When Al Gore and his global warming alarmists take over, one of the first citizens they'll slap in a prison and charge with crimes against the (green) state will be Steven J. Milloy (pictured), founder and publisher of the popular Web site JunkScience.com.

For 12 years, JunkScience.com has worked to debunk the bad science that has been used to advance the harmful or merely silly political and social agendas of environmentalists that have led to things such as bans on DDT and incandescent light bulbs.

Milloy is a self-described libertarian whose other unforgivable crimes include working for Fox News Channel and associating with think tanks that accept oil and/or tobacco money. He visited Pittsburgh Thursday to appear at an Alcoa stockholders meeting. I talked to him by cell phone as he drove back to his home near Washington, D.C.

Q: Why did you drive all the way to Pittsburgh to go to an Alcoa stockholders meeting?

A: I am the portfolio manager of the Free Enterprise Action Fund. We’re a libertarian/conservative activist fund and we own shares in Alcoa. We’re concerned that by lobbying for global warming regulation, the Alcoa CEO (Alain Belda) will not only help drive the U.S. economy into a ditch but will help drive Alcoa into a ditch.

Q: How were you received?

A: I spoke at the meeting. I expressed our concerns. I asked the CEO for a commitment that the board of directors would take a hard look at this through their due diligence -- and I got no response.

Q: What is it specifically that Alcoa is doing that you are concerned about?

A: Alcoa belongs to something called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which is a group of companies and environmental groups in Washington, D.C., that are lobbying for global climate regulation. All the parties that belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) have different interests, so you never know if they are going to be able to achieve their goal. But nevertheless they are lobbying for regulation that every economist in the world says is going to harm the United States and the global economy. The Europeans have global warming regulation they can’t live by without killing their economy. It’s going to accomplish nothing for the environment, because China and India, the up-and-coming greenhouse-gas emitters, have vowed not to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions -- as if that mattered anyway. Alcoa is risking its business by lobbying for regulation that will accomplish nothing. We can’t see how this regulation will help Alcoa. Its last quarter’s earnings were hurt by higher energy costs and environmental regulation -- both of which you are going to have in spades with global-warming regulation.

Q: Are there other famous companies adopting similar kinds of environmental standards -- voluntarily adopting them -- that will cost their bottom lines?

A: Well, no one’s really adopting them. Alcoa takes credit for reducing its greenhouse emissions, but what I think they’ve really done is ship jobs offshore, where none of that stuff really matters.

Q: Is there anything wrong about a private corporation choosing to spend its money on going green -- even if it’s foolish?

A: Management has a fiduciary duty to shareholders. If shareholders want management to be foolish, well, then that’s just the way it is. The problem here is that it is not Alcoa just being foolish on its own. Alcoa is lobbying for laws that will make everybody be foolish. If Alcoa wanted to be foolish by itself, that’s fine; but they’re trying to make everybody be foolish.

Q: What is JunkScience.com and what’s its purpose?