The Competitive Enterprise Institute and all that's fit to spin

onOct 18, 2006 @ 12:54 PDT

Here’s a clip from a BBC Newsnight interview with Myron Ebell, head of climate change policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and John Mitchell, Chief Scientists for the UK Met Office, and a lead IPCC author. The CEI has been ridiculed for months now over their production of two television spots arguing that the build-up of C02 in our atmosphere is a good thing.

Here’s some choice Myron quotes, as he tries to spin his way out of the un-spinnable:

Myron: “We tried to make two points with those ads, we first point out the huge, the enormous, almost inconceivable blessings that access to modern energy brings to humanity. And in the second ad we tried to show that the public policy debate is really skewed by a certain small group of scientists, but particularily by the media, who give very large headlines to every piece of research that comes out that supports the alarmist agenda, adn bascially ignores every piece of research that shows that climate change or global warming could have some beneficial effects, or some perfectly neutral effects.”

Newsnight: “Although you yourself are not a scientist are you?”

Myron: “Ah, no, and I should make that clear, I am not a scientist.”

For the rest of the piece, Newsnight host, Jeremy Paxman rips Myron to shreds. Put your head back in the sand Myron, you’re only making yourself and your CEI look even more ridiculous than you already are.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.