The game is over

They have been playing for what they can stick in our minds, folks.

For years people have had to die needlessly as corporations get away with their convenient lies about smoking and climate change. Our worthless excuse for a journalism industry has been publishing these lies ad nauseum in spite of repeated attempts by readers telling them to stop doing it. They're either fools, or collaborators, or both.

Guys, if you want to take an authoratitive statement at odds with the facts of climate change, take it from Exxon directly, who are supposed to know things, not from Myron Ebell, who has the accountability of a talking turd.

There are not two sides to the argument -- there are proven truths, and there are the professional liars. Debates should be held within one team or the other, not across teams who are playing by different rules. That means, don't ever take Myron's consciously false and designed-to-be-slippery statements to a scientist who has to waste his time refuting them, which is sometimes too complicated to do in a polite five second soundbite. Instead, take Myron's words back to Exxon and get them to explain why they aren't willing to agree with it publically, although they are paying for us to hear it.

So now, at long last, long after the public has made itself fully aware of the game plan, an official scientific organizations finally gets round to gathering up the toxic remnants to ram down Exxon's throat.

Thank heavens.

After 5 years of interviewing Myron Ebell on and off, the BBC has at last had the temerity to phone up Exxon directly and obtain the following interview (lies in bold):

Nick Thomas (Exxon): We recognized concentration of CO2 is increasing, temperatures are rising, we recognize the symptoms, we recognize that CO2 are one of the contributors to climate change,

Q: Why have you given money to a group that's published a report that says that global climate changes were not related to rising CO2.

Mr Thomas: I think it's important to understand that there is a different culture in the US where large companies fund policy debate and research.

Q: But if the research is wrong according to emminant scientists...

Mr Thomas: We fund several hundred external organizations who carry out research and promote discussion on policy issues. They'll be environmental affairs, marketing, economic policy. Now the important thing about all of that is, those organizations do not speak on our behalf, we don't control their views, we don't control their messages, they may or may not hold similar views to our own, and they will also receive funding from many other organizations apart from us.

Q: The Royal Soc says in a letter that Exxon promised to stop funding those groups. Did you make such a promise, and will you keep to it.

Mr Thomas: I don't know which groups specifically they're talking about.

Q: Well, I could give you the details if you like.

Mr Thomas: We keep our funding under review all of the time...

Q: So you are going to continue to fund the IPN.

Mr Thomas: I'm not going to get involved in answering which groups we will fund in the future. All I will say is any group put over a group that happens to get some money from us is not necessarily our view. They do not speak on our behalf.

So there it is. Journalism in action. At. F***ing. Last.


Stop press:

A spokesman added that ExxonMobil stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.

If this is true, we look forward to Myron Ebell losing his job, his health care benefits, his steady income, his air-conditioned office, and joining the Competitive Enterprisers on the streets (also known as tramps). No doubt he and his four kids will be able to adapt to the changed circumstances, as well as to a planet with a steadily worsening climate that he, in his own way, helped foment. Even if he is stopped today, we have already taken the poison and are dying. Life starts to feel real precious when you begin to lose it. That is his gift to the world.