Is Myron a climate change denier?

Myron Ebell's trip to Copenhagen proved to be only slightly less useless than Senator Jim Inhofe's. Inhofe famously flew into the city, stuck his head out of the window, shouted "Hoax!", and flew all the way back home again.

Myron, on the other hand, stuck around a little bit to soak up the atmosphere for the purpose of regurgitating rotten lies about it for the rest of the year.

He was interviewed by Kim Parlee for the Business News Network. Parlee is [sadly] exceptional among TV reporters because she actually prepared for this interview!!! The transcript of the interview is as follows:

Parlee: I'm joined by here by Myron Ebell. He is the director for global warming fraudulence at the Crackpot Enterprise Institute, and probably best known for being a climate change denier. Is that a proper way of classifying you?

Ebell: Well, we don't deny that global warming is happening, or that climate changes. We just don't think that it's a big problem. We think it's a very modest problem that's; we don't really need 45,000 people flying to Copenhagen to try to solve it. Of course, they're not solving it, but we think it's unnecessary.

Parlee: Well you said before that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the EU and the rest of the world to harm America's economy. Do you still believe that?

Ebell: [speaking slowly] We believe that global warming is used to create a regulatory framework to impoverish the richer nations. I think the context of me saying that global warming is a hoax was not fully captured by that quote. What we think is, not that global warming isn't happening, it's not a crisis that demands that we turn the whole world's economy upside down, and, of course, the richer countries to become considerably poorer, and force the poor countries to stay poor. We think that in fact if global warming turns out to be a big problem, the whole process going in here in Copenhagen, that started in Kyoto in '97, is a dead end. It's a very expensive, very destructive dead end that will be much worse than global warming. We believe that is global warming is a problem, the way to solve it is through technological innovation and creativity. And the most technologically capable societies are not the ones that are regulated to death, they're the ones that are free-markets that allow people to do things that invent things.

Parlee: Now having said what I said about the conference, looking like no solution is going to happen, amazing things happen when presidents and prime ministers fly in, and they may pull...

Ebell: A rabbit out of the hat.

Parlee: It might be a weak emaciated rabbit, but it will still be a rabbit. So it means it could happen here.

Ebell: Sure, you never know when people get together to negotiate. That's right.

Parlee: So what kind of agreement could we come up with if that's the case? Does that worry you that an agreement might come, when it might not be the kind of agreement that you want to see. You don't want to see any agreement.

Ebell: Well, I think the people who oppose energy rationing, like me, got very lucky with Kyoto in '97 because, at the time it was negotiated, it was absolutely dead in the United States senate. It would never be ratified. It doesn't matter who was president. The senate would never ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Even Senator John Kerry, who is here today, gave a speech a little while ago. John Kerry blamed president Bush when he ran against him in 2004 for the presidency, he blamed him for not being involved in the Kyoto process. But then when asked, he said, Oh sure if Kyoto came to the floor of the Senate, I would vote against ratification. So I think it's quite likely if some rabbit were pulled out of the hat here, it would probably again be a gift to us, and not to the people who want to ration energy. It will probably be dead in the United States congress as soon as it's negotiated. I think the only way the United States will get involved in this is to let the congress decide what to do, and take that to the international bargaining table, not take an international treaty and then take it to congress and say you have to do this. That's not the way our political system works.

Parlee: I've only got 30 seconds, but I have to ask you. The EPA has just come out and said that carbon dioxide is a dangerous substance. How did that ruling make you feel?

Ebell: We challenged that ruling as it was going along, and we announced the day that it went final that we will file suit in Federal Court to overturn it.

Parlee: And in terms of Copenhagen, what is the ideal outcome in terms of what you want?

Ebell: The ideal outcome would be to step back and say, Look, we've been on this Kyoto road since '97, and it's clearly not working to reduce emissions. What's reduced emissions in the last year is the global economic downturn. This process is not reducing emissions. Why don't we step back and figure out why it isn't working, instead of continuing to plough ahead into what is obviously a dead end. I'm a sort of obstinate driver and I often keep driving even though I know in the back of my mind I'm going in the wrong direction and I really need to stop and look at the map. I think they need to stop and look at the map.

