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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

registered or not is hardly the point.

Using it as an argument against him is absurd.

No, it’s quite reasonable given the long history of companies covertly funding FUD campaigns about competitors. Those don’t need to be complete fabrications like Steven Milloy’s “junk science”, either — it’s easy to give a negative impression by quoting the scariest cases rather than average or ignoring work which is already being done to address concerns. You can say “I’m just quoting experts” and still pick the most extreme voices in the field to highlight.

The way to avoid this is disclosure: say “I make money from a competitor” prominently so people can read the article with that bias in mind. This guy doesn’t acknowledge it at all in the article or his bio, which is not what you do if your goal is to have an honest discussion.

I would urge you to look him up. It is absurd regardless of the long history.

And if you want to claim that you also have to claim that on the other side, i.e. the environmentalists.

But with Shellenberger it's an especially absurd argument which you would know if you actually knew who he is and what he is fighting for and how.

If his history is so good it’d be better to briefly touch on it early on so it would be a positive rather than leaving the opportunity for people to wonder why it wasn’t disclosed. There’s no downside to being scrupulous about this and it can make a story more compelling when someone explains how their position evolved.

Because it's not important any more than knowing whether you or anyone else is member give that to the extent you can call him a lobbyist he is a lobbyist for his own mission.

He isn't working on the behalf of some industry he is working for a case.

He cowrote a paper with Brand from the long now foundation about nuclear.

Being a lobbyist isn't just one thing even though it always get's used like that and it doesn't mean you are working for some industry.

It’s always important to know about conflicts of interest. If his intentions are good, he should be especially keen on avoiding any risk of being seen as deceptive because that would hurt his stated goal and there’s no downside.

What about you start by being concrete and put forward any evidence of issues with his so called lobbyism. This attempt at weakening his argument by claiming he is somehow in bed with the wrong people instead of actually proving he somehow have husky alterier motives is absurd. I dont see people complain about all the scaremongering by environmental organizations.

Lobbyists are paid to present a preferred opinion, pretty much by definition. If someone is a registered lobbyist then their opinion should be held with great suspicion when it is anything to do with the subject that they lobby on.

Registered to present their own opinion. Your understanding of what lobbyism is is primitive to say the least.

> Registered to present their own opinion.

You don't have to register as a registered lobbyist in USA to present your own opinion. You have to register as a registered lobbyist to represent somebody's else opinion.

The vast majority of registered lobbyists in the USA are paid professionals, usually from the legal field. Several major law companies run large lobbyist for hire departments.

Now Michael Shellenberger may be one of the pro-bono lobbyists (admittedly I haven't yet found out either way), but this would put him in the minority of registered lobbyists in the USA.

I will note that he was at one point a paid lobbyist for Hugo Chavez. Was he presenting his own opinion then?

Using that argument is not absurd. You do not have to register as a lobbyist to lobby on behalf of yourself, but you do if you do so on behalf of somebody else, moreover do so for money (in USA, and many other countries.)

It is especially absurd in the case of Schellenberger. So yes it's absurd. Look him up.

Please point to the point where it makes the argument absurd.

I already did.

You try to use lobbyist to mean that he can't be trusted. That's absurd if you know who he is and how he works and what he works for.

He isn't a lobbyist in any meaningful way any more than you are in this thread or the environmental organizations or the IPCC or the oil companies etc.

If you think your argument can stand on its own you wouldn't need to put that in yet you did and that's absurd and provides no further context and doesn't add to the discussion.

He would not need to register as a registered lobbyist if he was not legally obliged to do so.

What so absurd in this point???

I already explained to you why it's absurd. If you don't understand that there isn't much to do about it, however I would urge you to look up Environmental Progress his group and to learn a little about him.

Again he is no more lobbyist than you or the environmental organisations that's why it's absurd to use it as part of an argument.

I looked him up. He used to be a paid lobbyist for Venezuela.

in 2004 when he was against nuclear. There are so much more about him that you haven't included.

You can start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7DIv3AU1o

It's pretty obvious that him being a registered lobbyist means absolutely nothing in this context. But again that's how this whole thing work. Shaming and fingers in ear.

You told me to look him up and that he wasn't a lobbyist. So I put his name and lobbyist into google and almost immediately found that he used to get paid by Venezuela as a lobbyist. I have no real idea who this guy is until you said to look him up. And somehow this is my fault?

I said that it was absurd to use that as an argument against him when you actually know what he DO not what he did in 2004 which isn't really interesting for what he is doing and writing about today.

So again. Show a concrete problem with him being a registered lobbyist otherwise it's just a cheap shot which is why you would have to go back to 2004 when he was against nuclear to find anything related.

You can simply google Michael Shellenberger and you will learn who he is today. You can check out this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7DIv3AU1o as that gives you a pretty good idea of his stance.

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