{"id":23178,"date":"2017-03-09T15:07:55","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T20:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23178"},"modified":"2017-03-09T15:07:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T20:07:55","slug":"faulty-logic-fuels-fossil-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23178","title":{"rendered":"Faulty Logic Fuels Fossil Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faulty Logic Fuels Fossil Fools<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Apparently, fossil fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That\u2019s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: \u201cThe amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201clogic\u201d of climate change deniers and anti-environmentalists is often baffling. Although the person who posted that comment doesn\u2019t appear to claim professional background or knowledge, Canadian anti-environmentalist Patrick Moore \u2014 who capitalizes on his science degree and long-ago association with Greenpeace to shill for polluting industries \u2014\u00a0told the Vancouver Sun in 2011<\/a>\u00a0that oil companies are \u201cleaving the soil cleaner than they found it because they\u2019re removing the oil from\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who coat their \u201calternative facts\u201d with a veneer of \u201cexpertise\u201d often employ twisted logic. Take a\u00a0petition letter urging\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0to withdraw from the\u00a0UN<\/span>\u00a0Framework Convention on Climate Change.<\/p>\n

Letter author\u00a0Richard Lindzen<\/a>, a climate skeptic whose work has often been debunked, claims \u201cmore than 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals from around the world\u201d signed the petition. What kind of \u201ceminent scientists\u201d would sign something claiming carbon dioxide \u201cis not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth\u201d and that \u201cwarming from increased atmospheric\u00a0CO2<\/span>\u00a0will be benign\u201d?<\/p>\n

The idea that\u00a0CO2<\/span>\u00a0is little more than plant food is common in denier circles, floated recently by the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>Heartland Institute, its affiliated industry promoters like Canadians\u00a0Patrick Moore<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tom Harris<\/a>, and others. In a 2014 book, two signatories to the Trump letter, retired Environment Canada scientist\u00a0Madhav Khandekar<\/a>\u00a0and retired Australian geology professor\u00a0Cliff Ollier<\/a>, along with database marketing consultant\u00a0Arthur Middleton Hughes<\/a>, wrote the world should burn more coal \u201cto produce electricity and increase\u00a0CO2<\/span>in the atmosphere.\u201d They also argue for more use of the pesticide\u00a0DDT<\/span>.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Faulty Logic Fuels Fossil Fools Apparently, fossil fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That\u2019s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: \u201cThe amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[141,1004,1080,5317,14981,328,14980,14982],"class_list":["post-23178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-david-suzuki","tag-desmog-blog","tag-faulty-logic","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-logic","tag-patrick-moore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23179,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23178\/revisions\/23179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}