Parlee: Myron Ebell, thank you for joining with us.

Next question (for which there unfortunately wasn't time):

So, Myron, what is the wrong with the process, and how do you think it would be made to work then, eh? If you knew it wouldn't work, you wouldn't be here.

Also, I'd like to have seen a little more quizzing on what he thinks is exactly happening to the climate? When will the north pole be ice free? What the hell does he know about anything, once he has discounted the testimony from everyone who does?

And while we're at it, exactly what technology is going to save our asses when climate change turns out to be the problem as predicted, and we become as frightened as we are when we are diagnosed with cancer -- in the way that we are not when we take risks with cancer.

All I have ever heard in terms of technological advances in five years of following this bonehead's unwarranted media exposure is the astounding innovation of being able to turn off six of the eight cylinders in his fat sport ute when it is idling in a traffic jam.

This is most crap. If we're going to stand for Myron Ebell betting our lives on as-yet, totally uninvented faith-based technologies, to be developed by the very same scientific intellectuals who are telling us that there is a big problem, we ought to require him to know more about technology than the absolutely pitiful knowledge he has of economics.

I expect my priests to have seen the bible before they preach our salvation on the basis of it.

Myron reduced to mush

Some coal-hearted imbicile thought it was a good idea to send Myron Ebell over to Copenhagen (or "Hopenhagen" as he calls it). Not sure what the point of it was. He seems to be sending back exceedingly dull dispatches that get published in Politico, a "cross-discipline forum for intelligent and lively conversation" that is happy to publish lies from the likes of Myron Ebell.

Myron rambles:

Failure looms over Hopenchangen. Blah blah blah.

The question is, who is going to be saddled with the blame for COP-15's failure? There is only one obvious candidate: the United States. And the environmental movement is preparing the groundwork.

Myron sketches out the miserable scenario that is his wet-dream with its climax in the defunct U.S. Senate.

Should [Obama tell his negotiators to stop frustrating the hopes of the world], it will be a repeat of Kyoto in 1997. The negotiations were hopelessly deadlocked at the beginning of the last week [of Kyoto]. President Clinton sent (or allowed) Vice President Gore to fly to Kyoto and collapse the U. S. negotiating position. The result was a treaty that was dead in the Senate the minute it was signed.

It's probably too much to hope that Obama will make the same mistake that Gore made, but it is ironic that unless he does, the U. S. will end up being blamed for the failure here. It will be interesting to see to to what degree President Obama can succeed in keeping the blame from falling on him personally.

In an earlier post, Myron warms up his "climategate" riff:

There is another reason for President Obama to call for a global timeout on energy-rationing policies. The Climategate scandal calls into question much of the scientific research upon which the energy-rationing agenda is based. President Obama ought to include a call at COP-15 for a real investigation of the data manipulation and fraud revealed by Climategate rather than an establishment whitewash.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then in an extreme attack of dullness, the Fixed News website published 1400 words by Myron documenting the chaos of too many people and too few passes, and how so many of the hopeful delegates (like him) show up only for the last week because they are too thick to understand the technical meetings in the first half.

It's surpring Myron wasn't there to join his friends Fred Singer and Lord Monckton at their kooky fringe meetings to wind themselves up before going out on the street to call crowds of young people "hitler youth".

Myron concludes:

The real news is that there is now a tremendous amount of animosity and distrust between the U.N. establishment and the environmental establishment. They know that they need each other, which is why the mainstream environmental NGOs have not made a stink and why the establishment press hasn't made it a front page story. But the fissure arising out of the U.N.'s incompetence is going to take a long time to heal and could easily grow much wider.

That is the very good news coming out of Hopenchangen.

Oh, Myron, extinction is too kind. Are you really stupid enough to think you can live forever, like Robert Vroman?

I don't believe in human intelligence

Myron Ebell twitched in front of the Fox Disaster Business cameras before a dizzying swirling computer graphics montage depicting the fires of hell.

