Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Fossilpower exposed

Heartland documents leaked: The exposure of these documents confirm what climate realists/scientists have been saying for many years about the source of climate denial, and that the people pushing denier talking points are doing so for money. This money comes largely from the fossil fuel industry, which this further proves.

The “Climategate” emails, whose motivated misinterpretation and attendant media blitz was *successful* at creating additional climate denialism, and importantly, gave politicians political cover to avoid climate legislation/renewable energy support. It was a case study of the powers of modern PR and misinformation, and just how effectively a lie can be made to persuade and effect policy.

These Heartland docs *should* be a very effective weapon to shut down climate denier arguments, disbar the media credentials of paid climate deniers everywhere, and demonstrate the sophistication and dishonesty of the PR machine that climate scientists are up against. It truly is a test of whether or not scientists and honest/objective media brokers will ever be able to turn the tide in the climate messaging/media fight. This is a rare gift, and I hope to see the same strength and media brilliance employed in its dissemination as we all had to witness and endure during the “climategate” media blitz.

Hopefully this episode becomes branded with a catchy name, which can then be neatly invoked forevermore to call to mind the devious and fraudulent nature of climate denial. You know, sort of like all manner of conservatives attempt when mentioning “climategate”. Please do better than “Heartlandgate”, though.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Gina Reinhart - Media Baron?

Mining in a new vein by Clive Hamilton

The mineral and other resources of Australia belong to the people of Australia, not Gina Reinhart or other individuals or corporations. Reinhart is being grossly overpaid for the work she does in the mining industry. She should be fired and replaced with someone on a much more modest remuneration.

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Michael Hudson: The Man Who Fired Greenspan

Michael Hudson: The Man Who Fired Greenspan:

This is the transcript of an interview with Michael Hudson in an Australian film, discussing a 1966 incident:


MH: They increased it largely by having Alan Greenspan create the Greenspan Commission to look at social security and pushing the myth that social security had to be funded out of pre savings, so American labour was essentially taxed 11% between itself and the employers to pay social security and this vast increase in social security taxes was used to lend to the Government(US) to provide it with enough money to slash taxes on the rich and that was Greenspan’s ploy.


He was rewarded by being made head of the Federal Reserve for his actual hatred of labour and his desire that you had to reduce living standards in order to increase the profits of capital.


And so Greenspan was sort of the hack that was hired.


When I was on Wall Street, Greenspan was hired as part of a study I was doing on the balance of payments of the Oil Industry. And one day my boss, John Deaver came into my office and said he really worried about Greenspan being a part of this report because he was known as a hack that always gave …his clients what they wanted instead of something actual.


So he (JD) gave me Greenspan’s figures on depreciation of oil producing refinery assets in Europe and asked me to find out where the faking is? He said he couldn’t believe that Greenspan by himself wouldn’t of just faked the figures and it took me about a week to figure out where the faking of the figures came out (from) and that was Greenspan had simply picked up depreciation rates relative to output for the United States and projected them onto Europe.


So I went over and talked to his assistant Lucille Woo and she said “it’s all implicit, all implicit” and I confronted her with it and she said “Yes that’s what we did”!


And so, Greenspan was indeed ‘talked off the study’ and we met… John Deaver, David Rockefeller and myself and I was told…Greenspan was such a little bastard that if they fired him, he’d hold a grudge against Chase Manhattan for years and they told me to be the guy to give him the news that we couldn’t use his (laughs) statistics on it and I was a 25 year old economist at the time and he hardly new me at all, so I was the guy that…subsequently became known as ‘the man who fired Alan Greenspan’.