The dose of Alexander Cockburn's global warming skepticism included in the recent special issue of the Nation on Cuba (and available in full from ZNet) elicited immediate derision in the enviroblogosphere. But no single rebuttal has been as amusing as the one by George Monbiot, the environmental bomb-throwing columnist for the Guardian, who, with all the precision and attention to detail of a brain surgeon, demonstrates how Cockburn has neatly relegated himself to a loony bin full of conspiracy theorists who look remarkably similar to people Cockburn has previously ridiculed. It's simply too good not to pass along, and thanks much to Grist for bringing it to our attention.

My favorite sentence, in reference to Cockburn's ignorance that the arguments he is regurgitating as proof of his remarkable claim that "There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend" have already been thoroughly refuted in the scientific literature:

The fact that Cockburn appears to be unaware that these arguments carry no weight lends support to the suspicion that he knows no more about this subject that the 9/11 truthers know about the thermal properties of structural steel.

UPDATE: I originally wrote that Cockburn's column appeared in The Nation's special issue on climate change. A reader pointed out that it was actually in the issue on Cuba.