Living around Charlottesville, Virginia, I was more than pleased by the privilege of providing a UVA extension course for locals in the community — largely (but not exclusively) retirees who are a uniquely formidable bunch of success stories, what with the university hospital, the mountains, and all of the golf. This series is regularly very well subscribed and a great opportunity to get the word out to people who hear only one side of the debate — and an awful lot of it.

Yesterday, I gave the lecture to tease the Spring sessions. I advertise this here with mild trepidation. After the last such disclosure — when Steve Doocy mentioned on a Fox appearance that I was in a Charlottesville studio — for a year the university suddenly was washing its hair every time a network called for a booking and I needed an uplink (sorry comrades, but that dispute is under the bridge). So who knows what this notice will bring — aware as I am of how our Team Alinsk- . . . er, Green, operates?

Of course, green groups had sent scribblers, according to attendees of my acquaintance who knew one or two of them, so the secret’s out anyway. But neighbors, including a retired general and federal magistrate, came to show a little intellectual muscle and support, which was encouraging and appreciated.

Here was the unique aspect: having been on a couple of dozen campuses in the past two years, I’ve seen faculty regularly show up — but they have never said word one to contribute to the post-lecture discussion. (OK, there was one exception, at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where the green club’s faculty advisor wore out his petulance routine and up and stormed out, leaving his students embarassed and apologetic.) Instead, they generally choose a different path of engaging in open debate, embodied by one memorable teacher — actually a PhD climatologist! — at Knox College, who said while storming out, “I’ll get him in class tomorrow!”

Not today. During the Q&A, the professor selected to introduce me and — it became clear — to balance me, became quite agitated and finally, after I invoked a very useful admission by the Club of Rome on its involvement in getting the global-warming industry going, he blurted out “I am one of those Club of Rome types! I am one of those Malthusians!”

This was followed by a bit of holding forth against population. Er, make that other population, as always.

Wow. Thank you. Combined with providing me the opportunity to correct serial mischaracterizations of what I said with the slides from which I actually said it, and his substantive retort of — well, he thought I was almost flip when exposing the science — this candor seemed compelling to much of the audience, if not in the way intended. Still, I’m a tad alarmed at the appetite among serious adults for some “but we still have to do something” gestures, even when the opposition — as in this case — is unable to mount a persuasive case.