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In descending order of importance, if Space management, Workforce quality, Parenting methodologies + Education system do not get overhauled, S’pore’s economic success is bound to rapidly deteriorate.(Edit: I have the solutions for the problems below)Whatever I put in italics are the current challenges. For your googling benefit.This is a long one. Brace yourself.Unlike what the population whitepaper (2013) suggested, our rapidly aging population is NOT the most endangering to our economic sustainability. While it portends a shrinking domestic workforce and customer base, with less workers to support the industries and less customers to sell to, they are not highly relevant to the future economy. Additionally to resolve this through artificial population injection via foreign migrants, may not only NOT alleviate the burden on the younger generations who have to support a larger population of older, less able S’poreans, but exacerbate the issues that will undermine S’pore’s economic success.First of all, a shrinking workforce is not a problem in the future economy. The world is moving away from the industrial era where a small number of decision makers rule conglomerates, assigning jobs with specific scope of work to the masses, much like the workers of a machine line. In recent years, a large number of corporations traditionally thought to be resistant to negative economic impacts have closed shop or downsized through massive retrenchment exercises worldwide, and S’pore is following suit. The way is opening up to a future of numerous smaller-sized, technologically supported companies with a short to medium term life span, with a lean structure comprised of mentally agile and multi-skilled employees whose work roles are less clearly defined. Often skilled, even highly skilled independent workers will be contracted on a project basis.The problem with S’poreans is that their skills are of little relevance to the future’s knowledge-based workforce. If S’poreans do not transform to accommodate future requirements, then the problem of talent shortfall will persist to disrupt businesses’ sustainability. Therefore it is the quality of the workforce that matters, not so much the size.Even with the reasoning that a larger population size will increase the chance of locating quality, if at 5.9 m population mark, just 1.0 m shy of 6.9 m, 96% of employers still state that they face skills shortage, what is the probability of rectifying this problem with an additional 1.0 m population figure? The obvious solution is that S’poreans right here right now have to be the ones to provide the quality seeked. Yet S’poreans ability to transform is also handicapped by the below factors.A shrinking customer base is also not a substantial threat to our economy because the domestic market has never been a major income source. S’pore made its mark through the import/export trade. What counts is our foreign clientele base… although the prognosis is not favourable and it has to do with Cost of Space.Multiple sectors and industries relying on foreign customers have been affected by slowing global demand. Even the only consistently performing one may be hitting a plateau. The tourism sector might have broke records for visitor arrivals and income in 2017, but emerging tourism market segments lauded for their high potential have fizzled out. When hotel rates are 3rd most expensive in Asia Pacific and costly medical services considered, medical tourists flock to regional competitors like Msia and Thailand. (Even S’poreans are going elsewhere). Businesses are also finding it too costly for associates to travel to S’pore, thus threatening the BTMICE segment that accounts for ¼ of our tourism receipts. In 2017, S’pore went up a notch to be the 3rd most expensive place for business travellers in Asia Pacific.The problem with the high cost of space is not isolated. Office rent in the CBD has risen to be more expensive than that of Miami in Florida. Businesses grapple with falling profits and rising overheads. Naturally businesses reduce pay packages as cost-cut measures. Luxurious pay packages for expats a thing of the past. Most on localised paychecks. This affects workforce quality. Foreign manpower expertise shortfall in many industries.With reduced pay, foreign professionals feel the financial strain of living here. S’pore is in the 5th year running as the most expensive city for expats.The Global Schoolhouse project is a dismay when elite foreign institutions took off with some citing high operating costs including that of rent, aggravated by lukewarm student enrolments. S’pore topped the charts for the most expensive place for foreign students, and rent is no doubt a high price for a student to pay.A study in NUS found considerable number of S’poreans bearing the brunt of unaffordable housing as ⅓ of their monthly income goes toward servicing mortgage loans. Income raises lagging behind property price increases is cause for more worry. The burden of meeting housing payments keep S’poreans in fear of losing their jobs, and an unhealthy situation has arised. The need for employers’ approval prevents challenging of the status quo. Long work hours are kept to even when much of it is spent on pointless activities. Longest work week of 44 hours globally. This is one reason for diminished motivation at work. Low workforce productivity. Suggestions for change can lead to longer work hours. Best to just keep to existing standards. SMEs lack innovation, are change resistant. Work is so stressful. Increase in Major Depressive Disorder for the middle-aged and suicides for 20 - 29 years age range. Quality of the workforce affected.Potential entrepreneurs typically fall within the range of marriageable age, face dilemma of self-employment impeding their qualifying for home ownership. Prudent family members including wife-to-be stand in favor of not rocking the boat, strongly influencing one’s final decision. Lack of entrepreneurial instincts.Parents transfer the stress of keeping their rice bowl intact by urging children to study even harder to gain competitive advantage, starting them at younger age, for longer hours. Increase in childhood mental health issues and teenage suicides. Parents are then apprehensive about having more kids who will not only add to expenses but face the similar challenges they went through. Besides there isn’t even time to have sex. Low fertility rate. There isn’t time for spouse as well. Divorce rates increase. Might as well not get married. Less couples tie the knot.As a result of paying the accrued interest on CPF utilised to pay for housing, and not being able to earn CPF interest on the sum used, retirement amount is significantly reduced. Half the population of 65 - 69 years are in the workforce putting in long hours with no minimum wage… so it couldn’t be that they enjoy working. Moreover life span might have increased but so have the number of years spent in ill health. Increase in aged mental health issues and suicides.The entire life trajectory of a S’porean doesn’t sound enticing.While there are other contributing factors to the above mentioned, they all present one underlying theme - the affordability of space (property/land). Can you see how determining it is of our economic and social well being?Now