Financial Times achievement hour

As the damp squib of Human Achievement Hour (for celebrating only harmful out-of-date 20th century technology) fizzles, Myron Ebell lays into the upper classes for their frivolous concerns about the future of humanity on this planet.

I have no idea why reporter Fiona Harvey or her editor at the FT thought her piece about how members of the European monarchies -- usually so removed from everyday life on the ground -- even they were becoming radicalised by the fact that climate change was going to threaten their existence, would be improved by some ignorant grunts from Myron Ebell.

But such is the lack of standards in journalism:

Global-warming sceptics regard royals campaigning against climate change as a fad at best and at worst a form of political activism ­inappropriate for public figures who are meant to remain outside the realm of democratic politics. Myron Ebell, director at the Competitive Enterprise ­Institute and one of America's most prominent climate-change sceptics, says: "The interest of royal personages in promoting global warming alarmism and supporting energy-rationing policies is a good example of out-of-touch elitism. It's a popular cause for them and other wealthy people who don’t have to worry about skyrocketing energy bills."

...

Among the royal activists on global warming, Prince Charles has shown the greatest willingness to try to influence politicians directly... The reason he is able to get away with this may be that in Britain, as opposed to the US, environmentalism largely transcends party boundaries. Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to speak out strongly on the problem of climate change, in 1988... Ebell is scathing: "My guess is that Prince Charles's clueless comments tend to confirm the suspicions of ordinary people that global warming is just another fashionable cause."

Is it, Myron? Just a fashionable cause? It can't mean anything more? So, if a royal prince campaigns against AIDS, that's just a fashionable cause too? You're in favour of AIDS, are you, Myron? Lots of people dying.

You don't want these influential people weighing in and undoing all your hard work lying and persuading people to act against their own interests of survival. That's your problem, isn't it? They're not allowed to speak out, but you are with your full of crap statements all day, every day, aren't you Myron?

But why would any self-respecting media organization publish it?

Myron keeps boiling the oil

Myron Ebell is spreading himself thin between Freedom Action Network work where he is pitching in against US healthcare reform (he likes it just the way it is), and wrecking any potential action to save us from the most life threatening effects climate change.

While it is morally acceptable (though sad) for the seriously defunct United States political system to self-inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on its own people through gross medical and financial maladministration, causing irreparable harm to the global environment is another matter.

Myron's expertise with the minutae of Congressional procedures exposes his pleasure in a system that consistently comes out with the wrong answer on easy questions.

Back to his CEI work, where Myron has decided to don his Cambridge University, England tie again:



This is the same one he wore to the Select Committe on Energy Independence in December 2007, as you can see from this picture:



(Although that was shortly after abandoning his tie for the CEI website that September in a picture he now uses for F.A.N.)

So, what has Myron been boiling the oil about this time?

Climategate: Alarmist Scientists Plan a Snow Job

According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism. Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding "Climategate" scandal...

In my view, the response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position. The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming.

As we well know, Myron's view is, as always, fossil-fuel-company-serving, and wrong. When he goes out and aggressively kicks someone, he pretends that it is wrong to kick back in any way.

These scientists are not cold-hearted calculating machines, they are human beings who -- as humans -- would quite like the human species to live at least beyond the end of the century.

Myron Ebell, on the other hand, doesn't care how many people he causes to die, if that is what he is paid to facilitate.

Myron has scoured the list-serve email messages for damaging content and hints of a conspiracy.

For a group of people who have been participating in a world-wide conspiracy to take over the energy supply, they do seem to lack any money or PR industry help as they pathetically consider raising money to buy an ad in the New York Times:

I would like to invite all members of the NAS (Ralph - please send this to all sections) - to sign a declaration that there is clear scientific evidence that burning of fossil fuels by humans will will alter the climate. I want that to be on the back page of the NYT and other newspapers in the US, sponsored by the NAS- without any outside contributions - unless they sign a contract making it clear that the NAS will not endorse any private companies. For this - I offer $1000.00 of my personal funds- but I will only donate these funds if 50 members of the NAS come with matching funds.

I mean, this is hopeless. This is disorganized, uncoordinated, unfunded, useless and unproductive.

As Myron knows, from his work on the Exxon and Chevron funded Action Plan in 1998 to train bogus scientists and systematically insert lies into the political system, you need professionals.

The kind of professionals who know about evil, like Bonner&Associates who send false letters in the name of citizens groups purporting to be in favour of corporate policies.

There's no point in paying for New York Times ads, folks. Just get out of your office, find Myron Ebell, and film yourself asking him a few questions about, say, his involvement in that 1998 Exxon conspiracy. Take along the documents. Does he admit he was there? Can he kindly explain to the viewers what he was trying to achieve? What were the names of the five bogus scientists they obtained the budget to hire and train?

We want answers to these very serious questions. Get out and get them.

No sense but the science

Myron Ebell, whose part in the suicide of the human species is documented in this blog, has been working on overdrive on the so-called Climate-gate emails, condemning bad practice that has supported junk science. Myron doesn't know what science is.

Science is about sifting through all the distractions, personalities, cock-ups, conspiracies and general human failings in order to find out what reality is and what nature has in store for us. Myron is anti-science because all these manufactured overblown deliberate misinterpretations and fallacies are all he wants to talk about.

There's the thousand words on FoxNews website criticising The New York Times for not giving this -gate the fair coverage it deserves. According to Myron:

Broder further opines on his own behalf: "The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent." That, of course, is not reporting, but agreeing with one of the alarmists' talking points.

And it is untrue. Anyone who has ever seen some of the leading scientific proponents of alarmism in action knows that they are not about "careful observation and replicable analysis." In fact, the major revelation of Climate-gate has been that top climate scientists refused to share their data and methodologies because they were concealing intentional data manipulation as well as incompetence. Which is exactly what their critics have maintained for years.

This is, of course, a lie. The NASA GISSTemp data is downloadable from here, as it has been for years, and the full calculations have been replicated using Clear Climate Code here.

But this interesting and relevant piece of data is not part of Myron's snot-mouthed narrative, so he gets on with the usual riff:

Dr. John P. Holdren... collaborator with Stanford Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame... has made a career of bending science to support left-wing politics and has an unblemished forty-year record of wild doomsday predictions that have all proven wrong.

Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, the Chairman of the U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who is a railway engineer by profession... Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt... salary is paid by American taxpayers... spending a good part of his time during office hours and using government equipment to produce political propaganda for RealClimate.org... has received help from Fenton Communications, the key P.R. firm for the Soros-funded left.

Dr. James E. Hansen... is a highly political animal... is also increasingly kooky and extreme... a federal employee, was arrested for protesting at a coal mine in West Virginia.

Science is also about data. Knowing that the science is against them, Myron and his friends in the Bush Administration were certainly instrumental in preventing the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory which would have given us seven years of inconvenient truths by now that no pack of emails could have dislodged.

Myron will also not be welcoming the imminent launch of CryoSat-2 for measuring sea-ice thickness (which fellow dipstick death-wisher Julie Walsh prefers to lie about). On the contrary, he would have been pleased in 2005 when the first launch blew up and saved him from having to account for the last five years of data that would have contradicted all his bollocks.

Science is the last thing he wants. Instead Myron has combed at length through random out of context quotes consistent with his narrative.

It's been a while since the Myron Ebell climate has kept up to date. In honour of this, I leave you with a denialist video from the horse's arse himself, Mr Nigel Farage.