denier think tank BUREAUCRATS & billionaires: who is the con artist and who 'the mark' ?

billionaires bribing think tank bureaucrats or tanker bureaucrats scamming billionaires ?

Most denier fighters hint (libel alert) that it is billionaires that have led the battle over climate denial .

Via their family foundations or the big corporations they control, these rich guys have supposedly discreetly 'bribed' libertarian advocacy think tank bureaucrats to work up credible denial efforts.

All to combat current attacks by government and environmentalists on the products that have made these billionaires wealthy.

Denier-fighters hint at this process by (A) noting that this think tank did a one time major denial effort on tobacco in 2003. And (B) one or two paragraphs later, when they drily note the only year this think tank got money from Big Tobacco was...... 2003.

You are led to - sorry left to - draw the conclusion that Big Tobacco was the instigator in this process .

And that supposedly the process works in the exact same way, in the current case of climate denial and the hydrocarbon producing or using industries.

But how true is this narrative ?

Students of how lobbyists work or how election fund-raising works are not so naive.

When the senior majority or minority member on an American House committee faces a fierce, expensive, primary or re-election fight, they often do "The Abramoff Manoeuvre" .

The politician suddenly lets (or encourage others to let) dozens of intrusive new regulations become attached to a bill affecting, let's say the potato farmers in Idaho.

Working closely - and profitably - with a lobbyist for the potato farmers of that state, he and the lobbyist convince enough gullible farmers that these regulatory threats are real, real enough to spend some very heavy money to squash them before they get to the formal vote.

The lobbyists tells the farmers , 2000 long kms away from the Beltway, that "old Joe is right dead set on seeing these regulations pass - but you may have heard he is in a bad battle to win his primary, back in New Jersey."

" I just bet X dollars for his campaign might move him our way - and he is the lead minority congressman on this issue you know..."

Old Joe gets his money, the regulations disappear and the potato lobbyist gets his percent of the money flowing from Idaho to New Jersey.

Its a win:win scam !!

Think tank bureaucrats of the cold war advocacy variety are pros at this sort of game: ever seeing new reds under new beds to scare gullible paranoid billionaires ---- or today, ever seeing new greens under new protest banners.

Let me hint , just as the other denier fighters have.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall slash Commie scam was over - so over.

Now most cold war advocacy think tank bureaucrats had to unexpectedly find new money cows to feed their salaries, expense accounts (don't get me started !) and fat pensions.

Suddenly climate change, a science news story about thirty years old by that point, became an overnight global threat to every free market company .. that had lots of money.

Ending the cold war was supposed to provide a peace bonus to many different people ---- firms might take the money that they had wasted for 40 years donating to cold war think tank bureaucrats and put it into something truly useful for them and society ------ like R & D.

But no --- a new, worser , terror lay on the horizon : the Green Terror.

"I'm a telling ya : way worse than the Red Terror : cause at least the commies also had their smoke polluting power plants, just like us free marketeers, but these greenies are truly scary - they got horns !"

"Thanky  , thanky  ,thanky  : you just keep 'em silver dollars coming in, and God Bless your continuing Prayers for our Holy Crusade."

Fundamentalist tele-evangelicals, politicians seeking re-election, think tank bureaucrats or 'discreet' lobbyists : they all have the same quasi-religious spiel .

That's why I say we are looking at gullible billionaires and cynical think tank bureaucrats milking them for all they are worth --- NOT the other way around.....