Meteoric Myron

As professional unwelcome guest and syndicated liar, Myron put forth his latest thesis on science earlier this month:

"Models are not scientific evidence," Myron said. "There is no way to prove a model. If something is a scientific fact, it means you can test it to find out whether it's true or false. There is no way to test these models -- to check if there a predicted effect will happen in the future."

So, to put this into perspective, if our astronomic telescopes spotted an incoming meteor whose trajectory was on a collision course with planet Earth (according to our best computer simulations), this would not be a scientific fact. Only the meteoric impact itself would be real -- anything else is pure speculation.

While we may concede that Myron Ebell may know his politics and neo-liberal economics, he is a genuine scientific illiterate. What we have here is a clash of realities. Scientists know that Physics ultimately underpins everything, while the economists believe that everything is for sale, including all scientific results.

However, Science is about the laws of thermodynamics, the Gravitational constant, and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Scientific predictions are justifiable calculations determined by those laws. Scientific evidence is a fair comparison between those types of predictions and past measurements. This is exactly what those ancient ice cores which record the climate over the past hundred thousand years are extracted for. That is what we test the models against.

As Exxon lobbyist, Myron Ebell's job is to destroy any perceived threat to his employer for money. That threat is now the Kyoto Protocol and the public understanding that would follow from it. I have no doubt that Myron and his group of Economic Hit Men can, with their skilled political manoeuvring and tactical lies, destroy and bury it. They have stated many times that this is their intent.

Myron will destroy the Kyoto Protocol, he can deny the existence of an oncoming meteor, and he would stab the eyes of anyone who saw that which displeased him with a rusty nail so that they may no longer report it. But this does not change reality. The future will strike. And we will have Myron and the people in the mass media who were willing to publish his excrement to thank for our next few years of criminal ignorance.