Why does Fiona Harvey care what Myron says?

Financial Times? Well there's a useless churnalizing he-said-she-said rag.

In a short article by their Environment Correspondent, Fiona Harvey reported how international scientists had reviewed 11 different indicators and concluded that climate change was now so bad that there wasn't any room to doubt it.

It is like denying the existance of Uranium.

But the facts nonetheless remained the target of scorn for sceptics, she wrote. [You don't say!]

Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, said the new report would not change people's minds. "It's clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is."

Let's be clear about this. Nothing is going to change Myron Ebell's mind. Not even if Saint Agnes descended from heaven, smacked him across his jaw, and revealed him a vision of his great grand children dying like flies on a parched sun-blasted wasteland.

Myron doesn't care about the future, because he believes that God and the almighty dollar will sort everything out, no matter what anyone says. His brain is hollow. His heart is a rotten tomato. His feet are dead tar-soaked albatross bodies. He's gone. The locus of evil now lies with those who pay him, and those who print what he has to say in the public press.

James Hogan of the Desmogblog picked up on this:

Even this new Financial Times article about climate scientists confirming the unequivocal certainty that manmade emissions are warming the globe features multiple quotes from climate skeptics and deniers, including Pat Michaels and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Why bother to quote the skeptics here in an article about hard scientific evidence? It is their Climategate story that has been thoroughly debunked, not the science. If there is any lesson that came out of Climategate, it is that climate skeptics should be ignored, not continuously quoted.

The deniers' golden egg -- Climategate -- has been proven false. Yet they cling to the myth regardless.

Doesn't that tell us plenty about their "expertise" and motivations?

Roundup Myron

The Myron Ebell keeps fighting for the death of the human race, even when we at the Myron Ebell Climate are otherwise engaged.

The San Francisco Chronicle published a good article 'Climategate' fallout may impact legislation

Five investigations into the "Climategate" scandal have now cleared a group of scientists accused of twisting data in an effort to prove the world is getting warmer... "The accusations were on A1, the exonerations are usually on A15," said Aaron Huertas, press secretary for the Union of Concerned Scientists...

"In general, I think the scandal has made the opponents of energy-rationing legislation stronger and more confident," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank.

Ebell, who for years has been one of the fiercest critics of global warming science, doubts that Climategate by itself changed any votes in the Senate. But the scandal may have solidified skepticism about climate science among the public, he said. That would make any global warming bill harder for Senate Democrats to pass.

"The American public opposes policies that are going to raise their energy prices," Ebell said. "And I just don't see how they can get around that."...

...Unless you include more than just the financial prices of things. For example, when Myron gets a severe pain in his ear, he goes to the doctor, even though it raises the price he annually spends on medical supplies. That's because when you are in pain you will pay anything necessary to get rid of the pain.

Global warming causes pain, so we will pay money to get around it -- if it weren't for people lying about the effectiveness of such intervention, who want to sell you snake oil rather than real medicine. Because they are evil and don't care if you die.

It goes on:

Ebell and other critics call the investigations a farce, saying they represent an attempt by the academic community to defend their own.

"These establishment reports to whitewash this scandal - they have no credibility," Ebell said. "It's pretty obvious that they're not independent inquiries, that they were designed to come up with an exoneration. You need (an investigation with) people who don't have connections, who haven't written papers with the people who are accused or served on faculty with them."

Over at the Tennessean, there's an article about a climate change threat report:

Many are skeptical of the claims made in such reports, including Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for limited government.

Ebell said these reports make shaky predictions, exaggerate the possibilities, and are written to scare people into supporting climate change. They run counter to other reports, which say global warming will mostly affect the North and South poles, he said.

"A lot of the conclusions are highly speculative and debatable and some just go against what we know," Ebell said. "A lot are based on computer modeling, and there is no climate model that can give useful forecasts for local and regional climate change. They have no scientific validity."

This is an interesting statement. The thing about predictions of the future based on physics and thermodynamics is you can either work it out with a pencil and paper (in which case your calculations will have limited complexity) or use one of these amazing computer devices.

Or, if you are Myron Ebell, you favour pulling it out of your ass.

For avoidance of doubt, we are well within the margin of error of the computer predictions, and it's all looking bad.

The Nashville Scene picked up on the Myron Ebell reference:

Update: Apparently the highest degree CEI's resident climate-change expert [Myron Ebell] holds is a master's in economics. Again, it's unclear why he's trotted out in the story as some sort of authority, aside from the fact that he disagrees with the premise of the EPA's report.

Finally Myron Blames Obama for the BP oil leak and fights against the Blowout Prevention Act.

Myron Ebell plants evil acorns

I believe this is from last November, to Pajamas media.



No time for a transcript, but this is the good bit:

Myron: I think it's much bigger than the ACORN videos-- those were a bombshell, no doubt about that. [smiles] Congratulations.

