This Weak in Ebell

Pretty much all activity has ceased from Myron Ebell, aside from his thin and pointless "This Week DC" postings at the Cold Head Blog on October 27 and October 16 lamenting the fact that "there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between McCain and Obama" on global warming and energy issues.

Like so many of Myron's comments, it's not true. What they say in words may be the same in terms of an admission of the obvious realities, but the policies will be quite different. One will cave-in completely to the reactionary elite who think they can buy themselves and their children places on the next rocketship to another planet, and the other is an old duffer who will die and be succeeded by a fundamentalist millenial wing-nut christian with an intellect not fit for the Kindergarden classroom.

It's beyond parody and out the other side ten times over. To pick on fruit flies... lord almighty. To actually have -- let alone display -- that level of ignorance of scientific practice takes your breath away. You couldn't make this up. I've tried. The best I can come up with is: "We've got to build super-weapons, and I don't see why any physics money should go on german refugee scientists and their silly theories about the constant speed of light."

It's just this kind of swamp of uneducated-and-do-not-know-it that Myron swims in.

Seeing as the public expression of climate change denial has no high level backing at present willing to hire Myron's voice -- as he admits -- he is no doubt doing evil stuff off-line, either by misleading powerful and scientifically ignorant plutocrats, or by doing the dirty policy work to undermine the chance that anything put in place will work.

I mean, even Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz see the crisis. Between them, they give the usual excuse of "I'm not responsible because when I was doing the damage I didn't know then what I know now". This excuse doesn't apply to Myron, because he knew all along. He was the one responsible for ensuring that Luntz, Gingrich, and the rest of them didn't know then what they know now. It's a multiplier effect. That's why Myron is the evilest one, while the rest of them just don't seem to be angry enough with him for these years of lying.

So, anyway, lacking any meaty current material from Myron, it's necessary to dig into the archives. Back in February 2000, he wrote an article entitled: Does America Have the Energy to Weather $2-Per-Gallon gas Prices?, in which he mocked President Clinton for believing what he'd read in the book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, because it was written by crackpots like Amory Lovins, whose ideas are suddenly looking pretty good. Shame we blew all the wealth on yachts for the super-rich, cocaine, and other deals that have no future.

So instead we've had ten years based on the policies espoused in the book of the same year, Dow 36,000, the author of which -- and indisputable crackpot -- is now economic advisor to the McCain campaign.

There are crackpots, and there are people whom crackpots say are crackpots. All those wasted years.

Foundation Wash

The Myron Ebell on-line newsfeed is decidedly thin these days. One wonders what he is doing with his time once he has finished filing his 60 words of sadness on GlobalLying.org, moaning that presidential candidates' plans for fossil fuelenergy rationing will increase poverty around the world (as if climate change isn't going to 1000 times moreso), and deploring the Wall Street bailout bill because of its tiny element of "tax credits for various types of renewable energy" (as if the $700 billion for crap isn't 1000s of times more significant).

Meanwhile, someone still in the excrement-smeared office of the CEI found time to make this post about how some other filthy tobacco-funded cheating and killing astroturfing operation (the Capital Research Center) had just published an 8 page screed citing Myron Ebell's May 2006 two paragraph quoted whinge about the appointment of Henry Paulson because of his association with the relatively benign greenwash that is the Nature Conservancy which serves "as the agent for turning millions of acres of productive private land into federally-owned land and has made huge profits doing so".

Issues such as how this guy, who has worked within the vast Ponzi scheme that is the United States banking system, is now in the job to help cover up this fraud, don't matter to the CEI, or indeed to the CRC.

The article, screed, whatever you call it, spends the first 4 pages decrying the huge amount of influence Goldman Sachs and its directors have had in government policy (though let's not mention Big Oil), is then interrupted by a big ugly black and white smug-shot of a young Myron Ebell in his tweed, before pinning the whole problem down to philanthropic donations to environmental causes and meddling in global warming issues by Sachs' employees.

The CRC, who publishes a newsletter called "Foundation Watch" (in which the above article is in), maintains a database of non-profits and grantmakers who they feel are meddling in government policy. This extensive database (see page 7 of 'C') doesn't, of course, refer to itself or the CEI -- both of who live off philanthropic grants and meddle in government policy.

Though, to be fair, it does disclose the funding of these two toilets by Exxon in 2006 in this page of background information.

Yes, I know these funds seem quite minuscule in the grand scale of things. But when a rational public policy is apparently as cheap to assassinate as, say, Martin Luther King, then the exact dollar-value of the rifle is inconsequential. What matters is whether you participated and supported in the commission of evil. It cannot be forgiven.

We have been without justice for so long we have forgotten what it's like.

When the rich do right

Pro-Bush swift-boater T. Boone Pickens, who remains unrepentant for abusing the democratic system and sending us into this hole of dysfunctional governance, proposes a wind power plan to generate electricity from wind instead of natural gas, which instead would be used for transport.

The plan would be fast to implement and reduce the serious burden on the US economy from oil imports.

You can tell the plan is probably effective, merely because Myron Ebell and is fellow campaigners at the CEI, who work night and day for the collapse of society and the extinction of the human race, are against it.

Said Senile Fellow, Iain Murray:

Pickens wants us all to drive cars powered by natural gas. Yet CNG-powered cars are heavier, much more expensive and take 20 hours to refuel at home. They're just not a serious alternative to the gasoline-powered car.

Since most people fill their cars at the gas station, it's an ignorant statement. As to being heavier, he's referring to the empty tank. Not the weight when it's full of gas (not liquid), or the rest of the car, which will be small and efficient, lacking the need for fuel pumps, filters, complex carburetor, etc.

Ebell showed up to break wind in this stupid article:

"You can buy an awful lot of promotion and access for $58 million." Ebell said he doesn’t buy the assertion that Pickens is in it for altruism, and noted that he stands to gain a windfall if Congress backs a long-term extension of tax credits for wind.

Ebell also noted that Pickens lost $270 million last year in investments, raising the stakes even more for the success of his energy ideas.

Funnily enough, everybody with their own money in the stock market "lost" money during that period.

Why aren't these PR dollars still going to the CEI to continue its lying? he wailed.

This theme showed up with the usual stand-by Gore-bash whenever ideas are thin.

You can beg as much as you like. Even as the CEI closes down, our demise will be its long lasting legacy.