Lindzen is a fruitcake. I wish I could bait him the way I flunked LindyBill on this thread: Is it safe to raise kids in a smoke filled environment?
From Wikipedia on Richard Lindzen:
Lindzen has claimed that the risks of passive smoking are overstated. In 2001,[19] Newsweek journalist Fred Guterl reported, after an interview with Lindzen
He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.[19]
A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" is also sometimes used to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert. That article says, "Richard Lindzen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies." The article concludes with the statement, "Such has not always been the case with environmental tobacco smoke."[20] However, Lindzen is not being directly quoted in the article, and the pro-tobacco views in that case are those of the article's authors, not necessarily Lindzen. |
