Big corporate money as a muzzle

In Canada, big corporate money is funding the environmentally horrific tar sands project and the equally despicable effort to muzzle scientists who would otherwise be reporting on the environmental disaster. IO9 reports:

Big money muzzles truth-tellers. "The Canadian government is currently under investigation for its efforts to obstruct the right of the media and public to speak to government scientists. These policies are widely believed to be a part of the government's unspoken campaign to ensure that oil keeps flowing from the Athabasca tar sands — even if it’s at the cost of free scientific inquiry, the environment, and by consequence, democracy itself."

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Masking peak oil

Why is it that fossil fuel industries are getting such massive subsidies? The IMF wants to know too:

Developing and industrialized countries should rein in energy subsidies that totaled $1.9 trillion in 2011 to ease budgetary pressures and free resources for public spending in areas like education and health care, International Monetary Fund economists said in a research paper published Wednesday. In the paper, “Energy Subsidy Reform — Lessons and Implications,” the economists reviewed a database of 176 countries and analyzed ways to change energy subsidies by examining case studies of 22 countries. In 2011, energy subsidies intended to contain energy prices for consumers accounted for 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or 8 percent of all government revenue, the fund said.
It occurs to me that without these subsidies, energy prices would be shooting upwards due to peak oil, possibly causing a nationwide panic. Then maybe the federal government would have a very difficult time justifying these subsidies, which would panic the 1% who control the fossil fuel industries.

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Global warming and causation

Was this blizzard or that hurricane or that drought "caused" by human-caused global warming? Michael Mann, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, used this basketball analogy to illustrate this causation issue:

If you take the basketball court and raise it a foot, you're going to see more slam-dunks," Mann said. "Not every dunk is due to raising the floor, but you'll start seeing them happen more often then they ought to.

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