"Greens are people who never had to worry about their grocery bills"

(David) One of the 20th century's great physicists was Freeman Dyson. Dyson, still alive, still sharp, still kicking, is the subject of a lengthy profile in this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine--a profile which chiefly concentrates on Dyson's global-warming skepticism.

Though an Obama-supporting, Bush-bashing Princetonian, Dyson fiercely opposes global warming alarmism. Several quotes from the article:

It was four years ago that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism.

Dyson supports the use of coal as fuel, the bete noir of global warming alarmist, for two reasons. First, he believes carbon dioxide may be beneficial to the ecosystem of the planet, second coal fuel is indispensible for alleviating poverty...

All this may explain why the same man could write “we live on a shrinking and vulnerable planet which our lack of foresight is rapidly turning into a slum” and yet gently chide the sort of Americans who march against coal in Washington. Dyson has great affection for coal and for one big reason: It is so inexpensive that most of the world can afford it. “There’s a lot of truth to the statement Greens are people who never had to worry about their grocery bills,” he says.

The article is priceless. Take the time to read it if you're the least bit interested in global warming.