Tomorrow the National Environmental Trust is to hold a press conference attacking the distinguished physicist Dr. Frederick Seitz, former President of the National Academy of Sciences and 95 years old, on the grounds that he once accepted money from the tobacco industry in connection with his doubts as to the connection between smoking and cancer. Why is the NET involved in this? Well, that’s because Dr. Seitz has also expressed doubts about anthropogenic global warming. The logical fallacy in this argument should be obvious.

A prominent participant in the press conference will be NASA scientist James Hansen (the one who has been silenced, we keep hearing, from expressing his concerns about global warming). Corner readers may remember my last two mentions of him, which seem to have just the tiniest bit of relevance here.