We make no representation, explicit or otherwise, about the completeness, accuracy, or consistency of the data on our website, of the integrity of the services we provide, or of those with which we may interoperate. - ECOworld Disclaimer [1]

Don't say you weren't warned.

The "environmental publishing company" ECOworld promises to keep "nature and technology in harmony," but the content of the website and the clear bias of editor Ed (Redwood) Ring shows that Ed would be more forthright if he adopted a nickname that demonstrates more clearly his leanings, say Ed (We Need More Freeways [2]) Ring.

In a recent, strident and extended editor's note, Freeway Ring complains that climate change denial has fallen into humiliating disfavour in the mainstream media. He complains that people who want to continue arguing about global warming are "branded as ideological fanatics and corporate shills."

Well, if the shoe fits...

If Freeway Ring is NOT a corporate shill, we invite him to share the details of his funding and prove the point. (That would, of course, leave the possibility that he is still an ideological fanatic, but I suspect he might adjust his ideology pretty quickly if the money ran out.)

But the sweetest part of Freeway's entreaty for confusion in the climate conversation is this:

If there is a "denial industry," who would benefit? A handful of underfunded think tanks?"

A reasonable answer to the first question might be "ExxonMobil" - the largest and most profitable corporation in the history of the world. But the second question - rhetorical, surely - is flat-out hilarious.

Spend 10 minutes at ExxonSecrets [3]; contemplate, briefly, the tens of millions of dollars that Exxon alone has spent "underfunding" climate-change-denying think tanks. And then come back to ECOworld and ask yourself why any legitimate information source would "make no representation" about "the integrity of the services we provide, or of those with which we may interoperate."

Freeway Ring doesn't want to defend the integrity of his services, or of his collaborators, because they are indefensible.

The concluding paragraph in this editor's note begins:

Many conscientious people, relatively free of biases, simply feel climate science is beyond them."

Quite so, and Freeway Ring and his buddies clearly plan to take full advantage of those people. There appears to be no room left for shame.