We are dead meat

Take it from David Letterman. "We are SO screwed."



Meanwhile, Daniel Gilbert tries to rationalize it as a flaw in the human brain.

He's wrong, though. It's a flaw in our human society. The fact that people like Myron Ebell and his entire support network of liars who maliciously disrupt the governing process in its fumbling grasp for an effective solution, while we angrily denounce and lock up holocaust deniers whose message really is of no consequence to the survival of the species -- that's the failure.

It's high time that Myron Ebell -- who must fully understand the issue in order to concoct his fiendish lies -- starts begging for forgiveness. It's too late to make up for the damage he has done, but getting out there in person to heed Al Gore's call for civil disobedience against the construction of new coal power stations would credit towards a sense of justice.

If he doesn't start doing that, then he is absolutely pure evil. Not just misguided, greedy and opportunistic.

An April shower of piss

Every time I dig into the internet, there's another horror lurking. Here's Myron fittingly dressed like the wet pope of death reading out his usual piss poor talking points. You wonder why he needed to write them down:



It's a shame we don't get to see the audience, paid to cheer and boo. This is the auspicious start of some wacky Hot Air Tour paid for by the future-killing organization called Americans for Prosperity where they go round the United States with a big red gas bag bearing the slogan:

Energy Taxes Hurt Families & Kill Jobs

Myron's 22 April 2008 speech runs with the usual:

• Those nasty politicians support Cap and Trade legislation


• Cap and Trade is a tax on consumers for hydrocarbon energy


• That's where we get 85% of our energy


• From a politician's perspective, it's the best kind of tax; it's a hidden tax


• The absolutely essential goal of this tour is to let Americans know that Cap and Trade is a tax


• With Cap and Trade the government tell how much energy people can use


• Americans will be forced to pay more for gasoline


• Raising the cost of energy will cost Americans their jobs


• But if Al Gore is right, what will it take to stop Global Warming?


• In the EU gas taxes have been raised to try to reduce emissions


• The price gas in most EU countries is 8 dollars a gallon


• If it would help Global Warming, would you be willing to pay 8 dollars a gallon for gasoline?


• Even with 8 dollars gas, emissions are going up faster in the EU than they are in the US


• What is Cap and Trade? A tax!

Speaking of unregulated capitalism this week, as the entire financial system is bailed out from its self-inflicted collapse with 100% TAX MONEY, I don't see why these gits wouldn't want us to pay more tax. If it weren't for these taxes propping it up, capitalism would have collapsed long ago.

The point about fossil fuel taxes, (not energy taxes, you mealy-mouthed by-the-book PR-reframing, lying twat) is to encourage people not to pay them. Encourage them to use other sources of energy (which will be subsidized by the fossil fuel tax), and use it more efficiently in pursuit of a reasonable life for themselves and their grand-children's children whom we assume (though this may not apply to Myron) they don't want to see starved and wiped off the side of this planet.

Cap and Trade was a system whereby the private industries kept the tax and redistributed the money among themselves. It didn't go to the government. It was an attempt to buy them off.

But as we can see, with industry going around place paying the Myron Ebells of this world to lie about its intent, its purpose, and the reason why it needs to be done, why bother? Obviously the oil industries don't want to play along with this game, and really they ought to be closed down and nationalized. Like the financial system has been this week.

Oh, yeah, this just in:

Plants are unlikely to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air as the planet warms, research suggests.

US scientists found that grassland took up less CO2 than usual for two years following temperatures that are now unusually hot, but may become common.

That's to go with Myron's oft made claim that elevated CO2 will have the only side effect of more plant growth.

Hurricane heads

As the third major tropical storm of the month massacres non-American people in Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, there's deafening silence on both both blogs sponsored by Myron Ebell's continuing employer, the so-called Competitive so-called Enterprise so-called Institute.

The pictures are quite shocking, and show how easy it is to "adapt" to circumstances, as Myron Ebell says our children and grand-children will have no problem doing, for the convenience we experience from our current lifestyle, which they won't get.

