Reports Trump Selects Exxon Head Tillerson and Super Hawk Bolton for State Department Bye Bye Climate Hello War

Here's a summary of the Exxon-Russia $500 billion Arctic deal.

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American oil company ExxonMobil has signed a huge deal with Russian company Rosneft to begin exploring the Russian-controlled parts of the Arctic for oil, reports the New York Times. ...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the signing of the deal on Tuesday. Rosneft is owned by the Russian government.

Putin told reporters that the deal may eventually see $500 billion worth of investments.

The key agreements from the press release:

• US $3.2 billion exploration program planned for Kara Sea and Black Sea
• Establishment of a joint Arctic Research and Design Center for Offshore Development in St. Petersburg
• Rosneft participation in ExxonMobil projects in the U.S. and other countries with a focus on building offshore and tight oil expertise
• Joint operations to develop Western Siberia tight oil resources
• Companies form partnership to undertake projects in the Russian Federation and internationally

In exchange for the Arctic exploration, the Times reports, Exxon has given Rosneft the rights to some assets elsewhere in the World. It's not clear at present if any of these points will be in Texas or the Gulf of Mexico. Arctic drilling is largely off-limits in Alaska.

http://www.businessinsider.com/exxon-mobil-rosneft-arctic-2011-8

Exxon's CEO Tillerson's appointment as Secretary of State, according to NBC News reports, not only is deeply concerning because of Exxon's record with regard to expanding fossil fuel exploration and use, but because it has engaged in global warming denial, despite knowing for 40 years that it was occurring. This includes 11 years when Exxon knew about how fossil fuels were causing global warming, but climate change had not not yet become a public issue. 

Since Tillerson has been an Exxon employee since 1975 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson) he has been well aware of this global warming crisis while pursuing policies that will extremely exacerberate it. 

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Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public. ...

Exxon didn’t just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the time, meaning that Exxon was truly conducting unprecedented research. 

In their eight-month-long investigation, reporters at InsideClimate News interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists and federal officials and analyzed hundreds of pages of internal documents. They found that the company’s knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977, when its senior scientist James Black delivered a sobering message on the topic. “In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon’s management committee. A year later he warned Exxon that doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees—a number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today. He continued to warn that “present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." In other words, Exxon needed to act. ...

When NASA scientist James Hansen told a congressional hearing that the planet was already warming, Exxon remained publicly convinced that the science was still controversial. Furthermore, experts agree that Exxon became a leader in campaigns of confusion. By 1989 the company had helped create the Global Climate Coalition (disbanded in 2002) to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change. It also helped to prevent the U.S. from signing the international treaty on climate known as the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 to control greenhouse gases. Exxon’s tactic not only worked on the U.S. but also stopped other countries, such as China and India, from signing the treaty. At that point, “a lot of things unraveled,” Oreskes says. ...

Since then, Exxon has spent more than $30 million on think tanks that promote climate denial, according to Greenpeace. ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-chan...

Just over a month ago, Tillerson proclaimed that we will need the equivalent of five Saudi Arabian oil reserves to meet global demand over the next 25 years. At the same time he assured people that ExxonMobil is concerned about climate change and integrity is part of everything that ExxonMobl does. Sounds like he will fit in perfectly in the Trump cabinet. 

A number of Democratic Attorney Generals are investigating how much ExxonMobil knew about climate change, despite its denials that global warming is not occurring. 

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Global demand for energy will grow 25% in the next 25 years and countries will guzzle oil five times the size of Saudi Arabia’s reserves.

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson was on bullish form in London on Wednesday, dismissing any concerns that the UN’s new climate treaty will limit near-term consumption of oil and gas.

His scenario would blow efforts to contain global warming to below the 2C danger zone sky high, unless nascent carbon capture technologies come online fast. ...

As a company Exxon “shares the view that addressing climate change is serious and warrants thoughtful action,” he said, citing projects on carbon capture, efficiency and waste heat conversion. ...

“We’re trying to influence and inform people and business on the choices they make.” ...

Exxon has come under intense pressure in the past year over evidence it ignored warnings from its own scientists of the dangers posed by burning fossil fuels way back in the 1980s.

Leaked internal documents clash with the company’s public position over the past decades and funding of lobbying to cast doubt on the veracity of climate science.

It is facing an inquiry from a coalition of Democrat attorney generals led by New York State’s Eric Schneiderman into what the company knew.

