Where the car-lovers go

On November 13 the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability of UC Berkeley, California, released a detailed research paper called California Climate Risk and Response.

What they did was completely at odds with anything that has ever emerged Myron Ebell's Competitive Enterprise Institute, because it contained information, numbers, reasoning, data, predictions and sound, justifiable statements. It's a fair bet that the professors and researchers behind the report would like to see their state of California move forward into the future as a place where humans beings continue find it agreeable to inhabit.

Myron Ebell, on the other hand, has done what it can to pollute the air of public debate and threaten the survival of the species by:

• Blaming Mexican immigrants for the Enron engineered California electricity crisis of 2001


• Lying about the reliability of petroleum predictions


• Being an apologist for the recall of the electric car


• Pressing for off-shore oil drilling in sensitive waters


• Belitting the Endangered Species Act in favour of clear-cut logging


• Presenting tenuous arguments that higher car fuel standards would be harmful to human health, as well as supporting lawsuits against the imposition of better standards in the state of California


• Conspiring with Exxon White House plant Philip Cooney to suppress the federal Climate Action Report of 2002

The UC Berkeley Research Paper and its projections of massive climate change induced economic damage got mentioned in The LA Times, Fox Weather News, KTVU, and a number of environmental blogs.

But reporter Matt Nauman of the Mercury News was the only one stupid enough to decorate the press release with an ignorant quote from Myron Ebell:

But Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates limited government and free-market solutions to public policy issues, dismissed the report's findings.

"Global warming or cooling may impose some costs on California (as well as provide some benefits), but the projections of trillions of dollars of damages from global warming are based on fantasy rather than facts," he said.

Until September 2007, Matt Nauman was the automobile correspondent for the paper. Here's his blog, Every car I drive where he signs off with:

That’s 845 issues of Drive, including today’s last one. (That doesn’t count a year or so of a Saturday publication, OverDrive, and a few Sunday Drive special sections over the years.)

Sixteen years means that I’ve seen SUVs rise and fall, gas prices rise and rise some more, the return of the convertible, the birth of the crossover and, now, a sense that we’re about to move beyond the internal-combustion gasoline engine and move toward electric transportation, be it pure EV, gas-electric hybrids, diesel-electric hybrids or some other fuel source.

I’ve talked to hundreds of auto executives, designers, marketers and engineers over the years. I’ve covered dozens of cars shows and attended hundreds of local car events. Thanks for telling me about your car (or motorcycle) and how much it means to you.

It's great to see where all our environmental climate disaster correspondents are going to come from as the car industry and the economy goes into decline.

They need to do their homework better. Never, ever publish a quote from Myron Ebell without explaining to your readers that he's a dangerous liar , unless you want to look like an idiot.

It's like asking a tobacco lobbyist whether smoking causes cancer. Their answer will serve no purpose other than to sell more cigarettes regardless of how many slow and painful deaths come of it.