what then determines the cost of space? The cost of space is fundamentally an issue of availability. Less land/property available equates to higher prices charged. Contrary to popular thought, people are not the country’s only natural resource. Without this piece of land, S’pore as a country wouldn’t even exist. Albeit of an extremely small area of 720 km2, that only makes it more precious. When 13,700 people are placed in every square kilometre [*calculated based on developable areas as per the whitepaper], space utility had better be damn well managed.How is Space managed in S’pore?While there is no doubt that land use is meticulously planned and policies are implemented for the benefit of S’poreans, there are adverse outcomes in areas approached with a reductionist mindset.Example 1.In 2007 - 2011 foreign direct investments led to 50% surge in property prices. Having gone way over the range of affordability for serious home buyers, property cooling measures to curb buyers’ eligibility were introduced in 2011, with the anticipation that falling demand would drive prices down. The interest in the private housing market fizzled out and prices began the descent from 2013 - 2017 dipping by (approx) 12% to its lowest.Then end 2017, prices started to go back up. Same goes for 1st half of 2018. Prices are likely to rise 8 - 10% for the year of 2018.Turns out the cooling measures did not effect a drop in prices for a significant period.Oh well… no big deal, you think. Actually it is a huge deal.An event that interrupts the top of the supply chain of a sector can cause a ripple effect throughout its ecosystem, subsequently impacting related sectors and industries, then rippling out to the rest. And the property sector has one of the most extensive economic ecosystem. In 2017, 1 in 5 persons or 18.8% in the workforce is directly involved in real estate and construction. Other jobs directly affected include valuers, conveyance lawyers, mortgage bankers, facility managers, architects, engineers and various service providers. Residential property is a major asset class worth $833.5 billion. Mortgages make up about 30% of local banking portfolio. Home ownership is at over 90% of all households with a portion who depend on rental as an income source.When source of income for these people are cut off, other sectors in turn get affected as consumer spending shrinks. With considerable number of people experiencing such, there will be a large enough impact on the economy. While the effects of cooling measures cannot be considered the only contributor to the economic slowdown, it has its reasonable share.The Property sector is the bedrock of the Singapore economy. What came down was much more than the prices of property.This matters.Example 2.As a result of the cooling measures where property transactions hit record lows, continual yearly supply of newly completed homes added to the bulk of unsold and unoccupied units, totaling 32,000+ at its peak in 2017, recording a 10 year high vacancy rate of 8.9%. This is a lot of unused space. The only method to address this is to impose hefty fines on property developers (with foreign directors and almost all of them do) for not selling the units by a certain time frame. To avoid the penalty, some developers buy over those units under a subsidiary.But this is meaningless towards fulfilling the goal of reducing property prices. Nor does it address the vacant and wasted spaces.Example 3.Considering that a large number of new homes have been unoccupied for years, although the vacancy rate has fallen to 8.4% (2018), recent release of government land sales and the redevelopment of en-bloc sites will add another 20,000 units from 20 new residential projects, flooding the market in the near future.Build, then leave empty, then build more… On land scarce, congested Singapore.Example 4.For almost a decade, S’pore’s huge population had the public hospitals plagued with bed shortages even as more and more new facilities were progressively added on to meet the demand. At end 2016 there were 13,931 beds. By 2022, 4 facilities will offer 4,250 beds. By 2030, another facility will be ready. By 2032, 8 new polyclinics will be completed to reduce the load for hospitals. Yet, based on the 6.9 M population, the ratio of hospital bed to 1,000 people only slightly increases from 2.2 (Year 2010) to 2.8 (Year 2030) (approx).So how? Build more?Apart from technology to facilitate timely discharge... to community hospitals and nursing homes (still occupying space), and patients’ homes (sounds good), there other methods of addressing the overcrowding such as preventive care. But the methods are hardly preventive at all. Perhaps time to address the root causes of illnesses? Anyway this is altogether another topic.Public hospitals also faced a backlash from S’poreans for accepting medical tourists when beds are in shortfall. They have had to tone down operations, thus compromising on the knowledge to be acquired from a larger variety of diseases that foreigners can provide. This affects the transitioning to a knowledge based economy.Example 5.The tourism sector may be high performing but hotels functioning at high occupancy is a threat to the tourism business. High demand means high prices and this has already affected certain tourism segments as mentioned above. In 2018, Colliers stated that hotels in S’pore are full almost all the time during peak periods, and especially during Mon to Thurs, and Sat nights. Hotel demand has constantly outstripped hotel room stock since 2011.In 2015, there were 398 hotels and 60,908 rooms. By end 2017, there were 420 hotels with a total of 67,084 rooms. Another 3,372 rooms were in the pipeline. There is a mention of a need to build more.Going forward, how viable is the ‘build more’ approach? Bed capacity is as low and hotel rooms are as filled while remaining land has decreased and cost of space driven up? What about the large number of houses left vacant?S’pore is now the 4th most expensive city in Asia to construct a building. Note ‘city’ and not ‘country’. This means construction costs are more expensive here than many other bustling Asian cities. Costs are then transferred to the end users and the cycle repeats itself, where the high cost of space impacts the decisions of the people which negatively impacts the economy.Workforce quality is influenced by the cost of space as a result of Space Management as I’ve brought up earlier on, and also the Education System. If edu continues to be rigid, linear and tightly guided, the future workforce will not be suitable for the new economy.The education system needs to stop telling people what to think. Let people think for themselves.S’pore is full of textbook specialists - specialists whose know-how is narrowly constrained by the edu system. These specialists will not entertain other schools of thought. They are so enamoured by their elite education, not realising that contemplating opposing ideas can provide wisdom that one lacks. This is Stockholm Syndrome where the victim assumes the kidnapper has saved him from the ills of the world and does not want to believe otherwise.If one’s world is just the fish tank, then the resources one has to draw on solving a problem is limited to the fish tank. True specialisation is trans-disciplinary and objective. For a fair assessment, one