No science but the science

I received a copy of the formerly prestigious Science magazine of the AAAS where I was disappointed to find a short note on page 1717 of Volume 313 Issue 5794, 22 September 2006, where there was a lie from Myron Ebell's pal in a ScienceScope piece authored by Eli Kintisch:

Cutting greenhouse emissions requires both research on new technologies as well as market limits on carbon usage, says the Congressional Budget Office in a new report.
The report implicitly criticizes the Bush Administration's emphasis on energy research, arguing that "relying exclusively on R&D funding in the near term... would increase the overall cost of reducing emissions in the long run." Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-MN), who requested the study with independent James Jeffords (VT), says the work validates his call for carbon limits. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner thinks that strategy is unwise, pointing out that high gas prices in Europe, for example, have not lead to lower emissions.

This is not the first time Kintisch has dipped into the lie factory; according to the search engine, he quoted Myron Ebell on 26 June 2006. For this he has his name dropped in the Myron hole.

Just to unpick how this lie works, Horner's fallback lie will be to claim that although Europe's gas prices are higher than in the US, carbon emissions have increased. It is true that gas prices are higher in Europe than in the US. It is true that carbon emissions are lower in Europe than in the US. It is also true that gas prices in Europe have not been rising; due to the high tax, the price rises in the raw materials have not made as much of a percentage difference as they have to Americans.

For an institute who pretends to be all into market solutions, they scant respect for the effect of price signals when it comes to affecting their sponsors such as Exxon. They're just such complete wallies.

Meanwhile, the work on Poor Schmuck - The More People I Meet, The More I Like Nuclear Weapons continues. All good stuff.