I'm featured in an article on campus conservatives in the current issue of Time Magazine. Despite expressing my doubts (based on past such articles) that the campus Right would be treated even-handedly, I think John Cloud wrote a fair and interesting report.

In interacting with the piece's author, one of my worries was that he didn't take the whole idea of campus censorship seriously. In response to his specific doubts regarding my lecture being shouted down at Berkeley, I sent him copious amounts of evidence--photographic, audio, news articles, eyewitnesses, etc. Thankfully, Cloud took the time to review the material. "In a notorious example of left-wing intimidation," he writes, "the Leadership Institute's Flynn spoke at a 2000 forum at the University of California, Berkeley, about his 38-page pamphlet Cop Killer: How Mumia Abu-Jamal Conned Millions into Believing He Was Framed.... [the event] erupted in virulent protest. According to an article in Berkeley's student paper, some of the demonstrators actually burned copies of Flynn's booklet. The disruption got national news coverage, and an embarrassed student senate had to pass a bill declaring that Berkeley, home of the free-speech movement, still opposes book burning." I'm also quoted elsewhere in the piece.

It's a bit strange to see yourself, and so many people you know, discussed in America's leading news magazine. My old boss Ron Robinson and my new boss Morton Blackwell feature prominently in the piece, as do Roger Custer, Charles Mitchell, Clayton Henson, and Steve Hinkle--leaders of campus groups that have hosted my lectures. One of my favorite speakers from my Accuracy in Academia days, Reginald Jones, is referenced right at the outset. Young America's Foundation's Pat Coyle, someone who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to promote conservative ideas, gets some long-deserved national recognition. Pat's effectiveness, as the piece demonstrates, has not gone unnoticed by the Left. One website has printed his home address and telephone number, explaining: "Pat is the one working diligently to divert your tuition and public tax money toward the radical, racist, right-wing club."

There are a few really cool things about the article. First, although Cloud describes a number of provocative conservative poster slogans and activist tactics, one can't help but come away from reading these portions of the article recognizing that campus conservatives have a lot of fun. Second, however tempting it might have been for a journalist to feign discovering some new anthropological find--i.e., campus conservatives--Cloud conveys that the conservative movement on campus dates back at least a half century. Finally, Cloud realizes that the young Right aren't a bunch of Republican droids. The formula for these articles is to portray the college conservatives as Bush lackeys. Reality is far more nuanced. One of the first lines of the piece rejects this notion: "Many of [the conservative students] think the President has betrayed them by signing bills fattening Medicare and the Department of Education."

John Cloud got it.

Liberal bias on campus is a myth.

I think he understates the amount of money spent by the left on campuses. Nowhere is there a mention of Nader's PIRG groups or the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on liberal student activities.

You know, DB - when you speak such fantasy, it makes everything else you have to say just that much easier to ignore. Now go back to your corner, troll.

Let me take that back. Don't go away. For every moment you spend here, speaking to people who find you amusing, it's less time you can spend ruining the country.

Where are taxpayer dollars spent on liberal student activites?

Yeah ok you brainwashed conservative hack. Answer the question. Or would you rather call me a Commie? You'd probably rather call me a Commie.

Maybe you consider free condoms a "liberal" cause. (It's a public health measure son)

Billions for defense, not one dime for liberalism!!

Maybe you haven't figured it our by now DB (what are you 15?), but there are something called the elites in this country! Who are they? The Mainstream Media, Hollywood, the beureaucrats in Washington, and the liberal acedemic establishment. All of these people want to tell you what's good for you. They think you're too stupid to live your own life. So the media tells you what's important, the government tells you what your money should be spent on, Hollywood tells what's cool or what's not, and the acedemics tell you what's right or wrong. I am a CONSERVATIVE! I believe that I know what's good for me, not the liberal elites that run this country. I have a right to worship however I want whereever I want. I have a right to spend MY MONEY how I please. I have a right to set MY OWN PRIORITIES in life. That's what being conservative is all about. It's about being an individual over being a socialist. It is a viewpoint millions of people all over the USA share and if nobody teaches it at colleges and universities I PAY FOR, I have the right to demand that they do. Don't even deny it dosen't happen. Everyone knows all the professors on campuses are part of the liberal establishment. There needs to be balance! Half of taxpayers are conservative, they're views need to be represented. Buzz off DB. Come back when you've learned more about our country.

