Monday
Jan302017
by 
Josh
Josh Myron Ebell in transit - Cartoon notes by Josh
Myron Ebell, who led President Trump's transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, gave a fascinating talk at the House of Commons today on Trump's approach to environmental policy.
There are plenty of stories in the media (Guardian, Daily Mail and Independent, for example) from the press conference held earlier in the day and he covered similar ground in the HoC talk. Here are some cartoon notes - it was a lot of fun.
;)
Click to enlarge
Update on Jan 31, 2017 by
Josh
Josh
Here is a video of the Press conference held by the Foreign Press Association and the GWPF.
Reader Comments (93)
Well I fast forwarded to the C4 question then kept watching and was about to end the video when Horrorbin started talking abs that was it, I had to watch all the way through!
Must say Myton is VERY good at handling the non-questions thrown at him where the majority were really only asked in an attempt to trip him up.
Be interesting to see if anyone from the Obama administration has been treated similarly by these journalists? I suspect that briefing was significantly less confrontational.
Mailman
Russell seems to have a very high opinion of himself, and is perplexed that others do not share his enthusiasm. On balance I much prefer The Dork ... he talks more sense.
The Dork certainly makes more sense than the Budgie, but then so does Ebell-
nothing aids polemic coherence more than excluding most of the evidence.
I was especially interested to see the dynamics between the excellent and measured Myron Ebell and the various members of the audience.
Most of them were indeed just there to ask questions and to learn. But a few of them were also there to argue and dispute with him, to offer their own version of the way things are, the way things will be, or the way things ought to be. Roger Harrabin clearly fell into the latter group.
You won't see much clearer evidence of how the BBC is breaking its charter. Roger Harrabin was not really there to report on possible policy ramifications, he wants to try and influence policy. That is political activism.
" That is political activism."
Which is Myron Ebell's metier- and he is clearly an ornament to his very old profession, as no one can accuse him of working both sides of K Street.
Impressive watching Ebell being so calm and measured.
I would have said 'BBC, Guardian, Independent and all other fake news outlets, no questions for you. Leave now'.
No messing about from Myron Ebell, just calmly delivering the news without a care in the world. C4 visibly furious while Damien Carrington and Horrorbin looked aghast. Never mind your repeated BS claims of a 'new normal' gentlemen - this is the new *reality*, and sceptics everywhere are loving it. Suck it up, snowflakes.
Can barely wait for the official announcements that will take down the scam like never before. It's going to be magnificent.
I think Climate Science journalists will have to report on really important stuff, like:
"Summer heat melts icecreams, while parents watch helpless as rising tide swamps sandcastle"
With a photoshopped image of a polar bear drowning in the background, most of their readers won't notice a change in credibility, integrity or honesty in their output.
I notice the Guardian are on track to lose another £90million this year. Given similar losses over the past couple of years their trust fund doesn't look big enough to sustain them for long.
Greenpeace posted an attack on Ebell last night on Facebook, calling him a 'climate denier'. The Independent also: Donald Trump advisor and climate change denier Myron Ebell goes to Number 10.
This is despite the fact that Ebell clearly stated in the press conference that he accepted there would be some additional warming from anthropogenic CO2 emissions, but the question was how much, and would it be harmful. GWPF & FPA Press Briefing with Myron Ebell. 30th January 2017 (climate sensitivity answer starts at 26 mins).
Russell, you're such a tool. Did you even watch the press conference video? When Ebell talks about the "Expertariat," can you relate to that? Do you feel any ownership of that failure? Why do you think you're so unable to persuade people here? You're posts are like those of a brainwashed automaton or a robot. I like to call people like you Climate Scientologists. Wouldn't it be much better if you engaged with us honestly? Would you please stop your silly rhetorical "gotcha" games and address what Ebell said? And rename you silly web site. Can't you see it makes you look, well, this is a good time to stop.