Tillerson avoided mentioning the issue, but insisted the company he has run since 2006 was committed to doing the “right thing the right way”.

“Integrity is in everything we do. It’s the foundation of trust and cooperation. A focus on integrity makes a corporations more effective,” he said.

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/10/19/exxon-ceo-world-needs-oil-of...

The grandaddy of Republican hawks in the Senate, John McCain, is already raising questions about Tillerson. Of course, none of them have to do with global warming. 

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Saturday he has concerns about the possibility of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson being nominated for secretary of State, given his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...

“I don’t know what Mr. Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me,” McCain said in an interview with Fox News. ...

McCain is the first Republican to raise questions about the potential nomination, and Tillerson could fail to make it through the confirmation process if just three GOP senators join a united Democratic opposition.

“I’d have to examine it,” McCain said of the potential nomination. “You want to give the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt because the people have spoken. But Vladimir Putin is a thug, bully and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”

Former top McCain aide Mark Salter predicted that Tillerson would have a hard time getting through the confirmation process.

“Tillerson would sell out NATO for Sakhalin oil and his pal, Vlad. Should be a rough confirmation hearing, and a no vote on the Senate floor,” Salter tweeted Friday.

Tillerson negotiated an energy partnership with Putin in 2011 that the Russian president said would be worth as much as $500 billion. The next year, the Exxon Mobile CEO received the Russian Order of Friendship from the Kremlin, one of the highest honors that Russia bestows on foreigners

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/world/exxon+tillerson+ties+putin+exp...

montrealer58 wrote:

McCain has long been considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only) in American conservative circles.

McCain may be unorthodox in terms of some Republican policies, but when it comes to war he is about as hardcore as Republicans get. During his 2008 Presidential campaign, his "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" was a common chant of his. As one of the Three Amigos of the Republican Party, he, along with Senators Graham and Ayotte (who replaced Democrat Lieberman), continually promoted military spending and war. 

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The truth is that McCain was in some ways less a Republican than a neocon by the late 1990s. McCain began his political career as a traditional Republican realist but then became progressively more enamored of what amounted to neoconservative views, which, after all, had their origins in the Democratic party in the early 1970s, when a group of cold war Democrats became disaffected with their party's drift toward George McGovern. For his part, McCain's unusual saga began in Bosnia where he endorsed American intervention. McCain became increasingly more hawkish toward Iraq and Russia. Now Syria is in his target sights.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/goodbye-the-three-amigo...

One analysis of McCain and his Amigos concluded:

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Being supportive of every U.S. war or arguing in favor of more militarism in virtually every case isn’t evidence of any particular expertise.In the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, the results have been disastrous.

http://fair.org/uncategorized/nyt-goodbye-to-joe/

The growing body of evidence concerning Rex Tillerson's cozy connections to Putin could sink his confirmation. However, no Senator is yet talking about his record at Exxon and the 20 investigations by State Attorney Generals into Exxon's global warming denials despite the fact Exxon has had evidence from its own research 40 years ago indicating how dangerous fossil feul emissions are for the planet. 

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Tillerson’s nomination will face fierce resistance from Democrats and environmental activists, who have made Exxon their No. 1 enemy in the fight against fossil fuel companies. Democrats are already planning to press Tillerson during any confirmation hearing about whether the oil giant suppressed decades-old internal research about the threat of climate change, as the company’s critics have alleged.

Tillerson, who has no prior government experience, is the latest wealthy business leader who could be chosen for a top Cabinet post by Trump, joining Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, who is his choice for treasury secretary, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, who he tapped to lead the commerce department, and fast-food CEO Andy Puzder as labor secretary. ...

Tillerson ties to Russia and Putin stretch back to the 1990s, and he has been critical of the U.S. sanctions imposed in 2014 that have constrained Exxon’s work in the country. Russia is one of the top three oil producers in the world, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In 2011, Tillerson joined Putin at his vacation home to sign a lucrative deal that allowed Exxon to explore oil fields in Russia’s Arctic. In exchange, state-controlled oil company OAO Rosneft was allowed for the first time to acquire ownership stakes in Exxon projects in the United States. Putin later awarded Tillerson with the “Order of friendship,” one of Russia’s highest honors, for the company’s “big contribution to developing cooperation in the energy sector.”

