If oil companies raised prices too high there would be repercussions, such as raised calls for investigations into oil company price fixing. Oil companies are walking a fine line between greed and good public relations.

I put oil companies very much on par with tobacco companies. In pursuit of profits, both have cared very little about the health and welfare of their fellow citizens. My question for you is, why do you appear to be going out of your way to defend them?

Who are the politicians conducting these investigations? If anything they should be leaping for joy at the news of higher gasoline prices. As the prices rise people drive less, they buy more fuel-efficient cars, and seek out alternative fuels. Raising gasoline prices in the private sector do all the things they say the government should mandate for us.

The fires in Southern California have been in the news a lot lately. When I turn on the television there are many images of fire tucks transporting fire servicemen and helicopters dropping many gallons of water in attempt to extinguish those fires. Where did the fuel for those trucks and helicopters come from? What about the millions of ambulances that transport patents to emergency rooms every day? Who provided that fuel? Who provides the fuel will heat hundreds of millions of homes this upcoming winter hence saving millions of lives? What about the hospitals that saves newborn babies lives using plastic incubators? Where did that plastic originate? What about the millions of trucks that transport food and other consumer goods across the country to that the average person can access them cheaply and easily? There are very few industries that have improved the lives and raised the standard of living to the extent the oil companies have.

for more:
Coyote Blog: In Praise of "Robber Barons"
Coyote Blog: Wither Supply and Demand, In Favor of the Oil Trading Cabal?
Coyote Blog: AZ Republic Takes Shot at Oil Companies

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"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them." - Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Coyote Blog


Americans Indians support oil drilling in ANWR.

Why are politicians debating this and not scientists? I personally beleive global warming to be man made. Howevor, I dont like serious issues being politicized. You can beleive what you want, but noone will know for sure till politicians stop turning this into partisan politics and give it to the scientists to figure out.

On that note, though. I do tend to think any measure to decrease pollution is good for the community. So I support clean air regulation, especially in urban areas, and limiting if not banning waste dumping in the oceans, lakes, Seas, and Rivers, and so on.

It's just better to not have pollution than to have it.

Ah, but is CO2 a pollutant? The Supreme Court seems to thinks so, I don’t, scientists don’t.

The quality of our air and water is better today than it was in the past. I’m not to concerned about that.

__________________
"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them." - Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Coyote Blog


Americans Indians support oil drilling in ANWR.

November 14, 2007
Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet
By John Stossel

Recently on "20/20," I said "give me a break" to Al Gore for claiming that the global-warming debate is over and suggesting that all dissenters were in it for the money. I interviewed independent scientists who say Gore is wrong.

Some people were relieved to finally hear the other side: "Thank you, thank you, thank you for your report on climate change. ... I'm sick of hearing 'the debate's over' and writing anyone who differs off as a nut. This report showed the true nature of the debate and true lack of consensus, something you can't get anywhere else."

Others were just mad: "Your 20/20 report on Global Warning made me sick. ... Your sarcastic ridiculing of Al Gore ... I have lost all respect for you and your reporting."

Yes, the globe has warmed, but whether severe warming is imminent and whether human beings are causing it in large degree are empirical questions that can't be answered ideologically. The media may scream that "the science is in" and the "debate is over," but in fact it continues vigorously, with credentialed climate scientists on both sides of the divide. (For example.) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may present a "consensus view of scientists," but the "consensus" is not without dissent.

"Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute.

The scientific process ought to be left to play itself out with as little political bias as possible. Politically influenced research is poison to science.

Part of the problem is the IPCC itself. Reiter points out, "It's the inter-governmental panel on climate change. It's governments who nominate people. It's inherently political. Many of the scientists are on the IPCC because they view global warming as a problem that needs to be fixed. They have a vested interest."

Phillip Stott, professor of biogeography at the University of London, says that the global warming debate has become the new "grand narrative" of the environmental movement. "It's something for people to get excited about and protest. It's more about emotion than science." While the scientists thrash things out, what are the rest of us to do?

There are good reasons to begin with a presumption against government action. As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving. The synthetic-fuels program during the Carter years consumed billions of dollars and was finally disbanded as a failure. The push for ethanol today is more driven by special interests than good sense -- it's boosting food prices while producing a fuel of dubious environmental quality.

Even if the climate really needs cooling down, government can't be counted on to accomplish that. Advocates of carbon taxes and emissions trading talk about reducing CO2, but they promise no more than a minuscule reduction in temperature. Temperature reduction is supposed to be the objective.

In fact, even drastic plans to cut the use of carbon-based energy would make only a negligible difference. As John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a member of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal:

"Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10 percent of the world's energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 -- roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It's a dent."

I agree with Stott, who says, "The right approach to climate change is adaptation -- and the way to do that is to have strong economies."

We will have a strong economy if we don't give up our freedom and our money to fulfill the grand schemes of big-government alarmists.

Next week: How the private sector could deal with a global-warming problem.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

John Stossel is not without his detractors. Ralph Nader has called him, "the most dishonest journalist I've ever encountered".
James K. Galbraith said that Stossel, in a story on economics in September 1999, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to make it seem that Galbraith had said nearly the opposite of what he meant.

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in the New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported.

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a clip of a TV minister originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. The clip made it seem that the minister was describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when actually, he was telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. The minister filed a lawsuit against Stossel, his source for the clip, 20/20, and ABC for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal in September 2007 called "Sick Sob Stories," Stossel described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, Sicko. Julie criticized Stossel, saying her husband would have been saved by the Canadian health care system, and she thought Stossel should have interviewed her and her doctor before writing about them.

Looks like Stossel is not above stretching the truth to fit his agenda.

"If they don't close these [nuclear] reactors down, we'll have civil war in five years." -- Ralph Nader in 1977
Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader - The Dark Side

Stossel has won 19 Emmy Awards. Stossel was honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, and has received the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the Peabody Award. Stossel says when he was skeptical of business, he was deluged with awards. In one year, according to Stossel in his book Give Me A Break, "I got so many Emmys, another winner thanked me in his acceptance speech 'for not having an entry in this category,'" According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention he was deluged with awards. But in 2006, he joked, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards.John Stossel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________
"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them." - Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Coyote Blog


Americans Indians support oil drilling in ANWR.

John Stossell is a voice and has an opinion. I know it hurts terribly that he actually challenges those like you Upton who drink the Kool-Aid so easily like a good trained dog. Actually, that's a good metaphor for you. You are like a trained dog. Ralph Nader, while I respect some of the work he did in the '60's has become little more than a characture of the man he once was.

I'm sure Coyote, it only follows that Stossel is a big oil company apologist. Against reasonable restraints such as price controls. Otherwise, I have to ask, would your support have been forthcoming?

When did price controls become "reasonable"? Price controls were the cause of the "energy crisis" of the 1970s and of the California energy crisis of the 1990s (only the wholesale price of electricity was deregulated there; controls were placed on retail prices). For more than four thousand years, dictators, despots, and politicians of all stripes have viewed price controls as the ultimate "something for nothing" promise to the public.

__________________
"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them." - Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Coyote Blog


Americans Indians support oil drilling in ANWR.