Global Warming: Far left, far out, and the Woo-factor?

[Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan]

A delicious send up of the cranks on the Left, who are at the very least as, well, crank-like, as those of the Right, at least when it comes to Global Warming. In this case it is a deconstruction (as in 'demolition') of Alexander Cockburn's bizarre tirades (aka 'lunatic ravings') against the science of global warming. The key conclusions to a very long post:

It's important to remember both the left and the right have anti-scientific tendencies, the left's just tend to be less religious, less world-threatening and more woo-based. My brother recently told me about moving to California, "they don't believe in Jesus here, just bullshit" in reference to the woo-based beliefs of large portions of the population. The risk of unscientific tendencies is when people with potential to become cranks see a scientific theory as a threat to some overvalued idea they hold dear. Sometimes the over-valued idea isn't even a bad quality, it can be compassion - but taken to an extreme. If the left starts to see global warming policy as a money-grab by the elites, expect to see more left wing crankery and climate denial based on conspiratorial beliefs about carbon markets.

I suspect this is what has happened to Alexander Cockburn, a lefty who has gone over the deep end, on what appears to be suspicions of a conspiracy to further defraud and hurt poor countries using global warming science.

This leads me to three questions:

1) Since both the Left and the Right can be completely crockers, who can I, the founder and president of the Hezbollah wing of the Uncommitted, trust on anything?

2) Why does The Nation publish such nonsense?

3) What the hell are 'woo-based' beliefs?