Tillerson made waves in 2014 when he spoke at an energy summit in Moscow alongside Igor Sechin, a Rosneft executive and close confidant of Putin who has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department.

Exxon has faced scrutiny in the aftermath of a series of investigative reports that allege the company has known for decades about the effect of fossil fuels on climate change. Two state attorneys general — New York’s Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey — have launched fraud investigations into whether Exxon misled the public and its investors about the threat of climate change.

Exxon is fighting the state attorneys general in court. The company has said the investigations are politically motivated. An Exxon spokesman declined to comment for this story.

http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-likely-to-tap-tillerson-for-secreta...

Former Obama Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris is alreay calling Tilllerson the most imperilled Trump candidate for confirmation because of the split in the Republican party between the Trumpites who want a friendly relationship with Russia and the traditional Republicans who see Russia primarily as an adversary. 

Another November article outlines what Bolton sees as the United States five greatest challenges. Point number three does suggest how a Trump administration might both see Russia as a threat and an ally and thus help explain the strange pairing of Bolton and Tillerson as State Department nominees. 

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First, and almost certainly the highest national-security priority for voters last Tuesday, are the closely related threats of radical Islamic terrorism and the Middle East’s spreading chaos. ...

Second, nuclear proliferation, primarily by Iran and North Korea, is continuing and even accelerating. Obama’s cherished nuclear deal with Tehran has not contained Iran’s nuclear program, has not stopped its cooperation with Pyongyang, and has not changed its offensive behavior across the Middle East.  ... Moving vigorously to eliminate the rising proliferation tidal wave will either be the hallmark of Trump’s presidency — or possibly its epitaph.

Third, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is on the prowl in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in ways unprecedented since the Cold War.  ... Utilizing Russia effectively against Islamic terrorism and in the epic struggle with China may seem contradictory, but all are possible with renewed U.S. strength of purpose and the attendant resources, political and economic as well as military.

Fourth, China’s belligerent assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas, its extensive military buildup, and its disdain for international commitments in trade and other fields all demonstrate not merely the attributes of a rising regional power, but one that neither respects nor fears the consequences of ignoring or even humiliating America. ...

Finally, although mostly ignored during the campaign, global governance will inevitably pose increasing challenges for America. Trump’s campaign indirectly addressed part of this issue on immigration, but the fundamental importance of protecting U.S. sovereignty is far broader and more complex. Obama is entirely content with surrendering vital decisions to multinational organizations, courts and treaties, even while we are seeing key projects to diminish the authority of the nation-state begin to come apart. ...

https://www.aei.org/publication/next-presidents-foreign-policy-priorities/

The Inside Climate News uses internal documents to show that ExxonMobil (and nearly all major oil companies) and its top executives, including Tillerson, knew from its own research from the 1970s onwards that carbon dioxide emissions were catastrophic for the planet despite the fossil fuel industry's climate change denials. The articles listed below can be found at the website at the bottom of the page, as well as individually within the quotes.

No doubt Tillerson would as Secretary of State, in collusion with Trump, continue to promote the fossil fuel industry no matter what the now staggering body of evdence says or how bad global warming gets.

The last post and this one show we now have a new group of Three Amigos, Trump, Tillerson and Bolton, linked by patholgoical lying.  

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Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions.

 

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxon-believed-deep-dive-int...

Exxon documents show that top corporate managers were aware of their scientists' early conclusions about carbon dioxide's impact on the climate. They reveal that scientists warned management that policy changes to address climate change might affect profitability. After a decade of frank internal discussions on global warming and conducting unbiased studies on it, Exxon changed direction in 1989 and spent more than 20 years discrediting the research its own scientists had once confirmed.

 

Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus in 1982 with In-House Climate Models The company chairman would later mock climate models as unreliable while he campaigned to stop global action to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

 

Exxon's Business Ambition Collided with Climate Change Under a Distant Sea Throughout the 1980s, the company struggled to solve the carbon problem of one of the biggest gas fields in the world out of concern for climate impacts.

 

Highlighting the Allure of Synfuels, Exxon Played Down the Climate Risks In the 1980s, Exxon lobbied to replace scarce oil with synthetic fossil fuels, but it glossed over the high carbon footprint associated with synfuels.

Exxon Sowed Doubt About Climate Science for Decades by Stressing Uncertainty Collaborating with the Bush-Cheney White House, Exxon turned ordinary scientific uncertainties into weapons of mass confusion.

