The American Spectator

The standard refrain of the global warming alarmist industry, including their media enablers, is to shriek “ExxonMobil!” at every turn, in a fairly sad manifestation of the form of argumentation designed to distract from facts known as argumentum ad hominem.

The thinking for years was that — because ExxonMobil supported both sides of speech on the issue, even over a decade giving approximately, say, 5% or so of the $300 million that someone(s) have just given the Green P.T. Barnum, Al Gore, to cram the global warming agenda through before the cooling becomes an insurmountable impediment — why, anyone who’s budget included a tranche from the oil giant is clearly just doing their bidding.

Things became a little more difficult when the pressure campaign became such that, following a change of leadership, ExxonMobil decided to distance itself from any groups still fighting the agenda. The cry “you’re funded by ExxonMobil” quickly turned on our modern day Winston Smiths to “you’re not even receiving funding from ExxonMobil!” Don’t ask. Just hear “ExxonMobil!” and know that’s enough to nod obediently.

One form of this is rather humorously on display in an article in yesterday’s Guardian, ostensibly about last weekend’s International Climate Change Conference in New York thrown by the Heartland Institute. To wit: “…Heartland Institute, a Chicago thinktank that hosted the conference and was funded in the past by Exxon Mobil.”

This got me thinking, what a useful way of educating people, saying so much by, really, saying nothing at all. Now, applying the lesson, the object of the Heartland conference participants’ ire was two-fold: first, the selling of science for guaranteed billions in return for pushing, and in the name of imposing, a particular agenda. Second, that agenda’s big ticket item is the cap-and-trade rationing scheme, or global warming tax, stuck in the Obama budget to pay for his social engineering. That’s what this whole enterprise is about.

Again, we know that Group A previously received support from ExxonMobil — a very bad thing, apparently, even though green groups get piles of ExxonMobil money, still — and this fact informs whatever comes out of Group A.

So, now allow me to re-introduce President Obama’s global warming tax, and in a manner designed to gain the understanding of global warming alarmists: …Barack Obama, the president who proposed this tax and who in the past spent time doing drugs.

There. That makes things much clearer. Thanks, greens!