must inquire into as many areas as possible, constantly testing one’s convictions. If an oncologist is to treat cancer patients, he must understand the entire scope of how cancer came about and ascertain if chemotherapy is the best solution. If not, he is just a salesman selling chemotherapy spa, which is a highly lucrative job I’ve noticed.The complex economic and social challenges today are caused by reductionist thinking, only considering one aspect, giving little credence to all other related areas.S’porean parents are themselves stressed out by the Cost of Space, and the competitiveness as a result, thus pushing their children to excel. However to do so and within the outdated edu system, is counterproductive. Not only do the children not acquire the right set of skills for the workforce of the future, they are driven to madness. This severely impacts their ability to navigate life.In any case the form of parental care has largely shifted away from the form of care children really needs.Experts aren’t kidding when they state the 1st 8 years of a child’s life is the most crucial. Any disruption in the nurturing process nature has intended have lifelong consequences. Infants need their mothers more than the 1st 3 -4 months of life. Babies are overwhelmed enough in this new world, and is only going to be more confused in the childcare with a ton of other equally confused babies. A domestic helper who is only here temporarily causes emotional destabilisation to the child who has never known separation. Grandparents are good only if the parents themselves have flourished in their care.Desperate for parental love and presence yet unable to adequately communicate, the formative years are disrupted, preventing the build up of a strong foundation that will grant them the confidence to weather storms in their later years. Depression and suicide rates of the young are on the rise in S’pore. A wake up call?What’s the point of an entire nation of emotionally-stunted, mentally unstable and unhappy people? Would you entrust them with acting in the best interests of the economy and the society? Economic success is not just an economic issue. A well-supported social structure is a crucial ingredient for economic sustainability.Now as you can see, resolving the problem of rapidly aging society by increasing the population figure will not only NOT promise to get quality migrants with adequate skills and capabilities, but will definitely add on to the congestion in S’pore and the competition that is driving parents astray. Additionally in the future where the number of jobs will continue to downsize, where there is no need for workforce quantity but quality, more people on this island will increase the burden on the future younger generations, contrary to what the whitepaper suggested.For S’pore not to lose its economic success, these are the points to address. In ascending order of importance: Parental care and the Education system prepares the children for the future. Workforce quality is imminent. Space management is long overdue!And no, I do NOT think it is solely the government to make the changes above. Even if they do make the changes, they can’t do them all at once, and the people need to change the way they view things as well before progress can happen. You see, the government has given a strong support system to facilitate workforce upgrade, but the speed of change is slow because the people are not fully cooperating with the changes due to a ‘stuck’ mentality. They still focus on the negatives of everything in S’pore… A Mindset Change of the people will be a great complement to improvements in social and economic policies, and speed up progress.If only they knew.*Disclaimer, when I refer to S’poreans or People, I do not mean all S’poreans and people of S’pore. I meant majority.EDIT: The following are solutions for these problems,good space management strategies to help lower costs for all the affected parties which solves a lot of problems;Revive Medical tourism, sustain BTMICE segment and Education hub.Facilitate foreign professionals relocation.better ways to locate matching workforce skills and capabilities;supporting parents in caregiving;reducing congestionI am looking for potential business partners for Points 1 to 4. If you are a serious party, please contact me/pm me for simple, creative and well-thought-out solutions, and be ready to open up about your intentions, background and other questions I may have.

LOL.Oddly, the only people who seem to have noticed this "hoax" are fossil fuel and libertarian lobbyists and their spokespeople, plus a bunch of ideological and political hacks and denier conspiracy blogs and wingnut conservative propaganda blogs poorly drag queened as “newspapers” and their creationist Ship of fools friends who can't seem to understand even the most basic science.There is a dangerous and shameful anti science idiot wind blowing in the US right now. All the extremists have united in a devastating attack on science.No, this is not the Dark ages, this is the (former) science nation USA in 2019!! The Anti science league are still around like a pest. Like a second black death plague:Thats why we see creationists fighting to get creationism into schools,Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - Wikipediaand attacking science:that’s why we also see anti vaxxers attacking science,Vaccine opponents attack U.S. science panelthat’s why we see mighty polluters industries fighting the science just like tobacco industry did.https://www.washingtonpost.com/n..."As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".https://www.scientificamerican.c...DENIERS FAVOURITE DENIER THINK TANK THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ARE STILL TALKING DOWN THE HAZARDS OF TOBACCO SMOKING USING THE VERY SAME ARGUMENTS.You got to see this to believe it:Anthony Watts - SourceWatchDeniers favorite fossil fuel think tank front group, the Heartland Institutes view on tobacco and tobacco smoking. Now where have we heard these arguments before?This is chilling:Heartland Institute 2019:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science"."The anti-smoking movement is hardly a grassroots phenomenon: It is largely funded by taxpayers and a few major foundations with left-liberal agendas."Smoker's Lounge | Heartland InstituteTHE WORLD WIDE CONSPIRACY - DENIERS WET DREAMThis is how deniers wet dream of a world wide conspiracy looks like. I just had to write it out for them:climate scientists from all over the world- have for about the last 150 years - contrived the world into believing that people are contributing to climate change by putting plant food into the atmosphere. All the world's governments have paid trillions and trillions of dollars (add as many zeroes you like) to these scientists for this hoaxy conclusion so that these authorities and governments can impose all kinds of taxes and regulations on their citizens and impose further restrictions and obstacles in the way of the fossil fuel industry. (Like they did to the innocent, cool and clean tobacco industry).A secret green industry is very soon ready to get mega rich by doing a global wealth redistribution and turning the world into a large wind farm park where there are all sorts of socialist welfare like silly free health care and education etc, but