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?