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The recent op-ed piece in Canada’s Financial Post by Czech President Václav Klaus is more than a little infuriating.  Klaus, an economist by trade with no background in climate science, has become a favourite skeptic for hire at the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing libertarian think tanks. 

Klaus is a vocal skeptic on the topic of global warming. His 2007 book argues that global warming is akin to a new religion or ideology that threatens to undermine freedom and the world’s economic and social order.  At a 2007 speech at the Cato Institute, he argued that, “Environmentalism should belong in the social sciences” along with other “isms” such as communism, feminism, and liberalism.  He went on to argue that, “environmentalism is a religion” and a “modern counterpart of communism” that seeks to change people’s habits and economic systems.

At his 2009 keynote address at the International Conference of Climate Change (a.k.a. Denial-a-Palooza), he maintained that environmental activists don’t necessarily care about temperature, or carbon dioxide, rather they care about rent seeking and political profit.  In an increasingly familiar trope, he argued that the climate change movement has become popularized because it gives politicians an excuse to exert more control over society.

Klaus delivered a keynote speech at last week’s Global Warming Policy Foundation Inaugural Annual Lecture in London.  According to his address, “Global warming in the last 150 years was modest and future warming and its consequences will not be dangerous or catastrophic.  It doesn’t look like a threat we should respond to,” he said.

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In a surprising exception (an interesting article in the National Post ), Jonathan Kay makes what he calls a "conservative" argument for a carbon tax.

Reading the piece, there seems no reason to define the Carbon Tax defence in a partisan way. It's just a good idea.

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It takes real dedication to "prove" that a 500-year flood event is nothing out of the ordinary, but Roger Pielke, Terence Corcoran and the National Post are nothing if not committed.

Using a statistical trick that would be dismissed in any debating club, Post Business Editor Corcoran argues that the recent round of U.S. flooding can in no way be linked to climate change. In fact, according to his graph, you might be left with the impression that flood damage is actually receding in these weather-battered times.

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Solomon's New Book Full of Hysteria, (Imagined) Persecution, and Fraud

National Post stringer Lawrence Solomon's book-length version of his newspaper series on purported climate change deniers is just as unconvincing - and misleading - as the original Post articles. But at least he admits his motivation for writing it: he's an anti-nuclear, anti-mega-hydro guy watching the environmental tide turn against him.

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"My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways."

Roger Revelle, in a letter to then Congressman Jim Bates, July 14, 1988

Among the not-very-credible denials of climate change risk, one of Lawrence Solomon's most offensive is his attack on the memory and work of Dr. Roger Revelle.

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Amazon.com has been irritatingly slow delivering Lawrence Solomon's new book The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud - and those who are too fearful to do so. It's  like waiting for the movie version of a favorite novel: you know the whole story, but you still want to see the Hollywood spin.

The book is based on a series of columns that appeared in the National Post - a desperate attempt to prove that there is legitimate scientific debate about whether humans are causing climate change. It will be most interesting to see if Solomon includes in the book the apologies, disclaimers and corrections that he had to write after his subjects slammed him for misrepresenting their work or their position.