(I know, I know, this is like talking to a brick wall, but I have to try every once in a while)
Mickey Reno, at least some brick walls do serve a useful purpose.
Here's what Ebell Said, Mickey, and its Monckton warmed over:
During the briefing in London on Monday, Ebell made his anti-scientific stance clear. “There hasn't been much warming for the last 20 years, or statistically no warming for the last 20 years, but it is going to happen because we keep pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” he said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/donald-trump-myron-ebell-theresa-may-climate-change-global-warming-environment-a7555371.html
I've known the CEI crew since back in the days of Nuclear Winter and Bagdad Bob, and can testifeven back then , they made disbelief in global warming a prerequisite for employment.
I am content to have convinced Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey that physics happens, not that you or most of the K Street denialati are about to let scientific commonsense get in the way of continuing their Question Time rhodomontade.
It's like listening you a puppy dog barking at the moon.
Get used to it Russell, adults have taken over and there is REAL change you can believe in coming 😂😂
Mailman
Mailman, you need some better emoticons:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/09/metamodeling-seven-deadly-sins-at.html
Feb 2, 2017 at 9:36 PM | vvussell you said:
"During the briefing in London on Monday, Ebell made his anti-scientific stance clear. “There hasn't been much warming for the last 20 years, or statistically no warming for the last 20 years, but it is going to happen because we keep pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” he said."
Can you tell where the warming is? Why do you consider Ebell to be anti-science, yet you support Mann's Hockey Stick? Don't you need to stop being in denial?
There you go, Mickey & Mailman- a real live adult Climate Scientologist just stood up to ask where the warming is?
‘During the briefing in London on Monday, Ebell made his anti-scientific stance clear. “There hasn't been much warming for the last 20 years, or statistically no warming for the last 20 years, but it is going to happen because we keep pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” he said’ Russell @ 9:36 PM quoting the Independent.
If Russell watched the video he would have realised that the quote is a blatant half-truth omitting the opening ‘for those people who say …’ (see @ 28.06).
Thank you for clarifying Golf Charlie's un-scientific stance
Here without ellipsis is what Myron told Vanity Fair:
“There has been a little bit of warming, but it’s been very modest and well within the range of natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about.”
Russell said: " ... nothing aids polemic [in]coherence more than excluding most of the evidence".
A bit like ignoring reality and relying on climate model predictions then?
Russell quotes Ebell:
“There has been a little bit of warming, but it’s been very modest and well within the range of natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about.”
Is it warmer than 150 years ago? I hope so, pretty cold coming out of the LIA. Advancing glaciers in Switzerland destroyed whole villages, desperately cold over the whole of Europe, deaths from famine produced by crop failures and loss of livestock.
Is that the temperature for the planet that we should aspire to and can tweak with our CO2 thermostat, if there is even such a thing as a global temperature? Minus 94.7C in Antarctica to plus 56.7C in Death Valley? Who decides the correct temperature for the planet?
Perhaps it is the Hadley Centre, as in this document "Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre" January 2005
"What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change, in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains open to debate.
Once we decide what degree of (for example) temperature rise the world can tolerate, we then have to estimate what greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to, and how quickly they should be allowed to change.
These are very uncertain because we do not know exactly how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases.
The next stage is to calculate what emissions of greenhouse gases would be allowable, in order to keep below the limit of greenhouse gas concentrations. This is even more uncertain, thanks to our imperfect understanding of the carbon cycle (and chemical cycles) and how this feeds back into the climate system."
Remember that the science was already settled even then.....
Or the Tyndall Centre, who came up with suggestions for how to keep the whole idea in the public eye:
"The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change" Dennis Bray and Simon Shackley, (September 2004. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research).
"We suggest that, in the realm of the public, forces act to maintain or denounce a perceived reality which has already been constructed. That is, an issue introduced by science (or media for that matter) needs continual expression of confirmation if it is to be maintained as an issue.
