Penn Jillette

James Randi is our inspiration, our hero, our mentor and our friend. Randi taught us to use our fake magic powers for good. Psychics use tricks to lie to people; Randi uses tricks to tell the truth. Every year, in Vegas, the James Randi Educational Foundation gathers together for a conference as many like-thinking participants as you can get from people who question whenever people think alike. There are smart, famous and groovy speakers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. There's lots of real science stuff with real scientists questioning things that a lot of people take for granted, like ESP, UFOs, faith healing and creationism. It's a party.

Clive Hamilton

"Over the last 20 or 30 years . . . academics have been less willing to engage in public debate," the former Australia Institute boss said.

That had to change, and by Gaia, Hamilton was the man to change it.

So how odd to see Hamilton a fortnight later telling a popular discussion website, On Line Opinion, he's no longer going to debate there.

"I will not be contributing any further pieces to the site because it has been captured by climate change denialists," he huffed.

Hamilton conceded he actually didn't know the science he's defended: "I do not presume to engage in arguments about climate science because I do not have the expertise to do so without making a fool of myself."

An amusing development on the environmental left is the conflict between anti-nuclear and anti-carbon activists. Nuclear power emits no carbon or greenhouse gasses, so the global warming crowd supports it, but anti-nuclear activists oppose nuclear no matter what.

Even Nancy Pelosi says nuclear energy should be “on the table” as a policy solution, because “the technology has changed” (It hasn’t. Sure, it’s gotten better, but it hasn’t changed drastically enough to go from off the table to on the table.). Emission-free nuclear energy satisfies the anti-carbon crowd. In fact, environmentalist and Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore is now an avid spokesman for building new nuclear plants.

But anti-nuclear activists find every excuse to oppose the nuclear solution. To the anti-nuclear left, atomic energy is “dirty and dangerous,” “retro power,” and “obsolete.” Nukes are dangerous because, as Michele Boyd of the Public Citizen notes, armor piercing anti-tank missiles can penetrate the storage casks of nuclear fuel. That’s right: armor piercing missiles (and what, exactly, is safe from armor piercing missiles?).

As a teen, I can vividly recall the sight of dead fish floating off the shores of Lake Erie. I remember days when large swatches of sky were yellowed from the emissions pouring from the chemical plants that lined the Niagara River. Once, I parked my dad's car near a chemical plant in Niagara Falls only to find it a few hours later covered with a spotty film that had to be scrubbed off.

I drank that water and breathed that air for 20 years. It was then that I realized that if industry were left to its own devices, it could unintentionally kill us all.

I believe that preserving the environment is an individual responsibility. What is disconcerting to me is the way this issue has become politicized, even to the point where it has taken on a religious fervour.

Some activists have decided that we all should march under the banner of global warming, trumpeting the potential destruction of climate change.

Late last week, the Drudge Report amplified a “shock claim” that “for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year”. Drudge linked to the claims originally trumpeted by the UK’s fading left-wing rag The Independent.

Just for context, that is a paper that in late 2005 ran a story about me leading a Big Oil-funded global conspiracy against the Kyoto Protocol -- not true, but I am willing to listen to offers -- based on a cobbling of unrelated offal-smeared papers taken from my trash and given them by the dumpster divers of Greenpeace. But at least they called me first, unlike The Guardian which pulled the same stunt the same day.

This time the Indy writer also claimed “The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ice is lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further.” This is what we call a lie.  Overlayed with Homeric prose, it expands to become a scare.

Sen. Harry Reid

The Dr. No of the drill-nothing Congress tried to deflect the issue of rising gas prices Monday by telling Fox Business News that there are costs we should worry about besides those stemming from Democratic inaction. Our guilt is supposed to replace our anger. "Coal makes us sick," Reid said, "oil makes us sick, it's global warming, it's ruining our country, it's ruining our world, we've got to stop using fossil fuel . . . ."

Reid et al. say they want us to use alternative energy such as wind and solar. But if it's going to take another 10 years, as they claim, to bring ANWR, offshore oil and shale into the mix, wind and solar are going to take even longer. Even if we tripled our current output from wind, solar and geothermal, they'd produce just 2.2% of our current energy needs.