those shaky sciences of geology, physics, climatology, paleontology, etc., or the firm reliable precise predictions of economists?

well, don't forget the comparison between "the science is not there to prove global warming", vs "the science is not there to prove that cigarettes cause cancer". the classics never die; especially when it's the same hired mouthpieces in the same organizations who make both arguments.

Google "slavery pro-choice" and you'll discover that anti-abortion activists have attempted a very similar rhetorical comparison. The slave states were, after all, "pro-choice." Landowners had a right to choose to own slaves and states themselves had a right to choose to allow it. Do you see interesting congruencies in this or just plain stupidity? Presumably the latter, if you're pro-choice. The former, of course, if you're stridently anti-abortion.

Comparing similar rhetoric in situations that are entirely dissimilar is tempting, but yields little useful. People will adopt whatever reasoning best reinforces their previously held opinions. Reactionaries, by definition, say reactionary things. The so-called global warming sceptics will tell you that alarmists say alarming things; thus today I found global warming being compared to witch trials, by a particularly creative Australian sceptic. Interesting congruencies? Not really. Apples to apples, please.

This is why your section rules, Mr. Leonard. I'd not seen that kind of comparison, but it's revealing -- as ever, the petroleum industry will fight any change as long as they feasibly can, using whatever rhetoric they can muster, despite being on the wrong side of history. What I don't get in the discussion is how banking on fossil fuels is anything but a losing bet, long-term (above and beyond the obvious climate-change consideration). If the US was energy-smart (hahah, given our track record), we'd be putting serious R&D into wind and solar, the energy equivalent of a Manhattan Project.

The crisis in Florida the other day points to how wrongheaded centralized power is, especially in something like nuclear. Our government really favors centralization of power resources, even by supposedly decentralizing Republicans (like their notions of "fiscal responsibility" it's chimerical at best), even in alternative fuel sources. So, they like solar power if it's a centralized power plant, or nuclear, because it requires centralization. I'm sure they'd favor it with wind, too.

But if 9/11 taught us nothing as a country, it's that centralization is a risky policy to pursue in the age of terrorism, because power plants are such easy targets (I'm reminded of that time in Wyoming when a bird flew into a power station and shorted out power for like 23,000 people -- and that was just a bird). What the US needs is a new way of conceiving of energy resources, one that is decentralized, and alternative energy resources like wind and solar offer that, if only our government could wrap its bloated head around that.

Energy independence would get us out of the wars-around-the-world business, and energy decentralization would offer protection against the terrorists that the authorities like to invoke now and then, when politically useful. And things like solar and wind power would offer long-term security for the country's economic and environmental well-being, and would give us a lead in that as an industry.

But, instead, the "debate" continues by well-financed dead enders in the fossil fuel industry, or dead ends like the ethanol lobby, or worse, the coal industry.

I bet you could find a hell of a lot more similar statements if you compared rhetoric opposing the minimum wage to that opposing abolition. And, to be fair, abolition of slavery DID wreak havoc on the economy of the South, above and beyond that of the civil war. It was well worth it, but it did.

This is the kind of nonscientific, nonproductive rhetoric that global warming alarmists use all the time. Promote "Goodthink" by comparing your opponents to slave owners, and challenge their arguments with non-sequitors-

"the same senator Inhofe who insisted upon ‘sound science,’ consensus among scientists and complete scientific certainty before devoting funds to climate mitigation, found sufficient justification in inconclusive information from the US intelligence service, contradicting the conclusions of the chief UN weapons inspector, to start a war on Iraq."

Global warming advocates say their climate predictions are based on the soundest of science, yet Inhofe is held in fault for supporting the conclusions of every major foreign intelligence service before the Iraq war, a very nonscientific endeavor.

This rhetoric is poisoned.