The oily Heartland Institute has a charming package of PowerPoint presentations retreading all of the old misdirection about the causes and effects of climate change. For example, a presentation from Minnesota Senator Michael Jungbauer says that “34 per cent of scientists and practitioners (my emphasis) disagree that global warming is a serious problem facing the planet.”

Okay. But, even if that’s true, and even if the sample of “practitioners” include people who are vaguely qualified to comment on climate science, that still leaves two thirds of the respondents firmly on the side of climate calamity nervousness. Senator Jungbauer would recognize that as an impressive majority if it was, say, a group of people endorsing his own strained views.

My favorite PowerPoint slide, though, is one from our old buddy Tim Ball (inset), a man who has built a handsome second career as a climate change speaker. Ball has found a Tolstoi quote that finally explains the insanity of his own stubborn insistence that he’s the only person in the world scientific community who understands climate science. Tolstoi said:

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”