[Note: This post is slightly off topic.]

Take it back, America bashers, or we’ll sic Chuck Norris on you:

Chuck Norris brought his tough-guy approach to the campaign trail Sunday, taking aim at John McCain’s age and suggesting the Arizona senator might not last even a single term.

Norris, an ardent supporter of Mike Huckabee, told reporters he believes serving as president accelerates the aging process 3-to-1.

“If John takes over the presidency at 72 and he ages 3-to-1, how old will he be in four years? Eighty-four years old — and can he handle that kind of pressure in that job?” Norris said, as Huckabee looked on.

Yes 72 + 3×4 = 84! You go, Chuck. And here all along I thought you were just another dumb action star. My bad!

So a Kansas state House member Larry Powell has sent a copy of Fred Singer’s lame denier treatist, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years to every Kansas legislator. Of course, he sent one to Governor Sebelius, who denied a permit for two large coal-fired power plants in his home county.

Since Climate Progress has been blogging regularly on Kansas (see below and thank you Kari!), Kansas reporter Sarah Kessinger called me Friday for my opinion on Singer’s book and what legislators should do to become informed on climate. The book has been widely debunked, see this post on RealClimate.

The most absurd thing about the book is that … wait for it … the Earth wasn’t actually in a warm trend — unstoppable or otherwise — 1500 years ago! [Yes, during the Medieval Warm Period, parts of the earth were a bit warmer, but that peaked (below current temperatures) 1,000 years ago.] I thought the reporter would like that fact:

“I don’t think there’s anybody in the scientific community who takes Fred Singer seriously,” said Joseph Romm, a Washington scientist and author. Romm said the 1,500-year cycle theory isn’t possible considering the earth wasn’t in a warming trend 1,500 years ago.

Duh! I mean, seriously: Every book contains at least a few small errors, but most real scientists, heck, even most global warming deniers, try to avoid putting egregious factual mistakes in the title of the book. That is a pretty good sign you can skip the contents.

An even better reason to skip the book — in 1998 coathor Fred Singer testified to Congress that “the climate is not warming,” and as recently as November 2003, he wrote in the Financial Times:

The irony is that there is no convincing evidence that the global climate is actually warming.

I kid you not. So four years ago, Singer said the scientific evidence of warming was not compelling. By 2007, he was publishing a book saying that the science clearly shows we are in a natural warming cycle.

Why, why, why traditional media do you keep quoting someone who just keeps making stuff up and contradicting himself as he goes along???

Singer has been an unstoppable industry gun-for-hire for a long, long time — even for the tobacco industry:

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