Politically incorrect guide (PIG)

Back in mid-Feburary I saw Christopher C. Horner interviewed on Daily Show with Jon Stewart about his new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. I was hopeful that he would take a middle road and function as a bridge between the two camps. I was quickly disillusioned. He spent his time parroting the usual attack the messenger distortions such as global warming is a left wing communist tree hugger conspiracy. He repeats the charge that the climate scientists can't be trusted because they are just trying to get more funding. What he didn't make clear in the interview is that Mr. Horner is NOT a scientist. He is a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He's an expert on global warming legislation and regulation. So he has a conflict of interest himself. In fine lawyerly fashion, Mr. Horner skirts the truth as he points to the growth of the Greenland Ice sheet as a refutation against global warming. He neglects to mention that the scientist who wrote the study came to opposite conclusion -- temperature increase led to increased precipitation, leading to ice sheet growth. He also has no problem citing Michael Chrichton as scientific support. Unfortunately Chrichton got his information on global warming science for his novel State of Fear from persons also responsible for the tobacco industry's effort to obscure the relationship between cancer and smoking.

Even more damning is his publisher. The Politically Incorrect Guide (PIG) series covers a wide range of subjects - Science, Islam, Darwinism and intelligent design, and American history. All of these texts suffer from similar distortions and misinformation. Such as the American War Between the States was not principally about slavery. Or that global warming is caused by the sun. And intelligent design is more scientific than Darwinism. The Pandas Thumb has reviewed the whole collection.