Fighting back is balance.

Sometimes you have to take a side just to get back to balance.

The Paris Climate Accords are important.  So, I'm fighting back.

Someone posted this article from Breitbart and I decided to take it down.

http://www.breitbart.com/economics/2017/05/31/every-bad-thing-avoided-rejecting-paris-climate-accords/

I decided nothing less than a point by point take down would do and I discovered a thing or two in the process.

Point by point.  

From the article: "It’s likely that it was already acting as a drag on the U.S. economy. After President Barack Obama unofficially committed the U.S. to the Paris agreement, businesses began preparing for its impact. Knowing that it would diminish U.S. economic output, businesses invested less and directed more investment toward less-productive technology to meet the climate deal’s mandates. Banks and financiers withdrew capital from sectors expected to suffer under the climate deal and pushed it toward those expected to benefit. A classic example of regulation-driven malinvestment."

What businesses invested what money where? That's a really vague accusation with no evidence to back it up.  Which companies lost shares and why? How do you attribute this directly to these accords? The Accords were adopted 12 December 2015. The DOW was at 17, 128 on December 18th. As of today it is 21, 201. The economy looks fine. All of this is rhetoric completely lacking any evidence. If you discount peer-reviewed scientific studies about climate change, you must be kidding me that you believe this. No review, no evidence, nothing of any substance at all.  

Even the S&P energy index was at 438.48 at December 18th 2015. It currently sits at 476.57.  Probably not the growth the energy CEO's wanted, but not dead, and still growing. 

From the article: "To get the rest of the way, the U.S. would have to make major investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cleaner motor vehicles. This likely explains why the Paris climate deal was so popular with many in Silicon Valley and many on Wall Street. It promised a bonanza of spending and investment, most likely subsidized by taxpayers, in technologies that wouldn’t otherwise be attractive. It was practically calling out for making self-driving, solar powered cars mandatory."

About that money invested in technologies that would not otherwise be attractive.  What technologies?  How would those technologies look if it were subsidized to the point fossil fuels are and historically have been? What specific regulation would make that self-driving, solar car mandatory?

From the article Point 1: "Goodbye to ‘American Last.’ The Paris agreement was basically an attempt to halt climate change on the honor system. Its only legal requirements were for signatories to announce goals and report progress, with no international enforcement mechanism. As a result, it was likely that the United States and wealthy European nations would have adopted and implemented severe climate change rules while many of the world’s governments would avoid doing anything that would slow their own economies. The agreement basically made the U.S. economy and Europe’s strongest economies sacrificial lambs to the cause of climate change."

The other countries are already moving on this.

 http://www.iflscience.com/environment/china-home-worlds-largest-floating-solar-power-plant/ 

The agreement was a political mechanism for encouraging better behavior.

From the article Point 2: "Industrial Carnage. The regulations necessary to implement the Paris agreement would have cost the U.S. industrial sector 1.1 million jobs, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These job losses would center in cement, iron and steel, and petroleum refining. Industrial output would decline sharply."

This is where things got interesting. I decided to look up that study by the Chamber of Commerce. It was completed by Steven Tule. 

Steven Tule is the vp for climate change and technology for the US Chamber of commerce institute for 21st century energy.

His bio is at www.energyxxi.org.

Well, what the hell is EnergyXXI? Google energyxxi.com

It's an energy company in Houston specializing in oil and natural gas development.  You think that's a coincidence?  Maybe the bought both .com and .org at the same time? 

I looked it up and the domain registrar for energyxxi.org is www.markmonitor.com which is a company that specializes in, and I quote "Protecting brands in the digital world" 

A marketing firm. This isn't a government website. It is a cover for oil and gas interests. That study is worse than useless, it is actively biased to favor those oil and gas interests.

I'm guessing this study never underwent a peer review process. 

Point three references the same bullshit and biased Chamber of Commerce study and should be ignored exactly as much as point two. No proof.

From the article Point 4: Smashing Small Businesses, Helping Big Business. Big businesses in America strongly backed the Paris climate deal. In fact, the backers of the climate deal reads like a “who’s who” of big American businesses: Apple, General Electric, Intel, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, General Mills, Walmart, DuPont, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson. These business giants can more easily cope with costly regulations than their smaller competitors and many would, in fact, find business opportunities from the changes required. But smaller businesses and traditional start-ups would likely be hurt by the increased costs of compliance and rising energy costs."

This essentially tells you that the major representatives of many other industries, retail, technology, banking and investment, chimicals, cereal and agriculture think the U.S. should stay in the agreement.

All those other industries think it is a bad idea to pull out. One industry thinks it is a good idea to pull out. That one industry who just so happens to be funding all these studies telling you how bad the agreement is.  

Point five actually cites a Heritage Foundation study.  A conservative think tank funded by the Koch brothers who are heavily invested in fossil fuel production?  Again, you get this study peer-reviewed by competing interests, just like the climate change science papers that are denied by these think-tanks, and I'll listen. Until then, shove your Heritage Foundation in the garbage where it belongs.

All of the evidence points one direction. This is the fossil fuel industry fighting for it's life in the face of opposition.  They are directly behind all of this. The last time we let the representatives of the fossil fuel industry take charge of our government, we went to Iraq for no reason and destroyed the country. Now, we have ISIS as a direct result of that era.

If you deny climate change and think we should be out of the Accords because of this crap, your whole belief is built on a foundation of lies.