When you spoke on the Hill with Adams and Shapiro, I asked whether Morons would critique both the left and the right. You said yes and gave an example that I frankly can’t remember. The Time piece, which I agree I much better than I expected, characterizes Morons as “left bashing.” I hope the Times piece is wrong on this minor point.

I am ¾’s though Why the Left Hates America. I loved the 5 Lies chapter. Are you aware of any website that uses that format (like www.snopes.com does for urban legends) for debunking myths of the left, i.e. Myth then the evidence that debunks the myth.

Congrats on your LI position. My son (William & Mary) did a summer stint at LI with Matt Lewis and I can’t believe how excited and committed he is to conservative thinking.

He started a non-profit (http://www.savemygeneration.org) to raise campus awareness of key economic issues that have the potential of biting his generation in the ass because my generation has passed the buck.

Keep up the good work and I eagerly await MORONS.

Thanks, for the kind words Ken. Intellectual Morons isn't necessarily a "left bashing" book. I understand why the Time reporter might say that, but there's a good thirty or so pages that deal with figures on the political Right.

I agree, Lenny and Carl. But don't buzz off DB, it's good to get your opinions, extremist though they may be...

By the way, Lenny, can you get this Sugar Daddy© off my back?

hehe. I see ur point. It's fun to watch him set 'em up then knock 'em down. Hey Homer, you wanna go bowling on Sunday?

This may be a little off topic. But could any of you here defend the Kyoto treaty pullout? How does a right winger defend ignoring a problem that will one day kill us all? How does a right winger defend appeasing the barbarian hordes that will end this American empire.

Db:

Like you, many right wingers believe that barbarian hordes are undermining our country and our culture; there are two main such hordes -- leftists who don't care what cultural or traditional political institutes they destroy (stable monogomous marriage, constitutionally limited government, separation of powers, etc. Most importantly, this horde is destroying the basic open space for unregulated behavior known as 'freedom,' e.g. they want to annihilate unregulated parking spots and outdoor smoking and any income not reported to the government); and, second, the floods of immigrants, often who lack good will to our culture, who are coming in too fast to assimilate. I can't imagine who else _you_ might be refering to as a "barbarian horde": perhaps SUV drivers?

But a second point. We don't have to defend any 'pullout' of the Kyoto Treaty, because the US never agreed to the Kyoto treaty, so it is impossible to 'pull-out' of it. You can't get divorced if you were never married . . . get it? This is a very subtle point about our constitution and the limitation of the president's authority; see, the Senate holds the power to ratify treaties and it didn't ratify Kyoto. But perhaps you don't care about separation of powers or about the constitutional allocation of authorities, because you are a member of the first type of barbarian horde. That is not an insult -- it's just a guess.

If you feel leftists are Barbarian hordes, I'll let that stand. But how in the hell can you square you faith in free markets with your paranoia about immigration? The mobility of capital nessecitates the mobility of labor. Immigrants are the foundation of our economic system, capitalism. To be anti-immigrant is to be anti-capitalist. Read the Economist sometime to see how this is true.

It was warmer during the middle ages than it is now. There were humans then. It was colder 20,000 years ago during the last ice age and yep, humans were around then too. So get off the climate change will kill us all BS. In fact, try reading this,

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

Also, I think it kicks ass that I was mentioned on Flynn Files. Yay! Thanks Dan.

Leftists care much much more about marriage than those on the right.

I've actually been to the Oregon Institute. It's shoddy set of buildings outside a small, rural, racist town in Southern Oregon. This is the source of your global warming "skeptisim".