The "Fair and Balanced" network decided it was a good idea to debate him against his paymasters, Massey coal mining company.

Q: Tell us a little more about [the evil] Mr James Hansen, the climate scientist who dared to protest at the gates of the coal mining mountain.

Myron: Well, James Hansen is an astronomer who's specialty is the climate of Venus (lie, lie, lie!). He's often described as the world's leading climate scientists. I don't think this is remotely true, but he is certainly the world's leading scientific alarmist about global warming and of course he is making a spectical of himself all over the world, not just in West Virginia. He advised the people in Britain that they should commit acts of civil disobedience to close down a coal fired power plant. He's a little bit kooky, I think.

Q: Well, Don, it must be upsetting to you to have a person protested at your very plant to be a person on who's back a lot of this research is now based.

Don Blankenship (Massey Energy CEO): I think that some of us who have paid attention know it's been a hoax for a long time, and Mr Hansen is just a part of the big hoax.

Q: Well, the funny thing is, Myron, is he actually admitted to Scientific American about four years ago that he at one time deliberately exaggerated the dangers of global warming. He said, "Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time when the public and decision makers were relatively unaware of global warming issues." So he's essentially admitted that he did what Climategate shows a thousand times over.

Myron: Yes, that's right. Dr Hansen is the head of this small unit up at Columbia University that's part of NASA. They have one of the main temperature data sets, along with the one in England. Phil Jones, the head of the CRU who's now taken a leave of absence from his job because of his huge scandal. And in one of the emails he says, "Our dataset has a lot of problems, but it's really good and clean compared to the one done at NASA GISS. That's the one that Hansen is in charge of. So I think there's a lot of shenanigans going on here. They won't cough up the emails, the Freedom of Information requests to find out whether Gavin Schmitt, one of Hansen's boys uses NASA government time in order to do propaganda on behalf of global warming alarmism.

Q: Don, do you think that because of what's happened with climategate, and the more we find out the people on whose a lot of this legislation is based have had a chequered past to say the least, that the push for massive changes that would disrupt your industry and other industries in America is going to fail?

Don the coalman: I think it's going to fail, but I don't think they're going to quit trying because so much money's been invested in the windmill, solar panel, and all the other things that they have invested in.

Q: You think it will fail, but you think there will be a residual. Will it be enough to effect most businesses in the United States?

Don: Well, it'll effect some. I don't think the people who have advocated this will quit just over climategate because they've always shown that they will perpetrate a hoax, I don't think they will give up that easily. But windmills, solar panels, will double American's power bills. It will effect anybody who gets their power from those sources and fossil fuels, nuclear power or hydro.

Q: Myron, aren't there people at NASA that have questioned Hansen, some of them very recently?

Myron: Uh, yes. I think that the jig is up here. But as Mr Blankenship says it's going to cost us a lot of money even though they're probably going to fail. At some point in a war you probably know who's going to win, but that doesn't mean there might not be hundreds of thousands of casualties before the war is actually over. I think we're looking at major increases in energy prices as a consequence of this long alarmist campaign. It's not just the makers of solar panels. These scientists have gotten billions and billions of dollars in research money from federal tax money to promote this global warming scare story. So they're in it too.

Of course, we can ask what temperature records that Myron, Don and Fox Business News do rely on, or is their position based entirely on god-given faith, lies, convenience, and no data. Ignorance is strength!

Meanwhile, the Gistemp series is being worked on by volunteers on the Clear Climate Code project by volunteer programmers, while Myron combs through the CRU emails looking for stuff he can lie about.

What a downer. Here's a nice video to cheer you up.

Myron the Coal-funded citizen reporter

A world of pain as Myron Ebell wears his pope of death outfit and questions various environmental offices about the "ClimateGate emails", berating people about the lack of scientific ethics. That's got to hurt. It's like being called a fantasist by L Ron Hubbard.

Here is The Video

In the first doorstep everyone must have been told to give them no comment.

It's dangerous to give these people any footage, because you know they will edit it in any way they can. If you pick your nose or give them the finger, it will make their day.

