Last Friday, we introduced you to a pair of slightly kooky deniers out in Montana. This Friday, it’s our pleasure to introduce an even more interesting character from Big Sky country.
Before we move West, one note: E&E’s Scott Waldman confirmed yesterday the rumor that Pruitt is asking Heartland for suggestions for Red Team members. However, Waldman reports that Heartland’s credibility is so destroyed that if their experts were selected, Judith Curry wouldn’t participate. “They kind of get the B-list people involved,” Curry told Waldman. “It's really not the best thinkers.” Weirdly, we agree.
With that, enter Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D., founder and president of Lysander Spooner University, libertarian politician and at least one-time Hitler admirer.
Roots first came to our attention with his provocatively headlined WUWT post asking if Glacier National Park’s glaciers are growing. Roots’s post is basically just some pictures of glaciers, and assertions that they’ve grown compared to past pictures at local venues. He suggests that all the various photos of glaciers are taken at different times of the year to inaccurately show melting, but doesn’t actually attempt to prove this in any real way. (The pictures are nice, though.)
Now, we were curious about Lysander Spooner University, which Roots apparently founded. Turns out it’s not exactly a university, but more of “a libertarian blog.” It does, apparently, have classes, including a course on “Government Myths and Lies about Climate Change.” It was held last year “in the sidewalk area in front of” a coffee shop. If you’re worried about the cost for such a prestigious course, don’t worry: admission is free. If you can’t afford that steep price because of past troubles with the law, there’s a 25% discount for ex-convicts.
Though 25% off zero isn’t even B-list level thinking, it is nevertheless a generous notion. It perhaps stems from the fact that, according to his faculty page, Roots himself is an ex-convict (and high school drop out, though later apparently received a J.D. and Ph.D. in sociology).
We went searching for the backstory on his legal troubles, and found the response to his 2000 application for admission to the Rhode Island State Bar Association. The doc provides full details of Roots’s checkered past (skipping required community service, driving with a suspended license, stockpiling loads and loads of unregistered or falsely registered guns and ammo in his dorm room).
After a stint in federal prison, Roots started pursuing his education, eventually earning his J.D. and PhD. But the RI bar was still wary, as Roots wrote about how “Adolph Hitler, among others, as evidence of the superiority of the white race” in a listicle which “purports to establish that members of the black race are inferior to members of the white race.” Which makes it a little more amusing that his felony resisting arrest with violence charge was “not as serious an offense as might appear on the surface since the only injury was to the officer's hand when he struck [Roots] in the face.”
Between the fake university, love of guns and white supremacy, Roots may not be ready for Heartland’s “B-list,” but he does sound ready for a position in the Trump administration.