DB. You started out making this board a better place with your dissent. However, you have kind of degenerated into what most of these guys probably thought you were going to --a vulgararian who substitutes emotion for logic. There are women and civel people on this board. Keep the comments comming but leave the vulgarity at your commune. Thanks.

Yeah DB, I concur with Ryan. You are embarassing yourself and I am starting to think you are just a crank who is just messing with the readers of this great blog site.

Hi my name is DB and I'm NORMAL!!!!!

DB, knock off the swearing a bit.

DB- stick to your day job as a fluffer in non-union snuff films.

I would like to apologize for the swearing and the tirade. It will not happen again. It is just very frustrating to ask a person who he feels about a problem, and have him claim it dosen't exist. Despite my "embarassment", I am correct. Global warming is occuring. It is dangerous. And no Ginger Spice-signed petition is going to change that.

Would anyone like to defend Bush's global warming policy?

Well you better come back because you just tried to weaseal your way out of a debate you were losing by asking a question reminisicent of Clinton. (It depends what the meaning of is is.)Everyone knows that the President has the authority to sign treaties as the representative of the United States. Of course all 300 million of us don't sign laws and treaties. We have representives who do that for us. It is astounding the things you don't know about our democracy.

The president has the authority to sign a treaty and then pass it on to congress to be ratified. The consitution requires that BOTH branches of government approve of a treaty. The executive branch, which Clinton headed, approved. It was assumed that the United States would then ask for ratification from the Senate, but George Bush decided to refuse to send the treaty for ratification, effectivly removing the executive branch's approval of the treaty.

As to the "posioning the well" charge: I suppose you would like for us first to establish anthropogenic climate change before we debate what to do about it. Well, we don't have to do that. Because that debate has already occured, and it turns out that 99% of scientist agree that it is happening and it is a problem. It is entirely proper to pose a question which rests upon the conclusions of ninety-nine percent of climatologists. It is entirely improper to try to make a point with an example sentence referensing domestic violence.

If indeed there is a great deal of diversity among Conservatives on these issues, prove your point. Where are the Pro-Kyoto conservatives?

"Everyone knows that the President has the authority to sign treaties as the representative of the United States." My point was this is NOT tantamount to 'the US signing the treaty'. The only thing equivalent to 'the US signing the treaty' is a full ratification. The president can sign anything he wants; the US doesn't sign on to anything it doesn't ratify -- got it? How would you feel if GWB signed in his 11th hour an agreement of some sort withdrawing us from the UN? Would you lambast the following administration for ignoring his foolishness?

"It is astounding the things you don't know about our democracy." Pardon? You are the one who claims that the US "withdrew" from a treaty it never ratified. This is a republic, not a monarchy, so the President's signiture alone doesn't mean anything.

First you say that consistency is not a necessary condition of truth, and now you deny another common point of logic by claiming that 'poisoning the well' is a legitimate move in a rational discussion.

You seem to be at war not only with civility but with logic. Good luck in life.

Vive le Gadfly!

You are wrong to assert the the President signature dosen't mean anything. It means that the executive branch has agreed to the terms of the treaty and has agreed to senf the treaty to the legislature for retification. Bush did not send the treaty to the legislature for ratification, therefore he withdrew the United States from the treaty. Had he sent the treaty to the legislature and the legislature refused to reatify, that would be a treaty not-ratified. Kyoto was a treaty commitment not honored.

Of course consistancy is not a nessacary condition of truth. That is obvious. One can consistantly lie. One can occasionally tell the truth.

I was arguing that I did not poison the well. If I am poisioning the well I am poisoning it with a rationally founded scientifically proven evidence. In any debaate, I'll take that poison anyday.

I am still waiting.

Conservatives on global warming...

