Well, obvious to some, I suppose. The point is that people with an entrepreneurial bent should be familiar with business environments around the world. When you hear that Russia is a country ruled by an ex-KGB/military mafia you may get a false picture of a Don Corleone style of doing business: live and let live; pay up and you're OK. This is quite false. A story like this may save somebody from making a very grave mistake.
As much as I hate the commies (wherever they reside), I think the Chinese saved the world from a scam of unheard proportions. To make far-reaching policy decisions based on doctored data and questionable analysis would be criminal. Until there is an open, solid scientific basis for the AGW hypothesis absolutely nothing should be undertaken along the lines of what these people suggest. There are other serious environmental issues (like contamination) which deserve far more attention; they are understood and well documented. AGW at the moment looks like a scam. It is a good thing the Chinese couldn't be bought off or tricked by the fraudsters.
There is something to this, but it is also quite misleading. It is (sometimes painfully) obvious that there is a huge variation in innate ability. There are extremely talented people, there are those who find just about everything difficult, and all the shades in between. You can see this even with quite small children. Success is very often correlated with hard work, but in no way does that imply that some people aren't much smarter than others.
I think scientists are partly responsible for their loss of credibility by bowing to leftist pressure and endorsing slogans like "global warming", "global cooling", "the population bomb" and other such nonsense.
I say it would be very silly to form an opinion of S.J.Gould based on this rant. He was a remarkable person who did a lot to popularize evolutionary ideas and as such will aways be the target of attack, even by other scientists. If you want to have an informed opinion go and read his wonderful books, it is time well spent.