Ah, Wingnuts. On another forum I participate on, somebody is very excited about the recent International Conference on Climate Change, a meeting of global warming deniers. While questioning global warming is something I believe a reasonable person can do to a point, what startled me was the nature of the anti-global warming argument pursued by the main deniers.

They believe that global warming is a hoax created by large corporations to make money and increase their power in government. It's the first time I've run into an anti-corporate/anti-environment argument.  The more nutty of the two is a full-fledged conspiracy theorist who believes GE runs the world. 

 My questions to you, OS reader, are 1) have you ever heard similar arguments, and 2) do you have insights as to where the GE angle comes in?

A lot of their arguments are standard tropes, ranging from the bizarre (and completely inaccurate) study that "showed" that Hummers were better for the environment to rants against laws phasing out incandescent bulbs and claims that the climate is always in flux (so there's no crisis).

More unusual was this claim:

But the claims reached the height of screwiness in a long screed about how GE was lobbying to create a cap and trade in order to make a massive profit from this new market. The screed was both too long and two disjointed to summarize well, but the closing statement summed it up well enough: "In summary, instead Big Gov and Big Oil keeping me down, is just going to turn into Bigger Gov and Big Green still keeping me down."

Usually, conspiracy memes fit nicely into larger political movements: right wing ones feature communist take overs, government clamp-downs, etc. Right wing ones feature corporations gone amuck and defense contractors. This one mixes freely from the left and right wing fringes. Refreshingly original!