From a longtime reader:

You’re exactly right about why they like global warming alarmism. Here’s an iron rule: If your solution to a “crisis” is what you would do anyway, if there were no crisis, there is no crisis. They want to put more regulation on the economy and tax the things they don’t like, and kill the profits of companies they don’t like. They want to do these things because they want to do these things, not because the earth is getting warmer or because Britney doesn’t wear underwear.

Me: I hate to disagree, but I do. A little. I think we should always be open to the idea that broken clocks are right occasionally. One can find voices who’ve been wrong about everything on foreign policy for decades who were proved right on Iraq. Or, look at the New Dealers. They wanted to recreate WWI war socialism during peacetime. That was a bad idea. They wanted to use to fight the depression. That was a bad idea too. But the same folks wanted to use that sort of mobilization to fight WWII. That wasn’t that bad an idea.

But the reader’s point that global warming provides an excuse for liberals to do what they’ve always wanted should make us very reluctant to take their proposed solutions at face value. That’s why it’s particularly maddening when Gore is so determined to shut off all debate.

It’s funny, the same people who insist that dissent is the highest form of patriotism when it comes to the war, suddenly think you’re a moronic bastard or environmental traitor if you want to debate global warming a bit more, even when the solutions being discussed could cost — in monetary terms — far more than the Iraq war.