Not only gorgeous (he is, really), but smart, too.

From NewsBusters’ Paul Detrick:

CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano clapped his hands and exclaimed, “Finally,” in response to a report that a British judge might ban the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” from UK schools because, according to “American Morning,” “it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies.”

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano added. “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano went on to explain that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

The case stems from a father’s claims that the film is brainwashing propaganda, who told The Telegraph, “I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom.”

The Business and Media Institute has extensively critiqued the media’s coverage of global warming in Fire & Ice, which covers a hundred years of coverage of global warming. While journalists have warned of climate change for more than 100 years, the warnings switched from global cooling to warming to cooling and warming again.

There’s more, here (and a video), with every word written about Marciano strengthening my appreciation. I’d never heard of the guy before this minute, but on the basis of this alone, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s definitely not just a pretty face. So, for at least ten minutes, please don’t burst my bubble by telling me that, even though he’s scientifically honest, he has some other weird belief system, such as frog worship, or I don’t know what.

While I’m on the subject of global warming, I came across these gemlike paragraphs written about the huge benefits to the medieval world from global warming around the year 1000:

In the absence of honey, another source of sweetness was the crushed pulp of grapes left over from the making of wine. The Normans’ Domesday survey of 1086 listed no less than thirty-eight vineyards in England, with Ely marking the most northerly spot, seventy miles northeast of London. It was a warmer world. Archaeological evidence indicates that the years 950 to 1300 were marked by noticeably warmer temperatures than we experience today, even in the age of “global warming.” Meteorologists describe this medieval warm epoch as the “Little Optimum,” and they cite it as the explanation of such phenomena as the Viking explosion into Russia, France, Iceland, and the northwestern Atlantic.

The northerly retreat of icebergs and the pack-ice under the impact of warmer temperatures is a plausible explanation of why Lief Eriksson was able to sail around the top of the Atlantic as far as Newfoundland in or about the year 1000, and why he found vines there. During the “Little Optimum,” Edinburgh enjoyed the climate of London, while London enjoyed the climate of the Loire valley in France, a difference of 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit — the equivalent in modern American terms of San Francisco’s climate moving north to Seattle.

From: he Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger (a book I can’t recommend highly enough, along with Lacey’s other books about British history).

One is tempted, reading things like that, to come up with a Martha Stewart-esq slogan: “Global Warming : It’s a Good Thing.”