Stop breathing now

"If you're against extra CO2 in the atmosphere then stop breathing" -- is one of the more stupid comments to come out of the Myron Ebell end of the human experiment.

But an equally dumb statement emerges in an article about people protesting offshore oil drilling:

Myron Ebell, director of the energy program at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said he declined an invitation to join hands. Instead, he's asking people to e-mail the Obama administration, asking the president to stop pushing for a moratorium on new offshore drilling.

"Many Americans are now so removed from material reality that they have no idea where the energy they use comes from," Ebell said.

"Anyone who is sincere about stopping offshore oil production should walk or bike to the rally and then forswear all use of cars, trucks, trains, airplanes and products transported by trucks, trains and airplanes," he said. "That, of course, includes nearly all the food consumed in the United States."

This is not possible, owing to the success of Myron and pals in fighting with every tooth and nail any policy that would allow for a transition from an oil and coal based economy.

Instead, the political power of the oil companies has been such that they have gotten everyone else's taxes to pay for the US military to fight their wars and clean up their environmental devastation. Their financial and media power has paid for Myron Ebell to lie on their behalf, and have his crappy words printed in newspapers and spoken on TV.

Meanwhile: "The sea's filling with oil. A lot of people are very sentimental about the sea... We're going with the democratic solution: blame the president."



And here's a slightly sadder one.

The usual dipsticks

Myron Ebell phoned in at minute 30 of G Gordon Liddy show:

Here's how Gordon the Watergate burglar began his show:

Attitude is everything. It's critically important. And thus a man seeking a job in the Mississippi sheriff's department was being interviewed, and the sergent said: "Your qualifications all look good, but there is an attitude suitability test you must take before you can be accepted." Sliding a service pistol across the desk, he said: "Take this pistol and go out and shoot six illegal aliens, six drug dealers, six muslim extremists, six liberal democrats, and a rabbit."

"I love this job. But why the rabbit?"

"That's the attitude," said the sergent. "When can you start?"

Here's the transcript of Myron's 15 minutes of teious waffle, during which time they successfully made no reference at all to the hole in the sea floor that was endlessly pissing oil out into the infinite blue ocean.

G Gordon Watergate Burglar: This IPCC, they said that thousands of scientists backed its claims on man-made global warming. But this may not be the truth. Could you speak on that?

Ebell: Heh-heh. Well, you know it's never been the truth, and various people have pointed this out going way back to the 90s when the first reports were being issued by the UN global warming panel, and they were claiming that all the scientists participating agreed with the whole report, and Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT, a very distinguished scientist tried to get his name taken off the second assessment report in 1995 because he said:

"I don't agree with it; there are a lot of things I don't know about in other chapters, but I don't even agree with all the things that I know about."

And they wouldn't take his name off.

So this has been clear, but the global warming alarmists have been repeated this over and over, but now a scientist very closely connected to the ClimateGate scandal, all the scientists in the scandal, and it's also very active in the IPCC has admitted that all the critics have said all along, which is, These reports really reflect the view of a very small group of scientists. And I would describe them as a cabal. Maybe not an organized conspiracy, but certainly they are acting to get the political conclusions that they want out of these reports, and it's really 20, 30, 40 scientists in total. All the rest are just window dressing.

Crook Gordon Liddy: Wow. And the press went for this hook line and sinker?

Ebell: Absolutely. The mainstream media has repeated this over and over again, and they get it from con-men like Joe Rahm at the Centre for American Progress, and Gavin Schmitt, who not only works at NASA but uses his NASA job to produce propaganda for a website called RealClimate. And these guys have just repeated these lies over and over again. They know they're not true. But they're political promoters.

Guns Gays and Lord: The mainstream media, when someone asserts something, they don't publish it as if it were gospel. They check it out.

Ebell: I think most of the MSM went missing on this issue a long time ago. They have simply parroted what they're told by the IPCC, what they're told by scientists at NASA and NOA, and the Federal Government, and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, and when people point out that these statements simply aren't true, they just ignore them. They say, these people are seen as eccentrics or are being paide by industry, or there's always some reason to go after the credibility of the critic, but never to check into the credibility of the establishment position.

GGL: At this point it seems to me these days everyone is aware of the fact that the global warming business is a hoax.

Ebell: Well, in some ways I think it's too strong a word. It's a contrived crisis, I would call it. And if that's what you mean by hoax, that's fine.

There's a lot of people who have decided, some of them very sincerely in the scientific community, that global warming is a crisis, and they have decided to do anything necessary politically to advance the agenda that they think will solve or address the crisis.

now some of these people I don't think are sincere. They;'re just totally phoney. But I think some of them really believe that it is their god given right or duty to twist the science, because they think it's so important to save the planet, and therefore underhand and dishonest means are somehow justified.

Course this goes back. Theres a long argument in politics and philosophy about whether to what extend the ends ever do justify the means. And here I think you will find some people -- Steve Schnieder is a good example at Stanford, one of the real long time leaders of the global warming alarmists, going back to the 80s -- that in order to win your point politically you exaggerate and say things that aren't true. I think Schnieder is a sincere alarmist. I think some of the others are just out to make their careers and promote their own interests.

