First the Luddite U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it seeks “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming. Then the monkey-see, monkey do deniers at Planet Gore and the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) joined in.
Finally, the Chamber realized it needs to pretend to not be the extremist, anti-science organization it is, so Bill Kovacs, Vice President for the Environment, Technology & Regulatory Affairs Division, walked back (swung back?) his remarks in a blog post on the National Journal Energy & Environment “Expert blogs” [talk about lowering the bar on the word "expert"]:
My “Scopes monkey” analogy was inappropriate and detracted from my ability to effectively convey the Chamber’s position on this important issue.
“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth,” as the journalist Michael Kinsley said back in 1992. The analogy may have been “inappropriate” — but it was all too truthful. Little distinguishes the deniers from the creationists, as the Christian Science Monitor explained here.
Then Kovacs lets out the biggest whine I’ve heard since, well, my daughter refused to help clean up the mess she made last night:
The anti-business lobby quickly jumped on these news articles without actually reading the substance of the Chamber’s petition, casting us as climate “deniers.” That is certainly unfortunate, but not unexpected. For many of these special interest groups, dogma trumps facts, and they’ve been calling us deniers for years, even though the Chamber supports sensible and ambitious congressional and international action on global climate change.
“Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.”
The fact is, the Chamber simply refuses to clean up the mess they made, which is to say the ever increasing amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases their members are pouring into the atmosphere. They not only don’t support “ambitious congressional and international action on global climate change,” they actively oppose even the not-so-ambitious Congressional climate and clean energy bill passed by the House — although many of the major businesses on the Chamber’s board publicly support strong climate action (see here).
And speaking of “dogma trumps facts,” here is Kovacs pushing more denier dogma:
Second, and equally troubling, is EPA’s ignorance of any evidence that calls into question its conclusions on endangerment. We all know by now the saga of Alan Carlin, the EPA whistleblower whose internal report criticizing the data behind the endangerment finding was ignored because, according to Dr. Carlin’s boss, it does “not help the legal or policy case” for endangerment. It now appears EPA officials are considering scrapping the role Carlin’s office has in scientific analysis of agency rulemakings. Dr. Carlin is learning first-hand that the word “reprisal” contains the letters E, P and A.
Yeah, well the word “ape” contains the letters E, P, A. So does Paleozoic.
Seriously, the only word containing the letters E, P, A that Carlin should learn about is “plagiarize” — see Memo to media: When the EPA ignores internal non-expert comments filled with falsehoods cut-and-paste from anti-science deniers, that isn’t “suppressing a report.” And why have you completely ignored a major scientific report revealing what a sham that “EPA report” is?
Only a hardcore denier like Kovacs would associate himself with the utterly discredited Alan Carlin.
Kovacs ends by writing:
But please do everyone reading this blog the favor of knowing what we are talking about here before responding….
Yet Kovacs doesn’t do humanity a favor by bothering to know what he is talking about.
The opponents of the Kovacs’ simian behavior aren’t anti-business, we are pro-sustainable-business, but anti-Ponzi-scheme. Heck, even one of the Chambers own members, Johnson & Johnson, wrote a letter asking the Chamber to stop making comments on climate change unless they “reflect the full range of views, especially those of Chamber members advocating for congressional action.”
In sum, the entire argument of Kovacs and the Chamber should be titled “The Origin of Specious.”
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This makes me wonder if Bill Kovacs is a creationist, since he evidently thinks the Monkey Trial was a good idea, just like he asserts a climate trial would be.
How about peak Chamber of Commerce memberships? They’re starting to get, brand damage-wise, very expensive.
Very funny!
The USCC did file their petition with the EPA. I wonder how they get out of that jam?
http://www.uschamber.com/ assets/ env/ uscocpetendangerment.pdf
The Chamber’s PR firm let them call it the next Scopes Monket trial? And had them file a supplement to the petition? bit.ly/145wr0 Somebody is being paid way too much.