Among the “solutions” that strike me as preposterous: Harvard’s Howard Gardner wants the government to confiscate excessive income and excess net worth in the interest of reducing economic inequality. Politicians and professors will, of course, define how much is too much.

Lt. Gen. William Odom (Ret.), a Yale professor, argues that the U.S. should make Iran’s radical theocrats feel less “insecure” by not opposing their acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Bill McKibben of Middlebury College wants to slow global warming with “large-scale technological and social change, with the investments of financial and political capital that such shifts imply. Even if we muster the will, we won’t solve the problem.” In other words: Do as he tells you but don’t expect any good to come of it.

I’m unconvinced also by the assertion of Stanford’s Paul Saffo that Senate ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea will, as he claims, stall global warming, feed the poor and prevent terrorism.

Stephen Lewis, a former U.N. envoy, is gung-ho for the creation of a “new international agency for women,” based at the U.N., with “at least a billion dollars annually to begin with” to push for gender equality. Want to bet that a Saudi prince won’t be elected chairman?

Still, we shouldn’t be too hard on these guys. They’re doing some heavy lifting. Thinking is no racket for sissies.