The Ford Motor Company came under attack in the blogging world last week, for seemingly trying to have its cake and eat it too - or, more accurately, for trying to emit its carbon and appear to be doing something to stop global warming. Back in April, Ford signed a deal with TerraPass, a carbon offset provider, to give Ford buyers a chance to offset their emissions by purchasing a TerraPass with their car. The trouble is, Ford is a contributor to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which produced those ridiculous global warming denial ads that everyone's been up in arms over for weeks.

Perhaps you've seen the Competitive Enterprise Institute's global-warming-agnostic ads. You know, the ones that feature smiling children and happy flowers and the tagline "Carbon Dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life." (Of course! Carbon dioxide = life! That's why, when you put a plastic bag over your head, you live!) Well, if you haven't seen the spots, hurry up and check them out before the CEI wises up to their unintentional comedy and pulls them.

Well, that's certainly convenient. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is releasing a couple of commercials today that - surprise - scoff at global warming. The ads will run in 18 cities around the country beginning tomorrow and will seek, in the words of the CEI's press release, to "counter the flood of scare stories on global warming." ("Flood," eh? Interesting word choice . . .)

American lobbyist Chris Horner is trying to convince major European companies to join a campaign against the Kyoto Protocol and any future such strategies to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases—but he’s not making