The Greenhouse Gashouse Gang

WorkingTheUmps
ShillVille

Well, anybody who has been paying attention knew it had to be coming.....

After all, when companies like Exxon are making $40 billion a year by killing our planet you don't think they're going to let a little thing like a consensus report from a bunch of scientists who are NOT bought and paid for stop them do you?

Alison, as is so often the case on matters such as these, gets right to the heart of the matter, this time by imagining an interview she wishes the CBC would have with a fictional professional obfuscator named 'Dr. Shill':

Are you aware, Dr Shill, that the Fraser Institute has received $120,000 from ExxonMobil over the last three years?

Or that Kenneth Green, formerly the Fraser Institute Director of the Centre for Studies in Risk and Regulation and now with the American Enterprise Institute who also receive ExxonMobil funding, last year offered $10,000 payments to any scientist who was willing to provide an "independent" analysis of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?"

"Dr Shill?............Dr Shill?..........."


While Dr. Shill searches the Fraser Institute's clubhouse for his answer, we thought we'd supply some shill-stats from the back of the rookie card of the afore-mentioned Mr. Kenneth Green who has spent time working the umps on both sides of the 49th parallel and who was recently called up to the big leagues of bloviation by the AEI from their Vancouver farm team.

Back in spring training of last year Mr. Green made his big league managers smile when he hit this long foul ball:

"One-worlders and other socialist sorts have seen the potential for finally giving the U.N. control over all the “commanding heights” of the world by giving them control of a key driver of development. Hollywood, of course, has always known that disaster sells movie tickets. And rent-seeking companies and governments that compete with the U.S. seek to use greenhouse-gas controls to give them an edge over their competition."


Then, on opening day of the 2006 Shill Season, Mr. Green spun himself silly in the batter's box and managed to eke out this infield single on the letters page of the New York Times:

Kyoto boosters have tried to hide this "inconvenient truth" by labeling anyone who disagrees with them a shill or a crackpot, and insisting that science "demands" that we control greenhouse gas emissions. But science only tells us how things are, not what to do.


But after that it was slow going and, so, with the season coming to a close, on Sept 27th Green swung for the fences:

At the individual level, people all over the world want a better quality of life, not just as a spiritual matter, but also as a consumer matter. They want more and better products: more health care, more education, better nutrition, better housing, more mobility, more opportunity, more choice--and they want it within their lifetimes. Securing all of those things requires energy, and lots of it--far too much to be generated without significant input from coal, oil, and natural gas, all of which emit greenhouse gases when burned. Limiting the use of or increasing the price of energy would mean that people could afford less rather than more, resulting in a dynamic unlikely to find either political favor or genuine compliance in democratic countries.


Hmmmmm......... didn't know that the fate of the free world hinged on that old Andrea True Connection song titled 'More, More, More (How Do You Like It?)'. Regardless, having more is going to become harder and harder once our most highly populated cities start sinking. Thus, it appears that Mr. Green's best efforts have resulted in little more than a puffed-up pop-up and rumour has it that he will soon be riding the coal-fired buses once again, if not in Vancouver, perhaps in Greenland where they've got so much new territory opening up that they are sure to soon to start up a new shill factor league that will be playing it's games 24/7.

As for Dr. Shill?

Well, he seems to have disappeared through a non-existent ethanol-producing cornfield behind the Fraser Institute's rightfield bleachers.

OK?

.