Great Gas Larynx: For some years now, things have been cooler than warm, the sunspot activity is down to zero, and it's anticipated that it's going to stay that way for some while, and the opposite is happening.

Ebell: Well Gordon I am kind of a skeptical contrarian kind of person who's always somewhat self-critical of my own beliefs. I don't get so wrapped up in them I can't see beyond them. I do know some people who get so convinced of something that reality never intrudes. They see what they want to see. I think some of these people are deeply deluded because they've become true believers, and once you get into that mode of just believing in something so strongly, you can explain away all the inconvenient facts that are brought to your attention.

And you see this over and over with websites like RealClimate where no matter what comes up they have an explanation for it. And the explanations often contradict one another, but they've always got an explanation. I don't full yunderstand the psychology, but that's my best guess.

G. Mumble Legpain: The problem as I see it is more than an academic discussion, because Obama seeks to use this as a justification to impose this huge energy tax on us, which is going to be very very damaging to the economy. Could throw us into a double dip recession. It's something we have to let people know, that this crisis which he doesn't want to let to go to waste. is bogus.

Ebell: Yes. I think you've hit the most important point. We're being asked to change our use of energy, and lower out standard of living, and pay a lot more for energy, and use a lot less of it, and really put our economy not into a double-dip recession, but really into permanent stagnation, on the basis of a theory for which a lot of the evidence has been cooked up. And because the establishment has defended these people, this small group of climate scientists, their work has never adequately been checked.

We've got the hockey stick, Steve MacIntyre and McKitrick demolished that. They're not climate scientists, but they looked into it and said, Hey wait a minute, the evidence isn't here.

And now we've got the climate gate scandal, and it showed that they're manipulating the temperature data, makes the last couple of decades a lot warmer than, say, the 1930s.

And so we're being asked to buy this whole suite of very expensive policies to make us very much poorer on the basis that we can trust these guys, and whenever we look they're wrong.

And so I think that our Senators and representatives need to step back and say, Let's not go this way. Let's let the science get sorted out. Let's be much more critical of it, and let's forget about these energy rationing bills which President Obama wants us to pass.

Great Grovelling Liar: I of course am very familiar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. My daughter and I are going to be joining you at dinner at the end of this week. But I have to confess that I don't know that much about Freedom Action. Could you tell us about this organization?

Ebell: Gordon, it's a sister organization. It's not officially affiliated with the CEI. And it's an activist group. We're involved in political pushing and shoving. We're not a think tank. And I invite your listeners to check us out at FreedomAction.org. Or to join our social network, FreedomAction.net. We're trying to mobilize grass roots of political activists through the net. We're trying to establish a social network for activists to communicate with each other, and discuss the issues, and figure out how to come up.

For example, we were very active in the last month promoting the Murkowski resolution which would have stopped President Obama and his Environemntal Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gasses without any congressional approval. Unfortunately last Thursday it was narrowly defeated, but the WhiteHouse really had to pull out all the stops, and majority leader Harry Reid has to pull out all the stops to defeat it. In fact Harry Reid had to promise several senators that he would have a vote on another alternative bill that would delay the EPA for two years, and that got people like Jim Webb of Virginia to switch his vote.

But J Rockerfeller of West Virginia said quite correctly in the debate, I am voting for the Murkowski resolution because I don't want EPA turning out the lights on America. And in fact that's what the EPA is going to be doing as they block new coal fired power plants and constrict our electricity supoplies. The lights are going to be going out, assuming our economy ever recovers and starts growing again. There will simply not be enough electricity.

Gum Monster Label: Well, China is coming on-line with a new coal-fired power plant every single week. [Ebell: Yes] And we're going to restrict ourselves?

Ebell: And this is the crazy world we live in, supposedly having to compete against China and people like Senator John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, and Lindsey Graham the Republican of South Carolina -- in fact he said this on the floor of the House, well if we don't start building a lot more windmills and solar panels and get off oil and coal, we're going to fall behind the Chinese, and they're going to win the war for the new clean energy economy.

In fact, they're building so much new coal fired capacity that they're building more in a year than we built in the last 20 years. The reason is because coal is the cheapest source of reliable electricity, and like the United States, they have very large coal reserves, and so we're losing the race for affordable energy, not for renewable energy.

GGL: Solar panels are not a reliable source of energy at all. They all have to be backed up by coal. It's bizarre. It's just bizarre. Doesn't make any sense.

The Twitter feed for the CEI gala is here, and it includes this crappy photo of Fred Smith, and this one of MacIntyre and McKitrick receiving the annual Julian Simon award for scientific charlatanism.

I'm Myron Ebell and you don't need to know that BP paid for this message

Myron Ebell is furious:

The Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act is designed to undo key parts of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court ruled that provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation that prohibited corporations, including non-profit 501C4s such as the NRA and Freedom Action, from exercising their first amendment free speech rights in political campaigns were unconstitutional. The DISCLOSE Act would require advocacy groups engaged in election-related activities, but not trade unions, to disclose their donors in a number of ways.

