Merchants of Doubt was a pretty good book on the subject.

I just ordered it (put on hold at my library). I'll report back.

The lead in gas story is really interesting in how the scientist who discovered how big the problem was had been trying to establish the age of the earth and it was incredibly hard to get rid of lead contamination in the lab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO0JaecRWy0

What scientific consensus is that? You don't see an incentive for "green" energy companies to lie? If man made climate change was 100% debunked tomorrow how much do you think their subsidies would drop?

You should list the positives/negatives of fossil fuels and the positives/negatives of tobacco then compare them.

The fact that you compare fossil fuels to tobacco or lead in paint is insane, I think you watched Gasland a few too many times.

Citation please.

They market themselves as clean energy every chance they get, which is obviously in line with the man made catastrophic climate change narrative.

SolarCity's crimes are only limited by your imagination.

I understand why big oil has a vested interest in spreading lies about climate change, I just don't understand what the hurr durr lockstep knuckle-draggers get out of it, other than the thrill of telling libruls that they're wrong.

Like, k doubt the vast majority of climate change deniers have a ton of stock in BP and Exxon. What gives? What's the motivation to parrot the corporate shill line?

I have heard it's due to a tendency to realise that solutions to climate change require collective action at a government and supranational level. Typically deniers are hardcore repubs who refuse to believe that any collective can solve a problem better than an individual. To accept climate change means ceding power to government as a necessity to solve it = big government = stalin comin!
That's my view on the logic chain. Naomi Klein covers it well in the first few chapters of 'This Changes Everything'

Yea if you are right wing you have to be against Climate Change as the solutions are obviously collectivist.

The scientific consensus that humans are partly responsible for the rate at which the climate is changing. Green energy companies may be incentivised to lie when it comes to the efficiency of their products, cost of setup and so on. I have already stated that they should face the same consequences as Exxon if they have mislead shareholders and so on. However, I do not see what they have to lie about when it comes to the impact of man made climate change. The science is already on their side. This is not the case for companies like Exxon.

I've never heard of Gasland. Why exactly is it insane?

Tobacco companies and companies that added lead to paint continued to lie about the negative impact of their products long after scientific consensus had been reached. I would recommend reading about Robert Kehoe and Clair Patterson if you're uninformed about the behaviour of companies that added lead to fuel.

If Exxon have lied about climate change then their is a clear comparison between their behaviour and the the behaviour of the other businesses mentioned. As Kukraprout stated you get the same organisations trying to spread doubt about the scientific consensus on multiple topics. The Heartland Institute have done this for both second hand smoke and climate change. Quite how you cannot see the similarity is beyond me. Do you have any sort of argument to back up your view point or are you just going to insult anyone that disagrees with you?

It was featured in an episode of Cosmos (Degrasse Tyson) version. Like you said, it was interesting.

Yeah, I first heard the story on Cosmos.

I don't think they committed crimes.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/06...hange-fascism/

Oh yeah, the GOP. They have all of our best interests in mind, for sure.

Can you not see fraud when it's staring you right in the face? The denial of climate change is basically Trump University on a much, much grander scale. No reputable news organizations report it as "undecided" any more. Pretty much only Fox News and the Wall Street Journal--and the WSJ only does so on their editorial pages.

Pretty much. Human beings make decisions about what to believe by figuring out how each outcome would make them feel, then work backward for reasons to justify believing A over B.

A lot of GOP officials (at the local level only) are starting to see climate change and react to it because it's literally affecting their communities right now.

Can anyone explain to me why you see a big split along party lines with beliefs in various pseudosciences? As a general rule creationists and climate change deniers are Republicans and anti-vaxxers seem to be Democrats. The first time I came across this online there was someone that kept banging on about a specific Democrat that didn't believe the scientific consensus on man-made climate change. My response to this line of argument was "what relevance do his political beliefs have to this topic? What qualifications does he have in the relevant sciences?" It took me around two days to work out that this was some weird American thing.

It's very complicated. Republicans in general are allied with big business and against big government solutions. Liberals in general are skeptical of big business (and sometimes the science they use). For example GMOs, which may be perfectly fine, liberals tend to be more skeptical of than Republicans.

Republicans also tend to be more religious and more fundamentalist, so that plays into it as well. But basically in the USA there are two completely different realities for every issue. I'm not sure why we're different than other countries but it does seem more extreme here.

The worst thing is that the best solution to global warming is probably a free-market based solution (some sort of carbon tax). But since we can't even agree that global warming EXISTS let alone that it's an existential threat, the two parties are not moving together in that direction.

A tax is not a free market solution.

A Pigouvian tax is preferable to market oriented people compared to various alternatives. Outright bans can be counter productive as people attempt to circumvent. Equal allocations are also inefficient. A properly sized pigouvian tax allows a more efficient allocation

I've made the case itt before that subsidies are generally more efficient for encouraging small markets.

A carbon tax by itself won't speed the adoption of renewables nearly as well as subsidies. I think the carbon tax is good though as a source of revenue and as renewables get more market share and subsidies fade out.

Cap and trade though is a lot of flim flam on the whole set up with the result and probably for the purpose of mountebankery.

Oh yeah, the democrats. they have all of our best interest in mind, for sure.

LOL at using news organizations to support an argument.

I can't find a link and the magazine enerG is not available online, but there's a story in there about 12MW project in Kauai with battery storage. There's another battery storage project 52-MWh that should be coming online shortly.

Kauai, an sunny island, is obviously better than most places for things like this. But, this is just where it is starting.

The end is coming for fossil fuel power stations and I've got 2 words for anyone who is thinking about starting the long process of planning and building one: "stranded assets".

You know whats a good way to get people to adopt something, make it better then its competitors.