From time to time we hear from a small DC group with the impressive sounding name: the "National Centre for Public Policy Research" (NCPPR). Their president Amy Ridenour takes a jab at DeSmogBlog yesterday with this strange sentence - obviously crafted to incite controversy:

"Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today."

I am assuming that much like her friend Christopher Monckton, Ridenour has not heard of the Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies. The basic point Godwin makes is that as a conversation online progresses, the likelihood of someone mentioning Nazis or the Holocaust becomes more likely.

I sent an email to Ridenour assistant, David Almasi, the other night asking for an explanation and also pointing out that in the four years I have managed the DeSmogBlog I have never used a Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument or discredit an individual. So far they haven't responded and I think they're silence is telling.

It is a stupid and useless means of making a point that only creates division and hate.

In the probably insane hope of building common ground with a pack of climate change deniers, it's worth noting that Amy Ridenour 's National Centre for Public Policy Research has released a quite-reasonable report on the wrong-headedness of subsidizing and/or mandating the refining of ethanol from corn.

Ethanol from corn doesn't help in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diverting corn from its higher use as a food source is counterproductive. This issue provides a lively demonstration of what happens when government responds to self-interested lobbyists rather than, say, scientists.

Here are recent statements by vocal media impressarios and think tanks who spend their time, not in a laboratory, but in the popular media trying to convince the public that global warming is either not happening, or is not caused by our continued consumption of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas etc).

Below each one, I have also provided an historical quote on what they had to say about the effects of CFC's on the hole in the o-zone layer. Notice any similarities?

National Centre for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) president Amy Ridenour is in high dudgeon, accusing ThinkProgress of libel for posting the Bonner Cohen clip that the deSmogBlog noticed yesterday. Ridenour says it is "false and defamatory" for ThinkProgress to have suggested that the NCPPR or its associates are under the paid influence of the fossil fuel industry, from which Ridenour reports "total donations to us: less than one percent of our revenues, and for most of our history, zero percent."

Posted first by thinkprogress.org, check this spin-job by the literally unbelievable Bonner Cohen. Like many other former tobacco industry apologists, Cohen has reshaped himself as an expert on the science behind climate change.

Here's the whole interview, and below is a good example of Bonner's spin, and a comparison to his old arguments on second-hand tobacco smoke: 

Caller: "I do believe in global warming... how do you foresee the future if we keep going with the pedal to metal so to speak?"

Bonner: "Your grandchildren would be best served, when considering climate change that we not allow ourselves to be driven by idle speculation, not by computer models. Simply look at the scientific data and see if in fact we are experiencing anything out of the ordinary."

".... what i think is vitally important is that for everyone, that we make the decisions that we make with respect to our environmental and energy policies based on the best available scientific data that we have. We cannot afford to do that based on speculation alone."