The ACORN videos which purportedly showed a ridiculously dressed undercover republican couple getting advice on running their prostitution business were a total fraud, but it was enough to get all the a mainstream media that has no interest in the truth, and have this comunity organizing group shut down.

Myron smiled because he approved of this hit-job and found it impressive. And he was trying to perpetrate the same fraud with his CRU emails.

Unfortunately it's on a much bigger scale. While O'Keefe and his handlers were trying to make the lives of poor people in America that little bit more miserable by destroying one of the most effective community groups that they have, Myron Ebell is doing what he can to threaten the lives of the other five billion people, as well as most life forms on Earth.

What price energy independence?

In a politico arena debate "with policymakers and disinformationopinion makers", Myron Ebell wrote:

The U.S. has only 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. That is because many of the most promising areas, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the coast of southern California, have never been explored. There are estimates of potential reserves in those places, but they cannot be counted as proven reserves.

Hey, Myron, what do you think this a map of? Disneyland?



Myron went on to outline his plan for the extinction of about 90% of the species on the planet, merely for the convenience of fat Americans driving their fat unemployed children to fat shopping malls in order to make fat coal company executives fabulously wealthy.

In 60 years' time, when your grandchildren will be living a period of could-have-been-avoided desperate crisis, they will thank you for the pleasure you gave to these dead pathetic people lying in their graves.

After producing more oil domestically, the next step would be to develop competitive alternatives. At present, there is one alternative that makes economic sense: producing liquid fuels from coal. The U.S. has the world’s largest reserves of coal. And beyond coal, the U.S. has colossal unconventional reserves in oil shale, most of which is under federal land in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. At the same time as we produce more oil and oil alternatives, demand is likely to go down in the medium to long term (by which I mean 30 to 60 years) as alternative auto technologies become affordable and attractive to consumers.

Meanwhile, further down the hopeless debate thread that just shows how irrevokably detached from reality and its consequences we now are, Dean Baker produced the one straightforward post in the whole lot:

The country is not going to be energy independent and everyone who is serious knows this. The only reason why this even comes up is nonsense from the oil industry and the drill everywhere crowd.

We have to get off fossil fuels because it is wrecking the planet. It will cost money to switch to cleaner energy sources and conservation, but it will also create jobs. It would be great if we could have a serious discussion about this, but the BP crew lie about the issues, and the way the media in this country work, any lie from a major industry group must be treated as a respectable opinion, no matter how outrageous it is. Therefore we will continue to hear nonsense on energy issues, not serious debate.

The fact that Myron Ebell gets quoted on the front page of the New York Times, and not Dean Baker, is evidence that we are completely screwed.

Wagons on the brain

There is only one Myron Ebell and only one 160 page Independent Climate Change Email Review that fully exonerated the scientists on all matter of substance.

The CCE Review website includes minutes of every meeting, and all the evidence submitted to it, including bollocks from Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick complaining about how the panel was composed of scientists, some of whom were biased in favour of a belief in global warming, and had worked in East Anglia in the 1980s. Picky picky. Had it had some oil lobbyists who lie for money no matter what the consequences, that would have been fine.

For some reason, the terrible New York Times and the sad Seattle Times thought that Myron Ebell's opinion was worth printing -- without the additional qualification that he is wrong, dangerous, and has demonstrably no interest in the truth.

First, let's begin with this cheery blogpost by the mom of the Mom-and-Pop business known as the Cretinous Benderprize Intestines:

CEI's Myron Ebell was quoted on the front page of the New York Times today - "above the fold" - discussing the University of East Anglia's report on Climategate and university researchers’ leaked emails about shutting out skeptical scientists, not responding to requests for data, and presenting misleading global warming data. The so-called Russell Report was the second "insider" investigation of influential global warming scientists-advocates and their attempts to bury dissent from their orthodoxy. In its own report, Pennsylvania State University downplayed Penn State researcher Michael Mann's culpability. In a scandal that rocked the global warming community, the emailers only received mild slaps on the wrists from the investigators.

Here's Myron's NYT quote on the report's findings:

The university solicited and paid for the new report, which climate skeptics assailed. "This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and climate change policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington.

No surprise there. The "establishment" has a lot invested in catastrophic man-made global warming.

Thank you Justin Gillis of the New York Times for providing Myron Ebell and his CEI the oxygen of publicity so their cancer can live on for a little while longer. His article was titled: British Panel Clears Climate Scientists.

Meanwhile, over on the left coast, Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times wrote a piece titled: British climate researchers had high scientific standards, review finds.

Did Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times quote Myron Ebell? No, he did not! Because there is no reason to, unless it is to point out he is wrong and his words should never be trusted.

Unfortunately, Henry Chu wrote a second article, published in the Seattle Times, bearing the title: New 'Climategate' inquiry mostly vindicates scientists".

