This is an excellent post, Joseph.

There is ignorance, and then again there is ignorance.  If it simply means an innocent lack of knowledge, then we should refrain from blaming the innocent, and just move past what they have ignorantly written.  But there is a more damning sense of "ignorant" used by Italian-Americans (and perhaps others), along the lines of, "He is rude and offensive, and he ought to know better."

On Amazon.com choosing Michael Crichton to review Lomborg's book: Those people are pretty insensate, so this does not surprise me.  Not that the matter has been at all well publicized, but animal-welfare supporters are boycotting Amazon.com right now, because it is the sole on-line vendor of a couple of magazines written for devotees of cockfighting and dogfighting.

I am very concerned about the role of the Inuit in the fate of the polar bear.  They are a desperately poor people, really a more or less loose network of scattered communities, and some of them at least make some decent money through sponsoring the trophy hunting of polar bears in their territory, and guiding the hunters.  Of course it is in their interest to insist that polar bears are plentiful.  Is that a deception on their part?  Or is it an example of innocent ignorance?

Anyway, it should be clear that any conservation plan will have to include the Inuit and their interests.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!