 

Exxon Made Deep Cuts in Climate Research Budget in the 1980s The cuts ushered in a five-year hiatus in peer-reviewed publication by its scientists and the era when the company first embraced disinformation.

 

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01122015/documents-exxons-early-co2-p...

Documents reveal Exxon's early CO2 position, its global warming forecast from the 1980s, and its involvement with the issue at the highest echelons.

 

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122015/exxon-mobil-oil-industry-pee...

Members of an American Petroleum Institute task force on CO2 included scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell.

 

https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken

The selection of Tillerson and Bolton send a loud and clear message on where he intends to go during his presidency. 

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With the presumed designation of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton as Deputy Secretary of State, Donald Trump will be sending a clear message to the world: the U.S. is open for business (presumably to the highest bidder), it will be carrying a big stick, there will be no speaking softly, and the operative word will be “bulldozer.” There will effectively be no subtlety, no negotiation, and no shades of grey: starting in January, it will be Trump’s way or the highway.

For those Trump voters who might have imagined that he would assemble a cabinet and team of advisors attuned to the needs of the blue-collar worker or man in the street, it should be becoming crystal clear by now that they have been hoodwinked. Instead, the Trump Administration is turning out to be the domain of big business, billionaires, and Goldman Sachs. How anyone could have imagined that a man who has never worked a blue-collar day in his life nor associated with ordinary people until his run for the presidency would be genuinely transformed into the champion of the working class always defied logic. Given that Trump has so far refused to personally divest himself of his business interests during his presidency, it is plain for all to see that he plans to enrich himself and his family on the backs of the American economy. Tillerson’s appointment would be consistent with that objective. ...

By comparison, Bolton has good diplomatic credentials. Apart from his brief stint at the UN, Bolton was an Undersecretary of State, has held a number of other positions in government and at prestigious think tanks in Washington, and won praise for his work in establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative. However, some of his critics have alleged that Bolton has tried to spin intelligence to support his own political views. His bluntness has earned him a variety of governmental enemies, with Iran’s foreign ministry having called him “rude” and “undiplomatic,” and North Korea’s government having referred to him as “human scum.” This is not a particularly good place to start if one of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy objectives is to make progress with America’s most ardent foes. It would appear that his objective is exactly the opposite.

What is clear is that one of Trump’s near-term goals is to strengthen America’s relationship with Russia. Given that Tillerson is extremely close with Putin, his role in the government would certainly be a step in that direction. But Russia is an issue in which Tillerson and Bolton will surely butt heads. As a high-profile neocon, Bolton has a traditional view of Russia as ‘the enemy’. ...

Trump’s approach to creating a government, running the government, and crafting a foreign policy has all the makings of a business transaction in which he imagines that everyone else in the world can’t wait to ‘do business’ with America, and that the U.S. is the world’s first choice - for everything. That is obviously his world view, which, he believes, has been the key to his success, and is central to America’s future success. He, and America, are in for a rude awakening with this approach, however. Many of its allies — particularly in Europe — are already wondering if Trump’s America is worth being allied with, questioning basic tenets of American post-war foreign policy, and whether the U.S. can be depended upon to adhere to its historical and ‘binding’ security, aid, and other commitments. America’s enemies must already have come to the conclusion that, at least for the next four years, there is no point in even trying to negotiate with a U.S. president and administration that subscribes to a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ view of the world. ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/trumps-foreign-policy-und_b_...

Of course there's even more to be concerned about with Secretary of Energy Perry, including ratifying the Keystone pipeline. 

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It’s sad commentary on yet another dubious Trump cabinet appointment. Sadder still is how ill-equipped Perry is to lead this critically important national security agency.

The DOE is responsible for advancing the national, economic, and energy security of the US, promoting scientific and technological innovation in support of that mission (which weirdly includes genetics), and ensuring the safety and cleanup of America’s aging nuclear weapons. It’s also concerned with overseeing the nation’s programs on nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism. So important is this position, that the last two DOE secretaries included a Nobel Laureate (Steven Chu) and a professor from MIT (Ernest Moniz).

