Wednesday, June 20, 2007

It's Miller time

Myron appeared on the abysmal Dennis Miller radio show on 9 May 2007. After the exciting 30 second intro tune you are suddenly faced with two hours from an old codger rattling on about nothing. What does he have against the world?

Fittingly, Myron's qualification for being invited on the show was that Vanity Fair article which established his intellectual dishonesty.

It's amazing how people can so misrepresent the distinction between the present and the future. So if you have terminal cancer but you're still walking around having not died yet, these guys would say: "What's your problem? Even I can see it's not actually killed you."

The interview went:
Ebell: ...We have not seen weather catastrophes because of the warming, and I think it's very unlikely that we're going to see much of a negative impact in the future despite all the attempts to find, well this species is under threat, and that species will have to move north, and the sea levels are going to rise 20 feet. I think if you look at each one of these claims, you'll see that there isn't much to it.

Miller: ... I have noticed a particular increase in the headlines about global warming that are taking it out of amusement in my eyes and into "Hm, where have I heard that stuff before?"

A couple of examples. I see a guy now talking about how binge flying should be done away with, maybe vacations. I see another guy talking about too many children, have one less kid and lets indeed get to 6 and a half billion world population down under maybe 5 and a half, dangerously close. And then we've got the "Man is a virus"... I think this is getting a little too rabid for my tastes. What do you think?

Ebell: Well I think that the environmental movement is very frustrated that the global warming scare has been around since 1988. There was a big treaty signed in Rio in 1992, and then the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. They've spent billions of dollars promoting it and trying to scare the public, and so far they haven't got very far. It's kind of a religion. If you look at their emissions, the whole point of the Kyoto Treaty is to force us to use less energy and lower our emissions. They are actually going up in a higher rate in percentage terms than in the United States since Kyoto was negotiated. So even though they believe in it, they're not actually doing anything. The one country that would do something because when we pass a law it gets enforced. If the government doesn't enforce it, some private person can go into court and a judge will enforce it. So they haven't been able to pass a mandatory restriction on our energy use in this country, and so they're frustrated.

Miller: [The president of France] Sarchosy seems to be in on this. I found it funny that he had the absolute courage to even mention America in his acceptance speech. But then he mentioned it to say we had to get on board as far as global warming. I guess he takes it hyper seriously.

Ebell: It's hard to say. You know it's very difficult in Europe to be accepted in polite society if you don't at least say you are very worried about global warming. Of course, most people who are very worried about it aren't actually doing anything. They're still flying around. You know Al Gore flies around in a private jet all over the world. And that Tennessee public policy group revealed that his power bills are kind of out of line...

Miller: ... We're all supposed to pillory ourselves every day of the year because we are a virus. If we're all supposed to cut down on the amount of kids we have, and if we're all supposed to not take a vacation once a year, why don't we just let it burn out.

Laughter

Miller: Am I supposed to go through all this so I can like stay four feet from my house, never drive, never take a vacation, not even have any glorious children playing ball in the yard, and once a week like Rod Taylor in The Time Machine I'm summoned by some siren into some cathedral, and while we're in there they can take the chains on and whip our own backs because we're a virus. If that is in fact what will take to get the planet all cuddly again, why the hell do I want to be here, Myron?

Ebell: I think you've got it Dennis. I mean I think that there's a... If we're going to look at it, I think most of our economy is not very vulnerable to climate change. The people who are vulnerable are in poor villages in Africa, and they don't have much energy, so that's their problem.

Miller: Exactly. They're the ones who are forced to run a fan by peddling on a bike.
That's right. Have lots of kids. They're really going to thank you for the avoidable catastrophe that's going to cast a shadow across their lives.

The next guest was some from Jihad Watch blog where they make up stuff out of whole cloth. The story of the day was the Fort Dix attack plot where a pizza delivery man in New Jersey took his jihad videos to the store to get them converted to DVDs and found his group of friends subsequently infiltrated by an FBI agent posing as a terrorist who sold them guns and recorded them plotting to attack the nearby military base.

Rather than realizing just how stupid this was getting, Miller says:
There's two ways we can shoot the information you just told me. Granted, I don't believe they're the sharpest scimitars in the drawer. But I also think there is a lax attitude in this country... I think there's a general consensus in the terrorist community that if we're not completely sleeping, we're in some state of somnambulant behavior, and they felt they could take their videos down to the local tarintino kid and just ask them to transfer them onto video. That's the wrong message we're giving off.
The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming! Be very afraid! The terrorists are coming!

Oh, they look like the three stooges.

Don't be fooled. They're getting cocky because they know we aren't scared enough. Be very afraid! Wooo-ooo-oo!

Jihad-watch adds: "Law enforcement has been doing a great job. You have to credit them, because after 9/11 there has been nothing, and yet there have been many major plots that have been foiled."

His examples:
Seems like this Mr Jihad Watch gets as much right about the situation as Myron Ebell does with global warming. That makes them perfect guests for the Dennis Miller show!

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Scraping the barrel a bit, arn't you Myron - using your kooky blog in England to plug your appearance on an equally kooky talk show. Whilst Miller let you ramble on at length you didn't say much - where were the flawed statistic showing short haul aviation to use less energy than rail transportation, or the stuff about the two ton 4x4 having better lifecycle performance than the Toyota Pius - only flawed by the assumption that the 4x4 lasts three times as long and that the scrap metals left at the end of the vehicle's life have no energy value.

You never did answer the question - which came first? - the increasingly marginalised oil industry media whore, who invents himself a kooky environmentalist parody blogger - it's better than being ignored of course; or the kooky blogger in England who, needing somthing to blog about invents the parody of the oil industry pundit. Given this performance, I suspect the latter.

6:10 AM, June 24, 2007 Permanent link to this entry  
Blogger goatchurch said...

Err. You've lost me there, I'm afraid. Pardon?

7:03 AM, July 10, 2007 Permanent link to this entry  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So you don't deny that Myron and Goatchurch are one and the same?

12:30 PM, July 15, 2007 Permanent link to this entry  
Blogger goatchurch said...

I don't deny that it's is the most bizarre allegation I have ever heard. But I like it and I do see your point.

No, I'm not Myron. I wish I was, because then I could break down in public and 'fess up all the irreparable damage I've caused. We don't get nearly enough confessions, John Perkins being one of the most recent.

My hope was that there would be at least one of us volunteer proxy bloggers for each professional lying think-tank shill, and we'd form a virtual network that mirrored those guys in real space. Unfortunately, it never got going. So there's just me out here, keeping the faith.

You might be interested in a slightly larger project: undemocracy.com. I don't know what's successful. I just do stuff.

4:59 AM, July 21, 2007 Permanent link to this entry  

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