But one guy took the chance.

Worker: The consensus on global warming is settled by many more scientists that are involved in these emails... Some folks have been cherry-picking out of context. This isn't where the debate on global warming is. The debate on global warming is what we should do about it.

Myron: The CRU is really the Pentagon of research. This may be the Pentagon for this research.

Worker: I think that's completely inappropriate. We've got decades of research, much of which has improved just in the last few years. These are conversations that happened years ago. Once the information is public, we're talking about peer reviewed information that is settled.

Myron: Can I ask you another question?

Worker: I want to ask you something. What is your argument here? That we shouldn't be doing anything about global warming? Because that is the conclusion of scientists around the world. And we need to take action now.

Myron: Let me follow up by asking you about a recent email from Keven Trenberth of the National Center for Atmosphere Research, one of the really key people in the IPCC, a lead author and one of the real central characters. Kevin Trenberth in one of the recent emails, just a month ago said, "I think we need to be very embarrassed about the lack of warming in the last decade and the fact we don't have an explanation for it." Doesn't it bother you that all the scientists agree and yet global warming seems to have stopped in the late 1990s.

Worker: That's a ridiculous assertion. I think that you're cherry-picking a particular piece of information, not putting it into the global context. Obviously it's a complex system and to pick out one piece and call it evidence you.

Second CEI fuckwit: Do you think it helps your credibility if you just look at these emails and take them seriously and address some of the serious criticisms that some people.

Worker: I'm not particularly interested in what private citizens had in private discussions among themselves before the public scientific data came.

Myron: Smiling You're a denier!

Worker: I'm a global warming optimist. I believe that we'll solve this problem and I think the solutions will help us. It'll help the economy. It'll help create jobs. And I think the science is settled.

Scene 2 – Greenpeace

Myron: You don't have any thoughts about these emails that have been released, and documents?

Kert Davies: My main thought and interest is who stole them. They came into your hands. The ones that were cherry-picked. The ones that were on the original FTP site are the ones that your side would want to broadcast as scandalous. But it's already been debunked that this mention of a trick. It's not a trick. It's a mathematical solution.

Myron: To, quote, Hide the decline.

Kert: No.

Myron: That's what the email says: Hide the decline.

Kert: The trick is adding to the historical record a more current material record from the instrumentation.

Myron: Because the decline in the proxy records...

Kert: No, we're not going to hash it out for your TV show. Global warming is real. You're wrong, we're right, and I don't care where you go with this. But you're wrong.

cut

Myron: But it looks like a lot of the evidence on your side is phony. Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Van Sander, Kevin Trenberg, Gavin Schmitt. These are not people who were not central to promoting global warming alarmism. These are people right in the middle of it.

Kert: Are you assuming that they're fabricating data?

Myron: Read the emails. Look, they say things like, We've got to hide the decline. We've got to figure out how to explain why it hasn't been warming for the last ten years.

Kert: What you've got in these emails is some measure of exchange between scientists where they're debating the data. I don't honestly care what they do as long as we come out with the right conclusions in the science that drives policy.

Myron: Are you in denial about all this?

Kert: Not at all. I'm furious about it. It's been a revelation to see all this email. We'll see what happens. I'm sure there will be investigations on who hacked the computers, or if this information breaches any national security, because there were some government scientists involved. I think this thing is going to play out for many years.

Cut to the Center for American Progress who kindly let the wolf into their house without taking the precaution of recording their own footage of the following interview in case anything happened that it would be a shame for Myron to cut out.

Faiz Shakir: I don't think there's any concern about whether these are upending notions that climate change is already occurring. There is a consensus that climate change is occurring. The nobel prize willing IPCC has concluded that. And I don't think anything in these emails suggests otherwise. I don't see this as a terribly important news event in itself. There are some ethics of individual scientists I might have issue with. But in general I'm not at all interested in these emails.

Number 2: Have you had any chance to actually go through and read the emails.

Faiz: You know, I've read a few of them that have been reported by Reuters and some other news agencies, but I haven't had the time to go through and document every single one of these emails.

