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Tens of thousands of words will flow in the coming days on the significance of the life and death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Texas resort. Adam Liptak leads Times coverage here.

His death came just a few days after an unprecedented move by the court put a roadblock in the way of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulating carbon dioxide from power plants. (David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council does a good job here of dissecting the meaning of the stay in the context of a broad suite of factors driving greenhouse gas reductions in the United States.)

I won’t delve in depth on Scalia’s untimely passing. There were so many facets to the man and his interpretations of the Constitution. I simply want to draw your attention to a fascinating exchange I was lucky to witness during 2012 commencement activities at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

Justice Scalia was engaged in an onstage conversation with the school’s remarkable president, Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist. She asked him to explain his dissent in the 2007 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

“The issue was simply whether carbon was an environmental pollutant or not,” he said. “I did not think it was ever regarded as that. It is not the Atmospheric Protection Agency. It’s the Environmental Protection Agency. That was the basis for my dissent.”

I hope you’ll listen to the full exchange, and perhaps explore the longer conversation, which included Steven Chu, then President Obama’s secretary of energy, the computer scientist Edward A. Feigenbaum and others.

In 2009, when the E.P.A. first exerted its authority to rein in carbon dioxide, I wrote a post that in part looked back at Scalia’s skepticism about this gas fitting under a statute created to cut eye-stinging, lung-searing smog. I use this slide in talks for two reasons — both to illustrate Scalia’s views on global warming but also because his comment reflects a broader sense of discomfort with “dealing with global warming.”

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Here’s an excerpt from that piece:

Over all, carbon dioxide and climate remain a very tough fit for the legislative and legal arenas. This reality was on display during Supreme Court arguments in November 2006 that laid the legal foundation for today’s announcement. Confusion arose over which layer of the atmosphere was the repository for smokestack and tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide. James Milkey, assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, corrected Justice Antonin Scalia, saying: “Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It’s the troposphere.” “Troposphere, whatever,” Justice Scalia replied. “I told you before I’m not a scientist.” Over a brief flutter of laughter from observers, he added, “That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.” It looks like the courts will have to deal more with global warming in the months and years to come.

As recent events bear out, the Supreme Court will indeed be dealing more with global warming.

I enjoyed meeting Scalia in that visit to Rensselaer. He was candid and engaging and fiercely devoted to his view of the law. I offer condolences to his family and friends.