Science, of course, has framed the issue of climate change/global warming. In this paper, we explore under what conditions belief in global warming or climate change, as identified and defined by experience, science and the media, can be maintained in the public’s perception.
As the science itself is contested, needless to say, so are the potential policy changes. So how then do people make sense or construct a reality of something that they can never experience in its totality (climate) and a reality that has not yet manifest (i.e. climate change)?
To endorse policy change people must ‘believe’ that global warming will become a reality some time in the future.
Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.
Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.
We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming."
Clearly their message got through and has been the basis of media presentation ever since. The media now find it difficult to accept that they have been had.
Well, duh....thank you for telling us that.
Chewy, take the professor out the back and plug him into the hyper-drive.
Myron Ebell was there to talk and explain as an advisor to the winning side in a political election. He wasn't there to debate.
Roger Harrabin was there to report as a representative of a public service broadcaster with a legal duty to be politically impartial. He wasn’t there to bang the gong for solar and wind industries which depend upon politics for their continuing existence. If he had argued for the eventual triumph of Communism over Capitalism his remarks would have been equally inappropriate.
Nice to see the liberal media get smashed by logic but all was not sweetness and light.
The speakers endorsement of a energy mercantile policy will not improve US living standards.
If a solid bilateral agreement between the Us &UK is implemented it may indeed improve UK living standards.
Also the nature of the Trump administration was hinted at near the end.
Trump is clearly a mere salesman of a apparently attractive new property.
However the anti UN /papacy thing is to be applauded.
Sadly its replacement by the usual scarcity suspects supporting so called "free trade" ( scarcity / ranch style production & export is going from the fire pan into the fire.
It's my opinion that the USofA finds it impossible to escape its Puritan &Plantation past.
Rinse and repeat.
vvussell, your level of dishonesty is a fair reflection of why Climate Science is about to go bust.
It is obvious what it was about Climate Science you found so appealing, full of lies and incompetence.
Painted lily with P&P past. Thanks, DoC.
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" If he had argued for the eventual triumph of Communism over Capitalism his remarks would have been equally inappropriate."
But no more tautiological than Ebells-
Just as all but the loony left have admitted Communism's Cold War defeat . all but the looniest righties have been forced to concede the physical reality of radiative forcing.
The trouble is that thinkitanks harboring presentably professional witnesses are not in the business of speaking truth to power, or anybody else. They say what they are paid to , employ no contrarians and shun scientific andor as much as the climate evangelists on the other side of the metaphoric street.
CEI was in the market for 'climate deniers' <I>avant la lettre even before Hansen hit Capitol Hill, and Ebell was one of their early hires.
Does anyone else understand what he's on about?
Does anyone really care?
Russell, If you are actually an honest rational scientist (though frankly you do not come across as one) then generally the people on here are not your enemies.
We have had 25 years of CAGW claptrap. The catastrophes predicted have not happened. But the trillions spent and the millions of jobs lost (in the West) are real. These are the people you really have pissed off, and they are not interested in the physics of radiative forcing. They will throw the baby out with the bath water. Real science will be (is already) the loser. All because some climate scientists became activists, aided and abetted other activists (like Harrabin) and politicians, all of whom deliberately and continuously peddled a lie: CAGW.
Well, no. But I've been treating a large table with teak oil and breathing the fumes. When someone starts making less immediate sense than the Dork of Cork, I start looking at the solvents or other possible explanations.
Thanks , michael, for again reminding us that much of the glue the world sniffs seems to be exhaled as blog comments.
Budgie is making progress towards another epiphany-- that CAGW is a perjorative coined by PR flacks in response to the rhetoric of doom favored by climate activists .
@Budgie - Jan 31, 2017 at 1:32 PM
thanks for the link, vote added.
wonder why the BBC has not advised the public viewing audience of it's existence ? /sarc
it's fun to watch the old school pols & MSM try to get a handle on the shakeup of the world they knew.
vvussell, thank you for reminding us that no one will miss Climate Scientists and their effluent discharges.