"Of course consistancy is not a nessacary condition of truth. That is obvious. One can consistantly lie. One can occasionally tell the truth." Learn to think before you type. It is called the principle of noncontradiction. The same thing cannot be and not be in the the same way at the same time. This applies as well to propositions: a proposition cannot both be true and false in the same way at the same time. So if two propositions contradict, then they cannot both be true. That is to say: Consistency is a necessary condition of truth. It is not a sufficient condition. (It just occurred to me that perhaps your problem is not with logic but with the English language.) This really is all rather 8th grade points about reasoning. But if you can't agree to the principle of noncontradiction then this explains your tendancy to babble. That isn't an insult. It is just an observation.

Nope, I stand with it. Your of the same ilk that 30 years ago was swearing by the fact that global cooling was going to kill us all.

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/06/nclim06.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/06/ixhome.html

Global warming does not exist AS a problem. Nothing we can do about solar flares my man.

Sustainability as an environmental goal is an imminently conservative principle; a goal that always lets prudence reign sovereign however, and not hysteria. That is, for any given environmental issue all factors are looked at (including economic) and a reasonable course should be adopted. Kyoto is not reasonable.

Clinton's own Energy Department came out against the Kyoto Protocol for two broad reasons. One, (given the Energy Department's expertise) that its demands would impact the American economy and family far too negatively to justify its claimed benefits; and Two, that there is no scientific conclusiveness regarding the existence or meaning or threat of global warming. It is unclear whether a temperature increase (usually cited at .6 degrees over the last 150 years) has in fact occurred, it is not known whether this is a result of human activity or simply natural change as the earth continues to warm up after its last ice age, or has more to do with the fluctuations in heat emmitted by the sun, and it is unclear whether this is in fact a bad development.

So I dispute your claims that there is a scientific consensus in this regard. When I took a climatology lab course in college at the same time that the Kyoto meeting was taking place I was astonished to be presented with the methodology and evidence that climatologists use to support these claims of global warming and discover how threadbare, inconclusive, and disappointing they are. I think my professor represented the majority opinion of scientists with regards to the evidence and impact of global warming. He said that the evidence was pretty clear that some change had occurred and that although it was uncertain what sort of impact these changes would have long-term or whether this was a natural or man-made phenomenon we should be "better safe than sorry" and ratify the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas reducing treaties. Therefore, whether or not to support Kyoto is a matter of political prudence . . . not one of hard science. Climatologists qua climatologists are unqualified to make such sweeping demands on our economy and lifestyle as Kyoto makes. Such a decision is a matter for the statesmen who can gather the input of scientists, economists, doctors, astronomers (NASA in fact can demonstrate an actual cooling of the earth over the last couple of decades) and others and weigh the pros and cons and decide what is the reasonable and prudent course of action.

Besides the real question for you DB is why did Clinton not seek Senate approval himself for the Protocol since his administration "signed" it in 1997 and he had, gosh, an entire term in which to get it ratified? Don't worry I will give you the answer to this question. He did not get it ratified b/c the senate had made it quite clear that Congress would not approve the treaty in Byrd-Hagel Resolution 98. That is right, Byrd, as in the Democrat Robert Byrd. Sponsors of the bill also included Senator Max Cleland (the popular triple amputee Democrat), the very liberal Carol Moseley-Braun and others. Do you know what margin this resolution which instructed the administration NOT to sign onto Kyoto passed by? It was a slim margin I admit, it only passed unanimously, 95-0. Hmmm. That seems to indicate that it was a nonpartisan vote of the entirety of Congress agreeing that Kyoto was a disaster and should not become a binding treaty on the U.S. Clinton took this to heart and so never submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification, Bush dropping it was simply a fait accompli.

This is all old news DB, get over it. In fact I have bored myself stiff by responding to you. Your posts entertain me but you don't get much in the way of responses b/c the readers of this site find it hard to get worked up over silly theories of global environmental destruction that aren't even convincing in Hollywood disaster flicks, and believe me I LOVE Hollywood disaster flicks! Everyone should see The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno, great fun.

