Don Young, quack scientist

Our amazingly arrogant representative has once again shown that sheer chutzpah on the part of one well-placed man can outweigh the considered opinion and solid research of thousands of scientists and years (decades!) of studies. Young, who has been working to prevent legislation that would finally have us taking some responsibility for global warming, managed to strike the (to him) offending line from a House bill that would recognize that yes, global warming is a problem, and yes, fossil fuel burning is contributing to this, and yep, it's humans burning the stuff that are causing a bit of a problem. Not only that, but Young thinks that Greenland is cooling (that'll be news to all those shrinking glaciers) and that somehow, the United States is not the chief culprit in this. Says Rep. Young, plaintively: "It is never the fault of the bigger countries that burn as many barrels of oil as we are doing today -- not per capita, but as many barrels of oil. It is never their fault." Problem is, of course, there AREN'T any other countries that burn more fossil fuels. We use the most gas and the most oil, not only per capita, but in total as well. As the Anchorage Daily News pointed out,

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States burned 20.6 million barrels of oil a day last year. The second biggest consumer, China, burned just under 7 million.

So he's right. It ISN'T their fault.
Don Young has never been one to let facts get in the way of his opinions, however. Remember, his uninformed opinion is worth just as much as years of research and thousands of scientists. Just ask him--he's said so in public before.