Instead, this is a man who now openly questions the integrity of scientists, dismisses environmental risks posed by such things as greenhouse gases, fracking, and pipelines, and sees fossil fuels as a viable energy source for literally centuries to come. Perry is an unabashed climate change skeptic who once said:

I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes our climate’s changed, they’ve been changing ever since the earth was born. But I do not buy into a group of scientists who have in some cases found to be manipulating this information. And the cost to the country and the world of implementing these anti-carbon programs is in the billions if not trillions of dollars at the end of the day. And I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money still on a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is being put more and more into question. ...

Perry is vehemently opposed to regulations placed on greenhouse gas emissions, saying they’ll have “devastating implications” to the nation’s economy and the energy industry. At the same time, he’d like to expand the practice of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, while authorizing construction of the controversial XL Pipeline. ...

Perry once told an audience of Pennsylvania steelworkers that he would “create another 250,000 jobs by getting the EPA out of the way” of natural gas drilling. He also claimed he could create 1.2 million jobs by increasing American energy production. To make it happen, he would open up numerous areas currently off-limits to oil and gas exploration, and repeal regulations he believes are hampering domestic production of fossil fuels, including drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Gulf of Mexico.

http://gizmodo.com/why-rick-perry-will-be-a-disaster-as-energy-secretary...

More evidence of trouble for both Bolton and Tillerson in the upcoming Senate confirmation process. 

Bolton considered George W. Bush too moderate which is why the title of the article below is "Trump's flirtation with Bolton sends shivers through Senate".

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Donald Trump’s selection of ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson as secretary of state threatens to touch off a confirmation fight, but the man in the running to be Tillerson’s deputy could spark an all-out war in the Senate.

John Bolton, the mustache-sporting, Iraq War-cheering former United Nations ambassador, is possibly one of the least diplomatic diplomats ever to serve in the U.S. government. He has argued the U.S. should bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, dismissed the idea of a Palestinian state and called the United Nations a "twilight zone." ...

Already, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentuckian with a libertarian bent, has threatened to block Bolton, a man he considers a warmonger. On Tuesday, Chuck Schumer, the incoming leader of the Senate Democrats, explicitly compared Tillerson and Bolton in a statement that clearly laid bare his preference, saying: "Mr. Tillerson’s worldview may not seem to be as dangerously interventionist as Mr. Bolton’s. ...

His time at the U.N. did little to endear him to Democrats or the international community. Bolton harbors a deep distrust of multinational institutions, and organizations such as the U.N. and the European Union, to him, are threats to national sovereignty and bloated, often-useless bureaucracies. ...

Bolton hinted in his book that he became disillusioned with Republican president Bush as the years went on because he appeared to succumb to political pressure from the left to be more moderate. On the Bush administration's struggle to deal with North Korea and its nuclear program, for instance, "the permanent government has triumphed over Bush, or at least over his principles," Bolton wrote, adding that as some Bush aides left, "the departure of many 'hardliners' was like eliminating players from the defense team in football." ...

In 2015, Bolton called on the U.S. to bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, and he's urged Trump to abandon the nuclear agreement Obama reached with the Islamic Republic later that year. ,,,,

Bolton is deeply pro-Israel, so much so that he's suggested forgetting the idea of creating a Palestinian state. Instead, he's argued for placing the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control and handing the West Bank to Jordan. The left-leaning Jewish advocacy group J Street is among those urging Trump not to place Bolton at State. ...

Bolton also has a wariness of treaties and international law. While serving as undersecretary of state for arms, Bolton helped engineer the withdrawal of the U.S. from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. During his tenure at the U.N., he came out against proposals that the U.S. believed would have imposed new legal obligations on nations to intervene in other countries to prevent mass atrocities. ...

Bolton also has flirted with the fringes of the right, including people who traffic in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. He wrote the forward to "The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America," a book co-authored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two figures viewed as stridently anti-Muslim by civil rights activists. He's also been friendly with far-right European leaders such as Britain's Nigel Farage. ...

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Bolton repeatedly said Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be in jail.  ...

Not all members of the foreign policy establishment are writing off Bolton's chances in the Senate this time. Lawmakers may be open to someone who can balance out Trump's isolationist streak and who understands the U.S. bureaucracy. Trump's lack of foreign policy knowledge and Tillerson's lack of government experience also could boost Bolton. ...

