I’ve been asked to review a couple books about global warming. Climate change and evolution, which I mainly write about, are intimately related, since life is a potent source of greenhouse gases (methane from bacteria, etc.) and abrupt climate change has triggered profound changes in the biosphere. This assignment has me taking a particularly close look to all the new research and political news emerging these days.

And I’m getting a funny sense of deja vu.

Those who pay close attention to the work of creationists know that they have a penchant for quote mining–for snipping out a passage from a scientific paper that conveys a completely different message once it’s taken out of context. Typically, this qutoe mining makes it sound