Under the deal the NRA made with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the NRA would now, along with trade unions, be exempt from the disclosure requirements. In return, the NRA has agreed to not oppose passage of the bill.

...

Myron Ebell, Director of Freedom Action, sharply criticized the NRA's sell-out.

"The NRA has proved itself to be part of the 'arrogant elite' it denounced just a few months ago," said Ebell. "Unfortunately, the only conclusion is that Mr. LaPierre is a hypocrite and the NRA is just another powerful special interest seeking special treatment.

"The new word from the NRA is, it's OK to deny free speech to Americans as long as the NRA gets a carve out," Ebell said. "Groups from every part of the political spectrum should vehemently oppose this plan that will chill free speech and participation in American elections."

I checked out what Lawrence Lessig says, as he's more from the preservation of the human species end of the political spectrum:

The vast majority of Americans -- both Democrats and Republicans -- considered the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United to be a colossal blunder. Whether or not the First Amendment compelled it (and IMHO, it didn't), as Justice Stevens rightly said in dissent, Americans don't believe that our politics needs more corporate influence. To the contrary, most believe it needs less. As we learn more about the blunders in mis-regulation bought by Wall Street billionaires, and as we watch black clouds of oil billowing from an offshore oil rig, never adequately inspected or monitored because regulators were "persuaded" by well (as in oil-well) funded lawmakers to turn a regulatory blind eye, who could think that this system needs more of the same? Who could believe that this system was working?

Being a pure idealist doesn't always win results. I just love to see the right wing party divided, with their their poor little corporate millionaires whinging about their free speech rights to talk like billionaires through Myron Ebell shaped meat puppets without declaring where their money is coming from.

Myron and his pals desperately want to be hired by BP so they can tell to the world about the great benefits of natural oils on sea life without looking like complete clowns at the end of their commercial. The bit they don't like about this law is where they'd have to end their TV ads like so:

(B) STATEMENT IF SIGNIFICANT FUNDER IS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL- If the significant funder of a communication paid for in whole or in part with a payment which is treated as a disbursement by a covered organization for campaign-related activity under section 325 is not an individual, the significant funder disclosure statement described in this paragraph is the following: 'I am XXXXXXX, the XXXXXXX of XXXXXXX. XXXXXXX helped to pay for this message, and XXXXXXX approves it.'

(i) the first blank to be filled in with the name of the applicable individual;

(ii) the second blank to be filled in with the title of the applicable individual;

(iii) the third, fourth, and fifth blank each to be filled in with the name of the significant funder of the communication.

At the moment only candidates' ads end with this type of formulation, as you can see at the end of this one by the Wicked Witch of the West:



As compromises and carve-outs go, selling out to the NRA looks like a pretty good deal from where I'm standing -- on the other side of the Atlantic, safely out of range of even the highest powered assault weapons that weird Yanks insist on clinging to.

Guns in America generally kill only other Americans, and this self-inflicted violence and damage does not necessarily get beyond their shores -- unlike their atmospheric and marine pollution, their foreign invasions, missiles, bombs, drugs, propaganda, diseases, lies and death.

If Myron Ebell is against it, it's almost always a good thing. So I call on Lessig to reconsider his position and support this bill whole-heartedly.

What's a few bullets between friends, when there are bigger threats to life at stake?

Myron feels comfortable with carbon-based fuels as our children's future

Myron Ebell is returning to form in this fact-check-less money.cnn article where he claims

While the BP spill is unfortunate, it's the first big spill in U.S. waters since 1969, said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

He's referring to an 11 day spill off the coast of California, before drilling got banned from there.

Myron has been fighting for a long time to have the ban lifted, owing to the fact that everyone has forgotten about why it was in place. This is in common with all his "Institute's" bone-headed campaigns against regulation that never refer to the usually perfectly reasonable ongoing reasons for the regulations to have been made.

That's before Myron Ebell and his pals are liars who don't care if you die.

I guess the massive BP leak from its pipeline on land in Alaska in 2006 doesn't count. This leak, which drained into the sea, was second only to the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaskan waters -- in which BP had a controlling stake.

Even if Myron's statement wasn't false, it implies that leaks anywhere in the rest of the world outside of U.S. waters don't matter. Which is a typical American attitude.

Myron went on:

Ebell thinks renewable energy isn't ready for prime time, no mater how much utilities are required to buy.

He also doesn't think global warming is a serious threat - not an opinion shared by most climate scientists.

"I think most of these claims are made up," he said. "Carbon dioxide is essential for life on earth."

You can't make this up.

If I had the chance, I'd get in Myron's six-cylinder Chevy TrailBlazer and drive it straight across his lawn and in through his living room wall when it was snowing outside.

"You crashed my car and ruined everything," he'd shout.

"Negative, Myron," I'd respond. "Your car is an important part of your life."

Next week, Myron appears on a radio near you.

Christopher Monckton demolition

Forget the page layout. This is good. Original page is here.

Found it through desmogblog.

Skip the to any point in the middle when you're bored with the intro. It's all good stuff.

If only the same could be done for Myron Ebell, except he says so little these days he's practically evapourated off the planet.