Concerned? Moi?

There can be no hope for as long as people keep paying for Myron Ebell to prevent our future survival. As one of his pals on the Cold-head website (where he often hangs out) says:

In a present beset by breast cancer, poverty, and mental illness, I really don’t care about warmer winters in a richer world 100 years from now.

I say, that fund of blind optimism is wearing a little thin these days, don't you think? With the end of that fantasy of wealth coming from private banks printing money in their Ponzi schemes, and the CEI morons fighting against all advances of technology, be it wind power, digital TV, low energy light bulbs, or an internet that doesn't have toll barriers at every crossing, in what way is our world going to be richer 100 years from now? Once we've mined enough holes in the ground, and refilled them with land-filled garbage, run out of oil, lost a couple more cities to hurricanes, paid the 6 trillion dollars due for two unnecessary wars, experienced 50 years of climate change drought, where's the riches going to be coming from, eh?

On 22 January, Myron Ebell blogged Global Warming Drops to Bottom of Public Concerns and illustrated it with stick figures. His same thin piece was cross-posted on the CEI blog here, but illustrated with a picture of a bored granny. Neither version has a working hyperlink to the article cited, which is here.

And?

You know, if I am concerned about my grandchildren's future, and then my wife gets caught in a road accident, you don't say that my grandchildren have dropped to the bottom of my concerns, do you? There's just a lot of other immediate misery occurring. Times are hard for a lot of people, something which these CEI dickheads aren't really able to grasp because it contradicts their entire fictional version of reality, and they can't handle it.

Six days late, Myron Ebell filed his pointless three paragraph piece Obama's Inaugural Address:

Finally, the president said, "With old friends and foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet." That last phrase is code for negotiating a new U. N. agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. The problem with a new agreement is the same as the problem with the Kyoto Protocol. The countries that ratified Kyoto aren’t meeting their commitments to reduce emissions. If they did, it would wreck their economies.

Er, and not doing this has strengthened America's economy, has it? It seems it's invested in a lot of infrastructure and property that is unfit for present use. What else is an economy but that?

The following day he posted the slightly shorter The Green Stimulus which is just so much waffle I can't find anything worth quoting from it. Generally, he's ranting about anything he can describe as a subsidy of wind-power. We can subsidize coal in a myriad of unpleasant ways, including poisoning people by eating their coal ash which they've decided they don't need to dispose of properly while they're making money. And we can subsidize the oil industry by killing millions of people for land in the middle east that happens to be above it. But for wind-power, if the state pays for so much as a college education for an engineer who eventually gets a job in the industry, Myron Ebell will be out there all over the case.

These guys are just getting sick and sad. I am determined to outlast them. Not that anything is going to save the planet, as they have already irreparably done the damage. All that is left to hope for is justice.

The audacity of misery

From Obama's inaugural address today:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Meanwhile, in Myron Ebell's lair on Planet CEI, the poisoned misery is gushing.

John Berlau refutes the concept of a "national purpose" by quoting ideologue Milton Friedman's rather childish deconstruction of President Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".

Sam Kazman shows himself as too dumb to understand the meaning of the word "global" in the term "global warming" when he drivels on about today's cold temperature in Washington DC.

Christine Hall insists that Americans should burn more oil than ever before and never even think about apologizing for it.

Ryan Young titles his piece of rubbish "Why Good Men Don't Become President Anymore" and then doesn't bother to tell us if his George Bush was a good man or not.

Iain Murray ineptly fisks the inaugural speech and gets refisked by commenters on the blog. Unbelievably, he says, "Science should inform, not dictate policy." So, the law of gravity is just some worthy advice, is it?

Doug Bandow takes a lazy cheap shot about freezing weather and global warming, and says bring it on.

Grand old idiot Fred Smith stupidly tries to deconstruct the "pump priming" metaphore before explaining away the current financial crisis as the consequence of the lack of economic freedom and responsibility. Evidently the old duffer is too insulated to note Alan Greenspan's shocked disbelief on his realization that this is all total bollocks.

Ivan Osorio writes something incomprehensible about unions.

Cord Blomquist has nothing interesting to say beyond his empty sneer at President Bush's establishment of a "Freedom Institute".

Iain Murray (again) quotes a nuclear energy poll to say that the public is turning against the theory of anthropogenic global warming -- as is the intended consequence of all the lying done by the CEI.

