Fair criticism of Tesla is one thing, and I’ve engaged in my share. Poisonous political attacks are another, especially when they come from the black, self-serving lungs of a coal company executive. Robert Murray released a cloud of calumny and obfuscation on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” calling Tesla a “fraud” that had taken $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies while failing to turn a penny of profit. Murray is the chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., the nation’s largest underground coal company, which extracts 65 million tons of bituminous coal a year from 12 active mines in the U.S. and Columbia. You might think that Murray would have no issue with people buying electric Teslas and connecting them to a carbon-fired teat, at least in states like Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio that generate at least 70 percent of their electricity from coal. But it didn’t take long to see what was really eating Murray, or "Squawk Box" co-host Joe Kernen, who regularly argues that man-made climate change is a myth, and has called environmentalists the "Eco Taliban." Murray tried to link red-meat names like Warren Buffett and J.B. Pritzker with Tesla’s Elon Musk, darkly hinting that Hillary Clinton wants to subsidize her cabal of supporters for reasons “that have nothing to do with supporting the environment.” (About the only names he didn’t mention were Vince Foster and the Rothschilds). Oddly, the Pritzker family earned its fortune in Hyatt hotels and real estate, not energy. More strangely, as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, parent company of Nevada natural-gas utility NV Energy, Buffett has tangled with Musk over electricity rates for solar customers, and has tweaked Musk over “big time” tax breaks for Tesla’s battery plant. So much for energy conspiracy theories.

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But logic really went out the window with Murray’s smiling insistence that “...you could close down every coal-fired plant in the United States today and you would not affect the temperature of the earth at all. Not at all!” Host Kernen eagerly took the bait: “Just the temperature in that lady’s house, er, you might affect that temperature, but not the temperature of the planet. Thanks for making the case.” Wow. I've heard of Coal Miner's Daughter. Kernen is apparently Coal Miner's Talker. Is it just me, or is cheerleading for a notoriously polluting, life-snuffing industry an especially rich vein of bullshit for a purportedly objective business journalist? Kernen's “case,” of course, is that climate change is a fraud or a conspiracy that the world's scientists have somehow managed to keep secret, even though most scientists will confess their geek love of cellos and Miyazaki on a first date. And, that any rational response to this "phony" crisis, aside from extracting and burning fossil fuel to the planet’s literal last drop, is a symptom of government overreach or collective madness. Musk saw through CNBC's smokescreen, and tweeted back: The “Real fraud going on is denial of climate science. As for 'subsidies,' Tesla gets pennies on the dollar vs. coal. How about we both go to zero?” Murray didn’t mention that coal power plants are America’s (and the world’s) number-one source of carbon-dioxide emissions—about 25 percent in America, roughly 44 percent around the globe—and the leading contributor to climate change. Coal plants are also directly implicated in smog, acid rain and toxic air pollution, including more than half the nation’s mercury emissions and the most sulfur dioxide. Now, there’s nothing wrong with clear-eyed debate over the best strategies to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. We can acknowledge stark realities—including Americans' current dependence on natural gas and, yes, coal—wasteful practices or misguided avenues. Hey, the ethanol boondoggle that mainly benefits corn-growing agribusiness—there’s a good one. I’ve personally criticized the government for subsidizing production and sales of six-figure EVs, including Teslas, for wealthy buyers who don't need or deserve huge tax breaks.