The title was wrong, the Myron Ebell "This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position," quote was detrimental. Does the LA Times know he used their name in his byline to sell that crap?

You had to go to the blogs to have proper coverage, such as Climate change deniers exposed by the truth:

So have the deniers shut up? Of course not. Have they disproved the science? Discussing science scientifically is something they assiduously avoid!

Instead Myron Ebell of the so-called Competitive Enterprise Institute simply denounces the report as a whitewash, without giving any reasons. And Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit – the main attack dog against the “hockey stick graph” – focuses on the one and only criticism the UK enquiry made.

And: Climategate Burned by Reality:

To date, none of the pundits or anchor-creatures who made such a fuss last winter has been heard from. One Myron Ebell, flak for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington propaganda shop funded by tobacco, oil and coal interests, denounced the result as a “whitewash.”

Who could have expected anything else? To an operative like Ebell, whose scientific credentials are as nonexistent as those of Hannity, Palin and Brian Williams, intellectual integrity doesn’t exist. Facts are infinitely malleable in service of ideology.

People who call this “conservatism” are mistaken. It’s an updated version of what Orwell feared: a dogma-driven, obscurantist attack upon reason.

Meanwhile, Myron Ebell's further words on the CEI blog (posted by Christine Hall, because Myron is too important to handle his own blogging, says:

The Muir Russell report on the ClimateGate scandal does a highly professional job of concealment. It gives every appearance of addressing all the allegations that have been made since the ClimateGate e-mails and computer files from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Institute were released last November. However, the committee relied almost entirely on the testimony of those implicated in the scandal or those who have a vested interest in defending the establishment view of global warming. The critics of the CRU with the most expertise were not interviewed. It is easy to find for the accused if no prosecution witnesses are allowed to take the stand.

The Muir Russell report is thus a classic example of the establishment circling its wagons to defend itself. As was pointed out when the committee was appointed, the members are part of the old boys’ network and have several obvious conflicts of interest.

The professional whitewash attempted by the Muir Russell report will not succeed, however. That is because the evidence that data was manipulated by some of the scientists involved, for example to make the 1930s appear cooler in twentieth century temperature records, is simply too obvious and too strong to cover up.

As usual, lies, because Ebell, like McIntyre and McKitrick, was perfectly able to take his testimony to the panel and get it published if it wasn't too defamatory, like David Holland's. But he didn't. So by what right does the press take his untested testimony?

Drowning in fake whitewash

I don't know why Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin thought she would improve her article Penn State clears Mann in Climate-gate probe by publishing a some unqualified garbage from Myron Ebell, instead of using the space to apologize on behalf of the paper for dangerously misleading its readers for months over a non-scandal which they should have known was wholly unfounded, but I guess we don't have any committees to investigate the misconduct of reporters, do we?

She's lucky. She can publish any old shite made up by the most unreliable sources, such as Myron Ebell, when she must know he lies consistently and is in the private pay of oil and coal interests that do not care if we have a future as a species on this planet or not.

"I'm pleased that the last phase of Penn State's investigation has now been concluded, and that it has cleared me of any wrongdoing. These latest findings should finally put to rest the baseless allegations against me and my research," [Michael Mann] said in a statement.

But the report will likely do little to quell the political debate over climate science, which has only intensified over the past year.

Myron Ebell, a global warming skeptic who directs Energy and Global Warming Policy for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted that the Penn State ethics review only interviewed one of Mann's critics, MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen.

"It has been designed as a whitewash," said Ebell, whose group accepts contributions from the energy industry. "To admit that Dr. Mann is a conman now would be extremely embarrassing for Penn State. But the scandal will not be contained no matter how many whitewash reports are issued. The evidence of manipulation of data is too obvious and too strong."

In not so many words, Ebell is telling us that he will never shut up about this, no matter what evidence is put before him. That should be enough to rule him out ever again. That and his complaint that a committee of scientific inquiry should call lots of people who are not scientists as witnesses.

As to Lindzen's evidence, his contribution to the report was to say, in response to the information that the first 3 allegations had been dismissed:

It's thoroughly amazing. I mean these are the issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I'm wondering what's going on.

When questioned, he agreed that there was nothing irregular about the accessibility and publication of Mann's data. There was and could be no cover up.

The story no one is getting, not this investigation, not Juliet Eilperin's crappy reporting, is that all of these results have been independently replicated with different software and a different set of data.

This is why it is real science, and not a matter of mistake, accident or manipulation. Case closed. You spend all your time discrediting some witness of an event as being unreliable. All of that should fall away if there is a second witness, and a third, and so on. How many more witnesses do we need before you give up?

No amount of evidence will ever shut Myron Ebell up. It is a matter of serious misconduct for a reporter to interview him in this context.