Is human activity responsible for climate change?

I'll give up my motorcycles if you give up your cars.

I like to eat beef

Who looks to Exxon Mobil for news and information?

DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

meltdown

The fact that government has subsidized this industry for decades and during a time that this industry manufactured an oil shortage crisis in order to escalate its profits; the fact that government continues to subsidize this industry as it continues to make obscene profits is all the proof anyone needs about the complicit relationship between Big Oil and Corporate Government.

Is this news shocking? Not really. Will there be a robust investigation? Not really. Will anyone be held accountable? Not really. Will anything change? Not with this administration or with a Clinton, Trump, or Cruz administration.

There might be a magic show to dazzle those who are easily distracted with the illusion that committees will conduct investigations and ask very tough questions and that the American public, the easily distracted ones who spend their seconds, minutes, hours and days texting, posting on Facebook, and watching innumerable sitcoms will have the opportunity to view these actions on C-Span, and then the crescendo to this government inquest will be some serious hand slapping, or perhaps, if enough pressure is brought to bare from the public, an upper management sacrificial lamb will go to jail and business as usual will adapt, and very expensive corporate lawyers will encrypt future communications so that it will take another 70 years, instead of 35 to procure and expose the dubious actions of its [corporate] handlers.

We see this time and again play out in front of our eyes, even with politicians, whether it's Watergate, Iran Contra, The Washington Bridge closures, Polluted water in Flint, or Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon aka the BP oil spill, Enron - the one where Kenneth Lay died the day before serving his jail sentence, or whether its the subprime mortgage ponzi scheme that wrecked our economy, as long as the relationship between government and corporations exist, the only people who will go to jail are the fall people or the lone wolf whistle blowers who will be incarcerated or perhaps demonized for life, in case they are granted asylum in some foreign country; like, I don't know, let's say, Russia, as an example.

The only true accountability is the wrath of Mother Nature, because we know it's not nice to fool mother nature.

I may sound just a little cynical, but I'm a realist, as I know many here are also realist, but it does not mean we don't try to hold government or corporatism accountable with protest, demands and our attempt to return government back to the people, but time is something we have precious little of, and another four years of corporate government "will" drive humanity precariously close to an inevitable path of destruction that can neither be repaired or sustain our existence, and I fear that the billionaire parasites will win another four years come this November, and that the taxpayers will continue to pay for its own demise with [corporate] subsidies.

Things that make you go, "Hmmmm...."

As climate change melts Arctic permafrost and releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, it is creating a feedback loop that is "certain to trigger additional warming," according to the lead scientist of a new study investigating Arctic methane emissions.

The study released this week examined 71 wetlands across the globe and found that melting permafrost is creating wetlands known as fens, which are unexpectedly emitting large quantities of methane. Over a 100-year timeframe, methane is about 35 times as potent as a climate change-driving greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and over 20 years, it's 84 times more potent.

And then, were such a tax to exist in a struggling world economy the super volcano in Yellowstone erupts.