Russell, Climate scientists have had plenty of opportunity over the last 25 years to publicise their dismay at, and opposition to, the CAGW theory. They didn't, mostly. Those that tried, were jeered at as "deniers", by people like you.
Scratch a "climate change" believer like Harrabin, and he is soon spouting climate doom. Harrabin, and many others, are convinced CAGW is what the "climate scientists" are telling him. Your pretending that CAGW is just a snarl word doesn't exculpate you from the responsibility of encouraging these activists.
Your chance of helping to recover science's reputation is rapidly receding. As the GWPF video shows, Ebell is simply passing on the message that the new Trump presidency isn't going to go with the previous flow. Trump is not going to spend trillions, and throw millions of US jobs out of the window. The CAGW party is over.
Just where in the IPCC reports has Budgie seen the Apocalyptic epithet he's chirping about . ?
Could he show me a CAGW or two in any recent issue of say, JGR Atmospheres ?
I'd like to know, since bashing existential threat inflation is what I;ve been doing for the last three decades.
Come on, old bird are you part of the semantic agression problem, or the solution ?
What? Me worry about climate?
========
Well, you could get busy bashing another great and inevitable existential threat, cooling. When, not if, it occurs, it will cause a much greater disruption of society than any warming can do, at least any that man can do.
Alternatively, find the one extraterrestrial object whose future impact with Earth will cause as much damage as this great delusion about dangerous climate change, and go place yourself on it, now. Your added mass will ensure a near miss, not a hit.
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I thought Snowflakes were to be a thing of the past.
I will accept 'perjurative'.
==========
Russell said: "Could [Budgie] show me a CAGW or two in any recent issue of say, JGR Atmospheres?"
Firstly, "CAGW" is not an epithet, but "denier" is. CAGW is just a useful acronym, shorter and less tedious than something like the theory of an "unrecoverable global warming catastrophe, created by the burning of natural ("fossil") fuels by humans, within the near future (eg by 2100)".
Here, as requested, are examples of a CAGW or four (note: all made by people claiming to be, and accepted as, reputable scientists):
CAGW 1. UK Government Chief Scientist, Professor Sir David King stated that the world was entering its first hot period for 60 million years when "No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life" .... "we will reach that level by 2100" unless we curb the burning of "fossil" fuels. (Independent 01-05-2004).
CAGW 2. ""If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late." said Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and economist who heads the IPCC." (NYT 17-11-2007).
CAGW 3. "Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of NASA scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen." (Guardian 18-01-2009).
CAGW 4. "The 14 scientists ... were asked about the probability of a tipping point being reached some time before 2200 if global warming continued on the course of the worst-case scenarios predicted by the IPCC. Nine of the fourteen scientists said that the chances of a tipping point for the high scenario were greater than 90 per cent .... The survey, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was carried out by a team led by Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University ..." (Independent 28-06-2010).
I've got many more CAGW warnings to make your flesh creep, Russell, if you want.
Budgie, it will be interesting to see if outpourings of climate science contaminated discharges reduce, if no one is paying them to produce any.
The EPA has polluted science, and those highly paid individuals should be made to pay for the clean-up.
That Jim Hansen guy should have stuck to the muppets! :)
Regards
Mailman
There is a 20 minutes + Edward Abbey piece on Utube "In Defence of Rednecks" which is pretty instructive of our current condition.
Rednecks need growth to sustain their income.
They actually require more pollution to survive because they simply have no ownership.
They are more archaic wage slaves then the typical San Francisco workforce but both require scarce currency.
Growth has been effective in disguising money scarcity ( the greatest con) for perhaps 500+ years but is now faltering.
There is no American frontier now.
Trump has made token efforts to increase the wages of his wage slave voters via restrictions of peasants fleeing war zones.
He is a manager of the system.
Not a true democrat in any way.
Democracy requires that the voters own the system.
They clearly do not.