Thanks for correcting the inaccurate posting concerning Heartland’s position on tobacco issues, and directing people to the essay summarizing my views on the subject. Concerning Lord Monckton’s challenge to Al Gore to debate him over the science of climate change, you should note that The Heartland Institute isn’t challenging Gore to debate, Lord Monckton is. We just heard about the challenge and decided to run ads letting other people know about it. I suppose we’ll run them until Gore agrees to debate one of his most notable critics. Concerning your counter-challenge, to have some unnamed person debate me on the proposition, “smoking is bad for you, really,” it wouldn’t be much of a debate since I don’t claim smoking isn’t “bad for you.” A life-time of smoking will take 6 or 7 years off your life expectancy. I suggest you check my position statement again, at http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10594, or my recent collection of essays, “Please Don’t Poop in My Salad,” at http://www.heartland.org/books/poop.cfm, and then perhaps rephrase the challenge. How about, “Should Cities Support Smoking Bans?" That would be the same topic Bronson Frick, associate director of the American Nonsmokers Rights Foundation, and I debated on December 6, 2005, before an overflow crowd of more than 100 people at the National League of Cities annual meeting, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Joseph Bast President The Heartland Institute

And Al Gore is still afraid to debate.