The Policy Lass

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is launching yet another astroturf organization and campaign that misinforms the public about taxes on the fossil fuel industry and seeks to create a false sense of threat to jobs and access to energy. It’s a casebook example of a vested interest trying to frame the discourse — but that’s not all it does. It’s blatantly misleading.

Purporting to be the website of a grassroots movement of tens of thousands of “energy citizens” who are up in arms about the plans of those nasty anti-freedom un-American types to tax oil and GAS AND DESTROY JOBS OMGWTF!!!11 it’s nothing more than an attempt to protect its tax breaks by creating a false sense of threat to fossil fuel industry jobs.

It’s so crass and blatantly misleading that I’m disgusted and disheartened to think that anyone in his or her right mind would believe it.

Pure bunk.

Mother Jones covers the story here:

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Interesting development in the climtategate front.

Apparently, the Norfolk Constabulary made a visit to Tallbloke’s home with warrant in hand and a request to see his computer cache.

I gotta say it — 20 computers in his attic?

The response in the comments of Tallbloke’s post are hilarious!

Here’s Smokey:

Science blogging:

Encrypt
Encrypt
Encrypt

The feds couldn’t get Al Capone on his criminal syndicate, so they got him on income tax evasion. Word to the wise.☺

What’s funny is that Smokey refers to Al Capone, which isn’t the kind of comparison I’d like made about me – especially when there’s a criminal investigation of actions in which I may have been involved. 🙂

I’ll post updates as we get them.

UPDATE:

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You don’t need to watch the Comedy Channel to find great comedy any more. All you have to do, thanks to the wonders of the Intertubes, is to visit WTFIUWT and spend some time reading both the guest posts and the commentary. Be prepared to lose several heapings of IQ in doing so, but it’s good for a larf.

Case in point, the most recent post by none other than His Nibs, Viscount Christopher Moncton of Brenchley. The following excerpt is the most ideologically loaded pile of steaming bollocks analysis I’ve seen in quite some time. The way the Viscount portrays the Durban climate talks, you’d think a group of Bildersberg elites had teamed up with Lord Sauron himself to plot the total domination of the world!

The Viscount is clearly playing to the loonies, as the following shows.

I’ve bolded and italicized the pertinent words and phrases.

Here’s the Viscount:

The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean ‘for’] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Let’s do a little deconstruction, shall we?

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http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-global-warming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006,26808/

Say no more…

Over at Bishop Hill, there’s another cartoon up by Josh.

I had a little fun with Picasa…

What’dya think’s the real problem? Donna or my idea?

It’s deja vu all over again in the climate denialosphere.

Perhaps you, like me, have this very strong feeling that we’ve been here, done this, read the emails, saw the inquiry reports and realized it was all just a bunch of climate chum meant to confuse the issue and cast suspicion over the science to protect the interests of a select few among the 1% who reject regulation of their industries and their paid and/or intellectual lackeys who, while they may not benefit directly in bribes from continued burning of fossil fuels, are ideologically or politically biased…

So, more of the hacked emails are being circulated, with the usual bits and bobs cherry-picked to try to mislead the unsuspecting or credulous into thinking there is no global warming, no anthropogenic cause, and nothing to worry about — all of this due to selectively snipped emails that are taken out of context.

In other words, just more denier bait.

I’m shocked — shocked and appalled to my very foundations that scientists might express disdain for the work of their colleagues, question the value of data and methods, and disagree on what data means and how to present it!

I thought that they were just a great big happy family! Imagine my utter dejection at realizing that there are disagreements and debates between scientists when preparing their work for publication!

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