Big oil and their record profits as a result of price fixing/gouging/manipulation are attacking Al Gore with billions in order to “prove” what the scientific community has already debunked.
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Global Warming Doesn’t Exist
May 17th, 2006
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Considering oil companies have been cleared time after time after time of price gouging, manipulation and collusion, I wonder how you arrive at that conclusion other than a DNC talking point memo told you to write it.
Or is this one of those things where you support it with the “facts?”
Oliver, you should check your site code; the part of Jay’s comment where he addressed the actual point of your post got cut off.
Oliver, I would rethink the “billions”, as CEI only has a revenue stream of about 3 million, and on their 2004 990 filing with the IRS, they spent a total of $23K on such ads. And look at where the ad buys are located: Albany? Harrisburg? Springfield? Dayton? Not exactly the tri-state media market.
I’ve covered the “greenscam” war against Gore for quite some time now, and have nothing but praise for you that you’re doing what we Progressives should have done when these industry-funded groups first sprung up back in the ’90s – fighting back. But it only hurts Gore if you don’t get the facts straight, and none of these groups are spending billions to launch ad wars against Gore – they don’t have to – slander is cheap in some media markets.
His point included the bogus accusation that the oil companies were able to make these donations based on their price fixing, manipulation and gouging.
“Global Warming Alarmism”
This is not going to sell to most of the general public. Even President Bush has acknowledged that the burning of fossil fuels is affecting the climate.
http://whyfiles.org/updates/080global_warm/index.html
The only consolation is that the money they spend on this will not go to another $500M retirement slush fund for another already rich big oil company CEO.
Someone needs to explain to me the amazing coincidence of every major oil producer reducing inventories to minimum levels at precisely the same time. Lower inventories definitely reduce costs for oil companies somewhat, so there is some cost benefit. However, given the numerous market shocks of the past 5+ years, wouldn’t an enterprising oil company think that they could gain a competitve edge by increasing inventories, thus allowing them to rapidly meet demand during disruptions (i.e. Katrina) and reducing the cost to consumers at the pump? Yet amazingly not one of the big 5 oil megacorps have done so. That certainly stinks of collusion, but naturally it is almost impossible to prove since there are numerous other factors affect gas prices as well ranging from dwindling crude sources (peak oil) to reduced refining capacity to Mid East instability. Let’s not forget the enormous amount of consolidation in the oil industry as well, with mergers reducing the number of competing companies to 5 or so major players. It’s probably not that hard to see a certain degree of “coincidental parallelism” among competitors when they number so few in a market with a certain base level of inelastic demand (people HAVE to buy gas to go to work, get food, etc., which is in direct contrast to discretionary items like t.v.s).
Collusion is incredibly tough to prove, and any “investigation” led by the FTC, which has a bit of a politically biased history (swinging both to the Right and Left depending on the prevailing winds), is going to be met with a large degree of skepticism. Still, for me it goes back to the conspicuous reductions in refining capacity and inventories, even during repeated crisis, that produce opportunities for MASSIVE windfall profits to a degree far greater than any short term gains to be had from competitive pricing. Is that illegal? Maybe, but I don’t know how you would prove it since there is nothing inherently wrong with only maintaining sufficient supply to meet current demand. Certainly a stiff windfall profits tax would go a long way toward discouraging such scenarios, but at the current time, I don’t see any chance of that happening. ironically, though, high prices may ultimately be a boon as they will discourage unnecessary consumption and increase demand for alternatives.
And if it involves the environment and an oil company says it, bet money on the opposite being the case.
“There is no global warming…oh, and this just in, 6,000 year old Earth actually getting flatter.
Stay with until us after the break when we’ll discuss the health benefits of smoking and why expectant mothers should consider going filterless after switching from beer to scotch.”
Oh great. I can’t wait for Dugger to come along and tell us that Al Gore is part of a vast left wing conspiracy (that first originated in Stalinist Russia) to doctor scientific findings in order to hasten the rise of a one world UN run government while a study by an oil company funded think tank represents objective science.
I assume the expenses claimed for items such as anti-Gore commercials help to reduce the increased profits, thereby helping the argument that they are not price-gouging after all. It’s a two-fer.
Bill, thanks for your insight. This scenario is not entirely unlike the “California Energy Crisis” which essentially involved about 8 electrical generation companies taking facilities offline to artificially constrain supply and therefore reap tremendous profit. Even with incriminating emails, damning testimony and numerous lawsuits, there is about a snowball’s chance in hell that California or Californians will ever recover even a dollar of the money that was stolen from ratepayers.
Oh great. I can t wait for Dugger to come along and tell us that Al Gore is part of a vast left wing conspiracy (that first originated in Stalinist Russia) to doctor scientific findings in order to hasten th…..
ROFLMAO!