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Yeah, that's a very weird phrase. What "industry" is even alleged to be involved in such a conspiracy? At least with "military-industrial" I'm pretty sure it's

by pohl 2y ago

Yeah, that's a very weird phrase. What "industry" is even alleged to be involved in such a conspiracy? At least with "military-industrial" I'm pretty sure it's referring to weapons system manufacturers, etc. But "climate-industrial"? Is the claim that the makers of wind turbines and solar panels are conspiring to drive climate change narratives that wouldn't otherwise exist?

colechristensen 2y ago
Fuel ethanol. Big investor driven industry which managed to get mandates for production in more or less all fuel for personal transport. Production of which is at best energy neutral while at the same time diverting a significant portion of the best land towards nonsense non-energy-production. They know full well that the energy budget for inputs vs outputs is awful, but it's a profitable venture, particularly with high and rising oil prices. There are plenty of other examples of "greenwashing", but ethanol is perhaps the worst offender in the US.
- alan-hn 2y ago
  That's because they have the backing of the agricultural industrial complex. They need to do something with all that corn. Same thing with high fructose corn syrup
  - teslabox 2y ago
    Boiling corn in an alkaline solution breaks down the fiber and allows the niacin contained to be used by humans. Native Americans knew to boil their corn in wood ash, but Christopher Columbus didn't realize this was important. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
Lutger 2y ago
There's a vast array of such conspiracy theories, loosely interconnected. They are immune to evidence or reason, asking if it makes sense is like making remarks about plot incoherence of a porno movie. Yesterday I saw 'Wind turbines excrete chemtrails in order to change the weather' on facebook. Hundreds of comments were all in furious agreement. The more I block such posts, the more facebook seems to understand that it enrages me. The central concepts of this web of theories are: - an evil elite is trying to control us and/or profit from us - the elite is leftwing / deepstate / woke / bill gates / george soros / lizard people - they try to coerce our children to change their gender - its basically all about renewable energies, which don't work (every week there's a new reason) - or about immigrants, such as nazi theories like 'they are trying to replace us with brown people' or 'immigrates cause wildfires, not climate change' - they (the evil elite) try to scare us, just like with covid - they are trying to take money away from us and exploit us - they are changing the weather in order to control us or some other vage nefarious purpose (not clear to me why the elite would change the weather) - something something with chemtrails (this one is also really unclear for me, but it is related to changing the weather) Basically if somebody believes any one of the above, its very likely they believe some or all of the other things too. The connections are very loose and incoherent. Doesn't matter for creating a narrative. If you look carefully these concepts together are just a twisted, childish nightmare version of all that right wing conservatives hate. These are devices to incite hatred and distrust towards any of the solutions for today's problems that they want to undermine. Its like someone from a far-right think-tank took drugs and came up with all these in a bad trip, then put them on social media. Facebook? Make it as weird as possible with some spiritual air to it, you'll get the older, gullible crowd. Make it a bit more 'discovery sciency' like with some hipster music? Thats tiktok for the teenage angst. Add some Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson to it and you'll get the enraged tech bros that also come to hacker news.
- alan-hn 2y ago
  And its weird because rich elites are exploiting workers but these bizarrely stupid conspiracies distract from the reality of profit extraction from workers

by pohl 2y ago

colechristensen 2y ago

Fuel ethanol. Big investor driven industry which managed to get mandates for production in more or less all fuel for personal transport. Production of which is at best energy neutral while at the same time diverting a significant portion of the best land towards nonsense non-energy-production. They know full well that the energy budget for inputs vs outputs is awful, but it's a profitable venture, particularly with high and rising oil prices. There are plenty of other examples of "greenwashing", but ethanol is perhaps the worst offender in the US.

alan-hn 2y ago
That's because they have the backing of the agricultural industrial complex. They need to do something with all that corn. Same thing with high fructose corn syrup
- teslabox 2y ago
  Boiling corn in an alkaline solution breaks down the fiber and allows the niacin contained to be used by humans. Native Americans knew to boil their corn in wood ash, but Christopher Columbus didn't realize this was important. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

Lutger 2y ago

There's a vast array of such conspiracy theories, loosely interconnected. They are immune to evidence or reason, asking if it makes sense is like making remarks about plot incoherence of a porno movie. Yesterday I saw 'Wind turbines excrete chemtrails in order to change the weather' on facebook. Hundreds of comments were all in furious agreement. The more I block such posts, the more facebook seems to understand that it enrages me. The central concepts of this web of theories are: - an evil elite is trying to control us and/or profit from us - the elite is leftwing / deepstate / woke / bill gates / george soros / lizard people - they try to coerce our children to change their gender - its basically all about renewable energies, which don't work (every week there's a new reason) - or about immigrants, such as nazi theories like 'they are trying to replace us with brown people' or 'immigrates cause wildfires, not climate change' - they (the evil elite) try to scare us, just like with covid - they are trying to take money away from us and exploit us - they are changing the weather in order to control us or some other vage nefarious purpose (not clear to me why the elite would change the weather) - something something with chemtrails (this one is also really unclear for me, but it is related to changing the weather) Basically if somebody believes any one of the above, its very likely they believe some or all of the other things too. The connections are very loose and incoherent. Doesn't matter for creating a narrative. If you look carefully these concepts together are just a twisted, childish nightmare version of all that right wing conservatives hate. These are devices to incite hatred and distrust towards any of the solutions for today's problems that they want to undermine. Its like someone from a far-right think-tank took drugs and came up with all these in a bad trip, then put them on social media. Facebook? Make it as weird as possible with some spiritual air to it, you'll get the older, gullible crowd. Make it a bit more 'discovery sciency' like with some hipster music? Thats tiktok for the teenage angst. Add some Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson to it and you'll get the enraged tech bros that also come to hacker news.

alan-hn 2y ago
And its weird because rich elites are exploiting workers but these bizarrely stupid conspiracies distract from the reality of profit extraction from workers