first, the oil and coal industry and all the kind free marked fundamentalists - who innocently sits in their garden coaches (and blames everything wrong in this world on “poor people and immigrants”) - must be stopped and placed on a remote island north of Greenland.Naturally, it’s the communists in the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that manage all this through their headmaster Al Gore and the gay wizard of Dumbledore -all extended through the Illuminati agreement (the Paris agreement).Everything has been kept hidden until now, using the secret PC media (the political cartel), and environmental organizations, which is, of course, governed by the same authorities.but all this is finally exposed by a plucky band ofbloggers, amateur-deniers, boys room conspiracy drivlers, cranks, astroturf front groups, web-trolls, russian troll bots, youtube-videos, denier blog doctored graphs with childish handwritten arrows and comments added, desperate alt-right white supremacy nationalist madcap wingnuts, bible mums, creationists, very old conservative white men, political hacks, conservative propaganda blogs poorly draq queened as “newspapers”, Fox News-hosts, Breitbart blog commentary field readers, corrupt republican politicians, PragerU-sheeples, Ayn Rand-worshippers, government hating free market fundamentalists AND the fossil fuel industry.The leftist alarmist media are naturally pushing the “hoax”:Even without El Nino last year, Earth keeps warmingThe truth;In actuality, the science of AGW is apolitical, being based on credible evidence and physics. The denial of climate science, is based on no credible evidence and no physics, and is all-political.The denial of science is also like a true religion, for its acolytes also deny evidence and physics based on no evidence and no physics.When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 75 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red.[…] Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”The irony of this thinking is hilarious;While the scientific work of agencies like NOAA and NASA is higly respected and acknowledged world wide, in america, they are hated by the denial movement, and in such way, if this was the 50s, climate deniers would been locked away for anti american behaviour by the McCarthy process.Which side has the money?Think about it.Forbes list over richest people of the world shows most of them are from coal and oil industries. Yes, we are talking about one of the wealthiest industries ever.If there ever was such a thing as agovernment conspiracy working globally to turn America into a socialist dictatorship of huge wind mill parks and land of solar panels run by UN leftists:ask yourself these 7 question;1.why then has America and the World been polluted for 120 years with lead, asbestos, DDT, mercury, arsenic, teflon, nicotine and now CO2?Can you spot the “green deal dragon”?Look more like a dirty black deal to me.2. why then is Government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, intended to protect the public from pollution, now being run by former fossil fuel lobbyists of those very polluters and every environmental law demolished?Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPAE.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math83 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump3. Why then did Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Receive On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash?Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash4. why then are these "green" governments giving out multi billions in socialist subsidies to fossil fuels , not to “green” energy??Green energy feels the heat as subsidies go to fossil fuelsGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP. More than 40% of this represents subsidies for coal, the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels. Although not good news on its face, the disproportionate funding for fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity to shift funding to renewable energy without an overall increase in costs.Global Subsidies - Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables — Environmental Graphiti5. Why are there 180 climate deniers in the Republican party?How US climate machine has left 180 deniers in Congress - Michael West6. Why then is it republicans in 2019 seems to forget or ignore that the 3 main environmental issues in modern times were all initiated and fulfilled by REPUBLICAN presidents?7. Why then did the US say goodbye to the Kyoto and Paris Accord?8. Why dont climate deniers understand that their undermining and smearing of american institutions like NASA, NAS and The Pentagon would had been seen upon as anti-american back in the 50s, and they would had been locked away for being communists?if there is an ongoing “green conspiracy”,Can someone tell me where this “green conspiracy” is?Now ask yourself a new question;Doesn't it look much more like a fossil fuel industry that uses huge sums of money to bribe everyone they can to protect its cash flow?What’s more plausible?A world wide conspiracy involving tens of thousands of scientists and 200 nations over a period of 200 years?Polluters industries are hiding their self interests in ideology and politics to pander their tribe and bribes anyone they can - because they don’t have any science on their side? Just like tobacco did?Lets look closer at the 7 questions:1 AMERICA THE POLLUTED:America the polluted2. WHY ARE THE EPA NOW A JOKE AND EVERY ENVIRONMENTAL LAW DESTROYED BY THEIR FOSSIL FUEL PUPPETS?The EPA was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards. But he EPA is now a joke in Trumps America. It’s been hijacked by fossil fuel puppets and climate deniers. FFS, their new chief is a former coal lobbyist.Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPAAnd when fossil fuel interests get bogged down in the candy store alone, this is what happens:Donald Trump has announced a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, one that would create hundreds of millions more tons of carbon pollutionThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions RulesThe Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its MathMercury Limits on Coal Plants No Longer ‘Appropriate,’ EPA SaysEPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer 'Appropriate and Necessary'Trump's New Power Plan Comes With a Deadly Price83 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under TrumpThe Trump Administration’s War on Wildlife Should Be a ScandalNational Parks Getting Trashed During Government ShutdownFlorida Court Orders Oil Drilling In Everglades To Move Aheadhttps://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changePublic Citizen report on Koch-Trump connectionsTrumps America is fossil fuels America. How proud deniers must be. Leat them eat mercury, as they did lead, asbestos, DDT, nicotine and C02, you know, those other "hoaxes" science warned about. And as usual, these environmental laws will be renamed "tax scams" by the fossil fuels front group propaganda machine, to pander their bent over tribe of gullibles who, as usual, will swallow any anti-governmental lie they design, just because they believe being pro-government makes you a socialist.3. Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel CashSenators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash4. GLOBAL SUBSIDIES FOR FOSSIL FUELSThe United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon SpendingIMF Survey : Counting the Cost of Energy SubsidiesWhy are taxpayers subsidising the oil and gas companies that jeopardise our future?Instead of hoping market forces solve the climate crisis, the government needs to stop giving tax breaks to pollutersWhy are taxpayers subsidising the oil and gas companies that jeopardise our future? | Clive LewisGreen energy feels the heat as subsidies go to fossil fuelsGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP. More than 40% of this represents subsidies for coal, the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels. Although not good news on its face, the disproportionate funding for fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity to shift funding to renewable energy without an overall increase in costs.Global Subsidies - Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables — Environmental GraphitiGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP.How Big Oil Clings to Billions in Government Giveawayshttps://www.motherjones.com/poli...Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per yearA new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuelshttps://www.theguardian.com/envi...https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. Once intended to jump-start struggling domestic drillers, these incentives have become a tidy bonus for some of the world’s most profitable companies.Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—which get an average tax break of $3.34 on every barrel of domestic crude they produce. With Washington looking under the couch cushions for sources of new revenue, oil prices topping $100 a barrel, and the world feeling the heat from its dependence on fossil fuels, there’s been a renewed push to close these decades-old loopholes. But history suggests that Big Oil won’t let go of its perks without a brawl.https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...A new paper published in Climatic Change estimates that when we account for the pollution costs associated with our energy sources, gasoline costs an extra $3.80 per gallon, diesel an additional $4.80 per gallon, coal a further 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas another 11 cents per kilowatt-hour that we don’t see in our fuel or energy bills.https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-ene...5. Most republican politicians are puppets for the fossil fuel interests.In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.How US climate machine has left 180 deniers in Congress - Michael West6. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS WERE BEHIND ALL THE MAYOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN MODERN TIMES:The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency.), founded by President Richard Nixon in 1970, was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards.1987: Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol (to ban ozone-depleting pollutants), and created a huge climate report in 1989:Ronald Reagan’s 1989 EPA REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGEPage 28: http://bit.ly/2w8YMuVGeorge H W Bush introduce cap-and-trade (to deal with the acid rain problem).The Political History of Cap and TradeAnd what about George W Bush?Well Dubbya of course ran against the single politician--Al Gore--who is most closely associated with the cause of climate action in modern U.S. history.So I suppose it isn't too surprising that we heard lines like this spoken on the campaign trail:“As we promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”What might be surprising for you to learn, however, is that it wasn't Al Gore--but George W Bush--who made that statement in the run-up to the election. It was Bush who had committed to combat climate change through the regulation of carbon emissions.Vice: A Commentary on the Politics of Climate DenialGeorge W. Bush administration 2001 National Academies report:Committee on the Science of Climate ChangeDivision on Earth and Life StudiesNational Research Council“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.[…] Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century[….] The predicted warming of 3°C (5.4°F) by the end of the 21st century is consistent with the assumptions about how clouds and atmospheric relative humidity will react to global warming.The National Academies PressTRUMP?Trump's 2018 National Climate Assessment. ️Based on extensive evidence … it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”For the warming over the last century,“there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”Climate Science Special Report: Executive Summary7. If there ever was a “powerful leftist green side” in the USA, why did they not enter the Kyoto and the Paris accord?Senators who urged Trump to leave Paris climate accord took millions from oil companiesThe corruption knows no limits:When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyper-partisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained by FOIA show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social media network.Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service, because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.- Russ Choma & Rebecca Leber, Politics, Mother Jones, Jan 7, 2019The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of "fake news"“If the internet had been around in the 60s and 70s, climate deniers would be arguing against the health effects of smoking, and dredging up historical/anecdotal examples to insist that lung cancer was "natural", while warning that smoking cessation efforts were all part of a global conspiracy of taxation and socio-economic control.”"As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway PublicThe goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources. The polluters know they dont have any science to back up their arguments. So instead they use the best defence method they can. Which is to polarize and politicize the science.To keep their money flow going they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can engorge itself in even more wealth.Keep the people dumb and fogged in fear rethoric.College is Bad for America, Say Majority of RepublicansRead more at: College is Bad for America, Say Majority of RepublicansEducation for the masses is bad for the assesEducation leads to socialism and democracy. Socialism and democracy leads to communism.The difference between capitalism and socialism, is equivalent to the difference between freedom for the asses and freedom for the masses.To pander their gullible bent over “people on the streets” its often enough for the polluters to label environmental laws for “tax scams”. This will trigger their tribe into believing its about them and some (imaginary) battle against the “evil” government (who is only out to protect its citizens from environmental hazards).Libertarian and free-market ideology has traditionally had difficulty dealing with negative externalities, as detailed in the non-libertarian FAQ; denial allows a person to simply ignore the limitations of their ideology. American conservatives in particular tend to distrust government, dislike regulations and hate taxes, so that any problem whose solution is a tax or a regulation naturally attracts distrust.When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 70 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality“They connected their audience’s underlying ideologies to climate change: Because cutting GHG emissions requires intervention regulation or increased taxation of carbon emissions—that curtail free market economics, people whose identity and worldview centers around free markets became particularly likely to reject the findings from climate science when the logic was laid bare.”