Thank you Brian for a real argument, and YKW too. I get back to you both later. But first, no one ever tried to scare the world with a story about global cooling. It never happened. As for the link, I have a hard time believing anything coming for one of Lord Black's papers. You can be skeptical about the workings of the Kyoto treaty, but you cannot deny global warming. The crazy Oregon Instistie notwithstanding.

I will be interested in your longer response.

I don't think it necessary to dispute global warming as a fact, it is only sufficient to note that the scientific evidence is not truly overwhelming as regards what causes the warming or what the impact of it will be long-term and so any particular measure to curb greenhouse emissions still has to pass muster in terms of costs versus benefits and can be reasonably disagreed with or rejected as a matter of prudence.

I still stand by the fact that I find debating Kyoto boring though. But I wanted to honor your request for "Conservatives on global warming . . .". No point on keeping you waiting forever thinking that conservatives have never thought much about global warming.

Ok You Know Who. First off, I do not know why you have to gat all philosophical about this issue. I have a feeling you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Second, that priciple is part of Western Logic. There are many other cultures on this Earth who have formulated different logic systems. Notably many logical systems of the Orient include a principle of paradox.

But this is not, at its heart, a debate over logic or philosphical differences. I am arguing that consistancy is not a nessacary condition for truth. I am not arguing, as you seem to believe, that someone can change his story and yet still be telling the truth. My argument is thus: SBVT can be consistant and say that this or that happened. John Kerry can be inconsistant and say that it did, or it didn't, and then say it did again. It dosen't matter weather John Kerry or SBVT are consistant or not because an absolute truth exists! Whatever happened thirty years ago in Vietnam is unaffected by weather John Kerry makes consistant statements about what happened or not. There is an absolute truth! There is a course of events which actually occured and weather the participants of those events make accurate and consistant statements regarding those events thirty years after they occured does not change the truth of what acctually happened.

Lisa hits Bart with a frying pan. Marge comes home and asks what happened. Lisa consistantly says that she did not hit Bart with the frying pan. Bart is still dazed and confused from the hit. At first he says Homer choked him, then he feels the pain on his head and says he must have fallen, then he finally remembers that Lisa had hit him, and says so. Through all that time that Bart was saying that Homer had choked him, or that he had fell, did the truth change? No. The truth was always that Lisa had hit Bart with a frying pan.

Consistancy is not a nessacary condidtion of truth.

Despite your characterization that only the right can be motivated by economic incentives (thus oil and gas interests are somehow "right-wing" and can influence politics through economic motivation according to you) this sort of crude materialist reductionism can easily be applied to climatoligists as well. You ask: "What in gods name would be thier [climatologists, sic] motivation for trumping this issue up?" to which I would reply, grant money. Climatologists kid's need braces too. If you can be a cynic and characterize the unanimous vote of the Senate against Kyoto as cowtowing to economic interests then the climatologists are fair game for the same reductivist treatment. Scientific researchers LIVE off of convincing wealthy foundations or governments that their research is relevant. This generally is couched either in terms of economic benefits that will possibly accrue from continued funding of a scientist's research, or from the health benefits. Rarely have scientists in the last several hundred years ever argued in defense of their research on grounds of wonder or the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists as a whole are extremely shrewd and pragmatic people. Therefore climatologists as a group have ample economic motivation for insisting that their research is extremely important in order to stave off disaster.

Do I actually think that it is reasonable to just dismiss the majority (but by no means unanimous or clear-cut) views and alarm of climatologists b/c of cynically insinuated economic interests that are secretly driving them? No, actually I don't necessarily think that at all. But neither do I think it reasonable to dismiss an unanimous vote of the Senate regarding Kyoto (and it did go beyond Kyoto as well in laying out principles of approach regarding global warming) b/c of insinuated economic and political blackmail from some vast right-wing interests like "big oil" and "big gas." Particularly when you admit Kyoto has flaws.

