1/13/2012

Ben Stein loses gig for being "unsure" about man-made global warming, but that is only a part of the story

Ben Stein's unsureness about man-made global warming (note he was just "unsure") seems to have cost him this job for a Japanese company. From Reuters:

The conservative pundit and actor -- and former Nixon speechwriter -- alleges that his position on climate change had him kicked off a $300,000 acting gig, only to be replaced by a lookalike.

Stein filed a discrimination suit against Japanese company Kyocera Corporation and New York ad agency Seiter & Miller Advertising, in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday. . . .

In February, Jao called Hurwitz and said "questions had been raised by defendant Kyocera about whether [Stein's] views on global warming and on the environment were sufficiently conventional and politically correct for Kyocera," according to the suit.

Stein then told Kyocera and Seiter & Miller that he was extremely concerned about the environment but unsure whether humans are responsible for global warming.

"He also told Hurwitz to inform defendants that, as a matter of religious belief, he believed that God, and not man, controlled the weather," the suit claims.

That same month, Seiter & Miller President Livingston Miller emailed Hurwitz, telling her the agency had decided to withdraw its offer. . . .


The person who replaced Stein is University of Maryland economist Peter Morici. It is pretty ironic that Morici is working for a Japanese firm that is trying to sell its products in the US given that he blames Japanese and Chinese companies doing this as the cause of the so-called "Great Recession."

The seeds of the Great Recession were sowed by an imbalance of demand between the United States and Western Europe, on the one hand, and China and other Asian economies, on the other. . . .


Despite Morici hating our trade deficit with Japan, it was global warming that seemed to be the more important issue for Kyocera.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Ben Jones - Data Centre Design said...

In 2011, air-conditioning in the UK consumed some 48 PJ (13.3 TWh) of electricity causing emissions of over 2M tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere. This represents about 7% of all electricity used in non-domestic buildings and 14% of electricity use in such buildings for building services purposes (including lighting).Half of the “cooling” energy is actually consumed by chillers, with a similar used by fans and other ancillary equipment – especially in central systems.
To put this into context, this cooling energy use is less than the equivalent figures for France, Spain or Italy, and two orders of magnitude less than the USA or Japan. Even on a per capita basis, air-conditioning consumption in the USA is around 30 times than of the UK: Japan’s is over 50 times higher.

2/29/2012 4:14 AM  

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