Myron: We need to figure out a way to explain how the world hasn't been warming for the last decade. How can global warming be going forward if the world hasn't been warming for the past decade?

Faiz: Right, do you have that email on you, Mr Trenberg's email?

Myron: I don't.

Faiz: I think if you look at the context of what he said, he said he was concerned there wasn't enough observable data, and he was concerned that he wanted to get more data. I think there has been a misinterpretation by those who are looking for a conspiracy theory in all this. They want to get emails and infer that there's an attempt to deceive the public about climate change, when in fact if you read these emails in the context that they were provided, particularly that one you referenced, he's merely saying, I want more observable data. Can I find it somewhere? Can we invest in trying to find more data so we can demonstrate to the public. So I don't think that there was an intent to deceive. Simply an attempt to clarify. And in many of these emails, the intent was there. Let's just present this data in a way that people can see it and understand it. Let's look at another way to show this data in a way that people like Myron Ebell will be convinced.

Myron: But the data is, from all of the main temperature sets, the satellite and the Hadley CRU datasets don't show any increase in the global mean temperature for the past decade.

Faiz: One second. What was the year of that data?

Myron: It's 2000. There was no warming.

Faiz: Those emails were sent in 1999.

Myron: There were recent ones from Kevin Trenberg.

Faiz: But that one that you referenced about the dataset is from 1999, if I remember correctly.

Myron: There were ones this fall the same. We've got to have a story to explain why the global mean temperature hasn't been going up. And in fact don't you agree that it's sort of worrying for people who think the world is in crisis. In fact, they ought to be happy. The world doesn't seem to be in crisis. Warming isn't a problem. There hasn't been any warming.

Faiz: Mr Ebell, we've had the hottest decade in history, this past decade.

Myron: You really believe that?

Faiz: Absolutely.

Myron: Jim Hansen had to take it back from the US record this summer. He had to say, Sorry I was wrong. It wasn't the case. It was the 1930s.

Faiz: Not only was it the hottest decade in history. You've got arctic ice sheets melting. You've got it going on in Greenland and Antarctica. We've got the species of the polar bear. The drought and the wildfires in Australia. We've got sea levels rising. All of these are observable and predicted by the IPCC reports.

Myron: You looked at sea level rise? There isn't any sea level rise in the last several years. There is none. If this is the warmest decade in history, there's quite a lot of evidence that the people at the CRU and Phil Jones didn't know what they were doing or they were intentionally manipulating the data. There are all kinds of documents in this treasure trove to show they were either intentionally manipulating the data, or they didn't know what they were doing. So I think this whole temperature record going back to about 1850 is very suspect. Don't you think it should be investigated to find out if that temperature record is accurate or whether we can't believe it any more? Because Phil Jones has already said that he's deleted or destroyed the data, right? The underlying raw data no longer exists.

Faiz: Mr Ebell, I have a concern for people who believe in conspiracy theories. I see the Glen Beck-ization of the Republican Party. You want to grab hold of the nearest conspiracy theory to justify things you already believe in that climate change doesn't exist. Grasping for emails to make that point. I think if you read these emails with the intent that they were written, there was no intent to deceive or manipulate.

Myron: There was no intent to suppress the science that disagreed with them, to try and lean on journal editors not to publish papers they didn't agree with, to try to get editors fired, to try to arrange peer review so that articles wouldn't be accepted. You do agree that that looks like a conspiracy.

Faiz: I said at the outset that there were some ethics of these people who are put into question. To the extent that there were efforts to suppress scientists with whom they had disagreements with, and to freeze them out, and to isolate them, I think that those type of ethics need to be questioned. But as pertains to the issue of climate change, we've got so much observable data, we've got so much going on, and yet you want ...

Myron: We can agree or disagree about that. But you do agree that the personal ethics problems. There really needs to be an investigation into these people and what they're up to, don't you think?

Faiz: What kind of investigation are you looking for, exactly?

Myron: The idea of trying to manipulate peer reviewed literature, the things you referred to as personal ethics problems. Don't you think that that ought to be investigated?

