I'm a bad person

I wasn't going to post anything today so I could catch up on some things and prepare a nice long post for later in the week, but as I was editing the Thomas Sowell column for tomorrow's paper, I just had to get this paragraph up:

"Global warming" seems to be joining "diversity," "gun control," "open space" and a growing list of other subjects where rational discussion has become impossible and where you are considered a bad person even for wanting to discuss it rationally.

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And one more, from the AP today:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — As delegates to a climate conference here debate how to reduce greenhouse gases, one of the problems — and a possible solution — lies in the rice fields that cover much of Thailand, the rest of Asia and beyond.

Methane emissions from flooded rice paddies contribute to global warming just as coal-fired power plants, automobile exhausts and other sources do with the carbon dioxide they spew into the atmosphere.

In fact, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting this week in Bangkok concludes that rice production was a main cause of rising methane emissions in the 20th century. It calls for better controls.

“There is no other crop that is emitting such a large amount of greenhouse gases,” said Reiner Wassmann, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.