Myron Ebell is the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to his CEI biography, he also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition of non-profit groups that “that challenge global warming alarmism and oppose energy rationing policies.” Ebell was President Trump’s pick to lead his transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016. Ebell is a go-to voice for climate change denial. He appears regularly on mainstream media outlets as an anti-regulation, fossil fuel advocate.
Myron Ebell on Climate Change
An article on the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation notes that with Ebell’s influence “The Trump EPA has repealed or weakened almost 100 environmental regulations, even when affected industries have not objected to the rules,” Dr Elizabeth Southerland, who served in the EPA from 1984 to 2017 wrote in The Guardian.
Ebell has worked tirelessly to undermine climate change research. A PBS article notes that, “Ebell has been instrumental in crafting a national strategy challenging research showing that global warming is both man-made and real. The action plan, drawn up in 1998, said victory would be achieved when the public recognized “uncertainties in climate science.”
In the same article remarks that, “Despite such evidence pointing to a warming planet, Ebell has described the consensus around global warming as “phony” and “not based on science.” If he’s wrong, he told FRONTLINE, “Then I’ll have to say I’m sorry and I wish we could speed up our efforts to reverse the policies that we have supported here at CEI.”
Vanity Fair has reported on Ebell and when talking about our warming oceans, Ebell is quoted as saying, “I think that’s made up,” Ebell says. “I understand that the oceans are primarily heated by direct solar radiation. I do not understand how—beyond just the surface—they are heated by the warming up of the atmosphere. It seems to me that the atmosphere would have to warm up significantly above the previous level before that radiation could actually heat up the ocean.”
See Also: William Happer, the CO2 Coalition, the Consumer Energy Alliance, the Thomas Jefferson Institute, the Heritage Foundation
Climate of Denial