Faiz: I don't mind looking into that, as long as you and I can agree that the issue of climate change is settled.

Myron: Oh no, we can't. I think it's settled. But I think it's settled the other way. Global warming is not a problem.

This is useless. It's time there was a counter-attack. Where are all the datasets which these guys do support? There aren't any. They have nothing to contribute. It's all suppress suppress suppress.

It's funny how the fossil fuel industry and the shipping lines are making business decisions based on the understanding that the Arctic ice melt is continuing.

Meanwhile, here's some big sets of raw data sources that Myron doesn't need to talk about while he's got this subject going on.

Myron on the attack

The smirking media-trained scientifically dissembling Myron Ebell showed up clean-shaved, powder-puffed and in his best suit on Fox news to debate against the scientist Kevin Tenberth talking over a Skype call from his office.

In this interview, Myron promotes his hypothesis of a whistleblower who was disgusted by the scientists, because it makes a better story.

While there might have been an insider, it is likely that he was paid. Although this will be difficult to reveal because lying is the PR industry's full time job, and they only rarely get caught out.

Trenberth: There are certainly disputes among the scientists about how to deal with the so-called skeptics, but not about the science itself. The science itself stands. And of course it's not dependent on a few individuals. There are hundreds of scientists around the world that are doing climate change science.

Q: Myron, was this hacking and posting of emails done for political purposes, do you think?

Ebell: I don't know, but you keep calling it hacking. There's no evidence that it's hacking. It may have been a whistle-blower who is simply disgusted by...

Trenberth: Well, it was hacking, supposedly from Russia.

Ebell: There is no evidence either way on that. Look, I don't want to Kevin Tenberth in particular. I think he's not one of the main gang leaders here. But he's part of a gang that I think is being revealed from these emails. Even more from the data files, as they're cooking the data. And "cooking" is a technical word for manipulating and falsifying the data. They have been doing this for years. I'm sorry, these people have already been revealed as not having any honour. Now they're being revealed as not having any sense of shame. They're just trying to brazen it out. If they had any honour they would come forward. Like Phil Jones, they would come forward and say: Sorry, you're right, I've been caught with the goods, I've been denying requests to share the data for years when I knew it had tremendous problems in it. I knew we were making things up. Fudge factors appear continually in these data files. We didn't know how to deal with it, but I wouldn't admit there were problems with it. This is shameful. They should be talking to their lawyers about it.

Trenberth: That is certainly a shameful comment. That is totally wrong with regard to everything Phil Jones has done. He has tremendous integrity. And the publications are very open about all the problems with the data and how it has been treated. Your charges are simply false.

Ebell: This is simply not true, Dr Trenberth, this is simply not true. There are emails that show he was denying Freedom of Information Act requests in Britain, and when he knew he had the data later he said I've deleted the data, I've destroyed it. It's been damaged. It's irrecoverable. And yet he said, I'm not going to answer these... (grin)

Trenberth: That's a misrepresentation also in both cases.

Ebell: It is not.

Q: There are emails that also seem a little bit childish, might be one way to put it. Here's one of them. It says: "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him."

Trenerth: That sort of thing is unfortunate. It's not a comment that I made. And indeed on personal emails I'm sure you will find that kind of thing. But that doesn't undermine the integrity of the science at all. And the charges about the Freedom of Information Act are really quite flawed because a lot of the data are proprietary, and Phil Jones does not have the option of passing it on. And no data have been deleted. Let me assure you (Myron grinning and nodding like a cat playing with a half-killed mouse) unless it was a long time ago for reasons that don't have any malicious intent.

Myron, you know it. Every time you lie, a fairy dies.

Data should always have been published. The CRU was getting grief over this back in 2001. There is no excuse. The 2007 publication of GISTEMP resulted in the clear climate code project. With some encouragement, this could have happened here too. But you can't blame the climate scientists if they feel embattled by the world out there which gives safe harbour to monsters like Myron Ebell who lie and attack from all corners of the TV land.