Still Screwing Around

Myron is busy in the congress making sure that absolutely nothing gets done. This is an easy task for a tosswit, because they speak the language. There's a Bill in the Senate to do with climate change that Myron doesn't like. As usual, because it doesn't start a war, massively pay-off corporations, or infringe civil liberties, the presumption is to reject it.

Myron was pleased. He said: "Our children and grandchildren will thank them for not condemning them to a future of energy poverty."

He forgot to reverse the statement by adding: "...but unfortunately they are not going to thank us, because we will condemn them to a future of energy poverty, as well as a difficult climate."

Mr. Ebell's employer, Lee Raymond CEO of Exxon, has said: "Gas production has peaked in North America. I think that's a fair statement [to say that production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built], unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

So, there you have it, the modus operandi of the government lying machine. Super-unpopular thing X must be done to avert unfortunate event Y, precluded by the fact that X does not avert Y.

While we're at it, let's just review some of the other poppycock spoken by people who have noticed the problem, but can't recognize the solution. Keith McCoy, vice president of NAM, said of any climate change measures: "If you're going to go down this road... then it has to be market-driven and incentive-based.".

In plain words: "We will block this as hard as we can until you bribe us to get out of the way."

Something will give. Everyone is going to sink, including the corporate owning class. There's not enough money in the world to pay them off, and there never will be, because their greed is insatiable. Once we recognize this, it becomes obvious that we must kill these monsters now. Their existence is not in the public interest. If it ever was.

This is a shout out to all those children and grandchildren of Myron Ebell that he occasionally speaks about. If you have logged on in the year 2050, and found out all the lies your ancestor has spoken in your name, then all I can offer you is the chance to dance on his grave. Maybe you are rich. Maybe you inherited the blood money that Myron made as a corporate stooge during the Bush Administration. Or maybe there has been a financial crash in the meantime, and the whole lot turned back into the worthless scraps of green paper that it always was. The internet is our collective memory. It has been around for ten years now. Unlike previous generations of corporate liars who's paperwork is safely rotting in the basements of Washington DC where no one will find it, Myron knows that you can find out all about for his crimes at the click of a mouse, should you wish. That fact is a poor substitute for a conscience, but it is all we have for now.

The World's Wealth

Myron had some time spare to do an interview on the BBC this morning.

My favourite part of it was when he said:

"The US consumes about 25% of the energy in the world, and we produce between 25 and 30% of the wealth created in the world, so, in fact, the answer for the world is not to assume that by cutting back on American production and productivity, that you're going to get richer, the answer is the emulate the institutions and the policies that the United States has pursued to become as wealthy and as productive as we are."

This is undoubtedly true, if you count missiles, bombs, and aircraft carriers as wealth. However, if you measure wealth of a nation in terms of mineral reserves (eg oil), and functioning infrastructure (trains, hospitals, and sewerage systems), then the United States is very poor indeed.

One thing missiles are good for is bombing the infrastructure in other countries so that they become as poor as you. Then go in and steal their oil.

As an aside, Myron stated that every edit Philip Cooney did to the government climate change reports was scientifically defensible-- at least in the opinion of one so-called scientist. Also, he claimed that the US stayed out of the Kyoto process because it wouldn't work. You only need to substitute the word "because" with "so".

And finally, he criticised Tony Blair for publically announcing his desire to get a deal with Bush on Climate Change. Apparently, Bush always stands firm against public ridicule and pressure, so the correct strategy is always to keep these matters polite and discrete, because this makes Myron's job of going in and burying it so much easier.

Awash with old news

Well, I'll be darned. What happens when you hire one of Myron Ebell's friends to edit the government's climate change report? Lies, obviously. That's what Ebell's job is about, and what his friends call him to ask for help with.

You can still see one of those frivilous legal attacks made against the US Climate Action Report 2002 that was complained about in Rick Piltz's memo. We were all staggered at the time, because a factual document written by scientists accidentally got released by the Bush Administration. Ebell and friends had to be called in to help with the "damage limitation".

Truth is always damaging to a professional liar, which is why Mr Ebell thrives in today's modern media climate. Completely damning memos never seem to do the job of scraping out cancerous growths that they used to.

The Climate wakes up

Okay, holiday time is over. Every leaked document that has come out of the Anglo-American government while I've been away has proved that us "radicals" and "fringe lunatics" are 100% correct -- more so than we ever believed -- and that the official stories were what they appeared: barefaced lies.

Read the Downing Street Memo and weep at how blatantly and unquestioningly they do it. If these people treated scientific evidence with the same contempt as military intelligence, we'd find the same techniques of doctoring the official reports by inserting the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties".

Once you have an official report, no matter how bad, official people can refer to it, and that needs be their only official point of contact with reality. Treading the same earth and breathing the same atmosphere as the rest of us does not mean their intellect is on the same planet. They exist in a fantasy world concocted by science fiction writers such as Myron Ebell who were given leave to edit the reports.

At no time during any of these episodes does anyone on the inside ask the obvious questions: "Why?", and "What will this achieve in the end?"

The Myron Ebell Climate would like to welcome Jim Kunstler's Clusterfuck-nation as a ray of hope. If the oil supplies are dwindling in a way that this important component of the world's crackpot "globalized" economic and energy policy must be reconsidered, then it's almost like God is giving us a message at this time. The coincidence of these factors is fortuitous; if the official liars can hold to their story through this they could just as well sell the flat earth theory to a user of GPS.

On a final topical note, Tony Blair is supposedly cashing in on the favour he did for George Bush helping his administration to invade Iraq, by asking him to do something about climate change. No one believes such a trade-off could happen, for while continuing to murder thousands of children in a foreign country never troubled Blair's conscience, going against his oil interests is something that Bush cannot contemplate. So, there will be some inconsequential crumbs.

And instead of making a speech, saying: "Look folks, I'm really disappointed now. I did all this lying and invading foreign countries for this guy, and look what I get in return. Absolutely bugger all," he will lie as usual and say: "My goodness, these crumbs are tasty. It's definitely a good start and a step in the right direction. My hopes for the future are fullfilled. Never you worry."

This is what he will do, because it's a political axiom that you never embarrass the President of the United States, or admit you have been a damn fool. As usual, the questions that need to be asked are: "Why?" and "Where does that get you?" If you don't have good answers to those, then you shouldn't be making the effort to lie.