Tim Dickinson has written another great political expose that appears in the Rolling Stone. It is titled: The Climate Killers. In it, he identified the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming.
They are as follows:
1. The Profiteer Warren Buffett
2. The Disinformer Rupert Murdoch
3. The Fake Protester Jack Gerard (head of the American Petroleum Institute)
4. Burning Man, Rex Tillerson Exxon Mobil
5. The Dirty Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu
6. The “Matt Drudge of Denial–Marc Morano
7. God’s Denier Sen James Inhofe from Oklahoma [Someone needs to tell this jackass to visit a few superfund sites in his own state like the one Quapaw Oklahoma, for example.]
8. The Power Player, David Ratcliff, head of Southern Company America’s second dirtiest electric utility. He has assembled an army of 63 lobbyists.
9. The arm twister, Dick Gephardt, former House majority leaders and now lobbyist for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company.
10. The pundit, George Will–he heads up corporate funded “science”
11. The Know Nothing, Tom Donohue, president U.S. Chamber of Commerce
12. The Coal Baron, Don Blankenship, CEO Massey Energy Global warming, he insists, is nothing but “a hoax and a Ponzi scheme.” His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation’s fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.
13. The Hack Scientist – Fred Singer– a former mouthpiece for the tobacco industry, the 85 year old Singer is the granddaddy of fake “science” designed to debunk global warming. The retired physicist who also tried to down play the danger of the hole in the ozone layer is still wheeled out as an “authority” by the polluters.
14. The Flip flopper–Sen John McCain (’nuff said)
15. The Inquisitor, Rep Joe Barton, Republican Texan. Barton is a mini version of Sen. James Inhofe
16. The Tea partiers, Charles and David Koch, CEO and Exec. VP. Koch Industries. Multibillionaire brothers who run the nations largest private energy company. Over the years they have lavished millions on climate deniers at the Heritage Foundation.
*****************************************************************************
QUEEN’S ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am beginning to think that the topic of global warming is a faux issue–not that global warming itself is faux, but rather that pitting the left against the right to argue regarding the theories of global warming is one way to put the status of doing anything about it on hold.
Instead of falling for the manipulations of these people listed above, why don’t we just drop the intellectual discussions, and simply start demanding that they clean up the messes that they have already made and insist that THEY, not the taxpayers foot the bill for it?
Surely that would be more productive than bickering over whether or not global warming is “real.”
******************************************************************
TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY KINGSTON PLANT AND OTHER EXAMPLES OF WANTON DISREGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
In December of 2008, a coal ash storage pond in Tennessee ruptured, spilling more than a billion gallons of ash slurry laden with heavy metals — a spill 50 times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — into tributaries of the Tennessee River. In a new report that was prompted by the Tennessee incident, the EPA detailed 44 “high hazard potential” coal ash storage pond dump sites across the country.
Responding to watchdog pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disclosed the locations of 44 “high hazard” ash dumps, where a failure of the containment structure — like the disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant in east Tennessee last December — could kill large numbers of people.
A 2007 assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that at least 23 states already have poisoned surface or groundwater supplies from improper disposal of coal ash, including Texas, Virginia, and the Carolinas.