“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red,” became a common phrase in the conservative magazines of that era. Rather than suggesting that America strip away protections designed to keep air and water clean, commentators and pols railed against controls on less visible threats, like pesticides, ozone holes, and global warming. Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”“It’s not surprising that high-profile deniers are almost exclusively conservative white men, since they have most benefited from the industrial capitalist system, and therefore have the most skin in the game when it comes to protecting the powers that be — even if they aren’t those powers."[...] “conservative white males are likely to favour protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well”. It added that “heightened emotional and psychic investment in defending in-group claims may translate into misperceived understanding about problems like climate change that threaten the continued order of the system.”Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United StatesClimate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalismHow Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY SPENT ON LOBBYISM:Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.In the run-up to the US midterm elections last year (2018) $2m was spent on targeted Facebook and Instagram ads by global oil giants and their industry bodies, promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production, according to the report published by InfluenceMap.Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says reportA study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeTruth is these interests are spending billions on lobbying officials:"Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye," explained Brulle. "There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials. Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication. This process may limit the communication of accurate scientific information in the decision-making process."As the study concludes, “the environmental organization and the renewable energy sectors were outspent by the corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.”How lobbyists buy climate change legislationhttp://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Fi...About $2 billion USD was spent between 2000 and 2016 by a variety of fossil-fuel related actors on US lobbying alone to confuse the issue on climate change, deny the science and prevent action. This is according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Springer journal Climatic Change, a long-lasting interdisciplinary journal with a solid impact factor of 3.537. The study is The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016 by Robert Brulle of Drexel University.As Brulle points out in his abstract,Major sectors involved in lobbying were fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities, and affiliated trade associations. Expenditures by these sectors dwarf those of environmental organizations and renewable energy corporations.https://phys.org/news/2013-12-ko...https://cleantechnica.com/2016/0...Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science’IT WAS ALL BIPARTISAN UNTIL FOSSIL FUEL MONEY FLOODED THE REPUBLICAN PART CA 20 YEARS AGO.Even the oil giants knew:http://iopscience.iop.org/articl...Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years AgoBonus: Our CO2 IS causing the warming:As confirmed by GOVERNMENT founded scientist and denier darling Roy Spencer:"Greenhouse components in the atmosphere (mostly water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane) exert strong controls over how fast the Earth loses IR energy to outer space. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface”He even calls out for deniers to stop questioning the GHE because it makes them look like idiots....hilarious:"Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. "http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?

LOL.Oddly, the only people who seem to have noticed this "hoax" are fossil fuel and libertarian lobbyists and their spokespeople, plus a bunch of ideological and political hacks and denier conspiracy blogs and wingnut conservative propaganda blogs poorly drag queened as “newspaper” rags and their creationist friends who can't seem to understand even the most basic science.Which side has the money?Think about it.Forbes list over richest people of the world shows most of them are from coal and oil industries. Yes, we are talking about one of the wealthiest industries ever.If there ever was such a thing as agovernment conspiracy working globally to turn America into a socialist dictatorship of huge wind mill parks and land of solar panels run by UN leftistsask yourself these 6 question;1.why then has America and the world been polluted for 120 years with lead, asbestos, DDT, mercury, teflon, nicotine and now CO2?2. why then is Government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, intended to protect the public from pollution, now being run by former fossil fuel lobbyists of those very polluters and every environmental law demolished?3. Why then then did Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Receive On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash?4. Why then are these "green" governments giving out multi billions in subsidies to fossil fuels ?5. Why then is it republicans in 2019 seems to forget or ignore that the 3 main environmental issues in modern times were all initiated and fulfilled by REPUBLICAN presidents?6.Why then did the US say goodbye to the Paris Accord?if there is an ongoing “green conspiracy”Now ask yourself a new question;Doesn't it look much more like a fossil fuel industry that uses huge sums of money to bribe everyone they can to protect its cash flow?Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says reportThe Climate Denial Machine: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Blocks Climate Action.What’s more plausible?A world wide conspiracy involving tens of thousands of scientists and 200 nations over a period of 200 years?Polluters industries are hiding their self interests in ideology and politics to pander their tribe and bribes anyone they can - because they don’t have any science on their side? Just like tobacco did?Lets look closer at the 6 questions:1 AMERICA THE POLLUTED:America the polluted2. WHY ARE THE EPA NOW A JOKE AND EVERY ENVIRONMENTAL LAW DESTROYED BY THEIR FOSSIL FUEL PUPPETS?The EPA was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards. But he EPA is now a joke in Trumps America. It’s been hijacked by fossil fuel puppets and climate deniers. FFS, their new chief is a former coal lobbyist.Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPAAnd when fossil fuel interests get bogged down in the candy store alone, this is what happens:Donald Trump has announced a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, one that would create hundreds of millions more tons of carbon pollutionThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions RulesMercury Limits on Coal Plants No Longer ‘Appropriate,’ EPA SaysEPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer 'Appropriate and Necessary'Trump's New Power Plan Comes With a Deadly Price76 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under TrumpThe Trump Administration’s War on Wildlife Should Be a ScandalNational Parks Getting Trashed During Government ShutdownFlorida Court Orders Oil Drilling In Everglades To Move Aheadhttps://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changePublic Citizen report on Koch-Trump connectionsTrumps America is fossil fuels America. How proud deniers must be. Leat them eat mercury, as they did lead, asbestos, DDT, nicotine and C02, you know, those other "hoaxes" science warned about. And as usual, these environmental laws will be renamed "tax scams" by the fossil fuels front group propaganda machine, to pander their bent over tribe of gullibles who, as usual, will swallow any anti-governmental lie they design, just because they believe being pro-government makes you a socialist.3. Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel CashSenators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash4. GLOBAL CORPORATE SOCIALIST SUBSIDIES FOR FOSSIL FUELSREMEMBER:CORPORATE SOCIALISM IS GOOD - IT BENEFITS THE BILLIONARIES.DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM IS BAD - IT BENEFITS THE WORKERSGreen energy feels the heat as subsidies go to fossil fuelsGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP. More than 40% of this represents subsidies for coal, the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels. Although not good news on its face, the disproportionate funding for fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity to shift funding to renewable energy without an overall increase in costs.Global Subsidies - Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables — Environmental GraphitiGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP.How Big Oil Clings to Billions in Government Giveawayshttps://www.motherjones.com/poli...Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per yearA new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuelshttps://www.theguardian.com/envi...https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. Once intended to jump-start struggling domestic drillers, these incentives have become a tidy bonus for some of the world’s most profitable companies.Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—which get an average tax break of $3.34 on every barrel of domestic crude they produce. With Washington looking under the couch cushions for sources of new revenue, oil prices topping $100 a barrel, and the world feeling the heat from its dependence on fossil fuels, there’s been a renewed push to close these decades-old loopholes. But history suggests that Big Oil won’t let go of its perks without a brawl.https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...A new paper published in Climatic Change estimates that when we account for the pollution costs associated with our energy sources, gasoline costs an extra $3.80 per gallon, diesel an additional $4.80 per gallon, coal a further 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas another 11 cents per kilowatt-hour that we don’t see in our fuel or energy bills.https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-ene...5. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS WERE BEHIND ALL THE MAYOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN MODERN TIMES:The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency.), founded by President Richard Nixon in 1970, was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards.1987: Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol (to ban ozone-depleting pollutants), and created a huge climate report in 1989:Ronald Reagan’s 1989 EPA REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGEPage 28: http://bit.ly/2w8YMuVGeorge H W Bush introduce cap-and-trade (to deal with the acid rain problem).The Political History of Cap and TradeAnd what about George W Bush?Well Dubbya of course ran against the single politician--Al Gore--who is most closely associated with the cause of climate action in modern U.S. history.So I suppose it isn't too surprising that we heard lines like this spoken on the campaign trail:“As we promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”What might be surprising for you to learn, however, is that it wasn't Al Gore--but George W Bush--who made that statement in the run-up to the election. It was Bush who had committed to combat climate change through the regulation of carbon emissions.Vice: A Commentary on the Politics of Climate DenialGeorge W. Bush administration 2001 National Academies report:Committee on the Science of Climate ChangeDivision on Earth and Life StudiesNational Research Council“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.[…] Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century[….] The predicted warming of 3°C (5.4°F) by the end of the 21st century is consistent with the assumptions about how clouds and atmospheric relative humidity will react to global warming.The National Academies PressTRUMP?Trump's 2018 National Climate Assessment. ️Based on extensive evidence … it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”For the warming over the last century,“there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”Climate Science Special Report: Executive Summary6. If there ever was a “powerful leftist green side” in the USA, why did they not enter the Paris accord?Senators who urged Trump to leave Paris climate accord took millions from oil companiesThe corruption knows no limits:When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyper-partisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained by FOIA show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social media network.Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service, because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.