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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Follow the money.
It leads to the fossil fuel companies. Who earn more profits than any industry, in history.
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It's not more marginally profitable though. There might be more overall profit because we use fossil fuels in absolutely everything, and it's so vital to every single aspect of our lives, but many other industries have much higher profit margins.
... and it depends on who you're saying is making a profit. The US went negative in profits for a while. It's a fairly volatile market, so you can go from making a profit to losing your shirt fairly quickly.
Profit is not an indication of "evil factor" either. There is nothing intrinsically evil about profit. We all innately want the highest return on our investment of anything. If we watch a movie, we want it to be a very good movie so that our investment of time is rewarded with high entertainment value. We aren't evil because we want to see a good movie instead of a bad one, and we aren't evil because we want to sell our product for a higher profit rather than a lower one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Oil companies make the highest profits ever in history. They have a massive incentive to lie - and they now ADMIT that they lied about climate change. Their shareholders are not going to be happy.
Scientists get grants so they can go sit on a glacier and gather data. They don't make any profit.
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Yeah, big oil has/does/will attempt to deceive. It shouldn't be tolerated if it can be proven that they meant to deceive, and that the deception has caused harm. The problem is that they separate themselves from culpability by hiring researchers to make the claims. Can't blame the oil companies then, because they are simply reiterating what the "researchers" are saying. It's like infomercials selling male enhancing drugs; can't blame the drug maker since it's some guy just giving his opinion that it works great.
Scientists make huge profits too. Heck, they sometimes get government grants that fund research that they then use to publish a book. Essentially the government funds their personal book / lecture profits by supplying the means to gather data in the first place. I'm not against this by the way, but to think scientists have completely altruistic and objective motives is not true.