Monday, October 08, 2007

Criminals And Moralists Working Together

While looking into into the Enron CO2 trading swindle I found this interesting tit-bit.

The expressive term 'Baptist-bootlegger' derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who transported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. The bootleggers had allies in the Baptists and other teetotalists, who believed that alcohol was a deadly threat to the social order, and had worked for decades to get prohibition onto the statute books. The Baptists provided the political cover and the bootleggers pocketed the proceeds. In public the two groups maintained a great social distance from each other.

Now Enron had positioned itself at the centre of an awesome Baptist-bootlegger coalition. The gargantuan rents which Enron energetically sought could be realized only if the Kyoto Protocol became established as part of US and international law. Ken Lay, Enron's CEO saw Enron as not only making billions from sales of the natural gas which was to displace coal as the preferred fuel under the Kyoto commitments, but he realised that as the main if not the only international and domestic trader in the new barter world of carbon credits, Enron could realise hitherto unimagined wealth. Such credits, of course, would only become bankable pieces of paper if governments, particularly the US Government, established and policed a global policy of decarbonisation under which a global tax on carbon was to be enforced.

As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron's way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date.
Cross Posted at Classical Values

3 comments:

Karridine said...

Gregor Mendel didn't like some of the data he gathered, thinking (wrongly) that it did not support his theory of genetics, SO he edited his reports and hid the 'contrary' findings.

The religion of 'Global Warming' is doing this and more, and in order to achieve its various goals is lobbying to destroy peoples' lives and reputations and futures FOR THE GREATER GOOD of Global Warming's motley collection of True Believers.

"Its just a vulgar peon, thinking he's a scientist! Crush him, mercilessly and vilify his research!"

Perfect storm coming...

EliRabett said...

Karridine, care to provide a reference about Mendel. BTW the same thing is said about Millikan (charge on the electron), but it turns out to be wrong. In Millikan's case, the data he discarded was from early runs when he was practicing how to operate the experiment and had not mastered it. One of the things that a good scientist does is critically evaluate the data and yes, discard data based on the evaluation.

Reliapundit said...

OFF TOPIC:

did u see the pics at zombietime of folsom street sf?

what do you think of this?