You can doubt the NASA studies if you want (especially b/c I have not linked to any) but their methods of taking the temperature of the earth's stratosphere are much more rigorous and convincing then what climatologists do who study air particles trapped in glaciers and computer models, as well as written historical documentation of temperatures recorded via mercury barometers around the globe for the last couple centuries. For one thing, NASA has been able to provide data from space which overcomes much of the problem of reconciling various local data that climatologists can gather. Nasa has also been able to quantify what impact natural volcanic activity has on the earth's atmosphere as well as (you blithely dismissed my reference to this) fascinating research on the impact that solar flares and changes in the heat production of the sun have on our atmosphere.

Climatologists do not research the chemical composition of the sun and how the changes in what the sun is burning affect the earth. Astronomers and phycisists do this. It is a matter of prudence to take all the separate evidence from these various sources and try to bring them together in a reasonable manner and draw practical conclusions from them. Even if 100% of climatologists agree that humans are changing the temperature of the earth AND that this change is alarming and destructive (which they don't as you seem to acknowledge) their claims still have to be brought into contact with the evidence and research emanating from other fields such as cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy, etc. If there exist apparent contradictions between the testimony of these different fields (which there are) then it becomes less reasonable to force major disruptions in our economy based on the fear of the one group, the climatologists. Instead we should move slowly and allow science more time to figure out what exactly is going on.

This, by the way, does not preclude taking various reasonable and practicable measures to make sure that we can sustain our standard of living through any number of means including reducing greenhouse gases. However, the hysterical manner of going about it by the hardcore environmental community is not helpful in this regard.

O.k., I could debate more but have to get back to cowtowing to big right-wing corporate interests.

I did not mean to imply anything about corporate power or those that serve it. You'd be happy to know I have full faith the capitalist system, although I have some reservations about the increasing power of a handful of corporations to monopolize their markets....that aside.. Climatology is an important discipline without global warming. I find it absolutely absurd that you have decided to attribute global warming to a bunch of underpaid scientists looking to prove their worth to society.

A good climatologist is multi-disciplined. He incorporates all those fields into his research. You can't understand global warming without understanding basic physics, or astronomy. (The fact that Earth is warm at all is after all, an astronomical affair.)

I have to be honest and say that I am not a scientist and cannot speak very commandingly on this matter. However, I do take exception to some of your scientific "contradictions". First, accurate models of global mean temperatures over time have been made. I believe most of their data comes from meteorological records, which might be hard to reconcile, but surely not impossible. Also, I believe that the models incorporate indirect measurements such as tree ring growth. I doubt that metrological observations from space prove of much use since such instrumentation has only been available over the past few decades, while the climatology models must have data over a period of centuries to prove that global warming is human induced.

It is true that natural volcanic activity plays a part in our climate. But nearly every active volcano is monitored, and any volcanic activity from a dormant volcano would surely be registered. If the current warming trend were caused by volcanoes we would have plenty of data to prove that. It would not be the mystical "but what if" scenario that you suppose. We monitor this activity; if anything was out of the ordinary we could see it.

The same goes for solar flares. Yes solar flares can affect the climate. And yes we have recently had a spike in solar activity. But I don't think that solar flares could cause the slow, gradual change in mean global surface temperatures that we are seeing occur. Solar flare activity starts and tops in a manner of weeks. Any climate change occurring from them is sure to be short lived.

And your proposition that climatologists do not research the sun's changing chemical composition and therefore cannot fully understand the problem is misleading. It may be true that climatologists do not research the chemical composition of the sun, but if the sun's changes have an affect on climate they measure that. Say for instance that increased solar activity increases the amount of heat transmitted to Earth. Climatologists may not study the exact chemical change in our star to find out why the heat transmission has increased. But they note that the heat has increased! That's the only thing that matters to their work!

Lastly, you seem to vastly underestimate the amount of collaboration that goes on between scientists of different disciplines. In the scientific world, a multi-disciplined approach is a part of the process, especially on such a global issue as global warming. A climatologist may need an astronomer's advice, she'll call him up! Or read his paper. I assure you that climatologists are aware that their field calls upon many disciplines of science, and I can assure you that they go about their work with that knowledge in mind.