Without any comments about this humanitarian situation which is occurring (denial isn't just for science, it's for all other things you can see as well), we're have to go back to the highlights.

The highlights include, Myron's colleagues explaining that the death rate from Hurricane Katrina was due to not everyone having cars with which to evacuate from New Orleans.

Presumably, in Haiti their problems would be sorted out if everyone had a private yacht so they could head over to the next Caribbean vacation island whenever it got a bit rainy.

We have to remember that the CEI care about poor people so much that they make ad campaigns to explain how environmentalists want to take away electric streetlights from impoverished rural villages where they have so much benefit.

I wonder if that streetlight (which was a gift by the CEI-hating National Rural Electric Cooperative Association) is still standing, following the mudslides. Things are bad. They are getting worse. Even as Exxon pays people become more ignorant about it.

Reviewing the blog comments over where the NRECA copyright infringement arguments were published, the guys there have problems:

Yes, I do believe [a supernatural being in the sky blinked its eyes once a day for 6 days 6,000 years ago and created the universe and everything in it.]

It beats what I am expected to believe.

Science:

The moon was created by volcanic activity – oops – sorry we were wrong. We don’t know how it was created. Here is a theory. A big something or other slammed into the earth billions of years ago and the collection of the fragments formed the moon (the latest theory). So, over time in a vacuum, a perfect sphere can be created out of jagged fragments. It is there and I can’t prove it did not happen this way so, it must be fact.

It sometimes looks like the human species is too stupid to live. The tragedy is that that many of those who aren't complete morons are evil enough to take money to disinform them, knowing that full well that playing this game threatens our survival.

The economics of bad cars

Shunning as he does the broken brand that is the CEI (which is not non-partisan no matter how many times it's said), Myron Ebell has been posting almost weekly on the blog of GlobalLying.org. There's nothing there but paving slabs of miserable misguidance on this particular road to hell. However, occasionally, he rises above himself to post something so awesomely contradictory it's worth repeating:

(2008-09-03) ...As for the automaker bailout, Detroit has been cleverly maneuvering to make this a deal that Congress can’t refuse for the past year.

They have now presented it over the August recess so that it will be taken up just before the election.

The first number I heard in July was $25 billion in loan guarantees, but now it’s up to $50 billion.

We at CEI aren’t sympathetic to taxpayer bailouts of big businesses that can’t compete in the market, but I must add that in this case, GM, Ford, and Chrysler can argue that many of their current woes have been caused by federal government policies. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards enacted in the ’seventies have put Detroit at a long term competitive disadvantage versus the Japanese automakers.

This disadvantage was made worse by the much higher CAFE standards enacted by Congress (and reluctantly supported by Detroit’s Big Three) last December. High gas prices are also hurting Detroit, and again the federal government could be partly to blame.

Thus the automakers do have a case to make, although that doesn’t mean CEI will be supporting the bailout. And it’s one that will be hard for Congress to resist because auto jobs are spread all around the country.

What???

Is Myron suggesting that cars made in Detroit would be more popular with consumers than Japanese cars if their fuel efficiency was even more crappy than it is today?

Regulation is necessary because there is a proven market failure with regards to automotive fuel efficiency (not to mention automobile safety). For whatever reason (ignorance, stupidity, malicious propaganda from Myron and his pals), not enough consumers take account of future price rises and environmental devastation when deciding to purchase and use their vehicles. Any auto executive who knew that the US car industry would be doomed when oil prices rose and invested in better technology would be driven out of business by his rivals who do not care about the long term prospects, because they want their profits NOW.

Regulation is essential to avoid the market undermining any possibility of preparation for the future. It's what saves the system from its own self-destruction. The problem is, Myron is looking forward to destruction. If he can do it by pushing a creed in which it is impossible to conceive of a concept known as market failure, then that's what we hear.

Either capitalism dies, or the planet dies, or capitalism gets responsibly regulated, and there's no evidence of that while they continue to pay Myron a salary.

Meanwhile, the benefits of improved energy use continue to be suppressed by the oil men in the White House.