I love this SCOTUS nugget from Ryan's Lizza's post, “Barack Obama, Left Conservative,” on the Obama administration's new stance on the dangers of, and regulation of, carbon dioxide.

According to Lizza, it all began with a lawsuit from James R. Milkey, who sued the federal government on behalf of the state of Massachusetts, whose coastlines were eroding due to global warming. Initally people thought Milkey was daft for his lawsuit. Five years later, he was arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, where this exchange took place:

“Your assertion,” Justice Antonin Scalia, who was skeptical about the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and Massachusetts’s disappearing coastline, said, “is that, after the pollutant leaves the air and goes up into the stratosphere, it is contributing to global warming.”

“Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere,” Milkey responded. “It’s the troposphere.”

“Troposphere, whatever. I told you before, I’m not a scientist. That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.”

Milkey won, 5-4. Now we are where we are. Which is way behind but at least in the game.