Cord Blomquist (again) demands all regulations to be cut as well as a corporate tax rate of 0% to "get the economy chugging along more efficiently". After all, if these conditions can give us a bloated and corrupt investment banking industry, just think what it will do for industries that create actual physical toxic waste that can get into our food!

Fred Smith (again) equates fair trade with protectionism which led to the second world war.

And Myron Ebell catches up on his brief (three days before the 20th) with the statement:

The first bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) brought to a vote in the 111th Congress is the omnibus land grab bill that was blocked in the waning days of the last Congress by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). It was re-introduced by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, as S. 22. It contains around 160 titles. Lots of new National Parks, Wilderness Areas, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Trails, and National Heritage Areas. Plus making official a whole new designation of public land lockups for the Bureau of Land Management called Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. And withdrawing 1.2 million acres from the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming from future oil and gas production–an area with high gas potential.

Now, the part of this enormous Bill, which Ebell was too useless to link to when he linked to the utterly meaningless vote when he told us what to think about it, says:

'Wyoming Range Withdrawal Area' means all National Forest System land and federally owned minerals located within the boundaries of the Bridger-Teton National Forest identified on the map entitled `Wyoming Range Withdrawal Area' and dated October 17, 2007, on file with the Office of the Chief of the Forest Service and the Office of the Supervisor of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Withdrawal- Except as provided in subsection (f), subject to valid existing rights as of the date of enactment of this Act and the provisions of this subtitle, land in the Wyoming Range Withdrawal Area is withdrawn from--
(1) all forms of appropriation or disposal under the public land laws
(2) location, entry, and patent under the mining laws; and
(3) disposition under laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing.

It appears that the Bridger-Teton National Forest oil-drilling issue was pretty much settled back in 2006 when even Republican-minded gun lovers could see it was incompatible with their appetite for shooting wild animals between the trees.

But Myron Ebell -- the fascist destroyer of hope -- sees it the other way. He thinks that protecting public lands from being cordoned off and raped by bulldozers counts as stealing it from its rightful owners -- the mining and drilling companies.

Is this guy still working in the PR industry or what?

Sing it now:

This land is your land,
this land is my land
From California
to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest
to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking
I saw a sign there
And on the sign it
said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side
it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

How many lightbulbs do you eat for breakfast?

I've had it up to here with these Competitive Enterprise Morons wild-mouthing about how Mercury in food is fine, but when it is encapsulated in a long-life lightbulb -- that is not usually eaten -- it's scary dangerous where:

The business fantasy is for the nation’s 4 billion-plus light sockets to sport CFLs. There’s much more ka-ching in selling 4 billion $5 light bulbs as opposed to incandescent bulbs costing $0.75. But what about the mercury problem that may impose substantial liabilities on businesses and consumers faster than CFL light bulbs turn on?

Given that CFLs are 6 times more electrically efficient and last 10 times longer before they break, the average payback can be as little as a month. Would you buy a used car from this "Institute"?

No doubt they would try to sell you one.

The Mercury emissions from coal due to the extra inefficiencies of incandescent lights exceeds by three times over five years all the Mercury in the bulbs, none of which needs to get into the atmosphere. How hard is it to take it back to the store, when you get your replacement bulbs, where they post it into their bulb eaters? Less hard than changing your bulbs ten times as often, no doubt.

But the Competitive Enterprise Institute didn't get where it is now by passing out advice that wasn't a lethal threat to members of the human species. For example, in spite of Asbestos being recognized as a killer since First World War and continuing to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people per year, twenty years after it was banned in many places, one of their junkman jackasses writes Asbestos Fireproofing Might Have Prevented World Trade Center Collapse.

The asbestos coatings went only up to the 40th floor, so I guess all the New Yorkers who are now going to die from the dust cloud of the collapse are either going to agree with him that not enough asbestos was used, or too much was used.

And let's not remember how safe it was to give children Lead Paint to eat and Leaded air to breath from all the Lead in the gasoline that turned out to be gratuitously unnecessary for any known purpose, except the wholesale fumigation of the population with mind-rotting toxins.

Now that's a thought to warm Myron Ebell's slimey heart. He is a vampire. More of his human death-wish next week as we get back to his fight for the global mass extinction of the species. He goes for the big one, unlike the rest of the lightweights in his Institute who's best efforts can only kill people by the million.