In his book, Bolton expressed strong displeasure with the way U.S. diplomats think and operate, suggesting a good deal could change if he gains much power over the foreign service. He argued the State Department needs a "cultural revolution" in which its diplomats understand that their client is the United States, not the country they are dealing with, and in which they act more like litigators defending American interests.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/john-bolton-state-trump-232573

Trump's selection of Tillerson for Secretary of State, Rick Perry for Secretary of Energy and Zinke for Interior Secretarry is part of a process of climate change denialism taken to even higher level, in which intimidation and firing of climate scientists who speak out about the dangers of global warming, as noted in the last post, is central to their aplproach on this issue. In fact, global warming denialism has become a industry in itself, thanks to funding frpm the fossil fuel industry. This approach is based on the deny, doubt delay strategy made famous by the tobacco industry.

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Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is part of the global warming controversy. It involves denial, dismissal, unwarranted doubt or contrarian views which depart from the scientific opinion on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its impacts on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions.[2][3][4] In the global warming controversy, some deniers do endorse the term, but other often prefer the term climate change skepticism[3] whereas scientists think it "inappropriate to allow those who deny [anthropogenic global warming] to don the mantle of skeptics"; in effect, the two terms form a continuous, overlapping range of views, and generally have the same characteristics: both reject, to a greater or lesser extent, mainstream scientific opinion on climate change.[5][6] Climate change denial can also be implicit, when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action.[7] Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism.[5][6]

Campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" of industrial, political and ideological interests, supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers in manufacturing uncertainty about global warming.[8][9][10] In the public debate, phrases such as climate skepticism have frequently been used with the same meaning as climate denialism.[11] The labels are contested: those actively challenging climate science commonly describe themselves as "skeptics", but many do not comply with common standards of scientific skepticism and, regardless of evidence, persistently deny the validity of human caused global warming.[5]

Although scientific opinion on climate change is that human activity is extremely likely to be the primary driver of climate change,[12][13] the politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial, hindering efforts to prevent climate change and adapt to the warming climate.[14][15][16] Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. 

The climate change denial industry is most widespread in the United States, where the official Senate Environmental Committee is chaired by Jim Inhofe, who famously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and claimed to have debunked it in 2015 when he took a snowball with him and threw it on the Senate floor.[19] Organised campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO2 emissions.[20] Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates and libertarian think tanks, often in the United States.[15][21][22][23] More than 90% of papers sceptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.[24] The total annual income of these climate change counter-movement-organizations is roughly $900 million. ...

Since the late 1970s, oil companies have published research broadly in line with the standard views on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, leading to comparisons of this strategy to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by tobacco companies. ...

From 1989 onwards industry funded organisations including the Global Climate Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute sought to spread doubt among the public, in a strategy already developed by the tobacco industry.[66][67][68] A small group of scientists opposed to the consensus on global warming became politically involved, and with support from conservative political interests, began publishing in books and the press rather than in scientific journals.[69] Spencer Weart identifies this period as the point where legitimate skepticism about basic aspects of climate science was no longer justified, and those spreading mistrust about these issues became deniers.[70] As their arguments were increasingly refuted by the scientific community and new data, deniers turned to political arguments, making personal attacks on the reputation of scientists, and promoting ideas of a global warming conspiracy. ...

In the 1990s, the Marshall Institute began campaigning against increased regulations on environmental issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and the dangers of DDT.[67][73][74] In each case their argument was that the science was too uncertain to justify any government intervention, a strategy it borrowed from earlier efforts to downplay the health effects of tobacco in the 1980s.[66][68] This campaign would continue for the next two decades. ...

Gelbspan's Boiling Point, published in 2004, detailed the fossil-fuel industry's campaign to deny climate change and undermine public confidence in climate science.[86] In Newsweek's August 2007 cover story "The Truth About Denial", Sharon Begley reported that "the denial machine is running at full throttle", and said that this "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign" by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry had "created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."[41]

Referencing work of sociologists Robert Antonio and Robert Brulle, Wayne A. White has written that climate change denial has become the top priority in a broader agenda against environmental regulation being pursued by neoliberals. ...

The New York Times and others reported in 2015 that oil companies knew that burning oil and gas could cause climate change and global warming since the 1970s but nonetheless funded deniers for years.[28][29] Dana Nuccitelli wrote in The Guardian that a small fringe group of climate deniers were no longer taken seriously at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in an agreement that "we need to stop delaying and start getting serious about preventing a climate crisis. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

SNL’: Alec Baldwin’s Trump Joined By John Goodman’s Rex Tillerson

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/12/snl-trump-alec-baldwin-putin...