Sorry but one final note. The damage being done to our enviroment aside from global warming is enough to justify the hysteria of the "radical enviromentalists."

uuuuggghhh.....

this just keeps goin' doesn't it...?

Shuuuttuupp!!

(a Simpson's joke. Stonecutters)

Don't worry, I am done. This was a post on a cool Time article originally wasn't it?

Funny how the overblown rhetoric stops when you actually take on DB.

And in its place steps a reasoned argument you have yet to counter.

Chortle. No one ever tried to scare people with global cooling?

Try Google

Onto the ash heap with you - along with Malthus and the Club of Rome. But, DB - scientist that you are (uh huh) - tell you what. You send your mailing address to Dan Flynn and I will personally spend the $25 to buy and send you a copy of Peter Huber's Hard Green. He's got the PhD from MIT, I'll let him dismantle all the tripe you've been spilling.

What I found there was a bunch of right wingers making comments like you did on this page, without references. I think what probably happened was the science was just studing the ice age and began to wonder if it ever could happen again. This is totally different that a chourus of scientists arguging that man is causing an ecological disaster. Live in your fantasy land if you wish.

That shows how dumb you are. You think one PhD from MIT can slew thousands of experts from around the world? Please. There are plenty of people with fancy degrees who agree that global warming is real. Skeptics are either delusional or bought and paid for. I'd said your boy from Cambridge was bought and paid for.

I just read this wonder boy's bio. I don't trust anyone from the Manhattan Instiute. And I don't trust a lawyer to refute the opnions of scientists.

And weren't you the one who said earlier that I was living in fantasy! Please! Denying global warming. That's about as out there as you can get.

You will all be happy to know that the Bush Administration just admitted that climate change is real and caused by humans! Thank you! I rest by case.

Congratulations, you've finally nailed it.

I trust no one who disagrees with my liberal orthodoxy.

I deny everyone's credentials that I find disagreeable.

Look - I'll buy you the book. Then again, I don't suppose you're actually interested in logical argument.

There is no logical argument that can refute the reems of data that point to global warming. I have been reading the books official website, and have found some quotes that I think speak for the book's "logic".

"Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks,harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains, which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with olestra and pine with plastic. Humanity can survive just fine in a planet-covering crypt of concrete and computers"

"Alaska's Prince William Sound has fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill"

"There is an excellent chance that if global temperatures rise modestly, the planet will just grow very much greener than it is today"

There is absolutly NO logic to these arguments. This book presents an attack on the enviromental movement because the enviromental movement represents a threat to the industries that fund the Manhatten Institute. I am from Alaska. I remember watching Prince William Sound fill up with oil. The place hasn't recovered, I can tell you, these 15 years later. I've seen it with my own eyes. The first quote I list is absolutly insane. Humans cannot live without depending upon nature. It is impossible. There is no way anyone, MIT doctorate or not, can predict that more brainpower can solve enviroental problems. What if there is no food to feed those brains? What if increasing pollution makes us all sterile? There will be no more brains!!!

This book is a obviously a hack job paid for by the industries that fund the author's employer. I doubt even the author believes in the BS he's writting.

Well, my friend - here is my last comment to you. I find your shrill disregard for anything challenging you amusing. I've read Huber and my father is a lifelong environmentalist who's credentials would make you jealous. Huber does challenge assumptions, including the most basic about the methods used to project impacts in the environment. If you're happy in your cocoon of arrogant ignorance, then I'll do nothing to change that here.

But if you like, I'll still buy you the book.

Actually, my friend - Huber's been writing about junk science longer than he's been associated with Manhattan.

Whatever. Smart people write books claiming the holocaust never happened too. As Dan says, ideology can make smart people believe dumb things. Sounds like your boy Huber is an INTELECTUAL MORON.