- Russ Choma & Rebecca Leber, Politics, Mother Jones, Jan 7, 2019The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of "fake news"“If the internet had been around in the 60s and 70s, climate deniers would be arguing against the health effects of smoking, and dredging up historical/anecdotal examples to insist that lung cancer was "natural", while warning that smoking cessation efforts were all part of a global conspiracy of taxation and socio-economic control.”"As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway PublicThe goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources. The polluters know they dont have any science to back up their arguments. So instead they use the best defence method they can. Which is to polarize and politicize the science.To keep their money flow going they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can engorge itself in even more wealth.To pander their gullible bent over “people on the streets” its often enough for the polluters to label environmental laws for “tax scams”. This will trigger their tribe into believing its about them and some (imaginary) battle against the “evil” government (who is only out to protect its citizens from environmental hazards).Libertarian and free-market ideology has traditionally had difficulty dealing with negative externalities, as detailed in the non-libertarian FAQ; denial allows a person to simply ignore the limitations of their ideology. American conservatives in particular tend to distrust government, dislike regulations and hate taxes, so that any problem whose solution is a tax or a regulation naturally attracts distrust.When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 70 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality“They connected their audience’s underlying ideologies to climate change: Because cutting GHG emissions requires intervention regulation or increased taxation of carbon emissions—that curtail free market economics, people whose identity and worldview centers around free markets became particularly likely to reject the findings from climate science when the logic was laid bare.”“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red,” became a common phrase in the conservative magazines of that era. Rather than suggesting that America strip away protections designed to keep air and water clean, commentators and pols railed against controls on less visible threats, like pesticides, ozone holes, and global warming. Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”“It’s not surprising that high-profile deniers are almost exclusively conservative white men, since they have most benefited from the industrial capitalist system, and therefore have the most skin in the game when it comes to protecting the powers that be — even if they aren’t those powers."[...] “conservative white males are likely to favour protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well”. It added that “heightened emotional and psychic investment in defending in-group claims may translate into misperceived understanding about problems like climate change that threaten the continued order of the system.”Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United StatesClimate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalismHow Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY SPENT ON DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS:A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeTruth is these interests are spending billions on lobbying officials:"Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye," explained Brulle. "There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials. Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication. This process may limit the communication of accurate scientific information in the decision-making process."As the study concludes, “the environmental organization and the renewable energy sectors were outspent by the corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.”How lobbyists buy climate change legislationhttp://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Fi...About $2 billion USD was spent between 2000 and 2016 by a variety of fossil-fuel related actors on US lobbying alone to confuse the issue on climate change, deny the science and prevent action. This is according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Springer journal Climatic Change, a long-lasting interdisciplinary journal with a solid impact factor of 3.537. The study is The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016 by Robert Brulle of Drexel University.As Brulle points out in his abstract,Major sectors involved in lobbying were fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities, and affiliated trade associations. Expenditures by these sectors dwarf those of environmental organizations and renewable energy corporations.https://phys.org/news/2013-12-ko...https://cleantechnica.com/2016/0...Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science’IT WAS ALL BIPARTISAN UNTIL FOSSIL FUEL MONEY FLOODED THE REPUBLICAN PART CA 20 YEARS AGO.Even the oil giants knew:http://iopscience.iop.org/articl...Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years AgoThe leftist alarmists over at Fox News are at it again:Even without El Nino last year, Earth keeps warmingBonus:As confirmed by GOVERNMENT founded scientist and denier darling Roy Spencer:"Greenhouse components in the atmosphere (mostly water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane) exert strong controls over how fast the Earth loses IR energy to outer space. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface”He even calls out for deniers to stop questioning the GHE because it makes them look like idiots....hilarious:"Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. "http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/BONUS:This is how deniers wet dream of a world wide conspiracy looks like. I just had to write it out for them:international climate scientists - have for about the last 150 years - plotted a plan to trick the world into believing that people are contributing to climate change. All the world's governments have paid enormous sums to these scientists to arrive at this so that these authorities can impose all kinds of taxes on their citizens and impose restrictions and obstacles in the way of the fossil fuel industry. (Like they did to the innocent and healthy tobacco industry). A secret green industry is very soon ready to get mega rich by turning the world into a large wind farm park where there are all sorts of socialist welfare like free health care etc, but first, the oil and coal industry must first be eliminated and placed on a remote island north of Greenland. It is of course the left-wing communists in the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that manage all this through their headmaster Al Gore and the gay wizard of Dumbledore -all extended through the Illuminati agreement (the Paris agreement). Everything has been kept hidden until now, using the PC media (the political cartel), which is, of course, governed by the same authorities.but all this is finally exposed by a plucky band ofbloggers, amateur-deniers, boys room conspiracy drivlers, cranks, astroturf front groups, web-trolls, youtube-videos, graphs with no links doctored in denier blogs with childish handwritten arrows and comments added, desperate alt-right white supremacy nationalist madcap wingnuts, bible mums, creationists, very old conservative white men, conservative propaganda blogs poorly draq queened as “newspapers”, ”Breitbart blog commentary field readers, corrupt republican politicians, PragerU-sheeples, government hating free market fundamentalists AND the fossil fuel industry.The truth;When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 75 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red.[…] Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”The irony of this thinking is hilarious;While the scientific work of agencies like NOAA and NASA is higly respected and acknowledged world wide, in america, they are hated by the denial movement, and in such way, if this was the 50s, climate deniers would been locked away for anti american behaviour by the McCarthy process.Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?