>While at the same time he categorically rejects the idea of global
>warming with a firmness that makes Bush look like a waverer. He
>seems to be going out of his to embrace every extreme minority
>scientific view, to put it kindly. Is he just being impish?
That's part of it - he loves to tweak Nation readers, and no better way to do that than endorse a Bushite view on climate change - but I suspect a couple of other things. One is that he just loves big old cars. Last I heard, he had about a dozen stashed in various locations around the US. And another is that he seems to want to blame environmental problems on Corporations, and spare any critique of the masses' contribution. So it can't be suburbanization, sprawl, and gas guzzling, because that would be the position of, as he once accused me of being, "an urban weenie who hates the West." Not like manly, bold Alexander Cockburn, guiding his Imperial along the highways of California.
And man, is this dumb: "[I] regard oil "shortages" as contrivances by the oil companies and allied brokers and middlemen to run up the price." No, it can't be strong Chinese growth, low levels of exploration by oil companies (because shareholders want the money instead), already limited refinery capacity made worse by Katrina - it's gotta be a conspiracy!
Doug